On Sunday 10 March 2019 22:57:02 Przemek Klosowski wrote: > On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 10:26 PM Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote: > > Leave it to humans with no concept of common sense, but lots of > > don't rock the boat > > rules and you get TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. And probably 100 > > more lessor 'accidents' we haven't been told about. > > Gene, this is just not the case. There's no way that 'lesser nuclear > accidents' are covered up, unless you include people falling off > ladders and such. Accidents with release of radioactivity are super > easy to detect, and so rather hard to cover up. > > Plus, one serious coal mine disaster (e.g. our 2010 Upper Big Branch > Mine, 29 deaths) has about similar number of fatalities as all these > nuclear disasters (the official counts are TMI = 0, Chernobyl = 31, > Fukushima = 0). There are good reasons why coal mining has a > reputation of one of the most dangerous jobs there are. Read > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident and > weep. > > Of course on top of direct accident deaths due to nuclear industry > accidents there's mortality due to long-term radiation effects, but if > you count those, it's only fair to count black lung deaths among > miners as well, and all the deaths due to smog pollution.
Absolutely. And that puts coal in a very bad but bright to the point of blinding, light. > You have a point that lots of rules limit progress in nuclear > industry, but these rules do have an impressive track record for > safety. We don't put new cheaper parts on airplanes, either, and for a > good reason. This reminds me that I once met some guys that watch FAA > advisories and figure out what spare parts they cover, then buy all > available supply of these parts. The sheer evil genius of their > business plan left me speechless---leave it to the free market forces > to find a way to profit; but if the alternative is to do away with FAA > regulations, I am OK with the speculators. Humph, I know where there is a little 500C they'd pull the flight perms in a heartbeat on. The thing has a pwm dash light dimmer. The main switching transistor failed so he couldn't fly it at night. 2 hours on his kitchen table one morning when I needed a ride, a better rated transistor was put in it, gooped and glued down for antivibration, and given a good coat of waterproofing varnish. Left it on the kitchen table to cure the goop while he tried to take me where I needed to get, failed as the wind at the landing site was probably well north of 60 mph and everytime the blade cleared the mountaintop we were thrown 3k feet away into stiller air. So we gave that idea up, put down in his back yard and I put the dimmer back in, then called the power folks in Naturita who had a snowcat and they needed a good excuse to go read the meter on the microwave shack since it had been about 6 months. Killed 2 birds, and the weather was more co-operative the next day. But I'd be willing to bet that barring another really shorted bulb, which blew the OEM transistor, and which the transistor I put in finished blowing that bulb 50 milliseconds after it was powered up again without failing itself, that dimmer is still working as designed 50 years later. That dimmer, if repaired or replaced and installed by a licensed A&P mech with a chopper cert was over $1000 in 1978. The transistor I used cost less than the batter he used to make us breakfast pancakes that morning. One thing about frozen stuff like that dash dimmer, if I have to modify it to make it dependable, it gets modified to stand up to blowing its src fuse or tripping its breaker without it failing again. Best way to hide your tracks is to never give them an excuse to compare what they are looking at with the OEM certified part because they have to replace it. FWIW, the failure mode of most dashboard sized incandescent lamps is not an instant open, but an instant open followed quickly by the short of a sagging filament coming in contact with its support wires, and to finish blowing, the circuit often has to supply several times the normal current to finish blowing the lamp. But the folks who design such stuff don't know that, so it never gets anywhere near their calculator. Besides, I expect there is a statute of limitations that expired decades ago, so now it can be told. With the per flying hour maintenance costs of a 500C over $200/hr in 1978, its probably been scrapped by now. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
