Something stinks...

[SpeedKnight]

First, read this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060304/sc_nm/nuclear_dc

Then...

*mounts handy dandy soap box*
DAMMIT! Where I'm as guilty of jumping to conclusions as anyone... this drives me nuts.
Allow me to point out that I run a friggin' nuclear reactor for a living. I know what tritium is. The article calls it "a form of hydrogen that becomes radioactive water when it contacts air." Bullshit. It starts as water. All these plants are pressurized water reactors. That tells me the "tritium" spills were really spills of what we in the nuclear world call Controlled Pure Water. It's basically reclaimed reactor coolant... it's been chemically and mechanically purified to remove fission products and activated wear products that build up in the coolant. Once this purification is complete, the tritium (which by the way also occurs naturally) levels in the water are elevated to about 5 times or so normal, naturally occurring levels. Is tritium radioactive? Yes. So is your CRT computer monitor. Unless you have a projection TV, and LCD TV, or a plasma TV... it gives off radiation also. If you live in the northeast, say, near the Adirondaks (I think I spelled that right)... the granite that makes those mountains produces radiation.
This article, and the people it mentions, are making a big deal out of what is really nothing. The amount of "tritium" (really, the water it's in) that would have to be spilled to have any health affects (and I'm not even taking into account any dilution) is in the MILLIONS of gallons.
Hells bells... the guy that started the Navy's nuclear power program, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, fucking drank a pint of Controlled Pure Water, ON MANY OCCASIONS, and never got cancer.
If someone is going to write an article about shit like this... I'm thinking maybe some research into nuclear power should be done first. If you're gonna publish something... AT LEAST HAVE THE FACTS STRAIGHT!
*steps down*

Any opinions?

[Buxom Wench]

I think you said it all :bow:

well done!


P.S. my Rogue used to work for a company that made the equipment that monitored Nuclear Power plants.
He never saw any problems from this either.

[SpeedKnight]

I think you said it all :bow:

well done!

*bows*

P.S. my Rogue used to work for a company that made the equipment that monitored Nuclear Power plants.
He never saw any problems from this either.

I have to step back, just a little. It does mention 3 million gallons getting into the groundwater back in '98. I won't pretend to know the volume of the ground water, but I'm willing to bet it's several times more than 3 million. The amount of tritium in 3million gallons would indeed give you a detectable radiation exposure... but it'd be less than an x-ray would give you. Dilute that, and the exposure level goes down. The article then says that the spill at one plant was 276,000 gallons and it was completely contained at another.
This article pisses me off to no end... it's trying to stir up hostility against something that people in general are, for the most part, ignorant about. ARGH! :augh: :chomp:

[Entropy]

Don't get me started either. I live in Rockland and can see the Indian Point plant from my house. Spread between the few that have educated themselves and the few who don't give a crap we have the stupid and loud members of the community who don't know anything but will yell about it at the top of their lungs.

My biggest peeve is people who move to the area and then complain about the plant. I usually respond:

"It was here when you moved in. You knew it was there and you moved in anyway. If you hated it so much, why did you buy a house here? If you still hate it, why haven't you moved yet?"

[Bethany2112]

I went with my Dad to a fatherdaughter day at his Nuculear plant in upstate NY. Oh over 10 years ago. You had to go through a radiation detector before you even go in the plant. Then again when you leave. This way if there was an unusual level they could track where you were that day.
Course now they could be even safer if the government would let companies build new plants instead of trying to fix the old ones. The cost of reparing some of these older plants is ridiculous. I remember seeing the powerlines as they were leaving the plants. They had this really loud humm and the rain was evaporating about 6 inches above the line. So cool.

[Margaret]

This article pisses me off to no end... it's trying to stir up hostility against something that people in general are, for the most part, ignorant about. ARGH! :augh: :chomp:


That's what some reporters do the best. They report the facts, but don't give you all the information. People need to make the effort to get educated and many rarely do.

[KissMeKate]

Sorry, but if we're going to get on our environmental soapboxes, I'll have to get on mine.

I'm a environmental consultant. It's my job to go out there and figure out if what companies and the government are doing are a threat to people and/or the environment. Then we get to figure out how to either control the problem, or even better, fix it. It's not an easy process, nor do we ever clean anything up to my satisfaction, but we comply with state and federal guidelines. And if you've ever tried reading the Federal Register, you'll see how screwed up it is.

It sucks that whoever reported this is uninformed, but another point to be making is that companies all over the world are illegally discharging waste all the time. There are all kinds of loopholes in legalese that allows this to continue to go on. That still doesn't make it right.

It sucks that the common person is uninformed, but does that mean it's ok to continue to pollute our environment because most people don't care or don't want to know? That's still not right.

This article reports 3 reported spills. Hate to break it to you, but many spills don't get reported to the public, and if they do, many are like this, incomplete. Here's a science project for you: Pick a hazardous product, anything you want. Research what companies produce this hazardous product - every company (remember, the US isn't the only country polluting the planet). Find reports for how much waste has been produced over the last 20 years and where it went (landfills, incinerators, dumped, lost, spilled). Add it up. I'll bet you'll be horrified, and that's only one product.

Did you stop to look at the crap we're able to make and throw away? Every process makes waste, and much of this is hazardous in some way. Did you stop and think about where this goes? It's doesn't just disappear. Did you stop and think how it gets where it goes? It goes the same way everything else goes, on rails and roads. Did you stop and look at the most recent probability of cancer? It's close to one in two. Did you stop and look at your food and wonder where it came from and if it's safe?

I'm sorry you feel offended that the information about the tritium spills isn't correct. Yes, this one time they are focusing on nuclear plants, but next time it will be something else.

A bigger point needs to be made. We are running out of clean everything - food, water, air, land. So what are we going to do about it?

Soapbox done. Flame me if you'd like, but I still hope to make even one little part of the world a better place to live, even if it takes my whole lifetime. :earth:

[SpeedKnight]

That's what some reporters do the best. They report the facts, but don't give you all the information. People need to make the effort to get educated and many rarely do.

True enough. I'm a knowledge sponge... if I find something that interests me or that I feel I would find myself, at some point, arguing for or against... I learn about it.
I mean... I've become quite handy when it comes to working on cars. I've had no formal training. I learned everything from books and from trial and error... because mechanics are crooks. So now, they don't rip me off. :)

As for the topic at hand... I went through two years of grueling schooling before I went to my first sub. After that, it took another 10 months before I was allowed to run the reactor (usually takes about 12 to 14 months). On top of that we train WEEKLY on everything from the physics going on inside the reactor while it's up and running, what's going on when it's shutdown, the affects of coolant chemistry, heat transfer stuff, effects of radiation exposure, etc. etc. etc. I spend WAAAY too much time learning all this stuff to not get pissed when some reporter writes some crap that seemingly only serves the purpose of spinning up the ignorant!

[Becca]

Thanks, Speedknight, I learned something today. I live within 30 miles of 2 different nuclear power plants so it's not unusual to see something in the news.

And, I really appreciate someone, with knowledge, getting on their 'soap box' to dispute something in the news instead of going off on a rant.

[SpeedKnight]

Kate, dear...

I'm not by any means justifying illeagal discharges of any sort of waste. My rant here is merely how slanted this particular article is. Truth be told... every article I have ever seen about nuclear power is slanted in much the same way.
I agree that it is wrong for companies to not report hazordous discharges. In the case of this article, the amount of discharge that would truely be hazordous simply couldn't be hidden, I would think.
As far as I'm concerned, if a spill is contained and does not affect the general public, there's no need to report it. Even in the UberAnal world of the Navy's Nuclear Power Program, we don't report spills that don't leave the ship. On the flip side, if the spill is outside of the ship, we report it. I've seen that ONCE in my 12 year career.

My soap box is not from an environmental viewpoint... it's from one of putting out the right information! Even if the focus were on something other than nuclear power, I'd be nearly as peeved. It just so happens that this particular focus bites me more, because too many people are too willing to jump to the wrong conclusions when nuclear power is involved.

[SpeedKnight]

Thanks, Speedknight, I learned something today. I live within 30 miles of 2 different nuclear power plants so it's not unusual to see something in the news.

And, I really appreciate someone, with knowledge, getting on their 'soap box' to dispute something in the news instead of going off on a rant.

*bows obligingly*

If only one person has been educated here... good enough for me.

[Cyranno DeBoberac]

Even worse is the total lack of reporting on a genuine threat to all our lives, dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.dhmo.org/).

[Margaret]

Exactly Bob. What an awful thing to have on this planet. However, the more awful truth is that we are dependant on dihydrogen monoxide. If it were to be a banned or even controled substance, millions would die.

[Winifred Baskerville]

Even worse is the total lack of reporting on a genuine threat to all our lives, dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.dhmo.org/).


Yes, Bob, that is a very serious threat... Thank you for making us aware of that one, too.

Winnie

[SpeedKnight]

There were a few DHMO spills here the other day. Several parts of the island were completely covered with the stuff.