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I agree with ya Dod. I'm not campaigning against nukes yet.  But I have a bad feeling that this Japanese disaster is going to wind up killing an awful lot of people in later years.  Particularly the 50 or so people that had to walk inside the reactor to do damage control ...the ones exposed to massive amounts of radiation.  In fact, it wouldnt surprise me to find they were already dead or hospitalized.  It may kill a lot of of folks who lived nearby and were exposed in the first days.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
I could envision them along the Mississippi River and other large rivers in the heartland.  But they'd have to get a handle on all this flooding.  Also maybe Texas and areas of the Gulf.

Isn't just flooding you have to worry about in the midwest:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1919&from=rss

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
3 nuclear incidents in how long? 60 years? one without a containment shell and was built poorly (chernobyl), one that caused no harm (3 mile island) and a third that will in the long run, probably not cause too much damage. i don't think this is reason not to pursue the energy source. hell, how many coal accidents have their been?

Aye, but if you have a coal accident you don't have the risk of poisoning everyone for hundreds of miles around, and you don't have to wait a few hundred years before you can use the area around the coal mine again (or a few thousand, depending on what sort of radiation leakage you have).  

It isn't just the risk of an accident you have to think about, is the impact that having a disaster will cause - and in nuclear's case, that's pretty high.  

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Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:

Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
3 nuclear incidents in how long? 60 years? one without a containment shell and was built poorly (chernobyl), one that caused no harm (3 mile island) and a third that will in the long run, probably not cause too much damage. i don't think this is reason not to pursue the energy source. hell, how many coal accidents have their been?

Aye, but if you have a coal accident you don't have the risk of poisoning everyone for hundreds of miles around, and you don't have to wait a few hundred years before you can use the area around the coal mine again (or a few thousand, depending on what sort of radiation leakage you have).  

It isn't just the risk of an accident you have to think about, is the impact that having a disaster will cause - and in nuclear's case, that's pretty high.  

Instead coal plants poison those around them every second they're operating.  They often cause acid rain, and their emissions create bad air conditions correlated with asthma and other medical conditions.  And when, on rare occasions, a coal seam catches fire entire cities can be destroyed (see Centralia, Penn).  

Something important to remember is that Risk=Frequency*Vulnerability*Cost.  Frequency is the likelihood of a particular outcome (say a 100 year storm, which has a 1% chance of occurrence in a given year).  Vulnerability is how conditions increase or decrease susceptibility to damage from a particular source.  Cost is the amount of damages done if an unfortunate event occurs.  

So if we are calculating the difference in risk to public health between having a nuclear or coal power plant near an urban center we would use the above formula.  The frequency of coal plants contributing to determent of public health is constant, while it is very rare for a nuclear plant to release harmful material into the air or water.  The public is (presumably) more susceptible to medical issues stemming from excessive exposure to radioactive iodine than it is from coal exhaust (ie a dose of radioactive iodine is probably much, much worse for you than exposure to a molar equivalent amount of CO/CO2/H2SO4/etc coming out of a coal plant).  The cost would be the same (death).  If you assume cost is constant, then you end up with R=V*C as the deciding equation.  Which poses a higher risk is determined upon the determination of the balance between constant polluting with less potency or rare polluting with very high potency.  I don't know the numbers to calculate which poses a higher risk, but if anyone can find them it'd be interesting to see.

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I'm usually against wasting govt money, but surely it would be a good idea to help coal plants convert to clean coal technology.  Give them an incentive to convert.  Maybe that would help?

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
I'm usually against wasting govt money, but surely it would be a good idea to help coal plants convert to clean coal technology.  Give them an incentive to convert.  Maybe that would help?

it's not the plants so much, as it is the mining.

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Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:


Aye, but if you have a coal accident you don't have the risk of poisoning everyone for hundreds of miles around, and you don't have to wait a few hundred years before you can use the area around the coal mine again (or a few thousand, depending on what sort of radiation leakage you have).  

Aye?

Do you say 'Yar' and 'Arrgh' too like the pirates?  ;p

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:

Aye?

Do you say 'Yar' and 'Arrgh' too like the pirates?  ;p

Depends on how my day in work is going....

One thing I NEVER do is say things like "top o' the morning to ya" or "faith and begorrah" and I never, ever mention lucky charms :-p

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Lol!  Its my understanding that no good Irishman would ever say 'Faith and Begorrah'.  Dont know where that phrase came from.  

Well, I have my thick Southern Accent.  I say things like 'Yall' and 'I reckon' and I eat grits and turnip greens.  Lol!