Nuclear power: engineering question or Evil Atomic Rays

[scott_sanford]

ARGH!

I really should be able to just skip past when I run into a comment by someone with an agenda, I really should. I know better. I know that many decisions aren't made by checking on numbers but by appealing to emotions.

It does not make me feel better, in part because many people who honestly mean well are being manipulated by a (hopefully) small minority of the willfully ignorant or politically motivated and that kind of thing bugs me. More so because this is a question where people are dying because of that manipulation.

A coal plant is less frightening; it does not bear Scary Atomic Symbols and therefore must not have radiation. That this is not necessarily true does not change the fundamental point that the building does not display Scary Symbols.

You may now feel safer.

Comments

[kengr]

Fay had a link to an article about the nuke plants in the area that had bad flooding a while back. The writer actually wondered *why* the plants were located near rivers.

This showed how little he'd bothered to actually try to inform himself.

For any readers who *don't* know, it's because nuke plants use a *lot* of water for cooling. Not run directly thru the reactors, but used to cool the working fluid that *does *go thru the reactors.

Coal plants use a fair bit of water too, for similar reasons.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you should mention that. One of the triggers of this particular rant was a comment on this article about the two nuclear plants in Nebraska which are currently not flooded (despite some nearby land being underwater). Someone asked, "Where is the mainstream media?" I held my tongue. First, since the plants are mildly inconvenienced despite the record floods, this is what folks in the business call Not A Story. Disasters are stories; places near disasters that escape damage are Not Stories. Secondly, the comment is on an article in the New York Times, which is part of the mainstream media on this planet.