EU members want more subsidies for nuclear power

[Marvellous Chester]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Only older fission reactors can melt down. The newer ones have various safety features that guarantee that the reactor will shut down, assuming that's physically possible, and the mechanics of a fusion reaction mean that we might as well be talking about the neutrinos mutating. If you disable the power to a fusion reactor with no warning and then flood the reactor chamber with seawater, then.... you'll get a white flash as several milligrams of hydrogen plasma react with the surroundings. No radiation output, no chemical byproducts, and if you're lucky, not even any permanent damage to the reactor! (Although the currents that get set up by the magnetic containment collapsing might cause problems.)

If what you say is true then that is reassuring. I personally would rather live in a world with no technology than have a body full of tumours so surely you can see where I am coming from I guess nuclear would onyl be for a time until we discover another kind of energy.

Originally Posted by Human No More

Ah, the old appeal to probability (aka "It could happen, so it will happen").

A reactor and a bomb are nothing alike, to believe to is a misunderstanding of physics on the most fundamental levels.
I worry about terrorists anyway; but does it mean fear dictates how I live? No. Nobody wants to ban aircraft, trains or skyscrapers just because terrorists attack them.

I personally still don't see humans spontaneously disappearing.The question is that even if they DID, what would happen? Not much. It would take a complete inversion of the laws of physics for a reactor to fail from lack of operators; it will shut down or run itself out first. New designs are actually designed to shut down even if gravity itself stops working (also meaning they will do so if in deep space). Can't get more belt-and-braces that that.

One has to figure out what is considered an acceptable risk. Nobody like volatile things, espcially when they can cause the kind of trouble Japan has suffered through. There are no guarantees ever, programs can have bugs in them, hardware can malfunction and before you know it your safety mechanisms are worthless. Everybody makes mistakes, even the brightest engineers that would be in charge of stuff like this.

As for terrorists, all their current ways of attacking can kill a few hundred or thousand people but for them to be in control of a nuclear power station could harm/kill millions, I think it's a bit different. In truth it's not humans I'm worried about, they have the means to get out of there. It's everything else I'm scared for, the ones that can't pick up and leave when disaster strikes.