zen4dummies Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 "I could be wrong, but I think the Sierra clubs current position is they are against Nuclear power, citing the waste and safety as the reason. Wasn't it Carter who pushed for this years back?" It looks as though you are right. I just googled the subject and the Sierra Club is against it for the reasons that you stated. Carter is a nuclear engineer. He also pushed for shale oil production and Reagan squashed that when he came into office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekong Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Maybe they have changed their position recently but about two years ago I remember that they shocked a lot of people when they strongly recommended nuclear power plants. Germany (I believe) came up with a coolant that did not pick up radioactivity as water does, making the system much safer. What do you know about this Mekong? Zen I believe that you are talking about the PBMR (Pebble Bed Modular Reactor). Since it uses Helium as the Primary Circuit Coolant the Helium cannot get contaminated, since it is an inert gas. I have noticed people making reference in this thread to "Nuclear Engineers", wheras in fact there is no such beast. There are Engineers experienced working in the Nuclear Industry such as myself but we studied the same as Engineers in other Industries, it just so happened I lived / studied in the area of the UK where BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited) UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) and NNC (National Nuclear Corporation) all had their head offices at a time when the Nuclear Industry was still ongoing in the UK. The differance between Nuclear Industry and say Onshore Oil and Gas comes down to SIL (Safety Integrity Level). SIL has 4 levels SIL 1 to SIL 4, with SIL 1 being the lowest having an availability of between 0.1 - 0.01 (90-99%) SIL 2 0.01 - 0.001 (99 - 99.9%) SIL 3 90.001 - 0.0001 (9.9 - 99.99%) SIL 4 0.0001 to 0.00001 (99.99 - 99.999%) These figures refer to PFDavg (Probability of Failure in demand average), that is to say that if a safeguarding circuit was asked to detect a deviation from norm and isolate accordingly, what is the probability of the safeguarding circuit failing to do so. You also have to take into consideration the frequency of the deviation, ie if an event was to happen say once ever 6 months a SIL 1 Safeguarding Circuit will fail once between 50 and 500 years In Oil and Gas approx 60% of my safeguarding circuits are SIL 1, 30% SIL 2, and the other 10% SIL 3 with the odd 1 or 2 SIL 4 (Main Well Head Isolation, Battery Limit Isolation where offshore pipeline comes onshore etc) In Nuclear everything is SIL4 How to achieve these differant levels is down to redundancy, test intervals of devices within the safeguarding circuits etc etc Sorry to have been so long winded, this is the crap that pays my salary / keeps me employed and not many people understand it or what I do. As I have said on other threads accidents don't happen and can be engineered out of any design at a cost, a SIL 1 Safeguarding Circuit costs in the region of US$10,000 to implement to make it SIL 4 would be more like US$250,000. Frequency, Consequences, Costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted June 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Carter commanding a nuclear sub. I imagine he must think it's safe, since he lived next to a reactor for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueyam Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Carter commanding a nuclear sub. No. Never happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueyam Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 I have noticed people making reference in this thread to "Nuclear Engineers", wheras in fact there is no such beast. There are Engineers experienced working in the Nuclear Industry such as myself but we studied the same as Engineers in other Industries... This is not true in America. Here one receives a degree for successfully completing the required curriculum at a Department in an Engineering College. The curricula of the various Departments differ substantially from one another and are generally approved and accredited by the professional societies associated with each engineering sub-discipline (e.g. American Nuclear Society for nuclear engineers). Thus if one is looking to hire a nuclear engineer, one usually selects from graduates of nuclear engineering departments rather than departments of chemical, electrical, or mechanical engineering, etc. Their educational backgrounds will be significantly different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekong Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Rogueyam, I agree to disagree, someone who does a Phd in Nuclear Physics is not an Engineer but a Physicist, they understand the concepts of fission and fussion but do not have the whereabouts to design and / or commission such a viable facility. On an NPP does one need a Phd in Nuclear Physics to understand the principals of a Turbine, does one fuck pure mechanical, does one need a Phd in Physice to understand Power Generation, again does one fuck pure electrical. Sorry mate you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about, out of my 25+ years in Engineering I spent approx 9 years involved with Nuke Power and I refer to myaelf as an Engineer with Nuclear Experience not a Nuclear Engineer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Munchmaster Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Lazyphil understands the concepts of fission but I don't think he's a physicist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueyam Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Rogueyam, I agree to disagree, someone who does a Phd in Nuclear Physics is not an Engineer but a Physicist, they understand the concepts of fission and fussion but do not have the whereabouts to design and / or commission such a viable facility. On an NPP does one need a Phd in Nuclear Physics to understand the principals of a Turbine, does one fuck pure mechanical, does one need a Phd in Physice to understand Power Generation, again does one fuck pure electrical. Sorry mate you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about, out of my 25+ years in Engineering I spent approx 9 years involved with Nuke Power and I refer to myaelf as an Engineer with Nuclear Experience not a Nuclear Engineer. What you said previously was that "there is no such beast (as a Nuclear Engineer)" and that those working in the nuclear industry "studied the same as Engineers in other Industries." These statements are simply false for the reasons I've already given. While you certainly write like an engineer (i.e. quite poorly) your reply is so overlarded with emotion and bereft of reason that I must wonder whether your technical skills are merely the equal of your rhetorical ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueyam Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Here are some folks who for 50 years have been doing what you say isn't done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flashermac Posted June 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2008 Carter commanding a nuclear sub. No. Never happened. My mistake. He certainly knows about nuclear power though: << As a junior officer' date=' he completed qualification for command of a diesel submarine. >> << Carter felt the best route for promotion was with submarine duty since he felt that nuclear power would be increasingly used in submarines. During service on the submarine [i']USS Pomfret[/i], Carter was almost washed overboard. Carter completed an introductory course in nuclear reactor power at Union College starting in March 1953. This followed Carter's first-hand experience as part of a group of American and Canadian servicemen who took part in cleaning up after a nuclear meltdown at Canada's Chalk River Laboratories reactor. << Upon the death of his father in July 1953, however, Lieutenant Carter immediately resigned his commission and was discharged from the Navy on October 9, 1953. This cut short his nuclear power training school, and he was never able to serve on a nuclear submarine, as the first of the fleet was launched January 17, 1955, over a year after his discharge from the Navy. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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