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RE: The Evil Nuclear Power Plants! - Emancipated Human
One of the issues with nuclear plants in the united states at least is they were originally intentioned to be decommissioned after 50 years of faithful service. The plants were supposed to be replaced with newer, safer more state of the art ones. However that duration of time has come and passed, and no newer plants built. We just keep using the older ones, which are not nearly as safe as newer style plants.
They go in and replace parts and what not. they have outages to perform these quarterly operations to keep them up to par.
Replacing parts is fine and good however it does not upgrade safety capabilities of the plant itself. The designs for the reactors themselves have been dramatically improved over the years. The fact of the matter is a lot of US plants are just outdated. We need to invest in newer, safer, better overall designs.
Sorry, but that's "Failed logic" Anytime you replace a part, that is new, that IS an upgrade, and does increase safety. Every part manufactured in the world has a MTBF (Mean Time before Failure) rating. As systems and parts are replaced, most of the time they ARE using new, improved parts/systems, but NOT in all cases. basically I agree with your premise however !, I HATE Nukes (IMO) they are the greatest sin creation of man ...
No, I'm sorry but you can only increase safety as far as overall plant design will allow. My logic was not faulty, I did not say that replacing a failing part did not increase safety. I said it does not improve the safety of the design of the plant.
I don't hate nuclear power, I feel it is a necessary component of any national energy supply that does not contribute as much damage to the environment as coal or natural gas (when the radioactive remains are properly dealt with).
Thanks for your input.