Welcome to My World

[acidfree:1203 align=right size=200] I’m still a relatively “new” import here in Florida, so naturally I’m still learning the lay of the land and getting an idea just what kind of stuff inhabits the area with me. I was pleasantly surprised to learn there’s a nuclear power plant about sixty miles south of here. Apparently nuclear power accounts for 17% or so of all power generation done here in Florida; presumably because I live so close to the plant there in Saint Lucie my power here is generated by one of its reactors.

Naturally when opponents of nuclear power rear their ugly heads we are consistently referred to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the world’s worst, and the United States’ worst (respectively) nuclear accidents, to remind us how dangerous these reactors are and how much better we’d be with alternative energy production systems.

Let’s get it out of the way now and look at a list of nuclear and radiation accidents so we’ve got all of humanity’s glow-in-the-dark screwups out on the table. Amusingly, Saint Lucie Unit 1 is listed as having experienced a “significant precursor” back in 1980 with a 0.001% chance of causing core damage. Whoops

With that nastiness out of the way, though, we still have to examine the overall safety record of the technology compared to other power generation technologies.

Chernobyl was, of course, the biggest nuclear disaster in human history — a bad reactor design coupled with inadequate safety procedures both combined with a group of engineers and technicians working under immense pressure … that led to the reactor lid literally blowing off from the top of the reactor’s core, the reactor’s fuel catching fire and melting, and oozing all over the place, venting a whole bunch of radiation into the atmosphere. Whoops. The plant didn’t use containment buildings so when the sucker exploded (yes, it actually exploded — the techs screwed up their tests that badly), hot balls of free-floating hostility shot everywhere.

Three Mile Island was the biggest nuclear screwup in American history, but there’s a big difference here — the reactor designs used in the United States include tons more safety systems than the Russian designs do, including full containment buildings, better cooling systems, and they don’t have positive void coefficients (you have to work to make an American reactor run hot enough to boil water and generate power; the Russian reactors ran hot unless you work to stop them).

There have been a few other mishaps here and there, but the death toll from nuclear power has never even approached the death toll from power generation technologies like coal burning or hydroelectric dams. Of course, Chernobyl skewed those numbers a whole bunch If you don’t count environmental damage, nuclear power has killed fewer people than other power generation methods. If you do count environmental damage, it’s still done less damage. Chernobyl was a big blast, yes, but over time burning coal has put far more pollution into the air than even the Big Reactor Blast Party of 1986 did.

It occurs to me that I probably won’t ever get a chance to take a tour of the Saint Lucie facility (I think this technology is seriously impressive) because of all the stupid terrorism crap from recent years (thanks, ‘ya bastards!), so the picture in this post (click it for a bigger version; many thanks to NukeWorker.com for permission to repost the image) will have to suffice in satisfying my curiosity about how these machines work.

Star Trek got one thing wrong — they show matter/antimatter reactors just standing there in the middle of big engineering decks, with just a layer or two of Plexiglas separating the soft, squishy, easily-killable humans from the deadly reaction taking place inside … the sad reality is that once we actually have the technology to come up with that kind of reactor, we’re going to hide its spiffiness behind slabs of concrete and lock it up behind armed, poorly-paid guards in the name of “national security.” sigh

Oh well, at least I know keeping my apartment lit and air conditioned isn’t belching lots of fumes into the air sixty miles away. It’s encouraging that there are at least lots of pictures to keep me entertained. It’s also neat to have a couple reactors like this in my back yard.

Hand, n.:
A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.
— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

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