positives, page-27

If people own a stock, weather it is uranium, coal, oil/gas, wind or solar power, they are generally going to be bias because they believe in the product which is why they own stocks in it. People post information on the relevant stocks messageboard that they believe is correct or to get further points of view from like minded people. I think people who have lost all their money on the stock market and no longer have anything to do on hotcopper go to stocks they don't own or have any intention of owning and downramp. I don't go to CEY's messageboard when a coal mine explodes and tell them coal s#@%'s and is slowly and silently killing us all!!!

anyway...

The nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan is bad enough; the nuclear disaster unfolding in China could be even worse.

"What disaster?", you may ask. The decision taken today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair....

...Several writers for the Guardian have made what I believe is an unjustifiable leap. A disaster has occurred in a plant that was appallingly sited in an earthquake zone; therefore, they argue, all nuclear power programmes should be abandoned everywhere. It looks to me as if they are jumping on this disaster as support for a pre-existing position they hold for other reasons. Were we to follow their advice, we would rule out a low-carbon source of energy, which could help us tackle the gravest threat the world now faces. That does neither the people nor the places of the world any favours."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/mar/16/japan-nuclear-crisis-atomic-energy





When it comes to safety, the nuclear industry emphasizes the concept of "defense in depth." Reactors are designed with layers of redundant safety systems. There's the main cooling system, a backup to it, a backup to the backup, a backup to the backup to the backup, and so on. A major accident can only occur if all these systems fail simultaneously. By adding extra layers of redundancy, the probability of such a catastrophic failure can -- in theory at least -- be made too small to worry about.

After Chernobyl, the nuclear industry argued that -- as far as safety was concerned -- Soviet RBMK-type reactors, like the one involved in the 1986 accident, had about as much in common with modern Western reactors as an inflatable dinghy does with an ocean liner. And they were right. But their argument made very little impact because the nuclear industry had lost the public's trust.

It is vital the nuclear industry does not make the same mistake now. It must not try to sweep safety issues under the carpet by telling people that everything is OK and that they should not worry. This strategy simply won't work. What might work is to acknowledge the problem and work to fix it.