Discussion: Solar Energy in America

The nuke out by me has been shut down for a year because of parts that wore WAY too quickly and released some radiation (a small amount). After a year, and not actually having a way to solve it the solution is to restart the plant and operate it at less than full capacity. I am not adverse to nuclear power, I actually think we do ourselves a huge disservice by not reprocessing spent fuel like the French (we'd just rather they sit in a fancy swimming pool in an earthquake ridden area), but given recent events you think people in charge wouldn't be so stupid to essentially say "we've got a problem, we don't know how to fix it or exactly what caused it so we're just going to run it a little slower and keep our fingers crossed"!

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/02/...-san-onof/

Also, the NRC was founded in 1975. Then that whole little thing called 3 Mile Island happened in 1979. What was the damage to the surrounding area/population? Not a whole lot but it could have been far worse. I can't say one way or another which agency is more stringent but let's not put it out there that plants operating under the NRC haven't had mistakes in the past nor will they not have any in the future...

Interesting that you bring up foreign reactors when we are talking about nuclear power in the united states. The negligence on behalf of TEPCO at Fukushima was pretty bad. I'm not going to say that wasn't the case (even though the accident still resulted in no prompt fatalities) because I have done my own research and know that the lead safety engineer was screaming about the need for more tsunami protection since 2007 at the latest. He was ignored by management and the Japanese regulatory authority is much weaker than the NRC here in the US. So, thanks for playing, but the US is building and will continue building new reactors.

Do you think Japan is under-regulated or US is over-regulated?

I think both have about the right amount of regulation. The problem is that the regulatory authority didn't have the teeth to force corrective action and levy significant fines like the NRC does.

The NRC lacks agility in terms of regulating anything other than traditional light water reactors.

Is the Japanese system under-teethed or the US over-teethed?

There have been a great many advances in nuclear safety, both in industry in terms of INPO and in the NRC. Some of which are because there wasn't enough sharing of reliability and failure data between plants before Three Mile Island (which resulted in no deaths, and no significant exposure).

As for San Onofre, the culprit is steam generator tube leaks (which leak mildly radioactive primary water into the secondary steam line, not to the public). While I haven't kept a close eye on them, it looks like the new steam generators suffered from flow induced vibration. It seems like it may have been poor design.

http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/re...l#publicly

Japan was under-teethed, IMO. They are rebuilding their regulatory structure as we speak.

Agreed on both and my point stands. They don't have a solution other than "let's run it at less than full power and cross our fingers". Again, with the recent problems and negative spotlight on the industry you would think they would have a better plan...

The Japs aren't going to fix the problems that led to the accident, it's pretty much inherent to their culture. Everything is very hush hush, can't talk about it. There's a shame in admitting error.

Overt racial slurs aren't usually your style.

Japs? That's racist?

Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese." Today it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur among Japanese minority populations in other countries, although English-speaking countries differ in the degree to which they consider the term offensive. In the United States, Japanese Americans have come to find the term controversial or offensive, even when used as an abbreviation.[1] In the past, Jap was not considered primarily offensive; however, during and after the events of World War II, the term became derogatory.[2]

Japs? That's racist?

Overt racial slurs aren't usually your style.

I didn't realize I was being racist either??? Jap is an abbreviation for Japanese.

It's all about perspective, some people find the word retard offensive even when used in a manner that doesn't indicate a mentally handicapped person. Funny that he's calling racism when Japan is one of the most racist countries in the world.

Japan has a very xenophobic culture, but that doesn't mean I would use a derogatory term to describe them. I'm surprised that multiple posters on this board that are normally pretty aware about stuff like this don't know about this slur for Japanese people.

It's not a slur, no more than Brit is a slur for a British person. The fact that a certain segment of people at one time or another have used the word in a derogatory context, doesn't suddenly make my usage of the word derogatory. Definition wise it has a legitimate usage, which is exactly how I am using it. People tend to give words this power, even though context nor the technical base or origin of the word are ever actually understood. We see the same thing with words like "retard" or "gay", where one person finds it offensive in a context that actually is offensive and then suddenly the word is off limits in all contexts. Sorry but that's BS.