Thai environment, energy, safety issues

Nuclear Power for Thailand

By Anonymous, Created on: 04/09/2007, Last updated on: 09/07/2014

» The Prime Minister has explained the plan for a nuclear power plant to produce energy for Thailand and help Thailand move away from reliance on oil and gas. Thailand is a net importer of energy, getting much of its energy from the middle east at a huge cost to the country. Added to that the use of...

• ipsut commented : Drake: Leaks are not inevitable you said. Hmm how about Japans Earth Quake? If it is designed and maintained by human beings, mistakes will be made. Its inevitable, sorry. Money prevented them from building the reactor higher up from the beach than they did. Money is almost always the weak link. The Japanese are limiting nuclear power, Taiwan is trying to as well. I hope Thailand follows suit.

• drake commented : [quote="ipsut":sbgbg406]Drake: Leaks are not inevitable you said. Hmm how about Japans Earth Quake? If it is designed and maintained by human beings, mistakes will be made. Its inevitable, sorry. Money prevented them from building the reactor higher up from the beach than they did. Money is almost always the weak link. The Japanese are limiting nuclear power, Taiwan is trying to as well. I hope Thailand follows suit.[/quote:sbgbg406] Since you seem to really want to play with a sleeping dog, I must point out that it's view of nuclear power is mostly from engineering and technology standpoint because it's the only thing that is measurable and evaluable with some degree of certainty. As for the uncertainty factor, to err is human. As much as anyone want, we can not avoid "human error" but most good engineers do try to put in as much "safety margin" as their bosses and the beans counters will allow - just for one of those days when everything goes South and the monkeys pushed all the wrong buttons. Planes do fall from the sky and automobile accidents do happen - more frequent and deadly than nuclear leaks but yet humans continue to use those technologies because their benefits out weight their risks. Taking educated risks, that's what living an adult life is about isn't it ? If anyone want to completely avoid human mistakes, this is the wrong planet. Here, the issue is the same with radiation and nuclear energy. Man CAN NOT live without being exposed to Nuclear power or radiation, perhaps some want to exclude the use of man made technology but there is no way avoiding the natural ones. For that matter, life wouldn't exist without Nuclear power and radiations in the first place. Just look up on any clear day or night and remind self that them out there are billions of ginormous nuclear reactors burning and spewing out countless amount of radiation non stop. Some fine day when one of the little twinkly light turned itself in to a Cosmic Gamma Ray Burst source and point it's beam this way, life on earth will be all dead in an instant, except for perhaps cockroaches. And if all of the beams should missed earth, in about five billion years the Sun will go red giant and completely (re)absorbed the Earth - providing same result but now the survivability of cockroaches will be extremely poor. Now THAT's inevitable. Should we fret about all that ? Create a committee to investigate and mitigate perhaps ? Or just simply continue to live as the Hindus do, continue to live life as it is knowing that Reality and Existence will end when the dreamer wakes. But I digressed. Fukushima reactors are 40+ years old first gen BWR design whose technology and they were scheduled for EOL (end of life) this year but someone, unfortunately, decided to extend their working permit for another 10 years. Nature revoked the permit. Apparently, the cause of the melt down was steam leak due to substandard pipe welds that blew when the quake hit and causing the turbine cooling pumps and emergency steam powered pumps to fail even before they were partially flooded. The design didn't need electricity to run the emergency pumps and would have withstood the flood IF the welds had held. Yet, as some of the constructions were clearly below specifications the reactors lived for their entire designed life expectancy and survived through all of the previous quakes of 'expected' intensity - a testament to the engineering and robustness of the system itself. So far, there are less dead/injured/loss from this Nuclear event than the Tsunami itself or the Tsunami of 2004 but yet all the irrational anti Nukers are so focoused on it. Why ? At the end, this will proved to be just a fraction of the Chernobyl incident and mostly forgotten. Opponents of nuclear power always point to historical negatives, as insignificant as they are, rarely if ever admitting to what else are available or what good had come from Nuclear Science and Technologies so far. Today, other Nuclear technologies beyond BWR or Uranium Cycle fuels are available. Nobody talks about them much. From what I gathers the anti-nuke don't want them because their singular reason for existence will be mitigated and the pro-nuke don't want them because it's a competing technology and there is less money in it. As for decisions rashly made by politicians at the behest of Green Loons the world over to abandon Nuclear Power, some things are better left to adults and we will sort that all out in due time. FYR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_an ... _accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors

• ipsut commented : [quote="chimp":3nd1ourw]The same old arguments will continue for years, but the fact is Thailand will need new and safest nuclear power Nuclear power can be operated safely and cheaply when properly comply with international standards and safety routines.[/quote:3nd1ourw] Yes the same old arguments will continue as they will never be fully answered. Yes calculated risks are a fact of daily human life, however the consequenceses of nuclear mistakes are at present to large to allow. Japan is limiting its future exposure, and Taiwan has been considering if continuing with their latest reactor is something that should be done, ( of course they will as too much money has been spent already and really thats all its about ). I'd prefer limits to growth rather than the unlimited growth Thailand and most other countries seem to enjoy.

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