
Calm Before the Storm - spenrose
https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2019/09/30/calm-before-the-storm/
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H8crilA
Ironic that building more nuclear plants would also stop the water from
rising.

But because it's not going to happen[1] this one probably needs
decommissioning.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)

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SteveGregory
Nuclear is the only technology that sufficiently solves the heat problem.

Lots of our energy is spent on heat, whether residential or industrial.

Nuclear _produces_ heat. If only we used this for district heating, container
ships, and electricity

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pjc50
I'm not sure I'd trust lowest bidder flag of convenience ships operating
beyond national law to operate a reactor safely without ever dumping
radioactive material in the only ocean we have.

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dredmorbius
To say nothing of the 200 or so ships lost at sea every decade. _Not_ evenly
distributed across the oceans, but concentrated in sea lanes, especially near
ports and land, especially choke points such as straits, capes, and canals.

The scale of operations, with ~80,000 registered commercial large ships,
regulation of an international activity dominated by lowest-cost, least-
regulated, flag-of-convenience registries (as you note), very often minimally-
trained, and _very_ disempowered crews (authoritarian / high-gradient socio-
economic-political power discrepencies play a role in numerous accident
dynamics), training, and scrapping practices all put a distinct chill in that
notion.

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pjc50
I'm reminded of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery)
: 1,400 tonnes of explosives sunk in the Thames estuary. At least it's safeish
as long as nobody touches it. The couple of nuclear reactors in subs that have
already sunk are I believe in deep distant water, losing one inshore would be
a serious problem.

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dredmorbius
Nuclear submarines tend not to congregate in and/or near shipping lanes, as a
general rule.

Their role in commerce is limited.

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dredmorbius
... the point being, for nuclear-powered merchant traffic, that that _does_
congregate near shipping lanes. Increasing consequent risk.

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klemudooj
No wonder that support for this fearmongering hit piece for Type
Investigations comes from Anti-nuclear foundations, and i mean all of them
(Bottom of the page)

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tempguy9999
This is _exactly_ why I am against nuclear power, not because it is in any way
bad but because it gets treated with not much more sophistication than a chimp
would given matches.

Nuclear power is of fabulous value, but the way it gets turned into a
potential liability is what puts me off it. It seems to be the way the human
race approaches anything; with the shortest term view.

The merit of any tool is in wielding it wisely.

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brazzy
Yup, the problem with nuclear is not the safety of the technology as such, the
problem is the combination of two things:

* People's greed, stupidity and laziness means that in practice, there is no such thing as a safe technology.

* A nuclear reactor is pretty much the only thing where a local fuckup can have globally disastrous consequences

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H8crilA
> * A nuclear reactor is pretty much the only thing where a local fuckup can
> have globally disastrous consequences

As opposed to a distributed fuckup that has >95% probability of failure.

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tempguy9999
There is 100% failure probability for _everything_

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H8crilA
Yes, correct :)

I meant within next 100 years or so. On a predefined time horizon.

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tempguy9999
It's unclear what high probabliity, distributed fuckup you're talking about.
Climate change? In that case I'm entirely with you but that's a result of the
same short-termism I mentioned.

I am horribly certain we've painted ourselves into a corner.

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H8crilA
Climate change, yes.

