This user mdsolar submits a lot of stories. All of them are negative about nuclear power. Isn't that an interesting pattern?
This user AC makes a lot of ad hom attacks and defensive comments about nuclear power. Isn't that an interesting pattern?
I don't think this is about "agreeing". He actually stated a fact. We know what happens when we irradiate a region to the point where most people leave. It happened in Chernobyl.
Right now, Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl is one of the greatest nature conservation parks in the world. It was a very clear proof of the fact that humans are one of the greatest if not the single greatest threat to biodiversity, and a far greater threat than significantly elevated background radiation combined with some of the more harmful isotopes that penetrate key organs and remain.
Whoever modded OP -1 troll needs to take a long look at findings at Chernobyl.
I've looked at the findings at Chernobyl and it is not clear proof of that at all.
It is clear proof that exposure to radionuclides prevents basic biological functions of things like fungi and bacteria that may appear insignificant at the top of the food chain, but not at the bottom of it where life is very active.
Trees are not rotting at Chernobyl, this is very bad. Apart from the accumulating fire danger that threatens to spread the fall-out elsewhere around Europe and the Northern Hemisphere it indicates that some very basic biological functions have been halted at Chernobyl and aren't likely to restart any time soon. If you are going to talk about bio-diversity then you can't just point to all the fluffy creatures and say "see, they're fine" you also have to look at the slimy creatures that live in the dirt because they are the ones that are important to us beyond sentimental reasons.
In this case, there is a reasonable case that radiation is a factor. However, you'll find mutations in butterflies all the time, and some percentage of those are due to natural radiation. Funny you won't see similar studies based on exposure to sunlight. You'll find it has an impact, but the press won't really care so much.
That is because we are talking about radionuclide effect vs raditation effect, not a natural effect. It is clear that there is a mutagenic process at work here that is above normal rate of natural mutations. Coupled with mutagenic effects recorded in species of farm vegetables and flowers this is an indication that bio-accumulation of radionuclides is occurring and that there is an increasing rate of uptake because more and more mutations are being recorded. Additionally more radionuclides are being released everyday.
It takes years for these radio isotopes to move through the food chain, however they are there now and remain until they completely decay. I would expect the next species affected are lizards and birds. The gestation rate of cancer in humans is roughly 6 years, so we should unfortunately see the first cases of disease from direct exposure to radionuclides start appearing in humans (probably children) around 2017.
After that, the random time factor introduced by the process of bio-accumulation becomes a factor and I would expect a statistical increase of other types of cancers in humans to gestate some years after that followed by genomic effects decades after that. Funding for collecting this data at Chernobyl was cut after 10 years, iirc, so there is no hard data to understand what will happen in the human population after that. I'm not stating an opinion for or against nuclear power, I'm just pointing out this is how these radio analogues work in the foodchain and that this is what happened.
Ignoring the politics of this discussion for a moment, what we are seeing here is the process of bio-accumulation expressed in nature. These are the radiological effects on small species at the bottom of the foodchain and what we are observing is the amount of time it takes these radionuclides to be moved through the food chain whilst affecting these creatures.
This is because radio isotopes present to a metabolism like a micro-nutrient that can be utilized in the body, for example pu-239 analogues iron so to a metabolism, it is used like iron would be. The creatures that consume it are themselves consumed by their predators.
Once ingested, radiation emitters are move somewhere in the body where that nutrient (analogue) is required. Alpha, beta and gamma radiation is emitted at various energetic levels as the radionuclide decays inside the body. The surrounding tissue absorbs the radiation and the gestation period for cancer, lasting roughly six years in humans, begins as a direct effect of exposure to the radio isotope. The indirect effect is on the genome and the DNA which is what I suspect we are observing now.
The affect of radionuclide contamination on humans is inevitable and the simple fact here is that the longer the radionuclides are release into the environment, the more there will be increasing the effects and variation.
At least for Thallium 208, it looks like it decays directly to Lead 208 [periodictable.com], also known, historically as Thorium D.
A little more research points to the spent fuel component of this fuel cycle actually Thaillium 233. I'd still like to learn more, however I thank you for the links.
I wanted to write a more detailed response however I'm tied up with things - I really appreciate your civility!
Are you sure you want to shoot this target?
Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people
They are between the leaders of these businesses who happen to be people. It would be just as much an act of collusion between people, if none of the businesses were corporations and thus, considered "people" by your viewpoint.
Indeed, they are the people who represent the company and the company is legally bound to the agreement, not the people who sign it so the OP's point remains a strawman.
You do not live here. You do not understand what we deal with. You do not know our history. You do not know what we are talking about.
Well your corporations operate in Australia and engage in union breaking activities that interfere with the functioning of democracy, probably based on the experiences that made unions the way they are in America today. Beleive it or not, Australia views unions as a functioning expression of democracy - and they work, so no one is lecturing you, but maybe there is something here for you to learn. After all your financial regulators were in Australia recently to learn about the checks and balaces in the Australian economy during the GFC. Perhaps the kangaroo riding, crock wrestling upside down folk may have something other than decent beer to offer.
In the United States, we have unions. They have a history. We know them better then you ever will.
It's unlikely though that you know the history of how your corporation behave outside your borders, especially when they control all of the media that influences the very opinions that you share. Australia however, continues to resist the type of corporate media ownership that limits our access to information.
They have earned a bad reputation for certain types of behavior.
I think that's unfortunate as it really illustrates that people in the US aren't participating in democracy any more than voting, which, iirc is around 17%. Now is the information you got about those unions from personal experiences or from the media outlets that are owned by the corporations that the unions are fighting against. I'm not invaldating what you are saying but I am wondering where the opinion came from.
Speaking of reputations, right now your pharmaceutical companies are lobbing to change the Australain healthcare system so that they can derive further profit from the population, including those who can least afford it. They also lobby to change labour laws in the country and have also been attempting to implement free-trade conditions that by-pass the High-court of our country. Guess which entities are fighting those activities?
The point is that in the US, we have a lot of unions that have done bad things. So many people are not going to be very receptive to expanding their power.
People are scared of the power American corporations yeild and the relentless way they pursue more power at the expense of ordinary people whose opinion of success is that 'they have enough'. This re-inforces that. Americans deserve to be treated a lot better by your corporations because it seems to me that you've lost sight of the things that made your country great in the pursuit of the dollar and, the despotism Franklin predicted is very close indeed.
I've read a lot of posts in this thread and it is amazingly clear to me that most of the posters here, who I assume are mostly from the US, simply do NOT know how a union works. I'm not sure why this would be, but I do realise that there is a lot of disinformation in the US about unions and they are not held in very high regard.
Here in Australia a union works like this:
- You are hired by your employer as normal.
- Some workplaces have compulsory union membership, which would have been previously negotiated. If you don't like it, don't take a job there. It's an interesting political debate, but at the end of the day, the compulsory union membership is to the advantage of the union which is to the advantage of the worker.
- If you enter a dispute with your employer then you can ask the union for help. AND THEY WILL. Legal aid, counselling, wage advice, negotiating. All you guys on here saying "I should be free to negotiate my own contract" well guess what: you fucking can. But with a union, they're there to help you when that all goes tits up. Like when you get fired. If it was an illegal firing then the union can pursue legal means (with a much larger war-chest than you have) to either reinstate you, or, ensure you are paid all due severance payments.
- If a group of you at work (who are all union members) are unhappy then the union will take note and with the will of the members (unions often vote before taking action like this) will pursue industrial action like holding a strike. This group mentality may sound a bit weird to you guys over there in the US, but it's actually a wonderful thing: people looking out for each other, people supporting each other, and being part of a community.
- In case it wasn't obvious, union membership levies a small fee each year (usually a few hundred dollars, but it varies widely) to help fund its operation.
So I hope that's a better picture about unions and how they work. Are they perfect? Of course not, and they can become too powerful for their own good. And, it would be pretty frustrating have a problem, and to be a member of a union, but not receive any support from it. But to say that "all unions are bad" is a ridiculous overreaction.
In my opinion: anyone slating unions either doesn't know what they are, or, is actively against them since an organised and informed workforce can demand (shock, horror) better working conditions and higher wages.
For the rest of you, how's that clause in your contract prohibiting you from EVEN TALKING about your wage with other workers? Just stop and think about that for a fucking second. You guys are being fucked and you don't even know it. Where's this magical free speech you keep banging on about?
You know what it is? I've actually worked for a few companies in the US and I've been there, at ground zero, when someone has been instantly fired (typically illegal in Australia) and frog-marched out of the building. During the coffee break everyone was up in arms, shocked, and ranting about how unfair it was. Then, HR held the meeting in the afternoon to "debrief" and every person there clammed up tighter than a nun's bum. It was a fucking joke. No one was prepared to say a word. I stepped up and chewed out HR, chewed out the boss, and told them all they were a pack of pussies. But what I didn't realise at the time was that everyone was terrified of being fired. And I think the number one reason for that was the health care situation in the US. You guys are slaves to that system and until you pull your heads out of your arses and sort out the health care, then changes to workers rights and employment conditions will just be icing on a turd.
MOD PARENT UP! Absolute gold. Plus, free association *IS* the ultimate expression of democracy
Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)...
during the black plague in England in the 1300's - hardly relevant now.
Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong.
And just because something is legal does not make it just.
If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong."
Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people - so that argument is a strawman.
To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable.
A corporation may have the same rights as a human, but it is not a human. The concept of a Proprietary Limited Liability Company already *is* an application of liberty that is despicable because it is absolved from the full responsibility for its actions. It's liability is limited, a person's is not.
...liberty and justice for all.
How does a corporation pledge allegience to anything not in it's corporate charter?
I am not against unions that do not derive their power from government, so if you want to start your own union, you should be able to, however as an employer, I should not be compelled to work with a union, so I should be able to fire all people in the union, it's my discretion. Agreement between two companies not to hire employees from each other is suboptimal, but nowhere near the scale of damage that government causes with rules and regulations and taxation and inflation. As I said, the problem here
Free assembly is the primary expression of democracy. For you to asset that an employer with 100's of millions of dollars of resources can contrive legal agreements, collude with each other and fire people at their discretion because they exercise those rights is an admission that America is not a democracy but a corpocracy. You're suggesting as soon as ordinary people openly, legally, democratically, get together, combine resources for their mutual benefit it's your opinion that they should be un-employable. What about the companies that *do* want to do the right thing by their employees but can't because they have to compete with these unetical entities who act in secret collusion to derive profit from supressing their employees salaries?
These corporations operate in western countrys that protects them by rule of law devised by citizens. These companies don't deserve to enjoy the benefits of operating in a stable environment provided by a democracy if they are not going to pull their weight in securing the prosperity of the citizens who provide that stability. If the free market determines that the price of a good or service should increase because it's in demand then that applies to people as well. If their skills are in demand because they invested in education to develop it then why shouldn't they profit from the investment in their education free of any hidden machinations to suppress the very free market these corporations expect to profit in.
Most IT workers I know don't belong to a union because they expect companies operate by the same principles that drive a free market. Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe have created a precedence that demanded a response that no-one in IT should have ever had to seek all because they didn't want to share the prosperity of the IT industry with the people who make up the IT industry. Clear examples of corporations working to suppress the free market and upset the balance that has negated the need for unions in the IT industry for decades.
The metrics don't include failures so infrequent that they aren't expected to happen in our lifetimes. That sort of infrequent failure was precisely what I was speaking of.
That is because there are two things being discussed here. Metrics vs Modeling via Calculated Core Damage. The CCD places probability of failure on every piece of equipment and component of the installation to determine reliability.
The original research that mdsolar spoke of, may well be accurate. But I don't see his condemnation of that research (as undermining the credibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) based on the actual content. That's more a problem with mdsolar's point of view than with the NRC.
This report refers to such content. I surmise that mdsolar's criticizm, and indeed the report's is valid. CCD has to be "a theoretical rate for a limited class of failure modes under ideal maintenance and regulation conditions" because it isn't real life that includes human related external factors. Indeed stylized in the very way you referred.
Further, the measure of 1 reactor accident per 10,000 years of reactor operation refers to a reactor *design* and Calculated Core Damage is not an industry or world wide measure of all reactors - just a coincidence. As each reactor is different it requires a completely new CCD for each reactor. Europeans use a Probabilistic Safety Analysis to determine possibility of core damage and the English use Failure Mode Effect Analysis.
At issue is human factors, that led to Chernobyl, TMI, FUkushima, that are not modeled and have meant 3 accidents in 14,500 years of civil reactor operation. The point here is that it's valid to critique the NRC's modelling when its metrics show a contradiction. I don't see this as undermining the process of approving reactor designs, but strengthening it because it standardizes human factors into the certification processes.
The concerning issue is that the NRC's own metrics show an increase in the frequency of 'reactive inspections' - these are the real numbers. CCD, PSA and FMEA only apply to the machine as a certification mechanism. Calculating human factors is a complex endeavor.
As to your current arguments, I find them a lot better quality.
Thank you, however I have always pointed to fact in our interactions, why are these any different?
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
