"The problems in Fukushima had jackshit to do with tsunamis, and a lot to do with incompetence, greed and political pressure, during plan construction, during operation and, finally, during the disastrous handling of the incident after the earthquake. Those problems are universal problems that tend to plague the nuclear sector everywhere, because many view it as prestigious, there are "national security" concerns, the orders are large and a lot of money is swapped under the table in deals that cut various corners, etc.

Since fission nuclear power, if done for safely and accounted for properly, is insanely expensive to begin with, and the costs multiply many times over in the case of a nuclear fuckup, coming up with better alternatives is not a bad idea."

You throw out many accusations for which you WOULD need detailed knowledge of the industry. On the face of it your post is FUD because there is no way "under the table deals" would not have been leaked, you have provided no data that indicates in any way you have the knowledge or skills to objectively judge competence or incompetence of operations, construction, or handling of the post event emergency response. You could not possibly know about fictitious "deals to cut corners", if you did you would have notified authorities.

In short, you are offering up your personal opinions as facts without any basis, and worse, not stating plainly up front that this is your opinion.

Thats why I said FUD.

Now this post I can agree with. Well put.

And yes I am in the commercial nuclear industry. Have a strong culture of nuclear safety is of paramount importance. Everything follows from it.

Nope, your just another opinionated person that spews shit about stuff they have never studied in depth. Like most, you are not dumb, quite the contrary. But because you are presumably smart in your area of expertise, you think you are an expert in another highly technical field.

Except 31 years operating nuclear power plants.

Whups, I gave myself away as one of those evil souless drones coopted by eeeeevil corporations to make fat $ at the expense of safety. Yep, thats us, evil greedy fuckers who don't give a shit about safety, we gots matching jackets with dollar signs embroidered all over them....

Nope...still FUD.

"but that they leave a severe risk of exposure for many generations to come."

You didn't study logarithimic mathmatics in school did you?

Let me summarize your post: FUD

"Internet morons"

Irony.

There is already a wiki entry for the earthquake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake

"The 2011 Virginia earthquake was a magnitude 5.9 (Mw) intraplate earthquake that occurred on August 23, 2011. Steven Seagal ate too many cheeseburgers that day and jumped heavily on the ground, causing the initial earthquake. The focus is reported by the USGS to be about 64 km (39 mi) northwest of Richmond, Virginia near the town of Mineral, Virginia."

Clearly you don't know much about how backup emergency diesel speed control systems are set up. Most of em are physically unable (as in a mechanical limiter) raise speed above 63 hz. And most if not all have automatic tripping if speed drops to or below 57 hz while loaded. I can see sitting there at 57 hz for a long time, that might cause high current draw from your loads, eventually leading long time delay current trips. Can't see much chance of long term damage. Might be a PITA to restart in manual though.

Hehe, when I replied there were no other replies to him. Sad.

Troll fail.

Try again next time.

Nice to see someone with a lower number than me from time to time....where's that damn cane?

Wait, what was I saying again?

PWR's in teh US can most certainly ramp with power no problem. If you can ramp at 20% / hr or faster that is all yo need. I hav experience on military reactors and have been a PWR control room supervisor for years.

As was mentioned since the fuel cost is so low (essentially free) and plant fixed costs never change, it's alwaqys more economic to run a nuclear plant baseloaded (i.e., full power) all the time. but more importantly, to raise and lower power you have to dilute out your chemical shim reaqctivity coontrol, this creates a large amount of liquid radiactive waste water which has to be processed. The processing of this water is expensive.

Both of these reasons and to a lesser extent that anti-nukes love to point at nuclear plants and snicker at the less than 100.0% capacity factor, is why all US plants for the foreseeable future will be run baseloaded.

Just as rude as you implying I would do something dishonest or not do my utmost to protect the public health and safety.