Please tell us that the Russians re-designed their rectors and scrapped further imbecilic experiments like that from ever taking place again. What happened in Japan? Did the back up generators fail becasue they were put in a low place not thinking about it ever getting flooded. Did they have meltdown becasue of lack of cooling?
There are still 8 RBMK-II reactors in operation across the former Soviet Union. They have had the fuel channels and control rod system re-designed. Fukushima came down to almost 1 simple issue. The reactor was undamaged by the earthquake and reactors shutdown as designed. The following tsunami destroyed all of the electronics that controlled the continued cooling of the core and spent fuel. Worse yet, Fukushima Daichi was designed to have their cooling pumps and control electronics moved up the hill above what would have been the cresting height of the tidal wave, but for cost reasons, it was never done. In short, just like using graphite tips on Russian control rods as opposed to platinum like in the west, COST trumped safety and led to a gargantuan disaster.
Would you say our nuke plants are the safest... or do we have some old dangerously designed nuke plants still in operation?
In a nutshell, yes, western reactors are designed (not necessarily operated) to be as safe as possible while using uranium fuel. That said, I still do not live within 50 miles of one of them.
Probably the point I remind everyone I am not an expert on nuclear power. I studied the effects of radiation on metal components. However, I worked around a whole bunch of really smart people while at Oak Ridge National Lab (thank you UF connections!!). As I recall, we are unable to make pure Thorium as a fuel for reactors. It needs to convert to Uranium-233, and so most fuel sources would be mixed mode pure Thorium and U-233.
If it turns out that you find it compelling, Higginbotham's new book Challenger: The True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space is Amazon's 2024 Book of the Year so far.
Cross link to prior book recs thread, in case anyone else was wondering if this was the same or different: Books recommended on GC | Swamp Gas Forums fwiw.
Currently reading (just started) John Le Carre's last work, published posthumously in 2021: Silverview Silverview by John le Carré review – the last complete masterwork? John le Carré’s Last Completed Spy Novel Crowns a Career Attuned to Moral Ambivalence (Published 2021) Silverview So far so good. It appears he still had 'it' when he check it. I'll follow up with proper review when I finish (assuming I remember...lol!).
Just read the new Tom Clancy book, Act of Defiance. It’s kind of a generational sequel to one of my favorite books ever, The Hunt for Red October (30 years later). The new book was entertaining nostalgia.
Thank you, since that is one of the few threads that I’ve started. For some reason, post number two has disappeared from that thread, or at least I can’t see it. Perhaps that person put me on ignore.
When Red October first came out, my wife was driving in the car and listened to a talkshow on the radio discussing the book. She immediately drove to a bookstore and bought me a copy. One of my roommates from UF became a submarine captain. I asked him once how accurate was that book. He said some parts were very accurate and some were very far off. He would not, however, tell me which was which.
Lol! That would be Tampon gator. Take it as a compliment. He ignores ANY AND EVERYONE who fails to sing in perfect snowglobe harmony. Re the first paragraph--perhaps a merger is in order...
Interesting post phat. I dialed in on this: In the last part of the book, Alberta talked about Christian leaders who are moving away from politics and especially from supporting Trump. Hopefully they will get back to the primary mission of the church, and that is preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I can only comment with my personal opinion but Evangelical Christians have crossed over to secular politics and in an extreme way. Where do you think the money and the votes are coming from? Not just billionaires and racists. No, the lions share of Trumpers and the money supporting him come from the religous community. Especially the Catholics and Evangelicals. The hypocrisy of it all blows my mind. I used to debate conservatives all the time and their self rightous "The constitution this and the constitution that, now where are those people?, ain't none of em in sight, as we hear the - RIP- of the constitution in maga hands as they throw the original in the fire. SMDH
I finished In my time of dying. Indeed it is stunningly well written, and I think it’s also fascinating. I didn’t know any of that stuff about Junger’s family. And I think it’s as good of a treatment of the topic of an afterlife as you can get. One more book of his that I would recommend highly.
Thought I would bring this thread back up. One book I read recently is about Columbus, and I was searching for an objective and nuanced look at what he did. Thought it was very good. The book I am reading now is Nexus by Yuval Harari. I really enjoyed his earlier books, and this one is off to a good start. Both links below (emphasis mine). *** Columbus: The Four Voyages From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational skills. In all these exploits he almost never lost a sailor. By their conclusion, however, Columbus was broken in body and spirit. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, the latter voyages illustrate the tragic costs- political, moral, and economic. In rich detail Laurence Bergreen re-creates each of these adventures as well as the historical background of Columbus's celebrated, controversial career. Written from the participants' vivid perspectives, this breathtakingly dramatic account will be embraced by readers of Bergreen's previous biographies of Marco Polo and Magellan and by fans of Nathaniel Philbrick, Simon Winchester, and Tony Horwitz. *** Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the… From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.
