Air cooled nuclear reactors - what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot as it turns out:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire</a>
Tangentially related, but as everyone here seems to enjoy talk of nuclear [things], it’s worth a recommendation:<p>Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel ‘On the Beach’.<p>If you want high-level spoilers, Wikipedia is your friend. I shan’t say a word other than that it’s a terrific little book that I can’t believe I’d never heard of. I just read it last week.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)</a>
This is why I don't understand nuclear power advocates:<p>> Dealing with all the radioactive waste left on site is a slow-motion race against time, which will last so long that even the grandchildren of those working on site will not see its end. The process will cost at least £121bn.<p>Example:<p>> The expenditure rises because structures age, growing more rickety, more prone to mishap. In 2005, in an older reprocessing plant at Sellafield, 83,000 litres of radioactive acid – enough to fill a few hundred bathtubs – dripped out of a ruptured pipe. The plant had to be shut down for two years; the cleanup cost at least £300m.<p>Nuclear power is the posterchild for the flaws in public-private partnerships ("PPPs"). These simply shift profits to private industry and liabilities to governments. That's it. Don't believe me? Example [1]:<p>> The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants.<p>So if Chernobyl happened to a US nuclear plant the operating company would be on the hook for at most $450 million. Think about that.<p>The article mentions the 1957 fire. This is lesser-known than Chernobyl (which is often dismissed as an outlier) and less severe but still a major disaster. It's known as the Windscale Fire [2].<p>[1]: <a href="https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear-energy-factsheet" rel="nofollow">https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire</a>
Weird I submitted this yesterday<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34003392" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34003392</a><p>Even the target url is the same?