🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6aiov3$ibt$1@news.bconnex.net>, "DEW" <caper@bconnex.net> wrote:
] Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 14:38:57 -0500
] 
] Driving home one recent night I heard a CBC radio program on Three Mile
] Island. I was surprised to learn how out-of-control the plant was. 

Personaly I think it's mostly the fault of a bad design.  If I recall
correctly - the Canadian designed reactors (CanDu?) had the benefit of
shutting down in the even of a catastrophic coolent loss.  The 
French/American/Russian designs tended not to do do this... infact they
tended to get much worse.

[..]
] It was disturbing to
] hear that the same problem had occurred shortly before at another American
] reactor but management types had suppressed information about the occurrence
] and how to avoid it at other sites.

Yah... don't tie/chain control valves in on position (3 Mile) don't do 
f*cking 'experiments' with a comertial reactor (Chernobile(sp?)).

] Before hearing the program I thought that the worse the year 2000 mess might
] bring could be a bit worse than what folks had suffered between 1929 and
] 1950. I read about power problems but most mentioned shutdowns and
] blackouts. The radio program made me think hard about nuclear reactors.

I'm not particularily concerned about it.  I would suggest that logging
programs might have trouble (much like the Air Traffic Control systems - the
ATC screens really don't "care" about the date - they just give you the 
current situation).  But I don't think that control systems will have a 
problem.  Most of the time, if the computers detect a big change/anomally
the trip-out the reactor, and put it in a shut down state.  Failing that,
there's _always_ operators around... and unlike the "China-Syndrom" (What a
farse) operators do tap their guages before trusting the readings.

I'm told that it's not 'hard' to shut a reactor down... but it may be a
bitch to bring her back up (i.e. it could take a couple days).

Sean

-+-
Sean Ennis <sennnis@escape.ca>

My email address has been munged to prevent spam.  Take off the first
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