Re: [tlug] silicon cash eater

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

Benjamin Kowarsch writes:

 > But the proof is in the pudding. Both the Three Mile Island and the
 > Fukushima incidents were preceded by engineers issuing warnings and
 > submitting reports about shortcomings that would later become fatal
 > during the incident.

In the case of TMI, you're right, wrong, and wrong.  Yes, there were
warnings, but the proximate cause of the loss of control was something
different (inadequate training about the meaning of a sensor
indication), and there were no direct fatalities, although I don't
know what happened to people at the plant.  (The official report
suggests that 2 months living in Denver gets as much additional
radiation exposure as any Pittsburgh resident got from the accident,
and even the muckrakers only claim a factor of 5 understatement --
that understatement would be criminal if true, but the revised
exposure hardly amounts to a serious health threat.)

 > In both cases these warnings and reports were
 > ignored and swept under the carpet.
 > 
 > And since somebody mentioned it, the very same was the case with
 > the Challenger explosion.

And the very same is the case with your posts, which are habitually
under-fact-checked.  Point is, people are human.  We're not going to
get things 100% right.  But it's also not safe to insist on sufficient
redundancy, or sufficient energy conservation, or sufficient
conversion to renewable sources, to reduce risk of nuclear accident to
arbitrarily low levels.  Climate change won't necessarily wait for the
renewable technologies, turning off lights gets women assaulted
(anecdotal evidence from my university based on two incidents), and
any of the various investments will consume resources that the people
you propose to protect would like to use otherwise, perhaps in other
safety-related roles.

You have a lot of valid arguments available.  Why not use them,
instead of blustering about how great engineers are and how stupid and
venal and unethical management is?

Steve