I have to first apologize for my bad movie making skills, but here I present me, myself, and I in person to try and give a little perspective about safety in the nuclear industry. This is an extremely important concept to understand especially as reports about the Fukushima reactors get worse by the day. I hope not to disappoint any of you who were hoping that some dashingly charming and good looking fellow was behind the stream of rants coming out of this blog. I never pretend to be any of those things! And yes, I know that the blanket is awesome. Before you ask, my mom made it for me.
This is just a quick little trivia piece about what passive safety can do, but the idea is very powerful. Can a nuclear reactor be designed to be inherently safe? Yes it can. The designs for the Generation IV reactors are all inherently safe like the advanced fast reactor in Idaho. Subjected to the worst case scenarios, they will shut down safely and use the laws of physics to keep them cool. How awesome is that! I will get more technical about passive safety systems in the future, but I just wanted you to realize that we can harness the power of the atom and do it safely. Granted, these designs are somewhat different than what is currently in use, but hey, we haven't built a new reactor in more than 30 years. All the more reason to get the industry going again. It will actually be safer for the country if we replace the old reactors with new reactor technology.
The One Responsible
- Aaron Ackerman
- Aaron is an engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines working on a masters degree in nuclear engineering. Also, he is a member of the Unites States Navy and will be a nuclear engineer on US Navy submarines when finished with his education at the School of Mines. Aaron's undergraduate background is in physics.
5 comments:
You definitely got me interested with the video, I want to know more about the passive safety systems, I look forward to your next post.
We had the same idea with the fire-side chat! LOL you did it right though. Thanks for explaining to people a little background. Well done
I like the fireside chat. It was easy to listen to you explain about a very controversial and not well understood subject. Thanks
Hey, I am glad that you guys enjoyed what I had to say as well as the appreciated my efforts to be personable ;). Dion, I see we think a lot alike with this idea. Good plan! I definitely am going to do some posting on passive safety systems in nuclear reactors since this seems to be something that most people didn't even know existed.
This is a fun video, Aaron. Of course, I think something that concerns the public is when NSEs argue that newer reactors are safer than old ones. This is a good argument to support the build-out of new plants, but it also suggests that old (still operational) plants are not as safe as they could be. Also, polls show that most of the American public is in support of keeping existing plants running, but not of building new ones. So, as usual, the industry is caught in something of a Catch-22. I think we need more frank talk about what risks currently exist, how new designs might address them, and where we might worry and can worry less. In other words, fewer cheerleading, more real discussion about the state of today's reactors.
But you do a good job of this elsewhere, and this is a nice story :).
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