WJR: 4th Plane's Intended Target was Three Mile Island Nuke Facility

WJR-AM | Sept. 24, 2001 | self

[meyer]

Could you have formatted the so-called "facts"?

[aruanan]

We've got to move away from gasfired and oil (and certainly coal, which is becoming WAY too expensive with all the greenie modifications required.

I seem to recall my uncle (the CEO for a major midwestern utility company) telling me that there are new coal burning designs that are extremely clean and make a lot of pollution control unnecessary. He told me that his company hired all their own scientists because the EPA was using such outmoded science. As a result, they cleaned up their effluent cleaner than the water they took in. They also exceeded the clean air requirements by doing it their own way and had it all paid for. He said they were given an award and that the EPA guy came to speak. He said since he knew the EPA guy was going to say that it all showed what a wonderful thing the partnership with The State was, he, being the CEO, arranged for himself to speak right before the EPA guy. He basically laid it out how what they had done had been through the ingenuity of private enterprise without a bit of help from the federal government in any way. The only thing the EPA guy could do after that was to say, yeah, well, great job, mumble, mumble. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

[Pelham]

Some close relatives of mine worked on the construction of San Onofre in California. The rebar of the outer containment dome is constructed of steel rod that is something like 5 inches in diameter- even a small piece of this material is remarkably heavy. There is so much of this rebar in the dome structure you could hardly see where they found a place to pour the concrete.

The structure was designed to withstand not just the crash of a large airplane, but also a shellburst from a cannon. The reactors and turbines in American nuclear plants vary a good deal, but the containment domes should be very similar. A plane vs a containment dome, the dome wins.

[Mark17]

Any that I've missed?

Three Rivers Stadium? Or did they already demolish it?

[Pelham]

Talk to someone involved with the engineering of San Onofre, instead of some guy from SC Edison. Those dopes at the OC Register are too clueless to find someone who knows how the plant is designed.

[Pelham]

Yeah, "his type" know their area of expertise, whereas "your type".... entertain the rest of us, although you don't intend to.

[chimera]

Talk to someone involved with the engineering of San Onofre, instead of some guy from SC Edison. Those dopes at the OC Register are too clueless to find someone who knows how the plant is designed.

You're right. I checked the article. The guy they quoted has the title of "Business Manager". Now, what are the odds this persons has an engineering background of the depth required to understand the details of containment structure integrity? I'd say pretty long. If the quote is accuarte, it appears to me that he didn't even read the FSAR for the SONGS units. I have. Its right in there under the discussion of the plant containment. Proof against "missile impacts", i.e., aircraft crashes.

[fightu4it]

" Yeah, "his type" know their area of expertise, whereas "your type".... entertain the rest of us, although you don't intend to."

Yes, his type, with their explicit faith in their man made creations. Always discounting human error and natural and man-made disaster. His type designed every project that ever failed. Then learned why it failed. History is replete with examples. So pardon me if I am skeptical, but I am and will remain.

[chimera]

Well, his type also designed every project that ever succeeded, including all of the things that make your civilization as advanced as it is. His type recognize that things sometimes fail, but his type also sees that many more times things work, and work well, as designed and planned. His type also recognize that advancement of technology will always involve the risk of failure. But his type are among the courageous and innovative few that will also bring about much more good in the world, far more than the cowardly who are not his type. He for one is glad of that.

[archy]

There's another DC/Beltway-area target no one seems have mentioned that's worth considering, which would seem to be very high on the targeting priorities of our enemies from both the value of destruction and the resultant publicity:

The CIA headquarters building complec at Langley, Virginia. Just fly to Ft Marcy Park and turn left.

[fightu4it]

" His type also recognize that advancement of technology will always involve the risk of failure."

The risk of failure is what we are talking about.

In my area of the world the risk was considered to great a threat to the population to achieve a goal that could be achieved by a less threatening means.

Thus the Marble Hill plant construction was halted. Again human error in the form of faulty concrete construction was the last nail in the coffin.

Why don't some of these people spend a little intellectual currency in developing ways to clean fosil fuel emissions. You would get the much needed electricity minus the ever present threat that also includes spent fuel rod transportation and storage.

This is all I have to say on this issue. If we disagree, then so be it.

[ninenot]

Thank your uncle for all of us. I live in the service area of a $1Bill++ utility headed by a pure weenie who spends most of his life (and shareholders'/ratepayers' money) kissing the arse of the Feds and the State. He hasn't the intestinal fortitude to make the case to renew his nukes' licenses--which provide 30% of our power--and the utility is about to take another pounding from the courts who find that his officers LIED LIKE HELL about a civil matter--while under oath.

Hope your uncle lives a long and healthy life.

[chimera]

Why don't some of these people spend a little intellectual currency in developing ways to clean fosil fuel emissions. You would get the much needed electricity minus the ever present threat that also includes spent fuel rod transportation and storage.

The chemistry just isn't there to make anything that involves combustion of hydrocarbons ever be as emission-free as nuclear generation. Why? Because you're always going to get some form of carbon oxides produced, and flue gas scrubbing systems will never be 100% efficient. At the temperatures involved in boiler firing, you're also going to get nitrous oxides produced. That's even more problematic.

You can try coal gasification to make methane that maybe can be used in fuel cells. The end use in such a scheme eliminates the combustion step, but the gasification process itself produces a fair amount of effluents.

Point is, you're always going to have some tradeoffs. There will be an element of risk in any technological venture. That is a given. There was a time when people thought motorized transport was too risky. Then electrification was bad-mouthed because people were afraid to go into a room with electrical wiring for fear of being electrocuted. Aviation was demonized because, after all, if God had meant for man to fly, He would have given him wings. But, with the passing of time, people became educated and enlightened enough to banish their irrational fears of new things, as surely as the ghosts and demons of a nightbound people vanish as soon as they learn they are able to make light with the flip of a switch.

"Spent" fuel rods are a boogeyman. There's nothing there that can't be handled by something as simple as shielding. What might that be? Why, very low-tech things like water, construction-grade concrete, steel, lead, or bismuth. When I was an engineering graduate student I designed and built a fuel assembly transfer cask that handled kilocurie-level activities. No sweat. Anyone who can used a computer modeling program and can work steel and cast lead can do it. We're not inventing new technology here.

Transport of fuel rods is probably the safest mode of transport of almost any kind. Check out some of the transport cask crash test films from Sandia Lab. They took this cask and smashed it with a locomotive going about 60 mph, then burned it in a pool of jet fuel for hours on end. The cask had a little scratching and some discoloration from the heat, but its boundary was never breeched. Its the kind of thing that would probably survive a fall from orbit onto a granite slab.

Of course, you wouldn't have to worry at all about transporting "spent" (they're really not spent) fuel rods at all if you went to a concept like the proposed IFR that Clinton killed. You send fresh fuel in one end of the plant, and at the other end you get electricity, reprocessed nuclear material for use in medicine and industry, and an extremely small volume of non-usable waste that must be disposed of. All the fissile materials stay within the plant boundaries.

[Milosevic2]

Understand God's mercy : Milosevic and nuclear holocaust ...

while the terrorists keep playing russian roulette (Sept. 13)