The Pros And Cons Of Living Near A Nuclear Power Plant (npfr)

So now CNN reports that US nuclear power plants are the next terrorist target via planes crashing into them. Since I live five miles away from one, I can only think about the pros and cons of such a thing. First, the cons:

CONS: I will suffer a miserable, horrible death.

PROS: I believe in some form of after-life.

although i'm sure you're partly joking, i remember a post by our resident smart-guy, jon nelson, that talked about this, and how you should be fine and with plenty of time to get out, even though nothing tragic should happen by ramming a plane into a power plant.

but, time for a poll!

if you were to die in a nuclear holocaust, which pink floyd album would you take with you to the afterlife? either heaven or hell, or whatever else you can imagine to go to after you turn your toes up to the daisies.

ok, just take this one and i take Meddle, then i hope to meet u in paradise, and we copy them =)

de <a target='_blank' target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href='http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid= l0gj5u0arre95ajginlduaa4pqkf3b1

I wouldn't be able to take any floyd album with me, because i'd be physically unable to- i'd be DEAD!

Aren't the reactors just a tiny piece of the plant? I was also under the impression that they would make a difficult target, and even if they were hit, there probably wouldn't be a breach.

About 5 years after Chernobyl I spent a few weeks in a village in Somerset, UK, a few miles away from a nuclear power station. Once upon a time my friend showed us black smoke over the power station. We felt... not very good... :/ After several minutes, after several phone calls we knew that workers repairing the roof have fired something but it was not dangerous. Anyway, I felt very strange...

the essential jeremy ellis wrote in message ...

Very doubtful, John. Very very doubtful. And the afterlife thing is debateable too, heh.

Whoosh. This all came along and caught be a bit unprepared, but yes, I did write a small and short message about this very subject on amp-f a couple months back. I'm blinkered if I can't find it now. It should be on Google.

It's not so much time to get out - a jetliner crash into a nuclear power plant would most certainly kill anyone unfortunate enough to be with a few hundred meters of where it impacts, depending on WHERE they are exactly (that is, underground or inside some structure of some kind). As for the people, well ... many analyses have been done, and your truly has participated in them. Our best conclusions indicate (with multiple conservative assumptions made about the thermodynamics of a fire, just to name one huge laundry list of assumptions) that the chances are very low to remote that a core meltdown would occur. Is it possible? Yes. It is also possible that I might be an alien from Planet K'rzxfdefl, and that you are all in fact pieces of cheese. It is possible that some of you will suddenly die tomorrow in completely unrelated automobile accidents (though I sincerely hope that doesn't happen). The last example is, sadly, quite a bit more likely than anything high-profile we tend to worry about. Human nature is such that we fear consequences over probability (or frequency) of accidents, which leads to a skewed concept of risk (the technical definition of which is a combination of probability and consequence). Logically, we should be so terrified to drive that we would throw away our cars and never drive them, but we drive. Logically, people have nothing to fear from an airplane crash into a nuclear power plant (in my humble opinion), but we fear that too. Anything is possible, and it could do some Very Bad Things. Nothing is comforting about accident analysis in general except when it comes to probability. Of course, what was it that someone once said ... 'the more we insist something is unlikely, the more Fate tends to glance annoyingly in our direction until she gets sick of our big talk and puts us in our place.' Rare things can and do happen. Just because something isn't a one-in-a-million doesn't mean it won't happen first time and then never happen again in a million tries. Just pointing out logic. I guess I'm not very comforting, am I?

I don't worry about it. What will be will be.

- Jon

Yes.

Also yes. But remember the fear factor - most people would be terrified if it did happen, and people (at least the poor passengers) would be dead. Also, it would seem likely that at least some major damage would be suffered by the plant, probably affecting its ability to generate power. Blackouts aren't fun, either.

- Jon

I have a friend who has a masters in nuclear engineering and what he has told me corroborates what Jon has posted. A direct hit by a jetliner would most probably not cause any breach of the core. I wouldn't be too concerned. I'm much more paranoid of some moron running a red light and hitting me...