for the USA peoples

[Lord Lanair]

Ummmm..... source please.  :hmmm:  

[mole]

he gave you the source, its a gimick news game show. the originals slightly better delivered but it works.

the qoute i liked was "well now that the US has invaded theyre going to find somthing. because they'll have their own inspectors so they are going to find somthing"

which frankly was my view at the time and im quite surprised that didnt happen, unfortunatly its now too late for our governments and it wont work if they tried it

[Guest:whiteknight]

hey guys...not ignoring you....just moved into my new place in los angeles.  its gonna be awhile before i get any time to reply to you(my computer isn't set up and won't be for a couple days....i'm on a friend's comp) but rest assured, i'll be back and continue the convo

[mole]

amazed to find out today that the UK owns the safest nuclear power program in the world. where as the american reactors are only one step above former USSR reactors  

[evilknight]

pfff, we have no time to make our reactors safe. otherwise, how on earth are we going to be able to afford all these guns?
why, we'd have to put our nation into horribly paralyzing debt to do that!
oh....wait.....

[Lord Lanair]

*glares at the satire*

Well, once again, what's the source, mole?  Or the criteria for the decision?  :unsure:  

[Rug]

Simple facts, Lanair. British Nuclear Reactors are Carbon Dioxide cooled - CO2 being a nice, relatively inert gas for this. Russian and American reactors are Water-cooled, which can cause serious problems, such as those that occurred at Three Mile (I think thats right) Island and Chernobyl. I'll let the Chemistry student explain how this can occur *points at mole*.

[mole]

no Chernobyl was a mass screw up, youd think the russians would realise there are reasons why its illegal to make plutonium in a reactor. but yea H2O coollant can be seriously bado. its ok as long as you have a perfect casing and no chance of a failure but when you have H2O being super heated by somthing like Isotopic Uranium you get Hydrogen and Oxygen Plasma which is highly highly combustable. what happened in Chernobyl was that one of the reactor casing welds failed and the plasma and steam began to escape until it exploded, anihilating the entire building upwards from it and below for that matter. where you get (in this example) 1/3 of the active material blasted into the atmosphere all the way to the jet stream and then you get nuclear slag which will melt through just about anything in its way.

EDIT

CO2 being a nice, relatively inert gas for this

CO2 also has relatively the same heat sinking properties as Oxygen so it tends not to make much of a mess when it does leak

[Lord Lanair]

Ah, thanks for the explanation.  But... what're the chances of an H2O leak, especially in the US?  I can understand how the Soviet equipment was faulty, but ours?  :miffed:  

[mole]

unfortunatly you'll never know till it happens, im sure if the russians knew they had faulty welding they'd fix it ... or put the bloody coolant back into the reactor  <_<  

[Rug]

Ah, thanks for the explanation.  But... what're the chances of an H2O leak, especially in the US?  I can understand how the Soviet equipment was faulty, but ours?  :miffed:

Happened.

[Lord Lanair]

When?  And why don't I know about it? <_<

I'm guessing that even if there was a leak in one of our plants, it did not cause a nuclear explosion like the one at Chernobyl.

[mole]

yea but thats different at Chernobyl they were tring to make plutonium by using less coollant, if americas been doing that then theyre in big trouble besides.

chernobyl wasnt a nuceal explosion it was just high gas pressure and flying debry

[Rug]

Because you aren't learned, and/or you can't use Google:

The accident at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979, was the most serious in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history(1), even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community...

... The sequence of certain events - - equipment malfunctions, design related problems and worker errors - - led to a partial meltdown of the TMI-2 reactor core but only very small off-site releases of radioactivity...

... Because adequate cooling was not available, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes which hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt...

chernobyl wasnt a nuceal explosion it was just high gas pressure and flying debry

If Chernobyl had gone supercritical1, you'd know about it. The reactor building would not have been there anymore.

Chernobyl was a water explosion, essentially. *points to mole* He's the chemist and can explain that further. If it had been a nuclear explosion, I'd be the one to talk to.

1, The amounts of fissile material (IE, Plutonium or Uranium) necessary to sustain a long enough chain of fissions to create a nuclear explosion is called a supercritical mass. The likelyhood of a nuclear reactor going supercritical is minute, due to the way a reactor is constructed - no singular fuel rod contains enough material to go supercritical.

[Lord Lanair]

Excuse me if I didn't know about a minor event that occurred 10 years before I was born.  <_<

Explain to me how Chernobyl was just a gas explosion, since I thought the people in the surrounding area got radiation sickness.  :miffed: