121–129 of 129 posts
Video says no radiation detected at surface. What is the effect of the radiation underground? How long until the gas is harvestable from a new well?
Soviet Russia was not big on detecting radiation in public.
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the odd thing about the Herzog film though is that it includes a narration that casts the images into a kind of scifi story unrelated to Kuwait/Iraq, rather than a documentary. The filming is amazing though.
Herzog has this concept of the ecstatic truth, which means his documentaries are rarely as simple as they can seem; it's almost a third form of film. I'm an unabashed fanboy, but in any event, Lessons Of Darkness is highly, highly recommended.
Usually known as fiction.
Or fiction intended to be taken as fact, which is either a hoax or a gag, depending on context.
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Wow. That's a lot of down votes for a joke/movie reference that shouldn't have offended anyone. Maybe this community isn't for me!
It might not be. We are working VERY hard to make sure it doesn't turn into reddit. So jokes are strongly discouraged (with a few rare exceptions), as are memes, clichés, image macros, or anything like that.
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Here is some support for that argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site A lot of smart people being very very sloppy.
There's a huge difference between any nuclear power plant and the Hanford Site, which was setup as a wartime production facility. The majority of the river contamination took place in the early years, from 1945 to 1951 when knowledge, technology, and experience was extremely limited at the time compared to today. At the time, they sacrificed environmental concerns for expediency because they had a war to win. Even if…
Filmmaker Adam Curtis mentioned the risks of the type of boiling water reactors cooling systems such as those in Fukushima I,[36] and claimed the risks were known since 1971[37] in a series of documentaries in the BBC in 1992 and advised that PWR type reactors should have been used.
Fukushima had been warned their seawall was insufficient to withstand a powerful tsunami, but the seawall height was not raised in response"
Still no indication of greed, sloppiness, cut-corner mentality and general incompetence?
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Nuclear energy is hugely susceptible to black swan events, with very serious environmental and monetary consequences. Even the best, safest run facility, in an instance of sabotage, terrorism, conflict, or simple unexpected event (seismic, extreme weather), can turn into a maelstrom of troubles that will endure for thousands of years. Further the nuclear industry is one with a very poor track record of promises versu…
What you describe is true of the old style nuclear reactors (which, unfortunately, is all of them). I completely agree. But new reactor designs (thorium, etc.) avoid the black swans and all of the interdependent complexity. We should be deploying them.
Thorium reactors do not work reliably (just have a look at those that where actually built). The current designs do not work - we don't even have an idea how to do it right in theory. They absolutely are not less complex and are not in any way safer than any other nuclear reactors.
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A golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
If we wanted to, we could build breeder reactors that burn >90% of what we call waste today and leave only isotopes with relatively short half-lives.
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A golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
Honestly, I'd rather deal with nuclear waste than I would what we're currently doing to our environment.
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i wonder if the US tests being all in the west and pacific had anything to do with everyone in project Manhattan being in, well, Manhattan
Just FYI, the Manhattan Project did not take place in Manhattan. It was done in Tennessee at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos research facility in New Mexico.
but it started in Manhattan. and the CO was always in NY. as well as most of the researchers families and properties.
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Herzog has this concept of the ecstatic truth, which means his documentaries are rarely as simple as they can seem; it's almost a third form of film. I'm an unabashed fanboy, but in any event, Lessons Of Darkness is highly, highly recommended.
> the ecstatic truth Usually known as fiction. Or fiction intended to be taken as fact, which is either a hoax or a gag, depending on context.
This also works in reverse, of course, notably with Fitzcarraldo, where he replicates an insane feat of human ingenuity that wasn't actually part of the real life Fitzcarrald's story.
In any event, all of Herzog's movies are worth viewing from my highly fan-boyish perspective.