[GPSCC-chat] Antinuclear bookmark?

[Spencer Graves]

Hello:


       Is anyone interested in helping with text for an anti-nuclear 
bookmark?  Below please draft text for such.


       This is 109 words.  The "Credit Card and the Great Recession" 
bookmark is only 73 words, but it also has a plot that consumes a 
quarter of the available space.  For art, I was thinking of the 
"radiation warning symbol" with a red X over it, thick enough so the X 
is visible but not so thick as to create doubt about the identity of the 
radiation warning symbol 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination).


       Comments?
       Best Wishes,
       Spencer

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Safe Nuclear Power?

US nuclear industry representatives say that our nuclear plants are 
newer and have better safety features than the Fukushima facility and 
would not likely encounter similar problems.

This ignores the historical evidence indicating that it is impossible to 
manage complex systems to ultra-high levels of reliability, because the 
safety systems required for such high reliability are typically not 
properly maintained.  This phenomenon is called "normal accidents" or 
"system accidents".1

Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal power do not have this problem:  An 
accident won't create an area the size of San Francisco where it's too 
dangerous for humans to live for a hundred years, as Chernobyl did.2


########################
footnotes, which will have to be abbreviated for a bookmark:


1.  Wikipedia, "System Accident", 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_accident, accessed 2011.03.19.


2.  The current nuclear radiation level in the exclusion zone today, 25 
years after the accident, is between 10 and 100 times background.  This 
radiation comes primarily from Cesium 137 and Strontium 90, both with 
half lives of 30 years.  Thus, 30 years from now, the radiation level 
there will range between 5 and 50 times background;  120 years from now, 
the radiation will range between double and 12 times background.  
Wikipedia, "Chernobyl disaster", 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster;  The exclusion zone 
around Chernobyl is 488.7 km2;  The City and County of San Franciso 
encompasses 600.7 km2.  Wikipedia, "Chernobyl after the disaster", 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_after_the_disaster#Chernobyl_today;  
"San Francisco", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco, accessed 
2011.03.19.


-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Operating Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567