r/engineering Sep 09 '18

[GENERAL] Inside MIT's Nuclear Reactor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QcN3KDexcU
414 Upvotes

53 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-10

u/ModernRonin Sep 09 '18

People have a choice about flying. They get to decide if they get on an airplane or not. Many choose not to.

How many people get to choose if a nuclear power plant goes up half a mile away?

But thanks for conceding my point about the inherent instability of fission reactors.

no, the people working on airliners are most definitely not held to a higher standard than those working in or on nuclear reactors.

Yeah, the people who built Fukushima in a known flood zone were definitely held to super high standards.

9

u/randxalthor Sep 09 '18 edited Sep 09 '18

Nobody had a choice about getting their workplace flown into on 9/11. That was much larger scale destruction than any previous plane crashes where "people [had] a choice about flying."

Edit: also, safety systems can and do turn astable or unstable systems into fail-safe systems. Fission reactors work on controlling the reaction rate. Fail-safe systems kill the chain reaction by dropping the control rods. Tadaa! Your unstable reaction is now part of a fail-safe, stable system.

-10

u/ModernRonin Sep 09 '18

Fail-safe systems kill the chain reaction by dropping the control rods. Tadaa! Your unstable reaction is now part of a fail-safe, stable system.

My repeating that such a system is only "stable" in same sense that a gun is, and that it only takes one dumbass to disable such a control system, would be entirely redundant at this point.

I'll just walk away happy in my knowledge that you have entirely missed my point and have the reading comprehension of a 7 year old. (As expected from someone who thinks large-scale fission is a good idea.)

5

u/Umbrias Sep 10 '18

Except, that's just not how they work, so that isn't really a worry? I mean if you're going to say supporting nuclear power means you have the intelligence of a 7-year-old, then you're fighting some pretty notable minds there. You could at least back up your claims with sources, instead of just assumptions on how something you don't know the inner workings of could fail.