Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rolepgeek]

That said, somehow I don't think hackers can just cause meltdowns at nuclear plants, or rolling blackouts for that matter.

Nuclear plants are very delicate.  Nobody has tried with a plant but the US was able to sabotage Iranian reactors by just subtlely fucking with the speed controls.

And blackouts are a perennial concern among the security obsessed.

Hunh.

Well that ain't great.

Though I'd thought I'd remembered seeing that Nuclear reactors (in developed countries, at least, with all the regulations and shit) were really quite extraordinarily safe compared to their depiction in media. Redundancy upon redundancy. Though that wouldn't prevent just ruining the reactor itself, I guess. :/

On another note: Has anyone here watched Braindead, and if so, what do they think of it?

Yes it is sort of american politics. >.>

[Culise]

By and large, they really are; physical safeguards exist that would be impossible to destroy via hacking, because they're intended to function even in the complete destruction of the computer systems that run the place.  You can hack a motor connected to a computer; you can hack the systems that keep the control rods up and out of the way.  You can't really hack a concrete wall, at least, not from a computer.  Nuclear plants are the epitome of a political target, though; the media furour that would arise in the wake of a covert attack on a nuclear plant could rival Fukushima or Three Mile Island. 

[mainiac]

Though I'd thought I'd remembered seeing that Nuclear reactors (in developed countries, at least, with all the regulations and shit) were really quite extraordinarily safe compared to their depiction in media. Redundancy upon redundancy. Though that wouldn't prevent just ruining the reactor itself, I guess. :/

The industry loves to bitch about that.

John Taylor, an executive of Westinghouse, which makes reactors, calls the film “an overall character assassination of an entire industry.

[...]

The final report, issued in 1976, concluded that the possibility of the most serious kind of reactor accident occurring was as remote as a huge meteor slamming into a major city.

12 days later Three Mile Island happened, pretty much the exact kind of melt down due to failure of the shutdown mechanisms that the film was about.

I think it's all very silly.  Of course they aren't going to intentionally design a system with failure points they know about, that would be moronic.  But we have seen nuclear accidents in the past and it's pretty freaking obvious that oversights happen and that letting them self police makes it worse.  It's like banks.  They dont want to go bankrupt and drag the economy down.  But they also dont want to "waste" money by leaving corners uncut.  We as society dont want them cutting corners.  So of course there is going to be an endless parade of real bona fide experts saying that there is no danger of safety failures.  It's in the industry's own interest to have the experts try to solve any problem they can.  That doesn't mean we take them at face value any more then we reject them out of hand and trust the nutjobs.  There is a big, big difference between cynicism and healthy skepticism.

If it matters I think it makes sense to keep existing nuclear plants running, properly regulated of course.  If we already have the plants it's a cost effective energy source.  I'm just not a big fan of an economically nonviable industry trying to milk the government for more subsidies.

[Starver]

Hopefully their overseers are watching porn on their phones, rather than their workstations. :/

"Yes! Yes! YES! I love it when you insert your fuel rod into my hot core until I'm fissioning!"

[Frumple]

Take your touhou porn and get out =_=

[Starver]

a covert attack on a nuclear plant could rival Fukushima or Three Mile Island.

It is generally accepted that the 3MI incident caused radiation effects so insignificant as to be indistinguishable from statistical noise. Unlike the mental health issues arising from worry and stress ongoing at the time. If there was even the possibility of repeating that incident, by cyber-attack, an enemy would do better to target the news channels (or just let Fox News do its everyday thing, without any extra effort expended).

[Flying Dice]

See, what we need to do is fix globalism by forcing all nations to provide a decent standard of living and a planetary minimum wage.

And how should they force everyone to do it? Militarily?

"Enact minimum wage, or die!"

A fair sight better than the neo-con "Democratize or die!" at any rate.

[mainiac]

a covert attack on a nuclear plant could rival Fukushima or Three Mile Island.

It is generally accepted that the 3MI incident caused radiation effects so insignificant as to be indistinguishable from statistical noise. Unlike the mental health issues arising from worry and stress ongoing at the time. If there was even the possibility of repeating that incident, by cyber-attack, an enemy would do better to target the news channels (or just let Fox News do its everyday thing, without any extra effort expended).

If a city has 10 magnitude 5.5 earthquakes over the course of a half century you dont say no big deal because magnitude 5.5 aren't very dangerous.  You freak out because you know that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake is about as likely as 10 magnitude 5.5 earthquakes and a magnitude 7.5 earthquake is a pretty significant possibility too.

[Rolepgeek]

And if a city has ten Three Mile Island incidents, that would be pretty bad, and we would be worried

Like, Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in history, yeah? Right now, the radiation pockets remaining are places where you don't want to have a picnic, and it was handled horribly.

I mean, seriously man, that's the same reasoning people use to justify doing anything and everything to stop terrorism. In fact, it's nearly literally the same things being worried about, with cyberattacks, it's just worrying about Russia doing it instead of random terrorist organizations.

Like, they're disasters, yeah. Take a look at Chernobyl's death toll. Take a look at Fukushima's death toll. Take a look at how many of these disasters have happened per year, on average, for each severity level. Fearmongering and panic is significantly more dangerous than a reactor melting down in typical circumstances. Radioactive material tossed up by a fire? Radioactive particles in water? That causes some problems. But a typical reactor meltdown is expensive, not deadly. Even one initiated via cyberattack.

Oh, right, and look at how the average has been changing over time, and how many have occurred in recent years. Compare this to total number of reactors in operation, and accident rates from other energy sources.

Rolling blackouts would be much more deadly, because it would inspire much more panic in widespread areas. And any advantage gained by a country would be negated by the fact that you just pissed off the United States of America and they will have no qualms about retaliating. Not against an uprovoked attack on it's citizenry. Pearl Harbor was just a military base. Putin's not stupid enough to try that unless he is actively planning to start WWIII.

[misko27]

There's a difference between starting WW3 because someone hacked Sony, and starting WW3 because someone hacked a nuclear reactor.

[mainiac]

And if a city has ten Three Mile Island incidents, that would be pretty bad, and we would be worried

The world has had enough that we need to be aware of the risk.

Fearmongering and panic

I talked about the risks in a post that finished with a goddamn endorsement of nuclear power.

Like, they're disasters, yeah. Take a look at Chernobyl's death toll. Take a look at Fukushima's death toll.

Well nobody died in the magnitude 5.9 or the magnitude 5.7 so clearly earthquakes aren't a danger.  After all, those are way more common then magnitude 7s.

[Frumple]

... or what you're talking about actually are the magnitude 7s. Pretty sure that's generally the position stated.

[mainiac]

... or what you're talking about actually are the magnitude 7s. Pretty sure that's generally the position stated.

Well then we are fucked cuz an 8 aint too unlikely.

[Rolepgeek]

Nuclear accidents =/= Earthquakes. False equivalency there. What is your proposed mechanism for massive death tolls? It sets off a nuclear explosion?

Second, how do you propose we stop those magnitude 7 earthquakes, mainiac? Should we stop using nuclear power entirely? I'm sure Europe would love losing it's primary source of energy, given their lack of massive amounts of space like the US has.

Seriously, apply your logic to terrorism, mainiac. After all, if a group gets hold of a nuclear weapon, that would be pretty damn bad, setting it off simply the confirmation of how bad it can get. Just because no terrorist group has one yet doesn't mean they can't get one. To be safe, we need to prevent all brown people from entering our country. Millions of people will die and the financial center of the world would be destroyed if they manage to set it off in New York. We cannot justify risking the lives of our citizenry in order to improve the lives of a measly few hundred thousand people. Right?

No? You want to compare manmade disasters to natural disasters, I can compare manmade disasters to manmade disasters.

Also what Frumple said. There've been a total of 35 documented nuclear and radioactive accidents with fatalities that I can see. Seven of those were from nuclear reactors and involved multiple people.

Basing policy off of a vague idea of the potential for a horrible tragedy, without even a model to predict the likelihood based on strength and scale, is dumb. It's just a bad idea. Earthquakes we have a mathematical model to predict how common each given strength of earthquake is gonna be. The dataset is a. too small, b. too noisy, and c. completely different for nuclear reactors.

Like seriously you're using neither statistics nor sense here, mainiac. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm trying to tell you that the capacity for danger in a nuclear accident, and the distribution of power in earthquakes, are not the same. There is no Gutenberg-Richter law for power plants.

[mainiac]

Second, how do you propose we stop those magnitude 7 earthquakes, mainiac? Should we stop using nuclear power entirely?

If it matters I think it makes sense to keep existing nuclear plants running, properly regulated of course.  If we already have the plants it's a cost effective energy source.  I'm just not a big fan of an economically nonviable industry trying to milk the government for more subsidies.