There's been renewed discussion in the news here just recently about meeting the U.K.'s growing electricity demands, and whether we should be going with more nuclear power or not.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A11184365

Paul,
I'd have a nuclear reactor in my backyard, as long as the nieghbours didn't complain about the associated Sub-station with it.
Look mate, all of the fear and rubbish is to a degree un-founded.
To quote Chernobyl as an example of what can go wrong is in itself just stupid.
Bear in mind that Chernobyl used 1950's (might be even earlier) technology to control a nuclear reactor, is something that is beyond belief.
As far as I am aware, nuclear power is a lot "greener" than the alternatives, if controlled properly.
As per usual, people don't like what they don't understand.
But wait for it, you'll have David Bellamy over there telling you "it's just wrong, from a scientific point of view!".

"Nuclear Power" is one of those things that immediately leaves the realm of technology.... and enters into politics.

The "Antis" also find fault with Hydropower, Coal, Oil, Gas, wind, and solar. It seems they simply want us to do without!

As for safety concerns... does anyone really think that the thousands of victims in the sundry conflicts - all centered on the Middle East- would have become victims, had that part of the world NOT been overly enriched by the "blessing" of oil?

Go Nuke. Let the others sit in their tents and milk goats.

I'm not putting down nuclear, but the real problem is long, even short term waste disposal, not actual operation on a plant.

The real issue isn't how the electricity is generated, but in getting it to where it will be consumed, without angering people.

[This message has been edited by classicsat (edited 07-13-2006).]

I don't think the "traditional" nuclear plants will work politically in the future. By traditional I mean above ground fission plants running on uranium.

By placing the reactors underground, I think people will feel much safer. If it makes sense technically or not isn't that important, it's the psychology.

Technically, what you can do is to switch to torium instead of uranium. Very similar but the waste becomes harmless in hundreds, not thousands of years. This should calm people as well. ("Don't worry: This will be harmless to your grandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandgrandchildren" )

Third, co-locating the reactors and the permanent used fuel storage will eliminate the politically sensitive used fuel transport. It means longer transmission lines which like classicsat writes, will probably be the hardest part to get done.

Nuclear power makes sense – the fuel is cheap and plentiful and there are no greenhouse emissions if you are inclined to believe in global warming. The greatest challenge is one of waste disposal and that suffers too much from NIMBYism*. Finland grasped the nettle of deep repository disposal and I believe we should be following their lead.

The trick is always to find a stable terrain with little groundwater circulation in which to do it. Yucca Mountain, Nevada USA is great for its lack of groundwater but I am more than a little concerned that it is situated on a major fault zone (the Walker Lane) that to this day accommodates one third of the net displacement between the North American and Pacific plates – the other two thirds displacement is taken up by the parallel San Andreas system that everyone is more familiar with. I suspect that overall, Minnesota and Michigan would geologically be far more suitable for a disposal site that the back door of Area 51, but just think of the howls of protest that would provoke!

If it wasn’t for various prohibitions in the Law of the Sea, disposal in subducting oceanic trenches would invite the Earth to recycle naturally over a period of scores of millions of years. I don’t think that any malcontented militants would easily go looking for it there either! Unfortunately, this is not going to happen.

NIREX that was looking at deep disposal in the ancient volcanic rocks of the English Lake District should be reopened – one doesn’t have to be the dustbin of the world but all countries that consume nuclear fuel must dispose of their own waste on their own sovereign territory IMHO.

* Not In My BackYard

Recent events in the Middle-East have brought this topic into focus again.

Israel can be described as a land that:
- has problems getting along with it's neighbors;
-is a modern, liberal society;
- has virtually no local energy resources; and,
-has areas 1000 ft below sea level.

So, here are the varios energy sources, and the popular Israeli reaction to them:
HYDRO- Not many rivers of any size. A hydro-power 'tunnel' from the Med to the Dead Sea was nixed because "we don't know what bad ecological things will happen if we add water to the valley;"
NUCLEAR- Not with all those pesky terrorists around!;
COAL- Messy, polluting, ugly piles, and there isn't any there anyway; and,
OIL- Polluting- and look who we have to buy it from!

End result: Israeli development is limited by severly constrained by a lack of available power. And you can't blame some "Anti-Semitic conspiracy;" the opponents to any increased power production are non other than fellow Israelis!.

This again shows how the "Nuclear issue" long ago left the arena of ideas, and entered the Twilight Zone.

Considering all, I'll take my chances with the PoCo geeks and paper-pushers.... rather than the self-appointed saviours who ask me to lie down in front of trains, while endorsing the nuclear dreams of some third-world tyrant (whose country floats on a sea of oil!)

Nuclear Fusion power may be closer than you think. France is currently building Iter, a 10,000,000,000 dollar fusion facility. If this technology can be made to work efficiently, we may have a solution to many of our problems; economic, political and ecological. Fusion produces far less and shorter-lived by-products. Fission always produces a mix of radioactive isotopes of the elements as waste products, practically the whole spectrum of isotopes from radium down to deuterium [ heavy hydrogen ].
The fuel for fusion is hydrogen, which is not rare nor located in some tyrant's backyard

BTW, C-H, what is torium, I have looked in my periodic tables but can't find it anywhere?

Alan

ps. Want to hear any of my 'atomic' jokes?

Some very good comments here.
In particular John (Reno) who has had the experience of the area.
Could someone please tell me why "nuclear" is such a dirty word these days?.
It is after all a simple chemical reaction that produces heat, not unlike an arms-length list of other chemicals that do the same thing.
I'm not willing to go into the political side of the argument, but why should Iran not be allowed to use nuclear means to generate electricity, umm, if I'm not wrong it is used in the US to do the same thing.
Just the same as the US has Nuclear weapons.
Seems to me to be like, you can't, but we can.
Nuclear energy is the future.
Have I spelt the word nuclear wrong??.
I'm pretty sure it had a different spelling a few years back.

Mike, it is the practice of some -especially those from the American South- to pronounce the word as "Noo-Cue-Lar", rather than the correct "Nuke-lee-are."

Part of the problem is IMO, that in some peoples minds they cant get over the fact nuclear power was used as a weapon in wartime.

Nuclear is not necessarily the perfect answer. But it is a very viable one for the next 100+ years.

Disclaimer: I use to operate nuclear plants in the Navy, and I have worked for a couple of companies that provide reactor related services to nuclear power plants.

There is alot of misinformation out there, and there has been (in hindsight) alot of silly statements made by both Pro and Anti nuclear activists.

1) Nuclear Reactors can not blow up like nuclear bombs. Those pesky laws of physics get in the way.

2) Nuclear Reactors, like most industrial processes, can have "Industrial Accidents". Obviously proper planning, construction, training, and maintenance go a long way to minimizing the chances of something nasty happening.

3) From what I hear, the next generation of power plants will actually use the spent fuel from the current generation of reactors. So the issue of long term storage, greater than 300 years, MAY become moot!

4) Current plants are, and next generation plants can, use the fissionable materials from military weapons. So there is another waste stream being taken care of.

5) We can measure levels of radiation down to the tiniest amount, but the amount of radiation require to cause biological changes, as best we can determine, is in the order of a thousand to a million times greater!!!!!

In general, people will get upset that a power plant might give them 0.001 mRem of exposure over 1 year, but ignore the fact that smoking 1 cigarette will give them 5 mRem in 1 minute.

I think the keys are education, education, and education. (And killing 99% of the lawyers )

LarryC

C-H:


Is "Torium" just a misspelling, which should actually be "Thorium", or is there a newly added Element, which postdates my current version of the Periodic Table (1994)???

If it is Thorium, then:
Looking at the Periodic Table, it's Atomic Number is 90, and weight is 232 (and some change...).
Would be nearly as large and bulky as U 235 / 238, along with being totally unstable too.

Questions:

1: Does this Element (one of it's Isotopes) "swallow up" Electrons in a Reactor and become highly Radioactive - similar to the way U 238 will catch a free flying Electron, turning into the highly Radioactive / sllloooowwww decaying (1/2 life) Isotope U239?
If this doesn't occur, or at least not to the degree which Uranium does, that's a heck of a great step forward, as far as spent fuel disposal + Management.

2: Does this Element create any "Fissionable new Elements" during a typical reaction - similar to how Uranium 235 will create a percentage of Plutonium, which will also be split (fission), and contribute to the complete heat volume generated in the reactor?

3: How much usable fuel is available per Mole of "Raw Material" - like how Uranium base fuel contains mostly unusable U238, with... what is it, something like 30% U235 usable fuel?

4: As compared to the total _Gross_ heat energy generated by Fission of Uranium 235 + Plutonium, what would the percentage be for Thorium?

5: How long are Thorium's "Dirtiest Half-Lives" (half life events with higher Radiation emission than the Element would have naturally before Fission, or higher than Radium in its natural state)?

6: Is Thorium very abundant, or will it need to be obtained from mines in "Difficult" areas (deep mining, minimal ore vs. overburden).

Please excuse my lack of solid Nuclear Physics knowledge! Feel free to de-bunk any and all totally lame description I have made!

Only covered the "Basic Basics" of Atomic Fission and Fusion Reactions in my Science Studies - with very little math involved!
Part of my lessons were from High School Physical Sciences courses, with the remainders being part self studies and part from Electrical Engineering (as would be covered / required for BSEE).

I am really interested in new, more "Modern" ideas for Generating Electricity via Nuclear Energy sources... or as "Reno" said:

It's Pronounced "New-Que-Lure"

Peter Griffin - of "the Family Guy" pulled a great one, on the "Y2K" episode!

Lois said "New-Clear" (referring to a Nuclear Holocaust), and Peter "corrected" her by saying:

"It's Nuke-U-Lure, dummy, not New-Clear; the "S" is silent"
Nearly died laughing!

Lastly, per Alan's post:


This would be great news!!!

Plentiful fuel, much less of a headache to deal with the spent (used) fuel .. doesn't a Hydrogen Fusion complete reaction end up with Helium as the newly created Element?
Seem to remember:
1: 2 Hydrogens get fused together, resulting in a new element + output energy,

2: One of these "Dual Hydrogens" get fused to another Hydrogen, resulting in "Heavy Hydrogen" (Deuterium) + additional output energy,

3: Heavy Hydrogen gets fused to either another Hydrogen, or is it two Heavy Hydrogens get fused together, resulting in the new element Helium + output energy.

Nevertheless, the "Fallout" which would linger around, should a Fusion Reactor become uncontrollable (then go "Melt"!) would be Helium.
The heat would be hellish, but afterwards everyone would be talking like "Mickey Mouse"

As far as Generating Electricity via Steam (water boiled by heat from a Nuke-U-Lure reaction), I have always been in favor of it - once I knew what the heck was going on inside (thank my 9th grade physics teacher for this!).
The only real drawbacks are the disposal of spent fuel (fission), and the "Tiny Bit Of Energy" that may render most materials useless (fusion).
As far as I know, the crucial issue keeping Hydrogen Fusion from being used in place of Uranium Fission, is containing the extreme heat energy of the reactions.

As to the Technology vs. Political issues of Hydrogen Fusion, I just say "The Stars + The Sun have been doing it for a few hundred years - at least (humor regarding time), seems like it works for them!"
(like I could constrain the intensity of a star's mass!...hee hee hee).

Ok, what was it that i wanted to say??? - Oh ya, More Fossil Fuel-based Power Generation for me!!! (not serious at all!)

The "natural" options are becoming more productive now.
Besides Hydro-Electric sites - which have a high upfront investment, yet are almost "free-endless energy" from the water cycle; Wind, Solar and Geothermal generation is really taking off in my area of the Planet (South Western United States).
There are still a lot of Fuel Burning Generating plants, but they have advantages too.

Another source for fueling the Prime Movers of Electric Power Generation comes from the Methane released at Land Fills (Refuse, or trash fills).
All the Land Fills in Orange County are recovering the Methane Gas (which is a byproduct of the garbage breaking down), and driving Generators that are connected in a "Co-Generation" fashion with that Methane Gas.
This provides power for the land fill electrical needs, and also "flows" out to the utility grid.

This is a great topic for discussion!!! Glad it was brought up.
Would like to discuss these items more, but maybe a new thread would be a good idea?

Let me know.

Scott35

[This message has been edited by Scott35 (edited 07-15-2006).]

The problem I see is that so many of the people who are opposed to nuclear power (however it's pronounced! ) are just riding on the media hype and misinformation. That media coverage doesn't help when almost any incident at a nuclear pwoer plant is blown out of proportion. A harmless steam leak (which probably happens hundreds of times a day at conventional stations and goes unreported) becomes "Nuclear accident narrowly averted" on the six o'clock news.

Some of these people also seem totally unwilling to face the facts and accept that we (society as a whole) either need to reduce the amount of power we use or find ways to keep up with the demand.

I've heard complaints about the windfarm which is located a few miles away from me. Yet when questioned, those same people are horrified at the suggestion that they reduce their electrical consumption but are equally opposed to nuclear power, coal/oil/gas power, or almost anything else. Do they think we can just snap our fingers and "magic up" extra power out of thin air?

Given the choice between living with a nuclear station or a coal-fired station in my backyard, I know which one I'd choose.

Fusion is the sun's energy process. The principle is to get a deuterium and a tritium atom, [ both of which are isotopes of hydrogen], to fuse into a helium atom with the release of energy and a neutron. That's it. So far, the necessary temperatures and conditions within experimental reactors have been produced for very brief periods, and energy production is still less than the amount put in. ITER is an ambitious project, but if it succeeds the results for humanity are reassuring.

1. There are from the above reaction, no fissile or long half-life isotopes produced - and thus no long term storage problems.
2. From that, it becomes evident that bombs can't be made from by-products.
3. Greenhouse gasses are not produced, nor dioxins, CO, ash or sulfur. Good.
4. THERE IS NO MELT-DOWN SCENARIO. Sorry, that's strictly 'green propaganda' crap. If the magnetic constraints in the reactor are disrupted for any reason, the plasma will cool and the reaction will stop.
New Fission Reactors can only be a stop-gap measure. I spent 5 years cowering in an atomic energy plant as a young buck engineer and the idea that we are now about to fall back to building more horrid polluting, totally uneconomic and frighteningly dangerous plants appals me totally. If we Brits had simply thatched all our houses with straw in 1950, we would have saved more energy that the entire UK atomic energy programs have ever produced!
The real answer is for us all to stop wasting the world's resouces and use less energy!
Turn that light out!

Alan

ps Paul. If we won't use less, put the price up to £100 a kwh after we have used a sensible allocation. By jiminy, we would all use less then!




[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 07-16-2006).]

Yes they do actually, for the domestic power and lighting sockets are seen as an endless source of power by most consumers, totally ignorant of where it comes from. Not only that, it is their right to consume as much as they wish and it's up to governments to supply more with the condition that the generating plant is located in someone else's backyard.
If only these ignorant individuals had some idea of what's involved in actually generating the supply, and the enormity of the infrastructure that gets it to the socket on the wall, there might be less opposition to new plants or better still, more thoughtful use of the supply.
Up until recently wind farms have been built here which are working very well. Now, as the US president says that nuclear is the way to go, our prime minister does the same. Australia may well get its first nuclear power station.


[This message has been edited by aussie240 (edited 07-16-2006).]

I would have thought that the eco-people, if given a choice between two kinds of power plants: a) one that produces huge quantities of mildly posionous pollution that cannot be contained and gets all over the place, or b) a kind of plant that produces small quantities of highly dangerous waste which can be safely contained and handled and doesn't normally get loose, that they'd opt for b).

Our (USA) worst nuclear accident resulted in the loss of the plant, but nothing got outside (Three Mile Island). That's what the containment building was for.

aussie,
At one time, I'm sure, it used to be looked upon as a priviledge to have an electricity supply into your home.
That has all gone out the window these days with all our modern conveniences and the like.
During the recent snow-storm here, it became apparent just how much people can get wound-up when thier beloved electricity isn't there at the flick of a switch.
I have to agree with your comments, aussie, but if people don't like it, maybe they should consider becoming independant from the grid.
Let them see how hard it is to maintain a reliable supply 24/7.
A mate of mine, had his Power Company service dropped last week, he is now independant of the Grid and the Solar gear he is using has paid for itself.
A few whiners here in NZ could take a leaf out of his book.
And of course aussie, the Government and the National Grid owners must be blamed, they are the ones at fault for not keeping up with any upgrades or new lines, regardless of renegade land owners or environmentalists and thier lawyers.

Sorry that I've been so late in responding.



Thorium is named after the scandinavian god Thor. We spell him Tor in Swedish. You guess the rest...


It's almost as heavy as uranium, but more plentiful on earth.


Yes, it catches neutrons and becomes something else instead: U233 and some U232. (I gloss over the two intermediate steps that take place by themselves) Because U232 emits lots of nasty gamma rays it's hard to make a bomb of the mixture.

There aren't enough neutrons emitted to keep the atom splitting going. The chain reaction stops after some time.


Yes.


Thorium only comes naturally as TH-232, which is the isotope that you use. So in effect 100% percent.


I haven't the faintest idea, I'm afraid. What I know is that the process requires a neutron source to keep the chain reaction going. It can be a fuel like plutonium, uranium etc. or it can be a neutron emitting machine (an accelerator). The decay of a U233 atom releases 30 to 60 times as much energy as was needed to initiate the transformation. A few small test reactors where a fuel is used have been built or are under construction. As far as I know, there are still no accelerators near the size needed to run a full size reactor.


Thorium (the naturally occuring isotope) has a half life of 14 billion years, but the waste isotopes from the reactor (Uranium, Thorium and others) have half lives of less than a hundred years. This means the waste is "harmless" in a few hundred years. The ground doesn't need to be stable for 100 000 years, only 1 000 years, which makes it easier to predict. This means that in some cases, such the nuclear plant closest to me, the waste could be deposited on site.


About three times as abundant as uranium, but the isotope is also more useful. (Like you pointed out in question 3, not all uranium is easily used in a reactor.)

This guy in Chicago built a thorium reactor in a shed in 1999, so it is doable. A teenager built a thorium/uranium breeder reactor in his mothers back yard a few years earlier as a scout project. (Don't you wish she had been a NIMBY?) I never thought you had to include the "Don't try this at home"-disclaimer when talking about nuclear reactors!!!

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 07-24-2006).]

Since thorium ores all contain uranium, [thorianite 26%U, thorite 0.45%U], there will be, in the metal or carbide refining process, U decay products including the isotopes U235, U238, Radium A, RaB, RaC, RaD, RaE, RaF, RaG [lead], Ionium, Polonium and probably the Actinium series too. These will appear as waste products either before or after the reactor, [ in which latter case our dear old friend plutonium might make an appearance and rain on the parade just for good measure!].

So, not 1000 years after all, me dear Earthmates!

Suddenly, wind turbines seem very attractive. Especially if spotty youths are allowed to build reactors in their backyards! HELP!!!

Alan

Mr. B
What is the RaA, B, C, D, etc. you are refering to in the following quote?
[q]U decay products including the isotopes U235, U238, Radium A, RaB, RaC, RaD, RaE, RaF, RaG [lead], Ionium, Polonium and probably the Actinium series too.[/q]

LarryC

There was an interesting program on BBC TV about Chernobyl and how the dangers of nuclear power may be overstated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm

Larry, I'm not sure if today's scientists use the same terms for the natural decay isotopes as "old gits" like me, but here goes!
Uranium 235 & 238 naturally decay by different routes, but eventually arrive at;
uranium > ionium > radium.

Radium decays in a sequence of isotopes.
RaA is radon: 226-4[ ie helium, the alpha particle ] > mass 222 approx + energy.
Then decay proceeds >
RaB, isotope of lead>
RaC, isotope of bismuth>
RaD, isotope of lead>
RaE, isotope of bismuth>
RaF, Mme Curie's polonium>
RaG, lead, inactive, mass 206>

Each decay releases either/ and / or alpha particles, beta rays, gamma rays + heat. The decay product falls into a group 2 places lower in the periodic table for release of an alpha particle. For a beta ray release change, the decay product rises one place higher in the periodic table than the parent substance.

In an ore, these isotopes will exist in proportion to their respective half-lives, so we get them all.
Thorium and Actinium ores will exhibit similar series of isotopes, in proportion, except that the final, inactive, lead isotopes will be ThD mass 208 and AcD mass 207 respectively. I very much doubt that Thorium ores can be found completely free of Uranium, and in any case Uranium and Thorium both produce radioactive lead and bismuth isotopes. These cannot be separated chemically of course- only a centrifuge can do that.

OOOOOPS! We know what you can make with centrifuges!

No, Doofy, not milkshakes.

Alan

Gosh Alan, how dare you come here and see the big picture? ;-)

You are probably right about the fuel for the reactor. Uranium mines easily become nasty places (look at those in the former Soviet Union) and I don't doubt that thorium mines will be equally nasty.

Regular readers of this atomic diatribe on putting the world's electrical supplies to rights might be interested, [yawn], in another cunning device:
The PMSR aka the Paper Moderated Slow Reactor. These are not novel machines - they can be found humming away in most Gummint Departments like the FBI or the British Child Support Agency. Characterised by frenzied, almost apoplectic activity which belies the total lack of any measureable results, the PMSR will swallow vast amounts of taxes and employ hordes of faceless Public Servants. A PMSR immediately disproves Newton's Third Law, for within it any action produces an immediate and opposite inertia of....absolutely nothing! Such is the fine balance of this " nothing-inertia" reaction that it nullifies the initial action to a nicety, accompanied by an "emanation" - a flurry of low velocity 'particles'. These 'particles' are vital to the machine, for without them the balance between initial action and the nothing-inertia-fication is lost. On casual examination these particles look for all the world like sheets of white A4 paper with senseless writing on them, and a closer look under the electron microscope confirms that is axactly what they are- hence the name of the device. The inexhaustible and boundless energy being input and subsequently emanating from a PMSR cannot as yet be tapped into to generate power. Many eminent scientists have tried and failed, but the closest yet was the guy who created a near critical-mass pile of the 'particles', took them home and used them to fuel his furnace.

Alan

Paul,
I'd choose this as the best post in this thread.
The fact of the media getting on the band-wagon for a story, doesn't help things.
If there was a debate tomorrow on nuclear power without the media's bias, I'm sure things would be different.
Strange thing is, people only watch TV channels that comply with their views, if something is said that they don't like, they switch over.
Just like the Internet, people only surf sites that they like.
Back to the topic Paul,
I'd sooner have a Nuclear Reactor in my back-yard rather than a Coal Fired plant, any day.
Coal and any other such plants more or less run un-regulated, yet everyone is scared about the small chance of a reactor fault.
BTW RODALCO, that isn't an offer to supply Auckland's power from my back-yard either, Stacey would throttle me.


{Message edited for a typo}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 07-26-2006).]

Who came last?

Google Chernobyl.

Select the 'wikipedia' page.

Scroll down. Eventually you will find a charming map of Europe. It shows the Caesium-137 fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Equivalent to over 250 Hiroshima atom bombs, plastered all over Europe so everyone gets a fair share.

Still feel safe, do you?

Nothing to worry about, it's just media hysteria.

Alan

As Dixie Lee Ray (former director of the Atomic Energy Commission, and early "siant" to the "green" movement) pointed out:

-Even the shoddiest reactors release far less radiation than the natural "background" radiation we're all exposed to;

-Numerous places on this planet have local, natural sources of 'extreme' radion exposure- which seem not to have a bad effect on natural life; and,

-Most any coal-fired plant releases far more radiation than any commercial reactor (coal contains minute amounts of radioactive elements).

Of course, these statements of hers quickly caused the enviros to remove her from their "favourite scientist" list. Amazing!

Reno; I have to stuff several large humble pies into my mouth, along with my best hat, all at once!

In the c.100 years period 1937-2040, worldwide coal-burning powerstations will have released 800,000 tons of Uranium, of which 6000 tons is fissionable U235, and 2 million tons of Thorium into the environment.

Not only that, but the fissionable U235 dumped in the average ash, as a waste product, actually contains more energy than the original coal!

Alan

I just got an e-mail claiming that #1 reactor at Fosmark, North of Stockholm, Sweden, went uncontrollable on 25 july 2006 due to loss of electrical supply to the computers. The report claims the reactor was within a few minutes of core meltdown and another Chernobyl event. Any more info C-H?

Alan

What happened at Forsmark is that the sparkies wired an UPS the wrong way. They had no instruction sheet so they wired it they way they assumed it would be. This took out some of the computers in the control room. Fortunately, there are four independent back-up generators and the wiring error only took out two of them. A meltdown of the reactor could have caused significant negative publicity for the nuclear industry as the area south and west of the reactor is densly populated. (Stockholm and Uppsala)

It's the same power plant where some bright spark switched off the outgoing power without informing the control room a few years back. He almost took out the national grid, not to mention caused emergency shutdown of the reactor.

Sweden actually lost the southern part of the grid a year or two ago when a switch failed. The switch broke off and fell on the switch below, shutting down two reactors in the process.

This is in part an effect of government policy: By closing reactors and instead running the remaining ones above 100% of design output, the grid becomes more sensitive to reactor shut downs. Oskarshamn 3 will now be pushed to 1450 MW instead of the 1050 MW which it was built for. The plans are similar for the other reactors, placing the output between 120-140% of that which they were designed for.

We can't run them safely can we?
From Japanese morons mixing liquid uranium in a bucket. Yes, a bucket and so untrained they had never heard of critical mass; unauthorised experiments in Ukraine, [ eventual death toll between 35,000 and 200,000 depending on who you believe]; idiot 'electricians' wiring up critical stuff to wrong polarity by guesswork; to Brits deliberately overheating a reactor to "seal the cracks in the graphite core." [ I kid you not! ]. It caught fire. It was air cooled. And it had a chimney....
Then again, coal stations releasing enough U235 to make 20,000 atom bombs every year.

Still, never mind, eh!?

Alan