I understand your point and think you make good onew, but you reek like an intervenor. You say you “remember three-mil island”; I read the accident report shortly after the incident and have yet to see it accurately reported in the public media.
Everywhere on earth there exist earthquake faults. So what.
My dad was part of the initial start-up group for SCE’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station 1 - SONGS1. I’ve lived near nuclear power plants all my life. I worked in Nuclear Plant Engineering at the Trojan Nuclear Plant, Goble, Oregon, for eight years.
Trojan was built in a region that experiences subduction earthquakes like those in Japan. Whether it is dams or natural gas, there is risk associated with living in an earthquake area. Probably the safest place to be during an earthquake would have been the solid rock Trojan was built upon, 45’ above sea level and seventy miles inland from the Pacific Ocean.
It was shutdown and is now decommissioned. This was done by an unethical CEO who was an antinuke and one greedy SOB. He shutdown Trojan, laid off 1300 people in order that Enron would purchase Portland General Corp. and he could join Enron’s Board of Directors. As an accountant he had to have known and recognized the shenanigans ongoing at Enron, because he retired from the BOD, waited a few months and sold all his Enron stock for $70Million+ just before the whole scheme tanked.
And the employees at Trojan and Portland General? Many lost everything they had worked years to acquire, and the folks still employed at Portland General lost their pensions - all of it - with the demise of Enron!
This has nothing directly to do with your argument exept this: without the power generated by Trojan the utility bills of everyone in the Pacific Northwest have skyrocketed.
If you don’t approve of dams, natural gas or nuclear you can always retreat to a forest somewhere and burn deadfall wood. But be forewarned: burning wood produces polonium in wood ash and it is radioactive. Never let your children clean out a fireplace and when you do, always wear a face mask and gloves. Polonium is an apha particle emitter, like plutonium. Stay safe.
1. What's an "intervenor"?
2. Go to GOOGLE. The Three Mile Island debacle is now in Wikepedia. It's history and whether you agree with the media's accurate reporting is another story, but it's ancient history now, readable in history books...reported on to within an inch of its life.
3. Earthquake faults...and you say "so what"? WHY build a nuclear power plant where there are earthquakes AND tsunamis as regular occurences then MOAN and groan when the unspeakable happens? STUPID to build it where all the engineers SAY that it is STUPID to build it...that's "so what."
You didn't grow up where there was the DOUBLE DANGEROUS whammy of earthquakes AND tsunamis. Though California has had only ONE tsunami in all my years and regular earthquakes you were SEVENTY MILES INLAND...safe from the TSUNAMI that caused the Japanese plant to fail.
That was my point, for the THIRD time.
PG&E and other utility companies are between a rock and a hard place. They are "allowed" to make some profit but are continually pulled between the correctly outraged public whose bills skyrocket, the do-gooders who DO want us to be cold and burn our old socks for fuel, the politicians who say they care but only care about staying elected...and the engineers who TRY and keep things working. My husband was a gas engineer for PG&E...I know ALL about it.
4. I don't know what I could have possibly written to make you think that I would want to retreat to the forest, misliking dams, etc. :o):o) I wonder if you DELIBERATELY missunderstand or just misread. Maybe you are just ticked off at your high utility bills.
5. I have a natural gas fireplace, beautifully designed and needs no cleaning. My husband was the creator of that wonderful idea. It's wonderful. Our cleaning lady doesn't have to do a thing with it.