Antinuclear

Confessions of a Nuclear Power Safety Expert, Miller McCune, By John Perlin 15 June 11 When Italy decided in the mid-’70s to add nuclear power to its power portfolio, young mechanical and nuclear engineer Cesare Silvi was among those attracted to the opportunities it presented. His work centered on nuclear safety issues — in particular, what might happen if something unexpected struck a power plant.“[If we] continue with nuclear power, there will definitely be worse accidents,” he argued in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

Over the weekend, Italian voters agreed and overwhelming rejected restarting nuclear power in their country…..

Corners he saw cut there eventually soured Silvi on that endeavor. His next position — at the Italian Commission on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Sources, which included work on nuclear disarmament — eventually soured him on nuclear energy itself.

“Why not consider Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as warnings of greater catastrophes to come and avoid the inevitable by shutting them down, much like changing your diet and/or lifestyle after finding out that your cholesterol or blood pressure is elevated, rather than continuing down the same path until a heart attack or stroke strikes?”

In the meantime, he suggests that wrangling existing power plants requires a global response toward the dangers he predicts.

In the last two decades, Silvi has gone on to acclaim in the world of solar energy, where has been president of the International Solar Energy Society and founder of the Italian Group for the History of Solar Energy…..

“Our problem is that we don’t know what will happen on any scale of time. Such uncertainty is OK when dealing with train trips or dinner choices. But it becomes problematic when considering the possible spread of very dangerous material that will stay deadly for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”

In his introduction to risk analysis, Silvi provides a very simple equation: R=PxC. In English, that translates to the probability of something happening (the P) times the consequences if it does (C) equals the risk to society (R)…….

“Nuclear today only generates about 12 percent of the developed world’s electricity. By instituting an energy efficiency program,” Silvi suggests, “we could fill the gap caused by shutting them all down and put this malevolent genie back into the bottle….“Instead of a Kyoto accord,” he says, “we will have to have some kind of multilateral nuclear agreement to deal with such threats.”

Nuclear engineer Cesare Silvi studied unlikely outside threats to nuclear plants in Italy, which soured him on the energy source and caused him to go solar…… .http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/confessions-of-a-nuclear-power-safety-expert-32220/