stop being so political

[kivanc]

ok good thread. i want to say a few things although the below is a good and short summary

I think the reason is for balance rather than making a political statement. That being said, nuclear power plants aren't really balanced against coal plants in non-river cities, but that's because they weren't balanced correctly.

civ just tries to have roughly equal power of strategies. if an economy style or a trait happens to be overpowered, this decreases my joy in game. maybe not for everyone, i don't know.



and i also want to comment on nuclear plants.

positive: it is a shortcut for fast development of a country. many already-developed countries used them before. it is very lucrative, very efficient by means of power. and it is a clean energy if you can control it good.

negative: however, there is really a great risk of accident. not small.
i am an electrical & electronics engineer and i'm responsible for automation system of a cement plant. even in our plant, there is a small risk of electrofilter (electrostatic precipitator) blow-up but that is a rather small accident if you compare with a nuclear blow.

the more qualified your plant system is the more safe you are. and safety requires money, maintenance (thus experienced staff), investment and inspection. we know that not every plant is inspected fairly and that is the problem.

how does an accident happen? there are many ways:
* the routine controls of a machine might have been ignored/forgotten.
* a chary boss might have refused the suggestion of a safety system by his engineers. so system runs w/o enough measurements.
* a measuring sensor may show wrong values, so operator/control system doesn't see any danger. system continues to run.
* a maintenance guy makes a wrong installation
* etc

 

[civ_king]

uh, Nuclear Power plants have quadruple redundancy system or even more...

 

[Lord Khorak]

negative: however, there is really a great risk of accident. not small.

This is almost offensively false given your reason for believing it....

i am an electrical & electronics engineer and i'm responsible for automation system of a cement plant. even in our plant, there is a small risk of electrofilter (electrostatic precipitator) blow-up but that is a rather small accident if you compare with a nuclear blow.

.....has less than no relevance to a nuclear power plant.

 

[Perfxion]

So you are saying there have been ZERO nuclear power plant accidents EVER in the history of mankind? Three mile island NEVER happened? And that was one of MINOR ones.

Here in Texas, an ice cream plant exploded, and felt like a earthquake for 40 miles. Now, give the same level of distance and make it a radio active substance.

 

[Olleus]

But do ice-cream factories have more or fewer safeguards than nuclear power plants?

I'll give you a hint, it's not the latter.

 

[frekk]

You're wrong simply by pluralising nuclear disasters. There was one, it was Chernobyl . . . There have been no other 'nuclear disasters'.

No, there have not been any other disasters on that scale ... however ... nuclear technology hasn't been around very long at all. Wiping out "just" 1 city within the first 30 years of the technology becoming widespread is not a record to be proud of!

all events like Three Mile Island proved was the robust effectiveness of western reactor design and safety culture.

That could be argued, but the point is that not all nuclear technology is "western". And the technology alone cannot guarantee safety ... if you know about what transpired at Three Mile Island, you'll know it was human intervention that mitigated the accident, not technology. Even western technology is going to be operated in some cases by non-western cultures where corruption, bribery, and poor work standards are the norm. Good safety takes inputs of money invested in regular upgrades and replacements, and in worker training. But some countries are obviously going to try to run their reactors more cheaply.

Which is seperate from the fact that no-one turning up to any modern nuclear reactor would eventually cause it to simply stop. Even in the case of something actually going wrong passive safety designs still work to terminate the reaction without needing any input.

Even the best laid plans of mice and men ...

That's why human operators are deemed crucial not just for operation but safety as well.

It's political in that the supposed meltdown risk of a nuclear reactor is basically a vast falsehood fabricated to pander to anti-nuclear paranoia, and built on a single incident in the entire history of nuclear power generation

A "vast falsehood" that you admit is based on a real-world event? That doesn't even begin to make any sense. If it happened, then it happened. No ifs ands or buts. It's a real-world event and it's not politically-motivated. What's politically motivated is attempting to completely exclude a real world event because you worry it will damage the perception of what you support. Now that is being Political. Featuring an event that actually happened, and for which there is NO guarantee of never happening again (in fact it almost certainly will, eventually), is not. It is one thing to disagree with the mechanics, to make the risk more closely resemble what it is in the real world, but it is quite another to try and censor historical fact out of the game and very ironic and hypocritical to be crying foul over "politics" while doing it! Your motivation is entirely political and you've admitted it yourself - you're worried that it will somehow empower a political opponent of yours (the anti-nuclear bunch). No other reason - just politics.

If I really felt politics were somehow appropriate in a game, and I was anti-nuclear, I could be political like you. I could say the game is too political because it is too kind to nuclear technology, as a nuclear explosion (whether by weapon or accident) in the game is not nearly as devastating as it is in the real world. But I really don't think bringing politics to the game is appropriate. The meltdown scenario is in the game not because of politics but because Chernobyl made a big impression on popular perception, and most of the game is about popular perception, the things that have captured the public's attention and imagination. So Broadway is in the game, but the Crystal Palace is not, because it is largely forgotten by people today - not because of politics or nationalism or any of that.

The other side of the coin is that, if you feel something represented in a video game is somehow going to give support to a political movement you oppose, you really are nuts. Are people all of a sudden going to flock to anti-nuclear protests waving banners that say "Nuclear plants in video games explode!! Get rid of nuclear power!!" ... c'mon. It's like saying the inclusion of religion in civ4 is somehow going to cause an outbreak of religious fundamentalism. It won't.

And, oh yes ... the entire history. All five or six decades!

 

[Perfxion]

I know that there will not be as many safe guards but still, safe guards are not going to ensure that a 100% prevention from a melt down. It has happened before, it can happen again. To quote a friend of mine once said, "Anything built by man is flawed, because man is flawed". So saying it can't happened is really in la-la land.

 

[Disgustipated]

It could happen again, it's just not likely. It's worth checking out the 3 mile island incident report, however. In that case, there were multiple failures (routine maintenance had one system shut down). Basically the secondary system lost the ability to cool the reactor coolant. The reactor scrammed as it should have. But decay heat was a serious problem. A pressure relief lifted, but got stuck open. The operators failed to notice it was stuck open, and reactor coolant pressure dropped to the point a steam bubble formed in the core melting the cladding and melting the uranium fuel.

As bad as that incident was (multiple mechanical and operator failures) there was very little radiation dose outside the building. No one died as a result. And this is why I feel Civ mechanics are way off. All it really did was make that nuke plant inoperable (although the other plant continues to run). Killing half the population of a city is absurd. 3 mile island was a major core meltdown, and had no significant effects outside the containment building.

 

[frekk]

Killing half the population of a city is absurd. 3 mile island was ...

... was obviously not what the game is portraying in meltdown!

It is portraying Chernobyl, in which a city was permanently wiped off the map and remains totally uninhabited. The mechanics of what happens are definately not too drastic because it just kills off a bit of the population and the city eventually recovers, whereas, in the event of real catastrophic failure, the city is utterly ruined permanently and entire continents can suffer health effects (!). It's actually pretty moderate compared to what really happened.

The mechanics may be a little flawed in how they determine when an accident occurs. I don't think it should just be a random chance - it should probably reflect the kind of safety standards, the level of corruption and so on that is happening and should probably be affected by things like natural disasters or war. In a wealthy, high-tech city far from any military action it should probably never happen. But in a decaying economy or in the middle of a warzone ... why not?

 

[Crezth]

The mechanics may be a little flawed in how they determine when an accident occurs. I don't think it should just be a random chance - it should probably reflect the kind of safety standards, the level of corruption and so on that is happening and should probably be affected by things like natural disasters or war. In a wealthy, high-tech city far from any military action it should probably never happen. But in a decaying economy or in the middle of a warzone ... why not?

That's not a bad compromise, certainly would be a good way of justifying it.


Also, it bears repetition that barking at Firaxis to be less political is in fact a majorly political act in and of itself. Ho hum.

 

[civ_king]

Did anyone do research on Chernobyl? They took ALL failsafes off because they were going to do tests, but it got delayed so the UNPREPARED night shift did it, needless to say thing got ugly, also Chernobyl was built far below standards and was built with a bare minimum of features

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yeah, Basically they did a test to see what happened if they messed with the safety features... and they found out. (so now we don't have to do it again)

 

[ETa]

It is portraying Chernobyl, in which a city was permanently wiped off the map and remains totally uninhabited. The mechanics of what happens are definately not too drastic because it just kills off a bit of the population and the city eventually recovers, whereas, in the event of real catastrophic failure, the city is utterly ruined permanently and entire continents can suffer health effects (!). It's actually pretty moderate compared to what really happened.

Chernobyl had 58 direct casualties and 4000 suspected cancer deaths. 330000 pop were resettled but it did not wipe out half the city like a nuke would. If the land was of any value then the polluted land could be scrubbed and sent elsewhere.

 

[kivanc]

This is almost offensively false given your reason for believing it....



.....has less than no relevance to a nuclear power plant.

some industries are more similar than others. examples: iron/steel and cement industries are similar. but also, almost all industries are similar in some ways. machines, working styles, habits are similar.

i also have some info about nuclar plants because i had dialogues with nuclear plant constructors. we work with international companies like siemens, abb, aumund, rexnord, and also some cement globals like flsmidth, polysius etc. so these companies also work with power plants, giving us valuable info about'em.

i don't say i know nuclar plants very well, but what i have heard is that they are really dangerous. if you hear that it has a (let's say) 0.5% risk of blowing, does it still mean people are safe?

 

[Suho1004]

I think all we need to know about nuclear power plants can be learned from the Simpsons. Sure, they've got mutated fish in the river, but even with someone like Homer Simpson working there, they've never actually had a meltdown (it has blown up, but there was no meltdown).

See? Perfectly safe.

 

[kivanc]

ok.

 

[trickofthehand]

Hmm, this thread is filled with a lot of ignorance. I worked security for nuclear materials and worked side by side with DoE personnel. Nuclear plants are NOT dangerous, so you've heard extremely wrong (or are BS'ing for the sake of an 'internet win', don't know which).

The only 'right' things I've heard so far in this thread is that Chernobyl was built way below safety standards (it was) and that 3 mile island was 99% hype (it was). 3 mile island released enough radiation to equal directly exposed personnel receiving 1/3 of their background radiation dose for an entire year, other people further off such as the civilian population received a dose equal to a chest X-ray.

3 mile island had a stuck valve. Western plants are built to collapse in on themselves and thus completely bury the reactor should it go critical. So not only are they built in with an incredible amount of failsafes, but posters above are right, they have at least 4 redundancies built in (sometimes as many as 8).

When built right, and not built by crappy Russians who cut corners everywhere possible, nuke plants are one of the safest things humanity has ever engineered. They are in no way, shape or form "really dangerous". The only way they are dangerous are when things go wrong, in that case yes a nuke plant is going to f you up in ways a conventional power plant won't. However kivanc's implying that nuke plants are inherently really dangerous because of conversations he's had with the engineers of power plants.

That's bull feces.

 

[frekk]

Chernobyl had 58 direct casualties and 4000 suspected cancer deaths. 330000 pop were resettled but it did not wipe out half the city like a nuke would. If the land was of any value then the polluted land could be scrubbed and sent elsewhere.

Chernobyl was wiped off the map - the number of people killed is rather irrelevant, since the economy and land that supported them disappeared. The city is gone - that's it.

And no, you couldn't just scrub the land and send it elsewhere - it would be prohibitively expensive to scrub thousands of tons of soil, to say the least.

 

[Sonereal]

Chernobyl was wiped off the map - the number of people killed is rather irrelevant, since the economy and land that supported them disappeared. The city is gone - that's it.

And no, you couldn't just scrub the land and send it elsewhere - it would be prohibitively expensive to scrub thousands of tons of soil, to say the least.

I'm not sure if it's been linked yet (may've missed it) but a city of 50,000 in the ZoE was pretty much abandoned following the Accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat_(city)

 

[frekk]

When built right, and not built by crappy Russians who cut corners everywhere possible

Sure, but the game features Russia, China, India and a host of other famous corner-cutters.

nuke plants are one of the safest things humanity has ever engineered.

No, they are not. The mere fact that fuel waste is stored on-site introduces numerous hazards. You can make the reaction relatively safe, but you can't make the plants entirely safe. There's not much you can do to make things safe if the plant gets swept away during a flood, ripped apart during an earthquake, hijacked by terrorists, or what have you.

The only way they are dangerous are when things go wrong

By that standard, nothing is dangerous.

However kivanc's implying that nuke plants are inherently really dangerous because of conversations he's had with the engineers of power plants.

That's bull feces.

Maybe you don't understand what the word "inherent" means, but nuclear plants are inherently dangerous - that's why so many safety features are built-in. If danger was not an inherent quality of nuclear plants, you wouldn't need to.