Motorcycles

[trash]

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

an interesting web page

[micro_Amps]

That is amazing. So sad, so strange. We got some of it through the news here, but this is an insiders view.

[Aaron]

*nods* This link was posted around a few other haunts of mine a month or so back. Very sobering stuff.

I enjoyed the narrative, a very pragmatic yet sensitive one. The scenes of all the equipment used and then dumped afterwards is just amazing.

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[TallduDe]

300 years before the area is safe again.

damn.

interesting how the reactor was only switched off in 2000, 14 years after the meltdown!

[bithed]

…I didnt like reading it but i read it…i wanted to turn it off and read about toys again but i couldnt…

…We have nuclear plants here…We also have posters of smiling suns and goofy promotional characters telling us that its really IS ok to build the kids park over the nuclear waste that is buried many kilometes below…God help us all…

[brendan]

i dont like reading big atricles but i read it. it just sucked me in

[peteWah]

Im going to be sick…
it was a good history lesson in which it makes you think how lucky you realy are in comparison to the people who live in these cities towns and countries that have such devices…(AGED TECHNOLOGY BAD)
We have a reactor(south east of Sydney CBD)
at Lucas Heights
We dont have posters of smiling suns and goofy promotional characters telling us that its really is ok…

[trash]

The reactor at Lucas Heights is not same as Chernobyl and to compare it is like a whipper snipper motor compared to a F1 engine.
Lucas heights HIFAR is a 10MW slow breeder Uranium research reactor. Chernobyl was a 6GW fast breeder reactor. I’m not sure if it was Uranium or Plutonium fuel.

I know the operation of Lucas Heights well, its such a shame that nuclear science gets such bad press because of the greens. (the Armish Party)
Lucas Heights has saved many lives over the years.
Lucas Heights really is OK. Insert the goofy japanese character here? 🙂

What makes me really laugh is when somebody suggests that it could suffer a meltdown.
It’s physically impossible, you could not do it even deliberately. I look forward to hearing about the new 14MW reactor when it comes online.

I don’t have a problem with nuclear power, I have a problem with the companies they will try save a buck using it. Chernobyl is an example of what can happen when everything goes wrong.
I’ve been to the Ukraine twice, I haven’t been into the zone but I’ve been past it a few times.

The choice of 600 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide or 1Kg
of radioactive Strontium is never going to be a an easy choice.

Lucas heights also has a second smaller 100kW reactor that was decommissioned about 10 years ago. I can’t remember it’s name, but it ran for 30 years without ever needing new fuel. I’m guessing that it’s atomic pile was about 1Kg of Uranium. Picture running your car for 30 years off something the size of a small milk carton ?
How many litres of petrol or barrels of oil is that ?

[peteWah]

Well how am i to know, I just dont like the idear of having one so close to a major population… I dont care about the size of the thing

[Aaron]

The reactor was in the sticks when it was built, the population came to it.

While I’m not a big fan of Nuclear reactors they are important for medical science, and other research/development not just making electrickery or bombs.

Slow breeders are generally quite safe, it’s the fast breeders you gotta watchout for becuase they rely in part on controlling a reaction that would go boom if left unchecked (ie Chernobyl)..

A.

--
Site Owner Guy.

[trash]

I’ve been into lucas heights a few times. They used to have a lot of open days, but these days I think they might be a bit paranoid of people with malicious intentions.

It’s a very interesting place. The atomic pile in the hifar reactor is only about the size of a small fridge. The heavy water coolant (which is also the moderator) doesn’t get any hotter than 60 degrees. If the coolant fails… lets say somebody smashes a pipe.. the fission reaction cannot continue and the reactor stops.
Same for the control rods. If they fail, they fall into the pile, and the reactor stops.
The main purpose of the reactor is to produce large amounts of neutrons. Technicium is the main product of the reactor. It’s a very useful isotope that doesn’t occur naturally.

The reactor is only one small part of the whole site. They also have a Tandem particle accellerator. Think of your high school Van de Graff generator on steriods ! 🙂

A couple of Hospitals around Australia have cyclotrons for producing isotopes for medicine, and Sydney uni had a small experimental fusion reactor.

You’d be supprised at which materials around your house give off radiation.

Have a search in google for “the radiactive boyscout”.

[TallduDe]

“What happened when a teenager tried a dangerous experiment in his back yard

Tale of the Radioactive Boy Scout.

Golf Manor, a subdivision in Commerce Township, Mich., some 25 miles outside of Detroit, is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen, where the only thing lurking around the corner is an ice-cream truck. But June 26, 1995, was not a typical day.

Ask Dottie Pease. Cruising down Pinto Drive, Pease saw half a dozen men crossing her neighbor’s lawn. Three, in respirators and white moon suits, were dismantling her next-door neighbor’s shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs.

Huddled with a group of neighbors, Pease was nervous. “I was pretty disturbed,” she recalls. Publicly, the employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that day said there was nothing to fear. The truth is far more bizarre: the shed was dangerously irradiated and, according to the EPA, up to 40,000 residents of the area could be at risk.

The cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn. He had attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother’s shed following a Boy Scout merit-badge project.”

WTF

some kida have wayyyyyyy to much free time

[Admin]

Remember in the 90’s when the Russian power company dissconected the power to the nuclear sub pens(reactor cooling) because the government did’nt pay its bill,only the use of the military restored the power hours before meltdown.I know they had more than 14 subs drydocked at one stage.It makes you think how powerfull the mighty Dollar is !!!! Pay your bill or we all die !! I thought the Tax man was Bad !!

[trash]

I heard in the news yesterday that Lucas Heights is actually going to start conducting public tours again. Well worth it if you get the chance.

Yep, that sounds like the former Soviet Union.
I got mugged in Alma-ata, Kazakhstan, there was no need to call the police, they were the police !

[Author]

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