Thought I'd dig this out as a follow-up to my last post. I hadn't read it since last year so some of my times do seem to be incorrect. Sorry lads and lasses.
It does talk about the active nuclear plant problems if mankind vanishes though and, is generally, a really interesting read.
Imagine Earth Without People (New Scientist; 12th October 2006)
The Times also covered the article when it was released and gave a handy flow chart fpr the timeline:
It does talk about the active nuclear plant problems if mankind vanishes though and, is generally, a really interesting read.
Imagine Earth Without People (New Scientist; 12th October 2006)
The Times also covered the article when it was released and gave a handy flow chart fpr the timeline:
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angusabranson- Angus Abranson
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Thanks for giving me a weeks worth of entertainment in one image.
Or, specifically (because it fits the best with what you're referring to) http://www.chayan.fr/flash/francais/phototheque/jungles/jun_001.htm
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This is an interesting timeline above, btw. Thanks for posting.
Say if the population of earth were reduced to a few million?
or is a few million people negligible?
Ok, so that's around 99% but that certainly makes things more manageable ;p
What they missed is that many species are dependant on humans for survival, lots of animals in zoos would be dead were it not for saving them, but then that's natural selection for you.
Hint: with a few exceptions (military stuff, and the old Soviet-era RBMKs such as the Chernobyl "B" reactor) they're designed to fail safe if their grid connection trips out or any of their monitoring systems detect that they're going out of bounds and no human overrides them. In extremis, there are actual mechanical fail-safes: the British AGRs, for example, have big hoppers full of perspex beads impregnated with neutron absorbers, physically bolted to the top of the reactors, with a thermal fuse -- if the reactor goes over a critical temperature, the fuse melts, the perspex beads flood in and melt, and the entire reactor gets shut down by a gush of molten neutron absorbent material. (This is a final dead man's handle -- they should never get to a state where the fuse plugs melt, and if they do melt, the reactor's a total write-off, but if all the regular core cooling systems are offline, if the control rods are jammed, the crew have run away, and the reactor's heading towards a meltdown, the system will shut itself down with extreme prejudice.)
The most scary thing about modern nuke power plants isn't the booga-booga radioactivity, it's the fact that they're blasting out live steam at 90 atmospheres and gigawatt energy levels (i.e. on the order of the equivalent of a kiloton nuclear explosion, smeared out over each week of operation). Live high-pressure steam is deadly dangerous. But the reactors themselves? You have to get really ingenious about sabotaging their multiple redundant safety systems if you want to make them pose a hazard.
I can rest assured that I don't have to worry (as much) about the nuclear power plants during the Zombie Holocaust when it happens now :p
I'm guessing you're back from Japan? Hope you had a good trip? I'll pop you over a mail in the next few days (as soon as my Microsoft confusion has been overcome...).
We're not all bad.
Though we did shoot a lot of stuff into space in the 70's, that would still be about.