Story Time - GeekAlpha on Japanese Radiation
Back when I was in Nuclear Power School (in the Navy *), I had this awful class called CMR (Chemistry, Materials, and Radiation Controls) where we learned about radiation controls. Given the situation in Japan, this story is relevant to world events.
First of all, Nuclear Power School was the worst thing you can do to a human. Sure, it was only six months long, but it was pretty brutal **. The stress level and academic pace was often compared to MIT's Engineering program, although having never been in the later, I cannot say how they compare from experience. What I do know is that my class started with 550 and ended with 318 *** and everyone was reduced to a pale shambling stressed-out and sleep-deprived zombie with no life by the time we reached the second half of the school ("The Dark Side"). The school was the punishment devised by a sadist for those too poor, too drunk, and too gullible to get scholarships to CalTech or MIT. All exams were timed, long, entirely discussion questions (most of which requiring calculations where the work must not only be shown but explained) and it operated on the principle of "verbatim understanding." In six months, we had about 80 such exams, each one comprehensive, siting material from earlier classes and exams. And once you got to "The Dark Side" no class materials could leave the building.
Actually, it was the "R" part of the CMR class that was awful. The course material was as dry as a Peruvian salt flat in November. We learned all about the biological effects of different kinds of radiation and contamination. **** We learned to calculate exposure for point, line, and plane sources of radiation and how to account for distance and shielding. ***** We learned about decontamination and radiation hazards, measurement, and controls. We also had to memorize all of the results of the vast library of health studies on radiation and the various legal and safety limits for radiation sources, airborne gaseous and particulate radiation, and surface contamination.
Many of our classes were taught by fine-looking young female officers who had joined the Navy specifically as instructors (Direct Input Officers, known as Dildos), which at least provided something to look at when you were trying to stay focused. The other classes were taught by enlisted sea-returnees (who had years before been just like us) that we could occasionally talk into telling a "sea story" that would entertain us and give us some respite from the academic grind. For the RadCon portion of CMR, however, I got my one sea-returnee officer instructor (who lacked the assets of our other valued officer instructors).
This officer was a surface-warfare qualified Lieutenant who had done a stint in the shipyard on an aircraft carrier (the Enterprise if I recall correctly). The shipyard is an awful place for a nuc, and there are no good sea-stories to be had when the Shipyard, the reactor plant manufacturer, and Naval Reactors are breathing down your neck looking for an excuse to stop work and blame the naval crew. In my time in the yards, we used to joke that our submarine would not be released from drydock until the required paperwork could be used as a counter-weight to lift the ship back into the harbor; and that joke was never funny, because it was damn near true. So, there would be no sea-stories of Filipina bar-girls, firing waterslugs at Soviet submarines, mailing photos of surface ships in cross-hairs to their captains, or crossing the "Line of Death" from this guy.
But, we knew we were in trouble as soon as he walked in the door. We were already so sleep-deprived and stressed out by this point in the school that much of the class was taking their notes while standing at the podiums in the back of the class (we had to get more podiums during our RadCon course) and the coffee-pot we maintained was getting refilled every hour.
Unannounced, our new instructor quietly glided in from the back of the classroom on the first day of Radcon (sadly replacing our treasured, and smoking-hot Dildo Lieutenant junior-grade who taught Materials), and his gait was remarkable. This man was white like I had never seen. As he walked you could almost hear the sucking sound as he consumed all humor and soul out of every student he passed. He walked stiff-backed with his legs awkwardly jangling forward from a stiff spine and a butt so uptight that it could compress charcoal into diamond, and he looked just like George Jettson.
Lieutenant George-Jettson-On-Ludes then mounted the podium at the white-board (alas, our days of watching the skirt of LTjg Hot Materials Dildo as she erased those boards had come to an end), he turned, uncapped a marker and remarked in a drone right out of a Charlie Brown Cartoon, "I am Lieutenant [George-Jettson-on-Ludes]; my voice is a bit monotone; I'm working on it; Capital one-" and his marker started squeaking on the white-board as he copied the course-material outline on to the white-board verbatim to the hypnotic drone of our new nazal pillow-smotherer of joy.
Death would have been a merciful end to his course. There was never enough coffee, Mountain-Dew, or even standing to keep my constant struggle to copy the white-boards into my notebook free from drool. Our droning filler of white-boards hardly ever spared a word that wasn't written in the course outline in his two month at the front of the room. We struggled through the awful course material for a month and in an odd moment of mercy he stopped to remark that if we had enough time, he would tell us his one sea-story. This is the story he told us:
The aircraft carrier ****** was in the drydock with all of its reactors shut down, cooled down, and depressurized. The reactor compartments, sealed when reactors are running, were open for maintenance and modification to primary plant systems.
The reactor compartment had a single ladder from its single entrance, the "control point" down 14 stories to the bilge, where a containment area had been set up around a cut in the piping.
The entire reactor compartment is a Radiation Area where workers can safely work in normal clothing. They must wear a dosimeter to measure their exposure, and they must be checked by the watchstander at the reactor compartment door (the "Control Point" watch) when they leave for radioactive contamination.
The cut in the piping down in the bilge had produced an extremely high level of airborne radioactive contamination, so the area around the cut had a herculite (thick plastic) enclosure sealed with velcro in a monitored double-airlock configuration. The airborne contamination in the enclosure was estimated at 100,000 times the limit for airborne contamination.
Above the limit for airborne contamination, a worker must wear a gas-mask or other breathing protection. (if memory serves 20 years later) at 1000 times the limit, an anti-contamination suit must be worn in addition to the gas-mask (the full yellow canarie-suit with gloves, hood, and booties called "anti-c's." These suits don't shield the wearer, they just provide a surface for contamination that can be safely removed without getting anything on a worker's skin that will continue to radiate him.). At 100,000 times the limit, the worker must have an air-fed hood instead of gas-mask in addition to wearing anti-c's.
So an enlisted lab-technician had to go into the enclosure to monitor the contamination levels. He donned his anti-c's and airfed hood. The Control-Point watch was in charge of the air manifold for the hood and he had a monitor for a security camera in the enclosure.
Our young hero with air-fed hose in hand mounted the ladder and climbed 14 stories into the bowels of the ship. He dutifully plugged his airfed hood into temporary pipe fittings as he reached each new manifold on his journey until he reached the herculite enclosure. He carefully opened and sealed each of the tough velcro enclosure flaps of the airlocks festooned with dire radiation warnings until he reached the inner enclosure and plugged in his air supply.
The technician began his work doing the monitoring until suddenly his air-supply stopped. He unplugged and replugged his air-fed hood, but no air was available. He turned the to the camera and waved to the Control Point watch that there was a problem, but nothing happened. Panicking, he unplugged his hood, opened and sealed each of the enclosures in turn and ran for the ladder. He started his climb sucking air against a sealed breathing mask and desperately tried to reach the control point 14 stories above. He then fell and dropped dead at the base of the ladder.
The room was silent when LT George-Jettson-On-Ludes finished his story. We all looked at him with that expression I get right before someone tells me, "that was a really stupid story, don't ever tell it again."
We all just continued staring at him in silence until he said, "what should the lab technician have done?" We kept staring.
"Take the fucking mask off!" (holy crap, he was suddenly not monotone. It was almost like he was human.)
"You've just spent two months memorizing all of these radiation limits, biological effects, and radiological controls. The airborne limit of [I forget] micro-curies per milliliter is based on what?"
"You will exceed your legal limit for radioactive exposure of 5 rem (Rad Equivalent Man, basically a measure of the biological effect of one rad of gamma on a person. The XKCD graph at the end of this post is in Sieverts, which are the equivalent of 100 rem each.) for the year if you are immersed in a cloud of contamination for 40 hours a week for 50 weeks."
"And the legal limit is based on what?"
[insert actual verbatim description here. Essentially, a one-time short dose of 10 times the legal limit for radioactive exposure would cause measurable blood changes. 20 times would cause radiation sickness. 100 times would cause radiation sickness that would require a bone-marrow transplant. 200 times would be lethal within two weeks. But remember, this is a one-time dose of a direct beam of radiation, not long-term exposure that contamination in the lungs would cause]
"And what is the effect of long-term exposure?"
[insert verbatim description here. Essentially, out of 10,000 people exposed to 1 rem of radiation over a period of time, of the 1600 people that would otherwise develop cancer an additional 5 would develop cancer; just enough to be statistically significant.]
"The mask was required because the enclosure was at 100,000 times the limit, what would be the biological effect of breathing inside the enclosure?"
"He would be contaminated, and that contamination would settle in his lungs." (with some math we could have figured out his dosage based on his stay time, but note how many orders of magnitude there are between the time to exceed the limit and the statistical biological effect that contaminants would produce over time. Essentially, he would have had to go to a hospital to be monitored, there would have been a bunch of paperwork, and he probably still would not have received enough exposure to take him off the duty-roster, much less statistically increase his chance of cancer when he lived to be an old man.)
"And what is the biological effect of not breathing?"
"He died."
"That's right. It's not enough to just have the right answers verbatim and follow all the controls, you must understand why we have the limits and be able to make decisions based on more important concerns. If that man had taken off his mask, he would be alive, but he followed on all the requirements and limits and controls without thinking. He lost perspective and it killed him."
So, a few people have asked me about the reactor plant disasters in Japan. They are disastrous. It's awful, no question.
Here are some good posts about it:
http://www.plainenglishnuclear.net/2011/03/yet-another-japan-reactor-post/
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/12/nuclear-energy-insid.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_Water_Reactor_Safety_Systems
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/all-right-its-time-to-stop-the-fukushima-hysteria/
In context, remember that potentially over 10,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami. At the nuclear plant? None. There have been some injuries and there has been a release of contamination. Yes, a release of radioactive contamination is unacceptable and scary, but lets look at this in perspective.
Fourteen people died when the Gulf oil rig blew up, which was not part of any natural disaster. How many people die in coal mines?
Look, people freak out about the dangers of a nuclear plant because it is nuclear. If a large amount of radioactive cesium and strontium from the damaged plant settles over agricultural land, we cannot safely produce food there, and that is a disaster. Radioactive contamination causes cancer.
But, ask yourself how much you have heard about the burning refinery in Japan. How much did you hear about the chemical plants in Louisiana that sprayed mercury and lead and all kinds of hexavalent cadmium carcingenic goodness all over vast fertile swaths of land. Do you have any idea if that was cleaned up? No, because it's not ZOMG NUCLEAR. Do you even know if the fish you eat is full of mercury? No. Again, not ZOMG NUCULAR!
Guess what? All that shit is just as toxic and will give you just as much cancer. You just don't care.
There was exactly one really horrific nuclear accident, and that was Chernobyl. I actually know a lot about the accident if you want to buy me a beverage and you have something for me to make diagrams on, but basically the Chernobyl exclusion zone outside of the actual reactor containment building would be no less dangerous if entirely radiation-free carcinogens like asbestos were sprayed evenly over the countryside.
Should we be upset that there is a disaster in Japan? Yes, there are several disasters going on. Is the plant disaster bad? Yes it is. Does it mean that nuclear is more risky than all of the other hideously risky things we accept in our daily lives? No.
I oppose those who are irrationally anti-nuclear power for the same reasons that I oppose those who blame our federal spending deficit on teacher's unions, food stamps, and TANF (welfare). The arguments are myopic and ideological. In the case of electrical power, all sources of power have disadvantages and engineering challenges and our current population and civilization requires electricity. Limiting consumption and developing green sources are awesome, but they are not handwavium solutions. Likewise, our deficit didn't suddenly appear after Clinton because teachers and poor people battered down the entitlement door when we weren't looking, and if you cut every bit of the non-defense discretionary budget to zero, we would still have a deficit (and no one to collect revenues). A rational discussion on either topic must be free from sweeping generalizations, fear, and simplistic magical solutions that don't involve spreadsheets worth of calculation.
* Back when there was an actual existential threat to be scared of, nuclear war with the Soviets. Everyone is so scared of Al Qaeda these days, that some idiot from a cave might bomb your mini-mall, that people forget we no longer live with the daily danger of extermination from a global nuclear war. The submarine force I served in was designed for the end of the fucking world.
** LTjg Hot Materials Dildo once stood at the head of our class and watched us all studying for a while. On the base, it was a weekly occurrence (I am not even exaggerating) that someone in the Nuclear Field "A" School that preceeded Nuclear Power School would attempt or commit suicide. I used to see the ambulances all the time. As she watched us she said, "why is it that people commit suicide all the time in "A" school, but never in Power School? Power School is so much harder and more stressful?" In silence everyone just looked up and stared at her in a daze for a moment. I spoke up, "because we don't have time." Everyone chuckled. It was true. Then we all started studying again.
*** In boot camp we lost 1 nuc out of 19 to a drug test. In "A" school, I lost 13 nucs out of 24 for various reasons, mostly psych. In Power School, we lost 232 out of 318, mostly due to academics. At prototype we lost 1 nuc out of 60 for drugs. The drop ratio just to get to the fleet was high. Probably one third of the guys in the fleet (at least on my boat) didn't finish their enlistment either because of drugs, psych, or just going AWOL.
**** Radiation is the actual particles or waves that damage your body. Contamination is the material that emits that radiation over time. If you get contamination on your skin, in your lungs, or in your digestive tract, the contamination will expose you to radiation as long as it is there. If the contaminant happens to be a radioactive element that your body will chemically absorb rather than expel, that chemical will expose you to radiation for longer, increasing your total radioactive dose (and thus the biological damage radiation causes). This is why we are concerned with certain radioactive fission products like Iodine and Strontium.
***** Time Distance and Shielding is also an excellent strategy with dealing with bad relationships.
****** It was his story, but I believe he said the carrier was the USS Enterprise. I wouldn't want to blame the wrong ship for a fatal incident, however. Hell, for all I know it didn't actually happen, but his point was a good one that stuck with me.
First of all, Nuclear Power School was the worst thing you can do to a human. Sure, it was only six months long, but it was pretty brutal **. The stress level and academic pace was often compared to MIT's Engineering program, although having never been in the later, I cannot say how they compare from experience. What I do know is that my class started with 550 and ended with 318 *** and everyone was reduced to a pale shambling stressed-out and sleep-deprived zombie with no life by the time we reached the second half of the school ("The Dark Side"). The school was the punishment devised by a sadist for those too poor, too drunk, and too gullible to get scholarships to CalTech or MIT. All exams were timed, long, entirely discussion questions (most of which requiring calculations where the work must not only be shown but explained) and it operated on the principle of "verbatim understanding." In six months, we had about 80 such exams, each one comprehensive, siting material from earlier classes and exams. And once you got to "The Dark Side" no class materials could leave the building.
Actually, it was the "R" part of the CMR class that was awful. The course material was as dry as a Peruvian salt flat in November. We learned all about the biological effects of different kinds of radiation and contamination. **** We learned to calculate exposure for point, line, and plane sources of radiation and how to account for distance and shielding. ***** We learned about decontamination and radiation hazards, measurement, and controls. We also had to memorize all of the results of the vast library of health studies on radiation and the various legal and safety limits for radiation sources, airborne gaseous and particulate radiation, and surface contamination.
Many of our classes were taught by fine-looking young female officers who had joined the Navy specifically as instructors (Direct Input Officers, known as Dildos), which at least provided something to look at when you were trying to stay focused. The other classes were taught by enlisted sea-returnees (who had years before been just like us) that we could occasionally talk into telling a "sea story" that would entertain us and give us some respite from the academic grind. For the RadCon portion of CMR, however, I got my one sea-returnee officer instructor (who lacked the assets of our other valued officer instructors).
This officer was a surface-warfare qualified Lieutenant who had done a stint in the shipyard on an aircraft carrier (the Enterprise if I recall correctly). The shipyard is an awful place for a nuc, and there are no good sea-stories to be had when the Shipyard, the reactor plant manufacturer, and Naval Reactors are breathing down your neck looking for an excuse to stop work and blame the naval crew. In my time in the yards, we used to joke that our submarine would not be released from drydock until the required paperwork could be used as a counter-weight to lift the ship back into the harbor; and that joke was never funny, because it was damn near true. So, there would be no sea-stories of Filipina bar-girls, firing waterslugs at Soviet submarines, mailing photos of surface ships in cross-hairs to their captains, or crossing the "Line of Death" from this guy.
But, we knew we were in trouble as soon as he walked in the door. We were already so sleep-deprived and stressed out by this point in the school that much of the class was taking their notes while standing at the podiums in the back of the class (we had to get more podiums during our RadCon course) and the coffee-pot we maintained was getting refilled every hour.
Unannounced, our new instructor quietly glided in from the back of the classroom on the first day of Radcon (sadly replacing our treasured, and smoking-hot Dildo Lieutenant junior-grade who taught Materials), and his gait was remarkable. This man was white like I had never seen. As he walked you could almost hear the sucking sound as he consumed all humor and soul out of every student he passed. He walked stiff-backed with his legs awkwardly jangling forward from a stiff spine and a butt so uptight that it could compress charcoal into diamond, and he looked just like George Jettson.
Lieutenant George-Jettson-On-Ludes then mounted the podium at the white-board (alas, our days of watching the skirt of LTjg Hot Materials Dildo as she erased those boards had come to an end), he turned, uncapped a marker and remarked in a drone right out of a Charlie Brown Cartoon, "I am Lieutenant [George-Jettson-on-Ludes]; my voice is a bit monotone; I'm working on it; Capital one-" and his marker started squeaking on the white-board as he copied the course-material outline on to the white-board verbatim to the hypnotic drone of our new nazal pillow-smotherer of joy.
Death would have been a merciful end to his course. There was never enough coffee, Mountain-Dew, or even standing to keep my constant struggle to copy the white-boards into my notebook free from drool. Our droning filler of white-boards hardly ever spared a word that wasn't written in the course outline in his two month at the front of the room. We struggled through the awful course material for a month and in an odd moment of mercy he stopped to remark that if we had enough time, he would tell us his one sea-story. This is the story he told us:
The aircraft carrier ****** was in the drydock with all of its reactors shut down, cooled down, and depressurized. The reactor compartments, sealed when reactors are running, were open for maintenance and modification to primary plant systems.
The reactor compartment had a single ladder from its single entrance, the "control point" down 14 stories to the bilge, where a containment area had been set up around a cut in the piping.
The entire reactor compartment is a Radiation Area where workers can safely work in normal clothing. They must wear a dosimeter to measure their exposure, and they must be checked by the watchstander at the reactor compartment door (the "Control Point" watch) when they leave for radioactive contamination.
The cut in the piping down in the bilge had produced an extremely high level of airborne radioactive contamination, so the area around the cut had a herculite (thick plastic) enclosure sealed with velcro in a monitored double-airlock configuration. The airborne contamination in the enclosure was estimated at 100,000 times the limit for airborne contamination.
Above the limit for airborne contamination, a worker must wear a gas-mask or other breathing protection. (if memory serves 20 years later) at 1000 times the limit, an anti-contamination suit must be worn in addition to the gas-mask (the full yellow canarie-suit with gloves, hood, and booties called "anti-c's." These suits don't shield the wearer, they just provide a surface for contamination that can be safely removed without getting anything on a worker's skin that will continue to radiate him.). At 100,000 times the limit, the worker must have an air-fed hood instead of gas-mask in addition to wearing anti-c's.
So an enlisted lab-technician had to go into the enclosure to monitor the contamination levels. He donned his anti-c's and airfed hood. The Control-Point watch was in charge of the air manifold for the hood and he had a monitor for a security camera in the enclosure.
Our young hero with air-fed hose in hand mounted the ladder and climbed 14 stories into the bowels of the ship. He dutifully plugged his airfed hood into temporary pipe fittings as he reached each new manifold on his journey until he reached the herculite enclosure. He carefully opened and sealed each of the tough velcro enclosure flaps of the airlocks festooned with dire radiation warnings until he reached the inner enclosure and plugged in his air supply.
The technician began his work doing the monitoring until suddenly his air-supply stopped. He unplugged and replugged his air-fed hood, but no air was available. He turned the to the camera and waved to the Control Point watch that there was a problem, but nothing happened. Panicking, he unplugged his hood, opened and sealed each of the enclosures in turn and ran for the ladder. He started his climb sucking air against a sealed breathing mask and desperately tried to reach the control point 14 stories above. He then fell and dropped dead at the base of the ladder.
The room was silent when LT George-Jettson-On-Ludes finished his story. We all looked at him with that expression I get right before someone tells me, "that was a really stupid story, don't ever tell it again."
We all just continued staring at him in silence until he said, "what should the lab technician have done?" We kept staring.
"Take the fucking mask off!" (holy crap, he was suddenly not monotone. It was almost like he was human.)
"You've just spent two months memorizing all of these radiation limits, biological effects, and radiological controls. The airborne limit of [I forget] micro-curies per milliliter is based on what?"
"You will exceed your legal limit for radioactive exposure of 5 rem (Rad Equivalent Man, basically a measure of the biological effect of one rad of gamma on a person. The XKCD graph at the end of this post is in Sieverts, which are the equivalent of 100 rem each.) for the year if you are immersed in a cloud of contamination for 40 hours a week for 50 weeks."
"And the legal limit is based on what?"
[insert actual verbatim description here. Essentially, a one-time short dose of 10 times the legal limit for radioactive exposure would cause measurable blood changes. 20 times would cause radiation sickness. 100 times would cause radiation sickness that would require a bone-marrow transplant. 200 times would be lethal within two weeks. But remember, this is a one-time dose of a direct beam of radiation, not long-term exposure that contamination in the lungs would cause]
"And what is the effect of long-term exposure?"
[insert verbatim description here. Essentially, out of 10,000 people exposed to 1 rem of radiation over a period of time, of the 1600 people that would otherwise develop cancer an additional 5 would develop cancer; just enough to be statistically significant.]
"The mask was required because the enclosure was at 100,000 times the limit, what would be the biological effect of breathing inside the enclosure?"
"He would be contaminated, and that contamination would settle in his lungs." (with some math we could have figured out his dosage based on his stay time, but note how many orders of magnitude there are between the time to exceed the limit and the statistical biological effect that contaminants would produce over time. Essentially, he would have had to go to a hospital to be monitored, there would have been a bunch of paperwork, and he probably still would not have received enough exposure to take him off the duty-roster, much less statistically increase his chance of cancer when he lived to be an old man.)
"And what is the biological effect of not breathing?"
"He died."
"That's right. It's not enough to just have the right answers verbatim and follow all the controls, you must understand why we have the limits and be able to make decisions based on more important concerns. If that man had taken off his mask, he would be alive, but he followed on all the requirements and limits and controls without thinking. He lost perspective and it killed him."
So, a few people have asked me about the reactor plant disasters in Japan. They are disastrous. It's awful, no question.
Here are some good posts about it:
http://www.plainenglishnuclear.net/2011/03/yet-another-japan-reactor-post/
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/12/nuclear-energy-insid.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_Water_Reactor_Safety_Systems
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/all-right-its-time-to-stop-the-fukushima-hysteria/
In context, remember that potentially over 10,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami. At the nuclear plant? None. There have been some injuries and there has been a release of contamination. Yes, a release of radioactive contamination is unacceptable and scary, but lets look at this in perspective.
Fourteen people died when the Gulf oil rig blew up, which was not part of any natural disaster. How many people die in coal mines?
Look, people freak out about the dangers of a nuclear plant because it is nuclear. If a large amount of radioactive cesium and strontium from the damaged plant settles over agricultural land, we cannot safely produce food there, and that is a disaster. Radioactive contamination causes cancer.
But, ask yourself how much you have heard about the burning refinery in Japan. How much did you hear about the chemical plants in Louisiana that sprayed mercury and lead and all kinds of hexavalent cadmium carcingenic goodness all over vast fertile swaths of land. Do you have any idea if that was cleaned up? No, because it's not ZOMG NUCLEAR. Do you even know if the fish you eat is full of mercury? No. Again, not ZOMG NUCULAR!
Guess what? All that shit is just as toxic and will give you just as much cancer. You just don't care.
There was exactly one really horrific nuclear accident, and that was Chernobyl. I actually know a lot about the accident if you want to buy me a beverage and you have something for me to make diagrams on, but basically the Chernobyl exclusion zone outside of the actual reactor containment building would be no less dangerous if entirely radiation-free carcinogens like asbestos were sprayed evenly over the countryside.
Should we be upset that there is a disaster in Japan? Yes, there are several disasters going on. Is the plant disaster bad? Yes it is. Does it mean that nuclear is more risky than all of the other hideously risky things we accept in our daily lives? No.
I oppose those who are irrationally anti-nuclear power for the same reasons that I oppose those who blame our federal spending deficit on teacher's unions, food stamps, and TANF (welfare). The arguments are myopic and ideological. In the case of electrical power, all sources of power have disadvantages and engineering challenges and our current population and civilization requires electricity. Limiting consumption and developing green sources are awesome, but they are not handwavium solutions. Likewise, our deficit didn't suddenly appear after Clinton because teachers and poor people battered down the entitlement door when we weren't looking, and if you cut every bit of the non-defense discretionary budget to zero, we would still have a deficit (and no one to collect revenues). A rational discussion on either topic must be free from sweeping generalizations, fear, and simplistic magical solutions that don't involve spreadsheets worth of calculation.
* Back when there was an actual existential threat to be scared of, nuclear war with the Soviets. Everyone is so scared of Al Qaeda these days, that some idiot from a cave might bomb your mini-mall, that people forget we no longer live with the daily danger of extermination from a global nuclear war. The submarine force I served in was designed for the end of the fucking world.
** LTjg Hot Materials Dildo once stood at the head of our class and watched us all studying for a while. On the base, it was a weekly occurrence (I am not even exaggerating) that someone in the Nuclear Field "A" School that preceeded Nuclear Power School would attempt or commit suicide. I used to see the ambulances all the time. As she watched us she said, "why is it that people commit suicide all the time in "A" school, but never in Power School? Power School is so much harder and more stressful?" In silence everyone just looked up and stared at her in a daze for a moment. I spoke up, "because we don't have time." Everyone chuckled. It was true. Then we all started studying again.
*** In boot camp we lost 1 nuc out of 19 to a drug test. In "A" school, I lost 13 nucs out of 24 for various reasons, mostly psych. In Power School, we lost 232 out of 318, mostly due to academics. At prototype we lost 1 nuc out of 60 for drugs. The drop ratio just to get to the fleet was high. Probably one third of the guys in the fleet (at least on my boat) didn't finish their enlistment either because of drugs, psych, or just going AWOL.
**** Radiation is the actual particles or waves that damage your body. Contamination is the material that emits that radiation over time. If you get contamination on your skin, in your lungs, or in your digestive tract, the contamination will expose you to radiation as long as it is there. If the contaminant happens to be a radioactive element that your body will chemically absorb rather than expel, that chemical will expose you to radiation for longer, increasing your total radioactive dose (and thus the biological damage radiation causes). This is why we are concerned with certain radioactive fission products like Iodine and Strontium.
***** Time Distance and Shielding is also an excellent strategy with dealing with bad relationships.
****** It was his story, but I believe he said the carrier was the USS Enterprise. I wouldn't want to blame the wrong ship for a fatal incident, however. Hell, for all I know it didn't actually happen, but his point was a good one that stuck with me.