Was Greece Just Nuked? | Hacker News Reader

Was Greece Just Nuked?

jamesaltucher.com

20 pointsComputerGuru14 comments

Wow he's got a lot of old and bad news to make a post like this. You can go to pretty much any other HN thread besides this one to find better info. This is just full of too many inaccuracies. Here's a few off the top of my head-

1. The Fukushima reactors are an old version of the BWRs and while they do have containment, it's not 100% foolproof and at least one of the reactors already has a damaged containment due to one of the explosions.

2. People will die from this accident. It has been raised to a Level 5, which is the same level as the Three Mile Island accident. Level 5 signifies "severe damage to a reactor core, release of large quantities of radiation with a high probability of significant public exposure and several deaths from radiation." Several of the reactor cores are significantly damaged/melted.

3. The controlled releases of steam are no longer the issue in terms of radioactivity emissions. The steam is an issue in terms of venting hydrogen gas and possibly causing more explosions. The radioactivity being emitting now is much worse. At least one of the spent fuel ponds boiled dry, and the rods are on fire releasing ash and smoke into the atmosphere.

Minor nitpick on 2: Three mile island had no deaths.

We just did a podcast interview with a nuclear engineer (my brother actually) on the subject of Japan's nuclear situation that's worth checking out I think:

http://techzinglive.com/page/694/114-tz-breaking-news-jay-ro...

[Edit] For added context, after serving as a nuclear submarine officer, he worked at a commercial nuclear power plant for five years running computational simulations. Also, he spends half his time in Japan, where his wife and child are currently living.

Hey ComputerGuru, thanks for reposting this. Where'd it go?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347487

Death by flagging.

James seems to rub some people the wrong way on HN. I like his writing. He's witty and always has an interesting point of view.

Thanks axiom. I felt this was a particularly important one. I don't like how the media operates in terms of scaring the population. But i guess this article had its run. Thanks again.

I think that the frequency of posting has something to do with it as well. Just a few hours ago another story of his was front paged.

Actually, I don't view the article as linkbaiting. The stock market fell 20% over the Greece headlines. Now nobody discusses it. And the media just moves on. No apologies. The same thing will happen with this Japan crisis. I view this as much more serious because of the stark fear people have over the world "nuclear". the media and the pundits know this and take advantage of it.

> Actually, I don't view the article as linkbaiting.

I didn't claim otherwise, and I appreciate your articles. My comment was about the fact that your articles, however insightful, appear often on the front page, sometimes more than once per day. This may rub some people the wrong way.

And a headline that's the very definition of linkbaiting. Flagged, and will flag it again if it comes up again.

I'm not saying this is the best article on HN but take a look at this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347017

Is that really a much more insightful piece?

In my mind that's much more pandering to the HN crowd and has a lot less content.

Anyway, I think the worst you can say is that the guy is a little agressive with self-promotion.

You're welcome. I open links in new tabs and come back to them hours later - I read this one and I could have sworn I got to it via HN and wanted to read the discussion about it, but couldn't find it anywhere for the life of me. So I posted it :)

holy crap, we nuked ourselves nearly a thousand times? I thought the amount of tests we've conducted was far less.

There is a timeline form 1945 to 1998 of all the nuclear detonations recorded, where they took place and what nation did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk

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