Come on; didn't you ever hear someone say something really, really, stupid and therefore you remember it?
That's the way I felt when I was watching the Presidential debates back in 1976. Here's the transcript ( easy enough to Google ):
http://www.historyguy.com/politics/presidential_debate_no1_1976.html
I would certainly not cut out atomic power altogether. We can't afford to give up that opportunity until later. But to the extent that we continue to use atomic power, I would be responsible as President to make sure that the safety precautions were initiated and maintained. For instance, some that have been forgotten: We need to have the reactor core below ground level, the entire power plant that uses atomic power tightly sealed, and a heavy vacuum maintained.
The only thing a "heavy vacuum" buys you is one atmosphere maximum more pressure containment. However, you can get the same result just by making the containment building a little stronger.
Let's say you want to protect against an accident with a 5 atmosphere overpressure. You can do that by creating a vacuum in the containment, and when you get that 5 atmosphere overpressure, the containment pressure is going to go up to 4 atmospheres. So you need to build the containment to withstand 4 atmospheres of overpressure.
However, if you make the containment 25% stronger, so that it can withstand 5 atmospheres instead of 4 atmospheres; you can skip having to maintain a vacuum inside.
You falsely give Carter the credit for the slight underpressure that all containment buildings have. That was done in nuclear power plants since the late '50s. The fact that Carter didn't know that was done, is to his detriment.
Where did you come up with the "idea" that it cost too much? WRONG Cost isn't the issue. The point is that a vacuum doesn't buy you much, in fact it doesn't buy you anything if you make the containment stronger. However, it does limit access of workers, and THAT could be a safety issue. If something is amiss, you want to be able to send a worker in to check it out. You don't want that worker excluded because the worker can't live in a vacuum. If what that idiot Carter suggested were done, nuclear power would be LESS SAFE.
PamW
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