Re:Tokyo High Court slashes damages to Fukushima nuclear dis...
by pdonis on Thursday March 19, 2020 @07:58PM
(#22633089)
> the Army still runs reactors
I wasn't aware that they were currently running any. You are right that I left out that the Army did used to have a small program, though--none of their reactors were more than about 10 MW, IIRC--but I thought it was shut down in the 1970s and they never had many reactor-years of operation.
> the Air Force handles nuclear material
Yes, fair point, the Air Force does handle nuclear weapons and associated materials.
> Both investigating implementing reactors in future plans
Yes, true. I've thought for a while that the obvious way for the US government to encourage nuclear power as well as generate some revenue independently of taxes would be to build a reactor for every US military base and sell the excess power generated back to the grid.
> the issue wasn't which form of energy was the most safe, it was whether the military is inherently better at managing such systems because of their organizational structure
If you left out "because of their organizational structure", I would agree with your description of the issue. I don't think organizational structure is the only relevant factor.
> Out of curiosity was that officer actually fired (discharged/loss of commission) or reassigned?
Reassigned, to a different command (not a ship), to duties not involving nuclear in any way. (I may have said "fired" in one of my posts describing this, but in military lingo that means "reassigned". Actually discharging someone requires a court martial, and the rules for when that can be done are much stricter.)
> Reassignment is pretty common on the civilian side when people show themselves incapable of executing duties appropriately.
But the definition of "incapable of executing duties appropriately" is very different in the civilian world. A minor administrative error wouldn't qualify. (By "minor administrative error" I mean an error of the order of "a single document was not filled out correctly", not an error of the order of "many things over an extended period of time were not done correctly". The latter might get you reassigned in the civilian world; the former won't.)
I wasn't aware that they were currently running any. You are right that I left out that the Army did used to have a small program, though--none of their reactors were more than about 10 MW, IIRC--but I thought it was shut down in the 1970s and they never had many reactor-years of operation.
> the Air Force handles nuclear material
Yes, fair point, the Air Force does handle nuclear weapons and associated materials.
> Both investigating implementing reactors in future plans
Yes, true. I've thought for a while that the obvious way for the US government to encourage nuclear power as well as generate some revenue independently of taxes would be to build a reactor for every US military base and sell the excess power generated back to the grid.
> the issue wasn't which form of energy was the most safe, it was whether the military is inherently better at managing such systems because of their organizational structure
If you left out "because of their organizational structure", I would agree with your description of the issue. I don't think organizational structure is the only relevant factor.
> Out of curiosity was that officer actually fired (discharged/loss of commission) or reassigned?
Reassigned, to a different command (not a ship), to duties not involving nuclear in any way. (I may have said "fired" in one of my posts describing this, but in military lingo that means "reassigned". Actually discharging someone requires a court martial, and the rules for when that can be done are much stricter.)
> Reassignment is pretty common on the civilian side when people show themselves incapable of executing duties appropriately.
But the definition of "incapable of executing duties appropriately" is very different in the civilian world. A minor administrative error wouldn't qualify. (By "minor administrative error" I mean an error of the order of "a single document was not filled out correctly", not an error of the order of "many things over an extended period of time were not done correctly". The latter might get you reassigned in the civilian world; the former won't.)