Yulia Latynina: Oil Spill Is BP’s Chernobyl
[Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.]
The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the huge oil spill that resulted has led to a predictable reaction from many liberals — curses directed at profit-obsessed transnational corporations, calls for introducing exorbitantly high taxes on offshore drilling and appeals to abandon hydrocarbons completely and live in harmony with nature.
In reality, however, many technological disasters are not the result of negligence, ignorance or malice but are the consequence of highly complex technologies in unexplored areas that often have unpredictable results.
We often believe that if something is created by man, we know exactly how it will perform. But this is far from true.
There were several other major disasters prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union that were caused by negligence and stupidity — for example, the Alexander Suvorov ship tragedy. On June 5, 1983, the ship’s crew inadvertently attempted to pass under a low section of a bridge spanning the Volga River, tearing away the upper deck and claiming the lives of 177 people.
But Chernobyl was a different disaster. What proved fatal for the Chernobyl reactor was something known as the “end effect.” This is when the reactivity of the reactor undergoes a short-term increase instead of the anticipated decrease. One good analogy is if you press down on a car’s brake pedal and instead of slowing the vehicle it causes a brief surge in speed because of a freak situation in which the pedal’s position suddenly changed.
The same thing is true of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico...
Read entire article at Moscow Times
The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the huge oil spill that resulted has led to a predictable reaction from many liberals — curses directed at profit-obsessed transnational corporations, calls for introducing exorbitantly high taxes on offshore drilling and appeals to abandon hydrocarbons completely and live in harmony with nature.
In reality, however, many technological disasters are not the result of negligence, ignorance or malice but are the consequence of highly complex technologies in unexplored areas that often have unpredictable results.
We often believe that if something is created by man, we know exactly how it will perform. But this is far from true.
There were several other major disasters prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union that were caused by negligence and stupidity — for example, the Alexander Suvorov ship tragedy. On June 5, 1983, the ship’s crew inadvertently attempted to pass under a low section of a bridge spanning the Volga River, tearing away the upper deck and claiming the lives of 177 people.
But Chernobyl was a different disaster. What proved fatal for the Chernobyl reactor was something known as the “end effect.” This is when the reactivity of the reactor undergoes a short-term increase instead of the anticipated decrease. One good analogy is if you press down on a car’s brake pedal and instead of slowing the vehicle it causes a brief surge in speed because of a freak situation in which the pedal’s position suddenly changed.
The same thing is true of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico...