[Spridgets] Re Renewable energy (off topic)

[bjshov8 at tx.rr.com]

I think the design of these plants, at least the mechanical and electrical systems, is considerably less sophisticated than you realize.  (Hint, have you ever read the comic strip "Dilbert"?)

The biggest problem is that these are difficult systems to design, and it is hard to find enough people who are truly competent to design them.  You can't take the average college engineering student and convert him into someone who can do this at a high level.  And when it filters down to the companies and employees that actually get hired to design these things, they are trying to do it to make money so they are not hiring the best that they could hire.  The same thing happens in my branch of engineering.  My feeling is that the plants are too complicated and complication affects reliability.

> plants designed by the best and brightest who supposedly took every possible
> problem into consideration. As one writer said after the latest accident it
> will simply be a matter of time before some country becomes uninhabitable
> because of a nuclear accident.