The Earth also absorbs heat radiated from the Sun which is trapped by greenhouse gases.

Edited April 29, 201411 yr by Airbrush

The Earth also absorbs heat radiated from the Sun which is trapped by greenhouse gases.

Yes, but I don't think that is 'heat flow' in regards to geothermal power, which refers to heat coming from the interior & moving outwards.

[Enthalpy: radioactivity spread to users together with heat]

 

 

You would need contamination to go from the primary to the secondary to the tertiary. In physical terms we're talking about leaks in two separate heat exchangers. If the maintenance team is that incompetent you have much bigger issues.

 

And this accident would happen. Of course.

 

The basic notion about safety is that accidents do happen. Prior to Fukushima, dozens of studies proved that losing all cooling methods would have been ludicrously improbable, with a coma and many many zeros as a percent probability. But it happened a all six reactors of dai-ichi, all reactors of dai-ni, and several more plants. Te other reactors could be cooled because an ultra-paranoid commission had thought that a tsunami could stop all cooling, and that the Diesel generators would be transferred within the building, which had not been done timely at the four exploded reactors.

 

The interesting question is not what precautions have been taken, nor how improbable someone imagines or claims the accident to be, but what its consequences are, precisely because accidents do happen.

 

Pipes from a hyper-deadly site like a nuclear reactor and the population are just no-no. The number of alleged barriers is irrelevant there.