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Messianic vs Myopic Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Isaa Levi
Isaa Levi*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Advocates and opponents of nuclear power agree that cold water reactors will not explode like atom boaba. Such a logical poaaibility is incompatible with our knowledge of the design of such plants and the physical principles regulating their operation.

No such knowledge rules out the possibility of a core meltdown. Estimates of the rate at which such meltdowns will occur range from one in a million years (so that the probability of a reactor running one year without a meltdown occurring is 0.999999) to one in a thousand years (so that the probability of no meltdown in one year of operation is 0.9990005). (These probabilities are computed on the assumption that the production of meltdowns is a poisson process.)

Some philosophers think the difference between the hypothesis about atomic explosions and the one about core meltdowns to be a matter of degree.

Type
Part XVI. Reason and Scientific Change
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 616 - 636
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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