Whistle Blowing

~lynn~ — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:51:21 +0800

Whistle blowing is basically an act of alerting the higher ups when an engineer found out that a product/process produced by the company is unsafe. Internal whistle blowing is to report to the boss/higher-up, while external whistle blowing is to inform to mass media and such.

Ok keeping story short, engineers are supposed to have the public's safety and interest as their main concern. If they found out something that could endanger the public, they should take measures to rectify it. Whistle blowing comes as a last resort.

Now, another concern is that in most of the countries, the law does not protect these whistle blowers. Also, while engineer should focus on public safety, they are naturally more concerned about keeping their job.

Thus the problem and focus of this discussion is that, should or should not one whistle blow? Save the people or save my own job?
Is it possible to compel the government to legislate a law to protect whistle blowers?

Discussable? XD

(I guess the correct tag would be Philosophy?)

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy

~lynn~ — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:07:53 +0800

(I'm not having a lot free time for now actually, so pardon my topic for the lack of facts/statistics)

I'm sure nuclear energy is no longer a new issue/topic.
Its power generation output is high enough to contribute towards the power grid of a country, making it as reliable as the conventional power generation methods.
Besides, the yield/input ratio is pretty high, i.e. a relatively small amount of fuel (herein uranium) required to generate a substantial amount of power.

That, I'm sure most of us know. Another pros about nuclear energy is that in contrast with other alternative energies, nuclear generation's output is more predictable/controllable. Hence, it has not much issue when being connected to the power grid. Wind and wave energy, are still being used for small scale because their output is not constant and can't be predicted. Hence, making it not reliable when it comes to analysing for power supply to meet the base load demand of the country/state.

Cons, includes the difficulty in handling the toxic waste. The fuel waste after the power generation process, remains radioactive for a very long time (for a thousand years, well that's what I've read).

Others include fear of the plant being unstable and hence explode. This is rather untrue, because the nuclear fission process is very much safe and has a number of check-and-balance system for safety purposes (I remembered clearly there are steps to ensure the stability of the fission reactions. Something about the Boron rods.... akh I'd do some search ups when I'm free.)
However, public opinion remains it is dangerous, perhaps from them thinking nuclear power plants are just another form of nuclear bomb.
Also, the Chernobyl incident have gave the wrong impression that nuclear power plant does have the risk of blowing up.

So all being said, I'd hope the topic has a sense of direction in terms of:
1) The power generation by nuclear fission. Pardon but I've always think scientific discussions always work better with numbers.

2) Should countries begin to adopt nuclear energy? (For scoping purposes, let's focus on Malaysia first.)
If yes why so, and if not, why not? XD

This is the first time I've created a topic here, so pardon me if it's lacking anything >< (I know! The numbers are missing!)
I hope there will be a fruitful discussion, in contrast to those topics we've been having for a while now

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Whistle Blowing

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy