Be Excellent To Each Other

Okay, a not-bad first episode of the new series. Still not sold on Donna, though it'll be nice to have a companion who'll give the Doctor some shit, rather than blindly following him.

It was as good as most opening episodes, I think. Tate is still really bloody annoying.

Couple of really good individual moments though.

I quite liked it in the end, despite thinking 'ho-hum' when the baddies seemed a bit too Sarah Jane Adventures. And SJA is great and all, but 'Hi I'm an alien and I want to sucker stupid shallow people into doing something bad for them' has been done a few too many times.

Fortunate then that some inspired fun burst out in the last third, with the nice idea of interplantery nurseries and the Close Encounters Mothership. Donna was a mixed bag (oh ho!). Overall she annoyed me less than I thought she would - thankfully she's a different person to the incredibly grating one in The Running Bride. I still wish she wouldn't pull her 'fish face' though, you know, the one where her mouth becomes a terrifying pointed void of maw and her eyes go all tiny black buttons. *Shudder*

Still, she's not that bad. If a bit annoying.

3/5

Wait - has Catherine Tate got a permanent role as the assistant? Fuck, am I glad I don't watch MR RELIEVED FACE

I can't believe I'm posting this, but Catherine Tate didn't annoy me anywhere near as much as I thought she would, and dare I say it, she actually looked quite attractive in some scenes.

Shit storyline though, and WHAT THE FUCK have they done to the theme music?

Fairly naff plot, crappy baddie and I'm not keen on Catherine Tate (middle name: Irri). But it weren't bad - certainly better than that Manhattan Daleks guff from the last series.

Ruined it, but then surely everyone knew Murray Gold would get round to that sooner or later?

As for Tate, I thought she did rather well, and that the character could be interesting.

Another thumbs up for the new assistant if not the actual episode itself. I like the idea of the Doctor almost being hen pecked rather than having some love lorn puppy following him around. The streak of piss-esque line right near the end set the tone even if it did seem to come from that Nanna character's mouth rather than Donna's.

Episode wise it was agreeable enough and certainly one the 9 year old in the house enjoyed more than we did. I don't know why but the most annoying thing for me was the really badly directed crowd scenes with people pointing at the little fat things wandering about.

I'm sorry, are we disturbing you?

I enjoyed it, more than I thought after the last crappy couple of episodes (inc. the Xmas special). I think Tate is going to be fine as the assistant. I am optimistic - even the recent series of Torchwood was surprisingly good, woo!

I've not watched Doctor Who yet, but on the subject of Torchwood -- the finale was excellent but NUCLEAR REACTORS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Apart from the fact that THEY MAKE THEIR OWN POWER so it's really quite hard to cut power to one, the very last line of failsafe involves a mechanism which, roughly, is a ton of control rods held back against springs by electromagnets. Power cut == electromagnets off == rods into reactor. End of story.

Seriously, I found this so annoying it detracted from the (otherwise excellent) finale. Grrr. There is also no nuclear reactor in Cardiff, but I can forgive that.

On a related note, the etymology of the nuclear jargon SCRAM is worth a giggle.

If there were a real nuclear reactor, they probably would have got a lot of possibly legal grief for scaremongering with their bad science.

Hmm, I don't watch Torchwood, but what way did they say it worked?


They rely on a grid connection to operate though. The turbines will shut down in the event of the grid being lost.


Woah, that's not the end of the story! I thought you said you'd done physics?
The vital issue which makes nuclear power and reactor design such a tricky business, is that after you've shut the thing off, you've got decay heat to deal with.

This can be several hundred megawatts, in a large reactor!

The only way to disperse that heat is by keeping the cooling water flowing. This requires electric pumps, operated from grid power. If the grid fails, you have standby diesel generators. If the generators run out of fuel, you have several hours of battery power. Once the batteries go flat, the water in the core will quickly boil off. Then the fuel channels will melt. Then the molten fuel, metal and other stuff will pool in the bottom of the reactor vessel - that's a meltdown. Heard of Three Mile Island? If fission begins again in the pool of stuff, then you've potentially got a China syndrome.

The point is: you can't walk away from present-day nuclear reactors, because they are not inherently safe. Making them safe requires a lot of very complex engineering band-aids, and everything to work as it should.

I don't mind Catherine Tate in Dr Who at all. I find her largely non irritating and don't see what you're all complaining about (Apart from those of you who aren't). I don't like Catherine Tate when she's doing her own show though. I'm glad I wasn't imagining the change in theme music. It's horrible and shit.

I've never seen Catherine Tate before (other than as the runaway bride). I thought she was OK, and the episode wasn't too bad overall.
Not the same to look at as Billie but sort of interesting all the same.

What's wrong with the theme music? I didn't rate the "new" version that they've had until now, this one is at least an improvement on that, and I hope they'll edge closer to the Orbital version over time

I really hope that they don't have her falling in love with The Doctor. I've hated that previously.

The new theme is terrible, an abortion of a tune.

Personally speaking I loathe The Catherine Tate Show (yet another in an increasing list of lazy comedy slag writing shows...yes Little Britain I'm looking at you) but quite like her as Donna, probably my favourite scene of the opener was her spying the Doctor for the first time.

Really liked the baby lard aliens...so cute you want to scoop their eyeballs out.

But overall the episode was a bit meh and not a patch on the last seasons opener (although infinitely better than the Christmas / Minogue special).

Oh I liked the Minogue one! It had Minogue in it.

I also liked the bit where the taxi ran into the crowd of lard-lings and skidded on several of them. I could have written that bit, I was waiting for it to happen.

I'm as certain as I can be (without knowing) that this won't happen, and that Donna will indeed be just a mate for him. They'll probably do it so that she is the one who sorts out 'the mess' of Rose and Martha, as they go along.

They've already stated that isn't going to happen.

Tate was alright. Until she started yelling, at which point her voice grated on my very soul.

Yeah it wasn't bad, overall. I quite enjoyed it, despite getting a bit bored in the middle section. I also tire of evil alien companies with two henchmen and inquisitive mortally doomed journalists getting the exposition done for us. (Although it was a nice twist having the journalist not get killed, I did feel a bit like throwing things at her for being so irredeemably stupid.)

No, it was the nurseries angle and the world not being doomed for once that was nice. More plot lines that don't involve the entire world being under threat please, Mr Davies. Who knows, you might even manage to do a 'keep two or three very interesting people' safe plot line. Or even one supremely likable person. Wouldn't that be ace?

The title music was a bit meh. Not annoying though. I might even watch this episode again at some point. As for Catherine Tate, I don't hate her, but I've never been able to like intelligent people who spoon-feed us crudities in lieu of humour. It shows laziness and contempt. Still, she was okay and had some nice moments.

Next episode looks good. Expect me as an Ancient History and Classical Archaeology graduate to get jolly cross, though. (Hint: In the trailer Roman bloke says that prophecy is not a woman's job - what, a woman like the Sibyl and her priestesses? You clot.)

Meh, I said "just fucking shoot them already!". I mean, the henchmen were carrying sub-machineguns at all times, and had loads of opportunities to blast the journalist as well as the Doctor and Donna. Either throw in some firefights or don't bother with the guns in the first place. Rubbish!

It still should have been Sally Sparrow as the assistant. I mean she's even got a stylish name!

I was mildly amused that the journalist woman had to resign herself to her fate of being constantly tied up again after escaping. That villain woman was terrible though.

I [heart] Sally Sparrow.

I missed this. Oops. I'm terrible at watching TV shows on time. I accidentally missed the final part of last season's finale, and the entire last series of Torchwood.

Is it being repeated, do we know? I'd rather avoid watching it on the computer if at all possible.

It's worse than that -- I worked for Nuclear Electric (now called British Energy to get that scary N-word out of the way) for a few years, in the Barnwood office. I worked on computer modelling software that calculates from neutron flux and coolant temperature data to deduce conditions inside the fuel pins. I've also stood on top of a fuel pond and marvelled at the Cherenkoff radiation.



Yes, I accept your very good point that I've just made a handwavy stupid argument as to why Torchwood's handwavy stupid argument is stupid. Mae culpa!


Pedant: only one reactor in the UK (Sizewell B) uses water as the coolant, the others are all CO2 cooled. I wonder what boiling off what would like. Sizewell B's outlet channel temperature is about 450degC if memory serves, and the water is held liquid with some stupendous amount of pressure; the pipework around it is quite impressive to behold. As temperature rises, eventually the pipework will give way and I'm willing to bet that would be spectacularly devastating.


Or, excitingly, catch fire in an old school Magnox reactor (with solid Uranium fuel). That's quite fun apparantly.

Now, I'm fuzzy on this bit. The question is, once you've flooded the reactor with a neutron poison, how long does it take to dissapate heat; you'll certainly put a stop to the neutron chain reaction damn fast, as that isn't actually all that stable in a uranium based reactor anyway (plute based fast breeders are a different story). My instincts are that, unless some other factor intervenes, the core cools off quite quickly once the neutron flux is eliminated. I must confess though that I have no data to back this up.

The two famous exceptions have other factors: Three Mile Island had been run for hours with a coolant release valve left open, which meant there was far less coolant than their should have been, and Chernobyl was running the reactor much hotter than it should have been due to a surplus of Xe-135. Neither reactor was SCRAMmed until it was tool late, so I don't think either accident invalidates my reasoning.


This is very true. As with aircraft, only more so, there are systems, and redundant systems, and backups, and backups of the backups, and redundant backups of the backups, and so forth. But it's a hell of a lot safer than it is usually presented in popular fiction, which usually suggests that at any second they can just shoot off into meltdown mode at the drop of a hat.

Also, fascinating semi-related link.

Hmm, actually, you're right. Give them rubbish stun-darts or something instead, and some added jokes about the henchmen really wishing they had machine guns. And yes, the villainess was a bit underwhelming. A completely obvious portrayal with completely obvious dialogue. Good job that last third was so corking, eh?

And Sally Sparrow for companions. GOOD LORD, THIS.

Huh - my dad used to work just over the road at Barclays, and my school was just up the road from there.

[edit] Wiki says that the decay heat declines from 6.5% to 1% (of previous operating power) in the hour after shutdown. Beta-decay, not fission.
That's a troubling amount of heat energy to get rid of - especially if you've shut down because of a coolant circulation problem, say. What happens after the fuel reforms in a big, un-moderated lump in the bottom of the reactor is anyone's guess.

And fair enough, I can't claim to know exactly what would happen either. Perhaps the real problem is that nobody, not even the experts, really does: new reactor designs still pick suspiciously different approaches to dealing with a worst-case scenario, and until one of them is tested, it's hard to be sure.

I'm not convinced by some of the claims made for the CANDU thing for example, the EPR design seems to understand the problem better - it has a "core spreader" and seperate cooling system specifically to deal with a reactor breach accident. And several other belts-and-braces solutions.

I know nothing about how UK reactors work, so feel free to educate me

Mohh! I went off and read the same page, clicked Quote, and in the meantime you'd done your edit

Well, Sizewell B (for example) runs at 1196 MW electrical output. Overall efficiency of a PWR is about 30% or so, so that suggests that immediately after a coolant release followed by a SCRAM you would have to deal with 259MW of heat generation.

Hmm, I was going to start calculating the volume of reactor and the approximate volume of water, but a lot of these SCRAM systems use a liquid injection anyway, like heavily boron dosed water or something. I don't know what Sizewell B uses. Well, let's plow on regardless. IIRC Sizewell B has about 400 fuel assemblies and each one is about 60cm across and 6 m long (all these numbers are from memory from 1996-2000, and I've been drunk since then, so I may be a bit out). That suggests a core volume of about 864m^3. Each assembly holds 36 fuel rods and each rod is 20mm x 6metres, so the fuel occupies around 108m^3. Add on a bit more volume for the structure of the assemblies and you may have something like 700m^3 of coolant. That suggests 700,000 kg of water, disregarding heat expansion of the water.

C_p for water is 4.18 J g^-1 K^-1, which finally gives us a heating of the water of (according to my very rusty maths) 11.3 degC per second. I'm not about to go geeking out further with some integration; clearly, the decay heat tails off quite quickly if it is down to 1% within an hour. Say it stays at 6.5% for 15 min, that suggests a temperature increase of the coolant of about 170degC. That's probably not enough to be troubling, as it is still 2000 degC away from the melting point of the fuel. Even if you lost half the coolant (and that the SCRAM doesn't just pump liquid in to replace it, which I think it does) this isn't the worst thing that can happen to a reactor[1].

"Assume all cows are spherical and hollow."

Modern reactors use uranium dioxide fuel, mind -- it's ceramic and doesn't melt until 2500 degC. I think you'd be going great guns to get it to melt en masse. It's not very thermally conductive, however; in the core it's formed into little pellets, about 20mm across, and the pellets stuck end-to-end into meter long rods. Each rod is coated in zirconium layer that acts as the primary conductive mechanism to get heat out of the fuel and into the coolant. One thing we've seen is that under high reactor load, the amount of fissionable product that is gaseous increases, and the gas pressure can get high enough to balloon the zirc out from the pin. This causes gaps that inhibit the cooling process. We did a lot of calculations of the Fission Gas Release, it's a key safety metric and has to be kept within tight parameters.

Slightly off the end of my knowledge now, CANDU I know but EPR is new to me. I've got my excuses, how do you know so much about reactors?

[1] The worst case I considered was a reactor vessel breach which, despite the reactor being quicktly SCRAMmed, results in gaseous fissionable product being released into the atmosphere. The worst of these is Iodine-131, a virulent alpha emmiter which the human body, apon breathing it in, decides to do what it does with all chemical iodine i.e. store it in the thyroid gland. This can in theory cause a hell of a lot of very nasty brain tumours. I-131 concentration levels is another very key safety metric. Fuel with too much of it in was retired prematurely.

Ah, thanks for going to the trouble, that's a more comforting amount of water than I'd been assuming. So as you say, this particular scenario would have to depend on a few other things being wrong at the same time, as indeed was the case at TMI etc.


Sounds like it!

Assume all sheep have a head at each end.



As you can probably tell but charitably didn't imply, I don't really know very much about reactors, I just took an interest in some parts of them from a materials and engineering basis, and read a bit more than I could reasonably digest given my lack of physics background!
And, the EPR is the design promoted for future UK build, which as a RE guy I'm sort of naturally opposed to and a bit skeptical about.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/russell-t-davies-return-of-the-tea-time-lord-805255.html

Richard Dawkins is going to be in Dr Who! I love it when geeky interests collide.

(though as he was friends with Douglas Adams this doesn't really count.)

Double-combo-link! Dawkins is also married to the lovely Lalla Ward of Romana fame.

What a shame Douglas Adams isn't around to do another script though. I think he would have had fun with the new style.

Any excuse to geek out, that's me.

It'll always be the case with any nuclear problem. There are so many layered redundant systems that a systematic failure is essentially impossible; the odds are far far lower than the chances of humankind being wiped out by an asteroid. On the other hand, the human factor has to be rigourously controlled, as this was the underlying cause of TMI and Chernobyl. The combat this with rigourous well-planned procedures. The office in Barnwood had when I worked there about a thousand dedicated safety engineering staff, at least half of them with PhDs, who literally just sat around all day thinking of stuff that could go wrong and what the procedure would be to correct it. It's an awe-inspiring amount of work.

I wasn't being charitable -- I'd say you know a hell of a lot more than most laymen, certainly way more than I would know if I hadn't worked in the industry. If you're interesting in the material science perspective, is very interesting -- crashing a plane into a sample of reactor wall at 800 km/h.

I've read up on EPR now, it's very similar to Sizewell B which I discuss above. It's an evolution of the PWR design type.

Not bad, Tate is less irritating than previously, but I still have my doubts about her. Wish she'd burst in to Nan occasionally, I mean when she was hanging onto the window cleaning station she could have at least given us a 'what a fucking liberty' or something.

Bits of it I liked, other bits I didn't. Some bits were good (The mimed conversation through the window) others not so (Catherine Tate).

That's all very well, Richardgaywood and Kalmar, but what safety procedures are there against an armed Joe Don Baker and Bob Peck infiltrating a secret processing plant via abandoned Yorkshire mining works, eh? EH?

Or in stopping a panicky Jack Lemmon from pressing the wrong buttons in a tense hostage situation ironically presided to highlight deficient safety measures? Huh?

Or preventing a seven-reactor mega-powerstation on the slopes of Mount Fuji exploding and covering the entirity of Japan in multi-coloured radioactive smoke? Hum?

*Points if you can spot the vehicle of each cataclysm.

Well quite! Analogous to TEH EVIL TERRORISTS in our modern paradigm, that.
Edge of DARKNESS.


Human error. No accounting for that. China Syndrome innit.


Err. Dunno, what was that one?

Japan did have a fairly bad accident recently though, to do with fuel handling rather than meltdown or anything though.

In 2001, no-one died.
In 2002, no-one died.
In 2003, no-one died.
In 2004, no-one died.
In 2005, no-one died.
In 2006, some-one died.

The Japanese 7-reactor one was one of the vingettes in Akira Kurosawa's under-rated final film 'Dreams', which has some truly disturbing imagery involving fireballs melting the slopes of Mt. Fuji in the distant background and an entire population fleeing up and over a hill side in a futile effort to escape.

Contrary to pool-hall attendants 'half-glass full' mantra, everyone dies.

By the way - if you see the Cherenkov effect with your eyes, does that mean you're in trouble? Something one of you said earlier, about standing atop of something and seeing the soft twinkling blue light of minty fresh Cherenkov fun, or something.

Me, I said that. No, it's just light, and is quite safe to behold. Very very eerie blue glow that literally comes from nowhere. It was quite faint when I saw it, as the fuel was pretty old; they say that when the refuel Sizewell B (which involves taking the entire core to pieces submerged under 15m of boronated water) that it is so bright you could turn the lights off in the room and work by it.

I feel very priviledged to have seen it. It's a pretty rare effect.

Of course readers, bear in mind that according to his avatar, it's a strange mutated man-monkey who's saying this.

Interesting stuff in truth, I think I recall a youtube video showing the effect. I wouldn't mind seeing it in real life. Think I'll sneak in and have a peek, I imagine they'll be pretty cheerily forgiving of my amusing trespassy curiosity.

Of course, was just a monkey when I saw it.

Sure! Find Steve on the gate, tell him I sent you. I'm sure they'll be really happy to give you the no-holds-barred tour, where you get to stand in the control room, and on a gantry over the pond, and look down onto the top of the reactor core. Happens all the time, the cheeky scamps sneak in all over the shop. We just ruffle their hair, send them on their way, and mutter, "boys will be boys".

Man, that reminds me, I completely accidentally found myself driving down the one stretch of dual-carriageway to be found in the highlands when on a camping holiday a couple of years ago; turns out it's the approach road to Dounreay. And it's a dual-carriageway with a big concrete divider down the middle so you can't pull a U-ey and get out of there.
An Atomic Police car pulled me over and asked me what I thought I was up to, with my camera and bird-spotting binoculars lying on the dashboard, and then instructed me to drive *into* the compound, over the severe-tyre-damage spikes and that, turn around after the checkpoint and then drive back out the other side. So I did. That place is *huge* when you get up close! And I did wonder if they were going to shoot me when I went past the barrier.

Ah, bless. I would so be riddled with lovely bullets. It's great being satiric isn't it? Apart from the bullett riddling 'carried too far' bits.

I like the new version, but possibly just because it reminds me (especially the chords towards the end of the opening titles) of the 1980 Peter Howell version, which I love.

The new music is a case of 'too much'. Gold's initial revamp is one of his few successes on the Who stuff (although one might argue that whoever mixes the show should be the first against the wall), but the new version just has too much tat added on top, and almost entirely 'hides' the samples from the original.

Another good episode.

I'm afraid I think Gold is an appalling one trick hack who got the gig due to being bestest buddies with RTD after previously digging him out of a hole. Mark Ayres should have got the gig and then we might have music that doesn't sound bland.

With old Who, each story had a different composer, so you got some really distinctive and expertimental music. It didn't always work granted but the new series just has generic sci-fi fare which isn't memorable and is mixed in far too loud. Although, granted, in the 70's Dudley Simpson scored most of the stories. But man, Simpson was *talented* and each story he did sounded totally unique. You *remembered* some of the scores and they were simple and evocative.

As for the theme remix, appalling.

And don't even get me started on the shit that passed for a story last week. Ended up watching it on fast forward I was so bored. Just totally 1 dimensional and bland.

The promo for this weeks episode looks better.

[goes off in a huff]

Howell was talented with no budget and limited techology and produced good music.

Gold has a shit load of money, all the technology in the world and comes up with sub 1996 telemovie music.

Hmmmm.

That goes for 90% of people involved with Who now, doesn't it?