Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Company Admits To Nuclear Cover Up
a-charles writes "Just as power companies are considering the first expansion of nuclear power usage in the US since the 70s, Reuters reports on a disturbing anouncement from the nation of Japan. On Thursday the Japanese power company Hokuriku Electric Power admitted it had covered up a 1999 incident in which mishandling of nuclear fuel rods led to an unintended self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction. The mishap caused the plant, located in central Japan, to enter a 'critical state' for much of those 15 minutes. Apparently, this was in the same year that two workers were killed in a separate incident in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo. A pair of workers were killed after using buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a lab, a test that also created an uncontrolled chain reaction for a short time. The nuclear power industry already has a bad name for safety violations in Japan, and these revelations are unlikely to help with that public image."
> ut I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for
> the latter*[nuclear waste]
> Until we're there, nuclear just doesn't seem
> as viable as coal (sad tho' that may be)
Of course, coal burning generates radioactive waste as well. The concentration is small but the volumes are very large.
sPh
It's been a few years (and a lot of beer) since I went through the navy's nuclear power program, so I can no long speak about it like an expert, but this i know a "Critical State" is just what happens when a nuclear reactor is producing power. It's fucking annoying to hear it announced like it's a bad thing. If it inadvertently entered this state, it could be bad a suppose, but as long as the hafnium rods where avaialable to be shoved back down in there to stem the reaction this wouldn't be a problem?
Actually, it is not a problem in the slightest, if we use modern designs like the Integral Fast Reactor. Current reactors only extract a few percent of the energy from the Uranium, and throw out the rest. Merely by recycling this "waste", any new Uranium mining can be delayed for certuries.
Using the aforementioned technology renders the waste problem inconsequential. More than that, it is likely to actually improve the waste situation; these reactors burn away all of the really nasty elements, and the little remaining waste is much safer and (relatively) very short lived.
Furthermore, the design is passively safe, and meltdowns are impossible.
The search is over. Of course we should continue to investigate other technologies, but we have a perfectly workable and very nearly ideal one staring us in the face. For the foreseeable future, this is the silver bullet.
In any case, holding out for something like the Tokamak is a waste of time. While a Fusion machine, in the end, it is hardly radiation free; the neutronic fusion reactions will slowly irradiate the hundreds of tons of reactor, which will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced.
Much more interesting and promising in my opinion is the Polywell, conceived of by Dr. Robert Bussard. The device seems like it may be perfectly feasible in the short term, and would have so many advantages, that it is madness not to make the minimal investment. I'm not going to discount Tokamak research, but we should really be investigating the alternatives as well. Anyway, here is Dr. Bussard's Google talk as well, for those who missed it: Should Google Go Nuclear?
Rule #1 when discussing anything nuclear. The first person to mention Chernobyl as an example as to how dangerous nuclear power can be is the loser. The reason? That person just admitted that they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about and are unfit to contribute anything to a nuclear debate. The second rule of debating nuclear power, never mention Chernobyl.
Here are the Chernobyl facts:
o Chernobyl only has a single containment shell which is thinner what anyone considers safe for a single layer of a double layer containment design. In other words, any non-Russia design has two containment shells, both single layers are thicker than what Chernobly provided with its single shell. Why? Because its dangerously stupid to do it that way.
o Chernobyl has fewer safety mechanisms that is considered safe by the world, even as far back at the 1950s. Basically, all non-Russia designers have deemed Chernobyl a worst case accident waiting to happen and unfit to be built. Only in technologically inferior Russia could such a design be approved. Even by Three Mile Island standards, where some monitoring equipment was not installed, Chernobol is third world sub standard. This is important because by the time Three Mile island went online, even its monitoring equipment was considered sub standard by its opponents.
o What little was installed for Chernobyl's auxilary cooling systems were non-functional and in need of repair. They were offline. Ignoring all non-Russian operated reactors, the reactor would have been taken offline as a matter of safety protocol.
o But small penis Russia had something to prove, so they DISABLED their remaining safeties! Followed by a mandate from the Russian government that they begin a series of very dangerous tests. These tests would be considered dangerous for any fully operational, non-Russian reactor. In otherwords, basic protocols say you NEVER do these types of tests on a full scale reactor unless the reactor is specifically designed for these types of tests.
o And oh, let's make sure they do these tests while the reactor has a skeleton crew. Basically, they had so few people, they could never hope to react to any real emergency.
So in a nut shell, we have a design that is so flawed, it could NEVER contain any type of serious accident and by worldly comparison, is considered ufit and should never have been built. Most of its backup systems were never installed and what few were installed, were not operative and in need of repair. Both common sense and basic safety protocols were already violated yet they contained to run. What few safetys remain were purposely disabled by the skeleton crew to allow for a series of very dangerous tests. The tests caused a run away which any other non-Russian design would have safely handled. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume a non-Russian reactor would of failed...but all non-Russian containment shells would have properly contained the situation causing only a minimum of radioactive venting. And that's still assuming a 1960 - 1970s reactor design. Modern designs would simply melt into a slag, shutting down the runaway, preventing any and all containment loss.
Long story short, anyone that thinks Chernobyl is in any way, shape, or form an example of how dangerous nuclear power is is ignorant of the subject, and unworthy to debate it. Pointing to Chernobyl as a posterboy makes as much sense as pointing at a standard bomb and declaring nuclear is dangerous. Chernobly is a posterboy of how small Russia's penis is and nothing more. In otherwords, if one wanted to spread radioactive contamination over a huge area, you do it, by design, EXACTLY how Russia did it. Chernobyl is a posterboy of how to build a bomb while calling it a power plant.
If anything, it proves that we don't want Russia building nuclear power plants. If anything, it proves that Russia is technologically incompetent. If anything, it proves that the Russian government is unethical and immorale. If
I doubt that many run into skyscrapers.
You might wanna do a little research before making claims like this. For example, ignoring the clear sensationalism (it's MSNBC, after all), I have here an article where a researcher claims to have studied skyscrapes which kill 200 birds per day .