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Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak
James Hardine writes "Following an announcement this week that the infamous Japanese Monju fast-breeder nuclear reactor would be re-opened with a new plutonium core, Wikileaks has released suppressed video footage of the disaster that led to its closure in 1995. The video shows men in silver 'space suits' exploring the reactor in which sodium compounds hang from the air ducts like icicles. Unlike conventional reactors, fast-breeder reactors, which 'breed' plutonium, use sodium rather than water as a coolant. This type of coolant creates a potentially hazardous situation as sodium is highly corrosive and reacts violently with both water and air. Government officials at first played down the extent of damage at the reactor and denied the existence of a videotape showing the sodium spill. The deputy general manager, Shigeo Nishimura, 49, jumped to his death the day after a news conference at which he and other officials revealed the extent of the cover-up. His family is currently suing the government at Japan's High Court."
They shouldn't have let Shatner direct.
Governments can suppress the videos, but they will never stop the first posters.
sodium cooled reactors also have a tendancy to produce radioactive isotopes of sodium like Na22 or Na24 from the high levels of neutron radiation exposure, the first produced by knocking a neutron out of Na23 and the second from neutron capture. sodium reacts with water to produce sodium hydroxide [caustic soda] and hydrogen gas, both of which are very dangerous in large quantities for obvious reasons.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Wiki leaks server suffers a meltdown after 9.1 MB video gets slashdotted.
Japanese government doesn't even try to cover it up.
Looks like Wikileaks is having trouble with bandwidth of the full video.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Uploaded to youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwWQLMmn0tM
They'll be certain to address the cause of the leak - videotapes. Whether or not the sodium leak problems will be addressed I can't say, but they'll ban video evidence of problems for sure.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
See, nuke power is safe, and we always know how bad even these contained breakdowns are.
--
make install -not war
(continued title)
... except stupid people.
This SHOULD show that even a "disaster" is minimal by nuclear standards and that safety is about a billion times better than any type of plant, but who knows how this will be interpreted by those who are inclined to panic at what they don't understand.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
How many people die yearly in coal mining accidents? How about accidents on oil drilling rigs?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You can't stop the signal Mal
I watched the whole video and I didn't see anything of note. I didn't see the "small mountain of sodium" and I didn't see anyone die. What is it? can anyone explain what I was meant to see please?
The next generation of nuclear power reactors is on the drawing boards today, and they aren't pressurized liquid sodium.
I guess it would be a really bad time to mention Battling Seizure Robots!
main(0)
Those do not incur the risk of radioactive contamination, which has long-term consequences that are more worrying than those resulting directly from the incident (I'm not saying every nuclear incident goes the way of Chernobyl -- just pointing out there is a risk). So it's not just a matter of comparing casualties resulting from the particular explosion/meltdown/whatever.
Score: i, Imaginary
I have long been saying life would be more interesting if we had more six-eyed fish and flipper kids walking around.
No sig for you!!
Tomorrow's top story on Slashdot: The Chernobyl meltdown! Followed on Tuesday by breaking Three Mile Island news...
#DeleteChrome
You realize breeder reactors are used for producing plutonium, and NOT for power generation?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Nothing that involves a high concentration of energy and a low concentration can ever be completely safe. Energy is the ability to do work, and it may end up doing work you don't want it to do. Now here's the real problem: You feel you have been lied to, that somebody promised you breeder reactors are completely safe, or that other kinds of reactors are completely safe or something. Well, somebody lied to you all right, when they told you that any power generation could ever be completely safe.
Read up on 'loss of blade' accidents for windmills, dam failures for hydro, and how coal releases radiation (lots of it) and other toxins (lots of them). Read up on what chemical compounds are used in solar cells, or just how hot a commercial sterling solar engine is at the mirror's focal point. Look at the political consequences of breeders, but also at the political consequences of the existing fuel oil demand. Look at the environmental consequences of nuclear, but also at the environmental consequences of big oil. Find out how even wave and tide, if scaled up to produce tens or hundreds of gigawatts, means thousands of small boat accidents a year, plus Manatees and probably many other species will inevitably become extinct and whole ecologies such as the everglades will likely follow. For any power source, read up on where it is to be located, and the human costs of sending the power to where it is to be used. THERE IS NO SAFE!
Who is John Cabal?
Instead the burning of coal slowly kills thousands of people a year through air pollution.
And as we all know, that's not news because it isn't sensational enough.
One study I found when searching indicates that 25 reactor meltdowns per year would be required to being it inline with coal pollution deaths.
AFK being...AFK then?
Bitter, not morose.
from "Horror at Party Beach" and thus needed....sodium! Someone should sing a song about it.
Monstar L
I remember reading about some fracas with some congressman wanting to install sodium-cooled nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers. Hyman Rickover, who was running the Navy's nuclear-powered fleet at the time, got hauled in front of a congressional panel; he dropped a small chunk of metallic sodium into some water and asked, following the ensuing fire and explosion, whether there were any questions. The Navy commissioned one sub with a sodium-cooled reactor (the U.S.S. Seawolf), but it was the only one.
Dog is my co-pilot.
If there was any radioactivity in the area being videoed that there is no observable scintillation. Did they use shielded video cameras?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Too bad.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They're top-secret nuclear-powered "Gundam" or (Generation Unsubdued Nuclear Drive Assault Module) Mobile Suits!!
I would be very interested in reading said study
Tobias Ussing http://www.nearby.dk
We are also poor at judging risks outside our biological programming, which is why we deem it a reasonable trade off to have over a hundred thousand people a year across Europe and the US die in accidents, rather than have universal public transport. If a hundred thousand deaths a year is OK so we can go to the office exactly when we feel like it, why isn't it OK so we can turn on the dishwasher exactly when we feel like it? - and that's meant to be a serious question.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
3rd gen are past drawing board. The FBR and IFR are gen 4, and are almost certainly going to happen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So interesting, that i took the liberty of finding the source.
http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm
Coal mining accidents might not incur the risk of significant radioactive contamination, but the combustion of coal does release massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, and people living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to more radiation than those living near nuclear power plants.
I've always found these statistics to be interesting:
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
this is a prototype of a power station. Most breeders today are too small to generate more power than they consume, but once scaled up, they will. ALL future reactors will be breeders in advanced countries will be breeders. It is far too expensive for them not to be.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Have you done any reading on the status of Chernobyl lately?
Since the accident, the natural wild life has returned in full force, and the region's ecosystem is healthier than it has been for centuries. Obviously without an in depth study we cannot be certain of mutation and cancer rates in those animals. But I'll venture a guess that natural selection took its course, and the overall population is healthy, allowing it to adapt and thrive in a mildly radioactive environment.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/33784558.html
So there goes your whole argument. Now read up on blue fin tuna that has such large quantities of mercury that even 6 pieces of sushi per week exceeds the safe limit. Read about the Exxon Valdez spill and countless others that directly destroyed entire ecosystems.
At this point nuclear energy is safer than any conventional other energy source. It is also the only economically viable energy source, at least for the time being. People who believe that solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources are the way to go obviously have NO idea how much electricity is consumed in industrial processes. Statements like "this windmill can power thousands of homes" are meaningless, when a single steel foundry consumes that much in a half hour.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
Yes, several were built and were decommisioned. But first they were designed poorly and that was when oil was CHEAP. Now it is pricey. We would be smart to either build nuclear ships or perhaps even better would be to build the bering strait brdige or tunnel.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's funny, I thought a "meltdown" was when the core overheats and actually begins to... you know, melt. I can't think of any reactors that actually use carbon as a mediator anyway...
=Smidge=
Well said, I fully agree, that's why it is important that this sort of information should be suppressed. It gives stupid people ideas about things they know absolutely nothing about.
It is important that governments should legislate that whoever "leaks" these sorts of things are classified as terrorists and should be locked away for life at the very least.
Governments have highly intelligent professionals advising the cream of our society (our politicians) who in turn make judicious decisions based on fact. As a safeguard, our politicians select judges who are impartial and above reproach to make sure that the best interests of the people are looked after.
These sorts of stories are so easily distorted and used to inflame situations that anywhere they "discuss" these things should immediately be shut down as it is obvious that those forums are deliberately manipulating the stupid people in our society, if people want to know something about nuclear power, they should contact their government.
Nuclear power is safe, this minor technical problem they experienced was well contained and it is a pity that now the stupid people will miss-interpret the events - one very good example why our democratically elected governments need more control over the media and the internet. Immediately lock up the families that are suing the Japanese government I say, more stupid people doing stupid things.
Misleading stories (nothing happened and yet the story - a fairytale I say - implies that there was a risk to people) do not help in the betterment of our society.
Please people, do not worry, your government is here to look after your best interests, Nuclear power is safer than any other form of power, your government will ensure it stays that way. Your government would not lie to you.
BM3
Thanks, heard it a few times from sources i trust, just really wanted to have a source for it(the coal power plants are more radioactive)..
:)
Still would like one with the specific 25 disasters a year (or what it was). But lets hope the original poster can give me/us that.
Again, thanks, bookmarked.
Tobias Ussing http://www.nearby.dk
Actually, breeders can do both. Early examples were primarily for weapons grade Pu production but many designs exist geared more for commercial power production. The Pu they produce is well suited for further use in a reactor, but is much more difficult to process into weapons material. That, of course, is a big plus these days when the world has quite enough bombs.
Why do they use sodium to cool reactors? It reacts violently when exposed to water producing highly corrosive NaOH. Why would you want to use that stuff? Seems like a really bad idea.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
There is another factor to consider in this. Chernobyl used a design whereby a lack of water caused a positive feedback loop in the reactor to cause it to get even hotter. U.S. and most other designs use a negative feedback loop so the less water/coolant there is in the reactor, the less energy is put out. A Chernobyl type accident is physically impossible in any reactor used in the U.S. 3 Mile Island is about the worst nuclear accident that can occur in a U.S. nuclear power plant and about three dozen things went wrong (including stupidity on the part of the plant operators) in order to cause it.Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Not to mention the un-filtered combustibles from coal-fired power stations release vast amounts of Mercury Vapors that contaminate our environment and food chains.
Scrubbing the gaseous elemental Mercury from the combustion gases is very expensive and not that efficient and many countries don't even bother. Look it up in your own country.
I'd rather have the *fear* of an unlikely contamination of my environment from non-global-warming nuclear power than the *certainty* of air pollution and Mercury in my food.
I live in the Central US and already pregnant women are strongly cautioned to NOT to eat freshwater fish more than once per 2 weeks (last I read) because of Mercury pollution from rain containing coal-combustion mercury vapor condensates. And this mean ALL lakes, streams, rivers, ponds, etc... I used to love to catch and eat my caught fish. Now I can only catch and release...
For some reason, I don't see the any tree-hugging Nuclear nay-sayers addressing this point. Because it clearly points toward MORE coal burning to power the exhaust scrubbers (and thus more CO2 released) versus Using Nuclear power and having Zero CO2 release.
Find out how even wave and tide, if scaled up to produce tens or hundreds of gigawatts, means thousands of small boat accidents a year, plus Manatees and probably many other species will inevitably become extinct and whole ecologies such as the everglades will likely follow. For any power source, read up on where it is to be located, and the human costs of sending the power to where it is to be used. THERE IS NO SAFE!
Be honest though. As long as it is safe for humans, we don't care if it kills off every life form that we aren't actively breeding/farming on this planet. That's really how much we care about nature and wild life. PETA may think animals ought to be saved, but, truthfully, every other party would kill animals in hordes as long as we got anything positive from it like meals most of us think taste good.
A meltdown is when for some reason the nuclear reaction isn't mediated, and the reaction "runs away" or takes off out of control. This would happen in older reactors if there is a loss of coolant and the control rods weren't dropped into the reactor (also known as a SCRAM) to stop the nuclear reaction from occurring. With breeder reactors, I'm unaware of what their procedure is for handling any sort of failure with the sodium coolant.
It's more of the poor risk analysis. Deaths from coal based pollution and auto accidents happen daily in a series of small dramas affecting a handful of people at a time. When a nuclear accident happens it's all over the news and millions are involved in the same drama at the same time. That skews our risk assessment so that the emotional reaction to the infrequent large event is much greater even though the many small and frequent events kill far more people.
reletive novelty also plays a role. A video of one guy being killed by a bull will get a LOT more airtime than a thousand fatal carcrash videos will.
Jaws scared a great many people out of the ocean. I would guess that many times more people have died on the way to or from the movie than due to shark attack.
Any time.
I was just in my home state of Pennsylvania yesterday and saw a bumper sticker asking "Why not coal?" (Coal Miner's Union) The major industry around my area used to be anthracite mining, and when that collapsed, the town kinda went to shit, although it's coming back slowly. Given that, I understand why they'd want coal, just like I'm sure people in Detroit want the auto industry back, and the midwest wants ethanol.
Unfortunately, even though it would probably be a boon to my home town, I can't agree with bringing back coal. All of the evidence just seems to point to critical public safety issues due to the inevitable pollution. I'm a believer that, when the world changes, you change with it. Re-educate, find something else to do, and go do it. This resistance to change is what keeps communities poor in the global economy, and creates lobbies to bring back technologies and industries that are probably better off dead or significantly re-structured.
According to Wikipedia,
"Secondary" means that this sodium didn't pass through the reactor core so it didn't become radioactive.
wow such arrogant dogma. you sound just like the iraqi information minister.
Nothing will stop nuclear power eh? the actual specifics of this latest cover up don't matter to you? if this stuff is no safe, they wouldn't want to cover it up surely?
I bet you posted this before you even looked at the details of the story didn't you.
Actually, they partially are. Breeders can be reduced to dramatically reduce the amount of waste generated, thus eliminating one of the major issues with nuclear power. I've seen predictions from 95% to 98% less waste.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I agree that the human race is unlikely to make the decision to save the Manatees at the cost of less jobs, fewer lifestyle options, and such, but it is becoming apparent that impoverishing the rest of the capital E Ecology or even local ecologies hurts us as well. Maybe Manatees aren't that significant, maybe Alligators can all go, just maybe we could pave the whole everglades without losing carrying capacity for humans, but take out enough species, whole biomes, and so on, and it will hit us too.
Even before that, safe for which humans? Plenty of us wouldn't care about something that only kills people on the coasts, if we live inland, but those people on the coasts get to vote too, most places. If wave rockers on the Texas coast affect erosion of the few remaining sandbars protecting New Orleans, Texas may think they're great, but Louisiana won't.
Even before extinctions, something that commits large parts of the world's coastlines to power generation will probably have impacts we don't like on good old us, for example, tankers hit coastlines sometimes - what happens when an oil tanker mishap also takes down part of the wind and wave grid for a double whammy? (Hint, the oil company says it was all the wave rocker floats fault and the tanker wouldn't have run aground at all if not for them - after all, if you had just loss a valuable asset in an accident involving your competitors, and they were about to sue you, wouldn't you try to prove they were at fault? Oil companies don't sue mother nature for putting rocks there, but when someone owns the coast and covered it with big moving objects that 'affect currents', that's different.)
Who is John Cabal?
Breeders can be used to reduce nuclear waste. The reduction of breeders does not help with that.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
the 1950's called and they want their nuclear tech back. no one has built a new plant based on water cooling in 50 years.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Iron doesn't fission or fuse, so steel is only risky if it's got mechanical potential energy. Ergo, we must ban weightlifting and tall buildings. All other elements besides iron are potentially capable of liberating energy by either fusing to make iron or fissioning to make iron, so it's all other elements we must ban. If we just make the whole universe iron, and pack it all into one ball so nothing can fall any farther, then everybody will ,at last, be safe. Uhm, wait...
Who is John Cabal?
i'd like to see a link to that warnign though, i wasn't aware inland USA was that polluted.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No, you're thinking of either a controlled shutdown or a SCRAM (Emergency, probably uncontrolled, but still designed to be safe). A meltdown is what happens when the emergency control systems fail and the core physically melts due to the high temperature, possibly melting its way through the containment (Or worse - see China Syndrome).
Furthermore, you're not understanding the role of the control rods (No plant I can think of uses carbon btw). They are fully lowered into the reactor to slow the reaction rate by absorbing neutrons, hence the retraction of the rods would cause a meltdown.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
"or just how hot a commercial sterling solar engine is at the mirror's focal point. "
:)
You had to really stretch to think of something dangerous about solar/sterling engines.
I would not count the heat as a danger anyway, it's necessary to generate power, not a byproduct like radioactive waste or chemical/particulate pollution.
As far as safe, clean power goes, they are pretty good.
No, a meltdown is when the fuel rods and surrounding material starts to melt. Worst case, the fuel completely melts and pools at the bottom of the reactor container, melts through the floor of the reactor container, and keeps going for a while till enough other material, particularly neutron-absorbing material (graphite, bismuth) (which in the worst case for old, poorly designed reactors may be ample portions of bedrock underneath the reactor) has mixed in to bring the fuel density below criticality. There may be additional chemical energy sources (like molten graphite and Earth's atmosphere) to keep the fuel molten. Chernobyl is probably fairly close to the worst case scenario in a situation where a well-organized response to the meltdown occurs. Worst case would probably be a meltdown as part of a larger event that kills off the local authority (eg, large asteroid impact, large suprise nuclear strike) In that case, there are bigger problems, but the meltdown isn't going to help.
Naturally you don't want a meltdown, but if anyone advertises a meltdown-free nuclear power plant, run screaming in the other direction. The alternative is far worse.
There are modern nuclear reactor designs where meltdowns are impossible. For example, pebble bed reactors. The fuel never reaches the density that would generate enough fissions and heat to melt the pebbles. And even if all reactor cooling fails, the pile can be air-cooled.
While your statement about civilization being a step backwards may actually turn out to be true, the assertion that "humans have to work much harder to get sufficient food" is hard for me to agree with. In the US, we now spend a smaller percentage of our incomes on food than at any point in history. 2006 figures show that percentage to be 9.5%.
If we were still living in a cave, we would definitely be spending more than 9.5% of our waking hours in the pursuit of our meals. I produce quite a bit of what our family eats as a part-time organic farmer, but I can attest that it is impossible for me to compete on a cost basis with agribusiness.
Now whether the food these megafarms produce is as high quality or is as safe to produce, I have my doubts.
from your sig: 01110101 00100000 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011 well, apparently I am.
sig sig sig siggy sig
I think it's your kind of arrogance that is more dangerous. Your comment suggests that government can do no wrong. Yes, there are smart and honest people in government, but it's not those people that necesssarily have the power, it's the corrupt ones. If you think judges are impartial, I think that's quite naive.
Democratically elected governments do not remain so for very long if they are allowed to muzzle citizens and the media.
It does have a habit of reacting explosively with water and can burn in air, but it isn't all bad for a nuclear coolant.
One benefit is that in a pool style reactor molten sodium can have enough surface area to radiate the excess heat away so that the fuel doesn't melt should the reactor get out of control (including a total failure of the primary and secondary cooling loops). In that scenerio, the sodium will remain liquid and so noit carry radioactive materials out of the containment building.
In a sense, it mandates a strong security measure, maintaining an inert atmosphere in the containment building. Anyone entering will need life support.
For the most part, the additional dangers can be controlled by not building the reactor on a flood plain.
My fellow slashdotters, have we not yet reached the point where any digital photo/video evidence must be called into question?
I think we have, IMHO.
-OJ
sig sig sig siggy sig
Oh if that was the ONLY thing that was wrong with it...
1)The end of the control rods were made of graphite, which accelerated the reaction rather than slowing it when the operators pushed the panic button.
2)The channels that contained the control rods were far too narrow, causing the control rods to get jammed when they deformed due to the intense heat.
3)The reactor did not have a containment building, allowing the radioactive gases to escape into the atmosphere after the accident blew the roof of the reactor itself.
4)The reactor core was unusually large, containing much more nuclear fuel than other reactor designs, thus making the radioactive release worse.
5)The reactor was staffed with uneducated workers that didn't have significant experience with nuclear reactors.
6)The operators were not told about the design problems with the reactors even thou they were well known at the time.
7)The operators ran the reactor outside of safety regulations, withdrawing many more control rods than the reactor was designed to operate with ( that this was even possible is another design flaw ).
The sodium leak, or the knowledge of how bad it was.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
*I use "We" in the most general way possible. "We" can be a small community, a large city, an entire country, or the world.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Technically you're right, there is no "risk" of contamination from coal, it just plain contaminates everyday. There is enough uranium and thorium in most coal that if you could extract it economically would produce more power than the coal itself. Coal is somewhat radioactive, how do you think they do carbon dating?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
Why is this country obsessed with nuclear power?
Recent studies have indicated geothermal power could cheaply provide energy for the entire world. With almost no ecological impact.
The earth is bursting with more energy than the human race could hope to exhaust. And it is already being harvested for electricity today. Yet almost no money is spent on geothermal research. And all the presidential candidates talk about is biofuels, hydrogen, solar, wind, and nuclear. Why isn't geothermal on the list if it is both practical and promising?
That was the sound of sarcasm zipping completely over your head.
There's a lot of fluff in reply to this comment, but basically everybody knows that nuclear power is very clean and nice, unless a big disaster happens, whereupon it becomes extremely unpleasant. Coal on the other hand is slightly unpleasant all of the time. Which you think is best largely depends on how much you trust the people running them to avoid the big disaster.
I was trying to visualize how big a spill this was, but I didn't find 700kg easy to visualize.
700kg of sodium, which has a density a little less than water (0.968g/cm^3), would be less than a cubic metre by volume (0.723m^3 or so, or about 723 Litres), and would fit into three bathtubs (filled to the edge, they're apparently about 300 Litres or so).
Conversion to Imperial or kegs of beer equivalents is left as an exercise for the reader.
There are other coolants you can use for breeder reactors. My personal favorite is the lead cooled system. It can safely shut itself down even without any computer or operator intervention (thanks to thermal expansion of the core ), there is no pressure in the reactor, so it can't explode, lead doesn't boil at the temperatures involved, so a loss of coolant accident as happened at TMI is unlikely, and it can reach temperatures high enough to allow high-efficiency thermochemical production of hydrogen from seawater. The latter will be important as natural gas gets more expensive ( virtually all fertilizer used in agriculture is made using hydrogen from natural gas ). Main issue is corrosion in molten lead, but already proven materials can handle it for electricity generation. The more advanced high-temperature system that produces hydrogen thermochemically at 850 C will require more advanced materials to be developed however.
Anthracite coal is pretty different than more typical bituminous coal.
It is almost pure carbon with trapped natural gas. And while it's very hard to ignite, when it burns, it burns with a blue flame and produces almost no particulates. The ash is chemically inert and not dangerous to the environment.
The *main* reason we couldn't use too much anthracite is there simply isn't that much of it. What is available is not amenable to anything but wide, but narrow open pit strips which tend to rip up the landscape over many square miles.
The reason you're seeing a boom in the use of anthracite is back in the "old days", most uses (heating, trains, etc) required large sizes (referred to as egg, chestnut, pea, rice, barley) and the fine anthracite powder was cast on piles that reached 1000-2000 feet in height.
Back in the late 80's, due to some changes in regulation and technology, so called "co-generation" electric plants because feasible because they required the fine antrhacite coal and so did not require anything more than a lot of dump trucks and front end loaders.
For a guy who is a coal-cracker, you are not very knowledgeable about this fascinating form of coal. I left the coal regions 25 years ago, and the area is beautiful where it wasn't torn up by "strip" mines. A lot of that was due to ineffective regulations on the strip mines. But the environment has recovered pretty quickly now that it was filled in. in another 50 years, you won't be able to tell there were strip mines.
I believe he was being sarcastic.
Looked it up again: http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=Oklahoma+Mercury+Fish+Warning&btnG=Search
I was wrong, It is not more than one serving per week... (but that was 1995)... http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/advisories/news/newsmar05.htm
"The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) plans to lower the acceptable level of mercury in fish from one part per million (ppm) to 0.3 ppm so that the state's standard matches federal guidelines. In advance of the change, the department issued an advisory that women who are pregnant and young children should not eat more than one serving of predatory fish per week (including bass, flathead catfish, walleye, gar and crappie) from Oklahoma waterways.
Source: Oklahoma DEQ issues statewide advisory for mercury levels in fish, Associated Press, Feb 16, 2005."
As 'large' as some of my fishing friends and neighbors are, I feel confident in saying that they often surpass the vague "one serving" quantity in a single dining session. There are very few 'Natural Sources' of Mercury in Oklahoma. NOTE: Oklahoma only has one or two 'natural' lakes/reservoirs out of the 3 dozen or so lakes/reservoirs in the state. I'd expect similar results in adjoining states.
"Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning"
http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm
please read and take note, nuclear power is MUCH safer and just as useful as any form of power generation we have.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Correction... Study quoted was in 2005 (not 1995). Dough!
Erm... it was safe. The reactor suffered a significant failure of its cooling system without escalating beyond that. No design that relies on zero accidents is safe, that requires a design where even accidents aren't catastrophic.
If the sodium leak had involved sodium exposed directly to the reactor (it didn't), environmental contamination would primarily be from Sodium-24, which has a half-life of 15 hours. That's not irreversible contamination, at worst that's a temporary evacuation order. It's not like non-nuclear industrial accidents can't get that bad (eg, the Bhopal disaster). This is something we already have to live with as an industrialized civilization, nuclear power simply has the virtue of releasing far less CO2.
The only part of this that causes me concern is the cover up.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
There is another factor to consider in this. Chernobyl used a design whereby a lack of water caused a positive feedback loop in the reactor to cause it to get even hotter. U.S. and most other designs use a negative feedback loop
Much worse than that (which comes from a very US-centric view of nuclear reactor design) is that the control rods had neutron reflectors on both ends (i.e. graphite moderator which provides more thermal neutrons for the chain reaction) and that they had to be "driven" mechanically (against water/steam pressure) into the reactor to subdue the reaction vs. sane designs where gravity would have done the job.
Water schmater. Gas-cooled reactors can be very safe. Chernobyl was an horrendous design combining the worst of both worlds (light water coolant and a graphite moderator!!!?!). Incompetent, uneducated operators, an arrogant, superstitious manager, safety systems that could be (and were) vetoed, basically a criminally bad design being operated by nicompoops.
Stick Men
is there as much a tendency to cover up accidents on those? are the cover ups bad enough for the staff to commit suicide in shame after the event? Dress it up all you like, this is disastrous PR for the nuclear industry. People aren't sure about its safety as it is, deliberate cover ups are just totally insane.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Bzzt. That statement makes no sense. Go read up on kWh vs kW and try again.
Dangerous or not, how is this any worse than coal mining, products unearthed by miners who risk their lives for the sake of simply having work? I understand uranium must be mined, as well, but at the same time, the quantity mined is no where near that of coal, simply because you need less uranium to produce the same amount of energy as burning coal.
Also, let's talk about the environmental effects. My family actually has a history with this, living in West Virginia and finding work in the mines. Ever heard of a process called "strip mining"? Tearing the tops off of mountains and letting mining sediment flow into valleys and adjacent creeks? Nuclear waste is more dangerous pound per pound, but it also can be contained, stored, and most importantly, reprocessed into other nuclear fuels. Coal burns and releases carbon.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm willing to risk the occasional "breeder screwup" every couple of decades for cheaper, more environmentally-friendly fuel that doesn't involve razing land en masse and sending people into under-inspected mines because the product itself is simply so worthless unless produced in bulk.
Uranium isn't a solution to any major environmental problem, considering that such a novel idea simply doesn't exist right now. But it's still more than coal. It's something I'd be willing to put myself behind if a nuclear plant were proposed near my home.
It's more of the poor risk analysis.
Damn, we're not Vulcan enough yet.
Mercury Poisoning is a little vague, as is Illinois Fish and Your Health, but that is understandable because fishing and hunting is a significant source of income, I know in Michigan, during the late seventies early eighties, Mother's milk was generally unfit for human consumption!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Err, I was being sarcastic, I took exception to the term stupid.... the idea was to point out that it is important to listen to all sides of a debate without belittling and effectively dismissing peoples concerns by comments like stupid.
BM3
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"Statements like "this windmill can power thousands of homes" are meaningless, when a single steel foundry consumes that much in a half hour."
Yup. the plant I work at pulls 50 MW, 24/7.
Ironically, we make silicon for PV applications.
With pebble bed reactors (and other newer designs), they are "passively safe". This basically means that when the thermal energy in the core gets high enough, it is no longer a neutron-friendly environment and fission can't be sustained. The reactor is designed such that heat is naturally lost to the environment fast enough to keep the equilibrium temperature below that which would melt anything in the core. A meltdown in that case would be impossible, because heat by itself acts like emergency control rods, no operators or computers have to get anything right to halt the reaction.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
You realize that you are ignorant on the subject of breeder reactors?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
A negative coefficient is usually the best way to go (vs. a positive coefficient design Chernobyl employed). Runaway nuclear chain reaction = bad day.
zing!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
This is so true! I am in japan now and they go bananas every time I want to put soy sauce on my rice. In Sweden, and other parts of europe I guess, we can put soy sauce on the rice. But here in Japan it is not acceptible - sauce on rice is "dog food", very strange.. :) The most funny thing is that when I try to tell them "I like it better this way", they truly do not understand what I mean. It seems food here is not about eating in a way you like but rather eating in a way that the ancients developed thousands of years ago. Weird people.
:)
So mod parent funny or informative!
Here is what they call the "mountain of sodium". This is a frame of the video, 6 min 12 sec in: http://download.yousendit.com/5B82D57A7547637B
I think it's your kind of arrogance that is more dangerous.
That's called "irony", son. It's one o' them literary tricks, like metaphor, where the writer doesn't actually mean what it seems like they're saying. I know, it's just plain wrong, but you know them liberal arts types. Think of it as the literary equivalent of that "there are 10 kinds of people" joke.
(using FireFox 2.0.0.10 on Linux)
What does "contains radiation" mean? If something is radioactive, it doesn't contain the radiation, by definition. It releases it.
Besides, the article really only suggests that the areas surrounding coal plants receive more radioactivity than the areas surrounding nuclear plants, which is not surprising since nuclear plants contain their waste instead of spewing it into the environment. I think nuclear power needs a lot more investment and is superior to coal burning but let's not be sensationalistic.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I think you mean "... uneducated workers who didn't have significant experience..."
... and then they built the supercollider.
Slusho!
No one can drink just six!
They're only as safe as they're built. There's nothing 'intrinsically safe' about breeder reactors.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Was in really a suicide?
I lived once for three month near a thermo- power plant ... the firemen had every few days (like two or three times a week) dill sessions ... I can tell you, the sirens were more than slightly unpleasant. Also, having the fear of them boilers blowing up drilled into my bones regularly did not help much with my enthusiasm for the place.
I take this video with a grain of salt.
Tolerance does not tolerate intolerance, or hypocrisy.
The video is encoded with some wierd codec (WMV-9?) that tried to install itself but the firewall wouldn't let it. Bleah.
So a guy uses most of his available spare time to produce some of the best translations available for you, for free, and all you do is insult him? Die in a fire, you worthless piece of shit.
Coal has enough problems without making stupid stuff up.
Are they actually walking through sodium oxide snow? It looks like the sodium leaked, reacted with the air to produce sodium oxide, which is rather violently corrosive to things like humans, even if they are in a fire suit. I personally stay away from any chemical that is so unstable that it wants to be sodium hydroxide.
Unfortunately, even though it would probably be a boon to my home town, I can't agree with bringing back coal. All of the evidence just seems to point to critical public safety issues due to the inevitable pollution. I'm a believer that, when the world changes, you change with it
This is a pretty simplistic answer to change, unfortunately, and it fails to speak to how terrorism can spread like wildfire. Sure, you can say that we should all switch to some other way of life because we are screwing the planet, but, at the end of the day, you are but a man with a can of tuna saying that the dozen people in the lifeboat have to share. No, they do not. they could throw you overboard and take your tuna. Or, they could just eat you.
Coal mining isn't inherently bad. No resource extraction really is. It's just that 6 billion people can't live the way a billion people used to, and that ultimately begs the question, what if the world only had a population of 400 million Americans, and there was nobody else?
I guarantee you that your coal miner would be tempted to nuke the rest of the planet and keep his job, rather than uproot his entire family because some other uppity pricks from DC want him to "change."
This is my sig.
You have demonstrated a lack of understanding of the concept of "energy". You have failed the entrance criteria for participation in an educated discussion of the concepts involved in this thread. It would be pointless at this juncture to bother rebutting the rest of the assertions in your post. Please turn in your login and password on the way out.
Thanks. Bye!
This video is a joke & indeed there was no need to release the video. The white stuff is simply a chemical fire retardant. It was released at the fist indication of a leak in order to avoid a larger disaster, ergo., a massive fire. If you don't belive me that the white stuff isn't sodium, consider this. Look at the suits these guys are wearing - notice they have a bottle of air on their backs? That's a one way system. The air supplies them with the good stuff they need to stay alive in a hostile environment which in this case is a room full of chemical fire retardant. When they breath out, they exhale into the environment. If that white stuff coating everything and making the room foggy was sodium the whole place would go up in one big fire ball as humans tend to breath out a bit of good old H2O which of course would react very violently with the airborne sodium. If the white stuff was sodium, they'd be wearing rebreathers and they clearly are not! Rebreathers are large backpack units.
It's video interpretations like this that destroy the credibility of the anti-nuke crowd. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. The anti-nuke folks are primairly responsible for global warming because of their irrational fear of one of the safest forms of energy production. Breeder reactors for all!
Ever heard of sarcasm, buddy? (I am not the GP, but I'm pretty sure the GP was being facetious).
The problem is the increase of nuclear waste material if a resurgence if nuclear power should occur. U-238 has a half life of 4.46 billion years, while the fissile U-235 still has a half life of more than 700 million years.
Have a look at the "Nuclear fuel cycle" and you'll see that it is in effect not a cycle at all, but a process in which at the end we have to dig up more and more holes to put the waste material into and hope it stays there to the end of time. So we got highly concentrated radioactive material dug into the earth. Who is to guarantee that coming generations maybe in 100, maybe in 10000 years will not accidentally be exposed to it and suffer from it?
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Ever been to Centralia?
There's an excellent analysis on wikipedia, including a pretty good breakdown of the chronology leading up to and after the meltdown.
There's nothing intrinsically safe about anything with a power output in the 1GWe range :)
.0000000000000001% scenario before the double-digit scenario.
Then again crossing the street isn't particularly safe. It's funny. People look to mitigate risk from the
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
...ass. From energysolutionscenter.org, cold-reduction mills use 126.5-148.5kWh per metric ton (1000kg) of product, just as an example. Wind turbines generate about 20kW at a constant 15mph wind. When most steel mills produce thousands and thousands of metric tons of product, wind power just doesn't cut it. Most plants are hooked directly up to a coal plant or nuclear for this reason.
Next time just look it up yourself and don't be a dick.
In Soviet Russia reactors meltdown you!
My SIG is a P226
That news story is obviously a fabrication.
The last time I visited Chernobyl, it was a radioactive wasteland full of mutant dogs, crazed boars, and weird headless things running amok. What a nightmare.
Thank god I had my AK47, a case worth of Vodka, and an endless supply of metal bolts.
Reactors don't use carbon as a mediator. They use carbon (graphite) for the control rods that control the output of the reactor. The mediator that carries away the heat is usually water or some kind of liquid metal, like sodium.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Don't lots of older reactors use graphite control rods? I know that Chernobyl did, since those very rods caught fire from the heat of the runaway reaction.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
I do, now.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Forget car accidents. More people have died yearly from lightning than from shark attacks.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Well, there's always cannibalism...
In the US, we now spend a smaller percentage of our incomes on food than at any point in history. 2006 figures show that percentage to be 9.5%. The problem, of course, is that people outside of the US are involved in the production of that food as well. Just because Americans work less to eat, doesn't mean that's true of everybody across the globe. Somebody always ends up feeling the pinch.
I don't get these "suicide to save face" issues.
I like Benders approach better.
Bender: I am so embarrassed.. I wish everyone else was dead!
Bot Assisted Blogging
I apologize, I shouldn't have confused kW with kWh. As a psych major, physics and especially electricity was never my forte. I will correct my original post to "Statements like "this windmill can power thousands of homes" are meaningless, when a single steel foundry consumes an order of magnitude more energy during the same unit of time."
Now please read up on Cherry picking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking
Let's see what we got here:
- Men in cool silver-space suits...check
- Grainy film footage...check
- Foreboding industrial design...check
- Ominous silence...check
Where the hell was the part where the mutant zombie comes out of nowhere to attack the lead guy, and camera falls to the ground, and we proceed to see massive carnage ensue? And then "6 months later" in subtitles...roll credits.
Seriously dissapointing...
Although this is line of argument does not address another fact: Yes, coal causes more deaths (or, if you'd like we can just say "damage"), but the damage is spread out over the entire population, roughly evenly. However, a nuclear power plant meltdown causes damage in a very specific location. So, even if the amount of damage caused by coal plants is greater, the higher concentration of possible nuclear-related damage keeps people more cautious, especially when the plant is IYBY.
Say the damage to NYC from coal is worth $X per year on average with a standard deviation of 0. Now, put several nuke plants beside NYC that have an annual expected damage cost of $Y where Y is much less than X, but the standard deviation is much higher. One of them blows and you just wasted the whole city. It's not very likely, yes, but a real bummer if it happens.
So if you're going to compare the average cost, please also compare the risk to that estimate.
If someone came up to me with those silver suits and asked me to go inside a radioactive nuclear reactor I'm pretty sure I'd be laughing hysterically. They seriously don't give them silver space suits and tell them it will protect them from radiation do they? I thought that was just in the movies. I wonder how many of those guys plan to have children...
Because the people left. And people, it would seem, have a bigger negative impact on wildlife than the radioactivity from the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history...
yes, this was so insignificant that a man killed himself over it. hell, i don't think he did kill himself. either it was a life-threating fuck-up that drove this man to kill himself, or it was someone afraid of getting caught lying, losing big dollars on energy profits, killing a man, and then making him the scapegoat to save face with the public.
yes i hear you yelling 3 mile island, but keep in mind NO ONE was injured at 3 mile and wildlife still lives in the swamp around the plant.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Put a raw egg in it and you're fine. I know many a Japanese person who eat a bowl of rice, soy sauce and raw egg for breakfast. I asked why without the raw egg it's not cool and the response was "because it just is". Personally, I have to agree with them and think that you're weird. Japanese rice is miles better than the crap grains used in the western world. There's no need to dirty something that's already perfect (which is the reason I was told as to why soy sauce on rice is a no-no).
>It seems food here is not about eating in a way you like but rather eating in a way that the ancients developed thousands of years ago.
You must be new here (to Japan that is). Have you not seen a pizza menu? Did you just read my post about the raw egg?
You underestimate the amount of people who will buy Detroit/UAW(and not at exhorbitant prices) despite the push to kill it. They are not of the type that will just settle for an import just because some non-voting person wants us to go in a direction contrary to the citizens' wishes. I was just in my home state of Pennsylvania yesterday and saw a bumper sticker asking "Why not coal?" (Coal Miner's Union) The major industry around my area used to be anthracite mining, and when that collapsed, the town kinda went to shit, although it's coming back slowly. Maybe there are some that are just turned off by environmentalists, completely. Re-educate, find something else to do, and go do it. Fine, then get rid of all of the "Right to Work" related laws, and then encourage the extraction of Oil Shale out of the West. This resistance to change is what keeps communities poor in the global economy, and creates lobbies to bring back technologies and industries that are probably better off dead or significantly re-structured. No, that's what unionbusting has done.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Anyway, let me know what your calculation reveals. I'll give you a hint though, at least from an energy efficiency point of view: Gasoline consumption in New York is at the rate the national average was in the 1920s
PONIES!
RMBK reactors (Like Chernobyl) tended to use graphite tipped control rods, but this has since been altered in light of the fact that they do catch fire. The other carbon-based moderator tends to be boron carbide, which is a ceramic with boron as the primary moderator.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Look at the political consequences of breeders
They move to the suburbs and start voting republican?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
A single carriage return is not a new paragraph.
You can get food your way in Japan. Really, really easily -- one way is to go into any fast food restaraunt. Hold the pickles, add more lettuce, special orders don't upset us because they're in the freaking manual. Seriously, though, there is a wide spectrum of culinary traditions in this country, from "The chef is the master, you are the student, you should be glad you were even allowed to choose to eat dinner at this restaraunt" to "Hum a few bars and I'll get you something in that general direction" to "Did you know there are 745,000 combinations of ingridients possible with this dish? We have 10 named varieties which are our most popular, or you can just pick one of the other 744,990."
There is also a wide spectrum of cooks having egos. (There is a bad habit among a certain type of Westerner to assume that any odd action taken by a Japanese person is because they are Japanese. That is one theory -- another is that the cook just can't be bothered to help you, or is excessively proud, or is just a disagreeable person. All of thsee will be right at least part of the time.) I assure you, if you visit enough hoity-toity restaraunts in NYC, you will fairly quickly find someone who would not be willing to accomodate a simple request that wasn't in their "vision" for the food. ("Where is the ketchup?" "THIS IS A FOI GRAS AND CAVIAR PATTE SERVED IN A LIGHT BALSAMIC VINAGRETTE."* "I like my foi gras with ketchup!"
(Sidenote: I do E->J and J->E translation in Japan as one of my work duties. I am not, however, a professional translator. The difference is that the folks who pay my salary pay me to *resolve* issues like "I just don't want squid" rather than just passively relaying the "Oh, we can't do that" response. I understand that the standard practice among professional translators is that you are supposed to not get in the way of the speaking parties at all -- this is why I am not a professional translator, I just translate for money.
P.S. For those of you considering a job in this general line of work, the pay is a heck of a lot better if you pitch yourself my way. Most clients do not appreciate the value of a beautifully articulated "The waitress says no" nearly as much as they do "OK, so here's what is going on here, and here is what I did to get you your squidless pizza. Aren't you glad you hired me." The same fundamental issue scales straight from "I can't give you pizza w/o squid" to "I can't approve that $1 million deal you are suggesting".)
* Sorry, I only eat at restaraunts that cost more than $15 when the client is paying, and then I'm having what he is having, so I have absolutely no clue whether this is actually a plausible French food combo or not. Bonus points: consultants get to eat at dinner, translators don't.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Sigh... Kids today don't know SQUAT about sodium.
Oh, and you are a pompous creep. But I guess you already knew that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I bet any modern desktop is able to fill a several Mbps link this way.
Rethinking email
Oh... wow.
Looking at that video, that leak was a LOT bigger than I thought it was back in 95.
I mean, I was thinking like, a small spurt of gas then nothing, then everyone evacs, but no -- That video's like "Holy shit, there's a big glowing green cloud coming up from the basement, get the fuck OUT" level of leakage.
No wonder they tried to cover that up.
Radioactive isotopes should collected and stored no matter what industry they come from.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Even before that, safe for which humans? Plenty of us wouldn't care about something that only kills people on the coasts, if we live inland, but those people on the coasts get to vote too, most places. If wave rockers on the Texas coast affect erosion of the few remaining sandbars protecting New Orleans, Texas may think they're great, but Louisiana won't.
Obviously safe for my/our group of humans. You are thinking regionally at the state level where some states can fight against each other. But what's really going to be it is when the US as a whole finds a magic energy source that just means messing up one spot on the globe that we never see. Damn, sounds like I've almost described oil, but oil only messes up far more than the domestic politics of the oil producing nations.
If we had some solar farm over Nevada, or tidal energy generating sources along most of our entire sea coast, if a foreign ship dared beach itself on them, they'll be paying out for the down time and the replacement costs and the clean up costs. You don't think that we'd really let some foreign interests trump domestic concerns do you? The whole mess with oil can be summed up by saying it gives some domestic folk interests in foreign resources and such. Heck, we care about the price per a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil.
What if almost the entire US didn't care about the price of gas or barrels of oil from foreign markets because we were using sustainable domestic energy sources? From a military point of view, we'd be much better off. If that time ever came, the US would never take part in any more middle east peace talks and would really start not caring about the entire region. Part of their problem with us is that our government has to take an interest in those countries for our oil resources. If we didn't need oil resources, we'd let them rot.
And Layman Grandparent, educate thyself.
As someone who lived in a small town which had 300,000 tons of fly ash dumped on it per year (for a while), I am pretty horrified by what fly ash is. I am especially horrified that the same person who engineered this fly ash dumping is having a MALL BUILT ON THE 5-YEAR-OLD FLY ASH DUMP.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
I liked Cloverfield better, but at least the cinematography was on par.
The danger inherent in the focal point of a Parabolic Solar Sterling generator is NOTHING compared to the dangers in Nuclear, Coal, Hydropower, or even Wind and Geothermal. Yes, it's really freaking hot in there. It's also really freaking hot in a fire. But there's one key difference. The focal point won't spread. It doesn't need to be extinguished. You can eliminate the heat by simply pointing the dish away from the sun. If you don't have the dish oriented so that the focal point falls on the ground, there is no danger of catching anything significant on fire.
Compared to just about anything else, there is very very little danger. What danger there is would arise from the systems for storing solar power for off-peak use. But even these are nothing compared to the potential long term impacts of Nuclear, Coal, and even Hydropower. (I lean towards mass produced flywheels.)
Chernobyl was pretty obviously designed primarily to produce plutonium, electrical power production was a secondary benefit. Hence #4, and the graphite moderator.
Oh well, sorry for that.
I was basing that information on what I was taught in science class back in high school. I suppose it's very likely out of date.
Of course I was rather suspicious at the time of why they were teaching us about how a nuclear power plant worked...
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
However, even if a third of the individual animals are killed by the radioactivity, the species would be able to thrive in the shadow of the reactor. This is true for the human animal as well, though human society would almost certainly find that level unacceptable. Obviously, I pulled the 1/3 out of my ass, maybe it's 1/5000 or maybe it's 0 - but until someone does a study, it's worth remembering.
The claims made in the video are dubious at best. The video itself does not show much of significance. It is blurry and the area is covered in a white 'mist'. Most of it takes place in only a few rooms. This could be done in a college steam room even. I cannot see what this video could possibly prove no matter what. A coolant leak is bad. A fixed coolant leak is good. A sodium explosion is bad. Did that happen? If the video showed mishandling, fires and nasty things like that, this would be interesting. I truly wish this never appeared on Slashdot.
Hyperbole aside, many of the "worst accidents" at nuclear plants are in fact merely instances of property damage with no injuries or fatalities. Wariness of nuclear reactors is smart, but so is wariness of speeding through thin air at high altitudes in a tube of metal, using a combination of basically flat, slightly curved protuberances and extreme velocity to keep hundreds of passengers aloft. Statistically, both are safer than the alternative means of achieving the same goals.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Lastly, there's a certain type of poster on Slashdot who always assumes the worst of others... don't be one. I obviously recognize that Japan is a nation of individuals, (and that, for instance, the fact that a taxi driver in Osaka was rude to me doesn't mean "everyone in Japan is rude," or even "those Oskans are rude,") but there are also clear differences in culture and mores between Japan and America, and while there are obviously great people and bad people in both places, I think you will find more willingness and familiarity with order substitutions -- on the part of customers and staff -- in Amercia.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I don't have a prejudice against translators -- I'm professionally trained as one. This included courses in professional ethics, in which I was taught such hypotheticals as "Opposite party says something outrageously offensive in front of client. What do you do?" The "correct" answer is to translate it, without passing judgement, missing not a single nuance. Lawyers are professionally required to zealously defend guilty people, translators are professionally obligated to maintain a certain distance from the matter at hand.
I am of the opinion that this is bogus, which is why, again, I don't translate professionally. (I also think that what your translator did was both correct and in the best interests of her client. There are agencies which would have made that the last thing she ever did, in an analagous situation.)
Here's a concrete example: I was once dealing with a female American biggywig (not a VP at Microsoft, but that general level of the stratosphere), a senior Japanese politician (think senator -- again, not actually a senator), and their various staffs. One staff member, on being introduced to the VP, said "Hello, nice to meet you. And my, do you have an amazing rack."
I just completely, bald-faced lied about what he had said. What was I going to do, torpedo the negotiations because the assistant to the deputy aide to the undersecretary of bumble is pathologically incapable of being a member of the human race?
Anyhow, I brought this up the next 3 times I went into professional training/ethics seminars/etc, and the answer was unanimous: bad translator. You should have said, in exactly as many words, "You have a nice rack." I cannot accept that that is the right solution to this issue, though I understand the reasoning behind it (the reasoning is that the translator is supposed to be an interchangeable cog, not a party to the discussion in their own right -- nobody asks the stenographer to excercize discretion, either). That is why I am not a translator.
I also don't have any prejudice against Westerners (last time I checked, I was still lily white), and don't harbor any bad feelings about you. I was criticizing a specific current of thought which, sadly, is not uncommon among Westerners (the reverse isn't uncommon among Japanese people, either).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.