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Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak

Posted by kdawson on from the all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace dept.

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."

8 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Youtube link by pirodude · · Score: 5, Informative

    Uploaded to youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwWQLMmn0tM

    1. Re:Youtube link by pirodude · · Score: 5, Informative

      Also, english subtitled video here: http://www.dotsub.com/films/videotape/index.php?autostart=true&language_setting=en_2524

  2. Re:Video down? by hyperherod · · Score: 5, Informative

    An English subtitled version can be found here until that also runs out of bandwidth. Also a link to a version on YouTube but this is with Japanese subtitles only.

  3. Re:radioactive sodium too by Dun+Malg · · Score: 5, Informative

    sodium cooled reactors also have a tendancy to produce radioactive isotopes of sodium like Na22 or Na24 Eh. The chemical dangers are more significant. Na-22 isn't particularly radioactive, and the highly radioactive Na-24 has a half-life of only 15 hours.
    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  4. Re:radioactive sodium too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rice.

    The Japanese won't put soy sauce on rice.

  5. Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming by NevermindPhreak · · Score: 5, Informative

    So interesting, that i took the liberty of finding the source.

    http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

  6. Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming by Shining+Celebi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    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:

    For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.

    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.

  7. Re:radioactive sodium too by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Informative

    The halflife of Sodium-24 is around 15 hours. The primary decay route is beta emission to an excited Magnesium-24 which then emits two gamma rays at 2.75Mev and 1.37Mev. So the snow is probably pretty radioactive too.


    Siiiigh, again.. The leak was in teh SECONDARY LOOP. It wasn't any radioactivity in it. Nada, zero, zip... Yes, it was a bad accident, but the only thing nuclear about it was that it occurred in a nuclear power plant. The same thing would be much less likely to occur in the radioactive primary loop, because that counts as part of the nuclear island and is hence under much stricter safety requirements.