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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'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.
9.1 MB video via https, mind you.
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... 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
You are not supposed to actually watch that video. You are supposed to just switch to the OMG WTF NUKULAR BAD groupthink.
Face it, nuclear power is Bad, so the fact that there is a video showing a bunch of kids in hazmat suits re-enacting Blair Witch in their school basement should we all the proof you need. Any grainy image of sewage pipes is a bonus.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
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.
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."
The thing to keep in mind is that sodium is so popular as a reactor coolant precisely because it doesn't form a lot of long lived radioactive isotopes when irradiated in a nuclear reactor.
Siiiigh again... sodium reacts explosively with concrete. The concrete that the entire containment structure was made out of. The concrete that had a layer of steel over it to prevent sodium, in the event of a leak, from reaching the concrete (they thought the sodium couldn't corrode it). The steel that the sodium nearly ate its way through.
What, exactly, do you think the energy of a 2,000 pound bomb going off in the middle of a reactor will do in terms of letting more sodium leak? What do you think letting more sodium leak will do in terms of further explosions? What do you think all of this will do to the primary?
This was a Very Bad Thing (TM), but could have been far worse.
"Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."
zing!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
The big issue here is not that an accident happened -- accidents have a way of doing that from time to time. Things go wrong, the best plans have flaws, people make mistakes. This is true of
The big issue here is that the government lied to its people and the fact that they lied was covered up. We need more stories like this of governments around the world because it might just put a dent in the (very dangerous) "government is your friend" mentality that is especially prevalant in the USA.
Personally I wish the definition of treason were expanded to include "issuing false statements to the people with the intent to deceive when done by any government official" or something to that effect. Meaning, you can make an honest mistake and it's no big deal; deliberately lie to the people and you get removed from office and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Does that sound harsh? Perhaps, but they don't seem to think so when they "make an example" of us, as we have seen with the War on (Some) Drugs and are now seeing with copyright law. Not to mention, almost any concept I have of "harsh" goes out the window when talking of wrongdoing on the part of people who consider themselves our masters.
This isn't Athens where people were chosen for public office by lottery. These are people who seek power and have worked very hard to get it. What's wrong with giving them a reason to be cautions with how they use it?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein