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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."
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.
Uploaded to youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwWQLMmn0tM
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.
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.
(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
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.
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.
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.
They're top-secret nuclear-powered "Gundam" or (Generation Unsubdued Nuclear Drive Assault Module) Mobile Suits!!
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."
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.
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
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
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)
A number of reasons:
a) It is liquid at temperatures suitable for the reactor operation meaning you don't need any pressure in the cooling system. In contrast pressurized water reactors and gas cooled reactors need to keep the entire core under high pressure.
b) Sodium is a metal and hence conducts heat very well, this allows you to build a very compact reactor that is still capable of dissipating its heat after shutdown even if the cooling pumps were to fail.
c) Sodium doesn't absorb neutrons nearly as much as water does, and this allows you to build a reactor which produces more plutonium than it consumes, thus eliminating the need to enrich uranium.
d) Sodium atoms are heavier than hydrogen atoms, so the neutrons will not lose their energy as quickly. As a consequence the neutron spectrum is a lot harder, and capable of destroying much of the long-lived waste. The Waste from a breeder reactor would hit uranium levels of radioactivity in 300 years rather than tens of thousands of years.
e)While sodium is corrosive when mixed with air or water, pure sodium is almost completely non-corrosive to steel. This is in sharp contrast to 300 C pressurized water with boric-acid dissolved in it. A sodium cooled reactor generally experiences virtually no corrosion to the reactor core unless an accident occurs.
Basically, if it wasn't for the fire-hazard sodium would be close to an ideal reactor coolant.
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 ).
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!
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.