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Nuclear Emergency Declared At 2 Plants In Japan
Hugh Pickens writes "CBC reports that Japan has declared a state of emergency and called for mass evacuations near two nuclear power plants following cooling systems failures that led to radiation escaping from a reactor at one location. The emergency declarations, which include five reactors at the two plants, followed Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the country's northeast coast. In a troubling announcement, Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official Ryohei Shiomi said a monitoring device outside the plant detected radiation that is eight times higher than normal and an evacuation zone has been expanded from three kilometres around the plant to 10 kilometres."
We need to bulldoze the plant before it blows and build a new one!! Is fusion available yet?
See: http://slashdot.org/submission/1496534/JapanCaesium-measured-melt-down-may-have-started
Yes, and if the (unlikely) worst happens and a baboon turns into a massive black hole, the current recession is child's play. What a dumb argument.
Nuclear power plants are safe. Not perfectly safe. Not zero risk. But they kill a hell of a lot fewer people than coal, the usual alternative. The worst-case scenario for this nuclear power plant is bad, but not out of proportion to other problems this exceptionally large earthquake has caused.
Have you seen pictures of Japan? Oil refineries have literally, actually, factually blown up, releasing who-knows-what into the atmosphere and water. People are freaking out because a nuclear power plant has released small amounts of harmful radiation and might release moderate amounts. With plenty of warning.
The story here is not that a power plant was damaged and might release toxic material. It's that everyone is going bugnuts crazy about that when entire towns are inundated and/or on fire.
they'll want you there more than ever, feel free to spend extra
the earthquake wasnt the problem. it was the tsunami. it caused damage which brought the emergency diesel generators offline. these plants at fukushimi were offline for most of 2008 and 2009 for earthquake upgrades and it looks like they worked for the most part. right now any damage is because they had no power and were relying on RCIC and other passive cooling systems, and even now have limited electrical power and probably limited heat sink capability. IAANE
The reactors won't impact the global economy appreciably - it's *highly* unlikely that anything is going to blow up, anyhow. It's sounding like they had a partial scram, with primary coolant system failure afterwards.
Nuclear power *is* safe. You're seeing a disaster the scale of which is nearly unimaginable, and appropriate action is being taken. You don't fix these things overnight.
Learn about Photography Basics.
How many people died from the Japanese nuclear accident? Zero, so far. How many will die? Donno, but probably 0. How many died in America's worst nuclear accident ever (3 mile island)? Zero.
Now let's see... how many anti-nuclear hippies died from doing too much LSD or ketamine or whatever it is they do? Probably thousands. How many people died in coal mine accidents? Beyond count. How many died building hydroelectric dams, which are very "green"? A lot, 112 for just for one dam (Hoover).
Since most foreign media just use NHK news, here is the link to their english website:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html
I am in japan and following this very closely
In a few months, once the influx of foreign rescue workers has abated, you'll see hotel/etc prices plummet. So you should be able to save money. (If that feels machiavellian, remember, you're adding money to a tourist industry that has just been shot in the face. So swing by New Zealand and northern Queensland on your way home.)
((All assuming these nukes don't kablooey.))
(((Headline on local news: "Japan launches monster rescue effort". You know it's bad when even the monsters...)))
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Imagine the savings you would have made after Hiroshima.
There's a lot of misinformation flying around.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12721498 [bbc.co.uk] (watch the movie)
Steam was released on purpose.
Based on just this discrepancy between the BBC and the CBC articles, /. might be a bit careful on it's reporting right now...
Everyone's getting excited over the nuclear plants, and ignoring the thousands that are still are dying due to just water. Why is radiation so much scarier? Water kills faster. /rant.
Although I agree with your general assessment. In regard to dying from doing too much LSD, I think that is a quite low probability given its relatively high LD50 compared to what is usually taken. Information gleaned from an overview of the Wikipedia entry and its sources (along with Erowid) suggest no documented deaths linked to LSD usage alone.
The chances of the reactor blowing up are next to zero. The biggest problem will be either a core breech(aka melting through the core chamber), or a slow uncontrolled cooling of the control rods because of damage by them being too hot. However considering that the CBC article is hours old already, and they've been slow venting, and finally have the ability to turn the pumps back on to get water into the chamber it should be controllable unless something happens again.
Now, let this be a lesson to anti-nuke nuts. Most reactors built within the last decade or two have two redundant systems for moving water. Steam, or mechanical. This series of reactors doesn't. You know why? Because in Japan, anything that could possibly at all, maybe related to nuclear, or radiation makes environmentalists go batshit crazy.
But it doesn't help that the reactors were built to withstand at least a 9.0 and it was hit by a 9.1, and I've heard it may be revised again as high as 9.4.
Om, nomnomnom...
Or who have died from the radiation emitted by coal fired power plants.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Statistically the number of people who die prematurely due to power production using coal is roughly 40,000/year(ok this is an national resources defense council number but the science is good). This includes people dieing in mines due to collapses explosions, people dieing prematurely due to working in a mine their entire life(lung cancer), but most importantly people dieing prematurely due to the increased risk of cancer of living near a coal plant. The number for nuclear is 0. For that matter the total number of premature deaths due to radiation in the population surrounding Chernobyl was roughly 40,000. So as many people in the US are dieing yearly due to coal production as died in total due to the only significant release of radioactivity to the public in the history of civilian nuclear power in 60 years.
The comma was used as a decimal separator in this case. So 377,873/Km^2 is 377.873/Km^2. Problem solved.
People are freaking out because a nuclear power plant has released small amounts of harmful radiation and might release moderate amounts.
No, not people. The news media. Of everything going on in Japan this is what they are focusing on. I'm mildly disgusted at the news coverage all in all. The primary coverage initially was the effect on the stock market, and now it is nothing but these reactors. Far, far more environmental damage is being done by all matter of other noxious things burning and leaking. Oh, and I'm pretty sure people are dead, dying, entrapped, homeless, etc, already. Yet the focus is on what *might* happen with a nuclear reactor, as if the thing is going to go up like a thermonuclear bomb.
Better known as 318230.
No need to resort to ad hominem. Even an objective comparison of safety supports nuclear over green technologies.
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. Solar has a huge problem in that roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. If you're imagining every house in the U.S. with solar panels mounted on the roof, you should expect probably about 100 more roofer deaths per year from installing and maintaining them. In terms of direct deaths (i.e. excluding mining and pollution), hydro actually turns out to be the most dangerous power source worldwide due to deaths from dam failures.
Over it's 50+ year history worldwide, in terms of deaths per amount of energy generated, nuclear power is the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. Yes that includes Chernobyl (a reactor design not used outside of the former USSR). If you accept the high estimate of number of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl, it's about 4x safer than wind (the safest green technology). If you accept the low estimate, it's 125x safer than wind.
LSD is effectively non-toxic in humans. People occasionally do stupid things while on LSD that result in death, but keep in mind that people also do stupid things while excited, agitated, or depressed.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
According to this Japanese article, TEPCO (the power company that runs the reactor) reports that at about 3:30 pm local time (1 hour 40 minutes ago) an explosion was heard and white smoke could be seen coming from the number 1 reactor. A few workers have been reported to be injured. :(
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110312/t10014627881000.html
>>Wonder how many of the usual "Nuclear Energy is cheap, safe, clean and does the dishes AND the laundry" posts we get today.
I'm more concerned with the terrible track record of reportage on the subject. The news is already reporting that there is 1000x times normal radiation in the town. (http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-2011-3) with my friends on Facebook writing posts about Godzilla and whatnot.
It's 1000x normal *inside the containment building*, which is exactly what those things are there for.
I'd much rather have been living next to the nuclear plant than the Chiba oil refinery during the earthquake.
Modern nuclear power is safe, but we didn't put containment domes on modern reactors for nothing.
In retrospect that reactor should have been replaced years ago in a country like Japan.
>>cheap - not really; subsidies are usually needed. but then, subsidies are needed for practically all power generation that isn't coal or gas.
Nuclear has the lowest subsidy rate of any green technology (including 'clean' coal and gas). Normal coal and gas aren't generally subsidized at the power plant level.
I've posted the subsidy rates for various sources of energy on here before. IIRC, it's something like 10-20% for nuclear, vs. 40-50% for other green technologies.
I want a MANLY power plant that can create a 30-100 km dead zone of mutants and a death plume that has a global reach.
OK, but why do you think coal is so manly?
Well, it does, but the scenario is very different.
You know that you have other options than to watch american media news on the Internet, right ? My recommendation is to get your news from two countries with somewhat opposing political agendas ... it's amazing how the same events have completely different interpretation from one side of the border to the other. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
The outer walls of the Reactor 1 building have partially blown off, leaving only what looks like a steel frame. NHK is saying that a sensor within 5km of the plant is detecting radiation levels approaching 1015 microsieverts - that is apparently a year's worth of radiation exposure each hour.
People in the danger zones are being told to cover faces with wet towels, avoid eating vegetables and other fresh foods, and refrain from drinking tap water. Things seem to be happening quickly.
See here the hull exploding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4uogOEUrU#t=43s
1266953+17
Humans are notoriously bad at estimating real risk.
We're afraid of flying in airplanes, while we cheerfully get in our cars for the drive in rush-hour traffic.
Nuclear power has risks, indeed, but aside from pie-in-the-sky fantasies about renewables that simply are either unproven or nowhere near competitive, the fact is that all power-generation systems have dangers.
Humanity needs power, and lots of it.
The successful effort by the left to derail nuclear power through much of the 1980s and 1990s led to the establishment of many more power plants using conventional coal or gas - which have their own pernicious effects. Is an X% increase in cancers over a large area "better" than a Y% risk of nuclear plant catastrophe?
Arguably, Germany has shown the way toward intrinsically-safe nuclear systems with PBRs being a truly fail-safe design as long as there is gravity.
I guess my point is that nothing is "safe"; everything is a tradeoff between economy, risk, and value. The first time some caveman accidentally dropped a haunch of antelope into a fire and realized that it was WAAAAY more tasty than the raw stuff they were all chewing, I'm sure there was some other caveman on the other side of the clearing whinging about the dangers of increased carcinogens and obesity.
Sure, continue to invest and develop renewable technologies. But right now "hoping" for renewables to supply our appetite for power?....one might as well wish for a team of unicorns to do it.
-Styopa
Captain "Piece of jewellery worn on a necklace"?
Moreso, the 60s vintage GE Mark I BWR is the culprit here. It's a design with serious safety shortcomings. IMHO all those reactors should have been decommissioned by now. They are not any sort of an indicator of how safe the up-to-date designs are. They are a similar safety disaster as cars of the same vintage. You wouldn't want to drive a 60s vintage Chevy as your daily commute car. The poor handling on recovery from the ramps is outright scary. Never mind what happens in a wreck. That's a solid car analogy right there ;)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Do you drive cars designed in the 60s in Germany? Would you drive them if the engines were merely upgraded to modern, less-polluting versions? No? Why? Because those things were mostly unsafe deathtraps, with piss-poor handling. The reactor in question is at beast an early 60s vintage design that came online in 1971. It's a textbook safety engineering fuckup. Why do you mix politics into this discussion? You have an old, fucked-up design that should have been offline by now. End of story. Do you judge the safety of cars in general by what came off the end of Chevrolet production line circa 1965, too?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
If it takes one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded to knock a nuclear plant over, I think we're still relatively in the clear. Oil refineries seem to go pop the moment someone sets a firework off too close to one (and that smoke isn't exactly clean you know)- and do you want to know what's happened to the Japanese sewage processing system? Coal power plants throw out more carcinogenic toxins in a regular working day than those plants have since this disaster- and that sewage gets routinely dumped in the sea even when the sewers aren't dealing with a 10 meter tsunami.
It will truly suck if those nuclear plants turn into a major disaster- but then you can throw it on the pile of hundreds of other major disasters Japan is currently faced with.
You're close: this was a substandard US reactor design. It doesn't really matter who does the bad job at designing, if the job was done wrong then it's done wrong. Somehow people forget that there must be quite a few of those Mark I BWRs out there still running. They have known flaws. To top it off, the reactor manufacturer (GE) colluded with operators of the Japanese plant in question and have a disturbing track record of lying through their teeth (mirror here).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
When they've burst out with the 88.000 (eighty-eight-thousand) people missing in Japan, which they've supposedly picked up from Kyodo news agency.
Which then got copy/pasted all over the internet by every damn blogger and news agency out there. So now, it gets parroted around like it is a fact.
It turns out... it was a typo. Or a mistranslation. Or a googling error considering that some reports mention it as 110.000 missing.
BREAKING NEWS: Death toll from Japan quake rises to 110, 350 missing: police Note ... 200-300 bodies found in Sendai after quake, 88 others killed ...
See? Right there. "110, 350 missing"!
*headdesk*
And here I thought that one would actually have to know how to read if one wanted to be a BBC journalist.
FFS... 88000 people can't go "missing" in such a short time. It's technically impossible. Why?!
Well, besides the fact that 88000 people take up quite a lot of space and someone would pretty fucking soon notice them and proclaim them dead or found (identified or not) - you can't really know that there are 88000 people missing unless you can actually account for 88000 names. Or at least 88000 bodies.
And it takes a bit longer than 24 hours to compile a list of 88000 actual humans.
Let's say that it takes 5 minutes for a person to fill out a "missing persons" form, and for someone else to input that into a database.
If the reports were coming in non-stop from 100 locations that would make it 4400 minutes just to gather all the reports ( 88000 reports divided by 100 locations times 5 minutes i.e. (88000/100)*5 ).
That comes out to about 3 days of non-stop report gathering alone.
It would actually take about 10 times that, at least.
There simply was not enough time yet to gather that kind of actual data.
And again... If you know of 88000 actual people (Name, date of birth, address etc.) that are missing - just look for a really big pile of people somewhere.
Pretty sure you'll find a lot of them there.
Well... unless there were aliens involved. Then all bets are off.
Except the one with the time it would take to compile a list of 88000 names and addresses.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Here's video of the reactor exploding.
You can't stop the fission reaction immediately. Nuclear power relies on slow neutron production which takes time for it to stop (fast neutron production is what makes bombs go off). After the control rods are reinserted you have to wait for the decay chains to run down and neutron production to stop (or as close to stop as it gets). This is why you can't just shut the reactor down and then pump a lot of coolant through to bring the temperature down. These things take time in BWR.
Just announced on the NHK channel.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Though desirable, Thorium isn't even necessary; most any modern reactor design is passively safe. Read up on the Molten Salt Reactor for one example: the reactors run at atmospheric pressure, with no active cooling necessary. The reaction naturally stops if it gets too hot, and you can literally walk away at any time. As an added benefit, they can consume other reactors waste as fuel, obviating any further mining for the next century, and the waste they produce is much smaller it quantity and far shorter lived.
The anti-nuclear comments on that site are truly depressing, as are the ignorant responses to your own post. Coal has, and continues to kill far more people than Nuclear, both from mining, as well as respiratory diseases and cancer. Coal is not clean by any measure; it has put an immense amount of radioactivity and heavy metals into our environment--far more than nuclear.
I'd estimate the chances of the pressure vessel having blown up slightly higher than 0 at the moment.
Tokyo Electric Power Company is providing regular updates with real information:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html
It appears the news services are reporting from a parallel universe where things are completely different.
If you really want to know, here's the press releases from TEPCO which runs the plants. It's far more informative and far less alarmist than most of the reports going around. Yes, they are evacuating. Yes, there has been some unknown level of radiation leakage, but we don't know how bad it is just yet.
Those who want to review how the safety mechanisms of a BWR work should read this.
It will take the media and Japan a while to circle around to what caused the explosion, so I'll explain it now.
The explosion you see in the videos aligns perfectly with the Fukushima Daiichi No.1 reactor building seen here (forth square building from the left.)
The BBC has provided this incredible before/after photo where you can actually see the reactor building structure with the walls removed by the explosion: the metal framework is still intact.
The exact same thing happened with TMI-2 in 1979. The hydrogen burn occurred inside the containment dome. The Fukushima reactor doesn't have such a dome, so the hydrogen accumulated in the reactor building.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
The story here is not that a power plant was damaged and might release toxic material. It's that everyone is going bugnuts crazy about that when entire towns are inundated and/or on fire.
The story is actually about explosions in one nuclear power plant, residents warned to stay indoors, turn off air conditioners, not to drink the tap water. If they have to go outside, to cover up completely, wear a mask and cover their face with a wet towel. Radiation released per hour is more than the recommended limit for humans per year. Obligatory link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/12/3162450.htm
BM3
That is not correct, RBMK type reactors were built without any containment.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
One thing about wind power. In the event of an earthquake, a terrorist attack, a greedy company cutting corners like BP, incompetence or human error nobody needs to worry about the breeze getting out.
Because it's immaterial. They would need to shut it down perhaps a week before cooling was lost. A BWR that has been shut down will generate enough heat to violently self-destruct for at least a day or two, and enough heat to sustain internal damage perhaps for a week, IIRC.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
If people as disciplined and conscientious as the Japanese can't do nuclear power safely, what chance do we have. Would you want a company like BP running a nuclear power plant or building one?
Hydrogen burn isn't a very energetic event, which is why the Reactor Building framework is still intact. This means the Reactor Vessel is still intact and bolted upright to the floor with the damaged core inside. The RV and the steel containment around it is a very robust container, much stronger than the framework of the building.
All cooling apparatus is gone. If the detonation didn't disable it the fire will. So total core melt is almost certain.
TMI-2 melted 50% of the core which pooled at the bottom of the RV. The RV did not rupture despite the intense heat. It is possible this RV may also not rupture, especially if any cooling can be applied to the outer surface. If so then widespread intense contamination may be avoided.
If the RV does rupture then we'll have molten corium pooling on the concrete floor uncovered before God and everyone. All bets are off at that point.
FYI the reactor is a GE Mark I BWR with steel containment. Details here(PDF). A very old, before-mandatory-concrete-containment-dome system.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I've seen a lot of pro-nuclear advocacy on this site, and I feel that people need to have a perspective on what that choice represents. It's opportunity cost. That's a term for when you give up your chances on one side in the pursuit of another. If your choices are poor your loss includes what you did not pursue when you had the chance.
Right now we have gotten wind down to where it has much to offer and very little drawback. Laddermills can provide power 24-7. Offshore windfarms have been heavily studied and show little impact. A better grid could distribute the uneven power effectively. Ribbon generators and windbelts can, in arrays, compete with solar panels.
Where heat is needed we can concentrate solar thermal energy, whether through passive solar buildings, solar towers and troughs which heat molten salts to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit for storage in insulated tanks to drive turbines 24/7. You can even get hot water from running hoses through a compost pile - several compositions yield a proven 140 degree internal temperature and you're getting fertile soil too.
If you do in fact need electricity, solar panels on a microgrid close to their point of demand circumvent our hugely wasteful grid with its losses due to resistance and the unnecessary surplus generated by redundancy of huge, centralized powerplants.
These are not perfect, but when you consider the subsidies fossil fuels and nuclear plants require, the wars being waged to control their supply, and the costs of pollution whether we're paying them now or ignoring it at the peril of future generations, we are being very foolish to waver in the pursuit of a resilient, safe energy supply.
In the words of Bill Maher on offshore wind turbines: "You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash."
Supporting links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laddermill
http://www.truth-out.org/wind-energy-can-power-much-east-coast-study-says63637
http://inhabitat.com/windbelt-innovative-generator-to-bring-cheap-wind-power-to-third-world/
http://gliving.com/power-tower-wind-turbines-a-brilliant-idea-in-this-issue-of-metropolis-magazine-may-2009/
http://www.solarreserve.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_trough
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-microgrids.html
Him going to Japan and spending money is more likely to help Japan than remarks like yours.
Fact is globally there are thousands of people dying every _hour_. It helps none of them if we cried and mourned all the time.
Us earning and spending money like normal has a higher chance of helping Japan (unless we are working in a dubious/bad industry). And I'm sure they would welcome donations and other direct help (careful of scammers though).
If a nuclear station goes "chernobyl", I'd say don't go. But otherwise, there are plenty of parts of Japan (Kyoto etc) that aren't badly affected by the tsunamis and quakes.
Why does the world still continue to operate (and even build) BWRs? They're a very poor, cheap design. I believe a new one is being built in the USA just now.
There is no secondary cooling circuit, so active steam goes through the turbines. That means that the turbine halls are radioactive to begin with.
The problem we are seeing here is failure of post-trip cooling. This implies a lot of things wrong with the design and possibly maintenance and operation, and I'm sure the full details of what went wrong will be made available to the public after the investigation.
I feel very sorry for the Japanese and everyone else in Japan just now. The best we can hope now is that the lessons learned from this disaster will give the world better and safer nuclear power stations. We need them to survive and prosper as a species.
Stick Men
"Nuclear power plants are safe. Not perfectly safe. Not zero risk."
Then why can't they get any insurance?
Convince the insurance industry so they'll insure the reactors, then I'll gladly concede that point.
If I get reimbursed for my real estate to go live somewhere else I'd be ok with the risk.
As it is now, _I_ have to cover the risk. I'm not amused.
if, after a natural disaster, an energy technology has the possibility of redoubling on that disaster, that technology is NOT safe.
quake devastated japan. but meltdown can make any percentage of it, a desolate wasteland. this may be a high percentage.
Read radical news here
Just saw an official press conference on Japanese TV. The containment vessel is intact. The concrete shell was damaged by a hydrogen explosion. Boric acid is being used as a neutron poison. It's not pretty, but it looks still to be under control.
You have to put this in perspective. We just survived one of the biggest earthquakes ever. Hundreds were killed by horrific tsunamis. tens of thousands are homeless in winter conditions. And yet the hysteria in the western media is over a power plant that is still contained. A bit of perspective please.
Except you're completley missing what caused the damage. The damage you can see in the videos was not caused by the earthquake. It was caused by the reactor losing coolant, running too hot, producing hydrogen gas from the fuel essentially burning, and that gas exploding. As others have pointed out, this is exactly what happened at Three Mile Island, although TMI had an extra containment dome which the Japanese reactors lack, which is resulting in higher radiation leakage than TMI experienced.
Now, consider something lime a molten salt reactor. A modern reactor doesn't care if the coolant/heat exchanger cycle shuts down, as this earthquake appears to have caused. Heating up the coolant naturally slows down the reaction. Additionally, the coolant doesn't boil off, so the fuel is never exposed to oxygen or hydrogen. Combustion is impossible. At the very first step of the problem, the chain of events that leads to a loss of containment is cut. This is a monster of a quake, and yet it would have had no significant effect aside from the reactor safely reducing itself to minimal power (generating heat as quickly as it naturally dissipates) when the heat exchange cycle stopped.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
"NPR's Jon Hamilton tells us was NOT a nuclear explosion." Thanks, moron. Nuclear plant trouble is scary enough without intentionally lying to the public.
Unclench your asshole, you're being ridiculous. Consider the intelligence of the average NPR listener, it might be slightly above baseline, which means they're probably about qualified to find their genitals (hint: your hands stop there) and possibly tie their shoes, but they may still be depending on Velcro(tm). Telling [stupid] people that it's not a nuclear explosion is a good thing to do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They only become so because they are staffed with a lot of people that know how incredibly dangerous they are and work hard to prevent accidents.
It's actually idiots like the above that push the fluffy "safe" "clean" image of nuclear power that are counterproductive and holding the entire civilian nuclear industry back. Heavy industry of all kinds is full of incredibly dangerous shit and none of it becomes any less dangerous by pretending the problem has gone away - in fact the opposite happens and people die. Why do these idiots think nuclear is different and run by magic puppies or something?
All of the current leading edge advances in civilian nuclear power are due to knowing how dangerous everything is and taking big steps to reduce that danger. That's a hell of a lot better than the total idiocy of trying to pretend there never was a problem in the first place.
In this story it's about some incredibly dangerous technology being treated with the respect and preparation it deserves resulting in the successful completion of a disaster plan. If the "nuclear is totally safe" idiocy was applied then there would be no disaster plan and most likely another element to the disaster.
The Moorlocks have to work incredibly fucking hard for the stupid Eloi to keep their stupid mindset of a "safe" world.
Not only downwind from Nanticoke, but include the steel mills in the industrial sector, the ones for many years that belched out noxious, and toxic fumes completely uncontrolled. Add in the few Coking facilities that Stelco operated, as well as the many other things. There are parts of Hamilton harbour that are considered to be more toxic than nuclear waste dumps due to the concentration of coal tar, and industrial sludge that ended up there. When I lived in Hamilton, everything in my apartment was covered with a film of soot from the truck traffic, the smog, and the steel mills, and I lived on the mountain. However, Hamilton barely gets the brunt of the shit they generate though, it all blows across the bay to Burlington, the smog was insane when I lived in Burlington, there were days during the summer when we were told to not go outside at lunch due to the smog levels, there were days were you couldn't see the lake from a block away there was so much smog. I firmly believe that nuclear power is far safer, think about it how often do reactors meltdown, or catch fire? Now compare that to how much shit that a single coal fired power plant, or anything for that matter belches out into the atmosphere in a given day....
It had to be done... It had to be said...
Nuclear on the other hand when something goes wrong thers no putting it off and everyone dies slow painfull deaths and the land is useless for centerys.
Why would that happen? It hasn't happened in Chernobyl, for example. The land is already being used as a wildlife refuge and there weren't many deaths in the first place.
It was verified as a hydrogen explosion, not a reactor overpressure rupture.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yeah, right. Only CO2, H2O, and heat...and SO2. and NOx. and particulate matter. hydrocarbons. Mercury.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
It does generate low level radioactive waste from materials exposed to neutron flux. Byproduct is never going to be hydrogen. Helium 4 and neutrons are a common outcome of fusion reactions that we think are viable.
As you will well know, the trouble with nuclear power plants is that when they fail, they fail spectacularly. Just saying there have been 0 deaths lately is not saying much if you've just narrowly escaped a meltdown. And we know what will happen if even a *partial* meltdown happens: Chernobyl. It's then not just the initial meltdown, it's a large area that is rendered uninhabitable for a very very long time. Imagine one of those clouds going over a multi-million city and you know that the whole death count of the tsunami is just *nothing* compared to the fall out.
That and the nuclear waste, which seems to be an unsolved problem that is just silently ignored, we just store it indefinitely in locations meant for "temporary storage" and presto. Look at the way the Fins (very down to earth people) are trying to do to get rid of it. And that is just for a small part of their own nuclear waste. And Germany, where they stored the trash in a salt mine and now have to dig up the leaking containers. These are the countries that actually have the money to do things like that. I'll not go into the situation in Russia, because that just makes me sick to the stomach.
I'm all for safe nuclear energy. Saying that the current power plants are anything near the safety required is simply nonsense. Neither coal or nuclear energy is currently at a level where it can produce clean, safe energy at this time.
A 40 year old reactor that was poorly maintained/upgraded fails in mag 9.2 earthquake and has probably ended any possibility of new plants being built in the united states for at least 20 years. Not only could this kill or injure a large amount of people but it's a setback for the only realistic option we had to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and global CO2 reduction. Sadly this will be reported as a failure of the technology and not the people that maintain it.
He is not suggesting that there be no nuclear power stations, he is suggesting that it is better to operate plants that have better failure modes than water reactors like the one in this article.
Also, we should stop building coal plants. A little bit dangerous waste that we can see is in fact far better than enormous amounts of invisible waste.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You do know humans have radioactive isotopes in us without nuclear power or coal plants right?
You do know that 1 millionth of a gram of plutonium is a carcinogenic dose in the human body, it analogues iron when presented to a human metabolism, as high energy alpha emitter in the body it is extremely toxic. From World Nuclear Association's website on the Chernobyl disaster ;
5% of a 160 ton Nuclear reactor core that was about to be refueled - let's call it 100 tons, that's 5 tons of radioactive core into the atmosphere. At conservative estimates thats 5000,000,000,000 fatal doses. If we accept that an extremely conservative estimate of 1% of this makes it into the food chain via bio-accumulation and of that a conservative estimate of 1% of people are exposed and a conservative 1% of those exposed actually get some sort of fatal cancer that's 5,000,000 fatalities.
So please don't try to convince me that I can have pu-239 in me without a nuclear plant.
Radioactive decay has been occurring in humans since the first one was born in Africa.
Please don't be ridiculous, you know very well we are talking about radioactive isotope emissions from the nuclear industry. You focus on the reactors only instead of the entire industrial process over which radioactive isotope emission is inevitable. These are the types of radioactive isotopes that eventually end up bio-concentrating;
Mine tailing: radioactive mine tailings from open cut mining where ever it has occurred, radon 220, radium 226, thorium etc. Enrichment: U-238 or DU. Used as weapon projectile, is pyrophoric and burns into a radioactive powder. Groundwater contamination from leaking Hexafluoride tanks Reactor facility: tritium, iodine 131, xenon 141, 143, 144, cerium 141, 143, 144, tritium, tritium and tritium and Noble Gasses which decay Into more dangerous daughter products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium. That's just the authorised effluents not the accidents. Reactor decommissioning: cobalt 60, iron 55, nickel 63. Radioactive Waste: Plutonium, Strontium 90, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and on and onThose radioactive isotope emissions have been going on since the nuclear industry began, so which of them would you prefer to be decaying in your body.
Tens of thousands of humans die a year from natural Radon while deaths from nuclear accidents number in the single digits a year.
At TMI large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind men staggering aroun
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What could have happened that the reactor didn't scram?
No, all reactors properly shutdown with fail safes. The problem is, their reactors require active cooling which is something modern reactor designs specifically avoid for exactly these reasons. The problem is, just because the reactor has shutdown does mean the heat instantly goes away nor does it mean the core immediately stops creating heat. Their reactor designs require electric pumps to circulate coolant. When the reactor went down from the quake, their emergency generators started up. Those ran for about an hour until the tsunami reached the plant. The water, from what I've read, got into the generators and caused all of them to shutdown at the same time. The reactor's fail safes then fell back on a large battery bank. The batteries can't last for too long and from what I understand, power only a small subject of coolant pumps. As a result, the core temperature has continued to rise and a lot of water has evaporated. This is why they are working to get replacement batteries until they can get new generators online.
As a result of the heat, a lot of hydrogen formed and caused a massive explosion at one of the plants. Again, from what I've read, the explosion was external to the core's containment. As such, actual containment has not been lost. In order to address building coolant pressures from the rising temperatures, they've been forced to vent filtered yet radiative coolant.
Last I've heard, one worker has died from the explosion and a second was injured. Likewise, they are preparing to issue iodine to the surround population. Seems some of what has been vented is a radioactive form of iodine. Thusly, when the population ingests a non-radioactive source, its prevents absorption of yet additional iodine, including the radioactive iodine which has been released.
By modern reactor do you mean not currently in service and not scheduled for construction? All of the reactor fleet in service and planned are either BWR or PWR designs and none are passively safe. Virtually all rely on the emergency diesel generators, like those that failed at Fukushima, to supply power for the emergency component cooling systems; I believe Oconee uses a nearby power plant as its emergency power system. I am a cautious proponent of nuclear power and have worked for suppliers to the industry for 25 years and been in about 2/3 of the plants in the US. The reactors approved for construction in the US are safer than the existing ones because they have significantly reduced the number of components (valves, pumps, etc.) that are required to safely shut down the plant, they have more systems that are passive, but they are not passive by any stretch. The molten salt reactor you cite is only viable commercially as a thorium cycle reactor like the ORNL reactor. I believe the pebble bed reactor may have a slight edge on safety to the MSR, but either would potentially be an improvement over our present units.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
If you've got a question, son, just go ahead and ask it. There's no need to be a snarky little jackass.
Now, more folks know a large amount about nuclear power without being a D.O.P.E. (Doctor Of Pile Engineering), but apparently you can't fathom such a thing. I'll try to help you out.
The comment about not being a nuclear physicist relates to not being certain about nuclear power generation in a disorganized pile of uranium in the bottom of a reactor vessel.
What I do know, however, is that for a nuclear chain reaction to occur, you need neutrons splitting off of uranium, and then those neutrons need to cause fission of other uranium atoms.
However, these neutrons from a fission event are traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, and at such speeds, they are unlikely to cause fission of another uranium atom. These neutrons need to be slowed to a 'thermal' state (near the kinetic energy of, say, water in an operating reactor) in order to cause the next fission event.
This is where the water comes in. The neutrons are slowed by the water to a thermal state, and in such a state, they are likely to cause the fission of another uranium atom, creating power and continuing the nuclear chain reaction.
When you've got a mass of molten uranium in the bottom of a pressure vessel, you don't have water in between the uranium atoms, so you can't slow down the neutrons to cause the next chain event.
Now, as to the heat conduction angle, normally the ratio of surface area to mass is high in normal geometry. A fuel pellet is about the size of a pencil eraser, a fuel rod is a stack of these in zircaloy cladding, and a fuel assembly is a cluster of these rods with space in between them (for the water to slow down the neutrons and carry heat away for power production.)
Now if you've got a molten pool of this stuff, the surface area vs the mass ratio is much lower. This means that heat removal (which is done with surface area) is degraded. As a consequence, the fuel heats up incredibly (until the decay heat falls off), but relatively little sensible heat is transferred to the steel reactor vessel- which can conduct heat away from the uranium pool at the bottom rapidly, especially if they flood the primary containment structure.
I have not, however, ran sophisticated computer simulations to these ends, nor am I qualified to perform a back of the envelope calculations to the same effect.
I am, however, intimately familiar with the normal and emergency operating parameters of a certain pressurized water reactor, and many of the physical principles are similar to that of the boiling water reactor in question. As such, I can compare the likely conditions in this reactor with the normal and emergency operating conditions in the reactor that I am familiar with, and make reasonably credible predictions- certainly moreso than you, or 95% of the stuff you've read so far.
But hey, there's no PHD in nuclear physics after my name. How could I possibly know anything relevant?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
This calamity shows Mother Nature can still really kick ass...
And that's why we should cooperate more globally and not worry so much about fighting each other with all the advanced technology we have been creating. While this tragedy is horrible, just horrible, something like an asteroid strike on the Earth, a supervolcano eruption like in Yellostone, or a massive plague could kill billions. So, this should be a warning to our global society that we should cooperate more to prepare together for what Mother Nature can still dish out at random times.
See also:
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
And by me:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
Like with Hurricane Katrina where the USA lost a city, this event will be a test of the Japanese character. The good news is, you can see in Japan aspects of what a healthy society looks like (unlike the USA during Katrina or before). Japan prepared a lot for this (good building codes, to begin with). Their leadership has responded immediately. People are helping each other. News is being posted right away through their advanced social networks. (Many individuals wanted to help with Katrina, and were turned back, and parts of the New Orleans area descended into violence and fear...) You can be sure, as a society, Japan will come through this even stronger and healthier and better prepared for the next event. I wish I could say stuff like that about the USA these days? I don't know, even as I have a lot of faith in US individuals in a crisis. But in the USA, government is painted as the enemy. We don't know what good government would feel like anymore, sadly -- government that is accountable, or plans well, or prioritizes human needs over short-term profits to a few.
With that said, more money put into solar energy research in Japan is probably a good idea... And if you are going to have nuclear power plants, designs like Hyperion power might make more sense (ignoring how you still need reprocessing facilities that might be at earthquake risk). That plant design was 40 years old. This book explains why old nuclear power plant designs are riskier:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter10.html
"The nuclear power plants in service today were conceptually designed and developed during the 1960s. At that time, it was deemed necessary to achieve maximum efficiency and minimum cost in order to compete successfully with coal- or oil-burning plants. The latter were priced at 15% of their present cost and used fuel that was very cheap by current standards. In order to maximize efficiencies in the nuclear plants, temperatures, pressures, and power densities were pushed up to their highest practical limits. Safety features were exemplary for that era, and even for current safety practices in other industries. But they were not up to present-day demands for super-super safety in the nuclear industry.
As the public became more concerned with nuclear safety, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission required that new safety equipment and procedures be added on, in the process discussed in Chapter 9 as "regulatory ratcheting." The amount of labor and materials for these add-ons exceeded that for the plant as originally conceived. With this added complexity, the plants became difficult and expensive to construct, operate, and maintain. Moreover, the level of safety was still limited by the original conceptual design.
By the early 1980s it became apparent that a new conceptual design of nuclear reactors was called for. The cost of electricity from coal- and oil-burning plants had escalated to the point where their competition did not require maximum efficiency from nuclear plants. Furthermore, the added efficiency achieved by pushing temp
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just to put this all into perspective for those claiming doom and gloom regarding nuclear power --
How many oil disasters have there been in the past decade? (Spills, refinery fires, etc.)
How many people died?
How many in Japan due to the quake?
How old were the facilities?
How many coal disasters have there been in the last decade?
How many people died?
How many in coal disasters in Japan due to the quake?
How old were the facilities?
How many nuclear disasters were there? How old were the facilities?
Right... so when we look at nuclear power, it's still the safest. They're built with the most oversight, foresight, and regulation AND it took the largest earthquake in recorded Japanese history to damage the 40 year old reactor-- which still likely won't go into meltdown. And there's been plenty of time to evacuate everyone just in case it does.
Do we get ANY of that luxury with oil or coal?
(Note: I use oil, coal, and nuclear energy in this comparison because they are the energy sources that can be created just about anywhere. Geothermal, wind, water, and solar require very specific placements.)
Nobody's claiming the situation isn't already extremely bad. But a meltdown would still make it so much worse - it is not within the capacity of the world's economy to clean up the fallout of such an event, and Japan sure can't afford to have a large part of its land be useless wasteland.
Yes, people are misusing that event to further their own anti nuclear agenda. Distasteful, definitely, but that doesn't mean that the news' focus on the situation is out of proportion.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
This is a fair point but we didn't know about the health effects at the time. Also a lot of the worst cases were actually at uranium mining facilities specifically for defense purposes. Uranium mining processes have undergone a huge change in the last 50 years because of this. Today uranium mining is in large part in situ leaching which isn't actually mining at all just pumping water into and out of the ground.
Well it has blown up now, and I was just hearing the Japanese prime minister announcing the evacuated zone to 20km.
The reactor vessel hasn't blown up. It's still intact, the containment structure went which is where all the steam was. Time to learn the difference.
This sounds reassuring...
It should be.
A lesson to anti-nuke nuts??? Oh I see! Disagreeing on nuclear policy makes one a flaky nut. How then are we going to produce sound policies, if people like you instantly jump on ad hominem attacks, instead of assessing a real situation for what it is: the Japanese have now to deal with a major nuclear disaster, itself in the middle of a horrible natural disaster, and you go on blaming those who dare to ask questions, and you dare come here on Slashdot telling us that those reactors are subpar, not because of industry practices, but because the industry could not build more of them.
Yes it should be a lesson. You can't stop safety upgrades because you're afraid of something and that's been an on-going case as most japanese reactors for the last 30 years. No ad-homs yet, but that's just fine. Then again, you can go learn japanese and learn exactly why things like this have happened in Japan. Once you do, you'll see it sits at the feet of hyper environmentalists with a anti-nuke agenda delaying everything for the sake of delaying everything.
If you refuse to allow safety upgrades, you have blame.
Om, nomnomnom...
For those who want an article with things like numbers and cutaway diagrams of the reactor, please see this article, from World Nuclear News.
Well, What do you expect when you name nuclear plants with names starting with 'Fuku'
FragHARD or don't frag at all