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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?
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here's video of the reactor exploding.
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.
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
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.
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...
The problem is the outdated reactor designs. This is essentially the exact same failure as at Three Mile Island, although the Japanese appear to have omitted the containment dome that made TMI such a tempest in a teacup (almost no radiation actually leaked at TMI, due to the dome, but it looks like the Japanese reactors are already leaking significant amounts of radiation). The TMI accident was 32 years ago. Its design was 10 years old even then.
Ironically, the anti-nuclear proponents are their own worst enemies if they actually want to prevent things like this. The demand for power isn't going away, but installing newer plants, which would be of the modern and inherently safe designs, would allow the old ones to be decommissioned or at least overhauled. Instead, between a near-ban on new construction (in the US at least, I'm not sure about Japan) and an increasing energy demand that is already taxing our current grid at times (again, in the US, especially on the west coast), we simply can't afford to take the older plants offline.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
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.
I posted part of this already, but it's buried near the bottom due to the GP being downrated. Every time there's a nuclear accident, the anti-nuclear people come out in droves yelling about the "dangers" of nuclear power. If you want to talk about perspective, danger, and opportunity costs, here's the low-down:
There have been zero deaths in the U.S. associated with commercial nuclear power generation despite it producing nearly 20% of our electricity. Wind has already killed at least 13 people in the U.S. despite producing less than 1% of our electricity. All of these have been maintenance workers (the only non-maintenance death was a skydiver in Germany who flew into a turbine). So the quip about a wind turbine at sea collapsing is beside the point since that wouldn't have stopped any of these deaths. In fact I suspect it would have caused more deaths since transferring from a boat rocking in ocean swells to a stationary platform isn't exactly the safest thing to do.
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 unit 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.
How about pollution? What most people don't realize about nuclear is that it's an incredibly concentrated power source. How much spent fuel (high-level nuclear waste, like we're trying to bury in Nevada) do you think would be produced to power a typical U.S. home for 30 years? A bit less than 10 kg, about a half liter's worth. To power the same home with solar, you'd need about 30-50 square meters of panels, and the panels have an expected lifespan of about 25-30 years. One small water bottle's worth of waste, vs 30-50 square meters of solar panels. Nuclear in the U.S. generates about 20% of our electricity, and produces ~2000 tons of spent fuel a year. That's about enough to fill one tractor trailer. One tractor trailer-full of high-level waste to provide 1/5th of the entire country's electricity for an entire year. And it's not spewed into the atmosphere like coal, it's not spread all over towns and the countryside like solar or wind. It's neatly contained in concentrated form within the nuclear plant. And all this is not even factoring in the waste reduction that can be achieved with reprocessing.
How about compared to wind? The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant which is the cause of the problem today has an overall generating capacity of 3596 MW. How big a wind farm would you need to replace it? The largest wind farm in the U.S. is Roscoe Wind Farm. 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25%. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average. To replace Fuku