Slashdot Mirror
Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown
Hugh Pickens writes "Japanese nuclear experts are working to contain a partial meltdown at an earthquake-stricken nuclear power plant north of Tokyo, as fears grow that the death toll from Friday's massive quake and tsunami could reach the tens of thousands. A partial meltdown, experts said, would likely mean that some portion of the reactors' uranium fuel rods had cracked or warped from overheating, releasing radioactive particles into the reactors' containment vessels. Some of those particles would have escaped into the air outside when engineers vented steam from the vessels to relieve pressure building up inside. Adding to problems at the site, hydrogen was building up inside the Number Three reactor's outer building, threatening an explosion like the one that blew apart the Number One reactor building's roof and outer walls on Saturday. However, it remains unclear how far radiation has spread from the facility. Some local residents and health workers were diagnosed with radiation poisoning in precautionary tests, but they show no outward symptoms of distress. 'Even if you have a radiation release, although that's not a good thing, it's not automatically a harmful thing. It depends on what the level turns out to be,' says Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months – a significant but not necessarily injurious amount, especially if exposure time was short."
Indeed. I'm this guy, an irrelevant mathematics graduate with postgrad focus on the history of science and mathematics (so I'm not a nuclear power station worker but I'm not completely uneducated in the topic).
I tried to prompt a discussion on the Greenpeace blog about their sensationalist - and, especially yesterday, entirely unsubstantiated - banner.
My contributions were removed.
There is no lack of information in Japan. There has been 6 or 7 press conferences on the topic by the management of the power station today, both before and after every development that happened at the station during the day. All the conferences had a pretty reasonable technical explanation of the steps, and report upon execution. All conferences were broadcast fully on several TV channels.
There are three problems with the coverage. First, western media have been extremely sensationalist in their coverage. Second, journalists, both in Japan and in elsewhere ignore the presentation (e.g. one journalist complained that she doesn't understand the explanations, and that there isn't "enough information" in the same breath on live TV), and press with "hard" questions, which end up to be only one: "When is this shit going to explode?". Three, which is a failure of Tepco, they put forward people who cannot explain shit eloquently. The explanations make sense if one listens patiently and makes sense of a ton of stuttering, stammering, repeating, verbal mistakes. Of course it ain't working when every journalist has to tweet within 25 seconds of the start of the explanation.
Finally, the big problem in Japan now is getting help to the people in the affected areas, not the meltdowns in Fukushima that may, or may not be happening.
But I guess some journalists have to make a living.
It's not getting much press, but the Unit #1 reactor was scheduled to be closed in two weeks. (Those links don't show the exact date, but I think it was March 22.)
It's sort of like the old cliche about a cop getting shot in the month before his retirement.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, has written his take on the events, and why he's not worried about it.
I haven't finished reading this story yet (it's quite a few pages), but it's pretty interesting so far.
-- # man women
In a day to day sense, nuclear power is almost as cheap and FAR cleaner than oil. Have you ever lived near an oil refinery? Much less a well? I used to pass one every week going to and form work. It smelled, and left a smile on your car if you stayed more than a few hours. How safe can THAT be to live near. Here is aquick report. I cant speak the the numbers but it gives you a good idea of the impact.
http://chge.med.harvard.edu/publications/documents/oilreportex.pdf
I worked on a naval nuclear reactor while in the Navy. I was a chemistry and RadCon tech. I understand the science and risks better than you do. Sorry if that sounds eilitist, but its true. Just because radiation is involved does not mean it is evil.
Actually you are wrong on two counts.
Firstly, the fissile and fertile uranium in enhanced burn-up reactors are in much much greater concentration than they are in uranium deposits in the ground, and uranium deposits are pretty diffuse. There's lots of arsenic, mercury and lead in the ground, too. That does not mean that you want to concentrate tonnes of arsenic or mercury and dump it into any old hole in the ground. You almost certainly especially don't want to dump it back into one of the holes you extracted it.
Secondly, by assembling a reactor pile that goes critical (i.e., it maintains a self-sustaining chain reaction), you really are creating radiation that would not occur naturally (except in very very rare and small cases like the Oklo natural reactor). Although you can literally dump a bunch of fissile-uranium-and-carbon in a heap -- a literal pile -- and have it go critical, by careful engineering with one of several possible fast-neutron-to-thermal-neutron moderators, you can produce many more nuclear disintegrations whose daughter products trigger more nuclear disintegrations, in a chain reaction. Carefully surrounding the pile with concentrated isotopes will in turn produce ("breed") fissile material that can be used in building a new pile.
In short, it is moving around the fissile materials (and fertile ones, and unfortunately a whole host of building and other secondary materials which will, under neutron or gamma bombardment, themselves become radioactive) that creates the relevant radiation. It is not a concentration of radiation at all, but rather most of the radiation is a side-effect of concentrating a sufficient amount of suitable material (mostly material that was already slightly radioactive on its own) into a _critical mass_.