Slashdot Mirror
US Alarmed Over Japan's Nuclear Crisis
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that the US is urging Americans who live within 50 miles of Japan's earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate as Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that no water remains in a deep pool used to cool spent fuel at the plant and that radiation levels there are thought to be 'extremely high.' Jaczko's testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee suggests that damage to the plant is worse than the Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has acknowledged. On Tuesday, the company said water levels in three of the site's seven fuel pools were dropping, but did not say that the fuel rods themselves had been exposed. Left exposed to the air, the fuel rods will start to decay and release radioactivity into the air and lack of water in at least one spent-fuel pool sparked fears of a worst-case scenario: the fuel could combust. 'If there's no water in there, the spent fuel can start a fire,' says Eric Moore, a consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on nuclear plant design and safety issues. 'Once you have that fire, there's a high risk of radiation getting out, spewed by the fire.' The power company says a reduced crew of 50 to 70 employees — far fewer than the 1,400 or more at the plant during normal operations — had been working in shifts to keep seawater flowing to the three reactors now in trouble. Their withdrawal on Wednesday temporarily left the plant with nobody to continue cooling operations."
Not to take aware from the obvious serious problem of nuclear fallout, but the connection with NTT is out too: http://www.internetpulse.net/
Anyone born before 1945 must find a great amount of irony in the headline.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
I don't know how much if this is true. I assume there is a modicum of truth in all of these reports, but these guys seem to offer a more rational and less sensationalist explanation.
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Trying to drop water from helicopters is not going to work, and apparently fire crews can't get close enough to the reactor with a water cannon. Surely Japan, of all places would have the expertise to rig up some remote-controlled fire trucks?
That's not the case at all. They're fighting like hell to run power to the cooling systems to bring them back online. The brief withdrawal of workers was due to a temporary spike in radiation.
And the US and other nations have sent people there, on site, to report on what is going on. No sats required. Hell, the US Military has helped put out some of the fires, so they are RIGHT THERE.
The Emperor went on TV to ask the world for help and patience while they work on the problem. China has been asked for help in supplying boron to help cool things down.
Go follow the BBC News coverage for some real information on what's going on, they seem to be doing quite well at providing it.
$0.02 (CDN)
People may not be able to live there yes, but Tjernobyl has shown proven the saying "life finds a way" true again. The area around Tjernobyl has become one of the most biologically diverse in the area... probably in large part due to the lack of humans around.
No, no - it's safe as milk.
Clean, safe , cheap power source my ass.
When you are using 50 year old designs, then yes, you're right, it isn't all that safe. Now, if the anti-nuclear energy lobby had actually allowed us to build more, modern reactors over that time period, then we would have plenty of new, modern, safe nuclear reactors. So, the anti-nuclear power people really have to blame themselves as much as anyone else for the current state of nuclear power in the world.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I have always been pretty pro-nuclear power. It doesn't suffer from almost all of the drawbacks that classic power generation suffers from, nor many of the drawbacks of 'green' power generation (works only with wind/sun or you need such a LOT of it to generate anything significant). I've never had anyone be able to present an argument against it that couldn't be picked apart easily - apart from "well, *I* wouldnt want to live next to one". But I must admit I am having to rethink my position. Maybe small, self contained reactors are the answer, but I doubt it.
The Japanese are number 1 when it comes to earthquake proofing. So if they are unable to build plants that can take a big natural disaster (very big sure, but certainly not unheard of) without turning into a catastrophy, I'm really wondering if the idea simply is not inherently flawed. I mean even if it turns out this was caused by sloppy building and bribed inspectors or what have you, even if this was just a small proportion of the nuclear plants in the affected zone - then it still proves that one cannot guarantee there won't be a giant radioactive 'event' in case of a large natural disaster. I really shudder to think what would happen if there was a big earthquake in Russia right now. Or anywhere near the North Korean nuclear facilities. Does anyone believe that they are better prepared for something like that than the Japanese would be?
Yes, because we don't have *any* nuclear power plants in earthquake prone territory in America. We're way smarter than that.
We now have four rectors that needs to be cooled down, built in and kept under close watch for a couple of hundred thousands of years.
Even if those reactors melt down, which they haven't yet, they'll probably stay contained (3m of concrete underneath), and from there it would be about 10 years before access for scraping them would be possible, similar to TMI. The reactors themselves are a problem, but not the BIG problem. The pool with the spent rods is, like the summary says.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This is the least informed comment I have ever read on /.
"We now have four rectors that needs to be cooled down, built in and kept under close watch for a couple of hundred thousands of years"
That doesnt even bear any resemblance to anything that is actually happening or going to happen at that plant.
Obviously nobody knows anything if CNN is putting sentences like this in their articles: "buildup of hydrogen gas, which is the highly flammable, lighter-than-air gas used in the Hindenburg."
Oh jeez. While true, it really shows the expectations of science education in the US. I mean who is a sentence like that aimed at? Kids? They don't know what the Hindenburg is? Seniors? They invented the hydrogen bomb. People should know what hydrogen is.
I would be concerned with where all that water went and what its state is?
One would assume the containment ponds are leaking into the ground. How radioactive is the water? How long lived is its radioactivity?
As reported in the NY Times - it looks like this is Japan's Katrina. From reading the article, I get a sense that this is worse than what happened with Katrina in the US. Any readers from Japan care to comment? It seems like, even if there are very dedicated and smart people working the problem, this wouldn't be something that can be handled simply by nuclear experts. Effective management of this as a crisis is needed, and the people in charge need to work together as a team to solve a national crisis. Neither of which seem to be happening.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Stop spreading this sensationalistic bullshit. Even in a worst-case scenario, that being meltdown of all cores, cracking of all containment buildings and fires in all spent fuel pools, the consequences would be tiny compared to those of Chernobyl. Yes, the whole area would be evacuated (some of it already is), and there would be large amounts of radioactive pollution, but there would be no "liquidators" giving their lives up to contain the situation, and people wouldn't be sacrificed in an attempt to save face. Japan isn't the Soviet Union.
Note: after writing the above writeup I considered deleting the whole thing because the parent post is obviously trolling, but then I decided to leave it in place anyway as there's already too much misinformation about this situation.
Evacuating 50 miles from a DAMAGED NUCLEAR POWER PLANT is a bit different than having your countrymen evacuated from the entire country.
Le Danger! Le Danger! We must protecta ze cheese!
This disaster could well be worse than the one in Tjernobyl.
No, it could not.
- Chernobyl did not have a containment vessel to catch and contain a melted core.... it melted out the bottom of the reactor and through the floor.
- Chernobyl used graphite control rods -- and graphite burns, carrying with it radioactive isotopes right from the melted core.
All radiation is not created equal. A micro-SV is a measure quantity. A micro-SV per hour is a rate, and you have to know how long the person is exposed to get the total quantity. Eating a banana will give you about 0.1 micro-SV due to radioactive potassium-40 in bananas. An average person gets over 400 micro-SV a year just from eating food. A reporter in Japan yesterday, took a picture of a radiation meter while standing outside, and it read 0.6 micro-SV/hour. Well bellow even the most conservative safety thresholds.
Particularly in the vented steam, the isotopes found in quantity have very short half-lives. The quantity of what has been released is diluted quickly to levels barely above background in the atmosphere.
Note that most of the cooling infrastructure at the plant is completely intact... but they lack electricity to run it. A new electrical line is being run, and should be completed in a day or so. At that point, the pumps will be back on line, and the situation will rapidly de-escalate.
Yeah. Yesterday they said American jets bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With news today, accuracy doesn't matter as much as time to market. The NYT tends to be a couple of hours behind CNN, but tend to do a better job, I think.
I tried very hard, but I just could not find the following _full_ interview in English, only Spanish. Reuters quote part of the interview but leave out the juiciest and most damning accusations by nuclear accident cleanup hero/expert Yuri Andreyev. Luckily google translate does a decent translation so you can read it...
A couple of (corrected) quotes:
Andreyev: "In the nuclear industry there are no independent bodies"
[What has happened in Japan's Nuclear facility] "was not an error, it is a crime"
Your a fucking idiot. You're not thinking, you're letting your complete ignorance in this field and fear concoct impossible risks, and sharing idiotic solutions to those imaginary issues.
There are more extreme steps Japan could take to have near complete control. Unfortunately all of them include operating near the reactors and exposed fuel rods (the real threat). If they could do this easily (without workers being exposed to higher levels of radiation near these areas) I'm sure they would.
I feel like that last post was written by a cheerleader.
>>>If something similar happens in Japan then Tokyo could quite easily become a ghost town
Tokyo's around 200 miles away! Jeez. And encasing everything in concrete would be dumb, as the nuclear material would simply keep heating-up until a worse disaster happened. You have to DEAL with the problem, not dump a bunch of concrete and hope it goes away.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The jury is still out - you have no information to make "probable" guesses. Read this translated interview of a Nuclear cleanup expert to see the four possible outcomes of this accident.
It's nice to blame others right?
If it weren't for those pesky hippies the good energy companies would have constructed those highly expensive new reactors and shut down the old ones. They would have willingly forfeit the MASSIVE profits they are making with old reactors. The pro-nuke energy lobby is only lobbying for the extension of old reactors because ... uh ... something ... eco friendly ... certainly not because they are pumping out pure profit since they've been paid off long ago.
(ChildLeftBehind)
Isn't that a type of cheeseburger? Or a town in Germany?
(/ChildLeftBehind)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Didn't the battery operated pumps go out when the batteries ran out of energy?
That's still a failure of that system, but it seems less of a maintenance failure and more of a part of the interconnected failures that came from underestimating nature.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Oh really? I have not much insight but i keep reading that there was never much resistance against nuclear power in the Japanese population because they a.) believed in the technology and b.) saw the necessity.
So what has barred the Japanese from buying those hypothetical "plenty of new, modern, safe nuclear reactors." Yes, I know that the plant in question was about to be shut down. Still it was in operation for 40 years in which time span the safety of nuclear was allegedly so much increased. So why wasn't it replaced 20 years ago?
The truth is that these power plants are operated by companies who want to earn money. They will never replace a plant before they are forced too. And that they weren't forced is not the fault of the opponents of nuclear power.
And encasing everything in concrete would be dumb, as the nuclear material would simply keep heating-up until a worse disaster happened. You have to DEAL with the problem, not dump a bunch of concrete and hope it goes away.
Actually, that's not true. Encasing it is a viable (though probably last ditch effort) solution. Yes it will generate a lot of heat, but that doesn't really matter. The important thing is that, once encased, it cannot start a fire (no oxygen). Radioactive soot from a fire is probably the most dangerous part of the whole situation (outside of direct radiation exposure to people actually at the plant)
They should have put video footage of the Hindenburg ablaze with Herbert Morrison crying "Oh the humanity" in the background followed by the reporter looking directly into the camera and saying, in a grim voice, "this could be happening in Japan as we speak!"
I'm sure people would have ate it up.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Without an earthquake (one of the biggest in recorded history, I might add) to disrupt the reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi plant could have continued happily along with no major problems. Good time to be somewhere else, granted, but this is hardly a disaster yet. As long as non-essential personnel get the hell out of there, and as long as they either get the reaction under control or start taking steps now to contain a meltdown, there should be no major issues. A bit of contamination, but Hiroshima AND Chernobyl are both relatively safe, compared to what nuclear doomsayers would have us believe about the lasting effects. Yes, I know the halflife of Plutonium is somewhere up around forty thousand years (give or take), but Plutonium won't comprise the majority of the contamination. Most of the decayed elements will be smaller radioactive isotopes with far far shorter halflives (years, decades maybe, not millennia), like Iodine, or Caesium. In fact, there's been more negative impact from coal and oil based power, even since the advent of nuclear power; hell, even if we include nuclear WEAPONS, there's been far more negative environmental impact made by fossil fuels than radiation. If I had a choice of living next door to a nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, I'd pick nuclear any day of the week.
Nuclear power is only bad when something goes horribly wrong. Consider how many nuclear reactors there are in the world. How many reactive cores are currently operating. Now exactly how many times have we had a Chernobyl-scale disaster? One of the reasons Chernobyl got so far out of hand, I hear, was because the information output, such as it was in that era, just couldn't keep up with changing conditions inside the reactor. You'd have people working on information ten, fifteen minutes old, patching up lost causes the whole time. Chernobyl was of cheap, shoddy construction, even for then, and we learned so much from it - mostly in the "what NOT to do" category. Every year, there's a good dozen stories crop up on Slashdot about some new miracle bacteria or algae that just LOVES eating what we'd call radioactive waste, so storage and disposal of radioactive materials will eventually cease to be a problem. It would be cool if we could find a use for these radiation-eating bacteria, but hey, you can't have your pony and eat it too.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Japan's Katrina x 100,000
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Plus any kind of pesudo-timeline like that makes no sense either. "In a mere two hundred years or so" the tech will appear to molecular-sanitize a failed nuke site.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Of course, I'll probably be alone in this opinion since this is apparently the same planet where people think wifi gives them rashes... Imagine telling one of those people to live next door to a nuclear plant!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
>Because the US has handled all their disasters with flying colors....just shut up already USA.
How about, instead of making this about a jingoistic Japan vs. US thing, making it about people vs. politicians generally?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Where the hell are all of the robots Japan has been promoting over the years? Instead of designing robots that mimic facial expressions or perform synchronous dance routines, why didn't they build any that could assist with such an obvious catastrophe? FFS Japan: get with the program!
While I agree that there will probably not be a "nuclear meltdown" I think you're being a little harsh. Tigger's Pet has a good point about the impact on the rest of the world, economically speaking. If China had a similar catastrophe how do you think that would affect the prices of the many goods that come out of the country? Hell, computer prices in general are probably going to go up now and that's just one of Japan's contributions.
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Where does this position come from? Can't you see that the whole situation warrants a bit more of a nuanced view? "Bad things have happened before, so we should never do it again" is a pretty underwhelming argument, especially when the cause of these problems is well understood and could be mitigated.
the big error was in having the diesel generators in the basement. they got swamped by the tsunami. lesson: put the back up generators on the roof. or one on the roof and one in the basement, if you are afraid of a terrorist rocket
now the japanese are dumping water on the reactors with helicopters and fire hoses, which is amateur hour because apparently the pressure in the reactor makes it hard to get water in there. an analogy i heard is it is like trying to weakly push water into a balloon full of air (without popping the balloon, might i add)
therefore, the only real emergency solutions i see, correct me if i am wrong, is either: 1. get some new backup generators there asap, or 2. run some emergency electrical lines to the power plant asap
they need to power that water cycling equipment, asap
or rather, get it done 3 days ago ;-(
i'm sorry japan, this is quite bad, i feel for your proud nation and this apocalypse. i am somewhat of a movie buff and have always admired your cultural output from afar, i often attend movie screenings at the japan society at 47th st in nyc. i even got to ask questions from the audience with famous japanese directors, like sion sono and go shibata, translated and answered, which was quite thrilling
i will try to make a donation there. there's no other word to describe what is happening to your country: it is an apocalypse. i am very sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
American jets?
Excuse me for a moment while I bash my head against my desk.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The fuel rods in these reactors are made from a zirconium compound. This compound is explosive above 2000 deg. There are tons of this stuff to go boom spreading the radionuclides from the tons of the spent fuel, into the atmosphere. Is this shades of "On The Beach"? But, not to worry, the government says we are safe just like they said the environment around the WTC was safe.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
It's pretty funny, because the backup generators and the pumps were working right after the earthquake and the cooling was working fine too.
Tip: When you're planning for disasters you treat each disaster separately, even if they can be linked (earthquake causes tsunami).
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Link, please. I would LOVE to see that.
I can see it now: Come down to Bob's for the Hindenburger. Only available well done.
You are aware, aren't you, that Chernobyl is located in a country whose inhabitants are not native English speakers and that they may have a different spelling when the proper name of the city is translated to English? Apparently not.
The summary says that "the fuel could combust." I'm not a nuclear engineer, but is this statement accurate? The article made it seem as though the fuel would reach very high temperatures, and things AROUND it would catch fire (and then carry the radioactive materials in the smoke). It didn't sound as though the fuel itself was going to combust, just that it would melt.
I have read that often the last days on /. and I simply don't get it. It what country do you live and what is wrong with your coal plants? ...
In germany nearly every majour city has a coal plant. There are no problems whatsoever with them. Except for CO2 the "hot air" they exhaust is cleaner than the air they take in
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This may be moderated as flamebait, however this is exactly the attitude many people responding to the news of the Fukushima reactors on slashdot seem to have. How can you be so in love with nuclear that even when four reactors are in various states of melting down and leaking dangerous amounts of radiation into the environment that you find it necessary to attack any doubts on the supposed safety and environmental goodness of nuclear power?
Reminds me of Inspector Drebin standing infront of the exploding building in Naked Gun. "Nothing to see here people!"
I new these stupid "greens" are to blame here, I just couldn't find any way to connect emerging nuclear catastrophe with them. Thanks!
839*929
People may not be able to live there yes, but Tjernobyl has shown proven the saying "life finds a way" true again. The area around Tjernobyl has become one of the most biologically diverse in the area... probably in large part due to the lack of humans around.
Mutants will do that ...
Just joking ... stop looking at me so funny, 3-eyes!.
This disaster has destroyed what little faith I had left in the media. It's disgusting what they are doing right now.
A little bit of common sense would tell you that those magical bacterias don't exist. ... perhaps they are robust to live with "radioactive caesium" or can build up sugar with tritium, BUT by that the tritium, caesium, uranium or plutonium does not go away.
Bacterias live from chemical processes
The only thing for which those bacterias are useful is to let them combine the "waste" into their metabolism and use some kind of pumping technology to get the bacterias out of the ground to store them elsewhere.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This is why I push so hard for coal mining to be banned. I've heard that entire US towns have been made uninhabitable due to coal fires that won't go out for hundreds if not thousands of years. ( http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm )
Beats their initial reporting. When they initially reported a "hydrogen explosion" at one of the reactors, apparently they had a big problem with people equating this with a hydrogen *bomb* explosion.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The media talks about a meltdown as if it's the end of the world and we have nothing to handle it. In reality handling a meltdown is precisely what the containment system is designed to do. It's certainly possible that it could fail or have been damaged from the earthquake, but it's also possible that it will work just fine. Without knowing a whole lot more, I'm not going to judge which is the most probable.
At this point I definitely agree that the pools with the spent fuel rods are likely to be the biggest problem.
I think the failure in planning here wasn't in any of the systems in the plant. It was in not realizing that something like a tsunami would cause so much devastation around the plant that restoring power would be so difficult.
We now have four rectors that needs to be cooled down, built in and kept under close watch for a couple of hundred thousands of years.
Try switching to these four rectors instead then. They look pretty cooled down from here, and I seriously doubt they'll be around for a thousand days, never mind years.
How can you be so in love with nuclear that even when four reactors are in various states of melting down and leaking dangerous amounts of radiation into the environment that you find it necessary to attack any doubts on the supposed safety and environmental goodness of nuclear power?
Probably as a reaction to the severe and unmigitaged NEWS CHANNELS running some sort of extinction level event coverage 24/7 w/ every anti nuclear asshole they can find to provide baseless supposition about what is happening and see every "journalist" and news reader get basic facts about radiation wrong. Oh and dangerous amounts of radiation requires many qualifiers and explanations. Meanwhile, several thousand people are dead yet no one wants to declare war on the sea and mighty Neptune. Fuck it, how long til Bird Flu comes back around to kill us and our children too! Won't someone think of the children!
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
"Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels."
It is amusing to see the comments here which excuse the problem at the Japanese nuclear plant because the earthquake was really big. You see to many people who don't have an automatic fear of anything nuclear, there remains the problem of the people running it. The technology might be safe but when those in charge aren't doing their jobs then there is basis for distrust.
1. The earthquake was big: It's Japan. You can't not expect a big earthquake. Everything has to be ready for it.
2. The tsunami unexpectedly washed out the generators: see point 1.
3. It was an old plant, the new ones are safer: if this one wasn't safe then why was it running?
The point to me is not that nuclear power is unsafe, but rather that unacceptable risks were taken in this case. Does the same problem exist are other sites in other countries? I have no idea (and I bet the armchair Slashdot crowd doesn't know either), but there is a serious lack of trust right now over how that risk is being evaluated.
None of this excuses the sensationalism in the media or the fools in the US who are buying anti-radiation tonic in preparation, or even the foreigners who are fleeing the entire country of Japan over the threat of 'meltdown'.
PS. What if all six reactors had been working?
That's the reason why nuclear energy is cheap. Because the plants are old and their construction costs have been fully amortized. Alternative energy wouldn't be so alternative anymore if only recently constructed nuclear plants were allowed to operate.
Football Odds
Anyone who has ever dealt with the press knows that they are frequently laughably inaccurate/sensationalistic/alarmist on all but their most basic stories. In the wake of this nuclear incident, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, et. al. have featured a virtual parade of Chicken Littles literally yelling at the camera, including a number of anti-nuke environmentalists who clearly have an agenda to push. If you were to just watch the news, it would be nigh impossible to get a grasp of what's really going on or the actual technical issues involved. All people hear is "radiation scare" with absolutely no context as to the type or level of radiation, for example.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Japanese dispute claim of no water in #4, claim helicopter crew was able to see water but the level isn't known. Last night saw on HNK news the U.S. will fly unmanned drones to verify water level, as getting close to pools involves very high exposure.
The interesting thing here is something I've noted elsewhere: a big difference in expectations of education between science and everything else. The reader is expected to be familiar with a specific event in history (to know what the Hindenburg is), but isn't expected to know what element 1 is. They are explaining something that you'd see in on of your first science lessons in school, in terms of a fairly specific instance in history. People who don't know about history or geography are regarded as ignorant in our society, while people who know nothing about science are just considered normal.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is a little more nuance than that: Obviously, the onsite engineers are not "saving face"(if anything, they are running the nontrivial risk of having face slough off most unpleasantly) and the Japanese government also seems to have come round to the severity of the situation(if not quite to the degree that experts from other countries with lots of reactors would like). Every statement from plant management, though, seems to be a variation on "Golly shucks, there are definitely some issues; but it is hard to say exactly how severe they are. We are working on it, check back later." It doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies about how forthright they are being...
Hundreds of square miles of dead sea critters are of no import next to a situation that were it to go out of control could kill thousands of humans. A PETA type mentality is a symptom of wealthy society disconnected from world's reality.
Yes, this is a very different situation to Chernobyl but the worst case is actually far, far worse (in some ways of measuring at least). The problem here isn't the reactors themselves but with the spent fuel stockpile. Estimates have the potential for an uncontrolled meltdown in the spent fuel pile at orders of magnitude higher radiation exposure than were experienced from the Chernobyl incident, added to this exposure causing major problems in continuing to cool the reactor cores still under threat.
I have no idea what you're talking about "thousands of people to try to control the Russian plant" either. For a start, it was Ukrainian or Soviet but let's not stand on petty national boundaries too much. Second, about 30 people died as a direct result of the incident which makes it, uh, 0.03 thousand?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Do you say the same to people who write Czar as Tsar (or vice versa)? Hint: transliteration from the cyrillic to roman alphabet is not a one to one mapping.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This comparison is only as long as there arent any accident happening.
HTTP/1.1 400
My wife is Japanese and most of her family lived in that area, some only 1km away from the Fukushima power plant.
... ... And lots of other stuff too!!! / rant and vent over.
I've been so upset by the event and livid with the BBC and I'll not even talk about other news sources in the UK. I want a law to block the sensationalism I've been seeing. Keep that for guff filler shite celeb stories and film releases.
It is harrowing and needs no build up. I can't watch another presenter, first being told by some expert that there is no threat, to only then ask the question "What about the worst case?". You’ve just asked him, you had your answer about the now and the future, and now you want guy to make up an answer? Well fuck you BBC. For balance, what is the best case? If this works, how soon can people return? Will the farms in the area be safe?
The expert may be proved wrong tomorrow, but he gave his opinion about today. Why do you have the need to constantly push for the worst case?
How is that the news? I can't read another statement about radiation going up 4 times and how awful that is, only to find out that the level is less than a scan at a hospital? Do these people have any journalistic pride any more? I've seen so many stories and write-ups pro and con that I now have no idea who to trust or what is really going on.
So whilst the nuclear pro and con here spout the next 10 pages of stuff, I’ll be still no better off from their posts.
yeah, media concern about the current major story tends to force previous major stories out of the news, relatively speaking. Here, the last major story is probably the Libyan revolt, though something else happened to oil-spill news in a similar fashion
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It's kind of depressing if you think about it. Humanity is a bigger scourge to biological diversity than massive doses of radiation.
Happy people make bad consumers.
We gotta get out while we're young
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Bullshit. Utter fucking bullshit.
THe odds on an actual "nuclear blast" as you suggest are about 1 in a billion.
Nuclear Explosions don't just happen...they require VERY precise conditions, with geometrically shaped charges and layout, to bring about an actual blast. Yes, bad shit can happen, without a doubt...but a spontaneous nuclear blast is probably somewhere in the magnitude of a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 event.
Quit spreading shit.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Go to this web page, and look in the title of your browser window of the word enclosed in double quotes. Then report back who is the ignoramus who can't spell properly the name of the city. http://chornobylmuseum.kiev.ua/index.php?lang=uk
There was nothing wrong with the Chernobyl reactor nor with the people that ran the reactor. What happened was that the higher ups in the Soviet system, those with no clue whatsoever, had ordered a very dangerous experiment to be conducted at the plant. This experiment was running late which triggered a lot of human errors and together with some unfortunate events caused the catastrophe. The nuclear engineers working at the plant knew how dangerous the experiment was and what the risks were but proceeded with it. If they had refused, it would have been a good way to end their careers and possibly been transferred to Siberia.
The exact same thing can happen again, like it did with BP:s oil spill and their infallible blow out preventor. It's not about technology but about human factors. Mistakes do happen because time schedules are still stressed, idiots with no contact with the people on the ground are still the ones doing the decisions and it's still much safer to do what your boss says than to be adamant about following safety regulations.
Football Odds
What this incident proves is that the chain is indeed as strong as its weakest link. If it is now obvious that nuclear power generation is a long complex chain, with each link requiring utmost planning and care. People may argue that newer reactor and/or containment designs may be safer and/or stronger but what about the other links like backup power, spent fuel storage, pipe fittings to withstand the tremendous pressures inherent in the generation of power from nuclear energy? Part of that chain is also the proper training of personnel not only to operate the plants properly and minimize human error but also on how to manage a crisis situation. They should be drilled every day on how to go about this during a plant blackout or plant fire scenario. The more complex the chain, the more there can be weaknesses. If plants are to be built in the future each of these links in the chain must withstand close scrutiny.
When do the TEPCO executives start committing seppuku?
I think you'd have a promising career as news producer!
Looks like it's gone now. CNN often rewrites articles under the same URL when things are developing. Again, the NYT beats them on credibility by posting a change log for corrections at the bottom of the page. But at least one of CNN's local partners picked up the story off of their wire and has archived it: http://www.12newsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=14254119&clienttype=generic&mobilecgbypass
This account is yet another sockpuppet for commodore64_love. We all have gotten sick of c64love due to his increasing tendency to troll in recent months, and as a result he has negative karma and can only post once per day, or something like that. Problem solved, right? NO! He has created a legion of sockpuppet accounts, including C_amiga_fan, commodore_6502, theaveng, and now this one. The others have been modded into oblivion, as they deserve, but this one is, somehow, able to post at Score: 2. This is possibly due to a recent misleading post which several mods hit +1 Insightful on (because it sounded good at first read) without bothering to check the source and discover the original source conveys the opposite sentiment to that which cpu6502/c64love is pretending it conveys. So, without further ado, please go take care of this problem if you care about this community we call Slashdot and don't wish to see it ruined by mindless trolls.
Coal plants have accidents too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill
I'm of the opinion that the biggest danger in Japan right now is the pools with spent fuel rods. I think this shows that we don't handle waste from either coal or nuclear plants very well.
And the odds of that happening are extremely small. If it does happen, or looks like it might, you get evacuated from the area. By comparison, coal plants _continuously_ emit radiation among many other unsavory products. It's cleaner and safer to live near a nuclear plant than a coal plant. Not to mention it won't smell nearly as bad. You won't get soot spread on your property. etc. etc.
Sure, when the shit hits the fan, it's probably safer to have a coal plant burning up, but if you're that worried about safety and the statistics thereof, you're more likely to die in a car accident any day of the week.
Where is the hightech robots that Japan is known for?
Isn't it strange that there is no autonomous or even remote controlled vehicles ready for cooling the fuel rods.
This would be the showcase of all times, to show what automated vehicles can do.
North Korea has armed robots that can move about and shoot down apples at more than a one mile distance.
US has several advanced military robots.
Example: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/ugv.htm
But why don't we have firefighting robots or a fuel rod excavator.
It shouldn't take more than a day to rig an excavator with fire a hose.
Just like during the oil well fires set of by Saddam under operation desert storm.
Engineers added jet engines to fire hoses and mounted them to tanks with great success.
Why haven't we seen the same kind of enginuity from the Japanese.
Dropping water from helicopters is ridiculous and probably just causes more problems to the exposed fuel rods.
And can anybody tell how much plutonium the area (nearest 300km) can take before you have to abandon it permanently?
And how far will the cloud spread if all the rods decide to ignite and puff into the air?
How many kilo's of plutonium does it takes to kill the pacific ocean?
How does plutonium mix with air and water. Does the heavy atoms fall out or will they just float about for days/weeks/months?
Ups.! That was a lot of questions.
The problem in Japan is that the rods in question are in cooling ponds with no coolant. They are outside the containment (ie, not in the reactor). The power company itself said yesterday that "The possibility of re-criticality is not zero". You're probably right in that they'll most likely get water back into the ponds and things will settle down. Keep your fingers crossed. There are three ponds in this state and the engineers don't seem to know if the ponds are even able to hold water after the earthquake.
Don't worry anyone, Godzilla is just making a come back.
Be seeing you...
Stop.
Lying.
Please. Shut. The. Hell. Up. You have zero clue what you are stating, and are showing yourself to be either a shill for the oil/coal companies, or just too clueless to know better. By chance, are you being paid by Fox News?
Do you have any idea of the lies you are spouting? It is not going to blow up even if all the rods turn into one big blob, just because the uranium is not the right isotope. If this were the case, Iran would just empty all the rods from an existing facility and use that in their devices, as opposed to all the work with the centrifuges.
Nuclear power 101. Yes, power reactors get hot, but they do not get even near a mass critical enough to do a detonation. No reactor ever designed would do this. Yes, they will melt, but they will not be turning into a Fat Man ever.
At least learn about the subject you are trying to scare people on. As of now, your post history shows that you are a liar, a troll, a shill of a company/organization who wants nuclear power killed, or mindlessly spouting someone else's rhetoric that you do not understand.
Just like 1000 MICROsieverts is different than, say, an invading German army.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A similar accident in a third world country would result in something much more harmful to the world as a whole. And third world countries are the place where nuclear power is growing massively.
"..you're more likely to die in a car accident any day of the week."
And yet the US spends more than ever on terrorism than anything else, how many US citzens has died because of terrorism again?
HTTP/1.1 400
It sure takes some balls to publicly display the level of ignorance required to believe that this could turn into a nuclear blast. Gotta commend you for that, at least.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
You're not a troll, just a dumb shit.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You can make your point without calling someone a "fucking idiot". Just sayin'.
Love sees no species.
Interesting tangent (not really). How about we keep talking about the topic at hand? I was merely pointing out that if you're that afraid of a small statistical chance there are more obvious things to be afraid of.
Unless you're just trolling of course. But that would never happen on /., right?
Well to be fair the plant was designed and installed by GE.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You seriously think Japan hasn't been building nuclear reactors over that entire time period?
They're expensive, no one is going to decommission a working plant to entirely replace it with new technology - let alone do that every decade or so when new designs highlight flaws in the older designs.
The anti-nuclear power people have nothing to do with that. They certainly haven't prevented Japan and France and China from building modern reactors. And it isn't the anti-nuclear power people who decided that th French would go with active safety instead of passive safety on their most modern reactors.
Oh jeez. While true, it really shows the expectations of science education in the US. I mean who is a sentence like that aimed at? Kids? They don't know what the Hindenburg is? Seniors? They invented the hydrogen bomb. People should know what hydrogen is.
Look, this example pertains to a whole other discipline, but when my lady and I went to Panama and we were checking in at the airline counter the girl at the terminal there said "Panama? You mean, like the island?" I don't remember what my response was, but I have to admit that it wasn't to educate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nuclear blasts involve supercritical masses, not critical masses. That's why you have the whole "explosives to compress the core" thing dontcha know. While criticality will produce a shitload of nasty (read gamma rays) radiation as opposed to less harmful alpha and beta particles, and it would also produce enough heat to melt and even vaporize the fuel, leading to a nice plume of radioactive material, you are NOT going to get a "nuclear blast". EVER. So how about learning some physics if you want to keep coming to this site?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You know that with hindsight, the Japanese government is probably going to consider processing these fuel rods now instead of leaving them lying around, in a pool or otherwise...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If they can't even get fundemental information like this correct, how are we to trust any other hyperbole, I mean"news", they publish?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'll note here that I know little about nuclear power or nuclear reactor design. I know enough to throw out the obvious lies told by the extremes from each side.
So I'm wondering, if the containment system can handle a meltdown just fine, why are they going to such great lengths to try to cool it despite having undergone at least a partial meltdown?
I can see the owners of the plant wanting to save their economic investment by doing everything possible to save it. And very small releases of radioactive iodine in vented steam or the like is probably an acceptable tradeoff. But at this point is the facility recoverable? If not, why not evacuate the workers and let the core melt into containment? Then construct something specifically to cool that, so it can be dealt with.
Serious questions, that nag at me anytime I see an assertion that this reactor design can handle a meltdown just fine.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I thought you were traveling to a song from 1984.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html
Just read the Fukushima updates. How come nobody links to this?
If the #4 pool is NOT dry, then that NRC official should be fired...
That said, I can't understand why the spend fuel pool is not inside any containment structure and not at ground level.
This is not a "First generation product" issue. This is a cost savings issue.
Yes, it was a comparatively shit design. The mirror image of that is that the Japanese accepted and bought the shit design. You get what you pay for.
Japanese officials denied that the water is gone from the spent-fuel pool, the Associated Press reported.
Severe structural damage is the only way the fuel pool could be emptied, Helwig said. The 50-foot-deep pools have no outlets at the bottom, thus preventing them from draining in case of an accident.
So there's no confirmation that they lost the water, and no one can explain how that could possibly happen. That water shouldn't get hot enough to boil. Supposedly, the earthquake didn't damage the structure. I wouldn't expect a giant wave of water to result in a sudden lack of water...
If the fuel pools are exposed to the air, the radiation doses coming from them could be life-threatening up to 50 yards, Alvarez said.
Yards... not miles. :-)
The mistake was also that a nuclear power plant near a fault line was only designed to withstand a 7.9 earthquake. That's good enough for most earthquakes, but bigger earthquakes are possible, and with something as dangerous as risky as nuclear power, you don't want to take any chances.
Another mistake is that it relied on outside infrastructure for cooling. When off-site power dropped, they had to rely on diesel generators which lost their fuel due to the tsunami, and the backup batteries didn't have enough power to run the cooling system for the days required to cool everything down.
Personally I think nuclear power plants need some sort of passive cooling system that works automatically, even if everybody on the site drops dead and all outside power is cut. No idea what such a system would look like, though.
Have you ever actually been to the United States?
You can't underestimate how much exposition is required to explain a technology story to an American audience.
Also,
"Everything will be fine. Just remember one thing. You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor."
Bacteria eating it won't make the radiation go away. That is not oil.
Rethinking email
In terms of actual constructed nuclear reactors this IS A MODERN DESIGN mainly because it has been updated with extra safety features over the years. Westinghouse will sell you something very much like it now and I believe there is a similar plant under construction (it's late and I can't remember where - look it up yourself since you're interested in nuclear power or just assume I'm wrong if you like).
What you are talking about as "modern" is prototypes like China's new pebble bed reactors (designed to never be able to fail this way), a plant under construction in India and other stuff that has not even been designed yet let alone tested - it's the stuff of the future instead of "modern".
+1, insightful.
We're also lucky that we have a huge amount of land.
The Japan have a (relatively) tiny island and massive power requirements. What else are they going to do?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Does anyone find it ironic that the problem was caused when a giant, nuclear electricity plant was damaged by a lack of electricity?
Don't have the link right now, but read a news item yesterday asserting that TEPCO had specifically claimed, several years ago, that each of their plants was fully capable of surviving a tsunami. So maybe it's true that they didn't really expect a tsunami. Maybe they just said they had fully anticipated tsunami damage, and were prepared for it, while they told themselves it would never happen, and their public statements were just so much PR.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
That was very much a low point for that magazine - a poorly researched article citing a social newsletter at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility written by an engineer that quit to pursue a career as a writer of "Southern Humour".
Read the comments on the article to get an idea of how bad it is and how lazy the writer was. The idiot just read the Oak Ridge article and recycled some of it.
Too soon, too soon.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Your passive cooling system might utilize the heat from the rods to circulate water in a closed loop. You might need a very large reservoir of water - or something like a massive radiator - to dissipate the heat. And I've no idea how to translate the heat into circulation with the fewest moving parts.
But in this case, if they'd kept one of the reactors running, to generate the power to run the cooling to keep the whole complex stable, wouldn't they be far ahead of the game? Still, even when you shut them "off," they aren't really off, so there should be a way to capture some of the continuing heat to run pumps to cool the reactors.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
given the man's insatiable desire for electricity it seems ironic that any nuclear plant is run for-profit.
www.itjerk.com
Actually, the heart of Tokyo is 140 miles away from the reactor site. If you want to see how wide-spread the fallout area can be and the levels at different distances then have a look here;-
http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html
I certainly wouldn't be planning on staying in Tokyo or returning there for a long time if the reactor does go.
While the Western media is truly sensationalizing this, attitudes in Asia are different than those in the West. Americans and Europeans are far more cynical of technology, corporations and government than Japanese are. So they're far more likely to question everything. Japanese, on the other hand, are more likely to trust that the experts have the situation contained. Just because they aren't worried, doesn't mean there isn't a real problem there.
Problem is the same everywhere. Replacing the design would negate years of profits, so why not take the risk that it won't happen! Then, if things go really bad, the country as a whole gets to pay for the cleanup.
Smells like the usual "privatise the profits, socialise the risk/cost" BS we've been seeing.
Blar.
First, I'll ask for a source of your claim. Second, I didn't realize anti-nuclear protestors were so powerful all of a sudden :D
Blar.
In addition to that, it's having extreme courtesy and regard for other people. They don't want to ask to put other nations' people in harm's way, that would be impolite and disrespectful.
So what has barred the Japanese from buying those hypothetical "plenty of new, modern, safe nuclear reactors."
Nothing except economics. The irony (if I dare to use that word on slashdot) of the situation is that the Dai-ichi site was slated for decommissioning in February, but its license was extended by 10 years. Had they been in the middle of decommissioning when the quake/tsunami hit there could have been 6 reactor's worth of screaming hot rods in the upper containment pools.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And this is just one more reason why.
Blar.
No thanks, mag 9 earthquakes can damage cooling and power systems. Losing coolant on a reactor running full power is what the Chernobyl operators did (in their case just by virtual of the void at the ends of their control rods that pushed them over the edge), rumor is things didn't go so well for them after that.
So... Apparenly, Korea is dragging its heels about supplying Japan with enough boric acid to shut down those four nuclear reactors damaged by the Sendai temblor.
Makes sense, in a strictly technical way. It takes millions of dollars to refine uranium to the point it can be used in a reactor. So if the reactor core gets out of control, what you do is unrefine it.
I don't know what they used at Chernoble, but in Japan they'd like to use Boron, a neutron quencher one spot left of Carbon, which was Fermi's control rod in the first sustained nuclear pile ever (Stagg Stadium, University of Chicago, 1942).
How do you deliver something like that to a hot nuclear core in Japan? I'd recommend 20-Mule Team Borax, tons of the stuff, maybe melted into a couple hundred tons of potmetal, tin and pewter. Once the reaction is diluted to the cooling point, what you got left is a chunk of high-quality uranium ore.
And, as any potter with experience mixing glazes can tell you, you don't want pure elements in your glaze anyway, you want the pre-mixed kind, the fully-adulterated mixtures provided by aeons of geological weathering.
Just a thought....
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
So are the reactors continuing to generate heat? or are those things just so hot that they are extremely difficult to cool without active cooling It seems any cooling done would produce a slow but steady lower temperature. Do they just not have enough time to let things cool down with the sea water that flashes into steam because the heat is damaging the containment vessel?
I keep thinking about it in terms of my water cooled computers if the pump broke. Sure there is water in the system, but if it doesn't move it gets hot quickly and doesn't cool, then one of the lines break. But can you turn off the computer? or does it matter?
You can't process them right after they come out ... they have to "cool" down.
To me it seems though that these storage pools should be holes in the ground ... so it can't leak as easily and you can at least fill them up with sand/rubble and top them off with concrete even if water does somehow drain away faster than you can fill it.
Modern designs are safer, perhaps, but building them on an earthquake-and-tsunami-prone planet is still a game of Russian roulette.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
[...] so that we can check for proper spelling?
Spoken like somebody who has never paid any attention to the difficulty of transliterating (not translating) Cyrillic.
As an example, from wikipedia (and note that the first letter of Tchaikovsky is the same as the first letter of Chernobyl...):
His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij" and "Chaikovsky" (and other versions; the transliteration varies among languages).
...we were typing this in Ukrainian and using Ukrainian transliteration instead of English.
Or do you suggest we all start using our native languages for discussion? How 'bout alphabets? We already got a Japanese version so...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If we're gonna talk about alphabets.
Then again, that is a bit of a "oranges and tangerines" situation there, with tsar, tzar, czar being variations of transliterations of a single term from several languages, with added s-z letter-play for British-American variations. Bonus points for the word originally being a distorted form of Caesar.
Kinda the way Charlmagne transformed into the word meaning the king in Slavic languages.
On the other hand, Chernobil has only one correct transliteration into English.
Or are you suggesting we also start calling it Cherunobiru or whatever the transliteration from Ukrainian to Japanese to English may be, considering that this is a story about a nuclear accident in Japan?
Or should I start writing all names in my native language as well (whatever its name may be this week)?
ernobil. Naaah... wouldn't work. Slashdot keeps eating my characters.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
absolutely false, an uncontrolled fuel pool fire would release many times the contamination of a Chernobyl. Chernobyl ejected 40% of its 180 tons of fuel, a spent fuel pool has hundreds of tons of contaminated fuel.
Japanese dispute claim of no water in #4, claim helicopter crew was able to see water but the level isn't known. Last night saw on HNK news the U.S. will fly unmanned drones to verify water level, as getting close to pools involves very high exposure.
I hope they remember to disarm this one...
Transliteration is not a perfect process. Ask Kaddafi/Khaddaffi/Quaddafi/Ghaddafi...
You mean like that time Americans didn't know how to pronounce Iraq? Despite being at war with that country.
Hint: Most of the world doesn't have such a problem.
Then again, most of the world knows that what is happening in Japan currently is a nuclear accident. Not nucular.
You're not a troll, just a dumb shit.
Well hey... Your mom doesn't seem to mind.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
From what I was reading a few days ago you just described the new type of reactor know as SBWR or the variation ESBWR (which is under review in the US) which I have heard referred to the Type III, while the reactors at this plant are Type II. The type III uses a passive cooling mechanism. You can read a bit more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor (part way down the page).
I would still be more interested in the type that lets us use up all of those spent fuel rods we have to deal with storing waste. The IFR or a relative of it is an idea but introduces liquid sodium as a coolant which could introduce other issues. Read about the IFR here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
Without an earthquake (one of the biggest in recorded history, I might add) to disrupt the reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi plant could have continued happily along with no major problems.
You mean: as long as nothing goes wrong, nothing's wrong? The point is that you need to make sure nothing goes wrong. Blind faith doesn't get you very far.
Good time to be somewhere else, granted, but this is hardly a disaster yet.
If you don't think this is a disaster, then I really wonder what you would consider a disaster. It's not as big a disaster as the earthquake+tsunami itself, but it's a disaster nonetheless.
As long as non-essential personnel get the hell out of there, and as long as they either get the reaction under control or start taking steps now to contain a meltdown, there should be no major issues.
Ah, I get it now. You've missed about a week's worth of news. Non-essential personnel is already out of there, the reaction is already under control (for now at least), and they have been working all week to contain the partial metldown and prevent worse. And yet there are major issues.
A bit of contamination, but Hiroshima AND Chernobyl are both relatively safe, compared to what nuclear doomsayers would have us believe about the lasting effects.
Relatively safe compared to what exactly? Are you aware of the number of birth defects after Chernobyl? The number of people who died there? Did you know that Chernobyl is still highly radioactive?
But what's a few thousand ruined lives? That's not really anything to get upset about, is it?
In fact, there's been more negative impact from coal and oil based power, even since the advent of nuclear power; hell, even if we include nuclear WEAPONS, there's been far more negative environmental impact made by fossil fuels than radiation. If I had a choice of living next door to a nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, I'd pick nuclear any day of the week.
Sure, coal is a lot worse. But that doesn't make nuclear a good option. Certainly not nuclear plants that aren't safe enough.
Nuclear power is only bad when something goes horribly wrong. Consider how many nuclear reactors there are in the world. How many reactive cores are currently operating. Now exactly how many times have we had a Chernobyl-scale disaster?
How many Chernobyl-scale disasters do you want? Is one not already one too many? Nuclear power is currently only a small percentage of the world's energy production, and yet we're seeing meltdowns and near-meltdowns almost every 10 years. And stories of radioactive leakage are a lot more common than that.
As another poster said, it's reasonable to engineer to a once-in-a-thousand-years standard. It sounds like they where only off by 142 years.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
See the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum site for reactor status reports that have real information. The latest status report (22:00, March 17) Their table for the spent fuel pool in #4 says "Level low, preparing water injection, damage to fuel rods suspected."
Reactors 1,2 and 3 still have water levels below the top of the core, and seawater injection continues. So they still haven't reached cold shutdown.
Desperate attempts are being made to fill the spent fuel pool. which, incidentally, is well above ground level in a severely damaged building that has just had a fire. Radiation levels are too high for anyone to approach. Helicopter water drops have been tried. Military fire trucks, ones that can spray water without the operator getting out of the truck, are being used. "The effect of these operations is under evaluation".
It's ridiculous that this is being quibbled over. It's apparently so dangerously radioactive in the area that people cannot approach to even look in the building. There was an explosion and fire of something that apparently generated intense radioactivity in unit 4. If there's still 100 gallons of boiling water left in the pool or not seems kind of irrelevant at this point.
leaking dangerous amounts of radiation into the environment
The problem with that is that there are not dangerous amount of radiation leaking into the environment. For a good, more informed, less bias summary, read here:
http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nuclear-accident-simple-and-accurate-explanation
No one has died from radiation poising, and as of now, it doesn't look like anyone will. The major concern right now is a financial one, not an environmental or safety one. If they wanted, they could let the "cores melt down" and nothing really bad would happen. The cores would be contained in the designed containment chambers. The only downside is that you loose a lot of really expensive uranium and can't really put a new plant right there anymore.
Also, take this into account, Chernobyl, which by all accounts was worse than Japan's situation could turn out to be killed between 28 and 700,000 people (depends on who you ask, but lets go with the "long term effects, people who got cancer in their 70s that maybe wouldn't have and use the 700,000). Each year in China alone, 700,000 die from air pollution related causes, mostly from coal power plants:
http://www.pri.org/business/global-development/thousands-of-deaths-because-of-china-s-coal-energy2500.html
In addition, on average 30+ workers die in China's coal mines each year. 28 workers total died in the Chernobyl meltdown.
Coal kills way more people than nuclear energy has. It is kind of like terrorism in America. Everyone is going through crazy steps like the TSA to prevent another terrorist attack, even though your are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist (in the USA).
Is nuclear 100% safe, no it isn't. Neither is walking down the street or drinking water. The fact is we need energy for the world, to provide heating and cooling, to help produce food, and to help our economies grow. With the technologies out there right now, nuclear is, in my opinion, by far the best option. It is cleaner and safer than coal and is about the same cost per kwh. Hydroelectric would be better, but it is limited as to where you can put it. Solar and wind are great future technologies, but until efficiency is greatly improved and/or better storage techniques are developed, they can't supply the power requirements we have right now, much less in the future.
Had they been in the middle of decommissioning when the quake/tsunami hit there could have been 6 reactor's worth of screaming hot rods in the upper containment pools.
But then they wouldn't need electricity to operate those high-pressure pumps,
a simple hose on each one of the 6 reactors would do the job, or even simpler, they could have done it with buckets of sea-water!
OTOH, a Nuclear Core tightly sealed inside a Containenment Vessel is different beast to cool.
I read one article that made the statement that the tsunami was above the magnitude they had prepared for.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The devil's hand is government. Though I do not dismiss nuclear power as a useful source of energy, it is hard to imagine many companies would choose to build them without indemnification, incentives, fuel processing and more benefits from government.
Without an earthquake (one of the biggest in recorded history, I might add) to disrupt the reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi plant could have continued happily along with no major problems.
Sure, if you are allowed to dismiss the cause of every accident as an irrelevant anomaly then nuclear power looks like a good investment. What the plant could have done in your imaginary future is irrelevant: if the idiots at Chernobyl hadn't operated the plant miles out of spec, or if the bozos who built it had included a containment structure, or...
The problem is, we don't live in the world of your imagination. Scientists and engineers have been trying to teach philosophers for 300 years that what you can or cannot imagine has zero ontological significance, but it's apparently a difficult lesson to learn.
In the world we actually live in, relatively small, common, stupid things that people inevitably do result in the total economic loss of billion-dollar nuclear reactors every couple of decades. Even well-designed, well-operated plants like Ontario Hydro's CANDUs have been vastly more expensive than anticipated due to an almost trivial design and construction error. This is the commonplace reality of nuclear power: errors so small as to be inevitable have economic consequences that are wildly out of proportion with their causes, even when we ignore the public health effects and inconvenience involved in evacuations and whatnot.
Conversely, how often do you hear, "Earthquake 10 km from coal-fired plant, thousands evacuated from homes, emergency crews at risk while trying to bring boilers under control"? While a great deal can be said against coal, oil, gas and hydro power, we don't have to imagine a world in which they are forgiving of relatively minor erors, becuase in the real world we actually live in they are forgiving of relatively minor errors. For some reason we even seem to be able to mostly avoid earthquake damage to hydroelectric dams.
Fision power is eoncomically problematic because relatively minor--to the point of being inevitable--human errors will result in a significant risk of total loss of the plant. This is a consequence of the hgih energy density in nuclear fuel, not a consequence of plant design, as even pebble bed reactors have suffered from signficant risk of plastic deformation due to overheating, and once that happens to the highly radioactive components of the plant, it is pretty much a dead loss.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I hope you're joking. It took nearly 20 years to get the permits for reactors number 5/6 which were still under construction. Reactors 1-3 were ~2 weeks from being mothballed because of their age.
The truth is anti-nuke nuts the world round are really good at fucking people over, because of the very smallest things.
Om, nomnomnom...
Hundreds of square miles of dead sea critters are of no import next to a situation that were it to go out of control could kill thousands of humans.
Huh? How exactly is a nuclear meltdown with fire going to kill thousands of humans? The worst case scenario in Japan is considerably better than Chernobyl, and that killed what? A dozen?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
OP was using Swedish transliteration. Google Tjernobyl - you should get Swedish Wikipedia entry for Chernobyl among the first results.
Chornobyl is transliteration into English of Ukrainian name for the place.
Chernobyl is transliteration into English of Russian name for the place - the source of the word in most languages around the world as it was the name it became "famous" for. Russian being the language of the land and all, land being the former USSR.
The starting letter that looks like a backwards four or funny Y to Roman alphabet user is often transliterated as Tj
Nope. You are thinking of another Cyrillic letter. Chernobyl or Chornobyl - either word uses a much "harder and stronger" letter.
Both are also available in latinic form.
Not that Tj would be proper transliteration of either of those in English. Much too soft for "tshe", utterly wrong for "che".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Spoken like somebody who has never paid any attention to the difficulty of transliterating (not translating) Cyrillic.
Spoken like someone whose native language is not Slavic...
Just because your language can't handle affricates properly, doesn't mean everyone else can't handle 'em.
And again... OP was mixing Swedish in with the English, along with displays of highly trollish and idiotic behavior.
Personally, don't really have a problem with the first part, but it was easier to point at and make fun of.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If the cores melt, there really will be no way to deal with it. You'll have hundreds of tons of incredibly radioactive material congealed together in a huge mass. If that happens, we're fucked. The only thing to do is seal it in.
Just drop it dude. No one is buying your side of it. The more you argue, the more foolish you look.
But I paid for the full course!
And I'll have you know, ladies quite like the way I look.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Address the fact that a number of Commodore related accounts popped up right around the time that the well known troll account "commodore64_love" was banned. No insults, just facts that need to be addressed in order for you to retain any credibility.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, and neither am I, this is part of the AGW scam which the Lame Stream Meidia
... and all the other bans which leave Windmills which don't
are in up to their armpits.
When you can see the radiometer readings they are ~0,2 mS, ie BACKGROUND but
pools are boiling, containment MAY be breached, reactors are in scary MELTDOWN
days after they SCRAMED. Pull the other leg.
Asshole America under Obama is being talked up for another ban like the Gulf drilling
ban and the fracking ban
work
Meanwhile Obama now thinks the US should invade Libya.
That's exactly what I was thinking. If you've got heat you need to get rid of, can't you use that heat to do so? They still turn water to steam. Can't you use that to drive a generator? Presumably a different kind than when the plant is running, but it only needs to power the cooling system, rather than an entire city.
And if that doesn't work, something with giant heat sinks and stuff like that. It sounds all pretty obvious to me, but I'm no nuclear engineer.
Remember folks, it's only a genuine Hindenburger if it's made with soylent green. Don't be taken in by cheap imitations.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In what universe is there nothing wrong with a reactor which explodes on emergency shutdown procedure (SCRAM)?
Here are a few facts for you:
Fact 1: RBMK back then was not safe even for Soviet standards.
Fact 2: The problem with the control rod design was known, but ignored - the Leningrad nuclear power plant had a partial meltdown for a similar reason a decade before.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That 'reasonable' depends an awful lot on the costs involved.
If building the tsunami resistance to a 10,000 year standard increased the lifetime costs of the plant by 0.01%, I wouldn't call it reasonable to engineer them to a 1,000 year standard.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So if it all melts down into one big blob and sinks into the Earth, why not just leave it there, run some pipes to force in water and some pipes to extract steam, and run generators off that? It's not like you could make the mess any worse, right?
OK, so you'd probably be running radioactive steam through your generator loop, but they have to deal with that with reactors, don't they?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Those pools are 40' cubes, half a million gallons of water each. Each helicopter load is 900 gallons. Do math.
Just saw another news article on NHK claiming 7.5 tons per load, or 1800 gallons seawater. Still, to replenish a pool that's down by half or more would take over a hundred trips, let alone with boiling or high evaporation rate near boiling
But it would be nice if level 20 feet or more of the 40+ foot depth to cover fuel to prevent cladding fire. Actually a crucial piece of information to know if fuel pool fire is imminent or not, as that would be much worse if left uncontrolled than the "meltdown" in reactor everyone is programmed by Hollywood to fear.
The outside of the rods is an alloy that's almost all zirconium. The Material Safety Data Sheet for zirconium says that powder and shavings are flammable, but the bulk metal isn't (analogous to iron that way). So how does a spent fuel pool fire work? If the zirconium cladding melts, you're left with uranium dioxide, which is already oxidized. You'd get a release of volatile fission products, plenty bad, but not a fire.
Wikipedia gives a sourced number of 0.18 g for the designed peak ground acceleration. That's actually a relatively low number as severe quakes go, though I can't easily find out whether that was known at design time.
Japanese engineers must believe in big safety margins, judging from how intact the reactors were at the end of the quake.
Modern designs would have no problems in the present scenario, no active cooling and no ejection of spent fuel into a cooling pool for 10 to 20 years needed. I'm pro-modern nuclear, but this obsolete shit designed in the 1950s has got to go (not the 60s as some imagine, there was more than 10 years delay)
It's kind of depressing if you think about it. Any animal on top of the food chain is a bigger scourge to biological diversity than massive doses of radiation.
FTFY
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I didn't realize GE was responsible for keeping this thing running, updating it, and providing maintenance on it. For 40 years. Huh.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Or we could just not play the role of Captain Hindsight. They had backups, emergency backups, and emergency backup backups. They did everything within reasonable human planning, including sea walls. Really, the sea walls were the only part that failed at doing their job.... but only because a quake hit that was well over 10x more powerful than ever recorded, or at least 6x more powerful than any earthquake's estimated power in any signs of history they could find (8.1-8.3 in 869... yes, 869).
Are we going to start building levies in New Orleans that are 5x higher than the worst that we could ever imagine could happen in the area? If they do, what happens when we get something even more powerful than THAT? Are we going to point fingers and say "horrible planning, tsk tsk"? There's just no end to it. They planned well, but what happened, happened. All we/they can do now is go "well, I guess we learned how this can be avoided in the future" and move on. You can't blame them when over-the-top measures were being taken to prevent disaster.
You can plan for the "worst" all you want, but Mother Nature is a vicious bitch that'll show your arrogant ass how shit gets done around here.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Before we all rail against 50 year old designs...
1) This plant is at the end of its service life
2) The service life of any major power generation facility is measured in decades and often gets extended from the original plan
3) It takes years to plan the plant in the first place and who would go with an unproven design
My point is, that in 30 years time the same argument will be leveled against whatever technology we are contemplating installing now.
Nullius in verba
Bullshit. Ever been out to one? Ever seen the fly ash pond?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_pond
German coal plants are not that clean, no coal plants are that clean. Sure nuclear waste might be dangerous for a while, but that ash is dangerous forever.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
I actually think that is largely a good, normal thing - to some extent. When something happens, or when a new plant is being designed, we SHOULD be looking at the worst case scenario. Sometimes that is exactly what happens, as we are seeing now. The problem is that this reporting seems to scare some people into ignorant, knee-jerk reactions instead of leading them to investigate the issue and consider it rationally. For example, Chernobyl resulted in something like ~25-50 workers killed directly, and on the order of 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to it. A quick search indicates that, in the U.S. at least, thyroid cancer apparently has something like a 90-95% survival rate, and even higher if it is caught early - which presumably it would be after a nuclear accident, as you would be able to concentrate screening on those known to have been exposed. 650 deaths is terrible, but it is not the world-ending disaster that some portray it to be.
I lost a lot of respect for the German government with their knee-jerk reaction to the events in Japan (although it sounds like this may be as much about electioneering as real concern about safety). At this point, I feel like you can't really look at what has happened in Japan as anything but a success, although that can change at any moment. Yes, there is still danger of a nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, but look at the three other major nuclear installations along the east coast of Japan between Sendai and Tokyo - basically, they survived the largest Japanese earthquake and tsunami in the last 300 years with minimal issues. It is doubtful that the plants in Germany are built to the same standards (no real danger of earthquakes there, and very little likelihood of any kind of tsunami - especially since only a couple of their plants are built along the coast), and yet they are using this massive disaster as a reason to completely abandon nuclear power. It just doesn't make any sense. If anything, the Japanese are showing that reactors can be designed to standards that protect public safety in even the worst disasters.
Nonsense. How many animals can you think of that have caused a global extinction event?
Happy people make bad consumers.
Yes, nuclear engineers thought of this at least 30 years ago. Many of the newer plants, including some ones that were retrofitted, have steam powered pumps for emergency cooling.
With all that said, these do in no way make nuclear power "perfectly safe". For the pumps to work, the right valves have to be open and so on. Undoubtedly there's a way for even the modern plants to catastrophically fail that is most likely far higher in likelihood than the ridiculously low estimates that the reactor designers publish. And each major design revision adds new failure modes.
How would you contain a liquid sodium fire if it's contaminated with fuel products?
No one has ever tested the tertiary containment. The mountain of concrete around the core is SUPPOSED to contain a melted reactor core, but it's never been tested.
Also, at least one of the containment is thought to have a leak to outside somewhere because an explosion caused a pressure drop.
And finally, that containment on this particular reactor design is relatively weak and has known flaws. It might hold the core and it might not. This is why the workers aren't writing off the plant secure in their knowledge that it can take any disaster.
No, it's letting a wastepaper fire burn inside an "explosion proof" safe full of high explosives. Oh, and the safe has never been tested to see if it can take an explosion, and there's 30 year old criticisms saying it won't. And you have stacked up a bunch of other, weaker explosives in crates all around the "explosion proof" safe.
I think he's (she's?) agreeing with you, not trolling. You're both saying that it's human nature to be bad a risk assessment and to overreact to sensational low-risk things like nuclear power and terrorism, while being complacent about commonplace high-risk things like driving and food poisoning.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
There was nothing wrong with the Chernobyl reactor...
Yes, there was: it had a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity. Water-moderated reactors have negative temperature coefficients of reactivity. It is a significant difference.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Not only that but the U is not nearly enriched enough to support an explosion. If you were to take U from a commercial power plant and put it directly in a warhead under all the same conditions as weapons grade uranium, you still couldn't cause an explosion.
Eschew Obfuscation
Japan does reprocess the fuel, or they send it to a safer storage location. It does have to sit around for about 2 years though in order to become less radioactive enough to handle.
Eschew Obfuscation
News outlets seem to be trying to outdo each other in predictions of doom. In reality, the worst case scenario isn't so bad, and even that's not likely to happen. Additionally, the problems of Fukushima are not likely to occur in plants of a newer (4th generation) design.
Who benefits by bringing nuclear power into public disdain? The petro-energy companies, and the speculators of petroleum products. Wind, Solar, etc. do not have the capacity to replace gas, coal, and oil fired electric power plants. Only nuclear energy does. The possibilities of a previously obscure design, that of using thorium and molten salts, promises cheap, efficient, plentiful power. This threatens that Rockefeller legacy and the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia, and Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. They're making their influence felt in the media and government.
If you really want to know what's going on at Fukushima, read http://www.energyfromthorium.com
That's very easy to say in hindsight. As in the 9/11 disaster, this was an unprecedented failure, but right now, there are more fault tolerant gravity-fed cooling designs. What you need to realize with over-designing, is that it involves increased costs. You have to determine the increased costs verses the odds and results of any foreseeable disasters. Maybe back in the 70s, they didn't have enough spare cash to throw around? Or maybe they were just gambling? Who knows.
I know it involves increased costs. Well, them's the breaks when you decide to deploy extremely energy-dense and toxic power sources. Pay to extract, pay to build, pay to clean up. Expensive business, nuclear.
We're working on it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Well to be fair the plant was designed and installed by GE.
Technically, although Fukushima Daiichi 1 and 2 were GE reactors, FD-3: the one that is running MOX (mixed plutonium oxide fuel), was a reactor supplied by Toshiba (a japanese company if I'm not mistaken). If you had to rank something bad happening, well, I'm pretty sure most experts would agree that having plutonium excape into the enviornment would be pretty bad in the scale of things...
Doesn't matter. Chernobyl got hot enough to melt both steel and concrete. At its hottest point, Chernobyl reached 2255 Celsius, and was still at 1600 C after four days. Containment vessels are designed to capture a momentary catastrophic explosion, not to handle a Chernobyl-style meltdown in which uncontrolled fission occurs on a continuous basis over a protracted period of time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, that would be politically incorrect. The correct term is "enrichment", no matter it it makes the state poor.
You're exaggerating. Although it was in the bottom 40%.
100% security does not exist. Car, trains, boats, planes, all have calculated risks of grave/fatal accidents and yet year after year we all accept the possibilities of dying in one of them that are way higher than being affected (let alone killed) by a nuclear accident.
So how strong is strong enough? Suppose for each level of magnitude for the reactor to withstand involves a 10x cost. Would you design a magnitude 12 reactor for 10,000x the cost just so the current situation would never occur? What if the next earthquake was mag 13? What if the next Tsunami is 100 ft tall? There is a point where if they cost too much money, the reactors wouldn't have been made and then what? They just do without electricity?
it involves increased costs
At which point renewable energies start being economically more attractive. That's exactly the problem with energy generation today: non-renewable energy sources appear cheaper because currently polluting the biosphere is free, and the lives of peons affected by the pollution isn't priced much (see the BP oil spill). This shouldn't be the case.
Didn't we already invade Libya in that one Paulie Shore movie?
+1 Disagree
So are you willing to pay at least 2x the current going rate for electricity, and force your neighbors to do so as well? I figure as more natural resources get consumed, nations will eventually have to do as you say, but we haven't reached that point yet.
Economics. Older nuclear reactors are incredibly cheap sources of electricity. Although the older reactors were expensive to begin with, their loans have been paid off entirely by now, leaving only the operating costs of the plant which are very low. As a result, there is an incredible economic incentive to keep older plants operating. If they wanted to replace the older plants with newer ones then they would spend more than $30 billion (!!!) just for Fukushima Daiichi, just to get the same level of power output they have now.
Big tank of water suspended above the plant. 3 Mile Island had this...
Take off every 'sig' !!
The plant survived the tsunami. Nothing much around it did though. Roads are wiped out and the power grid is down.
The plant went through all the emergency fallbacks that they could as an independent entity. No one planned for the rest of the infrastructure to be knocked out for so long.
So I'm wondering, if the containment system can handle a meltdown just fine, why are they going to such great lengths to try to cool it despite having undergone at least a partial meltdown
IANA nuclear engineer, but this is my understanding of the current situation.
First, there is no saving the reactor now that there is a partial meltdown. The reactor cores will have to be decommisioned because of many reasons (potential damage to the reactor containment, radiation all over the place due to the damage to the fuel rods, etc, etc). In fact, I think that at least one of the reactor cores that are currently problematic was scheduled to be decommissioned anyhow (apparently after a while exposing things to a bunch of radiation causes them to wear-out, no surprise there, and you want to decommission it before it reaches the end of it's predicted lifetime).
AFAIK, there are three main things they are trying to avoid: 1. cleaning up will be much easier if the whole core doesn't melt down. 2. nobody knows exactly how much damage the reactor containment received and the probability of how much stuff will eventually leak as a result of that damage. 3. collateral damage to the spent fuel holding area due to excessive heating from the reactor.
Out of an abundance of caution, I'm sure they are considering that the one variable they have possibly have control over is to reduce the potential additional damage that the core can do to the reactor containment by cooling it down as much as possible.
But the main issue that everyone is worried about is #3. The spent fuel is hanging around next to the reactor in a pool of water (if you believe the USA-NRC, an empty pool of water). All that spent fuel is NOT in any type of reactor containment system, but is still hot and could cause a radiological disaster if the fuel rods are damaged allowing the fuel pellets inside to be exposed to the environment. Because the reactors themselves aren't being sufficiently cooled right now, they are apparently heating the pools of water where the spent fuel is being stored (some estimates are that the water is nearly at the boiling point ere the normal temperature is around 70deg). And if you listen to the media, it probably is starting fires in the building that houses the holding ponds. If the water in the holding ponds boils away, there will be a large increase in radiation (because normally the water absorbs some of the neutrons) possibly causing damage to the spent fuel rods. That would be bad.
Of course this always brings up the issue of why are we storing the spent fuel rods in holding ponds near the reactor? Don't know if I can answer that one other than apparently the easiest thing to do from a security/safety point of view (don't have to move them very far after you take them out of the reactor because you want to keep them constantly under water while you move them) and currently, there's no other good place to put them.
This is the very definition of society: do everything you want but don't fuck with the life and future of my kids. Do not pollute their lives. You are not entitled to, however good it feels for you.
By the way to answer your question, I'm willing to pay ten time as much, not only for my electricity but for all the energy I use, and even much more than that. You see contrary to lots of people around it seems, I love my kids very much, including their own kids who aren't here yet. I'd live in a cave and give my blood if needs be to see them laugh and sing and be happy. I don't need all the bullcrap that advertisers are trying to shove down my throat, I don't want it. Like he said: "All you need is love" (I loved that guy very much). Oh this reminds me of a song that I liked so much too
All you need is love and understanding
Ring the bell and let the people know
We're so happy and we're celebrating
Come on and let your feelings show
So I've been watching this fracas for a week now and nobody has yet asked the most obvious question:
Where are the robots?
This is Japan we're talking about for crying out loud. Around the world, Japan is known for two things: robots and tentacle porn. It's unlikely that the tentacle porn is going to offer much in the way of assistance at this point, but god damn, where are all the robots in this nation's time of crisis? The media keeps talking about how the spent fuel in the cooling pools is going to explode and rain nuclear hellfire down upon the huddled masses because nobody can get in close enough to add water to the pools without sterilizing their weak human genitals and/or dying. For fuck's sake, in case you haven't realized, robots don't give a single shit about radiation. Since this is Japan we're talking about, a significant portion of their robotic population probably has genitals too but if those get irradiated, all that will happen is a new genre of hentai will be born.
Japan, I urge you, look upon your library of millions of low-budget films and bring to fruition the event they have foretold: use your technologically superior robots to save the human race. Do it for your people. Do it for the world. Do it for tentacle porn.
For sure. But none of them has the potential for causing such concentrated or long-lasting damage, so our tolerance is higher. It ain't rational, but it's human. No point railing against human nature.
I don't know. I don't much care, as I'm not the one wanting to build the reactors. All I can tell you is, we now know that the upper bounds on the design were an order of magnitude too conservative. It wasn't as though a mag9.0 earthquake was outside human experience. It wasn't something that has never occurred since the Triassic period. It was something that hadn't happened in Japan for a few hundred years.
Obviously, the answer to "what do you do if the cost-benefit tradeoff becomes infeasible" is "try to change the variables (eg adopting an inherently safer design that cuts the costs" or "don't include nuclear as part of the energy mix" or "wait till scarcity of resource changes the balance of benefit once more"
Aknowledging human nature should be the first step towards rationalizing about our fears and being able to put them in perspective to the bigger problems that are still there. And for long-lasting damage... I think cars have already caused much more damage to our environment and our health than 10 Tchernobyls ever will.
There doesn't appear to be an issue with fires in spent fuel ponds according to this article I found (below), and the discussions I've been having here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/18/fukushima-radiation-tsunamis/
Spent fuel heatup following loss of water during storage. [PWR; BWR]
Benjamin, A.S. ; McCloskey, D.J. ; Powers, D.A. ; Dupree, S.A.
Abstract: An analysis of spent fuel heatup following a hypothetical accident involving drainage of the storage pool is presented. Computations based upon a new computer code called SFUEL have been performed to assess the effect of decay time, fuel element design, storage rack design, packing density, room ventilation, drainage level, and other variables on the heatup characteristics of the spent fuel and to predict the conditions under which clad failure will occur. Possible storage pool design modifications and/or onsite emergency action have also been considered.
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6272964
A commenter posted:
>>Importantly, reading the documents introduction
>>& conclusion section seems to indicate that
>>there is a “decay time” of 5 to 150 days after the
>>BWR fuel assemblies are put in the spent fuel
>>pond, after which the fuel assemblies do not
>>reach the critical 850-950C following a complete
>>water drain.
The article seems to suggest it isn't a burning issue, although the radiation would be quite locally intense (within the pool itself) until it is recovered by water. Nothing would be leaking about into the air though. If anyone has a different take on the article share them.
The radition dosage at the gates of the plant were about 10m/Sieverts for a while (1 chest X-Ray per hour) and bumped out to 100m/Sieverts at one point. Source: Wikipedia article, and their sources on it. As others have mentioned, the radition 10km away would be what one would get on a plane trip. If someone said radition dosage of a plane trip, eating a few bananas or smoking a cig or staying at my home, I'd have stayed.
I agree that cars have caused monumental damage. But nuclear plants have the *potential* (thankfully, not yet realised) to cause even more significant damage than that. They have the potential to render parts of the globe uninhabitable by humans for times well in excess of the length of human civilisations.
I think you underestimate how far we are already on our way to make our planet uninhabitable (meaning: for humans who want to keep their current lifestiles). You keep talking about potential problems with nuclear reactors, while if they would all explode tomorrow 90% of the world would still be habitable. On the other hand we've been filling the airs and the seas with so much rubbish that slowly but surely we're poisioning ourselves.
Now, of course I'm not suggesting we should just ignore problems associated with these kind of reactors, but we have too keep the perspective that we're doing massive damage all over the world and most people don't lose a minute's sleep over it, while on the other hand buying iodine pills because of a reactor that's thousands of miles away.
Human nature indeed, but nature also gave us the capacity to learn.
If the next earthquake is going to be mag 13 and the entire facility is built to withstand that, I want to move in and live there NOW. The scale is not linear, a mag 12 earthquake (> mag 13) would be part of a potential planetary extinction scenario. The most powerful "quake" measured is a magnitude 21 quake, also called a "starquake" because it happened on the surface of a neutron star (specifically a magnatar star), some 50.000 light years away. It was so powerful that the aftereffects could be measured in our atmosphere (gamma rays). If it had been less than 10.000 light years away, it would have fried us and wiped out all life on Earth.
So yeah, the people doing the hindsight fandango saying 8.2 was a conservative criterion for the design brought about by evil capitalist corner-cutter needs to get stuffed. There is always going to be an upper limit to what a design can take and personally I think the Fukushima facilities are doing quite well considering how much they got fucked over by mother earth.
Umm, the best modern designs have a big tank of water at the top of the plant, so that a passive feed of water cools the reactor. It eliminates the need for an active electric pump - but you still get a radioactive mess if the piping breaks, and you still get a mess if the water in the tank leaks out from the same damage that killed the main cooling...
Pebble bed reactors are as of yet unproven, and they aren't compatible with existing fuel pellet technology which will drive the cost up.
piping won't break, the Fukushima plant piping was damaged by hydrogen explosion of which the root cause was need for active cooling. You might speculate about a plane or bomb being launched at containment building, but reality is anything short of a tactical nuke isn't going to do much.
1. You do notice that Tjernobyl page being in SWEDISH. I'm not saying that it is wrongly transliterated IN SWEDISH.
I don't speak Swedish, and it would be rather bothersome to ask around for some Swedes to send me a recording of them reading that word. Maybe they pronounce Tjernobyl the way Chernobyl is pronounced in English, I don't know.
But what I DO KNOW is that you don't transliterate "Che" as "Tj" in English. At least not if you want it done correctly.
2. Seriously... Is there some reason you are pushing that straw man? Like what you mentioned above - "God DAMN it, they are RIGHT..." etc?
Cause, I KNOW that you are not that dumb* not to notice that: a ) that word does not have the "Che" voice anywhere in it; b ) that those are examples of transliterations from various languages (as in from slightly different pronunciations of rather similarly sounding words) and c ) when read out loud in English they all sound about the same.
You know - as in completely different from transliterating Chernobyl as Tjernobyl.
FFS, just read those two out loud. This is not the case of Coca-Cola vs Koka-Kola but Coca-Cola vs Totta-Tolla.
And yeah, I know... This is way off the deep end of xkcd-ism and a waste of time and all...
But hey, so are most other "discussions" on Slashdot.
*Not trying to be insulting there, I've been paying attention to your comments for some time as they tend to "pop-out" among others, what with 4-letter nick and 4-digit ID...
And then there is that green pill... candy... light thingy next to it.
And you are generally making rather insightful and informed comments. If anything, I'd swear that you are a rather intelligent and educated person.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Zero. And that includes humans. However, local biological diversity is a different story, and ecological imbalances happen all the time.
Things balance out when the dominating species runs out of resources (e.g. food).
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
We're working on it.
Even if it's caused by human activity AND the entire planet is covered by water, there's still a very rich and diverse marine life.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
The article I linked to is a global event, not local. Also, when the animal in question (humans) is dispersed around the world, the whole globe is "local".
The first hit to biological diversity happened when humans moved into other continents from Africa and encountered the large mammals existing there. These animals, unlike their African counterparts, had not evolved a healthy fear of these strange, small creatures and were readily hunted to extinction.
For an eye-opening account of just how much of an impact we have on the environment, try reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman sometime. You might not be so blasé about the topic afterwards.
Happy people make bad consumers.
So what'd we do, kill the dinosaurs now? How about the dodo? Or many many other extinct species?
Weisman has an agenda. Don't kid yourself. We have an impact, yes, but if we leave suddenly it certainly doesn't mean paradise for those poor, poor animals. Another species will come and dominate, and it'll have drastic impacts on whatever local ecological system they happen to be in. It's just how shit works.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
No on the dinosaurs, probable on the dodo.
Weisman has an agenda? Oh for Christ's sake! Why do I get the feeling this is a case of, "There exists knowledge that might counter my worldview, therefore the person who provides evidence contrary to it is probably suspect and all of the evidence can be ignored." Try growing some balls and challenging yourself sometime.
Apparently you feel that there has existed a species who had a bigger impact on biodiversity than mankind. Name it. The best I can think of are the bacteria that caused the oxygen holocaust, and I don't think that would count since all life then was unicellular.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Try growing some balls? LOL. You need to settle down a little.
Yes, in the lifetime of our planet, there has existed many species who had a giant impact on "biodiversity". Seriously, think outside your own little span of a few thousand years. We haven't been here forever you know.
You assume that things exist as they are without humans being there. Don't be so naive and ignorant. We're only a small part of this planet, and while we dominate it right now, we only have for a VERY brief moment in history. Species come and go. It's simply evolution. Every once in awhile a species is introduced that is so overpowering that it goes berzerk and wipes out everything it can use until there's nothing left for it. It's happened thousands of times, and we won't be the last ones to dominate this planet, either.
Lastly, "probable on the dodo"? Based on what? Provide your evidence that humans are the only species responsible for any animal extinction or shut the fuck up.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Great. Name it.
At a global scale like our species? Name it.
Great. Thousands of species have caused a global biodiversity extinction event. How easy it must be, then, for you to name one. I'll wait.
It's probable that humans were the primary cause of the extinction of the dodo based on this, among others. True, some of it involved humans introducing many new species to Mauritius, but it still makes humans the primary cause. Trying to find a case where humans are the sole cause of an extinction is ingenuine as many factors play a part.
How about I don't shut the fuck up and you take your own advise on settling down a little. Sound reasonable?
Happy people make bad consumers.
ingenuine->disingenuous
Happy people make bad consumers.
Guess what dominates the oceans. I'll give you a hint: it's not us. Until recently when we started overfishing the oceans, it was it's own world that was largely left alone by humans. You can bet it had certain species completely dominating at various times. Did they make some other species go completely extinct directly, acting alone? Probably not directly, but you can bet they played major roles.
Guess what dominated fairly recently ago. Several species of dinosaurs. But oh, I suppose they had zero impact on the survival of less dominant species, huh?
Otherwise, I don't have to name shit. The planet is billions of years old. We're but a drop in the ocean. It's scientific fact that the most dominant species has major impacts on biodiversity. That includes insects. Get over it.
On the bright side, we're the only species that we know of that's capable of protecting and even reversing the destruction of biodiversity. Let's just hope things start leaning more that way and less the other, agreed?
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Oh I realize just how short of a time we have been around. About 4 billion years of life on Earth, 2 million years of hominids and 200,000 years of modern Homo Sapiens. I'm certain I could find examples of a species dominating and taking another species or two into extinction. But I cannot find one example of a single species taking out as many other species in as short a time-span as us. I've looked, and except for maybe the Oxygen Holocaust event I mentioned earlier, I haven't found anything. (I think the legacy of dinosaurs is more a case of preventing other species from flourishing than blighting others out). So unless you or anyone else can point one out to me, I can only assume we're the only one. And that's depressing.
I definitely agree that we should learn how to decrease (and preferably, reverse) the rate at which we contribute to the decline of biodiversity. But a big part of this is making as many people as possible aware of the scope of the problem.
Happy people make bad consumers.