Things Get Worse at Fukushima

An anonymous reader writes "Radiation levels are skyrocketing around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant as reports indicate that a radioactive core has overheated and melted through its containment vessel and onto a concrete floor. Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guidelines."

Comments

Before everyone freaks

[WhitetailKitten]

This is part of the planned failure mode of the reactor. To be sure, it's fairly far on the "stuff is breaking" scale, and there are definite consequences (such as fears of leakage into groundwater). But this is not going to be a Chernobyl-level catastrophe.

However, fingers crossed that nobody else dies. Japan's already had enough fatalities this month.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[WhitetailKitten]

TEPCO has a history of coverups and other shenanigans that the cynical jaded type would come to expect from a large corporate-type organization. However, this is just coming back to bite them in the ass on the international stage, so I get the feeling they won't be so lucky this time.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[dadelbunts]

Exactly. Sometimes when things break, or someone talks too much, just gotta bury them under a shitload of concrete. Im waiting for the day where we can blast our problems into space.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[WhitetailKitten]

Except that they weren't quick to pump seawater. They held onto that as a last resort for a couple days while they tried to get the internal pumps going again. When that didn't work out and it was clear that they had absolutely no other option, TEPCO began pumping seawater in. They did everything they could to avoid writing the reactors off.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[MozeeToby]

The entire complex was being shut down in just a few months, why would they spend all the extra money trying to save the reactors if they were going to be decommissioned anyway?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[The Grim Reefer2]

But this is not going to be a Chernobyl-level catastrophe..

I really hate that the above statement is becoming the bright side at Fukushima. No matter what corporate greed or human error is uncovered in the coming years/months, the masses are going to remember the hysterics of this tragedy and remain opposed to nuclear energy for some time.

Amazingly the damage and deaths caused by Deep Water Horizons and the rigs burning in Japan don't get near the hype. And the number of deaths caused by coal are virtually ignored.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[fishbowl]

Ok, if you have a material science background, can you describe the concrete that would work in this application and how it would be applied?
 

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Anonymous Cowpat]

When that didn't work out and it was clear that they had absolutely no other option, TEPCO began pumping seawater in. They did everything they could to avoid writing the reactors off.

And that's unreasonable because...?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[arkhan_jg]

Reactors 1-4 will never be used again. But burying them in concrete is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Right now, the cores are still hot enough to melt through the reactor vessel if not constantly cooled by constant pumping of (now) fresh water through the coolant system.

Worst case scenario (though not hugely likely) - water stops getting in, or stops cooling the fuel rods, they melt down through the reactor into the outer containment vessel, and there's not enough left of the control rods mixed in to prevent the molten fuel reaching criticality again, and it then gets hot enough to melt through the containment itself, then either contaminate groudwater, or even worse, hit enough water to cause a steam explosion, spreading radioactive elements for miles around.

It's going to take *years* to decommission these plants after the damage they've suffered from the quake and tsunami. No doubt some sort of concrete shroud will be part of the final solution, but right now, keeping control of the coolant flow in both the reactors and the used fuel ponds is the top priority, closely followed by patching any leaks from the containment vessels caused by the multiple hydrogen fires/explosions.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This is part of the planned failure mode of the reactor.

Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far. Why should we believe the company now? How do we know that this is really all part of some planned failure scenario and not simply another unexpected disaster beyond their control and indeed understanding?

But this is not going to be a Chernobyl-level catastrophe.

They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have? These people--and quite a few nuclear proponents around here--told us all that there was "no danger" of any major leak in the days after the tsunami hit. Three weeks later the reactor is a molten puddle on a concrete floor, and now they're telling us we don't have to fear something else. Do you believe them? Would you beleive them if your home was near the exclusion zone?

Need I mention that four weeks ago, all involved would have scoffed at the notion of even the possibility of a meltdown.

Even the Japanese Prime Minister has lost patience with the plant owners and their slipshod operations. How much credibility can we give these people, give to nuclear power? How much can we afford to give?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[poetmatt]

Those plants cost billions of dollars, are incredibly expensive and hard to build (and time consuming and parts of limited supply), and you're even remotely surprised they don't try to salvage them? You do realize that if they just "shut off all plants" when the crisis started Japan would be essentially without power permanently, right? Sure, the nuclear aspects would be safe, but they would be permanently shutdown. Multiple years of investments and infrastructure gone.

Hell, forget capitalism and realize that there are indeed things that happen in this scenario outside of just the nuclear plant, such as "who else is going to provide power now?" (if enough are shut down).

Re:Before everyone freaks

[fishbowl]

If you have a concrete that can set in that environment, and maintain integrity versus the decay heat that under that blanket of concrete, you should be up for a Nobel Prize.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[pixelpusher220]

Human history is littered with, well, litter. We just push stuff over the next hill or into the river and forget about it. We're starting to run out of room to do this without having side effects of leeching into soils etc.

What I find ironic is that by blasting stuff into the sun, we might just be able to 'push it over that hill' in a manner that won't be an issue for literally billions of years.

While our early ancestors surely said "you don't think we can possibly pollute the entire ocean do you?".

Could we possibly produce enough stuff from this planet that we actually effect the sun in any meaning full way? In terms of scale it seems like we might just be able to get away with blasting our refuse into the sun and not see any significant consequences.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Solandri]

Bury the whole damn thing in concrete, and be done with it. This crisis would have been resolved two weeks ago if TEPCO wasn't more interested in repairing and reusing the reactor than the public safety.

Each reactor was written off the moment they pumped seawater into it. The corrosive nature of salt means the steel containment vessels will never pass inspection to allow them be used again to house an active reactor. Reactors #1, #2, and #3 will never be used again. TEPCO deserves criticism for waiting too long to pump in seawater (long enough to allow the rods to become exposed and melt), but refusing to use concrete has nothing to do with it.

They aren't encasing it in concrete because doing so would compromise their ability to continue cooling, and thus practically guarantee the core melting through the steel containment vessel.. TFA is speculation that this has already happened based on one industry expert's interpretation of the reports he has seen. He's apparently forgotten that reactor #2 suffered a hydrogen explosion inside containment early on (near or in the suppression pool, or "torus"). They've been suspecting for a while that they have a containment breech there, allowing water from the core to leak out. The high radiation readings from the water near that area are consistent with that scenario.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Brett Buck]

This crisis would have been resolved two weeks ago if TEPCO wasn't more interested in repairing and reusing the reactor than the public safety.

              You think that running out of electrical power while trying to recover from a stupendous natural disaster is not a public safety issue? And I might add, getting some of the reactors running helps the recovery effort for the rest of the plant, substantially.

        I would also point out that you don't just let a reactor core melt, and pour out on the floor, and cover it with concrete without carefully considering the long-term criticality issues and the long-term durability of the fix.

       

Re:Before everyone freaks

[kevinNCSU]

And if switching sooner caused the boiling seawater to leave enough salt buildup behind that they could not be cooled and thus causing a meltdown you'd be screaming at them for jumping to seawater immediately. It makes sense not to take that risk until it's clear you need to. Considering the astronomical costs of failure and cleanup it's unlikely anyone is giving much weight to the cost variable for possible solutions.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Chris Burke]

"Cynical jaded type"? Come on! All you have to do is to keep your eyes open for a while to see that this is indeed typical behavior.

Cynicism is just realism plus experience.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, Unless climbing out of this pesky gravity well becomes very very very cheap, I'm pretty sure garbage isn't going to be launched at the sun, It would also be worth considering that today's garbage is tomorrows archaeology or perhaps even tomorrows mineral/raw material mine. Dumping matter into a fusion furnace does put it pretty much beyond use.

If we were more selective about our waste (say spent nuclear fuel) then

A) what about an accident during launch (scattering radioactive material over a large area)
B) The mineral question is also interesting, current nuclear material consists of rare elements, of which only a small finite supply exists. It is not inconceivable that other uses might be found for said nuclear waste in the future....

Re:Before everyone freaks

[pixelpusher220]

Nuclear has few operational issues, but significant failure issues.

Coal has significant operational issues, but few failure issues.

Both have significant 'waste' issues

We *can* filter the coal exhaust to remove the things that cause the more direct deaths. CO2 is perhaps a bigger issue but something that mitigation may be able to handle.

As we're seeing, there simply isn't anyway to 'mitigate' failure of a nuclear reactor. Sure we can take some steps, but when the definition is failure, some of those steps stop working and you're back at square one.

It's a lot easier to mitigate the normal running operation of a system than to mitigate the issues when that system experiences catastrophic disaster.

I'm no fan of coal, but it will be around for decades. I just wish we would use this 'event' to see the true downside of nuclear and move our investment money towards sustainable power.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[jjohnson]

How could North Korea get light artillery within range of Fukushima? And what could they gain besides a nuclear barrage of Pyongyang?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Rene S. Hollan]

Except, the energy required to blast our garbage to the sun will probably create more garbage in its production than the garbage blasted away.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[geekprime]

Hmm,

here's a graphic with the sun and planets drawn to scale, http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/interior.html

I don't think the sun would notice if we threw the entire planet in to it, From that page
"the radius of the Sun is about 109 times that of the Earth, which implies that the volume of the Sun would hold approximately 1.3 million Earths"

Re:Before everyone freaks

[atrain728]

What kind of light artillery has a range of 600 miles?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[antifoidulus]

And it doesn't help that the boss is essentially hiding out in his pillow fort instead of working to try to coordinate the effort, be a public punching bag, or doing anything better than hiding. Fuck at this point taking the warriors way out and killing himself would be a boon to TEPCO and Japan.....

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Talderas]

I didn't realize North Korea had artillery capable of being fired 1000km.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[MozeeToby]

Because salt water can cause a salt build up on the fuel rods, making them much harder to cool and making meltdown more likely. Or does that not jive with your evil corporation narrative?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Toy G]

No, the announced closure was just postponed in February for another 5 years at least, with a view to get an additional 5 years on top of that after a bit of maintenance.

Reactors cost huge sums to build, nobody really expects them to last only 30 years; 40 is the bare minimum to get some returns from the whole operation, anything on top of that is pure profit... which is where the REAL interest is, of course.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[WhitetailKitten]

Not to get off-topic, but I think even North Korea isn't crazy enough to do that, because the response from Japan and its Western allies would be to bomb North Korea back into the Mesozoic Era. Shelling a disabled nuclear power plant to expressly turn it into a dirty bomb when the country's already suffering a three-hit combo of quake-tsunami-reactor isn't just an act of war, it's being a dick on a massive scale.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[AGMW]

Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.

Well, to be fair the reactors were built to withstand an 8.5 (or so) earthquake and it was hit by a 9.0 ... I've also seen footage of a 10 metre high 'tsunami' wall being breached by a 10 metre tsunami because (and you might want to sit down for this one) Japan sunk about a metre. That sort of thing can seriously play havoc with your disaster plans!

Now, sure, in hindsight they could have built to withstand a bigger earthquake and someone could have decided 10 metres wasn't enough (actually, I don't know how high the tsunami defences were here?) ... but actually, given the size of the quake and resulting tsunami I reckon the designers/builders did a pretty good job.

I also seem to recall there were calls to replace them with newer designs which were stopped ... was it the green lobby? The new/er/est designs have a far safer failure mode, and maybe they'd have taken the opportunity to beef up the designs to withstand bigger 'quakes?

All that said, if the company running the plant has been stupid then they certainly need to pay the price, and hopefully the next gen to be built will all learn massive amounts from these failures.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[dgatwood]

Ironically, this whole crisis was caused because they did precisely that—the reactors shut down automatically for safety reasons, and then they had no power with which to keep the pumps running because the diesel generators were underwater. Had pretty much any one those reactors not automatically scrammed, it is likely that things would be in better shape than they are now.

And what folks should take away from all this is that reactors should auto-scram only when they detect a coolant leak, not because of an earthquake that merely might cause a coolant leak. Or at least that's what should happen for older reactors like these that require active cooling in a scrammed state.

No, scratch that. The takeaway should be that reactors that require active cooling in a scrammed state are fundamentally unsafe in a seismic zone and should be replaced with newer reactors as soon as possible.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Americano]

The earthquake happened on March 11. They began injecting seawater into Reactors 2 & 3 early on March 14, and by March 15, all 3 reactor cores had been subjected to this, as well as seawater being injected into the containment buildings as well for at least Reactor 1 & 2.

"Many days late" makes it sound like they dicked around toasting marshmallows for a week while the reactors melted down. The best you could argue would be that they should have started flooding the reactor cores with seawater immediately on March 11, when they had no idea what sort of damage had been done to the reactors by the quake or the tsunami - flooding in seawater may have made the problem worse by damaging a marginally-functional cooling system to the point where it would stop cooling things.

But, since you're apparently a nuclear engineer, how quickly - in your professional judgement - should they have written everything off and concluded that seawater was the only possible way to cool things down? I presume you have access to all of the data and information that the Japanese engineers have access to, as well?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[vlm]

Concrete is a mixture that's water-based. Start with some dry concrete powder (or some Jell-O Instant Pudding), and your radioactive water becomes radioactive concrete. Then, put more concrete on the outside of that to put as much mass between fish and isotopes, and you're golden.

The part the grandparent post is making fun with is "if you have a material science background". One thing I do know about, is ceramic linings for metal melting furnaces as I've built some. I have in fact poured my own aluminum castings and machined them on my own lathe and milling machine. This necessitates considerable research and book reading about melting furnaces, etc.

First of all, heat plus solid concrete = powered concrete ready to add water. Red hot and concrete do not go together. Red heat breaks down cement. Cement plus heat equals dust. Concrete plus heat equals dust and gravel. Industrially at (relatively) low temperatures it takes hours to break limestone into cement, so at reactor temperatures it'll likely literally never "set up" into a solid. Plain ole cement aka burned lime quicklime whatever is limestone with the water of crystallization burned out of it. Then you add the water back in and it sets up into artificial limestone. Did you know the pyramids in Egypt are made of "limestone" or is it cured cement? There is a pretty interesting book on that topic. Plain ole cement is pretty cool technology. But it is beyond an epic fail at high temps.

Now you can buy ultra high temp ceramic coatings for furnaces, kilns, etc.

Problem 1) very low strength. Like puddle under their own weight. You're likely to end up with a white hot reactor surrounded by a glass puddle.

Problem 2) explodes and fractures on contact with water and thats everywhere down there in the reactor and on the coasts.

Problem 3) as generations of steel mills have learned even the best ceramic coatings turn back to dust after at most a year or two of use. So you've bought a year at best, now you have the same problem plus a megaton of mid level contaminated concrete. Ugh.

Problem 4) It would take an epic amount of high temp ceramic coating to cover the plant. Not in stock, the harbor is wrecked, its too heavy to airlift, and which country will volunteer to shut down their steelmills for a year until more can be made? This is the stuff where a little "salt bag" sized bag weighs about 100 pounds. And you need like a million of those bags. Hmm.

Problem 5) Cements in general are porous at a like ionic level. Right now, say, 1 percent of whats in the reactor has leaked out. Lets think about this logically, if 100% had leaked out into the sea, the plant would not be an issue anymore... Anyway, if you concrete it, that guarantees that 100% of the reactor core will end up in the ocean (eventually) and it 100% guarantees they will not be able to get at it to stop it (because its buried under concrete).

Problem 6) Learn what distillation and vapor pressure are. Right now, at least some isotopes are solid and can't fly away. Encapsulate it in a great insulator like cement, it'll get hot enough all right to make an even bigger more dangerous mess.

So in the short term it doesn't really do anything other than blow a lot of money and look very busy. Once the reactions cease and it cools, slapping some concrete on it might isolate it from the environment, for at most a couple decades, at most. Sooner or later you'll have to clean it up and the concrete will just get in the way.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Sponge Bath]

"...shouldn't several TEPCO executives have commited ritual hara-kiri or seppuku by now?"

Allow them the honor of placing the first ceremonial bags of concrete on the melted core themselves.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[cpu6502]

>>>Bury the whole damn thing in concrete, and be done with it. This crisis would have been resolved two weeks ago if TEPCO wasn't more interested in repairing

This is a dumbass comment.
Just as dumb as when you posted it two weeks ago.
- The melted nuclear fuel will react with the concrete and emit noxious gases that could kill thousands. And even if it hasn't melted yet, it will continue to grow hotter inside the concrete until it does. Then there's potential for leakage out the bottom, and into the underground water.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Chris Burke]

If we can ever apply 30 km/s of delta-v to objects cheaply enough that we're considering doing it for our garbage, I'd like to think that we can 1) find better things to do with that delta-v and 2) find better things to do with our garbage, like recycle it since the energy cost is obviously no longer a concern.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Anonymous Cowpat]

All GP did was claim that TEPCO tried every option which involved not writing the reactor off first, before pumping seawater in. At no point has the allegation be made that they risked catastrophic failure by doing that.
If they were genuinely risking a catastrophic failure by not immediately pumping in seawater, then I agree that to not do so was unreasonable.
But that is not the allegation WhiteTailKitten made.

All that was alleged was that they tried to avoid wrecking the reactor if they could help it, and when they couldn't avoid wrecking it, did. That does not strike me as unreasonable. Don't forget, Japan is now facing rolling blackouts across a large swath of the country for a year or more because there just won't be the power-generating capacity available. That calculation was surely known when they decided not to immediately flood the reactor vessel with seawater.

Reckless and stupid would be allowing the reactor to get too hot in the hope that it would do less damage than pumping in seawater. However, pumping in seawater, guaranteeing substantial loss of power-generating capacity, before it was necessary to do so would have been irresponsbile.

Allowing the situation to develop and shifting from one option to the other when the balance changed seems to me to have been the best thing they could have done.

If that what actually happened? Was that the point when TEPCO changed their response? I don't know. But what I do know is that GP didn't allege any facts which would lead someone to conclude that TEPCO acted unreasonably, but still expected the reader to imply that this proved TEPCO acted unreasonably.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Tmack]

If they were so unconcerned with saving them, why did they wait on the sea water? they could have done that days sooner but didn't because it would render the reactors useless.

Because then you end up with radioactive salts to deal with. Pure water will cool without transporting radiation, since theres nothing in pure water that will take on the extra particles. Salt also accelerates corrosion, and when the water boils away, it leave a nice crust all over everything, possibly clogging pipes/pumps/valves, as well as adding insulation to stuff thats already too hot.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[vlm]

You do realize that if they just "shut off all plants" when the crisis started Japan would be essentially without power permanently, right?

In a cold winter like this, where it snowed on some of the victims, it would literally be a genocide to shut off the electricity. Not the handwaving hype from TV but real genocide, as in rapidly no heat, no food, no (clean) water, no (treated) sewage systems on the entire island. Its already like that in the worst of the areas, but the rest of the nation is more or less unharmed... Until you pull the plug on them.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[rmstar]

This is part of the planned failure mode of the reactor.

Calling the core meltdown in Fukushima a "planned failure mode" is... Orwellian.

A week ago, none of this was possible, and just a ridiculous scenario due to fearmongering by some hysterical tree huggers. Now we have a confirmed meltdown and now it's a "planned failure mode". Wow.

You guys are truly beyond repair.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[ColdWetDog]

Ahh, this particular sarcophagus? Or did you have a better one in mind?

Re:Before everyone freaks

[leenks]

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.” -- Bernard Shaw

Re:Before everyone freaks

[vlm]

They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have? These people--and quite a few nuclear proponents around here--told us all that there was "no danger" of any major leak in the days after the tsunami hit. Three weeks later the reactor is a molten puddle on a concrete floor,

They don't need any credibility at all. BWRs are not a zillion ton charcoal briquette like Chernobyl. You can't light the worlds largest charcoal briquette on fire and vaporize the works... if there is no charcoal briquette. From a credibility standpoint, sure with security theater you could sneak out the BWR and sneak in a RBMK and no one would notice (snicker) but lets be realistic here...

If the reactor is puddle on the floor, thats good, compared to Chernobyl where the briquette vaporized it for us to breathe... I'd much prefer it melted in a containment structure there, than vaporized here in my air.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[lgw]

Coal has significant operational issues, but few failure issues

Coal mine fires are a huge problem, and have killed more people and left more land uninhabitable. As a kid I lived not so far from the Centralia fire, which started burning in 1962 and is still burning - and all my friends will back me up that none of us started it. And then there's the Door to Hell.

The energy stored in the fuel of a nuclear reactor is high, but small compared to the energy stored in large fossil fuel deposits.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[1s44c]

This is part of the planned failure mode of the reactor.

Like crumple zones are part of the planned failure mode of cars. Just because it could have been very much worse doesn't mean this isn't a huge clusterfuck.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[PitaBred]

Nothing stirs irrational fears like the words "terrorist", "think of the children" or "nuclear"

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Chris Burke]

without RTFA :-D, by interstellar space do you mean out of the solar system? that would seem to take more energy than sending it down a gravity well wouldn't it? (ignore the earth launch costs obviously for now)

Yeah, he means it's easier to achieve escape velocity for the solar system than to slow down enough to hit the sun.

If you could somehow place an object in space so that it was stationary with respect to the sun, then you would be correct and the object would naturally just fall into the sun.

But the earth is moving at 30 km/s perpendicular to the sun, so to get that object to be stationary, when launched from the earth, you need to add 30 km/s of delta-v.

Escape velocity for the solar system, on the other hand, is 42 km/s if you start at earth's distance from the sun. Which is only 12 kms/s faster than earth itself is already traveling. So that's actually easier.

Counter-intuitive, no? But so it goes.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[radtea]

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.” -- Bernard Shaw

The clearly the /. editors or the dimwit who submitted this story are not cynics, because they certainly lack the power of accurate observation. This report speculates that the reactor pressure vessel may have melted, but for some unaccountable reason the summary suggests that the containment may have been breached.

There are probably better discussions out there, but here's my take on the reactor design, which includes a pretty picture from Wikipedia that gives an idea of the difference between the pressure vessel and the containment.

This story is pure sensationalism by abstraction and amplification. The mental health effects of fear due to misinformation, sensationalism and lies surrounding nuclear accidents of this type are far greater than the physical health effects, and I dearly hope one day the ignorant assholes who promulgate these kinds of sensationalistic accounts get their propper cumuppance: a massive class-action suit brought by the victims of their voyeuristic fearmongering.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Tmack]

Ironically, this whole crisis was caused because they did precisely that—the reactors shut down automatically for safety reasons, and then they had no power with which to keep the pumps running because the diesel generators were underwater. Had pretty much any one those reactors not automatically scrammed, it is likely that things would be in better shape than they are now.

Thank you Captain Hind Sight, BUT Not sure how a runaway critical reaction is a better outcome than the current situation. If the SCRAM units did not kick in, the reactors would remain critical, and the state of the rest of the plant would be unknown. What happens if the quake knocks the control rods out of alignment, or disrupts the turbines that generate the power, or bends/cracks/breaks the coolant lines? With a critical reactor the designed power output is up in the 1.1GW range, anything going wrong that could disrupt the cooling systems gives that power nowhere to go, and 1.1GW (or more, if the reaction does actually run away) is a whole bunch of power to concentrate in one spot. SCRAM units take a maximum of 4 seconds to fully insert the rods to stop the reaction, leaving little time for anything else to break and prevent their use. It was the 100% correct thing to do. Even IF the tsunami didnt wipe out the generators AND POWERLINES (remember, it took them over a week to run a new powerline to the plant) between the plants, and one stayed operational, running pumps with nothing in them to pump does little good (cracked cooling line/evaporated coolant/steam releases), as does powering broken pumps or pumping coolant through broken lines (they still arent sure the pumps or lines are operational in some of the buildings).

What went wrong, besides under-designing the seismic and tsunami resistance of the plant, was placing the generators in a position where a tsunami could wipe them out. Had they been on the roof, or on/in an elevated structure (like the top floor of the reactor building itself??) and as protected as the rest of the facility they probably would have remained operational, and kept the coolant flowing long enough to get mains power back without anything reaching any worrisome state.

Newer fail-safe reactor designs are in evaluation as this is all happening. It takes YEARS to get anything rolling with these plants, you cant just switch them out one day. It is the goal to replace the old ones, it just takes time and lots of $$.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[leenks]

I was purely commenting on my parent and not on this story.

I fully agree with everything you are saying, and I feel this story is going to do nothing but fuel anti-nuclear movements which I don't think the world can realistically afford at the moment.

These reactors were old too, but this disaster (which was beyond what they were designed to withstand) is going to impact negatively on nuclear power for decades even though the overall impact is far less than any other power source we have available to us today.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[0111 1110]

well, we are orbiting the sun, so just kind of "letting go" of something lighter than ourselves would cause it to shoot off into interstellar space.

What do you mean by "letting go"? Do you mean giving an object escape velocity from the earth? To get to interstellar space it would also have to have enough velocity to escape from the gravity of the sun.

So basically if we had something smaller than the earth moving around the sun at the same velocity as the Earth

You mean like the moon? Or an orbiting spacecraft or satellite?

it would be going fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity, though it would have to avoid a few planets on the way out!

Are you talking about somehow "turning off" the gravity from the sun briefly? What you are saying doesn't make any sense to me. Are you implying that the moon, if it were not so close to the earth would simply automagically leave the solar system rather than staying in orbit around the sun?

This idea of turning off gravity is a curious one. Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to? If we could somehow turn off the earth's gravity but not the sun's we could all literally jump off the earth (actually since the planet rotates we would presumably be thrown off), but we would still all individually be in orbit about the sun. To get farther away from the sun you have to accelerate either tangentially or directly away from the sun or some combination of the two.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[sznupi]

One which travels, say, 97% of that distance on some moving platform...

Re:Before everyone freaks

[angel'o'sphere]

Reactors cost huge sums to build, nobody really expects them to last only 30 years; 40 is the bare minimum to get some returns from the whole operation, anything on top of that is pure profit... which is where the REAL interest is, of course.

While this is true, it is only the tip of the iceberg of the economic problem.
Tearing down a Reactor and storing it (as waste) costs roughly ten times as much as building it.
If you can postpone that, by either continue using it as power producer *or* as exhausted fuel rod storage, you make/safe a lot of money.
angel'o'sphere

Re:Before everyone freaks

[hey!]

Well, I'm not freaking, but I'm not happy either. When the hydrogen explosion killed some of the workers on the roof, that was a failure that had been anticipated in the design: the outer building bad blow away panels to limit the damage from a hydrogen explosion. It wasn't the hydrogen explosion per se that bothered me, but the fact they had guys on the roof when there was significant hydrogen gas below them. That made me doubt the operators' ability to assess the state of the situation in real time.

I'm sorry to say that events since then have not improved my estimation of how accurate and timely TEPCO's picture of the situation is. There have been a series of alarming, unexpected events, almost too many to list. Until the situation stops generating nasty surprises, I'd say all bets are off as to how bad this situation *might* get. I say this fully recognizing how effective the defense in depth safety features have been so far at preventing a Chernobyl scale incident. I don't *expect* such an incident to occur, but the unexpected is the characteristic feature of this crisis. If I were a Civil Defense planner, I'd be quietly preparing for a much worse than I'm hoping for.

It is absolutely true that compared to the tsunami, the Fukushima reactor situation has been relatively minor, but that's not exactly the benchmark I'd want to set for nuclear power safety (don't have an accident as bad as a magnitude 9 quake followed by a coast length 10m high tsunami). There is a potential for a one-two-three punch here: quake, tsunami, radiological disaster. Japan is on the ropes. It's people are valiant, but they are vulnerable. In this situation a radiological disaster wouldn't have to be anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl to be psychologically and economically crushing.

I'm not anti-nuclear by any stretch of the imagination. The problems in this situation are (a) the obsolete design of the reactors and (b) TEPCO management. It is clear that the combination of these two has produced a situation of such complexity that nobody can say with any certainty what is going on, or what is going to happen. You don't have to be an anti-nuclear fanatic to see this. This system continues to behave in *majorly* unexpected ways. Yes, even in an acceptably safe design there are surprises, but the surprises appear to be cascading, and that shouldn't happen in an acceptably safe design. There's really no way of getting around that. This design isn't good enough, this company wasn't good enough, and the regulation of these reactors' operation wasn't good enough.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[geekoid]

No it isn't. It is exactly that: A type of failure they planned for. IN fact, every nuclear reactor plans for it.

A) no reasonable person ever said this was hysterical fear monger. In fact, they where designed to do this.
B) In the design, training books and documents that is a failure mode. It's a bad one, but it has been planned for in the design.

Please stop making things up.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Americano]

Jesus christ, do you have the least understanding of how these reactors work? It takes months for them to cool down safely under normal circumstances. This means that they need the cooling systems to not break down and corrode away even after they have power back on. This means that injecting seawater into the reactor could make that eventual cooling-down even more risky, as the seawater leaves all kinds of impurities and salts behind when it boils away - clogging up cooling system components, and generally making the system less efficient.

THIS is why they want to avoid pumping the reactor full of seawater. They began pumping in seawater the NEXT DAY after the tsunami struck. That was a "last ditch" effort - not because they were trying to "save the reactors," but because they were trying to "save the cooling systems" for the months-long process of safely cooling down the reactors until they can be fully shut down and the fuel safely removed. If you prevent a meltdown today, and end up with a meltdown tomorrow because you destroyed your cooling system, what the hell difference does it make?

They weren't trying to "save the reactors" if they were pumping seawater into them on March 12 (tsunami struck on March 11). It is entirely reasonable for them to have tried to see if they could get power back to the cooling systems in time to prevent having to take cooling steps that would cause widespread damage inside the reactor and the reactor cooling system, which will now hamper their efforts to cool down the reactors safely indefinitely.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Anthony Mouse]

Just because it could have been very much worse doesn't mean this isn't a huge clusterfuck.

It sounds a lot like the fire code made sure that everyone made it out of the building alive but now you're upset because the fire department tracked mud on the carpet and soaked all your furniture with their fire hoses.

And now you want us to stop building houses and live in tents, never mind that the house that caught fire was made of wood and the houses being built today are made of brick.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Thing 1]

I don't think the sun would notice if we threw the entire planet in to it

Ah, but if we threw 10% of the planet into it, we might end up cutting billions of years off Earth's life expectancy through a more-rapidly decaying orbit... Perhaps throwing it onto the moon would make more sense? The combined "body" would still have the same mass, and we'd have the nearby-availability of the waste for when we develop sufficient technology that can use that "waste" as an input.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.

This is the Godzilla Argument.

Why didn't they plan for a 46' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a 600' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a Godzilla attack (being in Japan is just a poetic coincidence)?

No matter how good the plans are, something worse can happen. So, rather than building a 700' sea wall, they went with their best predictions. Turns out they were wrong. If a comet had hit the ocean instead, they'd be even more screwed. Heck if a comet hits the Atlantic, all the nuclear plants on the US East Coast get wiped off the map.

They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have?

To people who understand what happened at Chernobyl and what is happening at Fukushima Daiichi, plenty. It's not impenetrable knowledge - Wikipedia has all you need to know. Also check out the Union of Concerned Scientists daily updates.

Re:Before everyone freaks

[Lemmy Caution]

If you include the economic value of the area that may have to remain depopulated around Fukushima, how does it stack up?

My own position on this is: I don't like anti-technology hysteria. But I also don't trust the nuclear energy industry, I distrust the hubris of many pro-nuclear advocates, and I'm not a nuclear scientist. I don't entirely trust nuclear scientists, either - not that they are being willfully deceptive, but that they can sometimes deceive themselves, because they are, at the end of the day, also liable to a kind of peer-pressure and group-think. I have no idea what will happen with Fukushima, but I've whiplashed between being anti-nuke to pro-nuke to a stubborn skepticism all around.

No!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait! I learned everything I know from Slashdot, and Slashdot says nuclear power is safe and no one will get hurt.

None of this leaking stuff can be happening. La-la-la-la . . . I can't hear you!

Re:No!!!

[Dan667]

the oil and coal lobby certainly want you to fear nuclear so the can continue to kill you slowly with coal plants that emit radiation and smog. Oh, and the wars for foreign oil.

Re:No!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Power is not safe. Period. Anyone who says that is simplifying the truth.

The question is how dangerous (as in injuries and deaths per unit of energy) the various ways of producing electricity are. I'm not so sure that this accident will make any qualitative change to the picture. Nuclear is still going to be the safest option. Wind is also quite safe, but wind needs to be supported by hydro and natural gas (AKA fossil gas) and those are neither safe nor good for the environment. Wind would be a good alternative if there was a safe and clean way to store energy.

Re:No!!!

[sjames]

So who received a "major" dose of radiation? A number of people have received a maximum safe dose. They will not be sent in again. They are also not "the public". Certainly they are a lot better off than many industrial workers injured or killed every year.

Re:No!!!

[polar red]

there we are again with the base-load crap again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_power_source#European_super_grid

"Containment vessel"

[Dr. Cody]

Just to be clear, they are absolutely not implying it has melted through the containment, but, rather, the reactor pressure vessel.

Re:"Containment vessel"

[dingo8baby]

exactly. excuse me for being rational, but i'm not about to take an article from the Guardian as hard fact before it's reported on, say, the iaea website. I actually find it rather offensive that a site like /. would post this alarmist nonsense.

Re:"Containment vessel"

[Solandri]

TFA seems to have forgotten that reactor #2 suffered a hydrogen explosion inside containment

Enough hydrogen was also produced within the reactor vessel by the interaction between water and hot fuel to cause an explosion at each unit when this was vented to the secondary containment. For units 1 and 3 this removed the top part of the reactor building. At unit 2 this may have taken place in the torus, causing damage there.

They've been suspecting they have a containment breach in reactor #2 for about two weeks now, in or near the torus / suppression pool which is connected to but sits beneath the main containment vessel. So the presence of highly radioactive water underneath it isn't really a surprise. No need for the core to melt through the steel containment vessel for that to happen.

The mystery right now is the burns the three workers suffered a few days back. They were working on reactor #3, not #2. #3 was also suspected to have a leak in containment, but their latest readings say that the containment vessel is not losing pressure, which would seem to imply there is no leak. So where did that radioactive water come from?

Re:"Containment vessel"

[SmilingBoy]

Wrong.

That's how it really goes:

Primary Containment: Fuel Rod Cladding (probably damaged in blocks 1 to 3)

Secondary Containment: Reactor Pressure Vessel (probably intact in blocks 1 to 3)

Tertiary Containment: Thick Concrete Containment (that's the one you forgot) (largely intact for blocks 1 to 3)

Quaternary Containment: Outside Reactor building (very damaged)

So where does the radioactivity come from? Probably mainly from the suppression chamber in block 2, which is damaged, and which has a connection with the RPV and the turbine building.

Re:"Containment vessel"

[Daniel Dvorkin]

excuse me for being rational, but i'm not about to take an article from the Guardian as hard fact before it's reported on, say, the iaea website. I actually find it rather offensive that a site like /. would post this alarmist nonsense.

Here we see the inevitable conclusion to the "rationality" of the nuke-nuts: they will deny any facts which conflict with their preconceived ideas about how wonderful nuclear power is, and accuse any news source which offers such facts of lying. I swear to God, they're as bad as the "nukes are bad, mmmkay?" Greenpeace types, just in the opposite direction. I'm a big fan of clean, safe nuclear power, and I believe we should keep trying to develop new types of reactors which will provide power efficiently while standing up to natural and manmade disasters -- and this kind of "la la la I can't hear you" denialism is not helping in the effort to achieve that goal.

The *real* shame in all of this

[elrous0]

They've set back nuclear energy for decades, at a time when we most need it.

Guess we had better get used to more carbon dioxide.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[Prikolist]

Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is (you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[halivar]

Fukushima is not a modern plant.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[colinnwn]

Fukushima reactors are by far NOT a modern plant. It was about the oldest design still considered safe to operate in the West. Chernobyl was such a dangerous design, and omitted so many safety systems, that it NEVER would have been licensed to operate in the west, not even in the 1960's.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[The Grim Reefer2]

Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is (you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.

It's a GE designed plant that is nearly 40 years old. At least one of the reactors were scheduled to be decommission within the next couple of months. It's neither a modern plant nor "by the gods of technology, Japanese".

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[elrous0]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.

Just building the transmission lines for that kind of project is going to be overshadow the scale of the whole TVA project. And who's going to pay for it? Do you think the American people (or the people of other countries) are willing to make *real* sacrifices for that, when it really comes down to it? Oh sure, ask any American if they support solar/wind and they'll say "Yes." But try rephrasing it as "Would you support a 50% income tax increase to pay for investments in solar/wind infrastructure?" and see what they answer.

Believe me, I would love nothing better than a country running exclusively on clean energy, with solar panels and turbines everywhere. But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).

And that's not even getting into the issue of countries and areas that don't get enough unobstructed sunlight and wind. What's going to happen to them in this utopia?

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[klingens]

It was a very modern plant once. What do you think how "modern" the currently built ones (the few ones that are... finland one is the only one which is built right now) are in 40 years? Just as outdated, just as much nuclear waste no one knows what to do with. Nuclear energy is a dead end from an economic and public safety perspective and always was. The only reason for it to exist is armament, either real or potential.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[Ash Vince]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.

Just building the transmission lines for that kind of project is going to be overshadow the scale of the whole TVA project. And who's going to pay for it? Do you think the American people (or the people of other countries) are willing to make *real* sacrifices for that, when it really comes down to it? Oh sure, ask any American if they support solar/wind and they'll say "Yes." But try rephrasing it as "Would you support a 50% income tax increase to pay for investments in solar/wind infrastructure?" and see what they answer.

Believe me, I would love nothing better than a country running exclusively on clean energy, with solar panels and turbines everywhere. But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).

And that's not even getting into the issue of countries and areas that don't get enough unobstructed sunlight and wind. What's going to happen to them in this utopia?

Firstly, you are probably right. We cannot possibly generate the same amount we do at the moment if we use just wind and solar power.

The arguments for solar power though are not about replacing the current methods we have, they are about supplementing them. You mention transmission lines in your post when talking about building them, but you do not need to with wind and solar as they can be used at the point electricity is used to supplement the national grid. Transmission lines are the least efficient part of our current power grid.

There is a large part of the US that could spend a few dollars on solar panels and a small wind turbine for their roof and then vastly cut down on their own electric bill. They might not reduce it to zero but they could reduce it by a large margin. Also, over here in the UK when people do this they can sell their surplus (day rate, more expensive) electricity to the grid when they are not using it and then use that as a credit against the cheaper night time electricity they actually use.

Solar and wind power might never replace all our current nuclear power plants, but they are not meant to. Instead they can be used to supplement it, and as energy prices go up and up it makes more and more economic sense.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[squallbsr]

The Chernobyl reactors are not using the same basic designs as the Fukushima reactors. The biggest difference between the two is the GE Mark I reactors at Fukushima are Boiling Water Recators and use water as a moderator, Chernobyl reactors are RBMK designs and use graphite as a moderator.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[uberdilligaff]

You are absolutely correct. I would love to see the proponents of solar and wind "solutions" provide a quantitative model showing how they would be able to provide a large fraction of total US electrical capacity -- say 50% or even 25%, and what it would cost, including transmission infrastructure.

Worse yet, the NIMBYs block almost every project to erect even simple power distribution trunk lines.

In the real world, it is necessary to choose among the feasible solutions that offer the best benefit-cost prospects. None is without risks, including all the fossil, nuclear, and "green" technologies. It is completely irresponsible to simply say "we shouldn't do nuclear, because it's dangerous". The real problem for nuclear is that only a tiny fraction of the populace understands the physics of nuclear power, and even fewer understand the engineering that controls it, but everybody reacts to the hysteria and fear that is propagated by the media.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[maxume]

If you did that math, you got something wrong. Insolation is petawatts, human power use is less than 20 terawatts.

The sun striking the atmosphere is on the order of 100 petawatts. Less than that is available on the ground, but it is still something like 1/1000 of the surface of the Earth to meet all current energy needs.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[hawguy]

Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is

Yes, because solar cells are made from sugar and spice and everything nice, and don't have any toxic components.

What will you say if a tank of Cadmium waste leaks from a solar cell manufacturing plant, contaminating ground water and causing injury and death. (and who's to say that it hasn't already happened, since we've offshored most of our solar production.)

All power production has risks and can cause injury or death. The question is what level of risk is acceptable, and it needs to be looked at on a per-kwh basis. Solar hasn't killed many people yet, but it's still in its infancy -- there's around 20GW of installed capacity now, the output of a few nuclear plants.

(you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.

This is by no means a "modern" plant - it's a 40 year old plant with a reactor designed by a USA company 50 years ago. More modern designs have passive safety built-in, so no active cooling is required.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[hawguy]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.

I wouldn't say they are entirely pipe dreams - solar has great potential to provide daytime "peaker" power, but neither solar nor wind can be counted on to provide consistent baseload power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even Southwestern US desert locations frequently scouted as ideal solar sites are subject to clouds and rain for parts of the year.

Coupled with grid energy storage mechanisms, Solar and wind can be an important part of an energy strategy - but only a part.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[elrous0]

I actually looked into solar panels for my house a while back. If I completely covered my roof, it was going to cost $25,000-$30,000 and would generate about 40-50% or of my energy costs (assuming pretty consistent sunlight). At that rate, the panels would take about 40 years to pay for themselves (assuming they never needed replacement and never needed any maintenance, which seems unrealistic to me). In the end, barring a huge spike in electrical energy costs, they just weren't even close to practical. And considering my back roof is partially in shade, I'm not sure even those numbers were realistic. And the installer was telling me they would never need any maintenance, and I don't buy that for a *second* (I've never encountered any electrical system outside of nature that could run for 40 years with absolutely no maintenance).

It's nice to think we could all throw up solar panels on our houses and be done with it. But that shit is an EXPENSIVE up-front investment (and would take a very long time to pay for itself). And people in apartments or high-rises wouldn't have even that option.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll just build fast breeder to take care of the nuclear waste problem. Oh wait, we can't because ecologists don't want us to. Can't have the nuclear industry solve its waste problem: that'd be one less argument for us. Unacceptable.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[deapbluesea]

Real numbers to work with:

• Assumptions:40d lat, summer day, 8 hours of light
• Amount of solar energy reaching the surface: 600 Watts per sq meter
• Amount in a day: 4.8KWh per sq meter
• Amount in a year (assuming 365 sunny days): 1.752MWh

Global electricity usage in 2009(est): 132,000 TWh

Total sq meters needed for 2009 usage: 75342465753 sq meters or ~274km x 274km, roughly twice the total amount of land used in California for agriculture in 2007

Of course, this all assumes 100% efficiency of conversion and transmission as well as 365 days of 8 hours of direct sunlight. So there's your theoretical maximum, and it's still an extremely large number all things considered.

Just for fun, assume 250 sunny days with an average of 6 hours of sun, and 30% conversion efficiency. I'm assuming the usage estimate already accounts for transmission loss as part of global electric usage: ~700x700km would do it in this case, roughly 70% of the total land area of Texas.

Conclusion: You can do it, but it would take an awful lot of space. If you want citations for the numbers above, I'm feeling too lazy to put them in, so go google it yourself.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[elrous0]

Three Mile Island was contained and didn't hurt anyone, but it still essentially ended all nuclear power plant construction in the U.S. People are irrationally afraid of the nuclear boogeyman. The press exploits this for ratings, people freak out, and anti-nuclear activists use it as ammo for years to come. Even if the Japanese reactors are completely contained today, with no more radiation release and everyone living happily ever after--it's still too late. The damage to the public perception of nuclear energy has already been done.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[Solandri]

That's pretty much the conclusion I've reached. By cost, solar (20-45 cents per kWh) is currently nonviable except for places with extraordinarily high electricity costs (e.g. the more remote islands of Hawaii) or extraordinarily strong and consistent sunshine (e.g. the desert Southwest U.S.). Wind is getting there, down to about 7-12 cents per kWh wholesale, compared to 3-5 cents for coal.

But the biggest problem I think people are overlooking for wind is the sheer scale of the wind farm you need to replace a decent-sized power plant. Roscoe Wind Farm is the largest wind farm in the U.S., with 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from land-based wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25% capacity factor. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average.

A single AP1000 nuclear reactor generates 1154 MW. Figure maintenance and other reasons will drop that to about 90% capacity factor, or about 1000 MW. A plant will typically have at least two so one can remain operational while the other is shut down, so 2000 MW for the plant. How big would the wind farm need to be to replace that?

2000 / 195.4 = 10.3x bigger. To replace two AP1000 reactors will require nearly 6500 turbines covering over 4000 km^2. Each turbine requires 100-200 tons of steel, so that's around a million tons of steel. I don't even want to think about the transmission lines needed to string them all together. And wind turbines cost about $1.2 - $2.6 million per MW of peak capacity. Since this hypothetical wind farm has ~8000 MW of peak capacity, that's $9.6 - $20.8 billion in construction costs. The AP1000 reactors are estimated to have a total construction cost of about $4-$5 billion each. So $10 billion for two of them would actually line up with the low end of an equivalent wind farm's construction costs.

4000 km^2 is about 1% the land area of California. In 2010 California generated about 200 TWh of electricity, or an average of 22 GW. So even if you assumed lots of areas are as wind-productive as Roscoe Wind Farm, and that we developed some technology which could store 100% of generated electricity for later use, California would need to cover 11% of its land area with wind turbines to replace its current electricity generation with wind. That's a bit far-fetched to say the least.

Wind and to a lesser extent solar are not the panacea a lot of people seem to think they are. They're going to primarily be supplemental power generation technologies for a long, long time. My hopes had been on deep well geothermal, but that's run into significant problems of its own.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[fritsd]

Were you bitten by a rabid ecologist as a child?
If the Fukushima reactors had been molten Sodium fast breeders, we'd have had much more "effect" of the emergency cooling with seawater, and containment would not have been an issue anymore :-(
Doom IV promotional video: Monju nuclear reactor sodium leak accident footage
Hint: the Superphénix Wikipedia article uses the following words for the decommissioning phase:

A public inquiry was launched in April 2004 to consider plans to set up a plant to incorporate the 5,500 tonnes of sodium coolant in 70,000 tonnes of concrete.

Actually it might be a good idea to use it for Carbon Capture and sell the resulting soda for household use ;-)

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[polar red]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_power_source#European_super_grid

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[EatAtJoes]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that.

Yeah it really takes guts to be a raving pro-nuke on Slashdot, taking potshots at renewable energy. You really bucked the trend, there.

What really rakes in the mod points on Slashdot: any realistic argument surrounding the horrific health impacts of nuclear power. Nothing gets nerds excited like references to the devastating consequences of Chernobyl on the surrounding population (like say ... Scotland).

Much braver to make the daring claim that "nobody ever died because of a nuclear accident", because all of the respected epidemiogists sounding the alarm are really luddite shareholders in wind and solar companies right? When I want the real dirt on public health, I always ask .. a physicist or nuclear engineer, because they care about health first!

Also gutsy: crying crocodile tears for "all the mine workers killed by coal". Only an evil anti-nerd environmentalist would fault corporate negligence in failing to observe basic safety precautions leading to the needless deaths of thousands of miners. Good thing that nuclear is so safe we don't even have to worry about corporate negligence!

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't disagree with your numbers, but your final conclusion on dedicating 11% of california to wind power is a little off. A single wind generator takes a plot of land that's a few hundred square feet. Between the generators is generally farm land (at least in the Midwest it's that way). The farmers have tons of productive land, and they mostly love the few grand per year that the power companies pay them to rent the land for the generators. Very little productive land is lost when a wind farm is build in an area.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[geekoid]

A modern plant waste returned to back ground radiation level in 200-500 years, depending on the material used.

Do you know how much nuclear waster there is? not really all that much.

Then what is the purpose of Japanese plant? you can't built weapons with them, only electricity.

And, yes a modern reactor, as in todays technology will be out date in 40 years, that doesn't means it suddenly becomes more dangerous.

Please learn about the scope of nuclear power generation. Frankly it's criminal the green peace has spread such lias an ignorance that we still build BWRs.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[geekoid]

Wind isn't going to work on a large scale, you are correct.

Solar has 3 legs.

Efficiency, Manufacturing Cost, Availability.

Being able to improve one of those legs will drop the consumer cost dramatically.

So home Solar, at the very least, will become an aid to the overall energy.
Now, industrial solar furnaces can give us a lot of power. They should be part of our national solution, along with Nuclear. Meaning there should be government projects to built plants and resell the power at cost.

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[angel'o'sphere]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.

Sorry, I don't want to debunk every little sentence, however the whole block I quoted is completely wrong and nonsense.
If you would place a solar thermal power plant covering whole Nevada you could produce 100 times the energy the planet needs right now.
If you would use the coast of three random states in the USA, like Oregon, Florida and perhaps Texas to place there wind farms it would cover the energy needs of the USA 2 or 3 fold.

You simply don't know anything about energy production ... 99% of the people don't know anything about it, so it is not your fault.

But repeating the lies of the energy companies is no good.

Believe me, I would love nothing better than a country running exclusively on clean energy, with solar panels and turbines everywhere. But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).

Dude, you sound like a politician. Starting a sentence with "believe me" is utter fail.
Anyway, if you had studied the "numbers" as you claim, you would not write such bullshit.
Perhaps you have problems with where to put the decimal point, my apologizes if that is the case.

angel'o'sphere

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[angel'o'sphere]

In the real world, it is necessary to choose among the feasible solutions that offer the best benefit-cost prospects.

That is a misconception. In the real world the ordinary citizen does not know what the cost-benefit prospect is.
The oil the USA (and the world) is getting so cheap is "secured" by endless war since 1970 (roughly). Do you really think the "sudden" revolutions in the middle east are happing just so?
The low price for energy you pay, is payed with taxes that are fueling your war machine. The war machine is making sure you get the energy you want. If the price for the wars would be in the energy bill, you would see how much you in fact pay. But you don't see that ;d

Anyway, as a hint for your future:

The real problem for nuclear is that only a tiny fraction of the populace understands ... but everybody reacts to the hysteria and fear that is propagated by the media.

This is a very important/bright sentence.
Let me rewrite it for you:

The real problem for renewable is that only a tiny fraction of the populace understands ... but everybody reacts to the hysteria and fear that is propagated by the media/government/energy companies.

You get it? You are convinced that renewables wont ever work because that is what you got told the last 30 years. And you believe it ... but that does not make it true.

Ah, my hint, which I wanted to give:
Just turn around every sentence you hear and put in the opposing side and the opposing argument ... then think about it.

angel'o'sphere

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[MrKaos]

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists.

Fucking Karma whore. You know that's *exactly* what many people here feel. I, however, will probably get modded down by all the pro-nuke-ler ignorant arrogant assholes because I'm saying there are better ways to make power WHILE A FUCKING NUCLEAR REACTOR IS IN THE PROCESS OF MELTING DOWN.

It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.

Bullshit. REAL renewables have yet to see any significant industrial investment and all comes down to political will. Where is your research? I bet you've got none and are just lying. So here is some I've dug up;

Nuclear power: economics and climate-protection potential uses industry and government data and finds that, globally, nuclear power is already being outpaced by better means of electricity production. It finds globally, as far back as 2006, more electricity was being produces from low-carbon and no-carbon competitors. Even without subsidies decentralised electricity generators provide almost three times the output and almost six times the capacity of nuclear power, that's kinetic vs potential energy. Energy efficiency means alone are shown to provide ten times the capacity of the nuclear industry.

Even the pro-nuclear 2003 MIT study found that every ten cents spent to buy a nuclear kilowatt hour (1 kWh) could be used to generate 1.2 - 1.7 kWh of gas fired electricity, 2.2 - 6.5 kWh of co-generation (combined heat and power) from industry or 10 kWh of energy efficiency methods.

Wind power is already whooping nuclear ass. Back in 2004 it globally outpaced nuclear by six times in annual capacity. With short lead times, farmer friendly, rapid technological development I suspect this will grow after the fukushima disaster.

America is blessed with so much wind and sun power you don't even need nuke-ler bower, so why don't people like you have the imagination to utilise this resources that ends your dependency on oil and nuclear.

Oh sure, ask any American if they support solar/wind and they'll say "Yes." But try rephrasing it as "Would you support a 50% income tax increase to pay for investments in solar/wind infrastructure?"

Ask them if they would like a Fukushima style disaster near them with a General Electric reactor commonly installed around the U.S. I bet there is some hidden failure mode waiting in any one of those reactors - Just as the japanese have recently discovered. Tell them they can save money on CHP and then ask them if nuke is a viable alternative when an electricity company will rent their land to put up wind power - and they can still have their crops or cows.

But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).

Please surprise me and share your valuable research with us. Show me the numbers and I'll do some real research.

And that's not even getting into the issue of countries and areas that don't get enough unobstructed sunlight and wind. What's going to happen to them in this utopia?

Reeeaally, altruism is a motivator now, as if. What a serious load of Bullshit you have produced. I bet you feel good getting that load out, karma whore. You pro-nuclear idiots have hit a new low *WHILE* a meltdown is occuring you trumpet the lie for all to hear, fucking pathetic. It's one thing

Re:The *real* shame in all of this

[angel'o'sphere]

Dude,
that was an example, ofc you place small plants all over the world and not one singel plant in Nevada. Or do you really think germany for example wants to replace its oil/gas dependency with an electric current dependency?

Also, meanwhile it pisses me of a bit:
Why is the first question always "how much does it cost"? That is the WRONG question! The correct question is: how much will it cost in the long run if we don't do it now but continue to postpone it and emit more and more CO2?

But it becomes a lot harder when you start thinking about how impractical it is to ACTUALLY implement it.

Sorry, that again is your cliche. Our cliche in your eyes is: we are solar fan boys with no clue. But you fall into the same dumb cliche just from the opposite angle.
Power lines need to be build anyway all over the world. Most new power lines will switch to DC instead of AC anyway. The new infrastructure we build in europe and likely soon in north africa is perfectly suited for solar plants. Keep in mind, thermal plant just works like a nuclear plant or coal plant. There is not even anything else needed to connect them to the grid.

Wow, and now you even ask which government has the money to fund it? So you suddenly know that the nuclear plants where government funded?
Anyway, you don't need any extra funds, the energy corporations can build them on their own money.

You people neer look at the big picture. You are asking question over question which makes no sense at all. Nevada was an example for scaling! Not for placement. You put them all over world ofc. And in USA you place them where you feel fit, preferred where you have a bit more sun. You ask about materials and mention solar panels, WTF a thermal plant has none! Maintenance costs are very very low. Military costs are just the same, who cares if you have to "defend" 100 coal and nuclear plants or 100 solar plants? It is absolutely no difference.
The plants get administered by the same guys that do the coal and nuclear plants now.
You ask about infrastructure and you completely neglect that for coal/oil we already had enough money to built it. Why should we not be able to repeat that? Or do you think all the oil tanking ships just popped up from nothing?
Solar plants have so many advantages ... no fuel, no waste nothing to transport. Simple maintenance, low crew requirements, etc.

BTW: what are NIMBY people?

No offense ... in 30 years we will have a mainly solar based energy generation in Europe/North Africa anyway. We NIMBY people (what ever that is supposed to mean) don't really care if you in the USA want to continue to live in the energy stone age.

angel'o'sphere

Media Hysteria?

[Frosty Piss]

There are, as well, media sources that say this *isn't* so, and that this is mostly a Media Hysteria. For example: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/29/tv_news_goes_hollywood/

a radioactive core has overheated and melted

[wiredog]

Or, from the Beeb:

Theories for the leak centre on two possibilities: steam is flowing from the core into the reactor housing and escaping through cracks, or the contaminated material is leaking from the damaged walls of the water-filled pressure control pool beneath the No 2 reactor.

Nuclear technologies

[MetalliQaZ]

This disaster will very likely change the way that nuclear power generation plants are approved and evaluated in the future. Unfortunately, a promising technology will almost certainly be set back, perhaps irreparably. The silver lining, however, is that alternative nuclear technologies may finally get a fair shake. Alternate fuels and reactor types offer so many possibilities to possibly exceed the efficiency and safety levels that we put up with today but have thus far been unable to obtain funding compared to the currently developed reactors. That confidence in our current strategy is being eroded rapidly. This isn't some second-rate system like Chernobyl, it is close-to-state-of-the-art.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[WhitetailKitten]

Here's the thing: The reactors at Fukushima are ~40 years old and contain a design flaw that essentially caused this to happen. Newer designs for water boiler reactors have the water flow in via gravity feed instead of requiring manual pumps running on external power. While it's certainly possible that other problems might've caused a newer reactor to suffer potential meltdown, it's very likely that we would've never seen this occur if Fukushima Daiichi had a gravity-feed water cooling system. The takeaway should be that nuclear power plants need to be upgraded to keep up with the times, but unfortunately I think you're right, and the takeaway will be "OMG NUCLEAR BAD."

Re:Nuclear technologies

[shadowfaxcrx]

The reason they've been unable to obtain funding is because they've been unable to obtain authorization to build it. If you come up to me asking for money to build a plant that is illegal to build, I'm not going to give you any money.

And the reason it's illegal to build safer plants is because the public lumps ALL "nukyulur" into the same "oh shit it's dangerous" boat. It doesn't matter what tech you use, or how safe it is: to the public, you're building Chernobyl Mile Island Daichi and must therefore be run out of town.

Hell, when they started irradiating food to kill bugs that could kill people, they found that they couldn't sell it. They had to coin a new marketing word (picowave!) so that the mouthbreathing morons that make up most of the public wouldn't think someone had slipped plutonium into their frozen peas.

So until we get the public over its irrational fear of anything radioactive, we will never see nuclear technological advancements applied. Ever.

And as I said yesterday, once we get the public over that fear, we still have to address the *real* problems of Nuclear: What to do with the waste, and how to stop cheap bastard energy corporations from cutting safety corners in the name of profits.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[Iskender]

That confidence in our current strategy is being eroded rapidly. This isn't some second-rate system like Chernobyl, it is close-to-state-of-the-art.

I see your point about investigating alternative reactor technologies. However, the Fukushima reactors are certainly not state of the art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_boiling_water_reactor reactors for instance are already in operation. Generation III reactors are currently the state of the art of reactors in operation, and the Fukushima reactors are firmly in the generation II category.

The Fukushima reactors have no doubt had safety upgrades during their lifetime, but there's only so much you can do when the fundamental reactor design is antiquated.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[0WaitState]

The reason the public lumps all nuclear power technologies into the same hopper is that they are all run by the same corrupt management culture. Management cuts safety margins, defers upgrades, miscategorizes more frequent natural disasters as once in 1000 years, all the while paying themselves performance bonuses for having improved operating margins. Then the "nobody could have foreseen" event happens, and we the taxpayers have to spend 10s to 100s of billions cleaning up the mess. If the nuclear industry had to post an insurance bond against their future screwups there would be no nuclear industry.

This isn't a technology problem, it's a regulatory and human problem.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[squallbsr]

I think the reactions from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents have actually made nuclear power much more dangerous than it would be today if these major disasters hadn't happened. We would have probably advanced our reactor designs and have had safer reactors as a result.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[HiddenCamper]

the pool of water below the reactor (in this case in the torus) is designed to quench vented steam and reduce pressure in the reactor. under normal conditions, when the reactor is pressurized, there are 2 emergency core cooling systems available to the core. The first is HPCI (high pressure coolant injection), and is an active pump meant to get water on the fuel. the second is RCIC (reactor core isolation cooling), and uses steam from the reactor to run a turbine and pump water into the core. RCIC requires only batteries....and that your suppression pool is below boiling point so it can quench the steam. If the plant had electrical power, and they had a leak or a failure of the high pressure systems, they would vent all their steam to the suppression pool and run their low pressure core spray and low pressure coolant injection systems. the plant i'm at has 3 LPCI pumps and 1 LPCS pump. these low pressure pumps are designed for flow, not pressure, and are capable of fully filling the reactor vessel in all but the worst pipe breaks (double guillotine shear in the recirc lines). and even in the worst condition, provided you still have electrical power, the water that is lost funnels down through pipes back into the suppression pool where it can get run through heat exchangers, cooled, and pumped back into the core repeatably. if you dont have power, the core has relief valves that automatically lift in safety mode without power if the core has too much pressure. this vents to the suppression pool. i dont know if the pool has relief valves or the containment, but you then would need to manually vent the containment to keep the pressure down enough to inject water in. during the accident, i believe unit 2 had too much pressure build up in the core and that stopped seawater injection for a while. they had to release the pressure to allow the pumper trucks to get water back in.

Re:Nuclear technologies

[TheSync]

"Nuclear would be fine as long as it was strictly regulated by a 3rd party uninterested in profits (read: the government)"

And who, exactly, was running Chernobyl, and what was their viewpoint on profits?

Re:Nuclear technologies

[angel'o'sphere]

How do you 'cut safety margins' on newer reactor designs which don't require active cooling?

By making the pipes 10% thinner, but adding a bit more paint on the outside so no one realizes at the first glance.
By using not the "super expensive non corrosive steel alloy" which is designed for it, but the next best cheaper variation.
By having vents that open much earlier than they should and releasing radioactive steam, to "protect" inside structures that are expensive to replace.
By drawing all the required tripple fold power lines inside the building but only connecting 2 sets, saving the payment for the workers. (ofc with the never executed plan to have them connected by your own workers later).
By not doing test runs for your backup power generators with all generators simultaneously but only powering half of them up as you plan to switch to the other half next test run. (Needless to say that the staff is always testing the same generators and the other ones are never tested ... ) Ah, well I nearly forgot you talked about plants that don't need active cooling ... anyway, your infrastructure will need back up power nevertheless for metering and displaying and operating valves etc.
Sorry, I don't have the report of "corner cutting" at hand right now ... over the last 30 years we had like 6000 of such events/incidents in germany (we have like 30 nuclear plants, or well, perhaps only 22 or something) And, keep in mind: that are the corner cutting or near accident incidents which made it into the books ...

far more people have been killed by coal plants than nuclear.

Against popular believe (your statement is false anyway): all nations have more coal plants than nuclear plants. Or produce more energy from coal than from nuclear plants .... oh, I said all ... WTF, I'm getting old: except for Japan ofc.

BTW:

was at a reactor run by communists

The people that where running that reactor would likely kill you if you would call them communists. I for my part don't know why americans seem to hate communists ... but the people who have suffered under so called communist regimes hate communists much much more. (To say it blunt: 99% of the americans don't now anything about what communism is and what it is for and against what it is ... but that is a different topic)
angel'o'sphere

Re:Nuclear technologies

[MrKaos]

Here's the thing: The reactors at Fukushima are ~40 years old and contain a design flaw that essentially caused this to happen. Newer designs for water boiler reactors have the water flow in via gravity feed instead of requiring manual pumps running on external power. While it's certainly possible that other problems might've caused a newer reactor to suffer potential meltdown, it's very likely that we would've never seen this occur if Fukushima Daiichi had a gravity-feed water cooling system. The takeaway should be that nuclear power plants need to be upgraded to keep up with the times, but unfortunately I think you're right, and the takeaway will be "OMG NUCLEAR BAD."

Please, get a clue. This has nothing to do with the technology of the reactor. Stopping this accident would have taken a flood proof diesel generator. Stop beating this up to say "we need new reactors". You need to stop talking and start listening to *existing* safety research and start *implementing* the design modifications that have been around for decades.

TEPCO had 40 years to install appropriate backups and seawalls based on real science. This whole disaster is a case of criminal negligence at an executive level in much the same way BP was in the gulf of mexico.

The sooner you accept that Nuclear power is a dangerous temperamental fickle ten headed hydra that wants to kill you the sooner you will have safety means that are appropriate to the operations of a nuclear reactor. Even then you don't call it safe, you say it's under observation for the next thing that can go wrong. Besides any REAL effort at making ANY new reactor design safe would start with it being UNDER GROUND so that mitigating an emergency becomes a matter of flooding the rector cavity, you'd even design it so that it could recover from an event like this and factor the decommissioning into the design.

Mitigating an accident like this would then become a matter of disassembling the reactor in a pre-built moderator housing everything with enhanced underwater industrial techniques.

Still speculation

[toppavak]

"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."

Sensationalism and denial

[gatkinso]

This is what I see on this board.

It is an interesting mix to be sure.

The situation seems very bad, but headlines screaming "radiation at 10,000,000 times the safe limit" (which turned out to be wrong) are not helping.

Worse seems to be the nuclear fanboys ignoring the fact that that plant is fsked, in precisely the manner that antinuclear folks said could and eventually would happen.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

The plant is fucked. But it's been hit by a disaster beyond what was even planned for. And how many have died?

The point isn't that nuclear is perfectly safe. It's that it's better than many of the alternatives out there.

Look at how many people did as a result of coal and oil operations. Then factor in the pollution that those technologies spew into the atmosphere.

Now compare that to Nuclear. Including this disaster. Some people who work in the plant have been exposed and been hurt. I recall reading a week ago about 3 killed in a hydrogen explosion at the plant (I've not seen this confirmed). But what will the eventual impact be? ARe we talking about a 50 mile exclusion zone where a big chunk of Japan will be uninhabitable? Thousands geting sick with radiation poisoning?

Or are we talking about a 1% increased risk of cancer for folks who worked and lived in the immediate vicinity during the month after the incident?

Because if the eventual results are the latter, I'd rather have a nuclear plant in my back yard than a coal plant.

Coal WILL pollute the environment.
Coal WILL increase my risk of various diseases.
Coal often kills people in it's extraction process.

Nuclear MIGHT pollute the environment if something goes very, very wrong.
Nuclear MIGHT increase my risk of cancer if something goes very very wrong.

If that's the choice, then it's clear to me which one I support. The question now is will the disaster kill / sicken lots of people, or not?

It's not denial, it's an analysis of the options. It seems to me that the disaster is being sensationalized because nuclear is somehow "spooky". Again, we'll see.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[sulimma]

> But it's been hit by a disaster beyond what was even planned for.

And this is what I find strange: In 1896 a tsunami larger than 30m has occurred in Japan. Tsunamis higher than 10m have occurred a couple of times. Yet, the power plants at Fukushima where designed to withstand only 5m waves. How many other relatively frequent desaster scenarios are there in the world where it is know that the plants are not designed to cope?

The rest of your argument basically is that the mean pollution for nuclear power is relatively good. But every poker player knows that you can't simply optimize the mean result. You also need to take into account the variance.
Nuclear power has the potential to render whole cities inhabitable. It might be worthwhile to accept some disadvantages to make sure that does not happen. This is like paying for an insurance: You mean results get worse but the variance is improved.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[Iskender]

You are not conducting "analysis of the options". You are making a strawman argument: "If not nuclear than coal and nothing else".

Coal has severe drawbacks. Nuclear has severe drawbacks. We are better off without either. Moreover, the nature of nuclear (hazards, costs to develop, waste management) make it a poor choice for transitioning away from coal to technologies that are superior to both. Nuclear may have its place, but replacing coal is not an appropriate application.

We might be better off without either, but that's not the way it works. Unless nature has given your country wonderful hydroelectric or geothermal opportunities (Norway/Iceland), you'll have to generate large amounts of electricity some way. And it turns out that way always contains coal/oil/nuclear.

Grandparent's argument would be a fallacy except it describes how things actually work out in the real world. And why would it be any different? Coal and nuclear are the only energy options that don't care much which (industrialized) country wants to use them: wind/solar can't provide baseline power and have NEVER powered a country, gas isn't available even nearly everywhere, oil is ridiculously expensive, hydroelectric depends on location and is often already fully utilized etc.

Face it, until someone comes up with a comprehensive (meaning working) solution to provide the electricity for societies coal and nuclear will always be there, and when either falters the other one will pick up the slack. And yes, I'd love 100% solar power too, but it's just not happening yet.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

No, but I do think that the energy source that kills hundreds every year directly, and untold numbers anally, and pollutes the biosphere when things go RIGHT is inferior to the method that has killed perhaps a couple dozen people in half a century of use.

Do you not agree? Why or why not?

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

I have heard of renewable energy, and support it's use as much as practical.

But I am operating under assumptions based on the data I've seen. These assumptions tell me that even if we used solar, wind, and hydro to the limits that we can, we'll still need other sources to fill in the gaps. The question then becomes, what fills the gaps? Gas? Oil? Nuclear? Coal? Something new?

I don't understand what you mean by "adequate insurance". What damage do you think has occurred? Please exclude Chernobyl, as it's an outlier design that's not used elsewhere.

Exactly what insurance do you think three mile island should have had to ensure a better outcome than the one they had in which nobody was hurt? Or are you talking about monetary liability insurances? Because that's a whole other matter.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

I have looked, and looked. Perhaps I am not looking in the right places, but it is my understanding from the research that I've done THAT "Clean Coal", Carbon Sequestration, and other technologies that are here today or expected to be available soon still emit tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. They reduce or eliminate CO2, and reduce some other hazardous chemicals, but so called zero emissions plants are not online and research on some of them has been pulled due to cost overruns.

You speak as though an environmentally friendly method of coal based energy production is available now and in use. Can you go into more detail about what you're talking about?

Your claim that there is a coal based technology where only "hot water and steam" come out seems to be incorrect.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

Citation needed!

Who got "fried nads"? When did this happen?

I'd rather have soot than have a windmill fall on me and kill me. But who said that was something that would happen?

It seems to me that people are scared of things that haven't been demonstrated to be actual risks, instead of things that are demonstrably toxic if used as directed.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[PyroMosh]

Yes! Excellent summary.

I'd expand that though. Nuclear doesn't even necessarily kill when it goes wrong (although clearly, it can). Who's died at Fukashima so far?

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[thegarbz]

Call me crazy but we need some kind of statistical measure such as deaths per TWh of generation.Oh that's right we have those:

Nuclear 0.04 deaths/TWh
Coal 161 deaths/TWh

So now that we have that info, how about we decide to minimize the deaths occurring rather than deciding HOW they occur. You scared of coal yet? NIMBY, give me a bigarse modern nuclear reactor thanks.

Re:Sensationalism and denial

[MS]

You ask how many have died? We don't know it right now, as the radiation will decay slowly, so the death-toll and (what's worse) the people dying of cancer and leukemia will rise for many generations. In Cernobyl babies are still born crippled - after 25 years of the disaster!!!

Any other incident lasts only a few minutes: earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, dam-breach, mine-breakins, ... The victims are countable and the rebuilding may start the day after the incident.

Wile with a nuclear incident, the surrounding area (and we talk about areas the size of an entire state!) becomes uninhabitable for thousands of years! :-(

Any nuclear risk, as small it might be, is too much risk. There exists only one single nuclear plant world-wide, which is 100% secure: it's in Austria - it was never turned on. :-)

Re:F*ck You, Shima!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Given the progression of events thus far, I'm not certain if we can really rule this scenario out.

Look at the State of Baden-Württemberg!

[Kensai7]

Most probably Fukushima Daichi will have to be sealed. The nearby communities will eventually be safe. But uncertainty about nuclear power travels FASTER than the nuclear fallout in all cases. A state election in a premium German state was lost by the reigning government because it supported nuclear power plants...

It's a bitter sweet evolution, if you ask me. Yes, current last generation plants are unsafe and should be closed down the sooner the better, but this will definitely hurt industrial research for future IV generation power plants which are definitely safer than any other form of major power generation...

Re:The End of Nuclear Power

[dadelbunts]

Or this will lead to stronger safety regulations. Oil drilling is a very messy process with recent negative impacts but we will still continue that as well.

Re:F*ck You, Shima!

[Xunker]

He didn't have to. Have you SEEN the ANIME that has been coming out of Japan for decades? Thousands of Manga authors already predicted it! Let's hope the predictions of two-wheel-drive electric motorcycles and sexy, sexy robots also come true.

Nuclear Energy

[should_be_linear]

Nuclear (and coal) energy always seemed to me like old mainframe computers and renewables like Internet (distributed), modern, interesting, R&D. We just need to jump to new and abandon old. It will be difficult, but I think it is FAR from impossible. I know there are lots of people here on /. hypnotized by how great nuclear is. but I just prefer distributed everything better (including risks) as opposed to centralized.

Re:Nuclear Energy

[LWATCDR]

Funny thing is that IBM is still selling mainframes and making a mint out of it. They have even stopped making PCs. Oh and giant cluster computers like Google runs on are also big large installations. Plus things you depend on like your bank, power company, telephone network, insurance companies all tend to run on bit mainframes. BTW those big mainframes have uptime's measured in years and decades and really don't fail.

So you want a power grid with the reliability of twitter?

Distributed systems for power is what we already have. You may think the nodes are too big but the simple truth is that when dealing with any systems like this there is an ideal node size. The cost, efficiency, and reliability all tend to go up as the node size goes up to a point. To go with a computer example take a look at modern super computers. They do not use clusters of Atoms they cluster the biggest CPUs that are available as COTS parts.
In any distributed system you want to use the largest possible node and the fewest possible nodes that you can and still have a comfortable level of redundancy.

Plus renewables are expensive and not reliable. Im again if instead of one nuclear plant the tsunami wrecked 100,000 solar plants, and 10,000 large wind turbines. The replacement costs and times would be just as bad if not worse than with this power plant. Some of the reactors where cold when the tsunami hit once this event is over they can hopefully be brought back on line and restore a good amount of the power deficit that they are having.

Re:Nuclear Energy

[NoSig]

So you want a power grid with the reliability of twitter?

An American can dream... :(

Easy to fix?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guideline."

So the right thing to do would be to change the current exposure guideline. Right?

Cue for the following response

[Compaqt]

1. This is actually proves nuclear is so resilient.

2. We should build more nuclear plants.

3. It was designed for the biggest quake we ever thought could happen.

4. It was the big bad tsunami that caused the damage, not the earthquake.

5. Nothing has happened, nothing is happening, and nothing is going to happen.

6. We can trust whatever TEPCO is saying.

7. People fall off of roofs.

8. Windmills kill people.

Re:Cue for the following response

[Coren22]

Interestingly enough, every one of those but #6 is true.

Remote Extensionals?

[Zelig]

I've been wondering, as we watch this problem evolve, why they didn't insert robotic remote hands ASAP. This is Japan, after all. What am I missing?

On the XKCD scale...

[NightStriker]

For those keeping track, this is 1 yellow square on the XKCD chart.

Re:On the XKCD scale...

[Colonel Korn]

It's actually one red square - the measurement was off by a factor of 100 and later corrected.

http://www.eimai.in/incorrect-measurements-that-led-to-alarm-in-fukushima/3348/

Re:On the XKCD scale...

[blair1q]

That chart is so fucked up. I wish people would stop posting it as though it's magically insight-conveying.

In particular, yes, 1000 mSv is one yellow square, but look at the white block containing the miniaturized copy of the red diagram next to the yellow squares. The red blob in the lower-left of that picture is 8 Sv, but is about half the size of 8 Sv's worth of yellow blocks next to it.

Add in the blithe combination of different time scales for exposures (Using a CRT for a year is next to One day in Colorado is next to One X-ray), and the vast tolerances for some of the entries, ("in a short time, but varies"), and the chart alone makes my skin blister.

If you're willing to do the scaling math yourself, you can compare one item to any one other item at a time. But as an overall indicator of relative values it's disinformative.

Re:The End of Nuclear Power

[dadelbunts]

I really hope that isnt the case. Kind of off topic but do all these people in the "green" movement support nuclear energy? Kind of retarded to push clean electric cars that are powere by electricity generated from coal burning plants.

This is corroborated by nobody

[sirwired]

This is speculation by ONE guy in an article in the Guardian, hardly a bastion of calm, rational, journalism. NONE of the other usual online sources have corroborated this at all.

An actual meltdown, with the core sitting on the floor of the building, would be front page news across the world, yet only this one article says this is the case.

Re:This is corroborated by nobody

[the eric conspiracy]

Yes, I agree. There are a lot of other indications that the leakage is unlikely to be a primary containment breach, including the fact that the reactor seems to be retaining a lot of pressure. I also think the reactivity would be a LOT higher than 1 sievert/hr and the temperature would be a lot higher than the reported 300C.

All in all this is very probably another scaremongering story with an 'expert' speculating on a variety of possible scenarios floating a theory that really doesn't fit many facts.

Re:This is corroborated by nobody

[iggymanz]

more importantly, the IAEA hasn't corroborated this at all. If it isn't here it didn't happen: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Control rod penetrations in pressure vessel?

[1zenerdiode]

The article above seems to be fear-mongering. This washington post article discusses what seems to be a more plausible failure mode. Apparently there are gaskets around the control rod penetrations in the bottom of the vessel, and the temperature may have increased enough to damage them allowing primary water to escape into the concrete containment structure. There are also many other penetrations in the vessel for plumbing that may have been damaged during the quake.

Renewable Energy enough, why not use it?

[jeroen8]

Our sun, a nuclear fusion source which is already working reliably for more than 5 billion years, produces an extreme amount of energy. Within 6 hours, deserts on Earth receive more solar energy than we use in a whole year globally. Why do we keep ignore this most power full energy source? For the world energy demand (18.000 TWh) we need only a surface area of 188 x 188 square miles with Concentrated Solar Plants. This is a small thumbnail on the map of Africa. Germany has seen the light and is investing 500 billion euro's in Desertec. A CSP plant runs 24 x 7 hours on full power (even when the sun is away because it can store sun heat in molten salt). These CSP plants can easily replace nuclear and coal power plants.

Re:Renewable Energy enough, why not use it?

[kimvette]

You might displace some garden snails, scorpions, or spotted owls by putting up a solar farm.

Don't put up a wind farm, because old-style high-rpm windmills that aren't even used for large-scale electricity production was known to kill birds every now and then, so all wind power is bad. Off the coast is even worse because senators do not want to put up with the eyesore as they cruise around in their yachts.

Hydroelectric? you can't dam up any rivers; red squirrels might lose their homes and have to relocate to a new tree.

There is always an argument against everything. Environmentalists are more BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) than NIMBY.

Re:Renewable Energy enough, why not use it?

[catmistake]

For the world energy demand (18.000 TWh) we need only a surface area of 188 x 188 square miles with Concentrated Solar Plants.

Coincidentally, a 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by Brookhaven National Laboratory found that a severe pool fire could render about 188 square miles uninhabitable. If that happens, we should definitely use that uninhabitable land for something... generating the worlds electricity sounds like as good an idea as any.

Nobody outside TEPCO really knows

[Animats]

And they probably don't know either.

The reactor may have melted through the base of its pressure vessel, but it's hard to tell. The high radiation levels could either be from a melt-through or from a leak as attempts are made to force water into the reactor pressure vessel. The latest JAIF status report contains almost all the hard data that's coming out. Everything else is secondary speculation based on that limited data.

No data seems to be available about pressure or temperature inside the reactor. That's listed as "unknown" for unit 2. The sensors involved were probably destroyed in one of the fires, explosions, or building collapses. Pressure in the containment vessel for unit 2 is listed as "low", whatever that means.

A full meltdown is now a real possibility. The JAIF chart has been showing "Fuel rods exposed partially or fully" for units 1, 2, and 3 for ten days now. Reactor pressure vessels are tough, as are containment structures, but ten days of no core cooling is well beyond design limits.

Understand that the water spraying operation refers to the containment structure, which is normally dry. Inside the containment is the reactor pressure vessel, which is a boiler. Getting water inside there, which is needed to cover the core and achieve cold shutdown, requires forcing it in against steam pressure. This has to be done in a highly radioactive environment, in a fire-ruined building where the walls and beams have collapsed, the pumps are damaged, and valves which are usually operated remotely have to be operated by people turning handwheels. Some people are trying very hard to do that. Some of them will probably die. If they succeed, there will be a local mess, but it will be manageable. If they fail, there will be a meltdown.

Re:Nobody outside TEPCO really knows

[PSUspud]

A better source for more detailed information is the government website at NISA (nuclear and industrial safety agency) here., with the latest report at here. It's got pressures and temperatures, as much as they know. On the other hand, it is scary how much they don't know. They have no idea of the temperature of the spent fuel pools in #1, 3, and 4, or the water temperatures inside the reactor vessel in #1, 2, or 3. (They are monitoring the external temperature of the reactor vessel.) That's not good enough -- couldn't they just drop in a remote temperature sensor into the spent fuel pools? How hard can that be?

Re:Nobody outside TEPCO really knows

[HiddenCamper]

cant get up there. the SFP if they have less than 15 feet of water in them are deathly radioactive. normally they measure temperature for the reactor water at the reactor water cleanup system piping, and the steam lines out. because the water levels arent up there it is hard to truely discern what the temperature is. as for not knowing a lot, they probably still dont have their plant process computers online otherwise they'd know most of that stuff. and because of the complexity of the electrical systems they probably dont have most of their power sources up which would give them indications. -iaane that manages a plant process computer.

Re:O.S.R. (Obligitory Simpsons' Reference)

[JackSpratts]

160,000 three mile islands you mean.

it's now 10% of chernobyl, but hey, who's counting? this is slashdot. we're just denying.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/asia/30japan.html

nuclear power: it's safer than ponies.

Re:Yup, sure!

[Ruke]

The core absolutely cannot melt through the concrete. The melting point of concrete is an order of magnitude higher than that of the containment vessel - the fuel cannot get this hot, short of a nuclear reaction. There are legitimate concerns regarding the structural integrity of the concrete after the hydrogen explosion, but this would be from cracks forming in the concrete, not anything that the fuel itself could possibly do.

Rest assured that the concrete container is designed exactly for this eventuality. It would be a pretty poor design if it was incapable of holding that which it was created to contain.

They've already freaked:

[Hartree]

There's a whole raft of practical problems and misconceptions with what you suggest.

As soon as they started injecting seawater, the reactor was toast as far as re-use.

And why would you want to dump something like concrete into it that would be less effective at getting rid of heat? (Let alone the fate of the poor schlemiel you'd get to direct the stream of concrete into it.). You wait until the fuel has cooled and isn't generating so much heat before entombing it if it comes to that. Trying to cast concrete around a major heat source contained in a water filled pressure vessel is a great way to make a bomb.

Besides, it already is surrounded by concrete. It's called a containment. Chernobyl didn't have that. And at least some of it is getting out of that regardless.

This is similar to when someone from outside of the computer field has suggested how to handle a software problem. From their view, it's obvious and has got to be easy. From the developer's view it's usually completely the wrong direction.

Re:The End of Nuclear Power

[khallow]

This is truly the end of fission Nuclear power plants.

Why? I think to the contrary, it'll calm down people. Here, we have the worst that can happen, a vast disaster, the feared meltdown, and the result is some elevated radiation in the basement and the usual hysterical news. There's no area, the size of Pennsylvania rendered uninhabitable forever (or other hysterical predictions of the radical environmentalists).

In other words, this is one of those dumb "human error" accidents that caused the other three meltdowns of civilian power plants, but a genuine natural disaster. And the reactors weathered it pretty well.

Sure, there will continue to be NIMBYs. But the more real knowledge we have about nuclear power and its problems, the more comfortable people will get to nuclear power.

Not going to be decommissioned

[slyborg]

This misinformation has been bandied about quite a bit, but the fact is that while Reactor 1 had reached the end of its operating license in March, the Japanese government had actually just extended the license for another 10 years in February. The "entire complex" was not by any means scheduled for shutdown, particularly units 5 and 6, which are undamaged and will likely be restarted at some point.

Re:Not going to be decommissioned

[iggymanz]

There are plenty of people looking for work who would do it, just as there are people who contract in Iraq even though a few contractors were beheaded, just as there are people who work in war zones.

Re:Not going to be decommissioned

[ooloogi]

They kept other reactors running at Chernobyl for 14 years after the meltdown.

Re:Yup, sure!

[SeNtM]

RTFA. The fear is that the hydrogen explosions have already caused a failure in the concrete which is why radiation is being detected in water outside of the plant.

Best quote I heard on NPR this morning

[Culture20]

Paraphrased since it was hours ago and I was driving... "Traces of plutonium have been found around the Fukushima site, and although the amounts discovered were no higher than if the soil samples were taken from any random soil around the world, the scientists determined that the specific isotopes of plutonium found were from the plant." They then continued to explain why it was super dangerous.
What I heard was "DANGER DANGER! The soil around the Fukushima site is identical to the soil in your backyard. That's not a good thing! You must Fear It! Fear It!"

Re:Yup, sure!

[lgw]

10,000 deaths are an estimate: 28,000 are unaccounted for after the tsunami. The tsunami death count will be revised upwards in the future vastly more than the number of people the Fukushima problems may be linked to the deaths of, long term. About half a million people are homeless after the tsunami - that's a real, ongoing crisis.

I would also say that there are worse outcomes than deaths. Generations of birth defects, rare cancers and cell mutations, toxic metals accumulating in a localized food chain; I tend to think of those things as being worse than death.

And these are very real problems in science fiction movies. Also, giant, radioactive ants. They suck. Communist construction of nuclear power plants also sucks (but communist construction of dams sucks worse, and has killed more people than any other modern disaster), but that's not what Japan is facing here.

Reactor Design and Plate Tectonics

[catchblue22]

Construction on the Fukishima reactor began in 1967 (wikipage). It is easy to forget that Plate Tectonics was only accepted as a reasonable explanation of geological phenomenon in the 1960's. According to this excellent New York Times article,

"After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan’s biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet — considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said."

The tsunami that overwhelmed the plant recently was 46 feet high, far higher than anything they seemed to expect. If you read the NYTimes article, you get a sense that the nuclear safety bureaucracy hadn't adequately integrated modern plate tectonic theory into its safety programs. The 18 foot high maximum tsunami prediction is symptomatic of this.

From the article, it seems that Japan had based its tsunami predictions on historical records, instead of predictions from Plate Tectonic Theory. Computer simulations of plate movement would have given far larger predictions for maximum tsunami heights, predictions that would have agreed with the height of the recent tsunami. I think a strong argument can be made that Japan's nuclear bureaucracy had not taken into account modern Plate Tectonic Theory in its safety practices. They seem to have instead relied on past records of earthquakes and tsunamis. I am not suggesting that individual people were unaware of Plate Tectonic Theory, but instead that their bureaucratic rules didn't seem to acknowledge it. Since construction on the reactor began in 1967, planning of the reactor must have begun much earlier. It is easy to imagine that the initial reactor designers were unaware of the Theory of Plate Tectonics and its implications.

Not being decommisioned

[slyborg]

Posted this above as well, but Unit 1 at Fukushima had just been relicensed for another 10 years in February.

The fact of the matter is that a utility will always apply for an extended operating license and will almost certainly get one. The only plant shutdowns I know of in the US, apart from TMI Unit 2, were when something too expensive to repair needed replacement, such as the ComEd Zion plant outside Chicago, which needed a new $460 million steam generator. So since there is so much better in the way of designs available, why aren't utilities rushing to replace these ancient reactors instead of asking for extended licenses, you ask? Economics of course - an existing plant is almost all sunk cost, and the utilities are in business to make money. They will build new reactors only to add capacity, and they will build the cheapest design they are permitted to.

My main objection to nuclear power is that these plants are operated by businesses. Unlike a solar farm or even a coal plant, the worst case failure for a nuclear plant is very, very bad. You have a business trying to maximize profit knowing that the worst case failure costs will be shifted to the taxpayer. This is a recipe for disaster. I have no issues at all with the state of reactor technology, and the US military operates dozens of reactors that *move around* and has for 50 years without a major accident (the Russians haven't had as much success there, though). If these things were being operated by some agency like the military with those levels of discipline, perhaps we could all rest assured. When it's some utility executive who wants a bigger bonus, I am not at all confident.

Nuke it from orbit

[Noughmad]

The only way to ... Oh wait.

Re:It's already in the UK

[Minwee]

That was The Guardian. This is what the real BBC had to say on the subject.

Meanwhile, Yes, Prime Minister had a few things to say about the press:

"Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country, The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country, The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country, The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country, The Financial Times is read by people who own the country, The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is."

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"

"Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."

Stuttgart 21

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The government in Baden-Württemberg was down and out on the floor from the Stuttgart 21 fiasco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 . In case you missed it television, it showed police spaying peaceful old grandmas and little kids with pepper gas. Those images were difficult to stomach. The catastrophe in Japan just put a final nail in the government's coffin.

And, no, I am not an anti-nuke type. I think that only by researching and investing in all technologies, including nuclear, will we ever be free of the oil yoke that we are carrying.

Re:The End of Nuclear Power

[ColdWetDog]

Good, and while all those NIMBYs are spouting off their uninformed opinions, I will be looking into burying a small reactor from toshiba in my back yard.

I do so want to see you go up to your Homeowner's Association with that plan. Could you post it on YouTube? Please?

Re:Where is the heat coming from

[Hatta]

Sure, fission is on going, in the sense that radioactive material tends to decay spontaneously. What's not going on is a sustainable chain reaction.

Re:Where is the heat coming from

[QuantumPion]

I realize this was not a chemical reaction, however, I still can't figure out that reaction was stopped at the time of earthquake according to various sources. Graphite rods were inserted into the core to stop the reaction.

So where is this heat coming from. Is the fission on going, wouldn't that mean the reaction wasn't stopped, it is still on going!

Can someone explain this to me?

When a Uranium atom splits by fission, it leaves behind two unstable isotopes. These isotopes soon undergo radioactive decay themselves. These decays produce a significant amount of heat, which can't be "turned off" because it is natural radioactive decay (as opposed to the original induced fission, which can be stopped by absorbing the neutrons which cause fission). The fuel rods are not merely hot and simply need to be cooled off - they are still generating their own internal heat due to these natural decays. The only way to get rid of these decaying isotopes is to wait for them to decay naturally, which is an exponential process.

Some of the isotopes have a short half life, which causes them to generate a lot of heat, but this large heat load decays away quickly and is gone after a couple days. A majority of the isotopes have half-lives in the years to decades range, which means they produce a moderate amount of heat for several years, which is why spent fuel needs to be stored underwater. Once the fuel is about 10 years out, enough isotopes have decayed that it can remain at safe temperature just by radiative cooling, and so can be stored in dry storage containers.

Re:Where is the heat coming from

[filthpickle]

Automated systems shut the reaction down as soon as the earthquake occurred. The fuel rods continue to produce heat even after the reaction has stopped.

Decay Heat

Re:Costs ten times as much.

[iggymanz]

What is the full cost of nuclear, with the 100,000+ year storage requirements on the current uranium oxide based spent fuel? These concrete casks we're mostly NOT using (but using fuel pools instead) won't last that long, lucky if we got a few centuries out of them with the assumption our civilization doesn't rise and fall so people remember the risk and avoid them. Since we're far too dumb to use it as fuel source here in the USA, I'd say the long term storage costs and risks blow any solar argument out of the water.

Adding some reason to all of this

[mishu2065]

There was a report published a few years ago by a website called 'Sense about science'... much more informative about radiation than the daily news. Now if only the public would read it...

Re:O.S.R. (Obligitory Simpsons' Reference)

[brizzadizza]

That's interesting, how many people were evacuated from their homes because of ponies?

1000mSV really is high....

[mysidia]

Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guideline."

10000 mSV = 1Sv

Very bad for the workers... well beyond what could cause cancer in 1 hour. the 1000 mSv reading is no doubt an average, or "what they've seen" so far. Spontaneous spikes are possible.

Symptoms of acute radiation (dose received within one day): 1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.

3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.

6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.

They're saying 15 minutes under current exposure guidelines. But in reality, workers could die if there's a sudden jolt to 100000mSv/hour.

Re:Come on

[geekoid]

"...A BWR cannot go above 250C"

um, what? yes, it can.

Sea water doesn't make the core non operational. It makes it unusable, the core still generates heat. and a hell of a lot more then 250c.

"Also coolant was restored and the reactor was flooded with cold water which would remove all heat."
What? You might want to call TEPCO and let them know.

While this article is pure FUD, the rest of your post clearly indicate you are a geek.
Meaning that you will rant on about something you don't know about so you can actually feel like you know something and seeth your righteous ignorance. Comic book guy would be proud.

I'll stick to being a nerd, thank you so very much.

Re:Costs ten times as much.

[DrBoumBoum]

Renewable energy appears expensive mainly because currently polluting the biosphere is free. Tragedy of the commons.

When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Published on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by Hawaii News Daily

Worse Than Chernobyl: When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater

by Tom Burnett

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl.The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense – it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster.Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact thata similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.

Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.

Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel‘ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.

The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or aChernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.

The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

© 2011 Hawaii News Daily

Dr. Tom Burnett is a frequent contributor to the Hawaii News Daily.

Press Releases

[randomsearch]

You can read press releases from TEPCO:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

These releases document the "official" status of the plant. Believe what you will.