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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."
Just to be clear, they are absolutely not implying it has melted through the containment, but, rather, the reactor pressure vessel.
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.
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.
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.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
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.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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.
Remain calm! All is well!
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.
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.
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.
Interestingly enough, every one of those but #6 is true.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"...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.
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.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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.
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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.
“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.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.
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
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.