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Nuclear Risk Expert: Fukushima Fuel May Be Leaking
An anonymous reader writes "Three weeks after the nuclear crisis began at Japan's Fukushima Dai-1 power plant, there's still a real danger of melted nuclear fuel escaping the reactor buildings and releasing a large dose of radiation. So says Theo Theofanous, an engineer who spent 15 years studying the risks of nuclear reactors. Theofanous believes that melted nuclear fuel has already leaked through the reactor vessels and accumulated at the bottoms of the primary containment structures. All attempts to keep the reactor buildings cool may not be enough to prevent the overheated fuel from eating through the concrete floors, he says."
This is a plant that shouldn't be operating in the first place right now. This series of nuclear reactors is past its expiration date and therefore can't be expected to perform under the duress of an earthquake and following flooding. There always was a plan to lock them up for one last time after which its supposed to be unbreakable (or anybody who does break it would be dead from radiation near instantly) but there never was any other plan for renewing it after it had run for too long.
Sorry Japan, we love electric power just as much as you do, but you've got to pay for what it takes to make it. Doing it on the cheap just causes other problems for humans in other areas than your own.
HAHAHA
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
"All attempts to keep the reactor buildings cool may not be enough to prevent the overheated fuel from eating through the concrete floors, he says."
Why is the fuel so hungry?
I don't know it's appropriate to post April fools jokes about possible nuclear meltdowns. Oh well, Slashdot editors know best; now we just need a drop down list so we can set the number of people that will be killed!!
MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Then, quite appropriately...OMG GLOWING PONIES!
I couldn't imagine that they had 8 hours to get a generator to the site of the plant, and yet failed to return any service for days. The idea of having an eight hour backup is that you'd expect to have a mobile generator on site in that time. I might have missed it, but can anyone tell me why the couldn't drag or fly power to them in less than, what 3 or 4 days? Was it that cut off? Are they just that bone headed?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Bummer man. I guess i'll have to do this the old fashioned way...
There... didn't fix it for you.
In Uranium mining, there is a technique called in-situ leeching.
In summary, it involves drilling a hole, pouring an acid or alkaline into the hole to dissolve the resource, and pumping it back out.
Once it's out, in the case of uranium, there are a couple of steps involved in turning it into yellowcake.
Given the probability that it is now leaking onto concrete, an alkaline solution would be more ideal.
What would be needed is something like an oil drain pan that resists the chosen alkaline.
The solution would be pumped in and out of the pan into an recovery tank. Uranium in this format is quite similar to the safe-to-handle yellowcake.
Very little reaction would occur - not much more than in nature. Depending on the speed of this chemical reaction, the size of the current breach, and the rate that it eats the steel, it might be possible to use the reactor's own cooling system to supplement the removal process. The key is to remove the fuel, and separate it enough physically that the reaction 'stops'. At this point, damaging the building is no longer an issue. The only important thing is to recover the resource to stop the reaction.
Obviously the rods are no longer able to be removed as one complete unit, or it would be well under way.
We need some miners to step up and advise of the fastest method to dissolve uranium in a steel container and pump it out.
Nuclear engineers are trained in how to make reactors work. Not in how to mine for resources which is exactly what we need right now.
Miners stand the best chance of leaving the area safe.
Contamination only means that there are radioactive elements mixed in with the safe dirt.
Miners are the only experts who know how to extract these resources. If they're gone, then it's safe again.
Even if they replace radioactive contamination with chemical contamination, chemicals are usually easier to deal with in the longer run.
Compare an oil spill to the land around Chernobyl. Chemical spills are problematic for a decade or so.
Anyhow, that's my view. We should treat it like a mine. Mine the resource, make it safe. Get it to a reprocessing facility. Just make sure it is no longer in the reactor in a self sustaining fission state.
an 'america syndrome' ?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Jesus Christ Slashdot. You're meant to be a news site.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
sounds like mr burns I hope he does hard time for trying to bribe his way out of this.
From TFA:
But the drywell's concrete floor is probably 5 to 10 meters thick, so Theofanous says there's not an immediate risk of a release of radioactive materials via this route. "A lot of melting has to take place before you get through 5 meters of concrete," he says.
And:
"We don't really know where the fuel is," he says
.
Also:
Theofanous found that as long as there was a typical amount of water in the drywell--about half a meter--and that water was continuously cycled through to prevent it from heating up and boiling away, the nuclear fuel would not immediately make its way out into the environment. "We showed that if there's a severe accident, you must make sure there's water in the drywell," says Theofanous.
So, yeah... Article is hype but the summary is outright lying.
See... these are the moments when I wish that I was religious.
So that I could find some modicum of relief believing that there is a special hell for people who are hyping up these stories just so they'd get more fucking clicks and page-views.
You know... Trying their best to make a cent or two from their fellowman's suffering. Cunts.
The IAEA is reporting that measured soil concentrations of Cs-137 as far away as Iitate Village, 40 kilometers northwest of Fukushima-Dai-Ichi, correspond to deposition levels of up to 3.7 megabecquerels per square meter (MBq/sq. m).
Compare this with the deposition level that triggered compulsory relocation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident: the level set in 1990 by the Soviet Union was 1.48 MBq/sq. m.
From http://www.japan.org
The first problem is that TEPCO isn't telling anyone what they know (to save face and because they're freaking out)
The second problem is that whatever they are telling, they're telling to the Japanese government and no-one else (even their own workers, who they convinced to wade through radioactive water without boots, go into radioactive buildings without radiation badges or suitable gear, etc).
The third problem is that the experts are working with minimal data - and what they do have is suspect
The fourth problem is that TEPCO has been trying to salvage the reactors at the same time as spraying them with seawater (which would be corrosive) and after the outer shell had exploded on three of them (causing untold damage to electronics, shock-proofing, etc)
On top of all that, TEPCO allowed the hydrogen build-up in the first place. They could have burned it off with a controlled burn. This would have prevented the explosions, reduced the spillage and possibly prevented the fuel leak. (Reducing pressure may have reduced water temperature and may have conserved some of the cooling pools.)
As for building the reactors ALONG the fault-line, despite advice not to by their own chief scientists, and building a tsunami wall far lower than the historic tsunami wave-heights....
This accident was stoppable at so many points in so many ways. The problem wasn't so much the reactor alone as the mindset together with the reactor.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
eom
From what I read Tepco, their regulators and the general government in Japan has ignored all 3 items in my subject.
For doing that they will pay the huge price of a 10-20 year cleanup with enormous damage to their economy and the respect the people have for their institutions.
It is not only the Middle East that may see governmental changes in the near future.
Think about it...
A massive Earthquake,
A Tsunami,
A Giant Crack in the Bottom of the the ocean,
A giant radiation leak....
Can Godzilla be too far away???
The authorities don't know how the water is leaking out and don't know the upper bound on the total amount of radioactivity released. The lower bound is already rather staggering. In addition, radioactive materials have already leaked into the ocean and the ground water. TEPCO said the level they measured in the ground water was the similar to the high levels found in the turbine buildings and the tunnels outside the plants. The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said those readings were way too high so they asked TEPCO to measure again more carefully.
The only specific theory I've heard of how the thousands of tons of highly radioactive water got out of the containment vessel is that it got out via graphite seals in the bottom of the vessel. There are holes there for control rods and the holes are blocked with graphite seals. The seals will fail at high temperatures and melted fuel rods falling to the bottom of the vessel would provide more than enough heat to cause the seals to fail. If it is any solace, reactors that don't contain melted fuel rods probably don't have leaks all over the bottom of the containment vessel.
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl escaped upward into the air. This made it easier to get a handle on the magnitude of the total amount of radioactivity released. The release at the light water reactors at Fukushima is for the most part traveling downward, to basements, tunnels, ground water, and the ocean. This makes it extremely difficult to get a handle on the total amount of radioactivity that has been released. They really don't know of the bulk of it is in the thousands of tons they have already discovered or if that is just the tip of the iceberg.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
The IAEA is reporting that measured soil concentrations of Cs-137 as far away as Iitate Village, 40 kilometers northwest of Fukushima-Dai-Ichi, correspond to deposition levels of up to 3.7 megabecquerels per square meter (MBq/sq. m).
This should be compared with the deposition level that triggered compulsory relocation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident: the level set in 1990 by the Soviet Union was 1.48 MBq/sq. m.
This information is from http://japan.org
April fool!
What? Oh.
Damn. Can we go back to the silly stories? :-(
...and if you believe that, you'll buy this watch!
The odds of a nuclear accident are small. The consequences of a nuclear accident are large. It's the classic risk problem everyone's been talking about since Katrina. The Soviets/Ukrainians dealt with the consequences of their nuclear accident by creating a large exclusion zone, but the Japanese have a lot less land to "exclude." The lesson is we (humanity) should learn, it that we have only this one nest. We can't afford to foul it up (that is, any more than we have already.)
p.s. Straight Dope is usually on the mark. Not today.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." -John Adams
Nuclear power has one thing going for it:
Nuclear power also has several strikes:
Even if a superior reactor design comes along, there's an incredible financial incentive to stick with the technology that was first developed and deployed (see the Wired story on thorium).
The best argument in favor of nuclear power is that "it may have problems, but it's all we've got". Nuclear advocates rightly point out that, compared to coal, oil, natural gas, and even hydropower (complicated), perhaps nuclear isn't so bad. Coal is abundant but dirty, oil is expensive and dirty, natural gas is cleaner but still poisons the ocean with CO2, and hydropower has it's own challenges.
But the one "black swan" that never gets talked about is "disruptive technology" that changes the entire energy equation.
One example: I've mentioned Global Resource Corporation's Microwave here before. This device uses specific microwave frequencies to release gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons from solids, such as coal (diesel, propane, butane). The company had a prototype that worked on tires, but they fell apart before they could get commercial versions of their technology to market. Luckily archive.org has a copy of their website: http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://www.GlobalResourceCorp.com. I remember reading about a cool patent that used Magnetic Resonance to figure out what specific microwaves a given sample of "trash" would need to be broken down...
GRC's site talked about applying the technology to tar sands, to coal mining, breaking down hundreds of millions of used tires piled everywhere... How would the energy equation change if harvesting coal and tar sands didn't require massive amounts of energy?
Here's something else: according to an old story on money.cnn.com, the largest single use of electricity in southern California is pumping water. And very large amount of water is used to generate electricity.
So, with these twin issues... What if Raphial Morgado's MYT (Mighty) pump really is as good as he says it is? Suppose you could get 25% more water pumped for the same amount of electricity, or generate 25% more electricity with the same amount of steam?
Whereas Global Resource Corp's special microwaves haven't reached market because it was torpedo'd by mismanagement (or maybe there's a technical problem - I'm pretty certain that the science is sound), Morgado's pump is in limbo because he hasn't yet found anyone who'd lend him $4-million or $10-million to build a factory. He has plenty of offers to buy the technology outright, but he has the audacity to presume that he should be the one to profit from his invention.
Imagine if the demand for energy suddenly plunged by more than 25%. Oil is only going for $100/barell because demand roughly matches supply. If supply exceeds demand by a significant percentage, we'd be back to $1/gallon gas in a heartbeat.
These are just the two technologies that
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
... kills as many people as the coal-mining industry did in its best year to date (2005).
Why would someone with no insight into the current status at Fukushima throw wild guesses around. This sounds more like an religious agenda then science.
He teaches chemistry at UC Santa Barbara.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
First sentence says it all: "It's Theo Theofanous's job to worry about worst-case scenarios." The rest of the article is a description of a worst-case scenarios that is not entirely 100% impossible, but quite implausible. The cautious language also reflects this.
At this point, it seems the bigger risk is a steady stream of isotopes from the fuel pools which are still not full and still steaming hot, and possibly some more from cracks in the reactor containment. It's going to be challenging to isolate it all from the air, given the contamination levels above and around these fuel pools.
Knowledge isn't dangerous. Corporations and Politicians are. And Financiers. By their very nature, corrupt. And weak and twisted "democracies".
A little prophylatic corporate-exec/politician/"banker" entrail noosefest, every couple of decades or so, would be most salutary to society, history, and humanity as a whole.
And, since those people people consider themselves to be moral stanchions and instruments of divinity - it would also be "morally uplifting".
Great article to surround with "April Fools Day" crap, one of the worst things about living in New Zealand : Living In The Future subjects you to not only the first of April NZ time, but again "the next day" when The Rest Of The World (TM) catches up.
Right, this BS story placement aside, what the FRAK is going on?
In NZ, we have not had much talk about "oh noes!1!1! the world is screwed!1!1!", people are not stockpiling iodine tablets, we are not scared shitless by our media. We have our own earthquake recovery to obsess on, "how much will it cost? What will happen with the Rugby World Cup games scheduled for CHCH? How many houses need to be demolished?"...
The "Left leaning", some would say realistic coverage is talking about radiation being detected away from the site, about food from the area being frigged, about dead bodies unable to be moved "because it would spread more radiation to move them", and of passengers from the region setting off airport scanners when they fly away from Japan to other countries. In New Zealand, we are also having a general "see, we're pretty damn smart not to get involved in Nuclear power..." vibe, patting ourselves on the back. Our country is as unlikely to support Nuclear Power as "Capital Punishment" and constantly invading other nations, to steal their finite resources. And this has made us all the more so.
The "apologists" immediately went out in force, "ohhhh, other power sources still kill more people annually", "those whining greenies are LYING LIARS WHO LIE!", "you're too dumb to be smart like me, you cant understand, you dumbo dumb dumb!" etc.
In short, what the hell is going on? Is radiation REALLY being spread about? Is that really "acceptable"? Or is this whole thing "being hyped up by the liberal media who want the terrorists to win"?
---
Somebody just shoot this fucker.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Oh japan.org? ... fake rads map ... fear mongering anti-nuke crap ... Good call.
Instead of a brain-dead attack on the messenger, why not try finding out the truth for yourself? It takes all of 10 seconds to go to the IAEA site here and see the numbers quoted by the OP are correct:
The average total deposition determined at these locations for iodine-131 range from 0.2 to 25 Megabecquerel per square metre and for cesium-137 from 0.02-3.7 Megabecquerel per square metre. The highest values were found in a relatively small area in the Northwest from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. First assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village. We advised the counterpart to carefully assess the situation.
I saw that too, but the wording is a little vague. It says two things: highest values in a small are in the northwest, and IAEA operational criteria for evacuation exceeded in Iitate. That could possibly mean that the highest value was found in Iitate, but that is not necessarily the case.
I really liked your use of courier in your rant, it looks much more crazy without the ALL-CAPS, which you did resort to in the ending sentence, Unfortunately. I find your insanity entertaining and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Don't you know the IAEA is in cahoots with the UN, trying to trick the US into abandoning nuclear power. The resulting chaos and starvation will then pave the way for UN troops to invade the US and establish COMMUNISM! Invest in canned food and ammunition NOW! ... or something.
The world's largest concrete pump, deployed at the construction site of the U.S. government's $4.86 billion mixed oxide fuel plant at Savannah River Site, is being moved to Japan in a series of emergency measures to help stabilize the Fukushima reactors.
"Our understanding is, they are preparing to go to next phase and it will require a lot of concrete," Ashmore said, noting that the 70-meter pump can move 210 cubic yards of concrete per hour.
Putzmeister equipment was also used in the 1980s, when massive amounts of concrete were used to entomb the melted core of the reactor at Chernobyl.
"It will be too hot to come back," Ashmore said.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
The government has been reported that HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE WATER detected at the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is due to a PARTIAL MELTDOWN OF FUEL RODS there, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday.
Emphasis added. Please don't panic. If you feel the highlighted words are over sensationalizing the situation then I suggest you address your concerns directly to the Japanese news media and the Japanese government.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
All is not rosy, though. Many people died or were displaced in the tsunami, and grief among the survivors is intense. Electrical power shortages are likely to be troublesome for years, hampering manufacturing. There are some concerns with export shipping. And there may be some power plants that need some maintenance from the Earthquake and tsunami. We will learn more over the coming months as further events unfold, but that's already enough major projects to get started on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
21 meters is about seven or eight stories.
I guess the only reasonable thing would have been to move the plants further away from the sea, but then you don't have the emergency source of cooling water.
Or maybe they could have put multiple rings of sea walls up? Say 4 stories tall and ten meters thick, way out beyond the perimeter, 6 stories tall and five meters wide at the top, in about two hundred meters, and then the 8 story wall, three meters wide, about another two hundred meters in, about two hundred meters from the perimeter of the actual plant compound?
Hind sight is twenty-twenty, as they say. (It isn't really all that accurate, just seems so, which is part of the problem here.) Now that we know how it failed, we could have stopped it. But it's too late.
So, do we do like Greenpeace and others say and shut down all the high-growth industry and let all the current people with power stay in power for ever?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
So, you admit you are still a student.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The battery backup in commmercial nuclear plants does NOT run the large scale cooling equipment, that is what the multiple independent channels of diesel backup power (which failed along with offsite power) are for.
The battery backup is for instrumentation and control only, including computer monitoring systems, process control computers, some valves, etc. At a typical GE BWR (like fukushima, I was an operator at a newer GE BWR myself) the entire basement of the control/auxialiary building is filled with lead acid batteries (multiple THOUSANDS of car battery sized cells) and large UPS's (27 of them at the plant I worked at) for backup power to intrumentation and control only.
The RHR (recirc heat removal pumps, used for both emergency and normal shutdown cooling) are huge beasts, batteries could not possibly keep them running. They are 4160v multiple 1000 horsepower motors (can't remember exact size), no way lead acid batteries can do that (let alone the UPS's), simply no way. One easy way to vouch for this fact is that the UPS's only produced 270VAC power!
There is the HPCI and RCIC systems driven by decay heat steam from the reactor itself (via small to mid sized steam turbines), and in the fukushima situation these likely functioned until control power was lost (assuming piping to these stayed intact). After control power is lost, these systems shutdown or break, or overspeed, can't remember, probably varies with the individual plant. Either way, no control power, no HPCI or RCIC
The spent fuel pool is another matter entirely. It has a separate electric motor driven pumped cooling system, but once again, batteries do do not drive these, these pumps are something like multiple 100Hp 480v pumps, once again outside the range of what even a ton of lead acid batteries can manage for any significant length of time. (see paragraph about heat sink below too)
The loss of offsite power, followed by the loss of the diesel backup power is really the root failure, and you need BIG diesels (or gas turbines even) to manage this load. At the plant I worked at, there were 4-4+ MW diesels onsite for a single reactor. 2 at a minumum were needed to keep things cool if offsite power was lost (assuming no other failures). We had fuel for approximately 2 weeks of run time of each diesel within the control building (about 200000 gallons, with another million available in a non safety rated tank outside the buidling). 4Mw locomotive or marine sized diesels cannot be simply trucked or helicoptered in, these are BIG machines, not to mention replacement fuel (they're thirsty!). In my plant's case, each diesel was a 5000Hp, 16 cylinder twin turbocharged monster that was originally designed for use in diesel electric cargo ships!
Perhaps if they parked an aircraft carrier right on the coast and somehow ran cables that could have made up for the loss of power, or maybe a dozen or so diesel electric locomotives, a few large diesel electric container ships, etc. but nothing smaller than that could have handled this load (original design Nimitz class aircraft carriers have about 20Mw electrical generating capacity INCLUDING their 4 emergency diesel generators at 4160v 60Hz, and remember they need some of that to keep their own engine room and other ship functions operating in this sort of scenario). But even then you would need some hellish power cables and functioning switchgear and control power in the plant itself BEFORE you could consider turning on a big cooling pump
Oh yeah, you would also need a functioning "service water" system (part of the normal seawater cooling system for the plant, not the emergency seawater cooling that is being used, provides cooling water and makeup water to cooling towers at some plants), those pumps (assuming control power AND intact piping again), needs another megwatt or so to operate. If you don't have service water, you don't have a heat sink even if you get the cooling systems inside the plant building operating.
Most people have no idea of the scope of the pow
Very carefully reading the most alarmist sources, who have mis-read the Japanese news and falsely extrapolated their misunderstadings by several orders of magnitude, and then doing some false extraolation of your own.
This is not the same kind of reactor as at Chernobyl. It's not the same class of failure. Dangerous, yes.
But you getting into a panic doesn't help anyone, least of all, you.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Brain dead what? That site already has a reputation for fearmongering. You don't like that tough. The 'truth' on that is already out there too. Not forgetting that you're talking about the same iaea that can't tell what the left hand is doing from the right while it's pissing in it's mouth? Right'o. I'm sure that works out just fine.
Om, nomnomnom...
Eu Nuclear energy secretary or someone - right at the start of the incident, said something like 'the biggest disaster of the century' or something.
Eu is generally staffed with social democrat bureaucrats which tend to bluntly retort the uncomfortable truth regardless of how it disturbs any country, private interest or population. Im trusting what was said from that source - definitely not american government or hell - main stream media which was rather noticeably too quick to drop fukujima issue from the headlines.
For there to be 1000-3000 times normal amount of radiation in ocean water around the plant and fishing in a 40 km radius being banned, there has to be something that went really wrong.
And werent they pumping sea water to cool that plant ? The water to cool a nuclear plant has to stay in closed circulation. In this case, it was evaporating. Yet, we were assured that it would not be harmful. And this is just one of the shady explanations. you go figure the rest.
Read radical news here
Excuse me but this is above any argument. Nuclear power, is like maintaining a glass full of nitroglicerin in your bathroom because it fulfills some of your crucial ass wiping needs - it may be the cheapest way to fulfill your needs, but, it is also a ticking time bomb :
A lot of nuclear reactors are dotted around the world. And this planet is a moving one - there are always constant earthquakes :
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
See. Its like a gamble. So far, we are alright because one of those quakes didnt chance up on a critical installation. This japan quake could have been much closer, and all of those 6 reactors could have been already totally shattered and we would be sucking iodine tablets right now.
Germany did right. At a time when the planet was showing rather increased activity, they shut down all of their 10+ reactors, around 30% or so of their power. They are going to replace nuclear power.
Indeed. It is the biggest folly of this civilization to rely on VERY dangerous, catastrophic things, because they are cheaper than alternatives. No - these are really dangerous - because ONE failure, may be enough to wreck our civilization and decimate populations. You go figure how the rest will come down with domino effect - it will come down, but the question is, how much it will. All depends on the level of the disaster happening on the next reactor. It may even be this one.
Read radical news here
HA! The IAEA has a reputation for fearmongering now? Jesus Christ, What do you actually need to acknowledge that the shit has hit the fan? God descending from heaven and telling you personally? Or rather Pluto ascending from Hades, I guess...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Any thoughts on the poisoning of the North Pacifics fisheries as a result of this stuff pouring directly into the Japanese current?
How did that much Cs-137 migrate into the soil 40 km away in this amount of time? Not trying to be an ass, just an honest question. I do know a bit about physics.
NOT.
Privacy is terrorism.
You're not asking, but I'll tell you.
I lived through the Kobe earthquake. I was out on the edge, and I had to work, no time to go in to try to help clean up. I know how long the cleanup took, I know about the traffic getting in and out, I know about railroads that had to be cleaned up and inspected, I know about whole city blocks that were flattened, if not by the quake, then by the fires that came later. My wife and I were going to meet in Sannomiya that morning, and by the time we had planned to meet, the (huge) department store we had planned to meet at was rubble on the ground. All five stories of it, and most of the block it was on and the blocks around it.
The quake up north was two orders of magnitude worse and followed by tsunami. We were spared the tsunami down here. But it was still two weeks before people could even begin to move in and out of Kobe and several other cities around here. A trip that normally takes less than an hour by car during those two week took at least seven hours, even for emergency and relief vehicles.
You can be disgusted with it all if you want to.
Perhaps I'm feeling guilty because I have the time, but I don't have the train fare to get up there to help this time. Maybe that's why I'm willing to cut the TEPCO employees and management some slack. But they are working in very difficult conditions.
I have a suggestion. If you want so much to help out, call your old lab up and see if they can arrange a shipment of dosimeters, which you can volunteer to pay for. I can guarantee they'll need them, if you can figure out a way to get them there.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Any thoughts on how this will affect the fisheries of the Northern Pacific and Bering Sea, since the current flows directly past the plant and will pick up all 200K gallons a day they are leaking?
you thought the good guys won the cold war?
Supply never exceeds demand for very long in an oil market. Where would the oil be stored?
You leave it in the ground. What supply and demand means in this context is the ability to supply. If you have more supply capability than demand requires you have to run your facilities below capacity which means they make less money and so you want to lower your price slightly to sell more of your product and increase your profit (obviously at some point this ceases to work which is when you go bust).
Nuclear power has more than one thing going for it. In particular you are forgetting zero green house gas emissions from operation and the vast reserves of fuel available - assuming we build some breeder reactors (although these do have some security implications because they create and burn plutonium).
I'll agree that the downsides are pretty significant but at the moment it is the only current technology capable of meeting our power supply needs without _guaranteed_ huge environmental impact. So either we use it, develop something better (e.g. fusion), live with the environmental impact of coal or learn to like living in the dark.
Read the interview with a mother of one the Fukushima workers and then come back:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/03/mother-fukushima-worker/36240/
They will all die gruesome death, they even don't have enough dosimeters.
Maybe it rained downwind? Or dust settled?
Take off every 'sig' !!
No way is that his real name.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I hate to say it, but the economic argument for nuclear power is the weakest link. It's all heavily subsidized with liability protection that no other industry (well to my knowledge, which isn't so hot) has.
REALLY??
How about oil drilling? Maximal damages from an oil drilling disaster is only a few million dollars in the US. BP said they will pay up all costs, but others involved in creating the mess in the Gulf said, "I'm not paying more than required by law, so fuck off".
Gas any safer?? Not really. Remember the mud volcano in Java? That will keep flowing for another 25 years, or more. Farmland ruined. 100,000+ people displaced permanently. Will the company pay all damages? HA!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/08/indonesian-mud-volcano-26-years_n_833160.html
Oh, and almost ALL current gas is made via "fracking" coal beds. So forget about clean water in the area (100s of km2)
http://salem-news.com/articles/july032010/fracking-usa-rb.php
Now, let's move on to fabulous coal.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/08/27/moving_mountains_to_mine_coal/
The coal industry uses one million metric tons of explosives a year to blow up the mountains in this region. This explosive force, equal to 58 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, has wiped out more than one million acres of forests, 1,000 miles of streams and 475 actual mountains.
Oh wait, but this is coal going right!.
So yes, nuclear is cheapest option if you account for environmental damage. All fossil fuels damage our environment on tremendous scales when they are working right, and damage it even more when they fuck up. Nuclear, on the other hand, makes you pay when you fuck up, but overall is quite benign (animals that were through to be extinct can be found in the Chernobyl exclusion zone - most cows and horses abandoned only a mile from the reactor died within a number of months due to massive iodine dosage they got by eating grass, but their offspring are just fine and are "free"). Hell, *I* would go live in Fukushima next year rather than most places on this planet fueled by coal. Hell, I'd move there *now* if I had to live in place like below!!!
http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000HjcriCg2dKk/s/880/880/china-pollution-linfen16.jpg
There is a HUGE difference between these numbers. For soviet union that was Cs-137. In Japan, that is I-131.
I hope you understand the difference.
Secondly, your numbers are most likely wrong too.
The second team made additional measurements at 7 locations in the Hirono area, South of Fukushima-Daiichi NPP. The measurement locations were at distances of 23 to 39 km from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The dose rates ranged from 0.5 to 4.9 microsievert per hour. At the same locations, results of beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.04 to 0.34 Megabecquerel per square metre.
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima310311.html
On 31 March, deposition of iodine-131 was detected by the Japanese authorities in 8 prefectures, and deposition of cesium-137 in 10 prefectures. In these prefectures where deposition of iodine-131 was reported, on 31 March, the range was from 29 to 1350 becquerel per square metre. For caesium-137, the range was from 3.6 to 505 becquerel per square metre.
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima010411.html
This indicates maximal Cs-137 contamination is less 1% of the Soviet Union limit.
So please link to the IAEA source or STFU about your "numbers". Do you understand that 1MBq is 1,000,000 Bq/sq. m2 not 500 Bq/sq m2 - it would take 5 year at maximally detected rates to reach the mandatory evacuation as stated by Soviet Union in 1990. Currently, most likely only a few places very close to the reactor have reached those limits for Cs-137.
I was rather curious on why this particular researcher was relevant as all of his thoughts seem to be nothing more than conjecture.
So you're saying what is currently happening is all that's important, and we need not worry about what might happen? Conjecture, the way you seem to be using the word, is the reason things like safety mechanisms are designed the way they are (or at all). This seems to be very educated conjecture, with knowledge of the structure of the reactor and the behavior of the materials involved.....
Is it too late to nuke it?
If it did we would all be using it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is the last measuring from TEPCO:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/monitoring/11040205a.pdf
Radiation Dose measured at Monitoring Post of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (Sv/h)
Until the recovery of automatic transfer system of measurement data, data will be reported based on visual observation by regular patrol of monitoring posts.
Date of Measurement MP-1MP-2MP-3 MP-4MP-5 MP-6 MP-7 MP-8
2011/4/2 PM 18 56 61 62 130 200 370 280
2011/4/1 PM 19 59 69 68 150 210 390 300
Where in the fucking hell are the measures of deadly levels or radiation? Even at the main Building that does have the highest levels of radiation at 840 Sv/h, most people working there have not still reached the maximum limit of 250,000 Sv for workers in a emergency situation. This is bad, many heads at TEPCO should roll but people here shouldn't be parroting infotaiment reports.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
NO, they won because the other parties (CDU, FDP) are racist, slow and conservative.
In some German areas up to 33% of the people are immigrants.
The ruling CDU party in Germany implemented a racist policy that requires to have frozen deposits of around 2000€ for social visas. Everybody with friends and family outside of Schengen Area is angry. The ruling party lost !
Just imagine how angry people become when they need to save up and freeze around 2000€ + expenses for a an annual visit of a mother or sister from outside of the Schengen Area.
The average total deposition determined at these locations for iodine-131 range from 0.2 to 25 Megabecquerel per square metre and for cesium-137 from 0.02-3.7 Megabecquerel per square metre.
And now that we got that out of the way, let me congratulate you on that fine piece of humor: Critizising someone for not providing a source for that true statement, while you at the same time fail to provide a source for your own made-up statement that the quoted number refers to iodine-131 and not cesium-137.
That's a longtime to wait to go home...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Obviously reading skills aren't the high point of your life either. Otherwise you'd know I wasn't talking about the iaea.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sorry, but that is not reality. We wish it were so, the movies we see tell is it's that way, but the real world is different.
That's what bugs me about ...
Well, let me tell you what my wife pointed out to me in the newspaper yesterday.
There are breakwaters and bulkheads in the ocean around most of Japan, specifically to take the force out of tsunami. Some are relatively small, giant toy jacks one or two meters across. Others are huge blocks, in the range of ten meters tall.
If you're thinking of an American football gridiron, you're thinking ten long paces is not so big, but stand that on end and it's about three and a half stories up.
So we have areas with these ten meter breakwater blocks sunk under the surface and lined up in dashed walls, to slow tsunami down. This tsunami bowled a bunch of those walls over. Does that give you a picture of the scale of things yet?
There are several towns that have been practically wiped off the face of the earth. I'm not sure how it turned out, but there were some towns that lost their town halls and the buildings with the backup records and enough of the people that they were/are worried whether they would even even know who was missing. That's part of the reason they have more than a thousand bodies that they can't identify.
The generators they needed were too heavy to lift in by the helicopters that were available. They eventually got the right generators in, but they had to find the equipment to move them with. If you're looking for heavy equipment after a quake like that, you're looking at unburying cranes and stuff from the wreckage, cleaning it up, inspecting it, and standing it back up before you can use it, or at having it trucked in from a hundred kilometers away, over roads that, in the damaged zones, are blocked by landslides (mountainslides), holes, and in some cases fault seams ripped a meter or more wide/deep into the earth.
Does that help you understand what is going on here? the logistics of what you're demanding that management must be able to have done?
About the only thing that they could have done ten years ago to start preparing for this kind of tsunami would have been to have started rebuilding and de-comissioning the reactors, using designs that the anti-nuclear lobby has been adamant in preventing them from testing. Or tell everyone to move out of Tokyo and de-commisioning the reactors without replacing them. (And what do they do for power where they move?)
Actually, moving people out of Tokyo is a great idea, but if you think moving trucks over broken roads is hard, try getting bosses of IT start-ups who are desparate for customers to leave the best market they know of. This kind of politicis is intractable, without some sort of evidence. Well, we have the evidence now, and it's still not going to happen in just a few months. And there's going to be a lot of what will just be shifting the problem, companies moving to Osaka or Kyoto or other population centers instead of realizing that they can telecommute from places like the middle of Tottori or Awaji Island.
Woops. What's going to happen to Awaji if we have a tsunami of this scale hit this area?
Actually, they do have a lot of the processes going to get people and companies to move out of Tokyo, and they do have a lot of the processes going to change over to so-called renewable sources of energy, but it takes time, and they have to keep fighting with social and economic pressures from companies that are being squeezed by the economy and trying desparately to make enough money to make payroll.
I'm not even scratching the surface of the problems that you want management to solve with a snap of their fingers.
We suppose that God could do that, but even God apparently does not. Usually. (Or you could say that this tsunami was God trying to get us to get a move on it, if you are inclined to think that way.)
So, do you still think it's worth making yourself angry about all this?
I think there are better ways to help solve the problems.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
For what it's worth, and maybe you were aware of it already, but I was talking to a guy at church yesterday who is a member of the Japanese SDF, but was not one of those who went up to the Tohoko area to help out.
We were talking about how, if I wanted to go up to help, I'd have to pack in and pack out like a scout going on a long-term campout. Bedding, tent, clothes, food, being ready to hike from the nearest operating train station to wherever you're going to try to help. Plans and contacts, if you expect to be able to do any good.
The SDF here sent more than half their staff, and the rest want to go, but somebody has to stay behind to mind the base. It looks like it will be a month or so before they can start scheduling shifts in and out, because of the time it takes to figure out where to help and how once you get in there. Also, manpower seems to be less of a problem than supplies and logistics for the time being.
They do have need of certain kinds of specialists. If you were one of those, that would be especialy frustrating to have your flight cancelled.
If you get up there and need help with the Japanese, I can try to help by e-mail.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Part of the problem was multiple sources of information. A lot of that information was coming from people who knew abou things that could go wrong, and were willing to guess about, what was happening before we had enough facts to know which of the scenarios were close to what was really happening in there.
And, as far as wild optimism goes, a lot of the "facts" circulating were (and are still) "wildly" pessimistic. Doomsday scenarios that seem to assume these reactors were the same type as the one at Chernobyl, and tirades about management that seem to assume that the same extremism is inducing coverups. Sometimes it's fallen walls and such keeping you from getting to information, not incompetent management.
They put some temporary measures in place on agricultural products that were a wee bit early. Because of the leak, some of those measures will end up being necessary. Later.
The leak was theoretical. Now it is known to be real. But it still isn't poisoning the entire food chain for the whole hemisphere like certain alarmists are saying.
The radiation level in the ocean is going to be a local problem, and they are struggling to fix it and keep it as local as possible.
They need more radiation hardened robots capable of working submersed. You have any of those? Or concrete that hardens in moving water tainted with radioactive acid? And they need tracers to find other possible leaks, but I think they have those.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Get your professor to get you in contact with someone who can talk to the people in charge up there, to see if they could use your software, or to see if they could let you go up to take samples and analyze it.
Those guys are busy, of course, so it may take a while to get a moment with someone who can make that kind of decision, but it may be worth the effort if it can help them shorten their analysis turn-around time.
Remember, though, that if they let you go in, you're likely to need to carry a backpack with extra food and clothes and maybe even sleeping bag and tent. And you'll need to pack your tools in, as much as possible. They need all the supplies they can get, so people who go in to help need to be as prepared to take care of themselves.
Oh, good hiking boots, too, because there will be a lot of places you won't be able to get a car or bicycle through, and the trains probably aren't going to be able to take you all the way in.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
There were and are a whole lot of people guessing. That's a big part of the problem here, too many people guessing based on not enough information.
Yeah, other people were worried about cracks and leaks. However, most of the worriers were also screaming about how this was going to be worse than Chernobyl, a comparison that only gets in the way.
You do understand why that comparison just gets in the way?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
"Star Wreck: in the Pirkining" Russian built Star Ships with reduced warp drive abilities. :) Chernobyl tech applied to starships. ;)
I need to say seriously That I apologize for my past, present, and future jokes. My condolences to people suffering because of these conditions and disasters that had friends or/and family members die or get cancer for these disasters.