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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."
Oh look, another volunteer. Since they're not dying on the spot, what's holding you back? If a little cancer is not worth mentioning in a discussion, it certainly isn't a reason not to help out, is it? People like you disgust me. The workers couldn't even do their job there under the normal limits. The limit has been increased to a quarter of a sievert. The workers incur the limit dose after just 15 minutes of working in some of the areas. Just one hour in the same area: Radiation sickness and 10% dead within 30 days.
Russia and the Ukraine were both part of the USSR but the place was effectively run by Russia anyway.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You meant _ineffectively_ run by Russia, right?
The lesson is we (humanity) should learn, it that we have only this one nest.
If we don't solve that problem, we deserve whatever happens to us.
We can't afford to foul it up (that is, any more than we have already.)
So you'll be turning off your computer and lights in 5, 4, 3... Oh, yeah, I forgot. Solar, wind, and geothermal will give all six billion of us all the electricity we need, so I guess you can leave that stuff powered up.
...And what power source would you recommend? Coal, which is pretty much the only other viable alternative to nuclear energy at this point, which kills over 5 thousand workers each year just mining it, not to mention all of the health risks associated with burning coal for power. On the other hand, we've had about 63 deaths occurring directly from nuclear incidents since nuclear power started. Now, while others have obviously had larger cancer risks and such resulting in death, but it is nearly impossible to be 100% certain about how many of those have occurred. Quite honestly nuclear power is the safest type of power we have at the moment.
And we have to realize that the disaster at the Fukushima plant isn't normal. Rather, this was the fifth largest earthquake to be recorded in modern history. Not only that but it had a huge tsunami to go along with it. Could TEPCO have handled this better? Yes. Could the Japanese government have handled this better? Yes. Should TEPCO have built this reactor to withstand larger earthquakes? Yes. But is nuclear power more dangerous than coal, oil, and every other power source that can be used in large quantities? No.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
Not arguing with you, but if you're counting deaths from mining coal, you need to also count deaths from mining uranium, not just deaths from "nuclear incidents".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
it doesnt reduce radiation dose. gamma requires several feet of shielding to bring it down. the suits are just there to prevent particle contamination from getting in/on their bodies.
Having been in regular contact with good friends in Tokyo, it seems the general mood in Tokyo is one of calm, and it's the rest of the world that are panicking.
A lot of roadblocks go up in a sudden poof of smoke when you say "or would you rather deal with a nuclear meltdown?". Helicopters and fuel aren't going to be an issue when your need is at pretty much the very top of the pecking order.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I guess buying a modern, safe nuclear reactor wasn't really on the top of his to do list, and mothballing the Fukushima reactors before the quake would have been unthinkable, they provided about 20% of the total power used in northern Honshu.
The first reactor was scheduled to be shut down on march 26th 2011., the others over the next decade. You can't do it all at once because you need time to build new plants to replace the capacity.
Which, incidentally, is the main reason that so many old reactors are still running. Nobody will let them build new ones, so how can you shut down the old ones?
Except the worlds largest sources of uranium aren't in third world countries, and the coal numbers above for coal can be separated to include US only. Oh Look, it's 15 deaths/TWh just in the US alone 3 orders of magnitude higher than world wide nuclear.
There's a lot of negative things to be said about nuclear power, but in terms of human death coal is orders of magnitude worse regardless of how you neysayers try to skew the statistics.
Their anti-nuclear movement blocked several plants back in the 90s.
Yep, old reactors like this were to be shut down and replaced by newer, safer designs. All the activists did was keep old reactors going.
It's not just Japan, but the rest of the world. Old reactors are still running in America and Europe because the movements forced governments to not build any new reactors.
Haha, yeah, and please put the most positive spin you can think of on whatever you read. If you read "It's a disaster" you must consider that the translation might be defective.
Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way
What I think you are saying is, well, maybe it is a disaster, but they had a hell of an excuse!
That (i suspect willfully) misses the points completely. The reactor was not supposed to fail. Yet it did, and the results are impressive, to say the least. That a catastrophe that manages to make a reactor fail also severely hinders you ability to deal with the situation is a new thing we have learned. And that in fact nobody has a good plan for a situation like this is also suddenly in plain sight, although is nothing that wasn't known before.