Slashdot Mirror
Robots Enter Fukushima Reactor Building
swandives writes "For the first time, a pair of remote controlled robots have entered a reactor building at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power hopes the iRobot Packbots will be able to provide data on the current condition inside the buildings, although the company hasn't yet released any information on what they found inside."
I continue to conclude: It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. We now know it is far less than that. It does not appear that the entire mess will equal one Chernobyl.
There will probably be a greater and more fatal impact: the rejection, in the West, of nuclear power, which will either have dire economic consequences and lead to even more transfer of wealth into the sovereign investment funds of the Near East, or possibly to wars: I point out that our Middle East Wars have been deadly; nuclear power has not directly killed anyone in the United States. There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
Note that China is not going to halt nuclear power construction. The major effect of Fukushima Daiichi may well be a very great Chinese comparative advantage. Cheap easily available energy and freedom are the keys to economic prosperity: the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable.
Meanwhile, there is no sign of any danger to anyone outside the evacuation zone in Japan, and indeed not much evidence of danger inside it. Japan will be deprived of some rice farming land for a few years -- perhaps -- and of the energy from the plant. Of course the plant was older and scheduled for retirement to begin with.
The 9.0 earthquake is now said to have been the largest ever recorded to have hit a civilized area.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I object to letting our robotic overlords have control of nuclear material.
Thanks to Google. Once they find out that long term disability and on-the-job life insurance does not extend to robots. This will be just one of many stepping stones to the robot uprising, mark my words!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Who will be the first to sue this company about the name, the Isaac Asimov estate or Apple?
It's about time. In the Land of the Robots, they finally found a paltry few to send in there.
What if they robots are susceptible to radiation and this brings about the singularity?
With all the stories of robots invented by Japanese over time, I am surprised they weren't doing this on day 2 after the event. I just assumed that if they were inventing sex robots and elder-care robots and dancing robots which all do things which humans could already do pretty well, that they had run out of things humans couldn't do, like industrial robots and disaster explorer robots. I've lost a lot of respect for Japanese robotics after the length of this delay.
Allow me to be the first to say, "domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!"
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I'm pro-nuclear power, but I'm not a PR person. Just realistic about the world's future energy needs.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"My God! It's full of stars!"
I'm not even pro-nuclear (I'd call it the lesser of two evils), and even I take exception to the assumption that the realists about Fukushima (or Chernobyl for that matter) must be nuclear industry shills.
There is a general trend of alarmist hysteria surrounding nuclear power, and slashdot is one of the few places I read where there are people basically telling the alarmists to stow it. A few of these people shouting down the anti-nuclear sentiment are strongly biased in favour of nuclear power, but most are simply more informed about the risks involved than the general public. Dismissing the anti-alarmist commentators as "nuclear industry PR folks" is essentially throwing reason out the window in favour of fear.
(Just to preempt the inevitable accusation that I am "one of them", my own view is that nuclear power plants should be built in lieu of coal power plants. See the "lesser of two evils" sentiment above. I'm all in favour of solar homes and where local conditions permit I support hydro, geothermal or other means of power collection. In the long run I think fusion offers our best hope. Nuclear power is a stopgap.)
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
am surprised they didn't do this earlier? the great western powers have got all sorts of robotic devices and planes and tanks to kill people, couldn't they have given japan a couple to help out people in need? oh but then, that wouldn't earn them dollars would it! ok my bad!
I agree that fusion is our best hope, but it too is nuclear power. However, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant that nuclear power from fission is the stopgap.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Why didn't someone somewhere already have a number of robots ready to go on short notice.
I would have expected the US army to have rapid deployment robots to nuclear radiation zones.
Great, if they are like my Roomba they will bounce from one wall to another in the corner, scream loudly, and then shutdown.
You're deluding yourself.
The power company reps, governments and media are making that easy, but you're still the one living in delusion. That's a far more dangerous place to be than most realize. The more you believe in lies, the more your mind and soul deteriorate.
If you want to really be a skeptic, you need to dig in earnest into all sides of the story, accurately determine the truth of what you find, contrast and compare, and don't hide behind sophistry or let the fear of being 'wrong' about your initial assumptions determine your thought patterns.
I really think you should try to be less pedantic about such a standard piece of terminology. You might go blind from the high blood pressure.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
There is a general trend of alarmist hysteria surrounding nuclear power
You mean hysteria like this?
“Fukushima is going to kill 200,000 from increased cancers over the next 50 years.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/japan/110415/fukushima-death-toll-meltdown-chernobyl?page=full
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"Nuclear power" in the vernacular sense means "power generating fission reactors". Mostly because those are the only tech presently used to harness nuclear reactions for electricity. Informally, virtually every member of the public hears "nuclear" and understands it to mean "fission", assuming they know what fission is.
I am aware that a hypothetical fusion power plant would "nuclear" in the sense of the word used by physicists, however I do not generally refer to them as "nuclear power plants" to avoid confusion. When precision in language gets in the way of clarity, clarity should always come first; being correctly understood matters more than being technically correct when dealing with non-experts.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
That's EXACTLY what the machines wanted! You've sent them to the mother of all power sources, and mankind to its inevitable doom! Now they will be able to replicate and grow stronger in absolute radiated safety. These fools have just killed us.
Er. "would be nuclear", not "would nuclear". And I clearly need to go to bed if I'm making typos that basic.
The media is getting this material here. You can find video of RC helicopter flights over the buildings, video of the No.4 spend fuel pool sampling operation right down to the surface of the water, photos of the tsunami water marks on the turbine and reactor buildings and photos of the destruction of outlying structures. Also interesting are photos of the emergency staff and their on-site facilities. Much of this stuff is high resolution photography.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Temp is how the whole thing works and also the big problem in nuclear power-- almost every credible threat relates to the cooling; it doesn't have explosions or breaks in things in the cold - there are so many safety measures that are nearly fool proof in the cold!
The waste, well that is another problem its the output waste not related to the plant's operation. The waste doesn't seem to be handled well by most nations. At least they'll have a place to ship it all -- TEXAS is going to privatize nuclear waste dumps and allow them to put them over ground water supplies. good riddance.
Hey flesh bags, bite my shiny metal radioactive a.....
Oh Fukushima, not Futurama..... Sorry my bad...
There is a general trend of alarmist hysteria surrounding nuclear power....Dismissing the anti-alarmist commentators as "nuclear industry PR folks" is essentially throwing reason out the window in favour of fear.
Except that there is in fact a lot of nuclear astroturfing going on.
Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby ...
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7506
Bowman heads the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the main lobbying group for the industry. His remarks (PDF), at a February gathering of more than 100 Wall Street analysts, were part of a presentation on "reasoned expectations for new nuclear plant construction."
Bowman knew it was important to impress his audience of wary potential investors. "We are where we are today because this industry started many years ago on a systematic program to identify what went wrong the last time," he said, "and develop ways to eliminate or manage those risks."
NEI has certainly won bragging rights. Thanks to its persistence, a growing number of commentators and policymakers see nuclear power as the solution to global warming. "Safe, secure, vital," is the mantra...
Geothermal is also nuclear power. It relies on the intrinsic fission of elements within the Earth's mantle, and legacy heat from prior fission as well as legacy friction from planetary formation. It's implemented by steam turbines also, or turbines driven by the flash evaporation of some other coolant.
The difference betweent fission, fusion and geothermal is that geothermal requires no fuel creation or elimination. You dig two deep holes fairly close together and force water down one of them. The heat of the Earth heats the water, which comes up the other hole - usually as steam or superheated water that will become steam when the pressure is released, but sometimes just as much hotter water. Naturally after the energy gained is tapped, the hot water is then re-injected. For new water some use sewage effluent and solve two problems at once. There is no ash, no spent fuel to rot in casks 100,000 years under close supervision of a non-proliferation task force. There are no mining deaths because there's no mine. There are no refining risks because there's no refining. There's no proliferation risk because there's no nuclear products onsite. The cost of dealing with the emissions are well understood because there aren't any. Geothermal plants require a much smaller geographic footprint than even nuclear plants, because they can mine energy from several miles in each direction and there is no risk.
With geothermal power in the event of a disaster of the worst possible sort: a Geothermal plant is simultaneously attacked by terrorists, crushed by a 10.3 earthquake and inundated by the subsequent 90m tsunami at the exact moment that a Justin Bieber album goes platinum, the worst that can happen is that some steam will vent and electricity will stop being generated, and Justin Bieber gets a slot on Dancing With the Stars. That's not a lot of downside risk, relative to fission and fusion.
There are established economies on Earth that can't provide 100% of their electrical energy needs from geothermal sources. Some parts of Africa, the US East Coast, Brazil. Japan, though? Yes, they could. Their entire nation is a chain of active volcanos. They are geothermal rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It was the tsunami that took away the people and the diesel generators. Both tsunami victims and the plant were fine after the quake.
Actually, thus far every design type of theoretical fusion plant would necessarily create radioactive waste, although not as much of it as fission plants. The reason is the same one that the waste-water in the original article is a problem: nuclear reactions work by massive cascades of nutrons randomly hitting atoms in the core. When those nutrons hit the nucleus of an atom (in a way that causes them to be absorbed in the right way), then you get your nuclear reaction, and that in turn produces more neutrons as ersatz-billiard-balls to continue your reaction, plus energy (in the form of heat) that you harvest off (usually with water) to convert into your power-transmission method of choice (usually electricity).
The problem in all of this is that you can't just limit it to your fuel and your energy harvester (water), you wind up with lots of other elements in the reaction chamber that also get bombarded with neutrons. And some percentage of those elements are going to wind up transmuting into radioactive waste.
In the case of a fusion reactor that is probably going to be whatever serves as the reaction chamber wall. Remember, neutrons are magnetically/electrically neutral particles, so you can't contain them using magnets, so you just have to let your reactor wall take the hits, and slowly degrade into radioactive waste. No one has a solution to this problem, and it is unlikely that one exists.
So, there really is no pedantic to call out here. Nuclear energy produces nuclear waste, the only question is how much (vs. the extracted energy), and how bad the byproducts will be.
"Banri Kaieda spoke to reporters on Sunday shortly after Tokyo Electric Power Company presented a road map to cool down the reactors and significantly reduce radiation leaks in 6 to 9 months" http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_16.html It's only 6 to 9 months no big deal right? "Radiation levels measured between the double doors of those reactor buildings was 270 millisieverts in the Number One reactor, 12 in Number 2, and 10 in Number 3. The radiation level detected at the Number One reactor exceeds the national exposure limit of 250 millisieverts for nuclear contract workers." http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/18_03.html Three reactors melting down and at least one breached , plus several tons of waste fuels rods that have melted or blown away and are still currently boiling off, plutonium found around the plant on the ground , not to mention the dumping of highly radioactive water into the ocean for over a month but no big deal right? http://www.vgb.org/vgbmultimedia/News/Fukushimav15VGB.pdf If you have a mind to look behind the curtain http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread672665/pg739
Except that there is in fact a lot of nuclear astroturfing going on.
How is it astroturfing if they are a) a group specifically and publicly formed by and for the nuclear industry, b) not hiding who they are, but openly and honestly giving their side of the debate, c) to an audience that is there specifically to hear what they have to say because they WANT to hear what they have to say?
Sorry, but that's just silly. It's kinda like saying the catholic church astroturfs every time a priest stands up and gives a sermon.
The unnamed 'reputable scientist' Gundersen is probably referring to is probably Chris Busby, who with all due respect has the credibility of the tooth fairy. Gundersen himself spends most of the argument saying how much worse things are going to get and only near the end says that the things he's talking about have - in his likely inflated estimation - only a 10% or 20% chance of happening.
As someone who lives in Tokyo and has been following this saga with nervous interest, let me say *about fucking time*.
I couldn't believe when I heard spokesmen on the news two weeks after the incident saying things like "the radiation level has risen suddenly in reactor 2 and there's smoke pouring out of the gaping holes in the structure but since levels are too high to send personnel in to check, at this point we have no idea why."
I mean, are you fucking kidding? I could show up with a parrot drone sourced off ebay for $300 and be a national hero with salutes of "Are you a wizard?" from all and sunder.
That the people running a nuclear plant are so devoid of imagination and out of touch with modern technology that they can't figure out how to get a remote cam in there at the very least, speaks volumes for Japan. I'm sure it's the only "first world" country where every goddamned bit of government paperwork is just that. Paper. You can go into a local government office and there are no computers on most desks. Yet down the street there's a museum with a singing dancing humanoid robot show.
end rant
"Well Artoo, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into"
Obligatory Useful links: A very good description of radiation by the EPA
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/index.html
Follow the link under the green heading at the right of the page
"...there is no sign of any danger to anyone outside the evacuation zone in Japan"
This is truly hilarious. Words delivered with the same sincerity as those uttered by representatives of the cigarette industry back in the 1950's.
Pournelle cleverly avoids comment on the Japanese workers who are now dying a slow death as a result of their efforts to deal with the problem and obviously Jerry cannot wait to see exactly just what problems might emerge from the 9 month project to seal the reactor.
The fact that there is need for an evacuation zone at all should wake dear old Pournelle up to the problem, but he is too old and set in his ways.
After the Chernobyl accident, the team that had created the Lunokhod rovers was asked to build remote-controlled vehicles (RCV) to help clean up. The RCV's first task was to remove reactor debris (chunks of graphite from the core) from a roof, by pushing it off the edge of the roof. The RCVs worked well; eventually though they failed due to the radiation. This despite them being rad-hardened, as the original Lunokhods had been powered by an RTG.
All in all a pretty boneheaded analysis of events that are still unfolding.
Since there is "not much evidence" against anything (in your/his words), I suggest you move to the evacuation zone in Japan right away: buy property now, it will never be so cheap!
We have very little experimental data on nuclear meltdowns, despite the strong memories and high damages caused by Chernobyl and the other (fortunately few) major incidents, so of course there is not hard evidence of anything. But I think that through the deaths, mutations, stories you can get from anybody who experienced Chernobyl we got a pretty good informal understanding that radioactive particles are able to seriously affect the health of individuals and of the natural environment for decades if not for centuries.
It's wisdom that should guide any attempt at dealing with situations like these, when there's not enough knowledge.
Wisdom that is missing in this techno-enthusiast "rational view".
Could anyone provide figures of property lost value and dead count caused by:
- the Fukushima accident
- the earthquake, excluding the tsunami
- the tsunami, excluding the Fukushima casualties
?
I mean, the power plant problem is a big one, but I'd really like to see how it compares to the big image. Somehow I have a feeling that even establishing a permanent 30km exclusion zone around the power plant, and all the cancer accidents resulting from radiation leaks will not get anywhere near to the number of dead and value of property destroyed in whole towns levelled with the ground by the tsunami wave. Yet we shrug the tsunami as yet another natural event while screaming about dangerous nuclear technology causing a disaster the scale of...
I mean... Fukushima disaster scale is slowly approaching 1.0 Chernobyl events. But how many Tsunami Events is it?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I predict the rates of deaths from Cancer in Japan will not increase but rather drop off, as ppl will now be more aware of a risk, and more likely to follow though on it!
Treatments will be made cheaper and more widely available, and thus a much lower death rate the other parts of the 1st world!
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
We are still finding out how bad it is at the moment.
Meanwhile I object to calling the guys that say "the roof won't blow off" etc etc "realists".
As I see it one of the biggest problems is the expectation of 100% zealous fanboy behaviour or you are out. Suggest a thorium solution on the ground of increased safety? Out the door you go, distinguished career over with the successful project cancelled. Suggest a brilliant way to very cheaply chemically incorporate everything in high grade waste in a stable material? There is no waste problem screams the fanboys - you cannot have your dismal amount of funding so it's going to take you three decades to put the finishing touches on.
Once nuclear power became a way to funnel huge amounts of money from the taxpayers it ceased to be anything other than an excuse for that transfer so it was technologically finished in the USA. What Westinghouse would sell you before Toshiba got involved was little more than TMI painted green. Now it's currently not much better. Meanwhile South Africa has more advanced civilian nuclear technology - derived from that via Germany is the pebble bed reactor in China. India is way ahead. France for all it's troubles and the dead end of plutonium fast breeders and pointless reprocessing is well ahead.
Meanwhile in the USA it's just a cheer squad that pretends it is all perfect and it's rare that some improvement sneaks in from elsewhere (eg. the Toshiba stuff that inspired the AP1000). It's been a dead industry in the USA since even before Carter told them they had to survive on their own merits.
" It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. "
Well, that's very comforting, after all the Tsar Bomb is just the BIGGEST FRIKKIN HYDROGEN BOMB EVER BUILT.
Yeah, I know residual fallout is smaller in atomic/hydrogene bombs than in dirty bombs, but I still wouldn't make the guy my PR/spokesperson.
Well, astroturfing in this context is clearly the wrong term. However, those of us who are old enough will have seen the pattern:
The pro-nuclear lobby will win a degree of public acceptance while there is nothing nasty fresh in the public memory. But every now and then, poor implementations such as the Windscale/Sellafield and Cap de la Hague reprocessing plants, and major instances such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima remind us that nuclear fusion power is only as safe as the engineers' (and accountants') margins allow it to be.
Given that many (i.e. most) large corporations are inherently untrustworthy when it comes to putting public safety ahead of their pecuniary interests, the current crash in uranium mining stocks comes as a timely reminder that the free lunch offered by nuclear fission is nothing of the sort.
but it has killed people in the US.(Not saying his overall point is wrong since it pretty much isn't.) Admittedly I only know of one incident, SL-1, but that killed 3 people. (But it might have been suicide. Of course it's kind of hard to forget that one when you hear one of the deceased accidently got nailed to the ceiling.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Indonesia is a scary case. It has both an ambitious nuclear plan and a long history of geological instability which shows no signs of abating. It is also a culture where corruption is rife and taken for granted, which does not bode well for the prospects of a safe nuclear implementation. Given this cocktail of factors, it's probably not unfair to say that Indonesia truly is "backward".
The plasma facing first wall and structural materials of fusion plants are being designed to minimise the generation of long lived radiative elements (search for IFMIF for info on the planned materials test facility). Over the lifetime of a fusion plant you'd end up with barely enough high level waste to put into a small oil drum - this can then be destroyed. People seem to forget that you can use the huge neutron flux of a fusion reactor to transmute materials, ie you can convert dangerous radioactive waste into much more benign waste. It would require a dedicated plant, but this would be no problem in a fusion economy.
the greanpeace number is claimed to be a additional deaths to due cancer, not all cancer cases. Their pessimisc view is that this number can rise to 200.000.
Not that that really matters now, because it impossible now to reverse what happened in chernobyl 1986.
One thing is for sure: the "Don' panic" numbers released by authorities are only one hlaf of the truth.
First - I'm "old enough" to have seen patterns myself. Feel free to get off my lawn any time.
Second - "large corporations" is a strawman argument - unless you can give me a single example of any large scale example of ANY energy generator that is *not* a "large corporation"? That's where the regulatory framework comes in.
Third - There are probably more people that die in just West Virginia each year than have died IN TOTAL due to nuclear accidents. Hint: mining disasters aren't even close to being the worst offender - take a look at the stats regarding cancers, black lung, silicosis and other diseases caused by long-term exposure to coal dust in the mines.
Forth - when has anybody, anywhere, described fission as a free lunch? All systems and technologies have their costs. As somebody commented earlier, nuclear energy right now is just one of the best of a bunch of bad options.
- Nah, the worse was the earthquake/tsunami, I predict the reactor thing will be minimal.
- Anti-nukes are alarmists, the reactor situation is manageable.
- The reactores were old, the next generation will be safer.
- The media thrives on this, all that coverage is just sensationalism...
- 10km radius doesn't mean much.
- The US considers recommends a 20km evacuation area.
- Statistically, the radiation absorbed by workers won't do any harm, see this graph.
- Radioactivity can be measured in bananas.
- France believes Japan has underestimaed the dangers.
- 20km radius does not mean much.
- Workers in the nuclear sector are supposed to risk their lives.
- 60km radius is... the reactors were old.
But I ask:
- Where is the line, where do we draw a limit for nuclear accidents (as if one can call the semi-permanent poisoning of such a huge area "an accident")?
Note: When you talk "rice farming", do you have a notion of what it means to Japanese?
They name all their meals after rice; there are lots and lots of people name Rice*; besides, Japan is notoriously lacking cultivation areas.
This is typical and normal for Japanese companies not to be forthcoming with information. They simply don't offer information unless it is required. You might consider this "secretive" especially when such an event literally has potential to affect everyone on the planet in some way, but this is simply not inherent to the way the Japanese think. This is an embarrassment and simply would prefer not to talk about it. I think this trend is clear and obvious from the very beginning of the reporting of the situation. The picture painted was always one indicating "nothing to worry about" and so on. As things progressed, they had to "admit" more failure as it couldn't be denied.
In the western mind, this does the opposite of "building trust" and is read as being deceptive. Even now, I cannot help but feel that way. But I have to remind myself that this is "normal" for this different cultural mindset. Then ask yourself why would they do anything that wouldn't be normal for them to do? They don't read this as a "public trust" issue -- they see it as an internal affair.
You realize you just posted spam on a discussion board literally filled with black-hat hackers that can ruin your day, your year or your life?
The article said they had remote controlled things on site almost immediately. I am not in the field of robotics so I don't know the difference.
About China leaping forward if they develop nuclear energy and the west doesn't. You have to understand we are a democracy and things that China allows would be impermissable here. China has made great leaps forward. But they just avoid paying the costs that are needed. Their environment has been raped (women may howl at that. Are there any reading /.?) And at some point in the future they will have to pay the costs they are skipping now. They may indeed go forward with nuclear power. And they will probably skimp on safety so it can be done cheaply. And at some point there will be an accident. There will then be a strong reaction in the country. My understanding is that Chernobyl played more than a minor part in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And thirdly, I remain unconvinced of the economic viability of nuclear power. Yes, for years I have heard about how cheap it is and how we must have power to develop our economy. And how safe it is compared to other alternatives and blah, blah, blah. What I haven't heard is how cheap nuclear power is if you take into account the unfunded liabilities involved. The US government has taken on the responsibility of dealing with the nuclear waste generated. How much does it cost to build a facility to safely store this waste and how much will it cost to maintain and staff this for thousands of years? And how much does it cost to moth=ball a nuclear site until it is no longer radioactive? I find myself wondering how affordable nuclear energy is if those costs were added to the equation. And I have never even heard this point raised when nuclear power is being debated, much less and answer the the question.
Perhaps the geniuses (genii?) at /. can enlighten me.
You mean hysteria like this?
Yes, perfect example.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi that failed were designed in the 1970's. Newer designs using current technology are designed with a more 'fail safe' type of cooling and probably would NOT have suffered the cooling failure under the same conditions. Nuclear power plants designed TODAY are much safer than the ones put in service before Three Mile Island. The problem is that the older plants that are subject to the failure modes we have seen are NOT going to be replaced until they either DO fail, or are past their extended life spans. The industrial nations will probably use Fukushima Daiichi as a reason to rally against nuclear power and ignore all the progress made over the years since TMI to improve the safety and reliability of this important power source. We need to be better informed.
I agree that fusion is our best hope,
I really wish people would stop saying that. Such statements means mankind is doomed to war over tiny stores of fuel.
Fusion researchers have done an excellent job in pushing their lies and PR so as to continue receiving funding but it would literally be a miracle to have fusion power plants running in less than a couple hundred years; with five to six hundred years being far more realistic. Granted, there are other possibilities which might be able to deliver fusion in a much small time span but none of that receives much funding. In fact, the projects which have been proven to be failures of decades receive almost all of the fusion funding. And that ignores that research thus far actually indicates sustained fusion at the scales currently being attempted are physically impossible.
And as incredible as fusion power would be, to actually create a usable power plant means another half dozen or more technological advancements of like significance. Literally, we are closer to exploring the universe than we are of creating fusion power plants.
To be clear, I absolutely believe in fusion research. But I absolutely do not believe in continued funding of what has proven to be failed approaches. As a world, we need to a take a hard look and finally starting funding projects which actually have a hope of creating a fusion plant because the status quo is nothing but corrupt, good 'ol boy funding.
It is possible the Fukushima nuclear reactor explosions were caused by a specifically modified version of the Stuxnet worm, which tried to stop the japanese weaponized plutonium production programme by targeting the Siemens Simatic based servers that control the nuclear powerplant's backup generators and emergency cooling systems.
Radioactivity measurements suggest the japanese were storing or producing much more plutonium at the exploded Fukushima-1 nuclear powerplant than officially declared or necessary for use at their single MOX-fueled reactor, which is indicative of a clandestine A-bomb making effort.
Stuxnet malware is exceptionally well-positioned to attack nuclear reactors, because its variant C used attack code to confuse Siemens Simatic S7 SCADA control systems in the iranian Bushehr PWR nuclear electric power reactor and wrecked the primary coolant loop main pumps by overspinning them, requiring 6 months of repairs in the russian-built reactor. (Variant B of Stuxnet similarly wrecked Simatic/Vacon controlled uranium-hexafluoride gas ultra-centrifuge motors in the iranian Natanz U-235 refining plant by using incorrect frequencies/revs. Variant A was an early prototype with incomplete attack code, which seemingly got released due to administrative hiccup.)
As mentioned above, radioactivity measurements suggest the japanese were storing or producing much more plutonium at the exploded Fukushima-1 nuclear powerplant than officially declared or necessary for use at their single MOX-fueled reactor, which is indicative of a clandestine A-bomb making effort.
There have been rumors in 2009 and 2010, that Japan decided to make and stockpile large amounts of plutonium domestically, to allow for rapid assembly of nuclear bombs in case of a national defence emergency. The japanese Pu-239 production project is allegedly called "Operation Mishima Yukio", named after the militant revolutionary writer and actor who commited seppuku in 1970, after unsuccessfully demanding the nuclear re-armament of Japan in a failed coup 'd etat attempt.
The modern japanese plutonium bomb project was started in 2007-2008, when their long-term ally USA repeatedly denied to export superior F-22 Raptor fighter jets, sought by Tokyo to fend off the several hundred Su-27 / J-11 heavy fighter planes in chinese air force service. Many analysts assume that "real-politik" control of the asiatic rim of the Pacific (including Taiwan, South Korea and Japan) will soon transfer under Beijing's sphere of influence, in exchange for annuling of most the USA's renminbi-yuan foreign dept. That would spell doom for Tokyo, since China can never forgive the many japanese military atrocities of WW2 and seeks revenge.
Therefore it seems plausible that Japan tried to fend off any possibility of a chinese or north korean threat by seeking domestic posession of atomic weapons.In turn, Stuxnetan (~ "Stuxnet girl mascot" in japanese), a modified variant of the anti-iranian nuclear military worm, could have been used to attack the plutonium-producing reactors at Fukushima, in case the USA and Tel-Aviv really disliked Japan's independent nuclear weapons ambitions.
If so, the "japanized" Stuxnetan worm was rather obviously designed to strike the Simatic Win-CC driven backup systems at the moment when the nuclear reactors emergency stop on alarm signal of earthquake sensors (moderate to strong earthquakes being a regularly occuring phenomenon in Japan). The resulting several Fukushima mishaps, explosions and massive destruction, rather then the mere wrecking and breaking of reactor machinery, were an unintended result of the attack. The malware programmers simply did not consider the possibility of a rare super-massive scale 9 earthquake happening, as opposed to the usual grade 6-7 tremors and also ignored the risk posed by mega tsunami waves, which followed the quake onto shore and disabled much more emergency capability than anticipated.
If such a Stuxnetan versus Fukushima scenario proves true, the consequences could be en
"Flamebait"? Good grief!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I continue to conclude: It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. We now know it is far less than that. It does not appear that the entire mess will equal one Chernobyl.
Rubbish, Tsar Bomba's fall out is measured in kilograms, Chernobyls around 10's of tons. Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle. Great that it didn't blow up however the release of radionuclides will continue to occur until all the leaks are repaired. The question is how this will be achieved. Chernobyl released it's radionuclides into the air and all over the land because it was land locked. It seems that because Fukushima is releasing its radionuclide yield into the ocean that this is somehow less concerning. Let's do and see the science and asses the actual damage based on that, not hyperbole.
There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
The claim can be made for two reasons. First at TMI the science wasn't even done. Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost due to increased cancer rates?
It can be best summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
Here is the actual text of the agreement. However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Maybe Pournelle is just to lazy to look and since cancer takes years to gestate I think it's premature to understand the damage done to the Japanese populace by Fukushima.
the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable.
Absolutely predicable. If they make the same tragic organisational mistakes that every other country has made then we will see an accident on the same scale. It's difficult to believe that the Chinese will succeed where the UK, USA, USSR, Germany and now Japan has failed.
Of course the plant was older and scheduled for retirement to begin with.
Of course this is completely irrelevant and actually should have promoted investment in *ensuring* the plant wouldn't fail. The activated isotopes inside the reactor, or CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits - look it up), will be leaking into the Pacific if the reactor vessel is as breached as it appears to be. I suspect we are just at the
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A perfect example.
Admittedly, it's hard to properly estimate which cancer deaths were due to a release of substances and which were due to something else, but Chernobyl itself (reactor with no containment filled with highly combustible graphite had its core fully exposed to outside air) is estimated to have cause 4,000 deaths.
The guy in that article is stirring up some nice sensationalism to sell page views, as usual.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I think a few more people have died in the history of United States nuclear:
HOWEVER - All of them were involved in the early days of nuclear R&D. Louis Slotin (Manhattan Project), Harry Dahglian (Manhattan Project), and the SL-1 crew (Remember, it was three military personnel at a military research reactor) come to mind.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
In Chernobyl, the "released" radioactive material spread all over Europe and Asia. In Fukushima, the "released" material is mostly still on the power plant site.
Contaminated water is a pain to keep bottled up, but it's a lot easier than contaminated smoke.
So that 1/8 figure, while accurate, is misleading about the effects on the population.
Been there. Or at least seen the building from the highway.
Note that all three people were military personnel, so CIVILIAN nuclear power still can't be blamed for any deaths (in the USA).
Note, further, that the incident happened when someone disconnected the reactor control rod motor (yes, that reactor only had ONE control rod. Probably because it wasn't much bigger than a 50 gallon drum), and then pulled the control rod out by hand.
When I read the incident report on same, it mentioned that the particular bit of maintenance they were sent in to do required that they disconnect the control rod motor (to keep the reactor from going critical while they worked), do the maintenance (they apparently did, safely), then reconnect the control rod motor.
Which last apparently required that they lift the control rod ~1/2 inch so that it could be reconnected to the motor. Evidence suggests that they lifted it ~1 FOOT, causing the reactor to go supercritical, and impaling the idiot who lifted the control rod in the ceiling.
Needless to say, it killed the other two petty officers doing the work.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Did no body read Roadside Picnic? We're meant to send alcoholics with a death wish in first to collect stuff, then the robots replace them.
No, we can't be looking at 800-1000 tons of Pu.
The plant wasn't designed to make Pu, and you're assuming that it incidentally created enough Pu to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal?!?
Sorry, don't buy it. I might believe 800-1000 Kg, maybe.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Same severity as Chernobyl.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Fusion researchers have done an excellent job in pushing their lies and PR so as to continue receiving funding but it would literally be a miracle to have fusion power plants running in less than a couple hundred years; with five to six hundred years being far more realistic.
Wow, a prophet right here on /.!
I'd really like to know which orifice you pulled your numbers from? We are possibly at the edge of the AI singularity, meaning soon we might build a computer smart enough to build a smarter computer. It's a fairly short track from there to IQ 10,000. I strongly suspect such an AI would have very little trouble designing a working fusion reactor. This will likely all happen well within 100 years, possibly within the next twenty years.
Even ignoring the possibility of a singularity, mere humans could well invent a working fusion reactor in the near term. Advances in science and technology aren't very predictable. Let me give you a few examples:
Given that even Einstein was dead wrong in some of his predictions, I don't have a lot of faith in what you're saying here... ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
These things are not in any way robots. They are remote controlled cars. They are about as sophisticated as a $300 RC car from the local hobby shop. They're a lot of fun, but they are NOT ROBOTS.
What evidence would it take to change your mind about nuclear power?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85736.html
OPINION: How to minimize consequences of the Fukushima catastrophe
By Alexey V. Yablokov
The analysis of the health impact of radioactive land contamination by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, made by Professor Chris Busby (the European Committee of Radiation Risk) based on official Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology data, has shown that over the next 50 years it would be possible to have around 400,000 additional cancer patients within a 200-kilometer radius of the plant.
I find that extremely unlikely since the radiation readings beginning at 20 km south of Fukushima Daiichi are barely above background levels. Now, based on the trend of the readings done around Fukushima Daiichi, I believe that the Japanese government instead of going into a evacuation zone based in a radius from the plant, will make a evacuation from the zone going up to 60 km from Fukushima Daiichi northwest 10-15 km wide, since only inside this polygon are radiation readings above 2 Sv/h. The highest reading outside the current evacuation zone are at reading point 32 in Namie town, at 28.6 Sv/h, around 32 km northwest from Fukushima Daiichi.
The last available reading from Fukushima:
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/04/18/1305090_041816.pdf
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The above comment says 2 Sv/h, but should say microsievert, but looks like slashdot doesn't like greek characters.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Wow, a prophet right here on /.!
My numbers were not meat to be prophetic but rather to illustrate the fusion bullshit which so many are ignorantly buying into. Being pragmatic is not the same thing as ignorance and naive acceptance; which you have bought into hook line and sinker. The sad thing is, I'm not alone. My statements are supported by physicists.
I'd really like to know which orifice you pulled your numbers from?
Pull your head from your ass and figure out what was actually said. The exact dates are of absolutely no value. The only purpose of those projections are to clearly denote, its extremely, extremely, extremely, unlikely you will see fusion in either of our lifetimes. Realistically, fusion within two hundreds is extremely unlikely unless scientific advances occur which literally border on that of the miracles. And that's no hyperbole either. This is all based on physicist who are actually involved in doing fusion research.
We literally are closer to some type of extra-solar exploration than we are fusion power. Period. Literally, in order for mankind to create a fusion power plant, there are between a half dozen and a dozen technological advances which in of themselves parallel the scientific achievement of sustained fusion and at this point, are decades to a century away from that.
So please, keep your ignorance to yourself.
What evidence would it take to change yours ?
However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Deceptive quoting makes the report seem to imply that the low life expectancy is due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident whereas the report actually says something else:
"As is true throughout the Former Soviet Union, life expectancy is low not only as compared with Southern and Western Europe, North America and Japan, but also with a number of countries from the developing world. Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less than in Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war. Overwhelmingly the most important reason for this is the combination of poverty, poor diet and living conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use. These factors may also, to some degree, be reinforced in the affected areas and communities by the psychosocial effects of the accident. Cardiovascular disease and trauma (accidents and poisonings) are the two most common causes of death followed by cancer (this situation is not confined to the Chernobyl affected regions). Most doctors when asked what measures would most improve the health of the population said improved diet and living conditions."
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
I see in this picture:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110417_1f_1_2.jpg
the reflection of the operators in the wall. I suppose that after that door is the most intense radiation in the building.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
7.1 mag. is coming :(
Pirate Themed Baby Shower Food
So please, keep your ignorance to yourself.
Amusingly, that's precisely what I was telling you.
It's also quite funny that you're claiming "physicist" (sic) support your view, when the person who discovered the principle that makes fission possible (Einstein) was dead wrong about its practicality. He didn't think it would ever work, not even claiming it would take hundreds of years. He was proven wrong within ten years.
Once again (and I hope it sinks in this time) technology predictions are hard, and many extremely smart people have been burned making them. I'll laugh thinking of this thread if I hear of the first net energy producing fusion reactor going live. It may not happen, but I'm not stupid enough to make a prediction one way or the other. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
We literally are closer to some type of extra-solar exploration than we are fusion power.
This also deserves a response, which I neglected.
You are predicting something that's already happened. Congratulations!
The Voyager 1 probe has reached the heliopause, and of course it has escape velocity from the Sun. Extra-solar exploration, ho! Face it, predictions aren't your strong suit.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Cheap easily available energy and freedom are the keys to economic prosperity: the Chinese are moving toward both.
You are 100% correct. Without energy, your economy stops. Period.
China has been using coal. Only 1% of electricity in China was produced by nuclear. They want to push that up to 10% in next few years. That is a fuckton of nuclear power plants.. (about 100 reactors)
China is also leading producer and installer of PV and wind generators. If they thought renewables would meet their future energy needs, they would not be building nuclear. The answer is quite clear. Hell, they dammed the Yangtze River at tremendous cost!
So far the only major users of nuclear has been France, Japan and somewhat the US (not as percentage of total energy). The first 2 have no choice but to continue using nuclear. Japan will need to continue building more nuclear power plants quite quickly unless they want to stagnate their economy completely. The can no longer afford to run oil plants (they actually started to build nuclear because of 1978 oil shock). Like France, Japan does not have access to any fossil fuel resources. Its future is nuclear, no matter what.
As someone has said it before. We will use nuclear either as a power source, or as a weapon to fight over remaining fossil fuels. Oil wars have been raging for almost 2 decades now. Kuwait, Iraq, Libya. The massive unrest in entire Muslim world is result oil and its politics.
The 2 deaths from Fukushima are from the tsunami, their bodies were recovered from the basement of turbine building of unit 4, drowned when the tsunami flooded the whole area. Currently, only 22 workers were exposed to more than 100 mSv of radiation.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Okay, but when the FIRST POST in the comments is pro-nuke, and has nothing to do with the article, are you really going to give them the benefit of the doubt?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
When Huge Robots fight Mutated Squid...
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CFIQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjetamuz.com%2Fvideo%2F4992%2Fbeastie-boys-intergalactic-official-music-video-hq&rct=j&q=beastie%20boys%20intergalactic%20video&ei=Q3msTczjGMLJ0QHbyoT6CA&usg=AFQjCNGmHYibUBswJYjWWmKj1xh5p9Ckxw&cad=rja
... here are pictures of the operators of those machines:
http://english.kyodonews.jp/photos/2011/04/84830.html
and the remote control machinery at work:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110411_1f_system1_8.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110411_1f_system1_7.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110411_1f_system1_5.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110411_1f_system1_1.jpg
Maybe, just maybe, they found that the best tool for what they wanted to do is this robot made in America?
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
This comment surprises me. Although I am not from the US. Over here in Sweden thorium and fast reactors are subject to a lot of research, and everyone in the nuclear industry wants to get to the point where those solutions are feasible. The real problem here is getting new types of reactors and processing plants approved by the government.
Personally I have never seen any nuclear "fanboys" speak against those kinds of new ideas in the field.
Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle.
I stopped reading after this because this is a load of bullshit. Both, the refueling cycle is wrong and the amount is insanely out of proportion. Citing another alarmist,
http://www.ieer.org/reports/npdd.html
0.9% of fuel at end of 3 years is plutonium. Since a reactors have about 140 tons of fuel, that means total plutonium that could ever be produced by constantly refueling and running the 6 reactors at Fukushima 100% of the time, is less than 100 tons. The real number is between 75-100 tons. Refueling it less often results in less plutonium. Furthermore, plutonium is a great fuel for reactors too - treating it as waste is retarded.
And how dangerous is plutonium? It's less dangerous than you think. There is quite a bit of plutonium in soils all over the planet, thanks to nuclear bomb "tests", yet, we are not dying left and right due to plutonium poisoning, are we? No, we are dying thanks to coal and its heavy metals that are spewed out.
As to your life expectancy, you may want to read life-expectancy of the workers at Chernobyl. Their life expectancy is not only longer than average Ukrainian/Russian, but hey have less tumors too. As to your link, it is again beyond belief you would link to a 1959 report. Do they have time machines there too???
Approved by the Twelfth World Health Assembly on 28 May 1959 in resolution WHA12.40
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17407581
RESULTS: The mortality risk to populations exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident may be no higher than that for other more common risk factors such as air pollution or passive smoking. Radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking.
How can one compare Hiroshima with its 10**12 higher radiation rate to nuclear accident is beyond comprehension. It's like comparing a warm stove top to a blast furnace.
And of course, all assuming LNT model. A model dating back to the 50s and as obsolete as the 50s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Something that has been shown over and over and over again in animals. But I guess humans are not animals, as some would have us believing. The truth will eventually come out and it will be that LNT is a failure. In some cases, we will learn that radiation is more harmful than helpful (as per LNT). In lots of other cases we will find out that radiation is more helpful than harmful.
That's all true, but at least you have some choice as to what isotopes you end up with - i.e. you can avoid the easily released nasties like iodine and caesium. Radioactive iron (in the form of steel) isn't going anywhere too easily, and the half life is quite short.
I really wish people would stop saying that. Such statements means mankind is doomed to war over tiny stores of fuel.
You have too much faith in humanity. Mankind IS doomed to war over tiny stores of fuel. And, of course, has been conducting wars over tiny stores of fuel for quite some time.
Support SETI@home
Holy shit you are stupid. Period.
Please provide any proof I'm wrong. Any. Since we both know you're a complete fucking idiot and a troll. Shut the fuck up and get off your sister. Holy shit you are stupid.
I see - I'm wrong because we have almost no capability to actually produce fusion power in any meaningful way and it has been so for the last several decades and absolutely looks like the case for at least the next several decades and EVERYONE involved says MAJOR milestones (exactly as I fucking said) would still be missing (including a complete lack of materials science) to actually have anything which would hope to deliver fusion.
So you're position is 100% I'm wrong because you don't want it to be so. You are a fucking idiot. Holy shit you are stupid.
I've already done that. Will you answer my question?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I understand the cultural issue, but it's not a sufficient excuse when they are in charge of a nuclear reactor. If they can't overcome their shame *at least* during an emergency requiring international support, then perhaps they shouldn't have one.
Then ask yourself why would they do anything that wouldn't be normal for them to do?
They should follow a set of pre-established procedures that include adequate communication. I'd expect this to be required in licensing the plant; if it's not, it should be.
It's a US nuclear lobby thing. I've worked with nuclear engineers and scientists from three different countries and they are all quite down to earth - one from a civilian research reactor, one from a military research reactor and one from a large, old and highly dangerous power generation reactor which was tinkered with a lot and shut down after Chenobyl. None of them thought it was perfect and all of them respected the dangers.
The fanboys are the ones that comment on this site with the attitude I've described above and unfortunately also some people employed in the US nuclear industry, though rarely in any technical role. They are the ones that come up with counterproductive crap like "nuclear waste does not exist" or "let's just run a crappy 1960s design of plutonium fast breeder and it will solve all our problems" or keep pushing "clean" as if that word applies in any sane way to anything in power generation. They forget that there is a complex process with a variety of toxic materials to produce to fuel and instead like to pretend the things run on magic beans. The very depressing thing is most of what the fanboys push very hard as the perfect solution is stuck in the 1970s and experience outside of the USA has shown there are better ideas possibly before those fanboys were born.
Wow! Your stupidity is literally brilliant.
I can only hope you die a horrible death before you can pass on your genetics. Holy shit are you fucking dumb.
Wow! Your stupidity is literally brilliant.
I can only hope you die a horrible death before you can pass on your genetics. Holy shit are you fucking dumb.
If you knew anything about debate, you would know that what you just wrote actually reads "I concede."
Have a nice day. :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Holy shit you are stupid. Period.
Please provide any proof I'm wrong. Any. Since we both know you're a complete fucking idiot and a troll. Shut the fuck up and get off your sister. Holy shit you are stupid.
I see - I'm wrong because we have almost no capability to actually produce fusion power in any meaningful way and it has been so for the last several decades and absolutely looks like the case for at least the next several decades and EVERYONE involved says MAJOR milestones (exactly as I fucking said) would still be missing (including a complete lack of materials science) to actually have anything which would hope to deliver fusion.
So you're position is 100% I'm wrong because you don't want it to be so. You are a fucking idiot. Holy shit you are stupid.
So I see your position has changed from "200 years" to "at least the next several decades"? Which is it? I'm the stupid one?
You'd better see the doctor about your blood pressure, I'm sure it's elevated.
For the rest of what I have to say, read my response to your other profanity-laced rant. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Ironically, the moronic climate change deniers have convinced a fair portion of the public that scientists can't be trusted, with their childish claims of corruption for grants, this works both ways, nuke scientists are paid by guess who, the nuke lobby.
Given it seems most deniers are Nuke fans the irony is awesome, and the public is now largely anti-nuke. Fun, fun times. Hoisted by their own petards!
NO NUKE FTW
No, we can't be looking at 800-1000 tons of Pu.
The plant wasn't designed to make Pu, and you're assuming that it incidentally created enough Pu to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal?!?
Sorry, don't buy it. I might believe 800-1000 Kg, maybe.
My apologies, I meant "spent fuel", I was tired. However the U.S reserves of pu-239 is approximately 70,000 tons, I'm too tired to dig out an exact reference for you at this time, but you may be interested in this National Geographic article on the state of nuclear waste materials (as opposed to pu-239).
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I read that article. Nor does it especially disturb me.
And no, I'm not surprised at all that the USA has ~70 ktons of Pu-239. However, the size of the US's Pu-239 stockpile is irrelevant to the amount of Pu actually used in nuclear weapons in the USA. The amount of Pu required to make a Bomb is measured in low-double digit kg, not in large fractions of a ton.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Deceptive quoting makes the report seem to imply that the low life expectancy is due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident whereas the report actually says something else:
"As is true throughout the Former Soviet Union, life expectancy is low not only as compared with Southern and Western Europe, North America and Japan, but also with a number of countries from the developing world. Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less than in Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war. Overwhelmingly the most important reason for this is the combination of poverty, poor diet and living conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use. These factors may also, to some degree, be reinforced in the affected areas and communities by the psychosocial effects of the accident. Cardiovascular disease and trauma (accidents and poisonings) are the two most common causes of death followed by cancer (this situation is not confined to the Chernobyl affected regions). Most doctors when asked what measures would most improve the health of the population said improved diet and living conditions."
Then why stop there, it is a 78 page report. I could perhaps cut and paste the entire report for you to ignore. What about the next choice section;
Unfortunately we can't link to the graph in Figure 4.1 "Thyroid cancer in children under 15 years of age at diagnosis" where the gestation period of thyroid cancer can be clearly seen in the diagnosed cases going well above averages from 1990. Or this;
Or this ;
My point is you accuse me of deceptive quoting but there are very little ways to characterise what is 78 pages of bad news into a single line that makes a point. YOU read the report now you know where to find it and tell me if there is anywhere in there that it says that Chernobyl has been good for the region? It documents a plethora of serious consequences as a result of the accident. You make out that I'm not relaying the sentiment that the report conveys, that Chernobyl had a broad spectrum of serious consequences for the population of the Ukraine and Belarus.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Funny, I stopped reading after this load of bullshit.
I bet I know who you are though.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well, you can try to spin it and say I'm the one who is ignoring things, but it still remains that it was you who made a claim that the effects of the Chernobyl power plant radiation was a devestatingly low life expectancy for the population of multiple affected countries. But the report, despite the bad things it does mention, does not support any such notion; only your selective quoting made it look that way. Which is exactly what I wanted to point out, especially since you didn't provide any reference beond the title of the report, which might well lead others to simply accept your deceptive summary.
Yes, the report talks about many bad things. But no, these are certainly not all due to the effects of the Chernobyl power plant radiation, especially not the low life expectency, which is clearly identified as being caused by "the combination of poverty, poor diet and living conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use." Trying to imply it's due to radition is dishonest and I will continue to point that out.
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
Ok you do that, don't focus on how it got that way, reality or the point. Just continue to characterise the report as saying all that the woes of Belarus and the Ukraine are caused by lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I am not claiming to be doing any deep analysis; I am merely criticising your use of the report.
Also, claiming that I am characterising the report as being all about lifestyle factors is a strawman. The report is not all about that, but what is important here is that your quote was indeed all about that! If you wished to make a point about radiation, you should have chosen a more appropriate quote. You did not. That is your fault, not mine.
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
Of course. Does it the work the du weapons are doing in Iraq disturb you? I mean u-238 is a legitimate waste product of the nuclear industry and I guess that if you are an a American citizen then it's being done in your name. Do those children born with two heads disturb you?
As your point is irrelevant to the amount of radionuclide in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, *you* drew the comparison to the US weapons stockpile so;
Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of spent fuel assuming a 10 year refueling cycle.
I hope this satisfies your search for perfection in my argument but most readers seemed to be able to make the comparison between what a bomb's mass is compared to the core mass of a reactor compared to the spent fuel mass in cooling pools. So if you want to make the comparison characterised as "low double kg" don't be so pedantic. I already know how much mass it takes to make a bomb. How does it counter, change, alter or negate the fact that;
Fukushima has a plethora of fallout that a bomb doesn't possess, radiocobalt, radioiron etc going into the ocean that will continue until the leaks are stopped.
All of my points are completely valid, save for one error that I've already apologised for and corrected. If you've got a point other than being a pain in the ass then make it.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
then how are you in a position to criticise my use of it? Even a basic analysis of the report reveals;
Yes, a deliberate strawman drawn as a parody of your position to recharacterise the report as somehow flawed because, in your eyes...
So what? All you have done is demonstrated your obstinence in refusing to understand the ramifications of the effects of the accident, physical and physcological. It doesn't matter if I was trying to make a point about radiation or the presence of radionuclides, the lack of and science to understand what radioisotopes are being dealt with and the political games used to keep control of the information.
What is important here is that many people in several nations are suffering a plethora of consequences but you seem to subborn to accept that the;
is as much a consequence of the nuclear accident as cancer caused by fallout because essentially the people in the area have given up. Maybe thats worse than cancer. It seems quite a cynical way to attack an argument. If you don't like the quote I choose, you go pick one an let me know which one you think is more appropriate. I'll even give you a few to get you started;
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You are trying to shift the burden of blame onto me, for some reason, without accepting that you made a mistake, deliberate or not. Sadly, that you won't acknowledge what you did and instead try to blame me for pointing it out makes me think the deception was deliberate. See, you are not contradicting my claim that the report denied your assertion that it was radiation/cancer that decimated the population of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, instead you are trying to divert the argument to other parts of the report. But let's review the problematic original statement:
There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
The claim can be made for two reasons. [snip first reason] However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Maybe Pournelle is just to lazy to look and since cancer takes years to gestate I think it's premature to understand the damage done to the Japanese populace by Fukushima.
It is a perfectly obvious implication that you are here representing the report as saying that the low life expectancy is due to cancer contracted by radiation from the Chernobyl power plant accident. Talking about the cancer effects, not only on the population of the Fukushima prefecture and neighbours, but on the population of the whole of Japan, certainly underscores this implication. (And I'm sad that "Fukushima" will inevitably come to mean the nuclear power plant accident rather than the beautiful prefecture that was hitherto famous for its tasty rice...)
But as I showed, the report does not support this implication! But instead of showing that my correction is somehow wrong, you are now arguing that the details, such as what the cause really is, don't matter because the situation as described in the report is pretty darn horrific at any rate, and who can argue with that?
But the details do in fact matter very, very much!
I will take the time to clarify exactly why and my reasons for taking offense at what you did. I will do this entirely for your benefit even though I feel I have no obligation to reveal personal information and background, merely for objecting that the facts didn't support your statement. Nevertheless...
I have family living in a town called Minamisoma about 30km north of the Fukushima #1 power plant, right on the border of the evacuation zone. Unlike most people posting here about the accident, I have driven past that nuclear power station many times on the way to Tokyo (where in fact all the electricity generated by the plant also went, but I digress...)
There has been a lot of misinformation spread through-out this catastrophe, misinformation (to not call it straight out fear-mongering!) that can cause a lot of anxiety for people who are affected by the accident (cf. your own point about the psychological effects of Chernobyl!) Saying that radiation has induced cancer that's killing the population enough to drastically lower the life expectancy in a huge area caused me personal scare, for obvious reasons, and when I found out that it was, in effect, a lie[*], I felt it very necessary to point out that out, not the least for the sake of others who might be equally unduly worried by your statement, and especially since you didn't provide a direct link to the report so that they could quickly check for themselves.
([*] I'm sure you will take offense at this, and say that it makes no differences whether it was indirect effects, such as psychological or economical, rather than direct effects of radiation, but trust me, it makes a big fucking difference to the people who are personally affected by the Fukushima #1 situation and who are already scared about the effe
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."