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Mitigating Fukushima's Dangers, 42 Days In
DrKnark writes "Tepco has released more information about their plan to stabilize the Fukushima reactors. They are basically facing 4 problems: ensure long term cooling of the cores; ensure cooling of the spent fuel pools; prevent release of radioactive material; and mitigate the consequences of the releases that will continue for a while."
I'll wait until some unknown blogger says its ok, thank you very much!
I just checked that site and you were right. No news there, just pages and pages on how reactors work. Wonders of technology. True, when they work and don't burn or explode.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
From http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/04/april-20-2011-fukushima-review-of-ines.html:
On April 17th the same site had the following radiation levels recorded for units 1-3:
Reactor 1
Dry Well: 121.4 Sv/hr
Suppression chamber: 97.5 Sv/hr
Reactor 2
Dry Well: N/A
Suppression Chamber: 131 Sv/hr
Reactor 3
Dry Well: 253.2 Sv/hr
Suppression Chamber: 103.9 Sv/hr
So that's going to take a while to cool off.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Reasonable people are demanding that we review our use of oil for years. What's your point?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yeah, you are probably right - but what does that tell us? They have no concept at all to handle a major failure mode in one of their reactors, none at all. All we are seeing is seat-of-the-pants level improvisation, because they have no plan. Why do we let those guys operate a reactor again?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Ignoring all the "coal kills more people" vs. "Pu is forever" arguments, the fact remains that all these fuels are essentially nasty, polluting "fossil" fuels (albeit one from dead suns).
Maybe Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon will mark a recognition of the level of care we need to take when handling these very finite resources. I hope so.
From the roadmap document:
"Current Status [2] (Units 1 to 3) High likelihood of
small leakage of steam containing radioactive
materials through the gap of PCV caused by
high temperature."
The only way the pressure containment vessel could have a hole all the way through it 'caused by high temperature', which is leaking to the atmosphere, is if some of the fuel has melted and pooled. Units two and three show atmospheric pressure in the reactor primary containment.
See: http://atmc.jp/plant/vessel/?n=3 and http://atmc.jp/plant/vessel/?n=2
The subtext behind this issue of what source of energy does the most damage is control. Nuclear power plants are big, long term projects which require lots of investment from large Governments. Because of this they increase the reliance which people have for those Governments. You are locked in to both the technology and the political environment which brought it in to being. So people who want political independence on a smaller scale (state, local or individual) oppose nuclear power. They want technology they can control. They want it to be within their own reach.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Those reactors are 45 year old technology, took a direct tsunami hit right after an earthquake that was in the top 3 worst ever recorded, exploded, caught fire, and resulted in a grand total of... zero deaths.
IIRC two people were killed at the plant by the earthquake. Both the earthquake and tsunami were of much greater magnitude than anything considered by the designers.
It's interesting that no attempt has been made to compare damage at this plant with that at other industrial plants in Japan. The press has also been silent on toxic chemical spills resulting from the earthquake and tsunami.
Thousands of civilians killed? Yes.
Thousands of civilians killed by U.S.? Again, yes.
The IBC project released a report detailing the deaths it recorded between March 2003 and March 2005[72] in which it recorded 24,865 civilian deaths. The report says the U.S. and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths.
Thousands killed by DU ammunition? Possibly.
Thousands affected by the continuous effect radiation from DU ammunition? Almost certainly.
When you measure something in thousands of tonnes you can safely say that it WILL affect large areas of land and large numbers of people.
And 4.468 billion years is a long time.
The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of questions about potential long-term health effects.[4][5] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because uranium is a toxic metal.[6] It is weakly radioactive and remains so because of its long physical half-life (4.468 billion years for uranium-238). The biological half-life (the average time it takes for the human body to eliminate half the amount in the body) for uranium is about 15 days.[7] The aerosol or spallation frangible powder produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites leading to possible inhalation by human beings.[8] During a three week period of conflict in 2003 in Iraq, 1,000 to 2,000 tonnes of DU munitions were used.[9]
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No, he posted to the story he meant to.
You'll see this kind of trolling, using brand new accounts and very very long off-topic or nonsensical posts whenever there is a story that may have implications that could negatively impact a corporation or industry sector. I believe they are intended to disrupt discussion of those stories. You'll see them very often in stories that discuss telecom companies or energy industry.
I believe they are paid trolls, from organizations like New Media Strategies (or their darker cousins) who, instead of astroturfing or writing positive things about their clients, exist only to disrupt serious discussions of things that could be construed to negatively impact their clients.
I could be wrong, but I've been seeing this pattern. You'll also see a pattern where an offtopic post is followed by a string of anonymous or very new accounts being very repetitive and responding to the original offtopic post, creating a long section that many people just won't bother to scroll through and will just abandon the potentially hot story.
Yes, I'm paranoid. I believe paranoia is an appropriate reaction to life circa 2011.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, nobody has followed up the story of the burning refinery of Cosmo Oil at Chiba, very close to Tokyo that burned for a week, or the other 2 refineries washed away by the tsunami in Miyagi prefecture, what stand was left to burn.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The german poet Christian Morgenstern brilliantly commented on that kind of denial nearly 100 years ago - "weil, so schlieÃYt er messerscharf // nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf". It should not be, therefor it cannot be. That's pretty much the hymn of the apologist.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Except for in places where it isn't in the coal, which is just about everywhere outside of the USA because mercury really isn't all that common. Even when it is in the coal how is it going to get into your system when the flue gasses are scrubbed with water to remove the NOx and SOx which as a side effect very easily condenses the mercury removing it into ash dams or other pollution controls?
If you are going to say stuff like you do above in a public forum you really have a responsibility to say something tied to reality and know just a little bit about what you are talking about instead of just making shit up. When you are talking about a mercury threat a few orders of magnitude less than domestic light bulbs it really doesn't justify comparison with plutonium.
I'm aware that the plutonium is also usually very well contained so is usually also ignorable. We just happen to be discussing a situation where a significant amount of it may have escaped.
The "coal is dangerous" shit whenever nuclear is mentioned is getting very old. We all know it kills people, in fact there is almost a weekly death toll in direct mining accidents alone. However usually the comparison is brought up as a frankly very childish distraction along the lines of "little jimmy is being bad, why can't I be bad too". It's depressing and each time it is used I have to tell myself that the person who used it is a real human being and not just a juvenile lying weasel that thinks everyone else is stupid.
Yeah, you are probably right - but what does that tell us? They have no concept at all to handle a major failure mode in one of their reactors, none at all. All we are seeing is seat-of-the-pants level improvisation, because they have no plan. Why do we let those guys operate a reactor again?
Why do we let them? Because as much as we'd all love to see a form of electricity generation that uses only perfectly safe fuel, operates without any risk to its users, and emits no waste, the gods have not yet graced us with such an energy source yet.
And why do they have no plan? Well... because we can't plan for everything. We *did* have a plan for an earthquake. Then nature fucked us with a bigger one. We did know the risks of tsunamis -- but nobody thought of the possibility of a big one following a record quake.
For every disaster you plan for, there's always the chance of another one that makes the one you prepared for look like a tiny mishap. You plan for a quake at level X on the Richter scale, nature will throw an X+2 at you. You plan for tropical storms, nature will throw hurricanes at you. You plan for those, you'll get get a tornado. No matter what you plan for, there's always something that you didn't.
And then, after it's all over, and your otherwise-well-designed $PROJECT is a pile of smoking rubble, some asshole will come out of the woodwork and snort "How could those guys not plan for __________?"
The real litigious bastards...