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."

Comments

Re:It's cooling down.

[beckett]

I'll wait until some unknown blogger says its ok, thank you very much!

Coal vs. Nuclear

[anchovy_chekov]

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.

Re:Coal vs. Nuclear

[gweihir]

Mercury is safe to eat in comparison to Pu. And Pu has a half-life that the distinction does not make a whole lot of difference. Also keep in mind that its half-life (24,100 yrs) the problem is not gone, but _halved_ and some other nice radioactive stuff created from it. Calling this "a while" is highly stupid. Also, it is quite possible (and done) to remove the mercury from the smoke.

Bottom line: Nuclear power is extremely expensive and deals with time-lines for containing its by-products that are far outside of what the human race can handle. The thing that really ticks me off is that by now it would have been cheaper to just shove all that money down the nuclear fanatic's throats and build up renewable energy source with what was left. And this stuff will continue to be expensive for > 100'000 years, a constant financial and ecological drain on humanity. Just so a few people without ethics could fill their coffers.

Re:No, thanks

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:No, thanks

[Mindcontrolled]

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.

Can we give up on the Coal vs Nuclear distraction?

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Send in the robots

[maztuhblastah]

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 __________?"