Slashdot Mirror
Engineers Find Nuclear Meltdown At Fukushima Plant
fysdt writes "Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged."
News 11.
"Nuclear Meltdown" - these two words were used to scare the public away from nuclear power for half a century now. So, what now? So the uranium and zircaloy melted in some cases, and? So they melted, nothing is exploding, nothing is happening. Sure, more radiation is released, but again, so what? It's more radiation, is plutonium and uranium being spread around? What's going on? What should we be scared of now?
You can't handle the truth.
Nuclear can be safe, but never will be. And wouldn't be affordable if it was. Not that it's affordable anyway if the cost of containing the long-term nuclear waste was factored in.
Oh... News at 11.
News 11.
funded by mr burns and he made profit buy paying for kickbacks as they are cheaper then paying to fix the broken plant.
I'm no nuclear expert, but if someone were to tell me that in the accident I only damaged 55% of my body, I wouldn't feel terribly good about it.
Is this where we get to tell all the "Nuclear Power at Any Cost" folks "I told you so?" Nuclear power can be safe and inexpensive, but just plugging your ears and yelling "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" whenever anything goes wrong is not going to get us there.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why do they only know now? Are there no cameras/water level sensors/etc... that could have told them this remotely? Or does something about the technology preclude that from being feasible or useful?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Funny... I wonder how they *saw* the rods.. did they pop off the reactor cap and take a peek in and measure it? lol I am going to assume that when they went in and re-calibrated the water level gauges they found the level to be below where the fuel normally is so it's a good assumption the fuel has broken/melted/fallen down the the bottom of the pressure vessel since it's still being cooled by the lower than normal level. but for how long?
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Jeez 5ft from a 13ft rod is 38% so what you are telling us is that there is actually less damage to the core than TEPCO had estimated.
This entire disaster has been framed as a failure of nuclear power almost every time it comes up. People don't seem to say this was a failure of management or engineering in these discussions. Why do you suppose that is?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Before jumping on the bandwagon about how "dangerous" nuclear is, go read the actual statistics from the World Health Organization:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Everyone seems to think it's "worse" because nuclear accidents happen all at once and the news can sensationalize them. In terms of the actual deaths per TWh, nuclear is the safest by a very wide margin.Even if 1000 times as many people died from nuclear, it would STILL be safer than coal or oil in most countries.
...and the world didn't end?!?!?!? But...but..but... I keep hearing from the anti-nuke crowd that a MeltDown is the most horrible thing that can happen, and will result in Bajillions of deaths.
Your snide comments aside, this really isn't a problem. The reactor is housed inside of a containment vessel, which means that the melted material should be contained. There has been some evidence that there were minor cracks in the vessel, but as far I understand it, they were sealed weeks ago.
The big deal here is that instead of being able to remove the rods and cleanup the site, they now have a building that has a puddle of radioactive material at the bottom, which may be too difficult to clean up, so as a result, I would expect that they will probably just seal this up and leave it there for the rest of time. But it shouldn't pose any danger to the outside world.
It's bad for you.
Well, the question arises - where the fuck did the 6 tons water per hour go that they pumped lately if the containment only has minor cracks AND the fuel is not covered by water? Carried away by magic unicorns?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
this really isn't a problem. The reactor is housed inside of a containment vessel, which means that the melted material should be contained. There has been some evidence that there were minor cracks in the vessel, but as far I understand it, they were sealed weeks ago.
We have to take it on faith that those were the only cracks, and that they were sealed completely and permanently.
You can't take the sky from me...
Let's define safe though. Coal power dumps tons and tons of pollutants into the air, so it has long term safety effects (acid rain, global warming, etc). Solar power is generated using panels made with toxic substances. Wind power kills thousands of birds each year. No matter what you do, there will always be some risk and the goal is to minimize it, not eliminate it.
I think that a 40 year old nuclear plant suffered a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a gigantic tsunami and only suffered a partial meltdown is a testament to the amount of safety, planning, and engineering that goes into these plants. This series of events has only made me feel safer about nuclear energy. Afterall, if that's what it takes to cause a problem at a 40 year old plant, then what would it take to cause a problem at one designed with the latest techniques, expertise, and equipment?
NHK article.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Can a containment vessel actually contain radioactive material that is in full melt down?
Has it ever been tested in real life?
Does the containment vessel have cracks?
Do those cracks lead to "the outside world"?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Listen Slashdotters: there is no reason why we humans cannot have a safe, viable nuclear power program. Yes, nuclear energy is dangerous, but we have the science and the engineering know-how to build and manage safe, reliable power plants using nuclear energy.
Well, when I say, “we”, I mean some people. Okay, a very few, highly educated people, and yes, people who might require salaries higher than an electricity utility would pay. And even if they did get the salaries they deserve, these people might find the day-to-day management of a power plant to become supremely boring in the long run, and yearn for something more challenging than what’s available in the outskirts of the country where most nuclear power plants reside.
So, does that leave us with a very big reason why people cannot have a safe, viable nuclear power program? Because there are not that many people talented enough to design and safely operate nuclear power plants, because these same rare and talented people would rather get paid to do something else, and because utility companies would rather pay less educated people less money to operate the machinery they don’t completely understand? (picture: the taxi driver with the check-engine light on: “yeah, it’s been like that”)
This could be sad. Really sad. Realizing the limits of society’s capabilities as being the limits of most people rather than the limits of the few mutants among us who qualify as nuclear engineers. Scott Adams notes in The Dilbert Principle that we are nearly all the idiot beneficiaries of a few mutant smart people who make gadgets that are easy for the rest of us to use. But nuclear power plants can’t be made as safe and disposable as a car, an iPad, or even a table-saw. In a nuclear power plant, little things like a lit check-engine light really matter and have devastating consequences.
In the short term, the problems of safe nuclear power can certainly be solved. The right people with the right talents can be hired and put to work. That’s not the problem. The problem is, can the right people be maintained months and years after routines get boring, cost-cutters start cutting, and discipline erodes as the most talented move on to newer and more exciting things?
Put short, is it inevitable that nuclear power plants will have accidents because it simply isn’t practical to maintain sufficient interest (including money and talent) in them to keep them running safely?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
No, the goal *should* be to eliminate the risk, with the maturity to know that it never will be. You start aiming to only "mitigate" risk, and you start having a few who take it to heart, but many who use the ambiguity to cut corners and trade risk for profit. Stick with the unambiguous goal, and a realistic understanding of what it means.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
It's always confirmation bias!
People like roman don't care how many people die as long as he does not have to actually put a face to the numbers.
Some of the pollutants that burning coal dumps into the air? Radioactive uranium.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Not Anonymous but skip oliphant, philosophical bozo.
The Telegraph says 5 Feet.
From the BBC: "But a spokesman for the power giant said when a faulty gauge had been repaired, it showed water levels in the pressure vessel 5m (16ft) below the level needed to cover fuel rods. "
Also of interest: "He said there was likely to be a large leak in the pressure vessel, possibly caused by the fallen fuel.
"As for a meltdown, it is certain that it has crumbled and the fuel is located at the bottom (of the vessel)," he added.
The water is said to be leaking into the containment vessel and from there into the reactor building.
Experts said the announcement from Tepco did not mean that the situation at the plant had worsened because it was likely that the fuel had dropped to the bottom of the core soon after the 11 March earthquake. "
See: "Setbacks at Japan nuclear plant"
At:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13374153
Um, to add more fire to your argument, coal is also responsible for releasing more radioactive substances into the environment that nuclear power.
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If 5 ft. out of the 13 ft. rods were melted down, wouldn't that be 38.5%? So wouldn't that be less than the 55% they thought was damaged? So this is good news then? Did subby fail at math? I'm confused...
today is spelling optional day.
The damage caused by a toxic substance correlates to the level of exposure and the concentration of these substances that end up in individual people.
I think we would all be much happier if Fukushima Dai1 were a coal plant at this point . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"And the reactor design was not safe. They raised safety concerns about it back in the '60s but the manufacturer did not want to address the problem because it would have cost money. Time for you to take that nuclear reactor out of your ass. "
Surely this only further reinforces his point?
all the posts belittling the supposedly uneducated sheep who condemn nuclear power. all i see are socially inpet criticizing those who have a better grasp of human nature and how it does, and always will, interact with nuclear power
technological overconfidence. an inflated sense of technological familiarity, technophilia, deriving much personal worth and smug satisfaction from one's one personal mastery of technology, and from mankind's mastery of technology in general, etc.: it's all blind, ignorant hubris
the problem is, accidents happen. they always do. no long winded speech on safety will alter the inevitable. corners are cut, economic considerations bypass longterm challenges, things break and fall apart over time. eventually, you have a nuclear accident
and with nuclear power, when you have an accident, it stays with you for centuries. that's the big problem with nuclear power
nuclear power presents longterm effects outside of the realm of mankind's normal psychological considerations. mankind, in a way, isn't built to handle nuclear power safely. and i'm glad you, slashdot user xyz, can understand the longterm implications. the point is, in the normal psychological continuum, it is accurate to say that average human nature doesn't. and so an intelligent person makes decisions not based on the intellect of a select rare few, but on the average scale of intellect (not being able to understand this point, btw, means you probably aren't within the realm of intellect of those select few, at least when it comes to social intelligence)
i'm not saying we have better alternatives. and nuclear is great, when it works. and it works 99% of the time. but the problem with nuclear, when it doesn't work that 1% of the time?
unlike every other power source, really terrible consequences stay with you for centuries. and so that 1% changes everything about nuclear power in ways that any conscientious person finds very troubling and sobering
nuclear is a wonderful source of power... except when all hell breaks loose. and even though when all hell breaks loose is very rare, the huge consequences of all hell breaking loose simply means nuclear power (specifically, fusion, not fission) is going to go extinct. and should go extinct
sorry, deal with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What toxic chemicals are used to make solar panels? Silica, silicon, aluminum, copper, lead-free solder?
Did they put cracks into the containment vessel like the magnitude 9 earthquake did in Japan? That just might speed things up. I'm pretty sure even the MIT guys would agree with that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So it seems clear at this point that all three of the damaged reactors are leaking water, meaning, logically, that the containments are breached in all of them. Building 4's spent fuel pool also is suspected to be leaking. Where are the tons of water they are pumping in every day going? The turbine building basements so not have infinite capacity, and that much water won't evaporate at any speed from inside underground spaces...
if people are not willing to pay for safety, is not build things that are extremely unsafe without sufficient safety mechanisms.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Hey arse hole the sea already had plutonium in it, how many grams did this add across the 1.36716364 × 10^18 cubic meters of seawater? Your lack of brain cells is more of a danger to the general outside world.
a single turbine kills fewer birds than 2 un-spayed/neutered cats over the same period.
for that matter, sky scrapers kill more birds each year.
They actually produce very little waste (much less than the crap spewing from coal or from producing solar panels). Go education yourself here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690627522614525.html
Key quote:
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Here's a lovely pic of a "clean coal" plant's emissions that I took just yesterday. Yummy. http://i.imgur.com/6Xaos.jpg
Nuclear can be safe, but never will be.
Indeed. In theory, nuclear power can be safe in practice. In practice, it never will be. Not as long as fallible humans are in charge of building and running the plants, at least.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I thought they already knew the reactor fuel rods were completely borked to at least some degree. When I think of "meltdown" I think "puddle of molten nuclear fuel sitting on the floor of the reactor building." Not "reactor vessel really borked and leaking water" (Which was already suspected and were not calling a meltdown.)
They weren't separate questions. I put them in order on purpose :-)
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
A sneeze- After the bean counters have finised
Boiling frogs: "Down with nuclear! Burn more coal!"
[Note: Frogs don't actually let themselves get boiled slowly.]
This isn't anything new. We already knew that the plant suffered a partial meltdown. Part of the code was exposed and is now a bunch of radioactive goo. The same thing happened at three mile island. What we got today was direct confirmation that a partial meltdown did in fact occur.
Drill, baby, drill?
cadmium, copper-indium, gallium arsenide, polyvinyl fluoride, etc.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Personally, I like the idea of nuclear power. I just don't trust it in the hands of any organization with a profit motive.
Could be worse. It could be in the hands of an organization without profit motive that doesn't care if it gets sued for screwing up...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Conclusion: Meltdowns aren't as serious a catastrophe as we'd been led to believe. I'd rather have a dozen of them than another tsunami.
CdTe PV panels are a popular choice, but CdTe is an inhalation hazard, toxic if ingested, and irritates the skin. Hg is used in the production of some (not all) panels. As a general rule of thumb, the more efficient the panel, the nastier the materials they use to make them.
Of course, you are correct, you can make very safe panels out of everyday materials that you might even be able to find around your house, but the end result won't be nearly efficient enough to be worthwhile.
http://harryshearer.com/news/le_show/player/?id=817&start=18:02
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...coal is actually WORSE than nuclear in both radiation output and toxic byproducts that need disposal
Ummm, not under a meltdown condition it isn't. That's only true if both types of plants are functioning properly.
Yes absent a Fukushima type disaster, coal is in many respects dirtier than nuclear, particularly on a climatic level. The problem is that nuclear accidents can and do occur and the local severity of those can be FAR worse than any disaster from a malfunctioning coal plant. So until cleaner sources can scale up (solar, wind) or be developed (fusion) your choice is either a slow poisoning and climatic change by coal or the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. Some choice...
I don't see any anti-nuclear idiot bitching about coal.
You haven't read much of the environmental movement's literature have you? Coal, oil, gas and nuclear are all bad as far as they are concerned. And to be honest, they have a point. Each of our major sources of electric power comes with significant environmental (not to mention geopolitical) problems. The only way I see to really clean up our power sources is to heavily utilize solar and wind and develop fusion (yeah, yeah, I know...) for the base load. Battery technology will need to improve as well. We would still need hydrocarbons for other purposes (manufacturing, lubricants, lots of other products) but we want to minimize its use as much as possible. Same with fission.
The article you linked is based on a sophistry--most nuclear waste never leaves the plant. It is stored "temporarily" on site, for 40 years and counting so far.
Also, the pro-nuclear stats were provided by one employed by the nuclear industry (see editor's note at end of article).
That would be the mature way of thinking. Of course, it leads unequivocally to the obvious conclusion :
nuclear is the safest power (by far) we have. Accidents are high profile, but they hardly ever occur (and when they do occur, there are hardly any victims. Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people. Total death toll for the nuclear industry over 60 years is perhaps 100 people. Is anyone seriously going to claim that even producing solar panels killed less than 100 people by now in simple workplace accidents ?) ...)
solar is next, but the panels are toxic to just about everything, and you need large surfaces where nothing else will grow (and installing these panels is dangerous, just like placing a roof is dangerous)
wind is next in the safety line, but is also dangerous (though most deaths result from the engineer in the generator room getting killed by flying metal, or sticking his hand into a rotating
all fossil fuel based generation methods, of course, are not very safe at all. They are toxic, they blow up, and even when they don't directly leak, the gasses are dangerous, and carcinogen. And let's not forget oil spills. And the wars.
So you'd think that if a person were genuinly interested in lowering risk, they'd be pushing moving everything to nuclear. You have to admit that generating a gigawatt of power, reliably, on-demand and without releasing anything at all into the athmosphere, on an area 200 meters by 200 meters is pretty amazing.
Here's the question I have : given that the given arguments against nuclear power are bogus. The dangers of nuclear power, when evaluated as sum(chance_of_occurence * cost_of_occurence) for all occurances, is MUCH less than solar, and the positive payoff (ie. energy for billions of people) of nuclear power is much greater than solar or wind ... why the hell would anyone oppose nuclear power ? I mean I realize pretty faces on the idiot tube are saying this, but have you ever thought about this for yourself ?
I don't disagree, but which do you want to live next to? A coal plant or a nuclear plant? Coal plants spew meausrable amounts of radiation into the air every day. Nuclear plants do so only about once every 15 year or so (1979, 1986, 2011).
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
TEPCO are doing "feed and bleed" -- they are pumping between 6 and 9 tonnes of water an hour into the reactors and then extracting it again to remove decay heat from the cores. Step 2 is to build a self-contained cooling loop in each reactor building starting with reactor 1 that will circulate cooling water rather than doing feed and bleed. Step 3, if it is possible, will be to restore the original cooling loop systems through the seawater condensers under the turbine buildings beside the reactors. That can only be done when the loops are fully functional again and that will take a lot more time to achieve.
They are also planning to flood the secondary containments to immerse the reactor vessels in a large heatsink of water to further cool the reactor vessel itself. This will only be done when and if they are sure the containments are watertight.
The reactor is housed inside of a containment vessel, which means that the melted material should be contained.
Ahem. TFA:
"Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak."
"Tepco has not clarified what other barriers there are to stop radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has been breached. "
Corium is a bitch. It's gonna burn down as far as it damn well pleases.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Well the mining processes for copper and aluminum can lead to quite a lot of heavy metal pollution in lakes and streams if sufficient precautions are not taken. The refining process for aluminum and silicon is VERY energy intensive. Most of that energy comes from coal fueled power plants, which pump out more heavy metals (these ones going into the air), as well as nitrogen compounds that lead to acid rain. There are also a number of chemicals used in the manufacturing process for semiconductors that are highly toxic, though I don't have any specific information on those used for solar cell manufacture.
There's also another equally stupid point : nuclear reactors actually reduce the amount of radioactivity in the environment. They, of course, also concentrate it.
If we vaporized nuclear waste and dumped it into the athmosphere, to fall down whereever, it would actually be a lot less dangerous than the uranium ore that was removed.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
Solar panels don’t come falling out of the sky – they have to be manufactured. Similar to computer chips, this is a dirty and energy-intensive process. First, raw materials have to be mined: quartz sand for silicon cells, metal ore for thin film cells. Next, these materials have to be treated, following different steps (in the case of silicon cells these are purification, crystallization and wafering). Finally, these upgraded materials have to be manufactured into solar cells, and assembled into modules. All these processes produce air pollution and heavy metal emissions, and they consume energy - which brings about more air pollution, heavy metal emissions and also greenhouse gases.
(from the linked article)
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http://www.wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html
(of course, sky-scrapers also kill more engineers than wind turbines. But wind turbines kill far more engineers (and people) than nuclear power does)
Among other things engineers certainly did not enter the containment vessel and see the condition of the nuclear rods.
The Japan Times seems to have been a little more careful to get things correct.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110513a1.html
The linked article - towards the end - puts the radiation exposure around a coal plant into perspective and shows that it's less than 1% above background. 1.9 millirem per year vs 360millirem per year. That was really anticlimactic after reading all that blather about how burning coal concentrates the radioactive material. Oh, and it's about 3 times higher than around a nuclear plant. Hmmm. The problem with nuclear though isn't the normal operation, it's the accidents that can contaminate hundreds or even thousands of square miles to the point where people should not live there. When a coal plant has an accident it's much more localized and non-radioactive. Then there it the production of plutonium in nuclear, which is extremely toxic and does not occur naturally on earth. Much of our nuclear waste is sitting around in swimming pools on-site waiting to be the next fukushima. Just think - in the east coast blackout, many nuclear plants in the US went into emergency shutdown and had the spent fuel pools cooling systems running on generators. There was no grid for external power, and fuel was somewhat hard to get due to the widespread outage. The coal plants on the other hand were shut down, and posed not the slightest potential for disaster.
what would it take to cause a problem at one designed with the latest techniques, expertise, and equipment?
Economies of scale, cost reduction, most anything the big business comes up to increase the profit. An earlier example of this would be the BP oil spill.
FCKGW 09F9 42
Disagree. My understanding is that all they needed was backup power coming from outside the plant, and there would have been no meltdown. They still might have had some leakage from the earthquake damage, but the situation would have been much better.
Oh, you mean the stuff inside that laptop you're posting with?
After all ghouls are healed by it.
The nuclear apologists' arguments wouldn't sound so hollow if right now we were watching TEPCO relocate and care for the people it has damaged. TEPCO executives sit in their expensive houses while people in the vicinity of Fukushima sit in an irradiated environment. Something ain't right about that.
Right, because humanity will never discover a technology powerful enough to destroy itself, so we should just continue on the same path . . .
I am sure the universe is littered with the remains of civilizations that practiced your philosophy . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
If Fukushima Dai 1 were a coal power plant . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I don't really disagree with you, but there is one part of solar energy you missed. Solar Thermal power doesn't use those hazardous chemicals, it uses mirrors shining on a tower full of salt to store heat as liquid salt which is then used to boil water and produce power. It is much less dangerous, but still you lose land to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Power_tower_designs
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If we knew they would consistently explode and take out 100 square miles in the event of an accident, we'd just build them in the desert and not worry too much about it. Yet that is not what happens - what happens can be much worse.
dump the rest into a river
Did you actually read what he wrote? Those items still radioactive are stored. All of the radioactive products that are left when processing out the Uranium, Plutonium, and Other are radioactive on the half life counted in years, not thousands of years.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
In the case of Three Mile Island, and with approximately 50% of the rods in meltdown, the walls of the reactor pressure vessel were ablated about 5/8" (out of of a total wall thickness of 9"). So, yes a containment vessel can contain the material. Actually, considering that in just about 2 minutes, 15,000lbs of Corium (that molten mass of melted fuel, cladding, steel, and other fun stuff) was formed and pooled in the pressure vessel, a loss of just 5/8" of thickness is pretty impressive.
Now in the case of Chernobyl, the Corium was released and flowed downward. This Corium flow didn't make it outside of the facility build and into native earth though.
Hooray, yippee, wahoo!
Somebody is making sense, Oh my God you mean I'm not alone in not trying to curry favor by blindly following along with some old, tired Hippy/enviro-whako cause du-jour?
Thank you!
You've restored my faith.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
People think nuclear power kills more people than wind power because the TV says so. I really wish there were more to it than that.
I find the anti-BP argument usually boils down to something along the lines of:
"FUCK YOU BP for trying to cut costs! Assholes! Oh, and FUCK YOU for charging me so much at the gas pump! Douchebags!"
Damned if they do, damned if they don't ....
Even solar thermal kills. There is something terminally unsafe as huge chunks of several-thousand-degrees-hot metal hanging tens of meters above the ground, and engineers climbing into them.
So who shall decide which benefit/risk scheme we will have? The Central Committee or the people?
Reading over Slashdot comments since the Fukushima disaster started, I've been struck by the large number of comments that either say nuclear energy is actually less dangerous than coal, etc. even in the face of possible nuclear meltdown or that blame "anti-nuclear luddites" for the disaster. It's hard for me to understand how anyone, especially since this disaster has released radiation that will likely cause cancer and birth defects, could not at least acknowledge the tragedy that has happened even if they remain committed in the long run to nuclear power. It makes me wonder exactly what the motives are of these people. Personally it's made me realize that nuclear power is much more complicated than I had once thought; like many other industries it would seem to be rife with the profit motives of large corporations overriding responsible regulation. So even if nuclear power is hypothetically safe if regulated properly, it would seem that it's actual implementation is not in the context of the huge corporate influence on the political system. Also, some have said the problem was merely that the plant was not decommissioned on time or not upgraded to be in line with current safety measures, but were not the same safety risks present during the near 40 years leading up to this disaster? And how can anyone trust that the nuclear industry's current safety measures are really safe when the same was probably said 40 years ago?
Clearly you didn't read the article or even the quote I posted from the article. If the US reprocessed its waste like they should there would be very little waste to store or dispose of. In fact, I would prefer the waste from power generation in a compact form instead of what we have now - mercury levels so high in the oceans that it isn't safe to eat fish anymore. There was a recent scientific american article that detailed how much *nuclear* waste coal plants put out into the atmosphere. Guess what? It's more than nuclear plants.
Fear monger all you want about nuclear power. It's not perfect, but it's far cleaner than any other large scale method of power production we current have at our disposal.
Just nuke it from orbit-- oh, wait...
The reactor is housed inside of a containment vessel, which means that the melted material should be contained.
Ahem. TFA:
"Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak."
"Tepco has not clarified what other barriers there are to stop radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has been breached. "
Corium is a bitch. It's gonna burn down as far as it damn well pleases.
The crazy nasty-ass corium just doesn't give a shit.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
is clearly a bogus argument: building nuclear power stations is a major job, and there have certainly also been deaths and injuries resulting from industrial accidents associated with building them.
Rainbow colored ponies.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium
I don't know, maybe in some parallel universe those items still radioactive are indeed stored, but not in this reality.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
"The nuclear plant, she is BROKEN."
When you design a system to use solid fuel, and that fuel turns liquid, the system won't work any more. This is pretty consistent across most such systems, not just low-end systems like the GE boiling water reactor family (which were specifically marketed as being the lowest-cost design that could legally be built).
Nuclear reactors cannot produce power cost-effectively, so they are subsidized by tax dollars. It reminds me of the TARP bailouts; politicians pissing away my money in order to subvert the free market. And that's what you should be scared of, to answer your other question; a bipartisan bunch of lying bastards who have nearly unlimited access to your money, zero accountability, and who will say whatever you want to hear.
And of those three:
1979: No actual measurable public radiation exposure. Some animals did have measurably elevated levels of radioactive substances, but if you drank that milk for a year you'd receive 1/75 the dose you would from eating a banana daily
1986: Not an accident but a dangerous experiment gone wrong on a fundamentally unstable reactor design with no containment provisions whatsoever. Try to build an RBMK near me and I'll fight it tooth and nail.
2011: Required a disaster that outright killed 25,000+ people in order to trigger problems
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
See my other comment about how great current reprocessing is.
Also, if coal is really as radioactive as you trying to fear monger, then nuclear power plants should actually use coal instead of uranium since it is far cheaper and much easier to mine.
And given the fact, that there has been a serious nuclear accident on average every 20 years, and that when nuclear power plants produce just tiny 2% of our current power needs. If there were so many nuclear power plants as there are coal power plants at the moment, we would have a meltdown every single year.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
As I been watching the Fukishima events happen, one of two things are apparent.
1.) I can know more about nuclear reactors than the people on the site.
2.) The people on the site have been lying or defiantly optimistic.
I'm going with number 2, suggesting that they are they have not been honest nor accurate.
Fact 1:The hydrogen gas was that blew up the buildings was either radiolysis or damaged zirconium cladding; neither of which suggests an intact core.
Fact 2:The injection of water without an equal mass of steam, suggests holes.
Fact 3: If damaged fuel melted, it would have pooled at the bottom of the hemispherical reactor vessel, where it would clump together and not apart as they suggested.
Fact 4: The injection of nitrogen is keeping the fuel from burning, again.
Do you remember the blue flashes people saw over the plant, I'm thinking that the fuel reached criticality since the accident.
Saddly, there are many people in Fukishima who will not be able to go home. Japan is building "temporary" homes for them, but they will not be temporary.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
We have to take it on faith that those were the only cracks, and that they were sealed completely and permanently.
Even Tepco doesn't believe that:
"The company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak." from TFA.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I have been living near one most of my life (indian point) in fact I hear the damn warning system testing like 4 times a week (when a real emergency happens no ones gonna do anything because the damn horn blows all the time but i digress)
Id take living near the plant over living near a coal plant, a wind farm any day
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99m
That is the longer stability isotope, and it indicated a half-life of 6 hours. Do you often get scared of such "dangerous" things?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The solution, to pollution, is dilution...
Accidents are high profile, because they hardly ever occur
I think this might be closer to the truth.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
I think most people would probably prefer some dead birds over radioactive waste spewing into their environment, but that's just a guess. Plus, with the dead birds, you just wait for evolution to do its magic, and your problem goes away. Plus, modern designs kill far fewer birds.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Until there are known deaths caused by it, then you can claim its terminally unsafe because the solar expert OeleWaPpErKe said so right?
Solar thermal deaths: 0
Nuclear deaths: More then one.
Ohh btw I'm a proponent for nuclear power, just that I think it should be used to fill the holes in out system where wind,solar,tidal,and geothermal will leave due to geographical constraints... I'd hope we could leave Natural gas, oil, and coal out of the equation though.
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.
The IAEA, i.e. the group lobbying worldwide for the construction of new nuclear power plants and the minimization of nuclear fear among the population, estimates 4,000 deaths at Chernobyl because of the disaster (source). Yet with your faith in nuclear power you managed to be more catholic than the pope and lowered the death toll by 80 times. Enough said.
Do they call that the Brazil Syndrome ?
Nullius in verba
And in just about any piece of electronic equipment, yes. Its commonality doesn't make it any less toxic or undermine the point that even alternative energy sources produce waste and problems which should be considered when determining whether they are economically and environmentally feasible.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Each coal plant spews measurable amounts...
A Nuclear plant somewhere spews... every 15 years or so.
Nullius in verba
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.
Some might disagree
I see you have confused 99mTc, which is produced for nuclear medicine, with 99Tc, which is produced in every nuclear reactor, is discharged into the sea after reprocessing and has a half life of somewhat more than 211000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99
So much for "that is the longer stability isotope".
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
In general I've been staunchly pro-nuclear, especially with the current generation technology (pellet reactors etc).
My issue is mostly with:
1) oversight of existing reactors. At some point they SHOULD be decommissioned, but profiteering means that thats not going to happen and they will keep running them until accidents DO start to occur more frequently.
2) The issue with nuclear in my mind isn't with the death toll, but rather the land impact. If something of the Japan scale was to happen at a plant in the Northeast US, you're looking at HEAVILY populated areas that would need to be evacuated potentially for years. That would have MASSIVE economic impact. For instance a quick look at a map in my area (Boston), puts much of the metro Boston area within 30 miles of Pilgrim. Last I heard the evac zone in Japan was 20-30 miles at least from the plant. Thats like 3-4 million people in the case of Boston. While few people might die, it would SERIOUSLY impact the country as a whole.
I personally would like to see US policy shift from maintaining old aging reactors shift to building newer/safer/more efficient ones and decommissioning aging ones. I realize that reactors are cheap to operate and in order to recoup costs you need to keep running them, but eventually the cost of an accident also needs to be factored into the maintenance cost (X likelihood of accident * cost / time, etc).
Someone else already mentioned that this statement is about nuclear plants under normal operation, not ones that have a failure.
But moreover: it was about uranium and thorium, which have half-lives of billions of years, which means a very low level of radioactivity and therefore hardly a radiation hazard.
And the uranium and thorium are in the fly ash. In a decent modern coal plant, fly ash is removed from the exhaust gases. Yes, disposing of the ash is a problem, but I dare say, less problematic than disposal of nuclear waste. See Wikipedia, fly ash.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Fuck no, they cant cut into the 100 billion in profit they make every year can they... how else could they afford the mortgage on the third yacht, and the mountain summer home.
Godzilla.
Then again, he could save us when Mothra attacks, so maybe its not that big a deal.
"If we vaporized nuclear waste and dumped it into the athmosphere, to fall down whereever, it would actually be a lot less dangerous than the uranium ore that was removed."
Then there shouldn't be a 20km dead zone around the Fukashima daiichi right? Won't let people in it = dead zone.
"Most of that energy comes from coal fueled power plants, which pump out more heavy metals (these ones going into the air), as well as nitrogen compounds that lead to acid rain."
Which by law those companies are supposed to be filtering out but are too cheap to do it. And congress/agencies are too spineless and unethical to protect us against those tightwad companies/industries lobbying/payoff efforts.
Wow. You still haven't even ready the original article I posted.
I'm not sure what you're rambling about here, but once again I'll bring in some facts to the conversation. You'll probably just ignore these too.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
2% of who? the US? France produces 75% of their power from nuclear (from the first article that you have ignored twice).
Just because it is not widely reported does not mean it doesn't happen.
Solar kills too, see bottom of the page: http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/ohb/Pages/New.aspx
And don't give me the crap that is not "solar thermal". Fact is that accidents happen and people may die as a result. Now gtfo.
Note that the control rods were put in immediately when the quake started which would have dropped over 94% of the heat production immediately. Note that the fuel rods are each a pellet of fuel well separated by zirconium laced material that takes 2300 degrees C to melt. Now it is true heat would build up over time with no water at all but it seems pretty unlikely that that much melting would have happened.
Also please please keep in mind this was an antiquated design a few weeks from end of life facing a once in 300 year disaster. Using it to bash all nuclear power, which we desperately need and all types of reactor design, many of which are three orders of magnitude safer, is inexcusable fear-mongering and intellectual laziness.
How can you think like that ? The uranium in those reactors ... I guess that was made by the tooth fairy, right ? There was no dangerous uranium on this planet before the first nuclear reactor was discovered by that very evil Belgian ...
Oh wait. He collected that reactor fuel in Belgian Congo, where it was lying on the ground in the form of green stones that glow in the dark ? Apparently these were made into statues and used as glow-in-the-dark room ornaments ... Kids were playing with them (they still do)
Strangely cancer occurs somewhat more in that region in children than elsewhere. And ... no nuclear reactor was involved ... U-235, the dangerous kind, is a naturally occuring element (and so are the fission products, like cesium). Nuclear reactors actually lower the amount of dangerous nuclear waste on our planet.
What makes nuclear waste from reactors dangerous is, of course, it's concentration. If we were to spread it around, it's concentration would drop so significantly that it wouldn't be dangerous at all.
I have read this one months ago. The article is worded so you, as a nuclear power fan, are fooled by it, without even trying to think about what is written there.
You also seem not to have read editor's note on the page two where you can see sentences like "In most areas, the ash contains less uranium than some common rocks".
So, pray tell me how can the ash contain less uranium than some common rocks and at the same time be more radioactive than spent nuclear fuel?
Of the world, of course. Yes, France produces a large part of their power from nuclear. Germany, where I live, on the other hand, only around 20%, Austria whole zero percent.
Nuclear power is an intermediate solution at best, until fusion arrives.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You can never lose more money than you have at the table.
This should be concern for the company, there should be no limits set by governments on liability (like the few tens of millions of dollars liability cap they had or have in USA for deep water oil drilling).
It's really the company's problem - they have to figure out how to take that and store it or reuse, whatever.
There is only a certain value to the company, so no matter what the law is, the limit on liability is the value of the company. And with some creative corporate structuring, a company can artificially reduce its apparent value.
So what happens when a company is only worth $10 billion, but can cause $1 trillion in damage? It becomes rational for that company to make decisions that have a small risk of a $1 trillion accident even though it may only save them a few million dollars, since the MOST the company can lose is $10 billion.
Whenever a company has the opportunity to cause greater damage than they can pay for, regulations (and enforcement) are required to make sure companies do not take risks with money they don't have.
paintball
The fact that you think only 50 people died at Chernobyl is a good indication of how much credence your argument should be given*.
*hint: none, because you are literally retarded
Just a small correction: we don't really know how many victims Chernobyl made. The '50 fatalities' figure was at some point an official Soviet figure, which included only about 47 workers who died of acute radiation poisoning, and is hopelessly optimistic.
The WHO and the AEIA estimates the number of direct victims of Chernobyl to 4,000, but this figure is suspected to be low, as the AEIA has vested interests in the nuclear industry.
The TORCH report (The Other Report of CHernobyl), commissioned by the European Green Party, estimate about 60,000 extra cancers deaths due to Chernobyl. This figure does not include non-fatal cancers, which still have notable effect on victims.
A recent book, written by reputed scientists and based over 5,000 survey, puts the number of victims at about one million. Of course, some people disagree with this figure, however, there is no doubt that the scope of the accident was massive, and continues to make victims today.
The Ukrainian government has claimed in 2006 that more than 2.4 million people, including 500,000 children, have suffered adverse health effects from the Chernobyl disaster. This does not include the effect on people displaced due to the disaster. Of course the Ukrainian people are the ones left with the very hot potato and they would dearly like some help.
Also you may want to take a look a this photo essay and reflect on your "50 victims" figure. The bottom line is that there were definitely way more victims than the 50 you claim, and quite possibly way way more.
I'm right now totally in favor of nuclear energy, but we need to all understand the very significant risks, and try to mitigate them as much as possible.
Tell that to the living plants and creatures in the immediate vicinity of the leak - the same plants and creatures that will be eaten by bigger creatures... that might swim for miles... before being eaten by bigger creatures... that also swim for miles... before being caught by bigger creatures... that own fishing boats... that might sell their catch to arse holes like you.
Twenty percent of the USA power needs, not two. A similar level in Germany, I believe.
More than that in France, of course
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We now have to assume for insurance purposes that, about once every 25 years, a nuclear accident will require evacuation for decades of a 20 to 50km area around the plant. Premiums must be adjusted accordingly.
And there was also that once-a-century tsunami caused by the fourth strongest earthquake on record which wiped out all infrastructure in the area so they couldn't fix the thing once it broke, but that doesn't really deserve mention now, does it?
> Some of the pollutants that burning coal dumps into the air? Radioactive uranium.
Fukushima radiation is traced around the globe, how can that happen with all the radioactive uranium dumped daily by coal? I smell BS.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Disagree. My understanding is that all they needed was backup power coming from outside the plant, and there would have been no meltdown. They still might have had some leakage from the earthquake damage, but the situation would have been much better.
A system where a power outage causes a NUCLEAR MELTDOWN is unacceptable.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You should get a refund for that biology class you took, maybe this time take one in nuclear chemistry, no wait you would have to understand basic physics and chemistry first so there is no hope.
'nuff said.
Of course, the really big fear most people have is that one day they flip the lightswitch and nothing happens, ever again.
We are heading there. Rather quickly.
Read about Peak Oil.
Global warming may or may not be true - in any event Peak Oil is most certainly true and even Big Oil admits it and if we don't do something about it soon, billions will starve, and die due to communicable diseases and lack of medications to treat chronic illness.
If you aren't as healthy as a horse and living on an isolated farm you'll likely die.
A lot of people are talking about global warming to get people off of fossil fuels, even though they know about Peak Oil, because if they were to mention just how close we are to running out, people would panic.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It is much less dangerous, but still you lose land to it.
Less dangerous unless you are a turtle... ;^)
Accidents are high profile, because they hardly ever occur, and because "nuclear" is a stigmatized buzzword that everybody - subconsciously or otherwise - relates to weapons of mass destruction.
I think this might be closer to the truth.
I think this might be even closer.
Just as a matter of interest, if you're using the term "nuclear industry", shouldn't you include deaths and injuries from mining, refining and transportation of the fuel? Ditto the other industries - solar, wind, etc. Not that I disagree with your basic premise, but I've been living off-grid for years, and I don't do without anything - TV, stereo, computers (6 in regular or semi-regular use at last count), washing machine, refrigeration, lighting, etc. It's certainly possible for many domestic households to do without a grid connection, and that would free up generating capacity for the consumers who need it 24/7, consequently reducing or delaying the need to build new generating plants.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.
Some might disagree
A sane person would not believe a single word that comes out of the mouthpiece of that insane bunch. Even former Greenpeace co-founders have gotten sick of Greenpeace's anti-corporate anti-capitalist propaganda that has to do with the environment vaguely at best.
Nuclear can be safe, but never will be.
Indeed. In theory, nuclear power can be safe in practice. In practice, it never will be. Not as long as fallible humans are in charge of building and running the plants, at least.
Name one major accident related to nuclear power that resulted in death to those outside the operations of the plant and was not Chernobyl.
I deny mention of Chernobyl because that reactor was less robust than what comes out of my dog's anus after he eats a bowl of prunes. It was a total piece of crap staffed by an incompetent team managed by idiotic foremen and commissioned by an organization in shambles (Russia).
So go ahead, name one. I dare you.
Being angry at cutting costs and being angry at consumer price are not mutually exclusive.
everything has its risks, hell, the same people killed in those 'solar related incidents' could die walking across the street. Its a matter of risk vs reward, and for the most part, solar thermal reward outweighs the risks it poses.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
No, the spent rods won't start up again, in the sense of reaching criticality. There's a reason why they're called "spent rods." They do melt down without cooling, however, and that was a big concern because, as you point out, they weren't covered by anything but water.
Modern reactors can use that waste as fuel.
TEPCO already has stated that they know that core was damaged, and amended their estimate after reviewing the new data in 27/April/2011, 2 weeks ago:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11042713-e.html
Amendments to the estimate value of the core damage ratio of Unit 1 to 3 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station based on the measurement of the Containment Atmospheric Monitoring System
In the attachments in that link they show the revised core damage ratios for unit 1 from 55% to 70%, for unit 2 from 35% to 30%, for unit 3 from 30% to 25%. Also, since they started to inject boronated water since 13/march/2011 is almost impossible that the damaged fuel formed a radioactive lava bloob. Certainly, that damaged fuel is the cause of all the radioactive contamination coming out from the site since march 12th, and TEPCO should deal with the damage that the buildings had sustained from the fires and explosions, but they couldn't have taken a look inside the reactor unless they have removed the cover, something that is impossible to do at the moment. The leakages can be because corrosion from the salt water, cracks in building structure or damage on tubes, but still they have no direct way to know what is in the bottom of the core vessel. It was obvious from this series of reports that something was still leaking water outside:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11051211-e.html
Out flow of fluid containing radioactive materials to the ocean from areas near intake canal of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2 (continued report 38)
if you see pages 3 and 4 of the attachment, is clear that they had an uncontrolled release of radioactive water from an unknown point to the sea at least since April 30th, the graphs are like a jigsaw instead of a smooth descending line like in the previous days, but it appears that in order to showcase the evident success in some of the emergency works they tried to put under the rug the new troubles that they were having.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Pretty much everyone who is advocating that government needs to promote private nuclear power generation, since the main thing that is necessary to get the nuclear industry to do that is to (1) provide massive subsidies, and (2) provide complete immunity from liability in the case of accidents.
Which, basically, means accepting both the cost of the subsidies, and unlimited potential future costs to encourage a for-profit industry.
Which amounts pretty exactly to "Nuclear Power at Any Cost".
why the hell would anyone oppose nuclear power ? I mean I realize pretty faces on the idiot tube are saying this, but have you ever thought about this for yourself ?
Because the average person is an idiot. A student at my college was telling people that the Fukushima nuclear power plant was in danger of exploding and killing a large portion of the world population, quite a few people believed her (and she honestly believed what she was saying). Until we start teaching how nuclear power works early in school the public perception will not change. Just look at "green" energy, people using it think they are saving the world, yet they have no idea how toxic the manufacturing and disposal of those technologies are.
You forget that salt is toxic, why do you think it is a bad idea to drink sea water?
evacuating Boston?
people would just assume there were some lite-brites mounted on a bridge.
it depends how you quantify it.
certainly, about 4000 were estimated to have died from cancers related to the accident.
but then, are we including cancer deaths in our estimate of fossil-fuel power related deaths? or just deaths on the job?
only about 50 (too lazy to hit wikipedia in the middle of a rant, but i think it was 46 or so) died directly at the plant - mainly firefighters. as far as cancers from radiation exposure from the resulting radioactive smoke, it's anybody's guess. just like it is with coal power, or even asbestos mining.
the infuriating thing is people's politics (on both sides of the fence) prevent any meaningful figures or comparisons being devised.
2) The issue with nuclear in my mind isn't with the death toll, but rather the land impact. If something of the Japan scale was to happen at a plant in the Northeast US, you're looking at HEAVILY populated areas that would need to be evacuated potentially for years. That would have MASSIVE economic impact. For instance a quick look at a map in my area (Boston), puts much of the metro Boston area within 30 miles of Pilgrim. Last I heard the evac zone in Japan was 20-30 miles at least from the plant. Thats like 3-4 million people in the case of Boston. While few people might die, it would SERIOUSLY impact the country as a whole.
Ifs, maybe, woulds, possiblys....... If we put a nuclear plant somewhere in Siberia/Northern Territories/ and it had an issue, then NO-ONE would be affected. If we had it in central London, Manhattan or then MILLIONS would be affected. I'm not saying that the effects could be catastrophic ... but there's little point (beyond audience capture) in postulating a worse-case scenario.
As another poster said - surviving a level-9 quake and tsunami with only this amount of damage is a credit to their engineering. Pity it wasn't better - but who'd have thunk?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Fukushima reactor 1 is (oops; was) rated at 460 MW electrical, so it would have produced in excess of 920 MW thermal running full bore. The initial decay heat production after a scram from full-output operation would be 7% of capacity, or 56 MW thermal. That is the equivalent of a raging fire burning some 4.5 tonnes of heating oil per hour. It is not hard at all to visualize such a blazing furnace, with no effective cooling except radiative and convective (with some conduction through the walls of the containment into the supporting structure), boiling away the water in the core and reaching an extreme temperature.
While zirconium has a high melting point, it will oxidize fiercely at lesser but still-high temperature in the presence of steam - i.e., essentially, burn. This reaction, in turn, adds to the heating in a kind of thermal runaway. With the oxygen in the water/steam reacting with the zirconium, the hydrogen is freed as a gas - hence the powerful explosions.
Not that it matters, since the melting has been established, but I don't find it at all surprising that massive melting of the fuel rod contents occurred. I think most of us were pretty sure from the early days of the disaster that very significant melting was occurring.
Is there any further evidence that part of the emergency can be connected to a covert nuclear weapons programme at the plant?
Mining Uranium is more dangerous then mining coal, at least on a per ton basis. Large volumes need to be mined to get any Uranium as it is fairly dilute, the mines are full of radon gas which leads to high cancer rates amongst the miners. Extracting the uranium from the ore involves hazardous chemicals which often leak into the environment. It is hard to believe only fifty people have died, perhaps you're only counting deaths from industrial accidents when building nuclear plants which have to be as hazardous as your other examples.
If you want to make a point, please don't exaggerate to such an extreme as it makes whatever you say come across as bullshit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Health_risks_of_uranium_mining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
He just got here from 1972 so give him a chance to learn how things are before ripping into him for his ignorance.
Read the comments at the end of that article and you'll get an idea of how bad it is. It's a rehash of an Oak Ridge labs newsletter article written by a guy better known for his books on classic cars and moonshine. The original source takes the line that OMFG terrorists could make a nuclear bomb out of the stuff they find in ash heaps. If that really was the case nuclear power would be very easy and we wouldn't have to worry about all that messy mining, concentration, smelting and enrichment - we'd just get the stuff from ash. Unfortunately reality has other ideas.
Show me the measurements that show these radioactive elements are in the flue gas. The equipment to do it has been around for more than a century but for some reason you have nothing to show me because nobody has found it in the gas - nothing but a convenient lie from a failed 1980s nuclear power PR campaign that attempted to convince people that nuclear waste was not as dangerous as other waste.
There are plenty of real things wrong with using coal that actually kill people instead of just making shit up.
Since almost nobody has been building the things for thirty years who are you going to pull out of retirement to build another one? People keep pushing the "40 year old plant" line to try to fool us all into thinking that it was not one of the most modern operating nuclear plants on the planet. That sort of technology does not change much in a decade and there are almost no plants less than 30 years old - and due to constuction time they are going to be 40 year old designs.
Since the new slashdot look is now broken and doesn't let me accurately preview comments (cuts off the top half of the text, making snippets unreadable), I'm just going to comment without knowing if anyone else addressed this.
Ignoring the question of whether nuclear is safer than wind, nuclear isn't sufficiently scalable. Period. Future advancements MIGHT change this, but even the best modern designs won't allow the world to replace all the world's coal plans, let alone create 15TW+ of nuclear.
Here's the question I have : given that the given arguments against nuclear power are bogus. The dangers of nuclear power, when evaluated as sum(chance_of_occurence * cost_of_occurence) for all occurances, is MUCH less than solar, and the positive payoff (ie. energy for billions of people) of nuclear power is much greater than solar or wind ... why the hell would anyone oppose nuclear power ? I mean I realize pretty faces on the idiot tube are saying this, but have you ever thought about this for yourself ?
I don't oppose nuclear power, I think it's a tremendous advancement. I just don't think it is an economic, practical, or even theoretically viable alternative to a huge portion of our current power generation. In terms of large-scale policy decisions, the highest and fastest returns come from conservation efforts--we have a lot of low-hanging fruit there (insulation, mileage, etc.). Beyond that, wind is the only economically viable, scalable alternative energy... we've dammed most dammable rivers, geothermal uses a ton of water, solar is still expensive, etc.
At least for the US, wind is the smart and immediate option. Solar, particularly solar thermal, are still making rapid improvements... and I expect them to be able to provide great returns in the future.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Being angry at cutting costs and being angry at consumer price are not mutually exclusive.
Obviously: that was my point.
Now if people were rational, we wouldn't see such behavior, but as it stands ...
Makes me recall a conversation during excursion to a nuclear plant with my student's association.
"How about earthquakes?" "Well besides that this part of the world doesn't have them; we're built to withstand a magnitude 7-8 or so quake" (exact number I don't know - but a magn. 4 quake is already very very rare in The Netherlands).
"Or an airplane crashing on the reactor?" "It's built to withstand that."
"How about an airplane crashing on the control room?" "Then this control room would be broken but we have a second one."
"How about a nuclear bomb falling on the reactor?" "Well that we can not withstand... but that doesn't matter too much in such a scenario, does it?"
That was almost 20 years ago, about a nuclear power plant by then about 30 years old.
The number of people killed by the Chernobyl accident is subject to debate, depending on who you may believe and how you count (which deaths you relate to the specific accident and it's aftermath) tens of thousands were killed.
Anyway two big issues with nuclear:
Storage of waste. This is simply an unresolved issue. Short-term (decades) may be solved; but the real long-term storage which is virtually "forever" not.
Power is not exactly on demand: you can not switch on and off a nuke like you do a coal fired plant. Nukes are great for baseline production, not for the morning peak demand. That requires other solutions, and storage of energy for quick release is still a big issue. Batteries have too little capacity. Flywheels same. We have no proper solution for that yet.
Profit should not be part of the equation. Electricity is a necessity in modern society.
Instead of profit mongers designing, building, running, and maintaining nuclear facilities, it should be a government agency, similar to NASA, in control.
Profit, cost cutting, year-over-year "metrics", and performance-based measures guarantee an environment of deteriorating safety and increased risks. Combined with an anti-regulation mentality and you have a recipe for eventual disaster(s).
Nuclear energy is a "mission critical" activity based on the nature/need of the product and the potential downsides, and NASA is the only model agency I know that has a respectable record of safety.
Better yet, I think the way to go is have the government developing massive solar and wind farms. Make electricity so cheap that coal, oil, and nuclear energy producers can not possibly compete.
The only downside would be the hit terrorists would take. No more money going to hostile countries. No more oil profits funding of terrorist groups. No more nuclear facility targets. No more raw material for nuclear weapons. No more recruitment help from governments invading over misguided fears of weapons of mass destruction.
There is a lot less terror when a solar panel or wind turbine is blown up compared to a nuclear reactor, nuclear waste storage facility, oil refinery, petroleum storage facility, or natural gas pipeline.
Performance must be inherent in every aspect of the system. It is not an afterthought, but always thought. - me
There were fuel rod pieces found two miles away from the containment structures. This fact has been completely ignored by the media.
The hypothesis is that there was explosion in the spent fuel rod storage in Unit 3, and it was strong enough to blow rods out of the pool. Unit 3 uses MOX fuel containing plutonium, so it poses a potentially greater health risk. The suggestion is that there was a "prompt criticality" event where a hydrogen explosion mechanically shifted the rods so they went critical and released additional energy resulting in a much stronger explosion.
The follow on video http://vimeo.com/23393101 says that if the fuel rods went prompt critical, that highly radioactive material was vaporized and ejected into the atmosphere. This is the black cloud that was only seen in the Unit 3 explosion. The reason this had minimal impact is that most of the material went out to sea. This is one of the reasons that there are such high levels of radiation on the sea floor by the plant. If the prevailing winds had blow over land then a Chernobyl style uninhabitable zone would have been created in a large area next to the plant.
Currently this is a hypothesis, but if it did happen it would be easy to detect based on the radioactive isotopes at the scene. Both the US and Japanese governments, and perhaps China and S. Korea would also be able to figure this out. Given that there has been almost no mention of how fuel rod components have been blown all over the landscape, It is conceivable that this situation has been kept under wraps.
To give another take on how bad thinks are http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105120189.html
That's right, the contaminated water in just one of the units, by itself, is enough to warrant the same international severity level as Chernobyl.
Why is Snark Required?
I'm not going to descend into anti-nuclear hysteria, but
"Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people."
That is very naive/simplistic. What were the long-term effects of exposing 100M (or whatever it was) people to increased radiation dose?
According to Wikipedia:
"A 2006 report predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of Chernobyl fallout."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster)
With regards to your final question: "given that the given arguments against nuclear power are bogus. The dang...."
There are so many "givens" there, that your question basically says:
"given that nuclear is the safest and best power source, why would anyone oppose it?"
Why can we not have a balanced discussion about nuclear power and concede that it has its disadvantages?
With news of the devistation of the reactors and the massicve release of heevy transuranic elemets with half-lives into the 100,000 years, the Government of Japan must consider Culling Humans, within a radius of 400 km of the stricken nuclear reactors.
Failure to do so, will ammount to the UN declaring Japan a NON ENETRY ZONE.
All Japan exports will be halted.
All Japan financial transactions ... halted.
All Japan Govenrment Credit ... halted.
All flights out of Japan airspace ... halted.
Nippon wil become the new Leper Colony of the new Millinimum.
And its Citizens will be rendered, deseased, genitically impared.
But what's the better alternative?
It's odd how the discussion is always about safety. The anti-nukes say nuclear shouldn't be deployed because it's very unsafe. The nuclear proponents say if the anti-nukes got out of the way, we would could all have cheap, safe, plentiful power. Both arguments are wrong. Complete bullshit in fact. In fact just about every nuclear discussion I see a torrent of bullshit, and not much else.
So to put it plainly nuclear power is as you say very safe put Chernobyl aside, and deaths caused by nuclear is below the noise flaw. In fact in terms of deaths the safest form of electric power generation we have. End of discussion on safety. Or is it?
Turn out how many people nuclear has killed hasn't nothing to do with why nuclear power production is declining as a fraction of power produced. It never, ever was. That's the bullshit story from the pro nuclear side. The nuclear plant building industry died in the arse about 4 years before Three Mile Island. Why? Because it too dammed expensive, and too unreliable.
Now I'm not saying it's unreliable in the normal sense of the word. Its far more reliable than wind, or solar, or even coal. The problem is when it does break, it does so in a really, really big way. As in, it takes out the entire plant. So if a windmill dies, you just replace the wind mill. Hell if a boiler in a coal fired plant blows up you just pay the funeral bills and build a new one. But if a nuclear power plant looses power for just a couple of days so it can't cool itself, it's fucked. Which is a problem, because the almost entire the cost of the electricity from that plant is actually interest payments on the plant, not the fuel. Nuclear power plants are insanely complex and expensive things. In order to get the interest payments anything like reasonable the loans have to be over a 30 or 40 year life. But making something run fault free for 40 years is dammed hard. You can be completely certain that in 20 years a bunch of accountants will be running it, and squeezing every last drop out of the maintenance bill.
Worse, although the safety record is good in that no one gets killed, by another important measure its a disaster. Nuclear only accounts for something like 20% of the world electricity production, but guess what? Cleaning up after its accidents chews up 50% of the world's electricity production accident costs. The fact that it doesn't kill anyone is actually a problem. Unlike hydro. Hydro often kills people in large numbers. When a dam broke in China 30 or so years ago it killed 170,000 people. But dead people don't sue. The 11 million displaced weren't happy, but they were able to go back to their homes within the month. It will cost Tepco billions (literally) by the time it has got Fukushima under control. We will be hearing about it for decades to come. As the first nuclear GE engineers said, nuclear can break in such a spectacular way, rendering tracts of land unusable for centuries, that no company or insurer can bear the cost. And it can do all that without killing a single person, and indeed that may be the outcome at Fukushima.
Besides, I can guarantee that capitalism being what it is, if was really possible for nuclear to produce cheap power the bloody things would be dotted all around the planet regardless of the whining of a few greenies. But it isn't. That is why when Obama asked the nuclear industry to save us from Global Warming, the industry asked Obama for 100 billion in loan guarantees. Loan guarantees means the bankers can ignore the risk, so that keeps the interest down, which makes nuclear competitive. Even then they manage to externalise the cost of cleaning up any resulting messes, and in all probability disposing of the waste for centuries to come. Uncle Sam has already been stung for $9 billion for the Yukka Mountain disposal area, which ultimately failed. It wonder how many more $9 billions have to be spent, as tax payers expense, before a workable sol
Typical work safety failure with power grid infrastructure - servicing the grid without switching it off.
You can die from electric shock from electricity produced by solar power, at a solar power plant just the same as from coal or nuclear. Most casualties at power plants are related not to the energy-creation side (boiler, reactor, panels) but at the electricity management side, where you work with high voltages and currents that can fry you at a distance.
Plus some solar power plants work not by photovoltaic effect, but by heating water using solar collectors (or other working medium) and using it with traditional power plant turbines. You tell me what can go wrong with that.
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If you look at the EPA data, the radioactivity of fly ash is in the same order of magnitude as that of soil or fertilizer. Can we finally put this tired old propaganda crap to rest? Usually ash from coal plants is used as filler for concrete or blacktop. If the heavy metal content is too high for that, it is used as filler for construction works in mines. There is not the slightest problem with coal ash, unless some idiot decides to store it as slurry in unstable ponds.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The argument is primarily that workplace accidents at any power plant account for vastly more deaths than nuclear meltdown accidents. Solar has the nasty side-effect that it requires enormous number of panels to produce more energy. A solar power plant that would be capable of producing as much power as a large nuclear power plant would be likely so big - require so many people building it - that the number of accidents (due to sheer number of people working at building it) could easily dwarf a NPP accident rate.
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Still, the death toll at 4000-5000 is more reasonable. 50 is the number that died in the explosion or due to direct exposure at the location. Most of people observing the nuclear fire from (so called since then) "Bridge of death" at Pripyat received lethal doses. Many disaster recovery people died, and cancer rates soared. Of course the Greenpeace number accounts for pretty much every cancer case in Ukraine ever since...
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Here you go.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Greetings and Salutations...
Kind of an interesting mix of comments to this topic, ranging from uneducated prejudice to some fairly knowledgeable and thoughtful analysis. Now, for what it is worth, just after the events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant started, a geologist by the name of Evelyn Mervine, who was annoyed and frustrated by the lousy reporting of the events there got the idea to interview her father, who is a Nuclear Engineer, discussing the situation as it evolved. Of course, the originally planned three or four interviews extended to 20 or so, including a short but excellent overview of the various modern types of reactor designs covering both strengths and weaknesses. She has the interviews posted on her blog: http://georneys.blogspot.com While Ms. Mervine is a bit awkward in her role as a broadcast interviewer at times, it is a quite well done discussion and analysis of the ongoing crisis in Japan, and includes some discussion about steps that need to be taken to minimize the danger, as well as an overview of more current designs. I will say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I did transcribe several of the interviews, so I have some interest in them, but, I only volunteered to do this because I found it a fairly valuable thing. I recommend checking out all the interviews, as there is a lot of good information there.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Have you read your link?
What it says (among many other things not related to the number of death, it's a rather thorough report), is that 28 people died from acute radiation syndrome in 1986, possibly a few more in the following years.
Additionally, the report says that 4000 thyroid cancers cases (most of them children) were probably caused by low radiation exposure. Out of these 4000, 15 died.
There is mention of a possible increase of cancer mortality in a larger group of 600,000 people which might account for up to 4000 deaths.
You own link says 28 + 15 + a few, or roughly 50. The 4000 number is an upper bound not an estimate. And if you don't trust the IAEA, you can ask the WHO. They say that "up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure." and "fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster".
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people. Total death toll for the nuclear industry over 60 years is perhaps 100 people.
I'm in favour of nuclear energy and I too feel safer after the Japanese events, but I fear that that statement is grossly incorrect. The WHO might say that there have only been 60 direct deaths among the liquidators, but every other source says at least several thousand. Considering the slapdash methods of the Soviet Union, I find it hard to believe that only a few dozen were exposed to lethal levels of radiation.
Other than that, I'm happy there are SOME people making sense.
I'm right now totally in favor of nuclear energy, but we need to all understand the very significant risks, and try to mitigate them as much as possible.
But we do, and we have. Newer reactor designs are inherently safe, don't need active cooling and don't have the nasty tendency to go critical or release explosive hydrogen. Someone needs to articulate this to the public - in the real world that lays outside our basements it's heresy to claim that nuclear is clean and actually good for the environment.
Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.
Yes, in the same way that deaths due to smoking are restricted to the number of people who accidentally set themselves on fire each year, and don't include any long term consequences such as lung cancer.
You are a fucking idiot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Some of the pollutants that burning coal dumps into the air? Radioactive uranium.
Yes, it's lucky that nuclear energy doesn't involve anything like radioactive waste isn't it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
lol idiot!
I'm confused. From the quotes around "clean coal" I imagine you're being sarcastic. But the image show a beautiful scenery and no smoke or anything from the chimney, so it does indeed look very clean. Did I miss-understand anything?
Nucleore Wessels
Additionally, the report says that 4000 thyroid cancers cases (most of them children) were probably caused by low radiation exposure.
If you use a vague adverb such as "probably", you make it look like the connection between the accident and the thyroid cancer in children is something weak.
Instead, the report says:
That is, since thyroid cancer doesn't normally affect kids, they were forced to admit that these 4,000 were definitely victims of the disaster. That's why they're counted apart from the others.
Out of these 4000, 15 died.
First of all, I don't think that the remaining 3,985 victims are enjoying the cancer in their thyroid (supposing that they still have a thyroid).
That said, you're quoting only a part of the report; you're skipping others such as:
So you correct me, it's not "about 4,000" as I said, it's "up to 4,000", with no lower bound specified. I think there is little difference.
Saying "Chernobyl only made 50 victims" instead of "Chernobyl made up to 4,000 victims" is still a misrepresentation. And it's also a ugly one to me, because it disregards the value of the life of up to 3,950 people.
"fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster".
I don't feel that there is a difference between dying of acute radiation poisoning and dying of cancer. Do you?
maybe in some parallel universe those items still radioactive are indeed stored, but not in this reality.
To be fair, technetium emissions from Sellafield have recently been greatly reduced. Apparently Sellafield launched a new trial treatment in 2003, in which technetium is removed from the liquid waste and, wait for it, stored as medium-level solid radioactive waste. Apparently this led to a 95% reduction in Tc-99 during trials. As a result of this, this cleaning technology was adopted on a permanent basis.
I agree that the Wikipedia article does not contain this factoid. Wikipedia is not the only source of information on the Web.
I couldn't help noticing on the second map on that page, that the east-coast of Japan is a very long stretch of ocean coast. A bit like Britain and Ireland but probably lots windier.
TEPCO, are you paying attention?
I also wish to mention that TEPCO apparently did a lot of good work on Sodium-Sulfur batteries. With the shitstorm of negative commentary that they must get now, I hope somebody reads this: we don't hate you, we hope you have the energy (pun intended) to give Japan safe power in the 21st century. With money to spare to clean up pool #4.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
GODZIRRA!!!!!!!!1111111
oh noesssssssssssssssssssss
My point exactly.
Each coal plant affects 10s of thousands of people every day.
A nuclear reactor that has issues affects 10s of thousands of people once every 15 years or so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
None of those construction injuries have any possibility of contaminating ground water.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Wow. A credit to their engineering? The same engineers that put a vital support system at sea level in a place known for tsunamis? Fukushima is not a credit to the engineers -- it is an indictment.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
With all respect, I disagree.
Modern, large scale solar power plants don't use photovoltaic cells. Too high cost:efficiency ratio, the price of infrastructure doesn't scale up well. Instead, they use traditional approach with hot steam turning the turbine, and the solar energy is used to heat various working liquids - methanol, saline, or even liquid sodium.
In this case, a leak can lead to quite disastrous water contamination, and failure of the systems can be quite explosive and deadly to employees.
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When I said "probably", I just wanted to emphasize the difference with ARS deaths, which are certainly caused by radiation. The reason they think the thyroid cancers where caused by the disaster is mostly statistical. You can be reasonably sure most of them were indeed caused by radiation, but you don't which ones, you don't even know precisely how many. It's less than certain in that respect. I shouldn't have used "probably" though, I agree it's way too weak. Note that I counted the dead from thyroid cancer as part of the 50 deaths directly caused by radiation, and that I don't mix the two 4,000 numbers (I actually thought you did.)
First of all, I don't think that the remaining 3,985 victims are enjoying the cancer in their thyroid (supposing that they still have a thyroid).
We were talking about the death toll. Of course, many more people have had their lives and/or health strongly affected by the disaster and thus, are victims.
That said, you're quoting only a part of the report; you're skipping others such as:
...the international expert group predicts that among the 600 000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986-1987, evacuees, and residents of the most 'contaminated' areas), the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this radiation exposure might be up to a few per cent. This might eventually represent up to four thousand fatal cancers...
I didn't skip this part, this is exactly what I was referring to when I wrote "There is mention of a possible increase of cancer mortality in a larger group of 600,000 people which might account for up to 4000 deaths."
Saying "Chernobyl only made 50 victims" instead of "Chernobyl made up to 4,000 victims" is still a misrepresentation.
Yes, I agree with you, it's almost certainly a lot more than 50 so saying "only 50" is strongly misleading. But I do think that saying "about 4000" is just as bad, it could very well be a lot less. We actually have very little data on the effect of low radiation exposure on mortality because it's below statistical noise. Most estimates are done by looking at the mortality effect of a rather high dose, and expect it to scale linearly to lighter doses. But maybe it doesn't, maybe radiation has no effect at all below some threshold (link). The truth is we really don't know, and we probably never will know how many people died because of the Chernobyl disaster. All we know is it's at least about 50, and there is little doubt it's less than 4,000.
While it is true that ton for ton, uranium is more nasty than coal when mined, and that you need much more uranium ore mined for a ton of uranium fuel than raw coal (with rock veins etc) for a ton of coal fuel, I still bet mining, processing and transporting a kilowatt-hour of energy worth of uranium is far less of a health and environmental hazard than a kilowatt-hour of energy worth of coal.
REMEMBER: part of the IAEA is to PROMOTE the nuclear industry not merely regulate it!
Government run nuke power. Private corps with crazy amounts of government welfare (including insurance) running plants ends up with a meltdown every 25 years and many smaller problems plus lax management all around (except during a meltdown year.) Nuclear powered military devices have a far better record and they are managed all around better; FYI, the military is government. There is accountability at all levels when they run it (or at least plenty of blame shifting and somebody gets in trouble way before disasters happen.) Before some people claim government/military can't be trusted, think about just how are they supposed to regulate a private industry (which is far less oversight than doing it all themselves?)
If you want nuclear power for good reasons, then you should be against privatized nuclear power; otherwise, you are just an industry lapdog.
The military has managed BOMBS and warships for decades really well since the invention of this stuff; I don't see why they couldn't (or something similar) run all nuclear everything.
Security wouldn't be a problem for them... When crisis happens the only organization capable enough to solve these problems IS THE MILITARY. Japan's biggest problem was in letting the corporation run the show; just like the USA's handling of BP's spill. They don't have their own experts or at least didn't listen to them and the corporation lacks the resources to respond properly (plus they have no profit motive to do so - just make enough of a showing to let their lawyers keep them from paying anywhere near what they should. Lawyers + PR is much cheaper than doing the right thing.)
Nuclear power is NOT cost effective. QED. The only way to make it worthwhile is if you run it non-profit (government) and never have meltdowns. Even then, it is not a cheap energy source and is easily beaten by wind and now even by newer solar tech. I am not against it for baseload power until a market can be created for power storage and the necessary modern power grid is created. Unfortunately, our governments are all so corrupt we won't upgrade our power grids (high voltage DC) so flexible and distributed power become practical; we must create/maintain centralized power bases at all costs and that is at the heart of the matter.
The MOST corrupting industries are coal, oil, and other highly critical industries. If we didn't have public roadways then the roadway industry would be one of them....
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Salt toxic? Maybe I should let my local McDonalds know that...they actually put the stuff on their fries.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I misunderstood the term meta-stable and later figured out the error. Not being a nuclear isotope specialist, I am not clear though on the actual dangers of the 99 isotope vs the 99m isotope, and I have to say, the Wikipedia article doesn't really go into the dangers. Please enlighten me on why this isotope is so dangerous.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Are you really surprised, reading this post....
Japan co with bad nukes...> We are ok...trust us, we are saying we are ok, believe we are ok... ....
US inspection co> Are you sure...?
Japan co.> yes...all ok
US co.> Lets just send someone in case..(Person arrives.....inspects, finds rods melted....)
US co.> I thought you said all was ok...
Japan co.> Yes, we thought so too....but ok, we will get it fixed, all is ok....
US co.> Are you sure you can fix this...?
Japan co.> Yes, trust us.....
Here you go.
That wasn't related to nuclear power, as the plant's purpose was - at the time - to "make, refine, and machine plutonium for use in nuclear weapons". Other notable excerpts from that Wikipedia article include "Working conditions at Mayak resulted in severe health hazards and many accidents," "The Mayak plant was built in 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program," and "Two operators were using an "unfavorable geometry vessel in an improvised and unapproved operation as a temporary vessel for storing plutonium organic solution."[8] In other words, the operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of vessel."
Sounds like Mayak was run with even less care and even more blatant stupidity than Chernobyl, and it was commissioned by the same organization in shambles that I mentioned above (Russia).
Accidents like Chernobyl and Mayak are the direct result of outright stupidity and lack of any sense. Nuclear operations in the United States aren't even comparable to what went on in Russia and Ukraine that caused those completely avoidable incidents.
Oh and I want a pony too!
The problem with what you propose is that it is negative to the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to. This means you're solution is about as realistic as the easterbunny existing. People aren't going to change things when they experience a negative outcome as a result.
I have a fan in my house. I fully intend to buy an AC unit soon, a fan just isn't good enough. But I also use energy saving bulbs because there's no negative effects for me. I use a laptop for work, but you won't be able to pry my power hungry desktop from my cold dead hands. My laptop doesn't play a single game. I turn my hifi and dvd player off at the wall. I leave my TV in standby because it takes more than a minute to start up and then even longer to get a new EPG, and frankly I think the couple of hundred Wh a year is worth it in this case.
No solutions need to be a) possible, b) practical, and c) useful. e.g. solar panels on roofs. Great idea, roofs are a wasted space anyway. On the other hand massive solar PV plants are a horrible idea. They are a large expensive waste of space, terribly inefficient, don't provide baseload when people need it, you lose efficiency in the transmission, and you don't get much out given what you put in.
Now, when it comes to civilian deaths of nuclear energy, I only can go into statistics, I give you that. We will have cancer victims due to Fukushima, and we have cancer clusters in the vicinity of normally operating plants. Whether those are worse than the effects of coal plants, well, frankly I don't care, both have to go. We do have the technology.
I further give you the point that I might be biased - I come from a place that was a fallout hotspot after Chernobyl. We were 8 at the time.I am in my mid thirties, and I have seen an overproportional amount of my friends die of cancers or have their thyroids removed. p=0.95 compared to the nationwide cancer register. So, I am kinda pissed.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Salt your lawn and see if anything continues to grow.
I agree, but the parent was making extreme claims of only 50 deaths ever attributable to nuclear when the number is at least an order of magnitude higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Errr, hang on. I don't think that's right. It's certainly not how I'd design such a plant.
Firstly, you'd obviously design your layout to keep things as close to the ground as possible. Choose sites with equator-facing hillsides, that sort of thing. Simple site selection can save large chunks of cost in construction and maintenance. Only a fool would design for increased costs.
Secondly, while undoubtedly you'd design your plant to get as hot as feasible - Carnot cycle, all that thermodynamics jazz - you'd not design it to get any hotter than you need to. Again, costs will go up the hotter things get - you need more exotic materials in your pipework, in your working-fluid tanks, it gets harder to start-up and shut down the system.
Just because you can build solar mirror systems that can turn steel into plasma doesn't mean that is what you'd actually do in practice. Since you're going to need some form of active mirror steering to handle the diurnal motion of the sun across the sky, then you can choose how precisely you focus the light. In fact, you'd probably have to take steps in the controlling software to carefully avoid overheating your pipework.
A for-instance : this paper discusses alternatives to cryolite as a solvent for aluminium manufacture, looking at mixtures like LiCl and KCl : "a quasibinary system by keeping the amount of LiCl and KC1 in the mixture always in the eutectic proportion of LiCl (58.5 mol %) and KC1 (41.5 mol %) (mp 634 K)".
Working with something at (say) 700K is a lot less troublesome than something at thousands of K. Hell, you could use good old mild steel for your pipework (probably).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I further give you the point that I might be biased - I come from a place that was a fallout hotspot after Chernobyl.
Well there you go. I'm very sorry for what happened. The fact of the matter is that we can't base political decisions upon emotion. We have to look at facts.
There have only been a small handful of deadly nuclear accidents in the world. All of them took place outside the United States. Two of them (Chernobyl and Mayak) were due to sheer incompetence and were completely avoidable. One of them was due to a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the tsunami that followed, and subsequent massive aftershocks that continue to this day . In all the years of nuclear energy production, there have been several thousand deaths. It's unfortunate for those people, but a pretty damned good safety record in the grand scope of things.
Not a single death to the public in the United States. Three Mile Island is the one incident that a lot of anti-nuclearites like to cite, but it wasn't a disaster by any means. Nothing really happened. A core meltdown occurred, but so what? People like to talk about the word meltdown like it's some evil thing that will destroy the world, but it's just what happens when a cooling system fails. The walls of the facility were built so that radioactive material wouldn't escape (and it didn't), and the staff were competent enough to stop the meltdown (and they did). There have been no deaths and the cancer rate in the area directly surrounding the plant has not changed as a result of the incident.
So yes, nuclear power has an incredible safety record. The Chernobyl disaster was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Mayak was extremely unfortunate, but it would not have happened if controlled by the United States. Fukushima was extremely unfortunate, but look at what the fuck kind of stress that place is under. It was built thirty years ago to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. It mostly contained the damage after a 9.0 earthquake but then the emergency generators were flooded by the tsunami. That is a result of poor design, and so the disaster could theoretically have been avoided. New reactors will not be designed as such because we saw what happened. We will learn from that mistake, and nuclear power will only continue to become safer.
without releasing anything at all into the athmosphere
Two words: waste heat.
Also, nuclear power has its own carbon footprint, at least as large as wind or solar, requires huge amounts of water in mining, toxic/exotic substances (hafnium, beryllium) to work, spent fuel storage (we are talking about technology currently in use, not hypothetical magical reactors), up to 12 years of construction time plus 20 years of decommissioning.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Not even that many, unless you count psychological and political effects. TMI was an unmitigated devastating disaster if (and only if) you count psychological and political aftermath.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Having lived in the Harrisburg, PA area for 15+ years, I saw that up close. Literally. I drove right by it - a few hundred yards from the containment buildings. And nothing happened to me.
However, I'd be willing to bet that the cost of TMI did affect 10s of thousands of people who's bill went up over time, in total by about the cost of the accident.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I put salt on food I eat, and I have not died any time recently from it. Perhaps I am trying to point out that toxic isn't the right word to use?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxic
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?