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."

Comments

nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferred

[Hazel Bergeron]

News 11.

and?

[roman_mir]

"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?

Re:and?

[roman_mir]

Sure, it's released, sure, it's not great. Who is dying? The stuff is flowing into the ocean, which always had nuclear materials in it, diluted in water, so there will be some more now. Horror.

Re:and?

[Anonymous Coward]

What should we be scared of now?

The fact that the nuclear industry appears to be full of people who have no idea about accurate risk assessment?

Re:and?

[Platinum Dragon]

What are you going to do with that molten mess? Remember; it's basically all radioactive waste now, good luck finding a country that will take it. Nope, that witches brew of toxic heavy metals is staying there for a long, long time. An earthquake-resistant, tsunami-resistant structure is goin to have to be built and maintained for, oh, the next few thousand years.

If nuclear reactors were treated as lackadasically as fossil fuel-burning facilities have been until recently (and may still be), you bet your arse there would be many more deaths and sicknesses. The paranoia exists because we know very well what an uncontrolled release of radiation, or a power excursion in an operating reactor, can do.

Re:and?

[DerekLyons]

What are you going to do with that molten mess? Remember; it's basically all radioactive waste now, good luck finding a country that will take it. Nope, that witches brew of toxic heavy metals is staying there for a long, long time.

Why would it have to stay there? Does not Japan have waste storage facilities? It's not like the mass cannot be physically removed - they had the same thing at TMI, and though it took a while it was all removed.

Re:and?

[rickb928]

" Who is dying?"

Single dumbest statement in this entire debate. Congratulations.

Ask this for the next 40 years, ok? You WILL get an answer.

Re:and?

[Mysteray]

Sure, it's released, sure, it's not great. Who is dying? The stuff is flowing into the ocean, which always had nuclear materials in it, diluted in water, so there will be some more now. Horror.

I dare you to go into one of the evacuation centers and say that to one of the 70,000 people who have no idea when (or if) they'll ever be able to return to their contaminated home.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The "I Told You So" Thread?

[spun]

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.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[Aphrika]

Imagine where we'd be if that attitude was present in the past.

Steam!? High pressures? Sounds lethal, let's give it a miss... Internal combustion engine!? That liquid fuel might catch fire, people could die...

Yes there are risks, but if anything, what Fukushima went through proves it's not as dangerous as people might think, even when it goes wrong (well it didn't go wrong, it suffered an earthquake and tsunami). It's not like there are fuel rods in the ocean and mushroom clouds kicking off. Hopefully this will take the edge off the word meltdown in the same way that we're not really phased by boiler explosions any more.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[tnk1]

Is there anyone out that who is saying "Nuclear Power at Any Cost?". What I seem to be hearing is that it's dangerous, but the danger can be managed.

I think the advocates of nuclear power are upset that a single incident at a 40 year old plant, due to extreme circumstances, with no deaths, is going to set back production of new plants that aren't within 500 miles of a fault line, let alone the ocean, due simply to an unreasoning fear of something that we are exposed to every day already.

Think about it. Incidents like Three Mile Island, and this most recent one in Japan create more fear when they have killed no one at all, than industrial accidents that have killed dozens or even hundreds of people, both immediately and through chronic disease. Of course Nuclear Power advocates are groaning about this latest non-disaster, it's like saying that you can kill as many people as you want, just as long they aren't killed with "the nuculer radiation".

Nuclear power can be really dangerous if mishandled, but so can coal, gas, oil or even solar power generation. All of those can create waste materials that can render areas uninhabitable if they are not stored properly. As far as explosions go, there's just as much danger from too much fertilizer being stored in one place as there is from any plant, nuclear or not.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[spun]

That irrational fear comes from decades of people being told that their fears are irrational, of not having their concerns listened to, and of experts being flat out wrong, especially when disaster strikes.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[lennier]

What I seem to be hearing is that it's dangerous, but the danger can be managed.

Yes, that's the line we've been fed by the nuclear power industry for 60 years. "The danger can be managed." Problem is, Fukushima is only the last of a long line of accidents which should never have happened according to the probability scenarios used to manage the danger.

a single incident at a 40 year old plant, due to extreme circumstances, with no deaths

No dramatic and initial deaths. That's not quite the same thing.

This is the big problem with nuclear accidents: they release toxic substances into the environment which remain toxic for centuries and kill slowly over time. Each time one of these happens, it contaminates land and water, and that contamination doesn't go away.

This is why nuclear reactors are scary to people who have some imagination and can think beyond the bounds of "normal operating scenario" into "what if something goes wrong which should never go wrong?" territory.

is going to set back production of new plants

Yes, that would be a positive outcome if you're not convinced that new nuclear plants are a net long-term win to humankind.

As far as explosions go, there's just as much danger from too much fertilizer being stored in one place as there is from any plant, nuclear or not.

The point is its not just photogenic Hollywood explosions that we're talking about. It's toxic leaks of long-term radioisotopes accumulating in the environment. Not nearly as easy to measure or as exciting to report, but once it gets out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.

The interesting thing is that a power reactor meltdown, small and benign as it might look compared to a nuclear bomb, can actually release more radionucleotides into the environment than an outdoor nuclear test. Plus, it does it in a location much closer to inhabited cities and farmland.

We don't really want a lot more of those.

Nuclear power arguments

[girlintraining]

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?

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[GodfatherofSoul]

The point is that given the inevitability of human error and insatiable greed, is nuclear the best option? This is the point the anti-nuke crowd has been making. Yes, it CAN be done safely...in theory. But, what happens when corporation A figures that regulation X hurts profits too much so they lobby to get it waivered, and regulation Y is weakly enforced, so they just ignore it altogether?

Personally, I like the idea of nuclear power. I just don't trust it in the hands of any organization with a profit motive.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[Anonymous Coward]

Because failure of management or engineering at a nuclear power plant is still a failure of nuclear power. It's the nuclear power that causes the problem, not the management. If management or engineering fails at a wind plant, it doesn't require the evacuation of entire cities, potentially for decades.

And because we know that management and engineering DO fail.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[Colonel Korn]

The point is that given the inevitability of human error and insatiable greed, is nuclear the best option? This is the point the anti-nuke crowd has been making. Yes, it CAN be done safely...in theory. But, what happens when corporation A figures that regulation X hurts profits too much so they lobby to get it waivered, and regulation Y is weakly enforced, so they just ignore it altogether?

Personally, I like the idea of nuclear power. I just don't trust it in the hands of any organization with a profit motive.

But coal power is also handled by an organization with a profit motive. If we stop letting corporations run nuclear plants, it means we open new coal plants. Given our current level of inevitable human error, nuclear power has the lowest cost in human lives of any power source. Even with our big mistakes and the disasters we've seen, it just can't compete with the "working as intended" performance of coal:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[LordLimecat]

You fine them into oblivion so that it no longer makes economic sense to skip that maintenance plan. You plan the fines and fees so that doing regular maintenance, building a smart, safe plant, etc is incentivized. You make darn sure that maintenance is being run with independent audits.

You DONT say "[entire power generation sector] is unfeasible because management problems are hard".

I mean, why shouldnt I say "I like the idea of Hydroelectric dams, I just dont trust a for-profit company not to flood a valley and cost thousands of lives?"

It's bad for you.

[mosb1000]

Sure, more radiation is released, but again, so what?

It's bad for you.

Re:It's bad for you.

[mosb1000]

There are people who used to live in the immediate vicinity of the power station who have been greatly affected. Fortunately, there were evacuated rather than waiting around for the negative health effects. Also the Japanese food supply has been disrupted. Again, that's probably better than eating the contaminated food. If you don't care what's happening in Japan, don't read the news article. But some people may want to read about it so that they can have a better idea of what might happen here if a similar scenario were to play out.

Re:It's bad for you.

[Serious Callers Only]

so you are saying I shouldn't be drinking the water from the plant right now, and maybe wait until it's diluted with more ocean water, and then drink it? I don't actually like drinking ocean water that much though...

Radionuclides can be concentrated in the food chain. Fish in a vast region around Japan may therefore have to be monitored and banned from sale if the radiation levels are not acceptable - potentially fish much further afield will migrate to near the plant and then be caught elsewhere, increasing cancer risks around the pacific. Milk, livestock and vegetation from areas near the plant will also be affected over a long time period. There are still restrictions on lamb in the UK from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 for example - this incident will not be quickly forgotten.

There may not be a high cost in lives, as it's very difficult to quantify the increased deaths from cancer and tie them to a particular incident, but there will be a huge economic cost (though probably not as much as the tsunami). This is something we should worry about, and it should inform our decisions on future nuclear power plants as the up-front cost is not the only one that we incur when building them. Our best bet is certainly not fission, coal or any other massively polluting energy source, it is moderating the power we do use, and finding new ways to generate it (fusion, solar, tidal etc).

Re:Nothing to see here

[Mindcontrolled]

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?

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[Lord Byron II]

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?

Geeks for Nukes

[WheezyJoe]

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?

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

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.

Nuclear power counter-arguments

[TiggertheMad]

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...

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

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 ?

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[NatasRevol]

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).

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[gr8_phk]

cadmium, copper-indium, gallium arsenide, polyvinyl fluoride, etc.

Oh, you mean the stuff inside that laptop you're posting with?