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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."
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.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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.
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.
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?
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.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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).
" Who is dying?"
Single dumbest statement in this entire debate. Congratulations.
Ask this for the next 40 years, ok? You WILL get an answer.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC