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

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.

Re:and?

[MightyMartian]

What should we be scared of now?

The inevitable invasion of pink unicorns.

Only 55%?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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?

[Microlith]

I don't think there have been any "Nuclear Power at Any Costs" types. Everyone who wants it also wants it to be safe. Of course, the anti-nuke people would like you to think that any and all nuclear supporters wouldn't give a damn when one had a failure.

The possibility of a blob of molten nuclear fuel in a full blown fission reaction melting its way through the subsoil and into groundwater, contaminating everything in its path and blowing a very dirty plume of steam into the atmosphere is not welcome news.

No, but at the same time it isn't very likely. I mean, unless you have evidence to back up your fear-induced claim. Certainly it would have happened now if it were that out of control.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[egarland]

Wait.. are you saying that Nuclear power isn't safe? Check the numbers again... Nuclear is insanely safe. Coal kills more people each year than Nuclear has ever. The only rational reason not to replace all coal production with nuclear is because it's too expensive. And it *is* too expensive. If we fix that problem (and we've got some great prospects as far as that goes) it will be a phenomenal improvement. Everyone will be able to breathe a little easier... literally.

"Nuclear at any cost" isn't a bad idea. The cost of using coal, oil, and natural gas for electricity generation is very high and a lot of that cost is displaced and not reflected in the economics of running a power plant. Every bit we use for electricity generation isn't available to fuel cars and power home heating. Nuclear is expensive, but not as expensive as relying on and securing foreign sources of energy and all the health and environmental issues caused by coal. Obviously, nobody wants to get irradiated, but the risk of that is wildly exaggerated. To put things in perspective, a coal plant puts out more radioactive waste per unit energy produced than a nuclear plant does.

What's even better than "Nuclear at any cost" though, is ultra-cheap nuclear. It's probably possible and if we hadn't had our heads in the sand for 50 years we'd probably have had it by now.

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?

[the eric conspiracy]

the consequences of accidents are unpredictable.

FTFY

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[Coren22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S

I can't wait. I would gladly have one in my back yard and sell power to the neighborhood.

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[kevinNCSU]

Have you considered the possibility that "understanding the risks" and risk assessment in general is a wildly subjective issue and any one persons risk tolerance can vary wildly from another person's so that perhaps a person who deems the risks as acceptable does in fact understand them fully and simply disagrees with you without the need for any sort of cognitive dissonance which is a fancy way of saying anyone who doesn't reach the same conclusion as you is wrong and a fucking idiot ;)

Re:The "I Told You So" Thread?

[spun]

Read the article, it is pretty certain that the fuel has not been contained.

As I stated before, I am a supporter of nuclear power. People like you are not effective supporters of nuclear power, in fact, you do more damage to your cause than any anti-nuclear nutjob ever could. I don't want you to denounce nuclear power, I just want you to shut up about it so we can actually have it, because when people like you open your mouths about nuclear power, your know it all, elitist attitude turns everyone off.

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

[Antisyzygy]

Irrelevant. You can make the same argument about coal power, and coal is actually WORSE than nuclear in both radiation output and toxic byproducts that need disposal. I don't see any anti-nuclear idiot bitching about coal.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[girlintraining]

But coal power is also handled by an organization with a profit motive.

They emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, too.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[rahvin112]

The problem wasn't the technology or the construction. The only flaw I saw in the entire setup was that the system SCRAM'd without backup power to run the cooling system. What this failure points out is a critical failure in site planning and design for site specific conditions. This reactors was built at sea level on the side of the island hit more times than any other by Tsunami's where there are 600 year old (600!) markers saying don't build below this point because a Tsunami destroyed everything below the marker and it appear that although they took into account earthquake engineering they didn't even account for a Tsunami hitting the plant.

Had they taken the Tsunami incident into account they could have either built the plant with sea walls and significant concrete protection for the generators and backup systems or they could have built the plant above the markers. They did neither, so the reactors began building up latent heat from the reactions when the backup cooling system and generators were destroyed by the Tsunami. The key thing here though is that the safety systems and containment vessels prevented a full blown disaster. Sure there was radiation released that will wash into the ocean and dissipate entirely within a year. Sure the reactors have been poisoned and ruined and many people have been displaced but outside the plant operators there will likely not be a single death from radiation. That's an amazing achievement given the glaring site and design problem.

The point of this disaster and what people need to learn isn't that nuclear is bad, it's that site specific conditions need to be taken into account when designing the plant. You need to design for the 100 year storms and disasters to be fully avoided and make preparations and planning probably out to the 500-1000 year events. (for those that aren't aware thats the re-occurrence interval. It doesn't mean it happens every 500 years, it means there is a 1/500 chance of it happening that year). What needs to happen in Japan is an inquiry into why this plant was built at this site (in particular given those 600 year old monuments up the hill from the plant), why it wasn't designed to survive a Tsunami and Earthquake of this magnitude and what happened to make all this possible. Then they need to evaluate every other plant and it's site and make sure they are all designed to survive natural disasters. It's easy for the press to focus on the scary of the nuclear aspect while ignoring the site and engineering failures that made this accident possible.

You can't simply take a "safe" design and slap it down at any location without taking into account local and regional disasters and site specific conditions that could compromise the safety systems. This is basic engineering and how this plant was built at this location without accommodations for a Tsunami is astounding to me.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[rhakka]

it is simply not true that we must choose between nuclear and coal.

the technology for conservation is far beyond what we are utilizing right now. to say nothing at all of the half a dozen clean and renewable energy sources that are within twice the cost of nuclear energy per KWH.

that's the twice the cost of nuclear energy with NO CATASTROPHES to clean up, that is. I would be interested in seeing what the final cost tally from fukushima would do to the expected cost per KWH were it all borne by TEPCO instead of the japanese government. Including relocation, rebuilding, etc.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[dkleinsc]

Well, the media may not be picking it up, but there's lots of environmentalist types complaining about the use of coal-fired plants too, due to the fact that it's one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions contributing to global warming, and can turn the areas near where it's mined into wastelands.

The green folks are pretty clear on what they want to see: widespread use of wind and solar power.

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?"

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[blind biker]

Had they taken the Tsunami incident into account they could have either built the plant with sea walls and significant concrete protection for the generators and backup systems or they could have built the plant above the markers.

In fact, they had seawalls, but they were built for 12 m tsunami waves. From wikipedia:

  Although Japan has invested the equivalent of billions of dollars on anti-tsunami seawalls which line at least 40% of its 34,751 km (21,593 mi) coastline and stand up to 12 m (39 ft) high, the tsunami simply washed over the top of some seawalls, collapsing some in the process.

and

The remaining reactors shut down automatically after the earthquake, with emergency generators starting up to run the control electronics and water pumps needed to cool reactors. The plant was protected by a seawall designed to withstand a 5.7 m (19 ft) tsunami but not the 14 m (46 ft) maximum wave which arrived 41â"60 minutes after the earthquake.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[gr8_phk]

Under normal operation, coal plants emit a few time more radiation than nuclear plants - a few time more than an irrelevant amount is still an irrelevant amount. It's when things go wrong that nuclear is many orders of magnitude than coal and goes way beyond the irrelevant level.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[Target Drone]

coal is actually WORSE than nuclear in both radiation output and toxic byproducts that need disposal

For a properly functioning power plant Coal puts out about 100 times the radiation of Nuclear. However even if you live near a coal plant it will only up your anual background radiation does by about 0.5%.

The coal industry will put out about 101 PBq of radiation for the years 1937-2040. By comparision Fukushima has spit out about 130-150 PBq of iodine-131 and Chernobyl was about 1760 PBq.

Having said all that I think neither are great solutions and we should really be investing more money in alternatives.

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[rahvin112]

I'm not saying they didn't have sea walls. I'm saying that the protections constructed didn't match the site conditions or historic record of tsunami's. They ignored those stone monuments all over the hillsides that were 600 years old because obviously what does someone from 600 years ago know. I'll point out that those monuments were significantly higher than this tsunami, indicating that an even larger tsunami hit the location previously. There are dozens of these monuments all over the island. The Japanese at the time built these 6' tall stone monuments to warn future generations not to build homes to close to the sea.

And yes, the reactors SCRAM'd (dumped in the control rods and turned the generators and emergency pumping systems on) after the earthquake and did so completely automatically. Then the tsunami destroyed the pumps and generators so that the reactors had NO cooling. There are operational questions on why the reactor SCRAM'd itself that can be dealt with by the operator on whether that was the right course of action. But the site plan given the record was inadequate. This isn't an American site where records are at best a few hundred years old so there is a lot of guessing on site conditions and maximum events, Japanese culture is thousands of years old and they have Tsunami markers from nearly a thousand years ago that were higher up in the hills than this wave hit and there are no doubt written records in storage in museums and temples that discuss these Tsunami's. That's a bonafide historical record to indicate possible Tsunami height and from all indications they ignored the history when the built the plant and that's unforgivable. There is a critical failure in the site engineering in this plant and it's the primary cause of this disaster. If the AP can walk around Japan and take pictures of dozens of these massive stone monuments in parks then why did the site engineers ignore them?

I'm also not saying that they should have built 46m high sea walls, but they could have put the pumps and generators in water tight hardened and reinforced concrete bunkers in the event the plant was submerged by a larger Tsunami. Such considerations would have been relatively inexpensive against the cost of taller sea walls. Or they could have built the plant above the markers. Or they could have built taller sea walls. But why on earth did they ignore the advice of their ancestors who no doubt lost friends and family to the Tsunami that caused them in their grief to build those big stone markers?

Re:Nuclear power arguments

[dunkelfalke]

My argument still stands. Capture fly ash, extract uranium, sell it for profit. Problem solved, making the point about coal power plants spewing radioactivity moot.

Oh, by the way, before you call other people idiots, you should do your research. What I've described above was actually done. Coal power plants are often built at a close proximity of a coal mine to make the transportation of coal easier. The power plants are also optimised for the kind of coal that can be fond at the nearby coal seam. Coal from some seams indeed has got larger amounts of uranium in it, and fly ash from powerplants that burn this coal was indeed successfully "mined" for uranium, which can be worth the costs since real uranium mining is not an easy job.

Modern coal power plants do run very clean, and flyash is captured and is used in some industrial processes. Older ones can be easily (well, for certain definition of easy) upgraded, as it was done to combat sulfur dioxide pollution two decades ago by adding scrubbers.

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.

[mosb1000]

All that means is that we should be thinking about getting rid of those too.

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:It's bad for you.

[he-sk]

Mod parent up.

Wild boar and other game caught in some Bavarian forests still has to be checked for radition, because it rained when the Chernobyl cloud passed over them. 20 years later people in Bavaria still feel the effects of an incident that occured more than 1000 km away.

The radioactive polution of the ocean surrounding the Fukushima plant is quite scary, indeed.

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?

NHK is reporting it differently

[gstrickler]

NHK article.

Re:Nothing to see here

[NatasRevol]

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"?

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.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[NatasRevol]

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

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.

Isn't 5/13' less than 55%?

[ruiner13]

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...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[lordandmaker]

"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?

Where is all the water going??

[slyborg]

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...

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[EastCoastSurfer]

You really are a douche bag...NUCLEAR REACTORS PRODUCE NUCLEAR WASTE!

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:

What remains after all this material has been extracted from spent fuel rods are some isotopes for which no important uses have yet been found, but which can be stored for future retrieval. France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains -- from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy -- beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.

The supposed problem of "nuclear waste" is entirely the result of a the decision in 1976 by President Gerald Ford to suspend reprocessing, which President Jimmy Carter made permanent in 1977. The fear was that agents of foreign powers or terrorists groups would steal plutonium from American plants to manufacture bombs.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[osu-neko]

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.

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:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[dondelelcaro]

What toxic chemicals are used to make solar panels?

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

Clean, Safe, Too Cheap To Meter

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

http://harryshearer.com/news/le_show/player/?id=817&start=18:02

Re:He would never agree to that

[roman_mir]

Are you taking care of the victims of energy industry, which mostly relies on burning hydrocarbons? Maybe you should eat a ton of coal, see how that works out for you.

Oh, and I am an atheist.

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).

Feed and Bleed

[nojayuk]

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.

Re:Feed and Bleed

[ozmanjusri]

they are pumping between 6 and 9 tonnes of water an hour into the reactors and then extracting it again

“Reactor 3 at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power station is leaking” — TEPCO says Cesium at 620,000 times above limit.

"Tokyo Electric Power Company says water containing radioactive material has been found flowing into a pit outside of the No.3 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Workers could not confirm whether the water was leaking out into the sea, but they reported seeing froth near the water intake. TEPCO says the concentration of radioactive Cesium in water sampled from the pit was 620,000 times higher than the safety limit set by the government."

Re:and?

[osu-neko]

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.

The problem, of course, is that this theory of how markets operate has been proven wrong so many times it's not even funny anyone's stupid enough to still fall for it. Allow people to sue for unlimited amounts, giving companies a huge financial incentive to prevent problems, and what they do instead is roll the dice and count on the fact that if the dice come up favorably while their competition actually spends money trying to be safer, they'll score a huge competitive win. Theories based on markets solving problems like this rely on humans that are always rational and never gamble, or a world where gambling never pays off. None of these assumptions are anything less than patently absurd. The only practical solution that works with real humans is to have the government regulate the shit out of it to prevent companies from gambling on safety in the first place, and even that doesn't work all that well. It's the worst possible solution, except for all the others. In reality, it's a huge concern for everyone, regardless of the fact that, in principle at least, you're right, it should be a concern for the company, which should deal with effectively on its own. Too bad the real world has never resembled anything like this rational utopia...

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Bad Summary and Terrible Article

[the eric conspiracy]

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

So coal is safe then

[gr8_phk]

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.

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?

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[Coren22]

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

Re:Nothing to see here

[techoi]

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.

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.

Is Slashdot being astroturfed?

[theshibboleth]

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?

Re:Is Slashdot being astroturfed?

[peppepz]

Is Slashdot being astroturfed?

I don't think so, and that is the sad thing for me. Now people are even starting to deny what happened at Chernobyl. Radioactive forest notwithstanding.

Re:Is Slashdot being astroturfed?

[khallow]

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.

There's good evidence for both assertions so why shouldn't they say that?

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

What tragedy? I doubt even in a few decades we will be able to prove that there is an elevated level of cancer or birth defects traceable to this accident. Even for Chernobyl, the effect has been swamped by observation bias (seeing more cases merely because you now look for and classify these cases). Nor has anyone died directly due to radiation exposure from the accident (but there apparently has been one or more fatalities from more mundane accidents experienced by workers dealing with Fukushima).

It makes me wonder exactly what the motives are of these people.

I see truth. There is considerable hysteria surrounding anything nuclear which is not conducive to truth-seeking. So I help people deal with their hysteria.

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.

If that is true, then there should be a long series of dangerous and high profile nuclear accidents confirming your impression. There aren't.

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?

For the most part, yes. It's a typical engineering project. You find out after starting the project (here, building hundreds of nuclear reactors) that any engineering project has issues and risks that you didn't realize were present at the beginning and usually couldn't figure out were there without initiating the project.

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?

If the words were good enough 40 years ago, then they're good enough now. I personally don't understand people who can be placated by mere words. I instead consider actions. For all the talk about corruption and fraud in the nuclear industry, they generate remarkably few serious accidents.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[EastCoastSurfer]

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.

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:and?

[roman_mir]

Cesium half life is about 30 years, so 5 half lives later is not 5000 years, it's 150.

However this will not even matter in the ocean. Ocean is full of radioactive materials, they are all over, but diluted. Much like gold. People don't go filtering ocean water for gold though.

Let me rephrase it for you.

[Medievalist]

"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.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[Andy Dodd]

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

Optimistic or Lying all Along

[BrendaEM]

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.

Re:Nothing to see here

[ozmanjusri]

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.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[peppepz]

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.

Re:and?

[Surt]

More like skittles. Meaty skittles.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[bugs2squash]

Each coal plant spews measurable amounts...
A Nuclear plant somewhere spews... every 15 years or so.

You don't play poker do you?

[raehl]

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.

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[HuguesT]

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.

Re:and?

[fnj]

Bullshit. You fail the mathematics of elementary inverse geometric progression. Nothing magic happens after five half lives. If the half life is 8 days and you wait 45 days, you end up with 1/32 of the starting radioactivity. If it started out at at 16x max "safe" radioactivity, then yeah, after 5 half lives it will be 0.5x max "safe" radioactivity. But if it started out at 1024x, you will still be at 32x. You better wait ten half lives in that case. If it started out at 1,048,576x, you better wait fifteen half lives. On the other hand, if it starts out at 0.5x, guess what; you won't have to wait at all.

There is NO length of time you can wait after which there will be "no" radioactivity. Eventually it will be immeasurable in comparison to background radiation, and after an even longer "eventually" (a very substantial "eventually"), the last particle of an initially finite release of radioactive material will decay, but that doesn't happen magically after five half lives.

It's also a given that the distribution of released radioactive substances or particles, even in a comparatively small area, will never be uniform. There will be hot spots. So it's not at all straightforward to determine "how much" radiation is even "there" at a given point in time.

Now for the fun part. Given the commonly accepted working hypothesis that there IS NO absolutely safe threshold (a hypothesis that has never been disproved), the concept of "safe" gets pretty hard to determine and nebulous. Is the likelihood of 8.7 eventual premature cancer deaths over and above the nominal expected rate per 100,000 population "safe?" How about 1.1? How about 0.1?

Concentration in the food chain also throws elementary half life calculations out the window.,

Five half lives is a completely baseless and useless rule of thumb. Now, if you want to talk about dissipation due to progressive dilution due to physical processes, the situation becomes even more complex, variable, and difficult to predict.

Nuclear Power at Any Cost

[DragonWriter]

Is there anyone out that who is saying "Nuclear Power at Any Cost?".

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".

Re:nuclear can be safe; short term profit preferre

[xmundt]

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.