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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 inevitable invasion of pink unicorns.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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:
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.
cadmium, copper-indium, gallium arsenide, polyvinyl fluoride, etc.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
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 ?
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.
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.
the consequences of accidents are unpredictable.
FTFY
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
Oh, you mean the stuff inside that laptop you're posting with?
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?
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.
" 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.
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?
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.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
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?
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.
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
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.