Japan Widens Evacuation Zone Around Fukushima

mdsolar writes "Japan has started the first evacuations of homes outside a government exclusion zone after the earthquake and tsunami crippled one of the country's nuclear power plants. 5100 people are being relocated to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities."

Comments

Nuke power

[M. Baranczak]

If the Japanese can't do this shit safely, then who can?

Re:Nuke power

[Flipstylee]

Anyone else apparently, that plant was due for replacement/shutdown many years ago.

Re:Nuke power

[maxwell demon]

Anyone else apparently, that plant was due for replacement/shutdown many years ago.

Anyone else? Including those who ran the reactor in Chernobyl?

Re:Nuke power

[Rakshasa Taisab]

The Chernobyl reactor was brand new... If you're going to be all panic mode about stuff at least get the easily verifiable facts right.

Re:Nuke power

[Microlith]

Obviously it is impossible, which is why we have yearly meltdowns and hundreds of huge exclusion zones around the wo...

Wait a second. We don't. It seems that, unlke oil or coal, the total number of major disasters is way lower on the nuke side.

It's too bad we can't actually build the newer, safer designs. People might protest. It reminds me of the protests when the Cassini probe was launched, all because it had a plutonium RTG on it.

Re:Nuke power

[plopez]

Chernobyl was new but read this:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pbawa/421/ETHICAL%20ISSUES%20CHERNOBYL.htm

And before you vilify the Soviet system for fraud, incompetence, corruption etc,; read up on the Diablo canyon reactor. It had serious quality issues as well. Such as the shock absorbers on the foundation which were intended to protect it from, IIRC, 7.3 magnitude earthquakes being installed in reverse. Quality issues abound in all construction even reactors. I don't even trust the Germans to do it right.

Diablo canyon and Chernobyl also points out that if a good reactor design can be made, building it to spec is still a problem.

Trivia tidbit: I do believe that the author of the Chernobyl memo is Uri Andropov who chose Gorbachev as his successor to the post of General Secretary of the CP of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev who instituted Glasnost and Perestroika, which eventually led to the peaceful downfall of the Soviet Union.

Re:Nuke power

[RoFLKOPTr]

or three mile island ?

"According to the American Nuclear Society, using the official radiation emission figures, "The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year.""

Accidents happen. Nobody died. Can we stop bringing up TMI as one of the poster children for why nuclear power is dangerous and deadly, because TMI is a horrible example for that purpose given how it pretty much proves the opposite.

Re:Nuke power

[Zulkis]

How about oil spills? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills Or mine disasters? http://www.usmra.com/china/disasterwatch/ (just China)

Re:Nuke power

[SquirrelDeth]

So is Chalk River in Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories But our Prime minister fired the nuclear watch dog when she said to shut the plant down after the last time the reactor had a spill. http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/303953

Re:Nuke power

[mellon]

We can't build the newer, safer designes for two reasons. The first is that the nuclear industry, by which I mean both the operators and the regulators, have utterly failed to be honest and diligent. By this I mean that they generally do their best to try to paint a happy face on any problem that may come up, rather than saying "here's what's bad about this, and here's what we're doing about it." Consequently, each time something genuinely bad happens, public trust is further undermined. And they do their best to find the cheapest possible solution to any problem, rather than actually trying to solve it, because if they had to actually solve it, it might be cheaper to simply shut down the plant.

The root of this problem is that nuclear, like solar, is not actually economically competitive with carbon sources. We'd like to stop using carbon sources of energy, but it's difficult because it's cheaper (partially because we never count the cost of the externalities). The difference between nuclear and solar is that in the case of nuclear, there's a temptation to cheap out on safety so as to make it more economically feasible, or to simply not account for externalities, like the cost of exclusion zones when a serious accident like the ones at Chernobyl and Fukushima happens.

So the point is not that nuclear is inherently unsafe, or inherently a bad idea, but rather that the economics of nuclear power tend to increase risk, not decrease it, and that what is being risked is an outcome like the ones in Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Re:Nuke power

[Velex]

Intriguing. Coal kills.

Oh well. Not too different from self-driving cars. The first self-driving car that even injures someone will be a media circus. Yet I guess we're ok with human drivers: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx.

Re:Nuke power

[Microlith]

I don't know of a single coal plant that has a sarcophagus over it

Good catch. Mostly that's because its toxic materials are either blown into the atmosphere or end up in large reservoirs on site, which have a habit of breaking.

a vast area around it where people are forbidden to live.

I suppose that's mostly because we're ignorant of the hazards of coal plant output. I hear the health effects are quite drastic, let alone living downstream in the event of a fly ash spill.

Re:Nuke power

[Waffle Iron]

Anyone else apparently, that plant was due for replacement/shutdown many years ago.

Every time there's a nuke plant disaster, some people argue that the particular situation is a special case that can be safely ignored. Undoubtedly, the same arguments will pop up the next time there's a major accident, sabotage or attack (which will undoubtedly be yet another special case).

Re:Nuke power

[PNutts]

Nuclear energy is quite cheap once the plant is up and running they can be run indefinitely with proper maintenance.

Fukushima Dai-ichi's energy was cheap until 3/11/2011 and it was properly maintained as much as any of them. Also, the Titanic was a great ship that provided excellent transportation until halfway across the Atlantic.

Re:Nuke power

[darkjedi521]

A natural gas plant in CT blew up a year ago due to improper purging of the gas lines during testing. Managed to rattle windows 30 miles away and if I remember correcltly, it registered as a 2 or 3 on the nearest seismograph. http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/07/us-energy-explosion-idUSTRE61619Q20100207

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

The Soviets sucked. But lets review the three power reactor accidents that have presented any potential or actual risk to the public and lets see how those accidents shook out:

1) Chernobyl: A soviet designed reactor with no containment that had a steam explosion because the operators were not trained for the experiment they were running, and they lost control of the reactor by disabling all the safety systems and doing things all the other reactors in the USSR said no to. No shock there that it had a steam explosion. (Operator error, design flaw)
2) Three Mile Island: A faulty pressure relief valve on the PWRs pressurizer and a bad design for the indicator, plus poor location of the indicators on the back of a panel, no release but core damage. (Operator error, design flaw)
3) Fukushima: a Tsunami induced beyond design basis accident, where the Units survived the earthquake and apparently the safety systems were working until the Tsunami took out the Diesel generators knocking all but the RCIC safety system out. (Beyond DBA)

Effects:

1) Chernobyl: Core Damage and exposure plus release plus fire. Worst case accident. Expected because the soviets just didnt give a fuck, they built a faulty reactor, had no containment and they blew it up with faulty procedures and an arrogant approach to Nuclear engineering. Big shocker to no one that they had a loss of containment accident and killed a lot of people trying to bring it under control. Classic Soviet Engineering Fuckup.

Actual Measurable Effects: Unit destroyed, lots of deaths of personnel involved in controlling the accident. Area contaminated, but effects have been much less over time than expected, tours are available of the area now. Worst case loss of control accident.

Cause: Experiment coupled with Operator Error/Arrogance. Soviet reactor design was unstable at low power, Night shift was untrained for the experiment that they were told to run. Plant tried to run experiment during the day, but was told to stop due to Brown Outs and passed this on to the junior night shift. Shift lost control of reactor, steam explosion took the lid off the uncontained reactor. Because Soviet reactors were designed to be refueled while running it had no containment and the rest is history. No one builds reactors like this except the Soviets, so this kind of accident can not occur with non-soviet designed reactors.

2) TMI: Core damage, no known release. It scared a lot of people at the time because it wasn't clear, at the time, what was wrong or what the effects were. Communication was poor and people understandably were panicked. No known release was measured, and a number of studies have looked into this. Increased rates of cancer were not detected, but its possible it did occur. Unfortunately, at the time the accident occurred the movie China Syndrome came out and this may have also had some impact on public perception of this accident.

Actual measurable effects: Core Damaged, Unit unusable, No deaths, no known direct health effects although there is some debate from residents on this point. Scientific studies so far have concluded that if there was any release (and there is no evidence of , it did not have any impact on public health and safety. The material than ended up the aux building did not contain solids at room temp, so any release was likely xenon (and maybe some argon or krypton), and possibly some radioactive iodine. Data at the time of the accident indicates that the release was less than 2 mrem, or 1/40th the natural dose for residents of a high altitude city. In short, not above background levels and no evidence of I-131 or C-137 in mammalian milk in the surrounding areas. So, the actual effects were scary sounding, but not anything that would have adverse impacts on health.

Cause: The Babcock and Wilcox valve indicated it was closed if the solenoid was de-energized, not when it was actually closed. It stuck open, and the indicators said it was closed. There were sensors on th

Re:Nuke power

[angel'o'sphere]

I suppose that's mostly because we're ignorant of the hazards of coal plant output. I hear the health effects are quite drastic, let alone living downstream in the event of a fly ash spill.

You should not believe everything you hear. There is no fly ash anymore in a modern plant since 15 - 20 years (in EU especially, not sure about USA, the last discussion with a /. er from there revealed that they "should" have even stricter limitations but seem not to be enforced).
I don't really know what you mean with a spill ... but I remember this accident a few months ago in an aluminium plant I think in eastern europe where lots of people died to spilled high acid materials.
A flood caused a deposite to over flood and flow into a town.
Anyway, regarding fly ash: it is separated in a way that most of it can be used as building material, e.g. for roads or as hard plaster in buildings. Only a very small amount gets deposited.
angel'o'sphere

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

Coal pants also release Thorium and Uranium which is a byproduct of coal composition, and is the largest source of radioactive release worldwide. Coal plants produce radiative waste and dump it into the air all day long, Nuclear Power plants do not.

Re:Nuke power

[Rising Ape]

How many oil plant and coal plant explosions did we have in recent years?

You don't need explosions for those to harm people. Air pollution, mining incidents, global warming... if all the consequences of coal were piled into a single, per-decade event it would be an appalling accident, far worse than Fukushima.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

> Oil and coal plants don't explode that much, no.

Thats splitting the hair, coal plants and oil plants absolutely have explosions and people die all the time. Coal dust is terrifyingly explosive, just google around a little and you'll see that coal dust explosions are unfortunately very common. Usually only a few people die, but plants themselves have been leveed such as the Kleen Energy Systems gas plant in 2010 that was almost destroyed.

You should expect any combustible fuel plant to have explosion hazards.

Re:Nuke power

[edxwelch]

"Nobody died"
This is the tired old logic of the nuclear appologist.
Only count the deaths. Ignore the fact that some of the health effects like cancer and birth defects take years to become evident. And ignore the fact that the huge swaiths of land has become uninhabital and that the groundwater has become poisened.
Oh yes, then the idiotic chest x-ray comparison.
Chest x-ray is external radiation, but people living near Fukusima are in danger because of internal radiation (ingesting radioactive isotopes from air, dust, food, etc.)

Re:Nuke power

[RoFLKOPTr]

To your logic: the fact that in a majour catastrophe nobody died, does not make the technology causing that catastrophe safe. The opposite is true: if the technology would be save the catastrophe would not have happend.

It wasn't a catastrophe. It was an accident. Nuclear power is not safe in the same definition that almost EVERYTHING we do is not safe. Are cars safe? Nearly 40,000 people die every year in car accidents, let alone the tens of thousands more that are severely injured. Are planes safe? Planes are the safest method of efficient long-range travel in existance, but 1,000 people still die every year. And there are thousands of aviation accidents that don't actually cause any harm... I think earlier you called those "catastrophes". There are thousands of aviation catastrophes every year, resulting in about 1,000 deaths per year.

Let's try some risk-benefit analysis. There are about 140,000,000 automobiles in the United States. Let's just estimate that means 140,000,000 people drive frequently given that most people who own a car drive every day and some households have only one car for several people while some households may have several cars for one person. 40,000 automobile-related deaths per year means that approximately 0.0003% of those served by the automobile industry die because of it each year. Nuclear power accounts for about 20% of all power generation in the United States. Given a population of 307,000,000, I think we can safely approximate that around 61,400,000 people are served by nuclear power in the United States. 3 deaths in the history of nuclear power in the United States (3 people died in an accident at the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls on January 3, 1961) means that less than 0.00000005% of people served by the nuclear power industry have ever died because of it. We see 45 deaths per year directly attributed to coal power which produces energy for 150,000,000 people giving us a death rate of 0.0000003% per year, let alone all the wild speculation by the environazis trying to attribute every lung-related death in coal power areas to the coal emissions and we see numbers claimed to be sometimes approaching 10,000 deaths per year. That's all bullshit, of course, but that's what people claim. The fact is that nobody can claim any more deaths in the United States due to nuclear power than those three that died during the technology's infancy, because there is no environmental impact with which to attribute random numbers to.

The media oversensationalizes every little thing that ever happens, and you have been sucked in. Everything we do is dangerous. I suggest you stay inside wrapped in a warm blanket for the rest of your life because that's the only way you'll ever protect yourself from injury. Be careful not to stub your toe on your bedroom door on the way to the kitchen.

Re:Nuke power

[thermopile]

A fantastic summary, but I quibble with the "no evidence of any significant release of radiation" quote for Fukushima. Two months ago, I would have said it was impossible for a reactor in Japan to contaminate the drinking water in Tokyo, but that's exactly what happened. To the detriment of the industry (and I'm a nuclear engineer), there was a significant release of radiation.

That said, in the grand scheme of things, it has not presented a harm to the general public that is greater than other risks: look at the poor folks in the spillways of the Mississippi. Or the coal ash spill from the coal-fired plant in Kingston, TN.

Three incidents like you describe above, over thirty-two years, is a pretty darned good safety record, with the 440+ commercial power reactors around the world. Why does nuclear have a bad rap? One possibility is it stems from fear since it all started with a few mushroom clouds, but whatever the reason, it seems awfully visceral.

Re:Nuke power

[RoFLKOPTr]

"Nobody died" This is the tired old logic of the nuclear appologist. Only count the deaths. Ignore the fact that some of the health effects like cancer and birth defects take years to become evident. And ignore the fact that the huge swaiths of land has become uninhabital and that the groundwater has become poisened. Oh yes, then the idiotic chest x-ray comparison. Chest x-ray is external radiation, but people living near Fukusima are in danger because of internal radiation (ingesting radioactive isotopes from air, dust, food, etc.)

How many years are we supposed to wait? Three Mile Island happened over 30 years ago and there has been no evidence of increased cancer rates as a result of that accident. And the only other accident that caused any injury in the history of nuclear power in the United States was in 1967 when somebody fucked up and improperly removed a control rod from the reactor, causing an explosion and the death of its three operators. That's it. Stop being blindfolded by the sensationalization and the stigmas related to the word "nuclear" and look at the facts.

Re:Nuke power

[angel'o'sphere]

You are making the same mistak everyone else is doing here in the discussion.

Car accidents have nothing to do with power plants. My they be nuclear or solar.

Coal mining has nothing to do with power plants.
Be they coal plants or nuclear plants.

You whole posting makes no sense. But it is typical for the way how people in our society believe to make "logical conclusions".

Your risk-benefit analysis holds only so long until we have a really bad accident (or until the true numbers of death in Chernobyl are released).

So it is completely pointless ... I dont get why that is so hard to see.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Nuke power

[DamnStupidElf]

There is no fly ash anymore in a modern plant since 15 - 20 years

Surprise, surprise, there are no nuclear plants operating commercially that were designed within the last 15 to 20 years. It's all old reactor designs without passive safety. Thanks to the insane selective fear of physics that some people have, it's far too expensive (in the short term) to test and build the new reactors.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

Agreed. I've actually got a Nuclear Engineer education and studied TMI, its an example of a contained accident. No release. TMI is an example that shows conclusively that the defense in depth used in nuclear reactors worked despite the mistakes made by the operators and despite the flaw in the BW PORV.

So yes, it is nonsense to use TMI as an example of how nuclear power is unsafe. TMI proved that even when everything failed, it was still possible to stop the accident.

Chernobyl, however, is a great example of how not to build and operate a reactor. That accident proves what happens when you dont have defense in depth, when you dont have good procedures, when you dont have containment, when you put poorly trained operators on the night shift and let your good operators go home to enjoy May Day. It also says you shouldnt experiment with big power reactors to find out what happens when things go wrong. That was classic communist thinking, screw the peasants its all for the greater good. Chernobyl is a textbook case of what can happen when you bypass all your procedures, disable your safety systems and build an unsafe reactor.

So if you want to use something as an example of how nuclear power can be done poorly and unsafely, use Chernobyl. If you want to make the argument that when everything goes wrong, nothing bad happens, sure bring up TMI.

And if you want to look ignorant, bring up TMI as an example of an accident that hurt people around actual Nuclear engineers and scientists.

Re:Nuke power

[angel'o'sphere]

The way for solar is not photovoltaic (which only works if there is sun/daylight) but thermal. It is easy to store enough heat over daytime to continue producing energy over night.

Wind and Solar are only "expensive" in terms of construction costs.

If we had started with them like 40 years ago, they would run them on maintenance costs: which means they cost close to zero.

Regarding reliability: you know, you have a hugh grid. There is always sun or wind somewhere on the grid. Right now you are depending on oil/coal or what ever from foreign countries. With wind you would only rely on your country and/or your neighbours.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Nuke power

[anagama]

How is it NOT a failure of engineering for the earthquake and tsunami threat to be minimized? History and tsunami stones pointed to real dangers that would lead one to think it is retarded to put generators that require fire, and for which water is a fatal enemy, at sea level. You cannot dismiss Fukushima because it wasn't designed for the event -- the earthquake and tsunami are an indictment of the engineering, not a reason to excuse the engineering.

Re:Nuke power

[Cyberax]

Uranium mining is fairly benign, it's done mostly in open-air quarries. Underground mining is not economic for Uranium mining alone, so it's usually done only when there are significant reserves of other resources (silver or copper ores, etc.) alongside.

Re:Nuke power

[angel'o'sphere]

No I don't want coal accidents.

As I pointed out in several other posts: there is no relation to nuclear power in coal accidents.
It is a so called "straw man" comparison.

Yes, coal is used to generate energy.

However: now we could compare coal mining with iron mining or gold mining or for gods sake uranium mining. Now we where in business. Comparing different mining activities and their direct impact on the workers and the people living in the surroundings ... that makes sense.

Comparing one industrial like energy generation with another one like mining: that makes no sense.

That is especially true if one activity is happening in a first world country with safety regulations and well educated workers and the other one is happening in a third world country with wage slaves and no safte measures what so ever.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Nuke power

[plover]

And I'm glad Chalk River is still on line. My wife needed the isotopes they make to help treat her cancer.

Their "spill" was 47 liters of heavy water. No damage, nobody harmed. If they stopped making radioisotopes, they'd kill tens of thousands of patients due to lack of treatment options. And it's not like they can stockpile those compounds. The half life of the useful ones are all pretty short.

There's this fragile thing called perspective. I don't know why so many people lose it when they hear the word "nuclear".

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

>I quibble with the "no evidence of any significant release of radiation" quote for Fukushima

I did say significant (not no release, I'm a Nuclear Engineer too!). :-)

So yes, there certainly should have been noble gas releases, and probably C-131 radioisotopes. Possibly others with cladding damage, but its hard to know all the facts at Fukushima right now (we sent people, and the Japanese have not been really that cooperative), including release so I agree that a release of some radiation occurred. We can messure that, but the amounts so far appear to present no threat to public health and safety, hence the use of the words "significant release of radiation". Thats why I mentioned the WHO quote, they seem like the best non-nuclear source, so it seems reasonable they probably aren't trying to spin it and there conclusion was no threat to health at this point.

As an aside, going back on GE BWR training I would have expected some release of nobles and C-131. Until we have cold shutdown and we can all study the events its all just inference at this point, so this could all change.

>Three incidents like you describe above, over thirty-two years, is a pretty darned good safety record, with the
> 440+ commercial power reactors around the world. Why does nuclear have a bad rap?
> One possibility is it stems from fear [anengineerindc.com] since it all started with a few mushroom clouds,
>but whatever the reason, it seems awfully visceral.

Yeah I agree. I think you have it right, mushroom clouds and nuclear weapons. That and general ignorance of how power reactors work coupled with a general misunderstanding of the health effects of ionizing radiation, and that we are all exposed to it all day long. As Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I wonder if we still called them something else, like "atomic steam generator plants" instead of "Nuclear Power Reactors" if people would be less irrationally afraid of them.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

> If you believe that, you are beyond hope.

I don't believe it, this is what I do for a living. I know what happened, I understand the BW PWR used, I studied the accident and I am a Nuclear Engineer. Please educate yourself and read the DOE and NRC studies, and maybe listen to some actual Nuclear Engineers and stop believing everything you read on the Internet.

Re:Nuke power

[osu-neko]

Thanks to the insane selective fear of physics that some people have, it's far too expensive (in the short term) to test and build the new reactors.

Yes, it's not the cost of the materials or the labor involved in building something as large and intricate as a nuclear power plant that make it expensive. Or maybe it is. Both concrete and engineering costs sky-rocket if people fear the result. The cement just won't set because it's shivering in fear...

Honestly? Really? You think building a nuclear power plant would be cheap if people didn't care what kind of plant you built? You think it's fear that multiplying the cost? And it has to be multiplying significantly, or the argument that fear is the reason for the overwhelming expense falls flat. Can you quantify this? How much would the plant cost if people didn't fear it? Is the cost of securing a permit that much more expensive that just building the plant? Is there completely unnecessary safety equipment that could be eliminated, and that equipment alone costs more than the plant? I'd love to see the numbers here...

Re:Nuke power

[ColdWetDog]

Hydro isn't terribly cheap either. In the little town I'm in, we're trying to develop two new hydro sources. One is just raising an existing dam - 20 million for about 10 MW, the other is a new site that is 'supposed' to cost 25 million for about 20 MW. We could probably get a couple of Toshiba 4S units in for that price (if they existed)(yes, I'm being a tad sarcastic).

But upfront costs for hydro, even under excellent circumstances, are breaking the bank in a lot of places. Part of this is due to regulatory issues, part do the the current financial climate (it's hard to raise cheap money, and no the US Federal government is not very hydro friendly). So the easy way out is to burn something. Coal, nat gas, oil, politicians, lobbyists.

Re:Nuke power

[AmiMoJo]

Coal mining has nothing to do with power plants.

Are you seriously suggesting that we ignore the source of fuel when evaluating methods of power generation for safety? A bit Machiavellian wouldn't you say?

Go mine some coal and then get back to us.

Re:Nuke power

[osu-neko]

Oh wow. Just wow. You really are as ignorant as the other comment I replied to seemed to indicate you might be.

We can build modern designs. Sometimes we do. Generally we don't, because it's expensive. It's expensive because materials and labor aren't free, and significant amounts of both and requires to build and operate one. We can build modern designs, we just don't without public subsidy for the same reason we don't build solar and wind power without public subsidy: you can't make a profit doing it.

Coal plants release more radiation because they release so little radiation that we don't even bother to try to contain it. If a nuclear power plant were operated along the same principles, there's no question it would eclipse the coal plant in terms of released radiation by half a dozen orders of magnitude.

Yes, those two elements are released more in coal burning than in nuclear power incidents. This is irrelevant, doubly-so since neither are elements your body will try to chemically incorporate, both of which are naturally occurring and found in the environment anyhow, long before the industrial era, and neither of which poses anywhere close to the health risk as things with much lower half-lives (those things don't stay around as long, but they're far, far, FAR more dangerous while they're still present).

Re:Nuke power

[Doc Ruby]

Except they didn't shut it down or replace it. Just like everyone else. Including the US, where practically any time our 104 plants is due for replacement/shutdown, instead it just magically gets relicensed.

So no, nobody else can either.

Re:Nuke power

[Doc Ruby]

No, they're talking about the "boom" of a meltdown gone critical, not the H2 "boom" that damages the buildings and ability to work to contain the disaster. The meltdown "boom" is a much vaster explosion, spewing radioactive material over a wide area. In most cases, an area filled with many thousands or millions of people, and upstream/upwind from large areas that get terribly poisoned. Like "Ukraine" or "Europe" or "the East Coast" or "the northeast quarter of Japan", etc.

If you're going to talk about "boom" in Three Mile Island, you should get your sense of proportion correct first.

Re:Nuke power

[Mindcontrolled]

Isn't the slashdot groupthink these days that scientists do it all for the funding? So, obviously, you are only arguing pro nuke to save your job... I am a trained biochemist, btw, which makes me competent enough to judge other fields of science. And the pro nuclear faction here is so full of shit and so devoid of any reasonable argument that it hurts.

Re:Nuke power

[SquirrelDeth]

The spill you are referring to was 47 kilo's not liters. There was also a 800 liter spill and a 7,000 liter a day spill that lasted over a month that was pumped into the Ottawa river. They need a new plant and since they take a while to build sooner is better than latter. If the plant gets shut down for good how many years would it take to start producing isotopes again? As for perspective why shouldn't people drive 50 year old cars that pollute like a bastard and leak oil once in a while?

Re:Nuke power

[Animats]

A fantastic summary, but I quibble with the "no evidence of any significant release of radiation" quote for Fukushima. Two months ago, I would have said it was impossible for a reactor in Japan to contaminate the drinking water in Tokyo, but that's exactly what happened. To the detriment of the industry (and I'm a nuclear engineer), there was a significant release of radiation.

Right. The number of casualties is small, but the area evacuated is large, and may be evacuated for decades.

For actuarial purposes, insurance for nuclear plants now has to be repriced. Total power reactor years worldwide is now about 14,000, with two major evacuation incidents. So an assumption of one evacuation of a 30km circle around the plant and acquisition of that real estate per 7000 reactor-years is appropriate for insurance purposes.

The insurance cost will vary with location. That's a big problem. Many US power reactors are sited near major cities. Indian Point in NY is probably the worst case for evacuation cost.

The discouraging thing about the Fukushima reactor disasters is that the real problem was loss of power. The earthquake and tsunami damage was contained. The cooling systems survived and ran until the batteries ran down. With no power, there was little cooling, resulting in hydrogen explosions and meltdowns in several units.

Plants are vulnerable to power loss for a variety of reasons - hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, regional blackouts, poor maintenance, fuel shortages, and sabotage. Most of the NRC literature on loss of coolant accidents focuses on pipe breaks. That may have been the wrong emphasis.

Re:Nuke power

[RoFLKOPTr]

Oh noes, it melted down. Further use of stigmatized words to convey images of something much worse than what actually happened. Yes, the core melted down. But the walls of the facility contained all nuclear fallout as well as the ensuing fires, and the reactor was brought back to stability with no injuries to the staff or the public. How is that anything other than safe?

Re:Nuke power

[XSpud]

So seriously, lets stop the fear mongering, four accidents of significance and only one - due to a terribly stupid design - resulted in actual threats to the public. Nuclear power is safe, and if people would just take the time to actually understand it they would know it.

It is statements such as this that contribute to the public suspicion of the nuclear industry IMO. Nuclear power is not "safe", it has risks like any other industrial scale power generation. The public knows there are risks, it knows that the nuclear industry has a history of trying to hide the risks, and it knows that human factors are often more significant than reactor design when safety is concerned.

At some point the industry needs to hold their hands up and say "yes we have been doing it wrong", and if the risks really are less now than they were in the past, try to convince the public that things will be different. But I suspect this wont happen while we are still using reactors with all the same attributes as the ones at Fukushima for example, or storing fuel in ways that were never envisaged by the original designers.

My view is that there will always be accidents (until proven otherwise) and it's not acceptable to rely on people risking their lives every time there's an accident in order to prevent further risk to the public. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima would have been far worse but for the actions of a few "heroes". Nuclear safety should not have to depend on heroes.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

So lets look at this mathematically, current US power requirements are over 3,700,000 megawatts.

According to the Department of Energy, Office of Utility Technologies, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy & Electric Power Research Institute, to produce 1,000 megawatts of electrical capacity from solar requires approximately 11,000 acres of photovoltaic solar cells. So, the amount of land you need to produce all power needed by the US, via solar, is approximately 40,700,000 acres or about five times the size of New Jersey.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, you need 50,00 acres of wind turbines to produce 1,000 megawatts. So, for wind, you need an area approximately five times the size of west Virginia.

Right now solar accounts for about 640 megawatts of power, and wind about 35000. The current bulk requirements are over 3,700,000 megawatts, so wind and solar are neither significant sources currently nor are they viable given the amount of land they both require, with current technology. Unless there is a significant change in technology, I just dont see how thats feasible.

Hydro, Coal, Gas, Oil and Nuclear are sources we have today that produce significant amounts of power, which is why we use them. Hoover Dam produces 2080 megawatts, and a single Westinghouse PWR produces over 1,000 megawatts of power. So even if solar and wind were everything that we want them to be, the numbers just don't add up.

Now I certainly am not open to new information, so if you have data that refutes this I'm all ears. This is probably why both liberal and conservative governments keep going back to fossil, hydro and nuclear as part of their energy strategies.

Re:Nuke power

[drinkypoo]

Sure, that is true (If we exclude Chernobyl).

Uh what? A single typical coal plant puts out more nuclear waste than Chernobyl every year. Granted, there are less of the unusual particles; most of what is emitted is thorium, and then there is a substantial amount of uranium, a small portion of which is fissile. If you were to somehow capture it all and burn it in a nuclear reactor it would produce more power than the coal. Because it is more widely distributed it does not kill people so quickly; it is impossible to say how many of today's cancer deaths are due to coal power. In the USA, coal for electricity accounts for only about half of our consumption of the stuff... the cleaner half.

And for more Uh What, who cares about Chernobyl any more in that way, since Fukushima is officially greater than Chernobyl? From now on, nuclear accidents will be described in fractions of Fukushima. Well, not "now", because the situation is still developing. They are finding exposed nuclear material about as fast as they can enter new areas. It's not clear now many meltdowns we're even talking about yet.

Re:Nuke power

[Rising Ape]

The meltdown "boom" is a much vaster explosion, spewing radioactive material over a wide area.

Except that won't happen, and I don't know where you got that from. The molten fuel is extremely unlikely to have the correct geometry to go critical, since it needs to have a moderator present as well. The intact core is close to the maximally reactive configuration, and a molten core is unlikely to spontaneously assemble itself into a lattice of fuel + water. Criticality in a meltdown may be a concern for fast reactors, but these aren't fast reactors. Even then, it wouldn't be a massive blast like the hydrogen explosions - but the heat released could cause the containment to fail so it would be a problem, yes.

Re:Nuke power

[drinkypoo]

You should not believe everything you hear. There is no fly ash anymore in a modern plant since 15 - 20 years (in EU especially, not sure about USA, the last discussion with a /. er from there revealed that they "should" have even stricter limitations but seem not to be enforced).

I personally know a guy who was paid to climb stacks here in the states and you can find out-of-spec plants as fast as you can pay people to climb them.

Anyway, regarding fly ash: it is separated in a way that most of it can be used as building material, e.g. for roads or as hard plaster in buildings. Only a very small amount gets deposited.

We did actually have a case with some sheet rock from china sweating radioactives and toxics, as you may recall; it was made from fly ash. A great deal of fly ash seems to be made into concrete, which seems like a decent way to entomb radioactives if it's sufficiently uniform, except that the suckers who are working with the stuff are going to breathe a certain amount of it past the sides of their respirators, assuming they're even in the first world where they get to use them. Here in the USA you can track increased radioactives downwind of pretty much any coal plant. I would guess that it's worse in China. The jet stream brings a crapload of Chinese pollution here. There are now days where there's more Chinese pollution in Los Angeles than there is of the local kind.

Re:Nuke power

[slyborg]

Exactly. I'm not "scared" of nuclear power, I'm an engineer and I understand the concepts of risk and failure mode effects analysis. The problem is primarily management failures in most of these high-profile accidents, as summarized by the poster above. There is no way to eliminate those on long enough time scales because human beings make mistakes. The problem with nuclear power is that the catastrophe scenario is very, very bad, and the timescale to react is very short. The latest update from Fukushima is that according to simulations based on the data they have, the Unit 1 reactor began melting down within 16 hours after loss of core cooling.

My feeling from reading some of the responses from people who are in favor of nuclear power is that for some people it reduces to an attachment to the technology. It's pretty cool to have the ability to split the atom to generate power (even though it's ultimately just boiling water). There's a visceral pride we feel in being able to harness something inherently very dangerous. Until it gets away from us.

Re:Nuke power

[CyberDragon777]

"Atomic" is still kinda iffy, "atomic bomb" and all that.

I propose "Sub-molecular thermoelectric generator" instead. :)

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

>> primary containment appears to be intact but we won't know for some time.
>No. Both unit 2 and unit 1 containment and pressure vessel have leaks.

Right, primary containment is intact, which means that the core is still protected. Leaks from water lines are not loss of primary containment, and water leaks are not as hazardous as you have been led to believe.

>> WHO has stated that there is no evidence of any significant release of radiation.
>No. Material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels and continues
> at 154 terabecquerels per day.

No, the WHO did in fact state that. You should visit their website, its a fact.

Currently measuring shows that I-131 has been detected in three prefectures, with values ranging from 1.5 Bq/m2 to 4.5 Bq/m2. Cs-137 was detected in eight prefectures, with values ranging from 3 Bq/m2 to 44 Bq/m2. Gamma dose rate for Fukushima prefecture was 1.7 Sv/h, in all other prefectures where sources where detected, reported gamma dose rates were below 0.1 Sv/h with a decreasing trend.

>>Measured increased amounts of radiocative caesium and iodine in the vicinity of the plant, but not at dangerous levels.
>No. It is at danerous levels - hence the exclusion zone.

No, the exclusion zone is not a measure of dangerous release, its to get people away in case there is a dangerous release.

> > No evidence that any uranium or plutonium has been released.
> Yes there is. The explosion in Unit 3 blew pieces of fuel rod up to a mile from the site. Uranium and plutonium was vapourised and detected both in the soil in Fukushima and as far away as California.

Nonsense, neither WHO nor IAEA support your claim here. As the party making the affirmative assertion has the burden of proof, if you have a reliable source for all these claims I would be happy to retract my statement. I can find no evidence to support your assertions.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

I didn't suggest that you should.

I will tell you that I do not work for the nuclear power industry, I work for the regulator and my job is to find things wrong with plants and to assume that bad things will happen. So I'm hardly a fan boy for nuclear.

But hey, the process is public and open and you can file a claim on any plant you want in the US with NRC, and they take those claims very seriously. So I just don't see how we can make the system more transparent, but if you have a beef the process is open, so please speak up.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

I'm sorry you feel that way. If you were part of all the public debates at the NRC you might feel differently. I know from personal experience the peer review that goes into every safety and security analysis, and the process is completely open to the public. So for what its worth, if you have an issue with nuclear, the NRC is an open agency, please file an allegation with the NRC and/or come to/dial into the public meetings and comment.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

Gamera.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

>Then you did not read the papers released the last 10 years about it? Or did you?

I did, last year in fact. And Chernobyl.

And I'm not a fan boy for Nuclear, my job is to inspect plants and to think of ways they fail and how they can be made to fail. I'm hardly someone that believes what a nuclear plant operator says, I'm on the other side of the table questioning everything they say. Just because I'm not freaking out doesn't mean that I'm skeptical of the nuclear industry. And just because I'm measured in what I say does not mean that I think Nuclear power is trivially easy to do safely, I know it is not.

But just because something is hard does not mean that its impossible. As a whole, there have been very few accidents, and only one so far (Chernobyl) that had a significant release.

Re:Nuke power

[thermopile]

I'm really not trying to get into a debate on semantics, but releasing a few TBq of radiation counts as "significant" in my mind. At the very least, it's way more than background.

This article by some nuclear engineers at NC State is an excellent, fact-based breakdown of what the effects are of the Fukushima accident, with known numbers to date.

Bottom line: Three cancers.

Three cases of cancer that would not otherwise have occurred, and this is using the (very conservative) linear-no-threshold assumption.

Others in this thread have been bleating about how bad nuclear power accidents have been. The following quote from the UN's final report on the Chernobyl accident (a summary can be found here ) doesn't support their claims:

"Apart from the increase in thyroid cancer after childhood exposure, no increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality have been observed that could be attributed to ionizing radiation. The risk of leukemia, one of the main concerns (leukemia is the first cancer to appear after radiation exposure, because of its short latency time of 2 to 10 years), does not appear to be elevated, even among the recovery operation workers. Neither is there any proof of other non-malignant disorders that are related to ionizing radiation. However, there were widespread psychological reactions to the accident, which were due to fear of the radiation, not to actual radiation doses."

People's fear is very real and important. But it's not substantiated by facts.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

I agree nuclear power can be safer, and the impact with nuclear is in the accidents and that its the cutting of the safety corners that causes them. No question about that, but those accidents are very rare. When you take Chernobyl out of the picture (it was a horrible design, no western country does what they did), you have two accidents:

1) TMI - and people can quibble, but the data so far shows that there does not appear to be any health impacts. And lots of lessons were learned and applied from TMI, its not like everyone shrugged and said "oh well".
2) Fukushima - A Tsunami they didnt plan for took them out, and they should have known in my opinion that it could occur. The event was recoverable if the Japanese had planned for it, which they did not (portable pumps and generators for example). Lots of other countries plan for large loses at their sites, the Japanese just didn't. So lets not throw an entire technology out because of the decisions of one company in one country.

Re:Nuke power

[edxwelch]

> Right, primary containment is intact, which means that the core is still protected. Leaks from water lines are not loss of primary containment, and water leaks are not as hazardous as you have been led to believe.

Dude, try looking at the defination of the verb "contain". It means "not let out". That's not what's happening here. The basement of unit 1 is full of radioactive water that leaked from the containment. Unit 2 is even worse. This water is leaking into the ground water and now several sewage treatment plants have radioactive sludge.

> No, the WHO did in fact state that. You should visit their website, its a fact.
They may have stated that, but they are wrong. 630,000 terabecquerels is not an "insignificant release of radiation"

In some spots the soil contamination exceeds Chernobyl evacuation levels: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110511p2a00m0na018000c.html

> Nonsense, neither WHO nor IAEA support your claim here. As the party making the affirmative assertion has the burden of proof, if you have a reliable source for all these claims I would be happy to retract my statement. I can find no evidence to support your assertions.

New York times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/world/asia/09japan.html?_r=1
Most people consider it a reliable source of information.

Uranium found in air samples:
http://enenews.com/uranium-234-detected-hawaii-southern-california-seattle

Re:Nuke power

[shutdown -p now]

Heavy water is 11% more dense, so 1ml of it weighs 1.1g (hence the name).

Not that it matters much - that's what, 4 liters extra?

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

The evacuation was a precaution immediately after the emergency was declared because there might be a release. If you evacuate after a release you're probably screwed and already breathing in byproducts.

Re:Nuke power

[Python]

Yeah, do keep in mind that I speaking about reactors, not other uses of fissile material. Windscale was a military pile core used for bomb production, not a power reactor. So apples and oranges, but if you want to include all nuclear accidents, that is a much longer list.

Windscale also had no containment (unlike TMI), the core caught on fire and there was a a plume from the fire (although the filters appear to have contained most of the byproducts, a smart addition). There was no plume or core fire at TMI.

No one was evacuated from the area of Windscale, and yet apparently there were no long term health effects. Surprising, but thats apparently the case.

Re:Nuke power

[lennier]

3) Fukushima: a Tsunami induced beyond design basis accident

People keep repeating that phrase "beyond design basis" as if it's some kind of positive thing.

All it means is that the designers got their design basis dead wrong as it didn't reflect the actual real-world conditions.

Since the designers in this case weren't some fly-by-night Soviet outfit but General Electric, who built a whole load of reactors based on the same flawed design basis, and neither the company nor the nuclear industry as a whole nor any of the international nuclear regulatory agencies called them on this... ... the only valid conclusion to be drawn is that there has been ongoing systemic under-estimation of design basis risk across the entire international commercial nuclear power community for at least the last 40 years. And the same people who systematically under-estimated the risk back then, are still running the industry today.

This is not a comforting realisation, and it's not one that counts in the nuclear power industry's favour.

Re:Nuke power

[Shihar]

>I quibble with the "no evidence of any significant release of radiation" quote for Fukushima

I did say significant (not no release, I'm a Nuclear Engineer too!). :-)

So yes, there certainly should have been noble gas releases, and probably C-131 radioisotopes. Possibly others with cladding damage, but its hard to know all the facts at Fukushima right now (we sent people, and the Japanese have not been really that cooperative), including release so I agree that a release of some radiation occurred. We can messure that, but the amounts so far appear to present no threat to public health and safety, hence the use of the words "significant release of radiation". Thats why I mentioned the WHO quote, they seem like the best non-nuclear source, so it seems reasonable they probably aren't trying to spin it and there conclusion was no threat to health at this point.

As an aside, going back on GE BWR training I would have expected some release of nobles and C-131. Until we have cold shutdown and we can all study the events its all just inference at this point, so this could all change.

>Three incidents like you describe above, over thirty-two years, is a pretty darned good safety record, with the
> 440+ commercial power reactors around the world. Why does nuclear have a bad rap?
> One possibility is it stems from fear [anengineerindc.com] since it all started with a few mushroom clouds,
>but whatever the reason, it seems awfully visceral.

Yeah I agree. I think you have it right, mushroom clouds and nuclear weapons. That and general ignorance of how power reactors work coupled with a general misunderstanding of the health effects of ionizing radiation, and that we are all exposed to it all day long. As Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I wonder if we still called them something else, like "atomic steam generator plants" instead of "Nuclear Power Reactors" if people would be less irrationally afraid of them.

Eh, and if people were perfectly rational we would hit the snooze button in the face of the absurdly small danger that terrorism represents and spend our money on something useful that will save lives, like choking prevention courses, or trying to teach people how not eat yourself to death. To bad people are stupid.

Nuclear suffers the double edged blade of stupid fears and rational fears. You are not being stupid if you decide you don't feel like living next to Fukushima right now. The area is irradiated. Sure, the levels are low, but things in the environment can concentrate it in particular points. Nothing is going to cause you to drop dead, but you might bump your risk of cancer in a non-trivial way. The blight that Fukushima has created in Japan is larger and will last longer than the irrational fears. That area is going to be a dead zone for a long time. Everyone who had property there can basically write it off. They have been screwed. A large piece of the long term losses in value might very well be psychological, but that doesn't do you much good if you have a worthless piece of property in the area.

If we build nukes, we should do it under 3 conditions.

1) We can accept the losses if the planet blows up. There will always be a way to cause a nuclear plant to cause a radioactive mess. It might be you need to ram an airplane into it, but there will always be away, even if we built perfect mechanical systems. Wherever you drop one of these things, you need to be will to have a large radius around the thing be evacuated. I'm okay if a plant in northern Maine blows up and we need to evacuate a few hundred miles of forest. I can't accept a nuclear power plant blowing up next to New York City. The consequences to the entire national would be economically fatal.

2) All plants need full insurance to deal with a disaster. Fukushima has economically destroyed the lives of everyone in a 30 mile radius of

Re:Nuke power

[ildon]

I was in highschool at the time and some girl was trying to get people to sign a petition to prevent the Cassini probe from launching in one of my classes. I told her I wouldn't sign it and when she asked why I basically explained how it was statistically impossible for it to hit the earth during the slingshot maneuver and even if it did, and the containment of the plutonium failed in a worst case scenario, the increased nuclear exposure would be so small as the be statistically insignificant, and since we live in Florida, you'd be more likely to be struck by lightning and killed than to get cancer from the incident had it occurred. She nearly cried.

Re:Nuke power

[CrimsonAvenger]

Official estimates of deaths from Chernobyl are around a half million, but some fairly credible sources believe it is actually as high as a million or even more.

Define "official" in this context.

Doing a quick survey, I can't see anyone I'd call "official" estimating 500K+ deaths from Chernobyl.

Admittedly, Greenpeace came up with a very large number of "expected deaths". Not actual ones, mind you, but the number they expect to see someday.

Note, by the way, that even Greenpeace's estimate was almost an order of magnitude below your upper limit of "as high as a million or even more". "Expected deaths", in Greenpeace's case, of course, against your actual deaths....

Re:Nuke power

[JSBiff]

"Also, the Titanic was a great ship that provided excellent transportation until halfway across the Atlantic."

But, we didn't stop sailing because of the Titanic.

Re:Nuke power

[Rakishi]

Your facts are out of date, measurements have been done and data has been released. Not of the reactor, which is irrelevant to those not involved in the cleanup unless bad things happens again, but of the area around the power plant. Decent quantities of radiation (cesium-137) have been detected in some areas. Enough to essentially leave the areas uninhabitable without significant cleanup costs. I think I've read estimates of up to 200 square km being unsafely radioactive but don't quote me on that. Not instant death, of course, but you wouldn't want to live there for years or grow food there.

Detailed ground measurements are, asfaik, not yet being done (or at least not being released) however very detailed fly-overs were done (and the data released).

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/05/10/fukushima-radiation-map/

Re:Nuke power

[NotAGoodNickname]

No, no grid in the world can effectively deliver power from a plant 3000 miles away. Wires don't work that way.

Re:Nuke power

[countertrolling]

That's just cold, man.. Ol' boy was pissing radioactive waste for months afterward.. And they did a wee bit more than just 'take an interest'.

Canadian reactors may be the safest in the world, but they aren't totally free of glitches.. Looks like you didn't read the link.. Bullshit politics is global, if not exactly evenly spread

Re:Nuke power

[mug funky]

the way i see the whole pro nuke anti nuke situation is this:

pro nuke: "these designs are as safe as they can be. there's defence in depth, so even if everything goes wrong, not all that much will go wrong"
anti nuke: " AAAAAAARRGGHHH!! ATOMS!!1!"
me: "defence in depth depends on how good the designer's imagination is".

the fact there was a station blackout is the main problem here. the second problem is the potential (and still unknown) damage caused to the vessels and containment structures by the freaking huge quake that hit. i think defence in depth worked beautifully, but the depth wasn't quite deep enough.

new designs are passively cooled, so this wouldn't happen, but it's still far too easy to imagine a situation that could fuck it big time. even a vanishingly small chance may occur on a long enough timeline, and these things run for a long time.

i think nuclear is necessary, but the potential human problems mean that much has to be done to make it _really_ safe.

with that said, it is still safer than the practical way of generating power. research can go into two places here - one is making renewables more practical, the other is making nuclear safer. much good can be done in both those areas.

Re:As long as .....

[El Torico]

The turtles will take care of that.

Slashdot on nukes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this is Slashdot, nukes can do no wrong! Clearly this must be propaganda from the bleeding heart eviro-nuts who don't hold the same opinions as me!

Re:Slashdot on nukes?

[Mindcontrolled]

No, they probably are not paid, I give you that. They are useful idiots. For every poster that is actually engaging into a discussion, I can give you ten who just spam the site with the usual lies like "coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste". What I find most fascinating is the fact that in the nuclear threads, suddenly stuff like global warming and peak oil is real and nuclear power is our salvation. In every other thread, those two things are usually made up by a global conspiracy of socialist scientists and/or Al Gore for the sole purpose of grabbing your hard earned and well deserved money.

Re:Slashdot on nukes?

[bky1701]

"In every other thread, those two things are usually made up by a global conspiracy of socialist scientists and/or Al Gore for the sole purpose of grabbing your hard earned and well deserved money."

Uhh, no. I think you're confusing slashdot with Fox News. Easy mistake to make.

Seems to me like you can't deal with the fact there might be people of different opinions on slashdot, and want to use that to demean anyone you disagree with. Like the GP said, basically, but worse.

Re:Slashdot on nukes?

[DamonHD]

Oh, do f*** off. I'm very moderately pro-nuke but your attitude is astounding and you are the idiot if that is how you write off the opinions of other human beings in either direction.

There are rational and irrational reasons to support and not to support nukes: we're not Mr Spock from Star Trek so both have a legitimate part to play in discussions.

Rgds

Damon

TEPCO has ruined nuclear power for decades

[Animats]

Much of this is TEPCO's fault, and specifically the fault of their CEO, Masataka Shimizu. A few weeks after the hydrogen explosions, it came out that the CEO had ruled that only he could authorize any release of radioactive material, including venting hydrogen to the atmosphere to avoid an explosion.

When that decision needed to be made, the CEO was not present when wanted. When the earthquake occurred, he happened to be in another part of Japan and had trouble getting to TEPCO HQ. But there was no backup plan if the CEO was unavailable. Nobody took over and made the decision. (In the US, policy is that the on-site plant manager can make that decision.)

The CEO wasn't seen in public for weeks after the disaster. He was rumored to have fled the country, that he'd committed suicide, or that he was in a hospital. The Prime Minister of Japan personally went over to TEPCO headquarters to demand answers and action. Even that didn't help, and his office had to directly take over management of the disaster.

Masataka Shimizu is still CEO of TEPCO.

Japan used to have a tradition of seppuku in such situations.

Contaminated Groundwater

[edxwelch]

Things are worse than people realise. Units 1 and 2 are both leaking water from the pressure vessel and containment vessel. Also, the quake craked the site foundations. So the contaminated water is seeping into the groundwater.
http://fairewinds.com/content/fukushima-groundwater-contamination-worst-nuclear-history
They have found highly radioactive sludge in several sewage treatment plants. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110513p2a00m0na019000c.html

Re:Contaminated Groundwater

[Python]

The IAEA has stated regarding possible ground water contamination:

"As of 10 May, the restriction on the consumption of drinking water relating to I-131 - which had been applied since 1 April as a precautionary measure for one remaining location (the village of Iitate in Fukushima prefecture), and only for infants - was lifted."

How many years are we supposed to wait?

[hoboroadie]

Patience, friend, the catastrophe you seek will occur. The closest man's creations have come to achieving longevity measurable in geologic time is our creation of fissionable material. Those poisons will outlive the pyramids.

Japaneese Slavutych?

[SharpFang]

I wonder if the next logical step will follow the Chernobyl pattern.

After the Chernobyl disaster, a common effort by all soviet republic to give relief to victims of the disaster resulted in building a new city from scratch. Slavutych is the city of people from the Chernobyl zone. Employees of the power plant, veterans of liquidation of the disaster, foresters, guards and scientists maintaining the zone of exclusion live in a city 50km from Pripyat, and these currently employed in the zone are going the 60km to work by a train every morning. The town, population 25,000 is divided into 8 districts, each with unique style and character given by a chosen soviet republic that lead building it. The design was specifically intended to give people new hope, a consolation and compensation for what they lost. The plan mostly worked: the standard of living is one of best in Ukraine, and there is outstanding number of children in the town, making its average age the lowest in the country.

Now I wonder how would the counterpart in Japan look like, if Japan chooses a similar solution. A modern town built in a year or less from scratch, designed with keeping spirits up in mind, done by the Japaneese may be very interesting...

Re:Japaneese Slavutych?

[drinkypoo]

Now I wonder how would the counterpart in Japan look like, if Japan chooses a similar solution.

The problem is, they're not exactly swimming in land in Japan. (They're swimming in radioactivity.) They'd have to build it on the side of a mountain or something. Seriously though, the best option is to expatriate as rapidly as possible. Spend some of their money while it's worth something to secure some land for their citizens in some other nation and send them packing. Whole towns are now flooded at high tide since the 'quake. Japan is facing a chronic land shortage.

All this comes off as insensitive I'm sure, and I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense to build anything in Japan any more. I'd be talking real seriously with Brazil. They already have lots of Japanese and surely they could benefit from lots more. The Japanese are very serious about protecting the environment in their own country, so it might actually improve their environmental conditions to import them all.

High radioactivity before the tsunami

[rrohbeck]

It seems that the quake itself damaged the #1 reactor, well before the tsunami took out the power system:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110515p2g00m0dm007000c.html

Re:Perspective is a funny thing . . .

[plover]

Seriously? You're comparing having to move your house to saving my wife's life, and the lives of the other people saved by those radioisotopes? Jeez, I'm so very sorry for the terrible inconvenience. Let me get right on that perspective changing.

Re:Control of product lifecycles

[hoboroadie]

Okay, you caught me, I don't really know about the actual management decisions and the engineering implementation here, just talkin' outa my ass I guess. Back in the sixties, I repaired televisions and RCA was pretty crap stuff, but suddenly (in the early seventies, IIRC) GE came out with some absolute, unrepairable shit. Stuff that was lucky to make it out of the warranty, unbelievable badness. We quickly learned to jack up the estimates for GE repairs to keep people from actually fixing them. If we found out on the phone it was a GE we'd refer them to the shyster shop in town, that we normally would not recommend. When we did have to do a repair, it was always pretty bad to work on, crumbling apart as we opened it up &c., and then we'd usually eat shit when it came back with some unrelated problem that we'd end up fixing because of the coincident timing. They thinned out the gauge of the chassis steel, the circuit boards got thinner, the components got spindly and poor, It was pretty amazing, actually. As you said, Sony came along and ate their lunch with nice, stout chassis, (and beautiful plywood), and good components. We hardly ever saw Mitsubishis, but as I recall, they seemed even nicer. In the olden days we'd recommend Curtis Mathes, then in the seventies we'd say "Sony, no baloney",or if money was no object, Mitsubishi. We had an antique GE reactor down the road, makin' isotopes, and I used to worry a lot about that place. Another thing I noticed was the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory that i talked to would all parrot the exact same nonsense about how their work was good for world peace. I don't recall the script now, but it was like they went to brainwashing camp and took the propaganda straight out of a manual, not some reasoned conclusion from independent thought or research. I like electricity as much as anyone, it's pretty keen what we can do with it, but I think I'd rather wear fur and hunt my food with a bow and arrow than trust our corporate leaders to build "safe, clean" nuclear generators. As long as the "Wonderful one hoss shay" is our model for manufacturing practice, then I don't think a college-indoctrinated engineer is qualified to design something as critical and dangerous as a nuclear water boiler. YMMV.

Re:As long as .....

[RobertM1968]

Whoosh!!!

And the correct answer is...