Fukushima Meltdown Might Have Come With Earthquake, Not Tsunami

formfeed writes "As the data from the Fukushima reactor is being reviewed it looks like the meltdown happened much earlier: '[T]he fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were completely exposed to the air and rapidly heating five hours after the quake.' Apparently, the earthquake had caused a crack in the containment vessel. Which means, that even without the generators failing, the meltdown might still have happened. With this new data, it seems a similar incident could happen in an earthquake zone even without a tsunami."

Comments

Uh... summary?

[zalas]

Article:
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said it is studying whether the facility's reactors were damaged in the March 11 earthquake even before the massive tsunami that followed cut off power and sent the reactors into crisis.
Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural damage in the earthquake that caused a release of radiation separate from the tsunami.
Summary:
Apparently, the earthquake had caused a crack in the containment vessel.

I'm not sure how the summary writer came to that conclusion... Shouldn't we wait for an actual report/finding before stating that?

Re:Uh... summary?

[Sollord]

Welcome to /. leave facts at the door along with all thoughts of compromise as your solutions and knowledge are always right on all topics

Re:Uh... summary?

[ozmanjusri]

Shouldn't we wait for an actual report/finding before stating that?

This slow release of news is just salamitaktik to reduce public outcry. Tepco have known from the start that the reactors melted down and breached containment.

Of course, as usual with reputation engineering, it's only made things much worse. This was an international incident from the beginning, and resources from around the world should have been used to mitigate the damage.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Kilrah_il]

You should be modded -1 Factual or -1 On-topic :)

Re:Uh... summary?

[Forty Two Tenfold]

nuclear experts

Not that I disagree with Gundersen, but one person does not a group make.

Re:Uh... summary?

[he-sk]

Here's a better writeup:

Mainichi Daily News: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110517p2a00m0na008000c.html
taz (German): http://taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/artikel/1/tepcos-verteidigung-broeckelt/

According to these articles, reactor no. 1 experienced some kind of problem (sudden drop of pressure) 10 minutes after the earthquake and well before the tsunami struck. The crew then had some troubles with the cooling system of said reactor but the articles are pretty vague in that regard. This is according to TEPCO's own reports.

Anyway, I've always maintained that the assertion that the earthquake did no damage in Fukushima (and therefore other nuclear plants are "safe") was nothing but a myth pushed by nuclear apologists in their own self-interest. It's nice to see some factual reporting backing up my thesis, by the nuke operator no less.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

While on the topic of moderation, why do people always confuse "Insightful" and "Funny"?

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tepco have known from the start that the reactors melted down [...]

Yes, and they were very forthcoming with this information (because this is not a BIG DEAL [TM])

[reactors...] breached containment.

[citation needed]

AFAIK, all the "leaking radioactive material" stories are about the spent fuel pond(s) not the reactor cores.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Chas]

Remember the first rule of yellow journalism.

If there's no news to be had, generate an eye-catching, inaccurate headline.

Then make shit up.

"Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source"

This is essentially a license to freely spew anything. Regardless of the facts.

Now comes the time when they attempt to rewrite what actually happened, and replace it with a "nuclear horror" scenario.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cite me anything where Kyodo reported wrongly. They've been following Fukushima since Day 1.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because "Funny" no longer gives karma. "Insightful" is the closest thing without being too much of a stretch.

Re:Uh... summary?

[jbengt]

Summary:
Apparently, the earthquake had caused a crack in the containment vessel.

I'm not sure how the summary writer came to that conclusion... Shouldn't we wait for an actual report/finding before stating that?

From TFA:

The utility said on Sunday that a review of data from March 11 suggested that the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were completely exposed to the air and rapidly heating five hours after the quake.

and

Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural damage in the earthquake that caused a release of radiation separate from the tsunami.

Re:Uh... summary?

[ozmanjusri]

[reactors...] breached containment. [citation needed]

'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.
Now 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.
“We will have to revise our plans,” said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for Tepco. “We cannot deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak”.'

AFAIK, all the "leaking radioactive material" stories are about the spent fuel pond(s) not the reactor cores.

Leaking?

"United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

"The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=2&hp

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you lead a sad, humorless enough of a life where the two are always mutually exclusive?

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary: 'had'. Story: 'might have'.

Summary: 'crack'. Story: 'structural damage'.

Re:Uh... summary?

[AmiMoJo]

To me this does seem like a major design defect. The reactors were designed to withstand large amounts of lateral acceleration, but not as much as the earthquake cause. It is somewhat understandable that such a large tsunami was not anticipated but this is not the first magnitude 9 earthquake since accurate record keeping began.

Other plants have been inspected and 99% of them are fine, although that was expected since they were further from the epicentre and thus were exposed to less lateral movement. If this quake damage is confirmed they will be forced to close more reactors since there isn't much that can be done to improve their structural strength. Hamaoka has already been shut down over these concerns and it seems unlikely that the older reactors there will ever be used again.

Nuclear is dangerous but Japan is in a difficult position because it has little in the way of natural resources like oil, gas and coal with which to generate electricity. There is also the "benefit", if you can call it that, of having the facilities to manufacture weapons grade uranium very quickly which allows Japan to remain a non-nuclear country but have the ability to rapidly arm themselves if the situation deteriorates that far.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

ARTICLE: Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural damage in the earthquake.

SUMMARY: Apparently, the earthquake had caused a crack in the containment vessel.

Are you still not sure how the writer came to that conclusion? If you have such a difficult time connecting the dots it's no wonder that you are pro-nuclear.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now 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.

They're saying there "may have" been a breach - not that there "was" a breach.
What's really strange, is a lot of reputable sources are reporting this wrong.

In fact, a note from the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) quotes Banri Kaieda, the nation's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister, as saying that it is "a fact" that there were holes created by the meltdown. That would likely mean at least some of the uranium fuel is now lying on the basemat below, or perhaps even outside the concrete containment.

But nowhere in their linked report does it say anything about a breach in the containment vessel.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said it is a fact that the
water injected into the No.1 reactor leaked away because of a hole or holes
created by the meltdown.
[...]
The operator, TEPCO, said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods in the reactor are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel.
TEPCO says the melted fuel has apparently cooled, even though much of the injected water is leaking through holes at the bottom of the vessel.
Under a plan decided last month, the utility was to fill up the containment vessel with water and set up a system to circulate the water through a heat exchanger.

Not that I can really blame them too much for mixing up some of the terms, considering how many different "vessels" there are.

Though, it does seem TIME got it right:

It's important to note, however, that the worst has not come to pass, nor do experts believe that it will. In that scenario, all of the rods would have fully melted, collapsed, and burned through the pressure and containment vessels, causing a large radioactive leak outside.

WSJ too:

Within 16 hours, the reactor core melted, dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and created a hole there. By then, an operation to pump water into the reactor was under way. This prevented the worst-case scenario, in which the overheating fuel would melt its way through the vessels and discharge large volumes of radiation outside.

The nuclear industry lacks a technical definition for a full meltdown, but the term is generally understood to mean that radioactive fuel has breached containment measures, resulting in a massive release of fuel.

I'd like to read more about your second link, but it says the NRC report is "confidential". Got a closer-to-the-source link? Or at least a newer one? (the report is from March)

Re:Uh... summary?

[oh_my_080980980]

Putting your head up your ass doesn't make what you say true.

This was a big deal - level 7 nuclear disaster.

The containment vessel was breached.

The spent fuel rods became radioactive because their pools became depleted.

Plutonium has been leaking into the sea.

Moron.

Re:Uh... summary?

[aardwolf64]

Karma is totally overrated... I've got my +1, and I haven't written anything useful in YEARS... :-)

Re:Uh... summary?

[mosb1000]

This utility has, so far, always said "might have" when they meant "have". They knew right away that there had been a meltdown, but instead of admitting it, they waited until it had been proven by a visual inspection. And for future reference "structural damage" is jargon for crack when you are referring to a containment vessel.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a big deal - level 7 nuclear disaster.

That's a fairly useless scale ( read up on the "criteria").
This is worse than TMI (which had barely measurable radioactive release), but nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl (AFAIK, so far).
Chernobyl had no sealed containment vessel, and the fuel was allowed to reach super-high temperatures which burned the graphite moderator directly into the atmosphere, where wind carried it for miles - which is REALLY REALLY BAD.

The containment vessel was breached.

Again, [citation needed].
See my links and quotes in this post.

The spent fuel rods became radioactive because their pools became depleted.

The spent fuel rods are always radioactive (at least until they decay according to the half-life of their fuel).

Plutonium has been leaking into the sea.

Plutonium? You sure it wasn't cesium or iodine?
Still radioactive, but not nearly has bad as Pu.
I can find a few links stating that plutonium has been found "outside the reactor building", but they don't got into much detail on the amounts.

Please provide a link if you've got one, it's hard to find unbiased info.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the first article that came out about this on Slashdot and all the +5 Idiot comments that followed
"you people are fear mongering"
"theres nothing else that can go wrong with these"
"the rods will instantly cool down because blah blah blah"
"nobody expected a tsunami to hit"
-Than the meltdown occured
-The hydrogen explosion
-The leaking into ground water
-Dumping massive amounts of contaminated water into the sea
-Evacuation zones expanded and higher readings in the air

You literally have to go back and read the first couple of article comments to laugh at how idiotic the apologists were, not to say the nuclear fear mongers were that great also.
Credibility is not something Slashdot always has and they have some of the worse predictions on technology and life in general on this site, but just shut your mouth nuclear apologist. Greenpeace still have their heads up their ass.

Oh yeah and lol at all the "look the Japanese didn't loot and riot after, they are much better than Americans"
Than we find out TEPCO and all them are in bed with the government, lying to the public about a *NUCLEAR* accident and endless other complacency. The same attitude that kept these people calm keep them in place and to shut up and not speak out against this. Not exactly a perfect society.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Chas]

Apparently you missed "quoted an unnamed source".

I can "quote an unnamed source" who says that the moon landings were faked on a soundstage.

Thanks for playing!

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fukushima doesn't have a sealed containment vessel either. It used to have that, but it's no longer sealed.

Re:Uh... summary?

[jafac]

Well, it was also fairly obvious given the following:
- Among the long history of safety procedure fraud at Fukushima, by TEPCO, were instances where repairs were performed using procedures that were not approved by standards, but signed off as otherwise. (therefore - plant infrastructure which may have been *designed* to withstand certain g acceleration forces of an earthquake in 1971, may not be able to withstand those forces 40 years later, after these un-approved, but fraudulently certified repairs.) - The article which mentions these variances does not provide specifics.

  - When Unit 1, and 3 exploded, the roofs of the building blew off. This indicates that the hydrogen had been generated in a reactor core at over 2200 degrees C, in the presence of water, and escaped the primary cooling system, venting into the reactor building's structure through the particle scrubbers, and exploded. A hydrogen explosion is not good, of course, but only indicative of a loss-of-cooling, at a minimum. Many experts will say that hydrogen generation is pretty much a sure sign of melting; it's not precise, but when you're in the ballpark, in a nuclear reactor, things can get very unstable very quickly, (like, milliseconds-quickly). None of these units had instrumentation, or controls, or active cooling going on. As hot byproducts are released - they have much lower melting points than the Uranium fuel, and they can migrate around, and collect in different states (or chemically react with eachother, and have a completely different set of properties - and these properties could be caustic, or explosive) . . . and cause hotspots, regions of high flux. (while some byproducts absorb neutrons and slow the reaction down). Pretty much all bets are off, as far as predicting what's going to happen.

Strictly speaking, hydrogen generation does not mean melting HAD to happen. But in this situation, it was highly improbable that melting wasn't happening in conjunction with that.
(and the hydrogen generation did not necessarily happen at the time of the explosions - the explosions happened later).

  - When Unit 2 exploded, the explosion blew out the side of the base of the building, through the condenser, in the primary cooling. This means that the hydrogen collected and ignited in the primary cooling system. This also means that there was enough heat in the condenser to provide ignition. This could have been due to excessive steam pressure, (compression-ignition) - with oxygen leaking IN through structural cracks. It strongly suggests that Unit 2 was damaged structurally, (the concrete torus), in the quake. It could be that thermally hot byproducts or corium caused the ignition in the RPV, maybe with an oxygen isotope (I don't know if this is possible or not, probably not), or dissasociated water,(weird isotope chemistry?) or the ignition source made it's way into the torus (which would mean, holey RPV+holey primary cooling = open core). I can't really say what the ignition source could have been, but the presence of oxygen is the crazy bit, and the simplest explanation is structural issues in the concrete (or connecting cooling pipes/valves).

I think it was pretty idiotic and foolish (okay. . . unprofessional?) for TEPCO to state, in the immediate aftermath of the first hydrogen explosion, that they knew that the RPV was intact. They couldn't get instrument readings, or even a visual inspection for many days after that explosion to even get a half-assed confirmation of that statement. It was this kind of fumbling around and PR mismanagement that does the most damage to the industry's credibility. It would have been better for them to state what they definitely knew - what data they had, and the range of possibilities that it could have meant. That first hydrogen explosion was absolutely the time to press the panic button and evacuate residents.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cite? or are you just trolling?

If you had bothered to read my linked post, you'd see that no experts are saying the containment vessel was breached.

If you have anything useful to add, please do, otherwise STFU :)

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

Chernobyl also had a fraction as much nuclear material on-hand, and had no plutonium-burning reactors. Also, the spent fuel ponds had no containment structure around them at Fukushima, only the core.

Anyway, I think it's way too soon to make any calls as to how bad this is going to be in the long run. The real question is how much cesium is working its way into the soil, houses, water, etc around the plant. All that can be done for now is to try to minimize it.

Re:Uh... summary?

[schwaang]

Nuclear is dangerous but Japan is in a difficult position because it has little in the way of natural resources like oil, gas and coal with which to generate electricity. There is also the "benefit", if you can call it that, of having the facilities to manufacture weapons grade uranium very quickly which allows Japan to remain a non-nuclear country but have the ability to rapidly arm themselves if the situation deteriorates that far.

Speaking of war, in all the press coverage of earthquake-proofing the reactors, I haven't seen a single mention of the potential hazards from nuclear power plants damaged by war. In the US we actively worry about terrorism, but a war in which bombs or missiles strike one or more reactors is a realistic possibility, and much more so in Japan.

With nuclear, the probabilities of leaks may be small, but the possible consequences are unacceptably high. And as each serious accident has shown, neither the risks nor the consequences are adequately understood.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

If the containment vessel isn't leaking, how is all of the highly-radioactive, plutonium-bearing water accumulating outside of the containment vessel?

Lots of very respected sources are reporting that there was damage to the containment vessel in reactors 1 through 3, quoting multiple figures in the government and TEPCO. I'm going to trust their ability to cross-check their reporting more than your "linked report" which is just a second-hand summary of news reported by one source, not some official document.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

To me this does seem like a major design defect. The reactors were designed to withstand large amounts of lateral acceleration, but not as much as the earthquake cause. It is somewhat understandable that such a large tsunami was not anticipated but this is not the first magnitude 9 earthquake since accurate record keeping began.

But you see, that's not acceptable. You can't just account for known unknowns. You also have to factor in the risk of unknown unknowns. It's simply not good enough to say, "We've never seen a tsunami that big, so we'll just assume that one won't happen" when you're dealing with something with such huge consequences in the event of a failure.

A couple years ago, in the city just to the north of me, the Cedar River flooded. Floods happen, right? Yes, but it was something like *ten feet* over its previous record stage, with records dating back to the mid-1800s. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season broke half the records in the book for a hurricane season, some by huge margins. Same with the tornado outbreaks in April (two massive tornado outbreaks in a single month, each record-setting). And on and on. We have more than ample evidence that previously standing records, especially localized records, can get blown away. If you can't build with this realization in mind, and if a failure has such severe economic consequences, you shouldn't be building.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Firethorn]

Probably because, in war, no sane military is going to be shooting at the nuclear plants; it would be as bad, if not worse, as setting off an actual nuke.

Worst case, they'd be looking to take out the power switch yard, a much softer target, which would prevent the distribution of the power and therefore force the plant to shut down.

Re:Uh... summary?

[AmiMoJo]

You have to pick some cut-off point, otherwise there is no limit to the safety features required.

Re:Uh... summary?

[AmiMoJo]

Well I don't think there are any nuclear facilities that would survive having an airliner flown into them either so... Yeah, basically if there was a real war we would be screwed, but realistically I don't think it is likely. Countries with a modern high-tech military are basically at a standoff with each other because the consequences of even a conventional war would be utter devastating for both sides. That leaves countries like North Korea, but I don't think even they are mad enough to start a real war with South Korea or Japan because they know they would lose quickly and badly.

Terrorism seems like a more real danger.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

War is no problem, that's good to know. I'll be sure to forward your comment to Kim Jong Il.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

But that limit should not be "What we've already seen happen, plus a couple feet". When the disaster potential is on such a great scale, you need to assume "we ain't seen nothing yet." And if that assumption is too expensive? Then you don't do it.

Re:Uh... summary?

[garyebickford]

My great-grandaddy was an engineer/doctor/botanist in India in the mid-1800s. One of his claims to fame was a bridge over a river canyon, which had been washed out repeatedly. So he walked 100 miles upstream and 100 miles downstream, and interviewed the chiefs and the elders of each village and tribe along the river, asking how high the water went in their lifetimes, in their ancestors lifetimes, and in their legends. He assembled a 500 year history of the river's floods. Then he had the new bridge built ten feet above that.

I believe the bridge was finally torn down a few years ago, to make way for one with higher capacity. :)

Re:Uh... summary?

[riverat1]

In the US in the 1960's nuclear power plant containment domes were designed to survive a Boeing 707 being flown into them. Of course there are other parts of the plant outside of the containment dome that could be affected.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the containment vessel isn't leaking, how is all of the highly-radioactive, plutonium-bearing water accumulating outside of the containment vessel?

From the cooling pond which they've been pouring water all over. And from the small amounts that were airborne in the hydrogen when it detonated.

Lots of very respected sources are reporting that there was damage to the containment vessel

Cite?
I can't find a single (reputable) source reporting that.
The closest they get to saying it is they're "worried about" a "possible" containment failure.
And that the Hydrogen explosion could have caused "damage" to the containment vessel (but not stating if it punched through).

I WANT to know more about this, but everybody responding is replying either without citing or citing old, outdated texts (or sensationalist garbage).

I'm going to trust their ability to cross-check their reporting more than your "linked report" which is just a second-hand summary of news reported by one source, not some official document.

Nature was citing it as an official source, I treated it as such.

Though, the only reason I'm defending this nuclear plant at all - despite the fact that everyone knew beforehand was a horribly outdated design and was due to be decommissioned - is that everyone is painting all "nuclear power" with the same brush.
That somehow, Fukushima is some amazing revelation about how unsafe nuclear power is, and that we need to stop all nuclear development or research.

When what we really need to do is put the NIMBY and enviroweenies together on an island and let them starve because nothing ever gets done. Then carry on with the plans we've had collecting dust for the past 30 years for newer, safer, more efficient nuclear power.
Not cavalierly - nuclear power obviously needs oversight - but taking what we've learned to make stuff better.

Re:Uh... summary?

[splashbot]

Hitting a reactor would be worse, IMH (non Nuclear Engineering Major) O.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, a level-headed response :)

The real question is how much cesium is working its way into the soil, houses, water, etc around the plant.

Even this - as bad as it is - is still nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl.

Hell, the whole site could be covered top to bottom in plutonium, and it wouldn't be as bad as Chernobyl.
If it's all in one place, we can clean it up and isolate the areas we can't clean up (well, except for the ocean, but it'll disperse to "normal" levels quickly there). Whereas the fire at Chernobyl deposited large amounts of fuel over vast swaths of highly populated areas.

Re:Uh... summary?

[ThunderThor53]

While on the topic of moderation, why do people always confuse "Insightful" and "Funny"?

People don't confuse the two moderations. Instead, "Insightful" grants karma while "Funny" does not. Thus, especially witty comments get modded "Insightful" so that the poster gains karma.

From the /. FAQ: "Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass."

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

From the cooling pond which they've been pouring water all over. And from the small amounts that were airborne in the hydrogen when it detonated.

If you have *airborne* plutonium, you have *huge* problems. The boiling point of plutonium is nearly 6000 degrees Fahrenheit. And even if you're getting plutonium from water, it inherently means that the zirconium cladding has melted off the rods. Arguing that that this happened in the cooling ponds isn't exactly going to win you any brownie points in the "Nuclear power is safe" front.

And all of that said? Your claim is simply wrong. Again. Again.. Why on Earth do you think they reduced the rate of water flow into the core? Whatever they inject ends up in the basement after getting a hefty load of radionuclides. Not only is the water from the core, the evidence shows that it's from a core which has had re-criticality (multiple spikes in iodine production; iodine is a short-lived radionuclide)

Though, the only reason I'm defending this nuclear plant at all - despite the fact that everyone knew beforehand was a horribly outdated design and was due to be decommissioned

No -- only one reactor was (#1), and as usual with aging nuclear power plants (including our own), they got an extension to for ten years.

When what we really need to do is put the NIMBY and enviroweenies together on an island and let them starve because nothing ever gets done.

Right, because anyone who disagrees with you is someone who's only good as a target for name calling and has no proposed solutions of their own, correct? You realize you're talking about the same people who were accurately describing how serious this situation was while people like you were out there describing the plant's reaction to the earthquake and tsunami as a triumph of nuclear safety engineering.

Re:Uh... summary?

[schwaang]

Considering that the example of utter devastation in WWI didn't prevent WWII, and considering that the global political landscape can shift within the 50-ish year lifespan of any reactor (rise of China, re-alignment of the Middle East, etc.), and considering the proliferation of nuclear reactors into possibly unstable countries (India, Iran, China, etc.) it's hard to claim that war is an unlikely threat to nuclear reactors. IMHO. History is long and unforgiving.

Consider also the revealed history of possible mutally-assured-destruction between the US and former USSR. According to SecDef Robert MacNamara, we came to the very brink of nuclear war on *more than one* occasion aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis. (That fact alone should give any sane person pause.) And if we could come that close, others will surely come closer to insanely devastating wars.

Again, the chances may seem small, but the consequences are totally unacceptable.

Re:Uh... summary?

[WalksOnDirt]

Chernobyl also had a fraction as much nuclear material on-hand, and had no plutonium-burning reactors.

All uranium reactors produce, and burn, plutonium. Chernobyl released plutonium. The MOX fuel at one of the Fukushima reactors might have had more plutonium, but so far as I know the amount released has so far been small.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing these allegations, but I never see any citations on any of them, although I might have missed it where somebody gave them. Either way...

[ CITATION FUCKING NEEDED ]

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have *airborne* plutonium, you have *huge* problems. The boiling point of plutonium is nearly 6000 degrees Fahrenheit. And even if you're getting plutonium from water, it inherently means that the zirconium cladding has melted off the rods. Arguing that that this happened in the cooling ponds isn't exactly going to win you any brownie points in the "Nuclear power is safe" front.

IANANE :)
Wouldn't the zirconium melting occur as part of the "meltdown" anyway?

You realize you're talking about the same people who were accurately describing how serious this situation was

In all fairness, they were getting drowned out by the "nuclear is always bad" crowd.

Good info in your links though, I'll have to mull that over for a while, thanks.
I was able to find an official source supporting a leaking containment vessel.

It is also expected that the leakage of radioactive substances from the primary containment vessel will be decreased by flooding the bare part of the spent fuels.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go. Click the links for the three presentations of status for reactors 1-3. You're welcome.

Re:Uh... summary?

[AmiMoJo]

In WWI a lot of soldiers were killed but most of each countries civilian populations were untouched. There were a few attempts like the bombing of London by airships and very long range artillery but nothing on the scale of the mass bombings of WWII.

That is the key difference. When WWII came around it was possible to target factories and other infrastructure that were previously impossible to get at.

Re:Uh... summary?

[Rei]

Zirconium cladding in the spent fuel ponds does not occur as part of a core meltdown. This would mean a spent fuel pond meltdown, which would be a huge disaster in its own right (no containment at all)

Re:Uh... summary?

[RockDoctor]

Tepco have known from the start that the reactors melted down and breached containment.

Your evidence for this, in particular focussing on your technical term "known"? What sensor readings would they have had that would tell them containment has been breached, considering that simultaneously they also had shutdown operations happening, switchover of circulating systems, ground accelerations from the quake itself and aftershocks ...

But hey, I just have to work with much simpler sensor systems in a not-much-simpler non-engineered system. I often know what my sensors are saying, but it takes a lot of thinking to work out what is causing those readings, for any non-standard situation. What would I know about the difference between readings and interpretations?

This was an international incident from the beginning, and resources from around the world should have been used to mitigate the damage.

Very helpful. I remember seeing so much shouting that "this is a Japanese internal matter ; you foreigners get out of here - it's none of your business! We deny that anyone outside Japan has any right to know what has happened here!" And as for your "resources from around the world" ... I assume that you donated your single-ended teleportation beam system so that resources could be magically transported from (say) Ulan Bataar to Fukushima, without having to worry about traversing roads, finding landing sites for helicopters, and little things like that.

Oh, BTW, I do recall that within a couple of days helicopter loads of boron-rich reactor-kill material were being shipped from a US military vessel in the area (now why does the Japanese Navy not have their own nuclear-powered aircraft carriers? Oh, nothing to do with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and them adhering to their own Constitution.). Which appears to have been useful, if not completely effective. Did you teleport in a few more tonnes of boric acid from your own stocks too?

Sheeesh, don't people think before they type? Oh no, of course not. This is Slashdot.

Misleading Title As Usual

[borrrden]

Nowhere in TFA does it say that the earthquake caused the damage to the reactor that led to it melting. Also, I doubt it is even possible for it to melt in the 40 - 50 minutes it took for the tsunami to arrive. It first has to evaporate or otherwise evacuate the water inside the reactor, and then heat up to about 2800 C to melt. What the article is saying is that the rods had melted much sooner than initially thought. The timeline changed, not the reason. They are also looking into possible complications that may have occurred in the initial hour (there is another report that the cooling systems were manually shut off after a pressure drop, as per the instructions for such a scenario), but nowhere does it suggest that the earthquake, and not the tsunami, caused the crisis. The closest it comes to that is saying that the earthquake may have "damaged" the reactor, but gives no speculation on the effect that it would have had on the cooling system. A crack in the containment vessel without any cracks in the reactor pressure vessel would not have been an issue.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[thePig]

It need not melt in the 40-50 minutes as you suggest. When the tsunami came only the diesel generators failed. The battery backup was still working. Only when the batteries wound down was the effect of the tsunami felt - i.e. generators were offline. So, there was ample time for the meltdown due to structural damage to occur.

I am not sure about your other points - only pointing out that the timeline need not be as stringent as you were mentioning.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[borrrden]

Yes, but without the tsunami the diesel generators would have been working.....that is the point. For the meltdown to have occurred solely because of the earthquake would have meant it had to melt before the tsunami hit. TEPCO is saying the meltdown occurred around 16 hours after the earthquake.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Mindcontrolled]

If they lost cooling at the moment of the quake, they'd have to deal with roughly 10MW thermal. Heat of vaporisation for water is about 2kJ/g, so at 10 MJ/s we get vaporization of 5 kg/s. For 40 minutes between quake and tsunami, we have 2400 s, giving us 12 tons of water evaporated. That is definitely lower than the whole content of the RPV, so we won't get a dry core and total meltdown there, assuming that there is no other path for coolant loss than evaporation. Partial exposure of the rods with partial melting is still possible, though.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[rrohbeck]

If there was a crack at the bottom of the RPV, the pressure would have pushed water out rather quickly.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[DrBoumBoum]

No, the batteries provide nowhere near the power required by the cooling system, this was explained on slashdot a few weeks ago by a guy working with the pumps (sorry no time to find the comment now). The cooling system consumes a large amount of the total electrical output of the plant (something between 10 and 20 percent, again from memory), no battery setup can provide this amount of energy. The batteries are only used to power the instrumentation and control mechanisms (valves etc).

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Fierlo]

Except that decay power is about 7% or so right after shutdown. I'm not entirely sure where you got the 10 MW thermal. Unit 1 is a 480 MWe reactor. If you generously assume a 50% efficiency (it wasn't)...

480/0.5*0.07 = 67.2 MW thermal

More likely it's in the mid 30s (or even low 30s) for efficiency, so you end up around 96 MW thermal immediately after shutdown.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the summary goes too far and confuses issues. However, in the last couple of days news reports have been saying three things that are new: 1) that the fuel in reactor #1 appears to have almost completely melted down, 2) that this led to a breach of the containment vessel, such that TEPCO won't be able to circulate cooling water in the way originally planned, and 3) nuclear experts have been suggesting that with such a serious failure in reactor #1, there is a good chance that the state of reactors #2 and #3 are in the same state: i.e. almost complete meltdown.

The reports I've seen and heard were suggesting that the meltdown was in progress within the first 4 or 5 hours -- i.e. AFTER the tsunami, yes, but well BEFORE the complete cooling and control failure once the battery backup systems ran out. I think that's the new point that is surprising: that the battery backups even when they were working were not sufficient to prevent a meltdown from occurring. Things were already too damaged. Whether from the earthquake or the tsunami will be hard to disentangle, but things were significantly worse than TEPCO initially thought or publicly stated.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, that was a brainfart - I wanted to shoot for order of magnitude only, so I originally planned to set 10% of total thermal power. That somehow got garbled into 10 MW. So I undershot it by a factor of 10. You are right, with losing about 150 tons of water, the core would probably fall dry within the hour given a loss of circulation immediately after scram.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a trace of rx vessel water level and temperature over time. The water was below the bottom of the fuel in about 4.5 hours. I suppose it could just be boiling off with the pressure relief valves venting steam to the torus, but my first impression is that there was probably a small break loca caused by the earthquake. The apparent failure of the isolation condenser is interesting - some early US BWRs had these but they were generally disfavored (some even removed) because they are a heat exchanger with primary coolant on one side and the atmosphere on the other. They are a single point of failure that can circumvent containment and were (as I recall) difficult to design for seismic purposes. By way, as a noob and an AC, the link isn't in html - maybe some moderator will fix it.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110515e10.pdf

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[jbengt]

No, the tsunami did not take out the battery backed up pumps, only the emergency generators. The pumps kept working on battery power, reportedly for about 8 hours. The point is that, according to the data released by TEPCO, the water level dropped and exposed the fuel rods in reactor 1 before the pumps stopped working.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[radtea]

By way, as a noob and an AC, the link isn't in html - maybe some moderator will fix it.

You REALLY must be new here... /. mods have one job: to create misleading and false headlines and ensure that summaries are less accurate when they are posted than when they are submitted. In this case, they have for some reason replaced "pressure vessel" with "containment vessel", presumably to make it clear to absolutely everyone that they know nothing about the technology of nuclear power.

That's an excellent link, though, and the data indicate that the scenario described in the article is pretty unlikely--the water level is clearly stable until significantly after the tsunami. No amount of fiddling with the calibration on the gauge is going to affect that: the curve is flat, then starts to fall an hour or so after the tsunami.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[sribe]

It first has to evaporate or otherwise evacuate the water inside the reactor...

I'm thinking possible crack in the reactor vessel, and that the fucktard OP doesn't know the difference between reactor and containment vessels.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[gstrickler]

Reactor 1 is 1360MWt. Approximate decay heat at shutdown is ~6.6% ~ 90MW. After 10 mins, it's ~2.2% = ~ 30MW, after 1hr, it's ~1.5% = ~ 20MW.

The original poster failed to convert MW to kJ. 1MW/s = 2000 kJ/s, failed to adjust for the water temperature/pressure (heat of vaporization is lower at high temp&pressure), and failed to adjust for the rapid decrease in decay heat during the first hour.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[DrBoumBoum]

No, as I said above, but this time I found back the relevant comment, the battery backup system is for "for instrumentation and control only, NOT [to] run the large scale cooling equipment". So from my understanding the coolant circulation stopped as soon as the tsunami hit because 1. the main power was taken out by the earthquake 2. the diesel generators were taken out by the tsunami (fuel tanks gone) 3. the decay heat steam pumps could not or were not used for whatever reason. At that moment there was no way to avoid a meltdown.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Hartree]

Depends on what part of the cooling system. The main cooling pumps indeed do take a lot of electric power.

One of the backup systems, the RCIC, uses residual steam pressure to inject cooling water into the reactor. The valves and controls for that system require electric power, but batteries can supply that.

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[geekoid]

8 hours on units 2 and 3; which have a different cooling makeup.
1 may have only had 6 hours.

Also, it may have been a sensor issue.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110515e10.pdf

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[Anonymous Coward]

1MW = 1MJ/s = 1000kJ/s

MW/s is a weird unit. Where's that used at all?

Re:Misleading Title As Usual

[gstrickler]

Thanks for the correction on the conversion factor, don't know where I got my conversion factor (I can't find it now).

MW/s is an unusual unit, but given the rapid and approximately logarithmic decrease in decay heat production in the first hour, using a larger time window would be bizarre and produce questionable results. It's also what the original poster used, so for consistency and clarity, I used it too (just with an incorrect conversion factor).

Well.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the reason you don't build nuclear reactor in earthquake zones..

Unless you are HARDCORE!!

Re:Well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just stupid.

Re:Well.

[Rei]

As though earthquakes and tsunamis are the only kind of natural or manmade disasters, though. I'm sure there are nuclear reactors that would turn into scuba diving sites in the event of a levee failure or during a historic flood event. I'm sure an F5 tornado would have done just as good of a job taking out the generators and smashed up the spent fuel buildings quite adeptly. Heck, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that there's a reactor in a potential avalanche zone or in an area that could be destroyed by a volcano. Etc.

Big news

[atari2600a]

That was their big excuse. It looks like an engineer or an inspection crew's going to prison or something...

Re:Big news

[atari2600a]

Wait this report says nothing of the sort kinda what the fuck.

Kind of offtopic, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

My Facebook news feed is being spammed with this story. It's up to about 10 postings right now and climbing.

Re:Kind of offtopic, but...

[geekmux]

My Facebook news feed is being spammed with this story. It's up to about 10 postings right now and climbing.

Facebook news...the new oxymoron.

You must have the patience of a saint to be able to weed through all that to find news...

Re:Kind of offtopic, but...

[jd]

Saints don't let saints post on Facebook

Springs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not build reactors on those massive springs like in Cheyenne Mountain??? Yes I mean the whole reactor site. Don't tell me it can't be done.

Re:Springs

[SharpFang]

The primary reason this happened was that the coolant pumps (and diesel engines powering them) stopped.

Earthquake pretty much forces the huge, massive and ultra-precise steam turbines of the power plant to stop - these things require micrometer precision while in operation, so leaving them running is not an option - as effect primary power source of all systems is gone. Instead, backup power kicks in, diesel generators power up the coolant pumps and keep the core cool. But diesel engines need lots of air and if they get flooded, they stop.

In this case building the backup power and pumping stations on a high roof or elevated terrain would suffice. Sure -some- leak might have happened due to the earthquake but since the pumps would remain operational, there would never be overheating, explosion, extra water could be safely pumped in using normal systems and sealing any potential leaks could be done as a common repair.

Primarily, there would be no radioactivity leak. Reactor coolant water by itself is quite safe, being very clean it contains no material that could absorb radioactivity/become radioactive. It's the contamination from molten reactor material, debris, dust, ash and so on, dissolved in the water that carries the radioactivity. So even the coolant leak is not dangerous if water can be resupplied and is kept clean.

Re:Springs

[mr1911]

It can't be done.

Re:Springs

[Rei]

Always responding to the last disaster...

And, FYI, primary coolant *does* become radioactive in normal circumstances. That's why you need a secondary coolant loop.

Quality of sources

[DarkOx]

While I am not sure about the quality of this article and its unclear how some of these conclusions are reached should this events be corroborated later this is a big deal. If true it kinda throws out some of the hey it stood up to way more than was ever expected, these things really are safe narrative.

Re:Quality of sources

[DrBoumBoum]

I know it's bad but I like to repost and ponder in insight over the content of one the very first comment that was posted about the disaster:

It's funny because what is happening in Japan is exactly why Nuclear Power is SAFE!

An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in ... wait for it... containment chambers!

People don't realize the amount of engineering that goes into nuclear to make it safe.

As I always say: containment chambers indeed!

Re:Quality of sources

[osu-neko]

I know it's bad but I like to repost and ponder in insight over the content of one the very first comment that was posted about the disaster:

It's funny because what is happening in Japan is exactly why Nuclear Power is SAFE!

An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in ... wait for it... containment chambers!

People don't realize the amount of engineering that goes into nuclear to make it safe.

As I always say: containment chambers indeed!

Indeed. Radiation levels around the plant prove beyond any doubt that the amount of radiation release was neither small, nor did it decay within minutes, nor was it contained in any containment chambers. It's amazing how very confidently people can be so extremely wrong.

Re:Quality of sources

[Firethorn]

Indeed. Radiation levels around the plant prove beyond any doubt that the amount of radiation release was neither small, nor did it decay within minutes, nor was it contained in any containment chambers. It's amazing how very confidently people can be so extremely wrong.

We're still right about the radiation killing approximately nobody*.

The radiation release is still small in scope compared to Chernobyl, for a plant commissioned in 1971, which actually makes it OLDER than chernobyl by 6 years(commissioned in 1977). Reactor #4 wasn't completed until 1983.

Personally, I'd like to see us decommissioning these old reactors in faver of newer, safer reactors.

*It's possible that it might, sometime in the future, trigger a cancer for one of the workers.

Re:Quality of sources

[DrBoumBoum]

We're still right about the radiation killing approximately nobody*.

... yet. What you conveniently fail to consider is that nobody's concerned about the acute effects of radation, except possibly for the plant workers on site; people are wary of the long-term consequences, and rightly so. Also cancers are just part of the story, there are also the teratogenic effects to consider, which open a whole new chapter of this grim tale.

The radiation release is still small in scope compared to Chernobyl, for a plant commissioned in 1971, which actually makes it OLDER than chernobyl by 6 years(commissioned in 1977).

As I said in an earlier post, the nuclear apologists have adopted lately a new and very convenient frame of reference for nuclear disasters, i.e., Chernobyl = very serious (obviously, it was the stinking commies), and even that part is not clear, anything less = a walk in the park, obviously because you see, it's "not as bad as Chernobyl". Well a third grader knows that "smaller than huge" doesn't equal small, in fact it can perfectly be huge too.

Personally, I'd like to see us decommissioning these old reactors in faver of newer, safer reactors.

One problem I see here is that at the time they were built, these reactors were declared "perfectly safe" and the people who protested them were "luddites", "joe-six-packs", "tree-hugging hippies", etc. Now the discourse has changed and all of a sudden these reactors are not so safe in fact, first they are old now, but also their designs leave some to be desired after all. But the newer ones are perfectly safe right? And again anyone daring emitting any doubt about that is an idiot, correct?

Again as I said previously, I don't think the general public really fear nuclear power because of ignorance, as nuclear apologists like to believe. I'd say they distrust the nuclear industry, and possibly rightly so. Please show us that we really should trust you.

Re:Quality of sources

[Firethorn]

... yet. What you conveniently fail to consider is that nobody's concerned about the acute effects of radation, except possibly for the plant workers on site; people are wary of the long-term consequences, and rightly so. Also cancers are just part of the story, there are also the teratogenic effects to consider, which open a whole new chapter of this grim tale.

If you want to start playing that game, I can always start pulling out the statistics for coal when it's operating 'as normal' as opposed to an emergency.

As I said in an earlier post, the nuclear apologists have adopted lately a new and very convenient frame of reference for nuclear disasters, i.e., Chernobyl = very serious (obviously, it was the stinking commies), and even that part is not clear, anything less = a walk in the park, obviously because you see, it's "not as bad as Chernobyl". Well a third grader knows that "smaller than huge" doesn't equal small, in fact it can perfectly be huge too.

I've had risk management and safety analysis training(though I'm not an expert). We now know that a major accident involving a significant uncontrolled containment leak is, roughly, a 1 every 25 years event. We also can start figuring out the cost of it.

Even figuring on a Chernobyl level event every 25 years, it's still better than coal. Affordable electricity makes coal power better than no power. Unsubsidized solar and wind are generally still expensive enough that even if you include the health effects in the cost of coal power, it's still cheaper.

One problem I see here is that at the time they were built, these reactors were declared "perfectly safe" and the people who protested them were "luddites", "joe-six-packs", "tree-hugging hippies", etc. Now the discourse has changed and all of a sudden these reactors are not so safe in fact, first they are old now, but also their designs leave some to be desired after all. But the newer ones are perfectly safe right? And again anyone daring emitting any doubt about that is an idiot, correct?

They were safe for longer than I've been alive...

No reasonable pro-nuclear person I know of goes for 'perfectly safe' outside of soundbites(where such distortions are pretty much par for the course). Heck, I'm sure you can still find quotes from airline people that their planes are 'perfectly safe', despite a few crashes each year.

Note that I never said 'perfectly safe'. I said 'safer'. So much safer that modern plants should cause fewer casualties than roof-mount solar, just from the occasional accidental fall. Same deal with wind, what with the towers requiring occasional maintenance.

Again as I said previously, I don't think the general public really fear nuclear power because of ignorance, as nuclear apologists like to believe. I'd say they distrust the nuclear industry, and possibly rightly so. Please show us that we really should trust you.

Like with any power source, nuclear should be respected. We need to respect the power of pretty much any power source. Still.

Natural Gas - mining techniques at least occasionally contaminate drinking water supplies. Look up 'burning water'. Natural Gas explosions cost a few lives each year.
Coal - Thousands of mining deaths a year, tens of thousands from the pollution. Occasional containment loss of slurry has cost lives.
Nuclear - With all accidents included; under a hundred deaths a year.
Hydro - dam failures, other accidents, well, hundreds of deaths. A broken dam can kill tens of thousands quick
Solar and Wind - As stated earlier, falls from roofs and towers.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. No. No!! That's not possible, 'cause that would mean every Nukkular Plant is' in danger, IT WAS DA TSUNAMI!! REPEAT AFTER ME!!

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bit of an old news, but it is especially amusing being followed by the report from yesterday that none of Germany's supposedly aircraft-collision-safe reactors will actually survive a direct hit by an aircraft. I'm sure the situation elsewhere is worse -- Germany and Japan are the tech powerhouses most obsessed with safety on the surface.

The whole nuclear "industry" is just a sea of unsafe practices and lies, covered by a powerful lobby and corrupted governments.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Nuclear energy is safe. Every accident that ever happened is just a unique occurrence that could NEVER happen in *insert country of residence*. And when it's going to happen anyway, it's the fault of anti-nuke activists because they wouldn't let us build new and improved reactors. We would have totally built those despite the massive profit margins we have with the old ones. Honest!

Re:No.

[jez9999]

I know Americans aren't very familiar with good regulation, but geez.

Your argument amounts to, 'because it's financially preferable to keep old nukes running, we can't trust government to make sure new, safer ones are built'.

So, are you saying that nothing potentially dangerous should be built unless there will always be a financial incentive for people to build safer versions all the time?

Re:No.

[DrBoumBoum]

What you say is so obvious it doesn't even need mentioning. Trying to reason with the joe-six-packs luddites is an exercice in futility anyway.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

For one, I'm not American. Also, my argument amounts to "because it's financially preferable to keep old nukes running, we can't trust corporations to make sure new, safer ones are built".

As for governments, no I do not think we can rely on them for regulation, since even in regulation-heavy EU countries, we have regular scandals with ignored maintenance schedules and politicians eating out of the energy lobby's hands. The old-energy industry is too big to be regulated in a trustworthy manner.

Re:No.

[mosb1000]

Ok, so where are all the newer, safer reactors? We have a government. According to your hypothesis they should have replaced all the old, dangerous reactors (many of which are beyond their origional design life). That simply hasn't happened.

What really happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Another nuclear shill paid to spread disinformation by admitting only part of the truth. What really happened is obvious when you think about it. Neither the Tsunami or the Erthquake caused the meltdown. I have important and reliable data that actually the meltdown started even before the earthquake. Engineers then used the remaining power of the facility to intentionally cause the earthquake and the tsunami so they could blame the meltdown on natural causes. You heard it here first.

It has been never assumed that tsunami caused it

[mapkinase]

Way to fabricate news. It has been always assumed that quake caused it.

Battery Power

[mdsolar]

There is a detailed diary here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576330531564264132.html

"Documents released by Tepco Monday showed the isolation condenser— an emergency cooling system installed on Reactor No. 1 before the quake as a final resort in case of a total loss of power—worked only sporadically, if at all. Tepco officials explained that somebody appears to have manually closed the valves on the condenser soon after the March 11 quake—but before the tsunami hit about an hour later—to control the fluctuating pressure inside the reactor. Reopening the valves required battery power, so those valves likely couldn't be opened because the tsunami damaged the backup batteries.

If the valves hadn't been shut, things might have turned out differently. Temperatures in the reactor climbed faster than initially expected, causing more and faster damage. Tepco admitted this week the problems at Reactor 1 were far worse than originally thought. Its new projection shows fuel may have started melting rapidly only five hours after the March 11 quake. By 6:50 a.m. March 12, the fuel was likely in a heap at the bottom of the vessel. "

Battery power was lost apparently.

Re:Battery Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another WSJ article along similar lines, but I didn't bump into the subscription thing.

What really really happened really

[Anonymous Coward]

"You heard it here first." .... dont think so

dont take credit for tripped out stuff you copied from glp. ::rastabannana::

Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Doc Ruby]

Mitsuhiko+Tanaka was an engineer who led Fukushima's building of the reactor vessel. He told Japan's government following Chernobyl's explosion that he had helped TEPCO cover up the fact that the reactor vessel was damaged during its manufacture. Japan's government ignored him and continued to relicense Fukushima for many years past either his warning or Fukushima's designed lifecycle.

This is the problem with nukes: the people in its industry and government cooperate to protect the corporate profits rather than the public even when those two interests are in conflict. Regardless of technical solutions to technical problems (which cost money and are ignored when the corporation can get away with it), the problem that's proven impossible to solve is the failure to properly regulate the rich essential monopolies owning or running the nuke plants.

Which is a problem not just where earthquakes and tsunamis are the particular risk. It's a problem in countries like Russia, Japan and the US.

That is the risk that nuke boosters never admit: the risk of human error in the regulation and oversight, not just the engineers. These nukes are too risky for our corruptible industrialists and government people to be trusted with.

"There's no difference between theory and practice - in theory. In practice, there is a difference." - Yogi Berra (paraphrase)

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[L0rdJedi]

You realize that is a problem with any industry when government is close to the people that run anything, right? Nukes, oil, coal, "green" energy. You name it. When government gets in bed with companies, they end up looking the other way every time.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[jez9999]

Yep, we can't trust our government or companies to do anything competently. For our own safety, we should clearly ban:
- Nuclear plants
- Coal plants
- Oil plants
- Cars
- Supermarkets
- Highways
- Bombs
- Guns
- Tanks
- The police
- The fire service
- The public health service (outside the US)
- Banks
- Trains
- Computer components
- Boats
- Aeroplanes
- Busses

I mean it's either that, or come up with some kind of system for keeping these entities accountable, so that we would be able to benefit from these things. But since that's impossible, it's too dangerous to allow them.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

True. The public utility companies will always protect their short-term profits at the expense of safety. But this solvable. You just need to create a system where the CEO of the utility knows he's going to do jail time if there are any problems. Then safety will become the top priority and the shareholders won't matter.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[antifoidulus]

Unfortunately this isn't an isolated incident in Japan and really the only question was when, not if, something like this would happen. It's a pretty open secret that government has been in bed with TEPCO and the like for quite some time now, and that most "inspections" were mostly rubber stamp affairs. Hell, as recently as summer of 2003 there was a shutdown of a large number of reactors in the Tohoku region because it was found that managers were intentionally papering over gross safety violations. You would have thought that would have spurred the public into action, but it really did nothing.

You also have cultural issues at play. People like to point out how there was virtually no looting after the tsunami, and rightly so, but the downside of that same culture is a lack of whistle-blowing. Japan is still in many ways a Confucian society, and as such there is very little in the way of whistle blowing. And even when there is, people tend not to believe the whistle blower over his "superiors" at work because well, they are his superiors......

That being said, I would be willing to bet Japan goes from the rich country with the worst nuclear safety record to having one of the best. The Japanese throughout history have been a society that is very poor at initiating change, but the best at adapting to it, unfortunately it takes a huge shock for them to really change anything. Case in point, their air safety record. Japan used to have one of the worst air safety records around, but thanks to a string of major accidents in the 60s, and one huge accident(deadliest single airline crash in history) in the 80s, they now have probably the best air traffic safety records on the planet. There have been no passenger deaths in Japan since 1994, and there has only been one fatal incident involving a cargo jet. Considering the amount of air traffic both in Japan and from abroad, that is pretty damn impressive. Doubly so when you consider how small the airports are and how many flights they have to get in and out. The airline industry suffered from a lot of the same problems the nuclear industry does, rubber stamping, no whistle blowing etc. Hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call to the Japanese much in the way the major air accidents did.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[foniksonik]

Actually it's more likely you just couldn't find a CEO anymore. Shareholders want profits, a CEO won't keep his position for long if always spending them on "safety".

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[nedlohs]

Even faster CEOs won't take on such personal liability, at least not without compensation levels that make the current ludicrous levels look cheap.

They'll take a job at the local investment bank instead, where the only safety issues are paper cuts and RSI from counting the bags of money.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Waffle Iron]

You realize that is a problem with any industry when government is close to the people that run anything, right? Nukes, oil, coal, "green" energy. You name it. When government gets in bed with companies, they end up looking the other way every time.

What you say is true. The key distinction is that when something goes wrong with those other industries, you don't ruin all the real estate value in an area the size of a small state.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that is a problem with any industry when government is close to the people that run anything, right? Nukes, oil, coal, "green" energy. You name it. When government gets in bed with companies, they end up looking the other way every time.

What you say is true. The key distinction is that when something goes wrong with those other industries, you don't ruin all the real estate value in an area the size of a small state.

Eh? Deepwater Horizon doesn't count?

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Waffle Iron]

Not really. Things are already more-or-less back to normal in the gulf. A nuclear exclusion zone would have a much bigger long term effect on property values.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[rubycodez]

Actually, if you read reputable news sources Tanaka claims he had concerns in mid 70s the vessel wasn't strong enough to withstand stress of coolant failure. But the tinfoil hat blog sites have done the usual rumor monger / distortion thing with that. He became an anti-nuclear activist and regarding Fukushima mostly is criticising how TEPCO and the government are mishandling the situation.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a hell of a strawman. Tall and fat like a slashdot troll.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

You've not watched gasland yet, have you?

How about several states, all at once?

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be easier to simply ban Government?

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

After they fail spectacularly, how many of the above continue to be deadly for longer than mammals have existed?

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[radtea]

Yep, we can't trust our government or companies to do anything competently. For our own safety, we should clearly ban:

Nuclear plants are unique amongst these things in that their failure modes are:

1) rapid
2) complex
3) expensive

The speed comes from the energy density of the core, which is many orders of magnitude higher than for any other power source. A typical nuclear plant contains something like the equivalent of 100,000 boxcars of coal in its fuel rods, and while only a tiny fraction of that can be released over a reasonably short interval, only a tiny fraction has to be released over a relatively short interval to ruin the core.

Reactor kinetics are complicated and the cooling and control systems more-so. Complexity is a bigger issue in second and third generation designs--one could even say that the whole point of fourth generation designs is to engineer out as much complexity as possible. However, there is always going to be a fairly high level of complexity for anything beyond the "nuclear battery" type reactors (which to my mind are probably viable sources of energy in the long term.) The high energy density and consequent rapid pace of events during failure mean that the humans involved in the process are going to frequently make bad choices.

The cost is the big problem: a failure in a coal plant results in some nasty chemicals released into the environment, maybe some people burned in a steam explosion or the like. But it is very hard to create a coal plant disaster that writes off the capital investment or exposes the operator to the kind of widespread liability that nuclear disasters do.

So anyone who is not innumerate realizes that the risk-cost/benefit trade-off for nuclear power is very different from most other technologies. The benefits are significant, but a long, long way from "power too cheap to meter", which was the original promise of nuclear power. The costs are having an event like Windscale or Chernobyl or Fukushima every decade or two. For numerate people, the trade-offs involved are not a slam-dunk on either side.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO (personal):

My 6-month kid can drop the pacifier or knife the same way. I wouldn't worry about he dropping the pacifier; I wouldn't give him a knife. Likewise, who gave the Politicians a reactor?

So, it's not the same problem. You're either naive (*) or you're malicious. I can't tell; what I know is the OP is right, "people" are always the weakest link; I contend Murphy's Law is not something to be taken lightly, however.

(*) /. requires bad ortography.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[geekoid]

Ironically, with new plant technologies, none of the events are even possible.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[sycorob]

The other thing that Japan is known for is going from cheap, low quality cars to having some of the highest quality cars in the world. Was there a "shock" event that caused that as well? Genuinely curious.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Iskender]

After they fail spectacularly, how many of the above continue to be deadly for longer than mammals have existed?

I hope you don't really think nuclear accidents can do anything like that, since that would mean you're actually talking about something you don't understand. I'm actually hoping you're trolling.

Isotopes with long half-lives aren't very radioactive. Isotopes with short half-lives are very radioactive. Isotopes with long-half-lives are around a long time. Isotopes with short half-lives disappear quickly.

This means that anything left after 220 million years (the time span you mentioned) will be extremely weakly radioactive, if at all. If left undisturbed, such a substance would most likely be much, much less radioactive than the body of any human who has ever lived.

In actual reality, Hiroshima and Nagasaki already have fine radiation levels. The worse contamination in Chernobyl (outside the plant area) will most likely go down to normal levels in decades, or centuries at most. It's thoroughly contaminated, but on the time scale you mentioned it's no more radioactive than anything on Earth.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[jez9999]

an event like Windscale or Chernobyl or Fukushima every decade or two

Ludicrous to compare these with modern plants. These were all extremely old, and very badly run.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[DrBoumBoum]

Unfortunately those new plants are at present no more commercially viable than breeder reactors or fusion reactors.; they look nice on paper and in the lab but they aren't going to be a solution to any of our problems anytime soon. And going to full-scale, on-the-field deployments of an unmature technology without doing all the necessary research, testing, tuning, etc, before might not be the best of ideas; in fact it is precisely what has been done with current nuclear reactors, with the consequences we're facing now.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[RQuinn]

It's ludicrous to expect that any plant won't be badly run.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[mosb1000]

Any nuke plant can suffer a breach of containment.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[mosb1000]

What you're not getting is that most plants are not "modern" at all. In fact, depending on what you mean, none of them are are since they haven't build any Generation IV nukes yet.

Also, Chernobyl Reactor 4 had only been operating 3 years before it exploded, so it's not like it was extremely old when it went up. It was state of the art, and brand new. Obviously it was poorly run though.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

External radiation isn't nearly as big of deal as internal radiation and heavy metal toxicity.

Plutonium and uranium don't go away very quickly, even on geologic timescales. Once in the biosphere, they keep getting recycled (even with phytoremediation, you still gotta do something with the plant bound heavy metals).

Maybe our successor species that arises after the Anthropocene extinction event will evolve a way to deal with toxic heavy metals and above normal radiation: external and internal. Even so, by the time they get clever and curious enough to study geology, our nuclear scars will still be around, even if all other remains of homo sapians has been scrubbed from the earth.

When nuclear energy fails, it fails big and keeps failing for time frames beyond human comprehension. Chernobyl's core will remain a toxic, radioactive mess long after the concrete sarcophagus weathers away. Fukushima might join that fate.

Why should we as a species accept that kind of downside just to boil water?

Oh, and before the slashdot-nuke-lovers start their "coal,coal,coal" chant, fuck coal too. Another shitty way to boil water.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[osu-neko]

The other thing that Japan is known for is going from cheap, low quality cars to having some of the highest quality cars in the world. Was there a "shock" event that caused that as well? Genuinely curious.

Probably not. I'd point out that all generalizations have counter-examples, but in this case, I think you're more or less misunderstanding OP's point if you think that would be one. I don't think improvements in existing activities count as "change" in the sense that was meant -- certainly not a major change.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Solandri]

The cost is the big problem: a failure in a coal plant results in some nasty chemicals released into the environment, maybe some people burned in a steam explosion or the like. But it is very hard to create a coal plant disaster that writes off the capital investment or exposes the operator to the kind of widespread liability that nuclear disasters do.

So anyone who is not innumerate realizes that the risk-cost/benefit trade-off for nuclear power is very different from most other technologies.

The problem with this reasoning is that the normal operation of a coal plant is much more dangerous than all but the worst nuclear accidents. All you're doing is saying that concentrated dangers are more worthy of avoidance than distributed dangers simply because they're concentrated. That's a completely arbitrary assertion with no reasoning to back it up.

To properly assess risk, you have to take (1) the severity of the danger represented by a power source in an accident, (2) multiply it by the chance of such an accident occurring, then (3) add it to the dangers presented by the power source under normal operation, and finally (4) normalize it to the same amount of power generated so you can compare between sources with different power output. That will give you a total risk assessment under all conditions of operation/accident of a power system.

If you look only at (1), nuclear looks worst. If you look at (1), (2), and (4) nuclear ends up being less risky (in terms of fatalities) than hydro, solar, and wind. Fossil fuels fail very badly at (3), so once you account for all four, nuclear ends up being the safest power source we could use, coal the worst.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a super-fund site?

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear reactors are built on behalf of governments. None of this occurs in isolation. Taxes are levied and/or waived, approvals obtained and guarantees and expectations are created between nations, among governments within nations, power companies, employees and rate payers. Everybody is in bed. Only children or their mental equivalents ascribe all of this to 'corporations' or whomever they've been taught to hate.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Iskender]

External radiation isn't nearly as big of deal as internal radiation and heavy metal toxicity.
Plutonium and uranium don't go away very quickly, even on geologic timescales. Once in the biosphere, they keep getting recycled (even with phytoremediation, you still gotta do something with the plant bound heavy metals).

From what I hear doubt has been cast on the "lung hotspot" theory of radiation-induced cancer, which should make lingering radioactives much less dangerous.

As for heavy metal toxicity, then we get to the advantages of nuclear: a reactor is a relatively small thing. Most of it is supporting equipment. Put differently, there isn't enough of the stuff to make an area uninhabitable for a long time.

Why should we as a species accept that kind of downside just to boil water? Oh, and before the slashdot-nuke-lovers start their "coal,coal,coal" chant, fuck coal too. Another shitty way to boil water.

For a million reasons. You have to provide answers to a million questions to get away from coal and nuclear. No one has them yet, since no one on any side seems interested enough in making a complete plan of how we should make ends meet after migrating away.

You say we should do away with both coal and nuclear but you're probably like everyone else in that you can't actually say how it should be done. Even with political will (which is sorely lacking) there would be so many problems to solve. It's probably quite doable with conservation and our current renewable energy sources, but it would require an entirely different economical system which we don't have yet.

I suspect many of the pro-nuclear people here on Slashdot at least are like me: pro-nuclear as long as it is seen as a stopgap solution. Renewable idealists often end up propping up coal in practice, which is a bad outcome.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[PwnzerDragoon]

"Brand new" maybe, but I think "State of the art" is pushing it. Chernobyl was badly designed from the beginning, without even a containment.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[mosb1000]

Granted there were safety concerns, but the design has benefits too. The type of reactor is capable of using un-enriched uranium, though the commercial designs could not, and fuel is removed and replaced while the reactor is in operation. Yeah, the thermal feedback and the lack of containment (necessary to allow the fuel to be replaced while operating) is a huge draw-back. I guess they felt it was worthwhile at the time. It was designed before the three mile island accident, so they thought adequate safety could be achieved through the control process alone. When it comes down to it, people often won't believe something can happen until it does, which is a problem with Nuclear power since such bad things can happen when things go wrong.

When I look at Generation IV designs like molten salt reactors or liquid metal cooled fast reactors, I agree that safe operation is realistically achievable. And with fast reactors, you can even solve the waste disposal problem. But people have known about these designs sine the inception of nuclear power (the first power generating facility was a liquid metal cooled fast reactor) and people haven't been building them because of the cost. When I consider that, I really doubt the ability of the people who chose to build these things to make good decisions about what to build and where.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit !

There is no safe nuclear power. There will never be.
It's just physically impossible.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[splashbot]

None of those things on this list: - Nuclear plants - Coal plants - Oil plants - Cars - Supermarkets - Highways - Bombs - Guns - Tanks - The police - The fire service - The public health service (outside the US) - Banks - Trains - Computer components - Boats - Aeroplanes - Busses Can damage DNA in the Germ Line of Humans and other animals and plants like a Nuclear Plant can. I'm not totally against nuclear power, but they are dangerous and they need to be built properly, I.E. NOT WITH A PROFIT MOTIVE!!@#.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[gullevek]

Actually they are not really a Confucian society. That never picked up here.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[radtea]

Yeah, the thermal feedback and the lack of containment (necessary to allow the fuel to be replaced while operating) is a huge draw-back.

The confusion between "pressure vessel" and "containment" is one of the most frustrating thing about this whole discussion, although it does have the useful side-effect of marking the ignorant.

Reactors like the CANDU, which run on natural uranium and can be refueled while running don't have a pressure vessel of the kind a conventional PWR or BWR does. Dunno what the RMBK (Chernobyl) design has but the CANDU uses "calandria" tubes that contain the fuel rods. The refueling machine works on one tube at a time.

However, the reactor containment has nothing to do with the pressure vessel. All well-designed power reactors have containments, which do not in any way interfere with refueling.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[radtea]

All you're doing is saying that concentrated dangers are more worthy of avoidance than distributed dangers simply because they're concentrated.

Not at all. I'm saying that coal plants fail in ways that are cheaper than nuclear plant failures. This is trivially true. I don't know of any case in the past fifty years where a coal plant failure has led to a complete loss of capital investment of the kind that routinely happens in relatively trivial nuclear plant disasters. If Fukushima were a coal plant it would be back in operation today, not written-off.

This has nothing to do with danger, which is fairly trivial in both cases, albeit greater for a coal plant due to chronic release of radioactives, heavy metals and other pollutants. It has to do with cost, which is why I said, "The cost is the big problem."

Now, you can argue that coal is unfairly subsidized and whatnot, although nuclear has its own subsidies as well, notably the whole liability cap thing. But you can't argue that nuclear doesn't write itself off pretty easily compared to coal.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[radtea]

they are dangerous and they need to be built properly, I.E. NOT WITH A PROFIT MOTIVE

What a strange thing to say. I fly in aircraft built with a profit motive now and then, and haven't noticed that the motive of the builders particularly affects the dangers involved. Subsidized, state-run airlines like Aeroflot have no particular advantage over commercial airlines.

Why do you think the motive of the builders matters? The people who built Chernobyl were not motivated by profit. Nor were the people who built Windscale.

Bad engineering is a product of human beings, and it isn't like we live in a world where you can divide people into "good people" and "bad people" based on their motives, particularly when the major choices are profit on the one hand and power on the other. I can't offhand think of any major engineering work that wasn't primarily driven by one or the other of those motives, and I note that the profit motive sometimes produces wonderful things. The power motive does too, if you're into that kind of thing, although perhaps less frequently, and with more manufactured famines and genocides along the way.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[Anonymous Coward]

RBMK uses crains above the reactor to lift the fuel out while it is operating. Because the design is very tall, they felt installing a proper containment vessel would be too costly, hence it does not have one.

Re:Cheap, Defective Containment Vessel

[splashbot]

Good point, and I knew someone would mention Chernobyl built in a communist system. Whatever the motive, the end result is bad engineering, which is due to a single undivided group I shall call bad human beings. And it isn't a hard and fast rule that profit motive is always bad (But if Commercial Airliners were unsafe, no-one would buy and fly in them, there is fierce competition in that market). Perhaps it isn't the economic model itself that is at fault, its the people themselves. My idea was that the plant was obviously built close to the sea for cooling purposes, but that it was built too close, with no regard for tsunami danger, than was wise. Thanks for your counterpoint.

Unit 4 explosion from Unit 3 hydrogen

[mdsolar]

You can get to the whole article from a google search I think. The most interesting thing from the article you linked for me was this:

"According to Tepco, hyrogen produced in the overheating of the reactor core at unit 3 flowed through a gas-treatment line and entered unit No. 4 because of a breakdown of valves. Hydrogen leaked from ducts in the second, third and fourth floors of the reactor building at unit No. 4 and ignited a massive explosion."

The good news...

[digitaldc]

Japan is now on the fast-track for new green, renewable technologies after this latest disaster.
Let's hope that they can help save the planet and themselves with their ingenuity, precision and technological advances.

Re:The good news...

[geekoid]

No they aren't. There are people talking about it, but even the most basic look at the logistics make it impossible to do. Japan is already pretty efficient.

Financial meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my misread of the headline, Financial Meltdown might have come with earthquake, not tsunami. Really?

Re:It has been never assumed that tsunami caused i

[RCGodward]

Yeah, and we've always been at war with Eurasia... or is it Eastasia?

LNG

[mdsolar]

Japan has a fairly well developed liquefied natural gas infrastructure. This may prove useful as the Sabatier reaction is used to soak up excess wind energy.

Time for some slashdotters to eat crow

[Agent0013]

I wouldn't say that I am anti-nuclear, but I do think it can be dangerous. Especially with the corner cutting that a lot of corporations try to use to save money. I was struck by this news on how many times I saw a pro-nuclear slashdotter post how the power plant had survived the earthquake just fine. Many people were saying how it was an amazing triumph of engineering that it could withstand the quake that was ten times what it was designed for. If only they had put the pumps up on stilts or someplace where the tsunami would not have caused the damage, everything would have been just fine. I guess that was just a bunch of wishfull thinking now huh? Sure, I understand that at the time it had looked like it survived the earthquake without damage. But you end up losing some credibility and start to look like a fool when it turns out you were completely wrong because you didn't yet have all the facts.

Re:Time for some slashdotters to eat crow

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say that I am anti-nuclear, but I do think it can be dangerous.

Of course it *can be* dangerous. No question about it. But where is the report? Where is it? Unnamed sources? Speculation? Conjecture?

There are massive "green" forces spinning the shit out of this story since March 11th. Frankly, the "crack" at the bottom of a RPV could have occurred from the thermal stresses once coolant disappeared. Secondly, closing off these valves to restore pressure control indicates the problem is not in the reactor, but in the system that was closed off. Maybe that system sprung a leak during the earthquake?

But you end up losing some credibility and start to look like a fool when it turns out you were completely wrong because you didn't yet have all the facts.

Yes, I want the FACTS, not some speculation from "unnamed" sources. The bottom line is, tsunami killed cooling which caused meltdown. Any other reactor that was not flooded, did not experience a meltdown, including a sister plant few km away.

Re:Time for some slashdotters to eat crow

[bidule]

I wouldn't say that I am anti-nuclear, but I do think it can be dangerous. Especially with the corner cutting that a lot of corporations try to use to save money.

Well, when there are coal mining accidents at least it does not affect the public at large, otherwise it's the same corporate behavior whatever the energy source.

Many people were saying how it was an amazing triumph of engineering that it could withstand the quake that was ten times what it was designed for.

That still leaves 3 more reactors on the "triumph" side. And I wonder how no.1 would have fared if the valve hadn't been close, if it was human error. There's not enough information to form an educated opinion yet.

But you end up losing some credibility and start to look like a fool when it turns out you were completely wrong because you didn't yet have all the facts.

Then again, the previous stories were filled with rabid anti-nuke (or trolls, same thing) who said things semantically equivalent to "OMG! He smokes a pack a day!", "OMG! He eats bananas!" or "OMG! He's an commercial pilot!"

Frankly, the Air France black box they finally found is way more interesting than all this noise and speculation. We're close to having fact there, compared to the year of milking sensationalism left at Fukushima.

Um so what?

[DarthVain]

So what you are saying that *maybe* the plant failed during the largest earthquake in recorded history, that was far beyond the building specifications that the plant was built to resist, rather than after when it got hit by the largest tidal wave in history? This is also the first time in history that this has happened.

I bet the plant wasn't built to resist a direct comet strike either.

That all said, you can bet any new plants will have much more rigorous earthquake building specifications which is a good thing.

Keep in mind

[Gonzodoggy]

that this was a 9.1 quake. Those 40 year old reactors were only designed to take an 8.1. It's amazing they held up as long as they did.

Re:Keep in mind

[DrBoumBoum]

That's false, the earthqake was of intesity 9.0 with an epicenter about 150 km from Fukushima; the resulting ground acceleration was within (theoretical) design tolerance at unit 1. What is really amazing is (choose one or more): that the reactors were not able to withstand the damage, that TEPCO had been notified about that by the IAEA in the past, that it had simply ignored the warnings and that there are still people praising them for the robustness of their engineering.

What bothers me (the zycronium fuel rod claddings)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been a big nuclear supporter of safe nuclear power, and, by safe, I mean ones where the core can reliably melt down to puddle with very minimal impact on the environment around. The thing that bothers me is that I used to believe our current nuclear plants could do this. I am no longer convinced. Indeed, I am openly concerned this is not the case.

In the four cases of partial core meltdowns we have now seen (the Three Mile Island reactor and the three Fukushima reactors), the zicronium fuel rod casings have shown themselves to be a major liability. In all cases, they reacted with the hot steam to produce hydrogen gas, which has then posed a non-insignificant threat to the containment structure. In the case of the Fukushima reactors, we saw this actually happened to unit 3, and on day 3 of Three Mile Island incident, there was significant concern that an accumulated hydrogen bubble would explode damaging the containment structure.

I realize that one in four (25%) is not yet enough samples to exactly pinpoint the probability of containment failure due to the explosion of accumulating hydrogen gas. However, combined with the fact this has been a major concern in all partial core meltdowns experienced so far, it is a figure we should all be concerned with. Containment failure due to hydrogen explosion is not an insignificant failure mode during meltdown, and I have yet to see it mitigated to any reasonably acceptable level.

So, to the nuclear industry out there. Zycronium cladding for the fuel rods is currently used in pretty much every installed reactor. I realize it was chosen due to its low neutron-capture cross-section, but, in operation, it has shown itself to be a significant liability during partial meltdown. It is time to go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternative that does not have this problem. Even if that means a degradation in performance. Until I see this happening, you have lost my support.

Thorium reactors wouldn't have been affected....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorium reactors wouldn't have been affected by an earthquake either. Their inherent safety, the abundance of reactor material and the cost effectiveness totally trumps existing nuclear designs as well as solar and wind power for ultimate sustainability.

Neutrons make Steel Brittle.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common problem for reactor vessels that are exposed to a neutron flux for a long period of time. I could imagine this happening if the vessel wasn't ever annealed and re-hardened.

Fault Tolerances . . .

[Idou]

Yes, and the limitations of human institutions will have an equally grave impact for humanity for each of the items on your list . . .

I honestly think some people have a mental disability which prevents them from assessing risk rationally. They will be the end of us all.

umm, not quite the simple

[geekoid]

It was the tsunami that removed there ability to use the pumps. And crack does not equal meltdown.

It's not good, but it is critical to be as factual accurate as possible. To many emotional and political crap mixed in.

Re:It has been never assumed that tsunami caused i

[mapkinase]

The mods are right. The impression that it was only earthquake was in my head only. Only information about emergency pumps not being able to pump cooler for enough time before restoring the main power lodged in my brain. Somehow I missed what Wikipedia says about it, that is some of emergency pumps were flooded by tsunami and were not operational.

Re:Thorium reactors wouldn't have been affected...

[ColdWetDog]

Thorium reactors wouldn't have been affected by an earthquake either. Their inherent safety, the abundance of reactor material and the cost effectiveness totally trumps existing nuclear designs as well as solar and wind power for ultimate sustainability.

Except for the fact that commercial Thorium cycle reactors don't exist just yet - it's a great idea.

unpleasant facts for nuke lovers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring your disingenuous statement about death tolls, let me point out that US reactors aren't going to be decommissioned any more.

When the nuke-lovers are in power they will extend the licenses absurdly. The George W. Bush regime, for example, did this with many elderly US reactors that the Clinton administration had refused to relicense. Understanding that the Dems might win after Bush, the licenses were extended to run well past the next administration. Expect many more meltdowns to come, with great profits to beltway insiders!

Nuke plants cannot turn a profit without government sponsorship; among other problems, they can't get insurance from anyone but a government. They are really just another means of taking dollars from taxpayers and giving them to elites who taxpayers would prefer not to fund. Like banker bailouts.

When the majority of citizens in a country do not want or need nuclear power, and their government continues to build plants (using obsolete designs, no less, to save on construction costs) what does that say about the government?

no sane military ...

[garyebickford]

As we have seen lately, the keyword there is 'sane'. Unfortunately, sanity is not a prerequisite for having an army, running a country, or starting a war. (Sanity may not even be particularly useful in those scenarios.) Some parts of the world seem to my untrained eye as a basically a contest to see who's the craziest b.....d in the neighborhood. Whoever wins becomes boss - for a while.

Re:no sane military ...

[Firethorn]

Look at nuclear weapons - despite quite a few countries having them at this point, none have been used. Countries with working nuclear reactors also tend to have functioning militaries, to the point that competency would be required in a military attack against them.

Competency and sanity do tend to go together, at least when it comes to the low level of sanity it takes to know [i]not to bomb or shell a nuclear plant[/i].

Re:no sane military ...

[vrt3]

Look at nuclear weapons - despite quite a few countries having them at this point, only a few have been used.

FTFY.

The world is afraid some rogue state like North Korea might launch a nuclear attack, but so far only one state has shown it is willing to go the whole way and actually do it. It's not North Korea, China, Iran, Pakistan, ..., but much closer to home (for most Slashdot readers). I'll leave it to others to comment on what that might or might not tell you about the sanity of that state.

Re:no sane military ...

[Firethorn]

Doh!

Yeah, I should have more said 'none have been used since the effects of radiation became more well known'. Like I said though - you don't actually have to bomb the nuclear plant; just the switching yard for the power. Losing the grid connection will cause it to SCRAM automatically; they aren't designed to dump the power locally.

Physical impossibilities:

[Hartree]

"Bullshit !

There is no safe nuclear power. There will never be.
It's just physically impossible"

Indeed. The Carrington Event back in the 1859 shows that the biggest nuclear power source in the solar system is fraught with danger for our modern world.

In fact it almost certainly will one day destroy the earth.

We should all lobby the government to immediately start research to extinguish the sun.

lucky

[ceka]

The earthquake epicenter was about 125 km from the plant.
Taking into account that there are more than 50 reactors in Japan, it would be quite probable for the impact to be much worse.

Biblical Prophet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nikola Tesla made earthquakes in Alaska in 1899 and YOU are going to hell for not having an ear. So saith The Lord God. -Biblical Prophet http://tinyurl.com/teslascope