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TEPCO Confirms Partial Meltdown of No.2 and No.3 Reactors
blau writes with an article in NHK World. From the article "The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says findings show that fuel meltdowns may have occurred at the No.2 and No.3 reactors within days of the March 11th earthquake. But it says both reactors are now stable at relatively low temperatures."
TEPCO is also now blaming the tsunami for most of the damage rather than the earthquake.
Relative to what? The sun?
Many of the status reports from early on indicated a partial meltdown. (It was described as "fuel damage" - but that's meltdown).
So how is this news? We already knew the fuel rods had suffered from partial melting/damage. It's almost a given when you see status reports indicating fuel with only partial water coverage.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Um, stop me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it obvious months ago that there was a partial meltdown? What's the new news?
As I recall, the blame was on the tsunami since day one. Sure, there was a brief moment of "The earthquake may have been more responsible than initially thought" a few weeks back, but that didn't seem to amount to much.
Well, I haven't heard of any 3rd parties reporting anything unusual or notable regarding radioactive contamination above or beyond what has been reported already (and TEPCO can't exactly hide stuff that escapes the site.) Surely if it were so horrible then there would be accurate and reasonable reporting on the "true" radiation levels rather than what is reported, but I'm not seeing anything. And anecdotal rumors and information being spread via social networks (especially in a country like Japan that loves rumors) is suspect.
You don't get it. It melted down. That means that no one can live in Japan ever again. Millions will die, This disaster makes the actual Earthquake and Tsunami seem like nothing!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Japan has increased by 20 times the permissible level of radiation for schools, to the limits permitted a German nuclear worker. Thousands of parents are protesting, which in Japan is a pretty big deal. The Fukushima plant is out of places to store radioactive water, more storage is weeks away, and they still need to pump water to keep the fuel cool. The evacuation area may expand again. The slaughter and disposal of livestock in the evacuation zone has begun. Nobody really knows whether or not the fuel is burning through all three primary containment vessels on its way to massive contamination release.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yeah, radiation is tragic. Like that time we used it to kill the cancer that would have killed my grandmother. That was truly tragic, oh wait no the complete fucking opposite.
Even Chernobyl did not cause the level of issues you are claiming.
You do realize that the deaths due to radiation from this incident are well... zero. This was no Chernobyl. Yes, the immediate area will likely be unsafe for some time, but by any rational measurement, the worst that happened was the tsunami, which sadly has been pushed to page 5 by "OH MY GOD, RADIATION LEAK, GODZILLA ATTACK IMMINENT!!!!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The long term effects of this to the population: Nothing.
So those people are back in their homes and spending money in their local economies and the children are not having their education delayed and their parents' jobs are going swimmingly?
While they may not get cancer for another 40 years because of this, the economic statistics won't add up to "nothing".
This isn't to say that this accident is a reason not to install nuclear power. Far from it. But it is proof that certain people have in the past done little to ensure robustness in nuclear systems, and people in the future need to place "2. robustness of safety systems" just below "1. start a nuclear reaction" on the requirements list for nuke plants. Their estimate of the cost to them is infinitesimal compared with the cost to the community they are putting at risk, even if the risk does not end up causing physical harm.
Tepco is actually phenomenally lucky that only their own employees have died, and the winds have been carrying the bulk of the danger out into the ocean.
The long term effects of this to the population: Nothing. The levels are so low for the population that they're laughably small.
Don't pretend like 0 is the number of people affected by this meltdown. Nobody has been "laughing" since they got kicked out of homes they lost millions of yen for. It's not like someone's going to give that house back to them, nor their cash. School closings smack in the middle of the Japanese school year also mean lots of disrupted youths.
With Japan's prior issues with unemployment, fukushima was the straw breaking the camel's back for many souls now banned from living somewhere safe and known to them. But nobody is talking about the local lives in the cone of influence of the actual meltdown.
Because, you know, all gunshot wounds only hurt locally and we can just ignore the pain if we concentrate on the body parts not hurting. Right?
Fossil fuels are more dangerous.
Nukes can be done safely, they just weren't in this instance, and the designers of this plant are directly to blame for that.
The problem is the possible cost to the community is so high it might as well be 0. By that I mean if the possible cost is 1000 times what the plant is worth, it makes it less important to add more safety than if the possible loss was 0.5 times the value of the plant. In the latter case they might actually have to pay. So knowing they can't be made to pay they can take larger risks.
I heard that about Reactor 1, not 2 and 3 and from the sounds of it, they aren't sure that this was the case even for reactor 1.
Still, its possible that the earthquake cracked 1 and the tsunami screwed up 2 & 3.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Maybe, if the earthquake also knocked out the cooling systems.
But it didn't, so it's likely they could have pumped enough water to keep the rods from melting at all, though they would have had a hell of a time sealing the crack.
The fact is that losing electricity to the pumps led to a cascade of catastrophic explosions turned a cracked vessel from a bad thing into a months-long nightmare. And that fact points to naive, negligent, or deliberately penurious design.
Blame the jerk(s) who designed/approved 3 nuclear powerplants next to the sea in a tsunami zone and thought it was a good (million dollar) design idea to put the critical backup generators (that must never fail) in a basement, like what could possibly go wrong ?
the mind boggles
Tepco is shifting blame AGAIN.
The Tsunami knocked out the power, but if it knocked out the valve control systems and pumps, why didn't all three reactors melt down at the same time?
How come they started overheating when their back up batteries ran out of power. With the first reactor's batteries failing earlier due to tsunami damage. Mere coincidence? I think not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents
The reason the reactors overheated and melted down was because power was not restored to the reactors' emergency cooling systems before their batteries ran down. If Tepco didn't try to handle everything internally for the first few days, they would have gotten power hooked up to the cooling systems much sooner. The Japanese Self Defense forces could have flown in some generators if requested and if they didn't have any I'm sure the US Military would have been glad to help out and airlift a few generators to help avoid a nuclear meltdown.
The key is that Tepco didn't request any aid from outside sources till it was too late and was forced to by the Japanese government.
From what I can see it's a case of ineptitude by Tepco employees that made this situation much worse than it should be been.
Really?? Are you serious???
You should know very well there's a big difference between nuclear medicine and what was released by the Fukushima reactors. If you don't please beg your parents to send you to a different school before it's too late.
It's amazing how fast you dorks moved on from "nothing happened at Fukushima" to "Fukushima isn't anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl" and then on to "OK so the radiation release is of the same order of magnitude as Chernobyl, but Chernobyl wasn't a big deal anyway".
Don't be stupid. You're comparing apples to oranges. The OP's post was in regards to *radiation*. No economic damage, or health concerns for other reasons. That was what my comment was in reply to.
Of course there is massive economic damage. There will be more damage from the *scare* of the nuclear boogie man than the reactor itself. People going to the hospital after taking Anti-Rad meds and stressing themselves out.
There's massive damage due to the massive mother-nature event that occurred. There's massive damage done over-time due to the *over protective* safety measures..the evac zones radius isn't based on science, it's based on policy that's based on the idea that *it's better safe than sorry*...never mind the dosage would allow a nuclear worker to work year round and not approach the *time to leave* limit. There'll be more damage due to the fearmongering being done. But the radiation being emitted will not cause people to grow third arms or have birth defects or cancer. Anyone harping that is a fearmonger, and needs to be called out on it.
I hardly felt like the Tsunami was pushed back to page 5.
Maybe you need to tone down your sensationalism as well.
Nice way of instrumentalizing the tsunami victims for your agenda. The mark of a great personality.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I never said nothing happened. We knew it melted down shortly after the incident began. The claims I am making are that this is not the end of the world. It is not the same as Chernobyl, not even in the same league. I take it you are too young to remember but Western Europe had radioactive rain falling not too long after. Parts of Northern Europe still have high enough levels of contamination that you can't pick wild mushrooms. That does not mean that Chernobyl made all the children born after it mutants either.
There's a difference between "can't be made to pay" and "can't be made to pay the whole thing."
They can be made to pay as much as they can afford. If they think that's worth risking, then they're just crooks.
How does this, in practical terms I mean, compare to Chernobyl? Does this mean there's an area of Japan now that will not be habitable for decades/centuries? Is this area the size of a city, or more like the size of a building complex? Decades from now, are brave souls going to be wandering around a deserted area taking photos of the remains of buildings and explaining to the youngins how Fukushima became a household name?
Or is more like "yes, the numbers are bad, but it was contained." ... ?
I apologize for my ignorance, but I don't apologize for asking questions.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up.
Some pumps were still running after the earthquake and tsunami, and they continued to run until the backup batteries ran down. Loss of power was the real cause of the disaster. If they'd some backup power source that worked, the reactors would have reached cold shutdown in a day or two, there would have been no hydrogen explosions, and no core melting.
This is really important. A plant could lose backup power for many other reasons: fire, flood, hurricanes, terrorism, contaminated fuel, tank leakage, transformer damage, maintenance outages, or exhaustion of fuel supplies. Hospitals and data centers with backup power have at times lost power for all those reasons.
Read NUREG/CR-6890, "Reevaluation of Station Blackout Risk at Nuclear Power Plants ", from 2005. Volume 2, page 22, has the line "Risk is evaluated only for critical operation, not for shutdown operation. External events, such as seismic, fire, or flood, are also excluded." That, as we know now, is an overoptimistic assumption. The NRC does a statistical analysis on backup power sources, assuming independent failure of separate units, and computes the odds accordingly.
Nuclear plants that need power to reach shutdown need power sources as tough as the containment vessel. That's now very clear.
Since when is "may have" the same as "confirms" ?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Which means after the risks hit 1 x "What they can be made to pay", there is no economic incentive to ensure any more safety. Then add in that the company will be paying not any individual losing his savings and you get into a position where the people making these decisions may well be the ones least impacted. If an engineer makes a mistake that causes an event like this he is never going to work in that field again and is going to be working flipping burgers. If a CEO makes a decision that causes an event like this he is never going to work again since he makes millions a year that is not a big deal.
Of course. No seriously impact. Except for thousands of evacuees and a massive economic damage. That is now. The thyroid cancers come later. Dude, the whole you dug yourself into is so deep by now that you might get your personal china syndrome here. Sometimes the point is reached where simply admitting to be wrong instead of digging on might be the best solution.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
As I've watched the news about Fukushima, I have wondered if by trying to avoid fuel meltdown, did they make matters *worse*?
I admit, I really have limited knowledge about what went wrong or could have gone wrong. I'm definitely not a nuclear engineer.
But, from the news, it seems like the biggest source of problems was caused by hydrogen explosions. The hydrogen explosions happened because steam from the cooling water, under high heat and pressure, interacted with the Zircalloy fuel cladding, which caused the oxygen to bind to the alloy, and the hydrogen to become H2 gas, which could then build up in the pressure vessel (and ultimately the containment when it was vented from the pressure vessel into the containment, I think?).
This, then, finally ignited, causing the explosions, causing damage to the containments, causing radioactive release.
So, now, my question is, why not just evacuate all the water and steam from the reactor, so that there's no (well, very little - you probably couldnt' remove 100% of the water) hydrogen present in the reactor, then just let the fuel melt to the bottom and harden into a non-critical mass? What's so terrible about the fuel melting down? It happened at TMI, and didn't become a major disaster?
Is it possible that the cure was worse than the ailment, in this case?
So long as it does not get worse, there will be no Zone of Alienation in Japan. There will be some buildings that probably end up entombed in concrete. Odds are the fuel will be left in them or placed in Casks. People will be allowed back to their homes in a timescale measured in months not years, decades or centuries.
If it does get worse, say there is another huge earthquake and tsunami, it could get worse. Still probably not to the level of Chernobyl, since material was not shot into the sky.
Oh no!
There goes Tokyo....
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The problems are multiple.
1. Is the containment vessel solid? Will this burn through?
2. If the melted fuel gets hot enough to burn you will get radioactive smoke, and such into the air.
3. You are reducing the shielding to nearby people, by removing water that would be in the way.
4. If you made the wrong and not industry standard choice, do you go to jail?
Probably lots of other issues as well.
The problem is that it could melt through the earth into the water table. Imagine what would happen if something that hot and dirty melted its way into the water table... untold radioactive steam explosions would then ensue!
Even thyroid cancer is realistically not that bad, I say this as someone who is basically just waiting for that diagnoses. I have the precursor nodules. It is slow moving and slow growing, normally speaking. How many cases of cancer are worth not using coal? How many coal miners and asthmatics do you want to trade for each cancer death?
The reality is all of these power solutions have risk, and yes this will have a high economic cost. So does the deaths of those coal miners. Plug it into a spreadsheet and tell us what you get.
Sure we could have safer power than coal or nuclear but it would be so expensive that it would cost economic growth. That would surely kill people unable to get their medicines when their jobs no longer exist in the new reduced economy or keep their homes warm in the winter due to heating costs. Nothing is free, just tell us how you want to pay for it.
Fuel damage is not necessarily meltdown. The story was that the fuel damage was damage to the zirkalloy cladding, which they hardly could deny after the hydrogen explosions. In a suffciently cooled environment, that means that your fuel pellets drop out of the rods and collect at the bottom of the RPV, but do not necessarily melt. So far, that was the official story regarding the damage. Given the water coverage data, I completely agree that melting was a given from the first days, they just did not admit it.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yeah, no. It would have to burn though a huge amount of earth. Not gonna happen. If it got through the concrete slab that would be bad enough. Contaminated water would then seep into the water table and the water supply might be made undrinkable.
In the initial days of the reactor problems, there was concern that some of the core in reactor #1 might not have been fully covered by water, and that some fuel damage may have resulted -- as in a part of it. The claim was that a relatively small fraction was affected before they restored cooling water levels to normal levels, and that the core, while damaged, was largely intact. The "news" over the last week is that the entire core was uncovered for hours (the gauges were not functioning properly under the conditions), the core heated to 2800C or so, and most of it melted and pooled in the bottom of the reactor vessel. And now there is evidence the same thing has happened in reactor #2 and #3. That's meltdown for 3 out of 3 of the reactors operational at the time the tsunami hit.
If you think there isn't a difference between what was initially claimed in the first week of the reactor problems and what is being claimed now, then you haven't been paying attention. Up until the last week the potential for substantial amounts of the core being melted down and flowing into the bottom of the reactor vessel was only speculation by outside experts familiar with the situation. Now TEPCO has data confirming that is likely what has happened. That's the news: that this isn't theoretical anymore. It's likely.
None of this changes the external results of the disaster in terms of radiation release and so on. It's not like knowing it was a full-blown meltdown changes what has already happened. But it does change how difficult it will be to control and clean up (e.g., you can't pump water in and around the hot fuel as easily if it is a blob of solidified lava and metal), and it provokes serious questions about the ability to monitor exactly what's going on inside a reactor during a crisis. If you couldn't reliably tell that the reactor was actually in the process of melting down, then how can you react to the situation appropriately? It's like having faulty instrument readings while you're trying to safely land a plane with no visibility. The TEPCO crew could be the best reactor operators in the world, but if they don't know what is going on in there, they would be thoroughly borked.
We don't have enough data. Radioactive caesium in the soil can require wholesale decontamination because it's readily taken up by plants and makes its way into the food chain. Can. If it's all in the topsoil and you get a cloudburst, you're minus the topsoil and the problem. The newspapers aren't exactly publishing the levels of Americium or Polonium. Nor is there a vast amount of data on just how deep some of the underground contamination was and what the geology is like. If the contaminants are more likely to be flushed out to sea or trapped by naturally-occuring filters, it's a very different situation from if they're going to constantly cycle within living organisms.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is true that thyroid cancer is probably the best choice if you get to select which cancer you get. Survivability is very good. I don't want to discourage you, but I have a couple of friends who lost their thyroid, which may or may not be related to us growing up in on of the fallout hotspots of Chernobyl and getting a healthy dose of rain at exactly the wrong time. They all survived, but having to adjust and readjust your thyroid hormone medication all the time can be pretty shitty. Mood swings, depression, life-long dependency on medication. So, even though a vast majority survives it, the impact on your life is not exactly fun. Regardless of our differences on certain matters, you have my best wishes for getting through that if it should strike you. Regarding coal - there are alternatives. I am not saying to abandon all nuclear power overnight - but a controlled phasing out over 2-3 decades leaves ample room for replacement by natural gas, solar thermal, geo thermal, biomass, smart grid demand control and so on, and so on.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
1. Is the containment vessel solid? Will this burn through?
If the answer to that is "no, yes", then it isn't a containment vessel.
2. If the melted fuel gets hot enough to burn you will get radioactive smoke, and such into the air.
If it's exposed to oxygen, or the air, it isn't in a containment vessel, or you blew it open by putting water in.
3. You are reducing the shielding to nearby people, by removing water that would be in the way.
The water is not for shielding. The water is for cooling.
I am wondering how many people have died from this disaster and add the deaths due to Uranium Mining. And I would like to compare it to people who have died in Coal mining and coal power plant accidents.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How did we get "confirms" from "may have"?
A pile of molten Corium is still pretty nasty, and something that definitely needs to be actively cooled. The problem then comes with the very high-risk strategy of, completely blind, trying to raise the core temperature enough to initiate a core melt, then drop the core melt temperate again before it becomes dangerous. You've got a window of maybe a minute in which to do so, with little in the way of feedback, and no time to run an accurate simulation. And you better damn well hope your jury-rigged pumps respond perfectly first-time.
In the future, a 'controlled core melt' may become a designed-for scenario (melt-though bleed channel into a refractory chamber for easy cleanup?), but trying to do it on the spur of the moment would probably do more harm than good.
Are you claiming that there is 600 tons of fuel in each of these reactors?
There are various reports that Unit 1's isolation condenser was damaged before the tsunami hit and the workers had to manually shut it off, because it was cooling down the reactor too quickly. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_04.html
Also, the pressure in the reaction chamber fluctuated wildly and a radiation monitoring post on the perimeter of the plant went off.
All this happened *before* the tsunami struck.
which may or may not be related to us growing up in on of the fallout hotspots of Chernobyl and getting a healthy dose of rain at exactly the wrong time. They all survived, but having to adjust and readjust your thyroid hormone medication all the time can be pretty shitty. Mood swings, depression, life-long dependency on medication.
I already have those issues and quite possibly for the same reason. Forget the mood swings, the adhd like symptoms or sudden weightloss are much worse. The last one is really vicious, because as you lose weight you end up with too much thyroid hormone, which leads to more weightloss, and on and on.
I agree there are alternatives, but the cost is the issue. Money really does mean the difference between life and death for many. I think 2-3 decades is being very ambitious. If we got rid of coal power on that time scale I would be ecstatic, I think we are stuck with nuclear for a hundred years or more. Solar thermal is great where it can be done. Using northern Africa to power Europe would be a great goal. It is not really an option in a place like Japan though. Not enough land to do that, and not enough light either.
Shipping enough coal or natural gas to replace nuclear power plants is expensive too. Again, that cost could well mean lives.
How do you plan on getting all the air out? What equipment exists on side for getting a vacuum in the vessel?
Yes, if containment is lost then the fuel actually burning, as in oxidization at a rapid rate, becomes a real concern.
At this point one might question the logic of evaluating the risk at all. As in, "If there's a cheaper method of producing the same amount of renewable base load power that doesn't have any of these risks, we should use that first." Like, frinstance, geothermal. Why play with nuclear fire if you don't have to? Because it's exciting?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I was kind of wondering why the "probably was a tsunami" thing was news, honestly. I thought everyone knew that starting 2 months ago.
This entire story seems like a repost of a repost.
I was thinking about making a Godzilla joke, and then I read this. Reminded me of how bad the whole situation is. I feel like a jerk.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
That happened on Saturday. Didn't you notice?
Support SETI@home
Yeah, you're right.
Dragonball Z will be real!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
If anything is funny, it is your comment. Burnup? Care to define that?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Facts:
1. A meltdown does not necessarily mean significant release of radiation.
2. Significant release of radiation doesn't necessarily mean "ZOMG CANCER MUTANTS".
3. Worrying will do nothing. Indeed, the real disaster here is the gigantic, house-lifting, island-eliminating tsunami, not the pitiful nuclear meltdown. If you want to help, donate to the Red Cross.
4. If people do worry, the ONLY result is more people dead due to panic.
Because it was much easier to add vent holes to the building (which was NOT the containment) and less risky. Yes, by design, if the fuel all ments, it stays where it is, but it also stays quite hot for much longer that way. Why push their luck?
Where in Japan can they use geothermal?
If there was a cheaper way to do it, it would be done that way. The one thing capitalism is pretty good at is optimizing for cost, in the short term anyway.
Let me ask you a question - how is any air getting *in*? You start with water. The water is heated by the fuel to several hundred degrees, under pressure. But, some of it starts becoming steam. You now have lots of pressure inside the vessel, but not air - just water and steam. You now open a release valve and the steam starts boiling off and escaping out the relief valve. The positive pressure (of what, several atmospheres?) and the out-rushing steam should largely prevent air from entering .
So, how does the air ever get into the pressure vessel?
Very small trace amounts of air/oxygen might lead to a small amount of burning, but as long as the vessel is sealed up well, the oxygen will quickly deplete (ever put a candle under a glass ? Doesn't burn very long.
So, I still don't see how burning is much of a threat as long as the containment maintains structural integrity? Again, though, as I mentioned before, if the earthquake/terrorist attack/whatever does breech the vessel (and outer containment), then it does seem like there could be a possibility for fire in that instance.
A moment on Google will show you that Japan has the third most plentiful surveyed geothermal resources of any nation on earth. A few more moments would show that the US DOE finds it ten percent cheaper than nuclear per unit of electricity. Advanced geothermal is a closed cycle so no emissions, no fuel costs, no spent fuel storage, no loss of fuel sources in times of international strife or commodity shortages. Now we come to why, which was my question.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
just cause they used a scalpel to cut the cancer out that would have killed my grandmother doesn't mean i want to get slashed with one on the street.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
relative to this, I should note that I spent the last week at the NIH. One of their local newsletter articles included the results of an ongoing survey of possible thyroid cancers among the youth in the immediate area of effect of Chernobyl.
Results? A TOTAL (not increase) of 62 thyroid cancer cases in the relevant population.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
A couple things to note:
most of the people were forced to leave by the tsunami before they could be kicked out as a result of the Fukushima incident.
Two million yen is about what I paid for my house, and my house is nothing special, really. Remember, 500 yen is almost enough to cover a Big Mac and fries.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Burnup (was finding this so hard?) is the fissioning of nuclear fuel into lighter elements and the release of energy equivalent to the difference in mass between the two. It is analogous to the burning of fossil fuel into lighter compounds but with orders - lots of them - of magnitude more energy released per unit mass of fuel.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
There was no rapture.
More's the pity; with a few less God-botherers the rest of us might have gotten some real work done.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It's not like someone's going to give that house back to them, nor their cash.
Actually TEPCO or the Japanese government will most likely give them compensation for their homes, disruption to their lives, etc. Even if the above groups try to dodge this responsibility (which incidentally is something that the Japanese aren't known for), the courts are there to enforce accountability. I find it bizarrely delusional that you'd think a developed world country wouldn't have a means of restitution for harm from acts like this.
Second reply. Bad form, sorry. When these nuclear plants were built geothermal wasn't an option because the science had not sufficiently advanced. Japan embraced nuclear power like no other except France. The cheap power enabled them to become an economic superpower and the benefits far outweigh the harm caused by these meltdowns.
Now though the science of geothermal has progressed. Japan is so rich with geothermal resources and engineering talent that they could provide all their electrical energy needs for the rest of forever with offshore geothermal resources and not taint their landscape with cooling towers nor risk their precious hotspring mineral baths. They don't need nuclear any more, at all. For Japan it's a technology that served its purpose and should be retired. Other nations are not so fortunate to be blessed with such rich geothermal resources.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Awful lot of words for so little relevance. Stolen property is not the same because the thief has no funds. Japan in comparison has funds. Second, it's not the job of law enforcement to compensate you for other peoples' actions.
As to Katrina and the BP spill, I'm aware of how the compensation game is played. Just because someone says they weren't fully compensated doesn't mean anythign. I think we'll find that people with a clear claim received full compensation while those with a tenuous or unproven claim received more than their due. And there's always the courts, if someone feels they were slighted in compensation.
Termal camera measurements, and instrumentation show that the temps inside the reactor pressure vessels are at 270 C max, bad because that means that still is coming radioactive steam from the damaged reactors, good since that means that even if most fuel has melted, it didn't became a bloob of molten fuel damaging even more the reactor pressure vessels, meaning that as bad has is has get up to now, we are not dealing with the fuel out in the open like in the case of the Chernobyl disaster. The submission was pointing to a very short on details press article, but from the horse's mouth:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11052412-e.html
Press Release (May 24,2011)
Submission of a report on the operation of the plant based on the plant data etc. of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station at the time of the earthquake to Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
From the attached documents, we can see an english summary of the damage to the reactor cores in the best and worst case scenario, but if you can read japanese, this attachment:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110524a.pdf
has a far more detailed analysis with real data and scans from the operation log and charts from the instrumentation at the operation rooms. The most interesting data aside reactor status and analysis is the table at page 138 that shows seismometer data. The highest readings detected was of accelerations of up to 550 gals at 4th floor of unit 2 and 302 gal at same's unit basement; so we can make an educated guess that the different outcome of the damage at this unit from its twin, unit 3 was influenced by the stronger effect from the earthquake.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/22/safer-nuclear-reactors-impeded-by-marketplace-expert-says/
So we know how to build safer plants, but the nuclear industry can't afford or refuses to make the investment in protecting the public.
The other part of the economic equation is insurance. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6m6Z-A7ZI8TAPBRy35Dlp_z8oiA?docId=6274d45186a24d978d43b1dff293cea4
So the lack of meaningful insurance shifts the economic risk on to the public and is effectively a huge direct subsidy for the nuclear power industry. It seems very likely that if the same level of support were put into renewable energy that it would be very competitive with fossil fuel. As well as being much less risky. But guess who has the bigger lobby and more entrenched businesses?
Why is Snark Required?
There are two things that are news here (albeit a little bit late). The first is the extent of the melting. There was always a question as to whether the fuel had melted or if only the cladding had melted. Early on a British scientist wrote an opinion that the data indicated that the fuel had melted completely. TEPCO responded saying that it was a possibility, but that the data could also support the situation where only the cladding had melted. When they finally were able to get inside the building of #1, they decided that the fuel had melted completely. Again, there was still a question if this was also true of #2 and #3. Just recently, they have decided that it was true of those two.
The second piece of news is that when they originally went inside #1, they thought that it might be the case that the containment was cracked in the original earthquake. The coolant would have escaped and the meltdown would have occurred within the first 5 hours. But recently, they have discounted that as a possibility, returning to their assumption that it was a loss of cooling ability which resulted in the meltdown.
I'm replying to too many posts in this thread, but again I feel compelled to do it. I watched the TEPCO news reports on TV. I live in Japan and I speak Japanese. It's possible that I misunderstood some things because it is a technical subject and while I am fluent in Japanese, these things are difficult. But your account of the events do not mesh with my recollection at all. This is from memory, but I recall them originally claiming that a large portion of the core had been left exposed for 5 hours. At that point they said that the fuel was damaged and may have melted. However, they felt that the radiation measurements that they were collecting indicated that the core had not melted down completely, only the cladding had melted. Critically, they said that they couldn't tell for sure what the circumstance were without entering the building.
When the British scientist wrote indicating that he felt the core had melted, TEPCO responded very quickly (the same day IIRC). They admitted that it was a possibility that the core had melted. But they felt that the data also supported the case where only the cladding had melted. Without entering the building they couldn't determine which it was.
Like I said, I watched this on TV and I was not surprised in the least that the core had melted down. They said several times that it was a possibility. On the news, when they were planning on entering #1 they headlined it with saying something to the effect, "They will enter the building and hopefully finally be able to tell whether the core has melted or not".
What's frustrating for me is that the foreign press do *not* report what TEPCO are saying. They report only half of it. Hey, I have never had any love for this company. I consider myself a rather extreme environmentalist. I don't have a car. I don't heat my house. I try to live a spartan life. These energy companies are the antithesis of what I believe in. But I really do find myself feeling bad for those guys lately.
For those of you relying only on the foreign press's reporting of what TEPCO are saying, I urge you to consider that you may be the victim of bad reporting/translation more than the victim of deceit.
...and it provokes serious questions about the ability to monitor exactly what's going on inside a reactor during a crisis. If you couldn't reliably tell that the reactor was actually in the process of melting down, then how can you react to the situation appropriately? It's like having faulty instrument readings while you're trying to safely land a plane with no visibility. The TEPCO crew could be the best reactor operators in the world, but if they don't know what is going on in there, they would be thoroughly borked.
The sad part of the story is that TEPCO crew apparently knew enough to figure out what was going on (whiteboard photos prove this), but officially they pretended they didn't know and simply omitted strongly suggestive datapoints from public releases. Only now, when enough isotopes have been blown around northern hemisphere that any interested scientist can sample the isotope ratio in the air and work back the numbers they slowly admit some truth, while still covering up what really exploded in reactor number 3.
The first comments weren't variations on "this is just further proof of how safe nuclear power is, because the reactor hasn't actually burrowed its way to the earth's core and/or caused the extinction of all life on the planet".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You don't get it. It melted down. That means that no one can live in Japan ever again. Millions will die, This disaster makes the actual Earthquake and Tsunami seem like nothing!
Just because something isn't apocalyptically bad doesn't mean it's trivial.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You don't get it. It melted down. That means that no one can live in Japan ever again. Millions will die, This disaster makes the actual Earthquake and Tsunami seem like nothing!
I'm glad people realised this was a joke. About two weeks after the disaster there was a professor from one of the big universities (might have been Manchester, can't remember now) on Newsnight who was saying pretty much just this. Millions of cancers, vast tracts of uninhabitable land. This was at a time when measured radiation levels in Tokyo were below the background level in other industrial cities around the world.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, radiation is tragic. Like that time we used it to kill the cancer that would have killed my grandmother. That was truly tragic, oh wait no the complete fucking opposite.
Even Chernobyl did not cause the level of issues you are claiming.
Congratulations, you have just made one of the most epic fails in argument ever seen on slashdot.
Your argument is approximately as stupid as rebutting a comment about knife crime by talking about how good surgical scalpels are.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Parts of Northern Europe still have high enough levels of contamination that you can't pick wild mushrooms. That does not mean that Chernobyl made all the children born after it mutants either.
And, yet again, you and other nuclear power fans put absurdly exaggerated words into the mouths of other people.
There are two extremes of "Chernobyl had no more effect than a small barbecue spillage briefly setting fire to a small patch of your garden lawn" to "Chernobyl doomed mankind to extinction" and just because the latter is false does no mean the former is true.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Let me ask you a question - how is any air getting *in*? You start with water. The water is heated by the fuel to several hundred degrees [...] You now have lots of pressure inside the vessel, but not air - just water and steam.
At those temperatures the steam reacts with the containment vessel to form elemental hydrogen and oxygen gas. Do the chem:
2 H2O -> 2 H2 + O2
2 moles of gas -> 3 moles of gas
That's a 50% increase in vapor pressure right there. And where did the "air" come from? Well, that's your source of oxygen right there. Now you're dealing with two very reactive gases that will explosively recombine back into water vapor. And if that happens, the explosion can potentially breach your containment vessel, which lets more air in.
You now open a release valve and the steam starts boiling off and escaping out the relief valve.
Did you forget that it's also radioactive?
All, right, what stupid retard moderated parent troll?
Probably someone who got fed up with any anti-nuclear power post being modded down and every pro-nuclear cheerleading post getting modded up.
In actual fact, GP is pretty much an anti-troll, as it is a post designed purely to get people to agree with it, rather than the normal troll attempt to stir up a flood of "no it's not, you moron" posts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Which means after the risks hit 1 x "What they can be made to pay", there is no economic incentive to ensure any more safety. Then add in that the company will be paying not any individual losing his savings and you get into a position where the people making these decisions may well be the ones least impacted. If an engineer makes a mistake that causes an event like this he is never going to work in that field again and is going to be working flipping burgers. If a CEO makes a decision that causes an event like this he is never going to work again since he makes millions a year that is not a big deal.
I don't know what the law is in Japan (or the US) but here in the UK, the courts can go after directors' personal wealth too if they have acted in a criminal way (usually fraudulently, but in this case, being criminally negligent, ignoring safety laws, etc).
Put it like this, just because you set up your drug dealing operation with yourself as the only shareholder in a limited company, it doesn't mean you get to walk away with all the profits scot free
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sure but we are not talking about crimes here. Just me deciding the risk is worth it to build my sea wall 1 meter shorter, or making the containment vessel 2 cm thinner. Not negligence really either, just slightly less careful precautions. At what point does it go from reasonable compromise to negligence? Who decides?
Nothing is going directly into the atmosphere, why do you think the fuel is surrounded by containment vessels? This is not the same design as Chernobyl.