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Fukushima Finally Reaches Cold Shutdown
mvdwege writes "The BBC reports that the reactors at Fukushima have reached cold shutdown, meaning they no longer need active cooling to stay at safe temperatures. Plans can now be made to start the cleanup of the site. Unfortunately, TEPCO has also admitted not all problems were out in the open until now; an estimated 45 cubic meters of contaminated water have leaked out of cracks in the foundation of a treatment plant."
Sky did not fall, Japan is not irradiated wasteland, Fallout is still just a game.
No, they haven't addressed the meltdown. TEPCO decided early on that they would completely ignore the meltdown while they worked on getting the bathroom facilities working again.
authorities can't be trusted??? mighty wide brush you're painting with, and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative who is wary of anyone who runs for public office, so for me to say that is pretty substantial... what constitutes an "authority" in your mind, and why are they incapable of being trusted in a crisis? Who else would be better in this circumstance, private enterprise? /I can't believe I have to put it this way, but this is one of those times when a centralized government is absolutely needed to fix a problem
In units of volume, that is 12,000 US Gallons, or 45,000 liters.
Also, about ¾ the volume of a typical 40' shipping container.
...an abuse of the definition of shutdown. Reality check: - 3 melt-throughs - melted cores outside pressure chambers - compromised secondary containments - nuclear fuel and fission products escaping into water and air - corium so radioactive it cannot be approached even by robots - precarious leaning of number 4 spent fuel pool - widespread plutonium, caesium etc. beyond evacuation zone - significant contamination in food - yet to come: increased malignancies and birth defects Does this sound contained to you? Seriously...
It's not possible the cracks were opened up by the, what was it, 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the 45 foot wall of water that came ashore shortly after that, and all of the 7+ magnitude aftershocks?
thank you, I guess, for pointing out that earthquakes and tsunamis do indeed suck and destroy stuff. People will just get compensations and move on to somewhere else. There were definately WORSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster) disasters than this and It is worth taking for what it is. Also there are areas that are intentionaly and knowingly made into deserts/toxic lakes or whatever, and it's no disaster at all... so... 12 miles radius is not that big of a chunk to ward off and let smolder in ruins, wouldn't be the biggest or out of proportion dead-zone of the world.
Meanwhile, half a million people are homeless, about twenty thousand are dead. And all everybody cares to talk about is that some nuclear reactors weren't safe enough (through neglect of safety updates during the last three decades) to withstand a tsunami. If you criticize TEPCO for neglecting tsunami protection, why don't you criticize the whole Japanese government for neglecting tsunami protection along all of the coast?
This post is more inciteful than insightful.
(1) A 12-mile radius is NOTHING compared to all the intentional disaster areas (nuclear *weapon* testing underground, on ground, and over water) or all the major landfills or holes in the ozone. Those are the damages we "accept" as part of our way of life. Fukushima's failure was not a guaranteed result of running the plant, but a RISK that only existed due genuine natural cataclysm that was fought with decades old technology (when much better is available now). Ya, I'd call that a win. By the way, how do you think an oil refinery or a coal mine would have fared in that same situation?
(2) The maximum *allowed* radiation dose for an American nuclear worker is nothing to sneeze at when compared to a school bus driver, but then again, it's not deadly or else it wouldn't be allowed. People wouldn't work at nuclear power plants if they had good reason to believe that they would develop various cancers as a direct result. It's a heightened risk (one cannot deny that, mathematically), but it's by no means a death sentence nor does it guarantee a lesser quality of life.
(3) 30% less electricity for any metropolitan area can be spell doom. But it didn't in Japan. For the Japanese, it's an opportunity to innovate. To remodel. To rethink ways. I wouldn't be surprised if more low-power-consumption tech comes out of Japan due to this disaster and the world as a whole benefits.
Summary: *ALL* non-region-specific (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric) power systems can fail due to cataclysm. Some fail before the stations even get the fuel (oil spills, coal mine collapses). None but nuclear have so many safe guards, even at the 1960s tech level, that can respond to such a major disaster with so little loss of life.
hope some people can finally take a breather, it's only been... 9 months...
1) A 12 mile radius exclusion zone (& larger radius which people will avoid) is huge in a small country like Japan. Do you really think that Japanese people have chosen to have among the highest population density in the world even though they have a bunch of unused land?
When we consider how common Fukushima's reactor design is, and how reluctant power companies are to invest in new reactors, despite proven safety problems with their design, a disaster like this seems almost inevitable.
2) American nuclear workers carry dosimeters and are closely monitored. Children operate in a very different environment. Children are more susceptible to problems than adults, since they are still developing. I doubt that a nuclear plant would allow a worker to bring their child with them as they are exposed to radiation.
3) The loss of so much electricity in the Tokyo area has caused shortages in many components crucial to Japanese and global commerce. There is nothing innovative about turning off the air conditioning in an unplanned 30% loss of power. There is something deeply honorable about it though.
Summary: Large scale electric generation will always have drawbacks, but it's foolish to ignore their potential for destruction. As far as I know, the only part of Japan that 6 months after the Tsunami is uninhabitable by humans surrounds Fukushima.
I don't oppose nuclear power, but when the risks are ignored or downplayed (like in your post and in TEPCO's policies) a nuclear disaster is inevitable. And when people notice that you've been downplaying the risks, their unlikely to trust the industry to build new reactors, even though they improve safety.
One involves the splitting of the nucleus into two roughly equally sized (I said *roughly*, pedants), and the other involves the emissions of much smaller particles such as alphas or betas. Fission in a nuclear power sense usually refers to that induced by neutron capture in a chain reaction, though there is a small amount of spontaneous fission for certain isotopes. The energy released by fission is much larger than from a typical decay.
For the pile of molten crap that the cores now consist of, almost all of the heat production is through decay, not fission.
How about the fact that they lied for months (if they aren't still lying) about the severity of the meltdown
Don't you need evidence for such assertions? I see evidence that both TEPCO and the Japanese government made statements that later turned out to be false, but no evidence of lying, a deliberate falsehood.
and allowed/forced people to live in areas that are irradiated?
So what? Nobody was required to live anywhere irradiated.
How about the fact that rather than address radiation making its way into food and water, they merely raised the allowable amount of radiation in food and water?
Sounds like a reasonable solution to a tough disaster situation, especially given that radiation thresholds are intentional set too low anyway. They can change it back to the normal threshold when the disaster goes away.
1. The exclusion zone will be mostly lifted shortly (weeks to months). Of course, heavier contamination will remain offlimits due to abundance of caution (people live in the world where "natural" radiation levels are much higher than anywhere except next to melted reactor buildings, yet they are not "excluded" because the radiation levels of 50-300mSv/yr are "natural" (radium, uranium, etc.)). Contamination is mostly in a narrow streak from Fukushima going north west.
2. Food is monitored. And even if you eat the most contaminated thing you can find illegally, you'll still be fine unless you start eating it for next couple of years. Finally, it is simple (no pun intended!) to measure amount of cesium you have in your body. Simplest is measuring amount of cesium in your pee ;)
3. Tokyo does NOT have 30% less electricity. Japan is burning massive amounts of oil, gas and coal emitting a lot of CO2 and heavy metals and spending $38-$40 BILLION EXTRA on fuel PER YEAR so there are no shortages. All the fossil fuel plants that were offline because of nuclear are back online polluting. So only 2-3 years of non-nuclear fuel costs japan the same as compensation for their worst nuclear incident in last 65 years. (estimated compensation costs for Fukushima are up to $100-$110 billion).
Yes, I do realize you wanted to be sarcastic in your statements.
What a relief! I wonder when they'll start moving people back into Fukushima Prefecture.
Fukushima prefecture is 14500 km2 and 2M inhabitants less than 8% of the territory and 3.5% of population have been evacuated.
I can't wait to sink my teeth into some Fukushima vegetables and I know you feel the same way
Most of the japanese would be perfectly OK eating food from Fukushima prefecture without fear-mongering idiots scaring a gullible population with occasional radiations level in food lower than one would find in a simple banana or brazil nut.
When do you suppose that 12 mile radius exclusion zone will be lifted? This decade or next?
Exclusion will be lifted next year for all areas with less than 20mSv/y of radiations level, that's more 80% of the evacuated area. Also half the radiations are due to Cs-134 with a half-life of 2 years. That mean all zones will be available in less than a decade, including municipalities like Namie or Iitate.
Now that we've decided that the maximum radiation dosage for a Japanese child is the same as an American nuclear worker, it's only a matter of time before they play in the shadow of Fukushima again!
There's a big difference between what you are allowed to receive every years during your carreer and a maximum environmental exposure that could hypothetically only happen one year. I'm sure the inhabitants of Ramsar who live with a natural radioactivity level of more than 100mSv/y would be laughing a lot at this.
And let's not forget how much better Tokyo is with 30% less electricity.
Yeah sure I wonder how any other energy production facilities would have fared facing the same earthquake and tsunami. Do you really think the Japanese government will be dumb enough to replace nuclear plants with tenth os thousands of off-shore tsunami-proof windmills ...
http://www.transparency.org
I think you misunderstand my position (or, rather, I haven't explained it clearly enough...) I'm not saying that in general the competition generated from an appropriately regulated free market is bad - quite the opposite - I'm addressing the generalization by the post I was replying to that says "authority" can't be trusted in a crisis, whatever that's supposed to mean. "The authority" could be government, owners of the company, contractors slated to do the cleanup, volunteers, or those wild monkeys they let loose to track radiation with - I have no idea what the coward meant. Yeah, people generally are incompetent in anything they have no training in. That's why we call the trained ones "authorities" in their fields.
How about the fact that rather than address radiation making its way into food and water, they merely raised the allowable amount of radiation in food and water?
This might blow your mind... but often policy makers have to juggle multiple and conflicting priorities at the same time.
In the case of the Japanese Crisis you had a country devastated by an enormous disaster with people freezing in makeshift shelters with inadequate food and water.
Now you could say "sorry everyone you don't get to eat today." Or you can say "Here is some food that's irradiated above what in a normal situation we would expect but over a short period of time is a better alternative than hunger and malnutrition."
BMOC: Containment has almost nothing to do with cold shutdown.
According to TEPCO, it does:
TEPCO: Definition of "Cold Shutdown Condition": ... Release of radioactive materials from PCV is under control and public radiation exposure by additional release is being significantly held down.
(Roadmap towards Restoration from the Accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 17 Nov 2011, Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, Government-TEPCO Integrated Response Office)
TEPCO *is* changing the standard definition of "cold shutdown" somewhat. Now, they have *added* a containment requirement, so they're not really loosening any standards. Of course, normally "cold shutdown" doesn't include a containment requirement because normally the reactor vessel isn't breached.
zeigerpuppy has a point in that "cold shutdown" normally implies a state of normal control. Cold shutdown typically means the reactor is stopped, doesn't need active cooling, and can be safely opened for maintenance. Fuku is still an active disaster site.
I'm not advocating panic (what's the sense in that?), but fair criticism of TEPCO is, I think, well-deserved.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.