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Leak Found In Fukushima Tank Holding Radioactive Water
The fallout from tsunami damage at Japan's Fukushima plant isn't over yet. New submitter OldJuke writes "Tokyo Electric power Co. said about 120 tons of the water are believed to have breached [a water storage tank's] inner linings, some of it possibly leaking into the soil. TEPCO is moving the water to a nearby tank at the Fukushima Dai-chi plant — a process that could take several days ...More than 270,000 tons of highly radioactive water is already stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks and another underground tank. They are visible even at the plant's entrance and built around the compound, taking up more than 80 percent of its storage capacity. TEPCO expects the amount to double over three years and plans to build hundreds of more tanks by mid-2015 to meet the demand."
That sound you hear continuously in the background are the massive profits made from all of this!
Captcha: joyously
Can't they mix this water into the ocean, diluting it to background levels? Surely the ocean has a certain amount of naturally occurring radioactive materials in it and I'm sure this wouldn't change it much.
Been there done that.
On top of the millions of bequarels they've dumped so far. "It's only a little drop in the ocean".
I hope you don't like seafood.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Then can't they distill away the water, so that just the crap is left and unable to flow anywhere else?
What's the worst that can happen? Would it be worse than what's already happened there? Can it contaminate things any more than they already are?
If yes, then they should have tested all of their infrastructure before starting things up again. It's only been a year and clearly they need more time before starting things up again.
It sounds nice but what tends to happen is it settle to floor, get picked up by pants and tiny creatures concentrating it again, the eaten by fewer bigger creatures concentrating it more, and finally poisioning us we we go to eat fish.
Yes if you had some way to spread it over a very very large area of sea it would be fine probably, but you'd likely need to move it out to deep water with container ships, and then you'd have to do something with the contaminated ships. I suppose you might just scuttle them. Anyway just dump it in the ocean sounds simple but doing right ( if there is a right way ) is risky and expensive.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This did not happen. Nothing to see here.
There are no problems with nuclear power. It is good and glorious.
No one will ever be harmed by nuclear power. You can trust it. It is good.
Sincerely, the Slashdot nuclear re-education committee
But I thought nuclear energy is safe so surely just dumping this radioactive whatever it is into the ocean is ok then?
Can't they mix this water into the ocean, diluting it to background levels? Surely the ocean has a certain amount of naturally occurring radioactive materials in it and I'm sure this wouldn't change it much.
I suspect that it depends on what flavor of radioactives you are working with. The worst-case scenario is that a substantial quantity of them are (like Strontium, which looks almost like Calcium) compounds that are readily water-soluble and readily absorbed by organisms in the water and concentrated up the food chain.
Best case scenario is that it's mostly larger silt-type particles that are largely insoluble and not bioavalable, which still isn't great but should at least end up hanging out on the bottom for most of its lifetime.
Does anybody know what makes this delicious fluid tick?
Do you think Molasses is safe? Ever given a second of thought to the fear that your bottle of syrup might attack you?
But wait, a disaster COULD happen.
Just like with cotton balls, unicorn dust, and pixie wings.
Hanford Washington USA
April 02, 2013
"A nuclear safety board has warned a key U.S. senator that underground tanks holding radioactive
waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site pose a possible risk of explosion."
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/04/nuclear_safety_board_warns_of.html
I as everybody else in this area are "down winders". A tank blows we will certainly know about it.
These tanks have some of the most radioactive materials "contained"; the left overs of
30 some years of Plutonium production.
A lot of work has been done to the tanks to stop the leaks that have "flowed" for many years.
The leaks are now... well one can't say as everyday it's different; tomorrow they may well be gone.
I'm sure if they could, they would have by now so not sweating it myself.
Such is our bane for helping stop the japs.
The spent fuel pools at Fukushima are not in any sense "normal."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And so what? Before we can evaluate how bad this is, we need to know how bad the radioactivity is. Are we talking "enough to kill everybody" or "enough to detect"? Given that this is water that has already been cleaned, I suspect the latter. The only radionuclide they couldn't get out is tritium, and that at a relatively low concentration. Until there are actual numbers, I won't get excited.
And when you read "highly contaminated water", remember that bananas are too radioactive to meet Japanese food regulations. A little radioactivity goes a long way, as does a little hysteria.
----- Why sig when you can sign? PGP key id 7675D05E
Picked up by pants?
Nuclear concentration by clothing? Could make 'hot to trot' a reality.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Who said anything about coal? It's not politically correct to say this on Slashdot, with all the nuclear worship around here, but nuclear power can be completely fucked up, whether or not coal is. Coal is irrelevant.
But I thought nuclear energy is safe
s/$/r/
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Do you think Molasses is safe? Ever given a second of thought to the fear that your bottle of syrup might attack you?
But wait, a disaster COULD happen.
Just like with cotton balls, unicorn dust, and pixie wings.
Get your facts straight, the only result from the great Unicorn Dust Explosion in Ireland back in the 1800's was a slight increase in the birth rate of Leprechans.
umm, as a california resident, no thank you! I don't want to be pulling 3-eyed fish out of the water.
That statement means nothing in absolute terms. You need to compare it with something else for a meaningful insight.
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Cost cutting, and imperfect solutions.As well as other things that happen in The Real World to fallible human beings.
Why everyone on slashdot defends to death nuclear power is beyond my understanding. The waste lasts for tens to HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of years. You cannot possibly ensure anythings containment on that time scale.
We have a molten planet full of heat, a source a few tens of km away from every person. We have a fusion reactor wirelessly sending power to the planet. People need to figure out that nuclear is not the answer.
-
I have observed this as well. Conspiracy surely explains it.
Fairewinds Speech at the New York Academy of Medicine
Fairewinds Speech at the New York Academy of Medicine - Fukushima Two Years On - Gundersen Presents New Information concerning the Fukushima Accident: In this new video, Polaris Mediaworks laces together a video of Arnie Gundersen speaking along with the PowerPoint presentation he gave so viewers can better understand the presentation.
Fairewinds Speech at the New York Academy of Medicine
Fairewinds Speech at the New York Academy of Medicine - Fukushima Two Years On - Gundersen Presents New Information concerning the Fukushima Accident: In this new video, Polaris Mediaworks laces together a video of Arnie Gundersen speaking along with the PowerPoint presentation he gave so viewers can better understand the presentation.
Captcha: faiths
Don't be silly. Everyone knows that the tastiest three-headed fish come from Springfi***CARRIER LOST***
Why, whenever anyone says anything the slightest bit negative about nuclear power here on Slashdot, does someone come and start whining about coal?
Coal is traditional and cheap. Coal-fired plants have the least startup cost and the quickest time to operation. Nuclear proponents need to sell their advantages over coal. They have a point - to a point - but like all admen they are blinded by the money.
If the entire US converted to nuclear power electricity generation (beyond the huge share we get from hydroelectric) that would not slow down US coal mining, natural gas or oil production a whit. The coal would be shipped overland by trains, the gas and oil through pipelines to ports where they would be shipped overseas to be used to power developing economies and contribute even more to greenhouse gas production in places where emission standards are more lax. The net result would be even more growth of greenhouse gas emissions than present. The carcinogens would still come into the air - even more so than they are now. We would still breathe the air contaminated by these plants. Our coal miners would still die in scary numbers. But the source of these problems would be overseas, and beyond the reach of domestic policy. It's a NIMBY thing.
If US nuclear power advances to the point where it can drive more efficient extraction of fossil fuels it will be used to do so, stripping the land of them even more quickly than at present - because these resources have value and the companies that do this have obligations to their shareholders.
Think about bunker fuel. This is the sulfur-rich tar left over from converting oil to gasoline so viscous it must be heated before it is used. Instead of being used in US power plants it powers the ships that move stuff over the oceans just outside the reach of US regulation. Just because US regulations don't allow it to be burned here doesn't mean that it doesn't get burned, and the waste gasses waft over our shores. It has energy in it. Do you think anybody is just going to throw that away? By exporting the problem beyond our international boundaries we can absolve ourselves of guilt for it without actually contributing to a solution to the problem.
There is no fission solution to this problem. You're not going to get fission-powered superfreighters any time soon, and if you did they would be used to carry our local fossil fuels more efficiently to places they could be burned less and less optimally.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Making public comment free motivates profit-oriented bodies to participate and contend for space in the process until the contributions of individuals speaking their own mind is lost in the noise. Such is the nature of open discussion and there is no cure for this problem. If there is a soapbox in the public square, profit-motivated individuals subsidized to do so will contend against personally motivated folk to stand on it until there is no personally motivated person able to survive the wait time for his turn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2265732/Mike-Murasoi-fish-contaminated-radiation-Fukushima-nuclear-disaster-2-500-times-legal-limit.html
It's painfully obvious that this is caused by ongoing leakage of radioactive water from the plant. In contrast, there has be a reduction in radiatons levels on land http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201303120107. It's unlikely that biological concentration in the food chain is the primary cause after two years of radiation decay and sea water dilution.
If you don't trust the Japanese government, this would explain why they are prohibiting non-government organizations from sampling the ocean near the plant location. They say it's still too dangerous.
The motivation for a coverup is that ongoing radioactive ocean contamination would be a huge international incident. China, Korea, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines would all protest. There would be reputational repercussions, diplomatic turmoil and possibly economic sanctions. There is still a lot of hostility in the region from WW2, and this would be just the issue to reopen those wounds. Not to mention current rivalry over ocean areas that have China, Tiawan and Japan sending naval vessels to tiny islands with disputed ownership.
Why is Snark Required?
I was happy to read last week that the Obama administration seems to have been reading the blogs about the mass deployment of modular generation IV reactors. I hope it was brought to their attention by my "We the People" petition to study the efficacy of a plan to convert all coal plants to LFTR Nuclear Reactors but that is probably just wishful thinking. They said that they would be deploying 50 300 MW reactors every year starting in 2050 maybe sooner if they can get the technology right. Unfortunately this is far short of the 5 year start time that I feel we could do with a Manhattan style effort. I came to a capital cost figure of 1.6 Trillion for the conversion process but have recently learned that this figure could be over costly by a factor of two which would bring the figure to 800 billion in capital costs if the new data is right. I believe it is totally worth the 23 Billion dollar effort to make it happen and will try again with another "We the People" petition when they integrate my suggested "Facebook Authentication" into their site. Hopefully with enough signatures we can make this study happen and make the results fully public in all aspects of it's execution and findings.
"Ichi" being "one", "Dai-ichi" being "Dai #1", and "Dai-ni" being "Dai #2".
It's happened before.
I share your enthusiasm for the topic and your point of view. The whole coining words like "Fuckupshima" thing is antihelpful. Could you not do that? Please?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
According to http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/... it's Daiichi.
I'm guessing they would know.
Yeah, because we can trust Tepco to tell the truth.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
As I read about the details of how they are dealing with the hot cores of these nightmare wrecks of radioactivity, I hear the Sorcerers Apprentice and have a vision of Mickey Mouse trying unsuccessfully to deal with millions of buckets of water.
OK fine. I wasn't looking to censor you - only to encourage you to execute your advocacy in a more effective manner. If this is the way you enjoy doing your bit and effectiveness is irrelevant to your joy then knock yourself out.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Idea: why can't we get rid of all of the radioactive waste by dumping it into the ocean? (No really) If you only increased the background radiation by 0.1% and you sprinkled the waste into the ocean (or land) how much waste would you be able to safely dispose of? The ocean already has a certain amount of radionuclides in it,
Whenever I see a new article on the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster,
I am reminded of the ADVANTAGES (better cost, safety, waste, political
implications, etc.) of Liquid Fluoride THORIUM Reactors (a.k.a. LFTR's,
already being developed around the world (in various phases of R&D, eg,
in China, India, Taiwan, & [privately] USA).
More people need to know about the opportunities of this -safer- green-
energy source, so they can decide for themselves whether it's time to
-push- for regulatory changes, that will -ease- the transition to Thorium,
in our time.
Introduction: Kirk Sorensen's recent TED-talk
More details: (search YouTube.com for
"Thorium remix"
and take your pick)
Hilarious. No, really. It's just so ironic.
You're talking about the most efficient way of producing power save for fusion, and saying "Nah, people will just not use that."
Every "fuck" I read there warms my heart. The war on nuclear energy is destined for all the long-term success of the war on glaciers -- global warming notwithstanding.
You probably have the delusion that hydrocarbon power isn't a global pollutant. It's so funny to see someone at war against reality. Keep at it, Canute.
You are wasting your time I'm afraid. There are just too many people out there who cant imagine how anyone could come to a different perspective on controversial issues and how abuse of rhetoric can be polarising. If you can please take comfort in the fact that while I disagree with your point of view I can understand how someone with different facts, experiences and values could come to a different conclusion about nuclear power to the one I have. I appreciate your efforts to keep the discourse civil.
Does Slashdot give you achievements for successive Troll moderations?
Whenever I see a new article on the aftermath of a 40 year old plant disaster, I am reminded of the ADVANTAGES of pretty much every modern reactor design.
This is much the same as when I look at cars which didn't have seatbelts, crumple zones. Imagine if we outright banned them rather than investing serious research into making it safe. LFTR is one solution. I like the idea of the design and using thorium for fuel in general, but it is far from the only safe solution. There are several passively safe reactor designs out there from the Westinghouse AP1000 (which is basically old school with passive safety systems added) to molten sold reactors which basically are like your LFTR expect without the thorium.
Thorium is just a fuel. Sure it's a safer one, but the principles of passive and inherent safety can be designed onto many other systems too, and a modern reactor doesn't generate anywhere near the waste of their ancient brethren.
When solar was more expensive than nuclear there was a reason you would go for nuclear, but now solar has an advantage in most latitudes. Yes, it requires a large area for production, but it can just go over existing structures etc.
Offtopic but: why complain about the Chinese subsidies that make non-Chinese panels uncompetitive? Just BUY those cheap Chinese panels and have cheap power!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The problem is that all the research reactors have had major issues and are still tens of billions of dollars away from being commercially viable. Even then people will want to see one running for at least a decade before investing heavily in new thorium plants because they will worry about unforeseen costs. In the mean time everyone will just take the safe bet and build the same old stuff they have been building for decades.
Things do not move quickly in the nuclear industry, especially when huge amounts of risk are involved. Remember that they will have to convince the government to subsidize and insure the plant as well, adding years to the process.
In the mean time renewables will rocket ahead, and now we have the somewhat risky (from an investment point of view, not safety) but still orders of magnitude better than nuclear shale gas. Even coal is cleaning up, unfortunately. Honestly, I think we will see commercial fusion before we see widescale deployment of thorium reactors.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Every one comes at every thing from their own point of view. They cannot help it, as they see the world from the direction of their own experience. I can respect that. I can't too far exceed my own experience, and I'm aware of that limitation. Though I try to take an objective view I am well aware that my experiences build a belief framework that limits the potential solutions I can imagine, and respect that others have other experiential frameworks to build their beliefs and solutions upon. I actually rely upon that in my work. I do find here those who help me expand my point of view.
But yes, there are many here who are more limited, who seem to stop at "ur retarted" and not grow.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not sure what you're getting at here, nor who you're responding to, as we've reached max threading depth.
Of course lack of situational awareness is only a small part of your communication problem.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I hate to admit it, but you could probably be right. One thing is for certain, to build the first one would cost as MUCH as 23 billion, (similar to the Manhattan project if it was executed today. ) This is because some research is necessary before they can be deployed for low cost (lower than coal).
Not only would the cost be lower for each subsequent reactor, even lower than coal, but the lives of the plants would be extended from 25 years to 80 possibly 100 years.
Remember its cheaper to deploy LFTR reactors by building modular reactors (small ones 150 GW in size) than it is to build them from scratch or 500-1000 MW super sized ones because they can be built on an assembly line and are small enough to ship on only three rail cars.
It saves rebuilding by three times when their lives are compared to the lives of the coal plants that they replace.
Remember they don't need huge containment vessels like standard nuclear reactors, because there is no need to contain them.
For instance with one design, if they get too hot a freeze plug simply melts and the material spills into another container and the density of the reactants drop and it all cools. No worries about a melt down.
It is also important to note that there is several generation IV designs that consume our spent Uranium, at a higher rates than Thorium reactors due. Thorium reactors require only small amounts of Uranium to work, the rest of the fuel is the Thorium and it burns extremely efficiently ( not accounting for the loss in the conversion to electricity they are 99.9 percent efficient.) This leaves less than .1 % by volume of waste.
In my opinion, where they can be secured, Uranium fast breeders should be built to help consume the existing stock piles of spent Uranium for two reasons, one is that it nearly eliminates the Uranium proliferation risks, and secondly it recovers the storage space that is being used to hold it for housing the Thorium waste which lasts only 300 years.
The Thorium waste is easier to handle because you don't have to worry nearly as much about geological changes in the earth that might allow the waste to leak. 300 years on a geology time scale is insignificant where as 10,000 years is.
Maybe it's crazy, but would it be possible to inject something into the water to turn it into a solid or pseudo solid? Whether jello-like, plastic, or glue, something that keeps the water from leaving the containers and/or getting into the groundwater.
First thoughts that come to mind would be substances that solidify with time after having a chance to permeate or a combination of substances, one which permeates and the other which acts as a catalyst for solidifying.
Sure, you might need a lot of it, but it's a really bad problem and there will surely be more cracks in the future. Heck, maybe some day you could haul it off in blocks to a more appropriate location/facility.
If such a substance doesn't exist yet, now seems like a good time to invent it. :)
There is this false belief that LFTR is some magical totally safe fixes all things wrong with nuclear.
This is quite false.
Lets start with the basics. 232Th is fertile and is not a fuel. It absorbs a neutron to become 233Pa which, appart from being a neutron poison, decays after about 26 days into 233U which is the fuel in a Thorium fuel cycle. So now if we compare with a U fuel cycle we can only do so with a reprocessing fuel cycle, not as is often done with a once through cycle which Th can't even do. Note that with reprocessing the waste stream is reduced by about a factor of 65. Also fuel usage goes up by about the same factor.
Now note we are burning 233U rather than 235U in a traditional reactor. Turns out that is about the same in terms of fission products they are about the same from a waste management perspective. Of course you get less actinides since there isn't all this U238 sitting around causing problems. However its not the same as none, and actinides can be dealt with in a reprocessing cycle.
Because we are dealing with plain old Uranium fission we have all the same issue. We have decay heat. That is turn it off and the fuel still produces significant amount of heat for some time. So you still get all the same issues if you can't maintain cooling after a scram with Th fuel cycles as with U fuel cycles. Sure you can have passive systems. That doesn't mean they work when you need them too. There is more than enough decay heat to melt significant amounts of concrete.
For the same reason as above any core breach (you don't get to plan these btw). Would also be similar to traditional PWR core breach. It could even be worse since many designs have graphite moderators which would burn on exposure to water or air.
Now we come to the implementation issues. Th breeding ratios are marginal at best. A breeding ratio of 1 has never been shown. The theoretical models and numerical results seem to show it can be done. But its very close and is a show stopper if can't be managed. Note that the only MSRs ever run did not do any breeding whatsoever. This creates a very tight neutron economy and makes design more difficult and even more expensive. Even small traces of some elements in the materials used would simply mean they don't work as a complete fuel cycle.
The only big advantage of these things is the MSR part.ie molten salt. This is part of a larger class of reactor called homogenous reactors where the primary coolant is also the fuel. There are quite a few nice features with this type of reactor, but none of it has anything to do with Th and using U reprocessed fuel cycles look basically the same. The features include negative void/thermal coefficients (boiling/hotter slows down the reaction), potentially simpler passive cooling and scram systems (but these exist for PWR too...), load following (quick power response). Not under pressure. No fuel elements to compromise. None of these things has anything to do with Th.
But its not all pancakes and picnics. In particular the salts are either reactive with water (fluorides) or soluble in water (chlorides). Fluorides are pretty corrosive and that restricts material choice. The neutron economy makes this even more difficult. Any off design issue can cause serious problems just like at a pwr. And don't start with the "it can't happen in this design". That is what they said about pebble bed reactors. See the prototype for how well that turned out!
And last but not least we have particular issues related to just Th. MSR was suggested to overcome the many problems that Th fuel cycle has. But it doen't remove them. The neutron economy issues are mitigated with constant reprocessing and pulling out the 233Pa. You still get some 234Pa and so you still get 234U which is a nasty gamma emitter. Its so nasty that Th proponents claim that prevents or inhibi
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
I assume the weight issue makes using water or similar liquids impractical for a radiation suit? If 7cm of water cuts radiation by half, it seems to me, you could make a pretty effective radiation suit that way? Sure, it would be harder to move around, but better than taking a higher dose? Or I suppose they would rather people just work fast and get in and out quickly?
If you cared about ocean ecology, you wouldn't be eating fish anyway ;)
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
You can see whom I was replying to by clicking "Parent."
Of course lack of situational awareness is only a small part of your communication problem.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Here's an idea, idiot-boy, how about no nuclear and no coal?
I care about ocean ecology to the point that it continues to be feed me and billions of others. Use it but don't abuse it. Natural resources are there for us; our use is there purpose. That means we do have to be careful with them, we do have moderate our use of them, but saying we should not use them is wrong.
Conservation is important, I think of the planet as humanities bank account. We get regular deposits in the form of sun light. We also get interest from the operation of the ecosystem, we have to be vigilant though not to exceed the income and interest, because if we burn to much of the principle we won't have anymore interest in the future. We are failing at this today.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And the headline is self-contradictory. If there's a leak, then the container obiously doesn't hold.
Er, any normal reader knew damn well what it meant- it wasn't intended to mislead, and it didn't. You do realise that blatant pedantry is generally counter-productive towards one's case, since it looks like you have to resort to that rather than arguing the real issue.
:-P
That said, if we're playing that game, I'll point out that unless the tank emptied completely, then it's still holding *some* radioactive water... and it still has a leak. Ergo, it *is* a "tank holding radioactive water".
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
When I was a kid in the 60s, the North End still had a kind of stale-candy smell on a hot summer day. I thought that was how all cities smelled in a heat wave, but later I learned it was from the Great Molasses Flood.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Cars are actually a pretty good comparison to make. We do everything we reasonably can but mistakes and outright stupidity still cause accidents. There are alternatives that are much safer (mass transport) but funding is an issue, not least because auto manufacturers have a powerful lobbying arm.
In the long run we are trying to get away from humans driving at all, to the much safer alternative of self driving cars. Turns out no matter how good the technology human beings will always be the weak link. Public transport, while much derided and hated by petrol heads, actually works really well when done properly and costs less than running a car as well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hyperbole
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
citations?
If Thorium is so great, where are these "flying car" power plants?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Sorry what? How did you get from thorium to flying cars, and if you want citations just type any of the above model reactors into wikipedia and follow the citation trail, or just google passive nuclear safety and pick any link on the first page.
This isn't secret classified stuff.
How else do you describe a multi-billion dollar "oops" that was caused by a $10,000 oversight? Sealing the generators in the ground under concrete (waterproof) and running the intake and exhaust pipes up to 30 feet or so, and there'd have been no meltdown due to lack of local power. Simple, easy, and I've done it and seen it done a number of times. It's even been in the news as a "stupid" failure. The pumps in New Orleans were designed to work under water, but the generators that run them weren't. Much of the Katrina clean-up issues was caused by stupid design. Fukishima managed to repeat a common failure that was advertised world-wide.
The "helpful" is to point out it was a stupid mistake caused by "penny wise pound foolish" or something like that.
Learn to love Alaska
When you talk about shutting down something, you have to replace it with something. So any discussion is always about the options. Just like pointing out Clinton was a good president, and hundreds come out to complain about Obama or how good Bush was or anything other than the original question.
Learn to love Alaska
Agreed. I also like to keep in mind that while we can be objective about the facts (almost all nuclear plants release hardly any extra radiations say, or that the rates of extreme failure modes (meltdowns, etc) have been repeatedly underestimated), we cant be objective when it comes to things like how much we value our children's future over our grandchildren's. These aren't really things which are objective and so even when we have all the facts we can still disagree about what the right course of action is.
We also have to deal with the how many 'facts' aren't facts because people more interested in getting their own way than in truth have distorted the issue (from both sides, although more harmfully from the nuclear industry in my opinion). Whether it is the nuclear industry failing to disclose the real nature of accidents or environmentalists producing misleading estimates of extra cancer cases it seems hardly anyone cares about the truth in this issue any more and leaves me with serious doubts about what I can and cant trust.
Not only would the cost be lower for each subsequent reactor,
That's the real reason nobody is doing it. If you could spend $30 billion to make the first plant and make $1 in profit over 30 years, or $10 billion to make the second for $20 billion in profit 30 years, which would you pick? Nobody wants to be first, but second has lower costs, lower risk and higher profits.
Learn to love Alaska
And you wonder how shit like Godzilla happens...
Oh, so you don't have proof of a working Thorium Reactor then? Thought so. I've been hearing about these wonder reactors... as long as fusion. Nothing has happened yet. It could be a decade before anything workable is proven enough for others to build them.
Flying cars do exist but are totally impractical even if they work to some degree. Those have been almost promised since the 1950s. I know some baby boomers who've given up on science because every airhead dream they grew up with wasn't solved by science like they thought were promised; oddly, these people got big on religion (which hasn't delivered anything tangible...ever?)
The solution to all our problems (which are largely caused by technology) is more new technology just 5 years away from market! No, I'm not cynical as much as I'm realistic. We need working solutions yesterday not typical press releases promising a 5 year window... Solar beats nuclear TODAY; jet turbine power can do baseload TODAY. Grid storage solutions exist TODAY. Will the transition cost more? Yes, no matter what you transition to but it needs to start yesterday and ramp up quickly.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Well the ocean fisheries, as far as we can tell. Are decimated. Stocks that are no longer fished are not recovering. We don't know if they can. But the data at this point suggests they can't recover. Ocean fish will not last our lifetime.
So I hope you like jellyfish.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Oh I have about as much proof as you have reading comprehension skills. Yes you're right zero. You also seem to have missed about the fact that I wasn't talking about using thorium as a fuel source. I was talking about tried and built reactors incorporating passively safe design using classical uranium as a fuel source or even breeding out the waste from previous generations.
Maybe actually type some of the reactors I mentioned into Google like the AP1000 and you'd realise that.
In the mean time the one thing that thorium reactors have going for them is that they are actively researched, and not only researched as nuclear fusion is researched but rather they are at the design stage as the principles of operation are both well understood and achievable with today's and even yesterday's technology. Hell a common CANDU reactor with a slight modification can run on thorium though it doesn't have the advantages of the LFTR that are being researched currently.
I've never been against reprocessing spent fuel instead of storing it; I've not seen the numbers on this being effective but I believe that Carter banned it for safety reasons and if there wasn't anything else to it then it wouldn't have stayed after the industry ran out of new fuel some time ago (they import it now, or get it from discarded bombs.)
I don't care about passive "safe" designs. Retrofits that cost less than 1 billion (new plant) might be of interest. The error rate is not good enough; melt downs are NOT the only problems. Solving 1 problem doesn't fix everything. PR is the only really competent skill we seem to have. COST is also a problem, is it practical to spend more on nuke power when Solar is cheaper TODAY? The 10 years it takes to build one of those new $1 billion plants, solar will be much cheaper and likely with grid storage or baseline from other sources. We have jet turbines today that burn gas some use biogas and they start up extremely quickly - they don't have huge lag times... nor do they require massive corporate welfare during their whole existence.
BTW, IAEA is also the industry advocate. I wonder how long tobacco could have gone if the FDA was run by them.
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