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Fukushima Cleanup, 5 Years On (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: Today is five years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, leading to a series of meltdowns. Nearly half a million people were evacuated at the time, with 100,000 still unable to return to their homes. The government has set a goal of 20mSv/year before people are allowed to live in affected areas again, and while progress is being made hotspots are still a problem in many areas. Reconstruction has been largely waiting for decontamination to be completed, allowing homes and businesses to fall into ruin. Those who do wish to return find their communities gutted, with essential services and jobs gone. Meanwhile, engineers are still unable to determine exactly what happened at Daiichi, particularly what saved reactor 2's pressure vessel from exploding. The initial reports were scary even before the nuclear plant problems were evident. Engadget notes that even now, the worst part of the cleanup remains a grueling work in progress, tough even for robots. Reader the_newsbeagle writes, too, with a link to the New York Times' take on the 5-year mark, and notes that The state and location of the melted fuel inside the reactors is still a mystery. The meltdown zone is too dangerous for human workers to enter, and robots have had limited success navigating in the wreckage. So Japan is recruiting subatomic particles called muons to map the reactors' insides. These particles, born of cosmic rays, constantly stream down from the atmosphere, passing through most matter unimpeded. But their occasional interactions with the subatomic components of uranium allow physicists to locate the blobs of the deadly stuff.
what saved reactor 2's pressure vessel from exploding?
I'd suspect it was the same that saved reactor 1, 3 and 4's pressure vessels from exploding.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I watched this on NHK this weekend and was very impressed. A bit dramatic but very informative technically
88 Hours - The Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld...
A small amount of nuclear contamination in exchange for saving millions of tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere and a lesson in how to prevent this ever from happening again is a good trade, imo.
I agree. Especially when you consider that far more people have had, and will have, serious health problems (including cancers) from all the coal-fired power plants used in Japan than from this incident.
And while the trigger was the earthquake and tsunami, the failure was purely human in nature- poor planning, stupidity, etc. When it comes to coal power, the solutions are not nearly so well known or easily implemented.
I was assured by the Slashdot elite, even weeks on from the earthquake/tsunami, that there had been no meltdown nor even any kind of breach of the nuclear fuel at all and to say otherwise was a tinfoil-hat-tier conspiracy.
This is shocking to hear of a meltdown today!
Your brainpower must be exceedingly limited if you don't understand the length of time and scope of problem that a nuclear meltdown poses to the environment versus some "carbon", that arguably does or does not have a limited effect solely on the climate of the planet.
I doubt that the thousands of people evacuated from their homes and businesses for the last 5 years and continuing in the future for a while yet would agree.
It was an unnecessary lesson, given that other nuclear power plants in the same area survived the tsunami just fine because they were properly prepared: they built tsunami walls high enough to handle historical tsunami, plus a bit more as a safety factor. Even as there were warnings in the 2000s that the protection was inadequate at Fukushima the management there didn't improve the situation. This is a trade-off that never should have been necessary. Tepco was simply too cheap to head the lessons already learned by others, and now the government and the people are on the hook to the tune of billions of dollars.
The only lesson learned here is not to trust a for-profit business to do the right thing when safety costs them money. It needs substantial oversight to make sure they don't cut corners.
Indeed. The main reason is that pressure vessles don't just explode.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The problem here was continuing to use old designs of nuclear power station well beyond their sell-by date.
Nobody would advocate using a 40 year old car on the roads. Yet we persist with extending the life of nuclear reactors - clearly into danger territory.
If this reactor had been shutdown and encased on schedule and a new one built using more up to date techniques, then perhaps the issues with it would have been much less.
We have need of wood.
that's what she said
Reactor 1, 3, and 4 never had a sudden massive pressure excursion which appeared to drop off for reasons either unknown or not revealed.
You do realize this is actually killing off an entire ocean right?
No, I don't realise that. Whatever makes you think that's the case?
You do realize eating ANYTHING from the Pacific Ocean is very very risky... right?
No, I don't realise that because it's not true.
Half of Japan should have been, and still be, evacuated
If that's the case, I'm sure you can tell me what the average excess dose in mSv/yr in the half of Japan that ought to be evacuated? I mean you'd never make such a wild claim without knowing the numbers, right?
Carbon doesn't continue to react outside of the reactor leaking gamma and beta rays
By reaction, you mean decay right? Coal ash has decaying radioactive elements in it too, by the way.
yes, the same ones that made the Hulk
I hate to break it to you, but the Hulk isn't real.
Carbon doesn't cause mutations and cancers,
Certain allotropes of carbon are in fact strongly suspected to be carcinogenic.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I always love how the chief argument on /. for continuing the use pf nuclear power use into eternity entails holding people hostage with the mediocrity of coal-burning and its waste. Is the argument that we're stuck with nuclear due to how crappy the alternatives are, supposed to reassure me?
Oddly, the meltdown may be good for the environment. The meltdown has created regions that a bad for humans and may be good for nature. Overfishing in the hot zones is no longer an issue...
Sounds as if they had hired slashdot's own mdsolar to write the article.
When I was I high school in Ontario in the mid-90s, we got a presentation by a gentleman from the AECB (now renamed CNSC), the Canadian nuclear regulator. He passed a hefty chunk of uranium ore around the school auditorium. Every student got to hold it. Yet, I'm still here to tell about it, and just fine (other than having become a slashdot poster), and I have no concerns about my former classmates, either. Why? Becase playing with that chunk of uranium increased our overall environmental exposure to radiation imperceptibly.
Uranium can be deadly in the long run if you eat it, breathe in uranium dust, or put on a night face lotion laced with a good amount. Aside from that, it's only critical amounts of it, and the byproducts of uranium, that are deadly. The sly wording of the author, though, is intended to associate uranium with death in a general sense, and is FUD that reveals his bias.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
It's also with noting now close it came to being far, far worse.
Number 2 rector was building up pressure and the operators were unable to relieve it. The valves seemed to be stuck, even after they got emergency battery power to them. The containment vessel was over its design limit for pressure. Then suddenly the pressure fell, and no-one knows why.
Had the reactor containment vessel failed, the worst case was the loss of Eastern Japan. Hopefully one day we can find out what saved the country.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The other reactors were vented. They had a venting system that passed the contaminated air through water before releasing it. The water cleaned it much of the contamination, but not all, and now they have massive amounts of highly contaminated water to deal with.
They had to send people in to connect up emergency battery power to activate the vents. Those are the people who got the biggest dose of radiation, and who saved Eastern Japan.
For some reason the venting system in reactor two didn't work. The water level was low, but due to the severity of losing the containment vessel they decided to vent anyway. That didn't work either. Then at the last moment, with the vessel way beyond design limits, something happened and the pressure dropped.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Indeed. Coal Ash is more radioactive than actual nuclear waste.. In fact, significant amounts of both uranium and thorium are found in coal fly ash, to the point, in some cases, Thorium Reactor advocates have suggested there's more generate-able power if the Thorium was used in a reactor, than was generated by burning the coal. I've seen no numbers to back that up, but it seems plausible, based on back-of-the envelope numbers. . .
http://www.sfgate.com/health/a...
Had the reactor containment vessel failed, the worst case was the loss of Eastern Japan. Hopefully one day we can find out what saved the country.
It's not that mysterious. For example, according to this report, the pressure release of Reactor 2 is unexplained, but they weren't close to blowing out the pressure vessel:
The containment pressure rise at first was much slower than should be expected if all the decay heat is delivered to the suppression pool, which is an indication of a leak in the containment boundary. The wetwell venting line configuration had been completed by 11:00 a.m. on March 13, but the containment pressure had not reached the rupture disk setpoint, so no venting occurred. After core damage, the containment pressure increased more rapidly, probably because of hydrogen production. At 6:00 a.m. on March 15, an impulsive sound that was initially attributed to a hydrogen explosion was confirmed near the suppression chamber of the containment. Later reviews suggested that sound was not due to hydrogen burn. In any case the containment pressure did sharply decrease. It is not clear whether the designed vent path was ever in service; however, longer term, the containment pressure has remained low, around the level of atmospheric pressure.
In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture and that the vessel was leaking enough that it might not have even reached a high enough pressure to break the rupture disk.
Number 2 rector was building up pressure and the operators were unable to relieve it. The valves seemed to be stuck, even after they got emergency battery power to them. The containment vessel was over its design limit for pressure. Then suddenly the pressure fell, and no-one knows why.
Oh they know why. But they don't think the world is ready to hear about that big ass lizard that took a bite out of the containment vessel and absorbed the radiation.
So you have some links I can read? I'm finding it somewhat difficult to get any details about this event.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This quake was the fourth largest in measurement history, one of the rare magnitude 9 earthquakes. It was thought this area would max out at a mid 8 from historical earthquakes and estimation of the maximum potential fault break size. But what happened is three fault segments broke in quick succession, creating a super quake.
A similar thing happened in Sichuan China a few years earlier. Three faults broke making a quake larger than anticipated.
So seismologists are revising their ideas about California faults. Perhaps multiple faults could break together, creating a quake larger than any measured int he past 2000 years.
It's a problem of culture, not physics. Most of us feel safe flying despite knowing that about once a year, somewhere in the world, a planeload of about 200-300 people will be lost. Furthermore, those who do fear flying just keep quiet and take the train. You never see them protesting around airports or filing suits to prevent Boeing from building the next model. I used to explain this as aviation being grandfathered in before the liberal fear factory decided to start hating science, but recently we have seen them start a campaign against vaccination, which has been settled medicine for two hundred years.
Chernobyl was an explosive event, yes, but considerably less than fukishima on all honest accounts
That is a demonstrably false statement.
Do you even know what happened at Chernobyl?
Once on a tour of the Nevada Test Site I got to handle a chunk of pure U-238. Dark gray, the size of a common brick and insanely heavy. They use it for shielding.
Yea.. oversight. Like how the oversight of the Mines and Mineral Service here in the states prevented the British Petroleum disaster that spewed oil into the gulf for weeks. I'll take profit motive over a government agency's oversight any day, the odds are better. At least the company has a motivator, the government bureaucrats are just biding their time until they can pension out.
There is nothing wrong with having a nuclear reactor in this region. It just needs to be built to fail-safe. This plant in particular was not appropriately built to that standard.
And honestly, if there was a 500 foot tsunami, Japan's going to have other things to worry about. I mean, yeah the homes all around will be irradiated, but since they will have been flattened already and anyone left inside dead, irradiation of their dead bodies is probably just going to slow down decomposition at that point.
I keep hearing about the contaminated water in Japan but I'd like to know what's in it to get an idea of the problem this poses.
If the problem is heavy hydrogen then I suspect the problem will resolve itself before anyone gets around to processing the water. Some stuff like cesium and strontium are quite deadly but that is also what makes them valuable. There might be money to be made in "mining" this water for valuable radiation sources like that, for things like cancer treatments and disinfecting food.
Just how radioactive is this stuff? Couldn't we just fill an old oil tanker with this water, seal it up tight, then flood the outer hull and watch it sink into a deep sea subduction zone?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Sorry to break it to you, but you're the one who doesn't seem to grasp the problem.
If you're talking about coal powerplants vs nukes, the correct metrics isn't brainpower, but "deaths per PWh".
And coal is many orders of magnitude deadlier than nuclear power, even with Tchernobyl and Fukushima.
Global warming isn't the only negative impact of coal powerplants : miners are dying in the thousands per year, in China alone (another example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...), and air pollution is alarmingly high close to the powerplant, even with good filters.
A coal powerplant in Japan or Germany also has an high impact on people in Sudan, Syria or Tuvalu due to climate change.
The impact of Fukushima is pretty much limited to the Fukushima region.
Sorry for the forbes link, but this article really is relevant to the discussion : http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
Sigh.
It's like talking to a brick wall about how a factor 9 quake accompanied with a 500 foot tall tsunami is going to crush it and then sweep all the bricks onto the top of the hill it can see in the distance.
"oh no," says the wall, "I will never suffer that circumstance!"
And yet the world has seen many such brick walls rendered into smoking rubble and the bricks put on top of many distant hills.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Here are photos and an article in National Geographic from the massive quake and tsunami in the same area in 1896. Almost 27,000 people were killed and a tsunami was reported as high as 50 feet.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic....
The excuse that the tsunami was unprecedented and a "once in a 1,000- year event" is false.
The take away for me after five years is that it was criminally incompetent to not have planned for the possibility of a similar event so recent that there are photographs of it.
The engineers involved in the construction and operation should be in prison.
Disclaimer: I have a BSME with a Nuclear option, and I should be in prison if I had anything to do with the plant. I also live within 90 miles of the plant and remember thinking that I was in serious jeopardy when I saw a helicopter dropping water onto the stored fuel rods on TV. When the helicopters come out, it's the last straw.
Neither continue AGW business as usual, nor use more nuke. Those aren't our two only and sole choices.
In the long run, you're correct.
In the minor, you're correct.
In the short run major, you're wrong. For the rest of the 21st Century, Coal/Oil/Natural Gas/Nuclear are likely to be the primary 4 power sources for humans on Earth.
Yes, Wind and Solar will slowly go up as a global percentage, but not by enough to really move the needle.
So what do you prefer, Carbon or Nuclear?
Stop lying, there was no such thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You miss the point. Ignore the CO2 and all the "traditional" pollutants (particulates, VOCs, SOx, NOx, etc.) completely. Forget about it; it's irrelevant for the purpose of this post. We're not talking about carbon, or any of the rest of those, at all. Got it?
Okay. Now, understand this: even then, coal-fired plants are still worse because they collectively release more radiation per MWh in normal operation than nuclear plants have done, even including meltdowns!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture
This seemed wrong to me, since the RPV in Unit 2 was already breached. I believe AmiMoJo was talking about is pressure in the the primary containment vessel (PCV), not the RPV. Just to be clear the reactor core is inside the metal RPV and the RPV is inside the reinforced concrete PCV. The in the Mark 1 reactor design the PCV is the outer wall of the "dry well".
I also looked up some design diagrams for the venting system. While venting system rupture disk is indeed designed to protect the PCV it is not built into the PCV itself. Operators have to open two sets of valves in order to transfer pressure from inside the PCV to the disk. So while it's true the purpose of the rupture disk is to prevent catastrophic failure, that can only happen if the venting system is activated and works as expected.
Now the report you linked to is four years old and assumes that the venting system worked correctly, delivering overpressure to the the rupture disk. AmiMoJo is referring to evidence which came out later which indicates that the venting system almost certainly failed.
In a way I do agree with you. It's not mysterious why the PCV didn't explode; it didn't explode because it failed in some other, unknown way. Under the circumstances that was a very good thing in comparison to the alternative, but it takes a rather determined optimism to construe it as an endorsement of the reactor's design. It was more like a stroke of good luck.
This article has both a detailed diagram of the Oyster Creek reactor, which is the same design, and a schematic of the venting system.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think I prefer the deaths from other forms of power than this complete evacuation for years at a time.
Well, just fucking build it above 500 ft and put base isolators under it, then!
The issue is not that we "cant" build nuclear power plants that are safe; the issue is that we stupidly chose not to.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
To the extent that's true, it's true mostly because of mercury contamination produced form coal-fired power plants, not radioactive particles from Fukushima.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The issue is not that we "cant" build nuclear power plants that are safe; the issue is that we stupidly chose not to.
But that's how humanity works. When is the last time you heard of a leak at a chip fab? You don't, because they have double-walled pipes and detectors. We could build oil pipelines that way, but it would cost money, and that money is better spent on yachts and hookers and blow
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was more commenting on the point that you are talking about a 500 foot tall tsunami. The one that happened at Fukushima was only 49 ft tall. A tsunami ten times that size would inflict so much damage that I doubt you could do much to realistically mitigate that. But a 500 ft wave is unknown in human history. The tallest wave known was 100 ft tall at Lituya Bay in 1958.
It's not about whether it could happen, because its probably not impossible. However there is an assessment of risk that has to happen here.
Are you going to suggest that nuclear power is unsafe because it might fail in circumstances that have not been seen in all of history? You might as well suggest that it might have a reactor meltdown if it was hit by a meteor large enough to touch off an extinction event. At that point, who cares? We're all dead anyway. If anyone lives long enough to die of cancer from a busted nuclear plant 30 years after that, they probably lived a charmed life.
The 170,000 killed during the collapse of the Banqiao dam and related dams may disagree with you.
That one disaster killed far more people than every nuclear power accident combined.
The cause was simple - a hurricane stalled over the area dam, dumping a year's worth of rain in a day. Banqiao, a hydroelectric dam, was the most notable dam to fail, but not the only one. The death toll was in the six figures, and millions were made homeless.
Are you saying that the people who run chip fabs do not like yachts or hookers? Because I'm guessing that's probably not it. There is probably a difference in the situations which is more likely to be the reason.
I'm not saying that energy company execs are innocent, I'm just wondering how chip fab execs are somehow different. I'm guessing that they aren't, they just don't have the same risks to deal with. That or they hide their problems better.
Now, if they are better, we should recruit fab execs to run oil companies and nuclear plants. Problem solved.
Actually, depending on what variety of coal is used, and the specific origin of that coal, the mass of coal required for a power plant of a given size puts out between 5 and 10 times the mass of radioactive particles that a nuclear plant of the same output would, if it melted down entirely and completely vented. Similarly, on energetics of the particles, we're again talking roughly an order of magnitude of energy released by those particles, over a year. It's merely diffused over space and time from a point even like a reactor accident, and much is stored as fly ash. Which would have gone to the Yucca Mountain storage facility, but instead, sits in drums outside of coal power plants.
Are you saying that the people who run chip fabs do not like yachts or hookers? Because I'm guessing that's probably not it. There is probably a difference in the situations which is more likely to be the reason.
Yep. Here it is: If you kill a bunch of educated engineers, you may be held personally accountable. If you poison the land for decades (or longer) into the future, you will probably get away with it. QED, the difference is accountability.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is an NHK documentary called 88 Hours, that's pretty good. See if it is available where you live.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In a way I do agree with you. It's not mysterious why the PCV didn't explode; it didn't explode because it failed in some other, unknown way. Under the circumstances that was a very good thing in comparison to the alternative, but it takes a rather determined optimism to construe it as an endorsement of the reactor's design. It was more like a stroke of good luck.
Or that one or more components were designed to fail first. Or that the part of the PCV which was overpressurized (the "dry well") eventually vented to the part that wasn't (the "wet well"). I'm still hearing way too much assumption about what normal operation during a core melt is supposed to be. I know that if I were designing this thing, I'd have most plumbing passing through the shell of the PCV fail first (especially anything for venting the interior of the PCV).
I'll go one better. I have a small chip of uranium ore in my desk drawer right this very moment. I got it to test a geiger counter gizmo I got for testing whether old watches I was working on had radium pigment. Naturally I had to make sure the thing works before I trusted a "normal" reading.
I'm not afraid of handling this bit of ore, not in the least. But I wouldn't feel the same about handling the same amount of refined fuel, or the random by-products of a reactor disaster. Clearly I'm not radiation phobic, but extrapolating from the safety of handling ore to the products of a reactor accident is just plain stupid.
I'd have no fear of wearing a watch with radium pigment by the way; I've measured the radiation from them and what you get, even on the face of the watch, isn't a big concern especially if you don't wear it every day; maybe 3x background radiation in my neck of the woods. But I don't work on old radium watches because the binder in the pigment breaks down. If you open the case it'll release radium dust into the room. Would I freak out if I opened a radium watch by accident? No, I just wouldn't voluntarily put myself in that situation. There's a world of difference between carrying around intact radium pigment in a sealed case and breathing loose radium dust, just like there's no comparison between handling a piece of low grade uranium ore and exposing yourself to a radiological disaster.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The report doesn't contradict what I said, it agrees with it. The pressure was very high, beyond the limit at which the reactor was designed to operate or sustain for long. Not quite high enough to force open the final emergency rupture points that were designed to fail first to avoid an even more catastrophic explosion.
What you have to remember is that the containment building was already damaged at this point. The explosion of building 1 had put holes in it, which happened to vent hydrogen and prevent yet another explosion. But if the containment vessel failed, there was no building to prevent the contents getting out. Thus half of Japan was at risk, due to the amount of material in the reactor that would enter the atmosphere.
There is an NHK documentary called 88 Hours that explains all this pretty well, see if you can track it down.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
To clarify, the reactor vessel is designed to fail in a somewhat less severe way than simply exploding. There are points that are designed to fail first and vent the high pressure gas inside, into the containment building. However, in this case the containment building already had holes in it from explosions of other nearby containment buildings, so it would have been venting into the atmosphere.
So yeah, no explosion as such, but a massive disaster anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, that's how I would do it too, but it's evidently not how this particular reactor was designed back in the 50s. If the reactor failed in any kind of planned way, we'd have some idea what that was. What we're learning is that we don't have any idea how this particular design behaves when it's operating outside its normal operating envelope.
I think it's important to stipulate I'm talking about this design. You can't really talk about the "safety of nuclear power plants" as if all designs are the same. Clearly the old Soviet RBMKs are dangerous pieces of shite; and concerns about the GE Mark 1s were raised all the way back in the early 70s. Fukushima, in my opinion, probably means it's a high priority not to extend the operational licensing of any Mark 1s. That doesn't necessarily mean the Germans should shut down reactors whose design is 20 years newer. And it certainly doesn't mean Japan should shut down it's brand new Gen 3 reactors it just put into service, although maybe they should look at how those plants are managed and sited.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This quake was the fourth largest in measurement history, one of the rare magnitude 9 earthquakes.
The mag 9 quake was 450 miles away, I believe 'natucal miles' even.
At the plant side the quake was roughly mag 6.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, it's not good for the environment, except relatively, in that humans are so incredibly bad anyway.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Leslie Corrice's Hiroshima Syndrome is the best all-round source. Corrice's site is an amazing work, he has collected into one place facts as they became known, and news coverage of the events. He is particularly attuned to distortions, exaggerations and certain scenarios that have been delivered to the press chosen for their dramatic description despite a laughably low probably. And unlike just about everyone else, he strives to segregate his news reporting from his own commentary.
Some no-hype and anti-hype information sources compiled by The Actinide Age,
What actually happened, written clearly by a radiation professional and teacher, Les Corrice ... Putting Health Risks from Radiation Exposure into Context: Lessons from Past Accidents Professor Geraldine Thomas, Imperial College London, April 2011 ... Also quoted in New Scientist ... The D-shuttle project comparing negligible radiation doses internationally in 2014, and its published open access paper ... Real-time radiation monitoring network for Japan. See if you can find a reading higher than this ... Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (all below detection limit in 2012) ... in Proceedings of the Japan Academy ... Radiation dose rates now and in the future for residents neighboring restricted areas (after 2012, will not cause detectable health impacts) ... in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... Will Boisvert confirms that wild claims of Japanese thyroid cancers in 2015 are based on bad science. Dr Jonathan Kellogg summarises the academic criticism ... Tim Worstall confirms that wild claims of a single Tepco worker developing radiation cancer is mere anti-nuclear opportunism ... Articles on the mental health impacts of long term evacuation in Medical News Today and Tech Times, and the cited 2015 Lancet study ... Ocean contamination in 2012(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and in 2015(Scientific Reports) --- already comparable to natural radioactivity ...
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
500ft, far out, it always sounds scarier in US units. :)
I'm pretty sure that wave that killed Patrick Swayze in Point Break was nowhere near 150m.
Try reading the historical records from Japan or China sometime. Or the stories collected from the native population of the Pacific Coastal regions.
It's not as scary as you think. It's just what happens.
Your problem is you don't have back entrances to the unpublished Chinese and Japanese documents that haven't been published in English. In medicine, for example, that's about 4/5th of all the research that has been done.
History didn't start in 1066. Or AD 0. It started many thousands of years ago, way before non-Asian cultures developed written languages.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Many discussions of nuclear power on slashdot are polluted by references to completely bogus calculations at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory web site that claim that coal power plants emit more radiation into the environment than nuclear power plants. This is completely bogus because when coal is burned, the uranium within it remains in the ash and its concentration is no greater than in typical low carbon soils. You might as well say that a bulldozer pushing clay soil around is releasing radiation into the environment. Why? Because the uranium in coal comes from the soil out of which the primaeval forest grew. When the coal is burned, you just get the soil components back."
Fossil fuel use cuts our internal radiation burden. http://slashdot.org/journal/27...
It took some work but I read (and properly parsed - I think) their post, not once but twice. I've decided that it has to be trolling. Seriously... It has to be.
I don't know a whole lot about nuclear energy but I've taken the time to learn the basics. I know what to do with the three cookies, I know how safe they are (or can be), I understand the mechanics and process well enough, and I know what half-life means. I'm pretty sure they're intentionally trolling. What's curious is that I'm using an alternative browser at the moment so that I see they're a Facebook user. Who'd tie intentional trolling to their account?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It was not *technically* mine but was my older brother's - though I later purloined it, sometime in the mid-1960s. I don't know what ever happened to it. He had (and then I had) a chemistry set or something along those lines. In that set was uranium - I have no idea what for as the manual had long-since been lost. It had a small Geiger counter but I don't think that came with the set.
I'm remarkably healthy for my age but I never developed super-powers. I don't know for certain but, given that we were kids, presumably it was put in a mouth at one point or another. "Here, lick this. I double-dare you!"
Come to think of it, I'm kind of surprised we lived to be adults. I'm pretty sure my parents would be in prison and us kids wards of the State if they let us do some of that stuff today. We distinctly, with concerted effort, tried to make things blow up, be eaten away, smoke, emit fumes, spark, or otherwise frighten our mother.
Yeah, we'd be wards of the State. We used to have molds and melt our own tin soldiers. We had firearms and knives. We climbed to ungodly heights - often jumping off those lofty perches. We broke bones. We actually had a fight with frozen crab apples that had partially thawed out, it was awesome. I got pneumonia and puked in his boot, that was awesome too. Oh, I once beat the ever living hell out of him using nothing but a Queen Anne's Lace (a flower with a vine-like stalk that makes a fine impromptu whip) but that's because he did something to one of my Tonka trucks but I'll be damned if I remember what. Oh, they were made out of metal.
Yeah, we'd be in foster care today.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's a problem of culture, not physics. Most of us feel safe flying despite knowing that about once a year, somewhere in the world, a planeload of about 200-300 people will be lost.
I'd argue that it's actually the opposite. Many of us fear flying despite it being generally the safest mode of travel, to the point that you're far more likely to die on the drive TO the airport than on the flight.
The damage from coal is steady and persistent, and therefore we come to ignore it. The damage from nuclear power is approximately once every couple decades, so we fear it. Much like how car accidents trickle in the deaths in 1-2s, normally speaking, so we never hear about them - but we certainly hear about that plane - day in and day out, for weeks, and they bring it up again at the anniversary of the accident, just to pound it in more.
Having run the numbers, we'd have to have such a disaster every year, using the mid-high estimates for the deaths from Chernobyl(which are mostly theoretical even today), in order to even start challenging the death toll from coal with nuclear energy.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm not afraid of handling this bit of ore, not in the least. But I wouldn't feel the same about handling the same amount of refined fuel, or the random by-products of a reactor disaster.
Refined fuel is fine. They handle it with cotton gloves - mostly to keep the oils in their hands off the expensive metal stuff.
Random stuff from a reactor disaster? I'm with you.
I don't read AC A human right
Seriously, we need NEW reactors to replace the old ones. With gen IV, we can even burn up the old waste and even use it to clean coal waste.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
assuming that you are American, we now have ACA and you can get back on your lithium.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Coal plants in first world nations don't release radiation. ... and the ash js not more 'radioactive' than pure uranium or pure thorium, how could it?
In other words, the general public never gets into contact with it.
The fly ash js deposited
The idea that coal plants are irradiation the population js debunked since thirty years.
Or to say it with words you understand: a coal plant with all its radioactive ash (most plants don't even produce radioactive ash as there is no uranium or thorium in the coal) release less radiation than an open pit mine for Uranium. OOPS!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
For the rest of the 21st Century, Coal/Oil/Natural Gas/Nuclear are likely to be the primary 4 power sources for humans on Earth.
That is extremely unlikely as basically every nation that is building new plants is focusing on wind and solar: they are cheaper.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That is extremely unlikely as basically every nation that is building new plants is focusing on wind and solar: they are cheaper.
Saying that doesn't make it true. Wishing it doesn't make it true. Hoping for it doesn't make it true.
Let me know when you wake up to reality, then we can have an adult conversation about this.
Why don't you google and read some links and get an education?
Can't be so hard.
Seems you are actually not interested in the topic besides spreading your ten or twenty years old information which is in our days disinformation.
Wind and solar is right now cheaper in production costs per kWh than nuclear. Well known and widely spread on /. since months if not years. And significantly more cheaper than coal etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why don't you google and read some links and get an education?
Why don't you... I posted a reply to your last comment showing you why you're wrong...
Wind and solar is right now cheaper in production costs per kWh than nuclear.
That is probably true for new production... But all are more expensive than coal/oil/natural gas...
I have a choice in my power... 7 cents for coal power or 10 cents for wind power, and the wind power is subsidized by the government here. Texas is the largest producer of wind in the US, we have spent billions making that happen.
You are an silly american. That is your problem.
Wind power production COSTS like 3.5 cents per kWh. Coal power costs 4.3 cents. nucear is clsoe to 10, depends on whom you ask.
We are talking about production costs here. Not about market prices.
If you can not even get decent prices with subsidizing than this is your stupid way of life, regulations, government, lobbies, or what ever you want to blame.
Point is: building up a new 1GW wind plant is cheaper than a 1GW nuclear or coal plant. Producing 1GWh of power with wind is cheaper than producing it with coal or nuclear.
What you pay is a complete different story. And your american political/social problems are luckily not bothering the rest of the world.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers tested this type of reactor (without fuel in it) and found that it leaks at 70psi. This was the first critical design basis issue. The second was the gate pair seals for the spent fuel pools would leak if they were not powered (IIUC they're inflated with compressed air). What this meant was that GE had to issue instructions to operators. S class facilities have to be constantly powered, this means the reactor and the spent fuel cooling pools. Means *had* to be provided for the reactor to always have power. They didn't and this is why this is criminal negligence at a board room level.
Exposure of these basis design issues meant that as the fuel became more critical in the reactor and the cooling pools they would produce the hydrogen that lead to the explosion. We knowthe spent fuel cool pools were leaking because there was about 450 tons of water above the fuel rods would keep them cool for about 7 days without additional cooling.
I have a theory about that. I think that the failing cooling pool is what stopped the reactor from rupturing. The water either broke the seal all at once or over came some threshold to arrive at the head of the reactor where most of it was converted to steam and hydrogen when exploding. It wouldn't have been the first time something some comedy of circumstance prevented a nuclear accident from being worse than it could have been.
I don't think these nutty nukkers place any value on the communities that Nuclear power destroys.
Thank you, I'll look it up. Great scoop btw - a pity I was too busy to get into this one.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This is absolute total fucking bullshit!
I can only assume that you're referring to a Scientific American article that says that a coal powered plant emits a hundred times than the amount of radiation of a RUNNING nuclear plant; that's a RUNNING plant, not one that has lost its containment when it melted down. When a nuclear reactor melts down, the amount of radiation emitted jumps about a MILLION fold; and then takes decades, or longer, to decay away.
But don't take my word for it, here's the article:
http://www.scientificamerican....
The articles just says that the absorbed dose of someone living within a mile or so downwind of a coal plant is about 1.8 mrem/year, compared to 300 mrem/year of natural background radiation. After a meltdown the levels at that distance can be more than 300mrem/year just from the reactor. It will decay away over time, but it can still be well above acceptable limits hundreds of years later.
There's just absolutely no way at all that the total output of the coal plant could ever reach that of melted down nuclear reactor, let alone being a hundred times more. You're just totally full of it.
There's plenty of reasons to shut down coal plants, mercury, small particle air pollution, acid rain, CO2 etc. etc. Radiation just isn't one of them. The radiation is very dilute and far, far below background radiation. Dilute radiation is largely (but non completely) non problematic; we're surrounded by dilute background radiation anyway. it's the fallout from meltdowns that causes mass evacuations and all farming to cease. That's the real problem, and it's specific to nuclear accidents.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Interestingly enough, apparently TEPCO was planning on beefing up the safety measures later that month. The earthquake just happened first.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture and that the vessel was leaking enough that it might not have even reached a high enough pressure to break the rupture disk.
Interesting, perhaps you found the ASME report. As I said to you before that was the first design basis issue in implementations of that GE reactor, it started leaking at 70psi.
I know that if I were designing this thing, I'd have most plumbing passing through the shell of the PCV fail first (especially anything for venting the interior of the PCV).
If you were designing this, you would be sperm ;)
Or that one or more components were designed to fail first. Or that the part of the PCV which was overpressurized (the "dry well") eventually vented to the part that wasn't (the "wet well").
Or perhaps the gate pair seals for the spent fuel cooling pools in this reactor were situated in such a way that they leaked water over the top of the PCV. This was the second known design basis issue with this reactor type and that they would leak water when power was lost. It was also known that they would produce hydrogen in this state, and it did explode. The hydrogen density must have been high to puch holes in concrete like that.
However it is all irrelevant, the operators were criminally negligent because they did not take adequate steps to ensure power was maintained to this reactor installation so as to avoid exposing those issues. There is no mystery here. The collusion you yourself complained of, that was exposed in the official report into the accident, that led to the accident. Sea wall was not raised to account for new knowledge, additional generators could have been installed, they could have run those reactor at a lower output. So many opportunities to avoid this accident.
As for your unsubstantiated claims that the facility was to be decommissioned, evidence is emerging that Reactor 4 was actually being upgraded along with disturbing allegations of illegal fuel rod storage. That really undermines your argument that seawall upgrades wern't neccessary. On the good news front though I see that the amount of mox fuel rods in the No.4 reactors are down from 1300 to 400 and we are finally seeing the board of Tepco being brought to justice after avoiding charges of negligence for so long.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Correction: The amount of mox fuel rods in the No.4 reactor's cooling pools are down from 1300 to 400
My ism, it's full of beliefs.