The hydrogen explosion was only a small one - well before the large amount of hydrogen accumulated from the reaction between the hot zirconium fuel rod cladding and the cooling water. The thing that kept it from being devastating was that conditions changed where it didn't ignite. Things was, at the time, officials didn't know if it would or wouldn't and they were very scared.
You can also say that there weren't any problems from the TMI accident - unless you consider 40,000 curies of radioactive krypton released to the atmosphere minor. It certainly wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, but 40,000 curies is a lot.
And Homeland Security is right about reactors being targets. That big ole' containment building was designed before people actually used aircraft as weapons. They were meant to stop the average airliner - which at the time was slower and smaller than what is out there now. And if you consider the effect that a jetliner, at full speed, and carrying explosives, aimed right at a containment building, odds are good it is going to be a mess - a big mess.
And you conveniently twist the argument about long half lives. It's obvious that long half lives mean less radioactivity. What long half lives also mean is that the radioactivity that is there is there for a long time. And the fission products from each decay of the long half life atoms are generally much shorter half life. You get more radioactivity growing into your sample making it more radioactive than it originally was.
"Nuclear power is just fine. Most of the hot stuff is gone within days to months. That's why reactors can be serviced and/or dismantled within a few months to a few years of being shut down."
Good point. That must be why the Windscale reactor in the UK was still sitting with fuel in it since the 1957 accident until just this year - and decommissioning and cleanup can only now proceed.
I guess 58 years is kind of like a few months or a few years, isn't it?
Not just radioactivity. A lot of the lanthanides and actinides are very poisonous chemically. Even if they don't decay in your body, they displace lots of other elements and then screw up chemical reactions with all sorts of nasty consequences.
These people who like to minimize the danger of radioactivity like alpha and beta by saying it doesn't penetrate the skin, completely disregard the fact that most exposures people in surrounding areas of a nuclear accident will get will be through inhalation and ingestion.
In those circumstances, you can actually be in far more danger from those so-called "safe" forms of radioactivity because the energy is guaranteed to be deposited in the body. A gamma ray or a neutron might not even be absorbed.
And the point about the amount and half life both being important is something else these people gloss over. Even if it takes 10,000 years for half of something to decay, in a reactor there are tons and tons of material to decay and half of that means a buttload of decays are going to occur in 10,000 years.
Then those decay products will also decay, and decay again, and generally, they are even more radioactive than the original uranium or plutonium. Something else people like AKABatman choose to ignore.
One thing about the potassium in our bodies - unless you get the levels seriously out of whack, it won't kill you. Ask Alexander Litvinenko about how much of a radioactive substance it takes to kill you - Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter (you know - the kind you toss about as not being able to penetrate the dead skin on our bodies). Unfortunately 89 nanograms, ingested, is the median lethal dose. Litvinenko's dose was estimated to be 10 micrograms. Not much, is it?
And while it is obvious to anyone versed on the subject that a coal plant belches out far more radioactive material than a properly operating coal plant, when a nuclear plant goes south, it can do it in a big way. TMI let some 40,000 curies of radioactive Krypton out. Chernobyl was far worse and directly killed a lot of people, contaminated a huge area of the Ukrane, and spewed contamination across Europe.
I think it's pretty convenient and disingenuous that you and your other proponents of nuclear power continue to blame every accident on "bad designs". Sure they were bad - but people didn't know they were bad until they failed in various ways - some catastrophically.
Meanwhile, we have other reactors, also bad designs, that continue to operate far past their design lifetimes.
Look, I realize that nuclear power is going to have to be used to bridge between our fossil fuel-based society as we move to renewable sources of energy. It's out today that global climate change is way ahead of schedule and much more drastic than was originally projected as some of the various positive reinforcements kick in. Actually, anyone who has been following climate change probably realizes we are way past being able to stop what is now going to happen. That window of being able to do something has closed and there is too much momentum to do a damn thing about it. Which, basically, makes the arguments about nuclear waste fairly moot.
It was also in the news that grain yields are also declining. There goes the food supply and when people can no longer feed themselves, wars break out. Maybe we'll even see runaway nuclear reactions that are actually designed to be runaway reactions.
All of these arguments your kind puts out that minimize the risk of nuclear power and compare apples and oranges while trying to argue how safe it is - I love the comment about grinding up nuclear waste and spreading it around to make it safer.
I think it is you that needs to understand things better.
Do I really need to be so pedantic as to explain how long the sun will continue to burn and supply the various renewable processes?
And it is news to me that the entire amount of energy used in mining, extracting, and enriching uranium is nuclear. Do we have nuclear-powered mining trucks now?
Uh, it really is dangerous. That's why nuclear power plants are considered terrorist targets.
While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?
And the bigger problem is the cost and various issues with properly sequestering the waste. Using nuclear power is basically like borrowing to run the country - we get the immediate benefit and our children have to pay the price.
Any idea how much it will cost to pay just for the guards to monitor a waste site for 100,000 years or so? I don't think that is factored into the cost of electricity from a nuclear plant, is it?
I don't think the issue with waste has been resolved regardless of how safe the plants themselves may or may not be.
Does it really make sense to have to guard and watch over nuclear waste for thousands of years because we as a society couldn't be bothered to minimize our energy use?
There is no doubt that nuclear energy creates far lower carbon loading than burning fossil fuels. But why aren't we investing wholesale into wind farms, photovoltaics, and other renewable sources instead of just chanting the dril, drill, drill mantra and advocating for more nuclear power plants?
Nuclear only makes sense to help act as a stopgap measure until we can drastically increase our efficiency and use of renewable sources.
Good. It's nice to hear there is a fly in that ointment.
If this country is to build up the number of technical people, it needs to pay them. Companies like Microsoft complain there aren't enough skilled people but by abusing the H1B program, they depress the pay scale, they take jobs away from qualified (but more expensive) Americans, etc.
And with a 20% fraud rate, the H1B program needs an overhaul.
It's funny you think just mentioning I have a hybrid and enjoy not emptying my bank account to fill up is being smug.
So what if it is? While people were out stroking their egos and buying their monster trucks and SUVs, I basically put my life at risk being on the same roads with them. Now that more of them are being driven less because their owners can't afford to feed them, I am significantly safer.
Too many people who drive those pigs don't treat them like the killing machines they are and go blithly down the road, crossing lane markers while talking on their cell phones, putting on makeup, or paying attention to anything except driving.
I've got a Honda Civic Hybrid. And have I ever gotten to love the mileage!
At 75, the mileage drops down to ~45 mpg. I haven't tried extended driving at lower speeds - which you really need to do to get a good handle on mileage so that you average out grade and wind factors.
But the biggest factor affecting my fuel economy was being able to look at the world situation, understand the concept of peak oil, and understand the effect that a developing world would have on existing fuel supplies - which led me to buy high mileage automobiles.
That is why I routinely get mileage in the high 40's to very low 50's.
I believe what the poster meant by "diesel-style" was simply a reference to how the fuel was injected directly into the combustion chamber.
He/she didn't say anything about the heat from extreme compression igniting the fuel on injection.
I would think that unless the engine was really carboned up, with lots of glowing hot spots in the chamber, the gas wouldn't burn until the spark plug fired.
And this junk about some electric device clamped over, or inserted into, the fuel line near an injector -- anything that is on/in the fuel line away from where the fuel is actually atomized (not literally) is not going to have an effect unless it can do something to the fuel that will persist long enough for it to get to the injectors.
If it "thins" the fuel and lowers the viscosity, the electrical device might simply be a heater. That would reduce the viscosity and might allow better atomization/vaporization at the injector, and heated fuel really might stay warm long enough to get through the injector.
It might also be a fire hazard if not properly constructed because the fuel would have to be heated significantly. Then there is the issue with vaporizing the fuel prematurely if it gets too hot but depending on how much pressure the fuel is under, might not be a problem.
My bet is at most it is a heater, which might boost efficiency - especially while the engine is cold. My car has an mpg gauge on it and there is a significant difference in economy between when the engine is cold and when it is warm.
A warm engine will warm the fuel somewhat at the injectors, but this device might provide that warmth during the time before an engine reaches operating temperature. I would still be very suspect of this device whatever it is. If it is some kind of electromagnet, it's junk and a scam.
Dude, we all know there were real fireworks at the opening ceremonies. You don't need to keep telling us that.
And regardless of the reason that the giant firework footprints weren't real, they weren't real. They were faked.
And I don't buy the bit about it being too dangerous for helicopters to film it. With gyroscopic stabilization, telephoto lenses, and electronic stabilization on top of all that, it would seem that the helicopters could have stood off at a safe distance and filmed it.
Regardless of the reason that the footprints were faked, they were faked. Whether it was for safety, expense, or that it just wouldn't be possible to get that uniform of a display using real fireworks.
None of that changes the fact that it was faked. The Chinese also had the cute little girl lip-sync to the vocals of the not as cute little girl. And now they broadcast news and dialog like it was the real thing. It's all manufactured.
And just like children's toys painted with leaded paint, dog food "fortified" with melamine, and milk diluted with water but also fortified with melamine to fake protein levels, the Chinese really are hideous and corrupt.
So you advise ignoring any legal obligations and just doing what you want?
The outcome of this advice could be anything from legal action to loss of funding. Funding will be getting very tight soon and funding agencies will look for anything they can to cut programs. Not abiding by terms of funding contracts could cause this person to lose their funding.
Your advice to keep quiet and do whatever you want and hope nobody notices is very bad advice.
Slashdot Mirror
You guys are really tiring.
The hydrogen explosion was only a small one - well before the large amount of hydrogen accumulated from the reaction between the hot zirconium fuel rod cladding and the cooling water. The thing that kept it from being devastating was that conditions changed where it didn't ignite. Things was, at the time, officials didn't know if it would or wouldn't and they were very scared.
You can also say that there weren't any problems from the TMI accident - unless you consider 40,000 curies of radioactive krypton released to the atmosphere minor. It certainly wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, but 40,000 curies is a lot.
And Homeland Security is right about reactors being targets. That big ole' containment building was designed before people actually used aircraft as weapons. They were meant to stop the average airliner - which at the time was slower and smaller than what is out there now. And if you consider the effect that a jetliner, at full speed, and carrying explosives, aimed right at a containment building, odds are good it is going to be a mess - a big mess.
And you conveniently twist the argument about long half lives. It's obvious that long half lives mean less radioactivity. What long half lives also mean is that the radioactivity that is there is there for a long time. And the fission products from each decay of the long half life atoms are generally much shorter half life. You get more radioactivity growing into your sample making it more radioactive than it originally was.
You do realize that your "logical" answer is completely ludicrous, right?
"Nuclear power is just fine. Most of the hot stuff is gone within days to months. That's why reactors can be serviced and/or dismantled within a few months to a few years of being shut down."
Good point. That must be why the Windscale reactor in the UK was still sitting with fuel in it since the 1957 accident until just this year - and decommissioning and cleanup can only now proceed.
I guess 58 years is kind of like a few months or a few years, isn't it?
Not just radioactivity. A lot of the lanthanides and actinides are very poisonous chemically. Even if they don't decay in your body, they displace lots of other elements and then screw up chemical reactions with all sorts of nasty consequences.
These people who like to minimize the danger of radioactivity like alpha and beta by saying it doesn't penetrate the skin, completely disregard the fact that most exposures people in surrounding areas of a nuclear accident will get will be through inhalation and ingestion.
In those circumstances, you can actually be in far more danger from those so-called "safe" forms of radioactivity because the energy is guaranteed to be deposited in the body. A gamma ray or a neutron might not even be absorbed.
And the point about the amount and half life both being important is something else these people gloss over. Even if it takes 10,000 years for half of something to decay, in a reactor there are tons and tons of material to decay and half of that means a buttload of decays are going to occur in 10,000 years.
Then those decay products will also decay, and decay again, and generally, they are even more radioactive than the original uranium or plutonium. Something else people like AKABatman choose to ignore.
One thing about the potassium in our bodies - unless you get the levels seriously out of whack, it won't kill you. Ask Alexander Litvinenko about how much of a radioactive substance it takes to kill you - Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter (you know - the kind you toss about as not being able to penetrate the dead skin on our bodies). Unfortunately 89 nanograms, ingested, is the median lethal dose. Litvinenko's dose was estimated to be 10 micrograms. Not much, is it?
And while it is obvious to anyone versed on the subject that a coal plant belches out far more radioactive material than a properly operating coal plant, when a nuclear plant goes south, it can do it in a big way. TMI let some 40,000 curies of radioactive Krypton out. Chernobyl was far worse and directly killed a lot of people, contaminated a huge area of the Ukrane, and spewed contamination across Europe.
I think it's pretty convenient and disingenuous that you and your other proponents of nuclear power continue to blame every accident on "bad designs". Sure they were bad - but people didn't know they were bad until they failed in various ways - some catastrophically.
Meanwhile, we have other reactors, also bad designs, that continue to operate far past their design lifetimes.
Look, I realize that nuclear power is going to have to be used to bridge between our fossil fuel-based society as we move to renewable sources of energy. It's out today that global climate change is way ahead of schedule and much more drastic than was originally projected as some of the various positive reinforcements kick in. Actually, anyone who has been following climate change probably realizes we are way past being able to stop what is now going to happen. That window of being able to do something has closed and there is too much momentum to do a damn thing about it. Which, basically, makes the arguments about nuclear waste fairly moot.
It was also in the news that grain yields are also declining. There goes the food supply and when people can no longer feed themselves, wars break out. Maybe we'll even see runaway nuclear reactions that are actually designed to be runaway reactions.
All of these arguments your kind puts out that minimize the risk of nuclear power and compare apples and oranges while trying to argue how safe it is - I love the comment about grinding up nuclear waste and spreading it around to make it safer.
I think it is you that needs to understand things better.
Reprocessing also increases the amount of waste there is to dispose of.
Are you even aware that the uranium used in reactors isn't bomb grade?
Do I really need to be so pedantic as to explain how long the sun will continue to burn and supply the various renewable processes?
And it is news to me that the entire amount of energy used in mining, extracting, and enriching uranium is nuclear. Do we have nuclear-powered mining trucks now?
I see why you posted anonymously.
Uh, it really is dangerous. That's why nuclear power plants are considered terrorist targets.
While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?
And the bigger problem is the cost and various issues with properly sequestering the waste. Using nuclear power is basically like borrowing to run the country - we get the immediate benefit and our children have to pay the price.
Any idea how much it will cost to pay just for the guards to monitor a waste site for 100,000 years or so? I don't think that is factored into the cost of electricity from a nuclear plant, is it?
I don't think the issue with waste has been resolved regardless of how safe the plants themselves may or may not be.
Does it really make sense to have to guard and watch over nuclear waste for thousands of years because we as a society couldn't be bothered to minimize our energy use?
There is no doubt that nuclear energy creates far lower carbon loading than burning fossil fuels. But why aren't we investing wholesale into wind farms, photovoltaics, and other renewable sources instead of just chanting the dril, drill, drill mantra and advocating for more nuclear power plants?
Nuclear only makes sense to help act as a stopgap measure until we can drastically increase our efficiency and use of renewable sources.
It's best, however, when you are laying someone else -- as in "I'm laying your girlfriend." "I got laid by your wife."
Do I get a picture of it and a thank-you letter?
Good. It's nice to hear there is a fly in that ointment.
If this country is to build up the number of technical people, it needs to pay them. Companies like Microsoft complain there aren't enough skilled people but by abusing the H1B program, they depress the pay scale, they take jobs away from qualified (but more expensive) Americans, etc.
And with a 20% fraud rate, the H1B program needs an overhaul.
Don't you get tired of spreading misinformation?
It takes no more energy to make my hybrid than it takes to make any SUV and any extra fuel gets paid back in spades over the life of the car.
It's funny you think just mentioning I have a hybrid and enjoy not emptying my bank account to fill up is being smug.
So what if it is? While people were out stroking their egos and buying their monster trucks and SUVs, I basically put my life at risk being on the same roads with them. Now that more of them are being driven less because their owners can't afford to feed them, I am significantly safer.
Too many people who drive those pigs don't treat them like the killing machines they are and go blithly down the road, crossing lane markers while talking on their cell phones, putting on makeup, or paying attention to anything except driving.
Obama/Biden 2008 - Keep the lipstick off the pig.
I've got a Honda Civic Hybrid. And have I ever gotten to love the mileage!
At 75, the mileage drops down to ~45 mpg. I haven't tried extended driving at lower speeds - which you really need to do to get a good handle on mileage so that you average out grade and wind factors.
But the biggest factor affecting my fuel economy was being able to look at the world situation, understand the concept of peak oil, and understand the effect that a developing world would have on existing fuel supplies - which led me to buy high mileage automobiles.
That is why I routinely get mileage in the high 40's to very low 50's.
So your students will be able to understand their supervisors and employers...
Back in the 1930s...
It's just a God damn piece of paper, isn't it?
At least according to the Worst President Ever .
I believe what the poster meant by "diesel-style" was simply a reference to how the fuel was injected directly into the combustion chamber.
He/she didn't say anything about the heat from extreme compression igniting the fuel on injection.
I would think that unless the engine was really carboned up, with lots of glowing hot spots in the chamber, the gas wouldn't burn until the spark plug fired.
And this junk about some electric device clamped over, or inserted into, the fuel line near an injector -- anything that is on/in the fuel line away from where the fuel is actually atomized (not literally) is not going to have an effect unless it can do something to the fuel that will persist long enough for it to get to the injectors.
If it "thins" the fuel and lowers the viscosity, the electrical device might simply be a heater. That would reduce the viscosity and might allow better atomization/vaporization at the injector, and heated fuel really might stay warm long enough to get through the injector.
It might also be a fire hazard if not properly constructed because the fuel would have to be heated significantly. Then there is the issue with vaporizing the fuel prematurely if it gets too hot but depending on how much pressure the fuel is under, might not be a problem.
My bet is at most it is a heater, which might boost efficiency - especially while the engine is cold. My car has an mpg gauge on it and there is a significant difference in economy between when the engine is cold and when it is warm.
A warm engine will warm the fuel somewhat at the injectors, but this device might provide that warmth during the time before an engine reaches operating temperature. I would still be very suspect of this device whatever it is. If it is some kind of electromagnet, it's junk and a scam.
And we all know the Chinese will fortify their fake moon landing with melamine and antibiotics.
It just works better that way!
Dude, we all know there were real fireworks at the opening ceremonies. You don't need to keep telling us that.
And regardless of the reason that the giant firework footprints weren't real, they weren't real. They were faked.
And I don't buy the bit about it being too dangerous for helicopters to film it. With gyroscopic stabilization, telephoto lenses, and electronic stabilization on top of all that, it would seem that the helicopters could have stood off at a safe distance and filmed it.
Regardless of the reason that the footprints were faked, they were faked. Whether it was for safety, expense, or that it just wouldn't be possible to get that uniform of a display using real fireworks.
None of that changes the fact that it was faked. The Chinese also had the cute little girl lip-sync to the vocals of the not as cute little girl. And now they broadcast news and dialog like it was the real thing. It's all manufactured.
And just like children's toys painted with leaded paint, dog food "fortified" with melamine, and milk diluted with water but also fortified with melamine to fake protein levels, the Chinese really are hideous and corrupt.
Um, if some of the fireworks were CGI, then all of the fireworks weren't real, were they?
You speak in absolutes and then excuse the exceptions. It doesn't work that way.
Most of the fireworks were real, but the featured footstep fireworks were fake. CGI = fake. It's that simple.
So you advise ignoring any legal obligations and just doing what you want?
The outcome of this advice could be anything from legal action to loss of funding. Funding will be getting very tight soon and funding agencies will look for anything they can to cut programs. Not abiding by terms of funding contracts could cause this person to lose their funding.
Your advice to keep quiet and do whatever you want and hope nobody notices is very bad advice.
I am amazed that so few others thought about this.
The submitter is almost certainly under legal obligations of some kind and going out and doing his/her own thing could easily lead to legal trouble.
I just posted the same thing not having seen your post first.
This is excellent advice and people freelancing how they will copyright/license software can lead to big trouble, violations of contract, etc.