The control rods are not graphite (the composition varies across designs, but graphite would not be a usual component, it is a neutron moderator, not a neutron absorber), they are hydraulically actuated (so they have no immediate dependency on electricity to operate), and every reactor of the boiling water type (that was built in that era) uses the underneath geometry.
These reactors don't have concrete containment shields.
And the fact that they are pumping salt water into the steel containment vessels pretty much means they are a loss too. I'm not sure exactly what impact the boric acid they are pumping in has on the future usability of the fuel after reprocessing, but I'm pretty sure the whole idea is to foul the core so that it can no longer go critical.
It seems that the reactors at both of the Fukushima facilities and the Onagawa facility are all offline. Wikipedia has a citation saying that Tokai is shutdown (the reactor is a type that needs cooling for some time after shutdown).
So a lot of nuclear generation is offline, even if it doesn't get to most.
Not that significant. The Fukushima I power plant was supplying something like 2 Gigawatts of power, which is about 10 Nimitz class carriers managing to push all their power onto the grid. Never mind that there are many other generation failures.
Do you have some bizarre notion that other nations offered to beam their electrons at Japan but got turned down?
This doesn't have anything to do with refusing help or not, it has everything to do with large amounts of critical infrastructure being damaged or destroyed.
Hippies scientists are the ones saying that their new designs are safe. The nuclear industry is busy getting license extensions on their existing power plants.
Can someone who understands Japanese please explain if Google translate is mangling the numbers?
(The more recent numbers are reported in nGy/h and there are thousands without separators, older numbers are reported in uSv/h and it is not clear if the numbers like 6.755 uSv/h have a different precision than numbers like 61.8 uSv/h or if they are thousands of uSv/h. The nGy/h numbers at the beginning match up with the precision explanation, which would make AC wrong by 1000X).
It seems pretty likely that the integrity of the reactor in the fuel has been compromised (because of the reports of cesium in the atmosphere), but there hasn't been anything reported that suggests that the steel containment vessel has been compromised, and the intentional venting of steam from within the containment vessel (to manage the pressure inside) does happen to explain the presence of fuel derivatives in the air.
Calling it an unfolding meltdown doesn't add anything to the conversation (meltdown doesn't have a particularly clear meaning), and looks awful alarmist given the current information coming out of Japan (which is that things are in a worrisome state but that the seawater is successfully cooling the compromised reactors).
What's the concentration and half-life of the radioactive material in the steam? How much steam was released? Or do things like that not matter to small poultry?
Why not wait a couple of months and complain about the radiation that actually leaked, rather than speculating that things are going worst-case-scenario?
The contained waste from nuclear power is far less evil than the dispersed waste from coal power.
30 years ago nuclear was easily the best option for baseload power. Today, modern nuclear designs are by far the best replacement for existing nuclear generation (wind and solar can help, but the time tables for the gigawatts we need are easier to meet with nuclear).
3 of the 6 reactors at the facility were offline for inspection, so there is some chance that they will be able to bring them back up on a decent schedule.
Doesn't really change what you describe, but maybe keeps it to months.
I guess yelling shill is fine, if you think it is useful, but there really are good arguments that a small release of radiation can end up not harming anyone, because it is small and spreads out to the point that it is well below the background radiation that is already unavoidable (most things are slightly radioactive...).
So while the release is certainly a cause for concern, it can happen and still have no measurable consequences, let alone thousands of years of consequences.
At the moment it states two different quantities, the banana equivalent dose, from eating one banana, and also the equivalent dose from eating 1 banana a day for a year (365 banana equivalent doses). For some reason it states the doses using 3 different units.
It never directly states that a banana equivalent dose is the radiation from eating a banana every day for a year.
He is not suggesting that there be no nuclear power stations, he is suggesting that it is better to operate plants that have better failure modes than water reactors like the one in this article.
Also, we should stop building coal plants. A little bit dangerous waste that we can see is in fact far better than enormous amounts of invisible waste.
The TV news is saying that there is potential structural damage to the containment dome, and that the building surrounding the containment has blown up.
The worst case scenario is a molten pool of radioactive material, but the physics say that the consequences are more likely to be like Three Mile Island than like Chernobyl.
My uniformed speculation regarding the explosion would be that they could have mitigated it, but there was someone that really wanted to avoid releasing any radioactivity to the environment.
There's a Scientific American article about the fuel schemes for a couple of proposed fusion reactors. One of them requires converting nearly every neutron released into tritium or deuterium (I don't remember which), and the other requires thousands of fuel pellets, while we currently only make about 3 a year.
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The control rods are not graphite (the composition varies across designs, but graphite would not be a usual component, it is a neutron moderator, not a neutron absorber), they are hydraulically actuated (so they have no immediate dependency on electricity to operate), and every reactor of the boiling water type (that was built in that era) uses the underneath geometry.
These reactors don't have concrete containment shields.
And the fact that they are pumping salt water into the steel containment vessels pretty much means they are a loss too. I'm not sure exactly what impact the boric acid they are pumping in has on the future usability of the fuel after reprocessing, but I'm pretty sure the whole idea is to foul the core so that it can no longer go critical.
It seems that the reactors at both of the Fukushima facilities and the Onagawa facility are all offline. Wikipedia has a citation saying that Tokai is shutdown (the reactor is a type that needs cooling for some time after shutdown).
So a lot of nuclear generation is offline, even if it doesn't get to most.
Does Finland have that much stable wind? I.e., the nukes will generate most of their nominal capacity, the wind won't.
That doesn't mean wind is a bad idea, it is just far from clear that wind and solar will be enough.
Not that significant. The Fukushima I power plant was supplying something like 2 Gigawatts of power, which is about 10 Nimitz class carriers managing to push all their power onto the grid. Never mind that there are many other generation failures.
Do you have some bizarre notion that other nations offered to beam their electrons at Japan but got turned down?
This doesn't have anything to do with refusing help or not, it has everything to do with large amounts of critical infrastructure being damaged or destroyed.
Hippies scientists are the ones saying that their new designs are safe. The nuclear industry is busy getting license extensions on their existing power plants.
Can someone who understands Japanese please explain if Google translate is mangling the numbers?
(The more recent numbers are reported in nGy/h and there are thousands without separators, older numbers are reported in uSv/h and it is not clear if the numbers like 6.755 uSv/h have a different precision than numbers like 61.8 uSv/h or if they are thousands of uSv/h. The nGy/h numbers at the beginning match up with the precision explanation, which would make AC wrong by 1000X).
What valid argument are you talking about here?
It seems pretty likely that the integrity of the reactor in the fuel has been compromised (because of the reports of cesium in the atmosphere), but there hasn't been anything reported that suggests that the steel containment vessel has been compromised, and the intentional venting of steam from within the containment vessel (to manage the pressure inside) does happen to explain the presence of fuel derivatives in the air.
Calling it an unfolding meltdown doesn't add anything to the conversation (meltdown doesn't have a particularly clear meaning), and looks awful alarmist given the current information coming out of Japan (which is that things are in a worrisome state but that the seawater is successfully cooling the compromised reactors).
What's the concentration and half-life of the radioactive material in the steam? How much steam was released? Or do things like that not matter to small poultry?
Why not wait a couple of months and complain about the radiation that actually leaked, rather than speculating that things are going worst-case-scenario?
The contained waste from nuclear power is far less evil than the dispersed waste from coal power.
30 years ago nuclear was easily the best option for baseload power. Today, modern nuclear designs are by far the best replacement for existing nuclear generation (wind and solar can help, but the time tables for the gigawatts we need are easier to meet with nuclear).
3 of the 6 reactors at the facility were offline for inspection, so there is some chance that they will be able to bring them back up on a decent schedule.
Doesn't really change what you describe, but maybe keeps it to months.
I guess yelling shill is fine, if you think it is useful, but there really are good arguments that a small release of radiation can end up not harming anyone, because it is small and spreads out to the point that it is well below the background radiation that is already unavoidable (most things are slightly radioactive...).
So while the release is certainly a cause for concern, it can happen and still have no measurable consequences, let alone thousands of years of consequences.
At this point it is the other way 'round, we have about 20 weeks of 'normal' time.
At the moment it states two different quantities, the banana equivalent dose, from eating one banana, and also the equivalent dose from eating 1 banana a day for a year (365 banana equivalent doses). For some reason it states the doses using 3 different units.
It never directly states that a banana equivalent dose is the radiation from eating a banana every day for a year.
GP is either a performance artist or a gibbering moron.
You are describing political problems.
They aren't easy, but they are usually invented problems, at least in some sense.
Yet another reason to sensibly decouple the power grid.
And power electronics means that you don't even lose much efficiency when you do it.
He is not suggesting that there be no nuclear power stations, he is suggesting that it is better to operate plants that have better failure modes than water reactors like the one in this article.
Also, we should stop building coal plants. A little bit dangerous waste that we can see is in fact far better than enormous amounts of invisible waste.
I was pondering that they might do well to use semi-submersible platforms for their reactors.
I suppose the costs wouldn't be worth it for politicians.
Wikipedia seems to have a reasonable description of the plant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant
The TV news is saying that there is potential structural damage to the containment dome, and that the building surrounding the containment has blown up.
The worst case scenario is a molten pool of radioactive material, but the physics say that the consequences are more likely to be like Three Mile Island than like Chernobyl.
My uniformed speculation regarding the explosion would be that they could have mitigated it, but there was someone that really wanted to avoid releasing any radioactivity to the environment.
There's a Scientific American article about the fuel schemes for a couple of proposed fusion reactors. One of them requires converting nearly every neutron released into tritium or deuterium (I don't remember which), and the other requires thousands of fuel pellets, while we currently only make about 3 a year.
Part of the problem is that there is plenty of bad regulation.
The over-protection of corporations is probably high up on the list though.
He's either doing some sort of performance art or completely serious about such a scheme being a good thing.