Great use of sarcasm there, building on XP having had also over a decade of most obnoxious and prolific malware, ranging from mail worms through trojans all the way to self-replicating root-kits not to mention most numerous and spectacular security holes in the entire software industry.
And more to the point, it is also the only publicly known system to have been successfully compromised specifically to sabotage nuclear facilities....
the most humane way to kill a goat is *not* to cut its throat.
The most humane way to kill a goat (or any animal for that matter) without chemicals is to shoot it.
At best with a powerfull but silenced firearm - as not to scare the animal while its
sensory functions remain intact for a few seconds after the fact.
Anyway, please refrain from cutting throats of live beings, wether they're animals or whatnot.
Thanks.
I've been hunting many times and shot animals. It didn't make me a man but it made me desperately aware of how callously our modern food systems treat animals. I was taught to aim precisely and then taught to hit the animal in the heart or the head. Even so it's a brutal way to kill an animal, most of the time they die from shock. But using a rifle is the most humane thing for the shooter not the animal, killing anything with your hands affects you psyche. I'm certain Zuckerberg is actually doing the right thing by using a knife, if it's sharp enough then I doubt the animal is even aware what has happened and doesn't suffer. I think it's the perfect analogy of facebook user privacy actually.
If you want to kill an animal humanely form a distance then use a compound bow and arrow, it fit's your criteria but doesn't induce the trauma to the animal that a bullet does. Personally having done my share of hunting, killing, butchering, skinning, salting, gutting and chopping up of animals I'm happy I won't be squeamish about it if I need to to survive, but I'm very very happy I don't have to do it anymore even if I am not happy about how it is done or the animal are treated. Humans don't have to be cruel to the animals we eat and, in fact, it's in our interests that they are as happy and healthy as possible so that nasty toxins aren't produced by their distress before becoming food.
Incidentally;
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I'd suggest that your sig should actually read
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out my mistakes politely. Thank you.]
This indicates that you are interested in improving your English as opposed to improving other peoples manners when pointing out mistakes. It's a subtle difference, unless of course you are striving to improve peoples manners in which case feel free to ignore my advice.
Having seen the construction of the German language I admire anyone with *any* grasp of its subtle characteristics which are well beyond me.
As a reminder, the Sony hack involved 12.3 million credit cards. This isn't counting the 77 million people who 'just' had their data stolen.
This hack is less than one fifteen hundreth in scope (1/1500th). To put it in car analogy form, if Sony's breach was a quarter mile drag race, CBA's breach would be rolling 10 inches forward at a stop light.
This doesn't mean that every breach of data is deplorable. Just remember how bad the Sony breach was.
Incidentally, did you realise it's the commonwealth bank.
Don't forget beating up on microsoft is like kicking a puppy. Open Source software has won in the server space and so criticising microsoft is like beating up a puppy. Poor little harmless microsoft wouldn't hurt mean old open source software. Everyone who has a copy of linux should pay microsoft something for not using a microsoft operating system. microsoft have never done anything bad in the past and anyone who says so is just making up stories to make microsoft look bad.
We should look into making a real microsoft tax that people pay to make sure we get the benefit of microsoft in our lives, everywhere. After all microsoft invented logic and the concept of on or off being a 1 or a 0 so go and pay microsoft 10cents for every light switch in your house because it's the right thing to do and because they *need* you money more than you do. Microsoft Everything for Everyone Forever
We don't need anything else because microsoft is like the standard on computers. Poor microsoft and those mean open source thieves who steal microsofts ideas by volunteering their time to writing freed software. If they had any morals they would pay microsoft to volunteer to write open source software because microsoft invented software and the idea of software so we should pay them.
Now get of their lawn, because only they can shit on it.
Excuse the cynicism but NASA has been the victim of pork barreling for a long time. As long as that is controlling NASA's destiny with a management culture overruling an engineering culture I simply do not believe it is geared to do anything more than guide budget into electoral provinces. Sadly.
To crudely paraphrase a somewhat famous quote, by someone I have forgotten:
'The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.', or something like that.
I do agree with your comment overall, but the second part of your last sentence I have an issue with.
Seems to me that we are becoming a Democracy in theory but not in practice, maybe we always have.
[my emphasis]
IMHO, we have not always had this problem. It seems to me that this started shortly after we developed career politicians.
I do agree with you and even though I was just a kid in the 70's, I remember. It seems to me there is no subtlety anymore. "They" used to use covert operations, now "they" don't seem to care who knows what "they" are up to anymore. Wholesale pillaging of the worlds wealth into private interests. Politics is no longer functional as it is locked in this party tug-o-war while a plethora of structural issues continue to decay past critical.
Frankly, it bodes of a system that is collapsing and acts like these are harbringers of the planned police state, if only those pesky "rights" could be gotten rid of and the population would be fully under control.
Seems to me that democracy has been under intense attack in the legislature for the last ten years now. I'm not saying that it hasn't happened before there just seems to be another one of these bills presented every month or so in all the western democracies not just the US. It often leaves me wondering what the agenda is and, more importantly, who's agenda it is?
Most of the time the really offensive proposals include a variation on the theme "to combat child pornography" to frame anyone who opposes it as someone who support child pornography. Seems to me that we are becoming a Democracy in theory but not in practice, maybe we always have.
I am not claiming to be doing any deep analysis; I am merely criticising your use of the report.
then how are you in a position to criticise my use of it? Even a basic analysis of the report reveals;
the environmental effects of Chernobyl cannot be considered in isolation from their socio-economic and health aspects or from the changing institutional context of the three countries concerned...the most vulnerable groups of people in the affected areas are facing a complex and progressive downward spiral of living conditions induced by the consequences of the accident and the events that followed.
Also, claiming that I am characterising the report as being all about lifestyle factors is a strawman. The report is not all about that, but
Yes, a deliberate strawman drawn as a parody of your position to recharacterise the report as somehow flawed because, in your eyes...
what is important here is that your quote was indeed all about that! If you wished to make a point about radiation, you should have chosen a more appropriate quote. You did not. That is your fault, not mine.
So what? All you have done is demonstrated your obstinence in refusing to understand the ramifications of the effects of the accident, physical and physcological.
It doesn't matter if I was trying to make a point about radiation or the presence of radionuclides, the lack of and science to understand what radioisotopes are being dealt with and the political games used to keep control of the information.
What is important here is that many people in several nations are suffering a plethora of consequences but you seem to subborn to accept that the;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
is as much a consequence of the nuclear accident as cancer caused by fallout because essentially the people in the area have given up. Maybe thats worse than cancer.
It seems quite a cynical way to attack an argument. If you don't like the quote I choose, you go pick one an let me know which one you think is more appropriate. I'll even give you a few to get you started;
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. These countries have made an enormous commitment in addressing the consequences of the accident, the scale of which has never been fully appreciated by the outside world.
The affected population - those exposed to radioactive fallout, remaining in the affected areas, or forced to relocate - continue to face disproportionate suffering in terms of health, social conditions, and economic opportunity.
Radioactive contamination resulting from the Chernobyl explosion and fire poses health risks to the rural population and constrains economic development.At present between 150 and 200 thousand people permanently reside in these areas.
some two thousand cases of thyroid cancer have so far been diagnosed among young people exposed to radioactive iodine in April and May 1986. According to conservative estimates, this figure is likely to rise to 8-10,000 over the coming years.
You walk into a store to buy a tablet you looks at an android based one and then someone wearing an apple tee shirt walks up to you and says "Have you seen the Apple Tablet?"....
"14000 people were killed by a tsunami, but so far the damaged reactor hasn't killed anyone"....
The issue at hand he is that an accident at a Nuclear power plant plays out of a long period of time. For example most car crashes happen in under ten seconds, a train crash in less than say 30 seconds to a minute, a ship and indeed this quake and tsunami in a few hours and most people have good short to medium term thinking to deal with that. The longer term thinking required to really get your head around what happens when a Nuclear power plant has to be developed and is not unusual, but not common place either.
This catastrophe is still unfolding and will be unfolding for some time to come. Casualties from this accident will unfold over years and manifest in terms of increased cancer rates. There has been much discussion about radioiodine and how it will dissipate within 30 days but radionuclides like strontium 90 and cesium 137 will be around for 30 years and their volitiity makes them really toxic. Of course putonium is extremely toxic and there is no doubt that these elements will reach the US and other places in the world, the question is how much? The difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl is that there is significantly more spent fuel mass associated with the operation of four reactors, refueled regularly, approaching the end of their operational lifetime.
It's is obvious that there is a need to collect more data but estimates are already being made that casualties from this accident will be around 200,000 if things don't get any worse. With the specialised work being performed at Fukushima by a limited amount of workers who can only have limited exposure, one can only hope is is brought under control very soon.
It actually is a job for an AI - we need better robots...We need new physics to make the next step.
What an interesting post, I've thought the same things, especially about colonising our own solar system. Once we get there then we can try to figure out the next step of colonising the galaxy.
I was also considering a situation that *if* there were other civilisations that launched robots to explore the galaxy based on their own versions of AI could they combine over time. Could there ever be a situation where 80 percent of the Galaxies intelligent life is "artificial" and 20% has evolved naturally. Imagine if that is what our AI enhanced explorers discovered.
However the U.S reserves of pu-239 is approximately 70,000 tons, I'm too tired to dig out an exact reference for you at this time, but you may be interested in this National Geographic article [nationalgeographic.com] on the state of nuclear waste materials (as opposed to pu-239).
I read that article. Nor does it especially disturb me.
Of course. Does it the work the du weapons are doing in Iraq disturb you? I mean u-238 is a legitimate waste product of the nuclear industry and I guess that if you are an a American citizen then it's being done in your name. Do those children born with two heads disturb you?
However, the size of the US's Pu-239 stockpile is irrelevant to the amount of Pu actually used in nuclear weapons in the USA. The amount of Pu required to make a Bomb is measured in low-double digit kg, not in large fractions of a ton.
As your point is irrelevant to the amount of radionuclide in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, *you* drew the comparison to the US weapons stockpile so;
Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of spent fuel assuming a 10 year refueling cycle.
I hope this satisfies your search for perfection in my argument but most readers seemed to be able to make the comparison between what a bomb's mass is compared to the core mass of a reactor compared to the spent fuel mass in cooling pools. So if you want to make the comparison characterised as "low double kg" don't be so pedantic. I already know how much mass it takes to make a bomb. How does it counter, change, alter or negate the fact that;
Fukushima has a plethora of fallout that a bomb doesn't possess, radiocobalt, radioiron etc going into the ocean that will continue until the leaks are stopped.
All of my points are completely valid, save for one error that I've already apologised for and corrected. If you've got a point other than being a pain in the ass then make it.
Spin it! I'm fairly certian you have not engaged in any deeper anaysis of that document than that paragraph.
Yes, the report talks about many bad things. But no, these are certainly not all due to the effects of the Chernobyl power plant radiation, especially not the low life expectency, which is clearly identified as being caused by "the combination of poverty, poor diet and living conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use." Trying to imply it's due to radition is dishonest and I will continue to point that out.
Ok you do that, don't focus on how it got that way, reality or the point. Just continue to characterise the report as saying all that the woes of Belarus and the Ukraine are caused by lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use.
However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Deceptive quoting makes the report seem to imply that the low life expectancy is due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident whereas the report actually says something else:
"As is true throughout the Former Soviet Union, life expectancy is low
not only as compared with Southern and Western Europe, North America and
Japan, but also with a number of countries from the developing world. Life
expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten
years less than in Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the
world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war. Overwhelmingly the most
important reason for this is the combination of poverty, poor diet and living
conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use. These factors
may also, to some degree, be reinforced in the affected areas and communities by
the psychosocial effects of the accident. Cardiovascular disease and trauma
(accidents and poisonings) are the two most common causes of death followed by
cancer (this situation is not confined to the Chernobyl affected regions). Most
doctors when asked what measures would most improve the health of the
population said improved diet and living conditions."
Then why stop there, it is a 78 page report. I could perhaps cut and paste the entire report for you to ignore. What about the next choice section;
4.02 A well-established increase in thyroid cancer diagnosed in children and
adolescents poses a major problem for health services, particularly in Belarus and
Ukraine. While the disease is not generally fatal, the treatment is expensive and
demanding upon resources...as well as affecting the
thyroid gland, diminishes the IQ. As well as its negative consequences for IQ,
Unfortunately we can't link to the graph in Figure 4.1 "Thyroid cancer in children under 15 years of age at diagnosis" where the gestation period of thyroid cancer can be clearly seen in the diagnosed cases going well above averages from 1990. Or this;
In terms of the
impact at national level, it is not possible to estimate the scale of the losses
accurately. Attempts were first made to calculate the financial cost in the early
1990s, but different methods were used. The Government of the Republic of
Belarus estimates that losses over the 30 years following the accident will amount
to $235 billion. The Ukrainian government estimates the loss as $148 billion over
the period from 1986 to 2000.
Or this;
Failures have included:
* a significant number of rural people in high risk groups are still exposed to
substantial and, probably, increasing doses of radiation;
* environmental contamination still imposes significant economic constraints
associated with a variety of protective measures, many of which are not effective
in the new economic and political conditions;
* economies and social structures in affected communities are deteriorating,
alongside an apparent increase in poverty;
* the activities undertaken so far have failed to increase trust and reduce anxiety.
* low local capacity to deal with health, economic and environmental challenges
My point is you accuse me of deceptive quoting but there are very little ways to characterise what is 78 pages of bad news into a single line that makes a point. YOU read the report now you know where to find it and tell me if there is anywhere in there that it says that Chernobyl has been good for the region? It documents a plethora of serious consequences as a result of the accident. You make out that I'm not relaying the sentiment that the report conveys, that Chernobyl had a broad spectrum of serious consequences for the population of the Ukraine and Belarus.
we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle
No, we can't be looking at 800-1000 tons of Pu.
The plant wasn't designed to make Pu, and you're assuming that it incidentally created enough Pu to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal?!?
Sorry, don't buy it. I might believe 800-1000 Kg, maybe.
My apologies, I meant "spent fuel", I was tired. However the U.S reserves of pu-239 is approximately 70,000 tons, I'm too tired to dig out an exact reference for you at this time, but you may be interested in this National Geographic article on the state of nuclear waste materials (as opposed to pu-239).
I continue to conclude: It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. We now know it is far less than that. It does not appear that the entire mess will equal one Chernobyl.
Rubbish, Tsar Bomba's fall out is measured in kilograms, Chernobyls around 10's of tons. Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle. Great that it didn't blow up however the release of radionuclides will continue to occur until all the leaks are repaired. The question is how this will be achieved. Chernobyl released it's radionuclides into the air and all over the land because it was land locked. It seems that because Fukushima is releasing its radionuclide yield into the ocean that this is somehow less concerning. Let's do and see the science and asses the actual damage based on that, not hyperbole.
There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
The claim can be made for two reasons. First at TMI the science wasn't even done. Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost due to increased cancer rates?
It can be best summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Maybe Pournelle is just to lazy to look and since cancer takes years to gestate I think it's premature to understand the damage done to the Japanese populace by Fukushima.
the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable.
Absolutely predicable. If they make the same tragic organisational mistakes that every other country has made then we will see an accident on the same scale. It's difficult to believe that the Chinese will succeed where the UK, USA, USSR, Germany and now Japan has failed.
Of course the plant was older and scheduled for retirement to begin with.
Of course this is completely irrelevant and actually should have promoted investment in *ensuring* the plant wouldn't fail. The activated isotopes inside the reactor, or CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits - look it up), will be leaking into the Pacific if the reactor vessel is as breached as it appears to be. I suspect we are just at the
You know...at the very least, when talking about the peppers themselves they should spell it right...chile. Chili is the good stuff they make in TX with ground chiles, beef, tomato...etc.
I like mine with beans too, so I'm not only liking the TX version.
But isn't the pepper itself supposed to be spelled chile?
The shame about this disaster is that it was avoidable. The
World Nuclear Association, an organisation that represent reactor manufacturers and TEPCO, states that;
In March 2008 Tepco upgraded its estimates of likely Design Basis Earthquake Ground Motion Ss for Fukushima to 600 Gal, and other operators have adopted the same figure. (The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki earthquake in March 2011 did not exceed this at Fukushima.) In October 2008 Tepco accepted 1000 Gal (1.02g) DBGM as the new Ss design basis for Kashiwazaki Kariwa, following the July 2007 earthquake there.
and
In March 2011 eleven operating nuclear power plants shut down automatically during the major earthquake. Three of these subsequently caused an INES Level 5 Accident due to loss of power leading to loss of cooling.
Anyone who has seen the video of the plant post-earthquake and tsunami would note that the plant to survived the initial two disasters intact but failed nonetheless. It's well publicised that the explosions that destroyed the reactor buildings were from a hydrogen build up but not why there was a hydrogen build up and where that much hydrogen came from.
A reactor is a machine with design issues, refered to as Basis Design Issue or Design Basis Issues, that are mitigated by safety systems and procedures implemented to reduce the risk of these design issues becoming the vector for a disaster. The General Electric and Hitachi Reactors had two BDIs that had to be mitigated by safety systems.
The first Basis Design Issue of the General Electric reactor comes from the tests of the reactor prototype by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Brunswick in the 1970's. During the test the reactor was to be pressurised to 72psi, yet it only reached 70psi no matter how much more it was pressurised. This indicated that the reactor was leaking gas. Thus as the moderator in the reactor vessel got lower hydrogen gas was produced and leaked when the internal pressure reached 70psi. This was the first source of hydrogen.
The second BDI revolves around the spent fuel cooling pools. Due to the nature of the refueling gate pairs that separate the reactor head from the spent fuel containment. The design of the seals on the gates require them to be constantly powered to prevent a loss of coolant. There is a pool volume of 1300 tons of water and they are 12 meters deep. There is 850 tons of water above the spent fuel in each except for reactor 1 spent fuel pool which is smaller by 400 tons. There is 60 Million calories per hour heating capacity in the spent fuel rods in reactor 1 spent fuel pool, 400Mcal/h in reactor 2 spent fuel pool, 200 Mcal/h in reactor 3 and 1600 Mcal/h in reactor 4. Had those spent fuel containment pools not leaked there should have been several *months* to do something. However it seems the scenario that unfolded was *exactly* in line with what would happened if plutonium in those spent fuel pools was exposed, hydrogen was produced and conditions for a serious explosion were in place.
What is known is that to mitigate these two risks an availability of a constant supply of electricity is a requirement for a reactor facility. So why wasn't it? As is known the reason is that the tsunami took out the back-up power and the cooling pumps for the reactor. This, I believe, is the first piece of evidence for negligence on the part of TEPCO.
It was. There were a number of errors on your part.
Whilst I'm sure you made a convincing argument in your imagination, I invite you to point out any error I make as I welcome the opportunity to evolve my understanding. I have not had time to point out all of the errors in your post and have instead responded to key errors of fact in your "arguments".
There are several "corners to turn" with Fukushima, getting the reactors under control, stopping the spent fuel spontaneously combusting, eliminate the emission of airborne fallout, stop the radionuclide contamination of the ocean. These are *all* immediate concerns, they are all real and present dangers, they are all corners that need to be turned.
March 24. Bet you that's the date when all these problems started getting better.
Whilst I hope you are right, the only reason you can make that claim is because ordinary plant workers and fire fighters made and are making extraordinary sacrifices to bring the situation under control. Even then stabilising the situation doesn't mean it will get better just not as bad as a full blown loss of containment event. You simply would not have been able to make that claim if the outcome had relied on TEPCO's procedures. So 'better' in this case simply means the best of a bad situation.
However I note that it was after your specified date that it was confirmed that the reactor was melting down and as of 7th of April they stopped roughly 160,000 tons of radionuclide laden water per day leaking into the Pacific. This may not mean much to the Pacific but I bet you that this disaster will have long term effects on Japan's fishing industry. I bet you it will cost Billions to control and 10's of Billions of dollars to resolve and, as I described previously, many decades to clean up.
I bet you that TEPCO's criminal negligence is exposed.
Fukushima shows that the Nuclear Industry FAILED to apply itself to learning the lessons of safety from Chernobyl.
I have disproved this assertion soundly in the last few posts,
You have done no such thing. Using your words your entire argument revolves around;
the magnitude and occurrence of earthquakes
the fact that the reactor tolerated an earthquake that was 10% beyond it's design for specification
that "you can't implement safety systems to mitigate every conceivable hazard"
that "what safety systems Fukushima implemented did indeed work to mitigate the harm of a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami"
You are wrong about the facts of the earthquake being beyond the design basis for the reactor. The
World Nuclear Association confirms that;
In March 2008 Tepco upgraded its estimates of likely Design Basis Earthquake Ground Motion Ss for Fukushima to 600 Gal, and other operators have adopted the same figure. (The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki earthquake in March 2011 did not exceed this at Fukushima.) In October 2008 Tepco accepted 1000 Gal (1.02g) DBGM as the new Ss design basis for Kashiwazaki Kariwa, following the July 2007 earthquake there.
So the evidence assessed and reported by the stakeholders demonstrates that YOU ARE WRONG regarding the so called "facts" you have presented. You will note that ALL reactor manufacturers and TEPCO are members of this organisation.
I surmised that the most likely sources of hydrogen build up in reactor building came from two places;
One came from the lack of water in the spent fuel pools and the second from reactor itself. I provided you with the data on the heat capacity contained by the spent fuel in the cooling pools, the consequences of de-powering the cooling pool seals and discussed the tests of the reactor prototypes t
I originally replied point by point to your comments.
I bet it was as fact filled and articulate as your previous efforts.
I can't have a serious discussion with someone who can't be bothered to distinguish between an ongoing disaster that requires prompt action and long term consequences.
Then fucking define what the fuck you are talking about instead of using vague terminology that simply illustrates you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
But this short passage indicates you aren't even remotely serious...Think about it. I mean it, think about it.
I will assist you with your comprehension and you will understand that I have thought about it.
Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2. You have to wait decades to allow the *really* radioactive elements to decay. This is because new and highly radioactive elements are created in the reactor core.
It's still not something that has been addressed in an industrially proficient way that makes the sites safe or 'greenfeild'. Considering the 104 reactor sites around America are multi-core the United States will be looking at a conservative estimate of a quarter of a *Trillion* dollars, at todays prices, on reactor decommissioning alone. From my research I understand that there is a linear increase in costs as the core size increases but as Yankee Rowe is the only place it has been attempted we don't actually know yet in practice. That Yankee Rowe still contains spent fuel it's is fair to say that no nuclear facility site has successfully made 'greenfeild'.
Now that's what is required to disassemble a functioning reactor, shut down in a controlled manner to give you a baseline for comparison.
Next stop in our tour of Atomic incompetence is the Windscale Nuclear facility. With a core size around 20 tonnes it's about a tenth of the size of cores at TMI, Chernobyl or any *one* of the 4 cores at Fukushima. This disaster was also a level 5 event and it occurred in 1957. The cost estimates to remediate this tiny reactor is 70 Billion pounds (roughly $120 Billion ) with the final stage beginning in 2037. Now since you like to look forward, can you extrapolate the approximate cost to remediate TMI, Chernobyl or Fukushima with twice the core mass of TMI and Chernobyl combined even when we *exclude* the uncontained mass of the spent fuel pools? Are you starting to appreciate the duration of these incidences. These disasters will be an economic drain on their host economies for at least a century. This radiological externality is a financial burden *we* have placed on future generation the same way previous generations have put a carbon externality on our generation.
That is what I mean by "Long scale" of these disasters. By scale I mean;
a certain relative or proportionate size or extent, a standard of measurement or estimation, a point of reference by which to gauge or rate
There are several "corners to turn" with Fukushima, getting the reactors under control, stopping the spent fuel spontaneously combusting, eliminate the emission of airborne fallout, stop the radionuclide contamination of the ocean. These are *all* immediate concerns, they are all real and present dangers, they are all corners that need to be turned.
Now understand this, Chernobyl is contained, Three Mile Island is contained, Windscale is contained. Fukushima is not contained. When it is, I'll consider it to have "turned a corner" but right now it's what I call, "just hanging on", "in serious shit", "oh fuck I wish we built those backup generators", "barely under control", "fuck, we can't afford anything else to go wrong here". Do you get it? Am I getting through to you about what "Long scale" means? This is just the beginning of an accident that
A key fact is that they did spend money to mitigate a risk and it worked. Second, you make the bad assumption that a meltdown is more expensive than more risk mitigation. Risk mitigation is expensive too.
Your statements are utterly ridiculous. Just how you can come to any conclusion based in a real world analysis that makes a backup generation and a seawall more valuable than a billion dollar reactor installation or a risk mitigation strategy that's worth 100's of billions to the Japanese economy is beyond me. Perhaps you should investigate the insurance value of the Price-Anderson act to the US economy. Perhaps you should investigate the ramifications of disassembling the PUHCA legislation. Perhaps you should try life in *this* universe instead of the comic book universe where radiation immune superheros are available to disassemble a reactor that is melting down instead of plain old firefighters and plant workers risking their lives to do it.
I think it's an armchair engineer who can't be bothered to understand the facts. I already addressed in a previous post why your amazing power of hindsight is totally useless.
Oh dear, the beginning of the stereotypical ad-hominem fanboi attack. I'll refer you to conversations I had in 2009 here and here where, amongst others, I discuss in part, long term industrial scale means to deal with pu-239 containment. The generators and tsunami proofing is the risk mitigation work I presumed would happen in the absence of more permanent means to deal with the issue of spent fuel.
The information has be available for a long time for those who could be bothered to read and comprehend it, I guess you haven't. But judging from the sarcasm in your asinine comments your juvenile intellect would probably understand me better if I simply said "I told you so". But do continue to make assumptions about what I know.
Your opinion. Not based on fact. Magnitude 9 or greater quakes happen about once every 15 years worldwide...
extremely rare events, if they happen at all.
How amazingly arrogant, The *fact* is that 15 years is well within the lifespan of reactors all around the world. So if a 12 is too much to plan for what about an 11, 10 or even the 9 that just occurred. Your apparent expertise in geological sciences provides no better insight as to which one of those *was* appropriate and not an unreasonable expectation to plan for based on the fact that it is a geologically active region.
Even given that, the issue is acceleration from the shaking and secondary effects of earthquakes such as tsunami, landslides, and compromise of the foundation of the reactor. As I pointed out earlier, the specs for Fukushima were exceeded, but worked well enough.
On the contrary the available *evidence* suggests the reactor specifications were NOT exceeded. What you seem to be blind to is, as I pointed out, it was the tertiary effects that the reactor did not survive. These are facts we can see, they are apparent, they are recorded. The Tsunami knocked out the backup generators and/or power lines that fed the reactor backup power some 3kms away. That was the "oh shit" moment considering, in your opinion, it was not possible to foresee or plan for this contingency in such a geologically active region.
Maybe they'll start talking about long term spent fuel storage again, that's the real discussion. The fact is, to anyone with eyes, the reactor survived a 9 but the back-up systems, the responsibility of the operators, did not.
That is negligence.
It's also worth noting that if a new nuclear plant were built at Fukushima, there'd be little reason to build it past the old earthquake specs. The magnitude 9 quake happened. It'll probably be
Where's the time machine that TEPCO's going to use to comply with your instructions?
Stop making excuses. At any time in the last 40 years, or 20 years maybe 10 years - even the last 5 years the appropriate work could have been done. Don't claim this is a matter of hindsight when there has been plenty of science available in the last 2 decades to suggest that a 9 was, at the very least, a possibility. This, quite simply, is a lack of *planning* and an unwillingness to spend the money to mitigate the risk. Now the capital investment is an economic burden that will drag Japan down for years to come.
There's two things to observe. First, you can't implement safety systems to mitigate every conceivable hazard.
However it was reasonable to mitigate THIS hazzard. I'll accept that a magnitude 20 earthquake means there are probably bigger problems to deal with - otherwise you are saying there is no way that nuclear power should be implemented as it cannot withstand a *reasonable* expectation of hazzards. Even a 12 is not an unreasonable event to plan for based on the premise that *if* it happens the last thing that you will want to be worrying about is a nuclear power station melting down. Oh, and the electricity would come in handy too.
Second, what safety systems Fukushima implemented did indeed work to mitigate the harm of a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami. You need to understand what really happened before you libel them further.
I understand that a General Electric Nuclear reactor of that design requires a constant supply of power due to the nature of the refueling gate pairs that separate the reactor head from the spent fuel containment. I understand that, due to the nature of the seals on the gates, they need to be constantly powered to prevent a loss of coolant. I understand that there is a pool volume of 1300 tons of water, that they are 12 meters deep, that there is 850 tons of water above the spent fuel in each except for reactor 1 spent fuel pool which is smaller by 400 tons. I understand that there is 60 Million calories per hour heating capacity in the spent fuel rods in reactor 1 spent fuel pool, 400Mcal/h in reactor 2 spent fuel pool, 200 Mcal/h in reactor 3 and 1600 Mcal/h in reactor 4. I understand that the failure mode for a loss of coolant event in those spent fuel pools was *exactly* in line with what would happened if plutonium in those spent fuel pools was exposed, hydrogen was produced and an explosion occurred. That is what happened. Without those spent fuel containment pools leaking there should have been several *months* to do something.
So I've conducted my analysis based on the available data. I suggest you get a hold of more facts than you posses and perhaps then you can measure my capacity to level criticism. This is criminal negligence, it's plain to see because the facility survived the initial catastrophes. The risk *could* have been mitigated years earlier but it *wasn't*.
Then the backup battery system kicks in and keeps cooling going for 8 more critical hours. In other words just in the first 9 hours, we have a lot of safety systems that worked to mitigate the effects of a very bad disaster. Do you really want to claim that in the absence of these safety features, things would have been about the same or better at this point?
Well Mr Strawman, what you don't seem to understand is at this level of risk it's an all or nothing proposition. You are claiming that the existing safety features are the best that could have been done, I am claiming that the existing safety features were inadequate and that this whole disaster was completely avoidable.
Sure it released radiation, sure it looked scary for a while, but in the end, it's not just that bad a problem.
Riiiigghhht, so three smoldering reactors and one, in all likelyhood, melting down is "not just that bad a problem". The *reality* is we are nowhere near the end of this catastrophe, this is just the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod the guy funny!
Great use of sarcasm there, building on XP having had also over a decade of most obnoxious and prolific malware, ranging from mail worms through trojans all the way to self-replicating root-kits not to mention most numerous and spectacular security holes in the entire software industry.
And more to the point, it is also the only publicly known system to have been successfully compromised specifically to sabotage nuclear facilities....
Oh, wait ... you were serious?!
Stop beating up puppies, you monster.
the most humane way to kill a goat is *not* to cut its throat. The most humane way to kill a goat (or any animal for that matter) without chemicals is to shoot it. At best with a powerfull but silenced firearm - as not to scare the animal while its sensory functions remain intact for a few seconds after the fact.
Anyway, please refrain from cutting throats of live beings, wether they're animals or whatnot. Thanks.
I've been hunting many times and shot animals. It didn't make me a man but it made me desperately aware of how callously our modern food systems treat animals. I was taught to aim precisely and then taught to hit the animal in the heart or the head. Even so it's a brutal way to kill an animal, most of the time they die from shock. But using a rifle is the most humane thing for the shooter not the animal, killing anything with your hands affects you psyche. I'm certain Zuckerberg is actually doing the right thing by using a knife, if it's sharp enough then I doubt the animal is even aware what has happened and doesn't suffer. I think it's the perfect analogy of facebook user privacy actually.
If you want to kill an animal humanely form a distance then use a compound bow and arrow, it fit's your criteria but doesn't induce the trauma to the animal that a bullet does. Personally having done my share of hunting, killing, butchering, skinning, salting, gutting and chopping up of animals I'm happy I won't be squeamish about it if I need to to survive, but I'm very very happy I don't have to do it anymore even if I am not happy about how it is done or the animal are treated. Humans don't have to be cruel to the animals we eat and, in fact, it's in our interests that they are as happy and healthy as possible so that nasty toxins aren't produced by their distress before becoming food.
Incidentally;
I'd suggest that your sig should actually read
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out my mistakes politely. Thank you.]
This indicates that you are interested in improving your English as opposed to improving other peoples manners when pointing out mistakes. It's a subtle difference, unless of course you are striving to improve peoples manners in which case feel free to ignore my advice.
Having seen the construction of the German language I admire anyone with *any* grasp of its subtle characteristics which are well beyond me.
The goat actually felt more violated by how Zuckerberg treated his personal privacy than he did about the whole throat cutting thing.
Zuckerberg slit the throat of privacy around the world just as kindly.
As a reminder, the Sony hack involved 12.3 million credit cards. This isn't counting the 77 million people who 'just' had their data stolen. This hack is less than one fifteen hundreth in scope (1/1500th). To put it in car analogy form, if Sony's breach was a quarter mile drag race, CBA's breach would be rolling 10 inches forward at a stop light. This doesn't mean that every breach of data is deplorable. Just remember how bad the Sony breach was.
Incidentally, did you realise it's the commonwealth bank.
Oh, I wish I had mod points
We should look into making a real microsoft tax that people pay to make sure we get the benefit of microsoft in our lives, everywhere. After all microsoft invented logic and the concept of on or off being a 1 or a 0 so go and pay microsoft 10cents for every light switch in your house because it's the right thing to do and because they *need* you money more than you do. Microsoft Everything for Everyone Forever
We don't need anything else because microsoft is like the standard on computers. Poor microsoft and those mean open source thieves who steal microsofts ideas by volunteering their time to writing freed software. If they had any morals they would pay microsoft to volunteer to write open source software because microsoft invented software and the idea of software so we should pay them.
Now get of their lawn, because only they can shit on it.
Excuse the cynicism but NASA has been the victim of pork barreling for a long time. As long as that is controlling NASA's destiny with a management culture overruling an engineering culture I simply do not believe it is geared to do anything more than guide budget into electoral provinces. Sadly.
To crudely paraphrase a somewhat famous quote, by someone I have forgotten: 'The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.', or something like that.
I do agree with your comment overall, but the second part of your last sentence I have an issue with.
Seems to me that we are becoming a Democracy in theory but not in practice, maybe we always have.
[my emphasis]
IMHO, we have not always had this problem. It seems to me that this started shortly after we developed career politicians.
I do agree with you and even though I was just a kid in the 70's, I remember. It seems to me there is no subtlety anymore. "They" used to use covert operations, now "they" don't seem to care who knows what "they" are up to anymore. Wholesale pillaging of the worlds wealth into private interests. Politics is no longer functional as it is locked in this party tug-o-war while a plethora of structural issues continue to decay past critical.
Frankly, it bodes of a system that is collapsing and acts like these are harbringers of the planned police state, if only those pesky "rights" could be gotten rid of and the population would be fully under control.
Most of the time the really offensive proposals include a variation on the theme "to combat child pornography" to frame anyone who opposes it as someone who support child pornography. Seems to me that we are becoming a Democracy in theory but not in practice, maybe we always have.
then how are you in a position to criticise my use of it? Even a basic analysis of the report reveals;
Yes, a deliberate strawman drawn as a parody of your position to recharacterise the report as somehow flawed because, in your eyes...
So what? All you have done is demonstrated your obstinence in refusing to understand the ramifications of the effects of the accident, physical and physcological. It doesn't matter if I was trying to make a point about radiation or the presence of radionuclides, the lack of and science to understand what radioisotopes are being dealt with and the political games used to keep control of the information.
What is important here is that many people in several nations are suffering a plethora of consequences but you seem to subborn to accept that the;
is as much a consequence of the nuclear accident as cancer caused by fallout because essentially the people in the area have given up. Maybe thats worse than cancer. It seems quite a cynical way to attack an argument. If you don't like the quote I choose, you go pick one an let me know which one you think is more appropriate. I'll even give you a few to get you started;
You walk into a store to buy a tablet you looks at an android based one and then someone wearing an apple tee shirt walks up to you and says "Have you seen the Apple Tablet?"....
The issue at hand he is that an accident at a Nuclear power plant plays out of a long period of time. For example most car crashes happen in under ten seconds, a train crash in less than say 30 seconds to a minute, a ship and indeed this quake and tsunami in a few hours and most people have good short to medium term thinking to deal with that. The longer term thinking required to really get your head around what happens when a Nuclear power plant has to be developed and is not unusual, but not common place either.
This catastrophe is still unfolding and will be unfolding for some time to come. Casualties from this accident will unfold over years and manifest in terms of increased cancer rates. There has been much discussion about radioiodine and how it will dissipate within 30 days but radionuclides like strontium 90 and cesium 137 will be around for 30 years and their volitiity makes them really toxic. Of course putonium is extremely toxic and there is no doubt that these elements will reach the US and other places in the world, the question is how much? The difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl is that there is significantly more spent fuel mass associated with the operation of four reactors, refueled regularly, approaching the end of their operational lifetime.
It's is obvious that there is a need to collect more data but estimates are already being made that casualties from this accident will be around 200,000 if things don't get any worse. With the specialised work being performed at Fukushima by a limited amount of workers who can only have limited exposure, one can only hope is is brought under control very soon.
What an interesting post, I've thought the same things, especially about colonising our own solar system. Once we get there then we can try to figure out the next step of colonising the galaxy.
I was also considering a situation that *if* there were other civilisations that launched robots to explore the galaxy based on their own versions of AI could they combine over time. Could there ever be a situation where 80 percent of the Galaxies intelligent life is "artificial" and 20% has evolved naturally. Imagine if that is what our AI enhanced explorers discovered.
Of course. Does it the work the du weapons are doing in Iraq disturb you? I mean u-238 is a legitimate waste product of the nuclear industry and I guess that if you are an a American citizen then it's being done in your name. Do those children born with two heads disturb you?
As your point is irrelevant to the amount of radionuclide in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, *you* drew the comparison to the US weapons stockpile so;
Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of spent fuel assuming a 10 year refueling cycle.
I hope this satisfies your search for perfection in my argument but most readers seemed to be able to make the comparison between what a bomb's mass is compared to the core mass of a reactor compared to the spent fuel mass in cooling pools. So if you want to make the comparison characterised as "low double kg" don't be so pedantic. I already know how much mass it takes to make a bomb. How does it counter, change, alter or negate the fact that;
Fukushima has a plethora of fallout that a bomb doesn't possess, radiocobalt, radioiron etc going into the ocean that will continue until the leaks are stopped.
All of my points are completely valid, save for one error that I've already apologised for and corrected. If you've got a point other than being a pain in the ass then make it.
Ok you do that, don't focus on how it got that way, reality or the point. Just continue to characterise the report as saying all that the woes of Belarus and the Ukraine are caused by lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use.
Funny, I stopped reading after this load of bullshit.
I bet I know who you are though.
However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Deceptive quoting makes the report seem to imply that the low life expectancy is due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident whereas the report actually says something else:
"As is true throughout the Former Soviet Union, life expectancy is low not only as compared with Southern and Western Europe, North America and Japan, but also with a number of countries from the developing world. Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less than in Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war. Overwhelmingly the most important reason for this is the combination of poverty, poor diet and living conditions, and lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use. These factors may also, to some degree, be reinforced in the affected areas and communities by the psychosocial effects of the accident. Cardiovascular disease and trauma (accidents and poisonings) are the two most common causes of death followed by cancer (this situation is not confined to the Chernobyl affected regions). Most doctors when asked what measures would most improve the health of the population said improved diet and living conditions."
Then why stop there, it is a 78 page report. I could perhaps cut and paste the entire report for you to ignore. What about the next choice section;
Unfortunately we can't link to the graph in Figure 4.1 "Thyroid cancer in children under 15 years of age at diagnosis" where the gestation period of thyroid cancer can be clearly seen in the diagnosed cases going well above averages from 1990. Or this;
Or this ;
My point is you accuse me of deceptive quoting but there are very little ways to characterise what is 78 pages of bad news into a single line that makes a point. YOU read the report now you know where to find it and tell me if there is anywhere in there that it says that Chernobyl has been good for the region? It documents a plethora of serious consequences as a result of the accident. You make out that I'm not relaying the sentiment that the report conveys, that Chernobyl had a broad spectrum of serious consequences for the population of the Ukraine and Belarus.
No, we can't be looking at 800-1000 tons of Pu.
The plant wasn't designed to make Pu, and you're assuming that it incidentally created enough Pu to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal?!?
Sorry, don't buy it. I might believe 800-1000 Kg, maybe.
My apologies, I meant "spent fuel", I was tired. However the U.S reserves of pu-239 is approximately 70,000 tons, I'm too tired to dig out an exact reference for you at this time, but you may be interested in this National Geographic article on the state of nuclear waste materials (as opposed to pu-239).
I continue to conclude: It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. We now know it is far less than that. It does not appear that the entire mess will equal one Chernobyl.
Rubbish, Tsar Bomba's fall out is measured in kilograms, Chernobyls around 10's of tons. Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle. Great that it didn't blow up however the release of radionuclides will continue to occur until all the leaks are repaired. The question is how this will be achieved. Chernobyl released it's radionuclides into the air and all over the land because it was land locked. It seems that because Fukushima is releasing its radionuclide yield into the ocean that this is somehow less concerning. Let's do and see the science and asses the actual damage based on that, not hyperbole.
There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
The claim can be made for two reasons. First at TMI the science wasn't even done. Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost due to increased cancer rates?
It can be best summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
Here is the actual text of the agreement. However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Maybe Pournelle is just to lazy to look and since cancer takes years to gestate I think it's premature to understand the damage done to the Japanese populace by Fukushima.
the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable.
Absolutely predicable. If they make the same tragic organisational mistakes that every other country has made then we will see an accident on the same scale. It's difficult to believe that the Chinese will succeed where the UK, USA, USSR, Germany and now Japan has failed.
Of course the plant was older and scheduled for retirement to begin with.
Of course this is completely irrelevant and actually should have promoted investment in *ensuring* the plant wouldn't fail. The activated isotopes inside the reactor, or CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits - look it up), will be leaking into the Pacific if the reactor vessel is as breached as it appears to be. I suspect we are just at the
You know...at the very least, when talking about the peppers themselves they should spell it right...chile. Chili is the good stuff they make in TX with ground chiles, beef, tomato...etc.
I like mine with beans too, so I'm not only liking the TX version.
But isn't the pepper itself supposed to be spelled chile?
well it ain't chilly... Don't tell Jack Black
and
Anyone who has seen the video of the plant post-earthquake and tsunami would note that the plant to survived the initial two disasters intact but failed nonetheless. It's well publicised that the explosions that destroyed the reactor buildings were from a hydrogen build up but not why there was a hydrogen build up and where that much hydrogen came from.
A reactor is a machine with design issues, refered to as Basis Design Issue or Design Basis Issues, that are mitigated by safety systems and procedures implemented to reduce the risk of these design issues becoming the vector for a disaster. The General Electric and Hitachi Reactors had two BDIs that had to be mitigated by safety systems.
The first Basis Design Issue of the General Electric reactor comes from the tests of the reactor prototype by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Brunswick in the 1970's. During the test the reactor was to be pressurised to 72psi, yet it only reached 70psi no matter how much more it was pressurised. This indicated that the reactor was leaking gas. Thus as the moderator in the reactor vessel got lower hydrogen gas was produced and leaked when the internal pressure reached 70psi. This was the first source of hydrogen.
The second BDI revolves around the spent fuel cooling pools. Due to the nature of the refueling gate pairs that separate the reactor head from the spent fuel containment. The design of the seals on the gates require them to be constantly powered to prevent a loss of coolant. There is a pool volume of 1300 tons of water and they are 12 meters deep. There is 850 tons of water above the spent fuel in each except for reactor 1 spent fuel pool which is smaller by 400 tons. There is 60 Million calories per hour heating capacity in the spent fuel rods in reactor 1 spent fuel pool, 400Mcal/h in reactor 2 spent fuel pool, 200 Mcal/h in reactor 3 and 1600 Mcal/h in reactor 4. Had those spent fuel containment pools not leaked there should have been several *months* to do something. However it seems the scenario that unfolded was *exactly* in line with what would happened if plutonium in those spent fuel pools was exposed, hydrogen was produced and conditions for a serious explosion were in place.
What is known is that to mitigate these two risks an availability of a constant supply of electricity is a requirement for a reactor facility. So why wasn't it? As is known the reason is that the tsunami took out the back-up power and the cooling pumps for the reactor. This, I believe, is the first piece of evidence for negligence on the part of TEPCO.
The [pdf warning] Regulatory Guide for Reviewing Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Reactor Facilities categorises react
Whilst I'm sure you made a convincing argument in your imagination, I invite you to point out any error I make as I welcome the opportunity to evolve my understanding. I have not had time to point out all of the errors in your post and have instead responded to key errors of fact in your "arguments".
Whilst I hope you are right, the only reason you can make that claim is because ordinary plant workers and fire fighters made and are making extraordinary sacrifices to bring the situation under control. Even then stabilising the situation doesn't mean it will get better just not as bad as a full blown loss of containment event. You simply would not have been able to make that claim if the outcome had relied on TEPCO's procedures. So 'better' in this case simply means the best of a bad situation.
However I note that it was after your specified date that it was confirmed that the reactor was melting down and as of 7th of April they stopped roughly 160,000 tons of radionuclide laden water per day leaking into the Pacific. This may not mean much to the Pacific but I bet you that this disaster will have long term effects on Japan's fishing industry. I bet you it will cost Billions to control and 10's of Billions of dollars to resolve and, as I described previously, many decades to clean up.
I bet you that TEPCO's criminal negligence is exposed.
You have done no such thing. Using your words your entire argument revolves around;
You are wrong about the facts of the earthquake being beyond the design basis for the reactor. The World Nuclear Association confirms that;
So the evidence assessed and reported by the stakeholders demonstrates that YOU ARE WRONG regarding the so called "facts" you have presented. You will note that ALL reactor manufacturers and TEPCO are members of this organisation.
I surmised that the most likely sources of hydrogen build up in reactor building came from two places;
One came from the lack of water in the spent fuel pools and the second from reactor itself. I provided you with the data on the heat capacity contained by the spent fuel in the cooling pools, the consequences of de-powering the cooling pool seals and discussed the tests of the reactor prototypes t
I bet it was as fact filled and articulate as your previous efforts.
Then fucking define what the fuck you are talking about instead of using vague terminology that simply illustrates you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
I will assist you with your comprehension and you will understand that I have thought about it.
Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2. You have to wait decades to allow the *really* radioactive elements to decay. This is because new and highly radioactive elements are created in the reactor core.
It's still not something that has been addressed in an industrially proficient way that makes the sites safe or 'greenfeild'. Considering the 104 reactor sites around America are multi-core the United States will be looking at a conservative estimate of a quarter of a *Trillion* dollars, at todays prices, on reactor decommissioning alone. From my research I understand that there is a linear increase in costs as the core size increases but as Yankee Rowe is the only place it has been attempted we don't actually know yet in practice. That Yankee Rowe still contains spent fuel it's is fair to say that no nuclear facility site has successfully made 'greenfeild'.
Now that's what is required to disassemble a functioning reactor, shut down in a controlled manner to give you a baseline for comparison.
Next stop in our tour of Atomic incompetence is the Windscale Nuclear facility. With a core size around 20 tonnes it's about a tenth of the size of cores at TMI, Chernobyl or any *one* of the 4 cores at Fukushima. This disaster was also a level 5 event and it occurred in 1957. The cost estimates to remediate this tiny reactor is 70 Billion pounds (roughly $120 Billion ) with the final stage beginning in 2037. Now since you like to look forward, can you extrapolate the approximate cost to remediate TMI, Chernobyl or Fukushima with twice the core mass of TMI and Chernobyl combined even when we *exclude* the uncontained mass of the spent fuel pools? Are you starting to appreciate the duration of these incidences. These disasters will be an economic drain on their host economies for at least a century. This radiological externality is a financial burden *we* have placed on future generation the same way previous generations have put a carbon externality on our generation.
That is what I mean by "Long scale" of these disasters. By scale I mean;
a certain relative or proportionate size or extent, a standard of measurement or estimation, a point of reference by which to gauge or rate
There are several "corners to turn" with Fukushima, getting the reactors under control, stopping the spent fuel spontaneously combusting, eliminate the emission of airborne fallout, stop the radionuclide contamination of the ocean. These are *all* immediate concerns, they are all real and present dangers, they are all corners that need to be turned.
Now understand this, Chernobyl is contained, Three Mile Island is contained, Windscale is contained. Fukushima is not contained. When it is, I'll consider it to have "turned a corner" but right now it's what I call, "just hanging on", "in serious shit", "oh fuck I wish we built those backup generators", "barely under control", "fuck, we can't afford anything else to go wrong here". Do you get it? Am I getting through to you about what "Long scale" means? This is just the beginning of an accident that
Your statements are utterly ridiculous. Just how you can come to any conclusion based in a real world analysis that makes a backup generation and a seawall more valuable than a billion dollar reactor installation or a risk mitigation strategy that's worth 100's of billions to the Japanese economy is beyond me. Perhaps you should investigate the insurance value of the Price-Anderson act to the US economy. Perhaps you should investigate the ramifications of disassembling the PUHCA legislation. Perhaps you should try life in *this* universe instead of the comic book universe where radiation immune superheros are available to disassemble a reactor that is melting down instead of plain old firefighters and plant workers risking their lives to do it.
Oh dear, the beginning of the stereotypical ad-hominem fanboi attack. I'll refer you to conversations I had in 2009 here and here where, amongst others, I discuss in part, long term industrial scale means to deal with pu-239 containment. The generators and tsunami proofing is the risk mitigation work I presumed would happen in the absence of more permanent means to deal with the issue of spent fuel.
The information has be available for a long time for those who could be bothered to read and comprehend it, I guess you haven't. But judging from the sarcasm in your asinine comments your juvenile intellect would probably understand me better if I simply said "I told you so". But do continue to make assumptions about what I know.
How amazingly arrogant, The *fact* is that 15 years is well within the lifespan of reactors all around the world. So if a 12 is too much to plan for what about an 11, 10 or even the 9 that just occurred. Your apparent expertise in geological sciences provides no better insight as to which one of those *was* appropriate and not an unreasonable expectation to plan for based on the fact that it is a geologically active region.
On the contrary the available *evidence* suggests the reactor specifications were NOT exceeded. What you seem to be blind to is, as I pointed out, it was the tertiary effects that the reactor did not survive. These are facts we can see, they are apparent, they are recorded. The Tsunami knocked out the backup generators and/or power lines that fed the reactor backup power some 3kms away. That was the "oh shit" moment considering, in your opinion, it was not possible to foresee or plan for this contingency in such a geologically active region.
Maybe they'll start talking about long term spent fuel storage again, that's the real discussion. The fact is, to anyone with eyes, the reactor survived a 9 but the back-up systems, the responsibility of the operators, did not.
That is negligence.
Stop making excuses. At any time in the last 40 years, or 20 years maybe 10 years - even the last 5 years the appropriate work could have been done. Don't claim this is a matter of hindsight when there has been plenty of science available in the last 2 decades to suggest that a 9 was, at the very least, a possibility. This, quite simply, is a lack of *planning* and an unwillingness to spend the money to mitigate the risk. Now the capital investment is an economic burden that will drag Japan down for years to come.
However it was reasonable to mitigate THIS hazzard. I'll accept that a magnitude 20 earthquake means there are probably bigger problems to deal with - otherwise you are saying there is no way that nuclear power should be implemented as it cannot withstand a *reasonable* expectation of hazzards. Even a 12 is not an unreasonable event to plan for based on the premise that *if* it happens the last thing that you will want to be worrying about is a nuclear power station melting down. Oh, and the electricity would come in handy too.
I understand that a General Electric Nuclear reactor of that design requires a constant supply of power due to the nature of the refueling gate pairs that separate the reactor head from the spent fuel containment. I understand that, due to the nature of the seals on the gates, they need to be constantly powered to prevent a loss of coolant. I understand that there is a pool volume of 1300 tons of water, that they are 12 meters deep, that there is 850 tons of water above the spent fuel in each except for reactor 1 spent fuel pool which is smaller by 400 tons. I understand that there is 60 Million calories per hour heating capacity in the spent fuel rods in reactor 1 spent fuel pool, 400Mcal/h in reactor 2 spent fuel pool, 200 Mcal/h in reactor 3 and 1600 Mcal/h in reactor 4. I understand that the failure mode for a loss of coolant event in those spent fuel pools was *exactly* in line with what would happened if plutonium in those spent fuel pools was exposed, hydrogen was produced and an explosion occurred. That is what happened. Without those spent fuel containment pools leaking there should have been several *months* to do something.
So I've conducted my analysis based on the available data. I suggest you get a hold of more facts than you posses and perhaps then you can measure my capacity to level criticism. This is criminal negligence, it's plain to see because the facility survived the initial catastrophes. The risk *could* have been mitigated years earlier but it *wasn't*.
Well Mr Strawman, what you don't seem to understand is at this level of risk it's an all or nothing proposition. You are claiming that the existing safety features are the best that could have been done, I am claiming that the existing safety features were inadequate and that this whole disaster was completely avoidable.
Riiiigghhht, so three smoldering reactors and one, in all likelyhood, melting down is "not just that bad a problem". The *reality* is we are nowhere near the end of this catastrophe, this is just the beginning.