This blog displays a neat view of the plant building. Granted the guy says he modified it himself, still the proportions look plausible. On the schema the pools are clearly above ground. Are you sure that the schema you link to corresponds to the precise type of plants that are in operation at Fukushima? Anyway the relevant piece of information here is that the spent rods are stored outside of any serious containment structure, in open air, and can get emptied by a mere leak. This design seems to basically defeat the very concept of radioactive material containment. Somewhat akin to keeping your purse locked in a safe and putting your wallet on top of it. This would be funny if it were not criminal.
You can't say what you mean
I, like many, can but use the information that I get from the media. I am no nuclear engineer and cannot guess the proper jargon, not more than you could guess the proper terms deemed adequate in my particular little field of expertise. "Cooling pond" was used by the BBC journalist instead of "spent fuel pool", so be it. Still it seems that the spent fuel does require water circulation, even if the evaporation of the water without it should take days instead of hours.
Anyway what I'm really interested in here is a plausible estimation of a plausible worst case scenario. I want it for the precise purpose of throwing it at the face of the next asshole who will parrot that nuclear energy is safe, proof being that there has been so little damage up to now compared to other energie sources. Of course the fallacies in this asshat discourse are glaring. First this only shows how sloppily the exploitation of coal and oil is done today (think BP oil spill), not how safe nuclear is. But above all this is akin to driving at 100mph and saying "I haven't had any serious accident yet, see how safe my driving is?" Except that it's not a motorist who's speeding, it's a school bus driver with one million kids in his bus.
You need to consider the very worst case possible scenario in order to assess safety, so here we are. The crisis at Fukushima seems on its way to resolution with "limited" damage thank God. Unfortunately an army of motherfuckers are going - in fact they started on day one - to jump on the argument to maintain that nuclear power is safe. So since you seem to have some insight on the subject, please follow through this simple and "reasonable" worst case scenario: a major radiation leak happened on site, forcing definitive evacuation of any and all workers. The site has to be abandoned. The spent fuel pools are dry and the rods start burning. What happens next? How much radionucleides are sent in the atmosphere? What kind of radionucleides, including plutonium? How high and how far would the plume have gone? How many people affected, in how many countries/continents? What land area closed forever? And finally the killing one: how big compared to Chernobyl?
Are you willing to do the extra effort to put your litter in the bin, and force your neighbors to do so as well? I bet you are.
This is the very definition of society: do everything you want but don't fuck with the life and future of my kids. Do not pollute their lives. You are not entitled to, however good it feels for you.
By the way to answer your question, I'm willing to pay ten time as much, not only for my electricity but for all the energy I use, and even much more than that. You see contrary to lots of people around it seems, I love my kids very much, including their own kids who aren't here yet. I'd live in a cave and give my blood if needs be to see them laugh and sing and be happy. I don't need all the bullcrap that advertisers are trying to shove down my throat, I don't want it. Like he said: "All you need is love" (I loved that guy very much). Oh this reminds me of a song that I liked so much too
All you need is love and understanding
Ring the bell and let the people know
We're so happy and we're celebrating
Come on and let your feelings show
You sound to be an awfully full-of-himself arrogant prick, and I'm very glad to have met you at slashdot because I've desired for a long time to have a serious discussion with your kind of people, basically the horde of haughty assholes that never cease scoffing the "joe-six-packs", the "luddite" and other "hippies" that don't buy their bullshit about nuclear power being safe. I'd be glad to follow this discussion with you on private mail if you'd wanted to.
If you wish for your opinions to be taken seriously by an asshole like myself, you have to be able to talk about relevant issues using appropriate terminology.
FTFY
No fissile materialis stored on top of the building
TEPCO seem to disagree with you (they introduced the term re-criticallity) but you probably know better.
Spent fuel pools are low
I don't understand what you mean by "low". They're on top of the reactor buildings, do you mean "deep"?
plus a bit of fission products,
A.k.a. "nuclear waste"
Active cooling is not required on spent fuel pools,
Possibly. They seem to have water recirculation though. The emptying of the pools are currently not well understood it seems.
Swimming is not allowed
You probably think of yourself as someone very smart, don't you? Please answer honestly. Will you?
Loss of Coolant has occurred already at three reactors
If was thinking total loss of water recirculation in the ponds. Let's say "total loss of water in the ponds", whatever the cause.
Pronouncements such as "exactly one hydrogen or steam explosion away" are preposterous - radioactive release could occur without either, but both might occur without radioactive release.
You're definitely the most pretentious asshole I've read today. But I guess you got my idea (in fact I know that you did and only quip on trivialities to stroke your sense of superiority; which is a granted for you, but who knows where the discussion might end up?)
much of what you have said is utter nonsense.
Much of what you wrote is utter bullshit.
It is conceivable that a significant release of radioactive material will occur
That's the only relevant point in the whole discussion, which you needlessly polluted with all those childish twits that you seem so very pleased with. And I notice that you didn't address it, wasting your time and mine nit-picking on the form and totally overlooking the content. So to repeat myself, in a way that you may be able or willing to understand and/or answer: what consequences?
At which point renewable energies start being economically more attractive. That's exactly the problem with energy generation today: non-renewable energy sources appear cheaper because currently polluting the biosphere is free, and the lives of peons affected by the pollution isn't priced much (see the BP oil spill). This shouldn't be the case.
Wind, Solar, etc. do not have the capacity to replace gas, coal, and oil fired electric power plants
They certainly do. Solar energy alone received by Earth (annual average) represents five thousand times the total current energy consumption of humanity. And that's only solar. On top of that there's wind, hydro, tides, waves, currents and geothermal to use. So how can you maintain that the capacity is not there?
Now granted, renewable energy sources are diluted and unpredictable on the short term, so there are quite a few technological challenges there too. But considering that developing commercially viable breeder reactors or a complete and safe reprocessing industry is deemed a cinch by the average slashdot nuclear proponent, how can these intimidate them?
In fact googling around you'll find a lot of articles about this GE engineer who publicly resigned in 1972, I read elsewhere they were three but am not able and too lazy to find the article back.
Anyway what I currently find the most surprising is not the design of the reactors themselves but of the cooling ponds. The principal argument put forward by the countless arrogant and condescending pricks that here on slashdot and elsewhere sigh and call you a "luddite joe-six-pack" when you dare express concern about the risks posed by radio-nucleide pollution is that this danger is simply non-existent with current reactors because, contrary to how it was with Chernobyl, the 100 tons of fissile material in the core are hermetically contained and no radiation will ever escape from there ever.
Then I learn that on top of the building are stored 1600 tons of the same material if not worse, i.e., basically nuclear waste, the very nuclear waste that is going to be burried under Yucca mountain and of which not one milligram will ever get out of there during the next hundred thousands years, promised (the USA are four hundred years old by contrast). This material is encased in spontaneously flammable zirconium rods and requires active cooling, without which it boils away its swimming pool in a few hours and ignites.
So if I'm not mislead this design implies that in case of a final LOC accident, of which we were inches away it seems, in fact exactly one hydrogen or steam explosion away, that would have spilled enough radioactivity around to force the japanese to abandon the site, we would have seen about 1600 tons of radioactive waste going up in smoke in the atmosphere. And there are several pools, and one at least contains plutonium for good measure. Am I on track here? Is this even conceivable? Does anyone have any idea of what the consequences would have been? It seems to me that nobody dared really discuss this worst-case scenario because it at this point there was simply nothing to be discussed anymore.
The design flaws were known from the beginning, three GE engineers resigned in 1972 over their warnings and recommendations being ignored. Then as recently as two years ago the IAEA warned Japan that the reactors were not safe in case of an earth-quake.
Honest question here, I just read about the David-Besse reactor head hole incident in 2002; from my reading of it it looks like the system passed inches aways of a LOC incident with impossibility to insert the control rods, i.e., full meltdown of a running core. Is this correct? What would the consequences have been then?
The problem is nuclear energy. This is just the wrong solution to a non-existing problem. Nobody who's pushing for nuclear energy is doing it for a valid reason. Governments do it because it gives them nuclear weapons and more generally nuclear technology (i.e., more power, more control, more money, more pussy). Corporations do it because it's profitable in the short term once you've handed over to the public all of the R&D, risks and pollution issues. The slashdot crowd is all for it because it makes them feel so good being above the populace, their tiny grasp of nuclear physics making for a convenient compensation for their utter lack of success with women.
But the solution to humanity's long term energy needs is not nuclear power, it's renewable power, an eight-year-old can see that. Earth is receiving on average over a year five thousand times the total energy consumed by humanity at this point. As one can read from the Desertec project FAQ:
But if it is all so simple, then why do countries with enough solar radiation build expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants, instead of investing in this simple technology? Are there not deserts in the US? Why are Americans not freeing themselves from their oil dependence through solar power? And why has no one really started to exploit the technology?
"After the solar thermal power plants were built in California and Nevada, people lost interest in solar thermal power because fossil fuels became unbeatably cheap," says Müller-Steinhagen. Solar power was neglected even though the US was in the advantageous position, compared to the MENA region, of being a single political entity rather than a conglomerate of countries with differing interests. The US could achieve energy self-sufficiency through solar thermal power plants in the sunny south-west. But it was only recently that scientists writing in the respected magazine Scientific American unveiled a "Solar Grand Plan" for the US.
However defending thermal solar energy is not as sexy as advanced nuclear reactor designs, basically all you need is a bunch of mirrors and a bathtub of salt, the technology has been available forever, you're not going to feel like the next Einstein with that kind of crap.
But but but... I thought that nuclear energy was so perfectly safe now, a Chernobyl-like accident just could never ever happen again in any civilized country, it was just due to the sheer stupidity of those stinking commies, and anybody daring to think any differently was only a fucking ignoramus barely worth being laughed at with scorn? And I've always felt so ashamed of thinking that renewable energy sources were so much simpler, cleaner, reliable, safe and cheaper when taking into account externalities, that the world energy issue could have been fixed 40 years ago given the proper political will.
Nazis do not have a monopoly for oppressing people. You don't need to be a Nazi to be an oppressor.
I see that you are self-righteous and unshakeable in your opinion that Israel is doing the right and necessary things regarding the situation, which is important for your intellectual comfort. You would obviously judge much differently if the situation were reversed though.
Which looks to me pretty close to the definition of "untermenschen": people who do not need nor deserve the consideration that we expect for ourselves.
Now let me answer your next message straight away:
*Sigh*
As expected, you pull out just another hollow justification that the situation is perfectly ok and that you're really entitled to sleep soundly on both ears, confident in your conviction that you're the good guys, with no regards to the actual suffering you're inflicting on helpless people.
Don't you realize that *all* oppressors are invariably deeply convinced that they're doing what is necessary? Can't you imagine that you may be one of them?
It seemed to me that "significant oppression of a given group" could possibly be applied to the Palestinian population, at least to the eyes of some, among which the victims themselves.
You have to take into account in this kind of forums (Reddit too) the presence of users with names "obvious_troll" or "stating_the_obvious", in addition to real trolls and really stupid rednecks. They make it a full step more difficult to distinguish between straightforwad comments, first-degree trolling, sarcasm and sincere stupidity; to the least you need to always second-think and check the user name, just in case. I've been bitten once by such a troll, I know.
Nuclear power is perfectly clean and safe, whether the brainwashed tree-huging hippies like it or not. Chernobyl was a very stupid mistake done by very stupid people, the like of which just do not exist anywhere else; it just could never happen again. The issue of waste processing is the biggest technical non-issue ever, all nuclear waste can very easily be reprocessed by breeder reactors that we would already have if not for some asshole Peanut character that shat his pants with proliferation concerns. Concerns that are totally unwarranted for taken into account that there are plenty of reactor designs in the labs to totally prevent any military usage.
All this would really be a piece of cake if not for a handful a brainwashed hipppies that just keep on interfering with the process. Realistically nuclear power is cleaner that solar power, due to the fantastic number of incredibly toxic asswipes that are required to clean all the mirrors in a solar thermal plant.
Also one should take into account that solar thermal power is hampered by incredibly complex technical challenges, the least of which not being the fact that the sun doesn't shine at night, so it's just not applicable for anything more than illuminating your christmas tree, if even that.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't say what you mean
I, like many, can but use the information that I get from the media. I am no nuclear engineer and cannot guess the proper jargon, not more than you could guess the proper terms deemed adequate in my particular little field of expertise. "Cooling pond" was used by the BBC journalist instead of "spent fuel pool", so be it. Still it seems that the spent fuel does require water circulation, even if the evaporation of the water without it should take days instead of hours.
Anyway what I'm really interested in here is a plausible estimation of a plausible worst case scenario. I want it for the precise purpose of throwing it at the face of the next asshole who will parrot that nuclear energy is safe, proof being that there has been so little damage up to now compared to other energie sources. Of course the fallacies in this asshat discourse are glaring. First this only shows how sloppily the exploitation of coal and oil is done today (think BP oil spill), not how safe nuclear is. But above all this is akin to driving at 100mph and saying "I haven't had any serious accident yet, see how safe my driving is?" Except that it's not a motorist who's speeding, it's a school bus driver with one million kids in his bus.
You need to consider the very worst case possible scenario in order to assess safety, so here we are. The crisis at Fukushima seems on its way to resolution with "limited" damage thank God. Unfortunately an army of motherfuckers are going - in fact they started on day one - to jump on the argument to maintain that nuclear power is safe. So since you seem to have some insight on the subject, please follow through this simple and "reasonable" worst case scenario: a major radiation leak happened on site, forcing definitive evacuation of any and all workers. The site has to be abandoned. The spent fuel pools are dry and the rods start burning. What happens next? How much radionucleides are sent in the atmosphere? What kind of radionucleides, including plutonium? How high and how far would the plume have gone? How many people affected, in how many countries/continents? What land area closed forever? And finally the killing one: how big compared to Chernobyl?
Thanks a lot for your time.
This is the very definition of society: do everything you want but don't fuck with the life and future of my kids. Do not pollute their lives. You are not entitled to, however good it feels for you.
By the way to answer your question, I'm willing to pay ten time as much, not only for my electricity but for all the energy I use, and even much more than that. You see contrary to lots of people around it seems, I love my kids very much, including their own kids who aren't here yet. I'd live in a cave and give my blood if needs be to see them laugh and sing and be happy. I don't need all the bullcrap that advertisers are trying to shove down my throat, I don't want it. Like he said: "All you need is love" (I loved that guy very much). Oh this reminds me of a song that I liked so much too
All you need is love and understanding
Ring the bell and let the people know
We're so happy and we're celebrating
Come on and let your feelings show
If you wish for your opinions to be taken seriously by an asshole like myself, you have to be able to talk about relevant issues using appropriate terminology.
FTFY
No fissile materialis stored on top of the building
TEPCO seem to disagree with you (they introduced the term re-criticallity) but you probably know better.
Spent fuel pools are low
I don't understand what you mean by "low". They're on top of the reactor buildings, do you mean "deep"?
plus a bit of fission products,
A.k.a. "nuclear waste"
Active cooling is not required on spent fuel pools,
Possibly. They seem to have water recirculation though. The emptying of the pools are currently not well understood it seems.
Swimming is not allowed
You probably think of yourself as someone very smart, don't you? Please answer honestly. Will you?
Loss of Coolant has occurred already at three reactors
If was thinking total loss of water recirculation in the ponds. Let's say "total loss of water in the ponds", whatever the cause.
Pronouncements such as "exactly one hydrogen or steam explosion away" are preposterous - radioactive release could occur without either, but both might occur without radioactive release.
You're definitely the most pretentious asshole I've read today. But I guess you got my idea (in fact I know that you did and only quip on trivialities to stroke your sense of superiority; which is a granted for you, but who knows where the discussion might end up?)
much of what you have said is utter nonsense.
Much of what you wrote is utter bullshit.
It is conceivable that a significant release of radioactive material will occur
That's the only relevant point in the whole discussion, which you needlessly polluted with all those childish twits that you seem so very pleased with. And I notice that you didn't address it, wasting your time and mine nit-picking on the form and totally overlooking the content. So to repeat myself, in a way that you may be able or willing to understand and/or answer: what consequences?
it involves increased costs
At which point renewable energies start being economically more attractive. That's exactly the problem with energy generation today: non-renewable energy sources appear cheaper because currently polluting the biosphere is free, and the lives of peons affected by the pollution isn't priced much (see the BP oil spill). This shouldn't be the case.
Wind, Solar, etc. do not have the capacity to replace gas, coal, and oil fired electric power plants
They certainly do. Solar energy alone received by Earth (annual average) represents five thousand times the total current energy consumption of humanity. And that's only solar. On top of that there's wind, hydro, tides, waves, currents and geothermal to use. So how can you maintain that the capacity is not there?
Now granted, renewable energy sources are diluted and unpredictable on the short term, so there are quite a few technological challenges there too. But considering that developing commercially viable breeder reactors or a complete and safe reprocessing industry is deemed a cinch by the average slashdot nuclear proponent, how can these intimidate them?
Anyway what I currently find the most surprising is not the design of the reactors themselves but of the cooling ponds. The principal argument put forward by the countless arrogant and condescending pricks that here on slashdot and elsewhere sigh and call you a "luddite joe-six-pack" when you dare express concern about the risks posed by radio-nucleide pollution is that this danger is simply non-existent with current reactors because, contrary to how it was with Chernobyl, the 100 tons of fissile material in the core are hermetically contained and no radiation will ever escape from there ever.
Then I learn that on top of the building are stored 1600 tons of the same material if not worse, i.e., basically nuclear waste, the very nuclear waste that is going to be burried under Yucca mountain and of which not one milligram will ever get out of there during the next hundred thousands years, promised (the USA are four hundred years old by contrast). This material is encased in spontaneously flammable zirconium rods and requires active cooling, without which it boils away its swimming pool in a few hours and ignites.
So if I'm not mislead this design implies that in case of a final LOC accident, of which we were inches away it seems, in fact exactly one hydrogen or steam explosion away, that would have spilled enough radioactivity around to force the japanese to abandon the site, we would have seen about 1600 tons of radioactive waste going up in smoke in the atmosphere. And there are several pools, and one at least contains plutonium for good measure. Am I on track here? Is this even conceivable? Does anyone have any idea of what the consequences would have been? It seems to me that nobody dared really discuss this worst-case scenario because it at this point there was simply nothing to be discussed anymore.
having the generators in the lowest point so it could flood was not a good idea
Storing 1600 tons of hot radioactive waste high up in open air was even worse.
They can add to the rods inside of the reactor.
Unfortunately it's more the reactor rods (about 100 tons) that will add to those on the roof (about 1600 tons).
The design flaws were known from the beginning, three GE engineers resigned in 1972 over their warnings and recommendations being ignored. Then as recently as two years ago the IAEA warned Japan that the reactors were not safe in case of an earth-quake.
No, it was a criticality event (power excursion).
Nuclear is the only option left.
You say it like it's a good thing.
Honest question here, I just read about the David-Besse reactor head hole incident in 2002; from my reading of it it looks like the system passed inches aways of a LOC incident with impossibility to insert the control rods, i.e., full meltdown of a running core. Is this correct? What would the consequences have been then?
But the solution to humanity's long term energy needs is not nuclear power, it's renewable power, an eight-year-old can see that. Earth is receiving on average over a year five thousand times the total energy consumed by humanity at this point. As one can read from the Desertec project FAQ:
But if it is all so simple, then why do countries with enough solar radiation build expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants, instead of investing in this simple technology? Are there not deserts in the US? Why are Americans not freeing themselves from their oil dependence through solar power? And why has no one really started to exploit the technology?
"After the solar thermal power plants were built in California and Nevada, people lost interest in solar thermal power because fossil fuels became unbeatably cheap," says Müller-Steinhagen. Solar power was neglected even though the US was in the advantageous position, compared to the MENA region, of being a single political entity rather than a conglomerate of countries with differing interests. The US could achieve energy self-sufficiency through solar thermal power plants in the sunny south-west. But it was only recently that scientists writing in the respected magazine Scientific American unveiled a "Solar Grand Plan" for the US.
However defending thermal solar energy is not as sexy as advanced nuclear reactor designs, basically all you need is a bunch of mirrors and a bathtub of salt, the technology has been available forever, you're not going to feel like the next Einstein with that kind of crap.
But but but... I thought that nuclear energy was so perfectly safe now, a Chernobyl-like accident just could never ever happen again in any civilized country, it was just due to the sheer stupidity of those stinking commies, and anybody daring to think any differently was only a fucking ignoramus barely worth being laughed at with scorn? And I've always felt so ashamed of thinking that renewable energy sources were so much simpler, cleaner, reliable, safe and cheaper when taking into account externalities, that the world energy issue could have been fixed 40 years ago given the proper political will.
So am I the idiot, or are you the idiot?
Nazis do not have a monopoly for oppressing people. You don't need to be a Nazi to be an oppressor.
I see that you are self-righteous and unshakeable in your opinion that Israel is doing the right and necessary things regarding the situation, which is important for your intellectual comfort. You would obviously judge much differently if the situation were reversed though.
Which looks to me pretty close to the definition of "untermenschen": people who do not need nor deserve the consideration that we expect for ourselves.
Now let me answer your next message straight away:
*Sigh*
As expected, you pull out just another hollow justification that the situation is perfectly ok and that you're really entitled to sleep soundly on both ears, confident in your conviction that you're the good guys, with no regards to the actual suffering you're inflicting on helpless people.
Don't you realize that *all* oppressors are invariably deeply convinced that they're doing what is necessary? Can't you imagine that you may be one of them?
It's ok, those people are untermenschen anyway.
Don't waste your time really. Have a look at what I just found though.
It seemed to me that "significant oppression of a given group" could possibly be applied to the Palestinian population, at least to the eyes of some, among which the victims themselves.
You have to take into account in this kind of forums (Reddit too) the presence of users with names "obvious_troll" or "stating_the_obvious", in addition to real trolls and really stupid rednecks. They make it a full step more difficult to distinguish between straightforwad comments, first-degree trolling, sarcasm and sincere stupidity; to the least you need to always second-think and check the user name, just in case. I've been bitten once by such a troll, I know.
Evil people need to die or be made an example of.
Are you thinking about Dick Cheney?
What if the internal politics involve practices that involve significant oppression of a given group?
Are you thinking about Israel possibly?
Try "your favorite terms" "picture gallery" for a start.
No but this guy does.
Nuclear power is perfectly clean and safe, whether the brainwashed tree-huging hippies like it or not. Chernobyl was a very stupid mistake done by very stupid people, the like of which just do not exist anywhere else; it just could never happen again. The issue of waste processing is the biggest technical non-issue ever, all nuclear waste can very easily be reprocessed by breeder reactors that we would already have if not for some asshole Peanut character that shat his pants with proliferation concerns. Concerns that are totally unwarranted for taken into account that there are plenty of reactor designs in the labs to totally prevent any military usage.
All this would really be a piece of cake if not for a handful a brainwashed hipppies that just keep on interfering with the process. Realistically nuclear power is cleaner that solar power, due to the fantastic number of incredibly toxic asswipes that are required to clean all the mirrors in a solar thermal plant.
Also one should take into account that solar thermal power is hampered by incredibly complex technical challenges, the least of which not being the fact that the sun doesn't shine at night, so it's just not applicable for anything more than illuminating your christmas tree, if even that.