Chernobyl didn't have a "full melt down". It had an explosion and fire of the core and graphite components. Chernobyl did not have containment. Burning graphite combined with radioactive particles caused a highly radioactive plume. This is nothing even remotely close to that. Chernobyl was a crime when it was built.
Anyone who said containment could not be breached was clearly mistaken. Containment is intended to contain the radioactive particles. Clearly containment can be breached.
Clearly you people have no idea what is going on. Clearly you have no intentions of actually understanding what is going on. Clearly all you want to do is pump up this into the largest possible accident you can. It's extremely frustrating trying to again and again and again try to put the actual facts straight.
So if you are successful at damning nuclear power and then burn up more coal instead thus killing the world will you be happy? I'd much rather work with the REAL facts.
I post the link where you said the containment vessel could not be breached. Chernobyl did have a full melt down. BTW I am pro nuclear power and the "fukushima 50" said they expect to die. You switch your facts around so you can be right all the time. You are a troll.
The fuel rods completely melted and were outside the reactor in Chernobyl hence full meltdown, you really should be the new Baghdad Bob. Partial meltdown is partially or fully melted rods that have not escaped all containment, that could be a graphite reactor that is intact, or a containment vessel that is intact. The fact that the graphite reactor exploded and burned does not change what the rods did.
BTW, the 180+ people working on the plant now most likely will die as a result. Long term health issues from this will probably kill nearly a thousand more.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 04-02-2011).]
Looks like they are now planning on spraying the whole site with some sort of sticky goop (resin) to help stop the spread of contaminated material, as well as a shallow draft . Just more stuff to decom later IMO.
If you believe global warming then every fossil fuel plant emits byproducts that CAN NOT be cleaned up. Burning coal raises radioactivity in the atmosphere by releasing radioactive particles that were trapped in the coal. More people die from other power sources. That fact however is ignored because of alarmists.
In 2010, 48 people died in coal mine deaths in the US alone. In ONE year!
How many people have died because of this accident - 0.
How many are expected to die - 0
How many died at Three Mile Island .
I think you left out Chernobyl.
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11:22 PM
Apr 2nd, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
If you believe global warming then every fossil fuel plant emits byproducts that CAN NOT be cleaned up. Burning coal raises radioactivity in the atmosphere by releasing radioactive particles that were trapped in the coal. More people die from other power sources. That fact however is ignored because of alarmists.
In 2010, 48 people died in coal mine deaths in the US alone. In ONE year!
How many people have died because of this accident - 0.
How many are expected to die - 0
2 so far, tho cause of death not fully explained. May have died in the earthquake/tsunami but their bodies were discovered at the nuclear complex.
quote
RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Two missing Fukushima nuclear plant workers were found dead on Sunday as more highly radioactive water spilled into the sea and authorities struggled to seal the leak.
The two workers — a 21-year-old and a 24-year-old — had been missing since a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but their bodies were discovered only last week at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex
I post the link where you said the containment vessel could not be breached. Chernobyl did have a full melt down. BTW I am pro nuclear power and the "fukushima 50" said they expect to die. You switch your facts around so you can be right all the time. You are a troll.
The fuel rods completely melted and were outside the reactor in Chernobyl hence full meltdown, you really should be the new Baghdad Bob. Partial meltdown is partially or fully melted rods that have not escaped all containment, that could be a graphite reactor that is intact, or a containment vessel that is intact. The fact that the graphite reactor exploded and burned does not change what the rods did.
BTW, the 180+ people working on the plant now most likely will die as a result. Long term health issues from this will probably kill nearly a thousand more.
An exploding core is not a melting core. Blow up the core and then worry about the rods melting? I don't think so. The rods were already breached. Then the graphite fire sent radioactive particles in the air.
Kinda hard to have a 'full meltdown' when you no longer have a full core. Kinda hard to have your definition of 'full meltdown' that 'breaches containment' when the Russian plant lacked containment.
Here is a piece of the graphite core that was ejected in the explosion. The hole is for a control rod to be inserted.
I see you failed to quote where supposedly I said the containment could not be breached. You lack credibility.
Your made up 180+ people to die lacks any credibility.
Well actually most of your statements here lack any credibility
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 04-03-2011).]
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06:36 AM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
An exploding core is not a melting core. Blow up the core and then worry about the rods melting? I don't think so. The rods were already breached. Then the graphite fire sent radioactive particles in the air.
Kinda hard to have a 'full meltdown' when you no longer have a full core. Kinda hard to have your definition of 'full meltdown' that 'breaches containment' when the Russian plant lacked containment.
Here is a piece of the graphite core that was ejected in the explosion. The hole is for a control rod to be inserted.
I see you failed to quote where supposedly I said the containment could not be breached. You lack credibility.
Your made up 180+ people to die lacks any credibility.
Well actually most of your statements here lack any credibility
Do more research on chernobyl because you have no clue what happened there. Most of the rods melted into the basement. Melted rods = meltdown. DUH
Chernobyl did not have a containment vessel, it did have containment, an intact core is containment for example.
Look at the other thread where you were busy calling me a moron for saying containment could be breached. I posted the link, go back and see where you said it could not happen because it was not a graphite reactor, btw you and graphite reactors are in a serious man love relationship. You should get a room with one.
As far as calling me liberal, that is the funniest thing I have ever read here, stop distorting the truth. LMAO.
[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 04-03-2011).]
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02:11 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Chernobyl's exploding core scattered core components. Yes some of the core's rods most likely stayed in the core and were part of the melted blob. But Chernobyl did not suffer a meltdown. It suffered a core explosion. That is what first breached the control rods. Again you are wrong and have no idea what you are talking about.
quote
On 26 April 1986, at 01:23 (UTC+3), reactor four suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere[6]:73 and ignited the combustible graphite moderator.
You show your ignorance when you equate the reactor vessel to an actual containment vessel. Chernobyl lacked a containment vessel.
quote
The burning graphite moderator increased the emission of radioactive particles, carried by the smoke, as the reactor had not been encased by any kind of hard containment vessel.
Again you are wrong. May I suggest you do some basic research before you start typing.
re containment. Here is what I actually said
quote
Originally posted by phonedawgz:...An exposed core will overheat and melt. The fuel rods that hold the fuel can melt. That melted metal of course would collect in the bottom of the reactor. No that pool of metal would not start producing more power because it's a single mass. The residual heat production would continue however. Will it melt through the containment vessel? Most likely not, Will it 'burn' as stated earlier in this thread? No. Will it be transported into the atmosphere via burning graphite as in Chernobyl? Nope - no graphite. Can it be used by Rodan to incapacitate Godzilla - Yes.
Chernobyl's exploding core scattered core components. Yes some of the core's rods most likely stayed in the core and were part of the melted blob. But Chernobyl did not suffer a meltdown. It suffered a core explosion. That is what first breached the control rods. Again you are wrong and have no idea what you are talking about.
Again you are wrong. May I suggest you do a basic search before you start typing.
Then you admit chernobyl did have a melt down because the rods melted and were outside the reactor core. Containment does not equal containment vessel, but you know that you just have to twist my words. Also if anyone actually checks that link and follows the conversation they will see you were stating containment vessels could not be breached because there was no graphite reactor, which was BS then and is BS now. Your just trying to save face and you are a troll. The fukushima 50 btw is composed of more than 50 people in rotating shifts, supposed 180+. Many of them have written letters to family stating they believed they may die. Why don't you do some research yourself and stop twisting words and posting half truths. Your arguments are false and I am done completing ignorance. Have a wonderful life as Tepco's baghdad bob.
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06:10 PM
Raydar Member
Posts: 40712 From: Carrollton GA. Out in the... country. Registered: Oct 1999
Originally posted by JazzMan: It's also kind of reminiscent of how BP dealt with trying to stop last year's Gulf coast disaster. Maybe the Japanese engineers can try a junk shot and throw garbage at it?
Heh... I just heard that they're going to use a mixture of sawdust, shredded newspaper, and some other stuff (old shoes? ) to try and fill a crack in the catch basin where the water has been leaking out and getting back into the ocean. (Crack was caused by the earthquake.)
Japan's government has agreed to the release of the less radioactive water into the ocean only as a last option for dealing with the runoff. The goal is to clear more space for storing the highly contaminated water by emptying the less radioactive water into the sea.
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01:05 PM
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phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Looks like they are now planning on spraying the whole site with some sort of sticky goop (resin) to help stop the spread of contaminated material, as well as a shallow draft . Just more stuff to decom later IMO.
You don't want the radioactive 'dust' blowing around. It makes sense to control the spread of contaminated particles. Contained low level radioactive particles can be dealt with.
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01:36 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
I'm not the one who is saying I'm pro-nuke and then attacking nukes in every angle.
No, you're just the one trying to politicize the thread with comments such as your "liberal" one above. Last time I checked, the reactors (probably) melting down in Japan aren't liberal or conservative...
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03:11 PM
Scottzilla79 Member
Posts: 2573 From: Chicago, IL Registered: Oct 2009
Here is what is happening here in Germany. Chancellor Merkel knee jerked and shut down 7 of the oldest nuclear reactors March 16th. That lack of generating capacity has caused Germany to import electricity. Germany imports electricity from France and the Czech Republic. 75% of France's electric power is nuclear. 34% in the Czech Republic.
"Merkel had emphasized last month that the reactor closure must not lead to Germany importing nuclear power from neighboring countries, where safety standards might not be better."
The problem is you can't just make energy appear magically.
"RWE said the country's power imports from France and Czech have been amounting up to 3,000 megawatts and up to 2,000 megawatts respectively."
So you don't think its inherently unsafe and capable of ruining hundreds of square miles for centuries? You don't prefer a mix of renewable energy sources that does not include uranium fission reactors? Where is the lying?
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05:40 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
The government on Sunday acknowledged for the first time that it would take several months before radioactive materials stopped leaking from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan for the Fukushima crisis, told reporters: "We cannot allow radiation to go on being emitted. Yet while we have to resolve that problem as quickly as possible, it will likely take several months to achieve that goal."
Hosono is coordinating cooperation efforts with the United States to deal with the plant.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also said Sunday, "It will take months to cool (the reactors) and to implement measures to prevent (radiation) from spreading."
At a Friday news conference, Kan also said the government would have to be prepared for a protracted fight to resolve the issue.
The setting of a general time frame likely means that the government wants to show it has a long-term commitment to the situation, rather than merely haphazardly fixing problems when they arise.
Firefighting pipes are now being used to pump in large volumes of water into the reactors to cool the fuel in the cores. However, highly radioactive water is believed to be leaking out of the reactor buildings and flowing into the ocean.
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, want to restore the normal cooling system that would cool both the reactor core and the storage tanks holding the spent fuel rods. Doing so would allow sufficient water to cool the core down to under 100 degrees, at which point it would reach a cold shutdown. The core and storage pool would then become stable and there would be no danger of radioactive materials leaking to the atmosphere through hydrogen explosions, and also no need for water to be pumped into the core.
The time frame of several months given by Hosono is believed to be the time needed to achieve a cold shutdown, but reaching that stage will not be easy. The first task is to remove the contaminated water that has accumulated in the basements of the turbine buildings, which are next to the reactor buildings.
The process, which involves moving water to various pools within the plant ground, is already under way, but it is expected to take at least a week. TEPCO workers want to move the contaminated water in the basements to condensers in the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors. However, the three condensers were already filled with water, so they had to first take that water out and transfer it to the suppression pool storage tanks. This stage has now been completed.
The next step is to move the water from the condensers to their respective condensation storage tanks. This is under way for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, and preparations are being made to start on the No. 3 reactor, with the whole process expected to be finished in a few days. After that, the transfer of the contaminated water can finally begin.
Once the water is removed, radiation levels within the buildings will have to be measured to determine if workers can enter to begin the next step.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami likely caused devastating damage to pipes, valves and pumps within the buildings. Restoring the equipment to normal operations is expected to be a time-consuming procedure.
While those tasks are being performed, water will continue to be pumped into the core to cool both it and the storage pool. That means that highly contaminated water will continue to leak into the outer environment.
Although some causes of the leakage have been determined, some have evaded identification, so stopping the leaks entirely will be another difficult task.
TEPCO workers on Sunday attempted to plug a leak found in a working pit near the seawater intake to the No. 2 reactor, but had not managed to stop the leakage of water into the ocean as of 6 p.m. Sunday.
TEPCO officials are now considering dropping a fence into the ocean to prevent the spread of contaminated water.
The idea being contemplated is to lower a silt fence into the water. Silt fences are used in civil engineering projects to prevent the spread of polluted water. The fence is suspended from a float and extends to the seabed like a curtain and is designed to limit the movement of seawater.
The water off the coast of the Fukushima No. 1 plant has a depth of between five to six meters. One idea being considered is to install the fence near the seawater intake from where contaminated water is flowing as well as near embankments that surround the waters off the plant site.
TEPCO also said Monday it had started pouring low-level radioactive water into the sea. The amount of the relatively uncontaminated water is 11,500 tons at the facilities to process wastewater and in the buildings which house the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, it added.
The release of the water may affect fish and seaweed near the plant, but TEPCO officials explain that eating these on a daily basis will total only as much as one-fourth the amount of radiation that people receive from natural sources. http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201104040141.html
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11:12 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
The company running the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun releasing low-radioactive wastewater into the sea.
More than 10,000 tonnes will be pumped into the ocean in an operation the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) says will take several days.
It is now three-and-a-half weeks since the colossal Tohoku quake and its associated tsunami crippled the nuclear facility.
Engineers carrying out repairs continue to make steady progress but their efforts are being frustrated by large volumes of contaminated water.
Some of this water is mildly radioactive, some of it not; but all of the water has to be removed so that equipment damaged on 11 March and the explosions that followed can be properly fixed.
The key concern remains the second reactor unit at the six-unit plant.
High levels of radiation have been found in waters in the reactor building. This is water that at some stage has been in contact with nuclear fuel and has now pooled in the basement.
Doses at 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been measured. Just 15 minutes exposure to this water would result in emergency workers at Daiichi reaching their permitted annual limit of 250 millisieverts. Attempted repair in cracked pit Workers have attempted to plug a crack in a trench thought to be involved in the ocean leak
This water itself is leaking into the ocean by an as yet unidentified route, and it has to be plugged.
Trace dye has been put in the water to try to see where it goes, but without success so far.
Efforts to try to fill a crack in a trench thought to be involved in the leak have also come to nought.
Tepco says the low-radioactive water it intends to deliberately release into the sea has iodine-131 levels that are about 100 times the legal limit.
But it stressed in a news conference on Monday that if people ate fish and seaweed caught near the plant every day for a year, their radiation exposure would still be just 0.6 millisieverts. Normal background radiation levels are on the order of 2 millisieverts per year.
Getting the mildly contaminated water off-site would permit the emergency staff to then start pumping out the turbine building and the much more radioactive liquid in its basement.
The Japanese government has approved the release. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said providing safe conditions to get into the Number 2 reactor to fix equipment was a higher priority.
And while no-one wants to see radioactive releases into the ocean, Japan is at least fortunate in the way the large-scale movement of the ocean works around the country. Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power It will take months to get on top of the crisis fully, say Japanese officials
The Kuroshio Current is the North Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. It hugs the Asian continental slope until about 35 degrees North, where it is deflected due east into the deep ocean as the Kuroshio Extension.
This means pollutants in its grasp will tend over time to be driven out into the middle of the Pacific where they will become well mixed and diluted.
The map on this page has just been released by the scientists working on the European Space Agency's Goce satellite.
The spacecraft measures gravity variations across the surface of the Earth and this information, allied to sea-surface height data, can then be used to work out current directions and speed.
"We've been able to resolve the Kuroshio Current now, using just space-based methods, better than we have ever been able to do before," explained Dr Rory Bingham from Newcastle University, UK.
"The Fukushima nuclear power plant lies within 200km of the core of the Kuroshio Extension," he told BBC News.
"There are many caveats here and I cannot say for certain how the extension will impact on any dispersal of radioactive pollutants, but certainly having a detailed knowledge of the currents in this area is essential to understanding where the pollution goes."
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11:15 PM
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
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Since the first reports last month of damage to nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the lingering question has been whether drifting plumes of radioactive elements from the plant will harm people in Japan or other parts of the world. For many people, the biggest fear is cancer.
Related
* Measuring Radioactive Elements and Their Effects on Human Cells (April 5, 2011)
Certain levels of radiation exposure are known to increase the risk of cancer, but scientists disagree about the effects of very low doses of the sort that may have occurred so far in Japan.
Some researchers say it is reasonable to use data from high doses to calculate the risk of smaller and smaller doses. They argue that any exposure to radiation raises the risk of cancer, though probably by only a small amount in the case of small doses.
But others say that estimating risk for doses near zero is nonsensical, and some believe there is a threshold dose, or limit below which there is no risk from exposure.
Dr. John Boice, for example, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University who studies radiation effects in humans, warns that risk calculations based on tiny doses are themselves risky.
He argues that there is little data on doses below about 10 rem, but that some risk estimates nonetheless go down to a tenth of a rem or less. (He is also the scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md., a private group that studies radiation with grants from government and industry.)
“I can take a low dose, multiply it by a million people and estimate a risk,” Dr. Boice said, but he said professional groups like the Health Physics Society discourage it. “We say, don’t do that. Don’t multiply a tiny dose by millions and say there will be thousands of deaths. It’s inappropriate, misleading and alarmist. You’ve gone orders of magnitude below where we have proof of any effects at all.”
But Dr. David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University, is among those who believe there is no threshold. Radiation damages DNA, he says, and just one damaged cell can become the seed of a cancer, though it takes decades to develop. He is studying the possibility that in terms of causing cancer, low doses of radiation might be more dangerous than calculations based on high doses would predict.
Current estimates by government agencies for risks from low doses rely on extrapolation from higher doses. In the United States, most government agencies use a unit called the rem to measure radiation doses. (Europe and Asia use the unit millisievert, which equals 0.1 rem.) According to the Environmental Protection Agency, people receive 0.3 rem per year from natural background radiation.
If 10,000 people are each exposed to 1 rem, in small doses over a lifetime (above the natural background exposure), according to the agency, the radiation will cause five or six excess deaths from cancer. In a group that size, about 2,000 would normally die from cancers not caused by radiation, so the extra dose would raise the total to 2,005 or 2,006.
So far only minute amounts of radioactivity from the Japanese reactors have been detected in the United States, in milk on both the East and West Coasts, and in rainfall in Massachusetts. American officials say instruments can detect levels so vanishingly small — far below the natural background level of radiation — that they pose no threat.
In parts of Japan, radioactivity has been detected at various times in milk, meat, vegetables and tap water, on the ground and in the sea around the power plant.
Levels in tap water in certain areas have sometimes been high enough for authorities to tell people to drink bottled water, and the Japanese government has banned the shipment of milk and produce from some prefectures.
Milk from those regions has been found to contain radioactive iodine, which accumulates in the thyroid gland and can cause cancer, especially in children. Levels in the milk have exceeded those considered a cause for concern in the United States.
A quarter mile from the Fukushima plant (residents have been evacuated from a 12-mile zone around the plant) radiation levels of 0.1 rem per hour have been measured, and researchers agree that four days of such exposure would increase a person’s risk of cancer. But some would argue that an even shorter exposure would raise the risk.
Many of today’s risk estimates are based on a study of 200,000 people who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. More than 40 percent are still alive.
The research has been going on for 63 years, and an article reviewing its findings was published in March in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.
So far, it is uncertain how relevant the results from bomb survivors are to members of the public in Japan who may have been exposed to radiation from the reactors.
“One concern is trying to find out what dose these people actually received” from the Fukushima reactors, said Dr. Evan B. Douple, the first author of the article on the bomb survivors and the associate chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, which studies the survivors and is paid for by the governments of Japan and the United States. It is the successor to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, which was created in 1947.
Dr. Douple said the method of exposure was also different: The bomb survivors received their entire doses all at once to the full body, but exposure from the reactors may be gradual.
Previous posters have stated that iodine-131 has a short half-life and becomes harmless fairly quickly. This tends to foster the impression that the long-term dangers of radiation leaks are fairly minimal and have been overblown by the media hype. Well, the reactors are leaking more than just radioactive iodine.
Cesium-137, half life is 30 years. Radioactive cesium easily enters the food chain through milk and vegetables. If inhaled or ingested, it acts like potassium but continues to emit radiation inside the body. It can increase the risks of many forms of cancer. Because of its long half-life, any cesium-137 in the body will stay there and radiologically hazardous for the rest of the victim's life.
Strontium-90, half-life 29 years. Like cesium-137, this form of strontium stays in the environment and mimics calcium if it is ingested, becoming part of bones and teeth. It can increase the risk of bone cancer and leukemia, and like cesium-137 will remain radiologically hazardous for the rest of the victim's life.
As an aside, there are over three million, eight hundred thousand pounds of extremely radioactive spent fuel being stored at this power plant site, three million four hundred thousand pounds of which have to be stored in pools with mandatory active cooling.
A dangerous scenario
Shallow spent fuel pool: zirconium oxidizes with steam
Deep pools of circulating water in the attic of each reactor building store and cool the still-hot spent fuel, and shield the room from radiation. The water should be constantly cooled, but that requires a power source.
If water levels drop, radiation levels in the room housing the pool will rise. The water starts to boil. The steam can react with zirconium alloy tubes that hold numerous uranium oxide fuel pellets, producing explosive hydrogen gas. If water levels fall to within a few feet of the fuel, radiation becomes too dangerous for anyone to directly access the pool.
Exposed spent fuel pool: possible zirconium cladding fire
Once fuel assemblies are exposed to the air, oxidation of the zirconium alloy accelerates, and can theoretically create a runaway reaction called a zirconium cladding fire, which could spew volatile, radioactive fission products — including iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239 — into the atmosphere.
Pouring water on a "zirc fire" would fracture super-hot exposed fuel, sending up clouds of steam laced with radioactive elements. Engineers would probably attempt to extinguish such a fire with either sand or foam.
This came to as a surprise to me. I thought nuclear designers learned their lesson about using materials in conjunction with uranium that could create a fallout event. Though the mode of failure is obviously different between a graphite fire and a zirc fire, the result is the same, and both failure modes require active functional cooling to prevent them from occurring. In other words, the designs are not inherently safe.
Also wanted to point out that every where else in Japan that was affected by the quake and tsunami cleanup and recovery are underway. In the 100+ square mile evacuation zone around this reactor complex people are not allowed to return to their property to try and salvage anything, can't start rebuilding, can't start recovery. There is, as of this writing nearly a month after the nuclear disaster, no timeline as to when these families and survivors will be allowed to return to their homes to start rebuilding their lives.
Kyodo [News] also reported on Thursday that the bodies of hundreds of people killed by the quake and tsunami lie uncollected in the area near the plant because they were contaminated by radiation, leaving the police and morgue workers unable to safely handle them.
I guess these victims will need to be treated as radiologically hazardous waste; where and how will they be buried? They surely can't be cremated because doing so would release radioactive compounds into the atmosphere.
Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports, Accidents
Wow, I didn't realize it was that bad there. I'd remembered the criticality incident where workers where mixing uranium fuel by eye in buckets, but that was in the 90's. A lot of problems got covered up since. I was also surprised to discover that this exact failure mode was predicted at least 21 years ago by us:
The cascade of events at Fukushima had been foretold in a report published in the U.S. two decades ago. The 1990 report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency responsible for safety at the country’s power plants, identified earthquake-induced diesel generator failure and power outage leading to failure of cooling systems as one of the “most likely causes” of nuclear accidents from an external event.
It seems that though it's theoretically possible to engineer perfectly safe and clean nuclear power, in reality there's too many different entities involved in the process with priorities other than perfection to allow that to ever really happen.
IAEA blog of current status of this nuclear disaster:
The evacuation zone is a precaution. It is not because everything in the zone is severely radioactive.
Water towers are just ways to store water, nothing to do with methods of generating electricity. And in any case, the evacuation zone for a water tower failure is a few hundred feet at most and only lasts for a day or less. Cleanup can commence immediately and will cost a tiny fraction of what it cost to build the water tower in the first place. The remains of the water tower are fully recyclable and pose no risk to anyone, now or 100,000 years in the future. As such, water towers have no real need to be inherently safe since their worst case failure modes are inherently minimal and limited in nature.
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04:20 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Water towers are just ways to store water, nothing to do with methods of generating electricity. And in any case, the evacuation zone for a water tower failure is a few hundred feet at most and only lasts for a day or less. Cleanup can commence immediately and will cost a tiny fraction of what it cost to build the water tower in the first place. The remains of the water tower are fully recyclable and pose no risk to anyone, now or 100,000 years in the future. As such, water towers have no real need to be inherently safe since their worst case failure modes are inherently minimal and limited in nature.
The point is nothing is 'inherently safe'. If you want to make electricity you have to take some kind of risk. Dams can fail. Windmills can fall. Coal fired power plants will emit CO2 along with other particles.
The point is nothing is 'inherently safe'. If you want to make electricity you have to take some kind of risk. Dams can fail. Windmills can fall. Coal fired power plants will emit CO2 along with other particles.
And the point I keep trying to make, though seemingly unsuccessfully, is that the financial and ecological risks and costs of nuclear far, far exceed any other technology out there. The only reason consumers aren't paying insane prices for nuclear-generated electricity now is because the costs are either being borne by the taxpayers or haven't been figured in yet such as decommissioning and "permanent" storage costs. Taxpayers paid most of TMI, almost 100% of Chernobyl (and Ukraine is being bankrupted by that even as we speak, 25 years later) and will be paying most if not all of Fukushima. And that's just the direct costs. Indirect costs in terms of lost productivity from forests and arable land accumulate every single year. When the pyramids have been worn down to mere humps and buried in sand the exclusion zone around Chernobyl will still be uninhabitable and unusable for human endeavors. That's a hell of a price to pay for the most expensive electricity in the world.
If the true end to end costs of nuclear, including full liability and disposal/security, were born by the ratepayers I'd bet that nuclear would easily be several times more expensive to the end users, and much less profitable to those who benefit from selling it. I daresay it would cease to exist.
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05:05 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Chernobyl was in communist Russia. As a communist country the government is not supported by taxes. So you are categorically wrong when you said "Taxpayers paid ... ...almost 100% of Chernobyl". Russia did not have taxpayers. It had communism.
Your 'fact' "Taxpayers... ...will be paying most if not all of Fukushima" is of course just something you made up. It hasn't happened yet.
TMI's Unit 2 clean up cost GPU Nuclear Corporation, which operates the Three Mile Island plant about $1 billion. Unit 1 alone of TMI had a CONSTRUCTION cost of $1.7B in today's dollars. Considering the value of the electricity generated it is not as you say "insane prices". It is instead a bargain.
As an example look at Point Beach - Two Rivers, Wisconsin - Has an annual average annual generation of 7,767 GW·h. That has a sell price of $761M each year. Over it's expected 50 year life span thats $38B.
the Department of Energy's future electric cost estimations
quote
When the pyramids have been worn down to mere humps and buried in sand the exclusion zone around Chernobyl will still be uninhabitable and unusable for human endeavors
When the pyramids have been worn down to mere humps and buried in sand the exclusion zone around Chernobyl will still be uninhabitable and unusable for human endeavors.
point
So to conclude, the reason you are unsuccessful to 'make your point' is because your arguments are based on false data and conjecture.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 04-06-2011).]
) to try and fill a crack in the catch basin where the water has been leaking out and getting back into the ocean. (Crack was caused by the earthquake.)
