Things Get Worse at Fukushima 1122
An anonymous reader writes "Radiation levels are skyrocketing around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant as reports indicate that a radioactive core has overheated and melted through its containment vessel and onto a concrete floor. Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guidelines."
Before everyone freaks (Score:3, Informative)
However, fingers crossed that nobody else dies. Japan's already had enough fatalities this month.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is not going to be a Chernobyl-level catastrophe..
I really hate that the above statement is becoming the bright side at Fukushima. No matter what corporate greed or human error is uncovered in the coming years/months, the masses are going to remember the hysterics of this tragedy and remain opposed to nuclear energy for some time.
Amazingly the damage and deaths caused by Deep Water Horizons and the rigs burning in Japan don't get near the hype. And the number of deaths caused by coal are virtually ignored.
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Coal has significant operational issues, but few failure issues.
Both have significant 'waste' issues
We *can* filter the coal exhaust to remove the things that cause the more direct deaths. CO2 is perhaps a bigger issue but something that mitigation may be able to handle.
As we're seeing, there simply isn't anyway to 'mitigate' failure of a nuclear reactor. Sure we can take some steps, but when the definition is failure, some of th
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Informative)
Coal has significant operational issues, but few failure issues
Coal mine fires [wikipedia.org] are a huge problem, and have killed more people and left more land uninhabitable. As a kid I lived not so far from the Centralia fire, which started burning in 1962 and is still burning - and all my friends will back me up that none of us started it. And then there's the Door to Hell [wikipedia.org].
The energy stored in the fuel of a nuclear reactor is high, but small compared to the energy stored in large fossil fuel deposits.
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Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far. Why should we believe the company now? How do we know that this is really all part of some planned failure scenario and not simply another unexpected disaster beyond their control and indeed understanding?
They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl s
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Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.
Well, to be fair the reactors were built to withstand an 8.5 (or so) earthquake and it was hit by a 9.0 ... I've also seen footage of a 10 metre high 'tsunami' wall being breached by a 10 metre tsunami because (and you might want to sit down for this one) Japan sunk about a metre. That sort of thing can seriously play havoc with your disaster plans!
Now, sure, in hindsight they could have built to withstand a bigger earthquake and someone could have decided 10 metres wasn't enough (actually, I don't know
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Informative)
They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have? These people--and quite a few nuclear proponents around here--told us all that there was "no danger" of any major leak in the days after the tsunami hit. Three weeks later the reactor is a molten puddle on a concrete floor,
They don't need any credibility at all. BWRs are not a zillion ton charcoal briquette like Chernobyl. You can't light the worlds largest charcoal briquette on fire and vaporize the works... if there is no charcoal briquette. From a credibility standpoint, sure with security theater you could sneak out the BWR and sneak in a RBMK and no one would notice (snicker) but lets be realistic here...
If the reactor is puddle on the floor, thats good, compared to Chernobyl where the briquette vaporized it for us to breathe... I'd much prefer it melted in a containment structure there, than vaporized here in my air.
Reactor Design and Plate Tectonics (Score:5, Informative)
Construction on the Fukishima reactor began in 1967 (wikipage). It is easy to forget that Plate Tectonics was only accepted as a reasonable explanation of geological phenomenon in the 1960's. According to this excellent New York Times article,
"After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan’s biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet — considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said."
The tsunami that overwhelmed the plant recently was 46 feet high, far higher than anything they seemed to expect. If you read the NYTimes article, you get a sense that the nuclear safety bureaucracy hadn't adequately integrated modern plate tectonic theory into its safety programs. The 18 foot high maximum tsunami prediction is symptomatic of this.
From the article, it seems that Japan had based its tsunami predictions on historical records, instead of predictions from Plate Tectonic Theory. Computer simulations of plate movement would have given far larger predictions for maximum tsunami heights, predictions that would have agreed with the height of the recent tsunami. I think a strong argument can be made that Japan's nuclear bureaucracy had not taken into account modern Plate Tectonic Theory in its safety practices. They seem to have instead relied on past records of earthquakes and tsunamis. I am not suggesting that individual people were unaware of Plate Tectonic Theory, but instead that their bureaucratic rules didn't seem to acknowledge it. Since construction on the reactor began in 1967, planning of the reactor must have begun much earlier. It is easy to imagine that the initial reactor designers were unaware of the Theory of Plate Tectonics and its implications.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm not freaking, but I'm not happy either. When the hydrogen explosion killed some of the workers on the roof, that was a failure that had been anticipated in the design: the outer building bad blow away panels to limit the damage from a hydrogen explosion. It wasn't the hydrogen explosion per se that bothered me, but the fact they had guys on the roof when there was significant hydrogen gas below them. That made me doubt the operators' ability to assess the state of the situation in real time.
I'm sorry to say that events since then have not improved my estimation of how accurate and timely TEPCO's picture of the situation is. There have been a series of alarming, unexpected events, almost too many to list. Until the situation stops generating nasty surprises, I'd say all bets are off as to how bad this situation *might* get. I say this fully recognizing how effective the defense in depth safety features have been so far at preventing a Chernobyl scale incident. I don't *expect* such an incident to occur, but the unexpected is the characteristic feature of this crisis. If I were a Civil Defense planner, I'd be quietly preparing for a much worse than I'm hoping for.
It is absolutely true that compared to the tsunami, the Fukushima reactor situation has been relatively minor, but that's not exactly the benchmark I'd want to set for nuclear power safety (don't have an accident as bad as a magnitude 9 quake followed by a coast length 10m high tsunami). There is a potential for a one-two-three punch here: quake, tsunami, radiological disaster. Japan is on the ropes. It's people are valiant, but they are vulnerable. In this situation a radiological disaster wouldn't have to be anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl to be psychologically and economically crushing.
I'm not anti-nuclear by any stretch of the imagination. The problems in this situation are (a) the obsolete design of the reactors and (b) TEPCO management. It is clear that the combination of these two has produced a situation of such complexity that nobody can say with any certainty what is going on, or what is going to happen. You don't have to be an anti-nuclear fanatic to see this. This system continues to behave in *majorly* unexpected ways. Yes, even in an acceptably safe design there are surprises, but the surprises appear to be cascading, and that shouldn't happen in an acceptably safe design. There's really no way of getting around that. This design isn't good enough, this company wasn't good enough, and the regulation of these reactors' operation wasn't good enough.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Informative)
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"Cynical jaded type"? Come on! All you have to do is to keep your eyes open for a while to see that this is indeed typical behavior.
Cynicism is just realism plus experience.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.” -- Bernard Shaw
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Interesting)
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.” -- Bernard Shaw
The clearly the /. editors or the dimwit who submitted this story are not cynics, because they certainly lack the power of accurate observation. This report speculates that the reactor pressure vessel may have melted, but for some unaccountable reason the summary suggests that the containment may have been breached.
There are probably better discussions out there, but here's my take on the reactor design, which includes a pretty picture from Wikipedia that gives an idea of the difference between the pressure vessel and the containment. [tjradcliffe.com]
This story is pure sensationalism by abstraction and amplification. The mental health effects of fear due to misinformation, sensationalism and lies surrounding nuclear accidents of this type are far greater than the physical health effects, and I dearly hope one day the ignorant assholes who promulgate these kinds of sensationalistic accounts get their propper cumuppance: a massive class-action suit brought by the victims of their voyeuristic fearmongering.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
I was purely commenting on my parent and not on this story.
I fully agree with everything you are saying, and I feel this story is going to do nothing but fuel anti-nuclear movements which I don't think the world can realistically afford at the moment.
These reactors were old too, but this disaster (which was beyond what they were designed to withstand) is going to impact negatively on nuclear power for decades even though the overall impact is far less than any other power source we have available to us today.
Re:Where is the heat coming from (Score:5, Informative)
I realize this was not a chemical reaction, however, I still can't figure out that reaction was stopped at the time of earthquake according to various sources. Graphite rods were inserted into the core to stop the reaction.
So where is this heat coming from. Is the fission on going, wouldn't that mean the reaction wasn't stopped, it is still on going!
Can someone explain this to me?
When a Uranium atom splits by fission, it leaves behind two unstable isotopes. These isotopes soon undergo radioactive decay themselves. These decays produce a significant amount of heat, which can't be "turned off" because it is natural radioactive decay (as opposed to the original induced fission, which can be stopped by absorbing the neutrons which cause fission). The fuel rods are not merely hot and simply need to be cooled off - they are still generating their own internal heat due to these natural decays. The only way to get rid of these decaying isotopes is to wait for them to decay naturally, which is an exponential process.
Some of the isotopes have a short half life, which causes them to generate a lot of heat, but this large heat load decays away quickly and is gone after a couple days. A majority of the isotopes have half-lives in the years to decades range, which means they produce a moderate amount of heat for several years, which is why spent fuel needs to be stored underwater. Once the fuel is about 10 years out, enough isotopes have decayed that it can remain at safe temperature just by radiative cooling, and so can be stored in dry storage containers.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
"...shouldn't several TEPCO executives have commited ritual hara-kiri or seppuku by now?"
Allow them the honor of placing the first ceremonial bags of concrete on the melted core themselves.
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The entire complex was being shut down in just a few months, why would they spend all the extra money trying to save the reactors if they were going to be decommissioned anyway?
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the announced closure was just postponed in February for another 5 years at least, with a view to get an additional 5 years on top of that after a bit of maintenance.
Reactors cost huge sums to build, nobody really expects them to last only 30 years; 40 is the bare minimum to get some returns from the whole operation, anything on top of that is pure profit... which is where the REAL interest is, of course.
Not going to be decommissioned (Score:5, Informative)
This misinformation has been bandied about quite a bit, but the fact is that while Reactor 1 had reached the end of its operating license in March, the Japanese government had actually just extended the license for another 10 years in February. The "entire complex" was not by any means scheduled for shutdown, particularly units 5 and 6, which are undamaged and will likely be restarted at some point.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Because salt water can cause a salt build up on the fuel rods, making them much harder to cool and making meltdown more likely. Or does that not jive with your evil corporation narrative?
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Informative)
If they were so unconcerned with saving them, why did they wait on the sea water? they could have done that days sooner but didn't because it would render the reactors useless.
Because then you end up with radioactive salts to deal with. Pure water will cool without transporting radiation, since theres nothing in pure water that will take on the extra particles. Salt also accelerates corrosion, and when the water boils away, it leave a nice crust all over everything, possibly clogging pipes/pumps/valves, as well as adding insulation to stuff thats already too hot.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Reactors 1-4 will never be used again. But burying them in concrete is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Right now, the cores are still hot enough to melt through the reactor vessel if not constantly cooled by constant pumping of (now) fresh water through the coolant system.
Worst case scenario (though not hugely likely) - water stops getting in, or stops cooling the fuel rods, they melt down through the reactor into the outer containment vessel, and there's not enough left of the control rods mixed in to prevent the molten fuel reaching criticality again, and it then gets hot enough to melt through the containment itself, then either contaminate groudwater, or even worse, hit enough water to cause a steam explosion, spreading radioactive elements for miles around.
It's going to take *years* to decommission these plants after the damage they've suffered from the quake and tsunami. No doubt some sort of concrete shroud will be part of the final solution, but right now, keeping control of the coolant flow in both the reactors and the used fuel ponds is the top priority, closely followed by patching any leaks from the containment vessels caused by the multiple hydrogen fires/explosions.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
How could North Korea get light artillery within range of Fukushima? And what could they gain besides a nuclear barrage of Pyongyang?
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Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
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Those plants cost billions of dollars, are incredibly expensive and hard to build (and time consuming and parts of limited supply), and you're even remotely surprised they don't try to salvage them? You do realize that if they just "shut off all plants" when the crisis started Japan would be essentially without power permanently, right? Sure, the nuclear aspects would be safe, but they would be permanently shutdown. Multiple years of investments and infrastructure gone.
Hell, forget capitalism and realize th
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, this whole crisis was caused because they did precisely that—the reactors shut down automatically for safety reasons, and then they had no power with which to keep the pumps running because the diesel generators were underwater. Had pretty much any one those reactors not automatically scrammed, it is likely that things would be in better shape than they are now.
And what folks should take away from all this is that reactors should auto-scram only when they detect a coolant leak, not because of an earthquake that merely might cause a coolant leak. Or at least that's what should happen for older reactors like these that require active cooling in a scrammed state.
No, scratch that. The takeaway should be that reactors that require active cooling in a scrammed state are fundamentally unsafe in a seismic zone and should be replaced with newer reactors as soon as possible.
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You do realize that if they just "shut off all plants" when the crisis started Japan would be essentially without power permanently, right?
In a cold winter like this, where it snowed on some of the victims, it would literally be a genocide to shut off the electricity. Not the handwaving hype from TV but real genocide, as in rapidly no heat, no food, no (clean) water, no (treated) sewage systems on the entire island. Its already like that in the worst of the areas, but the rest of the nation is more or less unharmed... Until you pull the plug on them.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Each reactor was written off the moment they pumped seawater into it. The corrosive nature of salt means the steel containment vessels will never pass inspection to allow them be used again to house an active reactor. Reactors #1, #2, and #3 will never be used again. TEPCO deserves criticism for waiting too long to pump in seawater (long enough to allow the rods to become exposed and melt), but refusing to use concrete has nothing to do with it.
They aren't encasing it in concrete because doing so would compromise their ability to continue cooling, and thus practically guarantee the core melting through the steel containment vessel.. TFA is speculation that this has already happened based on one industry expert's interpretation of the reports he has seen. He's apparently forgotten that reactor #2 suffered a hydrogen explosion inside containment early on (near or in the suppression pool, or "torus"). They've been suspecting for a while that they have a containment breech there, allowing water from the core to leak out. The high radiation readings from the water near that area are consistent with that scenario.
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You think that running out of electrical power while trying to recover from a stupendous natural disaster is not a public safety issue? And I might add, getting some of the reactors running helps the recovery effort for the rest of the plant, substantially.
I would also point out that you d
They've already freaked: (Score:3)
There's a whole raft of practical problems and misconceptions with what you suggest.
As soon as they started injecting seawater, the reactor was toast as far as re-use.
And why would you want to dump something like concrete into it that would be less effective at getting rid of heat? (Let alone the fate of the poor schlemiel you'd get to direct the stream of concrete into it.). You wait until the fuel has cooled and isn't generating so much heat before entombing it if it comes to that. Trying to cast concrete
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Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
When that didn't work out and it was clear that they had absolutely no other option, TEPCO began pumping seawater in. They did everything they could to avoid writing the reactors off.
And that's unreasonable because...?
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
All GP did was claim that TEPCO tried every option which involved not writing the reactor off first, before pumping seawater in. At no point has the allegation be made that they risked catastrophic failure by doing that.
If they were genuinely risking a catastrophic failure by not immediately pumping in seawater, then I agree that to not do so was unreasonable.
But that is not the allegation WhiteTailKitten made.
All that was alleged was that they tried to avoid wrecking the reactor if they could help it, and when they couldn't avoid wrecking it, did. That does not strike me as unreasonable. Don't forget, Japan is now facing rolling blackouts across a large swath of the country for a year or more because there just won't be the power-generating capacity available. That calculation was surely known when they decided not to immediately flood the reactor vessel with seawater.
Reckless and stupid would be allowing the reactor to get too hot in the hope that it would do less damage than pumping in seawater. However, pumping in seawater, guaranteeing substantial loss of power-generating capacity, before it was necessary to do so would have been irresponsbile.
Allowing the situation to develop and shifting from one option to the other when the balance changed seems to me to have been the best thing they could have done.
If that what actually happened? Was that the point when TEPCO changed their response? I don't know. But what I do know is that GP didn't allege any facts which would lead someone to conclude that TEPCO acted unreasonably, but still expected the reader to imply that this proved TEPCO acted unreasonably.
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The earthquake happened on March 11. They began injecting seawater into Reactors 2 & 3 early on March 14, and by March 15, all 3 reactor cores had been subjected to this, as well as seawater being injected into the containment buildings as well for at least Reactor 1 & 2.
"Many days late" makes it sound like they dicked around toasting marshmallows for a week while the reactors melted down. The best you could argue would be that they should have started flooding the reactor cores with seawater imme
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Informative)
If you have a concrete that can set in that environment, and maintain integrity versus the decay heat that under that blanket of concrete, you should be up for a Nobel Prize.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find ironic is that by blasting stuff into the sun, we might just be able to 'push it over that hill' in a manner that won't be an issue for literally billions of years.
While our early ancestors surely said "you don't think we can possibly pollute the entire ocean do you?".
Could we possibly produce enough stuff from this planet that we actually effect the sun in any meaning full way? In terms of scale it seems like we might just be able to get away with blasting our refuse into the sun and not see any significant consequences.
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Except, the energy required to blast our garbage to the sun will probably create more garbage in its production than the garbage blasted away.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm,
here's a graphic with the sun and planets drawn to scale, http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/interior.html [utk.edu]
I don't think the sun would notice if we threw the entire planet in to it, From that page
"the radius of the Sun is about 109 times that of the Earth, which implies that the volume of the Sun would hold approximately 1.3 million Earths"
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
If we can ever apply 30 km/s of delta-v to objects cheaply enough that we're considering doing it for our garbage, I'd like to think that we can 1) find better things to do with that delta-v and 2) find better things to do with our garbage, like recycle it since the energy cost is obviously no longer a concern.
Re:Before everyone freaks (Score:5, Informative)
Concrete is a mixture that's water-based. Start with some dry concrete powder (or some Jell-O Instant Pudding), and your radioactive water becomes radioactive concrete. Then, put more concrete on the outside of that to put as much mass between fish and isotopes, and you're golden.
The part the grandparent post is making fun with is "if you have a material science background". One thing I do know about, is ceramic linings for metal melting furnaces as I've built some. I have in fact poured my own aluminum castings and machined them on my own lathe and milling machine. This necessitates considerable research and book reading about melting furnaces, etc.
First of all, heat plus solid concrete = powered concrete ready to add water. Red hot and concrete do not go together. Red heat breaks down cement. Cement plus heat equals dust. Concrete plus heat equals dust and gravel. Industrially at (relatively) low temperatures it takes hours to break limestone into cement, so at reactor temperatures it'll likely literally never "set up" into a solid. Plain ole cement aka burned lime quicklime whatever is limestone with the water of crystallization burned out of it. Then you add the water back in and it sets up into artificial limestone. Did you know the pyramids in Egypt are made of "limestone" or is it cured cement? There is a pretty interesting book on that topic. Plain ole cement is pretty cool technology. But it is beyond an epic fail at high temps.
Now you can buy ultra high temp ceramic coatings for furnaces, kilns, etc.
Problem 1) very low strength. Like puddle under their own weight. You're likely to end up with a white hot reactor surrounded by a glass puddle.
Problem 2) explodes and fractures on contact with water and thats everywhere down there in the reactor and on the coasts.
Problem 3) as generations of steel mills have learned even the best ceramic coatings turn back to dust after at most a year or two of use. So you've bought a year at best, now you have the same problem plus a megaton of mid level contaminated concrete. Ugh.
Problem 4) It would take an epic amount of high temp ceramic coating to cover the plant. Not in stock, the harbor is wrecked, its too heavy to airlift, and which country will volunteer to shut down their steelmills for a year until more can be made? This is the stuff where a little "salt bag" sized bag weighs about 100 pounds. And you need like a million of those bags. Hmm.
Problem 5) Cements in general are porous at a like ionic level. Right now, say, 1 percent of whats in the reactor has leaked out. Lets think about this logically, if 100% had leaked out into the sea, the plant would not be an issue anymore... Anyway, if you concrete it, that guarantees that 100% of the reactor core will end up in the ocean (eventually) and it 100% guarantees they will not be able to get at it to stop it (because its buried under concrete).
Problem 6) Learn what distillation and vapor pressure are. Right now, at least some isotopes are solid and can't fly away. Encapsulate it in a great insulator like cement, it'll get hot enough all right to make an even bigger more dangerous mess.
So in the short term it doesn't really do anything other than blow a lot of money and look very busy. Once the reactions cease and it cools, slapping some concrete on it might isolate it from the environment, for at most a couple decades, at most. Sooner or later you'll have to clean it up and the concrete will just get in the way.
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I didn't realize North Korea had artillery capable of being fired 1000km.
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The core absolutely cannot melt through the concrete. The melting point of concrete is an order of magnitude higher than that of the containment vessel - the fuel cannot get this hot, short of a nuclear reaction. There are legitimate concerns regarding the structural integrity of the concrete after the hydrogen explosion, but this would be from cracks forming in the concrete, not anything that the fuel itself could possibly do.
Rest assured that the concrete container is designed exactly for this eventuality
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10,000 deaths are an estimate: 28,000 are unaccounted for after the tsunami. The tsunami death count will be revised upwards in the future vastly more than the number of people the Fukushima problems may be linked to the deaths of, long term. About half a million people are homeless after the tsunami - that's a real, ongoing crisis.
I would also say that there are worse outcomes than deaths. Generations of birth defects, rare cancers and cell mutations, toxic metals accumulating in a localized food chain; I tend to think of those things as being worse than death.
And these are very real problems in science fiction movies. Also, giant, radioactive ants. They suck. Communist construction of nuclear power plants also sucks (but communis
No!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Wait! I learned everything I know from Slashdot, and Slashdot says nuclear power is safe and no one will get hurt.
None of this leaking stuff can be happening. La-la-la-la . . . I can't hear you!
Re:No!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Power is not safe. Period. Anyone who says that is simplifying the truth.
The question is how dangerous (as in injuries and deaths per unit of energy) the various ways of producing electricity are. I'm not so sure that this accident will make any qualitative change to the picture. Nuclear is still going to be the safest option. Wind is also quite safe, but wind needs to be supported by hydro and natural gas (AKA fossil gas) and those are neither safe nor good for the environment. Wind would be a good alterna
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So who received a "major" dose of radiation? A number of people have received a maximum safe dose. They will not be sent in again. They are also not "the public". Certainly they are a lot better off than many industrial workers injured or killed every year.
"Containment vessel" (Score:5, Informative)
Just to be clear, they are absolutely not implying it has melted through the containment, but, rather, the reactor pressure vessel.
Re:"Containment vessel" (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been suspecting they have a containment breach in reactor #2 for about two weeks now, in or near the torus / suppression pool which is connected to but sits beneath the main containment vessel. So the presence of highly radioactive water underneath it isn't really a surprise. No need for the core to melt through the steel containment vessel for that to happen.
The mystery right now is the burns the three workers suffered a few days back. They were working on reactor #3, not #2. #3 was also suspected to have a leak in containment, but their latest readings say that the containment vessel is not losing pressure, which would seem to imply there is no leak. So where did that radioactive water come from?
Re:"Containment vessel" (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong.
That's how it really goes:
Primary Containment: Fuel Rod Cladding (probably damaged in blocks 1 to 3)
Secondary Containment: Reactor Pressure Vessel (probably intact in blocks 1 to 3)
Tertiary Containment: Thick Concrete Containment (that's the one you forgot) (largely intact for blocks 1 to 3)
Quaternary Containment: Outside Reactor building (very damaged)
So where does the radioactivity come from? Probably mainly from the suppression chamber in block 2, which is damaged, and which has a connection with the RPV and the turbine building.
The *real* shame in all of this (Score:5, Insightful)
They've set back nuclear energy for decades, at a time when we most need it.
Guess we had better get used to more carbon dioxide.
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Fukushima is not a modern plant.
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Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is (you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.
It's a GE designed plant that is nearly 40 years old. At least one of the reactors were scheduled to be decommission within the next couple of months. It's neither a modern plant nor "by the gods of technology, Japanese".
Not being decommisioned (Score:5, Insightful)
Posted this above as well, but Unit 1 at Fukushima had just been relicensed for another 10 years in February.
The fact of the matter is that a utility will always apply for an extended operating license and will almost certainly get one. The only plant shutdowns I know of in the US, apart from TMI Unit 2, were when something too expensive to repair needed replacement, such as the ComEd Zion plant outside Chicago, which needed a new $460 million steam generator. So since there is so much better in the way of designs available, why aren't utilities rushing to replace these ancient reactors instead of asking for extended licenses, you ask? Economics of course - an existing plant is almost all sunk cost, and the utilities are in business to make money. They will build new reactors only to add capacity, and they will build the cheapest design they are permitted to.
My main objection to nuclear power is that these plants are operated by businesses. Unlike a solar farm or even a coal plant, the worst case failure for a nuclear plant is very, very bad. You have a business trying to maximize profit knowing that the worst case failure costs will be shifted to the taxpayer. This is a recipe for disaster. I have no issues at all with the state of reactor technology, and the US military operates dozens of reactors that *move around* and has for 50 years without a major accident (the Russians haven't had as much success there, though). If these things were being operated by some agency like the military with those levels of discipline, perhaps we could all rest assured. When it's some utility executive who wants a bigger bonus, I am not at all confident.
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Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
Just bu
Re: (Score:3)
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
Just building the transmission lines for that kind of project is going to be overshadow the scale of the whole TVA project. And who's going to pay for it? Do you think the American people (or the people of other countries) are willing to make *real* sacrifices for that, when it really comes down to it? Oh sure, ask any American if they support solar/wind and they'll say "Yes." But try rephrasing it as "Would you support a 50% income tax increase to pay for investments in solar/wind infrastructure?" and see what they answer.
Believe me, I would love nothing better than a country running exclusively on clean energy, with solar panels and turbines everywhere. But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).
And that's not even getting into the issue of countries and areas that don't get enough unobstructed sunlight and wind. What's going to happen to them in this utopia?
Firstly, you are probably right. We cannot possibly generate the same amount we do at the moment if we use just wind and solar power.
The arguments for solar power though are not about replacing the current methods we have, they are about supplementing them. You mention transmission lines in your post when talking about building them, but you do not need to with wind and solar as they can be used at the point electricity is used to supplement the national grid. Transmission lines are the least efficient part
Re: (Score:3)
Worse yet, the NIMBYs block almost every project to erect even simple power distribution trunk lines.
In the real world, it is necessary to choose among the feasible solutions that offer the best benefit-cost pr
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_power_source#European_super_grid [wikipedia.org]
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a misconception. In the real world the ordinary citizen does not know what the cost-benefit prospect is. ;d
The oil the USA (and the world) is getting so cheap is "secured" by endless war since 1970 (roughly). Do you really think the "sudden" revolutions in the middle east are happing just so?
The low price for energy you pay, is payed with taxes that are fueling your war machine. The war machine is making sure you get the energy you want. If the price for the wars would be in the energy bill, you would see how much you in fact pay. But you don't see that
Anyway, as a hint for your future:
This is a very important/bright sentence.
... but everybody reacts to the hysteria and fear that is propagated by the media/government/energy companies.
... but that does not make it true.
Let me rewrite it for you:
The real problem for renewable is that only a tiny fraction of the populace understands
You get it? You are convinced that renewables wont ever work because that is what you got told the last 30 years. And you believe it
Ah, my hint, which I wanted to give: ... then think about it.
Just turn around every sentence you hear and put in the opposing side and the opposing argument
angel'o'sphere
Re: (Score:3)
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
I wouldn't say they are entirely pipe dreams - solar has great potential to provide daytime "peaker" power, but neither solar nor wind can be counted on to provide consistent baseload power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even Southwestern US desert locations frequently scouted as ideal solar sites are subject to clouds and rain for parts of the year.
Coupled with grid energy storage mechanisms, Solar and wind can be an important part of an energy strategy - but only a part.
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:5, Informative)
But the biggest problem I think people are overlooking for wind is the sheer scale of the wind farm you need to replace a decent-sized power plant. Roscoe Wind Farm [wikipedia.org] is the largest wind farm in the U.S., with 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from land-based wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak [wikipedia.org]. Be generous and go with the high 25% capacity factor. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average.
A single AP1000 nuclear reactor [wikipedia.org] generates 1154 MW. Figure maintenance and other reasons will drop that to about 90% capacity factor, or about 1000 MW. A plant will typically have at least two so one can remain operational while the other is shut down, so 2000 MW for the plant. How big would the wind farm need to be to replace that?
2000 / 195.4 = 10.3x bigger. To replace two AP1000 reactors will require nearly 6500 turbines covering over 4000 km^2. Each turbine requires 100-200 tons of steel [google.com], so that's around a million tons of steel. I don't even want to think about the transmission lines needed to string them all together. And wind turbines cost about $1.2 - $2.6 million per MW of peak capacity [windustry.org]. Since this hypothetical wind farm has ~8000 MW of peak capacity, that's $9.6 - $20.8 billion in construction costs. The AP1000 reactors are estimated to have a total construction cost of about $4-$5 billion [wikipedia.org] each. So $10 billion for two of them would actually line up with the low end of an equivalent wind farm's construction costs.
4000 km^2 is about 1% the land area of California. In 2010 California generated about 200 TWh of electricity [eia.gov], or an average of 22 GW. So even if you assumed lots of areas are as wind-productive as Roscoe Wind Farm, and that we developed some technology which could store 100% of generated electricity for later use, California would need to cover 11% of its land area with wind turbines to replace its current electricity generation with wind. That's a bit far-fetched to say the least.
Wind and to a lesser extent solar are not the panacea a lot of people seem to think they are. They're going to primarily be supplemental power generation technologies for a long, long time. My hopes had been on deep well geothermal, but that's run into significant problems [tnr.com] of its own.
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that.
Yeah it really takes guts to be a raving pro-nuke on Slashdot, taking potshots at renewable energy. You really bucked the trend, there.
What really rakes in the mod points on Slashdot: any realistic argument surrounding the horrific health impacts of nuclear power. Nothing gets nerds excited like references to the devastating consequences of Chernobyl on the surrounding population (like say ... Scotland).
Much braver to make the daring claim that "nobody ever died because of a nuclear accident", because all of the respected epidemiogists sounding the alarm are really luddite shareholders in wind and solar companies right? When I want the real dirt on public health, I always ask .. a physicist or nuclear engineer, because they care about health first!
Also gutsy: crying crocodile tears for "all the mine workers killed by coal". Only an evil anti-nerd environmentalist would fault corporate negligence in failing to observe basic safety precautions leading to the needless deaths of thousands of miners. Good thing that nuclear is so safe we don't even have to worry about corporate negligence!
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I don't want to debunk every little sentence, however the whole block I quoted is completely wrong and nonsense.
If you would place a solar thermal power plant covering whole Nevada you could produce 100 times the energy the planet needs right now.
If you would use the coast of three random states in the USA, like Oregon, Florida and perhaps Texas to place there wind farms it would cover the energy needs of the USA 2 or 3 fold.
You simply don't know anything about energy production ... 99% of the people don't know anything about it, so it is not your fault.
But repeating the lies of the energy companies is no good.
Dude, you sound like a politician. Starting a sentence with "believe me" is utter fail.
Anyway, if you had studied the "numbers" as you claim, you would not write such bullshit.
Perhaps you have problems with where to put the decimal point, my apologizes if that is the case.
angel'o'sphere
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:4)
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists.
Fucking Karma whore. You know that's *exactly* what many people here feel. I, however, will probably get modded down by all the pro-nuke-ler ignorant arrogant assholes because I'm saying there are better ways to make power WHILE A FUCKING NUCLEAR REACTOR IS IN THE PROCESS OF MELTING DOWN.
It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
Bullshit. REAL renewables have yet to see any significant industrial investment and all comes down to political will. Where is your research? I bet you've got none and are just lying. So here is some I've dug up;
Nuclear power: economics and climate-protection potential [rmi.org] uses industry and government data and finds that, globally, nuclear power is already being outpaced by better means of electricity production. It finds globally, as far back as 2006, more electricity was being produces from low-carbon and no-carbon competitors. Even without subsidies decentralised electricity generators provide almost three times the output and almost six times the capacity of nuclear power, that's kinetic vs potential energy. Energy efficiency means alone are shown to provide ten times the capacity of the nuclear industry.
Even the pro-nuclear 2003 MIT study found that every ten cents spent to buy a nuclear kilowatt hour (1 kWh) could be used to generate 1.2 - 1.7 kWh of gas fired electricity, 2.2 - 6.5 kWh of co-generation (combined heat and power) from industry or 10 kWh of energy efficiency methods.
Wind power is already whooping nuclear ass. Back in 2004 it globally outpaced nuclear by six times in annual capacity. With short lead times, farmer friendly, rapid technological development I suspect this will grow after the fukushima disaster.
America is blessed with so much wind and sun power you don't even need nuke-ler bower, so why don't people like you have the imagination to utilise this resources that ends your dependency on oil and nuclear.
Oh sure, ask any American if they support solar/wind and they'll say "Yes." But try rephrasing it as "Would you support a 50% income tax increase to pay for investments in solar/wind infrastructure?"
Ask them if they would like a Fukushima style disaster near them with a General Electric reactor commonly installed around the U.S. I bet there is some hidden failure mode waiting in any one of those reactors - Just as the japanese have recently discovered. Tell them they can save money on CHP and then ask them if nuke is a viable alternative when an electricity company will rent their land to put up wind power - and they can still have their crops or cows.
But the more I look at the issue, and the kinds of numbers involved, the more I don't see how it's ever going to be practical (not until the coal runs out anyway).
Please surprise me and share your valuable research with us. Show me the numbers and I'll do some real research.
And that's not even getting into the issue of countries and areas that don't get enough unobstructed sunlight and wind. What's going to happen to them in this utopia?
Reeeaally, altruism is a motivator now, as if. What a serious load of Bullshit you have produced. I bet you feel good getting that load out, karma whore. You pro-nuclear idiots have hit a new low *WHILE* a meltdown is occuring you trumpet the lie for all to hear, fucking pathetic. It's one thing
Re:The *real* shame in all of this (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is
Yes, because solar cells are made from sugar and spice and everything nice, and don't have any toxic components.
What will you say if a tank of Cadmium waste leaks from a solar cell manufacturing plant, contaminating ground water and causing injury and death. (and who's to say that it hasn't already happened, since we've offshored most of our solar production.)
All power production has risks and can cause injury or death. The question is what level of risk is acceptable, and it needs to be looked at on a per-kwh basis. Solar hasn't killed many people yet, but it's still in its infancy -- there's around 20GW of installed capacity now, the output of a few nuclear plants.
(you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.
This is by no means a "modern" plant - it's a 40 year old plant with a reactor designed by a USA company 50 years ago. More modern designs have passive safety built-in, so no active cooling is required.
Re: (Score:3)
Media Hysteria? (Score:5, Informative)
a radioactive core has overheated and melted (Score:3)
Or, from the Beeb:
Nuclear technologies (Score:4, Interesting)
This disaster will very likely change the way that nuclear power generation plants are approved and evaluated in the future. Unfortunately, a promising technology will almost certainly be set back, perhaps irreparably. The silver lining, however, is that alternative nuclear technologies may finally get a fair shake. Alternate fuels and reactor types offer so many possibilities to possibly exceed the efficiency and safety levels that we put up with today but have thus far been unable to obtain funding compared to the currently developed reactors. That confidence in our current strategy is being eroded rapidly. This isn't some second-rate system like Chernobyl, it is close-to-state-of-the-art.
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they've been unable to obtain funding is because they've been unable to obtain authorization to build it. If you come up to me asking for money to build a plant that is illegal to build, I'm not going to give you any money.
And the reason it's illegal to build safer plants is because the public lumps ALL "nukyulur" into the same "oh shit it's dangerous" boat. It doesn't matter what tech you use, or how safe it is: to the public, you're building Chernobyl Mile Island Daichi and must therefore be run out of town.
Hell, when they started irradiating food to kill bugs that could kill people, they found that they couldn't sell it. They had to coin a new marketing word (picowave!) so that the mouthbreathing morons that make up most of the public wouldn't think someone had slipped plutonium into their frozen peas.
So until we get the public over its irrational fear of anything radioactive, we will never see nuclear technological advancements applied. Ever.
And as I said yesterday, once we get the public over that fear, we still have to address the *real* problems of Nuclear: What to do with the waste, and how to stop cheap bastard energy corporations from cutting safety corners in the name of profits.
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the public lumps all nuclear power technologies into the same hopper is that they are all run by the same corrupt management culture. Management cuts safety margins, defers upgrades, miscategorizes more frequent natural disasters as once in 1000 years, all the while paying themselves performance bonuses for having improved operating margins. Then the "nobody could have foreseen" event happens, and we the taxpayers have to spend 10s to 100s of billions cleaning up the mess. If the nuclear industry had to post an insurance bond against their future screwups there would be no nuclear industry.
This isn't a technology problem, it's a regulatory and human problem.
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:4, Insightful)
"Nuclear would be fine as long as it was strictly regulated by a 3rd party uninterested in profits (read: the government)"
And who, exactly, was running Chernobyl, and what was their viewpoint on profits?
Re:Nuclear technologies (Score:4, Informative)
That confidence in our current strategy is being eroded rapidly. This isn't some second-rate system like Chernobyl, it is close-to-state-of-the-art.
I see your point about investigating alternative reactor technologies. However, the Fukushima reactors are certainly not state of the art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_boiling_water_reactor [wikipedia.org] reactors for instance are already in operation. Generation III reactors are currently the state of the art of reactors in operation, and the Fukushima reactors are firmly in the generation II category.
The Fukushima reactors have no doubt had safety upgrades during their lifetime, but there's only so much you can do when the fundamental reactor design is antiquated.
Still speculation (Score:3)
"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."
Sensationalism and denial (Score:4)
This is what I see on this board.
It is an interesting mix to be sure.
The situation seems very bad, but headlines screaming "radiation at 10,000,000 times the safe limit" (which turned out to be wrong) are not helping.
Worse seems to be the nuclear fanboys ignoring the fact that that plant is fsked, in precisely the manner that antinuclear folks said could and eventually would happen.
Re:Sensationalism and denial (Score:5, Insightful)
The plant is fucked. But it's been hit by a disaster beyond what was even planned for. And how many have died?
The point isn't that nuclear is perfectly safe. It's that it's better than many of the alternatives out there.
Look at how many people did as a result of coal and oil operations. Then factor in the pollution that those technologies spew into the atmosphere.
Now compare that to Nuclear. Including this disaster. Some people who work in the plant have been exposed and been hurt. I recall reading a week ago about 3 killed in a hydrogen explosion at the plant (I've not seen this confirmed). But what will the eventual impact be? ARe we talking about a 50 mile exclusion zone where a big chunk of Japan will be uninhabitable? Thousands geting sick with radiation poisoning?
Or are we talking about a 1% increased risk of cancer for folks who worked and lived in the immediate vicinity during the month after the incident?
Because if the eventual results are the latter, I'd rather have a nuclear plant in my back yard than a coal plant.
Coal WILL pollute the environment.
Coal WILL increase my risk of various diseases.
Coal often kills people in it's extraction process.
Nuclear MIGHT pollute the environment if something goes very, very wrong.
Nuclear MIGHT increase my risk of cancer if something goes very very wrong.
If that's the choice, then it's clear to me which one I support. The question now is will the disaster kill / sicken lots of people, or not?
It's not denial, it's an analysis of the options. It seems to me that the disaster is being sensationalized because nuclear is somehow "spooky". Again, we'll see.
Look at the State of Baden-Württemberg! (Score:3)
Most probably Fukushima Daichi will have to be sealed. The nearby communities will eventually be safe. But uncertainty about nuclear power travels FASTER than the nuclear fallout in all cases. A state election in a premium German state was lost by the reigning government because it supported nuclear power plants...
It's a bitter sweet evolution, if you ask me. Yes, current last generation plants are unsafe and should be closed down the sooner the better, but this will definitely hurt industrial research for future IV generation power plants which are definitely safer than any other form of major power generation...
Nuclear Energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Funny thing is that IBM is still selling mainframes and making a mint out of it. They have even stopped making PCs. Oh and giant cluster computers like Google runs on are also big large installations. Plus things you depend on like your bank, power company, telephone network, insurance companies all tend to run on bit mainframes. BTW those big mainframes have uptime's measured in years and decades and really don't fail.
So you want a power grid with the reliability of twitter?
Distributed systems for power is
Easy to fix? (Score:3)
Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guideline."
So the right thing to do would be to change the current exposure guideline. Right?
This is corroborated by nobody (Score:5, Insightful)
This is speculation by ONE guy in an article in the Guardian, hardly a bastion of calm, rational, journalism. NONE of the other usual online sources have corroborated this at all.
An actual meltdown, with the core sitting on the floor of the building, would be front page news across the world, yet only this one article says this is the case.
Control rod penetrations in pressure vessel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Renewable Energy enough, why not use it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Renewable Energy enough, why not use it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You might displace some garden snails, scorpions, or spotted owls by putting up a solar farm.
Don't put up a wind farm, because old-style high-rpm windmills that aren't even used for large-scale electricity production was known to kill birds every now and then, so all wind power is bad. Off the coast is even worse because senators do not want to put up with the eyesore as they cruise around in their yachts.
Hydroelectric? you can't dam up any rivers; red squirrels might lose their homes and have to relocate to a new tree.
There is always an argument against everything. Environmentalists are more BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) than NIMBY.
Nobody outside TEPCO really knows (Score:5, Informative)
And they probably don't know either.
The reactor may have melted through the base of its pressure vessel, but it's hard to tell. The high radiation levels could either be from a melt-through or from a leak as attempts are made to force water into the reactor pressure vessel. The latest JAIF status report [jaif.or.jp] contains almost all the hard data that's coming out. Everything else is secondary speculation based on that limited data.
No data seems to be available about pressure or temperature inside the reactor. That's listed as "unknown" for unit 2. The sensors involved were probably destroyed in one of the fires, explosions, or building collapses. Pressure in the containment vessel for unit 2 is listed as "low", whatever that means.
A full meltdown is now a real possibility. The JAIF chart has been showing "Fuel rods exposed partially or fully" for units 1, 2, and 3 for ten days now. Reactor pressure vessels are tough, as are containment structures, but ten days of no core cooling is well beyond design limits.
Understand that the water spraying operation refers to the containment structure, which is normally dry. Inside the containment is the reactor pressure vessel, which is a boiler. Getting water inside there, which is needed to cover the core and achieve cold shutdown, requires forcing it in against steam pressure. This has to be done in a highly radioactive environment, in a fire-ruined building where the walls and beams have collapsed, the pumps are damaged, and valves which are usually operated remotely have to be operated by people turning handwheels. Some people are trying very hard to do that. Some of them will probably die. If they succeed, there will be a local mess, but it will be manageable. If they fail, there will be a meltdown.
Best quote I heard on NPR this morning (Score:4, Insightful)
What I heard was "DANGER DANGER! The soil around the Fukushima site is identical to the soil in your backyard. That's not a good thing! You must Fear It! Fear It!"
Nuke it from orbit (Score:3)
The only way to ... Oh wait.
Re: (Score:3)
Given the progression of events thus far, I'm not certain if we can really rule this scenario out.
Re:On the XKCD scale... (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually one red square - the measurement was off by a factor of 100 and later corrected.
http://www.eimai.in/incorrect-measurements-that-led-to-alarm-in-fukushima/3348/ [eimai.in]
Re:O.S.R. (Obligitory Simpsons' Reference) (Score:4, Informative)
160,000 three mile islands you mean.
it's now 10% of chernobyl, but hey, who's counting? this is slashdot. we're just denying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/asia/30japan.html [nytimes.com]
nuclear power: it's safer than ponies.
Re:Cue for the following response (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, every one of those but #6 is true.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is truly the end of fission Nuclear power plants.
Why? I think to the contrary, it'll calm down people. Here, we have the worst that can happen, a vast disaster, the feared meltdown, and the result is some elevated radiation in the basement and the usual hysterical news. There's no area, the size of Pennsylvania rendered uninhabitable forever (or other hysterical predictions of the radical environmentalists).
In other words, this is one of those dumb "human error" accidents that caused the other three meltdowns of civilian power plants, but a genuine nat
Re:It's already in the UK (Score:4, Funny)
That was The Guardian. This is what the real BBC had to say on the subject [bbc.co.uk].
Meanwhile, Yes, Prime Minister had a few things to say about the press:
"Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country, The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country, The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country, The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country, The Financial Times is read by people who own the country, The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is."
"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"
"Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."