Chain Reactions Reignited At Fukushima 234
mdsolar writes "Radioactive byproducts indicate that nuclear chain reactions must have been burning at the damaged nuclear reactors long after the disaster unfolded. Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident. Matsui says the evidence comes from measurements of the ratio of cesium-137 and iodine-131 at several points around the facility and in the seawater nearby."
Tetsuuuuuoooooooo!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
That is all.
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I spit in your general direction!
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Not surprising: (Score:4, Insightful)
If you melt the fuel, you can get localized criticalities.
Without a moderator? (Score:4, Interesting)
How, without a moderator?
My understanding is that LEU (low-enriched uranium) cannot achieve criticality without a moderator to slow down the neutrons?
Can anyone with a nuclear physics/engineering background give any explanation of how you can get a chain reaction without moderator?
Ok, they were cooling the reactor with water, and water is a moderator, but the water was also boronated, which should cancel the moderation property of water, shouldn't it?
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:5, Informative)
In the first-12-day timeframe, the water wasn't boronated, it was just seawater.
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I thought the news reports all said they boronated the seawater? Maybe I'm misremembering, but it seemed like that had been the case.
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't initially use seawater. They still had normal water in the pile and as far as I know hadn't triggered the systems to release boron in it.
These would be tiny little areas that would have an accelerated fission rate over just the fuel sitting in the elements. I'm not even sure you could truly call it a criticality in that it wouldn't be self sustaining. You'd get a momentary spike that would tail off. It's pretty insignificant as far as a source of heat or radiation compared to the decay heat and radiation from the fission products.
Thing is, using a mass spectrometer, you can measure truly tiny amounts of isotopes. You could expect some of the shorter life isotopes from just from occasionaly fissions without criticality. What this study was saying was that the observed ratio of isotopes was such that the particular researcher felt that it would require more than just the expected rate of fissions to get to that ratio.
That really doesn't surprise me. Nor is it terribly significant.
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It isn't clear to me how sea water would affect a neutron flux, especially after it had boiled a bit. I don't think it is clear to anyone else, either, but certainly the lack of boron absorb stray neutrons and keep them out of the chain reaction makes criticality more likely.
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:4, Insightful)
The scientific method in general terms consists of observation, then hypothesis, then designing an experiment to prove the hypothesis.
You are arguing "shouldn't it" and closing your mind to the understanding of the observed results - it doesn't matter what it "should" and "shouldn't" do under current models - what is important is what it actually did. Which means that either a) there were conditions that we don't know about that enabled the reaction or b) there are additional underlying scientific principles that we don't fully understand yet. My money would be on the former. However that the data do not agree with what you expected does not necessarily mean the data are wrong. It means you are wrong. Especially in a situation like this where I am sure that the data have been double and triple-checked.
If you stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, this will help you understand the universe better.
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not arguing anything. I asked a question. If (and that still hasn't been conclusively proven, but there is evidence to indicate a good possibility) that re-criticality occured, then the natural next question becomes *how* did this happen? How is my model flawed? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I never, ever said in my post that the data is wrong, nor even implied that. I simply asked how this happened without a moderator. So, please climb down off that horse and join the rest of us.
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I think another poster, perhaps, has a good explanation, btw - I thought the seawater they injected was boronated from the very start, but that may have been the result of either reading inaccurate media reports, or perhaps just confusion on my part as they apparently *did* boronate the water later, but perhaps not right from the start.
So, it seems the answer to my question may be as simple as, they injected "moderator" (in the form of non-boronated water) into the reactor, creating the conditions necessary
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The scientific method in general terms consists of observation, then hypothesis, then designing an experiment to prove the hypothesis.
No! You never design an experiment to prove the hypothesis, you design an experiment to disprove it. If people try for a bit and fail, then the theory is accepted (which is not the same as being true).
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:4, Funny)
No! You never design an experiment to prove the hypothesis, you design an experiment to disprove it.
Hypothesis:
Paper is combustible in air.
Method:
Obtain a piece of paper from the photocopier.
Attempt to ignite paper by exposing it to flame from a lighter.
Observations:
Flame appeared to grow in size.
Paper turned black at flame edge, and appeared to be consumed.
Flame continued to spread even after removal of ignition source (lighter).
Much heat was produced necessitating that the sample be dropped into the recycle bin.
After a short interval, tall flames and smoke were observed issuing from inside the recycle bin
After a period of a few minutes, flames had reached nearly to the ceiling. At this point alarms started sounding and the sprinkler system began spraying water.
Approximately eight minutes later, fire trucks arrived and fire crews evacuated the building. No further observations were possible.
Conclusion
Paper is combustible in air.
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Re:Without a moderator? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps it has something to do with more fuel clumped more closely, like in a pile at the bottom of containment.
I believe it was unit 1 that had temperatures shoot up after a magnitude 7 aftershock. Given that the cooling situation hadn't changed, is there anything else but fuel shifting that would account for that?
Fuel that's piled up on the bottom may also get less of the inhibiting effects from either the boron control rods, or boron in solution.
Some believe that has has been some level of criticality in the unit 4 fuel pond based on the nature of the radiation coming off of that. Between some fuel damage from previous loss of coolant, possible use of coolant without boric acid for a time, and the world-wide industry practice of re-racking, it isn't surprising to have an issue with that. Re-racking is the practice of placing fuel assemblies at a closer spacing than original safety standards called for in or to be able to store more spent fuel.
Unit 3 has mixed oxide (MOX) fuel which includes plutonium. Since it gives off more neutrons when hit by them, it is harder to control. Reactors may need additional control rods and more boric acid in the coolant during normal operation to stay in control, and more yet when shut down. Unit 3 is potentially more troublesome to control if too much damaged fuel piles up on the the bottom. The environmental damage is also more apt to be longer term. As plutonium breaks down, the material produced actually gives off more radiation..
This blog has a fairly in depth look at MOX fuel
http://abundanthope.net/pages/Environment_Science_69/MOX-Fuel---Insanity-Part-1.shtml [abundanthope.net]
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I think it's not a question of if there's fuel at the bottom, but how much.
It wasn't known initially due to the loss of instrumentation power, but stored data that was accessed later revealed that unit 1 had some kind of internal damage from the earthquake that was evident before the tsunami hit and there was loss of cooling.
The data showed a much faster drop in coolant level in unit 1 (compared to the other reactors), falling reactor vessel pressure, and rising containment pressure. So there's some kind o
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These reactors have fuel rods, moderator rods, and control rods. A sub-critical reactor still generates heat.
Subtract the cooling water, melt some fuel and moderator, the geometry changes, then who knows.
I can't find what material is in the moderator rods, probably graphite.
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Are there moderator rods? I was under the impression that Boiling Water Reactors just used the coolant water as the moderator, not rods?
I think the poster who said the emergency seawater coolant wasn't boronated probably has the answer. I had been (perhaps wrongly) under the impression that boron was being added to the seawater before injection specifically to keep the seawater from acting as a moderator.
If that was not the case, then there would have been moderator present, and if there were any holes/chan
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:5, Interesting)
Chernobyl had grapite rods which added to the problems since they burned.
The Fukushima reactors have boron control rods.
Hopefully there won't be additional fuel damage. There apparently was some in unit 1 a week ago. Although they reported things as stable, they interruptted cooling for an hour or two to set up more permanent power connections. Later the temperature at the bottom of the reactor went from 110C to 143C. They increased the rate of adding water some. I think they're in a hurry to get better cooling with actual recycling, finned radiators, filtering, and good control of the boron levels going. They got air filtering going recently and made the building safe to enter. Last I heard they were about to remove some contaminated material and start checking the original circulating pump. It's good to see them finally making some progress. For a while it seemed like they were hopelessly kept away by the highly contominated water all over. Hopefully they'll get whatever cleans/processes that working well before they run out of space to put the water. Starting to recycle would really help that mess. It sounded like much of the water being pumped out was from turbine areas or tunnels nearby. Without actually sealing up the leak, whatever water does come out will tend to build up more and more contamination.
I believe they concluded that that mess is all coming from the unit 2 suppression tank. In the drawing it looks like a tire around the bottom (old GE Mark I design). But it's huge. A during-construction photo I saw with someone standing nearby made that suppression pool look maybe 30 feet tall. They'd have to pump in an awful lot of concrete or something to seal that leak...don't know if that;d work while wet and many tons of water and hour going through.
Re:Without a moderator? (Score:4, Informative)
update:
more radiation than they hoped in unit 1, 700 ms/hr on the first floor. It won't be easy to work in there unless they can bring that down somehow.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_18.html [nhk.or.jp]
the unit 4 fuel pond is less damaged than expected, so some good news.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_18.html [nhk.or.jp]
Diablo Canyon Unit 2 is shut down for refueling and maintenance. Since it was shut down about a month ago and they didn't decide to start refueling then, I suspect there is more to this. They're likely giving it some extra attention. They recently had a motor with the rotor slipping on the shaft. I wondered if they could have had a control system issue (PLC?) instead of mis-calibrated micro-switches and shaft tolerance issues as given for the reason the backup cooling was down for 18 months. Any modifications or even rebooting of a critical control system are potentially dangerous, so those things are best not done with a plant running. It's probably not totally risk free even when shut down since cooling is still essential, but no-doubt they have extra people that know exactly what to watch for and have prepared. It's important that all plants be completely on top of any software vulnerabilities as well as normal issues. There may be a few hot-headed people in some other places about now.
Some huge military helicopters were seen headed the general direction of Diablo Canyon late last week.. The same type were seen when boric acid was picked up for use in Japan. Foreign news sources had also mentioned Japan dealing with France and South Korea as sources of boric acid.
They must be going through quite a bit of it and will until they can recycle coolant. Hopefully the 20 mule-team people or whoever are keeping adequate supplies available...
Hmmm... I bet radioactive coolant with boric acid in it would work great for getting rid of termites... or would they mutate? Someone should make more 50's style movies. Mutants from the sea raising sunken fishing boats...
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How, without a moderator?
My understanding is that LEU (low-enriched uranium) cannot achieve criticality without a moderator to slow down the neutrons?
Can anyone with a nuclear physics/engineering background give any explanation of how you can get a chain reaction without moderator?
I did about one year of nuke eng, after saying F Chem-Eng, then said F nuke eng and went EE. And then I never did any EE other than ham radio at home and have been a programmer / sysadmin since then. Yeah I was indecisive as a kid.
Anyway read the paragraph under the table at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere [wikipedia.org]
I cannot get a straight answer on how enriched the fuel was in the U plants. I believe the one reactor with MOX Pu was running about 5%.
I cannot get a straight
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without a moderator?
Is the moderator something that would go away when everything melts, or is it something that would fall down in the pool of unevenly mixed material we're talking about? Because we're not talking about pure uranium, we're talking about a mess.
Ok, they were cooling the reactor with water, and water is a moderator, but the water was also boronated
They were dumping sea water scooped up from helicopters on the damn things, and you think they were stopping in mid-air to add some boron?
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As I mentioned in one of my previous replies, I do remember seeing news reports which specifically mentioned the use of boronated seawater. However, it's possible that the boronation effort didn't start right away. I think you're right that during the timeframe that they were dropping it from choppers, they probably weren't bothering to boronate it.
Which raises the question, if you are going to put unboronated water on a melted reactor, do you risk results that would be *worse* than just leaving it to melt,
Re:Without a moderator? (Correction) (Score:2)
Err, the water is a moderator, not a reactor. Mental hiccup.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Another good reason to switch to Thorium (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.energyfromthorium.com
We have no one to blame but ourselves for any accident that happens when a safer, cleaner, more efficient, and cheaper nuclear fuel is readily available and already has most of the hard problems with its implementation worked out through several running prototypes.
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I'm sorry but you are wrong. Berillium Spheres are what is needed as the power source of the future.
Beryllium
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Invention of Radioactivity? Please tell me you're kidding.
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Color me bashful. :-(
Re:Another good reason to switch to Thorium (Score:4, Insightful)
With difficulty, but it's possible.
As for any claim that Thorium is some magic pixy dust that prevents all forms of nuclear accident.... pah.
Well, duh. (Score:3)
If the reactors had been successfully scram'd completely, heat from decay of by-products would have burned out in a very few days. As became obvious, that didn't happen.
Re:Well, duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
It did scram completely. The decay heat, which is 7% of 1000 MW boiled away all the water they lost the ability to pump, and then melted the zircalloy fuel rods into a pile of molten slag in places. That slag then has the geometrical configuration to do some more fission. Ironically, they may have had no problems if they didn't scram, as the reactor could then drive power to the cooling pumps, as opposed to relying on diesel generators.
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Ironically, they may have had no problems if they didn't scram, as the reactor could then drive power to the cooling pumps, as opposed to relying on diesel generators.
Could be, but you are assuming that all the other stuff was intact after the tsunami: generators, pumps, cooling systems for the generators, etc. I'm guessing they were not, since they've had such huge issues getting water circulating after the tsunami.
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Most of the newer reactor designs actually use the energy of decay heat to drive some physics that move the heat out of the reactor (mostly by creating convection loops to move coolant up to some heat exchange surfaces which dump the thermal energy into the local air), without requiring any external power, so you're not far off in the idea that the best source of energy to cool a hot reactor is the energy of the hot reactor.
It might be worse than that. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
"The decay heat, which is 7% of 1000 MW"
IIRC, the reactors were 1000MW *electrical* output. Because of thermal efficiencies of steam generators of around 35%, I believe that means the thermal output of each reactor would have been about 1000/.35 ~= 2800 MW thermal energy.
So, instead of 7% of 1000MW = 70MW, I think you're looking at 7% of 2800 = 196MW.
That's a LOT of heat to get rid of, even if it is a small percentage of the 2800MW full output.
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"The decay heat, which is 7% of 1000 MW"
IIRC, the reactors were 1000MW *electrical* output. Because of thermal efficiencies of steam generators of around 35%, I believe that means the thermal output of each reactor would have been about 1000/.35 ~= 2800 MW thermal energy.
So, instead of 7% of 1000MW = 70MW, I think you're looking at 7% of 2800 = 196MW.
That's a LOT of heat to get rid of, even if it is a small percentage of the 2800MW full output.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant [wikipedia.org] shows the plant #2 at 784MW for electrical power out.
Assuming 30% thermal efficiency (35% seems high for a 1973 reactor, but I am guessing honestly), then the full thermal load would be ~2600 MW. 7% of that would be 183MW. So, you aren't too far off.
Not sure what the water volume of the reactor would be, but if you ever have a hard time falling asleep the NRC has the standards for a BWR/4 reactor (plant #2) at this site http://www.nrc. [nrc.gov]
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After the TEPCO directors are retired.
And moved to another prefecture on the other side of Japan.
Chain Reaction! (Score:3)
I saw that movie. Not only does it end well but its got Neo in it. Don't worry. There is no spoon.
Seriously though... that's scary. It might not be Chernobyl but this has got to be the worst nuclear disaster of its type. Although since they're in Japan wouldn't it be called the South America Syndrome? (polar opposite of Fukushima is Chile)
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The comment that was developed in the prior comment "Chain Reaction" was an attempt at humor. If you can't tell the difference between Humor and Serious, please refrain from watering the mudders. And no matter what, never, under any circumstances use your brain not your ass.
"So Achmed, what was the last thing to go through your mind?"
"My ass"
Power constraints? (Score:2)
Alternatives... (Score:2, Interesting)
And don't say you don't have a computer.
Unit 3 explosion may have been Prompt Criticality (Score:2)
As well as that there has been some speculation that the explosion in unit 3 was more than just a hydrogen explosion. If you compare the unit 1 and unit 3 explosions, you see the unit 3 was far larger in magintude, plus there is a flash right where the spent fuel pool is located. Also pieces of nuclear fuel rods were found 2 km from the site. Arnie Gundersen speculates that this was caused by a "prompt criticality" in the fuel pool, triggered by the hydrogen explosion. http://fairewinds.com/updates [fairewinds.com]
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I very much doubt this, since the both the steel and concrete containment of block 3 are still intact. I think the difference may have been due to the difference of the outer shell, which was not made out of reinforced concrete in the case of block 1. Also, the power of block 3 was around double the one of block 1, so it is possible that more hydrogen was produced. On top of that, the hydrogen accumulated for two days longer in block 3 than in block 1.
Ah, just saw that a criticality in the spent fuel poo
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Age of Fuel (Score:2)
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good job (Score:2)
Interesting. (Score:2)
i have to say that the article is interesting, but as far as i understand the fuel in the different reactors is different and has undergone a quite different history.
The data and evaluation seems a little weak to me in that respect.
Re:Whack-a-mole (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more I see the attempt to design and operate Nuke plant as a very dangerous game of Whack-a-mole. Operator error, Wham, Design error, Wham, Maintenance failure, Wham. Earthquakes. Wham. Tsunamis, Wham. Terrorism, Wham,
and, what do we do with the waste for the next 20,000 years? Wham, Wham, Wham, Wham........
Miss one time, game over.
Kurt
And operating a coal plant is akin to all the moles poked out of their holes and looking at you while you shrug and say "working as intended."
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The thousands of people coal plants kill every year due to air pollution and mining accidents? Must admit I'm struggling to find an absolute number, but this'll have to do:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Re:Whack-a-mole (Score:4, Insightful)
Horse shit. Pure horse shit. Radiation levels at the moment are still extremely minor. Plant workers are still not exceeding their yearly allotment, they're being pulled out before hand. The yearly allotment is below the level that shows even a minor increase in cancer rates. The government has stopped fishing mostly for trust reasons - it's unlikely that anyone would've been made sick, but they want people to feel safe buying the fish when they do open it up.
This is a big problem, and it shouldn't have happened. But this event has made a few people sick (like a sunburn) for a few days because they didn't follow proper protocol. Meanwhile, the triggering event has killed, what, 20,000? Versus a couple people with minor injuries.
If you have evidence to refute the above points, I'd love to see your citations. I've been following this pretty closely, so I'd be very interested to see if I've been wrong.
But it seems like you're just making stuff up. There are plenty of facts in this debate. Don't go inventing nonsense just because the facts don't fit your opinion.
I'm not a nuclear fanboy, by any means. As an engineer, current plants make me nervous because they rely on active safety. But I'm more annoyed that NIMBYs aren't allowing research and production of the intrinsically-safe plants, than I am about the operators of the plant. Nuclear plants "feel" unsafe? Well they have just about the best safety record of all industrial facilities. This particular plant had multiple failures after design specifications were well exceeded, and even then the problems they've had have been extremely minor in relative and absolute terms.
In short, you're being irrational.
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That was the cost of dealing with the whole Tsunami. Stop trolling.
Re:Whack-a-mole (Score:5, Informative)
There are reactor designs that currently exist that are more resilient to meltdowns. Most notably, thorium molten salt reactors, but there are only a handful of experimental reactors in existence. There is also the CANDU reactor primarily used and designed in Canada which is a uranium heavy water reactor.
I will agree with you that the ancient nuclear technology most reactors use today is not that safe, but more modern reactors have solved that issue. The only problem has been rolling out thorium and CANDU reactors.
And WRT your comment on terrorism, there's a video on Youtube I've seen that debunks the whole "flying a plane into a reactor" myth. Nuclear plants have concrete walls that are like 10 feet thick and the plane collapses on it self and does nothing to the wall.
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Those walls appeared to be missing at Fukushima though. The reactor outer building seemed to be a relatively normal girder+concrete building. The reactor may have been in a reasonably thick, steel containment vessel, however the spent fuel pool wasn't protected by much. It was several stories up, near the top of a not particularly strongly reinforced, standardish building, and the top of the reactor - to minimise handling after unloading).
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You obviously haven't looked at the design of the plant. There are 3 layers:
- The outer cosmetic steel box, to keep the weather out
- The inner concrete containment chamber
- The inner steel pressure vessel that houses the actual reaction
The concrete containment chamber is present in virtually every modern reactor, and every Western reactor for the precise reasons we see described today. Lack of a containment chamber is one of the reasons Chernobyl was infinitely worse than anything else, since when the steel
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Ok, sorry, yes, the reactor in Fukushima is inside a concrete shell. However, the storage pool is not. Further, the Fukushima concrete shell was not designed for explosive or impact containment, because it seems it was broken apart by the hydrogen explosion in at least one of the reactor buildings (which I gather was outside of the concrete containment). Pictures taken from the air of the damaged buildings appear to show the top of the actual reactor pressure vessel (which was itself inside a steel containm
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Sure. The bone I'm picking is with the ancestor comment that claims all the dangerous stuff is safely under plane-impact proof, 10ft thick concrete.
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Compared to the reactor pressure vessel, the spent fuel rods are a waste of effort. A plane could crash into the building and compromise the spent fuel rod pool, but even if cooling was compromised (unlikely), there'd be loads of time to deal with it. Fukushima was different because they lost external power, which wasn't "supposed" to happen (the grid, generators, and battery backups).
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You obviously haven't looked at the design of the plant. There are 3 layers:
- The outer cosmetic steel box, to keep the weather out
- The inner concrete containment chamber
- The inner steel pressure vessel that houses the actual reaction
Unit 1 reactor vessel was leaking into containment before the Tsunami hit and backup power and cooling were lost.
Unit 2, some part of containment, probably the suppression pool, ruptured and is leaking.
Unit 2, although there's still a roof, that concrete building isn't containing the leaking water. I thought the whole idea of a cooling system that used a heat exchanger and ran seawater through a secondary loop, was to have ALL contaminated water kept within the building.
One could argue that the newer build
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Nuclear plants have concrete walls that are like 10 feet thick and the plane collapses on it self and does nothing to the wall.
What about a massive fire from burning plane fuel? What does that do to concrete and steel? [youtube.com]
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Depends if it is concentrated and whipped up into an inferno, out of reach of fire control equipment.
Unless you know of a reactor that's several hundred feet up in the air...
Good point. I can't think of any reason why firefighters couldn't put a fire out at a burning reactor building. Oh... wait a second... there was a fire at Windscale... and Chernobyl... and Fukushima for the most part is still too hot to get near, even without a jet fuel fueled fire... but yeah, except for the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you're completely right.
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"And WRT your comment on terrorism, there's a video on Youtube I've seen that debunks the whole "flying a plane into a reactor" myth. Nuclear plants have concrete walls that are like 10 feet thick and the plane collapses on it self and does nothing to the wall."
Oh, so all the government officials and nuclear plant operators that actually said on TV that the nuclear reactors are not resistant against collisions by anything slightly larger than a Cessna are lying? And they are lying in the *wrong direction*?
Re:Whack-a-mole (Score:4, Insightful)
What waste issue, you do realize you're surrounded by radiation now right? Granite counter tops, bananas, air line travel [boom headshot]. Btw some thing will kill you, be it cold, or starvation b/c you don't live next to the food you eat, or perhaps bacteria growing in the natural environment that decided you were a good place to set up shop. But hey, you keep trying to make everybody confirm to your nanny-state, gaia fueled fantasy and let me know how that works out.
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Yadayadayada. You still did not address the waste issue. Are you saying that the nuclear waste in in the same league as a granite counter top? Who the fuck moderates this shit up?
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You can get rid of the waste whenever we are smart enough to switch to thorium fueled fluoride salt reactors which are inherently safer, much more efficient using only a fraction of a much more plentiful fuel to produce the same energy. The small amount of unusuable nuclear byproducts of a thorium reactor have much more manageable half-life of around 330 years. The useful byproducts include many things that are otherwise difficult to produce like the isotope of plutonium used to power deep space probes, bis
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Terrorists can still take over 'planes? I thought they fixed the cabin doors...
(All that other TSA strip-search stuff is a waste of time...)
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Boeing designed the 787 without isolation between the network running the in-flight entertainment system (some of which allow PAX to plug in USB storage devices) and the network on which flight systems sit. So conceivably a passenger could have hijacked the plane without ever leaving their seat, e.g. with a crafted media file to exploit, say, ID3 parser bugs.
I presume Boeing have been forced to fix this, but I havn't checked...
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Wait... What? Terrorism or no, that would be a breathtakingly stupid move on their part; outside of bad movies, I can't imagine any design where someone would be able to hack an entertainment system and make the plane do a loop-the-loop... Have any reference to this?
[citation needed]
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Here you go: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/01/dreamliner_security [wired.com]
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Boeing designed the 787 without isolation between the network running the in-flight entertainment system (some of which allow PAX to plug in USB storage devices) and the network on which flight systems sit.
Not exactly. They (Boeing and Airbus, the only two major civilian transport aircraft mfgrs left) were spanked by the FAA half a decade ago to very specifically not even think of doing that.
So conceivably a passenger could have hijacked the plane without ever leaving their seat, e.g. with a crafted media file to exploit, say, ID3 parser bugs.
I presume Boeing have been forced to fix this, but I havn't checked...
Well conceivably, a pig could fly given a high enough thrust to weight ratio via a ID3 parser bug.
Check out
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2008_register&docid=fr02ja08-5 [gpo.gov]
aka "FAA Docket No. NM364 Special Conditions No. 25-356-SC"
More or less the FAA telling Boeing and Airbus they will absolut
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That link is precisely the case I was referring to (and also linked to by the Wired article I linked above). So which part of "Boeing designed the 787" (note the *past tense*, and note this was after 9/11 and locked cabin doors, and, especially, note my last sentence stating I presumed this had already been fixed) was incorrect? I'm all for nitpicking, but...
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Hydroelectric is a game of Jenga - lots of fun, but eventually something'll make the dam break, which is actually the most massively devastating type of power plant failure. The Johnstown Flood (caused by a dam failure) remains the deadliest disaster in US history. Estimates for a failure of the Three Gorges dam usually have 6
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Solar/Wind/Tidal/Geothermal/Fusion are all games of "how the hell can we make this actually work?". AFAIK, nobody has ever run an entire full-sized country, or even a significant fraction of a country, off any of those.
Iceland does - 66% geothermal.
But I agree that this is a very special case. Wind and (eventually) solar would be able to cover a large part of the energy needs of many countries - was it not for the tiny little problem of storage when it is winter, cloudy, and windless. Or just night.
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Know what? If we could use wind/solar/whatever during the day, and leave coal/oil/nuclear for just the night (and cloudy/windless days), that would still be a good 50% (give or take) reduction in dependence...
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Further, I do not believe ground-based solar will ever be effective, except in certain geological situations - mainly deserts. Any power source that completely fails during the night is just ludicrous. At least wind functions equally well (or equally poorly) throughout the day.
Now, something like satellite-based solar might work. And tidal is always an option, if you're
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Miss one time, game over.
Hardly, chernobyl and fukushima were about as miss as you are going to get, reactors dont blow up in the same way that a fusion bomb does.
Granted, chernobyl has a 30 KM exclusion zone, and fukushima will likely need a permanent exclusion zone as well, but it's hardly game over for the human race. It would be a good idea to build these things far away from large cities (having tokyo inside the exclusion zone would suck), but in the grand scheme of things, these kind of events are rather survivable
No disrespe
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Doubtful. The lack of a core explosion means that the vast majority of long term radiological hazards and dangerous isotopes are still contained. The primary hazards in Chernobyl are high quantities of enriched uranium, plutonium, and strontium in the areas surrounding the plant.
We'll know more once the plant stops leaking material and the Iodine has had time to decay, but I suspect that the radiation will drop dramatically and that a minor cleanu
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It's still quite radioactive because there's still *lots* of energy in it - current reactors only extract a couple of % of the energy. At some stage in the future technology advance and the economics of uranium availability will make it viable to re-use this waste as fuel.
I.e. it's not waste, it's fuel we're going to use again in the future.
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Such reprocessing is already possible but not legal to perform.
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and, what do we do with the waste for the next 20,000 years?
The part that is truly dangerous over that time span can be recycled. Just do that instead.
What? No. It's a triumph of engineering. (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you're saying is:
It was the worst natural disaster in Japan's history, one that was the perfect storm of conditions, all affecting an ancient design of plant which was NOT designed to handle such disasters, and yet despite this- still to this very day- has not had a substantial meltdown (some radiation leakage is not crowd on the beach in Melbourne)... and you're *complaining*?
Inevitable car analogy is as follows. If I own a regular Toyota Prius, there's a reasonable expectation that if I get into a fender bender I won't die. It's engineered to tolerate that. The car may be a write off, but I'm fairly safe.
But if a TANK shoots my Prius? Well, then I'm fucked. I'll die and it's *not Toyota's fault*, much less the fault of the automotive industry at a whole. You accept that, right? You accept that anything built by anyone, ever, is built to a limited amount of tolerance, and beyond that failure is not the fault of the manufacturer, let alone the whole industry?
In this metaphore, a tank shot my Prius in the engine block... and to the astonishment of most the Prius fucking TOOK IT. That armour-piercing tank shell bounced off like a motherfucker, leaving a huge dent, and shaking the car so I wacked my head, but hey. I'm alive and whole. I walked away after the worst imaginable thing happened, far beyond the design specifications of the vehicle. Yeah, there was a little blood-slash-radiation leakage from my head, but it's not that bad. I could have a concussion. I should probably get checked out, but it could have been MUCH worse. Furthermore, I am astounded on how this Prius is eating tank shells. That's some serious engineering work right there. Damn, dog... ... and yet, people are still like, "Oh, but I'm bruised a little bit, it didn't protect me completely. Priuses are so unreliable!"
Seriously.
Tank.
Prius.
Tepco might be incompetent lying morons, but the reason why the old plant was still around was in no small part because of anti-nuclear fear-mongering ("Not in MY backyard!"). That's the reason that newer, far more safter, reactors are not everywhere. Because constructing new nuke reactors is verboten, like we're still in the 70's or some shit.
If we treated nuclear power with the respect it deserves, keeping the technology up to date and learning from our mistakes... then we can progress.
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I don't know about reducing the half life, but there are reactors out there that you put the waste into and can burn up and get energy from, so you have less waste when it's done.
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Yes, but it requires a different type of reactor. CANDU reactors can do it.
Re:Sensational! (Score:4, Informative)
Sensationalistic, atleast.
Did they restart? Techreview says "yes", Nature says "No":
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/analysis_suggests_fukushima_re_1.html [nature.com]
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The "Nature" article is based on old data from the same researcher - Tetsuo Matsui. His latest thinking (presumably with more data) as shown in the technologyreview article is that reactions did restart.
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They both reference the exact same study from 02. may: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0242 [arxiv.org]
Look at the end of the Techreview article:
And the beginning of the Nature article (*cough*blogpost*cough*):
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They both reference the exact same study from 02. may: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0242 [arxiv.org] Look at the end of the Techreview article:
And the beginning of the Nature article (*cough*blogpost*cough*):
Furthermore, the Nature blogpost says clearly : " The work is not peer-reviewed, and like all speculation about Fukushima, it is based on sketchy and sometimes incorrect readings from the plant".
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Try the same news in video form from a US energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering (Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering) experience.
http://fairewinds.com/content/who-we-are [fairewinds.com]
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The comments below the Nature blogpost gives some additional info though:
.
(Blogpost author, Geoff Brumfiel)
So Matsui himself notes that it could be caused by contamination, not by reignition. In fact, the unit 2 results would suggest that that is the case
Re:Alarmist? (Score:5, Informative)
It started to carry a negative connotation when some people started using junk science to raise false alarms. Look at Helen Caldicott telling everyone that Chernobyl resulted in millions of deaths, and that Fukushima will result in millions of cancers.
She repeatedly appeals to a single source - a Greenpeace "Report" which they somehow managed to get the NYAS to publish without any peer review, which specifically states that it does not use standard scientific analysis methods because those methods don't give the results the report author wants to find.
She ignores all the other science which has been done to determine the results of Chernobyl, decrying it all as a massive "cover up" and "fraud". There's only one report in the world, apparently, which tells "the truth". These people cherry pick their sources to get the alarming results they want to find.
See: Confirmation Bias [wikipedia.org]
That is the sense that most people use when they pejoratively use the term 'alarmist' - someone who spreads FUD which is not based on sound science.