Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown 769
Hugh Pickens writes "Japanese nuclear experts are working to contain a partial meltdown at an earthquake-stricken nuclear power plant north of Tokyo, as fears grow that the death toll from Friday's massive quake and tsunami could reach the tens of thousands. A partial meltdown, experts said, would likely mean that some portion of the reactors' uranium fuel rods had cracked or warped from overheating, releasing radioactive particles into the reactors' containment vessels. Some of those particles would have escaped into the air outside when engineers vented steam from the vessels to relieve pressure building up inside. Adding to problems at the site, hydrogen was building up inside the Number Three reactor's outer building, threatening an explosion like the one that blew apart the Number One reactor building's roof and outer walls on Saturday. However, it remains unclear how far radiation has spread from the facility. Some local residents and health workers were diagnosed with radiation poisoning in precautionary tests, but they show no outward symptoms of distress. 'Even if you have a radiation release, although that's not a good thing, it's not automatically a harmful thing. It depends on what the level turns out to be,' says Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months – a significant but not necessarily injurious amount, especially if exposure time was short."
Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's incredible how safe their reactors are and when you consider what has happened, I think this should calm many people's fear of nuclear energy.
Now, the disposal of the waste ....
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tens of thousands of people were probably killed by the quake and the resulting tsunami.
But anti-nuke activists will consider this the worse tragedy and use it at every chance to fight against the building of more modern and much, much safer designs.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. I'm this guy [slashdot.org], an irrelevant mathematics graduate with postgrad focus on the history of science and mathematics (so I'm not a nuclear power station worker but I'm not completely uneducated in the topic).
I tried to prompt a discussion on the Greenpeace blog about their sensationalist - and, especially yesterday, entirely unsubstantiated - banner.
My contributions were removed.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know this might be just Paranoia, let me get something straight first: I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying I have my doubts.
Have you noticed how Greenpeace seems to be an appendage of the big oil industry? I mean, they attack oil all the time, sure. But how effective are they against oil? Not effective at all. They haven't managed to make a single dent in the oil proliferation. On the other hand, they have attacked every single change we got at alternative energy sources very effectively. They are mostly responsible for keeping the population scared regarding nuclear power. They are the ones that have equaled nuclear power plants with nuclear weapons, even though the two are mostly unrelated (a nuclear reactor is far, far away from a nuclear bomb). Find anyone and tell them "Nuclear Reactor" and they'll think of a mushroom cloud and dead kittens, and other things unrelated to nuclear power. They attack battery production, and all kind of industries that can provide us with real alternatives.
Nuclear power as we know it today is not the final solution, but it's certainly better than Oil, and we could be running 100% on Nuclear Power and electric vehicles powered by said energy if it weren't for this tree huggers. Follow the money.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the anti-nuclear lobby are cut from the same cloth. When I was at school, we had a visitor from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. We eventually got onto nuclear power, and he was opposed to that too, for some reasons that almost made sense. Then I asked him about fusion research and he was also against that, but his rationale became even more stretched.
There are some real problems with nuclear power. In my view, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but it's impossible to have a rational debate when one side refuses to even try to understand the underlying scientific and engineering issues. Unfortunately, in recent years, rather than seeing more rationality from the anti-nuclear crowd, we've seen increasing ignorance of science from the the pro-nuclear side, making the entire debate akin to an argument about sports teams.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, most of us aren't competent to analyse the engineering or the physics in detail. The only thing we can go on is the fact that the pro-nuclear lobby turn out repeatedly to be a bunch of complete liars. For example, after Chernobyl we were told "there are no such dangerous reactors allowed in first world countries"; then we suddenly hear that the Japanese reactors are older than Chernobyl. During this crisis, almost immediately people came out to say "a melt down of these reactors is impossible", yet these reactors have melted down. We heard that the leak was only radioactive steam from the cooling system; that the core wasn't compromised. Now we suddenly learn again that that was a lie. We repeatedly hear that wind power is more expensive than nuclear and then find out that the numbers are complete lies. All of the cost estimates for nuclear plants seem to turn out to have been done ignoring the cost of nuclear waste.
I don't know if there are some safe nuclear plants. I don't know if we can reliably make safe nuclear plants. What I do know is that the same people keep repeatedly telling us that "nuclear power is safe" and then we keep having major failures which prove it isn't. I don't need to understand the engineering issues to understand that there is no way to trust the pro-nuclear lobby to actually deal with those issues. Fission based power (and yes; you are right fusion is a different case) needs to be severely limited until we are sure that the people proposing it are much much more trustworthy.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
To bring in the car analogy, you don't need to be a racing expert to know it's a bad idea to ride around with stunting teen driver whose confidence exceeds reality, anymore than you need a degree in nuclear physics to know that those who claim everything is absolutely safe and nothing bad can ever happen are probably being similarly reckless.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, after Chernobyl we were told "there are no such dangerous reactors allowed in first world countries"; then we suddenly hear that the Japanese reactors are older than Chernobyl.
The following are true statements:
A and B are reactors.
A is a Chernobyl.
B is older than Chernobyl.
Which of the following must also be true?
a) B is a Chernobyl.
b) B is less safe than a Chernobyl.
c) The parent is a moron.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Much more expensive, but quite a bit safer. You also get an easier clean up because the graphite shells keep all the nuclear material contained.
As for wind, it is unreliable. Power grids are not meant for fluctuating supply. Wind can augment a stable power supply like nuclear/coal, but it cannot replace it. You still need a "smart grid" if you plan to have a large scale roll out of Wind/Solar because a sudden breeze would overload the power grid if you have too many Wind generators, and a sudden drop in wind would cause a brown-out. Power plants cannot change output very fast and a bunch of "Green" energy creating huge power spikes would burn out lots of parts and it would cost more than nuclear in the long run.
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then we suddenly hear that the Japanese reactors are older than Chernobyl.
But not an older design. Between the containment vessel and the light water reactor design, nothing like Chernobyl will happen. Chernobyl had a fissile reaction going while open to the atmosphere. These plants ceased fission prior to the tsunami, and it is the leftover radioactivity that is melting the core. Yes, you'll get a bunch of radioactive steam released, and yes, this will probably increase the risk of cancer for people exposed in the immediate area for a few days, but it's not the same thing as Che
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an attitude I find strange as well. Personally, I'm anti-nuclear weapons, but totally pro-nuclear for terms of power generation - indeed, it was trying to understand how the hell a nuclear bomb could be so destructive that got me interested in physics.
IMHO, it was the arms race that totally got nuclear power generation off on the wrong foot; too many reactor designs optimised for producing weapons-grade fuels, and then often dual-purposed to power generation almost as an afterthought. My parents lived through the Windscale disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire [wikipedia.org] and I remember my father explaining to me what a stupid design for a reactor it was, and how we were saved more by luck than judgement, and there were echoes of this in the RBMK/Chernobyl designs.
Hence nuclear power was forever tarnished by the short-sightedness of everyone trying to build their own nuclear stockpile, which produced dangerous and inefficient reactor designs. Compare with modern designs like CANDU which, as far as I can tell, have been designed for power and safety first, with capability for weapons-grade loads very much an afterthought - if it's even possible. But nuclear power (both fission and fusion) won't shake the public stigma for decades, if not whole generations, because they're hard for the layman to understand even without the news going ARGH NUCLEAR!!!!! at the drop of a hat.
Back on topic - I'm frankly amazed this whole thing with the Japanese reactors wasn't worse. Wikipedia currently has the total amount of energy released as 600 *million* Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, we've all seen the videos of the tsunami hitting the coast (and these stations were in a region closest to the epicentre); I was dumbstruck at the scale of it all. And yet despite near total failure of all cooling systems, there's been no massive release of radiation. It's a testament to Japanese engineering and professionalism that they're doing as well as they are - look at how few casualties there were due to structural failures (not to mention all those people already alerted by Japan's best-of-breed EWS and extensive training in how to deal with such a situation), in one of the most massive earthquakes on record. They're happily prepared to junk the reactor core - worth billions, especially when you factor in cleanup costs - in order to limit damage. What's happened in Japan is an utter catastrophe. The nuclear reactors are a tiny, tiny fraction of this but it receives disproportionate attention in the news because, judging by the reaction of a lot of my friends here in the UK, it appears to be something we (and, by extension, the news) care about more than all those already dead or missing, and the (hundreds of?) thousands homeless or without power or drinking water.
Rant over. FWIW, I'm not a nuclear scientist but have a degree in geology, and nuclear power is one of my pet pipe dreams (don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of wind and solar plants as well, and the brother-in-law runs a biogas plant in Germany). I also have a bunch of friends in Tokyo, who are thankfully fine. Happy to receive criticism if I come across as overly optimistic.
I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an argument, not against nuclear power, but in favour of transparency in the design, planning, build and monitoring processes. That, however, would demand equally grown up behaviour from the antis. I do feel that part of the problem with nuclear power has been the culture of secrecy fed by, to be frank, the scientific and engineering ignorance, emotionalism and sometimes near-hysteria of the antis.
In the early days of railways and canals there was similar "anti" hysteria - clergymen claiming that canals would be destroyed because it was blasphemy for men to ape their Creator by making rivers, idiots claiming that travelling at speed would prevent people from breathing - but the benefits were so enormous that people largely ignored them. The problem with nuclear power is that most people are not equipped to understand the potential benefits, so all they hear about is the potential downsides.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources [wikipedia.org]
Nuclear is also among the most expensive power generation methods available. I'm not sure what the potential upsides are.
Re: (Score:3)
The expensive is driven mostly by lawyers.
The expensive is driven mostly by lawyers. (Score:4, Informative)
Citation needed. On the other hand, here's a citation of my own: Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies [forbes.com]. And China, France, India, and Russia do not have the US's lawyers or environmental laws.
Falcon
Re:The expensive is driven mostly by lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
All non-fossil power generation is "hooked on subsidies" -- until we internalize the environmental costs of fossil fuels, nothing else is competitive and so everything else has to be subsidized.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
Fast breeder reactors can burn that waste leaving material with a half life of mere decades.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fast breeder reactors can burn that waste leaving material with a half life of mere decades.
And nuclear proliferation and a bunch of other isotopes and other things which have half lives far from "mere decades".
Quite realistically, the best way forward as I see it, is to develop LFTR technology.
It'd be particularly beneficial in earthquake prone areas as the molten salts would cool and go subcritical and end the main reaction.
For more info, see: International Thorium Energy Organisation [itheo.org]
Energy from Thorium has a nice piece about the current situation in Fukushima Daiichi. [energyfromthorium.com]
LFTR in 16 minutes - for t [youtube.com]
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Fast breeder reactors can burn that waste leaving material with a half life of mere decades.
And leave toxic waste [ieee.org] as well as hot nuclear material that has to be guarded so terrorist won't get their hands on it.
Falcon
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Interesting)
Fast breeder reactors can burn that waste leaving material with a half life of mere decades.
If only a working one could actually be built!
The two principal nations using nuclear power - France and Japan - have both tried to build commercial fast breeder reactors: Superphenix and Monju. Superphenix was shut down after only being able to operate at full power for one 10 month stretch. Monju, project started 26 years ago, and first criticality reached 17 years ago failed to ever achieve full power operation. It is now been restarted and may start finally producing electricity in 2014 (barring more plant problems), twenty years after its first start-up. Japan is planning a second FBR now, which is planned to start-up in 2025, fourteen years from now.
Perhaps commercial fast breeder reactors are the power source of the future, but it is turning out to be an incredibly difficult technology to perfect and have even larger capital costs than current nuclear power. There seems little prospect that we will have significant numbers in the next quarter century. If nuclear power is to have any significantly expanded role before mid-century it will have to be the advanced versions of current light water reactor technology.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
Russia has one working power-generating breeder reactor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloyarsk_Nuclear_Power_Station [wikipedia.org] ) and another one under construction.
So it's certainly possible, but up until now not cost-effective.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you are wrong on two counts.
Firstly, the fissile and fertile uranium in enhanced burn-up reactors are in much much greater concentration than they are in uranium deposits in the ground, and uranium deposits are pretty diffuse. There's lots of arsenic, mercury and lead in the ground, too. That does not mean that you want to concentrate tonnes of arsenic or mercury and dump it into any old hole in the ground. You almost certainly especially don't want to dump it back into one of the holes you extracted it.
Secondly, by assembling a reactor pile that goes critical (i.e., it maintains a self-sustaining chain reaction), you really are creating radiation that would not occur naturally (except in very very rare and small cases like the Oklo natural reactor). Although you can literally dump a bunch of fissile-uranium-and-carbon in a heap -- a literal pile -- and have it go critical, by careful engineering with one of several possible fast-neutron-to-thermal-neutron moderators, you can produce many more nuclear disintegrations whose daughter products trigger more nuclear disintegrations, in a chain reaction. Carefully surrounding the pile with concentrated isotopes will in turn produce ("breed") fissile material that can be used in building a new pile.
In short, it is moving around the fissile materials (and fertile ones, and unfortunately a whole host of building and other secondary materials which will, under neutron or gamma bombardment, themselves become radioactive) that creates the relevant radiation. It is not a concentration of radiation at all, but rather most of the radiation is a side-effect of concentrating a sufficient amount of suitable material (mostly material that was already slightly radioactive on its own) into a _critical mass_.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you actually read through the link you posted?
Nuclear is somewhat more expensive than coal and gas, but cheaper than nearly all alternative energy sources; wind, solar and tidal.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Informative)
Did you read the whole page? The only (levelised) study that shows nuclear to be competitive it the UK study (and only by a relatively small margin). In everything else, nuclear trails on-shore wind.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Interesting)
And then again the alternatives also have significant downsides that nuclear doesn't. Every source of energy is going to have some decent downsides, its just about what risks and and dangers you find acceptable.
I'm not a 100% nuclear fanboy, but I do find it a shame that this is going to kill nuclear for another couple decades. Especially since there are some really good designs (low waste, low half life waste, safer, immune to problems like in Japan) in the pipeline. Not all nuclear is created equal.
Also, as a denizen of the desert Southwest, I find the common theme of paving over the deserts with solar panels to be distasteful as they are also thriving ecosystems, and as valuable as forests and grasslands. Most solar schemes also depend on some rather nasty chemicals for their construction. Wind kills birds, is an eye sore, and has some decent potential risks, it also isn't the most dependable source of energy. Tidal energy is a bit better, but it isn't really that feasible for vast swaths of most continents, and isn't nearly high yield enough to meet demand.
We're going to need a broad spectrum of power generation to wean us off fossil fuels. Nuclear probably should be in that bundle, since it is dependable, (with modern designs) safe, and high yield. Objectively looking at its track record, it still is pretty damn safe. If someone ran the statistics (Google didn't help, I tried) I'm guessing nuclear is safer than coal, oil, or gas. If it takes the largest earthquake in 100+ years to make it fail (and not dramatically like Chernobyl), I wouldn't say that is a damning thing. Hell, if it was just the earthquake (sans tsunami), they would probably still be running fine, or at least not in a state like they are... which is quite a statement when you think of it.
Also... why is this getting more mind share than the far larger catastrophe? Yes, it is important, yes, it is somewhat frightening, but some perspective is needed as well. So far this reactor has claimed 4 lives, how many has the actually catastrophe claimed? This reactor, even in a worse case scenario, will claim fewer lives, and cause less destruction, than the earthquake and tsunami. Far fewer.
Actually, so far, I've been very impressed with the Japanese. They've shown how to do earthquakes right... I find the whole thing rather hopeful.
Re: (Score:3)
For wind and solar I don't think we are that far from the cost limits and getting to "as good as it gets".
You're not going to get more than 0.3 kilowatt per square metre on average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation [wikipedia.org]
It's a similar thing for wind - there's just so much wind per area (BTW those wind farms kill bats and birds).
So it's just a matter of getting the cost of materials down (e.g. use of reflectors instead of photovoltaics).
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Insightful)
Much, much cleaner than Coal, Gas and Oil and more easily implemented at large scales than Wind and Solar, not to mention considerably cheaper than the latter.
Re: (Score:3)
It's cleaner because all the waste is concentrated - in solid form, to boot - and there aren't any carbon emissions beyond those resulting from the construction of the plant.
Now you, like me, might not feel that CO2 should count as unclean when it comes to these sort of statistics but most people apparently disagree.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
It's cleaner because all the waste is concentrated - in solid form, to boot - and there aren't any carbon emissions beyond those resulting from the construction of the plant.
Now you, like me, might not feel that CO2 should count as unclean when it comes to these sort of statistics but most people apparently disagree.
Yes, and when comparing it to coal, you have to understand that coal fields are naturally radioactive. Burn it, and those radioactive substances (thorium, for one) are now air pollution.
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Also, I see a lot of people thinking uranium isn't r
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, that would be insightful if you weren't outright lying ... even the link you posted actually shows otherwise.
"I'm not sure what the potential upsides are."
Nuclear power is very clean. And inexpensive.
Re: (Score:3)
Huffingtonpost, DailyKOS and Dummy Underground are to the Left.
Offshore wind appears to be the winning bet there. (Score:3)
Fill the Great Lakes and every coast, the Gulf, and all of the Alaskan Coast with towers?
Not needed in the USA. The Rockies contain enough potential wind energy [nrel.gov] to power the 48 contiguous states. Of course the West Coast from BC to southern CA contains a lot too. Turn eastward in SCal going through AZ and NM to west Texas and there's more. On the East Coast hike up the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine to find more prime wind energy. Of course you can find more offshore but plenty can be found on land.
And that's just considering wind. A Solar Grand Plan [scientificamerican.com] goes into how solar power can
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Interesting)
In the early days of railways and canals there was similar "anti" hysteria - clergymen claiming that canals would be destroyed because it was blasphemy for men to ape their Creator by making rivers, idiots claiming that traveling at speed would prevent people from breathing
But it is useful to remember that American railroads fought tooth and claw any of a dozen long-overdue reforms.
Use of the telegraph for traffic control
Steel passenger cars with steam heat.
Automatic coupling.
Air brakes.
Useful to remember as well that the canal and the railroad could spread an epidemic disease inland with frightening speed. Cholera rides the rails.
Re: (Score:3)
The underlying problems with nuclear fission power are two-fold, and parent post touches on one of them.
As parent post implies, one major problem is that humans are involved, and humans make mistakes. They make mistakes in following procedures; they make mistakes in writing procedures. They screw up when implementing blueprints; they mess up when doing design. They can royally fuck up when choosing design specifications, as parent post describes. Humans are imperfect beings that cannot do anything for any
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Informative)
In a day to day sense, nuclear power is almost as cheap and FAR cleaner than oil. Have you ever lived near an oil refinery? Much less a well? I used to pass one every week going to and form work. It smelled, and left a smile on your car if you stayed more than a few hours. How safe can THAT be to live near. Here is aquick report. I cant speak the the numbers but it gives you a good idea of the impact.
http://chge.med.harvard.edu/publications/documents/oilreportex.pdf [harvard.edu]
I worked on a naval nuclear reactor while in the Navy. I was a chemistry and RadCon tech. I understand the science and risks better than you do. Sorry if that sounds eilitist, but its true. Just because radiation is involved does not mean it is evil.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry if that sounds eilitist, but its true. Just because radiation is involved does not mean it is evil.
Because it it did, the Sun would be the most evil entity in the Solar System.
Re:I agree, with one caveat (Score:5, Funny)
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Not only that, it causes thousands of cases of cancer per year, and other reactors of the same design have exploded. The experts say this one can't explode, but even they concede that it can expand until the Earth is orbiting inside it.
Oh, and carbon dioxide wouldn't cause climate change if that reactor were turned off.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's look at your "caveat":
You admit that nukes are more expensive than oil. You point out that oil power is dirty and dangerous.
OK. We should get off oil power, too. We should switch to geothermal power plants [wikipedia.org] for baseload, and increase our consumption efficiency so more intermittent energy sources like wind and solar can cover more consumption. Meanwhile we can develop better energy storage, and improve tidal/wave/current generation along with the wind and solar improvements.
Re: (Score:3)
You may want to knock that worry off your list.
four problems in 50 years (Score:3)
Four problems in 50 years? Wiki lists at least 56 Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States [wikipedia.org] which caused at least one death or $50,000 in damage. Of course we've had articles on Slashdot about what happened at the Vermont Yankee [valleyadvocate.com] nuclear power plant, as well as guards being caught sleeping on the job.
is actually a POSITIVE thing
Ah, I agree it's good there hasn't been more accidents.
Also, modern designs wouldn't have these problems. Modern designs remove 90% of the criticisms that you, and other, lay at their feet.
But those designs don't solve one important problem, nuclear power is still Hooked on Subsidies [forbes.com]. Without government subsidies Wall Street, no matter
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
But anti-nuke activists will consider this the worse tragedy
If one of these reactors ends up totally failing, it will be considered the worse tragedy by nearly everyone. Why? Because judging such events is a subjective process. That's why one baby trapped in a well is a huge crisis, whereas 100 people dying on the road each and every day doesn't even warrant news coverage. That's the way the human mind works, and you can't just brush it off.
If they were to end up with a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone around the plant for decades, then the meltdown would be remembered around the world long after the tsunami itself has faded from memory.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. No one is going to consider this worse. Rational humans, however, will consider it more under human control. We cannot prevent earthquakes and tsunamis; we can eliminate the threat of nuclear meltdowns entirely by not building uranium or plutonium fission reactors.
There is, of course, a cost to that choice. We would either have to reduce energy usage (either by efficiency or austerity), build more dirty, CO2-spewing fossil fuel plants,
Re:Considering ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Considering ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chernobyl is a literal impossibility
Not to get into one side or the other of this debate, but when I see something like that statement I have to point out that the Titanic was unsinkable. Never speak in absolutes. While the reactors of today may be safer than Chernobyl, they are products of fallible people and subject to failure themselves.
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You should learn something about geothermal power plants [wikipedia.org] that you failed to even mention. They provide the same class of full-time generating capacity as nuke plants do. Indeed, they're largely the same equipment actually generating electricity: steam pushing turbines driving electric current. But behind that they're fairly simple, very clean, and extremely low risk. They can be built within a few years, rather than the decades to build nuke plants.
Ignoring the clear alternative in geothermal is a sign of n
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Informative)
You're talking of kilowatt hours, I imagine. In that case, it'd take about 12 hours to generate that much. The amount you say you use sounds very small, and could be quite easily generated by a solar panel if you have a roof for it.
That said, I have no clue where's he's getting his number from, as that'd be one big roof.
Re:Considering ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think it will shut up nuclear proponets who claim meltdowns are so improbable that they are effectively impossible. This is a natural disaster that has occurred. Human disasters from human mistakes are far more plentiful.
"Far more plentiful." So how many human disaster-caused meltdowns do we have from nuclear power generation? One plus a partial melt in Three Mile Island in about 60 years of history. Doesn't support your assertion.
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One plus a partial melt in Three Mile Island in about 60 years of history. Doesn't support your assertion.
You are uninformed. [wikipedia.org]
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"Fact is is that Nuclear Power is Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]."
So is any other kind of power generation, from the fossil fuel power to new 'green' alternatives.
what progress? (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite all the tech developed since 1986, coverage of the progress of the cooling of the Daiishi plant has been absolutely atrocious in terms of speculation and lack of, well, at least one independent person , organisation or government (i.e. not this press release site, now down [tepco.co.jp]) providing reports containing hard facts, e.g. telephoto / satellite imagery, radiation count, etc.
To repeat myself from yesterday:
Fact 1: this was an old nuclear reactor without a satisfactory containment solution;
Fact 2: this was an old nuclear reactor without passive safety: i.e. power is required to prevent meltdown, rather than meltdown being prevented by design;
Fact 3: backup generators and batteries were supposed to deal with Fact 2;
Fact 4: you can only have so many on-site backups;
Fact 5: Chernobyl's failure was the result of a very dangerously planned and even more dangerously aborted attempt to test what would happen if Facts 1 to 3 applied;
Fact 6: while everyone's learnt the lessons leading to Chernobyl's failure, older reactors have not tackled the problems which led to Chernobyl deciding that tests in Fact 5 were necessary in the first place.
Fact 7: one side of the debate will conclude that nuclear power is universally evil; the other side will claim that circumstances were so shockingly unlikely that they could not have been planned for, ignoring in particular Facts 1, 2, 4 and 6.no-one
Re:what progress? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no lack of information in Japan. There has been 6 or 7 press conferences on the topic by the management of the power station today, both before and after every development that happened at the station during the day. All the conferences had a pretty reasonable technical explanation of the steps, and report upon execution. All conferences were broadcast fully on several TV channels.
There are three problems with the coverage. First, western media have been extremely sensationalist in their coverage. Second, journalists, both in Japan and in elsewhere ignore the presentation (e.g. one journalist complained that she doesn't understand the explanations, and that there isn't "enough information" in the same breath on live TV), and press with "hard" questions, which end up to be only one: "When is this shit going to explode?". Three, which is a failure of Tepco, they put forward people who cannot explain shit eloquently. The explanations make sense if one listens patiently and makes sense of a ton of stuttering, stammering, repeating, verbal mistakes. Of course it ain't working when every journalist has to tweet within 25 seconds of the start of the explanation.
Finally, the big problem in Japan now is getting help to the people in the affected areas, not the meltdowns in Fukushima that may, or may not be happening.
But I guess some journalists have to make a living.
Re:what progress? (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine you live in Rome. You are a civil engineer, in charge of building the first bridge. You build it the best you can, based on observing trees that fall across small streams. It is very dangerous, but effective for a few years. Several other people copy your design and build their own bridges using tree trunks.
Meanwhile, someone else looks at your design and determines the bridge could be built much safer if you use an ads to flatten out the top, so that people can walk on the flat area, and some ropes along the sides at hand level let people keep their balance. You try it out and find it works very well. Meanwhile, people all over Rome are falling off the "Gen 1" bridges. People protest bridges to the Roman Senate and elect people who won't allow new bridges to be built, even with the safety features.
To make matters worse, the existing bridges are now rotting. Several bridges have fallen into the creeks and many are too fragile to let more than one person across at a time. The tree bark, which provided at least some grip for people using the bridges is now gone, and when it rains the bridges are incredibly slippery. The Roman Senate funds a study to look into building "Gen 3" bridges. The engineers come back with designs for stone bridges, using the latest in geometry (the arch). The engineering community thinks this bridge will last for years, be incredibly strong and safe. But because the public has such a bad memory of the existing bridges, they want nothing to do with them. Meanwhile they demand the Senate fund more ferryboats for river crossings.
Re:what progress? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what progress? (Score:4, Insightful)
The step you are missing is the bit, just after paragraph 1, where you advertise your new bridge as providing "safe and limitless river crossing for generations; so cheap nobody will even think to impose tolls". Then, when people start getting washed away you build fences to make sure that only one person crosses at a time so nobody can tell who the washed away people are. Later, you publish studies showing that due to the unavoidable risk of waterfalls all river ferries are incredibly dangerous and much more expensive than anybody ever knew. Finally you start accusing everybody who ever claimed your version 1 bridge was unsafe of knowing nothing about water and that if only they all learned about the theory of swimming they would know that nobody will be killed by water in future.
perhaps you are right and nuclear is now safe. It's just very difficult to believe it just because the nuclear industry says it's true.
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This has been discussed before. They have tried to build the reactors with that in mind.
No, they certainly did not, at least not the most spectacularly failed reactor. It was built where a Tsunami would certainly impact it, and it was built with backup reactors on site where they would certainly be wiped out by anything which harmed the reactor's ability to maintain itself. It was built to destroy its neighborhood by design. I don't imply that this was the design GOAL, but I maintain that it was the RESULT of the DESIGN.
Unit 1 should have been offline since February (Score:3)
But had their license extended 10 more years. I guess that the officers that did this now must be contemplating suicide at the moment. If I were in their shoes, I would.
An additional systemic problem, that I expect that government officers and utilities managers from Japan at last tackle in view of the current emergency if politicians can stop the stupid political bickering that goes at the moment, is that the country has 2 separate electrical grids, one for eastern Japan and one for western Japan, working
Re:Unit 1 should have been offline since February (Score:4, Interesting)
Please have a look at this Japanese grid, they are isolated grids, based on this is what I based my observations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG [wikipedia.org]
My bad for believing in Wikipedia. Thank you for your critic, it prompted me to research more the subject.
A better map, more detailed that shows how really is actually the grid:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/japan/graphics/japangridmap.gif [geni.org]
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf [ieej.or.jp] from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal plants and requests for neighbouring utilities to raise the output of thermal plants above t
Re:what progress? (Score:5, Informative)
"Containment domes" are not a silver bullet.
There are many factors (as you might expect) that contribute to nuclear safety. The most important is the design of the nuclear reactor. It's very difficult to make a poor design "safe" and a containment dome isn't always possible or useful. For example, gas-cooled reactors could not have containment domes.
The RBMK (Chernobyl) design is intrinsically unsafe from a nuclear physics point of view, as demonstrated by the accident in 1996. Additionally, the safety systems were poor and able to be vetoed (very bad) and the reactor was being run out of its design specification and by people who didn't understand Reactor Physics. In fact, their attitude was one of superstition: the reactor has been good to us in the past, so it'll be good to us today.
Here in the UK there were great changes in the way our nuclear power industry was run following the Chernobyl disaster. The legal framework for the industry was completely overhauled, the way we operated our reactors was radically changed and all of our safety cases and fault studies were revisited, re-analysed and our plant refitted with extra redundant, diverse and segragated safety systems. All of our personnel, from the company directors to the plant operators were retrained.
We are lucky in that most of our reactors are of the gas-cooled variety (AGRs with formerly some Magnoxes). They are pretty intrinsically safe designs, but not perfect. Explosions and meltdowns are either "incredible faults" or highly unlikely. The most likely event that could lead to an offsite release of radioactivity for Magnoxes was a channel fire. At the commercial stations, this never happened. There was one once at Chapel Cross (used to make isotopes for military purposes in addition to electricity) but there was no release from the affected reactor, and they were able to refuel and continue using it.
The concrete pressure vessel stations (AGRs and the two youngest Magnoxes) could not "explode" (burst open). They are too strong: no tertiary containment (containment dome) required. They can't go prompt critical (i.e. no Chernobyl) because of the reactor physics and safety systems. If you tried to do one manually, the reactor would be shut down automatically long before it even got a bit too hot.
We won't be building any more AGRs, though. EDF will probably be building some based on the PWR design in the next few years. PWRs are OK as long as you have plenty of redundant and segregated cooling loops. I think the new ones will be able to post-trip cool on natural convection, so no power required for emergency cooling.
As for your original point, as long as the Russian RBMKs have their safety systems fixed (unable to be take out of service) there should not be another Chernobyl. Another thought: I don't know if these plant have boric acid for emergencies. For water-cooled reactors (e.g. PWR) it is a requirement to have a load of boric acid that can be dumped into the primary coolant to ensure permanent shutdown in the case of an emergency. Boric acid dissolves in the water and the boron absorbs all the neutrons. shutting down the nuclear reactions. It's a permanent shutdown though :-) The Magnoxes had boron dust that could be injected into the coolant gas for such an emergency.
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How can you make a reactor terror proof?(planes/bombs/espionage)
You can't, you can just minimise the risk. However, a thick concrete shield around a reactor is plenty to stop planes and most bombs. If the bomb is big enough, you've other things to worry about.
You can design a rector such that terrorists can't use it to cause much harm. Similarly with espionage.
Once solar is cheaper than coal we will stop having this stupid discussion; face facts that right now coal/oil/nat gas is much safer, cheaper, a
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we want cheap electricity now
We do. Electricity brings us light. It brings us communication. It brings us clean water. It brings our crops water. It manufactures our goods. It feeds us. Cheaper and more are two huge factors when considering the pros and cons of energy production. No matter how efficiently we consume our power there is always a good reason to produce more. Demand for energy has no where to go but up. Supply is a daily struggle.
evil is technology moving at the pace of the maximum speed pockets can be filled
Technology, as it always has, increases exponentially. In linear terms you can pi
Just terrible news coverage (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully this turns out to be nothing as bad as it could be. The reactors are dead, but lets hope that is the least of the issues.
Re:Just terrible news coverage (Score:5, Insightful)
I mainly read and watch Deutsche Welle for my news. AJ/BBC are usually decent though. How sad is it that we have ZERO real news in America? Not even NPR which is as close as we come. We need a real news channel and outlet, not political or sensational bullshit. Just news.
Re: (Score:3)
World Nuclear News [world-nuclear-news.org] This site is fantastic.
Nuclear Energy Institute's site [nei.org]
Atomic Insights Blog [blogspot.com]
An Engineer In DC [anengineerindc.com]
But I'm a little biased for the last one ... that's me.
Re:Just terrible news coverage (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
3 of the 6 reactors at the facility were offline for inspection, so there is some chance that they will be able to bring them back up on a decent schedule.
Doesn't really change what you describe, but maybe keeps it to months.
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Does there exist many subs in the world which you can hook up the the grid and provide electricity from? I guess their reactors provide much less power than a reactor on land but I think I remember reading about such capability before. Maybe it could work for hospitals and other emergency units at least?
Any kind of portable nuclear power plant so to speak :)
U.S. nuclear-powered capital ships can do that, I understand. I don't know how much power they can produce for shore facilities. Does anyone?
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U.S. nuclear-powered capital ships can do that, I understand. I don't know how much power they can produce for shore facilities. Does anyone?
From various sources, the Ronald Regan has two 104 MW reactors which have enough power to 'light a small city' (which is pretty much what a Nimitz class carrier is). I can't find anywhere where specifics. Probably not a whole lot, all things considering.
A bigger issue would be the advisability of sticking a 5 billion dollar carrier close enough to a tsunami infested shore to dump the power. Even a couple of megawatts would imply some big battery jumpers.
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The average TV viewer in the US has about a five minute attention span
They only think I have a 5 minute attention span because I can't stand to watch that drivel for more than 5 minutes.
The particles (Score:3)
Better news source (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this to be a good source for uncommented information: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ [world-nuclear-news.org]. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the source, but it does not seem to be very biased.
Unfortunately the nuclear accident seems to have overshadowed reports on the real human tragedy - the tsunami and the earth quake. Especially in Germany, media are instrumentalizing the incident and are plotting doomsday scenarios. The worst of all seems to be "Der Spiegel", which I held in much higher regard until yesterday.
Good technical info (Score:5, Informative)
The following document is a good source of info regarding the situation at the Fukushima reactors. See the section titled "BWR 3/4 Perspectives", including the parts regarding station blackout (SBO), transients with loss of coolant injection, and transients with loss of decay heat removal (DHR). (The remaining parts of the BWR 3/4 section don't appear to apply.)
Core damage frequency perspectives for BWR 3/4... [osti.gov]
...and it was about to close (Score:5, Informative)
It's not getting much press, but the Unit #1 reactor was scheduled to be closed [wikipedia.org] in two weeks. [truthiscontagious.com] (Those links don't show the exact date, but I think it was March 22.)
It's sort of like the old cliche about a cop getting shot in the month before his retirement.
Re: (Score:3)
March 26, if the info here is correct: http://www.icjt.org/npp/podrobnosti.php?drzava=14&lokacija=818 [icjt.org]
Why not to worry (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't finished reading this story yet (it's quite a few pages), but it's pretty interesting so far.
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Just pointing this out, but from the comments on that article he's not nearly qualified to make any real comment on the situation at the nuclear plants:
"Dr Josef Oehmen studied Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University Munich and received a PhD, also in Mechanical Engineering, from the ETH Zurich. While working in industry, he obtained an MBA degree. He is currently employed as a Research Scientist at MIT. His major researchinterest lies in risk management along the engineering value chain and the
Re:Why not to worry (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the problem the nuclear industry has is people just like Dr. Oehmen who seem to have a extreme confidence but then say things that don't make sense.
For example, at one point he says that the cooling system failed because onsite generators were flooded, so they operated on battery power till they could get some portable generators moved to the site and operating. OK so far. Then he says that once they got the portable generators there, they couldn't use them because they came with the wrong plugs. (!) WTF -- chop the plugs and receptacles off and wire the damn things together directly.
After that he says stuff like only radioactive nitrogen was in the steam and it decays in seconds. OK -- so why are people being admitted to the hospital with radiation sickness? Maybe because there was a release of cesium?
He concludes that the system is totally safe and nothing bad can possibly happen.
It is people like this who cause our problems because they allow confidence to overcome foresight.
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/Radiation-poisoning-patients-on-the-rise-in-Japan/Article1-672852.aspx
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss [bellona.org]
http://www.glob [globalpost.com]
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Thanks for the link, this was indeed well-written and, even if the guy might not be the world's expert #1, this text goes a lot further than any media outlet would care to go.
What I'm still not quite clear about: Some amounts of Caesium-137 and Iodine-131 are said to have been released. Here his report is a bit weak: While Iodine isotope poisoning can be averted by giving Iodine tables (this is currently being done), and half-life is about eight days, Caesium-137 has a much longer half-life (about 30 years [wikimedia.org])
Engineering Success (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I'm not a huge fan of nuclear power. Not for the usual "GAAAH! RADIATION! WASTE! YOU'RE MAKING GAIA CRY!" reasons, but because humanity (and more precisely, human bureaucracy) is often far too gaffe-prone to be trusted. Running a nuclear plant isn't amenable to cost-cutting or tight-fisted cost-benefit assessment.
But the way the affected reactors and their operators have performed has been almost perfect. Consider the fact that the buildings themselves are intact after what nature just threw at them. Pretty astounding. Sure, by the look of it, we've already breezed through several failure modes, but reaction has been halted and sea-water is readily available to keep the thing cooled without the core making a bid for freedom. Still, as I understand it, worst-case is the core splurges itself over the inner containment floor and eventually cools anyway.
Of course, there'll be a post-mortem over why standard cooling couldn't be restored, the results of which will be interesting (and no doubt, instructive).
Like he said (Score:3)
> but because humanity (and more precisely, human bureaucracy) is often far too gaffe-prone to be trusted. Running a nuclear plant isn't amenable to cost-cutting or tight-fisted cost-benefit assessment.
Exactly. Imagine the fiscal debate around replacing pre-Chernobyl reactors. Current US gov arguing about cutting tsunami warning systems the day of the Japanese tsunami. Now imagine a 9 earthquake in LA with our, shall we say, post-modern approach to regulation. There's a reason Tokyo didn't fall down and
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Of course, nuclear power also suffers from the same PR problem as air travel: It may kill far fewer people in the long run, but when there is a catastrophic failure it can kill a lot of people at once.
"Nuclear plant explodes, hundreds dead!" is a lot more (*ahem*) newsworthy than "Coal power still in use, air pollution still high, low levels of radioactive elements still being dumped into the atmosphere, risk of lung disease and cancer still elevated, global warming could still cause problems decades from
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Here in New York City we Fear Indian Point (Score:3)
I just want everyone in the New York City area to rest comfortable tonight with the knowledge that they built the Indian Point Nuclear Facility RIGHT ON TOP OF THE RAMAPO FAULT LINE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramapo_Fault#Earthquake_hazards_in_the_New_York_City_area [wikipedia.org]
Morons.
Fault Lines never die, they just fade away. So while they have a big one in Japan or California every 100 years, it might be every 100,000 years for the Ramapo Fault Line. So we could get a big one tomorrow, or in a thousand years. No one knows. But its not like you even need an Earthquake for something awful to happen at Indian Point: its old and crumbling. It has frequent safety violations and infrastructure failures. Any number of problems could happen. From human error to just plain catastrophic failure due to age.
I'm not against nuclear power. Modern Pebble Bed Reactors are extremely safe: you can stand up and walk away from them, nothing happens. But the Indian Point Nuclear Facility is ancient, crumbling, outmoded technology, and it needs to be shut down ASAP. Just like the one in Japan that is failing:
Its like an old car: if you insist its time to get rid of the junker, it doesn't mean you are against all cars.
Listen carefully, those who are for more nuclear power, as am I: you have to understand the greatest enemy of wider use of nuclear power is not tree hugging hippies, but old nuclear reactors, based on technology that requires constant monitoring, in decrepit states. Because when, not if, they fail, all of public opinion moves against nuclear power. We need to shut down the old shoddy Indian Point Nuclear Facility NOW.
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For what its worth, every nuclear power plant in the US has a "temporary" containment facility for spent nuclear fuel. Every single one of them has been at capacity for at least a decade or two. All of them are full... and I don't understand what we've been doing with the spent fuel if we have no where to put it. We need to solve the waste problem NOW, with the waste we already have... before we solve the energy issue.
Oddly, it turns out we do have places to put the spent fuel. It is in heavy (~10 ton) concrete casks on the grounds of the nuclear power plants that generated it - where it is perfectly stable and safe. Most plants have no trouble hosting enough casks to accommodate all of the fuel they will produce during their operating life, and the casks can be relocated to remote above-ground storage reservations somewhere eventually (perhaps a literal "reservation" - the Chiricahua Apache have expressed in this).
Simp
Single point of failure (Score:3, Interesting)
By using distributed and smaller power plants, this problem can be more or less avoided. Provided that the infrastructure takes into account a possible partial loss of power, that is. And that is a big plus for alternative energy sources, like wind or solar: these can be setup distributed.
Not wanting to panic people, but get real (Score:3)
a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months
I understand the US industry group not wanting to panic people about nuclear power as what is going on in Japan already has a negative impact on their industry, but they should be promoting how safe nuclear power is (ie even after a massive earthquake, the system worked mostly as it should) instead of the B.S. like the above.
Saying that the dosage is just what you would have absorbed normally in 12 months is like saying that a drowning victim only consume the same amount of water they would have in three days. Radiation is more than just how much you receive over a long period. It also has to deal with the amounts received in a short period, too.
replacing japan nuke plants with fossil fuel power (Score:3)
I wonder what the environmental community will say when/if Japan decides to close down their nuke plants and replace them with oil/coal/gas based power stations (there is no feasible way considering astronomical cost to use wind/solar/hydro to replace the output from all those reactors).
As far as safety, less people are killed per year from nuclear power generation vs fossil fuel generation (even adjusting for the difference of each respective production capacity). It may be a bit simplistic to use that as complete justification for the safety of nuclear vs fossil fuel but it definitely should not be blown off (no pun intended) and ignored.
Re:Used cars, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a company that works with radioactivity, and the reality is shocking. I have been told that since there is no "standard" level deemed harmful, that they can get away with all kinds of shit. Because a small amount of radiation could cause cancer and some can be exposed to large amounts without issue, that they can do basically whatever they want. It was found that a wall that was supposed to be shielded was not and that workers on the other side of it had been getting nailed for years... they covered it up and covered their asses ASAP. I would trust NOTHING when it comes from a corporation or government agency on this subject.
This is a real shame and greed once again rules the day.
Re:Used cars, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd rather listen to the FOX news shills, the anti-nuclear shills, the oil shills, the donation scammers and the govt shills?
I'm sorry but what he's saying sounds about right. People have some kind of paranoia when nuclear is mentioned - you only need to look at the current situation! A quake of incredible magnitude quickly followed by a massive tsunami will probably kill tens of thousands leave the entire countryside ravaged for years, but the news are all focused on a handful of nuclear power plants that are having some problems. Even Chernobyl only killed 50 people! If you want to account for cancer diseases and such, bring that up to 500 or even 1000 if you want, but it's an unrealistically high estimate. And that's Chernobyl; it is absolutely impossible to end up with this result in the current situation.
Re:Used cars, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
A quake of incredible magnitude quickly followed by a massive tsunami will probably kill tens of thousands leave the entire countryside ravaged for years, but the news are all focused on a handful of nuclear power plants that are having some problems.
I realize that Slashdot is pro-nuclear, and hell, even I'm pro-nuclear. But please don't embarrass yourself or this site by referring to the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi as a plant "having some problems". I assure you the experts dealing with this problem are not minimizing the seriousness of what's going on. It's very serious, it's ongoing, and until the plant is stabilized, it's legitimate world news.
A plant "having some problems" is a drop in power production, or a small tritium leak. At this point a catastrophic meltdown and containment breach seem unlikely, mostly because the reactor operators have resorted to essentially destroying the reactor by flooding it with doped seawater. There has already been some non-trivial radiation leakage, and a 20-km radius evacuation is underway. It really is newsworthy.
The lesson that pro-nuclear folks should be learning from this disaster is that Fukushima Daiichi and similar 1960s-era reactors should not be operating in the year 2011, and most especially not in an area with high seismic activity. You know this, I know this, and I guarantee that the experts who run the plants knew it before the quake.
While this particular incident seems to be under control, as long as these plants are operating, there's a very real possibility of a catastrophic meltdown somewhere, in the next few decades. And that will do ten times more to stop the deployment of nuclear power than Greenpeace --- or the Slashdot boogeyman of the day --- could ever do.
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... Even Chernobyl only killed 50 people! If you want to account for cancer diseases and such, bring that up to 500 or even 1000 if you want, but it's an unrealistically high estimate. ...
Actually there have been 5000 cases of thryroid cancer in children diagnosed (though this is treatable). The World Health Organizations's Expert Group [who.int] investigating Chernobyl expects cancer deaths in exposed groups to be 4000 or so.
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To repeat myself from yesterday, the public should trust the pronouncements about things that can kill you for thousands of years from industry shills why, exactly?
Because that pronouncement is self-evidently true and no sane person would argue with it? Did you read what you quo
Re: (Score:3)
We just did, from you, in a futile attempt to change the subject with a double-reverse straw man.
Thanks for disqualifying yourself early from any reasonable debate about this extremely grave meltdown unfolding in Japan.
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