Heroism Is Part of a Nuclear Worker's Job 349
Hugh Pickens writes "In 1988, Michael Friedlander was a newly minted shift technical adviser at a nuclear power plant near the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Gilbert, a Category 5 storm, was bearing down on the plant. They received word that all workers should leave except for critical plant personnel, and there was never a question: 'my team and I would stay, regardless of what happened.' 'The situation facing the 50 workers left at Fukushima is a nuclear operator's worst nightmare,' writes Friedlander. 'But the knowledge that a nuclear crisis could occur, and that we might be the only people standing in the way of a meltdown, defines every aspect of an operator's life.' The field attracts a very particular kind of person, says Friedlander, and the typical employee is more like a cross between a jet pilot and a firefighter: highly trained to keep a technically complex system running, but also prepared to be the first and usually only line of defense in an emergency. 'We will likely hear numerous stories of heroism over the next several days, of plant operators struggling to keep water flowing into the reactors, breathing hard against their respirators under the dim rays of a handheld flashlight in the cold, dark recesses of a critically damaged nuclear plant, knowing that at any moment another hydrogen explosion could occur.'"
The severity rating of the crisis has now been raised from 4 to 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and Japan's Prime Minister called the situation "very grave."
Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points. The way they are conducting themselves should make them proud. No looting, people sharing what little they have, really, amazing. And yes, I expect those operators at the plant will likely die before their time due to cancer or even worse. Beyond that is amazing stories of nurses in hospitals & nursing homes and even the stories of everyone pitching in at the shelters.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Informative)
My grandfather was a nuclear chemist at Oak Ridge National Labratory from 1948 to 1976. During that time he often worked with various highly radioactive materials including uranium and plutonium. He died at the ripe old age of 97 from heart failure.
Radiation exposure does not necessarily mean slow death. In fact we have no scientific, verifiable knowledge of what low level radiation exposure does to us.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Informative)
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Exactly. 10 times higher than normal. Not 2 orders of magnitude, not 3. World average background radiation / year is 2.4 mSv. So effective yearly exposure at 10x normal is 24 mSv. Say these levels continue for another month, (1/12)*24 = 2 mSv.
A chest x-ray is 7 mSv.
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Do you know how high 10 times higher than normal is? Do you know what the human tolerance for radiation is? Do you know that we are exposed to cosmic background radiation every single day when you go outside, and that the radiation you are exposed to in an average airline flight is more than 10 times normal? I can't fucking stand the ignorance surrounding the most basic facts on radiation and health.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Informative)
There have been hydrogen explosions in a plant that has uncooled, exposed nuclear waste directly next to the explosions. 30km away radiation levels are 10 times higher than normal. The workers have been evacuated more than twice due to obscenely high radiation levels. I think you need to do your research.
1) The hydrogen explosions occurred outside the reinforced pressure vessels, where the nuclear fuel is. Essentially what happened was that the hydrogen was created because of the cooling failure; it was vented from the pressure vessels into the surrounding building, and since the building's own ventillation systems were nonfunctional the hydrogen basically blew the roof off. It was loud and impressive-looking, and will certainly be something safety engineers will look at in the future, but the hydrogen explosions themselves never threatened to cause a nuclear release in and of themselves, and have actually proven to be good because it provided a more direct way to deliver cooling water into the spent fuel pools.
2) Yes, radiation levels were high (at one point they hit 500 milisievarts at one plant, 1/10 a lethal dose, which is really bad). As of today, radiation levels are down in the microsievarts range, which is less than you get from eating a few bananas. The "radiation cloud" barely contains any significant amount of radioactive material, probably so little that it will take specialized equipment to even detect any.
3) At the same time, four trains were derailed as a result of the earthquake, one of which appears to have vanished without a trace. Tens of thousands of people are dead; many times that number are injured or missing. But you don't hear about that; all you hear about is the "evil nucular meltdown". If the media weren't hyped up on nuclear fearmongering, this would rightly be a story about how well nuclear safety engineers are doing: despite two disasters which were both literally ten times worse than they were ordered to prepare for, there has not been a single death, and little to no release of radioactive material (radiation yes, radioactive contamination for the most part no.)
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Let me get your facts straight:
> radiation levels were high (at one point they hit 500 milisievarts at one plant,
You are aware, that the unit is "Sievert" not "sievart"?
Are you also aware, that, that radiation levels are measured in Sievert per unit time (usually hours) and Sievert is a unit for the radiation dose?
The levels at Fukushima are officially reported to have exceeded 1 Sievert per hour at certain times. This means you get the lethal dose in five hours.
> there has not been a single death
Exce
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I am not certain, but by my count, at least one of the dead worker was on a crane and died because of the earthquake itself, is it the same for the 4 others (out of the 5 you quote) or are they attributed directly to the meltdown itself? Maybe I missed some, but I have yet to see a death related to the meltdown itself. For me the earthquake itself followed by the tsunami is still a much much bigger tragedy and concern.
The incident level is still 5 of 7, so it's the same as the Three Mile Island incident in
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[...] how well nuclear safety engineers are doing: despite two disasters which were both literally ten times worse than they were ordered to prepare for.
And that is what we should be questioning, I think. Why weren't the plants designed to withstand a Mw 9.5 earthquake plus tsunami and fire? We know that happens, sooner or later*, and the risks are just to high to gamble on the possibility of those events not happening at a particular location during the lifetime of the plant. Better be on the safe side with such things.
* see e.g. McCaffrey, Global frequency of magnitude 9 earthquakes [hawaii.edu], for an estimate.
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You need to look no further than your pocketbook for the answer to your question.
You can't simulate real world conditions. You can only guess what you think real world conditions might be. The next systems built using this disaster as a guide will (hopefully) be able to handle what they just experienced. No guarantees though.
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Current and at this point very possibly final toll due to the problems at the nuclear plant: 0 and a pair of broken legs.
Current and incredibly uncertain death toll due to the earthquake and tsunami:14000
ratio of media attention:
nuclear plant: constant
disaster: fuck all
because nuclear is dramatic.
People digging through homes to try to find pieces of their loved ones is just depressing.
Where's the article for the countless heros who have been digging people out of the wreckage?
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
That plant could go Nova and wipe out Tokyo and you and certain other posters on Slashdot would still be claiming that
I'm only being half facetious. There's a brigade of posters on this site for whom nuclear plants can do no wrong under no circumstances, and who throw up any and all flack and argument to avoid the plain truth; To wit: That this is a nuclear disaster of the most serious proportions, which should have been completely and totally avoidable; and that its occurrence is a damning indictment of the private nuclear power industry as a whole, both technically, professionally, and publicly.
Go on about bananas all you like. The credibility of safe nuclear power has been(justifiably) shot by this ongoing debacle at the Fukushima plant, and no amount of flimsy excuses are going to rectify that. If you want nuclear power to have a future within the next three decades, it would be better to start by admitting mistakes and making apologies.
We now return you to the wider and more significant humanitarian crisis in Japan.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
the plain truth; To wit: That this is a nuclear disaster of the most serious proportions, which should have been completely and totally avoidable; and that its occurrence is a damning indictment of the private nuclear power industry as a whole, both technically, professionally, and publicly.
And this is what passes for "truth" in the reality you inhabit?
"should have been completely and totally avoidable"? I sincerely hope you're not an engineer because you should turn in whatever credentials you have if you are. Complex systems and structures are designed to certain tolerances. When those tolerances are exceeded, failures are not only likely, they are the expected outcome. You're conveniently ignoring that this quake is the fifth largest earthquake in all recorded history, followed up by a massive tsunami, affecting a plant built in 1971 with technology designed in the 1960's. And thus far not a single person's death can be directly attributed to anything radioactive at all, while tens of thousands lie dead or dying all around the plant due to the aforementioned quake and tsunami. Thousands more will likely die of wounds and disease before this is all over without ever getting a single mSv from this incident. Yet this is a "damning indictment of the private nuclear power industry" by your standards.
You might as well have said it's a damning indictment of seawall construction around the entire island nation of Japan! After all, if they'd only built hundreds of kilometers of seawall hundreds of meters high and hundreds of meters thick, designed to resist an earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and hypervelocity asteroid/comet impacts, nobody would be dead! That does leave out the odd attack by hyper-aggressive, advanced aliens bent on enslaving and/or using us as a source of food, but I didn't want to seem like I'm advocating over the top measures. End sarcasm.
The point is that everything can only be built so strong, and engineers can only anticipate so many different permutations. That does not mean you abandon doing anything where you can't engineer out 100% of the danger. If that were the case, we'd never have emerged from caves in the first place. Oh, wait...what about cave in's? Gosh, this whole "life" thing is kinda dangerous just existing, isn't it?
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Informative)
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NASA's Maximum allowable limit of radiation is 1400 mSv, and this elevates cancer risk by 3%., http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070010704_2007005310.pdf (p.19). These workers have been exposed to 250. Everyone talking about "obscenely high radiation levels" has been misled, and needs to do some more research then reading pop newspapers.
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>>I might be a little dramatic, but the increase in cancer occurrence is statistically noticeable at over 100 mSv/yr.
I was listening to the radio yesterday, and was grinding my teeth when an "expert" was repeating the (wrong) claim that there's a linear response between radiation dosing and cancer incidence rates. While he's right that people tend to use that model, it is because it is simple, not because it is right. It's quite clear there's a thresholding system in regards to radiation, below which
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Informative)
250 mSv isn't a "new limit". The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
You can argue whether or not what they're doing is "life saving or protection of large populations", but saying it's a "new limit" is a bit disingenious. It's an internationally agreed limit that was in place well before this disaster.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, I expect those operators at the plant will likely die before their time due to cancer or even worse
Spread FUD much? So far there have been no reports of workers getting sick from radioactive exposure. Sure they are getting some exposure but nothing that will cause a significant increase in cancer risk. If any one of those workers smokes then the smoking will likely be thousands of times more likely to be lethal than the "radeeayshun" will.
Do YOU spread FUD much? Really? Thousands of time more likely to be lethal than radiation? You should have just said nothing, because actual numbers of exposure are hard to come by. Smoking might increase your risk for cancer over a long time, but a short dose of high radiation could kill you or significantly increase your risk. I'm not saying the original post isn't FUD.
Just a check on wikipedia indicates smoking 1.5 packs per day only gives 15-30 mSv/yr. And the limit for Fukushima workers has been raised to 250 mSv/yr. And considering shorter doses can be lethal, due to the body's inability to repair damaged DNA quickly as opposed to over time, it should be concerning that some locations were receiving exposure of up to 10 mSv/hr.
My point is, you just pulled that statistic out of your ass.
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So far there have been no reports of workers getting sick from radioactive exposure.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16workers.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com]
Five workers have died since the quake and 22 more have been injured for various reasons, while two are missing. One worker was hospitalized after suddenly grasping his chest and finding himself unable to stand, and another needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation near a damaged reactor. Eleven workers were injured in a hydrogen explosion at reactor No. 3.
That's a little vague, though it does suggest at least one incident ("needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation"). (I suppose it could have been purely precautionary.)
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From the IAEA (http://www.iaea.org/press/):
CLARIFICATION
Contrary to several news reports, the IAEA to date has NOT received any notification from the Japanese authorities of people sickened by radiation contamination.
In the report of 17 March 01:15 UTC, the cases described were of people who were reported to have had radioactive contamination detected on them when they were monitored.
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Read their personal blogs. They already know they are dead now. They are now going in shifts lengths designed to kill them in a few months to a year instead of a few weeks.
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Actually, things have been getting progressively better for the last two days. Radiation levels are down, they have visually confirmed there is cooling water in No.4 reactors pool for spent fuel and more has been successfully added. However, for some reason, you don't seem to see those news under big headlines in the media ...
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Informative)
http://mitnse.com/ [mitnse.com] is one of the best sources for information.
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the smoking will likely be thousands of times more likely to be lethal than the "radeeayshun" will.
Do you get full dental coverage working for the TSA?
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... for anybody who would put their lives on the line like this. The Japanese are better at this than anyone else on Earth - honor and duty above all else. I take my hat off to everybody within that radius still fighting to protect their countrymen.
Agreed. If it were up to me these dudes would never pay for taxes or health-care again.
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a nuclear facility on the Savannah River that's slightly larger than Rhode Island. It was quite active during the Cold War. I interviewed for a job there in about 1988, and met a local boy whose Daddy worked at the plant doing hot laundry. He told me "they took real good care of Momma when he passed," at age 44.
Ionizing radiation is like bullets to a giant - lots and lots and lots of tiny bullets. If you're wearing a dosimeter, you're acknowledging that you're going into the line of fire.
The Wrath of Kahn may have been a(n extremely) cheesy movie, but Spock captures the spirit of nuke facility workers everywhere - they are just as brave as any Jarhead that risks getting his limbs blown off by an IED, or stupid, hard to tell the difference most of the time, but when it hits the fan it doesn't matter - they all deserve respect for bravery.
Got to disagree. Nothing but DISRESPECT (Score:2)
These guys are NOT firefighters. Fire fighters get in called AFTER shit has happened over which they had no control and take control and safe peoples lives.
Fire INSPECTORS are supposed to go in BEFORE shit happens and prevent it from ever happening.
I do not want a heroic nuclear engineer, I want one who is an abject coward and so takes every safety precaution before so that when the first real test of the safety comes along it doesn't fail so compeltly and utterly.
All the guys at Fukushima FAILED at their j
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with you that the Fukushima team deserves admiration and praise, I don't think the Japanese are automatically better at honor and duty than everyone else. That notion almost diminishes the Fukushima team's personal bravery by attributing it to something like cultural determinism.
Consider the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, was caught falsifying nuclear safety tests at Fukushima in 2004. They falsified information again in 2007 after an earthquake at a different plant. Where was management's sense of duty then? It was clearly misplaced, and short-sighted. That history doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this incident; it is quite possible that management has been exemplary since then. If management hasn't been responsible, that wouldn't diminish the heroism of the team on site at Fukushima one bit. It would simply illustrate one of the common features of heroism: a hero often the guy who has to step up when somebody else screws up.
Holding some people responsible for making a mistake doesn't mean respecting the people who deal with that mistake any less. That's important to remember, because people who screw up like to cover themselves with the glory that rightfully belongs to others. And somebody screwed up here. It may have been an unavoidable mistake (when we designed this 40 years ago we did the best we could but now we could do better). It could been something that somebody chose to ignore because it would be very unwelcome news (we knew we really shouldn't be running these ancient reactor designs in places like this). Or might be an omission due to not having enough review of how things were done (safety drills should have revealed the problem restoring axillary power to the cooling system).
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I have a lot of respect for the workers at the plant who risk their health and work hard to prevent a disaster. But I also think it's an irresponsible policy to require this kind of heroism from people. I have only contempt for the people who ignored the IAEA warning about Japanese reactors a couple of years ago, and for the people who are still deciding to build new reactors near fault lines without sufficient safety precautions to withstand the worst earthquakes.
The reactor should have been safe. Better a
Re:Nothing but respect... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a lot of respect for the workers at the plant who risk their health and work hard to prevent a disaster. But I also think it's an irresponsible policy to require this kind of heroism from people. I have only contempt for the people who ignored the IAEA warning about Japanese reactors a couple of years ago, and for the people who are still deciding to build new reactors near fault lines without sufficient safety precautions to withstand the worst earthquakes.
The reactor should have been safe. Better able to withstand earthquake and tsunami, and more, better, and more reliable backup systems.
The actual earthquake, Where the ground moved around, did no significant damage to the plant. It was the tsunami that destroyed the tanks for the diesel fuel for the emergency diesel generators (all 13 EDGs). This along with the loss of outside transmission losses meant no power to run the pumps for feedwater into the reactor vessel.
Many newer plant have completely passive systems, fed by gravity and other things that will work without electricity. One thing you have in an abundance after a nuclear accident is heat. some of the older plants and many reactors (especially in the navy) have pumps that run off of steam.
the plant I speak of is a little different from theirs. It's a PWR, theirs was a BWR. Our Aux feed system (with three separate trains) runs off of aux feed. in the event of an accident the natural circulation of the primary would move that heat to the steam generators with or without pumps running. The aux feed system which can be run with or without electricity will provide feedwater to remove decay heat from the Reactor.
There are Seismic considerations to everything we do as well. A similar earthquake and tsunami would not destroy our EDGs. Thus I doubt any resulting accident would be nearly as severe, our plant is 5 years newer
with regard to them being required to stay, I doubt that anyone was required to stay. I know if there was an accident where I work, (even if it was as severe) there would be no question that I would stay. Along with many others. I was in the coast guard before this. I was a sea marshal for a short time. I was a firefighter, repair team member, damage control team member. Many others as well would see it as their duty to stay, even if the company didn't ask. I personally know people from here who have volunteered to go help the Japanese plants.
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That's like saying you have no respect for a cop that sacrifices himself to rescue people in a hostage situation, becasue the government should have prevented the crime in the first place. It may be true that the events should never have happened, but that doesn't take away from the courage and sacrifice of those on the pointy end of the stick when it does. It's not the workers fault that the plant wasn't up to spec (although even that is arguable, no one was really expecting an earthquake of this magnitu
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Here's to the nuclear workers (Score:2)
I raise my glass to you and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for keeping those reactors safely running in normal times and safely stopped in abnormal situations. You truly are heroes.
It's not the same 50 people every day (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's pretty much SOP in the nuclear industry.
a jet pilot and a firefighter? (Score:2)
bit of a stretch.
The job must be exceptionally boring, since most of the time nothing happens. In my nearby plant, the nuclear engineers were found sleeping on the job during afternoons, and playing board games when awake.
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Worked as intern on a IT support help-desk many years ago. During quiet times, we'd do inventory on the RS232 breakout boxes and the LAN adapter cards, until someone called in to ask how to replace the paper on their laser printer. During crisis time, the help-desk operators would get calls from users if we knew the network had gone down, then the world would go crazy.
Early PC network cards had a habit of frying their MAC address EEPROMS and there weren't any internal firewalls at the time, so one PC could
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In my nearby plant, the nuclear engineers were found sleeping on the job during afternoons
Do you happen to live in Springfield?
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No the Peach Bottom nuclear plant near the Chesapeake Bay (northern tip).
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bit of a stretch.
The job must be exceptionally boring, since most of the time nothing happens. In my nearby plant, the nuclear engineers were found sleeping on the job during afternoons, and playing board games when awake.
Then they're doing it wrong and management should be taken to task for failing to do their job.
I am a retired firefighter and I can tell you that the vast majority of a firefighter's time is spent doing "boring" things. Done right, those things include a constant regimen of training, education and maintenance so that every firefighter has the skill, knowledge and ability, and his equipment has the reliability, to perform optimally when things finally get "exciting". While I do not wish to minimize the he
You know when you have an extrodinary job when... (Score:2)
this [thinkgeek.com] is a real, working device. Though, in the case of a nuclear reactor, you want the opposite effect.
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I could be used to fry all the devices connected to the hub, protecting sensitive data in the advent of a sudden danger.
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I want the "off" button to be as easy to press as possible.
Doses worry me (Score:4, Interesting)
If I understood things correctly the Japanese authorities now allow radiation doses up to 250mSv for the workers.
To put this in perspective, natural background radiation is aproximately 1-3 mSv per year , while at 10.000mSv death is to be expected.
Anything above 100mSv is definitively carcinogenic, and above 1000mSv you will see serious bone marrow damage.
250mSv is probably not going to give you acute radiation sickness, but it certainly is not going to be good for you. In particular it will increase your risk for cancer.
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Japan is having a "population crisis" as it is with their working cultural values and requirements are preventing people from having children at all. Now this?
It was a huge mistake for governments to allow economies to get bad enough to require both men and women to work just to survive -- this is a global problem with global consequences -- and worse that "overtime is expected" in places such as Japan and at "Japanese companies." (Note, I currently work for a Japanese company and essentially all Japanese
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To put this in perspective, natural background radiation is aproximately 1-3 mSv per year , while at 10.000mSv death is to be expected.
You mean 10,000 (ten thousand).
What's with this irritating Europe-style switching of the command and decimal point in English? I see it more and more. It might be what they do in Europe but in English, using the decimal there is rather misleading.
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And of course by command, I clearly meant comma.
Anotherr honorable note (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the people in line ups for food and supplies; calm and polite. No one shouting, shoving or being impatient.
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The Japanese have a saying, "The tall nail get hammered", this keeps people predominately civil.
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Who's talking about that? While those claims of what happened at the super dome are untrue there certainly was a lot of looting. There's plenty of photographic evidence of it. And I guarantee you a lot of Americans would not patiently stand in line for hours. They'd start pissing and moaning and eventually just rush the store, grabbing everything they can.
Hell, several years ago I was hanging out with a friend. The power goes out for a good hour or two. I leave for home when the power is restored, drive pas
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The year after Katrina, the Mississippi flooded and caused a disaster similar in scale, but mostly in rural areas and farming communities. There was no looting there either, and people pulled together - you just don't hear about it.
The problem with Katrina wasn't that New Orleans residents are Americans, but that they are dependent Americans - most of those who stayed behind did not have jobs or income before the event took place, much less after. They did not feel any sense of honor or ownership of their
maybe we need a better way of making electricity? (Score:5, Insightful)
One that doesn't have a catastrophic failure mode? Maybe we should be putting our money into that rather than war machines and dick pills?
Is there any business operation anywhere on the planet that isn't operated as a giant catastrofuck? I mean seriously, everywhere you look it seems like lying, corner-cutting, and profit-raping. Are there any responsbile operators out there?
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Modern nuclear reactor designs do not experience meltdown. They are designed to be passively safe.
Why don't we use them? Politics, mainly.
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Modern nuclear reactor designs do not experience meltdown. They are designed to be passively safe.
So what? The bigger risk has generally been (and in this case still is) keeping stored spent fuel from igniting after an emergency or attack.
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I've had enough of this wanking (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the very first hours YC, Ars, TheReg and
Listen all : it's mission accomplished when the crew back on deck - Apollo 13 style - not when the PR wish it was - Iraq invasion style.
Let's not loose our cool, scientific, matter-of-fact and "it ain't finished yet" attitude; have we turned ourselves in our own version of FOX?!
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My side is not "winning": I have no side, I really wish nuclear energy really was more economical to setup, maintain and decommission than other current sources. Unfortunately it doesn't seem so: it's an expensive, dangerous technology with 2 major problems:
1. there's no long term solution for waste disposal
2. it is never safe enough to operate because when it starts to fail it's extremely difficult - if not impossible - to adequately intervene and prevent further damage
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I can't tell if you're being sarcastic/sardonic or not, I hope so... but just in case not: the aim of liberals and greens (and stinky hippies) who were opposed to nuclear power was not simply to eliminate nuclear power plants, but to prevent the disasters that they can cause. This isn't winning, this is having their nightmare come to pass. If it helps prevent other disasters in the future, that's salvaging some good from the tragedy, but I don't know a single anti-nuclear activist who wouldn't prefer to be
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the green maybe, but as a liberal that believe that anything above 250 000 $ should be taxed at 70%, let me assures you that I (and my liberal wife) fully support further nuclear plants construction.
Also in the news... (Score:2)
... Recent financial crises and the need for improved benefits and pay structures to retain "key management and directorial personnel" pay and benefits must be reduced for the most critical workers in nuclear power plants.
(Yeah, it's all well and good to recognize how important they are when there is a crisis, but how well are they recognized when there isn't?)
Mixed feelings... (Score:2)
I completely agree, that people who risk their lives to save others are nothing else but heroes.
What I am confused about is what made such an act of heroism nessesary. With all the reports about Fukushima like http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/2011/03/17/wikileaks-cables-reveal-worry-over-japan-s-nuclear-plants-115875-22994842/ [mirror.co.uk] or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8384966/Japan-nuclear-plant-disaster-engineer-retired-35-years-ago-over-Fukushima-safety-concerns.html [telegraph.co.uk] I can not shake off the fee
Heroism is found in many works... (Score:2)
Not necessary (Score:2)
The sad fact is that this kind of heroism simply wouldn't have been necessary had the Japanese government/TEPCO taken safety more seriously instead of covering up problems and doing things on the cheap.
Damn the cost, Japan is one of the world's richest and most capable economies. If they can build high quality bullet trains, they can make sure their nuclear plants within range of major population centres (basically all of them) are safe given their location. Passive cooling for plants, and/or ability for
Where's the reference to Heinlein? (Score:2)
I was surprised to see that nobody had made the connection to Heinlein's wonderful short story, "The Long Watch" [wikipedia.org].
The main parallel would be the willingness to submit oneself to dangerous or even fatal radiation levels in order to prevent a disaster.
Terje
Kudos... (Score:2)
...especially, to the nuclear power promoters, industry shills, sycophants and other pro-nuke hacks whose tireless solicitations on behalf of plants that are "safer than everything" put these workers there to begin with.
Lunching in Washington, submitting op-ed pieces, cashing checks, cozy at home posting on reddit and slashdot, they're the real heroes.
Let's hear it for them!
- js.
It's guys like us[?] (Score:2)
These guys are "us" (probably less me, more
I wonder why? (Score:3)
A few years ago, some people asserted that widespread looting was a natural consequence of disasters when civic services couldn't immediately save them.
Hm, I guess not?
I guess humans DON'T have to behave like animals, if they choose not to?
The BATTLE OF chERNOBYL (Score:3)
I highly reccomend this documentary.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/ [topdocumentaryfilms.com]
It details the struggle to get the reactor under control, which cost (to date) thousands of lives.
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The Register? Are you sure? I haven't read this piece yet, but a few days ago they had an article explaining how this disaster proved how safe nuclear technology was. I do enjoy reading The Register occasionally, but it's not exactly an objective and unbiased source of information. Try iaea.org instead.
Re:Stop the FUD. Be cause and research. (Score:4, Informative)
*faceplam*
I'm pretty pro-nuke/anti-hysteria, but this is just irresponsible. If you want the straight-up story, go to the IAEA page [iaea.org] or see the analysis by Ars [arstechnica.com].
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4000 or so. This is less than even the initial estimates of immediate short-term life loss from the quake and tsunami.
It is very cute when the definition of "safe" is "causes less deaths than the worst ever earthquake in the history of man".
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From your article:
"The Japanese people, rightly, are hailing the personnel at the site as heroes. Not the least impressive aspect of their performance is the way they appear to be tackling the situation with such professionalism as not to carelessly risk their own well-being."
So, nothing in OP's point really changes.
That said, I'll agree with your article that the media hypes. . Everything. . to the nth degree, and that this practice severely detracts from its credibility, but in this case there is I think
Re:Stop the FUD. Be cause and research. (Score:4, Informative)
Well. I wonder. If the levels are that low as the guy thinks, why did the jp gov have to raise the allowed limit to 250mSv. I am sure the workers wear individual Dosimeters.
Disclaimer for below: I am a physicist, but did not think about nuclear reaction for a long time and am no expert on them; If somebody could do the caclulations properly, and dismiss the below as completly improper, i am glad to hear:
The cool down pond contains a MMol of radioactive substance, which should, depending on the composition (time of use) between 10^17 and 10^20 decays per second (i am no expert on this, therefore the large interval), which corresponds to kW to MW of emitted radiation (if the fuel pool evaporated 2000m^3 water in 1 week, the lower end may the right order of magnitude, corresponding to no active reaction going on), corresponding to emitted radiation in the oder of kW to 10s of kW. if we assume that .1% of this fuel is distributed in a 1000m^3 (e.g. the building), you have watts per second, and milliwatts and m^3. Assuming the worst part may be the inhaled alpha and beta radiators, and that you lung keeps 5liter, you end up with 5muW, corresponding roughly to 10mGray, or hundred mSv per hour (alpha and beta radiators), and you may want to add something for the gamma rays. If this would be thinned by a factor of 10, then you end up with the values reported close to the plants. So the problem would arise iff the fuel ponds catch fire and a significant amount if released into the atmosphere, you could end up with polluting 10^7-10^8m^3 into an unhealthy radiation level. That is .1(km)^3. So if the fuel storage evaporates over a week and the airflow is 1m/second you may emit a quite unhealthy smoke (that would be Tchernobyl). Lets hopefully assume that the burning would be slower and that the air stream would be thinned in a way that corresponds to size of the last plume when it arrived over tokyo, (100km^3 = 10^11m^3?), yielding 10^4W/10^11m^2, which is .1muW/second and m^3, corresonding to .3mW/m^3 and hour, so the order of magnitude will be .1-10mSv/Day if the fuel pool goes into fire. So the dosage over a week could definitely get into the harmful range, even at 300km away (you can check that estimation also vs. the measured radiation data at the reactor and lets say yokohama, which is roughly a ratio of 1/10000, meaning that if it would be 1Sv at the reactor we would reach the level calculated) if the wind conditions are awful and a lot of fuel burns/evaporates.
When i heard the amount of fuel stored in their plant under the open air, and that the radiation prevented them from working, i decided to take the plane to okinawa from tokyo. If they manage to cool the fuel pool in reactor 4 reliably (which contains the more active rods), then i will fly back (about the rest, even about a meltdown in the containment i am less worried), but i am definitely not a fan of getting the yearly radiation dose for a nuclear plant worker within a week.
So, no, no need to panic, but on the other hand if this would be too long over Tokyo, we can get new reliable Data on cancer caused byt radiation (in a 35Mio population, you can pick up change in rates on the order of a percent easily).
As i said: i am no expert on this, and i lack the most important information (specific composition of the fuel rods). But since i lack it, i may be pessimistic.
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Well. I wonder. If the levels are that low as the guy thinks, why did the jp gov have to raise the allowed limit to 250mSv. I am sure the workers wear individual Dosimeters.
The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
So really the Japanese government didn't raise the limit at all. They just said that what the workers at the plant is doing is "life saving or protectio
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Why is this marked as Troll? Everywhere I look, I see people screaming OMG Nuclear Apocalypse!!!11!!111eleventy!1!
It is a fact that media has been whipping people into a frenzy by playing on their fears and ignorance about nooklear power. There have been NO deaths because of radiation. No radiation sickness either. Just a few people who have recieved enough radiation that it MIGHT make a statistical change in the likelihood in them getting cancer 20 years from now.
Meanwhile the death count has now climb
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Prince Of Space buggered off as well...
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The radiation levels are high.
Everyone knows that you don't put robots in that sort of environment unless you want them to become sentient and rain nuclear death down on all of humanity.
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These guys do just that. [khgmbh.de] Don't know if they've sent anyone to Japan yet, but that might happen.
Re:It raises the question ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Running *ANY* power plant requires that level of dedication to duty. Being a police officer or a fireman also requires that level of dedication to duty. Being an air traffic controller requires that level of dedication to duty.
I am guessing "Rambo Tribble" has never served in the military and simply has no idea what sort of things require any level of dedication to duty or even what it means. But our "day to day lives" are actually vigilantly guarded by such people and they are frequently taken for granted.
I have served in many roles that required such dedication to duty. Among them, service in the US Navy and several positions in IT infrastructure services. Without people in place to maintain things, civilization as we know it would collapse -- all aspects of our infrastructures require a LOT of people with a lot of dedication. Ever have a day when the trash people failed to pick up when scheduled? How about the occasions when sewage systems are stopped?
To suggest that something shouldn't be done if it requires such "heroes" is to suggest that civilization itself should be reconsidered because it's not easy enough.
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That the people performing these heroic services are generally in the less-rewarded sectors of our society reflects poorly - on our society. Those people to which our society gives the greatest rewards - are generally (though not exclusively) aggressive sociopaths. Go figure.
At the very least, if true heroism is part of the job requirement, then part of the fringe benefit requirements ought to be good medical, and good life insurance.
And how about those coal miners...
(I'd rather have had mod points to giv
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Maybe you need to go look at the destruction photos again. No, the backup generators could NOT have been offsite and remained connected. I'll agree they could have been more highly elevated, though. No, they are not able to pull power from the grid because the grid was DESTROYED. There are people running cable as fast as humanly possible, but high voltage cabling is not something you just grab off the shelf at WalMart and start unspooling - assuming the WalMart or equivalent wasn't washed thirty miles out t
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Then perhaps nuclear plants shouldn't be within range of a tsunami at all.
The fact is, planning to manage in the event of tsunami should have been written into procedures and into site selection among other things.
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Yep.
Keeping spent fuel rods in open pools that need constant cooling not to boil off, though, is incredibly stupid. This being a problem was foreseeable, even in the 60s.
Nuclear power is better than the alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
Go read the link in this comment [slashdot.org]:
The earthquake and the follow-on tsunami caused serious problems with several reactors. The problems built up over hours and days, requiring a lot of effort to mitigate them.. They are going to be expensive to fix, and to date have killed tens of people.
The earthquake also caused a dam to collapse, destroying 1800 houses in an essentially unstoppable catastrophe. Right now, nobody knows how many people were in those homes - if 1% of them were occupied, that dam has killed more people than all the reactors.
People on slashdot favor nuclear power because a lot of them have an engineering mindset - everything we do has tradeoffs, and nuclear in general has the best ones for big sources of electricity.
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Pretty much every aspect of modern society is reliant on "big sources of electricity", either directly (say, air conditioned buildings) or by extension (say, anything made out of aluminium).
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You cannot compare nuclear and water dams, sorry.
Yes you can. And when you want to have electricity, you practically must. You either need the dam or the nuke plant or the coal plant etc. There are real trade offs and you really do compare them.
Also even Chernobyl has not "rendered huge amounts of land unusable for centuries". Neither did the the two nuclear bombs detonated over Japanese cites.
Re:Bring on the nuclear power fans (Score:5, Informative)
You talk about someone else being plain ignorant, in a post that is packed to the rafters with hyperbolic attempts to overstate the events so far. No one who knows anything about radiation is worried about radiation levels reaching 10x background. That's 0.05mSv per day, less than what you pick up every fortnight.
I think using an ongoing event like this as a pro- or anti-nuclear is wrong. There will be lessons to learn later, and if it finishes without a disaster, I personally will be more confident in the safety of current and future nuclear plants.
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During all of this, I've noticed the slashdot community seems to lean in favor of nuclear power. Not individuals, but the community as a whole - based on the comments that get highest moderation. This is in spite of the fact that the situation there is a total unmitigated disaster. One person held it up as a case in FAVOR of nuclear power, basically saying - look, even with the natural disasters they only released a little radioactive steam. That's just plain ignorant. The building have exploded, 3 reactors are thought have had partial meltdowns (one of them breached), the simple cooling ponds are in trouble (if they were full of water, someone could just walk in there and confirm it - the fact nobody has says the radiation levels are too high to go in because something is wrong), radiation is more than 10 times background 30km away. And regardless of weather you buy all those facts, it is requiring a HUGE effort of man power to prevent it getting worse and there is no solid plan. I did read they're importing 150 tons of boron to dump on it - because well, you need to do that when there is a little steam leak I suppose...
During the earthquake, four trains derailed, killing hundreds of people. One of them is still missing, vanished without a trace. Dozens of bridges collapsed, killing thousands. Miles of beachfront property was washed away, causing billions in damage and possibly killing tens of thousands. In contrast, so far the nuclear situation hasn't resulted in a single death.
And yet the media and all of you fearmongering blowhards are clamoring for a nuclear dark age, but nobody is suggesting we abolish trains or bridg
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And yet it's released less radioactivity than coal power plants do, and is still much cleaner for the environment. The fact that it's still holding up after handling an earthquake much larger than it was designed for is a testament to the engineering. And this is an OLDER plant. One that's not as advanced.
If we want to keep having computers and other things powered by electricity, we need to have electricity. And of the ways to GET that electricity, nuclear is one of the most efficient, safest and easily av
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Most people that have posted here seem to think the accident is a very good argument for retiring old reactors, and replace them with newer designs that have passive safety features and more reliable containments. In particular the following seems to be the "slashdot view":
*Fossil fuels is an orders of magnitude worse than nuclear, even when accidents like this are taken into consideration.
*The probability of disasters like this can be greatly reduced with designs
like the ESBWR, that don't rely on pumps to
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You know what is truly an unmitigated disaster? The magnitude 9 earthquake and the resulting tsunami. The one that caused trains to derail, killing thousands, and has even caused a train to go missing. But no, lets put the focus on the 40 year old nuclear reactor that managed to withstand this massive quake and cause a minimal radiation increase 30 km away. 10 times background sounds scary if you're ignorant and uninformed. How many deaths have been caused by this "unmitigated disaster" of the plant vs. the