Nuclear panic in Japan may be over-hyped.

Or, this article may be disinformation to keep us all from panicking, you decide.

This article does seem to present some pretty reassuring info about how moder nuclear plant designs will prevent a "China syndrome" type scenario and its worth reading.

Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl
The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here..

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating.

On all Generation II reactors—the ones currently in operation—the cooling water is circulated by electric pumps. The new Generation III reactors such as the AP1000 have a simplified "passive" cooling system where the water circulates by natural convection with no pumping required.

If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor—as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami—the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate.

If the coolant continues to evaporate, the water level can fall below the level of the fuel rods, exposing them. This will cause a meltdown, meaning the fuel rods melt to the bottom of the steel pressure vessel.

Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure—the so-called China syndrome, where the fuel would melt all the way to China. But Three Mile Island proved this doesn't happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren't hot enough to melt steel or concrete.

If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact.

Wall Street Journal


There's plenty of good sciency explanations in there to keep us calm in this emergency.


Is this thing over-hyped or do we really have a reason to panic?

Just look where this comes from and you will know if it is true or not.....

Wall Street Journal

i'm assuming this to be the same guy.

William Tucker is the author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey and editor-at-large at Nuclear Townhall.

link

obtained by google search of name.

seems like he may have an agenda.

I think we are closer to a melt down then japan is willing to admit. www.foxnews.com...

It was my understanding that dropping water from copters was going to be a last resort. Well they are doing it now does that mean if this fails its game over. TIme will tell i guess.

Pretty revolting piece of pro-nuclear, rose-tinted garbage.

Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating.

Would that be the same "cooling waters" that are now being dropped hopelessly from helicopters because there was none left in the pools?

Originally posted by rubbertramp

seems like he may have an agenda.

Everybody has an agenda nowadays.

Does that automatically make his information bogus? You would think that a guy pushing for nuclear power would know his stuff when talking about this nuclear safety.

Is he too biased to be taken as a reliable source?

it doesnt seem over hyped, if at all it seems they are downplaying the event like someone just had farted.
The ecological disaster is as always overlooked, you people know where the plant is located right?
Right next to the sea!

The impact on sea life and on the oceanic food chains is already catastrophic, no one is cleaning up the mess, radioactivity not only kills it also has the potential to mutate and damage DNA itself.

People will be sick all over Asia, and beyond, if the sea dies we die.
and still no one cares or has mentioned the environmental impact, serves them right stupid fish right?

reply to post by FortAnthem


i take it all with a grain of salt.
think bp and the leak.
they had an agenda also.
i'm not saying to disregard the info, i'm saying check it out before minds are made up.

reply to post by TheOneEyedProphet


totally agree with you mate.

www.ft.com...

This article doesn't address the real problem...the spent fuel pools. There is a lot more fuel in the fuel pools than there is in the reactor. The reactor is protected by the pressure vessel and primary containment. I don't believe we will see any significant affects from the fuel that is in the reactors. However, the fuel pools have no protection from the environment other than the walls of the reactor building that have been blown off by the hydrogen explosions. If the fuel pool water boils off then the spent fuel bundles will start heating up and the zirconium fuel cladding will eventually catch fire at about 1000 C. Then the fuel pellets could be released from the fuel rod and the radioactivity would be released directly to the atmosphere with no containment being available

I had an idea that might fix japan but I was not sure if I should start a thread about it or just add to an existing one. I chose the latter. regardless, yes it is being overhyped but what would happen if they pumped in liguid nitrogen on the rods would that flash freeze them or make things worse ?

Oh come on...please. It is blatent the nuclear reactor has destabalized and sooner or later (if not already) lead to a meltdown. Delaying the matter by telling the public theres nothing to worry about won't do good anyways when they DO worry about it. I don't know what agenda the Japanese Government or the media has, but I guess we will soon find out in the aftermath...

"Nuclear panic in Japan may be over-hyped."
Are you serious?
No, I'm not speaking rhetorically.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Its hard to tell who we should believe nowadays.

On the one side, we have people who believe this whole thing is being underplayed and they are keeping the true impact of this disaster away from the public for some reason, on the other hand, there are some who think the MSM is doing everything in its power to keep us in a constant state of fear.


When I first heard of this disaster, I immediately thought "what about the control rods? I thought they were supposed to drop in automatically in the event of an emergency to shut down the nuclear reaction." This article at least addresses that question and explains why there are still problems.

Originally posted by Curio
Pretty revolting piece of pro-nuclear, rose-tinted garbage.

Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating.

Would that be the same "cooling waters" that are now being dropped hopelessly from helicopters because there was none left in the pools?

What I don't understand is this:

if they got helicopters with water bags that only hold a few gallons , WHY don't they got a water pump on the copter ?????

one hose in ocean would pump enough to keep everything cool .... RIGHT ???

the copters must have plenty of gas too ... or they fall down ... RIGHT ???

and those BIG ships can pump a lot of water too ... RIGHT ???

they are making this farce pretty obvious too, with all the "sterned faced" "experts" on CNN the last few days!!!

WHO is kidding WHO anyway ????

and what will they tell us when the RADS get over here?

What you are saying is true. But that is not the problem.

The real problem with the reactors is the spent fuel rods that have been placed next to and above the reactors. Depending on who you talk to there could be as many as 6 hundred thousand spent fuel rods strored in the reactors building that do not have any containment except for the water that covers them. This is where the threat lies. If the spent fuel rods are exposed to the air Then they will heat up and catch fire. It would be something like 6 hundred dirty nukes going off.

This news article seems something like dis-information being spread by only reporting the part of the disaster that would leave you to think everything is not that bad.

I think that not only is it that bad, I think its much much worse. I think that the fires that are reported burning are in fact the spent fuel rods burning. And they have literally no way to stop it.

Radioactivity near the cores is off the charts, they are trying not to panic the 30 million plus people living near Tokyo, as the mass exodus would in itself cripple Japan, how in hell do you feed and house 30 million? where do you put them? the logistics of something like that is overwhelming, there is little to be done, we will have to wait till Friday, if by then things haven't changed, we are in for some rougher times in the future, we are in deep crap right now tho, the whole planet is, but hey, business as usual!

they wont tell the truth soon. that much is for sure.

I think it is a massive coverup much like the BP disaster is. They would rather spend billions of dollars in deflection than to apply it where it would really do some good and show real responsibility for the environment and for all life on the planet.

People keep talking about melt-down as if that is the only scenario that means trouble, as if everything is ok until 'melt-down' happens.

Well folks, melt-down in context of what's happening in Fukushima is like saying "it's ok, his arms & legs have been blown off but we managed to stem the bleeding from the stump where his head used to be."

Reality check: the HUGE stockpile of nuclear waste + Uranium/Plutonium mix fuel rods+ fire = ecological catastrophe on a scale that even the most cynical doomsayers would have sneered at the possibility of... IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. There are four known & (probably) six nuclear reactors destroyed & open to the elements spewing their contents into the air & water. Just read that again & imagine I told you that last year. You wouldn't believe me would you? You'd be running to the pharmacy for Iodine just in case, but laughing in disbelief.

Japan, within max of a few weeks is going to be uninhabitable. Completely uninhabitable, unless you like your sushi well-done. Do you get that? And it might even be worse than that.... if it's possible.... this stuff is so toxic & will travel so far around the globe that next year you will be praying for something easy like a mega volcano.

God help us.

reply to post by FortAnthem


I wondered about that, honestly.

We were on the brink of making a greater investment in nuclear to reduce our dependence on oil, so there is certainly motive to over hype or over state the disaster.

Keeping demand high keeps price high.