This is the single most important issue in the history of the world

I don't necessarily think about the failure of the nuclear reactors in isolation. In addition to the possibility of the failure of nuclear reactors, there are also a number of products that require a constant supply of electric power for refrigeration, mixing, pumping, etc. The problem is not necessarily the fact that manufacture of these products will be halted, but that the loss of constant manufacturing and storage capability of these toxic and/or explosive compounds could lead to catastrophes with long lasting consequences.

The National Geographic film: Aftermath: Population Zero discusses some of the dangers associated with the lack of refrigeration for Chlorine gas.

I expect that the nuclear power plants and industrial product manufacturers have procedures in place to address the long-term power failure scenario. However, depending on the scope of the failure, there may be secondary effects that those scenarios don't address. For instance, if the long-term supply of generator fuel is permanently interrupted, how are systems/products rendered safe?

Originally posted by Lighterside
reply to post by Visiting ESB

 

Originally posted by Visiting ESB
As for your hunch, maybe you should do some independent thinkng. You know, the kind of thinking that's not spoon-fed to you by TV?

Cause a troll like you knows I get all my information from the TV (am I the only who noticed I'm on an alternative news site?)

As for Independent thinking, looks like I had some, it didn't flow with your thinking (you know, the kind that's forcefully shoved down your throat as truth with nothing to corroborate your claims)

And really? You're going to compare tsunami damage to CME damage? Apples and Oranges!

I pity you, it must suck not being able to sleep at night thinking the boogey man is gonna getchya if you close your eyes for a minute.

edit on 12-8-2011 by Lighterside because: added reply to post link

You're the perfect example of the ignorance that's prevalent out there. First, is everyone who posts thread with which you disagree a "troll"? Just what is a troll in your Big Junior Book of Definitions? It's clear that you know NOTHING about this topic, so you should probably move on to the entertainment section. I have no patience with people like you. I don't care to be nice any longer to those like yourself who persist in their ignorance and fight intensely to remain there. Reasonable disagreements are one thing. Reasonable disagreement you haven't presented. Unless you think "fear monger" and "troll" are reasonable ways to disagree. You, and those like you, are part of the problem and will never be part of a solution.

Originally posted by BigBruddah
Sure enough nuclear power is a massive issue, but every nuclear reactor can't just be shut down at will. With them being all over the world and under different rule there will always be non believers and who says that America would be willing to turn their nuclear power off? If power was cut to millions of people, it would just cause riots and looting, so this isn't the answer, they just need to find an alternative.

I fail to see your logic i'm afraid..

Either they cut the power beforehand and turn them off safely to prevent meltdown when power goes out due to the CME, or they just wait for the CME and let it do it's thing and have all of the USA covered in fallout within hours because of the meltdowns.

If the American public would instantly resort to looting and rampaging because of a planned power cut to protect you from harm... well.. let's just say it would say more about the Americans in general than it would about your government in this case.

reply to post by Visiting ESB


It happened before...

It will happen again...

It's just that telegraph lines don't cause that much harm when they short circuit.

Early in the 19th century the first geomagnetic storm was observed, or to be more precise the effects of it were observed: From May 1806 until June 1807 the German Alexander von Humboldt surveyed the bearing of a compass in Berlin. On 21 December 1806 he registered severe disturbances and Auroras could be seen in that night. On September 1 – 2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. From August 28 until September 2, 1859, numerous sunspots and solar flares were observed on the Sun, the largest flare occurring on September 1. This is referred to as the 1859 solar superstorm or the Carrington Event. It can be assumed that a massive Coronal mass ejection (CME), associated with the flare, was launched from the Sun and reached the Earth within eighteen hours — a trip that normally takes three to four days. The horizontal intensity of geomagnetic field was reduced by 1600 nT as recorded by the Colaba observatory near Bombay, India. It is estimated that Dst would have been approximately -1750 nT.[7] Telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe experienced induced emf, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators and causing fires. Auroras were seen as far south as Hawaii, Mexico, Cuba, and Italy — phenomena that are usually only seen near the poles. Ice cores show evidence that events of similar intensity recur at an average rate of approximately once per 500 years. Since 1859, less severe storms have occurred in 1921 and 1960, when widespread radio disruption was reported.[8]On March 13, 1989 a severe geomagnetic storm caused the collapse of the Hydro-Québec power grid in a matter of seconds as equipment protection relays tripped in a cascading sequence of events.[2][9] Six million people were left without power for nine hours, with significant economic loss. The storm even caused auroras as far south as Texas.[3] The geomagnetic storm causing this event was itself the result of a coronal mass ejection, ejected from the Sun on March 9, 1989.[10] The minimum of Dst was -589 nT. On July 14, 2000, an X5 class flare erupted on the Sun (known as the Bastille Day event) and a coronal mass ejection was launched directly at the Earth. A geomagnetic super storm occurred on July 15–17; the minimum of the Dst index was – 301 nT. Despite the strength of the geomagnetic storm, no electrical power distribution failures were reported.[11] The Bastille Day event was observed by Voyager I and Voyager II,[12] thus it is the farthest out in the solar system that a solar storm has been observed.

Wiki

Originally posted by kro32
We just went through a bunch of very strong solar activity and nothing happened so don't you think your overreacting a bit.

LOL. You need to look up solar flare strengths and the effects because we as a race aint seen nothin yet cowboy!?!

I move for everyone to do research on subjects before commenting on something. It would add to the overall goal of truth and restrict disinformation provided by us to a minimal. It would also be a very strong defense against outside influence of disinformation. Tackle the problem like a group of college kids shooting to get an A++ on the project. Lock boards where only certain creditable members trying to further themselves and the truth of subjects in question and so we can have a place to intelligently discuss amongst themselves and get to a truth faster by eliminating the impossible and PROVING THE POSSIBLE. Hand it out like homework and whenever a case closed hold a fundraiser to give to team that solved a conspiracy for fact or fiction. Force people to want to work harder and usually they will. I know of many skills that I use to this day because of forums with these types of member conditions. Or we could organize like B.B.mAYBE IF YOU CANT BEAT THEM JOIN THEM THEN BEAT THEM. I have no Idea what I am saying. P

so? you are saying that the sun will take out the electrical grid? and that it will cause the power plants to go critical?
simple solution, use the power produced to keep the plant active and the spent fuel cooled. have extra parts to repair any possible damaged components. make sure all the electrical components are shielded from the radiation/energy burst from the sun. not very hard considering nuclear power plants already have giant walls of concrete.

reply to post by AceWombat04

That is true, but isn't the premise being put forth here that the predicted active solar cycle would be linked to the storms people are concerned about? It seems like four different things are being said: 1) That a more active than normal solar cycle will produce dangerous solar storms. 2) That this cycle will be normal and there's nothing to worry about. 3) That we're about to enter another Maunder minimum and thus there will be less solar storms. 4) That we're about to enter another Maunder minimum and thus there might be powerful solar storms. That's why I asked if there was a lack of concensus. It seems like there is, but I'm just a layperson.

I see your point. I don't think there will ever be a consensus reached about anything on these ATS forums.

Wikipedia has this to say about the correlation:

The occurrence frequency of coronal mass ejections and flares is strongly modulated by the solar activity cycle. Flares of any given size are some 50 times more frequent at solar maximum than at minimum. Large coronal mass ejections occur on average a few times a day at solar maximum, down to one every few days at solar minimum. The size of these events themselves does not depend sensitively on the phase of the solar cycle. A good recent case in point are the three large X-class flares having occurred in December 2006, very near solar minimum; one of these (an X9.0 flare on Dec 5) stands as one of the brightest on record.

So, given that information, there doesn't appear to be a link between the magnitude of the solar storm event and the sunspot activity. However, the number of solar storm events is directly proportional to the sunspot level.

That's the closest "consensus" I can find. But give it time, I'm sure any number of consensuses will be reached by any number of different groups.

reply to post by Visiting ESB



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7fe719047cef.jpeg[/atsimg]
Ok...this is bad! Now we don't have enough money to fix things before it's too late (just a lil humor)

I think this is an excellent topic and it's definitely something that needs to be addressed. I hope they have a plan in place You hit the bullseye on this one OP

How, when and what should be done? You can't just turn the switch off everything at once.

Umm... aren't power plants the source of power to the power grid. The solar flares are going to stop the transfer of power, not the production.

reply to post by DexterRiley


Yeah that does tend to be how it goes, eh?

So there's a relationship between sunspot activity and some scientists think we're going into a period of lower sunspot activity and others think we're going into a period of greater sunspot activity. So it depends on who's right in the end I guess lol.

reply to post by BrianC


Go to nasa for god sake. You will stay ignorant if you dont search yourself. OR WATCH NEWS?

But i doubt it will do much damage,it might,but dont think so.

Originally posted by Teeky
No woman would have built something sooooo stupid like a Nuclear power plant! It defies all logic.
Or like
I've said before... Nuclear power plants are a setup! I know where the nearest nuclear power plants are where I live. After Japan it's like a chess game.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Strange you should say that Teeky.

The first person to die of radiation sickness was Marie Curie ( Born Marya Sklodowska November 7, 1867 ) (doctorate in Physics)

She coined the term "radioactive and purified the radioactive elements in uranium,polonium, and radium (which Marie discovered),

I could be wrong but once a reactor is up and running couldnt it power its self?

Originally posted by Veelink
I could be wrong but once a reactor is up and running couldnt it power its self?

It could, yeah, but it can't keep it's own nuclear reaction under control, meaning that within a few hours the reactor would most likely go critical and melt down.

Nuclear power is nothing more then a very dangerous balancing act, and our safety net is about to be removed.

Originally posted by BrianC
pics or it didn't happen

Mod Note: One Line Post – Please Review This Link.

edit on 12-8-2011 by Gemwolf because: (no reason given)

Pics or it didn't happen....? Everyone knows about these power plants....that they do exist....and I think it is a very important issue....that is why many are trying to (go green)...some scientists are working on it.

Ok...give me a picture of the wind...(or it dosen't happen)...just being humorous!

Originally posted by kro32

Has there actually ever been a recorded case of disaster from anything solar related other than a sunburn? Not sure I agree that this is a big issue.

In a huge solar storm back in 1859, telegraph offices worldwide were hit, some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, the telegraph systems malfunctioned and even paper caught fire.

It is the strongest solar storm on record and is called the “Carrington Event,” which is named after Richard Carrington, who viewed and reported on the solar flare of Sept. 1, 1859.

In 1989, six million people in Quebec, Canada were left without power for several hours when a solar storm took down a power grid.

gartalker.wordpress.com...

In the 19th century, there were few electrical items to destroy. But a sloar storm did knock out telegraph systems worldwide in 1859.

There is another solar storm due in 2012 just as big, apparently.

reply to post by CranialSponge

Do you people not get it ?

Apparently it is you who does not get it.

There are 101 different potential disasters that could happen... and then there are another 101 potential disasters that we haven't even thought of yet as an "electricity on demand" fully dependant society.

There are a million different things people can conjure up in their minds about what some "worst-case" scenario with a nuclear reactor accident could be like, but what they always fail to mention is the probability and the factors that they rely on behind there assumptions. These scenarios can be just easily applied to anything else other than nuclear reactors with relative ease - such as fuel stations:

One can imagine a gasoline spill causing a fire that would wipe out a whole city, killing most of its inhabitants. It might require a lot of improbable circumstances combining together, like water lines being frozen to prevent effective fire fighting, a traffic jam aggravated by street construction or traffic accidents limiting access to fire fighters, some substandard gas lines which the heat from the fire caused to leak, a high wind frequently shifting to spread the fire in all directions, a strong atmospheric temperature inversion after the whole city has become engulfed in flame to keep the smoke close to the ground, a lot of bridges and tunnels closed for various reasons, eliminating escape routes, some errors in advising the public, and so forth. Each of these situations is improbable, so a combination of many of them occurring in sequence is highly improbable, but it is certainly not impossible.

(...continued)

I have frequently been told that the probability doesn’t matter — the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn’t matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly.

www.phyast.pitt.edu...

And for a situation like the OP to occur, it relies on a series of cascading assumptions, each of which has a very low probability from the outset. The probability and consequences are not discussed. Let's run through them shall we:

1. An extremely powerful CME capable of wiping out not only all electric grids.
2. The electric power grid being totally shut down for a significant amount of time without any, even partial, restoration taking place.
3. The nuclear reactors emergency systems running out of fuel.
4. The nuclear reactor emergency systems unable to be refueled.
5. The reactors being unable to be defueled once nuclear reactors reach cold shutdown after a couple of days.
6. Decay heat in the reactor being high enough after the several days or weeks from shutdown to not only damage the fuel but melt it through the reactor pressure vessel.
7. Containment breach.

Did anyone go into the probability of each of those? No. Instead we have a bunch of claims about "waking the hell up" and ridiculous claims about closing every single reactor on the planet without a shred of evidence, just some situation someone conjured up in his head. People don't need to wake up they need to grow up.

And a pissant little backup power generator designed for only temporary power interruptions will NOT suffice in such a large scale event.

Why?

The fuel supplies will last about a week, before more fuel would have to be found. After a week decay heat will be a lot smaller - probably not even enough to breach containment.

If an entire section of a country were to lose its flow of electricity, good luck in acquiring the components and manpower required to get it back up and running within just a few days.

A tanker truck every few days?

Manmade nuclear fission (chemical reactions) continues on its own and we have NO control of stopping it

Nuclear fission is by defintiion nuclear rather than chemical. That's why they call it nuclear. And control rods are held out of the reactor using electromagnets, if there is a loss of power then the reaction is halted in seconds. The only thing still generating heat is decay heat which is 6% of full power, going down to 1% after few hours and closer to 0.1% after a week when the diesel generators run out of fuel if for some reason they cannot bring in some tanker trucks. At 0.1% of full power I'm not even sure if how much damage would occur if total loss of cooling occurred but it's probably nothing like loss of cooling when still at 6% of full power.

Fukushima had a complete failure due to loss of all power since everything was flooded, the reactor never reached cold-shutdown and instead had to rely on weak and ineffectual batteries which lasted far less than even one day.

Cooling systems do not stop the fission process, they only control the rate at which it happens...

Control rods control the fission process and they stop it very easily. Decay heat cannot be controlled.

Oh and by the way: Those cooling systems must now be in continuous operation for thousands of years keeping the temperatures at bay until those non-stop chemical reactions finally exhaust themselves out.

Once again they are not chemical reactions, it is nuclear decay. And cooling systems are only required until decay heat, which decreases exponentially, is low enough so that active cooling is not required.

And here's another wakeup call for all you "asleep-at-the-wheel spoonfed deniers of ugly truths": A friggin "terrorist" could fly a damn airplane (sound familiar ?!) into a nuclear reactor surrounded by a highly populated area and within hours/days thousands upon thousands of square miles all around would be obliterated of all life.

And yet they still decided to fly them into tall buildings. There was a reason for that.

Pfft, please... one of many inevitable scenarios we're guaranteed to see one day.

If the time-span is infinite then every single thing that is possible will occur, just like the situation Bernard Cohen described with a fuel station fire destroying entire cities.

Calm down and take a chill pill, maybe lay off the ATS for a while, you are clearly suffering from overexposure to doomsday scenarios.

Firstly your point about generators is ignorant, how do you know how much fuel they have? Any proof or are you just putting your clearly overactive imagination to use, even if they only have enough fuel for a week its not like gasoline is difficult to obtain.

Secondly with regards to the people who look after the reactors, how do you know that they will just run at the first sign of trouble? You make the point that they would rather go look after their families, more likely they would rather contain the problem so that their families dont have to face a problem.

I think you are seriously worried about nothing, and if not nothing there are far bigger concerns in my opinion, hell even my personal problems dwarfs this ridiculous scenario.

On a side note, all these doomsday threads are in my opinion the result of people who dont have real issues to contend with in their lives and thus makes up hypothetical situations in order for them to have something to freak out about. I also used to hope for doomsday scenarios that is untill I had real issues to contend with.

So my advice to all the would be doomsday fanatics is get a life get a job get a wife, you will soon lose sight of hypothetical problems that are far fetched, as for calling this the most important subject in the world, please

Try struggling to support a pregnant girlfriend while being severely underpaid and living in a country where the governments only mission is to line their pockets at your expense all the while putting the blame for the vast poverty on something your forebears did 20 years ago which should at this stage not matter anymore.

Sorry if I come off mean but seriously having people freaking out about hypothetical situations which are unlikely in the extreme is putting me in a worse mood than I already am. Grrrrrr.

I love how everybody just accepts that we could destroy the entire world and make it inhabitable, all for generating power, just because it has a low possibility of happening.

People say "proof or it did not happen" but nobody accepts them.

Not to mention the thousands of nuclear devices exploded around the planet, which is the same time people started getting cancer.

I'll be shocked if the human race does not destroy itself over taking low probability chances like building hundreds of nuclear reactors because we don't want to use more coal or gas ect.

The nuclear reactors create electricity to the grid, they don't consume electricity from the grid. Nuclear reactors' electricity comes from electricity generators fueled by oil.

In Fukushima, the problem was that the sea water covered the electricity generators and shut them down.