Corium found in reactor 3!!

a reply to: PublicOpinion

I disagree the point is ridiculous. It's not particularly relevant to this particular thread, but the point itself is not without merit.

Even as you have pointed out, there are numerous different groups of environmentalists. None of these groups can agree with each other, and seek legislation which contradicts each other. If you put all of them in a room and didn't let them come out until they had just one answer they all agreed upon...they'd all starve to death, or kill each other first.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

What's wrong with fighting the good fight to live in a natural environment, while having serious debates about how to achieve this goal? Discourse is actually what democracy was all about as we still had it, now we'd have to speak with one homogenous voice in order to be heard by the oligarchs herd?
Neat trick from the ruling class, gotta give 'em some credit for that. But... still... it's just a neat trick to ridicule dissent. If enviromentalists would speak with one voice you folks would say that it sounds like pure propaganda. And I'd have a hard time not to agree with that. You didn't really think this through, did you?

I understand it would cost an extremely large amount of money, but realisticly why can't we just launch all the waste into the sun? Just load up a couple giant, empty ships, and shoot them at it. It wouldn't even be a blip on the radar. It would be very expensive, but then it's totally gone, we never have to worry about it again.

a reply to: PublicOpinion

You're joking, right?

I mean, I don't even know where to begin with that, so many thoughts come to mind.

Yes, I did very much 'think this through' (i.e. my response)

originally posted by: EvillerBob

originally posted by: 8675309jenny
I'm not anti nuclear energy at all, but realistically can we even make a sound financial argument for it's use when disasters like this are inevitable...

Disasters like this are not "inevitable". The likelihood increases when reactors are pushed beyond capacity/lifetime because new reactors cannot be built.

Blame the idiot enviroweenies for making life more dangerous than it needs to be. The same people trying to block nuclear power are also trying to push the world to electric cars, but will be completely surprised when the additional demand on the grid pushes it over the edge.

Nuclear was and is a terrible option. As Fukishima shows, we still don't have any clue what to do when a disaster strikes, nor do we know what to do with the waste. It's like Key stone cops. Instead of planning contingencies in case there is a disaster, it's always like they never had any plan whatsover. Just look at Chernobly as your second example. dumping dirt out of helecopters was the first plan. LOL

Nuclear power needs to die. Until we can figure out what to do with it and how to operate nuclear plants safely.

As in Japan, plan one is to build a nuclear power plan on an earthquake zone in a low lying tsunami area. Real smart. And then let's dump all the wast einot the ocean

Also pouring water on nuclear fuel to cool it. That's as far advanced as we have come? My air conditioning in my house is more advanced than that. LOL

Nuclear needs to die.

a reply to: MDpvc

It's not that it's just "expensive", or even that it would even be "prohibitively expensive"...

It's that not even the combined wealth of the entire planet Earth...past, present and future could even come close to funding such an endeavor! You see, nuclear waste is heavy. In fact, it's some of the heaviest stuff on Earth, in the Universe even (as far as we know). Weight is the mortal enemy of spaceflight. Spacecraft payloads are measured in hundreds of pounds. Nuclear waste products are measured in millions of TONS.

And then there's the... "What if something ever went wrong?"...question. If just a single spacecraft carrying high-level nuclear waste detonated after launch the resultant contamination could contaminate a good portion of an entire hemisphere of Earth. So you might ask why then do ICBMs not pose a similar problem, and the answer is because they haven't reached critical mass yet (unlike nuclear waste, which has already gone critical and is now in the decay phase).

Other than that, if someone ever figured out how to escape Earth's gravity much more economically, the Sun might well be a good destination.

a reply to: amazing

Not defending what happened in Fukishima (not at all), but to make a general statement as you have is incorrect. There were numerous primary and backup contingency plans at Fukishima. All of them failed. Most of them failed because Japan failed to implement many of these contingency plans fully or properly.

The 'dumping of dirt' on Chernobyl was not only heroic, but it also probably saved millions of lives. What would you have done given the circumstances? They didn't have many other options at that point. It was suicide, and many gave their lives as a result.

There are lots of far more advanced ways to quench nuclear reactions than water, and Fukishima even had some of these capabilities. The problem is, they take power to administer. Without power they were helpless to cool the reactors after they SCRAM'd them. Many of these methods involve injecting products into the reactor chamber to disrupt the nuclear reaction, but again, the injection process takes power.

If you want to get mad and 'go-off' on something related to nuclear power, then go after the people who cut corners, who don't follow engineering recommendations in the interests of cost and/or real estate or deviate from proper procedures. These are the reasons accidents happen, not because nuclear power generation itself cannot be made safe.

Nuclear power doesn't need to "die", the people who make it dangerous and harm others by not following the rules need to be treated like the criminals they are...and maybe that means their punishment should be death (and not just a slap on the wrist).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Ask away and share some thoughts then?

I'm not sure where, why and how discourse analysis is supposed to be a joke.

a reply to: PublicOpinion

Perhaps in another thread, but not this one.

It would be way off-topic. Just a one sentence summary though; the notion that fundamental disagreement among environmentalists is somehow a good 'democratic' thing and will lead to productive solutions is, well, laughable (being polite).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

fundamental disagreement

Summary? Actually, they're fundamentally united and only disagree with regards to the different methods to achieve their goal. Some say nuclear power would be green due to the reduced carbon footprint, others say green is only the mutated fish in Fukushima Bay.

What are you getting at? Maybe think twice next time before you come up with grossly shallow generalizations like that?

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: 8675309jenny

Except that the environmentalists don't allow those types of plants to be built (gas, coal, etc.). Those types are too damaging to the environment because they cause global warming, and we are all supposed to be forced to go to electric cars because the other kind causes global warming.

Where are we going to get our electricity?

www.reddit.com...

I would bet they have had clean energy for many years but it would not make any money so they have kept it from the public.

Three Mile, Chernyobl and Fukushima should be lesson enough that we're not smart enough or just dumb enough depending how one looks at this.

With no practical way to deal with spent fuel now stored on site in cooling pools at nuclear power plants we are playing Russian roulette.

Posit this,

There is 12% chance ( 1 in 8 ) of major CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) from our sun occurring by 2022 according to this,

2 Trillion Risk

In a Carrington type event,

What happens to all the emergency generators, transformers and switch gear needed to cool nuclear power plants and their spent fuel storage pools ?

Even if those are protected how long does diesal last with distribution and transportation shut down?

I know for myself if any normal activities such as driving or flying had such a high risk of fatal results I'd not even consider doing them.

a reply to: Phoenix

Now, I will admit you've made an excellent point with that response.

Only comment I would have is, aircraft and cars are not hardened for such an event as you describe either. 400Hz would give them some shielding, but not much, and most glass cockpits would go dark. Back to 'stick & rudder' then...except there isn't a mechanical linkage to those airfoil surface in most modern commercial aircraft anymore.

Nuclear power plant accidents are inevitable. Certainly, a combination of excellent design and well observed safety protocols could, in theory, make them much safer, but in practice, at some time and place, human fallibility will kick in. Shortcuts will be taken, protocols ignored, maintenance neglected.

Also, there will always be another unexpected, unanticipated factor. For the same reasons, it is impossible (despite decades of improved engineering and safety codes) to build jet aircraft which do not occasionally fall out of the sky.

Perhaps the technology might have taken a less lethal form (e.g. thorium) had it not been engendered by the nuclear arms race.

Had the wind blown inland during the immediate aftermath it would have been more catastrophic for Japan. Also, I recall reading a newspaper report at the time of a request from Tepco to Prime Minister Kan to simply abandon the stricken reactor shorty after they lost control of it. I wonder if there's any record of this online.

Had they done so, the vastly greater conflagration as the spent fuel assemblies went up would have become part of the equation. I think we can only speculate about the consequences of that, because it goes so far beyond any nuclear catastrophe we've encountered. The evacuation of a country?

originally posted by: EvilAxis
I wonder if there's any record of this online.

OK, I found a reference to this: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: PM at the time feared the country would collapse Guardian, 8th Sept. 2011

His unease grew when his trade minister, Banri Kaieda, told him that Tepco was considering pulling its staff out of the plant and leaving it to its fate. "Withdrawing from the plant was out of the question," he said. "If that had happened, Tokyo would be deserted by now. It was a critical moment for Japan's survival. It could have led to leaks of dozens of times more radiation than Chernobyl."

So that scenario brings us back to Phoenix's remarks about a Carrington type event with a chain reaction of chain reactions bringing global catastrophe.

Had Tepco been allowed to abandon Fukushima Daiichi, the chain reaction would have occurred. The uncooled fuel in the plant would have caused a conflagration spreading to the spent fuel pools and a country-wide evacuation. What are the global consequences of abandoning 54 nuclear power plants and leaving them to their own devices?

a reply to: PublicOpinion

The plants were aged, beginning to supersede their useful service life, and there is still no alternative...

Worldwide, they plan on building hundreds more over the next few decades, because there is no other alternative.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

There were numerous primary and backup contingency plans at Fukishima. All of them failed. Most of them failed because Japan failed to implement many of these contingency plans fully or properly.

The redundant safety systems were overwhelmed by the one two punch of a major earthquake (cutting primary off site power to the cooling pumps), and the Tsunami, which destroyed the back up generators, leaving only 24 hours of back up battery power.

There was no other designed contingency after that, except the thickness of the reactor vessel walls and the thickness of the reinforced concrete containment building, which as we saw, failed to contain the resulting explosions of built up hydrogen gas from the meltdowns, both inside the reactor vessels and in the open fuel pools, that contained all the fuel ever exposed in all the reactors since they were constructed, because they still haven't worked out what to do with the spent fuel rods.

Nuclear power reactors were designed to fail eventually, it was inevitable.

Now, lets build some more.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Except that the Japanese didn't build the reactors in accordance with GE's recommendations, IAEA's recommendations or even the Japanese government recommendations.

It didn't matter how they were built, once the primary cooling pumps, back up generators, and emergency batteries are removed form the equation, after a Scram.

Besides the most powerful ever earthquake and tsunami that damaged the infrastructure, which prevented restarting the cooling apparatus because the whole of the region was in blackout. You want to blame something, blame the design that called for off site power to run the cooling pumps, and the thousands of workers that fled for their lives once it became clear meltdowns were imminent.

Cant really blame them, whats the point of staying and getting blown up?

a reply to: 8675309jenny

Gamma radiation is greatly attenuated by water. I thought about this myself, and I think the only way they were able to get these images was because of it being an underwater robot.

Underwater or in the atmosphere insside the reactor wells, the electronics in the cameras is what fries first.

Radiation also conducts into electrical wires heating the conductor to the point the wire insulation catches fire, something that happened early on in the reactor buildings themselves, as evidence by the black smoke spotted issuing from the reactor buildings...

image

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Except that the Japanese didn't build the reactors in accordance with GE's recommendations, IAEA's recommendations or even the Japanese government recommendations.

It didn't matter how they were built, once the primary cooling pumps, back up generators, and emergency batteries are removed form the equation, after a Scram.

....

That's the whole point. If the referenced recommendations would have been followed the primary pumps and backup generators wouldn't have shut down as quickly as they did. The issue was the switchgear for the generators getting flooded and rendering the generators useless.