A turn for the worse in Japan?

[Mytical]

Ok, I know there is another topic, but honestly this doesn't fit in it. Here is the article...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42103972...ws-asiapacific

I honestly hope and prey that they can do something. This is bad, very bad. My heart goes out to them, nobody, and I mean nobody deserves all the hardships they have endured lately.

[telecom_goddess]

This is why we had the nuclear protests in the 70's and 80's.....NO NUKES! It's nothing but a dangerous hazard in times like this.

[Gravekeeper]

This is why we had the nuclear protests in the 70's and 80's.....NO NUKES! It's nothing but a dangerous hazard in times like this.

This kind of talk is honestly what I'm afraid of, that this will set nuclear power as a whole back decades. Everyone will use this as an example for years to come. When the fact of the matter is we literally do not have an alternative. Because we've dragged ass on developing green energy for so many years thanks to the assholes at the top that don't want to give up on the oil money trough, we're pretty much fscked.

We have nothing that can replace nuclear power yet. Simple as that.

Frankly, look at it the other way around. This plant took on the 5th largest earthquake in history and a 30 foot tsunami. But maintained containment. It's been rocked by explosions and fires, but its still holding on. Any other powerplant would have just flopped over, crumpled and frankly done near as much damage to the area. Its not like other types of power plants wouldn't have had catastrophic results had they gone up as well.

Thing is, Chernobyl is the worst possible scenario for a nuclear plant. But Chernobyl is not possible with a modern reactor, simple as that. Modern reactor's have their own containment vessal and don't use carbon to moderate the reaction. They use heavy water. Chernobyl used carbon, that's what caused it go up and what filled the air full of radioactive particles and debris. Carbon = soot. Radioactive soot = bad. >.>

You'd really have to work to get a Chernobyl out of this. Someone would have to back up a truck full of C4 next to the reactor.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Nuclear power's been dead for years and always will be. So I honestly don't see the events in Japan as changing anything.

I mean, try to build a new nuke plant someplace. Imagine the regulatory hoops that would have to be jumped through and the opposition from the NIMBYs who live close to the proposed site. Those two things alone would ensure it never happens.

Yeah, new designs are probably safer and cleaner, but try getting people to understand that when the counter-argument is "Chernobyl," "Three-mile Island," or "No nukes!"

I say this as somebody who lives close to the only two nuclear power plants in his state, and has even toured one. They went up before the "no nukes" sentiment dominated the argument.

[Daskinor]

I don't think that a truckload of C4 would be enough. Reactors are tough, even if it went into full fuel melt containment would not be breached. However that worse case scenario would require a massive and expensive cleanup effort. But the environmental impact would be far less then Chernobyl. Tokyo has only recorded an increase of 1-11μSv/h. Background radiation is 6μSv/h. Health risk start when you hit a cumulative exposures of 1Sv or 1,000,000μSv in a 48 hour period. The front gate of the plant has a reading of 400μSv. Its dangerous in the sense that the workers will have an increase chance of cancer.

Most of the spikes in radioactivity are caused by the venting of radioactive steam. While not quite safe for workers at the plant. the half-life of the particles in the steam. Mostly radioactive iodine have very short half-lives. Basically the particles cant get to far away before they are no longer radioactive.

The explosions where caused by vented hydrogen. The most unreported thing about these explosions is that they where expected. As the systems that would safely burn it off where disabled. Hydrogen is produced by the power generation process. This hydrogen is non radioactive, and this kind of reactor cant produce measurable amounts of tritium.

If this happened to be a coal fire plant the situation would of been much worse. Coal fire plants produce more radioactive waste and pollution. There would of been release of tremendous amount of poisonous waste materials.

[Gravekeeper]

Nuclear power's been dead for years and always will be. So I honestly don't see the events in Japan as changing anything.

It's never been "dead", there's easily over 40-50 being built right now in various countries in the world. Even Japan still has one more nuclear plant under construction right now. Even the US had 26 in the planning phase. Though its doubtful now how those will turn out with the level of fear mongering that's sure to follow this in the US.

Problem is, what's the alternative? Anything else is either pollution or massive landscape and enviromental impact. Nuclear is expensive to built, but cheap to operate and produces no pollution under normal operation. ( Apocolpytic tsunami's don't count. ).

Japan's plant didn't fail because of the earthquake, it failed because of the tsunami. The reactor's failsafe systems shut it down automatically when the quake was detected. The quake ironically damaged its connection to its own power grid. It went to back up cooling, but the tsunami flooded its generators. Then the shit hit the fan.

There's no nuclear reaction occuring, they're battling the decay heat. So its a fight to cool them down to prevent radioactive material from melting through their containment vessals. In which case burying it ala Chernobyl might be the plan C.

So we're probably looking at another long term exclusion zone. But its not going to murder half of north America as some of the fear mongering seems to suggest.

[Gravekeeper]

If this happened to be a coal fire plant the situation would of been much worse. Coal fire plants produce more radioactive waste and pollution. There would of been release of tremendous amount of poisonous waste materials.

Ugh, yes, a coal plant going up would be catastrophic. Ironic it's seen as the "safer" option. Any power plant going up is going to be catastrophic, but I doubt coal, natural gas, hydro, etc are built to shrug off an 8.9 quake.

I don't think the western world, and the US specifically, ever really got over the cold war nuclear scare completely.

[Andara Bledin]

Gah... system ate my post. >_<

Anyway, bottom line is that the crisis in Japan is set to become less-so shortly as the heat produced by the powered-down reactors will drop to about half of what it is currently putting out. As long as they are contained until that point (which happens sometime in the first week), the local emergency crews should be able to approach and get the situation under control.

Article at LA Times that mentions the decay heat phenomenon.

Article at Discovery News that explains that new reactors would not suffer the same issues, with the first Generation III reactor scheduled to go online in 2013.

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

It's a hard trade-off, though: they don't go wrong often, but when they do, it can mean large areas permanently* uninhabitable.

*close enough

[Gravekeeper]

It's a hard trade-off, though: they don't go wrong often, but when they do, it can mean large areas permanently* uninhabitable.

But again, the risk is insanely inflated by the fear mongering and the only example we have of that is Chernobyl. Its not possible to have a Chernobyl these days, and as Andara pointed out it won't even be possible to have a Fukushima in the future.

We've had nuclear power for over 50 years. We've had two incidents of note. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was the worst case scenario with the shittest technology and the least understanding of it. Three Mile Island could barely be measured as a signficant health impact and was caused by straight up stupidity vs new technology. So really, it's just Chernobyl. An old reactor design no one uses these days combined with the amazing safety protocols of the cold war Soviet Union. Even more ironically, it should be pointed out that Chernobyl continued to operate as a power plant, safely, until it was finally decomissioned in 2000.

As Dask said, coal is actually more dangerous and would release more radioactive material than a nuclear plant.

[protege]

We've had nuclear power for over 50 years. We've had two incidents of note. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was the worst case scenario with the shittest technology and the least understanding of it. Three Mile Island could barely be measured as a signficant health impact and was caused by straight up stupidity vs new technology. So really, it's just Chernobyl. An old reactor design no one uses these days combined with the amazing safety protocols of the cold war Soviet Union. Even more ironically, it should be pointed out that Chernobyl continued to operate as a power plant, safely, until it was finally decomissioned in 2000.

Yeppers, I remember reading about that too. The plant at Chernobyl, albeit damaged, stayed in operation until 2000. From what I've read, the reactor blew the fuck out of the containment structure...resulting in a massive fire, huge clouds of radioactive shit spread over a large area. What people keep forgetting about Chernobyl, is that what safety features they had...were *disabled* to run a test. A test, designed to see how long the turbines would spin if power was cut.

Also forgotten, is the other plants...which have served without any major issues. I don't ever recall hearing anything going on at the nuke plant (Beaver Valley) about 35 miles NW of me.

BTW, does anyone find it amusing that the tree-huggers are all upset about nukes (and coal plants). Instead, they seem to want to go solar or wind turbines. All well and good, but those won't work in all areas. We have wind turbines here in SW PA. However, they're currently not generating anything now--maybe they were closed...because the towers are dangerous toward birds? Ironically, another common tree-hugger complaint Also, don't solar plants require huge areas of land to generate the same amount of power? That won't work here either--to install a "panel farm" it would mean the destruction of acres and acres of forests or farmland. That won't go over well...

[Gravekeeper]

Yeppers, I remember reading about that too. The plant at Chernobyl, albeit damaged, stayed in operation until 2000. From what I've read, the reactor blew the fuck out of the containment structure...resulting in a massive fire, huge clouds of radioactive shit spread over a large area.

Yeah, once the carbon went up that was it. You were getting a radioactive plume. I don't think the test they were running was even authorized, was it?

That won't go over well...

Someone's going to bitch regardless of what you do, but at the same time isn't going to give up indoor plumbing or their iPod. So you just need to make the best decisions based on actual information, not the background noise.

Problem with wind power is that the best place for it is off shore and high up, but it's hard to do that with the amount of air traffic congestion around the places we'd need to put wind power. Solar on the other hand is viable now, but we could really use more cash thrown at R&D for it instead of being constantly waylaid due to the big oil money trough.

We have deserts, drag that shit out there and hook it up. >.>

[telecom_goddess]

Solar on the other hand is viable now, but we could really use more cash thrown at R&D for it instead of being constantly waylaid due to the big oil money trough.

We have deserts, drag that shit out there and hook it up. >.>

I like that idea.....the deserts are a waste land, no real environmental impact.

[Andara Bledin]

It's a hard trade-off, though: they don't go wrong often, but when they do, it can mean large areas permanently* uninhabitable.

It's been nearly 25 years since the Chernobyl disaster (minus only one month), and something of that magnitude is increasingly unlikely to happen today, as there are fewer than a dozen of such plants still in operation, with increasing pressure to have them all shut down due to the potential threat they pose. Chernobyl, itself, continued operation for more than another decade after the disaster, with the final reactor not shutting down until 1999.

So really, it's just Chernobyl. An old reactor design no one uses these days combined with the amazing safety protocols of the cold war Soviet Union.

Not quite. As noted, there are still several of that same plant design, and worse, the Type I variant, which doesn't have the same safety controls as the Type II, which is the type that failed at Chernobyl. Thankfully, the disaster didn't involve the Type I reactors, which would have been much more catastrophic in nature and scope.

However, it was the Cold War mentality, in large part, that led to the disaster even being possible. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the plant falling under Ukraine control, such an event at that site was almost impossible by 1991, and continues to be incredibly unlikely at any other.

^-.-^

[linguist]

I like that idea.....the deserts are a waste land, no real environmental impact.

deserts are every bit as biologically and ecologically diverse as any other ecological system. just because it's a different type of system doesn't mean there's no environmental impact.