Earthquake in Japan....9.0...ouch!

Tummy said:
It's good to see another side the story, critical thinking, take in both sides of the story so to speak.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what your point was, that wasn't what he was doing. DAYS ago people started in with the "this isn't Chernobyl, I'll write a piece having a go at all the doomsayers and give them some real info".

He was late, it was over a day after primary containment was breeched, tertiary containment was breached in 3 reactors at the time, and primary containment failure at reactor 3 was heavily suspected. This is why he said the danger had passed while thinking he was writing a highly original "i'm the only guy not getting over excited" article. He got many things wrong in it.

He's writen another article, the reasoning for not dumping water in at once is valid, however, dumping in water slowly might be EVEN WORSE as they might be feeding an exothermic reaction in the exposed rods, the reaction needs steam, high temps and could make it hotter.

Doesn't help that they are missing a lot. However he also claims radiation numbers aren't that bad, by comparing next to reactor numbers from Tuesday, to by the gate numbers on Wednesday, the "gate" numbers went UP from Tuesday to Wednesday, they won't tell us the reactor numbers, they completely evacuated the plant for most of the day, and the choppers are having to fly above a minimum altitude and for only 40 mins per person and per chopper, yet he claims the radiation levels aren't very high.

Basically first article was retarded because almost every assumption he made was proven wrong WAY before he wrote it and flat out declaring the danger had passed, I even pointed out, was stupid before he knows the outcome, just over a day later he's had a complete turnaround, and posted another article with pretty spotty info, the things he got right are widely available info, much of it for days. I'd say, two rubbish articles.
 
Problem with many of these articles and experts (and some so called experts) they keep trotting out the same stuff which would all be perfectly valid under normal circumstances and seem to be completely oblivious to or even actively trying to avoid the fact that circumstances are far from normal.
 
I discussed my views earlier in this thread with my housemate and he came up with a rather good point to make me reassess my possition.

Whilst I stated that nuclear power presents an unprecedented environmental threat, that's clearly isn't very accurate. Just look what happened with the BP oil spill last year - a huge amount of mess from a relatively 'safe' energy source.

I guess at the end of the day bad things will happen, and all we can do is keep learning and renewing our safety procedures to make energy production as uniformly safe as possible.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...oyal-Japanese-dog-leads-rescuers-to-mate.html

Chernobyl was worse for a couple of reasons still true.
It was a fully live plant they could not turn off the reaction where as the Japan case all reactors were stopped and winding down, the chances of it becoming a self sustaining reaction again are quite low still even though any radiation release is bad its not even half as bad as far as I can tell
 
Last edited:
Nitefly said:
I discussed my views earlier in this thread with my housemate and he came up with a rather good point to make me reassess my possition.

Whilst I stated that nuclear power presents an unprecedented environmental threat, that's clearly isn't very accurate. Just look what happened with the BP oil spill last year - a huge amount of mess from a relatively 'safe' energy source.

I guess at the end of the day bad things will happen, and all we can do is keep learning and renewing our safety procedures to make energy production as uniformly safe as possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, and no, this is really the problem, human error, lazyness, cutting corners, greed, things you simply can't wipe out. Remember pretty huge amounts(though far less than in terms of quantity of oil obviously) of nuclear fuel, and waste get transported around the world, which is very dangerous, and accidents happen, transportation of dangerous materials in accidents can happen for nuclear can happen aswell, I'd suggest the chances increase as the number of plants increased aswell.

I don't know how they'd stack up, number of coal/oil power stations + oil/fuel/coal usage in general as of course oil in tankers is transported for many uses, divided by huge accidents, vs number of nuclear power plants divided by huge accidents, which would seem safer, I honestly don't know.

Theres been plenty of oil spills but not "that" many, and a pretty huge number of nuclear accidents, accidents in power plants are relatively low, but accidents in fuel enrichment are pretty damn common and overally nuclear power is pretty tiny vs coal/oil.

The main thing though is Nuclear is essentially supposed to be the clean, safe thing we can move away from the dirty, pollution creating, accident prone oil/coal industry, but if its not any, or much cleaner, is it worth it?

HOnestly to date we've really seemingly jumped into nuclear without a huge amount of thought to decommissioning, sealing, protecting old nuclear sites and storing the ever increasing nuclear waste safely is starting to become a pretty big issue, and expensive.


The simple fact is, as I broached earlier, be realistic, be honest, what happens to society when power runs out, is the current alternative without oil/coal then nuclear reliance better even with several big accidents and loss of life, than what could and probably would happen to society if we basically lost all power? Nuclear is generally worth the risk, we could limit it if we were sensible, sharing, caring, helpful and less selfish.

Risk of earthquakes/Tsunamis in the UK? Very low, risk in Japan, very high, so between us if a new power station is built, we should build Nuclear, and they should build coal, better than us both building coal and safer than them building nuclear and us building coal, safer on a worldwide scale though.

No one would ever "share" responsibility though, we wouldn't share the costs and profits, nor be able to share our greenhouse emissions allowance, IE Japan get more coal power so use up some of our share, which has gone down with a couple less coal plants.
 
CrispyXUK said:
It'd me a much bigger problem if it was a coal based system, that is fact, fankfully it's not happened.
Click to expand...

CrispyXUK said:
Luckily it was due to be decommissioned this year, eh?
Click to expand...

What, on both counts, it was due to be decommissioned this year, had been due for ages, but actually had its licence renewed and when the accident happened it wasn't due to be decommissioned for another 10 years.
 
Rroff said:
Problem with many of these articles and experts (and some so called experts) they keep trotting out the same stuff which would all be perfectly valid under normal circumstances and seem to be completely oblivious to or even actively trying to avoid the fact that circumstances are far from normal.
Click to expand...

Well he also picked out Iodine 131 as the reason spent fuel wasn't that unsafe, firstly iodine 131 is about the least deadly radiation a plant can produce, throat/thyroid cancer is one of the most surviveable types around, though I'll admit I don't know if iodine is more likely to produce the least survivable type of throat cancer, afaik it doesn't, 10 year survival rate for thyroid cancer is stupidly high, 100% for stage 1/2, 93% overall survival rate and iodide pills greatly reduce the chance. Ceasium is pretty nasty stuff with a 30 year half life, and Stontium is worse, going for your bones(the nastiest cancers often).

Its also worth pointing out, Reactor 3 which seems most screwed, is also a Plutonium/Uranium mix while all the others are Uranium only, which again, only afaik makes for some more nasty combinations of things that can get into the atmosphere.


The biggest reason it "won't be a Chernobyl" is people have been evacuated, direct deaths(even ones not listed for those who will go on about the 50 number) would have been much lower if they'd told everyone to scram when it happened and not pretended nothing was happening. Would be even better if they didn't have not very well protected guys shovelling hugely radioactive stuff off the roof of the reactor without telling them.

Radiation can be nasty, these plants have a pretty decent chance to be spewing some pretty nasty stuff, the best thing about radiation is, its not some magical human seeking technology, it could hit the local area pretty hard, if theres no one there (unlike Chernobyl) the main things that will die will be tree's, grass, cows maybe(do Japan have cows?).

EDIT:- Insomnia, boredom, and that Register guy peeing me off = triple post, I should play some Rift.
 
Its also worth pointing out, Reactor 3 which seems most screwed, is also a Plutonium/Uranium mix while all the others are Uranium only, which again, only afaik makes for some more nasty combinations of things that can get into the atmosphere.
Click to expand...

Nuclear engineer I was listening to described this as a fallacy basically because the whole process partially produces fuel which contains plutonium to some extent depending how long its been in use for.
Some of it will be 2 years old which means all 4 reactors are containing the more lethal radiation to a varying extent
 
But what else can you do? Oil/Gas/Coal are better used elsewhere instead of straight out burning them for electricity. Nuclear you get some pretty nasty waste products but aside from these major ****ups there isn't a safety problem. You can demand a full conversion to renewable sources but it aint happening, not anytime soon. Not to mention environmentalists are at odds with each other, both bitching about non-renewable sources and at the same time bitching about renewable sources 'spoiling the view'!

All this really highlights is that they simply weren't prepared for the scale of the disaster. Isn't it the case that the reactors were all fine and relevatively undamaged from the Tsunami/Quake, but the cooling systems took a major hit. From reading the thread you seem pretty adament that basically once they get the cooling systems back up everything should be under control. So really all it shows is that if you're gonna use Nuclear power stations then you need to be better prepared for the worst the environment could throw at you.
 
I was under the impression there would just be a higher quantity of plutonium in spent fuel than in a starting off as uranium mix, too tired to read more into it, well to read into it and actually absorb useful information I should say ;)

It does kind of seem like Reactor 3 has blown up the hardest, had its spent fuel pool burn off the quickest, given off the most radiation(possibly, the 400MilliSv came from between reactor 3 and 4 as it was only 100 iirc between 2 and 3) so it seems like its reacting slightly differently. Who knows, they don't seem to so I'll be humble and suggest I can't work it out tomorrow :p

Whoa, just watching some of NHK online, they have a whole carpark of various different firetrucks/riot trucks with various sized water cannons on. It kind of looks like they are preparing for the ultimate waterfight.

Hmm, heard some radiation readings, 3,7k(give or take) microSv's, and they barely changed after a certain amount of time. Not sure if thats gate readings, or readings.

It did seem like he gave alternate readings for above the reactor at 1000ft and 300ft, the limit for them at the moment which is also making a bit of a joke of "aiming" the water.

But it seems they are deciding this HAS to be done today, regardless of radiation levels, they were hoping I think for chopper water dropping to help drop them enough to make it safer to get the firetrucks close enough, at the moment theres no real chance.

I get the feeling the firetruck goes will be sent in redardless later, can only hope radiation has gone down by then and that they are ok.

Yup, 4.13milliSv at 1000ft above, 87.7milliSv at 300ft, I think the 400milliSv yesterday was basically ground level between the plants, judging by the drop off from 300 to 1000ft, and the evacuation all day and won't send the trucks in closer than 300ft, I'm assuming its really very high closer to the plants.
 
Last edited:
Dropping water, big failure, no radiation change, if you saw the footage, I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the water they dropped hit the target. Trucks going in later, maybe in pretty bad radiation, hopefully will be far more effective.

Doing reactor 3 first because its doing worst in terms of water in the pond, heat, danger to the rods, though its also likely because the roof of reactor 3 is basically gone, reactor 4 has 2/3rds of its roof, its a harder target but probably also releasing less radiation, if they can drop radiation coming from reactor 3's pond, the trucks can get closer........ at a guess.


Looks like the roof of reactor 4 has broken further, so just a frame now, not seen it just a newsflash, I assume from dropping water on it, ,though if you see very little water hit reactor 4, they barely hit reactor 3.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom