Earthquake in Japan....9.0...ouch!
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Soldato
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Just to clarify here, your saying that 3rd party countries Nuclear plants could affect us, like Chernobyl did/does still?
In that case, I agree.
However what can we do about it?
World is stuck between a rock and a hard place: World wants more power whilst being greener (in terms of 'greenhouse' gases - nuclear isn't green in the long term obviously however!) but doesn't want eye-sores in terms of fields of solar panels and wind farms.
Surely instead of closing all the plants down, efforts should be made that every operating power station and every newly commissioned station is built to withstand anything nature (within reason - could design for a 11 Mag Earthquake for example) can throw at us?
Soldato
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Seems like a large lack of knowledge on here and in the general public regarding nuc power, its the safest and most productive form of power there is, end of, oh and FACT.
Just the way it is, besides I read somewhere that all of the nuclear fuel on planet earth would only just fill a football stadium if we lumped it into one pile, hardly much is it even if it was redonculously radioactive.
Get a grip folks, its worth it, worst comes to worst build all stations in a relativly geological quite place.
Just the way it is, besides I read somewhere that all of the nuclear fuel on planet earth would only just fill a football stadium if we lumped it into one pile, hardly much is it even if it was redonculously radioactive.
Get a grip folks, its worth it, worst comes to worst build all stations in a relativly geological quite place.
Yes.
We could certainly improve the technological saftey but it doesn't remove all aspects of risk. Nor can we absolutely guarantee global standards of saftey standards especially with the 'tin pot' countries.
I think minimal use is certainly acceptable, other options should be exhaustively maximized first in my opinion.
Caporegime
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Its not "the safest form of power, fact", its no where near. Its not about how often something might go wrong, its about the level of what might happen when it does go wrong, and nuclear power has proven throughout its time that it goes wrong pretty frequently....... as in safe being one incident since we started, there have been dozens at power stations, fuel production, fuel storage.
As for all the fuel fitting into a football stadium, whats your point, do you think you can put all the worlds cooling radioactive material in one storage tank the size of a football stadium and therefore cleanup isn't that bad?
Put that much nuclear fuel together and see what happens.
"spent" fuel is still very much active, very very dangerous and needs active cooling for a ridiculously long time, large quantities together would be completely unmanageable and catastrophic if something happened to cooling.
Building something the size of a football stadium, underground with a load of thick barriers to prevent spills does cost insane amounts of money.
Transporting spent fuel is not cheap, nor easy, so having one location or even 3-4 worldwide would be unfeasable.
Not every plant we've built to date is completely safe, we'll never build a completely safe plant.
For those who all said this disaster could NEVER be on the scale of Chernobyl... because, the most stupid excuse being, but it has a protective shell and building which Chernobyl didn't have, people were saying this after explosions and breaches to all the containment buildings making that literally a ridiculous notion.
20% of Chernobyl IS on the scale of Chernobyl, Chernobyl isn't magnitudes larger than Fukishima.
Its safe, but the worst case scenario for nuclear is magnitudes, many many magnitudes higher than the worst case scenario for ANY other power source we have. The one thing history has taught us, without question, without any comeback is, things go wrong, nothing is full proof, there will always be a catastrophic failure somewhere, somehow, eventually. Because of this nuclear is, and always will be one of the most dangerous forms of power generation we have, right now it is THE most dangerous but I give humankind a lot of credit, we'll come up with something worse
But, does that mean we shouldn't use it? THats a completely different question, this is what gets on my goat, people who insist its safe and that we should use it, these aren't the same questions.
Its not safe, that has no bearing on if we should use it. World wars/civil wars when we run out of power, or nuclear power stations and eventually one or two massive massive disasters from them.......... I'd almost certainly choose nuclear power. It doesn't really matter if we do keep finding oil/coal deposits, eventually we will tap out enough supplies that whats left is produced slower, and costs increase to the point its worthless long before we actually ran out.
I think we've still got a long way to go before we really find out how much contamination came out of those plants, and how much more will before cleanup is completely done. The thing with Chernobyl is due to the design almost all the radiation went up and was relatively easily measure, due to the way these plants failed, a load of radiation got pumped into the ocean, the ground, the surrounding area in ways that was simply much harder to measure.
High levels of Strontium detected in groundwater now. :-/
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110613a1.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110613a1.html
Associate
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Had an earthquake here in Norwich a few years back measuring something like 1.3, can't imagine a 9.0....billion times stronger
Some photos below showing comparisons of the day after the quake against how areas look today. Massive amount of work done within just three months.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/06/japan_three_months_after_the_q.html
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/06/japan_three_months_after_the_q.html
Soldato
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have to hand it to the japs. really do get things going. such a fantastic place. we could definitely learn a few things from them. imagine if that was here. nothing would have moved by now.
Indeed, as long as we ignore the power station.
Aren't there still three reactors leaking radioactive steam to atmosphere from the top and leaking radioactive water from the bottom 24/7? Isn't also an unenclosed spent fuel pond holding several hundred tons of the most highly radioactive fuel in a structurally unsound building? The three molten cores will take a decade to cool down and need isolating from the environment for ever. We don't even know exactly where they are right now.
Full Meltdown: Fukushima Called the 'Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of Mankind'
http://www.alternet.org/world/15132...rial_catastrophe_in_the_history_of_mankind'_?
http://www.alternet.org/world/15132...rial_catastrophe_in_the_history_of_mankind'_?
Got to hope they don't have another quake /tsunami if that bit of scaremongering is correct. 
http://bit.ly/IqVNfa
http://bit.ly/IqVNfa
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Soldato
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Who blamed Obama?
Soldato
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While I am sure there is some truth in that story i can't believe the housing is that precarious. We have earthquakes every 3-4 days at the moment in Miyagi and just as many in Fukushima prefecture. They're not as big as a 7, but we've had loads (I'm talking at least 50) of 5 - 6 magnitude quakes just since December when I moved here. If it was that close to failure I'm sure the combination of all these would have done more damage to the casing. I just can't believe a single 7.0 quake could do more damage than these:
That's in the last week....
More information here:http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_local_index.html
That's in the last week....
More information here:http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_local_index.html
I don't really know much about Earthquakes, but isn't the scale logarithmic??? i.e. a quake measuring 8.0 is 10x more powerful than one which measures 7.0 and 100x more powerful than one which measures 6.0 ???