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

Orionaut said:
For an alternative analysis of the Crisis.
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This is why media should go die. I hate modern media, it less than useless.
Which there was a reliable website/newspaper that actually got proper experts in to check/write news, and I don't mean those pay experts which know nothing on normal news.
Would rather see news half a day latter and it be correct, rather than news released 2seconds after with more holes than a sieve.
 
Suarez7 said:
So nothing to worry about here then? Move along?
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Yes, same as usual.

An obsolete nuclear power station in a bad location was hit by an extremely powerful earthquake and a major tsunami...and was undamaged. The cooling system, which is of a design which is no longer used, was damaged and the backup cooling system was inadequate for disaster conditions...and that still didn't kill anyone. Not one person.

The lesson from this incident should be that nuclear power has a remarkably low risk even in a combination of worst case scenarios.

There is a potential for catastrophe and it's right that nuclear power stations should be designed, built and run with an obsession for safety and with backups to the backups to the default-on safety systems, but if it's done properly it's quite safe (more so than using coal, that's for sure) and badly needed.

A modern nuclear power station would withstand even a major earthquake and tsunami without incident.

The leaking coolant tank is worrying only in that it happened at all, because it implies insufficient care was taken in the construction of the tank.
 
kwerk said:
There's no proof Chernobyl caused any birth defects. There's evidence it caused some thyroid cancer, but that can be offset by potassium iodide pills which I'm sure the Japanese people were issued with.

The effects of it were really exaggerated. Only 50 people actually died from Chernobyl.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.
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Damn you almost had me.
 
Because of it being nuclear, everyone will decide to scaremonger. Yes, they are dangerous, but no where near as bad as its made out to be. Living in Cornwall is bad for radioactivity levels, so are long haul flights. Still happens.
 
Angilion said:
Yes, same as usual.

An obsolete nuclear power station in a bad location was hit by an extremely powerful earthquake and a major tsunami...and was undamaged. The cooling system, which is of a design which is no longer used, was damaged and the backup cooling system was inadequate for disaster conditions...and that still didn't kill anyone. Not one person.

The lesson from this incident should be that nuclear power has a remarkably low risk even in a combination of worst case scenarios.

There is a potential for catastrophe and it's right that nuclear power stations should be designed, built and run with an obsession for safety and with backups to the backups to the default-on safety systems, but if it's done properly it's quite safe (more so than using coal, that's for sure) and badly needed.

A modern nuclear power station would withstand even a major earthquake and tsunami without incident.

The leaking coolant tank is worrying only in that it happened at all, because it implies insufficient care was taken in the construction of the tank.
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What he said.

The main thing that went wrong was that they turned off the power station, which turned off the main cooling system (as it runs off the power generated by the station itself). As you can't just "turn off" a nuclear power station and forget about it (you have to keep cooling it after it's stopped generating power etc), they had to run the backup cooling system. The backup system ran from diesel generators... which broke when the tsunami flooded them.
If the station was still running when the tsunami hit, or the backup cooling system got its power from the grid rather than local generators, things might not have broke... and that's without changing anything about the ancient design or rubbish location!
 
Django x2 said:
How long till these rods can stop being cooled, ie, why are they still hot?
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Splitting atoms (fission reaction) results in unstable atoms being released which generates heat until they are stable. This takes time and during this process it must be continuously cooled otherwise you get a meltdown. Even though the heat generated from fuel rods removed from a reactor is much smaller than active rods it's still enough to need constant cooling.

Online sources say most cooling rods are kept in cooling tanks for 10 years by which point the heat generated isn't enough for a meltdown.
 
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What I can not understand from a lets build nuke plants, Japan is an island the other side of the island does not get effected by Tsunamis I believe, so when looking to build them, why did they not build them on the "safer" side of the island?

@Westyfield2 - Does seem strange that they could not take power in from the grid, but as I understand it when the quake hit all or most f the reactors did an emergency shut-down so they might not have been enough power in the grid to run the backup systems if they could pull power from the grid?

Kimbie
 
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