Fukushima--beyond urgent
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Associate
All I know is goverments are unlikely to tell the truth if they think people will panic.
Since this is a case where people would panic and demand answers that really cannot be given its not unreasonable to assume there is a slight manipulation of the details given to media sources.
Since this is a case where people would panic and demand answers that really cannot be given its not unreasonable to assume there is a slight manipulation of the details given to media sources.
Associate
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Hopefully we'll be able to harness Nuclear Fission which would be immeasurably safer.
That said, even now - with the more stringent safeguards that we have in place now, there is very little risk. Just maybe we shouldn't build them in or near places that are susceptible to extreme disasters.
Man of Honour
There are some possible workarounds to that, maybe. It might be possible to develop them to enough of an extent to maybe make hydrogen possibly viable as a fuel, perhaps, if the problems of storing it could be resolved. Maybe. Possibly. Potentially.
For example, the digestive process of termites releases hydrogen from the plant material they eat. Essentially, termites fart tiny quantities of pure hydrogen. People are studying exactly how that happens and considering the potential possibility of using that knowledge (when they find it) to build some sort of biological reactor that would break down plant material to generate pure hydrogen. It might be possible. Maybe. At some point in the future.
But we need to be working on the power problem now, right now, and that means nuclear. Other options might be better in the long term if current hypotheses and research pan out, but we're going to be in trouble in the short term if we don't start putting a fix in place now and nuclear is the best option we've got that we know works and that we can build now.
Man of Honour
Why not just release a plague that would kill most of humanity and destroy human civilisation?
That would have the same effect as your plans and would be more merciful.
Hydrogen isn't even a power source and as yet nobody has any definite knowledge of how to make it one. There are a few possible leads that might or might not pan out at some point in the future, but currently hydrogen is an extremely bad way to move energy from one place to another and it will remain that for the forseeable future. Your plan would just waste energy on a huge scale, making the situation even worse. Civilisation would fall without electricity, which would kill billions of people from starvation, diseases and fighting over resources. My initial statement was not hyperbole.
Man of Honour
I think you mean fusion. Fission is what we're already using. Fusion is the safer (and more efficient and more sustainable and just generally much better) option.
I wouldn't even say "hopefully". I'd say "almost definitely". Nobody is seriously wondering about whether or not it's possible. It's a matter of "not quite yet" rather than "probably never".
That's it...but it's a problem in Japan because to a large extent their choice of locations boils down to either vulnerable to extreme disasters or in a densely populated area. They're rather short on protected unpopulated areas.
Per generating capacity, a modern nuclear fission power station in a sensible location is the safest form of large scale electricity generation. Fusion would be better still, but without unexpected advances we'll be unlikely to see a fusion power station before 2050 and we need more generating capacity much sooner than that.
Commissario
Aye, it did far, far better than many of the much newer facilities for things like chemical processing, or oil storage and refineries, many of which (in similar locations) went up with the earthquake, or the tsunami and nothing could have stopped them due to their designs - unlike the Fukushima plant which if they'd managed to get a fairly simple mobile generator or two onto the site would have been ok.
As I think has been said before in this thread, many more people are killed/injured/disfigured every single year from other "safer" industries involved in power production than in the entire history of nuclear power,, yet we don't see calls for all oil production/use to be stopped, or coal mining to be banned,
I suspect the death toll from construction of new wind turbines, and maintenance of them will probably overtake the entire number of deaths from peaceful nuclear power generation* within a few years, despite the fact wind turbines are "clean" and much simpler to build/maintain than nuclear reactors.
But because the deaths will be one or two at a time, and it's not "OMG it's nucular!!!" won't make much more than a mention in the news (if it happens in the UK, if it happens outside of the UK it probably won't make the news here unless the turbine falls over killing a busload of children), whilst almost any accident/incident on a nuclear power station no matter how minor (or if it happens in an outbuilding hundreds of yards from the actual reactor) seems to get headlines.
I would much rather live near a 1960's or 70's Nuclear plant than a newer coal power station, and far prefer either of those than any hydro electric dam, or oil refinery/chemical plant (Buncefield anyone?
).*I'll leave out the accidents involving nuclear on things like subs/warships, because the reactors are usually run under far different conditions and designs, and to be frank the Russians attitude to reactor safety on their ships was pretty poor. Not to mention in almost any field, the military use of potentially dangerous tech tends to have a higher accident rate/risk than is acceptable for civilian use, if for no other reason than they often operate with far slimmer safety margins, or newer/less well tested designs to get better performance - things like what is acceptable in aircraft design make good example of the differences in attitude/acceptable risks.
Associate
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So, forgetting the claims for super-safe design of modern nuclear power plants; the potential catastrophic core meltdowns; and the transportation of highly radioactive materials en-route to the plants, what do we do with all of the different grades of nuclear waste? We can't put ours down in Onkalo (the Finnish mountain tunnels - Into Eternity).
So for all the pro-nukes out there who are claiming super-safe, what is your plan for all of the nuclear waste?
So for all the pro-nukes out there who are claiming super-safe, what is your plan for all of the nuclear waste?
Why can't we put it into Onkalo?
Aside from that, Nuclear waste byproducts which can no longer be reprocessed into usable fuel by current technology get fused into very stable glass blocks which are then buried in a location similar to Onkalo which our Government does have access to.
The glass blocks don't leak, they don't turn into dust and they don't disintegrate, they just sit there happy as a clam until someone decides that they can be further reprocessed (the fuel reprocessing technology gets more advanced by the day) or they decay into lead. Very little issue at all, all things considered, probably one of the safest forms of industrial waste in the world.
Ha, yes, Fusion. That'll teach me for trying to think past midnight.
And by hopefully, I meant in the near future/as soon as possible. Again, my mind wasn't functioning at all properly, haha.Is there no way to perhaps generate the energy in one location and then somehow transport it to Japan? That might sound mad, and I'm sure it wouldn't exactly be super-efficient. But if you were able to find "safe" places nearby, all they would need to do is simply 'purchase' or transport the energy from somewhere else - they could use solar, and wind power as a filler/backup. Although I imagine they wouldn't like the idea of being dependent on another nation (as I assume that is probably where the nearest 'safe' place would be).
Man of Honour
If set up properly, it wouldn't be as inefficient as you might think. Losses in HVDC transmission are remarkably small, as low as 5% per 1000 miles.
Putting it in another country would be a bad idea even if any reasonably nearby country would agree to it. There are a lot of uninhabited islands near Japan, but they would probably be more vulnerable to natural disasters (and many could result in political problems with other countries, especially the contested islands).
Associate
This is what hydrogen is - a potential energy transportation medium (i.e. not a source)
Problem is, the end to end process is very inefficient.
Permabanned
I personally think that the damage that this Fukushima disaster caused won't be known for decades and not because it isn't known or can't be known - it's because the money in nuclear is mind bending massive. All it requires is -:
Massive energy price rises - Check
Help from the government in regards sanctioned tax evasion - Check
Help from the government in relations with investors (read above) - Check
Help from government to get councils to comply with cash benefits (just like the Fracking tax evasion/benefit that's going through right now) - Check
Help from the government to ensure confidence by not reporting bad **** about the nuclear industry.....
Lots of money to be made from the public - check
ETC.... Remember when this happened and the massive German investment that was 'nailed on' suddenly fell through because of the fear that this disaster would cause - and now we are all set to do it all over again without knowing anything about what is happening in real terms. The damage can only be MASSIVE, I personally can't see how it can be anything else.
Massive energy price rises - Check
Help from the government in regards sanctioned tax evasion - Check
Help from the government in relations with investors (read above) - Check
Help from government to get councils to comply with cash benefits (just like the Fracking tax evasion/benefit that's going through right now) - Check
Help from the government to ensure confidence by not reporting bad **** about the nuclear industry.....
Lots of money to be made from the public - check
ETC.... Remember when this happened and the massive German investment that was 'nailed on' suddenly fell through because of the fear that this disaster would cause - and now we are all set to do it all over again without knowing anything about what is happening in real terms. The damage can only be MASSIVE, I personally can't see how it can be anything else.
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I've modeled the contaminant transport under Fukushima in considerable detail for university. Most of this is waffle but I will try and respond to a few points... however, this is very important.
Fukushima did not fail because of where it was. Fukushima did not fail beacuse of the design of the reactor. Fukushima failed because TEPCO ignored advice to place diesel generators above ground level. If they had taken this advice, the plant would've undergone SCRAM, had the tsunami hit, break off connection to the main power grid, and then have the generators continue supplying energy to the cooling systems. They would've run indefinitely on fuel supplied. They were submerged, and thus failed, and the third linebattery backup was not designed to last longer than 24h, thus causing the major problem.
The reactors are being cooled by pumping water into them; the irradiated water is then being stored in tanks on site. Some of these tanks leak contaminated water into the ground, but it's nothing compared with the contaminated water that is seeping through the underside of the reactor where a meltdown occured. The leaks are absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. 300m^3/tonnes of water flows into the sea from under the Fukushima site a day, all of this somewhat contaminated to a degree, but this is where the issues start. Most diagrams show a massive plume reaching out into the ocean with zero scale, which is so completely useless as it doesn't tell you whether it's dangerous or just a tiny concentration present.
TEPCO are trying very hard to implement some very clever technology, groundwater ice walls and massive pumping operations in order to minimize the outflow towards the ocean. From now onward we should see a decrease in contaminated outflow. It takes time and is very expensive; freezing a 30m deep wall of ground is not cheap or simple, but it would totally stop groundwater frombeing contaminated by the sunken reactor.
Our simulation, which was validated time wise by someone who actually has visited Fukushima on govt business, showed that contaminants take significant time periods to actually reach the ocean, sometimes up to a couple of years, so we will likely be seeing some of the early contamination now still.
Fukushima did not fail because of where it was. Fukushima did not fail beacuse of the design of the reactor. Fukushima failed because TEPCO ignored advice to place diesel generators above ground level. If they had taken this advice, the plant would've undergone SCRAM, had the tsunami hit, break off connection to the main power grid, and then have the generators continue supplying energy to the cooling systems. They would've run indefinitely on fuel supplied. They were submerged, and thus failed, and the third linebattery backup was not designed to last longer than 24h, thus causing the major problem.
The reactors are being cooled by pumping water into them; the irradiated water is then being stored in tanks on site. Some of these tanks leak contaminated water into the ground, but it's nothing compared with the contaminated water that is seeping through the underside of the reactor where a meltdown occured. The leaks are absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. 300m^3/tonnes of water flows into the sea from under the Fukushima site a day, all of this somewhat contaminated to a degree, but this is where the issues start. Most diagrams show a massive plume reaching out into the ocean with zero scale, which is so completely useless as it doesn't tell you whether it's dangerous or just a tiny concentration present.
TEPCO are trying very hard to implement some very clever technology, groundwater ice walls and massive pumping operations in order to minimize the outflow towards the ocean. From now onward we should see a decrease in contaminated outflow. It takes time and is very expensive; freezing a 30m deep wall of ground is not cheap or simple, but it would totally stop groundwater frombeing contaminated by the sunken reactor.
Our simulation, which was validated time wise by someone who actually has visited Fukushima on govt business, showed that contaminants take significant time periods to actually reach the ocean, sometimes up to a couple of years, so we will likely be seeing some of the early contamination now still.
Soldato
Has that plant they are building been in the news at all recently? What's the current status of that project?
Associate
Excellent post, thank you for the information.
Tepco has admitted since 2011 they have been leaking 300 tons of radioactive water daily. Before Fukushima dead sea creatures covered about 1% of the ocean floor off the coast of California. It is now 98%. A lot of plankton are being killed off. They play a vital part of in our oxygen supply.
http://www.naturalnews.com/043380_fukushima_radiation_ocean_life.html
Regarding the water leaks look at how Tepco fixes them. According to a Tepco worker they used duct tape lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9WMkC1Rl64
US soldiers who helped with Fukushima are dying
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/12
There are scientists who are trying to warn us about Fukushima
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viUr6KBjh_8
Thyroid cancer rates on the rise in Japanese children, an expert warn residents to evacuate
http://www.naturalnews.com/043436_thyroid_cancer_Japanese_children_Fukushima_radiation.html
As somebody has already mentioned the real big problem now with Fukushima is removing the fuel rods. If they **** that up it will cause really big problems. I think they have around 1600 fuel rods to remove.
If you do some Google and You Tube searches you will quickly find out Fukushima is a massive problem that Governments around the world are secretly very worried about.
I would say we are being lied to or seriously misled about Fukushima. Look at the problems it is causing
36 Signs The Media Is Lying To You About Fukushima Radiation
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/01/3...ion-affecting-west-coast/#ADGdI6WKdFkcCrGK.99
I know for me fish caught in the pacific is off the menu.
http://www.naturalnews.com/043380_fukushima_radiation_ocean_life.html
Regarding the water leaks look at how Tepco fixes them. According to a Tepco worker they used duct tape lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9WMkC1Rl64
US soldiers who helped with Fukushima are dying
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/12
There are scientists who are trying to warn us about Fukushima
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viUr6KBjh_8
Thyroid cancer rates on the rise in Japanese children, an expert warn residents to evacuate
http://www.naturalnews.com/043436_thyroid_cancer_Japanese_children_Fukushima_radiation.html
As somebody has already mentioned the real big problem now with Fukushima is removing the fuel rods. If they **** that up it will cause really big problems. I think they have around 1600 fuel rods to remove.
If you do some Google and You Tube searches you will quickly find out Fukushima is a massive problem that Governments around the world are secretly very worried about.
I would say we are being lied to or seriously misled about Fukushima. Look at the problems it is causing
36 Signs The Media Is Lying To You About Fukushima Radiation
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/01/3...ion-affecting-west-coast/#ADGdI6WKdFkcCrGK.99
I know for me fish caught in the pacific is off the menu.
Man of Honour
I think you're refering to ITER. That's not a power station. It's a research facility.
The intended plan, which has already been ongoing for decades, is like this:
1) Medium-large research facility (JET, which has been a great success)
2) Very large research facility (ITER, being built now and due to power up in 2020 and go full power in ~2027 - you don't rush things on a massive nuclear fusion research project)
3) Very large research facility that could function as a power station but isn't designed to do so (DEMO, which they won't even plan until they analyse results from ITER because that's a large part of the point of ITER)
4) Actual power stations.
They've just started to lay the concrete for the base of the main building of ITER. That'll take a while because they're being obsessively careful about everything (e.g. the entire complex is built to withstand earthquakes orders of magnitude more powerful than any ever known to have happened in that area).
It's a very important advance, but it's not a power station.