Mitigating Fukushima's Dangers, 42 Days In 245
DrKnark writes "Tepco has released more information about their plan to stabilize the Fukushima reactors. They are basically facing 4 problems: ensure long term cooling of the cores; ensure cooling of the spent fuel pools; prevent release of radioactive material; and mitigate the consequences of the releases that will continue for a while."
Interesting radiation readings (Score:4, Informative)
From http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/04/april-20-2011-fukushima-review-of-ines.html [blogspot.com]:
On April 17th the same site had the following radiation levels recorded for units 1-3:
Reactor 1
Dry Well: 121.4 Sv/hr
Suppression chamber: 97.5 Sv/hr
Reactor 2
Dry Well: N/A
Suppression Chamber: 131 Sv/hr
Reactor 3
Dry Well: 253.2 Sv/hr
Suppression Chamber: 103.9 Sv/hr
So that's going to take a while to cool off.
Re:FTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interesting radiation readings (Score:3, Informative)
So according to the handy and authoritative
<handwaving>
Assuming the Iodine has already decayed by now, I thought the next most abundant decay products are Cesium and Strontium with half-lives of 30 years, if that's true then they could work for an hour until fatal dose in about 109 years time. ( 100 Sv/hr present / 8 Sv/hr lethal = 12.5; log(12.5) / log(2) = 3.64; 3.64 * 30 years = 109 years, if I didn't make any mistakes). Then they could work for 15 minutes until a "emergency radiation worker" 100 mSv dose after waiting for a cooling-down period of 239 years (log (100 / 0.1 / 4) / log(2) * 30), amirite?
</handwaving>
If they're not that patient then they have to use robots or something. Who's going to pay to keep the plant guarded from terrorists until the year 2250 until they can decommission it safely? Copyright doesn't even last that long (yet).
I find it very suspicious that nobody's even mentioned measured levels of Strontium-90 because it stores itself in the bones of people building new bone mass (i.e. children). They only talk about measuring Iodine and Cesium but Strontium should also be more than 5% of the fission products, almost as much as the measured Iodine (3%?) and Cesium (12%?)
Re:Quite possibly... (Score:4, Informative)
The main trouble with depleted uranium comes from its toxicity, not from its radioactivity, you can see that since as you pointed out, the half life of U238 comes in a geological timescale.
real info (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Coal vs. Nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
But, there's one important difference - if used appropriately, every ton of Uranium has the energy equivalent of something on the order of a million tons of coal or oil. Also, don't forget about Thorium. Uranium is not the only nuclear fuel. Thorium is estimated to be at least 5 times more abundant than Uranium.
I've seen some analyses which estimate that, if we used fast breeder reactors (like the Integral Fast Reactor - search for that sometime, interesting reading) and Liquid Thorium Reactors, we have enough fuel supplies to last us at least 100,000 years. Also, both technologies solve the 'nuclear waste problem' by burning off the nuclear waste.
If we can extract Uranium cost-effectively from the ocean, we have enough Uranium to perhaps get us through a few billion years (and, over the course of a Billion years, more uranium will leach out of the earth's crust [there's all kind of uranium in the crust, but not concentrated enough for effective mining, but if it dissolves out, it might be recoverable] and into the oceans, making it an effectively renewable resource).
Nuclear power has it's challenges in terms of safety and economics. Fuel supply is not a real problem though. If you are *really* worried about a fuel supply which might run low in 100,000 years, I don't know what to tell you. I don't worry much about problems that far down the road.
Re:Coal vs. Nuclear (Score:3, Informative)
Ingesting very small amounts of Pu will (probably) not hurt you. The toxicity of Pu is grossly exaggerated. It is chemically toxic like most heavy metals, but there is nothing really special about its toxicity as a chemically. All isotopes of Pu are radioactive, the longer lived isotopes are less radioactive than the shorter lived isotopes. There is nothing special about the radioactivity from Pu 239 (half life of 24K years) that makes it more hazardous than any other radioactive material. If you are concerned about long half lives, the U-238 that is released from burning coal has a half live of 4.4 billion years.
When you 'remove' the mercury from smoke, where does it go? It does not go away, it has to be put somewhere just like the waste products from nuclear power generation. The only real difference is scale. Nuclear produces only a small fraction of the toxic waste that is produced from burning coal, but that waste is a great deal more toxic. Which is easier to deal with? A billion tons of slightly toxic waste or a a thousand tons of highly toxic waste?
What are these 'cheaper' renewable that you are talking about? Do you really believe that there is some massive conspiracy to keep cheap, plentiful, reliable, and renewable power off the market? Or is this the renewable power that you are convinced that would surely be invented if only enough money were spend on it? If you have a way to produce electricty for a few cents a kilowatt hour using renewables, go for it. You have an unlimited worldwide market.