Endoscopic Exam of Fukushima Reactor 120
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Radiation-blurred images taken inside one of Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear reactors show steam, unidentified parts and rusty metal surfaces scarred by 10 months of exposure to heat and humidity. The photos — the first inside-look since the disaster — showed none of the reactor's melted fuel or its cooling water but confirmed stable temperatures and showed no major ruptures caused by the earthquake last March, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company." Here's a video.
No sign of the fuel? (Score:2)
''Given the harsh environment that we had to operate, we did quite well - it's a first step,'' Mr Matsumoto said. ''But we could not spot any signs of fuel, unfortunately.''
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more a lack of confirmation than an actual problem.
It's like saying "Well, this telescope is aimed at the night sky, but it's not in focus so we can't see Jupiter" rather than "OMG, the planet Jupiter is missing from the Heavens!"
Sorry, I ran out of car analogies.
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:4, Insightful)
More to the point, what does this mean for the layman?
Was the fuel consumed in the disaster? Did the containment vessel melt and the fuel escape? What are the possibilities, for those whose science courses are quite a few years back? :)
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:4, Informative)
It could all be at a pile near the bottom of the reactor vessel and it simply can't be seen yet. If there was a meltdown, this is the most likely case. Then they need to look inside the containment vessel (which the reactor vessel is inside) and check the reactor vessel from below to see if there was any escape. Don't know if they've done this.
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Err, he asked about the core. I answered.
Go start a new thread, please.
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Radioactivity is spread all over Japan -- the soil is radioactive.
Soil is radioactive anyway.
Watch this video (and lots of similar ones on YouTube) this is children's playground just outside of Tokyo, nowhere near Fuckupshima. The geiger counter shows 6.4 micro sieverts/h while the normal background level is in 0.1-0.3 range.
Since we know nothing about the calibration history of this dosimeter, whether the measurement has been rigged, or even whether the device can when used properly actually measure what it purports to measure, the actual number is meaningless.
To give an idea of the problem of using this device for the purpose of measuring biologically harmful radiation as in the video, try answering the question, who makes it? For example, it doesn't actually have a brand or logo on the front of
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In the context of other issued reports made by the Japanese government there is no reason to believe this one either.They have issued reports and then "restated" them when other scientists attempted to confirm findings. They have underestimated the danger in everything from safe distance, number of "functioning" and "salvageable" reactors, amount of fire, days needed to extinguish those fires to airborne hot particles.
I think the main problem here is widespread inexperience with managing ridiculous expectations. So what if neither TEPCO or the Japanese government had perfect knowledge of how the Fukushima accident would play out or reacted to that accident with perfect competence? In the real world, small errors happen even to the best.
Is it possible the pumps shut down before being flooded?
Why should we consider that scenario? Did the space aliens cause the pumps to shut down?
Fun fact: You likely have inhaled a piece of the Fukishima core. a "Hot particle." atomic sized so there is only the smallest statistical risk of illness.
The smallest statistical risk of illness is zero.
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I don't think it is possible to preclude the possibility that the reactor systems suffered damage from the earthquake that may not have been readily apparent before the effects of the tsunami were felt. While reports indicate the reactors were "shut down" following the earthquake, this simply means the process was begun to halt the energy output of the reactors.
The reactors did successfully shutdown. The problem was that fuel rods that have been in a reactor for a while have a lot of short half life isotopes that generate a lot of heat. At the point of shutdown, the reactor would have still be producing about 8% of its full power output as heat. That needs to be cooled and in an obsolete design like the Fukushima reactors, the cooling had to be active, that is, it has to have some system running (and that requires power) in order to work.
As I understand it, the
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Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it's about as radioactive as Denver, Co..
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Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me one case where a melted core traveled 500 m into the earth. One. There isn't any. At Chernobyl there is a big blob of it that traveled a few meters within the building and froze before burning through the concrete floor. At three mile island it didn't leave containment. Give the China syndrome a rest. It ain't real. There are enough REAL dangers without making shit up.
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's intellectual laziness and you damn well know it. Several cores melting down "near" each other doesn't make their individual blobs of melted fuel any hotter.
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Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
"He said it would take more time and better technology to get to the melted fuel, most of which had fallen into an area the endoscope could not reach."
The current tools simply can't go where the fuel is, so they can't yet inspect it. They've confirmed there are no major breaches and are now looking over the information they've been able to gather to see what everything looks like inside. The fuel comment was a regret about the limitations of the tools they have to use, not so much a cause for alarm about anything being amiss.
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They've confirmed there are no major breaches . . .
in the places that they have looked at so far (which was difficult because of all the moister i.e. "steam"). They also confirmed that there was no water where they had been claiming the water level was, so they just say "oh, the water level must just be a couple more meters down . . ."
This, plus your comment, supports the notion that this is not a scientific endeavor that we are observing but a propaganda one . . . The most optimistic view that cannot be unproven at the moment becomes the assumed truth u
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://fairewinds.com/content/cancer-risk-young-children-near-fukushima-daiichi-underestimated [fairewinds.com]
January 17, 2012 Arnie Gundersen - energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience -(Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering)
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So...is he a MD? I have a degree in Computer Science, so can I give diagnosis to someone who got boinked in the head by a HP Proliant server just because 'I know computer'?
Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Interesting)
I recommend doing a Google Search on Arnie Gundersen's name. He is a hired consultant for anti-nuclear lobbyists. There is a record of people complaining about the exagerration of his experience. From what I have been able to find, he does indeed have a master's degree in nuclear engineering. He also worked briefly as a technician in a non-operational plant (I haven't been able to find reliable reports on how long he was employed in that capacity, but I have read that he has never worked at an operational plant. It seems likely that he last worked in a nuclear facility in the early 70s.). Most of his career has been as a high school math teacher.
As a high school teacher myself, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that profession. But when these kinds of stories come out with quotes from him (and if you really do the googling, you will see that there are a *lot* of scary sounding predictions from him going back decades), you are always left with the impression that he is an insider in the nuclear industry. But rather he seems to be just a guy with an engineering degree who doesn't like nuclear power. At one point some anti-nuclear lobbyists latched on to him as being a credible source and have used him as an expert witness in trials or to make sound bites like the above. It appears (but I can not verify) that his 39 years of nuclear power engineering is mostly his work as a consultant for lobbyists rather than actively working as an engineer.
This is, of course, simply an opinion based on googling around. I recommend having a look yourself.
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Detailed studies carried out by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in 2003 reported an excess of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma near UK nuclear plants. Those are plants that did not have major accidents. This was an official government report using large amounts of evidence and has not been robustly refuted by any yet. The government's position has always been that there is no danger, so naturally they were not happy when this came out.
Furthermore a 1997 Ministry
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I didn't read the entire latest COMARE report, but the summary says "it has been concluded that the risk estimate for childhood leukaemia associated with proximity to an NPP is extremely small, if not zero".
Only one reasonable explanation (Score:2)
Nuclear power is so dangerous it's effects are leaking in from parallel universes where those power plants did end up being built there!
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Detailed studies carried out by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in 2003 reported an excess of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma near UK nuclear plants. Those are plants that did not have major accidents. This was an official government report using large amounts of evidence and has not been robustly refuted by any yet. The government's position has always been that there is no danger, so naturally they were not happy when this came out.
Did they perform a similar study on the cancers of people downwind from coal power plants? There are far too many variables in cancer risks to narrow it down to just the nuclear power plant. I recall a similar study that showed elevated cancer risk allegedly from high voltage power lines and substations. In the end, it turned out that A) the data was cherry picked to support the conclusion and B) the affected areas had old, leaking transformers which were releasing PCBs into the environment.
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Did they perform a similar study on the cancers of people downwind from coal power plants?
Yes, they were comparing rates with those around other types of plants (we have coal and gas), as well as the control level in cities.
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that radiation is not all the same. The stuff that comes out of coal plants is very different to what comes out of nuclear plants, the latter being much more of a health risk.
There are far too many variables in cancer risks to narrow it down to just the nuclear power plant.
Well it would be an incredible coincidence that all nuclear plants in the UK have the same elevated levels if it were not down to the plants themselves.
In the end, it turned out that A) the data was cherry picked to support the conclusion and B) the affected areas had old, leaking transformers which were releasing PCBs into the environment.
We
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If you would kindly supply links to what you are referring to, I'd have a chance. However, I caution you to noy rely too much on what the western press has reported on TEPCO. The reporting was truly abysmal. I've stated previously that I'm not a fan of TEPCO, but at the time of the disaster, their reporting was by and large timely and accurate. Unfortunately the western press wrote a lot of things that were either mistranslations of the original reports, misunderstandings of the issues or possibly even
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If they do find it, I wonder why they can't just contain and remove it somehow. Fill the pit with concrete, let it harden, then cut it out, remove it, and store it elsewhere.
Oh man, I can just see the setup for a movie now. The core leaks out into the ocean which creates a giant radioactive whale that gets it revenge on Japan by curbstomping sushi restaurants.
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Re:No sign of the fuel? (Score:5, Funny)
It's more a lack of confirmation than an actual problem.
It's like saying "Well, this telescope is aimed at the night sky, but it's not in focus so we can't see Jupiter" rather than "OMG, the planet Jupiter is missing from the Heavens!"
Sorry, I ran out of car analogies.
"Dude! Where's my car?" is probably all the analogy you need.
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DOCTOR #1: A simple evacuation of the expanding nuclear disaster will relieve the pressure.
McCOY: My God, man, drilling holes in the reactor not the answer. The containment must be repaired. Now put away your butcher knives and let me save this reactor before it's too late!
Good diagram (Score:3)
Informationless News (Score:3)
http://www.economist.com/node/21542437 [economist.com]
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First they are criticised for making assumptions, now they check exactly what is happening and you criticise them for verifying the integrity of the reactor vessel and the internal conditions. It is hardly informationless, we clearly know for certain more than we did before. TEPCO made some big mistakes but you could at least try to not instantly disapprove of everything they do without considering it first.
Or perhaps you have a better idea? What would you be doing differently at this stage?
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Or perhaps you have a better idea? What would you be doing differently at this stage?
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Video (Score:5, Informative)
Der Spiegel [spiegel.de] has some video, the commentary is all in German, but at least it's better than still pictures...
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Press release documents (pictures, videos, etc):
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/index-e.html
Blurred (Score:3, Informative)
Trying to figure out if the small white speckles are gamma rays or neutrons hitting the CCD. Beta probably wont penetrate that far through the camera body and alpha certainly won't.
The bright white, fast moving streaks are drops of water, probably from core spray inlets (similar to a shower) which has been flowing since the incident.
Chernobyl photography (exclusively film) was similarly damaged by radiation. Taking those photos eventually killed the photographers.
The fuel isn't visible because it slagged into corium at the bottom (or below) the pressure vessel. The camera can in from the top and there is a big collection of crap in the way. It may be years before the slagged fuel is sighted.
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That is not endoscopy (Score:2)
That is not endoscopy, by my ass. Shit, even Goatse comes closer to that.
Drama (Score:1)
1: What's the temperature inside the reactor room?
2: About three hundred degrees.
<pause>
1: That's not bad. Is there any water remaining in the pool?
2: No.
1: Humidity?
2: None.
1: Sh*t.
<pause>
1: Pebbles or slag in the bottom of the pool?
2: No idea.
<pause>
1: Bring the Aldrich catalog, Fisher, VWR, and anything else you are able to find. I want sensors. Digital sensors, photoelectric multiplier tubes, diode arrays, sensors for any wavelength, frequency, ridge pattern, oscilloscopes
Opposing oppinions (Score:2)
Fox News reports [foxnews.com] is reporting that although Tepco can't see the fuel because of steam in the containment area, and although they can't find the current water level, the internal temperature of 112F qualifies as proof that the "cold shutdown" has been successful.
The other point of view at the washington post [washingtonsblog.com] is that if they can't see the fuel, it has broken completely through the containment system, and "Given that steam forms when water boils this is an indication that the reactor is not in cold shutdown.
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Do you have any reliable sources on the amounts of radiation found in the food? Last I recall it was such that the food would give you the equivalent of a quarter of a chest x-ray per year.
Fortunately
Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Informative)
Putting any statement from one of the clowns from Tepco is just one step UNDER reporting a batboy headlinefrom weekly world news. Those guys are professionnal liers with ENORMOUS interest in asserting that no damage was done by the quake and all was fault of what they claim was a highly unprobably strong tsunami. If any rpoof arise from damage by the quake it would compromise all safety claims made toward japanese nuclear program.
In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite. Japanese requirements for seismic safety at that site were that it should be capable of withstanding an earthquake of about 7.75. The earthquake which hit the nuclear power plant was a 9. The best outcome for TEPCO in this scenario would be to simply be able to say "we met all safety requirements, but the quake was massively larger than anyone expected and so now we're doing everything we can to help". Instead, the plant actually withstood the quake and, what's more, actually shut itself down automatically during the quake. What happened next is what screws TEPCO (rightfully so).
As for those claiming that nuclear is safe because even with this accident everything is fine... just read a little more about all the food and radiation scandals going on. And realise that it's not over yet... For the comparison with Chernobyl... at least the Russian evacuated cities and got the plant under cocoon in less than 9 month, here the japanese are still in denial and only accept to acknowledge problems when they are cought red faced. Seriously, read a little more with carefull distance and neutrality on the topic from a wider panel of sources including ex-skf blog and fukushima diary...
Two people who were working at the nuclear power plant actually received more radiation than the "lowest one-year dose clearly linked to higher cancer risk" (http://xkcd.com/radiation/). Modeling and estimates say that between 100 and 1000 will have a somewhat shortened lifespan as a result of this disaster, but those are quite likely erring on the very high side considering that actual measurements of radiation in plants and soil within the exclusion zone have thus far been much lower than what existing models would suggest should be there. Most of what's actually been observed has been stuff that's very difficult for humans or animals to really get exposed to unless they're sitting there eating fist-fulls of dirt (due to the fact that the radioactive materials in question bond strongly to the stuff in the soil and thus aren't readily absorbed by plants of animals in normal contact with said soil).
This was a 40 year old power plant with known safety issues that neither the owners or the regulators took seriously. It was a 40 year old plant that got hit by an earthquake nobody involved in safety for the plant saw coming. It was a 40 year old plant that survived all of that and was only finally brought down by terrible design issues that led to small explosions and a fairly small release of radiation that may or may not result in a small number of people with slightly shorter lifespans. If that's the worst you've got against nuclear power plants, you should be dropping to your knees and praising Jesus for giving us the intellect to harness the power of the atom.
Coal kills thousands of people every year in mining accidents, plant accidents (mostly fires and explosions), and due to radiation exposure and heavy metal contamination of ground water from all the waste products. Hydro power plants have killed tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands in single accidents. Solar power kills a number of people every year due to various causes such as installers falling off rooftops and electrocutions. Electrocutions and falling deaths during installations also kill a number of people working on wind power every year. If all you people have are Three Mile Island (where nobody died and nobody received any significant radiation exposure) and Fukushima (where nobody died and two people received enough
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Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up "Banqiao dam failure" on wikipedia, or google it. 26k dead from flooding alone, more than 140k dead from secondary effects. Severe ecological effects and property damage as well. China's got a bad history when it comes to dams.
Even the most severe estimates for Chernobyl are a fraction as many dead, short and long term combined - the highest figure I've ever seen put forward was grossly inflated (the person posting it treated every additional cancer caused by the radiation as "fatal", see if you can spot the logical error there), and it still fell well short of Banqiao in deaths. Fukushima's repercussions aren't fully known yet (Chernobyl's are known because it's been twenty-five years), but there will be far fewer deaths than Chernobyl caused, even according to the people who think Tepco is downplaying the severity.
Other nuclear accidents have single digit fatalities (SL-1 comes to mind), or no fatalities at all. Three Mile Island was a zero casualty disaster, where nobody was killed or irradiated and the final cost was measured in dollar figures alone.
It isn't that nuke plants are intrinsically safe - they aren't. It's that we're so paranoid about nuclear safety we go out of the way when designing for failure, such that the actual damage done by a meltdown is a fraction of what it would be in a plant with few or no safety systems. If we built hydro dams the way we build nuclear plants they'd be incapable of killing anybody when they fail. But we don't. We don't built anything non-nuclear to nuclear-spec safety levels. Which means both the anti-nuke ninnies and the nuclear fanboys are wrong - the former for inflating the danger by pretending there are no adequate safeties and the later for pretending there are no risks.
Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Informative)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure [wikipedia.org] for more. The average estimate for the one you mention is actually 171,000, according to Wikipedia, plus it left some eleven million people homeless.
Put another way, that one hydroelectric incident killed more people than all the nuclear accidents in human history, and some of the higher estimates for that incident (as high as 230,000) actually exceed the official estimate for total deaths for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus the immediate deaths from Chernobyl combined.
The big difference between nuclear power and hydro power in terms of safety is that it is always possible to avoid the danger in the latter case. Just don't build within a couple hundred miles downstream of one.... (On the other hand, I suppose you could make the same argument about living downwind from a nuke plant....)
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Not really; not so much. The topography of the earth away from active volcanos is pretty stable. You know where the water from a burst dam is going to go; with zero chance that it could ever
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This does not occur in most places. That's why most airports have most or all of their runways pointing in only one direction. In most places, the vast majority of your wind is going to be within a few degrees of coming from the same direction every time.
The only place I've ever lived where wind direction changes by 180 degrees is California. I think it probably has something to do with the sun heating the water off the cost, but I'm not certain. It's very odd to realize that the wind blows in one direc
The above is an irrelevant Godwin (Score:2)
As with anything industrial there is a very long list of accidents and incidents associated with nuclear materials. The US list is relatively short (here's one I found in 5 seconds with google: http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html [lutins.org]) and there is a more complete international list hosted on the web server of a physics department in the US that
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"Maybe you should put in a little bit of time to catch up before dragging up old disasters that have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH NUCLEAR POWER."
Sorry, a whoosh is coming for you. The point was to compare it to other industrial disasters that has "NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH NUCLEAR POWER". The point is, it's easy to say that hydropower is cheaper, if you employ different safety standards. (In our case expected deaths in 40 years of operation.)
Let's put it simply (Score:1)
No, sorry you have missed the point. Posts like the above dam example are a case of "look over there" misdirection of comparing apples to neon lit aardvarks. It's a big impressive example that is nothing but a distraction to get people to ignore real safety issues and pretend that they don't exist at all. The issues may not be large, but that doesn't matter because even if they were they would be obscured by a completely fucking irrelevant divide by zero error that is rea
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"Now do you get it?
It's a disgusting little technique that derails any attempt at rational discussion."
No, I don't. Maybe try using logic next time. You knee jerk emotional rant is completely meaningless.
Re:The above is an irrelevant Godwin (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the gp is totally relevant when discussing nuclear safety.
Otherwise you can just through some numbers around and say LOOK NUCLEAR ... BAD without any point of reference.
If you want to discuss nuclear safety, you must have a reference point, which should be the safety of other power generating sources.
If you want a car analogy, more people die each year on France's roads than in plane crashes in the whole world in the same timeframe (3000 for french road accidents, +=1200 for aviation accidents). But if you believe the media, planes are far more dangerous.
Also, if your lutins page is anything approaching an exhaustive list of nuclear accidents of the last 50 years, that's pretty good going (especially since people dying in a plane crash carrying nuclear weapons is counted as fatalities, even though the weapons were unscathed and not involved). No one would even attempt to do such a listing for coal since it would take too much time (and yes, I know that this is an US list).
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Look up "Banqiao dam failure" on wikipedia, or google it. 26k dead from flooding alone, more than 140k dead from secondary effects. Severe ecological effects and property damage as well. China's got a bad history when it comes to dams.
The Banqiao dam was not just a hydroelectric dam - it was also intended as part of a system of flood control. If you read the rest of the Wikipedia article the Chinese government actually ended up rebuilding it despite the disaster because not having it was causing problems with flooding downstream. We can't really say for sure whether more or less deaths would have occured if the dam never existed in the first place since it was something like a once-in-2000-years flood, but I think it's fair to say that t
Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it took a combination a flood bigger than the dam was designed to control and seriously under-designing the dam and shoddy construction of that design and operating it poorly and failure to evacuate the flood-prone regions in order to cause this many loss of lives.
Also, it took a combination of an earthquake bigger than the plant was designed to withstand and the biggest tsunami wave in recorded history and the backup pumps flooding and failing and still there was no radiation-caused loss of life at Fukushima.
So let's tally up the deaths then, shall we:
Direct deaths: Banqiao: 26.000 Fukushima: 0
Indirect deaths: Banqiao: 140.000 Fukushima: 0
No matter how anyone trembling in their pants at the thought of the invisible bogey-man radiation tries to spin it, nuclear power is safer than any other means of producing electricity we have - even when it goes badly wrong.
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Also, it took a combination of an earthquake bigger than the plant was designed to withstand and the biggest tsunami wave in recorded history and the backup pumps flooding and failing and still there was no radiation-caused loss of life at Fukushima.
First, you don't actually know that, because you have to count a cancer gained from the incident as such, let's say if they happen any time within the next decade, and there's time for that to happen yet. Second, radioactive particles were spewed across the globe by Fukushima and the Jet Stream, so harmful radioactivity is still being emitted. This crisis is not over and won't be for years. The damage, however, has been spread out across the planet.
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The radiation levels only about 100km away from the disaster barely measure above the background level, and don't come close to a dangerous level, and you're worried about the globe?
You're a liar. Radiation levels in the USA crossed allowable levels, and reporting of the numbers was suspended so that the public wouldn't know the truth. Berkeley U was still releasing good numbers for a while longer, but they stopped eventually as well, while the numbers were still elevated. Guess I know why you were too cowardly to log in.
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[citation needed]
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Also, it took a combination of an earthquake bigger than the plant was designed to withstand and the biggest tsunami wave in recorded history and the backup pumps flooding and failing and still there was no radiation-caused loss of life at Fukushima.
I like how you cherry-picked my sidenote to reply to and just completely and utterly ignored the part where even if the Chinese government had chosen to go completely nuclear and not bothered with hydroelectricity at all, they'd still have needed to have built a dam there and it would still almost certainly have failed for the same reasons.
I also notice your comment attributing all the flooding-related deaths to hydroelectricity got modded up to +5 and my comment pointing out the multiple reasons why this i
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It's because most of us are bored to tears with "AMAGADNUCULARISBAD!".
If you actually look at statistics - you know, data; hard cold facts and figures - nuclear is the safest way of producing electricity we've come up with.
Coal/gas/oil are more polluting, solar/tidal/wind aren't base-load capable, and geo/hydro has its own set of problems, not least of which is killing a lot of people when dams go bust.
And all of them kill more people per kWh produced than nuclear.
So stop feeding your (and others') fears. I
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If you actually look at statistics - you know, data; hard cold facts and figures - nuclear is the safest way of producing electricity we've come up with.
If you actually look at the statistics that get used to prove this on Slashdot, they systematically understate the risks of nuclear and overstate the risks of other forms of power. It's not just hydroelectric - nuclear proponents make a big deal about deaths from coal mining whilst not counting deaths from uranium mining (in fact, I'm not sure anyone bothers to count deaths from uranium mining). Or they come up with "evidence" that coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear ones that not only don't
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* The worldwide production of uranium in 2009 amounted to 50,572 tonnes.
* The worldwide production of coal is estimated to more than 7,000 million tonnes.
* Uranium is generally mined by in-situ leaching, which does not entail going underground at all.
* Coal is still mined by people going underground in many places.
* There's 4,000 cases of black lung from coal mining every year in the US alone (10,000+ in China).
* The major health hazard in uranium mining was radon gas inhalation. These days safety regulatio
Banqiao Dam Disaster (Score:3)
No Kidding.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm [sjsu.edu]
A hydrologist named Chen Xing objected to this policy on the basis that it would lead to water logging and alkinization of farm land due to a high water table produced by the dams. Not only were the warnings of Chen Xing ignored but political officials changed his design for the largest reservoir on the plains. Chen Xing, on the basis of his expertise as a hydrologist, recommended twelve sluice gates but this was reduced to five by critics who said Chen was being too conservative. There were other projects where the number of sluice gates was arbitrarily reduced significantly. Chen Xing was sent to Xinyang.
Read "sent to Xinyang" as "exiled", a punishment used since the time of the emperors.
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These arguments get rolled out in every debate about nuclear so I'll debunk a few of them for you.
Firstly looking at deaths alone is completely ignoring the major health problems associated with various technologies, nuclear and coal in particular. Repeated studies in the UK have found that children living around nuclear plants have a higher change of getting lymphoma or leukaemia. The negative effects of pollution from coal and coal mining are obvious.
The Banqiao dam failure had nothing to do with hydro po
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Actually WE do, it is just poorer nations that tend to skimp on it.
So, are we poor in the US too? There was a famous dam failure [youtube.com] in West Virginia. Of course it nothing to do with power generation, but let's stop pretending that it's possible to mitigate all deaths in the event of a massive failure.
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There have been quite some big dam failure including 1 in France (under De Gaulle I think, wikipedia on Malpasset dam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpasset [wikipedia.org] ). But when a damn fail... you drown... and when the water is gone you can rebuild few month later without much afterthough... No need to close for decades or century huge part of the country or argue endlessly how much radiaoctive ood you can eat before glowing in the dark with lecturing morons across the globe saying that the potatoes emit less than
Re:pravda.JP (Score:4, Insightful)
A small irrigation dam in the hills above Fukushima city in Japan failed after the 2011 earthquake. Four people inspecting the dam at the time were drowned and a few houses below it were swept away, their occupants missing presumed drowned too. Google "Fujinuma dam collapse" for details.
It was an irrigation dam, not for power per se but it used the same technology other power dams use. That one incident directly killed more people and destroyed more homes than the Fukushima radiation releases have done to date.
Elsewhere a dam collapsed during flooding in Nigeria in September 2011, killing over a hundred people and destroying homes and property in its wake. It barely made the world news unlike the events at Fukushima.
Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Informative)
Hyperbole much?
I don't know where you get the bit about a third of Japan's rice being grown in Fukushima province. A lot of the rice eaten in Japan is imported, for one thing. For another thing the major part of the contamination from the Fukushima reactors was deposited in mountainous terrain to the north-west of the plant. Nearly all rice-growing in Japan is done on coastal flatlands such as the Kansai region, a looong way from Fukushima.
The tsunami smashed a lot of agricultural areas along the Tohoku coast, polluting them with salt, building debris, fuel oil etc. and they will need several years remediation before crops can be grown there again. This is basically the same situation for the agricultural areas contaminated with fallout although decontamination there might be easier as less soil needs removing and treating.
As for radioactivity levels, I do hope you are aware that seafood swims in radioactivity? Seawater has about 10Bq/litre of radioactivity due to the presence of potassium-40 (K-40). A rough BOTE calculation says there are 50 million tonnes of this radioactive isotope in the world's oceans continuously emitting beta particles and gamma rays. The few kilogrammes of cesium-134 and -137 deposited in the sea by the Fukushima explosions are a spit in the bucket by comparison. The short half-lives (2 years and 30 years) of the cesium isotopes means their radioactivity will diminish in a short timescale -- the amount of cesium and strontium fallout deposited in the Pacific during the H-bomb tests in the 1950s has already decayed significantly, for example. Conversely K-40 has a half-life of over a billion years meaning it will be a threat to life until the Sun goes into its red giant phase.
The FDA already recommends limits on eating seafood. This is due to the high levels of mercury found in fish like tuna. Unlike radiation this cumulative toxin never decays and more is being added every year to the seas, due in part to coal-burning power stations. Attempts are being made by the EPA to reduce the US contribution to this ongoing natural disaster from the current level of 50 tonnes a year at the smokestack but the coal industry is pushing back on this, not surprisingly. In comparison guess how much mercury the nuclear power industry adds to the seas each year? Yep, you you're right. A big fat zero.
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I don't know where you get the bit about a third of Japan's rice being grown in Fukushima province. A lot of the rice eaten in Japan is imported, for one thing. For another thing the major part of the contamination from the Fukushima reactors was deposited in mountainous terrain to the north-west of the plant. Nearly all rice-growing in Japan is done on coastal flatlands such as the Kansai region, a looong way from Fukushima.
I get it from various sources... I don't recall exactly where I read that tidbit.. but it's easy enough to find sites like this one. http://www.pref.fukushima.jp/kokusai/IADwebsite/aboutfuku/aboutfuku8.htm [fukushima.jp] Where it specifically mentions all the agricultural products that come out of that area and articles like this one: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45337452/ns/world_news-disaster_in_japan/t/japan-bans-rice-grown-near-crippled-fukushima-nuclear-plant/#.TxuQOyOZNCI [msn.com] Interestingly.. those 'safe levels of radiat
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The decontamination problem for agricultural areas hit by fallout in Fukushima province means removing a small amount of soil, usually the top few centimetres from the fields as that's where most of the fallout resides. Toshiba recently unveiled an experimental soil processing plant mounted on the back of a truck that is designed to extract cesium isotopes from soil. It's still in the development stage and needs to be tested and improved and it may not be cost-effective -- the truck unit currently can only
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That one incident directly killed more people and destroyed more homes than the Fukushima radiation releases have done to date.
While they may physically still be standing most of the homes in that 20km exclusion zone are effectively destroyed. Everything in them needs to be decontaminated and most people don't want to go back anyway. Chances are most will be demolished and maybe rebuilt as they have fallen into disrepair anyway.
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You got wrong from the first statement, so I wont bother with the rest of your rant:
The earthquake was 9 at the epicenter. Far from Fukushima Daiichi (150km) were it was much much lower (6+) hence the problem for Tepco.
Bias is cute... but sometimes check a bit more before posting it...
All the other statement you make have no backing or reference to be check except the cute but limited in it's scope XKCD graph... I know XKCD reference are usually thread winning arguments on Digg on fark but I expect better h
Re:pravda.JP (Score:5, Interesting)
Coal kills thousands of people every year
You are off by a large margin. Coal contributes to approximately 1-2 MILLION early deaths EVERY YEAR. 1 in 7 people will die early because of coal pollution.
And if you don't believe me, just look at your "clear skies". If you want to see what clear sky looks like, then look at this,
http://good-wallpapers.com/pictures/4519/Deep_blue_sky_wallpaper.jpg [good-wallpapers.com]
Yes, this probably looks "touched up" to you guys, but the sky itself is how it looks around here on a really clear day (central canada - about 3000km from any coal plants and 1500km from any city larger than 50k people). When you look straight up, it is almost black. When you look at the horizon, there is no haze. No smog. No particulates. It is clear, right down to the horizon.
Now go outside in any of the cities you live in, and look up. I will bet your zenith looks more milky than my horizon.
When I came over from Eastern Europe, Toronto was "super clean" in comparison. In comparison to this place, Toronto air is extremely polluted. Eastern Europe is much worse and I can't even imagine places in China.
When snow falls here, it stays WHITE as the day it fell for 6 months. And when it melts, it is as white as 6 months prior. In Eastern Europe, snow became gray and black within HOURS thanks to coal soot.
So if you ask me what is the most dangerous pollutant on this planet, it is coal and oil and gas, in that order. Nuclear is super clean in comparison, and if any radiation escapes, it is because of a fault, not by design.
So, have seen a blue sky?
PS. CANDU has its problems. It is not as economical as some others. It is not as safe as some different others. But it is pretty good. But above all, nuclear doesn't pollute by design. And this is something that cannot be said about fossil fuels.
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The sky looks like that in most of Australia too ... I know exactly what you mean by the sky overhead looking very dark/almost black too. I have to admit, first time I visited the northern hemisphere (Europe and US) one of the first things I noticed is how the sky is so hazy and "white" a lot of the time, rather than really blue.
However I'm not certain that's entirely to do with particulates and pollution from man-made sources. Humidity (or lack thereof) has a lot to do with it as well.
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Re:pravda.JP (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar power kills a number of people every year due to various causes such as installers falling off rooftops and electrocutions. Electrocutions and falling deaths during installations also kill a number of people working on wind power every year.
And how many people died during construction of the nuclear power plants? Not that I think this makes nuclear power special, rather that if you count installation deaths from one form of power generation system then you should from all the others too. Fair is fair. Building sites are hazardous places.
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In fact, those statistics ARE taken into account, and it is STILL more dangerous to work on solar. However, the danger is spread about very unevenly, and you can take personal charge of your danger as a solar installer. Safety is up to you. As a nuclear plant engineer, safety is up to you, and a whole lot of other people.
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The deaths quoted for Nuclear are still lower than for solar when counted as deaths per tWh generated, even when you take into account the full lifecycle and all the past accidents. Google it.
Fanboys stuck in the early 1960s (Score:2)
Please learn about the subject matter before coming out with drivel that implies we had some sort of golden age in the 1960s and have never progressed since. It's depressing.
Also, want plutonium for your third world bomb program? CANDU!
You needed to learn just a bit more (Score:2)
Also the "more efficient designs" (eg. CIRUS - a different Canadian design used to make the plutonium for Operation Smiling Bhudda -> ~8kT bomb) make it
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You really need to get your news from somewhere besides Glen Beck.
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Maybe you're not a
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Obviously you are not aware that Argentina bought their CANDU reactor decades ago when it was being run by a military Junta.
Thanks for attempting to "correct" me - what is it with these kids that do that without having a clue what they are writing about?
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So yes, CANDU is "old" and has been improved over the years. It is not the best. It is not the safest.
Sorry? In what way are CANDU6e and ACR-1000s "old", "not the best" and "not the safest"? They're quite new, are based on fantastic designs with nearly perfect safety records, and perform as well or better than any other designs ever put forth for nuclear reactors. I'm an American and I'll happily stand up and say that no US company has come up with a better design than either a CANDU6e reactor or an ACR-1000 and I challenge you to find anything in operation or under current construction that's a better desi
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>http://xkcd.com/radiation/
Missing on that chart: 300mSv for one year of heavy smoking:
http://www.webspawner.com/users/radioactivetobacco/index.html [webspawner.com]
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As for those claiming that nuclear is safe because even with this accident everything is fine... just read a little more about all the food and radiation scandals going on.
So basically what you are saying, is that if you were driving your 1910 Ford Model-T on the road, and had a collision with a car built in 2011, you think they will take equal damage, and so all cars are bad things. Because exactly zero progression in technology has made cars any safer...
Except in this case the Model-T got hit by a truck at 90mph, and the driver survived.
No, I'm not going to point out how factually incorrect your statement is, I just came to make a car analogy.