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Wrong thread!
I suggest you read the information at Marcus Bryant's link.
Wrong thread!
This
Earthquake,Tsunami...whatever you want.We can't control nature
But, you can plan for it.
And, according to the article Marcus linked; as well as the commentary I read and heard over the weekend, these reactors are nothing like Chernobyl. The fuel is hermetically sealed in a containment vessel designed to hold completely exposed and melted fuel indefinitely.
And, unless the integrity of the containment vessel has been compromised, it is highly unlikely there will be a Chernobyl-like release of radioactivity.
We hope and pray. Even MIT can be wrong.
Another explosion just reported.
I agree. I'm just more hopeful, after reading that, than I was before. That's all.
If the cores penetrate through the upper crust I wonder if it could have an effect on the fault and generate another mega-quake (possibly super steam acting as a lubricant)? They may not necessarily drop straight down and the line of least resistance could be right where you would not want it to be.
Sounds like Palast was right
Japan Radiation Leaks Feared as Nuclear Experts Point to Possible Coverup
http://www.alternet.org/story/150249/
Nuclear experts have thrown doubt on the accuracy of official information issued about the Fukushima nuclear accident, saying that it followed a pattern of secrecy and cover-ups employed in other nuclear accidents. "It's impossible to get any radiation readings," said John Large, an independent nuclear engineer who has worked for the UK government and been commissioned to report on the accident for Greenpeace International.
"The actions of the Japanese government are completely contrary to their words. They have evacuated 180,000 people but say there is no radiation. They are certain to have readings but we are being told nothing." He said a radiation release was suspected "but at the moment it is impossible to know. It was the same at Chernobyl, where they said there was a bit of a problem and only later did the full extent emerge."
According to some reports, 17 helicopter crewmen helping in rescue efforts were contaminated with low-level radiation, but Japanese officials declined to comment.
The country's government has previously been accused of covering up nuclear accidents and hampering the development of alternative energy.
In a newly released diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, politician Taro Kono, a high-profile member of Japan's lower house, tells U.S. diplomats that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry – the Japanese government department responsible for nuclear energy – has been "covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry."
In 2008, Kono told them: "The ministries were trapped in their policies, as officials inherited policies from people more senior to them, which they could then not challenge." He mentioned the dangers of natural disasters in the context of nuclear waste disposal, citing Japan's "extensive seismic activity, and abundant groundwater, and [he] questioned if there really was a safe place to store nuclear waste in the 'land of volcanoes.'"
"What we are seeing follows a clear pattern of secrecy and denial," said Paul Dorfman, co-secretary to the Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters, a UK government advisory committee disbanded in 2004.
"The Japanese government has always tended to underplay accidents. At the moment the Japanese claims of safety are not to be believed by anyone. The health effects of what has happened so far are imponderable. The reality is we just do not know. There is profound uncertainty about the impact of the accident."
The Japanese authorities and nuclear companies have been implicated in a series of coverups. In 1995, reports of a sodium leak and fire at Japan's Monju fast breeder reactor were suppressed and employees were gagged. In 2002, the chairman and four executives of Tepco, the company that owns the stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records were falsified.
great now they've gotten to the point of pointing fingers instead of getting down. they're more americanized than i thought.
Well, if they lose #2 they lose them all unless they have a samurai suicide team willing to stay and keep trying to cool the cores in #1 and #3.
If any culture has people willing to do that its going to be the Japanese.
Let's just file that under "spoke too soon". "Radiation levels soars after fire."
or maybe, in the interests of intellectual honesty (a stretch for you I know), you could have added the rather important words...
so far.
3 comical pathetic re ed things the damn Japanese govmt/nuclear company keep repeating:
1) Radiation levels dropped as the day went by - Of course, it just means the radiation has spread out to the atmosphere
2) Stay indoors - that is really gonna help??
3) The wind is blowing away from Japan -
Like, say, what might happen were they to be exposed to an earthquake beyond what they were designed to tolerate?
Uhhh...they have already admitted they have damage to the suppression pool of the containment vessel on #2. In other words, they can't do to cool the molten core once the primary vessel fails.
It certainly seems that way. I have begun to secretly suspect he is reading through the wikipedia entries on the various types of cognitive biases and seeing how many of them he can sneak in.
Psychology and the way the brain works have always fascinated me, and Darrin/Yoni/CObra/boutons' postings are an excellent example of many of these."Cognitive bias is a general term that is used to describe many observer effects in the human mind, some of which can lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, or illogical interpretation."
If you get the time, I highly recommend doing some brief reading on the topic, you will see some behaviors on the part of these people that are textbook cases of this.
Here is the entry on congnitive bias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
Here is a list of identified types of bias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
While these individuals display many types of this kind of cognitive bias, the one most direct is confirmation bias: "the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions"
There was a related thread here also on studies done that show people tend to "dig in their heels" when given data that contradicts those preconceptions.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158758
In my opinion, I think there is something in the nature of political conservatism itself, i.e. resistance to change, that I think tends to attract individuals who exhibit these kinds of cognitive biases.
That isn't to say conservatives in general are incapable of perceiving things rationally, or interpret data logically, but I think it tends to lower the odds when it comes to any given individual, and increases my skepticism when it comes to "conservative" solutions to problems. 101A is a good exception to this rule.
boutons and Dan for their end of the political scale do similar, and I am just as skeptical of solutions coming out of the farther end of the "left" scale of politics.
One of the best examples of this that outlines the type of confirmation bias was Darrin's comments in one of the wisconsin collective bargaining threads. There seems to be a lot of fairly objective data in the form of polls and increased activism that shows the issue has highly charged the Democratic base in that state. Darrin, after being presented with this information dismissed it as "insignificant", with the obvious implication, that if he were to see it as being significant, it would mean political setbacks for Republicans, something that he finds unacceptable.
That seems to me to pretty clearly fall under the category of "perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, or illogical interpretation".
Do some reading, it puts things that go on here in a whole new light.
/lecture
This is literally what saved Chernobyl from being 10 times worse. If the core had melted through the plant, it would have hit a reservoir of water under the plant, and the explosion would have been even more massive than the first one. They sent in suicide crews (who knew it was a very bad situation that they likely wouldn't survive) with minimal equipment to deal with it and drain the pool under the reactor. They did so, and saved millions of lives.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...1427276447319#
This is an amazing do entary on the Chernobyl disaster and the rescue workers that responded to the crisis. Some of them died within days of being on-site.
I just read that the Japanese Government has ordered the power company not to pull any employees from the plant...
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/int...l?cid=29698946
goddam!!!
Nuclear expert: “50-50 chance of a catastrophic radiation” from Japan
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...tdown-disaster
GlobalPost: Officials have said the possibility of a large-scale radiation release is small. Do you agree?
Arnold Gundersen: I think that the probability of a large scale release is about 50-50, and I don’t call that small.
GlobalPost: Why do you think that?
Gundersen: For several reasons. One, you’ve got three reactors involved. Two, you’re already picking up radiation on aircraft carriers a hundred miles away at sea, on helicopters 60 miles to the north, and in town. So clearly, as these plants become more and more difficult to control, it becomes quite likely that a containment now will have a gross failure. And a gross failure will release enormous amounts of radiation quickly.
GlobalPost: The New York Times is reporting that radioactive releases could go on for weeks or months. How concerned should we be about that? At what point does a reactor like this becomes less menacing?
Gundersen: The chain reaction has stopped. That happened in two seconds. But the radioactive isotopes are still decaying away. They’ll decay for at least a year. So you have to release the pressure from that containment pretty much every day. With releasing the pressure will come releasing radioactive isotopes as well.
.So yes, the Times is right that every plant — there are now three or four of them — will be opening up valves every day to make sure the pressure is down. And there will be releases from these plants for at least a year.
GlobalPost: How much of a health threat is that?
Gundersen: Within 90 days, the iodine health risks will disappear, because that will decay away. But the nasty isotopes — the cesium and strontium will remain for 30 years. And they’re volatile.
After Three Mile Island, strontium was detected 150 miles away from the reactor. That ends up in cow’s milk and doesn’t go away for 300 years. The releases from these plants will last for a year, and will contain elements that will remain in the environment for 300 years, even in the best case.
If we have a meltdown, it will be even worse than that.
GlobalPost: The ultimate risk in any nuclear accident is that the heat can grow so intense that the steel containment vessel is ruptured, releasing a large amount of radiation. You say there’s a 50-50 chance of this happening. What kind of health effects can we expect?
Gundersen: First, it’s important to know that this steel containment is about an inch thick. It’s not some massive battleship of steel. The reactor is already open, because the pressure relief valves have to stay open.
On top of that, these containments have already breached. We saw iodine and cesium in the environment before the first unit exploded. When you see that, that’s clearly an indication that the containment has breached.
Now, is it leaking 1 percent a day? Probably. Is it leaking 100 percent a day? No. I think for the neighboring towns out to 2 miles, they won’t have anybody back in them for five years. Out to 15 miles, I doubt you’re going to see anyone back for six months. And that’s in the best case, without a meltdown.
If we have a meltdown, I don’t think anyone will be back within 20 miles for 10 or 15 years.
GlobalPost: What would happen if they did return?
Gundersen: There would be higher incidence of cancer. The groundwater would be contaminated. With a meltdown, you’re worried about surface contamination of everything within miles of the plant, and groundwater contamination as well.
GlobalPost: How far would the ground water contamination spread?
Gundersen: Chernobyl had a meltdown, and that groundwater wedge is gradually working its way toward Kiev, which is a very large city [about 80 miles away]. That groundwater contamination lingers for 300 years. It’s not something that’s easy to mitigate.
GlobalPost: That’s a serious issue in a country like Japan with a large population and a small land area.
Gundersen: That’s right.
GlobalPost: You mentioned that the containment vessels have already been damaged. It appears that officials are reporting the opposite. How do you know you’re right?
Gundersen: We’re seeing iodine and cesium in the environment. That’s an indication that the containments are leaking. Exactly how much they’re leaking it’s hard to say.
I can’t understand how officials can say that the releases are low, when they don’t have any instruments that are working. Their batteries have failed, and when the batteries fail, all of the instruments stop working. So it’s hard to determine what the radiation levels are, and what the pressure levels are.
The Japanese and the nuclear industry are heavily, heavily financially invested in this. My experience is that, after Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl, everybody said there wasn’t a problem, until there was a problem. So I really don’t put much faith in official pronouncements the first week of an accident.
GlobalPost: So the people who have access to information have a self interest in making that information look as benign as possible?
Gundersen: Yes. On top of that, the officials don’t want to provoke a panic. So there’s a financial long term interest to try to minimize the impact. The flip side of that is that in the process you lose transparency. There is no transparency right now. We’re dealing with second hand information.
I understand from one source that the second unit cannot be vented, because the vent is jammed. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have one source, and I like to have two. But this accident hasn’t played out yet. It could clearly get worse before it gets better.
GlobalPost: When you say the venting system is jammed, does that mean that pressure will keep building up until something catastrophic happens?
Gundersen: Yes.
GlobalPost: That sounds bad. There have been explosions at two of the buildings where the reactors are housed. You used to operate nuclear reactors. Would the control rooms be affected by these explosions? And how do they continue controlling the reactors under these cir stances?
Gundersen: Yes. The control rooms have become almost uninhabitable. The operators would have to be in Scott air packs, because the ventilation failed. Otherwise they would be breathing contaminated air. The control room is very close to these reactors. Probably 200 feet away. I doubt there’s much being done in the control rooms. They’re contaminated, and the air is unfit to breathe. It’s very difficult to get anything done if you’re wearing an air pack and a bubble suit.
GlobalPost: So how do they release the pressure? Are they sending people to the reactor to manually do these things?
Gundersen: They’ll send someone out to manually open a valve. And then that person will go back out to manually close a valve. In a high radiation field, there are only so many trips you can make before you’ve exceeded what they call emergency limits. So these people are picking up very large doses in very short periods of time. For their personal health, you can’t send them out again.
So they’re running through the available number of operators to do these high risk maneuvers.
GlobalPost: Is it highly skilled work?
Gundersen: Yes.
GlobalPost: Do these doses endanger their health, or are they below thresholds that would cause a problem?
The probability of these workers getting cancer is dramatically increasing, because the doses they receive in a day are higher than what they get in a year. For every 250 rem received, there will be a cancer. That’s pretty well defined. So if one person picks up 2.5 rem, for every hundred people, one of them will get a cancer. That’s just a statistical crapshoot.
GlobalPost: How safe is Tokyo at this point?
.The radiation is being diluted by the wind and spread out. Tokyo is a long way away. Germany is a long way from Chernobyl, and the ground in Germany is so contaminated that they are still prohibiting the hunting of wild boars, 25 years later.
But we don’t have a lot of accurate measures. There’s a U.S. aircraft carrier 100 miles away, and the workers on that aircraft carrier received in one hour the dose they would normally get in one month.
GlobalPost: Is there any risk that the radiation would reach American shores?
Oh it will. Chernobyl reached the U.S. The question is how much radiation? There’s not a lot of data to make that determination right now.
GlobalPost: Should people be concerned about food contamination?
Certainly in Japan they should.
I’ve gone out and bought potassium iodine pills, and I plan to take potassium iodine starting in about 10 days, just because I’m concerned about food contamination. That’s a personal choice right now. My experience says that it would be prudent to get potassium iodine pills and take them, to avoid any of the iodine that might come over. But there’s not a lot of data to support whether or not potassium iodine really helps.
GlobalPost: Is that something that you can buy in a health food store?
Yes, you can get these pills in health food stores and online, although I hear that they’re selling out.
Note: He probably isn't using volatile in the normal sense of the word, i.e. "likely to explode", the word has a very distinct meaning in chemistry:
"a measure of the tendency of a substance to vaporize. It has also been defined as a measure of how readily a substance vaporizes."
Vaporize as it become airborne and travel through the atmosphere.
Pardon the pun, but it is looking more and more like the political fallout is that no democracy in the world will be looking to build a nuclear power plant for the foreseeable future.
This will now join an easy list of anti-nuclear bullets used against proposed nuclear reactors.
Three-mile island
Chernobyl
Fukushima
Depending on where you live, you would be familiar with other names as well:
The Lenin (soviet icebreaker ship)
Tomsk (USSR)
Lucens (Switzerland)
Orleans (France)
Jaslovské Bohunice (Czechoslovakia)
Windscale (Britain)
Disturbingly:
Ishikawa (Japan). Disturbing because the utility company falsified records of the incident to cover it up.
The list surprised me, I didn't realize that there quite so many incidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lear_accidents
Depends on the context. Usually these things are reported per hour.
As a side note for those interested, the units are wrong. Exposure is reported in rem, not rads. Rads or refers to dose or dose rate. Since most dose/exposure will come from gamma radiation in this case, people tend to use them interchangeably. Strictly speaking, this is not correct though.
Even if this is total exposure, it's considered significant. It's just below the threshold for deterministic effects. The longer term effects such as cancer induction have only limited studies due to the rarity of such events.
The real question that needs to be asked is: Over how much time will that 750 rad be delivered. If its an acute exposure, it's quite significant. If it's over a few weeks or months, not so much.
I didn't know Dr. Strangelove was attending MIT
We're getting conflicting reports about this. It truly depends on the fuel that's being used and the steel alloy used in the construction of the containment vessel.
Mostly uranium oxide melts around 2700-2900 C. Most steel alloys melt in the low 2000's. Odds are slim that the vessel will hold up.
I also heard reports that plutonium fuel was being used experimentally in one of the reactors, if so that presents another challenge altogether.
Last edited by Agloco; 03-15-2011 at 10:22 AM.
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