http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapc...ex.html?hpt=T1The U.S.-built robot probes measured radiation doses as high as 57 millisieverts inside the housing for reactor No. 3 and up to 49 millisieverts inside the No. 1 reactor building, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported. Levels found between the double doors of the airlocks of the reactor buildings were much higher -- 270 millisieverts in the case of reactor No. 1 and 170 millsieverts in No. 3, the agency said.
By comparison, the average resident of an industrialized country receives a dose of about 3 millisieverts per year. Emergency standards for plant workers battling the month-old nuclear disaster limit their annual exposure to 250 millisieverts, while a CT scan produces just under 7 and a chest X-ray delivers a one-time dose of about .05 millisieverts.
Several articles the last couple days were about dozens of US reactors that have been "uprated", supercharged with more radioactive elements or radioactive elements of higher energy. The result is a hotter core and more energy output.
Everybody waves uprating through, of course, until one of these uprated thingies melts and proves that uprating was overrated vs. the $Bs to recover from it and lives lost.
The higher output means the owners make more money.
The failed reactors means the US taxpayers (the insurer) are on the hook while the operator declares bankruptcy and melts away itself.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-18-2011 at 12:48 PM.
Japan Lifts Atomic Alert to Highest Level, Matching Chernobyl
That was just too good to pass up. Sadly Darrin seems not to have mastered the art of important qualifiers like "so far".
Pure socialism. The government subsidizing all the risks = socialism.
That is one little tidbit that most nuclear proponents gloss over and hope no one notices.
Everybody here should take a long, hard look at your homeowner policies. Go ahead and get them. I'll wait...
You found it? Good. Now look at the exclusions. Care to guess if you are covered if the local nuclear reactor goes kerflooie?
Surprise! You aren't. Ain't no way in any private insurance company is going to touch that risk, no how, no way.
I used to be mildly against nukes, but not anymore. nuclear power. If you can't make it safe enough to privately insure, you can't make energy economically, and can better put energy dollars elsewhere.
safe nukes? How about just getting construction financing from Wall St? Wall St can get much higher returns, faster, elsewhere.
It's no worst than having a few bananas in you kitchen.
http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2011041900018The industry ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Monday acknowledged that nuclear fuel rods have melted at the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors of the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan.
Detecting the Nuclear Terrorist, snippet:
They also detect the radiation that normally occurs in, for example, ceramic tiles, fertilizer, coffee, bananas, or a person who has recently had a medical procedure using radioactive tracers. This results in false alarms that can cause expensive and time-consuming delays at security checkpoints.
Heard an eyebrow raising bit that made sense on NPR when they were saying it could take the better part of a decade to really finish cleaning up this mess.
Hopefully that decade will be devoid of earthquakes and 8 meter tsunamis.
Maybe Halliburton can get the contract so it will only take 15 years.
Oh .
Can the radiation fill up the Superdome yet though?Heard an eyebrow raising bit that made sense on NPR when they were saying it could take the better part of a decade to really finish cleaning up this mess.
Hopefully that decade will be devoid of earthquakes and 8 meter tsunamis.
And there's probably some bacteria that will evolve that's capable of absorbing and then dispelling nuclear radiation safely. Mother Earth can't possibly be influenced by anything us puny humans can do.
Actually, I don't remember all the details but there were some pretty interesting evolutionary adaptations in the Chernobyl area as far as animals/plants coping with the radiation.
*edit*
quick search
http://www.planetizen.com/node/17057
Not sure if that's adaptation as much as rapid natural (so-to-speak) selection, but the two go somewhat hand-in-hand anyways.
That said, the article doesn't exactly present a rosy picture.
Humans spending long periods of time there would suffer a build-up of radiation that would shorten lives and raise newborn mortality. "It would be a disaster for humans," Morris says.
The world is like the first 5 pages of a 30 page topic, the good has already happened.
Anyone see any recent updates? Seems the news stopped trying to scare us.
I like this image showing the destruction of external power, from a 4/25 article:
It seems like the really scary stuff has past.Anyone see any recent updates? Seems the news stopped trying to scare us.
I like this image showing the destruction of external power, from a 4/25 article:
Besides we have other hot-button topics to talk about.
I wonder if Agloco went:
International Conference on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants as reported at the Economist.
"hot ticket" Gotta love the dry Brit sense of humor.TO CALL it a hot ticket might, in the cir stances, seem a tad tasteless. But no session at this year’s International Conference on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, held in the south of France, was as well attended as the late-running special plenary hastily arranged to provide an update on the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan and its attendant radioactive leaks.
More-than-expected damage found at Japan reactor
TOKYO – One of the reactors at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant has been damaged more severely than originally thought, officials said Thursday — a serious setback for efforts to stabilize the radiation-leaking complex.
Repairs to monitoring equipment revealed the new data, which also showed that the water level in the core of Unit 1 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is much lower than previously thought, leaving the portion of the fuel rods still intact fully exposed. Other fuel has slumped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is thought to be covered in water.
The findings also indicate a greater-than-expected leak in that vessel. Radioactive water pouring from troubled reactors has pooled around the complex, hindering work to bring the plant under control.
However, temperatures in the unit are still far below dangerous levels because the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to inject new water to keep the rods cool. That radioactive water is apparently then leaking into and through the larger, beaker-shaped drywell, or containment vessel.
"The situation (in the core) hasn't changed since (early in the crisis), and the fuel rods are being cooled by water continuously being injected into the core," nuclear official Takashi Sakurai said.
Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency officials said the new data indicates that it is likely that partially melted fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressurized vessel that holds the reactor core together and possibly leached down into the drywell soon after the March 11 quake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeastern coast.
While officials said it was unlikely that the chunks of fuel were still dangerously hot or that they could melt through the concrete base of containment vessel, they acknowledged that the level of damage could complicate plans detailed in April to bring the plant to a cold shutdown within nine months. Further examination was needed to ascertain the full extent of damage, they said.
TEPCO had adopted an unorthodox method of trying to cool Unit 1's reactor by trying to fill the drywell with water leaking from the core, but the possibility that chunks of melted fuel had fallen and damaged part the containment vessel raised questions about how successful this method would be. It also called into question the utility's timeline for stabilizing the reactor.
"We have to revise the flooding method, as we need to re-examine the way we carry it out," Matsumoto said.
Recent temperatures inside Unit 1's core were at the most 237 degrees Fahrenheit (114 Celsius), well below the normal operating temperature of about 570 Fahrenheit (300 Celsius). Zirconium fuel rod casing begin to break down at 2,200 Fahrenheit (1,200 Celsius) and melt at 3,900 Fahrenheit (2,200 Celsius).
The new findings became available as workers fixed a water meter Tuesday after entering the building for the first time since a March 12 hydrogen explosion at the unit.
The gauge showed that the water was at least three feet (one meter) below the 13-foot-long (four-meter-long) fuel rods, which are suspended in the pressure vessel. Some of the rods has melted away, however, and the chunks of damaged fuel are presumed to be sitting at the bottom of the vessel, covered in water.
The low level of water indicates that the core of Unit 1 had a bigger breach than expected, said TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto.
Cooling water has been leaking from the reactor cores of Units 2 and 3 as well, allowing an estimated 70,000 tons of contaminated water to pool inside the complex, which TEPCO has been struggling to bring under control for two months.
To prevent contaminated water from leaking into the ocean, workers in April began pumping it into a waste processing building while a system to decontaminate the water is set up.
The plant, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo, has a total of six reactors. Units 5 and 6 have already reached cold shutdown. Unit 4 contained no fuel rods at the time of the earthquake, but workers have needed to spray water into its spent fuel pool where still-hot rods are stored and structural damage and leakage are suspected.
...
One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ima-plant.html
It's OK. They are going to build a tent over it so we won't have to look at it.
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