Major nuclear meltdowns in Japan tonight

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waves have hit california already
no power to cool reactors ? , so
venting radioactive gas ? not good
i saw shirts being sold for red cross relief
so there is something that can be done ,
but all the loss .........
 
BBC coverage here, including interviews with various nuclear scientists, is suggesting that meltdown is highly unlikely. I think our friends in Japan have suffered an enormous amount, and it will not help anyone if inaccurate conclusions are jumped to regarding nuclear explosions.

My thoughts are with the people of Japan. The whole situation just seems on such an inconceivable scale to me... Aside from the human suffering, this earthquake will have major ramifications for the world economy.

A very sad couple of days  :-[

Justin
 
Lets hope the 40 year old nuke plant designs survive this with only modest venting of radioactivity, (unlike Chernoble). They are already handing out iodine tablets, lets hope the containment structure holds and/or they get the circulation pumps restarted.

We have much safer new designs these days. The design matters, and they are not all the same.

Earthquakes are always scary enough, and Japan has good earthquake-ready building standards, but tsunamis unleash incredible forces. One cubic yard of water weights almost a ton (1680#), imagine all those tons of water moving at speed... That's a lot of kinetic energy.

JR

 
The lead picture in the NY Times photo gallery tonight shows shipping containers jumbled like toy blocks after the tsunami hit. I saw the video shot from a helicopter as the wave rolled ashore; it was sweeping large vans, semis, anything in its path along like they were twigs.

Back to the nuclear situation: according to the latest reports, the authorities have suggested that 170,000 people need to evacuate. [Edit: Make that 200,000.] They've flooded the reactor building with seawater in what the paper called a "last-ditch" attempt to prevent meltdown -- last ditch, because the seawater will corrode things to the point that the plant can never be used again.

There may be a place for power reactors, but active seismic zones sure aren't it; Japan, California, Missouri. If we use them at all, they should be in seismically-quiet places.

Peace,
Paul
 
The pictures coming out of Japan from the tsunami damage are horrific.

The numbers of people affected by this are beyond comprehension - they're talking about 200,000 people living in temporary shelters, and 10,000 people missing in a single city.

Anyway, appeals for aid have started. Please dig deep and give what you can - maybe give a day's work, or whatever you can spare. Next time it could be San Francisco, or anywhere!

Here's a red cross appeal...

http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal

There may be other appeals based closer to you.

Stewart
 
pstamler said:
There may be a place for power reactors, but active seismic zones sure aren't it; Japan, California, Missouri. If we use them at all, they should be in seismically-quiet places.

Peace,
Paul

The biggest concern I have with nuclear power plants is control of fissile materials. Modern designs can be made that self quench and don't go all china syndrome when we lose electricity for the cooling system... come to think of it, how does a power plant with too much (heat) power, not have electricity for cooling pumps?


I'm sure this will add to the chicken little atmosphere around nuclear power here...

JR

...
 
JohnRoberts said:
pstamler said:
There may be a place for power reactors, but active seismic zones sure aren't it; Japan, California, Missouri. If we use them at all, they should be in seismically-quiet places.

The biggest concern I have with nuclear power plants is control of fissile materials. Modern designs can be made that self quench and don't go all china syndrome when we lose electricity for the cooling system...

Control of fissile materials is a worry too. But a nuke plant in a seismically active zone...losing electricity for the cooling system might be the least of their worries. An 8.9 eathquake, if it happened on land, could knock a containment structure down...or rupture the pipes of the cooling system. If the zirconium cladding touches air, you get the hydrogen bubble forming (apparently that's part of what happened at Fukushima I), and if it explodes you've got a major release of radioactive materials. Hell, if the AP story today is accurate, the spent rods in the storage ponds are a risk too; if their cladding touches air something similar happens, and while they can't go 100% critical they can make a lot of heat, and a lot of hydrogen, and a major, major toxic mess.

My then-father-in-law was in the Bay Area earthquake back in the 80s, which was at least a whole Richter point lower than this one, and the damage it caused was horrendous. When the New Madrid fault broke loose back in, what, 1810 or so, it caused the Mississippi River to run backwards for a time, caused the river to shift its course pretty drastically, and rang church bells in Baltimore. That's the kind of power we're talking about.

I'm starting to think Edward Teller was right when he said these things don't belong on the surface of the earth. But if they do, they belong in places like, I don't know, Nebraska? Places that don't shake.

come to think of it, how does a power plant with too much (heat) power, not have electricity for cooling pumps?

You know, I was wondering that myself.

I'm sure this will add to the chicken little atmosphere around nuclear power here...

Well, from the sound of it, at the moment the sky actually is falling at Fukushima, so it makes sense to be concerned about possible similarities to the situation here. I live about 100 miles downwind from a large reactor, and like I said, we're in the New Madrid seismic region. I wish it was someplace else.

There are very few things certain in the world, but one thing that's certain is that in fault areas, you will have earthquakes. You don't know when they're coming, but they will come. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 100 years, but they will come.

Peace,
Paul
 
For me, what Paul says about ignoring dangers (specifically, in his case, the New Madrid fault) that aren't immediate is the big problem.  There are certainly earthquakes, but also many other things that can happen in the long haul:

A previously friendly state goes rogue;

Facilities in poor condition are kept going because the need for electricity is there but the money for a safer facility is not;

Security becomes lax and a terrorist group obtains nuclear wast and builds dirty bombs;

and that's just what I can think of at this moment.  This is not just a matter of whether it's safe this week, or this year, or this decade.  This is something where we need to think about safety in terms of a century or more.  And as Chernobyl has shown us, the aftereffects of a nuclear power disaster can persist for decades.  Imagine St. Louis on the edge of a hot zone:  half the roads into town permanently closed, a virtual ghost town because most of the people with means left, extremely high rates of cancer and leukemia among those who stayed, and elevated rates among those who left.

Is it unlikely?  Sure.  But a week ago a 30+ foot tsunami and 8.9 earthquake in Japan seemed fairly unlikely as well.  (EDIT:  Fukushima was built to withstand a 7.9 earthquake--extremely well built, but not nearly enough.)

***************

On another note:  the Southern Co., my local utility, has spent millions of dollars and over a decade fighting federal efforts to force it to clean up its coal power plants.  Too expensive, they say.  But they lobby the Obama administration for more nuke reactors, and Obama regrettably gives them the go-ahead.  The up-front costs of nuke are huge, so Southern Co. gets our very pliable legislature and Public Service Commission to change the law so that they can bill customers up front for the costs of the new nuke.  

Now nuke is sold by its supporters as "clean" (except when accidents happen) and "inexpensive" (except when building those hyper-expensive reactors in the first place.)  So the same company that won't spring for a few billion to clean up their coal plants ("too expensive!") has got me footing the bill for the far more expensive nuclear reactors ("clean, cheap power!").  

Southern Co. does not give a Sh*t about the health of the people of Georgia--their handling of the coal issue is evidence of that.  And I'm supposed to trust them to run (more) nuclear reactors in my state?  That I'm paying for in advance and against my will?
 
hodad said:
[...]But a week ago a 30+ foot tsunami and 8.9 earthquake in Japan seemed fairly unlikely as well.[...]

Not to anyone living in Japan it didn't.

JDB.
[the word tsunami being originally Japanese is a bit of a hint. Also, it's hard to visit Tokyo and not pick up on the local awareness that the ground may go all disco fever all of a sudden -- IMHO much more so than in SoCal or other Ring of Fire-regions I've ever visited]
 
It's not clean even without catastrophic events, when you look at the people in Africa mining uranium and regarding the whole toxic waste issue. Reprocessing in France releases plutonium into the sea every day. Wrecking up a nuclear plant at the end of its life is an extremely costly affair.

It's not inexpensive long-term if all the actual costs are taken into account. No commercial insurance company will insure it, so the government has to guarantee for the risks.

And - at least here in Germany - continued and prolonged use of nuclear power prevents companies and governments from investing in the infrastructure necessary for a change to sustainable energy sources. What happened in Japan may change that now - sadly things always have to go really bad first to make a lot of people see and accept the facts...
 
jdbakker said:
Not to anyone living in Japan it didn't.

JDB.

My point exactly.  The most seismically prepared country in the world was not prepared for this.  As I said, Fukushima was built to withstand a 7.9.  As you know, 8.9 makes 7.9 look like chump change. 
 
All good points but I remain more concerned about a bad actor misappropriating fissile material to make a big bang, or a very dirty bang, than the accidental release from an 8.0 design shook by a 9.0 trembler.

I don't want to downplay our concern for the people in the middle of this natural (not man made) disaster.

As we like to do, second guessing this in hindsight, where would Japan be without nuclear power? Surely a less prosperous nation. The clarity of hindsight will adjust up the prediction for future shakes, while perhaps ironically the release of tension on the plates may may a big shake less likely, while after shocks are likely.

I sure wish we all wasted less energy, which would make the demand growth smaller.

I want to believe there are safer ways to make nuclear power than this 40 year old (GE) design, and hopefully strategies to control the materials too, so they can't be repurposed.

I am less optimistic about the latter than the former. The world is still a very angry place with people wishing harm to others. 

JR
 
"As we like to do, second guessing this in hindsight, where would Japan be without nuclear power? "

you are about to see what it's gonna be like with it
I just got news from a  friend in Tokyo ...


 
Okay, I found out why they couldn't use the reactor/power station itself to generate power to run its cooling pumps. It's because the wiring and switching, and perhaps the generators, were damaged by the tsunami. Couple million gallons of salt water flooding the facility...yeah, I can see that.

Layer after layer of bad judgment, and now layer after layer of tragedy.

Peace,
Paul
 
pstamler said:
Okay, I found out why they couldn't use the reactor/power station itself to generate power to run its cooling pumps. It's because the wiring and switching, and perhaps the generators, were damaged by the tsunami. Couple million gallons of salt water flooding the facility...yeah, I can see that.
Peace,
Paul

The whole thing was covered in mud. Nothing is gonna work under that condition.

 
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