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Author Topic:   Japan
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 121 of 175 (609265)
03-17-2011 8:16 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Son
03-17-2011 4:25 PM


Small nitpick: actually Chernobyl is in Ukraine
Oops, fair cop. Ignorantly, I tend to think of all former USSR nations as "Russia." Stupid, I know.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 122 of 175 (609269)
03-17-2011 8:40 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by 1.61803
03-17-2011 5:36 PM


Re: Wrong.
But yet I sense hositlity and anger. Why?
What website do you think you're on where you can spew scientific ignorance and not get called on it, out of curiosity?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by 1.61803, posted 03-17-2011 5:36 PM 1.61803 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 123 by 1.61803, posted 03-17-2011 11:15 PM crashfrog has replied

  
1.61803
Member (Idle past 1503 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 123 of 175 (609277)
03-17-2011 11:15 PM
Reply to: Message 122 by crashfrog
03-17-2011 8:40 PM


Re: Wrong.
What website do you think you're on where you can spew scientific ignorance and not get called on it, out of curiosity?
the evc coffee house forum. Wow another butt hurt pendatic scientist or layfart like me? You do know what forum your posting in?mmmkay? Great. Preeciatateya.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 124 of 175 (609279)
03-17-2011 11:59 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by 1.61803
03-17-2011 11:15 PM


Re: Wrong.
the evc coffee house forum.
Coffee House isn't a place for nonsense, actually. And even if it were - don't you think that a thinking person has an obligation to base their conclusions on facts, not fantasy?

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anglagard
Member (Idle past 836 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


Message 125 of 175 (609287)
03-18-2011 2:48 AM


Great State of Journalism
So the UN Security Council voted to take military action against Libya just now. Who reports? NYT, Al Jazeera, and BBC. Who does not? MSNBC, and Google News.
No, the nuclear boogeyman is the sole concern of all, the advance of democracy is nothing.
Also I am very tired of the MSM stating that the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sits upon the San Andreas Fault (or more properly plate boundary). Liars - It is at least 100 miles away, but what would I know, I only lived there in the 70's, knew several people involved in it's construction and started my studies of the earth sciences, including seismology, at the closest college in the world (about 20 miles) to that very plant.
Update - Google News discovered the UN action during this writing, better late than never.
Only post when pissed or correcting egregious misinformation, all three are evidenced here (yes, know the OED, unlike most Texans who can't even handle American English).
WTF is the difference between news and scaremongering? Obviously not the current state of "journalism."
Edited by anglagard, : unclosed parentheses. Bad enough in writing words, try computer code.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman Rushdie
This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

  
anglagard
Member (Idle past 836 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


Message 126 of 175 (609288)
03-18-2011 3:01 AM
Reply to: Message 121 by crashfrog
03-17-2011 8:16 PM


Smartass Comment
crashfrog writes:
Oops, fair cop. Ignorantly, I tend to think of all former USSR nations as "Russia." Stupid, I know.
Please try to be more accurate in the future as your slip is showing to the whole world.
Edited by anglagard, : just too much, crash may not be perfect but he is mainly well meaning

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman Rushdie
This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

This message is a reply to:
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DBlevins
Member (Idle past 3775 days)
Posts: 652
From: Puyallup, WA.
Joined: 02-04-2003


Message 127 of 175 (609354)
03-18-2011 2:17 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by Rahvin
03-17-2011 3:38 PM


Re-criticality
Just risking the jump-in to point out that a TEPCo spokesman indicated that there is a slight danger of re-criticality from the spent fuel ponds. One of the reasons they are determined to 'pour' Boric acid into the exposed ponds. (My understanding: The spent fuel was packed in tighter, and some of the newer spent fuel might still have sufficient radioactivity for criticality, as space for the spent fuel became hard to find.)
Spent fuel, because of its very nature as spent, is too highly contaminated with the products of the fission reaction to actually begin that chain reaction, which is why it's not still in the reactor core in the first place.
*Just an aside and full of maybes so not an 'ZOMG! We're going to die!' comment. Just pointing out that re-criticality possibility is not 0.

This message is a reply to:
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fearandloathing
Member (Idle past 4144 days)
Posts: 990
From: Burlington, NC, USA
Joined: 02-24-2011


Message 128 of 175 (609375)
03-18-2011 5:09 PM


Seems to me there might be a market for an emergency response remote operated vehicle of some type. I am sure somebody would be working something like that. I look at the capibilities of ROVs used in off-shore drilling and wonder why some of this or similar technology couldn't be used to make an emergency response vehicle for hazmat situations. I can think of quite a few possible applications. Have a modular tool packages for quickly outfitting them for different task.
If nothing else then maybe the nuclear industry could get together and create a emergency response team with these types specialized vehicles thereby spreading cost out over the participating operators.

  
Buzsaw
Inactive Member


Message 129 of 175 (609387)
03-18-2011 9:42 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by Dr Adequate
03-15-2011 10:22 PM


Re: Risk And Energy
Dr Adequate writes:
In America it's an oddity for government to intervene in the risk factor relative to creating energy from anything. Since our republic was founded, it's been up to citizens and companies as to whether risk should be a factor in any kind of mining industry.
Mining has always been a huge factor in the welfare and prosperity of America. The '49er California gold miners knew the high risk of venturing out for their fortune. They had a lot to do with opening up the West and exploration etc.
Considering all of the benefits of coal to the nation over the centuries and the millions involved in mining it, relatively few have lost their lives. Any enterprise involves risk. That's life.
What people forget is how many millions have lost their lives due to the loss of freedom or trying to regain lost freedom. Let freedom ring and let people decide whether the risk of death or injury is worth the venture.
But the problem, my dear Buz, is that the "risk of death or injury" does not always fall exclusively on the people undertaking the venture (and receiving the profit).
If my house backs onto yours and I build a gunpowder factory in my backyard, what would you have to say about that --- "Let freedom ring"? Do I really have the freedom to put you at risk in that way?
Here's the KMK plant in the Soviet Union (as it then was).
What the people in that town were breathing was not the clean air of freedom but the stench of tyranny, or to be more prosaic, carbon monoxide. When someone else is deciding what's in the air you breathe and the water you drink, how free are you? Freedom involves freedom from someone else poisoning you or blowing you up or giving you radiation sickness, and it is this freedom that the government is protecting with "regulations", just as it has other "regulations" to prevent people from whacking you over the head with a bit of two-by-four.
President Clinton, with the stroke of a pen, declared a large portion of Utah government land ...
No he didn't.
The Grand Staircase-Escalante region was already federal land. What Clinton did was make it a national monument.
Nuclear energy, due to it's risk of impact on large populations and regions has the potential of affecting large populations and regions.
So does burning coal, alas.
Your points are well taken, so far as a reasonable amount of safety regulation. The problem is that the environmentalists have managed to influence the government to the extent of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater so as to make the US dependent on rogue nations for our energy when we have enough to be self sufficient.
The point I intended to make was that President Clinton rendered the good clean burning anthracite coal reserves in Utah off limits to mining by declaring them a national monument.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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bluescat48
Member (Idle past 4189 days)
Posts: 2347
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2007


Message 130 of 175 (609396)
03-19-2011 12:40 AM
Reply to: Message 129 by Buzsaw
03-18-2011 9:42 PM


Re: Risk And Energy
Even anthracite isn't clean. It just has less volatile matter than does Bituminous or Lignite. And it still produces CO2.

There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002
Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969
Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

This message is a reply to:
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Huntard
Member (Idle past 2295 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 131 of 175 (609434)
03-20-2011 4:54 AM
Reply to: Message 100 by Rahvin
03-17-2011 3:07 PM


Re: Wrong.
Rahvin writes:
I specifically noted earlier in this thread that the Fukushima plant was designed with 7.2-7.3 quakes in mind, not a 9.0, which is orders of magnitude more powerful than any quake experienced in the region historically. What precisely do you think would survive a quake of that magnitude?
Also of course, as you have pointed out before, it survived the quake just fine. It was the tsunami that did this particular plant in.
So, even though an earthquake that was about 33 x 33 times more powerful than what it was designed to withstand hit it, it still got through rather unscathed. It was only after it was hit by a wall of water, that it got into some problems. And so far it seems they might even be able to control the current situation as well.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22389
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 132 of 175 (609439)
03-20-2011 8:15 AM


Information
I just this morning learned two interesting facts about US nuclear power from an expert on BBC radio whose name I don't recall:
  • Because of the lack of options for nuclear waste disposal, the NRC routinely gives permission to nuclear power plants to store many more and more densely spent fuel rods in cooling ponds than originally planned. If cooling were to break down the consequences would be far more dire than in Japan.
  • Most of our nuclear power plants do not have any long-term backup power generation capability, such as the diesel generators at Fukushima.
Just to briefly weigh in on the main discussion, all energy alternatives come with costs and risks that must be balanced. Where the balance points lie is complex and debatable and probably different for every location, and refusal to acknowledge this seems perverse. The difference in opinion on power options has a strong emotional core deriving from the fact that nuclear plants pollute through accident and catastrophe while other options pollute through normal operation.
And to briefly return to an issue introduced in the opening post but that hasn't been mentioned in a while, the number of dead/missing in Japan now exceeds 20,000.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22389
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 133 of 175 (609444)
03-20-2011 9:50 AM


Question about Nuclear Plant Design
Here's a question based upon this picture of a post-earthquake road in Japan:
Are nuclear power plant containment facilities designed to maintain integrity if something like this were to happen directly beneath them?
--Percy

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 134 of 175 (609445)
03-20-2011 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 131 by Huntard
03-20-2011 4:54 AM


Unexpected Tsunami??
Huntard writes:
So, even though an earthquake that was about 33 x 33 times more powerful than what it was designed to withstand hit it, it still got through rather unscathed. It was only after it was hit by a wall of water, that it got into some problems. And so far it seems they might even be able to control the current situation as well.
This is a little bit naive. Earthquakes of the magnitude that occurred were not unexpected and given such an earthquake, wasn't the tsunami inevitable? Surely the wall of water was no huge surprise.

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 135 of 175 (609562)
03-21-2011 12:55 PM
Reply to: Message 134 by NoNukes
03-20-2011 10:45 AM


Re: Unexpected Tsunami??
This is a little bit naive. Earthquakes of the magnitude that occurred were not unexpected
Sorry, but that's just not true. Earthquakes in the range of 7-7.3 were expected, and the plant complex was designed with that in mind. Nobody expected a 9.0, the region has no history fof quakes of that magnitude. Even still, the plant managed to weather the quake without serious (with regard to reactor safety anyway) damage.
and given such an earthquake, wasn't the tsunami inevitable? Surely the wall of water was no huge surprise.
Tsunamis depend on the location, type, and severity of the earthquake (so no, not inevitable, but predictable), and barriers were in place to prevent tsunami damage.
The major problems were twofold: the barriers were insufficient for this particular tsunami (which may not necessarily have been a lack of foresight, but rather a limitation on the amount of protection that can be given by such barriers, I don't know a lot about them), and more importantly, the diesel generators that provide backup electricity to the active cooling system for the reactors and the spent fuel cooling pools were located in the basement, and flooded.
Diesel generators, I understand, don't work so well underwater.
Without generators, the cooling pumps had to rely on battery power, which is of course limited. The general power grid wasn't supplying backup power either - I presume damage to general infrastructure form the quake/tsunami took care of that. Without active cooling, heat began to build up unchecked in the cooling pools, and basically here we are.
So we have several lessons we can learn so far, even before a full investigation:
1) Passive failsafes, as you find in modern designs like pebble-bed reactors, are obviously superior in the face of a natural disaster than active cooling systems. The pebble-bed design uses a specific arrangement of fuel pellets such that, if a meltdown begins, the fuel will melt in a directed manner that maximizes the molten fluid's surface area exposure to passive coolant (I believe it also directs the fuel such that it separates widely to stop the fission chain reaction, and I wouldn't be surprised if the passive coolant pool contain neutron absorbers as well, but I'm not positive about those) - it's all just gravity based and the meltdown becomes self-limiting.
2) Don't stick your backup generators in the basement where a flood will take them out.
3) NIMBYs and anti-nuclear protesters like to decry future plant construction, but we need to be decommissioning 4+-decade-old designs and replacing them with newer ones so that we can actually put into practice the lessons we've learned since the dawn of the atomic age.
That said, I'd like to point out that the Japanese government has raised the maximum exposure level for workers in the Fukushima crisis to 250 millisieverts/year. Radiation sickness doesn't begin to set in until exposure reaches 250-1000 millisieverts, and even then it's basically just nausea - you need 1000-3000 millisieverts/year to reach the "recovery likely, not assured" level (which translates to about 5% of people with this level of exposure dying).
Estimates of the radiation levels at Chernobyl immediately after its explosion put radiation exposure levels around 10,000-30,000 mSv/hour, which would translate to a lethal dose within minutes (death would occur significantly later of course).
Those who are still expecting a Chernobyl or worse are being unreasonably pessimistic.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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