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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:04am PT
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Hopefully the jet stream will stay north and take the radiation into Canada....?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:08am PT
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Some sayings from Japan-
"Children learn to smile from their parents.”
“The world is its own magic.”
“Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.”
“Blood is just red sweat.”
“I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.”
A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.”
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:08am PT
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Four hundred times more radioactive material was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. However, compared to the total amount released by nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s and 1960s, the Chernobyl disaster released 1/100 to 1/1000 the radioactivity
Hawkeye, this was on Wikipedia and the footnote goes here:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernoten/facts.html
Read in context, it's not very pretty.
In the aftermath of the accident, 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months
This is also from Wikipedia. But read it in context:
In the aftermath of the accident, 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months.[63][64] Most of these were fire and rescue workers trying to bring the accident under control, who were not fully aware of how dangerous exposure to the radiation in the smoke was. Whereas, the World Health Organization's report 2006 Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group from the 237 emergency workers who were diagnosed with ARS, ARS was identified as the cause of death for 28 of these people within the first few months after the disaster. There were no further deaths identified, in the general population affected by the disaster, as being caused by ARS. Of the 72,000 Russian Emergency Workers being studied, 216 non-cancer deaths are attributed to the disaster, between 1991 and 1998. The latency period for solid cancers caused by excess radiation exposure is 10 or more years; thus at the time of the WHO report being undertaken, the rates of solid cancer deaths were no greater than the general population.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:39am PT
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wondering why this thread is ignoring Kyshtym
is it still that big a secret?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
what we learned from it may have saved the northwestern US from a repeat performance, complements of the Hanford high-level waste tank farm
i've been told by my uncle at Hanford that Kyshtym was worse than Chernobyl
and in meetings i attended about handling Hanford tank 101SY, the 'burp tank'; the fear was it could be more dangerous than Kyshtym
(my cousin helped design the reprocessing facility that handled 101SY)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:48am PT
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The three U.S. bases around Tokyo have chartered planes to evacuate the families of the military people stationed there.
Meanwhile the Japanese dumped four bucketloads of water on the reactor by helicopter and are now "reevaluating" the situation. Apparently four bucketloads didn't lower the radioactivity at all. They're reassuring everyone that the riot control water canon will be in place this afternoon.
Meanwhile speculators have driven the dollar to first time lows against the yen.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:52am PT
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Jan, was the emperor's television address the first time that an emperor has spoken on television?
Also, if I understand correctly, Japan's politicians are relatively weak in terms of power. The real power is mostly held by senior bureaucrats, even more so than other liberal democracies. If the politicians seem ineffectual, it may be because they are.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:24am PT
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During the Cold War, national security policies prevented government
authorities from disclosing the risks and health hazards associated with
living near or working at weapon production facilities. These facilities
released harmful levels of radiation into the environment
Radioactive Iodine -131 is a major uranium fission product, comprising nearly 3% of the total products of fission.
Radio Iodine decays with a half-life of 8.02 days with beta and gamma emissions.
Due to its mode of beta decay, iodine-131 is notable for causing mutation and death in cells which it penetrates, and other cells up to several millimeters away. For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes paradoxically less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues which would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/iodine/exposure_pathways.html
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Bargainhunter
climber
Central California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:51am PT
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Once again, I’ve enjoyed this discussion immensely. I haven’t been captivated by a single news event like this since Sept. 11, 2001.
The contributions of rrrADAM and the other nuclear scientists (from Livermore and Hanford, etc.) on here have been very incredibly helpful in terms of understanding the technical aspects of this situation. I am physician and in the past I have been reluctant to comment on most medical discussions on here, but that may change…without someone like rrrADAM taking the time and effort to patiently answer questions on here over and over again regarding his technical specialty with nuclear reactors, I’d be at a serious loss.
Other comments have been equally insightful:
Dingus Milktoast summed up things pretty well with the following: “The backup generators flooded, apparently. So I am not willing to give a tip of my hat to the prescient powers of nuclear design engineers. ‘They design these things to withstand blah blah blah….’ And are taken out by a flood. Not Good.”
Someone else pointed out the irony of a multi-billion dollar nuclear plant disaster being mitigated with a simple fireman’s rig: portable pumps and some fire hoses in the sea. Yikes. Not a great confidence-inspiring example of a working redundancy plan to “preserve the inner containment.”
Once the NYTimes mentioned yesterday that 50 workers were staying behind as sacrificial lambs to hold the lid on it, the poster BMACD’s words rang true as he pretty much told it like it is: “whoever the fuk the engineering morons are that designed a seaside nuke plant to be earth quake proof but neglected to protect the backup cooling systems and generators from associated tsunami damage should immediately be choppered onto the site now to man the firehoses until they fukkin croak from radiation over dose.”
The mudslinging between the various voices is also informative, as the dissenting opinions help clarify issues and also provide amusement. I enjoyed Golsen’s comment (to some doctor): “I have a sneaking suspicion that if 2,000 extremely sick patients showed up at your hospital in an hour that you would sh#t bricks and we could all chime in on the internet how clueless the medical world was.”
I work in a busy Emergency Department and even if 20 extremely sick patients show up at once it would be a complete cluster. [FYI: I trained at the busiest Emergency Dept. in California (LA County USC Medical Center) and attended disaster drills there. They sucked. When we had a mock mass casualty event to test our triage and wash down decon capabilities, there were so many snafus and clusterf*#ks, it was embarrassing; and that was when we KNEW that we had a simulated disaster drill planned! I spoke to Dr. Celentano, the head of Disaster Management, and asked, “So what would really happen if/when a dirty bomb goes off in the Rose Bowl?” He replied, “Tens of thousands or more will die and we will not be able to do anything about it.”] A disaster, by definition, overwhelms the existing resources to manage it.
The reality is that this problem involves all of us. We use energy. It comes from somewhere. A few nights ago, I read by candlelight (I often have only one light bulb on in my house at time and I don’t use heat in the winter except for my wood stove, which only burns wood from my yard, nor do I use AC in the summer despite weeks of 100-100 degree days (my house is old and completely uninsulated, btw, I just deal with 40 degree temps inside with down booties, long johns, and down jacket, and the summer heat by wearing a wet shirt and staying as wet a possible). The two candles were plenty of light and it was romantic. I think if more people were introspective about their energy use, the obsession with oil, the wars and environmental risk required to maintain a steady supply, and our conventional forms of controversial power such as coal and nukes, would become much less appealing. I also drive a 13 year old Jetta diesel that still gets about 50 mph, btw. Ok, I’ll stop with the self-righteousness.
Back to the topic, my girlfriend’s family lives 140 miles from the Daiichi plant, just north of Tokyo. Last May, I strolled along the beaches of Miyako in Iwate prefecture after a week of scrambling in the snowy mountains of nearby Tohoku. This video shows the tsunami breaking over the protective beach barrier in Miyako (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zfCBCq-8I);. It broke my heart. There are so many kind elderly people in villages like this that in no way could evacuate fast enough to make it out alive. Beyond tragic.
Ironically, just 140 miles away from where I live in California is one of only 2 nuclear power plants in my state. It’s the Diablo Reactor Cluster on Avila beach near San Luis Obispo. It’s design to handle a 7.5 magnitude quake and draws it’s secondary cooling water from the Pacific. It has to throttle back to 80% during simple storms just to prevent kelp from clustering the cooling water intake. In 2008, one of the reactors was taken offline for 2 months due to jellyfish clogging the intake. In addition, after the plant’s completion, a new seismic fault called (the Hosgri fault) was found offshore. Protests took place forcing PG&E to seismic retrofit the plant to make it safe. A 25 year old engineer hired shortly thereafter noticed that the seismic retrofitting took place in error…the blueprints had been reversed for two identical reactors, thus negating the safety retrofit! Then in 2008, the USGS discovered a new fault in the area, the Shoreline fault a mere 600 meters from the plant. Jeanne Hardebeck, the research geophycicist behind the discovery, wrote in a recent issue of Rolling Stone Magazine:
“’The important issue is whether the two faults can rupture together.’ A rupture beginning on the Shoreline Fault that continued on the Hosgri Fault could bring the maximum earth-shaking power of the larger fault directly to the nuclear facility. ‘We’ve certainly not ruled it out,’ Hardebeck says. Diablo Canyon is engineered to withstand a 7.5 earthquake from the more distant Hosgri Fault — a design based on the USGS projections that that fault is likely to max out at a 7.3 magnitude temblor. (For comparison, the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan was built to withstand a 7.9 quake, but got hit by a 9.0.) But Hardebeck cautions that the USGS estimate ‘is not a very precise number.’ While she has not calculated the margin of error, Hardebeck says ‘it’s certainly a few magnitude points of uncertainty — and possibly even more than that…A 7.7 on that fault would not be surprising to me,’ Hardebeck says.
So there you have it folks, bringing it closer to home. A nuclear reactor on a sea cliff in central California next to two seismic faults, one of which is a few hundred yards a way, with a cooling system that routinely gets plugged by kelp and jellyfish. My fellow Supertopoians (many of whom are in California), it could have been us!
I write this as I sit under a single compact florescent bulb, writing by battery-powered laptop. I’m wearing 2 pile jackets and my feet are cold (ok, I’m wearing just flip flops), but I’m comfortable. Goodnight.
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Bargainhunter
climber
Central California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:17am PT
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It's getting worse, the water in spent fuel pool number 4 is now confirmed by multiple sources as empty… ....that means 4 (!) out of the 6 reactors are now in a state of variable malfunction. With spent rods now in pool number 4 now exposed, the release of radiation is significant enough to thwart further cooling maneuvers of the other reactors and their spent fuel pools. The water will boil off, the fuel rods will continue to burn and release more radioactivity, and the fuel rods in the containment vessels will fail. Core melt appears probable at this point. Experts, please tell me I'm wrong. I think I need to rent the China Syndrome.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:25am PT
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iU29-CtBza8xA01r9IzPwksyP1WQ?docId=9e518d4998224fd8b705cc3fe9903eb6
Bungling, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear power
(AP) – 31 minutes ago
TOKYO (AP) — Behind Japan's escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses.
Leaks of radioactive steam and workers contaminated with radiation are just part of the disturbing catalog of accidents that have occurred over the years and been belatedly reported to the public, if at all.
In one case, workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine, so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Two later died.
"Everything is a secret," said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who now lives in California. "There's not enough transparency in the industry."
Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing against time to prevent a full meltdown following Friday's 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami.
In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.
The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan's half-century reliance on nuclear power has strained its credibility with the public. That mistrust has been renewed this past week with the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. No evidence has emerged of officials hiding information in this catastrophe. But the vagueness and scarcity of details offered by the government and Tepco — and news that seems to grow worse each day — are fueling public anger and frustration.
"I can't believe them," said Taketo Kuga, a cab driver in Tokyo, where low levels of radiation was observed Tuesday, despite being 140 miles (220 kilometers) away from the faulty plant.
Kuga has been busy lately driving to airports and train stations people eager to get out and flee southward. And it unsettles him the information about radiation is all over the Internet, hours before officials make their announcements.
"I don't feel safe," he said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. official Takeshi Makigami says experts are doing their utmost to get the reactors under control.
"We are doing all that is possible," he told reporters.
Worried that over-dependence on imported oil could undermine Japan's humming economy, the government threw its support into nuclear power, and the industry boomed in profile and influence. The country has 54 nuclear plants, which provide 30 percent of the nation's energy needs, is building two more and studying proposals for 12 more plants.
Before Friday's earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima crisis and sent the economy reeling, Japan's 11 utility companies, many of them nuclear plant operators, were worth $139 billion on the stock market.
Tepco — the utility that supplies power for Japan's capital and biggest city — accounted for nearly a third of that market capitalization, though its shares have been battered since the disasters, falling 65 percent over the past week to 759 yen ($9.6) Thursday. Last month, it got a boost from the government, which renewed authorization for Tepco to operate Fukushima's 40-year-old Unit 1 reactor for another 10 years.
With such strong government support and a culture that ordinarily frowns upon dissent, regulators tend not to push for rigorous safety, said Amory Lovins, an expert on energy policy and founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
"You add all that up and it's a recipe for people to cut corners in operation and regulation," Lovins said.
Competence and transparency issues aside, some say it's just too dangerous to build nuclear plants in an earthquake-prone nation like Japan, where land can liquefy during a major temblor.
"You're building on a heap of tofu," said Philip White of Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a group of scientists and activists who have opposed nuclear power since 1975.
"There is absolutely no reason to trust them," he said of those that run Japan's nuclear power plants.
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Bargainhunter
climber
Central California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:51am PT
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Thanks QITNL. "Help your fellow man; respect nature." A singular yet complete mantra to live by indeed!
Unfortunately, I just found out I was wrong, my girlfriend's family is only 100km or less from the area in the adjacent prefecture ...but they are safe for now.
So, the latest NYTimes picture shows helicopters dumping water? This seems ridiculously futile. Remember what happened to those similar helicopters (and their pilots) in Chernobyl?
Initially I was joking about the China Syndrome until I saw Tom Cochrane's post...OMG, it IS the China syndrome!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:54am PT
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Jan, was the emperor's television address the first time that an emperor has spoken on television?
Yes, evidently this was the first time that the current emperor has spoken directly to the Japanese people on television. Previous to this, the last time a Japanese emperor spoke to the Japanese public was in 1945 after two atom bombs had been dropped and the emperor had to tell the people of Japan that the country was accepting unconditional surrender and that the people "must bear the unbearable". The symbolism could not be more somber.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:13am PT
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Also, if I understand correctly, Japan's politicians are relatively weak in terms of power. The real power is mostly held by senior bureaucrats, even more so than other liberal democracies. If the politicians seem ineffectual, it may be because they are
Yes, a large part of the problem now is that Japan is in a very transitional period politically, the biggest such transition since WWII.
One can well argue that the Japanese have a weak political system because the Americans favored it being that way because of WWII and in order to keep Japan as a close ally during the Cold War. We finagled to keep the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (which is actually a conservative party), in power as the sole governing party for all but a couple of the past 56 years. Real power was wielded by the bureaucrats.
Japanese people were content with this system for many years as they also distrusted strong leaders as a result of the war. They saw America and Japan as being in an elder brother / younger brother relationship or that of a sempai/ kohei apprenticeship. Lately however, they have become restless with this system and the inevitable nepostism and corruption that it brought. There has also been a rebellion against unelected bureaucrats making all the important decsions.
The current leaders are liberal compared to the LDP and are striving for transparency but they are very inexperienced and have made many policy mistakes. The Japanese have had four prime ministers now in four years but the bureaucrats are reluctant to to be decisive now, unlike during the Kobe quake, because they fear being accused of undermining the politicians who don't like them.
For sure, the post war era is over with this catastrophe. What will be really interesting to see, is what the new system will be. Perhaps people will flee back to the comfort of the LDP, or blame them more for establishing all these nuclear plants with so little oversight. Perhaps Japan will become more leftist. No doubt they will be forced to rely more heavily on the Americans for yet awhile. Okinawa for sure will be put on the back burner as all energy goes to rebuilding the mainland.
China of course, and South Korea will be the major winners here.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:46am PT
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QITNL-
I agree about the multi-nationals, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. British people were complaining to me 30 years ago that one of the biggest reasons for their decline was that British companies invested in the more profitable colonies instead of at home.
However, some countries regulate their multinationals much more than we do and some countries like China act as one big multinational. The West, especially individualistic America doesn't want to admit it, but this has been a faster and more efficient way to modernize than laissez fair capitalism.
I think the long term future however must rely on an ecological model, a self sustaining rather than growth and profit oriented one. Perhaps this nuclear accident will speed that process.
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bmacd
Social climber
100% Canadian
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Mar 17, 2011 - 06:56am PT
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Japan is a nation of the worlds finest foot soldiers, with the worlds worst generals. Paris Hilton could have handled this better than their political leaders have done.
Further reading has revealed that 3 top GE engineers quit in disgust over this Mark 1 reactor design @Fukushima and became leading anti nuke environmentalists way back then.
Is the policy of no containment structures for the spent rods pools global ? What a major oversight that is. Tom Cochrane thanks for bringing attention to the Hanford site problems. Even more reasons for me not to sleep at night.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 08:09am PT
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As I said, pages ago, before the nukes had any real spotlight, "we needed to get power to those plants in order to keep the fuel covered and cool". That is still the priority.
People pointing at helicopters dropping water and saying that shows they don't know what they are doing is wrong, as they are working with what they have... Which is no power. Dropping water or using fire hoses form fire engines is part of the plan to cool the fuel pool when all else fails. But getting water into the Rx vessel is another story... There is a lot of pressure in that system, so the pressure differential between the Rx stsem and a fire hose means that you can't use a hose to inject water into the Rx Vessel... The pressure of the injection system needs to be greater than the pressure of the vessel in order to get it in. This takes POWER. And getting power to the plants is not as easy as going to Lowes and buying a few generators, or running an extension cord from Tokyo to the plants.
The decisions being made are based an MANY circumstances, and most people outside the situation have no idea of the details that lead them to make the decisions they are making. Sending in the military, would do what? They would make decisions based on what?
And NOTHING can be made 100% safe, period! Try to imagine a design that would withstand a direct hit from an meteorite the size of a house... See what I mean? The system, as designed, has mitigated to a high level, what could have happened, even though the system wasn't designed specifically for the tsunami. Can/could it have been better, yep! And this will be taken into account in the future, both near and far. I can't talk about that plant in particular, other than it is the same reactor design as the nuke I work at, a GE Mark I... But I can say that my plant has several additonal layers of protection that were added on over the years, each making the system more robust. E.g., We even have SAMA (Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives) Deisels that are for charging the baterries that run emergency systems.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/fitzpatrick/appendix-g.pdf
Point is, it's not like these nukes are designed and constructed to meet minimum requirements, and just run to make power... The entire industry is ALWAYS modifying and making changes to enhance safety. They look for any and every way to maximize safety, and even though this costs LOTS of $$$, we still do it. My plant is also 40 years old, but we are still adding additional layers, on top of additional layers, that have been added through the decades to make it safer, and safer.
Also, the nukes share information with other nukes imediately, to ensure that any issues (real or percieved) are addressed at all plants... This is done through not only the NRC, but also INPO:
http://www.inpo.info/
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 08:18am PT
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Power plants can be designed to SHUT DOWN in the event of a power loss, and to do so AUTOMATICALLY, as a function of their design, and without depending on computers, pumps and electricity backups. But the American designers don't like them, as they are NOT HUGE, MASSIVE MONEYMAKING INSTALLATIONS.
This is incorrect, as all plants in the US are designed to automatically SCRAM when they lose offsite power. You are not reading, as I have already explained this...
The reactors are scrammed with a system that uses pressurized nitrogen to actuate the CRDs (Control Rod Drive) and insert the control rods in a matter of seconds. The valves that control this "fail safe", meaning, if a valve needs to be opened to serve its safety function, it is held closed with power... If the power fails, it automatically opens. And vise versa, if a valve needs to be closed to serve its safety function, it is held open with power... If the power fails, it automatically closes. That is what "fail safe" means... It will 'fail' to the safe position.
And, the EDGs automatically start, with pressurized air starting them, with valves that "fail safe" as above, and those EDGs automatically run pumps that have valves that also "fail safe".
And, as an added layer of safety, there is redundancy built into all of these systems, so if one were to stick, it would be bypassed, so the system still "fails safe".
So, it certainly seems a lot more unsafe when you actually believe something that just isn't so, huh?
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Bargainhunter
climber
Central California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 08:55am PT
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RrrAdam, I respect your testament that there are many safeguards in place, but the Chernobyl accident was triggered during a test to verify and make redundant a safeguard mechanism.* In this effort to make Chernobyl safer, an unprecedented extreme accident occurred. So re-assurance about redundant (failing) safeguards and that the Japanese workers are trying their best to mitigate what appears to be evolving into a multiple “core melt” incidents at Daiichi don’t really allay the fearsome outcome if it doesn’t work. I appreciate the fact that there are no quick fixes here, but is lighting up half of Tokyo with neon signs really worth the risks of nuclear power? Is it worth those fifty workers dying over the next 5 years or sooner from leukemia? I’d say no.
Google the horrifying videos of the Chernobyl “biorobots” (the soldiers forced to manually clear the radioactive debris of the roof and dump back into the fuming reactor) and the “kamikaze firemen” who were the first responders at the scene. These biorobots worked for 40 seconds at time in shifts, and even that was in retrospect too dangerous for some. It’s not worth it, man. I really don’t think we need so much electricity.
I appreciate your concern for safety and reliance and confidence on redundant mechanisms, but when faced with the consequences of everything failing, a nuclear failure just doesn’t appear worth it. Now the Chernobyl sarcophagus is failing, and a new structure being engineered to contain it further…
If we have to keep learning these typing of lessons to produce “safe” nuclear energy, it’s not worth it. We aren’t ready for it. As one of the Soviet scientist said (paraphrased), “we just don’t have the technology to work in these condition around this stuff safely.”
[At Chernobyl, if I understand correctly, the concern was the backup diesel generators took long to become fully operational (~45 seconds) to pump the vast amount of water needed to cool the fuel rods in the event of an emergency shutdown, and thus efforts to harness the power from the nuclear powered steam turbine as it was winding down was attempted to augment the pumps until the diesel generators were working at full capacity. They were testing this when things started going wrong and fast!]
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 09:14am PT
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Bargain... As has been said, numerous times in this thread, Chernobyl was a flammable dangerous design in what ammounted to a tin shack, so there was no chance of containment whatsoever. Those two items alone, make Chernoby completely different, thus any comparison between it and TMI or Fuku isn't valid, other than they were reactors.
As I said earlier...
It's analogous to saying, that a solo aid climber with a huge rack, portaledge with rain fly, sleeping bag, and lots of experience can suffer the same or fate than a free soloist if both were on the upper pitches of El Cap when a severe storm blew in.
In the above analogy, we can say that they are both climbers, but there is a huge different between the two, and the likely outcome if both were subjected to the same event (E.g., winter storm)... Just like between Chernobyl and TMI / Fuku, but they are/were both reactors.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 09:34am PT
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re: Workers contaminated and exposed to radiation...
We are ALL exposed to radiation, most natural, some man-made.
I am exposed to radiation in my job inspecting nukes... As I've said, numerous times, about ~125 mRem per year, and that is less than people who fly 2-3 times per week, people who live in Denver, or in New Enland, recieve annually. It is about what a person gets when they get a chest x-ray.
I have also been "contaminatied", more than once... OMFG!!!!!!!!! Should I worry? Am I gonna die? Nope! They wiped it off with a 'wet wipe', like you'd wipe a baby's ass with, and I went home, 'contamination free'. Dose recieved, 0 mRem from it. And, anyone who smokes get's an 'uptake' of radioisotopes, as well as anyone who lives near a coal fired power plant.
As I've said... It's all about how much and what. That article says they recieved 'how much' dose? And contaminated by 'what'?
But I do understand... When one doesn't understand, "exposure to radiation" and "contamination" sounds REALY scary!
People are buying Geiger Counters like crazy on the internet, and there is a lot of money to be made off of this fear. But guess what... When people get it, and turn it on, it will click, and they will freak out convinced that radiation and contamination from Japan has made it to them, not knowing that it will click anywhere you turn it on due to background radiation... How many people know the background dose artes for the area that they live? You HAVE to know this first, to see if there is any radiation above ambient background.
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