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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:45pm PT
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rrrADAM, without the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 there would be no commercial nuclear energy in the US because of the cost of insurance.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:46pm PT
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I never really saw rrrAdam as downplaying this thing he's just giving information as he knows it and answering questions along with pointing out disinformation.
He's a quality humanitarian person here.
Ed is doing the same and you tell by his posts his high humanitarian qualities.
This so nice that these guys are giving this information from their respective backgrounds instead of having to wade thru the media info.
Thanks a lot guys it's really appreciated ....
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Gene
climber
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:51pm PT
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Thanks Ed.
The NHK broadcast of the TEPCO press conference I saw implied that the reduction of 3 microsieverts/hour was a measure of the effectiveness of the water spraying effort.
Like Werner and others have said, I truly appreciate Ed and rrrAdam explanations. Thanks both of you.
g
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:59pm PT
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i didn't mean to imply that rrrADAM was downplaying this disaster... but when we get all technical and discuss each individual detail at length it is easy "to loose sight of the forest for the trees," I do it all the time myself... important to take a deep breath, step back and survey the situation
much of the concern over this is based on the threat we perceive to ourselves. what the Japanese people are going through is unimaginable, now is a time to seek ways to help them overcome something even larger than just the failure of the nuclear reactors, they have been through even more than that.
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Brandon-
climber
Done With Tobacco
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Mar 17, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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Thank you ALL so much. While some of the posts are silly, I'm learning more here than I could ever hope to learn from cable news.
Thanks.
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Mar 17, 2011 - 03:33pm PT
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Perspective.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
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Very good chart, however, recall the diferrence between:
Acute short term high dose exposure (outside the body)
Lots of studies done. Effects are known.
vs.
Chronic long-term low dose exposure (inside the body)
Health problems will take 10, 15, 20 years to show-up at times.
Not so many studies have been done. Effects are not known as well.
The effects from both are very real and serious though.
Read footnote #2. They recommend not trying to estimate the cancer risk below 1mSV, yet there will be health risks especially if it is Chronic long-term low dose exposure from being absorbed into the body through breathing, eating, or drinking these low dose radioisotope sources in trace amounts and stored in the body.
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cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:07pm PT
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Chiming in...
rrrAdam, Ed, Jennie, and others...
Thank you - there are many of us lurking here, and we appreciate your explanations, please don't get discouraged and leave!
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:17pm PT
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What Japan has always been good at is at robotic technology. Looks like they spent too much time and $$$ in copying a human that will talk, walk and do chores for you. They should have done more on machinery to fight fires.
If they do not have electricity to system in 48 hours look for the US to get in the picture using remote imagery machines, portable ready mix plant, pumping equipment and using a controlled insulated progressive density concrete mix for mitigation to surround the vessel.
Japan Government is what the US did in our disaster with BP. Waited too long. Also goes the blame game just as with BP and TEPCO saying they did not cut corners in safety or precautions. Cover ups just like any other country that has its pockets in these industries. Regulations? What stinking regulations? $$$$ for inspectors to look the other way. But there are improvements in some industries with these issues. Problem is and will always be $$$$$$$$$. This is good. Called Safety.
Fu%king Republicans will criticize but will they say we need better control and when the vote comes for these changes: LOL. Hell! They want all these protection agencies to go.
I say put all Republicans in that half mile reactive zone with Newt in charge, with Rush on his left and Beck on his right and his fellow republicans, give them business suits tell them they are safe, line them up and let them put the fire out.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:36pm PT
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 robots depend on electronics for their "brains"
electronics are not robust against the levels of radiation they would encounter in these nuclear reactor environments
the robot option is not an option in this case
in general it would be great to have robots doing a lot of this dirty work, but it is much more difficult then it would appear, once you get the electronics to work, the motors have to work, etc...
I don't think there has to be corruption for the rules to be bent in favor of less now to mitigate a future that may or may not come to pass. industry can argue, has argued, that failure scenarios be "reasonable" and will push back on scenarios that would result in major costs. generally, industry can make a good argument that "no one knows, or can know" what might happen. generally, humans prepare to prevent historic problems, see DMT's post above about fighting the last war. unfortunately industry is "convinced" only in light of actual events. the problems with these Japanese nuclear reactors will now be the actual, demonstrated, "worst case" and future designs and modifications to current designs will be designed to avoid them.
it is an ad hoc cost-benefit analysis that plays out in regulatory politics all the time, in the full view of the electorate (here in the US) and with their participation. our current commercial reactor program is based on that sort of politics, which is not to say that anything particularly sinister has happened. one has to answer the question: "how do you know that might happen"
we run up against the fact that our ability to predict the past is a lot better than our ability to predict the future
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Mar 17, 2011 - 04:53pm PT
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Thanks, Cleo...I'm lurking...taking in the excellent discussion.
Just a note on spent fuel:
The recommended period of pool storage for a spent fuel assembly is 19 months...after which they can be stored in dry casks...their gentler heat being dissipated by convection within. However, many spent fuel assembly racks in the United States remain in pools for several years...lacking terminal space to store them.
Japan's ovecrowded cooling pools indicate a similar dilemma. Many racks are full of largely cooled fuel.
The pool at Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 4 is/was a particular issue because the fuel rods in it were just removed from the reactor core during refueling in December 2010. They are generating more heat than the lower activity fuel at the other reactors on the Dai-Ichi site.
(Commercial power reactors are typically refueled at three to five year intervals; some of the test reactors at Idaho's INEL went six to eight years between core changeout)
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:06pm PT
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If the radiation level is too high for workers to check the pools, and they have run dry, then what is the worst case scenario? From what I understand, which is sketchy at best, is that the Unit 4 spend fuel pool had boiled, and partially to fully exposed the fuel. Since most of it has cooled down considerably, (speculation here) the worst case scenario would be fuel damage, including loss of some of the zircaloy allowing fission products to escape. Being down in a pit, ~40', if that floor is exposed to the wind (I.e., the outer building is now gone), those products can be blown out.
These are spent fuel rods, so how much contamination could they cause? I can't answer that, as I'm just not qualified, and I'm not going to guess on that. I can say, "potentially a lot", but that doesn't say much.
Could they heat up and melt through the flooring, covering the reactor below, making it even more difficult to work on the reactors below? If they do fully melt, what kind of radiation danger are we facing? We.. meaning Japan or the world. No, it is extremely unlikely that spent fuel could get hot enough to melt.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:11pm PT
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when you look at a modern car after a wreck it is certainly is an impressive mess, the consequences of which the persons on board are saved at the expense of the car...
that's good design..
as bad as the reactor buildings look now, if, in the end, the reactor cores are contained with little radioactive contamination to the site, it will be a huge success... the buildings are designed to be sacrificed one "system" at a time to preserve the integrity of the containment of the reactor core and to be able to manage that in the event of a complete fuel failure.
Well said, Ed... Much better than I could have done.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:14pm PT
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rrrADAM, without the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 there would be no commercial nuclear energy in the US because of the cost of insurance.
I didn;t know about that... I'll ahve to check that out. Makes sense though, as when we have multiple units down for outages, our stock goes up... When I asked someone why, since we weren't generating making $$$ I figuured it would go down, they said because our cost of insurance went way down.
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:18pm PT
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Concerning the use of robots (Ed's Post). High level rad can do them in, but in moderate levels (ie: way above what you want a human exposed to) robots and more commonly robotic arms (manipulators) can and are used. In fact we had some manipulator pieces ready to ship to us and were asked this morning by another entity within DOE whether we can sacrifice them for use in Japan.
There are many behind the scenes government actions being taken to try and help the Japanese, this is just one example.
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Gene
climber
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:20pm PT
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Hey Adam, Ed and other informed folks:
From what I gather from the media, TEPCO is focusing on the Reactor 3 spent fuel container because it is the only one of the storage pools that has MOX fuel which, due to its plutonium component, has the potential for more serious contamination.
Can you folks comment.
Thanks again for shedding light on this topic.
g
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Brandon-
climber
Done With Tobacco
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:28pm PT
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Maybe a dumb question, but;
Being down in a pit, ~40', if that floor is exposed to the wind (I.e., the outer building is now gone), those products can be blown out.
If the rods are throwing heat, won't that cause some sort of convection, raising the bad stuff to the surface?
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 05:30pm PT
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(Commercial power reactors are typically refueled at three to five year intervals; some of the test reactors at Idaho's INEL went six to eight years between core changeout) All the plants I have worked in the the US run on 18 month OR 2 year fuel cycles... BWRs tend to run 2 year cycles, replacing about half of the fuel, so they get 4 years out of a fuel bundle. PWRs refuel about half their core every 18 months.
It has to do with the amount the fuel has been enriched, as NAVY nukes run much longer between cycles since they have much more enriched fuel.
Unfortunately, here in the US, we do not reprocess fuel, and from what I understand, we only use 15% of the fissile material in our assemplies, but some of the fission products are neutron absorbers, so it make it inefficient to continue to use the fuel. Point being, we waste 85% of the usable fissile material since we don't reprocess, like is done elsewhere.
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