Japanese N-Plant Explosion

[Trippy]

Yes...yes, we are...In fact, one of the things that makes us so screechy is how often we're right.

The universe...seems to have an alarming tendency to run on Murphy's Law...and I'm given to understand Murphy was a structural engineer.

The thing is...the thing is with nuclear power, because of the threat of radioactivity and toxic heavy metals contamination...paranoia is a good thing.

For instance...someone might have said it was paranoid to have multiple redundant backup generators for pumps to cool the reactors...or some way to drop the reactors into a cooling pond in case of utter disaster...or overdesigning the entire site such that it could withstand a 9.2 quake or 40-foot tsunami

All that would have driven up the cost, yes. But we would not be having this convo now, as the reactors would have gone into safe mode just fine.

I still advocate for overdesign, very conservative siting, and for designing for the inevitable psychological complacency that results from a long history of problem-free operation.

Well, actually, I advocate for nuclear being a choice on par with coal, perhaps worse, and that we ought to be practicing efficiency and working on maturing the utility of renewables before we use nuclear.

At least some of which actually increases the risk of things going horribly wrong.

Besides... How were you planning on repleneshing the cooling pond?

 

[iceaura]

Making decisions about the prudent level of safety necessary in designing and siting nukes? Sure. For starters, include the historically obvious and the "human factor" in your "expected" risk, and then make your safety margins much larger than that "expected" risk. Shut down even "safely operating" plants that don't meet that obvious requirement, rather than rely on good luck. If it turns out you can't build to that standard economically, don't build.
”
This is precisely the approach which the Japanese used - I've already explained some of the legislation to you, investigate the faults in the area, investigate the maximum ground shaking expected from them, multiply it by three, and build to that standard.

But you just got through saying that this approach isn't good enough.

Uh, are you trolling here? The Japanese didn't even make a pass at that approach. You posted their standards yourself - read them. They are all to your approach, posted above - they simply took the scientifically assessed local geography and engineering risk as their physical base, as their reality, and ignored everything else. Like this:

Until it gets it wrong, we have to assume it's right.
That's the way it works.

That's completely insane. It's been invalidated by fifty years of experience worldwide. And it's nothing like my little off the cuff description - just to be obvious, any nuke plant that stored its waste on site in a high-level room just outside the containment structure would have been shut down twenty years ago, by that "model".

Even sillier:

Risks can be evaluated based on the state of the scientific knowledge at the time. They key point here is that mother nature is a bitch, and she's always got something else up her sleeve that may be both unanticipated, and uninticipatable.

Hold that thought. That's one of the factors taht wise and prudent people would keep in play, when deciding how to employ scientific risk assessment in their nuclear plant decisions.

Yes, yes, you keep going on and on and on about Alaska and some of the big quakes further south, but the point that you keep missing, and I have endeavoured to explain repeatedly is that up until last week, the kinds of faults that were expected to create a M9 earthquake were simply not known to exist in this area, and were not expected to pose a credible risk.

And for some reason you think the second part of that answers the first. I'm at a bit of a loss, here - how to try this again - - maybe this will get through:

Note the passive voice and the hints of areas of ignorance (the "were expected" and "not known to exist" and so forth). Now my approach requires that those statements be rephrased in active voice, and the areas of ignorance clearly demarcated, and the history of the authors when making similar assertions and incorporating similar areas of ignorance included as a factor. For starters.

 

[Trippy]

There's a certain Irony, in amongst all of this. One that goes completely against the grain of some of what's being suggested in this thread by Iceaura - among others.

Since, I think 2008, whensome of the unusual behaviour from the 2004 boxing day tsunami became clear, and possibly as early as 2006, right up until 3 days before this earthquake and Tsunami, JNES - the Japanese Nuclear Energy Saftey Organization were in the process of compiling (in conjunction with, I believe, the IAEA) a database of historic tsunami traces to try and develop better, more accurate models, and try and provide improved protection.

 

[Trippy]

Uh, are you trolling here? The Japanese didn't even make a pass at that approach. You posted their standards yourself - read them. They are all to your approach, posted above - they simply took the scientifically assessed local geography and engineering risk as their physical base, as their reality, and ignored everything else.

Bullshit.
They are specifically, and explicitly required to take into account the maximum shaking experience by the plant - including (but not exclusively limited to) any fault that has shown any activity in the last 126,000 years.

That's completely insane. It's been invalidated by fifty years of experience worldwide. And it's nothing like my little off the cuff description - just to be obvious, any nuke plant that stored its waste on site in a high-level room just outside the containment structure would have been shut down twenty years ago, by that "model".

More bullshit.

Nothing has been invalidated by '50 years of experience'. The Anchorage earthquake (assuming that's what you're referring to, you're being vague and imprecise again and making vague general statements that are hard to refute) occured on a fault that matches what were believed to be the requirements for an M9 shake - it's long, and it's straight.

And that storage is only temporary. The plant also has dry storage facilities. AFAIK all plants have something similar - for temporary storage, except it's not neccessarily an open pool.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Well, actually, I advocate for nuclear being a choice on par with coal, perhaps worse, and that we ought to be practicing efficiency and working on maturing the utility of renewables before we use nuclear.

Renewable have certain fundamental problems, all are either intermittent (Solar, wind, wave) or of limited availability (hydro, geo, biomass) Nuclear is the only one that can provide consistent power with a fuel supply that could last for millions of years (assuming breeding of Pu239 or U233).

The problem with nuclear power is it reliance on an archaic design concept of water base coolant. Other reactor designs like the Molten Salt reactor or Pebble Bed Reactors or a Sub-Critical Reactor, etc are immune to meltdown via the laws of physics, but money into developing them was halted decades ago, apparently some jack ass thought it better to keep with the archaic and fundamentally flawed designed and just keep adding more and more safety layers. Now mind you some of the latest 3rd generation reactors achieve many degrees of passive safety, these old power plants Fukushima were reliant on active safety mechanisms, which as you noted are subject to Murphy's Law.

Now with the greenies making pie-in-the-sky demands I'm afraid we may never get 4th generation reactors that could finally provide clear, safe and cheap energy.

 

[chimpkin]

Besides... How were you planning on repleneshing the cooling pond?

Really big-ass pond?
I was actually thinking it would have done to incorporate gravity-feed from a local river...to use a stream or river,set up to be diverged into the plant as a last-ditch backup.

Now with the greenies making pie-in-the-sky demands I'm afraid we may never get 4th generation reactors that could finally provide clear, safe and cheap energy.

Please define clean as regards the waste products.
Include what happens to the plant components after operational lifespan is up and the plant is scrapped.

Edited to add:
Thorium-cycle reactors-Or is it Integral Fast Reactors? do address some of my issues with nuclear...just not all of them. Have to look @ this subcritical reactor more.

Another addition: being able to get nuclear waste down to the point of a couple of hundred years of needing to be contained...that's very intriguing. If nothing else, it would certainly be useful to reprocess the waste we have lying around from the LWR's and render it down...

 

[Trippy]

Yes...yes, we are...In fact, one of the things that makes us so screechy is how often we're right.

If I might be indulged a moment to explain why I object so strongly to this statement (and others like it).

I can predict earthquakes using Chicken entrails, the predictions are accurate to a day either side of the day of peak risk.

Does that mean that the USGS should employ soothsayers?

Nope.

What it does mean is that if I make enough predictions, and they have the right element of generality to them, I can go as far as getting the majority of them right - 75% or more.

 

[Trippy]

Really big-ass pond?
I was actually thinking it would have done to incorporate gravity-feed from a local river...to use a stream or river,set up to be diverged into the plant as a last-ditch backup.

Which means that you now have (at least) two pathways for radioactive steam, and Iodine and Caesium to escape - speaking of which, what were you planning on doing with the steam?

 

[iceaura]

They are specifically, and explicitly required to take into account the maximum shaking experience by the plant - including (but not exclusively limited to) any fault that has shown any activity in the last 126,000 years.

Yeah, and your point?

And that storage is only temporary. The plant also has dry storage facilities. AFAIK all plants have something similar

And the hits just keep coming.

It's like pulling teeth - tech guys simply cannot be brought to recognize the issue here. They have to be leashed, in the interests of public safety.

Nothing has been invalidated by '50 years of experience'.

Reliance on technical experts for prudent assessment of overall safety in the construction of nuclear power plants has been completely invalidated, as an approach. If we have learned nothing else about the nuclear power industry, we have learned that.

Since, I think 2008, whensome of the unusual behaviour from the 2004 boxing day tsunami became clear, and possibly as early as 2006, right up until 3 days before this earthquake and Tsunami, JNES - the Japanese Nuclear Energy Saftey Organization were in the process of compiling (in conjunction with, I believe, the IAEA) a database of historic tsunami traces to try and develop better, more accurate models, and try and provide improved protection.

So the original risk estimations were bogus, and the reassurances over the past twenty five years were bogus, and an entire area of ignorance was ignored in the design and siting of the six reactors.

That's not news. Anyone looking at a map and putting pins in major earthquakes, for estimation of tsunami risk at the Fukushima site, could have (and did, actually) told you that.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Really big-ass pond?
Please define clean as regards the waste products.
Include what happens to the plant components after operational lifespan is up and the plant is scrapped.

Sub-critical and even fast neutron molten salt or even lead cooled can consume 99% of there own waste. In fact with the Sub-critical its possible to transmute all long half-life waste products meaning no need for longer term storage.

Edited to add:
Thorium-cycle reactors-Or is it Integral Fast Reactors? do address some of my issues with nuclear...just not all of them. Have to look @ this subcritical reactor more.

I would prefer waste processing over Thorium cycle, certianly the sub-critical makes for flexible fuel options, so it really does not matter. A fast neutron molten salt would also be nearly as flexible.

Another addition: being able to get nuclear waste down to the point of a couple of hundred years of needing to be contained...that's very intriguing. If nothing else, it would certainly be useful to reprocess the waste we have lying around from the LWR's and render it down...

Well then you answered your first question for me.

 

[Trippy]

It's like pulling teeth - tech guys simply cannot be brought to recognize the issue here. They have to be leashed, in the interests of public safety.
Reliance on technical experts for prudent assessment of overall safety in the construction of nuclear power plants has been completely invalidated, as an approach. If we have learned nothing else about the nuclear power industry, we have learned that.

So what. You'd rather rely on a Ouji board? Maybe psychics, or Chicken entrails.
Perhaps you could piss in a bucket, tip some molten lead into it, and examine the shadows it casts on a wall, act as a consultant for the USGS.

I know - maybe we should consult the bible.

So the original risk estimations were bogus, and the reassurances over the past twenty five years were bogus, and an entire area of ignorance was ignored in the design and siting of the six reactors.

No, they weren't.
There was no credible evidence to suggest an earthquake of that magnitude was capable of being generated by that fault.
End of story.

Now, we have credible evidence that did not exist a week ago.

That's not news. Anyone looking at a map and putting pins in major earthquakes, for estimation of tsunami risk at the Fukushima site, could have (and did, actually) told you that.

Oh bullshit.

Ooh, ooh, here's an idea.

When they make a wrong prediction, we could burn them at the stake as witches - or better yet, stone them to death.

 

[chimpkin]

Look, Trippy, I suppose it comes down to this: you think they lowered the risk to a reasonable level.

We don't.

So the disagreement comes down to what you feel is a reasonable level of risk.

I think it's reasonable to keep working on efficiency, on energy storage to iron out the "bumps" of renewables, and to further improve ways of harnessing said renewables. I'd rather use more social energy towards that end, you see.

My personal 'bet', so to speak, is on finding a way to harness tidal power-not just places where there are tidal bores, but find a way to use wave action from just ordinary tides effectively to produce power. This because the majority of population centers are within 50 miles of a coastline.

I'm going to pretend the earthquake didn't happen for a minute...and say that Japan's reliance on nukes has made me nervous for a while. Simply because it is such a seismically active area.

Now, since the radiation's only marginally going to affect anyone besides the Japanese people, who elected the government that allowed the plant...well, it can be said that it was a fairly democratically-decided-upon way to power their country.

They chose this, they pay the price.

Incidentally, since I know very little about reactor design, how do you think a meltdown would be best contained? I had initially thought a large lot of lead under the floor for it to melt its' way into...or a shaft to drop it into...then I thought about cooling from a river, and thought that would work best...but no, there's pressure involved, isn't there, since the whole core operates at above boiling-point for water?

I wondered if there were some way to design the core so that the control rods could drop over and sheathe the fuel rods-basically making them into control sleeves instead of rods, and then have the whole thing fall apart somehow, like a bundle of sticks when the strap holding them is cut?

But then again, if you're going to go to all that sort of trouble, it sounds like breeder reactors are a far better thing than LWR's.( Not that I'm totally going to sign on for nukes, even then.)

And of course, the whole issue is the operating temperature, that the heat doesn't just dissipate...

 

[Trippy]

Look, Trippy, I suppose it comes down to this: you think they lowered the risk to a reasonable level.

We don't.

See, here's the thing. I've studied statistics at University, and my Job involves doing a lot of geostatistics. I know enough about probability theory to know that there is no such thing as 100% safe. 4, 5, even 6σ events happen.

But the thing is, any form of power generation is inherently dangerous. Dams fail, boilers mines and gasfields explode, the list goes on. The single biggest problem being that you're taking energy, concentrating it, storing it, and releasing it in a controled fashion, and that is inherently risky.

So the disagreement comes down to what you feel is a reasonable level of risk.

No, not for me anyway.
My objection is the statement that the earthquake should have been predictable. There is nothing in the last 100 years of geology that suggests that that earthquake should have been possible at that location on that fault.

I think it's reasonable to keep working on efficiency, on energy storage to iron out the "bumps" of renewables, and to further improve ways of harnessing said renewables. I'd rather use more social energy towards that end, you see.

I actually agree with you here. There's a number of reasons I have chosen not to leave New Zealand, one of them is the point that, I think, something like 80% of New Zealands energy comes from renewable resources. There is (IIRC) one coal fired power plant here, most of the rest of our power comes from Hydro and Geothermal, we have some natural gas fired plants, but with forestry they can be switch to biogas. There are some wind farms that have been installed, and we're in the process of instaling some tidal power turbines in a couple of our harbours (big easturine environment, large volumes of water moving through a small gap, we don't have particularly high tides here).

We do have a hydro dam sitting across a fault, but we've taken the steps we believe neccessary to prevent a burst in any foreseeable scenario.

My personal 'bet', so to speak, is on finding a way to harness tidal power-not just places where there are tidal bores, but find a way to use wave action from just ordinary tides effectively to produce power. This because the majority of population centers are within 50 miles of a coastline.

I have three plans. One uses OTEC to harvest plastics from the North Pacific Gyre and processes them into crude oil, fresh drinking water, and maybe commercially useful minerals.

One uses co-generation to process dairy waste into crude oil.

And one uses a combination of OTEC and wave energy to generate power.

I'm going to pretend the earthquake didn't happen for a minute...and say that Japan's reliance on nukes has made me nervous for a while. Simply because it is such a seismically active area.

And there's a reason that we, as a nation, have chosen not to embrace nuclear power, and why I choose to remain in this country.

Now, since the radiation's only marginally going to affect anyone besides the Japanese people, who elected the government that allowed the plant...well, it can be said that it was a fairly democratically-decided-upon way to power their country.

They chose this, they pay the price.

I keep coming back to the fact that this is the earthquake that should not have happened.
Personally, I'm going to wait until they have the resources to get out into the area where the earthquake occured, and gather some real, hard data before I start making any judgements.

Incidentally, since I know very little about reactor design, how do you think a meltdown would be best contained? I had initially thought a large lot of lead under the floor for it to melt its' way into...or a shaft to drop it into...then I thought about cooling from a river, and thought that would work best...but no, there's pressure involved, isn't there, since the whole core operates at above boiling-point for water?

I seem to recall reading recently that the reactor runs at 285MPa which is about 2800 Atmospheres, or 41,300 PSI.
As far as arresting a meltdown goes. The trick is that you need to dissipate the residual heat, prefereably you'd quell any remaining radioactivity at the same time. I would probably take an ablative approach, a thick layer of something - preferably containing some non volatile Boron compound, for the corium to melt through, but dissipate a crap load of heat energy in doing so. Perhaps something like the shuttle tiles doped with some form of Boron.

Ideally though, we'd be using some of these third generation reactors that use passive cooling mechanisms, that fail in a safe mode (IE failsafe). To whit, the first requirement for a meltdown to occur is there has to be more heat energy availble than the coolant can remove. If you have enough coolant to remove all of the heat energy passively, then, as I understand it, melt down becomes virtually impossible (at least in the way that we're seeing in Japan) because even without power, the cooling will continue.

I wondered if there were some way to design the core so that the control rods could drop over and sheathe the fuel rods-basically making them into control sleeves instead of rods, and then have the whole thing fall apart somehow, like a bundle of sticks when the strap holding them is cut?

The problem wasn't the scramming. The Japanese early warning system operated as designed and got the warning to the appropriate places before the shaking even started, the reactors scrammed in response, as they were supposed to. The back up generators even kicked in as they were supposed to, right up until the room flooded.

 

[ULTRA]

I notice the Japs have started water-bombing the N-Plant again. I can't see this being a satisfactory solution except for the immediate future. The US military is said to be supplying pumps and the Japs are working to get power back to the plant. With the condition of the containment vessels and the damaged ponds, it looks like there is gonna be serious contamination going forwards.
It's a matter of concern that we weren't informed of the problems with the cooling ponds until 3 or more days into the disaster. Now watercannon are being brought in. Seems a little desperate to me, might just as well pee on the damn thing..I wonder how reactive the run-off is.
All the foreigners seem to have been flying out if they can. The thoughts rats and sinking ships comes to mind. I haven't checked the wire-services yet today, but i expect to see a fair bit of pessimism there.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

No, not for me anyway.
My objection is the statement that the earthquake should have been predictable. There is nothing in the last 100 years of geology that suggests that that earthquake should have been possible at that location on that fault.

That's conjecture.
A matter for the inevitable enquiry, surely.

Here's some conjecture of my own.
The building of the plants would have had a safety assessment based on a geological survey.

My guess, a guess because I have no more information than anyone else, is that there would have been evidence that this event might occur if someone had worked hard enough to find it.
Another guess, which we will have to wait a long time to confirm or disprove, is that if they had worked hard enough, it would have meant that they could not build the plants where they wanted them. Losing money.

Tokyo Electric, and their Geophysicists will have a lot of explaining to do.

 

[ElectricFetus]

We don't.
So the disagreement comes down to what you feel is a reasonable level of risk.

Don't include me on that, I think the 3rd Gens are safe enough, if by shear scale of safety layers and passive safety systems. 4th Gens would ultimately be safer, cheaper and cleaner and the only thing holding them back is lack of funding.

I think it's reasonable to keep working on efficiency, on energy storage to iron out the "bumps" of renewables, and to further improve ways of harnessing said renewables. I'd rather use more social energy towards that end, you see.

Oh sure, but in the mean time we can keep building more nuclear powerplants. Its not like renewables and nuclear power are mutually exclusive.

My personal 'bet', so to speak, is on finding a way to harness tidal power-not just places where there are tidal bores, but find a way to use wave action from just ordinary tides effectively to produce power. This because the majority of population centers are within 50 miles of a coastline.

Oh that nifty, only problem is wave energy is where wind was 30-40 years ago, that gives an idea how long we have to wait for it to develop, what do we do in the meantime?

I'm going to pretend the earthquake didn't happen for a minute...and say that Japan's reliance on nukes has made me nervous for a while. Simply because it is such a seismically active area.

Now, since the radiation's only marginally going to affect anyone besides the Japanese people, who elected the government that allowed the plant...well, it can be said that it was a fairly democratically-decided-upon way to power their country.

They chose this, they pay the price.

Exactly how is it going to hear? The amount of radiation release so far is still inconsequential to the health of anyone outside japan, or even anyone who is not at the power plants themselves. What about the benefits Japan has "paid" for nuclear power, reduce pollution and more self-reliant energy? When you add up the pros and cons even include disasters like these the pros win. Japans economy would have been weaker and more of it people would have died or been made ill from pollution related disease had they stuck to fossil fuels, and don't even talk about renewable then, they were not even a option before, even now they aren't an option for majority power soruce in almost all places (aside for Iceland or Hawaii, etc)

Incidentally, since I know very little about reactor design, how do you think a meltdown would be best contained?

Its been explained in previous post that these reactors, even though they are old designs from the 60's were in fact designed to contain a full out meltdown.

I had initially thought a large lot of lead under the floor for it to melt its' way into...or a shaft to drop it into...then I thought about cooling from a river, and thought that would work best...but no, there's pressure involved, isn't there, since the whole core operates at above boiling-point for water?

The pressurize water is of course relieved, in the event of a full meltdown the molten mass of metal that was the core would fall into the dry and wet wells below, be spread out and cooled via passive heat conduction.

I wondered if there were some way to design the core so that the control rods could drop over and sheathe the fuel rods-basically making them into control sleeves instead of rods, and then have the whole thing fall apart somehow, like a bundle of sticks when the strap holding them is cut?

A variety of designs have been made since the 60's. 3rd Gen reactors now being built employ passive safety mechanism:
- If power is cut off nuclear reaction stops via laws of physics, for example gravity would drop the control rods.
- passive cooling systems that cool the reactor without power or external supervision.

But then again, if you're going to go to all that sort of trouble, it sounds like breeder reactors are a far better thing than LWR's.( Not that I'm totally going to sign on for nukes, even then.)

aah no you see old breeder reactor designs were moronic, what kind of idiot would think its OK to use molten sodium as a coolant, it burst into flames on exposure to air and explodes on exposure to water! New designs of course have much promise like the molten salts but require much funding and research which for some reason is almost non-existent, certainly anti-nuclear politics is part of that lack of funding.

 

[adoucette]

The Japanese were well aware of risks of Earthquakes and Tsunamis and prepared for them, built with them in mind.

Still, even with all that planning and preparation, the death toll from the latest event has passed 5,000 people and seems to be heading towards 10,000 or so, and the damage to the infrastructure might reach as much as $200 Billion (twice Katrina), but at the same time the death toll from radiation from these damaged Reactors remains at ZERO.

And is likely to remain at ZERO.

Despite high levels of radiation close to the units, levels detected at the edge of the power plant site have been steadily decreasing.

16 March, 12.30pm
3.39 millisieverts per hour

16 March, 7.00pm
1.93 millisieverts per hour

17 March, 9.00am
1.47 millisieverts per hour

17 March, 4.00pm
0.64 millisieverts per hour

On the other hand, around 100 meters above the facility radiation was around 87 millisieverts per hour, indicating that the fuel rods in the Cooling Pond 4 are probably not yet exposed, but aren't covered with 16 ft of water either.

The good news is heat from radioactive fuel falls off exponentially as time passes and since the nuclear fuel in Cooling Pond 4 has been there since November, and so it's not so hot anymore, so a fire in that cooling pond is (from what I've read) no longer a possibility (and the fuel in the other ponds are all much older) The last temp reading they got on CP-4 was 84C on the 16th.

They still probably have days more to get water into that pond and supposedly they are preparing to do so as a new land line is being connected to give them Grid Power (Twitter says the line is now connected) and they have removed debris from the road so as to get 11 pumper trucks into the area to wash down the area (this is ongoing). With any luck this will reduce local radiation levels such that workers can get back into the area and refill the ponds. (They poured 30 tons of water onto Pool 3 with 5 special pumper trucks this morning. They are now evaluating the effectiveness of this operation).

The reactors are now nearly out of the woods as far as heat goes, and they seem to be able to keep the cooling running so within a week or so they should be able to stop the cooling pumps and still not have to vent anymore steam and thus the end result is still most likely that none of the reactors will have had a meltdown, meaning that the cost of clean up won't be that bad since they can use the normal de-fueling process. But even in the still unlikely event that they had had a meltdown, that does not mean that there would have been a large radiation release, yet many posters have simply used Melt Down as if it equals either a large release of Radiation or an explosion.

3 Mile Island went 16 hours with no cooling at all and in fact DID suffer a melt down, and yet there was no large release of radiation.

Because of the Containment Structure.

The thing to keep in mind is this is not Chernobyl, these reactors have containment structures and there are not tons of graphite to burn and spew radiation high into the atmosphere. Finally, the containment vessel is designed to handle a meltdown, hence the name, Containment. So far it has worked pretty much as designed, and provided sufficient time for people near the plant to be moved further away while they deal with the shutdown of the plants and because of their design, for the most part workers have been able to stay at the plant and manage the shutdown and the only thing that has escaped has been radioactive gases, which are designed to be released in this situation because for the most part the radioactive isotopes in these gasses have very very short half lives (Most of them are so short that's one of the reasons radiation is so much lower at the perimeter of the plant, then at the reactor buildings, but it's also why workers can't get that close).

So far the reactors are doing pretty much what they were designed to do and yet I continue to read erroneous statements about how much of a disaster it has been....

But it has not been a radiation disaster, even though pretty much the "worst case" scenario has occurred at the plant site.

Arthur

http://twitter.com/TepcoDisaster
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/

 

[iceaura]

o what. You'd rather rely on a Ouji board? Maybe psychics, or Chicken entrails

And he thinks he's joking.

Realistically, that would be an improvement, as would coin flipping or a roulette wheel - we would avoid the extra risk of false confidence. It's much less likely that six reactors would have been built at Fukushima if coin flips had decided the matter. But simple reasoning, applied to the record and risk of the employment of scientific expertise in an area of great scientific uncertainty, and incorporating the common understanding of human failings (the complacency effect, the influence of money, Challenger Logic, etc), would be my recommendation.

I'm an optimist: We can do better than chance, here.

Or we can do worse, by pretending we know what we don't:

So the original risk estimations were bogus, and the reassurances over the past twenty five years were bogus, and an entire area of ignorance was ignored in the design and siting of the six reactors.
”
No, they weren't.
There was no credible evidence to suggest an earthquake of that magnitude was capable of being generated by that fault.

See the problem?

Its not like renewables and nuclear power are mutually exclusive.

Nothing is mutually exclusive with nuclear power - it's so expensive that every alternative (coal, hydro, everything) is compatible with it.

That's why the continual comparison with the hazards of coal, dams, etc, is beside the point.

My objection is the statement that the earthquake should have been predictable. There is nothing in the last 100 years of geology that suggests that that earthquake should have been possible at that location on that fault.


”
That's conjecture.

He's completely correct. Nothing in the high tech, specialized world of geological science predicted that earthquake.

On the other hand, a ten year old with a map and a few pins could have told you that any nuclear reactor built on anything like the Fukushima site - let alone a complex of six of them - needs to be able to withstand a 9+ level quake with associated tsunami, plus a safety margin for human error. And plenty of non-geologists, people with a more sensible outlook on the uses of geological expertise at the current state of such expertise, have been saying that for decades now.

It's a matter of concern that we weren't informed of the problems with the cooling ponds until 3 or more days into the disaster.

It's completely routine, and expected. Every single serious nuclear mishap for fifty years has featured that kind of "communication". Go back in this thread for a record of a couple more such details - the false reassurance of omission and commission both, by the apologists.

Or compare your current impression of Three Mile Island with this archive: http://www.tmia.com/node/118 .

 

[adoucette]

Or compare your current impression of Three Mile Island with this archive: http://www.tmia.com/node/118 .

People who live near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant show no significant increase in cancer deaths more than 20 years after an accident at the plant released low amounts of radiation.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh studied deaths between 1979 and 1998 among people who reside within five miles of the Pennsylvania plant. Their findings are reported on the Web site of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"The good news is the TMI accident does not appear to have caused an over increase in cancer deaths among residents of that area over the 20-year follow-up period," principal investigator Evelyn Talbott told CBS Radio News. "Twenty years is the latency period for most cancers."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/01/health/main527826.shtml

 

[Trippy]

That's conjecture.

No, not really, it's evidence based. The difference is, now we (potentially) have evidence that suggests otherwise.

A matter for the inevitable enquiry, surely.

Have you read anything I've said - you know, the bits about waiting until they can get out there in a boat and get some reflection profiles blah blah blah.

Here's some conjecture of my own.
The building of the plants would have had a safety assessment based on a geological survey.

Correct, as I've already said, a couple of times now, an assessment is performed based on faults that have been active in the last 126,000 years and the ground shaking that is likely to arise from their movement.

My guess, a guess because I have no more information than anyone else, is that there would have been evidence that this event might occur if someone had worked hard enough to find it.

There is no evidence, anywhere in the world, to suggest that a fault like this one is capable of producing an M9 earthquake, No, wait, let me rephrase that, up until a week ago there was no evidence to suggest blah blah blah.

Another guess, which we will have to wait a long time to confirm or disprove, is that if they had worked hard enough, it would have meant that they could not build the plants where they wanted them. Losing money.

Tokyo Electric, and their Geophysicists will have a lot of explaining to do.

The IAEA guidelines with regard to the neccessity of Tsunami protection, and whether or not it needs to be considered is 50m above MSL and more than 10km inland - I don't recall if it's an and satement (both criteria need to be met) or an or statement (only one of the criteria needs to be met).

If you look at the layout of Fukushima Daiichi, it's been landscaped so that parts of the site are well above MSL, if I had to guess, I would say that the buildings that are landscaped are on the landscaped area are between 30m and 50m above MSL. It's not immeadiately obvious, but even the reactor buildings themselves are elevated WRT the waterfront. The one piece of information I have (so far) been unable to track down is where on the site the backup generators were.