Japanese N-Plant Explosion

Nuclear Power Stations, are not going away any time soon, and we need more of them.
4,000 of them would give the world all the energy it needs.
But they need to be as safe as possible, and not run by people who are time after time caught out as incompetent liars.

Different subject.
Is anyone familiar with the Russian floating Nuclear Power Station.
One is due to be launched next year to operate in the Arctic.
300px-FNPSAcadmicLomonosov.jpg

Akademik Lomonosov

Is this a good idea or a bad one?
At US$336 million (projected), they are a snip, and you could buy ten for the cost of a land based reactor.


I hope it's Pirate proof.
mmmm.....good idea for a novel.
(Anyone using this idea for a novel, please send me £10)
 
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Captain Kremmen said:
Nuclear Power Stations, are not going away any time soon, and we need more of them.
4,000 of them would give the world all the energy it needs.
But they need to be as safe as possible, and not run by people who are time after time caught out as incompetent liars.

Different subject.
Is anyone familiar with the Russian floating Nuclear Power Station.
One is due to be launched next year to operate in the Arctic.
300px-FNPSAcadmicLomonosov.jpg

Akademik Lomonosov

Is this a good idea or a bad one?
At US$336 million (projected), they are a snip, and you could buy ten for the cost of a land based reactor.


I hope it's Pirate proof.
mmmm.....good idea for a novel.
(Anyone using this idea for a novel, please send me £10)
Click to expand...

On a slight tangent - are you familiar with the story behind how MRI scans came to be known as MRI scans? It really is the ultimate expression of what earlier in the thread was being referred to as radiophobia.
 
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M.R.I. Stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. They work by exciting the hydrogen atoms in the body, and recording the results.

NISA confirmed that radioactive plutonium and uranium were found in samples taken a week ago, pretty much confirming that there was a partial melt-down in at least one of the cores. As we already knew this, I can only wonder why it so long to release the information. TEPCO have made a number of radiological measurement blunders, and thier already poor record will not be helped by this. TEPCO collected samples from 5 locations around the power plant over 2 days from March 21st and found 2 samples contaminated with plutonium. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/29_02.html

Trenches outside the plant were found to contain huge amounts of radioactivity.TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto said at a news conference on Monday that he only received the report from the plant workers earlier in the day.

The plant operator has revealed that it found water in a covered tunnel outside the turbine building of the number 2 reactor, and that radiation of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour was detected in the water. Normal radiation levels are measured in microsieverts, an order of 10^3 less. To put it in perspective,the annual total limit of radiation exposure considered safe for humans is 1,000 microsieverts based on standards set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/28_h37.html


As for levels found in the sea, the IAEA say "Samples collected on 26 March 330 metres east of the discharge point showed increasing concentrations. There were found to be 74,000 becquerel per litre for iodine-131, 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-137, and 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-134"
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
 
No, I haven't heard it.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Very anodyne.

Is it a euphemism for atom splitting death ray?
 
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Captain Kremmen said:
No, I haven't heard it.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Very anodyne.

Is it a euphemism for atom splitting death ray?
Click to expand...

ULTRA said:
M.R.I. Stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. They work by exciting the hydrogen atoms in the body, and recording the results.
Click to expand...
Mostly correct. And there's more to it than that.
In Chemistry we use the same process - it's called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy - it works by holding atomic nucleii in a strong magnetic field, bombarding them with radiation, and measuring the radiation that's released by the sample. It works with any atomic nucleus that has a non-integer spin (including C-13), but it doesn't work for integer spin nucleii because they have what is effectively a zero energy state that they can sit in (essentialy spin half nucleii act as little bar magnets, and the whole process works by putting them in a strong magnetic field that forces them to align paralell or anti-paralell, then exposing them to an oscillating EM field at their resonant frequency, and measuring the way they respond, which gives us information about what they're attached to, and what's adjacent to them, because these factors slightly change the local B-field individual nucleii experience, and introduce a small shift in the resonant frequency) - this includes Deuterium (which is incredibly useful in chemistry because you can prove which protons are labile in an organic molecule by exposing the molecule to deuterated water - or the equivalent, as the labile protons become increasingly deuterated their signal weakens and disappears). EG IIRC in a 21 Tesla B-Field, the resonance frequency is around 900MHz. The shifts are measured relative to Tetramethylsilane, which is used to calibrate the instruments.

Anyway, because MRI is based on the same technology as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) it was originally called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (IIRC they specifically target protons bound to water molecules, but there are other things they can look specifically at), however, because people would see the Nuclear in the name, and read that it involved radiation (even though it's only radiowaves in the MHz range) and panic, so they dropped the 'Nuclear' from the name and abbreviated it to MRI (even though AFAIK every NMR machine will still be in the department of nuclear medicine at your local hospital).

What was a pefectly functional word has in todays society become something of an epiphet.

Incidentally, NMRI can also be performed using Helium-3, Carbon-13, Fluorine-19, Oxygen-17, Sodium-23, Phosphorus-31, and Xenon-129.
 
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If a tabloid newspaper wanted to cause a radiation scare, it could do well to check the nearest cancer hospital with a Geiger counter.
People treated for thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine leak massive amounts of radiation.

On the first day after treatment they leak
925,000 Bq through perspiration.
1.7 Million Bq per cc of saliva
1.6 Million Bq in breathing
and 2.9 Billion, yes Billion, Bq in urine.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...id radiation patient breath becquerel&f=false
 
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It's kind of like - I've often wondered what the average person on the street would say if they got told that a single cathode ray gun in a CRT Television set emits roughly 30PBq of beta radiation while in operation...
 
Trippy said:
It's kind of like - I've often wondered what the average person on the street would say if they got told that a single cathode ray gun in a CRT Television set emits roughly 30PBq of beta radiation while in operation...
Click to expand...

The average person on the street would think that you're a fossil if you still have a CRT television.
 
On the Pu in the soil:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has detected isolated, low concentrations of plutonium in the soil at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The density of plutonium is equivalent to the fallout that reached Japan from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War, the company said.

TEPCO conducted analysis of plutonium contained in the soil collected on March 21 and 22 at five locations at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Plutonium 238, 239 and 240 were detected, however just two of the samples may be the direct result of the recent incident, considering the ratio of the plutonium isotopes.

"The density detected in the plutonium is equivalent to the density in the soil under normal environmental conditions and therefore poses no major impact on human health," TEPCO said. The company said it plans to strengthen environmental monitoring inside the station and surrounding areas.
Click to expand...
 
TEPCO to be nationalised by Japanese government according to a source. Maybe it will. You heard it here first!!
 
If governments can't control major polluters, they should take over.
We are turning the planet into a junk yard.
 
Major polluters don't clean up though do they?
It costs too much.
How many tonnes of radioactive material will need to be cleared up here?
And at what cost.
And with what degree of safety.

It's not just nuclear, I know.
I didn't realise before I read this thread what large scale polluters the coal industry were.

And as for Oil..........
Look at BP.
A few weeks dusting the surface, and then it's done apparently.
Oil magically gone.
 
Captain Kremmen said:
And as for Oil..........
Look at BP.
A few weeks dusting the surface, and then it's done apparently.
Oil magically gone.
Click to expand...

Nope, Billions of dollars spent directly on the clean up involving several thousand vessels and ~48,000 workers, and then there is a $20 Billion dollar BP funded but Government controlled fund to compensate people for their financial losses and as far as the cleanup goes they are still at it today (96.6% of the Gulf waters were open to fishing as of 2/1/11).

At present, over 2,500 people and 200 vessels are still working on cleaning up the gulf.

http://www.restorethegulf.gov/release/2011/03/24/operations-and-ongoing-response-march-24-2011

Arthur
 
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I wasn't talking about the Gulf of Mexico spill.
They are afraid of getting beaten up by Obama.
If Bush was still in power, he'd have given them a slap on the back and told never mind.

I was talking about BPs role in the Exxon Valdez spill.

The Alaska spill occurred just after midnight on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez tanker carrying more than 50 million gallons of crude hit a reef after deviating from shipping lanes at the Valdez oil terminal. Years of cost cutting and poor planning led to staggering delays in response over the next five hours, according to the state commission's report.

What could have been an oil spill covering a few acres became one that stretched 1,100 miles, said Walter Parker, the commission's chairman.


"They were not prepared to respond at all," Parker said, referring to Alyeska. "They did not have a trained team ... The equipment was buried under several feet of snow."

The commission's report dedicated an entire chapter to failures by Alyeska, which was formed by the oil companies to run a pipeline stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Valdez terminal on the Pacific. BP had the biggest stake in the consortium and essentially ran the first days of containment efforts in Prince William Sound an inlet on the south coast of Alaska.

"What happened in Alaska was determined by decisions coming from (BP in) Houston," Plater said.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/bp-exxon-valdez-response-gulf-oil-spill_n_588335.html
 
The ship owned by Exxon and piloted by a drunk ran aground at sea and Alyeska, the company responsible for the LAND BASED PIPELINE, for which BP owned a bit over 50%, coordinated activities that first day, but by noon on the second day Exxon officially relieved Alyeska Pipeline Service Company of cleanup responsibility and so to say that spill or the subsequent damages were because of a material failure at BP is simply silly.

The Alyeska plan, approved by the state, was the primary plan for purposes of direct spill cleanup involving oil from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the Valdez Terminal/Prince William Sound area. The Exxon plan states that the Exxon Shipping Company is responsible for containment, cleanup, and
claims settlements related to spills in the waters of the U.S. from Exxon vessels
Click to expand...

http://www.akrrt.org/Archives/Response_Reports/ExxonValdez_NRT_1989.pdf
Arthur
 
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