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'Worse Than Chernobyl': When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater
Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.
The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.
If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.
Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense – it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.
A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.
Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.
Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.
Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel‘ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.
The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.
The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.
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Show AllI posted this response to another article on CD today, I think it's relevant
My wife’s family and many of our intimate friends live in Japan and while we all hope for containment of these radiological poisons and empathize with the victims there’s opportunity for a new paradigm. It's a paradox that the ongoing Fukushima crisis could not have happened at a better time or place!
In the last year because of climate change, peak oil and now the Arab Renaissance the US Corporate/Plutocracy had announced to we the people via their sock puppet, Obama, that the government has 10’s of billions of dollars for new ‘clean energy’ nuclear power plants. Of course behind the rhetoric there’s quite a large amount of Corporate Greed. None the less without Fukushima we can surmise that more Atomic Power Plants would have been shoved down our….
In fact they still might be.
The German people just this week defeated members of PM Merkel’s regressive party in regional elections and now we learn that there is serious talk of replacing all of their nuclear plants with other forms of electrical generation.
Can you say Fukushima?
After the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which my father-in-law witnessed at 7 years old from a distance of about 20 km) the Japanese people reluctantly came to accept nuclear power as the best way to propel them to the world’s second largest economy (now third behind the PRC).
Now Fukushima coupled with Hiroshima.
Can you say Humpty-Dumpty?
Once the highly educated and hard working economies of Germany and Japan begin designing, manufacturing and selling safe renewable alternate energy producing technology the US can either Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.
Which will it be?
[the US can either Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.
Which will it be?]
You forgot the fourth option, which is the one the corporatocracy loves and always advocates as the first option; War.
Yeah I did :)
War, what is it good for?
Profit......
sorry mr. star
np it's a minor quibble. grin
from wiki:
The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the town of Pripyat. There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. This event exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.
--------------
the explosion and resulting fire at chernobyl was caused by a faulty water meter that appeared as if there was water in the cooling system when there was none
chernobyl was a PLANNED shut down that went awry, not an accident
the death toll for this disaster now stands at 1 million and counting - you see the tumors are still growing in unsuspecting folks around the world - where it will end who knows - maybe 100 million or so. and let's not omit the genetic mutation that is attendant with the leakages
we need to shut these monstrosities down
"In a recent interview with The Real News Network, Robert Alvarez, a nuclear policy specialist since 1975, reports that spent nuclear fuel in the United States comprises the largest concentration of radioactivity on the planet: 71,000 metric tons. Worse, since the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been scrapped due to its proximity to active faults (see last image), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactor operators to store four times more waste in the spent fuel pools than they’re designed to handle.
Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23988
Wow. Life imitates art. If I'm not mistaken, this is the plot from the movie 'The China Syndrome'
There are more than a few errors in this article. There is no nucler reaction going on in the Fukushima plant, and it is impossible for damaged or melted down fuel materials to achieve criticality in a light water rector. The heat that is causung the problem is decay heat from the fission by-products.
And the Chernobyl reactor was a completely different kind of reactor than a water-moderated reactor. It was a dual-use design favored by the sovet military with inhrent instabilities that nobody else used or would use. Is the idea that there are many, completley different kinds of nuclear reactors too complex a concept for my fellow leftists to grasp? Why is the US left so willfully technologically illiterate?
There is not a nuclear reaction occurring in the nuclear reactors?
The nuclear reactors that they are not able to turn off?
The cooling ponds have decay heat from "spent" fuel rods which also may explode.
Correct. Ther is no reaction going on. But the decay of highly radioacive by-procucts of the reaction continue to make a lot of heat and require cooling water for several months after the reactor is shut down.
What's your best, technologically literate guess, when this "situation" will be resolved?
When will the cooling be under control, and the radiation contained? Surely the technologically prowess of the nuclear power industry has this thing sorted out, so you can get us some more inside information to help us little sunflower-like no nukes peoples stop wringing our witto fingers.
The cooling is under control at this point, and the damaged and/or melted/solifified fuel rods will continue to cool down. But the problem is, there are breaches in the containment (dmaged valves or valves open to the turbine that shouldnt be, possiblly cracked pipes, cracked reactor vessel, cracked concrete contaiment, so the cooling water is leaking into the environment, carrying dsssilved fission products from the damaged or melted/solidified fuel rods into the outside environment with it. It is going to be a huge and very expensive cleanup operation, ther will certainly need to be a long-term exclusion zone around the plant for many decades, but it wil be much smaller than Chernobyl - no reactors exploded and threw their fuel high into the air.
At least the plant's seaside location will help - the groundwater gradient, and the land gradient, is toward the sea, so contamination of groundwater or surface water inland will be very limited - but the contamination of the marine food chain and commercial fishing could be disasterous. They should be mobilize every pile-driver in the country there right now and construct a watertight sheet-pile cofferdam to bedrock - offshore and onshore -around the whole plant now to contain the contaminated groundwater water.
SaboObfuscator,
What next? Will you accompany the French nuclear tool to Japan on thursday to show solidarity? After all, you guys stick together, right?
Oh, and since the cleanup is going to be so cheap, have you bought Tepco stock? It's dropped 75% since that "minor and contained" little incident at Fukushima so it's a GREAT BUY NOW, RIGHT? Oh, yeah, I forgot, you nuclear types always label externalized costs as "cheap" because you make sure they are getting offloaded from the corporations to the people. I'm sure Tepco is paying for those two military tanks with bulldozer blades just brought in because their thick steel is somewhat more effective at shielding radiation along with the NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) filters on them... Of course you don't know what it costs to rent two army tanks and you don't give a fuck either because you have no plans to pay for any of these desperate measures.
You could have your own daughter bursting with tumors from radiation damage and you'd either blame it on coal or admire all those "pretty" bumps.
Your level of negligence, considering your inside knowledge of nuclear power plants, is criminal and you should be banned from this forum.
Very soon, people like you will go silent, not from shame (you don't have any), but from fear of prosecution (everything you say here is permanent and can be used in a court of law against you).
I hope you have a good lawyer.
"Your level of negligence, considering your inside knowledge of nuclear power plants, is criminal and you should be banned from this forum.
Very soon, people like you will go silent, not from shame (you don't have any), but from fear of prosecution (everything you say here is permanent and can be used in a court of law against you).
I hope you have a good lawyer."
Seriously, grow up. I don't agree with Sabo's perspective of nuclear power at all, but this reaction is idiotic. Suing somebody for a post you don't like and asking for them to be banned.
The cooling is under control at this point? In what parallel universe exactly?
Describe for us non-nuclear technology types how the cooling is under control. As I understand the situation, reactors 5 and 6 are under control relative to cooling as their pumping systems remained in tact and they successfully brought power to those systems.
However reactors 1 through 4 had major damage to the pumping systems, and furthermore, the maintenance "pits" that have to be entered to replace the broken pumping system, electronics, etc are now filled with highly radioactive water that they don't even have a plan yet to remove.
If TEPCO has acknowledged that there has been a partial meltdown likely in at least 3 of those reactors, and that the fuel rods in each have not been consistently submerged in coolant, then how is it you assert that cooling is under control?
The last paragraph of your post actually, apparently unwittingly, does lay out in very stark terms how the nuclear power industry is far more dangerous than any other.
There're a few errors in your response too.
[There is no nucler reaction going on in the Fukushima plant, and it is impossible for damaged or melted down fuel materials to achieve criticality in a light water rector. The heat that is causung the problem is decay heat from the fission by-products.]
The reactors are still reacting, decay is how the plants generate the heat to make steam to generate electricity; the nuclear decay will continue until the uranium has decomposed. The article didn't talk about the plant's fuel turning into a critical reaction (a nuke bomb) what it was talking about was that when the melted down fuel hits the cold water a different sort of reaction will occur, and it will occur in conditions where there may be enough compression to cause a rather nasty sort of dirty bomb. It will explode, but not like the bombs over Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The rest of your argument is not relevant to the discussion of what should be done to provide nuke power. The designs of the various reactors are not the bloody issue here, nor is really about the natural disaster that has made a bad situation worse. No, it's the fact that nuclear power has a problem with the waste products. Even in your own country you've not found a place to store the muck produced for the next half million years or so. Why the hell should we even consider replacing the problems of CONG with nuclear power when the byproducts of the nuke industry are far more persistent in the environment than the dirtiest of coals?
>>It will explode, but not like the bombs over Hiroshima or Nagasaki.<<
True. It would be more of a massive "spattering" action as powerful as a chemical explosion such as that provided by dynamite, for example. There would be no oxidizing action as in a chemical explosion. It would not be a nuclear explosion. Heat a cast iron frying pan to red hot and dump a glass of water into it. The water would spatter and flash to steam. Same thing when a melted core hits groundwater.
CO2 in the atmosphere is not persistent???
It took tens of millions of years for atmosphereic CO2 to decline and life to begin to recover after the great Permian-traissic extinciton, beleived to have been a runaway global warming event.
Nearly all the useful heat produced to boil the water comes from the neutron - driven fission reaction, and a much smaller amount from the decay heat. The fuel, even when melted down, is not producing neutrons.
Thje proces is a bit similar to the way a overheated car engine will, for few minutes, get even hotter boil-over even more severely, if you turn the engine (chemical reaction)off - becasue you have also shut off the cooling water circulation too.
The CO2 event didn't render the planet uninhabitable for all life, just 95% of it. grin. There is no evidence that we're on a path to duplicate that event at all, even tho there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that we're going to do our best to try it.
I do think you're very wrong to think that the nuclear reaction that is indeed happening in the reactors are comparable to a chemical reaction. The difference is that when you shut off the car, you cut the fuel off. The fuel of that reactor/reaction is still there, and still 'burning' (albeit at a very very slow rate, one that we measure in the half life of the fire).
I call things the way I see them.
The nearby nuclear power plants have NO role in the numerous environmental problems in my region. They are not killing off the Hemlocks, Ash, Chestnuts, Elms, Red Oak or Brook trout. They are not spewing mercury and other toxic metals and global-climate catastrophe-casuing CO2 into the atmosphere, The nuclear plants are not scarring the hills with their "drilling pads" and dumping toxic chemical and radionuclide-laden brine into our rivers and groundwater. They are not making our streams run red and completely dead with mine-acid.
Indeed, in terms of ecological impacts - nuclear power is incredibly beneign. No trees or wildlife was adversely afffected - even around Chernobyl. At it's worst, it casuses a very slight increase in risk of cancer for humans - due to their abnormally long life spans. that's all.
I assume that you are not making the preposterous suggestion that nuclear power has worse environmental consequences than AGW. Considering that AGW is drectly implicated in the Russian and Pakistani weather disaters last summer, and resulting grain shortages, AGW has already kileld many thousands to millions from floods, heat exhaustion and starvation. Can any nuclear plant disaster come withing a thousandth of that?
But now have new phenomenon - just as I feared - AGW denialism in pursuit of anti- nuclear mania. Great.
Did you read the Monbiot article yet?
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
[The nearby nuclear power plants have NO role in the numerous environmental problems in my region]
They certainly do up here near where 20% of the uranium the world uses is mined. Coal is used to supply the power for the mines, I can't remember if it's used to smelt the rock the uranium is found in, but the rock still needs to be smelted. Oil is used to transport the uranium around too, which is also contributing to the problem of the environment (in your region too). The rivers downstream of the uranium mines in Saskatchewan are certainly being contaminated with the run off from the uranium mines too. Or do you think they pull it out of the ground in a pristine form that causes no pollution either? Yep, that's the sound of reality whacking you upside the head.
The final nail in the coffin of nuke power is that there's not enough uranium in the world to power our civilization, unless we figure out a way to extract every joule of energy in those rocks.
You could do a search on CD to find out what I've written about global warming and my condemnation of those wishful thinkers who think that's not a problem or worse that they don't think it's real. But thanks for trying to distract me...
Yes, I have read his article. On this point he's quite wrong. Don't try to make an argument using the false appeal to authority. Especially when the writer is not any sort of authority on the subject, and when one could argue the article was an attempt to paraphrase 'A Modest Proposal' by whatshisname...
Regarding Monbiot and other useful idiots:
http://www.counterpunch.org/busby03282011.html
Thanks for doing this. With respect, thisi s the post you should have made above. The Busby article is a great rebuttal.
drone,
You are welcome. My rant above not only reflects my human frailty, but my firm belief that words in life and death matters have consequenses that far outweigh the First Amendment rights. If a person wants to appear as an authoruy on a subject as serious as nuclear power and its' risks, they should post their credentials. They should be held to their recommendations in regard to healthy behavior in the light of the nuclear crisis.
If it was the choice of clothing or vehicle brands, I wouldn'r be getting on my high horse about this. There are people here that will suffer negative health effects from believing that the radiation contamination we will now receive in increasing amounts is benign.
It just seems logical to me that those who downplay this, though they can't be held accountable now, will be held accountable at some future date when the nuclear industry has been shunned and many people are sick.
Remember that these trolls operate in an echo chamber. The only dissenting view to their mindset is found here from people like me. The stats on nuclear dangers goes completely over their heads. I am trying to appeal to their sense of economic and personal survival since they don't appear to give a shit about anyone else's.
I don't know if I'll ever really "grow up". That's not the issue. The issue is that many children, because of the trolls, will never grow old.
Your persistent straw man argument, highlighting the sins of other energy extraction technologies is really getting tiresome and is just so transparent.
Your assertion that the ecological impacts of nuclear power generation is "incredibly benign" is worthy of being classified as one of the Big Lies of our time.
Have you read this? http://www.counterpunch.org/busby03282011.html
Here is a snippet regarding the "incredibly benign" impacts of this bloody industry
"The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. My colleague Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl.
I will briefly refer to two Chernobyl studies in the west which falsify Wade Allison’s assertions. The first is a study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University. Tondel examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years."
Was that the mass extinction that created the Siberian Steps? If so, it came from volcanic activity, and even the oceans died. Some people believe that's the only reason humans evolved - they survived several mass extinctions.
Saturnalia wrote:
"The reactors are still reacting, decay is how the plants generate the heat to make steam to generate electricity; the nuclear decay will continue until the uranium has decomposed."
A nuclear fission power reactor does not produce heat by decay. Decay processes are usually termed "radiological", while fission and fusion processes are called "nuclear". A plutonium-238 battery (once used in artificial implanted pacemakers) produces electricity by radioactive decay. The Fukushima reactor requires a chain reaction to operate; that is not occurring. But the enormous heat generated by the natural decay of the mixed fission products (millions of curies) is the present problem. And wirh a half-life of 700,000,000 years, the Uranium-235 will effectively be there forever.
John
Funny, I thought a meltdown was a form of a nuclear reaction. I was also quite sure that the reactors wouldn't want to waste any heat that came from the uranium in the rods...
What do you think is most direct path to limiting further radiation from Fukushima? do you think they're taking that path or are delaying it becuase they're trying to salvage some of the reactors/fuel? thanks
It's all here. It will be very hard. The enormous cost to human health (and many, many other living creatures) will exceed the gigantic monetary cost.
The only good thing about it is that it truly represents the death knell of nuclear power plants.
http://www.ieer.org/comments/Fukushima_IEER_press_release_2011-03-25.pdf
All good,
To answer your second question first: There is essentially no value to the reactors and other equipment. They are now a liability to TEPCO. Their actions at this time are trying to
1. Avoid a criticality accident. This is improbable but not impossible. That is why boric acid is being added to the cooling waters. This would be a PR nightmare and would make radiation issues much worse.
2. Avoid injury and avoid radiation exposures beyond legal limits for employees and contractors. Some TEPCO personnel have exceeded safe limits and may have a statistically increased chance of cancer.
3. Minimize the release and spread of radioactive contamination.
To answer your first question, I do not understand why they have not brought shielded filtration equipment on site and pumped the radioactive waste water through first a mechanical filter and second through either an ion exhange bed or an electrolytic desalting apparatus (normally used for desalination). I am not a chemist and do not know if this is practical but, if not, I do not know why.
Bill
drolltrol,
Since you majically appeared on CD after March11, 2011 and have gone to great pains to appear dispassionate and very informed about nuclear technology, I think it's about time you gave your full name and address.
I have no nuclear credentials but I post links to back up what I say. You don't.
I read once that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink.
Give us some links.
What is the useful life of a nuclear fuel rod?
What EXACTLY, is inside a nuclear fuel rod?
What EXACTLY happens to a nuclear fuel rod when it overheats and begins to decompose?
For how long?
What is the estimated total cost of manufacturing, using and storing for 1000 years ONE fuel rod.
How many fuel rods (used and in use) are there in Vermont Yankee as compared to Fukushima #2?
If you don't know, say you do not know.
Are you being paid by anyone to post here?
Is your source of income related directly or indirectly now or previously to the nuclear industry as a scientist or as a salesman or some other capacity besides janitor?
How long have you worked in the nuclear industry?
Zebra mussels are more worrisome than nuclear power plants, eh?
Zebra mussels can certainly be considered an invasive species. Perhaps, even if you aren't a lawyer, you share something with Zebra mussels.
ag,
My appearance on CD was not magic. I have been posting on CD for several years. CD has blacklisted me under my prior posting names 3 times. When they do this all of your posting history disappears. It actually is kind of funny when they do it because someone with an argumentative post such as yours appears to be fussing at no one. They have not told me why I have been blacklisted despite my attempts to contact them. I assume they don't like my views on nuclear power.
I have given links when I think they are warranted or helpful. I do not try to argue and I don't get into trashing people. I have gotten into verbal jousts with Harvey Wasserman whom I consider unprincipled in his writing. When someone purely expresses an opinion I will normally leave it alone unless they state what I believe to be a factual error.
I do not feel comfortable giving my actual name beyond Bill (which is my real name). I do not represent my employer in my postings and not all of my posts would please my employer. Likewise for giving my address. I do work in the nuclear industry and have been a radiation worker for close to 50 years. I have been with my current employer a little over 40 years and this is the major source of my income. I am an engineer by training and trade. I am not a PE, I have not needed it in my career. I have studied nuclear engineering but my degree is in materials. I am not compensated for my posts.
The useful life of a fuel rod is usually about 4.5 years but that will vary with the operating strategy of the reactor operator and his regulatory environment.
A fuel rod is a tube of a zirconium alloy welded shut on both ends. Inside the rod is a series of ceramic pellets that are held in place by springs (I think in a BWR there are springs on both ends whereas in a PWR there is only a spring on the top end-the reactors involved in the Japanese crisis are BWRs). The ceramic pellet is uranium dioxide (or a combination of uranium dioxide and plutonium dioxide if it MOX). The pellet is straight UO2 in a PWR whereas I believe there is a little gadolinium oxide added to BWR fuel pellets. There is a small shot of helium added to the rod before it is welded shut to improve heat transfer.
I don't have the time to research the fabrication costs right now although it is available. The operating costs (which includes the fuel fabrication) of a nuclear power plant is much lower than a coal or natural gas plant. Fuel is a relatively small part of the nuclear plant operating costs. (A nuclear plant is more expensive to build than a comparably sized coal or gas plant but that is not part of the operating costs). The storage costs would require too many assumptions to give a realistic number, particularly since Yucca Mountain has been canceled.
To be precise (and I like to be accurate), I would have to research the exact effects of overheating. I have a general understanding but with your adversarial positioning I would want to be more nuanced and I don't have the time right now. We will meet again before CD looses interest in the Japanese accident.
I have not compared zebra mussels to nuclear power plants. I was speaking of the town of Port Hope and the local perspective on their local contamination issues.
Bill
Well, thank you for your post. You are an engineer. I am a bit surprised that an engineer knows the MTBF of a fuel rod but is unaware of the maintenance cost of the fuel rod as waste. You could have just said "so much" per year. You knew that then I would get into cost benefit and you just don't want to go there. Separating costs of the main plant from the fuel rods is done all the time but I just wanted to concentrate on the folly of the fuel rods. I question your integrity in that area although I accept the truth of your training and experience because it tracks well with your posts. Your work in the nuclear industry compromises your objectivity. I'll bet you know all about stress problems in nuclear power plants with compression, shearing and tensile forces. I'll bet you know about how the earthquake reviews are gamed. You could tell us some great war stories but you won't becasue it would make the nuclear industry look bad. I've known some civil engineers that brag over a few drinks how they had concrete test cylinders prepared in advance for a multistory building so the inspectors wouldn't learn how the actual mixture used was inferior (but just fine unless there is a big a quake).
But maybe I'm just imagining things and you don't know that you have just been a tool for a corrupt industry.
Somehow. I doubt it. You seem too smart to be taken for a fool.
Plutonium is in the fuel rods then? Jesus fucking Christ, Bill. I thought it was just inside the reactor. All these waste rods out there flapping in the breeze and people like SaboCat claim they only need to be stored for 1,000 years. That's as disingenuous as a person can get.
You haven't answered some key questions. When the fuel rods decompose, what is the element release sequence. We all know about cesium-137 and I-131. What ELSE happens? What about I-129 (the 15.6 million year half life monstrocity)?
When does the plutonium in the rods start to leak radiation? You know this.
So you made a career and put your kids through school and have a nice house and some respect in the community. We all want that. It's nice. But you participated in an industry that kills life by destroying DNA and RNA from Whales to viruses.
I guess it's too late for you to admit any of this. Too bad for all of us.
I just finished a graven image to your technological literacy, and have lit some incense, and one candle.
Good thing the nuclear power industry has all of its ducks in a row technologically quacking (speaking).
Also, that you are on error patrol here in this forum, regarding the situation at the, count them, 4 out of control nuclear reactors, gives me reassurance.
Thank you SaboCat for your brave defense of the indefensible.
It is the industry? Or are you forgetting the massive once in thousands of years scale tsunami that casued this accident? ar you also forgetting all the other nuclear plants, including Fukushima #2 next door, that survived the massive earthquake just fine. But I agree, placing safety-critical equipment so close to sea level on the east coast of Northern Japan was pretty stupid. It certainly is an indictment on the site selection of some nuclear plants, but is it an indictment of an entire industry that is important for averting climate catastrophe? Hell no.
Have you read the Monbiot article yet?
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
When I was in high school there was the Anchorage Easter vacation (Good Friday) quake and tsunamis (03-28-64) - another of those '1000 year' events. Tthere's actually been quite a few '1000 year' and '100 year' events just in my lifetime - and I'm not that old. People tend to forget bad things over a 25-year period. Just human nature.
The other problem is Murphy's Law - the theory is sound.
There are some engineers that are convinced that Murphy was an unbridled optimist (probably including about now some Japanese nuclear engineers).
Bill
Yes SaboCat, THE INDUSTRY.
THE INDUSTRY, built the damn plant didn't they? The industry doesn't really have a clue how to get this under control now do they?
How pathetic, that YOU and the INDUSTRY, now point to the the natural disaster as something that the INDUSTRY wasn't absolutely responsible to account for.
Is it not true, that the INDUSTRY utilizes materials for profit that stay radioactive for hundreds of thousands, and even millions of years? I mean, the INDUSTRY of technological whizzes choose the way water is to be boiled do they not?
Has the INDUSTRY come up with a safe way to store the spent fuel for thousands of years yet? Why is this INDUSTRY so bloody irresponsible to this and hundreds of future generations?
I suppose some undreamed of natural cataclysm that is sure to occur shall according to your logic, preemptively absolve the INDUSTRY of all responsibility.
How despicably convenient.
Doesn't the US govt run these graphite core or type N reactors to create weapons grade plutonium as well?
DF,
None of the plutonium production reactors are still in service. The US government considers itself to have excess weapons grade plutonium.
Bill
What indicates that a meltdown is not in progress?
Certainly Chernobyl is a different kind of reactor. That in no way contradicts anything in this article. At the same time, no nuclear reactors are "completely different" than any others. Actually, even a coal-fired reactor has quite a bit in common with a nuclear reactor, though not the inherent instability of a potential meltdown. The question--a question, rather--is whether the differences are relevant, and how so.
Well, what different seems relevant to the issue of meltdown or potential meltdown? Certainly they are possible in either style of plant.
To speak loosely of Soviet work with instabilities "that nobody else used or would use" is highly misleading. One could read this and conclude that the US did not also build plants with instabilities that no one else would use, along with most to all work being done by the lowest bidder.
The kind of chauvinism one hears in France, where engineers and physicists speak of the slapdash folly of the US system, is an interesting counterpoint to the chauvinism of American engineers, who are just as prone to suppose that the mammoth bureaucracies that run US plants are not subject to inefficiencies of bureaucracies nor the disorientations of market dynamics and their related externalities.
Or maybe you are wrong. I have done a treatise on Chernobyl and this is a different situation entirely and only a long string of improper procedures and two voltage spikes during a SCAM could have caused it - the odds against it were astronomical.
But it is VERY possible for a damaged GEN I BWR to go critical and, in fact, Fukushima continues to flash radiation that can come from no other source than re-criticality. What do YOU think happens when fuel rods which are kept apart for a reason suddenly come together? If they just stop reacting, then Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukushima aren't happening.
http://enenews.com/alert-iaea-says-fukushima-reactors-may-have-achieved-re-criticality-increased-radiation-releases-possible
For an explanation of the difference between decay heat and criticality, refer to my posts at Hawaii Daily News - or pick up a text book.
We had the choice of safe nuclear power with Thorium fuel - but our military wanted Plutonium for weapons - so that is why we developed - and sold, all over the world, GEN I BW reactors. It looks like a bonehead move with 20-20 hindsight.
My co-author and friend, Pat Takahashi has the Thorium information on his blog. http://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/
My blog mostly rants about stupidity and injustice. http://drtom.posterous.com/
Thanks for checking in Doc,
But Sabo will not acknowledge anything anyone says, writes or cites here. Sabo will keep claiming nukes are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY and SAFER THAN ANY OTHER ENERGY SOURCE. Who cares if respected scientists are reporting on the likelihood of recriticality? Sabo has declared it impossible.
Sabo will also never acknowledge conservation and demand reduction. We must have more, more, more: any other basis for argument is ruled illegitimate by Sabo.
Sabo also never mentions nor acknowledges the full-cycle impact of nukes: mining, tailings, transportation, bombs, war, terrorism, waste, storage, not to mention colonialism, despoilation, theft, militarization, and the centralization of power and social control, etc. Sabo focuses solely on one snapshot aspect: a flawed assertion of the power of nukes to avert climate catastrophe while directly killing and poisoning fewer people than any other feasible energy source.
Sabo also belittles the human capacity to develop renewables, while at the same time Sabo ignores the plain fact that nuclear fuel is itself a finite non-renewable energy source.
In short, Sabo is not credible.
Thanks for your article.
A perspective on the topic, that I completely agree with from a certifiable leftist, is here:
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
According to Busby, Monbiot isn't what he appears to be when it comes to nukes:
"Most recently we have seen George Monbiot, who I know, and who also knows nothing about radiation and health, writing in The Guardian how this accident has actually changed his mind about nuclear power (can this be his Kierkegaard moment? Has he cracked? ) since he now understands (and reproduces a criminally misleading graphic to back up his new understanding) that radiation is actually OK and we shoudn’t worry about it. George does at least know better, or has been told better, since he asked me a few years ago to explain why internal and external radiation exposure cannot be considered to have the same health outcomes. He ignored what I said and wrote for him (with references) and promptly came out in favour of nuclear energy in his next article."
http://www.counterpunch.org/busby03282011.html
SaboCat - this article is a week old and more information continues to develop about the extent of the problem. I am curious if Monibot still feels the same.
Also, I am tired of the false choice of more fossil fuels or nuclear. Just because our politicians are corporate shills does not mean we should accept their arguements and framing on the energy debate. There are other options. Are you familiar with the work of Makhijani regarding carbon free-nuclear free. Any thoughts?
www.ieer.org/carbonfree
Just saying we could do nuclear better and safer completely disregards the laws of nature - both Mother Nature and human nature. Different reactor types have only produced different types of catastrophies when the impossible occurs. All the research and money could be put to so much better use.
"The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution."
I don't think 10 kilotons would be anywhere near sufficient. I think a 10 megaton or more hydrogen device detonated in the air above the complex would be required to completely vaporize all of it. That's probably still a bad solution. There are no good solutions. Will we learn from this and close all nuclear plants and stop building new ones? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha............
While this is going on, still the highest priority of the US government is to make war, and more war, on the other side of the planet. We have, or rather, we had, massive resources, and we have wasted them on war. We still, to this minute, are spending on destruction what should be spent on safe and sustainable energy for the life of our society. We are doomed, it seems, because we decided to have a dysfunctional democracy. As people lay dying of their cancers, they should remember how they decided to have dysfunctional democracy.
GE Syndrome
The reason so many trolls can get away with their BS is because it may take 10 to 15 years before we see the results of this catastrophe - and then again, it might get far worse in the near future, especially if anything happens in the spent fuel pools. But even then, most of the damage is far in the future - I probably don't have to worry, at my age (I do, anyway) but most people don't want to die that way - especially if you've ever seen the results of radiation exposure. Cesium is really ugly, and strontium is extremely painful. Go visit someone who is dealing with the consequences before you decide that 'experts' are telling you 'there is no problem, especially for us in the US' - they are lying through their greedy little teeth.
(Someone I know personally just died recently from bone cancer - 2nd cancer - if you survive the first cancer onslaught you will not want to face the second one, which is almost inevitable.)