Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

shedweller

And i know that the place isn't going to turn into an A bomb but it has turned into something almost as ugly. You cannot deny that. The place is messed up for a very long time. Was nuclear worth it in this case? Was nuclear safe for an earthquake prone location? Is Fukushima a safe place to be right now? Would you bring up your children there? Would you live there and conceive them, rear them and live there?

I don't mean to be confrontational and i apologise if you feel like i'm attacking you. Thats not my intention. But i do feel nuclear is not safe or at least fully safe. Nothing is i suppose but radiation doesn't mess about and there is very little we can do to protect ourselves against it. At least with particulates in the air we can filter them out. Try that with radioactive particles!

shadowninty

No I didn't think you were attacking me, no worries

I do understand the fear of radiation - it can't be seen and is so difficult to block. A lot of the fear is probably cold war era which is why young people like my don't fear it that much.
I doubt the place is going to be that messed up. They may put up an exclusion zone but its not a Chernobyl Raquel situation where inner bits of the reactor were strewn out.

Do i think it is worth it? Yes, I do. There ate millions of Asthmatics in this world due to pollution from fossil fuels.
Tens of Thousands of square kilometers of land has been destroyed by and oil. The same for the sea.
Look, I'm fairly liberal and pro-Green but I'm a realist. Its not plausible to ever power the worlds ever increasing power consumption with renewables. It is plausible with nuclear. What with climate change and the massive pollution in the world today, Nuclear IS the safe option, it IS worth the risk.

Statistician

And i know that the place isn't going to turn into an A bomb but it has turned into something almost as ugly.

Apparently we have a 'melt through' scenario, where the fuel is melting down through the confinements. What happens if this reaches the water table? Do we get a huge steam explosion like they said would happen at Chernobyl?

If there was a huge steam explosion, then fuel would be ejected over a wide area, like a dirty bomb. I wonder if this scenario is worse than an A bomb?
Remember, there is a lot of fuel in this site, so it might only need one of these reactors' fuel to reach the water table.

Does anyone know if this situation is still a possibility?

shedweller

Wasn't fuel already strewn around when the gas exploded? In any case, that can be reasonably easily cleaned up. It's the water table is the worry.

Solnskaya

shadowninty wrote: »

No I didn't think you were attacking me, no worries

I do understand the fear of radiation - it can't be seen and is so difficult to block. A lot of the fear is probably cold war era which is why young people like my don't fear it that much.
I doubt the place is going to be that messed up. They may put up an exclusion zone but its not a Chernobyl Raquel situation where inner bits of the reactor were strewn out.

Do i think it is worth it? Yes, I do. There ate millions of Asthmatics in this world due to pollution from fossil fuels.
Tens of Thousands of square kilometers of land has been destroyed by and oil. The same for the sea.
Look, I'm fairly liberal and pro-Green but I'm a realist. Its not plausible to ever power the worlds ever increasing power consumption with renewables. It is plausible with nuclear. What with climate change and the massive pollution in the world today, Nuclear IS the safe option, it IS worth the risk.

This, exactly, and what you wrote after it Shadow, makes me think you are dreadfully naive, (and to me you come across in your earlier posts as being very naive indeed). The whole downplaying of the threat of radiation has been a key strategy in the aftermath of Chernobyl-"look, it's not so bad, very few have died, nature is returning to normal"--utter BS. Also, you are worried about Fukushima being ruined, I'm not, I'm worried about the hundreds of thousands globally that will quietly contract cancer, uncounted by any statistician, linked by no-one to either Chernobyl nor Fukushima, and ignored by the powers that be. Mainly, I'm worrried about my kids, and theirs if they have them. And before you tell me they are going to be grand, and all this is just a minor incident with no long term effects, spare me, because I am an old, hardbitten cynic.

shadowninty

Solnskaya wrote: »

This, exactly, and what you wrote after it Shadow, makes me think you are dreadfully naive, (and to me you come across in your earlier posts as being very naive indeed). The whole downplaying of the threat of radiation has been a key strategy in the aftermath of Chernobyl-"look, it's not so bad, very few have died, nature is returning to normal"--utter BS. Also, you are worried about Fukushima being ruined, I'm not, I'm worried about the hundreds of thousands globally that will quietly contract cancer, uncounted by any statistician, linked by no-one to either Chernobyl nor Fukushima, and ignored by the powers that be. Mainly, I'm worrried about my kids, and theirs if they have them. And before you tell me they are going to be grand, and all this is just a minor incident with no long term effects, spare me, because I am an old, hardbitten cynic.

Ok then, I wont say anything

shadowninty

shedweller wrote: »

Wasn't fuel already strewn around when the gas exploded? In any case, that can be reasonably easily cleaned up. It's the water table is the worry.

I would agree there, I am also a bit worried about the sea, but I guess on quantities of scale it will be ok? I'm not sure what happens if someone is so unlucky to get a bit of fish with some deadly isotope.

Solnskaya

shadowninty wrote: »

Ok then, I wont say anything

say whatever you want, just don't accept all of the garbage that is spouted about how radiation is fun, sure itt'll be grand, etc. If a wealthy, hypertechnical nation like Japan has a problem theat it admits it is almost powerless to contain, start worrying, ffs.

shadowninty

Solnskaya wrote: »

say whatever you want, just don't accept all of the garbage that is spouted about how radiation is fun, sure itt'll be grand, etc. If a wealthy, hypertechnical nation like Japan has a problem theat it admits it is almost powerless to contain, start worrying, ffs.

Look, I understand radiation is dangerous. It causes cell mutation, therefore cancer, and other worrying things.
I do worry about the radiation dose the workers may be receiving (although the meters are messed up or something? wtf?), but the body should be able to deal with anything the people outside the exclusion zone are receiving.
I also worry about the long term damage to the workers of the stress - one poor man (in his fifties?) has died already

shedweller

shadowninty wrote: »

I also worry about the long term damage to the workers of the stress - one poor man (in his fifties?) has died already

Thats true, the workers are sure to have problems. The entire exclusion zone is going to have problems for the forseeable future.

Solnskaya

yes, and what about all the things and stuff the people have had to abandon. I'm sure they can come back later and collect them. I do hope all the bunnie rabbits in the zone are ok. They govt spokesman for the nice tepco people said that bunnie rabbits are able to do just fine after a small dose of radiation. And i'm sure all the food will be fine, they said it would be.

this thread is so full of vacuous, uninformed crap I thought I might add a little more.

take everything

Statistician wrote: »

Apparently we have a 'melt through' scenario, where the fuel is melting down through the confinements. What happens if this reaches the water table? Do we get a huge steam explosion like they said would happen at Chernobyl?

I'd be shocked if a melt through reaching the water table goes unreported.

AskMyChocolate

Solnskaya wrote: »

Gotta laugh. In the same breath as an admission that supporting the theory that an early meltdown had not occurred was wrong, you now state that the release of radiation is not life threatening. Any slight(ie massive) chance you may be hopelessly, totally wrong about this as well?

shadowninty wrote: »

Overheal does not work in Fukumshima, nor is he someone with involvement in the situation.
He can only go by what info he has and his understanding of that info means. And that goes for all of us.
I don't find your gleeful tone at him being wrong nice either, I could swear there are people in this forum who want the place to break the laws physics and turn into an A-bomb.

We can only hope that the workers in the plant will not suffer long term consequences, and the same for the environment.

In all fairness Solnskaya, there have been a number of pro-nuclear drumbangers in this thread, who have looked smugly and condescendingly down on anyone who didn't share their view; calling them tinfoil hat merchants, scaremongers etc.. but Overheal has never been one of them.


Yes, he is pro-nuclear. Yes, he is pro-establishment. But he has been an excellent contributor to this thread, and has delivered information, which a number of us are glad of, in as even-handed and informative way as is possible.

I think it is unfair of you to try to paint him as a TEPCO lackey.

Right from the start of this thread, for worried ignorant Joe Soaps like me, himself and Rob A. Bank have posted useful links, without lowering themselves to childish behaviour, regardless of their viewpoint. They have interpreted things differently, but have helped a lot of people who don't know enough, to see both sides of the story.

To accuse either of being from Fox News or Worldwide Socialist Weekly to me seems patently unjust. Just my opinion.

Choco

AskMyChocolate

shadowninty wrote: »

No I didn't think you were attacking me, no worries

I do understand the fear of radiation - it can't be seen and is so difficult to block. A lot of the fear is probably cold war era which is why young people like my don't fear it that much.
I doubt the place is going to be that messed up. They may put up an exclusion zone but its not a Chernobyl Raquel situation where inner bits of the reactor were strewn out.

Do i think it is worth it? Yes, I do. There ate millions of Asthmatics in this world due to pollution from fossil fuels.
Tens of Thousands of square kilometers of land has been destroyed by and oil. The same for the sea.
Look, I'm fairly liberal and pro-Green but I'm a realist. Its not plausible to ever power the worlds ever increasing power consumption with renewables. It is plausible with nuclear. What with climate change and the massive pollution in the world today, Nuclear IS the safe option, it IS worth the risk.

Why do you doubt the possibility that the place isn't going to be messed up? Is that based on any logical thinking, or just what you want to believe, because an older boy (profiteering media) told you so?

We have no idea yet whether Fukushima is going to be more or less damaging than Chernobyl. Information is still incredibly sketchy, and we have no idea of what long-term damage may or may not be caused. We are still trying to evaluate the damage of Chernobyl. What can be ascribed to what. We simply don't know yet, and that was twenty five years ago.

Anyone who believes that they know what the fallout (sorry for the word) from Fukushima will be, is either ignorant, arrogant, or just a tosser.

We simply don't know yet. It may take decades or centuries of analytical science before we know whether or not we should have been playing with things that we don't fully understand.

That was Einstein's position. He had a scrap of humility and just "felt" that God doesn't play dice. Who knows whether he was right or wrong?

shadowninty

What I am saying is that in Chernobyl bits of the inside of a reactor were spewed put. There has been radiation leaks (theres a lot of radioactive material onsite) but there hasnt been huge quantities (any?) of radioactive material thrown far outside the compound.
There has been contaminated water, and lots of it, which is a bigger worry for me.

Statistician

There has been radiation leaks (theres a lot of radioactive material onsite) but there hasnt been huge quantities (any?) of radioactive material thrown far outside the compound.

I thought they found some fuel from unit 4 fuel pool a km away? I'm sure I read a report on this sometime over the last 3 months.

shadowninty

Statistician wrote: »

I thought they found some fuel from unit 4 fuel pool a km away? I'm sure I read a report on this sometime over the last 3 months.

Yeah there was something about some fuel almost a kilometer away after one of the hydrogen explosions IIRC.

Solair

Well, it's a different setup to Chernobyl but, it doesn't mean it's any less likely to be environmentally disastrous.

Chernobyl was a reactor explosion - The reactor went out of control during an experiment to test the shut-down cooling mechanism. It's a 1950s design called RBMK which was basically an attempt by the Soviets to re-use a military reactor design, the main purpose of which was to produce plutonium for weapons, as a nuclear power reactor.

As a design, it has a lot of shortcomings. The reactor is enormous by any standards, it's graphite moderated, but water cooled, and if the water boils too rapidly you can get steam pockets (voids) in the reactor core which allow the reaction to speed up (light water also partially moderates the reaction).

It also had, at that stage, no containment structures and the reactor itself was capped by a large concrete plug.

So, basically what happened at Chernobyl was they were testing out the emergency cooling system, which was supposed to be able to use the spinning generators to start the pumps giving the diesel generators enough time to kick-in.

The experiment didn't go according to plan and the operators did not get the correct information about what was actually happening in the core due largely to inadequate and obsolete instrumentation and very slow computer systems.

The reactor boiled, loads of voids were created, so the reaction got even faster. Then enormous steam pressure built up, blew the top off the reactor spewing stuff everywhere. After that, the reactor core itself caught fire (it's graphite) sending more radioactive dust high up into the atmosphere.

Fukushima has a few differences:

The entire multi-reactor site lost cooling power, and was also probably severely damaged by the quake's shaking the buildings.

The reactors were shut down, but not for very long, so they overheated without cooling.

This appears to, according to TEPCO's most recent information, caused meltdowns i.e. the fuel assemblies collapsed to the bottom of the reactors and a melt-through in one case where the fuel has burnt a hole through the bottom of the reactor. Due to the rather odd design of this type of reactor, the control rods enter through the BOTTOM of the vessel, so it's quite possible the graphite plugs that seal them have melted and it's now resembling an upside down pepper canister with reactor core material seeping out into the containment below it.

TEPCO have pumped vast amounts of water through these failed reactors, which must have mostly run back into the sea, evaporated or run into groundwater/local rivers so that is also a huge difference in the scenario. It's hard to know whether this will have a better or far worse outcome as it may have washed a hell of a lot of contaminated water straight into the environment.

Then, you've got the other side of it which is that there were quite clearly explosions and continuous boiling off of steam in the fuel storage pools. That may have scattered debris all over the place in a very similar way to Chernobyl as these pools have no containment whatsoever other than a building which is not too different from your local hardware store roof.

You've got the complication that Fukushima was using MOX in at least one reactor. This contains plutonium, which is generally regarded as far more risky than uranium. Chernobyl was designed to use natural uranium to avoid processing complications and costs. So, it would have been a far more straight forward type of fuel being used.

Finally, the Soviets were able to get the situation under control quite quickly by throwing the entire resources of the USSR's formidable military and the entire resources of the state at it.

Japan's a democracy, and it's not anything like as well equipped as the USSR was in the 1980s so it had neither the ability to compel people to go in and do something, nor does it have the vast manpower and technical resources that the soviets had in that era.

Then, to make matters worse, Chernobyl's located in a relatively low density population area. Fukushima is only over a hundred miles from Tokyo, one of the largest population centres on the planet.

So, all in all I would not be too confident that Fukushima won't be an absolute health and environmental catastrophe on a scale we have not seen before.

If we are going to continue to use nuclear power, we really have to design these facilities / upgrade them so that they are fundamentally fail-safe. That's clearly not the case with either of these designs of reactor, or possibly any design of reactor used in a seismic and tsunami zone.

All I know is that I'd be a little concerned about any trips to Japan and I wouldn't be overly keen to swim/surf on the US or Canadian West Coast, until I know exactly what's going on! I'd also give any Pacific fish e.g. canned tuna etc, a miss for a while.

We simply do not have the facts about this accident yet, and until we have them all in the public domain, I think it's quite reasonable to take simple precautions to avoid unnecessary exposure to anything that did come out of it.

(Sorry for the long post, it's a complicated topic!)

gbee

Solnskaya wrote: »

And i'm sure all the food will be fine, they said it would be.

Of course it will, sure haven't they already raised the 'safe' level of contamination from 200μSv to 200Sv ~ no bother at all.

Solnskaya

Just to focus minds, one small issue is 66,000 cubic meters of highly contaminated water currently sitting in open ditches beside the reactors, that excludes the further vast quantities in evap ponds and within the basement. Any idea what 66,000 cubic meters of water looks like or just what a massive problem that alone presents? I have had to deal with spillages of 2 cubic meters of non-hazardous but environmentally negative liquids in the course of work, and 2 cubic meters is a pain in the hole, 66,000-140,000 cubic meters is a logistical and environmental nightmare. That does not include the further incalculable millions of gallons that were dropped, pumped and sprayed onto the reactors and simply leached back to the ocean, laden with isotopes and by-products so toxic that exposure to them is almost a guarantee of death.

Question if I may. Been watching the tepco webcam, is that smoke fog or vapour floating about does anyone know?
Thanks.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/f1-np/camera/

Solnskaya

Jake1 wrote: »

Question if I may. Been watching the tepco webcam, is that smoke fog or vapour floating about does anyone know?
Thanks.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/f1-np/camera/

It's just "steam" being released, bullsh1t always releases steam if you pile it up too thick.

Solnskaya

Solnskaya wrote: »

It's just "steam" being released, bullsh1t always releases steam if you pile it up too thick.

hmm, right, thanks for that ..

el diablo

Jake1 wrote: »

Question if I may. Been watching the tepco webcam, is that smoke fog or vapour floating about does anyone know?
Thanks.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/f1-np/camera/

Not sure. Just seen a dog or a fox crossing the screen. Anyone else see it?

Run_to_da_hills

el diablo wrote: »

Not sure. Just seen a dog or a fox crossing the screen. Anyone else see it?

Did it have ears? :eek:

Run_to_da_hills

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Did it have ears? :eek:

didnt see it, sorry

el diablo

Just imagine the amount of radiation it's been exposed to. :eek: it might show up again if you watch the feed for a bit.

Solair

Solnskaya wrote: »

It's just "steam" being released, bullsh1t always releases steam if you pile it up too thick.

More than likely just radioactive steam from the cooling ponds or one or other of the reactors.

Anything vapourising / smoking from that plant is almost definitely radioactive.

Solair

Solair wrote: »

More than likely just radioactive steam from the cooling ponds or one or other of the reactors.

Anything vapourising / smoking from that plant is almost definitely radioactive.

Thanks Solair, that was more along the lines I was looking for

Solair

The wildlife running around are Tanuki (狸) or Japanese Raccoon-Dogs

Pic: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Tanuki01_960.jpg/220px-Tanuki01_960.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Raccoon_Dog

Sadly, they'll be pretty heavily exposed to radiation if they're roaming that TEPCO facility's campus.

They occasionally pick up the odd radioactive wild boar in Germany from Chernobyl!!

http://news.discovery.com/animals/radioactive-wild-boars-increase-in-number.html

The big issue from Fukushima is likely to be the long-term contamination of fisheries.
Many Pacific fish migrate through waters that are likely to have been pretty seriously contaminated by this catastrophe.

Check this blog out for a bit of information on Pacific Salmon :

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2011/03/salmon-migration-routes-and-japans.html

The big problem is that various isotopes will get into the food chain e.g. by being absorbed by plankton. That concentrates it up, then it's consumed by small fish, that concentrates it some more, then it's consumed by bigger fish, increasing the concentration even more and eventually a large fish like a Tuna comes along and eats prey and you've super-concentrated amounts of some radioactive isotope in the tuna's muscles.
(The same applies to toxic non-radioactive heavy meal pollution e.g. mercury)

Then someone eats the tuna and you've problems...

We could have problems with Pacific fisheries for >30 years as a result of this.

Japanese cuisine is largely fish-based so this is a huge issue for them.