Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

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Mr. Oragahn
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Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:07 am

Weird thing that we don't have one about this ongoing and ever worsening chain of fail.
Radiation levels are peaking, the first three reactors are leaking, and there's lots of nasty products in there.
There are signs of yellow rain (just like around Chernobyl) and there are alarming levels of radioactivity picked in the environment, about 40 km away. Meanwhile, tap water is unsafe for infants to drink. Good news keep coming in.
If that wasn't enough, an objective analysis of the situation and comparison to Chernobyl will bring the following facts to the forefront: there's almost ten times more nuclear fuel at Fukushima, and it's been going on for quite some time -15 days- and will certainly not end tomorrow. Chernobyl lasted like eleven days or less.

Layman's summary of what went wrong.

I'll cut you some slack on the irony of a power plant going down because of a power shortage.
What has been whispered is that TEPCO was considerably cutting corners in order to turn more profit from that little activity of theirs, at the detriment of certain security measures.

PS: Perhaps a tsunami thread would be needed, but the good thing with the tsunami is that once it's done, it's done.

Bonus for Eastern US citizens. ;)

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by 2046 » Sat Apr 02, 2011 2:47 pm

The main lesson here is that only having active cooling is silly, as if that wasn't obvious.

In any critical system (or more specifically in this case, any system with critical failure modes), not having passive failsafes or otherwise basic-mechanical failsafes is just poor design.

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by Trinoya » Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:26 am

*nod* This seems more like a case of people determining: "Well, this reactor is old, it's due to be shut down, and it'd be very expensive to add in new safety measures that much of the world has standardized."

2 weeks. 2 weeks and the plant would have been shut down. The lesson is it is never too late to install new safety features.


That said: I'm more upset over the fallout (no pun intended) on the nuclear industry as a whole. I have friends who were considering buying radiation suits and all I could do was facepalm. The fact of the matter is: Unprecedented disaster + Stupidity in regards to how you build your nuclear plants = problem...

Nothing that can be done about it now, just got to clean it up the hard way. While nuclear programs have been set back 10,000 some odd years politically... hopefully some good will still come out of it and we may learn new methods to clean it up.

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:02 pm

Trinoya wrote:*nod* This seems more like a case of people determining: "Well, this reactor is old, it's due to be shut down, and it'd be very expensive to add in new safety measures that much of the world has standardized."

2 weeks. 2 weeks and the plant would have been shut down. The lesson is it is never too late to install new safety features.


That said: I'm more upset over the fallout (no pun intended) on the nuclear industry as a whole. I have friends who were considering buying radiation suits and all I could do was facepalm. The fact of the matter is: Unprecedented disaster + Stupidity in regards to how you build your nuclear plants = problem...

Nothing that can be done about it now, just got to clean it up the hard way. While nuclear programs have been set back 10,000 some odd years politically... hopefully some good will still come out of it and we may learn new methods to clean it up.
Looking for a Japanese Miracle much? :)

Well if you want some stupidity, look at the "Bonus" link in my post, and dare tell me that's not some *huge* stupidity, a terrible disaster in the waiting.
The nuclear industry is already heavily lambasted today for the risks it represents, and this surely doesn't help.
But it can certainly boost the oil industry, which would certainly please those who make lots of money solely speculating on the prices of oil. I didn't check the prices for oil and the evolution on the market, but I wouldn't surprised if there had been a positive bump following Fukushima.

There's also the whole problem that a country alone, by going nuclear even with one single planet, can actually threaten a whole quarter of a planet (Chernobyl had dramatic repercussions for a good number of people around Europe and beyond).
I recently learned that the french government recently ran a survey of its own nuclear plant capacity for a report which immediately went top secret.
France is one of the leading countries which have bet on producing most of their energy with nuclear fuel. France is going through a whole process of updating its plants, so it's said.

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by User1601 » Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:34 am

2046 wrote:The main lesson here is that only having active cooling is silly, as if that wasn't obvious.

In any critical system (or more specifically in this case, any system with critical failure modes), not having passive failsafes or otherwise basic-mechanical failsafes is just poor design.
"Poor design" is the motto of any public-sector agency, since there's no accountability to the cashflow-- as well as politics running the show, rather than the bottom line when it comes to risk-management.

One problem with Japanese plants, is that Japan went right from horse-power to diesel-power, and so Japan bypassed the steam-era; otherwise if they had this knowledge, they'd know to simply let the steam-turbines keep on turning, and use the electricity to run the cooling-pumps, even though the reactor itself was off-line; this would convert the reactor's excess thermal energy to electricity, while cooling it at the same time.

I don't know if this could be called "passive cooling," however it would be far more passive than requiring outside energy via electricity-- which is rather silly, when you've already got too much thermal energy-- and all the heat-sinking you need, right there in the ocean if needed via an underwater radiator-system. As long as the reactor needed was hot, the cooler would run.

Instead, the turbines stopped when they took the reactor offline-- which is like fighting a fire by cutting the fire-hose, since the turbines OPERATE by cooling the reactor!

It seems a rather obvious desiign-flaw-- like the World Trade Center being able to withstand a plane-impact, but not if the plane had FUEL in it! (Thank government again).

The other problem, likewise, is the amount of fuel in the reactor at any one time, when it would be far safer to use only as small an amount as possible, and simply robotically truck it into the reactor via continuous-feed system; then once it went offline, there simply wouldn't be enough fuel in the reactor to do any damage, even if it went critical.

Then as it got depleted, you just use it in another reactor with more concentrated amounts of depleted material, to increase the emissinon-levels and shorten the half-life; then finally you do this with the nuclear waste around the new material, to further deplete the waste, until it become completely inert-- then you sell the fully depleted material.

This is also the best way to deal with nuclear waste: recycle it!

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Apr 11, 2011 6:20 pm

I've put my hands on detailed documents about what's been going on, how Areva hid information about the real magnitude of the disaster on some of the reactors. I'll try to find a way to get them online. There's also a long history of misconduct by Tepco over decades regarding those plants.
It's also important to notice that other plants were also hit by the tsunami and some of them presented leaks. Only time will tell if proper information will surface at all. Surely, officials are acting as to minimize the literal slap in the face that Japan took by being an example of technological failure, when the country is boasted as being so high tech on all fronts. The incompetence, be it about the lack of safety measures, proper water pumps and clean water reserves, or the absolute retarded way the authorities dealt with the problem at a slow ass pace, which would surely let the problem get worse, is almost criminal.
Now, if news weren't bad enough, we know that the particles have been flying around the northern hemisphere quite a lot, and the US have been peppered joyfully:
Government Under Fire as Radiation Is Found in Milk, Rain wrote: "We have accelerated our precipitation and drinking water sampling and expect to have results in the coming days," EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said in a statement.

The EPA’s tardy response to widespread alarm about radiation in rain and the air has been sharply criticized by Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"It’s troubling that the EPA has to date not provided any precipitation data of its own, while measurements that have been made by states and others across the country are indicating somewhat surprising elevations of iodine-131,” Hirsch said Friday.

A rooftop water monitoring program managed by UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during torrential downpours a week ago.

As shown in the graph below, published by UC Berkeley, Iodine-131 peaked at 20.1 becquerels per liter, a measure of radioactivity, on the roof of Etcheverry Hall during heavy rains a week ago. The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 0.111 becquerels per liter.

...

The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as maximum contaminant levels, or MCL, by as much as 181 times. However, the material has a half-life of eight days, meaning it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment. Drinking water safety standards are based on prolonged exposures.

"Now, it isn't drinking water, and the MCL can be averaged for a period of up to a year," Hirsch said. "But it is striking that rainwater could be measured in Berkeley with radioiodine that is that far above the level you would generally be permitted to drink."

The material, which is one of the most toxic radioactive elements spewed when nuclear power plants melt down, is being ingested by cows, which are passing it through into their milk.

The UC Berkeley researchers also discovered trace levels of iodine-131 and other radioactive materials believed to have originated in Japan in commercially available milk and in a local stream.

Low levels of ioidine-131 were detected by state officials this week in milk harvested from San Luis Obispo. Milk from that region is tested frequently for radioactive material because its located near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

“It’s absolutely no public health risk,” California Department of Public Health spokesman Mike Sicilia said.
Safe?
Try again!
Physicians for Social Responsibility Deeply Concerned About Reports of Increased Radioactivity in Food Supply wrote: Washington, DC - March 23, 2011 – Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) expressed concern over recent reports that radioactivity from the ongoing Fukushima accident is present in the Japanese food supply. While all food contains radionuclides, whether from natural sources, nuclear testing or otherwise, the increased levels found in Japanese spinach and milk pose health risks to the population. PSR also expressed alarm over the level of misinformation circulating in press reports about the degree to which radiation exposure can be considered “safe.”

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”

“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The Japanese government should ban the sale of foods that contain radioactivity levels above pre-disaster levels and continue to monitor food and water broadly in the area. In addition, the FDA and EPA must enforce existing regulations and guidelines that address radionuclide content in our food supply here at home.”

As the crisis in Japan goes on, there are an increasing number of sources reporting that 100 milliSieverts (mSv) is the lowest dose at which a person is at risk for cancer. Established research disproves this claim. A dose of 100 mSv creates a one in 100 risk of getting cancer, buta dose of 10 mSv still gives a one in 1,000 chance of getting cancer, and a dose of 1 mSv gives a one in 10,000 risk.

Even if the risk of getting cancer for one individual from a given level of food contamination is low, if thousands or millions of people are exposed, then some of those people will get cancer.

Recent reports indicate the Japanese disaster has released more iodine-131 than cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid, especially of children, with a half-life of over 8 days compared to cesium-137, which has a half-life of just over 30 years. Regardless of the shorter half-life, doses of iodine-131 are extremely dangerous, especially to pregnant women and children, and can lead to incidents of cancer, hypothyroidism, mental retardation and thyroid deficiency, among other conditions.

“Children are much more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and stand a much greater chance of developing cancer than adults,” said Dr. Andrew Kanter, president-elect of PSR’s Board. “So it is particularly dangerous when they consume radioactive food or water.”

All food contains some radioactivity as a result of natural sources, but also from prior above-ground nuclear testing, the Chernobyl accident, and releases from nuclear reactors and from weapons facilities. The factors that will affect the radioactivityin food after the Fukushima accident are complicated. These include the radionuclides that the nuclear reactor emits, weather patterns that control the wind direction and where the radionuclides are deposited, characteristics of the soil (e.g., clays bind nuclides, sand does not) and the nature of the food(leafy plants like spinach are more likely to be contaminated than other plants like rice that have husks, etc.).However, radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.

“Reports indicate that the total radioactive releases from the Fukushima reactor have been relatively small so far. If this is the case, then the health effects to the overall population will be correspondingly small,” said Ira Helfand, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But it is not true to say that it is "safe" to release this much radiation; some people will get cancer and die as a result.”
Health risks of the releases of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors: Are they a concern for residents of the United States?

Now the quantities are small? Certainly not in the concerned regions of Japan (remember, Tokyoite tap water being unfit to drink for kids).
The question is just how many mSv (milli Sieverts) a random US citizen gets exposed to if he consumes that food. By consuming said food, radioactive particles will remain inside your body, which is obviously not good at all.

:)

Government Responds to Nuclear Accident by Trying to Raise Acceptable Radiation Levels and Pretending that Radiation is Good For Us

Amazing! This is tiring.

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Re: Fukushima nuclear disaster -- kudos to TEPCO btw

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Apr 12, 2011 12:08 am

As for the storage of spent fuel rods, see here.
Germany did it decades ago, Japan didn't. The problem with those sturdy and better dry case storage that use inert gas? Their cost.

An example of governmental cover up of a design flaw in the Fukushima fourth reactor, decades ago:
One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

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