http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

- Jesus christ, that is unnerving.

Definitely is. they are saying it was a "release" but it looks a bit big for that.

Man I hate people drawing comparisons to Chernobyl. Even at its worst possible failure those water-boiling reactors are designed to avoid the positive feedback loop that turned the crazy Russian graphite housing into a sustaining critical reaction.

What likely happened is that the non-radioactive second stage steam loop (the one that usually drives turbines and does not pass through the core) suffered a steam explosion and while the building was damaged and some radioactive material got out, it sounds like the principal reactor loop is still contained and being shut down along their emergency procedures. The turbine loop has a lot more places to fail, moving parts, etc, and typically isn't designed to go too far outside it's operating range, very similar to the ones at coal or gas fired plants.

Global humanity error factor + massive geological event = UHOH!

I realize that Japan is among the best at nuclear safety and operations and that all of the relevant agency's are on this like stink on shit. but that does little to ease the disconcerting feeling that this could go bad! really bad.

If it makes you feel any better, between the US and Russia, about two thousand nuclear bombs were detonated between 45 and 80. World didn't end. You're probably ok.


Remembered this neat video from a few years ago. It doesn't include Israel and South Africa.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Man I hate people drawing comparisons to Chernobyl. Even at its worst possible failure those water-boiling reactors are designed to avoid the positive feedback loop that turned the crazy Russian graphite housing into a sustaining critical reaction.

What likely happened is that the non-radioactive second stage steam loop (the one that usually drives turbines and does not pass through the core) suffered a steam explosion and while the building was damaged and some radioactive material got out, it sounds like the principal reactor loop is still contained and being shut down along their emergency procedures. The turbine loop has a lot more places to fail, moving parts, etc, and typically isn't designed to go too far outside it's operating range, very similar to the ones at coal or gas fired plants.Well, they're pumping seawater in, so it sounds like they lost more than their secondary loop as a heatsink. At least that's my guess - I dont know about civilian reactor plant designs, but I would presume they would have some sort of secondary emergency cooling heat sink in case the power generation steam loop went down, with pumping seawater as the last resort since pumping seawater into the core means building yourself a new reactor.

That said, I agree there is no big issue due to the design of this reactor vs. the graphite moderated Chernobyl design. It's just gonna be expensive.

My big concern about this is they are freaking out about all this, and there's a lot of news focusing on this with fearmongering, and this will again make everyone think that nuclear power isn't safe, and end up keeping us from opening new plants for another several decades.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CNPP2010_CD/pages/AnnexII/tables/table2.htm

Those reactors are old boiling water reactors, not pressurized ones. There's only one loop.

World didn't end. You're probably ok.

LOL, no i'm not worried on that level. if it outright blows it will be a local disaster of magnitudes far less than Chernobyl. it's just the last thing the nation of japan needs right now.
Big difference between intelligent concern and panic. sitting on top the san andreas fault as I do concerns me greatly. the fact that i most likely will not see a major event does not mean that i wont keep a extra food stuffs on hand.
You should be greatly concerned that it's been 300 years plus since the last Cascadia subduction zone event as it is firmly in the "window" so to speak. not so much to run to the hills but i'd be hesitant to buy property in Long Beach.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CNPP2010_CD/pages/AnnexII/tables/table2.htm

Those reactors are old boiling water reactors, not pressurized ones. There's only one loop.


Interesting, that wasn't clear. If so the seawater thing is interesting because they normally use highly purified light water for the primary loop because it has virtually nothing that produces long-lived radionuclides. IIRC light water principally produces an isotope of nitrogen with a half life of seconds. If that's the case the initial steam release probably wasn't measurably radioactive more than a few hundred feet beyond the reactor.

Interesting, that wasn't clear. If so the seawater thing is interesting because they normally use highly purified light water for the primary loop because it has virtually nothing that produces long-lived radionuclides. IIRC light water principally produces an isotope of nitrogen with a half life of seconds. If that's the case the initial steam release probably wasn't measurably radioactive more than a few hundred feet beyond the reactor.That's correct - neutron irradiated water produces N16 which has a half life if 7 seconds. I didnt know you knew so much about nuke reactors Malse - it's good to see someone else I can babble about such things on here. :)

As far as reactors "blowing up", just to correct a common misconception, nuclear reactors cant explode in a nuclear based explosion, they lack the correct critical geometry. Chernobyl wasnt a nuclear explosion, it was a rapid steam expansion that entrained some of the melted core particles in the steam and spread it over a huge area. There was no "explosion" in the conventional sense - the energy wasnt kinetic energy from a chemical reaction, or kinetic and radiative energy from a nuclear reaction.

Interesting, that wasn't clear. If so the seawater thing is interesting because they normally use highly purified light water for the primary loop because it has virtually nothing that produces long-lived radionuclides. IIRC light water principally produces an isotope of nitrogen with a half life of seconds. If that's the case the initial steam release probably wasn't measurably radioactive more than a few hundred feet beyond the reactor.

Hopefully that's the case with these reactors. I assume it must be since they were pretty nonchalant about venting all that steam that we saw video of on the news yesterday.

The sea water now is just an attempt to avoid putting those outer containment vessels/heatsinks to the test.

IAEA is reporting that investigators have found radiation levels are returned to normal levels, thankfully. Would hate for something like this to drag out and people to start panicking about the countless reactors in their own back yards.

A la Germany.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12733393

- It's getting freaky deaky.

Like others have mentioned, it's really not as scary as the media are making out it to be. Be wary when you see things like this:

This opens the possibility of a serious meltdown - where molten, highly radioactive reactor core falls through the floor of the containment vessel and into the ground underneath.

Those reactors have a secondary containment vessel and giant heatsink underneath the reactor, designed specifically to catch, contain, and cool the core in a meltdown scenario. Think Three Mile Island, not Chernobyl.

No kidding. A meltdown is most likely to simply damage the reactor itself. Water is the neutron moderator in BWR, when it's gone the reaction rate slows down enormously and the reactor almost immediately goes subcritical in virtually every deploys configuration. Judging from the seawater strategy they may already consider that reactor a loss, but it's not going to be dangerous unless they do something amazingly dumb like yank all the control rods.

A fire at the 4th reactor now. Any time they come out with a little bit of good news, there is 2 more bad things reported :(

yea, despite their best efforts this seems to slowly slipping farther and farther out of their control.

I swear to god, if this turns out to just be some publicity stunt for a new JJ Abrams directed Godzilla movie, I'm going to be pissed!

Seriously though, I think they'll get this contained, but I worry about how the greenpeace types are going to start screaming about this is why we need to ban nuclear power or some crazy shit like that.

I cannot be the only person who has noted the irony in the name of this facility.

Fukushima Dai-ichi

The US and any other country can learn something from this disaster. I have deep respect for the entire Japenese culture after observing what is going on there. There is no complaining, no looting, no one bitching about the government and when can they get help. People standing in huge lines, completely humble about their current situation. I am very impressed how well they are handling this horrific disaster.

Compared to, say, the New Orleans disaster in the US?

Compared to, say, the New Orleans disaster in the US?

Or any disaster we have.

He's right, it is amazing how respectful they are there. I too am humbled by their demeanor and resilience. It's frankly awspiring.

Nice visualization for all the chicken littles freaking out about nuclear energy now: http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/2e5d4dcc4fb511e0ae0c000255111976/comments/2e70ae944fb511e0ae0c000255111976

Sanchek - my girlfriend was curious, is that weighted over the lifetime that we've been using the form of energy (I.E. we've been using coal for hundreds of years compared to only 30 or so years of nuclear)?

It's deaths per terawatt hour. So, the insane amount of coal-related deaths are being averaged across its larger total amount of energy generated (yet is still horribly dangerous - and this doesn't even include things like black lung). I don't think the absolute timescale is relevant in this case, except maybe to bias for any safety improvements in coal/oil over its longer lifespan (though you certainly would need to adjust similarly for Gen 2-4 nuclear facilities vs. Chernobyl).

Sanchek - my girlfriend was curious, is that weighted over the lifetime that we've been using the form of energy (I.E. we've been using coal for hundreds of years compared to only 30 or so years of nuclear)?

That's annualized by TW/h. I don't totally agree with his methodology but it's not completely off base and does show the huge disparity in risk.

You do have to chuckle at all of the politicians suddenly running around as though they just realized nuclear energy might have risks attached to it.

16,000 dead supposedly from this. The footage of towns being swept away is heart breaking.

Heh beats me how I got this emoticon here.

Nuclear power is risky when you build your plants in one of the most seismically active regions near a major fault, next to a tsunami prone ocean. Common sense......might as well be a super power, right? Politicans don't have any though or have any grasp of logic either. They just know that when the public gets all spun up, they have to weigh in to make sure that whatever it is, even if the benifits outweigh the risks, will be built somewhere that only effects destitute brown skinned people. The media did jump all over the design of this plant, saying it was risky but then went on to show the locations of this plant design in the USA. Typically they are built in areas of next to no risk of a major seismic event. As for the arguement that coal kills more people than nuclear, coal kills many many more people much more slowly to the point that it doesn't register to the newsies. Just like cars kill many many more people than airplanes but when a plane goes down its a huge media event where as no one really gives a crap about 1 or two people getting killed in a car wreck every few minutes.

It is sad when so many die and suffer in the Man vs Nature contest, but it is still a case of trying to bet against the House. All we can do is learn from it all and keep plugging away. In the case of nuclear power, even applying the standards in the governance of nuclear powered navy ships would vastly boost the safety of the whole scheme both from a accident standpoint as well as the waste. Civilian nuclear power by comparison has inefficiency built in because money has to be made where as an aircraft carrier technically can operate at a loss. Maybe we as a nation are just getting too stupid over all to have something as complex as nuclear power but then again if an E-6 in the navy can run a nuclear reactor with no advanced degree in physics with no accidents while sitting on a ship loaded full of fuel and ordinance and we all sleep well at night still......

So, this hasn't panned out very well.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

Starting to think the Germans may have the right of this.

n the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

We had a client lose an infant shortly after birth about a month after the quake. not that was truly the cause but it is one of those things that makes ya go HMMM.

I would be dishonest if I did not admit that report does not have my worries going considering I have a 6 1/2 MO grand daughter living in San Jose.
A 3 to 5 % spike I would just laugh off but 35% is a very big jump.

I've seen harsh criticism of that particular claim, so hopefully it's exaggerated/wrong.

Still, even with Fukushima playing out as unfortunately as it has, nuclear is still far cleaner and safer than coal. I don't think it makes sense to abandon it because single loop reactors from the 70s aren't fault tolerant enough to handle an earthquake + tsunami combo.

And especially to abandon it in countries who have almost no chance of natural disasters occuring on a scale significant enough to damage a nuclear reactor, like Germany.

n the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

That's ridiculously bad science regardless of their suggested cause. Infant mortality in Japan is so low than virtually ANY increase is going to be a huge percentile -- going from 5 to 10 is a 100% increase! I can't imagine why you'd have more birth complications in a disaster zone with all kinds of stirred up pollutants and overstressed medical services with injured or traumatized mothers shipped hundreds of kilometers to temporary shelters when their homes and half their neighbors were flattened and washed out to sea ...

In other news, after the Haiti earthquake infant mortality only went up by 2%, because it was already 50x the rate of Japan!

They were referring to the Northwest US, not Japan.

Isn't nuclear power for the most part considered a bridge technology anyway? Even when it was new? Seems a shame though that Germany is taking a step back to fossil fuels in the form of gas turbines, even though it is cleaner than coal. Probably would have never happened without Russia's natural gas reserves but a global shift back to fossil fuels could drive up energy costs even further.