Japan reactors pose no risk?

I love crony capitalism. Originally Posted by pjorourke

what is that? I have no clue...;-(

Hi Grad Girl Next door!
Thanks for this long and informative post. Its really confusing to build up an opinion of your own with all that pro and anti nuclear activism going on. Friends of mine who live part time in Austria and part time in Japan try to be rather calm about all of this. I still don`t know what to think, but - let me express it that way - i expect the worst. And its saddening.

Oh and i just read you are new here! Welcome! Me too loves to read more from you in the future! Originally Posted by ninasastri

I applaud your friends for remaining calm. Freaking out really isn't going to do anything to help matters. I still have yet to hear from one friend in Japan since the nuclear crisis worsened early last week. I'm hoping she and her family just left the city over radiation concerns and that's the reason for the delay.

Regardless of the outcome it's all tragic at this point. Japan did amazing things with itself post WWII, so I have no doubt they will build themselves back up, but there will be some form of lasting effects from the nuclear crisis.

I know some there still fear that there will be another large quake in the near future as well. (I haven't read any recent studies that show if it is likely, aside from the chance of continued heavy aftershocks, but the fear is very understandable.)

On a different note, thank you for the warm welcome. I checked out your site and read a few of your other posts here...you're quite the well rounded girl! I like the yin/yang looks on your site as well

On a different note, thank you for the warm welcome. I checked out your site and read a few of your other posts here...your quite the well rounded girl! I like the yin/yang looks on your site as well Originally Posted by Grad Girl Next Door

Thanks for your compliments, do you have a homepage as well? would love to see it. What i wanted to ask you, what happened to the "early warning systems" for Tsunamis? Didn`t Japan have these? Or earthquake early warning messengers? Why did it come to this? I don`t quite understand.

My friends are at the "pro atomic" level so they spread the "calm down messages" i post here :-). We will see what the future brings. Thanks for your input....

what is that? I have no clue...;-( Originally Posted by ninasastri

Google is your friend

What i wanted to ask you, what happened to the "early warning systems" for Tsunamis? Didn`t Japan have these? Or earthquake early warning messengers? Why did it come to this? I don`t quite understand. Originally Posted by ninasastri

There was only about a half hour between the quake and when the tsunami hit.

Didn`t Japan have these? Or earthquake early warning messengers? Originally Posted by ninasastri

Yes, they do, and, as I understand it, they went off. The people in Japan are trained to react to the alarms, and they did move to higher ground. But the extent of the tsunami was totally unexpected. Plus, I think the tsunami was traveling about 50 mph (you'll have to do the kph conversion, IDK how).

Plus, I think the tsunami was traveling about 50 mph (you'll have to do the kph conversion, IDK how). Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

5/8 mile = 1km
50mile = 80km

Google is your friend Originally Posted by atlcomedy

wouldn`t have guessed and i thought wiki?

Thanks for your compliments, do you have a homepage as well? would love to see it. What i wanted to ask you, what happened to the "early warning systems" for Tsunamis? Didn`t Japan have these? Or earthquake early warning messengers? Why did it come to this? I don`t quite understand.

My friends are at the "pro atomic" level so they spread the "calm down messages" i post here :-). We will see what the future brings. Thanks for your input.... Originally Posted by ninasastri

Quite welcome

As for my own site...I'm in the process of building one right now. I have a regular personal site, and some social media pages, but none for the hobby arena so to speak ...so I'm creating one now.

In regards to the warning system, they do have one (as someone else mentioned). The problem as my friends who are natives over there relayed, is that they're used to smaller earthquakes in the 5.0-6.0 range already. Sometimes the Tsunami warnings go off with them and never really amount to much so they aren't really that phased. With this one in particular, it came in so fast and with so much force, there was little time to prepare once they wrapped their head around what really was going on.

This video is truly a "horryifying" first person look at what went down over there. It's the best I've come across thus far.

You can hear the warning system going off in the background, but at the start of the vid the water level goes from just lightly washing up higher/further up the road (cars are still driving on the road) to plowing down houses and shoving cars out of the way in under 2 minutes. The videographer got to a higher elevated level on a building with a cement foundation and some obviously sturdy metal reinforced structure.

(Also bear in mind that the undertow would likely be considerably stronger than the water we see rushing by on the top.)

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

By the time they realized what was going on, there really was no time to react aside from maybe to go higher in a building.

In the case of the reactors, they automatically shut down during a quake as a safety feature. Simply put, step one is the non-reactive rods come down on the core (like 2 forks coming together) to absorb remaining free neutrons that would otherwise continue the nuclear process. (If you take one hot fork and touch it to one cold fork, the cold fork would heat up some, but the hot fork would cool down....which is the goal. Not exactly the same chemical process, but the visual is similar.)

The thought process is, once the quake is over, the systems can hold themselves long enough to get through the quake and some quick evaluations, and then further processes can continue once the system is manually restarted, and if need be, power to run the remaining cooldown processes can be obtained via backup generators.

In the case of the Fukushima reactors, step one, the fork coming down, worked as it should have according to reports. What they fail to mention is the original level of coolant. (The amount of energy produced per reactor can be increased or decreased by increasing or decreasing coolant and its density...I believe it was light water in the case of the Fukushima reactors.) If the water level was already mid-level to low at the start of the shutdown, that's cause for a potential problem right there.

(Cooling rods generally take 24-72 hours to cool and nullify the continuous reaction, which is why even when you get water on them, the danger is not over and done with.)

Next major step, where the generators should've kicked in if the basic power did not (so as to continue the intake of the coolant waters), didn't go as planned, as is well reported at this point. You'd think they could just have brought in sea water right then, but that poses several problems.

1) The corrosive minerals in sea water render the reactor useless after exposure to it

2) (Mind you this is my own thought as it has not been addressed elsewhere) In the case of the volcano erupting in Hawaii and lava entering the ocean, you see signs of caution about breathing in hydrochloric acid all along the areas where the lava flows are. This is due to 3 chemical reactions that stem from the extreme heat generated by the lava boiling the various salts of sea water at massively high temps. The reactions are as follows:

MgCl2 (sea salt) + H2O (steam) = MgO (periclase) + 2HCl (HCl gas)
2 NaCl (sea salt) + H2O (steam) = Na2O (sodium oxide) + 2 HCL (HCl gas)
CaCl2 (sea salt) + H2O (steam) = CaO (lime) + 2 HCL (HCl gas)

I would think considering those salts are present in sea water across the globe, the same reactions would occur if you poured sea water on a scalding hot reactor. In which case you would potentially end up with large clouds of hydrochloric acid fog.

If the creation of HCl was possible, then perhaps that's why plant owners waited so long to bring in seawater (aside from obvious damage it would cause the plant).

I think part of the reason they held off in accepting US assistance in the early days of the nuclear crisis was to downplay the gravity of the situation to its people.

Hmmm...then with that argument nuclear energy can stand on it's own without government support as well...government support that includes funds to campaigns via nuclear lobbyist, etc. One thing I will give many of the hard core tree huggers is that they'll still be out there fighting nuclear energy for no money whatsoever. Whereas if you took away the funding of the so called "grass roots campaigns" that promote nuclear energy... once the paychecks are gone, they will be as well.

So, you're saying the nuclear lobbyists are contributing "Billions of dollars" to campaigns? You definitely need to report that to the elections commission.



As for the frozen turbine argument ...again...as stated in my last comment, it depends on what method you use where. Also, while Britain almost froze when the turbines halted due to natural disaster, how many people got cancer, how many died, and how many generations were effected by that one unanticipated uber-cold snap? Not nearly the same comparison as the scale of Japan. We won’t fully know the extent of that ecological and physiological damage for decades.

Also, how cost effective is it going to be to rebuild the nuclear facilities in Japan? Far more than it would cost to rebuild turbines. And what exactly will be happening now while citizens up North freeze due to lack of power there now that they've lost their primary power source? Britain was back up and running long before Japan will be. Quake and Tsunami damage to the power grids aside, the time it will take to rebuild the actual reactors could be a few years even at the fastest pace.

Certainly, no one knows, what is certain is that nuclear has provided electricity reliably for decades. Meanwhile, those of us who remember the first Carter administration remember how solar and wind were ready for prime time and could stand on their own. And a good thing to because the acadmics of the day said we would be out of oil by Y2K.

Back then the need was massive re-distribution of wealth from western countries to the third world because of global cooling, gasoline was extremely expensive, inflation was going nuts, and the federal government was the only answer no matter what the question. Not allot has changed now days during the second Carter administration except, of course, the weather forecast.

If we're going to talk about alternative fuels that are cheaper and safer than nuclear, the discussion can only lead to coal. That buys academia and DOE at least a couple more centuries to bring solar and wind up to a wobbly stand in the marketplace.

There really is no comparison from UK to Japan, in cost, damages, or downtime.

You are correct, wind in the UK has never been a reliable source of much more than public relations, down time approaches infinity vs the nukes in Japan.

Regarding funding for nuclear rules, regulations and safety...there is funding within that for "regulatory" commissions ad nauseum, as well as for developing "safer" technology within the nuclear field. There's also a good portion in government grants that can be put towards new nuclear facilities.

I agree, the federal government has no business doing research or issuing grants for anything. This is clearly not mandated as a federal responsibility in the Constitution and is ripe for misuse. Stop it all and plug the holes.

I never said anything about using government funds to support the alternative method's infrastructure.

Sorry, when you talked about diverting "Billions" I didn't realize you were talking about illegal campaign contributions.

But why the money towards the many many commissions and the "safer" nuclear tech research plus grants couldn't be equally effectively parlayed into alternative methods has yet to be seen.

Much of the studies put forth claiming alternative methods are so much more costly were in fact prepared by agencies hired by the pro-nuclear groups. Granted, that's not to say that so-called "independent" reports by the alternative methods agencies would be that much more honest or accurate.

Keep in mind most have never heard of the issues that plagued Hanford Washington. Granted, that plant was built in 1943, but no public admission of nuclear spill/leak was ever made. From what I've read, they never fully admitted if the widespread radiation was solely from irradiated cooling waters going back into the river (as they usually do) or if it was both a mix of that and other spills from where they were actually processing the weapons grade Plutonium. But the reactor itself utilized Plutonium in its cores and it is known that at least a portion of the contamination down river came from the cooling water in the reactor itself.

A lawsuit put forth by some of those downwinders in the 80’s wasn’t even settled until 2005. (Downwinders won that suit BTW.)

(Wiki Downwinders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Hanford )

The document: An Overview of Hanford and Radiation Health Effects. (HHIN) is no longer available on the Wash state health Dept site but is available to order through the CDC.

Summary of the document: Presents some basic information about Hanford, the radiation it released and how people were exposed to the radioactive contamination. It also provides an introduction to the possible health effects from radiation exposure, including a special section on thyroid disease. Summer 1996.



Yes, there are both pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear agendas. I'm not about to chain myself to the entrance of a nuclear plant wielding a sign that says "No Nukes" and screaming "We're all gonna die" to everyone who passes by.

For me, I'm not anti-nuclear...I'm pro personal well being. And until some of the pro-nuclear physicists start admitting that there are potential risks,
Can you please link to any physicist who says there are no potential risks?
instead of putting up this front as though new facilities are practically invincible, I think it's foolish to fully get behind nuclear energy. That kind of arrogance in various industries has screwed us time and time again.

It also should be noted that the general population will often hear the pro-nuclear side of things because there is more money behind it.

If you google or better yet Nexus the issue I'd bet a six pack the media stories run at least 5:1 anti-nuclear. The nuke industry may pay for ads, the anti-nukes get all the press they want for free.

This leads to conspiracy theories being tossed out by the anti-nuclear side, so when the general public has the two sides to compare, the anti-nuke side often seems like nutjob fanatics.

There is an intelligent, non-fanatical side to the anti-nuclear/limited-nuclear debate. It tends to be overshadowed by money of nuke corps and crazy of ultra non-nuke fanatics (who tend to be fanatics in other areas as well).

Agreed, coal is the absolute best answer, at least for the US.

I just wanted to toss out a more in-depth look at the side you generally won't hear much about because it's not either buying ad space (in the corporate aspect) or creating a scene by chanting and waving signs in protest (as in some of the non-nuke fanatics). Originally Posted by Grad Girl Next Door

Late for work gotta run, thanks for posting and welcome to the stew!

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You do realize that one person is confirmed dead and two others are missing and presumed dead at the plant, right?

Not such a funny line when there's already bodies being recovered.

You and Gilbert Gottfried . . . Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

Sorry, didn't catch that. By what I've read that brings nuclear up to 8 maybe 9 for the last decade vs 44 who died from wind turbines. Nothing I said was meant to be funny. Perspective is everything.

Sorry, didn't catch that. By what I've read that brings nuclear up to 8 maybe 9 for the last decade vs 44 who died from wind turbines. Nothing I said was meant to be funny. Perspective is everything. Originally Posted by Iaintliein

I didn't interpret anything insensitive lien. Some people are just touchy. Strange how there is a concentration of sympathy for the nuclear plant deaths and not the thousands from the quake/tsunami.

My name is Mazo. I have just met you and I love you. Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

Maniac, you should hook-up with "her"......I think "she" would like that......I'm sure "she" has a surprise something-something for you that you won't mind........

Back then the need was massive re-distribution of wealth from western countries to the third world

@IAL

I can't believe you posted this...

Thought you were against all redistribution of wealth.

By what I've read that brings nuclear up to 8 maybe 9 for the last decade vs 44 who died from wind turbines. Nothing I said was meant to be funny. Perspective is everything. Originally Posted by Iaintliein

Its actually kind of reassuring. Here we have an old reactor -- kind of a crappy design by current standards, that is hit with about the worst that Mother Nature can throw at it and so far, not much damage -- unless you consider the braying of the press to be damage. Think how well a modern design in a better location will work? Build baby build!!!!