Fukushima melting down?

there was no pump failure at 3 mile island. the leaking storage tanks at hanford have nothing to do with kitty litter. chernobyl is not entombed. it is covered by a large canopy created to keep out the elements.

you specifically faulted me for explaining that the reason TEPCO management did not move the power distribution switching station was because of their fear of more riots by the anti nuclear demonstrators. it is public record if you can read. all of it is public information and you do not have to retain false information just because you do not read it.
 
Punx0r said:
I suppose in some way the anti-nuclear protestors are to blame, in as much as everyone plays some very minor role in most world matters, but they're a long, long way down the blame list.

There have been a lot of accusations of TEPCO being in the pocket of the nuclear industry and so not properly fulfilling its obligations as an industry regulator.

You can, though, imagine the derisive laughter of the engineers when the management refused to move the switchgear along with the generators.
Click to expand...

TEPCO is the japanese power company that owned the fukashima facilities and as such was not the regulator.

the engineering staff was not smiling about the refusal of management to implement their recommendations.

i consider the actions of the plant manger yoshida and his staff to be close to a national hero in any other culture also. they saved the plant from an enormous release of radiation. you might say they saved the world in those three weeks. as a nuclear scientist i am not biased against nuclear power as you people are and i do understand what they did and what impossible obstacles they had to overcome.

when the tokyo hotshots came in that sunday with their high lift water cannon and then brought in the even taller concrete pumps to cool the storage pools they essentially prevented japan from having to evacuate tokyo and most of the industrialized northern portion of the country.
 
Pretty arrogant and oblivious bunch of cowboys I guess, nuclear scientists.

The difference between taking a horrible risk on yourself, and opting countless other people into the same horrible risk without their consent is ethically significant. I'm just guessing based on circumstantial clues, but something tells me that nuclear industry characters aren't that sharp when it comes to ethics.

Makes me wonder how much better off we'd be now if the trillions of dollars that have been squandered on nuclear engineering had instead been devoted to developing sustainable power technologies.
 
I am still forming an opinion on Nuclear.

I've seen evidence claiming there are nearly 1million related deaths, and ongoing rampant cancer from chernobyl instead of 40 dead or whatever.
Conversely, some people believe radiation is a huge scare story. The basis for this is interesting, and includes people swimming in the cooling pools, and eating radioactive elements. Odd.

I've asked this a few times, and don't think I've ever gotten an answer sufficient for me:
-powerplants can fail if they aren't kept under proper operating temps.
-this is done by circulating water
-the power to run the power plant and cooling relies on outside mainline power
-there are also several backups like battery and diesel
-all of these failed with Japan's GE reactor

So why aren't these things designed to run off the power generated? Self sufficient, or at least the capability for extended periods. You would think with the extreme technical nature of a powerplant, they would also lend much thought to making it infallable. Afterall the assumed danger in a meltdown would contain 1000's of pounds of nuke juice, vs less than 100lbs in a warhead. LOT more pollution.
Also, what about nuclear submarines? Let me guess, they power the powergeneration process all the time with batteries or diesel?
 
Chalo said:
Pretty arrogant and oblivious bunch of cowboys I guess, nuclear scientists.

The difference between taking a horrible risk on yourself, and opting countless other people into the same horrible risk without their consent is ethically significant. I'm just guessing based on circumstantial clues, but something tells me that nuclear industry characters aren't that sharp when it comes to ethics.

Makes me wonder how much better off we'd be now if the trillions of dollars that have been squandered on nuclear engineering had instead been devoted to developing sustainable power technologies.
Click to expand...

nuclear power is a sustainable power. nuclear physicists are some of the most conservative people around.

there is no solution to global heating besides converting most of the electrical generating capacity over to nuclear breeder reactors along with severe and lasting restrictions on burning of fossil fuels. immediate steps will need to be taken to restore the ocens pH immediately and to keep the current biodiversity intact before the majority go extinct and we are left with the roaches of the ocean with no value for our civilization. it is entirely these hysterical reactions such as the reaction to fukashima and chernobyl that cause the politicians to denigrate nuclear power as a useful and permanent source of power and then go along with public hysteria over it.
 
Uhmm.. Hanford is in Washington State (and does have many leaking plutonium tanks), and WIPP ( the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ) is in New Mexico, and is indeed closed because of using the wrong kitty litter in the waste storage drums resulting in exploding drums. You can deflect all you want but these are easily verifiable facts. And yes... the multi foot thick concrete casing around the entire reactor building at Chernobyl is designed to keep out the elements.. so the elements don't carry any of the intense radiation from the melted reactor (there was no containment vessel for the reactor) out into the outside world.
 
dnmun said:
nuclear power is a sustainable power.
Click to expand...

Hogwash. It's an industry that hasn't even come up with a reasonable disposal plan for its routine waste products.

How sustainable is it going to be when we have the first nuclear equivalent of the Deepwater Horizon event? I don't think even pro-nuke Cold Warriors will want to be present for that. But it's inevitable-- because people screw up, poor judgment is a given, and accidents happen. Would you rather deal with the consequences of a solar power accident, tide power accident, wind power accident... or an uncontained reactor core meltdown? And if you don't mind that risk, how about respecting the wishes of all the people who do?

nuclear physicists are some of the most conservative people around.
Click to expand...

Conservative, sure-- in more sense than one. Ethical? Not at all.

there is no solution to global heating besides converting most of the electrical generating capacity over to nuclear breeder reactors along with severe and lasting restrictions on burning of fossil fuels.
Click to expand...

You're conflating two things here. The latter doesn't imply the former. We can severely restrict the use of fossil energy without accepting the inevitable consequences of hubristic nuclear technology. We just have to let go of unmitigated stupidity like personal automobiles, giant climate controlled houses, pervasive round-the-clock lighting of unoccupied spaces, default truck transport, unchecked breeding, and gratuitous consumerism. Etc., etc., etc. There's a lot of very energy intensive stupid to trim away.

Then maybe by the time we've worked out how to generate vast surpluses of clean energy, we'll be smart enough that we don't waste it all on useless bullshit.
 
There's a lot of potential in nuclear energy. Newer reactor designs offer failsafe operation and the ability to consume current nuclear waste as fuel.

dnmun said:
TEPCO is the japanese power company that owned the fukashima facilities and as such was not the regulator.

the engineering staff was not smiling about the refusal of management to implement their recommendations.

i am not biased against nuclear power as you people are and i do understand what they did and what impossible obstacles they had to overcome.
Click to expand...

Apologies, I should have said the regulator was in the pocket of companies like TEPCO. I'm not against nuclear power.

Nutspecial, please read this thread from the beginning: your questions have already been addressed and answered.
 
Seriously, please do not ruin this thread as well, it's supposed to be a technical discussion.
 
nutspecial said:
[youtube]ejCQrOTE-XA[/youtube]

Nuclear Physicist Galen Winsor

If you listen to any, listen to last 1/2 hr.

He swam in and drank the cooling pool lol. Love this guy.
Click to expand...
That is truly an amazing video/speech.
The thing about this video is that never in a million years would they ever broadcast this on free to air TV because "good news is no news..." The facts that it contains are too boring for the masses and its over 1 hour of a single guy talking, this is not easily absorb-able information compared to say what happened to Michael Brown, people would rather be conditioned into fear...

This web article goes over the gist of it for people who don't want to watch it https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/06/27/man-eats-uranium-drinks-and-swims-in-reactor-water-ignites-plutonium-in-his-bare-hand/

He also talks alot about the frustrations around nuclear waste and the EPA which I think about too and that is its practically deliberately created.. While I understand the EPA point of view in terms of general ass covering so people can't sue for getting sick in the work place environment just like how cigarette smoking is banned in the workplace the rest of it is just a bit weird.
Seems clear to me that scheme behind creating nuclear radiation fear is based on the idea to try and prevent wide spread adoption in countries you don't trust like Iran to not build a nuclear power plant because we know the real reason is because they really just want to build a bomb.
The perfectly ironic thing about Iran is they have natural gas for a gas fired electricity plant (as well as oil) quite literally coming out of their ears but they still claim they need a 'nuclear program for electricity needs'.
Ultimately this whole scheme of trying to scare the global folk away from nuclear failed in this regard and have left people like Galen Winsor the nuclear physicist incredibly aggravated and frustrated to the point where he created such videos of eating Uranium, drinking reactor water as well is igniting Plutonium in his bare hands and has deliberately rebelled against what the US government have wanted him to do..

From the article URL above... Galen surmises the regulations and fear mongering that surround radioactive materials are in place to prevent the widespread adoption of nuclear power in local small scale neighborhood/home based reactors.

That video does remind me of a more recent video I watched where they talk about the fact that a guy working with plutonium during world war 2 when building the plutonium bomb accidentally injected him self with a needle containing plutonium and for the next 50 years they were still able to detect the plutonium in his body, but he did survive just fine..
https://youtu.be/89UNPdNtOoE?t=323

Chalo said:
dnmun said:
nuclear power is a sustainable power.
Click to expand...

Hogwash. It's an industry that hasn't even come up with a reasonable disposal plan for its routine waste products.

Then maybe by the time we've worked out how to generate vast surpluses of clean energy, we'll be smart enough that we don't waste it all on useless bullshit.
Click to expand...
Seems like your the perfect conditioned type of folk the US government want as I have discussed just above.
If you have watched any of the nuclear video documentaries I have posted on this thread they all talk about the fact that just like the french have done nuclear power plants can be made to take radio active waste and reuse it in the reactor till the point that its not radio active any more so there is no waste at all, providing the very clean energy you been asking for.
 
You have a really flawed understanding about how breeder reactors work, if you think they don't create any spent fuel or that their spent fuel isn't highly radioactive.

I agree that reactors could be done better. (But they haven't because the better designs don't produce as many nuclear weapons as a byproduct.) It doesn't change the fact that their castoffs are some of the most intractable and hazardous materials on Earth, and that foreseeable accidents will inevitably result in uncontrolled releases of these poisonous substances into the commons. People suffer and die from it, who didn't opt in.

Governments like nuke plants because they get nuclear materials to play with, and clean energy does not do that. But the fact that fission reactors have been sold as clean and safe does not make them so. If they were clean and safe, why would our own government go to such lengths to deny them to other countries?

What's the worst photovoltaic accident you can imagine?
 
It seems total world energy consumption for 2012 was 155 peta-watt-hours with 11% of this coming from renewables (including waste incineration), 6% from nuclear and oil/coal/gas for the rest.

Solar power generation in 2014 was 178 GW or 0.185 PWh (the vast majority was photovoltaic). Growth of installed P.V. in 2015 is predicted at 55GW, which is about 0.057 PWh.

Simple arithmetic suggests that to meet global energy requirements back in 2012 on P.V. alone would require an increase in P.V. of 838 times, which would take about 2716 years at current production levels. A crude approximation, of course.

I'm not saying nuclear fission shouldn't be replaced, but the scale of the challenge isn't insignificant. Manufacturing P.V.s at that scale may well bring its own environmental problems.
 
most people have no clue how much energy it takes to purify the silicon and run the furnaces.

in case anyone has some kinda misunderstanding of the force of the antinuclear activism in japan that caused TEPCO management to stall in moving the switching stations you should watch some of the demonstrations taking place over the reopening of the sendai plant yesterday.
 
Galen surmises the regulations and fear mongering that surround radioactive materials are in place to prevent the widespread adoption of nuclear power in local small scale neighborhood/home based reactors.
Click to expand...
Glad someone shares my opinion Beastie. If it's true, it's kindof a game changer. I haven't found much other authoritive sources to back him up unfortunately. Remaining hopeful, but the more I look @ nuke power and weapons, the more it all looks like bs and propaganda.
 
Energy consumption is not inelastic. People will use energy more conservatively and more intentionally if it's more expensive. Fossil energy is so cheap because fossil energy producers and consumers don't have to pay in cash for its many externalities-- externalities that may prove to be more than any expenditure can offset.

Same with nuke plants. We don't even know how to ensure nuclear waste security for its lifetime let alone pay for it, and one of the byproducts of nuclear energy is nuclear weapons proliferation, with all its associated costs. These things are not figured into the cost of nuclear kWh.

I suggest that taking both fossil fuels and nuclear energy off the table wouldn't end human life on Earth; it would just make us both more efficient in our energy use and smarter in how we produce it.
 
dnmun said:
most people have no clue how much energy it takes to purify the silicon and run the furnaces.
Click to expand...

Lots of us here know that not all PV cells require silicon wafers. Thin-film is just a hint at what's feasible with more development. If we'd thrown just a little bit of the trillions of dollars we've wasted on nuclear technology on PV tech instead, we'd have more and better options available.

Anyway, who cares whether it's PV, solar thermal, wind, tide, geothermal, hydro, whatever-- as long as it's renewable, clean, and relatively safe, without dire externalized costs? Neither fossil fuels nor nukes meet these criteria.
 
Punx0r said:
I'm not saying nuclear fission shouldn't be replaced, but the scale of the challenge isn't insignificant. Manufacturing P.V.s at that scale may well bring its own environmental problems.
Click to expand...
Solar generation doesn't have to be PV. ;)
 
I agree, but Chalo specifically mentioned P.V. and it forms something like 99% of current solar power generation, so I focused on it.

A quick look at energy returned-on-energy-invested says (Wikipedia):

Nuclear: From 10:1 to 2000:1 depending on fuel enrichment and process used
Photovoltaic: 6.8:1
Solar collector: 1.6:1

For comparison, hydro is 100:1, wind is 18:1, coal is 80:1, oil averages about 20:1, gas 10:1.

With increased development I can see P.V. closing the gap to the low end of nuclear. If a clean process exist to manufacture them and the associated power electronics and batteries, then put them everywhere I say.

Nuclear is just kinda awesome because it scales so easily. Just pick a number in Gigawatts that you want and off you go - it's almost an unlimited source of energy. It's kept our planet warm since it formed. But you could say the same of the sun and that a field of P.V. also scales very easily :)
 
TheBeastie said:
megacycle said:
"Criminals should not get tax concessions – if you break the law, then donations to your organisation should not be tax deductible"
- Senator Barnaby Joyce Australia

Barnaby Joyce, Abbott & the rest of the LNP ilk are criminals themselves,
Click to expand...
Are you talking about a completely unrelated subject because your loosing your argument or something? Your post should be deleted, talking about Australian politicians has absolutely nothing to do with Fukashima and nuclear technology at all.
Click to expand...
It took you 6 months to address my post and i wasn't the instigator of the 'off topic' matter, i just commented on a comment and I notice your latest post is rambling off too, maybe this needs deleting.

Before people support what Barnaby Joyce stated, about removing environment group status, they ought to understand that the mob he represents, were helped into power with the help of a think tank called 'The Institute of Public Affairs', which is registered for charitable status, its donors are mining, oil, gas and Murdoch, that's what really peevs me off.

Back on topic, It's easy for people to get hooked on the idea of PV being great for energy production, because they can relate to it personally through domestic PV, but the reality of industrial scale PV is totally different.
Capacity factor of PV is generally less than 20%, meaning it's averaging less than 20% of nameplate power over time, were wind is more like 35-40% and nuclear 85-90%.
 
Regarding the Hanford nuclear weapons site in Washington state that Dnmun brought up (confusing it with WIPP), they just had to settle a lawsuit for 4.1 million dollars for their illegal action trying to fire and blackball one of the leaders of the team trying to stop the spread of the leaking plutonium before it gets to the Columbia River watershed after he warned of serious flaws in the program.

A quote from one of the articles.. +But on Wednesday, Tamosaitis won a $4.1-million settlement from AECOM, among the largest known legal damages paid out to a whistle-blower in the Energy Department’s vast nuclear waste cleanup program.

“It was something I lived with every minute of every day over the last five years,” Tamosaitis, 68, said in an interview. “Hopefully, I have sent a message to young engineers to keep their honesty, integrity and courage intact.”

"Tamosaitis led the research into the complex technology of transforming the toxic and radioactive sludge into solid glass that could theoretically be buried safely for thousands of years. The work is to be performed at a massive industrial complex at the Hanford site that will cost more than $12 billion for construction alone.

As the research continued, Tamosaitis said he began to worry that the technology for chemically mixing the sludge was flawed, potentially allowing explosive hydrogen gas to build up inside large tanks and clumps of plutonium to form that could start a spontaneous nuclear reaction.

His warnings, although disputed by his employer, were taken seriously by independent federal safety investigators and by senior Energy Department officials. Within months, department officials said the plant’s design and construction failed to meet federal safety standards."
 
since you seem intent on insulting me like a 6 year old schoolboy you should know that my friend and major professor was Rudi Nussbaum and i have known Loyd Marbet for 35 years. maybe you might even know who they are.
 
I might have been a little insulting on the first one as I was so flabbergasted by your position... The rest was some facts, and corrections to your comments on them. You did seem to confuse Hanford where the problem is leaking plutonium tanks with WIPP where the kitty litter explosions shut down the facility. It just seems like you refuse to acknowledge any single drawback to nuclear power and are dismissive the obvious dangers when they're pointed out.
 
Punx0r said:
A quick look at energy returned-on-energy-invested says (Wikipedia):

Nuclear: From 10:1 to 2000:1 depending on fuel enrichment and process used
Photovoltaic: 6.8:1
Solar collector: 1.6:1

For comparison, hydro is 100:1, wind is 18:1, coal is 80:1, oil averages about 20:1, gas 10:1.
Click to expand...

The problem with that comparison is that the externalities of nuclear power are related to cleanup, security, and mitigation. So it's not EROEI; it's energy returned versus commitment of future resources. And that's a whole lot less favorable than the EROEI looks.
 
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