The end of the empire of Japan

[GostHacked]

That is NOT what the article said. The article said they have done some computer modelling and the worst case scenario is a containment breach. That is not a fact.

Computer modeling? Why would they do that? Can't get close enough to the cores to find out for sure? Why is that? OH YES, the radiation you say is not that big of a deal.

I realize that you are desperate to justify your chicken little ranting but that does not give you a license to just make crap up.

Even when Japanese officials and TECPO say they are going to take another 6-9 months to get the site under control? I am definately not making shit up. Even when they admit all sorts of failures and admit to underestimating the radiation coming out of the plant? I am not making shit up.

The incident is past us. The radiation on the ground is being measured and cleaned up. No changes to the details of what happened in the first week of incident will change the facts on the ground. i.e. whether there was a containment breach or not does not change the fact that the incident has largely been confined to the area around Fukushima.

The incident is definitely not past us. Confined? Bullshit. The plant is right on the ocean, the water (11,000 tonnes worth) spewed into the ocean, and the streams are carrying it around. So it is not localized at all. Also once it gets in the air, (already circled the globe) it is not localized.

[TimG]

Computer modeling? Why would they do that? Can't get close enough to the cores to find out for sure? Why is that? OH YES, the radiation you say is not that big of a deal.

What is your point? Why don't you just acknowledge that you misread the article and assumed it said things it does not say?

Even when Japanese officials and TECPO say they are going to take another 6-9 months to get the site under control?

Who are you to decide what timeframe is reasonable or not? 6-9 months to decomission a reactor sounds reasonable to me.

The incident is definitely not past us. Confined? Bullshit. The plant is right on the ocean, the water (11,000 tonnes worth) spewed into the ocean, and the streams are carrying it around.

The radiation is heavily diluted with sea water. It is not a concern. Edited June 10, 2011 by TimG

[GostHacked]

What is your point? Why don't you just acknowledge that you misread the article and assumed it said things it does not say?

Misread what exactly? Your article and the one I posted are very similar. They are both saying the same thing. What am I 'missing' here? Most likely from the same news source.

Most of the articles now are saying that there were full meltdowns at the plant. You even doubted that partial meltdowns happened. You've changed your tune quite a bit.

Who are you to decide what timeframe is reasonable or not? 6-9 months to decomission a reactor sounds reasonable to me.

No that's 6-9 months before they get the site under control. Then the decommissioning will happen.

The radiation is heavily diluted with sea water. It is not a concern.

[WIP]

Misread what exactly? Your article and the one I posted are very similar. They are both saying the same thing. What am I 'missing' here? Most likely from the same news source.

Most of the articles now are saying that there were full meltdowns at the plant. You even doubted that partial meltdowns happened. You've changed your tune quite a bit.

Early on, I figured it was a waste of time trying to track the flow of information coming from Fukishima, because...just as a lot of cynics suspected, it was all bullshit trying to minimize the damage and the future risks. Eventually the truth finds a way out in such a continuous, slow-rolling disaster. So now we find that they lied or were talking out of their asses when they ruled out the risk of core meltdown early on, and the actual radiation levels were at least double what the government reports indicated, and we are learning that large areas around the plant have radioactive cesium and strontium, which will make them virtually permanently inhabitable...this is a disaster in such a small, crowded nation that is already short on available space. I'm also troubled by the apparent willingness of the government to put the population of Fukishima City at risk...raising the acceptable radiation levels so that they don't have to evacuate a city of 300,000.

What really gets me though, is that the emerging pattern gives the appearance that Tepco is either deciding government policy, or has veto power over the government. It looks similar to the situation in the Gulf Disaster, where BP was telling the residents, the Coast Guard, and the MMS what to do. It looks like we are living in a world where multinational corporations give the orders, and the people we elect to government take the orders from them - not us!

[Post To The Left]

Russia is going to start building and selling floating nuclear fuel plants that can create enough electricity for 45,000 people and will have the added ability to purify sea water into fresh water. You could take this anywhere in the world and just set up a town with power and fresh water.

Already a pioneer of nuclear powered ice breakers Russia has a proven track record with them although their civilian nuclear power industry is questionable and they've had multiple military nuclear disasters. If Japan had one of these when the earthquake struck they could have just floated to the plant and plugged in the cooling systems, problem solved. So a solution to our energy problems or floating Chernobyls?

[GostHacked]

Russia is going to start building and selling floating nuclear fuel plants that can create enough electricity for 45,000 people and will have the added ability to purify sea water into fresh water. You could take this anywhere in the world and just set up a town with power and fresh water.

Already a pioneer of nuclear powered ice breakers Russia has a proven track record with them although their civilian nuclear power industry is questionable and they've had multiple military nuclear disasters. If Japan had one of these when the earthquake struck they could have just floated to the plant and plugged in the cooling systems, problem solved. So a solution to our energy problems or floating Chernobyls?

We've seen what happens when an oil rig goes BOOM. What happens when one of these things sinks?

[Post To The Left]

We've seen what happens when an oil rig goes BOOM. What happens when one of these things sinks?

Nothing. If it sinks the water will cool the reactors and put them into cold shut down. Now if for some reason it runs aground and breaks up on the shore then, that's a different problem. But the same thing could be said about any American Aircraft carrier and I don't get the idea that these nuclear power plant ships will be traveling a lot. They seem to be more like barges. Towed to a protective harbor and flick the switch, presto instant emergency power.

If only they were launched a year earlier they could have prevented this whole Fukushima disaster.

[Oleg Bach]

The earth has got the shakes lately...the upheavels will be back.

[GostHacked]

Nothing. If it sinks the water will cool the reactors and put them into cold shut down. Now if for some reason it runs aground and breaks up on the shore then, that's a different problem. But the same thing could be said about any American Aircraft carrier and I don't get the idea that these nuclear power plant ships will be traveling a lot. They seem to be more like barges. Towed to a protective harbor and flick the switch, presto instant emergency power.

If only they were launched a year earlier they could have prevented this whole Fukushima disaster.

Would the ship have been able to be deployed on time? TEPCO says the cores started going into meltdown less than 24 hours after the quake and tsunami .. once the radiation started spewing all over the place, what are the chances the ship would have made it in time to prevent the disaster? Or .. could this disaster have been prevented?

[GostHacked]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lcHo1pO1E

Some good footage of the Fukishima devestation.

[bush_cheney2004]

Nothing. If it sinks the water will cool the reactors and put them into cold shut down. Now if for some reason it runs aground and breaks up on the shore then, that's a different problem. But the same thing could be said about any American Aircraft carrier...

...or nuclear submarines, eight of which have sunk in northern oceans with emergency reactor scrams. Mankind has survived.

[jbg]

Would the ship have been able to be deployed on time? TEPCO says the cores started going into meltdown less than 24 hours after the quake and tsunami .. once the radiation started spewing all over the place, what are the chances the ship would have made it in time to prevent the disaster? Or .. could this disaster have been prevented?

I guess you keep bumping the thread somehow?

Well I plead guilty. I bump lots of threads.

[Sir Bandelot]

I guess you keep bumping the thread somehow?

Well I plead guilty. I bump lots of threads.

He has many good points to raise.

Henceforth I recommend always checking your sushi with a geiger counter

[Post To The Left]

Would the ship have been able to be deployed on time? TEPCO says the cores started going into meltdown less than 24 hours after the quake and tsunami .. once the radiation started spewing all over the place, what are the chances the ship would have made it in time to prevent the disaster? Or .. could this disaster have been prevented?

Well now that I think about it. Japan, and any nation with coastal N-Plnats, should have fast portable Diesel generator ships, that have enough power to keep the cooling systems going that can be launched on a few hours notice.

[TimG]

Well now that I think about it. Japan, and any nation with coastal N-Plnats, should have fast portable Diesel generator ships, that have enough power to keep the cooling systems going that can be launched on a few hours notice.

What we need are nuclear designs that do not require power to prevent a post shutdown nightmare. My understanding is the newer plants are passively cooled.

[WIP]

What we need are nuclear designs that do not require power to prevent a post shutdown nightmare. My understanding is the newer plants are passively cooled.

Passive cooling would be a major step towards better safety; but, from what I've read, it's only possible with smaller reactors, not the big reactors built for large scale power plants.

[Post To The Left]

Passive cooling would be a major step towards better safety; but, from what I've read, it's only possible with smaller reactors, not the big reactors built for large scale power plants.

The new generation of nuclear plants is using something like that:

The new Westinghouse AP1000 (the AP stands for Advanced Passive), for example, has a huge emergency water reservoir above the reactor vessel that’s held back by valves.

If the cooling system fails, the valves open and a highly reliable force takes over: gravity. Water pours down to cool the outside of the containment vessel. Then another highly reliable force, convection, kicks in. As the water turns to steam, it rises. Then it cools under the roof, turns back into a liquid, and pours down again....

Westinghouse, owned by Toshiba Corp. (6502), is about halfway to completion of one of the plants at Sanmen in China’s Zhejiang province. It’s supposed to go online in 2013. -- Source

But again its only enough water for three days.

Edited June 18, 2011 by Post To The Left

[Sir Bandelot]

The new generation of nuclear plants is using something like that:

But again its only enough water for three days.

What if there's an earthquake that breaks the cooling lines feeding the reactor? There can never be a perfectly safe system, and often it's not the design that't the problem, but apathy and political interference that render a system useless.

Trying to anticipate everything that can go wrong is a difficult task, especially for complex systems.

As the saying goes-

"We know there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns: that is to say, we know there are things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."

[WIP]

The new generation of nuclear plants is using something like that:

But again its only enough water for three days.

Those sound like better approaches than what's used today, but as long as there are pumps and pipes and valves, there is the chance of disaster. Most of the systems described in that article can't really be termed "walkaway safe" if they have up to 72 hours to get the cooling system up and running again!

I found the story I picked up from a podcast of an NPR show on mini-nuclear reactors, called NuScale Reactors:

They're designing what they call "modular" or "mini"reactors. Instead of occupying a city block of buildings, the smallest could fit in a two-car garage. And it won't break the bank.

"We've been calling it the economy of small," says Jose Reyes, who runs a company called NuScale Power. Reyes has designed a reactor about one-tenth the size of current reactors. It looks very different, though, kind of like a 50-foot-plus thermos.

"The concept is that you can't take a large reactor with all of its pumps and valves and piping and just shrink it down and expect to see an economic advantage there," he says.

In a standard reactor, there are pipes running everywhere, and pumps and valves to circulate water to the reactor core. The hot fuel creates steam that is piped out of the reactor vessel to run a turbine. If pumps or valves fail to keep the water moving, you can get a Fukushima-style meltdown.

In the NuScale reactor, there are no pumps. Water circulates naturally as it gets heated and then cools off. The whole reactor sits underground in a tank of water that will flood everything in case of an accident.

[GostHacked]

Ouch.

[Sir Bandelot]

Ouch.

Yep. Nothing to see here folks, move along... move along...

[Bonam]

There are plenty of designs out there for reactors that literally cannot melt down. Any disruption of power results in cessation of the chain reaction. Again, the problem is not, and has not for decades been, the engineering and scientific capability. The science has long been well understood to design and build much safer and more efficient nuclear reactors. The only reason these are not being built is regulatory stonewalling due to the politicization of nuclear energy.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Bonam

[TimG]

Ouch.

The interview is so full of distortions and out lies that I don't know where to begin.

For example, he claimed that there were full meltdowns. This is false. All we have is worst case scenario analyses that claim a full meltdown could have occurred. We really have no more information on that front than we had immediately after the accident when TEPCO acknowledged that a partial meltdown was a possibility.

He also claimed that the accident is comparable to Chernobyl. It is not. We are talking radiation releases less than 1/10th of Chernobyl. It is serious but conflating the two is dishonest propoganda.

He claimed that TEPCO was lying when we said the reactors did not safely shutdown. He is the one who is lying. The the fission reaction was stopped and the reactors did go into shutdown exactly as TEPCO said. What happened is the heat from the fuel could not be dissapated.

Frankly, the anti-nuclear types are creating their own mythology about this incident that is simply too absurd. It reminds me of the 9/11 truthers who refuse to accept anything the government says and lap up the utterings of any kook that tells them the government is lying.

[eyeball]

Frankly, the anti-nuclear types are creating their own mythology about this incident that is simply too absurd. It reminds me of the 9/11 truthers who refuse to accept anything the government says and lap up the utterings of any kook that tells them the government is lying.

With all due respect, pro-nuclear types are obsessed with an even more absurd mythology. They insist on accepting everything the government says and repeat the utterings of anyone who tells them the government can be trusted.

[GostHacked]

The interview is so full of distortions and out lies that I don't know where to begin.

So TEPCO is lying when they said at first there were NO meltdowns, then admitted 3 reactors went into meltdown? You may also want to familiarize yourself with Michio Kaku and his background.

For example, he claimed that there were full meltdowns. This is false. All we have is worst case scenario analyses that claim a full meltdown could have occurred. We really have no more information on that front than we had immediately after the accident when TEPCO acknowledged that a partial meltdown was a possibility.

TEPCO acknowledged that 3 reactors DID go into meltdown, and only a day or so after the quake/tsunami. But we only found out about that 3 months after the fact, when many nuclear experts already suspected that.

He also claimed that the accident is comparable to Chernobyl. It is not. We are talking radiation releases less than 1/10th of Chernobyl. It is serious but conflating the two is dishonest propoganda.

It is comparable to Chernobyl. They wont get these reactors under control for another 6-9 months. IN that time you can bet the amount of radiation leaked from the site will be way more than Chernobyl. Chernobyl was capped within a couple months, Fukushima has been spewing radiation for almost 4 months now, with another 6-9 months to go. Then they can start the clean up after the reactors are under control.

He claimed that TEPCO was lying when we said the reactors did not safely shutdown. He is the one who is lying. The the fission reaction was stopped and the reactors did go into shutdown exactly as TEPCO said. What happened is the heat from the fuel could not be dissapated.

Does it matter if they were shut down or not? because the building still blew apart resulting in the fuel rods from the pools above the reactors being scattered around from the explosion. You are not thinking this one through.

Frankly, the anti-nuclear types are creating their own mythology about this incident that is simply too absurd. It reminds me of the 9/11 truthers who refuse to accept anything the government says and lap up the utterings of any kook that tells them the government is lying.

Sure sure, compare anyone who can think critically and one who can track the lies and compare them to conspiracy theorists.

I said TEPCO lied, you said they did not. Then TEPCO says they did not tell us all the truth (aka lied). When a company has a history of lies , why would you keep on trusting them on what they say?

How many times can you be proven wrong in one thread?

Edited June 24, 2011 by GostHacked