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Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

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Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#91

Post by oliv__ »

mikeash wrote: post #74
oliv__ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. To me (and I suspect to many others), the huge difference lies in the indelibility of the damages of nuclear power. Sure, coal might kill a million people a year, but the remnants of a nuclear incident will remain for thousands of years and affect hundreds of generations after that, in ways we don't even fully understand yet.

How long will the mercury, arsenic, and other nasty pollutants emitted by coal plants stick around? What strange effects will they cause on hundreds of future generations? For example, children and pregnant women are warned to be careful about the fish they eat because of mercury contamination. A large part of that mercury contamination comes from burning coal. That's food from 70% of the planet rendered partially un…

What about when Japan dumps all the contaminated water into the ocean, what, do I just move to a different planet?

I'm in no ways a defender or a supporter of coal here; I think we should be moving to clean energies as fast as we can. Still, the damages from nuclear catastrophes are orders of magnitude bigger than those of coal, imo.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#92

Post by gus_massa »

vtange wrote: post #53
Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

Probably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands? The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..

I'm not so optimistic:

* Fuckushima: A giant tsunami hit the plant, cut the external power lines and drawn the emergency generators. Not even waterproof robot will fix that. (You can blame bad design or not enough preparation, but robots will not solve that.)

* Chernobyl: They disable a few safety system to make some stupid tests. Apparently the safety system were necessary. If you can override the orders of the robots with a password, they will obey stupid orders. (You can blame bad design here too, to make the accident bigger.)

* Three Mile Island: Apparently it was partially an human error. Robots may have helped. (Let's blame also bad design a little.)

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#93

Post by [deleted] »

notspanishflu wrote: post #51
Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

I've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south. Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.

[deleted]

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#94

Post by marze »

nate_meurer wrote: post #81
marze wrote: post #6

I still don't see why they are spending years trying to make rad hard robots. A long steel tube with fiber optics to pipe in light, mirrors and optics to transmit an image down the tube would be infinitely easier. They'd need to burn a few holes, but none of the reactor vessels are intact so that wouldn't allow additional radioactive material to escape. I'm surprised the Japanese decision to dump the all the tritium…

Honest question: do you really think they haven't thought of this? You think that none of these engineers and scientists have yet thought of your shielded fiber optics idea? I'm not trying to be mean, I'm really curious. Radiation shielding is a hard problem. For meaningful reduction of xray and gamma radiation in this environment, we're talking inches of lead cladding [0]. And even that won't ensure a useful lifespa…

You don't need cladding on a simple light pipe.

Did they consider non-electronics solutions? Who knows. It may be the sooner they discover where the fuel went, the sooner they need to start spending the $80B to dig it out. So slow is a feature.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#95

Post by wbl »

oliv__ wrote: post #91
mikeash wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will the mercury, arsenic, and other nasty pollutants emitted by coal plants stick around? What strange effects will they cause on hundreds of future generations? For example, children and pregnant women are warned to be careful about the fish they eat because of mercury contamination. A large part of that mercury contamination comes from burning coal. That's food from 70% of the planet rendered partially un…

What about when Japan dumps all the contaminated water into the ocean, what, do I just move to a different planet? I'm in no ways a defender or a supporter of coal here; I think we should be moving to clean energies as fast as we can. Still, the damages from nuclear catastrophes are orders of magnitude bigger than those of coal, imo.

Have you calculated the dose you experience from that and the impact on life expectancy vs. coal?

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#96

Post by mikeash »

oliv__ wrote: post #91
mikeash wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will the mercury, arsenic, and other nasty pollutants emitted by coal plants stick around? What strange effects will they cause on hundreds of future generations? For example, children and pregnant women are warned to be careful about the fish they eat because of mercury contamination. A large part of that mercury contamination comes from burning coal. That's food from 70% of the planet rendered partially un…

What about when Japan dumps all the contaminated water into the ocean, what, do I just move to a different planet? I'm in no ways a defender or a supporter of coal here; I think we should be moving to clean energies as fast as we can. Still, the damages from nuclear catastrophes are orders of magnitude bigger than those of coal, imo.

There are multiple nuclear reactors sunk into the ocean already. Japan could shove the entire Fukushima complex into the sea and it wouldn't come close to doing what coal has done to poison the oceans.

Note that even if you think radiation is particularly scary and vastly worse than chemical poisons, coal power plants emit many tons of uranium in addition to all the other nasty pollution.

What is your basis for that last statement? Coal: about a million deaths per year. Nuclear: about half a million ever, including weapons. Given that, how can you possibly say that damage from nuclear is orders of magnitude bigger?

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#97

Post by yongjik »

fludlight wrote: post #73
ori_b wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that the death toll from Fukushima was zero.

There are other considerations than immediate direct deaths. From Wikipedia: > though there have been no fatalities linked to radiation due to the accident, the eventual number of cancer deaths, according to the linear no-threshold theory of radiation safety, that will be caused by the accident is expected to be around 130–640 people in the years and decades ahead...in the most contaminated areas faced a 70% higher r…

> We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years – not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big.

In other words, nuclear accident is (pardon the Orwellianism) so un-dangerous that "fear of radioactivity" is more lethal than radioactivity itself.

Another way to put it is: when I see a group of anti-nuclear activists posing with children of Fukushima prefecture, asking "How long can they live?", it makes me shake my fist with anger, because they are literally harming these children more than the nuclear accident itself.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#98

Post by jmhobbs »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

Underground coal fires like the Centralia mine fire are an interesting and not as well known problem as oil spills.

> The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90 m) over an 8-mile (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#99

Post by Fej »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

The only nuclear accident that has killed any significant number of people was Chernobyl: which used the most dangerous reactor design that had ever existed, had tons of corners cut, was being operated by barely-trained staff, and the safeties were turned off temporarily. This was the Soviet Union, where failure could end in the manager's imprisonment in the GULAG or even death. As a result, it was not exactly run properly...

Today, Pripyat is perfectly safe except for the immediate vicinity of the reactor. People could live there.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#100

Post by nate_meurer »

marze wrote: post #94
nate_meurer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: do you really think they haven't thought of this? You think that none of these engineers and scientists have yet thought of your shielded fiber optics idea? I'm not trying to be mean, I'm really curious. Radiation shielding is a hard problem. For meaningful reduction of xray and gamma radiation in this environment, we're talking inches of lead cladding [0]. And even that won't ensure a useful lifespa…

You don't need cladding on a simple light pipe. Did they consider non-electronics solutions? Who knows. It may be the sooner they discover where the fuel went, the sooner they need to start spending the $80B to dig it out. So slow is a feature.

Where'd you get that idea? :)

You absolutely would need cladding on a light pipe, and lots of it. All kinds of optical materials are subject to darkening, clouding, and embrittlement by much lower levels of ionizing radiation than exist in the reactor [0]. Again, here we're talking about tremendous amounts of radiation over much of the pipe's length, so even small amounts of damage per unit length are going to quickly render the pipe useless for imaging.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a013786.pdf

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