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Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

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Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#121

Post by ars »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #66
ars wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You filter out the other elements, and release the water. Water pretty much can't get radioactive. (For more than a few minutes.) The longest radioactive oxygen you can make in a reactor has a half life of 26 seconds. For hydrogen, deuterium is not radioactive, and tritium can't be made in a light water reactor. So water effectively can't get radioactive.

And they have these filters right there, handy and ready to use just in case they started pumping in sea water?

They don't have to use them till it's over.

The water is being boiled away, not circulated with pumps.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#122

Post by brazzy »

SeoxyS wrote: post #109
illumen wrote: post #15

The writer is not an expert on earth quakes. Making such a bold claim that nothing can go wrong is plainly false. Just because they are an expert in one area, does not mean they are an expert in all areas. There are already a number of people being treated for radiation poisoning. They have already admitted that there have been radiation releases above safe levels. I feel sorry for the engineers working so hard to fi…

Let's use the smarter, more innovative, and safer energy solutions available today. Let's leave these 50's and 60's era shitty technology behind. Oh, and what do you suggest? In the US, for example, we've just about dammed every river that can be dammed, and solar and wind are too expensive for wide scale deployments. The only real alternative we have to the 20% of our energy which comes from nuclear would be to add…

solar and wind are too expensive for wide scale deployments.

No, they aren't. And the only reason nuclear is considered "cheap" is that the costs of accidents and waste disposal are methodically underestimated.

Oh, and another thing: Uranium fuel is a quite limited resource as well...

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#123

Post by ars »

varjag wrote: post #72
ars wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You filter out the other elements, and release the water. Water pretty much can't get radioactive. (For more than a few minutes.) The longest radioactive oxygen you can make in a reactor has a half life of 26 seconds. For hydrogen, deuterium is not radioactive, and tritium can't be made in a light water reactor. So water effectively can't get radioactive.

Remember, they pump in salt water, without prior desalination. It will get radioactive, although to which extent I have no idea.

Not very.

The worst sodium has a half life of 15 hours.

The longest chlorine has a half life of 360,000 years, but is barely radioactive. The rest are all under an hour.

There's other stuff in sea water though. But not in large quantities.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#124

Post by ars »

weinzierl wrote: post #88
hollerith wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the OP says there are such facilities. (The contaminated water can be kept in the containment till the facilities have recovered from the earthquake if they are currently down.)

As far as the steam is concerned this puts my mind at a rest. Quote from http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3792741638/containment-at-f... " In this situation, the vented air would be routed through a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, charcoal beds, and another HEPA filter to remove as much radioactivity as possible before being released from a very tall stack to dilute the flow as much as possible." When…

They are just flooding it and letting the water boil off.

If they could actually circulate water they wouldn't be in this situation.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#125

Post by ars »

ScottBurson wrote: post #86
pdenya wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you provide more detail on #4? I'm curious but not quite getting what the consequences of this are.

It means there are isotopes, including tritium, whose half-lives are long enough that they pose a risk to the health of anyone who happens to inhale or ingest them. The OP's dismissal of such risks is a bit facile.

But tritium pretty much can't be made in light water reactors, so there isn't going to be any in the released steam.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#126

Post by catfish »

bzbarsky wrote: post #92
catfish wrote: post #85

The light from the Sun that strikes this planet, (the largest fusion based nuclear reactor in the Solar System) produces more energy in one day than all the nuclear, oil, or coal based power plants on the planet. One has to wonder why governments insist on building poisonous, fragile, radioactive generators on earth, when we can safely harness solar, wind, and wave energies without such horrifying risk. Will it be th…

The reason people build power stations is that density of energy matters, not just quantity. Sure, we can replace our current energy sources with solar + wind + wave. What fraction of coastline needs to be covered with wave-driven generators, and what fraction of Earth's land area needs to be covered with solar or wind farms to get to our current energy generation levels? Last I saw the numbers for the US they weren'…

2/3rds of the earth is covered with water, Nothing would prevent putting solar on the oceans surface. And why would we cover land with panels, when we have rooftops that cover triple the area required to generate the base line you cite? Already, flexible rooftop material exist that serves a dual purpose of protecting the home, and producing power.

Every problem you cite can be solved readily. Put even a 100th of the resources expended to develop nuclear energy into alternate energies and we can be rid of the suicidal methodology of nuclear energy on the planets surface. Why anyone would defend something as poisonous as nuclear energy is beyond understanding. It is a continuous threat to the future of the species and supported only by those who stand to profit greatly from its deployment.

I don't think you actually understand the science at all.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#128

Post by lispm »

CamperBob wrote: post #120
lispm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did not work out too well, given the history of nuclear power plants in the US. When was the last one built? The list of cancelled nuclear power plants is impressive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canceled_nuclear_plants...

Meanwhile, hundreds of coal-fired plants were built in their stead, and those are currently spewing radioactive waste into the air in normal operation.

Coal-fired plants were not mentioned by me as an alternative or as desirable.

Please stop that.

I see that you are confused when somebody has not the view of the nuclear industry. You are brainwashed by the corporations. Even thinking that there are alternatives that are not coal seems to be not possible.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#129

Post by harry »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #127

This is not completely relevant to the current topic, but I was wondering if any video exists of the inside of a nuclear reactor. What does it look like when it's running? A brief search on Youtube could not locate anything.

dunno about actual run-of-the-mill daily cycle but I've seen the reactor at K-State run a couple-dollar pulse. It looked about like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgNwtepP-6M

For the day to day operation it just looked like a big pool of distilled water with a ton of pipes running around in it.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#130

Post by skybrian »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #127

This is not completely relevant to the current topic, but I was wondering if any video exists of the inside of a nuclear reactor. What does it look like when it's running? A brief search on Youtube could not locate anything.

I don't think any cameras would survive in there. They're inferring what's going on based on sensor readings.
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