First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant • Hacker News Board

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#201

Post by SampleBourgeois » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #71

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

While I realize it was likely impractical to meltdown reactors just to develop the technology to clean them up, I find the process here pretty interesting. A lot of good engineering has gone into the effort, and the engineering challenges (and risks) of post runaway reactors has gotten a lot more data. The Chernobyl folks just entombed everything, which is a one approach, even though they can "walk up to"[1] the rema…

Obviously it couldn’t melt through to China but AFAIK the way Czernobyl played out was that they had to somehow stop it from melting down to a flooded basement due to the fear of a long lasting series of hydrogen explosions that could have been truly disastrous for the region, if not Europe. Thus I think that the true worst case has so far never happened: A reactor without any of the modern safeguards (such as boroni…

I believe the 'chernobyl nearly caused a series of hydrogen explosions' hypothesis is not true. I will find the links I have on this subject, later.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#202

Post by yongjik » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #179

blattimwind wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, if a beach is made of eroded granite, its radioactivity will be between 25,000-500,000 Bq/t: assuming the sand is more than a feet deep, I think it's safe to assume > 25,000 Bq/m^2. I don't think this computation is valid, because you have to consider what and how much radiation makes it out of the solid. So converting from activity per mass to activity per surface area cannot be done, I think, by s…

Yeah this is just a version of the 'chest x-ray' fallacy/lie/propaganda. You just simply cannot compare radiation hazzards based on gross disintegration's per second. Anyone doing that is either lying because they know better or ignorant.

> You just simply cannot compare radiation hazzards based on gross disintegration's per second. Anyone doing that is either lying because they know better or ignorant.

You know, the really nice thing about this part of your statement is that there's no way to tell which side you're standing...

This whole thread started with Bq/m^2 (i.e., "gross disintegrations per second" per square meter), after all. Of course you can accept some numbers and reject others as invalid/irrelevant, but when your whole argument looks like "I reject this number because nuclear is dangerous", it starts to look awfully like circular reasoning, or propaganda, if you prefer.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#203

Post by afterburner » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #174

afterburner wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Shutting down reactors doesn't save much money; they've already been built. They also weren't built when renewable energy was developed into the very cost-effective solution it is today. The worst thing about building new reactors using existing technology (which would really no better than the exis…

>Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Those costs are entirely political. Fear mongers have made it extremely difficult to get a nuclear project to completion (see the whole NRC approval process). Solar panels would be super expensive as well if each one had to go through a giant 30 year planning process that NIMBYs could easily disrup…

That energy breakdown pic doesn't say anything about the cost effectiveness of any of the sources, it's just a breakdown of current use. Nice try, pro-nuclear activist.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#204

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #124

varjag wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met a dying Chernobyl first responder on a commuter train in Belarus, back in early 1990s. These people never made it to WHO statistic as their deaths protracted over many years can not be directly attributed to the accident. As pro nuclear crowd would be happy to tell you, only couple dozen firemen died on the first day and that was it, making nuclear meltdowns almost benign incidents.

It is a pretty hard-hearted thing to say, but if the WHO doesn't think there is enough evidence to count his death in the Chernobyl statistics, what evidence does he have they are wrong? I mean, it isn't unprecedented for crippling damage to not surface for a long time (eg, asbestos/mesothelioma), but on the other hand cancer can strike at any age [0] and people struggle to attribute things to chance if they have a p…

[deleted]

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#205

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #202

Gibbon1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is just a version of the 'chest x-ray' fallacy/lie/propaganda. You just simply cannot compare radiation hazzards based on gross disintegration's per second. Anyone doing that is either lying because they know better or ignorant.

> You just simply cannot compare radiation hazzards based on gross disintegration's per second. Anyone doing that is either lying because they know better or ignorant. You know, the really nice thing about this part of your statement is that there's no way to tell which side you're standing... This whole thread started with Bq/m^2 (i.e., "gross disintegrations per second" per square meter), after all. Of course you c…

> You know, the really nice thing about this part of your statement is that there's no way to tell which side you're standing...

Two points that inform my position. There is no civilian nuclear industry. Military and civilian are two sides to the same coin. Due to it's black budget military origin, that industry lies about risks out of habit. None of the public debate deals with the complex risks, dubious economics, and long tail waste issues.

I actually know almost nothing and I can see the public debate is just a bunch of deeply ignorant people spouting off. So my position, given the industry lies, the risks, and the existence of alternatives, the sooner we stop mucking around with radio-isotopes and sequester the stuff we've made the better.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#206

Post by eecc » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #40

eecc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LED lights? Highly isolated apartment buildings? Revised urban planning to accommodate a post-commuting work-life? Other energy saving technology? In EU we have a comfortable living off consumption levels that in the US would qualify as church mices' (still not enough to prevent collapse though: https://web.archive.org/web/20140913032823/http://graduatein... )

> LED lights? you need to be addressing the larger chunks of these pie charts: https://www.epa.gov/energy/electricity-customers

Yeah, did I mention "Highly isolated apartment buildings"? (I did ;)

In fact, there are apartments here in Amsterdam that stay a cool 20C in winter with little or no heating at all, just the warmth from the water boiler flue running through the heat exchanger of the air ventilator.

Nationally sponsored infrastructure plans to replace existing buildings with energy class A at scale would put a big dent on energy consumption.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#207

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #196

kortilla wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Building new reactors costs a massive amount of money, more than pro-nuclear advocates realize or are willing to admit. Those costs are entirely political. Fear mongers have made it extremely difficult to get a nuclear project to completion (see the whole NRC approval process). Solar panels would be super expensive as well if each one had to go through a giant 30 year planning process that NIMBYs could easily disrup…

> Those costs are entirely political. This is simply not true. There has been tremendous ongoing incompetence and mismanagement in the reactor construction process in recent years. You may blame regulation -- that's the goto excuse for pronuclear people to avoid coming to unpleasant conclusions -- but the problem is that reactors are complicated things, and reactors with safety systems are even more complicated thing…

Yes. There is a book by Serhii Plonkhy called ‘Chrrnobyl’. The lasting impression I have is that every single stage of management, design and construction was broken. One chapter alone makes the whole great book worthwhile - describing the Russian presentation at the European conference in Switzerland after the disaster.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#208

Post by dev_tty01 » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

mimixco wrote: post #15

It took 10 years to even get a robot that could get close to the fuel... and people still ask if nuclear might not be as bad as coal! The truth is that accidents like this can never be cleaned up or salvaged. It's time to move away from nuclear, as other countries have already figured out. Fortunately for us in the US, the last nuclear plant under construction today will likely be cancelled, as the last two were. The…

>The truth is that accidents like this can never be cleaned up or salvaged. It's time to move away from nuclear, as other countries have already figured out.

France per-capita CO2 emission is 1/3 the US rate and 1/2 the German rate. This is due to their heavy focus on nuclear power for electricity production. The data shows we should be moving to nuclear rather than away from it.

As far as "never" being able to clean up an accident, how could you take such an absolutist position? Do you really believe that with a reasonable research effort we won't understand how to reprocess nuclear waste and/or accident debris within 50 years? We couldn't even fly until a little more than 100 years ago. Our understanding of the physical world is growing more rapidly than any of us can really appreciate.

To say we can "never" clean something up is to completely disregard the exponential rate of increase of both scientific knowledge and technological capability. Given progress in the last 100 years, it is reasonable to conclude that nuclear waste is a 50 to 100 year problem at worst.

Geez, did we toss out cars or aircraft after a few accidents? Did we stop trying to go into space after some accidents? Did we stop trying to cure cancer after some deaths? No, we learned from the mistakes that were made that led to the accidents and fixed them. The development of nuclear power should follow the same iterative process all other technologies rely upon. Obviously we work as hard as possible to risk reduce the process, but iteration is how science turns into safe and practical technologies.

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

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#209

Post by ars » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #145

cgrand-net wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is that accidents like this can never be cleaned up or salvaged. While global warming is easily solved. Coal or nuclear are both bad but differently. Which one is less bad depends on your risk model

The choice is not between coal and nuclear.

Yes, actually it pretty much is.

Re: First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

#210

Post by hrktb » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #187

hrktb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a bit frustrated by some of these arguments. In particular there is all this “expected” part about low level of radiation that _should_ lead to low effects. That all fine, until we get the numbers of actual cases, which are higher than expected. But then we have something looking like backpedaling, a lot of “yeah it’s higher, but it’s not what you think. Because it should be low”, wich I’d take as a partly circul…

That paper has some wording that is hard to understand, so I think this might be what's causing you trouble. The quote you make from the paper is not the only reason. They give 5 reasons. - The exposure rates are significantly lower that Chernobyl (earlier in the paper they explain that in previous studies there is a correlation between exposure and cancer rates -- because the thyroid problem rates here are high whil…

My main beef is how in parralel to the pure data and experiments, there’s all this commentary going back to other events (Chernobyl) or expected results (“ours models would predict") to seed the ideas that some of these data is just non significant.

To draw a bad analogy, if we had a plane crash and had to study how 5% survived, we wouldn’t be saying ‘previous crashes had everyone dead, we should not pay too much attention to this set of survivors’ or ‘our models predict bulky males to survive, young kids surviving here is just an oddity that has nothing to do with our study’.

Also if there’s actual data not matching the model, shouldn’t we think hard and long about the the model ? And if we do, the argument wouldn’t be that data doesn’t matches the model, but that we have additional data explaining the root cause of the oddities.

I am not saying we must to tie everything back to a single source, and for instance the fact that having more screening than before actualy affects the rate of detection and changes the statistics is a very valid point among many.

But brushing away swaths of oddities because it’s not expected feels lazy. Basically I’m wondering if we would find causes aside from direct radiations that could cause some of the issues. For instance the whole country’s rate of cancer rising shouldn’t be an argument to dismiss Fukushima having something to do with it, hell the gov shipped contaminated soil around the country, there were multiple food mislabeling issues etc. We should pin down an actual cause of the rise of cancers around the country before saying it’s unrelated.