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First contact made with melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant

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

#31

Post by lucb1e »

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…

> ... and people still ask if nuclear might not be as bad as coal!

That's playing on feelings rather than making a rational argument. Regardless of whether I am for or against widely deploying nuclear energy, this is not the way to talk about it and create informed opinions. The media are already doing their best to play on feelings on this topic, we don't need to replicate that here.

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

#32

Post by ars »

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…

> and people still ask if nuclear might not be as bad as coal!

It's not even close. Nuclear is so much better than coal it's unbelievable.

Just to start with coal releases orders of magnitude more radiation than nuclear. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

Then the number of deaths from coal, take a look at the numbers:

Coal: 100,000 deaths per PWh.

Nuclear: 0.1 deaths per PWh.

That means coal is 1 MILLION times worse than nuclear. I mean seriously, what else would it take to convince someone?

Let's see, what's worse? Taking 10 years to do something, or killing 1 million times as many people?

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

#33

Post by est31 »

jrs235 wrote: post #9

Are all the rainbow colored pixels in the picture caused by radiation hitting the camera sensor?

I don't think so. I rather think it's water droplets acting as little prisms. Radiation would hit the camera sensor in a random pattern and the effect would decay over time. A bit like how you determine pi with the monte calro method by throwing points at a circle and then checking whether they are inside or not.

I found a video of the robot on YouTube [1] and it seems that the rainbow patterns don't follow the "monte carlo throwing" pattern, but their location depends on the scene.

I don't know how radiation would affect a CMOS sensor, but I would guess it to be similar to what strong light is doing, e.g. when you point your camera into the sun. What then happens is an effect called "blooming": CMOS sensors work by photodiodes converting light to electric potential. If the radiation that reaches one of the photodiodes in the sensor plane is strong enough, the potential would jump to the other sensors next to it, causing a large bright field in the digital image.

Edit: Oh and it seems that the material itself is reflecting light in a rainbow pattern, but that's not the same as "ionizing radiation hitting the sensor".

Edit2: it could just be oil. Oil on water causes rainbow like artifacts.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyKEVD4oC4s

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

#34

Post by crowdpleaser »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #27
acidburnNSA wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look objectively at the numbers, you'll see that nuclear is one of the safest forms of energy production we know. Even considering conservative estimates from Fukushima and Chernobyl, nuclear power has net saved over 2 million lives simply by displacing air-pollution related deaths that would have occurred had the nukes not been built. Coal kills on the order of hundreds of thousands of people per year. Fukush…

We shouldn’t be burning coal either.

Okay, how should we have powered the industrial revolution?

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

#35

Post by EamonnMR »

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…

We haven't figured out how clean up or salvage atmospheric CO2 either.

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

#36

Post by ars »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #27
acidburnNSA wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look objectively at the numbers, you'll see that nuclear is one of the safest forms of energy production we know. Even considering conservative estimates from Fukushima and Chernobyl, nuclear power has net saved over 2 million lives simply by displacing air-pollution related deaths that would have occurred had the nukes not been built. Coal kills on the order of hundreds of thousands of people per year. Fukush…

We shouldn’t be burning coal either.

But we are, so it's better to go with the cleaner option.

You are basically saying: Since you can't be perfectly clean, I'd rather you be as dirty as possible.

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

#37

Post by tomatotomato37 »

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…

Considering the failure mode of nuclear posions maybe 10 sq miles, whereas the operating mode of coal posions the entire fucking atmosphere, I'd say coal is still worse

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

#38

Post by moate »

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…

Frequently people worrying about environmental impact aren't as concerned about financial impact. I don't care if it cost eleventy-gazillion-bitcoins to decommission a nuclear plant if the alternative is continued global warming and an inhospitable planet when the bill comes due.

>>The truth is that accidents like this can never be cleaned up or salvaged.

I mean that depends on how pedantic you want to get with a "never" and whether you think "sequestered" is good enough or only "salvaged" is acceptable.

Current nuclear isn't great and is incapable of solving climate issues by itself. It still seems like a more viable option than continued reliance on fossil fuels.

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

#39

Post by 8ytecoder »

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 bad parts of nuclear power is extremely concentrated and so has great visibility. I have asthma and I used to live near a coal plant. My lifespan is shortened considerably - not to mention the huge decrease in quality of life. And I'm just one the many millions who are affected by increased pollution and particulate matter in the air. However because the effects of coal is diffused from your perspective you have no idea the damage it causes to people like us. On aggregate coal kills more people (earlier than what their lifespan would otherwise be and that has to count for something).

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

#40

Post by sigstoat »

eecc wrote: post #28
Kuinox wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and move away to what ?

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

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