
Assembly Line Nuclear Reactors Are Quietly Building Steam in the Northwest - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/assembly-line-nuclear-reactors-are-quietly-building-steam-in-the-northwest
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bkeroack
This is great. I've always thought that the reaction to Fukushima should not
have been "get rid of nuclear power generation because it's too dangerous",
but rather: "using a handful of giant reactors is too dangerous, scale them
down and spread them out so that a local disaster has limited ability to cause
catastrophic harm".

~~~
Turing_Machine
I agree with your larger sentiment, but disagree that current reactors are too
dangerous.

Let's look at what happened at Fukushima:

1) Massive earthquake 2) Massive tsunami 3) Devastating fire 4) Complete loss
of power to all control circuitry

An extreme worst-case scenario if there ever was one, and yet no one died.

~~~
rosser
_...and yet no one died._

Yet.

EDIT: Don't mistake; I'm (conditionally) very pro-nuclear power. But the
fallout (pun not intended) from Fukushima is far from over, so to be all,
"Welp, dodged _that_ one" is a little disingenuous.

~~~
maaku
To visit the area surrounding Fukushima you need a rad-protected hazmat suit,
because apparently the contamination is so bad as to be deemed unsafe for
unprotected humans.

Yet if you pulled out a Geiger counter outside of the plant itself, the
reading you'd get is less than what you'd see in a typical hot springs bath,
the national leisure in Japan.

To be sure there is a difference between relaxing in a high-rad bath for an
hour or two, now and then, and living in one 24/7\. The latter probably
wouldn't be very healthy, either. But our knee-jerk response to anything
involving the word "radiation" some times does more damage (economic, etc.)
than the radiation itself.

~~~
rosser
Sure, the _air_ may not be tremendously hot (though I'm still seeing reports
of 10-20 µSv/h as far out from the plant as 5km, when the US CFR's recommended
annual aggregate dose limit for individuals is 1 mSv), but what about the
groundwater? What about the soil?

~~~
sliverstorm
Not an expert on these things, but as I understand it the groundwater can't
actually _become_ radioactive, it picks up trace radioactive material. So the
next question is, how hard is that to filter, and how many people in Japan
drink unfiltered groundwater.

~~~
ars
Yes, that is correct. Water can not become environmentally radioactive except
as tritiated water which has a short lifetime both radioactively, and
biologically.

The longest half life for radioactive oxygen is 2 minutes.

Tritium (from hydrogen) has a half life of 12 years, and is harmless
externally. Internally it's dangerous but has a half life of only 1 to 2
weeks, so the danger is very limited.

Mitigating the risk even more, tritium is rarely made by reactors (i.e. made
in very small quantities), they prefer to make deuterium, which is not
radioactive.

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tinco
Is it clear which design these smaller generators are using? I am a pro-
nuclear power guy, but I'd be slightly concerned with the idea of having more
of the conventional ones being used as if they're no big deal, even if they're
smaller.

~~~
cjslep
Depends on which small modular reactor. NuScale mentioned in the article is an
Integral Pressurized Water Reactor[0]. A PWR is conventional, but I am not
sure where your concern stems from since PWRs and BWRs are the most common
reactors in the USA and are some of the most thoroughly studied, especially
when it comes to passive safety system design and maintenance.

[0]
[http://www.nuscalepower.com/ourtechnology.aspx](http://www.nuscalepower.com/ourtechnology.aspx)

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bayesianhorse
"Scares" aside, is this really a good idea? Nuclear waste is an essentially
unsolved problem of already epic proportions. Incidents too unlikely to ever
happen have happened. Any nuclear material running around on trucks is in
danger of being involved in catastrophic accidents or just stolen and used for
dirty bombs or worse.

Some of these concerns may be alleviated by the reactor design....

~~~
Turing_Machine
" Nuclear waste is an essentially unsolved problem of already epic
proportions."

No, it isn't.

After a couple of hundred years it's no more radioactive than the rock from
which it came.

The people who told you it was going to be lethal for umpteen billion years?

They were lying to you.

~~~
morsch
We haven't solved the problem of storing the waste for hundreds of years,
either.

