
Fukushima Reactor 1 melted down, 2 and 3 may have too - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/05/fukushima-reactor-1-melted-down-2-and-3-may-have-too.ars
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wombar
Oh no, that isn't possible. There were so many pseudo-reactor-experts,
explaining the safety of those types of reactor in detail. And now those darn
fuel rods just melted without appreciating the "don't panic, it's all
exaggerated" - wall of texts :[

~~~
DanI-S
Potentially 3 meltdowns occurred, after a 'perfect storm' swamped badly-sited
and antiquated reactors.

The end result: a few people with radiation burns, a local shortage of
electricity, and a release of radiation that - while significant - doesn't
come close to the radiation released by the thousands of atomic bomb tests
performed in Nevada this last century. An area will be uninhabitable for a
while.

Lessons learned: nuclear power is pretty darn safe, although you shouldn't
build 50s-style reactors near the coast in a tsunami zone. If you do, don't
live nearby. No surprises there.

~~~
kenjackson
I know what you were trying to say, but " _doesn't come close to the radiation
released by the thousands of atomic bomb tests_ " isn't exactly the way to
calm people about the amount of radiation leaked.

~~~
watmough
Is that even true?

A bomb might have 100 pounds of nuclear material, fairly efficiently exploded,
releasing a lot of energy.

A burning, melting reactor might have 100s of TONS of fuel pellets, which can
be aerosolized and distributed to the four corners.

~~~
brazzy
AFAIK even the most efficient bombs only convert a very small (sub 1)
percentage of the fissible material to energy. And (in the case of the over
500 airblasts) "aerosolize" all of the rest 100% and spread it throughout the
troposphere, ensuring that the whole world gets its share.

While it's true that reactors contain far more radioactive material, they
don't typically "aerosolize" much of it - Tchernobyl was pretty much a worst
case scenario in that regard, and Fukushima thankfully was not.

------
patrickgzill
One of the issues that is obscured by the discussion of nuclear plant minutiae
is the question "what level of trust should be placed in government?"

------
chailatte
Fairwinds: Fukushima Groundwater Contamination Worst in Nuclear History

"That (contaminated) water is seeping into the ground table, and there will be
contamination on that site for a long time to come. It could also move inland.
This is ground water, it doesn't have to move out into the ocean. It is
clearly moving into the north"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CAeixB19d4>

I don't believe that TEPCO is actively monitoring plutonium and uranium, which
is heavy and more likely to seep into ground water than to be blown into the
air. I hope that people in Tokyo do have some independent monitoring stations
setup. Anybody know any links?

~~~
ChuckMcM
People will read the TEPCO report and they will process it in a variety of
ways.

According to TEPCO (and GE documentation) the containment vessel did in fact
contain the core material. Looking at the measurements reported, (both from
TEPCO and other agencies) there isn't an indication of either groundwater or
watertable contamination.

[update: The TEPCO folks early on said they _did_ see some groundwater
contamination with Iodine. They also point out that the plant is 'downstream'
of the water table with any nuclides most likely being carried to the ocean
rather than to either of the rivers higher in the water table. The engineers
will know more when they open things up and start cleaning them out.]

The 'news' is that cleanup will take longer because rather than pulling fuel
pins out of the reactor and sending them off to be either re-processed or
disposed, the core material at the bottom of the reactor will have to be
removed piecemeal by what is probably custom equipment.

This was the same procedure used at TMI to remove material that had migrated
to the bottom of the reactor after having melted.

I don't think anyone disputes that this was a tragic event and at seems nearly
the worst possible accident (it could have been worse if all reactors were at
full power) but it hasn't killed anyone yet, this incident is unlikely to be
the principle cause of death for anyone in the forseeable future. And yet tens
of thousands of people are dead because they couldn't flee the wall of water,
so the tsunami _was_ a disaster, the damage to the nuclear plant _was not_.

When you see a head-on collision and the person in the car walks away because
the airbags went off, we don't argue for banning driving because the car is
destroyed, there is $50,000 worth of damage to the guardrail, and hundreds of
people lost work because they were caught in the traffic jam. We say, "Isn't
it amazing how safe cars are these days! That accident would have killed them
even 10 years ago."

We have had a head-on collision between a late model nuclear reactor and an
incredibly and extremely unlikely large magnitude double disaster and so far,
the safety systems that were built into the reactors and upgraded over the
years have kept everyone safe. Slowly, steadily, and with good engineering
practices.

The results of that disaster are being addressed and will be cleaned up and
repaired. I realize that someone walking away unhurt from what would have been
a fatal collision might feel that it was a miracle, but it might just have
been good engineering.

~~~
VladRussian
c'mon, these reactors of the basic design dating back to the Manhattan project
need to give way. The primary goals of these designs were weapon related
programs. Even molten salt reactor (supposedly coming in the happy future as
Gen IV) was successfully prototyped in Oak Ridge 40+ years ago.

I'm completely for technological progress, including full speed nuclear. Yet,
without hitting the current nuclear establishment hard in the nuts, they
wouldn't let the progress happen, and will be continuing to build, if
permitted, these old designs, or nothing will be built at all. The human race
thus is kept hostage - either old and dangerous or nothing. There is no debate
whether nuclear is safe or not. It is just a PR of the existing industry
trying to sell old dusty designs and their minor tweaks wrapped as the
necessary component of the technological progress of the human race. The real
answer is - existing nuclear is dangerous, costly, and huge portion of its
cost is socialized (as typical for any monopolized industry). The nuclear
energy, if/when it is developed using even existing today state of human race
technology (not 50 years old) can possibly be made safe and very effective.

Edit: among my best hopes for advanced nuclear and thermonuclear is that Musk
will need a source of energy on Moon, Mars, etc... and there is no nuclear
industry yet capable to reach beyond the Earth to limit the progress there

~~~
icarus_drowning
This is one aspect of this debate that I think hasn't been covered nearly
enough. Nuclear opponents have successfully created an environment in which it
is extremely difficult to construct new reactors, and then they are quick to
decry failures of obsolete designs. The anti-nuke movement shares culpability
in the Fukushima disaster precisely because they have done everything possible
to ensure that we are stuck with older, far less safe designs.

If anything, Fukushima is an example of how little attention we should pay to
the anti-nuclear movement, because an inevitable side effect of their cause is
the prolonging of older reactor's lifespans, when much safer designs could be
replacing them.

~~~
VladRussian
>If anything, Fukushima is an example of how little attention we should pay to
the anti-nuclear movement, because an inevitable side effect of their cause is
the prolonging of older reactor's lifespans, when much safer designs could be
replacing them.

Unfortunately. if limitations are lifted or eased, we'd immediately get more
of the same Fukushimas from the industry, and the anti-nuke movement is the
only force keeping it from happening.

~~~
bh42222
I think that both the industry and the anti-nuke forces are keeping nuclear
from advancing.

When people like the founder of Greenpeace are _pro_ nuclear, the only people
anti-nuclear are radically anti-nuclear. They do not give a damn about old
versus new tech.

The nuclear industry just wants to save money by pushing the old tech.

Together they create the false dichotomy of either old or nothing.

I wish we had an anti-nuclear movement which distinguished between old and
dangerous and what we could have with new tech. Even if they were against
both, if they were at least much more against the old an dangerous, that would
be great.

But the current ani-nuclear forces are not that rational.

~~~
nodata
To support your point, can you link to some information about the new tech?
I'd be interested in a layman's comparison to the old tech.

~~~
VladRussian
you can Google on your own and there are a lot of different designs in
different states, from pure concepts to successfully prototyped. My point is
the absence of any significant technological development by the entrenched and
monopolized industry (and intentional preventing of others through regulatory
machinery - i.e one can't disrupt the industry short of producing the fusion
reactor in the garage).

From practical point of view, the most developed, i.e. it was successfully
prototyped 40 years ago (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-
Salt_Reactor_Experiment>), is Molten Salt Reactor :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor>

nice quote from the article: " Since it uses raw fuel, basically just a
mixture of chemicals, current reactor vendors do not want to develop it. They
derive their long-term profits from sales of fabricated fuel assemblies." :)

The principal difference of this type of reactor is that all the stuff (fuel,
fission products, etc) aren't piled and accumulated in the reactor core.
Instead, it is flows in, burns, flows out, filtered/reprocessed, flows in ...

General scare tactic utilised by the industry to preserve status-quo is
expressed nicely here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor>

"As one director of a U.S. research laboratory put it, "fabrication,
construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep
learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents
and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not"

Basically - if you force us to make something new, it will be even more risky
and we've warned you.

Another quote from there : "Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum has explained that
almost all serious nuclear accidents have occurred with what was at the time
the most recent technology. " .

Complete BS - nor Chernobyl, nor Fukushima have nothing to do with their
technology being most recent as 1.their technology hasn't been most recent
2.it has to do with morons - Chernobyl, and unplanned for high tsunami -
Fukushima and if i remember TMI was also not about new technology.

------
drivebyacct2
We can all point fingers and accuse people of being too conservative in their
fear or not, but I think we can all agree that this is an unfortunate setback
in terms of public perception of nuclear energy.

I hate seeing coal ads that more or less state that it's safer than nuclear
energy.

~~~
nl
_we can all agree that this is an unfortunate setback in terms of public
perception of nuclear energy_

I - for one - disagree quite strongly with that.

I think that it's very unfortunate that somehow Nuclear power has picked up a
lot of support from people who think opposition to it is unscientific.

I think that if you look even moderately closely at it you'll find that the
risk modelling associated with nuclear power closely resembles the risk
modelling that Feynman tore to shreds when done on the space shuttle after the
Challenger disaster.

For example, people will tell you that this disaster was so bad because of the
combination of earthquake and tsunami knocked out the support infrastructure.
They'll even give you odds on each individual problem occurring.

But they don't look at the system as a whole: If an earthquake and tsunami did
occur, it was almost certain that support infrastructure would be knocked out.
In actual fact they were very, very lucky that no aftershock produced another
significant tsunami in the area.

The stupidity of those assumptions is obvious in retrospect, but nuclear fans
are papering over it by saying it is a one-off problem, and associating anti-
nuclear people with smelly, uneducated hippies from the 1970s.

Well.. it's NOT a one off problem, and the risks aren't as low as they make
out. Take seismic risks in the US. Quoting the report of _Safety/Risk
Assessment Panel for Generic Issue 19_ (ie "IMPLICATIONS OF UPDATED
PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC HAZARD ESTIMATES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN UNITED STATES ON
EXISTING PLANTS"):

 _Updates to seismic data and models indicate that estimates of the seismic
hazard, at some operating nuclear power plant sites in the Central and Eastern
United States, have increased_

 _Using available seismic hazard and plant seismic fragility information, the
Safety/Risk Assessment found that the increase in coredamage frequency for
about one-fourth of the currently operating plants is large enough to warrant
continued evaluation under the Generic Issues Program_

[http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/quake%20nrc%...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/quake%20nrc%20risk%20estimates.pdf)

So.. those risk assessments done when the plants were approved? They were
wrong, and in 1/4 of plants in the _Central and Eastern US_ core damage would
occur during a seismic event within their design tolerances.

Still calling this an unfortunate setback?

 _I hate seeing coal ads that more or less state that it's safer than nuclear
energy_

I hate seeing coal ads, but nuclear isn't the answer. (Oh, and don't believe
the whole "no renewables can produce baseload" lie, either. Do some reading on
solar-powered pump-hydro, geothermal and tidal power)

~~~
drivebyacct2
Um, I'm not making any excuses for this accident, and yet nuclear power is
still measurably safer than coal...

~~~
nl
Oh yeah, that argument.

Yeah, its true that if you are involved in the coal industry you are much more
likely to die than if you are involved in the nuclear industry.

Yes, day-to-day pollution from a coal plant (especially old ones) is much
worse than day-to-day operation of a nuclear plant (which is why they need to
be replaced).

But there is zero chance that an accident in a coal plant will affect more
than (say) 1000 people, and yet there is at least a 1/12,000 chance [1] that
it will affect 100,000+ with a nuclear station.

[1] The first commercial nuclear power station was commissioned in 1954. There
are ~25,000 days since then, and there have been 2 INES Level 7 accidents:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sca...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale#Level_7:_Major_accident)

~~~
ChuckMcM
_But there is zero chance that an accident in a coal plant will affect more
than (say) 1000 people, and yet there is at least a 1/12,000 chance [1] that
it will affect 100,000+ with a nuclear station._

Heh, the flip side is that _there is a 100% chance_ that the pollution created
by the coal plant over its lifetime will kill thousands of people. But to your
point, that is an argument based on facts, not emotion. And emotionally the
people living near the coal plant, while dying due to the effects of its
pollution will not have been frightened that one day it might have an accident
that would cause them to evacuate for a few months.

~~~
nl
I actually replied to a similar object further down.

Obviously I agree that coal is a disaster. At the same time I don't think that
replacing coal with nuclear power is acceptable.

However, since this thread is pretty much dead (except for us two!) I'll say
this:

I'm not as anti-nuclear power as I might appear here. For example, I'll
happily say that the panic associated with a nuclear leak is usually
unjustified. I'll even go so far as to say that nuclear power might have a
place in the future of power generation.

What I don't like is the uninformed cheerleading by many technophiles of
nuclear power.

There _are_ real risks associated with nuclear power, and they _are_ grossly
understated by those in the industry, which then gets parroted mindlessly by
many. There are plenty of examples on this thread of blind acceptance of
"facts" put forward by the nuclear industry (disclaimer - I'm not accusing you
of this). A trivial amount of research is enough to raise pretty significant
questions on them.

The trend towards blind acceptance of those claims, and the whole "nuclear is
cool" thing is what I try & push back strongly against.

