Yahoo is running a story that has 170,000 being evacuated from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. It's not clear whether it's because radiation levels are 1000X greater than usual, or that the core continues to heat. Supposedly the next 4 to 5 hours will determine whether there is a meltdown or not.
Earlier today I was congratulating Japan on the success of their preventative/training. The devastation is horrible, but considering that this is the worse earthquake recorded in Japan, followed by the tsunami, and loss of life expectation is approx. 1,000, there is a little to be grateful for when you compare the 100,000 lives lost from the 1900 earthquake and 6000 from the 1995.
But a meltdown? my prayers are with them.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Oh great... a Tsunami warning...
In other news, apparently there are a group of people in the states calling the tsunami a karmic payback for the Pearl Harbor…Fucking idiots. There are no other words I can say about that.
I… just don't know how to respond to that.
No country deserves an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, followed by a potential Chernobyl. It really makes your stomach sink. I remember reading about it in detail in the paper and visibly shaking from it.
I've donated to the cause, and I recommend you do as well.
I reckon that 1000 deaths should be preemtively crowned underestimation of the year.
Nothing to be ashamed of. I was quite confident that Japan would be alright when I first heard the news.
Then I saw more footage. And everybody in my family had grown increasingly depressed by the whole thing…
… At least we were until the BBC interviewed a guy with a terrible wig on about the deaths. We laughed a lot at that.
Then the guilt kicked in and we were sad again.
It won't go 'boom' like Chernobyl did, read up on what some of the actual experts are saying.Well… Chernobyl itself didn't exactly go 'boom' either. What happened was that the technicians were conducting an experiment, where they were using a potential meltdown moment to power the cooling system. It's a bit hard to explain but basically, when a nuclear power plant powers down, it still requires power to keep the cooling system running. The reason is because a nuclear core doesn't have a conventional "off switch" and thus has a potential to overheat.
The powerplant had diesel engines that generated enough power to run the cooling system but required a full minute to power up. Thus the idea of the experiment was to create an automated system, where the steam turbines would feed power directly into the cooling system, as they were still spinning down, after the power failure. This would have provided enough power to bridge the missing minute.
Unfortunately, a series of event caused the core to be very unstable at the time of the experiment, and no experts were around to notice and fix it, due to the fact that the experiment was postponed until the next shift change started. When they finally started, the core heated too fast for the cooling system to keep up which caused the cooling fluid to overboil.
What happened then is that the core went critical and actually started to melt and catch fire. There was an explosion but that was due to a massive steam built up, forcing its way out of the plant. The plant caught fire during the event and radioactive materials from the melting core was carried away in the steam/smoke and blown all over the northern sector of east/west Europe.
The comparison between the two events is that the cooling system of reactor 1 in the Fukushima was damaged during the quake which ended up in it going critical, just like the Chernobyl reactor did.
Here's a before and after picture of core 1.
Similarly, a before and after picture of the Chernobyl plant.
At the moment, it's classified as a class 4 disaster, according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, where 7 is the worst cases scenario. At the moment the Chernobyl incident is the only case that's a level 7 disaster. The only reason why Fukushima didn't go to class 7 is because they're been doing a phenomenally good job minimizing the damage to the core, resulting in a fairly mild meltdown. However that might change cause according to the latest news, reactor 3 of the same plant could potentially go critical as well.
At the moment, it's classified as a class 4 disaster, according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, where 7 is the worst cases scenario. At the moment the Chernobyl incident is the only case that's a level 7 disaster. The only reason why Fukushima didn't go to class 7 is because they're been doing a phenomenally good job minimizing the damage to the core, resulting in a fairly mild meltdown. However that might change cause according to the latest news, reactor 3 of the same plant could potentially go critical as well.
Thanks in part mainly to the preventative measures taken by the team working at the plant, and the use of the seawater, a potential widespread crisis has been averted. I'm sure what's on everyone's mind is the radioactive materials released into the air and how that will affect the surrounding area. There are many factors as to why what happened, happened, and what actions were taken to resolve this issue, but long story short, the materials released into the atmosphere decayed within seconds and are blown out to sea, never to be seen again. In other words, they've already reached their half-life. So unless someone was standing directly above the facility, no one will be harmed by the reactor going critical. That also means that no measures were needed to evacuate anyone within a 30,000 mile or so vicinity.
So the people most in trouble by this disaster of the Fukushima plants are the operators themselves as well as the company that owns it, but no one else. Well, I suppose you could add the residents suffering from outages wherever these plants powered.
ummm… partly true.At the moment, it's classified as a class 4 disaster, according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, where 7 is the worst cases scenario. At the moment the Chernobyl incident is the only case that's a level 7 disaster. The only reason why Fukushima didn't go to class 7 is because they're been doing a phenomenally good job minimizing the damage to the core, resulting in a fairly mild meltdown. However that might change cause according to the latest news, reactor 3 of the same plant could potentially go critical as well.
Thanks in part mainly to the preventative measures taken by the team working at the plant, and the use of the seawater, a potential widespread crisis has been averted. I'm sure what's on everyone's mind is the radioactive materials released into the air and how that will affect the surrounding area. There are many factors as to why what happened, happened, and what actions were taken to resolve this issue, but long story short, the materials released into the atmosphere decayed within seconds and are blown out to sea, never to be seen again. In other words, they've already reached their half-life. So unless someone was standing directly above the facility, no one will be harmed by the reactor going critical. That also means that no measures were needed to evacuate anyone within a 30,000 mile or so vicinity.
So the people most in trouble by this disaster of the Fukushima plants are the operators themselves as well as the company that owns it, but no one else. Well, I suppose you could add the residents suffering from outages wherever these plants powered.
It seems that a big tradition of nuclear disasters is the cover-up or at least making things sound safer than they are so as not to panic people. There are a lot of lies, evasions and half truths here.
The sea-water thing was a an extremely last ditch super-dooper emergency move, very shoddy stuff.
At the beginning of the disaster I heard that Hilary Clinton offered to fly in a 747 load of coolant material (whatever that is) and was refused by the head of the Japanese nuclear agency who said they had it well under control themselves.
Typical- trying to make it seem as if things weren't as bad. Saving face. Very stupid man,
I've also heard that the crazily named USS Ronald Regan just recently passed through that "harmless cloud" of vented gas, giving crew members over a month's does of radiation in a single exposure.
…So there's quite a bit more to this story than they're pretending.
The comparison between the two events is that the cooling system of reactor 1 in the Fukushima was damaged during the quake which ended up in it going critical, just like the Chernobyl reactor did.
They're different in build though. If it melts down it will still be contained, unlike Chernobyl which didn't have any containment.
Japan isn't the uber star of nuclear technology by a long shot, but if the experts that have predicted everything so far are themselves playing down the possibilities of what disaster could occur just to save face of their own profession, I'll be very upset.
Still as far as I understand it from their predictions, a meltdown won't be a major catastrophe.
They're different in build though. If it melts down it will still be contained, unlike Chernobyl which didn't have any containment.In a way, the Chernobyl incident was a learning experience for future plants. Back then, nuclear power was considered to be much safer form of energy then it is perceived to be today.
A sad update: There was an explosion at reactor 3 this morning, similar to the reactor 1 explosion and now people are saying that reactor 2 might go the same way. It's possible they'll now upgrade the incident to class 5 or 6 on the INES scale.
ummm… partly true.
It seems that a big tradition of nuclear disasters is the cover-up or at least making things sound safer than they are so as not to panic people. There are a lot of lies, evasions and half truths here.
The sea-water thing was a an extremely last ditch super-dooper emergency move, very shoddy stuff.
At the beginning of the disaster I heard that Hilary Clinton offered to fly in a 747 load of coolant material (whatever that is) and was refused by the head of the Japanese nuclear agency who said they had it well under control themselves.
Typical- trying to make it seem as if things weren't as bad. Saving face. Very stupid man,
I've also heard that the crazily named USS Ronald Regan just recently passed through that "harmless cloud" of vented gas, giving crew members over a month's does of radiation in a single exposure.
…So there's quite a bit more to this story than they're pretending.
Well yes, of course they are trying to save their face. That is, the face of the company in charge of the plant. The point I was trying to make was that surrounding citizens have nothing to fear, in fact residents would be able to move back to outlying communities within the vicinity of the plant.
They did take all the necessary precautions to make sure it didn't become a full blown disaster. The people faring the worst by this are the people in charge of the company allowing their reactor to reach a level 4 incident.
The point I was trying to make was that surrounding citizens have nothing to fear, in fact residents would be able to move back to outlying communities within the vicinity of the plant.O'rly?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/15/3164151.htm
As PP says, things have taken a turn for the worse…
Reactor containment has suffered damage.
O'rly?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/15/3164151.htm
As PP says, things have taken a turn for the worse…
Reactor containment has suffered damage.
Definitely missing the context of my statement by posting this as a response to my statement.
But anyway, this is recent news, but don't be too hasty jumping to conclusions here. As a precaution, it is best to treat it as a worst case scenario. However, in the previous instance it turned out to be less detrimental than hyped, so let's see what evidence they bring to us first. I know I'll be talking to my team about this first thing tomorrow.
]Definitely missing the context of my statement by posting this as a response to my statement.If I did I'm sorry, but it's even worse than that now.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/15/3164595.htm
Dangerous levels to human health
Evacuations within a 20K radius. People with 30K urged to stay inside and close doors and windows.
If I did I'm sorry, but it's even worse than that now.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/15/3164595.htm
Dangerous levels to human health
Evacuations within a 20K radius. People with 30K urged to stay inside and close doors and windows.
I just meant that I posted all that before this latest explosion. Great, maybe I just jinxed the whole thing.
Because it certainly is growing worse than I previously thought. They weren't able to contain the built-up pressure so this wouldn't happen.
What's new now is that small amounts of radiation have been detected in Tokyo.Incorrect. Radiation levels just outside the site are immediately harmful to human health. They're rocketed up.
They're saying it's up to 400 milisieverts an hour, but other sources have said near the site it went up over 8000 at one point. That means containment has been breached.
Ugh! The fourth one just caught on fire!? Is somebody playing "This little piggy…" with the powerplant?
Also, the fact that not allot of radiation is being detected in the outlying regions is largely due to the fact that all the radioactive material is being blown to the sea. However, I wouldn't be so calm about that, if the radiation ever reach levels where it could start affecting the sea life.
At any case, regardless of how well they manage to contain this situation, it's quite clear that this plant is going to be out of commission for a veeeery long time.
That fire is apparently out now.
This site is best for recent news it seems:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Possible_damage_at_Fukushima_Daiichi_2_1503111.html
Related to this one:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/
Not sure what formal standing they have.
Regarding the renewed interest on Chernobyl…
I hear that the Russians, in typical Russian fashion, put a huge metal dome around the entire plant and called it a day. And now, that metal dome is breaking down. And what has been released from the Chernobyl site has only been a minor percentage of the total radioactivity. Meaning, once that containment is breached, Chernobyl can once again start spewing radioactive matter. In much larger quantities than previously.
Regarding the renewed interest on Chernobyl…
I hear that the Russians, in typical Russian fashion, put a huge metal dome around the entire plant and called it a day.
whoa… talk about sweeping your troubles under the rug… or in this case a huge metal dome. I hope they're planning on doing something about it… O_O
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