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Merged nuclear power safe?

DC said:
:rolleyes: still more preferable that the unqualified comments from the postoffice guy....
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Unsupported assertion.

I asked for your "experts" qualifications and you've refused to provide them.
 
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At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained. It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside).
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Now that exactly the same explosion has happened again, I'm guessing they can't vent directly to the outside, but only inside the building housing the container vessel.
 
Nosi said:
Many people on this forum believe nuclear power to be safe, clean, efficient energy.
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It isn't "safe". But neither are coal plants, hydroelectric dams, missions into space, high-rise buildings, bridges, highways, or cooking. But we still do those things because we perceive that the benefits are higher than the costs.

Human endeavour shouldn't be limited to things that are safe, if we want to get anywhere.
 
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Last of the Fraggles said:
Psychologically I'm feeling a lot better about nuclear power today than I was last week. If you can hit a plant with a 9.0 and umpteen smaller aftershocks (6.0 and above) and a tsunami and have it explode and still not kill anyone then I'm confident we could have one near me where the worst it will get is some quite heavy rain.
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Enough with your logic, we'll have none of that here in our mainstream media!
 
DC said:
it was a comment by Wolfgang Renneberg, former boss of the german ministry for reactorsecurity.

So what does your expert say about a broken vessel?
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That guy ? As I can tell he is always crying wolf. I can't even find his Lebenslauf. He is certainly *not* speaking of experience.
 
Christian Klippel said:
Renneberg? Really? That guy from "Renneberg Consult" who seems unable to afford a company eMail address, and instead uses @netcologne.de (a regular internet provider)? The Renneberg that seems to have fun taking part in the nuclear hysteria? The guy who favours and supports that political party that is most vehemently against nuclear energy?

I'm sorry, but that guy has a very big conflict of interest here. Oh boy, that won't end well, i think.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: Not to mention that his company creates studies/reports exlusively for the ant nuclear lobby organizations and said party ("Die Grünen").

Here is his company website. This guy is absolutely not neutral.
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Quoted fr truth.

That guy is the last one I would consult as an expert.
 
DC said:
:rolleyes: still more preferable that the unqualified comments from the postoffice guy....
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Hum. No. There are many source some from what Sword quoted, some other you can find, and they all concur to the same things : fear are exaggerated. You choose to trust 1 guy because he goes your way, a politician fear monger, I choose the data I read on this, and what I did study in university on nuclear reactor design.
 
Java Man said:
The tens of thousands dead were due to the earthquake and tsunami. We can not control nor anticipate such things and we have no say on when they will strike and where people will find themselves when they do. But we can control our energy production systems because we build them. We not only get to choose what we do, we get to be responsible for them as well.
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Yep, no control over nature. And given that, these plants have been very successful at limiting the result of the terrible blow nature dealt.

You have to site human infrastructure where humans live. Japan is arguably a terrible place for them to live. Almost 100% of the infrastructure in the effected areas was wiped out.

But these plants still have intact containments.

There is a tier of redundant systems. One after another failed. Finally we were down to the mechanical barrier systems, and those have held.

So, honestly, design changes might have kept us from getting to that point, and would have saved the "CEO" a whole lot of money, but it's stupid to say that these plants have failed.
 
BenBurch said:
Yep, no control over nature. And given that, these plants have been very successful at limiting the result of the terrible blow nature dealt.

You have to site human infrastructure where humans live. Japan is arguably a terrible place for them to live. Almost 100% of the infrastructure in the effected areas was wiped out.

But these plants still have intact containments.

There is a tier of redundant systems. One after another failed. Finally we were down to the mechanical barrier systems, and those have held.

So, honestly, design changes might have kept us from getting to that point, and would have saved the "CEO" a whole lot of money, but it's stupid to say that these plants have failed.
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The fact is, it is bad, and it looks bad, and it was avoidable. Nuclear power could have emerged from this looking much more solid and safe if the avoidable bit was done right. That the plants survived a shock worse than they were designed for is not much comfort when there are claims that there have already been quakes that have exceeded their rating. If that is the case, then they have been operating outside their limits for years, which is clearly not safe either way.

Now it's been set back ten years or more. The focus on it when it hasn't actually killed anyone yet, but probably tens of thousands are dead due to the quake is absurd, but the public don't seem so interested in that for some reason.
 
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a_unique_person said:
The emergency generators they brought in after the quake. They said they couldn't use them because the plug didn't fit. :boggled:
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Yes, that surprised me a lot, too.

First of all, I was surprised that the plugs didn't fit in the first place - I mean, how many different kinds of plug would be common for mobile generators?

Was there really no way to connect the two, rather than decide to give up one of the lines of defense?

And how was the plant build to receive this extra power? When I was on the visit to a plant here in Germany we were told that if they should run out of cooling water their system was designed to accept water in all conditions from all sources. So a tank lorry from the nearest farmer could have brought water and they could have kept going.


What exactly stopped them from taking a pair of starter cables from the next car and use those?
 
Rasmus said:
Yes, that surprised me a lot, too.

First of all, I was surprised that the plugs didn't fit in the first place - I mean, how many different kinds of plug would be common for mobile generators?

Was there really no way to connect the two, rather than decide to give up one of the lines of defense?

And how was the plant build to receive this extra power? When I was on the visit to a plant here in Germany we were told that if they should run out of cooling water their system was designed to accept water in all conditions from all sources. So a tank lorry from the nearest farmer could have brought water and they could have kept going.


What exactly stopped them from taking a pair of starter cables from the next car and use those?
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I can only assume that there is a bit more too it than simply 'the plugs didn't fit'. I used to work in the genset industry and these things can be a bit more complex than simply plugging them in depending on exactly what they were trying to do.

In the absence of a detailed explanation we're only really speculating on the issues. I'm sure the situation and timescales played a significant part on what they were able to do.
 
a_unique_person said:
The fact is, it is bad, and it looks bad, and it was avoidable. Nuclear power could have emerged from this looking much more solid and safe if the avoidable bit was done right. Now it's been set back ten years or more. The focus on it when it hasn't actually killed anyone yet, but probably tens of thousands are dead due to the quake is absurd, but the public don't seem so interested in that for some reason.
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No, it was NOT avoidable.

Nature has an unlimited range of energies it can throw at you.

You cannot engineer absolute perfection that will not be destroyed at some level.

But at those levels, as we have seen, the death toll dwarfs any that you could even possibly have if you obliterated the plant.

Did you know that there are nuclear reactors moldering at the bottom of the ocean in several places on this planet? Crushed with the submarines that were part of. Clearly, we have all died already?

Did you know that there were two reactor calamities in the middle of Ohio at Argonne West? One was a melt-down that was actually planned-for. Another was the explosion of an experimental military reactor that claimed three lives and was a radiological nightmare. Clearly, Idaho is uninhabitable now?
 
As an aside, I remember that before Chernobyl it was usually claimed that reactors were safe and nothing could realistically happen. Yes, there was a theoretical chance that many, many things could possibly go wrong all at once at the things would blow up, but that just wasn't realistic.

Then, one of the things did blow up.

After that, it was new and shiny, western and modern plants that could not possibly blow up. Chernobyl was different for a vast number of reasons - all of which may well be accurate. But I am truly wondering what kind of accidents and idiot users have not been foreseen in the oh-so-save western nuclear power-plants.

I am certain that after this our plants will still be absolutely safe, because they are so much newer than those in Japan and not sitting in an area prone to earthquakes and what not.

Again, all of that is true enough - but I don't need another round of what is clearly not the truth.

Yes, things can go wrong. Horribly wrong beyond our wildest dreams and way more wrong than we ever anticipated. Then, things would get really bad. But before I start worrying about that I should spend a lot of time planning my finances for the time when I will hit the lottery jackpot 5 times in a row ...
 
MattusMaximus said:
I made a blog post about this whole situation last night, for what it's worth:

Know Nukes: The Japanese Earthquake & Anti-Nuclear Hysteria

Cheers - MM
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Can you help answer this?

"That is a sensible balanced kind of view of the situation, but I think the author is not up with the current data.

He says several times that the danger is not extreme because the primary containment has not been breached. This would be comforting if true.

Unfortunately the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency say that they are detecting cesium and iodine isotopes outside the Fukushima reactor. "
 
Rasmus said:
As an aside, I remember that before Chernobyl it was usually claimed that reactors were safe and nothing could realistically happen. Yes, there was a theoretical chance that many, many things could possibly go wrong all at once at the things would blow up, but that just wasn't realistic.

Then, one of the things did blow up.
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The only reason Chernobyl went up is because there was an absolutely obscene lack of adherence to safety protocols, and the only reason the meltdown actually mattered was because the Soviet workers involved didn't do their jobs properly.
 
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