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Merged nuclear power safe?

Aepervius said:
Bhopal.

Although to be fair I am not sure how much the clean up or long term pollution were (still thousands of dead).
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BBC said:
In a neighbourhood just north of the Union Carbide plant, we found people drawing groundwater from a pump. We took a sample and had it tested at a laboratory in the United Kingdom.

The test found that it contained nearly 4,000 micrograms per litre of carbon tetrachloride - nearly 1,000 times the World Health Organisation's safe limit
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BBC report from 2009
 
Darth Rotor said:
Nuclear power is currently safer than air travel.

Nosi, you gonna give up flying?
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Well, there was that story just a few days ago about the air traffic controller who was asleep and two flights had to land at Reagan National airport on their own...
 
Hindmost said:
There are times I get nervous enough not to want to fly...and I would hate to live anywhere near a coal fired plant.

glenn
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If I knew some big earthquake was about to hit Québec and I had a choice only between my appartment building and the Gentilly II nuke station, I'd pick the latter.
 
elgarak said:
The current version of the NYT article does not contain the sentence with the 2 to 8 sieverts numbers anymore. The article ends with the "10,000 times above normal" statement. It seems someone caught the mistake.
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The article is still there, but the link to it has been changed.

Here's the original article

The Japan Times article linked by r-j explains the discrepancy.

Tests revealed that while the two received 170 to 180 millisieverts of radiation, within the maximum allowable dose of 250 millisieverts, their feet were exposed to between 2 and 6 sieverts. One sievert is equivalent to 1,000 millisieverts. But their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening and will be treated the same way as regular burns, the institute said, adding that the workers are able to walk unassisted.
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Belz... said:
If I knew some big earthquake was about to hit Québec and I had a choice only between my appartment building and the Gentilly II nuke station, I'd pick the latter.
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I have felt the same...I have a passing knowledge of how a nuke plant is designed to withstand earthquakes--modeling and testing. But I was a bit curious what would happen if an entire plant was shaken to a high acceleration--not that I really wanted to find out. I have to say that I am very proud of what the engineers did 50 years ago and how the plants survived that level of quake. (as I said before...using slide rules.)

glenn
 
And from here
Government spokesman Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power Co. to be more transparent, two days after two workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered skin burns when they stepped in water that was 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found near the reactors.
"We strongly urge TEPCO to provide information to the government more promptly," Edano said.
.................
TEPCO is now rushing to inject the reactors with fresh water instead, and to begin extracting the radioactive water, Nishiyama said.
Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa said late Friday that the U.S. government had made "an extremely urgent" request to switch to fresh water. He said the U.S. military was sending water to nearby Onahama Bay and that water injections could begin in the next few days.
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Corsair 115 said:
Well, there was that story just a few days ago about the air traffic controller who was asleep and two flights had to land at Reagan National airport on their own...
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That is part of why pilots -- not neither engineers, not politicians, not Nosi -- are in the cockpit on passenger flights. ;)

Here is an old pilot joke:

What happens when the pilot screws up? Plane crashes. Pilot dies.

What happens when the air controller screws up? Plane crashes, pilot dies. Air controller has another cup of coffee until his supervisor looks at the tape ...
 
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Darth Rotor said:
That is part of why pilots -- not neither engineers, not politicians, not Nosi -- are in the cockpit on passenger flights. ;)

Here is an old pilot joke:

What happens when the pilot screws up? Plane crashes. Pilot dies.

What happens when the air controller screws up? Plane crashes, pilot dies. Air controller has another cup of coffee until his supervisor looks at the tape ...
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And an old aircraft maintainer joke is that pilots are only needed to taxi to and from the bird cage and drink coffee... ;)


[/derail]

ETA: Of course, you're absolutely correct in that trained/certified pilots are on board the aircraft for when things go wrong.
 
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r-j said:
It's all over the newsfeeds. Officials in Japan say the radioactivity in water at reactor 2 is testing 10 million times higher than normal.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10715296
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Just read that headline.
Another story:
Radiation in reactor's building tests 10 million times above normal

Tokyo (CNN) -- Radiation levels in pooled water tested in the No. 2 nuclear reactor's turbine building at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are 10 million times normal, utility company and government officials said Sunday.
. . .
The 10-million-times normal reading applies to radioactive iodine-134 found in the No. 2 building's pooled water, according to the nuclear safety agency. This isotope loses half its radioactive atoms every 53 minutes, compared to a half-life of every eight days for radioactive iodine-131 that has also been detected in recent days.
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At least it has a short half-life.

ETA: A half-life of 53 minutes means that less than 1/10,000,000 would be left after 24 hours. That's if more doesn't get added in the meantime.
 
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From James Empty Blog. A climate scientist who is not a nuclear alarmist. Very interesting reading.

http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/03/slowly-leaking.html
It's been interesting to follow the news management of this ongoing event, and particularly the slow dripping of information coming from TEPCO. I've blogged several times about how I don't think the risk is currently that serious for me, but that shouldn't be interpreted as any sort of approval of how TEPCO have handled things. They are clearly a fairly incompetent and dishonest outfit, with a history of maintenance failures and cover-ups, shielded from any genuine oversight by their cosy relationship with the government and the pusillanimous nature of the local media. There's plenty of evidence of their failures, eg here, here, here. Incidentally, and not at all coincidentally, TEPCO was also at the centre of the recent "amakudari" kerfuffle. I can imagine how the departmental "oversight" goes: "So, what is the current status of your maintenance program, TEPCO technical director?" "Oh, it's fine, Director-General Ishida-san. But enough about that, let's sort out the salary for your non-executive directorship position next year." It is telling that the Govt has basically been completely reliant on TEPCO for all information about the crisis, and it's been reported that PM Kan has basically had to resort to yelling at TEPCO executives to get some information out of them.
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Read the whole statement. It is very disturbing. He is tipping a level 6 for this event.
 
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