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Merged nuclear power safe?

r-j said:
It's in the article linked to. I guess you didn't read it.
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No it isn't. I've read it. No one claims the plant wasn't damaged by the earth quake. In fact, it says at least some of the failures were designed points of failure.
 
The stakes are high: if the earthquake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every similar reactor in Japan may have to be shut down. With almost all of Japan's 54 reactors either offline (in the case of 35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over any discussion about restarting them.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) and Japan's government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. "There has been no meltdown," government spokesman Yukio Edano repeated in the days after 11 March. "It was an unforeseeable disaster," Tepco's then president Masataka Shimizu famously and improbably said later. Five months since the disaster, we now know that meltdown was already occurring as Mr Edano spoke. And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned by industry critics.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...truth-behind-fukushimas-meltdown-2338819.html
 
r-j said:
I thought that was common knowledge at this point? CNN had interviews with Americans at the plant when the quake struck. They reported extensive damage to the buildings before the tsunami.
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The entire fiasco has been one of lies, covering up, not reporting and other deceptions. You would have to be in denial to still defend Tepco at this point.
 
"There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable," Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former nuclear plant designer, is quoted as saying.

Tanaka said that according to TEPCO's own data, emergency water-circulation equipment started up automatically shortly after the quake. "This only happens when there is a loss of coolant," he told The Independent. Likewise, between 3.04 pm and 3.11 pm, water sprayers in the containment vessel of reactor unit 1 were activated; Tanaka says this is a failsafe for when all other cooling systems have failed.

So by the time the tsunami struck at 3.37 pm, "the plant was already on its way to melting down", says the newspaper.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20811-did-quake-or-tsunami-cause-fukushima-meltdown.html
 
r-j said:
You would have to be in denial to still defend Tepco at this point.
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It's very hard to have a discussion with you as you are inherently dishonest. You can't make your case based on the truth so you need to make things up.

I see no one defending TEPCO. I see several people making the case that nuclear is the safest energy option in use today and I see you bending over backwards avoiding addressing what we have been telling you.

This is what I said about TEPCO six weeks ago:

Sword_Of_Truth said:
TEPCO pretty well deserves it. My industry contacts have been far less impressed with TEPCOs performance in the wake of the quake and tsunami than they have with the reactors they built 30 and 40 years ago.
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The reactors have proved surprisingly sturdy and robust in the face of enormous destruction. TEPCO, has not been as capable as the reactors they built.

Why you insist on distorting and denying the truth is beyond me. But it does you and your cause no service.
 
Fukushima disaster: residents may never return to radiation-hit homes
Japanese government will admit for first time that radiation levels will be too high to allow many evacuees to return home
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From the Guardian, citing Japanese news reports.

Link
 
Cesium seems to be the worst offender, but there is no doubt other material. Any news story should fill you in on these basic facts.

This is why ignoring and avoiding discussing the worst nuclear disaster in history can be problematic. Ignoring it means not knowing anything about it.
 
r-j said:
Cesium seems to be the worst offender, but there is no doubt other material. Any news story should fill you in on these basic facts.

This is why ignoring and avoiding discussing the worst nuclear disaster in history can be problematic. Ignoring it means not knowing anything about it.
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The reson he is asking is *because* cesium is expected to be the worst offender, but within a few decades the radioactivity due to cesium would not drop significantely (only by 50% in 30 years).

So contamination can't be cesium significantely if they expect only to leave the home a few decades. Unless they remove the material (as opposed to wait radioactivity to drop) in which case... Why a few decades ?
 
Aepervius said:
The reson he is asking is *because* cesium is expected to be the worst offender, but within a few decades the radioactivity due to cesium would not drop significantely (only by 50% in 30 years).

So contamination can't be cesium significantely if they expect only to leave the home a few decades. Unless they remove the material (as opposed to wait radioactivity to drop) in which case... Why a few decades ?
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Exactly. A few decades is too short it it's one material, and far too long for another.
 
r-j said:
Cesium seems to be the worst offender, but there is no doubt other material. Any news story should fill you in on these basic facts.

This is why ignoring and avoiding discussing the worst nuclear disaster in history can be problematic. Ignoring it means not knowing anything about it.
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Knowledge is the first act in reclamation. No one is ignoring the problem; we are trying to characterize it. On the other hand, it is all too easy to drop a blanket indictment of "contamination" against a community without specifics, when the contamination might only be limited to specific small areas (which might be dug up and physically moved) rather than a whole village, or whether the contamination might be radioactive iodine, which problem will cure itself in two months.

Having been actively interested in the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons facility, which is now a wildlife area and park, I can't believe the Japanese who know about the problem are making catastrophic statements like that.
 
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r-j said:
The other plant that was damaged and flooded by the quake and tsunami?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_II_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011_earthquake_and_tsunami

Yes, someday they will get rid of the 3000 tons of contaminated water there. They may even someday start the reactors again. Doubtful but they might.
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The black shame of that is that it will all be because of the PR disaster, not for any technical reason. So it's back to dependence on others for their energy needs, which was, if you recall, the cause of WWII in the Pacific.
 
Note that they don't link to the media report site itself, or even give any detail.

Plus statement like "A Japanese government source is quoted in local media as saying the area could be off-limits for "several decades". "
Who ? Which source ? Where did that source get the info ?

It all sound suspiciously wishy-washy.

I would like to see read the source directely, what isotope it is and what spread, surface, quantity, activity, etc...

I am not saying this is not the case, I am saying I do not trust at all secondary source which for the whole news media circus mostly reported incorrectely the whole shebang.
 
r-j said:
Cesium seems to be the worst offender, but there is no doubt other material. Any news story should fill you in on these basic facts.

This is why ignoring and avoiding discussing the worst nuclear disaster in history can be problematic. Ignoring it means not knowing anything about it.
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Cesium is highly reactive. If it's there, it's mostly in ionized form (as a salt). Cesium salts are water soluble.

You can wash it off. Sure, you have to deal with the runoff, but you can clean off the contamination from the house.
 
If only there was a reliable source of real information we could read.
 
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