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Merged nuclear power safe?

I was speaking to a former design engineer who was part of the team working on the British nuclear programme in the 1980s and he is resolute that this (i.e. the power stations) is a commercial rather than environmental disaster. I think his phrase was "expensive pile of slag".
 
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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Well, I've seen that happen often on rigs. It's usually fixable with a hacksaw and a new plug. Or ductape and rebar.
Remember the CO2 scrubbers on Apollo 13?

One question I have is why the square outer buildings can't be vented of hydrogen. It would seem that a simple skylight should do the job. Is it that they can't allow the associated and probably radioactive air to escape?
It would seem easy to fit an air exchange system - even with a negative pressure transfer to a vacuum storage vessel. I guess maybe such a vent system exists but is also not working? Waiting till the roof blows off doesn't seem the most elegant method possible.
 
Corsair 115 said:
It's been a long time since I saw the show, but from what I recall, I didn't take away that message from it. I just remember it being about a father trying to find out what really happened to his daughter, and Joe Don Baker's radioactive act of revenge towards the end. I also recall it being a very well-made program.
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It is indeed great! Especially Bob Peck's acting, as Ronald Craven, and the character Darius Jedburg (I am guessing this is Joe Don Baker).

You're also right that it was about Bob Peck's uncovering of stranger and stranger circumstances behind his daughter's death but throughout the series he is "visited" by his daughter who was, in life, some kind of environmental activist for a group called "GAIA" who tells him some story about "black flowers" which somehow kill everyone off. I think at some point Jedburg says he saw the same flowers in Afghanistan and thinks there may be some truth to this. It is somewhat subtle and I probably wouldn't have noticed it had I not watched it recently but it is, I think, something of the moral message to the TV series.

I agree though, that the series was really well-made.

Looks like I'm not the only one who's been reminded of it either:

http://craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/03/edge-of-darkness/#idc-container
 
I'm sure this has come up already but could someone tell me, in a nutshell, what was so disastrous about Three Mile Island.

I've known the name for a while as the name of an extraordinarily bad event but I haven't found any references to casualties in my (albeit) cursory search.
 
Skwinty said:
§ The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
§ Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
§ Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
§ There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
§ The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
§ The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water
§ The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.
§ Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.
§ The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)​

See these posts for some detailed pictures and explanations.​
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Skwinty... sounds as if the reactor cores are being directly flooded with seawater.

Reactor cores are not generally flooded with coolant I assume.

Is this seawater being circulated somehow do you know? Thanks.
 
Bluespaceoddity said:
Only this afternoon there was an item about the fact that many (petro-chemical) pollutants were washed over crop fields because of the debris carried by the tsunami.
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Most forms of petro chemical polution of agricultural soils have a tendency to abate over time due to bio-degradation. It is even possible to remediate heavy metal polution through bio remidiation. Although, it is likely that most of these feilds will need to be taken out of production for a while.
 
angrysoba said:
I'm sure this has come up already but could someone tell me, in a nutshell, what was so disastrous about Three Mile Island.

I've known the name for a while as the name of an extraordinarily bad event but I haven't found any references to casualties in my (albeit) cursory search.
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The power plant itself was the only real casualty.
 
Darat said:
I was listening to a harrowing account of an elderly women looking through the wreckage of her home for her husband's medal (he had died 100 days before) and one of the journalist's descriptions turned to the globules of tarry petrochemicals dripping from everywhere. The local refinery had exploded before catching fire, how much damage is that type of pollution going to cause?

Yes a nuclear reactor malfunctioning is very worrying - especially one so old - but I suspect that compared to the pollution caused by everything else as a result of the tsunami and earthquake it will be almost insignificant.
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Ah, but it has the word "nuclear" in it !!!
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Not if your car costs a billion dollars, you won't.
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Nope. On the other hand it doesn't make billions of dollars in revenue either. Remember nuclear power plants don't work for charity.

Sword_Of_Truth said:
You said that the people of Japan gambled on this reactor meeting fulfilling its design pourpose and meeting its projected lifetime and they lost. This is not true, they got exactly what they were hoping for out of it. It did its job for 40 years and is now permanently shut down (minus a few days). And it performed spectacularly well given the circumstances. The containment held against punishment that far exceeded it's design and no large scale releases of radiation occurred.

You seem to have missed several experts and people who have access to experts telling you in this thread that your doomsday scenario is not possible.
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Point is that the backups failed. The core overheated and at some point the cores in some reactors were assumed to have gone into meltdown and hope was set on the containment structure. The reactor did not fulfill its design purpose. It failed. It is fortunate that no more radiation was released aside from the steam released to lower some core pressure. Which was radioactive BTW. It is fortunate that no more radiation has been released and that it is nothing like Chernobyl. I don't think anybody here is sadistic enough to cheer for more radiation. The Japanese lost the bet. Something came along that was more than it was planned for. Nobody here wants to see them lose everything but their underwear on the gamble. But the bet that they could keep 40 year old cores without incident was undoubtedly lost.

So the bottom line is that all the backup systems failed. And given the old design of the reactor it overheated. Had it been replaced with a newer model some ten years ago this risk would not have been taken. That would cost money and cut on profit though. But it would have replaced the core with one less prone to meltdown in case of a cooling failure. Had that money been spent this incident would have been a non issue. Under cooling failure the cores would not have overheated.


Sword_Of_Truth said:
Chernobyl is the Godwins law of nuclear debates. Comparing western reactors to Chernobyl constitutes automatic loss of debate.
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Once again, is western radiation kinder on the skin than soviet radiation? Sure western reactors are safer and less people would be affected in case of an incident. Which is good, unless you're one of the affected. And if you die? Or a close relative? And you know that there were designs that prevented such an accident? Wouldn't it cut you to the bone to realize they didn't spend the money to save your life, but they'll still have to spend it now anyway?

In the capitalism thread I was commenting to BeAChooser that it is best to invest when you have the opportunity than to wait and procrastinate. You never know what the future brings. And the lesson is well seen here.

The money to upgrade those plants was not spent. It was not spent in a programmed and orderly way. Now it will need to be spent anyway. While at the same time requiring money for repairs. On top of that you have an energy shortage due to the failed reactors. So now it's spend on repairs, spend on new reactors, rationalize energy because there is a shortage and on top of that some radiation release and a few melted cores.

Had they spent the money over ten years to upgrade the then 30 year old reactors, they would have less problems. Of course those years the budget would have been tighter. There would have been pressure to know why money was being funneled to such projects. Bla bla bla, the typical line. But as Steve Jobs would say you can only connect the dots in retrospective and see that alternative as better. But it is too late now and we don't have a time machine to go back. So we blame it on the earthquake. But the earthquake was going to happen anyway and there was nothing we could do reduce its magnitude or the magnitude of the tsunami. But we can control our budget and how and when we spend it.
 
pipelineaudio said:
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. "
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Bluespaceoddity said:
It has been explained that these came out when some of the excess pressure inside the vessels was released. The detection doesn't necessarily mean the vessels in the various reactors of the plant have lost their integrity and based on current reports (NHK) they are still functioning as containment for the reactors' fuel elements.
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Yes, this ^^^
 
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Aepervius said:
And in the mean time the refinery leaking and the other infrastructure which released dangerous chemical in water are giving a free pass.
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Yup, I'm willing to bet a fair amount of cash that these chemical plants and related infrastructure damage will have a far greater environmental effect than anything happening with the nuclear plants.
 
Rasmus said:
Yes, yes, yes, I know all that.

But if you were to tell me that all food was absolutely safe I would no longer trust you nor would I trust your food.



Yes, I know that. But before they did that it was generally held to be impossible/unthinkable.

The old saying tells us that if you build something fool proof someone will come along with a better kind of fool. I want the people responsible for powerplants to both understand and admit that!



All of that I agree with.

It might be that it is the better way for dealing with the general public, but I feel like people try to fool me - and they shouldn't feel they have to try and fool me.
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I have never heard *anybody* relevant saying that nuclear plant would be *absolutely* safe, except a few promoter of the pebble type reactor (which I don't know but I doubt are 100% absolutely safe). I always heard them to be described as *safe*, but not *absolutely safe* by nuclear engineer, PhD, and relevant governmental agency.
 
Not sure if anyone has put this up here yet:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/fukushiima_analysis/

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!
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Analysis Japan's nuclear powerplants have performed magnificently in the face of a disaster hugely greater than they were designed to withstand, remaining entirely safe throughout and sustaining only minor damage. The unfolding Fukushima story has enormously strengthened the case for advanced nations – including Japan – to build more nuclear powerplants, in the knowledge that no imaginable disaster can result in serious problems.
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Discuss...
 
Apparently the lesson Java wants everyone to take away is to plan for events that happen with millennial periods.
 
Java Man said:
The money to upgrade those plants was not spent. It was not spent in a programmed and orderly way. Now it will need to be spent anyway. While at the same time requiring money for repairs. On top of that you have an energy shortage due to the failed reactors. So now it's spend on repairs, spend on new reactors, rationalize energy because there is a shortage and on top of that some radiation release and a few melted cores.

Had they spent the money over ten years to upgrade the then 30 year old reactors, they would have less problems. Of course those years the budget would have been tighter. There would have been pressure to know why money was being funneled to such projects. Bla bla bla, the typical line. But as Steve Jobs would say you can only connect the dots in retrospective and see that alternative as better. But it is too late now and we don't have a time machine to go back. So we blame it on the earthquake. But the earthquake was going to happen anyway and there was nothing we could do reduce its magnitude or the magnitude of the tsunami. But we can control our budget and how and when we spend it.
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And as it turns out (assuming no further events at the plant) any money spent on upgrading those plants would not have saved any lives whereas spending however many millions on other areas may have.

How safe exactly do you want the plants to be and how often should we upgrade them to make them even safer?

And why specifically nuclear plants and not dams and oil refineries and chemical plants?
 
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