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Merged nuclear power safe?

Thunder said:
its just a lot to take in, seeing two nuclear plant cooling towers blow up like in a Hollywood action flick.

:(
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No cooling towers were involved.

What you saw blowing up was the panel walls that shielded the crane and the crane operator.

See page 16 of the pdf. The mark 1 BWR building.
 
Officials were clearly struggling to keep ahead of the crisis and prevent a worst case scenario: a complete reactor meltdown.

In that case, the uranium core melts through the outer containment shell, releasing a wave of radiation and resulting in major, widespread health problems.
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From a local paper: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/14/3473225/3rd-reactor-loses-cooling-at-japan.html#ixzz1GbVU4nDn

My understanding is that this isn't really possible, but I'm not a nuclear engineer. Many here seem far more knowledgable than I. Is this even possible? If so, how likely?
 
OMGturt1es said:
Is this even possible? If so, how likely?
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If they ignored the cooling system failure and made no attempt to flood cool the pressure vessel then it is possible for the heat generated by the melting fuel to melt the steel pressure vessel.

Of course no responsible power utility would ignore the cooling requirements, so not possible.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
WRT the plug, it's not entirely uncommon for mobile generators to have a plug for hooking up to a building (or aircraft, as the case may be). Chances are,however, that if the plug didn't fit it's because the generators weren't set up to produce the "right" kind of power. Which would by why the generators weren't just hardwired in. That's my initial impression and completely unsupported by anything other than my own personal experience working in an industrial/electrical/aircraft maintenance field.
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I would agree with that but that would imply some inept stupidity on the part of someone.
 
technoextreme said:
I would agree with that but that would imply some inept stupidity on the part of someone.
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:D

I can see the conversation going:

"Do you have portable generators? Get them here ricky-quick."

when it should have been:

"Do you have portable generators? What power do they output? Well, **** me, do you know anyone else that's open that does? No, the plant has no power and no cooling, have to find a generator or we're **********. You don't know of anyone else? Alright, thanks. Bye."

10-15s later, after finding the next entry in the yellow pages:

"Do you have portable generators? What power do they output?..."
 
BenBurch said:
That is a BS number. I encourage you to research the real number and fix that entry (with proper citations and etc.)
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I'm not very knowledgeable about which sources to look for in this instance. They say it comes from the New York Academy of Sciences. Are they reliable but misquoted ? Or what ?
 
Rasmus said:
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 ...
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People are busy browning themselves on the news channels about the 30 year old nuke plants in the USA, particularly the ones in California. A calmer head said that someone's bound to take a page from Japan's book and tighten the girding under them.

Looking at the before and after maps of Japan, the nuke plants are some of the better looking real estate post quake.
 
Nosi said:
Looking at the before and after maps of Japan, the nuke plants are some of the better looking real estate post quake.
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This point needs to be continually emphasized. The bottom line is these plants were built to be very, very tough, and they held up under the worst conditions when pretty much everything else was laid waste.
 
Belz... said:
I'm not very knowledgeable about which sources to look for in this instance. They say it comes from the New York Academy of Sciences. Are they reliable but misquoted ? Or what ?
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http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

Not sure reading this if the estimate is 4000 or 8000 as they mention 4000 twice and I am not clear if they mean the same group...

See also;

http://www.magma.ca/~jalrober/Howbad.htm
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html

NOWHERE near the number you say the Wiki article has.

I am utterly snowed-in with work today or I would fix this stupidity.
 
Rasmus said:
Yes, but until Chernobyl that was also true for all the nuclear power plants, wasn't it? And until last week the Japanese plants were quake safe, too ...
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No one gave a rat's backside about Japanese nuke plants two weeks ago! ;)
 
The media generally sounds more juvenile when discussing nuclear power than they do guns. I did not think it was possible, but I was wrong. My wife was asking about what she heard on the news. I assured her that while the overheating and subsequent use of seawater to cool the reactor cores ruined them, I was in no danger if the shipyard sent me to Japan to remediate any US ships involved.

Ranb
 
Ranb said:
The media generally sounds more juvenile when discussing nuclear power than they do guns.
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It seems like many of the journalists writing/talking about this are environment correspondents (like the BBC guy doing the analysis here). What you'd want is a technical correspondent, but I suppose they're few and far between -- most journalists these days seem to have degrees in journalism and social sciences, and their technological and scientific illiteracy is just as bad as that of Joe Average.
 
Apparently it was some expert on nuclear power. I didn't actually see who it was, so I can't give a name, sadly.
 
Architect said:
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".
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I bet they had quake insurance!
 
The problem with the press is not a lack of critical thinking. They know damned well what is really going on. They also know that so long as they keep people scared of nuclear Armageddon they will keep watching. Ratings take precedence over facts.
 
Nosi said:
I bet they had quake insurance!
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Unfortunately, the insurance won't be paid out as the damage wasn't from the quake but from the tsunami (obviously unrelated)! They only took out the low level drain overflow insurance as I understand it :(
 
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