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Merged nuclear power safe?

Belz... said:
Reading the Wikipedia page on Chernobyl, they mention a recent study that mentions "985,000" deaths resulting from the incident.

Isn't that like 100 times more than liberal estimates used to say ? Is that even possible ?
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That number is from the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment and is complete and utter crap. Even Greenpeace's numbers (their estimate is around 100.000) makes me want to roll my eyes and gag, and that's ten times less than that book says. Any credible source will be < 10.000.
 
BenBurch said:
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.
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Thanks. The 1 million number doesn't even seem to make sense. If an atom bomb had exploded, sure...

I'll see if I can do something about it soon. I might not have time before the week-end so if someone else corrects it in the meantime, so much the better.
 
Belz... said:
Thanks. The 1 million number doesn't even seem to make sense. If an atom bomb had exploded, sure...

I'll see if I can do something about it soon. I might not have time before the week-end so if someone else corrects it in the meantime, so much the better.
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If you do, you might want to reference the million estimate in terms like;

'However, Blah Blah, author of "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" Is claiming a figure of X, many times more than estimates from WHO and other scientific bodies.'

Then you can probably avoid an edit war with people who are pushing his incorrect estimates.
 
Belz... said:
Thanks. The 1 million number doesn't even seem to make sense. If an atom bomb had exploded, sure...

I'll see if I can do something about it soon. I might not have time before the week-end so if someone else corrects it in the meantime, so much the better.
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In a major population center, sure. Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined didn't equal 1mil...
 
The media are now ramping it up: 'Reactor rods dry; Nuclear disaster looms'

Meltdown is the buzzword: can someone here explain to me what a meltdown actually is?
To the general public it seems to equal the end of the world.
 
Eddie Dane said:
The media are now ramping it up: 'Reactor rods dry; Nuclear disaster looms'

Meltdown is the buzzword: can someone here explain to me what a meltdown actually is?
To the general public it seems to equal the end of the world.
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A meltdown is when the fuel rods in the reactor melt. Since it's in a vault of steel and concrete that hypothetical molten fuel rods are very unlikely to burn through, it probably wouldn't do that much in terms of nuclear disasters.
 
Java Man said:
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.
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Unless the earthquake happened ten years an one day ago, instead.

Your argument is utterly ridiculous.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
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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My understanding, based on the limited reporting I've read, is that after the back up generators failed, the US sent in generators off one of their carriers. These are more likely the ones that didn't match. It's not as ridiculous as it appears on first blush ("Why would you get generators that don't fit!") rather the US gave what they had available, in the hopes that it might match. Given you're talking two different countries, it makes more sense they didn't match up.
 
Eddie Dane said:
The media are now ramping it up: 'Reactor rods dry; Nuclear disaster looms'

Meltdown is the buzzword: can someone here explain to me what a meltdown actually is?
To the general public it seems to equal the end of the world.
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Uncovered by liquid water, could be the zircaloy rods containing the fuel pellets, can start to burn using water vapor as the oxidizing agent, which means your nuclear fuel could reconfigure itself into out of design configurations, which means you don't have control over criticality, although the lack of an effective moderator helps.


Hopefully it is just a pile of molten slag at the bottom of the reactor vessel.
 
Java Man said:
Obviously everyone is happy no more life was lost to radiation. But those reactors will have to be replaced. In the meantime there is a power shortage. Had that money been spent on upgrading them ten years ago with newer technology then those cores could be powered up again. Providing the needed energy. The money now needed to repair things would not need to be subdivided into cleaning and repairing melted cores.

My "crisis" isn't a nuclear blowout. Which would be the most dire, extreme and undesired event. Nevertheless the current situation is quite a nightmare that could have been prevented if the cores were replaced with newer models. The Japanese are looking at quite an expense down the road and that's without a blowout.




Well it would be good to decommission designs that can cause a meltdown in case of a cooling failure. Given we already have designs that work that way.

And by safe I don't only mean a huge radioactive cloud. But safe in the knowledge that it's working ok, that it shutdown ok, that you can now reactivate it to power the grid in this crisis, etc etc etc. It retrospect it begins to look a lot cheaper and better to have gone through the expense of upgrading it.




We can sure talk about that in another thread if you want to.
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Java Man said:
Nope. On the other hand it doesn't make billions of dollars in revenue either. Remember nuclear power plants don't work for charity.



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.




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.
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You are missing the entire point on this issue. This was a design basis event with the largest earthquake on record followed by a Tsunami and the safest place to be was inside the nuclear plant. The purpose of the design and safety systems of a nuclear plant to keep the public safe–it’s not about money. So far, this plant has performed incredibly well considering the circumstances. The reactor vessel did not fail. Containment did not fail. The overall structure of the plant is intact. The diesels failed on two units and worked on the other two--all four units' would have failed if it was a design problem. The radiation dose at the plant boundary is normal. That is what is supposed to happen.

Not bad for a plant that was designed in the 60s by a bunch of people with slide rules.

The plants are not completely in a safe shutdown mode, but the trends look better today. Now, if the plant was magically replaced by a new plant, the end result of having minimal radiation release and a safe public would be the same. The plant may weather the storm a bit better and be easier to clean up, but it would still likely need to be replaced as even nuclear plants are not able to survive multiple design basis earthquakes. (they are designed to take on five smaller quakes before the large quake)

If it was a coal or gas fired plant there would be nothing left but fires and pollution.

You have to explain what you mean by replacing the cores…one third of core is replaced every 18—24 months and fuel designs are constantly upgraded. In addition, what type of upgrades are you referring to…plants are constantly upgraded and changed to keep them running and safe…please be more specific as to what type of upgrade would have changed the outcome.

glenn
 
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MarkCorrigan said:
So?

The explosions aren't throwing nuclear fallout into the air, they're just conventional explosions that have little to nothing to do with the core.
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They're still problematic as the previous explosions injured workers and damaged the cooling systems.

Probably worth a frowny face.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
they're just conventional explosions that have little to nothing to do with the core.
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i didn't say they had anything to do with the core. i just said the BBC are reporting a third explosion. nothing contentious about that statement.

as long as the primary containment holds up as it has with the other two explosions, everything should be ok.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I love my BBC. It's a respectable, fairly honest and good quality news outlet and I'm proud of it, but the unbelievable crap it's spewing about this plant is making me write a letter of complaint.
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I know what you mean.

I was checking my mobile to see the latest news just before bed last night and the BBC were running a quote by saying that should the containment vessel explode it will rain down plutonium on a scale twice as large as that of a "conventional nuclear explosion". The headline screamed "Japan Fights to Avert Meltdown!" or something with the story explaining that the next 24 hours could spell TEOTWAWKI or something...

On that note there has been another explosion. I think it happened two hours ago now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12740843
 
ripsaw_22 said:
i didn't say they had anything to do with the core. i just said the BBC are reporting a third explosion. nothing contentious about that statement.

as long as the primary containment holds up as it has with the other two explosions, everything should be ok.
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That's fair.

Sorry, I just got so used to thunder "Are we doomed yet? :(" posts that I replied as if you were him.
 
a_unique_person said:
That's what I was wondering, electrical power doesn't have to go through a magic plug, you can hard wire two cables once you hack off the offending plug and socket.
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Assuming voltage, phase, and frequency match. I suspect it's more a matter of the plugs being designed (like the difference between a 220 and 120 volt plug) so that you can't plug the wrong appliance in; the plug is a warning that there's some sort of mismatch and you shouldn't be connecting. I can see them bringing in generators, and then realizing that the generators were useless because the plant needed 440 volt three phase, and the generators were 220 volt single phase. Yeah you could cross connect, but there are really good reasons not to.
 
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