• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Merged nuclear power safe?

timhau said:
If you have the terrain, hydroelectric is great. As long as the dam holds, that is. And as it happens, one in Fukushima prefecture didn't, it broke and washed away something like 1800 homes; death toll is as yet unknown, but assumed significant. (That was an irrigation dam, not a hydroelectric dam; I don't know how much difference that would make in terms of durability.)
Click to expand...

Most of the power in Northren California comes from hydroelectric power, thanks to the Sierra Nevada range and a lot of very fast running rivers, but there are a lot of areas where geography is not that favorable.
 
a_unique_person said:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_6024d808f93d2117.jpg[/qimg]

This is a disaster, the French nuclear agency is rating it a 6. It's not a Chernobyl, but a six is only one below a seven.
Click to expand...

Isn't that old news ? It seemed like there was no agreement on that.

No, I'm telling you it should have been preventable.
Click to expand...

Nothing can be omnisafe. We have to live with that and simply do the best we can. So far the station seems to fare better than what it was designed for.
 
dudalb said:
Most of the power in Northren California comes from hydroelectric power, thanks to the Sierra Nevada range and a lot of very fast running rivers, but there are a lot of areas where geography is not that favorable.
Click to expand...

In some places the terrain is right, but water is very limited.
 
Aepervius said:
The circus continue in germany : now they want to test *all* food , electronic stuff for radioactivity coming from japan.
Click to expand...

Yeah ... Don't you know? We are dealing with atoms, man! Atoms! They have to do with quantums, i tell ya! And we all know that quantums can teleport Enterprise-Style! It's a fact. it was in the Bild!

So it's bloody obvious that these atoms ask their quantums brother to teleport them away from Japan. But since these atoms only speak Japanese (after all, they were born there!), they obviously only want to teleport to other Japanese stuff.

Man, you have no clue, man!

:D

Greetings,

Chris
 
timhau said:
From Reuters:

Dear Germans, I hope you're not offended when I tell you this: your commissioner is a tool.
Click to expand...

Nope, at least as i am concerned i'm not offended by what you said. It is 100% perfectly true.

However, i am offended by most of my fellow people over here. The stupidity starts to become unbearable. It truly is a shame what this country has come to be now.

Greetings,

Chris
 
timhau said:
I wonder if the media isn't confusing Power Station #2 (Daini) with Daichi's (Power Station #1) reactor #2, which has indeed caused problems.

If Daini has somehow started heating all by itself, then something is clearly amiss.
Click to expand...

That sound very likely to be the case. Over here in Germany you can see people use complete inflated numbers for the number of nuclear power plants. If you look closer at those numbers, one can easily see that they count each end every reactor as a single plant, just to get big & scary numbers, since everyone also knows that on each plant you have several reactors.

So, while i don't know if that is the case there as well, i would be in no way surprised if it is.

Greetings,

Chris
 
a_unique_person said:
That in the event of a major quake the following are entirely probable is not 'every conceivable' type of speculation. Japan is a land just waiting for a major quake, it probably has the toughest building codes in the world.

1. There is a good chance external power will fail. This is a given in a major quake. Don't count on it.
2. There may well be a major tsunami. After the Indonesian tsunami, the protection for the backup generators may well have stood a quick check. Near sea level behind a sea wall would have raised some interest. Don't count any anything near sea level being available.
3. The outages may well last longer than eight hours in the case of a major quake. In a major quake, expect power to be out for protracted periods of time. Modern battery technology has the capability to keep power going much longer.

The power to keep the cooling going is already very vulnerable on all three available sources. Having multiple vulnerable backups doesn't count for much.

It may have sounded good in 1970, but over 40 years, a review would have found that it needed improvement.

There are the containment levels, but by the time you are talking about using them, you are already getting pretty desperate. Having the backup cooling is the first line, and if it had worked, none of the the following disaster would have had to be dealt with.

There is also the issue of why an obsolete power plant was still even in service when there are much more modern, that is failsafe, designs available. A politician on the radio claimed this was due to anti nuclear protests. If it hadn't been for them, the plant would have been replaced already. I don't know how true that is.
Click to expand...

Plants are constantly upgraded based on new data and new requirements. A utility will have to evaluate mandatory and non-mandatory requirements as they emerge. Plants where it is not cost effective to upgrade are shutdown. INPO/WANO have been around to help utilities exchange technical information and have peer review of their maintenance and operation programs.

All nuclear plants are designed to have a loss of offsite power as a design basis along with a worst case accident. It is not expected to lose both diesels for extended periods of time. (diesels are typically placed on grade level as they are quite large and having large items at too high a level is not good from a seismic standpoint. The rooms have water tight enclosures and separate ventilation systems…I am betting the Tsunami might have clogged the diesel air intake in a manner that was unexpected….but this just speculation.

Batteries in nuke plants are periodically replaced. It is doubtful the batteries were older than 5 years. They are very modern and qualified for earthquakes and other electrical requirements. The batteries are designed to keep the instrumentation and control panels running along with a few motor operated valves. They are not capable of running large motors in this plant or even the newest designs—large motors draw a lot of current. The diesels are there for that purpose and they come online automatically in about 10 seconds typically. Originally, the diesels did start and run for an hour before the tsunami hit. What caused their failure is unknown to all of us here…and you don’t know if the utility did or did not evaluate this type of issue. There just isn’t enough information right now.

Right now, the safest place to be during the tsunami was inside the plant. There is a lot more to this industry than your post assumes…if you have any more questions, I would be happy to help answer them.

ETA: My experience is in the US, so there are certainly differences in Japan--but I have to assume quality is paramount.

glenn
 
Last edited:
Actually, Ham. " The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear" ISBN 0-441-31970-X.(Dug out my copy) :)
The funniest,saddest too, thing I've ever heard an environmentalist give as a reason for not using nuclear for power plants, "the electricity is radioactive".
 
BTW, here are some numbers regarding Germany about import and export of electricity, as well as the amount of electricity from nuclear power plants. maybe i have mentioned them already, dunno.

Here is an overview of how much we export and import.

For 2008, we exported 62.7 TW/h, but at the same time imported 40.2 TW/h. That makes a net-export of 22.5 TW/h.

Numbers for 2009 are only for the range January to November, and there we exported 48.5 TW/h per year and imported 37.7 TW/h per year. Net export is 10.8 TW/h per year.

This is means that we exported less than the half of the previous year.

However, and here is the catch. The total of the produced electricity in Germany by nuclear plants is 148 TW/h per year. So if they really want to switch off _all_ of them, and have coal & gas take over, this will result in a _huge_ increase of pollution etc.

Also, looking at the import and export numbers, it is clear that we are not exporting as much energy as is claimed. Some media outlets talk about figures as high as 1/3 of the total electricity generated being exported. Mind you, we generate 582 TW/h per year.

What they do instead is to take the combined amount of _maximum_capacity_ of all the power plants we have as a base and conflate that with the amount of electricity produced.

They completely forget that those maxima are theoretical and require a 100% working plant under best conditions and under full load. A completely unrealistic thing to assume that plants can be run at 100% capacity and load all the time, while lasting a long time....

Greetings,

Chris
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Is there an english language version of that article?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not, or i would have used the english version directly.

All i can offer you is a Google translated version here

While at it, here is the second article in the German WP that shows what energy mix we have, how many TW/h per year are produced by what, etc.

While the second article is available in English directly, the English version does not have the German numbers and specifics in it, obviously.

Hope that helps you a bit.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: And here is the Google translated version of the article about the German renewable energy act, just in case. However, for some reason it does not translate the whole article, dunno if the problem is on my side or on Googles side. An English, but heavily shorter, Version of it is here.
 
Last edited:
timhau said:
Regarding the situation in Tokio, this page is supposed to give you more-or-less live geiger counter data from Tokyo; unfortunately, it's mostly in Japanese so I have no idea whether that is true. Does anyone here read enough Japanese to either confirm this or call BS?
Click to expand...

BTW, those coordinates appear to be from Hino City in western Tokyo, so kind of on the far side from the nuclear power plant, which is I think north-east or north-north-east of Tokyo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom