Merged nuclear power safe?

[r-j]

For simplicity, if there is a source of radiation, like a light bulb, and at 500 meters it is measured at say 2 candlepower. (this makes the math easy, right?)

What is the candlepower at 50 meters? 10 meters? 5 meters? 1 meter?

It's not what you first think right? How many candlepower would the light be at 10 cm?

 

[a_unique_person]

Again it is NOT the quake that did them in. It was the tsunami. And even Japan do not have Tsunami that large that often. And before you cite large tsunami of 100 m, be aware of the circumstance and the concept of funneling.

According to the timeline on Wikipedia, the power went out with the quake, the generators fired up then. They were functioning correctly till the tsunami.

 

[PhantomWolf]

For simplicity, if there is a source of radiation, like a light bulb, and at 500 meters it is measured at say 2 candlepower. (this makes the math easy, right?)

What is the candlepower at 50 meters? 10 meters? 5 meters? 1 meter?

It's not what you first think right? How many candlepower would the light be at 10 cm?

It doesn't work like that. You need to specify a isotope and activity. Different radiations have different drop offs too. If you have an alpha emitter then going from 5m to 1m might expotentially increase the levels of radiation. A weak Beta emitter might have a large drop off after 10-20m of air which a strong one might need several hundred metres. The more activity, the more likely some of the radiation will go further. It also depends on if the activity is focused in a certain direction, if so then it will tend to be more concentrated and less likely to fade over distance.

You might as well ask how wet you will get if someone throws water at you.

 

[PhantomWolf]

According to the timeline on Wikipedia, the power went out with the quake, the generators fired up then. They were functioning correctly till the tsunami.

No one is saying otherwise, the issue is that the tsunami was out of the ordinary (if you can ever call a tsumani ordinary.) This one was way bigger that anything that had hit Japan before, and overwhelmed all of the defences that had been created to stop and protect people from Tsunami. It even blew well past "safe-points" defined by how previous tsumani had acted.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Does the accident at the nuclear power plant in Japan mean nuclear power is unsafe or does it mean that earthquakes are unsafe?

The latter, obviously.

So why are we even concerned with the question about the safety of nuclear power?

We should build power plants on the moon and send the energy to Earth via microwave. I call dibs on this idea. I will send it to Obama: he needs help in a reelection since the President has no authority to commit military action where there is not actual or immediate threat to the United States.

 

[Travis]

That is also true for reducing your 'carbon footprint'. Ordinary people are nothing compared to commercial carbon pollution.

That is true. Which is why I tend to take the same viewpoint on that.

 

[Puppycow]

Huh? Iodine 131 is highly carcinogenic. It is a very serious thing to have high concentrations of that in the water because it can be absorbed by fish which later get eaten by humans. In humans it will accumulate in the thyroid and irradiate it from the inside.

Iodine 131 was one of the most devastating elements from Chernobyl and highly linked to the consumption of radioactive milk. In a strong fish consuming country like Japan such high concentrations of iodine in the water is not something to be taken lightly nor compared to the background radiation of one liter of water. Beta radiation from iodine can barely penetrate the skin, but once inside you it can wreak havoc.

The good thing about it though is that the half life is only 8 days, so if they can stop the outflow, it will go away by itself in the medium term. Also, the ocean is big.

The cesium isotopes OTOH have longer half lives, 2 years for 134 and 30 years for 137.

But this is no doubt going to have an impact on people's livelihoods, especially farmers. The commercial value of their crops has been ruined. Hopefully they will be compensated. I fear that the stigma may outlast the contamination however.

 

[Aepervius]

Huh? Iodine 131 is highly carcinogenic. It is a very serious thing to have high concentrations of that in the water because it can be absorbed by fish which later get eaten by humans. In humans it will accumulate in the thyroid and irradiate it from the inside.

Iodine 131 was one of the most devastating elements from Chernobyl and highly linked to the consumption of radioactive milk. In a strong fish consuming country like Japan such high concentrations of iodine in the water is not something to be taken lightly nor compared to the background radiation of one liter of water. Beta radiation from iodine can barely penetrate the skin, but once inside you it can wreak havoc.

Devastating ? Sorry it is the most highly treatable. 99.9% of thyroid cancer were successfully treated. Only 9 death out of 4000+ cancer for Chernobyl.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Hey, if cancer becomes 100% curable, will nuclear power be 100% safe?

 

[Aepervius]

Hey, if cancer becomes 100% curable, will nuclear power be 100% safe?

Nope. The only way to be 100% safe is to either never be born, or be dead already.

very philosophical .

 

[a_unique_person]

No one is saying otherwise, the issue is that the tsunami was out of the ordinary (if you can ever call a tsumani ordinary.) This one was way bigger that anything that had hit Japan before, and overwhelmed all of the defences that had been created to stop and protect people from Tsunami. It even blew well past "safe-points" defined by how previous tsumani had acted.

What I am saying is that the backup power was susceptible to more than just the tsunami. Saying they had three levels of A/C power is not right, the supply was more fragile than that.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Different radiations have different drop offs too. If you have an alpha emitter then going from 5m to 1m might expotentially increase the levels of radiation.

Alpha emitters are completely harmless at a range of roughly 12 inches and are blocked completely by light shielding such as a piece of paper or a bulimic supermodel. . After traveling only a few inches in air, alpha pick up stray electrons and turn into helium atoms.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Hey, if cancer becomes 100% curable, will nuclear power be 100% safe?

Barring a revolution in medicine, blunt trauma from falling off a containment dome will likely remain severely injurious or fatal indefinitely.

 

[ceptimus]

You seem to keep forgetting...the plant survived the earthquake--that is not negligent.

For some meaning of the word, 'survived'.

In this case it means that:

• affected reactors can never be used again
• will cost a huge sum to clean up
• has caused a wide area to be evacuated
• has caused food to become radiation contaminated

And all this when (fortunately) the prevailing wind was blowing the radiation off-shore, away from populated areas.

 

[Cuddles]

Alpha emitters are completely harmless at a range of roughly 12 inches and are blocked completely by light shielding such as a piece of paper or a bulimic supermodel.

Close, but they're actually blocked by skin and are pretty much harmless as long as you don't eat or inhale them.

As for the question of whether nuclear power is safe, the more sensible question to ask is how safe it is relative to other forms of power. Not counting Chernobyl, there have been a grand total of 10 deaths from civilian nuclear power*. Chernobyl caused 53 directly, and probably on the order of 4000 over time, but is hard to get an exact number.

In comparison, according to official figures there were 4749 deaths in coal mines in China just in 2006. In a single country in a single year, coal power caused more deaths than nuclear power has in its entire existence, before the coal even managed to get out of the ground let alone into a power plant. Throw in all the other direct deaths, then add things like acid rain, oil spills, global warming, and so on, and any comparison between nuclear and fossil fuels is just laughable.

Of course, this doesn't mean nuclear power is perfectly safe and that we shouldn't try to make it even safer. This accident is particularly sad since modern designs can't fail in the same way. Hopefully soon we'll get accelerator driven sub-critical reactors working which are as fail-safe as it's possible to get. But even without that, it just makes no sense to start crying about how terrible nuclear power is because of a single accident that's only killed a single person. Where were all the cries to shut down coal plants when 29 people died in New Zealand a few months back?

*Edit - for clarification, these numbers were from Wiki and I haven't checked to make sure it's all inclusive so the actual number could be a bit higher. It's certainly only low double figures though, so the point stands even if I missed a few.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Nope. The only way to be 100% safe is to either never be born, or be dead already.

very philosophical .

Well, there is always radiation. This is something that the Progressive Radio wackos neglect to tell. Radiation is everywhere. The mountains, the ground and even the sky gives off radiation.

Here is a question. Is radiation healthy in small doses?

 

[Rolfe]

Close, but they're actually blocked by skin and are pretty much harmless as long as you don't eat or inhale them.

Wasn't that how nobody figured Litvinenko was dying of radiation poisoning? Because he'd been orally dosed with an alpha-emitter?

Rolfe.

 

[Aepervius]

Well, there is always radiation. This is something that the Progressive Radio wackos neglect to tell. Radiation is everywhere. The mountains, the ground and even the sky gives off radiation.

Here is a question. Is radiation healthy in small doses?

What the heck is a progressive radio wacko ? pro Nuclear ? Anti nuclear ???

Anyway if you read up the thread you will see that pro nuclear people are pretty much already aware of the background radiation, coming from our own body, food, environment etc...

As for radiation being healthy at small dose, as far as i know it is as of now "inconclusive" with at least one study showing potentially health benefit.

 

[Bill Thompson]

What the heck is a progressive radio wacko ? pro Nuclear ? Anti nuclear ???

Nuclear horrified. I think that they associate nuclear power with nuclear explosions. They seem to think that a nuclear power plant will explode like a hydrogen bomb. They say things like such-and-such mixing with the hydrogen in the air and causing an explosion.

They have people who admit they are not experts but they have a horror story to tell because they inspect some government building or lab and they get air time instead of any real scientist.

The talk show hosts gasp at whatever someone says but you can tell that they have no idea about physics.

Anyone, with enough work, can piece together a story to support an opion. One thing Liberals and Conservatives do is take tidbits out of context to reshape something to support what you want to believe. Anything anyone says in testamony that says a power plant might fail is framed in a context that they want to present.

Never trust science from someone with a political agenda.

As for radiation being healthy at small dose, as far as i know it is as of now "inconclusive" with at least one study showing potentially health benefit.

Yeah, Ann Coulter said this. And it was repeated on Progressive Radio but they insist that the study Ann was reading from continued to say that the study did not have a large enough sample group to be conclusive. But Progressive Radio focused on this to suggest that the Right Wing pundit was an evil liar. Oh that vast Right Wing Conspiracy!!

Like Global Warming, I do not know enough about Nuclear Power to have an opinion, but I like listening to people pretend that they do when in reality they have a political agenda and, like sheep, they follow the herd they belong to.

 

[BenBurch]

Huh? Iodine 131 is highly carcinogenic. It is a very serious thing to have high concentrations of that in the water because it can be absorbed by fish which later get eaten by humans. In humans it will accumulate in the thyroid and irradiate it from the inside.

Iodine 131 was one of the most devastating elements from Chernobyl and highly linked to the consumption of radioactive milk. In a strong fish consuming country like Japan such high concentrations of iodine in the water is not something to be taken lightly nor compared to the background radiation of one liter of water. Beta radiation from iodine can barely penetrate the skin, but once inside you it can wreak havoc.

99% curable if you do get it, BTW.