timtofly
One Day
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 9,445
Or even near the coast??
Massive Earthquake and Tsunami strikes Japan
- Thread starter shadowplay
- Start date
Or even near the coast??
Greizer85
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2009
- Messages
- 1,210
When you take those things out of the reactor, though, aren't they like, HOT (in both senses of the word)? 
They will have to be stored somewhere nearby in order to let them cool off a little bit, even if they'd later be moved to a more secure storage. If we'll have to build containment structures for spent fuel rods in the future, I guess there won't be a future for nuclear power... I imagine the cost would be beyond prohibitive.
They will have to be stored somewhere nearby in order to let them cool off a little bit, even if they'd later be moved to a more secure storage. If we'll have to build containment structures for spent fuel rods in the future, I guess there won't be a future for nuclear power... I imagine the cost would be beyond prohibitive.
When you take those things out of the reactor, though, aren't they like, HOT (in both senses of the word)?
They will have to be stored somewhere nearby in order to let them cool off a little bit, even if they'd later be moved to a more secure storage. If we'll have to build containment structures for spent fuel rods in the future, I guess there won't be a future for nuclear power... I imagine the cost would be beyond prohibitive.
They are hot. But after a short time they can be moved. In a number of cases they are moved, so that proves it possible. Mostly they are stored because there is no place to send them.
Yucca Mountain was a fiasco chosen for no reason other than at the time it was picked Nevada was politically very weak. And many of the other states helped to kill it as well, even though they had helped chose it, by restricting transport through their states.
Monsterzuma
the sly one
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2008
- Messages
- 2,984
is there any reason why they can't/won't pour concrete over the reactors in their current state..?
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
I think it is pretty clear from all this so far that two major changes need to be implemented ASAP.
1) Move the spent fuel pools away from the reactors themselves and provide them with their own similar containment vessel.
2) Don't cluster nuclear reactors so close to each other where an incident at one may cause you to lose control of many of them.
Yucca Mountain also has a huge groundwater problem. And I can hardly blame local communities for not wanting trains with spent fuel rods travelling through their states, especially if they have no nuclear reactors themselves.
Verbose
Deity
Bombing water is better.
timtofly
One Day
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 9,445
It has to be contained both from the bottom and from the top. Covering the problem will not make the problem go away. The incident cited the other day about Idaho, were they could not even bury the hands with the bodies lest the nuclear reaction continue, applies here as well. Everything involved needs to be cooled down and seperated before "just burying it".
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
If the reactor is allowed to heat to the point that it catches on fire, it will melt the concrete and mix with the uranium to form a nasty radioactive lava called corium.
Mathalamus
Emperor of Mathalia
corium? that sounds highly unpleasant.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
So you see an explosion or a fire. What does it tell you? What exploded? What's on fire? Chernobyl was a disaster because the explosion was INSIDE the reactor core. What photos and video we have of the Japanese reactors are apparently not enough for the experts to make use of either, because nobody seems to know (yet) exactly what exploded or caught fire.
Why? Is the PM of Japan a nuclear physicist? What can he actually do? The answers to those last two questions are "no" and "absolutely nothing". When there's a nuclear reactor accident, you don't call the damn politicians first. You call the people who designed the reactor, and you call the people qualified to work on the reactor. The politicians are towards the back of the line.
It's also possible the Japanese prime minister wasn't informed because the phone lines were down, which happens a lot in earthquakes.
Far be it from me to pass up on some fun with an off-topic subject.
Okay, let's talk BP camera feeds. What did the camera view of that billowing cloud of....
Wait a second. A billowing cloud of what?? What were we actually seeing billowing out of the busted wellhead. It wasn't black, it was kind of a grayish-brown. Was it mostly oil we were seeing, or was it mostly mud?
That's all aside from the fact that a camera feed doesn't tell you how much of the stuff is billowing. You need the pressure and flow rate. Can't get that from a camera. All the non-BP estimates of the amount of billowage per unit time were guesswork.
See, there's a general theme developing here: a camera feed doesn't do crap. All it really does is give people a false sense of security--the illusion of power stemming from an illusion of control stemming from the fact that they can see something. Well, you have no control at all here. Camera or not. Be real clear on that.
The phone lines were still down several days after the Earthquake, far away from the quake itself, in a country with the best anti-Earthquake infrastructure in the world.
Makes perfect sense.
Singularity
Infinite Density
No, there was a 30 kilometre high cloud(18.8 miles or 100.0000 feet for you americans.) after the reactor exploded.
No, he's not as far as I know. But I damn well hope he's got a/multiple brilliant government employed physicist(s) helping him all the time.
If this was inner Mongolia I could maybe agree with you. But not Japan in 2011.
Far be it from me to pass up on some fun with an off-topic subject.
Wait a second. A billowing cloud of what?? What were we actually seeing billowing out of the busted wellhead. It wasn't black, it was kind of a grayish-brown. Was it mostly oil we were seeing, or was it mostly mud?
That's all aside from the fact that a camera feed doesn't tell you how much of the stuff is billowing. You need the pressure and flow rate. Can't get that from a camera. All the non-BP estimates of the amount of billowage per unit time were guesswork.
See, there's a general theme developing here: a camera feed doesn't do crap. All it really does is give people a false sense of security--the illusion of power stemming from an illusion of control stemming from the fact that they can see something. Well, you have no control at all here. Camera or not. Be real clear on that.
Are you serious? The first guy to call BP on their extreme under-reporting of the quantity of the spill was a petroleum scientist watching that feed. The rest, as they say, is history in front of a Senate comity. BP lost, and the public won through a much clearer view of what was at stake and what needed to be done.
I don't trust TEPCO. I don't trust them one bit. It's sweet that you trust them, but your arguments lead me to conclude that you bask in ignorance and hate the fact that the public has a right to control their own destiny and not have it solely in the hands of corporations and bureaucrats.
Naval Power
Sailing the Seven Seas
Not too many volcano's far from civilization, you dump fuel rods into an active volcano and it explodes? Uh oh!
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Because people are afraid of what might happen if the plane delivering the fuel rods to the volcano, crashes before getting there.
One of the biggest problems with nuclear waste disposal is not the radiation or toxicity of the waste; the problem is everybody's paranoid of the stuff and isn't willing to allow it to be transported through their domain. So, transport fuel rods to a volcano? Not happening. Nobody would allow you to fly the stuff through their airspace.
I know. There was an explosion. An explosion centered on WHAT? The reactor core? An electrical transformer? A propane gas tank? Hydrogen gas leaking from the dishwasher in the lounge?
Chernobyl was a disaster because the explosion was inside the reactor core. Something no exterior photographs would have been able to show. The answer remains no. 24/7 surveillance is no good to anybody here.
That was my point--you don't call the prime minister, you call his brilliant government-employed physicist. ON HIS DIRECT LINE.
Think again.
Communications are severely impaired in ALL earthquakes. Underground cables get snapped by shifting rock, above-ground cables get snapped when the telephone poles fall over, cell phones go offline when the cell towers topple. Plus, whatever networks remain operational tend to get overloaded and crash when millions of people make phone calls at the same time trying to reach loved ones.
So, yes. Japan in 2011. Infallible technology is a fantasy incurred from watching too much Star Trek.
Was public-relations bullcrap. I don't care if you're the goddamn Second Coming of Christ. You have to know the cubic-meters-per-second (and you have to sample the muck coming out to see what percentage of it is actual oil) or you don't know how much is being spilled.
All right, Smart Guy. Control your destiny. You fix the reactor yourself. Tell me how you do it.
Disgustipated
Deity
This gives me an idea... If the U.S. were to drop another fat man or little boy onto the nuclear reactors, their problems would be solved. It's going to go up anyways, might as well do it as quick as possible in one fatal swoop. Why prolong the pain?
This gives me an idea... If the U.S. were to drop another fat man or little boy onto the nuclear reactors, their problems would be solved. It's going to go up anyways, might as well do it as quick as possible in one fatal swoop. Why prolong the pain?
The problem is that the mass of nuclear material in a power plant dwarfs the mass of nuclear material in a bomb. Spread it around and there's a great deal more radiation and heavy metal poisoning.
