Posted on 03/14/2011 5:27:49 PM PDT by gandalftb
There was a new explosion Tuesday morning at a reactor the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and the company that runs the plant said water may be leaking from the reactor.
Half of the rods inside the reactor were not immersed in water and the suppression pool, which holds the water used to keep the rods cool, seemed to be damaged, according to Tokyo Electric Co. and government officials.
The level of radiation also rose around the reactor, but a government official said there was no danger.
"The radioactive level near unit 2 has gone up, but at this juncture, the level is not judged to be immediately harmful to human bodies," said Noriyuki Shikata, a spokesman in the prime minister's office.
The blast is the third at the plant in the three days since a powerful earthquake struck Japan on Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
winds the next 24 hours out of the NE blowing any radition back onto Japan
I'm about 6 miles from one, as the crow flies. Or, as the Plutonium flies. :-)
All of these reactors will build by GE, now GE Hitatchi, but many came online during the 70’s. So they are first generation BWR (Boiling Water Reactors.)
Neat trick. You equate meltdown to containment breach. TMI was a partial meltdown. Where are the two headed cows in Penn ?
Home page of cnn.com has a good video on the emergency safeguards that failed.
‘Watch what went wrong at the plant.’
Reactor #3 was Toshiba and probably one of the first Japan built itself.
Do you glow in the dark?
Just kidding. I am not one to panic, but I also know that stuff like this does not help the cause for more nuclear energy.
Paranoia runs deep. Still waiting for the collapse of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and the deaths of millions from the BP blowout. And it wasn’t that long ago when FReepers were asking for a nuke to cap the well.
Happily, distance is in our favor. Concentration decreases by about the square of the distance, so by the time it any radiation gets to us, unless it's concentrated in a plume, it won't have any real effect, aside from statistical. Even Chernobyl was merely concentated to some areas in eastern Europe.
But it was very tough on the people who were affected.
Hindsight is 20/20.
If they designed the generator systems for a 7 meter tsunami, eventually there will be one 7.5 meters.
Every solution has another problem associated with it. This is the reality of engineering. If we succumb to the fear of failure, nothing would ever be built.
This is similar to the fear of flying. A person thinks the flight they are schedule to take will crash. So they decide to change the flight. Then the flight they were first supposed to take landed safely and they have yet to take off. They again get scared and decide to drive instead only to be killed by a truck but the other plane landed safely also.
There are no definite answers to anything. Each person thinks they have the answer to this disaster. But you have the luxury of knowing what already has happened. The engineers don't have that luxury because what happens is in the future. Engineers must deal with these types of questions on a constant basis. But statistics and the freak 7 meter tsunami will inevitably come along because the chance is not zero. That's the way life is.
Neither does it indicate meltdown.
All hydrogen explosions indicate is that the core is hot enough to disassociate water. This is strictly a function of temperature.
I think they should shut down ALL the nuclear plants on the west coast NOW...FORE EVER.
That was insane panic. It would have been a case of the cure is worse than the disease.
Even in Chernobyl, Kiev at 50 miles from the plant was entirely unaffected.
Sadly I think you will get your wish.
I can see Limerick Nuclear Power Plant from my driveway.
What’s happening in Japan is very serious... certainly the second most serious thing that’s happened there in the last four days. The chances of that calamity being replicated here are non-existent. So no, I was never the least bit concerned about living near a nuke plant and what’s happening in Japan has done nothing to change that.
What?? URL please.
Close enough for horseshoes and nukes and earthquakes.
The Japanese plants were not at the epicenter either.
The closest one to me is about 60 miles away. A total of five are within a approx. 100 mile radius to my house for a total of 7 or 8 reactors.
We have one in the Keys.......
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.