Posted on 03/23/2011 1:09:44 PM PDT by AwesomePossum
Do you have any evidence of that?
News report today is that tap water in Tokyo is unsafe for infants. Thats pretty good evidence that the situation is not in control. I recognize that the Japanese governement is busy with both the earthquake and tsunami response but they have to get this sitaution under control quickly.
MOX fuel is a bogeyman. First of all, it is only 7% Pu when fabricated, and almost all of that is fissioned in the course of one fuel cycle, so you end up with about as much Pu as you would with ordinary low-enrichment uranium fuel, which breeds Pu as a natural consequence of neutron capture in 238U.
Second, when analyzing a reactor accident, of primary importance is what is called the source term. That is what contains information on what is in the material released, and how much. Guess what? The source terms for MOX and ordinary uranium fuel are about the same. Why? Because in a LWR accident involving release of fission products, fuel isn't important, fission product spectrum is. And you get essentially the same fission products in the same amounts: noble gases like 133Xe and 85Kr, and volatile, reactive forms like 131I, 90Sr, and 137Cs. Very, very little of the fuel itself is contained in the source term? Why? Because in a LWR accident, the fuel particles generally lack the stored energy necessary to drive them out of the fuel pellets (even if damaged), then drive them out of the cladding (even if damaged), then drive them out of the pressure vessel (unlikely to be damaged), then drive them out of the containment (unlikely to be damaged), and out into the environment. And if they happen to get out, they aren't terribly mobile, at least compared to things like cesium and iodine, which you are going to get whether you use MOX or not.
So, please, lets save the bogeyman for the kiddie stories.
And I admit that I am no expert on nuclear plant design(far from it). But what I understand to be the containment buildings- are severely damaged. Then there is damage to all the coolant lines. It is hard to believe that they have not been blown apart in some cases. So if there is some other containment vessel then how does the water get there?
And then even a large tank will eventually become full. Then what?
How do we know what is really going on?
Apologize for WHAT? For posting information on what to do just in case your, "I'm telling you the sky is not falling, and there never was any danger of that happening." rhetoric was not based on fact?
You shouldn't let your emotions drive you
Unless you happen to be a nuclear scientist with some test data backing up your claims, you're the one letting your emotions and NOT hard data, drive you.
Frankly, your "head in the sand" attitude COULD actually cause people to go unprepared and suffer the consequences should the worst occur.
That said, I certainly hope you are correct but I'll make a few prudent preparations if you don't mind.
Besides the heroes in Japan fighting this, other heroes might be the folks who designed the pelleted fuel rods. This remains to be seen and if there is test data that exists for a similar circumstance, it needs to be made public to calm concerns FRiend.
LOL!!
In Japan, you have to know that “yes” does not mean anyone agrees to your question or can even answer it, only that they heard it. It took me two years of dealing with them in product development to understand this. Asking for an answer to something from one person or department is just not done in their culture, so press conferences and examination of comments produced by one will be quite contradictory and confusing. It does not mean they do not know what they are doing. I have more faith in their resolve to fix this than ours.
The information is from older TEPCO press releases (they are publishing information a few times a day). The problem is that while the switchgear and substation equipment for 5 and 6 remained somewhat intact, the electrical gear for units 1 through 4 did not.
Also, one backup generator was inadequate to maintain both 5 and 6 along with their spent fuel ponds at an adequately cool level. They would have endangered those two units to provide an inadequate supply to the other 4 generators. Essentially, if they could have made the hookup, they'd probably have had the roofs blowing off 2 more units and would have 6 scuttled nuclear reactors instead of (probably) 4.
They needed to wait for off-site power to provide adequate supply to run pumps and cooling equipment on 1-4 (some of which is now damaged due to the explosions, earthquake, and tsunami). And even with that hooked up, they still need to adequately test each piece of equipment and circuit to be relatively sure that the are operational and are not faulted (short-circuited).
>>>>“Countdown to ‘radiation is actually good for you’ posters showing up.”
>>They always do.
How about some links to some of those? Since they’re so plentiful and all.
I sure haven’t seen it, and I’ve been on a lot of these threads.
While low-level radiation hormesis is quite possibly a real phenomenon, I haven’t seen anyone who I thought knew anything saying it applied when it comes to some of the levels seen at Daiichi.
Conversely, I’ve seen plenty of Chicken Littles screaming their heads off over radiation levels at various places that didn’t amount to a hill of beans when analyzed rationally. Note I am not saying that about current levels at Daiichi.
This whole topic need a lot more rationality and a lot less hoping for disaster and Chicken Little-ism. And bless those atomjacks and pray for their success.
Well you could be right. But I don’t trust what they say. A little common sense tells me that you can’t blast “9 times as much sea water” into a closed system. If that much water is going into the reactor then it sure has to be coming out somewhere else. That is just common sense, absent some other explanation. Then you have the steam pressure issues.
The very worst that could happen is a lot lot less than did happen during the era of testing the A-bombs and then the H-bombs. And that very worst is extremely unlikely.
The Japanese are highly capable engineers and scientists. They have a culture of being very clean and careful.
Of all places for such a rare event to happen, Japan is perhaps the among the best in the world to handle it. The US, I think, would be the best.
I even think that the Japanese will be motivated to develop
detection, remediation and decontamination equipment at levels beyond what is currently available. That would be a great boon, in the age where we can anticipate a possibility of some dirty nuke being used.
And also that we and they will be motivated to combine our nuclear engineering expertise to deal with the spent fuel problem. We made a mess of it and since then have ignored it — see the history of the West Valley Reprocessing Plant near Ashford, New York. That plant reprocessed used fuel rods from 1966 until 1977. Given current clean-plant technology and robotics we should be able to effectively reprocess the spent fuel in ways that would greater lessen the long-term storage risks.
I have a similar take. That the MOX is headed towards a potential (albeit theoretical) alpha-mode failure and/or RPV breach; and that any mitigating action is permissible, steam explosion perhaps almost preferable to an alpha ejection or (perhaps inevitable) corium breach of the RPV.
Some of this information is here...
Note the section on fuel melt tests.
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
If the Chicken Little-ism gets much worse, I’m thinking about printing up some “I Survived Tsar Bomba and All I Got Was This T-Shirt” t-shirts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
I'll bet that gramps was really pleased about that.
The hard data shows that this situations is well under control, and you don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to see that.
You just have to look at the facts.
Over 15,000 people are reported dead. How many from the nuke plants? None that we know of, but suppose it’s, say, 100. That’s nothing.
How many died at the initial Chernobyl event? 40? That’s almost as many as have died from windpower just here in the US (44).
Just as with the Gulf oil spill, the damage done by Big Press and the “Sky is Falling’ crowd, of which you are one, will drawf, DRAWF, actual damages from the nuke plants in Japan. We are already seeing that, with the death of nuclear for the US being predicted.
Even some Liberals have the good sense to reconsider taking positions based on their emotions: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2693306/posts
I wish a bunch of Freepers would have that dab of common sense.
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