Japan temporarily pulls backs workers from Nuke Plant

fox news

[Mr. K]

Fox news saying they left the plant

[glock rocks]

how about someone tell us exactly what the radiation level is, what isotope it is associated with (if it is), and...is it alpha, beta, or gamma radiation...it kinda matters.

Damned straight.

[GonzoGOP]

BNSF, They haul the coal out of the Powder River Basin. That the stuff the power plants want because it is very low sulfur.

[Sequoyah101]

It goes with the design earthquake.

[glock rocks]

Clean burn? == Utah Kaipirowits.

Oh wait, Clinton sold it to Riady / Indonesia for campaign cash.

[jwalsh07]

The data we get from Japanese spokesman and MSM is, shall we say, less than optimal.

I would be very surprised if workers are not being rotated.

[TXnMA]

Consider the possibility of bringing in fire boats to use their monitors to knock the panels off of the tops of the buildings, and then fill them totally full of sea water.

(I understand that NYC's fire boats have so much monitor water jet power that they can actually slice away heavy pilings and drop entire burning wharves into the water...)

[SaxxonWoods]

Just staying [sic] the facts. Nothing more - nothing less.

“Waiting on the 7.8-8.1 quake - should happen at any time”

281 posted on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 10:18:59 PM by silentknight

Well, keeping giving us ‘the facts’ by all means.

[crazydad]

That was the libs wet dream movie. Making it like Reagan was going to start World War 3. Jason Rebar! Great actor but a political schmuck.

[GonzoGOP]

Oh wait, Clinton sold it to Riady / Indonesia for campaign cash.

WTF Over:
The Powder River Basin is in Montana and Wyoming not Utah. The region supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States. And at last check Clinton didn't sell it to anyone. Much of it is federal land so Obama could still screw it up. The existing mines would run dry in a couple of decades.

[Red Steel]

Buy Sapporo or Kirin or some Japanese beer.

Get some Suntory whiskey if you have a taste for some smooth whiskey.

A classic Sammy Davis Jr Suntory Whiskey ad circa 1974.

"Suntory white / .Sammy Davis Jr."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F8xhAsyvE8&feature=related

[jwalsh07]

Generic Heat Decay Curve After SCRAM

[Despot of the Delta]

I know that CSX does a majority of CONSOL’s hauling out of the Enlow Fork and Bailey mines in PA.

[piytar]

Kniow you weren’t asking me, but with the Hyperion design, it’s self-contained. No water in, no pumping, no water out. Nothing. Unless you literally blow it up with large explosives, it will be OK.

Then there’s the pebble bed reactor. The pebbles are graphite balls with unranium impregnated into them sealed by ceramic. That’s a passive safety design, the key word being “passive.” Even if you drain all the water, you don’t get a meltdown. Nasty hot, but no meltdown, and the ceramic is sufficiently heat resistant to withstand the heat.

The difference between modern designs and 40 year old ones is like the difference between fighter planes in WWII and fighters today.

But will that matter in the LSM? And therefore the dumbed-down voting public? Probably not...

[glock rocks]

I understand what you’re saying. I know what Powder River is.

Clinton locked up Utah’s Kaipirowitz Plateau (which he named Grand Staircase Monument) to get campaign cash from Indonesia. It’s possibly the largest deposit of clean burn coal in the world (with Indonesia being second).

[cornfedcowboy]

Warren Buffet’s trains. He owns BNSF.

[grey_whiskers]

"Ride the wind, doggies!"

[GonzoGOP]

Then there’s the pebble bed reactor. The pebbles are graphite balls with uranium impregnated into them sealed by ceramic. That’s a passive safety design, the key word being “passive.” Even if you drain all the water, you don’t get a meltdown. Nasty hot, but no meltdown, and the ceramic is sufficiently heat resistant to withstand the heat.

That is the irony of the anti nuke groups. By preventing the building of new plants they force the power companies to keep the older, and less safe, plants on line.

And safety is not just measured in bodies. Economic costs have to be kept in mind. Even if the Japanese get out of this with nobody killed (did they find those four missing workers from earlier in the day) it will still be a massively expensive cleanup. TMI cost 2.5 billion dollars when adjusted for inflation. TMI didn't kill anyone either, and it never broke containment. So a minimum they will have four TMI type damaged reactors to clean up. I know darknight doesn't see any problems here but a minimum $10 billion dollar cleanup on top of all the other quake / tsunami damage is going to be a real drain on the Japanese economy. And it wasn't in great shape before any of this happened.

[Greysard]

The plants can’t heat up because there’s nothing to heat it up with.

TXnMA already mentioned that even a perfectly functioning, shiny new reactor has lots of ways to produce heat when you don't want it.

But those two (at least) reactors are anything but new. They are junk by now. This means that the fuel rods are partially gone, and the fuel inside was free to fall out and mix with other fuel at the bottom of the reactor. There are no means of controlling the reaction there; temperatures there can be very high, and the resulting mix can burn through anything, considering that it makes its own energy as it goes, and it has a lot of that energy. If such a situation occurs, you will have a few hundred MEGAwatts (up to 600 MW after all fuel rods are gone) produced under the reactor and not cooled in any way. The temperature will rise forever, until the new balance is reached. That could be at stellar levels. No containment vessel can hold this for long - not without corresponding 600 MW of cooling. And that they couldn't adequately do yesterday, in part because the heat-producing area (as I understand) is not accessible. They poured an ocean of water there, and the reactor won - it has unlimited supply of energy in its fuel, and the fuel so far can't escape the containment vessel. Perhaps we'd be better off when the containment fails because under the reactor they have an area that is far better suited for separating and individually encapsulating drops of fuel. But I'm not a nuclear engineer anyway, what do I know...

[yorkie]

Conor, if they are stationed there, does that mean they cannot leave Japan?

Please let us know if there is anything we can do help, and keep us updated. Prayers are continuing.............

[TXnMA]

As I implied, it all depends on how "fresh" the radionuclides are and on their respective half-lives...

My point was that the likelihood of fission re-starting is slim to none. The "thermal action" we have been seeing is all due to radionuclide decay.