Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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Volkodlak
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Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

Hi,

you all heard of this disaster that hapaned in 2011,but did you heard that radioactive water will reach US in 2014 so we are dealing with global disaster.
They didnt even started with removing fuel rods they are youst cooling them at the moment.
Reactor 4 witch is most damaged could collapse soon because structure is too damaged and earth quake could couse it too when it collapse people should get out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside for a while.

what do you think about this disaster?
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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lovec1990 wrote:Hi,

you all heard of this disaster that hapaned in 2011,but did you heard that radioactive water will reach US in 2014 so we are dealing with global disaster.
They didnt even started with removing fuel rods they are youst cooling them at the moment.
Reactor 4 witch is most damaged could collapse soon because structure is too damaged and earth quake could couse it too when it collapse people should get out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside for a while.

what do you think about this disaster?
I'll be the first one to admit that the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster was surprisingly severe. Frankly, I'm still sort of amazed that an American-design BWR reactor could pop like that. That said, there are a couple of things I think bear mention:

First off, part of that was the Japanese' fault. TEPCO was apparently somewhat notoriously lax when it came to safety issues, coupled with an almost scandalously close relationship with their regulators. This is partly why none of the six reactors at the complex had conventional containment structures. Now, this is not to say that there aren't problems with how the NRC and private enterprise conduct themselves here in the U.S., but the problem is significantly less severe (and also a serious contributing factor in why there hasn't been a commercial nuclear reactor constructed here since the 1970s).

Second, none of the four reactors which blew, actually had a full-scale runaway. Three did suffer "meltdown", but when the quake struck, the reactors functioned perfectly, and SCRAMed automatically without any operator input. When they melted, they had been in non-operational status for hours (they all three had their control rods all fully inserted and no self-sustaining reaction was occurring). What did them in was decay heat. The fourth reactor (reactor 4) not only wasn't operating, it wasn't even in "cold-iron" -- it was completely de-fueled at the time. Reactor 4 blew because of hydrogen intrusion from reactor 3. The explosions were all hydrogen gas -- which also wouldn't have happened if they had vented the buildings, but they had lost all of their instrumentation, so they didn't know what was happening -- oh, and they were still bracing for additional tsunamis. This was bad, but it wasn't Chernobyl by any stretch.

Radioactive water hitting the United States isn't a concern. Trust me, the radioactive water that we already have from the Bikini nuclear weapons tests would've done us in by now if it were. "Radioactive water" is actually something of a misnomer. Water is used as a moderator and a coolant in reactors for a whole slew of reasons, but mainly because it easily captures neutrons. It's the radioactive stuff in the water you have to watch out for. By the time the currents bring that stuff here, it will be very much diluted (remember that the ocean is a fairly big place) and most of what's left will precipitate out. The bigger concern is the fish in the water. If they consume tainted material, it tends to stay in the food chain for a long time, but most of the take from those fisheries goes right back to Japan anyway (this is a much bigger concern for the Japanese).

As far as the fuel rods are concerned, I would have been seriously surprised if they had removed them by now. They're more or less safe right where they are. Remember in the Three-Mile-Island disaster in 1979 (which was functionally similar to the Fukushima disaster, only that time there had been a true containment structure), the nuclear fuel remained in place for decades. The typical way of dealing with this kind of thing is to let the worst of the radiation decay away naturally, before full clean-up operations begin. They might do it a bit faster than at Three-Mile-Island, because it's not under a big concrete dome, but I'd wager not. It's safer to just let the stuff sit for a few decades.

Reactor 4 is not the most damaged. Its reactor is still completely intact. Its building lost its roof in the hydrogen gas explosion, but that's just sheet-metal to keep the weather out.

Another earthquake won't do much. Even if the rest of the building collapses, all six reactors are cold-iron (or already slag). There won't be any explosions, and any contaminated dust won't carry far. This was a bad event, but it's a big stretch to say it's a global disaster. Chernobyl was, but this isn't. There hasn't been a single confirmed case of radiation sickness stemming from this thing. The real disaster here was the tsunami which killed something north of 18,000 people.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

uniform i have to disagre with two points you have mentioned:

1.) Reactor no. 4 has structure damage TEPCO is saying it would hold together if next earthquake hits but other experts arent sure it would hold.Reactor 4 is the biggest worry now.and ground under reactor 4 was sinking and the structure may collapse.

2.)i read few articles on this and it was said radioactive water will hit US
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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lovec1990 wrote:uniform i have to disagre with two points you have mentioned:

1.) Reactor no. 4 has structure damage TEPCO is saying it would hold together if next earthquake hits but other experts arent sure it would hold...
Yes, "Reactor 4" the building has structural damage. The reactor itself is perfectly fine -- and in fact thoroughly de-fuelled.
lovec1990 wrote:Reactor 4 is the biggest worry now.and ground under reactor 4 was sinking and the structure may collapse.
The ground subsidence issue isn't all that big a deal. As I stated before the reactor is completely cold iron and doesn't even have any radioactive material in it. Regardless, the reactor is a huge (practically solid) chunk of concrete, zirconium and stainless steel. A fault/fissure could open up underneath it and swallow it whole, and still nothing would happen. The thing is huge, solid, and also completely inert. The only issue regarding the Reactor 4 building is the spent fuel-rod pool. If the ground subsides too much, the pool could be compromised. That's not a good thing, but you're not going to have a nuclear explosion either. All you're really likely to have happen is another release of radioactive material if the thing runs off. It's going to go into the Pacific Ocean, and won't even affect groundwater supplies. If it does happen, they'll just have to remove the rods to another pool. At the very worst, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what's already happened. Heck, the entire area is already evacuated, so there's not even any concern for civilian casualties.
lovec1990 wrote:2.)i read few articles on this and it was said radioactive water will hit US
As I said before, we've already been hit with radioactive water before. The ocean is a big place, and radioactive particulate tends to precipitate out fairly quickly and anything left over gets diluted by the sheer mass of the water column. I mean, in 1955, they set off a nuclear test off the coast of San Diego (Wikipedia "Operation Wigwam" for details). Trust me, we already have "radioactive water".

If you want to talk about scary nuclear stuff, I'm more concerned about the fact that NRC recently authorized the construction (which appears to be proceeding on at least one site) of four new AP1000-2005 reactors. NRC authorized them to be built without the robust containment structures of past reactor designs -- the power companies balked at the capital-expenditure costs, and NRC caved. They're PWC reactors just like Three-Mile-Island, but they aren't going to have the concrete dome that contained all the radioactive cr@p in 1979. Yaaay, Progress!
:x

EDIT:
lovec1990 wrote:uniform i have to disagre with two points you have mentioned:

1.) Reactor no. 4 has structure damage TEPCO is saying it would hold together if next earthquake hits but other experts arent sure it would hold...
One other thing I forgot: Although I seriously doubt further collapse of the building would actually do much, you're right in that TEPCO is hardly a credible source. They're Zaibatsu. If they said that the sky was blue, I'd be inclined to go outside to confirm it.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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UPDATE:
According to the latest issue of The Economist, TEPCO is now beginning to remove spent rods from the Reactor 4 storage pool for dry-cask storage. They've also apparently submitted an outline cleanup general plan to their regulators estimating a total of forty years for complete clean-up of the site and contaminated off-site areas.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

UPDATE:

TEPCO is officaly nuts they are planing on releasing all radioactive water stored in tanks into ocean and saying it will not couse any health risks.Also radiation is record high exposure will kill you in 20min.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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I still say that the radioactive water issue is sort of moot. The really bad stuff went into the water in the hours and days right after the accident when firefighters were dousing the whole site. The runoff went right into the sea. Whatever they're talking about releasing is most likely no worse than that. Moreover, you have contaminated soil upstream, and all that is sending runoff into the sea anyway. With the currents they have right offshore (remember that they have a fairly sharp drop-off right off the beach), the stuff is going to affect only the local fishery, which has already been hit. Water releases tend to have fairly negligible real impact (with the exception of certain bottom-feeder species of fish). The mercury contamination that they have from the 50s, is probably more of a real-world hazard.
lovec1990 wrote:Also radiation is record high exposure will kill you in 20min.
As far as the lethality issue goes, I'd take that statement with a grain of salt. There's people walking around those pools with essentially nothing more than respirators. If the radiation levels were as high as you imply, they'd be walking around in full hot-suits at a minimum (or more likely, wouldn't be anywhere near that place).
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

UPDATE:

Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.We should start praying that big earthquake doesnt hit japan
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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lovec1990 wrote:We should start praying that big earthquake doesnt hit japan
Uh -- dude, I think that part already happened.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

Uniform Two Six wrote:
lovec1990 wrote:We should start praying that big earthquake doesnt hit japan
Uh -- dude, I think that part already happened.
:eyebrow:
i think uniform we have diffrent defenition of big earthquake im talking 7+ earthquake and yes there were earthquakes but not so strong.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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lovec1990 wrote: i think uniform we have diffrent defenition of big earthquake im talking 7+ earthquake and yes there were earthquakes but not so strong.
The 2011 earthquake (which was the proximal cause of the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster) registered as a 9.0 magnitude quake. It is the strongest earthquake on record to have hit Japan -- ever -- and the fifth strongest in the world on record. It shifted Japan's East Coast laterally by 2.4 meters, and dropped the landmass vertically by .6 meters. It shifted the earth's axis by 10 centimeters. It actually surpassed the great Kanto earthquake of 1923 in terms of magnitude (although Kanto remains the deadliest for Japan in terms of loss of life). This was The-Big-One, by almost any measure.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

UPDATE:

30. Dec: Homeless men are being recruited for one of the most unwanted jobs in the industrialized world - clearing of radioactive fallout at the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

1.jan: Steam is coming out of unit 3 posibility of meltdown.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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lovec1990 wrote: 30. Dec: Homeless men are being recruited for one of the most unwanted jobs in the industrialized world - clearing of radioactive fallout at the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
:eyebrow: Yeah -- um -- given the civil liability involved in anything involving radioactive debris, use of untrained personnel is difficult to fathom (even by the goofballs at TEPCO). I highly doubt this. What is your source?
lovec1990 wrote:1.jan: Steam is coming out of unit 3 posibility of meltdown.
I think there's a language-barrier issue here. Reactor 3 is in a cold iron state and has been for over two years. There is about zero chance of the reactor reaching criticality since the safety control rods are fully inserted into the pile. The steam observed has been coming out of the reactor intermittently since July, and has been stated to be cause to believe that reactor 3 may have suffered at least a partial meltdown in the 2011 earthquake/tsunami event -- not that it is in imminent danger of meltdown now. Release of radioactive steam is a possible sign that the reactor vessel has been breached and rainwater is coming into contact with the pile.

Also, the World Health Organization (part of the UN), recently released a report that states that the signs of radiation exposure in area residents are so low as to be statistically undetectable. That is, the various cancers that would have manifested in some way by this time, are currently manifesting in such low numbers that they are unable to be separated statistically from the baseline rate of incidence.

This definitively was the worst nuclear power plant accident since Chernobyl, but comparing the two is highly misleading. The 1994 live-steam mishap in the French submarine Emeraud's main engine room caused more fatalities (10, compared to Fukushima-Daiichi, which by contrast suffered only two direct fatalities -- and those due to drowning).
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Post by Volkodlak »

it was all over news RT had article our news site had news about this it was even on twitter go on internet and search you will find news about this.

as for reactor 3 i said there is posibility of meltdown even TEPCO has no clue whats hapening in reactor 3 some experts are saying there is posibility that reactor 3 is having another meltdown.

UPDATE:

TEPCO is doing something unbelivable again:
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-radiation-water-leak-186/
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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As to the second issue you brought up, even the experts acknowledge that some temporary fixes were made. The issue is that the temporary fixes have been stretched into two years. Largely this is due to the fragile financial state of TEPCO, which is why the cleanup operation is now in the hands of the Japanese government...

Which leads me back to the "homeless worker" issue. Even Reuters is going with this story, but I still find it somewhat dubious. There may be a kernel of truth to it, but I suspect it's more a case of reporters looking for a story where none exists. A case in point is that when searching for "homeless workers fukushima", the first thing that came up was a news article entitled "Yakuza recruit homeless workers for cleanup". The main point of the story being not the homeless workers, but the fact that a criminal syndicate had access to a nuclear site. The only real scraps of truth that appear to be verifiable are that the government is hiring contractors who may in fact be also involved with Japanese organized crime (not uncommon), and that they're hiring people for a large contract, some of whom may be homeless -- also not uncommon in the Sendai area since everyone is homeless right now. Basically, everything is under the direct supervision of the government inspectors, so I suspect that everybody is properly trained and equipped, and all relevant criteria are being met for the most part. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. If something goes wrong, and it was due to negligence or a failure of oversight, no bureaucrat wants to get strung up by a formal hearing. CYA (Cover-Your-***) is as much a part of the Japanese government mindset as it is over here.
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Re: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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They just finished de-fueling one of the reactors. Three more to go.
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