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.