News Intel Charts Course to Trillion-Transistor Chips: 2D Transistor Materials, 3D Packaging Research

[digitalgriffin]

Post #6: "No place on earth would be safe even in a limited war. ". Welcome to the debate.

Again: assuming a limited exchange, the reactor itself would still be operational. No need for backup power at all. If the reactor shuts down and the power grid as well, then diesel generators can provide backup power indefinitely. If they go, then battery power gives you a limited amount of time to restore some better alternative.

So let's assume worse than a "limited exchange:", but a disaster that takes out all these layers simultaneously: i.e. Fukushima. What happened there? The corium melted through the reactors pressure vessel and "ate through" (to use your technical term) a full meter into the concrete PCV. But that concrete is 7.6 meters thick ... meaning it only penetrated only about 13% of the way through. And that's simply the primary containment vessel. Secondary containment differs by reactor type and generation, but any modern plant will have it as well. Ergo: no problem.

Only if you define "disaster" as "I may have my 30-year cancer risk slightly elevated, if calculated using the unrealistically pessimistic and known-false linear-exposure cancer model". There are places on earth considerably more radioactive than Fukushima's Designated Evacuation Zone. Brazil's Guarapari beaches, for instance, have radiation levels nearly ten TIMES higher than the 20 mSv/yr at Fukuskima. But because it's "natural" radiation, those beaches are always carpeted with human bodies.

To this day, the corium is STILL eating through the concrete. All concrete when exposed to heat turns back into cement which is useless. The reactors in Chernobyl and Fukashima are still contaminating ground water. And the gamma radioactivity is so hot, that robots cannot approach them to clean them up. If containment wasn't an issue then there wouldn't be mass debate right now about dumping MILLIONS of gallons of radioactive water back into the ocean. You wouldn't need to freeze the surrounding ground with LN .

How long till these lands are usable again?

There's 72 hours of fuel for the generators. It takes a lot of fuel to keep them going.

You''re also assuming that heat exchangers will not be damaged in a blast. Again the control room and exchangers are outside the protected containment.

I'm not against nuclear power. I'm against old school PWR and BWR designs. Simply outdated, and dangerous if cooling fails.

 

[Endymio]

To this day, the corium is STILL eating through the concrete.

Fearmongering. It's penetrated 13% in 11 years, most of that in the first few months. By nature of radioactive decay, it's a logarithmic rate. It'll never reach 20%, not after thousands of years. And, I remind you, this is simply the primary containment vessel; there's a secondary below it.

If containment wasn't an issue then there wouldn't be mass debate right now about dumping MILLIONS of gallons of radioactive water back into the ocean. You wouldn't need to freeze the surrounding ground with LN .

Circular logic: "people are scared, so there must be a reason they're scared." Ignorance of radioactivity and its ubiquity in nature is the problem. There are already countless trillions of tons of radioactive uranium, thorium, radium, and potassium in the ocean -- radioactive waste left over from when Mother Nature created the planet. Release all that water into the ocean, and it would affect nothing and harm no one.

How long till these lands are usable again?

Easy one. They're useable now. There were a few residents who refused to evacuate right after the accident. They're still there today, doing just fine.

There's 72 hours of fuel for the generators.

Wrong. The NRC mandates a minimum figure (unless they've changed it) but sites typically carry much more. Even Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant maintains a 15-day supply ... which we found out during the recent war.

You''re also assuming that heat exchangers will not be damaged in a blast.

What blast? Did you forget we're discussing a limited nuclear exchange here? Nuclear power plants are not situated in military bases and major population centers, and the radius of destruction for a 300-500kt boosted-fission strategic warhead is only about 5 km. You can postulate an off-target missile striking a power station, but that's not going to happen the "dozens" of times your original post stated. And, even if the heat exchangers did fail, then we're simply back to a Fukushima-style incident .... a "disaster" that killed no one.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Fearmongering. It's penetrated 13% in 11 years, most of that in the first few months. By nature of radioactive decay, it's a logarithmic rate. It'll never reach 20%, not after thousands of years. And, I remind you, this is simply the primary containment vessel; there's a secondary below it.

Circular logic: "people are scared, so there must be a reason they're scared." Ignorance of radioactivity and its ubiquity in nature is the problem. There are already countless trillions of tons of radioactive uranium, thorium, radium, and potassium in the ocean -- radioactive waste left over from when Mother Nature created the planet. Release all that water into the ocean, and it would affect nothing and harm no one.

Easy one. They're useable now. There were a few residents who refused to evacuate right after the accident. They're still there today, doing just fine.

Wrong. The NRC mandates a minimum figure (unless they've changed it) but sites typically carry much more. Even Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant maintains a 15-day supply ... which we found out during the recent war.

What blast? Did you forget we're discussing a limited nuclear exchange here? Nuclear power plants are not situated in military bases and major population centers, and the radius of destruction for a 300-500kt boosted-fission strategic warhead is only about 5 km. You can postulate an off-target missile striking a power station, but that's not going to happen the "dozens" of times your original post stated. And, even if the heat exchangers did fail, then we're simply back to a Fukushima-style incident .... a "disaster" that killed no one.

I asked a reactor engineer at a npp. He is former navy sub nuclear engineer as most are. 3rd level is 72+ hours. It takes a hella lotta fuel to keep hp pumps going when you are talking thousands upon thousands of gallons of water.

And there are many nuclear plants are situated near big cities. Def within 5km. And many are old and decrepit.

For example: Indian point power station was well past it's design life. When they went to sand rust off the secondary loop it leaked. That's how corroded it was from time.

If the control room isn't destroyed the reactor will register the seismic blast and automatically go into scram mode. If power lines are down and substations destroyed or the control dam damaged you are f'd

Again I'm not against nuclear. Just pbr and pwr are outdated tech that leave vast areas unlivable for thousands of years. The wildlife in Chernobyl proves this. Or do I have to start posting videos from biologist? Or how far the radioactivity spewed from fuka and cher?


The cooling pools can also take a year for used rods to be put into caskets. They aren't protected. And to remove the reactor rods in a "cold state" takes several months of cooling to begin with.


I'm telling you in a limited war those plants would eventually go up with no emergency services able to help because infrastructure will have been destroyed.

 

[Endymio]

And there are many nuclear plants are situated near big cities. Def within 5km.

No. There's only 93 reactors operating in the USA; none within 5km of a major city. Fermi is probably the closest, at 30km from Detroit. Turkey Point is 40 km from Miami, Beaver Valley 45 km from Pittsburgh, Dresden 100km from Chicago, etc etc. None of these would be damaged by a blast within the city itself. And no adversary would nuke Detroit in a limited exchange anyway; they'd actually be doing us a favor.

For example: Indian point power station was well past it's design life. When they went to sand rust off the secondary loop it leaked. That's how corroded it was

Secondary loops don't carry radioactivity. What's your point? And if the primary loop leaks, it's still contained.

If the control room isn't destroyed the reactor will register the seismic blast and automatically go into scram mode.

Incorrect again. Seismic scram systems not only have an SSE trip threshold far above what a nuclear blast would generate (airbursts don't generate seismic activity, and surface bursts generate far less than an underground test), but the S-wave/P-wave profile is entirely different as well. Furthermore, most plants don't even have automatic seismic trip systems; the only ones I know of that do are in California, like Diablo Canyon.

I'm telling you in a limited war those plants would eventually go up with no emergency services able to help

You seem to be defining 'limited war' as 'a total destruction of infrastructure and dissolution of social structure'. If you posit an event that destructive, then we certainly have far more to worry about than a nuclear plant potentially leaking low-levels of radiation.

On a side note, I do want to thank you for rationally debating the issue. You obviously have strong feelings on the subject, but are managing to confine the discussion to facts and data.

 

[bit_user]

The kind of EMP blast you’re talking about would bring about way worse problems than this

Haven't EMPs from nuclear airbursts been largely discredited?

Regardless, what I worry about are CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections), which are a real thing and do have the potential to cause catastrophic, global damage to the electric grid and electronic systems.

If modern infrastructure fails and we can't get production of computers and storage back online within a year or so, we'll begin to experience catastrophic data loss (i.e. in any of the magnetic or solid state storage that wasn't directly affected by the CME or whatever). Not long after that, enough infrastructure will fail that it will no longer be possible to get high-tech manufacturing back online, and society will quickly regress back into the dark ages.

Clawing our way back into modernity will be harder the second time, because the industrial revolution was powered by fossil fuels and we've already used most of the oil, gas, and coal that you can reach without modern technology.

As you say, any of this research into refinements of our highly-advanced fabrication technology will be irrelevant, because there'd be decades (maybe centuries) of rebuilding basic capacity before we get back to a point where one can even begin to conceive of putting this kind of research into production.

As we've recently seen, our supply chains are vulnerable to even slight disruptions. Anything more catastrophic and we'd be F'd. Part of this is our own fault, because efficiency (which Wall St. loves) is the enemy of resiliency (which is expensive and requires some redundancy). People are good at optimizing for every day risks, but we suck at mitigating against Black Swan type of events.

 

[bit_user]

Nuclear winter is an entirely discredited theory.

Source?

What we do know is that major volcanic eruptions, like Mt. Pinatubo, have ejected enough material into the stratosphere to have a measurable effect (a couple degrees Farenheit, IIRC) on global temperatures for a couple years. That's why people talk about trying to control global warming through intentionally spreading fine particulates in the upper atmosphere.

I'll repeat that fact. When discussing the effects of a limited nuclear exchange on civilian nuclear plants, Japan's Fukushima accident is a far more representative worst-case scenario than Chernobyl. The Great East Japan earthquake was the strongest ever recorded in the country, and the resultant tsunami directly killed 18,000 people and destroyed the backup power and cooling systems at Fukushima. What then? Zero people died of acute radiation sickness, and only a small handful of workers actually working onsite at the plant itself received radiation doses that significantly raised their long-term chances of contracting cancer.

Wasn't the meltdown mitigated by (eventually) getting large quantities of water pumped through the reactor? That's why they now have billions of gallons of waste water they need to deal with... So, if I'm not mistaken, what would've happened if society & infrastructure had been so catastrophically damaged that nobody could get any pumps online to start pumping that water?

Just curious.

There's only 93 reactors operating in the USA; none within 5km of a major city.

MIT has a research reactor on campus.

Reactor | MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory

nrl.mit.edu

On a side note, I do want to thank you for rationally debating the issue. You obviously have strong feelings on the subject, but are managing to confine the discussion to facts and data.

As far as tangents in the forum discussions go, this was one of the more entertaining and enlightening that I can recall. Thanks for contributing.

 

[Endymio]

Source? [of nuclear winter's discrediting]

Too many to easily list, but the most compelling is an actual real-world experiment, rather than theoretical considerations. Nuclear Winter is based on the idea that ground fires ignited by nuclear weapons would inject particulates into the stratosphere, as volcanic eruptions do. In 1983, Sagan et. al. used their nuclear-winter models to simulate the effects of oil refinery fires, and found that their equations predicted that as few as 100 simultaneous such fires would lead to significant global cooling, and 300+ such fires would have catastrophic effects. Other researchers published similar papers, including a detailed study in 1991, just as Iraq invaded Kuwait, based on the fear that the invasion would lead to that.

This worst-case scenario was not only met, but vastly exceeded, with Iraq igniting more than 800 such refinery and oil-lake fires, many of which burned continually for 9+ months. And yet no global effects were observed. Furthermore, Sagan's predictions about particulate lifetime in the atmosphere were also shown false, as nearly all such particulates dropped out of the atmosphere within a few days of the fires ending. Sagan himself conceded his Nuclear Winter theory was "somewhat overblown" in one of his final books before his death.

It's also worth nothing that, when nuclear winter was first proposed, it was believed that particulates were the primary cause of volcanic-origin global-cooling events, whereas now we know that things like sulfur aerosols are the larger component. And nuclear exchanges don't generate these aerosols.

MIT has/had a research reactor on campus.

A good point, but MIT's research reactor generates 6MW. Fukushima generated 4,700 MW. The MIT reactor also operates at a much lower temperature, all of which means it contains less than 0.1% of total curies of radiation which can be potentially released. The reactor also has a much higher passive cooling coefficient, and doesn't keep spent fuel on site like commercial reactors do. So not only is the potential for an accident much less likely, but the maximum worst-case event far less serious.

 

[bit_user]

This worst-case scenario was not only met, but vastly exceeded, with Iraq igniting more than 800 such refinery and oil-lake fires, many of which burned continually for 9+ months.

I think you mean "oil wells", rather than "oil refineries".

And I'm not convinced they're equivalent to nuclear fallout, given the heat of a nuclear explosion is far greater. But you're point about the sulfur aerosols is probably the real issue. Anyway, thanks for the follow-up.

Sagan's predictions about particulate lifetime in the atmosphere were also shown false,

BTW, was this Carl Sagan? If so, I've heard he was good at popularizing science but not exactly an Einstein.

 

[Endymio]

I think you mean "oil wells", rather than "oil refineries".

Actually, I meant "refineries, wells, and oil lakes". But you're correct; the wells were the primary source ... I think there were only 2 or 3 refineries burned.

And I'm not convinced they're equivalent to nuclear fallout, given the heat of a nuclear explosion is far greater.

Yes, but the explosion itself doesn't cause cooling. Particulates can-- and nothing generates more particulates than a crude oil fire. Remember that, even according to nuclear winter, the direct effect of the nuclear blasts themselves is negligible; it is the secondary resultant fires that were thought to generate nearly all the particulates, and thus the effect.

BTW, was this Carl Sagan? If so, I've heard he was good at popularizing science but not exactly an Einstein.

No one's been exactly an Einstein the last couple of centuries. But Carl Sagan was the originator of the nuclear winter theory, and -- until he recanted near his death -- its largest proponent. Honestly, nuclear winter was from the start based on a series of shoddy assumptions ... the only reason it wasn't attacked as such immediately was that, at the time global nuclear war was considered a very real possibility. Anyone pointing out the theory's flaws would have been labelled as enabling nuclear war. It wasn't until the fall of the USSR that any real work critical of it was published.

 

[bit_user]

Remember that, even according to nuclear winter, the direct effect of the nuclear blasts themselves is negligible; it is the secondary resultant fires that were thought to generate nearly all the particulates, and thus the effect.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Did you see my previous post about CMEs? Thoughts?