Real News on the Japanese Reactors would be nice

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The mainstream news and all governments consider the public to be such total ignorant idiots, sheep ready for the slaughter.

Listen to what they say about the condition of the facility in Japan.

The containment buildings blew up.
Ummm... Geee... weren't those supposed to be so tough that nothing could ever escape the plant? They could withstand anything that could ever happen in the building? They thought of everything and even added a margin of safety? Surprise!! They weren't much stronger than the walls at your favorite shopping mall. So much for being a "Containment" structure.

The news says that it doesn't matter that the building is destroyed, it was only the third layer of protection, the primary and secondary protections are still intact.. we think...
The reactor vessel itself is the "secondary layer" of "protection" !!
These being GE units means that the "secondary" layer of protection is as wide open as the buildings !!! Those are BWR (Boiling Water Reactors). They have huge steam lines that come out the top and go to the turbine throttle valves. They are by their very construction OPEN when anything happens to the main steam line, it is just a pipe. Those reactors are not sealed, any little steam leak in the 'normal' plant operation (shaft seals and the like) releases steam "carry over" reactor materials.

They say the "Primary" line of protection is intact... (oh yea?) The "Primary protection" is the zircaloy tubes that make up the individual fuel rod elements, they hold the pellets. The "news" puts the spin on things so badly... how can a fuel rod be a level of "protection"? Will they resort to identifying inert fuel pellet material next when the zircaloy theme wears out with the public? or when the public finds out the tubes are mere thousandths of an inch thick?? Why don't they just say the air outside is a level of protection? It's actually all the true protection there really is right now.

Nuke power plants have hundreds of cameras... they're everywhere. Now that power is restored to the Japan plant, will we see video of inside the plant? Don't hold your breath!

Westinghouse had the patent on the PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) and it's closed-loop system of keeping nuke materials in the reactor at all times. GE wanted to get in on the billions of dollars to be made in that industry and had to come up with something to sell, thus the boiling water reactor. Bribe enough government officials, pay off enough "experts" to say it is safe and walla! You have a plant design right off the devil's own drawing board. GE has recently defended their "design" saying it has over 40 years of normal, safe operation- which is a spin on it's own. Anybody can have a million years of "normal" operation but what about the first time there is an "abnormal" operation? GE has only gotten away with it for 40 years, but not this time.

Nuke power plants cost Billions to build, yet, they are so cost-cutting minded in their design...
Why is there only ONE nuke plant in the entire world built with the capability to import cooling water from an outside source? (Diablo Canyon, owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co).

Why didn't the plants in Japan have pipelines connected to import water in an 'emergency', beyond what the "experts" said could ever happen there? A line 3 miles away would have been a lifesaver. Why aren't such pipelines installed at all the power plants around the world (Diablo Canyon excepted)?? How much does a simple water line cost? We have millions of miles of them in our cities around the world. Don't ask who would be there in the plant to open the valve... A lead rupture disk at the plant end of the line would be a failsafe method of sealing the pipes for rodent/critter intrusion etc. When water is applied at the remote end of the pipe, the seal burst, and water is poured into the area it is terminated at. Yes, it takes many pipes, let's see, 6 pipes for spent fuel pools, 6 for reactor containment buildings, yep, 12 pipes for the plant in Japan and if they were there, what would be the problem today?

I'm not in love with Nuke power, actually I despise it. I don't love Pacific Gas & Electric either, but at least they built their plant up on an 85 foot bluff and have 2 enormous pools of backup cooling water on a hill above the plant out of harms way that can be re-filled as needed if they ever have a situation that is other than "Normal Operation" and they are Westinghouse units, closed-loop design.

The place you wouldn't want to be near in a situation similar to Japan's is about 60 miles north of San Diego, (San Onofre). They have a 30 foot tsunami wall. Let's hope one doesn't come in at 31 foot eh....?

I said at the start of this rant "The mainstream news and all governments consider the public to be such total ignorant idiots"

No outside source of cooling water? at what savings? Who's the real idiots?


 



Not a good idea. Those diesel-gen sets are very large locomotive engines. They would be subject to building stress failure from the weight of them swaying in a decent earthquake. They should have been build in hatch-sealed rooms with snorkel air intake and exhaust pipes to the roof, except pipes apparently cost too much to consider.


 
Safety officer? I just smashed my monitor trying to kill a big on the screen! Now on backup...
 


I guess there'll always be a bug in every system?
I ran a virus scanner that promised to get rid of all viruses and trojans, but it didn't say anything about bugs... :cry:



edit: ESL, corrected structure
 
bug-death.jpg
 
I think they should park a ship with pumps in it, fill the fuel tanks full of fuel, yes it would ruin the ship forever and yes they would get the hull stuck in the shallow water.
they could put hoses from the ship to the leaking storage ponds and any reactors that are not being cooled enough.
then once they have that set up and the radiation goes down, they start filling around the ship to make a storage pond so the radioactive water gets reused and doesn't keep going into the ocean. later they will have to recover and do a big cleanup. I think the reactors are damaged to a point where most of the systems are toast.
There are military remote control atv's and stuff they could use to drag fire hoses and stuff too, even the ship could be rigged to be remote control.
I am really surprised there is not more unmanned stuff being used here.

I really hope they can get this under control.
at this point a few reactors are melting down, they are hoping the containment holds and are concentrating on the storage pools.
 
Most people who have followed this saga extensively are no longer highly concerned over the cores, but instead the cooling pools. The spent rods have apparently enough energy to support a sustained reaction. The quantity of heat might not be enough to run the turbines, but the temperature of uncooled rods might continue to climb until the rod casings are compromised.
 
Yes, it would seem as if whatever damage was done within the reactors has been done and that's that. In other words, the reactors themselves are under control (to a degree), but the spent fuels rods have been hard to keep cool due to their positioning. I believe they are the reason why there has been smoke and such at the plant over the past few days, which led to an evacuation on Tuesday.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/24/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T2
 


Excellent video. I've never seen that one. It is indeed a different way of looking at all the nuclear explosions throughout the early years of the Cold War, as well as the tests by nations not directly involved, i.e. India, China, and France. The Israelis also have nukes, or at least that is the theory anyhow. From what I gather they probably had their first bomb or the capability to build a bomb by 1967- on the eve of the 6 days war. They have never tested one though...nuclear opacity.
 
Google "Dimona," as that is the plant they built, complete with plutonium separation facilities in the 1960's with French assistance. There was a deal in the 80's where a worker there took a bunch of photos of the place, fled to England, and turned them over to a newspaper. Of course they were published all around the world. The guy who did it was snagged by Mosad in Italy, brought back to Israel, and thrown in prison for 2 decades.
 
Also, I'm fairly certain that we have never given Israel nukes. Presidents starting with Eisenhower firmly believed that by having nukes, Israel would destabilize the Middle East and lead to the spread of nuclear weapons (which they were obviously against) in the Arab world compliments of the Soviets. This is one of the reasons why Israel has never officially said that they have nukes- playing coy with their Arab neighbors who are always looking to one up them.

If you are interested in the subject, have a look at this book. Good read.
http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Bomb-Avner-Cohen/dp/0231104839
 
Bu we know your ok.

I however, am fairly certain they do have nukes though. I'd bet my left nut on it in fact.

I am still worried about those containment ponds and the fact that yesterday 3 workers trod in contaminated water and got burned.

Levels of higher order isotopes are evident outside the plant so it is a given that some of the spent fuel rods have been exposed to air at some time and boiled off their external cladding, which has been released into the air (Zirconium) and water.

I hope they get all of the pumps restarted and can then start a decent cleanup on the next few weeks once the 4 reactors are brought don in temp.

Removing the active fuel rods from them is going to be difficult if they are partially melted.
 
Indeed. If progress can be had, it'll take quite a bit of time to clean the whole works up- perhaps even years. However, if reactor 3 has indeed been structurally compromised and is leaking, it wouldn't surprise me if they opted to entomb it in concrete at some point.
 
That methodology is flawed with a reactor loaded with active fuel.

Concrete would increase the likelihood of the entire unit melting due to the inability to remove accumulated heat.

Reactors loaded with fuel must be cooled using an efficient means until the fuel either is removed, or additional neutron moderation sources are added to "absorb" neutrons and thus reduce fission with the fuel loaded.

Putting a huge (50 ton) blob of concrete on it is a fools solution.

A far better alternative is to build a large (and I mean lake sized) cooling pond further inland, and then transporting all of the 4 damaged reactors as well as the spent fuel to a new cooling pond.

That cooling pond could then be passively cooled using latent heat of vaporisation from air flowing over the water mass.

It would need to be commenced soon and would only work if the 4 reactors have no leaks in the primary containment structure.

Any other alternative is just plain stupid so I hope someone is reading this.

Then they can cleanup the old area, and bring the remaining two reactors back on line, provided they didn't pump too much salt water through them.
 
I believe that the concrete idea failed, but they used some sort of "liquid glass" to plug the leak. Still though, it makes you wonder how much environmental damage was done to the surrounding ocean because of the leak. We're talking some seriously radioactive water, i.e. at it's peak it was 7.5 million times the legal limit for iodine 131. Experts say that the radioactive elements will become less concentrated in the massive amount of water to the point where there is no danger in regard to sea life/food. It does make you wonder though...

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-fg-japan-reactor-damage-20110406,0,6240900.story
 
I see that the Japanese nuclear agency declared the issue at the plant a "level 7" incident. As I understand it, 7 is the highest level, which was given to the Chernobyl disaster, while the Three Mile Island incident was a level 5. I'm not doubting the severity of the incident at the Japanese plant, but it is not on par with Chernobyl. There hasn't been a release of a massive radioactive cloud, nor are the levels of radioactive cesium and iodine anywhere near the levels of Chernobyl. I'm not a nuclear expert, but I'd classify it as a 6.
 
I think there is a large liquid leak into the water table beneath the concrete that has cracked and that primary containment on one of the reactors has been breached, otherwise there is no way Stontium 90 could be detected as it is a decay product from one of the reactors.

Since the fission product yield from U-235 is 5.8%, from U-233 6.8%, but from Pu-239 only 2.1% then it is anyone's guess which reactor, but my bet is Reactor 2.

These people have not been forthcoming about the details of the incident.

I am more worried about Strontium 90 and Caesium 137 than Iodine 131 (HL of 8 days) due to the massive increased half life, 37 and 30 years respectively.

It will take some time for the liquid waste to seriously enter the water table and spread ... mostly toward the sea but it will seriously effect the groundwater inland.

The area for about 50 kilimetres around will be effected and the seas around the area severely contaminated ... the bones of the fish etc.

Of course I am taking a pessimistic line ... it coule all be cleaned up with some magic cleaning agent and forgotten in a matter of weeks.

But I don't think so.
 
Well as has been pointed out by the pro-nuke-power advocates, the Fukushima reactors weren't damaged by the quake itself - the operators were able to safely shut them down. It was the tsunami destroying the backup cooling system generators that was to blame, and for that the designers should be held accountable for building the plant next to an ocean with a high probability of seismic disturbances causing said tsunamis...

Personally I'd like to see all the light-water reactors replaced with pebble-bed or thorium high-temperature designs, which inherently cannot suffer a core meltdown. IIRC there was one in Germany that operated for a couple of years until the anti-nuke movement got it shut down after a change in government..
 
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