Not the nuclear thing again...

AndyF

AndyF

New member
I guess with events in Japan unfolding the pro-nuclear lobby may care to remind us again how wonderful this technology is, how its all designed to be fail-safe and how our fears are unfounded.  :-\

Because it would sort of appear that "it's all gone wrong just the way you said it couldn't"

 
cap n chris

cap n chris

Well-known member
Yes. It's entirely their fault. Stoopid Japs. Kick em while they're down. Go for it.

Remind me of the facts, though, please.
 
AndyF

AndyF

New member
cap 'n chris said:
Remind me of the facts, though, please.
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Don't you watch the news then?

They are pumping sea water in to cool the reactor. Trust me that is a desperate, desperate measure to take, it means the reactor is essentially destroyed..

Ceasium has been detected around the plant, so it is quite likely that (despite the claims to the contrary), the reactor core is melting and/or breached.

There has been a massive explosion and a leak of radiation.

So how can this have happened? Well, build a nuclear plant in an earthquake zone and it becomes a reasonable probability not an unforeseeable event. Earthquakes are reliable around Japan, building nukes in such a place is shown to be the feck stoopid idea that it is.
 
cap n chris

cap n chris

Well-known member
Seems like a more wise idea might have been to make it illegal for people to breed on an island with few natural energy resources, thereby meaning they wouldn't have to resort to nuclear power to keep everyone alive. Mind you, I guess the whole topic is only academic if you reckon life on earth is pretty much going to continue on a "business as usual" footing when in fact world population growth is skyrocketing and the pundits reckon 95% of the world population will die out from civil war, genocide, starvation, poverty etc., following the near complete depletion of the last remaining oil reserves by 2030 and easily within the lifetimes of those being born today.
 
M

martinr

Active member
AndyF said:
I guess with events in Japan unfolding the pro-nuclear lobby may care to remind us again how wonderful this technology is, how its all designed to be fail-safe and how our fears are unfounded.  :-\

Because it would sort of appear that "it's all gone wrong just the way you said it couldn't"
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Nobody has died from radiation but 1000 have been drowned by a wave? I know where I would rather have been that day - inside the nuclear power station...

Most of the nuclear plant in Japan is still working. Id like to know how windmills, or a tidal barrage, would have stood up to a tsunami......?
 
Les W

Les W

Active member
martinr said:
AndyF said:
I guess with events in Japan unfolding the pro-nuclear lobby may care to remind us again how wonderful this technology is, how its all designed to be fail-safe and how our fears are unfounded.  :-\

Because it would sort of appear that "it's all gone wrong just the way you said it couldn't"
Click to expand...

Nobody has died from radiation but 1000 have been drowned by a wave? I know where I would rather have been that day - inside the nuclear power station...

Most of the nuclear plant in Japan is still working. Id like to know how windmills, or a tidal barrage, would have stood up to a tsunami......?
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:clap:  (y)
 
M

martinr

Active member
"To keep things in perspective, no nuclear accident has caused anything approaching the 1,000 fatalities stemming from Friday's earthquake and tsunami."

and

"The only release of any radioactive material that we know about so far concerns venting of the containment vessel. When steam pressure builds up in the reactor vessel, it stops some of the emergency cooling systems working, and so some of the steam is released into the containment vessel."

Source: BBC
 
AndyF

AndyF

New member
martinr said:
"To keep things in perspective, no nuclear accident has caused anything approaching the 1,000 fatalities stemming from Friday's earthquake and tsunami."
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{Chernobyl}
It is estimated that there may ultimately be a total of 4,000 deaths attributable to the accident, due to increased cancer risk.[5]
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and

"The only release of any radioactive material that we know about so far concerns venting of the containment vessel. When steam pressure builds up in the reactor vessel, it stops some of the emergency cooling systems working, and so some of the steam is released into the containment vessel."

Source: BBC
Click to expand...

You better read between the lines...

One factor that has yet to be explained is the apparent detection of radioactive isotopes of caesium.
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So we do "know about" the release of ceasium, and that doesn't come from the coolant (unless something quite bad has happened).

This is a full scale nuclear accident. The reactor is probably so damaged as to never work again. This happened due to the predicatable event of an earthquake.

So either:

a) You can design an earthquake proof reactor - but they didn't
b) You can't build an earthquake proof reactor, but they built it anyway....

Take your pick... :confused:
 
P

Peter Burgess

New member
Aubrey - that's a good point. So we can have "safe" energy from fossil fuels, those who benefit from it are happy for those who dig it up to take the risks on our behalf. At least with nuclear power, we all share the risk and responsibility equally. Now that's democracy if you like.  (y)
 
P

Peter Burgess

New member
AndyF said:
So either:

a) You can design an earthquake proof reactor - but they didn't
b) You can't build an earthquake proof reactor, but they built it anyway....

Take your pick... :confused:
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I think that at the moment, you are the LAST person the Japanese are going to listen to when it comes to advice on coping with earthquakes.

I have watched the story unfold with mixed emotions. The tsunami footage made my stomach churn, a bit like the World Trade Centre disaster footage did. The footage of the earthquake in action gave me huge admiration for the engineering that has been developed to cope with earthquakes and no doubt save countless lives. And lastly, the humbling feeling of seeing how the Japanese seem to take it all in their stride. I imagine in this country some people would just be looking for someone to blame for everything.
 
bubba

bubba

Administrator
Whilst this terrible disaster is still unfolding, perhaps we should all take a deep breath, step back,  and see what happens before passing judgement?
 
C

ChrisB

Active member
So we do "know about" the release of ceasium, and that doesn't come from the coolant (unless something quite bad has happened).
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Wrong. It's not unusual for there to be minor damage to the casing of a couple of fuel pins over the life of the reactor, releasing small amounts of radioactivity into the coolant. That's one reason why the coolant is in a sealed system, only vented in emergency.

This is a full scale nuclear accident. The reactor is probably so damaged as to never work again. This happened due to the predicatable event of an earthquake.
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It's been provisionally rated at 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; full scale is 7. I agree it's damaged to the point where it won't work again; so is a considerable proportion of everything else in the area, why make a point of it?. This was the biggest recorded earthquake in that area. Yes, something went wrong with the emergency cooling, and I'm sure people will want to learn from that. If (and I agree it's still if) despite the failure of the emergency system, the worst that happens is a minor release of activity and writing off a reactor, that's minor compared to the rest of the consequences.

Chris
 
AndyF

AndyF

New member
A grade 4 incident hasn't happened because of the earthquake or the tsunami.

Its happened because of a decision to place reactors IN an earthquake zone despite the blindingly obvious high risks. Of ciurse the people who took this decision will never be brought to account for it...

Thats not an accident. Earthquakes are frequent in this area. Its obvious that an earthquake has a reasonable chance of causing catastrophic damage to a reactor, but unlike an oil refinery fire or a mining incident a reactor accident has the ability cause massive long lasting damage over a huge radius.

There are plenty of advanced nations with no local fossil fuel that do not have nuclear stations eg Singapore, Denmark, Greece, Austria etc.. So any argument that Japan had no option is false.
 
whitelackington

whitelackington

New member
Apparently the Japanese government have said that a second nuclear reactor
is likely to be in meltdown and that contains plutonium.
More than a hundred thousand residents have been moved
beyond a twenty kilometre exclusion zone.
It should be noted that the three countries which have so far experienced the most serious nuclear power station failures are not mickey mouse states
but three of the worlds most technologically advanced nations.
These Japanese nuclear power plant failures are so severe,
there is likely to be no further desire for a renewed nuclear building programme in the U.K.


 
Hatstand

Hatstand

New member
AndyF said:
I guess with events in Japan unfolding the pro-nuclear lobby may care to remind us again how wonderful this technology is, how its all designed to be fail-safe and how our fears are unfounded.  :-\

Because it would sort of appear that "it's all gone wrong just the way you said it couldn't"
Click to expand...

It would have been equally easy to start a topic with the same title, a big sigh, and something like "I guess with events in Japan unfolding the anti-nuclear lobby may care to remind us yet again how scaiwy this technology is, how it cannot be designed to be fail-safe and how we're all gonna die.  :-\"
 
Rhys

Rhys

Moderator
AndyF

Did you seen the pictures of burning oil refineries? They didn't survive too well either.

Rhys
 
graham

graham

New member
Rhys said:
AndyF

Did you seen the pictures of burning oil refineries? They didn't survive too well either.

Rhys
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No they didn't. However, we are all so well aware of the long term environmental damage caused by burning oil - damage that will have been caused by that oil whether it had been burnt accidentally like this or intentionally, as would otherwise have been the case - that we are actively trying to wean people off burning oil and other carbon-based fossil fuels. Should we not also be aware of the environmental damage that will happen if we continue to build nuclear fuelled power stations in earthquake zones?
 
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