I’m pretty sure he meant “there’s no other way to describe it”, not “I’m looking for the right word.”
Also, the common Japanese term for the suicide attacks in WWII is Tokko-Tai, though Kamikaze Tokko-Tai is also understood. But if you just say “Kamikaze,” it means “divine wind” and it’s not a specific reference to suicide attacks. I think most Japanese people don’t know that “Kamikaze” has become an English word that means aerial suicide attack.
It was named after a storm that destroyed an invading fleet, was it not?
No, it can’t. There is no way for the Fukushima reactors to “blow up” like Chernobyl did.
Yes, we know that. No one is denying that. It has been acknowledged that at the plant itself the situation is hazardous to human life. But the vast majority of people in this world, including you and me, including most of the people in Japan even, are nowhere near close enough to be in any sort of danger.
No, the cores are not “leaking”. Where do you get this from? I want to know so I can bitchslap whoever scared you so bad. At most there is some coolant water leaking out of the primary confinement into the secondary confinement, which is the sort of thing for which secondary confinement exists. The reactors/fuel/whatever are not maliciously oozing out as some sort of atomic lava. Even if it DID, there are structures underneath the reactor to catch such a blob of core magma. It’s not going to burn through the basement, into the Earth, and keep going to the other side of the planet. It didn’t even do that at Chernobyl which really was massively worse than this, even at Chernobyl it stopped in the sub-levels of the plant.
It’s not that anyone is lying here - part of the uncertainty is that no one is going to go into that area to have a look right now. That would be suicide. They’re having to determine what’s going on remotely. When things cool down sufficiently they’ll probably send in a robot of some sort to take pictures and they we’ll know what exactly happened. And I’m sure half the world will scream OMIGOD! OMIGOD! and the other half will say “huh - not so bad as I thought.”
Why you, a normally sane poster, are scared spitless of this I don’t understand.
Except the reactor cores can’t blow up. There may have been (probably was) some melting of the structure but with every hour the temperature keeps coming down. The cores aren’t going to blow up if they haven’t by now.
See, this is yet another reason you don’t look credible - two of the fuel pools HAVE caught fire. More than once. That’s why we see the current radiation levels. See - the worst has already happened, and the world has not ended. It sucks for the guys at the plant who got irradiated, it sucks for their families, it sucks for the people already traumatized by a massive earthquake and tsunami who then had to evacuation their homes… but YOU are not going to be personally affected. Neither am I. Nor is anyone North America, Europe, Africa, Australia… well, OK, it will probably effect our economies but not our health or longevity.
You do realize that even after getting hit with a fricking atomic bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt on their original sites, yes? Those bombs tossed lots nastier stuff into the atmosphere than Fukushima has. How about all those A-bomb tests the US, Soviets, and Chinese have done over the years? Are you glowing in the dark yet?
Within 2 months any radioactive iodine tossed out will be decayed into harmlessness. Stuff like mildly radioactive water becomes harmless in days. The worst shit puked out by Fukushima is some cesium, which yes, will take a couple decades to decay but seriously, just don’t eat any plants that grow near the plant during that time. Your local hospital probably has more cesium in its radiation-producing/using medical devices than what’s been chucked out by Fukushima - the main difference being those medical devices are thoroughly sealed/shielded.
Radiation isn’t magic, it’s not all powerful, and it’s not out to get you.
ZERO. The chance of a “core explosion” is ZERO.
The cesium is from the structure that holds and supports fuel rods. It’s indicative of a meltdown, either partial or total. It’s not being magically conjured into being. Overheated fuel rods, whether in a reactor or in a holding pool, can throw that off. That does NOT mean anything is “exploding”. Cesium is also pretty heavy, even when throw into the air it falls back to the ground rather quickly. Hence, it’s a problem near the plant, not half a world away.
Yes, it’s a big, nasty, ugly, dangerous mess. You are still blowing this WAY out out of proportion.
Thank you so much Broomstick.
Thanks, Broomstick.
Ahh, sanity.
Good on you, Broomstick.
Although, cesium can travel a long distance. There are still about 400 farms in the UK that have prohibition orders on them because of Chernobyl. These farms are all on high ground in Scotland, Wales and the Lake District. Scotland is about 1500 miles from Chernobyl.
There are differences between the two incidents (Chernobyl and Fukushima):
But does show that it can travel and note that Tokyo, a city of 35 million, is only 400 miles from Fukushima. Shanghai, a city of 20 million, is only 1200 miles from Fukushima. I don’t know what effect having cesium raining down on you would have but it doesn’t sound good and it did affect the Sami people in Scandinavia (also known as the Lapps). It seems the main effect is not so much the direct effect on human health but the effect on the farmland, the environment and the wildlife eg by contaminating water supplies and the food the animals eat
Your concerns are noted, however, the wind is largely blowing AWAY FROM Japan, Asia, Shanghai, etc. Meaning whatever cesium is up in the air is heading more towards North America than anywhere in Asia.
Of course, North America is a bleep of a long way away - it’s going to drop out of the sky and sink into the ocean long before landfall.
So… in this case… almost certainly NOT an issue.
article states that the line will only be connected to reactor 2 because the electrical system of that reactor wasn’t damaged as much as the others.
The control rods are inside the reactor and cesium is outside the reactor.
I’ve already quoted people saying the inner core is cracked in some of the reactors. And yes, they can explode, I don’t understand what makes you think they can’t.
Please post a source for your assertion that
Well, with heat and pressure, you can have an explosion. It’s not an atomic detonation type explosion, but a pressure explosion is still an explosion, right?
But then you (well, Magiver anyway) can’t say “The core is leaking!” and “it’s going to blow!” at the same time; if the core is leaking then it just can’t build up the pressure to blow up.
Yes. The problem with these reactors was the lack of water after shut down. They generate heat for days after the control rods are set to maximum absorption (shut down). This was the crucial time period. Without coolant the inner cores began melting.
Post 497 has a link regarding the breached inner cores.
This link talks about the potential for a melt down and inner core explosion:
**These explosions are not enough to breach the concrete and stainless steel shell of the inner core but the detection of caesium-137 and iodine-131 indicates that at least part of the fuel rods have been exposed and damaged. (Water levels inside the core are unknown because the gauges have failed, itself indicating damage.) If left exposed for too long the fuel pellets melt and fall to the bottom of the core. If it continues, all the fuel melts into a pool at the bottom of the core, continues to overheat — and at some point with loss of neutron moderation in the molten pool it becomes self-accelerating — until nothing can contain it and it burns through the core, i.e. the China Syndrome.
Contact with other material or any liquid, along with accumulated hydrogen will result in explosive dispersal of the highly radioactive material — not as a nuclear bomb — but a far worse kind of dirty “bomb” in terms of radioactive contamination of hundreds or thousands of square kilometres depending on prevailing winds. As time moves on the likelihood of this kind of catastrophic event becomes less and less likely because the energy released by the fuel diminishes quickly. Some experts believe the danger point for such a total meltdown has been passed but Tuesday’s events make any outside assessment very problematic.
**
The author also goes on to describe why the spent fuel poses a greater hazard in terms of isotope longevity.
**Little discussed so far is that all these sites have storage pools of spent nuclear fuel. Spent fuel contains the highest level waste in the entire fuel cycle. The long-lived byproducts of uranium fission including uranium-234, neptunium-237, plutonium-238 and americium-241 are the truly nasty problematic ones because they persist for thousands of years. Caesium-137 and iodine-131 are measurable indicators of fuel pellet breakdown/contamination because they are the most volatile and will be in any steam release, deliberate or core breach.
But there is also a high level of relatively short-lived radionuclides, which release lots of heat via their fast radioactive decay. So the spent fuel is kept on-site in deep pools of water for about six years before they are more amenable to transport for fuel reprocessing or long-term storage. This allows much of the short-lived elements to decay. An added dangerous ingredient in the cocktail is that these reactors use mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels, which means they have plutonium plus uranium in the fuel pellets.**
The author of the article does not think there was a reactor breach., It’s an interesting read.
sure it can. The reason the outer cores blew is because they vented the inner cores. The vents can and did stick during these operations.
Your use of terminology suggests you don’t have a background in nuclear engineering.
You might find this video to be an informative analogy.
Heck, given the steady stream of misinformation coming from popular media, we all might learn something from that video.
The neutron moderators are an important part of what makes the whole reactor work. Without them, the fission will not become “self-accelerating.” Quite the opposite, it should taper off.
However they’re stored upon shutdown there is still a multi-day heat quench that requires water. The buildings didn’t explode because of media attention. They exploded because of a heat generated hydrogen buildup in the cores which was vented to the outer building.
Interactive Before and After the Tsunami satellite photos.
Holy shit.
My heart is breaking, looking at these images.
Video from inside a car getting hit by the tsunami, the driver survived to tell the tale.
