Nuclear meltdown! Holy Godzilla NOOOO!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

Who the hell could have predicted that a nuclear power plant, the most safe form of energy in the history of humanity with the exceptions of Chernobyl, Hanford, Windscale, etc. might melt down? It’s impossible in a modern reactor. Ipso facto, cuz I say so! Nobody could have predicted this. Kinda like nobody could have predicted 9/11 other than the people who did predict it. Certainly not those who own and operate nuclear reactors and make profits from them. They could not have predicted such a thing. They in fact declared it impossible for such a thing to happen.

Who could have predicted a 8.9 or 9.0 or 9.1 earthquake near Japan? Fucking nobody, that’s who. Japan is seismically inactive! Everybody knows that!

Now let’s get the government to spread the cost of repair and clean up among the whole population, while those injured can fend for them fucking selves. We wouldn’t want the people who invested and took the risk to actually pay for the cost of not preventing the unpredictable catastrophe! That might chill others into not making such risky investments.

Privatize profits, socialize losses. It’s the American way. Such a patriotic capitalist windfall could never happen in a socialist country like Japan. We are on the cutting edge. Hey! I can see my hand glow in the dark! I have super powers!!!

2

You have the power to consistently amaze folks with just how dense you can be.
Perhaps you can look into gaining employment as a control rod?

3

Very few things can survive a 9.0 earthquake intact, so I’m not really all that surprised a nuclear plant can’t. I’m not even sure it’s feasible or even possible to build something that can. That still doesn’t change the fact that nuclear power is a hell of a lot safer and cleaner than coal power, which is its primary competitor. Should we be moving towards renewables? We should should. Until we do, is nuclear energy better for both people and the environment than coal? You betcha!

4

if you have an 8.9 earthquake close enough to a nuclear power plant to damage it…the power plant is the least of your worries.

5

Pie.

I liek it.

6

And for those interested, you may want to look into the history of incidents at nuclear facilities.

Three mile island and Chernobyl were down to human error and we have learned from those.
Better designs and failsafe-ing ensures similar incidents are highly unlikely.

Windscale and Hanford date from the very dawn of the nuclear age and were never the cause of any major incidents.

I’d also direct you to research the increases in cancers and other diseases influenced by radioactivity. Even with something as horrific as Chernobyl the affects on the public are less than commonly imagined. Again, far less of a worry than the earthquake that triggers a meltdown.

7

so it takes like the 7th largest quake in recorded history to turn an atom busting plant from safe to possibly dangerous and I’m supposed to be mad? I’m damn proud.

8

Well safer? Given the potential results of a severe accident (see Chernobyl), I wouldn’t say that.

The risk is certainly low, but the danger very high in case something bad happens.

In the case of France, where 70% of the electrical power is produced by nuclear plant, that are generally situated in river valleys, hence near densely populated area, I see this as a serious problem. About everybody not living in the middle of nowhere is relatively close to a nuclear plant. There’s only a relatively small seismic zone in Southern France, and I don’t think there’s such a plant there, but there are three possible dangerous situations :

-A technical problem, obviously. For no specific reason, a major accident happens

-A 9/11 style attack. After 9/11, it was stated that French nuclear plants had been designed to withstand the fall of a small airplane, but not of an airliner (the occurrence of such an event being seen as a vanishingly small likelihood…except, of course, if it’s intended)

-A war. It’s clear that power plants are prime targets in the event of an armed conflict. Obviously, at the moment, there isn’t much risk of France being attacked. But who knows what could happen in the future? Besides, when nuclear plants were build, it was the Cold War, so the risk existed.
There’s a nuclear plant about 50 kilometers away from Paris, and 1/5 of the French population is living in the urban area. In case a major accident would happen, then what? Evacuating the area, Chernobyl-style, would be a giganormous problem. In fact, I don’t think it could be done, because there’s no way to relocate 10+ millions people.

So, the fact that nuclear plants are way more dangerous than coal plants can’t be ignored.
I for one am surprised that Japanese power plant could melt down following an earthquake, given how common earthquakes are there. I had too much confidence in the safety measures, I guess.

9

It seems to me that there’s no reliable data about the number of fatalities related to Chernobyl (I mean including deaths from cancers, etc…). I understand that none of the three involved countries has been interested in releasing (or even researching) such informations.

10

Mother of God.

I hope that wasn’t the containment vessel.

11

One (of 4) of the reactors at the Fukushima plant has breached. It appears the containment building has suffered a serious explosion which is live on TV. Astonishing and terrible.

This is a 40 year old Westinghouse and is known as a bad design. It has had additional safety features added but clearly they failed at this one reactor.

The plant is situated on the east coast of Japan, noth-east of Tokyo. The prevailing winds are easterly meaning the radioactive steam and dust is moving out to sea. That is also a design feature.

Terrible but not catastrophic. Even if the pile melts down there is no danger of an atomic bomb type explosion.

Still…this is humbling and awful to watch.

12

Which is why I’d urge those interested to look at as much unbiased opinions as possible.

Nuclear power is such a political hot potato that it can be difficult to find such figures.
Work has been done in the areas affected by fallout further afield and any increases seem negligible.

13

Unless you eat fish from the Pacific Ocean.

14

Chernobyl had no containment dome, flammable control rods, prone to runaway reactions, people assigned to run it according to political loyalties and not competence, and had what safeties it had deliberately shut off before they deliberately overloaded it as a test. It’s a terrible example to use as an argument against nuclear power; it was an example of how bad the Soviet system was, not how bad nuclear power was; they had a huge number of industrial problems and environmental disasters that had nothing to do with nuclear anything.

As for the other favorite example of the Evils of Nuclear Power, Three Mile island was a “disaster” where no one died.

Pretty much everyone would be dead anyway. When you have been disintegrated by a nuclear blast, a little radiation from the also-vaporized nuclear plant nearby is unimportant.

But they aren’t. On the contrary; coal plants pump out far more toxins and endanger civilization via global warming; nuclear power plants don’t.

15

That’s not a major concern here.

I’m not familiar with the specifics of this case, but my doctoral research centers on concern about contamination of Pacific fisheries following American atomic tests in the '50s. Even in those cases (which obviously caused much more fallout than the incident here) there was little risk in eating the fish for an extended period of time.

16

I have to agree. Something about the word nuclear causes people to go apeshit; not that there’s no serious concern here, but we tend to gloss over a lot of things that are just as dangerous and far less useful, to boot.

Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen from the getgo, and I’m surprised other nukes over there haven’t met with disaster. Maybe after Chernobyl, they started actually assembling their feces.

Japan, you can be damn sure, designed, built and maintained that plant with 1000x more know-how and safety concern than the former USSR did with Chernobyl. However, this is a disaster of Biblical proportions, and bad things are happening…there’s going to be environmental and economic aftershocks for quite some time after the event, no doubt.

17

Nicely said. The words “nuclear” and “atomic” generate immediate knee-jerk reactions of fear and loathing. In truth I used to feel that way but that’s because a whole generation grew up in the shadow of the Bomb.

I cannot understand why people today are not better informed about nuclear power. By all means oppose it but at least have some rational knowledge of the risk/benefits and the risks with alternatives.

Chernobyl - its ironic that the explosion occurred because they were running a safety shutdown. The engineers were trying to ensure there was sufficient backup electricity to run the cooling system in an emergency shutdown.

FAIL.

However its the same problem as is now happening at Fukushima - lack of coolant to the reactor core. Chernobyl used graphite which produced a great deal of radioactive dust. Fukushima is steam cooled which is far less dangerous in radiation fallout terms.

18

Is it not perhaps worth mentioning that the reactor has not actually suffered a meltdown?

19

Good point and that was my understanding too. However right now the Japanese Nuclear Agency is saying it has detected caesium outside the plant. That can only come from the core which indicates some type of serious breach. Not a meltdown yet.

20

Shut up with your so-called “science!”

No one who is in full panic mode wants to be distracted by your fancy-pantsy facts.

An interesting effect of this event: I’m in full agreement with Der Trihs. Whoda thunk?