# Nuclear meltdown! Holy Godzilla NOOOO!!! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389 "2011-03-12T08:19:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 43
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/841 "2011-03-23T18:11:17Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > The containment building in Japan blew apart. They did not hold. They are rubble exposing the fuel rod tanks to the air. You say this as if you are refuting **Sam Stone** ’s point, but you’re not. He is correct: the containment domes held. The buildings were blown apart by the explosions, but the buildings are not the same as the containment domes. If the latter had blown, then we _would_ probably be in Chernobyl territory. Yes, things are bad in parts of Japan right now, and they could still get worse, but if it takes a once-in-a-millennium catastrophe to bring an old and outdated power plant to the current level of concern, then i don’t think that should be the sole determinant of the direction for nuclear power. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/842 "2011-03-23T18:20:50Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > They ignore the reality, that such an amount of cash is enough to build the infrastructure to use the wind power from North Dakota, which is more than enough to run the entire country off windmills. Now what’s the chance for a cite for your little claim about North Dakota and windfarms? See, I’m no expert at all, but I can do basic digging. In 2005, the energy consumption of the US was 29 PWh\*. A petawatt is 10 to the 15 watts. A windfarm, being kind, can generate 2 W/m2\*\*, or 17.5 KWh/m per year. By my maths, that means you need 1655 billion square metres of land. I’m not very good at geography. Can someone tell me just what percentage of the area of the US that would be? - [Energy in the United States - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States) \*\* [http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c4/page\_32.shtml](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c4/page_32.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/843 "2011-03-23T18:26:37Z")
So why are people so worried about Godzilla’s breath? > [@](#): > > One Bq is defined as the [activity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_%28radioactivity%29) of a quantity of radioactive material in which one [nucleus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_nucleus) decays per [second](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second). The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to [s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second)−1. The becquerel is named for [Henri Becquerel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Becquerel), who shared a [Nobel Prize](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize) with [Pierre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie) and [Marie Curie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Sklodowska-Curie) for their work in discovering radioactivity. What the hell does that mean? Well, 1 gram of potassium = 32.3 Bq , so that gives you an idea of the level of naturally occurring radioactivity. That is from the very small amount of potassium-40 that exists in potassium. > **[Potassium-40](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40)** > > Potassium-40 (40K) is a long lived and the main naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium, with a half-life of 1.248 billion years. It makes up about 117 ppm of natural potassium, making that mixture very weakly radioactive; the short life meant this was significantly larger earlier in Earth's history. > Potassium-40 undergoes four different paths of radioactive decay, including all three main types of beta decay: > Both forms of the electron capture decay release further photons,\[Note ... However, that is all beta decay, none of it is gamma rays. Cesium-137, for comparism, 1 gram = 3,215,000,000,000 Bq > **[Caesium-137](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137)** > > Caesium-137 (13755Cs), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Trace quantities also originate from spontaneous fission of uranium-238. It is among the most problematic of the short-to-medium-lifetime fission products. Caesium has a relatively low boiling point of 671 °C (1,240 °F) and easily become... But it’s not a fair comparison, as the danger from C-137 is the far more destructive gamma radiation, not just the beta decay. So saying C-137 is 10,000,000,000 times more radioactive than potassium, that isn’t the whole story. For that you have to use the other terms, which are calculated for damage to living cells. But, when you consider that Plutonium (Pu) is 10,000,000,000 times more dangerous than C-137, you might start to see the reason for some concern over the reactors, and the burning fuel rods. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/844 "2011-03-23T18:29:49Z")
Now the previous post is the sort of scientific data (links provided so you can do your own calculations) that no media source, even the ones people consider ‘fear mongering’ are reporting. And for good reason. Most people have no idea what any of it means, much less a way to turn that into “what does that mean to me?” But it does explain why milk and produce isn’t going to be shipped from Japan right now. Of course Cesium-137 only hangs out for around a thousand years or so, but after only 200 years most of it is gone. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/845 "2011-03-23T18:31:31Z")
Now plutonium, that is a whole nother story. Nobody, and I mean nobody is reporting on any possible worst case scenarios for a release of plutonium. If Godzilla starts spraying plutonium dust into the air, well, that is some seriously fucked up shit, ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/846 "2011-03-23T18:33:01Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I’ve noticed that the less science somebody knows, the more they try and make it personal. The more bias they have, the less they quote sources, and the more they try to be insulting, the gayer they are. Which is why you have never actually designed a nuclear power generating station. Why does that not surprise me. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/847 "2011-03-23T18:34:18Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > By my maths, that means you need 1655 billion square metres of land. > > I’m not very good at geography. Can someone tell me just what percentage of the area of the US that would be? If your math is right, and my calculations are rights, that’s about one-sixth of the US land area. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/848 "2011-03-23T18:39:50Z")
[QUOTE=levdrakon] So it doesn’t take billions of dollars in taxpayer money loan guarantees to build a nuclear plant that will take on average 13 years to complete if ever and when it screws up it’s too radioactive and too hot and too toxic and too dangerous for humans to repair it except for 24 hour/day 40 or 50 minute shifts that takes weeks and weeks and too radioactive and too dangerous for robots to do anything and too radioactive for any useful monitors to work and it keeps building up hydrogen gas and exploding on you when it’s supposedly not supposed to being doing anything at all because it was shut off, right? and it’s taking more billions of dollars to render safe enough just to spend more billions tearing it down because it was out-dated junk to start with by the builder’s and operators’ and nuke-nutters’ own admissions? [/QUOTE] It’s a rather long rant, most of which has been addressed in the GD version of this cluster fuck of a thread. If you like, I’ll parse it and answer the rant again: > [@](#): > > So it doesn’t take billions of dollars in taxpayer money loan guarantees to build a nuclear plant that will take on average 13 years to complete if ever Yep. One might be curious as to WHY it take so much time and why it requires loan guarantees, and yet not a lot of businesses are building the things. Do they not like money or something?? And (presumably in your mind) it’s free money given to them by the hard working tax payers…why wouldn’t they do it then? Do they know nuclear is evil and so nobly turn down that money or something? No, of course not. You see, while the government guarantees the LOAN of the bulk of the funds, a company still has to pony up some cash of it’s own. In the example in the GD thread, the company had to pony up$300 million dollars. That’s a substantial amount of capital, especially when you consider the fact that this company has no idea how long it might take to actually build the plant…or, if, in fact the damn thing will ever get built. Why? Well, because they don’t know how many delays, additional regulations, law suits, additional environmental impact studies, protests or other hoops they will have to jump through, and how long all that will add to the construction costs. Surly you don’t think that a nuclear power plant actually takes 13 years to construct if you just build the thing without resistance…do you? They are complex facilities with many fail safes and security aspects built in, but they don’t take that long to build…unless additional and unforeseen road blocks are constantly put in the path of those building them, stretching out the construction (and thus…and here is the really clever part by the anti-nuke crowd…tying up that $300 million dollars in capital for longer and longer periods, and extending the period before they can even start to get a ROI on their investment). Of course, when you posted the above rant, you knew all that already…you just figured that others didn’t, and they would look at your rant at face value (13 years! Costs billions! Might not even get built! Nuclear sucks!). > [@](#): > > when it screws up it’s too radioactive and too hot and too toxic and too dangerous for humans to repair it except for 24 hour/day 40 or 50 minute shifts that takes weeks and weeks and too radioactive and too dangerous for robots to do anything and too radioactive for any useful monitors to work and it keeps building up hydrogen gas and exploding on you when it’s supposedly not supposed to being doing anything at all because it was shut off, right? Which has happened exactly once in over 60 years of operation. And happened in a design that was not only old but terrible, and terribly implemented. Even a 40 year old design from a western nation has been able to withstand a 9.0 scale earthquake and a tsunami hitting it, and staying intact enough despite that so that no large scale high levels of nuclear contamination have occurred. IOW, as has been pointed out to you numerous times, when taken as a whole, nuclear causes less deaths per kilowatt hour than any other form of energy generation, and causes less environmental impact than any other energy generation on the same scale (hell, I’d say less than solar and wind, depending on how you define impact). > [@](#): > > and it’s taking more billions of dollars to render safe enough just to spend more billions tearing it down because it was out-dated junk to start with by the builder’s and operators’ and nuke-nutters’ own admissions? And, over that last 60 years, what has it cost society to fix problems with, say, coal fired power plants when disasters have struck? Think it’s less than a billion dollars? You have to compare apples to apples. How many nuclear disasters have occurred to western style nuclear power plants in that 60 years? What have they cost, combined? How many disasters have occurred to western style coal plants in that same period of time? What did clean up and rebuilding cost? And, of course, if we look at the disaster that struck Japan, what do you think is going to cost more…the clean up of the nuclear plant or the clean up of the other damage and destruction caused by the earthquakes and tidal waves? -XT ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/849 "2011-03-23T18:41:00Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > If your math is right, and my calculations are rights, that’s about one-sixth of the US land area. Fortunately, neithers is right. Also fails to account for offshore wind? Land area, land schmarea. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/850 "2011-03-23T18:42:52Z")
If this thing were as cut and dried as some suggest, there would be no such thing as the Union of Concerned Scientists. But there is. Which says to me that, despite declarations to the contrary, this debate is not simply a matter of those who understand science, and those who are ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/851 "2011-03-23T18:44:15Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Fortunately, neithers is right. Also fails to account for offshore wind? Land area, land schmarea. I’ve always wondered with all those big propellers blocking wind, does it affect the weather patterns? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/852 "2011-03-23T18:47:26Z")
For that matter, in the event of a major earthquake, what emergency preparations are in place to deal with the resultant massive air spill? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/853 "2011-03-23T18:49:07Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] For that matter, in the event of a major earthquake, what emergency preparations are in place to deal with the resultant massive air spill? [/QUOTE] Gas masks, presumably… (ETA: And sun screen for the massive photon spills resulting in damage to solar plants) -XT ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/854 "2011-03-23T18:52:13Z")
[http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/03/japanese-nuclear-reactor-workers-evacuated-again/](http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/03/japanese-nuclear-reactor-workers-evacuated-again/) There is smoke billowing out of 2 reactors indicating something burning. For the second time in 2 days they have evacuated the workers. There is radioactive iodine in the water at more than double safe limits in Tokyo and as far away as 250 KM. The people are being told not to allow children to drink tap water. There is some reason I believe it is not being contained. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/855 "2011-03-23T18:52:23Z")
> [@](#): > > …Gas masks, presumably… Oh, no, you don’t! I wasn’t born yesterday, I just look like this. Air isn’t a gas! ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/856 "2011-03-23T19:05:16Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > I’ve always wondered with all those big propellers blocking wind, does it affect the weather patterns? Nope! These days, we make them really big and steady and slow-moving so the little birdies can land right on them if they want, safe as a cotton puff. Not only that, but because they are so big, lots of bunnies and grasshoppers and butterflies and honey bees and mean ol’ predators like foxes and wolves and bears can all go about their merry little business, as Mother Nature intended, all around them and under them, like big trees. Unlike those \*nuclear \*plants. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/857 "2011-03-23T19:15:33Z")
If the calculations (and I use the term ironically) for land use by windmills to supply power, then most of the US should be covered with the windmills that are already being used. ---
**Author:** ![conway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ec9cab/32.png) [@conway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/conway)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/858 "2011-03-23T19:17:56Z")
I really can’t tell who is being sarcastic about what now, but just in case: [Will wind power change the weather?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2984/will-wind-power-change-the-weather) ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/859 "2011-03-23T19:19:55Z")
Oh crap. Missed a bunch of previous posts. GODZILLA! Please stop. If this gets much worse, it could effect future plans to build reactors. And that would be tragic. Unlike radioactive waste in a cities drinking water, a risk to building more Godzilla plants is serious. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/860 "2011-03-23T19:22:58Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > If the calculations (and I use the term ironically) for land use by windmills to supply power, then most of the US should be covered with the windmills that are already being used. Could you try posting that in the form of something meaningful with an intended point? Oh, and still waiting for that source for your claim about Dakota and windfarms. Any odds of you providing some sort of evidence for that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=42) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=44)