# 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:** 6
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/101 "2011-03-12T19:16:18Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > There’s a big nuclear explosion going on all the time - right up there in the sky! And it’s deluging us every minute of every day with radiation! And killing each year a large number of people, as a matter of fact. ---
**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 12, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/102 "2011-03-12T19:19:19Z")
If only somebody would invent a device that can measure radioactivity, or radiation, of the sort that would be emitted from a reactor. Then they could fly over the site and see if there is any danger. Maybe someday. ---
**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 12, 2011, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/103 "2011-03-12T19:28:29Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Then they could fly over the site and see if there is any danger. > > Maybe someday. They already tried that years ago with _Enola Gay_ (or more correctly, _Necessary Evil_), only something went wrong and there was an explosion. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/104 "2011-03-12T19:29:48Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Former Navy nuclear power officer here. > Meltdowns are certainly possible, even in modern nuclear designs, because of the residual radioactive decay of daughter nuclides produced in a fissioning reactor (as **xenophon41** has already noted). Even after the reactor shuts down, the decay of these daughter nuclides will continue to produce heat at a decreasing rate after shutdown. A good rule of thumb is the initial “decay heat” immediately after shutdown is about 10% of the reactor power prior to shutdown (assuming the reactor was operating for an extended period of time at that rate). So if a reactor was operating at 100% power for an extended period of time, the decay heat could be as high as 10% of the maximum reactor power immediately after shutdown. > > This residual heat can be enough to cause damage to the reactor core if all cooling is also lost, which could happen if there are no emergency power sources, or if the emergency power sources are lost for an extended period of time. > > Apparently several of the emergency power diesel generators at several of the plants have failed, and the backup battery sources of power have been depleted. > > I have to say that I am somewhat surprised that the power plants in question do not have additional backup sources of emergency power, at least according to the news reports that I have seen. On the land-based nuclear power prototype plant I trained on years ago, we had multiple layers of emergency backup sources of power, and it is my understanding that all U.S. nuclear power plants have similar requirements. > > BTW, it absolutely impossible for any nuclear power plant to explode like a nuclear bomb. It is physically impossible. Sorry, former nuclear officer, but I have more expertise than you do and you don’t know what you are talking about. You know who else was a former nuclear officer (in the Navy)? Jimmy Carter, that’s who. And he was the malaise president. He visited Three Mile Island. And opposed a moratorium on nuclear plants after three mile island. Or was that imposed? You say that it is impossible for a nuclear reactor to explode like a nuclear bomb. Isn’t the reactor the exact same reaction, just zillions of times slower? The thing is, once a reactor starts to melt down, you can’t just pull the reactor apart. Two billion years ago at Okai in Africa a natural reactor just happened to collect too much uranium too close together. Now, two billion years later, it is still hot. It was so hot that it caused genetic mutations in Africa that caused the genetic mutation of “intelligence” that is now in just less than geologic time scales wiping out most life forms on earth. > [@gonzomax](#): > > They had a nuke expert on CNN today. He says they are pumping sea water into the core in order to cool the core and rods. The expert explained he never heard of a plant doing it and it is not part of the protocol. He thinks it smacks of desperation. > They have evacuated a 20 KM zone around the plant. It is not necessary to evacuate anything. As many of the posters here have noted, a serious meltdown cannot happen in a modern plant, which this was 40 years ago when it was built. > [@Muffin](#): > > The Second Stone is our hero, > hero of the nation. > The only thing he suffers from is > [del]nuclear radiation[/del] mental retardation. I’m developmentally challenged. It is not politically correct to compare me to retards. They would get offended. > [@levdrakon](#): > > Okay, so… what we have here is the most complicated, expensive, safest most secure form of energy immaginable in the whole history of humankind and we have to sit back and wait from a safe distance while the experts make guesses as to what might be going on inside. > > “Hmm,” makes ya go. > > Everyone here forgotten Hiroshima & Nagasaki? Ooh, I’ll never understand why people get so worked up about nuclear explosions. Don’t they understand how safe they are??? Look, stupid, Fat Man and Little Boy are not modern bomb designs. They were both prototypes. Modern state of the art hydrogen bombs would not cause destruction on anything like the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Modern designs are so safe that we can expose the anti-proliferation super spies with impunity (do I mean immunity) just 'cuz we wanna punish their spouses. Human nature being what it is, modern designs are always perfectly safe, catastrophes are only caused by old designs that are already in place: the new designs that are designed to fix the problem that caused the last catastrophe will always prevent that last catastrophe, and unanticipated problems, like a 9.0 earthquake in Japan near a Japanese reactor can be fixed in the next round of designs. But a 9.0 earthquake will never again strike near a nuclear reactor because they are so rare that only 5 or six happen every century. Certainly we will learn to fix earthquakes in our next earthquake designs, and if not, then we can fix their frequencies, and if not that, then our definition of centuries. > [@gravitycrash](#): > > Fuck, so much for nuclear power making a comeback in the US. Bring on the goddamn windmills and solar panels! > > Man, the enviro-pussies won’t allow a shovel of dirt being moved in preparation for a new plant for the next 20 years if ever. Fuck. All power to the super-pussies! The problem with windmills and solar panels is that when they go wrong on a really large scale, no more than a million bucks or so is lost and the government can’t spread that loss to the taxpayers at large and remove part of it away from the uber rich that took the risk. If the investors have to pay the consequences of a disaster, it just isn’t worth it without a government bailout. In short, solar and wind can fail because they are not too big to fail. > [@MsWhatsit](#): > > [Oh Jesus! Look out! This could happen to any windmill at any minute! Evacuate the area! These things are INHERENTLY UNSAFE!!!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA) See, wind isn’t safe either. And you can get melanoma from solar. It’s fucking fusion! Do you realize that if all the money the US government spent on fusion research was put into large photovoltaic panel farms that it would still be generating some electricity today, rather than wasted in NIF and tokamak research that has never put a watt on the grid? It would be socialized electricity! Gigawatts of it every fucking day!!! > [@xenophon41](#): > > I love this thread. I almost never get to agree with either **Der Trihs** or **Shodan** , and now I’m doing both at once. (Throw in **Bricker** and it’s a trifecta.) > Whether this can be termed a “meltdown” or a “partial meltdown” will have to be determined, but the OP is a tiny bit less hyperbolic than perhaps it might be. Damnit! I was trying to be more hyperbolic than I might be. I invoked Godzilla for Cthulhu’s sake! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/105 "2011-03-12T19:34:35Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > They already tried that years ago with _Enola Gay_ (or more correctly, _Necessary Evil_), only something went wrong and there was an explosion. :eek: They tried it again on Bocscar and the same fuckin thing happened. Hasn’t happened since. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/106 "2011-03-12T19:35:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Read an essay by Isaac Asimov called “The Enemy Within”, about the inescapable radioactive isotopes that permeate human DNA, as well as the environment in general. Cancers and other illnesses need not have an external triggering event. Ho! There are radioactive isotopes in the environnement? :eek: Thanks for the info, I wouldn’t have guessed it alone. :rolleyes: And that has exactly the same effect on people as a breached containment dome :rolleyes: (Yes, I know it isn’t breached. Yet. But unless you are a psychic, you can’t know what will happen. Mostly everybody in this thread is pretending that absolutely nothing bad can possibly happen. That’s not a statement born of knowledge, but wishful thinking. In fact, not even that. You just take as a given your prefered outcome in order to be able to make fun of the other posters. It’s not “fighting ignorance” but gesturing. And acting like everybody else was an ignorant moron who can’t tell apart a fusion bomb, a nuclear plant, the sun, and radioactive decay in granite) ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/107 "2011-03-12T19:41:22Z")
As you all know, the leaders of the Nuke plants will tell the truth and can be trusted. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/108 "2011-03-12T19:43:08Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Sorry, former nuclear officer, but I have more expertise than you do and you don’t know what you are talking about. So, have you considered changing your custom tittle to “Control Rod”? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/109 "2011-03-12T19:43:54Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > As you all know, the leaders of the Nuke plants will tell the truth and can be trusted. And there isn’t a single independent group out there with easily acquirable equipment monitoring things. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/110 "2011-03-12T19:47:52Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > …Two billion years ago at Okai in Africa a natural reactor just happened to collect too much uranium too close together. Now, two billion years later, it is still hot. It was so hot that it caused genetic mutations in Africa that caused the genetic mutation of “intelligence” that is now in just less than geologic time scales wiping out most life forms on earth… Whether this is crackpot or no, I still want to know more. So this is a cite? request of the “Oh, really? Far out!” variety. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/111 "2011-03-12T19:49:48Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > (Yes, I know it isn’t breached. Yet. But unless you are a psychic, you can’t know what will happen. Mostly everybody in this thread is pretending that absolutely nothing bad can possibly happen. That’s not a statement born of knowledge, but wishful thinking. In fact, not even that. You just take as a given your prefered outcome in order to be able to make fun of the other posters. It’s not “fighting ignorance” but gesturing. And acting like everybody else was an ignorant moron who can’t tell apart a fusion bomb, a nuclear plant, the sun, and radioactive decay in granite) Yes, we can know it. Pro-nuke people have known that nuke is perfectly safe for 60 years. When something goes wrong, we can say it was an old design and that can’t happen with modern designs and that “those people” (Russians, Japanese, French) have “problems with theirs” implying that the laws of physics discriminate racially and ethnically and ignore that all designs in use today were once “modern” designs and aren’t any more, and repeat the same thing with the next round of catastrophes 10 years from now because by then all the once modern designs won’t be modern etc. The laws of thermodynamics that if you concentrate huge amounts of energy in once place along with enough fuel with enough potential energy to continue that huge amount of energy for a whole decade do not apply. The rules of physics requiring energy to spread out and entropy to do unpredictable things do not apply if you attach the words “modern design” to the plans. Why? Because plans are just that: pieces of paper on where the potential energy is going to be. Once it is in place those plans are 10 years old (4 in China because they get shit done and just shoot hippies) and are no longer modern. ---
**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 12, 2011, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/112 "2011-03-12T20:00:12Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Whether this is crackpot or no, I still want to know more. So this is a cite? request of the “Oh, really? Far out!” variety. Google on Oklo – there were naturally occurring underground nuclear reactions there a couple of billion years ago. There is no evidence to indicate that it later affected human evolution. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/113 "2011-03-12T20:01:24Z")
> [@robby](#): > > …I have to say that I am somewhat surprised that the power plants in question do not have additional backup sources of emergency power… Absent any solid evidence and operating stricty within my biases, I got two bits says the decision was based on “cost-effective” questions rather than “super-duper-extra-safe” questions. I sure hope the enviro-pussies are wrong. I sure hope that this is all blown way out of proportion, and there never really was anything to worry about. Trouble with being a pessimist is, most surprises are pleasant, but there are so few of them. And by the way what is it with you guys who have to make an issue of science and reason into an issue of _machismo_? “Enviro-pussies”? Make your case. If you feel compelled to scratch your big hairy manly nuts while doing it, it suggests a set of motives you probably shouldn’t be all that proud of. Testosterone poisoning is not conducive to reasoned decision-making. My cite for that is Human History, 30,000 BCE to date. You could look it up. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/114 "2011-03-12T20:06:41Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Whether this is crackpot or no, I still want to know more. So this is a cite? request of the “Oh, really? Far out!” variety. Okapi. He meant there was an Okapi that collected too much uranium and its internal molecules went atomic. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/115 "2011-03-12T20:12:26Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And by the way what is it with you guys who have to make an issue of science and reason into an issue of _machismo_? “Enviro-pussies”? Make your case. If you feel compelled to scratch your big hairy manly nuts while doing it, it suggests a set of motives you probably shouldn’t be all that proud of. Testosterone poisoning is not conducive to reasoned decision-making. My cite for that is Human History, 30,000 BCE to date. You could look it up. Yeah, we should all just revert to sarcastic one-liners that are devoid of any substance. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/116 "2011-03-12T20:39:55Z")
The thing is, it’s really early on here. There’s undoubtedly refineries, chemical plants, cars, etc. that have been washed into the ocean. That stuff is absolutely, positively going to have a toxic result. The nuclear plant thing, while indeed very troubling, still won’t measure up to all the rest, even if you apply the worst case scaredy-cat bugaboo factor. At this point, it’s ALL bad news, all of it. There’s really not much point in picking on the nuclear plant. ---
**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 12, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/117 "2011-03-12T20:55:28Z")
> [@](#): > > “The latest explosion wasn’t of a kind that would come with a significant leakage of radiation,” Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said. “It’s our expectation that we can bring this nuclear-power plant under control, using this unprecedented step of filling the containment structure with seawater.” [http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/japan-attempts-to-cool-nuclear-reactor/story-e6frf7jx-1226020536901](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/japan-attempts-to-cool-nuclear-reactor/story-e6frf7jx-1226020536901) Well that’s a relief. They are going to dump the ocean on it. All is well. > [@](#): > > However, Stratfor, a company that provides global intelligence, said its nuclear science and engineering sources found statements the Unit 1 reactor container had not been breached “highly dubious. Reports of iodine and cesium outside the plant indicate the reactor’s containment structure has been breached,” it said Don’t panic. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/118 "2011-03-12T20:59:00Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Mostly everybody in this thread is pretending that absolutely nothing bad can possibly happen. We’re not reading the same thread, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/119 "2011-03-12T21:06:05Z")
> [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > Yeah, we should all just revert to sarcastic one-liners that are devoid of any substance. You offer this without so much as a glimmer of irony, I take it? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389/120 "2011-03-12T21:06:40Z")
Oh snap, Carrot Top? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-meltdown-holy-godzilla-noooo/574389.md?page=7)