I guess I’ll have to wait for the Frontline report on this but I would like to know why generators weren’t airlifted in on day-1. And where are the journalists who ask these kinds of questions? How hard is it to apply who/what/where/when/why plus a little forethought into questions. I mean, seriously, what are these people paid to do? 4 years of college journalism and we get crap. A monkey could do their collective jobs. One monkey holding microphone.
Sorry for the rant but the amount of information seems pretty slim given all the power of the internet.
Who would install them? Walking into a radioactive field to install a pump is not it the job description. I would like to see management go in there and do the dirty work.
Thankfully the internet and media is not the only source of information. They did airlift generators (and fuel) right away. The fuel tanks were the first thing to go in the tsunami, and you need a huge amount of fuel to run the big generators.
It was that the control rooms and pump stations and power connection rooms were all flooded, so they couldn’t hook the generators up, that was what did the plant in. It was designed to fail.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Who would install them? Walking into a radioactive field to install a pump is not it the job description. I would like to see management go in there and do the dirty work.
[/QUOTE]
Who do you think ran the new power lead? Magic elves? If they ran power to the existing pumps then they could replace the damaged pumps too. Unless running the power lead was a ‘suicide mission’ involving ‘walking into a radioactive field’ OF DEATH™!!
screwing 3 power leads in takes a lot less time then unbolting and rebolting a new pump (which they don’t have yet). It would be akin to replacing the motor in a car. It all comes down to whether there are any active plumes of radioactivity. That is what kept stopping everything through the week and it was stopping activity outside of the buildings.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
screwing 3 power leads in takes a lot less time then unbolting and rebolting a new pump (which they don’t have yet). It would be akin to replacing the motor in a car. It all comes down to whether there are any active plumes of radioactivity. That is what kept stopping everything through the week and it was stopping activity outside of the buildings.
[/QUOTE]
What, you figure they just ran an extension cord down there or something? As for the last part, they kept stopping to check to see if there was any large changes in the radiation…when there wasn’t they let the workers continue. FXMastermind white smoke was a concern, so they halted work to check it out (last report I read is that it’s down to a trickle and hardly visible anymore…and doesn’t seem to be having any of the gloom and doom impact he was predicting). Since FXMastermind has yet to back up his assertion of the coverup of worker deaths and large scale injuries due to radiation, it seems that people are able to work in and around the plant with limited risk. Far from the ‘suicide mission’ gonzomax pulled out of his ass.
How about a bet? Gonzo and FXM can participate too. Which group will have more deaths…the firefighters combating the various out of control fires in other parts of Japan (including at those safe coal fire plants of FXM), or the workers going on suicide missions and working at the nuclear plant? Which groups will have more injuries?
(It’s a sucker bet if you’ve been paying attention at all to anything other than this nuclear ‘disaster’, and have followed the fact that there have already been a number of deaths of fire and rescue workers in other parts of the country. Check out some of these pictures of places OTHER than the nuclear power plant. I’m sure it won’t work, but perhaps this will put this entire event into some perspective)
First, don’t we have some kick-ass radiation suits? Has our space program let us down again or something? I could swear we have some stuff that could keep you alive in some pretty nasty conditions. No? Is it really that radioactive inside the building, or are they complying with really anal exposure standards considering the gravity of the situation?
The other thing is, at some point they might have to Chernobylize one of the reactor units. It won’t be because they can’t control it, but that the growing cost of this could be getting to be too much. If Japan is anything like the US, then the taxpayers are paying to rescue (what?) a situation that just isn’t worth escalating costs - and continued danger to the public.
Yes, that’s exactly what they would be doing to get the pumps working. They would wire directly do it rather than putting up nice new conduits all over the building. This isn’t a reconstruction project, this is a stop the reactor from overheating project. The power plants are done as functional machines.
Not that can stop gamma, unless someones’ developed an articulated, thick, possibly powered-actuator lead plate mail like ye knights of olde. And that would look cool…really cool, in fact.
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
Not that can stop gamma, unless someones’ developed an articulated, thick, possibly powered-actuator lead plate mail like ye knights of olde. And that would look cool…really cool, in fact.
[/QUOTE]
From what I recall, they were talking about 50-200 microsieverts per hour for the workers. That’s certainly nasty (not exactly a ‘suicide mission’ though), but it would still take several hours before workers would start to get sick (though IIRC, in the US a worker is only allowed 50 microsieverts of total exposure per year).
Maybe I’m missing something here, or I’ve got the wrong exposure levels or something (wouldn’t be the first time I was way off base in this thread).
The workers have been hit by radiation at some level since the tanks started blowing up. They are accumulating the radiation in their bodies. When people say it is equivalent to a MRI or Xray, they don’t point out it is getting an xray 10 hours a day. It is more like living in an MRI machine.
But even if it is a fancy extension cord they ran to the plant, someone still has to plug it in.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
The workers have been hit by radiation at some level since the tanks started blowing up. They are accumulating the radiation in their bodies. When people say it is equivalent to a MRI or Xray, they don’t point out it is getting an xray 10 hours a day. It is more like living in an MRI machine.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, that’s all true. It’s how MUCH radiation they are being exposed too, for how long and how much they are accumulating that’s the key. AFAIK, even though the Japanese upped the total exposure allowed, they are still staying below the point where workers would get radiation sickness (let alone be killed on ‘suicide missions’ to repair the pumps).
Exactly my point. Someone had to run it down there too. And someone had to physically check the pumps out too. Lots of someones in fact.
50 MILLIsieverts for normal work conditions, not MICROsieverts. I think some of the confusion with this whole thing is partly a confusion of “milli” and micro".
Despite rumors of sudden changes, it has actually be a long-standing policy to permit up to 100 millisieverts per worker in an emergency situation (which this is). That’s also the threshold for clear rise in cancer risk.
For operations in an emergency defined as “life-saving” up to 250 millisieverts are permitted. That’s still under the threshold for causing acute radiation sickness from what I’ve been able to research on line. It does increase cancer risk down the line, so in theory it could contribute to someone’s death 10 or 20 years from now.
These are long standing limits for emergency situations, not something new or made up just for this incident.
I’m assuming some of the this business of workers retreating and re-entering the area repeatedly has to do with limiting their exposure as much as practical while performing necessary operations. Really, even if they’re willing to give their lives there’s no point to spending their lives unless it is truly required. Their health should not be wasted, both because it’s the right thing to do and because if they do get sick someone else will have to step up to the plate.
Just gotta watch the unit prefixes a lot - I’ve noticed issues with that since this whole thing started. Between errors in rapid translations, lack of understanding, and sloppy reporting it just adds to fear and confusion. I’m constantly double-checking my posts so I don’t add to it.
It’s confusing since different sources use milli or micro, sometimes almost interchangeably. I know a bit about how nuclear reactors work, and a bit more about steam generators in general, but I know next to nothing about the various radiological exposure terms, or any of the medical aspects.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
I’m assuming some of the this business of workers retreating and re-entering the area repeatedly has to do with limiting their exposure as much as practical while performing necessary operations. Really, even if they’re willing to give their lives there’s no point to spending their lives unless it is truly required. Their health should not be wasted, both because it’s the right thing to do and because if they do get sick someone else will have to step up to the plate.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I’m sure that’s a big part of it…and why some things are taking so long. You can only send in a given worker for so long before they need to come out, otherwise they accumulate too much radiation and it can be quite hazardous. I assume they are wearing the same types of badges I used to have to wear when I was working at the Test Site in Nevada.
BTW, thanks for the post…appreciate learning more about this stuff.
We entered the fueling hall through some man doors near one corner of the cooling pond farthest from the reactor. From distant memory, the roof was metal truss work with high pressure discharge hi-bay lighting, and a gantry structure for the crane below that. I don’t think there were any hatches or skylights in the ceiling. The man doors we came in hit at about 1/2-2/3 the height of the building, and came from yet another support building where the locker rooms/showers were.
Now that I think about it more, we were working on a wide catwalk that went around the end of the fueling hall building away from the reactor. The catwalk was at the same level as the top of the cooling pond, and the main area beyond the cooling pond was probably at ground level. (no windows, and we came in via a convoluted route from the locker room) There may have been truck a or rail-car door at ground level. It don’t actually remember one, but from what I do remember, that would make the most sense.
I can’t recall at all how the refueling hall communicated with the reactor building. There had to be a way that fuel assemblies moved between the two, but damned if I can recall what it was.
Here is a photo of the Ringhals-1 reactor I was in. It is the rectangular building in the foreground. The fueling hall is on the left side of this photo. The circular building in the background is one of the newer PWR reactors, Ringhals-2 most likely. I have no memory of that tall stack on the side of the reactor building…I honestly wonder if it was added since I was there, as it is pretty prominent.
Nuclear fusion reactors will be able to use a limitless energy source without creating radioactive waste. These are what we should be working on, but it will take a lot of research money up front, so the government will need to be involved.
Cold fusion would be nice, but most physicists do not believe it is possible.
Fusion reactors do result in a highly radioactive core. However, while being very radioactive these materials have a much shorter half life than a fission reactor so within 100 years or so it is not too bad. To be sure, overall, the nuclear waste potential from fusion is “better” than a fission reactor.
That said there are reactor designs which will eat the waste from current reactors (and produce power doing it) but for various reasons we will not build them.
Unfortunately fusion power has been “20 years away” for the past 50 years and today it is still “20 years away”. Would be great if they figure it out but don’t hold your breath.
