Ok, a mix up of terminology, but nonetheless, hope the corium catcher does it’s job, if a melt down does occur.
Saying that something increases the risk of a worst-case scenario doesn’t say much. By how much did it increase the risk? What was the risk before, and what is it now?
Good Question.
Guess we have to sit back and watch and hope they can keep the water flowing.
This is ridiculous. The technology simply didn’t exist 40 years ago, and we weren’t going to create it out of nowhere. It’s extremely difficult to simply decide you’re going to create one type of new technology and make it practical. So many things have to be developed to support the technology.
It’s not as if if only we decided to make really fast computers in 1960, by 1970 we’d have had ipads. An entire technological field had to slowly develop around the applications we wanted.
Solar is still not especially efficient not because we haven’t tried to design solar panels, but because they rely on so much chemistry and metallurgy and technology that’s developing right along with it. You can’t force these things to happen. If you could, and we could come up with $1/square foot 50% efficient solar panels we sure as fuck would.
Which brings me to my next point. “Because there was no profit in it”? That’s your reason that we don’t have awesome wind or solar or magical unicorn power?
If you can generate electricity, you can sell it. If someone had the ability to make cheap, effective alternative energy power, they would do so. There’s plenty of profit in it. FFS, who do you think it is that’s building the windmills and solar panels? A bunch of hippies knitting it together in a commune? They’re built by the big evil corporations.
Why is it impossible to somehow make a profit selling power generating devices that use the sun or the wind, but possible to make a profit selling stuff that uses coal or uranium? Does the magical hippy vibe of the solar and wind power work like garlic for vampires for the evil power company CEOs?
Alternative energy sources weren’t too practical in the past because the entire science of the industry wasn’t there. They’re playing a bigger role now because the technology is starting to be there. But they’re still not going to be the majority of our power generation. Pie in the sky, we’re talking about them maybe making up a quarter of our energy production in a few decades. And that’d be great. But where do you get the other 75% if you don’t have magical unicorns to tap into? Coal or nuclear.
There’s this bizarre cognitive bias - or something - that makes people dismiss the downsides of what they see as the status quo when comparing it to something new. The argument essentially goes “well nuclear has some downsides, so let’s not do it” - not even looking to evaluate “what are the downsides of what we’d use instead?”. It’s completely irrational.
If you guys somehow acknowledged the realistic downside to coal, there’s no way you could seriously hold an anti-nuke view. If you understood that the 100,000 tons of nasty coal ash and byproduct we have to dump every year, waste that’s more toxic and much more plentiful than nuclear waste, you’d rethink your stance on the nuclear waste “crisis”. If you realized how much shit we dump into our very air - nasty, cancer-causing stuff, ironically, lots of radioactive stuff too - you’d realize that self-contained, small scale nuclear waste is not all that big a deal.
Coal is nasty. Coal shortens the lives of millions of people. Coal pollutes the environment - both the air we breathe and the land because of its massive waste generated. Coal is a huge contributor to global CO2 levels. If you weren’t so completely blind to the downsides of coal, you’d realize this isn’t a remotely close or hard decision at all.
We could have a a “disaster” like this once a month, and it still wouldn’t begin to compare to the damage inflicted by coal power.
No - the real tragedy here is that it’s all you moonbats who, while thinking you advocated for wind and solar and unicorn power - really campaigned for coal. Dead coal miners, thousands of acres made completely toxic due to coal ash and byproducts, a big chunk of global warming - that’s on you.
It’s probably closer to 10,000,000 tons. Except I have no idea what you mean by “byproduct.” Do you mean scrubber sludge, gypsum, spent activated carbon, wastewater, coal pile runoff, spilled #2 oil, ammonia slip, NO, NO2, N2O, CO, CO2, UBC, SO2, SO3, H2SO4, PM10, PM2.5, Hg and 42 other species of metals, trona, sulfur liquids leaking from SO3 injection systems, pyrites, mine waste, mill rejects, or what?
“More toxic than nuclear waste?” You want to back that up with a few cites? Keeping in mind I’ve worked with coal for nearly two decades, a very large amount of coal ash is used directly in concrete, road aggregate, sandblasting, and grit, without any further treatment, and I even use coal ash in my classroom demonstrations?
And before you post a cite, make sure you’re not repeating the horrific liberal mis-reporting on coal ash which conflated total radiation release countrywide with unit-specific radiation release. There have been several notable media retractions after the hysteria over the Kingston ash pond spill, most of which ended up on Page 99 by the ads for used diapers.
Let’s see, set the microphone here, wheel in that pulpit. Hey, where’s my pulpit? I ordered a pulpit, one that looks like its been pounded on for fifty years by a backwoods Baptist hellfire-and-brimstone…this is a fucking podium. Looks like it belongs in a Holiday Inn conference room for a sales motivation meeting… Shit.
Green energy is the answer. Cheap, clean, abundant energy. Its the scientific challenge of our age, nothing even comes close, with energy, anything can be done. This is a job for the Americans!
Difficult? Hell, no, difficult ain’t the half of it. The difficult we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer. And if we do it, we save the world. Quite literally. Sure like to wake up to that headline, how about you?
So how’s about we lead the world? Light the way, like we were born for. If not us, who? If not now, when? And even if we don’t entirely succeed, we’re bound to get a lot smarter in the process!
America! Fuck, yeah!
How about that the evil corporations don’t like solar because it’s too democratic? Individuals could conceivably buy devices to generate their own solar power, thus not needing big huge evil corporations to supply power to them. This would be very unappealing to evil corporations. See how that works?
Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants - Greg Palast The sad fact is the nuclear builders and operators lie. What ever they say. Listen to it and understand they are involved in billions of dollars.
How many times do nuclear plants have to be busted lying before you view them skeptically?
It’s hard to take anyone seriously who says this (in tones of doom instead of with an ironic raised eyebrow at how silly it is):
True…we probably can’t measure the effects. But the reason should be fairly obvious…
-XT
Gonzo, I know you’re anti-nuke. I understand that. I respect it. But if you want to argue anti-nuke effectively, you have to bring some substance to the conversation. Your cite is a not-particularly-coherent rant by Greg Palast about how the nuclear industry lies “all the time” because he claims a government team he “worked with” (whatever that means) caught them. Once. One operator, in 1988, alledgedly falsifying a safety raport. Which is nice for him, but if an industry lies all the time, there should be a string of non-compliances he can parade out, with cites. Not some vague unsupported anecdote of a single incident.
There has been another explosion at a nuke plant. it is the third. The Tv says radiation has gone up 400 percent.
Radiation that is now being released is core radiation according to experts.
Because the evil corporations aren’t a monolithc entity that are all on the same side. This is like the conspiracy theory that carmakers know how to make engines that get 200 MPG but big oil suppresses it. But if Ford put out a 200mpg engine tomorrow, they’d dominate the entire auto market and they’d make an absurd profit. But they’re holding back for it because they have to make sure Exxon and BP are taken care of, in some sort of big evil corporation solidarity?
If someone made good, cost effective solar panels, they could make a ton of them and make a nice profit. To say that they wouldn’t do it because it would take money from the utility companies doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Cite please? I read three news releases. Not a single one mentioned core radiation.
Una, any knowledge that you can share?
If intact are these containment vessels able to withstand a fuel rod complete meltdown?
What sort of event are the containment vessels supposed to be able to withstand while maintaining integrity?
I have read reports that a meltdown would still be contained to reports of some undefined but nonzero risk that a meltdown could melt through the containment vessel and then cause some unspecified horrors - from contamination of the water supply to a Chernobyl type event. I suspect the truth is towards the less hyperbolic but would love to hear it from you.
Meanwhile the degree to which these older plants have so far weathered this extreme magnitude of an earthquake/tsunami one-two reassures more than frightens me. (Although my skepticism of nuclear’s ability to be a cost effective energy panacea remains intact.) But I understand not everyone feels that way.
No - but my local ones have occasionally had fires and explosions without benefit of earthquakes and such fires have certainly killed people and caused evacuations. The point being that conventional power plants are hardly risk-free either. Toxic smoke from such fires can make people ill, kill them quickly, or raise their risk of cancer later on in life. Wouldn’t want to be downwind of that, either.
People minimize the risks and trade-offs of conventional power generation and maximize the ones for nuclear power. Neither extreme is an objective assessment of risks and benefits.
Ah. Found this:
I suppose you are young and are not familiar with the history of nuke builders in America. You probably never heard of Silkwood and the covering up of bad welds to get a plant on line faster. I suppose you are unaware of the endless lies and coverups perpetrated by the plant builders and operators. i suppose you are not familiar with the fines they have had to pay.
That is your problem. you should familiarize yourself with their actions before you get critical. The nefarious actions of the builders and operators is available.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
There has been another explosion at a nuke plant. it is the third. The Tv says radiation has gone up 400 percent.
Radiation that is now being released is core radiation according to experts.
[/QUOTE]
Do you have a cite??
Here is what CNN has to say on the current situation:
So…the situation is definitely of concern, and there is still a chance that there will be a total meltdown…which could result in a breach of the primary containment vessel and a large release of radiation. That would be very nasty…no doubt about it. It’s not going to be the end of the world though, and thus far the radiation released is not going to start killing people in Japan…let alone in the US.
Here is the thing gonzo…this was a major disaster. I’ve heard reports that up to 10,000(!!) Japanese have already died and there will probably be more to come. It’s going to cost the Japanese 10’s or even 100’s of billions of dollars to repair the damage. While this accident is serious, it’s hardly the worst thing that happening in Japan right now…and the it’s only going to get worse as disease and other factors start impacting the Japanese people. I know that this has become the anti-nukes cause of the day, but seriously…the plant was hit by a fucking 9.0 scale earthquake lasting OVER 2 MINUTES…and then clobbered with a fucking tidal wave. And in the midst of this disaster the workers at the plant are, you know, a bit distracted by ongoing events (like the fact that their own families are probably at risk from dying in the rubble, or dying of dehydration, or disease, or might get clobbered by ANOTHER aftershock), so they aren’t working at what one would call peak efficiency. And despite all of this, the containment vessel is still holding at this time. I think that, considering this is a 40 year old plant using an even older and supposedly less safe design that it’s a fucking miracle that it’s doing as well as it’s doing. I’m frankly stunned that the plant has held together this long.
-XT
Nope, sorry, I do not know that much about the specifics of reactor theory and practice. Even Wikipedia is probably a better source than I am on that subject. I know my limitations.
Unfortunately to Gonzo’s point is this:
On preview - well thanks anyway Una.