I heard on the tube that 4 plants are leaking. Then they said they were wondering whether it was all one leak running into the other buildings. How can that make sense?
The bottom line is the reactor that has plutonium is leaking. It seems whatever can go wrong , will. I do not like the possibilities.
They described it as a core leak.
Easy to confuse the two. They’ve both been posting uncitable claims and jumping to wild conclusions about the few things we can actually track down that they “read.”
It’s serious enough that they don’t have control of the situation and are widening the evacuation zone. Unlike the glass-half-full crowd who thinks spinach makes a great radiation absorber most people don’t want to live in a fallout zone.
The bigger picture is that a week after the shutdown they still don’t have a handle on the situation. People are learning after the fact that they should have relocated farther away. It’s not like they can see the radiation or that the irradiated particles disperse equally. And common sense would tell you if it can contaminate a water source 135 miles away what about smaller communities that are closer but don’t have the resources to monitor the situation. The people on the edge of the 12 mile zone had to rely on media coverage.
The bigger picture is that after a giagantic one-two combo of earthquake-tsunami afecting four nuclear reactors, there are no deaths and that, when all is said and done, more people will die or have their lives shortened by a miriad or "regular"contaminants rather than radiation.
The level of absolute ignorance in the people reporting the news makes me lose a couple of IQ point every time a see a “radiation is 100 times higher” without any context.
This incident is horrible, terrible, nasty compounded by human fuckups like not opening valves. This is like a airplane crash. Those 80 people are nothing (statistically) compared to the hundred that die for more easily and cheaply solved ciscumstances.
On the one hand, I really hate the people trying to make the bad, even the very very bad, seem much more horrific. The best information I can find is that a containment breach would not create a Chernobyl situation. It would cause a much larger localized spike in radiation and a larger clean up, but still clean upable. Definitely very bad and certainly it is prudent to have people away from where a large spike in radiation may occur, but not meaning that 300,000 are forever displaced. Is it or isn’t that? I don’t know what source to believe.
OTOH, the idea of saying that the number of deaths so far directly attributable is low so all is fine, is also a bit disingenuous. Let us imagine I am playing Russian Roulette and three clicks have occurred. I do not even know how many chambers there are. So far no deaths. Should I conclude that it is safe until the next person tries and dies, at which point the death rate is 25%? I do not think that such a method is a fair means of figuring out risk.
This disaster may indeed end up staying at “only” a very bad level, and dwarfed in scope by the rest of the earthquake and tsunami. Or it may get much worse. Does either change whether or not we think that any additional pulls of the trigger are any more or less risky? Should it?
The problem seems to be context.
It’s a crime when the media says “10,000 times” without including a page of context. The media is fear-mongering.
Then, these same people will say “it can’t be the same as Chernobyl” without any context whatsoever. They will say “dozens died immediately at Chernobyl. Not one single person has died because of nuclear power at Fukushima.” They actively forbid any context being included with their “doesn’t mean a thing”-mongering.
How about some context? How many people have abandoned their homes in the expanding evacuation area? Fukushima is a main agricultural, livestock and fishing area. The people in that area can no longer sell their produce. More and more countries are simply refusing to accept Japanese food imports.
How do we put a price tag on millions of people living in fear and uncertainly, one day hearing their drinking water 100s of kilometers away from the nuclear plant is unsafe for their babies? Then the next day it’s not.
What happens if all the farming and fishing in this area is destroyed, possible for many years? Japan isn’t the size of North America or Russia. They can’t move that sort of thing around.
Where is the context when you say “even if there were a meltdown, it couldn’t be Chernobyl.” Why do you avoid the context that includes 6-7 fuel pools dangerously overheating, barely under control, and containing many times the dangerous fuel as in one reactor. Where is your context about how if there were a radiation releasing meltdown in even one reactor, it would force the workers to pull back and let 6 or 7 fuel pools and three other reactors boil off, overheat and catch on fire?
How about some fair context from both sides?
I’m a little sick of hearing about how 100s of thousands of people stuck in shelters and living in fear is an unquantifiable externality that must be ignored when discussing the pleasures of nuclear power.
I have problems with that paper. It was immediately obvious when I saw this on page 8:
Can you tell me what’s wrong with that? For anyone who works at coal power plants, this raises an immediate alarm bell. Their source is cited as this:
So I went to that source (ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/modeldoc/m068(2006).pdf) and looked in it. The numbers “.85” and “85” only appear in that report in a few cases, none of them giving a value for coal net capacity factor.
An 85% net capacity factor is a high load factor for a large number of coal power plants in our fleet. First off, it assumes that the EAF must be at least 85.01% or higher, usually about 5 points higher, 90%. In 2009, the EIA rated the coal fleet of the US at a net summer capacity of 314,294 MW (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p2.html).
In 2009 the actual net generation from coal was 1,985,801,000 MW*hr (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html)
If we do the math, we get:
(1,985,801,000 MW*hr / (8760 hr * 314,294 MW)) * 100 = 72.13%
That’s a far cry from 85% net capacity factor, and it gets much harder the closer you get towards 100%. I did a review of the database of the 734 coal power plants I’ve worked with over the last 8 years, of which 612 are in the United States. I can’t offer a citation of course, but the reason an 85% NCF raised my alarm bells was the average NCF of the units I’ve worked with is only 64%. Now my numbers, even though it’s a large sample size, are lower than the average because, well, people often come to me when they have problems, so their plants are already suffering from some ailment. Of the US plants in my database, the best plant I’ve ever worked with had a 5-year average NCF of 93% (the worst was “0”, which is an unfair outlier and I don’t know how to come up with a bottom number which is honest).
So in short, I disagree with the assumptions of that study, not the overall point that more generation capacity is possible. Then again, that study also does not consider the potential threat of MACT and CATR, which could shut down anywhere from 45 to more than 100 GW of our coal fleet within 5 years (personally I think the power industry is being a bit melodramatic and doom and gloomish, and that actual retirements in 5 years will be along the lines of 10GW, but that’s why I post anonymously on a message board and not under my professional title…)
I hear you. It’s ratshit insane the denial coming from the nuclear believers right now.
The people that have been trying to shut down nuclear for the last 40 years or so? It looks like they were right all along. It really is a danger that we can’t afford to ignore.
The middle ground? You get shot from both sides.
Everything has been cited but you have to read them.
The fact is nuke lovers just refuse to see the obvious regardless of how often it has been proven.
Nuke costs too much, takes too long to get up and running ,creates lethal byproducts and is inherently dangerous. The fact that humans are flawed and plants don’t operate as planned is ignored by nuke fans. The fact that builders and operators cut corners, cover up and lie to the citizens is just ignored. The fact that every plant leaks due to aging and bad maintenance procedures to save money, is shrugged off.
Around the world, countries not ruled by corporations ,are rethinking nukes. The NIMBYS will be hot and heavy in the future. Who would not organize to fight having a plant in their neighborhood.
The hydrogen explosions that shattered the tops of two reactor buildings at the Fukushima 1 nuclear complex followed the venting of hydrogen and steam by plant operators desperate to prevent a far greater disaster: a high-pressure explosion of the primary reactor containment shell and radioactivity release.
Unlike Chernobyl, they had time to prevent a complete and unbelievably bad explosion at each reactor. What this means, and they aren’t going to say of course, is that all the reactors have partially melted down inside the containment…that’s what happens when you shut down a hot reactor and then don’t have cooling.
If the reactors are not damaged from no cool down and the explosions, then the laws of physics have been violated. The media and the experts they interview might actually know this, but they aren’t going to say it. Technically, until somebody examines the reactors, they can say “we don’t know”, and since nobody is going to be looking at the reactors for a very long time, if ever, technically they are right.
Somehow 3 hot reactors, with no cooling pumps going, managed to not suffer any great damage. And all this time we thought it would be a bad thing if you didn’t spend days cooling down a reactor after shut down. Turns out, that aside from blowing the place to shit, and spreading radioactivity all over the fucking place, it’s not dangerous to not cool a reactor down.
And they will have this under control soon. And Unicorns are real.
Then cite your claim about core radiation being released. (Not a current cite either. A cite from when you made that claim.)
Truth is, you have made unciteable claims. Both you and Mastermind have made claims without cites. To say otherwise is dishonest and untrue. (To be fair, some of the pro-nukers have as well.)
Reporting crap that somebody else reported is not “making a claim”. Speculating about what may have happened is not ‘making a claim’, nor is stating that nobody has been killed yet ‘making a claim’.
Wait, that last one would be a claim. The thing is, in almost all cases, nobody knows. The almost complete lack of independent and verified information is so huge it would not be unfair to claim that it has happened. Is happening.
The lack of information. I’m claiming that is a real thing.
Thank you for the informed analysis. Given that your experience is a better representation of the real world, for coal at least, than the paper is (and I do believe it is), how do you feel that would effect the findings?
Obviously it would mean that the magnitude of the excess capacity, assuming trough filling, is not quite as ample as they conclude. How much less do you think? And would I be incorrect to assume that since your modifications of their assumptions would mean that relatively more of the excess capacity is in non-coal source that the GHG improvements would actually be more dramatic?
And thank you for verifying the basic point, if not its magnitude, that we have a sizable portion of unused generating capacity right now that could be utilized it to fuel a significant portion of the transportation sector without needing to add any extra capacity.
The context of course was that new low CO2 capacity, such as nuclear, could in fact be used to reduce our oil imports and lower GHG’s from the transportation sector. Again, the concept also holds for other means of powering the transportation sector to some degree (depending on each cases overall efficiencies) from hydrogen to synthetic fuels to biofuels with power plant inputs), and for other low CO2 plants including renewables.
Yes we probably will be sizing up, since efficiency is not something Americans want to consider (but dang I do love walk in humidors) but the bigger urgency is how to replace the dirtiest capacity we currently have.
Actually, claiming that someone on CNN said something, is, in fact, making a claim. You claimed that CNN reported that core radiation had been released. You have yet to supply evidence that CNN made this report. You claim that CNN reported as such is unciteable.
Your claims are uncitable. The conclusions that you are jumping to are wild. Both you and gonzomax are wholly unreliable.
Rather than switching rails to whether or not CNN “claims” every thing or simply reports, and whether repeating reports from CNN is making claims or not, how about we trade some real life claims that are relevant to the discussion?
My claim: The hundreds and thousands if not millions of gallons of seawater/freshwater dumped over the reactors and into the fuel pools is contaminated and must be going somewhere. I propose that the water is being boiled into contaminated steam by the 100s or millions of gallons, and further claim the rest of the water is flooding the basement of the reactor buildings, with a very good probability of soaking into the earth beneath. The only pro-nuke counter claim I’ve heard so far is that the water evaporated.
Besides evaporation, what is your counter claim for the fate of perhaps millions of gallons of waste water so far?
CNN reports Japan authorities report “reactor seems to be leaking”.
Your claim, that I said “that core radiation had been released” is not even contested. It’s been measured all over the world at this point. Cesium and Iodine was detected as soon as they vented the first reactor, because what happens when you release radioactive water that has been in the core, core radiation at that point has been released.
A core breach is different than core radiation being released.
The entire “nuclear is safe” nonsense is just that, nonsense. If it’s safe, get an insurance policy for your reactors.
The meaningful discussion is comparing its safety to the generating sources that will be used if nuclear is not. Nuclear has risks that are concentrated into possible rare but very dramatic events and some risks that are associated with mining for the fuel. Coal … well that’s been beaten to death, but the risks are much larger just not usually as concentrated into dramatic events. Natural gas also has risks - lines have exploded. Every source has some risk, even wind.
If one goes by the relative morbidity and mortality associated with the source so far then one must conclude that nuclear fares pretty well compared to almost any other source. Is that a fair means to evaluate future risk? I’m not so sure.
I don’t think there is a lot of extra margin with coal. With gas I’m not certain. I know nuclear is about at the maximum capacity factor it can be. I don’t have any hard numbers, I don’t have research on this, I just think it will take more electrical generation than the paper says. I do agree that valley filling is a good way to leverage capacity and I do agree there is some margin, just not that much. Another issue is that the paper groups capacities into fairly broad areas - some cities or even States or multi-State regions may suffer from lack of generation in an electric vehicle switch. It would definitely be a long-term process to make it work.
I don’t think I have the knowledge offhand to make a judgment. Please note I’m not throwing out the idea, I just wanted to say that I think that paper makes some unrealistic expectations, and it’s puzzling to me because, well, as I said an 85% NCF assumption for the coal fleet just seems so very high.
Yes, I agree.
first… let me qualify my stand. the Cold War was a farce perpetrated by the Strausian/Dominionists in the government. they only started the Cold war to make the rich richer on the tax payers dollar. they created a reason to produce any plutonium at all, much less to be stored as weapons till the oil folks were in danger of losing profits… then build reactors to double charge the tax payers to make the rich richer. there is presently maybe over 1000 tons of plutonium. that costs about $100,000 a pound to make, not counting storage.
these look “Reasonable”. if the coolant is lost they shut themselves down.
what Politicians say: "Nuclear Reactors are perfectly “safe…”
what Politicians really mean:
“Safe” is when they only kill other people’s children for the next 1.8 Billion years if something goes wrong with one"