Post Fukushima. Where Now for Nuclear Power?

[walker 0]

Hi all

In Reply to this post:

I agree, white lies and censorship of important information to save face piss me off. As do the faked safety tests.

But I have yet to see your opinion expressed explicitly. What exactly is it? It's obiously not mild. So is it:

a) In between: Raise the safety standards and do not let profit come first. In this case: Build spent rod pools at ground level and the auxiliary generators/pumps above ground level (It was opposite in the name of profit). More rigorous inspections.

b) Radical: Shut the NPP's down.

Because (and especially with all the directly observable earthquake/tsunami damage) a feasible conclusion from the structure of your posts is, that you are only worried, that some day in the future you might be personally inconvenienced.

Which was posted in the

Japan hit by 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami thread.

While the debate about getting the imminent danger of a Chernobyl Plus Disaster at the Fukushima plant rightly took place in that thread as it was and is a part of the whole ongoing Japanese Quake and Tsunami disaster; I feel that any of the wider issues involved in the Fukushima disaster and its effects on the future of nuclear power would intrude on that thread

So I think it deserves a separate thread.

So down to the issues:

First up I think our future is either renewables or fusion, if that ever works. I have no objection to studying nuclear power but I would keep the experimental reactors further from people. Say a UN run island not built on a fault line or perhaps by a desert lake.

sprayer_faust you raise some valid issues but I think the question is wider, also I think suggestion a) is a none starter and would actually make such such plants just as dangerous if not more so. If I were to take such a step as to re-designing such plants, and they exist across the world, I would suggest that keeping all the radioactive parts at sub surface level would be a more simple solution but IMHO as a reactor design PWR is dead technology due to Fukushima. They result in spent fuel rods that we demonstrably can not safely store, as proved by Fukushima.

Japan had even started using the truly deadly Plutonium MOX reactors to try and use up the spent fuel. You may have noticed that it swiftly became the most important of the multiple dangers at the plant to try and contain. Even to the point of allowing the fires in the spent fuel pools to start and ignoring them. The reasons for that are that the Plutonium fuel is incredibly radioactive compared to Uranium and that it is also terribly chemically poisonous. It is also much much more volatile and building both heat and critically much more quickly, storing up more neutrons in the reaction and so being far more likely to jump up from supercriticality required for a self sustaining fission reaction to a prompt-critical event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_critical

That is why Plutonium is used for nuclear weapons, and why they are smaller than Uranium bombs.

But all this once again highlights the core problem of the spent nuclear fuel. What do we do with it? At the moment most western agencies store it in open pools. Japan is so over run with them, like many western countries that is re-racking them:

http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/pools.html

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/dry-cask-storage.html

This event clearly shows the dangers there. And in this case we have the additional issue of the No.4 Reactor having been shut down for maintenance, all the still active fuel rods were moved out of the reactor in to the storage pool with the already over full with spent fuel rods and re-racked with them.

Essentially a potential active nuclear reactor outside its primary containment!

And now that the secondary containment is destroyed merrily beavering away creating masses of radiation in the open air! And truth be told that is the threat of every single spent fuel pool in the western world.

SURPRISE! Spent Fuel Rods are actually more reactive than Fresh Fuel Rods!

Because spent fuel is a marketing misnomer, designed to make the uneducated people think its safer. It aint. In fact they are more reactive and more polluting. The chief reasons spent fuel rods are removed is because they fill up with plutonium and other transuranics as well as highly reactive isotopes and also begin to change the nature of their cladding both in terms of their chemical nature and by thermally distorting them. And all that makes controlling them and preventing a prompt critical event progressively harder and also making a prompt-critical event more likely.

So as you can guess from this I am not pro the current nuclear power systems. I would prefer it replaced.

That said I think the Molten Salt reactors may be considerably safer.

Anyway having started the debate I leave it to others to chip in correct my errors and continue the debate. There are a whole bunch of matters here we have not yet discussed. We use nuclear power to create nuclear weapons, medical systems, welding monitoring etc. etc.

We then have the corrupting power of profit intruding in to the whole thing consider that it has contributed both directly to the failure to deal with disaster as promptly as required at Fukushima and also contributed to causing the disaster in the first place. As the media is discovering mostly from certain sources.

I suspect the debate might be interesting.

Kind Regards walker

Edited March 21, 2011 by walker

[.kju 3245]

• Apply needed safety standards
  
• Force operators to upgrade their plants or face shutdown
  
• Remove government backing of damages for damage events
  
• Remove all hidden subsidiaries
  
• Make produces pay 100% for the long term storage
  
• Make reasonable investments in other energy forms, most notably renewable
  

= nuclear energy dead

But people prefer to believe the propaganda. Sad world.

Edited March 21, 2011 by .kju [PvPscene]

[celery 8]

Nuclear power is the best way to produce energy in the long run until something better gets developed. Anti-nuclear people are coming in their pants because now they have a recent example of the dangers of nuclear power, although it should be noted that Fukushima is a very, very old plant and Japan's history of nuclear power is full of secrecy, scheming and negligence, so it cannot really be compared to any other developed country's nuclear power plants. The only reason Fukushima is going through all this is because the failsafe devices were absolutely miserable and obsolete.

[Dwarden 1125]

whole issue is blown out of proportions as usualy...

old plant, old reactors (several obsolete types) from era before Chernobyl

inadequate protection against 20+m tsunami,

storage pools unprotected w/o redundant cooling system,

absence of enough anti-hazard&rescue equipment

for catastrophe affected not one but all 4 reactors and it's storage pools...

this all plays role ...

IMO the outcome for nuclear 'energy' industry are simple ...

- rethink safety protocols related to temp shut-down reactors including emergency

- rethink safety for rod storage pools ...

- rethinkg redudancy of cooling for both above ...

- start fade out obsolete reactor types completely off service

- ofcourse build new safer generation of reactors (which helps fade out the older ones faster)

end of drama, world moves on ...

[whisper 0]

• Apply needed safety standards
  
• Force operators to upgrade their plants or face shutdown
  
• Remove government backing of damages for damage events
  
• Remove all hidden subsidiaries
  
• Make produces pay 100% for the long term storage
  
• Make reasonable investments in other energy forms, most notably renewable
  

= nuclear energy dead

But people prefer to believe the propaganda. Sad world.

Same applies to the main sources of energy currently. Meaning we would end up without reliable source of energy.

Nuclear is bad

Oil is bad

Power market in general is bad.

It's an horrible comparison to make, but I'm not sure at all the number of deaths per kW produced is not favorable to nuclear energy

[Dwarden 1125]

the so called renewable energy is more deadly and energy expensive that the nuclear ;)

just try think what all is needed to made solar cells ...

what all is needed to make all components of the wind mills,

now each windmill's has meteostation and control center etc.

which needs to be

- cooled it down in hot

- warmed up in cold

- stop while too strong wind

- stop while too slow wind

- stop if there is ice or heat blades if there is ice

etc.

cost? You need 3+ times more windmills MW to equate nuclear plant

(because nuclear == 24/7/365 minus several days checks)

so for e.g. 4x1400MW nuclear You need like 4x3x1400MW windpower

(this mean at minimum 16800 windmills)

just check effectivity % :)

oh well ... Green Eco stuff is so nice fake economy

... biofuels leading us to famine and hunger

and so on ...

Edited March 21, 2011 by Dwarden

[b0b 10]

...

cost? You need 3+ times more windmills MW to equate nuclear plant

(because nuclear == 24/7/365 minus several days checks)

so for e.g. 4x1400MW nuclear You need like 4x3x1400MW windpower

(this mean at minimum 16800 windmills)

just check effectivity % :)

oh well ... Green Eco stuff is so nice fake economy

... biofuels leading us to famine and hunger

and so on ...

Cost? 1 nuclear plant meltdown = possibility of 1000's of lives lost and irradiated ground for x months/ years

Cost of 1 wind generator going down..., disruption to sheep for a few days to replace it.

I really dont wash with your PoV, its kinda sensationalist.., so what would you have us do? carry on the status quo poisoning the planet along the way?

Also industrial hemp can provide both fuel AND food to to mention thousands of other products. Coupled with Solar AND wind energy it could work quite effectively.

Edited March 21, 2011 by b0b

[Macadam Cow 1]

Well at least when there's an earthquake the windmill just...falls. And that's about it.

+ the biggest problem of nuclear energy are not nuclear plants but nuclear wastes.

We're are creating tons of waste we have no idea what to do with. So we burry them into the ground. Our grand grand grand children, who would probably not use nuclear energy, will be quite happy to deal with the mistakes their ancetors did

We have to use less energy, we're still following the 50's scheme believing ressources are endless. Problem is we're only using "non endless" energy and leaving the real endless energy on the side. It doesn't make any sense.

Just like moving 1ton of metal to move a 80Kg human it's completely absurd. We got it all wrong since the beginning and fact is we need disaster like what happened in Japan (and probably many more) to start to think we might try something else.

Edited March 21, 2011 by Macadam Cow

[whisper 0]

The problem is not the nuclear by itself, though finding better way than fission is sure an excellent idea, it's the industry behind and its substandards protocols and behavior.

Like I wrote in the other Fukushima thread, we have here a power dam placed such that an event like what happened in Japan would make the dam be destroyed, letting the water flow in a corridor all the way to a major river below, death toll would be horrible. On top of it, several industries are in the path, including a Seveso class chemical plant. I let you imagine the disaster at hand.

What have been the impact of the BP oil incident last year, what have been the total impact of the numerous oil incidents, along the years?

The whole power industry is at risk because it is playing with events we have zero control of in case of major incident. It has been shown numerous times, and nuclear is not the only one with this core issue.

The current safe technologies are not able to fullfill the power needs we have, by a fair, fair margin.

There's an obvious visibility issue in those industries, too many facts are hidden, too many choices for the cheaper.

What should happen imho :

* accept a radical raise in energy costs to adapt industries to safety measures

* lower radically our power consumption

* make longterm investments on research for a set of alternative and diverse energy sources. Longterm meaning the end of oil & nuclear is not near at all. Targeting something like fusion may also be a not so bad option

With the current world, nothing of this will happen

[walker 0]

Hi all

Like Chernobyl the pollution from the Fukushima will last certainly for decades, and possibly centuries or even if there is lot Plutonium pollution Millenia.

It is a 30 plus mile exclusion zone in the middle of Japan's most productive arable land. It will over those decades cost Japan hundreds of billions of yen, in lost production, housing factories and land.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/two-survivors-found-under-rubble-nine-days-after-japanese-earthquake/story-e6frf7lf-1226025761549

Sadly walker

[celery 8]

Hi all

Like Chernobyl the pollution from the Fukushima will last certainly for decades, and possibly centuries or even if there is lot Plutonium pollution Millenia.

It is a 30 plus mile exclusion zone in the middle of Japan's most productive arable land. It will over those decades cost Japan hundreds of billions of yen, in lost production, housing factories and land.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/two-survivors-found-under-rubble-nine-days-after-japanese-earthquake/story-e6frf7lf-1226025761549

Sadly walker

The Herald Sun is a tabloid.

[walker 0]

The Herald Sun is a tabloid.

Hi Celery

How about the Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-in/8395985/Japan-nuclear-crisis-Fears-mount-over-radioactive-waste-in-food.html

Or Fox News in Australia?

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/contamination-at-nuclear-plant-for-decades/story-e6frfku0-1226025756463

Or the French Science site Maxisciences

http://www.maxisciences.com/accident-nucl%E9aire-au-japon/le-japon-restera-contamine-des-dizaines-d-039-annees_art13345.html

Or Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/japan-radiation-release-long-term-problem-france-s-asn-says-1-.html

I could go on...

But I am sure you get the idea

Kind Regards walker

Edited March 21, 2011 by walker

[Beagle 684]

After Chernobyl there was a lot of discussion about pullign out of nucelear energy, but 25 years later all discussed reactors in germany were still running and new nuclear facilities are build now. Now they have shut down the three oldes reactors, but that wil only last until after the regional elections. In half a year from now the topic is off the horizont and all will go on like in the 20 years before Chernobyl and it will go that way even after the next accident. Some countries like france and germany are already energy exporters for those countries in the european energy grid without nuclear power plants. And thereis still the fact that you cant run heavy industries on solar power when you dont have any recources under your soil, that's why Japan relied so much on nuclear energy.

Russia is also still running RMBK 1000 Reaktors.

Edited March 21, 2011 by Beagle

[Daniel 0]

I don't think there'll be any real global decline in nuclear power as a result of Fukushima. Hopefully it will result in additional safety features.

But nuclear power will remain prominent until the real renewable energy revolution begins.

[hellfire257 3]

Launch the junk into the Sun. It uses nuclear power anyway :D.

The talk about waste depends on what the waste is, due to the individual half-life of the element. The most stable element is Iron, this can be found by looking at decay graphs and also the fact it is what is left after a star has died. If we can produce a reaction that produces waste with a smaller half-life then long term storage wouldn't be such a problem. It also depends on the type of radiation emitted, however most of it is the nasty stuff.

Long story short, there isn't a better alternative until technology advances again. As you rightly say Walker, fusion is the way forward, however it is a risky business and there are still far too many problems associated with it. We'll see in the coming years.

There are plenty of reliable and clean ways of obtaining energy, however nobody seems to want to put the money into the science aspect. For example, a wacky idea is putting solar panels in space and then converting that energy into microwaves for transmission through the atmosphere for conversion. In theory it would work, but in reality, it could be rather tricky as well as risky.

Edited March 21, 2011 by Hellfire257

[walker 0]

Hi all

As I have pointed out I personaly feel that wind power is the energy source we need to start using.

By the way no Windmills fell on anybody or anything in the Tsunami and Earthquake; they have continued to provide power all through and post the disaster.

http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=10926

Heck they are even providing the power to cool the reactors. :D

Cover the Fukushima Exclusion Zone (FEZ) in Windmills

Covering over 30 to 50 mile FEZ with windmills would seem to be to be a sensible use of land that will not be able to be lived on for decades. And since all the power grid is allready there in each of the unusable factories and houses it would keep the cost of set up down and there certainly will be no planning blockage or visual blight as the land can not be lived on.

Kind Regards walker

Edit Wrong thread

[ben_s 11]

Cost? 1 nuclear plant meltdown = possibility of 1000's of lives lost and irradiated ground for x months/ years

Cost of 1 wind generator going down..., disruption to sheep for a few days to replace it.

I really dont wash with your PoV, its kinda sensationalist.., so what would you have us do? carry on the status quo poisoning the planet along the way?

Also industrial hemp can provide both fuel AND food to to mention thousands of other products. Coupled with Solar AND wind energy it could work quite effectively.

Nuclear meltdown in plants can't happen easily when there's adequete protection, The only nuclear meltdown that's ever happened was at Chernobyl, and that was caused by a plorethra of problems. None of which would be existant in todays world of health-and-saftey.

Like, Being able to run the plant far far far below minium power requirments. Or doing crazy things like removing the control rods when it goes wrong.

Plus, the technology today has improved substantually, and we understand how it works alot more efficently. So as a nuclear meltdown wont ever happen again.

If I recal correctly, more people have died from Hydroelectric accidents, than from Nuclear. (See: Banqiau Dam, though, i'm not sure of spelling here).

I can't see any real risks from Nuclear energy, at least, no more risk than using fossil fuel power stations, and 'renewables' are just not an option with todays energy consumption, at least, not with companies in charge of what happens.

[Beagle 684]

Another energy shortage scenario is already rising and that comes from mobility. When Oil wil become shorter a lot of industries (plastics, cosmetics pharmacy) will refer to that the recource is to valuable to be just burned.

AS soon as there is a real shift into electrified mobility, a energy and akkumulator materiel shortage will be imminent. The cost of the energy cell is already higher than the cost of the whole mechanical part of such a vehicle.

[Rovka 14]

I say make use of humans, as example of what hamsters are doing in their cages, running the little spinning-wheel!! Yes this sounds a bit humiliating to some, being put in the same situation as animals are, but animals are animals, where humans are absolute beasts, unlike all those other animal species that we are not!

Now my option as I see it, is to create a society that says: You want something? Work for it! Those working should be benifitting the rewards of cheaper energy-bills, because they:

A: Lower the insurance billing, by having less frequent visits to hospital.

B: Less psychologic chronically deceases able to manifest themselves into invididuals.

C: Meeting possible friends, interacting with fellow-humans working for common cause.

D: Making themselves usefull for their own health, and society included, but also friendly

to their own wallet in the meantime!

E: Decreasing the manifestation of Heart-failure, or drug-addiction, alcohol-addiction, tobacco-addiction. Lowering the chances in deceases like cancer etc. Thus they lower their own bills to be paid, as movement is alot more healthier then many people foresee.

People should return to nature, and in a distant past, movement was energy.. Remember the stoneage: By means of friction of fire-stones sparks were created thus setting fire to dry twigs so that people could warm themselves in the cold or damp weather, plus it kept dangerous predators away.. Now that is the ethos people need to return to..

Right now too many people sitting around, being all dependant on paying the ever rising bills, because all the time more people are not actually contributing anything positive to society, neither to anybody else's nor their own true benifit, other then short-sighted goals set being fullfilled: Making money, to spend money on rising bills.. Not logical in my opinion..

But fact is, people are able to freely move about, where windmills are a permanent and (like humans!) potentially dangerous presence in their surroundings.. In a storm indeed a windmill may see it's wings being blown off.. A human may get hurt, but often recovers quite soon, where a windmill should be entirely replaced, and a human continues on being able to productive most of the time!! Who needs nuclear powerplants?

Then again, who needs this amount of many powerplants anyway? What if factories would run on human-based generator-electicity? It is better for factory-workers to lead longer healthier lives, less problems with the bones, less pain in the back, and so forth! It only absolutely benifits the individual ánd society as well!

But I have to say, I fear this is merely a dream.. People rather wish to pay rising bills, because they wish to be couch-potato instead I suppose...

[nodunit 397]

Running to sustain energy..well the populous would certainly be in better shape if that were the case.

[Rovka 14]

Two words: Will-Power..

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Thorium, Molten salt reactors built not on fault lines involving three tectonic plates. East coast Japan NPP was a local evolution-scale event waiting to happen.

It has already surpassed Chernobyl, good thing the media is playing it down, otherwise it could be the death of atomic energy in the U.S., evidence/source:

http://forum.janeysnews.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=745&start=40#p18500

[walker 0]

Hi all

I would like to know the Original source of those pictures. What interests me more is the 3rd picture which purports to be a gamma dose map of the plant. It looks correct. If it is a fake it is incredibly well done.

It appears to be a schematic photographed with at a guess a phone or small camera at an angle. The date is interesting. The measurements are mSv/hr.

If they are all from the same source and the two top pictures appear to use the same technology. Yet they are on totally different sources. Some one either has a search on looking for stuff or more likely some one is deliberately dispersing and hiding their source. Why?

I have done some reverse image searches 3 engines so far Tinman and the like. I will use something deeper running on a separate computer for a few hours. By their nature I expect them to be copied so in all probability all I will get from that is the spread map.

So far as I can tell the 1st image is SINGLE SOURCE! Primary copy. Placed on a standard US image shack repository on a separate server with a degree of anonymity, as to the person who placed it there. This immage is linked from two sites using cyrilic alphabet. One being a Russian site forum.atominfo.ru . The name of this file is common on the net but primarily used by Russian sources.

So far as I can tell the 2nd image is SINGLE SOURCE! Primary copy.The 2nd picture is stored deep in a russian website with the method by which it was placed there not immediately apparent. The second immage is linked from one other source a forum in Russia; the same as with the first image, Poster joined the forum 15.3.2011 and edited post 21.3.2011, 11:53. Dito sources for the file name. Which is a complex file name specific to an image shack file randomisation algorithm so no surprises there.

So far as I can tell the 3rd image is SINGLE SOURCE! Primary copy. Placed on an image shack derived file repository on a separate server with a degree of anonymity, as to the person who placed it there. The paper back ground and palette histogram search reveals a strong Japanese connection, including the background paper being on schematic floor plan images with a japanese character set but some come with a canadian location, though again Japanese character set, in all honesty a Japanese site hosted in Canada. This appears to be the primary source for that image that URL linked only from the site Iroquois Pliskin gave us. It tracks back to an Apple I Phone uploaded image.

The single source primary copy info is interesting since it means the site you gave us Iroquois Pliskin is close to the originator. Though URLs could have been passed and not show up in a reverse image search. I will check this by looking for others linking to the images.

So IMHO primary source appears anonymous. Though IP tracing is possible.

Leaving us two possibilities.

Some one trying to hide that they are leaking data.

Some one trying to perpetuate a fraud.

Regards walker

Edited March 22, 2011 by walker

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Chill, walker, read the rest of the thread I posted.

Here's the source, don't kill the server:

http://www.mod.go.jp/j/press/kisha/2011/03/20a.pdf Backup: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DZXT1VOW -- Molten spent nuclear fuel in South-East corner of Unit 4 (no operating reactor at time of the emergency, fuel was unloaded from the reactor), Reactor building 3 blown to dust, reactor lid flew 400+ feet up in the air during the explosion.

Currently Unit 2 is experiencing SNF pool water temperature rise, along with meltdown in the core. If you read the thread you'll find me. ;)

P.S. Spread the word around, just don't send any nuts our way.

Edited March 22, 2011 by Iroquois Pliskin

[walker 0]

Hi Iroquois Pliskin

And the third picture source?

The one that comes form this IPhone image

http://yfrog.com/h2va4thj

Kind Regards walker

Edited March 22, 2011 by walker