Japan [Tag: Fucked]

[bhodi]

arent the reactors in emergency status actually BWR designs? That was but the first of a few and didnt feel like dissecting the entire post.

15 seconds in wikipedia would show that BWR is a light water reactor design.

Believe what you want to; at this point, all the info is out there. As I said, worst case, it's not going to spray radioactive material everywhere. Of course, local cleanup is not pleasant, or cheap, but it's not significantly worse than any other ecological/chemical disaster.

[Hoax]

1. Governments lie.

2. Companies lie.

We aren't discussing toxic sludge town. It happened. Moving on. The fact that a town got turned into toxic sludge does not make the ongoing reactor story not interesting. I'm not sure why Nowhereman and others are having such a hard fucking time with the fact that we are discussing the ongoing confusing series of events that have the potential to have a variety of wide ranging and long lasting impacts.

[ghost]

I am personally quite happy that they are keeping the news focused on the nuclear issue-  I have friends there that are safe now and I would like to know about all the things that might effect them. 

[jakonovski]

Japan nuclear disaster risk seen receding fast.

This sounds like good news.   

A natural decaying process means that the amount of heat the fuel produces has fallen dramatically, by more than 90 percent, experts said on Monday.

The reporting in that article seems somewhat contradictory to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

The reactors should be in the long tail now, ie. the remaining heat production recedes ever slower.


 

[Tale]

Anyone else remember the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami? Estimates of up to 300k people killed with most of those bodies never found because they they were washed away.

We probably dance around it because we can't comprehend it.

This. Many news sources in 2004 only showed tourist videos from Thailand and Sri Lanka, which were the 2004 equivalent of the effect on California this time round.

There were about 170,000 deaths in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.

When the 2004 tsunami hit Aceh, it was 24 m (79 ft), rising to 30 m (98 ft) as it banked up inland. The quake was 9.1 to 9.3, lasting 8-10 minutes.

[ghost]

Japan nuclear disaster risk seen receding fast.

This sounds like good news.   

A natural decaying process means that the amount of heat the fuel produces has fallen dramatically, by more than 90 percent, experts said on Monday.

The reporting in that article seems somewhat contradictory to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

The reactors should be in the long tail now, ie. the remaining heat production recedes ever slower.


 

From the wikipedia article:

For this reason, at the moment of reactor shutdown, decay heat will be about 7% of the previous core power if the reactor has had a long and steady power history. About 1 hour after shutdown, the decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power.

I'm not a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but the article and this bit don't sound mutually exclusive. 

[jakonovski]

I'm not a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but the article and this bit don't sound mutually exclusive.  

They are, in the sense that the risks are not actually receding fast, heat wise, because the phase of rapid cooling seems to be in the past already. That's actually one of the reasons I stay worried: during the weekend the overall energy output was significantly higher than it is now, so the situation should've gotten better, not worse. That means the cooling effort must've suffered serious setbacks. And on top of that, now the heat is receding slower, so whatever solutions they have must stay in shape longer.

[Arthur_Parker]

DigitalGlobe Hi-res aerial pictures of the current damage at Fukushima Daiichi

http://www.digitalglobe.com/downloads/featured_images/japan_earthquaketsu_fukushima_daiichiov_march14_2011_dg.jpg

http://www.digitalglobe.com/downloads/featured_images/japan_earthquaketsu_fukushima_daiichi_march14_2011_dg.jpg

[Speedy Cerviche]

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[Khaldun]

But that editorial really points out the problem. The author is a strong advocate of a major program of building nuclear power plants. I'm not actually against nuclear power myself. But the problem here is precisely why expertise is such a vexed thing in these contexts. It is almost impossible to find someone who has both the requisite technical knowledge, the requisite knowledge of a specific case, and has no particular vested interest to provide a good, honest assessment for an educated public.

Take Libya, for example: one of the ickier things that's come to light as a result of the rebellion is how many noted economists and political scientists have been bought off by the Libyan government to try and launder Libya's reputation over the last ten years. I did a bit of googling and I was fascinated at the number of times that some of their most credulous claims were then repeated on message boards like this one: Oh, you know, there are efforts at reform in Libya! Maybe Gaddafi has changed! and so on. And anyone who knew Libya well who pushed back on these guys (who were almost entirely people with no specialized knowledge of Libya, North Africa, Arab politics, etc.) was ignored or dismissed as "biased".

When I'm trying to understand a situation that is outside my own expertise, I'm often really frustrated because I know enough about how expertise works and how expertise is bought and paid for to know that finding someone I can really trust is going to be difficult. Moreover, I'm kind of astonished at times at how people on the Internet just link to something because they read it and it sounds good without perusing the credentials of the person who produced it. Again, look at the link upthread where the content sounds like the assessment of an expert nuclear engineer but turns out to be from an economist whose expertise offers as much insight into nuclear power as you'd get from a specialist in Renaissance poetry--and who is much more likely, given his expertise and connections, to actually have some kind of vested interest in companies with ties to the energy industry. It doesn't mean he's wrong, but it does warrant some skepticism.

[Tale]

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

[Murgos]

Japan nuclear disaster risk seen receding fast.

This sounds like good news.   

A natural decaying process means that the amount of heat the fuel produces has fallen dramatically, by more than 90 percent, experts said on Monday.

The reporting in that article seems somewhat contradictory to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

The reactors should be in the long tail now, ie. the remaining heat production recedes ever slower.


 

From the wikipedia article:

For this reason, at the moment of reactor shutdown, decay heat will be about 7% of the previous core power if the reactor has had a long and steady power history. About 1 hour after shutdown, the decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power.

I'm not a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but the article and this bit don't sound mutually exclusive. 

You're reading it say 'heat' and you're reading it say 'power' and those words are combining in your head to be the same thing.  They aren't.

"Decay heat will be 7% of the core power.", and "1 hour after shutdown, decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power" does not contradict 90% reduction in heat 24 hours later.

I.e. a 1% reduction in Power does not equal a 1 % reduction in heat.  In this case specifically heat energy is turned into steam to turn a turbine to create power.  Power is a measurement of work per unit of energy and it takes a lot of steam to move a turbine.

The reason that the heat has not dissipated as fast in Reactor 2 is, from what I have read, because in this style of reactor water is used to absorb the residual radiation and transfer heat and since the core was not submerged the core was stuck with only air to carry away the heat with the residual reactions were not damped down.  Air is a good insulator and poor conductor.

Finally, according to the IAEA (http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html) the reactor #2 (i.e. all three damaged reactors) are now being flooded with sea water.  So, yeah.  The nuclear portion of this episode is over, as long as the pumps keep working, but for the cleaning bill.

[Arthur_Parker]

Richard Black BBC

An official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which runs the site, said seawater was being pumped in both by fire engines and via the system installed to extinguish fires in the power station's turbine hall.

He told BBC News that the use of this methodology had never been foreseen - it had been invented by the team on the ground at Fukushima

http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

Figure 2 shows the typical rate at which heat from a shut-down reactor core boils away water when the cooling systems are not functioning. The vertical axis shows the boil-off rate in gallons per minute. The horizontal axis shows the time, in days, since the reactor was shut down. Even a week after being shut down, the heat from a reactor core boils water at a rate of nearly 60 gallons per minute

There's a nice graph and everything, so yeah the fact they can supply the water with fire engines is pretty awesome news.

[Sand]

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

Yeah which answers my question how if this statement from the editorial is true,

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven.

, the reactors in Japan seem to be splitting H2O into oxygen and hydrogen which requires a minimum temperature of 800 celsius?

[Simond]

Or ionising radiation. Which, I dunno, might show up in a reactor core?

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

How about this, then?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198723013907008.html?mod=WSJ_article_related

After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world's admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan's nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology.

Part of the problem is the lack of media proportion about the disaster itself. The quake and tsunami have killed hundreds, and probably thousands, with tens of billions of dollars in damage. The energy released by the quake off Sendei is equivalent to about 336 megatons of TNT, or 100 more megatons than last year's quake in Chile and thousands of times the yield of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. The scale of the tragedy is epic.

Yet the bulk of U.S. media coverage has focused on a nuclear accident whose damage has so far been limited and contained to the plant sites. In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.

[jakonovski]

They were reasonably certain that some of the cores have partially melted, which would mean temperatures were at some point in excess of 1000C. Citing normal operating temperatures is a bit useless in a cooling failure.

[Khaldun]

Guys, the WSJ would pronounce itself impressed by the good judgment of a meat-packing plant in England that processed the flesh of Irish babies, and condemn dirty hippies in the US for getting all panicky and whiny about the humanitarian implications. Again, see my point about knowing what you're citing. Don't just cite the WSJ's editorial page because you like it this one time, unless you generally think highly of their reasoning skills and command of the facts. (Read them every day and I'll be surprised and not a little appalled if you do think highly of them.)

I don't actually hear that much crazy overreaction. The videos and assessment of the aftermath of the disaster have been just as predominant in the news as the nuclear issue.

The nuclear reactors are interesting at the very least as a case of potentially dangerous technology where some of the worst-case scenarios considered in advance weren't really equal to the actual worst-case situation which arose. That's not limited to nuclear technology, nor is that relatively common pattern a reason to stop trying to develop potentially dangerous but ultimately beneficial technologies. It does suggest there might be something wrong with the way we consider and design for worst cases, a bit along the lines of Nicholas Taleb's argument about "black swan" events. I don't see where thinking about this point in the middle of this disaster detracts from the wider human story.

Though speaking of that, I think the guy on his roof way out to sea was a pretty amazing thing. Very similar to a few of the most remarkable stories of survival from the Indian Ocean tsunami.

[Fordel]

It is an awesome name.

Heavy water designs burn pretty much everything.  This is because rather than enriching the fuel and using normal distilled water as a moderator which absorbs a small portion of the radioactive decay (neutrons) which starts fission, the heavy water design uses deuterium (heavy water, which has an additional neutron), which absorbs no neutrons and therefore fission occurs in fuels not normally considered fissile (unenriched uranium, thorium, spent fuel from LWR's).

So what is the downside to our design, if it can just use everything for fuel? Since it can use Thorium and re-use already spent fuel from other less awesomely named reactors?

Ours can also refuel on the fly, without needing a shutoff, that seems awesome too.


Why doesn't everyone use a CANDU! (Of course, maybe everyone does, there seems to be a lot of them around the world!)

[Simond]

I don't actually hear that much crazy overreaction. The videos and assessment of the aftermath of the disaster have been just as predominant in the news as the nuclear issue.

what.

Actual current media response: OMG CHERNOBYL ALL OVER AGAIN RADIOACTIVE CLOUDS OF DOOM!!!!! oh and somewhere over ten thousand people are probably dead due to the tsunami, and the survivors in the affected areas lost everything.

[Ingmar]

Not here. My local newspaper's site (http://www.sfgate.com/) is focusing mainly on the non-nuclear part at least. There's a link to an article about the nuclear plant, but it isn't the big headline or the picture they're running.

[NowhereMan]

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?, simply because in all the rush to discuss potential disasters and the worst case scenarios people seemed to utterly miss the fact that even worse things had already actually happened. It's a bit like the media devoting a huge amount of their time and energy to the question of what would happen if part of the BP oil spill had caught fire and blanketed one or two coastal towns in oil smoke and how devastating this might be for that part of the coastline while only doing the bare minimum of coverage of the spill itself. And then hearing people talking about how worried they were about the environmental impact of oil smoke and how they hoped and prayed that such a terrible disaster wouldn't happen.

Seriously, in comparison to other shit that has happened even if  the cores meltdown and burn through containment it will still be small fucking potatoes. No, I don't think it's all perfectly safe and that Tepco are doing a fantastic job which noone could better. I do however think that general science is fairly well understood, that the human race has managed to come up with some pretty good ways for detecting radiation and that if shit was going down seriously outside of what they were saying someone whose vested interest would be in acting on this sort of shit in advance would be mentioning that fact if the Japanese weren't. I also have some faith that the company may well see greater value in preserving whatever reputation they do have by writing off a few almost retired reactors rather than risk being the first non-Soviet nation to suffer a nuclear disaster.

Just to be clear: This is not a good thing, it has the potential to be worse though it doesn't look likely but considering the shit that has already happened it's only value as a news story is atomz porn to scare people into watching more. I'll admit that when it first happened it was freaky as shit but having had a couple of days to get access to more info and seeing things more or less proceeding as you'd expect in the case of shit going wrong the tenor of the reporting hasn't really changed. I would imagine there are other, even greater threats to human life going on in Japan right now but food logistic problems and medicine and housing supplies aren't sexy reporting the way 'nuclear' anything is.

faekedit Ingmar: The media comments are largely aimed at TV news and a lot of the big newspapers that have nuclear somewhere on the front page. I imagine local news places have some more variety (for better or worse).

[proudft]

SFGate is what is left of our big newspaper.   But TV for news?  That's so last century.

[Speedy Cerviche]

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

So? He wrote a book on it I think he knows a thing or two about nuclear power. Unless you specifically know this man to be a liar, your offhand dismissal of an expert's opinion is fairly reactionary.

[pxib]

So what is the downside to our design, if it can just use everything for fuel? ...
Why doesn't everyone use a CANDU?"

Largely because fewer nuclear engineers have experience working with them, so it's hard to find education programs that prep people to work on them.  Plus, since they can run at higher temperatures and pressures, their safety measures have to be more robust. Also there's the whole "since they don't need enriched fuel, many nuclear proliferation spot checks are bypassed" issue. Also, they produce more of some kinds of long-lasting nuclear waste than their light water counterparts.

Primarily, though, it's the first. Uncommon reactor types make it harder to find experts to engineer, construct, and maintain.

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?, simply because in all the rush to discuss potential disasters and the worst case scenarios people seemed to utterly miss the fact that even worse things had already actually happened.

That's just 24-hour news. An unfolding disaster keeps people glued to sets more than disaster recovery does. If the Japanese were looting and people were rioting, there'd be a lot more international attention to their plight. The fact that they're calmly and politely executing a massive, complex rescue plan... isn't that exciting. Not much new news to report.

Individual details of exactly how nuclear meltdowns occur and the possible effects thereof is just more likely to keep people watching through a commercial break.

[Arthur_Parker]

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?

And assuming that people interested in the nuclear situation don't care about casualties and survivors of the tsunami/earthquake isn't distasteful?

Maybe the thread should have been split, you certainly weren't the only person to say similar to this.

[jakonovski]

BBC is reporting a new explosion at the plant site. No details yet.

I'm thinking that the pumping equipment got totaled in one of the earlier explosions.

[Arthur_Parker]

kyodonews

06:17 15 March: Fukushima nuke plant's No. 2 reactor still unstable: Edano

06:58 15 March: Partial defect found in No.2 reactor's container: Edano

06:58 No sharp rise seen in radiation from No. 2 reactor: Edano

BREAKING NEWS: Radiation tops legal limit after blast heard at Fukushima nuke plant (08:16)
BREAKING NEWS: Suppression pool may have been damaged at No. 2 reactor: gov't agency (08:07)
BREAKING NEWS: Blast heard at 6:10 a.m. at Fukushima's No.2 reactor: gov't (08:02)
NEWS ADVISORY: Kan criticizes Tokyo Electric's response to nuke plant blasts (07:55)

[Fabricated]

Welp

[Arthur_Parker]

Higher radiation levels measured in Ibaraki -- south of Fukushima (08:28)
Some workers begin to evacuate No. 2 reactor: TEPCO (08:25)

[NowhereMan]

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?

And assuming that people interested in the nuclear situation don't care about casualties and survivors of the tsunami/earthquake isn't distasteful?

Maybe the thread should have been split, you certainly weren't the only person to say similar to this.

Distasteful wasn't quite the right word but when people say things like this having the possibility to have the rest of the disaster pale in comparison, when the absolute worse case scenario would be hugely preferable to what they've had and possibly not as bad as other stuff that's actually happening, you're left concluding they either have no idea about what might happen or have already trivialised these terrible events because the news focus is 'NUCLEAR DOOM'. I should make it clear I think at almost any other time that this would be a huge story very worth reporting on but in the context of the general disaster it's like the BBC, CNN, et al. deciding during Katrina that the big story should be whether or not one of the sewage treatment plants has been greatly damaged and whether it'll add to the flooding in the local area with contaminated water when the rest of the fucking city is underwater.

I do understand that on the media side of things there are strong practical reasons for this, it's when people then go around panicking that the nuclear powers are going to make Japan uninhabitable for 2,012 years if things go wrong and this could be the worst thing to ever happen to the country that I get annoyed. Possibly I find ignorance distasteful. Like I said, this might be far worse than the company is admitting to but based on the available knowledge and the science, worst case scenario for this is still pretty minor in comparison to a 9.1 earthquake and tsunami.

[Fabricated]

Pay no attention to the two explosions or the escaping workers. Everything is UNDER CONTROL.

[Arthur_Parker]

the absolute worse case scenario would be hugely preferable to what they've had and possibly not as bad as other stuff that's actually happening

In your opinion, lets all hope and pray you are right.

[Sand]

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?, simply because in all the rush to discuss potential disasters and the worst case scenarios people seemed to utterly miss the fact that even worse things had already actually happened.

Nowhere,
They didnt miss it. But the government was claiming "maybe" the death toll will reach a 1,000. So the lack of concentration on the tsunami and devastation could be seen as a direct result of the Japanese government down playing the catastrophe.
So the story initially was a shit load of mud and property damage, but no human loss since the government says only "maybe" the death toll will reach a 1,000. So the potential for a nuclear accident was a bigger lead story.

[Sand]

I might stand corrected.
They were reporting it as a different (2nd blast) at 8:46pm but it might be a second story/AP line for the same explosion.

[IainC]

I don't think anyone was buying the official estimates that lowballed the potential casualties. Nuclear emergencies are simply better copy than drowning people, we see dead earthquake victims every few months from one part of the globe or another but a juicy nuclear emergency is a rarity. Additionally as most people (journalists included) don't understand the science there's a lot more scope for doomsday predictions that provide linkbait and get eyeballs on screens.

Stop thinking that news corporations are running an information service, it's entertainment paid for by advertising and driven by suffering.