Nuclear accident follows Japanese earthqauke

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Jul 2011, 16:33

Another reason for not going high-rise. But what's that got to do with exploding nuclear power stations?

Tea, on the other and....

A swathe of Japan's tea making regions including parts of Tochigi, Chiba and Kanagawa prefecture as well as the whole of Ibaraki were included within the ban, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... evels.html

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 04 Jul 2011, 01:44

NO TEA!!???

The end of the world is nigh!!

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 04 Jul 2011, 02:11

kenneal wrote:NO TEA!!???

I haven't given this one enough thought. I think I'd give up alcohol before I'd give up tea, and that's quite a serious statement given how much alcohol I drink and the fact that you can't grow tea in the UK. Maybe a stockpile is a good idea.

I don't care if I never drink another cup of coffee in my life, but I guess a lot of people wouldn't agree.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Jul 2011, 07:14

UndercoverElephant wrote:the fact that you can't grow tea in the UK

is not quite right http://tregothnan.co.uk/

mr brightside · Post by **mr brightside** » 06 Jul 2011, 13:29

kenneal wrote:NO TEA!!???

The end of the world is nigh!!

Don't panic! The world's best mainstream tea, Thompson's Punjana, is going to be unaffected; due to being an Assam blend from tea growing regions of India and Kenya. Garbage teas masquerading as quality products like Tetley and PG Tips however, use a large mixing pot of the cheapest available leaves and might well leave drinkers with acute Caesium poisining. Off topic, i'm permanently amazed at how Tetley used the concept of a round tea bag so effectively to sell what is essentially the worst tea on the market; warmed up Dark Peak bog water is far better.

raspberry-blower · Post by **raspberry-blower** » 07 Jul 2011, 21:59

Japanese nuke fails stress test:

The Japanese government has found that electrical equipment at a nuclear power plant in eastern Japan does not meet earthquake-resistance standards.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency inspected nuclear power plants nationwide after the March 11th earthquake damaged equipment at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The plant was unable to cool its reactors after losing power.

The agency found that the level of quake-resistance of the electrical equipment at Tokai Daini nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture was below the standard set by power companies.
Continues

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 11 Jul 2011, 13:19

Useful brief history of nuclear reactor design

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14060913

Almost all built and planned reactors worldwide are water cooled reactors which are not self-evidently capable of passive cooling.

The dominance of this design was the result of US military investment, massive US subsidies and economic imperative.

Other reactor designs are so far behind in development investment that they are very unlikely ever to become economically competitive.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 11 Jul 2011, 14:43

Yes Ralph, its all the US's fault, that the USSR, France, The UK, China, India, Pakistan and South Africa all created indiginous Nuclear Reactors without US assistance, and then scrapped those reactors is irrelevent, its all down to those blasted Americans and their export subsidy, which apparently included communist china, the soviet union and apartheid south africa.

The purpose of civillian nuclear power was not to generate electricity, it was to generate weapons grade nuclear material, the electricity generation was just a useful way to recoup some of the cost

Ippoippo · Post by **Ippoippo** » 11 Jul 2011, 15:25

Japan can't say when nuclear reactors will restart

http://www.japantoday.com/category/nati ... ll-restart

Wonder how long it will be before they finally get rid of Kan. He really is stirring up the status-quo in the comfy industrial-government relationship.

Some 50 utility workers posed as citizens to back atomic power on TV

http://www.japantoday.com/category/nati ... ower-on-tv

Ahhh, good to see some openess in the industry still

Wouldn't have a problem if 50 workers went on TV, and were up front about who they worked for, before putting forward their arguments. It's the whole hush-hush thing that stinks.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 11 Jul 2011, 16:53

DominicJ wrote:Yes Ralph, its all the US's fault, that the USSR, France, The UK, China, India, Pakistan and South Africa all created indiginous Nuclear Reactors without US assistance, and then scrapped those reactors is irrelevent, its all down to those blasted Americans and their export subsidy, which apparently included communist china, the soviet union and apartheid south africa.

The purpose of civillian nuclear power was not to generate electricity, it was to generate weapons grade nuclear material, the electricity generation was just a useful way to recoup some of the cost

This is a very confused comment. Yes China and Russia designed their own reactors, but they still built on experience gained in the US, no doubt with the help of spies.

The UK scrapped the AGR design because we couldn't afford the development costs when the US was pushing cut price PWRs.

There is no doubt that most countries initially build reactors in order to obtain nuclear weapons - or as an excuse to enrich uranium.

The fact of the matter is, according to this article at least, that one technology (PWR/BWR) became dominant for a mixture of political and economic reasons, and having gained that dominance, inherently safer and /or more fuel efficient or less polluting designs were abandoned.

BTW you don't need enriched uranium for a bomb - build a graphite moderated reactor using un-enriched uranium and process out the plutonium from the reactor waste.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 11 Jul 2011, 19:25

So, lets assume for a moment, your right, and China stole its nuclear knowledge from the US.
HOW IS THAT AMERICAS FAULT!!!

The US researched the technology IT wanted most for ITS requirements, ever bugger else stole it for civillian power generation, therefore, America is bad?

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 11 Jul 2011, 22:33

Ah Dominic,

you are making assumptions about value judgements I never made. I
reported a history of nuclear as written as a comment piece on the BBC site with a precis. It is simply an explanation of events that happened.

Any interpretation of them as good or bad is in your reading. I deliberately didn't make a value satement. It was a train of events. That is all.

An Inspector Calls · Post by **An Inspector Calls** » 12 Jul 2011, 08:57

RalphW wrote:Almost all built and planned reactors worldwide are water cooled reactors which are not self-evidently capable of passive cooling.

That's just nonsense. It's as simple as arranging a gravity feed boiler system, and that's what such designs do. As an example, the Westinghouse AP1000, one of the designs being considered in the next round for the UK, does just that.

RalphW wrote:Other reactor designs are so far behind in development investment that they are very unlikely ever to become economically competitive.

That again is wrong. The proposals for next generation reactors are all type III+, and all embrace passive cooling. And there's considerable research going on into reactor design for even more advanced types. There's nothing to say that they can't become economically viable.

The BBC article is wrong to infer that gas cooled reactors are inherently safer than water cooled. Gas cooled reactors use graphite as the moderator. Graphite burns rather nicely, water doesn't. There's hundreds of tons of graphite in a gas reactor core. It was the graphite core that burnt at Windscale (a weapons plant, not civil). And the observation that gas cooled reactors are larger and thus have a lower power density is right, but as a result, the civil works for a gas cooled reactor are much higher. And finally, the observation that a Candu reactor is somehow not a PWR is rather fine: Candu a a pressurised heavy water reactor, rather than a pressurised light water reactor.

mr brightside · Post by **mr brightside** » 13 Jul 2011, 08:14

An Inspector Calls wrote:That's just nonsense. It's as simple as arranging a gravity feed boiler system, and that's what such designs do. As an example, the Westinghouse AP1000, one of the designs being considered in the next round for the UK, does just that.

Is the gravity feed system designed only to remove residual decay heat after an emergency shutdown? Obviously a tank of water is finite.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 13 Jul 2011, 09:20

Is the gravity feed system designed only to remove residual decay heat after an emergency shutdown? Obviously a tank of water is finite.

But the tank of water can be passivly cooled as well....