Fukushima meltdown hastens decline of nuclear power

[woodburner]

Similarly, you have no thoughts other than to quote bits or find bits and then repeat them just as you have accused me of doing. for instance, people could have found elsewhere tritium was a relatively small part of the problem, they didn't need you to tell them.

You don't seem to have grasped the fact that your original question along the lines of "Why the hell haven't they done this?'" (Evaporated the water from the contaminated pool) was in itself just as hysterical as you have also accused me, and most of the "media" as being. Your posts continue to be disrespectful, just because you can't get a simple answer to you perceived to be a simple problem. IT ISN'T SIMPLE!!!!! Engineers are discussing the building of an extremely expensive ice wall. Who he?

[Little John]

Similarly, you have no thoughts other than to quote bits or find bits and then repeat them just as you have accused me of doing. for instance, people could have found elsewhere tritium was a relatively small part of the problem, they didn't need you to tell them.

You don't seem to have grasped the fact that your original question along the lines of "Why the hell haven't they done this?'" (Evaporated the water from the contaminated pool) was in itself just as hysterical as you have also accused me, and most of the "media" as being. Your posts continue to be disrespectful, just because you can't get a simple answer to you perceived to be a simple problem. IT ISN'T SIMPLE!!!!! Engineers are discussing the building of an extremely expensive ice wall. Who he?

This is the last post I will be replying to of yours on this forum. UE is correct and you are a troll with little by way of content to contribute. Instead, your modus operandi appears to be personal attacks and pathetic trolling provocative behaviour. This post, in other words, is the last time I will do you the courtesy of assuming you are capable of grown up debate, which you are clearly not.

As it happens, evaporation or other chemically driven distillation/filtering processes are common practice in the nuclear industry for all of the reasons I have surmised. Which continues to leave the question of why, in the presence of a build up of a vast, unsustainably storable quantity of waste water, such processes are not in full swing right now. In the absence of any official information on the net that provides answers to the above questions in specific relation to Fukishima (and there is none, I have looked), it may be reasonable to speculate that open pool evaporation is not being done for political rather than technical reasons. It is true to say that tritium will be released into the environment via open pool evaporation. However, this form of radiation is low, is short lived and consequently presents a very low level of short term risk to life, including humans; as compared to a very high level of risk of groundwater contamination by strontium 90 if this body of water is allowed to grow into a vast army of leaky containers over the landscape.

[biffvernon]

it may be reasonable to speculate that open pool evaporation is not being done for political rather than technical reasons.

It may be reasonable to speculate thus but the possibility that there is a technical reason remains open, despite your not having found it.

To whose possible political advantage is it to make a very bad situation worse?

[Little John]

it may be reasonable to speculate that open pool evaporation is not being done for political rather than technical reasons.

It may be reasonable to speculate thus but the possibility that there is a technical reason remains open, despite your not having found it.

To whose possible political advantage is it to make a very bad situation worse?

Oh, yes, I accept it is entirely possible there is a purely technical reason. But, politics has a very irrational effect on many otherwise technically straightforward phenomena. Not least in the something like the nuclear industry with all of the irrational hysteria surrounding it for so many years.

I suppose I should repeat here, as it will not be clear to anyone reading this forum for the first time, I am actually anti-nuclear power, but just not for the obvious and, often (though not always), trivial reasons.

As for whose advantage it serves, you must remember, political advantage, particularly in a democracy, is not a very long game. There is also the US to consider. The USA has a number of reactors based on precisely the Fukishima one. It is therefore in a lot of powerful player's interests that everything looks like it is under technological control in a way that never looks like a partial retreat/concession. Which something like evaporation pools would arguably be. Or, at least, some influential anti nuclear campaign organisations would seek to make it out to be. They would basically have a field day.

[biffvernon]

For those who really want to follow every twist and turn and read what real physicists and nuclear engineers have to say go to the the Physics Forum. This thread is now on page 831 and has had 14125 posts and counting.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread ... 0&page=831

[Little John]

For those who really want to follow every twist and turn and read what real physicists and nuclear engineers have to say go to the the Physics Forum. This thread is now on page 831 and has had 14125 posts and counting.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread ... 0&page=831

Thanks for the link Biff. Will take a look.

[woodburner]

This post, in other words, is the last time I will do you the courtesy of assuming you are capable of grown up debate, which you are clearly not.

[woodburner]

This has been missed I wonder how many would show the same commitment.

[biffvernon]

That was worth reading. Respect to the man.

[biffvernon]

Radiation levels at the water leak now thought to be an order of magnitude greater than previously announced!

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/09/0 ... 2720130901

Radiation near a tank holding highly contaminated water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has spiked 18-fold, the plant's operator said on Sunday, highlighting the struggle to bring the crisis under control after more than two years.

Radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour - enough to kill an exposed person in four hours - was detected near the bottom of one storage tank on Saturday

[mobbsey]

Radiation levels at the water leak now thought to be an order of magnitude greater than previously announced!

What's more significant, in one of those great 'Spinal Tap' amplifier moments, was that the meter they were using only went up to 100mSv, hence why they were not registering 1,800mSv!

I've been corresponding with some of the Japanese anti-nuclear groups recently. What we're not getting over here is the bigger backstory of corruption in Japanese politics. Tepco caused the accident, but now they're charging the government to clean it up at a profit! In turn they give kick-backs to politicians.

Many people in Japan want Tepco removed from the site and the IAEA given responsibility -- it's only when IAEA demands action that things get done at the site. But mainstream politics won't accept that option in any form.

[biffvernon]

but now they're charging the government to clean it up at a profit!

That seems to happen at Sellerfield

[emordnilap]

1500 fuel rods to be dealt with by TEPCO

Critics say the plant’s owners, TEPCO, should not be trusted to carry out the operation and warn the consequences of any accident would be unprecedented.

Over 1500 fuel rods sit in a damaged storage pool 30 meters above the ground inside the shell of the reactor 4 building at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

[nexus]

Removing the rods from the pool is a delicate task normally assisted by computers according to Toshio Kimura, a former TEPCO technician, who worked at Fukushima Daiichi for 11 years.

“Previously it was a computer-controlled process that memorized the exact locations of the rods down to the millimeter and now they don’t have that. It has to be done manually so there is a high risk that they will drop and break one of the fuel rods,” Kimura said.

These spent fuel rods contain Plutonium, the most toxic material on earth – trace amounts of which can kill a human being.

Krypton 85 is also likely to be released into the air – this radiation is absorbed by the lungs, is fat soluble and damages sperm and eggs resulting in genetic diseases and deformities.

According to independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Anthony Froggatt, writing in the recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report:

“”Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date,”, releasing three times the radioactive material of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, or 14,000 Hiroshimas.”

This piece of work starts this month.

If TEPCO, who have so far proven vastly incompetent, somehow manage to pull off this unprecedented activity without creating a nuclear holocaust, they still have to perform the same effort with reactors 1 and 2, which will be much more complex due to even greater damage to the buildings.

More at [url]http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/20 ... d-to-know/[/url]

[RenewableCandy]

This entire thread has been banned.