An underwater robot investigating the inside of reactor 3 at the ***ushima No. 1 power plant has captured what is believed to be the first images of melted nuclear fuel deposits. Obviously, this is very bad news: melted nuclear fuel is one of the most toxic substances known to man, and it's been pouring into the North Pacific for some time at an uncontrolled rate, affecting much of marine life.
This is the first time Tepco has found something likely to be melted fuel. When the utility sent a different robot into reactor 2 in January, it found black lumps sticking to the grating in the primary containment vessel but said they were difficult to identify. The objects spotted this time look like icicles hanging around a control rod drive attached to the bottom of the pressure vessel, which holds the core, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said at an evening news conference Friday.
Even if it's not fuel rod material it still is going to be next to impossible to "clean" up the mess...don't get me wrong...I love nuclear power...but I also love exploration videos of areas like chernobyl...lol I guess the proper people has gotten to me. Lol
Japan should of asked other countries for help or assistance, and not lock themselves in with this problem.
Maybe by the time other countries start asking Japan for reparations for the damaged ecosystem and lost income in fishing industry...
Well, that's 3 major plant disasters in what, 70 years of plant operations of who knows how many plants. I say that's a fairly good safety record overall.
(3 that I know of, Long Island, Cherynoble, and ***ishima)
Well, that's 3 major plant disasters in what, 70 years of plant operations of who knows how many plants. I say that's a fairly good safety record overall.
(3 that I know of, Long Island, Cherynoble, and ***ishima)
Weird way of saying you aren't afraid of cancer...
In Romania after chernobyl there was massive fallout in the western part of the country due to rain. Guess what?! western cities now have the highest rate of cancer by far.
The problem is real and ***ushima will only show its true colors in the following decades. I also want nuclear power - just not fission based.
Well, that's 3 major plant disasters in what, 70 years of plant operations of who knows how many plants. I say that's a fairly good safety record overall.
(3 that I know of, Long Island, Cherynoble, and ***ishima)
Yes, radioactive material has entered the Pacific ocean from the ***ushima plant. It's also a small fraction of the radioactive material that is there naturally. Remember, the ocean is really REALLY BIG.
Normally I would not share something unless I honestly knew. I have just seen that image multiple times associated with the event and assumed it was accurate. My misunderstanding and thus, I removed it from the thread.
If I dug around, I'm sure I could find sources providing facts contrary to support my arguments. However, I'm sure there are equal amount of sources discrediting that and so on and so forth. Won't create another endless discussion that is common on these forums as noted by the user above.
Well, that's 3 major plant disasters in what, 70 years of plant operations of who knows how many plants. I say that's a fairly good safety record overall.
(3 that I know of, Long Island, Cherynoble, and ***ishima)
Weird way of saying you aren't afraid of cancer...
In Romania after chernobyl there was massive fallout in the western part of the country due to rain. Guess what?! western cities now have the highest rate of cancer by far.
The problem is real and ***ushima will only show its true colors in the following decades. I also want nuclear power - just not fission based.
It's nothing compared to the amount of deaths caused by other eneegy sources. The number of deaths per unit energy generated by nuclear power is absolutely miniscule compared to traditional sources.
It's nothing compared to the amount of deaths caused by other eneegy sources. The number of deaths per unit energy generated by nuclear power is absolutely miniscule compared to traditional sources.
Difference is that nuclear disasters have much more impact than any other ressource used, just like a plane crash, even though technically safer than cars, will be more disastrous. However, people seem to forget that right now the problem is coal more than anything else.
Difference is that nuclear disasters have much more impact than any other ressource used, just like a plane crash, even though technically safer than cars, will be more disastrous. However, people seem to forget that right now the problem is coal more than anything else.
Depends on the disaster. Chernobyl had a major impact. Three Mile Island did not. The final verdict on ***ushima will take a while, but my bet is it will be on the Three Mile Island side rather than Chernobyl.
People vastly overrate the risks of nuclear power, particularly new nuclear plants. The biggest problem about ***ushima is that it was 40 years old, and not designed for a double disaster of both earthquake and tsunami swamping its diesel generators. Allow for more new nuclear plant fabrication, and older plants can get cycled out for safer, newer ones. For example, that fuel melting? That's able to be completely prevented in modern reactor designs, by fuel that cannot melt down. The nature of the fuel itself makes it so that if a runaway reaction temperature starts, the fuel moderates itself by increasing neutron absorption along with the increasing temperature. This means it reaches a maximum, non-molten temperature, even with zero control rods in place. And this isn't theoretical, either. I saw a demonstration, personally, at a research reactor at the university I went to. The demonstration involved control rods on pneumatic pistons that could be ejected from the reactor rapidly. The reaction spikes, you get a spectacular blue flash of Cherenkov light in the containment pool, and then the light fades as the reaction mitigates itself back to the stable condition, without putting the control rods back in. What this means is that if EVERY SINGLE control method fails, the fuel still can't melt down. Ever.
This is what we could have, everywhere, if knee-jerk reactions to any proposed nuclear plant weren't so prevalent.
That's just the subsidy disparity. When you take into account lack of backing for loans for the extremely high capital investment for a new plant as well as political opposition, it is the interference that gets new nuclear plants prevented rather than a legitimate business case against it.
Normally I would not share something unless I honestly knew. I have just seen that image multiple times associated with the event and assumed it was accurate. My misunderstanding and thus, I removed it from the thread.
If I dug around, I'm sure I could find sources providing facts contrary to support my arguments. However, I'm sure there are equal amount of sources discrediting that and so on and so forth. Won't create another endless discussion that is common on these forums as noted by the user above.
So this is actually wrong. Sodium cooled reactors are not safer, they are actually less safe than water cooled reactors by nature. Sodium moderators have a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity, as opposed to water which has a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. This means that the hotter the sodium moderator gets the fewer neutrons escape the core thereby adding reactivity and increasing reactor power. Water on the other had is inherently stable as the more it heats up the more neutrons escape the core therefore making it harder for power to increase. Graphite similarly has a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity and is one of the reasons that the Chernobyl accident occurred, well besides criminal negligence. Modern water based reactor designs, like the AP1000 from Westinghouse, have a safety rating that mandates a 10^-6 probability of occurrence, AP1000 is actually 10^-7. Other advanced reactor prototypes like pebble bed reactors, gas moderated reactors, and high temperature gas moderated reactor use different safety features to allow for safe operation. Pebble bed reactors, for example, rely on dropping fuel pebbles into a large concrete basin below the reactor in the event on an incident. This spreads the fuel out reducing the ability of the fuel pebbles to react with each other.
Most countries do not want to be a test bed for new nuclear technologies. The US alone has prohibited test reactors from being built here, so any modern reactor design would need to be tested overseas first before getting approval for use in the US. Additionally there is an ever changing design for power plants as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not been equipped to deal with the majority of new reactor types on the market. These design revisions cost billions of dollars in time and man power. Look at Southern Nuclear's Alvin W Vogtle 3 and 4. They are years behind schedule and in a massive cost overrun because that have been through a large number of design changes. Until politicians embrace nuclear power as a modern safe method of producing power it will never be cheap, which is a shame because it is arguably one of the best ways to produce large amounts of power.
Ughh, I don't want to respond but feel compelled to. We talked about this quite a bit in my rad waste disposal course. I will finish my Master's in Nuclear Engineering next semester.
Radioactive Iodine uptake in marine life will be quite low due to the saturation of non-radioactive iodine in the ocean. While it is not good, it will be very diluted. The cesium is a bigger concern due to it's high energy gamma production, but water is an effective shield and with the dissipation in the large volume it is again not a big concern. Strontium is the same story.
It is not the end of the world as people are making it out to be.
Personally, I do not see nuclear power as the future. Not as long as we do not have an effective method of dealing with spent fuel. All of the reactors that have been decommissioned over the past several decades are long gone but the spent fuel still sits there on the site where the plant was. Supposed to be armed guards and other security watching it but we all know what happens with budget cuts.
There is one new nuc plant being constructed in the US. No plans for dealing with the waste though. Yucca Mountain was defunded. WIPP is not for commercial fuel, but DOE waste. Without a solution to the issue of waste we really should not be building new nuc plants. Finland will open the first geologic repository for waste in the coming years. Nuclear makes sense for them then, they also build the costs of dealing with waste fuel and decommissioning into the rate electricity consumers pay.
Keep in mind that spent nuclear fuel has to be stored for a minimum of 300 years before it can be disposed of. The dry storage casks are only licensed for 100 years. In our lifetime the issue of recasking will present itself unless we make a deep geologic repository.
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