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BattleMoose
Jun 16, 2010
Its just super depressing to consider some of the relatively very low cost preventative mechanisms that could have prevented the worst of the outcomes at Fukishima. Elevated generators or mobile generators located nearby and such.

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Trabisnikof
Dec 24, 2005

The more enjoyable one to me is the dude who worked at SONGS posting on nukeworker downplaying the problems and being super smug. Pretty much the entire forum said go gently caress yourself and then of course, the dude was proven completely wrong as time went on.

edit: he had a few posts, but this was one of the best bits

quote:

Sigh. You guys ever cover Areva for a few days? Ever SEE a SG? Talk for a few hours while they run probes with the engineers on the headphones and you learn. Why the sarcasm? Mean people.

High seismic + very large SG (2 loop 1150 MW CE) = lots more stabilizers, retaining bars, retainers, egg crates to immobilize longer tubes. Smaller 4 loop SGs in Nebraska get much less steel.

Tube issues not due to corrosion. Problem is wear at certain very specific points where civil structures are rubbing tubes. Design issue - engrs talk about being related to very large SGs, lots of retainers, massive flow. Hard to model perfectly, so something vibrates a little, tubes rub, wear in spots. Not at all unusual, although disappointing.

Plug affected tubes. Pass costs back to Mitsubishi. Eddy current test again next outage to verify nothing else rubbing. Biggest headache from the whole experience: list sarcasm.

Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 8, 2017

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Trabisnikof posted:

The more enjoyable one to me is the dude who worked at SONGS posting on nukeworker downplaying the problems and being super smug. Pretty much the entire forum said go gently caress yourself and then of course, the dude was proven completely wrong as time went on.

edit: he had a few posts, but this was one of the best bits

He'd have been right if the cooling system didn't fail!

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

Dameius posted:

I am pretty sure that they are referring to how the thread made predictions on things based on information available and then revised along the way. Also having too arfue with people who came in thread basically declaring that this was mecha hitler Chernobyl and refused to listen to actual nuclear engineers trying to educate.

I really think you had to be in that thread to get my previous post. I was poking fun at the original Fukushima thread.

And you are right. To be fair, there was a lot of this going on. As I recall there were three groups of people in that thread, nuclear goons (goons who worked in nuclear power generation), the end of the worlders, and people (I think I was one) who had reasonable concerns.

In any case, for whatever reason, I recall the nuclear goon reaction as being much like how I portrayed it. Sure everyone only had the "information immediately available," but some people were actually saying things like:

"No way any fuel melts from this"
"Its just not possible for the cores to have any criticality at this point"
"Western low-pressure reactors do not melt through. No way corium comes out of the pressure vessel."

Then, after all of those things happened:

"Coal is very bad, okay?" (this was, and still is, a correct statement)

Taken as a whole, it all seemed in hindsight a rather humorous way to start my questions. Which basically boil down to:

1. If you look at this (me reading real science is dangerous), computer models suggest that the corium may have melted to within 5-7 inches of the bottom of the primary containment vessel. Unfortunately, until someone gets robotic eyes on the corium, its impossible to know how accurate this model is.

Given this, what does the new evidence (both the radiation levels and melted grate) tell us about how accurate this computer model is.

2. TEPCO says they are going to remove the fuel in all the melted reactors. I am assuming bullshit on this, because removing the corium requires some magical anti-radiation technology that does not exist; therefore, the most likely scenario in my brain is that at some point TEPCO/Japan will have to bury, at a minimum, reactor one and two in place.

If this happens, is that 5 to 7 inches of concrete the corium is sitting on sufficient to protect the environment for the next 20k years or so?

ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Feb 8, 2017

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

ZombieLenin posted:

I really think you had to be in that thread to get my previous post. I was poking fun at the original Fukushima thread.


Maybe you shouldn't go around expecting people to understand that you're freaking out about a thread from 6 years ago.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

ZombieLenin posted:

I really think you had to be in that thread to get my previous post. I was poking fun at the original Fukushima thread.

And you are right. To be fair, there was a lot of this going on. As I recall there were three groups of people in that thread, nuclear goons (goons who worked in nuclear power generation), the end of the worlders, and people (I think I was one) who had reasonable concerns.

In any case, for whatever reason, I recall the nuclear goon reaction as being much like how I portrayed it. Sure everyone only had the "information immediately available," but some people were actually saying things like:

"No way any fuel melts from this"

Ah, come on. Yeah, there were idiot pro-nuclear goons in that thread, because it was GBS. But there were also people telling *those* people that they were full of poo poo. You're selectively remembering only one side of it.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

ZombieLenin posted:

I really think you had to be in that thread to get my previous post. I was poking fun at the original Fukushima thread.

And you are right. To be fair, there was a lot of this going on. As I recall there were three groups of people in that thread, nuclear goons (goons who worked in nuclear power generation), the end of the worlders, and people (I think I was one) who had reasonable concerns.

In any case, for whatever reason, I recall the nuclear goon reaction as being much like how I portrayed it. Sure everyone only had the "information immediately available," but some people were actually saying things like:

"No way any fuel melts from this"
"Its just not possible for the cores to have any criticality at this point"
"Western low-pressure reactors do not melt through. No way corium comes out of the pressure vessel."

I don't recall that at all. I recall a lot of doomsdayers shouting against the more reasonable opinions of "this is going to be a huge mess but nobody is going to die" and "your 'radiation' map showing the entire Pacific ocean flooded with radiation is unscientific BS"

It's important to remember that human memory is poo poo.

e: Oh poo poo you're talking about some GBS thread? I have no doubt that it was full of stupidity but that kind of ensnares you as a GBS poster, so haha. I recall the D&D thread (which might have just been an older iteration of the Energy thread?) being pretty good and level-headed with just a few shouty doomsdayers saying dumb things, but nothing as optimistic as you've posted here

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 8, 2017

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

QuarkJets posted:

I don't recall that at all. I recall a lot of doomsdayers shouting against the more reasonable opinions of "this is going to be a huge mess but nobody is going to die" and "your 'radiation' map showing the entire Pacific ocean flooded with radiation is unscientific BS"

It's important to remember that human memory is poo poo.

e: Oh poo poo you're talking about some GBS thread? I have no doubt that it was full of stupidity but that kind of ensnares you as a GBS poster, so haha. I recall the D&D thread (which might have just been an older iteration of the Energy thread?) being pretty good and level-headed with just a few shouty doomsdayers saying dumb things, but nothing as optimistic as you've posted here

Yep, the GBS thread. :smithicide:

Phanatic posted:

Ah, come on. Yeah, there were idiot pro-nuclear goons in that thread, because it was GBS. But there were also people telling *those* people that they were full of poo poo. You're selectively remembering only one side of it.

In this case, I am not selectively remembering. It's just that, given how irony works, poking fun at the nuclear goons is funnier.

Edit

It is important that human memory is poo poo. In fact, my dissertation was on how much of human memory was bullshit and socially conditioned.

ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Feb 8, 2017

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

The "nuclear goons" in this thread are of the "global warming is a deadly serious concern and nuclear power is our best shot despite some downsides" persuasion, not the "nuclear is the perfect fuel with no downsides" persuasion. Sometimes people come in assuming the latter and wind up getting shouted down for it

Trabisnikof
Dec 24, 2005

hobbesmaster posted:

He'd have been right if the cooling system didn't fail!

Sorry I mean he was talking about SONGS not Fukushima. So the 3 month downtime he describes turned into a decommissioning.

SONGS was mismanaged as gently caress:

a nuke worker 2 years before the final outage posted:

EASILY the worst plant I have been to.

EASILY the worst HP Department I have seen.

EASILY the worst Procedures I have tried to follow.

SONGS really is in trouble and you know what?... I don't even feel sorry for them! I maybe would if they were willing to accept just how screwed up they are, but the level of both ignorance AND arrogance around the plant is astounding.

So they just dumped literally THOUSANDS of gallons of contaminated water from the RWST into their Aux Feed Water Tunnel. About 2 to 3 feet deep in there! Not to mention the fact there were people in there when the water started coming in who had a "limited means of egress". Now, if that was the only incident (or maybe even just one of two or three) you could say, "Well, stuff happens"... but it's not!

Almost daily, the Security Dept has failing equipment, resulting in long lines of people trying to get in to the plant. If it's not the hand-geometry readers it's the X-Ray machines. If it's not those it's the turnstiles at the parking lot. If it's not those, it's the vehicle bollards. If it's not those it's the "Heavy Blocking Vehicles" that they put in place of the broken bollards not being able to move, as the batteries are dead... I could go on. We're not talking lines that take 30 mins to get into work, oh no... we're talking lines of people that take THREE HOURS to get into the PA!!

The Ops Dept has had their wrists slapped by INPO... as has Training.

The HP Dept is the weakest I've seen, with absolutely no balls whatsoever! "Service Organization" is what they say. No plans for work to be carried out, no briefs for big evolutions, absolutely NO communication, people in positions who have no right being there... I could go on and on and on and on.

Procedures are open to interpretation. How can you follow a document VERBATIM that is "open to interpretation"?

Injuries are a daily occurrence at SONGS. It was the same last year.

Dropped items are also a daily occurrence - it's genuinely amazing and downright LUCKY that they have not killed anyone with a falling object YET! Again, it was the same last year.

Their "Nuclear Notification" program is an absolute joke. It is impossible to weed out the important notifications that may have issues that need addressed, due to the literally HUNDREDS of DAILY notifications written about people being late to a training class, or not holding the handrail while ascending the stairs, or someone picking their nose while walking, or not wiping their butt after going to the bathroom etc etc. On that same subject, there is little to NO feedback on notifications submitted.

Management is obviously failing. They have no idea what they're doing but the good ol' boy/surfer dude routine is alive and well at SONGS.

In my opinion (using my right to free speech) the best thing that could happen to this place is to remove everyone from General Foreman positions and up (and a large amount of Supervisor positions) and bring in a new owner. Closing the plant down is an option, but I'd love to see the smug looks wiped off the faces of the Edison management when they see another Utility Company SUCCESSFULLY running their plant!

Avoid!

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

QuarkJets posted:

The "nuclear goons" in this thread are of the "global warming is a deadly serious concern and nuclear power is our best shot despite some downsides" persuasion, not the "nuclear is the perfect fuel with no downsides" persuasion. Sometimes people come in assuming the latter and wind up getting shouted down for it

I understand that point of view, and on some days I can be convinced. Essentially, my opinion, not that you asked, is that nuclear fission is a perfectly fine method of generating power, but this "fineness" is predicated on wide adoption of Thorium reactors, which escalates the safety margin and helps eliminate the waste issue, and the development of an actual plan for the processing and storage of whatever fission waste products remain.

This last part is extremely important, because the way it stands now, we in the United States have absolutely no plan for the long term storage of radioactive waste. Neither does anyone else really, but at least in places like Europe, they are actually very good about recycling and reprocessing spent fuel.

In any case, I just thought that anecdote from 2011 GBS was funny. I am not trying to say anything that should be interpreted as a criticism of the idea of nuclear power generation, or the people who are in favor of it... at least in this thread.

I'm sure somewhere I can find someone whose hero is that kid who built the breeder reactor in his backyard. :pram:

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Over time I've become less and less convinced that we need to do much more than on-site storage with really well-engineered casks

AreWeDrunkYet
Jul 8, 2006

ZombieLenin posted:

I understand that point of view, and on some days I can be convinced. Essentially, my opinion, not that you asked, is that nuclear fission is a perfectly fine method of generating power, but this "fineness" is predicated on wide adoption of Thorium reactors, which escalates the safety margin and helps eliminate the waste issue, and the development of an actual plan for the processing and storage of whatever fission waste products remain.

The thing is, and this is what gets confused for nuclear cheerleading, even the worst implementation of nuclear power is far safer than the alternatives of coal and natural gas. Reprocessing and good waste disposal processes are nice to haves, but even leaving nuclear waste in an open pit would be an improvement over continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Farmer Crack-Ass
Jan 2, 2001

this is me posting irl

QuarkJets posted:

Over time I've become less and less convinced that we need to do much more than on-site storage with really well-engineered casks

I feel like former chemical weapons depots could also be reasonably used for housing those casks, especially as the casks are far less dangerous than canisters of nerve gas.

Zudgemud
Mar 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I feel like former chemical weapons depots could also be reasonably used for housing those casks, especially as the casks are far less dangerous than canisters of nerve gas.

Nerve gas often goes to poo poo in a few decades of inproper storage, definitely useless after a couple of centuries, nuclear waste can be dangerous for a time equivalent of the time between the ancient Sumerians and present day. It's the unpredictability of ensuring safe storage during this time frame that makes nuclear storage quite a bit more complex.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Zudgemud posted:

Nerve gas often goes to poo poo in a few decades of inproper storage, definitely useless after a couple of centuries, nuclear waste can be dangerous for a time equivalent of the time between the ancient Sumerians and present day. It's the unpredictability of ensuring safe storage during this time frame that makes nuclear storage quite a bit more complex.

On the time scale of 1000s of years we're not really worried about the radiation anymore. We're basically just worried about heavy metal toxicity at that point, in which case you'd want to take the same kind of precautions that you take with any dangerous industrial waste product. We know how to deal with all kinds of dangerous waste products, and we already do a pretty good job of dealing with nuclear waste; we don't need to seal it away inside of a giant mountain or launch them into the sun. In fact, spent nuclear fuel actually still has a lot of usable energy content in it, so ease-of-access is actually a desired feature of any storage solution.

And if you're worried about radioactive waste, then you should know that coal fly ash produced at a coal power plant is 100x more radioactive than the nuclear waste produced for an equivalent amount of electricity at a nuclear power plant.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0932/ML093280447.pdf

quote:

Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.

Based on the predicted combustion of 2516 million tonsof coal in the United States and 12,580 million tons worldwide during the year 2040, cumulative releases for the 100 years of coal combustion following 1937 are predicted to be:

U.S. release (from combustion of 111,716 million tons):
Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 357,491 tons

Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):
Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 2,039,709 tons

That's all real radiation, and if the LNT model is correct it's causing real cancers and real deaths.

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

The thing is, and this is what gets confused for nuclear cheerleading, even the worst implementation of nuclear power is far safer than the alternatives of coal and natural gas. Reprocessing and good waste disposal processes are nice to haves, but even leaving nuclear waste in an open pit would be an improvement over continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Right, but Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.

What I mean to say is that, despite nuclear power generation's excellent safety record, these three incidents show how human error can lead to nuclear accidents that we barely have power to contain. Accidents that can potentially create a situation where large swaths of land are uninhabitable for thousands of years.

The nuclear waste issue is something different, but related. The more concerning thing about nuclear waste is the timescales on which it needs to be isolated, which brings up anthropological and sociological issues (now we are in my area of expertise). This is the case in as much as you not only have to store the waste in a way where you can ensure its containment for tens of thousands of years, but you also have to pass the knowledge of that waste, its dangers, and location to generations of humans tens of thousands of years in the future.

That last part is actually harder to do than the technological isolation.

Now, you might tell me, and rightly so, that even given what I've just said, coal power is essentially killing the Earth. I agree, which is why I am not against nuclear power. My opinion is that nuclear fission, until such a time as you can get energy positive fusion to work, is a great solution to this problem; however, we owe it to human beings past, present, and future to get it right and to ensure as best as we possibly can that:

1. No future nuclear disaster threatens to despoil large portions of the Earth, on what would be a permanent basis using human timescales.

2. We minimize the impact of fission waste products on the future Earth.

I mean, I could make an argument about how for profit power generation makes what I am suggesting impossible, but I won't. Instead, I will just say that we can help solve the above problems by actually developing a plan--remove the political considerations it isn't that hard--for the recycling, re-purposing, and storage of fission waste AND by the adoption of reactor designs that we know will work, are far safer, and produce much less in terms of waste products.

It could be claimed that what I am asking is "politically" impossible at this point; however, at the current moment new fission plants are just as politically impossible in the much of the West. This is because, rightly or wrongly, people are afraid nuclear power. All they see is TEPCOs gently caress up and stories about entire abandoned cities in the Ukraine. Therefore, I see my criteria as prerequisites to the expansion of nuclear power because, besides doing what I suggest they'll do, my suggestions will help alleviate people's nuclear phobias.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

ZombieLenin posted:

Right, but Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.


What about them? Only one of those killed people who weren't actively working next to a reactor, and one of them didn't even injure a single person.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

ZombieLenin posted:

Right, but Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.

What I mean to say is that, despite nuclear power generation's excellent safety record, these three incidents show how human error can lead to nuclear accidents that we barely have power to contain. Accidents that can potentially create a situation where large swaths of land are uninhabitable for thousands of years.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill

BattleMoose
Jun 16, 2010

ZombieLenin posted:

Right, but Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.

As has already been mentioned, very few deaths. In terms of industrial deaths that occur every year, these number are just insignificant. Especially compared to industrial disasters which can and have killed thousands of people.


ZombieLenin posted:

What I mean to say is that, despite nuclear power generation's excellent safety record, these three incidents show how human error can lead to nuclear accidents that we barely have power to contain. Accidents that can potentially create a situation where large swaths of land are uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Thousands of years is incorrect, timescales are a great deal shorter of that.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

BattleMoose posted:

As has already been mentioned, very few deaths. In terms of industrial deaths that occur every year, these number are just insignificant. Especially compared to industrial disasters which can and have killed thousands of people.

Everyone loves hydrolectric power, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

170,000 dead, 11 million displaced. Say the name to the average person, nobody will even recognize it.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong
In 1982 in Venezuela, a fossil fuel plant caught fire and killed over 128 people: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/power-plant-burns-in-venezuela http://www.fireworld.com/Archives/tabid/93/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86994/Inferno-at-Tacoa.aspx

The disaster included massive flows of superheated oil fuel running down into a nearby village and people and property being scorched by the heat and pressure wave from the main explosion up to 3 miles away.

Pander
Oct 9, 2007

Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.



Yes but those are 3rd world/brown people. Who cares if hundreds of thousands of those people die when invisible atoms might be affecting me!

Number Ten Cocks
Feb 25, 2016

by zen death robot
Am I allowed to not care about either of these issues? Because I feel that's a fairly popular position tbh.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

ZombieLenin posted:

Right, but Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.

What I mean to say is that, despite nuclear power generation's excellent safety record, these three incidents show how human error can lead to nuclear accidents that we barely have power to contain. Accidents that can potentially create a situation where large swaths of land are uninhabitable for thousands of years.

All of these accidents are comparable to the average fly ash spill, yet no one seems to ever worry about coal power. And like I already pointed out, "uninhabitable for thousands of years" is simply not how radiation works.

Did you even read my post, or the post right after it? All of your information on nuclear waste is completely wrong.


ZombieLenin posted:

1. No future nuclear disaster threatens to despoil large portions of the Earth, on what would be a permanent basis using human timescales.

2. We minimize the impact of fission waste products on the future Earth.

These are already the standards applied to nuclear power. The problem is that coal power isn't subject to these same standards; everyone seems to be okay with coal's ability to despoil large portions of the Earth and to leave behind hazardous waste products. When a huge accident happens the news barely covers it because that is just the price we pay for coal, oh well, but loving TMI, which basically did nothing by comparison to a typical fly ash spill, is a big deal to everyone.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 9, 2017

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]
So I have another set of questions about the Fukushima radiation levels. The latest radiation estimate is up to 650sv/h. This, I guess, means that part of the corium is close to the robot doing the detecting. I'm wondering why it is that researchers can spend a few seconds within feet of the corium deposit known as the "Elephant Foot" in Chernobyl, while the 650sv/h at Fukushima could kill a person in less than a second of exposure?

I'm also curious about the location of the radiation on the control rod connecting bridge. Since we know the core melted out of the bottom of the reactor, isn't this a weird place to have such high radiation levels?

Trabisnikof
Dec 24, 2005

This nukeworker post about SONGS is very applicable to the discussion on Fukushima as well:

quote:

Sorry Cecelia, but there won't be much sympathy for SONGS on this forum. I loved working there, and really liked all the people I met there. But my personal regard for the people doesn't give them a free pass on this one, just as it hasn't previously.

They are a poster child for the anti-nukes, and that isn't fair. But you can't blame Japan for the latest problem entirely. The person holding the license has to shoulder the blame for components they have installed, regardless of the source.

We'd probably give them some slack if there was some defect of which they were not aware. We'd be right on their side if the defective steam generators were anything other than exactly what they knew they were getting. If industry experience has proven the reliability of USA-made components, then why in hell did SONGS not buy them!?!?! No. They brought this on themselves.

It isn't the liberal media's fault that they bought the wrong design. It isn't the nuclear industry's responsibility to defend them just because they are under attack. You are wrong. This could not have happened to "any" plant. It might have happened to some other plant if they were run like San Onofre is run, but the reality is that it didn't happen to any other plant. If it makes you feel better, Davis-Besse is back on the grid, but some people are in prison. If it is any solace to you, Crystal River won't run again after cracking their containment. Maybe they have some steam generators you can buy.

Yes, the anti-nukes have been grossly unfair to them. And yes, the boilers came from a foreign manufacturer. I feel bad that people are going to lose their jobs over this. But, I can't accept their blind arrogant attitude that the world simply has to accept that they are relatively inept at running a nuke plant just because 1) they have been mistreated in the press for decades and 2) California needs their megawatts.

The industry isn't likely to love them after they have skewed the statistics on cost and availability in the wrong direction for so long. And now, they have jeopardized even further the outlook for building new units. Face it, they make the rest of us look bad, and showing support for them will be viewed as acceptance of their low standards.

After all the fuss, excuses don't keep the nuclides inside the pipe where they belong.

They need a better game plan than shrugging their shoulders and saying "we did the best we could, and you need us".

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

ZombieLenin posted:

So I have another set of questions about the Fukushima radiation levels. The latest radiation estimate is up to 650sv/h. This, I guess, means that part of the corium is close to the robot doing the detecting. I'm wondering why it is that researchers can spend a few seconds within feet of the corium deposit known as the "Elephant Foot" in Chernobyl, while the 650sv/h at Fukushima could kill a person in less than a second of exposure?

How long after the incident were researchers spending a few second within feet of the Chernobyl corium?

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

ZombieLenin posted:

So I have another set of questions about the Fukushima radiation levels. The latest radiation estimate is up to 650sv/h. This, I guess, means that part of the corium is close to the robot doing the detecting. I'm wondering why it is that researchers can spend a few seconds within feet of the corium deposit known as the "Elephant Foot" in Chernobyl, while the 650sv/h at Fukushima could kill a person in less than a second of exposure?

I'm also curious about the location of the radiation on the control rod connecting bridge. Since we know the core melted out of the bottom of the reactor, isn't this a weird place to have such high radiation levels?

The robot is much closer to the corium than anyone ever got to the elephant's foot, I suspect it's just a better reading. Remember radiation vs distance is an inverse square relationship.

Also the half lives of this crazy radioactive stuff is quite short - that's why it's radioactive!

Bates
Jun 15, 2006

QuarkJets posted:

All of these accidents are comparable to the average fly ash spill, yet no one seems to ever worry about coal power.

Because that's not how people evaluate risk. You're more likely to die in a car than in a plane but people worry more about plane crashes. If there's a way to change that psychological quirk then we should do that but otherwise it's just a reality the nuclear industry will have to accept. The nuclear industry simply can't afford to have any "incidents" however trivial they are compared to other issues.

Tasmantor
Aug 13, 2007
Horrid abomination

QuarkJets posted:

All of these accidents are comparable to the average fly ash spill, yet no one seems to ever worry about coal power. And like I already pointed out, "uninhabitable for thousands of years" is simply not how radiation works.

Did you even read my post, or the post right after it? All of your information on nuclear waste is completely wrong.


These are already the standards applied to nuclear power. The problem is that coal power isn't subject to these same standards; everyone seems to be okay with coal's ability to despoil large portions of the Earth and to leave behind hazardous waste products. When a huge accident happens the news barely covers it because that is just the price we pay for coal, oh well, but loving TMI, which basically did nothing by comparison to a typical fly ash spill, is a big deal to everyone.

I think people don't know how bad coal really is. It's so prevalent that accidents don't get the coverage that a :siren: NUCLEAR :siren: accident gets. I think it was last year but a whole coal face in Australia caught fire and burned for like 10 day I think before they got it out. while it got news coverage it was always like a stub article like, yeah so Victoria is still on fire if you're near the fire try not to breath to much. I never saw any "experts" get interviewed about how it happened or just how bad it was but Fukishima (sp?) got in depth coverage for weeks. This creates an assumption that coal is safe because it gets a disproportionately low amount of coverage. What I'm making a hash of saying is, I don't think people are okay with coal's ability to pollute, they just don't realize it.

Pander
Oct 9, 2007

Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.



Tasmantor posted:

I think people don't know how bad coal really is. It's so prevalent that accidents don't get the coverage that a :siren: NUCLEAR :siren: accident gets. I think it was last year but a whole coal face in Australia caught fire and burned for like 10 day I think before they got it out. while it got news coverage it was always like a stub article like, yeah so Victoria is still on fire if you're near the fire try not to breath to much. I never saw any "experts" get interviewed about how it happened or just how bad it was but Fukishima (sp?) got in depth coverage for weeks. This creates an assumption that coal is safe because it gets a disproportionately low amount of coverage. What I'm making a hash of saying is, I don't think people are okay with coal's ability to pollute, they just don't realize it.

The magic words are "extensive radiation release".

If you can fit that into a story about coal, it'd get traction. But nobody really thinks about the uranium and thorium in coal smoke, instead turning into a matter of greenhouse gases, which is its own little liturgical debate.

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

QuarkJets posted:

All of these accidents are comparable to the average fly ash spill, yet no one seems to ever worry about coal power. And like I already pointed out, "uninhabitable for thousands of years" is simply not how radiation works.

I don't mean to challenge you here, but it depends on the nature of the contamination. How long something is "unliveable" would depend on variables, like the nature of the accident and the contaminating material, and what you are calling "habitable".

If we look at Chernobyl this is the most catastrophic radiation release in human history. The environment was heavily polluted by "short" half life material like Cesium (which I just read is taking longer than expected to exit the environment), but most of the long decay radioactive material was/is contained by the sarcophagus.

However, it could have been much worse. Had the corium made it to the pooled water below the reactor the resulting explosion would have sent the corium (not just the lid and the burning graphite) straight into the air, and we would have lived in a much different world.

And while it certainly cannot be said that the Chernobyl exclusion zone is completely devoid of life--people visit, animals live there, and so do some people--much of the exclusion zone will be "unfit" for human habitation for as long as 20 thousand years. I take this to mean that the radiological contamination of the enviornment is such that any food grown here would be poison--hell radiological contamination in milk has been Belarus and the Ukraine today.

The real problem would be if you had a nuclear reactor disaster where the poo poo hit the fan, or the corium escaped containment in it's hot stage and the result was a flash steam explosion. If this were to happen you are exposing the environment to things that are highly radioactive with very long half-lives in abundance, including (depending on reactor type) highly transuranic elements like plutonium-239 (24k year half-life) or neptunium-237 (2 million year half-life).

I am not sure how one could argue that this type of disaster would not cause effected areas to become uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Incidentally, this is the problem with radioactive waste, particularly fission power production waste, generally. Multiple studies in multiple countries have concluded that any static waste repository would need to remain isolated on a scale of 100k to 1m years.

The reason Thorium seems attractive is because it:

1. It's safer because as soon as you remove the neutron source the reaction stops
2. It's safer because designs like the LFTR use liquid fuel and have built in "overheat" containment
3. It produces more fuel that can be used in the reaction process, and produces lest end run waste.

Am I wrong about any of this? I am totally open to that possibility! If I am educate me--I already told you that science and I have a dangerous relationship.

quote:

These are already the standards applied to nuclear power.

I beg to differ. Yes, nuclear power generation has high safety standards; however, we:

1. Currently do not have a long term waste storage plan..
2. Reactor design adoption is about economics, not safety or long term waste management

And none of this addresses human error. Let's leave the disasters out of it. I once lived in San Onfre. There is a power plant there where, despite all of the safety regulations, Betchtel installed the loving nuclear reactor backwards.

quote:

The problem is that coal power isn't subject to these same standards; everyone seems to be okay with coal's ability to despoil large portions of the Earth and to leave behind hazardous waste products. When a huge accident happens the news barely covers it because that is just the price we pay for coal, oh well, but loving TMI, which basically did nothing by comparison to a typical fly ash spill, is a big deal to everyone.

loving agreed! Coal is terrible, but in a round about way you're pointing back to my softly spoken critique about power generation for profit, which in turn is a softly spoken critique about a socio-economic order whose foundation is the exploitation of people and the planet for profit.

ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Feb 9, 2017

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Bates posted:

Because that's not how people evaluate risk. You're more likely to die in a car than in a plane but people worry more about plane crashes. If there's a way to change that psychological quirk then we should do that but otherwise it's just a reality the nuclear industry will have to accept. The nuclear industry simply can't afford to have any "incidents" however trivial they are compared to other issues.

And you are much, much more likely to die from coal waste products or a coal power accident than nuclear waste products or nuclear accidents. But the two are much more similar than car vs plane crashes; in a car you at least have the illusion of control, but it's not like you can control the output of your local coal power plant. For that reason, I don't think that the car vs plane analogy is good here.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

ZombieLenin posted:

And while it certainly cannot be said that the Chernobyl exclusion zone is completely devoid of life--people visit, animals live there, and so do some people--much of the exclusion zone will be "unfit" for human habitation for as long as 20 thousand years. I take this to mean that the radiological contamination of the enviornment is such that any food grown here would be poison--hell radiological contamination in milk has been Belarus and the Ukraine today.

It's far more likely that it means "the general background radiation count in this area is higher than some arbitrary limit we've decided on but lower than the totally natural background count of some areas of the planet that people live and thrive and survive in today."

http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-levels/

Levels of radiation *today* are on the order of microsieverts per hour in a lot of areas. That's 8.76 millisieverts per year. Nothing about that is "uninhabitable." Ramsar in Iran has natural background levels on the order of 10 times higher, and thousands of people live there in the high-background areas. The food they grow isn't poison. They live long natural lives. There's not even any real evidence they have higher cancer rates than anyone else (granted, small sample size).

If there were some global disaster that wiped away our advanced knowledge of radiation and scythed away our buildings and wound the clock back to the 1600s, people would move back into Pripyat, and live there. Some of them would die early of cancers, there'd be birth defects, there'd be chromosomal abnormalities, but people would inhabit it. They'd grow crops and eat them, they'd raise cattle and drink the milk, and they'd live. It wouldn't be considered some cursed ground, it wouldn't like Ravenholme where nobody goes anymore and just tells dark stories about. It'd be an area with a higher than usual cancer rate, and people would tolerate it. In another 1000 years? There'd be no difference at all, let alone 20,000.

Meanwhile the lead and arsenic and other heavy metals that pollutes a few hundred thousand acres of land when a coal slurry pond breaks lose? That stuff's forever. And people would put up with that too.


ZombieLenin posted:


loving agreed! Coal is terrible, but in a round about way you're pointing back to my softly spoken critique about power generation for profit, which in turn is a softly spoken critique about a socio-economic order whose foundation is the exploitation of people and the planet for profit.

What the gently caress does *profit* have to do with it? We build power plants because we like things like air conditioning, and not freezing to death in the winter because we didn't spend the previous 9 months chopping wood and curing meat, and medicine, and dental care, and sewer systems, and water we can drink without getting sick. Chernobyl wasn't run for *profit*. The exploitation of the planet? Get the gently caress over yourself. "No, don't go out of the cave and chop those trees down to build a hut, that's exploiting the planet! Stay here and bash your abscessed teeth out with this rock the way Gaia intended!" This is hippy-trippy bullshit you're spouting.

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Feb 9, 2017

Number Ten Cocks
Feb 25, 2016

by zen death robot
Relevant.

https://twitter.com/ItMeIRL/status/829770469733761025

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I thought the main problem with Chernobyl is that there's random piles of actually super radioactive poo poo just lying around because nobody really bothered to pick it up, except for the subsequent scientific teams and then they just put it in random buildings and didn't bother to clean up after themselves, and if you wouldn't know if you were standing in it until too late.

Less that the entire area is bathed in constant atomic hell energy that will melt your eyeballs out.

Presumably if people were really bothered they could pick up most of the badly radioactive stuff and put it somewhere else.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Feb 9, 2017

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

OwlFancier posted:

I thought the main problem with Chernobyl is that there's random piles of actually super radioactive poo poo just lying around because nobody really bothered to pick it up, except for the subsequent scientific teams and then they just put it in random buildings and didn't bother to clean up after themselves, and if you wouldn't know if you were standing in it until too late.

Less that the entire area is bathed in constant atomic hell energy that will melt your eyeballs out.

Presumably if people were really bothered they could pick up most of the badly radioactive stuff and put it somewhere else.

A huge amount of the "stuff" is radioactive heavy metal dust though.

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PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.


Saying "favorite Polonium-241 isotope" is very redundant. :colbert:

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