The slow motion events occurring at Japan's (or GE's) Fukushima reactor cannot be sugar-coated. It is a doomsday scenario unfolding.
Nuclear reactors are not the same as coal/oil/gas electricity plants. Unlike conventional plants, they cannot be turned off. So while brave workers were tending to Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors, attempting against all odds to keep the reactor from overheating, the fuel pool at Unit 4 was left untended; without makeup water to cool them, the fuel rods overheated. Above 1800 oF, an exothermic reaction, a fire, took place with the zirconium cladding around the uranium pellets. Zirconium burned, forming zirconium oxide and hydrogen gas, which then exploded and released radioactive cesium, a semi-volatile metal, to the atmosphere.
Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400 milliseiverts/hour (or 40 rems/hour in U.S. parlance). Considering background is on the order of 1 milliseivert per YEAR, this means a yearly background dose every 9 seconds. Put plainly, workers at the Fukushima reactors are putting their lives in immediate jeopardy.
What is a fuel pool?
Each year a commercial reactor operates, approximately 30 tons of fuel are irradiated. Every year or year and a half, this fuel is moved to a fuel pool for safe storage. Under 20 feet of circulating and replenished water, the fuel is stored. Water shields the radioactivity and cools the fuel, which still gives off heat. If water is not resupplied, which apparently was the case at unit 4, the water levels decline, the fuel is uncovered and it overheats, leading to a hydrogen explosion.
How much cesium-137 is contained in a fuel pool?
The amount of cesium contained in the fuel pool is typically measured in curies or becquerels, but these assessments are meaningless unless you are a physicist. An easier way to look at it is in relation to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, where 100,000 Japanese where killed. Cesium is a semi-volatile material that has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool?
In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of irradiated (what the industry calls "spent") nuclear fuel was equivalent to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb. Ten tons is the amount of irradiated fuel that would be contained in a shipping container or cask used to transport the fuel. Why so much more cesium than the Hiroshima bomb? Because an atomic explosion occurs in milliseconds, but a nuclear reactor operates continuously for years. Many more fissions means much more fission products, including cesium You do the math. If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool..
This is not to say all this material will be released to the atmosphere or ocean. This is the maximum cesium-137 possible inventory at each Fukushima reactor. Each fuel pool at each Fukushima reactor also contains approximately the same amount of strontium-90 and other cancer causing materials. In addition to the fuel pools at each Fukushima reactor, a larger common fuel pool sits at ground level between two reactors in a building with windows. The damage the tsunami caused to this independent fuel pool has not been discussed by the media.
Iodine, cesium and other radionuclides can be carried downwind and inhaled. Radionuclides that land in the sea may be taken up by fish and eaten. When these cancer-causing materials are taken into the body by inhalation or ingestion, they concentrate in different organs. Cesium concentrates in muscle, strontium (like calcium) in bones, iodine in the thyroid. Once in the body, these radioactive materials continue to decay, releasing harmful gamma and beta radiation. Plutonium, also present, gives off alpha radiation. Rearranging the DNA in the human body leads to cancer. To put this in another way, a BWR reactor boils water to produce electricity by generating cancer-causing materials.
Take this out of the nuclear realm. Imagine another harmful poison, botulism. Imagine a botulism reactor, reproducing botuli fast enough to produce heat and steam to turn turbines. Then imagine having to contain these billions of botuli so the public is not harmed. This is essentially the friendly atom that has now come full circle in Japan and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will relicense for an additional 20 years at Vermont Yankee and at 30 other Fukushima-type reactors in the United States. Fortunately, the State of Vermont has taken matters into its own hands and has decided not to allow Vermont Yankee to run past 2012..
Hyla Cass, M.D.: How to Protect Yourself From Radiation
Adam Hamilton: Japan's Earthquake and the Will of God
All Japanese wind turbines survived the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami. Renewables and efficiencies combined with current battery technologies are cheaper than nuclear energy. For more information on why we do not need nuclear energy see www.SafeEnergyAnalyst.org
Chernobyl
Japan
Three strikes and you're out nuclear!
Time to switch over to the clean, green, renewable energy solutions.
We never have any of these problems with wind and solar. none. zero.
With many types of equipment there is a "dead man's switch" which, when not depressed by a conscious effort causes the tool to stop, immediately.
It seems like the controls that insert the rods into proximity with one another would have been set up on a mechanical or battery -back-up system so that when power failed, they would automaticlly retract to a safe position. What am I missing here?
Thanks
FZLO
If you find out more, please post.
Cheers,
FZLO
"A total of 783 spent nuclear fuel rods were stored in the pool (at No. 4). At the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, three reactors--Nos. 4, 5 and 6--were out of service for regular inspections. About 300 to 500 spent nuclear fuel rods are also kept at the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors."
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110315004749.htm
What I don't know is whether these were designed to avoid vaporization of the fissionable material or if there is some way to prevent it. Vaporized plutonium is the worst thing that could happen aside from the whole thing going critical.
- As much as half of the energy used in your home goes to heating and cooling
A well-insulated house saves a lot of energy.
- A seawater Air Conditioning system will use 80% less energy than conventional Air-conditioning system.
- In a car, replacing steel by aluminium can reduce the body mass by around 40 % without compromising safety.
- A propeller-driven aircraft cuts fuel bills by 30%.
- Tankers fitted with sail will burn between 10 and 35 per cent less fuel.
- Freight Trains are using 3 times less fuel than trucks.
http://goo.gl/JAmNn
http://goo.gl/as1Rn
sun, wind, geothermal, kinetic etc.
all of them definetly cheaper than nuclear with only one incident like fukushima / chernobyl / 3M
I did. You didn't include half life decay in your calculation. So your total is wrong.
Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years. You should know that if you are an "expert".
On the other hand, if you are interested in fear mongering and scoring points for your agenda, then by all means you shouldn't worry about facts.
The American public is ignorant enough about science and mathmatics. (Just listen to some odf the baloney being spouted by the media talking heads.)
You have a responsibility to be factual. Doing the math, correctly, isn't that hard.
Mathmatics is a science of logical thinking. If you rely on math to make your point you should use it correctly. It's either right or wrong.
But maybe you believe that if you add 2 + 2 and get 5 that's close enough...
it's a back of the envelope calculation and presented as such,
That is the dirty little secret about nuclear waste that the US Nuclear Lobby doesn't want out, nuclear waste can be recycled back into fresh fuel, called MOX. So long as they keep it from being recycled, they can keep up their mining subsidies, and the waste is available for conversion to weapons grade material.
Fukushima would never have happened with properly engineered, modern designs. The environmentalists knows that, the anti-nuclear movement knows that. That's why it's so important for them to misdirect the public dialog back to 50 year old designs. Great work, blocking progress!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
So the design of the plant may be 50 years old, but what they are actually running would be something that is fairly modern and that has been optimized for 40 years.
The issues of nuclear power cannot be 'engineered' away unless we move to nuclear fusion or move to a more modular reactor design approach (which is inherently safe).
I'ts a small point, but cars are designed to last more than 5 years. 20 year old cars nowadays are not uncommon, and 40 year old cars are still legal to drive. So the comparison isn't as lopsided as you portray it.
More important, the real issue is that the fundamental design has in fact changed significantly in the past 50+ years. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 you will see that we're talking a pressurized water (PWR) design instead of the obsolete boiling water (BWR) design as at Fukushima (which hasn't been licensed for construction in the US for decades). You'll also notice that modern designs like the AP1000 have a passive cooling system that is not vulnerable to loss of power, which is what caused the problems at Fukushima.
but nuclear is by far the biggest payoff for energy contained in unit fuel,
this was an old and frankly p.o.s reactor design,
if they had a breeder facility they wouldn't have all those pools of spent fuel on site,
nevertheless the potential for catastrophe is high at any such facility - and the risk of it actually happening is hard to asses