Japan - It's worse than you know....
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Monday, December 16, 2024 06:17
VIEWED: 6776
PAGE 5 of 7
Hello,
My Dad used to call it a 'Dead Man's Switch' and I am surprised that there are any reactors built without it.
In essence, in order for a reactor to work at all, everything should be working. If anything fails, the reactor should shut off. Safely.
On my Dad's lawnmower, the switch is represented thusly: If you release the handle, the lawnmower shuts off. Reduces the chance of cutting yourself or someone else because you lost control of the device.
Dead Man? Dead Power? Dead whatever? It should shut itself off. Safely. Automatically. Inevitably. Unavoidably.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Hardware has the liquefaction thing right. It’s what caused so much destruction in our Marina District during the Loma Prieta ‘quake. It’s what happens, as he said, anywhere land has been filled in, and the Marina was built on fill from the Bay.
It’s weird to me, too, that people would go right up to it...human curiosity is funny, isn’t it? To me that’s not as unusual as on the monster movies where people stand there staring up at the monster for like 30 seconds before they even start to run, but I think Hollywood CAN be blamed for that one!
The water thing is interesting. I’d guess it’s the same as the crevasses, in that groundwater is being shoved UP by the movement. It’s not necessarily coming from any body of water (we had no such thing in the Marina), it could be just an upwelling of groundwater...after all, if the area is built on fill, it’s essentially like it was built on sand...and water wells up through sand...
As usual, Sig gives us some real good understanding, and I, too, thank you for that. Thank you Kiki, too. It’s hard to get info from the media, there are so many different “versions” and so many different opinions. I’ll tell you tho’, Sig, MY advice to anyone living anywhere in Japan would be “get out”! Earthquakes, tsunamis, radioactivity, volcanoes in the South, and before all that crowding, pollution...it’s not a place I’d have wanted to visit even before all this. Now? I think we should open up for refugees!!
Mostly I just find it all terribly depressing, a little scary even from this far away, and most of all angering. People wanting profit are just far too willing to ignore some obvious dangers and not have plans in effect for correcting them, and I’m off the fence now; I don’t support nuclear. If you have an electrical plant blow up, it only hurts those near it. A quake that breaks a dam that provides water energy could kill many, but again only locally. As far as I know, only nuclear can cause damage to an entire country, other countries outside its border, the entire world. Oil is bad, period, for so many reasons, including how much damage it might do on a large scale. I’m for renewables. Used to be I only cared about nuclear insofar as what we’re doing with the waste, but this has kicked me off the fence. There will ALWAYS be human error; there will ALWAYS be people whose greed outweighs their common sense or desire for safety, and nuclear to me has the biggest potential for harm.Quote:
Damned straight, Anthony! Add that to the above, and it’s just bad news all around.
I think that the priority for any business in this situation is in limiting liability. Often, the route to limiting liability is limiting *perception* of liability by limiting information about problems. Even if this causes more harm in the long run, they hope they can control perceptions in order to protect their interests.
I should mention that the same is true of governments.
As Sig said,Quote:
Sig, if that’s true, why aren’t more of them hollering? Why aren’t they DEMANDING to be heard? I kinda know the answer to that one, too, but it pisses me off. If the guys trained and educated on this stuff don’t speak up loudly, none of us can know any better.
But then I looked at the IAEA's charter, which is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, the NRC's reliance on the nuclear industry at home, and the mutual embrace of TEPCO and the Japanese government and I realized that there really IS a conspiracy to withhold information. Not a conscious one, just one of mutual outlook and purpose. Nearly all nuclear engineers everywhere feel the same way.Quote:
It’s not a rant, love, it’s the truth!
It is a conspiracy which crosses class, politics and nations, it is a conspiracy of hubris . There is still no humility in the face of power which ... five large accidents later... we still have not yet realized we can't control.
Gawd, Mike, you really think it was shame and weakness where Kat
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hardware:Quote:
Originally posted by jameron4eva:
I agree on that, im just saying the people in CHARGE of ensuring protocals are met, workers and civilians are safe, and that the most destructive, powerful, and while still very, VERY deadly, beautiful, thing that we've ever discovered, and still know very little about, is keept protected, didn't do there job. Because THEY chose to put a nuclear facility, on an ACTIVE fault line. That to me, is the biggest mistake.
Which would pretty much preclude putting a nuclear reactor anywhere in Japan. The reactors survived the earthquake with minimal damage. They scrammed as designed and it wasn't until the tsunami took out their generators (Why they were in the basement is another story. Next time, generators and diesel fuel on the roof, spent fuel pool in the basement. Not the other way around)
Our local nuke plant shut down last week, for "routine" maintence. Didn't make any difference to our power supply...
That nuke plant is located on a river, literally a stone's throw from a hydro dam.
That same hydro dam caught on fire a couple years ago, and "could not be extinguished". Repairs took 1 year costing $100-million. When it caught fire, it caused an "emergency" at the nuke plant, which requires hydro electricity to operate the nuke plant cooling pumps...
This same power company, TVA, caused "the world's worst environmental disaster" 25 miles upstream, when a dirt dam failed at a coal power plant. A massive wall of coal ash slurry hit the lake/river, causing a "tidal wave" that would have killed 1,000 people if it had happened on a summer day. Instead it wiped out all the boat docks and filled the river with poison.
My local nuke plant is thus located downstream of THREE dams on 3 giant lakes, and one of these dams is DIRT. This nuke plant would thus be UNDERWATER if any of those dams failed, and the nuke plant was hit by a "tidal wave" 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean. This nuke plant is actually designed for being underwater, with painted lines on the walls showing where the water level would be depending on how many dams failed... The piping is designed to EXPLODE depending on where the water level is on the walls of the nuke plant...
In 2010, this TVA nuke plant building contractor was an IRANIAN CITIZEN... The nearby Oak Ridge nuke bomb factories were also run by an illegal alien, who could not travel outside USA because the border police would not allow him to re-enter USA. 4,000 other foreign citizens also work at the ORNL nuke bomb factories... 1,000s of TONS of uranium were accidentally AND INTENTIONALLY released from ORNL in the air and water, or STOLEN BY ISRAEL.
Read the Top Secret Govt Report:
Quote:
"Conservative estimates indicated that 35,000 pounds of uranium were released into the air from all sources. 4,300 pounds of uranium a month was unaccounted for or released to the environment. ETTP operates an incinerator which handles radioactive, hazardous and uranium-contaminated PCB wastes. ETTP generated transuranic elements (isotopes with atomic numbers greater than uranium) such as neptunium-237 and plutonium-239; fission products such as techneitum-99; PCBs; toxic metals; and volatile organic compunds such as trichloroethene (TCE) and present risk to the public. Some contaminants migrated outside the Plant boundary. Waste disposal practices included direct discharge of radioactive materials, toxics and caustics to holding ponds and storm drains, and incineration and burial. Reports reflected a number of spills of nitric and hydrochloric acids, in one case 200 gallons. Numerous large fires and explosions were reported. It is impossible to characterize exposure because of inadequate surveys and incomplete records. Records indicate that as contamination levels increased, exposure controls were reduced. Contamination above limits was commonly detected. Operations have released a variety of contaminants into the environment, such as burial of low-level and hazardous wasteNOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Wow, PN, how do you sleep at night with all the paranoia in your head yelling at you?
If that much uranium had been release by that plant you would be dead.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36
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"Wow, PN, how do you sleep at night with all the paranoia in your head yelling at you?"
Hello,
He doesn't sleep. He's kept awake by the blood-curdling screams of women in his back yard.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Well PN we've found something that we agree on, we are both anti-nuclear power. I hope you're mannaging okay down there, you talk a lot about things that are unpleasant and scary, I want you to be okay and safe.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
Well PN we've found something that we agree on, we are both anti-nuclear power. I hope you're mannaging okay down there, you talk a lot about things that are unpleasant and scary, I want you to be okay and safe.
The nuke plant is still shut down for the past 3 weeks for "fuel reloading". Radioactive spent fuel rods are stored on site...forever...just like Fukushima.
Black Rain - The rainwater from this drain pipe has the highest level of radiation among all sites checked by our team of journalists in their three week-long visits to the Fukushima hot zone
http://rense.com/general93/deadz.htm
Robot Finds 270 Millisieverts An Hour In Reactor Building #1
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201104190193.html
US Marines To Be Moved From Japan To Guam
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20_13.html
FDA Won't Test Alaska Fish For Radiation - Don't Worry, Be Happy
http://rense.com/general93/curr.htm
Due to the extremely high radiation levels near the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant, the seaside area of South Soma is the last site for these local police officers to search for bodies of tsunami victims. Police officers told the journalist team that if radiation levels had not been so high, many more residents would have been rescued.
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Hardware, you seem to be the kind of person who likes to get the facts, but when you go after them be sure to get ALL of the facts. As useful as the IAEA website is, they DON'T mention about 95% of the critical events and findings at the site. (That's not an exaggeration.) They DON'T mention that the front wall of reactor No 4 has to be shored up, or that highly contaminated water is seeping in to reactor building basements and turbine buildings from god-knows-where, that it appears that uncontrolled fission occurred in SFP No 4 and that bits of fuel rods were found 4 miles away. This isn't according to crackpot conspiracists but according to TEPCO officials and nuclear engineers.
Start here, with Arnie Gunderson, a former nuclear power executive and engineer who discusses the state of the reactors and explains why (1) either there was a Chernobyl-level radiation release at Fukushima or (2) uncontrolled fisison uccurred in SFP No. 4
The IAEA's stated mission is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. What that kind of mission, they're going to say -and keep saying no matter what -We've got this under control. We can handle it. Everything's going to be OK.
In any case, my biggest objection to nuclear power isn't explosion or accidents, its the problem of long-term nuclear waste. Those wastes will far outlast ANY civilization which created them, and therefore ANY civilization's ability to monitor and control them. And storing them on-site until... ??? or putting them in a tin can and burying them in a mountain is NOT my idea of proper handling! Until someone comes up with an idea better than "kicking the can down the road" of how to handle these isotopes, we are doing our children and their children for many generations a vast disservice.
The reason why these isotopes are so long-lived is because they don't decay very quickly. Therefore, the radiation they emit is low and inconsequential UNTIL you ingest them. There is a difference between being "irradiated" and "contaminated". Of the two "contaminated" will ultimately cost more lives.
Here are the relevant half-lives
Quote:
Iodine 129 (I-129)- 15.7 million years
Plutonium (Pu) - has at least 15 different isotopes, all of which are radioactive.
Plutonium 238 - 87.7 years.
Plutonium 239 - 24,100 years
plutonium 240 - 6,560 years.
External exposure to plutonium poses very little health risk. Internal exposure to plutonium is an extremely serious health hazard. It generally stays in the body for decades, exposing organs and tissues to radiation and increasing the risk of cancer and kidney damage.
Uranium (U)
Uranium 238- 4.47 billion years
uranium 235 - 700 million years
Uranium 234 - 246,000 years.
... toxic damage to the kidneys and risk of cancer due to its radioactivity. Since uranium tends to concentrate in specific locations in the body, risk of cancer of the bone, liver cancer and blood diseases (such as leukemia) are increased.
The former Soviet Union distributed small plutonium heaters... tea-kettles, almost... to its outlying settlements as cheap sources of power. Once the Soviet Union fell, tracking ceased and knowledge disappeared. It wasn't until hunters began showing up with significant radiation burns (because they had warmed themselves at night with a mysterious metal container found in the woods) that knowledge of the program was revived. It sounds like a scifi story but it's not; I'll do my best to find a link to that. This is a very rapid progression to the kind of "lost knowledge" that will make our nuclear waste such a hazard for the future.
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Scary stuff Signe,
Remember that Star Trek episode where Data gets amnesia and is carrying around that suitcase full of nuclear waste and those villagers who are looking after him all start getting sick?
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Ah yes, here is its...
Quote:
In addition to spacecraft, the Soviet Union constructed many unmanned lighthouses and navigation beacons powered by RTGs.[1] Powered by Strontium 90 (90Sr), they are very reliable and provide a steady source of power. Critics argue that they could cause environmental and security problems, as leakage or theft of the radioactive material could pass unnoticed for years (or possibly forever: some of these lighthouses cannot be found because of poor record keeping). In one instance, the radioactive compartments were opened by a thief.[2] In another case, three woodcutters in Georgia came across one of the units and slept close to it as a heat source during a cold night. Two of the three were later hospitalized with severe radiation burns. The unit was eventually recovered and isolated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
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