Monday, March 14, 2011

Nuclear phobia

To hear the media tell it, the only things damaged in the terrible Japanese earthquake were a few power reactors. That's all the TV talks about. With tens of thousands dead, incalculable damage to homes, businesses, cultural treasures, bridges, and infrastructure, all the TV talks about is damaged power reactors. Even Fox who I had hoped for better from joined into the "nuclear power is the only story" line.
Could I be hearing anti-nuclear axes being ground?

5 comments:

Evan said...

The BBC is doing a good job of covering the disaster. On Friday after work our office had a few drinks downstairs at the Longhorn. People were thinking that up to a 1,000 casualties. I was the outlier saying at least 10,000 and likely closer to 100,000. Few people know that magnitude is a log-based, so an 8.9/9.0 quake has seven+ time more energy than an 8.2 quake (which is what the plants were designed to survive, so they fact they made it through a 9.0...) .

The nuclear plants are front and center as it makes a good story. Worst case scenario right now is localized radiation *if* there is a complete meltdown and the whole nuclear pile melts through to the concrete core-catcher.

Its an amazing feat of engineering that despite the earthquake, the tsunami that followed, two hydrogen explosions and the loss of coolant that the reactor containers haven't been breached.

I question the wisdom of not putting the diesel generators on higher ground though.

Unfortunately there will be a knee-jerk reaction and might kill nuclear power just as permits were being issued again. I think the lesson is to try not and build nuclear power plants along the ring of fire.

Evan said...

Unfortunately it looks like the containment units in at least one reactor have been breached near the bottom.

The spent fuel rods at Reactor #4 caught fire. Tepco is asking for help from the US Navy to drop water from helicopters onto the burning fuel rods.

Unconfirmed reports that reactor #2 has experienced a full meltdown and that the last 50 workers are being ordered to evacuate.

Dstarr said...

Well, as far as not building power plants along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Japanese don't have many options. Their entire country is smack dab on the ring of fire.
My bitch is the concentration of news stories on the damaged reactors. Japan has been wrecked, and all the news people can talk about is damage to a few nuclear reactors. I think the casualties, the property damage, the disruption of life deserve a little bit of coverage. The newsies have reduced a nationwide disaster to a trivial anti-nuclear story.

Evan said...

I've been following the entire situation in Japan very closely and donated to the Japanese Red Cross because they need all the help they can get.

What I find galling is that the US offered within hours of the earthquake to send a team of our best nuclear engineers to shut down the reactors and set up an alternative power supply (which I assume would have been one of our nuclear carriers). Tepco and the PM of Japan declined the offer and set themselves up for Chernobyl x6. They're getting out of the danger zone, but if those fuel rods melt and reach criticality again it will be one helluva a mess.

I think what will emerge after is the incompetent handling of the disaster by Tepco and Japan's government to save face by not getting help from the US.

Dstarr said...

I thought I saw that story too, the Japanese refusal to accept help early on. Can't remember where tho. I'm surprised that in 6 days they haven't been able to bring in mobile diesel generating sets with enough capacity to run critical pumps. I remember when the transformer blew at Scully Systems, blacking out the entire building. We were able to get a diesel generator set within a day to put the lights (and computers and power tools and everything else) back on.
The Journal has run articles critical of Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government.
Today Japan declared this a "Level 5" disaster, as bad as Three Mile Island. Actually it's worse. Three Mile Island wrecked one reactor but nobody was hurt. This this has wrecked four reactors and has released more radioactivity than Three Mile Island did.
Funny, we used to quote radiation levels in terms of RADs or REMS. 400 RADS or REMS was the 50% fatality dose, half the people exposed would die. On this one they are quoting "microSeverts" and "milliSeverts". I have no idea what the 50% fatality dose is in milli or micro Severts. And they are quoting the radiation measurements to three significant figures which is a little suspicious to me. I don't think the instruments are THAT accurate. It's not clear to me how much radioactivity is being released.