Black Monday: Nuclear Meltdown in Japan

krazykarl · Mar 14, 2011

Quote from achilles28:

I didn't know ET boasted so many nuclear physicists...

To me, it appears the GOJ and Tokyo Electric (owner/operator) are frantic to downplay the possibility of a full-scale meltdown. 2 of the reactor housing units literally blew apart. Radiation levels were reported 1000 times higher than normal near Fukushima. Entire towns (100,000+) were evacuated and denizens tested. I heard cooling with salt water effectively destroys the reactor casing making the plant a write-off. Clearly, the situation is dire and the authorities want nothing less to create panic and liability. For those that have been dialed in since early Friday morning, Tokyo Electric continued to sound the all clear while the reactor was in partial meltdown. If the situation weren't dire, neighboring towns wouldn't be evacuated, nor would Tokyo Electric pump-in water that destroys their investment.

1000 times higher than normal is still less than a TSA full-body scan. Don't get suckered-in by the hype.

achilles28 · Mar 14, 2011

Quote from krazykarl:

1000 times higher than normal is still less than a TSA full-body scan. Don't get suckered-in by the hype.

Is that right? Interesting.

To counter, the situation is far from under control, and deteriorating.

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achilles28 · Mar 14, 2011

Quote from krazykarl:

1000 times higher than normal is still less than a TSA full-body scan. Don't get suckered-in by the hype.

You know, it just struck me how dangerous those TSA body scanners are. 1000 times above normal x 6 flights a year x 5 years. That's serious radiation exposure.

trader345 · Mar 14, 2011

Quote from achilles28:

You know, it just struck me how dangerous those TSA body scanners are. 1000 times above normal x 6 flights a year x 5 years. That's serious radiation exposure.

I read that the TSA body scanner gives you less radiation exposure than what you get during an average day walking around outside absorbing background radiation. However I still worry about them. I was going to choose to get the patdown instead last time I was at the airport but the line was moving so fast that I didn't want to create a slowdown by asking for the patdown.

dcraig · Mar 14, 2011

Official reports are that the containment at Fukushima Daiichi #3 is intact after the hydrogen explosion and there is no immediate threat of large scale radiation release.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Explosion_rocks_third_Fukushima_reactor_1402111.html

On the topic of dose, I believe that the accepted limit for emergency workers in this situation is 100 mSv which is about 40 times the annual natural background dose in a year. So far I've only seen one report of a worker who received >100 mSv.

dcraig · Mar 14, 2011

Anybody obsessing about radiation dose can find a lot of information in position papers from the Health Physics Society here:

http://hps.org/hpspublications/positionstatements.html

trader345 · Mar 14, 2011

here's some more info on the radiation from the nuclear reactor:

http://www.slate.com/id/2288174/

Visaria · Mar 14, 2011

Bet against government advice, it's positive ev.

stock777 · Mar 14, 2011

so you all shorted ewj fri and are up 9% this am.

you did , didnt ya?

yeah

bigmoose · Mar 14, 2011

As the bits and pieces of info come in, the situation is starting to make more sense at Fukushima. I believe there were 6 reactors at that site. 3 were down for maintenance. The three in difficulty were running at or near full power when the Tsunami hit. For reference the cooling pumps at full power are around 36,000 horsepower per reactor, perhaps 2% of the reactor output power used for the pumps.

The diesel generators ran for about an hour after the event before they failed. When the reactor is shut down, there is about 6% power produced by residual nuclear reactions in the fuel. This residual decays with a half life period. The reactor doesn't go to absolute 0 power production immediately. I seems this is the residual heat that has caused the problem. Thankfully the diesels ran for that hour.

I believe reactor #3 (the Toshiba unit) at Fukushima in difficulty has mixed oxide fuel loaded. That is a mix of old weapons plutonium and uranium. Likely poses more of a contaminant problem if containment is breached.

Colling the core with seawater as said, pretty much ends the service life of the reactor.

I don't know where else we can get our energy from in the near term but from oil, coal and fission. This will likely start a worldwide political debate on fission when the dust settles...