Gundersen: But the nasty isotopes â the cesium and strontium will remain for 30 years. And theyâre volatile. Within 90 days, the iodine health risks will disappear, because that will decay away.
After Three Mile Island, strontium was detected 150 miles away from the reactor. That ends up in cowâs milk and doesnât go away for 300 years. The releases from these plants will last for a year, and will contain elements that will remain in the environment for 300 years, even in the best case.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/.../japan/110314/japan-nuclear-meltdown-disaster
Reactors contain years worth of uranium fuel. Nuclear bombs contain a lot of nuclear fuel too but it's almost entirely consumed in producing the explosion, bomb fallout is actually stuff like bomb casing material and dirt and building debris that is irradiated by the gamma wave blast. It's pretty radiaoactive for a while but is gone after a few months. A nuclear reactor meltdown wouldn't consume the nuclear fuel, so the area around it would be poisoned for centuries by a large amount of long half-life radioactive material.
Nuclear power plants are for creation/growth whereas Nuclear weapons are for destruction. Now if creation causes destruction then shut down all nuclear power plants.
Nuclear energy/power is the most destructive creation of mankind. Why do humans play with nuclear energy? There will be no more new nuclear power plants.
Reduce electricity consumption by 50%. Use wood fire to roast meat. Roasted meat is the best. When you use wood fire to cook food, the ash is rich with nutrients and provides the best fertilizer for trees and plants. This will cut nuclear power and coal produced electricity by 50%.
31 USA reactors are similar in design to ones failing in Japan. USA has nearly 100 nuclear reactors.
The very word Tsunami is Japanese. The history of Japan is Tsunami. Yet every single redundant back up has failed after a Tsunami. How's that for perspective?
When Chernobyl exploded 100 000 people got cancer all over Europe and Russia over the next 10 years.
As for Chernobyl, facts are this:
* For the 14 years since the disaster 300,000 died in Ukraine alone from the radiation sickness
* The releases contaminated an estimated 17 million people to some degree.
* 143,000 people have been evacuated from contaminated areas of Ukraine
* 600,000 people took part in liquidating effects of the disaster, 100,000 of which already died or are now handicapped
* Cases of leucosis and thyroid cancer exceed average by 2 and 5 times correspondingly among the Chernobyl victims.
* There are 1.8 million people residing on the territories of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, which are still defined as contaminated
I read articles about nuclear waste storage problems in France (80% of their power is from nukes).
Why not just use coal? I have nothing against nuclear power but why bother when we have so much coal available?
I am convinced even if we had the world's largest supply of oil easily obtainable we would try and find something else to use.