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Water leaks from Onagawa nuclear plant
- Thread starter ASusilovic
- Start date
Quote from futuman:
Nuclear fuel has melted in three reactors at Japanâs Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and fallen to the lower sections of their container vessels, raising the specter of overheated material compromising a container and causing a massive radiation release, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan said in a report released on Friday.
Nuclear Expert: Iodine-131 in No. 4 pool suggests that âspent fuel has started its own chain reactionâ
I wonder if reactor #4 could further compromise #3 one way or another? #3 has redeployed weapons grade stuff for fuel... You breathe one particle and you have lung cancer eventually... not that the other fuel is good for you..
Quote from maxpi:
I wonder if reactor #4 could further compromise #3 one way or another? #3 has redeployed weapons grade stuff for fuel... You breathe one particle and you have lung cancer eventually... not that the other fuel is good for you..
Look, you're not helping matters by sensationalizing something that simply isn't true. Plutonium is toxic, but a single "particle" certainly isn't 100% lethal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity
On the other hand, the really nasty problem with Plutonium is that as it accumulates in mass it can lead a fairly unstable environment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Criticality_potential
Now, if you've taken the time to absorb the core issue in that last section the following two articles should scare the ever-lovin' shit out of you not for what they say but for the fact that we don't know how many more sites out there that are substantially similar to these two, much less where they're located.
IMHO, any power plant that stores spent fuel (all of them) is a pretty damned good place to start...
The Most Radioactive Place on Earth and It's Just 130km From Ireland
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/296168/the_most_radioactive_place_on_earth_and_its_just_130km/
Inside Hanford: A Trip to America's Most Toxic Place
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2008/10/24_stclair_inside_hanford.php
Quote from dcraig:
Oh, and the area around Chernobyl is NOT a wasteland. Wildlife seems to be doing quite well and while harm to wildlife remains uncertain, it certainly is not of a scale that warrants the term "wasteland" - or anything like it.
dcraig is correct with this observation
There was this really interesting tv programme on Eden channel last week (Sky TV). It seems many of the animals in the area 'got used' to the higher radiation, kinda became immume to it. Now the area has bears, wild boar, otters, foxes, many animals...
Even this extremely rare Russian horse (only 1000 left in existence) has thrived. It appears the beneficial effects of no humans living in the area have lead to a variety of rare species and animals benefiting.
Others have fared less well, such as birds that emigrate to the area.
But overall, I have to say I was a little more optimistic after watching this programme. Nature basically adapts to the changing conditions, some benefit others do not. I was quite surprised to see this farmer moving back to the area to grow certain vegetables, basically living off the radioactive land...
Quote from benwm:
dcraig is correct with this observation
One report is anecdotal. You need to confirm it with several other observations.
The show you're referring to is probably from about 5-6 years ago. More recent studies don't paint as good a picture on the real conditions around the reactor at Chernobyl.
(One of, if not the first piece on the situation.)
Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving
National Geographic News
April 26, 2006
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0426_060426_chernobyl.html
Chernobyl wildlife depleted, deformed
Reuters
18 March 2009
Radiation has affected animals living near the site of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster far more than was previously thought, says a new study.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/03/18/2519385.htm
Chernobyl zone shows decline in biodiversity
BBC News
30 July 2010
The largest wildlife census of its kind conducted in Chernobyl has revealed that mammals are declining in the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10819027
Bottom line, it's simply too early to tell for certain. Especially for a world where man has become so myopically short-sighted.
What really matters is what happens to the area once the containment materials within and around the reactors decompose and begin to leak radioactive material into the ground and it ultimately reaches the water table.
Chernobyl and Fukushima are disaster areas. It's certain to get much worse over time.
There's no better perspective on all this than this piece:
Toxic legacy of the Cold War
Ohio's Fernald Preserve has flowers, birds and tons of radioactive waste. Sites that once supplied the nation's nuclear arsenal now pose a staggering political, environmental and economic challenge...
...A $4.4-billion cleanup transformed Fernald from a dangerously contaminated factory complex into an environmental showcase. But it is "clean" only by the terms of a legal agreement. Its soils contain many times the natural amounts of radioactivity, and a plume of tainted water extends underground about a mile.
Nobody can ever safely live here, federal scientists say, and the site will have to be closely monitored essentially forever.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/20/nation/na-radiation-fernald20
Quote from jprad:
Chernobyl and Fukushima are disaster areas. It's certain to get much worse over time.
Probably not. Radio isotopes have the interesting physical property of possessing a half-life. This means that Iodine-131 (the cause of the major public health effect of Chernobyl - Thyroid cancer) has for all practical purposes completely gone. Cesium 137 is probably the next most important contaminant and by now it would be down to nearly one half of it's original value. Radioactivity in the area surrounding Chernobyl is in fact reducing every year.
Unfortunately many chemical pollutants eg heavy metals such as lead and mercury do not possess this property. They last forever.
Quote from dcraig:
Radioactivity in the area surrounding Chernobyl is in fact reducing every year.
Hey sparky, what's already in the surrounding area is not the long-term issue. It's what's inside reactor #4 that's the problem if and when it gets out.
Obviously, the Russian government feels the same way or else they wouldn't be bothering with building the largest movable structure ever made to contain it.
Nuclear Cover Up: World's Largest Movable Structure to Seal the Wrecked Chernobyl Reactor
Scientific American
March 17, 2011
Because the destroyed reactor is still highly radioactive, to protect workers, the arch will not be constructed over the sarcophagus. R ather, it will be assembled nearby from prefabricated segments each about 25 meters high and weighing an average of 300 metric tons. Once complete, hydraulic jacks will then slide the arch approximately 300 meters on Teflon bearings during the course of a week to enclose the sarcophagus. Walls on either side of the structure, making it resemble an aircraft hangar, will help isolate debris. "All told, it has a design life of 100 years," Schmieman says.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...gest-movable-structure-seal-chernobyl-reactor
All that for 100 years...
yep, long-term thinking at it's finest.
Unfortunately many chemical pollutants eg heavy metals such as lead and mercury do not possess this property. They last forever.
The three main isotopes used in a nuclear reactor are Pu-239, U-233 and U-235, their half-lives are:
Pu-239 - 24,000 years
U-233 - 160,000 years
U-235 - 700 million years
All of them ultimately decay into lead.
Quote from jprad:
"All told, it has a design life of 100 years," Schmieman says.
So, the reactor will most likely be safely contained for maybe 100 years and the situation monitored during that period. Things will not get worse in the surrounding area - they will very likely get better and very likely get a lot better as the fission products that are the main problem simply decay away.
So what if further action is required in 100 years? Unless there is a collapse of civilization due to climate change and/or the exhaustion of fossil fuel resources, they will deal with it. And very likely using far better engineering techniques than we have today using vastly improved robotics.
What else might happen in 100 years? If humans persist in the reckless burning of fossil fuels, more likely than not the mean global temperature will be 5C higher and the Arctic an astonishing 15C -20C higher. The worlds coral reefs will pretty much be dead due to the temperature and ocean acidification. Drought frequency and intensity could be massively increased. The Amazon rain forest all but destroyed. Crop productivity down 40% or more. We will be well into a great extinction event with maybe 20% or more of the planets species going extinct. And there are even worse scenarios if the great stores of methane prove less stable than currently though and emit a gigantic pulse of methane into the atmosphere with dire consequences.
Seriously looking at this risk, there is simply no comparison in the threat posed by a few bad nuclear sites. And those problem nuclear sites are definitely manageable, though it is not easy.
It is an inconvenient truth, but nuclear power currently supplies 21% of electricity in OECD countries. Non-hydro renewables (geothermal, wind, solar etc) just three percent up from 0.7% in 1970. It has taken four decades to increase the share of non-hydro renewables just 2.3%. On the other hand nuclear capacity was nearly all built over 25-30 year period. The historical evidence very strongly suggests that nuclear must be a large slice of energy production otherwise dangerous climate change is inevitable. The world must learn from previous problems and do nuclear as safely and economically as possible - otherwise rising temperature and depleting fossil fuels foretell a very grim future.
Quote from jprad:
One report is anecdotal. You need to confirm it with several other observations.
Chernobyl zone shows decline in biodiversity
BBC News
30 July 2010
The largest wildlife census of its kind conducted in Chernobyl has revealed that mammals are declining in the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10819027
I think the Eden TV programme was made quite recently, they mentioned something from 2010, if I recall...
And the recent BBC link you provided does not really contradict the findings of the programme, it just has a more negative slant...not surprising as it always makes better news to side with the negative aspects for the shock value.
Check out this link too:-
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/8...yl-animal-dead-zone-or-post-apocalyptic-eden/
On the Eden TV programme, they were quite clear that birds had suffered. But I got the feeling with the guy conducting the bird study that he was one of these Greenpeace ideological head down types...basically he was looking for any evidence against nuclear, and he seemed quite emotional, wanting to extrapolate the results from birds to all other animals to back up his own biases.
There were other scientists on the Eden programme who seemed fairly convinced based on their studies (40+ generations of mice, etc) that other animals were benefiting, there was greater biodiversity, no ill effects in mice.
Of course in nature, whether you are in extreme conditions, such as deep sea, artic, volcanic mud pots, etc you will always find some species that thrive in such conditions, others less so.
The main question is, "How bad is the radioactivity for humans?". I think mice are closer to humans than birds in their genetic makeup?
Perhaps we should send some chimpanzees into Chernobyl to get a better idea? (I'm guessing this idea won't fly...)
One theory put forward is that the birds fly in from areas where there is less radioactivity, so then the sudden exposure to higher radiation is a shock to the system. Whereas mice and other animals living in Chernobyl build up some kind of immunity over time, they adapt to live in the conditions.
Or it could just be that birds are just more vulnerable...rather like the canary dying first in the coal mine?