Fukushima's real threat?

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

SS you really don't get this. As I understand it there is currently no way to access this material in order to move it. It represents an enormously heavy (and live in an earthquake scenario, because of the water) load trapped amongst the debris of a presumably structurally compromised building and reliant on that building to support it, again, most worryingly, in an earthquake scenario. The infrastructure to move and handle it - the cranes - have been blown away.

If this pool empties or collapses you will get a runaway radiological fire with a mind-boggling amount of radioactive material. Will it empty or collapse? I don't know, but given the state of the building it doesn't seem a long shot. The concern seems completely reasonable to me.

Regardless of how pro-nuclear one is or isn't, if you can't perceive the danger here you are fooling yourself IMHO.

The joke is SS I am not an environmentalist and have posted criticisms of various, in my opinion, ill-informed environmental opposition to resource development at times. The fact that you have to make me out to be one in order to make your "point" speaks to the quality of your reasoning.

I am not a nuclear engineer, so maybe such an engineer might be better qualified to respond here. Be that as it may, I will respond here as a lay-person with a bit of knowledge about a great many things.

I would think that it would be easy to take heavy equipment to the Fukushima power-plant site and in a few hours to clean-up the entire mess: debris, core material, cooling water vessels, etc. It would take a few hours to dump/sink that material to the sea-floor, perhaps a few miles off-shore. In a matter of years, that material would be harmless and corroded by the saltwater into nothing but sand and sticks on the sea-floor.

Yes there would be small amounts of long half-life stuff, but that long half-life stuff ( like some isotopes of Uranium ) is barely radioactive, and it is found in the natural environment everywhere on this planet now. So, there would be no pollution of any sort.

All over the Fukushima area, debris of all kinds left-over from the tsunami has been cleaned-up already. There is no reason to stop/halt the clean-up effort at the Fukushima power-plant gate.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

i've always gotten a kick out of comments regarding 'ideologically extreme viewpoints' from the enviro-mental/left crowd that are heaped onto those of us who view the issues of energy R&D, exploration, extraction etc from the pragmatic POV that WE NEED ALL SOURCES OF ENERGY that can and should be developed.

when for the past 40years all we've heard from them is ULTRA-EXTREME ideology of NO development of _any_ source of energy that isnt politically correkt

and their hypocrisy is breathtaking: no nukes = endless war over oil in the middle east, with endless fed budget deficits to pay for it, thousands of dead americans from both the wars and their offshoots such as 9/11

thousands of dead american coal miners, thousands more from the effects of air/water pollution from mining and burning coal

number of dead americans from nuke power?

zero.

[cobben]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

I would think that it would be easy to take heavy equipment to the Fukushima power-plant site and in a few hours to clean-up the entire mess:Fukushima power-plant gate.

The problem is that the radiation is so extreme that no-one can approach it and live, and if I recall correctly even robots cannot be used because the radiation destroys the electronics.

The soviets used 600,000 people to get Chernobyl in decent enough shape to build the sarcophage.
Each person went in for a few minutes only, and each person got a medal afterwards.
Many of these died a premature death many years later from various forms of cancer.

Now, if the Japanese are willing to sacrifice say 10 million people, perhaps they could get somewhere.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

The problem is that the radiation is so extreme that no-one can approach it and live, and if I recall correctly even robots cannot be used because the radiation destroys the electronics.The soviets used 600,000 people to get Chernobyl in decent enough shape to build the sarcophage. Each person went in for a few minutes only, and each person got a medal afterwards. Many of these died a premature death many years later from various forms of cancer.Now, if the Japanese are willing to sacrifice say 10 million people, perhaps they could get somewhere.

To-day and up until now for about a century, X-ray technicians, wearing a lead apron over their chests and standing near-by the patient in an X-ray control room, have been delivering X-rays all day long everywhere in hospitals and clinics.

So, being an official moron and with papers to prove it, I have an idea: Why not build a shielded operating room on-top of heavy machinery and clean-up the mess at Fukushima? The project might begin by dropping a lead apron over the reactor core, and then digging or plowing the core and the adjacent mess out of the contaminated site. There have been atom bomb testing sites ( for example, in southern Nevada ) and these sites were radioactive. But they were cleaned-up, and the public visits these sites now as tourist attractions...... So no-one is going to tell me that the Fukushima reactor site can not be clean-up with some shielded-plows.

And also, time cleans-up the radiation naturally, because highly radioactive isotopes have a very short half-life; so the radiation disappears quickly.

My mum was an X-ray technician for many years in the 1940s and 1950s. Working all day with powerful X-rays, she has no cancer now at age 85. Working carefully with powerful radiation, year-after-year, she never had cancer. My uncle was/is a famous nuclear engineer. He worked with radiation for decades. At age 91 now, he has no cancer. Working carefully with high energy radiation and for decades, he never had cancer.

So, using shielded plows or a short period of time, or both, the mess at Fukushima can and will be cleaned-up.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

caught this one last night - they got into the whole ball o wax, global warming etc and quite effectively addressed the issues of percieved risk of nukes, vs the certainty of continued carbon pollution of the atmosphere (and we dont even want to talk about the risks of the oil biz - why bother, when war is the only answer on that front, esp when we cant even summon the political will to fully develop our OWN resources in N America??)



Nuclear AftershocksEncore PresentationApril 10th FRONTLINE travels to three continents to explore the debate about nuclear power: Is it safe? What are the alternatives? And could a Fukushima-style disaster happen in the U.S.?

------


the takeaway (for me)?

we're screwed without it...

so i ask, what is:
Fukushima's real threat?

that the energy luddite brigade will use this unfortunate act of mother nature to throttle progress even more than 3mile island did, while china eats our lunch in this dept too ??? (note the question marks)

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

Back in 1957 and when I was in 3rd grade, all that we ever heard about on the radio was that the entire world might perish with Strontium 90 pollution. ( At that time there was not much pollution talk, and there wasn't any brigade of luddites trying to brainwash the public about the pollution risk of anything, but Strontium 90 was the one exception. )

Well, Strontium 90 which made the public quiver with fear, has a half-life of 29 years, so whatever Sr 90 that is around is harmless in about 50 years or so..... But the fear-mongers back in 1957 never told the public that fact.

Some other half-lives that we never hear much about to-day:

Uranium 237: 7 days; U 240: 14 hours; U 232: 72 years; Thorium 227: 19 days; Thorium 228: 2 years; Thorium 234: 24 days;
Radon 219--- which to-day is a favourite of the eco-frauds to strike fear in the public's mind--- has a half-life of 4 seconds;
Plutonium 243: 5 hours. Plutonium is another one of the favourites of the eco-frauds..... Other interesting half-lives:
Gold 198: 2.7 days; Silver 110: 25 seconds; Silver 111: 7.5 days; Iron 55: 2.7 years; Fe 59: 44.5 days; Nitrogen 16: 7 seconds; Sulfur 35: 87.5 days; Lead 214: 27 minutes.

There is a reason why Chernobyl is back to normal. There will be a reason why Fukushima will be back to normal soon. Not all of these isotopes are from atomic power-plant cores, but they show how radiation-emitting isotopes of elements work:

Those isotopes that have million and billion year half-lives are completely harmless to living things. And those radio-isotopes that have very short half-lives, become almost non-radioactive in short periods of time--- some in just seconds.

But you won't hear about any of these facts from the eco-frauds, will you? The luddite-brigade just keeps filling the public's minds with lies and cultivating fear. And this is how they play their little games of mis-information, cultivating public hysteria, creating economic decline in the Western World, and helping to create the Great Recession.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

There is a reason why Chernobyl is back to normal. ...
....

dunno about 'back to normal' mr steve - but i did catch a documentary a few weeks back that focused on animal life in the area = large/increasing numbers of all specie - esp top of the foodchain beasts such as wolves - evidence to suggest that the area has healed sufficiently to provide hope for fukushima's future

one thing seems absolutely certain however - if we dont come up with an alternative to burning stuff to make electricity in sufficient quantities to sustain life as we've gotten accustomed to - we're doomed

and personally?
i'd rather take my chances with nuke power than whats been offered so far by the rest of the 'alternatives'
never mind what coal is doing, with absolute certainty, to the natural environment or oil is doing - again, with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY - to the geo-political environment

why is this such a hard question: either we take the only real alternative or we let others eat our lunch for us, while we ruin the atmosphere in the process?

but i'm just a dumb tradesman, so what do i know...

[oddlots]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

Lektrode, is this really just about scoring points for one perceived team or other? Where on this site has anyone expressed a

ULTRA-EXTREME ideology of NO development of _any_ source of energy that isnt politically correkt

I'm just kind of mystified by this drive to politicize an issue that, I really think, at least as far as Fukushima is concerned, comes down to some pretty objective physics and engineering issues.

I completely agree with E.J. that the failure to take the lessons from the energy-oil crisis of the 70s and work towards energy independance in the west rather than double-down on the strategy of controlling foreign resources was an epoch-making historical blunder. But that does not in any way recommend taking a bloody-minded view of legitimate, practical concerns about coping with some pretty intractable challenges at Fukushima.

and their hypocrisy is breathtaking: no nukes = endless war over oil in the middle east, with endless fed budget deficits to pay for it, thousands of dead americans from both the wars and their offshoots such as 9/11

thousands of dead american coal miners, thousands more from the effects of air/water pollution from mining and burning coal

I've remarked on this hypocrisy here before but I also recognise that there's a step-change involved when you are dealing with radioactive waste, something that anyone that is taking a position on nuclear power has to admit and recognise at the get-go to be taken seriously. The elements involved here - strontium, cesium, plutonium etc. - are insanely concentrated, deadly, in some cases, long lived poisons, a massive release of which should strike fear into any honest commentator, particularly one who has an opinion on nuclear power. If not, what's all the endless engineered "containment" for?

The fact that there has not been such a release heretofore should in no way blunt one's alarm at the prospect of a possible future release, again, regardless of how - generally - one views nuclear power if there seems to be a set of circumstances that suggest such a devastating release is something less than a mathematical possibility.

I'd say the situation with the fuel pools fits that: a massive "high consequence" event that was thought to be vanishingly small as a possibility but now seems almost probable, given the state of the structure and the seismic forecasts. For this view to be legitimate doesn't mean it has to happen: if the consequences are dire enough the mere "close shave" is enough to indicate that the world's combined engineering / regulatory / business "brain trust" cannot be trusted with nuclear power. (IMHO the very fact that boiling light-water reactors are still on-line is, given the flaws evident at Fukushima, is in-itself enough to indicate this. There are plenty of designs that don't share some or all of these problems, but frankly as far as I can see the industry totally blew it by not cleaning house and getting rid of these Rube Goldberg designs and I really think it's an "own goal." The "ultra-extreme environmentalists" can't be blamed for that fumble.)

In fact making the distinction between ill-informed hysteria and genuine, informed concern and alarm I think is a good litmus test of how well one understands the situation and the benefits and pitfalls of nuclear power. In this context, with respect, posturing about politically correct environmentalists seems obtuse in the extreme.

[c1ue]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

A few facts into the equation:

1) Spent fuel is not dangerous forever. It takes several years to cool down, but it does happen.

2) The reason the SNFs are in the nuclear power plants is as much due to NIMBY/people terrified of nukes as anything else. Thus when you combine difficulty siting nuclear waste handling plus power/water requirements, the easiest remaining path is to just build it into the power plant.

3) All nuclear power requires a transfer medium. Does it really matter so much that the medium is say liquid sodium than water?

4) Yes, Fukushima is an old style plant. Fukushima Dai-ichi actually demonstrates the difficulty of end-of-lifing large capital investments, a problem which the solar PV and wind industries equally share. Even if better alternatives are available, the reality of getting more benefit from a sunk capital investment is always going to be there, and this in turn impedes investment in newer and generally better alternatives.

I do actually agree with Steve here. While there are dangers with nuclear generation of electricity, there are equally dangers with any and every other form of electricity generation - if you are a CAGW.

The ridiculous situation with the CAGW environment groups are that they oppose almost all forms of electricity generation - nuclear because "its radioactive" and coal/natural gas/oil because of CO2 output.

It actually is no exaggeration to say that this position equates to downshifting into a pre-1900 lifestyle.

And if said individuals were willing to do so, I have no problem with that. However, this position isn't going to be acceptable to the entire 2nd and 3rd world, and isn't going to be acceptable to most people even in the 1st world.

[oddlots]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

Regarding 1), that's absolutely true but irrelevant to the issue of whether there's a real danger here that needs to be appreciated. What's more to the point is whether, in the absence of active cooling these spent fuel assemblies can reasonably be expected to catch fire, damaging the fuel cladding and liberating particles of very radioactive material in potentially massive amounts and also sending out massive gamma radiation without any shielding or containment such that it becomes virtually impossible to intervene in the process. From what I've read that is actually the expected outcome if active cooling and water cover can't be maintained because, say, a further earthquake compromises the structure supporting the SFP. My point is not that this is going to happen but that the simple fact that this is a possible and plausible outcome is a massive fail for the industry / regulatory bodies / nuclear engineers.

Re. 2), that really strikes me as a very lazy argument. First, I doubt very much that NIMBY issues can explain the design genius of placing such a large load (SFP) towards the top of a building that you've also designed to "blow apart" in the case of an unlikely but possible build up of hydrogen due to loss of water cover in the reactor core. But more to the point, doesn't it seem weird that a) one spends enormous amounts of effort at designing multiple levels of containment into the reactor design b) recognize that the fuel in it's cool down stage requires active cooling and that a lack of it can be catastrophic c) and then proceed to make no allowances for a situation where this active cooling can be lost? That might seem unfair to the engineers here since - as you have pointed out - the earthquake and tsunami created conditions of cascading failures that were hard to envision. But to my mind the whole onus is on the industry to design failsafe systems precisely because of the very specific, inherent dangers of nuclear power. Anything less is a fail.

As an example, the CANDU's use of low-enriched fuel that requires heavy water to act as a medium makes it inherently safer. As I understand it, fuel pool fires are not possible with this design. This is the kind of built-in-at-the-level-of-physics safety that is required. Anything less than this kind of stringent thinking is not good enough. Nor is blaming it on NIMBY's.

I don't understand your point with 3) in this discussion, but as far as I understand it the difference of medium can have a big impact on the pressures required for the system overall. One of the advantages of the Pebble Bed design as far as I can remember was that it used I think helium as a medium and thus could run at much lower pressures, partially vitiating the need for massive containment structures. Whether that really works or not I'm not certain, but the move towards low pressure systems seems a vastly superior strategy. But again, how's this relevant here?

Re. 4), your point is well taken but your resignation in the face of the inevitable economic and institutional inertia doesn't sit well with me. If this inertia problem is inevitable and it's results - as I'm arguing here - could be catastrophic then that doesn't add up to an argument for nuclear power does it?

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

Dear Greenpeace and all of the other anti-nuclear power environmentalists here:

1.) Plutonium is not an output of U235 fueled reactors, the kind used everywhere in the world. Let's get that straight to begin with;

2.) Plutonium 239 can be produced by the absorption of one neutron in a U238 fueled reactor, the kind used in breeder reactors, should the world start building this kind of reactor;

3.) Producing heavier elements from lighter elements ( Uranium becoming Plutonium ) is fusion, and fusion is very difficult to create for mankind;

4.) Most Plutonium isotopes do have a long half-life, so they are barely radioactive. Plutonium 244 has a half-life of 80 million years, for example. Let's get that fact straight now; for all intent and purposes, Pu 244 is NOT radioactive.

5.) Plutonium is not synthetic although it can be made synthetically, just like anything else on the periodic table. Plutonium is found in trace amounts EVERYWHERE on planet Earth. Let's get that fact straight now.

6.) All of the elements above 92 on the periodic table are found in trace amounts EVERYWHERE on planet Earth. All of them are natural, very rare on Earth, but they are NOT SYNTHETIC. Let's get that point straight here and now.

7.) Plutonium is NOT TOXIC in small amounts. Let's get that point straight here and now.

8.) When eaten, Plutonium, being a heavy metal, would be deposited in human bones. All heavy metals, Mercury, Gold, Platinum, Uranium (as examples) go to the bones..... I played with large amounts of Mercury as a boy living near New Almaden in San Jose, California where Mercury was mined; so my bones certainly have Mercury in them since the human-body stores odd things such as heavy metals in bones.

9.) Mr. Bernard Cohen offered in 2007 to go onto national television in the U.S. to eat a small amount of Plutonium, about the same amount of Plutonium as the amount of caffeine that is found in a cup of coffee. His offer was turned-down.

10.) Plutonium is a heavy metal, not very shiny like iron is not very shiny, but it could be used for coins because it is exceedingly rare. Plutonium was made synthetically at the University of California in Berkeley in 1940. No-one ever saw Plutonium until 1940.

11.) Atomic power plants in the world use U 235 as a fuel, and they do NOT output Plutonium, nor use Plutonium as a fuel. Japan is an exception. Japan uses MOX fuel which does contain 7% Plutonium.

12.) The power plant at Fukushima did not leave any significant amount of Plutonium, because Plutonium is difficult to make. Absorbing neutrons into the nuclei of atoms--- in this case the atoms of Uranium--- is not easy to do. It is a kind of fusion. Fission is much easier to accomplish in a reactor.

13.) The old (now flooded) Fukushima I site did use some Plutonium in its MOX fuel. The MOX fuel was 93% Uranium ( mined Uranium from the ground + depleted or re-processed Uranium ). The other 7% of the MOX fuel was Plutonium. From any melted fuel rods in the wreckage, there will be a tiny bit of Plutonium from the MOX fuel encased in the rods. Japan is the only nation in the world using some Plutonium in its reactor fuel, and Japan is the only nation in the world working on making breeder reactors which will use Plutonium as fuel.

14.) The Fukushima I wreckage was caused by the 9.0 earthquake in Japan and the 45-foot rise in the sea-level which was the tsunami which followed after the earthquake. Fukushima I was not a nuclear accident. Let's underscore that point, too.

15.) Cleaning-up the wreckage at Fukushima I would be easy, and the small amount of Plutonium in the wreckage (from the fuel rods containing MOX fuel) would not be a major health hazard.

16.) The human-body and the bodies of all living-things on this planet naturally repair cell damage done by radiation. Otherwise, life on this planet would have been impossible, because radiation on Earth comes from everywhere: food, plants, fish, rocks, soil, the Sun, the Cosmos, the Earth itself, building materials, even from other living-things like your neighbours, your pets, your kids, and your spouse. Your television and your micro-wave oven are excellent producers of radiation.

Please make copies of this post, and circulate them to others, worldwide. Students in physics classes worldwide might be interested in this post. The media might be interested in these facts about Plutonium. Certainly, all of those in the environmental movement who have voiced a big opposition to Plutonium might be educated by reading this post.

Starving Steve is a lay-person, not a physicist. I am a former coin dealer, also a former city planner and teacher. Currently, I am retired and highly dis-liked by the establishment in British Columbia.

[c1ue]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

Regarding 1), that's absolutely true but irrelevant to the issue of whether there's a real danger here that needs to be appreciated. What's more to the point is whether, in the absence of active cooling these spent fuel assemblies can reasonably be expected to catch fire, damaging the fuel cladding and liberating particles of very radioactive material in potentially massive amounts and also sending out massive gamma radiation without any shielding or containment such that it becomes virtually impossible to intervene in the process. From what I've read that is actually the expected outcome if active cooling and water cover can't be maintained because, say, a further earthquake compromises the structure supporting the SFP. My point is not that this is going to happen but that the simple fact that this is a possible and plausible outcome is a massive fail for the industry / regulatory bodies / nuclear engineers.

If you want to point out worst case scenarios, the same should be applied to all other energy sources:

1) solar: the semiconductor manufacturing plants which create solar panels have gigantic stockpiles of highly toxic substances ranging from arsenic to cadmium to selenium and so forth. A massive earthquake, tsunami or whatever could release these substances into their surrounding area - and they would be there forever. Radiation at least goes away eventually even if a portion of it is geologic time.

2) wind: massive hurricanes and/or tornado outbreaks tear up wind turbine collector networks and destroy the turbines themselves, littering the landscape with tons of rare earths, insulation, lubricants, and plain old trash.

3) coal: explosions due to coal dust. Fires in the coal supply. Warming of rivers due to use as cooling.

4) natural gas: explosions of storage tanks. CO2 output. methane leaks into the atmosphere. Entire communities destroyed by earthquake + leaking natural gas (see Tokyo).

Re. 2), that really strikes me as a very lazy argument. First, I doubt very much that NIMBY issues can explain the design genius of placing such a large load (SFP) towards the top of a building that you've also designed to "blow apart" in the case of an unlikely but possible build up of hydrogen due to loss of water cover in the reactor core. But more to the point, doesn't it seem weird that a) one spends enormous amounts of effort at designing multiple levels of containment into the reactor design b) recognize that the fuel in it's cool down stage requires active cooling and that a lack of it can be catastrophic c) and then proceed to make no allowances for a situation where this active cooling can be lost? That might seem unfair to the engineers here since - as you have pointed out - the earthquake and tsunami created conditions of cascading failures that were hard to envision. But to my mind the whole onus is on the industry to design failsafe systems precisely because of the very specific, inherent dangers of nuclear power. Anything less is a fail.

We have 1000 foot tall buildings which are supposed to be built to withstand earthquakes.

Are you trying to tell me that it is not possible to build a 2nd story pool which can do the same?

As for NIMBY and what not - this is fact, not speculation on my part.

If people aren't even willing to have already processed (i.e. cooled off) nuclear waste buried 10000 feet underground and 50+ miles away, I hardly see how they're going to allow live nuclear waste.

As an example, the CANDU's use of low-enriched fuel that requires heavy water to act as a medium makes it inherently safer. As I understand it, fuel pool fires are not possible with this design. This is the kind of built-in-at-the-level-of-physics safety that is required. Anything less than this kind of stringent thinking is not good enough. Nor is blaming it on NIMBY's.

There is no inherently safe way for any form of energy generation. The types of hurdles imposed already can be seen in this report:

http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/Glo...-pickering.pdf

missile/aircraft impacts on turbine? fire? explosion? internal flooding?

Thus if you desire to remove SNF fuel danger, you can easily introduce new ones. For example, CANDU reactors also produce more nuclear waste than 'regular' ones - is this a feature you would desire?

I don't understand your point with 3) in this discussion, but as far as I understand it the difference of medium can have a big impact on the pressures required for the system overall. One of the advantages of the Pebble Bed design as far as I can remember was that it used I think helium as a medium and thus could run at much lower pressures, partially vitiating the need for massive containment structures. Whether that really works or not I'm not certain, but the move towards low pressure systems seems a vastly superior strategy. But again, how's this relevant here?

The medium used to transfer energy is very relevant. Standard nuclear reactors use water both as a medium to transfer energy and as a coolant. Pebble bed reactors use helium to cool, but use something else to transfer energy.

The need for water is what led to Fukushima's siting. A pebble bed reactor should need less water because it uses helium for cooling, but still requires it. Equally the spent fuel waste from a pebble bed reactor is still hot nuclear waste; it is less radioactive per kilogram due to the coating but still has the same total radioactivity. Thus you get more but less densely radioactive waste which still has to be cooled off in an SNF.

Re. 4), your point is well taken but your resignation in the face of the inevitable economic and institutional inertia doesn't sit well with me. If this inertia problem is inevitable and it's results - as I'm arguing here - could be catastrophic then that doesn't add up to an argument for nuclear power does it?

The problem you're experiencing is that you're looking at the worst case scenario.

There's nothing wrong with this, but the reality is that government planners are looking at a completely different scenario: how to provide electricity and other forms of energy at an affordable cost so that their respective nations and people can grow their economies and increase their living standards.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

mr O - always appreciate your comebacks

i dont mean to minimize the disaster that fukushima certainly is, but dont think its constructive to continually paint nuke power as all bad news, all the time.

yeah, theres some safety issues with it, but dont see how we can do without it.
and i've got to believe that todays technical prowess can design a sufficiently safe tradeoff tween no nukes and the certain ecological disaster/cliff that continuing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuels is sending us towards.

the politicization and polarization of the issue has come mostly from its opponents who have sandbagged practically every attempt to develop sane energy policies in The US: we cant explore/drill for our own oil, but we can spend trillions importing and fighting wars over somebody elses?

we cant use frack'g to fully develop natural gas resources nor even build LNG terminals to import what we need?

we cant even build pipelines to get the stuff from where it is to where it needs to be ?

and how about this one - we cant solve the issue of spent nuke fuel in the US - even AFTER SPENDING BILLIONS on a facility to contain the stuff in one of the most unihabitable, remote regions of the country, beneath thousands of feet of solid rock in NV???

and this ISNT "ultra extremism" ?
and i'm not aiming this comment at anybody in particular on the 'tulip - but simply calling out the hypocrisy that we have seen from those who seem to think that the solution to the energy equation is, as mr c1ue mentioned, reverting back to a practically agrarian economy circa 1900 or that somehow 'clean/green' tech will be sufficient to get us away from fossil fuel burning - or that we'll even survive long enough to get there, with another few more billion people on the planet, who will most certainly be burning stuff to survive.

oh and one other thing: i dont have the intellectual firepower or knowledge to go much further on this topic, certainly not in your (or mr c1ue's) league - but i do know that we in The US cant afford to argue about this stuff any longer and the political situation makes it more likely that the 'mexican standoff' will continue while we go slowly broke fighting about it - whats the answer? hell if i know, but somebody in the beltway better start coming up with a plan and execute it, because the (mostly political) status quo isnt working anymore.

Lektrode, is this really just about scoring points for one perceived team or other? Where on this site has anyone expressed a



I'm just kind of mystified by this drive to politicize an issue that, I really think, at least as far as Fukushima is concerned, comes down to some pretty objective physics and engineering issues.

I completely agree with E.J. that the failure to take the lessons from the energy-oil crisis of the 70s and work towards energy independance in the west rather than double-down on the strategy of controlling foreign resources was an epoch-making historical blunder. But that does not in any way recommend taking a bloody-minded view of legitimate, practical concerns about coping with some pretty intractable challenges at Fukushima.



I've remarked on this hypocrisy here before but I also recognise that there's a step-change involved when you are dealing with radioactive waste, something that anyone that is taking a position on nuclear power has to admit and recognise at the get-go to be taken seriously. The elements involved here - strontium, cesium, plutonium etc. - are insanely concentrated, deadly, in some cases, long lived poisons, a massive release of which should strike fear into any honest commentator, particularly one who has an opinion on nuclear power. If not, what's all the endless engineered "containment" for?

The fact that there has not been such a release heretofore should in no way blunt one's alarm at the prospect of a possible future release, again, regardless of how - generally - one views nuclear power if there seems to be a set of circumstances that suggest such a devastating release is something less than a mathematical possibility.

I'd say the situation with the fuel pools fits that: a massive "high consequence" event that was thought to be vanishingly small as a possibility but now seems almost probable, given the state of the structure and the seismic forecasts. For this view to be legitimate doesn't mean it has to happen: if the consequences are dire enough the mere "close shave" is enough to indicate that the world's combined engineering / regulatory / business "brain trust" cannot be trusted with nuclear power. (IMHO the very fact that boiling light-water reactors are still on-line is, given the flaws evident at Fukushima, is in-itself enough to indicate this. There are plenty of designs that don't share some or all of these problems, but frankly as far as I can see the industry totally blew it by not cleaning house and getting rid of these Rube Goldberg designs and I really think it's an "own goal." The "ultra-extreme environmentalists" can't be blamed for that fumble.)

In fact making the distinction between ill-informed hysteria and genuine, informed concern and alarm I think is a good litmus test of how well one understands the situation and the benefits and pitfalls of nuclear power. In this context, with respect, posturing about politically correct environmentalists seems obtuse in the extreme.

[Jim Bruno]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

There is no getting around that radiation is dangerous, harmful stuff and plenty of damage has been caused by less than the most extreme operational outcomes.

Any ITulipers live in Sweden? Did you know that scientists believe that Chernobyl caused cancer in Sweden?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-cdc111904.php

Or that radiation has reproductive/genetics effects on humans living within 22 miles of nuclear reactors, and that releases of ionizing radiation affects millions of births annually, including stillborn and impaired children?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nra052611.php

[cobben]

Re: Fukushima's real threat?

There is no getting around that radiation is dangerous, harmful stuff and plenty of damage has been caused by less than the most extreme operational outcomes.

Any ITulipers live in Sweden? Did you know that scientists believe that Chernobyl caused cancer in Sweden?

Yes, they are stilling paying the Sami to bury the odd too-radioactive reindeer, while those just under the boundary are exported to southern Sweden as a delicacy with no warnings attached. Mushrooms in certain areas of central and northern Sweden are still to be avoided, also wild meat, etc., which is not generally known today.

However, this study's premises can be questioned, e.g. assuming that the people living up there in areas with no fallout can be used as a control group wrt Chernobyl.

I knew a man working at the Strålskyddsinstitut in Stockholm back in the mid 70's who said he would never drink milk or eat milk products from northern Sweden. The fallout from the US nuclear tests was accumulating significantly there do to jet streams and other atmospheric conditions. If that radioactivity was also unevenly deposited in a similar pattern, how do they know the increase in cancer was caused only by Chernobyl?