Fukushima revisited

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MiddleAgedKen
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Re: Fukushima revisited

Post by MiddleAgedKen »

Well, everybody who doesn't eat fish from the Pacific is also guaranteed to die. Pick your poison, paisan'.
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Erik
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Re: Fukushima revisited

Post by Erik »

D5CAV wrote:For all of it's failings, the old Soviet Union actually acknowledged the Chernobyl disaster for what it was and evacuated everyone who would willingly leave (there are still some diehard wackos living in the Chernobyl area).
Actually...
They didn't acknowledge it, not until they were forced to. The radiation detectors at a Swedish nuclear plant went off, and caused alarm in Sweden. The initial assumption was that it was the Swedish plant that had a leak, and i think they even started to evacuate the people living closest to it, while they investigated the leak. When they didn't find one, they started to investigate where the radiation came from, which included sending up planes to check for radiation in the sky. This lead to the realization that the radiation became stronger the further out in the Baltic they went, which eventually made them zero in on Chernobyl. It wasn't until then that the Soviets admitted that there was even a problem. But it was hours after the alarm went off in Sweden until they got to that point, for several hours Sweden was on alert for a possible nuclear leak at the Swedish plant.

I'm not sure about the town area at Chernobyl, but I think they didn't start to evacuate until they had to acknowledge what happened to the outside world.

As for eating the fish. For a few years after the incident, everything grown, fished or hunted in Sweden was checked for safe radiation levels. A lot of moose hunters lost their whole allotment that way, they had every moose they shot declared unsafe, and had to be disposed of. In the northern part of Scandinavia, the moose hunt is an important way to get meat, so that was a disaster for many. Several moose hunters simply decided to skip the hunt, and work their day jobs instead. Which caused an outrage among the anti-hunting crowd, they then decided it was the hunters civic responsibility to hunt the moose anyway to limit the damages having too many moose would cause.
The point being that it's not some sort of hidden danger. Checking for radiation became routine, with strict guidelines as to what could be eaten, sold or had to be disposed as unsafe.
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Vonz90
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Re: Fukushima revisited

Post by Vonz90 »

D5CAV wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=345uegSj-zQ

I'm glad so many find humor in two nuclear cores doing the "China Syndrome."

Since Japan is about 12 time-zones away from the US, it's true that for most of the denizens of this site, the risks are minimal (unless any of you regularly enjoy pacific caught tuna or swordfish).

That's why I noted that the issue was Japan's.

Just to remind y'all on some ancient history, It was one (1) core at Chernobyl, and it never went the full "China Syndrome". The reactor core was contained and entombed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Not Fukushima. Like Elvis, at least two (2) of the six cores at Fukushima Dai-ichi have "left the building". They haven't been able to "find" a third core.

Oh yeah, and someone thought it was a good idea to save money on expensive Japanese real estate and put a swimming pool for spent fuel rods on the third floor of one of the reactor buildings - on a known earthquake fault. I hope whoever got the bonus for saving Tepco all that money has the honor to disembowel himself.

For all of it's failings, the old Soviet Union actually acknowledged the Chernobyl disaster for what it was and evacuated everyone who would willingly leave (there are still some diehard wackos living in the Chernobyl area).

The Japanese government is still whistling past the graveyard hoping no-one will notice.

Kind of like what they're doing with Japanese government bonds.
I've studied Chernobyl back when I did nuclear power. It was >>>>>> much worse than what went down in Japan. First of all, it did not have a containment vessel (the Soviets did not believe in them) and it was operating when due to a variety of control, operation and design faults it went prompt-super-critical. This led to a steam explosion which lifted the core cover off of the reactor, it also melted the control rods and the resulting heat caught the graphite moderators on fire, it was followed by several secondary explosions as H2 formed by the interaction of the fire with the remains of the zicronium components in the reactor ignited.

Yes, the center of the fuel melted down completely, through the vessel and into the ground below (AKA the China syndrome although that is not really a nuclear engineering term).
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blackeagle603
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Re: Fukushima revisited

Post by blackeagle603 »

given: Japanese are culturally averse to admitting wrong. They'll admit failure but not wrong. Apparently something from their Shinto roots which provides no path to redemption, eternal problem for your family and ancestors.
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