Tyler

Absolutely, share and share and share. I am glad it was helpful. I am expecting another email tonight from him and after I read through it I will post that one as well.

I agree with your take on this thread. It goes to show that everyone can put their own views aside when catastrophe strikes, sad thats what it takes but cool to see nonetheless.

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Tyler

Here is the email I received tonight, alot of the same as the first but I thought I would share just the same.


>
>
> There have been additional developments in the ongoing events in Japan
> as it relates to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. This plant, with
> several nuclear reactors, is one of several nuclear power plant sites
> on the East coast of Japan. Three of the reactors were operating at
> the start of earthquake and two were shutdown. Listed below is an
> executive summary of the major events in Japan along with an update
> based on today's news reports.
>
>
>
> ==================
> Executive Summary
> ==================
>
> A big earthquake occurred off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011,
> the fourth largest since 1900. The earthquake also created a very
> large tsunami wave that washed ashore killing lots of people and
> destroying lots of buildings, roads, and other infrastructure along
> the coastline. All the nuclear power plants on the East coast of
> Japan automatically shut down during the earthquake. However, it
> appears that four of the reactors at the Fukushima plant are in
> trouble. The original cause of the problems does not appear to be a
> direct result of the earthquake vibration, but of the tsunami. Based
> on reports, it appears electric power was lost at the Fukushima plant
> from the local electric grid when the tsunami wiped out the power
> lines to the plant. Power is necessary to operate pumps at these
> plants to cool the reactor, even when it is shutdown. They had backup
> emergency diesel generator on site, but the tsunami apparently
> rendered these generators non functional. These onsite diesel
> generators are about the size of a railroad diesel locomotive.
>
> It is important to continue to provide electric power to a nuclear
> power plant even after it is shutdown. This is because nuclear
> reactors continue to give off residual heat for quite some time after
> shutting down. It is called decay heat. If this heat is not carried
> away with cooling water, the temperature of the fuel elements inside
> the reactor vessel gets very hot and the fuel elements can melt. The
> plant operators eventually restored power to the pumps with portable
> generators to cool the fuel elements. However, during the time it
> took to restore power to the pumps, it appears that there was some
> damage to the uranium fuel assemblies inside two or three of the
> reactors that were operating at the time. Two additional reactors had
> been shutdown prior to the earthquake for routine maintenance. There
> are multiple barriers between the uranium fuel elements and the
> outside of the plant. If all these boundaries are breached, then
> steam created from the water used to cool the fuel elements can escape
> and carry radioactive material with the steam cloud.
>
> From reports in this morning's newspaper, it appears that all the
> barriers have been breeched at one of the reactors at the Fukushima
> Nuclear Power Plant and radioactive steam and debris is being spread
> around the plant site. To compound this problem, there also appears
> to be a fire in a buildings for one of the other reactors. A plume of
> smoke from a fire can pick up radioactive debris and spread it beyond
> the site boundary. Authorities have evacuated the area surrounding
> this plant. At this point, there does not appear to be any fatalities
> as a result of the released radiation. I expect that there will be
> few if any deaths as a result of this radiation release, certainly not
> near the death toll caused by the earthquake and tsunami which is
> reported to have claimed 10,000 lives elsewhere in the country.

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conraddobler

This has been a total cluster from the word go.

One day it's looking up the next day the world is ending.

I'd guess the real answer is probably inbetween as it usually is but the US beginning evacuations isn't a good sign IMO.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/118075374.html

I would imagine that our government is well aware as are all the other governments how it looks to start pulling people out, it's not done lightly and IMO it's not a great sign.

Probably the best chance to get this back under control is to restore power to the site, they're working on that, if they can get that back on and if the pumps still work then they have a much better chance to get this back under some form of control.

The psychology of this is probably worse than the actuality of this and Japan will recover but the worst thing that could happen is probably some event that would send good amounts of particles into the air and head downwind to Tokyo and start a panic there, the panic being worse than the actual event IMO.

We can all know all the science in the world but human nature takes over, if you were living in Tokyo how would you feel right now?

Would you want to live the rest of your life there if this thing isn't properly contained and somehow raises the background radiation even a little?

It's easy to say from a distance that your brain would take over and you'd just move past it, but how many really would?

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When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy

TBaslim

Thanks for the posts, Tyler.

I appreciate your relative's take, especially if he works in the industry. I do have two disagreements with what he wrote, however. The comments he opens with and ends his note with are showing up in lots of comments across the web.

Many folks who are pro-nuclear or work in the industry are constantly stating 2 points right now:

1) "this was such a totally unexpected event. 4th largest earthquake since 1900, and then *shock* a huge tsunami."

Stating this over and over implies, to me, that folks are trying to make the point that this series of events was very unexpected and hard to predict, making it hard to have prevented.

This just seems grossly naive to me, given Fukushima 1 is sitting literally on the low-lying coastline of an earthquake prone country, in an area that is ripe for a post-quake tsunami.

If there are issues with plant design or risk planning from 40 years ago, fine. Everyone (the nuclear power industry in particular) should acknowledge that and move on, rather then try to play the 'never could have expected it / black swan event' card.

2) Comparing any possible loss of life from Fukushima (either current and unreported, or future due to events) to the impact of the earthquake and tsunami (ie, 10k or more dead).

This comes off as a somewhat callous distraction argument / strawman. The first two horrible events so far to hit Japan were natural disasters. The Fukushima 1 event was triggered by those events, but the comparisons/relating of these should end there.

Fukushima will not be any worse or better as a civilian nuclear accident because of how many people died in the natural disasters. Does 10k deaths from the tsunami make, say, 5 deaths ok from Fukushima? Especially if it turns out the main flaw was bad planning to put the plant where they placed it?

I just don't see the correlation on that front.

Anyway, thanks again for posting, even with the concerns raised.

__________________

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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- Walt Whitman

conraddobler

TBaslim:

Very good points and very well put.

In reading extensively about this you can see both camps vying for the high ground on this, the pro nuclear side and the anti nuclear side both with an agenda and the government of Japan also has an agenda.

The truth is relatively hard to come by on a minute by minute basis.

Dumping water out of the sky by helo's and calling that a success is a HUGE red flag warning that we're IMO seeing a ton of propaganda on this.

I watched those videos, if you ever find yourself helo dumping water through a crack in a recently operating nuclear power plant the S@@@ has officially hit the fan.

Couple observations on this:

A.. The plants were placed near a massive fault, this was done 40 years ago so some slack on the original designers could be cut I guess but someone sometime should of scrapped this one because.

B. This thing is on the coast and subject to a Tsunami.

C. It seems now in hindsight to be HUGELY stupid to store spent fuel at the reactor and to build 6 of them side by side. The problem is if one goes TU then you can't work on the other ones.

D. This thing is like Murphy's revenge but that's the problem with this technology.

When you do these right you have still have problem of spent fuel storage, when you do them wrong you end up with what we have here, I for one am not at all anti nuclear power but I'm not pro stupid either.

We can learn from this and do nuclear safely IMO, the entire focus should be IMO on reactors that burn waste fuel, whatever puts out the cleanest easiest to store waste and is safe needs to be the focus IMO, and it needs to be placed in more geologically stable locations.

This thing took a one in a million shot to bring down but those happen and when the reprecussions are that serious then you've got to figure what would you do if that shot happened?

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When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy

LVG

Just a few thoughts:

1. Read / saw (maybe AC360) that TEPCO accidentally overstated a radiation release a few days ago - instead of it being 400 mSv (40 Rem), it was 400 microSieverts (40 mRem). Significant difference - like dying after 9 hours of exposure and dying after a year's worth of exposure. Frustrating, but good news (I guess) that it was 1000x lower.

2. The politics of this event frustrate me. As CD said, both sides are trying to climb to the top of Talking Point Mountain to get the win, when the reality is that for all the problems Fuku created, it will give us the chance to study a true total failure event. Which will leave us much better prepared in the future.

When the final report is released (years from now), I'm sure that there will be some design problems, problems will have been created by the quake / tsunami, and there will have been some operator error. Everything contributed to the event.

3. The media frustrate me. "They're pouring water on the reactor!". No, they're not. They're trying to refill the spent fuel storage pool. And if you don't know the frakking difference by now - then shut up and let an expert explain it.

Really. It's not that hard. It's called Wikipedia for christ sakes.

4. I just feel (and that's all that it is, a feeling) that the major crisis has passed. Not that there's not significant problems to be overcome - such as the spent fuel storage pool being dry, or almost dry, or overflowing, or filled with pixie dust (if TEPCO is to be believed), but it appears that all 6 reactors are in cold shutdown, and while one containment structure (maybe 2) have been breached, so long as they keep the core water level stable, a major catastrophe will not occur.

Which leads me back to point 3 - the arc of a good story is a good introduction, the climax, and the resolution. I think that the climax came 2-3 days ago. The media just hasn't realized it, so expect the hype to continue. But you'll notice that the events are not coming that quickly anymore - which means (IMO) that the situation has stabilized.

5. Helicopters - how the heck will they refill the pool dropping water like that? They're missing more than they're hitting.

6. As for CD's question of how would I feel - well, I'd build myself a homemade Geiger counter (the old Civil Defense 50's version with a 5 gallon bucket, tin foil, a cardboard tube, and string) and know where I could take shelter - so I wouldn't be worried at all

7. Thanks for the update Tyler - always informative to read an expert's opinion.

8. My initial opinion of the disaster at the Fuku plant is that there is a real need for passive safety systems at any nuclear plant. Not knowing the plant specifics, how different would this disaster have been if there was a large cooling reservoir that could be gravity drained into the reactor vessels or the storage pools. All that will come out in the report, including the actions taken (hopefully - because only an honest accounting will allow us to learn lessons).

9. Not sure how the new power feed will work out. Some of the talking heads make it sound like it's a magic bullet - once they flip the switch all the problems are over (which, I suppose, would provide a certain symmetry to the story - from loss of power to restoration of power, and the story in between).

But it won't be. There's been reports of systems failures, malfunctions, not to mention the explosions and steam everywhere - I bet that restoring power won't, in the beginning, mean very much. JMHO.

10. To the idiots buying iodine pills in the US - stop. Really - you have no idea what you're talking about or what the dangers are. And you don't need 100 of them.

11. This whole disaster reinforces the need to be able to clearly communicate and explain complex subject simply to the media and to the people. PR principles 101. How much of the anxiety and blowup could have been avoided by just clearly talking about what's currently happening and getting in front of events?

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DemsMyBoys

Good write-up LVG. I apprciate what you've had to say through all of this.

I think there is still a major problem with #4. And I think the worst could still be coming. Was listening to someone on the radio this morning who said the roof is still on it. (Which seems amazing to me.) He said they could dump all the water they wanted on it but it wasn't going to fill up the pool as needed. Hate to be an "I told you so" but I knew the helicopters wouldn't work. I haven't heard what they're going to try next.

Since it's still dark in Japan I'm waiting to see what we learn when everyone can see the reactors.

(I think it's the skeptical journalist in me. Question everything. Don't take anyone's word until you've had two independent sources confirm something.)

Shane

Since when do journalists do this?

DemsMyBoys

Dark ages. I think it went out with typewriter ribbons.

LVG

You absolutely could be right.

I'm not sure how they would be able to get water to the pool until power was restored and the pumps were online. Plus, any explosion could have damaged the fill line.

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RISE UP DARK SIDE

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is often difficult to verify their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln

LVG

Though this will be a discussion for another day:

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/...ower-2010.html

A report on the safety of nuclear power plants as conducted by the UCS.

__________________
RISE UP DARK SIDE

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is often difficult to verify their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln

LVG

Spot on.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42124500...fic/?GT1=43001

__________________
RISE UP DARK SIDE

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is often difficult to verify their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln

DemsMyBoys

Well, the good news is that they got the power line connected.

I have a good friend who is an honest-to-gosh nuclear physicist. He actually explained nuclear generating plants to me years ago while sitting in a cafeteria moving around the salt and pepper shakers. The thing I remembered most is "fuel rods have to be submerged in water" because he dropped the radioactive ketchup bottle into my Coke.

LVG

Well, at least he didn't explain a meltdown by spraying ketchup all over the place

__________________
RISE UP DARK SIDE

"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is often difficult to verify their authenticity." - Abraham Lincoln

Dback Jon

Or use Mentos as the fuel rods

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