Japanese Tsunami

[LOVEavatar]

Okay, I may have stretched it, but still worried am I.

[CyanRachel]

This is beyond horrible! All those poor people. My thoughts and prayers are with them. In fact, a good friend of mine had visited Japan just last year, and she stayed with her host family there. I do hope they're safe.

[Human No More]

About the nuclear shutdown - sorry, but that is pure scaremongering.
In the worst case scenario, they will need to perform a SCRAM and drop all the control rods in and shut down the chain reaction. Indeed, from a quick read of the article (which lacks any relevant detail other than stating they they were shut down, which could mean a SCRAM or scaling down operation and stopping producing power) that appears to be what has already been done - the reaction will not stop instantly, and reactors are designed to shut down safely in the event of coolant system failure.
Anyone making comparisons with Chernobyl is either scaremongering, has no practical knowledge of nuclear safety procedures, or both. Three Mile Island itself was vastly overhyped by a few people.

Either way though, this is terrible, and the news will probably get worse as things are accounted for

[applejuice]

Here's a very detailed article about Fukushima and the shutdown procedure: Nuclear Engineering International

[txen]

Originally Posted by Human No More

About the nuclear shutdown - sorry, but that is pure scaremongering.
In the worst case scenario, they will need to perform a SCRAM and drop all the control rods in and shut down the chain reaction. Indeed, from a quick read of the article (which lacks any relevant detail other than stating they they were shut down, which could mean a SCRAM or scaling down operation and stopping producing power) that appears to be what has already been done - the reaction will not stop instantly, and reactors are designed to shut down safely in the event of coolant system failure.
Anyone making comparisons with Chernobyl is either scaremongering, has no practical knowledge of nuclear safety procedures, or both. Three Mile Island itself was vastly overhyped by a few people.

Either way though, this is terrible, and the news will probably get worse as things are accounted for

That's not understanding of the Japanese nuclear industry. Japan has a network of monitoring that communicate that a large earthquake has started. This gives a critical 15 to 30 seconds of warning. They were in work of installing these early warning systems where that warning initiates the SCRAM process. Indeed the latest moment for the SCRAM was when the shaking started at the power plant. That shutdown the chain reaction before the shaking even stopped.

Unfortunately that is not the end of situation. Yes, the chain reaction ended. However, there is still a lot of fission products that have short lifetimes. These continue to decay and generate a considerable amount of heat. It is this latent heat that is the danger. It's only a problem for about 48 hours as the short lifetime of the fission products mean that the heat production drops to a manageable level after 48 hours.

I agree that comparing this to Chernobyl is likely not a good comparison. Even in the worst case I doubt that it could be that bad. It may well be like Three Mile Island. I expect these plants to be damaged beyond repair, again like Three Mile Island.

Nuc plants have backup generators to run the pumps when a problem occurs. In this case the tsunami took those generators out causing the current crisis.

Any radiation release is not a good thing, but at this time it appears to be a rather small amount.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by Human No More

About the nuclear shutdown - sorry, but that is pure scaremongering.
<snip>
Three Mile Island itself was vastly overhyped by a few people.

Not pure scaremongering. The U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear power plant since Three Mile Island, and the melted core of TMI took most of 20 years to clean up. Public hazard or not, both of those things are pretty darned scary! Yes, TMI was overhyped for the danger to the public. I mentioned it because the visit of the Japanese PM as well as the venting of gasses are mirror images of events surrounding the TMI incident. Chernobyl didn't even have a containment structure. It was in a class by itself as hazards go! (let's hope!)

[James of terra]

I wish everyone in japan the best and hope thing go well for then soon.

[txen]

Originally Posted by Eywa's Pet

Not pure scaremongering. The U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear power plant since Three Mile Island, and the melted core of TMI took most of 20 years to clean up. Public hazard or not, both of those things are pretty darned scary! Yes, TMI was overhyped for the danger to the public. I mentioned it because the visit of the Japanese PM as well as the venting of gasses are mirror images of events surrounding the TMI incident. Chernobyl didn't even have a containment structure. It was in a class by itself as hazards go! (let's hope!)

The design of Chernobyl was inviting disaster on so many levels it's hard to comprehend.

I have a feeling that the two plants where power to operate the emergency cooling was lost will be in many ways like TMI. The reactors are almost for sure wrecked. One thing that makes TMI worse is that cooling was lost while operating. Not so here. These plants may have had the emergency power for the ten to fifteen minutes before the tsunami hit. I'm sure the cleanup here will be long and costly.

[Sight Unseen]

Yeah, I just heard about the power plant on a rss feed, that's not good.

While it is true that the reactor was shut down (neutron absorbing rods lowered, slowing the chain reaction and the resulting heat output), there isn't any coolant being pumped around because the emergency generators were flooded, and fuel rods still emit heat even when the reaction is slowed with control rods. Under normal circumstances, the reactor when shut down still has the coolant pumps powered by the grid. However, there's nothing flowing and whatever coolant was in the reactor pool at the time is still there, soaking up heat. Water only has so much thermal capacity before turning to steam, and when the coolant starts boiling then you have a problem. There wouldn't be heightened background radation if no coolant or fuel escaped. Therefore, we can assume that either the coolant is currently boiling off or the coolant water pool has a leak.

Either option WON'T result in a Chernobyl-like explosion, rather a slow leak of either steam or water saturated with dissolved fission products, wrecked reactors and control systems, damage to the environment, and costly cleanup, which is still very bad. Also, who's going to volunteer to enter the hot zone and fix/start the generators?

[Helicoradian]

It looks like one of the containment buildings exploded

BBC News - Japan quake: Huge explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant

This is seriously bad

[LOVEavatar]

God...

[Sight Unseen]

Oh ****.

It seems all that steam built up and caused the building to explode. So much for scaremongering or slow leakage. Sh*t just got real... Bad. That explosion most likely hurled bits of radioactive reactor parts and fuel rods all over. Ironically, they say coolant-pool reactors don't explode. Why the fck didn't they think of steam buildup?

EDIT:
Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is very, very bad.
Also, no Japanese news stations have broadcast this footage, not a good sign.

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by Human No More

About the nuclear shutdown - sorry, but that is pure scaremongering.

HAHAHA, sorry... IN YOUR FACE
You don't just "stop the chain reaction". When you "shut down" a plant the reaction takes quite some time to stop. If the core melts entirely (which it may already have done), it's another Chernobyl. Scaremongering sure.


This is VERY SAD ONLY. **** nuclear power.

[Susano'o]

My heart and prayers are with the people in Japan. -ZS

Zoe Saldana (zoesaldana) on Twitter

[tm20]

Originally Posted by Susano'o

Zoe Saldana (zoesaldana) on Twitter

that was very nice of her