Japan nuclear plant explosions

[bℓσωηG]

Nuclear reactors for energy are not safe IMO, the media is continuing to play things down, but any radiation is not good radiation.

There have been massive protests in Germany over proposed nuclear power-plants in that country in the wake of the Japan tsunami which has seen damage and near meltdowns of nuclear power-plant reactors.

I cannot understand how governments continue to insist it is safe technology

Japan reels as blast rocks nuclear plant

A new explosion at a stricken nuclear power plant has hit Japan as it raced to avert a reactor meltdown after a quake-tsunami disaster that is feared to have killed more than 10,000 people.

The fear of a nuclear disaster looming on top of the quake and tsunami that gripped the embattled nation as it struggled with a crisis described by Prime Minister Naoto Kan as the worst since World War II.

Explosions have rocked two overheating reactors at the ageing Fukushima plant, located 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, after the cooling systems were knocked out by Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake.

A first explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor on Saturday but the seal around the reactor itself remained intact, officials said.

On Monday, shortly after Kan said the plant was still in an 'alarming' state, a blast at its number-three reactor shook the facility, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.

Plant operator TEPCO said a fuel rod meltdown in the number-two reactor could not be ruled out after water levels dropped sharply, Jiji Press reported. The operator later reported the rods were fully exposed and the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance.

But Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano said a major explosion was unlikely at the reactor. Engineers were pumping seawater in to stabilise it and radiation around the plant was at tolerable levels, he said.

The World Health Organisation said that there was minimal public health from the nuclear reactors.

However, authorities have declared an exclusion zone within a 20-kilometre radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.

At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: 'I didn't want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that no matter what.'

A US aircraft carrier deployed off Japan for relief efforts shifted its position after detecting low-level radiation from the malfunctioning Fukushima plant.

The ship was operating at sea about 160 kilometres northeast of the power plant at the time and a statement from the Seventh Fleet said the radiation level was so low that it presented no health risk.

Several Asian governments said they would screen food imported from Japan for radiation.

But citing advice from Russian specialists, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said there was no 'global threat' from the explosions in the Fukushima plant.

'The experts also believe there should be no nuclear explosion which could destroy the reactor,' he said.

Aid workers and search teams from across the world joined 100,000 Japanese soldiers in a massive relief push as the rattled country suffered a wave of major aftershocks and a false alarm over a new tsunami.

The foreign ministry expressed its 'heartfelt appreciation' for offers of help pouring in from around the world, and said rescue teams from 11 countries including China were now on the ground.

With ports, airports, highways and manufacturing plants shut down, the government has predicted 'considerable impact on a wide range of our country's economic activities'.

Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $US14.5 billion ($A14.3 billion) and $US34.6 billion, without taking into account the effects of the tsunami.

Rolling blackouts began across the nation in a bid to save power, with the heavily nuclear-dependent nation rocked by the crisis at Fukushima as well as an oil refinery fire.

The UN said power and gas supplies were critical, with the Japanese winter bringing sub-zero temperatures overnight and snow and rain forecast for coming days.

Russia said it was ready to divert 6000 MW of electricity from its Far East to help Japan deal with the power shortfall.

 

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2011/03/15/Japan_reels_as_blast_rocks_nuclear_plant_589010.html

[bℓσωηG]

Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation

http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nuclear-accident-simple-and-accurate-explanation

We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

Construction of the Fukushima nuclear power plants

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.

The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world.

The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before. The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.

The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), which is filled with graphite, all inside the third containment. This is the so-called “core catcher”. If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.

This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions

The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.

Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran). In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “moderator rods”. The moderator rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the moderator rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C.

The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the moderator rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up.

This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.

So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine).

There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods. The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Xenon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.

This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.

What happened at Fukushima

I will try to summarize the main facts. The earthquake that hit Japan was 7 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 7 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the moderator rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions.

The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.

When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario. The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, moderator rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor.

When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did.

Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake. The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in.

This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown.

It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.

But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems.

Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C.

This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in. I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health.

At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained. It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima. The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment.

So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented. Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail.

And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting. What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay – radioactive Cesium and Iodine – started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere.

It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give. The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems.

The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core – it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.

But Plan A had failed – cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable – so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened:

In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us.

The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now. The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is “liquid control rod”. Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

Now, where does that leave us?

 

• The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
• Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
• Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
• There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
• The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
• The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water
• The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.
• Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.
• The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)
• I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. About half of Japan’s nuclear reactors will probably have to be inspected, reducing the nation’s power generating capacity by 15%. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. That will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to potential power shortages during peak demand, in Japan.

 

[Magicdirt]

They didn't waste much time preparing the PR presentation on that one.

It seemed well prepared and on face value it looks quite factual, but there was one part that is quite ambiguous

" In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us."

If they are directly cooling the core with sea water they would have to keep pumping cold water in and hot water out, what is the status of the discharge water and where is it going ?

[Magicdirt]

`

Edited May 8, 2011 by Magicdirt

[bℓσωηG]

They didn't waste much time preparing the PR presentation on that one.

It seemed well prepared and on face value it looks quite factual, but there was one part that is quite ambiguous

 

That's what i thought , they also said the same ol' dont worry its all under control story with the BP spill and we know that was a fat lie!

http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=13131123

Edited March 15, 2011 by blowng

[Auxin]

They need not particularly lie, so long as they distort facts.

You can be exposed to radioactive iodine or strontium in a cloud thats giving off no more radiation than an intensive X-ray, and when said like that it sounds reasonably harmless. The harm comes when you breathe/ingest the elements and they stay in your tissues and its like an 8,000 hour long x-ray focusing on the thyroid or bone marrow, respectively, causing thyroid cancer or leukemia et al.

With extremely limited exceptions humans should not be fucking with anything nuclear since to this day we have no legitimate way to neutralize or safely dispose of the waste, and clearly no highly efficient way to deal with accidents.

Japan was mostly unprepared for 1 reactor going tits up at a time when on their volcanic tsunami prone islands they had 33 nuke plants running simultaneously! Imagine the catastrophe if two of their plants had blown.... or twelve.

But, blinded by the sickness of greed and pretty lights, the japanese people will not wake up and see the risk they are facing for their trivial transient orgy of shopping and indoor air conditioned neon karaoke. Their culture sure went down hill over the last hundred years, soon their 'culture' will be performed only by actors for the benefit of tourists that naively believe in the myth of an enduring japanese sense of honor and identity.

Isnt western style extremist capitalism and juvenile blind hedonism great.

Its too bad westernized nations have such short memories

[random]

omg @ that pic.

And omg at the news where they just said reactor 4, supposedly a decommissioned plant has been leaking radiation now.

What a sad wake up call for Japan, and how terrible for all of the innocent people caught up in these disasters.

[tripsis]

A wake up call for all countries and people who deem nuclear power a safe and worthwhile source of energy.

[Magicdirt]

`

Edited May 8, 2011 by Magicdirt

[Auxin]

Not to mention the chief 'byproduct' breaks the wests reliance on chinese tungsten for armor piercing weapons (ie. depleted uranium weaponry, ie. an excuse for illegal radiological warfare)

[ballzac]

I still believe nuclear power to be potentially safer than fossil fuels. When something DOES go wrong, it makes a huge splash and people notice, but most of the time they run without problem. Meanwhile, fossil fuel power stations pump out pollution on a daily basis.

I don't think a blanket statement should be made that nuclear power is bad, per se, but the way it is implemented certainly needs to be looked at. There are supposedly safe ways to dispose of nuclear waste for instance. Synroc is a good example. I don't know if safe methods are always used to dispose of nuclear waste, but this is the sort of thing that we should insist on if nuclear power is to be used.

As for nuclear accidents, in the big scheme of things, there have been very few. Chernobyl was pretty much the worst case scenario, and it's not hard to see how that came about in the political climate in the Soviet Union at the time. Other accidents have been relatively minor, and although they were certainly not benign, I don't think it is fair to say that these incidents prove nuclear power to be less safe than fossil fuels.

How many people have died directly from accidents at nuclear power plants, and how many at fossil fuel power plants? How profound has the impact on the environment been from each? And how many deaths have been indirectly caused by each? I don't know the answers to these questions, just throwing them out there. I think the facts need to be evaluated logically rather than having a knee-jerk reaction.

I'm no expert, and I don't think anyone else here is. My personal opinion is that nuclear power is safer than fossil fuels if implemented correctly, but it IS just an opinion.

[tripsis]

Even if implemented safely while the plants are running, there is still the fact there there is no safe way for us to store the waste. We cannot predict accurately enough to say that if we bury nuclear waste somewhere, that thousands of years down the track, it will still be a safe place for it. And if the area for containment breached and the waste leaked, the outcome could be disastrous. As you would know, one of the worst problem with exposure to high levels of radiation is the fact that is causes such terrible genetic mutations, which are felt for untold generations, and not just in humans, but every single organism on earth is susceptible to it.

[quarterflesh]

zzzz imagine a planet that runs on solar and wind power. we could all breath clean air and not live in fear of a radioactive cloud of death coming to sweep us away. has anyone watched the movie "on the beach"?? one day it will happen.

[ThunderIdeal]

they built a food irradiation plant near where i lived despite a permanent presence of protesters for months.

some of the information flyers going around described the number of accidents have occurred involving radioactive materials. just to give a very rough idea, we are talking about several hundred incidents resulting in significant exposure to humans.

[C_T]

am i wrong in saying if they had additional backup power for cooling, alot of this could have been calmed down? Or is this a twisted opinion based on the media's reports?

[ballzac]

there is no safe way for us to store the waste.

 

I don't believe that is true. Whether safe methods are typically implemented, I don't know, but they are definitely possible. Radioactive materials exist in nature (which is where we get them from). They are concentrated for use in reactors, but if the byproducts are redistributed in a similar manner as they exist in nature, they should be no more damaging than the ore that is mined to obtain the fissile material in the first place. Obviously this would be more expensive than just burying barrels of waste, but it's well and truly possible and has been done.

[synchromesh]

Depleted Uranium – One Of The Greatest Environmental Horrors In The History Of The World

[botanika]

This was supposed to be a plant that would never fail even in the event of a catastrophe like this. The number of redundant backup systems on it is astounding even given the plants age. This was a worst case scenario when all the backup systems failed. The tsunami did most of the damage, not the earthquake - it did its safe-shutdown just as designed. 

Even if they'd built the backup generators higher up, if they ran the power lines above ground on towers they would have been downed by the tsunami. 

Then for power, what choices do the Japanese have? They have no oil, and I'm not sure about natural gas. Coal? I don't think so. Imagine the air pollution. And a lot of people and large cities. To be self-sustaining with that large of a population they really had no choice. Was it designed to withstand a 9.0 quake, AND 10+M Tsunami coming in at 500+ MPH? probably not.

I hope they can get this thing under control. It is pretty well known that publically estimates of the extent of damage are underrated to prevent panic. 

It is just utterly bizarre how much bad luck there seems to be involved.

-All three reactors are now thought to be in some state of meltdown.

-The wind is about to turn into an unusual direction for this time of year. It will be turning North East tonight, blowing any released radioactivity directly into Tokio.

-Then it is expected to rain, which would help depositing much of the radioactive particles onto the city.

If this was a movie plot, it would be unbelievable.

On one hand nuclear power has some serious risks but on the other hand it is one of the absolute greatest accomplishments of science and engineering this world has ever seen. Rather than focus on agendas, I think people should instead marvel at the magnificance of those who have really pulled together to help Japan in their time of crisis. That's the human race at it's absolute finest.

Now if only we could harness tsunami's and earthquakes for electricity a little better...

Edited March 15, 2011 by botanika

[synchromesh]

Why geothermal remains a buried treasure

The naturally occurring heat trapped deep in the earth can be pumped up to the surface to produce electricity that's clean, is always available without the fickleness of wind and solar, and, according to some studies, is even cheaper than coal-fired power.

Utilize geothermal energy to prevent quakes: Expert

Surya Prakash Kapoor debunks the conventional theory of plate tectonics and says that geothermal energy is responsible not just for earthquakes but also volcanic eruptions , tsunamis and climate change. "Geothermal energy travels from its source situated at the centre of the earth towards the surface where it leads to geodynamism and geothermal events like volcanic eruptions, high heat flows and earthquakes. If this energy is tapped, used for generating electricity, not only will events like earthquakes cease but the earth's temperature can also be brought down," he said.

Plans unveiled for country's first commercial geothermal power source

Cluff Geothermal Ltd has signed an exclusive agreement with Lafarge to generate electricity by pumping naturally heated water from 3km beneath the former cement works at Eastgate, near Stanhope.

[bℓσωηG]

 

[botanika]

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydro/tidal-power/

[ballzac]

Why geothermal remains a buried treasure

Utilize geothermal energy to prevent quakes: Expert

Plans unveiled for country's first commercial geothermal power source

 

You do realise where geothermal energy comes from?

[synchromesh]

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydro/tidal-power/

 

Kewl!

[Bush Turkey]

ok its up to 6 on the international scale of gravity for nuclear accidents.!!! chernobyl was a 7 which is the maximum

Fukushima nuclear power plant.

•Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.

•Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, partial melting of core, damage to containment system.

•Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion.

•Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.

•Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

•Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck

Edited March 15, 2011 by B_T

[Auxin]

...for power, what choices do the Japanese have? They have no oil, and I'm not sure about natural gas. Coal? I don't think so. Imagine the air pollution. And a lot of people and large cities. To be self-sustaining with that large of a population they really had no choice....

Firstly, your right that if they insist on making all the energy they desire on the islands with little visible air pollution nuclear is the go. However there are three glaring errors in your logic. Firstly, the japanese are not self sustaining- not by a long shot- not for the last hundred years. If the ships and planes stopped japan would hit famine in 1 week. I dont know where you got the idea that they are or want to be a closed self-sustaining system Secondly, energy can move. China could make energy with solar, wind, river dams, horizontal river and ocean generators and sell that power to japan. China has the space and japan has the money to buy power. Thirdly why is it assumed that japans addiction to a constant orgy of electricity driven opulence is moral, reasonable, or even their right as humans? Theyre going too far in their addiction and their unsustainable habits will cost them. When a father abuses the vice of alcohol and beats his family in a drunken derangement we dont say its his human right, why should it be any ones right to abuse the vice of electricity to the extent of destroying the land in their self-gratification driven derangement? At least the harm of alcohol abuse can be cured in two generations, the harm of denuded radioactive land will take vastly more time to heal.

Everyone wants to stop the destruction, but everyone wants the products produced through destruction.

Ya cant have both.

Its unfortunate which the majority choose.