Japan quakes

[saaya]

Here in Taiwan they fix roads and power lines damaged from tsunami and earthquakes within days as well... 2 years ago there was a tsunami that took out some roads and on the next they they were already fixing the roads and power lines... impressive...

[saaya]

argh... meltdown suspected in reactor3... thats right... the one using plutonium... :S

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_29.html

It said 3.9 million becquerels of radiation was detected from 1 cubic centimeter of water sampled from the floor of the building. The radiation level was about 10,000 times higher than the water inside a normally operating nuclear reactor.
The agency said the water sample indicated it is highly likely the leak comes from the reactor itself, not from the pool storing spent nuclear fuel.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Yea I just heard the evacuation range has been moved to 30km. :s

The fukushima plant had some serious lacking backup cooling system plans when comparing it to for example even the oldest nuclear plant in Finland from the 70's got even 3 backup systems to produce electricity to it if its own one fails, which includes backup dieselgenerators which Fukushima also had and if those fails they get electricity from a hydroelectric plant and if THAT fails they can get electricity from a gasturbine. Now Finland isn't even prone to neither earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes etc and got better backup systems than Fukushima plant has which is kind of weird when you think about it...

[NEOAethyr]

argh... meltdown suspected in reactor3... thats right... the one using plutonium... :S

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_29.html

Whoa...

I thought they were gonna rig up a thermal imaging cam to a heli and check the core temps days ago...
I haven't heard about it since.

I heard about a special truck that the germans sent over that could pour concrete or water directly into the reactor room from the top of the building.
But I've never seen or heard of it being used in this crisis.
Then I heard the german's pulled out from japan.
1st I was thinking, because of the radiation?, but why would they pull out the equipment?
I assume now because japan doesn't want help...

A sec ago I tried to find info on the specific truck model and such and came across this instead:
http://www.sanygroup.com/products/en...5502THB62B.htm

That's the chinese lending a helping hand this time with equipment.
What's funny though, well it's not funny, anyways the news page that mentioned this on the sany site, is gone...
Was posted on the 11th, was supposed to be there in 3 days.
I assume it never got there ^^.

Wth you know...
The japanese heads up are just to stubborn for the own good, reminds me of ww2 stubbornness..., no offence.
Maybe I'm assuming to much here...
I mean why wouldn't they take all the help they can get..., that just doesn't make any sence.

Regardless, how many melt downs is this now?, I totally lost track :\.
Anyways good luck to you japanese peeps working on this prob and to the people of japan as well ^^.

...
If they are going to keep with this method, it's gonna take them over a month to get it all done...



Edit:
@dctokyo
How are things going over there btw?
Not just in terms of generic news, but anything.

How's everyone doing?
What's the food and water situation there in tokyo and other parts of the country?
Gas...
Etc, I mean, what's the deal?
How are the japanese doing so far?, is everything all good so far or is there some probs with cleanup, what's up? .

I get tired of hearing about meltdowns everyday lol.
I just wanna know how the people themselves are doing .

[Cooper]

reminds me of ww2 stubbornness..

Really ? I wouldn't give you more than 20.

[NEOAethyr]

20secs until I'm banned or something is that what you mean dude ?
I only meant that if it's true that they aren't accepting help, that is what it reminded me off...

It's not an easy thing to explain.
In ww2 they wouldn't tell the people what was going on and continued on as if nothing happened...
That's what I meant, not to be offensive or anything.

I don't mean it in a bad way, I love the japanese people's and there history/society etc.
I just think the higher ups can be stubborn at times, and this would not be the time for that...

[Cooper]

You made it look like you witnessed the WW2 events. I just estimated yr age...and I think I was pretty accurate.
In WW2 nuclear contamination was something not well understood or even known outside of certain closed research groups. Besides it was a warfare.

[Jamesrt2004]

Yea I just heard the evacuation range has been moved to 30km. :s

The fukushima plant had some serious lacking backup cooling system plans when comparing it to for example even the oldest nuclear plant in Finland from the 70's got even 3 backup systems to produce electricity to it if its own one fails, which includes backup dieselgenerators which Fukushima also had and if those fails they get electricity from a hydroelectric plant and if THAT fails they can get electricity from a gasturbine. Now Finland isn't even prone to neither earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes etc and got better backup systems than Fukushima plant has which is kind of weird when you think about it...

Fukushima was built in the sixties remember so a lot of... Mm flaws are in the design (I.e backup power like you said)

It's a shame, but not much can be done as nothing was known at the time

[NEOAethyr]

You made it look like you witnessed the WW2 events. I just estimated yr age...and I think I was pretty accurate.
In WW2 nuclear contamination was something not well understood or even known outside of certain closed research groups. Besides it was a warfare.

Lol, no I'm only 30yrs old.

[Glow9]

Lol, no I'm only 30yrs old.

Question exposed rods give off x amount of radiation
If all rods have melted how much more radiation is now given off than before?

[nunchucka]

Fukushima was built in the sixties remember so a lot of... Mm flaws are in the design (I.e backup power like you said)

It's a shame, but not much can be done as nothing was known at the time

you talk like things cant be added to upgrade this system? are you saying backup electrical systems cant be added to this plant? just because the plant was built in the sixties doesnt mean it cant be retro-fitted. basically they didnt want to pay the money out to do it, and the gov didnt put in place policy to force them too either...

[RPGWiZaRD]

Fukushima was built in the sixties remember so a lot of... Mm flaws are in the design (I.e backup power like you said)

It's a shame, but not much can be done as nothing was known at the time

Yea perhaps but systems can always be added afterwards but this sure opened the eyes across the whole globe, at least in the europe they are evaluating the nuclear plants' safety seriously now in case of natural disasters and other emergencies and I keep hearing about it in the news broadcasts several times for this week. Newer plants seems to generally have better safety systems but Fukushima was really old one and was meant to be shut down very soon but then the disaster struck, really bad luck there, imagine if they had decided to shut it down for example one month earlier or something...

Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant disaster.... the japanese aren't very lucky ones. Saddens me to even start thinking about it.

[bitbum]

Question exposed rods give off x amount of radiation
If all rods have melted how much more radiation is now given off than before?

In meltdown fuel goes into atmosphere, decay continues at similar rates, I think. Fallout would be on everyones mind.

[Glow9]

In meltdown fuel goes into atmosphere, decay continues at similar rates, I think. Fallout would be on everyones mind.

so how long would it take for them to burn themselves out?
I'd imagine thats when the dome scenario would come in.

[IvanAndreevich]

In meltdown fuel goes into atmosphere, decay continues at similar rates, I think. Fallout would be on everyones mind.

Bravo

Now the facts. In meldtown the fuel rods melt, and pool inside the containment unit, which is designed for that possibility. If the containment unit fails, then there is a possibility of widespread contamination. Not an explosion like in Chernobyl, though.

Decay continues at IDENTICAL rates governed by the half-life time.

[p2501]

Bravo

Now the facts. In meldtown the fuel rods melt, and pool inside the containment unit, which is designed for that possibility. If the containment unit fails, then there is a possibility of widespread contamination. Not an explosion like in Chernobyl, though.

Decay continues at IDENTICAL rates governed by the half-life time.

One more thing to add here: they don't really know what kind of properties a molten core weighing in at 70 something tons will have. In Chernobyl they were really shocked to not find ANY of the core in the reactor, they needed to search for it. It had burned its way through steel and conrete with ease and was only stopped by cooling the bottom most concrete layer with ln2 through a tunnel dug by liquidators. This and it seemed to have taken up material, which slowed it down.

So no one really knows where this things would end up when it escaped.

[Jamesrt2004]

Yea perhaps but systems can always be added afterwards but this sure opened the eyes across the whole globe, at least in the europe they are evaluating the nuclear plants' safety seriously now in case of natural disasters and other emergencies and I keep hearing about it in the news broadcasts several times for this week. Newer plants seems to generally have better safety systems but Fukushima was really old one and was meant to be shut down very soon but then the disaster struck, really bad luck there, imagine if they had decided to shut it down for example one month earlier or something...

Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant disaster.... the japanese aren't very lucky ones. Saddens me to even start thinking about it.

mmm I agree with you buddy, it's just that costs money.. so businesses wont do it! As mentioned ealrier in the thread it was meant to be closed down like a month before the disaster.. sod's law really though very upsetting for the japanese people

[saaya]

sea water radiation and contamination is 1200 times above the limit, which is i dont know how much higher than normal... yet the japanese government said... guess what... you got it! everything is alright! theres nothing to worry about! it will disperse quickly and the affect on marine life will be minimal...

ffs, do these government spokes people honestly think people are THAT stupid? why do they even hold press conferences? you cant have less credibility than zero so they are just wasting every-bodies time...

[saaya]

mmm I agree with you buddy, it's just that costs money.. so businesses wont do it!

which is why the gov has to establish and control standards...
without any standards wed be back to slave labor by big corporations within years if not months...

the gov failed to empose tight enough security standards... period...
could they have known? no
should they have risked wasting money on too much safety that isnt needed? yes!
and im not talking about the japanese government here, this applies to almost all governments out there...

the scaries thing from this whole disaster so far for me is the constant nagging and attempt of discrediting limits and standards by the japanese government.
they dont seem to realize that the problem is the radiation, which is PARTIALLY a result of negligence, and NOT the standards.
the problem is NOT that the standards and limits are too strict and low!
yet thats what they keep saying... it almost sounds as if the conclusions they are drawing from this disaster is to bump up safety limits for radiation pollution because they are too high

[G H Z]

Are they still at level 5 lol? Three Mile Island was a level 5 and nowhere near this amount of radiation made it to the enviroment. After the explosion at Fukushima 3, which was easliy twice as powerful as the reactor 1 explosion, I am not surprised there is a breach in the reactor. High levels of radiation in the sea means that one of the reactor's is breached, there is not enough radioactivity in the spent fuel pools to account for what's being seen.

Oh and it's nice to see they are just now just finding out sea water is not suitable for cooling these things, hello? How did the so called 'engineers' miss that one

[pcwhisperer]

Woulden't this be a good time for the energy consumer , to put pressure on the politicians to put a pressure on the industry with a demand to restart the thorium reactor research ???
No sissy flip flop make believe but we don't really try attempts aloud.

Right now, there are probably more politicians at a personal point ready to act with "a solid backbone attitude for the greater good" in that "special" relationship they have with all the industry's than ever. IMHO

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...is-428279.html

[Cooper]

Woulden't this be a good time for the energy consumer , to put pressure on the politicians to put a pressure on the industry with a demand to restart the thorium reactor research ???
No sissy flip flop make believe but we don't really try attempts aloud.

Right now, there are probably more politicians at a personal point ready to act with "a solid backbone attitude for the greater good" in that "special" relationship they have with all the industry's than ever. IMHO

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...is-428279.html

They are already busy getting that oil from Libya.

ffs, do these government spokes people honestly think people are THAT stupid? why do they even hold press conferences? you cant have less credibility than zero so they are just wasting every-bodies time...

Judging by all the speeches they make yes they are pretty sure ppl are just sheep hordes.

[MrToad]

I apologize if this sounds really dumb, but nuclear physics is not something I'm versed on...

Reading through the previous posts I get the impression that once you start a fission reaction it won't stop until the uranium is depleted?

Which means that unless cooled down by artificial means, as long as the materials it finds on it's path melt at lower temperatures than what the uranium fuel can reach it will keep melting it's way down?

Have I got this right or I've just read too much sci-fi?

[Cooper]

Does not seem to be the case for power plants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction

Nuclear power plants operate by precisely controlling the rate at which nuclear reactions occur, and that control is maintained through the use of several redundant layers of safety measures. Moreover, the materials in a nuclear reactor core and the uranium enrichment level make a nuclear explosion impossible, even if all safety measures failed. On the other hand, nuclear weapons are specifically engineered to produce a reaction that is so fast and intense it cannot be controlled after it has started. When properly designed, this uncontrolled reaction can lead to an explosive energy release.

[serialk11r]

When there's a meltdown I think you do have somewhat of a thermal runaway since the fuel will go to the bottom where there are no control rods and other neutron moderators to keep the reactions in check. Then you get the fires, and all the bad stuff :O