Topic: Japan, Radiation, & Reality

[Glock32]

Chernobyl had the sort of design flaws that are endemic to a secretive, authoritarian society where there is no public oversight (i.e., what the Democrats yearn for here). It literally blew its top, and it had no outer containment vessel. The core was directly exposed to open air, and putting water on it just made it worse.

[trapeze]

There was a rather decent book written about Chernobyl that came out not too long after the accident. It is a docudrama style novel because, at the time it was written, there were many details not known due to the paranoid secrecy of the USSR. Since then, quite a bit of factual stuff has come to life and a trip to wikipedia is worth a look.

But, that said, the novel is very well written and gives a lot of human dimension to the accident...the mistakes made, the heroes, the effects of intense radiation and the aftermath. The book is available here. It's quite good and I have read it at least twice.

There is something to be said for people who, knowing that they will be condemned to a very early and very painful death, stood up and did very valiant things so that others could survive, so that a larger tragedy could be averted.

[BigAlSouth]

There was a story or movie about the heroism of Russian sailors who were on a nuclear submarine (K-19) and suffered an accident. They knew they would all die if somebody did not do something that would involve certain death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-19

[Pandora]

FWIW.  The World Health Organization tonight announced that the radiation spread in Japan is localized and not harmful to human health.

[BigAlSouth]

Ann Coulter's column this week talks about radiation:
http://www.anncoulter.com/

Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons.

They get flu shots. They'll drink copious amounts of coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the '70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine -- an offer Nader never accepted.)

But in the case of radiation, the media have Americans convinced that the minutest amount is always deadly.

My pet radiation peeve? Irradiated food. This has been proven to kill bacteria, allow a much longer shelf life, and be more healthy for a number of reasons. But the sheeple, led by the ignorant pseudo intellectual anti-nuke activists don't want their food to get even five feet away from radiation.

Here is an example of what I be talkin bout:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Irrad/irradfact.cfm

[Libertas]

We're all gonna die!

Well, duh...eventually!

 

[IronDioPriest]

FWIW.  The World Health Organization tonight announced that the radiation spread in Japan is localized and not harmful to human health.

Boy, it sure did make for an "exciting" few days worth of news cycles though, didn't it? A whole new generation was introduced to the term "meltdown" in relation to something other than Lindsey Lohan or Charlie Sheen.

[Libertas]

Stupid WHO, just caused the MFM rating to...er...drop...uhh...drop even more...

They'll try to reassert their phony relevancy by drumming up another bogeyman!  You watch!

[John Florida]

Fox just had on an expert that says that time is on the side of the Japanese because radiation will drop steadily. The cooling rods were the original problem but you can cool them with a 3/4 inch hose. The main problem will be solved when they can get the reactor pumps on again and it looks like that will be real soon?Whatever that means.

[charlesoakwood]

from BAS #44 link

At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50 people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders.

On Beck the other day: The first first responder, a fireman with no hazmat, at Chernobyl is still alive.  I think we have a lot to learn.  NASA has secrets.

[John Florida]

There's so much damned information coming out that it's just a mass of confusion.Nobody know who or WTF is to be believed.

[rickl]

Compare and contrast:

Daily Mail:  The moment nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people

Boiled dry: This shot shows of the inside of reactor number four at the Fukushima nuclear plant before the disaster. The spent fuel storage pool is seen at the front of the shot. The rods are at the bottom of the pool, which has now boiled dry

World Nuclear News:  Spraying continues at Fukushima Daiichi

Over the last few days concern had mounted over the water levels in the used fuel cooling ponds of units 3 and 4. Operations to drop water from army helicopters had little effect, but the flights allowed Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) engineers a glimpse of the fuel ponds. It was thought that at least some water could be seen in unit 4, and the decision was taken to focus spraying on unit 3.

So which is it?

[rickl]

WNN also has what is the most detailed timeline of events I've seen so far:

Insight to Fukushima engineering challenges

[rickl]

Take the Spent Fuel Pool quiz.

I'm embarrassed to say how I did.  Not well.

[BigAlSouth]

Take the Spent Fuel Pool quiz.

I'm embarrassed to say how I did.  Not well.

Dang. 27%
Pitiful

[AlanS]

The astounding part of this is that during such a disaster you have lots of available energy in the form of steam pressure you don't want in the plant.  Why someone didn't consider this and include an emergency steam turbine sufficient to run the high-pressure feedwater and circulation pumps to a heat exchanger that could dump the heat, completely without electrical power, is beyond me.  Such a system would require nothing other than physical plant integrity to be maintained, could be designed as a purely mechanical system with no reliance on electrical power, and would have avoided all of the core damage.

I think it would depend on the volume of steam available as to whether it would be feasable. It would take quite a bit of steam to run pumps long enough to circulate the volume needed for an extended period of time.

While I've never worked in the nuclear field, I did score a 47% on the test. I was shocked I did that well.

[IronDioPriest]

No point in me taking that quiz. I have no idea what the terminology means.

[Glock32]

The astounding part of this is that during such a disaster you have lots of available energy in the form of steam pressure you don't want in the plant.  Why someone didn't consider this and include an emergency steam turbine sufficient to run the high-pressure feedwater and circulation pumps to a heat exchanger that could dump the heat, completely without electrical power, is beyond me.  Such a system would require nothing other than physical plant integrity to be maintained, could be designed as a purely mechanical system with no reliance on electrical power, and would have avoided all of the core damage.

I think it would depend on the volume of steam available as to whether it would be feasable. It would take quite a bit of steam to run pumps long enough to circulate the volume needed for an extended period of time.

While I've never worked in the nuclear field, I did score a 47% on the test. I was shocked I did that well.

Actually, plants do have this ability to a limited extent. The turbines' momentum and residual steam pressure can be used to power the cooling pumps in the minute or so gap while the backup generators are coming online. It was testing this function that started off the chain of events that led to the Chernobyl meltdown.

[rickl]

Yesterday I had a strong sense that they had turned the corner and were starting to get the situation under control.  It wasn't based on any hard evidence; it was more of a feeling or educated guess.

Some of the comments in this morning's Ace of Spades thread strongly suggest that's the case:

The information has always been out there. The problem is relying on the worthless MFM to get it to you. They were too busy quoting government jackasses who know nothing and George Soros eco-tards who are hostile to anything other than hard left communism.

Posted by: Vic at March 19, 2011 08:49 AM (M9Ie6)

I expect to see them get offsite power to components at the site today. They got it to the plant yesterday and today they will be rewiring feeds that were taken out by the tsunami.

Since there will be no more "ohm y God the noooklear is melting down we're all gonna die", what I expect to see from the MFM is scare stories about spinach and milk.

LOL, it reminds me of the days when I was a kid and the stories going around about Sr-90 and Cs-137 in the milk at school.  All that from above ground atomic testing.

I used to get a lot of free milk until the teachers caught onto the scam.

Posted by: Vic at March 19, 2011 09:12 AM (M9Ie6)

It is good to hear that they have gotten water to the cooling pond on unit 3 and will be working on unit 4 shortly.  The other bit of good news is that units 1-3 are all less than 100C, so they have finally turned a corner there.  I think that now that they have some power and the right spraying units that this mess will quickly fade from view.  The fact that some spinach and milk have some contamination above background isn't unexpected at this point. There is no need to stop buying milk or spinach because the tainted stuff will never make it to market.  Cows are great concentrators of bad things like PCBs and low level nasties, but milk is test ten ways from Sunday so you won't be getting them in your cereal.

Lets take the wins and be thankful that there is light at the end of the crisis tunnel.

Posted by: Sandy Salt at March 19, 2011 09:17 AM (VW9Wz)

For all the doom and gloom life is still happening and the appearance of Godzilla is postponed for another day.  I wonder if the appointed head of the NRC feels like an ass for being so apocalyptic in his testimony to Congress.  I seriously doubt it because just like everyone else in this administration they actually believe there are no consequences for their dumbass behavior, so I doubt we will be seeing any apologies or retractions any time soon.

Posted by: Sandy Salt at March 19, 2011 09:24 AM (VW9Wz)

But go read the rest of the comments there.  There's other good stuff there, along with the usual tomfoolery and wiseassery.  (I swear, AoS has got to be one of the wittiest places on the internet.)

Vic, Sandy Salt, and some others have been oases of sanity, reason, and good information over the past week.

[Libertas]

I got 53%, and I think half of that was luck.

Now, back to AOS, WORM is active.