Nuke Crisis : Level 7 on overall impact

[AndyH]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...-new-report_n_1382103.html?ref=green&ir=Green

The data collected Tuesday showed the damage from the disaster was so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades...

Tuesday's examination with an industrial endoscope detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the chamber. Plant officials previously said more than half of the melted fuel has breached the core and dropped to the floor of the primary containment vessel, some of it splashing against the wall or the floor...

The probe also found that the containment vessel...had cooling water up to only 60 centimeters (2 feet) from the bottom, far below the 10 meters (yards) estimated when the government declared the plant stable in December.

 

[edatoakrun]

This weekend Japan will begin a bold experiment in energy use that no one had thought possible – until the Fukushima Daiichi power plant suffered a triple meltdown just over a year ago.


On Saturday, when the Hokkaido electric power company shuts down the No3 reactor at its Tomari plant for maintenance, the world's third-largest economy will be without a single working nuclear reactor for the first time for almost 50 years.

The closure of the last of Japan's 54 reactors marks a dramatic shift in energy policy, but while campaigners prepare to celebrate, the nationwide nuclear blackout comes with significant economic and environmental risks attached.


The crisis at Fukushima sparked by last year's deadly earthquake and tsunami forced Japan into a fundamental rethink of its relationship with nuclear power...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/03/japan-nuclear-power-closure" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[Herm]

I expect there will be rolling blackouts this summer in Japan, it may even affect the auto manufacturers.

 

[EVDrive]

This is great news. They should quickly shift to solar, wind and geothermal. If any country could make the shift in record time, it is japan.

 

[Reddy]

Just found this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/b...pages/business/energy-environment/index.jsonp
Does that make nuclear "too cheap to meter, too expensive to clean up"?
Reddy

 

[Herm]

Pretty much so, perhaps nukes should be owned by the government.. but subcontract the work to responsible people, not bureaucrats.

A meltdown every 3 decades is too much, at least bring it up to a minimum of 5 decades worldwide. The Japanese are selling Toshiba nukes to every backward country that wants one, that bears thinking about.

 

[AndyH]

...The Japanese are selling Toshiba nukes to every backward country that wants one...

Who wants one Herm? Can you point me to a customer list? Thanks!

 

[Nekota]

...The Japanese are selling Toshiba nukes to every backward country that wants one...

Who wants one Herm? Can you point me to a customer list? Thanks!

Google search says -- "In addition to the four units planned in China, the Westinghouse AP1000 has been selected
by five utilities to lead the nuclear renaissance in the United States. Additionally, more than
40 countries throughout the world have also expressed interest in the AP1000."

 

[Herm]

IIRC Vietnam wants a Toshiba reactor.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

This is great news. They should quickly shift to solar, wind and geothermal. If any country could make the shift in record time, it is japan.

i suspect the primary shift will be to offshore wind. they simply do not have the space to use solar, but then again, if there was ever a people that would come together for the country's greater good, it would be them. i see personal solar going on every rooftop in Japan within the decade

 

[AndyH]

...The Japanese are selling Toshiba nukes to every backward country that wants one...

Who wants one Herm? Can you point me to a customer list? Thanks!

Google search says -- "In addition to the four units planned in China, the Westinghouse AP1000 has been selected
by five utilities to lead the nuclear renaissance in the United States. Additionally, more than
40 countries throughout the world have also expressed interest in the AP1000."

Thanks for this. I can use Google as well. Unfortunately none of it seems to fit Herm's suggestion that Toshiba is SELLING nukes to every BACKWARD country - unless you're suggesting that the Carolinas and Georgia are countries (or backwards?) or that unnamed countries submitting a request for information is a real customer?

 

[AndyH]

This is great news. They should quickly shift to solar, wind and geothermal. If any country could make the shift in record time, it is japan.

i suspect the primary shift will be to offshore wind. they simply do not have the space to use solar, but then again, if there was ever a people that would come together for the country's greater good, it would be them. i see personal solar going on every rooftop in Japan within the decade

Good on 'em, too!

I hope they bio-/phyto-/mycoremediate the contaminated areas and make the grounds around Fukushima a permanent memorial to how not to solve a problem.

 

[Herm]

Wind in combination with a smart grid would help.. you could freeze water when the power is plentiful and then use it for air conditioning and so on.. plus lots and lots of natural gas for peaking turbines. The Japanese are very frugal with electricity.

 

[Herm]

Thanks for this. I can use Google as well. Unfortunately none of it seems to fit Herm's suggestion that Toshiba is SELLING nukes to every BACKWARD country -

You need to cut down on doom&gloom and polish up your Google-fu.
Andy, try to cheer up a bit.. you will need it come November

http://www.powermag.com/water/Vietnam-Works-Hard-to-Power-Economic-Growth_4436_p5.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"An Atomic Future

Among Vietnam’s broader ambitions is its goal to introduce nuclear power to its supply portfolio. That goal, which dates back as far as the early 1980s, includes developing 8,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2025 and 15,000 MW by 2030 at up to eight sites in five provinces. Following passage of a general law on nuclear energy in mid-2008, the country made public that it would begin building two reactors (Russian-built VVER-1000s, totalling 2,000 MW) at Phuoc Dinh in the southern Ninh Thuan province by 2014 for operation by 2020 and 2,000 MW more (Japanese Gen III reactors) at nearby Vinh Hai, which could come online as soon as 2021.

The government then plans to add four more units to these two sites and to build six units at three or four central sites in the provinces of Quang Ngai (Duc Thang or Duc Chanh), Binh Dinh (Hoai My), and Phu Yen (Xuan Phuong). According to the World Nuclear Association, that could mean at least one reactor coming online each year from 2020 through 2027.

The new build plans have generated heated competition among Russia’s Atomstroyexport, Toshiba-owned Westinghouse, AREVA, the Korea Electric Power Co., and China’s Guangdong Nuclear Power group."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-vietnam-move-ahead-on-nuclear-reactor-plans-2011-09-28" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"In Japan's most aggressive move to promote exports of nuclear technology since the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March, a Tokyo-based utility consortium signed a deal with Vietnam on Wednesday to conduct a feasibility study for two new reactors.

The agreement comes as a lifeline to Japan's nuclear industry, which harbors ambitions of expanding abroad, even as its future is in doubt at home. Amid a post-disaster reassessment of energy policy, the government has vowed to reduce dependence on nuclear power for domestic electricity generation. But it has continued to push nuclear technology in overseas markets.

For Vietnam, where rapid economic growth has increased demand for electricity, the contract with Japan Atomic Power Co. offers a way to diversify its energy mix beyond two Russian nuclear reactors currently under construction. The Vietnamese government said last year it plans 13 nuclear reactors at eight separate plants with a combined capacity of 15,000 megawatts by 2030."

 

[AndyH]

Thanks Herm. Plans and feasibility studies are nice. The sales folks don't get paid until there's ink on the contract though - that's when an actual sale takes place. We'll see what happens in 2020.

The only reason unvarnished facts can be interpreted by some as 'doom and gloom' could be that people consume too many heavily varnished 'facts.' Advise your doctor if you are consuming more than 20 minutes of heavily varnished facts each day. Side effects might include numbness, irritability, sleeplessness, a desire to crawl through computer screens... If you cannot afford your heavily varnished facts, ExxonMobil might be able to help. :lol:

 

[AndyH]

And it just keeps getting more ..."interesting"...

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolize and shed radioactive substances.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...una-japan-fukushima-california_n_1551431.html

 

[AndyH]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/w...el-rods-at-damaged-nuclear-plant-in-japan.htm

Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic...

...According to Tepco, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1,331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods. Several thousand rods were removed from the core just three months before so the vessel could be inspected. Those rods, which were not fully used up, could more easily support chain reactions than the fully spent fuel.

While Mr. Koide and others warn that Tepco must move more quickly to transfer the fuel rods to a safer location, such transfers have been greatly complicated by the nuclear accident. Ordinarily the rods are lifted by giant cranes, but at Fukushima those cranes collapsed during the series of disasters that started with the earthquake and included explosions that destroyed portions of several reactor buildings.

IAEA Update - 27 Apr 12 includes pictures of crane structure in fuel rod storage pool:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/fukushima/statusreport270412.pdf

 

[AndyH]

CPM-703

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/703712189/cpm-703?play=1&ref=search

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/newsmotion/the-children-of-fukushima_b_2166067.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Parents near Fukushima are under constant stress because they have to rein in their children's instincts to be outside and explore. If a young child made his or her secret hiding place where a hotspot reached 47 microsieverts every day for a year, the health risk from radiation poisoning would be severe and life-threatening. Schools in the region limit the time that their students can be outside to three hours each day.

 

[AndyH]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...ears_n_3130891.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

Fukushima Cleanup: IAEA Says Japan Nuclear Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years

 

[Herm]

The core melted for gods sake!.. you know complete cleanup will not be easy or quick.. but it will get done. Incompetent Japanese engineers.