Nuke Crisis : Level 7 on overall impact

[RegGuheert]

I'm willing to bet this plant will end up costing over 100X the original projections.

 

[Reddy]

Slightly different system, but here's what's happening at Hanford after about 60 years:
http://www.bechtel.com/hanford_waste_treatment.html

 

[Herm]

This is one reason I like the SMR (Small Modular Reactor) concepts that are being developed/licensed now.. the whole reactor fits inside a concrete lined well... that can be flooded with water if needed.. and for maintenance you lift it up with a crane and transport it back by truck to the factory for refueling. They range from 25MWe up to 260MWe, use a bunch of them to equal one big unwieldy monster reactor. The Hyperion uses a lead-bismuth coolant that will solidify once it cools, fairly safe for truck transport.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/hyperion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

This is one reason I like the SMR (Small Modular Reactor) concepts that are being developed/licensed now.. the whole reactor fits inside a concrete lined well... that can be flooded with water if needed.. and for maintenance you lift it up with a crane and transport it back by truck to the factory for refueling. They range from 25MWe up to 260MWe, use a bunch of them to equal one big unwieldy monster reactor. The Hyperion uses a lead-bismuth coolant that will solidify once it cools, fairly safe for truck transport.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/hyperion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

great concept. My Dad was part of the Army's project investigating the same thing but included ones that could be loaded onto a ship to provide power in remote "war-torn" areas (you know how the Army is) but eventually scrapped the project back in the early 70's.

Technology has advanced a lot since then so definitely worth another look

 

[AndyH]

Nuclear Power: The Real Gift that Keeps On Giving

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/japan-nuclear-idUSL4N0FF13E20130709

SITUATION WORSENS

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima station, hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, said that an observation well between the damaged reactor No. 2 and the sea showed levels of radioactive caesium-134 were 90 times higher on Monday than they had been the previous Friday.

Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, said it detected caesium-134 at 9,000 becquerels per litre, 150 times above Japan's safety standard. A becquerel is a measure of the release of radioactive energy.

The reading for caesium-137, with a half life of 30 years, was some 85 times higher than it had been three days earlier.

The latest findings, 25 metres (yards) from the sea, come a month after Tepco detected radioactive caesium in groundwater flowing into its wrecked plant far from the sea on elevated ground. The level of caesium found in June was much lower than the amount announced on Tuesday.

The spike, combined with recent discoveries of high levels of radioactive elements like tritium and strontium, suggest that contaminated water is spreading toward the sea side of the plant from the reactors sitting on higher ground.

"We don't know what is the reason behind the spike," Tepco spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida told Reuters. "We're still looking to determine the causes behind it."

The operator has been flushing water over the three reactors to keep them cool for more than two years, but contaminated water has been building up at the rate of an an Olympic-size swimming pool per week.

 

[thankyouOB]

nuclear power; the gift that keeps on killing.

NYTImes today:
TOKYO — The stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima has probably been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for two years, ever since an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant, Japan’s chief nuclear regulator said on Wednesday.

In unusually candid comments, Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, also said that neither his staff nor the plant’s operator knew exactly where the leaks were coming from, or how to stop them.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has reported spikes in the amounts of radioactive cesium, tritium and strontium detected in groundwater at the plant, adding urgency to the task of sealing any leaks. Radioactive cesium and strontium, especially, are known to raise risks of cancer in humans.

Mr. Tanaka’s comments bring into sharp relief the precariousness of the cleanup at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where core meltdowns occurred at three of the six reactors. A critical problem has been the groundwater that has been pouring into the basements of the damaged reactor buildings and becoming contaminated. Workers have been pumping the water out to be stored in dozens of tanks at the plant, but have not stopped the inflow.

Until recently, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, flatly denied that any of that water was leaking into the ocean, even though various independent studies of radiation levels in the nearby ocean have suggested otherwise. In recent days, Tepco has retreated to saying that it was not sure whether there was a leak into the ocean.

Mr. Tanaka said that the evidence was overwhelming.

“We’ve seen for a fact that levels of radioactivity in the seawater remain high, and contamination continues — I don’t think anyone can deny that,” he said Wednesday at a briefing after a meeting of the authority’s top regulators. “We must take action as soon as possible.

“That said, considering the state of the plant, it’s difficult to find a solution today or tomorrow,” he added. “That’s probably not satisfactory to many of you. But that’s the reality we face after an accident like this.”

 

[WetEV]

nuclear power; the gift that keeps on killing.

Keep spreading that FUD. Coal Miners are counting on you.

Any amount of radiation is evil, causes cancer and kills, which is why everyone is already dead from natural radiation.

Oh, wait, people are still alive? How did that happen?

 

[thankyouOB]

absolutely. (and pray tell, why do you phrase your response in the way you do, do you hate workers?)


(back on topic) and please remember to answer:
why no company will build a nuclear power plant without federal limits on liability
what we are going to do with the waste
why no insurance company will insure them without federal limits on liability
what we will do with the waste
how cooling pools at plants are a solution to waste storage
what we will do with the waste

also too--if you are so confident that fukushima is not an environmental disaster, perhaps you would like to take a trip there with your small children.

 

[thankyouOB]

please note. i had a close friend who died in her 30s of a very rare cancer after visiting ukraine and environs to do research just a couple of years after the chernobyl event.

her doctors said she likely picked up an isotope during her visit.

 

[Smidge204]

why no company will build a nuclear power plant without federal limits on liability

1) Is that even actually true?
2) Hey, if someone is offering...

what we are going to do with the waste

Modify or repeal cold-war-era treaties that prevent us from reprocessing nuclear waste, which would both increase available nuclear fuel supply while substantially reducing the amount of waste to be dealt with. Vitrify what's left and bury it.

why no insurance company will insure them without federal limits on liability

Again, is this actually true?

what we will do with the waste
how cooling pools at plants are a solution to waste storage
what we will do with the waste

We're going to store in in your garage. Your garage. Think of the money you'll save on your heating bills!

Glad to know you are in no way emotionally involved in this discussion, and are able to remain fully objective about the whole thing.
=Smidge=

 

[thankyouOB]

personal attacks are a good substitute for substance?

 

[thankyouOB]

try some facts from the NRC website:

Fact Sheet on Nuclear Insurance and Disaster Relief Funds

Nuclear Insurance: Price-Anderson Act
The Price-Anderson Act, which became law on September 2, 1957, was designed to ensure that adequate funds would be available to satisfy liability claims of members of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of a nuclear accident involving a commercial nuclear power plant. The legislation helped encourage private investment in commercial nuclear power by placing a cap, or ceiling on the total amount of liability each holder of a nuclear power plant licensee faced in the event of an accident. Over the years, the "limit of liability" for a nuclear accident has increased the insurance pool to more than $12 billion.

Under existing policy, owners of nuclear power plants pay a premium each year for $375 million in private insurance for offsite liability coverage for each reactor unit. This primary or first tier, insurance is supplemented by a second tier. In the event a nuclear accident, causes damages in excess of $375 million, each licensee would be assessed a prorated share of the excess up to $111.9 million. With 104 reactors currently licensed to operate, this secondary tier of funds contains about $11.6 billion. If 15 percent of these funds are expended, prioritization of the remaining amount would be left to a federal district court. If the second tier is depleted, Congress is committed to determine whether additional disaster relief is required....

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[thankyouOB]

nuclear power; the gift that keeps on killing.

Keep spreading that FUD. Coal Miners are counting on you.

i have solar for all my power. how about you?

 

[WetEV]

please note. i had a close friend who died in her 30s of a very rare cancer after visiting ukraine and environs to do research just a couple of years after the chernobyl event.

her doctors said she likely picked up an isotope during her visit.

Yea, like oxygen 16 or carbon 12. :lol:

If just visiting there causes cancer, then everyone in the Ukraine should be dying of cancer. They are not, you should know.

The cancer risk is higher. About 0.01% higher, if you live there. One in 10,000 cancers is probably related to Chernobyl accident. Stop at the first sentence, then repeat as needed for spreading fear.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.22037/abstract" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Most of that risk came from exposure in the first days when children were sent to play outside in the fresh fallout.

 

[WetEV]

nuclear power; the gift that keeps on killing.

Keep spreading that FUD. Coal Miners are counting on you.

i have solar for all my power. how about you?

http://www.seattle.gov/light/FuelMix/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Ok, I'm on a different utility, but the mix is about the same.)

 

[Reddy]

Sorry for the long response. It's not directed at anyone, just a stream of consciousness.

Trying to stay on topic, the previous quotes said a lot. Ground water is leaking in, so there must be cracks in the foundations, and thus water can leak out. Cesium is water soluble, hence it follows the water. They don't know where all the cracks are (probably throughout the entire facility) and even if they did, it's taken until now to generate facilities to "process" all of this water. Do you realize how big these problems are? Reading this, I am utterly stunned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is serious, perhaps one of the greatest technical challenges of the present age, and we cannot "wish" it away or that it didn't happen. This must be dealt with using the best technological methods humans can muster. Will it ever be "cleaned up" from a radioactivity perspective? No. That is not possible, but it must and will be cleaned up to levels that are safe for human habitation. It's technically challenging, but doable as long as the existing regulator limits are used. The problem comes when "politics" and "fear" comes into play.

Remember, every person contains within them about 0.1 microcurie of radioactive potassium-40 that comes naturally from the cosmos. You can even buy potassium chloride (salt substitute) from the grocery store and measure it with a Geiger-Muller counter. Sorry folks, yup, you're radioactive! Deal with it.

Two years ago I estimated that this disaster would be ten times larger than Three Mile Island (at least for contaminated water), not counting the destroyed facilities. Well, I was very wrong. Already there are reports of more than a half a million cubic meters (130 million gallons) pretreated and currently being stored: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/fukushima/missionreport230513.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; All of this water still contains low levels of misc. radioactivity and higher levels of tritium (Tritium cannot be easily separated or trapped from water since it is chemically identical to the hydrogen in H2O, water).

One huge problem is the continued water leakage IN, not OUT. All that water must be treated and stored. They are running out of room, cutting down forests to make more room. There is no end in sight and no political will to deal with the water. At TMI, even though the water met drinking water standards, they could not discharge it to the river. They were forced to evaporate. Well, in this case, evaporating 200 million gallons of tritium-contaminated water will cost a huge amount of money, energy and fossil fuel consumption, just to evaporate the tritium into the air, which will then rain out into the ocean. Pretty dumb if you ask me.

Let's stop the finger-pointing and let the engineers do the work. It will take decades and, yes, there will be continued (or maybe continual) leaking. These are real people, trying their best to do a very difficult job. From the pictures I've seen, it looks like absolute chaos, much like I imagine fighting in WWII was like. The only difference here is that the radiation is invisible and you don't know that you've been "shot" until weeks, months, or years later.

Oh, since you may notice that I live near another famous nuclear site, and as a comparison, Hanford has 100-200 million gallons of tank waste which took decades to generate and will take decades to "process" again. All of this was generated by scientist and engineers whose families lived right nearby. There were no earthquakes, tsunamis, explosions, etc. to cause more problems. Cleaning up Hanford is mere child's play compared to Fukushima.

 

[thankyouOB]

from reuters august 5, 2013:

TOKYO - Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an "emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country's nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

"Right now, we have an emergency," he said.

 

[AndyH]

German photojournalist visits Fukushima

http://www.neureuters.de/umwelt/fukushima

An amazing view of life in Fukushima two years after the nuclear crisis began.

Koriyama: As with all official measuring posts checked by me (37 of 1,341) this one also shows a value almost 50% too low compared to my calibrated Geiger counter.

Fukushima City: Slowly Yoshihiko Oyama gets used to wearing this dosimeter around his neck - like all other students. This device will accumulate the radiation levels to which he is exposed every day for the next year.

At the edge of a busy road toward a Junior High School in the city of Koriyama I measure 14.88 microsieverts per hour - before the Fukushima accident, there were 0.04 microsieverts per hour. On such a highly contaminated site in Germany, you would be wearing a radiation protection suit and repirators, here the unsuspecting kids are walking by in shorts and T-shirts.

 

[WetEV]

At the edge of a busy road toward a Junior High School in the city of Koriyama I measure 14.88 microsieverts per hour - before the Fukushima accident, there were 0.04 microsieverts per hour. On such a highly contaminated site in Germany, you would be wearing a radiation protection suit and repirators, here the unsuspecting kids are walking by in shorts and T-shirts.

If the contamination was nuclear industry caused, perhaps. If it was coal ash, it would be just "so what"? If it was natural, you might say "what a wonderful view from this pile of rocks" while wearing lederhosen.

Or in Brazil, lying on the beach with the rest of the tourists in a swimsuit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarapari" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Choice quotes:

"Fukushima is the biggest experiment ever on the effects of ionizing radiation on human beings and nature at all." Really. Wow. Bigger than Chernobyl? Really???

"In the Japanese capital, the lights do not seem to fade out - even while currently only two of the remaining 50 nuclear reactors are in operation. " Sure, because of massive increase in fossil fuel burning. That is so much better, isn't it?

Isn't it?

 

[AndyH]

At the edge of a busy road toward a Junior High School in the city of Koriyama I measure 14.88 microsieverts per hour - before the Fukushima accident, there were 0.04 microsieverts per hour. On such a highly contaminated site in Germany, you would be wearing a radiation protection suit and repirators, here the unsuspecting kids are walking by in shorts and T-shirts.

If the contamination was nuclear industry caused, perhaps. If it was coal ash, it would be just "so what"? If it was natural, you might say "what a wonderful view from this pile of rocks" while wearing lederhosen.

The comment was about regulations and safeguards, not source.

But that's apparently lost on the shills.

Sure, because of massive increase in fossil fuel burning. That is so much better, isn't it?

The increased use of fossil fuels today is not permanent as Japan is quickly installing renewable generation. So yes, it is better.