<!--quoteo(post=1837395:date=Mar 16 2011, 03:18 PM:name=Ph0enix)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Ph0enix @ Mar 16 2011, 03:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837395"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Define unsafe. Its gonna take a lot of money and years to sort each site but these aren't dodgy reactors or crewed by badly/improperly trained operators. The long term impact past the initial reactor sites is gonna be pretty much nil.
That said fusion is the way forward long term as its pretty much superior in every way.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just because the crew is trained doesn't completely remove the risk of a full meltdown, and one of those surely impacts a large area for a long time. The problem with fission is that you can't stop it when it starts to get angry. And turns green.
<!--quoteo(post=1837395:date=Mar 16 2011, 08:18 PM:name=Ph0enix)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Ph0enix @ Mar 16 2011, 08:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837395"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Define unsafe.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think the current situation defines unsafe quite well. To quote you, "these aren't dodgy reactors or crewed by badly/improperly trained operators." Entirely correct. But STILL it went wrong. When every precaution has been taken and disasters still happen, it's unsafe. Japan is a densely populated country that can't even produce enough food to feed their own population. They need every single square mile. They can't afford to write off a large exclusion zone because it gets irradiated. They're a high-technology country, they have high safety standards, they have a reputation for dilligence and excellence, and they have every reason and motivation to prevent nuclear disasters that could make large areas of the country unfit for human habitation. And the ###### still hit the fan. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And it DID happen there.
Just to highlight the space thing lolfighter is on about, it's quite startling when you compare the British Isles to Japan
Japanese population : Approx 127 million people British Isles population : Approx 70 million people
Japanese land mass : Approx 378 km2 British Isles population land mass : Approx 315km2
I know if it was Britain and it was on my home front, I'd be sitting here right now thinking, "we're pretty f****d"; let alone looking at those figures being Japanese.
You're off by a factor of one thousand in terms of land mass, but otherwise this is entirely correct. Though from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles" target="_blank">this one,</a> I get approx. 65 million people. What's included in 70 million?
For even starker contrast, the USA:
Population: Approximately 309 million Land mass: Approximately Approximately 9.8 million km²
<!--quoteo(post=1837466:date=Mar 17 2011, 01:10 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Mar 17 2011, 01:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837466"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I get approx. 65 million people. What's included in 70 million?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We're doing a census this year. We've had a lot of people in since that 65 million figure, a lot more people born and in to the country from other parts of Europe. My 70 was an estimate but it's likely we'll have more than that by the end of the census. It's definately 70+ in the UK right now, I'd be extremely shocked if it was lower.
I'd say it is safe. Although I'm in Europe, England in fact. I can't see how an earthquake in my lifetime will hit us enough to disrupt a nuclear facility. Sometimes, people make a whole lot of something out of nothing.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1837470:date=Mar 17 2011, 01:48 AM:name=juice)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (juice @ Mar 17 2011, 01:48 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837470"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Nuclear power isn't "safe", but how many people have died from oil? Granted, the people doing the dying may be farther from home.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Except when a nuclear plant goes out of control, it's much more dangerous and also will turn the area around the disaster into a glowy area for decades... And since were on the subject of oil, <a href="http://www.bp.com/bodycopyarticle.do?categoryId=1&contentId=7052055" target="_blank">BP</a> should've been forced to accept assistance from the <a href="http://www.nam.nl/home/Framework?siteId=nam-en" target="_blank">NAM</a>, since their disaster last year involved the planet we all live on, so why not leave it up to the real pro's!
<!--quoteo(post=1837484:date=Mar 16 2011, 09:58 PM:name=Kouji_San)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kouji_San @ Mar 16 2011, 09:58 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837484"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Except when a nuclear plant goes out of control, it's much more dangerous and also will turn the area around the disaster into a glowy area for decades... And since were on the subject of oil, <a href="http://www.bp.com/bodycopyarticle.do?categoryId=1&contentId=7052055" target="_blank">BP</a> should've been forced to accept assistance from the <a href="http://www.nam.nl/home/Framework?siteId=nam-en" target="_blank">NAM</a>, since their disaster last year involved the planet we all live on, so why not leave it up to the real pro's!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not talking about oil spills, I'm talking about wars.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1837496:date=Mar 17 2011, 04:19 AM:name=juice)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (juice @ Mar 17 2011, 04:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837496"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not talking about oil spills, I'm talking about wars.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Hehe, granted. However, I wasn't able to decipher that from your post even with the (") around safe :P
<!--quoteo(post=1837474:date=Mar 17 2011, 03:16 AM:name=Thaldarin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thaldarin @ Mar 17 2011, 03:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837474"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'd say it is safe. Although I'm in Europe, England in fact. I can't see how an earthquake in my lifetime will hit us enough to disrupt a nuclear facility. Sometimes, people make a whole lot of something out of nothing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The thing is, the general public doesn't know much about nuclear safety. How many ukrainians knew that Chernobyl wasn't safe? I believe "not very many" is a far claim. How many people knew that a natural disaster greater than what japanese nuclear reactors could handle was going to happen? Even less, I think. I do not claim to be an expert on nuclear safety, but I can't dismiss what has happened: Sloppiness and poor reactor designs have lead to nuclear incidents. Force of nature has lead to nuclear incidents in spite of diligence and safety-conscious reactor designs. Murphy's law has struck thrice, so I don't think the assumption that it will strike again is unfounded. We can make safer fission reactors, but we can never make safe fission reactors. And the potential consequences are too severe.
NeonSpyder"Das est NTLDR?"Join Date: 2003-07-03Member: 17913Members
Yeah.
Except that we <i>can</i> make safe fission reactors. The reactors in japan that are screwing the pooch right now are all reliant on active cooling systems and when they fail the fissile material inside the reactor gets hotter and hotter and hotter. This is similar to what happened in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. In Chernobyl the overheat was due to a graphite-based reaction-enabler that, when it got too hot, rapidly became super-hot and out of control.
The reactors in japan are failing and melting down right now because the active cooling systems have no power, allowing the nuclear material inside the reactor to get hotter and hotter.
Passive-cool nuclear reactors are designed to be sensitive to failure conditions so if the coolant stops moving or it can't be cooled down or both then it simply stops reacting and shuts down quietly.
If the Japanese reactors were using this design, they would be turned off and quiet right now instead of burning and exploding.
Even with no electricity to the plant, no functioning anything, the passive nuclear design reactor just shuts down automatically. Not as a safety mechanism or anything but as a physical process inherent to the design.
There's a lot of information and several passive reactor designs currently in existence. If anti-nuclear green-peace nutjobs would stop screaming for long enough to actually read and understand nuclear safety, then we wouldn't need to have this embargo on new plants and we could stop running 40 year old designs.
A 41 year old reactor withstood a 9.0 quake and tsunami. I wanna say thats a damn good design.And nothing catastrophic has happened yet, altho the germans and austrians calls it a "nuclear apocalypse" haha. And in Finland they are already hoarding iodine tablets. The mass media hype machine is doing good so far. Japan has been well aware of a big quake coming, but nobody could foresee or prepare for a 9.0 quake, a tsunami at 500miles pr hour and 500+ aftershakes. And how is the population taking it? No looting, no riots, no massive whining, no panic most of all. But the rest of the world are all big babies atm, being worse than Captain Hindsight.
<!--quoteo(post=1837514:date=Mar 17 2011, 07:21 AM:name=NeonSpyder)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NeonSpyder @ Mar 17 2011, 07:21 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837514"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There's a lot of information and several passive reactor designs currently in existence. If anti-nuclear green-peace nutjobs would stop screaming for long enough to actually read and understand nuclear safety, then we wouldn't need to have this embargo on new plants and we could stop running 40 year old designs.
FFS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
QFT. Voyager 1 and 2 are still working thanks to nuclear energy. Nutjobs dont understand that nuclear energy is a GOOD thing. Think if the nazis had invented it first ^
Nazis? Really? You're bringing nazis into this thread now? REALLY? Excuse while my palm mashes my face to a pulp.
Alright, moving on. Here's something I don't understand: NeonSpyder, you say passive-cool reactors simply shut down? But japanese reactors WERE shut down due to the earthquake. As I understand, this means inserting the control rods all the way into the reactor core, halting the fission chain reaction by soaking up neutrons. So where does all the heat come from? How come the reactors overheated HOURS later if the fission reaction was no longer running? Why did they need active cooling if they weren't generating heat? Which part of the puzzle am I missing?
Even though the control rods are in and the reaction is virtually halted, the core is still very hot and takes days to completely "turn off", during which it still requires a cooling system to keep it from overheating.
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor" target="_blank">pebble bed reactor</a> design on the other hand doesn't have this issue. The part most relevant to what NeonSpyder was saying is probably this paragraph:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->When the nuclear fuel increases in temperature, the rapid motion of the atoms in the fuel causes an effect known as Doppler broadening. The fuel then sees a wider range of relative neutron speeds. U238, which forms the bulk of the uranium in the reactor, is much more likely to absorb fast or epithermal neutrons at higher temperatures. This reduces the number of neutrons available to cause fission, and reduces the power of the reactor. Doppler broadening therefore creates a negative feedback because as fuel temperature increases, reactor power decreases. All reactors have reactivity feedback mechanisms, but the pebble bed reactor is designed so that this effect is very strong and does not depend on any kind of machinery or moving parts. Because of this, its passive cooling, and because the pebble bed reactor is designed for higher temperatures, the pebble bed reactor can passively reduce to a safe power level in an accident scenario. This is the main passive safety feature of the pebble bed reactor, and it makes the pebble bed design (as well as other very high temperature reactors) unique from conventional light water reactors which require active safety controls.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It literally cannot overheat due to inherent physical and atomic characteristics.
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5sakN2hSVxA"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5sakN2hSVxA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center> A weird but pedagogical view of the reactor trouble.
<!--quoteo(post=1837583:date=Mar 17 2011, 06:10 PM:name=A_Boojum_Snark)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (A_Boojum_Snark @ Mar 17 2011, 06:10 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837583"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It literally cannot overheat due to inherent physical and atomic characteristics.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Goddammit why do we still have ###### old reactors.
I think it's because of the amount of work, time and money it costs to close those old ones down to create new ones. It's cheaper to let it live out its lifetime cycle.
<!--quoteo(post=1837577:date=Mar 17 2011, 05:19 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Mar 17 2011, 05:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1837577"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Nazis? Really? You're bringing nazis into this thread now? REALLY? Excuse while my palm mashes my face to a pulp.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I brought in a simple "what if" scenario for anti nuclear idiots.
Semantics aside, Bill Gates was talking like Adrian Veidt at ted.com the other day, concerning a new nuclear energy.
What is it that actually explodes in a powerplant? I thought the material containing the radioactive matter only melted once it got too hot?
Like this in the Chernobyl reactor. <img src="http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/interactive_resources/tutorials/failurecases/images/ChB8ElephantFoots.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Comments
That said fusion is the way forward long term as its pretty much superior in every way.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just because the crew is trained doesn't completely remove the risk of a full meltdown, and one of those surely impacts a large area for a long time. The problem with fission is that you can't stop it when it starts to get angry. And turns green.
I think the current situation defines unsafe quite well. To quote you, "these aren't dodgy reactors or crewed by badly/improperly trained operators." Entirely correct. But STILL it went wrong. When every precaution has been taken and disasters still happen, it's unsafe. Japan is a densely populated country that can't even produce enough food to feed their own population. They need every single square mile. They can't afford to write off a large exclusion zone because it gets irradiated. They're a high-technology country, they have high safety standards, they have a reputation for dilligence and excellence, and they have every reason and motivation to prevent nuclear disasters that could make large areas of the country unfit for human habitation. And the ###### still hit the fan. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And it DID happen there.
Japanese population : Approx 127 million people
British Isles population : Approx 70 million people
Japanese land mass : Approx 378 km2
British Isles population land mass : Approx 315km2
I know if it was Britain and it was on my home front, I'd be sitting here right now thinking, "we're pretty f****d"; let alone looking at those figures being Japanese.
For even starker contrast, the USA:
Population: Approximately 309 million
Land mass: Approximately Approximately 9.8 million km²
And for comparison, population density:
Japan: 337.1 people/km²
Britain: 206.3 people/km²
USA: 33.7 people/km²
Funny fact: If the USA was as densely populated as Japan, there'd be 3.1 milliard living there.
We're doing a census this year. We've had a lot of people in since that 65 million figure, a lot more people born and in to the country from other parts of Europe. My 70 was an estimate but it's likely we'll have more than that by the end of the census. It's definately 70+ in the UK right now, I'd be extremely shocked if it was lower.
Except when a nuclear plant goes out of control, it's much more dangerous and also will turn the area around the disaster into a glowy area for decades... And since were on the subject of oil, <a href="http://www.bp.com/bodycopyarticle.do?categoryId=1&contentId=7052055" target="_blank">BP</a> should've been forced to accept assistance from the <a href="http://www.nam.nl/home/Framework?siteId=nam-en" target="_blank">NAM</a>, since their disaster last year involved the planet we all live on, so why not leave it up to the real pro's!
I'm not talking about oil spills, I'm talking about wars.
Hehe, granted. However, I wasn't able to decipher that from your post even with the (") around safe :P
The thing is, the general public doesn't know much about nuclear safety. How many ukrainians knew that Chernobyl wasn't safe? I believe "not very many" is a far claim. How many people knew that a natural disaster greater than what japanese nuclear reactors could handle was going to happen? Even less, I think. I do not claim to be an expert on nuclear safety, but I can't dismiss what has happened: Sloppiness and poor reactor designs have lead to nuclear incidents. Force of nature has lead to nuclear incidents in spite of diligence and safety-conscious reactor designs. Murphy's law has struck thrice, so I don't think the assumption that it will strike again is unfounded. We can make safer fission reactors, but we can never make safe fission reactors. And the potential consequences are too severe.
Except that we <i>can</i> make safe fission reactors. The reactors in japan that are screwing the pooch right now are all reliant on active cooling systems and when they fail the fissile material inside the reactor gets hotter and hotter and hotter. This is similar to what happened in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. In Chernobyl the overheat was due to a graphite-based reaction-enabler that, when it got too hot, rapidly became super-hot and out of control.
The reactors in japan are failing and melting down right now because the active cooling systems have no power, allowing the nuclear material inside the reactor to get hotter and hotter.
Passive-cool nuclear reactors are designed to be sensitive to failure conditions so if the coolant stops moving or it can't be cooled down or both then it simply stops reacting and shuts down quietly.
If the Japanese reactors were using this design, they would be turned off and quiet right now instead of burning and exploding.
Even with no electricity to the plant, no functioning anything, the passive nuclear design reactor just shuts down automatically. Not as a safety mechanism or anything but as a physical process inherent to the design.
There's a lot of information and several passive reactor designs currently in existence. If anti-nuclear green-peace nutjobs would stop screaming for long enough to actually read and understand nuclear safety, then we wouldn't need to have this embargo on new plants and we could stop running 40 year old designs.
FFS.
FFS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
QFT. Voyager 1 and 2 are still working thanks to nuclear energy. Nutjobs dont understand that nuclear energy is a GOOD thing. Think if the nazis had invented it first ^
Alright, moving on. Here's something I don't understand: NeonSpyder, you say passive-cool reactors simply shut down? But japanese reactors WERE shut down due to the earthquake. As I understand, this means inserting the control rods all the way into the reactor core, halting the fission chain reaction by soaking up neutrons.
So where does all the heat come from? How come the reactors overheated HOURS later if the fission reaction was no longer running? Why did they need active cooling if they weren't generating heat? Which part of the puzzle am I missing?
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor" target="_blank">pebble bed reactor</a> design on the other hand doesn't have this issue. The part most relevant to what NeonSpyder was saying is probably this paragraph:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->When the nuclear fuel increases in temperature, the rapid motion of the atoms in the fuel causes an effect known as Doppler broadening. The fuel then sees a wider range of relative neutron speeds. U238, which forms the bulk of the uranium in the reactor, is much more likely to absorb fast or epithermal neutrons at higher temperatures. This reduces the number of neutrons available to cause fission, and reduces the power of the reactor. Doppler broadening therefore creates a negative feedback because as fuel temperature increases, reactor power decreases. All reactors have reactivity feedback mechanisms, but the pebble bed reactor is designed so that this effect is very strong and does not depend on any kind of machinery or moving parts. Because of this, its passive cooling, and because the pebble bed reactor is designed for higher temperatures, the pebble bed reactor can passively reduce to a safe power level in an accident scenario. This is the main passive safety feature of the pebble bed reactor, and it makes the pebble bed design (as well as other very high temperature reactors) unique from conventional light water reactors which require active safety controls.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It literally cannot overheat due to inherent physical and atomic characteristics.
A weird but pedagogical view of the reactor trouble.
Goddammit why do we still have ###### old reactors.
They should have replaced the doctors with Schröedingers cat, Japanese like cats.
I brought in a simple "what if" scenario for anti nuclear idiots.
Semantics aside, Bill Gates was talking like Adrian Veidt at ted.com the other day, concerning a new nuclear energy.
<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates.html" target="_blank">http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates.html</a>
The sky was blueish today, but not really... There were some clouds...
<img src="http://www.recipekey.com/images/browse_pictures/ground%20beef-recipes.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
On topic.
<a href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201103115952904" target="_blank">http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201103115952904</a>
Not looking too good.
Like this in the Chernobyl reactor.
<img src="http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/interactive_resources/tutorials/failurecases/images/ChB8ElephantFoots.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Read this, starting from the oldest post and work your way through them.
<a href="http://mitnse.com/" target="_blank">http://mitnse.com/</a>
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/pWc2J.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />