Keep calm and carry on..
Maybe that lasted into the 70's... afterall who remembers/learned the lessions from Banqiao Dam? (lmgtfy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)
Hydro power really is dangerous....
Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes
Sensationalism has always been part of the popular media - but Fukushima is a telling and troubling sign of how much the media has changed in fifty years: from an era of scientific optimism to one where it inhabits a world of fantasy - creating a real-time Hollywood disaster movie with a moralising, chivvying message. Not so …
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:01 GMT Mad Mike
Yes, really, really dangerous
This dam failure caused the deaths of 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes. Even with Chenobyl, the figures are massively less and that was a really bad nuclear accident!! Why not lookup how many dams fail per year and you might be surprised. The safety record of the nuclear industry is the best of any electricity generation mechanism. Let's not let facts get in the way of a good story though!!
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:44 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Clean danger v dirty danger
I think there is a perception that if you die crushed by a wall of water or drown or suffocate in a coal mine or burn to cinders in an oil fire - this is natural and "clean" and Gaia will look after you, whereas if you die of radiation poisoning, it's dirty, un-natural, man-play-godly, anti-gaian and you will somehow be deader than "normal" dead.
The radiation is a silent killer - it is so treacherous that you can die 50 or 80 years after being exposed and all that time you won't even know that you're DOOMED!
-
-
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 12:47 GMT Scorchio!!
Re: Glasgow
You should live in Cornwall then, where high and toxic levels of radiation occur naturally. Frequently written off as 'background radiation' in much the same way that unwanted effects of medication are written off as 'side effects and unwanted deaths in war are called 'collateral damage', it must be healthy! It's Gaia!
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:00 GMT Hermes Conran
Meltdown
Even those convicted liars who run these plants have had to admit that the core in at least one reactor has melted. The fact that good civil engineering and drastic risk management has prevented hundreds of people being poised so far does not detract from the fact that the whole area around the plant is despoiled for generations.
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:38 GMT Reading Your E-mail
Point proven perfectly
"Reactor melted"
Yep, but so what, if the whole plant had melted then we would have a problem, but the reactor melting means it's buggered for use again, not that the whole world is going to expire in a burst of gamma rays
...and nothing has been despoiled for generations, just cause they wrap your chips in it doesn't mean it's credible.
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:01 GMT Mad Mike
@Hermes Conran
Looks like a Redtop reader and he's fallen for it hook line and sinker. Even with the radioactive water and plutonium found to date, the amounts are pretty tiny. The area around the plant will be cleaned up within a few years and everything will return to normal. Radiation escaping into the sea is not too big a deal as the sea is immense and the dilution effect is massive. So, very quickly the radiation is so dispersed it offers no real threat.
People in Edinburgh and other areas such as Dartmoor with large amounts of igneous rock are exposed to higher levels of radiation each and every year!! Ever heard of Radon? Look it up in relation to building in this country.
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 09:04 GMT It wasnt me
Hmmmmm.... I have an idea.
You comment on the dilution effect got me thinking. Who are the real experts in the dilution effect?
Perhaps we could put homeopaths to good use and get them to clean up the mess? I quite like the mental image of Gillian McKeith being sent into the reactors. Oh noes, theres no shits for me to examine!
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Hermes
"the fact that the whole area around the plant is despoiled for generations"
Do you have a source for this "fact"? The whole area around the plant is a mess, yes - tidal waves will do that. And there have certainly been releases of radioactive materials from the plant. But I'm not aware of any evidence that there has been significant contamination of the area with long-lived radioactive materials.
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 15:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
This really is disappointing.
The Register is a technical publication and to continue to give oxygen to the wilder speculations and comments devalues the Science and Engineering professions and professionals who participate in them.
Without doubt there are issues to be addressed and they will be - but perhaps not as all of us would wish.
While 'we' continue to squabble and shout about 'nuclear accidents' then the public will continue to to think science and engineering is populated by arseholes and incompetents - which it most certainly isn't!!
Truth to tell, there isn't much to be seen now as far as the nuclear side goes. There is a lot more interesting stuff to be done with regard to earthquake engineering and alternative energy. Given were Japan sits I suspect there will be a re-vitalised interest in geothermal and other power sources.
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Spot on
Although I'm not so sure I share Orlowski's optimism with regards to the general public and their ability to parse all this stuff properly. Look at Germany, where the electorate has made bold gestures to the effect that what they want is the unachievable conglomeration of super-industry, green energy and no nuclear. Same thing going on in some quarters of Japan, although since they're actually in a seismic danger zone and have recently suffered a terrible cataclysm, that's much more understandable. I just have doubts about whether people will reject the scaremongering when it has such visceral appeal.
-
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 08:48 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Germany, eh...
Well, the discussion to tear down the 8? reactors that were SCRAMed at the news of the JAPAN INCIDENT a couple of weeks ago is now in full swing. Ancillary to this I heard on the radio that Germany plans to import hydropower from Norway. This will replace about 1 nuke. A laudable idea but guess what's first on the list of talking points: NIMBYness regarding the power converters and public fear of the high-voltage lines. Sigh.
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 10:21 GMT Sil_W
@ somethingmissing
Your comment about trusting the public to parse all this stuff properly does raise a good question about the democracy we all automatically laud as the be-all and end-all of moral government. What if the public, through ignorance or fear, set themselves on a self-destructive course? Does political morality, and the need to avoid undemocratic rule at all costs, require that the destruction be allowed to run its course?
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 12:26 GMT CD001
I've often thought
I've often thought that Democracy, being (supposedly) governance for the people, by the people, is fundamentally flawed by the fact that it's run "by the people" - have you never seen the Jeremy Kyle show?
(actually I haven't, I have a job, but from what I can gather it's like the Essex chav version of Jerry Springer).
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 12:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Plato was right
I'd say enlightened dictatorships/monarchies are probably the best form of government, but the problem with that is that it's much more of a lottery, and there's no way to really guarantee that a good leader won't be replaced by an idiot/tyrant. The problem with democracy, on the other hand, is that it nearly never results in the best possible (or even good) governance, but the upside is that it provides a mechanism through which people are able to signal their consent and approval. So the question is, as you said, whether or not we should go waltzing towards extinction due to our own mass stupidity, as long as our politics retains (broadly speaking, of course) a consensual element. Speaking for myself, I think in general totalitarianism leads more predictably to suffering, and since we're going to go extinct some day any way (and are almost certain, from a Darwinian standpoint, to be 'responsible' for our own demise), at least we can try and reduce suffering on the way there. Not to say I'm a democrat, mind - I find it endlessly infuriating living in a democracy. But it might just be the least worst option.
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:09 GMT Jolyon
Dirty
"("like a dirty bomb" we were told)"
Who told us that?
Also a link to an online copy of the Daily Mail's "Nature's Deadly Rage" would be great if you could provide it; Tim Black couldn't either although he did link to other quoted articles in his similarly themed piece on Spiked. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10325/
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:11 GMT David Pollard
Locating "Nature's Deadly Rage"
There are searchy-looky thingummies that can do it for you, e.g.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Nature%27s+Deadly+Rage&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=30&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=y&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
Registration is apparently required.
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:34 GMT Jimmahh
Let-Me-Google-It-For-You(TM)
"Also a link to an online copy of the Daily Mail's "Nature's Deadly Rage" would be great if you could provide it..."
Err... you did try Googling the phrase; Daily Mail's "Nature's Deadly Rage" didn't you....?
Because an online version of that copy seems to be the first result
*shrug*
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:54 GMT Jolyon
Goo goo
Yes, I googled. And yes, an online copy 'seems' to be the first result but as you will no doubt have seen, being the thorough sort of person you so clearly are, that's just the (rather impressive) front page. If the text content is available it would appear to be behind a paywall and I am too much of a freetard to take that route.
-
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 14:36 GMT barryred
Title?
I believe this is the clip you're talking about is with Sir David King, on a 'Recycle nuclear fuel for power' piece. (link @ end)
.
However, while Sir David King tries to be rational and explain the real situation, the interviewer is doing his best to guide him to saying the sensationalist bits. When the guiding fails, he just throws out the arguments himself.
.
Thankfully Sir David King was quite able to defend the rational corner!
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9439000/9439385.stm
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 15:28 GMT LesC
We're dooomed....
The very same BBC has reported that a Fukushima radioactive I-131 particle has been found at Glasgow and another in Oxfordshire. On the Beach, indeed.
Would think that some of the beaches around Dounreay and Sellafield / the Irish Sea would have concentrations of radioiodine higher than that.
Mines is the one with the suicide pills in the pocket.
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:15 GMT dr2chase
Can you do better than this?
The issue, as near as I can tell, is that there's mess of radioactive water in there, and it appears to be consuming workers' exposure allowance a lot faster than I would like.
Those would be interesting numbers to know, and I have not heard them reported. If TEPCO has a supply of workers adequate for a year of exposure at current rates, I think things will turn out ok. If they only have one month's supply, I think "Nucular Power Roolz!" is a bit premature. Would be interesting, also, to know if they are training new workers specifically for this job (using similar plants) so as to ensure a steady supply, just-in-case.
And yeah, this is a PR disaster, and I am more than a little worried that the other likely-better designs are going to be tarred with the same brush. In particular, there's no particularly easy answer to the pair of questions "if these other designs are so safe, why aren't we using them already?" and "if you were sure of this old design, and you're sure of this new design, what's the difference in actual safety?"
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 16:07 GMT Nigel 11
No easy answer??
"if these other designs are so safe, why aren't we using them already?"
We are using them already. (The old ones haven't yet been decommissioned, for economic reasons.)
"if you were sure of this old design, and you're sure of this new design, what's the difference in actual safety?"
"Passive cooling". That the new designs don't require electric pumps to be continuously powered, in order to avoid a melt-down. The old design assumed that a days-long power outage couldn't happen. The new ones don't make that faulty assumption.
Is this too hard for the man on the Clapham Omnibus? Probably not. The average journalist? Well, that IS a hard question!
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 08:57 GMT Oninoshiko
In addition
for LFTRs if they do overheat, a plug (imagine some ice plugging up your sink drain) melts out and the core (which is normally liquid, making the term "meltdown" meaningless) just flows out into containers which make is more dispersed, taking it non-critical (a normally operating nuclear reactor is "critical" meaning there is enough density if fissile material to sustain a chain reaction).
The reason we don't use them they don't generate enough nuclear waste. Because I am fully aware of how "tinfoil-hatter" that sounds, let me explain. In the 1960's, when much of the choices were being made about what should be researched in the field, there was a little cold-war with the Soviets going on (you might have heard about it). A core part of this was the creation of atomic weapons. One of the common ingredients (Pu-239) in a atomic weapon just so happens be in the waste products of common Pressurized Water Reactor designs.
This combined with a underestimation of the amount of U-235 was available lead to a concentration of development designs based on the dirtier, less-safe, and less readily available (0.74% of U is U-235 vs. almost 100% of naturally occurring Th is Th-232, in addition it is estimated that there is 4x as much Th as U naturally occurring) fuel.
Most of the waste from the Thorium fuel cycle is not suitable for weapons, and the excess of U-233 which is produced is mostly fed into the core to sustain the reaction. The U-233 which is above the requirements is such a small amount that it is not considered a large proliferation risk. That said, there is normally too much Pu-240 in waste from a "conventional" civilian reactor to be used directly for weapons but centrifuges can be used to remove the contaminating isotope.
There have been a couple of LFTRs built, notably the MSRE in 1964, which went critical (remember, being critical is the normal state for a operating nuclear reactor) in 1965, and operated as a research reactor until 1969. This tested many of the systems, including (and possibly most importantly) the frozen-salt-plug safety-valve, which was used to shut down the reactor multiple times. There has been a resurgence of interest in this technology lately, I have read of programs in PRC, India, and Japan to finish the necessary components to use this technology for power generation.
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 09:32 GMT Andydaws
Except, of course,
that LWR fuel is also loaded with Pu238 - which you most definitely don't want in your nuclear weapons production cycle.
LWRs are lousy breeders. Their refuelling cycle is far too long, and hence runs the fuel to too hingh a burn-up. That;s why early designs linke MAGNOX were designed for on-line refuelling - you could shuffle the fuel to manage flux exposure, to get good plutonium breeding.
One thing that LFTR enthusiasts miss is complexity of the associated processing plant, if they're going to breed. The breeder ratio is marginal at best - under 3% even in near ideal conditions. And to get that, you've got to be doing amusing things like spraying the fuel through an inert atmosphere to extract Xenon and other volatiles, bubbling it through liquid bismuth to remove protactinium (which is the precursor to the U233), and sparging flourine through the fuel to extract other uranium isotopes. All with fuel at 600C plus. Not a simple engineering problem.
And At decent scale, I'm a long way from convinced that the putative air cooling for decay heat removal is going to work. Simple surface-area-volume considerations suggest that you'd have to distribute the fuel into a LOT of separate cooling tanks, each with active air circulation.
It's a technology worth having a serious look at, but most of the protagonists aren't thinking of the engineering realities.
-
-
-
Wednesday 30th March 2011 08:59 GMT Veldan
Though it works both ways
It's also a case of people being scared of NP means less money gets allocated to NP which means the old plants sit there, not being upgraded to modern standards and when they finally break well after their lifespan we turn around and lay blame on NP when it was the fear of NP that stopped them from getting the attention/money they deserved to make them safe. </rant>
We don't know that our new designs are fool proofed, but 50 years of reactor research (my understanding is the Fukushima designs are form the 1960's) tends to go a long way into improving something.
Most of the new pebble bed and molten salt reactors are passively cooled, or simply built in a manner that makes meltdowns or explosions impossible (aka, the reaction stops and they can cool themselves without any outside intervention).
Newer tech that is just on the horizon even goes so far as to boast plants that couldn't explode/meltdown even if you actively tried to make them do so.
Without the money, we will never see these being made.
If we all supported NP and funded it whole heartedly, not only would the cost of it lower, we'd also be able to assure the capital to upgrade old plants instead of milking them long beyond their safe running lifespan.
-
-
Tuesday 29th March 2011 13:15 GMT Chris Miller
What is it with science reporting?
With a few honourable exceptions, news media seem to find it perfectly OK to have science/technology stories covered by reporters who clearly have no knowledge whatever of the subject. This does seem to happen (at least, not very often) in other subjects. Sports reporters are expected to understand the difference between soccer and cricket; music reporters are expected to be able to differentiate between a guitar and a drumkit. No motoring column would ever appear containing a statement such as: "the Whizzo SuperFast has a top speed of 200mph - for comparison, that's twice the distance between London and Birmingham".
Yet the Times recently lifted a story from the Asahi Shimbun that said: "radiation levels of 500mSv/hr, which is twice the permitted dose of 250mSv", without realising what a howler they had perpetrated. Surely there must be at least one subeditor who passed A-level physics?
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
