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Japanese Tsunami

Malcolm Robinson

By Malcolm Robinson
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Brett

Brett

Posted
Posted

Surely this can be more contained that what Cherynobl was though???

Still think the media hype about the whole situation has made people think that the effects of nuclear energy are devastating. The BBC reports were rediculous about it.

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threegee

threegee

Posted
Posted

'Fraid that's pure b******!

The get out word there is "problem". It's not remotely in the same league as Chernobyl. That was a fire in an unprotected graphite core that caused a simply huge atmospheric radiation release. There has been no major release into the atmosphere here. No one but the volunteers have sustained any significant exposure, and even there it is going to be arguable that if any of them ever get cancer it wouldn't have happened anyway. The radiation has mostly gone into the sea and, with a half-life of eight days, will be diluted and unmeasurable within a few months if not in weeks. The sea already contains vast amounts of natural Uranium (U3O8); so much that it's almost economic to extract it from sea water.

Completely illogical that rather than the twenty thousand plus people that have died in the earthquake and tsunami the only major concern should be about a forty year old nuclear (pre-Chernobyl) plant of obsolete design that we simply wouldn't use these days. No consideration that all the other old plants survived the earthquake exactly as they were designed to - so confounding the alarmists. And indeed so did this one! It wasn't until it was then hit by a tsunami more than twice the height it was designed to be protected from that problems occurred. Those problems weren't structural or indeed nuclear, they were simply the knocking out of the diesel generators.

Lots of lessons to learn from this, but they aren't the lessons we are hearing from the no nuclear at any price mob. A simple observation is that it wasn't sensible to not have any roof ventilation in the reactor sheds. If they'd vented the hydrogen off there wouldn't have been the bangs. But the hysteria about tiny levels of leaks almost certainly militated against this. Probably daft to store the spent fuel rods so darn close to the cores, and have the reactors so close to each other. If you look at modern German plants it's plain to see how much more generous the spacing is. But space in Japan is tight, so that probably entered into this decision.

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threegee

threegee

Posted
Posted

The "ratings" were introduced to aid the public understanding of such things. In fact they've done exactly the reverse and confused a very serious incident that resulted in about fifty direct and indirect deaths, and something between 4000 and 9000 who have/will ultimately suffer serious health damage, with one where those figures are near zero. That's why they are pure b*******, or to put it more mildly "unfit for purpose".

Part of the explanation for this was that Chernobyl was as seriously mismanaged after the incident as it was before; that I will grant you. But the main reason is that - as experts have been saying for decades - the unprotected soviet-era reactors were a disaster waiting to happen. A Chernobyl type plant didn't need a once-in-a-thousand-year natural disaster, and also to be built in a dumb place; all it needed was a dopey shift worker!

Let's ignore the 50 almost certain deaths resulting from Chernobyl and concentrate on the risk of cancer. All we can say at this stage is that about 50 volunteer workers might have suffered long-term health damage. Rate that against say 5000 in the Chernobyl incident and there is, at a very minimum, a two orders of magnitude difference!

I predict that the international ratings system is going to suffer serious revision. It has just lost all credibility!

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