Fukushima still leaking radiation

[Rei-Lin]

Well the containment walls were designed at the time to take on at least an 8.0 size earthquake and they took a 9 and stayed standing (of course damaged) and then ate a giant wave of water on top of that and still stayed up. The only reason all of this crap went South is because the design of the plant put the spent fuel pool on the roof and that the backup diesel generators were in the basement of the containment building, so they flooded and wouldn't run. There's a plant here in the U.S. that has the exact same design but they were lucky and suffered flooding of their diesel generators during construction and thought "Oh, well this is a bad idea to put these life saving generators in the one place they can drown!" and so they moved them further out away from the plant and put them on higher ground.

My job is to go from Nuclear Plant to nuclear plant around the country testing the safety related systems that keep these plants running, and these things are designed far beyond reason when it come to safety of the public. Even systems not designed for safety related accidents have held up long enough to reduce the radioactivity as much as possible before burning out (TMI's release was reduced significantly due to non-safety related systems kicking in). So yeah what happend at Fukushima was something nobody could have really planned to happen no more than they planned for the Titanic to sink. You build the best you think you can, add 10% more on top and hope it's enough. Not saying any of this stuff is perfect but from my perspective, I'd be more worried about plant accidents due to the people working there than the actual plant's themselves having problems.

In fact I'm sitting here at a hotel in Huntsville, Alabama waiting for these idiots to fix a LIGHT BULB on the unit I need to test because a guy decided to change it out (it wasn't burnt out but was "glowing brighter" than he thought it should be), and he made the unit shut off while trying to change it. So now the unit is broken, and they have less than 4 days to fix it or their plant shuts down. So not only am I delayed going home to enjoy the holiday weekend with my family, there's nothing I can do until they fix it so I can test it. It's bullshit and such is the life of Nuclear Power. Safe energy in the hands of total morons.

[Prof_Sai]

If nuclear safety was a technological problem, we would solve it. Alas it isn't, it's a human one. People make mistakes. They get tired and cut corners. No one can really know every detail of the entire plant, so it is impossible to foresee every possible interaction.

"these things are designed far beyond reason when it come to safety of the public." If this were true then there would be no accidents. Safety is a "weakest link" objective. You can put inordinate effort into strengthening every link you see, but if a link exists that no one knows about, effort elsewhere is meaningless.

This is true for all sorts of other things besides nuclear power. But with nuclear you have the unique combination of complexity and catastrophe. A thousand years from now, people are still going to be dealing with the results of Chernobyl and Fukushima. We've had such disasters every 20 years or so. (Maybe more if the Russians and Chinese are still keeping secrets.) At this rate, in 1000 years there would be 50 such radioactive zones all over the Earth. If we have a world war or social collapse, that could be 10 years instead of a thousand. Where will humanity live then?

[TF-Viewer]

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

A thousand years from now, people are still going to be dealing with the results of Chernobyl

Try 20,000 years.

[Prof_Sai]

Originally Posted by TF-Viewer

Try 20,000 years.

Tried, and failed. No chance of life on Earth if the current state keeps up.

[vincent_richter]

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

Tried, and failed. No chance of life on Earth if the current state keeps up.

What are you talking about?
Everyone knows there's bugger-all for life down 'ere on Earth!

[Drachen]

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

Tried, and failed. No chance of life on Earth if the current state keeps up.

Ironically, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is doing quite well biologically. Since the humans left, wolves, beavers, eagles and bison are all thriving in the area.

[Rei-Lin]

What I'm saying is, the safety systems are what save the lives during these accidents, not the humans and they have saved plenty of lives already. Like I said, TMI's radioactive release would have been far worse if a few systems didn't automatically activate to help contain it, and they weren't even designed for that type of release. As for Chernobyl, the only reason that was a problem again, was due to human error and the type of reactor they were using (and used at the other reactors in the same area for years and years).

Their reactor gained power as it got hotter which creates a runaway reaction as it heats up and makes more power which heats it up further, increasing the power until the containment couldn't hold the pressure and it blew up. All other reactors around the world are designed so that the hotter they get, the less power they produce so they can't explode, they just melt the fuel which can also create problems, but won't explode.

As for Fukushima, well it can leak all it wants, and it still won't create the type of emergencies people think it will. Humans can actually take quite a lot of radiation over long periods of time before feeling the effects. Now if you disperse material into the ocean, by the time it spreads out and sinks, the effects will easily be dissipated and water itself is the best shield against radiation, which is why they store spent fuel from the reactor in their pools (spent fuel pool, literally a giant pool).

Anyway, a lot of what people know about radiation and nuclear power is limited, all you have to do is watch any movie you want that has nuclear power in them. They don't glow green, radiation can't really spread over the entire Earth and silly shit like that. I've been doing this nuclear work for 6 years, and I still learn something crazy or interesting everyday. Also keep in mind how the media always plays up the nuclear accidents because they love scaring people half to death with it, so don't believe everything you hear!

[gladewalker]

Coal plants put more radioactivity in the air every year than nuclear plants.
*shrugs*
Sadly, you don't see many Sci Fi "Coal Power Mutants" movies.

[Prof_Sai]

As for Fukushima, well it can leak all it wants, and it still won't create the type of emergencies people think it will.

I just put something in your water, but trust me when I say it's harmless. It's not going to be just one reactor - more and more will keep failing until we stop using them.

Originally Posted by gladewalker

Coal plants put more radioactivity in the air every year than nuclear plants.
*shrugs*
Sadly, you don't see many Sci Fi "Coal Power Mutants" movies.

No, but you do see environmentalists opposing coal.

[TF-Viewer]

Originally Posted by Drachen

Ironically, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is doing quite well biologically. Since the humans left, wolves, beavers, eagles and bison are all thriving in the area.

Well, not really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernob..._natural_world

There have been reports that wildlife has since flourished due to significant reduction of human impact.[38] For this reason, the Zone is considered by some as a classic example of an involuntary park. Some claim that the populations of traditional Polesian animals (such as wolves, badger, wild boar, roe deer, white-tailed eagle, black stork, Western marsh harrier, short-eared owl, red deer, moose, great egret, whooper swan, least weasel, common kestrel and beaver) have multiplied enormously and begun expanding outside the zone. These claims, however, are not substantiated by any systematic census of any animal taxon.[39]

It seems that idea is just a misconception.

[Rachel Bronwyn]

Wildlife in the area is benefiting enormously from the lack of human activity. Controlled ecological studies do reveal the expected findings associated with raised radiation levels though. You can't tell looking at it on the surface.

[Kvasir]

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

I just put something in your water, but trust me when I say it's harmless. It's not going to be just one reactor - more and more will keep failing until we stop using them.

First off, while admittedly not making light of the fact radiation spilling into any environment is bad, I don't ever partake in drinking ocean water to begin with, so yeah "putting something in your water" in this instance is just kinda coming off as a scare tactic and not really serving your point and I have to start this off with how many other things would we of had to write off if they failed? Planes, Cars, Telephones, the internet, modern medicine, people, etc.
I'll come back to this in a second.

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

No, but you do see environmentalists opposing coal.

Okay, is your argument here that environmentalists AREN'T opposing Nuclear energy? Like, they all got together and went "Yeah, we're cool with that."? I have to assume I'm misunderstanding your sentiment here, because people have been treating Nuclear energy as the worst idea ever for decades.

Sure, I love idea of all natural energy production, and its what we should be striving for, but to just write off nuclear technology because sometimes it gets broken seems like such a short sighted view point. It'd be like writing off cars because they can blow up and spread shrapnel everywhere. Sure there's danger, but I hardly think ignoring the possibilities is worth it.

We've just got to figure out how to do it without, you know, not asking for help when its actually needed. That's what I take away from the story here, 2 years went by and they couldn't own up to the fact they couldn't actually contain it. What if in the first week they had asked for help, I'm willing to bet the incident would of been handled far better.

If we're going to use this kind of dangerous technology we have to be willing to work together, but as long as we're not that's when crap is going to go down.