Earthquake off Japan

[Sky Captain]

I'd guess fire in spent fuel pool is responsible for most of the radioactive material detected offsite. Reactors release radioactive material in atmosphere only when steam is wented and that is little compared to what spent fuel fire spewed out. Leaked radioactive water is in bulding basement and it is not going to disperse in atmosphere.

[Broomstick]

Additionally, I find it quite disingenuous to counter scaremongering about radiation by stating that "we haven't all dropped dead yet", as if this is a false dichotomy of we all either die, or we're all perfectly safe. There is a very serious situation here which has spread radioactive particles across most of the Japanese nation in quantities detectable and traceable to Fukushima (indeed, California and China have detected radiation clouds), not just coincidental blips in background radiation, although these levels are not dangerous right now.

Part of the problem is rooted in ignorance - there are people right now who really DO think these trace amounts signal imminent death, cancer, birth defects, etc.

One does not need to be literally glowing in the dark on another continent to class this as an event every bit as serious as Chernobyl. There have been reports that the Japanese are looking to upgrade to an INES 6 if they can't deal with the contaminants (far more of an issue than radiation) very soon.

Yes, it's very serious. But the greatest danger is still to the immediate area around the plant. One of the things irritating me are all the folks running around maintaining this is doom for the entire planet. It's not. It's not doom even for Japan.

It is possible to get pissed at both the scare-mongers and those falsely pushing those of us arguing it's not a global catastrophe into a pigeon-hole of "does not think this is serious". Really, it's a middle ground - serious locally, with concern in a wider area.

And yes, it could get worse. But I rather doubt it will get much worse.

[D.Turtle]

One thing that really put the whole thing in perspective to me was a graphic that compared the radioactivity levels surrounding Fukushima with those in Bavaria after Tschernobyl (at the 2:20 mark of the first video on this page (German)).

The level of radioactivity is roughly comparable - but they compare a region immediately surrounding Fukushima with a region 2000km away from Tschernobyl, which shows just how much of a difference there is between the current catastrophe in Fukushima and Tschernobyl.

[Master of Ossus]

Assuming Germany does opt to replace their nukes with renewables, can they produce enough energy to replace the nukes? Or will they settle on not being a net exporter of electricity?

Thats a good question. Last year, 22% of the electricity produced in Germany came from nuclear power plants, while 16% came from renewable sources. The plan was to raise the share from renwable sources to about 40% by 2020, which would mean it should be possible to replace nuclear energy with renewables. This would of course mean that coal and gas power plants would have to run longer (and maybe build new ones to replace old ones). Nobody has illusions that this can be done without major investments - in renewables but especially into the power grid - but it is a political reality that will not change.

It's not just the overall quantity of electricity that's produced, though. Nuclear power operates more-or-less 100% of the time, except when taken down for maintenance. Worldwide, nuclear plants actually produce the equivalent of about 90% of their boilerplate load for the entire year. In contrast, renewable sources are typically below 25%, and often as low as 15% (discounting hydro, which operates along pretty unique cycles). It's relatively easy to add 20% more renewable power to your grid. It's an entirely different thing to use renewables to replace nuclear and coal power, because you need these types of plants to be the baseline plants for your system. It's also hard to use renewables as peaking plants, since most of them can't operate in all weather conditions and/or require substantial down-time for maintenance. Realistically, they compete with CCGT generators in most countries like the US. Their profile might be slightly different in Germany, but I doubt that they're in any position to replace nuclear and coal and allow them to be decommissioned, even with a major government push over the next 10 years.

[Darth Tanner]

The only viable ways to have renewable as your base load system is to have so much excess capacity that you would need to be generating four or five times your average demand and to dump your excess on surrounding countries or to have massive pumped storage capacity. Neither of these options are realistic in my opinion, for example the entire pumped storage capacity of the EU is only 38.3gw so to expect to be able to run the baseload of even a smallish country off of them is unrealistic in the extreme, not to mention the hideous cost of trying to do so.

Germany can have nukes or it can abandon its ambitions of achieving carbon reduction targets, its more or less an either or situation short of future tech like fusion or carbon capture neither of which will be mature enough for actual use anytime soon if ever.

There was an interesting program on the future of the nuclear industry in the UK on radio 4 recently and the environmentalist gave the false idea that we had a choice between nuclear plants and wind turbines for future investment when in truth the choice is between nuclear plants and more gas and coal plants. Needless to say that point wasn’t raised on the show.

[His Divine Shadow]

Germany can have nukes or it can abandon its ambitions of achieving carbon reduction targets, its more or less an either or situation short of future tech like fusion or carbon capture neither of which will be mature enough for actual use anytime soon if ever.

Yeah well political reality as was said. Not always in touch with actual reality. See also: abstinence only sex-ed.

See here:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/librar ... ndex.shtml

More than half of power in germany comes from coal and gas, another 23% from nuclear, roughly 2/3rds of their power comes from those two sources.... Yeah, never gonna meet those CO2 reduction ideals here. Gazprom is also opening champagne bottles I bet.

[Pendleton]

I often wonder if those pushing more for renewables as baseloaders realise that a drastic change in lifestyle would also be needed. It's a combo of conservation and renewables, not just replacing one source with a cleaner one.

If you haven't already, please check out David MacKay's Renewable Energy - Without the Hor Air. It's focused on the UK, but the author is an FRS and sums up what needs to be done to move to more green energy and how realistically it can replace our current power generation systems.

[His Divine Shadow]

I tried to link that to some people once and it was rejected on the grounds of being too nuke friendly so it had to lie.

[PeZook]

Heh, yeah.

Frankly, we waste a shitload of energy. I catch myself doing that all the time: I just don't think twice of some things, like leaving the TV on the prattle in the background.

People two or three generations behind, though, they ALWAYS catch me doing that. They were a lot more conscious about saving electricity, because...well, it's become CHEAP.

And a lot can be done to save power with minor stuff. Say, in Poland, there's 13 million or so households. If they each run one 100W bulb for three hours each day, that's 3 900 MWh daily or about 1,4 TWh yearly. Poland produces 156TWh yearly, 2% from renewables.

Switch those households single incadescent to a fluorescent bulb and you suddenly save half the power produced by all Polish renewables (well, minus the costs of making the fluorescents vs. incadescents)

The problem is of course convincing people to be mindful of those things. Millions of people saving a few watt-hours per day can go a long, long way. Implement such drastic measures on a wide enough scale, and we could possibly vastly increase our capability to support civilization with renewables, extending the supplies of fossil fuels, lowering carbon emissions, etc.

So, by all means, reduce nukes (though I'd prefer to reduce coal, oil and gas FIRST) but reduce your energy use, too!

[mr friendly guy]

Why doesn't your country just legislate to get rid of incandescents. Australia did, although our leaders just copied the policy from environmentalists, but its a start.

[salm]

My dad argued that nuke plants are bad because if they cause problems in a place like Japan and people have to be relocated due to contaminated soil there wouldn´t be any space to put these people. The possibiltiy of not having space to relocate people in the unlikely event of it being necessary is worse than the guaratneed huge amount of deaths caused by coal and oil plants each year.

Normally he´s a rational guy holding a PHD in Mathematics. The wave of Z0mGNuKeS!!!111 hysteria in this country is astonishing.

[salm]

Why doesn't your country just legislate to get rid of incandescents. Australia did, although our leaders just copied the policy from environmentalists, but its a start.

The EU is regulating it. They´re doing it stepwise and started with 100W bulbs. 2012 all conventional bulbs will be illegal and 2016 halogen lights will be illegal as well.

[PeZook]

Why doesn't your country just legislate to get rid of incandescents. Australia did, although our leaders just copied the policy from environmentalists, but its a start.

We did. Incadescents are being phased out according to EU directives.

People are screeching and hemming and hawing. Some points are legitimate (fluorescents are toxic and must be properly disposed of, so the law should be followed by proper recycling policies), others are just retarded (it's a ploy by the almighty fluorescent lightbulb lobby!)

[Night_stalker]

This may end up not being from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, but still, I felt it should be brought to your attention. Note, I'm NOT panicking about this, despite being about 30 minutes from Concord.

http://www.wmur.com/news/27345160/detail.html

HHS: Small Amount Of Radioactive Material Found In NH

Officials Say Amount Does Not Pose Health Risk



CONCORD, N.H. -- A very low concentration of radioactive material, possibly from Japan, has been detected in snow in New Hampshire, state health officials said.
The Department of Health and Human Services said radioiodine was found in a test area at HHS in Concord. The concentration was 40 pCi/L (picocuries per liter) -- about half of what was detected in Massachusetts.
New Hampshire health officials said the low amount of material represents no health threat.
A sample of rainwater in Massachusetts showed the presence of radioiodine-131, but nothing was found in drinking water reservoirs. Health officials have been monitoring the possible spread of radioactive material from Japan as workers there struggle to bring under control nuclear reactors damaged in the recent earthquake and tsunami.
New Hampshire Public Health Director Dr. Jose Montero said the amount measured was so low that it couldn't be detected by the air radiation monitoring system in Concord. The material was found in snow that fell last week, and Montero said eventually finding some material from Japan was inevitable.
"After a release happens, we know we are going to find it here -- it was a matter of time -- and we just did," he said.
Health officials were able to link the specific material to the reactors in Japan. Montero said the radioiodine presents no threat to drinking water or food, and it has a short half-life, so it deteriorates quickly.
On a normal day, the radio chemistry lab in Concord conducts routine tests of the seawater and soil around the nuclear power plant in Seabrook. Health officials said that at this point, there is no cause to step up testing, but should further releases of radioactive material occur at the Fukushima plant, that could change.
"Certainly, we are going to keep looking, keep monitoring and keep informing the public if anything changes," Montero said.
Montero said there is also no threat to those most vulnerable to radiation -- infants and pregnant women. He said the concentration found is 25 times below the level that would be of concern for women and infants if they used that snow as their sole source of water over a short period of time.
From the summit of Mount Washington, WMUR meteorologist Mike Carmon explained how the jet stream carried the material to New Hampshire.
"Anything that gets up into the upper atmosphere is transported by the jet stream, which does travel from west to east across the Pacific Ocean and then across the country," Carmon said.
He says the Mount Washington observatory has not been asked to conduct any testing.
"We're not exactly concerned about it, but it is definitely something that we're interested in and will be most likely following up on," he said.
St. Anselm College professor Ian Durham said there's naturally occurring radioactive material throughout the Granite State.
"There's a fair amount of natural uranium already floating around in New Hampshire, and we live with it every day and cancer rates here are no higher than anywhere else," he said.

[K. A. Pital]

Double post eradicated.

By the way, there is talk that Japan might need to erect a sarcophagus much like the one in Chernobyl to keep the leak under control. It seems they will get their own Pripyat-like towns if the situation wouldn't drastically change for the better over the next few days. And so far there's no sign of positive change.

[Pendleton]

There's no way a sarcophagus could be deployed. For Chernobyl, it only just about maintained integrity with one reactor blown out and melted. You have several reactors pumping out enough heat to require over ten tonnes of water be pumped around them per hour. Any sand or concrete seal would be radioactive dust in a short time.

They, basically, have to keep doing this cooling with fresh water preferably, until the cores are cool enough to enable removal or entombment. That's several years. Meanwhile, the reactors and pools will still be leaking radioisotopes.

[starslayer]

Double post eradicated.

By the way, there is talk that Japan might need to erect a sarcophagus much like the one in Chernobyl to keep the leak under control. It seems they will get their own Pripyat-like towns if the situation wouldn't drastically change for the better over the next few days. And so far there's no sign of positive change.

I don't think so. Chernobyl released far, far more radioactive material than Fukushima has so far, with reactor 4 burning for two weeks. The sarcophagus there wasn't erected for at least a month afterward, IIRC, and wasn't finished until December of 1986 (the disaster occurred in late April of that year). This was obviously long after the cat was out of the bag. If there were to be any leak threatening long-term inhabitation near Fukushima, it likely would have happened by now. As it is, it will simply take time for the reactors to cool off enough to have serious work and examination done on them, and every degree they cool off by is positive change in that department. I would very surprised if the worst were not over for the plant.

[Master of Ossus]

There's no way a sarcophagus could be deployed. For Chernobyl, it only just about maintained integrity with one reactor blown out and melted. You have several reactors pumping out enough heat to require over ten tonnes of water be pumped around them per hour. Any sand or concrete seal would be radioactive dust in a short time.

What are you talking about? The core at Chernobyl wasn't exactly cool when they built the sarcophagus over it. In fact, it was dramatically hotter than any of the temperatures recorded at Fukushima.

They, basically, have to keep doing this cooling with fresh water preferably, until the cores are cool enough to enable removal or entombment. That's several years. Meanwhile, the reactors and pools will still be leaking radioisotopes.

The whole point is to build a sarcophagus outside and covering the reactors. For that matter, it's not clear to me that building one is necessarily going to compromise efforts to cool the reactors (even if they decided that that were important to do). A sarcophagus is basically just an external containment structure, to supplement the normal one (which had never even existed at Chernobyl, incidentally). The current containment structures don't cause problems for cooling the cores under normal circumstances; why must this one?

[Broomstick]

On a more personal and mundane level - we still haven't been able to contact my Other's Half's friend. We've obtained yet another phone number to try, we're hoping for better luck with that one.

[Sea Skimmer]

On a more personal and mundane level - we still haven't been able to contact my Other's Half's friend. We've obtained yet another phone number to try, we're hoping for better luck with that one.

Not asking you to post it, but did you ever have an mailing address for this person which could be used to locate the property in Japan?

[Broomstick]

Yes, but we're pretty sure it's out of date at this point - since Frank moved to Japan they've pretty much just communicated by phone. The address we have is from when he first moved there, about 25 years ago.

[K. A. Pital]

A containment structure would not harm the effort to reduce leaks, that's for sure. The news reported that they are putting a temporary containment structure (sort of a protective coating or whatnot, I had no time to look into the details). In time, they could put a permanent structure there.

If there were to be any leak threatening long-term inhabitation near Fukushima, it likely would have happened by now.

Hasn't it? Leaks of radioactive Pu in soil is long-term damage, or so I thought.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes, but we're pretty sure it's out of date at this point - since Frank moved to Japan they've pretty much just communicated by phone. The address we have is from when he first moved there, about 25 years ago.

Damn well, that’s shitty. I was going to suggest finding the exact location and then I figured one of our Japanese speaking members might be able to assist in contacting evacuation centers in that area. Also... to check a map and see if the location is in a known zone of tsunami inundation as this would tell you if sending a snail mail paper letter made sense or not. It’s entirely possible that this guy has lost his phone or phone numbers in the disruption, and is at an evacuation center or a friends house somewhere else in Japan with no way of recovering them if he was in the directly affected zone.

[His Divine Shadow]

Hasn't it? Leaks of radioactive Pu in soil is long-term damage, or so I thought.

From what I've heard it was so little as to be considered harmless. Some sources even said "natural traces", which considering Pu isn't really found in nature has gotta be really, really tiny.

[PeZook]

They could even be residue from Fat Boy, which was pretty dirty as far as nukes went.

But until the experts say something about that, we can only speculate.