* Posts by Horizon3

15 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Mar 2011

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

Horizon3
WTF?

"El Reg used to have a reputation"

1/ Exactly how many people have ever died from plutonium poisoning? A: 0 zip, nada none.

2/ I and many others doubt they will bury any reactors, that would just be kicking the rock down the road for someone else to deal with, the Japanese aren't very well known for this characteristic.

The plants will be cooled, decon'd and then scrapped out, they will prep the site for new Mark3 reactors and get back to generating. (Plant #1 was due to be shutdown permanently, 3 days ago any way), Add to that these units have had hot seawater in them, they are now junk anyway.

3/ Maybe you can explain to the class how a molten anything submerged in water can drip from air into a full vessel of water? Which would be needed to cause a steam explosion you try to make sound scary. Leave out the fact that the reactors are now at or below 100c and pressured up to 70 atmosphere, and unit 4 reactor which has no fuel in it whatsoever is of zero concern.

4/ That's just plain BS. NONE of the radiation detected in the sea or on the land poses any threat to humans it is not a problem. What is a problem is millions of acres of previously productive farmland is going to have to be scraped off for 1-3 feet in depth due to seawater contamination (read stuff won't grow in it) and re top soiled with millions of tons of good soil, peat and fertilizers to bring it back.

5/ There are many folks looking at the aftermath and economic situation, they are the ones not running around like headless chickens, squawking about nonexistent meltdown calamities.

The result of the quake and tsunami and the shutdown power infrastructure are having a major impact on other economies, this is a result of concentrating too much of your manufacturing base in on place. We should be making those products in our own countries, but unfortunately we have let the squeaky wheel get too much grease and allowed the litigators, unions and runaway government regulation drive the manufacturing companies to a friendlier place to do business, ie. They bugged out so they could make a legally required profit, without pricing themselves out of business.

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

Horizon3
Alert

Re: Real Facts

First off, you need to get your facts straight before you detract others.

A melt through in this case is physically impossible, the maximum temperature this fuel mix can generate is 3,000C (Ideal Circumstances) the melting point of the reactor vessel 5,000C.

Ideal Conditions would be no water, full air circulation, and no control rods or boron anywhere in the system.

The "China Syndrome" only exists in the minds of those that wrote the script, and those silly enough to believe it as fact.

The Plutonium they have found "buried 3 inches in the soil", is per IAEA and other sources is not in the least bit hazardous, they are currently analyzing it to attempt to find out where it came from, it could well have come from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events or from the 1,000s of French, UK and US nuke tests done in the Pacific or Chinese and Russian nuke tests done before the Test Ban Treaty.

The fact that they have found some I-131 in Scotland? There's not a snow balls chance in hell it came from Japan! I-131 has a half life of 8hrs, so unless someone had the money to resurrect a Concord, or use a supersonic military jet and fly the stuff nonstop from Fukushima to Scotland it came from somewhere else. Given the present wind patterns I would suggest it came from one of the plants they are shutting down in Germany or maybe one of your own plants or nuke subs in the UK burped some out, or from a drilling operation in the North Sea (Yes they use I-131 as a tracer, primarily because it has a very short half life, and unless you inject it by hypodermic or eat it it's harmless).

And Yes the metal buildings being demolished is not a big deal, they are there primarily to protect the rest of the containment from the elements. The biggest problem from the explosions is accessing the reactor building because of debris. The explosions could not have damaged the primary or secondary containment, it would be like shooting a BB gun at a brick wall.

I would be more concerned that the debris has interfered with the fuel cell racks in the spent fuel pools. In any case, the reactors and ancillary equipment where they have used seawater as emergency coolant are toast, they will not be brought back on line, ever. They are now junk iron.

Mostly I am sick and tired of the outright sensationalist bullshite spewed by the media, both broadcast and print. Real journalism is officially dead.

Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

Horizon3
Black Helicopters

I have never put much faith in INES numbers.

The INES numbers are put out by people, many of who are at best against nuclear power, and are not really that fond of any other reasonable forms of energy either.

I doubt seriously if they will scrap the whole plant. Units 6, 5 were shut down and are cooling without incident and Unit 4 was shut down for maintenance and was not even fueled.

Unless there is structural damage to their containment's they just need cleaned up repaired and put back to work.

Units 3, 2 and 1 are toast, they have had boiling seawater in them, and even if they are not visibly damaged, they will never pass a corrosion or NDT test again, they are junk iron now.

My hope is that they can get the units that will work, up and running very soon, as the people are going to need all of the power they can get to repair the damage to the rest of their country.

In the interim the so called massive leak and consequent radiation spike smeared around by the press today, was found to be BS of the first order. Not surprising just disappointing that they are still fear mongering to sell air time and papers.

Radioactive Tokyo tapwater HARMS BABIES ... if drunk for a year

Horizon3
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The Big Deal

According to all reliable sources, the Iodine-131 level in Tokyo tap water has returned to way below the allowable limit.

From NEI:

"In Tokyo, the level of radioactive iodine in tap water has dropped to within safety limits Thursday. Yesterday, the Japanese government had advised against giving tap water to infants under one year old."

Horizon3
Flame

A Little Back-up for Lewis Article

Let the flames begin:

From the Financial Post:

Low exposure to the Nagasaki atomic blast resulted in longer lifespans

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/03/21/lawrence-solomon-reactor-victims-will-benefit-studies-show/#more-11924

Horizon3
Alert

@Craiggy

Then you better ditch most of those light bulbs and fluorescent tubes in your home & office, because Xenon is the gas of choice to fill them with.

Fukushima's toxic legacy: Ignorance and fear

Horizon3
Black Helicopters

Found Some Information

Here are the results from the last 5 days of aerial surveillance of radiation patterns from Fukushima. Notice there is no appreciable radiation anywhere near Tokyo.

http://www.slideshare.net/energy/radiation-monitoring-data-from-fukushima-area-march-22-2011

Horizon3
Black Helicopters

I would be more inclined

To worry about how the contamination got in the Tokyo water.

Since the quake and tsunami there have be no southward winds to carry any radiation to Tokyo.

I don't know about you, but I find that pretty curious.

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Horizon3
Alert

Update from NEI

UPDATE AS OF 09:00 P.M. EDT, FRIDAY, MARCH 18:

A World Health Organization spokesman said that radiation levels outside the 20-kilometer (12-mile) evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan are not harmful for human health. He said the WHO finds no public health reason to avoid travel to unaffected areas in Japan or to recommend that foreign nationals leave the country. He also said there is no risk that exported Japanese foods are contaminated with radiation.

The Japanese government issued an advisory on Tuesday for people to evacuate from a 12-mile zone around the plant, and also told people living within an 18-mile radius to stay indoors. Radiation levels at the plant boundary have been declining in the last day or so.

Link to Original Article http://is.gd/YITDcr

Horizon3

@John Smith 19 New Designs

What you are describing is a Natural Circulation Boiler, they have been used since boilers were invented.

A prime example is your drip coffee maker.

All conventional power plants use this method, and most larger Waste Heat (combined cycle) Plants do as well. Conventional forced circulation boilers are only useful in very small applications, ie Nuke Subs. The larger plants such as in Conventionally Fueled AC Carriers and power generation plants are of the bi-drum natural circulation type with forced circulation as an alternative, usually used for rapid cool down for an emergency repair.

Contrary to popular belief and as some have posted here, you don't just walk up to a conventionally fired power plant and throw the "off switch". A large gas/oil or coal fired plant takes days sometimes a week or more to cool down in stages, or the thermal shock will wreck it otherwise.

The Mk1 BWR has this built in, but it is really too small to be practical (The Torus) at the bottom is the cool water storage, It is only good for a couple of hours protection, because it lacks a means of dissipating the accumulated heat (a method to cool the circulated water) and once it approaches the same temperature as the hotter water around the core circulation stops.

Another bogey man I have seen tossed about by the media and some here is persistent fires, what media is blabbing about is not fire or smoke, it's vented steam. Although there was a fire in building 4, TEPCO and others have stated it was not fuel related, but was from auxiliary equipment. The fact that there have been explosions from H2 is due to the lack of ventilation of the buildings, they are normally vented by induction fans that pull the air in the buildings out through filters and then up the vent stacks that everyone has seen, without power to the plant these fans do not work. The buildings that blew up are nothing more substantial than your average metal warehouse or shop building everyone sees every day, they are just insulated sheet metal panels on a steel skeleton. The resulting explosions although spectacular to look at posed no real danger to the reactor containment, because the pressure generated by the explosions was nowhere near that required to damage them, or the cooling equipment, most of the pumps, switch gear, etc. for cooling is underground and NOT located in the building proper. About the only thing inside the building itself is ventilation ducts, lighting, fire suppression sprinklers and gear for handling the fuel bundles.

Horizon3
Thumb Up

A Bright Light in a deluge of darkness

@Highlander ... Thanks for your common sense post.

3 out of 4 posts in this thread are done by fools that cannot dispute the information provided, so they attack the author. This is either ignorance or cowardice on a scale usually attributed to a poor education or inadequate parentage. I don't know about the UK but in the US we call it trolling a thread.

I have seen a lot of "what does this have to do with tech?" posts, Folks it doesn't get much more high tech than a nuclear power plant! About the only thing higher in technical issues are nuke powered colliders and manned space missions.

And as highlander stated, if you are relying on the media for your information, you deserve to be mislead and misinformed, they are in over sensationalizing high gear and are hours if not days late in their "reporting" and 8 times out 10 their information is false, misleading or outright lies.

Lewis has been getting his information from reliable and accurate sources. I can tell from reading them that the sources are from NEI, TEPCO, The Japanese Govt., MIT and quite a few others.

What purpose would any of these entities have in downplaying any hazards? If they lied it would come out eventually, and contrary to some of your "opinions" they do care about their reputations. Unlike the present day media they depend on their credibility to earn a living or maintain their status as a credible regulating body.

You can automatically exclude any UN sources or the US NRC (except for on the ground personnel) The NRC is run by an Obama political appointee who hates the nuclear industry, he was put in place by Obama to wreck it, not improve it.

Good fact sources:

MIT: http://mitnse.com/

NEI: http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

Horizon3
Unhappy

That was exceptionally callous AC

That was a mean and undeserved remark, and you owe Mr. Lewis an apology.

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

Horizon3
Thumb Up

Good Article Lewis

I know many of you have as a sole source of information, the lamestream media, which sensationalizes anything and everything to do with oil field, mining or nuclear. And gets 99.99% of it wrong 99.99% of the time.

A GOOD source of facts on this, is from the various nuclear energy outfits that are plentiful on the net, and I am not talking about blogs by ex professors or other envirowhacks.

Here is a good one to start with. The NEI http://is.gd/iUtRYQ .. it's not biased it just reports the facts as it gets them, FROM THE SOURCE!! not from a bunch of politicians that definitely are biased.

Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels

Horizon3
Alien

More information from AP?

Does the IAEA have a representative in Japan? I would wager they do not.

"seeking clarification"? that indicates to me they are making anally originated summations (ie. pulling it out of their collective arses).

Like ALL UN agencies the IAEA is about as useful as tits on a grasshopper, why people still lend any credence to them is beyond me.

Another excellent article Lewis .. Keep up the good work.

Japanese nuke meltdown may be underway

Horizon3

Please stop using MSM Sensationalizing

Here is a kink to the straight scoop from TEPCO.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031301-e.html