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8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

Ryan, I'm no nuclear expert, but I think what is being described is exactly a "containment breach". The hydrogen AFAIK is not produced in any significant quantity by radiation in the core and is not normal but rather by water reacting with the zircalloy nuclear fuel cladding at temperatures of 2000F or so. Auto ignition, shmotto ignition.... The overheated core got in contact with a lot of water all at once, produced a lot of hydrogen which blew the hell out of the outer containment. Hopefully that was due to their pumping in water, and the core is now being cooled. However all that hydrogen had to escape the closed cooling system in order to get into the containment building, and it's hard to understand how some highly radioactive water and steam didn't escape, too, in a containment vessel breach.

Technically, I guess a meltdown is when the core reaches around 5000F or so and the fuel rods themselves melt and burn. In any case the reactor is toast, and quite possibly the future of commercial nuclear power. Before this the Japanese nuclear power industry was a monument to safe nuclear engineering and had, I understand, never had to report any incidents to the IAEA. Never mind!
 
In addition to the announcement that they are "assuming" that the No. 3 reactor is also in process of meltdown, we now learn that it uses plutonium in addition to uranium.
...the reactor is fueled with uranium and plutonium, meaning the consequences of a meltdown are much more severe than at the other uranium-fueled reactors.
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and
...plutonium-fueled plants operate at a higher temperature. He also says plutonium is far more dangerous if it's released into the environment.
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From the Small Favors Dept. wind continues to blow out to sea from the area (but for how much longer)?

EDIT: Wind is now out of the SSW in the area. French Embassy is telling French citizens to get out of Tokyo due to the possibility of winds carrying radiation to the south. Looking at the wind directon forecast, that could be as early as 3z Tues.
 
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Mike Smith said:
The media keeps comparing the Japanese situation to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I try to put that in perspective here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-power-in-perspective.html

It isn't what many believe.
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If you compare Nuclear safety with that of the coal industry, it's clear which is safer. Even taking the expected eventual 4000+ death total from radiation sickness which is widely recognised, you could have a Chernobyl every 12 months and still not reach the death toll from coal mining in China alone per year. I hope that this doesn't put a dent in Nuclear research like TMI and Chernobyl did. As with all technology, it will get safer and safer as further investment is poured into it. 100 years ago, not many people would trust planes as they were fairly unreliable but now a fear of flying is pretty irrational. If anything, I'd hope this would prompt further investment into nuclear to make it even safer but inevitably certain groups will use this to push personal agendas such as more inefficient fossil fuel sources which are slowly running out, or green sources which are only viable via huge subsidies.
 
Mike Smith said:
The media keeps comparing the Japanese situation to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I try to put that in perspective here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-power-in-perspective.html

It isn't what many believe.
Click to expand...

Well said Mike. I was a 'Navy Nuke' and found out that although there is potential for disaster, the media and public tend to exaggerate this hazard because nuclear processes are not part of most people's lives and our greatest reference point is the giant mushroom clouds we have all seen in photos from Cold War testing, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents, and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs.

Being in the control room of a subamrine nuclear power plant I was exposed to radiation at a lower rate than I would be if I were in an airplane, outside in the sun, or in a cave.
 
True that many people focus on the radiation safety issue -- wrongly I think. The problem is that once the risks and their mitigation are understood, nuclear power becomes expensive and risky for private utilities compared to non-nuclear generation, especially in the United States which dotes on private enterprise. They're not that cheap to begin with, and if there's an accident or malfunction you've got a multi-billion dollar mess on your hands. Back fifty years ago nuclear power was going to be "too cheap to meter." Maybe so, but it sure wasn't after you add in all the safety and environmental mitigation. It got to the point that the cost/benefit of nuclear power as a base-load supply just wasn't worth it compared to large fossil fuel plants. Just when attitudes and incentives were starting to change, the Japan earthquake comes along....
 
While I agree with Mike that even a sensational story like the current scenario in Japan can be sensationalized by the media - a critical thinker will evaluate the source(s) and attempt to put together an accurate picture from the information provided. Evaluating Mike's blog post, one might be excused for finding his premise a bit oversimplified: Counting the direct number of dead = the way to decide which fuel technology is safer? Are you sure you want to hang you hat on that one?

For example, Chernobyl was a relatively unpopulated area. Still a 30 mile radius of populace was permanantly relocated. After further review (years later ) 220,000 more people were relocated into areas with less contamination. That is in a relatively low population density area. In general, Japan is not low population density. If you believe that coal or natural gas have produced similar "dead zones" that humans cannot inhabit for a long long time, please feel free to cite them. All of this is only considering the direct damage of radiation to humans. There is also damage to agricultural land and human ingestibles. In effect, are we saying that we will ignore these things (emergency to permananent relocations, uninhabitable "dead zones") because we can't go back and trace a human death directly to this or that nuclear accident? That seems a bit short-sighted to me.

I am not arguing for or against a particular technology. There are no great answers for the situation we find ourselves in. Coal is also doing damage to far more than the human lives of the miners killed in accidents. And as Mike said, it will take some time for the final toll, both in dollars and lives, to be assessed. But think twice before accepting the premise (and the figures) that simply counting the human dead directly attributable to accidents is all we have to do to make a call on which technology is the lesser evil. Evaluating something through such a narrow view is the opposite of what it usually claims to be: putting something "in perspective".

EDIT: Google News has now taken the welcome step of breaking out Japanese news sources from the rest: http://news.google.com/news/story?p...pRU__UyTsZM&rfilter=3&sf_loc=392&hubgeo=Japan
 
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Has anyone seen a map showing estimated tsunami heights along the Japanese coast? Until ten minute ago every video I have seen of the tsunami was under clear skies or high overcast. CNN just had a video of a tsunami every bit as bad as the Sendai area but the weather was light snow with fog. Which means the range of devastation is bigger than I originally throught.

After the 2004 tsunami most of the early video was from Chennai and Phuket. It was a couple days before any of us heard of Banda Aceh.
 
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Darren Addy said:
U.S. Detects Radiation 60 Miles From Stricken Plant
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The Swedes spilled the beans on the Soviets after Chernobyl.

BBC World television is reporting a second blast at Fukushima (as 10:25pm edt) and a 3 meter high tsunami was spotted off shore. The most recent afershock was a 5.8 so I don't see how a tsunami could be created and the live feed of the plant doesn't show anything...stay tuned.

CNN now reporting white smoke from the reactor building.
 
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