Swarm of big quakes across the globe

[Ryan McGinnis]

I think you're getting negative feedback because you're equating a so-far minor nuclear emergency in Japan after a Mag 9 quake to DOOMSDAY for US. If we ever have quakes here large enough to damage nuke plants with a tsunami, we've got much bigger problems.

Ever notice how none of the buildings in St. Louis are designed for a magnitude 8 earthquake? And yet quakes strong enough to crack the sidewalks in Washington D.C. have happened in southeastern Missouri in recent history. If a quake that large ever struck again (and it will, eventually), would it potentially cause havoc with the nuclear power plants? Sure. But it'd also be knocking skyscrapers over in Kansas City. i.e., much bigger problems to deal with that we are currently underengineering.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The Fukushima plant's problems were caused by the tsunami taking out the backup generators for the coolant pumps. The facility seemed relativey undamaged by the quake itself, as it was designed. As long as the US plants have comparable earthquake resistance, I wouldn't expect a similar disaster. I agree with Ryan though - when the next major New Madrid event happens, it is going to make all of these recent quakes (Haiti, Japan, Chile, New Zealand) seem minor in comparison when a dozen Midwestern cities are in ruins.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Minor nuclear emergency? http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/14/japan-quake-rods-idUSTKB00733720110314 Did you read everything I said. NO YOU DIDNT.

There are nuclear power plants here in the US that are based upon the designs like the ones experiencing problems in Japan that were built on fault lines that have been found. If this happens on such a large scale as we have just seen here its DOOMSDAY for "us" folks.

(Reuters) - Nuclear fuel rods at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear reactor are now fully exposed, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant's operator, Tokyo Eletcric Power Co .

The report referred to the Fukushima Daiichi complex's No.2 reactor, where levels of water coolant around the reactor core had been reported as falling earlier in the day.

The Jiji report said a meltdown of the fuel rods could not be ruled out. A meltdown raises the risk of damage to the reactor vessel and a possible radioactive leak, experts say.

Once again I would like to point out the normalcy bias that runs rampant these days here in this country and with a few of you here on ST. We are facing a huge problem with these nuclear reactors. WE as a planet. Japan is an ally there nuclear problem is the worlds nuclear problem. Our own country is kinda scrambling to figure out what fully went wrong over there to prevent it from happening here.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Once again I would like to point out the normalcy bias that runs rampant these days here in this country and with a few of you here on ST. We are facing a huge problem with these nuclear reactors. WE as a planet. Japan is an ally there nuclear problem is the worlds nuclear problem. Our own country is kinda scrambling to figure out what fully went wrong over there to prevent it from happening here.

That's EXACTLY what should happen! You learn from the shortcomings and inadequacies that are uncovered, and you use these to improve what we have now. All power generation technologies (at least those that are feasible in large-scale production) have faced tough times -- heck, orders of magnitude more people die from coal production (mining, etc.) out year than die from nuclear technology. In the U.S., nuclear technology accounts for ~20% of U.S. electricity generation, compared to ~24% for nat gas and 45% for coal. Despite this, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor's Mining Safety and Health Administration, ~350 people have died in coal mines in the U.S. since 2000, and thousands die each year in China coal mines. Nat gas is fine, but it is not without it's casualties (e.g. 6 people died last year at an explosion at a Nat Gas plant in Connecticut).

I'm not sure this is the normalcy bias as much as being patient and using what we know to avoid getting caught up in "world-case scenarios". We KNOW that, statistically, the number of people who have died from nuclear technology is low compared to other generation technologies like coal. This is NOT to diminish the situation at hand -- this is just to put things into perspective. Calling for the ceasation of nuclear technology seems extraordinarily short-sighted -- it's one of the only technologies that can be deployed on a large enough scale to significantly affect coal production (and serve as a electricity generation to move more vehicles over to electricity to reduce oil and gas consumption).

All I ask is that we do an objective cost-benefit analysis. If safety really is our #1 concern, then we need to look at the safety of ALL current power generation technologies. Coal is a popular choice for electricity generation, but is it any safer than nuclear? Looking at the history of fatalities, I would think "no". In addition, fly ash is radioactive, so I'm interested to see a comparison between the total amount of radiation produced by the world's coal power plants compared to the radiation released by (a) all nuclear plants and (b) the current nuclear situation in Japan.

EDIT: We have some nuclear power generation posts across a couple of threads right now... Perhaps we can split these off into a separate thread so we can keep things organized. I enjoy these discussions, and there's plenty I have to learn, so it'd be good to keep things organized to help foster discussion.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

A friend of mine is friends with a retired nuclear engineer who has considerable experience in building, maintaining and operating plants. He offered the following:

"The primary risk in the short term is radioactive iodine. It has a half life of 8 days, so every 8 days that pass the amount left in the
fuel decreases by 1/2. By moving people away from the plants and giving them iodine tablets to saturate their bodies with iodine
the damage from this source will be significantly reduced.

The reactors in the news are boiling water reactors (BWR, GE design in the US), the Jenkinsville, SC, plant is a pressurized water
reactor (PWR developed by Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering and Babcock & Wilcox in the US). Both are completely
unlike Chernobyl (A large block of graphite full of holes). While we normally consider all the US designs similar in safety there are
significant differences that are important in the current situation. Both PWRs and BWRs contain the core in a large steel pressure
vessel, but things differ from that point.

PWR's keep the primary coolant from boiling in the reactor by maintaining high pressure, the water goes through Steam
Generators (boilers) to make steam for the turbine. As a result the steam going to the turbine does not normally contain any
significant amount of radioactivity and the turbine is located in a separate building. The PWR reactor and steam generators are
located in a containment building designed to contain internal pressures of 50, 60 psi or more.

BWRs boil water as it passes through the reactor and send it directly to the turbine. This probably offers better thermal efficiency
and eliminates the cost of steam generators, but I have always felt if was an inferior design from a safety standpoint. Since BWRs
produce steam that normally contains some radioactivity they put the turbine in a building with the reactor. This requires a large
building. As you could see these are not cylindrical buildings with domed lids like at Jenkinsville, but rectangular buildings that
cannot contain high pressures. To help cool and protect the reactor they were venting steam from the reactor system into the
building, hydrogen built up and eventually led to the explosions seen on TV. The reactor vessel is still intact and they are trying to
cool the core using fire trucks and seawater. This will probably mean the plants are trash in the long run, a financial disaster, but
should prevent a human disaster due to radiation. Every day that passes significantly reduces the amount of volatile radioactive
material that might be released, particularly iodine, the primary short term hazard. Radioiodine has a half life of 8 days so by next
Saturday half of this material will be gone, another 8 days only 1/4 will be left.

All the largest earthquakes from the last century are around the Pacific rim. The faults here are old and generally inactive. It is not
practical to design for every possibility, only for those of reasonable probability. So when Mother Nature decides to get nasty we
suffer. Typically most things are designed for the 100 year flood, or hurricane, not a direct hit by an asteroid. With regard to
earthquakes nuclear plants are designed to what we think is a reasonable earthquake for where each plant is located. From what I
know, even the Japanese plants did not fail due to the earthquake itself, rather external power was lost and the emergency diesel
generators failed, leaving them without operating power to pumps and valves. Control power typically comes from batteries running
inverters, but the power to turn motors comes from the grid or a diesel or gas turbine generator.

The situation is bad, but I suspect in the long run most of the nuclear related problems will be financial. The reactors being cooled
by firetrucks using seawater are in a condition beyond any design accident. However I would like to ask Rudy Mancke how he
envisions a "nuclear volcano" occurring. If the fuel melts it will release materials like iodine into the atmosphere. They know this
and are preparing by evacuating and being ready to give supplemental iodine so your body will be saturated with it. The rest of the
fuel will indeed melt and flow into a lump in the bottom of the reactor vessel and possibly (China Syndrome) melt through into the
concrete or rock underneath where it should encase itself in molten rock which will cool around it. There may be supplemental
cooling for a while, then they will probably just entomb it and build a sealed building over it until the heat load will allow for natural
cooling without melting, years, not eons. Since our government is unable to build a spent fuel repository we now store spent fuel in
containers that are air cooled via natural circulation after ten years or so.

Mancke studied Chernobyl, which is an entirely different animal. The core was a giant carbon block with holes punched through it
for fuel and cooling, plus there was no containment building and little other structure to contain the core in an accident. Once the
carbon ignited it burned (very hotly) and dispersed the materials of the core along with the combustion products.
I expect most, or all deaths, will be related to the tsunami and earthquake. There will be fear of increased cancers and such, but
likely not much to document. I remind people that by moving from Columbia to Denver you would double your annual radiation
dose without any documented increase in cancer. People tend to be irrational about radiation, how else can you explain the fear of
airport security scanners that produce a tiny fraction of the additional radiation you will get from the flight itself.

What should we do? The obvious answer, to me anyway, is to build new plants rather than put everything on hold. The two units
under construction near here are designed to cool themselves in an emergency without any cooling pumps whatsoever. No
emergency cooling pumps, no pump failures. The emphasis on new designs has been to simplify things so there are less things to
fail, less and easier maintenance and passive emergency cooling."

 

[Wes Carter]

Dave, well said. You nailed it. I'm not a big fan of BWR's either. It's one thing to have to watch a sight glass on a boiler so you don't burn tubes, it's another thing to have to maintain a water level to keep nuclear fuel from melting. Also, keeping the primary coolant system pressurized mitigates steam impingement and pitting which greatly increases the life of the primary coolant lines, the reactor feedwater pumps, and everything. Also, chemistry control is much easier because you don't have to consider the steam side and the condensate side separately. It's all one big loop of water.

Of course you have to deal with those issues on the secondary system, but on that side you don't have (unless you have ruptured steam generator tubes) any contamination in that loop. So you just treat it like you would any steam cycle, except that you monitor it for contamination and you don't shut it down because ultimately it is removing the heat from the primary loop. But the design is much more forgiving even if it is a bit more inefficient than the BWR.

Although PWR's are more expensive initially, they are cheaper to operate in the long run. So the old adage "pay a little now or a lot later" rings true with Boiling Water Reactors versus Pressurized Water Reactors.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Alright im going to bump the thread in order to close it. We have our smoking gun and I already have started a thread. See Comet Elenin-Ammo for conspiracy theorist or is it something bigger. THIS IS POTENTIALLY. . . EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH NOW.

Huge quakes continue in the Pacific:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0004pbm/

Magnitude
7.6
Date-Time
Wednesday, July 06, 2011 at 19:03:16 UTC
Thursday, July 07, 2011 at 07:03:16 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
29.312°S, 176.204°W
Depth
20 km (12.4 miles)

 

[Jordan Hartley]

BUMP IT even though its a little late http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0005706/

Magnitude
6.8
Date-Time
Sunday, July 31, 2011 at 23:38:57 UTC
Monday, August 01, 2011 at 09:38:57 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
3.569°S, 144.844°E
Depth
16.8 km (10.4 miles)

 

[Scott Weberpal]

The last half dozen or so posts in this thread since it was resurrected yesterday have been nothing but bickering, so this thread is being closed.

I would also like to remind folks that personal attacks/snarks, etc. will lead to infractions no matter how silly the topic may seem.

The Elenin thread is being monitored closely, but at this point is being allowed to continue. If you are attacked or snarked, report the post, don't respond.