This word: None of our corporate employees in Tokyo were injured and attempts are being made to continue work as closely to normal as possible despite ceiling collapses.
Giant earthquake has hit Japan
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AdamZ
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Adam Zucker
I don't think it will hold thats why I posted the following. I truly hope they don't get up to 6K
Unfortunatly the mortalities are increasing
Don't worry, this dude will save us:
Dang I loved Ultraman!
Ain't that the truth!
I am curious is there any estimate of percentage damgage done from the Quake vs. the following Tsunami? What, if anyone knows is the main cause of the issues with the reactor Quake or Tsunami?
wsuffa
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Staying out in front of the issue with facts is important. Right now, the anti-nuke forces have virtually the stage to themselves. There is plenty of evidence that allowing one side or the other to shape the debate and public opinion unopposed will result in "success" for the side that shapes the debate... even if the other side has rational facts. That's particularly true when fear is used to leverage opinion.
They're trying to avoid being painted with a "conflict of interest" charge. It's a good thing that they disclosed the relationship.... it does not mean, however, that the picture is truthful and/or totally unbiased. Bias exists in ALL reporting & editing from both sides.
Agree 100%. It's amazing the force that was unleashed.... even more amazing is that Japan is now something like 4-6 feet closer to the US than before. Think of the force required to move a land mass of that size 4-6 feet.
This is, what, the 5th largest earthquake on record?
Agree. Learn from this event, and improve systems in the future.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
There are two dual problems with nuke plants. The first is that the results if that tiny bit of risk go bad are utterly catastrophic. The other is that the things have to be put near bodies of water, which is where most people live.
Areas like the midwest don't often get earthquakes (though if the New Madrid fault cuts loose...) thought they do get occasional climatic conditions that could affect the ability to safely operate a nuke plant.
And of course, decades later nobody has yet figured out what to do with all that waste...
Oh, and I love Ultraman.
Areas like the midwest don't often get earthquakes (though if the New Madrid fault cuts loose...) thought they do get occasional climatic conditions that could affect the ability to safely operate a nuke plant.
And of course, decades later nobody has yet figured out what to do with all that waste...
Oh, and I love Ultraman.
Matthew
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That's why I've been trying to temper my info with stuff from the NEI site. It's just the facts, with no commentary. Latest update is 9:15AM EDT.
As far as the damage from the quake vs the tsunami: I am pretty sure the reactors all scrammed automatically when the quake hit, shutting them down, the system worked as it was supposed to. The cooling water still needed power to circulate and was doing fine - for some amount of time until the tsunami wiped out the power grid and all the backup generators. That's when the cooling systems failed. My daughter has runs a small research reactor at her university, and said their reactor takes about 2 days to cool after it's shut down. But it's just a fraction of the size of a commercial reactor. I don't know how long they take, but it could be on the order of weeks? Some of the info I've gotten has been from her and her contacts in the business.
Anthony
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Anthony
A co-worker of mine is a civil engineer that used to work for Bechtel who built the nuke plant in Limerick, PA, which is right next to the now re-named KPTW, Heritage Field
.After 9/11 I asked him if a nuke plant was designed to withstand and impact from a commercial airliner. He indicated that wasn't even a scenario they considered but that they were built to withstand earthquakes. I don't know if all U.S. nuke plants were designed that way nor to what level earthquake they can withstand.
Matthew
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Either place them near an existing body of water - or create a new body of water, like reservoirs that are built specifically for cooling. That's not uncommon.
As far as the waste goes - right now it's simply stored on-site. That's one way of dealing with it. I think there are other ways of dealing with it, but the drawbacks seem to be more political/emotional rather than technical.
And Ultraman is pretty cool.
sba55
En-Route
This seems like a pretty fact-based and balanced article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html
Trapper John
Ejection Handle Pulled
The U.S. (and European) nuclear power generation industry is a victim of their own success, IMO.
I'm trying to think of another industry where things almost never go wrong, and when things have gone wrong no member of the public has been killed or even injured, that is subject to the paranoia, fear-mongering and hand-wringing as the nuclear generation industry is. But I can't come up with one.
Matthew
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I'll see if I can find it, but there used to be a chart somewhere that had the "deaths per megawatt" for various power generation schemes. At the top of the list was solar power. It doesn't generate many megawatts, and the number of people who fell off roofs while installing rooftop panels skewed the numbers pretty high.
Coal was pretty high, too - how many miners died this week, either directy or indirectly? How many folks were killed by a coal train at a crossing this week? How many cancer cases?
Nuclear was pretty low.
Energy, of any kind, has a cost.
Anthony
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wsuffa
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One of my oldest and best friends works for NEI after many years in industry.
It takes weeks to cool down a nuclear plant (and it takes some time to start it up, too). And even at that, spent fuel stays warm for some time....
The only other thing that comes close is aviation. Witness the paranoia, fear-mongering, and hand-wringing..... leading to FAA and TSA requirements. Granted that there have been deaths from aviation, but it's gotten much, much safer over the years. With respect to nuclear, there were many deaths associated with Cherynobl - and that's what folks recall.
Pi1otguy
Pattern Altitude
It's not so much the death, but the denial of use that can occur. With exception of mine fires a coal related accident doesn't deny the use of as much land for as long. If a coal plant blows, I'm pretty sure the most land over 5 miles away will be habitable within 5 years. The same can't be said for a possible outcome of the current situation in Japan.
Trapper John
Ejection Handle Pulled
Coal fired power plants emit significant amounts of Thorium and Uranium. How come no one gets worked up about that?
wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
Approx. 40% of the coal used is mined through surface, or strip, mining. Those mines really are never refilled and effectively deny use of that land for a very, very long time. Additional damage can come when waste ponds/reservoirs collapse & toxic waste invades nearby streams and lands.
Huge acerage is consumed by surface mines - fly over West Virginia & parts of Kentucky and Virginia sometime.
Frac-ing to obtain oil and natural gas is not damage-free, either.
Coal fired power plants (and to a lesser degree oil-fired) are blamed for acid rain that has effected thousands of square miles (particularly along the east coast). There are some estimates that thousands of premature deaths per year are attributable to coal-fired plant pollution. I can still remember when Pittsburgh was very, very heavily polluted (air), and when the river in Cleveland caught fire.
Solar: aside from the roof-falls, there is the potential for chemical pollution arising from the mining and refining of the raw materials (including Alumina for the frames - recall that the Red Sludge leak in Hungary last year was Alumina).
The impact is dfferent, but there is impact from pretty much any energy generation.
Bottom line: whatever choice you make, there will be risks associated with the choice.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Until there's something that can produce 4 GigaWatts of power from the land mass the size of that plant, day or night, wind or none... 24/7... barring a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami -- nuclear is here to stay.
All the whining and bitching that it's "dangerous", the politics, the pundits, the cameras, and the blabbing, the laws, whatever... isn't going to change the base power needs of a planet with a more than 2.0 human reproduction rate. (The U.S. is about 1.7.)
Exponents suck, but they're pretty well-understood math. We're doubling the population in a timeframe significantly shorter than a lifespan, and lifespans are getting longer.
The same people who are posting today that they don't want new nuclear plants built here now "ever", are the same folks who wanted electric cars yesterday. LOL!
I wandered through some comment sites on the various "news" websites about the possible disaster unfolding, and the immaturity level of the comments on both sides was off the charts.
When it comes to power utilization these folks are totally clueless.
Ironically, they type these rants from PCs powered by electricity, connected to the Internet, running on electricity, which routes into data centers which use massive amounts of electricity, and so on, and so on. Or cell phones. Or iPads.
It's just laughable if it didn't worry me so much that people can't even reason out simple things like their own power usage anymore. Simple math is totally lost on many of them.
Frankly, I'll take my iPad, my computers, my radios, my forced air heating, my lights... all the trappings of "civilization" and you can put a nuke plant up next door if you want, to power it. I'm not a NIMBY and I'm not naive about where the power comes from for all of this stuff. (Including accessing and using PoA! GRIN!)
[Note: I don't have air conditioning at home, but there's a few days a year where I'd like it... in Colorado we can also use evaporative cooling VERY effectively most days, since we're so dry here. Not saying I wouldn't LIKE to have it, just haven't had a huge need... real brick houses actually do pretty well in heat, unlike the cardboard crap they built all around us in the 90's.]
Sorry just had to "vent a little radioactive steam"... I just can't believe the people who want no nukes haven't just turned off all their lights and started living the luddite lifestyle yet. The reason they haven't? They instinctively know that it still will not even put a dent in human population growth and the overall requirements for electricity use.
Another minor rant... which country sent three of their nuclear-powered Aircraft Carriers with de-salinization plant and hospitals to any of our recent natural disasters? Yeah... just checking.
Us "evil" Americans. We're so bad. Vilified throughout the world, but we send people, equipment, and know-how to every major disaster in the world. I'm not in the camp that says we should bill for it, but I can see their point.
Okay, I'm better now. Back to WORK to pay my taxes to pay for that Aircraft Carrier.
All the whining and bitching that it's "dangerous", the politics, the pundits, the cameras, and the blabbing, the laws, whatever... isn't going to change the base power needs of a planet with a more than 2.0 human reproduction rate. (The U.S. is about 1.7.)
Exponents suck, but they're pretty well-understood math. We're doubling the population in a timeframe significantly shorter than a lifespan, and lifespans are getting longer.
The same people who are posting today that they don't want new nuclear plants built here now "ever", are the same folks who wanted electric cars yesterday. LOL!
I wandered through some comment sites on the various "news" websites about the possible disaster unfolding, and the immaturity level of the comments on both sides was off the charts.
When it comes to power utilization these folks are totally clueless.
Ironically, they type these rants from PCs powered by electricity, connected to the Internet, running on electricity, which routes into data centers which use massive amounts of electricity, and so on, and so on. Or cell phones. Or iPads.
It's just laughable if it didn't worry me so much that people can't even reason out simple things like their own power usage anymore. Simple math is totally lost on many of them.
Frankly, I'll take my iPad, my computers, my radios, my forced air heating, my lights... all the trappings of "civilization" and you can put a nuke plant up next door if you want, to power it. I'm not a NIMBY and I'm not naive about where the power comes from for all of this stuff. (Including accessing and using PoA! GRIN!)
[Note: I don't have air conditioning at home, but there's a few days a year where I'd like it... in Colorado we can also use evaporative cooling VERY effectively most days, since we're so dry here. Not saying I wouldn't LIKE to have it, just haven't had a huge need... real brick houses actually do pretty well in heat, unlike the cardboard crap they built all around us in the 90's.]
Sorry just had to "vent a little radioactive steam"... I just can't believe the people who want no nukes haven't just turned off all their lights and started living the luddite lifestyle yet. The reason they haven't? They instinctively know that it still will not even put a dent in human population growth and the overall requirements for electricity use.
Another minor rant... which country sent three of their nuclear-powered Aircraft Carriers with de-salinization plant and hospitals to any of our recent natural disasters? Yeah... just checking.
Us "evil" Americans. We're so bad. Vilified throughout the world, but we send people, equipment, and know-how to every major disaster in the world. I'm not in the camp that says we should bill for it, but I can see their point.
Okay, I'm better now. Back to WORK to pay my taxes to pay for that Aircraft Carrier.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Here's an intersting calculator - how much annual radiation do you get?
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator.html
You'll come up with some number - then you can compare that annual dose with the mrem/hr that is being measured at the Japanese reactor site. Helps put things into perspective, so you can see what kind of dosages are being recorded.
Here's a couple of checkboxes in the list:
>>
Live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant (pressurized water reactor) (0.0009 mrem)
Live within 50 miles of a coal-fired electrical utility plant (0.03 mrem)
<<
edit: I snipped this from that website - I wondered what the max annual dose was, here it is:
>>>
Consequently, to protect health and safety, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has established standards that allow exposures of up to 5,000 mrem per year for those who work with and around radioactive material, and 100 mrem per year for members of the public (in addition to the radiation we receive from natural background sources).
<<<
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator.html
You'll come up with some number - then you can compare that annual dose with the mrem/hr that is being measured at the Japanese reactor site. Helps put things into perspective, so you can see what kind of dosages are being recorded.
Here's a couple of checkboxes in the list:
>>
Live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant (pressurized water reactor) (0.0009 mrem)
Live within 50 miles of a coal-fired electrical utility plant (0.03 mrem)
<<
edit: I snipped this from that website - I wondered what the max annual dose was, here it is:
>>>
Consequently, to protect health and safety, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has established standards that allow exposures of up to 5,000 mrem per year for those who work with and around radioactive material, and 100 mrem per year for members of the public (in addition to the radiation we receive from natural background sources).
<<<
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wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
They should update the list to include the airport nudie-pervert-scan machines.
denverpilot
Tied Down
I just had a thought that I can't do the math for.
The Earth slowed down by a little over a millisecond from this little tectonic wiggle.
The coastline of Japan also moved 8 feet.
Did the GPS operators have to jiggle the GPS clocks a little slower with a correction?
Thought that came to mind was: At least the ILS antennas moved with the airports...
The Earth slowed down by a little over a millisecond from this little tectonic wiggle.
The coastline of Japan also moved 8 feet.
Did the GPS operators have to jiggle the GPS clocks a little slower with a correction?
Thought that came to mind was: At least the ILS antennas moved with the airports...
ScottM
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Steve
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-080&rn=news.xml&rst=2938
March 14, 2011
Using a United States Geological Survey estimate for how the fault responsible for the earthquake slipped, research scientist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., applied a complex model to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation of how the Japan earthquake-the fifth largest since 1900-affected Earth's rotation. His calculations indicate that by changing the distribution of Earth's mass, the Japanese earthquake should have caused Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
The calculations also show the Japan quake should have shifted the position of Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude. Earth's figure axis should not be confused with its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This shift in Earth's figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth's axis in space-only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that.
Both calculations will likely change as data on the quake are further refined.
woodstock
Final Approach
I also heard that the Earth shifted on its axis 10cm. Is that true? If so, what would that mean? That sounds like a lot but I don't know how much it usually wiggles anyway.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I guess happy hour will get here sooner!
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Greg Bockelman
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Greg Bockelman
I have heard, but have not been able to verify that the Japanese plants were built to withstand level 7 quakes. The one that hit there was a level 9 and the plants stood it just fine. It was the loss of power that kept the cooling towers cool that was the problem. When the power died, the pumps couldn't keep the rods cool, hence the problem.
As I said, heard but not verified.
Steve
En-Route
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Actually, all kidding aside - that was one helluva jolt. I haven't heard anything, anywhere, that indicates there was any structural damage from that earthquake. Maybe there was, and it was either overshadowed or scrubbed away by the tsunami. Any reports of buildings or overpasses collapsing from the quake itself? Maybe I've just missed it in all the tsunami news.
Pi1otguy
Pattern Altitude
And as if a massive quakes, tsunamis, and a nuclear emergency wasn't enough ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...uclear-meltdown-enough.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...uclear-meltdown-enough.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
steingar
Taxi to Parking
always in threes...
Steve
En-Route
A co-worker of mine is a civil engineer that used to work for Bechtel who built the nuke plant in Limerick, PA, which is right next to the now re-named KPTW, Heritage Field
After 9/11 I asked him if a nuke plant was designed to withstand and impact from a commercial airliner. He indicated that wasn't even a scenario they considered but that they were built to withstand earthquakes. I don't know if all U.S. nuke plants were designed that way nor to what level earthquake they can withstand.
Earthquake tolerance of U.S. licensed nuclear power plants
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstat...-constructed-to-withstand-earthquakes/?page=1
Discussion of potential damage to nuclear power plants from aircraft impact
http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/speeches/2002-speeches/jeffersonreport
The Japanese hired Sandia National Labs to determine the forces associated with an aircraft impact in 1988. Several test were conducted, including the now famous F-4 impact test. The Japanese used this data in their analysis of nuclear power plant structures as did other nuclear power plant design agencies.
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/video-gallery/index.html#rocketsled
Test report
http://www.iasmirt.org/iasmirt-3/SMiRT10/DC_250401
58, there were 58 deaths associated with Cherynobl and they were mostly the reaction force getting the cement on it....
Palmpilot
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I suspect that is largely true for those who make up their minds on scientific and technological issues based on their political leanings, but there are others who make up their minds based on evidence. Not everyone has politics as the driving force in their lives.
I haven't found any surveys on the attitudes of climate scientists to nuclear power, but I did find this advice to President Obama From James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist:
"It is essential that dogmatic ‘environmentalists’, opposed to all nuclear
power, not be allowed to delay the R&D on 4th generation nuclear power."
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdfpower, not be allowed to delay the R&D on 4th generation nuclear power."
According to the following article, improving safety is one of the primary goals of fourth generation reactors, which is something that may be relevant to the topic of this thread!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
chucky
Line Up and Wait
The Earth's axis moves around slowly but fairly continuously. Here's a plot of the angular offsets of the celestial pole. They measure this with long baseline radio astronomy arrays, I guess. On this plot, 1mas is equivalent to roughly 3cm at the pole, I think. As for GPS, the only thing that might matter would be a redistribution of the higher-order moments of the Earth's mass slightly modifying the orbits of the satellites somewhat. I don't think it would matter that much, though.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Would the 100 or so kids with Thyroid Cancer that lived in the area, count?
This is a real question -- not meaning to invoke the "If it'd only save one child" emotional argument that gets over-used in everything.
Do the cancer deaths in the area count that happen later on, or... ?
silver-eagle
En-Route
chucky
Line Up and Wait
I remember hearing it was thousands. Wikipedia says 1800 cases.
Edit - reading further, it looks like there's controversy over that number, and the other mortality figures, but it's in the thousands.
Edit edit: Just to be clear, that's cases of thyroid cancer, not deaths from it. WHO reports that the survival rate was almost 99%.
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Which 100 or so kids are you talking about? Got a cite for those numbers with names or are they kids that are assumed must have gotten it? This event has one of the longest term studies by the UN and last I saw their total number all inclusive was 58.
chucky
Line Up and Wait
That's deaths from acute radiation poisoning. If you're referring to the Chernobyl Forum, you're right about the deaths from radiation poisoning (well, actually, I think the number is 57). Here's the WHO report. For long-term effects, of course, no particular death can be directly attributable to Chernobyl, so they can only talk about excesses in the mortality. On page 104 of that report (no, I did not read the whole thing, just Chapter 7), they claim that there is no evidence of statistically significant increases in cancer rates in the Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia, except for thyroid cancers among youths and adolescents. It looks to me, however, that although the cases reported number in the thousands, the survival rate was very high. In other words, I believe you are right that the UN report only attributed a few thyroid cancer deaths to the doses from the accident above and beyond the deaths from radiation poisoning among the workers. I missread the wikipedia article I quoted above.
The same report makes predictions for the numbers of excess cancer deaths expected as a result of the fallout (about 4000), but these are predictions, not measurements.
It should be noted that there are other reports that have come out from sources of varying reputability claiming much higher attributable death figures, but I'm not going to wade through them this morning.
Jim Logajan
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A well-equipped terrorist can kill thousands in seconds without any use of nuclear material. I hear its been done with jet aircraft. Hadn't heard anyone demanding halting the production of jet aircraft or their use - yet the threat will exist so long as jet aircraft (and terrorists) exist.
My understanding is that, on balance, traveling by jet aircraft is considered by most to be worth the continued risk - though with some attempts at risk mitigation (I think there is some debate on the kinds of attempts - might be some threads elsewhere on this forum on that.)
There appear to be a vocal group of people who seem to use a different risk/benefit assessment when it comes to nuclear energy. As best I can make out, no amount of additional risk mitigation seems satisfactory - electrical power seems to be optional and not worth any amount of risk.
Yep, "China Syndrome" was a work of fiction, same as Jaws, and had much the same effect, fear mongering. This event proved it wrong. Coal energy is much more hazardous, and annually dumps more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the entire nuclear energy industry has done since its inception.