Could Japan's meltdown affect the planet?

[DudeistBelieve]

Serious question. If Japan suffers a meltdown is this only something that will affect Japan or will affect the planet?

I'm not talking economics or what not, cause I'm sure that would take a hit, I speak more out of fear of genuine damage to the environment and possible Fallout.

 

[Drunkenclam]

Couldn't tell you to be honest..

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Obviously, the only question is to what extent.

 

[derdeutschmachine]

In a true and dire situation it could but this doesn't seem to be the case from what I've read. It's not safe but it's also not going to be a huge issue like chernobyl or the dropped nukes of world war 2.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

No. Just no. A meltdown will still be maintained by the steel reactor casings, and won't leak out. If by some miracle it eats through the steel, the reactors are surrounded by a massive concrete shell. No radiation is getting through that bad boy. It may still be radioactive immediately surrounding the site, but it will have no lasting bad effects. Especially if you live anywhere other than Japan.

EDIT: Oh, but it is having global repercussions in another fashion. The advancement of Nuclear Energy has been set back by a few decades, as shares in nuclear industry crash and countries which have absolutely no reason to do so are re-evaluting all nuclear plants. I heard France suspended their programme to extend the lifetime of its various plants, and Germany shut them all down for a while. In case, y'know they just decide to get all up in Germanys grill and explode their radioactive asses all over the country. That was disturbingly graphic. I'll stop ranting now.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Did the Tsar Bomba?
(The answer is yes, but not that anyone has noticed anyways.)

 

[emeraldrafael]

I dont think it will be major.

Personally, I still dont see much danger in nuclear power. I mean, I lived near 3 mile island for a while, and that was as safe as safe could be.

EDIT:
This is gonna be in some bad taste (maybe) but honeestly, when I hear the world meltdown (no matter where it is, but particularly when its linked to japan)
<spoiler=I immediately think of this><youtube=0Ox5-fEH4Ww>

 

[snoopy7393]

From my limited nuclear knowledge; no. That is, of course, if we are not implying catastrophic failure. (think Chernobyl) When the reactors in Ukraine failed, they launched radiation high into the atmosphere. This radiation then traveled on the winds and caused widespread horror. Seeing as how Japan is simply melting down, it will be more of a bird s*it on head than s*it hits the fan catastrophe.

 

[Paksenarrion]

Despite current fears, these isolated catastrophes in Japan will not result in the end of the world-


EH TI FIIRUDO! SHINJI-KUN, HASHIN!...SHINJI!!!!

 

[Sieg The Bum]

No. Just no. A meltdown will still be maintained by the steel reactor casings, and won't leak out. If by some miracle it eats through the steel, the reactors are surrounded by a massive concrete shell. No radiation is getting through that bad boy. It may still be radioactive immediately surrounding the site, but it will have no lasting bad effects. Especially if you live anywhere other than Japan.

EDIT: Oh, but it is having global repercussions in another fashion. The advancement of Nuclear Energy has been set back by a few decades, as shares in nuclear industry crash and countries which have absolutely no reason to do so are re-evaluting all nuclear plants. I heard France suspended their programme to extend the lifetime of its various plants, and Germany shut them all down for a while. In case, y'know they just decide to get all up in Germanys grill and explode their radioactive asses all over the country. That was disturbingly graphic. I'll stop ranting now.

While I agree fully with everything you just said there is one thing that I would like to point out.
If the Uranium melts it would reach temperatures that would easily burn through the casings and anything else in its way.

Also, an important thing to note is that when the spent fuel rods caught fire a large amount of radiation was released. So I think only looking at the BWRs as a source of radiation would be ignoring other critical areas.

OT:
No. No. No. It will effect Japans environment but as far as a global scale is concerned, the situation is still rated under Chernobyl in scale.
If you would like to educate yourself on the technical side of the situation and nuclear power in general here's a good site:
http://nei.cachefly.net/newsandeven...anese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/

 

[ekkaman]

Not as much as the quake that hit.

 

[mb16]

What most people know about nuclear reactor comes from films and game so is wrong. Such as if a reactor is "critical" that's normal as fission occurs at the "Critical mass". IF it went "Super Critical" we would be doomed. Also the only reason Chernobyl was as bad as it was, is due to how badly it was made and maintained. reactors aren't made out of paper. It will be fine.

does anyone know if the control rods are on top or under the reactor? As the ones in the UK are AGR and have them above and should kill the reaction as soon as anything goes wrong.

 

[gbemery]

...*sigh* another thread/reason I am really starting to lose faith in people more and more these days.

...what the heck.
[sarcasm]
Alright its going to be horrible. The only way to survive will be to duck and cover during the initial explosions in Japan. You need to duck and cover because the explosions will produce exactly 32 and a half gamma ray bursts, these will conclude in about half and hour. The resulting alpha and beta particles will make their way around the world in the next month or so due to the jet stream. So make sure you have gone out and bought as many potassium iodine pills as you can stock up on (as so many of my fellow citizens have. Seriously it was on my news today that you can't buy these pills anymore because people are freaking out and frantically running to their local stores to gobble these things up).

Then if you have built your fallout shelter, numbering not in 13 or 101, then you will want to immediately proceed to it. The fallout will take decades to clear up so I hope you have enough supplies and entertainment. When you finally come back up to the surface you'll need to be careful for all the people unlucky enough to be on the surface for the past decade or so will have evolved into an advanced mutant race bent on green technologies and ice cream. Now if you have studied your SERE training while in the shelter you will have the skills you need to evade the mutant patrols and find the rest of the resistance movements...probably somewhere around Washington D.C. or the California coast. You will need to meet up with these groups so that you can retake the top side from those blasted hippie mutants.

After the resulting war for supremacy is over...well then it is time to rebuild our society. You will then want to increase the technological ability of your people. A very important resource, after food and water, will be energy to power your technological society. You won't be able to use oil anymore due to the mutants using up the rest of the oil field supplies. So you will need to start finding alternate sources. I have heard of a great power spoken of in the ancient texts that says one can harness the power of atoms themselves. You could call it nuclear power or something original like that. Then place these new contraptions everywhere you can, don't teach your people about them so that they can live in fear of its might and freak out at the slightest burp from these sites. Then when one goes critical due to some natural or human incident you can repeat everything I just said [/sarcasm]...or you can just realize that the media is blowing everything out of proportion, realize that a worse event has happened in the past and yet the effects were only local (subjective term) and just go on with your life with out worrying so much about things that don't need to be worried about. If you are living in Japan around these sites I could understand your worry then.

 

[Zakarath]

Even if the reactor experiences total meltdown, it may spread radioactive particulate over a fairly wide area of Japan. Due to the dispersion of radiation into the atmosphere, cancer rates may tick up, especially in areas in close proximity to the plant, but it won't affect the global environment beyond that.

 

[DanDeFool]

Did the Chernobyl accident affect the planet's environment?

No.

One of the major benefits of nuclear power is that the waste, although very dangerous, is contained relatively easily. As long as they can keep the spent fuel rods from, say, falling into the ocean or getting into ground water, there shouldn't even be any local problems.

Even if the power plant had a complete meltdown, the core of a nuclear power plant is surrounded by sand. The sand would melt, encasing the core in glass, and it would slowly cool over a long period of time.

So yeah. There most definitely won't be any global environmental effects.

PS: This is why we need to start using facilities like Yucca Mountain to contain spent nuclear fuel. If Japan had been storing their spent fuel rods someplace secure instead of just leaving them at the plant (kind of like what we do with our spent fuel now) this wouldn't have gotten as bad as it is now.

Then again, they do have to store the spent fuel on-site until it cools enough to transport, so maybe it would still have been a problem.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Despite current fears, these isolated catastrophes in Japan will not result in the end of the world-


EH TI FIIRUDO! SHINJI-KUN, HASHIN!...SHINJI!!!!

This made me worried about how the earthquake/tsunami/reacter issues would effect the release of the new rebuild movies, and now I feel like an asshole for worrying more about a movie than the people of Japan

 

[Paksenarrion]

Despite current fears, these isolated catastrophes in Japan will not result in the end of the world-


EH TI FIIRUDO! SHINJI-KUN, HASHIN!...SHINJI!!!!

This made me worried about how the earthquake/tsunami/reacter issues would effect the release of the new rebuild movies, and now I feel like an asshole for worrying more about a movie than the people of Japan

At least you're not worried about the fictional impossibility of all humanity turning into Tang...

...or *is it* fictional?

 

[philosophicalbastard]

This made me worried about how the earthquake/tsunami/reacter issues would effect the release of the new rebuild movies, and now I feel like an asshole for worrying more about a movie than the people of Japan

At least you're not worried about the fictional impossibility of all humanity turning into Tang...

...or *is it* fictional?

My god...Tang is made of soilent orange.

Also Captcha gave me an awesome band name: Journeymen Ledsch.

 

[Jules57]

Yes fall out could easily reach north americas west coast, this could very well be the end of japan, as it could make the entire island a dead zone. As it is now the workers at the fukishma plant are subject to lethal doses of radiation, the last actual measurement I remember was about 400 millisevents, 6.7 is the ammount you receive from an xray....do the math

EDIT: also 20 years worth of spent rods are being heated, if they can`t pump water into the reactor fast enough, full meltdown will occur, U.S orders given to forces at japan, no presence within 80 mile radius of the plant without authorization, Japanese officals evaced 20km radius amd people within the 20-30 km radius were told to stay indoors. ONly japan is down playing the situation. Potassium Iodine pills( a radiation begone if you will) are going for 500 U.S dollars per packet. Whether or not this is needed is unknown.http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/disaster-japan-march-16-live-blog this is a dated and times blog of current events, it is updated as new information is released.

 

[FalloutJack]

I think things would be horrible for Japan (Come on, Japanese Miracle, come on!), but given the area's removal from the mainland, the repercussions on the entire world should be somewhat limited.

Then again, nuclear power is the use of half-life reactions which are part of the planet's natural ability to heat its own core, so one can never be entirely sure.