why do people suddenly fear nuclear power plants?

[Pyro Paul]

you're missing the point he is trying to make...

When is the last time you remember a Coal Plant creating an uninhabitable no-man-land in a 100 mile radius? The last city that was made a ghost town for hundreds of years because of a few mistakes in a Solor plant?

A "few minor mistakes"...sigh.
Please read up on Chernobyl before making such painfully ignorant comparisons.

The events that caused Chernobyl could be comparable to unpinning a grenade, and putting it to your ear to hear how long it would take to explode; not Homer Simpson accidentally spilling his coffee on a control panel or bumping the comically large self-destruct button.

Sadly, that last analogy is degree of simplicity that the majority-general populace believes that can cause a meltdown. It simply isn't so.

If his point was to point out the "Radiation is bad, mkay", well, no shit! Fission is immensely powerful. I get that, I respect that. But I don't fear it.

However if he was trying to compare Chernobyl to Fukushima Daichi, then he's dead fucking wrong. A natural disaster of Biblical proportions vs an incredible display of human idiocy.

doesn't answer the problem and doesn't adress the point.

a few mistakes, regardless of the severity of it, caused the Chernobyl accident.
This created a 19 mile Exclusion zone where no one is allowed.
This Created a Ghost town out of the city of Pripyat which no one lives at.
and still has pockets of 'deadly radioactivity' which can kill 20 years after the fact.

When is the last time any other power plant caused such wide reaching distruction and damage?

Hell even in examples of Intentional Sabotage with the pure intent to cause damage and death No other Power plant in the world has caused such far reaching and long lasting effects.

 

[Phishfood]

The concrete shell that was destroyed by the explosion caused by the hydrogen gas?

Nope, the concrete shell inside that. The bit that was "destroyed" was just a regular building to keep the weather out so the workers don't complain.

The massive concrete containment shell is perfectly fine inside the building. Its 4' of concrete. A puny buildup of Hydrogen won't hurt it.

As far as I saw in the news, the fukushima NPP's n.1 reactor now only has the metal containment around the reactor core left. If I'm wrong about that, then I apologize.

Well, lets apply some brain power. You have read/heard the shell is gone/breached. OK, maybe. Getting news out of a disaster zone is tricky at best and there have been some scam messages out there. So...lets ignore the news either way and look at what are (hopefully) facts.

1) The reactor was built with a 4'shell. This shell keeps the radiation and the radioactive fuel in, as a last ditch line of defence.

2) Concrete is pretty damn strong, especially 4' of the stuff.

3) There have been explosions.

So. Ignoring the news, and assuming the above are valid what can we say?
I don't know the exact strength of 4' of concrete. However, watching mythbusters try and open a safe I can reasonably assume that to break 4' of concrete is going to take a MONSTER explosion. What we saw on the videos didn't look like a "busts 4' of concrete" explosion to me.

Again, going back to mythbusters safecracking lets assume that the explosion DID breach the shell. I can't imagine an explosion being JUST powerful enough to break the shell and leave the contents alone. So, if an explosion did break the shell surely the contents is everywhere? Since we aren't getting reports of massive radiation leaks surely we can assume the shell is intact?

 

[Anton P. Nym]

a few mistakes, regardless of the severity of it, caused the Chernobyl accident.
This created a 19 mile Exclusion zone where no one is allowed.
This Created a Ghost town out of the city of Pripyat which no one lives at.
and still has pockets of 'deadly radioactivity' which can kill 20 years after the fact.

You are only 2/4 with your points.

It wasn't "a few mistakes" that triggered Chernobyl. It was a lengthy series of bad, in some cases (literally) criminal, decisions.
The reactor was not built with a containment dome in place, unlike every other reactor design at the time.
The graphite moderator was flamable, unlike modern designs that use water instead.
The boron control rod design was faulty, which caused energy spikes upon insertion before damping the reaction. This is not the case with modern designs, and indeed wasn't the case with most designs at the time.
The chief engineer of the plant at the time of the accident was conducting an experiment to see how the reactor handled at very low settings, when he already new the plant was unstable at those settings.
The chief engineer repeatedly ignored warnings by other engineers that the experiment was becoming increasingly hazardous, and failed to terminate the experiment even though his own experimental protocol called for that.
That chief engineer would have gone on charges, save that he was a casualty of the accident.

I'll also point out that "pockets of deadly radiation" is a gross exaggeration. There are still areas with elevated radiation counts, yes, but the risk is in terms of long-term cancer or reproductive problems rather than radiation sickness. No, I wouldn't want to live there either... but the risks are closer to those of living in an old house with asbestos insulation than of the stereotypical image of radiation poisoning.

When is the last time any other power plant caused such wide reaching distruction and damage?

I know it's not a power plant, but a drilling platform did so last year in the Gulf of Mexico; remember Deepwater Horizon's blowout and fire.

-- Steve

 

[Harbinger_]

I recently saw in the news that people in Russia demonstrated against nuclear power plants after they heard that three Japanese power plants where going critical. I personally think its stupid to protest against them because stuff like this only happens in extreme situations (a earthquake like this doesn't happen often and buildings are designed to resist quakes)
discuss

They tend to make high targets for terrorists, computer viruses, environmental disasters, etc. Personally I don't think that the benefits would ever outweigh the risks for nuclear power.

 

[Pyro Paul]

When is the last time you remember a Coal Plant creating an uninhabitable no-man-land in a 100 mile radius?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mynydd_Merthyr

It's not a "100 mile radius", but it directly killed more people than Chernobyl and the dust tailings kicked up probably had the same long-term health effects.

Closer to your point would be a hydroelectric dam failure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure]. Make certain to look at the list of historical failures.

The last city that was made a ghost town for hundreds of years because of a few mistakes in a Solor plant?

No solar plant has come even close to the generating capacity of these plants. It'd be like comparing a Maine Coon cat with a chihuahua until you can find a solar plant (and storage system, so that it can continue feeding power at night!) that can produce hundreds of megawatts.

(Note that it's the storage for solar power that worries me in this case. Batteries and their ilk tend to fail... well... nastily.)

-- Steve

Last i checked Aberfan is still a populated town center.
also... there where No long term side effects at all.

Slag is inert. Outside maybe some contamination of ground water with heavy metals there was no long term health risks caused by the Aberfan Disaster directly... The only long term health effect seen (provided in a 2003 study) is the post tramatic stress disorder caused by witnessing the death of 116 children.

Even dam failures do not have as long lasting effects or far reaching. most dam breaks go 1-2 miles before losing sufficent energy. long lasting effects tend to be very minimal lasting 2-5 years at most to the point that often a few years after the incident one could hardly tell that such an event happened at all.

 

[Wintermoot]

I recently saw in the news that people in Russia demonstrated against nuclear power plants after they heard that three Japanese power plants where going critical. I personally think its stupid to protest against them because stuff like this only happens in extreme situations (a earthquake like this doesn't happen often and buildings are designed to resist quakes)
discuss

They tend to make high targets for terrorists, computer viruses, environmental disasters, etc. Personally I don't think that the benefits would ever outweigh the risks for nuclear power.

nuclear power plants are EXTREMELY well protected

 

[Fetzenfisch]

Even if they do not explode in the next crisis of whatever kind, they still produce highly dangerous waste that never ever will stop to be highly dangerous.
but yeah the alternative energy sources are totally useless, we all know the only thing the hoover dam does is lighting a single bulb in the presidents office.

 

[keinechance]

The concrete shell that was destroyed by the explosion caused by the hydrogen gas?

Nope, the concrete shell inside that. The bit that was "destroyed" was just a regular building to keep the weather out so the workers don't complain.

The massive concrete containment shell is perfectly fine inside the building. Its 4' of concrete. A puny buildup of Hydrogen won't hurt it.

As far as I saw in the news, the fukushima NPP's n.1 reactor now only has the metal containment around the reactor core left. If I'm wrong about that, then I apologize.

Well, lets apply some brain power. You have read/heard the shell is gone/breached. OK, maybe. Getting news out of a disaster zone is tricky at best and there have been some scam messages out there. So...lets ignore the news either way and look at what are (hopefully) facts.

1) The reactor was built with a 4'shell. This shell keeps the radiation and the radioactive fuel in, as a last ditch line of defence.

2) Concrete is pretty damn strong, especially 4' of the stuff.

3) There have been explosions.

So. Ignoring the news, and assuming the above are valid what can we say?
I don't know the exact strength of 4' of concrete. However, watching mythbusters try and open a safe I can reasonably assume that to break 4' of concrete is going to take a MONSTER explosion. What we saw on the videos didn't look like a "busts 4' of concrete" explosion to me.

Again, going back to mythbusters safecracking lets assume that the explosion DID breach the shell. I can't imagine an explosion being JUST powerful enough to break the shell and leave the contents alone. So, if an explosion did break the shell surely the contents is everywhere? Since we aren't getting reports of massive radiation leaks surely we can assume the shell is intact?

Well, from what I have gathered from the current news, there has been no breach of the main reactor yet, and the current rise in radiation is mostly from leaks all over the whole system.

But the problem is, the situation is not getting better. The cooling in all reactors has failed/is failing, heat continues to build up, pressure continues to build up and there was a fire in the storage for the used nuclear rods. They are currently unable to bring even one failing reactor under control, even with the adding of seawater( and letting it run of into the sea after it is iradiated), and the venting of the build up radioactive gases.

I really hope that they get it under control soon, before even more happens, but you have to admit it is not looking well.

 

[Harbinger_]

I recently saw in the news that people in Russia demonstrated against nuclear power plants after they heard that three Japanese power plants where going critical. I personally think its stupid to protest against them because stuff like this only happens in extreme situations (a earthquake like this doesn't happen often and buildings are designed to resist quakes)
discuss

They tend to make high targets for terrorists, computer viruses, environmental disasters, etc. Personally I don't think that the benefits would ever outweigh the risks for nuclear power.

nuclear power plants are EXTREMELY well protected

Without a doubt they are extremely well protected but people and nature have always proven that no matter what we do something can always come along and tear it down. There are alternative methods of getting energy that are not only less dangerous or difficult to attain but take less space and money to operate.

 

[rednose1]

Always find it odd people are worrying about what the waste products will do in 10,000+ years.

Looking back 10,000 years into our past, we were hunter-gatherers who just started using metal tools. Since that time, we:
-Learned to fly. And not just normal flying, but to fly so fast as to be faster than sound itself.
-Left this planet. We overcame one of the four fundamental forces (gravity) and set foot on another celestial object.
-Reduced the size of the world. I mean this figuretively, but the fact that we can see what happened in Japan instantly, as well as talk to them.
-Split apart the basic building block of matter.(of which everyone is now up in an uproar about.
-Wiped out entire species of animals. We were able to track down and kill every single one of anything in this wirld, Horrible, but still cool.

Not trying to take the "Just wait, everything will be fine approach." but 10,000 years is a LONG time, and 1) People are still trying to find a more permanent solution and 2) There is much more space for storing spent rods on site thean you think, even without reprocessing.

Seriously, go back 50 years and tell the good folks back then that all the music you want would fit inside something the size of a pack of gum, computers would be small enough to fit in your hand, not to mention ubiquitous, and that T.V.s would not only show color, but be capable of 3-D as well.

In other words...we've come a long way baby!

 

[Evil Tim]

I'll also point out that "pockets of deadly radiation" is a gross exaggeration.

Nonsense, those pockets of radiation at the edge of the map will kill you instantly because Infinity Ward couldn't be bothered to put anything sensible there to stop you walking off the path. I know it's true, I saw it in a videogame.

 

[Phishfood]

Well, from what I have gathered from the current news, there has been no breach of the main reactor yet, and the current rise in radiation is mostly from leaks all over the whole system.

But the problem is, the situation is not getting better. The cooling in all reactors has failed/is failing, heat continues to build up, pressure continues to build up and there was a fire in the storage for the used nuclear rods. They are currently unable to bring even one failing reactor under control, even with the adding of seawater( and letting it run of into the sea after it is iradiated), and the venting of the build up radioactive gases.

I really hope that they get it under control soon, before even more happens, but you have to admit it is not looking well.

No, its hardly a good thing. The fact they are resorting to using seawater means they have given up on ever using the reactors again. Heat building up is expected, the control rods are fully inserted and the main fission reaction has stopped however some of the byproducts still take a few days to decay.

If leaking radiation does become too much of a concern they will simply give up and let the reactor melt. That's what all the concrete is there for.

Most of the radiation (that I am aware of) was deliberately vented along with the Hydrogen to reduce pressure inside the reactor vessel. All of it short lived Nitrogen et al isotopes rather than Uranium/Plutonium/Caesium/Iodine (the Iodine being the main cause of Thyroid cancer around Chernobyl).

Bottom line is that the situation is not good, but its under control. The more time that passes the less likely a meltdown is as the by-products decay away and stop producing heat.

So, if a 9.0 earthquake (bearing in mind that a 9.0 is 10x as powerful as an 8.0 which is 10x as powerful as a 7.0...) and the resulting tsunami can't cause a catastrophic meltdown and release of radiation, what can?

 

[outcesticide69]

People fear it, because people fear what they dont understand or dont even try to understand. Nuclear power is probably the best alternative energy source, its safe 99.9999999% of the time, and when people see that .00000001% they freak out.

 

[Pyro Paul]

I'll also point out that "pockets of deadly radiation" is a gross exaggeration. There are still areas with elevated radiation counts, yes, but the risk is in terms of long-term cancer or reproductive problems rather than radiation sickness. No, I wouldn't want to live there either... but the risks are closer to those of living in an old house with asbestos insulation than of the stereotypical image of radiation poisoning.

No, it is not a gross exaggeration.

In the exclusion zone, particularly the 10 km area that used to be the Red Forest, there are still pockets of radioactivity well beyond 40 curies mark. That is more then double the amount to kill you instantly.

even in full hazmat gear prolonged exposure in these areas is lethal to the normal human.

 

[Simonism451]

Always find it odd people are worrying about what the waste products will do in 10,000+ years.

Looking back 10,000 years into our past, we were hunter-gatherers who just started using metal tools. Since that time, we:
-Learned to fly. And not just normal flying, but to fly so fast as to be faster than sound itself.
-Left this planet. We overcame one of the four fundamental forces (gravity) and set foot on another celestial object.
-Reduced the size of the world. I mean this figuretively, but the fact that we can see what happened in Japan instantly, as well as talk to them.
-Split apart the basic building block of matter.(of which everyone is now up in an uproar about.
-Wiped out entire species of animals. We were able to track down and kill every single one of anything in this wirld, Horrible, but still cool.

Not trying to take the "Just wait, everything will be fine approach." but 10,000 years is a LONG time, and 1) People are still trying to find a more permanent solution and 2) There is much more space for storing spent rods on site thean you think, even without reprocessing.

Seriously, go back 50 years and tell the good folks back then that all the music you want would fit inside something the size of a pack of gum, computers would be small enough to fit in your hand, not to mention ubiquitous, and that T.V.s would not only show color, but be capable of 3-D as well.

In other words...we've come a long way baby!

Say WHAT!!! So you're basically saying: Let those future Spacemen find out what to do with it, because I propably won't be around, when it gets to be a problem for me.
Really, how much more ignorant can you get? "That global warming thing? Well, I have air conditioning."
Jeez...

 

[Evil Tim]

In the exclusion zone, particularly the 10 km area that used to be the Red Forest, there are still pockets of radioactivity well beyond 40 curies mark. That is more then double the amount to kill you instantly.

Nonsense, even the men inside the reactor as it was melting down took weeks to die. Even people who have had prompt critical events literally happen in their hands take days.

 

[Lungo]

I like how there's like 20 people in this thread there are trying to argue one way or an other, solo based on, extremely minimum in most cases, poor knowledge and understanding of this. This include the works of a reactor, the current plants on question, what has happen, what may happen etc. And how many of you, with out naming, try to make it sound like that you know it all about this incident.

But at least it are fun, to read and see, how people speculate on what there are going on, what will happen etc.

Fact are that we, as general public, know close to nothing about what there really has happen, are happening or will happen. And the Japanese government will do what ever it can to prevent a giant panic to spread to its capital and stock index.

 

[Pyro Paul]

In the exclusion zone, particularly the 10 km area that used to be the Red Forest, there are still pockets of radioactivity well beyond 40 curies mark. That is more then double the amount to kill you instantly.

Nonsense, even the men inside the reactor as it was melting down took weeks to die. Even people who have had prompt critical events literally happen in their hands take days.

Yes, People in Full Hazardous Material gear designed specifically to protect you from Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical factors Died from exposure inspite of that fact.

the lethality is measured to an unprotected human body.

but at that amount of radiation, lethality is almost assured even if you have full Hazmat NBC gear...

 

[Phishfood]

Always find it odd people are worrying about what the waste products will do in 10,000+ years.

Looking back 10,000 years into our past, we were hunter-gatherers who just started using metal tools. Since that time, we:
-Learned to fly. And not just normal flying, but to fly so fast as to be faster than sound itself.
-Left this planet. We overcame one of the four fundamental forces (gravity) and set foot on another celestial object.
-Reduced the size of the world. I mean this figuretively, but the fact that we can see what happened in Japan instantly, as well as talk to them.
-Split apart the basic building block of matter.(of which everyone is now up in an uproar about.
-Wiped out entire species of animals. We were able to track down and kill every single one of anything in this wirld, Horrible, but still cool.

Not trying to take the "Just wait, everything will be fine approach." but 10,000 years is a LONG time, and 1) People are still trying to find a more permanent solution and 2) There is much more space for storing spent rods on site thean you think, even without reprocessing.

Seriously, go back 50 years and tell the good folks back then that all the music you want would fit inside something the size of a pack of gum, computers would be small enough to fit in your hand, not to mention ubiquitous, and that T.V.s would not only show color, but be capable of 3-D as well.

In other words...we've come a long way baby!

Say WHAT!!! So you're basically saying: Let those future Spacemen find out what to do with it, because I propably won't be around, when it gets to be a problem for me.
Really, how much more ignorant can you get? "That global warming thing? Well, I have air conditioning."
Jeez...

Actually I read that not as "Let someone else sort it out" but more as "we will sort it out". Perhaps even in this lifetime. Heck, all we need is a nice big rail gun and we can shoot that radioactive crap into the sun. Problem solved. Or a new kind of reactor that eats all kinds of radioactive goo and spits out lead. Problem solved. There are people working on both these things right now, I guarantee it.