Criticality

Fun, so we will have boiling cadmium there.

Plus, if this type of fuel requires a moderator to be present to sustain a chain reaction, then the energy comes out from just decaye heat, and absorbing neutrons will not do much.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus11979
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I think that the Japanese are very lucky that the plant is located on near the ocean on the East, so the winds will blow the crap away. If not, I am afraid that it would be a 50 year wasteland, in the area.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus11979

Jim Wilkins fired this volley in news:128f9988-c0e3- snipped-for-privacy@j9g2000prj.googlegroups.com:

WTF? You're talking about water purification, and I'm talking about staving off the effects of radiation poisoning!

You thought all those Japanese people were hoarding "iodine" to purify their drinking water?

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Of course if it was not located near the ocean on the east, the Tsunami wouldn't have killed the backup generators and they wouldn't be having this problem to begin with.

As for the wasteland effect, I doubt it would be more than a year after the reactor(s) containment to sufficiently decontaminate the surrounding area and get back to normal. How long did it take to rebuild after they were nuked? Technology and decontamination capability have improved a lot since then also.

Reply to
Pete C.

Actually, it's worse. The fuel requires a moderator / control rods to limit / stop the reaction, if those are destroyed or sufficiently displaced, the reaction will have no moderation. If the control rods and overall structure are intact, then the primary reaction should be stopped and the secondary reaction should be subsiding. Let's hope for the later case.

Reply to
Pete C.

======== cadmium or a boron salt would be better as these absorb neutrons.

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-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

_Expired_ 14-packs are currently going for $25.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

You keep repeating "the "10,000 year barren wasteland" that the anti-nuke crowd tries to hype it up as." and these sorts of things as if thay are either true ( it isn't) or meaningful. The only dramatic statements I've heard are from people like you bashing others for things they haven't said with regard to the current situation.

Your entire posture is laughable.

Even if someone could waive a magic wand and make the now destroyed facilities dissapear into thin air, the consequences will be significant. Significant even in the absence of any nuclear component. The UK modelled the consequences of a "dirty bomb" attack and the financial costs alone were STAGGERING. The utility that owns and operates these plants is GONE. Toast. How anxious would you be to aquire equity not last year, but today?

The lost capacity will need to be replaced, the quicker the better, and the existing site is worthless for that or any other purpose. Those costs are going to put a real additional strain on an already strained insurance/reinsurance industry and Japan's population and economy.

These are the things that are part of any decision to go forward with nuclear generating and aren't unique to Japan.

China is going ahead full blast with their G3 generating facilities. Any future financial loss will be born completely by the Chinese people. They know and accept the risk as a society. As I said earlier, the statistical chance of a catastrophe is tiny but not zero and because the implications of even partial failure are mind boggling, the private sector charges huge premiums for to provide capital. There is no private capital in a Chinese nuclear generating facility. None.

India holds nuclear facility designers and builders responsible for future liabilities. That's part of their solutin to the issue of operating accidents. All the proof anyone needs of the industry's confidence in a zero risk product is in the complete absence of GE, Westinghouse or anyone except the Russians and Koreans as suppliers. The Russians and Koreans don't care because as far as they are concerned, they aren't collectable. The others are because of the nature of their operations and won't accept the risk of liability for even a modest event.

Nuclear generating capacity is a reality and the world will have more nuclear generating capacity, not less. I haven't seen any serious argument against this fact and that includes argument from "the anti-nuke crowd". I don't think there even is a serious "anti-nuke crowd" beyond Koch Industries, Exxon-Mobil, Unocal and the other players in the fossil fuel industry. Those guys have their lobbyists argue for them with big checks and paid for, professional PR people pushing their line im the [ub;ic media and industry publications.

Reply to
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

It will, some day, in time, John, but those six reactors (of which three are normally off-line[and were, in rotation]) only supply about 2% of Japan's electrical needs. (50-odd reactors supply 20% of the country's electricity, of which those were six)

That's not insignificant, but neither is it a crippling blow.

Nor will those companies go bankrupt from the failure, unless they had no insurance, and the government doesn't want them doing business anymore.

The costs WILL be immense, but they'll eventually be absorbed by the whole world, as Japanese manufacturing comes on-line again, and transfers those costs into their product prices.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Pete, you need to read up on what a moderator is. It enables the reaction , it does not "moderate" it. It works by slowing down neutrons so their energy can be captured by other atoms and continue the chain reaction. That is different than a control rod which absorbs neutrons completely and slows the reaction. Neither of these are present in the fuel storage pool that is being discussed.

Reply to
anorton

"anorton" fired this volley in news:foOdncuPmf1wXeLQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Well, to make it clear for Pete... It moderates the speed of the neutrons to the purpose of obtaining the precise fission they want.

Otherwise, they just pass through the adjacent atoms they strike, or bust their nuclei apart into (predictable, but) unwanted elements, but do not promote the fission reaction required.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

55 reactors and 30 percent but your point is well taken. An issue that has to be factored in is Japan's growing use of energy, including electrical energy. Those guys inport all of their oil so an electric or hybrid vehicle fleet means something to the Japanese that it doesn't to us.

One of the downside effects of a nuclear event is that there has been little discussion of the infrastructure destroyed. Stuff like power transmission and switching, gas and oil pipelines and that sort of thing. I doubt that you can unload much on Japan's East Coast today.

I wouldn't be so sure of that.P erceptions have a way of becoming reality. People, even well informed people, believe today that AIG went down because of the quality of what they had put their money in. That's complete hogwash. They fell apart because they stupidly allowed collateral calls to compensate for events they had no control over and were overwhelmed not by any real losses but because they had to post very large amounts of collateral to their counterparties and a feeding frenzy of collateral calls couldn't be stemmed. IOW, perceptions overwhelmed them, not reality.

That same thing could easily happen in Japan to the operator.

Much will depend on the extent to which that operator will be liable. Acts of God are one thing. Negligence is another. I'm sure there was both.

I'd agree with that but working through the process might result in a different complexion. The game won't change but the players almost certainly will.

I'm hardly an alarmist about all of this, Lloyd. When the "To Big to Fail" financial institutions flexed their muscle on the threat of failure, the one thing I knew for sure is that if they did fail, there would be two people in line to replace each failed company. Figuring out how to make a buck is what businesses do and it''s their job to sort out conditions to do it.

I've been around a long time for a human and seen way to much to panic. In fact, that's probably my best trait, I don't pee all over myself regardless the situation. It isn't my radiant personality or rapier like whit that keeps customers coming back. LOL Some of what I am seeing and reading would actually be funny in other circumstance.

It just seems foolish and unproductive, however, to minimize or exagerate reality. It's also boring as hell. Quite honestly, this is fascinating when combined with what's happening in the other hot spots around the world.

Reply to
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" fired this volley in news:y_2dnQ47m snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

We're in complete agreement about that!

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Not if all they are is power reactor fuel rods. Even reactor fuel is too dilute to ever reach critical mass.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

I suspect that the majority of the NIMBYs got their science education from Saturday Matinee B-grade sci-fi movies, like "Them" (giant ants) or "The Beginning of the End" (giant locusts.)

Hope This Helps! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

FWIW, San Onofre is five miles from the nearest fault, and a 30-foot tsunami wouldn't make it up the face of the cliff they're sitting on.

And not only that, but the San Andreas fault isn't a subduction fault, like the one in Japan - the Pacific plate is merely sliding north, with no vertical component, so a tsunami is highly unlikely anyway.

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Yeah, right - can you imagine the hype and hysteria from the greenie weenies if they tried to use actual _lead_? "EEEEK! All the children will die of lead poisoning!"

Thanks, Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

I guess you haven't been paying attention to the news media then. There have been a great many anti-nuke people quoted trying to hype up the situation as much as they possibly can. This is the hype I am responding to, and the fact that Japan had two nuclear weapons detonated on it's soil in the nor very distant past, yet has been thriving for decades clearly shows that a nuclear disaster is not really any worse than a bad natural disaster. Both types are bad, and take a lot of work to recover from, but both types are entirely recoverable.

If my posture is, then so is yours.

The consequences from the 9.0 earthquake and 30' tsunami are vastly greater than the consequences from the reactor issues. I expect the cleanup of any radioactive contamination from the reactors will take far less time than the cleanup from the earthquake and tsunami.

That's the whole point here, the media and the anti-nuke folks are fixated on the least important part of the disaster. It was similar with the BP gulf oil spill, where it was all BP and offshore drilling bashing, completely ignoring the 11 people who were killed trying to make a living and make gas for your car available.

In the aftermath of the BP spill, the research on it's effects on the gulf are showing the impact falling far short of the hype from the anti drilling lobby, and I fully expect once the reactors in Japan are brought under control that the subsequent research will also show the effects fall far short of the "another Chernobyl" and similar hype.

As others have noted, the amount of capacity lost with these reactors is a pretty small percentage. As for the site, there are other reactors there which I believe are still fully functional, though they will certainly see a year or two of inspection before they are ever brought back online.

The site is most certainly not worthless by any stretch of the imagination, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki (probably misspelled) are certainly not worthless. Indeed if there is contamination to cleanup outside the current plant area and people are relocated, that makes for easy expansion of the site to build back the lost capacity.

The costs related to the reactors are vastly out shadowed by the costs related to the earthquake and tsunami. The reactor related portion probably will amount to less than 1% of the total damages related to the earthquake and tsunami.

This resembles the Chernobyl model and can result in maintenance deferred for political reasons, poor pay and training of operators, and other issues that do not appear as readily in a commercial model. The commercial model runs on profits, but the risk side drives the owners to keep things maintained and trained to a reasonable level lest they loose their entire investment.

I've not heard anything about the new reactors proposed in the US and going through permitting being supplied by the Russians or Koreans. Who supplies the reactors in France?

It's the only "green" option we have that is viable now. In the future hopefully we can get some large scale tidal generation going since there is vastly more available energy and it is more consistent and can be harnessed more efficiently than wind or solar.

Not much that comes out of the anti-nuke crowd is serious (or coherent). Heck, they had to drop the "nuclear" from "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" a.k.a. MRI just to calm their hysteria.

I think the idea that the fossil fuel players lobby against nuclear and other sources is more myth than anything. It is these very companies who are investing heavily in alternative energy sources. They know full well that fossil fuels will not be around forever, and they also know full well that fossil fuel dependence will not go away in their lifetimes. They are making profits on the fossil fuels and are heavily investing in diversifying their business into alternate "green" energy production so they can maintain their businesses as times change.

Reply to
Pete C.

If you are trying to prove there are people out in the world who are hysterical You got me convinced

Reply to
jim

(snip)

Pete,

As was brought-up in other threads, the after-affects of a bomb compared to the after-affects of a worst-case reactor meltdown and fuel fire are not really comparable. A bomb leaves generally hottter, but shorter-lived isotopes. A reactor has very long-lived isotopes as well as some hotter ones. A bomb has only a few kilograms of radioactive material. One reactor has about 1000 kilograms. multiply this by four reactors plus whatever is in the storage pools and you have the makings of a real disaster. With a lot of money and time, stuff can be partialy cleaned up, but not completely. People are still dying in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from excess luekemia.

Folks who downplay the impacts of something like this and play apologist for this industry do not do nuclear power any favors. Folks who protest already feel like their lives are being put in danger for the profit of others, and statements like yours are not going work to convince them otherwise.

I do believe nuclear power in some form should have a future. But the folks who run it, as in any industry, will indeed gamble with other people's lives to enrich themselves. This is why they must be monitored extremely closely with no apologies made for them.

Reply to
anorton

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