Japan has warned of a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor damaged after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the country's northeast coast.
Emergencies have been declared at two nuclear power stations in Fukushima, 150 miles (240km) north of capital Tokyo, due to cooling problems.
Radioactive steam has been released to reduce rising pressure in the plants and the Japanese prime minister has ordered thousands of people living within six miles to leave the area.
Japan's nuclear safety commission's Ryohei Shiomi said officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Daiichi power plant.
trex-073
What get's me, is how these nations can build Nuclear plants on know Earthquake Zones.....
If that plant has a meltdown, it's gonna have a negative impact on Namibia's economy..... the world was just tuning into Nuclear energy, we were about to become a major player in the Uranium industry, if this happens then people will get scared to build these plants....
Just my 2 cents.....
23_146_26
They say the type of radiation that is being released only has a half life of 5 seconds.... sorriso2
An explosion has been heard and smoke was seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant, say reports. Japanese TV is reporting that several workers have been injured in the blast.
and the evacuation area just got bigger..... here comes a major problem....
They have been toying with that idea here in Oz, building nuclear power stations, although we are powered by black and brown coal which is in abundance here so is yellow cake The worldwide production of uranium in 2009 amounted to 50,572 tonnes, of which 27% was mined in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia are the top three producers and together account for 63% of world uranium production. Other important uranium producing countries in excess of 1000 tonnes per year are Namibia, Russia, Niger, Uzbekistan, and the United States. 'The Greens' (political party) are opposed to building nuclear power stations but our CO2 emissions * Australia emits around 28 metric tons of carbon per person per year, one of the highest per capita levels in the developed world, primarily as it relies on coal to generate about 84 percent of it electricity. Many organizations have put steps in place to identify and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, implemented Reduction Strategies and offset any unavoidable emissions.And for those that haven't yet started, they need to understand, measure and manage their emissions and environmental impact as greenhouse gases are on the government and consumer agenda. Living in England in 1957 we had one of the first nuclear accident at the Windscale nuclear power station this below was part of the report quite scary at that time............................
On 7 October 1957, operators began an annealing cycle for Windscale Pile №1 by switching the cooling fans to low power and stabilizing the reactor at low power. The next day, to carry out the annealing, the operators increased the power to the reactor. When it appeared that the annealing process was taking place, control rods were lowered back into the core to shut down the reactor, but it soon became apparent that the Wigner energy release was not spreading through the core, but dwindling prematurely. The operators withdrew the control rods again to apply a second nuclear heating and complete the annealing process. Because some thermocouples were not in the hottest parts of the core, the operators were not aware that some areas were considerably hotter than others. This, and the second heating, are suspected of having been the deciding factors behind the fire, although the precise cause remains unknown. The official report suggests that a can of uranium ruptured and oxidised causing further overheating and the fire, but a more recent report suggests that it may have been a magnesium/lithium isotope cartridge. All that was visible on the instruments was a gentle increase in temperature, which was to be expected during the Wigner release.
Early in the morning on 10 October, it was suspected that something unusual was going on. The temperature in the core was supposed to gradually fall as Wigner release ended, but the monitoring equipment showed something more ambiguous was going on and one thermocouple indicated that core temperature was instead rising. In an effort to help cool the pile, more air was pumped through the core. This lifted radioactive materials up the chimney and into the filter galleries. It was then that workers in the control room realised that the radiation monitoring devices which measured activity at the top of the discharge stack were at full scale reading. In accordance with written guidelines, the foreman declared a site emergency. No one at Windscale was now in any doubt that Pile 1 was in serious trouble.
[edit] The fire
Operators tried to examine the pile with a remote scanner but it had jammed. Tom Hughes, second in command to the Reactor Manager, suggested examining the reactor personally and so he and another operator went to the charge face of the reactor, clad in protective gear. A fuel channel inspection plug was taken out close to a thermocouple registering high temperatures and it was then that the operators saw that the fuel was red hot.
"An inspection plug was taken out," said Tom Hughes in a later interview, "and we saw, to our complete horror, four channels of fuel glowing bright cherry red."
There was no doubt that the reactor was now on fire, and had been for almost 48 hours. Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy[4] donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled the 80 feet to the top of the reactor building, where he stood atop the reactor lid to examine the rear of the reactor, the discharge face. Here he reported a dull red luminescence visible, lighting up the void between the back of the reactor and the rear containment. Red hot fuel cartridges were glowing in the fuel channels on the discharge face. He returned to the reactor upper containment several times throughout the incident, at the height of which a fierce conflagration was raging from the discharge face and playing on the back of the reinforced concrete containment—concrete whose specifications required that it be kept below a certain temperature to prevent its disintegration and collapse.[5]
[edit] Initial fire fighting attempts
Operators were unsure what to do about the fire. First, they tried to blow the flames out by putting the blowers onto full power and increasing the cooling, but this fanned the flames. Tom Hughes and his colleague had already created a fire break by ejecting some undamaged fuel cartridges from around the blaze and Tom Tuohy suggested trying to eject some from the heart of the fire, by bludgeoning them through the reactor and into the cooling pond behind it with scaffolding poles. This proved impossible and the fuel rods refused to budge, no matter how much force was applied. The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot and, once, a pole was returned red hot and dripping with molten metal. Hughes knew this had to be molten irradiated uranium and this caused serious radiation problems on the charge hoist itself.
"It [the exposed fuel channel] was white hot," said Hughes' colleague on the charge hoist with him, "it was just white hot. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can believe how hot it could possibly be."
[edit] Carbon dioxide
Next, the operators tried to extinguish the fire using carbon dioxide. The new gas-cooled Calder Hall reactors on the site had just received a delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide and this was rigged up to the charge face of Windscale Pile 1, but there were problems getting it to the fire in useful quantities. The fire was so hot that it stripped the oxygen from what carbon dioxide could be applied.
"So we got this rigged up," Hughes recounted, "and we had this poor little tube of carbon dioxide and I had absolutely no hope it was going to work."
[edit] The use of water
On the morning of Friday 11 October, when the fire was at its worst, eleven tons of uranium were ablaze. Temperatures were becoming extreme (one thermocouple registered 1,300°C) and the biological containment around the stricken reactor was now in severe danger of collapse. Faced with this crisis, the operators decided to use water. This was incredibly risky: molten metal oxidises in contact with water, stripping oxygen from the water molecules and leaving free hydrogen, which could mix with incoming air and explode, tearing open the weakened containment. Faced with a lack of other options, the operators decided to go ahead with the plan. About a dozen hoses were hauled to the charge face of the reactor; their nozzles were cut off and the lines themselves connected to scaffolding poles and fed into fuel channels about a metre above the heart of the fire.
Tom Tuohy then ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief. All cooling and ventilating air entering the reactor was shut off. Tuohy once again hauled himself atop the reactor shielding and ordered the water to be turned on, listening carefully at the inspection holes for any sign of a hydrogen reaction as the pressure was increased. Tuohy climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. During one of the inspections, he found that the inspection plates—which were removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core—were stuck fast. This, he reported, was due to the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.
"I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in an interview.
Finally he managed to pull the inspection plate away and was greeted with the sight of the fire dying away.
"First the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down," he described, "I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out. I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully," he went on to say, "but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation."Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold.... image04
• Official: Second blast possible at nuclear site
• Workers trying to cool reactors at Fukushima
• Follows suspected meltdown at No. 1 reactor
[10:39 a.m. ET, 11:39 p.m. Tokyo] A state of emergency has been declared at a nuclear power plant in Onagawa, Japan, where excessive radiation levels have been recorded following Friday's massive earthquake, the United Nations' atomic watchdog agency said Sunday.
Good piece on the Windscale disaster, Frank. It looks as it the Japanese problem is shaping up to be a major unless they can get it under control.
Here is a recent opinion on that; source at the end. I had a couple of good schematics showing the interior of the vessel but unfortunately I can't post pix on this site.
"The reactors reported to have suffered damage in Japan are of the class 'boiling water reactor' sold only by General Electric. They have only 1 large pressure (c. 1 ton/sq in) vessel whereas the pressurised-water reactors of Westinghouse etc have a (somewhat smaller) reactor pressure vessel plus 4 'steam generators'. These vessels are of 20 cm stainless steel, welded by methods not believed feasible until c.1970. The metals in question undergo neutron embrittlement over the decades ...
Each has a 'torus' - the fat 'doughnut' underground, to receive blowdown of radioactive fluids. That's what Prof Miller, applied math @ UC Berkeley, pointed out would be wrecked if ever the fluids came blasting down those sloping pipes according to the design.
Greg Minor, who toured NZ courtesy of the Campaign for Non-Nuclear Futures at the time of the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, soon after his quitting the GE nuclear division on ethical grounds, told us this 'containment' had been "designed" in the sales division of GE. It allows a lower-profile, more 'normal' bldg above ground - the top 1/3 of which was blown off in the weekend explosion.
Miller's 'torus jump problem' called gravely in question this alleged 'containment'.
L. R. B. Mann M.Sc Ph.D
applied ecology
22a Ardern Ave.
Stanmore Bay, Whangaparaoa 0932,
NEW ZEALAND
Tel: 0064-9-424 0808
Frungy - 2 hours ago
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"Japan struggled on Monday to avert a nuclear disaster "
... bullshit. I'm in Japan. Yes, the earthquakes and tsunami caused a lot of damage, but there is NO nuclear "disaster". I'm actually quite peeved with the international media. The Fukushima reactors are light water reactors and the moment the disaster happened the control rods slid into place stopping 93% of the nuclear reaction, and all that was needed was time for the remaining 7% to cool off and stop reacting, and there were problems with cooling the reactors during this period, but it wasn't a "disaster".
Worst case they would have just let them overheat, the reactor cores would have dropped to the heavily shielded reactor room floor and that would be the end of it really (they could then have flooded the entire complex and some radioactive steam would have escaped and rapidly dissipated).
There is no nuclear "disaster". The 10km area around the reactors is a bit of a mess, but this is not Chernobyl. *sigh* Reporters are such idiots, if I could find the atomic safety commission's page on lightwater reactors, read up on this and realise that there's no real danger then I can only conclude that reporters are DELIBERATELY misleading the public in order to get more attention. They should be ashamed of themselves, spreading panic and delaying relief shipments to people who need them after the tsunami because of radiation fears that are completely groundless!
Stennie. where's the link?
2nd blast rocks Japanese nuclear plant
2011-03-14 07:15
Soma - The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant on Monday, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding six workers.
It is not immediately clear how much - if any - radiation was released.
The explosion at the plant's Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
The blast follows a similar explosion on Saturday that took place at the plant's Unit 1, which injured four workers and caused mass-evacuations.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said six workers were injured in Monday's explosion but it was not immediately clear how, or whether they were exposed to radiation. They were all conscious, said the agency's Ryohei Shomi.
Earlier, Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the reactor, said three workers were injured and seven missing.
Inner containment vessel intact
The reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods was intact, Edano said, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public. TV footage of the building housing the reactor appeared to show similar damage to the previous blast, with outer walls shorn off, leaving only a skeletal frame.
More than 180 000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation.
Earlier on Monday, pressure had jumped inside Unit 3, forcing the evacuation of 21 workers. But they returned to work after levels appeared to ease.
Associated Press journalists felt the explosion in the tsunami-devastated port town of Soma, some 40km north of the reactor. They reported feeling the faint rumble of a blast and the ground shaking.
At the time, sirens were wailing as rescue workers were in the midst of evacuating all those in the city to high ground due to a tsunami warning. That turned out to be a false alarm.
Japan begins to dig for its dead
2011-03-14 08:47
Soma - Rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks on Monday to dig out bodies in Japan's devastated coastal towns, as Asia's richest nation faced a growing humanitarian, nuclear and economic crisis in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Millions of people spent a third night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the devastated northeastern coast.
Also, the containment building of a second nuclear reactor exploded because of hydrogen buildup while the stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.
More than 10 000 people are estimated to have died in Friday's twin tragedy that has caused unimaginable deprivation for people of this industrialised country that has not seen such hardships since World War II.
In many areas there is no running water, no power and four- to five-hour waits for gasoline. People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.
"People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming," said Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest hit.
"We have repeatedly asked the government to help us, but the government is overwhelmed by the scale of damage and enormous demand for food and water," he told The Associated Press.
"We are only getting around just 10% of what we have requested. But we are patient because everyone in the quake-hit areas is suffering."
150 aftershocks
He said local authorities were also running out of body bags and coffins.
"We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don't have enough. We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It's just overwhelming."
Sato said local authorities may ask foreign funeral homes to send supplies.
The pulverised coast has been hit by more than 150 aftershocks since Friday, the latest one a 6.2-magnitude quake that was followed by a new tsunami scare on Monday.
Abandoning their search operations, soldiers told residents of the devastated shoreline in Soma, the worst hit town in Fukushima prefecture, to run to higher ground.
Sirens wailed and soldiers shouted "find high ground! Get out of here!" Several uniformed soldiers were seen leading an old woman up a muddy hillside. The warning turned out to be a false alarm.
"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters on Sunday, adding that Japan's future would be decided by its response.
On Sunday, search parties arrived in Soma for the first time since Friday to dig out bodies.
1 800 confirmed dead
Ambulances stood by and body bags were laid out in an area cleared of debris, as firefighters used hand picks and chain saws to clear an indescribable jumble of broken timber, plastic sheets, roofs, sludge, twisted cars, tangled powerlines and household goods.
Helicopters buzzed overhead, surveying the destruction that spanned the horizon. Ships were flipped over near roads, a kilometre inland. Officials said one-third of the city of 38 000 people was flooded and thousands were missing.
According to officials, more than 1 800 people have been confirmed dead - including 200 people whose bodies were found on Sunday along the coast - and more than 1 400 were missing in Friday's disasters. Another 1 900 were injured.
But police in Miyagi prefecture say 10 000 people are likely dead in their area alone. Miyagi, with a population of 2.3 million, was one of the hardest hit areas.
"I'm giving up hope," said Hajime Watanabe, aged 38, a construction industry worker, who was the first in line at a closed gas station in Sendai, about 100km north of Soma.
Just then, an emergency worker came over and told him that if the station opens at all, it would pump gasoline only to emergency teams and essential government workers.
"I never imagined we would be in such a situation" Watanabe said. "I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water."
He said he was surviving with his family on 60 half-litre bottles of water his wife had stored in case of emergencies like this. He walked two hours to find a convenience store that was open and waited in line to buy dried ramen noodles.
Nuclear disaster
The government has sent 100 000 troops to spearhead the aid effort. It has sent 120 000 blankets, 120 000 bottles of water and 110 000 litres of gasoline plus food to the affected areas. However electricity would take days to restore.
At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and around 1.9 million households were without electricity.
One reason for the loss of power is the damage to at least three nuclear reactors, two of them at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant.
Operators dumped seawater into the two reactors in a last-ditch attempt to cool their super-heated containers that faced possible meltdown. If that happens, they could release radioactive material in the air.
On Monday, the containment building of the second reactor exploded, just as the first one had on Saturday.
But Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the reactor's inner containment vessel holding the nuclear fuel rods was intact, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment. The containment vessel of the first reactor is also safe, according to officials.
Still, people within a 20km radius were ordered to stay inside homes following the blast. AP journalists felt the explosion 40km away.
More than 180 000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation after the first blast.
Power rationing
Also, Tokyo Electric Power held off on imposing rolling blackouts planned for Monday, but called for people try to limit electricity use.
Edano said the utility was still prepared to go ahead with power rationing if necessary. The decision reflected an understanding of the profound inconveniences many would experience.
Many regional train lines were suspended or operating on a limited schedule to help reduce the power load.
The planned blackouts of about three hours each were meant to help make up for a severe shortfall after key nuclear plants were left inoperable due to the earthquake and tsunami.
Japan's central bank has injected $85.5bn into money markets on Monday to stem worries about the world's third-largest economy.
Stocks fell in early trading on Monday on the first business day after the disasters. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average shed 494 points, or 4.8%, to 9,760.45 just after the market opened.
Towns wiped out
Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami that struck on Friday in the tens of billions of dollars - a huge blow for an already fragile economy that lost its place as the world's No 2 to China last year.
In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10 000 people - nearly two-thirds of the population - have not been heard from since the tsunami wiped it out, a government spokesperson said.
About a third of the town of Soma was wiped out, with several hundred homes washed away. Three districts of town on the shoreline are now covered in rubble, overturned cars and trucks and waist-high, dirty green water.
A tiny pink girl's bicycle, all twisted up, sits near a child's backpack - just some of the personal belongings littering the landscape.
Atsushi Shishito sat in a daze on the concrete foundation of his home, now completely washed away. He sleeps at an evacuation centre. The 30-year-old carried his grandmother to higher ground to escape the tsunami.
"All my other relatives are all dead," he added. "Washed away."
A third reactor at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant loses its cooling capabilities, hours after another reactor building at the facility is rocked by an explosion.
The problem was detected in the plant's No. 2 reactor Monday afternoon after an explosion rocked the building containing the plant's No. 3 reactor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.
"We think that the hydrogen explosion in (the building housing) reactor No. 3 caused the cooling system of reactor No. 2 to stop working," Edano said.
Water levels were falling and pressure was building up inside the No. 2 reactor, he said, and officials were working on a plan to release gas and also inject seawater into that reactor.
I was reading somewhere that this is not as big a problem as Cherbynol was, these reactors have a failsafe type housing under them, that the reactors fall into that can absorb all the energy that they could create, I find this a bit hard to believe......
Quote from: Michael Alexander on March 14, 2011, 11:36:32 AM
I was reading somewhere that this is not as big a problem as Cherbynol was, these reactors have a failsafe type housing under them, that the reactors fall into that can absorb all the energy that they could create, I find this a bit hard to believe......
And what happens after that? Do they cover it all up in a million tons of cement for a 1000 years and hope that nothing ever leaks? Its a disaster, no matter how safe they made it, that area will never be used again, all u need is a bigger Tsunami / Earthquake (at the current scenario, it can happen anytime) to take out the buildings, and what measure of protection for the environment, people, plant and animal life is in place to safeguard it all.
This disaster is going to have a global impact, not just on the economies, but environmental as well, for many years to come .
Japan has the 3rd largest economy, just behind China, and that alone tells you the impact this is going to have on goods the world import from japan, those goods are going to become very scarce, and prices are going to sky rocket.
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/japan-quake-2011/Japan_Nuclear_Plants.jpg)
Japan radioactivity in atmosphere – IAEA
2011-03-15 09:08
Vienna - Japan has told the UN nuclear watchdog a spent fuel storage pond was on fire at an earthquake-stricken reactor and radioactivity was being released "directly" into the atmosphere, the Vienna-based agency said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing information it had received from Japanese authorities, said dose rates of up to 400 millisievert per hour have been reported at the Fukushima power plant site.
"The Japanese authorities are saying that there is a possibility that the fire was caused by a hydrogen explosion," it said in a statement.
According to experts, a single dose of 1 000 millisieverts - or one sievert - causes temporary radiation sickness such as nausea and vomiting. A dose of 5 000 millisieverts would kill about half those receiving it within a month.
Radiation levels rise slightly in Russia
2011-03-15 11:46
Vladivostok - Radiation levels rose slightly in Russia's Far East on Tuesday but stayed within normal levels, officials said, as Japan struggled to cope with the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Radiation levels in Vladivostok, a city of 600 000 people some 800km northwest of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, were 1 microroentgen per hour higher at 04:00 GMT than six hours previously, the regional emergencies ministry said.
Russia's military said it was on alert to evacuate people if required from Russia's Sakhalin island, whose southernmost tip is visible from northern Japan, and the Southern Kuril island chain which is at the heart of a territorial dispute with Japan, Interfax news agency reported.
Called the Northern Territories by Japan, the Southern Kuril Islands are inhabited by Russians and one of the islands, Tanfilyeva, is just 6km from Japan's coast.
Sakhalin island holds Russia's biggest proven gas reserves in the Far East.
Japan warned radiation levels had become "significantly" higher around a quake-stricken nuclear power plant after explosions at two reactors.
Radiation being monitored
But the Emergency Ministry for Russia's Far East, a large swathe of Russia home to 6.5 million people which faces Japan to its east, said it expected the winds to change in their favour.
"Eastern winds will blow for the next several days, and the air flows (from the pollution area) will move over the Pacific Ocean, away from the Russian Far Eastern coast," said ministry spokesperson Yekaterina Potvorova.
She said radiation was being monitored across 71 sites in the Far East. Russian flagship airline Aeroflot would continue direct flights as normal to Tokyo, a spokesperson said.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people within 30km of the facility north of Tokyo to remain indoors and conserve power, underscoring the dramatic escalation of Japan's nuclear crisis, the world's most serious since Soviet Ukraine's Chernobyl in 1986.
Hello to you Bob! this below is what they described as the aftermath of the Windscale accident.You have to understand the time frame of this accident 1957 and the end of the war with Japan August 1945 that's 12 years After the wars. Britain had a nuclear power station working as early as 1953.
The history of British Nuclear Fuels is inextricably linked to the development of a comprehensive nuclear energy program in Britain. The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which precipitated the end of World War II, furnished proof of the devastating military potential of nuclear technology. However, with the formation of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) in 1954, the peaceful civilian applications of the technology were given a new prominence. Nuclear power's potential as a cheap, safe alternative to coal-fired electricity was especially alluring in the difficult years following World War II, when supplies of fossil fuels appeared to be diminishing and oil prices were increasingly unstable. A prototype reactor was built at Calder Hall in picturesque Wordsworth country after the war, and experimentally connected to the national electricity grid as early as 1953. At the historic United Nations Conference held in Geneva in 1955, Britain established its lead in reactor technology by announcing a plan to construct twelve gas-cooled reactors within ten years which would provide the United Kingdom with fifty percent of its electricity needs by 1975. Early projections indicated that nuclear power could compete with coal, still in short supply as a result of the war.
In 1956, Queen Elizabeth formally opened the fully operational Calder Hall reactor, to an overwhelmingly positive reception in the press. The reactor was built to a gas-graphite design perfected in Britain and nicknamed 'Magnox.' Like coal and oil-powered power stations, the Calder Hall station generated electricity through a steam-driven turbo-generator. Unlike traditional power stations, however, heat in the nuclear power plant was the result of nuclear fission, the controlled splitting of uranium atoms in a chain reaction. A relatively small amount of fuel produced a tremendous amount of heat. The British government remained loyal to the Magnox gas-cooled design in spite of the reservations of a minority of AEA engineers, who expressed doubts about both the economic viability and safety of the new industry. Dissenters included Sir Christopher Hinton, widely regarded as the 'father' of British nuclear power, who was later to urge in vain that the United Kingdom adopt the American water-cooled system.
There were other nuclear accidents Los Alamo's A criticality accident, sometimes referred to as an excursion or a power excursion, is an accidental increasing nuclear chain reaction in a fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium. This releases a surge of neutron radiation which is highly dangerous to humans and causes induced radioactivity in the surroundings.
* On 4 June 1945, an experiment at Los Alamos to determine the critical mass of enriched uranium became critical when water leaked into the polyethylene box holding the metal. Three people received non-fatal doses of radiation
* On 21 August 1945, Los Alamos scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. suffered fatal radiation poisoning after dropping a tungsten carbide brick onto a sphere of plutonium. The brick acted as a neutron reflector, bringing the mass to criticality. This was the first known criticality accident causing a fatality.
The fire released an estimated 740 Terabecquerels (20,000 curies) of iodine-131, as well as 22 TBq (594 curies) of caesium-137 and 12,000 TBq (324,000 curies) of xenon-133, among other radionuclides.[7] Later reworking of contamination data has shown national and international contamination may have been higher than previously estimated.[8] For comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl explosion released approximately 1,760,000 TBq of iodine-131; 79,500 TBq caesium-137; 6,500,000 TBq xenon-133; 80,000 TBq strontium-90; and 6100 TBq plutonium, along with about a dozen other radionuclides in large amounts.[7] The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 released 25 times more xenon-135 than Windscale, but much less iodine, caesium and strontium.
The presence of the chimney scrubbers at Windscale was credited with maintaining partial containment and thus minimizing the radioactive content of the smoke that poured from the chimney during the fire. Of particular concern at the time was the radioactive isotope iodine-131, which has a half-life of only 8 days but is taken up by the human body and stored in the thyroid. As a result, consumption of iodine-131 often leads to cancer of the thyroid. It had previously been estimated that the incident caused 200 additional cancer cases, although this figure has recently been revised upwards to 240.
No one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but there was concern that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500 km2 of nearby countryside was destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month. A 2010 study of workers directly involved in the cleanup—and thus expected to have seen the highest exposure rates—found no significant long term health effects from their involvement.
The reactor tank itself has remained sealed since the accident and still contains about 15 tonnes of uranium fuel - which, due to the presence of pyrophoric uranium hydride formed in the original water dousing, could still reignite if disturbed. "Nobody has touched it for almost 50 years because of a fear that it could either catch fire again or go critical and explode."[6] The pile is not scheduled for final decommissioning until 2037.
[/quote]And what happens after that? Do they cover it all up in a million tons of cement for a 1000 years and hope that nothing ever leaks? Its a disaster, no matter how safe they made it, that area will never be used again, all u need is a bigger Tsunami / Earthquake (at the current scenario, it can happen anytime) to take out the buildings, and what measure of protection for the environment, people, plant and animal life is in place to safeguard it all.
This disaster is going to have a global impact, not just on the economies, but environmental as well, for many years to come .
Japan has the 3rd largest economy, just behind China, and that alone tells you the impact this is going to have on goods the world import from japan, those goods are going to become very scarce, and prices are going to sky rocket.
[/quote]
this quote by Henk Coetzee is well placed..........................................................
Awesome piece of history, really interesting read!
Sounds like Windscale is stable, albeit no one dares to touch it--- yet. Here is my fear, Japan is situated nearly smack bang on top of the most active geological area in the world, Windscale is not.
The next Tsunami, and that is not unlikely at this stage, it can happen any moment, be bigger, stronger, higher, and more devastating, I am not convinced that their contaminated plants, no matter how well sealed up, will not leak or go hyper.
Windscale is a huge timebomb, that just needs its clock to be wound up.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/16/article-1366670-0B33AE3200000578-298_472x568.jpg)
French minister: 'Let's not beat about the bush, they've essentially lost control'
Radioactive steam spews into atmosphere from reactor number three
Experts warn that crisis is 'approaching point of no return' as officials run out of options
Officials commandeer police water cannon to spray complex
Attempts to dump water on reactors by helicopter fail
Two more previously stable reactors begin to heat up
Rich scramble to book private jets out the country as fleeing passengers pack Tokyo airport
Workers battling nuclear meltdown evacuated for hours today after radiation levels increased
The UK government is urging all British nationals to leave Tokyo as soon as possible amid fresh safety fears.
The Foreign Office this evening issued a statement recommending that all Britons leave the area for their own safety. At least 17,000 UK citizens live in Japan, the vast majority of them in Tokyo.
The plea came as the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan worsened amid concerns of a radiation leak.
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Destroyed: the four stricken reactors at Fukushima. Three were damaged in explosion while a fire broke out at the fourth
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Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency on Friday raised the level for the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant from a 4 to 5 -- putting it on par with the 1979 incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.
According to the International Nuclear Events Scale, a level 5 equates to the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core.
Chernobyl, for example, rated a 7 on the scale, while Japan's other nuclear crisis -- a 1999 accident at Tokaimura in which workers died after being exposed to radiation -- was a 4.
In Pennsylvania, a partial meltdown of a reactor core was deemed the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
Lawmaker: Japan's government doesn't lie Nuclear watchdog under fire over Japan CNN reporter reflects on tsunami damage
Explainer: Producing nuclear energy
This development came as Japanese authorities came under fire Friday from within and abroad over the lack of timely information on the unfolding nuclear situation as they battled for a second week to contain the crisis.
People near the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are increasingly frustrated, not just with the prolonged fight to curb radioactive emissions, but also the lack of immediate information from authorities, a local government official said.
Exposed: Nuclear fuel rods inside wrecked reactor as experts predict radioactive plume will reach Britain in two weeks
Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station to hit U.S. today
Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three Mile Island
Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete to stop catastrophic release
Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day
Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367524/Japanese-tsunami-earthquake-Nuclear-fuel-rods-exposed.html#ixzz1GxUldEEm
Let me add the following article:
LINK: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/4149/full
"WHY IS IT that, faced with an unfolding nuclear accident in Japan, even normally cautious news outlets quickly descend into a seething, breathless recounting of what seems like the Armageddon itself?
The epic struggle by the Japanese to cope with multiple calamities after a record earthquake and a massive tsunami boggles the mind. More than 13,000 people are feared dead and a swathe of towns wiped off the map.
But following the global news coverage over the last few days, you would think that a reactor meltdown, should it occur, will be the gravest threat to the devastated nation so far. And that the incident was calling into question the safety of nuclear power altogether.
This is balderdash. Yes, appalling disasters occur, technologies fail and people die. Buildings, bridges and even whole cities can crumble in the face of nature's fearsome onslaught. So why would we expect nuclear facilities to be any different?
When an aircraft accident kills scores of people, we don't hear calls for an end to air travel. When collapsing buildings crush victims in an earthquake, we don't question the wisdom of building skyscrapers near fault lines.
Why do accidents around anything 'nuclear' – from the accidental release of gas no more radioactive than the air in the northern Flinders Ranges, to the leak of low-level hospital waste of used gloves and smocks – trigger such panicked coverage?
Meanwhile, older coal-fired power plants – those without effective fly ash capture – are one of the largest sources of man-made radiation exposure, yet this generates no column inches in our newspapers and have no demonstrators in gas masks picketing them.
You can put forward a strong argument that nuclear weapons are inherently evil. But there is nothing inherently 'evil' about nuclear power, any more than sunlight is evil. Sunlight comes from the Sun, a titanic nuclear reactor burning 620 million tonnes of fuel every second. It just happens to be 150 million km away.
In a very real sense, solar power is really just nuclear power from a distance. Ditto with wind power (winds are generated by the difference between warm air, heated by the Sun, and cool air at the poles) and wave power (largely powered by winds). Even geothermal energy has a nuclear origin, largely generated by the radioactive decay of minerals. Not only is nuclear energy 'natural', we could not survive without it, since life on Earth is reliant on the Sun for light and heat.
THE JAPANESE QUAKE, which now appears to have been a magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale, released seismic energy yield equivalent to a 474 megaton atomic blast. This released 39,000 times more energy than the 12 kiloton bomb that devastated Hiroshima, and is equal to the force that flattened Lisbon, Portugal, on All Saints Day in 1755. Make no mistake, this was a catastrophic quake.
Despite this, the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, built to withstand a 7.9 magnitude quake, stood up to a seismic event that shook it over 30 times more powerfully than it was designed to survive. It held up to the onslaught, and shut down automatically as the tremors began.
It appears that the 10-metre tsunami that followed is what brought the reactors to the brink of meltdown, as back-up diesel generators for the facility's coolant pumps failed, and the cores began to heat up. Attempts to cool the cores were unsuccessful, and containment buildings blew up as the pressure built.
When a 20 km exclusion zone was declared – a standard emergency protocol – the global news coverage frothed with "NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE", "ATOMIC CRISIS" and "MELTDOWN ALERT". And how did they deal with the 9.0 magnitude quake? "TSUNAMI CARNAGE" and "NATURE'S TERROR".
These are just the headlines. The actual coverage has often been nonsensical, contradictory, overdramatic and occasionally hysterical. No wonder the public often react with fear when they see the word 'nuclear'.
To say - as some news outlets have - that the Fukushima accident was now worse than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, just shows how bad the coverage can get, and why people get anxious. Chernobyl was a Russian design without a containment vessel and the reactor core was exposed, on fire, and large quantities of the fuel itself released into the air.
The Japanese reactors are designed to prevent this ever happening; fuel is inside a thick steel vessel, itself within a containment structure that is specifically designed to prevent release of core materials even during an accident such as this. Also, boiling water reactors like the ones in Fukushima are cooled by water which, unlike the graphite core at Chernobyl, cannot burn.
Even if the 50 brave nuclear engineers and reactor staff, mostly volunteers, do lose their long battle and a meltdown occurs, this is not necessarily catastrophic. The reactor's containment structure is designed to prevent the spread of radioactivity and - even if these are breached - it is still likely that much of the radioactive material would be contained at the site.
THE LOSS OF TENS OF THOUSANDS of lives and the widespread destruction caused by the quake and tsunami will clearly dwarf any damage caused by the nuclear accident, even if a meltdown occurs. But that's not the impression you get from the lopsided, occasionally shrill coverage.
No wonder many people are panicked. And it's public panic in response to this incident - rather than the radiation risk - that could be dangerous. Power is out across much of the coast, roads are damaged or impassable, people are hungry and bewildered and cold. What we don't need is a mass, panicked exodus that will likely add to the casualties and strain already tight emergency services beyond breaking point.
In such a state, it can be hard to think clearly and rationally – and yet, that's exactly what we need to do. Not just in crises like this, but when considering the pros and cons of various technologies, particularly large-scale ones like power stations. What we don't need is an 'amygdala hijack' – a term coined by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence to describe an intense fear response out of all proportion to its actual threat.
Critical thinking, devoid of emotive triggers or blaring headlines, allow us to make better decisions. And we certainly need it in the midst of a natural disaster. What is now unfolding in Japan – the after-effects of the massive quake and tsunami, including the threat posed by the failing reactors – is a tragedy of immense proportions.
What we need to do as an advanced technical society is learn from each such calamity, so our engineers and scientists can build better and more resilient systems – bridges, buildings, roads and – yes – nuclear reactors. That's progress. That's science."
Mike,
That Cosmo piece reads like a PR blurb for the nuclear power industry. And it certainly needs it. If ever an industry is in dire straits, the nuke sellers are, largely because otherwise uninformed public opinion is swinging to the view that the entire concept of energy from nuclear power is insane, now and forever.
There are four good reasons why that is the case:
1) There is no way to handle the waste
2) There is no way to handle the waste
3) There is no way to handle the waste
And the (very distant) fourth reason:
The hidden costs are prohibitive. Only the nuclear industry claims an actual reduction in carbon emissions. The raw numbers, including the mining and refining of uranium, the land destruction, the water waste, the massive industrial process of gathering, refining and transporting the fuel, the construction and maintenance of the plants themselves, before getting into the maintenance and disposal of waste and the decommissioning of the plants make it a net negative, all the way around.
No one, repeat no one, has ever safely decommissioned a nuclear plant. And at no time has anyone calculated the real cost of keeping such a decommissioned site safe from human risk for the 3,500 years it will take for the worst of the nasties to reach its half life.
And for an update on what is really happening at Fukushima right now read the following Counterpunch article. But before doing so, just go in and look at your sleeping little ones and say a silent prayer of thanks that northern hemisphere winds do not cross the equator.
http://www.counterpunch.org/takashi03222011.html
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Hello to you Bob! your last post reminds me of the novel by Neville Shute 'On The Beach' where there has been a 3rd world war and they believe that the radiation poisoning will not cross the equator.
Quote from: Bob Molloy on March 25, 2011, 01:02:54 AMBut before doing so, just go in and look at your sleeping little ones and say a silent prayer of thanks that northern hemisphere winds do not cross the equator.
http://www.counterpunch.org/takashi03222011.html
The story is set in what was then the near future (1963, approximately a year following World War III). The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all animal life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, although all of these areas are slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning as the fallout continues to circulate southwards.
From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, USS Scorpion, placed by its captain under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia's southernmost major mainland city) to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. In preparation for this long journey the submarine first makes a shorter trip to some port cities in northern Australia including Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory, finding no survivors. The American captain, Dwight Towers, leads the operation, leaving behind a woman of recent acquaintance, the alcoholic Moira Davidson, to whom he has become attached, despite his feelings of guilt regarding the certain deaths of his wife and children in the U.S. He refuses to admit that they are dead and continues to behave as though they are still alive, buying them gifts and imagining his children growing older.
The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free suicide pills and injections, so that they will be able to avoid prolonged suffering from radiation poisoning. One of the novel's poignant dilemmas is that of Australian naval officer Peter Holmes, who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary, who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the pill should he not return from his mission.
The submarine travels to an abandoned naval installation in Seattle, where a crewman sent onto land with oxygen tanks and protective gear discovers that, although the city's residents have long since perished in the fallout, some of the region's hydroelectric power is still on-line, owing to the primitive automation technology available at that time. The mysterious signal is the result of a broken window sash teetering in the breeze and occasionally hitting a telegraph key. The expedition members then sail to the Gulf of Alaska in the northern Pacific Ocean, where they determine that radiation levels are not decreasing. Doing so discredits the
"Jorgensen Effect," a scientific theory which posited that radiation levels would gradually decrease due to weather effects and might allow for human life to continue in southern Australia or at least in Antarctica. After a brief stop at Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), (most of) the submariners return to Australia to live out the little time that remains before lethal levels of radioactive contamination arrive and kill the remaining Southern Hemisphere survivors. One crew member, who is from one of the coastal areas the expedition visits, jumps ship to spend his last days in his hometown. Please remember anyone who reads this it was just a Novel. Frank............................................ image04
Gulp!
@frank, I read this book many moons ago, then went onto see the movie adaptation of the book, sad part where the family lay on the bed, wife, kids and hubby just waiting for death......
I was recalling the book to some of my co workers just 4 days ago.....
According to these authors, the Russian nuclear reactor at Chernobyl which went out of control in 1986 has a no-go area around it the size of Switzerland that will be uninhabitable for at least 300 years.
Japan is roughly nine times the size of Switzerland. It has 55 nuclear reactors and is developing another 11. Right now at least two of its tsunami-hit reactors are out of control. All it needs is another seven and its game over for Japan.
The Japanese nuclear engineers at the site have now now admitted they are flying blind and have called for outside help.
For sources, Google links below:
Nuclear Power Runs Amok: Laurence Kotlikoff and Eugene Stanley
Plutonium in Fukushima soil adds to environmental woes
Here in the forbidden zone so close to the entombed remains of the deadly Chernobyl nuclear accident, less and less seems to be forbidden.
For one thing, hundreds of peasants have been quietly coming home to unofficially reopen ghost villages, opting for the risk of poisonous radiation here over another noisome day in the crowded refugee apartments of Kiev.
For another, Government officials have concocted a new tourist scheme that borders on the necromantic, planning to offer vacation trips through the contaminated areas of the Chernobyl radiation zone.
Officials ever brainstorming for a way to earn fresh foreign currency believe they can attract adventurers at a pace they foresee as closer to a quick, safe whisk than a lingering, life-changing experience: See the "dead city" of Chernobyl. See the sarcophagus of the meltdown, tight as Tut's tomb.
"Is there a place where people do not die sooner or later?" asked Olga Chikolovits, waxing carefree as a living tourist poster herself after emerging from her handsome little house here into the evening cold. She hid shyly at first, but the chimney smoke from her birthplace was a giveaway of life where there was supposed to be none, under the laws of the Kremlin and radiology.
"The Government said too much radiation here, but none over there," she said, gesturing peevishly toward the neighboring village over the hill, no less inviting in its simple bucolic way. "Then they found radiation over there, too, last year and closed it. What can you believe? So I came home."
The only suggestion of death during a visit here was in the far corner of the front yard of the little house across the way, the reclaimed home of Maria Ilchenka, Mrs. Chikolovits's colleague in breaking the ban on habitation.
Miss Ilchenka was chasing a feisty, multi-hued rooster. He was caught on the semi-fly, squawking, and in an instant his head was on the chopping block, detached.
"That rooster got too lively for his own good," said Miss Ilchenka, a durable woman wiping her hands on her coat. She offered a moon-faced grin along with fresh dried pumpkin seeds and bootleg potato vodka, homegrown treats from her reclaimed corner of this Ukrainian hamlet between Chernobyl and Kiev, in the forbidden zone.
After the explosion at the nuclear plant that alarmed the world in April 1986, the Government closed down scores of villages, buried their contents, slew the farm animals and shipped out everyone's kith and kin. The official death toll in the blast is given as 31, but officials have conceded that scores may have died as a result of the accident. Sorry That They Fled
Only parting, tearful glances at heirloom photographs were allowed during the exodus, and people who now dare to sneak back in are sorry they ever fled from the deadly cloud.
"The Government can measure as much as it wants, but it lies," said Miss Ilchenka. "The day they ordered us to get out they took the pigs and the cows and said it would be for three days. After three years, I decided to come back."
Government officials burdened with the immense job of trying to police the contamination zone, with its 20-mile diameter, concede that lately they have been looking the other way when some of the old-time residents of this rugged farm country come back to their humble old homesteads, exhausted by the crammed urban existence of "ecological refugees."
Freelance guides have been accompanying ruble-paying Soviet visitors to this area for some time. The prices of the new Chernobyl tours have not been specified by excursion sponsors in Kiev, but they are expected to be aimed more at hard-currency visitors. Press Mocks the Idea
The idea of tourism is mocked in the Soviet press as another half-baked attempt at entrepreneurial invention in a land lost in the economic wasteland of Communism. Even at that, the notion has the virtue of dark candor, of daring to think the outside world might like to at least leer, if not memorialize, a historic outrage upon one of the earth's humbler landscapes.
Against the glow of a winter sunset, radiation is as invisible here as the charm is palpable in scores of life-lorn, shut-down hamlets, scattered at tumbledown turns in the road. The sight and sound of Miss Ilchenka's barking dog was like Noah's dove in the all too quiet countryside. Then the hidden life emerged, friendly and fatalistic.
"Have a drink," Miss Ilchenka implored, saying her rough-edged homemade hooch was like no other.
Excursion officials say they also are planning a stop at Slavutich, a radiation workers' town where the slogan is "Life is good, but too short." 'Where Can you Hide?'
"Radiation is certainly something to be afraid of," said Mrs. Chikolovits, husky and beaming as she displayed the warm fire in her home. "But where can you hide from it around here?
"When the Government finds that safe place where no one ever dies, I will leave here," she said, grinning and hungrily crunching on the post-meltdown pumpkin seeds.
The tourist trips are envisioned as all-inclusive. That means that dosimetrics -- the monitoring of radiation dosages -- will be at hand, casual as a Venice gondola, to see that nothing more pernicious than Chernobyl memories is burned into visitors.
Just the other night there was a documentary on the Chernobyl accident Michael!..... I have posted a link to the video YouTube - Chernobyl disaster incident PART 1
Mar 2, 2008 ... Chernobyl disaster
www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DbSRC1_OZPIgits quite horrific in some of the scenes so please be cautious if you download it. The video has been around for awhile. The point I am making here is how the Russian government kept the general public in the dark.
It looks like Déjà vu What is happening in Japan at the moment with their nuclear problems to build these power stations in an area known for its instability is madness it comes to mind the slide show Stennie posted of Hiroshima and the difference between it and Detroit do you think they will have switched off a few of those lights it might help a little.
The TV have been over it these last few weeks and I did see them interviewing some of the Japanese fire fighters they referred to them as kamikazes you would have to be to work in them conditions I think they are very brave humans.
Our government have been tossing the idea around about our future base power needs, and that's closing down the coal power stations and building nuclear and that's because we are pollution the atmosphere CO2 Carbon dioxide Jeez give us a break. I suppose glowing in the dark due to radiation fallout is a better option.