Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster In Japan

[peestandingup]

So ... this is nothing to be concerned about?

Nope, everything's cool & our energy warlords are handling it (just like BP did. The oil all disappeared, right??).

My local news told me that I should be concentrating on Dems vs Rep budget battle & Dancing With The Stars, so by God that's what I'm doing.

[Timkin]

LOL@ PS up.... silly man.   Nope that dad gum oil sheen is back out there.

Seriously.. this is not good... Now , go back to watching your soap operas  errrr  Dancin with dem starz  ( has been stars ) 

[cityimrov]

How the hell to contain that mess??  Is there any way at all ?  obviously not so far

How long did it take BP to stop the oil spill?  Give or take a few months, probably about that long to contain it.  

By the way, did any of you guys stop eating seafood since the oil spill?  

[peestandingup]

After I saw that they officially OKed giving seafood from the area the "smell test" & nothing else, that's when I stopped.

These events are similar in that you can't see them. The oil lurks at the bottom of the sea, the radiation invisible in the air & in the soil. Typically & historically, things of this magnitude usually take a while to understand the full effect. Not to mention the mound of money (and bullshit) these super-industries try to pile on to make things seem not so bad. It's always been like that.

People like to think that the chernobyl disaster is ancient history & it's all good now. Yeah, that's not the case at all: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl I imagine we'll see similar stories from Japan in the years ahead. And God knows what's in our own seafood chain now, so it's anyone's guess how that'll play out.

[buckethead]

So should a sushi joint switch over to hamburgers really quick like?

I suppose you guys heard about the latest 7.1 aftershock.

http://www.examiner.com/top-news-in-san-francisco/japan-tsunami-warning-after-7-1-magnitude-aftershock-hits

[JeffreyS]

Isn't Fukushima older than Chernobyl?

[cityimrov]

You know, I still don't mind nuclear power.  I don't mind them drilling oil off the coast of Florida either.  Very bad accidents happen, it's a part of life.  For the most part, I believe we can keep these things to a minimum. 

What I do mind is the reasons we do it.  I prefer when we do these big industrial high risk projects, we do it because we have to not because we're too lazy or greedy to think up alternatives.   I also don't like it when companies cut corners when they don't have too. 

I bet we can reduce a gigantic amount of our oil consumption if we just gave up the idea of using our cars everywhere!  Walkable streets, high dentistry urban areas, mass transit everywhere.  Sure, we have to share a seat with our neighbor on the train and be more polite to each other but isn't that a better price to pay then having barrels of oil spilling down your coast because you don't want to ride a train with someone else? 

Somehow though, this is still a hard argument to make.  I spend all day hearing people compare their cars and why so and so has a better car than me.  How do you convince someone to ride the train when their dream and purpose in life is to buy a more luxurious car?  This is Keeping Up with the Jones by destroying the planet. 

I want to say build more nukes, drill more oil, we need them to keep our society running.  At the same time, I want to say, STOP, what in the world are we using this energy for?  We aren't using this energy to make to the world a better place.  We're just using it for, well, vanity. 

[buckethead]

^And sex.


Mostly, we do it for sex.

[Timkin]

You know, I still don't mind nuclear power.  I don't mind them drilling oil off the coast of Florida either.  Very bad accidents happen, it's a part of life.  For the most part, I believe we can keep these things to a minimum. 

What I do mind is the reasons we do it.  I prefer when we do these big industrial high risk projects, we do it because we have to not because we're too lazy or greedy to think up alternatives.   I also don't like it when companies cut corners when they don't have too. 

I bet we can reduce a gigantic amount of our oil consumption if we just gave up the idea of using our cars everywhere!  Walkable streets, high dentistry urban areas, mass transit everywhere.  Sure, we have to share a seat with our neighbor on the train and be more polite to each other but isn't that a better price to pay then having barrels of oil spilling down your coast because you don't want to ride a train with someone else? 

Somehow though, this is still a hard argument to make.  I spend all day hearing people compare their cars and why so and so has a better car than me.  How do you convince someone to ride the train when their dream and purpose in life is to buy a more luxurious car?  This is Keeping Up with the Jones by destroying the planet. 

I want to say build more nukes, drill more oil, we need them to keep our society running.  At the same time, I want to say, STOP, what in the world are we using this energy for?  We aren't using this energy to make to the world a better place.  We're just using it for, well, vanity. 

  And well.... Drilling and Nukes are going to eventually contibute to the demise of our occupation of this planet if these disasters continue as they are.. And yes I did hear about the 7.1 aftershock.. Truth of the matter be known, The damage was done initially with the first earthquake... it was that the magnitude of the problem was initially not identified, and was probably covered up as much as possible..  Sadly... the after-effects of this will likely, as does the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, be with us for decades if not centuries to come...  I am not predicting the future,but simply putting out an opinion...which I don't see how I could be far off , from.

[peestandingup]

Well, I don't really like to toot my own horn, but thanks Stephen. I wonder if he'd like to get anymore of those neato graphs from his little pro-nuke buddy's blog & post them now. I'm doubting it.

But remember, this is NO Chernobyl. Nope, no way!

[ChriswUfGator]

How the hell to contain that mess??  Is there any way at all ?  obviously not so far

How long did it take BP to stop the oil spill?  Give or take a few months, probably about that long to contain it.   

By the way, did any of you guys stop eating seafood since the oil spill? 

Actually, I have stopped eating any shrimp whatsoever.

And the spill is still leaking.

Noooooooooooo...

They SWEAR every time a new sheen shows up, it's riverbottom sediment or a different well, BP wouldn't lie!

[ChriswUfGator]

Well..... given the circumstances of the last 3 days, potentially anything could go wrong.. This just keeps getting worse

Yeah, its bad. From what I can gather from digging the last several hours:

Three reactors have had major explosions in a couple days time & are said to be near full meltdown, one other is on the verge of its initial explosion, while a remaining one is starting to have the same coolant failures that the others had at the beginning. Less than 50 workers remain at the complex & some are rumored to basically be the "walking dead", meaning they've already had very high exposure & are probably making their last stand to regain control. If only one reactor goes full meltdown, they'll likely either die right there or be helpless to do anything about the others, because they're so close together & it wouldn't matter at that point anyway. In other words, they'll all likely meltdown. Or at least those that have started the process already & are still "hot".

They've upgraded the nuclear emergency level to a 6 (7 is the max & means a full blown meltdown is in progress). The evacuation distance has been pushed back again, iodine tablets have been passed out to hundreds of thousands of people & they've started teaching fallout readiness procedures to the public in the surrounding areas.

Oh, and to top it off, from what I understand some of these reactors were storing spent (already used up) fuel rods in suspension pools & are they themselves now starting to overheat. Those things are still highly radioactive BTW.

Don't know how accurate some of this is, I'm obviously not there, but it's what I've gathered from bits & pieces from credible looking sources, watching the news, etc.

So it seems like this is the real deal folks & may turn out to be the daddy of all nuclear accidents. Everything that could have gone wrong has. My gut tells me we're going to be seeing some seriously disturbing shit in the next couple days. I guess there's always a chance & a miracle could happen, but it ain't looking good.

Oh, and I didn't even mention the jet stream potentially picking some of this crap up & dumping it on our own country's doorstep out west.

Maybe a little more research was necessary before handing out the crown for ‘daddy’ of all nuclear accidents… I believe the rumors about the 'walking dead' are just that. Any links to support?

Q: What about the radiation released? Is it dangerous?


A: It would appear that some of the nuclear fuel in FD1 has melted and released gaseous fission products to the interior of the reactor. These would include xenon, krypton, and iodine. There are about seven isotopes of xenon that are radioactive and would be released in such an incident, with atomic masses of 133, 135, 137, and 138, along with three isomers, 131m, 133m, and 135m. With the exception of the isomers, each of these xenon atoms will decay into cesium and some into other elements past cesium. There is also krypton but its radioactivity and decay products are of less concern.

Xenon itself is not particularly dangerous. It is a noble gas and is not concentrated in the body. Cesium is more of a concern. Here are the seven decay sequences:

Xenon-131m will decay to stable xenon-131.
Xenon-133m will decay to radioactive xenon-133.
Xenon-133 will decay to stable cesium-133.
Xenon-135m will decay to radioactive xenon-135.
Xenon-135 will decay to very mildly radioactive cesium-135.
Xenon-137 will decay to radioactive cesium-137.
Xenon-138 will decay to radioactive cesium-138 and then quickly to stable barium-138.

Of all of these, the decay of xenon-137 to cesium-137 is probably responsible for the most risk, but xenon-137 decays so quickly that the mobility of cesium-137 is limited. I do not think this poses much risk because it can’t get far. The xenon-135 has a longer half-life (9 hours) but decays to a nearly harmless form of cesium (135). I think this poses almost no risk due to the very long half life of cesium-135.

Q: Is this like the Chernobyl disaster? Could it be?

A: No, absolutely not. The Chernobyl disaster was a combination of a bad reactor design coupled with a bad operational sequence. It led to a steam explosion, a burning reactor, and no containment building so radioactive byproducts were spread far and wide. Fundamentally, Chernobyl was driven by fission energy (95% of the energy produced in a nuclear reactor) not by decay heat energy (5% of the energy produced in a nuclear reactor).

The circumstances at Fukushima-Daiichi are very different. The reactors shut down successfully and their heat generated from the decay of fission products began to drop rapidly. Take a look at this graph:

It has been several days since the reactors were shut down and they are now generating only about 0.5% of the thermal power they were generating before. Assuming that they were generating about 1500 thermal megawatts of power, now they’re only generating about 7 megawatts of thermal power. Nevertheless, that heat needed to be removed through cooling systems, but there’s not nearly enough power there to cause a Chernobyl-type incident.

Well graphs and oh I don't know 'facts' seem to be the most important part in detailing a catastrophe. Not rumors / hearsay "I read the news and shit and people are like zombies all dead & stuff".

Wow Schwaz, thanks for that awesome condescending lecture on 'facts'!

Of course you (naturally) turned out to be completely wrong, maybe you should focus your energy on 'sources' next time.

[peestandingup]

The thing is, he KNEW what he was posting was bogus & just pulled outta some random blogger's ass (or else he was just a complete idiot, which I don't think was the case). You have to wonder what goes through people's heads when they do stuff like that. I guess anyone can find these "facts" to backup their arguments these days with the internet, 24 hour news channels & all. It sorta makes us smarter & dumber at the same time.

Anyways, none of that stuff I posted was exactly a secret (which I commented on later). It's just looking past the headlines, the typical MSM garbage & looking back at history. And regarding the "fukushima 50" workers he so politely made fun of, we pretty much know now they're dying. They've even commented themselves early on that they know they've been exposed to fatal levels & are ready to make the sacrifice. Hell, for all we know, the original fukushima 50 are dead now & they're pumping in more workers to take their places. That's what happened with chernobyl. They'd work until they got sick then die a couple weeks later. There were countless workers who did that. And that was a different country. The Japanese TRULY don't give a fuck & will gladly die at the drop of a hat for the greater good.

But they're obviously not gonna tell you that right now, at least not flat out. Like I said, reading between the lines, looking past headlines & paying attention does wonders.

[ChriswUfGator]

Thanks for a great design, GE!

[Timkin]

We bring good things to life.....except Nuclear power plants