Japan - worst case scenario ahead

[psychokind]

japanese government just stated that in 3 reactors of Fukushima a meltdown is likely; in reactor 2 it maight already have begun. worst case would be the plutonium melting down into the groundwater and causing a huge steam-explosion.

what are your thoughts? has the time come to quit nuclear power? although the japanese operator of the plants is known for his lack in maintenance, such operators are propably existant in most countries - and it couldn't have helped anyway against the tsunami.

ps: I've seen (a lot of) pictures of us-american facebook users stating "karma-revenge for pearl harbour", do you think the same?

[inferiare]

Then those americans are kind of assholes. Their karma for Pearl Harbour was Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and they've done nothing bad to us since.

I'm not too sure what to think of the situation in Japan atm, I'm really just worried for them more than anything.

[Mantaray]

Aw, first the earthquake, then the wave, now the nuclear reactors are melting? Gosh

I highly doubt it was karma. (Those fb jerks should go back to school and brush up on WWII) It was just the earth doing what it does.

[Freedan]

sora-mage wrote:

Aw, first the earthquake, then the wave, now the nuclear reactors are melting? Gosh

Don't forget a volcano going off.

It's unfortunate; Japan is a real target for natural disasters. They seem to occur with alarming frequency there.

As for the 'revenge for Pearl Harbour', I've heard that as well. I'm pretty sure that's what the A-bombs were for. Those people can fuck right off. That was 70 years ago, and we're no longer at war.

Tragedies have a way of bringing out the very best and the very worst of people.

[EverPhoenix]

what's happening in japan is just extraordinarily bad luck. not karma, or anything. bombs in WWII were enough.

on what psychokind said, i dont think this is a reason to give up on nuclear power. the meltdown was caused by the earthquake, wasn't it? it is very difficult to make something natural disaster-proof, as they come unexpectedly and are quite devastating at worst.

[Mantaray]

Still, it makes you think. nuclear waste is lethal and you can't dispose of it. Maybe we should feed it to the sun XDDD give it an extra year or two of fuel.. haha

Meanwhile the people closest to the danger in japan should evacuate until this madness ends ._. I think Hawaii did it once, or came close to it.

[Jason Tandro]

I'm not a whiny liberal by any means, but it's hard to see stuff like this and credibly argue that nuclear power is the safest energy source we have...

I mean the worst solar energy ever did was give a guy melanoma.

[psychokind]

EverPhoenix wrote:

on what psychokind said, i dont think this is a reason to give up on nuclear power. the meltdown was caused by the earthquake, wasn't it? it is very difficult to make something natural disaster-proof, as they come unexpectedly and are quite devastating at worst.

it was caused by the tsunami. they had protection against it, but not enough for a 10 meter wave.

wouldn't be a really good argument against nuclear power that it in fact is very difficult to make something natural disaster-proof? because if we can't guarantee it, the time and disaster will come to cause a catastrophe that is far worse than anything nature could cause. we can rebuild and reproduce - but we can't get rid of nuclear radiation.

I was always a fan of germanys nuclear power-exit in 2020. I found it ridicolous that we got rid of that without need, and I hope japan brings us back to it again.

[SoulBlazerFan]

Well, maybe they were right about the whole 2012 thing afterall.

On a more serious note, nuclear power is incredibly dangerous, as anyone who knows about Cherynobl and the disasterous consequences can tell you. I believe there was also a meltdown at a place called Three Mile Island- but my memory is failing me at the moment. :/

However, it may yet be a necessary evil. It's not like anyone could foresee a tsnuami of that size coming and doing that kind of damage. There should be better safe guards, sure, but there are just some things you can never expect to happen. Ask anyone on September 10 of 2001 if they thought two planes could take down the towers- they would've said you were nuts.

I've just read they've been reading higher than normal amounts of radiation in Germany as well as France. This isn't just a localized issue anymore- it may be international.

And I agree with the general sentiment here- this isn't as much about retribution or anything. People love to jump onto any bandwagon- hell, there isn't even that many people left in the world who even remembers or was alive for Pearl Harbor- it was over seventy years ago. I think I read somewhere theres like, one or two Vets from WWII even alive today. It's stupid people would even bring it up, other than something run their mouths for.

[Flamez]

I'm going to be the selfish one and say, I hope the radiation doesn't decide to travel directly south...

That said, what is happening in Japan is fucked. SBF mentioned Chernobyl, easily the worst nuclear disaster ever, its been decades and you still can't go into some of the affected areas where the fallout accrued. Now this happened in Europe, the USSR. Anyone who know anything about the USSR back in the 80s knows that it was huge; imagine what a disaster of similar magnitude will do to a country the size of Japan, its a scary thought indeed.

[psychokind]

SoulBlazerFan wrote:

However, it may yet be a necessary evil. It's not like anyone could foresee a tsnuami of that size coming and doing that kind of damage.

why not? who said the tsunami waves will only be 8 meters high and the quake only up to 8 on the richters scale? for the last 10 years, nature has gone way over the top in every possible way it's totally predictable that something unpredictable can happen any time. we now saw what then happens to the plant and the country itsself - chernobyl was man-made.

now every country has to choose if they want to live with that risk and hope it will be not in their period of office - or if they want to quit and maybe have to use fossil energies again.

[Fazermint]

SoulBlazerFan wrote:

However, it may yet be a necessary evil. It's not like anyone could foresee a tsnuami of that size coming and doing that kind of damage.

That is a point of debate. There exists solid technology that can foresee these things, or at least I think so. Or maybe I've seen too many movies.. XD

[inferiare]

Sort of. People can detect when the tectonic plates shift which is what causes earthquakes, but it's really not until the earth starts shaking like a baby in a paint shaker that they really detect that there's a disturbance in the force. If the quake hits in the ocean, there's always a chance of a tsunami, but sometimes it fizzles out by the time it gets to land. I don't think there's any real way of finding out how big the wave will be until it hits.

[PaGaN3l3m3nts]

Here is a detailed article on how these reactors are constructed, and what exactly happened.

Short version is that the quakes and tsunamis really did next to nothing to the reactors - it's just the lack of power that's the problem, as once the reactors shut down, they still need cooling systems to bring them out of critical state. And no power means no cooling systems. Their back-up generators were damaged by the tsunami, and their battery back-up didn't have enough juice to complete the cooling. Currently relying on pumping in sea water and getting new generators sent in, and pumping out (very) trivially radiated timed exhaust to keep pressure from building to dangerous levels.

So, there shouldn't be anymore problems. Hopefully. :fingers-crossed:

[Freedan]

psychokind wrote:

chernobyl was man-made.

Chernobyl was also an anomaly. It was poorly built, poorly maintained, and run by people who had no idea what they were doing.

More modern plants have much more in the way of safeguards. In this case, it took a quake and tsunami of biblical proportions, followed by a few explosions just to damage it.

In most places, that wouldn't be a problem. Nuclear plants are very solidly built, meant to withstand a massive beating with barely a scratch. The problem here is that Japan is among the (if not the) most quake-prone country in the world, and tsunamis are inevitable, being on the ocean.

Japan's plants were built to withstand quakes and waves, but no one expected a 9.0 quake. Hindsight is always 20/20; it's easy to say now that "they should have expected something big", but until now, the biggest they've ever seen in their recorded history is low 8's. They made something capable of withstanding upper-mid 8's, and got slammed with a 9.