Opening this as a new article as of the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. This one picks up with updates following the much UPDATED previous one,
For previous reports on how we got here, as we collected them throughout the entire day Friday and late into the evening as officials had shut down the two nuclear plants and five reactors where they’d issued “nuclear emergencies” and widened local evacuations, please see our previous article…
Latest news, beginning with the EXPLOSION at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1, now posted here with new UPDATES at bottom of this article…
UPDATE 3/12/11 12:07am: “EXPLOSION HEARD.” Okay. Never mind standing down for now. This could be very bad…These all from Reuters via Twitter:
“Explosion heard at quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan – AFP via Sky News”
“FLASH: Several people appear to have been injured after reported Fukushima plant explosion – media”
“Japan nuclear plant update: Several workers injured following explosion at quake-hit site – NHK”
3/12 12:22am PT: Most detailed report on explosion at moment. From Lisa Twaronite at MarketWatch…
3/12 12:37am PT: NBC: “Explosion rocks quake-hit Japanese nuke plant”
“Japan nuclear plant update: Walls and roof of a building at site destroyed by blast – NHK via Sky News”
Reuters: Tokyo Electric Power Co. “(TEPCO) says four people taken to hospital after reported explosion, no word on condition: report”
3/12 12:53am PT: From Washington Post East Asia reporter Chico Harlan: “People in Fukushima area are being asked to close doors, shut windows, cover mouths with masks, wet towels”
3/12 12:53am PT: Good god. See the explosion AT APPX :47 mark in video…
3/12 1:54am PT: Via @BreakingNews: “Japan nuclear plant update: Hourly radiation leaking from Fukushima is equal to amount permitted in one year, official tells Kyodo”
And here’s a before and after explosion shot via @Jadath. Note the skeletal structure in the “after” shot…
3/12 2:05am PT: Better video and commentary now from BBC here, but it doesn’t seem to be embeddable, so you’ll have to go to the link to look at it.
During the video, the BBC nuclear expert Malcolm Grimston says: “I still very strongly suspect that’s not an actual nuclear explosion. … The issue is if that’s damage to the containment, the nuclear materials may be able to escape. … If that did include nuclear materials, we’ll be seeing very high levels of contamination very quickly.”
The hope is that because the nuclear process had been shut down — even as officials have been unable to properly cool the plant — the nuclear process is unlikely to have restarted.
3/12 2:12am PT: VOA’s Steve Herman, on the ground in Fukushima, says the evacuation radius around the plant has been expanded to 20km. It had originally been 3km, before being widened to 10km. And now 20km.
3/12 2:20am PT: Three latest updates from BBC’s live online coverage…
1011: More from Walt Patterson of Chatham House. He says the presence of the radioactive caesium in the surrounding area does not pose a huge threat to public health in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. “What would be serious is if there was an explosion or fire that lifted this stuff high in the air, meaning it could get carried over a wide area.”
1009: “This is starting to look a lot like Chernobyl” Walt Patterson, an associate fellow with Chatham House, has told the BBC after seeing pictures of the explosion at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant. “The nuclear agency says that they have detected caesium and iodine outside the unit, which certainly indicates fuel melting at the very least,” he says. “Once you have melting fuel coming into contact with water, that would almost certainly be the cause of the explosion.”
3/12 2:30am: Stratfor analysis describes the situation as “Red Alert”, but notes while a meltdown may have occurred, it does “not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster” — before then going on, as the BBC expert noted above did, to compare the situation to Chernobyl…
However, the earthquake in Japan, in addition to damaging the ability of the control rods to regulate the fuel “” and the reactor’s coolant system “” appears to have damaged the containment facility, and the explosion almost certainly did.
At this point, events in Japan bear many similarities to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Reports indicate that up to 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of the reactor fuel was exposed. The reactor fuel appears to have at least partially melted, and the subsequent explosion has shattered the walls and roof of the containment vessel “” and likely the remaining useful parts of the control and coolant systems.
And so now the question is simple: Did the floor of the containment vessel crack? If not, the situation can still be salvaged by somehow re-containing the nuclear core. But if the floor has cracked, it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through the floor of the containment system and enter the ground. This has never happened before but has always been the nightmare scenario for a nuclear power event “” in this scenario, containment goes from being merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible.
They also note the — seemingly obvious — political angle…
Of course, didn’t they also say the BP oil spill would “deal a severe blow to advocates” of off-shore drilling?
3/12 3:21am PT: Russia Today’s video of the explosion. Appears to be same as BBC’s (as linked in the 2:05am PT update above), though embeddable and without the BBC commentary, unfortunately…
3/12 3:28am PT: Expert on Fox “News”, Joe Cirincione of Ploughshares Fund, when asked what makes this the “second worst nuclear disaster in history”, answers: “Three Miles Island never got to this phase. We’re much closer to meltdown than we were at Three Mile Island.” Goes on to compare to Chernobyl, like so many others late tonight.
Cirincione continues: “If there’s no meltdown, well then, we’ve dodged a nuclear bullet and there won’t be anything for Japan or the U.S. to have to worry about.”
3/12 4:46am PT: Via NPR’s blog…
3/12 4:51am PT: Noriyuki Shikata, Dir. of Communitions for Prime Minister tweets what would be good news, under the presumption that it’s accurate:
3/12 5:39am PT: Okay…Running on fumes, and fresh news seems to have finally slowed down again for the moment. So, am going to try to stand down again — with the caution that when I tried to do so on Thursday night, the earthquake hit. Then when I tried tonight before midnight, the EXPLOSION happened and I had to return to my post here. If I don’t cause any more disasters when trying again to sleep, I’ll return in West Coast “morn” to pick up as needed…Please feel free to leave anything new in comments below!…
Until then, follow these folks who are on the ground near Fukushima: VOA’s @W7VOA, IDG’s @martyn_williams, WaPo’s @chicoharlan, AP’s @hiroko_nakamura.
Hope our coverage at The BRAD BLOG over last 48 hours has been useful. … Good night, again, I hope!
3/12 2:05pm PT: After some rest, finally, let’s get caught up again here with the very latest developments. And there are several. Some encouraging, some not so much…
Reuters reports within the hour, that the emergency cooling system on another reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has now failed, and that “at least” 9 people have been exposed to radiation, according to Japanese officials…
The emergency cooling system is no longer functioning at the No.3 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, requiring the facility to urgently secure a means to supply water to the reactor, an official of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told a news conference.
On Saturday, an explosion blew off the roof and upper walls of the building housing the facility’s No. 1 reactor, stirring alarm over a possible major radiation release, although the government later said the explosion had not affected the reactor’s core vessel and that only a small amount of radiation had been released.
The nuclear safety agency official said there was a possibility that at least nine individuals had been exposed to radiation, according to information gathered from municipal governments and other sources.
In another Reuters report filed at around the same time, a number of new points are made and/or several ones from last night re-confirmed:
- Yesterday’s explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor “severely damaged the main building of the plant”, but did not breach “the integrity of the primary containment vessel” which “remains intact, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s confirmation with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
- The explosion occurred “occurred outside the primary containment vessel, not inside.”
- “The government insisted radiation levels were low, saying the blast had not affected the reactor core container.”
- While there was “an initial increase in radioactivity around a quake-hit nuclear plant on Saturday … levels ‘have been observed to lessen in recent hours'”.
- 4 workers were injured by the explosion itself.
- 140,000 people are currently being evacuated from a 20km radius around both the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini plants.
- To help try to “limit damage to the reactor core, TEPCO proposed that sea water mixed with boron be injected into the primary containment vessel. … This measure was approved by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the injection procedure began at 20:20 local Japan time.
- While meltdown fears continue, Reuters reports, “experts said Japan should not expect a repeat of Chernobyl.”
First close-up photo we’ve seen of the No. 1 reactor, following the explosion yesterday…
3/12 3:19pm PT: Reuters tweets: “TEPCO has started preparations for releasing pressure from Fukushima Daiichi No. 3 reactor.” That’s the one where the emergency cooling system reportedly failed in the last hour or two. “Releasing pressure” likely refers to releasing radioactive steam, as had occurred yesterday on the No. 1 plant prior to its explosion.
3/12 3:28pm PT: Lou Charbonneau (@Lou_reuters) tweets: “#Japan nuclear safety agency says number of people possibly exposed to radiation from #Fukushima plant could reach 160 (the number’s rising)”
3/12 4:09pm PT: Conflicting reports from officials on whether or not “meltdown may be occurring” at No. 3 reactor where emergency cooling system has failed. One official says it’s possible. Another one — Japanese ambassador to the U.S. — tells Wolf Blitzer on CNN “absolutely not.” Also, iodine tablets for treating radiation sickness, said being distributed.
3/12 5:06pm PT: AP’s Jeff Donn and Mari Yamaguchi post an excellent piece, explaining why the hydrogen explosion occurred at Unit No. 1 yesterday, asserting that officials knew it was likely to occur, but preferable to a full meltdown and nuclear explosion.
3/12 6:13pm PT: Several helpful updates at this hour…
- March 13, 2am (local time) Press Release from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), summarizes the current status of each of the 6 Fukushima reactor units, including injuries to workers, etc. Good summary of 3 reactors currently cool and under control, 3 others not quite as much.
- This fact sheet [PDF] on Fukushima from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) offers this, seemingly noteworthy, distinction between the No. 1 reactor which had an explosion yesterday, and the No. 3 plant where the emergency cooling system had failed earlier today…
- NYTimes Michael Wines and Matthew L. Wald offer detailed article, bringing us up to date with entire nuke emergency/disaster. At least it was up to date when published. So read it quickly, as things are moving fast again right now, it seems.
3/12 6:35pm PT: Several troubling reports on the amount of radiation released, and another report that “at least one rod in Unit 1” has melted down… As culled mostly from @TheDeadHandbook (who was at Three Mile Island, so knows his stuff) on Twitter, as taken from Kyodo and NHK news sources:
3/12 6:58pm PT: On Twitter, I asked @Arclight, “an engineer specializing in risk assessment and safety, primarily regarding nuclear systems”, about the NIRS assessment I quoted above in the 6:13pm PT update concerning the use of plutonium fuel in Fukushima No. 3, versus the uranium-based fuels in the other reactors, and if he concurs with their assessment that consequences of an accident in that reactor “would be even more severe than at a more typical uranium-powered reactor.” His responses to my query:
A bit unclear on his response, I asked: “So are u doubting NIRS contention abt plutonium fuel at 3? Or just saying it’s no scarier than a uranium reactor?”. To which he clarified by responding:
So take that NIRS report above, with all of that in mind.
3/13 12:06am: The UK’s Guardian brings us up to date at this hour, as officials continue to struggle to cool three different reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plants and as Japan’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, stands by his belief that some sort of meltdown event may be underway inside two of those reactors and says there remains a risk of explosion.
After others, including the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. have challenged Edano’s use of the word “meltdown”, he says that “terminology is important, and that a part of the core, to a certain degree, is deforming.”
We began our concern and coverage of the “nuclear emergencies” in Japan more than 48 hours ago, after officials had quietly and cryptically noted that attempts to cool one of the reactors at the Fukushima plant after shutting it down were “not going as planned”.
To our amazement, few in the media seemed to be paying attention, and so we sought out whatever information we could find and tried to let as many folks known about it as we could. Now, two days later, the media finally seem to be giving this aspect of Japan’s national tragedy the attention it seemed to deserve in the first place.
So, for now, we’ll close this particularly long and unruly live thread, stand down for a bit and get some rest, in hopes that the issue is now receiving something closer to the attention it warrants. But, as necessary, we’ll certainly return to it in a new article. And we’ll definitely continue to cover points of note via Twitter (@TheBradBlog) as warranted throughout the next several hours, if not days, as we suspect this story will be continuing for quite some time.
Thursday night when we attempted to go to bed, the earthquake/tsunami struck. Friday night when we attempted to stand down, the Fukushima reactor exploded. Let’s hope tonight will be a quieter night. If not though, we’ll be back.
* * * NEW EXPLOSION * * *
* * *
3/13 8:14pm PT: A new explosion has occurred, this one at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3, as has been feared over the past 24 hours since the emergency cooling system on that reactor failed yesterday. DETAILS NOW HERE IN NEW LIVE BLOG THREAD…
… Brad blogged…
The difference being that BP et al enforce the oligarch’s hold on power while fission nuclear plants are just a necessary evil to our lords and masters… albeit one with which they can play “who’s got the bomb?” games…
A voice of reason from Iran.
meltdown has happened according to japanese officials
Moral: nuclear technology is too dangerous to use.If a mere tsunami can cause a catastrophe, if you have to beweare of any mere terrorist…then its far to dangerous to be allowed on earth…
sooner or later every continient will have its Chernobyl and worse.
‘Cirincione continues: “If there’s no meltdown, well then, we’ve dodged a nuclear bullet and there won’t be anything for Japan or the U.S. to have to worry about.”‘
how long do we go on dodging nuclear bullets? This macho posturing is irresponsibile…Sooner or later we will fail to dodge one bullet too many.
So, Brian… if coal and oil will kill off most life on the planet (and they will, sooner than you think) and if you will not permit nuclear energy of any kind (even thorium or fusion) and if renewables can’t take up the load fast enough (they can’t)… then how many billions will you condemn to death because they can’t get enough power?
zapkitty
There are plenty of geniuses employed by the weapons industry who could tackle a problem of that magnitude and get results, if priorities are restructured.
All the top grads from MIT, Cal Tech, etc. go to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. for the big bucks. How can that be changed?
Suggestion. Lock Bush and Cheney up for crimes against humanity and send a message that war crimes do not pay.
There is no way that nuclear technology can be made perfectly safe…genius or no genius…thats wishful thinking of the desperate nuke lovers
brian
You missed the point. Geniuses think out of the box. They come up with solutions to problems that you and I cannot fathom. Steer that creative energy away from bomb-making and they’ll find non-nuclear solutions to the energy challenge.
… brian said…
Bullshit. As nothing can be perfectly safe you’ve set an impossible standard and thus have automatically declared the technology of your choice the winner… safe or not.
Now try reality on for size: what energy source would you like a nuclear replacement to be as safe as…
Yes, Ghost, geniuses can do things most people can’t. The woman who discovered nuclear fission was one of those geniuses. She wanted to get funding for research on how to safely dispose of nuclear wastes, but all the funding went to morons willing to work on nuclear weapons and power plants, so she never got that funding.
It is an interesting story. She had doctorates in both math and physics and was one of the dozen or so people in Einstein’s inner circle. But her Nobel Prize when to a guy who had never studied either math or physics, because he was a German war criminal and the allies needed a way to de-Nazify him. He and many other scientists had done the same experiments that Meitner did, but since they weren’t geniuses of her caliber, they couldn’t understand what they were doing and couldn’t interpret the results correctly.
If there has been another genius like Meitner since then, it is unlikely that she ever got to attend school, and she probably died illiterate in some third world brothel or while being pimped on the mean streets of a developed capitalist country.
I truly believe that it was because she lived in a world where nobody else had half her genius, yet nobody, not even Einstein himself, considered her fully human and entitled to equal rights, that she gave the world nuclear fission. I think she saw clearly that the only weak point of patriarchy was it’s uncontrollable lust for power, so she gave it a power it could never control.
For another genius like that to emerge, everyone would have to have the same opportunities, regardless of sex, race, wealth, or any other factors, because we who are less intelligent, have no way of recognizing genius. During her lifetime, and even now, Meitner has never gotten the recognition she deserved.
But the world that couldn’t recognize her genius will pay a heavy price. I’m surprised that it has taken this long, but I’ve known since I learned about Dr. Prof. Lise Meitner, whom Einstein called, “The Mother of the Bomb,” that it was inevitable. And, in my opinion, well deserved.
CNN this morning seems to be trying to pretend this didn’t happen. They’re still talking about radiation 6x normal not 1000x. Footage is recycled from the Tsunami. Only saw the explosion here at BradBlog (via the other sources). Don’t want to say it’s a news blackout, maybe I missed their microsecond of coverage on this topic, but….
I think it important to keep several things in mind.
First, it is probably not possible to design a fail-safe system that can avoid the impact of an 8.9 magnitude quake.
Second, no one questions the hazards of nuclear power in terms of either what we appear to face here, “meltdown,” or the more common problem of nuclear waste.
But, as Dr. James Hansen points out in Storms of My Grandchildren, “Today’s nuclear power plants are ‘thermal’ reactors, so-called because the neutrons released in the fission of uranium fuel are slowed down by a moderating material [water].”
These “slow” reactors extract less than 1% of the uranium, leaving most of the energy in the form nuclear waste such as the especially dangerous “depleted uranium.”
Hansen speaks of third and fourth generation “fast” nuclear reactors which “‘burn’ not only all the uranium fuel but also all of the transuranic actnides”¦Fast reactors can burn about 99 percent of the uranium that is mined, compared to less than 1 percent by light-water reactors”¦” and, according to Hansen, the remaining radioactivity is inconsequential.
Hansen contends that what he calls fourth generation nuclear power plants would put an end to the need to mine uranium because “we already have stockpiled, in nuclear waste and the by-products of nuclear weapons production, to supply all our fuel needs for about a thousand years.”
Hansen sees fourth generation nuclear power, along with solar and wind, as a critical component to ending reliance on coal and oil.
Ernest
Sounds promising, but before giant steps like fourth generation power plants can occur, baby steps like throwing Bush and Cheney into prison must occur first.
Has anyone suggested that the containment building was blown up so they can get cement hauling helicopters in to encase the containment vessel? I think the core is gone beyond recovery and now they are going to bury it like Chernobyl. I just hope it doesn’t melt it’s way to the water table below the surface a cement dome might not contain that.
How is it possible to contain http://thumbsnap.com/2gVhhUXE?
It is not a pretty sight. As always, thanks for your good lead work, brad and company!
Heard you on randi’s show last night – good job.
‘You missed the point. Geniuses think out of the box. They come up with solutions to problems that you and I cannot fathom. Steer that creative energy away from bomb-making and they’ll find non-nuclear solutions to the energy challeng’
well ghost, i can not fathom how anyone can think these geniuses are our salvation after gthey have given us such deadly wonders as nuclear bombs, nuclear power(chernobyl, sellafield), GM(now threatens agriculture, plastic pollution , SSRI pollution, etc
ts just bizarre, abnd i cant fathom the sort of blindnes that cant see just where many of our modern problems lie.
But thats me!
and njo they wont make the perfect accident free nuke station…that i can confidentally predict.
‘I think the core is gone beyond recovery and now they are going to bury it like Chernobyl. I just hope it doesn’t melt it’s way to the water table below the surface a cement dome might not contain that. ‘
WELL Bob if you bury something like that in the groundm sooner or later it will make pollute the watertable…thats what modern life and geniuses do so well: pollute.
and as for zapkitty:
‘Bullshit. As nothing can be perfectly safe you’ve set an impossible standard and thus have automatically declared the technology of your choice the winner… safe or not.
Now try reality on for size: what energy source would you like a nuclear replacement to be as safe as… ‘
reality zapkitty is our world has been pollutted and degraded by human activity , and moder geniuses have only accelerated this disastrous trend. Ever see the movie Erik Brokavitch? Ever hear of the Great Garbage Patch? The dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico…well with the BP apocalypse its all dead now..
if you wanr a nuke powe station in yoru back yard, you can bury the waste in your back yard…you neightbors may object
humans are so made that only a disaster of epic proportions can make them move their sorry asses:
http://www.commondreams.org/hea...e/2011/03/12-1
in gemany, they are reading th lessons in the Japan nuke disaster….that no where on earth are these genius made instutions safe. and no amount of genius can make them safe.
rememeber: it take only one meltdown to make a region uninhabitable
‘Hansen sees fourth generation nuclear power, along with solar and wind, as a critical component to ending reliance on coal and oil. ‘
this faith that genius will solve all our problems thru refining the problem shows an inabilty to see what the real problem is. Nuke power thats waste free is hooey and reminds me of those defenders who keep claiming nuke power is green and clean.
on the lighter side:
‘ukushima Daiichi, built 40 years ago by General Electric, uses what is supposed to be a carefully controlled process of nuclear fission to boil water, create steam, power turbines and generate electricity. But Friday the Fukushima complex was hit by a double-whammy: violent shaking from a historic earthquake, and then a battering-ram wave that crashed ashore.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w...l?hpid=topnews
its a nuclear powered steam engine! You wonder why not an ordinary non-nuclear steam engine, or is it that lion/atom taming is more macho and exciting….indeed the splitting of the atom had a very masculine lion-taming ethos to it.
Brian, I sincerely appreciate your emotional reaction. I too share your concerns, but, unlike you, I am an adherent to the scientific method.
Dr. James Hansen is an adjunct professor in the Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and was the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
He has been at the forefront of global climate science since the 1980s.
What are your qualifications? What scientific studies can you point to that would refute Hansen’s scientific assessment of fourth generation “fast” nuclear reactors, which, by the way Hansen does not assert are “waste free” but, instead “produce nuclear waste, but in volumes much less than slow (thermal) reactors. More important, the radioactivity becomes inconsequential in a few hundred years, rather than ten thousand years. The waste from a fast reactor can be vitrified–transformed into a glasslike substance–placed in lead-lined steel casket, and stored on-site or transported for storage elsewhere.”
note to mods re: the previous article
https://bradblog.com/?p=8390
comment #25 is actually linkspam…
https://bradblog.com/?p=8390#comment-435826
And Brian, crunch time:
Are you so wedded to that nuke storyline that was so carefully manipulated by the likes of Halliburton and the Koch-suckers… so intent on dancing to the tune that they composed… that you would condemn billions to death simply to enforce your “no nukes whatsoever” ideology.
If someone was to place before you a fusion reactor that could never melt down, never explode, produced no nuclear waste whatsoever and was cheaper than all other current and foreseeable power sources… would you reject it because it had the words “nuclear fusion” in the patent descriptions?
Zapkitty, are you saying that anyone who doesn’t support nukes is a Republican, just like anyone who doesn’t support the Obama/Hillary wars of aggression based on Bush lies?
I just love it when neo-cons, knowing how much they are hated, try to smear decent people by falsely linking anti-capitalists to capitalist pigs.
No, those who oppose nukes aren’t Republicans or sell-outs to the energy industry robber barons like the Koch brothers–those who support nukes are.
If somebody could create that safe nuke you hypothesize, they certainly would have by now.
And Brian nailed it. I think it was Einstein himself who first pointed out that nuclear energy was the most expensive and dangerous way to boil water ever invented. But they had to try to find some ostensibly non-military use for nukes in order to keep making them during peacetime.
… Mark E. Smith said…
Welcome to the discusion. But you’ve missed a few things along the way… what I actually said in an earlier reply to Brian was:
https://bradblog.com/?p=8390#comment-435786
“And nuke proponents would correctly point out your persistence in overgeneralizing almost to the point of demagoguery.
Unfortunately the nuke proponents are themselves limited by the oiligarchs control of energy and their royal fiat that only meltdown-prone, bomb-capable uranium fission plants can be built.
Even so the Japanese plants in question are dated and there are current uranium-fueled designs that would have avoided this particular catastrophe.
But new nuke plants are very expensive and that’s not because of the “greenies” per se… they are expensive because that’s the way the oligarchs like it.”
… and that’s not even mentioning the thorium plants… and of course workable fusion is simply verboten (that’s how we ended up with ITER btw)… and the financial encouragement of big carbon to anti-nuke groups is an old story.
Y’see? The situation we face is one that was carefully engineered to the specifications of our lords and masters. You may feel genuine outrage at the thought of having to build uranium plants, and you might well love to see at least the tools of the oligarchs rotting in cells even if the oligarchs are beyond our reach…
… but your genuine rage does not alter the simple fact that the situation with the power plants was custom-ordered by the oligarchs and the tools of the oligarchs are still running, and ruining, the planet.
So I’ve not called Brian a “Republican” or anything else for the matter. I’m just pointing out that the tune he’s dancing to is copyrighted by Halliburton with musical arrangement by BP.
I think he should be aware of that fact, don’t you?
So I don’t think the “neocon” label is an appropriate one for me, to say the least 🙂
The original concepts were floated during the 70’s-80’s, actually.
(And much-safer-than-uranium-but-not-perfect thorium got the knife in the back decades before that, of course.)
And NASA was working on this concept (because it makes a heck of a space drive) when Bush was selected president and the order promptly came down in 2001 banning NASA from working on anything involving fusion.
So yeah, the perfect reactor I described is possible and several parties are trying to privately fund several different versions. You can imagine the difficulties they have in overcoming the niagra of money from big carbon, the malign neglect of governments ( who only fund dirty “tokamak” fusion that’s always
3050 years away) and the well-meant but frankly hysterical screeching of the anti-nukes…So, Brian, the question remains.
That near-perfect fusion reactor is placed before you.
What would you do?
‘Brian, I sincerely appreciate your emotional reaction. I too share your concerns, but, unlike you, I am an adherent to the scientific method.’
lets be earnest…i know about Dr Hansen…but hes a climate scientist not a nuclear scientist, so he i and u are on the same level. Anyone who thinks Nuclear power is clean and green or that science (aka the scientist) will solve the problems that current keep it from being clean and green are really in cloud cuckoo land.
‘by the way Hansen does not assert are “waste free” but, instead “produce nuclear waste, but in volumes much less than slow (thermal) reactors’
thus proving my point…Nuclear waste is not like your weekly garbage!It cant be stored anywhere on earth
=============
and for zapkitty…is this how you zapped your kitty:
‘that you would condemn billions to death simply to enforce your “no nukes whatsoever” ideology.
If someone was to place before you a fusion reactor that could never melt down, never explode, produced no nuclear waste whatsoever and was cheaper than all other current and foreseeable power sources… would you reject it because it had the words “nuclear fusion” in the patent descriptions? ‘
condemn billions to death? you mean like the victims of Chernobyl? death toll now stands at about 60000 to 90000:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/gl...nobyl_3477.jsp
thats just from one melt down…
the 2nD part of your reply is not science but techno fantasy.
from zapkittys technofantasy playbook vol 2:
‘So yeah, the perfect reactor I described is possible and several parties are trying to privately fund several different versions’
right..so its on the drawing board…just like the safe clean power of the atoms for peace brigade of the 1950s….and after that PR spin, we know what happened next…
Id just like to add that an unacknowledged problem of any kind of mass power generatin is that its mostly used for industry, which turns raw materials into garbage, which ends up in water table polluting landfills or the sea:
http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/
now,lets be even more radical: even if you had lean clean green mean your nuclear fusion, how long before the earth becomes uninhabitable due to garbage overload?
the industrial revolution was a mistake that is both devourning the earth igniting wars, and slowly turning the earth into a garbage dump
Brian, please stop dodging the question.
Or do you actually mean to say that if such a device were placed in front of you that you would simply declare it “impossible”…?
As for what is done with the power, again the problems you describe come from dancing to the tune called by the oligarchs… not from the source of the power.
And even given the worst-inflated figures the fallout from Chernobyl hasn’t killed nearly as many people as the fallout from coal power plants.
So you are offered a solution that doesn’t kill anyone and will actually save lives as basic power is brought even to the poorest regions of a world in the grip of climate change.
The reactor is in front of you. Depending on the particular design it could be a box 2 meters x 2 meters x 3 meters or a sphere 10 meters in diameter or a tube 2 meters wide by 8 meters long. It could come from a lab in Middlesex NJ, San Diego CA or even a town called Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.
Cheap, limitless power with no possibility of meltdown, explosion, or nuclear waste.
What would you do?
interview on the Japan nuke plant problem
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv...video_id=14272
AND Stratfor has this to say
‘apan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”
etc
http://www.stratfor.com/analysi...edefab18b032d1
if japan has this sort of problem, what of third world countries keen to go nuclear? nand any place that has quakes means one two three Chernobyls
http://blogs.forbes.com/william...han-chernobyl/
how many chernobyls or Fukushimas before the nuke advocates get the message?Will radioation have to lap at their doors before they get the message?
A wise man learnsE from the mistakes of others
FYI from whatreallyhappened.com:
Japan hits panic button: using sea water to try to cool down reactor!
Japanese officials continued their battle to control dangerous reactor overheating in the nation’s worst nuclear accident that followed Friday’s earthquake, as they resorted to an unprecedented attempt to cool the reactor with seawater.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Using Seawater will destroy the reactor. Taking this step means they have given up all hope of recovering and repairing the reactor. Now they are just trying to shut it down by any means necessary.
Read more: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn! http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz1GS5crQWL
This site is a Tokyo radiation level monitoring site for the nuclear reactors in Japan. This site shows the radiation release when the explosion occurred in reactor 1. It shows the levels around the site and that the sensor closest to reactor 1 had the highest release readings.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/fukushim...g/monita2.html
My mother’s ex-boyfriend was an engineer for the Air Force. He always told me that nuke power could be done safely in terms of the fusion, but that the gov’t either wouldn’t or couldn’t fund it. He didn’t say what/how, but just that the gov’t was going about it all the wrong way, and he never told me what the deal would be with the waste storage/disposal. Plus, he was a right-wingnut, so I always took what he said with…well, a salt-lick. If it can be done, I’m all for it. If the waste can be disposed of without environmental damage, I’m all for it.
So why doesn’t Warren Buffett or George Soros go into this business? It’s not like Buffett couldn’t scrape up the investors, and he strikes me as being progressive enough in his vision for the future of the world to take the plunge. That any of these liberal-ish moguls haven’t gone that route with their power of investment is probably the thing that I am most skeptical about.
Zapkitty is right that the conditions of poverty in much of the world are due to lack of access to cheap and clean energy. Would the oil/coal industry have the power to stand in Buffett’s way if he decided to move on this?
There is no such thing as clean energy…not even wind power, which has its own environmental effects
so FYI
http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/?p=22
shadow flicker
http://www.wind-watch.org/video-wisconsin.php
so as we see man made anything will have sideffects that can be annoying or deadly
… Soul Rebel said…
Okay, here’s the condensed version:
(yes, this is the short version)
Fusion power research veered down a wrong path in the late ’60s, encouraged by Russian reports of promising results from a device called a “tokamak.” or “tok” for short.
If tokamaks could be made to fuse hydrogen isotopes the result would be much the same as with a fission reactor: the neutrons from the reaction would be used to heat water to spin turbines to provide power.
Also as with a fission plant the neutrons would activate (make radioactive) materials in the reactor and the reaction byproducts would contain a range of radioactive elements depending on the isotopes used as fuel.
But (and it’s a big but)the fusion plant would provide much more power than a fission plant and would generate far less nuclear waste than a fission plant… and meltdowns or explosions or any other runaway reactions are simply not possible in a fusion plant. So it was a worthwhile effort.
But (the other big but) the goal kept slipping further away as research progressed. A tok tries to hold a relatively large field of very hot plasma stable long enough for fusion reactions to occur in the plasma. But the bigger the field and the hotter the plasma the more the field wants to become unstable. “Unstable plasma” sounds Star Trek dramatic but in a tok it does… nothing much.
The chase continues. It continues to this day. And yet the target of actual fusion power from a tok is further away than ever.
The oligarchs noted that tok research kept slipping and as fusion was a potential impactor on their overall grip on power sources they… encouraged… governments to keep chasing that rabbit down the money hole.
Here it gets depressing in a manner that is all too familiar. The amount of money that the U.S. spends on fusion power research is pitiable. Considering the importance of energy it’s actually criminally small. Scientists who want a slice of that research money must forsake all other fusion methods and chase the tok.
Small grants and certain universities have funded what tiny efforts at alternative fusion power research there have been… and the alternatives have gotten results. Some of those results showed that fuels that couldn’t be fused in even the biggest toks conceived might be fused in much smaller and cheaper devices. And power could be derived from those reactions without using neutrons, steam or turbines. Direct conversion to electricity. Cheap. Clean.
But anyone associated with the U.S. tok research or who gets fusion funding from the U.S. and who attempts to point out that the time and careers devoted to toks have been wasted is well on their way to losing their grants… or their jobs.
Here, again as with Brian and his fellow anti-nukes, the oligarchs have succeeded in separating their goal from their politics… in the minds of their prey, that is.
Tok research, thinly funded and currently manifested in the form of ITER, has become an academic lifeline for fusion researchers. Academics knowledgeable on the subject tend to praise toks above all else… and I’m sure that Soros and Buffett have noticed that toks keep going nowhere slowly.
But one group has slowly progressed using private funding, another has a Navy contract for some development work (Navy can say “We need this power for our ships. Period” … but onlookers half-expect the results to be locked down) and a third group is using venture capital and keeping an extremely low profile.
So far it’s been neatly arranged to not even occur as a problem… but how many hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens for (supposedly) a little oil?… and at what cost? Our owners play for keeps.
For some sanity from experts rather than sensationalized MSM see this
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011...ear-earthquake
Something to note about the events in Japan:
deaths from oil and gas plants = more than 100
deaths from nuclear plants = 1 (crane operator unrelated to the explosion)
FYI
This could and should have been predicted. It was predicted by scientists and NGOs such as CNIC. We warned that Japan’s nuclear power plants could be subjected to much stronger earthquakes and much bigger tsunamis than they were designed to withstand
….
‘Last December the Japanese government began a review of its nuclear energy policy. The review was commenced in the spirit of essentially confirming the existing policy. That approach is no longer viable. The direction of the policy review must be completely reversed. It must be redirected towards developing a policy of phasing out nuclear energy as smoothly and swiftly as possible.
Philip White
International Liaison Officer
Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org...ite120311.html
Kontantin:
‘deaths from nuclear plants = 1 (crane operator unrelated to the explosion) ‘
hm..another konstantin may ahve said the same think about Ukraines nuke plants in 1985
Soul Rebel wrote in comment #35 “Zapkitty is right that the conditions of poverty in much of the world are due to lack of access to cheap and clean energy.”
Have you ever read Irene Khan’s book, The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights? Khan, the Secretary General of Amnesty International make the case that conditions of poverty are not due to lack of access to cheap, clean energy, or to any other form of industrial development.
A person who is self-sufficient is not poor even if they have no money. If you are an indigenous person living on your land with access to food, water, shelter, and traditional medicinal herbs, you are not experiencing poverty even if you have no electricity and have never seen any money. It is only when the greed for resources by the developed world pushes you off your land that you become poor. There is no more sustainable ecosystem than the one nature gave us, and unless it is commodified and polluted, it can sustain human life for tens of thousands of years unless patriarchy rears its ugly head and forces overpopulation by subjugating females. When not subjugated, females enable us to be an ecologically viable species that controls its rate of reproduction in accordance with available resources.
Contrary to everything we’ve been taught, indigenous people who haven’t been invaded by civilization are happier, healthier, live longer, and have much more leisure time than people in developed societies. We are the barbarians and compared to them we cannot be considered civilized at all. As we continue to wipe them out, we lose our only source for millenia of knowledge about traditional medicine, just as we mindlessly destroy the natural ecosystems containing the plants that cure diseases.
Humanity has sold its birthright for a mess of toxic pottage. You need gas for your car because you can’t simply gather food from the forest around you, so you have to be able to shop quickly in the few hours you get off from working to make the payments on your car. You need electricity because you spend most of your daylight hours enriching multi-trillionaires and by the time you get home you are much too tired to entertain yourself with singing and dancing and creative arts, even if you still knew how. Because you can’t watch the endlessly fascinating natural world, with constantly changing plants, birds, insects, and animals, you can either stare at blank walls or turn on the TV to be desensitized to the violence that is needed to get you that electricity.
Having lived both off the grid and on, I know that being off the grid is a less stressful lifestyle. Those who think it is worth permanently contaminating the only planet we have, so that they can have gadgets they don’t even have time to enjoy, have devolved to a point where I’m no longer certain they can reasonably be called sentient.
well said Mark
Its poverty vs destitution
Workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, after the quake knocked out power to the cooling system.
What occurred at the plant was a “station blackout,” which is the loss of offsite air-conditioning power combined with the failure of onsite power, in this case diesel generators.
“It is considered to be extremely unlikely but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades,” said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation.
http://www.countercurrents.org/afp130311.htm
Brian, it serves no purpose nor adds any value to the discussion of future energy generation when your arguments are taken strictly from emotional sources.
3rd generation light water BWR reactors have inherent safety issues. Specifically, the need for external power supply to keep the coolant pumps running. That was the situation at Fukushima.
Molten Salt Reactors do not rely upon pumped in or gravity fed light water as a coolant, as light water always brings the risk of hydrogen generation. Very explosive.
Thorium is a far more stable radionucleide. We’ve known about it since the 50’s. And molten salts as the heat transfer AND coolant medium are far more efficient than light water. And even better, Molten Salt thorium based reactors can safely reprocess Uranium 235 and U238 and even plutonium and the Strontium 90 waste does not occur, like it does in Light water reactors. Strontium 90, with a half life of 30,000 years, is instead, converted to a lighter ion with a half life of 30 years in molten salt reactions just by using Flouride salts as an additive.
There’s no weapons grade waste.
There’s no toxic sludge waste.
It’s a viable and safe bridge between fossil fuels and sustainable renewable green energy sources.
The Molten Salt Reactor Project ran at Oak Ridge in TN from 1964 to 1969 and at full power for 2.5 of those years. They successfully used this reactor to treat radioactive toxic waste and the chemistry and math behind the design is well proven.
We’ve only needed to wait for material sciences to catch up due to the corrosive nature of the plumbing involved.
Don’t ever forget that Coal, Oil and gas produce (and release) more radioactive waste than all of the worlds current nuclear power plants combined.
Again, I appreciate where your coming from, but your position is not really grounded in reality. And I mean that in good faith.
Here’s your Molten Salt reactor history lesson…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
Užuojauta žmonėms.
Dan-in-PA…nukes are not dead…nuclear power support has itself melted down and only the diehards have not been swept away by the tsunami of reality
FYI
Possible Fukushima Nuclear Fallout Projections For the U.S, MOX Fuel In Plant #3
http://theintelhub.com/2011/03/12/29810/
FYI
NO SURPRISE, really
http://theintelhub.com/2011/03/...ale-of-crisis/
most govts are sociopathic
Dan and other nuk supportesr have their echoes in the japanese govt whose problem now is how to contian not the radiation but knowedlege of the scale of the disaster…How to save nukes from a social meltdown!
A NUKE Plant designer speaks:
‘Mr Goto said the reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant were suffering pressure build-ups way beyond that for which they were designed. There was a severe risk of an explosion, with radioactive material being strewn over a very wide area ““ beyond the 20km evacuation zone set up by the authorities ““ he added. Mr Goto calculated that because Reactor No 3 at Fukushima-Daiichi ““ where pressure is rising and there is a risk of an explosion ““ used a type of fuel known as Mox, a mixture of p lutonium oxide and uranium oxide, the radioactive fallout from any meltdown might be twice as bad.’
http://theintelhub.com/2011/03/...ale-of-crisis/
yes its REALLY bad, you nuke lovers
… brian said…
Your behavior is… interesting 🙂
So, am I a “nuke lover” by your standards?
If you think so, why would you think so?
Is Dan-in-PA a “nuke lover?”
If you think so, why would you think so?
And the question remains.
You remember, right? The question you never answer.
Are you afraid to answer it?
Here it is again with all the details:
An aneutronic fusion reactor is placed in front of you.
Compared to all equivalent power sources it is inexpensive to build and its construction has a minimal environmental impact. It is quiet in operation, and unlike wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants or tidal generators it doesn’t occupy large portions of the landscape.
Its fuel is a very common isotope of boron, boron 11, which is cheap, not radioactive in the slightest and of which there are billions of years of supply readily available on Earth.
We do laundry and scrub toilets with it.
Its exhaust is small amounts of helium. Yeah, that helium. Not enough to solve the party balloon shortage caused by the oiligarchs deliberate wasting of the gas from their drilling rigs but utterly harmless nonetheless.
No meltdowns.
At all.
No explosions.
At all.
No nuclear waste.
At all.
If anything happens to the reactor it shuts down.
Period.
Not because of any fancy failsafes, although you can have just as many of those as you like, but because a fusion reaction requires power and precise conditions just to keep it going.
The reactor shuts down and becomes, from a fusion plasma point of view, ice cold almost instantly. There are no chain reactions and there can be no chain reactions. Within 9 hours you even can open the reaction chamber itself without worrying about radiation.
It is placed in front of you. The practically perfect power source.
What would you do?
Here Brian:
http://ringshadow.deviantart.co...ge-1-154180410
Click on the word “Onward” to proceed to the next page in this simple and straightforward presentation.