Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

OKIsItJustMe

(19,933 posts)
Fri May 20, 2016, 06:39 PM May 2016

Burning reactor fuel could have worsened the Fukushima disaster

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/burning-reactor-fuel-could-have-worsened-fukushima-disaster
[font face=Serif][font size=5]Burning reactor fuel could have worsened the Fukushima disaster[/font]

By Richard Stone | May. 20, 2016 , 5:45 PM

[font size=3]Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.

Thanks to a lucky break detailed in a report released today by the U.S. National Academies, Japan dodged that bullet. The near calamity “should serve as a wake-up call for the industry,” says Joseph Shepherd, a mechanical engineer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who chaired the academy committee that produced the report. Spent fuel accumulating at U.S. nuclear reactor plants is also vulnerable, the report warns. A major spent fuel fire at a U.S. nuclear plant “could dwarf the horrific consequences of the Fukushima accident,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., who was not on the panel.

After spent fuel is removed from a reactor core, the fission products continue to decay radioactively, generating heat. Many nuclear plants, like Fukushima, store the fuel onsite at the bottom of deep pools for at least 5 years while it slowly cools. It is seriously vulnerable there, as the Fukushima accident demonstrated, and so the academy panel recommends that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear plant operators beef up systems for monitoring the pools and topping up water levels in case a facility is damaged. It also calls for more robust security measures after a disaster. “Disruptions create opportunities for malevolent acts,” Shepherd says.

At Fukushima, the earthquake and tsunami cut power to pumps that circulated coolant through the reactor cores and cooled water in the spent fuel pools. The pump failure led to the core meltdowns. In the pools, found in all six of Fukushima’s reactor halls, radioactive decay gradually heated the water. Of preeminent concern were the pools in reactor Units 1 through 4: Those buildings had sustained heavy damage on 11 March and in subsequent days, when explosions occurred in Units 1, 3, and 4.

…[/font][/font]
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/21874/lessons-learned-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-accident-for-improving-safety-and-security-of-us-nuclear-plants
The U.S. Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a technical study on lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident for improving safety and security of commercial nuclear power plants in the United States. This study was carried out in two phases: Phase 1, issued in 2014, focused on the causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident and safety-related lessons learned for improving nuclear plant systems, operations, and regulations exclusive of spent fuel storage. This Phase 2 report focuses on three issues: (1) lessons learned from the accident for nuclear plant security, (2) lessons learned for spent fuel storage, and (3) reevaluation of conclusions from previous Academies studies on spent fuel storage.
9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
 

Kelvin Mace

(17,469 posts)
2. Really?
Fri May 20, 2016, 06:53 PM
May 2016
Thanks to a lucky break detailed in a report released today by the U.S. National Academies, Japan dodged that bullet. The near calamity “should serve as a wake-up call for the industry,” says Joseph Shepherd, a mechanical engineer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who chaired the academy committee that produced the report.

Except that it won't because learning from mistakes cuts into profits.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
3. What in the wonderful minds of people reporting this would the "worsened" case involve?
Fri May 20, 2016, 07:46 PM
May 2016

Would that have involved killing as many people as will die in the next two hours from air pollution from the normal operations of fossil fuel plants or would it have involved five hours?

Not one moral idiot who cheered for shutting Japan's reactors to see if they were "safe" gave a rat's ass about the number of air pollution deaths that occurred as a result, nor the permanent effects on the climate. Zero. Zilch. None.

As pointed out by Nobel Laureate Burton Richter in a paper (Energy Environ. Sci., 2012,5, 8758-8759) criticizing the work of Stanford's resident idiot anti-nuke Mark Z. Jacobson, even if Jacobson's calculation for the loss of life at Fukushima were correct, the Fukushima reactors saved lives compared to what would have occurred were the reactor not built in the first place.

What struck me first on reading the Ten Hoeve–Jacobson (T–J) paper was how small the consequences of the radiation release from the Fukushima reactor accident are projected to be compared to the devastation wrought by the giant earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. The quake and tsunami left 20 000 people dead, over a million buildings damaged and a huge number of homeless. This paper concludes that there will eventually be a 15-130-1100 fatalities (130 is the mean value and the other numbers are upper and lower bounds) from the radiation released from reactor failures in what is regarded as the second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power. It made me wonder what the consequences might have been had Japan never used any nuclear power. My rough analysis finds that health effects, including mortality, would have been much worse with fossil fuel used to generate the same amount of electricity as was nuclear generated. This conclusion will surely draw fire since it flies in the face of what many believe, and of new policy directions some propose for Japan and Germany.

To answer my question requires an analysis of health effects from electricity generation using other fuels...


As Richter noted, the tsunami killed 20,000 people.

And I remind you that just 8 years before that, another tsunami in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean killed 250,000.

Tsunami 2004

And yet...and yet the people who carry on mindlessly about radiation have no interest in calling for the banning of coastal cities , even they are obviously far more dangerous than reactors struck by tsunamis, albeit not as dangerous as the air pollution killing seven million people a year. But if they can convince themselves that something "could have happened" involving a nuclear plant - even if it didn't - well they're perfectly happy to burn coal and gas to power computers and servers so everyone can share in their fantasy.

And of course, the 20,000 Japanese who died in 2011 from, um, living in a coastal city don't matter compared to someone eating a few hundred bequerels of cesium-137. The latter is as sexy as hell, and the 20,000 dead Japanese aren't sexy at all, as unsexy as the 19,000 people who died today from air pollution.

The fact is that the anti-nuke community, a group who my opinion are destroying the planet by appeals to fear and ignorance, often value their imaginations - they use the word "could" everywhere they can but have no interest in the word "is" - over the realities that are as clear as day to anyone willing to think.

But these people are unwilling to think. They're weak minded, poorly informed, badly educated, and are unable to engage in even a modicum of focus.

Have a wonderful weekend.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
6. And?
Mon May 23, 2016, 01:21 PM
May 2016

You believe that wider spread and higher levels of contamination would result.

How much wider, how much higher, and more importantly, in your estimation, based on your knowledge of radiation risk, would the resulting death toll be as high as five hours of air pollution deaths that occur constantly, without stop, all around the world?

How about deaths related to living in coastal cities struck by tsunamis in the 21st century, roughly a quarter of a million, plus or minus a few tens of thousands?

Would the wider spread and higher levels of contamination have made a reactor being hit by a tsunami as dangerous as the tsunami(s) itself/themselves?

By the way, did shutting the Japanese reactors in 2011 to see if they were safe make air pollution deaths less of a threat or a worse threat? Are air pollution deaths in Japan considered to be a "near miss," or an actual occurrence?

The 2013 Global Burden of Disease Survey lists stroke, ischemic heart disease, lower respiratory infections and lung cancer as the largest causes of mortality in Japan

What's your guess, would all these disappear if Fukushima hadn't happened?

Have a nice evening.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
8. I've spent thousands of hours reading all sorts of reports about nuclear technology.
Tue May 24, 2016, 08:34 AM
May 2016

I know very well the chemistry and physics of melted nuclear fuel, what scientists call "corium."

There have been several examples of the formation of corium, at TMI, at Chernobyl and at Fukushima. The data shows that the evolution of this corium didn't kill as many people as died yesterday from air pollution.

And yet, and yet and yet...we hear about all these things constantly. A great deal of fossil fuel is burned to run computers and servers that want to tell us all about these corium events.

My questions involve people who haven't read very much at all about nuclear engineering at all engaging in innuendo.

We can certainly spend billions of dollars improving the "safety" of nuclear technologies. We can also spend the same billions of dollars giving the two billion people on this planet who have no access to clean sanitation improved sanitary systems.

Which would save more lives per billion dollars? Improved sewers in Nigeria, or all new engineering for all nuclear plants?

Don't advise me to read a report please. You've raised the issue of nuclear safety, in a manner as I regard specious, and I'm trying to find out what you actually know.

Thanks in advance for your response and best regards,

NNadir

 

Nihil

(13,508 posts)
4. So would've a 60' tall lizard with anger issues but, thanks to a lucky break, Japan dodged that too!
Mon May 23, 2016, 07:45 AM
May 2016
Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Environment & Energy»Burning reactor fuel coul...