What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

[woodsmoke]

I would imagine that there are quite a few people who wonder what "might happen" with the nuclear plants in Japan. One of them has "exploded" and four more are being shut down under the possibility of a possible "failure"

I ASSUME THAT THE MODERATORS WILL REMOVE THIS POST within some near term time frame and that is wonderful, great, go for it, I will not be offended.

However, having taught "nuclear power" for years in both physics and physical science classes and also having been trained in it in the navy and as a "hazardous waste removal and cleanup" person, I have some small amount of information which may allay............or increase.........the fears of some people.

I post this with no agenda and if anyone feels that there is any bias in the post please feel free to post such and if a mod feels that there is any bias in the post, please feel free to remove it immediately I hereby give my complete permission to do so.

Beginning of post:

For people who are "wondering" about whether the nuclear reactor explosion in Japan could be "like a nuclear bomb".

a) No, it cannot be "like a nuclear bomb". A nuclear bomb is a totally different thing.
b) Can it release "radiation"?

There are actually two parts to the question
i) In the back of many people's mind is "Three Mile Island", especially in the U.S. and also "Chernobyl" which the environmentalists do not even talk about in the U.S. but, about which the "Europeans" are KEENLY aware.
ii) can radiation can come out of "reactors" -- yes.

to address (i) first.

A) Three Mile Island, in the U.S. was NOT an explosion like what happened at Chernobyl or even what like what happened in the (as of this writing) explosion in Japan.
a) Three Mile Island was an "overpressure" problem which got PAST the first safety system. Then it got PAST the second system. Then it was AUTOMATICALLY stopped by the third safety system.

Some nuclear "stuff" in the form of radioactive steam and particles was released but the amount, when spread over the area that the wind would carry it was "on the order" of what would be considered "background radiation, what we get every day from the sun AND the soil".

The big "point" about Three Mile Island was that it was, and is, a "modern" reactor which has a steel and concrete "containment" system and "multiple backup safety systems".

b) Chernobyl was literally a "pile", it was a HUGE version of the very first "test" system from WWII and made of "graphite blocks". It was a "first generation" reactor, and It was an accident that was PREDICTED to happen. Not a single nuclear scientist in the world thought that was a safe system except for the scientists in Communist Russia who, of course, were not going to listen to ANYthing that an evil capitalist said.

The reactor had KNOWN "design flaws", this from Wikipedia:

Improvements since the Chernobyl accident
In his posthumously published memoirs, Valeri Legasov, the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, revealed that the Institute's scientists had long known that the RBMK reactor had significant design flaws.[14][15] Legasov's death from suicide, apparently as a result of becoming bitterly disillusioned with the failure of the authorities to confront the flaws, caused shockwaves throughout the Soviet nuclear industry and the problems with the RBMK design were rapidly accepted

THE MUCH FEARED PROBLEM WITH NUCLEAR POWER:

The "China Syndrome"....with no aspersions about the haughtieness of the "ugly American"...

Is that the fear was that the "early generation" plants....like Chernobyl, could, if the wrong conditions prevailed in a "core melt-down" have a situation in which the nuclear "chain reaction" metaphorically melted from the U.S. to China

The movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome

Chernobyl specifically:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernob...ar_Power_Plant

First generation plants generally:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

So.... what is going on with the Japanese plants?

The plants are "second generation" and newer plants.

They have concrete and steel "containment vessels" and multiple "backup safety systems.

ii) can nuclear stuff come out of the plants?

The big fear for them is PRECISELY what has happened in Japan, that a reactor could suffer a "catastrophic failure" of the "backup safety systems" and:

a) have a STEAM explosion which would then release "nuclear particles" into the air and that it could contaminate large areas by being carried by the wind.

AND....that there would MULTIPLE PLANT FAILURES...

b) in places like FRANCE............and JAPAN...........where there are literally dozens of plants within VISUAL RANGE of each other, that there could be multiple catastrophic failures in the case of....

an earthquake.

Which is what has happened in Japan.

There are, as of this writing, five plants that have been shut down (one has had a steam explosion) and may be in the situation of catastrophic failure.

So....cut to the chase..... there is no chance of a "nuclear explosion" but there is a DEFINITE chance of "nuclear material being spread by the wind".

And.... remember....Japan EXISTS because of Volcanoes. The islands ARE volcanoes.

What if.... there was an even MORE MASSIVE earthquake....and a NEW volcanic eruption.......... which would then spread the nuclear particles IN THE AIR...across the pacific rim or across Asia?

THAT....is the fear on the part of people who actually KNOW stuff about nuclear power as opposed to the people who have an "agenda" against nuclear power.

woodsmoke

BELOW HERE:

A completely worthless aside here which has NOTHING to do with the discussion

WARNING:

The following contains EXTREMELY STRONG language and images...but it is a video taken from the game HALO that .....begins in the "outskirts" of Chernobyl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZsj5...eature=related

And it has NOTHING to do with this discussion!!! lol

woodsmoke

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Thank you for a very informative and interesting post.

I take exception, however, to:

i) In the back of many people's mind is "Three Mile Island", especially in the U.S. and also "Chernobyl" which the environmentalists do not even talk about in the U.S. but, about which the "Europeans" are KEENLY aware.

I remember Chernobyl very clearly, and over the years since then I've heard, read, and watched many things about it--all right here in the US. So I'm not exactly sure where you've gotten the impression that environmentalists don't even talk about it in the US, as that's where I am and where I've gotten my info!

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Hi DYK

Teaching env sci as I do we spend quite a bit of time on the topic and on the two occurrances.

These are entry level people not somebody that is as heads up as you.

As a side note, I had a woman who went to Russia just three, maybe two, years ago on a missionary trip, the churches have had the swimming pools removed and are being restored to being churches, and she had pictures of the plant from a great distance and.....

OH SO SAD. ... pictures of people who still live in the area that have children with deformities caused by the massive leak....she thought that they had been, basically, abandoned by the government and this was one way to make money....

and in that class nobody had heard of Chernobyl, but a few had heard of 3 mile island. Her pictures woke them up very quickly.

A sad thing, very, very sad... the dis-service that the education system is and has been doing to whole generations of people..

Because it could happen here..the likeliehood is almost negligible, but it could and all it takes is one "could" and it's all over but the crying.

woodsmoke

[MoonRise]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Good thread. Should stay as is. Thanks Woodsmoke.

[lcorken]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

With the price of fossil fuels (money and pollution) I think we desperately need nuclear and any other energy we can find. We've come a long way but apparently have a ways to go with safety.

How can anything withstand a 9.0 earthquake or a determined group of terrorists? There is a price to pay with anything. Is it worth it? It would take a smarter person than me to answer that. Unfortunately the most influential people are generally the ones with an agenda, whether religious, financial, political, or general assininety (I give up trying to spell assininity) that's not in the best interest of the majority.

Coal burners make smoke, nukes make fallout, hydroelectric kills fish, wind power is ugly, solar is costly, but power is nice. Ya can't have it all.

Ken.

If ignorance is bliss, I am the most blissful one around.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

The magazine "American Scientists" published an article in 2006 about the health effects of nuclear weapons testing since 1945.

Some of the maps show that the greatest contamination by US testing in Nevada didn't occur in Nevada but in areas down wind, where rainfall washed radioisotopes out of the sky and onto the land. [img width=400 height=194]http://www.americanscientist.org/Libraries/images/2005125932_646.gif[/img] Cesium-137 is one such contaminate. Levels were up to 10X higher around here than around Frenchman Flats.

Until someone can demonstrate a way to safely eliminate radioactive waste products I remain against nuclear power. There is NO place on this planet where radioactive waste can be stored for at least 10,000 years or more with a guarantee that it will never leak out of any containment and contaminate the surface. Rocketing it into the Sun is every risky, as the second failure of the Climate change satellite has recently demonstrated.

However, I AM FOR power from nuclear fusion, provided the reactor remains at 93 million miles away from the Earth!

All that is needed for a chain reaction to occur in a quantity of Uranium is that volume of its mass is equal to or larger than a sphere with a diameter of 6.7 inches. That volume is critical (hence "critical mass") because its radius is the distance a "thermal" Neutron can travel before encountering a U235 nucleus. Neutron reflectors and explosive compression can reduce quantity of U235 needed to create a bomb. Thermal Neutrons are slow enough to be absorbed by the nucleus, creating U236, which is unstable and splits to form Cesium-137 and Rubidium. The presence of Cesium-137 in the environment outside of the Japanese nuclear reactors is proof positive that the core of the reactor has been exposed to the environment. Normally, Cesium-137 remains in the core and contributes to the energy released when it breaks down.

The Japanese Boiling Water Reactors use only 3 to 5% enriched Uranium 235. For a comparison, LittleBoy used 85% enriched U235, and the resulting critical mass was surrounded by thick walls of the strongest steel made at the time, in order to keep the chain reaction going as long as possible before the fissionable material was blown apart and the reaction destroyed. Only 600mg of U235 was converted into energy. IF the fuel rods heat up to 2,075F the U235 will melt out and collect at the bottom of the reactor vessel. If the mass of the pooled liquid U235 reaches critical mass a chain reaction could blow the mass apart, killing the chain reaction before a nuclear explosion would take place, but releasing a lot of radioactive by-products to the environment.

The problem is that the Japanese are in a catch-22. They need to cool the reactor to prevent melting of the Uranium in the fuel rods. They are using sea water (because it is handy). But, for Boiling Water Reactors water is a moderator, slowing down Neutrons and making them "Thermal" Neutrons, which are slow enough to hit a U235 nucleus, causing fission to take place in the cooler rods, which generates heat. It's a vicious circle. Because the reactor cores are damaged they cannot pull the rods out and stop the reactor.

IMO, the five Japanese reactors have far exceeded the problems that 3-Mile Island had, and are rapidly approaching the Chernobyl type problem. That's why they evacuated 250,000 people who were within 12Km of the plants.

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Icorken you are much more informed than many and one of the few that have reached the conclusion that this is what is known as a "wiked problem".

There is no good answer.

The one answer which you didn't mention is that of a lot of people in the power structure of the government that want us to go back to horse and buggy, or preferably before that.

Of course that flies in the face of the fact that if we did we would be either gassed or something and then the people that did that would be in control.

But in that never, never land of theory, if several hundred million people are dead that is all the much better.

Cockaraoches are better than humans anyway.

And, you state the same position in which I place the students by middle of the semester.

The tests are not "I believe we should to this or that, or this or that is better" With each test they have to list more and more options that show that they are aware of both sides, not that they ESPOUSE either side.

And, hopefully, one or more of them will, a few days, weeks, months or years from now have an "aha" moment....and somehow do something to get some sanity back into the world.

Thanks for the good post!!!

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Grey Geek, that map shows some interesting stuff, but to try to put it into a more "human" perspective, have you ever heard of what happened to drinking "Sasafrass tea?"

The Communists did a lot of "open air" nuclear testing and assured the world that all that nasty stuff would somehow stay in Sibera and stop at the border!

The U.S. did open air testing also but stopped long before the Communists.

But one day, they somehow...slipped up and the nuclear fallout from an above ground test floated halfway around the world.

A lot of the 3000 plus that is on the map came from that blast. And, fortunately, it put a stop to Russian above ground testing.

But back to the Sassafrass tea.

It turns out that The Sassafrass plant is a natural suction pump for radioactivity for some unknown reason and .... after the test there was SO MUCH radioactivity in the roots the next year that everybody was banned from harvesting or selling it. It "thinned the blood" during the spring, after staying in all winter was the idea, and also just tasted good.

Somebody developed a kind of "artificial" Sassafrass tea flavouring and that is what we all drank for decades or ate in "root beer barrel candy" (one of my faves! )

However, I did notice about ten years or so ago that there is now natural Sassafrass root available, don't know if it U.S. origin or what.

But...one of the unknown casualties of testing.

Also there was a thing about some farmers having to dump milk because of radioactivity in the grass that had been picked up by the cows. Although that is kind of vague, I did see it on t.v. though.

I often wonder if the human body is the same way and maybe a lot of the "cancer" that people have is a very attenuated result of what was done in the fifties.

Dunno... sad, sad...

woodsmoke

[Detonate]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I think that the prevailing winds in Japan would carry the released contamination out to sea. By the time it reached our shores here in NA, it would be greatly diminished. Am I wrong?

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Detonate,

That it correct, serial dilution in the air, unless it got caught in a "jet stream" but as of now the released amounts are so small as to be negligible even a few miles away.

EDIT after comment by Toad. The use of the word "negligible" was intended to convey something like "the amount of a bunch of x-ray exams." Which, if concentraed on a person would burn them severly, but that amount spread over an area would not be anything like what happened at Chernobyl. Some people could have immediate and severe consequences, but that, again, serial dilution would "thin" it as the "vapor/cloud/whaever/" moved away from the area..

More on the discovery of the "Jet Stream" below.

However, as of now, two places have had "explosions", these were both Hydrogen GAS....buildup, like the hydrogen balloon experiment in your 9th grade science class.

The other thing that really has the hair on the back of my neck raising is that a relatively dormant(for a coupla years) volcano on the island has erupted.

If the volcanos start going kablooy it could be that they just encase the material like the concrete over Chernobyl or if they really start some shaking goin' on and the plants steel containment parts are torn apart and the stuff gets into the wind, the volcanoes themselves would alter wind patterns.

This is NEVER taught in schools in the U.S. anymore, because we don't want to frighten the little chilluns....

But.... The Krakatoa Volcano spread ash world wide and caused the painting of "the Scream" and the art by the British "Glowy" school. This explosion lead the British to study the whole thing and did the first reasearch that lead to knowledge of what we now call the "jet stream".



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa

Ashcroft's pictures are hosted at "Science and Society"

Here is artwork made in the aftermath of the eruption of Mt. Tambora

[img width=400 height=191]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_71Lw-_apdcs/S8ua6a253GI/AAAAAAAAD60/r4gLuyn7bBM/s1600/TurnerChichester_canal_jmw_turner.jpeg[/img]

And the "child of Krakatoa, Anak, is growing in height about 20 feet per year



But, by and large, yes, the U.S. would only receive a very dilute amount.

[toad]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

... as of now the released amounts are so small as to be negligible even a few miles away.

What on earth gave you that idea? It sounds so ... so authoritative. afaik the third reactor is going into meltdown, people have been measured who are 1000x over the limit yet everyone says there is nothing to worry about.

Purely egotistically speaking I'd rather you were "only a few miles" away than me :P

EDIT:

Very nice pictures

EDIT 2:

I was just searching for the 1000x above the limit data but cannot find it. It also appears that the amount of radiation on board the Ronald Reagan has "dropped" considerably over the last 24 hours. At first reports came in stating that it was well above the limit and clearly measurable whereas now it is reported to have never been more than mere background radiation. Still, the Ronald Reagan is changing course. Make of that what you will.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I think that the prevailing winds in Japan would carry the released contamination out to sea. By the time it reached our shores here in NA, it would be greatly diminished. Am I wrong?

The original amount would be diluted. It would affect us only if, along the way, rain washes it out of the clouds carrying it. Otherwise, it can eventually circle the earth and then gradually fall out of the sky, just the way volcano ash does.

The videos this morning show reactor #3 blowing up. Unlike the #1 explosion, which looked like it was Hydrogen based and blew the top of the building off, the #3 explosion contained an orange fireball, and it devastated the entire building. It even had a miniature "mushroom cloud", which doesn't prove anything, but my guess is that we witnessed the result of pooled U235 at the bottom of the reactor getting so hot that it vaporized and then exploded. This would be the worse case scenario. Without Neutron reflectors, explosive compression and moderators, the molten mass won't go critical, but it can get super hot and explode. How can a reactor explode? Depleted Uranium was used as anti-tank rounds on the A10 WartHog's Vulcan cannons, and as sabot rounds on the Abrahams M1A1 tank gun. One reason why DU is used (besides the fact that it is 64% more dense than lead) is that when a DU sabot reaches 600C it will, literally, explode, change from a liquid into a gas. The gas is very hot and reacts explosively with the Oxygen in the air, compounding the power of the explosion. You've seen Gulf war footage showing Iraqi tanks being blown apart by a sabot round. It was the Uranium doing the exploding. This is why a nuclear reactor can produce a non-nuclear explosion, which you saw in reactor #3 video.

That "mushroom cloud" is where the danger is. It was blown out to sea. Had it blown in any other direction the land where it settles on would probably be too hot for habitation for decades to come because of the longer lived radioisotopes emitted. Cesium-137, which was detected in the environment surrounding reactor #1, has a half-life of 30 years. Ten half-lives means it will be around for 300 years. Cesium-134 for 20 years. Iodine-125 for 600 days. Iron-55 for 27 years. Nickle-63 for 960 years. Strontium-90 for 290 years. Strontium is what makes Chernobyl area so dangerous. It replaces Calcium in plants and is taken up in the bones of mammals when they eat the plants. When we eat the mammals it goes into our bones, replacing Calcium. There it causes bone cancer and affects blood cell production in the marrow.

Fission reactors can produce Plutonium isotopes. If any of that stuff gets into the environment then the ball game is over for centuries: Plutonium-238 for 877 years, Pu-240 for 65,000 years. Besides their radioactivity danger, Uranium and Plutonium are among the most toxic heavy metals known.

WHO gives a report on depleted Uranium here, but it is being criticized by some. Note that the route into the body is through inhalation of dust containing U and PU, not from ingestion. The biological half-life of U is 15 days, so it would take 1/2 a year to cycle most of it out of the body.

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Toad wrote:

... as of now the released amounts are so small as to be negligible even a few miles away.

I quite see your point, but, the amounts that were being discussed, a few miles away, would be on the "order" of a lot of x-rays and I did not put that context very well. Also, a lot of the stuff would "probably" be in a form that can be "washed off" the body, that is why one sees the people in the blue and white "moon suits" and there is a photo somewhare of them washing people with sprayers to get rid of the "dust".

An example of this is what is called "NBC washdown" on a U.S. Navy(and others) ship. In the event of an attack, the ship "buttons up", and when a biological or chemical gas is released near the ship or when "fallout" from a nuclear weapon floats over the ship, an "external spray system" washes down the outside of the ship automatically. Then the crew can go out on deck.

Of course the materials then go into the ocean, but then, again, one has the serial dilution thing, the ocean is a very big place and the stuff just gets diluted.

However, again, if the wind currents were such that it was all "dumped" in a certain area, then that area would, indeed, be very contaminated on the order of the times mentioned by GG.

As of when I made the post the amounts were on that order.

HOWEVER

GreyGeek's post of the interior ( if "interior" also means that the reactor vessel itself was breached) of the number 3 reactor going up and the radiation going out to sea is a MUCH greater worry, however, again, not for the U.S. It would be a lot more worrisome in the immediate area and all of Japan is "the immediate area" for that kind of explosion.

Thanks GG. I'll do some noodling on that.

GGs comment on the isotopes "cycling" out of the body is a sidelight on the comment, probably not noticed by many readers in the U.S. and elsewhere, that the people local to the plants who were being "evacuated" were being given Iodine which "take up" the isotopes.

An example of that was on a "House" show a few weeks ago, wherein a person had Iodine stains on his hands and was involved with nuclear stuff.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

.....
that the people local to the plants who were being "evacuated" were being given Iodine which "take up" the isotopes.
...

It's been a while since I taught physical chemistry, but my understanding of the reason for taking Iodine is that radioactive Iodine is absorbed IN the Thyroid gland, where it causes Thyroid cancer, almost without fail. Taking Iodide tablets, or Iodine in a Potassium Iodide solution, before or shortly after exposure causes the normal Iodine to "saturate" the Thyroid gland, preventing the radioactive Iodine from being absorbed, or washing it out if it is. I've never experienced it but from what I've read it is a pretty effective treatment for protecting the Thyroid gland. Too bad we don't have something similar to block radioactive Strontium from being absorbed in place of Calcium in the bones.

P.S.: House used to be my favorite show because of the medical sleuthing, but the last two seasons or so have seen him turn into a narcissistic ogre, making fun of people as if he were the divine fount of knowledge. His current persona is so antagonistic that in real life NO ONE would want to work with him, regardless of how brilliant he thought he was.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I found this YouTube Video on what it would have looked like if Chernobyl had happened at Chicago. The video was built by the French to show the spreading of Cesium-137 during the two weeks following the explosion of the graphite reactor core.