What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

[MoonRise]

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.

Interesting video. Actually kind of scary.

[woodsmoke]

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

GG very good on the explanation.

As to House, yeppers to that...I quite agree, they have to be looking at this as the last season. What with the four parter about the police detective that ended him up in rehab and then the multiparter about Amber..... this time with him singing "highway to heaven" or whatever it was, I think this is the last season or next to last.

too bad, it was a very good show, I used him as an example of "serendipity" in how scientists often develop an idea.

nice vid also, except, if one remembers the "acid rain" from the Canadian and Chicagoan coal fired plants that killed some lake near St. Louis, I think possibly the "plume" would go opposite.

I can hear the Canuks after reading the above sentence saying WHEW!!! and wiping their brows!! lol

Now it may be that it would go that way but the "big idea" is that the area under question is still so contaminated that people do not live there.

Illinois is sometimes known as "reactor central" or something like tha.

woodsmoke

[Detonate]

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

House was a good show when it concentrated on the medicine. I really liked it. But now it has degraded into a soap opera and it is all about the characters and very little about the medical diagnostics.

[woodsmoke]

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

Yeppers, kind of like other shows, like ER, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice.

We all WANT them to last ..........forever.........kind of like BattleStar Galactica! I think ten years from now there wil be a new version!

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

"Acid Rain" is almost as bad on the environmnet as short-lived radioactive isotopes. My sister lives in Logan, WV. That area has open pit coal mines everywhere, leaving scars on the tops of many mountains. Coal used to be burned without smoke stack scrubbers and Sulfur Dioxide formed acid rain which fell on the trees. Driving down hiway 110 twenty years ago you'd see tall pines with the top 1/4th to 1/3rd being dead and bare branched. They were the parts that extended into the low hanging clouds. They also had to neutralize the acid in the lakes with Lime so that they could stock fish every spring for sport fishing.

Now the pines don't look as bad since the SO2 has been scrubbed, and apparently fish can survive the winter.

[lcorken]

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

Well, If you guys are going to digress to my LEAST favorite TV show, I have another idea.

Try this one.

They give those exposed to radiation iodine.

Scotch whiskey has an iodine taste. Maybe we should start drinking Scotch as a preventative measure.
The usual results: :P

The last smiley represents the morning after.

Ken.

[woodsmoke]

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

Yeppers to that.
About 1978 a high school science magazine called current science sent out a small quantity of "pH" paper, the stuff that determines acid and base, for teachers to give to students and they were to take it home and put it in the rain and send the info back to the mag which collated it and sent it somewhere.

It was the very first national survey for acid rain and did a world of good to convince people to put scrubbers on powerplants.

I can't seem to find info on the net but a plant near Chicago and the plants in Canada just so happened to be in the same weather pattern and almost killed a lake near St. Louis,

Yep, lotsa stuff still going wrong and we are doofing our time away on political gefelterfarb.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

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

It seems things have escalated, it looks like it's beyond the "bunch of xrays stage".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_835712.html

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

Yes. The INES now ranks the nuclear disaster in Japan as Level 6. Chernobyl was 7.

The pumps which were spraying sea water on the core failed yesterday. Last night there was a strong explosion at the Fukashima plant #2 (not the one which blew up yesterday with the miniature mushroom cloud) which was felt 25 miles away. I suspect that it was the core melting down and then exploding. Shortly after that a Japanese official said the levels of radiation escaping the plant were life-threatening and they extended the evacuation order from 30Km to 40Km. Over 280,000 people have now been evacuated and about 500,000 additional people are living in shelters. Water and food are running out and other basic necessities are in short supply. In short, it is Hiroshima and Nagasaki ten times over.

Sadly, the situation was so bad that they evacuated all but 28 employees of the nuke plant, who remained behind to continue efforts to control the overheating. There are reports that some of them (all?) are suffering severe radiation exposure. It appears that they are sacrificing their lives in an attempt to help rather than to just become helpless.

The low front passing up from Southwest Japan and out into the sea near the site of the quake will bring Northwest winds which will blow radiation down towards Tokyo, which is already reporting rising radiation levels. These winds, if they do not change and begin blowing out to sea again, may render large areas of central Japan uninhabitable, not just an 80 mile diameter half circle centered on the power plants. That could/may put this event at Level 7 of the INES scale.

IF all four reactors blow this event will become the worst nuclear accident in history, and so much radiation may be generated that it could contaminate parts of our country and the rest of the world, and certainly make it a Level 7 event. The situation is SO bad now that I cannot see them doing anything else except covering the reactors with boron, sand, cement and a layer of tar, even though doing that may cost some helicopter operators their lives.

Two other points:
1) Economic. The economic pain of this event will drag Japan's economy down to depression levels or worse. Ours is nearly at depression levels and this even won't help us at all. It will probably make things worse here in America because Japan is one of our strongest trading partners. When America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. This could trigger a world wide depression.

2) Political. This event may distract or inhibit the US from reacting to extremists in the MidEast and I suspect that within the next few days or weeks they may test our ability to react. Think like one of them. How would they strike a blow at "The Great Satan"? One way might be blowing up a major oil well in Saudi Arabia, an assault on Israel, or a suicide attack in this country against a school, water plant, etc. I have no doubt that they will try something just to add to the confusion and hysteria.

[woodsmoke]

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

It is very troubeling.

The total evacuation area for Chernobyl was larger than the island itself.

As to the testing of the U.S. I am in complete agreement, but why stop there?

I was blown away yesterday when I saw Bill Mahr......Bill MAHR? Interviewing the "crying Muslim congressman" and he would not let the man go on a question that..."yes, the Muslims are 99 percent fine, but all it takes is 1.........and he emphasized the number 1...... terrorist to set the world on fire".

And then when the guy got off onto that "the Muslim "preachers" are "speaking out" Mahr said, and would not stop... "Then how come we have not heard one of them, name one", and the guy just sputtered.

Bill MAHR??

When Bill Mahr has taken on Bil O'Reilly's role things are a changin' in the U.S.

Yes, the development of events are very troubling.

As to "nuclear policy" in the U.S. I saw, at first, several talking heads punditing that this would shut down Pres. Obama's "openness" to Nuclear Power, after all he does have the physicist in the White House, and then yesterday, that the W.H. spokesman had said, that no "nuc power is still part of the mix".

What was left unstated was that the Yucca Mt. burial site for waste has been taken off the table by the EPA and that there is nowhere to store the waste except in situ and the E.P.A. won't allow that ipso posto facto no new nuc sites in the U.S.

North Korea said it wants to restart 6 nation talks.

Two Iranian ships transited the Suez canal before all this,

And there was an article about how "the rebels" are, apparently, getting ready to take Bahrain, which has, for fourty years, been predicted as THE choke point for oil to the West.

One can even go back to a very scary horror movie(and book) called The Keep, wherein during WWII the Germans were trying to get control of a pipeline to Europe for Gulf Oil.

So in addition to what is going to probably be an apalling situation in Japan, the domino effect both radiationwise and economically/politically, for the rest of the world, as you said, is probably going to be.... don't know...

What a difference a day makes between Toad's comment on my comment and now!

woodsmoke

[dibl]

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

Continuing the wander, OT ...

I personally do believe that nuclear power generation will have to be a significant piece of the future infrastructure, in geologically stable regions. (Although after last week, I probably won't live to see the day). The U.S. eastern and upper Midwest are a very stable region, and rich with fresh water rivers and lakes from which to use cooling water. And tsunamis are most unlikely here in Ohio.

I've often wondered why no one has ever proposed that each new nuclear generation plant should include its own very deep borehole, into which spent fuel (suitably encased) could be safely discarded. The Soviet Union once drilled 7.5 miles into the earth: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole

Probably 3 or 4 miles deep would be sufficient to place spent nuclear fuel rods, encased, and with a nice cement lid on each deposit.

My approach also solves the "NIMBY" problem, which I think is what really killed the Yucca Mountain dump.

Today's two cents' worth.

[GreyGeek]

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

It wouldn't surprise me if we returned to gasoline rationing.

In 1974 OPEC embargoed oil to the US as "punishment" for their support of Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. It lasted for 6 months. Gasoline was rationed by license plate number and day. Before the embargo gasoline was 38 cents/gal and at the end it was 55 cents/gal !!! Oil went from $4/bbl to $12/bbl !!!

Before that rationing was used during WWII and involved classes of use and coupons for each class.

If it happens I suspect that it will begin with the license plates ending in odd numbers getting gas on MWF and even numbered plates on TTS. No gas on Sunday except for emergency vehicles (and politician's cars, of course). After that fails, then the coupons will start, as will the counterfeiting.

What most people don't seem to understand is that our GDP is directly tied to our rate of oil consumption. IF our rate drops then our GDP will drop, and so will our standard of living. IF you don't own a 110cc scooter or some other 100mpg+ vehicle it's time to start looking unless, like me, you will ride a bike. (BTW, the "scooter economy" is common in Asia)

[DoYouKubuntu]

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

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.

It just dawned on me that because I was around--and VERY much aware--when Chernobyl happened, it's part of my life, you know, my historical record so to speak. Younger folks--like those not even born when it occurred--can't/won't know about it unless they're taught, or for some other reason are seeking information on incidents of that nature. And, they may come across the same programs I've watched, but not bother stopping on them. Like when I'm scrolling through the DirecTV guide and see something coming up about Bhopal or Chernobyl, I typically tune in. Someone who's never even HEARD of those events may not. Like, huh? who cares? Anyway, yeah, I can see how it's completely different depending on the person's experience and perspective.

The info definitely *IS* available in the US, it's more a matter of "is anyone paying attention?"

[woodsmoke]

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

GG

Yeppers, I remember the even/odd liscence plates. That was when I converted my old 58 chevy 6 cyl pickup to alcohol and started buying alcohol at WallyWorld and pouring it into the tank one bottle at a time!

DYK...

Yep, I agree, the information is "available" but not in textbooks and so it isn't taught.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

Woodsmoke to his 58 chev: "One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me ..."

Here's the I-131 contamination from Nevada testing:
[img width=400 height=279]http://www.ki4u.com/radmap_usa.jpg[/img]