Beginners guide to nuclear power stations ?

Professor Robin Grimes – imperial college London, says it’s almost certainly not that bad.

Tom Logan of the institute of studies said “aye it’s a right balls up is this. I can see reactor #1 going off like a giant nuclear cock”

aah, Tom Logan, i am familiar with his essays, truly a wise man,

Read this for a less scare mongering, more technical description of whats going on.

Surely as soon as it looks even remotely like it’s going to go breasts skywards they’ll just dump the control rods into the reactor chamber and the problem is solved no?

Or if you read the papers or watch TV,

ZOMG NUCLEAR REACTORZ R EXPLODIGN IN JAPAN ITS CHERNOBBLE ALL OVR AGN WONT SOMEINE THINK OV TEH CHILDREN?!

I’m really, really starting to hate our media services. Bunch of scaremongering, lying bastards.

I think if I lived near a reactor that had just blown up like that one, I wouldn’t be staying near it saying it’s all media lies.

Looking further ahead, if it does all go tits up, which way is the wind blowing? I remember a load of radiation being dumped all over the world and Scotland when Chernobyl went up.
And if there is another powerful aftershock in that area, would it damage the thing even more?

Surely as soon as it looks even remotely like it’s going to go breasts skywards they’ll just dump the control rods into the reactor chamber and the problem is solved no?

They have already done that when the quake struck

Full Tech info HERE These are the statements from The Operators

As it starts to cool you need to add some water and balance all the pressures while everything chills out.

As the Aux equipment is a bit buggered this is harder. Reactors are designed with failsafes and secondary containments etc. If pressure is released then it will go into the secondary.

A friend who lives 180k away has been advised by a nuclear physicist friend, if the winds continue in the direction they are blowing and if the core was not breached (as it now appears) so possibly only a steam explosion with a localized and relatively small radioactivity, then it is fine to stay where he is. If it does turn out that there has been a core breach (which appears unlikely atm), that is a VERY different situation and he should move 500 kilometers away.

The reactors all automatically shut down when the earthquake hit yesterday, the issue has been that the reactor core is still hot and needs to be cooled (by water) and the coolant systems and backups failed.

Before anyone starts thinking that this is another Chernobyl you need to remember that that power plant had no containment structure around the reactor (no one in the west or japan builds reactors like this because it is fundamentally very dangerous, well, actually its mind bendingly stupid) and the graphite core actually caught fire and exploded, destroying the whole reactor. From what I can see of the images and what the experts seem to be saying is that the Japanese reactor looks to be still ok (ie, intact and not leaking as otherwise you’d see a very large release of radioactive material) but its outer building that surrounds the containment building has been badly damaged by a hydrogen/oxygen gas explosion when they were trying to vent pressurised water/steam from the reactor coolant circuit.

Still, not good though.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_54.html

Mind you, the Japs should be used to being nuked by now….. 😉

A friend who lives 180k away has been advised by a nuclear physicist friend,

Is his friend’s name Pike?

Coal ash more radioactive than nuclear waste!

A friend of mine, Kazuko in Sapporo just emailed me. She reckons ????????????????????????????????????????????????
I don’t know what it means, but the exclamation marks are a bit worrying.

A friend of mine, Kazuko in Sapporo just emailed me. She reckons ????????????????????????????????????????????????
I don’t know what it means, but the exclamation marks are a bit worrying.

Basically she’s alright because of where she’s located.

Yes, a bit of a downer,this one.

In terms of failure scenarios, it’s more like Three Mile Island than Chernobyl, with a loss of coolant in a Boiling Water Reactor. The real issue for the Japanese reactors is that the seismic event (earthquake) and the flooding event (tsunami) are linked, ie in Japan they occur together. It’s relatively straightforward to cope with either one separately.

The IAEA website http://www.IAEA.org has reasonably good info, albeit a few hours behind the media.

Hope it turns out ok, not a situation I’d like to be in

its a cld war era reactor, everything from that era broke down, screw you guys i’m getting a radioactive umbrella and a pvc gimp suit with gas mask….

wait wrong situation.

Just a very tricky spot for them to be in, im totoal 1 worker has been been killed ( by explosion but he had traces of radiation at 134 rads?
3 people have been taking to a hospital with radioactive poisoning.

They are trying to save the reactor – they could just let all the water out of the core, which would stop all the pressure build up and explosions (they are having electrical problems, thus the pumps are struggling to keep enough water in the core – so just like a car, it is blowing off steam due to overheating.

If they turned off *all* of the water, then the core would melt (completely safely, inside the containment vessel) but then the reactor would be totally wrecked and unusable. They’re trying to cool it down gently so that they can use it again in the future.

It’s a boiling water reactor, so it’s supposed to have steam in the top part of the core – think of it like a constantly boiling kettle that they collect the steam from to run turbines for power generation. You have to keep adding water or it’ll boil dry. If it boils dry you could damage the kettle.

What seems to be happening here is it’s nearly boiling dry, some of the fuel elements are breaking open in the heat and these exposed fuel elements are reacting with the water, releasing hydrogen – which then exploded as they tried to release it.

If it ever gets to a serious danger point they can just drain out all the coolant and let it all melt with no danger of gasses building up that could cause blowouts, at the cost of wrecking the reactor totally.

I’m really, really starting to hate our media services. Bunch of scaremongering, lying bastards.

If it isn’t exciting they don’t get paid, so no incentive to be accurate

I would never defend the UK press (mostly a bunch of clowns) but my friend who lives 180k away has been told there have been changes for the worse. They are unclear of what is happening so his wife and child have now moved further away. He is staying at the moment but ready to go.
Even if it doesn’t go into full meltdown it is still being very destructive to a lot of people especially as the earthquake was so damaging. Standard rules do not apply.

it seems that automatic “tripped” shut down in the event of an earth quake might no be the best of safety features. Having to the rely on back up generators has completely failed. Some kind of gradual shut down, keep them running at a level where they are self supporting, until they can be switched off safely might be a better course of action. Though building a nuclear reactor in a known earthquake zone may not be the wisest of decisions.

bassspine – Member

I’m really, really starting to hate our media services. Bunch of scaremongering, lying bastards.

I trust them more than I trust people with a financial interest in the nuclear power industry.

We’ve got the second worst nuclear accident in history and still, despite the failure of primary and secondary cooling systems and the consequences thereof, we are still being told that nuclear power is safe and controllable.

Given that this has happened in one of the most advanced and organised countries on earth, it doesn’t bode well for a fully nuclear powered future, does it?

Sadly, human involvement in a system is a guarantee that the system has the potential to fail.
Combined with the human propensity to refuse to learn from history, an extremely serious nuclear accident is inevitable at some point.

Which is precisely what opponents of nuclear power have been saying for years.

I was down the road when this went up in smoke during a thunderstorm a few years back.

Sizewell powerstation, just up the road from that there London village, and for some reason it didn’t even make the news which leads to one of two conclusions.

1) It was assumed that the locals had enough in common with Norfolk and their cousins not to notice a few extra apendages.

2) The powers that be covered it up.

*doffs tinfoil hat*

RustySpanner,

Given that this has happened in one of the most advanced and organised countries on earth, it doesn’t bode well for a fully nuclear powered future, does it?

It was cutting edge 30+ years back, modern designs always learn from the errors of the past, since Chernoble they no longer use gravity fed reactors, since Windscale the filtration systems have been altered, and this Japanese reactors ‘flaw’ of relying on the cooling water has been solved on the current reactors by making them passively cooled.

If you look at the statistics then by kWh nuclear is by far and away the safest power source we’ve ever used, ironically hydro comes out by far and away the most dangerous.

It’s a boiling water reactor, so it’s supposed to have steam in the top part of the core – think of it like a constantly boiling kettle that they collect the steam from to run turbines for power generation. You have to keep adding water or it’ll boil dry. If it boils dry you could damage the kettle.

Nope. It’s a closed system. The water is converted to steam in the reactor core. This steam drives a turbine. It is then converted back to water in a condenser fed by external cold water, then reintroduced to the reactor core to start over again.

If it ever gets to a serious danger point they can just drain out all the coolant and let it all melt with no danger of gasses building up that could cause blowouts, at the cost of wrecking the reactor totally.

I can safely say that we’re all glad you’re not in charge. You seem to be suggesting that a meltdown situation wouldn’t be that bad. Google ‘China syndrome’. Whilst melted fuel would hardly reach the opposite side of the globe, the reactor would not be able to contain the fuel as you suggest. It would burn through the base of the reactor and end up in the earth below, contaminating water tables and goodness knows what else.

We’ve got the second worst nuclear accident in history

Not quite, Captain Panic. A lot of guff is being spouted about this across the internet and via the news networks. Don’t just take it as gospel. A bit of background reading goes a long way. What’s happening at the moment is worst-case scenario from a financial viewpoint. The Fukushima I plant will probably never operate again. At the very least, the affected reactors won’t.

I’m not saying it isn’t bad, cos it clearly is. It’s nothing like a Chernobyl though. 3 Mile Island is the best comparison.

We’ve got the second worst nuclear accident in history and still, despite the failure of primary and secondary cooling systems and the consequences thereof, we are still being told that nuclear power is safe and controllable.

Is it dangerous and out of control, then?

Yes and after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, this is the biggest commercial nuclear incident we’ve yet been told about.

It was cutting edge 30+ years back, modern designs always learn from the errors of the past, since Chernoble they no longer use gravity fed reactors, since Windscale the filtration systems have been altered, and this Japanese reactors ‘flaw’ of relying on the cooling water has been solved on the current reactors by making them passively cooled.

If you look at the statistics then by kWh nuclear is by far and away the safest power source we’ve ever used, ironically hydro comes out by far and away the most dangerous.

Ok.
I’ll put it another way:

Every single system designed by human beings, thus far, has, at some point, failed.
Humans make mistakes – it’s in our nature.

Up until the 20th century, the consequences of these mistakes and the subsequent system failures have been on a very small scale.
With nuclear power however, the consequences of our mistakes obviously have a far greater impact and significance, one that has the potential to fundamentally change the relationship between our species and our planet.

So, unless the humans now designing power station safety systems are fundamentally different from every other human that has ever existed, there will be more serious nuclear incidents.
It is inevitable.

And that is why, despite all the reassurances in the world, many people are very, very suspicious about nuclear power.

Rusty Spanner,

There’s a good book called ”Risk: the science and politics of fear” by Dan Gardner which you might enjoy – it turns on its head scary kneejerk reactions to incidents like this.

poly, that looks like a really good read.
More info here if anyone wants to read more about it.

If you look at the statistics then by kWh nuclear is by far and away the safest power source we’ve ever used, ironically hydro comes out by far and away the most dangerous.

How many people have died from hydro power stations exploding?

chernobly UN report claims 9000 cancer related deaths as aresult of the radiation. Greeenpeace 250,000 and i think the use of the term per KWh may be very important in that unreferenced statistics quoted above
i was wondering how many died as a result of solar panels collecting electricity hence my belief that the kwh is the critical – any chance of a source and actuall numbers?
Coal and gas are presumably high due to themining of the raw material rather than the generation per se I assume hence mis leading??

How many people have died from hydro power stations exploding?

There are many ways that people can be killed in an industrial setting that don’t involve explosions. Given that the total death toll from Chernobyl is estimated at about 60 it’s not actually that big a claim. The death toll from Piper Alpha was three times that, but I’ve never heard of that being a reason to stop exploring or producing oil and gas.

Well whatever happens, tomorrow night after work I’m having a ‘nuclear supper’.
Fission chips.

Could try this:

I was also surprised when I read that hydro power has the greatest number of fatalities per kWh, but then I read about several nasty accidents, eg one in Russia where about 70 people were killed due to a phenomenon known as “water hammer”, caused by blockage of one of the inlet ducts (see link to BBC website):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8216138.stm

From memory, one of the reasons why the death toll was so high was that some visitors were having a plant tour at the same time.

Also, haven’t heard much about the Japanese oil refinery that seemed to be burning uncontrollably just after the quake / tsunami.

Back to the Japanese reactors, the US Nuclear Energy Institute has a lot of details on their website, eg:

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/factsheet/radiation-and-the-japanese-nuclear-reactors/

And a nice cutaway picture of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 station

http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h384/reactor1/BoilingWaterReactorDesign_3.jpg