Why is so much attention being paid to the nuclear reactor?
I’m not a scientist, but this article by William Tucker in the WSJ seems to make a great deal of sense and is worth quoting at length.
The gist of it is that Fukushima Daiichi ain’t Chernobyl. Nor is it likely to be much of a problem except an economic one, as well as a political one if it’s exploited by the anti-nuclear power forces:
If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor””as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami””the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate…
None of this amounts to “another Chernobyl.” The Chernobyl reactor had two crucial design flaws. First, it used graphite (carbon) instead of water to “moderate” the neutrons, which makes possible the nuclear reaction. The graphite caught fire in April 1986 and burned for four days. Water does not catch fire.
Second, Chernobyl had no containment structure. When the graphite caught fire, it spouted a plume of radioactive smoke that spread across the globe. A containment structure would have both smothered the fire and contained the radioactivity.
If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor.
What the Japanese earthquake has proved is that even the oldest containment structures can withstand the impact of one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history. The problem has been with the electrical pumps required to operate the cooling system. It would be tragic if the result of the Japanese accident were to prevent development of Generation III reactors, which eliminate this design flaw.
Much of the MSM, however, seems hard at work to keep such information from us. Granted, it’s a bit technical, and requires a soupé§on of intelligence to understand, but not anything beyond the range of most people. However, here are some answers to the question I posed in the title of this post:
The more ominous outcome—or the possibility of it—fits into the agenda of the left very nicely.
Compared to the earthquake and tsunami, it is a story with focus and a single locus rather than a spread-out tale of death and destruction over a wide area.
It is happening in real time. Therefore, it has a powerful element of suspense, rather than just tragedy.
There is a movielike aspect to the story being hyped by the press—“The China Syndrome,” to be exact. So many people think they know the possibilities, because they’re been prepared to think that way by the film, which provides the template. The actual events that occurred at Chernobyl—the technical aspects of which elude most people or have been forgotten—can be used in the same way to stir up anxiety. Anxiety has two functions: it boosts viewership/readership and it serves the needs of the anti-nuclear-power folks, who will stir it up (and count on scientific illiteracy, as well) in an attempt to curtail the development of nuclear power in this country and around the world.
[NOTE: It is ironic that the worst problem here may come through an attempt at recycling nuclear waste:
Nuclear experts are particularly worried about the No. 3 unit, supplied by Toshiba Corp., because it uses an unconventional fuel called MOX fuel, short for mixed oxide.
It is made by mixing low-enriched uranium with plutonium that has been recycled from a global stockpile of defunct nuclear weapons. This recycling is part of an international effort to decrease the number of nuclear weapons and move from “megatons to megawatts.”
MOX fuel has greater concentrations of “actinides,” or radioactive elements and runs hotter than conventional fuel, so a shut down plant would have to deal with more “decay” or residual heat from fuel rods.
This reminds me of another recycling problem that seems to have arisen with a completely different product—cardboard cereal boxes made from recycled paper that might leak chemicals toxic to human beings (hat tip: Artfldgr).
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.]
[ADDENDUM: Here’s some of the metaphorical fallout (of the political variety) in Germany, where the Spiegel headline blares “Nuclear Disaster ‘Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11.'” It ignores a host of things, including the fact that, at least so far, there has been no nuclear disaster—except for the effect on the functioning of the plant itself, which will almost undoubtedly never go online again.]
To eliminate the problem of meltdown completely, the transition to Generation IV reactors is needed, that is, those that use molten salts, not water, as coolant. The fuel also must be liquid, dissolved in this salts. When there is nothing to melt, all already melted, reliability drastically improves. Lithium fluoride thorium reactors would be almost completely safe.
I recall that after the BP spill the lefties were telling us that the Gulf of Mexico was going to be destroyed. As a friend used to say, don’t count your dead chickens before they stink.
This also reminds me of “sludge,” the cadmium-laced residual created in abundance when the Clean Water Act bound local industries to secondary treatment plants that generated the stuff. A big component in justifying the absurdly RCRA bill was cleaning up this sludge.
Just a reminder about the intrinsic problem with Big Green – or Big Anything, for that matter. When you get problems defined on such a scale that all measurement and efficacy is chained to the realm of conjecture, you have a situation that wants devolution. I did a study of the EPA in grad school a few years ago, and I found it impossible to answer the basic question, “Does the EPA do more good than harm?” with empirical evidence (I of course have evidence I like, and for theoretical Madisonian reasons I think the EPA is a disaster, but none of that is dispositive for an audience). And that problem, I submitted, arose because the problems set by the EPA were intrinsically nebulous, and hence measuring them and the attempts to address them was somewhat like trying to measure how much fairy dust is required to make unicorns stop pooping in the street.
Nebulousness always serves Power. Power hates non-centralization because immediate problems facing people immediately are harder to obfuscate, making propaganda harder to jam through the cracks in human reason.
But here we are (we = journalists and those influenced by them), looking at a country on the other side of the earth, with an industry we hardly understand, facing something in that industry that very few have any clue about, talking confidently about The Problem and The Solution.
It’s easy to forget that the ignorance is pervasive, and the only thing clear in all of that haze is that there is an Agenda and the whole narrative serves it. Power, in short, is just doing what it does – stoking the fires of ignorance to generate a saturating fog, and then defining the fog in such a way that only Power can dispel it.
Sorry, I’m cranky today, and frankly I’m sick of seeing that damn reactor explode – pretty soon even I’ll start believing that it was a “nuclear explosion.” To quote SteveH from yesterday’s thread, “I’m sick of their sh*t.”
Sorry, that should be “the absurd RCRA bill.”
In Japan, do they call it the “Brazil Syndrome”?
Mr. Frank: yes, the BP spill is another excellent example. It was used by the left and Obama to stop drilling.
Sergey,
I agree, MSR type reactors are the way of the future and there is a lot of thorium on the planet. Beyond the advantages you mention there is the scale of size advantage; small reactors can be built to provide power to a city 100,000 or a series of spaced out small reactors could power a single state’s grid.
Neo,
In this particular case the boogie man fear of all things radioactive-radiation (most of the public thinks atomic bomb) is especially appealing to the media. They get to beat up on the liberal/green hatred of nuclear technology. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
People, liberals in particular, desperately want to believe a risk free world is possible if only government regulates enough and spends enough money. They rarely stop to think about the fact that life is full of risks and that as individuals and as a society we have to find the balance between risk and reward.
Why is so much attention being paid to the nuclear reactor?
Radioactivity is scary because it’s invisible, and because most people know absolutely nothing about it. It’s bad juju.
Magnets have some similar characteristics – invisible lines of force, action at a distance – but are considered good juju. Calculations of the electronic Zeeman energy (i.e., energy changes induced by the magnetic field) somehow just don’t capture all that good mystical healing power, that’s all. Ask Shirley Maclaine.
Electromagnetic fields generally are of mostly bad juju. Those 60 Hz emissions from transmission towers induce (pun intended) all sorts of maladies in hypochondriacs and other neurotics, as do the evil emanations from cell phones. And when someone characterizes those emissions and emanations as “radiation,” we’re definitely talking bad juju.
And we make fun of the natives in Borneo. We can talk.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7638
Perhaps more detail than you want, but what is more important here is that the reactors that might be ruined produce in total six percent of Japans electricity. When added to the oil fires at various refinaries I think we are about to see years of power issues for Japan, unless they can find ways to conserve and rapidly shift to battery extension and other power saving technologies. It will take years to build the grid back up to previous capacity.
I’m glad some people here like thorium.
Thorium, eventually moving to fusion and flexible solar panels is my vision of the future. Odds are though this won’t happen because of our
A. Capital systems short sightedness
B. The mob mentality concerning nuclear power and even the slightest doses of radiation.
Why is so much attention being paid to the nuclear reactor?
What Occam’s Beard said, plus:
It’s Japan!
What’s the first thing most college kids (of all ages) think of when they hear Japan, unless they like sushi? Godzilla. Hiroshima. Monster movies.
If they weren’t having nuke problems, they’d be focusing on “what effect will this have on Japan’s sushi supply” or something like that. (rice supply hurt, bunch of boats hurt, possible need to re-map places before you can take a boat through)
For crying out loud, some blankers’ first response was to think about Pearl Harbor and those moron Whale warrior asses. It’s word association that’s then used to promote the reporters’ worldview.
Radiophobia is certainly a legacy of cold war and all these fallout shelters hysteria of 60-s. Before WWII radiation was cool. Nobody feared it, and glowing clock faces were trendy. And they contained radium salts in such quantities that induced skin cancer! It is amazing how little attention people paid to radiation in 50-s. Rather trivial ilnesses almost automatically led to X-ray examination, and shoe shops were endowed by X-ray machines, so customers could see their bones when trying on shoes. Several pairs in a row, some times! Only Hiroshima put an end to it. And before Chernobyl everybody believed that nuclear power plants were safe.
Invisibility and harmfulness contribute to mass hysteria, but in themselves are not enough. Bacteria and viruses are also invisible and often deadly, but if a person washes hands every ten minutes and constantly worries about get infected, we rightfully call him neurotic. Nozophobia occures, but it is not a social norm or even common pathology. And radiophobia is almost universal and amounts to what Freud described as universal neurosis. In our times, at least.
Sergey –
it’s got to be unusual, too. See: swine flu, etc.
The French don’t seem to have it, and the Japanese at least have a dang good reason….
“Radiophobia is certainly a legacy of cold war and all these fallout shelters hysteria of 60-s.”
No.
It is the result of ignorance. A product of our education system has in spades.
Here’s a good link to the structure of containment built into the reactor:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
The entire scenario certainly plays right into the left/econuts agenda. They’ve been on the antinuke bandwagon since the 70’s. General radiophobia can probably be traced to lie mainly within the Boomer generation. I remember as a kid hearing about the threat of nuclear war, hiding under school desks, watching bad scifi on TV…. all could contribute to a paraniod outlook with respect to nukes. Despite the fact that such fear is totally non-rational, it does seem widespread among my comtemporaries.
I worry much more about my older daughter’s newly minted dirver’s license and the threat it brings to her existence than the nuke plane 25 miles from our house.
Oops…. nuke PLANT (though I know at one time there were plans for a nuke plane also)
Michael Crichton has a great video of a speech he gave on this very subject titled “States of fear-science or politics”. Discusses the Chernobyl disaster that really wasn’t a disaster at the 4:00 mark. The whole thing is damning of the press and well worth watching. Here..
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/video-speeches-independent.html
The Germans are superprimed for hysteria over anything nuclear. Every disturbance at a power plant makes the news, even if it is only a circuit breaker kicking on in a lunchroom.
I was here in the south during the Chernobyl explosion, and the area around us had lots of produce farms that had to have all their vegies tested. The manager of a local castle used as a hunting lodge by its owner was planning for a hunting party for the owner’s noble friends. He called the university to ask whether they would test some truffles they were planning to serve and how many they would need for a sample. The guy handling the testing was a bit more worried about the local farmers, so he said he would need a kilo. There was no follow up from the castle. I have often wondered whether those guys still glow in the dark.
BTW, Merkel is suspending the operating extensions for the older reactors for 3 months during which their safety will be re-evaluated. This should get her over the current hysteria (as opposed to reasoned concern) and past the Chernobyl anniversary memorials (or celebrations if you are a Green looking at the next local election). Meanwhile I am avoiding certain friends because I just can’t bear hearing them talk about this.
The guy handling the testing was a bit more worried about the local farmers, so he said he would need a kilo.
Think all those truffles found their way to the testing lab? Or have I become too cynical in my dotage?
You know, the caviar might be hot, too. Also the champagne. A couple of cases should just about suffice for testing.
Ooh. And lobsters too. They really concentrate radioisotopes. Gotta test them. Just for safety’s sake.
No truffles were submitted for testing. I assumed they didn’t need candles to light the dinner table.
Here is a website that was recommended by commenter Vic at Ace of Spades. I think he is a nuclear engineer, possibly in the Navy (I’m not entirely sure).
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
Click on each headline for more detailed information.
The steam could have been vented through the turbine circuit. There never was an overriding need to vent it to the world.
During normal operations the high pressure steam falls all the way down to a soft vacuum in the condensers. That stuff is still there.
Even if it can’t spin — the need is to vent but a trickle of steam.
The last thing you can permit is so much back pressure that new coolant can’t come in.
Yet that’s exactly what these Homer Simpsons have done.
Amazing.
I have a friend that grew up near Hanford, WA in the 50s. He had a pencil he’d kept from one of the gas stations. It has a small plastic piece up by the eraser that was purported to contain nuclear material. Now, it’s unlikely it was radioactive, but still…
No wonder Japan is having issues with their reactors… all the Nuclear engineers are on these blogs when they should be in Japan helping them.
Things seem to have taken a turn for the worst with a third explosion. Can someone tell us what is happening?
Y’know, all joking aside, slightly radioactive isn’t exactly a death sentence.
I grew up in a home where the fireplace had several rocks from a uranium mine built into it, because they were pretty; my dad grew up in the same house and helped build that fireplace as a child.
Slight contamination of truffles is probably an outstanding example of “dumb rich guy wasting valuable resources.” (Probably the reason the story was told originally– it’s a classic pattern.)
Aside from low actual amounts of radiation release / exposure from all this… I’ve also read that the stuff that might be released has a short half life (as in weeks or a couple months)… This really is a MSM circus.
1. Foxfier Says:
“I grew up in a home where the fireplace had several rocks from a uranium mine built into it, because they were pretty; my dad grew up in the same house and helped build that fireplace as a child.”
They don’t have to be from a uranium mine. Hold a Geiger counter up a red brick wall sometime.
The worst ‘everyday’ thing the average person could do radiation exposure wise, imo, is probably smoking cigarettes. Has radioactive particles that lodge in the lungs and can not be cleaned out by the body… and a long half life (I think 20 years for the particles in question).
*grin* Yeah, but folks freak when they hear the word “uranium.”
Granite is radioactive, too, isn’t it?
Altitudes, especially flying… local radiation levels… getting regular dental work….
The Japanese government a couple of hours ago announced radiation levels at the Daiichi site were 400,000 microsieverts, significantly higher than the 1,000 microsieverts announced yesterday. The workers on site trying to cool down the core are true heroes. Wish them success if for nothing else than their brave determination.
Incredible uncut video of the destruction of one town:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8380309/Japan-earthquake-eye-witness-records-tsunami-destroying-town-in-under-7-minutes.html
The cameraman is on steps going up a hill: as he retreats, the black surge comes on faster and faster and more powerfully. First cars, then trucks and boats, then the buildings themselves give way. And the black water wipes away the place where he was standing. Finally, you see the whole city moving. Unbelievable.
“Capital systems short sightedness”
Yeah, those 5-year plans worked out great for the Soviet Union, didn’t they Brad? No it was only becuase they didn’t have the *right people* making the decisions. If they had some smart guys – like, say, Brad! – deciding everything for the rest of us idiots it would have all been peachy keen, skittles and unicorns for everybody.
Give it up, pal. You lost that argument decades ago.
France has built their nuclear power plants by government-funded program. It was not 5-year plan, but 25-year plan. And DeGaulle had a habit to ignore all mass protests and public opinion completely. The only people whose opinion he wanted to hear were scientists and engineers, as is proper to former military commander.
Two other blog entires covering this, with links to various sources.
Coyote Blog
Patterico I
Patterico II
P.S., in the comments for the second Patt link lies this gorgeous gem:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward–reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton
The difference in German and French approach to nuclear energy roots in their approach to democracy: In France it is so old and boring that nobody takes it seriously anymore, but in Germany it is a novelty which is worshiped religiously.
I have to say this… my comments on this topic have been scant, not because I don’t care about this horrifying turn of events, but because the exchanges of “experts” everywhere, not just here but all over the ‘webs, make it clear to me that there is pretty much nobody I can trust to know what he’s talking about.
Again vested interests and clashing egos have clouded what was supposed to be a clear-cut matter of objective scientific reality. Again the truth will out only once we have the 20/20 vision of hindsight.
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