Tsunami in Japan

Started by Le'eylan, March 11, 2011, 08:13:48 AM

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Tsanten Eywa 'eveng

Quote from: archaic on January 02, 2014, 11:40:53 AM
And remember, nuclear power is perfectly safe.

Yeah, and that say you. I say NO to nuclear power. It's a total waste, and you losing time. That is one of the things that is holding us back to make Earth a better place to live on. Nuclear power is one of the reasons.

archaic

Nuclear power is safe, under perfect conditions, within very specific definitions of 'safe', and ignoring future problems with spent fuel and other highlevel waste.


Current green energy options are not yet able to bridge the energy gap, and fossil fuels have a massive steaming pile of their own problems. So do many hydro electric schemes.
TBH, no option is perfect, but for me nuclear is pretty hard to accept. I know several countries have delayed or canceled nuclear power plant construction schemes in response to the original Fukushima explosions.

  :(  :o
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Toruk Makto

Safe? Unsafe? A reactor complex that was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami is hardly a representative sample.

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Toruk Makto


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Tsanten Eywa 'eveng



archaic

This .....
http://enenews.com/steam-coming-from-fukushima-unit-3-reactor-building-observed-multiple-times-this-week
is an edited version of this .....
http://topinfopost.com/2013/12/31/fukushima-plant-expected-to-effect-the-entire-northern-hemisphere

Which is poorly researched doom mongering.
Quote
You may want to get "Disposable Plastic Shoe Covers" to help avoid at least SOME of the radiation getting onto your shoes.  These shoe covers are cheap, and you throw them away as soon as you get inside your destination.
I've used these things plenty of times, inside they do the job, just. Outside, they won't last 100 paces on anything even slightly ruff, like cement or blacktop.





Quote from: Toruk Makto on January 02, 2014, 12:24:59 PM
Safe? Unsafe? A reactor complex that was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami is hardly a representative sample.
Facepalm!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents
Pasha, an Avatar story, my most recent fanfic, Avatar related, now complete.

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`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

A lot of things could cause steam to come from a damaged nuclear plant.

That article is a real piece of bad journalism, with lots of bad information. One item in particular caught my attention-- the reactor itself did not explode. Hydrogen from breakdown of the cooling water did. If we have learned anything useful from Fukishima, it is we need to have better control of hydrogen eminated from situations where things have gone wrong. This situation, bad as it is, whould be much easier to deal with if there hadn't been those hydrogen explosions.

One thing most people do not know is there was a hydrogen explosion at Three Mile Island as well. But unlike the boiling water design, the entire reactor in a pressurized water reactor like TMI, including the reactor vessel presure head, is inside containment. The hydrogen explosion was noted as a pressure spike on a graph, and was otherwise hardly noticed. No radiation was released.

Yawey ngahu!
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Niri Te

 Because Reactors, and Aircraft are two things that we build better.
Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

The Fukishima reactors are a US design, the GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor. Many of these are in service in the US.

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Niri Te

Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

The principal components are undoubtedly General Electric. For an interesting tour of a working BWR, do a search on Youtube for 'Vermont Yankee'. You will see the building design is not all that different from the Fukishima plants.

Yawey ngahu!
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Taronyu Leleioae

Pilgrim Station in Plymouth MA just south of Boston is still in operation with a recently extended lease.  It is the same design/type/construction as Fukishima built by GE.  It also has the same design flaws including non-waterproofed backup generators that sit low near the ocean.  Boston is very much at risk of a Tsunami as well if we were to get an offshore earthquake (which has been documented through archeological research).  Further, Boston as a city is much more exposed to earthquake risk due to the old construction.  So Fukishima's issues are definitely here in the US.  Not to mention there are problems already with ground water contamination not to mention bay (ocean) environmental impact.  Unfortunately like Japan, the demand for power in the Northeast US is high and nothing has replaced the 3 that have closed (Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts (Rowe)).  However there is great debate and close eye on Pilgrim as it is rated one of the highest (if not the highest) for being at risk.  Although here, if the pressures inside the building reached critical, they would be vented unlike Fukishima.  (If I remember correctly, this venting happened at Three Mile Island to prevent the Hydrogen explosion and to release the radiation buildup within the containment building.)

Niri Te

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on January 03, 2014, 03:35:09 AM
The principal components are undoubtedly General Electric. For an interesting tour of a working BWR, do a search on Youtube for 'Vermont Yankee'. You will see the building design is not all that different from the Fukishima plants.

When we lived in Arizona, we lived 15 miles from Palo Verde Nuclear Power Generating Station, and were good friends with one of the Control Room Operators there.
Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

As safety risks go, the US east coast is pretty benign, compared to Japan. Japan sits right on top of a subduction zone, and thoise generate the strongest earthquakes that we are aware of. There are very few mechanisms for generating earthquakes (especially strong earthquakes) along the US eastern seaboard. In the Atlantic, you have the mid-Atlantic rift, and a couple minor subduction zones on the European side. The rift does not generally generate strong earthquakes, and the European subduction zones are not the kind that tend to generate the 8 and 9 magnitude quakes. The east coast can get storm surges though, but these are slow-developing events compared to earthquakes. It is relatively easy to harden auxillary generating facilities by having more than one, and separating them physically. Using different technologies (diesel, gas turbine, etc.) also helps.

I would expect that the BWRs at Fukishima and ours have similar venting mechanisms, as the hydrogen problem is now well known. It is possible that the vents at Fukishima did not operate properly due to earthquake damage. PWRs generally have much stronger containment structures, and are less likely to be damaged by a hydrogen explosion (one limiting factor being the containment structure can only hold so much oxygen to react with the hydrogen, thus making the risk self limiting). Still, they had to do some venting at TMI (and some of the hydrogen vented would be radioactive tritium). Compared to what happened at Chernoybl and Fukishima, the events at TMI were minor. In fact at a hearing about TMI in an old courthouse, someone with a geiger counter remarked that there was more radiation coming from the granite in the walls of the courtroom than was ever measured at the fence during TMI. Although a BWR has some really unique safety features, PWRs to date have been the safest reactor designs. There are some new designs out there (and a couple commercial scale projects building them) that should be much safer than either a PWR or a BWR.

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Taronyu Leleioae

Actually, don't underestimate issues with the East Coast regarding natural disasters.  I agree, that as earthquakes go Japan is far and away super active as are places like Alaska.  However, the problem is, there are certain geological conditions on the East Coast (US) particularly offshore of Boston, where a big earthquake maybe 50 miles off shore will not only generate a tsunami, it'll also suck a substantial part of Boston into the mud.  The problem is that Boston is really a bunch of small islands where massive amounts of fill (including garbage) were brought in, and kept being pushed out to sea and packed down.  Down below, we have what is known as "blue clay".  It's a sediment compacted layer, which unfortunately sits over water and other unstable voids underneath.  It has been well known that construction crews have tried to repeatedly pound in long beams as footings, only to have them literally fall or be "sucked away" from underneath never to be seen again.  It's unstable ground.

Where this comes into play... is that I was at a senior regional emergency management conference a number of years ago where even the Deputy Chief's of Boston were in attendance.  Much to everyone's shock, the federal reports were given on how much Boston was likely to collapse.  That 95% of Boston's emergency services infrastructure wasn't even likely to get out of the building, and where the most vulnerable points were for flooding and other issues.  Unfortunately, you guessed it, south shore is also built on fill and other unstable ground.  How secure Pilgrim Station really is, is anybody's guess.  But, further, that there have been a number of recorded earthquakes and tsunamis in this area.  Not to the frequency of Fukishima, but they certainly have happened.  It's just that few people have been here as Boston, like the rest of the US, is only 400 years old with regard to record keeping.  (Hint...  Boston is "overdue"... for whatever that statistic is worth...)

The reality is, Japan is much worse off, and we've seen it.  I, let alone a number of friends of mine, would never to have seen a containment building actually blow up on live tv.  But it has given the emergency management agencies here much to discuss.  The problem is that the contractors who run Pilgrim Station, are typically saying...  "It'll never happen to us...  We're perfectly safe..."  And have no plans (nor want to spend the funding...) to waterproof and put the backup generators up on platforms above a guestimated tsunami water height.  It's about profit.  So we're definitely at risk here.  And while Pilgrim has generally run smoothly over time, it's the unexpected that really causes the chaos.

Truthfully, new reactors are much much much safer and have better engineering.  But as the multi-billion dollar waste facility will not be utilized, the US must primarily store the waste on site.  Which doesn't make sense.  Maine was closed because the reactor just could not be repaired effectively.  (Steam tubing was shot and the efficiency was degrading.)  I think this will likely be the last operating license for Pilgrim after this cycle.

Niri Te

 THAT would be a very good thing, ma Taronyu.
Tokx alu tawtute, Tirea Le Na'vi

archaic

Japan get lots of Earthquakes and tsunami, so they prepare. Admittedly, not adequately for 2011.

The US eastern sea get very few Earthquakes, generally mild ones at that and seldom is hit by tsunami, so they do not prepare. Mid plate Earthquakes are rarer, but still happen. Then there's the La Palma collapse tsunami scenario, which could inundate some or all of the eastern seaboard, depending on who's prediction you believe, if any.
Worst case, you wouldn't need to worry about waterproofed back up generators. As a wave more than one hundred fifty feet high would sweep maybe twenty miles inland flattening virtually everything in it's path and killing a sizable chunk of the population of that entire region.
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Taronyu Leleioae

Quote from: archaic on January 03, 2014, 06:19:36 PM
Japan get lots of Earthquakes and tsunami, so they prepare. Admittedly, not adequately for 2011.

The US eastern sea get very few Earthquakes, generally mild ones at that and seldom is hit by tsunami, so they do not prepare. Mid plate Earthquakes are rarer, but still happen. Then there's the La Palma collapse tsunami scenario, which could inundate some or all of the eastern seaboard, depending on who's prediction you believe, if any.
Worst case, you wouldn't need to worry about waterproofed back up generators. As a wave more than one hundred fifty feet high would sweep maybe twenty miles inland flattening virtually everything in it's path and killing a sizable chunk of the population of that entire region.

ma Archaic, I think you have your facts mistaken.  And I think you live here too?  The eastern seaboard (particularly the northeast) gets (smaller) earthquakes all the time.  In fact there are known positions even where these stress reliefs happen.  Great Lakes along the St. Lawrence is one of them just inside Canada.  It's absolutely true that the east coast does not get nearly as noticeable (or frequent) large earthquakes as Japan or California, but they are there all the time.  If you don't think they'd happen here, the Appalachian Mountains are two ancient plates slammed together.  They still shift.  There is a known fault line two towns from here along the side/edge of a rail line that they always keep measured. 

What's different, is our ground rock.  The transmission waves are different.  But a smaller (say 4) earthquake can really travel.  We've had some in Maine, that were felt in Pennsylvania.  But I agree we tend (keyword) not to get as much damage.  Having said that, we had one about 10 years ago, and I watched the plaster wall split...  As to the generators, it's amazing they didn't make such things mandatory.  Further, with all the cable and power lines they put in, exactly how hard is it to create a remote power generator station to allow an 18 wheeler truck hauling a big generator, to roll up, hook up, and feed power through dedicated lines back to the power station?  This could be a relatively easy retro fit, but it's not considered economical.

BTW, one of the main eastern seaboard seismic monitoring stations is here in Massachusetts.  It's because of the granite and fault lines.  If there's one in Chicago, they'll know about it.  Not a very big facility.  But interesting to tour and see how they monitor as well as filter sawtute made events out of the data...

As to preparations, well, the public isn't really prepared.  But higher levels of emergency management does run scenarios for this and has response plans in place.  However I agree, if it happens, I hope I'm not anywhere within 10 miles of the coast...

Tìtstewan


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