7 ms·
Kind of surprising at this point that there’s not an area directly below the bottom of the reactor with a giant ceramic catch basin (or something similarly heat
by rtkwe 9y ago
Kind of surprising at this point that there’s not an area directly below the bottom of the reactor with a giant ceramic catch basin (or something similarly heat resistant) to catch these failures and cleared of pipes etc so when this happens cleanup workers know the location of the materials.
- eberkund 9y agoI think that is easier said than done, the temperatures are in the several thousands of degrees here.
- IshKebab 9y agoClay would hold that wouldn't it?
- Neil44 9y agoDepends, most types of ceramic are molten by 1300-1400 centigrade
- faceplanted 9y agoThese catchers exist, they use a ceramic-concrete mixture with a massive melting temperature.
- askvictor 9y agoAnd radioactive. Which changes the atoms if which your containment material is made of. Which makes things much, much more difficult.
- philipkglass 9y agoThat's part of some newer reactor designs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_catcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_catcher
- petre 9y agoExpensive. The concrete can also crack in the event of an earthquake.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoNot as expensive as having to clean up three reactors worth of nuclear meltdown and a few exploded reactors. I'm sure they can prevent the concrete from cracking in an earthquake.
- petre 9y agoCheaper solutions exist, such as the one with borosilicate sand on the bottom of the reactor. Building passive cooling pools with those resources is orders of magnitude more useful because it prevents a meltdown rather than attempting to catch the molten core. The ESBWR uses such a passive cooling design. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Simplified_Boiling_Water_Reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Simplified_Boiling_...
- jjoonathan 9y ago> Kind of surprising at this point Fukushima was built when the nuclear power industry was 13 years old. Now it's 63 years old. You are seeing the folly of youth, with consequences delayed 60 years, not a design that would be typical of new construction.
- Rapzid 9y agoSounds like life :| Those cigarettes you smoked in your early twenties? Those beers you smashed working in IT? 63 will be interesting..
- jdubs 9y agoelaborate plz
- jacquesm 9y agoThe trick is not to give in to peer pressure.
- distances 9y ago> Those beers you smashed working in IT? 63 will be interesting.. If any, I'd guess this correlation to be negative vs. the general population
- collectively 9y agoYou know if you stopped smoking in your early twenties they’re not likely to affect you when 63. So this is more like smoking crack in your twenties.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoBut but but beer is healthy! It's what people drank all the time in the middle ages etc, it was better than the water. [/excuses]
- bamboozled 9y agoNuclear scientist's weren't like "naive" teenagers though. Sure the design could've been better; However by your logic they had 50 years to take extra safety pre-cautions and improve the structure. In-fact, it still absolutely amazes me it was even running at the time of the disaster and built on a coast in a country notorious for Tsunamis.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI have seen reactor designs with a borosilicate sand pile under the reactor. Presumably the molten core will turn the sand into borosilicate glass which not only freezes at a high temperature but is also a radiation shield.
- sschueller 9y agoWasn't something like that poured under Chernobyl after the accident which prevented the radioactive slurry from entering deep into the ground?
- frik 9y agoThe Russians handled the catastrophe better and faster. International help sender them low tech robots, Russians poured tunnels below within days/weeks with lot of human contractors. But Japan is doing little. Contaminated fluids leak into the sea that swaps to Hawaii and west coast ever since 2011. It's the local culture of loosing face that seems to be at odds with handling it and a major corruption problem. After 6 years Japan has done so little, compared to the Chernobyl Sarcophagus and all the handling inside and ever since. Why is there not more international pressure to Japan to do more and do it faster? They have to do it no matter what the costs are or if the have the resources, it doesn't matter - the rest of the world population will thank you for less pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_sarcophagus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_...
- nate_meurer 9y agoPerhaps it's a language barrier, but this comment makes no sense. The low-tech robots you speak of were uniformly useless, and the people working on the initial cleanup and containment were sent on what were essentially suicide missions. Information is easy to find; just google for stories about the Chernobyl liquidators. Regarding the radiation, I think you've fallen victim to ignorance of basic facts about the nature of radiation and the oceans. Pretty much anywhere in the Pacific, radiation from Fukushima quickly dropped far below environmental background levels [1]. 1 - http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=127297 http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=127297 Here's a good quote from the source above: "The highest levels of cesium (10 Bq/m3) attributable to Fukushima that we have measured were found 1,500 miles north of Hawaii. Swimming every day in the ocean there would still result in a dose 1,000 time smaller than the radiation we receive with a single dental x-ray."
- nielsbot 9y agoI remember reading articles right after the disaster saying some engineers/scientists tried to warn people that the design had some critical safety flaws.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three But not sure this really points to lack of caution? Personally, I think we need low carbon power sources, but emotionally (irrationally?) nuclear fission always feels like "apes toying with God's fire"
- phkahler 9y agoI still think they should fight fire with for. A small tactical nuclear bomb just inland of the plant could blow it all into the ocean where the material would sink. ;-)
- narrator 9y agoThat would just end up like the Marshall Islands where they did the H-Bomb tests. They are still too contaminated to live on.
- franklin_cobb 9y agoI think they tried, but the radiation was too hot and melted through the steel and concrete below. This was an old facility, so it was probably built with that idea in mind. It just failed. On a related note, I live in Chiba, which is a fair distance south of Fukushima. The rain and wind drove the radiation into my area after the accident. I still have interesting radiation readings in my rain gutters and spouts.