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As a fellow Tokyo resident, newly-minted quake survivor, and even fellow UFC aficionado, I found this guy's reprinted letter of explanation quite comforting. We
by veidr 16y ago
As a fellow Tokyo resident, newly-minted quake survivor, and even fellow UFC aficionado, I found this guy's reprinted letter of explanation quite comforting. We've been kind of worrying about the nuke meltdown scenarios, and wondering if maybe we should find some pretext for a quick trip abroad in the next couple days.
And so I read this post, and nodded, and though 'Hmm, ok, good... OK, sounds reasonable. Oh, I see, great!'
And then I got to the end, and some little circuit in my brain switched on, and I realized I felt just a little bit too comforted.
As if this post, from a first-time blogger, might actually be the work product of some agent of the US pro-nuke consortium that's trying to get clearance (not to mention indemnification from liability) to build many billions of dollars worth of new plants in the US. Or, perhaps more plausibly, merely the comforting words of a family friend trying to reassure people who weren't really in a position to do much about things in any case. And whose dad works in the nuke industry, with whatever subconscious bias that might convey.
But hey, fuck it: taking that article at face value will make it easier to sleep tonight, so until morning at least I think I'll try to do that. So thanks for posting it!
- radu_floricica 16y agoThere is a reason I feel much relieved after reading this. Pretty much everything I've read so far implied that once there is a meltdown, all bets are off. We'll have radioactive material boiling in open air, and all the "good" things that come with it. Which sounded very suspicious to me... I mean, isn't containment designed to prevent exactly that? Once the fuel melts, it just makes a hole on the bottom of the containment and pools on the floor? So for me, the money shot was here: > For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), which is filled with graphite, all inside the third containment. This is the so-called “core catcher”. If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down. edit: Plus reading about INES, there was a British plant that had 5 (five) level 4 incidents in 25 years, and a partial core meltdown at a French plant. And many more.
- illumin8 16y agoExcept that "Fukushima Dai-ichi No.1 Reactor does not have a concrete containment dome. This reactor was built before the now familiar reinforced concrete dome became mandatory for most reactors. Instead, the reactor has a much smaller steel containment vessel around the reactor vessel." This was from a Slashdot comment, so I trust it about equally to a newly minted blog with only a single post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2033910&cid=35463272 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2033910&cid=35463272 Someone with more knowledge of nuclear power history could surely cross reference the dates here for us and confirm/deny the existence of the 3rd containment layer: Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 - 439 MWe BWR, 1971 - Automatically shut down - Water level decreasing - Pressure release implemented - Explosion observed - Containment believed intact - Seawater injection has started - Radiation levels did not rise after explosion Unit 2 - 760 MWe BWR, 1974 - Automatically shut down - Water level lower but steady - Preparations for pressure release Unit 3 - 760 MWe BWR, 1976 - Automatically shut down - Preparations for pressure release Unit 4 - 760 MWe BWR, 1978 - Shut for periodic inspection Unit 5 - 760 MWe BWR, 1978 - Shut for periodic inspection Unit 6 - 1067 MWe BWR, 1979 - Shut for periodic inspection