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This strikes me more as a political stunt by Merkel to rally the conservative base in Germany than anything else. Still, it doesn't surprise me that this is su

• drzaiusapelord 16y ago
  If one of the worst earthquakes on record can't break the containment vessel in these old plants, then I think we're actually doing very well.
  • Roritharr 16y ago
    it is not clear at this moment if the containment vessel is damaged or not. the spike in radiation levels that was measured lately does indicate that it is broken. Edit: If you want to read up on the radiation levels: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110315-red-alert-radiation-rising-and-heading-south-japan http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110315-red-alert-radiatio...
    • jonknee 16y ago
      ... Which would mean an explosion damaged the containment vessel. The earthquake did remarkably little damage to the plant.
      • jedsmith 16y ago
        You do realize that everything that has happened at the plant since the earthquake, including that explosion, is a direct result of the earthquake, right? That's like saying the airliners didn't take down the World Trade Center, the fire did. There wouldn't have been a fire if it weren't for the airliners. The earthquake and subsequent effects of the earthquake destroyed these reactors. It's a pointless distinction to say otherwise, designed to soften the blow to nuclear power's reputation.
        • jonknee 16y ago
          Of course, but I find your analogy quite poor. All I meant was that the plant [apparently] suffered no damage from the earthquake (which was quite a bit stronger than it had been designed to withstand). It was the tsunami--also larger than the sea wall was designed to withstand--knocking out power that got the plant into its current state. A cache of compatible backup generators that were kept high enough or remotely enough could have prevented this disaster.
    • deleted 16y ago
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    • homecoded 16y ago
      The news ticker at heute.de was pretty sure about it, saying there are two holes each eight square meters in size in reactor 4. Of course I can't say how much truth lies in that statement.
      • ErrantX 16y ago
        That's talking about the reactor building (i.e. the outer walls). It's not 100% clear but they were at one point demolishing those walls to help vent hydrogen from the building. But I saw anbother source saying an explosion in that building caused the holes. (Unit 4, BTW, is shut down & stable, but it is the building with the fire in the spent fuel pond)
      • CountHackulus 16y ago
        The Brazillian news was claiming that a huge nuclear fallout cloud was heading their way and that everyone should stock up on iodine. The Austrian news was claiming that the meltdown was fully under way and that hell on earth was about to be unleashed. I'd wait until we have clear news about what's going on before making an opinion.
    • nakkiel 16y ago
      AFAIK the radiations might come from the fire in rector 4.
• jgrahamc 16y ago
  Which beliefs? That a nuclear power station situated in a major earthquake zone next to the coast could magically survive a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami? Right now, we don't know how serious this situation is, it could be that this will end with a small amount of radiation leaked and four reactors that have to be decommissioned. Or it could end with a major environmental disaster. We simply don't know yet. I'd caution calm and not following in the footsteps of Germany. Let's wait and see. In a few weeks we may be reconsidering nuclear power, or we may be marveling at how well those plants survived what happened to them.
  • paganel 16y ago
    > That a nuclear power station situation in a major earthquake zone next to the coast could magically survive a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami? The un-posed question is "what happens if a group of terrorists fly an A380 directly into one of these plants"? Someone on reddit was mentioning that a nuclear plant in Texas was built to "withstand a direct hit from an F-16 traveling at supersonic speeds", but I guess an A380 is so much heavier and larger than a F-16. Because right now terrorists don't even need to get access to the US aerial space, they can hit a nuclear plant in Mexic (let's say this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laguna_Verde_Nuclear_Power_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laguna_Verde_Nuclear_Power_Stat...) and still be able to cause important damage to the US population. Here's the reddit comment I was talking about: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/g3tfr/and_you_are_telling_me_nuclear_power_isnt_safe/c1kpxqk http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/g3tfr/and_you_are_tell...
    • jgrahamc 16y ago
      You might enjoy reading "Deterring Terrorism: Aircraft Crash Impact Analyses Demonstrate Nuclear Power Plant’s Structural Strength" http://www.nei.org/filefolder/EPRI_Nuclear_Plant_Structural_Study_2002.pdf http://www.nei.org/filefolder/EPRI_Nuclear_Plant_Structural_...
    • Qz 16y ago
      KE = 1/2mv^2, so depending on how supersonic they're talking about, it could very well withstand an A380 impact as well as a supersonic F16.
• deleted 16y ago
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• thematt 16y ago
  Why? I actually think the events of the past week prove it's safety. Let put it in perspective: a 40 year old nuclear reactor gets hit by a 9 magnitude earthquake, then slammed with 20 ft. tall swell of water, followed by an explosion due to the buildup of hydrogen gas that blows off the roof of the building, and after all that the core was still mostly intact and contained. That seems like an amazingly positive result to me.
  • xlpz 16y ago
    What potentially devastating consequences would there be if instead of a nuclear plant a windmill had been hit by an earthquake, tsunami and explosion? I honestly fail to be impressed by this kind of reasoning about nuclear energy's safety. Disclaimer: I still think fission power might be better in the long run than coal power (catastrophic global warming is worse than any nuclear disaster), but I'd rather do without either and strive for 100% renewable energies. It can be done, just needs the willingness to do it.
    • newguy889 16y ago
      How much land needs to be paved over with windmills to equal the power output of one nuclear plant?
      • afterburner 16y ago
        A handful of square meters per windmill, unless it's off shore and then it's none (as in no land). You realize windmills for energy production dots the Danish landscape, placed in handfuls in the middle of farms, right?
        • foobarbazetc 16y ago
          Yeah, but Denmark has a population of 5.5 million people and ample land for them and windmills.
    • ErrantX 16y ago
      The problem is that you can't (currently) replace that nuclear plant with a Windmill (or even a few Windmills) because the power production is still not high enough. So I don't feel that is an entirely fair comparison. What if such an event had hit, say, an Oil fired power station - you'd likely be looking at a reasonable level local oil contamination, and probably a large fire. I don't know how much more likely that such an event would be to happen but I am going to guess that safety and fail safes at fossil fuel stations are not quite the same as at a nuclear plant :) (in terms of your last point; it totally can. But practically speaking it is something that has to start at home. Millions of people can afford solar panels on their home; but they mostly don't bother (and some moan about the lack of action...!). And we could be pressuring local government to introduce housing regs requiring new builds to have solar panels.)
• mironathetin 16y ago
  I still remember the voices after Chernobyl: Light water reactors are safe and core meltdown can never happen, because the moderator is water. If it evaporates, the moderator is gone and the core will cool down. Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor. When the core overheated, the graphite melted together with the uranium and the nuclear reaction could not be stopped any more. Now we see how reliable those reports really are. There is no base for any beliefs, if you ask me.
  • EliRivers 16y ago
    "There is no base for any beliefs, if you ask me." Yet I bet you go on eating food, in the belief it will keep you alive.
    • kiiski 16y ago
      I think he spoke of beliefs about nuclear safety.
    • mironathetin 16y ago
      This is the wrong comparison. You can choose the food you eat, but you cannot choose the energy you use. At least not as easily. But there are similarities: the industry that sells energy wants to go on running their reactors. They advertise and we belief and consume. There is also an industry (or industries) that tries to control the food market. We belief and consume. Now look at the rate of overweight people and tell me they do a good job. As much as I like to get healthy (as good as possible) food I also want clean (as good as possible) energy. Japan shows again, that nuclear power is hard to control. And loss of control has devastating consequences. This is not what the nuclear industry tells us, right? So it is not the right thing to believe. The same with the food industry, as you dug out this comparison.
  • drzaiusapelord 16y ago
    By voices you mean Soviet propaganda for not only a poorly designed plant but also a poorly designed plant run poorly.
• nakkiel 16y ago
  Assuming the conservative base in Germany wouldn't back Nuclear Energy. I don't know what it's worth but this wouldn't be true in France for example. As for reconsidering Nucealr Energy, I still think we should wait for the end of the whole thing. Indeed I realize this won't happen.
  • ugh 16y ago
    It‘s not so much about the conservative base. The CDU can be relatively sure that their base will vote for them regardless. Opposition to nuclear energy is a popular position in Germany, also in the political center. This decision is supposed to appease those voters.
• asharp 16y ago
  The question is what exactly you expected of it. You've taken one of the oldest and least intrinsically safe designs since chernobyl (at least compared to anything recent like a nice pebble bed/molten salt reactor), hit it with an earthquake, washed it away with a tsunami and blown it up with hydrogen gas explosions. And it's basically just that there, leaking a fairly small amount of radiation. Compare that to other objects that could cause environmental damage, like say an oil tanker or a chemical plant and try and compare it in similar circumstances. If you were to take say a standard pesticide factory, hit it with an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, followed by multiple explosions, I would be very surprised if it could keep the same level of containment of its material. To give you an example of what happens when a major chemical plant breaches, have a look at the Bhopal disaster. It isn't unreasonable to say that a major chemical breach is on the same scale as a small nuclear incident and as such I would consider the comparative reliability of nuclear plants to be rather remarkable and a testament to the engineering that goes into building them. Also interesting to note is how things have progressed. Remember that this reactor was built in 1971. If you look at a newer design, such as a pebble bed reactor you would notice that it exhibits passive safety, ie. that if you were to subject it to the kind of failures that have befallen the fukushima plant, it would simply fail safe until it could be fixed. Even in the event of a catastrophic failure of the reactor core, very little radiation would be emitted as the core itself is encased as a series of nearly indestructible silicon carbide pellets, and the preferred coolant very rarely absorbs neutrons. This would also mean that coolant leaks would be a lot less of a concern environmentally as the coolant would not be as radioactive. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor