July 20th, 2007
Hi,
My responses to the pro-nuker's comments are in [[[ triple brackets ]]].
Sincerely,
Ace
At 02:23 PM 7/20/2007 -0400, <nuspl@cox.net> wrote:
Please help with rebuttal of this nuclear technologist's opinions on Japan nuclear accident.
/Tony
Michael Liesenfelt (UF) replied to your post about an hour ago:
"Approximately four hundred drums of so-called "low-level" radioactive waste toppled over (of more than 22,000 such drums located at the site)"
What a shame, somebody will actually have to go and pick up all of those bagged gloves and anti-contamination suits. I think they've got that under control.
[[[ They'll probably wash a lot of it into a drain and out into the Sea of Japan, and a lot will also evaporate (that's why the containers had "tightly" sealed lids in the first place). The preferred "solution" to pollution is dilution, in their eyes. They use it whenever possible. -- Ace ]]]
"All four automatically SCRAMed when the jarring started. A "SCRAM" of a reactor is a violent, sudden, dangerous stoppage which causes enormous wear and tear (and sometimes causes leaks)."
The control rods slide in and shutdown the reactor. Not quite violent, or dangerous. For heaven's sake, it's a shutdown safety s
[[[ Every SCRAM is violent, as I stated. If a reactor has more than one or two in a year, that's officially cause for concern. More than a dozen or so over two decades is also cause for concern. Slamming on the brakes, shutting everything down, changing the thermal and flow characteristics of about a hundred thousand gallons of fast-circulating, boiling-hot, pressurized, continuously-reheated water, cooling the metal pipes, etc., is NOT easy on the system. And to SCRAM the reactors just when they're needed most, right after an earthquake!
Here are some additional problems with SCRAMs, and control rods in particular:
From:
Revelations continue
On April 6th Hitachi submitted a document revealing an additional incident involving TEPCO. In October 1988, one of the 185 control rod drive mechanisms in the Fukushima II-4 reactor was out of order. TEPCO requested Hitachi to inscribe the serial number of the out of order control rod drive mechanism onto a new one and load it without subjecting it to the required government inspection. Two of the four people involved in this incident are still working at TEPCO. The power company and manufacturer were fully aware that their action was illegal when they conspired to deceive the government, but the government's nuclear safety inspectorate was incapable of uncovering the deception.
--------------------
From:
When three control rods fell out of position at Hokuriku Electric's Shika-1 reactor in 1999, criticality continued uncontrolled for 15 minutes. In 1978, five rods fell out of position at reactor number 3 of Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima I power plant. On that occasion criticality continued for seven and a half hours. And in 1998 34 rods slipped 15 cm out of position at Fukushima I unit 4, although the reactor did not reach criticality.
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... And should I mention the illogical design of the control rods is considered a "prime suspect" as one of the (many) "root causes" of the Chernobyl disaster? They were designed with a tip which actually increased the reactivity before decreasing it! It was no cause for concern most of the time, but it proved to be a crucial difference April 26th, 1986. But of course, I can't expect a pro-nuker to remember anything that far back or in a foreign country. -- Ace ]]]
"However, reportedly "90,000 Becquerels of radioactivity"
or 2.432e-6 Ci
I think I've held stronger laboratory test sources sources in my hand before. Cmon'
[[[ As I pointed out, simply providing the Becquerels is an incomplete expression of the danger. But sure, 90,000 is only about 13 times your own personal "normal" dose of "background" radiation. But that "normal" dose kills some percentage of us, too. The 90,000 Bq. should cause pause on principle, but no one thought it was really that, anyway. No one but a pro-nuker, that is. However, at the NIRS web site when I checked yesterday, the current figure was given as 402 million Becquerels. Quite a leap up, but certainly not in an unexpected direction, considering the 63 (up from 50 in my article) different significant problems identified so far (not including delayed and dishonest reporting). Would your pro-nuker hold THAT much radiation in his hand, absorb it into his lung, store it in his gonads, feed it to his wife or infant daughter, for it to lodge in THEIR reproductive organs, to harm yet another generation? And what right did we have to burden humanity with 90,000 Bq, anyway? If they were long-lived isotopes, this "punishment" will last a correspondingly long time, poisoning people (and other living things) for eons. But 402,000,000 Bq. -- and climbing -- ought to give anyone pause. -- Ace ]]]
"The Japanese should be especially able to realize the insidious
nature of radioactive poisons, since the effects of DNA damage from
Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue to this day, and could be
carefully measured."
Yet another piece of sensationalist propaganda published by our favorite religiously anti-nuclear activist, 'AcE' Hoffman.
[[[ The effects ARE continuing to this day -- and will continue for generations to come. These insults are undeserved. My opposition to nuclear power is based on logic, reason, science and humanity. I'm not the one doing any worshiping or propagandizing -- they are. They worship the Demon Hot Atom, and Demonize all who stand in their way. We don't call pro-nukers a "Nuclear Mafia" for nothing. -- Ace ]]]
---- Thinkcivic@aol.com wrote:
> BG: The following is further comment by by an environmental and energy
> writer who covered Three Mile Island and the construction of the last two
> commercial nuclear power plants in the US.
> ---------------------------------
> I am tied up on a project unrelated to energy, but wish i had time to really
> review information on this. the bits and pieces i am seeing raise some real
> questions not only about plant procedures but also about the quality of the
> japanese nuclear regulatory system.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> BG: Well, we know the US regulatory system is horribly flawed....
>
> BG
> thinkcivic@aol.com
>
[[[ There is little question the Japanese nuclear industry is even MORE corrupt and dishonest than our own -- perhaps even rivaling the Russian or French nuclear industries. Many local residents have wanted the Kashiwazaki facility shut down for years. -- Ace. ]]]