7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

but we're supposed to be excited about the 1% of power that Cali gets from solar?

that's just the utility portfolio, correct? which (as Sanpaku correctly notes) is hampered by both technical problems of scale and legal challenges. But that 1% doesn't count all the solar installations that aren't run by utilities but still generate power for their owners.

xp

23 people have died in shelters, mostly elderly hospital evacuees.

anyway i get that nuke power is necessary for stopping global warming but its also easy to watch that turn into a handout to power co.s that push nukes as we manage to avoid both reduction of consumption & exploring less dangerous/long-term stupid power ideas. theres no way solar power will run the world in time to stop coal. but theres a fine line here

#4 containment pool containing spent fuel appeared empty from surveillance from helicopter fly-by

― taco al pastorius (Steve Shasta), Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fuuuuck

ie power that is generated by private solar installations isn't counted as solar generation capacity, it's counted as a reduction in consumption/demand

xp

The total of confirmed dead and missing totals over 15k.

23% is not a helluva lot

xp

― in my world of suggest bans (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:20 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

sounds like a lot to me!

guys I love this but take it to the energy thread prob

xps

isn't cankles banned yet

Reactor #2 is now "billowing smoke"

where's the energy thread

uh why is canks being right a bannable offense?

The Energy Thread

Tthe United States advised its nationals living within an 80-kilometer radius to evacuate as a precaution. South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have followed suit with the advisory.

Actually Austrealia is now advising its expats to *leave*.

ugh typos all in my hands.

fwiw we're talking about how much coal power CA imports. the 23% figure is how much ELECTRICITY the state imports, and not all of that is from coal. some of it is from natural gas, some is from nukes, some is from wind power, etc. I don't know what the total percentage of coal powered electricity CA brings in is, but it's a much smaller percentage than other sources.

xp

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled disaster porn. It would seem to me that Fukushima might have been avoided if they had a contingent scram rather (an operator on a dead-man's switch monitoring containment) rather than an automatic one.

I haven't seen any confirmation on containment pool #4 being empty, just that the water level is unknown.

fair I just figured 25% is a sizable chunk of anything.

The NHK stream said officials confirmed the USA's RQ-4 surveillance that there was a shiny reflection that they believed was the floor of the empty containment pool.

It's all very well saying "Ooh, lets address our use of nuclear power" when there's already 250 million tonnes of waste that they don't know how to get rid of properly as it takes around 100k years to burn out, without counting what'll be used from now until they come up with a replacement.

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link it please!

The top of the spent fuel rod array in this GE design is a machined metal grid. If exposed it might glint:

http://ansnuclearcafe.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/spent-fuel-pool.jpg

These pools are 40 feet deep.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18intel.html

this article answers a lot of q's

love how the verb is always "spewed".

and another

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html?_r=1&src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants — Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while Chinese nuclear reactors send them to a desert storage compound in western China’s Gansu province. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the power plant.

aha

Wait so are spent rods still a total meltdown risk the same as live ones? I know so little about this.

I think if you have enough of them they can still go critical, so if you bung a whole lot together and leave them without cooling they'll basically turn into an uncontrolled little reactor

Despite being nearly ruined by its dreadful directorial style, this film is all about handling of spent nuclear waste. It's occasionally amazing

http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/

xp yeah, and it's worse because they're not stored in a thick layer of steel and concrete like the regular fuel rods are

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that engineers have begun to lay an external grid power line cable to Unit 2. The operation was continuing as of 20:30 UTC, Tokyo Electric Power Company officials told the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

They plan to reconnect power to Unit 2 once the spraying of water on the Unit 3 reactor building is completed.

The spraying of water on the Unit 3 reactor building was temporarily stopped at 11:09 UTC (20:09 local time) of 17 March.

The IAEA continues to liaise with the Japanese authorities and is monitoring the situation as it evolves.

I remain hopeful.

I read somewhere that TEPCO didn't start to lay power lines until yesterday? why?

They slept in.

Shit was on fire yo.

What the

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA&

"go away in a about a week"

yeah right!

"I cant smell any farts, we must be safe"

Any kids who took this on board would be terrified if they ever passed a fertilizer plant or sewage farm in the future, sayin.

can't believe it's been a week already, feels like only a few days for some reason

maybe its because the whole nuclear plant issue only became apparent this week

The nuclear accident underway in Japan does not raise doubts about the safety of nuclear power, and calls to abandon it altogether are just another example of the strange irrationality that surrounds the issue. [...]

It appears that the 10-metre tsunami that followed is what brought the reactors to the brink of meltdown, as back-up diesel generators for the facility's coolant pumps failed, and the cores began to heat up. Attempts to cool the cores were unsuccessful, and containment buildings blew up as the pressure built.

When a 20 km exclusion zone was declared – a standard emergency protocol – the global news coverage frothed with “NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE”, “ATOMIC CRISIS” and “MELTDOWN ALERT”. And how did they deal with the 9.0 magnitude quake? “TSUNAMI CARNAGE” and “NATURE'S TERROR”.

These are just the headlines. The actual coverage has often been nonsensical, contradictory, overdramatic and occasionally hysterical. No wonder the public often react with fear when they see the word ‘nuclear’.

To say - as some news outlets have - that the Fukushima accident was now worse than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, just shows how bad the coverage can get, and why people get anxious. Chernobyl was a Russian design without a containment vessel and the reactor core was exposed, on fire, and large quantities of the fuel itself released into the air.

The Japanese reactors are designed to prevent this ever happening; fuel is inside a thick steel vessel, itself within a containment structure that is specifically designed to prevent release of core materials even during an accident such as this. Also, boiling water reactors like the ones in Fukushima are cooled by water which, unlike the graphite core at Chernobyl, cannot burn.

Even if the 50 brave nuclear engineers and reactor staff, mostly volunteers, do lose their long battle and a meltdown occurs, this is not necessarily catastrophic. The reactor’s containment structure is designed to prevent the spread of radioactivity and - even if these are breached - it is still likely that much of the radioactive material would be contained at the site.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/4149/full

even if these are breached - it is still likely that much of the radioactive material would be contained at the site.

if u keep moving the bar, eventually someone will be overreacting

I picked up on that too--he's definitely downplaying the worst case scenario, but that doesn't negate the rest of his points.

um aren't all those guy's points wrong? the containment structure ruptured, there's no water in one of the reactors at all etc

for someone who drops EQ shit on his readership, he's really good at coming across as autistic.

d-40 otm

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/18/article-1367524-0B3B46E800000578-690_964x641.jpg
Exposed: this shots shows a gaping hole in the building of reactor number four. The green crane, circled, is normally used to move spent fuel rods into a 45ft deep storage pond, just out of shot. But the pool has now boiled dry and the spent rods are heating up and releasing radiation

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html#ixzz1H11vsNVc

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/18/article-1367524-0B3B932E00000578-109_964x581.jpg