8.9 Earthquake hits Japan

[goof2]

Originally Posted by Gas Man

What we going to do to it? Blow it up?

As I understand it blowing up a nuclear reactor doesn't go well. The radioactive material effectively turns it in to a dirty bomb.

[Gas Man]

Super bomb?

[tallywacker]

They are now allowing the workers to go back. The think the spike in radioactivity has gone down again.

[Trip]

They are being tight lipped about info. Our NRC boys are going out there to help. I think we will find out about a lot of human errors once this is all said and done. This may be the end of any new nuke plans we had going forward.

[Gas Man]

Originally Posted by Trip

They are being tight lipped about info. Our NRC boys are going out there to help. I think we will find out about a lot of human errors once this is all said and done. This may be the end of any new nuke plans we had going forward.

Then that would be sad.

I don't see "alternative" sources of energy like sun & wind producing enough. So that leaves you with coal? Or coke burn which will just push up the price of crude oil.

[tommymac]

Originally Posted by Trip

They are being tight lipped about info. Our NRC boys are going out there to help. I think we will find out about a lot of human errors once this is all said and done. This may be the end of any new nuke plans we had going forward.

Do you think thats more of a knee jerk reaction to all this or theres more credibility that we shouldnt build mor enuclear plants?

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by Trip

They are being tight lipped about info. Our NRC boys are going out there to help. I think we will find out about a lot of human errors once this is all said and done. This may be the end of any new nuke plans we had going forward.

Odds are that the "human errors" will involve dead humans not being able to do certain things. From the sounds of it, going in, the tsunami eliminated much of the equipment necessary to get the reactions under control.

Up here, one of our opposition parties is pushing for more studies and delays on plans to build two new nuclear power plants, because of the issues in Japan. Our CANDU reactors are built to take something like a 6.8 quake, when all that we've seen here is hundreds of times weaker. They use unenriched uranium fuel. The fuel rods are horizontal, rather than the vertical orientation that seems common in other reactors. As a moderator and certain separation of rods is required for sustained reaction this means that if a high temperature run-away situation occurs the rods will tend to slump, which will naturally slow or even halt the reaction.

They're obviously playing politics, as many of the issues raised are non-issues for us.

[Trip]

Originally Posted by tommymac

Do you think thats more of a knee jerk reaction to all this or theres more credibility that we shouldnt build mor enuclear plants?

knee jerk reactions. The jap plant two very very significant natural disasters that were both over it's design criteria. No one planned for that level of an event.

[tommymac]

Originally Posted by Trip

knee jerk reactions. The jap plant two very very significant natural disasters that were both over it's design criteria. No one planned for that level of an event.

Thats kinda what I figured, its not like we have 8.9 earthquakes and 30 ft tsunamis every day, and considering japan is on a major fault line these things should be factored in somehow.

[Gas Man]

Originally Posted by Trip

knee jerk reactions. The jap plant two very very significant natural disasters that were both over it's design criteria. No one planned for that level of an event.

But I bet you have a "extreme case" event plan.