Posted on 03/12/2011 8:16:13 AM PST by Chunga85
The Institute for Public Accuracy issued the following statement by nuclear expert, Kevin Kamp, about the risk of nuclear disaster in post-Earthquake Japan: “The electrical grid is down. The emergency diesel generators have been damaged. The multi-reactor Fukushima atomic power plant is now relying on battery power, which will only last around eight hours. The danger is, the very thermally hot reactor cores at the plant must be continuously cooled for 24 to 48 hours. Without any electricity, the pumps won’t be able to pump water through the hot reactor cores to cool them. Once electricity is lost, the irradiated nuclear fuel could begin to melt down. If the containment systems fail, a catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment could occur.”
“In addition to the reactor cores, the storage pool for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel is also at risk. The pool cooling water must be continuously circulated. Without circulation, the still thermally hot irradiated nuclear fuel in the storage pools will begin to boil off the cooling water. Within a day or two, the pool’s water could completely boil away. Without cooling water, the irradiated nuclear fuel could spontaneously combust in an exothermic reaction. Since the storage pools are not located within containment, a catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment could occur. Up to 100 percent of the volatile radioactive Cesium-137 content of the pools could go up in flames and smoke, to blow downwind over large distances. Given the large quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel in the pool, the radioactivity release could be worse than the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe of 25 years ago.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
Didn't need to go much past there. Anything with THAT name probably isn't, like the "Center for Science in the Public Interest" which is a whacko far-left vegan group, or the "National Association for Women" which couldn't find the time to help women like Juanita Broaddrick.
>The family turned the magazine publishing over to a new entity and the quality of the articles and the news is down to tabloid quality.
Hey! Don’t insult tabloids.
;)
In case you need an example to illustrate “hyperbole” this week. Thanks Chunga85.
National Association for Women = National Organization for Women - aka the “National Association of Gals” (NAGs) as Rush calls them.
Actually sand, lead, steel are much better materials for stopping a chain reaction. Water, once melting of the fuel rods has occurred, simply turns to steam and contributes to the spread of the contamination. Sand, lead on the other hand mix with the molten fuel and help to bring things back below critical mass necessary for a chain reaction to continue.
Another perspective:
PROF PADDY REGAN, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SURREY
“It looks as if the coolant pumps had initially stopped working. They shut down automatically when the reactor shuts down, but there is a backup system running off a diesel generator — it looks as though that’s the bit that failed.
“As a result there is no way of pumping heat out of the reactor, so it has to cool naturally. If the reactor gets too hot, in principle this means the fuel rods can melt - but it looks unlikely this has happened to any great extent in this case.
“To reduce the pressure, you would have to release some steam into the atmosphere from the system. In that steam, there will be small but measurable amounts of radioactive nitrogen - nitrogen 16 (produced when neutrons hit water). This remains radioactive for only about 5 seconds, after which it decays to natural oxygen.”
Per NHK press conference on nuclear reactors:
They are in still in process of putting sea water to cool the nuclear reactor. They will use that as a seal.
Even if that fails, they do not expect a problem within 20km which is why they increased the evac area.
When explosion happened, 4 people got injured. they we near the turbine of the containment and they are at hospital right now.
I find this interesting:
They do offer the following caveats:
Beyond Nuclear is unable to reach the Australian Radiation Service (as of 10 AM Sat Mar 12) who apparently released this map, to verify the radiation levels given or to understand how they are derived. This map shows an large-scale weather pattern which is verifiable by a weather site in Japan. This map below will not represent local or regional weather patterns for Japan itself. The weather site shows more local weather effects.
Just another group of people making a living off of donations. Of course, it is disaster, how else do they get people to keep giving them money?
Thanks - you saved me a lot of computer time. I was particularly "impressed" (amused) by some of the "scientific experts"who back this propaganda outfit:
Ed Asner, Ed Begley,Jr., Christie Brinkley, James Cromwell, John McEnroe, Bonnie Raitt and Susan Sarandon.
Surely the containment buildings remain undamaged. Especially after an earthquake, tsunami, and explosion.
I remember yesterday, they were saying 6km was adequate. Some reports say they're not letting anyone closer than 60km.
People who inject ideologies into situations like this truly make me sick. Prayers to Japan.
Yes, they might be better moderators of neutron flux, but the point was that they didn’t have it handy at Chernobyl. They had to fly it in, which took time.
In Japan, they have seawater there at their back door in huge quantities.
At Chernobyl, they were flying sand on top of the pile for week, and dropping the sand from a height put more radioactive components into the air.
The sky is falling agenda.
If that a division of the "Ministry of Truth" or something?
*If* there’s a meltdown, they should round up the luddite liberals and stuff them in the core. It wouldn’t cool the reactor, but it might cool down the hysteria.
So the reactor cooling system is running on battery power. This horrible, end of the world disaster will only happen if all the resources of Japan, and their many technically capable allies cannot deliver some working generators to plant, or repair the ones already there before the batteries run down. YAWN
Why couldn't this have happened in country where generators are manufactured? (/sarcasm) The engineers at the nuclear site might have other problems but I can assure you that a supply of electricity isn't one of them.
Yes, what happened to Forbes?
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