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Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: idolminds on Friday, March 11, 2011, 09:13:52 AM
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Ouch. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709598)
Luckily they expect eathquakes so are at least somewhat prepared for such things, but when its this strong theres only so much you can prepare for. Plus the followup tsunami, which is also hitting Hawaii and California in another hour or so but it'll be greatly dissipated by then.
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It's rough stuff. You can't prepare for something that big, really, at least not in any foolproof kind of sense. And the tsunami has already caused some major damage, several hundred lives lost. I hate stuff like this.
Donate! (http://ow.ly/4ctzx)
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Pictures (http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/03/earthquake-in-japan/100022/)
Yeah, its nuts.
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Holy . . . I have no worthwhile words right now. I really feel for those people.
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Dear God.. I just heard about this from my brother.
I'll be praying for the people.
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Absolutely devastating...
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I just read they are trying to keep a nuclear reactor cool and have evacuated the area just in case...dude.
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Here is a good article on the nuclear plant problems. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12nuclear.html?_r=1) It sounds like they are getting it under control.
Also, look at this list of earthquakes (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php). Bad enough the 8.9 but all the aftershocks are hovering around 5.0 and have been going on all day.
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One of my room mates just moved to Tokyo. He said it's pretty fucked right now.
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This sorry world can't catch a break, can it? What a nightmare.
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Man, that's just crazy.
What's just as amazing is the death toll and response relative to the level of destruction. Japan has been a model for disaster preparedness and this really proves that we can beat these things if we consider it important enough.
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My heart goes out to the people of Japan and those living or visiting there. It's such a major disaster. It's good that the Japanese engineers, government, and just people in general are so prepared or it would have been much worse. Imagine if this thing hit Haiti, for instance.
About the nuclear power thing... it is kind of interesting. I'm something of a proponent of nuclear power and just last week my brother and I described how modern nuclear power is so over engineered it is now basically safe. Guess I spoke a little too soon. No matter how many redundant cooling systems you have, it doesn't matter if they all break at the same time.
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Right. When things go really wrong at a fission-reactor site, they go wrong for centuries. Then there's the issue of radioactive waste, which has to be stored safely, also for centuries. We can't keep good track of stuff for 50 years, let alone hundreds. The risk of current nuclear tech is just too great.
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If your opinion of humanity is getting a little too high, this will take it back down a few notches. (http://i.imgur.com/eFYYe.jpg)
I like the selective memory of those people. They don't remember what WE did to them in that war. Either that or this is just tasteless mass trolling. Its hard to tell.
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Between that at the earthquake becoming the latest excuse to claim that the end of the world is coming I think it's kind of hard to start to think highly of humanity right now.
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If your opinion of humanity is getting a little too high, this will take it back down a few notches. (http://i.imgur.com/eFYYe.jpg)
I like the selective memory of those people. They don't remember what WE did to them in that war. Either that or this is just tasteless mass trolling. Its hard to tell.
Ugh.
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Whenever something like this happen I can't help but cringe at all the "this is the end" crap people start talking about. Gah, or how people the next day bitch about stupid shit like the weather. OH NO SNOW!
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Whenever something like this happen I can't help but cringe at all the "this is the end" crap people start talking about.
What weirds me out about that is the idea that they (not all, but quite a few) are happy and excited that the end of the world is coming. Its just...creepy.
So I only pick up bits and pieces of news, mostly following the nuclear reactor. They started pumping seawater in to keep water levels up and to cool the damn thing down. Just goes to show how serious it is, since the salt water is going to fuck everything up and they will probably have to decommission that reactor now. There is also word that a second reactor is now in trouble.
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I've read a story that there's a confirmed meltdown, not sure how accurate it though, still... fuck.
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There was already an explosion at one of the plants. That isn't good at all.
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What weirds me out about that is the idea that they (not all, but quite a few) are happy and excited that the end of the world is coming. Its just...creepy.
So I only pick up bits and pieces of news, mostly following the nuclear reactor. They started pumping seawater in to keep water levels up and to cool the damn thing down. Just goes to show how serious it is, since the salt water is going to fuck everything up and they will probably have to decommission that reactor now. There is also word that a second reactor is now in trouble.
I just read on the BBC that though they are/were pumping in seawater, the gauges were not showing that the water level was rising and "[they] don't know what to make of [it]".
That is bad.
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What weirds me out about that is the idea that they (not all, but quite a few) are happy and excited that the end of the world is coming. Its just...creepy.
So I only pick up bits and pieces of news, mostly following the nuclear reactor. They started pumping seawater in to keep water levels up and to cool the damn thing down. Just goes to show how serious it is, since the salt water is going to fuck everything up and they will probably have to decommission that reactor now. There is also word that a second reactor is now in trouble.
The people who actually do get excited are those who've lived with their basic needs fullfilled all their lives and haven't seen poverty and hardship... I guess they are bored. :P
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Please, say this ain't so. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110314/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_118)
I so hope not.
:(
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If they are detecting radioactivity on rescue workers then things can't be good:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.us.navy.radiation/index.html?hpt=T2
Third blast just happened btw.
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Yeah, as if the Japanese don't have enough to worry about the situation with the Fukushima nuclear facility is really bad.
I am not totally understanding the explosions though. Modern nuclear reactors have three layers: the reactor vessel, the containment building, and then an outer building. What is exploding? Just the outer building? Why?
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This is a pretty good explanation of the layers of containment and whats going on. (http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-reactors-pose-no-risk-2011-3)
PS, don't read the comments. It seems schools have stopped teaching reading comprehension.
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Gods. People should be forced to sit down and read that thing if they have any thoughts about what's going on in Japan or nuclear power in general.
Edit: Of course, then you see comments like this:
@Homer J. Simpson:
Warren Buffet always said "beware of geeks with a plan"
I think this rings true here.
I work with people like this guy and every day prove them wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that the geeks didn't plan for a 9.0 and all the things that go with it. Like a wall of water 30 feet high and freight trains crashing through buildings.
I sit int eh room with these guys and hear them spout the "it'll never happen crap and let's not over do the safety thing
Anytime one these guys dorks says she's all good and the infallible is infallible
Run like hell
Fuck humanity.
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Very informative, idol. Thank you.
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Yeah, thanks, that was a great read.
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This is a pretty good explanation of the layers of containment and whats going on. (http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-reactors-pose-no-risk-2011-3)
PS, don't read the comments. It seems schools have stopped teaching reading comprehension.
I had the warm fuzzies after reading that article, but then I read this (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42066534/ns/world_news-asiapacific/). Specifically this:
"Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower," [Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio] Edano said.
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Two sources told NBC News' Robert Bazell that the blast breached the containment structure and that radiation had leaked out.
The guy in the article idol posted said that the major news outlets were basically spreading misinformation... basically fear mongering, and that it is very unlikely that the containment would be breached. I wonder what he would have to say about this latest news.
Oh yeah, and they are saying it was a 9.0 quake now.
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More updates. (http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html)
And again. (http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/)
Its so hard to get a straight answer with this whole thing. Some people want to downplay it, some people want to scare the shit out of everyone. Could be a while before we get an accurate account of whats going on now.
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I don't know what to think. I had the same experience Scott did, which is to say just one more cycle in the ping-pong nature of the information we're getting. There seems to be a fair amount of ass covering going on at the utility company, which taints everything we hear from that end.
What has made the most sense to me so far is that the risk was analyzed incorrectly. While you would think intuitively that each backup cooling system would dramatically reduce the overall risk of a meltdown, the fact is that all these backup systems are vulnerable to the same disastrous event, and therefore the effective risk is that of any one of the cooling systems alone, or at best the risk of the best one of them alone.
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To me it sounds like the biggest issue wasn't really the loss of the primary cooling systems (modern nuclear facilities are designed around this potentially happening), it was more the fact that they lost the diesel backups and couldn't get a 4th tier cooling system in place in time to supplant the 3rd tier batteries. Maybe there could have been a better way to protect the diesel generators from the tsunami and much of the resulting problems could have been avoided.
That said, I don't understand the idea of purposely not designing for a major disaster. What did they say? They designed the facilities to withstand a 7.0 or 7.5 earthquake or something? Why not design something like a nuclear power plant located in the Ring of Fire to withstand a 9.5? It was the same with New Orleans and the levies. They were designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane. Why not design them to withstand a 5? The city is below sea level. What, they just prayed it would never happen? Of course it would, eventually.
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I don't think it's hard to understand why. What are the odds of something like this happening? Sure you can say that Japan is more likely to get hit by a major earthquake, but they've never had a 9+ magnitude in recorded history (I'm just quoting what I've read). To them, 7-7.5 (or whatever it's rated at) was considered a major disaster.
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Article on 9.0 "megaquakes" in the Ring of Fire (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/rim-of-fire-meg.html), going on 2 years old
In risk assessments, two things have to be evaluated, the risk of a failure, and the consequences of a failure. I would try for a long jump of 8 feet on a soccer field. I won't ever try it across a deep ravine. The risk of failure is the same. The consequences of failure are very different. The more dire the consequences, the lower the acceptable chance of failure.
For nuclear-power plants, the acceptable risk of catastrophic failure is near zero. In fact, it is zero. The benefits of its utility in no way balance out any finite risk of major damage to humanity and their environment for a very long time.
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But the plant wasn't built 2 years ago.
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I understand the idea of wanting to make something as strong as possible, but I don't understand the idea that we can just make something stand up to a particular strength of earthquake/hurricane/disaster. Maybe that 7.5 was the best they could do. Maybe the idea should be phrased, "it can withstand X disaster" rather than "was designed to withstand X" because the later implies we could take the design further. There's about 175 times more energy released in a 9.0 earthquake compared to the 7.5 these were rated for. While I imagine it's not a one to one scale, making something 175 times tougher isn't just something we can will into existence.
I guess it just goes back to Cobra's point because we might not actually be able to build a nuclear plant that can survive such a disaster. If the plant is designed to contain the radiation should it fail to sruvive, I sort of think that nuclear power could still be worth it. Then the trick is to see if things are actually being contained at a reasonable level which is pretty hard to do right now for all of us just able to read news stories.
One thing I've had hammered into my head over the past couple of weeks is that radiation is a term that tends to be scarier than the results. I visited a neutron source to do an experiment last week and to use the facility I had to receive a quick training on radiation. Apparently, the "legal" limit at a lot of places is just barely above the an amount that is measurable beyond the normal background radiation that is coming from everything else around you, meaning not very much. I was told that generally working at the facility, even for periods of a weeks and moving through areas marked as high radiation, will expose me to less radiation than I would receive had I flown across the country. The limits are designed not with the idea of not exposing people to tolerable limits, but the idea that people are batshit crazy about radiation and any is considered bad. If you can design a facility that creates a beam of neutrons to expose people to almost no radiation, that's a good thing. The point is, there's a lot of wiggleroom between experiencing elevated levels of ration and experiencing toxic levels and when radiation is simply detected it doesn't automatically mean things have gone to hell. I don't have a good sense of just how elevated the radiation is in areas around the plants, but part of me tends to think that heavy precautions are being taken over what may still be relatively acceptable levels. That's not a bad thing either while things are still hairy over there. But some radiation doesn't mean the land is no longer usable.
Of course, I have really meager knowledge on the subject and am talking more with the hope that terrible things won't happen. I just know that everything gets really dramatic when nuclear power is involved, to the point of exaggeration on both sides. It's hard for me to accept that it's either as bad as many places are saying or even as good as others are.
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Well, pretty much everything I'm reading now said the containment of reactor 3 is breached. So much for the MIT guy idol linked, who said it basically would not happen.
Here is a link to the MIT Nuclear Information Hub, which has been posting nice updates: http://mitnse.com/
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It's a shame these nuclear reactor issues are going on because last I read the earthquake and resulting tsunami resulted in between 450,000 - 500,000 homeless. Plus thousands of lives lost. That is the real tragedy.
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I read that whole page. Thanks for the link. It's so much better than all the speculation and incomplete or flawed information in the media. I was wondering what a Sievert was. It turns out to be 100 rem. Rem I knew about.
Until this nuclear crisis subsides, those half-million people are going to be off the front page. That's just the way it works. My heart goes out to them.
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Huh. Well that's not good. (http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/12/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1)
I guess I was being optimistic, but it's apparently good all these precautions/evacuations were undertaken. Sadly, that probably means that people knew how bad it was, but were covering it up while actually taking the necessary steps to protect people. At least they were moving people out.
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The whole thing worries me immensely.
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Wow, that sucks.
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Scientists believe the amount of radiation released is only a tenth of what was released at Chernobyl, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the chief spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. But the levels for radioactive iodine and cesium that have been spewed into the air, water and soil around the plant are in the thousands of trillions of bequerels -- 15 times higher than the threshold for a top-scale event, according to figures released by the safety agency Tuesday morning.
(From the main story)
The average age of the world's 443 nuclear reactors is 25 years, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
From a linked article (http://www.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/04/11/japan.fukushima.nuclear.industry/index.html) within the main story
All I see reaffirms my take since Chernobyl on our current approach to nuclear power. Sad.
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Well, that will put an end to any renewed interest in nuclear fission as a source of power.