Nuclear Power

[Flosshilde]

IMO the UK threw away 2 decades of possible development of the industry - mostly because of the political difficulty in fighting the scare stories put out by the media (and those brought up on Godzilla and two headed monsters of science fiction) - however our now utterly wasted gas fields will not help us through the next failure of international energy markets and competition for scarce resources.

I think that rather than continually trying to find new sources of energy to cope with increasing demand the focus should be on reducing demand. There is evidence, I believe (but can't at the moment give sources) that increased energy supply from renewable sources simply encourages people to increase their use.

[Budapest]

maybe you should communicate this to US government - see http://www.ne.anl.gov/facilities/edl...y_experiments/
re experiments on very hot corium in water cooled pools

Frances, thanks for the very interesting link. I didn't even know that they are doing experiments in this area! The problem is, we are in totally unknown territory with the events at Fukushima. Three Mile Island gave us the much used phrase 'The China Syndrome', but Three Mile Island never got to the stage of a full meltdown. Chernobyl did, and it also showed that the concrete chamber beneath a reactor could contain the melted fuel rods/corium, and the corium wouldn't continue melting down through the earth. Valeri Legasov ensured that the chambers beneath the Chernobyl reactor were drained of water before the corium reached them. Because it's never happened before, one can only theorise on what would occur when 140 tons of molten nuclear fuel meets much cooler sea water (in the instance of Fukushima). I suspect that few would disagree that an explosion would occur. I suppose the debate is just how big such a thermal/hydrogen explosion will be. Legasov estimated that it would be equivilent to a high yield nuclear bomb - 2 to 4 megatons - but there again, Legasov was steeped in the Cold War.

Let's hope that we can all sleep safely tonight, and that we don't glow in the dark...

[johnb]

Budapest,

Thank you for your very interesting post.

One would hope that TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, who run the plant) are aware of the dangers of a thermal explosion, and are ensuring that the chambers beneath the Fukushima reactors are kept clear of water.

I'm sure they already know that corium + water = really bad news! (If they don't they shouldn't be involved in running a nuclear plant!

The impression I have gained is that such an event is only a possibility if something goes drastically wrong with the current reactor cooling measures. Would you agree with that?

A couple of posts on another forum concerning meltdown or partial meltdown:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3217259&postcount=1915

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3217343&postcount=1925

[Frances_iom]

there is a major problem in that the scarier the headline the more traction it gets - most reporters can just about add up their expenses - few judging from the little I've seen got past O-level science thus they go for the scariest stories and don't do even simple research. The blogosphere exists only to get eyeballs on the adverts and to satisfy the ego of the blogger.
Now there is a serious problem with education - there is no Royal road to Maths as Gauss commented over two centuries ago, likewise too many assume they can ignore the science on which modern society is based - if you wish to go back to subsistence farming find a remote Island to try it out on but from my own research most such when offered the choice 200 or so years ago jumped at factory employment. Life styles will change but over decades - today's life style differs in many respects from that of 1960 but not that significantly, 1960 differed greatly from that of 1910 but had many traits in common thus total energy usage will increase considerably until much of the world has reached some reasonable fraction of current Western nations usage

[Bryn]

Flossie, a wood-burning kiln burns its fuel at a much higher temperature than an Aga does. Modern Agas do indeed offer lower pollution levels than older models but they still chuck out a lot of very unhealthy stuff:

from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...6/ai_17847941/:

Fumes from a burning wood stove include:

* Carbon monoxide, the leading cause of poisoning deaths in the country. Colorless, odorless carbon monoxide gas is often improperly vented from wood stoves.

* Carbon dioxide, inhalation of which can lead to fatigue, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea and disorientation.

* Sulfur dioxide, the presence of which can aggravate symptoms in individuals with asthma and bronchitis.

Particulates formed from incompletely-burned wood carry toxic substances such as creosols, aldehydes and phenols into the lungs, as well as carcinogens such as benzopyrene, dibzezanthracenes and dibenzocarbazoles. Research conducted as part of the EPA's Integrated Air Cancer Project found a major source of cancer risk from particulate air pollution caused by wood stoves. The study also found that breathing air containing wood smoke can reduce lung function, especially in children. It can also increase the severity of asthma, emphysema, pneumonia and bronchitis; irritate eyes, lungs. throats and sinuses; and trigger headaches and allergies.

An EPA study correlated risk of death with wood smoke, finding that exposure to every 100 micrograms of total particulate per cubic meter of air raises the risk of dying 19 percent from bronchitis and asthma, nine percent from cardiovascular disease, 32 percent from emphysema, and 12 percent from pneumonia.

Wood stoves produce many of the same carcinogens as cigarettes. People who've given up or never started smoking may be exposing themselves to many of the same toxins from their stoves, and wondering why they lack concentration and are often tired, restless and irritable.

To make matters worse, people are not careful about what they burn. Many owners toss treated wood, plywood, painted wood, plastic and other chemically coated substances into the stove. Homeowners also burn newspapers, wrapping paper and rubbish. Consequently, toxic chemicals are spewed out that can exert harmful effects on all of us.

It's not the most up to date source, but there are plenty of Agas and the like around from 16 years ago.

Fiends of friends in Totnes used to burn old books soaked in sump oil, both in their living room grate, and in their Aga. O.k., that was around 30 years ago, but they thought they were being oh so Green. They had read the tip in an environmentalist magazine, believe it or not! Hopefully not Resurgence, but being Totnes it might have been

The average garden bonfire is an entirely different kettle of fish, by the way. Combustion temperatures tend to be much higher and oxidation is thus far more complete, so fewer complex carcinogenic organic compounds are found in the smoke, and what there are, are in lower concentrations.

[teamsaint]

there is plenty of energy...after all, the universe is just energy.

the question is, why are we still dependent on expensive polluting energy, when there are plenty of potential ways to release cheap clean energy? anything to do with money for big corporations and their friends in government?

Just for starters, houses in the uK are hopelessly inefficient. Also imagine the energy saving if , say, £1000 was spent on energy saving investment in every house. Solar panels installed in every house.
Maybe we could afford this if we stopped all the wars we are paying for(in oil sensitive areas).

[Budapest]

Francis and Johnb I'm not scaremongering (and have nothing to gain from it). I'm trying to make people aware of what's going on in Fukushima. It's not being reported properly in the western media; particularly in the UK, where the government is about to launch a programme of new nuclear power stations.

I'll pick on the Beeb to start with. This is a BBC news report from today (italics are mine)...

"Doses at 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been measured - the highest readings recorded in the crisis so far.

Just 15 minutes exposure to this water would result in emergency workers at Daiichi reaching their permitted annual limit of 250 millisieverts."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12896690

This BBC report mixes up annual doses with hourly doses and as such is totally inaccurate (most of the media gets confused about this, and it results in some of the worst reporting I've ever seen). To clarify, workers at Fukushima can have a legal dose of 250 millisieverts per year. Radiation levels in water puddles at the plant have been reported by TEPCO as being 1000 millisieverts per hour. One hour x 24 hours in a day x 365 days in a year = 8,760,000 millisieverts per year, which is a bit more than the 250 millisieverts per year legal maximum, wouldn't you say?

The Guardian have posted a report this evening which quoted a 'nuclear expert' as saying:

At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.

See here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...uclear-reactor

The Guardian's 'nuclear expert' has obviously never thrown a bowl of frozen chips into a pan of boiling fact, and doesn't appear to have any understanding of chemicle reactions.

I could go on and on with this. But enough: it's time for bed...

[Frances_iom]

there is plenty of energy...after all, the universe is just energy.
Just for starters, houses in the uK are hopelessly inefficient. Also imagine the energy saving if , say, £1000 was spent on energy saving investment in every house. Solar panels installed in every house.

If you were starting a new house then given a suitable plot and considerable expense it is possible to build a house that runs entirely on renewables (there was such a green house demo'd here on IoM but the construction cost was very high - however the UK housing stock cannot be rebuilt overnight (at present rates not even over 2 centuries) - the easy improvements (fibre in loft) are I think mostly done, possibly solar preheating for hotwater would repay investment; for those with a suitable south facing roof in mostly southern England solar PV panels might just recoup costs but energy efficient heating schemes such as groud heat extraction are only possible for new builds. Both my properties are solid walls (in SE England brick c.1900 semi) in Peel 18inch sandstone rubble tho with a brickface curtain wall - I could, given planning permission clad my semi with insulation but it would be an eysore in the road - for my Peel property the solar gain is good but force 6 or higher SWesterlies (or esp northerlies) remove heat rapidly.

[Budapest]

Edited out: internet or forum software problems dublicated my previous post.

[Budapest]

See above.

[johnb]

This is a long thread and I've only had the time to skim read it, so apologies if I've missed anything.

I just want to address what some folks were saying earlier in this thread, about there being no chance of a nuclear bomb explosion at Fukushima. That is quite correct: an uncontrolled fission explosion cannot occur in a reactor. However, an explosion of similar magnitude can occur when a reactor melts down. Melted fuel rods produce a lava-like substance called corium, which burns through the reactor vessel and flows down to a concrete chamber below. The concrete chamber beneath the reactor is a safety feature, designed to stop the corium from going straight down into the earth, where it would eventually reach the water table.

At Fukushima they’ve been pouring thousands of tons of sea water into the cooling pools and over the reactors, and it seems likely that the chambers beneath the reactors are flooded. If a reactor does go into full meltdown, and the corium hits that water, there could be a massive thermal explosion (mostly fueled by hydrogen as the corium vaporises the water - there are 140 tons of fuel rods in each of those reactors).

They had exactly the same problem at Chernobyl. During the early days of the crisis they poured thousands of tons of water in to the Chernobyl No.4 reactor. This water had absolutely no effect on the fire, but it did flood the chambers beneath the reactor. Valeri Legasov, a leading Soviet scientist and one of the team brought in to deal with the disaster, realised what would happen if the molten core of the reactor reached the water. Legasov estimated that the resulting thermal explosion would be in the order of 2 to 4 megatons, and would flatten everything within a 20 mile (30km) radius of the plant. Furthermore, the radiation thrown high into the atmosphere by the explosion would render a large part of Europe and the western Soviet Union uninhabitable for decades, if not hundreds of years.

Grim stuff. At Chernobyl, three divers volunteered to go into the flooded chambers to manually turn valves that would release the water. It was a successful mission. However, two of the divers died shortly afterwards from radiation sickness. It’s not known if the third diver is still alive. Incidentally, on the second anniversary of Chernobyl, Valeri Legasov committed suicide, out of remorse for his part in the cover-up by the Soviet authorities.

One would hope that TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, who run the plant) are aware of the dangers of a thermal explosion, and are ensuring that the chambers beneath the Fukushima reactors are kept clear of water.

Most of this post is lifted verbatim from a blog by a certain Rob Godfrey:

http://www.spiderbomb.com/blog/

Godfrey might be a nuclear expert or he might not, what he writes might be spot on or it might not. Whatever the case I'm sure that Budapest was posting from a genuine desire to contribute and enlighten us but I do wish that when someone lifts text from elsewhere they would put it in quotes and give a reference. (Though perhaps Budapest is Rob Godfrey!)

[johnb]

I'll pick on the Beeb to start with. This is a BBC news report from today (italics are mine)...

"Doses at 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been measured - the highest readings recorded in the crisis so far.

Just 15 minutes exposure to this water would result in emergency workers at Daiichi reaching their permitted annual limit of 250 millisieverts."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12896690

This BBC report mixes up annual doses with hourly doses and as such is totally inaccurate (most of the media gets confused about this, and it results in some of the worst reporting I've ever seen). To clarify, workers at Fukushima can have a legal dose of 250 millisieverts per year. Radiation levels in water puddles at the plant have been reported by TEPCO as being 1000 millisieverts per hour. One hour x 24 hours in a day x 365 days in a year = 8,760,000 millisieverts per year, which is a bit more than the 250 millisieverts per year legal maximum, wouldn't you say?

Forgive me for being obtuse but isn't the BBC saying that, if workers were exposed to 1000 millisieverts per hour, within 15 minutes they would accumulate a dose equivalent to their annual limit of 250 millisieverts? How is that different from what you are saying?

Or am I being particularly thick? (Not unusual, for me.)

[Bryn]

Forgive me for being obtuse but isn't the BBC saying that, if workers were exposed to 1000 millisieverts per hour, within 15 minutes they would accumulate a dose equivalent to their annual limit of 250 millisieverts? How is that different from what you are saying?

Or am I being particularly thick? (Not unusual, for me.)

If you are being thick in your reading of the BBC's comment, johnb, I fear I must be just as thick, for that is how I too read it.

[Lateralthinking1]

My apologies for the length of this but it covers a lot of ground and seems a more appropriate way to do it than by soundbite.

History - "Today's life style differs in many respects from that of 1960 but not that significantly, 1960 differed greatly from that of 1910". I am sorry frances_iom but this is simply wrong and, as such, further misinformation, unless you base it quite literally on invention - there were a lot of new inventions between 1910 and 1960 - rather than numbers linked to energy consumption.

Motoring - I do not have the figures for the number of cars in the world in 1910 but in Britain it was 100,000. In Britain, there were 5 million cars in 1960. In 2010, there were 31 million. In the world, there were in 1968, 170 million. By 1985, it had doubled to 375 million. In 2002 there were 530 million, 25% of them in the United States. There are considerably more now. If you do the maths by numbers of individual trips, you will find a similar if not parallel "hike" in the last 50 years.

Domestic - When I was born in 1962, we didn't have a car, central heating, a telephone. This was not at all untypical. Many houses lacked an inside toilet or a bathroom, there was gaslight in some homes, many did not have fridges, there were no computers, most homes had one or no television sets, there were no video recorders.

Flying - This was beginning for more people in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Freddie Laker and so on. A poll at my Junior School showed that a third had been abroad once for their holiday - nearly all France and Spain. The rest hadn't. My first trip abroad was in 1977 and my first flight in a plane was in 1991. I can dig out the official national statistics if you would like me to prove that we weren't all living in a commune. However, I've done the cars and don't particularly want to have to wade through the rest. Of course, technological improvements to reduce emissions have to some extent offset rampant consumerism - science is to be applauded for virtually performing miracles in this regard - but this too has been overwhelmingly in the period 1960-2011.

The comment though is revealing. If it is genuinely perceived widely that lifestyle hasn't changed "that significantly" in the last 50 years and that it was all about the previous 50, then let's go back to living conditions as they were in, say, 1970, using taxation to "nudge" it along - the Coalition's favourite word. Obviously they didn't feel painful. Not that different from where we are now. One could argue that vast increases in consumption are even more sickening for providing minimal returns (or losses) in feelings of comfort. As for happy consumerism, at least unit on unit, this is surely an unaffordable luxury when basic survival is the issue.

Risk - I would just like to clarify that I did not say, as alleged, that perceived risk was more important than actual risk. I said that it was also a feature of being human.

At the time that nuclear power was introduced, few scientists had any comments on the adverse impacts of smoking cigarettes. The behaviour and attitudes of many people were based on a lack of awareness. Even if that had not been the case, the regular smogs in London etc at that time would have placed it in a different context to the current times so risk is also relative. Ten or so years earlier, when cigarettes were sent to guys in WW2, the risks of smoking, had they fully been known, might have still seemed relatively small compared with the prospect of death on the battlefield. As for me, I would see a distinct difference between smoking cigarettes in a field and conscription anyway. In the former, there is choice. Nuclear to me is more like conscription. Imposed but the vast majority survive relatively unscathed. So far.

And the arguments being put forward in justification of nuclear power are not only about actual risk but perceived risk and relative risk. The perceived risk of power cuts, for example, should it not continue or more realistically be curtailed. Those could, of course, occur for many reasons - we had them in the 1970s and lived - but in any case the perception I speak of is based wholly on assumptions - the assumption that there will be certain levels of consumption in the future, the assumption that climate change caused or made worse by human consumption is real and of the magnitude presented by the majority of scientists but not all. Do not necessarily see any implication of dissent in that statement. I happen to believe that it is real but that the narrow focus on it is unhelpful. It needs to be considered more in the round and with less hysteria so that this doesn't drive the nuclear rationale.

A brief word about democracy. On every edition of "Any Answers" I can think of, Jonathan Dimbleby asks occasional callers if they have a specific professional role in the topic they are discussing. I have never heard a caller ignoring that question. They wouldn't be on for long if they did and no one seems to find the question offensive. Similarly in the hothouse of Parliament which is full of generalists rather than specialists - Prime Minister Major was only educated to O'level - no one says of another that he or she is ignorant. They would be removed from the House by the Speaker if they did. Of course, on matters like nuclear power Major, like Cameron and indeed Huhne, would have been briefed and sources would have been provided but not for every single utterance.

Responsibility - So there will be decommissioning. This could have been done at the outset. Presumably, this is as a consequence of over-reaction and misreporting in the press? I don't think so. The following picture is an absolute disgrace. I find it utterly disgusting. They are taking the flak for it. Being reneged on by the owners, senior managers and international elites. The ordinary employees, highly qualified and otherwise, are not to blame and this takes place in the light of shadowy shareholders and other business interests, both there and in Britain, becoming "jittery" along with talk of nationalisation. No pictures of them of course. They are the ones who should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Let's see them - and see them paying up. And where's Cameron? Where's Brown who presided over the decision to export MOX and the Secretary of State who was personally in charge of energy policy when that decision was made - the Rt Hon Ed Millband?



BBC - "Tepco employees bow to apologise for the radiation leaks from the Fukushima power plant"

Shareholders - This from Government Department, BIS, shows that "BNFL is a limited company wholly owned by the Government. 49,999 ordinary shares of £1 each are owned by the Secretary of State for Business Innovation & Skills, and one ordinary share of £1 is owned by the Treasury Solicitor.....Over time, to pay the remaining liabilities as cleanly as possible and to return all remaining funds to the Treasury". http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...usinesses/bnfl. How much did "we" get for trading in MOX?

Value for Money? - In the meantime, after a highly competitive bidding process, Nuclear Management Partners was awarded the contract by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to own the shares in the site licence company, Sellafield Ltd, and to oversee the management and operations of the Sellafield site for what could be up to 17 years. NMP is a consortium of US company URS, British company AMEC and AREVA of France. The company will own the shares for an initial period of 5 years with the total value of the contract over 17 years a possible £22 billion. A consortium made up of Serco, Battelle and The University of Manchester is the management contractor for the National Nuclear Laboratory at Sellafield. This is overseen by DECC and wholly government owned.

Back in 2006, the Westinghouse Electric Company was sold by British Nuclear Fuels for $5.4bn. The sale surprised many industry experts who questioned the wisdom of BNFL selling one of the world's largest producers of nuclear reactors shortly before the market for nuclear power was expected to grow substantially. However "The Economist" gives several reasons in favour of a sale; the commercial risk of the company's business in Asia may be too high for taxpayers money, if Westinghouse won the bid for any new nuclear stations in the UK competition questions may be raised, if lost it may be seen as a lack of faith in its own technology' and finally the record of UK governments building nuclear plants was a commercial disaster. The buyers were........Toshiba.

Finally, johnb and Bryn, I agree with you on your point about millisieverts. I don't know what the poster had in mind but it seems to me that here the BBC has either provided a balanced report or used (accurate) statistics to understate the position, depending on how someone sees it. Quite obviously, had they included the figure 8,760,000, this would have been regarded either as sensationalising or being more transparently accurate, depending on how someone sees it. Perception again - and on both sides.

[greenilex]

Huge figures are inherently unsettling for us numerically-challenged punters.

As whales go, I'm off - to hide under what pack ice i can still find and suck becquerels through a straw.