Nuclear Power

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

on reflection and prompted by this sensible piece arguing to scrap Trident i feel that this thread has a title that confounds the issues involved ... for me Nuclear Energy is one thing and Nuclear Power quite another ...

the connotations of the Power theme involving war destruction images of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, nuclear winter etc etc .... nuclear energy is far less malign and intimidating ... and Thorium technology offers a solution to our highly inconvenient stockpile of unwanted plutonium as i understand it ..... and could power an awful lot of electric transport including the pensioners go cart i am likely to need shortly ....

[Lateralthinking1]

Ah well, yes, language. We still haven't heard anything but all the difficulties associated with thorium from the nuclear enthusiasts. Maybe we should review that misnoma. The plutoniumites. I was quite fascinated by this article yesterday on the BBC news page. It is from Malcolm Grimston of Chatham House. I was going to launch in about the very clever way he had reduced very serious issues to just "sub plots". However, the factual content seemed so reasonable that even I was almost convinced by it. Of course, I have mentioned in other contexts how the buzz phrase is "we need a good story". The way they work can be read like an open book not that this in any sense means that there is transparency. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13017282

Now we have as the top news story "Japan: Nuclear Crisis Raised to Chernobyl Level" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13045341. So it seems less than slanted to comment that (a) the latest news is extremely serious (b) this tragedy has been deliberately kept out of the news in Britain for about a week (c) some of us will be studying very closely the statements being made and the outcome - it was me who remarked on this thread that the level could be further raised, to no response, but even I didn't suggest that it would leap up to the very highest and (d) Grimston is quite an interesting individual - to my mind, a very subtle operator in that he pushes his agenda in a way that virtually sounds neutral. Expect words about my "paranoia" to follow!

Grimston sounds like Government to me. He has been doing a public relations job for the industry worldwide for a month - interviews with Australian television and so on. He specialised in psychology no less while studying natural sciences at Cambridge. He was Director of the Talks Service (!!!) at the Atomic Energy Authority, has been closely involved with NATO, and is an elected Conservative Councillor in Wandsworth. He is a part of a consortium including Manchester, Southampton and City Universities carrying out a government-funded project on sustainable nuclear energy. He believes that there is no alternative to nuclear but - and note the gambling phraseology - that it is a question or "double or quits". They can't resist a game of roulette. Ask Gus.

What I love about his BBC article is how it begins: "One way of looking at the drama that has unfolded around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors is as a narrative with one central plot, and a number of sub-plots distracting the attention". Sure, fellow, it is the sub plots that are distracting the attention from sorting out the problem. It wouldn't be the severity of a wide range of factors doing that or even you then? Will they ever rest their profit-making propaganda and start thinking of the people who are suffering? I find it all absolutely nauseating and every time it occurs, it has the very opposite effect on me to the one intended.

[greenilex]

People following the "Astute" story might be interested in this link:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/revealed-flaws-of-hms-astute-1.1095509

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Expect words about my "paranoia" to follow!

No such words from me, I assure you. I haven't forgotten my friend and her now deceased brother who dies from Hodgkin's Disease following the Windscale (now Sellafield) fire in 1957.

[Frances_iom]

No such words from me, I assure you. I haven't forgotten my friend and her now deceased brother who dies from Hodgkin's Disease following the Windscale (now Sellafield) fire in 1957.

and what is the link to Windscale - The cause is not known. Hodgkin's lymphoma is most common among people ages 15 - 35 and 50 - 70. Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is thought to contribute to most cases <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001606/#adam_000580.disease.causes>
also
Hodgkin’s disease is considered one of the most curable forms of cancer, especially if it is diagnosed and treated early. Unlike other cancers, Hodgkin's disease is often very curable even in late stages.

With the right treatment, more than 90% of people with stage I or II Hodgkin's lymphoma survive for at least 10 years. If the disease has spread, the treatment is more intense but the percentage of people who survive 5 years is about 90%.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

and what is the link to Windscale - The cause is not known.

It could never be proved, of course, but the medics were convinced of the links when both children (from a family with no known instances of cancer) developed the disease within 4 years of one another.

Hodgkin’s disease is considered one of the most curable forms of cancer, especially if it is diagnosed and treated early. Unlike other cancers, Hodgkin's disease is often very curable even in late stages.

So that makes it OK then? One of them did recover, and I believe she's still alive today, but suffered a great deal at the time (and lost her younger brother).

With the right treatment, more than 90% of people with stage I or II Hodgkin's lymphoma survive for at least 10 years. If the disease has spread, the treatment is more intense but the percentage of people who survive 5 years is about 90%.

I don't find this to be particularly reassuring.

[Frances_iom]

It could never be proved, of course, but the medics were convinced of the links when both children (from a family with no known instances of cancer) developed the disease within 4 years of one another.
.

?Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) - possibly this link wasn't known in 1957, viral infection within same family sounds more likely to me as no other similar clusters were reported that I'm aware of - please correct me if I'm wrong here as I'm no epidemeologist. My limited understanding is that in the last couple of decades we have become much more aware of the possible link between viruses and certain cancers.

[Bryn]

Another point that appears valid to me is that while some papers have drawn attention to a possible statistically significant correlation between cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the Windscale area, I can find no such reports of a similar correlation regarding Hodgkin's disease. The two different cancers should not be confounded.

[Budapest]

People like Malcolm Grimston should be put on trial; but I suppose stupidity is just as much a defence as mental instability.

The relevent thing here is that the BBC publishes such rubbish. Likewise with their 'Environment correspondent', Richard what-ever-his-name-is, who doesn't appear to know anything about his subject. Here's a good example...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12745186

The above report was from the early days of the crisis (at least one further report was pulled by BBC management because it was so scientifically inaccurate). I don't have the time or energy to lash the western media for the way they've reported Fukushima. However, Malcolm Grimston is so awful that it's worth a little bit of effort. Here's the URL again:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13017282

Grimston's words follow in italics...

One way of looking at the drama that has unfolded around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors is as a narrative with one central plot, and a number of sub-plots distracting the attention.

Good advice to folks who live within 100 miles of the plant.

However, the fuel in a nuclear reactor continues to produce considerable amounts of heat even when fission has stopped, and the key task - the main plot in this drama - is to keep water circulating over the fuel to remove that decay heat.

Recriticality, fission, has not stopped. That's why there's so much heat (and incredible amounts of radiation).

This is to prevent damage to the fuel rods, and to the containment around the reactor - the thick steel pressure vessel and the surrounding concrete structure designed to keep fissile material isolated from the outside world in all circumstances.

Reactor No.4 was closed down. It's fuel rods were in the cooling pool above the reactor. The cooling pool lost water and the rods were exposed and there was an explosion. The resulting fire in cooling pool No.4 left fuel rods completely open to the atmosphere (it's from this that most of the worst radiation has come). The fire in No.4 cooling pool was also the first indication that fission was still taking place (because of neutron radiation being detected and also various isotopes, none of which can occur without nuclear fission taking place immediately).

The early decision to evacuate people from the immediate area was crucial - it gave the operators flexibility to deal with the immediate problem, which was the build-up of pressure inside the pressure vessel as the water boiled.

Not singular; plural: there are three reactors in meltdown; and they evacuated people because the radiation levels were so high, which means that the operators have no flexibility to deal with the problem. Folks might have noticed that the 'high levels of radiation' reported by TEPCO are always 1000 millisieverts per hour; that's because TEPCO's instruments can't measure amounts more than this. I'm not making this up.

[Frances_iom]

... I'm not making this up.

refs ?
not confirmed by http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html tho it would appear likely that most of the radiation has come from the spent fuel cooling pond which was full as reactor 4 had just been emptied pre quake + tsunami - these rods definitely overheated due to lack of coolant and the chemical of the zirconium cladding produced hydrogen which blew the covers off the building - possibly the explosion or morelikely the quake damaged a pipe and this has been the main cause of the leak via the restored cooling water

[Lateralthinking1]

Interesting. Clearly the Grimston article is one that needs to be considered very carefully word by word. What you appear to be saying is that the "even when" could imply that it already has been. The reader is left to decide and yet it is clever because it sits among sentences that sound so precise.

I suspected as much and am looking at it again. Like others, he makes a distinction between 1-3 and the rest, saying that they came on line first, were the oldest, etc etc. This could imply that 4-6 are much more recent - they aren't - and that they are significantly different in design. While this may be true of 6, I am not sure that it is of 4 and 5. And in fact 3 and 6 underwent the same earthquake assessments although I take the point that it wasn't the earthquake itself which prompted the crisis if one wants to separate it out from the tsunami.

[Frances_iom]

While this may be true of 6, I am not sure that it is of 4 and 5. And in fact 3 and 6 underwent the same earthquake assessments although I take the point that it wasn't the earthquake itself which prompted the crisis if one wants to separate it out from the tsunami.

No4 was I think in process of decommissioning - hence emptied of all fuel which is why the cooling pond was full - with hindsight would have been better if they had waited until the quake had occurred (!) - the whole set of problems was due to the enormous tsunami that wrecked all incoming power links and the diesel generators (beside killing near 30,000 people + devasting major parts of N E Japan

[johnb]

Re Budapest's latest post.

I agree with his castigation of the media reporting of the Fukushima crisis but I am sick and tired of people regurgitating snippets of information picked up here and there, often from extremely unreliable blogs, (and inevitably adding their own bias) especially when neither they nor their 'sources' have any real understanding of what they are talking about.

There has been useful information in the physicsforums/engineering/nuclear engineering forum but otherwise it is wise to either ignore the opinions (or what they regard as 'facts') asserted by sundry individuals (or at least take them with a bucket load of salt).

[Budapest]

johnb, I'm not regurgitating anything. What you get is my own opinion, based on my scientific know-how of this stuff. Take it or leave it; or glow in the dark.

Dr. Michio Kaku is a well-known professor of theoretical physics. Here's his take on Fukushima...

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/13/expert_despite_japanese_govt_claims_of

And here's Arnie Gundersen, a US nuclear expert who's one of the few in the mainstream media who is not a lobbyist for nuclear power...

http://vimeo.com/22062314

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Interesting links, Budapest. But we are still left with the feeling that all points of view are coloured by the standpoint taken by the contributor in the first place. It's tricky.