Heroism in a nuclear threat

stimpson wrote: »

Here vibe666 - get yourself a clue

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=partial-meltdowns-hydrogen-explosions-at-fukushima-nuclear-power-plant#comments

plenty of clue mate, just a lack of gullibility in falling for sensationalist scaremongering articles.

and yes, of course its very easy to skim over a random article and copy/paste it thinking that it supports your opinion, but how about you actually read it properly? here, i've highlighted the key words in the article for you to make it a little clearer.

But the explosion at reactor No. 2 is potentially more serious as it seems to have affected pressure in the suppression pool—a massive pool of water stored in a torus-shaped chamber beneath the reactor itself that both cools and captures any escaping radioactive materials. If the suppression pool is damaged or cracked and can no longer help cool the reactor—and 2.7 meters of the fuel rods in that reactor remain exposed, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company—radioactive material might escape.

And if the temperature continues to rise—and the reaction of zirconium and oxygen produces yet more heat—the cladding itself can spontaneously combust. "If the temperature gets high enough then you get a self-propagating reaction and a fire that would burn like a sparkler," says physicist Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "If it catches fire, all bets are off."

i don't see anyone there saying anything with any degree of certainty at all, just a lot of the same conjecture and hyperbole in the media that i've been trying to steer people away from so i don't see your point at all.

they might just as well be saying that if it leaks into the sea, then it could cause a mutation in the sea life and godzilla might appear and could destroy tokyo. :rolleyes:

in the mean time, thousands of ACTUAL people have lost their lives and thousands of ACTUAL homes & businesses have been destroyed and over a million ACTUAL people have been displaced or had their lives severely disrupted and it's not getting the attention it deserves because the media are full of sh1t and too busy sensationalising a fcuktonne of ifs, buts & maybes to sell stories and the sheeple as usual are lapping it up, when they should be concentrating on the real problems the people of japan are facing.

dolphin city wrote: »

ah it's okay, sure there's a lad in there with a garden hose topping up the water levels every few hours. :D

why don't you do yourself a favour and look it up instead of trying to be sarcastic?

thousands of people are dead, please do everyone a favour and try really hard to grow up just a little bit?

my original point (which you really seem to have sunk your teeth into without actually finding anything out for yourself yet again) was that one of the *supposed* possible scenario's for reactor 4 was a drop in the water level in the spent fuel pool, which may have exposed part of the fuel rods, causing them to overheat, BUT that if that was the case the normal amount of heat produced and as such the rate of water evaporation in the spent fuel pools is usually very low under normal operating circumstances.

low enough that (assuming that this is in fact the cause of the problems in R4) if the water level had been spotted in time before it exposed the spent fuel rods and started to heat up again (with access to fresh water) it could have been topped up with little more than a low pressure hose every few hours to maintain the water level as the whole purpose of these pools is to store (surprise surprise) 'spent' nuclear fuel rods that have already been used up and also gone through a regular controlled shutdown procedure, leaving them producing only a tiny fraction of their active output. since the spent fuel rods in question were removed in november last year and have been steadily cooling in the spent fuel pools since that time.

the problems with the pool appear to have arisen since the earthquake & tsunami because their water supply (along with the rest of the plant) feeding the pool was cut off and the water level was allowed to fall as the skeleton crew had (perceived) more important things to attend to and had not given it sufficient attention.

Solnskaya wrote: »

And if the fuel rods burn through the floor of the containment vessel, and enter the pool beneath, not alone are all bets off, there will be very little left to bet on.

and again with the scaremongering BS that is getting in the way of the real news. :rolleyes:

what you are talking about is an absolute worst case scenario, followed by another worst case scenario, neither of which are very likely at all.

*if* there was a *total* meltdown it's *possible* that the resultant radioactive mixture *could* cause an explosion in a worst case scenario, however even in the case of a total meltdown, it is still only a worst case scenario and by no means a certainty, and yet still, even if it did happen, it would still be small potatoes compared to what has already happened in japan.

in the mean time, 5600 people are now confirmed dead, with many thousands more still missing. whilst the world has been focusing it's attention on what *might* happen in fukushima, hundreds or possibly more japanese people who were trapped but still survived after the earthquakes and tsunami have been slowly starving or freezing to death waiting for a rescue that never came in time. the chances of finding anyone still breathing in the rubble now are pretty much zero unless they had access to food or water and some form of heat.

that's what's real, that's what's been happening whilst everyone has been focusing on the wrong thing.

even if every worst case scenario possible in fukushima came true all at once, it would still be insignificant compared to what has already happened and is still happening to the people of japan.