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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Jan Wyllie

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Jan Wyllie

Differences in nuclear regulations [14Jul11] - 0 views

www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/...n_nuclear_regulations_999.html

nuclear

shared by Jan Wyllie on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released recommendations this week based on lessons from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, declaring that events like those at Fukushima are unlikely to occur in the United States because of stringent safety measures and regulations.
  • The 90-day study suggested developing equipment and procedures for U.S. nuclear reactors to keep the core and spent fuel pool cool and requiring that facilities' emergency plans address prolonged station blackouts and events involving multiple reactors.
Jan Wyllie

Japan media critical of PM's nuclear-free vision [14Jul11] - 0 views

www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/...s_nuclear-free_vision_999.html

shared by Jan Wyllie on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • While conservative dailies slammed the plan as irresponsible, even papers that share the goal criticised Kan for speaking vaguely and without sufficient debate, at a time when his days in power are numbered.
  • In the face of the hostile reaction, Kan's top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, stressed that Kan's words should be understood as "a hope for the distant future", not official government policy.
Jan Wyllie

Earthquake, not tsunami, caused first Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown? [09jul11] - 0 views

nuclear-news.net/...shima-nuclear-reactor-meltdown

nuclear

shared by Jan Wyllie on 14 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • the most interesting single thing on the table in today’s update is the revelation that at least one of Fukushima’s reactors suffered sufficient damage from the earthquake that hit the region … prior to the tsunami … to have likely gone out of control or melted down.
  • we can assume at this point that the untrustworthy TEPCO will cover up whatever it can, and it is in their interest to ignore any evidence that the earthquake itself resulted in significant damage.
  • It would turn out that not only was this tsunami not unexpected at all (this has been covered before) but that the earthquake did enough damage that whatever other expectations Japanese nuclear regulators have regarding earthquakes may have are in serious question.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The plant is essentially full of water … injecting more water into the plant can only happen if some of it boils off, which releases radioactive steam into the air (which is, essentially, what has been happening for weeks). The current plan is to decontaminate the water and use the decontaminated water to cool the plant.
  • There is no evidence that water is no longer leaking into the sea or steam into the air.
  • rate of escape is only somewhat slowed down, and the prospect of additional catastrophic events such as the collapse of a structure or an explosion is still very real.
  • possibility of a hydrogen explosion
  • There is still a distinct
Jan Wyllie

Full Meltdown: Fukushima Called the 'Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of M... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/..._in_the_history_of_mankind%27_

nuclear capability practice science biodiversity pollution emergence record risks

shared by Jan Wyllie on 18 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.
  • TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
  • "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."
  • "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."
  • a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.
  • far more radiation has been released than has been reported.
  • "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,"
  • the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".
  • "We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."
  • Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April.
  • Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
  • Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator
  • Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US
  • Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units. "Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."
  • "With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
  • Jan Wyllie on 18 Jun 11
     
    A "NEVER ENDING DISASTER" - A new rendition of Hofstadter's Law about how things take longer than expected ... it's always worse than expected, even when you expect the worse.
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