Via the GWPF – After Tsunami Disaster, Expect Nuclear Delays & Global Run On Cheap Fossil Fuels
Forget wind. Forget solar. Forget green energy. Japan’s nuclear disaster will only intensify the global race for cheap fossil fuels while most future energy R&D will go into nuclear safety. –Benny Peiser, 14 March 2011
Any potential switch away from nuclear power is likely to favour gas-fired generation, the most practical low carbon-emission alternative. –David Musiker, – Reuters, 14 March 2011
Nuclear power should have a part to play in cutting carbon emissions. But safety fears could kill its revival – at least in the west. Although support for new nuclear construction has been creeping up in the US and Europe, it remains brittle. Even one serious accident could shatter it. –Financial Times, 14 March 2011
Germany’s federal government intends to check the operating time of each of the 17 German nuclear power plants. The question of coal energy is newly emerging. –Die Welt, 14 March 2011
Cost remains the biggest obstacle for any revival of nuclear energy. Momentum for a nuclear comeback also has been slowed because other energy sources remain less expensive. Natural gas is cheap, especially with the expansion of supplies from shale rock, and there’s been no legislative action to tax carbon emissions. — Jia Lynn Yang, The Washington Post, 13 March 2011
Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference. –Darren Goode, Politico, 11 March 2011
Other headlines:
Japan’s crisis may have already derailed ‘nuclear renaissance’
The world has seen a surge of nuclear reactor projects recently, and President Obama has made a push for nuclear power. But the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) nuclear plant may abruptly halt those efforts.
The nuclear crisis in Japan, even if authorities are able to bring damaged reactors under control, has cast doubts on the future of nuclear power as a clean-energy solution in the United States and around the globe, – Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2011
Japan Earthquake Holds Lessons and Warnings – Science Insider, 11 March 2011
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And to add to the earlier – WNN’s facebook page is reporting that a fire occurred reactor #4, now extinguished. Reactor #4 is on cold shutdown, so does not present a danger, but the fire may be the cause of the spike in radiation readings
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150106273137499
I remember reading this procedure. Besides having acronyms like EGGs (Emergency Gravity Generators), there was also some that spelled out items that go with eggs, like bunnies or such (I forget now).
About a year (??) ago on WUWT there were comments on this topic stating that the permitting of small hydropower installations has been blocked nationwide by greenie lawsuits.
Here’s from a level headed nuclear scientist:
http://www.livescience.com/13220-nuclear-power-expert-explains-japan-crisis.html
Japan has asked the US for help to stop the American-designed reactors plunging into uncontrollable meltdown. The latest blast occurred after cooling water dropped repeatedly in unit 2, with the nuclear fuel rods partially exposed – risking an overheat of up to a temperature of 2,200 degrees Celsius. Damage to the hermetically-sealed reactor container dramatically increases the risk of serious radiation leaks…… A top Japanese official said the fuel rods in all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors at Daiichi appeared to be melting……Specialists are now considering spraying water directly on the damaged container in an attempt to cool it externally.
Link to story at SkyNews
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Video-Japan-Quake-And-Tsunami-Plea-For-US-Help-After-Second-Explosion-At-Nuclear-Plant/Article/201103215951706?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15951706_Video_Japan_Quake_And_Tsunami%3A_Plea_For_US_Help_After_Second_Explosion_At_Nuclear_Plant
Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, speaking on Fukushima Daiichi, 3/15/11
Michael Crichton, ‘Is this the end of the world? No, this is the world.’
Larry, with due respect I think your position is quite untenable. Clearly a tsunami was foreseeable and it was unreasonable to think a facility on the sea front was immune to flooding via breach of a sea wall – so flooding of the electrical control room as well as diesel generators was foreseeable. Likewise disruption of electrical and transport links subsequent to an earthquake of sufficient local severity to cause automatic shutdown. Moreover modern design improvements to nuclear power stations highlighted the deficiencies inherent in this one long ago.
Forced evacuation of such large areas surrounding a plant are not experienced in other kinds of major industrial accidents excepting such extreme events as Bhopal. Yes, the loss of life due to the tsunami is far, far worse than will be caused by this nuclear disaster. It is, nevertheless, a nightmare for very many thousands of people who cannot accept assurances from their leaders and experts at face value when these assurances have successively proved unreliable – to the point when even the media you deplore are leaving over safety concerns.
There seems a good case for Thorium reactors as from what little I know they would always fail safe and then be relatively easy to restart having been inspected.
James Bull
I am not a conspiracy theorist – but that doesn’t stop me being suspicious about the way this has been portrayed by the Japanese Givernment and the power company.
Does anyone not think it strange that days after supposed full control rod insertion, these reactors are taking a lot of cooling? The way I see it, either, they never got full ‘shutdown’ or the coolant system has been failing from the outset – e.g. via a leak?
I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that once shut down was properly initiated, the core will cool down after some residual heat has been dissipated. Now, it seems that this cooling simply hasn’t been sufficient from the supposed shutdown and that this has presumable been allowing a continual heat build up. But for this to be disastrous, wouldn’t the heat need to be continued to be generated (i.e. from non-full shutdown?) We were told that temporary battery powered cooling did work (?) – so surely in the hours whilst that was going on, someone could have organised backup power? The pieces of the puzzle don’t seem to fit….
Overall, it seems that we have not been told the truth – whatever that may be – or more simply, the power company are a bunch of idiots who have not done the proper job and are relying on the blame being placed squarely on the tsunami/quake to cover their backsides!
Anthony,
There is power generation technology that is so efficient that the difference in hemispheres has a big effect on the power output.
It harnesses individual energy and not the current nonsense of bulk energy harvesting.
It is all to easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. At the time these reactors were being built, did anyone suggest that they ought not to be sited where they were because of the risk of a Tsunami? Or the risk of an earthquake?
When was the last time Japan experienced a Tsunami of such magnitude? How frequently does Japan experience a Tsunami of broadly similar magnitude?
I seem to recall reading that in Japan, they experience an earthquake every day. Japan is situated in probably the most siesmically active region of the world. Of course, it is a matter of scale but obviously, earthquake resistence must have been part of the design and presently none of us know precisely what damage was sustained and how the reactors have stood up to the extreme forces to which they were subjected.
When one sees the extent of damage that a Tsunami can wreak, it is no surprise that this caused considerable operating problems to these reactors and it is not that surprising that back up safety features have been compromised.
Humans learn from experience. It is now clear that nuclear reactors ought not to be sited in places where there is more than an insignificant risk of Tsunami damage.
I wish the Japanese well and hopefully they will get these reactors under control without further significant contamination.
“Does anyone not think it strange that days after supposed full control rod insertion, these reactors are taking a lot of cooling? ”
No, not particularly. It normally takes 4-7 days after operation heat production in a BWR to drop sufficiently for the reactor to be depressurised for refuelling – and when the lid isn’t taken off temperatures will still be about 80C. I posted the numbers on another thread, but for Unit #1, after a week or so it’ll still be generating about 5MW.
The good news is, at that point, heat removal by natural convection from the outside of the reactor vessel is entirely sufficient.
On a different point, I’m starting to get a little irritated by the IAEA, who are jumping just a little too much to the media’s tune. They’re not admitting it, but they started one scare this morning, when they were still telling the BBC about a fire in the #4 reactor fuel pond, some time AFTER they’d already been told the fire was nothing to do with the pond/fuel, and had already been put out.
And now it turns out that the 400mSv/hour reading that’s been made so much of wasn’t at the plant boundary, as is usual. It was one “hot-spot” between two reactors. The radiation level at the plant boundary was about 12mSv, and by 06:00 GMT was 0.6mSV/hour. Still high, but three orders of magnitude different.
The extension of the damage to include the previously uninvolved reactor 4 is bad news. That unit had been offline for maintenance.
Apparently, the reactors spent nuclear fuel was held in a cooling pool on the 5th floor of the building. This pool has apparently not been replenished because of the pump failures. Probably the pool has begun to boil dry and the fuel elements are reacting with the steam to produce hydrogen, which caused a fire in that building. While that fire is now out, the spent fuel pool is apparently now too radioactive to visit or to reconnect to another water source.
It seems likely that the site will have to be entombed, because the likelihood of intolerable local levels of radiation, from exposed nuclear fuel, is becoming much greater. The overall damage will still be fairly modest, as only the volatile radioactive material will disperse, but it is certainly the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
[they are saying that all reactors are now “safe and stable” according to SKY]
http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/14/even-candles-kill-many-more-than-nuclear-power/
Michael R says:
March 14, 2011 at 7:03 pm
It quite clearly is a nightmare…it may or may not be “catastrophic” (only time will tell) but it clearly is a nightmare for the Japanese people. The people in Japan are going through the worst nightmare that most of them will ever experience, and the nuclear meltdowns are certainly part of it. To try and minimize this nightmare they are going through is quite an insult to that nation.
Is the nuclear situation part of the nightmare? Yes of course…
______
Let’s just stop you right there because you’ve got the truth of it. The comment that I was referring to in my post was the insensitive statement that the nuclear meltdowns in Japan were “industrial accidents…nothing more…” as though someone had simply spilled a bit of bleach on the floor of a factory or something. They are NIGHTMARES, and are part of the larger NIGHTMARE that the Japanese people are going through right now. While it does no good to blow these meltdown out of proporation by making it seem as though the world was coming to an end, so too, it is absurd to label them as simply “industrial accidents”. The Japanese people are going through a triple-headed earthquake-tsunami-nuclear nightmare and to try and downplay one those facets by calling it an “industrial accident” is insulting to the Japanese and I will not let it pass without comment…obviously.
Alan Wilkinson says:
March 14, 2011 at 11:35 pm
A couple of problems here. With 500,000 people evacuated into emergency shelters overcrowded and very lacking in supplies, refrigeration, medical care, electricity, and heating the elderly and those with other health problems are going to experience far greater mortality rates.
Nuclear accidents are even more insidious in that it’s hard to tell what will happen with cancer rates among those exposed over the next several decades. Even a small uptick amongst a large population can add up into a great loss of life.
So between the stress of large scale evacuation and some smaller number of permanent displacements into less than adequate facilities, emotional and physical stress, and long term uptick in cancer rates the death toll from the nuclear accidents could easily equal or exceed the number killed directly by the earthquake and tsunami. Then again maybe not. One thing is for sure though – it’s far too early to tell. They have hardly even begun locating the dead or clearing out the emergency shelters. In fact the emergency shelters are still filling up as the evacuation zone around the nukes keeps expanding as they fail to quench the meltdowns and other plants get added to the critical list.
I woke up in the midwest this morning to reports that people were fleeing Tokyo (while others were remaining) due to radiation drifting there. Now, not so much a story. Apparently, mostly from a fire at the used fuel pool of an inactive reactor that has been extenguished. To me, it indicates that the people at the site are partially overwhelmed. I can only think that the initial loss of cooling was worse than they understood or worse than they thought they could recover from. I was told on Saturday by someone who knows that industry that if hydrogen had come from the reactors, then they had problems. They knew where the hydrogen came from, but they never really applied that publicly to conirm the level of the problem .
We should leave ourselves room for change , because available information keeps changing and the situation is developing. Still, news is a business and fear sells. Those reactors will eventually cool, they’ll regain total control of the site, and the three remaining reactors may or may not be used again. Japan certainly needs the electricity badly for survival.
Eli Rabbet of all people actually has started an interesting discussion on the situation with some very intelligent links for a change. http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/15/fukushima-15-march-summary/
Kind of neat seeing some intelligent fish out of water in the comments.
There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to the health hazards of nuclear power – uranium mining and refinement.
Talking about the health hazards of nuclear power plants without examining the health of the miners producing the fuel and the environmental damage in the vicinity of them is like talking about the cleanliness and safety of coal fired plants without taking into the account the people and environments where the coal is mined. I imagine the number of people who die in coal power plant accidents is miniscule but the hazards and environmental damage incurred during the mining process are notoriously poor. The exact same thing applies to nuclear power – you have to include the people and places where the fuel is produced. Same goes for oil exploration, production, and refinement. Nobody dies producing wind or sunlight as those fuels require no mining. Biofuels similarly just about free of risk from end to end in the process.
David,
There is no such thing as risk free energy or a risk free existence. Risks have to be quantified and acceptable levels of risk determined. It would be nice if everything was simple and risk free, then even that would lead to other risks, like your mother-in-law living forever 🙂
Kev-in-Uk says:
March 15, 2011 at 3:51 am
I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that once shut down was properly initiated, the core will cool down after some residual heat has been dissipated. Now, it seems that this cooling simply hasn’t been sufficient from the supposed shutdown and that this has presumable been allowing a continual heat build up. But for this to be disastrous, wouldn’t the heat need to be continued to be generated (i.e. from non-full shutdown?) We were told that temporary battery powered cooling did work (?) – so surely in the hours whilst that was going on, someone could have organised backup power? The pieces of the puzzle don’t seem to fit….
Spent fuel rods have to be cooled in liquid storage for about 5 years after they are removed from a reactor. Shutdown, which happens automatically given a set of predetermined parameters (such as the vibrations from an earthquake of a given strength), reduces the heat output from the reactor to 7%. After one day, given proper cooling this drops another 5%, then down to 1% after about 48hrs. That last percent then takes a lot longer to cool off. This is due to the nuclear reaction continuing inside the rods plus the radiation from the fuel rods.
A few points then to consider: First of all, 7% of the heat output of these generators is still a huge amount of heat, requiring a continuous, massive cooling effort.
Secondly as the cooling system had failed, the fuel rods most likely did not cool down on schedule as they should have and might still be giving off 5% or 2%, we just don’t know exactly.
Thirdly, the roads are unpassable, the port unusable, there is a limit to how much stuff one can helicopter in under such circumstances, so this is not a screwup by the power company blaming the tsunami for their problems – the tsunami has made bringing in the equipment needed very difficult indeed.
Lastly, even though the seawater cooling as a second level backup is mostly working as intended, the engineers are basically chasing the heat, trying to catch up with a cooling schedule they have fallen far behind. Hence the build of of heat and pressure, the attempt to release said pressure, bringing with it a buildup of hydrogen which tends to blow up with little encouragement needed.
Overall, it seems that we have not been told the truth – whatever that may be – or more simply, the power company are a bunch of idiots who have not done the proper job and are relying on the blame being placed squarely on the tsunami/quake to cover their backsides!
I am certain the Japanese government is releasing only the information they feel absolutely compelled to release and no more. I am equally certain mistakes will have been made, especially with engineers desperately trying to cope with an unprecedented emergency, but this is nowhere near a Chernobyl style cover-up. The nuclear emergency was declared immediately, with frequent updates issued even if they contained nothing but bad news, the population has been evacuated in a progressively larger area and Iodine tablets have been distributed to prevent the population metabolising radiactive Iodine. Hardly the signs of a cover-up or the denial shown by the Russians.
These engineers and technicians, this “bunch of idiots”, are knowingly risking their lives and their potential offspring – I suggest they deserve your respect and your sympathy not your contempt.
Alan Wilkinson says:
Yes you are correct the likelihood of a tsunami was foreseeable, that is why they designed in protection for a 6.3 meter tsunami. Unfortunately they got a bigger one.
We learn from experience. In the period from 1850-1862 there were over 600 boiler explosions in England that killed hundreds. As a result of that sort of experience standards of construction and operation changed so that today we routinely operated super heated steam plants at 1000 psi plus pressure levels and boiler explosions are rare. Same thing happened with bridge construction (we are still learning lessons here regarding on going maintenance requirements). The same will happen with coastal nuclear facilitates, elevated cooling water storage will become mandatory, sea wall protection will change from perhaps the 90% likely tsunami to 1.2x the 90% likely tsunami. Off site pumping facilities set back from the shore will be required, etc. etc. etc.
There is not a single major technology you can think of that did not go through the exact same learning process, ranging from natural gas or producer gas piped to homes, to nuclear power, they all have had problems as the technology got more wide spread and matured.
Larry
Larry
Mr. Springer said something that is patently false thusly:
“Biofuels similarly just about free of risk from end to end in the process.”
Evidently he neglects the same things he accuses others of neglecting.
Let’s see if he can find the mistake in that statement.
“Many journalists and alarmists are not very adult.”
Don’t kid yourself. They are cold, calculating adults. They see in real time that viewers switch channels when a qualified scientist gives factual no-nonsense information.
On the other hand, when Michiu Kaku speaks….ratings climb.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=13138100
A very simple formula.