Nuclear power

ninky_2

details of the INES scale here. this would certainly seem a "serious accident" with "significant release of radioactive material" rather than one with "limited release of radioactive material". the only reason we are not seeing more public deaths yet is due to evacuation and the fact those left behind are cut off from the outside world. it's not due to "limited release".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale

Level 6: Serious accident

Impact on People and EnvironmentSignificant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures.Example:

• Kyshtym disaster at Mayak, Soviet Union, 29 September 1957. A failed cooling system at a military nuclear waste reprocessing facility caused a steam explosion that released 70–80 tons of highly radioactive material into the environment. Impact on local population is not fully known.[2]

Level 5: Accident with wider consequences


Impact on People and Environment. Limited release of radioactive ­material likely to require i­mplementation of some planned­ countermeasures.Several deaths from ­radiation.Impact on Radiological Barriers and ControlSevere damage to reactor core.Release of large quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high probability of significant public exposure. This could arise from a major criticality accident or fire.Examples:

• Windscale fire (United Kingdom), 10 October 1957. Annealing of graphite moderator at a military air-cooled reactor caused the graphite and the metallic uranium fuel to catch fire, releasing radioactive pile material as dust into the environment.
• Three Mile Island accident near Harrisburg, PA (United States), 28 March 1979. [3] A combination of design and operator errors caused a gradual loss of coolant, leading to a partial meltdown. Radioactive gases were released into the atmosphere.
• First Chalk River Accident,I][URL="http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"][COLOR=#0645ad]citation needed[/COLOR][/URL][/I Chalk River, Ontario (Canada), 12 December 1952. Reactor core damaged.
• Goiânia accident (Brazil), 13 September 1987. An unsecured caesium chloride radiation source left in an abandoned hospital was recovered by scavenger thieves unaware of its nature and sold at a scrapyard. 249 people were contaminated and 4 died.
• Fukushima I nuclear accidents (Japan), ongoing since 11 March 2011.

by anyone's judgement level 5 seems an understatement. the windscale fire was a level 5 as was 3 mile island. this is definitely more serious than either of those two events.

thescouselander

@ninky - on what basis can the current incident be assessed as worse than the level 5 incidents you stated? I certainly haven't seen any evidence on the news that suggests anything worse than level 5.

ninky_2

thescouselander wrote: »

@ninky - on what basis can the current incident be assessed as worse than the level 5 incidents you stated? I certainly haven't seen any evidence on the news that suggests anything worse than level 5.

the counter measures are far more extreme than those implemented at the other named level fives (iodine distribution and size of evacuation area). the area of detection of radio isotopes is far larger (now even some detection in US although levels are low isotopes have been distributed this far). the only reason we are not seeing more civilian deaths is evacuation (from previously inhabited) areas and the fact that many in those areas had already been killed.

thescouselander

ninky wrote: »

the counter measures are far more extreme than those implemented at the other named level fives (iodine distribution and size of evacuation area). the area of detection of radio isotopes is far larger (now even some detection in US although levels are low isotopes have been distributed this far). the only reason we are not seeing more civilian deaths is evacuation (from previously inhabited) areas and the fact that many in those areas had already been killed.

Yes but the countermeasures are mainly precautionary - they're not directly linked to the effect. Arguably similar measures should have been taken during the other level 5 incidents.

Also the detection of isotopes some distance away from the incident is probably more to be with the ability to make such detections - there are more sophisticated detection equipments available now than in the past. Detections near the US are said to be very low level with zero danger to health.

ninky_2

thescouselander wrote: »

Yes but the countermeasures are mainly precautionary - they're not directly linked to the effect. Arguably similar measures should have been taken during the other level 5 incidents.

Also the detection of isotopes some distance away from the incident is probably more to be with the ability to make such detections - there are more sophisticated detection equipments available now than in the past. Detections near the US are said to be very low level with zero danger to health.

so why did the french nuclear regulator upgrade to a 6 earlier this week? do you think they just don't understand the INES scale? or that perhaps they have a different agenda to the japanese?

thescouselander

ninky wrote: »

so why did the french nuclear regulator upgrade to a 6 earlier this week? do you think they just don't understand the INES scale? or that perhaps they have a different agenda to the japanese?

I dont know - why should the French regulator know more than anyone else? They seem to be on their own with their assessment.

John_Pierpoint

The French have lots of nuclear power stations and regular "minor incidents", so they must be pretty knowledgeable about what can go wrong.
France has 59 reactors churning out nearly 80 percent of its electricity, and the French state owns Areva, which exports its nuclear technologies around the world.
Borloo, putting the problems in context, said there were 86 level-1 incidents in France in 2007, and 114 in 2006.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ev-ehrlich/will-climate-change-denia_b_211182.html

harryhound

The Japanese have experience of creating these "little local difficulties" too
(So there is yet another technically sophisticated country, where the managers recruit idiots and fail to train them because they are cheap). Seems they put too many used rods into a bath of nitric acid to melt down the casings and forgot that if you stuff too much nuclear together it "goes critical".
The BBC has dredged up its on the spot interviewer from 1999:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fc7th#synopsis

Generally thought to be the worlds 4th worst "civil" nuclear accident - no Europeans killed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident

ninky_2

harryhound wrote: »

Seems they put too many used rods into a bath of nitric acid to melt down the casings and forgot that if you stuff too much nuclear together it "goes critical".

the situation in japan is not unique. in the states they are getting jumpy because some plants have crammed even more spent fuel rods into small spaces. in fact this situation seems to be happening all over.

there has been such pr over the containment system of reactors but a failure to note that spent fuel poses as much of a safety hazard and is a time bomb for the next generation. putting the same safety features in place for spent fuel as we have for reactors would increase the costs of nuclear power considerably.

the reduced containment of spent fuel pools also makes them a viable terrorist / military target. i heard some nonsense being spewed about how terrorists couldn't steal spent fuel because it's so highly radioactive - well why should they steal it? it's a ready made bomb that's only detonation requires damaging of the coolant system.

harryhound

It looks like the accident at the site took place after the reactor was "turned off" and must be sown to a bunch of cowboys decommissioning it?!? Have we not got some of these Magnox plants sitting arround because they are too expensive to decommission?
The Tōkai Nuclear Power Plant was Japan's first nuclear power plant. It was built in the early 1960s to the British Magnox design, and generated power from 1966 until it was decommissioned in 1998.

Ah this is probably the nearest one to London:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_nuclear_power_station
Oh this sounds familiar:
On 22 January 2011 a fire broke out in the decommissioning work as titanium rods were being broken up.[8]
How do you manage to create a fire by rubbing two titanium rods together in a power station with no fuel rods? I thought titanium was used for building aircraft these days?

Meanwhile the owners of the burning power station in Japan have been found to have been fiddling their inspection records - plus ca change................