Nuclear power

Jonbvn

I am quite staggered to see this article by the High Priest of the Guardinisatas Monbiot.


Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power

He presents an amazingly pragmatic article.

tomterm8

You've got to consider the fact that Japan was very lucky, because three of the six nuclear reactors had been taken down by fluke (for maintenance) before the tsunami struck. And despite that, after two weeks, they have been unable to repair the plant enough to reestablish cooling. And the fact that radiation has been shown to contaminate the Japanese food and water supply already.

Here's the question: if all six of these power stations had been operating, what would have been the result?

Calling Fukushima a 'crappy power plant' is all very well, but no one was saying it was crappy before the accident. It is a small power plant, compared to the ones we are intending to build. And I heard a conservative minister claiming we don't suffer from tsunami's in Britain. Which makes me suspect our existing and new nuclear power plants are not designed to cope with one.

We are an Island. What happened to Japan can happen to us. tsunami's can happen to any island.

blueboy43

tomterm8 wrote: »

You've got to consider the fact that Japan was very lucky, because three of the six nuclear reactors had been taken down by fluke (for maintenance) before the tsunami struck. And despite that, after two weeks, they have been unable to repair the plant enough to reestablish cooling. And the fact that radiation has been shown to contaminate the Japanese food and water supply already.

Here's the question: if all six of these power stations had been operating, what would have been the result?

.

Who knows what the result would have been, however the fact that some of the reactors are down is hardly lucky as the biggest problem at the moment is the spent fuel rods in reactor 4 cooling ponds (one of the ones not in operation).

thescouselander

Jonbvn wrote: »

I am quite staggered to see this article by the High Priest of the Guardinisatas Monbiot.


Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power

He presents an amazingly pragmatic article.

Crikey - I never thought I see Moonbat saying things like that. Still, all valid points though.

What I also find interesting that the recent events may prevent building of new nuclear plants. The implication of this must be that we run the older (and less safe) plants on under some sort of life extension regime until some other substitute is found (which seems unlikely).

Surely the safer approach would be to bring forward the building of new, safer plants so we can shut the old ones down.

blueboy43

ninky wrote: »

radiation is not the same as radio isotopes. radiation disperses relatively quickly. isotopes have a massive half life and accumulate in the food chain.

More ninky disinformation.

It is radioactive isotopes that give off radiation.

Brazil nuts contain tiny amounts of isotope radium 226 & 228 - they do not contain "radiation". They have these isotopes roughly 1000 times more than other foods, yet you will get much more benefit from eating them (through Selenium) than the risk of the radiation dose.

Far from isotopes having "massive half lives" - some do Plutonium 244 is 80 million years, and some don't Iodine 131 has a half life of 8 days.

Some isotopes accumulate in the food chain, some don't, and it can vary by foodstuff.

Some are absorbed instead of calcium by humans (eg Strontium 87).
Some aren't.

At present it doesn't appear that this disaster is close to Chernobyl in its effects - but no one really knows.