Nuclear Power

[mfcrocker]

Windscale '57, Three Mile Island '79, Chernobyl '86, now f*ckushima and the rest, there is a history of accidents at nuclear power plants. Back then everyone was told they were safe but that hasn't been borne out by events. I don't expect any power plant is totally safe, the issue here is the impact an accident might have if your power plant happens to be nuclear.

There can be little doubt that every nuclear plant in the western world is on al qaeda's map.

Oh come the f*ck on...

Windscale: The purpose of the facility was changed without working out the risks properly. Conclusion: people were knobs.

TMI: A partial meltdown like this one, issues mainly arised due to poor training. Conclusion: people were knobs.

Chernobyl: Don't even need to go into just how stupid people were being with this one. Conclusion: people were knobs.

Are you seeing a common link here? Nuclear power is fine as long as you don't f*ck with it!

Quote:
"After Tuesday's explosions and fire, radiation dosages of up to 400 millisieverts per hour were recorded at the f*ckushima Daiichi site, about 250km north-east of Tokyo.
Later, a reading of 0.6 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was recorded at the plant's main gate, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said."

You know as well as I do that it was a temporary spike to 400mSv/h - it died off pretty quickly after that. Let's keep the sensationalism out of this thread, yeh? Recent data (4:30pm 15/3) shows it at 489.8μSv/h, a much lower doserate. And that's the thing to remember - it's a rate. Dose = rate * time exposed.

The UK doserate limits for special personnel may only be 100mSv/yr but that's (understandably) a very careful limit. Radiation sickness doesn't usually show itself until around 1Sv of exposure. Plus I don't know about you, but I reckon the people still there deserve the rest of the year off after this

 

[barryfullalove]

I can never hear about Windscale without thinking of the Not The 9 O'Clock News sketch where they had an advert for Windscale Flakes and all the kids were glowing orange

This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk0WzCtF0yY

 

[Red the Paper]

How many radiation related deaths have there been in relation to Chernobyl....less than 100

 

[Anonymous]

You know as well as I do that it was a temporary spike to 400mSv/h - it died off pretty quickly after that. Let's keep the sensationalism out of this thread, yeh? Recent data (4:30pm 15/3) shows it at 489.8μSv/h, a much lower doserate. And that's the thing to remember - it's a rate. Dose = rate * time exposed.

AHHHH!!! but 0.6 mSv/hr AT THE GATE.

radiation dissipation is affected by distance. (0.6^3)xdistance = radioactivity at source. normally mSv values are reported at 1 meter from the storage bunker, pig or source. therefore to get the correct output you have to adjust for the distance.

Hence at a very conservative estimate the gate is 200m away from the sources - which gives ~50mSv/hr.

That is still considerable and the sort of values you would expect from an unshielded source which has been taken out of a pig.

 

[Mr Jinx]

How many radiation related deaths have there been in relation to Chernobyl....less than 100

Sounds like that may have been the Kremlin's official figures. Don't think they'll ever know the real number.

 

[Red the Paper]

Sounds like that may have been the Kremlin's official figures. Don't think they'll ever know the real number.

Don't believe the hype Mr Jinx.

I think you will find more die from mining disasters than nuclear ones.

 

[mfcrocker]

AHHHH!!! but 0.6 mSv/hr AT THE GATE.

radiation dissipation is affected by distance. (0.6^3)xdistance = radioactivity at source. normally mSv values are reported at 1 meter from the storage bunker, pig or source. therefore to get the correct output you have to adjust for the distance.

Hence at a very conservative estimate the gate is 200m away from the sources - which gives ~50mSv/hr.

That is still considerable and the sort of values you would expect from an unshielded source which has been taken out of a pig.

For the figure I gave (489.8μSv/h) the location was listed as "Portal" rather than the main gate. No idea where Portal is, but it's definitely not the main gate because that has it's own listing.

With all that said, with the water levels dropping in the spent fuel pools this is becoming more serious.

 

[crocks]

Is it a case that the fuel rods/reactors need to be cooled down sufficiently before other (more permanent) action can be taken e.g. pouring concrete in?

Not sure what the next steps are....

 

[Anonymous]

Concrete isn't a solution anyway.

Neutrons are "fast" - concrete is not an adequate shield against them. You need either water, polyethylene, polypropylene etc to slow them down and reduce the energy and lead to shield against gamma radiation.

 

[StroudGrecian]

Oh come the f*ck on...

Windscale: The purpose of the facility was changed without working out the risks properly. Conclusion: people were knobs.

TMI: A partial meltdown like this one, issues mainly arised due to poor training. Conclusion: people were knobs.

Chernobyl: Don't even need to go into just how stupid people were being with this one. Conclusion: people were knobs.

Are you seeing a common link here? Nuclear power is fine as long as you don't f*ck with it!

So what you're saying is nuclear power is safe as long as people aren't knobs.

The trouble is people will always be knobs.