On the Reactor and your worst case scenarios

[nadinbrzezinski]

and a certain map circulating, the one I made light of the numbers last night... my mistake.

That graphic is good for the wind pattern... after that it is crap.

let me explain...

When you have an incident (we all agree this is one) radiation actually "lowers in strength" exponentially from the zone. This means that by the time and this is absolutely worst case, north america we are taking about 300 rads. Chances are our exposure will be measured in the 70s when all is said and done assuming the containment vessel holds and all that. Oh and no, low level exposure is not safe... studies and all that, but that is not bad. If it does not not... and the absolute worst case happens... the absolute worst case is about 300...

You can reduce this by not drinking tap water, staying indoors, don't play in the rain, and do not drink milk or eat cheese.

But that 750 rads is crap because of the wonderful dispersion patters and how it "lowers in strength"... it is also very much a LETHAL DOSE. Now if you were within the exclusion zone and worst happens... well yep... then you can talk about 1000 and 750 rads and lethal doses if the wind is right and worst happens. I dont think any Du'er is even considering that.

Oh and it goes saying the fisheries will "glow."

Now plastic sheeting and "proofing" a safe room... no that will not work, Unless you use lead. So if you have access to a bank vault... that is safe, or a cave underground will also reduce it by levels of magnitude.

This is why.

Radiation has three particles, alpha... pretty much a newspaper will stop it, beta... your clothes and gamma... that is deep penetrating and that is why you are given a lead apron at the dentist to protest the rest of you.

And yes it is horrifying and it will have effects to the web of life. Oh and it goes without saying... yes these things are engineered to very high standards. but damn when they got a cascade of events going wrong... it is just spectacular. This is why they are wonderful and cheap and all that... UNTIL they fail.

[Demeter]

1. Another one of those "Impossible" Black Swan Events

"Nobody could have predicted..." is going to be the epitaph of the world.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well to be fair

an 8.9 quake is not common, even if in the last ten years we have had what five non common quakes?

And to be even more fair... this thing was built on solid rock... unlike oh the station up the road built on a foundation of... wait for it... SAND.

Oh and right on the fault, not around it, ON IT... on the actual mapped branch of the fault.

Yep, southern california Edison even filled the cove where they built it.

If we had THAT quake here... I am not sure that plant would be standing to be honest.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Good point

The Japanese have been actively planning for earthquakes and tsunamis for some time. Both together appears to have been beyond that they prepared for.

The "one up the road" on the other hand seems prepared for neither.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Yep, San Onofre has always been fun to drive by

as in eerily fun to drive by

[Demeter]

5. Neither Was Japan

It's not possible to "prepare" for this kind of catastrophe--except never to get into this kind of bind in the first place.

A core meltdown does not have a zero probability.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. The point I made still stands

given WHERE this thing was built... compared to oh San Onofre... we will be having the SAME issues with the big one in SO Cal... even if the big one is just a measly 7.5... it is called liquefaction.

I am hoping that this thing's containment vessel holds... even if the core melts, if the vessel holds... then it will become a multigenerational mess (like Chernobyl)...

But I admit it... they did built on a SUBSTRATE that is far SAFER than oh the plant up the road from me.

[Dappleganger]

11. something Dr. Masters brought up...

is that the plate shifting in Japan is different than what would happen on the San Andreas fault. The one on the San Andreas has the potential for far more damage.

[MineralMan]

7. Yah, I used to live just five miles, by air, from Diablo Canyon.

I spent a lot of time before it was built, protesting its building. All to no avail. It was built. It is operating. It's just waiting for a big quake. I no longer live in California, nor five miles from the plant. On the other hand, I do live in Minnesota, and there are a couple of nukes here, too. Not that close, but not that far, either.

Are they risks? Of course. Not as much as having on on an active earthquake fault, but risks, nonetheless. Nuclear power is not safe. It has never been safe. It will never be safe. That's the nature of generating electricity using fission reactors. They're not safe, and cannot be made to be safe. They can be made to be safe most of the time, but not 100% of the time. So, they are not safe.

I spent hundreds of hours protesting the Diablo Canyon plant. All to no avail. There it is, today, humming away, waiting for the earthquake. I'm glad I'm not there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Oh and forgot worst case

fruits and vegies are off my list too for a little while

[Yo_Mama]

9. Why bother?

There seems just about no chance of a worst case scenario actually occurring. They've got seawater and boric acid into the worst reactor, and they say radiation levels are dropping.

Of course, I can play disaster p0rn too.

For example, Godzilla might wake up and lunge out of the harbor. Due to his untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder from his last encounter with the human race, he neurotically fixates on helicopters and rapidly rampages up the coast to Fukushima, where yet another quake hits. Tripping, he collapses on top of Reactor No 1 at the Daiichi plant, and squashes the still-intact containment chamber. Naturally, this releases whatever is left of the fuel and the seawater/boric acid compound. The fuel rods are exposed to air.

Sensing an odd tingling sensation, Godzilla rises and resentfully kicks the fuel rods a few hundred yards further inland (which nets him a very nice contract offer from the Chicago Bears, who are already lining up their scabs for the next NFL season).

Now we have the rods fully exposed. They are relatively cool, but still emitting tons of radiation. What we can't let the Japanese do is simply dump tons of concrete over them, because we NEEDS disaster. So now we need something to get this up in the jet stream. Hmmm. Mothra!!!!

Unfortunately, at this precise moment a battery-operated Fukushima station has been playing its soothing Crooning To the Oldies lineup, which consists solely of those little twins singing their Moth-a-riYA song for 26 straight hours. Not only has the population become crazed with anger over 26 straight hours of this when it is searching for news, and bolted into the evacuation area in a mob bent on tracking down and destroying the station, but Mothra has been alerted and comes to investigate. Unable to find the twins, Mothra circles in a puzzled yet determined manner over the Fukushima shore. It is at this PRECISE moment that the mob of Japanese finds and shuts down the radio station.

This makes Mothra decide to leave, but Mothra figures "hey, gotta get something out of this," and picks up the nice radioactive nectar fragments to go back to his(her?) - xir! - nest. Mothra unfortunately did not have xir coffee this morning, so xe is a bit befuddled.

At this PRECISE moment, Mothra detects the very faint sound of the Godzilla film festival currently being broadcast by an small, yet classy, TV station in Seattle, USA, which mingles tantalizingly with the fumes from a fair trade coffee shop on the outskirts of Seattle. Blundering into the jet stream, Mothra heads toward Seattle. Admittedly, Mothra's top flight speed is only 25 km per hour, but the jet stream itself is moving at a good clip, so now we have hot, partially spent fuel rods being carried toward the Seattle area by a giant moth with poor taste in music looking for two tiny twins with poor taste in music. As serene a pastoral picture as this is, one wonders what will happen when Mothra doesn't find the twins and lands for a coffee?

Fade to advertisement. Folgers, I think.

We see Mothra nearing the Seattle landscape, looking a bit tired and in need of a pick-me-up.

I'm a little too tired to finish this novel, but it gets easier from here. There are only a few plot holes left, which are relatively easy to fix:

A) One might expect NORAD to have picked up the giant radioactive moth in the jetstream, but it turns out that ET has just landed in Boulder, CO (where else?) and the entire airforce is out there getting autographs.

B) One might expect Mothra to drop the fuel rods into the ocean and land at the first available Starbucks, which would sadly produce little disaster, but Mothra has Strict Opinions on Fair Trade and heads inland toward the fair trade coffee shop.

C) Mothra finally drops xir cargo which lands on the top of a tractor-trailor heading for NYC.

D) It's not like any of those radiation-monitoring thingamabobs deployed after 9/11 are still working.

E) Take your pick as to which city to finally fully irradiate, ignoring the fact that fuel rods are not that stable and by now, rather cold. Still radioactive, but certainly not spewing as much radiation into the air as the desert nuke tests of the 40s and 50s.

F) I really think you should work Cheney into this somehow. It's not REAL disaster p0rn until Cheney gets in there. Maybe he gets irradiated and turns into a radioactive undead zombie who craves the still-living hearts of union organizers. Naturally he cannot be killed by ordinary means. I think it would be neat if he eventually climbed the Empire State Building.

[Zoeisright]

10. Wow, What a stupid post.

Your stupid fantasy vs. actual reality.

I would try to explain that your "reasoning" (such as it is) is flawed: appeal to ridicule, argument from ignorance, and continuum fallacy, but I'm sure that's beyond you.

Sit down and play with your blocks and let the grown ups handle things, please.

[Yo_Mama]

16. Oh, - you want reality?

Read the TEPCO news releases:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

And here's a list of the reactors at Daini and Daiichi:
http://www.japannuclear.com/nuclearpower/program/location.html

For comparison, Chernobyl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Note that they are all boiling water reactors, so they aren't going to explode like Chernobyl and can't catch on fire like Chernobyl. I honestly haven't come up with anything better than Godzilla and Mothra to get this material up in the jet stream. Perhaps we could try a volcano that explodes RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE DAIICHI PLANT!!!! That has possibliities. But after an earthquake, a tsunami, and another earthquake, it might strain audience credibility.

I don't mean to offend you. I am so damned glad that they have managed to get this situation under more control that I am giddy with relief.

But still, we just had almost the worst case scenario, and even the worst case scenario wouldn't do anything like Chernobyl. Totally different reactor types, and a much smaller reactor. Also, at Chernobyl they refused to believe that the reactor had blown up, which made things much, much worse.

[SidDithers]

12. Brilliant!!!...

:applause:

Best post on the topic today.

Sid

[Joe the Revelator]

13. I love this post...

Thank you for making it.

[Rex]

14. About no chance = 0?

I like the idea of Cheney climbing the ESB, but you know only oil and pop tarts can kill a nosferatu king kong of the undead apocalypse!

[RC]

15. You make more sense than the paranoid, no science anti-nuclear folks do.

They really should do some research into the different types of nuclear reactors and stop comparing them all to a primitive pile of graphic blocks in northern Russia, built with minimal fail-safes.

Granted nuclear is not 100% safe, but coal and oil kill and injure many more each year that nuclear does, including Chernobyl.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Well I guess thinkning we may get 70 rads in the west coast

is just fantasy... and nothing to see here.

For the record that is a low number.

More for the record, every incident in the history of the nuclear age has been downplayed until well, they can no longer down play it.