David Lock

Listening to a scientist on Radio 4 this morning who was saying that the latest nuclear power station breakdown in Japan was potentially very serious. My limited understanding was that this was because the station used Plutonium and Uranium which is the real nasty stuff. Exposure to these elements cannot be detected by a Geiger counter.

Does anyone have more knowledge about the science/physics and what the consequences might be? Is the potential disaster scenario worse that say a single nuclear bomb?

dl

Coffin Dodger

Most, if not all reactors use Uranium and if my education serves me right there are three types of radiation - alpha, beta, and gamma and these are all picked up by Geiger counters. It's mainly gamma that you have to worry about if you're not near the epicentre

Lewis is a nuclear scientist so I'm sure he'll explain properly soon

Leslie

No nuclear radiation is a good thing to have, the effects depend of course on the strength of the exposure and the type of radiation as described above.

Les

hodgy0_2

if i remember correctly to much exposure to Gamma can play havoc with your tailoring and turn you green when you get angry

birchy2010

iTrader: (12)

It could be potentially Worse than a Nuclear bomb depending what the spent fuel load is within the cores. As long as the Cores dont breach the only worry is contaminated Water.
This mornings problem is that they have lost the cooling system, you'd have hoped all control roads are inserted and that the problem is heat generated during the cool down, now the cooling system ceasing flow is very reminisant of 3 mile island disaster where cooling systems were "problematic" and i use that term lightly as we'll never know. As long as they can cool the core and the Vessel remains intact then it should be very contaminated, if there is a damaged vessel and core breach then it could be very nasty depending on any explosions and action taken to limited exposure.

The pumping of the sea water is to cool the core down to control the heat generated and prevent further explosions.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to man.

Also when you say is this more dangerous than a single nuclear bomb - it depends. There are many different kinds of reactors with many different potential effects if they go wrong.

Equally there are many different types and sizes of nuclear bomb.

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Where is the resident nuclear scientist when you need him

David Lock

OK. The scientist certainly said that a Geiger counter would not detect radiation as has been happening at other less dangerous power stations.

Even if seawater is used it still has to be taken out of the station.

Re bombs or course it's "how long is a bit of string" type question and I know you can have small nuclear bombs the size of a large rucksack but, of course, the Hiroshima size sprang to mind.

Terrible situation but I think there will be legitimate questions asked about the location and design of the stations in the first place and an earthquake, even of this ferocity, surely could have been part of the design and safety plans. If that just wasn't possible then they shouldn't have been built (easy to say I know).

dl

Leslie

I remember being told that Plutonium Oxide is seriously deadly, especially if it is inhaled.

Les

boomer

There is a very good article here

It explains the technical stuff in a very understandable way

mb

andys

Fuel rods now full exposed accourding to BBC, thats not good

scoobiesteve103

in all fairness if anyone can deal with this its the japs.after having a whopping nuke land on them in the second world war they did come back to be some of the smartest people on the planet.im sure there top people are working on it and will hopefully get it safe soon

Coffin Dodger

There is no question that earthquakes would be considered as part of the design of the reactor especially give its location in close proximity to geographic faults. I had a tour of the Magnox reactor at Bradwell in Essex, even this has backup systems for eventualities such as earthquakes etc. even though Essex isn't specifically known for them.

If the Boron control rods could not be lowered into the reactor due to some sort of distortion of the core then it was also possible to release Boron marbles that would hopefully find there way through the channels into the core. Failing that Boron powder could also be blown in. So a main control system (Boron rods) and two backups (marbles and powder).

DonNedly

iTrader: (10)

In fact plutonium is the most toxic element known to man.
Followed by mercury which is in my teeth!

Excellent article! Good to read a logical well informed article instead of the normal scaremongering clueless media with their Chernobyl 2 and so on.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Nuclear Pinball !

scud8

iTrader: (1)

The Trawsfynydd power station in north wales used to use water from the lake to cool the reactor. I used to fish there all the time and part of the local knowledge was knowing where the hot water flowed into the lake as this affected what fish were likely to be where. In many years of fishing there I never caught a fish with more than the normal number of heads or eyes.

stilover

And our Governments want to build more of these power stations all round Britain. No thankyou.

Worse still, the contract was given to the ******* French.

We are an Island. If the Government invested in Wave energy, we'd have enough power to never need any power stations. The Tide will always be there generating energy.

Fantom

The tide will not always be there..............but it will be there for a long time

Coffin Dodger

Gathering power from the tides is still very much in it's experimental stages. I don't doubt there is a lot of power that could be harnessed but it is also questionable that sticking loads of big machines in the sea could have a detrimental effect on an already fragile marine ecology due to currents being redirected etc.

Upshot is it's not going to be viable any time soon. Nukes on the other hand are for the most part clean (i.e. environmentally friendly), can produce huge amounts of power from tiny amount of fuel, and modern reactors are as safe as they can possibly be. If your concerned about power stations all round Britain I'd take a look over the channel as the frog's have loads of them along their coast which lets face it is not far from Britain.

Given our continued and increased demands for power nuclear is the most sensible and most environmentally sound at this moment in time.

Miniman

iTrader: (2)

You can't turn up the tide when everyone needs a cuppa after Eastenders though.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Typical news; As vague as ever, treating three speperate problems as a single one

There are three seperate reactors having problems!

The first one had its core exposed on Friday/Satuday, second one was partially exposed on Saturday (and porbably fully exposed by Sunday night). The third one is also suffering cooling problems and also been exposed.

No1 suffered core exposure and an explosion on Friday/Saurday and has been filled with sea water to replace the lost coolant (vented as steam)
No3 suffered core exposure and explosion on Monday and has been filled with seawater to replace the lost coolant (vented as steam).
No2 has suffered core exposure, but levels have been stabilised (what with who, knows! Maybe that one still has water supply)

note; 'exposure' means lack of contact with cooling water, not exposure to the outside world, the reactor still maintains containment

vindaloo

Blinky?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...impsons#Blinky

speedking

There is always confusion between radiation and contamination.

Alpha and Beta are particles which contaminate. Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper, Beta by aluminium. If inhaled or ingested they are dangerous. They can be transported by dust, water, vapour etc. but otherwise have only a very limited range.

Gamma is effectively X-rays which cannot be detected by a Geiger counter because they are rays. They require lead or concrete to stop, but are a line of sight phenomena that will not drift for hundreds of miles. A failure may expose a source, but non-locals will not be affected. Range in air typically 50m.

The fact that gamma rays cannot be detected by geiger counter is not sinister.

There are two cooling circuits, the primary contacts the fuel and becomes irradiated. The secondary acts through a heat exchanger with the primary and so can be released back into the environment as at Trawsfynydd.

A 1/10,000 year earthquake is the Design Basis for Nuclear critical structures and components. In the UK this is a fairly low level event. It would be possible to design for any size of earthquake, but economics dictates that a near incredible event is big enough. When you consider that road bridges, hospitals, fire stations, airports etc. do not consider any earthquake criteria in their design then you realise how much extra protection is built in to nuclear facilities.

@stilover. AIUI these plants were designed ~50 years ago, and technology has moved on since then.
"The Tide will always be there generating energy." There is a certain amount of natural energy put in to generate the tides. If you extract a portion of that energy from the system then the tides will reduce. Maybe not significant globally, but with unpredicted consequences locally. Similarly, wind is not limitless. If the UK extracted a lot of energy from Westerlies then Holland would see reduced wind power.

Unfortunately due to the UK's withdrawal from the Civil Nuclear programme it is the French who have the most experience of designing and constructing Nuclear Power Stations around the world. They will, of course, be subject to the UK's excellent regulatory regime.

Nuclear Power is the only sensible dependable energy source for the near future.

andys

Wiki says they can detect gamma rays

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

boomer

There was actually a commercial trout farm using the warmed-up water from the power station - i remember going around it when i was a nipper (or is that a kipper?)

mb

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

Agreed. Not like we have a lot of Earth quakes around here anyway.

Shame the anti-nuclear lobby will jump all over this. I trust they'll be happy when the lights go out!

5t.

scud8

iTrader: (1)

There was a good article on the Telegraph site yesterday (from James Delingpole), part of which commented on the relative safety of the nuclear power industry vs wind farms. Wind farms lost in absolute terms (44 fatalities in the last 10 years compared with 7 for nuclear), and by a huge margin when corrected for the amount of power generated (the article claims 200 times, which sounds conservative to me given how little power wind farms actually generate compared to their theoretical output).

It links a report on accidents from wind farms which is scary reading - it claims there are documented cases of blade fragments being thrown more than 1km from the turbine, and others where fragments have embedded themselves in nearby buildings. (The report is written by a group opposed to wind farms in general, so some of the comments are clearly biased, but it does claim that the data is based on analysis of documented and verified cases.)

The article is http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...se-earthquake/

Gary C

Not really true.

Alpha and Beta are both particles but it is the source of the particles that is the contaminate, in the same way you can get contaminated by a Gamma emitter and even an electron capture source producing X-rays.

All uranium reactor fuel contains plutonium once the reactor has been at power. Some of the U-238 captures a neutron to from Pu-239 which is itself fissile.

One of the reactors is fuelled with MOX which is a fuel with an initial Pu-239 content and increases the available power from each fuel stringer (and also uses up some of the Plutonium stocks)

Having a higher Plutonium value in the fuel makes a release more significant, though its the radioactive Iodine & Strontium that are the early problems. Iodine is taken up readily by the thyroid & strontium is taken up by bone and then both steadily delivers dose to the body.

Gary C

Not true

Its Alpha that can't be detected by a GM tube as it can't pass through the foil window.

A Ro-80 even has a Gamma/Beta discriminator sheild to allow the operator to determine the fraction of Gamma to Beta.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

The problem is the UK is full of miserable c hunts that do not want anything on their doorstep so nothing gets built, no one wants wind turbines, so they protest and go to court and the council say no and nothing gets built, the Jocks have a gazillion miles of countryside where no one lives not even sheep but every few years a tourist passes by and admires the landscape so the jockanese go to court to object and the council says no so nothing gets built. If the Brits are so ******* good at screwing up their own future by protesting why the hell can't you get your act together and sort out petrol prices and road tax etc?