Nuclear power debate

GWC Community Off-Topic/Other
#161

by the way, I am not argueing for coal power at all. I don’t live in the US anymore, and the discussion in countries where coal/oil isn’t abundant is not dichotomized into Nuclear or Coal.

There’s still the element of total renewable energy like solar and wind. but those are the long term goals.

At the mean time i don’t think you have to use uranium/plutonium to boil water, after all that’s all a power plant does. There are other nuclear elements (eg thorium) that won’t cause a melt down and still boil water at a reasonable pace.

#162

Info:

Iodine-131
Natural Half life: 8 days
Half life in human body: 5 days

Main effects: Thyroid Tumors.

Solution:
People lacking iodine intake will absorb upto 80%, people with iodine rich diet will absorb about 10%. Common Iodine rich foods are seaweeds. When in risk of high exposure, iodine pills are used. 3 pills can reduce absorption to 1 to 2%.

Cerium-137
Natural Half life: 30 years
Half life in human body: 70 days

Main effects: Cerium-137 spreads through out the body. It is particularly harmful to organs sensitive to radiation. Breast cancer is one of the more common effects.

Solution:
Drinking lots of water can help cycle out cerium-137. When exposed to high quantities, people should go to the hospital immediately. There are antidotes in the hospital, and Chelation for treatment.

#163

Turn Dirt into Energy, mining waste to become nuclear fuel

China’s Science Branch announced project to launch Thorium reactors in 20 years.

China has just announced massive funding to develope Thorium reactors. They also announced that by doing this ahead of others, and with the massive thorium available in China, China will lead the world in energy technology.

I’d hate to see that day… and i am sure it isn’t in the interest of the US either. Well, thorium power is good for the world, but if that world has an authoritarian state holding everyone’s balls, it just isn’t the kind of the world i wanna be in, especially when I am Taiwanese. So why is the discourse in US still uranium v.s. coal??? It’s time to do this and make those Chinese waste 20 years.

#164

news:

City of Tokyo has declared tap water unsafe for infants. Thus causing the entire city to frantically scrounge up all the bottled water.

The Japanese Ministry of blah blah blah and Science has tested high concentration of Cerium 137 and uranium in the earth at the village of Iitate, 40km from the plant. The concentration of cerium 137 is 4 times over the regulation set by the Japanese government, and uranium is 6 times higher. Halflife of Cerium 137 is 30 years.

Iceland has detected Iodine 131 from Fukushima at Reykjavík. Making iceland the first European nation to announce the detection of airborne radioactive materials from Fukushima.

Radiation level here in Taiwan reported by http://203.69.102.242/gammadetect.php, has raised from 0.03 to around 0.06 here in Taiwan. Though I think these stations only reports gamma ray radiation.

#165

Dr. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University, and his assessment of the radiation risk to public health, both in Japan and around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/earth/29brenner.html?ref=science

How to explain the facts without scaring people needlessly? How to reassure without seeming to sugar-coat or patronize? The last thing people want, Dr. Brenner said, is a guy like him in a white coat on TV smugly telling them everything is fine.

At first, there was a delay in releasing radiation readings around the plant. And when officials announced that radioactive iodine had been found in milk and vegetables, and yet initially declared them safe, Dr. Brenner said, he “screamed loud” and spoke out to reporters about it. There was simply no reason to risk consuming them, he said.

Over all his message is that there are risks and it’s significant to Japan at the moment. Though he underestimated radiation getting into the tap water, and I see no mention of how the radiation that’s expelled into the ocean will have international effects, at least around northern pacific.

In recent years Dr. Brenner’s research has focused on responses to terrorism. He finds himself in the odd position of having directed the development of a machine that he hopes will never be used, the Rapid Automated Biodosimetry Tool, or Rabit. Its purpose is to test blood samples — up to 30,000 a day — for signs that people have been exposed to a significant dose of radiation.

If only the Colonials had Dr. Brenner instead of Baltar.

#166

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29japan.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=plutonium&st=cse

Plutonium leaking into the sea…

The contaminated water threatening the ocean had radiation measuring 1,000 millisieverts per hour and was in an overflow tunnel outside the plant’s Reactor No. 2. The maximum dose allowed for workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts in a year.

Mr. Nishiyama said that while the detected plutonium levels were low, they pointed to the gravity of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. Plutonium is a heavy element and not easily dispersed, he said, so higher levels outside the reactor suggested a wider leak.

Half life of Plutonium… Pu-238: 87 years, Pu-239: 24,100 years

#167

These two geniuses (or lunatics how ever you see it), drove and walked through the radiation zone up to 1.5 km away from the nuclear power plant with their Geigerzähler. The landscape you can see, reminds me of Zombie apocalypse.

//youtu.be/yp9iJ3pPuL8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8&feature=player_embedded

#168

that incessant Geiger counter beeping forced me to turn off the sound… but from the engine sound before i think they were driving an electric car.

i wonder if those dogs lost their owners and house, that’s why they are wondering the streets… poor things… they look so happy.

it said the guys are wearing radiation suite and masks so maybe that’s why they are doing this.

road conditions got pretty bad when they get closer to the shore and the scene at 6:26, when they guys got out of the car and ahead of them is endless rubble and a half standing house is pretty shocking…

the bulldog scene is heart breaking. My Japanese is poor, but I think the guys told it to hang on, and the dog just sat down and looked at them. At the herd of cattle I think passenger wanted to get out and film, and the driver stopped him because he is afraid the mother cow might be protective of the young. again, my Japanese is poor, but that’s what I think I heard…

the highest count in the clip is 106+ uSv/h…

#169

I was not familiar with uSv/h.

We know how inaccurate wikipedia can be, so I’m asking you all whether this is accurate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Symptom_benchmarks

“Symptoms of acute radiation (dose received within one day):[19]
0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.”

Fake edit: I looked at foonote 19 which pointed to http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/docs/energy-good-bad.pdf, so the chart looks legit unless the data is out of date somehow. So, just posting for everyone else. My apologies if this info has been posted earlier.

#170

The sheer number of different ways of rating radiation is one of the most confusing things about this disaster.

#171

Yeah, I was hoping for a chart that gives me info per minute or per hour. But, I guess it’s up to the reader to divide 250 – 1000, etc., mSv/day by 24 or by 1,440… If that conversion is even scientifically sound.

#172

I don’t even know.

Also, you really can’t convert b/t some of the systems (eg. rads to Sv)

#173

I just finished watching the whole video.

Definitely lunatics…

Thanks to my poor hearing I couldn’t hear/notice the beeping. But, that car doesn’t indeed sound like a normal gas car. Smart considering there are probably no working gas stations nearby.

When the camera panned, I saw normal civilian clothes. And, their shadows at the end seemed normal-sized.

The road conditions is partly why I call these guys lunatics. Who drive across a road whose stability is questionable?! Same for walking across damaged bridges.

The highest count I saw was 112 uSv/h at 11:36. But, yeah.

Good to know. Thanks.

Edit: Another reason these guys are lunatics. It’s good that they have two counters, but how can they guarantee the counters are really accurate? I’m guessing they thought they bought good counters, but they could be cheaply made or have other issues which compromise their accuracy.

#174

Hard to tell. Some small cars (even, e.g., decades-old MR-2s) can be that quiet, and get pretty great mileage.

#175

For comparison, a flight from LA to New York is a dose of 40uSv, so no, not lunatics from a radiation perspective. Business travelers pick up more radiation in an average week, so as long as they don’t set up camp at the area of max exposure, they should be fine.

100mSv (aka 100,000uSv) is the lowest short term exposure linked to increased cancer risk.

#176

Thank you. I was hoping that you could help us out to understand what was said. I also picked up that they were driving an electric car. Regarding the dogs, some of them might have roamed around before last month or also some owners might have left them back (willingly or unwillingly).

#177

again, the point is what kind of radiation. 40uSv of Iodine/Cerium/Plutonium in the air, falling on your skin and getting breathed in to your lung is different from 40uSv of cosmic/solar radiation at higher altitudes, radiating on you through the metal skin of a plane.

And 100uSv/h exposure for 12 hours (abut the time it takes to fly from Japan to the US) is 1.2 mSv, which is 300 times more radiation than 40uSv from a flight. Just saw 40 is LA to NY, then 5 hours would be 500uSv, which is 12.5 times the equal time on a flight.

according to the chart from wiki, which only reflects the acute radiation symptoms, but not long term effects, exposure to the highest reading in the clip for a day would be 2.4 mSv, which is 0.0024 Sv, so those guys will not show radiation sickness right away. But that is far from saying it is safe.

#178

Just my 2 cents then I’ll get out of all the smart peoples hair.

NOTHING is safe. Walking down the street, staying at home, going to work, driving your car, riding the bus, making coffee, riding the elevator, taking the stairs, exercising at the gym GO WOLVERINES! all these things have differing levels of risk.

Coal, petroleum, solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, all forms of energy production have their risks and rewards.

As a society we need to decide which rewards are worth the risk and how to defer, lower, or move those risks.

Options i have heard of range from putting the generation plants deep deep underground (below the water table) so on the chance of a meltdown the radiation is contained.

I have heard of shutting down all civilian reactors and going back to fossil fuels and alternative energy.

In the end for me it all depends on what level of risk you want.

If we ditched all power plants we would create jobs (albeit low paying ones) and there would be 0 risk of carbon from them, and 0 risk of a meltdown contaminating the earth.

Millions would die without refrigeration, heat, communication, and cooking.

Its all about finding the balance, and what you are willing to sacrifice, and force others to sacrifice, for the safety you desire.

Well, thats my 2 cents.

TLDR : Balance, risks and rewards. choose yours.

#179

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/04/11/dnt.lah.japan.radiation.city.cnn?iref=allsearch

Interview with one of the people who recorded that earlier video.

I was wrong, they were wearing suits.

#180

Some more facts to unmuddy the waters:

http://www.livescience.com/13876-nuclear-energy-dangers-coal.html