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Wombat
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22 Mar 2011, 2:38 am

There is no doubt that the Japanese disaster is rapidly turning into a world disaster that could kill millions of people.

Meanwhile Israel keeps saying that it wants to blow up Iran's working reactor. What do you think that would do?

But wait! There's more!
For sixty years both America and Russia have been busy building nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

What would happen in a real war? They would be using atomic missiles and torpedoes on each others ships.
Each ship would turn into a Fukoshema.

The reactors at Fukoshema are actually designed for use in submarines.

Never mind the actual use of atom bombs on other people's cities. What if 50 or 100 nuclear powered ships got blown up?

Are we human beings totally insane?



John_Browning
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22 Mar 2011, 4:05 am

Nuclear warheads and a few nuclear reactors have been sunk in the ocean. They are well shielded in a near lifeless abyssal plain.

As for Iran, it has to be done. If it could be taken out surgically, the fallout would be a lot less than if Iran got ahold of nuclear weapons.


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Chronos
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22 Mar 2011, 4:10 am

Wombat wrote:
There is no doubt that the Japanese disaster is rapidly turning into a world disaster that could kill millions of people.

Meanwhile Israel keeps saying that it wants to blow up Iran's working reactor. What do you think that would do?

But wait! There's more!
For sixty years both America and Russia have been busy building nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

What would happen in a real war? They would be using atomic missiles and torpedoes on each others ships.
Each ship would turn into a Fukoshema.

The reactors at Fukoshema are actually designed for use in submarines.

Never mind the actual use of atom bombs on other people's cities. What if 50 or 100 nuclear powered ships got blown up?

Are we human beings totally insane?


I've not heard of Israel wanting to blow up Iran's nuclear reactor so I can't comment on that. I doubt the nuclear issue in Japan will kill millions. It's doubtful that Chernobyl has killed millions and that was an uncontained core explosion that scattered dense nuclear fallout over heavily populated areas.

There was actually a movie about a nuclear war, and in it, Australia was spared, but the radioactive fallout was so great that everyone was dying of radiation exposure, and in the end, it killed off the human race. I don't recall the name of it and I'm not sure how many nuclear bombs or event it would take to cause such a scenario....hopefully we won't find out.

There are plenty of life forms that have the potential to survive a nuclear apocalypse though.



Wombat
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22 Mar 2011, 4:45 am

Chronos wrote:
There was actually a movie about a nuclear war, and in it, Australia was spared, but the radioactive fallout was so great that everyone was dying of radiation exposure, and in the end, it killed off the human race. I don't recall the name of it and I'm not sure how many nuclear bombs or event it would take to cause such a scenario....hopefully we won't find out.


The film was called "On the Beach" based on a novel by Nevil Schute.

In the film Melbourne was the last city to go. Everyone else was dead but Melbourne died too.



Gideon
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22 Mar 2011, 8:00 am

The Japanese reactors are not going to release enough radiation to give a person a bad sun burn even a mile away from them. This whole hype is an excuse to sell media air time and newspapers.



ruveyn
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22 Mar 2011, 8:08 am

Wombat wrote:
Chronos wrote:
There was actually a movie about a nuclear war, and in it, Australia was spared, but the radioactive fallout was so great that everyone was dying of radiation exposure, and in the end, it killed off the human race. I don't recall the name of it and I'm not sure how many nuclear bombs or event it would take to cause such a scenario....hopefully we won't find out.


The film was called "On the Beach" based on a novel by Nevil Schute.

In the film Melbourne was the last city to go. Everyone else was dead but Melbourne died too.


Schute exaggerated the dangers. It would take thousands of megaton yield thermonuclear weapons to produce enough fallout to kill the human races. The breakdown of a BWR or PWR even a core breach will not produce such dire effects world wide. That being said, it can get very bad in the neighborhood of such a breakdown: witness the abandonment of the city of Pripyat and Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Even so the people of Scandanavia who received a considerable amount of radioactive fallout (wind born) did not perish. The effects will be some number of additional cancers in these areas, but not an extinction level event.

ruveyn



jamesongerbil
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22 Mar 2011, 8:18 am

Chernobyl happened because people were dumb in the first place. It's not the technology that's awful, it's the people can get their hands on it!

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The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyla nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operatorsb. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html
This clearly cannot be extended to Japan, who do use safe technologies and aren't irresponsibly messing around with it.



ruveyn
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22 Mar 2011, 10:44 am

jamesongerbil wrote:
Chernobyl happened because people were dumb in the first place. It's not the technology that's awful, it's the people can get their hands on it!
Quote:
The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyla nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operatorsb. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html
This clearly cannot be extended to Japan, who do use safe technologies and aren't irresponsibly messing around with it.


The Russians never had a safety culture. They are a stoic, tragic lot.

ruveyn



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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22 Mar 2011, 5:05 pm

Wombat wrote:
There is no doubt that the Japanese disaster is rapidly turning into a world disaster that could kill millions of people.

I've heard some encouraging tidbits of information in the media. Reactor number three, the MOX reactor, is getting good results in its attempt to reconnect the electricity. The bad news is, there's corrosion in reactors one and two from the sea water used to cool the cores. These two reactors are not as dangerous as number three.


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Meanwhile Israel keeps saying that it wants to blow up Iran's working reactor. What do you think that would do?

I doubt they would blow it up. If they do, they might contaminate themselves with radioactive fallout. Why would they want to do something like that?

Quote:
But wait! There's more!
For sixty years both America and Russia have been busy building nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

What would happen in a real war? They would be using atomic missiles and torpedoes on each others ships.
Each ship would turn into a Fukoshema.

Let's hope war doesn't break out. There's no use in worrying about it, though. If it does, it does. But it's not right now, so why worry? No one knows for sure if a war will ever occur between US and Russia.

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The reactors at Fukoshema are actually designed for use in submarines.

I haven't heard that. I did hear they were designed by GE as a less costly alternative to other nuclear power plants. The containment vessels are supposed to cost less to construct, or something like that. The plant was built in 1971 and hasn't had any serious mishaps until now, but has been previously sited as a potential concern.

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Never mind the actual use of atom bombs on other people's cities. What if 50 or 100 nuclear powered ships got blown up?

Are we human beings totally insane?

Good point, nuclear power has the potential to be very destructive. We, as a species, must constantly work to keep ourselves safe in this ever increasing nuclear age.



MotherKnowsBest
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22 Mar 2011, 5:48 pm

If you guys really want to melt your brain watch this documentary film, Into Eternity, about the biggest nuclear problem. My husband, a nuclear scientist, watched it with me and says it's a pretty accurate picture. (He's actually been to the site in question too.) It's given me nightmares. 8O

Full version on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RurTvL7N ... re=related



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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22 Mar 2011, 6:06 pm

I'm a nuclear energy buff, so I am going to give that video a try, motherknowsbest.



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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22 Mar 2011, 6:41 pm

What's strange is the comparison of Onkalo to a Pyramid site in Egypt, like Giza. What if someone digs it up 3,000 years from now, not knowing what it is? It won't be like finding King Tut, that's for certain.



visagrunt
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22 Mar 2011, 6:53 pm

Let's have some perspective here.

How many people died in the vicinity of Three Mile Island? Not one.
Now, I grant you that Chernobyl was a different ball of wax, but only 237 people were identified with acute radiation sickness, of whom only 31 died from ARS. The 4,000 additional cancer cases expected never occurred--rates of solid cancer of those exposed are no higher than those in the general population. Given limitations of health care in Ukraine and Belarus it is difficult to assess the scale of ongoing health impacts from Chernobyl, but given the degree to which it is the subject of debate, we have nothing like the kind of scale that you are suggesting.

Now explosion of a nuclear device is a different beast altogether. The force of the blast and the thermal and ionizing radiation are intended to do violence and they do so effectively. But this immediately places them in a different category from civilian reactors. But if we leave aside the devastation of a deliberate nuclear detonation, what of the radioactive aftermath?

65 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a third of the survivors of those blasts are still alive (roughly 225,000 of 650,000 survivors). Roughly 1% of them have radiation related illnesses. What is their rate of cancer? No higher than in the rest of the industrialized world.

Meanwhile, if a seismic event were to take out a hydroelectric dam, what would the consequences be? How many watersheds would be lost?

It's all very well to demonize nuclear power generation, but if we do so, we need to examine other modes of power generation with the same critical lens.


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ruveyn
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22 Mar 2011, 7:56 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
What's strange is the comparison of Onkalo to a Pyramid site in Egypt, like Giza. What if someone digs it up 3,000 years from now, not knowing what it is? It won't be like finding King Tut, that's for certain.

King Tut does not glow in the dark.

ruveyn



MotherKnowsBest
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23 Mar 2011, 12:03 pm

What I want to know is, what are they going to do when they dig down to target level and find tons of nuclear waste that's already been sitting there for 100,000 years. 8O



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23 Mar 2011, 3:24 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
I haven't heard that. I did hear they were designed by GE as a less costly alternative to other nuclear power plants. The containment vessels are supposed to cost less to construct, or something like that. The plant was built in 1971 and hasn't had any serious mishaps until now, but has been previously sited as a potential concern.


If these are GE Reactors, they use a boiling water technology which is generally safer than the Westinghouse design, which is similar to moder russian designs, which is a High pressure steam/heat exchange design, which was the type of reactor used at TMI. Boiling water reactors are a direct heat design, in which the water heated by the reactor is the same used to drive the steam turbines. --These are also prevailant throughout the US Navy.

Contrast this with the Chernobyl design which was essentially a giant Fermi Pile made from graphite, which has the rather nasty tendancy to catch fire.


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