Make no mistake: the US news media is milking the Japanese nuclear disaster for every drop it is worth. Most journalists are hard lefties, and 100% against nuclear power, and their reporting shows it. Yes, I am accusing US journalists of letting their personal political beliefs color their supposed objective news reporting. I wonder how many of them know that the founder of the Sierra Club admits that it was a mistake to oppose nuclear power, and that current journalists are simply swallowing this original credo from the environmental wacko lobby.
Permit me to illustrate.
I herewith regurgitate the junk I found on Wikipedia, that totally correct, totally unimpeachable, totally incapable of being wrong source of information. Any goofball (yes, I qualify, not to mention any journalist writing a story about Fukushima) can look this crap up and get the same info: yes, I do have a BS from UC Berkeley, but this is in pure chemistry and not engineering.
A SCHEMATIC OF FUKUSHIMA
The Daiichi complex has a total of 8 nuclear reactors:
**unit #1, #2, #3 - operational
**unit #4, #5, #6 - down for maintenance
**unit #7, #8 - under construction
‘Daiichi’ means Dai #1; yes, there is a Daini, which is Dai #2 with 4 more reactors, a few miles inland.
NUCLEAR REACTORS ARE EARTHQUAKE PROOF
It is important to note that the 9.0 earthquake is a 100 times (or thereabouts; I still do not understand the Richter scale) stronger than the earthquake destined to hit SF and, by implication, Diablo Canyon. The 9.0 earthquake did not knock out the reactor safety systems: the tsunami did.
OK: big earthquake, and power goes out at the nuclear plant; diesel generators kick in to power the water pumps. OK, so far, so good. Then comes the tsunami, knocking out the diesel generators.
Oops.
What, you mean to tell me that in all of Japan, there are no heavy-lift helicopters and spare, portable diesel electricity generators?
This reminds me of stories over the decades that hurricanes, tornadoes, and ice storms are the real threat to nuclear reactors, not earthquakes.
FULL SPEED AHEAD
There are 2 different types of commercial nuclear reactors: boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR). BWR are the original designs: the very first US civilian power nuclear reactor in the US was a BWR in the early 50’s, and is the same design in the Daiichi plant. The US Navy totally decommissioned all BWR’s in nuclear powered vessels in service by 1974.
There are 3 dozen nuclear reactors similar to the Daiichi ones currently in service in the US scattered among 2 dozen nuclear facilities. The design is so old, that I count 10 BWR’s that have been decommissioned from old age.
It is important that we proceed full speed ahead building more nuclear reactors. We must decommission these 50-year-old geezers and replace them with the newer, safer, disaster-proof generation of PWR’s.
YEAH, BUT THE NUCLEAR REACTORS EXPLODED
No, the exterior buildings exploded, not the reactor. I would not say exactly that this is by design, but this is actually a good sign. The uranium fuel rods have a zirconium alloy casing: when these go dry, under intense heat, and have water reintroduced, it causes the creation of hydrogen gas. When this gas is released into the containment building, well, ka-boom.
This is actually a good sign. It means that the engineers are getting water into the core, cooling it down.
UNIT #4 FIRE
This is the one event that is worrying. The reactor in #4 is a BWR type 1, which has a bulbous shape. Spent fuel rods are stored in a water pool near the top of the reactor. When this pool goes dry, the rods can overheat, melt, burn, and release airborne radioactive dust into the atmosphere. This is apparently what happened at Unit #4.
TIME IS ON OUR SIDE
If we assume that the engineers successfully inserted the control rods and shut down the reactors in #1, #2, and #3 (a rather big if, I agree) after the earthquake but before the tsunami, then time is on the side of the engineers. When you do this sort of total shut down, it takes a few days for the radioactivity and heat to die down. If they can keep the core cool in the meantime, then the core will gradually decay without a meltdown. The fact that the core has not melted through the containment vessel so far is good sign: each day that passes, the less likely it becomes that the core will melt down.
SPRAYING WATER IS A JOKE
The media reported the dousing of water on the reactors from helicopters and fire boats as a joke: a total, useless, desperation, last ditch effort that will make the nuclear reactors totally unusable.
Totally wrong.
Whenever the safety systems are activated in a nuclear reactor, the unit instantly becomes a has-been, never to be used again.
Also, do you know what the main emergency back up safety system is in a BWR?? Pumps spray water onto the core.
NO ONE HAS DIED FROM THE NUCLEAR REACTOR FAILURE
The earthquake and tsunami has killed 10,000+ people and counting. My prayers to the victims. However, not a single person has died from the nuclear disaster. The failure of the TEPCO power plant has caused terrible inconvenience to the people not to mention the Japanese economy, but no one has died. The TEPCO workers on site trying to control things are rightfully being called heroes, not to mention the walking dead, and I salute them.
However, I wonder if their exposure and danger has been exaggerated by the press. And, the anecdotal accounts indicate the civilian exposure near the reactor complex to radiation has been, thus far, minimal and not life threatening.
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