Massive Quake Hits NE Japan

[Docfeelgood]

Yet, you still didn't answer the question.

I said I would if he would answer mine.

[Docfeelgood]

After the war, Japanese people developed a natural resistance to all kinds of radiation.

as to why Dashi has no heart.

[The Mad Monk]

I don't believe it. I just don't.

Why must you keep going?

[notyoueither]

Glutton for punishment, except he's too dim to recognise the punishment he's taking.

[Wezil]

Sadly, we have to share the pain. This thread has been wrecked.

[Docfeelgood]

I don't believe it. I just don't.

Why must you keep going?

What? are you his lover ? what do you care for that heartless bastard?

[Docfeelgood]

Sadly, we have to share the pain. This thread has been wrecked.

high pedestal you put yourself on. What about when you backed out on our date? you stood me up! you were going to show me a good time!

[Docfeelgood]

When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense – it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.

Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.

Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel‘ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.

The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.

The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/03/w...s-groundwater/
interesting

[germanos]

Blowing the thing up with a nuke seems silly. What does he mean by vaporize the core? If there's one thing we don't want it's radioactive vapour blowing around. It seems counter-intuitive, but the same can be said for blowing out oil-wells with explosives.

But I agree it seems the situation is completely out of control, has been from day 1, and we can only hope that the whole thing won't blow up worse then it already has.

[Docfeelgood]

Agree, using a nuke to put out a nuke? like pouring gas on a fire to put it out?

I'm sure KazyHorse knows the answer. He always knows.

[Dinner]

It's cherry blossom time.

I was in Ueno Park in Tokyo (the urban park famous for it's cherry blossoms) right in the middle of cherry blossom season. Truly spectacular. I thought the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. were nice (the Japanese actually donated a bunch of those cherry trees to the US prior to WW2) but Ueno Park just blows it away.

[Docfeelgood]

Do they smell sweet?

[Docfeelgood]

http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/si...m,+radioactive

Why am I not surprised?

[Wezil]

Why am I not surprised?

Why am I not surprised you are an out of work "health care professional".

I would be surprised if someone actually hired an idiot like you.

Quit bugging us and go look for a job you deadbeat. There must be a bathroom you can clean somewhere.

[Docfeelgood]

Why am I not surprised you are an out of work "health care professional".

I would be surprised if someone actually hired an idiot like you.

Quit bugging us and go look for a job you deadbeat. There must be a bathroom you can clean somewhere.

who is "us"?
You flatter yourself if thinking I post just to bug you. Is "us" as demented as you?