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Thread is about the various issues surrounding Japan in the aftermath of the recent earthquake. Don't bring the shit side of the internet to the thread, and post with the realization that this thread is very important, and very real, to your fellow members.
Do not post speculative and unconfirmed news you saw on TV or anywhere else. Generally the more dramatic it sounds the less likely it's true. |
On March 15 2011 22:06 hugman wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 22:03 dump wrote:On March 15 2011 22:01 Grettin wrote:On March 15 2011 21:58 zatic wrote:On March 15 2011 21:56 Agathon wrote:On March 15 2011 21:48 mTw|NarutO wrote:German Source is saying that the radiation level rose to an too dangerous level to work at the plant. http://kurier.at/nachrichten/2081574.phpAll workers have been evacuated. Can someone confirm? Can u translate : "13:16 Dramatische Entwicklung im AKW Fukushima: Die Strahlung ist in den letzten Stunden so stark gestiegen, dass das dort arbeitende Personal abgezogen werden musste, berichtet die japanische Nachrichtenagentur Kyodo. Bis zuletzt hatten rund 50 Arbeiter unter Lebensgefahr in den sechs Reaktorblöcken gearbeitet, um das Schmelzen der Brennstäbe zu verhindern. " My german lessons are so old  Bottom line: radiation level so high that the remaining 50 workers have been called off the plant. Source Kyode news agency. So this means there isn't anyone to do anything about it. Thats pretty much it then. Time to bust out the cement and sand I guess? :/ Can someone explain why they haven't started doing that already? Is it because it makes it impossible to remove the contamination from the site later? Because from what I understand there's nothing of economic value left to salvage at the plant anymore, right? Chernobyl got filled with cement something like 3 months after the meltdown. I have no idea what would happen if you start pouring cement on core that's in the process of melting. Surely something will happen though, and if they don't do it I'm sure there's a reason.
Ah right, I forgot the last thing that kept the whole thing under wraps sorta exploded... bleh.
On March 15 2011 22:06 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 22:03 dump wrote:On March 15 2011 22:01 Grettin wrote:On March 15 2011 21:58 zatic wrote:On March 15 2011 21:56 Agathon wrote:On March 15 2011 21:48 mTw|NarutO wrote:German Source is saying that the radiation level rose to an too dangerous level to work at the plant. http://kurier.at/nachrichten/2081574.phpAll workers have been evacuated. Can someone confirm? Can u translate : "13:16 Dramatische Entwicklung im AKW Fukushima: Die Strahlung ist in den letzten Stunden so stark gestiegen, dass das dort arbeitende Personal abgezogen werden musste, berichtet die japanische Nachrichtenagentur Kyodo. Bis zuletzt hatten rund 50 Arbeiter unter Lebensgefahr in den sechs Reaktorblöcken gearbeitet, um das Schmelzen der Brennstäbe zu verhindern. " My german lessons are so old Bottom line: radiation level so high that the remaining 50 workers have been called off the plant. Source Kyode news agency. So this means there isn't anyone to do anything about it. Thats pretty much it then. Time to bust out the cement and sand I guess? :/ Can someone explain why they haven't started doing that already? Is it because it makes it impossible to remove the contamination from the site later? Because from what I understand there's nothing of economic value left to salvage at the plant anymore, right? We've been discussing about this also on the other forum im on. I think they are having hard time getting the cement etc there. But i really don't know why they haven't started it already.
Don't think it's that. As tattered as the country is, the roads are still carrying trucks south of the northeast region.
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On March 15 2011 21:52 Ropid wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 21:30 r.Evo wrote:Just curious, did any other country announce something similar to germany? The argument "Hey, on the other side of the world something of a magnitude no one expected happened, therefor there are huge problems in one of their nuclear power plants (which are, according to the INES, still "just" a 4 and not higher) we'll do the most logical thing possible: Shut down some of our nuclear power plants to buy our power supply from the by a large margin better maintenainced nuclear plants in eastern europe!!" sounds rather... weird to me. "Weird" might be another word for "inspired by political interest, not by logical thinking" in this context. Also there should be mentioned that there are quite some people going on the streets in germany protesting against the nuclear power plants here which will be kept online. Oh, well, I better find some hiding to survive our next earthquake over here. =/ Source about shutting down pre-1980 nuclear power plants in germany: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-germany-nuclear-merkel-idUSTRE72D51520110315Edit: Just read that it is an official INES-6 now. Nevermind that part I wrote above. Majority of german voters want nuclear power gone despite knowing that the figure on their electricity bill will go up. The issue of nuclear power phase-out was already resolved by past governments. The way I see it, people are only flipping out because the current government was trying to take the phase-out decision back and thus ignoring the wishes of voters. Anyways... please stop discussing german domestic politics in this thread. Despite it being off-topic, it keeps cropping up every other page and now I couldn't keep myself from replying anymore.
Perhaps a new thread for discussions regarding nuclear power in general would be a good idea. It's obviously a topic people are eager to discuss at the moment, but right now it's mostly derailing this topic making actual news regarding the situation in Japan hard to filter out at times.
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On March 15 2011 22:06 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 22:03 dump wrote:On March 15 2011 22:01 Grettin wrote:On March 15 2011 21:58 zatic wrote:On March 15 2011 21:56 Agathon wrote:On March 15 2011 21:48 mTw|NarutO wrote:German Source is saying that the radiation level rose to an too dangerous level to work at the plant. http://kurier.at/nachrichten/2081574.phpAll workers have been evacuated. Can someone confirm? Can u translate : "13:16 Dramatische Entwicklung im AKW Fukushima: Die Strahlung ist in den letzten Stunden so stark gestiegen, dass das dort arbeitende Personal abgezogen werden musste, berichtet die japanische Nachrichtenagentur Kyodo. Bis zuletzt hatten rund 50 Arbeiter unter Lebensgefahr in den sechs Reaktorblöcken gearbeitet, um das Schmelzen der Brennstäbe zu verhindern. " My german lessons are so old Bottom line: radiation level so high that the remaining 50 workers have been called off the plant. Source Kyode news agency. So this means there isn't anyone to do anything about it. Thats pretty much it then. Time to bust out the cement and sand I guess? :/ Can someone explain why they haven't started doing that already? Is it because it makes it impossible to remove the contamination from the site later? Because from what I understand there's nothing of economic value left to salvage at the plant anymore, right? We've been discussing about this also on the other forum im on. I think they are having hard time getting the cement etc there. But i really don't know why they haven't started it already.
If you stop relieving the pressure inside and pour concrete all over it, isn't there a risk of it becoming a giant radioactive frag granade? Specially since it would take days until the concrete hardens. I think something like that would never be as simple of just pouring concrete on top of it.
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On March 15 2011 21:51 Duravi wrote:Show nested quote +Also there should be mentioned that there are quite some people going on the streets in germany protesting against the nuclear power plants here which will be kept online. Oh, well, I better find some hiding to survive our next earthquake over here. =/ The dumb thing is these same groups protest against coal, oil, and natural gas, and now against nuclear energy which is a much cleaner replacement for the former ones and something everyone should transition to until a better solution is found. Where the fuck do they think we are actually going to get all of our energy from? Do they want to go live in the woods for the rest of their life? Its a bunch of kids and brainwashed adults that have no grasp of the big picture.
Nuclear power is NOT cleaner if you take everything into consideration. Sure it doesnt produce CO2 like coal or gas do, but the radiation is bad in a different way. You have a huge amount of irradiated materials coming out of the power plants and all of this waste has to be kept safe for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Can YOU guarantee that?
Nuclear half-life reference: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbwertszeit
Its the german page of Wikipedia on the term, because the english one doesnt include the table with the data of half-life ... like
238U Uran 4,468 Billion Years
235U Uran 704 Million Years
Even if it is technically possible to keep the stuff safe for a decade or two in the right containers you cant guarantee this for the whole time because no materials needed for those containers will last for thousands of years. Thus they have to be replaced eventually and the "human factor" comes into it. Can you honestly say that replacing the containers will never ever be "forgotten" or rather "not done due to cost cutting measures"? I dont think so.
Thus it is quite urgently necessary to rethink our energy policies and our ways to spend energy.
- Aluminium for example needs a huge amount of electricity to be produced and quite often a nuclear power plant is built to provide constant energy for such an industrial process.
- Using air conditioning instead of "regular heating systems" is a waste of energy since every "transformation of energy" reduces the amount of energy you actually use. Coal power plants actually have a degree of efficiency of roughly 35% and if you use that electricity to produce heat you reduce that degree even more compared to using coal directly.
Saving energy is even more important than finding new sources of energy, but in our technological societies the words "new tech" sell more goods than "save energy" and thus the wrong things are done.
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On March 15 2011 22:11 Badboyrune wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 21:52 Ropid wrote:On March 15 2011 21:30 r.Evo wrote:Just curious, did any other country announce something similar to germany? The argument "Hey, on the other side of the world something of a magnitude no one expected happened, therefor there are huge problems in one of their nuclear power plants (which are, according to the INES, still "just" a 4 and not higher) we'll do the most logical thing possible: Shut down some of our nuclear power plants to buy our power supply from the by a large margin better maintenainced nuclear plants in eastern europe!!" sounds rather... weird to me. "Weird" might be another word for "inspired by political interest, not by logical thinking" in this context. Also there should be mentioned that there are quite some people going on the streets in germany protesting against the nuclear power plants here which will be kept online. Oh, well, I better find some hiding to survive our next earthquake over here. =/ Source about shutting down pre-1980 nuclear power plants in germany: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-germany-nuclear-merkel-idUSTRE72D51520110315Edit: Just read that it is an official INES-6 now. Nevermind that part I wrote above. Majority of german voters want nuclear power gone despite knowing that the figure on their electricity bill will go up. The issue of nuclear power phase-out was already resolved by past governments. The way I see it, people are only flipping out because the current government was trying to take the phase-out decision back and thus ignoring the wishes of voters. Anyways... please stop discussing german domestic politics in this thread. Despite it being off-topic, it keeps cropping up every other page and now I couldn't keep myself from replying anymore. Perhaps a new thread for discussions regarding nuclear power in general would be a good idea. It's obviously a topic people are eager to discuss at the moment, but right now it's mostly derailing this topic making actual news regarding the situation in Japan hard to filter out at times.
Yeah, sorta... though right now, anywhere you look, even in the news, everyone's talking about the reactors, so the current content of this thread is probably pretty reflective of the information that's available, unfortunately.
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Zurich15365 Posts
Please do not derail this thread with energy sources debates. Thanks.
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This is not happening in France, they can not assign an INES rating to this event. They merely offer their "suggestion" that it should be rated 6, something which most other experts and agencies disagree with. As long as there is no official update from TEPCO or JAEA, it is still rated as a 4.
On March 15 2011 22:11 Badboyrune wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 21:52 Ropid wrote:On March 15 2011 21:30 r.Evo wrote:Just curious, did any other country announce something similar to germany? The argument "Hey, on the other side of the world something of a magnitude no one expected happened, therefor there are huge problems in one of their nuclear power plants (which are, according to the INES, still "just" a 4 and not higher) we'll do the most logical thing possible: Shut down some of our nuclear power plants to buy our power supply from the by a large margin better maintenainced nuclear plants in eastern europe!!" sounds rather... weird to me. "Weird" might be another word for "inspired by political interest, not by logical thinking" in this context. Also there should be mentioned that there are quite some people going on the streets in germany protesting against the nuclear power plants here which will be kept online. Oh, well, I better find some hiding to survive our next earthquake over here. =/ Source about shutting down pre-1980 nuclear power plants in germany: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-germany-nuclear-merkel-idUSTRE72D51520110315Edit: Just read that it is an official INES-6 now. Nevermind that part I wrote above. Majority of german voters want nuclear power gone despite knowing that the figure on their electricity bill will go up. The issue of nuclear power phase-out was already resolved by past governments. The way I see it, people are only flipping out because the current government was trying to take the phase-out decision back and thus ignoring the wishes of voters. Anyways... please stop discussing german domestic politics in this thread. Despite it being off-topic, it keeps cropping up every other page and now I couldn't keep myself from replying anymore. Perhaps a new thread for discussions regarding nuclear power in general would be a good idea. It's obviously a topic people are eager to discuss at the moment, but right now it's mostly derailing this topic making actual news regarding the situation in Japan hard to filter out at times.
I agree with that. We should make another thread (with a good explanation in the OP, which should be updated regularly) for the nuclear issues, so that people can talk about the more important things in the current thread.
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BREAKING NEWS: TEPCO unable to pour water into No. 4 reactor's storage pool for spent fuel
So it will keep boiling?
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I usually let the world news just flit on by before my eyes, after all it's usually over after a couple days, but this just keeps getting worse and even I've started to take notice. If they can't get the reactor under control this could turn into some serious shit.
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On second thought, I think I'd like to see the power plants topic stay here.
It's arguably an important part of the crisis, and of the economy of a highly commerce-dependent country.
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Man the information policy of these energy companies is despicable. The situation is so confusing you don't know who to trust. TEPCO have been notorious liers for ages and in germany the situation is the same. Last time there was an incitent in the nuclear power plant next to me it took the company over a day to alert officials and although officially nothing serious happened the area sorrounding the plant has the highest rate of leukemia in the whole world(yes higher then nagasaki, belarus, ukraine,etc)...you don't know who to trust..
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On March 15 2011 22:24 dump wrote:
On second thought, I think I'd like to see the power plants topic stay here.
It's arguably an important part of the crisis, and of the economy of a highly commerce-dependent country.
zatic specifically asked you not to, so would you leave the topic out of this thread? start a blog or a new thread if that's what you want to talk about.
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On March 15 2011 22:26 Hikko wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 22:24 dump wrote:
On second thought, I think I'd like to see the power plants topic stay here.
It's arguably an important part of the crisis, and of the economy of a highly commerce-dependent country. zatic specifically asked you not to, so would you leave the topic out of this thread? start a blog or a new thread if that's what you want to talk about.
Zatic, by energy sources do you mean the politics about the plants or everything pertaining to the plants in general? If it's the latter, I apologize.
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think he only meant discussions about whether or not nuclear power is "cleaner" than coal etc
(for example)
edit: so, the first of the two
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Zurich15365 Posts
On March 15 2011 22:29 dump wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2011 22:26 Hikko wrote:On March 15 2011 22:24 dump wrote:
On second thought, I think I'd like to see the power plants topic stay here.
It's arguably an important part of the crisis, and of the economy of a highly commerce-dependent country. zatic specifically asked you not to, so would you leave the topic out of this thread? start a blog or a new thread if that's what you want to talk about. Zatic, by energy sources do you mean the politics about the plants or everything pertaining to the plants in general? If it's the latter, I apologize.
You can obviously discuss nuclear plants here but not nuclear energy vs other energy sources or whether we should have/use either. Take that to another thread.
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Burying it under whatever you want wont have a significant effect.
Like said before, the core is melting and could burn its way through the bottom. The second and third containment have the purpose to stop that by slowing the process, drawing heat away etc. and eventually cooling it down to a level that the rest can withstand. Flooding the reactor with water helps.
The reactors were abandoned long ago as they can never be used again. What they are now doing is keeping the nuclear waste in it contained, preventing it from reaching ground water level. Remember: Tsunami raised the water level and the site is close to the ocean.
I appreciate these efforts.
On March 15 2011 22:24 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
Last time there was an incitent in the nuclear power plant next to me it took the company over a day to alert officials and although officially nothing serious happened the area sorrounding the plant has the highest rate of leukemia in the whole world(yes higher then nagasaki, belarus, ukraine,etc)...you don't know who to trust..
Source? Facts?
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There is a after shock happen rightnow in Tokyo...OMG
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There's an aftershock going on right now... NHK's Tokyo studio is shaking, the anchor's a little panicked.
Dammit, 6+ in Shizuoka.
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Something "positive" which can be taken from all this, is that it has shown the mentality of the Japanese people when faced with such adversity. There has been no looting, no marauding gangs and the people are pulling in together, to overcome their situation together. For this I have the utmost respect for the Japanese people.
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On March 15 2011 21:48 mTw|NarutO wrote:German Source is saying that the radiation level rose to an too dangerous level to work at the plant. http://kurier.at/nachrichten/2081574.phpAll workers have been evacuated. Can someone confirm?
My impression of Kurier's coverage is that it's a bit sensationalist. According to tagesschau.de (a fairly reliable source for those unfamiliar with the German news landscape), it's just a control room that's become too radioactive for workers to stay. They are also quoting KYODO as the news source. If I can find the time, I'm going to go read the KYODO article to see what they actually wrote.
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EPT
