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Reactor meltdown possible in Japan.


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And I'm saying that there's zero chance of it. Chernobyl was as bad as it was because of...

1. A lack of any kind of containment

2. A full-scale runaway nuclear chain reaction

3. Graphite control rods/casings burning and allowing radioactive smoke to pour into the atmosphere

None of those are even remotely possible in this situation. There are containment structures. There cannot be a chain reaction. And there is no graphite. It's simply impossible.

Well "impossible" and "zero chance" are a bit of a stretch*. You are assuming that the containment vessels can't be breached and that there could not be a fire at the plant... and while those are unlikely, it's certainly not impossible. While I would think a Chernobyl-magnitude event is highly unlikely -- especially because of the better design -- there also needs to be some respect for the fact that we're not exactly dealing with matches and candy canes here, and there's always the possibility that something never before experienced could occur.

(* I feel that I can nitpick after you called out a non-scientific article's description of temperatures.)

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Not sure why everyone is in such a tizzy. People really need to move onto another topic, becoming such a non-story now. There is 100% chance of nothing happening with this whole story, not sure what the fascination with this whole situation is?

Nothing is happening..... Nuclear reactors typically explode like this several times a year. Everything is completely normal. We are evacuating staff because they have the flu, yeah... that's right.

nuclear%20reactor%20explosion%20blast.jpg

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Well "impossible" and "zero chance" are a bit of a stretch*. You are assuming that the containment vessels can't be breached and that there could not be a fire at the plant... and while those are unlikely, it's certainly not impossible. While I would think a Chernobyl-magnitude event is highly unlikely -- especially because of the better design -- there also needs to be some respect for the fact that we're not exactly dealing with matches and candy canes here, and there's always the possibility that something never before experienced could occur.

(* I feel that I can nitpick after you called out a non-scientific article's description of temperatures.)

Sure, and that's fair. But for all intents and purposes.... there's essentially no chance of any of those three things happening. In order for there to be NO containment, the whole containment facility would have to be compromised (not just a little leak). In order for there to be a fire that releases radioactive material, a rod would probably have to catch on fire somehow (I don't know if that is even possible with the rod design they have?). And in order for a chain reaction... well, I don't know what would have to happen, but it seems impossible to me.

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Not sure why everyone is in such a tizzy. People really need to move onto another topic, becoming such a non-story now. There is 100% chance of nothing happening with this whole story, not sure what the fascination with this whole situation is?

Well, we have a Level 6 on the INES... only Chenobyl and a 1957 event in Russia have attained that rating. TMI was a level 5. Not to mention, we've had fuel rods fully exposed for hours at times, and several fires and explosions associated with the reactors.

But that's no big deal is it?

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Sure, and that's fair. But for all intents and purposes.... there's essentially no chance of any of those three things happening. In order for there to be NO containment, the whole containment facility would have to be compromised (not just a little leak). In order for there to be a fire that releases radioactive material, a rod would probably have to catch on fire somehow (I don't know if that is even possible with the rod design they have?). And in order for a chain reaction... well, I don't know what would have to happen, but it seems impossible to me.

Well, the fire yesterday certainly released radioactive material into the air... the concentration was low because the available radioactive material in the building was low.

What if the apparatus used to pump in seawater fails or is somehow destroyed, and they are unable to get any water into the reactors and the water boils off and the pressure is so great that the containment vessel cracks at a weak point and pushes out a lot of radioactive material, simultaneously while the building is on fire and wafting billows of radioactive smoke into the air? I mean I ain't gettin' near those things.

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i don't think a large aftershock further compromising the already weaken containment is so unlikely

But if the containment aftershock was large to weaken, the why wouldn't it be as to sufficiently weaken further, unlikely though it may be?

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Chernoybl was a 7, not a 6, and the scale used is intended to be logarithmic. this is not close to what happened at Chernobyl.

I should have claried that better. Chernobyl surpassed that rating, but this event is only 1 of 3 total accidents to have a rating of 6 or above.

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But if the containment aftershock was large to weaken, the why wouldn't it be as to sufficiently weaken further, unlikely though it may be?

It could. That wouldn't make it as bad as Chernobyl. There's a huge difference between "no containment" and "weakened containment".

You'd need, at the very least, all three of the "differences" I mentioned in my earlier post to somehow manage to materialize at the same time in order for this to even have a chance of reaching that kind of catastrophe. The likelihood of any one of them occurring is low enough.

I should have claried that better. Chernobyl surpassed that rating, but this event is only 1 of 3 total accidents to have a rating of 6 or above.

And nobody is denying that this is serious. But it's simply not another Chernobyl, and people need to realize that.

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Have you tried reading a different thread if it annoys you so much?

There are no new reports out relating to this yet. The sun is coming up now so it should start getting busier.

Why would you want it get busier? Its not like the nuke plant only erupts and leaks during the day..

Screwing up facts vs. Opinions is more likely during the Japan daylight when stupid reporters from japan and usa can make things up to get attention

Notice nothing really happened news wise during the night time hours...

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Lol.. can people stop bickering back and forth like little babies.. no one is an expert here, so if anyone posts anything without a link or source from a major news source then it is an opinion! Simple as that!

Meltdown or no meltdown, Chernoby or no Chernobyl, no one is a nuke expert and no one is at the plant conducting tests.

Just sit back and let news outlets and nuke experts explain stuff, not a snow Weenie from the east coast

Its getting rather annoying

The news outlets have been awful at providing chronology to their "breaking news," literally every expert I've seen is biased in one way or another, and the government has basically just completely stopped releasing information. I'm not saying the rampant speculation by us, who's understanding seems to range from decent to "what is chernobyl," is proving to be particularly useful, but that is the basis for it.

Also, I have not seen that this event has officially been classified as a 6. I saw that the French now consider it to be a 6, but given their completely overblown reaction to this event pretty much from the very beginning I'm not putting a lot of stock into that just yet.

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[2:24 p.m. ET Tuesday, 3:24 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo]The explosion Tuesday at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has elevated the situation there to a "serious accident" on a level just below Chernobyl, a French nuclear official said, referring to an international scale that rates the severity of such incidents. The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale goes from Level 1 to Level 7. "It's clear we are at Level 6, that's to say we're at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of France's nuclear safety authority, told reporters Tuesday.

CNN

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/15/japan-quake-live-blog-fire-erupts-in-fourth-reactor-radiation-warning-issued/?hpt=T1

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Snownh.. it is very likely that information has likely been traded back and forth much quicker here than on some news channels. We have some extremely credible, intelligent, and insightful scientists on this board that are somewhat capable of understanding this situation better than people at CNN. It would be completely ludacris at the same time to sit back and accept whatever lard the news agencies shovel at us.

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The news outlets have been awful at providing chronology to their "breaking news," literally every expert I've seen is biased in one way or another, and the government has basically just completely stopped releasing information. I'm not saying the rampant speculation by us, who's understanding seems to range from decent to "what is chernobyl," is proving to be particularly useful, but that is the basis for it.

Also, I have not seen that this event has officially been classified as a 6. I saw that the French now consider it to be a 6, but given their completely overblown reaction to this event pretty much from the very beginning I'm not putting a lot of stock into that just yet.

Agreed. Though this is clearly at least a little worse than TMI, it's much closer to that than to Chernobyl so far.

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Snownh.. it is very likely that information has likely been traded back and forth much quicker here than on some news channels. We have some extremely credible, intelligent, and insightful scientists on this board that are somewhat capable of understanding this situation better than people at CNN. It would be completely ludacris at the same time to sit back and accept whatever lard the news agencies shovel at us.

I agree sboswx, but people should be posting stuff like fivealarmphotography Just posted with credible sources and clearly siting them and not stuff like "dude how can you say its a 6 when its clearly a 5" and "this is getting real bad". What is bad?

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Snownh.. it is very likely that information has likely been traded back and forth much quicker here than on some news channels. We have some extremely credible, intelligent, and insightful scientists on this board that are somewhat capable of understanding this situation better than people at CNN. It would be completely ludacris at the same time to sit back and accept whatever lard the news agencies shovel at us.

i like how the biggest media haters are also some of the least informed people here as a whole

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2037: The US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has said it agrees with the assessment of France's Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) that the incident at Fukushima should be classified as level 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), one below Chernobyl. Following a number of explosions and a fire at the plant which released dangerous levels of radiation, ISIS said the situation had "worsened considerably" and was now closer to a level 6 event. "It may unfortunately reach a level 7," it added.

BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

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And nobody is denying that this is serious. But it's simply not another Chernobyl, and people need to realize that.

Well I was specifically addressing this quote:

Not sure why everyone is in such a tizzy. People really need to move onto another topic, becoming such a non-story now. There is 100% chance of nothing happening with this whole story, not sure what the fascination with this whole situation is?

Which obviously implies that this situation is not that big of a deal, when in reality it is. Is it a repeat of Chernobyl? Absolutely not. Having a containment structure in place should at the very least help, which Chernobyl lacked.

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Well I was specifically addressing this quote:

Which obviously implies that this situation is not that big of a deal, when in reality it is. Is it a repeat of Chernobyl? Absolutely not. Having a containment structure in place should at the very least help, which Chernobyl lacked.

I guess "nobody is denying that this is serious" wasn't entirely true, huh? :arrowhead:

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And I'm saying that there's zero chance of it. Chernobyl was as bad as it was because of...

1. A lack of any kind of containment

2. A full-scale runaway nuclear chain reaction

3. Graphite control rods/casings burning and allowing radioactive smoke to pour into the atmosphere

None of those are even remotely possible in this situation. There are containment structures. There cannot be a chain reaction. And there is no graphite. It's simply impossible.

What credentials do you have to make these assertions? Even from basic college physics I know that a chain reaction can accelerate with increasing temperature. So I suppose a chain reaction could be plausible in the worst case scenario. In addition if the containment vessels are at atmospheric pressure, I don't believe any assertion of their containment abilities until a robot our some other device is able to investigate. Not trying to be alarmist but I also don't think it's reasonable to make an assertion as if it's fact that this can't have a similar scale impact as chernobyl. I think the fact is that we still have no clue what the potential impact of this disaster can be.

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There's an interesting tension between those freaking out about this and those trying to act all cool and in-the-know and saying it isn't a big deal or that it certainly won't become xyz. It strikes me as a big deal-- a Level-6 event on that scale on a populated island is a big deal-- and I share the puzzlement of some that anyone in this discussion would presume to know the level of risk here or the potential outcomes. The experts on the scene-- the ones trying to stabilize the reactors-- don't even know that.

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