Nuclear explosion in Japan

[TimberWolf]

Judging by the flame colour, hydrogen explosion.

Much prettier than the first one.

Hydrogen explosions and flames are noted for their invisibility, so maybe something else burnt this time, with the hydrogen & oxygen.

[BlasterBates]

I suppose we'll have to shut down all nuclear plants because of the danger.

I wonder what the death toll will be 10 15 or maybe 20?

Here is what happens with a renewable generation facility catastrophe :

Banqiao Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Up to 230,000 deaths.

[minestrone]

I bet there are people panic buying beans and bottled water at the moment 'before the radiation gets here'.

[Mich the Tester]

I suppose we'll have to shut down all nuclear plants because of the danger.

I wonder what the death toll will be 10 15 or maybe 20?

Here is what happens with a renewable generation facility catastrophe :

Banqiao Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Up to 230,000 deaths.

Not sure what to make of what you're saying. Any form of electricity generation will bring risks. Just as you don't need to give up on nuclear energy because of a couple of accidents, you don't panic and give up on hydro-electric because a badly constructed dam failed. You build safer reactors and better dams. Looks like the Japanese power stations were built pretty well; I don't believe there's reason to panic. But then I just have to trust the line-up of physics professors on the morning news, who all said that things are under control.

[BlasterBates]

Well in the German media the universal view is that Nuclear power now has no future, and any country building new ones and not shutting down old ones is irresponsible.

[Mich the Tester]

Well in the German media the universal view is that Nuclear power now has no future, and any country building new ones and not shutting down old ones is irresponsible.

The meejah will say all sorts of stupid things to sell papers. Luckily Germany is run by people who are a bit smarter than 'the meejah', unlike several other countries that come to mind.

[TimberWolf]

Not sure what to make of what you're saying. Any form of electricity generation will bring risks. Just as you don't need to give up on nuclear energy because of a couple of accidents, you don't panic and give up on hydro-electric because a badly constructed dam failed. You build safer reactors and better dams. Looks like the Japanese power stations were built pretty well; I don't believe there's reason to panic. But then I just have to trust the line-up of physics professors on the morning news, who all said that things are under control.

They were old reactors anyway. Maybe claim on the insurance?

Two new ones were planned for the site, using a more modern design:

Unit Type[12] First criticality Electric power Reactor supplier Architecture Construction
Fukushima I – 1 BWR-3 October 1970[11] 460 MW General Electric Ebasco Kajima
Fukushima I – 2 BWR-4 July 18, 1974 784 MW General Electric Ebasco Kajima
Fukushima I – 3 BWR-4 March 27, 1976 784 MW Toshiba Toshiba Kajima
Fukushima I – 4 BWR-4 October 12, 1978 784 MW Hitachi Hitachi Kajima
Fukushima I – 5 BWR-4 April 18, 1978 784 MW Toshiba Toshiba Kajima
Fukushima I – 6 BWR-5 October 24, 1979 1,100 MW General Electric Ebasco Kajima
Fukushima I – 7 (planned) ABWR October 2016[13] 1,380 MW
Fukushima I – 8 (planned) ABWR October 2017[13] 1,380 MW

Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Mich the Tester]

Looking at the news sites there's so much speculation I get the impression some journalists actually want a reactor meltdown; would give them something exciting to talk crap about. As if there's nothing going on in the world today.

[Sysman]

The thing that annoys me is that half of the world’s reporters have flown into Japan to individually report on matters: surely their planes / transport would have been utilised better to take in relief equipment as opposed to cameras to drain power off a unstable grid?

Unfortunately this always happens. From 1998 by AA Gill (I saw another version of this article in the Times back then)

Lokichokio: crazy name, crazy place, a border town dropped in a fold in the hills between nowhere and nothing. The line that separates Kenya from Sudan is purely notional. A year ago this was a collection of huts baking in the wilderness, with a landing strip. Now it is a frontier town, a burgeoning collection of tents and hastily built breeze-block cantonments with bars and swimming pools and rooms with showers. It is a boom town, growing to service five Hercules aircraft, tied to the outside world by a thin, potholed, crumbling, rain-washed, bandit-harassed road that winds 1,000 miles to the coast at Mombasa. Everything -- fuel, food, loo paper, Coca-Cola -- has to be driven into Loki. This is Charityville.

In the West, we don't get to see the UN at work. We probably think it is a good idea, a bit wasteful, a bit blunt and slow. But we never get to see where all that money and effort actually goes. It goes here, into these ranks of Toyota Land Cruisers and bubbling tarmac; and guards with walkie-talkies and gangs of black laborers, humping white sacks in the midday sun, and the pilots hanging out with a cold Coke in the Trailfinders bar. And the long lines of dusty tents, each the size of a football pitch, with the letters UN like a twenty-foot-high expletive painted on the sides. When this much neat charity lands on your doorstep, it changes everything: the economy, the social structure, the landscape. UN, the Ultimate Niño. Looking at Loki, it is impossible not to draw the trite conclusion that Africa has simply swapped colonialism for charity and there is very little difference. Both are buttressed with fine words, both in practice are paternalistic and divisive. It is still the white folk in the shade and the black folk humping the sacks.

[TimberWolf]

Reactor #2 is showing somewhat familiar symptoms to #1 and #3 now, before their explody bits exploded. A bit odd considering it should have cooled off a bit by now. They are having trouble keeping the cooling pumps working and keeping the water levels high, for reasons I don't know.