Nuclear Risk Expert: Fukushima's Fuel Could Still Seep Out

[bananas]

"This doesn't exist as a problem just in Fukushima, but also all the plants here in the United States. But they didn't want to deal with it. Then I got disgusted and left the nuclear business," he says.

When the good people are pushed out, what are you left with?

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/nuclear-risk-expert-fukushimas-fuel-could-still-seep-out

Nuclear Risk Expert: Fukushima's Fuel Could Still Seep Out
POSTED BY: Eliza Strickland / Fri, April 01, 2011

It's Theo Theofanous's job to worry about worst-case scenarios. As director of the Center for Risk Studies and Safety at UC Santa Barbara, he tries to quantify the unthinkable and calculate the likelihood of utter disaster. He has studied everything from chemical weapons to natural gas pipelines--but for a 15-year stretch in the 1980s and 1990s, he focused on nuclear reactors.

<snip>

And according to Theofanous's research, if some of the nuclear fuel melted in the first days of the emergency, a major release of radiation is still possible.

<snip>

The acute concern, he says, is the radioactive water that workers have found pooled in turbine buildings and tunnels near the reactors. "It's a real Catch-22 here," he says. ... "But there's a huge amount of water. I still don't know how they're going to get out of this."

Theofanous says he encouraged the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do further studies on whether reactors could fail disastrously days or even weeks after an initial accident. "I highlighted the importance of knowing what happens in the long-term," he says. "This doesn't exist as a problem just in Fukushima, but also all the plants here in the United States. But they didn't want to deal with it. Then I got disgusted and left the nuclear business," he says.

[Buzz Clik]

1. For the love of crackers. This is pure insanity.

"This doesn't exist as a problem just in Fukushima, but also all the plants here in the United States. But they didn't want to deal with it. Then I got disgusted and left the nuclear business," he says.

Of course, the "risk" exists. It's also possible that we'll be hit by a meteor and turned to powder. Fukushima was the confluence of two incredibly unlikely events happening at the same time that crippled the backup measures.

This is so damned tiresome.

Can we focus simply on Fukushima before we shit ourselves over a non-existent problem in the US?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Buzz Clik]

3. Glad you rekindled that discussion you abandoned this morning:

Have you ever read here at DU -- or, just as likely, have you ever claimed -- that one atom of a radionuclide is deadly/lethal? This was then put forward as the basis for nuclear energy being terrifyingly unsafe and unjustifiable. I come onto DU for about 2 hours per day at the very most, and I saw it in more than a dozen threads over a span of 72 hours. It's the dumbest crock of crap I've ever seen.

So, Dr. Science, would you care to attempt to justify that bullshit, or shall you join me in pounding that claim as anti-science fear mongering?

[bananas]

15. You mean the thread about the National Academy of Sciences?

"National Academy of Sciences Requires Industry to Ensure Nuke Waste Safety for 1 million years"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x786163

[kristopher]

16. You know how it is...

...to a certain mindset if the facts are contrary to the belief, then there MUST be something wrong with the science.

That this trait is fundamental to human nature is hard to deny, after all, it is the very thing that creates the need for science itself.

[AndyTiedye]

4. Earthquakes and Tsunamis are Not Unlikely on the Pacific Rim

Japan is one of the most seismically active places on the planet. Earthquakes in the sea CAUSE tsunamis.

The Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami was a wakeup call, and tsunami readiness enormously improved throughout the Pacific in its aftermath.
But not at TEPCO, which made inexpensive token improvements, while mostly just hoping a big tsunami would never come.

Not at our nuke plants either. Many of them are in earthquake zones, and some West Coast plants could be at risk for tsunamis.

There are a number of US reactors of the same design as the ones that are melting down in Japan.

So yes, we DO have a problem here, it just hasn't bitten us yet.

Do you feel lucky?

[Buzz Clik]

5. Japan has had dozens of big earthquakes since the construction of the Fukushima plant.

There have been dozens of tsunamis during that span. You are really willing to suggest a) that the catastrophe was not the result of an unlikely coincidental occurrence of two natural disasters and that b) that's likely to happen to any or all of the nuclear power plants in the US?

I will grant you that we have ridiculously exposed spent fuel rods, though I'm not sure how many are stupidly placed on the roofs of the reactor buildings. Some of the rods have been there far, far longer than necessary because the abject fear of radioactivity has crippled this nation and made us incapable of acting.

[AndyTiedye]

8. A Tsunami Following an Earthquake is NOT a "Concidental Occurance"

…and the "ring of fire" has generated two 9+ earthquakes in the past 7 years.

Both were accompanied by devastating tsunamis.
The Boxing Day quake and tsunami was actually more powerful than the recent one.

so not unlikely and not a coincidence.

Is this a risk for all US nukes? of course not. A tsunami requires an ocean nearby.
Earthquakes happen along fault lines. Most of the US is not as seismically active
as Japan. We must examine closely those reactors that are in earthquake zones or
at risk for tsunamis though. The most obviously questionable ones are those on the
West Coast, which is very seismically active, and in some cases at risk for tsunamis,
and in most cases they are close to very large population centers that would be all but
impossible to evacuate quickly.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. It's not that simple.

The tsunami had to come from the right direction to hit it. For instance, an american reactor, George Washington Power and Light was unaffected, about 90 miles down the coastline. The harbor lost 7 feet of water, and that's about it. The harbor had a southerly facing entrance, so the main thrust of the tsunami didn't funnel into it.

Not all earthquakes produce tsunamis. Tsunamis do not radiate in all directions equally. the directionality of the wave can put some things and risk and others in the clear, depending on placement.

[ljm2002]

6. "Fukushima was the confluence of two incredibly unlikely events..."

"...happening at the same time that crippled the backup measures."

Isn't that kind of the point? Those "two incredibly unlikely events" ... er, they happened.

Yes, I get that it was extremely unlikely. After all, the last time a tsunami wave that high hit the coast of Japan was in the year 800.

But then again, that side of the coast is known to be vulnerable to tsunamis, and the Japanese islands sit atop one of the most seismically active areas in the world. And yet still, plants were built there. Because all these brilliant minds put in place all of these well-thought-out safety systems that could not be breached. Well, unless the unthinkable happened.

Well now the unthinkable has happened, and here we are.

As far as issues in the U.S. power plants, if this is not a good time to look at what issues may exist in our own power plants, then when would be a good time? We already know that certain safety precautions have been deemed unnecessary -- notably, systems to discharge hydrogen and prevent hydrogen explosions such as the ones that occurred at Fukushima. We already know that we have plants built right atop fault lines in California -- with a safety factor to withstand a magnitude 7. Yet there have been larger quakes than that in California, within living memory.

Worst-case scenarios for nuclear power plants are much worse than with most systems. Yes, it is true that some other systems can and have killed more people right away -- certainly a dam giving way can kill lots of people, or an explosion at a coal-powered plant. But there is a crucial difference, which is of course radiation and radioactive particles, which can make the land around a plant uninhabitable for hundreds of years, at least.

My point is, you can't base your worst-case projections on the theory that the worst case cannot happen. If we learn nothing else from the tragedy at Fukushima, at least we should acknowledge that.

[Buzz Clik]

7. And my point is that extrapolating Fukushima to all US reactors (as suggested in the OP) is insane.

[kristopher]

9. Fission as an energy source is itself the problem - it is a fundamentally flawed concept

There are far better ways to meet our energy needs.

Take the cure:
!
V

[AtheistCrusader]

10. Science Fiction of course, but a plot device in the book 'The Rift'

was Browns Ferry reactor in the US. Again, total fiction, but essentially the same failure mode.

Large rivers can do very strange things during and after an earthquake, such as jumping banks, or re-routing. All reactors are near a water source for cooling. Even a large lake can have the equivalent of a tsunami, called a seiche. Large quakes can occur anywhere in the US. Etc.

So the risk is real, even if very unlikely in the US. More than one event can occur at any given time. It would not hurt to review each of these older reactor's capabilities. Additional on-site generators for cooling power. Addition of redundant cooling pumps. Doubling or quadrupling battery capacity to run the pumps without generators for longer. Snorkels for the generators. Siting different backup generators so that a single event can't directly harm all of them simultaneously, etc.

There are things that can be done. As you mentioned, getting the spent fuel OFF SITE would be a help.

[ljm2002]

13. "extrapolating Fukushima to all US reactors"...

..."(as suggested in the OP) is insane".

So the OP cites a specialist in risk analysis who thinks that there are long-term radiation risks at Fukushima, not just acute short-term risks, and who says the same is true of reactors here in the US. You call that "extrapolating Fukushima to all US reactors" and say that is "insane".

Nuclear fission is well understood. It operates on the same principles regardless of reactor design. In a worst case scenario, it seems reasonable to point out that there are similar risks, which of course may play out differently depending on the original cause of the incident, how much damage is done, how well the design holds, etc. I'm having a hard time seeing anything "insane" about pointing out that the technology itself has certain intrinsic risks that are the same whether the reactors are in Japan, the US, France, Russia, etc.

If you have an issue with what he is saying that then why not refute the points he makes?

[bananas]

14. You have it backwards - he didn't extrapolate from Fukushima to all US reactors

He studied these problems years ago - Fukushima was the result of these long-standing design flaws.
These design flaws are common to the Japanese and all US reactors (and almost all reactors world-wide).
That's why you think it's insane - you have the reasoning backwards.
Fukushima is just one example of this problem, and if we keep running these old reactors, it will happen again.
The design flaw was triggered by an earthquake/tsunami, but that's not the only possible trigger.
When you add up all the unlikely possible scenarios by which a reactor can melt down,
it turns out to be a lot more likely than you think.

[AndyTiedye]

12. That Emergency Generator in the Basement Would be Vulnerable to Ordinary Floods, Too

All nukes are near some body of water. They need it for cooling.
Rivers flood sometimes. Rather often, actually.