I think the danger is the spent fuel rods burning and causing fires.

If you chuck cold water onto hot rods you will get a steam explosion.

What happened in Chernobyl was a massive steam explosion that tore off the roof. It seems what has happened in Japan is hydrogen gas exploding which has been vented from the pressure vessels.

However we should not allow this to lead to panic. The reactors haven't failed because they are nuclear reactors, it is a combination of bad luck that has brought this about. Maybe bad design but all this does not to point to nuclear bad, should be given up on.

I think the fact that we have 4 reactors ready to fail (or 6? if fuel is burning) we are looking into a clear design fault. Remember, Chernobyl went off like a bomb, and yet, 3 other reactors were safe and one operated for a decade after. This thing here is just falling apart and it's not 1 but all of them having issues. This makes me fear this more than Chernobyl. It's like a lot of smaller problems that if one gets out of control, all do.

Saw this article, and it explained a lot.

Most of the problems with plant is from the loss of power. The system was designed to in case of an emergency, the systems scram and emergency power from generators would maintain the systems. If that should fail, external power supplies would kick in. They never expected for this level of disaster where the tertiary system's (and beyond) were destroyed.

As soon as they get these power lines ran, they can restore most of the normal cooling systems and stop most of the issues that are happening.

Perhaps, as long as those cooling systems are still intact.

I think the biggest design problem was clustering 4, 5, even 6 reactors together in one location. If it had been just one plant or maybe even two they may have been able to handle the situation.

Yes that.

Sadly, this debacle with the power plants takes attention and resources away from all those thousands of poor people who have lost everything to the tsunami.

Now the latest for these poor buggass is snow- followed by radioactive fallout- wonderful :nope:

Watching the helos dropping water to the reactors on NHK TV... looks pretty desperate. :-?

Also overlooked - the people fighting to save what they can out of this disaster at the plant(s) are not at home where they're needed to do the same thing.

My thought exactly...

It's not some complicated design fault. The reactors automatically shut down when sensors feel an earthquake (and they did shut down). But the uranium (or plutonium) rods in the core then need to be cooled.
The standard cooling system runs on electricity, but the magnitude of the earthquake (or the tsunami) cut the power.
Then they have another back-up system; diesel-generators. But the tsunami flooded those, so there is just no electricity to pump the water to cool the reactor.
So IMO it's not really a design flaw, more a case of poor judgement in the placing of the powerplant. Placing a power plant literally a stones throw away from the coast in a country that's earthquake ridden is the mistake here I think.

I agree with the Growler btw, here in the Netherlands they only started paying attention today, to those fifty people risking their lives to save a lot more people. Let's hope they get it under control soon. And let's hope they'll survive this.

Here's a link for those that missed it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12768791


And another great summary with video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12757167

Well, Here in Ohio, we have this great behemoth within sight (or at least the plumes is) within 50 miles or so away.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nBaWI2hPVZ...4Y8/s320/1.jpg

(Notice only one tower is running. They never finished the second reactor).

When they built perry, they (somebody in power) initially said that CEI could use the lake for cooling, or even partial cooling, letting them build low profile towers. But then they said the full size towers were required.

Fukushima is smartly built on the ocean's shore, where they have an unlimited heat sink to cool their reactors. This greatly cut's down on building costs, and makes operations much easier, as they don't have to pump superheated water up a few dozen stories, they just pump the seawater up a bit. If you look at the the before and after photos linked many pages ago, you can see the water outlets running, they look like the outlets of a hydroelectric plant.

I think they're issues was not putting it on the coast, but putting it on the wrong coast.

Of course, when this was built, the knowledge and experience with tsunami's and tectonics we have now did not exist, and putting them on the western coasts made nice targets if their was ever a shooting war with the communists. So in hindsight, bad idea. But at the time, it was the most logical place to put it.

I was just reading about the TMI accident, and in that episode the fuel rods completely melted down and melted only 5/8 of an inch of the 1 foot thick steel reactor vessel before the fuels half life point was reached and radiation levels dropped allowing crews inside to clean up the mess.

The danger in japan is those spent fuel pools, those pools are dry by now, and have no surrounding containment vessel, so if they explode because of the fires they probably will spew radioactive material over the countryside. There's NO danger of an atomic bomb type explosion so some of you guys can relax, the reactors are likely junk, but they won't explode either provided they get the cooling system operable soon.

The storage ponds are the danger, air dropping water tho appears desperate but is likely the only thing that can be done till the pumps come back up. Pray for those workers, they're likely sacrificing their lives to save their contrymen. Whatever the outcome they're hero's.

Well I didn't mean you should never build a nuclear power plant near water; of course you should, it's way easier to cool your plant that way.
But the risk of a tsunami is way too large, especially on the eastern shoreline of Japan.

Tsunami isn't a new word. Japan has had thousands of years of experience with tsunami's.
And it wouldn't have really helped against the communist 'threat' either. From east to west coast in that region is about 60 miles, I'll bet there was at least one rusty Russian rocket that could make it that far :O: