3/10/11 Hawaii Tsunami Warning

[JERRY2KONE]

Hang in there Chief. One day at a time just like you tell your patients. Two years from now this will all be a story that you get to share with friends, and relive with your kids after they have forgotten all about it. Tomorrow is going to come whether we are ready for it or not. Forget about the things that we cannot control, and concentrate on those you can change. Now you can tell the wife that she knows what it feels like to get her sea legs. Smile

[JERRY2KONE]

I just watched a fox news report with a Greta Vansustrin update. It is around noon here in Prague. The Japanese Gov has pulled all of the workers off the power plant due to the impending expectations of nuclear fallout. It was stated that one of the reactors has suffered a breach in all three of its containment walls releasing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere, which will be carried on the winds to surrounding nations. The team was ordered to evacuate the entire area leaving it in God's hands now. All of their efforts have failed and there seems to be little hope of any kind of resolve for this catastrophy. They have finally announced that Japan would like to have US military assistance, but it may just be too late for that. The stroage pool that caught fire last night near reactor #3 is now leaking radioactive material into the soil, ocean, and will eventually contaminate the sealife, drinking water and and plant life in the region. A very large portion of Japan will soon become uninhabitable by any form of life for at least the next 100 years. I would guess that the next move is for international resources to gather and try to find a way to contain the area and reduce the eminent envronmental disaster that now threatens the globe, because of the plants location right on the edge of the ocean. this is no longer just a japan problem. It is everyones problem. Welcome to hell on Earth.

What the hell is the military going to do? We've been running supply trips and evacuation since this all began,the only thing we could do is help clear the fallout areas. They would have to demolish the reactors containment and then try to re-contain the nuclear material in a new vessel.this is so not going to end well for japan,china is probably laughing there ass off right now...

[Jahay]

This is terrible news!!!!

[JERRY2KONE]

Japan should have requested assistance with cooling the reactors when this whole feasco began on Friday. Saturday at the latest. I could see ships anchored off shore pumping in seawater to help keep things cool, but now there is little anyone can do.

Anyone within a few miles of this plant now risks radiation poisoning that could surely kill them. I am not so sure that China is laughing since their shores are right across from Japan. The fallout will blow which ever way the wind carries it, and that will surely be to China & Korea on given days. This disaster is far from overwith. Covering the vessels will only do so much, but radioactive material will still leak into the soil and contaminate the surrounding area to some degree. This will leave the chances of rain water leaching contamination into the sea, and eventually into drinking water over a very large area. I am not sure what can be done at this point, but there will be a very involved consortium of some kind brought together to find a reasonable solution that the entire world order will be happy with. At least Chernobyl was landlocked, and posed little threat to surrounding water supplies. This is a seriously scary scinario.

Does anyone know if the fallout would reach Cali? Prevailing winds would carry it to our western shores,china and Korea are somewhat safe. But at some pOint we will have to go in and start to clear it out and dig up the nuclear material,it's literally the only way to stop it from getting worse. Nothing much we can do about the soil and water that is already polluted though.

[JERRY2KONE]

Well prevailing winds can do all sorts of things, but there are a lot more factors involved then just wind. Percipitation and wind patterns will have a lot to do with how it moves about the planet. Anything is possible. Look at what just happened with this quake and tsunami. No one would have ever guessed that a wave that big would engolf entire cities in Japan, but that is exactly what happened. Sure during most of the year the winds do tend to travel west to east over the aian region, but during a few months every year the winds change direction and Korea is a hell of a lot closer to Japan then Cali is. Less distance means higher level of radiation, because it will disapate the further it has to travel.

I do not even think that digging up a nuclear reactor is posssible once it has been breached. The radiation levels would be much too high for any kind of machinery to be driven close enough to do any work. The driver would be dead inside of 20-30 minutes. It would be a suicide mission at that. Who is going to volunteer? Unless they do it all remotely with remote controlled equipment. That would be a serious project and more than likely making history in inovation. Anyway the way these things are built it is like a huge bunker with a bank vault cemented right into the center of it. The reactor is a huge vessel of enormous weight that is built in sections just so it can be installed. So what your suggesting might be possible, but I am not sure how they would do it.

This is why Chernobyl was barracaded and burried. No one could get close enough to do anything with it. Even the guys who were volunteered to go in and burry the site could only work for like 7 minutes, which exposed them to a life time dosage of radiation. If they stayed any longer than 7 minutes they would die within days or weeks from radiation poisoning.

Thinking about it,I have no idea how long a NBC suit can withstand high doses of radiation? As any workers there would have to wear them and then you have air filtration that has to be taken into account.Maybe well get lucky and japans robotics experts can chip in.in the end though if they can't physically remove the damaged reactor they will just have to encapsulate it and hope for the best. Hopefully we are a little more resourceful in our decision than russia's "bury and forget it" policy. As for Korea and china,yeah they are in a $h!t load of trouble.

[JERRY2KONE]

Ya know I forgot all about their robot technology there in Japan. Honda has the most technologically advanced robot in the world. They should be jumping in here and using robots to take care of this work in contaminated areas. Good thinking man.

The problem with burrying it now is that it is already leaching into the soil and seawater, so there is going to be a lot more than just dumping dirt over the reactor and leaving it. Otherwise there would be contamination going on under ground that could affect several areas around it. The reactor has to be sealed 306 degrees like a sphere in lead or cement in order to contain the radiation. I think the idea of using robots is a good one, and using remote control heavy equipment to move it around in order to get it into some kind of container would work if they can pull it off. That would be a great move on their part. See if we can come up with stuff like this on an R/C site in just a few minutes, then why in the hell can't all of these nuclear genious's come up with a resolution after what, five or six days?

They are already using robots to find and recover earthquake victims,they'll probably come up with something.

[hemiblas]

I just read and they said the longer they can hold out, the longer the reactors will cool on their own. Is this true? Are things getting better as time goes on or worst?

[PBO]

In relation to cooling the longer they are left un-cooled the more certain melt down becomes. This why they are doing anything they can to keep the reactor cores immersed or sprayed with water

[BrianG]

You can't simply seal it since heat would increase to the point where it would melt anything surrounding it. Then you'd have an explosion which would send radioactive fragments and debris all over the place. You have to find a way to neutralize the radioactive process completely, then seal it.

[JERRY2KONE]

Everything to do with nuclear power generation has a shelf life so to speak. Plutonium/uranium once put into reactive mode will generate heat for a certain amount of time. That length of time will depend on the demands placed on it throughout its useful life. Even after the rods are no longer useful for generating heat for steam power systems they still have a reactive state for many many years, and are quite capable of generating significant amounts of heat. these rods can create enough heat to be a problem for a very very long time. The spent rods now in these storage ponds around the world will last longer than you or I will live on this Earth.

So in a sense yes they will cool down, but not in our lifetime. Reading up on Nuclear energy can be quite interesting and informitive. One of the major problems with using nuclear fuel is that our civilization does know how to get rid of the spent fuel rods. They are piling up very quickly and are being stored in storage ponds much like the one at this reactor site, which is now one of the serious concerns for leakage into the soil and seawater there. So no they will not just coold down on there own where we will not have to worry about them. How long ago was the Chernobyl disaster, and that meltdown is still pumping out contamination. That is why there is a huge dead zone around the area(10 sq miles or something like that). This problem in Japan has to be dealt with by man now, one way or another. There is no easy out in this situation, and we cannot just ignore it either or the damage will spread into a mcuh larger area.

[PBO]

Originally Posted by JERRY2KONE

This problem in Japan has to be dealt with by man now, one way or another. There is no easy out in this situation, and we cannot just ignore it either or the damage will spread into a mcuh larger area.

Absolutely. Nuclear situations need to be priority number 1 & shouldn't be considered the country of origin problem. If the situation deteriorates & contamination is widespread, it then affects a significant number of countries & their populations

It will also be interesting to see how this 'event' will influence the global power strategies & local economies