Can a Closed Nuclear Power Plant From the ’70s Be Brought Back to Life?

My statement was that nuclear reactors cannot explode. The explosion at Chernobyl had nothing to do with a nuclear chain reaction. It was a steam explosion resulting from the inherently flawed RBMK design (positive void coefficient of reactivity) of the system which used graphite as the moderator and water as the coolant. Once again you misquote but that is your pattern. True engineers don’t do that.

 

The public supports more nuclear energy.
We Want More Nuclear
Rebecca Leppert, Pew Research

A majority of U.S. adults remain supportive of expanding nuclear power in the country, according to a Pew Research Center survey from May. Overall, 56% say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity. This share is statistically unchanged from last year. . . .

 

Sir, it wasn't the reactor design that caused the crash. It was the staff that shut all safety devices. Got it? And these were true engineers, but tired and stressed, like staff often is all over the world.

 

And it can be stated with just as much justification that you are deflecting and rationalizing. When there are toxins like tritium in millions of tons of water dumped into the ocean, what is the effect? What? You don't know? You have only somebody's 'opinion' about it -- but rashly dismiss someone else's opinion?

But rather than fight 'city hall', I simple removed from my shopping list any and all seafood that comes from the Pacific Ocean after the disaster at Fukushima occurred. I'm still alive, healthy, and can ask for no more from a civilization that thinks it's "OK" to dump toxic radioactive crap into any body of water. But please, help yourself to all the Alaskan King Crab you like! (It's all right... hell, there are millions of people who continue to get tattoos, even though tattoo ink has been directly indicated in lymphoma! Ultimately, there's no accounting for blind stupidity....)

 

Excellent news. More Alaskan King Crab for me.

 

For me, as a German, Chernobyl is not too far away. Our Region had been unlucky enough: A substancial part of the radioactive cloud was washed out by some casual rain. Until today all the deer has to be examined before allowed to eat or to sell. 4 or of 5 wild pigs have to be dumped as radioactive waste. The same with mushrooms, not mor than twice or three times a year.

 

It was the reactor design. Human error was a factor at Three Mile Island and Fukushima. There was no loss of life and significant radiation release because of the reactor design.

 

There is no effect if the concentrations are below toxic thresholds. All water contains radioactive materials. If that scares you then don’t drink water.

 

Yes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66610977

Tritium levels SIX times lower than drinking water standards set by the WHO, but it’s not safe to put in the ocean?

SMH.

 

I wish you and Jack all the best, including plenty of my old favorites, the Alaska King Crab and those wonderful Weathervane scallops. Ah, how I miss them, along with the superb Chinook (King) Salmon. The stuff from the farms in Norway isn't nearly as good, but, so far I haven't seen their stuff glow in the dark.... (just kidding... don't get huffy).

Seriously? Light-water nuclear fission reactors (Fukushima) are probably the very WORST things that mankind ever invented!

 

All of those are gone due to radiation poisoning from Fukushima?? I missed that?

Do you have smoke detectors in your house or know anyone who does?

 

Yes.

 

No, none of those types of seafood are "gone" due to radiation poisoning -- but that doesn't mean I want to EAT any of them... especially after Japan decided to dump enormous quantities of toxic radiation into the ocean.

As far as smoke detectors... sure, I've got some. But, because I don't break them apart inside the house, or try to EAT them, I feel reasonably sequestered from the advertised danger. Thank you for your concern!

 

Then don’t eat them if you think they are a health risk. You are exposed to more radiation from your smoke detectors than Fukushima radiation from any seafood you might consume.

 

Somehow, this whole thing reminds me of an old nursery rhyme --

Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean.

 

What is your point?

 

It's not that 'esoteric', AFM.... We've come to an impasse over whether it's fine and dandy to dump millions of tons of radioactive toxins into an ocean, so, those in your camp (like one of the Sprats in the nursery rhyme) can eat all the seafood in the path of the Japanese current, and those in my camp (the the other Sprat) can eat anything else. It was just a little tongue-in-cheek 'adios' to a thread that I've lost interest in.

OTOH: Because the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and the eighth-largest in the world, the greater worry will appear, quickly, if either the Russians or the Uks blow it up. If that happens, no one will even be able to get 'clean' seafood (or anything else to eat) from anywhere in Europe for a very long time to come.

 

Are you concerned about the billions of ton of treated sewage which enter the global water supply every day?

The Zaporizhzhia power station which consists of 6 pressurized light water reactors systems with both primary and secondary containment has been shut down since 2022 when Russia took control of them. Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is extremely difficult and expensive. This would have to be done 6 times.

 

I'm VERY concerned about sewage in the waterways of the planet -- including the square miles of floating garbage 'islands' that exist right now in the Pacific Ocean. There's nothing good about that, and we can thank India and China primarily for that!

The greater tragedy is that even if somehow we were actually able to get ALL nations to agree to stop dumping garbage into the waterways of the world, we'd still have the enigma of what to do with all the tritium and other radioactive crap, like cesium and strontium, that Japan is flushing out into the Pacific Ocean. As I said in my Post #23, science has no way to get rid of it.

Sorry, AFM, but I find that some klatch of bureaucrats, 'talking heads', and paid lobbyists telling us that Pacific Ocean seafood is perfectly harmless is, uh, somewhat 'unconvincing'.

 

More for me!

 

Are you concerned about the TREATED sewage which enters the global water system? Are you unconvinced that it is not possible to treat water and return it to the global water supply.

 

It'll just get encased in the mud and eventually buried over like everything else that is in a core sample. It is part of the reason dam removal isn't as simple as just breaching it. They have to determine what could be released when all the dirt built up on the upstream side gets released too.

 

OK, I'm assuming your Ph.D. is in nuclear physics... so tell us, how exactly DOES Japan get rid of tritium in the millions of gallons of toxic water it's dumping into the Pacific Ocean? Hey, who knows -- somebody might nominate you for a Nobel prize (since nobody else knows how to accomplish that)! You have the floor....

 

The water is not toxic.

 

They don’t. But the amount of radiation in the water is well below the toxic limit which poses no danger to humans. Every gallon of water in nature contains radioactive material.