tagged w/ China Syndrome
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Steam exiting from cracks around severely damaged units 1,2,3 of the Fukishima complex is extremely radioactive,according to Paul Gunter on Thom Hartmann's RT Tv show.The critical masses from the 3 units will keep melting down into the earth,hence the term "China Syndrome". This nuclear accident is unprecedented.Fukishima is by far the worst nuclear accident to date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baya8-agPs4Steam exiting from cracks around severely damaged units 1,2,3 of the Fukishima complex... more
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Radioactive cesium leaking from the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is estimated to reach the West Coast of the United States in five years after its density declines considerably, according to a semi-governmental research institute.
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has compiled a map predicting how cesium-137 will spread throughout the Pacific Ocean in the long term. Cesium-137, whose half life is 30 years, is one of the radioactive substances leaking from the crippled nuclear power station.
It estimates that cesium-137 from the plant will spread in the shape of an ellipse -- as far as about 4,000 kilometers off the coast of Japan -- in one year. It then predicts the substance will reach Hawaii three years later and the U.S. West Coast five years from now. However, the agency says that by that time, its density will have declined significantly.Radioactive cesium leaking from the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is... more
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It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to see the host of calamities our primeval mindset is capable of manifesting. What happened to Jackson Browne singing about the healing power of the sun? After Three Mile Island nuclear energy publicly became the unacceptable risk Dr. Helen Caldicott warned us about. We canceled canoe trips to protest at General Electric until comfort became our cause allowing nuclear megawatts a backstage pass into the main stream. Today the land of the rising plume is seeing solar in a different light after a crippling 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked their tenuous power grid. Instead of the one inch per year average, tectonic plates shifted Japan 13 feet in moments equaling 157 years of time travel.It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to see the host of calamities our primeval mindset... more
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Scientific American...
China Syndrome: Going Nuclear to Cut Down on Coal Burning
China pauses its plans to build the most new nuclear reactors in the world in the wake of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan--but will not halt them
By David Biello | March 28, 2011 | 4
sanmen-ap1000-construction CHINA SYNDROME: China is building nearly half of all the new nuclear reactors in the world, including this AP1000 at Sanmen nuclear power plant. Image: Courtesy of Westinghouse
PART ONE...
Across the East China Sea, west of Japan and its ongoing crisis, sits the growing Qinshan nuclear power plant, where four new pressurized-water reactors are under construction in addition to the five already operating on-site. The Qinshan addition is one of 20 new nuclear power plants undergoing construction or approved for construction in China today, part of a bid to increase the nuclear share of China's electricity-generating capacity from less than 2 percent to 5 percent. That means China is building nearly half of all the nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association.
"Now in China we have 13 nuclear power reactors in operation," said Zhang Guobao, former vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission—the government agency charged with setting energy and industrial policy—via a translator during a visit to NDRC headquarters in Beijing this past November. "In comparison with countries like the U.S.A. and France, this number is very small, [but] we are first in the world in the construction of new nuclear reactors."
China's newly released five-year plan requires that China source 11.4 percent of its energy needs from other than fossil-fuel—at least 43 gigawatts of that to come from nuclear alone—up from slightly more than 8 percent now. Further, Chinese officials have announced plans to explicitly cap China's total energy use at four billion metric tons of coal-equivalent by 2015; they also have drafted a "New Energy Industry Development Plan" that would invest amore than $750 billion in "new energy," which includes nuclear, in the next decade.
But the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent 14-meter-high tsunami on March 11 has given cause for concern. A State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao has put a halt to new nuclear construction and approval. "We will temporarily suspend approval for nuclear power projects," the State Council said in a statement following a meeting on March 16. "Safety is our top priority in developing nuclear power plants."
That will be temporary. "China's energy mix is dominated by coal," explained Guobao, who retired this year. "In the near future it is our priority to increase the proportion of nuclear and renewable energy in our energy mix."
China's currently operating reactors deliver nearly 11 gigawatts of electricity—or more than half the amount delivered by the nation's notorious Three Gorges Dam alone. And China is building 25 more reactors. "By 2020, installed [nuclear] capacity could reach over 70 gigawatts," Guobao said, although the current five-year plan for nuclear is to boost it from 10 to 50 gigawatts by 2015.
But that would still be only a fraction of the electricity produced by burning coal. "For the foreseeable future, coal will continue to take up a big part of our energy mix," Guobao said.
Nuclear with Chinese characteristics
China's new nuclear future is a mix of its own and foreign reactor designs. China has or is building heavy-water reactors from Canada, "evolutionary" pressurized-water reactors from France, pebble-bed reactors tested in South Africa, and even is working on reactors that would use molten salt for cooling and thorium for fuel. China has become the nuclear industry's living laboratory for new reactor designs and the learning that comes from actual construction.
CONTINUED...Scientific American...
China Syndrome: Going Nuclear to Cut Down on Coal Burning... more
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The China Syndrome is a hypothetical idea of an extreme result of a nuclear meltdown in which molten reactor core products breach the barriers below them and flow downwards through the floor of the containment building. The origin of the phrase is the dramatic hyperbole that molten material from an American reactor could melt through the crust of the Earth and reach China.[1]The China Syndrome is a hypothetical idea of an extreme result of a nuclear meltdown... more
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Nuclear expert Joe Cirincione warns that radiation from Japan’s multiple potential nuclear meltdowns could spread to the US west coast and that the threat represents an “unprecedented crisis,” as another explosion rocked the Fukushima complex and officials admitted that nuclear fuel rods at reactor number two have been fully exposed.
“The worst case scenario is that the fuel rods fuse together, the temperatures get so hot that they melt together in a radioactive molten mass that bursts through the containment mechanisms and is exposed to the outside. So they spew radioactivity in the ground, into the air, into the water. Some of the radioactivity could carry in the atmosphere to the West Coast of the United States,” Cirincione told Fox News.
When host Chris Wallace questioned whether radioactivity could travel thousands of miles across the Pacific, Cirincione responded, “Oh, absolutely. Chernobyl, which happened about 25 years ago, the radioactivity spread around the entire northern hemisphere. It depends how many of these cores melt down and how successful they are on containing it once this disaster happens.”
“One reactor has had half the core exposed already,” explained Cirincione. “This is the one they’re flooding with sea water in a desperate effort to prevent it from a complete meltdown. They lost control of a second reactor next to it, a partial meltdown, and there is actually a third reactor at a related site 20-kilometers away they have also lost control over. We have never had a situation like this before.”
Fears that the radiation could reach the United States have prompted the California Department of Public Health to issue a statement saying they are assessing the situation and that they have radioactivity monitoring systems in place for air, water and the food supply.
As the Washington Blog has documented, pollution from Chinese coal factories routinely hits California.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.infowars.com/nuclear-expert-radiation-could-spread-to-us-west-coast/Nuclear expert Joe Cirincione warns that radiation from Japan’s multiple... more
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Japanese authorities are operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are under way at two nuclear reactors, a government official said Sunday, adding that there have been no indications yet of hazardous emissions of radioactive material into the atmosphere.Japanese authorities are operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are... more
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