Could Solar Flares Trigger 700 Nuclear Meltdowns?

[QuantumPion]

If there were a cosmic disaster catastrophic enough to cause every nuclear plant to melt down, I can guarantee 90% of the world population would starve to death (from desutruction of industrialized infrastructure required for mass food production) long before any symptoms of radiation-induce cancer arise (not that anyone would have the capability to diagnose said cancer, with the complete destruction of all machinery and electronics and all...)

 

[russ_watters]

And that matters because...?

 

[clancy688]

And that matters because...?

...

Me: "Tens of thousands inside the exclusion zone lost their homes due to the nuclear disaster."
They: "Nope, they lost their homes to the earthquake and tsunami."
Me: "That's not true, because..."

 

[nikkkom]

Utter nonsense. All plant workers entering the RCA are issued programmable digital alarming dosimetry. Stationary rad monitors are located at all steam transfer points to monitor for radiation release and personell safety.

Oh really?

Explain to me how it happened that at one point during Fukushima meltdown, workers went into the plant to open a valve but turned back, because their radiation meters went offscale high, so they were unable to determine whether there were 1, 10, 100 or 10000 rem/h?

Explain to me why Fukushima units had no working emergency lights. Why workers had to work in complete darkness?

 

[clancy688]

Explain to me why Fukushima units had no working emergency lights. Why workers had to work in complete darkness?

Probably another case of "Safe plants are safe, but unsafe ones don't count"... (forgive me if I'm overly sacastic now, but somehow I'm exhausted after this discussion...)

 

[russ_watters]

...

Me: "Tens of thousands inside the exclusion zone lost their homes due to the nuclear disaster."
They: "Nope, they lost their homes to the earthquake and tsunami."
Me: "That's not true, because..."

Then I think this all started with you misreading Ryan's post: he didn't mention the exclusion zone and I think he's good enough at risk analysis to not use that boundary as a constraint. But he'll have to clarify that.

 

[QuantumPion]

Oh really?

Explain to me how it happened that at one point during Fukushima meltdown, workers went into the plant to open a valve but turned back, because their radiation meters went offscale high, so they were unable to determine whether there were 1, 10, 100 or 10000 rem/h?

Explain to me why Fukushima units had no working emergency lights. Why workers had to work in complete darkness?

You are just being silly now. Your original claim was that they did not have adequate dosimeters. Now you are backing off and just complaining that they don't have dosimeters which can read radiation levels far above that which are immediately lethal. They had dosimeters which read "off scale high", indicating very high radiation levels, so they exited. Modern digital dosimeters typically have a range of 0.1 to 1000 R/hour. If the radiation level is greater than 1000 R/hr, you would immediately evacuate. Your complaint is entirely false and invalid.

I highly doubt they had no working emergency lights. You'll have to back that claim up with some evidence.

 

[russ_watters]

I highly doubt they had no working emergency lights. You'll have to back that claim up with some evidence.

Yes, it would be quite odd and impressive if they were "work[ing] in complete darkness"!

 

[Ryan_m_b]

...

Me: "Tens of thousands inside the exclusion zone lost their homes due to the nuclear disaster."
They: "Nope, they lost their homes to the earthquake and tsunami."
Me: "That's not true, because..."

Then I think this all started with you misreading Ryan's post: he didn't mention the exclusion zone and I think he's good enough at risk analysis to not use that boundary as a constraint. But he'll have to clarify that.

You've got it right russ, Clancy as far as I can tell you are misreading my post. You seem to think I have taken a position opposite to yours simply because I asked you to clarify it. In reality I haven't and instead tried to point out aspects of the whole disaster that we have to take into account e.g. the earthquake and tsunami.

 

[nikkkom]

Explain to me how it happened that at one point during Fukushima meltdown, workers went into the plant to open a valve but turned back, because their radiation meters went offscale high, so they were unable to determine whether there were 1, 10, 100 or 10000 rem/h?

You are just being silly now. Your original claim was that they did not have adequate dosimeters. Now you are backing off and just complaining that they don't have dosimeters which can read radiation levels far above that which are immediately lethal.

What? 10 rem/h is immediately lethal? Since when? Even 100 rem/h, while quite high, is not immediately lethal.

They had dosimeters which read "off scale high", indicating very high radiation levels, so they exited.

Wrong. Their dosimeters had insufficient range even for initial, relatively small increases in radiation before complete meltdown.

In an unanticipated accident like this, a worker may decide that to save thousands or maybe even millions of people, he is willing to voluntarily go into 10 rem/h or even 200 rem/h field for ten minutes to open a valve or something.

But in order to be able to make such judgement, worker needs to know whether it's 10 or 5000 rem/h there.

In Chernobyl they had this problem with dosimeter ranges. I was 100% sure that nuclear industry all over the world pored over Chernobyl information to not repeat their mistakes.

To my horror and disbelief, while reading about Fukushima disaster I realized I was wrong: nuclear industry did not fix even an obvious problem like this. Or the emergency lights...

 

[nikkkom]

I highly doubt they had no working emergency lights. You'll have to back that claim up with some evidence.

Photo from March 11. Control room is completely dark. Workers are forced to use handheld lights:

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/b6/31/b631e76b3198de7cb355b157402e905c.jpg

http://www.examiner.com/article/fukushima-timeline-one-year-after-march-11th-12th

"Batteries were being brought into the control room to attempt to re-establish level indications and other instruments."

"At the same time, valve by valve, operators worked through the pitch black buildings to align the fire protection system to allow for injection of water into the core."

"Unit 2 shares a control room with Unit 1 and suffered the same loss of lighting and power to control and indications that Unit 1 did. "

 

[nikkkom]

And there is more:

"As cooling was lost, pressure spiked inside the reactor, and the safety release valves (SRVs), normally used to quickly depressurize the reactor in an emergency, were inoperable due to the loss of battery power. By 04:15 the fuel was no longer covered by water and began to melt, releasing hydrogen in the zirconium-water-heat reaction. Workers rushed into the parking lot to scavenge batteries from cars in order to get enough power to use one of the SRVs."

Got it? *Safety valves which require DC to operate*! How dumb is that? It would be interesting to chat with a genius who designed that system...

 

[nikkkom]

From INPO report:

http://www.nei.org/filefolder/11_005_Special_Report_on_Fukushima_Daiichi_MASTER_11_08_11_1.pdf

"With no core cooling and extensive damage to the site, workers began to investigate methods for venting containment without power
and reviewing methods for injecting water into the reactor using the fire protection system or fire engines."

Nice. No one bothered to plan for it beforehand. Let scared and stressed workers devise the plan while they listen to their dosimeter beeps.

"In complete darkness, operators began to align the alternative water injection valves from the fire protection system to the core spray system by manually opening the valves in the reactor building."

Yet another confirmation that emergency lighting was dead too.

"At 1825, the operator closed the MO-3A valve to remove the system from service. The reason for this action has not been determined. As a result, there was no cooling method aligned to remove decay heat from the reactor."

I can tell you probable reasons: mistake under stress, fear that this half of IC is damaged, fear that rapid cooling will damage the reactor.

I can somewhat blame the operator, but in all fairness, he wasn't supposed to be in a situation where he operates mostly-dead control panel with nothing but stabs in the dark, with neither instrument data nor emergency instructions on hand.

 

[QuantumPion]

What? 10 rem/h is immediately lethal? Since when? Even 100 rem/h, while quite high, is not immediately lethal.
Wrong. Their dosimeters had insufficient range even for initial, relatively small increases in radiation before complete meltdown.

In an unanticipated accident like this, a worker may decide that to save thousands or maybe even millions of people, he is willing to voluntarily go into 10 rem/h or even 200 rem/h field for ten minutes to open a valve or something.

But in order to be able to make such judgement, worker needs to know whether it's 10 or 5000 rem/h there.

There is no situation where a plant operator would have to decide whether to enter an area to save equipment which would save "millions of people". This is complete fantasy of your own making. I think you've watched Atomic Twister one too many times. And as I have mentioned previously, I have never heard of any lack of dosimetry issues at Fukushima. You'll have to back up your claim with some evidence.

In Chernobyl they had this problem with dosimeter ranges. I was 100% sure that nuclear industry all over the world pored over Chernobyl information to not repeat their mistakes.

To my horror and disbelief, while reading about Fukushima disaster I realized I was wrong: nuclear industry did not fix even an obvious problem like this. Or the emergency lights...

At Chernobyl, the problem they had with radiation detectors was because of the lack of experience and training of the operators. They assumed the radiation was not as high as it was because their geiger counters, used for detecting low-level contamination, were maxed out. They had access to high level geiger counters but did not use them initially, before they knew the scope of the accident.

And there is more:Got it? *Safety valves which require DC to operate*! How dumb is that? It would be interesting to chat with a genius who designed that system...

Um... do you even know what DC power is? How valves work? How batteries work? What on Earth could possibly lead you to think that emergency backup power is "dumb"?

And in your own following post, you quote statements saying they had emergency lighting, while simultaneously claiming they didn't have emergency lighting. Can't really comment on that logic.

All of your statements are evidence of a complete non-understanding and refusal to educate yourself of the facts. You have simply taken scarey sounding headlines, written by journalists and anti-nuclear activists, and accepted them as factual.

 

[zapperzero]

You are just being silly now. Your original claim was that they did not have adequate dosimeters.

You are becoming quite annoying. The lack of dosimeters is well documented, at one point TEPCO even asked NISA if it's okay to use just one dosimeter per "work crew" (whatever that means) and NISA said "yeah whatever" for some reason. Dosimeters which did exist went offscale on multiple occasions, as documented in firefighters and workers' testimonies, but also in the official records of TEPCO, where this is given as a reason for various actions and inactions.

EDIT:

40% of workers had no dosimeter at nuke plant soon after disaster

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201209040060

and here is your "emergency lighting"
http://www.neimagazine.com/graphic.asp?sc=2061344&seq=3

As[/PLAIN] all AC and DC power sources of Units 1 and 2 were lost, the lights gradually went
out and the alarms stopped sounding in the Units 1 & 2 main control room. Only the
emergency lights remained on in the Unit 1 block of the room while the lights in the Unit 2
block went out completely.
[snip]
At approximately 15:38 that day, the only
interior lights in the Units 3 & 4 main control room were the emergency lights due to the
total loss of AC power supplies. LED flashlights that were distributed to the Units 3 & 4
main control room for the field inspection of the facilities in February 2011 were used to
light the room.
[snip]
From approximately 02:00 until approximately 03:00 on March 12, they drove the
fire engine to the T/B of Unit 1 and found that the shutter at the entrance to the building
had been opened by the force of the seismic waves and several cars had been swept out
of the building and piled up on the ground. Amid such chaos, they used searchlights of
the fire engines to look for the embedded water discharge port.

Would you like some crow with that pie?

 

[berkeman]

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