This is why my office chair is a toilet. Actually my entire desk is in a toilet cubicle with the rest of the IT Team 'just in case of emergencies'. Curiously though the sound of urination is no different from the sound of people pissing on things to make their territory but they can't because we are already pissing on everything.

It's sometimes very odd when someone urgently bursts in during one of our meetings, but they usually leaved feeling relieved.

Can someone explain to me why a reactor can overheat and meltdown like in Japan ... but not have the energy to spin the turbines to power cooling?

Yes. The first factor is the residual thermal heat in the reactor, it is 150 tons of uranium, so it's a large thermal mass before having properties that cause the heat in the first place, i.e. neutrons bouncing around.

Obviously the heat is removed with the water cooling, however the water also serves to *moderate* the reaction by slowing the neutrons. There has to be enough water to cover the fuel rods otherwise more heat is generated. There probably was enough energy to spin the turbines and may have been a way to control the reactor assuming it was operational.

I don't know if there is facilities to do that however, after the earthquake and SCRAM the reactors condition was unknown.

How can it get so hot that it boils the water way even under ridiculous pressures ... but that heat can't be used to power turbines?

Well the pressure in a Mk I reactor only has to get to 70psi to expose the basis design issues and typically operates at lower pressures than that.. As the water level was not known in the reactor the operators didn't know that the water level was low. Consequently there was nothing to moderate the reaction and instead of cooling, it was getting hotter.

Am I to believe that reactors actually generate more power when shutdown than when powered up?

Yes, when they malfunction, as was the case in Fukushima.

I just can't fathom why a plant can SCRAM and then overheat ... but be unable to cool itself.

Because there wasn't enough water to moderate the reaction, let alone cool it. Don't forget the natural state is for it to produce heat.

Someones design is WAY fucked up me thinks. Its generating too much steam ... USE IT ...

By that stage each reactor was fully exposed to the basis design issue and was hot enough (thermal and radioactive) to start producing hydrogen from the water. This is the beginning of a plutonium fire, so at that stage, assuming you still had containment a lot of water is required to bring things under control. If TEPCO had better contingency planning, followed the manufacturers instructions for operating the plant, and the backup generators were available this whole situation could have been avoided.

No. A riverbed was a seriously braindead place to put Fukushima.

The Mk I had several basis design issues, however these issues were made fatal by Tepco's criminal negligence. The two dasis design issues were: Gate pair seals in the spent fuel containment pool and reactor vessel exceed 70psi internal pressure. Both had a consequence of producing hydrogen and both were exposed because TEPCO did not maintain power to S class facilities (that contain radio isotopes) in accordance with the siesmic design guidlines.

Maybe on a scale of "eternity", fire doesn't render places "permanently" uninhabitable.

But, then, neither does radiation.

The relatively short half life of Strontium 90 is 600 years, some radioisotopes are more than that some are less. To the perspective of anyone alive today, it's the same as eternity.

Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.

Many of the so called "improved" designs are only improved for economic reasons. Choices, such as less concrete for the containment, actually *reduce* the safety of the reactors because they are too expensive to build otherwise.

We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build reactors that quite simply are INCAPABLE of replicating the accidents that led to contamination at TMI and Chernobyl.

What we don't have is a properly prepared geological spent fuel containment facility. Accidents like Fukushima show how important this step is if you want to reduce the inherrant risk of the entire industry.

As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".

The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals that this issue was "Wholey man made" and "avoidable". The installation could have survived had they not had a beleif system that Nuclear power was safe, therefore reducing effort to improve safety in basic ways, like raising the seawall or locating backup generators appropriately.

Basically, if you consider yourself environmentally conscious, you cannot be anti-nuke.

If you understood the actual environmental impact of Nuclear power you don't have to be "environmentally conscious" to have excellent motivation to oppose Nuiclear power.

Because the only other viable options for baseline power are natural gas, coal and oil.

I think you mean "Baseload" and Solar thermal does "Baseload". What you're missing though is that "Baseload" is a function of the grid, not just any single source.

And anyone telling you that we can rely, solely, on wind, wave, solar and geothermal is LYING TO YOU. The people telling you these lies? Shills for the NG, coal and oil industry!

I think we are going to need all of these sources in the coming years. Wind is a great replacement for nuclear because it scales much better. The era of coal is over and we cannot place a radioisotope legacy on future generations the way a carbon legacy was put on our generation.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with the coal or oil industry.

The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place. This happened because the beleif system in the safety of Nuclear Power affected all of the safety proposals put forward within and by TEPCO. In other words a 'systemic' issue where the belief that a reactor is safe to be run to capacity, as opposed to a safety culture that certifies it to do so, is the main issue.

A good example of this safety culture is in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report. Their interactions with the US Nuclear Sub Fleet revealed that a sub has to consistantly re-certified to operate a certain depth. If it does not get recertified it may not operate at that depth.

As the issue at Fukushima was controlling the residual thermal energy in the reactor as it cooled, perhaps this is a safety culture that could be applied to individual Nuclear reactors at power plant installations where the operating procedures recognises the issues and only certified the reactor to a certain percentage of its production until the problems had been resolved.

Any recertification the following year with new lessons learned proscribes risk aversity proportional to the impact, the onus being on the owner to prove that the reactor is safe to operate to that capacity.

The goal is to prevent an accident because there is less thermal heat in the reactor to deal with and explosions, such as those seen at Chernobyl and Fukushima, don't happen. The best outcome being an operator may have been able to continue using a reactor because they chose to be risk averse appropriately to avoid any possibility of the type of thermal issues that lead to explosions.

I know that such a proposal would not be popular with the pro or anti nuclear people, however there are another group that recognises that these plants are getting old and simply can't be run forever so if you want the benefit of the power you have to figure how how to do that safely.

Comments don't flatten jokes, highly strung slashdotters do.

Phones don't kill people, conversations do.

No, however now you can imagine that there will be a cluster of beowulf movies.