There's no reason to think the melted core will get that far down, or even burn through the concrete floor, or even leave the reactor vessel in any sort of coherent form. Chernobyl's overheated core just spread through the lower parts of the structure (look for the 'elephant's foot' picture), Three Mile island's core was scraped off the inside of the reactor vessel, having only blued the metal.

'Corium' is basically molten ceramic (The fuel is a uranium-oxide matrix.) It has such poor heat conducting properties that during normal operations, it could be 3000F in the center of a pellet, and 650F on the surface of the cladding- 3/16" away from the center.

The most important reason is that 'corium' isn't actually hot enough to burn through the earth like that, nor does it conduct heat all that well, even if any part of it became hot enough.

The integrity of the fuel rods is challenged at 2200F (zircaloy-water reaction, which released the hydrogen that caused the reactor building roofs to blow off on three of the Daichi units.)

Steel melts at about 2600F. Concrete breaks down at about 1800F.

In addition, the fuel is a uranium-oxide mix, a sort of ceramic. This class of material is generally known for poor thermal conductivity. That's why the pellets are the size of a pencil eraser, they need to be small and have a high surface area in order to conduct heat from the center of the pellet- which might be at 3000F in normal operations- to the fuel cladding and into the reactor coolant, which might be around 600F.

Anyway, from what I know about western reactors (it's my line of work, but i'm not a reactor engineer per se), I seriously doubt the fuel would 'burn' through steel or concrete. The fission products escape because of physical destruction to the facility caused by the Tsunami, or because of relief valves that limit reactor coolant system pressure, or primary containment structure pressure.

Chernobyl's release was due to a massive overpressure event that physically broke the reactor vessel. Nothing ever burned through concrete (check out the photos of the 'elephant's foot')

Three Mile Island's core was found in the bottom of the reactor vessel; a small amount of fission products was released by mis-operation of support systems. The integrity of the reactor vessel was never threatened, though the containment building (much larger than Daichi primary containment structures) withstood several hydrogen burns.

The fire department ruled out everything that makes a Tesla a Tesla,so I propose:

1) cigarette embers on a napkin

2) a bad 12V accessory

The fascist actions of the Government lately cannot have escaped your notice. In case they have, I'll paste a summary for you:

quote source: Here, with more links.

The power of the federal goverment, and some state governments, is being turned against those who oppose the powerful. If you don't have a problem with that, you're no better than a Nazi, regardless of Godwin's law.

I was being sarcastic, of course, but this sort of news will certainly discourage guys from assisting lesbian couples. The couples will have to go pay full price at a fertility clinic for sperm. Is that not a logical consequence of this case? Does this not increase costs for the women involved? One guy gets screwed over by the court. Hundreds (Kansas) or thousands (National) of lesbian couples won't be able to find economical sperm donors. Buying sperm from a clinic will run north of $500. Yes, they ought to be able to swing $500+ if they want to have a kid. But should they have to?

This case will make it that much harder for lesbian couples to obtain a sperm donor. Like many laws and regulations, it'll ensure that things only occur when the proper people (in this case fertility clinics) get their cut.

Some folks have confused the United States prohibition on an established, national religion (congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...) in the first amendment with a ban on any intermingling of religion with public office or government function. This odd view has been entertained from time to time in various courts, and is pushed by certain atheist and 'civil liberties' groups who lack productive work to pursue. So kindly forgive the GP poster, his confusion is rather common place.

The argument is somewhat circular, because death-penalty opponents have made it so expensive. I'm not against all of the additional costs, mind you, in this day and age we ought to be damn sure we're executing the right person.

I don't understand how one can have any knowledge of the history of science, and think that Genesis would be a literal record. Accepting divine relevation of the Pentateuch, the record spans 4,000 to 1600 BC. Our understanding of Natural Law (Newton, Galileo, etc) has only really started to explode in the last 600 years or so- meaning that Moses-Era people lacked the knowledge necessary to understand the specific mechanisms of pretty much any aspect of how the current conditions came to be.

A lecture on natural law would have been out of place and unhelpful to the faithful for the following 5,000 years; the message was simply "I, God, made you and this world."

The fact that this short message was stretched out to a seven-day process in no way makes it literal. The specifics of creation were not the point, and would have been lost on those folks; so it was omitted. Those same young earth creationists must believe that the God of Abraham has a bit of Loki the Norse Trickster god in him, given that there is so much physical evidence contradicting a 6,000 year old earth. Either that, or they must believe that there's a massive satanic conspiracy to invent evidence for an earth billions of years old, an equally preposterous claim.

Religion gives us the 'Why' of life; science is the 'How.' They cannot serve each other's purposes.

3. The stone (abbreviation st) is a unit of measure equal to 14 pounds avoirdupois (about 6.35 kg [nb 1]) used in Great Britain and Ireland for measuring human body weight.

Explain 'Stones"

Now rank them by body count.

I'm not.

The projected capacity is 830,000 barrels per day. This is equivalant to a continous chain of 30,000 gallon rail cars, with one completing an offload every 1 minute 14 seconds. Even if they run it initially at a quarter capacity, that's still a railcar every five minutes, or 288 rail cars kept off the tracks each day.That's a three mile long train.

Given the massive capital cost of this project, I'm imagine TransCanada will make good use of the line.

I am curious why you have a problem taking a 3-12 mile long train of crude oil off the tracks each day.

The only explanation I can come up with is that you believe:

1) that the relevant oil production is limited by rail transportation constraints, and

2) that the creation of a pipeline would allow a large increase of oil production, and

3) the same amount of oil would travel by rail, with an additional amount traveling via pipeline.

That explanation alone is also insufficient to explain opposition to the project.

Oh, one more thing:

Given that we can use infrastructure like this for a good 100 years if not longer, this no reason to stop the project either. A 'reasonable timeframe' isn't limited to our vanishingly brief lives.

Are you saying we shouldn't build any pipelines, because we can't completely eliminate rail shipment of crude oil? It would seem to me that if you build just a few pipelines from the sources of crude oil to the refineries, you would greatly reduce the crude oil being shipped on rails.

That's the idea behind the Keystone XL pipeline.

Warren Buffet, Obama's buddy, owns BNSF railway, incidentally. Blocking the Keystone XL pipeline from being built directly enriches a major Obama campaign donor.

During the Eisenhower administration the tax rate on the uppermost bracket of incomes was 91%. Ninety one friggin' precent. Yet, there were still obscenely wealthy people. It's time to define new upper income brackets. I don't have a problem with someone's five-million-and-oneth dollar being taxed at 90%.

While there technically was a 91% Tax bracket, that single fact in no way communicates the reality of the situation. There were loopholes big enough to drive a Maybach through, and everyone did so. The fact is that wealthier Americans pay a higher share of the tax burden today than in 1958, and lower income Americans pay much less in taxes. More here