The part that I’m amazed by is that no civilian seems to know about the TVA meltdown. It’s the only full meltdown we ever had, and the Army Corps of Engineers lost all access to nuclear power because of that incident, as they intentionally melted it down to test China Syndrome. This was in the 50s. They did build the thing inside of a mountain to contain all the radiation, but had the physicist that came up with China Syndrome been right, that wouldn’t have really mattered. They also could have just done the math to figure out that, yet again, the physicist in question understood physics just fine, but lacked in mathematics.
Comment on rollin' coal
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
ok real talk. 3 mile island reportedly had no result on the environment, on account of being fully retained. Chernobyl was significant, obviously.
Fukushima as far as we can tell today, has no significant long lasting effects. Notably i’ve read that rates of certain cancers in areas surrounding the plant did rise, but i’ve also heard that it was still below the nominal expected rate. So nothing of significant concern. The local sea life near to the plant could very well be an issue, but we don’t really have much data on that at the moment. Especially now that they’ve started releasing tritiated water into the ocean for the next 20-50 years or whatever the fuck the plan is supposed to be.
Nuclear energy fucks around sometimes.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Emerald@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I looked up TVA meltdown, got no results about it.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It may still be classified. I learned about it in Nuclear Power School in the Navy
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
i’ve never heard of it, i would assume it isn’t out there. Technically there is one other meltdown we had though, the SL-1 reactor, killed three people. Caused a bit of a mess, wasn’t super significant though.
Was that a naval/sub reactor? Or was this something else?
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That was an Army test reactor. The Navy has a spotless record, so far.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
ye, i was mostly mentioning it because it is technically another true meltdown of a reactor within the US.
Naval sub reactors i know have a spotless record, across the aisle, amusingly. Ship reactors i would imagine are less of a problem, though im guessing those are just stolen from subs so equally spotless most likely.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It is my understanding that the Three Mile Island incident was a meltdown, that the fuel rods got hot enough to melt themselves and pool in the bottom of the reactor vessel but did not escape containment, unlike Chernobyl whose reactor core is currently a big lump in a sub-basement.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
TVA meltdown
Ok so TMI, is actually a cumulation of three primary factors, none of which should’ve happened.
The first was that they had bad/broken gauges and equipment that was hard to read, meaning they didn’t know the state of the reactor exactly like they should have been able to.
Second, they had the auxiliary cooling pumps shutdown for maintenance. Now normally this wouldn’t be a huge problem if you’re following procedure, as procedure dictates (this was also the law btw) that when your reactor core is running, the auxiliary cooling lines need to be active.
And third, the reactor core was operated under only the primary water feed lines. I.E. power generating feed water. Which as i said is not allowed.
Once they had a crew change, the new crew immediately realized everything had melted down, and called for shutdown. Only took like 8 hours or something.
Chernobyl was a little more complicated, because chernobyl wasn’t designed with a PCV (primary containment vessel), technically it had a secondary containment, which would be the building around it, but obviously that didn’t help. It was theorized and believed by the engineers (and the operators, ignoring a certain condition where this wouldn’t be true, which nobody knew about) that it was impossible for the plant to have a meltdown, primarily due to the fact that it was such a spread out core, making it react slower to immediate changes in the power production.
However, during the day when this happened, (i wont go into all the detail because i will be here for hours otherwise.) the plant was in a xenon well, meaning that it was able to produce virtually zero fission (xenon absorbs neutrons) and the operators didn’t realize it, so they pulled out nearly all of the control rods trying to bring it back up (for a loss of power test) only to then have all the xenon start decaying at about that period of time, which meant the power level started to aggressively increase, and since there were no control rods, it sort of hit a runaway condition. Leading to the entire plant fucking exploding, due to a steam explosion specifically. This one was a lot more like a steam boiler explosion in a locomotive than a nuclear explosion or even hydrogen explosion (though that could’ve been the second explosion that happened)
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Chernobyl is a big lump in a sub basement, but that was still the result of a chemical explosion, not a meltdown. My point was that the only meltdown incidents have been caused by the US.
TMI is a bit of a sticky wicket, because as you say the roda did melt, but we got it back under control before abything more than some steam escaped containment.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
so technically, it wasn’t a chemical explosion at chernobyl, it was a steam explosion, followed by a possible hydrogen explosion, though that would have been due to chemical reactions ultimately iirc.
Also technically, chernobyl is a meltdown incident, meltdown is described as “severe core damage” And considering that core no 4 no longer fucking exists, i think it’s fair to call it a meltdown incident.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
What do you think a “meltdown” is?
JATtho@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Especially now that they’ve started releasing tritiated water into the ocean for the next 20-50 years or whatever the fuck the plan is supposed to be.
the tritiated water is no-more concentrated than what other power plants around the world release. (the latter may be surprising to know) In addition, tritium has a half-life of only 12.3 years and is diluted in a literal sea, which is an extremely good radiation shield.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
yeah. This is all very true, but like most dilutions, things take time, and it’ll be interesting to follow the dilution process as it moves forwards. From what i understand the tritiated water is also released farther out form the shore to prevent local pollution, but i believe there are still elevated levels of radiation in sea life surrounding the shore. Though i can’t remember if that was significant or not. Regardless, humans consume fish, it’s something to be weary of to some degree (i believe there are laws around this already though)
Also, last i heard, they were handing out bottles of this tritiated water during a press conference they gave near the plant. Definitely not in accordance with regulations and stipulations recommending how you interact with this type of radiation, but then again, flying in for that press conference is going to expose you to more radiation anyway so.
BTW, fun fact for anyone curious as to why they don’t just “remove the water” It’s because tritiated water is so closely related to your average water molecule, that it’s basically identical from a molecular composition point of view (except for the fact that it has tritium in it) as a result, there is no way of removing it. Or, an easy way of removing it.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The radiation near shore will also have any residual from the initial tsunami.
gnygnygny@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Who is doing the control TEPCO ? So we are safe 🙈
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
i think tepco the government, and the regular suspects in the international agencies.
Japan for what it’s worth has a culture that is pretty strict about these sorts of things, so i can’t imagine they would blunder this one.
fellowmortal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
yeah, but then again if you did have a significant raise, you would expect it to be outside of what is statistically nominal for the general population, and from what i understand, it was not. So even if it was a result of the radiation. It would still be lower than the average human expectancy throughout one life time. I.E. Not statistically significant to any degree of concern.