Plutonium is Forever

http://www.cringely.com/2011/03/plutonium-is-forever/

by evo_9 • 15 years ago

118 87 15 years ago

wcoenen• 15 years ago

The plutonium was only found in trace amounts comparable to the amounts left behind by nearby nuclear weapons tests: http://mitnse.com/2011/03/30/news-updates/

lukeschlather• 15 years ago

In disaster management, you need to go big early. Start getting several projects under way, so if any of them are needed they can jump into effect as soon as the need is clear. Hopefully the contamination is minor, but we already know there's likely to be some significant cesium contamination for a while now, and Japan should have half a dozen task forces starting with the assumption that technology X will deal with the contamination, and figuring out what they need to do to implement it.

philthy• 15 years ago

The plant should have been dismantled, flooded, and buried within 24 hours of the emergency generators going down. They knew how bad it was/is, this all could have been prevented.

nickolai• 15 years ago

You cant dismantle a plant that still generates residual heat while a used fuel pool is on fire nearby. Its just too dangerous a place for humans to be. What should they have done? Sent Asimo?

Tuna-Fish5• 15 years ago

Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray source, you can treat sram and dram as good sources of truly random data. :)

Tuna-Fish5• 15 years ago

...

It is simply not possible to dismantle a nuclear reactor that close after shutdown -- the power produced by radioactive decay heat right after shutdown is in the order of 10MW, and the core is incredibly hot for weeks. If they had done everything as well as they possibly could, they would not be any closer to dismantling the plants than they are today. The best course would have been to maintain cooling so that nothing would have been damaged -- they tried this and failed. The failures in their actions are not asking for more help earlier, not in the basic course of action they took. The idea that the reactors should have been buried with 24 hours of the emergency generators going down betrays basic lack of knowledge of the facts of the situation. Should you have tried to bury a core that has been active less than a day before without considerable active cooling, it would have simply melted it's way to the water table.

The total amount of plutonium that has been released into the environment so far is minuscule. It is significant because it serves as an unmistakable indicator that the cladding for the rods has melted, meaning that should any containment fail now, the results would be catastrophic. But we knew that -- TEPCO said that the cladding was melting on 14th of March. Still, unless something unexpected and catastrophic happens now, the nuclear side of this disaster will still kill more people in Germany than Japan.

3am5• 15 years ago

Germany?

jamesbkel• 15 years ago

You can't just 'dismantle' a plant that still has residual heat being generated.

Additionally, if you're suggesting burying it in reference to the solution at Chernoby, that also doesn't work so well. At Chernobyl the plant was effectively destroyed, so there was no harm in simply filling it with concrete and placing the sarcophagus over it. At Fukushima the plant is still largely intact. Unless you can submerge the plant in concrete in one fell swoop (not possible), the damage done by the piecemeal burying of the plant would undoubtedly create even more damage and result in more radiation leakage than we currently see.

demallien• 15 years ago

Of course, the infrastructure in the entire region had been destroyed by the earthquake + tsunami, making the simple task of transporting hundreds of tons of sand and concrete a herculean task...

dy• 15 years ago

Some interesting insights into the culture of Japan (and corporations both Japanese and American). Is there a way we could help that would be more amenable to the Japanese culture and way of handling things?

Saving face is an important aspect of Asian cultures and if we are truly trying to help them on humanitarian grounds, we should try to become more effective rather than bemoan the fact that they have pride in their culture.

It is an interesting test these days to think how would America respond to foreign help/intervention - I didn't follow what happened post-Katrina but it seems like we also downplayed foreign aid and focused on American rescue efforts.

wisty• 15 years ago

My understanding of face is, you first have to understand that East Asians are often terrible verbal communicators. Americans say that "actions speak louder than words", but in Japan they mean it (even if they don't say it).

I think that if you tell them that rescue teams (or nuclear scientists) are en-route, it's wouldn't be seen as piss-poor communication on your behalf, but a unconditional act of friendship. Asking them if they want help will most likely get a "no".

I think you may also need to have already made connections with the right people.

amitraman1• 15 years ago

Fix problems early and often.

I currently work at Japanese company in San Jose, but I don't see this type of behavior. The caveat is that I've only worked for a year here, so I may not be exposed yet.

I'd really like to know if Japanese society looks down on people who have embarrassed themselves. The executives must have a reason to prevent embarrassment and risk lives.

Duff2• 15 years ago

Now I'm starting to get worried. This has been up for 2 hours, and typically the "atomic trolls" would have at least 5-6 comments up about how all of this is nothing to worry about. So I guess this is truly bad.

mchouza2• 15 years ago

I'm no "atomic troll" and radioactive contamination at Fukushima is potentially a significant problem. But the detected plutonium levels are almost insignificant compared to the detected Cs-137 contamination (whose half-life is 30 years, not months):

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/im... (Pu) http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfil... (Cs-137)

The activity of Cs-137 is orders of magnitude greater.

Duff2• 15 years ago

Since day 1, I've been reading things like "Unless something catastrophic and unexpected happens, things are ok."

The problem is, catastrophic and unexpected things keep happening. I find the whole thing really depressing, as I think long-term, nuclear power is the best source of energy. But how do you implement it properly? That I don't know.

afterburner• 15 years ago

The plutonium leak confirms a meltdown and containment breach. That is what is significant.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

I don't think you should down voted. Even though you're taking a "jocular" attitude, I think you've hit on something.

I've been following the pro and anti nuke arguments here and I have found them quite useful. I might not agree with the pro-nuclear arguments but they've given me a better idea of what realistic and unrealistic fears around nukes are.

For example, claims that truly minute amount of plutonium can automatically cause cancer seem distinctly over-done. See the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

On the other hand, I recall the article which talked about how a reactor melt-down couldn't break containment structure because "This structure is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown". Well, given that an escaped-meltdown is currently considered plausible-if-not-likely, it seems there's a difference what something is designed to do and what a human-built artifact is capable of doing.

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-po...

And point of this is we're at the point that ... some large of folks confidently said we could never get to... Yes, things quieter now but it does seem like there's more reason to worry...

Nuclear radiation is "natural" in the sense that's around everywhere. Given that the world's a large place, the reactor won't pollute the entire that much. Now, making significant area around the plant uninhabitable for a long time? That's looking much more likely and that's not a cost that anyone is going to see as small.

We have water giving off 1 Seivert(1,000 mSv)/hour at the plant and apparently this water is building up. Look at xkcd chart and see where that rates...

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

fady• 15 years ago

Watch this, if you have not already.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5384001427276447319...

lutorm3• 15 years ago

Something to be aware of: The fact that a radioactive material "is around forever" also implies that it is not very radioactive. You can't make a material that is both intensely radioactive and stays around forever, because it's the radioactivity itself that makes it go away.

lisper• 15 years ago

Plutonium is indeed not "intensely radioactive." The problem with Pu is that if you ingest it, it stays in your body so you can get enough radiation over time to cause cancer. So you're not going to get radiation sickness from Pu, it's just a very potent carcinogen.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

I'm not particularly in favor of nuclear energy.

But it seems the danger of plutonium in particular may be exaggerated. I've mostly read the wikipedia article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity

Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed.

These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[89] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[95][96] (etc, it's not something you'd want to ingest mind you).

Any counter-references are welcome.

pasbesoin4• 15 years ago

IIRC, isn't it also, chemically, extremely toxic?

kragen2• 15 years ago

Apparently not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity only describes radiation poisoning.

juiceandjuice• 15 years ago

Exactly.

I went to a reactor at INL and their rods were just chilling outside of the reactor, about 50 feet from the controls. Of course, they were highly enriched uranium, so average half life was over a billion years (some was U-238)

With a 24,000 year half life, Pu-239 is sort of on the border of being fairly dangerous, and it decays with an alpha particle, which is good from the standpoint of ionizing radiation but not so good if you are drinking it.

radu_floricica2• 15 years ago

Strontium is worse, btw. Tends to behave like calcium in the body, and you pretty much get radioactive bones. I've heard a lot of talk about it in medical circles over the years (I'm from Romania... not near but not very far from Chernobyl).

raleec• 15 years ago

I plead ignorance. Why does a nuclear power station need an external power source? Obviously there is a good reason, but my sleep deprived brain can't fathom it.

lutorm3• 15 years ago

Because when it's shut down, it's not making power anymore...

(It needs power even when operating, but that's for regulatory reasons to maintain redundancy, if I understand correctly.)

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

When the reactor is shut down it's no longer generating power. Specifically, when the control rods have been "scram"ed there is no longer enough power being produced by the reactor to turn the turbines and their generators.

However, the shutdown nuclear reactor still requires power to maintain proper cooling. The reactor core itself is at an incredibly high temperature and it continues to generate heat as the fission byproducts undergo radioactive decay. Generally only active cooling is sufficient to maintain a sufficient rate of cooling for used reactor fuel, that requires a continuous flow of coolant which requires a power source.

chris_j• 15 years ago

Very simply, when a nuclear reactor stops, the fission products in the fuel rods continue to decay and therefore continue to generate heat. A lot of heat. An external power source is needed to take that heat away from the fuel. Failing to keep the reactor cool can potentially be rather catastrophic.

There is lots of information online. Why not start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_safety#Failure_modes_of...

caf3• 15 years ago

Spent fuel rods even continue to generate a nontrivial amount of heat months after they've been removed from the reactor - one of the problems at Fukushima is the spent fuel pools (which are located near the top of the reactor buildings, outside the secondary containment).

ErrantX4• 15 years ago

A meta point: Cringely is one of those bloggers who, previously, I have slated here on HN - I find his insights into technology poor, badly thought out or both. To make a bad joke; he makes me cringe.

So I've been (pleasantly) surprised to find his insights into Japan of actual interest and use. His tone is still a little breathy, and he tends to over-react to some items, but there is some real understanding of the culture/technology involved (I guess a fortunate meet up of having worked heavily in the nuclear industry and Japan).

Which goes to show; never completely dismiss commentators, one day they might be useful reading.

pkteison2• 15 years ago

It actually worries me. When I know something about the topic, I find his writing awful and full of problems and obviously dumb. Then, in another area where I know nothing, it seems decent. Is this because it is actually similarly dumb in this other area also, and I just don't know enough to spot it?

radu_floricica2• 15 years ago

It's because he's a great writer. But this time he _has_ been surprisingly accurate...

snippyhollow• 15 years ago

Didn't you post this same commentary already? Anyway I agree with you, get my +1; Sry, I mean".".

ErrantX4• 15 years ago

No. He has errors in this area too. But within the text there are things of interest. A critical reader can pick these out.

It's not perfect, but something of use in there.

TomOfTTB3• 15 years ago

There was a whole HN thread that very clearly debunked his previous post on the Japan situation (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2316158). If you're finding his writing insightful now it might be a sign that you aren't thinking rationally about the situation. That said I'll list he problems with this paticular article...

1. Japan did ask for our help. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was dispatched the day after the Tsunami at Japan's request. Further they've been working with U.S. experts through the entire situation (not the ones you see on TV but those guys aren't real experts)

2. The idea that the TEPCO plant manager is causing trouble because he's "more concerned about his job than his reactor" is absurd. I GUARANTEE the Japanese government took control of this situation the second it became critical. The local plant management is AT BEST serving a support role.

3. Plutonium Contamination water is only a big deal if it seeps into the water supply which it hasn't yet. Otherwise its just more stuff to be buried in cement for thousands of years.

So in the end he's still being an alarmist with this just like he is with everything else (this is a guy who predicted internet video was going to cause the internet to collapse in 2010)

ErrantX4• 15 years ago

Hmm, take a careful re-read. I wouldn't (and didn't) call him insightful. Past experience of his writing screams "take care". What I did say was that in this case they are interesting, and he does have some insight into the Japanese.

As I originally said, he does still over-react, but there are items to reflect on nevertheless.

It's worth noting that the USS Ronald Reagan was dispatched in relation to the relief effort, whereas Cringely is talking about the nuclear issue - which are two distinct entities. From a cultural perspective the two incidents stack up differently. On the other hand some US tech was dispatched to help with the reactors, but in a low-key way that was never reported.

You should never absorb without critique what people are saying, but in this case there is material of worth in his writing.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

The idea that the TEPCO plant manager is causing trouble because he's "more concerned about his job than his reactor" is absurd. I GUARANTEE the Japanese government took control of this situation the second it became critical.

Your guarantee is comforting and all but do you have a reference for this? Did you notice headline of the head of TEPCO disappearing?? What about Kan asking TEPCO "what the hell is going on"??

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8619408-tepco-exec...

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/122850/20110315/japan-blast-...

pasbesoin4• 15 years ago

This disaster has caused me to revisit my concerns regarding nuclear energy.

# One of the most challenging technologies ever developed, is under the control of politicians and bankers. A recipe in itself for technical disaster.

# Public concerns, under this regime, end up being counter-productive. "No new nukes" means extending the life of the oldest, most vulnerable technology.

# Human society has demonstrated no stability, sociologically, technologically, nor otherwise, approaching even vaguely the time frames required to safely utilize this technology. It is a huge bet, and burden, on future society -- on the entire planet, actually.

# Nuclear resources on this planet are limited, and unique in their performance profile. There may come a time when we need them for better uses, e.g. early space travel. Forgoing e.g. renewable energy resources for the sake of this "quick fix" is, in the long term, squandering an irreplaceable resource. (Call me when someone finally gets fusion to work.)

InclinedPlane5• 15 years ago

On the other hand it's important to weigh the risks of nuclear power fairly, relative to other power sources. These reactor accidents are novel, noteworthy, and dramatic, but how serious are these accidents in proper context?

Jumbo jet crashes are similarly dramatic and noteworthy, yet air travel remains one of the safest forms of transportation available, by a significant margin. Is the same bias for flashy and scary events happening with nuclear power?

Fukushima and Chernobyl are notable, but so is the failure of Fujinuma Dam (also due to the Tohoku earthquake), and the failure of Banqiao dam, and the Texas City disaster.

So far the record of the non-Soviet civilian nuclear power industry compares favorably with that of other industries and power sources, even including extrapolating some rather severe further evolutions of the Fukushima reactor disaster factored in.

Tichy2• 15 years ago

"yet air travel remains one of the safest forms of transportation available"

Doesn't that depend on how you measure it, like accidents per miles or accidents per hours? Even if it would be safest by miles, I don't think it would follow that the safest way to get to work every morning would be by plane. It only works because airplanes go long distances, and accidents most frequently happen during starting or landing. In short, the comparison is not even very useful.

The question is also do we have to fly so much/do we need so much energy. If there were no airplanes, would people just travel the same distances by car? I doubt it.

pasbesoin4• 15 years ago

Oh, I agree. The amount of mercury that coal consumption puts out is horrendous -- and a permanent blight. And coal ash is one of the nastier industrial waste products we've managed to create. (I won't start down the C02 discussion, here, but of course it's another huge factor.)

That's one reason I specifically cited renewable energy (and I'm skeptical that geo-thermal really applies in this regard, long term). If you want nuclear energy, we have the solar system's biggest fusion reactor at our disposal. Just divert some of its output on its way to becoming kinetic (including heat) and chemical energy, to do what we need. Yes, there are problems, but progress -- even in the face of meager funding -- has demonstrated that they are solvable.

ChuckMcM2• 15 years ago

Sigh, its not 'one of the most challenging technologies' its actually rather simple which is why it was developed in the 1940's, a 'challenging' technology would be genetically engineered life forms, only recently managed [1]. Not only are synthetic life forms more technologically challenging, if they escape from the lab the planet is designed to provide them with an environment that allows them to replace all existing lifeforms if they adapt better.

Public concerns, are just that, concerns. While its extremely important to have an open and informed public conversation around complex policy issues, they don't actually inform the policy they inform the public. If the national energy policy is to have 30% of our power provided by nuclear sources, we will have 30% of our power provided by nuclear sources.

Human society ... yeah collectively we've been unable to keep a stable form of government for more than about 300 years (I realize that both the Chinese and Egyptians would dispute this given their emperor pasts but I don't accept that a series of emperors represents a 'continuous' government in the same way that a constitutional (or institutional) government exists with people merely filling rolls in the institutions)

Nuclear resources on this planet are limited ... Uh no. You see the two most often discussed forms of nuclear processes for energy generation are fission and fusion. There using simply U235 and D3 we've got plenty. Successful implementation in space craft would extend that basically forever [2]

You know how when you see Doctors in an operating room on TV you might think to yourself "Wow, that is very realistic" and then when you see them using a computer you say "That is so lame! You can't zoom in 2000x on a traffic camera photograph no matter how good your image processing software is." Basically we tend to give credence to things we aren't personally aware of the details of, and we instantly recognize the flaws in the the things we know intimately. However, everything has those same flaws, and if you happen to be sitting next to a surgeon they could tell you all the silly things wrong about the OR in a House episode and you could tell them about all the silly computer things they claim to do in a CSI episode.

ABC news ran a story on coal ash [3] where they talked about cancer and asthma. I'm surprised they didn't run a radiation counter on the coal dust, if they had they would probably have found it to be more radioactive then the area outside the Fukushima plant. What is worse, the mercury and arsenic they were worried about are stable, which means that unlike plutonium they never go away ever. And if you ingest mercury? it kills you way faster than plutonium.

ABC News could have taken a moment to talk about how if instead of the coal fired plants that had been built in Oklahoma they had instead built a single nuclear plant, statistics say that nobody in the town would have cancer due to the power plants. As it is, ABC News makes it look like everybody in the town has cancer. Not rational.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-s...

[2] The sun will eventually go red-giant and that will be the end of the planet so 'forever' in this context is the period of time between now and when the Sun causes the planet to be uninhabitable (more than a billion years)

[3] http://abcnews.go.com/US/oklahoma-town-fears-cancer-asthma-l...

tedunangst2• 15 years ago

Actually, if you ingest mercury (the metal), it's not that bad for you. Basically goes right through. It's mercury vapor and various compounds that are dangerous. The ABC article doesn't have enough info to identify what's really in the coal ash.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16973445

joeburke• 15 years ago

Please, let's keep the fear mongering down. This is the first incident of this kind in 40 years and the number of casualties will probably not exceed a few hundreds.

Coal alone killed over 100,000 people over the past century.

caf3• 15 years ago

Three Mile Island was 32 years ago.

jpr• 15 years ago

Agreed. I believe that nuclear energy is safe and nice and dandy when properly managed, but the humankind has demonstrated with 100% certainty that it can't properly manage anything, ever. I don't want anyone to make decisions that can directly affect the health of many, many generations to come.

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

Your point about the counter-productive nature of "no new nukes" is spot-on.

However: Nuclear resources on this planet are limited, and unique in their performance profile. There may come a time when we need them...

You're falling prey to the Malthusian fallacy (read up about him and Paul Ehrlich). This logic is constantly being invoked, but history shows that it simply doesn't work this way. The best way to guarantee our future is to ensure that there are plenty of minds around to work on it, and to be sure that the "invisible hand" will guide them so that their greed will be rewarded when they put their effort into solving our problems.

samgranger• 15 years ago

All nuclear plants should switch to Thorium to be honest. Much safer and there's so much available, it's crazy. Shame that it didn't get researched that much since it's not so good for making nukes.

gyom• 15 years ago

The comment about people who wished that they had written books, in opposition to wishing to actually write one, resonates with me.

"But it’s like those people I meet on airplanes who find out what I do for a living and tell me they would really like to write a book: what they mean is that they would like tohave written a book."

Plutonium is Forever

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