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Japan has 55 nuclear reactors at 19 sites.  Two more are under construction and another twelve are in the advanced planning stage.  Net Generating capacity is around 50 GW providing around 30% of the country's electricity (more here).  

As a result of Japan’s largest earthquake in history on March 11 and subsequent tsunami all reactors shut down automatically as they were designed to do but cooling systems associated with two sites had been damaged. 

Three reactor sites are adjacent to the earthquake epicentre and two were in the direct path of the tsunami.  The Fukushima-Daiichi plant belonging to Tokyo Electric Power Company was particularly hard hit.  It lost all grid connections, providing electricity, and its backup power plant was seriously damaged. 

But unlike a great deal of other infrastructure in the area, the reactors and their containment survived the destructive force of a wave that was significantly larger than the design expectations.

Cooling pumps were totally knocked out and alternative cooling methods have resulted in the production of hydrogen released from the reaction of water on hot metals.  This has subsequently exploded on several occasions destroying parts of the outer containment building.  There has been some success in pumping in water to cool the shutdown reactors and spent fuel rods but there are now exposed radioactive elements within the plant and steam and waste water may contain radioactive isotopes. 

This older-style plant dates from 1966.  Reactor 1 began production in 1970 and is the smallest and oldest while reactor 3 has recently undergone an upgrade to change its fuel type.  Reactor 4 was shutdown for maintenance and its unexpended fuel rods were in a holding pond.   The four older units have an early-style containment structure consisting of a rectangular steel-reinforced concrete building with an additional layer of steel-reinforced concrete surrounding; a steel-lined cylindrical drywell; and a steel-lined pressure suppression torus below.  

There are six reactors on site and nearby including number 6, a much larger more modern reactor with more modern containment and two more under construction.  All were hit by the tsunami.  The newer plant has not failed.

There were less critical cooling problems at Tokai nuclear power station, 120km from Tokyo, where one of two cooling systems, on one reactor, also stopped working. 

In addition, briefly elevated radiation levels led to a low-level emergency being declared at a Tohoku Electric nuclear plant, in Onagawa.  But all three reactors there are functioning properly and it is thought that the spike in the radiation sensors may have originated from the release of steam to atmosphere during emergency cooling at the Fukushima reactors (above). This plant is located 114km to the South of Fukushima across Ishinomaki Bay but is directly under the prevailing wind from Fukushima.

Compared to other damage, that to nuclear plants seems to have been minimal. 

Elsewhere in the same region at least 15,000 people have lost their lives.  Oil storages have been swept away with the oil covering large areas; a refinery exploded; and there have been numerous fires and deaths resulting.  Homes, factories, communications infrastructure, roads, rail lines and bridges have been destroyed.  

At the present time no one, not directly involved, has suffered any more additional radiation than they would get from an X-Ray but some workers have been heavily exposed.

As a precaution an exclusion zone of 20 kilometres has been set up but there remain significant numbers of people within this radius. Children have been given iodine against the possibility of radioactive iodine accumulation.  This was the most significant health risk from Chernobyl the World's worst nuclear accident. There, 203, mainly emergency and plant workers, were hospitalised with acute radiation sickness, 31 people died; and up to 9,000 people are believed to have been seriously injured by a higher than normal cancer risk. 

We can hope that the demonstrated Fukushima vulnerability to complete cooling failure will lead to the closure or modification of the remaining older style boiling water reactors that have the older-style containment structure.

But it is important to note that part of the issue at Fukushima is not the reactor vessels but fuel rods in holding tanks due to maintenance on reactor 4 and the lack of appropriate off-site storage for the spent fuel.  These are circumstances that might have been avoided by better administrative and management procedures or even different timing, that missed the tsunami.

At least two of the reactors at Fukushima are damaged beyond recovery and ongoing radiation may have consequences for the viability of other units on the site.  This will result in a reduction in electricity generating capacity in Japan of between 1.5 and 4.5 GW; or up to 3%.  

Until this situation is stabilised there will be ongoing concerns about possible longer term consequences in the region and for industry.

 

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Travel

Southern France

Touring in the South of France

September 2014

 

Lyon

Off the plane we are welcomed by a warm Autumn day in the south of France.  Fragrant and green.

Lyon is the first step on our short stay in Southern France, touring in leisurely hops by car, down the Rhône valley from Lyon to Avignon and then to Aix and Nice with various stops along the way.

Months earlier I’d booked a car from Lyon Airport to be dropped off at Nice Airport.  I’d tried booking town centre to town centre but there was nothing available.

This meant I got to drive an unfamiliar car, with no gearstick or ignition switch and various other novel idiosyncrasies, ‘straight off the plane’.  But I managed to work it out and we got to see the countryside between the airport and the city and quite a bit of the outer suburbs at our own pace.  Fortunately we had ‘Madam Butterfly’ with us (more of her later) else we could never have reached our hotel through the maze of one way streets.

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Fiction, Recollections & News

The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

 

Introduction:

The other day, my regular interlocutors at our local shopping centre regaled me with a new question: "What is AI?" And that turned into a discussion about ChatGPT.

I had to confess that I'd never used it. So, I thought I would 'kill two birds with one stone' and ask ChatGPT, for material for an article for my website.

Since watching the movie Oppenheimer, reviewed elsewhere on this website, I've found myself, from time-to-time, musing about the development of the atomic bomb and it's profound impact on the modern world. 

Nuclear energy has provided a backdrop to my entire life. The first "atomic bombs" were dropped on Japan the month before I was born. Thus, the potential of nuclear energy was first revealed in an horrendous demonstration of mankind's greatest power since the harnessing of fire.

Very soon the atomic reactors, that had been necessary to accumulate sufficient plutonium for the first bombs, were adapted to peaceful use.  Yet, they forever carried the stigma of over a hundred thousand of innocent lives lost, many of them young children, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fear of world devastation followed, as the US and USSR faced-off with ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction.

The stigma and fear has been unfortunate, because, had we more enthusiastically embraced our new scientific knowledge and capabilities to harness this alternative to fire, the threat to the atmosphere now posed by an orgy of burning might have been mitigated.

Method:

So, for this article on the 'atomic bomb', I asked ChatGPT six questions about:

  1. The Manhattan Project; 
  2. Leo Szilard (the father of the nuclear chain reaction);
  3. Tube Alloys (the British bomb project);
  4. the Hanford site (plutonium production);
  5. uranium enrichment (diffusion and centrifugal); and
  6. the Soviet bomb project.

As ChatGPT takes around 20 seconds to write 1000 words and gives a remarkably different result each time, I asked it each question several times and chose selectively from the results.

This is what ChatGPT told me about 'the bomb':

Read more: The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

Opinions and Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

 

 

 

Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)) has been a major influence on my life.  I asked for and was given a copy of his collected Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell for my 21st birthday and although I never agreed entirely with every one of his opinions I have always respected them.

In 1950 Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature but remained a controversial figure.  He was responsible for the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. The signatories included Albert Einstein, just before his death, and ten other eminent intellectuals and scientists. They warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments to find alternative ways of resolving conflict.   Russell went on to become the first president of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and subsequently organised opposition to the Vietnam War. He could be seen in 50's news-reels at the head of CND demonstrations with his long divorced second wife Dora, for which he was jailed again at the age of 89.  

In 1958 Gerald Holtom, created a logo for the movement by stylising, superimposing and circling the semaphore letters ND.

Some four years earlier I'd gained my semaphore badge in the Cubs, so like many children of my vintage, I already knew that:  = N(uclear)   = D(isarmament)

The logo soon became ubiquitous, graphitied onto walls and pavements, and widely used as a peace symbol in the 60s and 70s, particularly in hippie communes and crudely painted on VW camper-vans.

 

 (otherwise known as the phallic Mercedes).

 

Read more: Bertrand Russell

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