[ExI] Two Japanese reactors on red alert

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Wed Mar 16 08:11:17 UTC 2011


On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 09:10:51PM -0700, spike wrote:

> The news out of Japan just gets worse and worse.

Not really. Chernobyl was an open graphite fire, with
several tons of piping hot radioisotopes in the breeze.
A couple these with plumes across Tokyo would have been fun.

This so far is just a warning.
 
> For nuclear power, look to me like they could put the reactors in submarines
> along the coasts and send the power ashore in really big cables.  They could
> have them hanging a few meters off the bottom with the power cables resting
> on the sea floor.  They could dump the waste heat from the Carnot cycle
> directly into the seawater.  That arrangement would make them impervious to
> earthquake and tsunami, wouldn't require those big cooling towers which
> (especially now) panic the populace and so forth.  

Yes, let's emulate Russia. These people know how operate
nuclear facilities responsibly, and they are excellent in
dealing with waste.
 
> If something goes terribly wrong and a meltdown occurs, you have the option
> of setting an explosive charge to disperse the fuel rods on the sea bottom,
> so that they don't form a critical mass and spoil our whole day.

Imagine if Japan was powered by geothermal, wind and solar.
None of them have failure modes like this 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_(nuclear_reactor)

High energy density is a *real* advantages, yes? 

Wait until volatile human caretakers have abandoned their
neat piles of radiowaste.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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