Quake Rocks Japan

[Diomedes]

But nuclear power is safe!

[MMH]

But hey, at least no one knows if the used fuel rods are still being cooled.  Or secure.  So there's that.

[hbionic]

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

Our closest reactor to this area. About an hour south of Los Angeles....30 minutes south of Anaheim....located in south orange county. Looks like a pair of tits when you drive by.

[phillymic2000]

Igy's just pissed cause someone else actually knows more about nuclear power then him. I mean come on, IGY spends more time drooling and believing in a team that has no chance making it farther then Temple and yet he finds time to rip and dog the other 3 major teams in the city. Never mind that the Phils/Eagles and Flyers are closer (and have been since 2001) then the almighty unbeatable sixers. Come on people!! The sixers are going to sweep Da Bulls!!

[Eagaholic]

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

Our closest reactor to this area. About an hour south of Los Angeles....30 minutes south of Anaheim....located in south orange county. Looks like a pair of tits when you drive by.

Yeah Chuggie, you got a couple of real gems out there in Cali, built on fault lines. One of which is only constructed to withstand a 7.5 magnitude quake. If there was a 9.0 there like Japan it would be 200 times stronger than the 7.5 it was designed to handle. Wtf are they thinking, only a 7.5? On a FAULT LINE. Makes New Orleans levy system look like Fort Knox. WTF??

[phillymic2000]

And I'd gladly bet the 20 spot I won of igy last year, that the sixers don't make it out of the 1st round!

[Eagaholic]

go jerk off to pictures of shirtless black athletes and leave us alone igy. 

lol...who is "us"....the dozens of nuclear reactor fans on the board...or are you referring to your many different screen names

Lol at "your many screen names". But I will agree with him that I appreciate the knowledge and input QB brings to the discussion even though I disagree with his point of view and most of his arguments.

[Don Ho]

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

Our closest reactor to this area. About an hour south of Los Angeles....30 minutes south of Anaheim....located in south orange county. Looks like a pair of tits when you drive by.

Trestles, one of the best surf breaks in California.  Always wondered about the water there though. 

[Don Ho]

"They're saying" no threat of nuclear fallout hitting the US.  Correct me if I'm wrong QB but did not the Japanese launch balloons carrying bombs with the intention of having them make it to the west coast of the US and detonate?  Some did make it to the west coast traveling along the Pacific  jet stream.  Could not radiation distributed into the atmosphere during these meltdowns make it to the Pacific Northwest?  Hawaii? 

[QB Eagles]

"They're saying" no threat of nuclear fallout hitting the US.  Correct me if I'm wrong QB but did not the Japanese launch balloons carrying bombs with the intention of having them make it to the west coast of the US and detonate?  Some did make it to the west coast traveling along the Pacific  jet stream.  Could not radiation distributed into the atmosphere during these meltdowns make it to the Pacific Northwest?  Hawaii? 

It's a matter of scale. We are constantly being bathed by natural radiation from outer space, rocks, soil.... even potassium and carbon from inside our own bodies. It remains to be seen exactly how much radiation was released into the atmosphere by the worst event thus far at the station (yesterday's spent fuel fire at reactor #4), but it won't be enough to appreciably raise this background level anywhere in the US. The radiation release may be detectable by sensitive instruments that are able to detect particles that could only come from spent fuel (again, it depends on the scale of the release), but the effects won't be any different than the background radiation.  You would get more radiation from flying in an airplane or moving to an area (like Colorado) with a higher background dose. Right now we can't even say that a harmful amount has been released to the civilian population in that part of Japan, let alone the rest of the world.

The radiation numbers they were quoting at the peak of the danger yesterday very close to the source wouldn't be a big public concern, but it will probably take some time and study to know if that really was the peak of how much was released. It would have been a concern if someone was working in those high-radiation areas very near the source for about an hour or more, so it's possible that there will be health implications for some workers at the plant. As of now this event reminds me of the Windscale fire.

[Rome]

We all know what the worst case scenario is here but say the absolute worst doesn't happen and the area isn't uninhabitable for 50 years.  How bad is it going to be on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being Chernobyl.  I mean, all we keep hearing is how "wonderful" the design was to be able to withstand such a horrific earthquake & tsunami, but it can't be all that wonderful if explosions are happening on a daily basis, and radiation is being spewed into the air with increasing intensity & frequency.

Seriously... you're the expert & I defer to you in this matter.   How terrified should we be at this point?

[rjs246]

Thank god I missed all of this.

I actually think that this has the potential to be nuclear power's shining moment. Major explosions at multiple power plants after one of the biggest combination natural disasters in recorded history and no major leaks or threats to the population? That would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago and is a pretty amazing achievement.

I've done a little reading on nuclear power because it's one of those things that I go back and forth about. As this whole thing illustrates, the issue these days is far less about major accidents and much more about the by-products of the process. People are actively working on solutions to nuclear waste problem, and there are some pretty cool options but I've never understood why we don't just launch the shtein into space. Bye bye, waste. Hello angry alien invasions.

[smeags]

yeah cause i am hearing some say this is bad and others saying whats being released is comparable to a dental xray.

[PhillyGirl]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229300990

[Munson]

Thank god I missed all of this.

I actually think that this has the potential to be nuclear power's shining moment. Major explosions at multiple power plants after one of the biggest combination natural disasters in recorded history and no major leaks or threats to the population? That would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago and is a pretty amazing achievement.

I've done a little reading on nuclear power because it's one of those things that I go back and forth about. As this whole thing illustrates, the issue these days is far less about major accidents and much more about the by-products of the process. People are actively working on solutions to nuclear waste problem, and there are some pretty cool options but I've never understood why we don't just launch the shtein into space. Bye bye, waste. Hello angry alien invasions.

My guess is the $$$ it takes to launch shtein into space.