Mt. Fuji Volcano In 'Critical State' After Quakes 151
An anonymous reader writes: Mount Fuji, in addition to being a picturesque landmark and an important part of Japanese culture, is also an active volcano. Its last eruption was just over 400 years ago, but its location — where the Eurasian, Pacific, and Philippine tectonic plates meet — mean it will always have potential for eruption. A new study (PDF) has examined the pressures around Mount Fuji in the wake of several recent earthquakes, including the magnitude 9 tremor that unleashed the destructive tsunami in 2011. The researchers now say the volcano is in a "critical state." According to the study's lead author, "The volcanic regions are the ones where the fluids trapped in the rock – boiling water, gas, liquid magma, which cause an eruption when they rise to the surface – exert the greatest pressure. The seismic waves add to this pressure, causing even more disturbance." They have no way of predicting when an eruption might happen, but the potential seems greater than ever.
Who wants to bet... (Score:5, Funny)
...this thread erupts with first posts?
Great (Score:5, Funny)
I'm leaving for Tokyo later this month. At least is easier to pronounce than Eyjafjallajokull.
racist html (Score:2)
For some reason it won't let me type mt. Fuji in kanji.
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Eyjafjallajokull won't let you type mt. Fuji in kanji? Why would you want to type it anyway? It's an English language website. Unless you really want to show off that you know one of the world's most common languages, I guess.
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Your inability to correctly interpret simple anaphoric references would make you fail a Turing test.
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You fail too, you're obviously a computer program.
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For some reason it won't let me type mt. Fuji in kanji.
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Weird. It previewed the three kanji, but on submission it won't display them.
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You guys must be new here. There's no Unicode on Slashdot at all.
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Not even other more popular encodings.
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According to tlhIngan (30335) [slashdot.org] in post #47460141 [slashdot.org]
Unicode is also supported. It does actually work, just that the whitelist of allowable Unicode codepoints is small. Adding in extra codepoints is on an as-needed basis. You're not likely to see those new emoji anytime soon.
So it is working as long as you count "not allowed" as "working".
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"working as designed" which is a metaphor for "not a bug, no sir".
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The reason was it was first full Unicode, then a bunch of trolls abused it to screw up page formatting, which was switched to a blacklist. Then they figured out other ways to abuse the codepoints to do even stranger things to the layout, at which points the devs simply gave up and switched it to a whitelist.
It was only until about 2 or 3 years ago that the whitelist was applied on comment entry - you could still find the old comments that scre
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Those evil Iceland volcanoes have their fingers in everything!
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Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm leaving for Tokyo later this month. At least is easier to pronounce than Eyjafjallajokull.
Eyjafjallajökull let's not forget the umlaut...
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
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It's not actually that hard to pronounce, "ey-a fjell-a yo-cull" is close enough.
"Fu-dji" is probably still easier though ;)
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You mean Huji?
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
On a serious note - it's actually very easy to pronounce. You just need to think of it properly - three separate words.
Eyja Fjalla Jökull.
It's actually a limitation of our brain. We can manage words up to reasonable length, and after that, we have to switch to far less efficient general abstraction instead of specialized brain centres. To avoid this limitation, slice the word into manageable pieces and you will find it very easy to pronounce once your task-specific brain centre handles it.
This is the same thing as trying to do the math on 7*8 versus 78*87.
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Eyja Fjalla Jökull
Isn't that how you summon a Deep One?
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It's actually a limitation of our brain. We can manage words up to reasonable length,
Your brain. Not our brain. Now get off my lawn, I've got the Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz [wikipedia.org] to read.
Best wishes from Germany
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Same thing. Slice into individual words. I don't speak Icelandic at all, and I speak only a bit of German, but word rules are pretty much the same. It's a combination of words. Finnish has the same thing as well.
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Oh, you want to be pedantic? Let's be pedantic, then!
Scandinavian languages don't have "umlauts". "Umlaut" is a concept from German, where vowels are modified into different forms and marked with an umlaut mark. Other languages, however, just borrow these typographical forms to represent vowels with similar sounds. However, while German considers the vowels a and ä to be variations on the same letter, Scandinavian languages consider these to be separate letters entirely, and place them differently in a
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Oh, you want to be pedantic? Let's be pedantic, then!
Scandinavian languages don't have "umlauts". "Umlaut" is a concept from German, where vowels are modified into different forms and marked with an umlaut mark. Other languages, however, just borrow these typographical forms to represent vowels with similar sounds. However, while German considers the vowels a and ä to be variations on the same letter, Scandinavian languages consider these to be separate letters entirely, and place them differently in alphabetical orderings.
Thus, there is no "umlaut" in Eyjafjallajökull, there is merely an "ö" rather than an "o".
In Icelandic 'o' and 'ö' are fairly subtle variations on the same sound, the difference betwee 'o' and 'ö' is only a matter of moving your tongue about 4-5mm forward. Icelandic is near near-isomorphic with with Ancient Norse to the point where some Icelanders can actually stumble their way through inscriptions transcribed into modern alphabet from rune stones over a thousand years old and many can read 12-13th century manuscripts similarly transcribed to modern alphabet pretty clearly, in fact te
Um... (Score:2, Insightful)
They have no way of predicting when an eruption might happen, but the potential seems greater than ever.
They say they can't predict it, then in the same sentence predict it. Amazing.
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They say they can't predict it, then in the same sentence predict it. Amazing.
They say they can't predict it, and then they don't. They only say that it seems more likely than ever before. Then you fail to read. Sadly, not amazing, nor unusual.
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They are predicting that it is getting close to an eruption. That's a prediction. Perhaps you were expecting the actual date of the eruption, but to qualify as a prediction they only need to anticipate some aspect of its future behaviour in some way.
From OED:
Predict
VERB
[WITH OBJECT]
Say or estimate that (a specified thing) will happen in the future or will be a consequence of something
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You might be able to use a dictionary, but you clearly lack reading comprehension. A prediction, to qualify as any sort of useful prediction, requires some bit of information that can be acted on. What they said was that the odds of Mt Fuji blowing up increased, but we have no idea by how much or how that would translate into an actual date.
Furthermore, they didn't say that it got close to an eruption, but that the odds increased. Put down the dictionary, and pay more attention to what you read.
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They say they can't predict it, then in the same sentence predict it. Amazing.
They say they can't predict it, and then they don't. They only say that it seems more likely than ever before.
And that's a prediction.
Then you fail to read. Sadly, not amazing, nor unusual.
Oh internet, so fast on the useless attacks. Will there be a day when people keep it civil?
Re:Um... (Score:4, Informative)
And that's a prediction.
If the water in your kettle is hotter than it's ever been before, then you know it's closer to boiling than it ever has been before. You can say that without announcing the time at which it will boil, or even whether it will boil. And that's why it isn't a prediction.
Oh internet, so fast on the useless attacks. Will there be a day when people keep it civil?
That day will have to come after people start R'ing TFA and understanding it before posting. But in fact, I was perfectly civil. I may have misstated the case slightly, however. He may have read the article, and simply failed to understand what he read. I don't want to attribute to one type of incompetence what is actually due to another.
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Using the definition of prediction in AmiMoJo's post (which you ignored... why?):
In fact, I used it as my guide.
Your estimation may never come to fruition, but it was still a prediction.
They said it was more likely, they did not say how much more likely it was. Thus, they did not in fact make an estimate. You want words to mean things that they don't mean, to support your argument.
It is because you actually believe that that the internet has mostly negatively toned comments. Lack of empathy.
Civil discourse does not mean never pointing out a fault or a flaw. Criticism is an absolute necessity for progress.
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They have no way of predicting when an eruption might happen, but the potential seems greater than ever.
They say they can't predict it, then in the same sentence predict it. Amazing.
It only seems that way....like somebody was sitting there looking at Mt. Fuji and got the willies.
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At some point the bottle will fail and the soda will erupt.
Can you say on which drop? Can you say how it will fail (split seam, pinhole rupture that expands, cap failure?)
No? But you can say that it likely will if the behavior continues.
Lets take another example, say HDD failure. Any HDD will fail
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On the first drop of the bottle the cap loosens slightly but stays in place. The bottle hisses as some of the pressure is released. When you pick it up awhile later and drop it again, the pressure has mostly equalized, but a second drop, and it hisses some more. A little while later you pick up the bottle which is now full of flat soda.
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As long as you put a 6 on one of those four sides, I don't see a problem.
Light 'em up (Score:2)
"Oooh look, incendiary rounds! Gotta try these out at the range!" - God
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We should expect meteors?
It's over 9000 (Score:3)
The only thing missing from this breathless article was an animation of a scientist inspecting a piece of monitoring equipment, watching the needle bury itself, and screaming "it's over 9000!!!"
Mt. Miyajima? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mt. Fuji is more well known, but I wonder how all this seismic activity is affecting Mt. Miyajima in the southern part of Japan? It's another active volcano, one I visited in the 90's. It was actively smoking at the time, and surrounded by lava beds.
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Considering Miyajima is in the south, away from all the geological activity farther up north, the effect of the earthquakes will not be nearly as great.
Then again, volcanoes are an unpredictable thing. Even minor shifts of the crust can have major implications, if the shifting, however minor, is just right. Sometimes, it's a matter of when. But I'm sure there are instruments monitoring these things. If there was any change detected, it'd be on the news as well.
We now know the precursor of eruptions, though. (Score:2)
I think thanks to more recent research by geologists, we now know that most volcanic eruptions occur after a series of very specific types of earthquakes around the volcano. This is why seismic sensors are placed all over many Japanese volcanic mountains, for example Mt. Aso and Sakurajima on Kyushu and both Mt. Fuji and Mt. Asama (since both mountains if there is any major eruption could seriously affect the Tokyo metropolitan region).
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Ask someone from Seattle
Or Mexico City... It has Popocatépetl just down the street.. Arguably the most dangerous volcano in North America...
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Yellowstone is the "most dangerous" because it is really acting up lately and is considered to be a ELE capable Super Volcano. In fact, Yellowstone may be the biggest volcano threat in the world.
It just doesn't scare people because "Old Faithful" sounds so reassuring.
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Personally, I'd go for Vesuvius being the biggest threat around (2 million or so people in the blast zones). But I'm not particularly familiar with Popacatapetl and Mexico City, so I'd have to put that one on the table too.
Yellowstone might be able to destroy North America (in the sense of "unfit for human habitation" for centuries), resulting in around a half billion deaths. [SHRUG] There's another 6+billion to go. Our species has been do
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Ask someone from Seattle
Ask someone from the entire central US. Yellowstone's "next to" is pretty large when you consider the projected ash fall from a major eruption. Aside from that, the knock-on effect on food supply and weather would have global consequences, so I guess we're all pretty "stupid".
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You may not be able to conceive of managing such risks, but that's your failing.
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Nuclear power + Active volcano = Godzilla!
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"Yes and no tsunami will hit any reactors on a mountain!"
No tsunamis, but lahars, pyroclastic flows and lava are probably more dangerous to a reactor
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"Yes and no tsunami will hit any reactors on a mountain!"
No tsunamis, but lahars, pyroclastic flows and lava are probably more dangerous to a reactor
Well, if seawater hits a nuclear plant, chances are that radioactive steam will be the result. On the other hand, if ash or molten rock envelopes one, it will probably either A) seal the radioactivity in. B) melt it apart, bringing the fuel geometry to sub-critical mass. Although it is, of course possible that the plant would simply crack open, with the same results that you'd see on earth-faulted land or with water incursion. That is, a plume of radioactive gas or steam.
Still, there's a limit to how close
Re:Solution! (Score:5, Informative)
Still, there's a limit to how close to an active volcano people are willing to live, so the really hot zone (in both senses) would not be as direct a threat to people or livestock.
Tell that the millions in Mexico City, right under the "Popo" volcano or Seattle, not far from Mt Rainier.. If/when those blow, those cities are in deep kimchi... Of course, those pale in comparison to the Yellowstone caldera.. if THAT one blows, at least the western part of the USA has a BIG problem....
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You forgot Aetna. But I was thinking more of the zone where the "blessings" of the volcano are more immediate. Like Monserrat.
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Mount Nyiragongo is probably the next volcano to cause large scale destruction.
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... Of course, those pale in comparison to the Yellowstone caldera.. if THAT one blows, at least the western part of the USA has a BIG problem....
I hate to have to mention this, but if Yellowstone goes, the western part of the USA will be someone ELSE's problem; at minimum, the entire rest of that hemisphere - this is assuming the whole planet doesn't just pop like a zit and crack in half at that point. Most models suggest this would be an extinction level event.
Re:Solution! (Score:5, Informative)
With an abundance of sustainable and reliable energy, survivability of an event such as a volcanic winter would be drastically increased. Energy is the only limiting factor in producing a 100% self-sufficient and self-contained living environment, not only in space, but on earth as well. Energy availability would be instrumental in facing such a disaster, and with adequate preparation we could manage quite comfortably.
However, if the green dream of a world powered exclusively by renewables were realized, humanity would have no hope whatsoever. The lights would go out indefinitely, and any sort of civilization would promptly collapse, with only a handful surviving in miserable conditions. Renewables are not reliable, and are incapable of sustaining civilization through such a crisis.
While efficiency is a laudable goal (to which most engineers already aspire), eking by with extreme conservation is highly anti-productive, and exacerbates environmental and societal problems. Energy is not a disease to be eradicated, but a resource essential for enabling greater levels of recycling and reuse, and ultimately a sustainable high quality of life with minimal environmental footprint. With prosperity, population also tends to level off, solving that problem as well.
Energy is only a problem when it is derived in an environmentally destructive manner, as with mining and extraction of fossil resources, or the vast and inefficient collection, storage, and distribution infrastructure for wind and solar. These sources also require extensive mining for the raw materials comprising the infrastructure, and the fuels required for transportation in both cases.
Owing to a far superior energy density, nuclear energy necessitates very little mining and supporting infrastructure. Molten salt reactors like LFTR use nuclear fuel roughly 200 times more efficiently than todays LWRs, and with passive safety and no need for water cooling, they can be sited virtually anywhere. For perspective, a 1GWe LFTR plant would be roughly the size of a Walmart. Incidentally, there are upward of 10,000 Walmarts, which would accommodate 10TW of LFTR power production--enough to provide for 10 billion people at US per capita power consumption.
Each year, a 1GWe reactor would only consume about a ton of thorium, and produce about a ton of fission products. All of the fuel required to power the world for a year could be mined at a site not much larger than a Walmart itself. However, it could instead be recovered from the tailings of rare earth or other mining already in progress. (For reference, a metric ton of thorium fits in a sphere 55cm (or 1.8ft) in diameter.) A plant could easily have decades worth of thorium on hand.
Of course, the picture wouldn't be complete without considering the waste. A single GWe of generating capacity is enough to power a sizable city, producing 1t (metric ton) of fission products per year. One might worry that these are going to accumulate and produce an intractable problem, but in reality the radioactivity is constantly disappearing, and will reach a steady state when the creation balances the decay. As 83% of the fission products of a LFTR are stable after a decade, and the rest no more radioactive than ore in 300 years, the sum total of waste produced for one GWe of power, will gradually build up to, yet never exceed 59t after 300 years. This is a trivial amount, which is still overstated as many of the fission products have uses. (radioisotope thermal generators, sources for medicine or food irradiation, etc.) Even if politics prevents doing something useful with it, it could still be safely stored in a small room on site.
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While efficiency is a laudable goal (to which most engineers already aspire), eking by with extreme conservation is highly anti-productive
No...this means we'll have enough coal leftover if and when Yellowstone finally blows.
There's no doubt that nuclear fuel is useful, but that's completely off-topic to the point you started out making.
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That coal should be left in the ground, and not foolishly burned for energy. It is criminal to turn such a valuable concentrated carbon resource into ash, particulate, and CO2 and disperse it into our environment. Incidentally, there is more than 10 times the energy recoverable from the traces of uranium and thorium within the coal, than from combusting the coal itself. Of course, that isn't available if we mix the ash into sidewalks and roads, and such. (and it still contains some of the other nasties [energyfromthorium.com]
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It might last for a while, but conservation is still not sustainable.
An oddly strict definition of conservation....not using it at all would fit under the definition of conservation. Or saving it all for a global emergency to survive a volcanic winter when solar and hydro give out. That's what I was getting at. There's no reason we shouldn't know where it is and be ready to mine it just in case.
I said nothing against going to nuclear as a primary fuel source. It's perfectly feasible except for one small problem - no one will do it or approve it. With that standing as a
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That coal should be left in the ground, and not foolishly burned for energy. It is criminal to turn such a valuable concentrated carbon resource into ash, particulate, and CO2 and disperse it into our environment.
If you're not using it, then it's not valuable. And that carbon concentrates just fine in living plants. The argument that burning coal pollutes is fairly sound. The argument that we have a bunch of highly valuable carbon that we'd be using for some other purpose, if we weren't burning it first, just doesn't make sense.
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So have there been any efforts to tap active volcanoes for energy production?
Your post gave me the peculiar (and perhaps ridiculous) notion of siting a nuclear production facility IN the volcano (a bit of land no one cares to inhabit anyway, and if not of the explosive type, perhaps a better containment area than most).
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The problem, is that there aren't enough of them. ;) More seriously, that is basically what geothermal [wikipedia.org] does, and it is useful where available. Exploration and drilling are expensive though, and suitable sites are limited. Interestingly, while the environmental effects [wikipedia.org] are minimal compared to fossil fuels, they are still not as benign as with nuclear. Drilling releases greenhouse gasses trapped deep in the earth, among other things including radon. (Hence both geothermal and fracking put out more radioa
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Yeah, part of what I was thinking is... you can hardly get more nasty than a volcano's environment, so it's not like you can pollute it.
For many years I lived in the SoCal desert where the ground was naturally radioactive. After that, nothing worries me. :)
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We seem to be an extinction-level event ourselves. The human race, and much of civilization, would survive Yellowstone. Not that it would be fun or painless....
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If yellowstone blows, the rest of the world would have the big problem. It'd basically start a nuclear winter. The last time one of those supervolcanoes blew, only something like 10% of the human population at that time survived. [wikipedia.org]
Western USA would merely cease to exist.
On the other hand, it'd be just in time to counteract the effects of global warming.
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When the Yellowstone caldera blows, then everyone will have a problem. You'll have temperate temperatures around the tropics, and subtropical temperatures on the equator. Glaciers will be covering the Alps and Rockies (yes, the whole thing). And so on. Central and Northern Europe will be uninhabitable, and so will be Canada and a lot of North America. And so forth.
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It's not "if", it's "when".
Trust me on this ; I'm a geologist. If you want to set a time limit on it - say, 100 years - then you can talk about probabilities and an 2if", but without a time limit, you're talking about "when". There no reason to believe that the area has gone quiet, and plenty of evidence of continuing magma movement in the sub-surface.
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Well, if seawater hits a nuclear plant, chances are that radioactive steam will be the result. On the other hand, if ash or molten rock envelopes one, it will probably either A) seal the radioactivity in. B) melt it apart, bringing the fuel geometry to sub-critical mass
C) Radioactive rock monsters! Don't you know that rationality has no place in discussions of nuclear power? Next thing you know, you'll be pointing out that Fukushima was a quite minor footnote in the story of the tsunami and the damage it wrought.
Re: Fukushima (Score:1)
Yay DOOM! I haven't had good fallout training since the 1980's.
How much will the US put on the military game board to keep China from taking Japan while its still toasty? China doesn't like Japanese anyway so the volcano is doing them a favor.
Do volcanos count toward Global Warming???
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Reactor 4 spent fuel cooling pool contains 1500 spent Mox fuel rods. Any seismic activity large enough to threaten the stability of that structure introduces the risk of a plutonium fire fueled by several hundred tons of mox fuel. A storage facility near it contains another 6000 spent mox fuel rods. The smoke of the fire is plutonium oxide and chloride which is fatal to humans at doses of 1-10 micrograms.
There is little doubt that if that happens at Fukushima the fallout would be carried by the jetstream over the US and, eventually the entire Northern hemisphere.
This is the potential consequence that has not been spelled out.
You can mod the facts down, however it won't change the consequences or make it any less real.
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Obviously, Pu oxide is a common result of reaction with either atmospheric O2 or splitting H20 used to try and cool the burning plutonium. But where does the Chlorine potentially come from, salt in sea water? It sounds like you're describing a risk where at least part of it is specific to plants that might be either inundated by the sea or catch fire and have sea water pumped in to put it out, but I'm far from sure if that's actually what you mean. Is the point here that we are equally screwed whether a pla
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Yes, and also contact with sea water. The plutonium fire is uncontrolled criticality in the atmosphere. It is thermally hot as a result of the neutrons smashing around into more fuel. You are right that the nature of such a fire will instantly split water into hydrogen. The main issue from PUO2 is breathing it in, it is not very soluble however it can still bio-accumulat
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Reactor 4 spent fuel cooling pool contains 1500 spent Mox fuel rods.
Correction, contained. It now has less than 400 as they've been removing them.
Reactor 4 spent fuel pool status [tepco.co.jp]
Thank you for the information, that is great news. I hadn't seen it because I see this was only reported a week ago. 400 is still a serious threat though so let's hope the process is continued until the threat is all removed.
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There is little doubt that if that happens at Fukushima the fallout would be carried by the jetstream over the US and, eventually the entire Northern hemisphere.
Because obviously, Japan will forgot how to pump water. A few diesel generators and some hose means that your scenario doesn't happen - even if you somehow came up with the huge earthquake and the structural failure.
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Facts matter little to the FUD mongers.
Well, you run off and get some. Pick up a clue while you're at it.
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They didn't forget, bureaucracy stalled the process until the buildings started exploding.
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The damage to the foundations mean the entire building leaning over. TEPCO's status page for the reactor reveals they are building a support structure to stop the spent fuel pool from falling.
I see your supporting your adgenda as a Nuclear a
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I see your supporting your adgenda as a Nuclear apologist again.
At least, I don't go bug-eyed and rant four times about the shills modding down a single post (and the modding in question is as flamebait and off-topic, looks like appropriate modding to me).
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Of course you don't, you never present any facts of value.
And, as usual, your "argument" is easily demolished so the only thing you have left is your predictable ad-hominem attack, to which you readily resort.
Well you would say that because the science and reality of the situation doesn't fit into the agenda you pr
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It's so peculiar a failure mode that I have to quote the whole thing:
All this "NIMBY" greenpeace anti nuke fags really just don't know what they are taking about, anyone who knows about nuclear reactors will tell you that they are really great, super reliable and that the only reason that we have to pay for electricity is because it's waaay too cheap to meter it from a nuclear reactor and the utilities had to pay for meters.
I've often thought, "I would like some strontium 90 on my breakfast cereal" because it is tasty and good for you, plus you will win every fart contest. Recently it was conclusively *proven* that not only can you get a great suntan from the core of a reactor, but that radioisotopes have Vitamin C in it, so my advice to people would be if you are feeling a bit of a sniffle coming on, get yourself to a local nuclear reactor and ask to cuddle up to a couple of fuel rods and get toasty.
Chernobyl and Fukushima proved how safe Nuclear power is and we should all want one near us. Whilst evacuations of these areas have occurred Bruce Willis proved that you won't die at all from fallout from a nuclear reactor in "A good day to die hard". He lived and was stronger so we should move people back there so they grow up to be just like Bruce Willis.
Nuclear is perfectly safe and we can all have a nuclear future, in our back yards, today!
You really need to learn how to reason with someone who doesn't fully share your worldview. Free association babble just doesn't work.
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Ah, yes. Your hypocritical ad hominems are quite pointless, you should know. And what "science and reality" went into you going off your rocker here [slashdot.org]?
It's called - being sarcastic - and having a laugh. There is nothing ad hominem about that post, it's modded troll because people feel threatened by something they don't understand. Including you.
It's so peculiar a failure mode...
When you encounter something so absurd, sometimes an equally absurd response is the only sane thing.
You really need to learn how to reason with someone who doesn't fully share your worldview. Free association babble just doesn't work.
Well I learn a little more every day. I don't have any animosity to you personally, and I actually agree with some of your posts unrelated to nuclear things. I just wish you would post some evidence to support your p
Re:Fukushima (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm, a quick bit of research finds that MOX fuel rods are basically PuO2, which doesn't do the pyrophoric thing - it's stable in dry air, heats up slowly in the presence of water vapor.
Which at least suggests that the panic at the thought of a Pu fire is a bit exaggerated....
Note also that spent fuel rods have rather less Pu in them than you might think, since most of it has been burned in the nuclear reactor before it became "spent".
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And what do you expect happens when you put a bunch of them in close proximity and take the moderator away. An outdoor nuclear reeactor without control rods. This is what you do in a nuclear reactor, there is no magic that will change a FUEL ROD's behaviour or properties when it's outside a reactor. On their own, fine. Bunch
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A storage facility near it contains another 6000 spent mox fuel rods. The smoke of the fire is plutonium oxide and chloride which is fatal to humans at doses of 1-10 micrograms.
There is little doubt that if that happens at Fukushima the fallout would be carried by the jetstream over the US and, eventually the entire Northern hemisphere.
How many tons is that 6000 spent rods? Then remember exactly how big the Pacific Ocean is and how large, comparatively, a microgram is. A microgram is only 10^-12 of a ton, area crossed is a square fall off rate.
Could it immediately pollute the ocean and cause problems? Sure! Would the fall-out in the ocean cause a long term problem? Not unless there is way more than I expect from those fuel rods; the ocean is huge! One third of the Earth's surface, over half of the salt water on Earth; and you are worried
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Roughly 850 tons on site.
8.5^14 fatal doses. More than enough to go around and around.
Absolutely. I described the effects [slashdot.org] which would last as long as the decay period, which
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Reactor 4 spent fuel cooling pool contains 1500 spent Mox fuel rods. Any seismic activity large enough to threaten the stability of that structure introduces the risk of a plutonium fire fueled by several hundred tons of mox fuel. A storage facility near it contains another 6000 spent mox fuel rods. The smoke of the fire is plutonium oxide and chloride which is fatal to humans at doses of 1-10 micrograms.
There is little doubt that if that happens at Fukushima the fallout would be carried by the jetstream over the US and, eventually the entire Northern hemisphere.
This is the potential consequence that has not been spelled out.
Hello fanbois and shills, troll me with your mod points.
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Reactor 4 spent fuel cooling pool contains 400 spent Mox fuel rods. Any seismic activity large enough to threaten the stability of that structure introduces the risk of a plutonium fire fueled by several hundred tons of mox fuel. A storage facility near it contains another 6000 spent mox fuel rods. The smoke of the fire is plutonium oxide and chloride which is fatal to humans at doses of 1-10 micrograms.
There is little doubt that if that happens at Fukushima the fallout would be carried by the jetstream over the US and, eventually the entire Northern hemisphere.
This is the potential consequence that has not been spelled out.
C'mon you slimey chickenshit mod troll, even my corrected facts trump your pathetic fanboi crap.
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>> Haz (tap that magma)... thermal electricity generator...?
Yes, this guy: http://is.gd/8w8Rjo [is.gd]
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you have at least to extract the gas, that is very dangerous and turn a calm volcano into a explosive one... drilling is hard, as it too depth and too hot... explosions could help for the final steps, but even the small breach, at that depth, can cause the critical failure and a full eruption ... even if manage to do it, injecting huge amount of water to extract the heat it would only extract a very small quantity of the total, remember that there are volcanos under water too. Also, cooling one side might
Re:Relieve pressure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the problem with trying to relieve the pressure is that many eruptions occur because of gases suspended in the magma. Once the pressure drops enough, the gas ceases to be soluble in the magma and it's the expansion of the gas that causes the violent eruption. It follows that relieving the pressure could easily trigger the eruption you are trying to prevent in this case. Whether this is the actual cause of an eruption in a specific case is dependent on the volcano, I believe, and is implicated in the more explosive ones, as opposed to the gentler flowing eruptions found with others.
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I don't know, that eruption doesn't sound that bad. In fact, there wasn't even any lava flow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
This potential one has already had higher intensity earthquakes, 9 vs 8.2. That's almost an order of magnitude larger.
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What was last century's score card? Something like 55000 to ash falls (of various types), mud flows and lahars, and a few hundreds to lava flows.
Don't confuse "spectacular" and "dangerous". That can kill you if you worry about the spectacular and don't attend to the dangerous. As, I'm sure, Seattle will discover as people fret over lava flows from Mt Rainier (not a pro
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They were convicted for making statements that earthquake will not happen, which caused people to not prepare and react appropriately. It was still pretty messed up, but it's nowhere near as bad as faux news makes it sound.
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