Thoughts on Japans nuke plant blowing up....

Have to get an All-pro bumper to mow em' down !! haha

 

I gots one, but I might need a bullet proof one first.

 

Exactly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC8xecTjzvA&feature=player_embedded

 

what caused them to lose cooling capacity?

 

Not positive , but loss of power meant no main coolant pump circulation and heat built up too high.

 

but they make the power... how does the power go out in a power plant?

 

Electricity got knocked out with the quake and the tsunami and the ten or so backup generators that are supposed to kick on when these go off line all failed because of the tsunami and the water damage. There are backup batteries too, which did not work due to water damage. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong

 

The energy directly produced by these reactors in not usable until it gets "stepped down" and goes through the appropriate transformers. The reactors use electricity that is already converted to cool themselves. So when the quake/water hit, the power lines bringing the electricity used in cooling were destroyed. This is where the generators are supposed to come into play. And finally when those failed, I believe some sort of batteries were supposed to come not play. All of these backup devices were damaged and not functioning. This is what I got from listening to Bill Nye the science guy.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami

This link looks quite good, sounds like after the diesels stopped, the interuption to power casues the overheat issue , and on battery power they never regained it.

Like TGR37 said, i think the voltage the turbines make is like 10,000-50,000 volts for long distance transmission.

 

What I don't understand is why they built nuke plants right on top of the ring of fire?

 

yea i get that but seems crazy to have som many backups fail. im just surprised they were not able to figure some way to divert power for cooling

 

they have 450MW reactors, im guessing 80' long turbines or so . For a simple 20' off to the side , they could've added a smaller 500KW turbine just for that power, a simple copy of a nuke sub turbine/generator.

 

agreed. my thought process would be to make it a priority to make the plant able to run all by itself with no outside help... completely self sufficient not relying on generators or batteries

 

I guess everythipng was engineered with given circumstancees in mind. A lot of the buildings were not designed to withstand a 8.9 quake. People never expected the water to reach 6 miles inland. Power to a lot of the country was and still is knocked out. Everything with th design and with the buildings was compromised from the quake and the water and no matter how "over-designed" the systems were, they were not designed for this.

 

Why didn't they just get you guys to design it , I bet it would still be working .

 

This was taking at the mouth of the Mad River, in McKinleyville(where I live). about an hr south of Crescent City. We had dumbasses lined all up and down hwy 101 standing on their cars trying to get a glimpse....and we had like 4 people get swept in by the Tsunami in Crescent City...yet all morning we had sirens going off, warnings all over the radio and televsion..yet they still wanted to go take pictures?!?!?!

 

Yea I don't think that it was necessarily a design flaw as it was just a perfect storm of everything going perfectly wrong. The stars aligned on this one in a bad bad way.

 

Agreed

 

dont have to be a smart ass. just thinking out loud.

i agree that nothing good comes from a 8.9 quake. mother nature trumps anything man made. the media is probably making it so much worse than it is...10% fact 90% speculation...