While the Fukushima NPP suffered its meltdowns, a thread was ongoing in the ‘Physics Forum’ (www.physicsforums.com/...), I participated in those conversations under several handles (several handles were necessary because the people who ran that forum didn’t approve of some of my (and others) questions and comments).
The forum’s contributors consisted of a number of experts on NPPs mostly from the US or Europe as well as people from outside the industry. There was at least one nuclear fuel designer, several NPP plant managers, quite a few NPP plant engineers and a number of reactor operators including ex-USN operators. The thread was (and still is) a tutorial on every aspect of a NPP imaginable, from nuclear physics, to backup power and cooling for a NPP.
A memorable point occurred when the question arose as to what the soils were under the plant; were there any underground water basins or streams? That’s when an actual Geologist appeared in the forum who had knowledge of the land under the site; he informed us that there was no water table under the Fukushima site; there was sandy soil down to bedrock, and the bedrock sloped toward the Pacific. Thus we learned that there was no danger of the radiation spreading to farmland or places where people lived. So for a time we were reassured that this wasn’t going to be a global disaster.
Here’s a snippet, one peripheral discussion from the Physics Forum discussion as an example:
Well let's say we pump the seawater to the condenser at 50 ft above sea level instead of 5 feet (raise the elevation of the plant 45 feet). The pumping power for the 300,000 gpm circulating water flow rate increases from 380 to 3800 hp; at 60% efficient pumps that's an additional 4.2 MW load.If they're selling the power at 50 $/MW-hr that’s 212 $/hr or almost $2 million/year per unit or $12 Million per year at the 6 unit site. That's why the plants are built close to sea level.
These conversations were taking place while the world’s news media was discussing the possibility of a global disaster. At the time, I tried to get news media interested in covering the discussion taking place in the Physics forum but there were no takers, and I was unwilling to invest the time it would take to write the story with no place to see it published. So the discussion continued in isolation from the rest of the world.
From the very beginning, there was a coverup taking place in the forum of the magnitude of the developing disaster. The ‘industry experts’ were in near lockstep in denying the severity of the damage to the plant, it took many weeks before the experts would acknowledge that a meltdown occurred, although from their later statements we can see that they knew in real time that a meltdown had occurred in the first hours. Instead they repeatedly challenged that a meltdown had occurred, saying ‘we have no proof’ and ‘we won’t know until we uncover the core’ etc etc etc. They were lying; they knew. The whole lot of them were lying, all the physicists, all the plant managers, all the reactor operators including the ex-military types, if they weren’t lying by their statements, they were lying by not challenging the misstatements of others. They all fell in line behind those who took leadership in directing the conversation. It’s all still available for reading at the above link. If one spends the time, it’s easy to see who’s who. There are a lot of posts missing; embarrassing questions and firm accusations were edited out; accounts were closed as handles disappeared.
It was at this time that I evolved from a solid supporter of nuclear power to someone who has a lot of doubts. The doubts are not about nuclear power itself, I still think nuclear power is the cleanest form of energy generation available (rivaling solar). My doubts stem from the fact that the Fukushima accident made it clear that the members of the nuclear industry will never tell the truth; they will always see themselves as being above the commoners and believe they have a duty to tailor the message about nuclear accidents (or the potential for accidents). If we can’t expect the truth from the people who know, how can we trust that (or any) industry to inform us? IMO this is the ‘problem’ with using nuclear energy as a power source, and nothing is being done to solve it.
This tendency to try to ‘see the bright side of things’ hasn’t been limited to Fukushima, there are plenty of examples of it elsewhere:
Mr. Dyatlov, manager of the blown-up block in Chernobyl insisted that the reactor was still there, intact, being cooled. He was unable to be convinced that the reactor was damaged until helicopters filmed the situation from above next noon.
21 Years later, government denies Three Mile Island accident was extraordinary
www.wiseinternational.org/…
So now, in mid 2023, we are seeing the United nations giving permission for Japan to dump the radioactive water it has been accumulating from the accident into the Pacific Ocean, and in doing so raising the background radiation for the whole planet. It should be noted that it is in the interests of every human that the background radiation of planet earth be kept as low as possible. Raising Earth’s background radiation in order to save ‘face’ for the Japanese sets a very bad precedent.
Why do I say this is being done to ‘save face’ for the Japanese?
Here’s the story:
Remember above when I said that a geologist appeared in the Physics forum discussion and assured us that there was no ground water below the site? At the time this information reassured everyone that this accident could be contained; all that was needed was for the buildings to be torn down, all radioactive material buried onsite and grass could be planted, a soccer stadium could be built over the site, or even a daycare facility for children, there would be no danger to humans with everything buried onsite in the stable geologic conditions that exist there. But from the Japanese government and TEPCO’s POV, (TEPCO is the conglomerate power company the owns the Fukushima NPP) the site would remain ‘dirty’ for the next 20,000 years. So instead of containing the contamination onsite, they started pouring water on the melting cores, and they kept pouring water on those cores instead of allowing them to melt, dissipate and sink towards bedrock keeping the bulk of the radioactivity in one general area, when they saturated the ground with seawater (which sank down to bedrock, collecting all those radionuclides from the melted cores along the way). When this water reached bedrock, it flowed down slope, east into the ocean instead of remaining contained in the stable geologic area below the accident site.
Now that’s all a done deal, there is nothing that can be done about that. Japan got away with flushing the bulk of its ‘problem’ into the Pacific, and while there were a few of us screaming foul, there was nobody paying attention. The ‘experts’ condoned the flooding of the site as if it had some purpose other than to flush the problem into the pacific.
Someplace was going to have to remain dirty for the next 20,000 years, why shouldn’t that place have been the soil between the bedrock under the Fukushima site and 20 feet below grade? The answer to that question is that the Japanese, wanted to pretend that they have cleaned up the Fukushima accident site and returned Japan to its pristine glory.
The ‘cleanup’ includes all the water that was dumped on the site that failed to percolate down into the (waterlogged) soil; even after flushing all that contaminated water into the ocean, Japan is still stuck with all the million gallons of water that was collected in the basements and the turbine rooms as the seawater was dumped on the meltdown. The logical place for this water to be dumped is onto the soil of the Fukushima site so that the bulk of the radiation contained is contained to the ground under the accident site. But instead, the United nations chooses to give permission for Japan to dump this remaining radioactive water into the Pacific and in doing so, gives its blessing for all the millions of gallons of contaminated water that was already flushed into the Pacific via the underground path.
I was appalled earlier as the Physics Forum thread was taking place when I saw that they were pouring water on those cores (for no productive reason) and I am appalled now as they dump the rest of the contaminated water into the Pacific (where the currents will have that water flowing to Alaska and then south past the west coast of the North American Continent before it becomes thoroughly diluted into the Pacific Ocean water mass).