Japan Earthquake

Japan Earthquake | Page 2127

Pretty unbelievable they did this in the middle of Chicago. What if it had not worked right?
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 3:23:47 AM

They did it in a squash court underneath the stands of the football stadium in the South side of Chicago. A very densely populated area. So many of the great "successes" of the Manhattan Project were dangerously dismissive of public safety.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:26:05 AM

A squash court. Unbelievable!
by Panserbjorne9 8/12/2011 3:26:41 AM

From wikipedia: "Unlike most reactors that have been built since, this first one had no radiation shielding and no cooling system of any kind. Fermi had convinced Arthur Compton that his calculations were reliable enough to rule out a runaway chain reaction or an explosion, but, as the official historians of the Atomic Energy Commission later noted, the "gamble" remained in conducting "a possibly catastrophic experiment in one of the most densely populated areas of the nation!"
by bo 8/12/2011 3:27:24 AM

This article has a good rundown of Pathfinder's history, minus all the "unofficial" details blog.keloland.com
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 3:28:16 AM

Thanks lilly. Here is an article about the job creation from the solar industry: idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com
by bo 8/12/2011 3:29:47 AM

Interesting, Will from Atomic Power Review left some new comments in July on that Keloland article.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 3:32:58 AM

With Hanford they kept workers in the dark about the total sum of the project. If Chicago Pile was part of the Manhattan Project did anyone know what they were doing? I mean minus the scientists actually building it.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 3:33:53 AM

if you want more info about the Chicago squash court expieriment you can read book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb written by Richard Rhodes. books.google.com Fermi actually only turned it on 1 time and ran it for 4.5 minutes at a power level up to 0.5 watt.
by RonD 8/12/2011 3:34:05 AM

I meant to
post the amazon link www.amazon.com
by RonD 8/12/2011 3:35:27 AM

The Manhattan Project was not so militarized at the time of the Chicago pile, so I think everyone knew what was happening. I think it was just scientists and grad students there, no workers (unless you count the grad students as workers). Hanford and Oak Ridge involved tens of thousands of people doing production work, so they didn't need to know in order to make it work.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:41:03 AM

Thanks @RonD, Rhodes book is great, as are the official histories of the AEC.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:41:54 AM

if you have the book this is around page 435-440, the experiment was to conform that the chain reaction would work as expected/calculated and they did this in small incrementa
l steps
by RonD 8/12/2011 3:44:27 AM

Very true, it was a proof of concept. But it still very recklessly endangered public safety. A choice that would be repeated throughout nuclear history.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:45:46 AM

it does seem crazy to do this in a city but this was in the middle of of WW2 and you had a Nobel Prize physicist doing this
by RonD 8/12/2011 3:45:58 AM

Well, they did it where they did it because it was an available space on the campus of the U of Chicago, where Fermi and many of the other physicists worked. So it was a choice of convenience more than anything else. And as a caveat, some Nobel Prize wining physicists took the position that the Trinity Test would ignite the Earth's atmosphere in the betting pool at Los Alamos, and yet they went ahead with the test. They are flawed humans too.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:48:46 AM

Talk to you later Bo, going to head off to bed.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 3:56:42 AM

Good night lilly, I'll get a few more Hanford links to you overnight.
by bo 8/12/2011 3:57:14 AM

More than one Hanford reactor was without containment. The N-reactor, which Reaguns actually restarted in the mid-'80s, was atrocious in that regard. Chernobyl was modeled after Hanford N.
by bojack54 8/12/2011 5:31:14 AM

Wow. Thanks @bojack54. Do you know if any of the Hanford reactors were used for electricity generation besides plutonium production? And if so, when did that electricity reach public customers?
by bo 8/12/2011 5:42:54 AM

check out this documentary about the people effected by the nuclear crisis in fukushima www.nippon-sekai.com
by inCalifornia 8/12/2011 6:00:57 AM

I'd like to hear your opinion's on Enviroreporter's recent readings of air filters in California www.enviroreporter.com
by inCalifornia 8/12/2011 6:14:02 AM

bump. high rad again in #1 drywell a. 360 Sv/h.
by Edano 8/12/2011 8:05:57 AM

@Edano :)
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 8:11:26 AM

and 334 Sv/h at 11:00.
by Edano 8/12/2011 9:34:25 AM

@Edano that'll be a breeze picking up then
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 10:30:13 AM

@inCalifornia I think you will get more answers in a couple of hours many aren't up yet
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 10:31:11 AM

morning! (afternoon - evening)
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 10:55:51 AM

To answer Bo's question from last night. The Columbia Generating Station produces power but it is run by a local utility. The plutonium reactors didn't produce power.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:01:37 AM

Good Morning Bom Dia
by Majj 8/12/2011 11:03:07 AM

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Krypton-85 and Xenon-131m in Reactor 2 Containment Vessel Air Samples

Half life of xenon-131m is about 12 days.
The measurement of density of radioactive materials in the air inside the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel was delayed because there was water in the temporary sampling instrument that TEPCO installed outside the CV. It looks like they decided to measure the water anyway, as well as the air.
According to the measurement, the air is more radioactive than the water inside the Containment Vessel, but less radioactive than the air inside the Reactor 1 CV.
So the melted fuel is probably not even inside the Containment Vessel in Reactor 2 either.
But what's with krypton and xenon? I also read a tweet by one of the workers at the plant who said there is still radioactive iodine being released, even though TEPCO's monitoring says iodine-131 is not detected at the plant any more.
ex-skf.blogspot.com
by Majj 8/12/2011 11:03:56 AM

@Majj I like the comment to the post
.
"Does that mean TEPCO detects radionuclids as work proceeds, but does not necessarily inform the public? Wow..."
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 11:13:04 AM

@Majj @lillymunster good morning
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 11:13:36 AM

TTokyo HackerSpace’s volunteers take ‘people power’ to radiation monitoringOKYO (majirox news) – Radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is not leaking evenly and many parts of the United States have higher radiation levels than Japan, according to Safecast.org, which uses volunteers armed with bento box (lunch box) monitors to gather radiation data.
Safecast, an international volunteer organization, works with Tokyo HackerSpace to help people affected by Japan’s disasters.
“People have a reaction of fear and panic, which I am not saying is unwarranted, but we have found that this type of contamination is not uniform and is spread out in different locations, so unless you go and measure you shouldn’t make blanket statements,” said Pieter Franken, senior visiting researcher at Keio University and co-founder of Safecast.org.
“You shouldn’t say ‘don’t go to Fukushima’ or ‘don’t go to Japan.’ If you compare the radiation levels in Japan on a worldwide scale, you will find out that in many places in the United States the radiation levels are higher. www.majiroxnews.com
by Majj 8/12/2011 11:16:06 AM

the worker exposure docs have been published but tepco have 'reserved the right not to translate' again
www.tepco.co.jp
www.tepco.co.jp
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 11:22:14 AM

Oh and TEPCO made the PDFs so you can't do cut and paste. I will get them translated... jerks they are.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:34:01 AM

They seem to run through a translator ok translate.google.com
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:36:19 AM

Should have translated copies saved online here in a bit.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:40:15 AM

@lillymunster I just can't have this comp set up properly it doesnt like playing with pdf's
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 11:51:12 AM

@elainekirk I have one translated and
saved as a Word doc, trying to convert it to PDF
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:55:36 AM

Ian Goddard found this 1978 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article on low dose radiation effects. I didn't get a chance to read it yet but it looks like a really good article that is relevant. I put a copy on the server at www.houseoffoust.com
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:57:12 AM

@lillymunster thank you
by elainekirk 8/12/2011 11:57:19 AM

@Majj About the short lived isotopes, the explanation is evident. The core in all those reactors will undergo fission for decades to come, so they emit fission products. I don't understand all the confusion about the short lived isotopes. There will always be emissions of short and long lived isotopes for as long as the nuclear core is in those facilities. The only way to stop these emissions is to dry cask the cores, which won't happen for a long time to come.
by Pedro Jesus 8/12/2011 11:58:10 AM

@Pedro Jesus TEPCO is trying to proclaim all short lived isotopes are no longer being produced. They have been stating there is no I-131 at all anywhere.
by lillymunster 8/12/2011 11:59:25 AM