Nuclear POWER!
The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has me spending all my spare time and then some till the wee hours reading about reactor design and safety systems and makes me want to go into nuclear engineering. Am I weird?
TEPCO looks like it has a pretty big mess in its hands, though. I still can't figure out how it managed to get so out of hand. Perpetual total station power loss, offsite and onsite, is a hugely serious event, but there's still supposed to be a steam-powered coolant injection system (Reactor Core Isolation Cooling) that should've kept the fuel rods covered, safe from melting and hydrogen production. For some reason, that failed or was never engaged three times over. Then, of course, there's the mystery of reactor #4, which managed to catch fire in spite of being disabled before the quake. Media reports blame the spent fuel pool, but boiling off 30' of water takes a good long time.
Of course, it's important to keep this in perspective. Nuclear power is still far safer in terms of the number of human casualties per GWh of generated electricity than coal, disasters of Chernobyl's magnitude notwithstanding. Beyond immediate casualties, the global warming impact of coal is like cooking the proverbial frog in the fryingpan -- we're the frog. And any impact from Fukushima Daiichi is likely to pale in comparison to the thousands of casualties and miles of destruction from the tsunami.
TEPCO looks like it has a pretty big mess in its hands, though. I still can't figure out how it managed to get so out of hand. Perpetual total station power loss, offsite and onsite, is a hugely serious event, but there's still supposed to be a steam-powered coolant injection system (Reactor Core Isolation Cooling) that should've kept the fuel rods covered, safe from melting and hydrogen production. For some reason, that failed or was never engaged three times over. Then, of course, there's the mystery of reactor #4, which managed to catch fire in spite of being disabled before the quake. Media reports blame the spent fuel pool, but boiling off 30' of water takes a good long time.
Of course, it's important to keep this in perspective. Nuclear power is still far safer in terms of the number of human casualties per GWh of generated electricity than coal, disasters of Chernobyl's magnitude notwithstanding. Beyond immediate casualties, the global warming impact of coal is like cooking the proverbial frog in the fryingpan -- we're the frog. And any impact from Fukushima Daiichi is likely to pale in comparison to the thousands of casualties and miles of destruction from the tsunami.