Japan

I shall start off with an apology, I have not been keeping this up at the level I would have liked to but hell I'm not going to complain and moan about why but I will say sorry. A lot has happened recently in the news, what with half of the middle east rising up among other things and there is no way in hell that I will ever be able to even scratch the surface and discuss any where near all of them. This has been daunting alas I am just accepting that I will not cover it all even if it does interest me. Well with the bollocks over I shall make a real start on this post.

On the 11th if March a magnitude 9 earthquake hit just off the coast of Japan. The initial shock flattened houses and torn apart roads but the worst was yet to come. Following the earthquake a huge tsunami struck sweeping away the wreckage. The scenes seen are heartbreaking and no matter what I say it will never give justice to the sheer horror of what unfolded. The country will need to be rebuilt from the bottom up and as the death toll rises it just gets more depressing. At the bottom of this post I'll leave a link to donate money, if you can please do. It's times like these we need to work together to help out our fellow man.

One thing that can be seen through the horror is the strength of the Japanese people. Japan looks like a post apocalyptic waste land yet the people of Japan have not let this get them down, they have come together to help each other out [link]. It is a glorious thing to see how the people have conducted themselves in the face of such destruction, a true testament to the nation.

One thing that has overshadowed the entire disaster is the nuclear "crisis" that unfolded at the Fukushima nuclear power plant [link]. This again however proves to be little more then a scare story hyped up by the media. We were constantly bombarded with messages of impending doom with the anti-nuclear arguments rising over whether nuclear power is ever truly safe. Many were worried of a Chernobyl type disaster [link] which was never a possibility. We were told to worry about the fact that engineers were flooding the reactors with sea water and to fear the steam being released from said reactors.

However Fukushima does not show the failings of the nuclear industry but rather it's successes. What has been commonly misunderstood about the crisis is that people do not realise that all the different steps taken are not out of desperation but have been preplanned. Nuclear power uses a system of safety by redundancy, which basically means that many many different things can fail and the reactor will not meltdown or release any large amounts of radiation.

The first thing that happened when the 40 year old reactors were hit by the magnitude 9 earthquake (much higher than they were designed for) was that the boron control rods were fully injected into the reactor. In a nuclear reactor the boron control rods are used due to their ability to absorb neutrons. It is the neutrons flying around that cause a nuclear reaction to continue (a background on nuclear power can be found here [link]), so by removing the neutrons the reaction will stop. This worked perfectly, however it is not the end of the story as during the generation of nuclear power many by-products are produced which continue to release radiation after the main reaction has stopped and thus need further cooling.

It is here that we run into the problem. The initial motors that ran cooling water through the reactor were broken by the huge earthquake and put out of action. This meant that the first backup diesel motors started up. Alas as the tsunami hit the motors were flooded with water and ceased flowing cooling water around the system. This is when the second backup system went into action, battery powered pumps started. However it became apparent after some time that the level of water was decreasing, there was a leak somewhere allowing the cooling water to escape. At this point it is important to reflect that up to this point the plant has regulated itself to ensure that the plant remains safe. An oil refinery was already in flames [link] and the nuclear power plant, whilst damaged, was doing well.

It was at this point that man power was required to intervene. After the third motors gave out it was then required to pump sea water into the vessel to cool the reactor. It is worth noting that this was a fall back measure that was in place and not an act of desperation as portrayed by the majority of the media. This is the tactic that will be carried out right up to the point the power is reconnected to the reactors [link].

The cooling was not the only problem associated with the reactors however. Throughout the cooling process pressure inside the vessels raised to high levels and steam had to be released from them. This meant that slightly radioactive steam had to be released into the environment, a terribly scary idea if not properly understood. The idea of radiation is something that scares the public and if not properly understood can lead to panic. It is an invisible enemy and it can get to you without you ever knowing. The panic that can be caused with the media reporting on radiation leaks is something Japan doesn't need especially when the facts are known. The reactive isotopes found in the steam have a very short half life (meaning they lost their radioactivity quickly) which meant that the majority of the isotopes would be harmless by the time they ever left the plant. However the plant operators knowing how misunderstood and scary a direct release of steam could be decided that containing the steam temporarily in the reactor building before releasing it would not cause as much alarm.

This in turn was a bad decision. The engineers on the plant knew that the steam at the temperature and due to the slight radioactivity would quite easily deteriorate into hydrogen and oxygen, an explosive mix. It was decided that the explosion risk was small enough to go with. Obviously due to events this was probably the wrong choice as the reactor housing exploded [link]. The explosion looks impressive but the damaged caused was simply cosmetic. As with any building on a process plant one side of a building is designed to be weaker than the others so that if an explosion occurs that side will be blown off and the destructive power of the blast will be negated. The containment around the reactor (huge layers of concrete that prevent any nuclear material to leak from the reactor) was not damaged meaning that other than the physical danger of the explosion nothing became worse.

I could go on for hours about the glorious success of the plant and of the nuclear industry as a whole but I feel this is enough for now, if you want to read up more then click this [link], if anyone wants more of my opinions on nuclear power or if you wish to question any of my view then leave a comment at the end and I will spend more time on this.

The public and media perception of what is happening at Fukushima is a problem for Japan as it causes unneeded panic which does not help the nation to recover. It distracts from the huge humanitarian disaster taking place, only today has the BBC released an article on their website entitled "Fukushima - Disaster or Distraction" [link]. With industry leaders such as the IChemE speaking out in support of nuclear power and it's safety [link] as well as many nuclear physicists providing evidence to show how safe nuclear power is [link], it is hard to see how the media has turned Fukushima into the scare story it has become.

I personally feel that Fukushima has been a fantastic success for the nuclear industry and I support the expansion of nuclear power in the UK in an effort to fight climate change. However the major problem at this time has nothing to do with Fukushima. It is the fact that thousands are dead and many more are still missing following horrific natural events. So rather than becoming terrified over an industrial incident which by all intensive purposes is on the heal and has been dealt with fantastically we should be extending our hand to the people of Japan. Their plight is great and we as people need to come together to help. We must not allow an irrational fear distract us from the real issue in Japan, so please give what you can. They need our help and we must provide.

Thank you for reading.
Stay alert, Stay free.

Red Cross [link]
UNICEF [link]
Save The Children [link]




Sorry no song today, I simply don't know anything that would be fitting.