Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak

James Hardine writes "Following an announcement this week that the infamous Japanese Monju fast-breeder nuclear reactor would be re-opened with a new plutonium core, Wikileaks has released suppressed video footage of the disaster that led to its closure in 1995. The video shows men in silver 'space suits' exploring the reactor in which sodium compounds hang from the air ducts like icicles. Unlike conventional reactors, fast-breeder reactors, which 'breed' plutonium, use sodium rather than water as a coolant. This type of coolant creates a potentially hazardous situation as sodium is highly corrosive and reacts violently with both water and air. Government officials at first played down the extent of damage at the reactor and denied the existence of a videotape showing the sodium spill. The deputy general manager, Shigeo Nishimura, 49, jumped to his death the day after a news conference at which he and other officials revealed the extent of the cover-up. His family is currently suing the government at Japan's High Court."

Governments can suppress the videos

Governments can suppress the videos, but they will never stop the first posters.

radioactive sodium too

sodium cooled reactors also have a tendancy to produce radioactive isotopes of sodium like Na22 or Na24 from the high levels of neutron radiation exposure, the first produced by knocking a neutron out of Na23 and the second from neutron capture. sodium reacts with water to produce sodium hydroxide [caustic soda] and hydrogen gas, both of which are very dangerous in large quantities for obvious reasons.

Re:radioactive sodium too

sodium cooled reactors also have a tendancy to produce radioactive isotopes of sodium like Na22 or Na24

Eh. The chemical dangers are more significant. Na-22 isn't particularly radioactive, and the highly radioactive Na-24 has a half-life of only 15 hours.

Re:radioactive sodium too

I'm a chemist, but not big into nuclear.

Na-24 beta decays into Mg-24, which is stable and not dangerous.

Re:radioactive sodium too

So they put liquid sodium on the fissile material as a coolant? Man, is there anything the Japanese *won't* put soy sauce on?

Re:radioactive sodium too

Rice.

The Japanese won't put soy sauce on rice.

Also

Wiki leaks server suffers a meltdown after 9.1 MB video gets slashdotted.

Japanese government doesn't even try to cover it up.

Re:Also

9.1 MB video via https, mind you.

Re:Also

Oh, hell yes. The initial key exchange to start an https connection is wonderfully expensive.

Note to web "masters" everywhere: you cannot distribute huge files to millions of people using MySQL and SSL. Full stop. Upload that shit to Amazon S3 or Akamai or YouTube or _anything_ other than mediawiki. Thanks!

Youtube link

Uploaded to youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwWQLMmn0tM [youtube.com]

Re:Youtube link

Also, english subtitled video here: http://www.dotsub.com/films/videotape/index.php?autostart=true&language_setting=en_2524 [dotsub.com]

This video will drive one procedural change

They'll be certain to address the cause of the leak - videotapes. Whether or not the sodium leak problems will be addressed I can't say, but they'll ban video evidence of problems for sure.

what?

I watched the whole video and I didn't see anything of note. I didn't see the "small mountain of sodium" and I didn't see anyone die. What is it? can anyone explain what I was meant to see please?

Re:what?

You are not supposed to actually watch that video. You are supposed to just switch to the OMG WTF NUKULAR BAD groupthink.

Face it, nuclear power is Bad, so the fact that there is a video showing a bunch of kids in hazmat suits re-enacting Blair Witch in their school basement should we all the proof you need. Any grainy image of sewage pipes is a bonus.

Re:what?

At several points in the video you can see a white substance coating things, especially on the underside. This is probably the sodium, meaning that the stuff escaped, despite assurances that this hadn't happened, contradicting earlier statements by the agency. Consequently, it means that there may have been a corrosive effect to a (much) larger part of the facility, meaning that the plant probably was damaged to a much greater extent than has been made public, but also that the consequences of another incident could be far worse.

Sodium reactors and the Navy

I remember reading about some fracas with some congressman wanting to install sodium-cooled nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers. Hyman Rickover, who was running the Navy's nuclear-powered fleet at the time, got hauled in front of a congressional panel; he dropped a small chunk of metallic sodium into some water and asked, following the ensuing fire and explosion, whether there were any questions. The Navy commissioned one sub with a sodium-cooled reactor (the U.S.S. Seawolf), but it was the only one.

Re:Video down?

An English subtitled version can be found here [dotsub.com] until that also runs out of bandwidth. Also a link to a version on YouTube [youtube.com] but this is with Japanese subtitles only.

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

How many people die yearly in coal mining accidents? How about accidents on oil drilling rigs?

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

Instead the burning of coal slowly kills thousands of people a year through air pollution.

And as we all know, that's not news because it isn't sensational enough.

One study I found when searching indicates that 25 reactor meltdowns per year would be required to being it inline with coal pollution deaths.

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

So interesting, that i took the liberty of finding the source.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm [isu.edu]

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

I don't know about that study, but the statement itself seems to agree with this:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste [sciam.com]

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash--a by-product from burning coal for power--contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

Those do not incur the risk of radioactive contamination, which has long-term consequences that are more worrying than those resulting directly from the incident (I'm not saying every nuclear incident goes the way of Chernobyl -- just pointing out there is a risk). So it's not just a matter of comparing casualties resulting from the particular explosion/meltdown/whatever.

Coal mining accidents might not incur the risk of significant radioactive contamination, but the combustion of coal does release massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere [ornl.gov], and people living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to more radiation than those living near nuclear power plants.

I've always found these statistics to be interesting:

For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.

Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

Have you done any reading on the status of Chernobyl lately?

Since the accident, the natural wild life has returned in full force, and the region's ecosystem is healthier than it has been for centuries. Obviously without an in depth study we cannot be certain of mutation and cancer rates in those animals. But I'll venture a guess that natural selection took its course, and the overall population is healthy, allowing it to adapt and thrive in a mildly radioactive environment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/33784558.html [nationalgeographic.com]

So there goes your whole argument. Now read up on blue fin tuna that has such large quantities of mercury that even 6 pieces of sushi per week exceeds the safe limit. Read about the Exxon Valdez spill and countless others that directly destroyed entire ecosystems.

At this point nuclear energy is safer than any conventional other energy source. It is also the only economically viable energy source, at least for the time being. People who believe that solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources are the way to go obviously have NO idea how much electricity is consumed in industrial processes. Statements like "this windmill can power thousands of homes" are meaningless, when a single steel foundry consumes that much in a half hour.

Re:Nuclear Power and Global Warming

Nothing that involves a high concentration of energy and a low concentration can ever be completely safe. Energy is the ability to do work, and it may end up doing work you don't want it to do. Now here's the real problem: You feel you have been lied to, that somebody promised you breeder reactors are completely safe, or that other kinds of reactors are completely safe or something. Well, somebody lied to you all right, when they told you that any power generation could ever be completely safe.
        Read up on 'loss of blade' accidents for windmills, dam failures for hydro, and how coal releases radiation (lots of it) and other toxins (lots of them). Read up on what chemical compounds are used in solar cells, or just how hot a commercial sterling solar engine is at the mirror's focal point. Look at the political consequences of breeders, but also at the political consequences of the existing fuel oil demand. Look at the environmental consequences of nuclear, but also at the environmental consequences of big oil. Find out how even wave and tide, if scaled up to produce tens or hundreds of gigawatts, means thousands of small boat accidents a year, plus Manatees and probably many other species will inevitably become extinct and whole ecologies such as the everglades will likely follow. For any power source, read up on where it is to be located, and the human costs of sending the power to where it is to be used. THERE IS NO SAFE!

Quite right, and since the dawn of the human race

We are descendants of a hunter gatherer species. For a long time our energy source was our own muscles, and in order to get plenty of high quality food to supply them, a relatively small primate had to learn to kill animals large and strong enough to kill it. The rewards of risk taking (i.e. hunting large ungulates) presumably outweighed the risks, because eventually we learned to domesticate them. There seems to be some evidence growing that civilisation was a step backwards caused by climate change because, even with intensive farming, humans have to work much harder to get sufficient food. Hence the pyramid system feeding the rulers and warriors, the priests that justified it, and the conflict between nomads and town dwellers.

We are also poor at judging risks outside our biological programming, which is why we deem it a reasonable trade off to have over a hundred thousand people a year across Europe and the US die in accidents, rather than have universal public transport. If a hundred thousand deaths a year is OK so we can go to the office exactly when we feel like it, why isn't it OK so we can turn on the dishwasher exactly when we feel like it? - and that's meant to be a serious question.