Get your Geiger counters out
Get your Geiger counters out folks. There's some
radioactive material missing in Egypt.
A safe containing radioactive material at the Dabaa nuclear power plant was seized while another safe containing radioactive material was broken open and part of its contents taken, the newspaper said.
The government has alerted security authorities and asked that specialised teams help in the search for the stolen material, Al-Ahram reported.
More than a dozen people were wounded last week when military police tried to disperse hundreds of Egyptian protesters demanding the relocation of the Dabaa plant, which is still under construction.
Plant staff have refused to go to the site because of the deterioration in the security situation there, Al-Ahram said.
But Barack Hussein
Obama believes that every country has the right to develop nuclear energy, whether they're democratic or fascist, and regardless of how loose they are on terrorism.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Egyptian Revolution, nuclear meltdown
Japan's worst case scenario
Dr. Michael Allen, an expert on nuclear reactor meltdowns, talks about some of the
worst case scenarios in Japan (Hat Tip:
Instapundit).
The worst of the worst could come if Japan can't come up with a way to sufficiently cool down the reactor fuel cores. That has reportedly become increasingly difficult with workers evacuating the sites -- at least temporarily -- because of high radiation fields.
"These things play out over a long period of time, longer than people would think," Allen said. "You have an earthquake that lasts maybe a minute, a tsunami that lasts maybe 15 minutes. But these things could go on for months. You could lose all six of the reactors."
If workers are unable to get additional cooling water into the reactor vessel, the molten fuel core will collapse into the water in bottom of the vessel. Eventually the heat from the decaying fuel would boil away the water that's left, leaving the core sitting on the vessel's lower head made of steel.
Should that happen, "It'll melt through it like butter," Allen said.
That, in turn, would cause a "high-pressure melt injection" into the water-filled concrete cavity below the reactor. Because the concrete would likely be unheated, the reaction created by the sudden injection of the reactor's ultra-hot content would be immense, he said.
"It'll be like somebody dropped a bomb, and there'll be a big cloud of very, very radioactive material above the ground," Allen said, noting that it would contain uranium and plutonium, as well as the fission products.
Should these events happen, the best outcome would be if the winds are blowing east and push the radioactive plume over the Pacific Ocean, he said. "It (the radioactivity) will fall out in the ocean and everything will be fine," he said.
The worst case, Allen said, would be if winds pushed a radioactive cloud south toward Tokyo and Japan's highly populated cities. If that were to happen, he said, the consequences would likely be greater than the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, where an entire area of Ukraine had to be evacuated because of the radioactive conditions that increased the risk of developing cancer.
Should these events happen, the best outcome would be if the winds are blowing east and push the radioactive plume over the Pacific Ocean, he said. "It (the radioactivity) will fall out in the ocean and everything will be fine," he said.
The worst case, Allen said, would be if winds pushed a radioactive cloud south toward Tokyo and Japan's highly populated cities. If that were to happen, he said, the consequences would likely be greater than the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, where an entire area of Ukraine had to be evacuated because of the radioactive conditions that increased the risk of developing cancer.
I've heard a lot of reports of Japan using helicopters to get water into the reactors and cool their cores. What I don't understand is why they're not using the water-tanker planes that were used for the Haifa forest fire here a few months ago.
Labels: earthquake, Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan, nuclear meltdown, tsunami
Get your Geiger counters out folks. There's some radioactive material missing in Egypt. 
