china syndrome in the news 2

[electricpete]

http://www.bettertheworld.org/2011/12/michio-kakus-top-10-science-stories/

Here is an article from abc-news purporting to give top 10 science stories from Phyics Prof Michio Kakus.
We expect reasonable technical correctness without sensationalism from a source like that.

Here's the beginning of the article

2011 was dominated by the horrendous news that there were three simultaneous meltdowns at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in March, sparked by a gigantic 9.0 earthquake and a monstrous tsunami. It was recently revealed that the accident was much more severe than previously thought.


The uranium core of Unit 1 completely liquefied (the first time this has ever happened) and melted right through the vessel and into the containment, almost setting off a China Syndrome-type disaster (where the core melts down, theoretically all the way to the other side of the planet).

I'm pretty sure there is no scenario where the core melts thru to the other side of the planet.

I'm pretty sure this physics guy knows that as well.

Any idea what the heck happened here.... some journalist twisted this around ?

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[cloa]

Famed futurist and science popularist.
He choose the news stories- don't think he wrote the stories. He is way out of his depth even in theoretical physics- no they haven't confirmed the existance of the Higgs boson. CERN put out some evidence that it exists but its low percentage stuff. A lot of junk news.
The biggest news not included is the Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to the discoverer of quasi-crystals- main-stream views proved wrong.

http://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=5

 

[IRstuff]

Bachelor's from Harvard and PhD from Berkeley isn't anything to sneeze at through...

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[racookpe1978]

It is if the information he/she is putting out is this wrong.

That is, if the writer discussing (and thus promoting) these "top ten news" stories doesn't correct the bad science/wrong information HE is using as the basis of his discussion, the value of his advanced degrees are not worth the paper they are written on.

 

[crerus75]

Let's place some of the blame where it belongs. Kaku has often come out publicly against fission. I am not a nuke by any stretch, but even I have caught errors in his past claims. He once claimed in a radio interview that terrorists could conceivably fly an airliner into a nuke plant and spread many tons of radioactive material, making a huge dirty bomb. His claim was that essentially ALL of the fuel would be ejected from the building, and that this mass of fuel could cover a theoretical radius of XXX miles, where XXX assumes complete and relatively even distribution of the fuel.

My admittedly untrained mind (I have no training in the nuke field) could not posit a scenario where a typical airliner could pierce the containment (one of the design criteria is/was, IIRC, withstanding collision with a loaded 747 with no resulting primary containment breach).

I also could not figure out how the tons of fuel would somehow be aerosolized or otherwise spread for miles, as he claimed. I thought that one of the things that Chernobyl taught us was that, while fuel, graphite, and other debris could get blown around after an "energetic event," the radius of contamination would be relatively small, at least compared to Kaku's claimed number.

He then claimed that fusion (cold, I think, but I could be mistaken) would solve all of fission's problems. At that point I shut off the podcast.

 

[blacksmith37]

I think the primary consideration is that "junk science" tends to make more EXCITING news (being unconstrained by facts).

 

[crerus75]

Absolutely. Witness the hoopla over Fukushima even though, AFAIK, no one has been killed by the events at the plant. The flooding killed-- what-- 15000? The events at the plant should be lost in the noise but aren't.

I suspect that Kaku is working on fusion research in some way (a friend mentioned this to me but I haven't investigated it). He did allude to that in the podcast I heard. Maybe I ascribe too much malice to Kaku in thinking that his criticism of fission is in part a ploy to make fusion more palatable, but stranger things have happened.

 

[Duwe6]

In "theory" I may see why Kaku is so biased towards Fusion over Fission. Theoretically, Fusion will be cheaper and have waste disposal advantages. Theoretically. Someday. Maybe.

Fission works. Commercial Fission USA nukes have NEVER killed any civilian, no any have any workers been killed by a failure of any of the 'hot' systems in USA nukes. Period, stinking DOT.

USA coal-fired plants [total] kill a worker or 3 every year, going back to the first plants, where EACH plant killed a worker or three every year. Additionally, coal plants spew mercury, arsenic, cadimum, and radioactives continously. They actually give off more radiation per megawatt than nukes do.

Wish we would ever get a president that would ask Sierra Club, 'Greens', and any amalgamated tree-huggers to make a definite choice for this decade:
A) Fission B) Coal C) Canadian Tar-sands oil D) sit in the dark.

Fusion would be wonderful, Cold Fusion would be extra-wonderful photovoltaics that would be cost-effective and last 10+ years would be wonderful, affordiable & consistant Wind Energy would be wonderful, Clean Coal would be wonderful.

And Unicorns would be wonderful. Where's the reality folks? Can't we grow up enough to chose something realistic to use until the Wonderful Ideas come to fruition?