nevermind....the guy on cnn just poo poo'd any problem with radiation

or the facility...

the evacuation was only a precaution


no cause for concern.....he actually said that 'NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN'

it's 'ALL JUST A PRECAUTION' 'I SEE NO DANGER'


'at no time do i see anyone in any danger'


a professor from georgia tech

glen sjoden

the rosiest scenario you could imagine

i hope he's right

in their arks. Nothing to be alarmed about.

http://www.me.gatech.edu/faculty/sjoden.shtml

Distinctions

Florida Power & Light Endowed Term Professor for Nuclear Power Research, 2007-2010.

University of Florida, College of Engineering, International Researcher of the Year Award, 2006.

Certificate of Appreciation and Recognition for Contributions to U.S. Intelligence by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI),

Scientific and Technical Intelligence Committee, Washington, D.C., 1999.

American Nuclear Society
*The American Nuclear Society (ANS) is an international, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) scientific and educational organization with a membership of approximately 11,000 scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other associate members. Approximately 900 members live outside the United States in 40 countries. There are 51 U.S. and nine non-U.S. local sections, 24 nuclear plant branches and 34 student sections. ANS members represent more than 1,600 corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies.

boundry..

Aside from the fact that the publicly released and published measurements were largely gathered at the site boundary, why might he talk about the site boundary. Radiation intensity falls off with distance squared and I don't imagine the general public is running around within the plant.

There's another thread with Bill Nye's take - might be more up your alley

Someone who has received advanced training in nuclear engineering, but never worked in the field?

They must be a dime a dozen... :crazy:

...and the Military Industrial Complex.

What would be ideal...one year? Two years? :shrug:

This guy isn't.:shrug:

He's a VP of HSW Technologies

http://www.hswtech.com/

Hello all,

I'm a former student of Dr. Sjoden's currently studying nuclear engineering at the University of Florida. I'm currently wrapping up the final semester of my senior year and will soon have a bachelors of science in nuclear engineering. Dr. Sjoden is indeed the vice president of HSW Technologies along with his former PHD adviser. Aside from a hand full of graduate students, they are the only two employees of the company. The primary function of this company is the leasing of a collection of software programs called PENTRAN which was written by Dr. Sjoden as part of his doctoral thesis. Its function is numerical simulation of neutral particle transport. With regard to the nuclear power industry, this program has applications related to a field called neutronics. However, the program is quite broad and has been applied to medical physics applications with great success.

All the best

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

he was totally unbelievable

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

and welcome to DU.

Sid

out at the plants. Do you think he'd go?

Especially those who understand what's going on. I have no doubt he'd go, if asked to.

that it was perfectly fine there. He was being quietly hysterical to his talking points.

to a remarkable degree. Everybody has their religion, I guess.

Like a tsunami destroying the generators....

I imagine you would be very surprised at the size of the fault tree analysis involved in the design of a nuclear plant. Triple redundancy is the standard. In no other engineering discipline is such care taken to ensure safe operation over such a wide spectrum of conditions. However, its preposterous to think that any design could be full-proof against every possibility as remote or as powerful as the events in Japan.

because his audience is for children... his science is for children, cuz see, physics, geometry, astronomy, all of that is all different for kids than for adults.

good fucking grief.

he wasn't doing the 'nothing to worry about shit' that CNN wants to hear, so they pretty well got the hook and cut him off.

this guy was way too happy and everything was just hunky dory

about the cut off Don Lemon delivered.

Do you really have the background to recognize what the "true" dangers are? It's one thing to question whether a stranger has a conflict of interest and another to critique the analysis.

Much of the information he provided was just wrong. It was apparent he was outside his expertise. That said, had some random guy on the street had as reasonable an idea of what was going on as he had, I would be impressed. But just FYI

Cs-137 isn't used for reactor control. It is a fission product and gamma-ray emitter. You see elevated levels of cesium in any nuclear power plant. Consequently, the detection of CS-137 isn't particularly surprising and certainly isn't indicative of any sort of containment problem.

Boron-10 IS used for reactor control and is in fact, the most popular neutron absorber around. The two types of Boron compounds used in reactors are 1) boron carbide and 2) boric acid. The former is a very hard solid and isn't particularly chemically reactive. It's a material used in bullet proof jackets. The later is chemically reactive but not especially toxic. If you've ever used flea powder, you were likely using boric acid.

The plume of smoke he was referring to was referring to was the result of a axillary pump explosion. This damaged what is called a "containment building". The containment building is usually just a steel building housing the containment structure, which is a primary barrier against the release of radioactivity the environment.

The japanese reactor trouble up until the hydrogen explosion earlier this evening had actually been remarkably similar to the events at three mile island.

A. Just Spring redecorating.

Dr. Sjoden is indeed correct. I am a Nuclear Engineering student at GaTech and was very relieved to hear someone doing damage control. Everything he said is correct, and he did an absolutely wonderful job of putting things in perspective. I am personally going to go and thank him on Monday.
And yes, I did create an account just to respond to this post.

I didn't realize this thread was as large as it actually is.
Bill Nye actually wasn't very accurate. The poor guy couldn't explain what friggin Cesium does (Cs is not used in the control rods, Boron Carbide is (The same stuff used in bulletproof vests and tank armor)).
Dr. Sjoden isn't actually tied to industry that much, and every Nuclear Engineer is part of the American Nuclear Society. So it's not some corporate scheme to promote nuclear power, it's a collection of professionals who share ideas and input to each other's work. His research in particular is creating computer modeling programs to detect illegal materials in shipping crates, what have you, using nuclear forensics (you can detect cocaine and all sorts of stuff, it's pretty neat)
To someone who does not understand how nuclear energy works, yes it can be confusing and possibly frighting and it gets really hard to sort out misinformation from the facts. If anyone has any questions, please direct them to this post. I can try and answer as often and accurately as I can (I'm not a regular member of this site)

...would be nice to know what your CV is :)

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Excuse the sarcasm, but if we tend to disbelieve the "nothing to see here" platitudes, there is a basis for it.



Tell me how much better the technology is today, fine. But don't even try to convince me that this is a harmless nonevent. It makes eveything you say suspect. Once the containment was breached, I suspect no one has a clue what the ramifications will be. Including the "experts".

You're referencing the Chernobyl accident, which actually didn't even have a containment structure. Now I'm sure you've probably heard many comparisons to the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents in past few days. If you don't mind, I'd like to illustrate how each of these reactor accidents relates to the Japanese problems.

While these two events are often lumped together, they were the results of very different phenomenon and had very different effects. The Chernobyl accident was a true disaster, resulted in a serious threat to the local public, and lead to numerous fatalities. The reactor was destroyed and the surrounding region was scarred. Three mile island, on the other hand, was posed little threat to the public and resulted in only a small release of radioactivity when during a ventilation process. The Three Mile Island plant actually still operates to this day.

In the case of Three mile island, this comparison is quite fair. As is the case now, difficulty at three mile island stemmed from trouble providing cooling water to the core following pump failure and lead to a partial meltdown. In japan's case, the primary pumps were lost when the plant was isolated from the power grid during the earthquake. When the plant was isolated from the power grid, the reactor was "scramed" which means that control rods were inserted into the core to prevent further fission.

Had the earthquake been the only tribulation, all would have been fine and dandy because there are diesel powered backup pumps which kicked on in response to this sort of situation, cooling the core to remove what is called "decay heat". Decay heat is heat generation (orders of magnitude lower than heat generation in normal operations) from the radioactive materials in the pressure vessel which continues for a finite amount of time after shutdown. However, in the tsunami following the earthquake, many of these pumps were disabled and since then, there has been difficulty providing coolant to the core to remove this decay heat. As a result, some "fuel rods" have been damaged and a portion of the fuel may have melted. While this means that the reactor will probably never run again, it isn't the sort of disaster many people think of. As with the case of three mile island, there is likely little threat posed to the public.

The difficulties with the Japanese reactors is very different from what happened in the reactor at Chernobyl. The trouble facing the Japanese reactors is providing coolant to remove decay heat from the core. The trouble at Chernobyl was what is called a "run away criticality accident". This occurs when the fission rate increases with increasing reactor temperature. This is a result of the core geometry and materials used. What was particularly troublesome was the use of graphite moderator/water coolant combination. As you might guess, more fission means more heat, which leads to higher temperatures, which in turn leads to even more fission! When this configuration was achieved, within a very short period of time, the reactor exploded. As I mentioned previously, the Chernobyl reactor had no containment structure, only a containment building so there was little to prevent radiation material from escaping into the environment.

The reactors distressed in japan and any reactor in the United States have been engineered such that this could never happen. Beyond a certain operating temperature, any further increase in temperature will lead to a REDUCED fission rate, which in turn reduces to temperature to the operation temperature. It's conceptually similar to how the cruise control works in a car. This achieved by using water as a coolant AND moderator. As water is boiled, density drops, moderation decreases,and fewer fissions can occur. But the problem now isn't fission, its decay heat.

The venting system was damaged in one of the plants and they were not able to deliver water. Water delivery has been a problem since yesterday in all of the plants. Your explanation is theoretical. The fact is that this happened in the aftermath of a catastrophe of incredible proportions, and the very infrastructure that the safeguards depend on were already out of commission, as you pointed out.

I was not comparing the technology at Chernobyl with that of today, I refer to the "damage control" surrounding the event. The truth is, when this kind of thing happens there are many people available to tell lies and to cover up the true extent of the damage. I don't have any reason to believe that it will be different this time.

It is not fair to brand every government with the sins of the Soviet Union. The rest of the world learned of the accident when fallout from Chernobyl reached other nuclear plant around Europe and set off radiation detectors. Three mile island was not subject to any attempts to hide what was happening. In fact, the events were reported in real time and the local population was evacuated as a very conservative precaution.

No radiation leak -- LIE.
Intentional and controlled -- LIE.

There was a Congressional hearing about TMI and the "experts" had to admit that didn't have any idea how much radiation exposure had actually occurred. It's on the record. Look it up.

You would even now perpetuate those same LIES? No, thank you. Thanks for playing, but NO, THANK YOU.

I'm not entirely sure were you are getting this. Please cite a source. The congressional hearing I think you mean to refer to was the presidential commission lead up by Kemeny and it was inline with what one would expect following an event of that sort; It was knee jerk and iconoclastic. With respect to the claim that there was no radiation leak, that seems contrary to the state of emergency declared by the station manager. If you are referring to the Met Ed statements, from what I read, they were all over the place. Business majors, amirite? In any case, radiological release came about as a result of venting hydrogen gas to the atmosphere to relieve pressure to the core. The radioactivity released during such an event is low to begin with and after considering atmospheric dispersion, I'd b surprised if it were distinguishable from the background radiation we all live in everyday. ANS has done a few studies following the accident if you're interested in the dose to the public if your concerned. I'm totally clueless what you are referring to with respect to intentional and controlled. Also, take a breathe man.

:hi:

Maybe you can ask him for some help in controlling this damage, too?

Number Of People Tested Positive For Elevated Radiation Levels Has Jumped To 160
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x630808

Did authorities in 1979 have smaller brains and not realize the skepticism it would confirm in perpetuity?

Why is there no more information from Japanese authorities?

Do you and the professor have more interest in growing the nuclear industry, or shutting it down?

Few people devote a lifetime of study to something they think not worthwhile to pursue.

what the number one goal is, forget the truth. "Damage control" is the main thing, that's all these talking head "experts" ever care about. :argh:

edit: typo

this guy was an assclown. he saw absolutely no danger. no danger. that is just stupid speak.

there was an explosion in a nuclear plant.

no danger at all. his certainty in his position made his opinon totally irrelevant. no one is certain what is happening.

sad that you started an account to spread misinformation.

now lets see you take your hugh brain over to japan and help...not holding my breath

Perhaps damage control was a poor word choice but I can vouch that none of the information he provided is untrue and if you'd like would be more than happy to direct you to published sources with regard to any specific questions you have. You must understand that nuclear science suffered tremendously as a result of Chernobyl and the unfair association of the accident with all reactor designs. Never mind nuclear weapons. Even the language of the science has come to have a negative connotation so many are very sensitive to negative press. It's certainly difficult to disseminate information given the complexity of the topic and the short attention span of the public. Are you really reasonably considering the information available or going off a lifetime of soundbites?

news tonight they had one of the nukesperts saying how well things are going, not like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island caused hardly any damage. There won't be a radiation cloud wafting over the Pacific either because it's just hydrogen. Blah, blah, spin, spin.

Love the Gilda; damn I miss her. :)