(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Japan's nuclear concerns explained

You must login or register to view this content.

Workers in Japan are struggling to contain the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was badly damaged by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Click through this interactive explainer to learn more about how the Fukushima Daiichi reactors work, what's causing the problems with these reactors and what's being done to get this nuclear incident under control.

Reactor basics


There are several different types of nuclear reactors, including boiling water reactor systems and pressurized water reactor systems. The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are boiling water reactor systems. Here's how they work:

At the heart of a nuclear reactor is the reactor vessel, a large steel tank filled with water. It's loaded with 12-foot-long fuel rods made of radioactive pellets encased in zirconium alloy. These ceramic fuel pellets are usually made of enriched uranium 235, which is incapable of creating a nuclear explosion.

Reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant used more toxic mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel rods, which contain a mixture of uranium and plutonium that is reprocessed from spent uranium.

The fuel rods are loaded vertically into the reactor vessel in a precise grid pattern known as the reactor core. Nuclear fission, or the splitting of atoms, is initiated. As each atom splits, it gives off large amounts of energy in the form of heat and radiation. It also sends free neutrons toward other atoms, causing some of those atoms to fission. This can lead to a chain reaction.

Rods that absorb neutrons control this chain reaction. When the control rods are present, neutrons are absorbed and the reaction slows. When the rods are removed, the reaction increases.

How bad is 'bad'?

You must login or register to view this content.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) developed the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale to identify the severity of incidents involving nuclear energy.

Chernobyl was a level 7 accident, the highest level, denoting a "major accident."

Three Mile Island was classified a category 5, which is an "accident with wider consequences."

The IAEA is not yet rating the incident in Japan on the INES scale.

You must login or register to view this content.

For inforation check out DEREKTROTTER's post You must login or register to view this content.

So can you some up what all this means? I don't feel like reading watching basketball

tl;dr We're all gonna die.

:carling:

Japans going through the worst, and the worst is that Radiation is invisible. You cannot taste it, smell it or feel it. It's not possible to directly measure the amount of radiation exposure a person has had.

As you can see here:


Radiation is invisible. You cannot taste it, smell it or feel it. It's not possible to directly measure the amount of radiation exposure a person has had. When you see people with Geiger counters checking a site like Fukushima Daiichi, they're measuring contamination, which generally refers to actual radioactive particles.

There are four main types of ionizing radiation:

--Alpha particles: relatively heavy, cannot penetrate human skin or clothing, but can be harmful if they get into the body in another manner.

--Beta radiation: can cause skin injury and is harmful to the body internally.

--Gamma rays: high-energy invisible light that can damage tissue and is most dangerous to humans.

--X-rays: also high-energy invisible light that can damage tissue and is very dangerous to humans.

Levels of radiation exposure:

--An average person receives about 3.1 millisieverts per year from natural sources.

--A person in the U.S. typically receives a total of 6.2 millisieverts because of medical diagnostic procedures and other man-made sources of radiation.

--A chest X-ray delivers a dose of about .02 millisieverts of radiation.

--A CT scan to the abdomen delivers about 8 millisieverts of radiation.

--Japanese officials say they had measured radiation rates of up to 400 millisieverts per hour between reactor units No. 3 and No. 4, according to the IAEA.

Same source.

Ahh alright got it now. Damn hope they get this under control and it doesn't spread.

Didn't they say that Fukushima was a "5"?

I'm not really worried about this affecting the U.S, if the Chernobyl accident didn't really have any affect on us, then this most likely won't either :y: Hope for the best for Japan and anyone else in danger.

Thanks for this information. I hope it gets cool down and wont spread radiation