Fukushima Daiichi began releasing wastewater today into the ocean

My main fear is that we see such disasters put the rest of the world off nuclear energy, which if done the right way is a clean and safe energy source.

Nuclear isn't a clean source of energy per se. It is cleaner than coal and gas fired power stations, but nuclear still has waste. Nuclear fuel emits way way more carbon emissions to make the fuel. It has to be mined, transported, refined, transported and constructed, then transported. So not clean, just cleaner. And what to do with the nuclear waste? Just dig a hole, bury it and forget about it for 100,000 years? It is hardly recyclable. Some spent fuel is re-refined (along with transport again) into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, but not all NPPs are capable of using MOX, and then the waste MOX is worse than the original spent duel rods. But's that's ok, we can just bury it and forget about it. As for 'done the right way'...... Well, I'm still waiting for it to be done the right way. So far, since it's conception, nuclear reactors have proved time and time again to be dangerous and problematic. But the main issue here isn't the hardware, it's the people running them. When ever money is involved with anything it is usually subject to budgets, and greed. Corners are cut, mistakes are made, shit happens. Until such a time as there is no personal gain for every single employee, staff member, manager, director, then it is going to be subject to greed. Greed has shown time and time again to be the root of many disasters, and will continue to. 

Regarding evaporation ponds, that idea seems simple and effective, but isn't the tritium itself actually the hydrogen part of the affected water molecules itself? (H2O)

I wasn't aware of the full process when tritium water vapour is released into the air. Tritium water can be evaporated off, but basically follows the same cycle as regular water vapour. So either way, whether pumped into the sea, or evaporated off, it will come back down to the surface one way or another. So I guess no matter what, any discharge of Tritium is set to stay with us either in the ocean or the atmosphere for the length of it's half life's.

I'm not 100% sure what isotopes that were released compare to chernobyl, but one thing for certain is that chernobyl burned for days if not weeks and sent billowing a cloud of Ash and dust for miles, some parts of Europe actually were heavily contaminated.

Chernobyl released Iodine 131, Caesium 137, Strontium 90, Plutonium, and a bunch of other isotopes such as xenon, krypton, tellurium, zirconium and all of their daughter products.
Fukushima Diiachi released Iodine 131, Caesium 137, Strontium 90, Plutonium, and a bunch of other isotopes such as xenon, krypton, tellurium, zirconium and all of their daughter products.
You seem to be concentrating on comparing the explosions of the two plants and not much else. I'm looking at the big picture, everything from when the first brick was laid, right through to how they stand today. The explosions were just a part of the disasters. Yes the exclusion zone for Chernobyl is about 3 times larger than Fukushima's (1000 sq miles for Chernobyl, about 380 sq miles for Fukushima), and yes the explosion was worse, and agreed fire took hold for longer than Fukushima, but Chernobyl just needs to be babysat now, and has done for a long time. Fukushima is still happening, only further disaster is being held back. Drop those defences at Fukushima and it will melt down again, and will cause new explosions. Another bad earthquake or tsunami, or terrorist act, or WW3, and the thing could go again. The building is in a very very bad way. Nobody has actually got close to the cores, and it is only recently they actually managed to build a robot to survey parts that didn't fail. Some debris and fuel from the cooling pools is all that has been removed so far. Some of the fuel is bent in one of the cooling pools (I forget which, No. 2 I think) and the last I read was 'they do not know how they are going to be able to remove it without causing a potential disaster'.

Fukushima was a steam explosion from what I'm aware, not only from the reactor vessels themselves but also the spent fuel pools.

Nope, completely wrong. There were three explosions from Fukushima and all were Hydrogen explosions. 12th March 2011 unit 1's reactor building exploded due to Hydrogen gas after steam reacted with the nuclear fuel. The containment vessel wasn't breached. 14th March 2011 unit 3's reactor building exploded much like the 1st, only much worse, but again, didn't breach the containment vessel. 15th March 2011 unit 2's suppression chamber exploded. The exact cause is unknown, but similarly to the other two, Hydrogen gas is suspected. The containment vessel was not breached. When salt water contacts the nuclear fuel a reaction happens that forms Hydrogen gas. They used nothing but salt water (the sea) to cool the crippled reactors after the pumps failed and this caused the explosions. All three reactors (1,2 & 3) melted down, and they are still in the same state as 12 years ago. Big lumps of corium at the bottom of their containment vessels. There have been photos taken that show what they think is corium beneath one of the vessels, in the basement. When the explosions happened there were many ancillary systems, pipes and cables that were destroyed. They are literally using what is left, and what they can to run cooling water to and from the reactors. All the sensors and mechanics for operating them in any way whatsoever are all destroyed. They are big lumps of metal containing melted reactors, and there is three of them.

As far as I know, the bulk of the affected fuel remains in the reactor buildings?

In big shitty melted piles of corium at the bottom of units 1,2 and 3's containment vessels. Some is suspected top have escaped, but they haven't confirmed that yet as they simply can't get close enough. A robot (that didn't break) finally got some pictures of one of the basements and it didn't look good, at all. Signs of fuel (corium) in the basement, and the pedestal that one of the vessels sits on is deteriorating fast and could topple. This would cause the vessel to be disconnected from the cooling water and then...... Fun and games for sure. Some, and only some of the spent fuel has been removed from the pools. Some is bent and stuck. Some still has debris on top of it the last time I heard anything about it. This of course doesn't apply to units 4, 5 and 6 as they were not in use at the time, although they may still have spent fuel sitting in the pools and fuel in the reactors. I would expect this has been removed since the disaster.

Am I right that essentially contaminated steam was all that escaped?

I'm sure some steam was released but so was Hydrogen, isotopes of Iodine 131, Caesium 137, Strontium 90, and a bunch of others such as xenon, krypton, tellurium, zirconium were all released into the air. The fallout landed as far away as Tokyo where Ceasium, Strontium and Iodine were found in fallout. Some Plutonium was found closer to the NPP. This is what is inside all the thousands of black bags now. What to do with them? Bury them? They are in the form of top soil, and surface dust and debris. I'm sure they could be mixed into a concrete slurry, or glassified and then buried. It's not like you can just bury that stuff as is unless it is really really deep as it may leach into the water courses.

Fukushima is still happening. It ain't finished yet. There is still much work to do to just get to the same stable state as Chernobyl and may take 20, 40, 50 years to do so? To this day they still don't know the full extent of the damage beneath the vessels and in the basements. The concrete is starting to crumble due to the water, fuel and the reactions they have with each other. It's really a matter of time, and which comes first. They either get it stable, or it is due to go again. If it does go into meltdown again, any of the reactors, we (they) are in a much worse position now. We will have to see in the future which was the worst between Chernobyl and Fukushima. Either way, they were both terrible, terrible disasters. For what it is worth, official records state that only about 30 people in total lost their lives due to Chernobyl, and zero people lost their lives due to Fukushima. I find that incredibly hard to believe. For both disasters the death toll is only those that lost their lives during the actual disaster, not those that lost their lives due to the effects of the disasters. The WHO estimates of a total 4,000 deaths (to date) due to disaster-related illnesses in "the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations". TEPCO reckon about 7 people have dies since the disaster, all being workers of the plant that died from leukemia and one lung cancer. 

Oh man, where to start with this.....

Juzzie, grab some popcorn and a nice mid strength alcoholic beverage. 

nzoomed, if you think that radioactive waste isn't dangerous for about 4 half-lives, then you are a dangerous idiot. And I mean an idiot of biblical proportions. I'm absolutely stunned by your response. You would make a great politician. I actually don't know if you are trying to troll me, but I'm starting to suspect that as you just seem to want to try and pick holes in anything I say. Where in the world have you heard that the waste is safe after 300 years? Show me some kind of publication from some kind of body such as the IAEA or other nuclear safety or regulatory body. That is absurd! I'm still picking my jaw up from the floor this morning when I first read your response.

For spent nuclear fuel, Plutonium 240 has a half life of 6,560 years. Plutonium 239 has a half life of 24,000 years, which means it is still half as dangerous as it was after 24,000 years. Uranium 235 has a half life of 703,800,000 years (yes, 703 million years.) There are also other isotopes such as Iodine 131, Caesium 137, Strontium 90 etc. These have shorter half lives of 8 days (no biggie there), 30 years and 29 years respectively. If any of these products gets into the ecosystem it will cause havok, so they are usually either mixed with concrete into casks, or glassified and stored in casks then buried for thousands of years, maybe 100's of thousands of years. Some fuel is reprocessed into MOX which actually makes it a way more dangerous fuel then just Uranium. I get it that some isotopes have a shorter half life, but these are all mixed in with the Uranium and Plutonium, so nobody is going to touch them. And after mixing with concrete or glassification makes them completely unusable in the future for any kind of reprocessing. These isotopes/elements are super deadly if ingested or inhaled, so when they get the waste and treat it for storage, there is no intention of ever doing anything with it. There are other types of waste - intermediate level and low level. These are things such as materials used in the manufacturing process of the fuel and tools, clothes, PPE, stuff like that. All of that takes up a lot of space, way more than the actual spent fuel itself, so massive underground dumps are required. All of this requires a large amount of materials, energy and fuel for storing - the processing and then transport of the waste, again proving my point that nuclear is not that clean. These waste stores are usually in the middle of nowhere, and can be kilometers underground and requires the use of a lot od diesel for transport and on site generators to keep the air moving and the lights on. Your statement is unreal.

You state that the shorter the half life, the more dangerous the isotope. Then why is Strontium 90 (28.8 years half life) not less dangerous than Tritium with a half life of 12 years? By your very own words, Tritium is more dangerous than Strontium 90, yet you say the release in the ocean is OK. Please explain this to me as you have completely contradicted yourself on that.

Electric mining vehicles...... Oh lord, give me fucking strength! Do you know anything about energy density? Some fun facts: There isn't enough lithium on the planet to replace all the ICE cars (just cars, not trucks, vans etc, just cars) with electric cars. The US have just found a mountain of the stuff, but is unclear if any will ever be mined due to the indigenous natives there. So we can't use that in any argument yet, and even if they had the permission, it will be a good few years before the first digger hits the earth there to start mining it. And even if there was enough lithium to make every vehicle in the world electric, there isn't enough cobalt. Period. Please tell me, tell us all, how, if there isn't enough resources on this planet for just cars to become electric, how the hell will the big mining trucks and diggers and cranes and lorries and fork-lift trucks and all the other vehicles required for mining, how will they become electric?

There isn't enough electricity generated on the planet to charge all the cars if they were all electric, so how will the big dumper trucks and other plant charge? These mines are in the middle of nowhere. They have no local infrastructure. Just build a few hundred miles of pylons and a sub station at every mine? Lol. SMRs would work I suppose, but again bringing a whole load of extra complications.

Lets look at one large dumper truck capable of moving about 100 tonnes of ore. There are varying degrees of dumper truck (medium sized electric haul trucks, large electric haul trucks and ultra-class electric haul trucks), I have chosen one that is relatively large (between large and ultra-class) but very common for large mining operations, and are becoming more prevalent these days, as time is money, and the more they can haul the larger profits are made. They have a diesel engine that is about 3000 HP (horse power), that is roughly 2200 KW. That means to run one for an hour at full power it would require a lithium battery capable of 2200 KWH, or 2.2 MWH. For the purposes of this I will assume they are running at 1/4 power all the time as they vary in the power consumption throughout operation. So at 1/4 power a 2.2 MWH battery will last 4 hours. Using a 100 KW charger it will take 22 hours to charge. A 500 KW (I don't think these even exist yet) charger would take just over 4 hours to charge. These vehicles are often run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without rest. 3-5 work shifts will run them every day. So lets say that a 500 KW charger does exist (it may) that means that one large electric haul truck is out of commission for half of the day. So the only option if they want to mine 24/7 is to buy more trucks, at ~$10,000,000 each, and have them sat there doing nothing for half of their life. A diesel equivalent is around $5,000,000 and can work 24/7 with no rest except for swapping driver and refueling with diesel. Mining operations are in the business of making money. I don't care what anyone says about this, they are not in the business of mining. It is simply mining they do to get the monies. Unless they are a non-profit org and doing it for the good of the people, for free, they are not in the mining business, they are in the profit business.

So, hypothetically speaking, if I owned a mine I would want all of my vehicles running 24/7 and I would want to buy them as cheaply as possible. My aim is to make money. Any vehicle sat there charging is not making money, it's actually costing money (if you don't understand this, research business economics.) Why in the hell would I want electric vehicles that I can only operate half of the time? Or should I spend twice as much on the electric vehicles just to have them sat there? So one diesel haul truck capable of running 24/7 at a cost of $5,000,000 suddenly becomes two electric haul trucks at a cost of $20,000,000. I ain't doing that and anyone that thinks that is a good idea needs their head checking. And as far as CO2 and emissions, they are simply being moved from the local site to a remote site. Do you research on this. Electric being better for the environment is a fallacy. They cost more in emissions to produce and maintain. Lithium batteries have an average life span of 1000 charge cycles. Lets be generous and say it is 2000 charge cycles before the battery requires replacing. That means running as close to 24/7 as they can, they would be charged up (a charge cycle) 3 times a day. 3 into 2000 goes 666 times, meaning they would require a brand new battery every 2 years. The rest of the truck would last 10-20 years, the same as a diesel, so lets assume the entire life span of the electric haul truck is 10 years and the diesel is 10 years. That is 5, FIVE, brand new batteries (one with the vehicle, and 4 replacements) the electric haul truck would require throughout it's life span.

How many children in the lithium and cobalt mines would have to die to make one electric haul truck battery? Assuming it is correct that approx 1.5 children die per Tesla S battery (I'll say 1 per battery for the sake of lazy calcs (and yes they do, DYOR)), and a Tesla S battery is 100 KWH, then for an electric haul truck battery at 2,200 KWH, 22 children die per battery. Absolutely genius!

Unless there is a radical change in battery technology, electric cars, vans, trucks, mining haul trucks, cranes, everything is a fallacy. It is impossible. No matter which way around you do the calcs, it will never ever work. Sure there are some in action, but few and far between and they are at their infancy. The truck manufacturers are in the business of profit, not making trucks, so they don't care that people buy them. But it is unsustainable, period. Never ever will it happen on this planet without some massive radical change to the batteries. And don't go on talking about Hydrogen. Sure it works, but is not economically viable. The cost to generate the Hydrogen is way more than the Lithium batteries, so it's a non-starter. Maybe one day when Hydrogen generation is cheaper, but electrolysis generation usually requires more electricity to produce the Hydrogen than the energy contained within the generated Hydrogen. The other way is chemical generation by reaction. Again, this costs more to produce the Hydrogen than the energy that is stored in the generated Hydrogen.

Diesel is the only economically viable way for large mining operations to run efficiently and profitable. Nobody would run a mining operation if it wasn't profitable.

Thorium reactors.... Yay for Thorium molten salt reactors, our saviour. If they are so good, why don't we have them now? America have tried 4 times to make one work and failed every time. I think they have given up. They are costly to produce and super complicated in construction compared to regular nuclear reactors. And, and this is the crux of it all is the military industrial complex. We use Uranium nuclear reactors to produce Plutonium for the military industrial complex. They want Plutonium and warheads. They want nukes. It's a game of stand-off. Any country that doesn't have nukes, or protected by a country that doesn't have nukes is subject to invasion and take over. They all want nukes. Old nukes have to be replaced with new nukes, so they need that precious Plutonium. Thorium reactors (whilst they require a small amount of Uranium or Plutonium - roughly 20% of the fuel) do not produce Plutonium, so they are useless to the military industrial complex. Producing Plutonium is also massively profitable, and remember what I said about what companies work for.... Profit. A Thorium reactor is no where near as profitable as a Uranium reactor, so they are no where near as economically viable as a Uranium reactor. For the single reason that they don't produce Plutonium, and until such point as nukes are no longer required, there will be no Thorium reactors actually put into practice on a large scale. There may be the odd one put into production, but that would be nothing more than a show piece. Thorium reactors are not a new thing. The idea has been around for decades. Why don't they make them? If you have a better answer than mine, I'd love to hear it.

Waste is only radioactive for around 300 years.... WTAF? Where do you get 300 years from when the half life of Uranium 235 is 703,800,000 years. This is set in stone science. The radiation will last for many half lives until it is spent. Please explain in further detail how you come to this crazy 300 year figure? What you state is ridiculous. Some clarification is most needed here on this point, although I'm sure you are just trolling me.

You watched a video, great. I didn't. I learned about Thorium reactors quite a while ago. I don't need a video to explain what they are, what they do, and why we should have them. Anyone stating they will become a viable source of power is naive. Ask the military industrial complex if they prefer Thorium reactors to Uranium reactors and they will laugh at you. The military industrial complexes in some ways are a greater power than any countries' governments. The governments do what the military industrial complexes tell them, not the other way around. I really think you are lacking in some knowledge of how the world actually works. Maybe you should do some research, you know, like I have over the years.

Also interesting about many areas of Fukushima...... I didn't watch the video. I'm getting tired of this debate. You seem to lack some critical knowledge on.... pretty much everything so far. You seem to have an idea. Some knowledge, but little. Someone that knows a bit, but not enough is generally considered dangerous. All the gear and no idea springs to mind. I'm not here to answer your questions, but debate your answers. You have showed little, if any, answers of substance, and some ridiculous statements.

Elon Musk! LMFAO. You obviously have no idea that Elon is nothing more than a very clever scam artist. Elon didn't invent Teslas. Elon didn't invent the idea of the hyperloop. The SpaceX heavy rocket will never work. He is a genius in getting people to invest in things that are doomed to fail. Don't believe me? Go DYOR, but I'll give you a pointer - seek Adam Something (@AdamSomething) on Youtube and watch some of his videos on Elon. They are informative, factually correct and sourced. I honestly couldn't give a hoot what Elon thinks or doesn't. He isn't a source of credibility for me.

Back to Fukushima. Why don't you do your own research instead of asking me questions, then come back to debate them. TEPCO said the containment vessels were never breached, but TEPCO say they have found fuel below the containment vessel in one reactor and fuel in the suppression pond wetwell. Heard of a thing called propaganda? They don't want to admit it, but will be forced to when they confirm what they have found actually is corium. I'm getting bored now so I'll speed through the rest of your babble. Yes, 3x hydrogen explosions. Yes 3x melted cores, one or two partially, one a big shitty heap. When they melted down the only water they had was sea water, so they used that. They do not now. You were surprised they didn't get generators there quickly. Did you actually see the state of Fukushima prefecture after the earthquake and tsunami? They installed the backup generators in a place that would cost them less money than if they had done it right. Remember, they are a profit making company, not an electric for free company. They want to maximise profits everywhere they can. They took a chance. It back fired on them. Now they are paying the price, or the Japanese government are, or more likely the energy consumers in the form of a clean up levy.

And finally, I'll end with this doozie - The new sarcophagus at Chernobyl is to protect the elements from the reactor and building, not protect the building and reactor from the elements. Completely the wrong way around.

Now, if you would be so kind to throw this old dog a bone and answer my questions it would be very noble of you. I did that for you throughout this whole thread thus far, and I'm getting bored of answering your questions and correcting your statements. Do your own research on what you talk about. I don't talk about things I don't know or can't backup with evidence, so your turn now, or I'm gonna call it game over on this conversation. I have wasted too many hours on this thread. and for what? I have nothing from this debate so far, except the feeling you are trolling me.