Making mountains out of meltdowns (in Japan)
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Worth to watch
Fairewinds Associates Chief Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen discusses the current state of the Fukushima plant in Japan.
http://www.fairewinds.com/updates -
@unknownuser said:
Radiation levels in seawater remain high
The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says radiation levels detected in seawater near the plant remain high.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it detected 11,000 bequerels of radioactive iodine-131 per cubic centimeter in seawater samples collected around the water intake of the No.2 reactor on Tuesday morning.
That's 280,000 times higher than the maximum allowed under the government's standards.
The recorded radioactive concentration was still high even though it was lower than that of last Saturday, when 7.5 million times the legal limit was detected at the same spot.
The utility also detected 24 bequerels of iodine-131 per cubic centimeter, about 600 times higher than the legal limit, in samples taken near the water outlet of the No.5 and No.6 reactors on Tuesday. The figure was higher than that of the previous day.At a location about 330 meters south of the water outlet of the 4 reactors, the iodine-131 concentration had fallen from 4,385 times the legal limit detected last Wednesday to 400 times the legal limit, or 16 bequerels per cubic centimeter on Tuesday.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011 21:50 +0900 (JST)
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........and?
@unknownuser said:
At a location about 330 meters south of the water outlet of the 4 reactors, the iodine-131 concentration had fallen from 4,385 times the legal limit detected last Wednesday to 400 times the legal limit, or 16 bequerels per cubic centimeter on Tuesday.
And it will probably rise again, then fall....
How many dead from a direct exposure to the plant? None. Yet in the north, we seem to have forgotten about that again
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There probably will be only few deaths from direct radiation in Fukushim disaster. But its delayed effect are far more challenging to estimate. Chernobyl disaster is said to have 4,000 to 200,000 or more victims.
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Have you any idea of the real maintenance of a central plant ?
Take a look of this : RAS
The weak link is human! (or nature in the case of Fukushima)
(in French and German) free access (first video) -
I used to believe that Japan was the land of the robots, but it appears that France and the US may be better prepared to work in radioactive environments.
Its been reported that the two fellows that were exposed to radioactive water in the plant have developed rashes. Hope it doesn't get worst, but who knows what will happen in the long run:(
@unknownuser said:
The highest specific exposures reported so far were of two workers at the Fukushima plant who received doses of 170 to 180 mSv on March 24 — lower than the new Japanese standard, but still enough to cause some symptoms (reports say the men had rashes on the areas exposed to radioactive water).
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Oooh developing itchy rashes? Nasty!
@unknownuser said:
but who knows what will happen in the long run:(
Quite. Most probably this I suppose?;
[flash=425,344:bdwa6ozo]http://www.youtube.com/v/HY-03vYYAjA?fs=1&hl=en_GB&fs=1&&[/flash:bdwa6ozo]
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@notareal said:
Chernobyl disaster is said to have 4,000 to 200,000 or more victims.
That's quite a ratio.
I hear Chernobyl is a tourist attraction?
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numbers of deaths,... numbers of deaths,...
take a look at the devastated zone closed because of radiation and think about it
what is happening to all this people ? to all that piece of land ?
they maybe not dead yet but they have been taken out of their homes and ways for getting a living.
is this tragedy a making mountains out of meltdowns ?YouTube - Inside report from Fukushima nuclear reactor evacuation zone
[flash=480,385:bacsqkhd]http://www.youtube.com/v/yp9iJ3pPuL8?fs=1&hl=es_ES[/flash:bacsqkhd] -
How would you feel if the alarms were playing Mozart of Debussy sonatas?
What about a sensor that measures pollen count. I bet the alarms would be screaming. They would be screaming here, yet people are hospitalised and even killed by attacks from asthma every week in Europe alone.
If it is so dangerous, why are these guys driving through no-man's land? What I find more moving are all the ripped up roads, and the lack of people. I mean where are all these people been moved too? What about the sick and the elderly? Who cares for them? And what the hell does 100µSv/h actually mean? We are talking "µ" here. ie micro.
This video has told me nothing. You even saw the film maker with a bare hand. What does that tell us? The most 'scary' thing about it were those panic alarms. Turn the volume down and look at it again? How do you feel now? The anti-nuclear lobby really need to get a sense of proportion!
AND, I should point out, what about the massive oil slick left by BP in the States last year. Did that ever get discussed in such large hysterical proportions, worldwide, on forums and thoughout the internet? Did it ****!?
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You are correct about the sound track.
@tfdesign said:What I find more moving are all the ripped up roads, and the lack of people. I mean where are all these people been moved too? What about the sick and the elderly? Who cares for them?
That is what I was refering to when talking about making mountains out of nothing.
salud -
It's okay. I know. I was reinforcing what you were saying
Salud!
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@unknownuser said:
Radiation levels exceed permissible limit
The science ministry says the amount of radiation accumulated over about half a month in some areas of Fukushima Prefecture has exceeded the permissible level for a whole year.Since March 23rd, the ministry has been measuring radiation levels in 15 locations more than 20 kilometers away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
At one location, in Namie Town about 30 kilometers northwest of the plant, 14,480 microsieverts of radiation had accumulated over the 17-day period to Sunday.
8,440 microsieverts of radiation were observed in Iitate Village.In another location in Namie, the amount reached 6,430 microsieverts.
People would be exposed to this accumulated amount of radiation if they had stayed outdoors throughout the entire period.The level at one location was more than 14 times the 1,000 microsieverts that the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends as the long-term annual reference level for people. The recommended level of 1,000 microsieverts excludes radiation from the natural environment and medical devices.
Hiroshima University Professor Kiyoshi Shizuma says most of the radiation observed in Fukushima is believed to be radioactive cesium that has fallen to the ground.
Shizuma advises residents to wear masks to avoid inhaling radioactive substances mixed with dust.
He points to the need to take samples both from the air and the ground for detailed analyses in order to assess any possible impact on human health.Monday, April 11, 2011 21:20 +0900 (JST)
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yessss....andddd.....?
I also heard on the radio this morning that the alert had been raised to category 7, the same as Chernobyl. But what we weren't told- until John Humphrys probed deeper (oohh-errr!), was that this reading was taken from irradiated water deep inside the reactor, and despite a crack in the wall in the reactor, levels were still 10 times lower than that of Chernobyl.
@unknownuser said:
Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where 10 times as much radiation was emitted.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13045341
You have to remember that yesterday there was another major tremor in Japan measuring something like 7.1 magnitude, with the epicentre only 50Km from Fukushima, Yet its reactor stayed intact.
@unknownuser said:
The epicentre of the quake was in Fukushima prefecture, and struck at a depth of just 10km (six miles).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13032122
On 'a lighter note' (considering that the west are so obsessed by whats going on at the plant rather than up north), 28,000 now confirmed DEAD.
Deaths from Fukushima? NIL.
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@tfdesign said:
If it is so dangerous, why are these guys driving through no-man's land?
Make no mistake, radiation is dangerous. Life expectancy in the greater Chernobyl area (or was it the whole of Ukraine? - I forgot) has dropped from 75 to 55 years. And you'd really have to go out of your way over there to find a newly-born that hasn't got one or more chronic ilnesses.
In any case, whether or not the Fukushima incident poses a real health threat to, say, Tokyo's inhabitants (and it will), the likely outcome is that it'll profoundly change Japanese society. I cannot imagine there won't be mass migration to the south of the country. Keep in mind, 7 million (!) people left the Ukraine since Chernobyl.
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@unknownuser said:
Make no mistake, radiation is dangerous.
That must be the understatement of the year!!!
But then is coal dust, as well as the gasses like methane that are released from coal (and oil). But that's not really the point....
(and you did'nt quote my point about pollen either did you?)
arghhh should be working right now.... must resist!!!
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@unknownuser said:
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
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@unknownuser said:
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
Does anyone actually read what I posted only an hour ago or so?
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The good news regarding radioactive iodine decay times. Still, by the factors below, assuming no further leaks, there remains 1,300 tera-becquerels dispersed over the environment.
@unknownuser said:
TEPCO: 1% of radioactive iodine released outside
Tokyo Electric Power Company estimates that about one percent of the radioactive iodine at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been released since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami damaged the facility.The company on Tuesday announced the estimated radioactivity levels of all substances at the plant's 6 reactors and fuel storage pools at the time of the disaster.
The estimates are classified under radioactive noble gases, iodine or other materials.
81 million tera-becquerels of iodine-131 are believed to have existed at the plant.
The utility says the amount of iodine-131 released outside the plant is about one percent of the total with a margin of error included.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said earlier in the day that 130,000 tera-becquerels of iodine-131 have been released so far.The company also says that, *provided no leak occurred, the level of iodine-131 at the plant had fallen to less than one-hundredth of the pre-disaster level as of Monday.
The level declines naturally, as the radioactivity of iodine-131 falls by half in 8 days*.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 03:18 +0900 (JST)
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Just for informational purposes, in case someone hasn't run into the term 'becquerel' before.
It's a measure of activity, in which 1 decay event occurs every second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
From that link:
@unknownuser said:
The nuclear explosion in Hiroshima (14 kt or 59 TJ) is estimated to have produced 8×10^24 Bq (8 YBq, 8 yottabecquerel).
For comparison purposes (as dangerous as that is) a terabecquerel is 1x10^12 Bq. So 130,000 x 10^12 bequerels, or 130 x10^15 bequerels, or 130 petabequerels, or .13 exabequerels (which is the prefix for "x10^18") of iodine 131 have been released.
About one - sixty one millionth the total decays per second. But that's really apples and oranges, because comparing the relatively slow decay of iodine 131 to an engineered millisecond-length nuclear chain reaction isn't really informative.
Another comparison is that about 3.5 million curies of iodine-131 have been released.
@unknownuser said:
A radiotherapy machine may have roughly 1000 Ci of a radioisotope such as caesium-137 or cobalt-60. This quantity of nuclear material can produce serious health effects with only a few minutes of exposure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie
So there's the rough approximation of 3,500 radiotherapy sources floating around... dispersed over who knows how many cubic kilometers by now.
Iodine 131 does have a half life of 8.02 days. In four months (120 days) about 3 thousandths of a percent will still exist. In a year (360 days)2.84 x 10^-12 percent will still be undecayed.
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