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Deep breath...

You do realize the Fukushima Daiichi plant is 40 years old, right?

Yes, and I'm also aware that the plant was supposed to have been decommissioned already, per the regulatory code you cite. It just wasn't because that regulatory code was ignored for the sake of profit and convenience.

The code wasn't ignored, it was overturned. The regulators were telling the Japanese government that it was unsafe for the last 5 years. They were also talking about the falsified safety records in the plant. Nobody lied, this was public information. It was just completely disregarded by the Japanese government.

There are a lot of plants built during that time, sure, but every plant that I know of keeps up with the current safety standards and are under constant, continuous monitoring to make sure everything is safe.

And with all the lies about the state of Fukishima while it was occuring, how can I trust anything you say about these inspections? Are the inspectors on the take from the industry? Did they used to work in the industry? Are they ignoring this hairline crack or that little problem because "it'll be OK"?

The inspectors are not financially influenced by the industry at all. IAEA, which is the security organization that was warning Japan of the issues regarding Fukushima Daiichi, reports directly to the UN. Their focus is peaceful uses of nuclear technology as well as regulate nuclear safety and security. This industry also has at least two more regulatory councils; WANO, (which was established after Chernobyl by IAEA, the UN, and independent governments/nuclear plants, whose focus is nuclear safety and efficiency) as well as WINS (established in 2008 to influence the safe handling of nuclear material and facilities). I would absolutely hope they used to work in the industry, I can't imagine anybody more qualified to inspect a nuclear power plant than someone from the field. The inspectors don't ignore a single hair, let alone a hairline crack. I've been through inspections before, they are properly thorough. Besides, if one of them lies, they'll be caught red-handed by either of the other two and wouldn't be trusted again.

I don't trust the regulators. I don't trust the industry. They both lie. How can I have any trust for any part of it when they lie?

Neither the regulators nor the industry lie. There's no incentive for the regulators to brush over something, they don't get bonuses for passing more plants, they themselves are regulated by the UN. The last thing they want is to break international law. The liars are the governments. They're the ones that have to sink money into plants that need repairs/reconditioning. Japan happens to be a very proud country and ignored the warnings given. This is what has to stop.

At least I know the coal industry isn't lying to me. I know what the dangers are and I trust that people are aware. I do not trust any booster of nuclear power anymore. With so many lies, how can I? And you don't even bother to address that point at all, which tells me you don't actually care that they lie.

The coal industry is most certainly lying to you. They spend MILLIONS in advertising and attempts at covering up the death numbers. But more importantly, you make a very dangerous, and erroneous, assumption. If you assume people know of the dangers (which is not true, as evidenced by this article stating that ten years ago, one out of five people believed the sun revolves around Earth) you're putting more faith in mankind then they deserve. People live ignorantly by choice.

The danger and scope of Fukishima was consist

The consequences of such an event shouldn't be ignored.

And they weren't. End of story.

No, *not* end of story. They still launch RTGs, in spite of the real risks involved. They didn't "ignore" the risks completely (they did shield the reactors), but they still went ahead with these launches, even though there are risks involved.

Yes, end of story! Read up on RTG, start with the wikipedia article, especially the part about when a rocket blev up on the launch pad and the RTG was thrown in a nice parabola into the ocean. There was no leakage, it survived and it was reused on a later flight. Since the amount of plutonium in them is really small, they can be engineered *really* sturdy, and they are. They are designed to survive a launch pad explosion and every other possible disaster. Oh, and please stop using the word "reactor", they're not reactors.

Everything else you wrote is either wrong or completely irrelevant. There are no lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima that can be applied to RTGs, and no analogies between them can be drawn except for ones comparing apples with spoons.

The lessons are that you can't engineer away disaster. Not a single thing ever invented is disaster-proof (in fact, there have been some notable "disaster-proof" inventions famously succumbing to disaster. Raise your hand if you can name two). Nuclear reactors are apt examples because they involve severe effects when things go wrong. Fukushima and Chernobyl suffered meltdowns. Something which RTGs cannot do, but they dispersed radioactive material (*especially* Fukushima), which RTGs very much can do.

Of course you can engineer away disaster! We do it all the time. The problem is that you have to draw the line somewhere, but since RTGs are small and light-weight, they're much easier to design to be fail safe.

RTGs don't work even remotely like a nuclear reactor of any type, well-engineered, poorly-engineered, or otherwise.

First off, that's absolutely false. They *are* nuclear reactors. However, I'll cut you some slack on that and assume you meant that they aren't similar in danger to traditional large-scale nuclear power plants. This is true, but I've never claimed otherwise.

No, they're NOT nuclear reactors. If that were true, a smoke detector would qualify as a nuclear reactor. They contain a chunk of radioactive material that just sits there, safely encased. The decay heat is then used for generating electricity. Quoting wikipedia: "A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction". Go read up on nuclear physics.

It's not clear that plutonium is as dangerous as people have been told it is. In particular, there seems to be no scientific backing for the usual claim that a single inhaled particle is 'guaranteed' to cause cancer.

No one claimed a "single particle" would guarantee cancer. And the link you posted made the case that plutonium is very dangerous. Did you not read it first?

RTGs containing various radioisotopes have been damaged in accidents before with no apocalyptic consequences,.

No one is claiming "apocalyptic consequences". Speaking for myself alone, I'm talking about completely innocent bystanders being killed as a consequence of disaster, without being aware of any impact, decades later.

At least with most disasters, you know when you are at risk, the disaster is localized, and when it's over, it's over. Nuclear disasters have the distinction of not being so forthcoming with the aftermath.

When you build an RTG you use such a small amount of radioactive material that it's feasible to encapsulate it in a manner that renders it reasonably safe under any

The consequences of such an event shouldn't be ignored.

And they weren't. End of story.

No, *not* end of story. They still launch RTGs, in spite of the real risks involved. They didn't "ignore" the risks completely (they did shield the reactors), but they still went ahead with these launches, even though there are risks involved.

Everything else you wrote is either wrong or completely irrelevant. There are no lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima that can be applied to RTGs, and no analogies between them can be drawn except for ones comparing apples with spoons.

The lessons are that you can't engineer away disaster. Not a single thing ever invented is disaster-proof (in fact, there have been some notable "disaster-proof" inventions famously succumbing to disaster. Raise your hand if you can name two). Nuclear reactors are apt examples because they involve severe effects when things go wrong. Fukushima and Chernobyl suffered meltdowns. Something which RTGs cannot do, but they dispersed radioactive material (*especially* Fukushima), which RTGs very much can do.

RTGs don't work even remotely like a nuclear reactor of any type, well-engineered, poorly-engineered, or otherwise.

First off, that's absolutely false. They *are* nuclear reactors. However, I'll cut you some slack on that and assume you meant that they aren't similar in danger to traditional large-scale nuclear power plants. This is true, but I've never claimed otherwise.

It's not clear that plutonium is as dangerous as people have been told it is. In particular, there seems to be no scientific backing for the usual claim that a single inhaled particle is 'guaranteed' to cause cancer.

No one claimed a "single particle" would guarantee cancer. And the link you posted made the case that plutonium is very dangerous. Did you not read it first?

RTGs containing various radioisotopes have been damaged in accidents before with no apocalyptic consequences,.

No one is claiming "apocalyptic consequences". Speaking for myself alone, I'm talking about completely innocent bystanders being killed as a consequence of disaster, without being aware of any impact, decades later.

At least with most disasters, you know when you are at risk, the disaster is localized, and when it's over, it's over. Nuclear disasters have the distinction of not being so forthcoming with the aftermath.

When you build an RTG you use such a small amount of radioactive material that it's feasible to encapsulate it in a manner that renders it reasonably safe under any reasonably conceivable failure conditions. (Launch-pad explosions are not all that violent, frankly -- Kaku's major concern with Cassini was the Earth flyby, where a miscalculation would have exposed the RTG to much greater heat and higher mechanical stress.)

I'm not talking about "reasonably conceivable failure conditions". It's not the things you've planned for, it's the things you *didn't* plan for (which is why I brought up Fukushima and Chernobyl. Both were engineered for reasonable expectations, but they still failed because not everything that happens is reasonable).

The launch will probably be successful, and if it's not, it's very unlikely that anyone will die from plutonium exposure as a result. Those are the only guarantees you'll get from any honest engineer. They're good enough for me, they're good enough for you, and they're good enough for the good Dr. Kaku.

Who are you to speak for others? They may be good enough for you, but you have no business speaking on behalf of others.

I'm not saying that I'm particularly concerned about RTGs in general. I'm just trying to show that concern is reasonable. Engineer-types tend to mischaracterize anyone who dares question the safety of nuclear systems as some sort of crazy person.

The consequences of such an event shouldn't be ignored.

And they weren't. End of story.

Everything else you wrote is either wrong or completely irrelevant. There are no lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima that can be applied to RTGs, and no analogies between them can be drawn except for ones comparing apples with spoons.

RTGs don't work even remotely like a nuclear reactor of any type, well-engineered, poorly-engineered, or otherwise. It's not clear that plutonium is as dangerous as people have been told it is. In particular, there seems to be no scientific backing for the usual claim that a single inhaled particle is 'guaranteed' to cause cancer. RTGs containing various radioisotopes have been damaged in accidents before with no apocalyptic consequences,.

When you build an RTG you use such a small amount of radioactive material that it's feasible to encapsulate it in a manner that renders it reasonably safe under any reasonably conceivable failure conditions. (Launch-pad explosions are not all that violent, frankly -- Kaku's major concern with Cassini was the Earth flyby, where a miscalculation would have exposed the RTG to much greater heat and higher mechanical stress.)

The launch will probably be successful, and if it's not, it's very unlikely that anyone will die from plutonium exposure as a result. Those are the only guarantees you'll get from any honest engineer. They're good enough for me, they're good enough for you, and they're good enough for the good Dr. Kaku.

At least someone isn't giving up.

Still, the lessons of Fukushima Daiichi are serious. There are a sizable number of reactors out there which will melt down if they lose cooling pump power. (The reactors and the pumps at Fukushima survived the earthquake and tsunami. Cooling continued until the battery bank ran down, then stopped. All the damage shown in photos is from later hydrogen explosions.) That's unacceptable. There has to be backup passive cooling.

All plants should have catalytic hydrogen recombiners to prevent hydrogen explosions. There's no excuse for not having those. That should have been fixed after TMI, decades ago.

Long term storage of used fuel rods on site has got to stop. After initial cooling, those need to go to dry cask storage.

The really tough issue is evacuation zones. Indian Point in New York has 19 million people within 50 miles.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/06/us-japan-nuclear-health-idUSTRE7354H920110406

From the article: 'Asked what health consequences he expected from Fukushima, he said: "From what I know now, nothing, because levels are so low. In food, people are talking about levels which would give you one millisieverts per year, five millisieverts per year ... this is nothing where we would expect major health impacts."'

There is a UN investigation team tasked with long term health monitoring. It will be interesting to see what their findings are 10 or 20 years from now. This does not mean that there are no problems. There are problems to the environment and those problems will continue for quite a long time. This is going to be one messy and costly clean up.

A lot of people don't have a good handle on what level of (and especially what sorts of) radioactivity are likely to cause health problems. They often incorrectly assume that any level of radiation exposure will lead to a statistically significant number of cancers. Standards for radiation exposure are set incredibly low compared to the amount necessary to cause health effects. There is a misunderstanding that exceeding an exposure standard will lead to health problems.

Personally, I found it really helpful to read the collections of reports here: http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html These talk about the amount of radiation that came from Chernobyl, how people were exposed, the type of treatment they received and the long term health effects. It's kind of a hard read, but if you keep Wikipedia open in another tab, you can slowly make your way through it. Finally, information about radioactive contamination in Fukushima is available from the International Atomic Energy Agency at the UN http://www.iaea.org/ After you get a handle on the effects of what happened at Chernobyl you can compare it to Fukushima using real data.

one event was able to take out locally-generated power (because the reactors scrammed)

The reactors were scrammed manually.

According to the IAEA they scrammed automatically (see http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/meetings/PDFplus/2011/cn200/documentation/cn200_Final-Fukushima-Mission_Report.pdf), but it makes no difference: even if someone has to press a button, if the operating procedures say to press that button in the event of an earthquake then you need to take that into account when performing the risk analysis.

FACTS.

FACTS.

FACTS.

FACTS.

Pro-Nuke news is out there, it's just nobody will report on it, because it won't attract as much viewers/readers.

There were no melt throughs at Fukashima, there were melt downs of the core but these all were contained. See the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log.

To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.

2. From Wikipedia's page on the 2011 tsunami:

The Japanese National Police Agency has confirmed 15,365 deaths, 5,363 injured, and 8,206 people missing

Just sayin'.

International Atomic Energy Agency

Actually the scale is not about damage to the plant either. The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) considers three factors [PDF]. The first factor refers to the effects on people and the release of radioactive materials, the second to the plant itself and the third to the failure of safety systems.

Obviously, the Fukushima accident (that's a INES term, by the way) is very high on the second and third factors, and it remains to be seen how high on the first factor.

Go here to get the IAEA's reports on the state of Fukashima. It used to be updated daily and you can see what state the cores were in at the time. Core damage was revealed early & updated as the state of the reactors became better known.

One point you can bank on: At no point did the fuel melt through the primary containment. The damage to the core assemblies means that the fuel rods overheated to the point where the pellets have certainly fallen to the bottom of the reactor, but that also means that they fell back into the water and were cooled. The continual injection of water has prevented the pellets from overheating once again and the addition of boron to the water has prevented a restart of criticality in the pellets.

If the fuel had melted through the primary containment, there would have been many more isotopes detectable than the Iodine & Cesium found in and around the secondary containment than has been found up to date. There is certainly some damage to the bottom of the reactor vessel but to find out how much will take access to it. That won't happen until they are able to evacuate the contaminated water in the basements, reestablish a closed cooling loop & decontaminate the buildings enough to send in video cameras. A reasonable timescale for answers seems to be 1-2 years.

The new level is 20 millisieverts per year. That's 2 rem per year using the older dosing method. Playgrounds are new permitted up to 3.6 microsieverts per hour. The IAEA gives this guidance:

The dose limits for practices are intended to ensure that no individual is committed to unacceptable risk due to radiation exposure. For the public the limit is 1 mSv in a year, or in special circumstances up to 5 mSv in a single year provided that the average does over five consecutive years does not exceed 1 mSv per year.

Typically permissible levels are lower for children because they have more time to develop cancer. In theory children exposed at the 20 mSv per annum level can be expected to increase their rates of cancer from one in 500 to one in 200. In practice the children aren't going to be exposed to environmental radioactivity at the maximum level for the whole time. Regardless, many millions of children are going to be exposed to higher levels of environmental radiation because of this. Zero is the optimum healthful level of radiation and there is no healthful effect from any increase. More of them are going to get cancer. Some 30 years hence, some few hundred of them will have died who would not yet have if this had not happened. Japan's explanation for why they raised the limit is sanguine: effectively, "because we must. The radiation is in the schools. We cannot evacuate the entire region." Japan is an island. It's not like they have an Alaska to evacuate people to. Besides, it's not like the schools and playgrounds have any more radiation than the homes at this point.

Now please do go on about how this is all ok, nothing important has happened, how nuclear power is the cure for all the world's ills - too cheap to meter. Tell me how you get more radiation from your Brita. Please continue to ignore that Japan has the choice of geothermal which is cheaper renewable baseload power that doesn't have these risks at all. I want to see you try to justify this.

But before you start... the worst may not yet be over. Criticality is probably still occurring in at least one of these reactors or they wouldn't be injecting them with Boron. The US is probably watching this go on because we have satellites particularly sensitive to "neutron beams" but we're too polite to point it out. It's too late to inject these reactors with Boron because the water, and hence the Boric acid, can't reach the heart of the corium piles on the floor of the primary containment. It all boils off before it gets even close to the physical place where it can damp the ongoing reaction. Eventually one or more of these corium lava piles may melt into the flooded basement, come into contact with the highly radioactive pools of water, and explode in a giant flash of radioactive steam. If that happens the cloud will be visible for many miles. There's no hiding it. If the wind is blowing inland that day it will deposit most of its nuclear enhanced goodness on the bulk of the island, including Tokyo, before moving on to contaminate China and Korea. Japan's neighbors will not be amused. And they won't be pouring any new water in for a few weeks anyway, because they have no place to store the radioactive runoff afterward.

At the time Japan chose the nuclear path it was a brilliant stroke with some risks. They took the risks and benefited from that choice for 30 years. With abundant cheap electricity they became an economic engine for the rest of the world to envy. I can't be critical of the choice they took at that time: the cost of not doing it was far higher. But then is not now. Science has progressed to the point where Japan no longer needs nuclear power. As they recover from this disaster I expect they will turn away from it. Others may need nuclear now, but not Japan.

To replace with tidal means you have to destroy your fishing grounds.

What fishing grounds?

Food Monitoring and Food Restrictions (12 - 18 May 2011)
(...)
"In Fukushima prefecture, 175 of the 194 samples (more than 90%) had radiocaesium levels below the regulation values set by the Japanese authorities. However, 19 of the 194 samples (fewer than 10%) exceeded the regulation values for Cs-134/Cs-137. Samples above the regulation values were bamboo shoots (ten samples), shiitake mushrooms (five samples), and four samples of fish (two samples of whitebait, one sample of ayu and one sample of Japanese smelt)."

Here you go. Click the links for the three presentations of status for reactors 1-3. You're welcome.

What about the Strontium-90?
According to the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_product_yield, table "medium-lived fission products", the yield of Sr-90 should be a bit less than the amount of Cs-137 and the half-life also comparable (28 years vs 30 years).
It's chemically similar to Calcium and Magnesium which we need to live and build our bones and teeth from. We are exposed to the calcium in our bones all our life, from within our body, and our bones protect our bone marrow from irradiation.
Now imagine that a child grows up incorporating a tiny little bit of Sr-90 instead of Ca-40 in her shoulderblade (say it comes from Fukushima prefecture milk). I say imagine because I don't have a clear idea what the risk is and how it depends on diet.
Now imagine that this child develops leukemia. What are the odds that the bit of Sr-90 in her shoulderblade caused it, that it sickened her marrow? I don't know but I don't think it's negligible.
Yet, almost all the reports on the IAEA page (http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html) only mention I-131 and Cs-137. So where dd the Sr-90 go to???? it is only mentioned in the 13 april report.

Even chernobyl only killed around 50 people.

The IAEA, i.e. the group lobbying worldwide for the construction of new nuclear power plants and the minimization of nuclear fear among the population, estimates 4,000 deaths at Chernobyl because of the disaster (source). Yet with your faith in nuclear power you managed to be more catholic than the pope and lowered the death toll by 80 times. Enough said.

If the Fukushima reactor can melt its way through a concrete floor,

Huh?

Checks the IAEA status page. No mention of reactors melting their way through concrete floors there.

Your source is?

Getting back to Europa ... if you hand-wave a large power supply onto Europa's surface then you have got round many problems, but not all.

another one in orbit around Europa. The latter might an earlier reconnaissance probe that's repurposed for that end.

Saturn's system is crowded - 60-odd moons known. How stable will an orbit around Europa be? Serious question.

Your previous, re-purposed probe presumably has it's own power supply, which will almost certainly be solar panels. Their lifetime? Their power output? Fuel for station-keeping and orbit correction?

It's not so simple. I would like it if it were that simple, but it's not.

The IAEA maintains an excellent log of the status of the reactors, spent fuel pools, isotope monitoring, and radiation levels.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

In Unit 1, fresh water is being continuously injected into the RPV through the feed-water line at an indicated flow rate of 6 m3/h using a temporary electric pump with off-site power. In Units 2 and 3, fresh water is being continuously injected through the fire extinguisher lines at an indicated rate of 7 m3/h using temporary electric pumps with off-site power.

So we know the amount of water being pumped in.

RPV temperatures remain above cold shutdown conditions in all Units, (typically less than 95oC). In Unit 1 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 180oC and at the bottom of the RPV is 117oC. In Unit 2, the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 141oC. In Unit 3 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 91oC and at the bottom of the RPV is 122oC.

We know a fair amount about the temperatures of the reactor units.

In accordance with the report of the Nuclear Emergency Response HQs (Prime Minister’s Office) from 15th April, thermography temperatures of the Containment Vessel and Spent Fuel Pool in Unit 1 were 33 oC and 36 oC respectively. In Unit 3 the temperatures were 68oC and 59oC at the same positions. Also on the 15th April, thermography temperature of the Unit 2 reactor building roof was 31 oC

We know the temperatures in the spent fuel pools.

In accordance with NISA Release 94, TEPCO took water samples from the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 on 12th April, in order to examine the conditions. The sample was taken by using the arm of the concrete pump vehicle. At the same time, the temperature of water in the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 was measured with a thermistor attached to the arm of the concrete pump vehicle. The activities for I-131, Cs-134 and Cs-137 were 220 Bq/cm3, 88 Bq/cm3 and 93 Bq/cm3 respectively.

And we know the radioactivity of the water in the spent fuel pools.

A reference: Between naturally occurring radioactive Potassium and Carbon-14, every human body (or other form of carbon-based life) is radioactive. Humans have about 8 kBq of radiation per person (more or less depending on one's mass, of course). It works out to around 114 Bq/cm3. So the water in spent fuel pool 4 is about twice as radioactive as your average hunk of meat - or about the same as a banana. (Potassium & Carbon 14 are much safer forms of radiation than radioactive Iodine & Cesium; but it's a fun comparison).

We know that units 2 & 3 are at atmospheric pressure, and that unit 1's pressure is in the same range as tire pressure (0.4 Mpa, or ~58 PSI for Americans...).

So there's actually quite a bit that is known.

It's taking so long because the Japanese are being quite cautious about radiation exposure. I read a report yesterday that no worker has received more than 100 mSv since Mar 11; the maximum allowed for emergency workers is 200-250 mSv or so. (They did have a couple of guys whose feet were well dosed for a short time, but the whole-body radiation level was still below 100 mSv).

I was wrong about iodine-131. Thank you for the correction.

OTOH, there has been a lot of cesium-137 from Fukushima detected. The levels generally track the levels of iodine-131 when both are measured. For example, the IAEA said:

On 12th April, deposition of both iodine-131 and cesium-137 was detected in 7 and 6 prefectures respectively. The values reported for iodine-131 ranged from 1.6 to 460 Bq/m2 and for cesium-137 from 31 to 700 Bq/m2. The highest deposition was observed in the Ibaraki prefecture.

There is also concern about radioactive cesium in mushrooms and in fish although I have not been able to confirm how much of this is cesium-137. In fact, trace amounts of cesium-137, assumed to be from Fukushima, have been found in milk in Hawaii and Vermont.

This is the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

They have been recording specific facts every day that you can use to gauge the plant's progress. For example, take this copy and paste from the report on April 11: "In Unit 1 the pressure in the RPV is increasing, as indicated on both channels of instrumentation. In Units 2 and 3 Reactor Pressure Vessel and Drywell pressures remain at atmospheric pressure. RPV temperatures remain above cold shutdown conditions in all Units, (typically less than 95 C). In Unit 1 temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 228 C and at the bottom of the RPV is 121 C. In Unit 2 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 149 C. The temperature at the bottom of the RPV was not reported. In Unit 3 the temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is 92 C and at the bottom of the RPV is 111 C."

Seems a lot more scientific than the average news media to me...

The inexcusable part of all this was the hydrogen explosion. Explosions. That's the cause of all the structural damage. The reactor buildings survived the earthquake and tsunami.

That's a known, expected problem. It was a big worry at Three Mile Island, but they managed to avoid it. It is preventable. There are catalytic recombiners, passive devices which recombine hydrogen and oxygen non-explosively. Many nuclear plants have them, but pre-TMI plants usually don't. If those had been retrofitted in the decades since TMI, this would have been a much smaller disaster. See this IAEA paper, "Mitigation of hydrogen hazards in water-cooled power reactors". They indicate that passive recombiners are necessary, and are in use in Germany, France, Canada, the United States, and Russia. They've been retrofitted to the GE Mark I reactor in other countries. But not, for some reason, in Japan.

The cooling pumps survived the earthquake and tsunami, and continued to run until the battery backups ran out. The hydrogen explosions probably damaged them and their plumbing and wiring. (Nobody can get through the wreckage and radioactivity yet to tell. A remote-controlled backhoe/grab and a dump truck are now being used to dig through the rubble.) If it hadn't been for the hydrogen explosions, restoration of power would have restored reactor and fuel pool cooling.

So that's where TEPCO screwed up. They failed to install a low-cost standard protective device that's been used elsewhere for decades.

And people on slashdot.org read that Japan has already released 10% as much radioactive material as Chernobyl, and somehow it's all a liberal scare.

And furthermore, those 10% only compare atmospheric release. Just my personal educated guess, but I think the share of atmospheric release in Fukushima accident is much lower than for Chernobyl, where we had an open reactor fire.

There is quite a bit of independent monitoring:

http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

(Note that those links both use the available TEPCO data, but they also list other data)

So if there is a coverup, it is more than just TEPCO and Japan.

I don't remember if they actually gave figures for the water, but the IAEA updates page gives lots of actual figures compared to the news:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

I think it's been handled pretty well. Nobody has been killed by DEADLY ATOMS, and the only radiological injuries have been skin burns to two workers who ignored their dosimeter alarms. The release of radionuclides into the air has been minimal, and the amounts found in food and water have dropped back below minimum levels in all but the immediate locality to the reactor complex (and the levels there are only above the 'constant yearly exposure' maximums). Reactor core and storage pool temperatures are again under control, and coolant water containment in all but two reactors is unbreached. In one of those, the leak of irradiated coolant is within the reactor complex.
The 'crack' mentioned in this case is not in the reactor containment itself as the summary and article imply, but in a water storage pool next to the sea, with the crack being between the pool and the sea.

Not that lessons can't be learnt from this: gravity-feed coolant reservoirs would be a good idea, as well as separate backups for the storage pools and cores, but it's far from "getting steadily worse".

IAEA Incident page
MIT NSE hub
WNN

The average total deposition determined at these locations for iodine-131 range from 0.2 to 25 Megabecquerel per square metre and for cesium-137 from 0.02-3.7 Megabecquerel per square metre.

And now that we got that out of the way, let me congratulate you on that fine piece of humor: Critizising someone for not providing a source for that true statement, while you at the same time fail to provide a source for your own made-up statement that the quoted number refers to iodine-131 and not cesium-137.

Fix the management issues how? You are volunteering?

Do you want to see another disaster? One that could have been avoided with the appropriate management decisions? (... we can always say in hindsight.) One that is leaving behind a huge mess to clean up? That has also caused evacuations and has taken lives?

Here.

A little explanation. Check the links at the bottom of that page for more, because it wasn't just Sendai.

(I assume you will find the Japanese no problem to read?)

Oh. And if you are having a hard time finding the latest information on the nuclear power plants, look here. The IAEA also has some information, although you might find it rather cryptic.

Oh japan.org? ... fake rads map ... fear mongering anti-nuke crap ... Good call.

Instead of a brain-dead attack on the messenger, why not try finding out the truth for yourself? It takes all of 10 seconds to go to the IAEA site here and see the numbers quoted by the OP are correct:

The average total deposition determined at these locations for iodine-131 range from 0.2 to 25 Megabecquerel per square metre and for cesium-137 from 0.02-3.7 Megabecquerel per square metre. The highest values were found in a relatively small area in the Northwest from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. First assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village. We advised the counterpart to carefully assess the situation.

What do you mean, out of options? They detail their options on a daily basis in every press conference they hold.

Currently they are trying to remove the radioactive water from the trench connecting the reactor building to the combine room, and once that is done they will continue with power restoration to get cooling systems back online. Removing the water will also help them determine what kind of additional damage they are facing, if there are water leaks, and whether any circuit boards need to be replaced.

They are also currently trying to decide on ways to minimize the spread of airborne radiation further, including a liquid material that will reduce dust in the area and a specialized tarp that will keep radiation from spreading from the damage reactor buildings.

Seriously. Just visit some reputable news sources once in a while:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/ http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Erm performing upgrades on the site is quite different from performing upgrades on reactors. I can't remember the source, try some googlefu, the only reactors which were not going to be replaced with mkIII reactors were reactors 5 and 6. There was a 10 year plan for the rest of the 40 year old site.

It's nice listening to Tepco isn't it. So I ask you again what has changed? Oooh look, nothing. They are still pumping water manually through units 1 2 and 3. Actually it looks like at this point they are pumping fresh water. Funny that, so they are pumping coolant which is LESS damaging to the reactor now that they've announced the reactors are beyond repair than the corrosive shit they pumped through before while they were (according to you and you alone) trying to salvage it.

Try comprehending what the news says. The core has melted, some of it has damaged containment, and the operator says it's not salvageable, no fucking shit.

As for encasing the reactor? Good work armchair engineer. How do you encase a reactor which is having out of control temperature excursions which is under continuous deluge? Oh that's right you don't because while your workers are busy covering it cement the out of control reaction either melts through the floor or explodes into the sky. Encasing a troubled reactor is *NEVER* an option. Encasing a reactor that is under control and running at a reasonable temperature is. You clearly have no appreciation for the types of reactions and temperatures which occur here.

I always read the reports on the matter. Generally no fluff and about as accurate as you can hope for.

more importantly, the IAEA hasn't corroborated this at all. If it isn't here it didn't happen: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Last update from the IAEA incident report page Is that the Unit 2 RPV well temperature remains stable at just under 300C, with pressure little above ambient. That doesn't square with a "molten corium breaching RPV" scenario, where temperatures would be a few thousand C at the RPV well, and pressure would rise as the molten corium dripping onto the concrete drywell causes outgassing.

According to the latest IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (29 March 2011, 16:30 UTC) at http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

The RPV has not been breached in any of the reactors and the non empty reactors (1-3) are being cooled with fresh water.

Here is the last post from IAEA:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident Update (28 March, 23:00 UTC)
Japan Confirms Plutonium in Soil Samples at Fukushima Daiichi.

After taking soil samples at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese authorities today confirmed finding traces of plutonium that most likely resulted from the nuclear accident there. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told the IAEA that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had found concentrations of plutonium in two of five soil samples.

Traces of plutonium are not uncommon in soil because they were deposited worldwide during the atmospheric nuclear testing era. However, the isotopic composition of the plutonium found at Fukushima Daiichi suggests the material came from the reactor site, according to TEPCO officials. Still, the quantity of plutonium found does not exceed background levels tracked by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology over the past 30 years.

Also, Japan's NISA has this report:
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110329-5.html
That points to TEPCO's original analysis:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110328e14.pdf

The reactors at the Fukushima no.1 complex were hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, THEN a 12m high tsunami, and THEN several explosions.

Hmm.
Let's turn that around a bit:
The reactors at the Fukushima no.1 complex suffered several (chemical) explosions and possibly core meltdown and melting fuel rods in the spent fuel pool because the electricity to the cooling systems was interrupted for more than a few hours.

Remember, reactor # 4 was off-line during the earthquake and tsunami. There were not even any rods in the reactor itself; That's the one with the full spent fuel pool.
Worst-case scenario: if the fuel rods in that pool melt and flow together at the bottom of that pool, which is on the second floor of the building, outside of the actual reactor core. So, what's the status of that pool since 20 March? The IAEA page says only:

Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update (27 March 2011, 01:15 UTC) (...) Unit 4 From March 22 to March 25, 130 to 150 tonnes of seawater was poured into the spent fuel pool each day using a concrete pump. Sea water was also poured in through the spent fuel cooling system from 24 March, 21:05 UTC to 25 March, 01:20. White "smoke" was still being observed coming from the reactor building as of 25 March, 23:00 UTC.

When you only read western news, not only is it biased and uninformed, you're days behind.

From the 23/24th:
"dannychoo
  http://ow.ly/4lhVf radiations levels in Tokyo tap water have dropped off - safe for toddlers to drink."

Also this from WHO: "It should also be noted that the Japanese guideline value is an order lower than the internationally agreed Operational Intervention Levels (OIL's) for I-131 (3,000 Bq/kg), Cs-134 (1,000 Bq/kg) and Cs-137 (2,000 Bq/kg). Iodine-131 is not a significant source of radiation because of its low specific activity (ref. IAEA General Safety Guide No. 2: http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1467_web.pdf"

The radioactive iodine is almost certain to cause cancers and mortality in Japanese children in coming years.

From the IAEA staff report "Thyroid Cancer Effects in Children" :

The main consequence of the Chernobyl accident is thyroid cancer in children, some of whom were not yet born at the time of the accident. Following the vapour explosion and fire at the Chernobyl reactor, radioactive iodine was released and spread in the surrounding area. Despite measures taken, children in southern Belarus and northern Ukraine, were exposed to radiation in the weeks following the accident , particularly by consuming milk from pastured cows and leafy vegetables that had been contaminated with radioactive iodine.

Radioactive Iodine has a half-life of 8 days, so it is the immediate exposure that is the problem here. Unfortunately, the Japanese government took 3 days after the Iodine exposure was publicly announced (and, presumably, more days after they knew about it), to ban the eating of contaminated spinach (a "leafy vegetable") and dairy milk. Worse, when the iodine contamination was first made public, Mr. Yukio Edano, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, urge calm, saying that the contaminated food posed "no immediate threat." What weasel words - these cancers will take months to years to develop, so there is indeed no "immediate" threat. He should have urged people not to drink milk or vegetables from the affected area, instead.

Here is some more information about the risk from Iodine-131 at Fukushima. This is a problem particularly for children as their bodies take up the Iodine - similar doses don't cause problems for mature adults.

The only decent, unbiased coverage I've found is on MIT's web site. MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

Depressing that you can't find any other decent and/ or unbiased coverage. Try this http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html .

This chart applies only to "prompt" doses. Most of the casualties from Chernobyl (4000 to 8000 fatalities and counting) were from Thyroid cancer caused by exposure of children to radioactive Iodine....

The thyroid cancers, fortunately, did not cause many deaths, since it is highly treatable by thyroid removal (you were right when you counted them as casualties, but not as fatalities). This should not be treated lightly of course - who wants to see thousands of kids getting sick with thyroid cancer, have to undergo thyroid removal surgery, then be on thyroid replacement drugs for the rest of their life?

The eventual cancer death toll from Chernobyl is expected to top 10,000 or so eventually however, spread of millions of people.

This chart applies only to "prompt" doses. Most of the casualties from Chernobyl (4000 to 8000 fatalities and counting) were from Thyroid cancer caused by exposure of children to radioactive Iodine. This is not just a dose effect, as the same dosage from another material, or of adults rather than children, won't cause these cancers. So, this chart is not appropriate for these long-term dangers.

Radioactive iodine has been found in milk and spinach near Fukushima, ad it is very worrying that the Japanese government is only talking about "immediate effects" when the real danger is long term.

it would be more useful to learn of the radiation levels in the evacuated areas

You can get more info here.

At Chernobyl, this actually happened inside the containment vessel and the resulting explosion ruptured the vessel, leading to a serious release of core radioactives – though this has had basically zero effect on the world in general nor even much impact on the area around Chernobyl.

*faceplam*

I'm pretty pro-nuke/anti-hysteria, but this is just irresponsible. If you want the straight-up story, go to the IAEA page or see the analysis by Ars.

I doubt editors will correct this, given they didn't even notice they misspelled "Tsunami" (as "Tsumami") in the headline.

IAEA, and kyodo are useful in that sense.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/japan_nuclear_crisis/
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in ... wait for it... containment chambers!

You've vastly oversimplified what's going on. First of all, it's pretty clear that the first level of containment (the zirco-alloy cladding on the fuel) has failed. There's been radioactive iodine and cesium detected outside the plant, indicating the fuel rods have at least partially melted.

Those two can get outside the primary containment vessel because their primary cooling system is broken. Normally there are two water loops to keep the core cool. The inner water loop is a closed system which carries heat from the core to a heat exchanger. There the heat gets transferred to an outer water loop (ocean water in this case), which does the actual cooling. The inner loop water never leaves the plant, and thus not even the radioactive tritium which gets formed leaves the plant.

When the electrical systems and backups failed, that cooling system ceased to function. The only way they have to cool the core right now is to directly vent the water surrounding the core. Vent the steam, lower the pressure, cool the core. Best case you're releasing radioactive tritium. But since the rods have melted, the water is now in direct contact with the uranium fuel and fission products. That's where the radioactive iodine and cesium come from. Iodine is gaseous (so escapes along with the venting), and cesium is water soluble.

That's where we were at yesterday. It rated a 5 on the INES nuclear safety scale, which was the same as Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, today has had two very, very bad developments.

First, there's reports that the containment vessel for reactor #2 is damaged. No confirmation and no details. For whatever reason TEPCO and the Japanese government are being tight-lipped about it. Second, apparently some of the debris broke through the wall of building 4 and exposed a huge, huge flaw in the system. They have spent fuel rods and unused fuel rods sitting in storage pools outside of containment. The only thing protecting them is the water in the pool, and the building walls surrounding them. Walls which have blown apart in buildings #1 and #3, and have holes in #2 and #4.

Supposedly some of these spent fuel rods in building #4 caught fire (they're still experiencing nuclear decay, so still generating heat; just at a much, much slower rate than in reactors #1-#3 which were shut down recently). The water in the pool is supposed to keep them cool, but with the electricity gone, they suffered the same cooling failure as in reactors #1-#3. It just took a lot longer for the problem to exhibit itself since the amount of heat they were generating was much lower. Anyway, supposedly some of these rods caught fire, which corresponds to the sharp spike in radiation release yesterday. Those radiation readings dropped back down to "normal" again after the fire was put out.

But if those spent fuel rods have boiled off enough water to expose them to the air, then there is nothing stopping them from heating up. They will melt, possibly catch fire, and worst case they will start fissioning again after melting into a slag at the bottom of the pool. And all of this will happen outside of containment. Basically, the situation right now is only slightly better than what we had in Chernobyl - a hot core exposed to the atmosphere with a fire. That's why the situation was upgraded to a 6 on the INES scale today.

If the rods catch fire, it'll basically be the same as Chernobyl again. Maybe a bit smaller since the fuel isn't as hot as in

What I am asking for is a little fact-checking from the press and perhaps a smidgeon of accountability. There seems to be an insane amount of bullshit being spouted now, making people in Europe unduly worried about our safety here in Japan. In one of the worst examples of what press can do, bad press has caused unjustified refusal of vaccinations causing needless resurgence of nasty diseases (MUMPS/MMR, see f.ex. http://badscience.net/). No accountability at the press, they just find the most sensational snippet and extrapolate from that.

Meltdown? Yes and no. Some parts of the fuel rods will have melted, but the material should be contained within the containment vessel. Annoying to clean, but by no means a scare with a human toll looming that is ANYWHERE NEAR the tsunami toll. Just because it is nuclear does not mean it is scary.

Now that that is off my chest, the most objective news I have seen on the reactor issue comes from the IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

The number one comment is that (new) technology will save us. Ummm. yeah. In Northridge CA, and in SF CA, bridges fell during earthquakes that were built to the (then) latest seismic standards. Bugs occur in control software. Human error (some idiots mixed up two valves at Diablo Nuke plant last year causing a scramble at the plant).

Nuke is clean and cheap is another common Nuke industry talking point parroted by the /. commentators. Nuke power is really the most expensive source of power when you strip away the hidden costs ($0.25 - $0.30/KW/hr). http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf

Worse, the contamination and fossil fuel use in mining uranium is invariably ignored by the pro nuke folks. A study by the Canadian government shows the safety risks: http://www.ccnr.org/bcma.html. Currently, most uranium is enriched using power from burning coal, making nuke power a very carbon heavy source of energy. As we transition away from enriching uranium in centrifuges for nuke plants (we have to, there isn't much uranium left to extract), perhaps this will change, but current nuke energy is far from carbon neutral., but then we have other issues (huge worker safety issues, and still waste issues) as we move to reprocessing fuel.

One guy said the extent of the Chernobyl disaster was 50 people died (as if the only deaths were those in the first weeks of the disaster):

Even the IAEA says that 4000 people will have died http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Chernobyl/pdfs/pr.pdf And, most literature not affiliated with pro industry groups has extremely high estimates of the total death toll (up to a million, but these groups also have an agenda, so the truth likely falls somewhere in between). Since the IAEA report doesn't include those immediately evacuated into other countries (a significant number), it is probably not even suitable as a lower bound.

Since the disaster contaminated hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of farm land, and only a few thousand square kilometers were excluded from agriculture (indefinitely) the effects will be ongoing for thousands of years. The contamination spread across Europe (western and eastern) and the UK.

One commenter said if meltdown, rods would puddle on the floor, no biggie-- FTA:

According to experts interviewed by The Associated Press, any melted fuel would eat through the bottom of the reactor vessel. Next, it would eat through the floor of the already-damaged containment building. At that point, the uranium and dangerous byproducts would start escaping into the environment.

At some point in the process, the walls of the reactor vessel â" 15 centimetres of stainless steel â" would melt into a lava-like pile, slump into any remaining water on the floor, and potentially cause an explosion much bigger than the one caused by the hydrogen. Such an explosion would enhance the spread of radioactive contaminants.

If the reactor core became exposed to the external environment, officials would likely began pouring cement and sand over the entire facility, as was done at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in a briefing for reporters.

At that point, Mr. Bradford added, âoemany first responders would die.â

And, of course, we have the waste issue. Currently a few miles from my house, there are dry casks filled with nuclear waste from the Diablo Canyon nuke power plant. There is no place to safely dispose of this waste, so they just collect it on-site-- first submerged in tanks, now in dry casks. The vessels for this waste storage are not built to the standards of the reactor containment.

Finally, Nuke would not exist in the US