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Fukushima Radioactive Fallout Nears Chernobyl Levels
0WaitState writes "The cumulative releases from Fukushima of iodine-131 and cesium-137 have reached 73% and 60% respectively of the amounts released from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. These numbers were reached independently from a monitoring station in Sacramento, CA, and Takasaki, Japan. The iodine and cesium releases are due to the cooking off of the more volatile elements in damaged fuel rods."
It's ridicolous fear-mongering to post that we're at so-and-so percentage-level with regard to release of 2 specific radioactive substances, without mentioning that this in no way implies that we're even close to similar in general.
Like you point out, in particular iodine is a short-lived and thus mostly local problem (and even local radiation-levels have been very modest this far). Half-life of 8 days means that it's more than 99% gone in 2 months and 99.99% gone in 4 months and so on. (basically add a 9 every month)
There may yet be larger releases, but -this- far we've got ~20.000 dead due to earthquake and tsunami, and ~0 dead due to radiation released from the powerplants.
Reporting live from Tokyo (well, just on the outskirts, but def. part of the greater Tokyo area):
People here have bought up massive amounts of bottled water, though apparently the level of radioactive iodine has fallen below the maximum legal limit for infants (which is one third for that of adults). Milk is also in short supply. Two days ago, two supermarkets near me had no milk, or plain bottled water. (Haven't looked since then.)
On the subject of meltdowns, there is no "official" meaning to the term. But, I would say that at least a couple of the reactors have "melted down" (I haven't really been paying attention to the news, so I don't know if any of the others have or not). Anyway, fun facts, the "precautionary" safe limit of 80 KM set by the US government (and then the Australian government), for folks, was apparently worth setting. At least one village outside the 30 KM radius has had really high levels of radioactive iodine get into the water.
Me, I'm staying in Tokyo until things get really bad. But, I imagine, at least a couple of million of the other residents would also want to leave at that time too. So...
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As for the levels in the water, they appear to have gone done quite quickly . Personally, I trust these guys because they give strict facts and no speculation. I have yet to see any reports of Hong Kong vegetables, but I admit I'm too lazy to google. That said, my (again, admittedly) knee-jerk reaction is to point out all the sketchy stuff in the past with China and other food products and ask if it might not be something else.
Things are slowly getting better. It wasn't the best two weeks, but life in Japan goes on as normal. That said, I'm down in Kyoto, which is pretty far from it all.
Several people have radiation sickness from high exposure already, high doses have been recorded up to 40km away, and radiation kills long term (unless it's a massive dose), so that's not a very useful statistic. It is useful to know what levels of radiation have been released.
All of these points are, I believe, at least hyperbole, and at worst outright scaremongering.
While it's true several plant workers have been taken to hospital for monitoring after receiving acute doses higher than safety recommendations (>100 mSv), this is many times lower than the typical onset of "radiation sickness". The safety threshold is chosen as the limit of detectability for increased cancer risk over a lifetime, which puts it on the order of 1 or 2 percent increase in lifetime risk of cancer. Given they're doing very valuable work, this is not that dramatic a risk - the risk to other emergency responders in the wake of the tsunami is probably much greater.
With regards to the "high" doses 40 km away, these need to again be put in perspective - it is "high" compared to the local background (although often only 50 to 100% more than usual, barring localised spikes), but there are places in the world where natural radiation is almost 100 times greater than the typically quoted "background dose", and people live there just fine. Combined with the fact that most of this radiation is short-lived Iodine isotopes, a ballpark estimate suggests that people living outside the plant would only see a dose of 1 mSv or less by the time the iodine had decayed away, even if they ignored all the simple safety precautions which can be taken to reduce that further. These doses are well known not to cause any significant increase in cancer risk - long term or not.
And your suggestion of a Chernobyl-style sarcophagus being required is still rather unlikely. Since it appears none of the reactors have actually melted down or suffered a substantial failure in containment in the immediate vicinity of the rods themselves, it's quite likely that they'll be able to take them through a more or less normal shutdown and decommissioning once proper cooling is restored, and the storage implications will be no more serious than if they reached their natural end-of-life. Indeed, if they weren't already near or past their expected end-of-life, they could probably be fairly readily repaired, refuelled, and set running again within a relatively short timeframe. (Indeed, there's talk that this is being considered for Reactors 4 through 6, although that may turn out to not be politically viable).
I'm not denying it's a serious issue - but in the perspective of tens of thousands dead, and many times more homeless and short on food and other supplies, it really shouldn't be dominating headlines in this way.
They are comparing a per-day value from Fukushima to a 10-day value from Chernobyl, that's why there's a factor of 10 difference, and they have taken it into account.
I wonder how far it will go though... Chernobyl actually really "exploded" and thus in contrast to what the officials say there is only very little radioactive material within the chernobyl sarcophagus (they say there is 97% left inside, but you can walk inside with little protection, check youtube - there are many videos of the inner sanctum of the sarcophagus ... there is only little left. the rest is spread around the ukraine, russia and europe mostly). Most of the material was pushed into the air when it exploded.
As there are no real (trustable) sources in terms of the Japanese nuclear catastrophe it wouldn't suprise me if there is a complete melt down of No. 3 and no public information available on the real scale of the disaster (e.g. plutonium 235, its byproducts and other radioactive material and spreading across continents and oceans).
Death toll from Earthquake and tsunami 10,000+
Death toll from the reactor accident so far 0.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.