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Radioactive Water Found In Two Reactor Buildings
RedEaredSlider writes "Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it detected several kinds of radioactive material in the water on the floor of reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The isotopes found in the water were cobalt-76, technetium-99, silver-108, iodine-131, iodine-134, four isotopes of cesium, barium-140 and lanthanum-140. All have half-lives measured in hours or days, with the exception of cesium-137."
That rule of thumb fails if said element happens to decay into yet another radioactive isotopes. Like, say, uranium...
Somewhat, though you're not going to get much of that other radioactive isotope if you start with a few grams of something that has a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years.
Several of the radioactive elements they're finding have half lives of a few hours (I-134 and Ag-108 are less than an hour). For those decay products to be found in significant quantities 2 weeks after shutdown indicates the source of the water has a large concentration of these decay products. This would suggest a leak in the reactor's containment, rather than residual run-off from the water dumping/spraying operations. Reactor 2 sustained a hydrogen explosion inside containment, probably within the torus/suppression pool. So this isn't really a surprise.
Reactor 3 had no reports of a similar explosion, but they are inferring that containment is breached based on higher than expected radiation measurements. That is the more worrisome one, since it's using a MOX fuel rather than plain uranium. However, they are reporting that reactor 3 isn't losing pressure, so maybe there isn't a leak.
If you check my post history, you'll see I'm adamantly for nuclear power. But we shouldn't downplay what these reports are telling us.
That's not a very well informed argument, although your target selection is not too bad.
The unwashed masses stop listening because they want to be scared. They want to be scared because anyone whom doesn't watch garbage like the mainstream media produces... does not watch that garbage.
You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to sit next to the guy at the magic show who spends all his time telling everyone around him how its all fake and I bet I know how it works? Or the guy at the horror movie whom feels the need to tell everyone around him how its all fake and none of it is real? What a PITA for the folks whom want to be entertained.
Same way with the TV news viewers. They literally don't want the truth, so stop trying to tell them. They want to be scared. If you somehow convince them not to be scared about this thing, they'll be pissed that you've "ruined the fun" as they wait for the next scary story.
With a memory best measured in days or weeks, I don't think the opinion of the general unwashed masses really matters for nuclear power, at all.
Now on /. its OK to tell the truth about whats going on. Some of us actually want to know. But keep the non-fiction here and the fiction out there on the TV news where it belongs.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The lesson for the future is to include redundant diesel generators
And more importantly, don't place your backups at or below sea level; and especially not so when on the coast. And especially, especially not so when tsunamis are prevalent in your region. The absolutely obvious stupidity is jaw dropping.
I would seriously like to know why the IAEC didn't have something to say about that long before this happened. Even moreso, I'd like to know why they didn't have generators in standby for such emergencies; as is commonly done in the US. I actually thought this was an international standard. And even moreso, I'd like to know why generators were not immediately made available within the first 12-hours by the military after an emergency had been declared. Had any of this been done, there would have never been an initial emergency declared, let alone an ever growing escalation.
Everything about this smacks of massive human incompetent by the Japanese government and the utility company, which seemingly, has unyielding authority which seems to usurp that of the people and even the government.
The final word in analysis, once its actually penned, is likely to be a scathing review of incompetence at almost every level of governance and corporatism.
They had helicopters functioning. Its not like all of Japanese society ceased to function. It literally would have been trivial to have a generator, or a series of generators delivered within the first twelve hours. Hell, contrary to the popular spin, their inability to deliver the most basic of emergency services by their military strongly suggests that they were in fact, completely unprepared for any and all emergencies they are likely to face.
Its radiotoxicity is very significant, more so than its chemical toxicist. Ingested alpha emitters are nasty - Thorotrast was highly carcinogenic despite Thorium having a 14 billion year long half life and so being only weakly radioactive.
Of course, Thorotrast was ingested in huge quantities, which won't happen for this plutonium.
This is all just a minor accident that could have been avoided if it weren't for the hippies who won't let us build completely safe reactors to replace the existing completely safe reactors. Right?
I know you're trying to be sarcastic but unfortunately you're correct. The ones that melted down had sorta-crappy Mark I containment structures. They were planning on building replacements on site with much better containment structures... To some extent its just bad luck, but note how they blew up almost in order of construction and the newest ones pretty much shrugged it all off.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
actually I thought the GPs point was valid and well made. it's this:
CNN/Fox/et. al. have access to many qualified, tv-friendly experts who could put the Fukushima accident in perspective, but they choose not to. Why? Because their audience is not interested in reporting, they are interested in "news". They want the "magic" and "horror" of real live disasters. They are not interested in seeing the "magic" or "horror" revealed as neither magic nor particularly that horrifying.
Not everyone who fears/hates nuclear power falls into this category. Not even everyone who watches cable news channels. But it does seem an interesting insight into why the cable news channels prefer talking heads who hype the disaster over experts who would offer a more even-handed and sedate assessment of the situation.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!