Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation

SillySnake writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit. 'With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday." Also of interest: Cryptome is featuring high-res photos of the reactor site, taken by UAV.

Comments

Incompetence

[amiga3D]

I find it hard to believe how badly this mess has been handled. It just keeps getting steadily worse with no end in sight. I believe that Chernobyl will be nothing next to this disaster soon.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: Armchair quarterback could have done better. More at eleven...

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it hard to believe how badly this mess has been handled. It just keeps getting steadily worse with no end in sight. I believe that Chernobyl will be nothing next to this disaster soon.

Being an engineer doesn't lend itself to being a kamikaze too.

Re:Incompetence

[Securityemo]

IMHO, a major thing that seems really stupid was the plants venting the radioactive hydrogen gas into the upper building instead of out into the air. The explosions clearly must have jeopardized the control over the process, since workers got hurt. From what I understand, the radioactive gas could have been vented without any ill effects. I suppose the reactor just isn't built to do that though.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it hard to believe how badly this mess's PR has been handled. It's like TEPCO is using BP's PR playbook. The management of the disaster itself is difficult to judge, although it seems better handled than BP's.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

And you evidently COULDN'T have done better, so shut up.

Re:Incompetence

[EdZ]

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

Re:Incompetence

[Charliemopps]

Your statement shows not only your ignorance on this disaster and Chernobyl, but on nuclear safety itself. 30 people died in the immediate aftermath of what happened at Chernobyl. No one in japan has died from this reactor yet (although there may be some in the future.)

This reactor was hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, followed up by a 30 foot tidal wave. Had this happened to any other major source of power (coal, natural gas, hydroelectric) the death toll would have been in the hundreds... maybe in even the tens of thousands if it had been a hydroelectric damn.

Please, do some reading so you have some idea of what you're comparing this to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects

Chernobyl was a horrific even, orders of magnitude more devastating that what's happening in Japan right now. Just the initial released was equal to a 50 kiloton atomic bomb going off.

Re:Incompetence

[Alex Belits]

Oh please, PR about a disaster that conveniently happened when "western" (US) media and "non-government" organizations were in a full attack mode against anything related to USSR economy or politics.

I am sure, I was counted among "victims" of Chernobyl disaster, too. If you are reading this in US, I am probably healthier than you are.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody was killed? Just wait a few years and you will have many deaths.
I think you just dont know how dangerous radioation is, otherwise I cant explain me how you can write such stupid text.

Radiation is in the air, in the sea, in drinking water, in foods and many peaople will get cancer the next years.
Also the whole area will be contamined for many many many many years.

Its a dead zone there.

Re:Incompetence

[hedwards]

It's a matter of incompetent engineering. Placing it where it was located was a really bad idea, and it should have turned up during the design phase when they were brainstorming all the worst case scenarios to plan for. Additionally, I was shocked that they didn't have any spare backup generators that were available in case the backup went down. Especially given its role in preventing a lot of the mess that they've gotten into.

And the lack of robots hardened against radiation, this is Japan, they can do robots, and they haven't got any to work in this environment? Have they not seen Godzilla?

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that the people working directly to keep the reactor under control understand that they will die within weeks or months.

I will say that the information coming out of this disaster has been much more forthcoming than what happened with Chernobyl. They didn't even tell people for like 2 days after the incident, never warned people about eating food from nearby sources etc. Within a day or two of having it capped with concrete the story was "success!" and a flag was put up. The radiation destroyed the flag within a week so they sent the military in to put up another one... over, and over again. Each time was a suicide mission.

Re:Incompetence

[antifoidulus]

Being an engineer doesn't lend itself to being a kamikaze too.

Really? In my experience being an engineer means you have no life.

Thank you, Thank you, I'll be here all night because my boss over promised and I'm the one who has to pick up the slack.

Re:Incompetence

[antifoidulus]

You have to wonder who actually ordered the gas not to be vented into the atmosphere. If it was the engineers, then shame on them, but I'm willing to bet it was the suits at TEPCO and/or the government. When the disaster first struck TEPCO went out of their way to assuage everyones fears saying they had total control of the situation. Actually venting gas, even if it wasn't incredibly dangerous, would have been admitting failure, even just a little bit. It looks like the suits at TEPCO wanted to save as much face as possible, so they went with the riskier plan even if the worst case scenario was much more dire than if they had released the gas..... or I could just be a conspiracy cook :P

Re:Incompetence

[Ihmhi]

It's not really incompetent engineering IMO. Most of the stuff at the plant was built 30-40 years ago. For its time I imagine the engineering to be very sound.

If you cleared all the regulatory hurdles to building a nuclear power plant and started construction today, you'd be done in 5 years at the fastest. By that time, all of the engineering involved in the plant will, unsurprisingly, be outdated by five years.

I wonder if there's a way to crowdsource conceptual ideas. You start with a basic question like "How do we do this"? and then go from there. If someone asked me what I'd put in such a plant, I'd probably have the radiation-hardened robots placed in strategic locations with Roomba-style chargers.

Re:Incompetence

[nojayuk]

A dam used for irrigation and drinking water (much like any hydroelectric dam anywhere in the world) in the hills above Fukushima town failed during the earthquake. The resulting flood killed at least four people and a bunch of others in houses downstream are missing, presumed drowned.

Several dams in the area are known to have sustained damage but many others have not yet been properly inspected.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are to believe TEPCO which is doubtful, workers that have received more than 150/200mS are brought offsite. These are dangerous exposure but far from certain death.

Re:Incompetence

[TheRaven64]

The fact that you conflate radiation and radioactive isotopes implies strongly that you have little understanding of the subject, or valuable contributions to make.

I cant explain me how you can write such stupid text.

Quite.

Re:Incompetence

[rogueippacket]

I believe that Chernobyl will be nothing next to this disaster soon.

I don't know about that... one of the big differences here is that the Chernobyl core was actually exposed, and releasing radioactive materials which killed observers over a kilometer away. Look up the "Bridge of Death" in Pripyat.
By comparison, Fukushima is releasing (only) 1000 mSv per hour - this is concerning, and would poison anyone exposed to it, but compared to Chernobyl (estimates there were 350+ Sv per hour - several orders of magnitude higher), not even in the same ballpark. Furthermore, the option still does exist to cover the leaking reactors in a concrete sarcophagus... but things need to get a lot more dire before that happens, because then you have a permanent radioactive structure.

Re:Incompetence

[Nexus7]

Apparently these backup generators never really work, anywhere.
      http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/

Re:Incompetence

[Technician]

What I find most disturbing is the lack of information they are telling us.

Have you seen anything in the news about the reactor in #3 blowing the lid off the primary containment vessel?

The Hydrogen explosions at 1 and 4 were the same shape cloud. It was a gas explosion. Number 3 on the other hand was a tall cylinder explosion with a cap of debris that fell out of the top of the cloud. I have not said anything about it yet as I could not confirm my finding, but today they released the high resolution drone photos. Another item is buildings 1 & 4 blew because of a hydrogen explosion. The hydrogen exploded and the resulting pressure blew the buildings apart. Number 3 on the other hand had a hydrogen explosion after the building ruptured. The big flash of the hydrogen fire lit when the building blew. Listen to the explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ It is different.

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm#20%20March

Reactor 1 and 4 have a more traditional shape for a confined gas explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK0-scxGEak&NR=1

Take a very good look at the photos. Locate the primary containment dome in #4. It is bright yellow just like in the drawings. Note it is NOT in the center of the building. Note the roof truss of #4. The roof blew off, but most of the truss is intact. Now look at the elevation in #4 of the yellow containment dome.

Using that as a reference, now look at #3. Look for anything as high as the dome in #4. In the middle is a rubble pile. Note in the corner of the building in a mirror location to #4 look at the circular hole in the truss. It's where a plume of steam is rising. The fire and charred truss is at the other end of the rubble pile, or over the cooling pond. Where there is supposed to be a yellow dome is a steaming hole. Now look at the roof of the turbine hall next to it. Notice a hole in the roof about the right shape and size for that dome lid to have fallen in?

I'm not sure yet if the core blew off it's lid, but the primary containment did blow the top.

The above is my opinion based on my personal examination of the photos in the link above and the noted difference of the explosion of #3.

Due to the radiation levels, the torris may have ruptured resulting in the top blowing out of the primary containment building. This would explain the relatively low amount of radio active parts blown about the area.

Re:Incompetence

[khallow]

You have to wonder who actually ordered the gas not to be vented into the atmosphere.

That probably was established procedure for the reactors. Keep in mind that the alternative was to allow pressure to build up till something major broke. When this is all said and done, it'll be interesting to see how closely TEPCO hewed to the emergency procedures that were in place. There are obvious deviations, such as pumping sea water into reactors. But it surprises me how people with no information are willing to attribute all sorts of faults to the people making the decisions, even though it's usually (if not always, to be honest) not obvious why the decision should be wrong.

Re:Incompetence

[korean.ian]

But those deaths were a result of the earthquake, not because of the problems with the nuclear reactors.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

One the scale between 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl this disaster is worse then TMI but much closer to TMI than Chernobyl.

Chernobyl:
No containment vessel.
A high Positive void coefficient.
Surrounding population wasn't evacuated for days after.
Most radiation exposure from the surrounding population came from eating contaminated food.

Three Mile Island:
Containment vessel worked.
Pressure Vessel was never breached.
Negative void coefficient.
Total radiation impact of release was 1 extra cancer.

Fukushima:
Containment Vessel may have been damaged.
PressureVessel may have been damaged.
Negative void coefficient.
Population evacuated.
Food screened for contamination.

Re:Incompetence

[Culture20]

I am sure, I was counted among "victims" of Chernobyl disaster, too. If you are reading this in US, I am probably healthier than you are.

If you're anything like the Ukrainians I've met, you likely have larger breasts.

Re:Incompetence

[Culture20]

But 4+missing, not tens of thousands. Even so, it's Infinite% more than the radiation/poisoning deaths.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are within the safe limits for workers in the nuclear industry. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary will happen to them.

Re:Incompetence

[fishbowl]

Do you have a reference to anyone speaking for TEPCO or the Japanese government saying they had total control of the situation, ever?

I agree that it can be slow getting English-translated information from the site, and that there aren't people at the site making conjectures and reporting speculation, and the whole thing can feel like an information embargo which can be interpreted as official dissembling and outright lying.
 

Re:Incompetence

[fishbowl]

>What I find most disturbing is the lack of information they are telling us.

Do you think they (TEPCO, or the Japanese or US governments) have any information they haven't made public? Could you be specific about what that information might be? Do you think anyone who is actually involved in the disaster effort has had any material information withheld from them?

Re:Incompetence

[fishbowl]

>Nobody was killed? Just wait a few years and you will have many deaths.

That's a conjecture based on your assumptions.
You are basing your assumptions on speculation and a biased opinion about the disaster. Your guess may turn out to be right, but just because you might have a lucky guess doesn't mean that facts should be invented.

Re:Incompetence

[fnj]

OK, I looked up "bridge of death pripyat" and found a shitload of pages, all telling an identical story of people standing on a bridge watching the fire from a distance, half of them dying of radiation sickness.

So how come none of them are listed on the known death toll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster

Everybody on that list was on the plant grounds or in a helicopter crash. Every one of them was involved in performing professional services (reactor employees or experts called in, electricians, firemen, security, etc).

Unless someone can document this instead of repeating an apocryphal tale, I'm officially calling bullshit.

Re:Incompetence

[mug funky]

is that you, 567632?

Re:Incompetence

[mug funky]

not terribly safe - the workers may have to quit smoking to keep their cancer chances the same.

100mSv is the point at which a rise in cancer rates above the error bars is observable.

but it's a small rise.

250mSv is getting more serious though.

Re:Incompetence

[mug funky]

in Soviet Russia, radiation makes you stronger!

Re:Incompetence

[mug funky]

those guys in the turbine rooms got ~4Sv right into their feet.

they'll probably lose them.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose Tiananmen Square is an invention of the evil West too, right?

Re:Incompetence

[rogueippacket]

The odds of finding any documentation stating exactly what happened there is slim to none. Remember, Chernobyl was in the clutches of the Soviet Union at that time. The rest of the world only found out about the disaster once the contaminated winds drifted into nearby countries.
Having said that, it may just be a tale. Only the original residents of Pripyat know for sure. But the point remains the same - 1000 mSv of leakage is hardly anything by comparison.

Re:Incompetence

[PingXao]

You can't compare #3 with #4 because #4 was shut down for refueling. During refueling, the containment cap is lifted off and laid down off to the side, probably in the corner. For example (this is not the same facitlity), here's a pic of the containment head being lifted off http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/headlift.jpg

And here's another pic that shows refueling underway. http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/rflg-fl2.jpg

Notice the dome sitting on the floor in the back, out of the way. That is probably analogous to what the pictures of Fukushima Daiichi #4 building are showing. You can't assume the containment head position would be the same in the other reactor buildings.

Re:Incompetence

[emt377]

You have to wonder who actually ordered the gas not to be vented into the atmosphere.

How are you going to vent it without power? Open a window?

Re:Incompetence

[amiga3D]

Yes, yes, it's all just peachy. As I read more the worse it seems to be. You sound like a PR flunkie for Tepco. Truly the situation is worsening or haven't you been keeping up? The thing is that it's a long way from contained even now. Keep watching.

Re:Incompetence

[anagama]

The design of this reactor was first questioned in 1972 by the US Atomic Energy Agency. Worse though, was the idea of NOT putting the generators and fuel on the bluff above the plant. What's your excuse for that tard move?

Re:Incompetence

[Alex Belits]

The idea that protesters wanted "democracy" was.

Re:Incompetence

[MachineShedFred]

Okay, but what was the size of that dam? How much water was it holding back? Did it rupture all at once, or did it hold on long enough for them to controllably spill water out before it was completely compromised?

All dams, and disasters affecting them, are not made equal. If the Grand Coulee dam on the Columbia River took that 9.0, it's quite possible that north Portland OR, and Vancouver WA may cease to exist.

Re:Incompetence

[Technician]

Thanks for the great photos. They show the locaton of the containment in the relation to the corner. It's about one containment diameter from the wall, just as the photo shows.

Anyway, I found another article where they say it "May have been breeched.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/16/fukushima_wednesday/

It now appears that a similar breach may have taken place at the plant's No 3 reactor: Japanese chief cabinet secretary Edano raised the possibility in a briefing during the early hours of today (UK time).

Re:Incompetence

[SETIGuy]

The way the reactor was designed the hydrogen would vent into secondary containment which operates under negative pressure. In normal conditions it would be pumped out of the secondary containment through filters to remove radioactive particles. But without power, that's difficult

You could argue that they could have used small explosion to blow holes in the secondary containment and avoid a larger explosion. Of course, that could have triggered a larger explosion. I doubt they would have been authorized to do it in time to prevent the explosions.

"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[unity100]

Really. this 'probability jargon' is starting to annoy me. you found 3000 times the normal radiation in seawater around the plant, and STILL 'maybe' ?

this overemphasized 'keep public calm' attitude of government and the annoying enthusiasm of main stream media outlets like cnn to drop the fukushima incident off headlines is really annoying me.

European energy commissioner said 'biggest disaster of the century' over chernobyl, yet, talking heads in mainstream media almost trying to convince people that radiation is good for their health. Despite EPA found 1000 times allowable radiation in groundwater in massachusetts.

whaddya gonna do. as long as 'lobby' concept is around, and news generation and distribution stays corporate, these kind of stuff will happen. just prevent interested industries profiting, screw the rest ...

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ourcraft]

Please, my older slashing friends, mod this up, mod this up so we can begin to have the discussion. The discussion is dying away in the press, and that dying away has "calmed" our discussions. People who love both science and life must begin to scream that this is front page for any paper or any TV (except Foxnews I guess). Please, lets begin the discussion, please.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the UFOs will save you.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

What discussion do you mean? There's been lots of discussion here over the Fukushima incident. It's been dominated by the "pro-nuke" side, if you can call it that, but that's not surprising considering Slashdot's demographics.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[unity100]

and ?

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ourcraft]

I mean, the levels of radiation are well past what previous posts and "calm down advocates" have said "well its not this bad" - it is now.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

Yeah, now it's bad, because the reactor containment that "couldn't crack" has cracked. It's still not Chernobyl, though. As in, the boiling-water reactor hasn't popped like a popcorn kernel like one poster professing nuclear engineering/control knowledge described it.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[emj]

1000 milisieverts that's twenty times as much as the one-year limit for Radiation workers, meaning spending some time there would make it impossible to survive (8 Sv).

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you cry wolf too often. The first few days when the situation was still manageable, there were anouncement that the confining structure was completely destroyed when at the time only the building containing the confining structure had suffered damage. Things are now much worse now but you're paying the sensationalism of the first few days (thursday of the tsunami to monday night, situation was manageable, it worsened on the first tuesday).

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

But these are four reactors and a lot of uranium in an earthquake zone next to the sea in the middle of a densely populated country.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

this is front page for any paper or any TV (except Foxnews I guess)

I was curious, so I popped over to FoxNews.com and guess what was the largest story on the front page? Japan Nuclear Crisis. I really love when people are so politically biased that they can help but inject politics into everything, regardless of it's truth or merit.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ludwigf]

Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation

I skimmed TFA and it seems the "may" was introduced by /. editors and not the evil "mainstream media". There is a leak and it is radioactive water that it is leaking. No maybe. Actually they already planned how to fix it , tried to do so and failed at it.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ourcraft]

No, the story is far from out as to what the hell is going on, but the levels have reached well beyond what we were not worry about "because it isn't this high". Let me post once again the link to xkcd's excellent map of radiation levels. http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

And what will we use as an excuse after that happens? (And at the rate we see things happening there, I'd give it a month tops.)

This isn't to say I'm anti-nuke in the debate. The problems with situations like these are generally all caused by profit or re-election minded idiots. Plants like that should have been replaced years ago with a safer model, and the same goes for most plants in north america.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

That's still not a problem if it's contain-able, though, and if that becomes a problem it's still only a problem in proportion to the breach of containment and spread of radioactivity.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

But wouldn't you have to, you know, ingest the water into the body somehow to receive the full dose, not just be next to it?

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. Self-centered, obnoxious little shit.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

We might also stop using millisievert as the unit and call 1000mSv one Sievert. There's nothing "milli" about it: 1Sv is four times the lifetime radiation dose limit of a radiation worker in lifesaving operations. The normal limit is much lower. It's also the short term dose where acute radiation sickness sets in. An environment which delivers a dose of 1 Sv per hour is "get in, do a few minutes of work, get out" territory, and you still get a lifetime worth of radiation.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

When we talk about doses given off by contaminated concrete and metal, do we quote them in terms of what would happen if you swallowed the concrete and metal? Why would water be different? No, these numbers aren't referring to what happens if you drink it.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

It's unclear what they mean when they say 1000 mSv (which is a measure of exposure and not radioactivity as one other poster noted), but we can perhaps assume that they mean that the area of water directly outside the reactor crack would result in 1000 mSv of exposure if you where immersed in it. It's clearly a problem, but it's not like the radiation travels through the water and up into the air. Even if the water evaporates and makes it into the lungs of people in the area, it wouldn't lead to even a fraction of the dose (by the logic that there's less radioactive material to ingest and/or be irradiated by)

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

It's still a useless number unless we know how they factored in exposure. So would the number for exposure to contaminated material be, unless you gave the proximity you calculated it for.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ErikZ]

Maybe he means us discussing what he could possibly mean?

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[icepick72]

The excellent map also comes with an excellent disclaimer at the bottom. A must read, especially before taking the comic as gospel in an emergency situation.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mixing up irradiation and contamination. Contamination means that you carry a radiation source in or on your body (ingested particles, dust on the skin, etc.). Irradiation means radiation is affecting your body, no matter where the source is. Contamination causes irradiation even when you leave the site (until you're decontaminated, if possible). Internal contamination is particularly bad because you can usually not get away from the radiation source anymore. That doesn't mean that "just" being irradiated isn't dangerous.

If you're close to a radiation source, whether you're contaminated or just physically close to a source that is not on or in your body, the radiation penetrates your body and damages the cells. Alpha radiation (helium nuclei) only interacts with the surface and is easily shielded. Beta radiation (electrons and positrons) penetrates a little deeper but can still be shielded. Gamma radiation (electromagnetic waves, beyond x-rays) can not be shielded sufficiently by a radiation suit and penetrates the whole body.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

That figure was from the air, not the water.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

Yeah, spending time inside the reactor containment would make it impossible to survive. At least that's how I read "1000 mSv inside the air in the pit".

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Securityemo]

Yeah, the air inside the sealed reactor pit full of meltdown waste. Not the air outside the crack.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[davester666]

Well, they have set up sprinklers for people to run through. I suppose some of it can get into your mouth.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[gabebear]

You have your facts wrong. The rainwater was several thousand percent above EPA limits for drinking water. Bad, but actually this radiation is just barely detectable.

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/03/30/japan-nuclear-fallout-radiation-rainwater-thousands-times-legal-drinking-water-limits-12593/

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[AlanS2002]

How about you put in the work of getting a high karma so you can mod stuff up, instead of asking everyone else to act on you passions?

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ktetch-pirate]

Of course, the fact that the Banana counter at Walmart is actually above the 'allowable' limit might have something to do with it. The limit isn't about safety, it's about placating the ignorant. 1000x LEGAL limit is still what, 100x SAFE limit. There's a BIG difference between them.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[LordKronos]

I think YOU need to calm down. Nobody is saying that there MIGHT be a radiation leak. There is a leak, and that's confirmed. There's no denying the radiation in the water. The question is, where is it coming from. This cray MAY BE the source of that leak (or it may turn out to be something else, or a combination of several things...they aren't sure yet). If you RTFA:

Nishiyama told reporters on Saturday that the crack "could be one source" of the radiation leaks that have hobbled efforts to quell the damaged reactor.
On Sunday he added: "This(crack in the pit) for the first time clarified the relationship (of the contaminated water) with the sea."

As far as your other comment:

European energy commissioner said 'biggest disaster of the century' over chernobyl, yet, talking heads in mainstream media almost trying to convince people that radiation is good for their health. Despite EPA found 1000 times allowable radiation in groundwater in massachusetts.

LOL...are you expecting me to believe that fukushima is causing massachusetts ground water to be 1000 times allowable levels? Sorry, but that seems INCREDIBLY far fetched...so far fetched, I'm not even sure how to explain it to you. I'll just stick to what the EPA has said: “these detections were expected and the levels detected are far below levels of public-health concern.”

And you think the media is trying to keep people calm? Doesn't seem that way to me. For instance, a few days ago I'm watching the news and they give a teaser for an upcoming story saying that "radiation from fukushima has reached detroit". Then they go to commercial, come back, do another story, then do the fukushima story, which is about 4 minutes long, and then at the very end of the story, they throw in a quick note about "oh yeah, it's about 1/15 of the radiation you get from eating a banana". Seems to me they're more interested in freaking people out for ratings and then just throwing in a calming footnote at the end.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ktetch-pirate]

I meant "100x under SAFE limit"

I need to check the preview a little more closely next time

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ourcraft]

Thnak you so much for your kind words of encouragement.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[tsm_sf]

It's clearly a problem, but it's not like the radiation travels through the water and up into the air.

Look, I'm pro-nuke too but you're just making us all look bad at this point.

1) This is a catastrophic failure of the first order, and claiming that it's not that bad because the reactor didn't go "BLOOEY!" makes people think that could be a possibility. It's not reassuring.

2) Attempting to put a best-case spin on every aspect of the situation is entirely unhelpful. Nobody prepares for the best, they prepare (or should) for the worst. This isn't something people should be calm about, this is something people should be rational about. There's a difference.

3) Your grade school science teacher is shedding a single tear.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[ourcraft]

It says "in the air"

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of:

-- Dude, your wife called saying your cat died.
-- Damn, man, don't talk things like that! First, you say the cat climbed to the roof. Then you say it did a misstep. Then you say it tripped on a tile. Then you say it fell. Then you say it got hurt. Then you say they trying to help it with CPR. Then you say all efforts don't seem to have any good effect. Then you say it unfortunately died. Got it?
-- Hmm, this is to reduce the pain and prepare for the bad news, right?
-- Exactly! See? Much better that way...
-- Sure... btw, your brother called, too.
-- Yeah? What did he want?
-- He, erm, said your mother climbed the roof...

I wonder if by 2015 we will know the real extent of the accident. Even the NYT is calling all this BS. And pro-nuke people keep saying "Whoa! Calm down! Ok, it's an horrible accident, but just imagine if a gigantic comet collides with the Earth? See, it was not so bad, after all".

I guess we should ask everyone whether s/he is against or pro nuclear energy. All the population living next to a reactor should include exclusively pro-nuclear folks. This way, we would have people feeling 100% safe near reactors.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[lennier]

This cray MAY BE the source of that leak

Those science fools! When will mankind learn that no machine was meant to operate as fast as 80 Mhz?

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[zippyspringboard]

"There's been lots of discussion here over the Fukushima incident. It's been dominated by the "pro-nuke" side, if you can call it that, but that's not surprising considering Slashdot's demographics."

Yeah, I've noticed that too. My advice for them is to get used to saying "would you like fries with that?" This is already bad news for anyone trying to make a living in any way related to nuclear power, we wont know how bad for months to come, but no matter how you slice it it's not good.

To those who would claim "yeah but next time it'll be different" I would say, correct, next time I'm not going to try and kick the football. http://pratie.blogspot.com/2005/09/charlie-brown-and-lucy-and-football.html

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[SillySnake]

Not that I don't have some of the same concerns about editorial staff as the next person, but I think the article was changed after I submitted the link. I think the headline on the Slashdot article is a direct copy and paste of the Routers story when I submitted it.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[mvdwege]

Have you been reading the same news I have?

From the very beginning the industry supporters were downplaying the severity of the incident: "Oh no, the plant was built to only withstand an 8.something quake, look at how beatifully it shut down when it turned out to be much worse!"; "Oh no, there is some radiation, but just a tad above background!"

And then you get industry shills like the MIT NSE guys who are clothing this "Rah! Rah! Go nuclear power!" attitude in scientific sounding jargon, so that ignorant Slashbots like you can make fun of concerned people.

I say, if it is really going so well there, why don't you go off and stand in reactor building two for an hour or so?

Mart

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's been lots of discussion here over the Fukushima incident. It's been dominated by the "pro-nuke" side, if you can call it that, but that's not surprising considering Slashdot's demographics."

Yeah, and I suspect many of those who comprise those very demographics fear having to learn to say "would you like fries with that?" It always amazes me how warped a person can be when self interest is involved. This fallibility or corruptibility is one of the very reasons that our world may not be ready for nuclear energy yet. I'm far from anti nuclear, but I am also far from un-concerned. Seeing how this event has been handled is starting to erode any confidence I did have.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, that's true here on Slashdot, but look at the mainstream media. Anti-nuclear hysteria is the order of the day; according to the NYT, public support for new nuclear plants has plummeted in the US.

The discussion around Fukushima is a great example of comfirmation bias. The pro-nuke people see it as proof that nuclear power is safe, and the anti-nuke people see it as proof that nuclear power will kill us all. Funny how that works.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[mpe]

This isn't to say I'm anti-nuke in the debate. The problems with situations like these are generally all caused by profit or re-election minded idiots. Plants like that should have been replaced years ago with a safer model, and the same goes for most plants in north america.

At least part of the problem here would come from the anti-nuke lobby making it difficult to build any new plants.
Though in the case of the Fukushima plant they apparently were in the process of replacing these old reactors with new ones.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[fishbowl]

It's perfectly acceptable to report only the facts as they are known, instead of speculation and conjecture about what is unknown, and attacking the primary sources of information. This does not make one an "industry shill."

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Falconhell]

Its OK, climate sceptics have taught us that scientists cant be trusted, especially those who rely on an industry for their funding. WHo would trust nuclear scintists after that big fuss!

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't read my comment. At present times, the situation is dire and extremeley dangerous. I never said it wasn't. It was only very concerning during the first few days. Till the first monday night, the best information we had was that the confinement structures were holding. But during these days, there were anouncements by some ecologists (not all) that the wreckage we saw was the confinment structure standing in ruins which was not the case: it was just the building encasing the confinement structure. The situation worsened on the first Tuesday following the accident. However some ecologists, before that Tuesday, were already telling that all securities had failed and that like in Chernobyl, the reactor was now leaking directly in the air. People weren't minimizing the problems, they were busy pointing out that while the situation would worsen, what ecologists were anouncing as havin already happened hadn't for the moment.

The conclusion is simple: while nuclear shills will always downplay the accidents whether they are grave or not, the ecologists will always do the same and pretend accidents are much graver than they are. The nuclear safety agencies lost credibility during the aftermath of Chernobyl. You lost a part of your credibility during the first days of the accidents when you anounced sensationalists news (the confining structure has been completely blown up) before the situation worsened.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[mug funky]

they were in the process of replacing the low enriched uranium with MOX actually...

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[mug funky]

the Chernobyl reactor popped because it went supercritical in part of the core.

as TMI proved, even if the core is a sloppy mess, that isn't going to happen in a BWR design.

especially after it's been shut down for 4 weeks.

we could however end up with a nightmare scenario such as the Kyshtym disaster, which IMHO was probably worse than Chernobyl, but the USSR and the USA both kinda covered up.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[micheas]

You know you can die from drinking too much water, right?

There is a fair amount of evidence that a radiation level of about 20-60mSv per hour seems to be about what we are designed to live in.

You can see how people that have no clue (Ann Coulter) can come up with... well BS.

Lack of radiation bad, too much radiation, worse.

This was looking like it was going to be a little worse than TMI. Now there is evidence that something unexpected is very wrong.

We probably will not know if this is ultimately going to be closer to TMI or Chernobyl until at least another month.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[tsotha]

whaddya gonna do. as long as 'lobby' concept is around, and news generation and distribution stays corporate, these kind of stuff will happen. just prevent interested industries profiting, screw the rest ...

It's nothing so sinister. Only a small percentage of people actually understand enough about ionizing radiation to understand what's going on. Clearly the news readers don't, as they repeat whatever the last (maybe or maybe not) expert told them. And it's not clear why people all around the world need to care. In the end, unless the reactors get out of control it's a local problem.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[emt377]

No, the story is far from out as to what the hell is going on, but the levels have reached well beyond what we were not worry about "because it isn't this high". Let me post once again the link to xkcd's excellent map of radiation levels. http://xkcd.com/radiation/

This is really only relevant to full-body irradiation. The energy goes up with the inverse square of the distance to emitter - for a cosmic source this is irrelevant. But for a tiny radioactive dust speck it makes a big difference. Inhale it and it gets stuck in your lungs. The tissue immediately surrounding it (at microscopic distances) gets nuked and cell death ensues. In effect, you get a tiny lesion. Normally, when you get radiation burns you remove yourself from the source and heal up. But with the inhaled dust speck it sits there, with no chance for reprieve; when your body responds with inflammation and fibroblasts it gets continuously nuked. Scarring builds up. It's like you pick a scab year after year and won't let it heal. Eventually the lesion gets chronic and cancerous and begins to spread. You really don't want to seed your organs with radioactive isotopes. This is also why Potassium (which is radioactive) is harmless - it's water soluble and gets flushed out. Iodine collects in the thyroid, strontium in bones (it's a calcium analog).

The Sievert scale approximates physical injury - but it only works for large-area irradiation, not long-term exposure at microscopic distances. In this context, even a dental x-ray is immensely broad-area and assumes a distant emitter. Alpha radiation is weighted to adjust for epidermal protection. For higher intensities it also assumes brief exposures and that the body is given an opportunity to heal.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[pclminion]

If you actually bother to learn what a Sievert is, you would see that it is already adjusted for the type of ionizing radiation and the type of exposure... It's measuring exactly what you are talking about.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[borrrden]

Actually you don't have to ingest it, BUT you have to be pretty much right next to it to receive the full dose. "Measurements showed the air above the radioactive water in the pit contained more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radioactivity. Even just two feet (60 centimeters) away, that figure dropped to 400 millisieverts." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110402/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_587

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[borrrden]

There actually was a story about that. The drinking water levels of radioactive iodine in MA DID exceed the EPA limits. However, the EPA limits are calculated for a level that is suitable over the lifespan of a human (in 1974 I might add...making this calculation almost as old as the Fukushima reactors themselves), not a temporary exposure . The EPA stressed that in no way would this have any health effects.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[LordKronos]

There actually was a story about that.

I'll give you that there was a story, but was it an accurate story? I've seen a few stories about it, but following the links back to the source, you can see that it got blown out of proportion by bad math. The claim of 1000 times the allowed level came from another report of 1000% over the allowed level. As anyone with the most basic mathematical knowledge should know, 1000% is equal to 10 times, not 1000 times.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[Anonymous Coward]

And those people are the only ones who get to use the electricity generated, too.

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[borrrden]

Not to mention that the "allowed level" they are basing it on is not relevant in this type of situation. They are basing it off of the standards for drinking water absent any nuclear leak (i.e. drinking water that you would be drinking for your entire life) and as such, the limit is about 0.1 becquerels per liter (incredibly small). You can see this information in question 3 of this Q&A http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20110324-73.html

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[emj]

spot on! Even though I spent some minutes writing that I saw this point some seconds after hitting "submit".. :-)

"May Be"

[Anonymous Coward]

For Technophiles at /. its always "maybe" when things are already happening? Are you living in the past or something?

Re:"May Be"

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, luddite! Nuclear energy is safe and clean! Nothing is happening! LALALALALAAAAA!

Re:"May Be"

[mug funky]

standard procedure in all technical situations when communicating with non technical people.

like "there's a small problem with the server, but we're on it. no biggie.", when you're actually scrambling around for the install disks and hoping against hope that your data is still there in spite of the corrupted MBR on the system disk.

or some such other calamity.

of course, lives aren't at risk in most of our jobs, but people use the same jargon in any technical failure, and we as /.'ers should be able to recognize it immediately.

my reaction to the whole quake/tsunami went:

- big quake, oh, that's awful.
- prime minister addresses the country. first thing he says (about the entire quake, tsunami, almost certainly tens of thousands dead) is that Japan's nuclear plants are all fine and in stable shutdown.

me thinks... oh, i didn't even THINK about nuke plants. why is he so quick to reassure about nuke plants above anything else in this disaster? i bet there's something horribly wrong about to happen at a nuke plant.

- something minor happens at fukushima. i'm like, here we go.
- every update mentions vanishingly small chances of something i hadn't thought possible (after reading about BWRs on wikipedia...).

i quickly learnt that "maybe", or "there's a very small chance of" actually meant "has most certainly occurred". this has been confirmed by what happened since.

1,000 or OVER 1,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

"generating readings 1,000 millisieverts"

Is this another instance where they say "1,000" because their detectors only go that high?

Re:1,000 or OVER 1,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another? o wait i c wut u did thar.

success

[yoyoq]

the nuclear energy "success" continues!!!!!

Re:success

[Anonymous Coward]

hey man, get with the new memes. Winning!

A link to high-res photo

[skyr1de]

Here: click here

Re:A link to high-res photo

[Anonymous Coward]

mod to -1, please.

this guy is an 'asshole'....

(yes, you guessed it)

Re:A link to high-res photo

[bcmm]

-1 Obvious Goatse redirect. (Sorry, got not mod points of my own right now)

Re:A link to high-res photo

[gtbritishskull]

Parent is goatse troll.

The cost of nuclear

[NotAGoodNickname]

$300 billion cleanup bill for this mess. Years of unusable land. Polluted ocean. Unknown effects on health of people within the radiation zone. What is the true cost of nuclear power? The sad part it what will really stop nuclear power dead is if this forces the PM to resign due to public pressure. The potential disruption of the political power structure are what the politicians are really going to be worried about. In my opinion this is the end of nuclear power plants.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[ErikZ]

Where in the world did you get that 300 billion number?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[MightyMartian]

And what exactly will Japan use to generate sufficient power to keep its industrial base going? They don't use nuclear power because it's got 1950s chic, they use it because Japan is not blessed with plentiful amounts of other sources of energy.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[betterunixthanunix]

This is hardly the end of nuclear power; what do you think we are going to use instead? We still do not have a distribution infrastructure in place that can make wind power available to the nation, solar is too inefficient, hydroelectric cannot be installed everywhere, and I doubt that you want to see thousands of coal fire plants dotting the landscape. The hard truth is that nuclear power is here to stay, and that instead of talking about its death, we should be talking about its rebirth: newer, passively safe reactors (e.g. pebble beds) that do not have these sorts of apocalyptic failure modes.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[therealobsideus]

We (humanity) cannot afford to abandon nuclear power. The issue is not in the power source (nuclear fission), but in the reactor designs. Nuclear reactors in most cases are prohibitively expensive to build so no one tries - and even then a permit application (at least in the US) can take upwards of a decade. Companies can rise and fall in that time. If more money and research went into Gen IV designs, and a rolling shutdown of existing reactors in place of newer plants then we would be much better off. If the Dai-Ichi reactors were not Boiling Water Reactors and instead were Pebblebed Reactor/Pebblebed Modular Reactor then this would most likely be a much different story as the passive safety checks should take care of everything.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Dan667]

maybe you forgot the BP spil in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the smog over cities like Los Angeles and Mexico City. Then there are the wars fought in the name of oil in Iraq and Libya. On the scale of power needed nuclear is still better than oil and coal.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Kyusaku Natsume]

That's the price of the whole damage by the earthquake and tsunami in the whole country. Is obvious that you are against nuclear power but lying is not helping your position. Is possible that people can consume far less energy than what they use today, but will need a enormous change in mentality from the "me" to the "we, humanity" that beside a disasters of this magnitude happening around the world, I don't see what else could make us change.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[tomhudson]

The $300 billion is for the damage the tsunami caused, and the thousands of people killed. Not just for the damage to the generators.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Alex Belits]

Haliburton, most likely.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Alex Belits]

Scratch that, more likely Yakuza. Not that one can tell the difference -- both thrive on corruption and construction.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[ultranova]

In my opinion this is the end of nuclear power plants.

Yeah. We'll just replace them all with coal plants which kill a couple hundred thousand people a year rather than a few every few decades, as nuclear power does.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[bryan1945]

I've heard that number thrown around at Foxnews, CNN, maybe WSJ. I believe it was some low-level Japanese politician just throwing out a number.

Sad part is that in the US everyone is going 'chicken little', even though the perfect storm of horrible circumstances in Japan don't apply to most (if any) of US nuke plants.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[bryan1945]

Fusion! It's right around the corner, we promise!
Would be nice; failure mode is to just shut it off. Apparently, recreating the interior of a star in a smallish bottle is a bit harder than anyone thought/thinks. (Yeah, big surprise)

Re:The cost of nuclear

[schnipschnap]

The sad part it what will really stop nuclear power dead is if this forces the PM to resign due to public pressure. The potential disruption of the political power structure are what the politicians are really going to be worried about.

You are way off the mark. If the earthquake hadn't happened, it's likely that he would have resigned already. Here's a relevant link. Basically, his approval rating's gone up after the earthquake, from 24% (2011-03-03) to 35.6% (2011-03-17). 24% is slightly lower than the approval rating at which it's believed that a cabinet is on the way out.

BTW, Japanese cabinets come and go. As you can see here, very few Prime Ministers stay in office for four years or longer.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[arose]

Geothermal.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Synn]

I don't think it was a "perfect storm" of events that took out the plant, rather an inept/corrupt system of implementing nuclear power. I think we have the technical prowess to do nuke power safety, the problem is getting the current corporations and governments to do it properly.

Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

We still do not have a distribution infrastructure in place that can make wind power available to the nation, solar is too inefficient, hydroelectric cannot be installed everywhere, and I doubt that you want to see thousands of coal fire plants dotting the landscape.

Natural Gas. It already produces 23% of our electrical generation in the US, has half the carbon footprint of coal, and is far cleaner. With the ability to exploit shale gas, there's now a huge amount of it available in the US.

Your objections to wind only require actually investing in a better power grid. The bottom line is any change is going to take some long term investment. If you base your analysis on just exactly how everything is now, of course it all has to stay the same.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[TheRaven64]

The difference is, the Yakuza delivers what it promises...

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the first fusion projects in the 50's was named Project Sherwood. It was named that because as on researcher said: "It sure would be nice if we can contain a fusion reaction".

Re:The cost of nuclear

[khallow]

I don't think it was a "perfect storm" of events that took out the plant, rather an inept/corrupt system of implementing nuclear power. I think we have the technical prowess to do nuke power safety, the problem is getting the current corporations and governments to do it properly.

We already know an earthquake and tsunami took out Fukushima's cooling capabilities. Why do you have to trot out the myth of human fallibility where it isn't warranted?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Volante3192]

Because coal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania ) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal ) and natural gas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking ) and dams ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure ) are all 100% safe and contain zero ill effects to anyone, anywhere living within any distance to the source.

I just went with wikipedia because I felt really really lazy. A monkey randomly typing characters into Google search could find something like this without remotely trying. Yes, nuclear power has downsides. EVERY option of generating power has a downside.

Ok, fine, I'll play your little game. Let's shut down and replace every nuke plant with...well...what?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[NotAGoodNickname]

I didn't say it was a good idea to end nuclear power plants. I just said it was the end of nuclear power plants in my opinion. Don't attack me, I'm just the messenger.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the number for Fukushima reactor cleanup.

The Three Mile Island cleanup "took 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million" and was completed in the early 1990s. Here we're talking about a worse accident (not much debate anymore), with 3 operating reactors with damaged fuel, one of which may have a containment breach (reactor #2), and 4 spent fuel pools in various states of damage, and (unlike Three Mile Island) significant amounts of radiological material spread around the region, into the sea, and apparently also into groundwater. Plus there is a lot of damaged reactor building (non-containment-related) to clear away and dispose of before even getting to the difficult stuff, whereas in Three Mile Island the reactor building was fine.

It's a total wild-assed and non-expert guess, but I think a factor of 4 for the multiple damaged reactors, spent fuel pools, and buildings, and a factor of 10 for either cleanup of or losses in the surrounding region (which were insignificant in the case of Three Mile Island) would be conservative. If people can't safely come back to their homes and businesses, can't fish the waters or farm the land around there anymore, it will be very expensive. Make a reactor cleanup an even billion for inflation since the 1990s for Three Mile Island and do the math. So, yes, 300 billion is an exaggeration. We're probably "only" talking about tens of billions, maybe "only" 10 billion via the economy of scale from dealing with 4 reactors at the same site as they learn how to do it. But it's definitely billions.

The 300 billion is the number being bandied about in news reports as an estimate for the total tsunami reconstruction costs.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[h00manist]

Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.

Right on the target. Society, politics, and mostly economics are holding us up from having more progress. Technical issues are long solved, there's just lots of lies and corruption that never moves forward that is gumming up the gears of progress.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[esaulgd]

I don't know about that. The Japanese are already very focused on the "we" over the "me"; they are quite efficient and frugal. The average Japanese makes personal sacrifices that would be unthinkable for Americans: living in tiny homes, relying exclusively on public transportation (or bikes), rigorous classification of garbage... Yet the actual reduction in energy usage is not that large. Not to mention that lifestyle choices are determined by both infrastructure and societal factors, both of which take decades to change. It's not like Americans can "buckle up" and their energy problems will be solved, or even significantly improved, tomorrow.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

LNG. Then, biogas. Make it part of the building permit. "By year 2040 you shall be burning renewables only."

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm because human fallibility isn't a myth? Other locations will have their own unique "perfect storm" issues anyways. It's disingenuous to simply say most reactors are too far inland to be affected by a tsunami! Humans built the reactor, humans picked the location, and the type of construction and operated it. It's really REALLY misleading to suggest this is simply a product of nature.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

The human fallibility was in not designing the plant to withstand an earthquake and tsunami of that magnitude.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad part is that in the US everyone is going 'chicken little', even though the perfect storm of horrible circumstances in Japan don't apply to most (if any) of US nuke plants.

Yup. I'm sure there's an entirely different "perfect storm" that applies to US nuke plants.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter. You can call it a "perfect storm" if you like, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that this "perfect storm" occurred, and the effects of it are on the order of massive natural disasters.

25 years ago after Chernobyl the response was that "Chernobyl was just a horrible horrible design by the Russians, this style of event could never happen with a U.S. designed reactor. Our reactors have containment vessels and aren't moderated by flammable materials.". And those people were correct. They ignored all the other possibilities for disaster however, and here we are 25 years later with a massive disaster with a U.S. designed reactor that's just starting to unfold. And now I'm hearing the same response. "Oh that couldn't happen here in the U.S., since we don't have massive sunami dangers". And that's true as well. But do we really want to tempt fate and hope that there's not some other unseen, or underestimated risk? That's exactly what happened with the Fukushima plant. There's always unknown unknowns. What's undeniable is the effects of a major accident are enormous.

The impacts of these plants having major accidents is beyond anything else we've ever done before. The risks may be low (and I'd argue somewhat unknown since before this disaster nobody would have said it within the realm of possibility), but the impact is extraordinarily high. There's only a few hundred of these things scattered around the planet, and so far 3 of them have had major accidents, two of which have lead to large amounts of radioactive material being spread around the area. On the whole, that's some really terrible odds for a technology. So tell me again why we should continue to build new reactors, and extend the lifespan of existing ones for another 20 or 30 years?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Kyusaku Natsume]

I was talking in general terms, not about USA only. I'm from Mexico, in my trips to Japan I was extremely impressed about their culture and the care they put in public infrastructure, not only by the guys on charge of it, but the common man. Now, I'm impressed how their collective acts have ended the rolling blackouts that they had to withstand in the early days of the current emergency.

  In Mexico's and America's case, we stand to get a great benefit from making similar improvements to mass transit like the ones done in Japan. But the common man in both countries is unable to think even on neighborhood terms, less in a country level. We are turning in a curse the blessings of living in big countries rich in natural resources.

Best Regards

Re:The cost of nuclear

[johnny cashed]

And not recognizing that the old plant needs to be shut down after seismic events of greater magnitudes (than designed for) happen elsewhere on earth.

This accident makes it painfully obvious that nuclear plants, currently in service, cannot be shut down to a safe level at the drop of a hat. It requires years of maintenance to shut down a reactor. Yet humans allow older designs to continue running.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Kyusaku Natsume]

The sad thing is that they have done it properly, you can only see Fukushima Daini and Onagawa NPS that survived without mayor problems the earthquake and tsunami. Hell, you can even point to Fukushima Daiichi units 5 and 6 as a proof that those installations were secure. The big question will be why units1 to 4 weren't upgraded to the safety levels of the other reactors.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Polluted _ocean_?

Oh my. You americans still believe the pacific is 4*4 inches because that's the size it occupies on a map?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[mvdwege]

What myth?

The myth that a reactor system dependent on active cooling cannot be safe?

The myth that the industry downplays the risks at every turn?

The myth that every major incident until now was either caused by operator negligence or an organisational culture more concerned with cost cutting and PR than actual safety?

Hell, even with the problems found in the AVR Julich reactor in Germany, a pebble bed reactor would have been a better design than the BWRs at Fukushima.

And if you're going to argue that this design wasn't available 40 years ago, then you just confirmed my point: a design with known safety defects was built in a seismically active location. The only question was when Mart

Re:The cost of nuclear

[symbolset]

I like geothermal too. But the entire US supply of geothermal electricity at 77 plants (3,086 MW) is less than this one nuclear power plant (4,696 MW) was a month ago. There's a lot of potential for geothermal energy in Japan, but not enough to make up for this and all the other plants that are now offline.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[arose]

There's a lot of potential for geothermal energy in Japan, but not enough to make up for this and all the other plants that are now offline.

Is there anything that doesn't scale about geothermal? Are the scheduled blackouts in Tokyo not enough to see the problems with a power supply that can be crippled by failure in two plants? Seeing that 725MW or those 3GW is one site with 15 plants, the tech has potential.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

Ok, fine, I'll play your little game. Let's shut down and replace every nuke plant with...well...what?

Common sense tells us to avoid the next predictable environmental disaster by switching to energy sources that cannot leak poisons into the land, sea, and air.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[tehcyder]

Yes, you are obviously correct in your implication that any anti-nuclear comment must be coming directly from an oil company shill.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[LoganDzwon]

Yay, you perfected the PFM method of generating energy!

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Volante3192]

That doesn't answer the question. In fact, it avoids it. "How do we balance the budget? Cut spending. Where? Where we're spending." GENIUS!

Much easier to criticize than make suggestions, isn't it?

(Oh, and by the way, hydroelectric does not leak poisons (well...in general. For the sake of argument let's not quibble over the lubricants and et cetera necessary to keep the turbines running smoothly) but a dam burst would qualify as an environmental disaster. (A dam by itself qualifies too, but again, for the sake of argument, let's assume we've accepted the dam's existence, under duress if necessary.))

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Jedi Alec]

Common sense tells us to avoid the next predictable environmental disaster by switching to energy sources that cannot leak poisons into the land, sea, and air.

Wonderful idea. Got any plans on how to accomplish that? Plans that are:

a) technically viable and
b) implementable without bankrupting the country?

Because so far I've studied quite a few of these "100% renewable by 2050" plans and although they make for wonderful drinking games (1 shot per completely unfounded assumption) they seem...rather optimistic.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[khallow]

The myth that a reactor system dependent on active cooling cannot be safe?

Yes.

The myth that the industry downplays the risks at every turn?

Yes.

The myth that every major incident until now was either caused by operator negligence or an organisational culture more concerned with cost cutting and PR than actual safety?

Yes. These are comfortable myths with some truth to them, but it's wrong to use them as filters, to interpret current events via these myths.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[khallow]

Umm because human fallibility isn't a myth? Other locations will have their own unique "perfect storm" issues anyways. It's disingenuous to simply say most reactors are too far inland to be affected by a tsunami! Humans built the reactor, humans picked the location, and the type of construction and operated it. It's really REALLY misleading to suggest this is simply a product of nature.

I have to disagree. For example, consider your use of the term. "perfect storm". There was just a really big earthquake, not a confluence of factors that happened to cause an accident.

Slashdot posters have repeatedly echoed the myth of human fallibility, especially in describing why the Fukushima accident happened. For example, there are multiple cases where people blame TEPCO, bad regulators, etc and fail utterly to mention the earthquake. This isn't rational discussion. These people are filtering reality through a conclusion they made long ago.

As to your claim that I'm being "misleading" for reminding you that the earthquake caused the accident, do you have a reason for your belief? They deliberately built a nuclear plant that they knew could fail. And three reactors failed as designed despite being exposed to a disaster beyond their design specs and caused some degree of calamity. So what?

Re:The cost of nuclear

[khallow]

Go back to March 1, without your knowledge of the earthquake and tell us what acceleration and tsunami height to design Fukushima for. In my view, the specs were rational and there wasn't sufficient evidence that they were too low for the location. There's no indication that a flawless being with imperfect knowledge of the future would have chosen differently. The only human fallibility I see here is the irrational need to blame after the fact for rational decisions made before.

This discussion maybe ?

[unity100]

http://www.spiderbomb.com/blog/?p=317

there are people who are going around and saying 'radiation is good for your health'. but more importantly, there ARE people believing them.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[vikisonline]

I dont understand. She says minimum amount people should be exposed to, meanwhile what she means is maximum. How can I trust someones knowledge on anything when they dont know the difference between minimum and maximum.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[ErikZ]

Two of the data points that have brought this up:

1. The low cancer rates in Colorado. We have less atmosphere protecting us from cosmic/solar radiation, more uranium in the ground, and plenty of radon. Results: Those people living in areas having high levels of background radiation â" above 1,000 mrem (10 mSv) per year â" such as Denver, Colorado, have shown no adverse biological effects.

In fact, people living in Denver have the 3rd lowest lung cancer rates in the US.

2. Chernobyl. Despite being the worst nuclear plant disaster, finding cancer after the original accident has been difficult. It's been mostly estimation using statistical analysis.

The worst part was the Thyroid cancers caused by children eating radioactive iodine.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[Securityemo]

Actually, she's correct. It's just that she's an avatar of Nyarlathotep so the human mind can't grasp the logic she espouses, much like an ant can't begin to understand high-level human problems; the capacity doesn't exist in our cognitive universe.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[unity100]

2. Chernobyl. Despite being the worst nuclear plant disaster, finding cancer after the original accident has been difficult. It's been mostly estimation using statistical analysis.

maybe it has been difficult for private think-thanks in usa, but it hasnt been difficult here around the black sea. the cancer rate around black sea among youth has skyrocketed and still much higher than normal.

i dont know why you people pull that 'chernobyl didnt cause much problem' bullshit from. people are dying here for decades.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does predominantly UV and lung cancer (of all things) have to do with this?

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[ktetch-pirate]

Maybe the cancer rates have been rising, because the cancer DETECTION has been rising. It isn't a cancer death, if cancer isn't detected. So all the deaths before Chernobyl were 'natural causes' etc. When you start heavily screening for cancer, then, yes you find lots of cancer deaths, but then by that token the 'old age' deaths go down. It's the same deaths, just counted differently.
From what I remmeber, the problems in the area, most of the deaths, were from poor healthcare and nutrition, both of which cancer finds 'easy targets'.

Here's the thing. They did an examination of people who were exposed, and those that weren't (a control group) and the incidents of Cancer? about the same.

The problem with 'everyone knows' or 'folk wisdom', is that it's heavy on the folk, and light on the 'wisdom'

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Chernobyl. Despite being the worst nuclear plant disaster, finding cancer after the original accident has been difficult. It's been mostly estimation using statistical analysis.

...and I ride to work on a fucking unicorn each and every day. Please spare us the broad, pseudo-factual statements unless you have some real data.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is has to do is that it's blatant spin. People also probably wear more clothes in colorado (protection from UV) and the air is probably cleaner and more free of pollutants. Cancer does not only have two sources, UV radiation and background from geological materials. It's think tank bullshit that someone is paying good money to create SO THAT THEY CAN CITE.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[laron]

Here's the thing. They did an examination of people who were exposed, and those that weren't (a control group) and the incidents of Cancer? about the same.
Who are "they" and where can one find this study?

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[mpe]

When you start heavily screening for cancer, then, yes you find lots of cancer deaths, but then by that token the 'old age' deaths go down. It's the same deaths, just counted differently.

IIRC there have been cases of cancers being found post mortem in people who died for some other reason.It's not just deaths. Such screening will also find cancers in living people who show no obvious symptoms.

Re:This discussion maybe ?

[Hartree]

"I ride to work on a fucking unicorn each and every day"

Must be an awfully bumpy ride.

Original report from TEPCO

[Kyusaku Natsume]

here:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040307-e.html

-Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose overc
  1,000 mSv/h in the pit* where supply cables are stored near the intake
  channel of Unit 2. Furthermore, there was a crack about 20 cm on the
  concrete lateral of the pit, from where the water in the pit was out
  flowing.(We already informed.) During the same day, we injected fresh
  concrete to the pit, but we could not observe a reduction in the amount
  of water spilling from the pit to the sea.
  Therefore, we considered that a new method of stopping the water and
  determined to use the polymer. Necessary equipment and experts of water
  shutoff will be dispatched to the site and after checking the condition,
  we're doing continuous work to stop water by injecting polymer(April 3rd).
-Monitoring posts of No. 1 ?No.8 set up near the boundary of power station
  area have been restored. We will periodically monitor the data and
  announce the results of monitoring.

This crack maybe explains why the levels of I-131 had not dropped at the same rate than in the previous days in the readings of I-131 and Cs-137 published by MEXT in their readings of radiation and contamination of water by prefecture page. In most prefectures they have dropped to levels that are not detectable but in a few the levels of Cs-137 have increased.

Any Japanese deaths due to Nuclear radiation?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, then stfu already. Please.

Really how much fear mongering do you people need to promote your agenda? It's disgusting, especially compared to the facts.

Whats next, going out a killing people and claiming death was by radiation?

You want a serious debate when the situation is not serious.

Did you ever stop to think that IF people died from radiation in Japan that their families would be coming forward to tell the world that the government is hiding the truth. That is what the government is doing right, hiding the truth?

Where are the families of radiation deaths?
WHERE?!

You guys need to react with RATIONALITY & REASON.

Re:Any Japanese deaths due to Nuclear radiation?

[thomasdz]

(yeah, yeah, I'm replying to an Anonymous Coward posting currently rated at -1 Troll)

Let's revisit this question in ten years or so....THAT's when we'll probably see the results of the radiation.
Like smoking, you won't be able to pin a SPECIFIC death on radiation, but you'll see a statistical correlation and perhaps an unusual number of cancers in people in the area... yes, perhaps the cause listed on the death certificate will be "cancer", but there will be a rise in them and that rise is caused by the radiation.

Re:Any Japanese deaths due to Nuclear radiation?

[Volante3192]

If we have to revisit it in 10 years, it's still nowhere near how bad Chernobyl was.

I wonder if in 10 years there will even be a blip statistically large enough to be significant.

I wonder if in 10 years we, in general, will even remember this ever happened...

Re:Any Japanese deaths due to Nuclear radiation?

[dasunt]

Let's revisit this question in ten years or so....THAT's when we'll probably see the results of the radiation.

Like smoking, you won't be able to pin a SPECIFIC death on radiation, but you'll see a statistical correlation and perhaps an unusual number of cancers in people in the area... yes, perhaps the cause listed on the death certificate will be "cancer", but there will be a rise in them and that rise is caused by the radiation.

Presumably, we should only see that if radiation levels are significantly higher for most of the population.

Slight increases in radiation doesn't seem to harm us in a way that we can statistically determine. This is easy to show -- most parts of the earth have varying levels of background radiation, due to the type of soil and bedroom, as well as the elevation (Denver receives more radiation than the sea coast, all other things being equal). But we don't detect differences in the cancer rate.

Re:Any Japanese deaths due to Nuclear radiation?

[dunkelfalke]

If we have to revisit it in 10 years, it's still nowhere near how bad Chernobyl was.

I think this is more among the lines of "Guantanamo was not as bad as a Soviet gulag".

This is actually very bad

[skyr1de]

They now suspect that steel pressure vessel was compromised.as well. Oh boy. Look at recent radiation report Scary stuff....

Re:This is actually very bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse link.

Millie bloody who?

[Hognoxious]

1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour

I don't understand. Can someone translate that into old-fashioned units like luminous watches per hockey game?

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Securityemo]

According to Wikipedia:

0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
6 – 10 Sv (6000 – 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[BobGregg]

>> 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour

If it helps, this is equivalent to 1 Sievert/hour.

You're welcome.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Arker]

Best I can tell it means that standing by that crack for an hour would be sufficient to make you very sick, and possibly fatal.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[jheiss]

1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour

I don't understand. Can someone translate that into old-fashioned units like luminous watches per hockey game?

Various sources[1,2] indicate a range of 1-100 mrem/hr for a radium watch face, with about 20 mrem/hr looking like a plausible average. 1 mrem == .01 mSv[3], so 1000 mSv is about 5000 watch faces/hr. Apparently a standard ice hockey game is 60 minutes[4], so:

1000 mSv/hr == 5000 radium watch faces/hockey game

:)

[1] http://trusted-forwarder.org/elgin/help/luminous_dials.html
[2] http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/radium2.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League#Game

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Anonymous Coward]

And very wet.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[vlueboy]

If it helps, this is equivalent to 1 Sievert/hour.

Thank you! milli = 1 / 1,000
I only first heard of millisieverts last month,
but the men reporting all throughout that month have NEVER heard of fractions and unneeded redundancy. More likely, the thousand must be there for shock value.

In real life, nobody ever says "1,000 millimeters" or "1,000 milliliters."

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Anonymous Coward]

In real life, nobody ever says "1,000 millimeters" or "1,000 milliliters."

Yes, they do. The standard unit of furniture and home appliances is the millimeter, so it's not uncommon to see e.g. cupboard door sized 395 x 988 mm or a wash machine 600 mm wide and 630 mm deep.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess all the people with IDs higher than yours don't know what a luminous watch is.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[DamienNightbane]

You forgot the two intermissions.

Re:Millie bloody who?

[Hognoxious]

I'm pretty glad you got modded informative. You're the only one who actually answered the question that was asked. For the benefit of BobGregg (89162) it wasn't "what does the prefix 'milli' mean", nor (pay attention, Securityemo (1407943)) was it "what are the likely health effects of the current radiation levels".

And you probably glanced upwards too.

one question comes to mind...

[vawarayer]

... and only one : Would their stupid plane not get irradiated?

Wha?

[jav1231]

Welcome to last week.

WTF?

[Cyberax]

WTF?

"Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose over 1,000 mSv/h in the pit"

That doesn't make any sense. Sievert is a measure of absorbed radiation dose. The measure of 'radiactiveness' is Becquerel/Curie (per liter, kilogram, mole).

Re:WTF?

[emarkp]

Yah, I had the same WTF moment when they started using mSv all the time. Apparently they're also using it to weight different types of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma). First time I've seen it used like that.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

(reported)
They measure at air level just above the water.

(speculation by this ignorant person)
And they might have measured Gray. And converted for typical normal exposure to human when the radiation comes from outside the body.

Re:WTF?

[maxume]

The per hour makes the information sensible, I don't claim to know if it is the appropriate unit or not.

Re:WTF?

[Kyusaku Natsume]

I guess that they are doing it this way to provide the public with a rough capability to do comparisons between what is reported in local measurements versus what they are reporting at the emergency site. In case of water contamination, they are using an equivalence of 1Bq/litter = 1Bq/kg that for practical matters is good enough.

Re:WTF?

[khallow]

They probably measured in Becquerels and then weighted the components of the radiation by estimated biological effect.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't it make any sense? It's a measure of the dose received in the pit. It tells you how dangerous it would be to be at that location. Getting near that location is the thing to be cautious of. A Becquerel is a measure of how radioactive a substance is, which is useful if you might ingest or inhale that substance, like say drinking contaminated spinach or milk. Given that nobody is likely to ingest or inhale the water in the pit, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to publish the number in a human equivalent dose received per unit time.

(BTW, as someone pointed out a Sievert is a unit that's been adjusted for the amount of damage the radiation can cause. An alpha particle has 20 times the damage than a beta particle.)

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are probably using just mSv so that the public can get comfortable with one table of measurement which can be easily understood. If they were using half a dozen measurements I doubt XKCD would have bothered to make this... http://xkcd.com/radiation/
Now because they have consistently used one measurement I can look at the chart that otherwise wouldn't have been made and see that this is very bad at least half the dose to cause severe radiation poisoning.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume they mean "The dose would be 1000mSv/h if anyone was stupid enough to stand in the water in the pit for that long".

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

1000 mSv/h per standard volume of 1 human being?

Re:WTF?

[lennier]

WTF?

"Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose over 1,000 mSv/h in the pit"

That doesn't make any sense. Sievert is a measure of absorbed radiation dose. The measure of 'radiactiveness' is Becquerel/Curie (per liter, kilogram, mole).

No, it makes sense. Adjusting for the radiation type and averaging over body parts, if you stood near that water, you would receive a dose of 1000 milliSieverts (1 Sievert) in one hour. I would assume that they quote that figure because the electronic dosimeters they used to take that reading measure in Sieverts/hour, not in raw Bequerels.

Though there's some confusion as to whether they have dosimeters capable of reading above 1,000 mSv. It may be that the meter is pegged at 1Sv and that water is actually radiating a much higher dose. 1Sv seems too much of a 'round figure' to be plausible as the exact figure,

Re:WTF?

[lennier]

Yah, I had the same WTF moment when they started using mSv all the time.

Don't forget the difference between mSv and mSv/hr. The media has been constantly confusing them. One's a total accumulated dose, the other's a dose rate. A chunk of contaminated soil radiating at 1mSv per hour, giving you an accumulated dose of 24 mSv per day, is a lot more dangerous than getting one dental X-ray at 1mSv total. And that's not counting the effect of inhaling or eating particles which are radiating, which give you a point-blank constant dose until they decay or you excrete them (and for iodine or cesium or strontium, youmight not excrete them).

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but since they are reporting Miliseivert everywhere else (because that's what matters to humans), they are reporting comparable values here. i.e. that's what you would absorb if you were in the pit. There are conversion rates from REM, etc.they use. People already don't understand about radiation, using different units everywhere will just confuse them further. This isn't a scientific lab experiment, so Seivert is appropriate.

Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what this will cause to the world, when it'll be on Wikileaks!

hahahah

[unity100]

you are trying to 'understand' ann coulter ?

Re:hahahah

[micheas]

vikisonline clicked on the link, and might have bought her book. In Ann's world, that's a win.

Coulter would probably do anything you have seen in the backwaters of the internet IF she thought there was a long term positive reward in it.

Fukushima vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?

[G3ckoG33k]

Do you think those high-res photos of the reactor site will give inspiration for some bad-ass fps even more realistic than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?

I don't, but they could.

article title FAIL

[TheSHAD0W]

The title should be "Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radioactive Materials". When I hear "leaking radiation" I think of a neutron beam shooting out the crack. :-P

"in the air"

[ourcraft]

said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit.

Re:"in the air"

[Securityemo]

I was confused by that too. Are we still talking about the reactor pit (which is the sealed containment where the waste is kept in, like a huge jar), or a pit now connected to that one by a crack? I assumed it was a bad translation, and that they meant that "the reactor generates 1000/mSv of radiation inside the pit, and we found a crack in the pit leaking radiation".

Re:"in the air"

[SeaFox]

I think we're talking about the reactor "pit" as in the floor of the reactor building itself, not the containment vessel. I say that because the summary talks about the radiation readings "in the air above the pit". If we were referring to the containment vessel we'd be discussing radiation readings in the reactor pretty much (and there being lots of radiation there would be no surprise). So contaminated cooling water/sea water they've been throwing into the building is leaking out the bottom and into local water tables it sounds like.

Re:"in the air"

[fishbowl]

The impression I got was that they were much more concerned about fixing that crack in an effort to preserve the integrity of the pit, as opposed to preventing leakage to the sea. In other words, they need that pit. They are willing to let water drain to the sea if necessary, but without being able to use that pit to store water, they have some different problem.

Obviously the people who are at the site are not devoting a whole lot of resources toward making English-translated reports and high-resolution video of the scene just for what amounts to our voyeuristic desire for more information. This is understandable, even if to some people it looks like an information embargo.

 

why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[thomasdz]

1,000 millisieverts implies four significant digits of precision... I wish they wouldn't do that... just say "1 Seivert" and be done with it.

Japan Times has some more info

[airfoobar]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110403a1.html

Re:Japan Times has some more info

[airfoobar]

Replying to my comment to note, in the pics link in TFS there's a second page of pics (I almost missed it): http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm

The Japanese Current

[defunctpassword]

Since this plant sits on the edge of the Japanese Current, Any thoughts on what 200,000 gals of this stuff per day will do to the Northern Pacific and Bering Sea fisheries?

Re:The Japanese Current

[ColdWetDog]

Since this plant sits on the edge of the Japanese Current, Any thoughts on what 200,000 gals of this stuff per day will do to the Northern Pacific and Bering Sea fisheries?

Not much. It's a big, big, big (mindboggling big) ocean.

Re:The Japanese Current

[ColdWetDog]

Oh and forgot the important part:

"The solution to pollution is dilution"

Re:The Japanese Current

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, they will boom. They'll be able to see the fish glow in the dark.

Re:The Japanese Current

[Rufty]

The solution to pollution is to hold your breath until your death.

Re:The Japanese Current

[anagama]

Are you trying to be facetious?

Re:The Japanese Current

[ColdWetDog]

Are you trying to be facetious?

Not really (it was a favorite line of a surgery attending I worked with in medical school). It's more gallows humor than anything but it's true. The vast majority of time we just mitigate pollution by 'diluting' it in either time and / or space. Remember, Parcelsus figured this out in the 17th century:

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison.
The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.

Basically, the concentration does matter. So dilution works. Now, what we are coming up with in the Anthropocene is that we've run out of diluent. And it's gonna come back and bite us in our shiny metal butts. But the principle is sound.

...or may be not?

[PixetaledPikachu]

Almost all Articles regarding Fukushima got "may be" in their subjects

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[lattyware]

Because 1000 sounds so much 'better' (in the media sense of the term) than '1'.

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[Anonymous Coward]

1,000 millisieverts imply only one significant digit of precision. Anything more is just your imagination. If you really wanted four significant digits of precision, you'd write: 1.000e3 millisievert or 1.000 Sievert.

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[JohnnyBGod]

Why wouldn't they have four significant digits of precision? I believe it possible to measure even microsieverts per hour.

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[thomasdz]

because I keep hearing exactly 1,000 ... I never hear 1,005 or 1,002 .... I somehow doubt that the measurements are always exactly 1,000 millisieverts
false precision

How come the leak is always "1,000 millisieverts"

[Anonymous Coward]

How come when they have a leak the reading is always "1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour" they have been saying that level for weeks no more or less always "1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour" kind of strange.

Re:How come the leak is always "1,000 millisievert

[raynet]

Perhaps the meter only measures up to 1 sievert. :)

FIlling the crack

[DanielRavenNest]

They have tried twice now to plug the crack - first with a load of concrete, and then with an expanding polymer. Both failed, which makes me suspect the crack is a lot deeper than they think it is. Deep cracks in the ground are not terribly surprising after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. They may have to cofferdam the water upstream of the crack, and then dig it out the surface concrete, and fill it before patching it again. A cofferdam is a temporary barrier to keep water out of a construction site.

Rating system is broken ..

[roguegramma]

It appears to me the rating system is broken.

Why should a perfectly sincere and polite post end up with -1, just because it is against the opinion of the moderator?

If that is what moderating is for, then maybe there should be a -1 "disagree" option, and the easy to abuse "Underrated"/"Overrated" should be gone. I say easy to abuse because there is a small risk for negative metamoderation for these.

Why not have a multidimensional rating system, maybe using left wing and right wing or INTP as in the psychological scale?

Then I could change my preferences to only show me the posts that agreee with my opinion ;-)

Re:Rating system is broken ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Modding record on every post with names of who modded in what way need to be made public.

Re:Rating system is broken ..

[Anonymous Coward]

politeness and sincerity do not make a post correct. INTPs shouldn't mind this at all. INFPs on the other hand...

May be may be may be may be

[Blakey Rat]

How about we get a story when something is happening! I'm sick of things that "may be" happening...

What I've learned from video games...

[fox171171]

But wouldn't you have to, you know, ingest the water into the body somehow to receive the full dose, not just be next to it?

In "Half Life", you are okay as long as you don't step in it.

Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

NOTE: This post is mostly recycled from a previous post at the bottom of a thread under the previous Fukushima story. The thread started with a post I made warning that most of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima was moving downward into the ground and ocean, not upward into the air.

Filling the crack and fixing this leak won't reduce the amount of radioactive material spewing from reactor #2 into the environment. This pit and the concrete with the crack in it were never intended to be part of the containment system. If they succeed, then the HRW (highly radioactive water) will either (a) find another way into the sea, or (b) further contaminant the groundwater, or (c) flood the ground and then do (a) or (b). Depending on the total amount of radioactivity released, it *might* actually be better to pour this HRW into the ocean where it will be diluted down to safe levels.

The term "containment" has a fairly precise technical meaning (BTW: I've got a Ph.D. in nuclear physics but not nuclear engineering). These reactors are basically a bottle in a bottle. The inner bottle is the pressure vessel and it is used to maintain pressure for the creation of steam and electricity. The outer bottle is 10cm or 20cm thick stainless steel. It is called the containment vessel. Its sole purpose in life is to contain all the radioactivity in the event the fuel rods melt down. Normally almost all the radioactivity is contained in the zirconium clad fuel rods. That is why there can be HRW 100,000x higher than the water found in a functioning reactor. Almost all of the radioactivity in a functioning reactor of this type is contained in the fuel rods. When the fuel rods melt down, high levels of radioactive materials contaminate the water making it highly radioactive.

Up until last week, the word "containment" had the simple and obvious meaning of radioactive materials staying inside the massive stainless steel containment vessel. I believe TEPCO forged a new meaning in order to downplay the significance of the HRW that was found in the turbine buildings. I will use the traditional technical definition, not the new one invented by TEPCO.

You see, the idea was that as long as the radioactivity was kept inside the containment vessel then you could safely operate the plant and move around in it. The environment was safe. The control room was safe. The turbine building was safe. Even the reactor building was safe (as long as you stayed out of the containment vessel and storage pool). Everything was safe. One of the difficulties caused by a loss of containment accident is that it becomes difficult and dangerous to work on the plant. That is why they need to pump out the turbine buildings before they work on restoring the cooling. If they hadn't lost containment (in the traditional sense) this would not have been a problem.

The pit, the tunnels, and even the turbine buildings were not designed to contain radioactivity. The buildings were designed, like most buildings, to keep the rain out, etc. For example, right after they had those scary hydrogen explosions that blew apart the reactor buildings, I was assuring people it was not a big deal because those buildings were never designed to contain radioactivity. TEPCO and the government were offering the same assurances.

When I heard about the HRW in the turbine buildings I stopped issuing reassurances and I started to be greatly concerned because it meant they had lost containment. I was hoping against hope that the HRW in the turbine buildings was a fluke and that it hadn't spread elsewhere. When I then then heard the tunnels outside the turbine buildings were flooded with HRW I knew this was a serious accident, much worse than Three-Mile Island. When I heard there were 18,000 tons of HRW outside of containment (that number has now been reduced to 13,000 tons) I knew this was a big fucking deal and I was surprised that the Western press were ignoring these developments even though they had been h

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[SomeKDEUser]

Although I agree this is bad, I should correct you on one point: the big concrete building around the containment vessel is part of the security of the design: notably, the concrete foundation slab is much thicker than would be required for other types of building. Indeed, the fact that the water flooded the building is indication it is mostly watertight (concrete from the 60 cannot be airtight/watertight).

Specifically, the design is such that if the containment vessel starts melting, the corium will be stopped by the foundation. In fact the floor of the building is typically designed such that the molten metal be as spread as possible. Also, as we see here, the water is contained in the building -- to the extent that there is enough capacity -- instead of directly seeping into the ground.

But I agree: the breach of containment is BAD. This should never happen, and (throwing random hypothesis) maybe indicates that the earthquake did damage. The good news is that they seem to have found the leak, and therefore can attempt repairs.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

They definitely lost containment on the fuel rods themselves - the zirconium oxidized hence hydrogen that later exploded. I suspect that majority of the emissions from the plant has been from Reactor #4 area where they managed to get a fire in the cooling pond. This means that zirconium failed there, in the cooling ponds, most likely because no one was looking at water level after the earthquake... That was Big Mistake #1.

As to reactors 1-3, they lost primary containment of fuel (zirconium). Some fuel inevitably melted due to lack of cooling. But now they have to keep cooling it, so shit will wash out, especially since they were using sea water. That definitely corroded stuff and more radioactive material is being washed out.

As to secondary containment, the pressure vessel you are talking about, there is no indication that it failed. Current temperature readings are lowish (100-200C) and have remained there for almost 2 weeks now. But because they have to keep cooling the mess for months and months, stuff will leak from pipes that are in questionable state. Reactor #2 also appeared to have a hydrogen explosion inside it's containment and that may have damaged it - the drywell pressure remains at atmospheric while other reactors it is slightly higher than atmospheric. But for oxygen to get into the reactor to cause a hydrogen explosion, I think all the water would have to evaporate from the reactor...

So finally, the emergency appears to be over, but plant remains in very precarious semi-stable state. Things will have to be repaired caused by the hydrogen explosion and cooling water in the secondary containment will be very radioactive. The end result is these reactors possibly suffered more damage than Three Mile Island. The cooling infrastructure definitely suffered more damage thanks to the tsunami and later hydrogen explosion.

But we will see in few months...

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Dr.Jimbo! Your post is the best example of what makes Slashdot great.

A guy that KNOWS what he's talking about and can explain it to the rest of us.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

Excellent point about the fortified basement designed to prevent melted fuel rods (corium) ending up under the basement. I hope we agree that HRW (highly radioactive water) in the turbine building constitutes a containment breach.

I disagree that a constant level of HRW in the basements indicates that the basements are water-tight. Remember that they are pouring literally thousands of tons of water on the reactors in order to cool them. If the water level is steady then all it means is that the inflow is equal to the outflow. It is possible that both are zero but none of the information I've seen indicates this is so. In fact, it would seem rather remarkable to me that the leak (or leaks) leading from the reactors to the turbine buildings fixed themselves although it is possible that the spraying patterns changed enough to direct the HRW elsewhere. I think they should put dye in the HRW they've found because that would help them determine the flow rate and also find out if this water is leaking into the ocean. They use dyes to measure ocean currents so they can be measured even after being highly diluted.

It is certainly not true that the HRW is being contained in the buildings. Shortly after HRW was discovered in the turbine buildings, it was also discovered in three tunnels outside the turbine buildings. For some reason, this fact wasn't widely reported in the Western media. The tunnels are U-shaped. They go down from the surface about 15 meters, run horizontally about 80 meters and then come up 15 meters to the surface again. For some strange reason they call these tunnels "trenches". The HRW level in tunnel #1 was reported to be 10 cm from the surface. It was 1 meter and 1.5 meters from the surface in tunnels #2 and #3. The radioactivity of the water in the tunnels matched that in their associated turbine buildings.

The threat of the HRW in the tunnels overflowing onto the ground was so severe that they *reduced* the amount of water they were spraying on the reactors. This caused the outside temperature of the containment vessel of at least one of the reactors to rise by 20C.

I reiterate, fixing the leak in the concrete in the pit to stop HRW from pouring directly into the ocean will do nothing to fix the leak in the containment system. The flooded tunnels prove there are tons of HRW that have already escaped containment even by TEPCO's ridiculous definition.

Western media were pretty much ignoring Fukushima when news of the flooded tunnels broke. Their attention had shifted to Libya. A day or two after the flooded tunnels were reported, the focus in Japan shifted to the minuscule amounts of plutonium found outside the buildings. Now the news in Japan is about the direct leak into the ocean and the efforts to pump the HRW out of the turbine buildings so they can get back to work on restoring the cooling systems. It's been days since I last heard anything about the tunnels. You know, maybe they are not planning to drain the flooded tunnels right away and are instead concentrating on the buildings. This might account for the drop in the estimated total weight of the HRW from 18,000 tons down to 13,000 tons.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[SomeKDEUser]

The point of fixing the leak is that they can keep circulating water. This is quite important :) Of course, this means that you end up with a flooded containment room (for it _is_ a containment room -- not the containment vessel, but it is distinct from the turbine building: you have the core, the containment vessel, a concrete room, then the rest of the building). The room will be flooded. But at this point, not much else can be hoped for. I completely expected melted cores, so it is actually turning out to be not quite as bad as I thought it would be.

Yes, I am a bit of a pessimist :)

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

As to secondary containment, the pressure vessel you are talking about, there is no indication that it failed. Current temperature readings are lowish (100-200C) and have remained there for almost 2 weeks now.

They have found at least 13,000 tons of highly radioactive water (HRW) *outside* of the secondary containment systems. They know it is continuing to pour out. ISTM this HRW either came from melted spent fuel in a storage pool or melted fuel from inside one (or more) of the reactors. ISTM this means that the secondary containment is either useless (because the HRW is coming from a storage pool) or it is breached. If the secondary containment was working then there would be no HRW in the turbine buildings or the tunnels outside. Am I missing something?

So finally, the emergency appears to be over, but plant remains in very precarious semi-stable state. Things will have to be repaired caused by the hydrogen explosion and cooling water in the secondary containment will be very radioactive.

!!!! The emergency is certainly not over and the plant is certainly not stable unless you consider a steady stream of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water pouring out of the plant "stable". The leak is massive and ongoing and they don't know its full extent. See my post above that starts with Excellent point about the fortified basement ...

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[Xylantiel]

Just to say up front, I think this is the most significant nuclear incident ever, and I expect it to have a huge effect on nuclear safety design and regulation. Chernobyl was being intentionally operated outside of spec and was a stupid design to begin with and TMI didn't actually release any harmful materials.

But to put it simply... you do not know very well what you are talking about.

Up until last week, the word "containment" had the simple and obvious meaning of radioactive materials staying inside the massive stainless steel containment vessel.

No, in reality, there are many layers to the containment, each of which contains different things to varying degrees. The outermost containment is the building itself, and in the case of a boiling water reactor this includes the turbine building because H20 that comes in contact with the core is circulated through the turbines. For example, steam containing radioactive contaminants can be vented into the building (outside the steel vessel) and still maintain zero external contamination. The big problem at Fukushima is that the top half of the reactor buildings are GONE. "containment" by your definition was lost with the first hydrogen explosion because the vented gas could then escape into the environment.

This is so far beyond a simple loss of containment accident that it is not funny. But the containment of raw core material itself is not really in terrible shape. The big problem is that the buildings are half-demolished from the hydrogen explosions. So all the plumbing and wiring and such are completely trashed. Things don't just need to be "fixed" they have to be rebuilt almost completely. Working on site is difficult, but not impossible. Every time they localize some contamination is a huge step forward because it means they know what they are dealing with and can make progress.

But back to the core breach, or to be more precise the core coolant leak. They have been saying all along that there were good chances of a leak from the reactor core, and what is happening seems like one of the less bad types of that. The cores have partially melted, so that radiative materials can mix into the water. That water has been able to leak. So far there is evidence of mostly "volatiles", mostly iodine and cesium, not much heavier stuff. But they seem to have isolated it to reactor 2. This breach was caused by, wait for it... a hydrogen explosion (you seeing a theme here?).

If they can get the contaminated water under control then a big piece of the wider impact will be more or less under control. This is why they are trying to pump this stuff out of the basements, because nobody thinks they will be strictly water tight. But that has proven challenging (where do they put it?). In the mean time if they can plug a few leaks they can reduce (not yet stop) the external impact, so that's what they are trying to do.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[lennier]

it *might* actually be better to pour this HRW into the ocean where it will be diluted down to safe levels.

Plus, as a bonus, Japan gets giant mutated laser-breathing sharks!

That's, uh, a good thing, right?

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

But to put it simply... you do not know very well what you are talking about.

You know, it's a funny thing, people were saying that and worse when I warned that most of the radioactivity was leaving the plant downward in the water, not upward in the air. What was a crackpot idea a few days ago is now obvious today:

If they can get the contaminated water under control then a big piece of the wider impact will be more or less under control.

Exactly my point. But that's a very big "if".

This is why they are trying to pump this stuff out of the basements, because nobody thinks they will be strictly water tight.

This is not what TEPCO and the Japan government have been saying. They have consistently said that they are pumping out the turbine buildings to make them safe enough so they can go back to work restoring the primary cooling systems. Never once have a seen them express a concern about water leaking out of the turbine buildings although I've seem them talk about pumping out the turbine buildings so they can restore the cooling systems dozens of times.

As for your point about layers of containment, of course there are layers of containment. As I stated, the first layer is the zirconium clad fuel rods. When this layer fails we don't say there was a loss of containment, we say there was a meltdown (assuming the failure mode was melting).

I also agree with you that the reactor buildings and turbine buildings were designed to be able to safely vent steam from a functioning reactor. In other words, steam from water that is 100,000 times less radioactive than the water that is pouring out of reactor #2.

For the rest of it, I think you are, at best, picking nits. As long as either the fuel rods stay intact or the containment vessel doesn't leak then it is still possible to safely operate the plant. In other words, the containment vessel was specifically designed to contain almost all of the radioactivity in the case when the fuel rods fail, most likely via a meltdown. On the other hand, while the buildings were designed to contain small amounts of radioactivity, they were not designed to contain the bulk of the radioactivity when both the fuel rods melt down and the containment vessel fails.

... if they can plug a few leaks they can reduce (not yet stop) the external impact, so that's what they are trying to do.

I disagree. If there are 100 holes in the bottom of your boat, plugging 10 of them will have almost no impact on the overall situation. If they can plug a few leaks then it *might* reduce the amount of radioactivity leaving the plant but it is equally likely that it might not. They don't know how the highly radioactive water (HRW) got into the turbine buildings and they don't know how it got into the tunnels outside the buildings. I guess it is possible that the majority of the HRW leaving the reactor building has already been discovered but no one really knows. I think it is equally likely, perhaps more likely, that they have only discovered a small fraction of the total. How do you find out if HRW is leaking into the ground underneath the plants. Or, more challenging, how do you determine it is not?

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

It might be better than making Fukushima Prefecture uninhabitable by contaminating the ground water.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[mpe]

If the secondary containment was working then there would be no HRW in the turbine buildings or the tunnels outside. Am I missing something?

These are boiling water reactors. Steam is produced in the reactor and fed directly the steam turbine which drive the generators.
Unlike in a PWR where water which remains a liquid circulates between the reactor and a heat exchanger where water in a secondary loop is turned to steam.
This could be down to a leak in the pipes which run between the reactor and the turbines.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

" "volatiles", mostly iodine and cesium, "
Caesium 137 has a half life of 30 years, but I guess that's 'volatile' compared to Plutonium used in No.3 reactor.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[fishbowl]

I don't think they want to fix the crack to prevent seawater pollution. I think they want to fix the crack because they need to use the pit as a container.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[jd]

At last! A sane, rational, thoughtful commentary on the actual mechanics by someone!

(I'm being serious. I understand the radiochemistry and have posted - and been fried by critics - on that score. A post by someone with qualifications in nuclear physics detailing step-by-step what is happening, how it is happening, why it is happening, and how we can know this through indirect observations is greatly appreciated. The parent post is exactly what is needed and should be required reading for the media and armchair commentators alike.)

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[cplusplus]

and TMI didn't actually release any harmful materials.

Chernobyl exploded and blew threw it's containment vessel, leaving the reacting nuclear fuel exposed to the outside world, burning everything around it and releasing all the smoke and debris in to the open air. Chernobyl was much worse than Fukushima (although things seem to keep getting worse there day by day).

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[flnca]

The big problem at Fukushima is that the top half of the reactor buildings are GONE.

I've wondered about this myself. If you compare the fact that you mentioned to a schematic of the reactor buildings, where do you think could the containment vessels and their contents be?

When you look at the images of buildings 3 and 4, do you actually see a containment vessel?

I'm really worried when I look at the images. It looks like the explosions have blown the containment vessels apart. Some guy on some blog said that it would all be nothing but smoldering burning ruins ... do you think there's a possibility that the containment vessels are intact?

Do you think there's a risk of a domino effect? That the rises in ambient radiation could affect other reactor sites in the area?

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[Erhy]

In my past job, I worked with a company whose speciality was to prevent that contaminated ground water reach the surroundings. With a very big device on a crane, which has a massive eccentric disk a slot was made and in the same procedure the slot was filled with special concrete. This was done in a length of more miles. Perhaps it is possible to use this technique around the power plant to avoid that contaminated flows in the sea.

Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing!

[DrJimbo]

I thought you were going to suggest preventing the contaminated water from moving inland. If the total radioactivity is small enough so that it can be diluted to safe levels in the ocean then maybe it is better to let the highly radioactive water (HRW) go into the ocean in order to protect the groundwater inland.

I honestly don't know which option is better. They're dumping shitloads of HRW into the ocean now and I think it is diluted to safe levels within 100 km. I worry that if a significant amount of HRW gets into the water table, it could make areas of Japan uninhabitable. OTOH, dumping all of the HRW into the ocean could have consequencs far away from the plant. Also, it may take years for the HRW to percolate into the water table inland.

The HRW reminds me of the big pink spot in The Cat in the Hat comes Back. They seem to be creating hundreds or thousands of tons of HRW every day. Where is the best place to put it all?

Megameters

[idji]

When was the last time you told someone you drove 1 Mm, instead of 1000 km? Or if you are being pedantic about 4 sig digs - Is the Moon 360,000 km or 360 Mm far away? I bet you say 360,000 km or rather 360 thousand km and don't mean 5 sig digs. There are standard units and typical domains - and we used mS for these domains. In computing we have all gotten used to byte, kb, Mb, Gb, Tb and Pb, and translate between them. But we don't often mix up km, m, cm, mm, um, nm, pm because they are different domains.

Wish the company would just fix the problems

[Bruha]

All we hear is more of the same day in and day out. They're doing this, oh and we discovered that. They're now leaking cesium 141 into the ocean which has a half life of 30 years vs 8 days with the iodine. And ocean water flows clockwise towards the US and our fishing waters. After transocean were going to find we have very little seafood that's not contaminated because of human activity.

The government needs to get their power company out of the picture and work on real solutions, that power company is doing everything it can but at a slowness to save it's own ass.

Re:Wish the company would just fix the problems

[rubycodez]

and how would they "just fix the problems"? See things in perspective. This contamination is nothing next to what decades of above ground nuclear testing put all over the globe, nothing next to the radioisotopes centuries of coal burning has put into the environment. The level of contamination that has reached the US from this zero for purposes of breathing and ingesting food, the minute amounts are a marvel in that we have so sensitive instruments we can detect, for example, a Xenon atom every ten seconds decaying per meter of air (which is what the measured "contamination" is in California for Xenon. For any effect on you or any Californian, it's same as zero)

Re:Wish the company would just fix the problems

[lennier]

The government needs to get their power company out of the picture and work on real solutions

They would, but magic wands capable of dispelling multi-Sievert-level ionising radiation are highly restricted after the unfortunate international incidents which led to the 1948 Treaty of Avalon and the 1949 Geneva Conventions on Thaumaturgical and Faerie Invocations.

I'm sure no head of state wants to see a repeat of those dark post-war years when entire European cities were instantaneously converted to chocolate pie, rose petals, or in one particularly gruesome case, a gigantic olive martini.

A few thousand deaths by radiation are a small price to pay for a safe, non-magical future.

Re:Wish the company would just fix the problems

[lennier]

nothing next to the radioisotopes centuries of coal burning has put into the environment.

Yes, because coal burns at 2,000 degrees centigrade and emits a high-density neutron flux and plenty of Cerenkov radiation. That's what gives a coal fire such a warm, tingly blue glow.

Re:Wish the company would just fix the problems

[fishbowl]

So do you think they are withholding information and doling it out slowly in order to keep up an information embargo? Or do you think they might simply be releasing information as it becomes known?

The crack is leaking the water???

[Anonymous Coward]

The crack is leaking the water? Are you sure its the crack and not the still-solid reinforced concrete part? Next thing you will start telling me that its the hole in the boat thats causing it to sink, or the hole in the roof of the airplane thats causing the wind to rush in! What kind of nonsensical thinking is this? Any middle manager would insist that you first prove that its the actual hole in the airplane, leak in the bottom of the boat, or crack in the core before even asking about attempting repairs. "Prove to me that the radioactive material is coming from inside, prove that the radioactive material wasn't in the ground before! I insist that before you attempt repairs, that we know for sure that someone else didn't put that radioactivity there, and that it hasn't been there all along!"
  Slashdotters please note: I worked for a middle manager in IT for too long. I put up with stupid idiotic crap for too long, and it has led to this...

Or in laymen's terms...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 Sievert

2nd set of photos on Cryptome.org

[rickzor]

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm
includes lots of ground and non-aerial photos.

Re:2nd set of photos on Cryptome.org

[Muad'Dave]

There's a third set of pics, one of which shows boxes of batteries in the control room.

Two confirmed deaths at TEPCO from tsunami

[Kyusaku Natsume]

From NHK:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/03_11.html

Tokyo Electric Power Company has said two employees who had gone missing since the March 11th disaster were found dead at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The bodies of Kazuhiko Kokubo and Yoshiki Terashima, both in their 20s, were found in the basement of the turbine building for the Number 4 reactor on Wednesday.

They had been carrying out a regular check-up at the plant.

The chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said in a statement that the company is extremely sorry about losing two young employees who had tried to maintain the plant's safety in the midst of disaster.
Sunday, April 03, 2011 13:02 +0900 (JST)

Rest in peace.

Shouldn't be coming from the suppression pool

[Kyusaku Natsume]

The readings from the suppression pool at unit 2 are of negative relative pressure. NISA reports that the suppression pool is damaged. Despite being the less impressive in pictures, the damage in unit 2 is the most serious.

RE: How come the leak is always "1,000 millisiever

[ae1294]

Radiation Survey Report

Location: Fukushima, Plant 2, Sub level: The Pit
    Time: 9:03am
    Level: (choose only one)
          __ 1-200 millisieverts
          __ 250-500 millisieverts
          __ 550-1000 millisieverts
          __ over 9000 millisieverts **do not check upon penalty of termination
Technician:
  Overseer:
  Overfiend:

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[fishbowl]

Is Sv a linear or a log scale?

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[whois]

At least they used Seiverts. Could be worse, the could have said "1000 times the amount of radiation you get on a hot sunny day when riding in a plane, eating a banana and delivering a baby" or some other random unit of measure that doesn't tell you anything.

1,000 millisieverts

[Odinlake]

1,000 millisieverts... is that, like, 1 million microsieverts or something?

the tech has potential.

[symbolset]

It does have potential, and Japan is a good place for it. That California plant injects treated sewer water, taking care of two problems at the same time. Since Japan obviously needs a crash program to build power generation in all forms available, they will probably get some geothermal.

Radiation sickness and protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is how Radiation effects the human body:
http://www.standeyo.com/News_Files/NBC/radiation.human.body.html

Radioactive water found leaking into sea from pat at Japan nuclear plant. This can be devastating to say the least to all humankind! The effects of radiation sickness and poisoning include cancer, genetic and reproductive damage, hormonal damage, and thyroid blockage (that's why they want you to take potassium iodine, another dangerous toxin) but I wouldn't. There are much safer substances like Zeolites.

A couple good articles on radiation sickness protection that shows what you need do to test radiation levels, treat water, and what to take internally to not get sick:

Water Purification Tablet

Radiation Sickness

Re:why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT?

[borrrden]

Actually what all the reports are saying is OVER 1,000 :p so your doubts are correct.

Pot, kettle, black

[dbIII]

Your statement shows not only your ignorance on this disaster ... No one in japan has died from this reactor yet

Apart from the two bodies they pulled out the other day? You are not only ignorant while calling others ignorant but very insensitive no matter what those power station workers actually died from in the plant.

It's also way too early to write posts like yours above. Even massive doses of radiation can take a while to kill people but hopefully nobody has been exposed to that much or will be exposed to that much as work on the reactors continues. I think we should all calm down and wait for the hype from rabid opponents, rabid fanboys and the press that want a disaster movie to die down. The comparison to Chernobyl doesn't make much sense but when you have a three point scale of nothing/TMI/Chernobyl then people are going to do it.

a "thousand millisieverts per hour" ....

[optymizer]

is not that cool. You know what's cool? a billion nanosieverts per hour!

I hate you all

[Bardwick]

Japan issue blamed on greedy business, government, lazy contractors blah blah blahh blah.... Cost of nuclear blah blah. Nuclear bad because of dead fish and contaminated land, nuclear bad blah blah. There was a fucking EARTHQUAKE. A BIG one. There was a fucking TSUNAMI. A BIG one. Shit happens and sometimes it's no ones fault. Even typos and bad grammar.

take out the fuel rod?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, why can't they take out the fuel rod? There must be some kind of robotic arm for this job, as they do need to change them regularly. Once separated, they stop bombarding each other with neutrons and the chain reaction should stop.

I understand that it might be too late because things are melting inside reactor #2. But earlier when they are not melting, why not taking them all out? Am I missing something very important?

hey that 's old news

[doccus]

I thought i read that in YESTERDAY's /.