Slashdot Mirror


Fukushima Radiation Levels High, But Leak Plugged

jmcvetta wrote in with a story about Fukushima radiation levels so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. Levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places. But the good news is that the leak is patched using 1500 liters of sodium silicate.

322 comments

  1. Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Helpful radiation chart for those of us who don't have a clue whether 100 millisieverts is a tiny dose or enough to create a Godzilla monster.

    In short, it's definitely into the "You might want to step-up your planned schedule on those cancer screenings" territory.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      100 millisieverts per...? A millisievert is a specific amount. If you are getting 100mS/sec you are probably in serious trouble; 100mS/day, you want to leave. Also WHERE outside the buildings? Just outside the door levels are high; 200 meters away, levels are dropping off by inverse cube law.

    2. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      I assumed they meant per hour.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    3. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It really does depend on the length of your presence. And, it looks like definite cancer danger, and is 16 times higher than average Chernobyl-nowadays, so - quite alarming.

    4. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hi,

      I am glad I have Slashdot posters here who can help me determine the risk of radiation leaks from Japan. I take such advice as seriously as I do the sex tips I frequently see posted on Slashdot.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    5. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2

      The key to the chart

      "(However, keep in mind that I am not a radiation expert, and this chart is intended for general public informational use only.)"

      So, yes, please make your judgements based on a web comic.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    6. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The unfortunate thing is that the damage done by the leaks is amplified by the Gas Effect, which means the dosages are probably actually higher than mentioned. I'd step up a bit in that xkcd chart, into definately get cancer screened.

    7. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      mS? millisiemens?

      The sievert is Sv...

    8. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      HAving reread the parent post, I see he is NOT stating whether this is a high or low dosage or stating anything about his opinions of nuclear power. I apologie for the knee-jerk reaction. I have seen so much poo-pooing of the situation and references to the XKCD chart that I jumped to this conclusion. Apologies.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    9. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      Look! We fixed one of the any problems! Suceess!

      "United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    10. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by MozeeToby · · Score: 2

      It just happened so yeah, it's going to have higher levels than Chernobyl. Almost by definition, the more radioactive byproducts have short half-lives. If all of that radiation were from radioactive iodine, for example (and the majority probably is), the levels will drop to current Chernobyl levels in about a month. In two months the levels would be safe enough to work there basically indefinitely while keeping below a 100 Sv exposure limit. Of course, there's almost certainly some longer lived isotopes in there, but at this point the majority of the detected radiation is going to be from shorter lived ones, simply because they put out more radiation.

    11. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by khallow · · Score: 1

      What is the "Gas Effect"? Does it have anything to do with global warming, anesthesia, or flatulence?

    12. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, I believe this is the standard measure on geiger counters.

    13. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obligatory IAEA reports for real information

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

      At 6:07 UTC, 5 April coagulation agents (liquid glass) were injected into the holes drilled around the pits. The leakage was reported to have ceased at 20:38 UTC on April 5. Work continues to prevent further releases to the sea.

      They also have pictures for that leak.

      As to possible reason why you see the alarmist report "monitoring devices have been rendered useless" is that most radiation meters are sensitive devices that tend to be flooded by high levels of radiation. For example in Chernobyl, all devices had a cap of 0.1R (or something like that). So when their reactor exploded, all were reading MAX. In reality Chernobyl had levels exceeding 1-4Sv/h on the ground. So what about Fukushima? The highly contaminated water is causing levels to be very very high. And if you monitor says off scale, you don't go there.

      What is the cause of this large amounts of radioactive water? I can only speculate to the cause, but most likely scenario is some pipes are leaking. The significantly higher radiation than in normal reactor is most likely due to the water having direct contact with the fuel since zirconium oxidized (see hydrogen explosion). Having salt water in there before didn't help.

      So yes, people are working in dangerous conditions. High levels of radiation outside the reactor can be currently cleaned up. The big problem is if the pipe that keeps leaking this mess continues to leak it, there is going to be lots of radioactive material that is washed out.

      On positive note for the workers, if one is to draw a positive note, their expose in most cases is not acute exposure to 200mSv, but drawn over a few days. This means that their cell repair mechanisms have time to repair the damage and likelihood of complications from this dose is significantly smaller than if they received an acute dose like that.

      So to summarize, the leak is plugged. Most of radioactive material to open is stopped. Reactors are in reasonable cool state and have been there almost last 3 weeks. The problem now the radioactive water leaking from somewhere (broken pipes?) and this must be repaired because this water can't leak for next year or so... TBH, this is not a good situation even though it is stable.

    14. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by geekoid · · Score: 2

      OTOH, it's pretty accurate and he provides all the references.
      So if you are concerned, read the references. I learned about this crap years ago ni the ilitary. I did have to learn to convert from my historic mothod(rems/rads) to the SI method.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    15. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just outside the door levels are high; 200 meters away, levels are dropping off by inverse cube law.

      This would be true if there was only a point source of radiation. But for a month now radionuclide particulate has issued from the reactors and is scattered around the countryside. There have been high levels of radiation measured on the ground many miles from the reactor.

    16. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

      It isn't a comic though, it is a chart prepared in the style of a particular web comic.

      (Your entire context is sort of strange to me, very few laypeople are going to have enough understanding of the sources and dynamics of the contaminants to "judge" the situation, and the very limited surveys and information available would make it very difficult for them to be precise, not to mention the fact that the situation is not stable (they do seem to be gaining more control though, which is at least better than the alternative)).

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    17. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They fixed th most concerning problem. There not calling the reactor fixed, nor are they saying there is no concern.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    18. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by hedwards · · Score: 2

      What he means is that inhaled or swallowed radiation is more dangerous than the stuff you're just exposed to. Depending upon the type of particles, some of them can't penetrate paper, whereas others require meters of thick concrete to block. While the latter isn't going to make much of a difference in the short term, you're not going to get much damage out of the former. But, even with the latter, if you've inhaled it, those particles, at least some, are likely to stick around for a while.

      One of the main reasons for those iodine pills is to protect the thyroid in cases like this by making it less likely that radioactive iodine will end up hanging out there.

      Simplification I know, but that's basically that.

    19. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by click2005 · · Score: 1

      But the good news is that the Leak is Patched using 1500 litres of sodium silicate.

      solium silicate is also commonly known as a band-aid.

      --
      I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
    20. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 1

      Being, how should we say, "premature", in your assessment, it is ironic that you would mention slashdotter's sex lives... ;-)

    21. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1, Troll

      Good, because saying the reactor is fixed and there is no concern would be absolutely fucking ludicrous, wouldn't it? I wonder how much plane tickets to Japan are right now? I'd love to get the Pollyanna nuclear cheerleaders here a ticket to Japan, so they can check out the damage for themselves and report back to us, if they survive. It's no problem, right? Perfectly safe.

      Nuclear power can be made perfectly safe, but that would cut into profits. And as long as the taxpayers of the world are on the hook for most of the damages a nuclear plant can create (owners and operators have a liability cap, or they could never afford insurance, given that the maximum possible damages are basically incalculable), the moral hazard that creates will ensure that there are no investments in safer nuclear technology.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    22. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      Well, a significant amount of the current contamination comes from Cs, which won't be gone in a hurry. So you gonna eat up your yearly maximum for emergency work quite fast, even in a month or two (I suppose you mean 100 mS/a - 100S is 10-20 times the immediately lethal dose). Since they have no closed cooling loop, they are continuously washing out the nuclear inventory of the core - best soluble stuff first. The high spikes in the first days probably was Xenon, now the well-soluble Cs is washing out mostly as CsI and CsCl, probably. How it goes on depends on whether the core in one of the blocks has temporal criticality - and there are some indications for that. Debatable indications, but there are simply not enough data released at this point. If that's the case, the shortlived stuff will be produced in higher amounts, not as much as in a normally running reactor, though. If not, the dosage we will see will depend on the speed of corrosion of the core remains and on how fast the cooling washes it out. Most interesting at the moment is block 1 - if you look at the official measurements, the pressure is creeping up again for the last two weeks and the radioactivity in the drywell is not going back. So there is at least something fed into the drywell that keeps the readings up - probably only creeping out slowly through microfractures or pinpoint holes, as the pressure vessel pressure is still increasing. Main point is that this is not over, not by any means.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    23. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      The main point to remember, however, is that it is referenced to whole body radiation exposure. I don't agree with the style of presentation, which I find somewhat confusing, but the most important problem is that your exposure is getting significantly up when you ingest or inhale particulate radioactive matter.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    24. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by ukemike · · Score: 2

      It is also worth considering that sieverts are a calculated unit. There is a not a direct conversion from becquerels to sieverts. Sieverts are a measure of dose equivalent.

      [wikipedia]
      The dose equivalent is a measure of biological effect for whole body irradiation. The dose equivalent is equal to the product of the absorbed dose and the Quality Factor.
      The Quality Factor (Q) depends on the type of radiation:
      X-ray, Gamma ray, or beta radiation: Q = 1
      alpha particles: Q = 20
      neutrons of unknown energy: Q = 10 (If the neutron energy is known, see more specific Q values at 10 CFR 20.1004 [1])
      conventional units: dose equivalent (rems) is the productof dose (rads) and Q
      SI units: dose equivalent (sieverts) is the product of dose (grays) and Q
      Conversion
      1 Sievert (Sv) = 100 rem
      1 rem = 0.01 Sievert (Sv)
      [/wikipedia]

      These Quality Factors are assumptions, not hard fact. For instance Q=20 for alpha particles assumes that the source is inside your body, but even that is a big leap. 1 rad of exposure from Cesium 137 in your body would be less of a big deal than 1 rad of exposure from Iodine 131 in your body. Even though both are beta emitters, the cesium would likely be distributed throughout your body, while the iodine concentrates in the thyroid gland.

      It's too bad that this is soooo complicated, and that journalists are soooo incompetent at reporting information that is even modestly complicated. I bet that 99% of the press that has done stories about Fukushima would fail even understand the millisieverts per what unit of time question.

      --
      -- QED
    25. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 2

      They fixed the uncontrolled spill of a couple of liters per minute into the ocean so they can keep on with the controlled spill of a couple of thousand tons? Wait, they didn't fix the uncontrolled spill, they plugged on hole, temporarily at best. They don't know the flow path, they don't know where it comes from and where else it is going. If that sells at good news, the spinmeisters are getting a bonus this year.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    26. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "the maximum possible damages are basically incalculable"

      which is true for almost anything, look at the gulf spill, depending on who the numbers come from it's tens of billions or hundreds.

      if you see news of a plane crash and shortly afterwards someone insists that plane travel is still "safer than road travel" do you turn around and shout "air travel cheerleaders should have got on their plane" or "how about you go sift through the wreckage for bodies!!!!"

      no?
      of course not!
      because that would be retarded.

      nuclear is safer, not perfectly but it's safer than most of the alternatives.

      You're more likely to die on the road to the airport(unless you live really close) but when a plane crashes it makes world headlines and a lot of people die at once.
      when a car crashes it makes the local news at most unless it's someone famous.
      It doesn't make world headlines but it adds up.

      nuclear is kinda like that, you're far more likely to die from lung cancer from living near a coal plant or die falling off your roof while installing solar panels but that's local news stuff.
      It doesn't make world headlines but it adds up.

      that and scary atoms and radiation.
      a smog cloud or a broken neck aren't mysterious and scary.

    27. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by LastGunslinger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How many coal miners and oil rig workers are injured, die, or contract chronic diseases each year compared to the number of people (workers and general public) harmed by nuclear accidents?

    28. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lgw · · Score: 1

      It's still vastly less of a concern than the ongoing relief effort for the tsunami. But you're spot on (I guess even a stopped clock is right occasionally): the lasting worldwide damage here is to the discussion about nuclear power. With the price of fossil fuels going up and people concerned about CO2, that's a discussion that needs to be had rationally. Little chance of that now.

      Solar thermal plants (not photoelectric) are still a good idea for a great many places, however, so maybe we're not totally doomed to rolling blackouts in our future (well, except here in Cali where the NIMBYism is so amazing that PG&E was seriously considering building its solar pants in orbit).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    29. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by ozbird · · Score: 1

      On the bright side, radiation levels in Australia have fallen since banana prices jumped to $18/kg. (Cyclones, floods, whatever.)

    30. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      How much are you offering for this?

      I already survived the rain from Chernobyl, lets add another one to the score.

    31. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      You believe almost anything can cause incalculable damages? Uh, okay. You did know the damages for oil spills are also capped, right? Now, the profits, they are not capped. Things go well and the ultra-rich owning class profits. Things go badly, and WE pay for it.

      Nuclear power, as I fucking well said, CAN BE safer. But NOT when we let the owners off the hook! Get it, dipshit? I'm not against nuclear power. I'm against greedy sociopaths profiting off of something we have to pay for when it goes wrong. And I'm against THAT because the damn greedy sociopaths have ruined nuclear power, just absolutely killed it as an option.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    32. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nuclear power COULD be safe if we stuck the plant owners with the whole cost of any potential disaster. As it is, they profit but we pay the costs. What incentive is there for them to spend any money on safety, when the taxpayers here and in Japan are on the hook for the damages?

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    33. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 2

      Well you missed the point. Perhaps I wasn't clear: nuclear power could be safer if the owners invested more into safety, but as long as taxpayers here and in Japan are on the hook for the majority of damages, the ultra-wealthy sociopathic owning class assholes have no incentive to invest in safety. They profit, we pay.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    34. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Well if you survived Chernobyl rain, you should be ready for a dip in the cooling pool. I mean, they are totally equivalent, right?

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    35. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 0

      I'd love to get the Pollyanna nuclear cheerleaders here a ticket to Japan, so they can check out the damage for themselves and report back to us, if they survive.

      Okay, schedule mine for a two week stay. I'd love to see Japan.

      Note, for the record, that not one single person has died as a result of Fukushima.

      Note also that not one single person outside the emergency workers working to contain Fukushima has even become ill as a result of Fukushima.

      Note finally that more people died as a result of the wastewater plant wall collapsing in Gatlinburg TN than have died due to civilian nuclear power accidents in the USA. Or Europe. Or both combined....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    36. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lgw · · Score: 1

      seriously considering building its solar pants in orbit

      Even if we could edit our posts, I think I'd leave that typo - there's a SF story in there somewhere.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    37. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by blueg3 · · Score: 2

      Inverse square law, no?

    38. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by blueg3 · · Score: 1

      Or about a factor of a thousand less than Chernobyl 2-3 weeks after its meltdown.

    39. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 0

      Okay, Pollyanna. But you need to spend a day as close as you can get to the plant, without protection. Send me a signed contract stating you will do this and I will send you a ticket.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    40. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      whereas others require meters of thick concrete to block.

      Presumably as opposed to meters of thin concrete?

      Water has a tenth-thickness of 36" for gammas, much less for neutrons, and basically stops alphas and betas cold.

      Steel has a tenth-thickness of 4" for gammas.

      Lead 2".

      You won't generally need meters of protection from anything unless you're storing an active nuclear power plant in your backyard.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    41. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      and of course alpha radiation from outside your body is hahahaha my t-shirt is a hazard suit. So, really want to avoid inhaling dust here.

    42. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by elrous0 · · Score: 2

      radiation levels in Australia have fallen

      Oh man, I wish I had known this before I invested heavily in dune buggies and shoulderpads.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    43. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by GooberToo · · Score: 1

      You make an excellent point. But the flip side of that coin is, lawyers must die. Even after supposed reform, lawyers add considerable and needless expense to much of everything we see and touch in our daily lives. In aviation alone, lawyers not only make things up to 4x as expensive as need by, they also slow technology adoption which makes everyone safer. So until such time we start actively killing lawyers by the bushel, caps are unfortunately the next closet option available.

      If you have ideas which do not start and end with killing lawyers by the bushel, I'd seriously like this to be the start of such a thread.

    44. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by drsmithy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Good, because saying the reactor is fixed and there is no concern would be absolutely fucking ludicrous, wouldn't it? I wonder how much plane tickets to Japan are right now? I'd love to get the Pollyanna nuclear cheerleaders here a ticket to Japan, so they can check out the damage for themselves and report back to us, if they survive. It's no problem, right? Perfectly safe.

      Nothing is perfectly safe.

      Measuring across the entire lifetime, nuclear is still the safest form of power generation we have. The only other one that comes close is Hydro.

    45. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Jake73 · · Score: 1

      My car is really fast. It goes over 500 meters!!!

    46. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      If you have ideas which do not start and end with killing lawyers by the bushel, I'd seriously like this to be the start of such a thread.

      Is it really necessary to kill them? Surely we need someone to clean latrines.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    47. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by makomk · · Score: 1

      Quite possibly less than the number of uranium miners - not to mention the health risks to residents in areas surrounding the mines - but we don't even bother measuring that as far as I know.

    48. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by GooberToo · · Score: 1

      I guess we can, but the rhetoric isn't nearly as fun to talk about. I mean, think of the bus and cliff jokes...

    49. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Rei · · Score: 1

      I'm not surprised that sodium silicate worked. I have some of that stuff for hydroponics usage. It crusts up everything it touches even *without* trying -- including the eyedropper I use to measure it. Silica really doesn't like to stay in solution ;) Now, yeah, a silica encrustment isn't exactly a permanent patch, but it doesn't need to be, unless they're planning to just abandon the site tomorrow.

      --
      You can't change that... by gettin' all... bendy.
    50. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't go to Japan right now. Know why?

      Because they've been hit by one of the largest earthquakes for a long time and then swept across by a huge tsunami - during which around 13,000 people died making mayhem for the rescue services. So I wouldn't want to be a burden on that.

      However... not one fucking person has died as a result of the Fuckushima nuclear plant. Odd that... how idiots like you focus on the thing that's caused the least problems and ignore all the suffering and death.

      People might get the idea that you had an agenda or something.

    51. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by radtea · · Score: 2

      I assumed they meant per hour.

      Why?

      Seriously, I am reasonably expert on radiation safety (I've worked as a medical physicist and spent a good deal of my professional career around radiation sources of one kind or another) and I have no clue what anyone could possibly mean when they say "rates exceed 100 mSv". It's like saying, "the spacecraft was traveling in excess of 30 km when it impacted." If it was impact on the Moon that might mean "30 km/s", if it was impact on Earth it might mean "30 km/hr".

      The only thing such statements certainly mean is that the person making them has no clue whatsoever about the topic they are pretending to report on.

      And the only thing I find weirder than people reporting rates using units that have nothing to do with rate is people who assume they know how to translate nonsense into sense. Why do you assume that someone who knows nothing about radiation--the person reporting the story--can be relied upon the make the error you expect as opposed to some other error? Why do you think there is any communication going on here at all, instead of simply an idiot spouting gibberish?

      I really don't understand it.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    52. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      In practice liability tends to have upper bounds even when not coded into law: if the company which has hurt you goes totally bankrupt then you're left holding the ball.

      If you swerve off the road and your car rolls through a school classroom there's a small chance that you could hit the upper limits on your insurance liability (often capped at a few million or tens of millions) paying for dozens of badly injured children to be supported/treated/cared for for life.

      If you hit the cap and you have no cash then you go bankrupt and the poor fuckers you hit can end up out of luck or having to ask the government for money.

      The good side of the legal cap is that it requires that a large quantity of cash is kept in a fund and that the entire industry has to pay if any one company screws up so that even if the company collapses the remaining ones keep paying.

    53. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, we must remember all the silicon miners who died in that recent, tragic, solar power mishap.

      Things would be much safer if we did not allow people to risk other people's money and lives for their own profit. Pebble bed reactors, anyone? Nuclear could be a great power source, if we made the owners responsible for all damages. Then they would have incentive to pioneer safer technology. As it is, they profit when things go right but we lose when things go wrong.

      The two things that have done the most to kill nuclear power are, first, the owners and operators of nuclear plants, and second, the smug, tone deaf nuclear boosters who dog-pile on anyone with concerns over the safety of nuclear power. Berating someone to be less of a worry-wort is hardly the best way to get them on your side.

      Got it, pro-nuke crowd? YOU killed nuclear power because you are elitist know -it-alls who have alienated the public by continually attempting to blow smoke up their ass. When something goes wrong, do not immediately begin downplaying people's fears and belittling them for being worried. Have some sympathy, even if you KNOW they are wrong. In fact, the more certain you are, the more you should keep your socially challenged mouths shut.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    54. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And THAT is the problem with limited liability in general, people can make decisions that impact billions of other humans, perhaps even killing or maiming thousands, and they get ten million dollar bonuses for "making the tough decisions."

      Your example does not hold water, because I am not a corporation, I do make a living from driving, and I keep my car maintained. The nuclear power industry is, to use your example, a school bus driver who will only pay for fifty year old school buses, does not pay for proper maintenance, and boozes it up while speeding through residential areas. Oh, and I only carry the minimum insurance mandated by law, in fact, I payed to have the law written to my standards, and by law YOU must pay if I kill a bunch of kids with my reckless activity.

      In general, if an activity is so potentially dangerous that no one could possibly insure it for the likely amount of damage it will cause, that activity will never become a business. Unless of course the people standing to profit from said activity are allowed to write the laws governing it themselves. Nuclear power and offshore drilling are unique in that, rather than being required to carry insurance sufficient to cover costs (which would make the business absolutely unprofitable), we, the taxpayers, are on automatically responsible, no court proceedings or bankruptcy necessary.

      Do you understand what that means? The insurance industry, the industry that calculates risk, has calculated the risks of nuclear power and they want nothing to do with it. It is, according to the experts, too risky to insure. Maybe you are okay funding some fat cat CEO by covering the potential risk while letting him take home the profit, but I am not.

      Where did you get the idea that the nuclear power industry pays into a fund? Do you have some kind of citation for that? I'm pretty sure they do not.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    55. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd do that, with little worry. I won't, though, because they're dealing with a REAL disaster, the tidal wave and earthquake, which is of FAR more import than the nuclear plant problems.

    56. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by wo1verin3 · · Score: 1

      If you stand in an area with 100 millisieverts measured for a single second, you've been exposed to 100mS for a single second. If you stand in that area for an hour, you've been exposed to 100mS for an hour. There is no "per" in this description, the area has a measurement of 100 millisieverts.

    57. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Blah, blah, blah. How does it feel to help kill nuclear power? Because that is what you are doing by downplaying legitimate concerns. You are not reassuring anyone. Personally, I want safe clean power. Maybe you don't, I don't know, either that, or you are just have no understanding of social interactions and have no clue how much damage you are doing to your own cause. But I want nuclear power, so do me a favor and shut the hell up, thanks.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    58. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by LastGunslinger · · Score: 1

      I agree. There are several newer designs for nuclear reactors that are much safer than current plants in the US, Japan, Europe, and elsewhere. The problem, at least here in the US, is that these safer designs aren't being built. Instead, we're stuck with plants that are more than thirty years old since we pretty much stopped building them following the incident at 3 Mile Island. No one was hurt in that accident and not a single case of cancer is attributed to it. Yet we've experienced the accidents at the Massey coal mine and the explosion of the BP oil rig over the past year and no one suggests we stop using coal and oil. I'm also in agreement with the idea of holding corporations responsible for disasters. I'm not a fan of limiting corporate liability and footing the taxpayers with the bill. That's the problem behind many work-related accidents. The companies put profit ahead of safety because the cost of paying for the occasional disaster is less than the potential profits of doing thing in an unsafe manner.

    59. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by GooberToo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nuclear could be a great power source, if we made the owners responsible for all damages.

      They used to be. And then anti-nuke idiots decided that wasn't enough. So to prevent any improvements in the nuclear industry, they continued their scare mongering so no one would get an MRI until the name was changed. As a result, people were both scared and stupid.

      This had the effect of preventing old reactors from being replaced (like what you see in Japan). It meant new reactors were financially impossible. Insurance companies stopped wanting to cover these plants because of a massive number of fraudulent (fraudulent and unknowing ignorance - see anti-nuclear idiot scare mongering above) claims dating back to Three Mile Island.

      Basically, idiot scare mongering anti-nukers were very successful in making the world a more dangerous AND expensive place. Energy costs went up. The cost of running and maintaining nuclear plants went up. As a result, nuclear subsidies became standard far and damage caps were required.

      So literally, the only benefit of being an anti-nuclear idiot is everything is more dangerous and more expensive than reasonably should be. And that's all in thanks for providing the cheapest, safest energy source known to mankind, which in turn keeps all other energy sources cheaper.

      There isn't an anti-nuke idiot who doesn't have blood on their hands. The really sad thing is, people are ignorantly scared of nuclear power but should really be scared of anti-nuclear idiots.

    60. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Glock27 · · Score: 1

      Have some sympathy, even if you KNOW they are wrong. In fact, the more certain you are, the more you should keep your socially challenged mouths shut.

      Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot.

      I'm sure you're just as charming and influential in person. :-)

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    61. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 0

      Yeah. So have I, growing up in one of the fallout hotspots in western Europe. 3 of my friends have no thyroid anymore, 1 died of lymphoma, one survived a brain tumor, barely. That's one high-school class that was out in the playgrounds back then. Anecdote, I know, but fuck you apologists in the arse with a barb-wire-wrapped hot poker while rats gnaw of you tiny balls. Assholes.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    62. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      If you gotta resort to measurements like "less than chernobyl" to promote your power plants - you have lost already.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    63. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 2

      It wasn't the anti nuke crowd that killed nuclear power, it was the greed and shortsightedness of management, and the overzealous insensitivity of the pro nuclear crowd, who basically have been telling everyone to shut the hell up and stop whining. Give me one example of the anti nuke idiots actually accomplishing anything, and I'll retract my statement. But the anti-nuke idiots had nothing to do with the GE Three resigning over safety issues with the same model core that is in several Fukushima reactors. You did know that, right? Three top engineers at GE nuclear power division resigned over safety concerns, yet GE went ahead and sold those reactors for decades.

      The thing that worked the anti-nuke idiots into a frenzy was simply greedy sociopathic CEOs skirting safety laws and ignoring the advice of their own engineers. So they may be idiots, but they did not start the problem. No, the pro nuke crowd are the ones who really killed their own dream.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    64. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      Because if it were seconds or even minutes, those nearby workers would probably all be long dead by now. And I doubt they mean per day.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    65. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      It's not really clear how dangerous nuclear is until the plants have been decommissioned. There are plenty of other nuclear plants that could go the same way given similar conditions, in some cases it would probably take a lot less.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    66. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by a_nonamiss · · Score: 1

      spend a day as close as you can get to the plant

      Holy crap, I'll take that deal! Where do I send the contract? (You know that unless you're a nuclear scientist or a government emergency worker, you can't get anywhere near the plant, right?)

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
    67. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      That's not how it works. The Sievert is a measure of absolute exposure: in one day you are exposed to X sieverts background radiation. If you stand there for two days, you are exposed to 2X sieverts, not X sieverts. The sievert does not have a time term, and one must be given. If you've been exposed to 100mSv in a single second and you continue to stand there for an hour, you will be exposed to 360 Sv in an hour and experience death by radiation (8Sv total exposure is fatal even with immediate treatment).

    68. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They succeeded in closing superphenix which was a french prototype fast breeder. They got some success in Germany.

    69. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My thyroid is messed up too. Not an apologist, just a realist. Even if it kills me, Nuclear kills far less people than coal.

    70. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Water is unsafe ! If you're a water cheer leader, go spend a day without protection in the arctic ocean during winter.

    71. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by 5KVGhost · · Score: 1

      So, how many people die annually from nuclear power accidents due to all these sociopathically inadequate safety systems?

    72. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 2

      "Do you understand what that means? The insurance industry, the industry that calculates risk, has calculated the risks of nuclear power and they want nothing to do with it. It is, according to the experts, too risky to insure. Maybe you are okay funding some fat cat CEO by covering the potential risk while letting him take home the profit, but I am not."

      no.
      just no.

      [citation]
      http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf67.html

      " It is commonly asserted that nuclear power stations are not covered by insurance, and that insurance companies don't want to know about them either for first-party insurance of the plant itself or third-party liability for accidents. This is incorrect, and the misconception was addressed as follows in 2006 by a broker who had been responsible for a nuclear insurance pool: "it is wrong [to believe] that insurers will not touch nuclear power stations. In fact, wherever they are available to private sector insurers, Western-designed nuclear installations are sought-after business because of their high engineering and risk management standards. This has been the case for fifty years." He elaborated: "My comment refers very much to the world scene and is not contentious. Apart from Three Mile Island, the claim experience has been very good. Chernobyl was not insured. Significantly, because Chernobyl was of a design that would not have been an acceptable risk at the time, notably the lack of a containment structure, the accident had no impact on premium rates for Western plants.

      "The structure of insurance of nuclear installations is different from ordinary industrial risks. It involves international conventions, national legislation channeling liability to the operators, and pooling of insurance capacity in more than twenty countries. The national nuclear insurance pool approach was particularly developed in the UK in 1956 as a way of marshalling insurance capacity for the possibility of [serious accidents]. Other national pools that followed were modeled on the UK pool - now known as Nuclear Risk Insurers Limited, and based in London.""

      "Do you have some kind of citation for that? I'm pretty sure they do not."

      Look up the Price Anderson Act.
      Plant operators have to have both their own insurance.
      This gives them an incentive to be safe as they get a lower price if they have a better safety record.

      If the limit is reached on that due to an accident then the second layer comes in, all plant operators have to pay into that and if there's an accident then it doesn't matter which of them was a fault they all pay into it.

      It's similar to car insurance in come countries: if you are hurt by someone who is not insured or your costs run over the top of the limit on the policy of the person who hit you then the government covers the remaining cost as the insurer of last resort.

      The USA takes a somewhat different approach, and having pioneered the concept is not party to any international nuclear liability convention, except for the CSC, which has yet to come into force. The Price Anderson Act - the world's first comprehensive nuclear liability law - has since 1957 been central to addressing the question of liability for nuclear accident. It now provides $12.5 billion in cover without cost to the public or government and without fault needing to be proven. It covers power reactors, research reactors, enrichment plants, waste repositories and all other nuclear facilities.

      It was renewed for 20 years in mid 2005, with strong bipartisan support, and requires individual operators to be responsible for two layers of insurance cover. The first layer is where each nuclear site is required to purchase US$ 375 million liability cover (as of 2011) which is provided by a private insurance pool, American Nuclear Insurers (ANI). This is financial liability, not legal liability as in European liability conventions.

      The second layer or seconda

    73. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 0

      We don't really know, nobody can track the cause of various cancers. But that's not the point, the point is that greedy nuclear power executives and tone deaf nuclear power proponents have killed any chance of safe, clean nuclear power.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    74. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 0

      Really?!? But it's so safe! Why would they keep people away from a perfectly safe place?

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    75. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Do you have reading comprehension problems? I never said plant operators carry NO insurance, I said, their liability is capped by law and therefore they only need to carry a very limited amount of insurance. All that verbiage, okay, it's mostly copypasta, but you should make sure your response actually pertains to what was written before before wasting so much time.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    76. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      there were in fact a number on the coast of japan, the others did fairly ok.

      yes there will always be a potential mix of circumstances that could cause a disaster, but that goes for everything. if an earthquake like that hit a hydro damn above a big city we could have had a far worse disaster.
      Imagine the Banqiao Dam happening in the US.

    77. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, you're reneging on your promise. You said as close as he can and he proposed to go as close as he can.

    78. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      nice attempt at a retcon.

      Yes, they only have to carry a limited amount of insurance.
      This is the exact same as how drivers are required to carry insurance in many countries up to a specified minimum amount of liability covered.(generally in the tens of millions range)

      if you screw up really badly and manage to do more damage than that and haven't the assets to cover the damage then the government steps in and covers it.

      with nuclear it's similar only there's another layer in between with a second far far higher limit which you and all the other drivers *also* have to pay into.

    79. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

      Just outside the door levels are high; 200 meters away, levels are dropping off by inverse cube law.

      This would be true if there was only a point source of radiation. But for a month now radionuclide particulate has issued from the reactors and is scattered around the countryside. There have been high levels of radiation measured on the ground many miles from the reactor.

      Also, if the law in question were inverse SQUARE, not cube. (WIth something approximating a line source and being close to it compared to the distance to the ends, it would be inverse first power. With something approximating an area source and being close to it compared to the distance to the edges, it wouldn't fall off with distance AT ALL.)

      Inverse cube applies to things like dipole fields, where you get increasing cancellation as the apparent angle between two opposite-sense sources decreases with increasing distances. Not at all applicable to (incoherent) particle radiation like this.

      Also the inverse-nth-power approsimations assume the radiation isn't absorbed by air at all (a good approximation for gamma, wildly pessimistic for beta)

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    80. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Oh come on, now. Are you telling me he would let a little thing like police cordons stop him? He CAN get as close as he wants, I just don't think he WANTS to.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    81. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Hahaha, seriously, retcon? My words are all right there, show me!

      Drivers liabilities are not capped, if they owe more than their insurance covers, they pay, up to their own personal net worth. The government does not step in to pay for anything! In the case of nuclear power, they pay, only up to the cap, and they DO NOT have to declare bankruptcy. See the difference?

      You really couldn't be any more wrong about this. Remember, you helped kill nuclear power by playing the fool and acting the ass. Unlike you, I actually want nuclear power, so thanks for helping destroy my dreams.

      I'm through explaining things to children, Good Day sir.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    82. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1

      Don't worry about the downmods. You have an excellent point, but there are a lot of nuclear power industry lobbyists who're unwilling to allow open discussion.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    83. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assumed they meant total accumulated dose thus far. That way, I don't need to guess a unit of time.

    84. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      I never worry about downmods, and the damn nuclear power lobbyists could learn a thing or two if they just listened. What sounds better to the average man with concerns over nuclear power, "There's nothing to worry about, stupid, now shut up and sit down." OR, "I share your concerns about safety, which is why I advocate newer, safer reactor designs. With safer nuclear power as an option, we won't have to destroy the climate with CO2 anymore" Obviously, the second approach will win more converts. But these aren't actual nuclear power industry lobbyists, these are frustrated dorks. They have contrary tendencies to begin with. They think they are smarter than the average person. They have personal ego-investment in nuclear power because they have been touting it for so long. An actual nuclear power industry lobbyist would have far better control over his emotions and would be far more effective at advocacy. The guys here are just ego stroking. They have a belief system that runs "I'm smart. Because I'm smart, I believe in using nuclear power. If nuclear power is called into question, my intelligence is called into question. Therefore, I must defend nuclear power, or be thought the fool."

      Who knows, maybe I am the nuclear power industry lobbyist, trying to get these assholes to stop hurting my cause.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    85. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lgw · · Score: 1

      Sure, but we can't even get far enough in talking about nuclear power to discuss how we might make it safe, not for a decade at least. There are designs that require a lot less "investment into safety" as well, and I'd prefer a corporate-corruption-resistant design to any plan that starts "first we'll make corporations less corrupt".

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    86. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lennier · · Score: 1

      If that sells at good news, the spinmeisters are getting a bonus this year.

      It's not a spinmeister, it's a Putzmeister!

      They were the successful contractor, narrowly beating out industry competitors Schmucklord, Nimrodski and King Derp.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    87. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lennier · · Score: 1

      Sure, but if you inhale or eat any dust, you have a distance of 0. Extra special bonus if it's iodine or cesium or strontium, it gets incorporated into your body tissues or bones. Mmm crispy fried thyroid with a side of leukemia.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    88. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by lennier · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, there's still a thriving uranium mining industry in Bartertown.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    89. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stuff between you and the source of radiation absorbs the radiation, so it drops off faster than inverse square.

    90. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hi,

      I think some knowledge is better than none, no matter the source, but you should always complain about it when somebody tries to post something informative, because you inherently suck.

    91. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 1

      Well,by that same logic 9/11 attacks wasn't a big deal but that didn't stop you from going to war over it now, did it?
      The thing is; On the road I put my self at risk. It is when someone else puts us at risk, that we become upset right?

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    92. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny, cause I thought they meant 100 millisieverts one time exposure. Like 100mS/sec for 1sec or 100mS/h for 1h etc. Does it matter how quick the dose is administered?

    93. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by LastNewcomer · · Score: 1

      Easy, as Fukushima is on Earth it must be mSv/hr.

    94. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by LastNewcomer · · Score: 1

      Do you know what happened in Asco (Spain) plant a few months ago?. There was an small leakage, and it was not reported to the local Nuclear Agency and plant managers tried to hide the issue (huge penalties here). This plant, as many others, have schools visits daily, as I did with Vandellos 1, like 30 years ago. Well, the kids kept visiting the plant before, during and after the leakage without notice or interruption. The case was discovered later. Too much power and money on that plants to trust anybody barely related to this industry. Period.

    95. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oops. Is Google broken? Didn't know. Thx.

    96. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by wrook · · Score: 1

      The really sad thing is, people are ignorantly scared of nuclear power but should really be scared of anti-nuclear idiots.

      Or they should really be scared of the alternative power generation schemes. Personally, I have no problem with anti-nuclear people. There *is* a risk. And there *is* waste. And it *is* a problem. Fine. Getting rid of nuclear power doesn't solve the problem, it only changes the symptoms (and as you point out, can make it worse). It is important to note that the idiocy is *not* in thinking that nuclear power has problem. It is in thinking that anything else we have is better.

      I have found that when I explain things in this way, most (though not all) of the anti-nuclear people I know view the situation differently. They don't become any less anti-nuclear, but they stop being counter-productive (which is all I want anyway). If they want to reduce nuclear power generation (and everything worse) there is a simple and effective technique -- reduce energy consumption. The beauty of it is that we can make large improvements in this area without additional need for technology. Only our culture needs to change. While doing this, we can also put pressure on politicians and businesses to divert more money into research for things like large scale energy storage and transportation so that we can reduce the need for unrenewable energy sources.

      The thing is, these people *really* want to be helpful. If you concentrate so much on how idiotic they are, you lose a valuable resource. Instead please consider trying to aim that human energy into productive directions.

    97. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Inverse square law, no?

      Exactly. The inverse cube law only applies in 4-dimensional space.

    98. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
      "Note also that not one single person outside the emergency workers working to contain Fukushima has even become ill as a result of Fukushima."

      -

      And we know that those people don't count? It takes a special person, one who has no shame to even say something like that. Shame on you. Sleep well tonight while other people shorten their lives.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    99. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by jmcvetta · · Score: 1

      There is a key difference between a spectacular damn failure, even one big enough to wipe out a whole city, and a spectacular nuclear accident. The city destroyed by the floodwaters can be rebuilt. The city irradiated by a nuclear release, stays irradiated for countless generations. Maybe in the future man will develop much better decontamination technology. If/when that happens, it will fundamentally change the nuclear debate; but it's not here yet.

    100. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by inKubus · · Score: 1

      In all seriousness, this is the last reactor story I'm going to read on slashdot. Because there's nothing I can do. Even if it explodes in a firey mushroom cloud and irradiates the U.S. from coast to coast, there's nothing I could do to prevent it. I assume that the world's experts in the nuclear business who likely have some investment in it's continued availability who are gathered there fixing it are competent and will resolve the situation as quickly and safely as possible. It's at times like this that the higher power such as God or whatever was invented. Sometimes you just have to trust others. Frankly, I don't want to read about it any more. I want to read about Linux.

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
    101. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

      You meant inverse square law, right?

    102. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Bill+Currie · · Score: 1

      It matters very much. 100mSv over 2 years is the upper "legal" limit for radiation workers. Over 2 hours, it would be best to steer clear of radiation sources (bananas should be ok) for a couple of years. Over 2 seconds... unless it's a brief burst, I hope your will is in order.

      --

      Bill - aka taniwha
      --
      Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak

    103. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's simple, so far, every time TEPCO or the Japanese government has released figures, they have almost always done it in Miliseiverts/hour for sake of consistency.

    104. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by vipw · · Score: 1

      Yes, we must remember all the silicon miners who died in that recent, tragic, solar power mishap.

      Roofing is a very dangerous job, but I guess it's not headline news.

    105. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      you made a large number of blatant factual errors. I simply corrected them.

      Yes, they don't have to declare bankruptcy but they can be made pay retroactively if there's an accident.

    106. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      given that large sections of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are already being reclaimed it's not "countless generations" but rather a few generations.

      the people killed by the floodwaters are still dead, the buildings still destroyed.
      And chances are that there's far more people dead from the floodwaters, personally I value the people more than the land.

    107. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      1: I'm not american. I also think going to war over 9/11 was stupid and counterproductive.

      On the road you put yourself and others at risk unless you're a perfect driver which if course I'm sure you're sure you are.
      A driver can still spin off the road and hit someone on the footpath or plough into another car.

      When you're on a plane the pilot's actions decide how much risk you're at but in practice you're more likely to get to the other side of the country alive than if you drive yourself.

    108. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      unfortunately that's also the answer to the question of "how many people are killed by [insert *anything* here]"

      In practice if there's a significant number of people being killed it should show up in the stats.

      and yes. it's aaaalll the fault of people counseling sane, cool decision making based on actual harm rather than deciding what to do based on what sounds most scary.

    109. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by GooberToo · · Score: 1

      Give me one example of the anti nuke idiots

      Really? So ignoring reality means you didn't just get all your examples and more?

      I guess I sincerely wish I lived in the delusion bubble you and others like you create. Sadly, I live in the real world.

    110. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by GooberToo · · Score: 1

      It is important to note that the idiocy is *not* in thinking that nuclear power has problem. It is in thinking that anything else we have is better.

      That's an extremely rational point, to which I completely agree. The problem is, rationality is extremely foreign to anti-nukers. You need to keep in mind, people have long attempted to educate and rationalize with anti-nukers and as a result, we have their world of self fulfilling prophecy which slows progress, endangers the world, and makes everything more expensive.

      Until the Japan disaster, this was all starting to change. People were finally starting to listen to reason and were beginning to rationally filter the anti-nuker idiots.

      The thing is, these people *really* want to be helpful

      We're talking about two classifications of people here which you are conflating as one. Frankly, I'm guilty of some conflation here too. There are those who have been victimized by the anti-nukers and then there are the anti-nukers. The victims, who generally just sit there suffering from fear and ignorantly create friction to a safer world, probably do want to be helpful; else the anti-nukers wouldn't be as powerful as they are today. They just don't realize how ignorant and unhelpful they really are. But the real anti-nukers absolutely do not want to be helpful. Not in any way. They only want fear, ignorance, stupidity, and humanity living back in caves. Literally, if you killed all anti-nukers today, the world would be a better place tomorrow.

    111. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by a_nonamiss · · Score: 1

      My car last car went 186,000 miles! That's the speed of light!

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
    112. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      You corrected nothing, as you are simply wrong. Corporations don't have to pay retroactively, that's what the cap is for. Just stop, okay? You aren't helping your cause.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    113. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Except you aren't counseling sane, cool decision making, anyone conversing with you can tell you have a high emotional charge around this issue. It makes you appear illogical and partisan, not cool and logical. Your emotional charge is the reason that you are harming your cause.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    114. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by spun · · Score: 1

      Couldn't find anything, huh? Just say so, don't resort to ad-hominems. It makes you look foolish.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    115. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by niftymitch · · Score: 1

      Pickles can kill too:

      Take a couple large dill pickles and liquefy in a blender.
      Start a stopwatch and time how long a goldfish lives
      after dropping in the pickle liquid.

      --
      Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
    116. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      please.
      show me examples.

    117. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      not to put too fine a point on it but 1 of my classmates died of lymphoma as well and another died of another form of cancer.
      I was nowhere near any reactors or fallout.
      Also an anecdote but my story is unexceptional.

      The thyroid cancers are pretty much certainly due to radioactive iodine from the accident but as to the others:

      chances are a quarter of everyone you know, everyone you love and everyone you will ever meet is going to die of some form cancer with or without any nuclear plants.

    118. Re:Obligatory xkcd radiation chart by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      blatant factual errors:

      "The insurance industry, the industry that calculates risk, has calculated the risks of nuclear power and they want nothing to do with it. It is, according to the experts, too risky to insure. "-spun

      blatant factual error which you were too lazy to check.

      "Where did you get the idea that the nuclear power industry pays into a fund? Do you have some kind of citation for that? I'm pretty sure they do not."-spun

      blatant factual error which you were too lazy to check.

      or are you contending that you didn't make blatant factual errors.

      "only carry the minimum insurance mandated by law"-spun

      Some plants have more than the legally required minimum amount of coverage, example:

      STPNOC purchases insurance coverage on behalf of NRG and the
      other owners of STP. STP maintains property, decontamination
      liability and nuclear hazard liability insurance coverage as
      required by law and periodically reviews available limits and
      coverage for additional protection. Currently, STP has a
      $2.75 billion limit in property and decontamination
      liability insurance coverage, which is above the legally
      required minimum of $1.06 billion. The $2.75 billion
      includes $1 billion excess blanket coverage that is shared
      with two other nuclear power plants, namely Diablo Canyon and
      D.C. Cook.

      http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/NRG_Energy_(NRG)/Nuclear_Insurance

      but of course I'm just being a nuclear cheerleader and emotional by point out that you're too full of yourself to admit when you're wrong and too lazy to do good research.

  2. Aperture Labs provided a solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a portal... to somewhere... that they can transfer the radioactive materials.

    1. Re:Aperture Labs provided a solution by Rei · · Score: 2

      The yellowcake is a lie!

      --
      You can't change that... by gettin' all... bendy.
    2. Re:Aperture Labs provided a solution by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 1

      It's a portal... to somewhere... that they can transfer the radioactive materials.

      The isotrop hit quarter-life but went off harmless in Atlantic ocean. Observe with hasty.

  3. Units by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    100 millisieverts? Per hour? Per day? Per century? Thanks, Slashdot, for giving us a useless number.

    --
    "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    1. Re:Units by jd · · Score: 1

      Per Library of Congress*. That's the default on Slashdot, when no other units are given.

      *Yes, you were expecting time rather than bytes, so remember to cast the type before assignment.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:Units by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      Per picosecond.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    3. Re:Units by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 4, Funny

      Per furlong.

    4. Re:Units by destroygbiv · · Score: 1

      per fort-night

    5. Re:Units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Per Cowboy Neal

    6. Re:Units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Per hogshead. They measured it by tying an onion to their belt, which was the style at the time.

    7. Re:Units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      per slashdot-comment

    8. Re:Units by jam244 · · Score: 1

      100 millisieverts past light speed.

    9. Re:Units by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      I believe you meant per fortnight, good sir. As everybody knows, a furlong is 110 fathoms.

    10. Re:Units by cshake · · Score: 1

      Per radian!

    11. Re:Units by tophermeyer · · Score: 1

      I assumed the Library of Congress unit of time referred to the time it would take a million monkeys on a million typewriters to replicate it by chance, the LoCUoT.

      What's the sense of adopting a standard unit if we can only use it for a single type of measurement? I've already modified my oven dial to the Library of Congress unit of energy, the LoCUoE.

    12. Re:Units by hort_wort · · Score: 1

      100 millisieverts? Per hour? Per day? Per century? Thanks, Slashdot, for giving us a useless number.

      I assumed it meant that the meter had recorded a *cumulative* amount of 100 mSv before it fizzled out. I have a counter on my desk that I've had running since this disaster occurred. In that time, it's accumulated 0.013 mSv with the background here.

    13. Re:Units by kitsunewarlock · · Score: 1

      Per fortnight.

      --
      Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
    14. Re:Units by Scatterplot · · Score: 1

      It's actually Libary of Congress-Football Fields per Olympic Sized Swimming pool.

    15. Re:Units by Flyerman · · Score: 1

      They made the Kessel Run in 100 millisieverts.

    16. Re:Units by asvravi · · Score: 1

      Most reports out of TEPCO seem to be using the sieverts as a radiation rate measure, assuming a default per hour dosage.

    17. Re:Units by Dunega · · Score: 1

      Per can of tuna's mercury content.

    18. Re:Units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Per Hogshead per Rod.

    19. Re:Units by LastNewcomer · · Score: 1

      Per sexual intercourse. So don't worry.

  4. "Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. After the pumped 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the ocean there is not more water to leak.. Give me a break.

    1. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by maxume · · Score: 1

      They are pumping something like 30 gallons per minute into each of the reactors, that's plenty of newly contaminated water to deal with.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by TopSpin · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is an estimated 50,000 tons of water still on site that will need to be disposed of one way or the other. About 500 tons are pumped into reactor pressure vessels for cooling every day. Some recent information on this is reported here by NHK: Workers face challenge of water storage

      To put 50,000 tons of water in perspective, a super tanker will carry about 172,000,000 gallons of oil. 50,000 tons of water is ~12,000,000 gallons. One super tanker could carry all the water on site plus and also receive all new water pumped into the reactors for the next 1332 days. No, I don't need the plausibility of this explained to me; this is an attempt to provide some scale to the problem.

      --
      Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
    3. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by Noughmad · · Score: 1

      11,000 tons of radioactive water

      I keep hearing this figure on the news, but nobody has ever bothered to say how radiaoactive this water was. I mean, if I put a miligram of Uranium into the Atlantic, did I just produce 323,600,000 cubic kilometres of radioactive water?

      --
      PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
    4. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by maxume · · Score: 1

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

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

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    5. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by xaxa · · Score: 1

      To put 50,000 tons of water in perspective...

      50,000 tons of water is a 36×36×36 cube of water (1 tonne of water has volume 1000 litres = 1 m^3).

      This is 20 large swimming pools worth of water (20× 25×50×2).

    6. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      NHK World was reporting that water tanks will be installed next month to hold the water. I'm still not understanding why 50,000 tonnes does not become 100,000 before the tanks are installed since they can't get to the recirculation system until they remove the water. And they need to add more water until they do that.

    7. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good link. The relevant passage:

      According to the TEPCO Press Release of 4 April, approximately 10 000 T of water from the radioactive waste treatment plant and 1 500 T of subsurface waters stored in the sub drain pits of Unit 5 and 6 are being discharged to the sea to provide room to store water with higher levels of radioactivity in a safer manner. The discharges started at 10:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC respectively on 4 April. TEPCO has estimated that these discharges would increase the effective dose to a member of the public by 0.6 mSv, if he/she were to eat seaweed and seafood from the discharge area every day for a year.

      A person's average yearly background dose is around 3.65 mSv, according to xkcd.

    8. Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right. by internettoughguy · · Score: 1

      Good link. The relevant passage:

      According to the TEPCO Press Release of 4 April, approximately 10 000 T of water from the radioactive waste treatment plant and 1 500 T of subsurface waters stored in the sub drain pits of Unit 5 and 6 are being discharged to the sea to provide room to store water with higher levels of radioactivity in a safer manner. The discharges started at 10:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC respectively on 4 April. TEPCO has estimated that these discharges would increase the effective dose to a member of the public by 0.6 mSv, if he/she were to eat seaweed and seafood from the discharge area every day for a year.

      A person's average yearly background dose is around 3.65 mSv, according to xkcd.

      It also says that the "lowest one-year dose clearly linked to increased cancer risk" is 100mSv, so that's pretty safe right?

  5. Actually by AnonymmousCoward · · Score: 0

    Using 1,500,000 of those packets that come with your shoes. "Do not eat!"

  6. Leak to ocean stopped. Leak from reactor, not. by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    The leak that was stopped was from a drain pit to the ocean. The reactor itself is still leaking highly radioactive water. They're running out of places to put it.and are frantically building tanks and ponds.

    1. Re:Leak to ocean stopped. Leak from reactor, not. by c0lo · · Score: 1

      The leak that was stopped was from a drain pit to the ocean. The reactor itself is still leaking highly radioactive water. They're running out of places to put it.and are frantically building tanks and ponds.

      This and... did they actually managed to stop the water leaking into the soil? Or is just a case of "out of the media sight, out of mind"?

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  7. 100 mS is no joke by ShooterNeo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So according to the chart, if you hang around an area with 100 mS per hour for an hour, you'll receive a dose likely to cause cancer. Hang around for 4 hours, and you get radiation poisoning. That's not a lot of time - it takes days of labor to do anything major. Probably takes 30 minutes just to walk around part of the plant looking for radiation leaks. This must be why it took so long to plug that water leak - no one could hang around the leak for more than brief intervals.

    Heck, even refueling a diesel pump - which is just increasing the amount of highly radioactive water you have to dispose of somehow - is going to take 20 minutes at a minimum, right?

    I'm sure the workers are doing what they can - sprinting through the hot areas, working in shifts, using automation when they can - but the larger the contaminated area gets and the more fission products leak the worse the problem becomes. If you cannot even enter the building the reactor is in, how can you fix anything? They can't just send in robots and spray concrete willy nilly - if the reactor cores fully melt down and form critical masses at the bottom of the reactor vessel, gigawatts of heat will be produces and burn through any containment.

        They need to have active pumps flushing water through the reactor vessels and out to the cooling tower and back again. This is the only method that won't create more and more radioactive water that has to be disposed of. (because right now they are just pumping water in and it leaks out of the reactor vessel and pools somewhere)

    But to do that, somehow has to enter the building, install new pumps, fix breaks in the wiring, fix holes in the pipes, install sensors, power it up, and so forth. That's many hours of labor, and beyond the dexterity of what robots can do.

    http://xkcd.com/radiation/

    1. Re:100 mS is no joke by khallow · · Score: 1

      I'm sure the workers are doing what they can - sprinting through the hot areas, working in shifts, using automation when they can - but the larger the contaminated area gets and the more fission products leak the worse the problem becomes. If you cannot even enter the building the reactor is in, how can you fix anything? They can't just send in robots and spray concrete willy nilly - if the reactor cores fully melt down and form critical masses at the bottom of the reactor vessel, gigawatts of heat will be produces and burn through any containment.

      Keep in mind that everything is decaying over time and there's still some isotopes in the few day range which are still decaying. Much of this will remain hot for centuries, but merely waiting does ease the problem. They can also clean up the problem (vacuum, wash, whatever, the radioactive contamination, vitrify it or otherwise stabilize it, and bury it).

      And they're beyond issues of criticality. What fuel has melted is now both diluted (since it mixed up with metal, concrete, etc) and "poisoned" by elements such as boron and some decay products which absorb neutrons easily.

    2. Re:100 mS is no joke by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Informative

      So according to the chart, if you hang around an area with 100 mS per hour for an hour, you'll receive a dose likely to cause cancer.

      No. To use the inevitable car analogy:

      A scientist says: "Car accidents can happen to anyone who is in an automobile. However, studies have shown that car crashes are an insignificant cause of death for those who drive less than 1000 miles per year.

      An editor summarizes: "Minimum one-year driving linked to increased car crash risk: 1000 miles".

      You read: "If you drive 1000 miles you'll probably die".

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    3. Re:100 mS is no joke by ShooterNeo · · Score: 2

      Radiation poisoning happens at 400 mS. Your analogy fails. 100 mS is the minimum level at which we KNOW cancer rates go up significantly. They probably rise at lower radiation doses as well.

    4. Re:100 mS is no joke by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      If you hang around an area with 100 mS per hour for an hour, you'll receive a dose likely to cause cancer.

      Well, you'll receive a dose that has been statistically shown to increase your chances of getting cancer, which is not quite the same thing as likely.

      There was a handful of articles floating around last week that the plant company was looking to hire semi-skilled 'Jumpers' to do the kinds of jobs you're talking about. They'll pay you a ridiculous amount of money ($2500-5000) to get trained in on a simple task like refueling a generator or patching a damaged cable, then you jump in, get the work done as fast as possible, and jump out again. So long as everyone plays by the rules and tracks their dosages you should be fine to do it once or twice; in fact, the practice was common world wide during the 70's and 80's before robots became advanced enough to do those kinds of tasks in healthy reactors.

    5. Re:100 mS is no joke by ShooterNeo · · Score: 1

      What a way to make a living. And it's a nice chunk of change...IF you don't end up being the 1/100 or 1/1000 that develops some kind of nasty cancer early and dies slowly and horribly...or is forced to spend hundreds of k on medical bills.

    6. Re:100 mS is no joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So how about you don't go to the specific *spot* that has 100mSv??? How about someone take a shovel and moves that little bit of dirt to another spot where it wouldn't be a problem?

      There are hotspots, with some being 100mSv/h. The key word is hot spots. There are cool spots too, with very little radiation (uS/h). Then there is stuff in between. That's why they have radiation monitors so they can detect these changes.

      This is not minimizing the risk. The area is contaminated and thanks to the shit that happened, it is leaking radioactive water that will need to be contained and then processed. There is also a need to fix the leak from the place it is leaking. But for that they will have to pump out the water and decontaminate (ie. wash) the area near the reactor. This will take a while and water will pile up.

    7. Re:100 mS is no joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "cancer rates go up significantly" != "you are more likely to get cancer than not"

    8. Re:100 mS is no joke by Rashkae · · Score: 1

      No, not a dose likely to cause cancer. A dose that has a measurable effect on increasing your lifelong chances of getting cancer. The base chance of a random person, with no extra-ordinary risk factors, getting cancer is somewhere around 46%. It's assumed that any exposure to radiation increases this, but with radiation doses less than 100mSv, the increase chance of getting cancer is so small it can't be measured/detected. (and I'm pretty sure, though don't remember exactly, that the first level of increased cancer detection is less than 1% increase.) I'm sorry for the vague numbers, I'm quoting from memory and not looking them up for exact figures. But the take away is that being exposed to 100 mSv radiation is not good, but does not mean it's likely you'll suddenly get cancer from it.

      When it comes to radiation and chance of getting cancer, all doses are cumulative. Being exposed to 100mSv once by itself doesn't do much, but add that to all your chest x-rays, high altitude flights, bananas, etc will eventually lead to an increase chance of cancer.

    9. Re:100 mS is no joke by kevinNCSU · · Score: 2

      "significantly" in the statistical sense that we can find any correlation between radiation and increased cancer occurrence, not the laymen's sense of "greatly". Also keep in mind that's a YEARLY dose linked with cancer and I think we're talking about an hourly dose of 100 mSv there so you are certainly correct that it is quite a serious amount indeed.

    10. Re:100 mS is no joke by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      So according to the chart, if you hang around an area with 100 mS per hour for an hour, you'll receive a dose likely to cause cancer. Hang around for 4 hours, and you get radiation poisoning.

      Not quite. There's a difference between an increased chance of cancer (something like a 5% increased chance of getting cancer in the next 30 years) and being "likely to cause cancer". Similarly, 400 mSv marks the beginning of some symptoms of radiation poisoning - itchy skin being the primary symptom.

      As exposure moves towards 2 Sv, we see up to 50% of those affected with nausea and vomiting, mild fatigue/weakness, a slight headache, and a 0-5% chance of mortality. (Each person reacts differently to a degree).

      The latent period is from 20-40 years of healthy life before the onset of cancer.

      There's a reason why the "Fukushima 50" (though the number is actually far larger than 50) are all older workers: There's a good chance they'll die of natural causes before they develop cancer from the radiation.

      The sad fact is that opponents of anything "nuclear" are having a field day misrepresenting the facts. The most common one I see is the substitution of the Greek mu with the Latin 'm'. I often see reports of exposures of 400 milli-Sv being reported, when the actual levels were 400 micro-Sv (ie. 1000x lower). Similarly, radiation dosimeters come in a range of capacities. The most common models go "off the scale" in the microsievert range, as that is the kind of radiation level one would expect to see in nearly all situations. As a result, it's hard to gauge how serious a radiation level that is "off the scale" really is. It could mean something, but for most dosimeters, it's really meaningless FUD in this situation. Anti-nuclear activists are in full FUD mode, overstating (sometimes drastically) both the radiation levels and the risks involved.

      Make no mistake: Fukushima is no walk in the park. The nuclear workers are exposing themselves to levels of radiation for long enough they will have health problems in a couple of decades (if they don't die of other causes first). But there is an awful lot of FUD being spread around by activists.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    11. Re:100 mS is no joke by berashith · · Score: 1

      exactly. Everyone needs to remember that there is a base percentage chance of cancer already, around 20% i think, and these exposures are upping this percentage to 21%. Even if my statement is oversimplified and incorrect, it is not as incorrect as those saying that 100mSv / hr will kill you in exactly one hour.

      The other confusion I keep hearing is that this will increase existing chances ... I have a family history of colon cancer, so I watch it closely. Radiation exposure is an independent risk, it doesnt take my chances and double the likelihood.

    12. Re:100 mS is no joke by blueg3 · · Score: 1

      It's not "likely", it's "measurably likely". As in, there is a small but measurable increase in the probability that you will one day get cancer.

      100 mSv/hr is not a trivial amount of radiation. It's not Godzilla or Chernobyl, but it's substantial. As you point out, a few hours at 100 mSv/hr will cause radiation poisoning, and a few more hours will kill you.

    13. Re:100 mS is no joke by confused+one · · Score: 1

      except that something like 1/5 of the population dies of cancer anyway. So, getting 100mSv increases your chance from 200/1000 to 205/1000 (based on increase in risk .05%/rem, which is debatable). However, most studies show the increase in cancer rates cannot be distinguished from background until dose exceeds somewhere between 10 and 20 rem (100 - 200 mSv).

    14. Re:100 mS is no joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a .1% increased chance at 100mS. Less than .1% is fairly negligable, and much less of a factor than slight changes in genetic predisposition, diet and certainly way less than smoking.

    15. Re:100 mS is no joke by Maestro4k · · Score: 1

      So according to the chart, if you hang around an area with 100 mS per hour for an hour, you'll receive a dose likely to cause cancer. Hang around for 4 hours, and you get radiation poisoning. That's not a lot of time - it takes days of labor to do anything major. Probably takes 30 minutes just to walk around part of the plant looking for radiation leaks. This must be why it took so long to plug that water leak - no one could hang around the leak for more than brief intervals.

      The difficulty stopping the leak was more trying to work with portions of the leak (maybe both sides) under water in addition to the radiation issues. I'm pretty sure one side was completely inaccessible due to the water, so they were having to dump stuff in and hope it would get to the leak and plug it. Which it finally did. They're not working under optimal conditions period, even without the radiation they'd be having problems fixing stuff. The plant's lucky to still be standing after what it went through.

    16. Re:100 mS is no joke by tokul · · Score: 1

      A scientist says: "Car accidents can happen to anyone who is in an automobile. However, studies have shown that car crashes are an insignificant cause of death for those who drive less than 1000 miles per year.

      He is not scientist. He is statistic, who manipulates data and ignores the fact that large part of dead are sitting in passenger seat. Car accidents can happen to anyone who is in an automobile.

    17. Re:100 mS is no joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your "inevitable car analogy" fails inevitably.
      We know for fact that a certain amount mS will inevitably kill you by radiation but there are no certain amount of km you have to drive to _inevitably_ kill you by car accident. Thus your analogy inevitably fails.

  8. Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times limit by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2

    Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit

    TOKYO â" The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

    The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

    The exact source of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed.

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/05/111571/japans-ocean-radiation-hits-75.html

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  9. Glow-in-the-Dark Sushi! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

    Eat it now, before it cooks itself...

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  10. the fishermen just don't "get it" by v1 · · Score: 2

    "We have repeatedly asked the government and Tepco to stop further radiation leaks into the ocean. But the government and Tepco ignored us and dumped radioactive water into the sea, which is utterly outrageous," said the letter from Japan's largest fishermen's labour group. "What they have done is unforgivable. It could really destroy our business."

    (emphasis mine)

    They are being totally selfish and turning a blind eye to what the government has been trying to tell them. They have many millions more gallons of water than they can store. Some of it has to be dumped. They could dump some less contaminated water from the storage pond to make room for much more dangerous water that has to be removed from the reactors, OR they could stop using the pond and just dump that highly radioactive water from the reactors straight into the ocean, which would be much worse for the fishing industry over the next several years. No one else has a better idea, unless these fishermen care to stop by with some buckets?

    They're upset at what's happening, and are lashing out and treating it like they're the deliberate targets of a random malicious decision. It's the best option available at this time. I don't even know if a technology exists to remove radiation from water, I'm assuming it either doesn't exist or is too slow to be practical otherwise they wouldn't be using storage ponds in the first place.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    1. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by ibpooks · · Score: 1

      I don't even know if a technology exists to remove radiation from water, I'm assuming it either doesn't exist or is too slow to be practical otherwise they wouldn't be using storage ponds in the first place.

      The technology does exist to remove the radioactive particles from the water, but the water treatment plant at Fukushima is offline as a result of the damage and lack of electricity. The only option at this point is to store as much contaminated water as possible until the treatment plant can be reactivated. Furthermore, if the primary contaminant is Iodine-131, they simply need to quarantine the water long enough for the Iodine to decay at which point the water can be safely discharged into the sea without risk to humans or wildlife.

    2. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by timeOday · · Score: 1
      Perhaps what they're really doing with these statements is pulling a number in the queue of people lining up for compensation of financial damages. It will be argued that this was a preventable outcome of the tsunami. For example, the reactors might have been placed on higher ground.

      I can see their point. If elevated radiation is detected in their catch, nobody will touch it with a ten foot pole. They will have no livelihood, and that is a terrifying prospect for anybody.

    3. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think they do get it. Is TEPCO or the Japanese government going to compensate the fishermen for the fish they can't sell? Are you going to buy it? Why is it selfish to protest the dumping of toxic waste directly into the ocean at the cost of their livelihoods?

      They are lashing out at being the unfortunate hardest-hit victims of the most expedient and undoubtedly the cheapest option to dump radioactive water directly into the ocean.

      I scarcely believe anyone is defending this but I guess we're supposed to worship at the altar of Nuclear here at slashdot.

    4. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the primary contaminant is not Iodine-131. It's I-131 and Cs-134/137 in almost equal measures. That's a 30 year halflife for Cesium-137 and it's far more toxic with a lethal dose at just 4mg.

    5. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      I don't even know if a technology exists to remove radiation from water, I'm assuming it either doesn't exist or is too slow to be practical otherwise they wouldn't be using storage ponds in the first place.

      The technology does exist. It's mostly a matter of getting the technology to where it's needed quickly.

      To that end, the Japanese government has asked the Russians if they can use one of their ships that is specifically designed to treat radioactive water. I don't recall the class of ship, but the Soviet/Russian military uses the ships to treat the water in decommissioned naval vessels. From what I understand, it's a class of ship unique to the Russians; other navies use drydocks instead of a portable/floating treatment center.

      The Russians wanted a few answers from the Japanese before they would lend the ship, plus there's the time it takes to get the ship to Fukushima before treatment can begin. Hopefully it'll be able to get on site quickly enough to be useful.

      A different method to 'treat' radioactive water amounts to mixing concrete using the radioactive water; it effectively encases the radioactive isotopes in the concrete, and prevents the release of radiation into the environment. The method is able to contain the longer-lived cesium isotopes long enough for a safe decay. Even then - there's the question of which is actually safer in long and short term to dispose of: Dump the radioactive water into the ocean and let it dilute the radioactive water to the point it's safe (over a few months), or have massive, radioactive concrete blocks that concentrate radiation for a 1-2 centuries.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    6. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by mosb1000 · · Score: 1

      As with any solids dissolved in water, these chemicals can be removed through distillation, or reverse osmosis. Many can also be removed through ion-exchange. I would assume they haven't done so for lack of ability to get appropriate equipment in place in a timely fashion. Though I'd think they could have done it since it's been over a week, so perhaps the problem is more likely a lack of foresight and planning from the early stages of the disaster.

    7. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget the destroyed infrastructure: Roads strewn with rubble & debris.

      Also, there are other things to think of:
      Humans die after a couple of days without water; the need is far more immediate for drinking water than for reactor coolant.

      When an entire life-critical infrastructure for millions of people (like drinking water) that took decades to build is knocked offline in an instant, it's not something you can just rush in and fix offhand. The need is great, and the actual supply is limited by the ability to transport the water over damaged roads that are clogged with debris.

      The techniques you mention for radiation removal are also used to make normal drinking water. I imagine the resources to do distillation, R/O and ion-exchange are more than a little overtaxed in Japan - first from disabled municipal water sources in stricken areas, and second from areas where any level of radiation has been detected in the water.

      Save people from certain death now, and worry about possible death from radiation later. Electorates are generally unforgiving when people start dying of dehydration.

      We saw a similar problem after Hurricane Katrina - not enough clean drinking water. It took days before clean water was readily obtainable, and weeks before the municipal water systems were back.

      There are always ways we can plan to handle a disaster - but 'perfect' preparation is just too expensive. Sometimes it's easier and cheaper to rebuild a home than it is to prevent its destruction.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    8. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They had the technology working, but then the Enclave showed up and took over.

    9. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fishermen are being selfish because an incompetent, lying, cost-cutting industry can't think of a better way to deal with the mess they created?

      This isn't a Japanese, "we're all in this together" problem. It's an industry screw-up. They build reactors on a coast line where they get tsunamis. That was stupid. They deal with the problem of depleted fuel rods by not dealing with them. Stupid. They use homeless people to clean their reactors. Evil. (Look up the documentary, "Nuclear Ginza")

      The industry clearly doesn't care about people. It cares about bottom lines.

      The Fishermen did nothing wrong. They are not being selfish. They are trying to survive because a stupid, evil industry mismanaged an otherwise clever form of energy.

      This is normal for humans. We're clearly too stupid to use nuclear power safely.

    10. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree, and they are fools for not dumping everything into the ocean. The dilution factor is so great that it would not likely affect their fisheries at all (since the Japanese tend to fish the entire pacific). Also, its a perfect place for radioactive cesium, with a half life of 30 years, it probably takes mlilenia for any given ml of water to circulate around the world. After all, most coastal cities dump raw sewage straight into the ocean and nobody complains, and that is more likely a health risk than an increase of alpha radiation 0.01% above background (after dilution).

      Bottom line is, their radiation levels are so high because they are sequestering it. Its like if your house filled with smoke and you refused to open a window.

    11. Re:the fishermen just don't "get it" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a perfectly fine technique to remove this radiation from water. It's called waiting. Seriously, the stuff dumped now is primarily Iodine, with a halflife of days. They're not dumping uranium or plutonium.

  11. Re:Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times li by hedwards · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not a problem, we'll just throw the fish in jail and we'll be good to go.

  12. Fusion Power Time? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    When I look up and see the Moon, I see a large amount of energy that soon could be within Humanities reach.

    1. Re:Fusion Power Time? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      When I look up and see the Moon, I see a large amount of energy that soon could be within Humanities reach.

      That's the sun. Daylight. An interesting concept. You might try it some time.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Fusion Power Time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then you need to do some serious growing up and facing the very real limits of our technology and physics. There are NO FUSION POWER REACTORS *ANYWHERE* on this planet. NONE. Yes, there are fusion *reactors*, NONE of which create more power than they take to run. Then what? What do you want to do on the Moon? Mine He3? Are you insane? There are no planned reactors to burn this stuff. And there is absolutely no infrastructure, technology or capacity anywhere for us to mine the Moon.

      If we *did* have the technology and power to do so, well, we WOULDN'T *HAVE* an energy problem!!!!

      Christ you Space Nutters are something else.

    3. Re:Fusion Power Time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes!!! Moon prism power!!! All our problems are solved by the pretty Japanese schoolgirls.

    4. Re:Fusion Power Time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tidal?

    5. Re:Fusion Power Time? by olsmeister · · Score: 1

      I think he's referring to the abundance of helium-3 in the lunar regolith, which could be used for nuclear fusion.

    6. Re:Fusion Power Time? by berashith · · Score: 1

      wait, what??? the helium goes to the moon? that is why balloons float? what attracts this He? is the moon a big magnet for this stuff ? :)

    7. Re:Fusion Power Time? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Yep, we'll have fusion power in 50 years. Just like they said 50 years ago.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    8. Re:Fusion Power Time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which makes me seriously think that you nuclear islamists are simply completely crazy. Literally incapable of seeing the sun in broad daylight. Pathetic.

    9. Re:Fusion Power Time? by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      When I look up and see the Moon, I see a large amount of energy that soon could be within Humanities reach.

      What I want to know is where you learn to build fusion reactors in humanities class.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    10. Re:Fusion Power Time? by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      If I had to go for jail for something, I mean, If I could chose - I would chose to go to the slammer for going berzerk and ripping at least 10 people that posted this tired, boring, uninformed and frankly idiotic meme on slashdot limb from limb. Then writing "READ THE FUCKING LITERATURE BEFORE POSTING SMART-ARSE BULLSHIT" in 10-meter tall letters on some wall. That, yes, that I would consider fulfillment.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    11. Re:Fusion Power Time? by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      What I want to know is where you learn to build fusion reactors in humanities class.

      I have to agree. If they teach how to build a fusion reactor in their humanities classes, just think of the science & engineering courses!

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    12. Re:Fusion Power Time? by lennier · · Score: 1

      When I look up and see the Moon, I see a large amount of energy that soon could be within Humanities reach.

      You mean if we deorbit it? Yeeees... that would certainly impart a large amount of energy very quickly. Might be a bit difficult to convert into anything except thermal and acoustic, but that's acceptable if we aim it at an uninhabited continent. Certainly worth investigating!

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    13. Re:Fusion Power Time? by lennier · · Score: 1

      this tired, boring, uninformed and frankly idiotic meme

      I assume you're posting this from your Mr. Fusion powered home and are preparing to take the generating world by storm. Good job old chap!

      In the meantime, fusion continues not to happen.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    14. Re:Fusion Power Time? by lennier · · Score: 1

      What I want to know is where you learn to build fusion reactors in humanities class.

      It's in the music track; generally Jazz Fusion.

      Critical Theory deals more with fission.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    15. Re:Fusion Power Time? by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      When I look up and see the Moon, I think "mmm, cheese"

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    16. Re:Fusion Power Time? by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      they said the same thing 50 years ago

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    17. Re:Fusion Power Time? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      the sun and the moon are the two largest objects in earth's sky. the moon is the object that is not as bright.

    18. Re:Fusion Power Time? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      solar, wind, thermal are all good sources. but sometimes the sun, wind, and drill bit is not enough. H3 is not radio active, and is relatively portable. I believe that watching one's thyroid gland stop functioning because of radiation poisoning could ruin an otherwise beautiful day.

  13. Question on construction by Pro923 · · Score: 1

    I admittedly know very little to nothing about nuclear power, or the complexities of building a reactor. Why don't they build these things below ground level so that if something like this happens, they can just pour in water - or even seal the thing off with tons of concrete?

    1. Re:Question on construction by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      Nuclear power plants are very inefficient because they have to operate at low temperature to protect the fuel from damage. This means they need enormous amounts of cooling to dissipate waste heat. Trying to do that underground would be very difficult.

    2. Re:Question on construction by maxume · · Score: 1

      When you say "inefficient", what do you mean? Do you mean that the thermal output of the reactor is much higher than the electrical output of the plant, or do you mean something else?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    3. Re:Question on construction by MarcQuadra · · Score: 1

      Also, they operate at high pressures to keep the water liquid past the normal 100C boiling point. In a BWR, pressure is 75 atmospheres, in a PWR it's 160. To get those pressures from depth of water and hold with an 'open top' (read: loss of containment at the top), you'd need a stack of water 750 meters high; double for a PWR. At lengths like that, you generate a lot of 'dirty' water, it saps a ton of efficiency from the reactor (warming-up a kilometer-long tube of water?), and it's more likely that a crack develops along the water column and you're back to square one.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    4. Re:Question on construction by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      Yes, that is just right. The thermodynamic efficiency is quite low. Lots of waste heat, little power. Combined cycle gas generators are limited by the cooling capability of very tough turbine blades so they get up to about 60% conversion. Nukes are doing well for what they are at 30% owing to fragile fuel.

    5. Re:Question on construction by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      I think you'd cool at the turbine exhaust below ground using a cooling water loop, not place the turbines at the surface. It is just that you need a river flow's worth of cooling water in that loop. That is why nukes are built at the ocean or on a river usually.

    6. Re:Question on construction by maxume · · Score: 1

      Oh, so what are the numbers per kg of fuel?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    7. Re:Question on construction by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      That does not make a difference if the question is what kind of generation to do underground. But, you might want to look at the ratio of energy expended to get the fuel divided into energy produced. You'll find that especially with gas diffusion enrichment, the most common source for our fuel, nuclear power looks very poor compared with any other source.

  14. yes please - hyper thyroid sushimi by axonis · · Score: 1

    i wonder what the 1/2 life is of some Fukushima sushimi, say in a Kansas sushi bar ?, anyones thyroid would be pumping at the thought of todays catch in that cool glass cabinet. Spear fishing anyone ? or can Virgin Oceanic pick one up ?

    --
    bæ8Ã0sÃOE?5r©oÂÃ?âz:ÃÃAÃ?ÃOEÂ6fXÃ?]Â
    1. Re:yes please - hyper thyroid sushimi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sushimi is not a word.

    2. Re:yes please - hyper thyroid sushimi by CompMD · · Score: 1

      I don't know, but I'm heading to Yokohama Sushi at 8th and New Hampshire in Lawrence, Kansas for dinner tonight, and I'm bringing my geiger counter.

  15. From the Han Solo school of thought by Shivetya · · Score: 2

    It is in Parsecs

    --
    * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
  16. Proper unit abbreviation: mSv by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    100 mS per hour

    100 milliseconds per hour?

    I think you mean "100 mSv per hour"

  17. Buttleak Plugged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is what I read the first time, sounded like Nuclear Pr0n... ;-)

  18. This is all meaningless by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even if they get the hydrogen under control, the amount of water, the damage to the secondary containment, the likely damage to primary containment, the contamination of the site, it's not just that Fukushima Daiichi will never operate again. Daiichi will be entombed and left to decay for at least a decade, probably longer, much longer. All six reactors are lost, 5&6 are just not going to be operated because it is too hot to work there 8 hours a day.

    While they wait for decay to lower levels enough for machines to clean things up, there will be continuing groundwater and soil contamination. They will have to build a new seawall and interceptor wells to limit (not prevent) contamination of the local sea. The local population won't be allowed within 12km, and they won't WANT to be within 20km or more. Agriculture will likely be ruined, having to wait for years to once again export their products. It's the Cesium isotopes that will cause the worst problems, and cause the lasting effects, and they are not able to contain this yet. Hopefully #3 won't blow a Plutonium cloud that, even if it were minimal, would poison the area for the forseeable future. There is no assurance that this will not happen.

    This is already inevitable, and there will be no real discussion, because TEPCO cannot admit to the inevitable outcome yet. To do so is to admit defeat, lose all face, and watch them become a single-yen stock.

    And somehow Japan needs to replace the generating capacity. Quickly.

    Overall this situation is redefining 'worst-case'. It may have been simpler to have a couple of core melts and just pour concrete and sand over the whole damned thing. Now we've gotten broken containment, multiple vectors, and inadequate resources. Oh, and the Japanese way of self-reliance to the point of failure. Works for the residents and their migration, doesn't work for engineering problems.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    1. Re:This is all meaningless by blueg3 · · Score: 1

      Overall this situation is redefining 'worst-case'. It may have been simpler to have a couple of core melts and just pour concrete and sand over the whole damned thing. Now we've gotten broken containment, multiple vectors, and inadequate resources. Oh, and the Japanese way of self-reliance to the point of failure. Works for the residents and their migration, doesn't work for engineering problems./quote.

      No, there's still quite a ways to go before you get near "worst case". One bad scenario is failing to cool the fuel to the point that it combusts, putting ash heavy with radioactive material into the air. (Also bad is an explosive failure of the primary containment, but that's very unlikely these days.) Uncontained radioactive materials at the reactor site and in the ocean is one thing. Radioactive materials in the ground water is worse. Radioactive materials in the atmosphere in large quantities is very bad.

    2. Re:This is all meaningless by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      "Also bad is an explosive failure of the primary containment, but that's very unlikely these days"

      This is quite possibly what has happened at #2, if I recall correctly. Lack of pressure buildup is seen as a failure of the vessel, and while it won't be described as 'explosive', that's the likely cause.

      As for atmospheric releases, an ocean release doesn't seem that much more preferable. If the choice was between a burn and ash, vs. leaching and seawater contamination, I choose neither. Ultimately, we are facing a long-term discharge, I think. I don't see a workable plan to stop the water, since they are still pouring it on.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:This is all meaningless by blueg3 · · Score: 1

      Failure of primary containment is bad, but nowhere near as bad as explosive failure, which is what you got at, say, Chernobyl.

      Atmospheric dispersal is much worse than oceanic. There's a lot of water in the ocean, and water mixes relatively well. (There's already an enormous quantity of naturally-occurring uranium in the ocean, for example.) Atmospheric dispersal from a fire is relatively localized and deposits large quantities of radioactive ash over a relatively large area of land, contaminating the whole area. It's much more hazardous to human health.

    4. Re:This is all meaningless by radtea · · Score: 1

      I don't see a workable plan to stop the water, since they are still pouring it on.

      That's an extremely weird thing to say, as they are actively working to get recirculation going in all the damaged reactors.

      Perhaps you don't see the workable plan that is being worked on because you aren't paying attention?

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    5. Re:This is all meaningless by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      Do you have any evidence to back up these assertions of yours? From the risk of a plutonium cloud to cesium causing the 'worst' problems, almost everything you've said is exactly opposite to what I've read everywhere else. The amounts of cesium floating around are, even at their worst, insignificant. Plutonium is far more dangerous, and there is significantly less of than than the cesium. And not even the experts that the rest of the world has flown into japan have mentioned any risk of 'plutonium clouds'.

      While the situation is obviously not good, hysterical handwaving does worse than nothing.

    6. Re:This is all meaningless by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      You mean the workable plan of getting recirculation that includes getting the piping fixed that got blown apart and getting the pumps running again that are currently immersed under a couple of kilotons of water giving off about 1 Sv/h in the immediate vicinity? Yep, someone is not paying attention, indeed.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    7. Re:This is all meaningless by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Informative

      First, the cesium issue is that it is longer-lived than iodine isotopes. It also tends to accumulate in bones. While iodine is fairly well defended against, cesium is more difficult...

      The plutonium issue is precisely what everyone else seems to be glossing over. The #3 reactor is the only source of plutonium at Daiichi, and there is some minimal contamination detected immediately next to the reactor. The fear of some experts is that they may yet lose containment of #3, that the fuel may pool and eat through the floor of secondary containment, and then it's in the ground and groundwater. Clearly, they expect to be able to keep this fuel cool enough that it won't truly melt, but we've been assured more than few times that that isn't a problem, and it is now assumed by several experienced engineers to have already happened to a small extent. TEPCO is not your reliable source for info on this either. Most of this is under the heading of 'prepare for the worst'.

      But #1 is again building pressure, and hydrogen. This is good, because containment is working well enough to build pressure. this is bad because an explosion will cause a lot of problems... They are trying to displace the hydrogen with nitrogen last I heard, though where the hydrogen goes I haven't looked into.

      If #3 containment fails due to explosion or fuel fire, that would release plutonium, and likely as a cloud. The current expectation is that a #3 containment failure would be a meltdown, down through the floor, and plutonium would be a ground contaminant. I am not encouraged by that.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    8. Re:This is all meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Leaking containment and no containment at all because it blew up is not the same thing at all. And your "choose neither" is why I'm happy you're not in charge of the security there.

    9. Re:This is all meaningless by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure security is the big problem there. From what I can tell, draining the secondary containment and fixing the cooling systems are bigger issues. I'm happy you're not in charge of security, either. I just haven't heard much about security breaches. Most people seem to want to get away. At least the workers are sticking around, mostly.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    10. Re:This is all meaningless by chitokutai · · Score: 2

      TEPCO has already stated that reactors 1-4 have already been scheduled for decommission. The only reason they are going through all this trouble is because they need a stable method for keeping the fuel rods cool.

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12903725

      Also, TEPCO hasn't come out and said it specifically, but the idea of long-term relocation has been discussed on the news quite a bit here in Japan. Many of the people affected were relocated to a new city as a group so that the community could stay together for the short term. Their housing options run out in about 6 months, so most likely that's when we will start to hear how the government wants to handle the situation. They are going to require financial assistance either way, so the government has to figure out ways to finance their relocation - which they are already talking about.

      The TEPCO stock has already lost most of its value, and there is a lot of talk about nationalizing the company so that affected residents can be compensated for their losses. Again, all of this is being discussed on a regular basis here.

      Nothing in this situation is going to happen quickly. We're looking at least a decade of slow steps to even get back to where we were prior to the earthquake. Everyone clearly recognizes that, especially with first-hand experience in disaster recovery from the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

    11. Re:This is all meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All six reactors are lost, 5&6 are just not going to be operated because it is too hot to work there 8 hours a day.

      What are you talking about. Did you know that Chernobyl reactors 1 and 3 operated for until end of year 2000?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant

      In November 1996, reactor one was shut down, followed by reactor three on December 15, 2000, making good on a promise by Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma that the entire plant would be closed

      So you are definitely wrong. If they want, they can restart #5 and #6, unless they have poured salt water in there and AFAIK, that was not the case. I would bet #5 and #6 will be operating within 2 years.

      Hopefully #3 won't blow a Plutonium cloud that, even if it were minimal, would poison the area for the forseeable future. There is no assurance that this will not happen.

      There is no assurance that Jesus will not come back tomorrow either. Anyway, if you read that actual IAEA reports about plutonium in soil, you would have learned that the trace amount found was consistent with the trace amount that is found in soils around the world thanks to nuclear weapon detonations in the atmosphere in the 50s and 60s. And if you have researched ANYTHING about Chernobyl, you would have figured out that plutonium is only found within 1km of the reactor... a place where significant percentage of the core vaporized. *sigh*

      And somehow Japan needs to replace the generating capacity. Quickly.

      Japan has fucked itself with its split power grid 50/60Hz. They have shortages now not because Fukushima and many other reactors are shut down (not just Fukushima), but because the power grid is screwed in the entire region. Tsunami has wipes the grid away. It will take months until it can be restored. Then they will have sufficient power, but not enough to meet peak demand in summer (air conditioning) and that is because of Fukushima. Now if Japan has standardized its power grid decades ago, then this wouldn't be a problem. But I guess there is more corruption than most outsiders perceive. For example, the grid split has allowed TEPCO to maintain almost a complete monopoly in the area.

      It may have been simpler to have a couple of core melts and just pour concrete and sand over the whole damned thing. Now we've gotten broken containment, multiple vectors, and inadequate resources.

      That's the stupidest thing I've read about this for a long long time. If you think this is bad, wait until you have complete containment failure because the thing melts through...

    12. Re:This is all meaningless by sl3xd · · Score: 2

      Iodine is somewhat defended against with potassium iodide; enough so that almost nothing is absorbed by the thyroid; what remains decays in ~48 hours anyway.

      Cesium doesn't have a strong affinity for bone - it distributes fairly evenly throughout the body, with slightly higher concentrations in the muscles, and is treated by the body similarly to potassium. As a result, cesium is normally excreted via urine, though much more slowly than iodine. Prussian blue binds with cesium, which reduces the time until excretion by 2/3. It's still bad - it can take months to eliminate most of it. But it's not as bad as the next common isotope...

      The "bone seeker" is Strontium-90; I haven't read a single report detailing any traces of Strontium-90 being detected. (It's worth noting that Strontium-90 is treated by the body like Calcium, and 70-80% of any ingested is excreted via urine within hours. The rest, however, is pretty much there to stay.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    13. Re:This is all meaningless by khallow · · Score: 1

      You mean the workable plan of getting recirculation that includes getting the piping fixed that got blown apart and getting the pumps running again that are currently immersed under a couple of kilotons of water giving off about 1 Sv/h in the immediate vicinity? Yep, someone is not paying attention, indeed.

      Yes, that plan. Keep in mind that if some pumps or plumbing are out of reach to human workers because they're immersed in radioactive water or whatnot, you can always bring in new gear. If you can't reach a broken pump, then bring in a new one. That sort of thing.

    14. Re:This is all meaningless by khallow · · Score: 1

      It may have been simpler to have a couple of core melts and just pour concrete and sand over the whole damned thing. Now we've gotten broken containment, multiple vectors, and inadequate resources.

      "Simpler" does not mean less harmful. How do you cool a meltdown when you have just insulated it with a pile of concrete and sand? For all your disapproval, they have far more cooling and some degree of control over what happens and what leaks that they wouldn't have with the "simpler" approach.

    15. Re:This is all meaningless by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      once they have a handle on all the leaks and the overheating, maybe they could just take a bite out of the coastline

      literally earth move a couple of acres onto some large ships, then sink the ships into the middle of the ocean

      if you say that will make that area of the deep ocean radioactive, well yes, but that's better than the coastline of japan

      "the solution to pollution is dilution"

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    16. Re:This is all meaningless by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Some current events to consider:

      Slashdot article, some Japan Atomic engineers (among others) lay out a long slog to fix this.

      And Bloomberg's reporting.

      I never doubted the money would be huge. 30 years is worse than I expected.

      And my sources included engineers with long experience in both accidents and decommissioning.

      It's a mess, and worse than TEPCO has yet admitted to. The best-case scenario seems to be decades of cleanup, giving up on reactors 5 & 6, no discussion of the seawater problems or leaks.

      Of course, the JA engineers aren't casting aspersions on their TEPCO brethren, are they?

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  19. Who? by Hartree · · Score: 2

    I'd like a machine that can travel at 100 mS per hour.

    I think they call it a Tardis. It's just not a very good one.

  20. Good, now on to the next problem by antifoidulus · · Score: 0

    Well it does look like they have finally got this under control, at least for the most part.

    Hopefully now we can have the debate over what exactly is going to replace this reactor? It's obvious that these reactors will never generate electricity again, but they have provided something like almost 20% of the power to the Tokyo region.

    Thus far we have heard nothing on what the government and/or TEPCO(probably soon to be one and the same) plan to do to generate more power. Factories that have repaired the physical damage to their plants cannot start up because they are under the constant threat of rolling blackouts. Even though the blackouts may only run a couple of hours, it basically scuttles production for the whole day as starting up a lot of the large(and expensive!) machines at some of these plants can take hours. The more time goes on without production the more damage it does to supply lines, and perhaps more significantly for Japan's long term prospects, it provides a huge financial impetus to move production overseas(mostly China and Korea).

    China is already taking advantage of this opportunity to smear Japan and make it look more dangerous than it actually is. While one could argue this is largely China attempting to score a political victory(the past century hasn't been too kind to Chinese-japanese diplomacy), but just as importantly China is not so subtly trying to scare people into moving production from Japan to China. Japan needs a new plan for new energy quick....

    This is going to be a really shitty(sweaty?) summer......

    1. Re:Good, now on to the next problem by linear+a · · Score: 1

      ...what exactly is going to replace this reactor?....

      Dunno. Maybe a crater?

  21. Butt Leak Plugged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ha Ha

  22. Checklist for your idea .. by roguegramma · · Score: 1

    Your idea's good points are:
    [x]It would be easier to prevent dissipation of radioactive gases.
    [x]Terrorists would have a harder time hitting a reactor.

    Your idea's bad points are:
    [x]It would cost extra money to prepare the building site.
    [x]It would cost extra money to build the reactor.
    [x]It would be harder to access the reactor if an earthquake damaged the site.
    [x]It does not prevent leakage of radioactive materials to the ground water.
    [x]It does not fully prevent the risk of an explosion and fracture of containment vessels.
    [x]Depending on the site, there might be an increased risk of flooding with water or mud.
    [x]While it would be easy to add a lid of concrete, building the box below the lid would have to happen in advance and would cost extra money.

    --
    Hey don't blame me, IANAB
    1. Re:Checklist for your idea .. by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      Fair enough, though I'll add (from my own input and from above comments): good points: [x] Tsunami proof bad points: [x] Cooling complexities

  23. The bad news by westlake · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Workers are pumping nitrogen into one of the reactors at Japan's damaged nuclear plant in an attempt to prevent an explosion caused by dangerously overheated fuel rods.

    Officials at TEPCO, which operates the Fukushima plant, said a dangerous hydrogen buildup is taking place at its number-one reactor. Japan's NHK television quoted officials saying hydrogen is accumulating inside the reactor's containment vessel - an indication that the reactor's core has been damaged.

    Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant Shifts to New Blast Risk

    Chemistry 201: Why Is Fukushima So Gassy?

    But there are reasons...that Fukushima is particularly vulnerable.

    One is its recent use of seawater to cool the reactors's fuel rods and cores. In addition to the oxygen in water molecules, cold seawater can hold a great deal of dissolved oxygen gas. But warm water cannot; so as the seawater was heated in the reactor, the dissolved oxygen emerged and gathered in the empty space above the water.

    (Ordinary reactor cooling water has had the oxygen removed from it by plant operators to reduce the possibility of rust.)

    In addition, gamma radiation from the nuclear fuel in the reactor would continuously produce small amounts of hydrogen and oxygen by breaking up water molecules --- and the normal method of recombining these elements into water at such plants in a controlled fashion is no longer available.

    Plants of the Fukushima variety usually have catalytic converters that accomplish that at the point where steam has run through the turbine and is condensed back into water for another trip through the reactor. But that path has been closed since the plant lost power at the moment of the March 11 earthquake.

    Hydrogen can also emerge from the zirconium metal used as fuel cladding. One of the lessons of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 near Harrisburg, Pa., is that when the cladding comes into contact with steam rather than water, it goes through a reaction that is akin to rusting; it picks up oxygen from the water molecule and gives off hydrogen.

    This only happens at high temperatures, but uncertainty reigns at the moment about temperatures in the Fukushima reactor cores. With some cooling channels blocked, they are likely to have hot spots.

    By design, boiling water reactors like these have far more zirconium metal in them than pressurized water reactors do. They boil water directly in the core, covering the fuel assemblies with a water/steam mixture rather than keeping them immersed in water. The water has to be directed to each individual fuel assembly and therefore each sits in its own zirconium box.

    All of that zirconium is available for an oxidation reaction with steam in which the metal absorbs oxygen from water and turns to a powdery rust, releasing hydrogen.

  24. Re:butt leak plugged by kwoff · · Score: 1

    Better than a butt-plugged leak?

  25. Re:Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times li by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    Excuse me, but I'm an NBC executive and was wondering if you might be interested in having your "Fish Jail" idea developed into a sitcom for our Thursday night lineup. Please...we're desperate...call me.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  26. Units? by linear+a · · Score: 1

    Millisieverts, megasieverts, whaterver.....

  27. Rendered useless by blueg3 · · Score: 1

    Radiation monitors designed for people working at a site that has chronic exposure risk, maybe. Personal radiation monitors for acute exposure can handle well above 100 mSv/hr. Radiation monitors in general can measure above 100 Sv/hr, 3 orders of magnitude higher than what they're talking about. It's not that the levels of radiation are "immeasurable", as the article incorrectly states. It's just that they apparently don't have equipment on hand sufficient to measure it.

    1. Re:Rendered useless by pipedwho · · Score: 1

      The truly sad thing is that if for some reason you needed to find a high level radiation monitor, the first place you'd probably think of looking would be a nuclear reactor facility.

      However, for some reason, this facility doesn't have one kicking around? And in the last month they haven't even seen the need to get one sent to them? That is indeed a sad, sad, indictment on an industry in dire need to avoid as much negative publicity as possible.

      It's almost as if this facility was run by the anti-nuclear movement.

  28. Butt Leak Plugged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's always a good thing.

  29. Um, so they built a pipe that goes to the ocean by Marrow · · Score: 2

    And connects to a drain at the bottom of a pit underneath a nuclear reactor. And this is to help when they wax the floors? This is to clean up after barbecues? This drain is used when the have the weekly trim everyones hair day underneath the reactors? Considering these buildings are supposed to be nearly hermetically sealed, why the snot do the plans call for a pipe that goes out the the friggin ocean?

  30. Re:Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times li by whiteboy86 · · Score: 2

    I, for one, preping to welcome our new Godzilla overlords.

  31. New superheroes! by Poingggg · · Score: 1

    It's just a matter of time before a new superhero will appear and help us out. We all know the consequences of being bitten by a radioactive spider. We just have to wait until a fisherman gets bitten by a radioactive shark (with or w/o laser) or stung by a radiating jellyfish. Jellyman to the rescue!!

    --
    What person will donate an airborne act of love?
    1. Re:New superheroes! by lennier · · Score: 1

      Jellyman to the rescue!!

      He has the proportionate spinal strength and mobility of a jellyfish on land!

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  32. Not if you're living in the fourth dimension. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Geeeeez.

  33. Remove the rods by danhaas · · Score: 1

    I'm not a nuclear engineer, but why can't they remove the fuel rods instead of trying to cool them on site? That would not be a bad idea for the reactors with compromised containment. A meltdown without containment would be a near Chernobyl disaster (what an awful metric).

    The reactor must have some sort of rod extraction device, since they have to change the rods ocasionally. Maybe that device wasn't damaged by the quake.
    Grab a lead box with a reliable cooling system, put it on top of a truck and use robots to drop the rod inside the box. Of course actually doing it would not be so simple, so feel free to add your knowledge/insight.
     

    1. Re:Remove the rods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is just from off the top of my head, and as always the INANT (I am not a Nuke Tech)
      #1 the crane to move rods is damaged
      #2 the rods melted at least partially
      #4 the plant is in pieces on top of the reactor
      #5 the rods themselves throw off a great deal of radiation (>100R/hr) so much that If I remember correctly they transfer them under water to the spent fuel pool
      need I go on?

    2. Re:Remove the rods by asylumx · · Score: 1

      need I go on?

      Only if you intend to provide #3 at some point!

    3. Re:Remove the rods by DrJimbo · · Score: 1

      I'm not a nuclear engineer, but why can't they remove the fuel rods instead of trying to cool them on site?

      TEPCO has reported that a significant percentage of the fuel rods have been damaged. The hydrogen explosions indicate the damage was actual melting. Melted fuel rods are causing all the problems and no one even knows where the melted fuel has ended up.

      The levels of radiation inside the reactor buildings was reported to be too large to measure. I believe this means much greater than one sievert per hour. It is quite possible people would be killed or incapacitated before they were able to do much good. There is too much debris in the reactor buildings (due to the explosions) to be able to send in robots.

      They are flooding the reactors with hundreds of tons of water per day to keep them cool. A lot of this water is becoming highly radioactive, making it deadly and, if anything, the level of radioactivity in the water is even higher inside the reactor buildings.

      Work to restore the primary cooling system on reactor #2 has been completely stymied for almost two weeks as they deal with the highly radioactive water that leaked into the turbine building. AFAIK there are no plans to send people into the reactor buildings. I think it is unlikely people will ever go back inside them.

      To make a medical analogy, we are a medic under fire on a battlefield, and we are having trouble applying CPR to keep a soldier alive and you are suggesting we could solve all his problems by performing open heart surgery.

      --
      We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
      -- Anais Nin
    4. Re:Remove the rods by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      #3 is implied and means "???" by convention.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    5. Re:Remove the rods by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      In all likelihood, the cores are structurally damaged from falling at least half-dry for a couple of hours. The top-levels of the buildings are blown apart, so the fuel-handling machines are blown up and rubble blocks the access to the wetwell. If you want to get to the cores, you are looking at timeframes like in TMI, where it took them more than 5 years to extract the fuel from one reactor, which was housed in a building that did not blow up. Looks more like it is gonna be entomb and abandon here... And wait until it gets washed into the Pacific with the next tsunami. But heck until then - the public has forgotten again.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    6. Re:Remove the rods by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

      They are probably buried under piles of concrete or whatever from the collapsed building. So your police-grade bomb-defusing robot can't roll in and tidy the place up. It would take a remote-control crane. I don't know if such a thing exists, but it sure would be cool. One would think that a team of university students could build one in a couple months' time...

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  34. Can't be the only one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Am I the only one who read "Butt Leak Plugged"?

    [ You can't make up this captchas.. http://i.imgur.com/Qobsq.png ]

  35. Helium 3 by charnov · · Score: 1

    He's referring to Helium 3 which is thought to be abundant on the moon and very rare here. Great for fusion power.

    --
    [RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
    1. Re:Helium 3 by lennier · · Score: 1

      He's referring to Helium 3 which is thought to be abundant on the moon and very rare here. Great for fusion power.

      Yes, and the Cavorite deposits will also be very useful once we've developed a practical antigravity drive, which will be done about three decades before fusion achieves breakeven.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  36. Bioaccumulative effects by Dasher42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    What I don't see enough discussion about is the bioaccumulative effect.

    For catch-up: fat-soluble toxins can accumulate in the bodies of organisms such that at every step of the food chain, the concentration is multiplied. It's not just a single species accreting the toxin, but what happens when its predators are eating from this concentrated source. Any links up the food chain up to the apex predator are going to have a multiplied effect, which is why a seemingly insignificant amount of mercury pollution versus the ocean's volume has made tuna consumption a point of caution.

    We are seeing radiation levels that could be a bit of a concern and the Fukushima situation is still not under control. And are some of the compounds it's emitting bioaccumulative? Yes, Cesium 137 for example, and that has a half-life of 30 years. And the first thing you should do is move your consumption as far down the food chain as possible. Even if you don't plan to go vegan, learn Indian cooking or a low-meat cuisine, because the less animal product you're consuming, the better.

    Sources:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11482657
    http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/102/2bioma95.html
    http://science.jrank.org/pages/854/Bioaccumulation.html
    http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-rainwater-radiation-181-times-above-us-drinking-water-standard-2011-4

    1. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I could see being a bit wary of fish caught in that vicinity, but on a global scale, the radiation and radioactive particulates are insignificant. If the radiation has dispersed enough to effect North American cattle, it has also dispersed enough to be background noise.

    2. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      I don't have the paper handy, but from what I read, Cs has a bioaccumulation factor of 2 for each level of the food chain. So, not as bad as fat-soluble toxins like PCB or dioxins, but, yeah, there will be lingering effects, especially for the fisheries. For filter feeders like mussels, the effect will probably be higher in the local (or non-local) waters.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    3. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by sl3xd · · Score: 2

      Bioaccumulation doesn't really apply - radioactive isotopes aren't fat-soluble toxins.

      Radioactive isotopes are water-soluble - often highly so.

      Of the main contenders from a nuclear plant:

      Iodine: Is excreted via urine (like any other mineral). Not a real candidate for any meaningful analog of bioaccumulation, as its half life is so short. It still causes damage while in the body, but it'll generally only be the first or second ingester that is affected; after that, Iodine will have broken down.

      Cesium: A potential problem; most is excreted quickly in urine, but cesium is treated by the body like Potassium (a necessary nutrient), so the body does hang on to some and spreads fairly evenly throughout the entire body. Cesium has a relatively long half-life of ~30 years. While it can potentially be 'concentrated' through a predatory food chain (similar to bioaccumulation), it won't be concentrated any more than Potassium is in nature. Unlike bioaccumulation, where all of the toxin is stored in fat cells, the body will only hold on to so much cesium/potassium; the rest is excreted in urine.

      Strontium-90: Note: I haven't read any reports of this being detected in the environment around Fukushima. Strontium-90 has 70-80% of all that's ingested excreted through urine; of the rest, 99% goes to the bones. This can be a problem for predators that swallow bones (fish, sharks, porpoises), but isn't a problem for those that do not swallow bones, (Humans), or predators that do not have bones (squid, octopodi). Strontium-90 is treated by the body similarly to Calcium, and would be 'concentrated' through a predatory food chain similar to Calcium. I imagine this could be devastating to a coral reef; but again - none of this stuff has been detected.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    4. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by Dasher42 · · Score: 1

      I could see being a bit wary of fish caught in that vicinity, but on a global scale, the radiation and radioactive particulates are insignificant. If the radiation has dispersed enough to effect North American cattle, it has also dispersed enough to be background noise.

      I'd like to agree but the businessinsider link (http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-rainwater-radiation-181-times-above-us-drinking-water-standard-2011-4) features independent testing from UC Berkeley which showed radiation levels 181 times the US standard in the rainfall on the San Francisco Bay Area.

    5. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by Dasher42 · · Score: 1

      Excellent and informative post, but as to cesium, it has been demonstrated as being bioaccumulative. The output of the Chernobyl disaster is still making reindeer meat in Norway and wild boar in Germany unsafe to eat:

      http://www.quora.com/Fisheries/What-are-the-probabilities-that-the-cesium-137-radiation-pouring-into-the-ocean-from-the-Fukushima-reactor-site-will-enter-the-japanese-current-concentrate-up-the-food-chain-and-destroy-the-Pacific-coast-salmon-fishery

    6. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by wrook · · Score: 1

      Kind of off topic, but Japan has it's own vegan cuisine called shoujin ryouri. It is generally associated with buddhist temples, but it doesn't have to be. Shoujin ryouri is really, really delicious and surprisingly healthy. Whenever I punch in a typical shoujin ryouri menu into a nutrient calculator I'm amazed how close it comes to what most people say you should be eating (i.e., WHO, etc). Unfortunately there aren't a lot of non-Japanese resources on the topic.

      But I seriously doubt very many people in Japan will adopt such a diet. People will openly laugh at you for suggesting that you eat shoujin ryouri more than once or twice a year ("What, are you going to become a monk? Ha ha ha ha!"). On the other hand, most people don't eat a lot of meat or chicken to begin with and quite a lot of the staple fish that they eat is deep sea fish anyway. Possibly the biggest animal product that could be affected locally is eggs. I don't know what the local fish specialties are in the area, but I suspect the fisheries will be shut down. This will be a fairly large financial hardship on a lot of people, but probably won't affect the way people eat all that much.

    7. Re:Bioaccumulative effects by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      I followed the links to the paper that is the basis for the claim (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15748661).

      Link diving far enough finds a paper about boar in Croatia. There's a [citation needed] for reindeer meat, Germany, and Norway; but that's OK.

      The radiation levels differed by three orders of magnitude depending on the location in Croatia where the boar were collected. Only one of the areas had enough cesium in the meat to be of any concern to health -- and even then, the meat would only be a concern to those who ate particularly high levels of boar meat. The levels of radiation in boar meat ranged from 0.4-611.5 Bq/kg. They speculate the cesium absorbed was primarily from the consumption of truffles.

      To put things in perspective:
      The amount of natural potassium-40 (half-life of about a billion years) present in the average human body produces ~4kBq of radiation, with people having an average mass of ~60 Kg. (Heavier people will also have more potassium-40, lighter people will have less, etc.) A human naturally has around 67 Bq/kg from potassium alone; Carbon-14 roughly doubles it to about 135 Bq/kg.

      At the highest levels reported, 611.5 Bq/kg, the boar meat had around five times the natural level of radiation present in our own bodies.

      Another way to look at it is the banana: 1 kg of bananas (~8 of 'em) has 3.96 grams of Potassium. This equates to about 122 Bq/kg of radiation from potassium (I didn't bother figuring out additional radiation from Carbon-14).

      So a 225 g (8 oz) steak of the most contaminated boar meat would have about the same radiation as a few bananas.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  37. Re: Good, on to the next problem -- reality check by DrJimbo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well it does look like they have finally got this under control, at least for the most part.

    Plugging one leak does not mean the situation is even close to being under control. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said:

    ... no further leakage has been detected from the pit. But there is a possibility that the water, which has lost an outlet, could show up from other areas of the plant.

    The highly radioactive water is believed to have come from the No. 2 reactor core, where fuel rods have partially melted, and ended up in the pit. The pit is connected to the No. 2 reactor turbine building and an underground trench connected to the building, both of which were found to be filled with highly contaminated water.

    Thousands of tons of highly radioactive water had already been found in many places outside the reactor buildings even before the direct leak into the ocean was discovered. Is there anything more substantial than crossed fingers and wishful thinking that makes you think the flow of highly radioactive water will halt now that they've plugged the direct outlet into the ocean?

    In addition:

    According to estimates by TEPCO announced Wednesday, 25 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the No. 3 reactor. The company earlier said that 70 percent of the No. 1 reactor's fuel rods and 30 percent of the No. 2 reactor's fuel rods have been damaged.

    Nishiyama said past hydrogen explosions have likely occurred due to hydrogen accumulation caused by the reaction of melted fuel rods' zirconium with steam from the coolant water. But now there is concern that hydrogen could accumulate in the No. 1 reactor under a different process involving radiation-induced decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen.

    The installation of billion dollar radiation shielding around the reactor buildings has to be delayed until at least September because, of the high level of radioactivity. In other words, they need to wait for the current levels of radioactivity to decay before it is safe enough to install radiation shielding. So, ISTM, the September date is optimistically assuming the ongoing contamination will magically stop. Yet, even if the shielding could be installed tomorrow:

    Some experts were sceptical about the feasibility of the measure as the step would have only limited effects in blocking the release of radioactive substances.

    That is because the bulk of the release of radioactivity is downward in the water, not upward into the air. The shielding story highlights the challenge they are up against. The level of radioactivity around the plants (and in the plants) is so high, it is impeding their efforts to control the amount of radioactivity escaping. For example, work to restore the primary cooling system for reactor #2 has been halted for almost two weeks because of the high levels of radiation in the turbine building. The radiation level, due to highly radioactive water in the building, is over one sievert per hour. So a worker hits their lifetime dose limit less than 15 minutes. Someone who lingers there for an 8 hour shift will die regardless of what treatment they receive. It's been reported that the level of radioactivity in reactor buildings 1, 2, and 3 is too high to measure.

    They are pouring hundreds of tons of uncontaminated water onto (into?) the reactors every day to cool them. Thousands of tons of this water has come out contaminated with radioactivity and has flooded the turbine buildings, tunnels outside the buildings, and the ground. They don't know how the water is getting contaminated or the routes it is taking

    --
    We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
    -- Anais Nin
  38. there are no safe levels by citylivin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I get what you are trying to say with this, but honestly when everyone says its safe, yet these kind of "accidents" can still occur it makes you step back and really weigh the positives and negatives.

    For instance, in these plants they are using plutonium mox fuel. That shit has a halflife of 20,000 years. So it wont be completely nonreactive for approximately 250,000 years or 12000 human generations. Sure it shouldn't happen, and there were no doubt many mistakes by this particular company. But even if it is a possibility that this would happen, and it obviously is, should we not reconsider the long term environmental and other effects when we are possibly going to be affecting forward 12000 generations in the future?

    So far in my life time (30 years) there have been 3 major nuclear accidents. Does this not at least warrant a second look? There are plenty of these unsafe plants active in the world, and yes I am aware there are safe reactor designs (CANDU). But when you factor in human greed, nuke plants run by the lowest bidder, should we even be doing it?

    I was VERY pro nuclear power before this complete mess that has happened. Even though we will run out of uranium by 2100, even though fuel stays reactive for tens of thousands of years. But honestly, if the japanese cant even do it right, what hope do we have for any country out there?

    The timescales alone are enough to make one pause. Can you really trust the next 12,000 generations of man to not have any accidents with spent fuel? Is that something that we should be burdening our future generations with for a short term gain today?

    Further reading: 'No safe levels' of radiation in Japan

    --
    As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
    1. Re:there are no safe levels by Glock27 · · Score: 1

      I get what you are trying to say with this, but honestly when everyone says its safe, yet these kind of "accidents" can still occur it makes you step back and really weigh the positives and negatives.

      For instance, in these plants they are using plutonium mox fuel. That shit has a halflife of 20,000 years. So it wont be completely nonreactive for approximately 250,000 years or 12000 human generations. Sure it shouldn't happen, and there were no doubt many mistakes by this particular company. But even if it is a possibility that this would happen, and it obviously is, should we not reconsider the long term environmental and other effects when we are possibly going to be affecting forward 12000 generations in the future?

      Actually, just one of the six reactors is using plutonium.

      Regardless, there has been no large release of such material, nor is there likely to be any. Despite the impression you get from the many extremely alarmist articles, the cores are cooling off and the situation is improving. Probably the worst thing that's happened is a small amount of radioactive cesium has been released into the ocean.

      So far in my life time (30 years) there have been 3 major nuclear accidents. Does this not at least warrant a second look?

      I'm not sure what you mean by "a second look". The worst by a long shot of those "major accidents" (neither Three Mile Island or Fukushima has produced a confirmed fatality so far) was Chernobyl, which happened in the Ukraine. The reactor design was quite slipshod, with no containment vessel among other safety features. Even so, it required the operators to disable safety features in a stunning display of stupidity and poor judgement for the disaster to occur. How to you propose to globally outlaw or regulate nuclear power in sovereign nations, many of which hate the US and the UN? What about France, which generates 80% of its power from nuclear, and has had exactly 0 problems?

      When you balance the actual track record of nuclear power safety against the estimated 200,000 people that die every year from fossil fuel energy generation, nuclear appears to be far safer. Then there's the global warming argument against energy production that creates CO2. And no, there is no way that "alternative energy" such as wind, solar and geothermal can take up the slack in a meaningful way.

      There are plenty of these unsafe plants active in the world, and yes I am aware there are safe reactor designs (CANDU). But when you factor in human greed, nuke plants run by the lowest bidder, should we even be doing it?

      Given the alternatives, and the need to perfect nuclear for space exploration purposes, yes.

      I was VERY pro nuclear power before this complete mess that has happened. Even though we will run out of uranium by 2100, even though fuel stays reactive for tens of thousands of years. But honestly, if the japanese cant even do it right, what hope do we have for any country out there?

      The timescales alone are enough to make one pause. Can you really trust the next 12,000 generations of man to not have any accidents with spent fuel? Is that something that we should be burdening our future generations with for a short term gain today?

      There is a realistic solution to safely disposing of nuclear waste - package it appropriately and drop it at the mid-Pacific subduction zone.

      The only problem with that idea is that nuclear waste is potentially quite valuable, as it could be reprocessed. You should also read up on thorium reactors, in which the Chinese are heavily investing.

      Further reading: 'No safe levels' of radiation in Japan

      "Al-Jazeera, the nuclear experts!" Sure...

      You should also realize that the Middle East is driven by oil revenue, and anything written there will

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    2. Re:there are no safe levels by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      "I get what you are trying to say with this, but honestly when everyone says its safe, yet these kind of "accidents" can still occur it makes you step back and really weigh the positives and negatives."

      but you see, that's exactly what I was talking about. You don't hear about the thousands of people dying of lung cancer, they don't make the news, you don't hear about the electricians falling off the roof putting in solar pannels.

      But you do hear when a few workers get a high dose of radiation. it makes international news.

      which is worse? a few people dying every few decades and the occasional really spectacular disaster like Chernobyl or hundreds of thousands of people quietly dying in very non-dramatic ways.

      You ask what we will do about the plutonium, but I ask what we'll do about all the arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury etc. its almost as dangerous as the plutonium and it's being kept in giant piles of fly ash .
      it doesn't have any half life.
      it's forever.
      do you trust the next infinity generations of humans?

      also:2100? what the fuck? reprocess it and we've got thousands of years easy.

    3. Re:there are no safe levels by mug+funky · · Score: 1

      fresh ones don't, except maybe a couple of atoms.

      woooo, scary atoms

      *munching on my bag of dicks and mocking you. savouring the flavour and not choking*

    4. Re:there are no safe levels by ShakaUVM · · Score: 1

      Quoting Al Jazeera isn't really doing much to establish your bona fides.

      >>That shit has a halflife of 20,000 years. So it wont be completely nonreactive for approximately 250,000 years

      Uh, no. Think about what "half life" means.

      It will never be "completely nonreactive". After 250,000 years it will have decayed in half 12.5 times, so .5^12.5 = 1.7% remaining.

      Also things with long half lives, by definition, decay less often, so they're less radioactive. I'd much rather spend a minute next to a gram of a radioactive product with a half life of 100,000 years than half a gram of something with a half life of one minute.

    5. Re:there are no safe levels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of the fuel rods on site are "spent" fuel rods, where a percentage of the uranium has been converted to plutonium isotopes (that's what fission does). And even the "fresh" fuel rods in reactor 4 are 7% plutonium.

      Fukushima has shitloads of spent fuel rods, all cleverly stored directly above the reactors, which makes maintaining their cooling a bit tricky when local radiation is topping out at over a sievert per hour. This is why Fukushima can get so much worse than Chernobyl. Chernobyl--Chernobyl had one reactor blow it's immediate fuel load into the environment. Fukushima has about 40 times that amount of uranium and plutonium on-site, directly above the problem reactors.

      Buy some kneepads.

    6. Re:there are no safe levels by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
      You've convinced me. I'm going to give up my car - because after all, more people are killed every year in cars than in nuc plant accidents. Then I'm building my house on top of a reactor.

      Must you astroturfers engage in this asinine non-sequitar argument again and again? Because people are harmed by non nuclear methods of generation, it does not mean that they won't be harmed by Nuc. It simply does not follow.

      Airplanes are very safe by the passenger mile, but if your engines quit on you, your outcome is a lot more uncertain than if your car quits on you. One ditches wherever it can, and another pulls off to the side of the road and calls AAA.

      the space shuttle is extremely safe when you use mileage, yet not so safe in failures/launches.

      Should we adapt the nuc plants so that as many people are harmed as by the other methods? Maybe run unshielded? Of course not.

      As in the other examples, a Nuc plant problem tends to the spectacular, the plane goes down, the shuttle has an accident. Those people are not "more" dead than someone who contracts black lung disease, but they sure died a more public death.

      Here's your challenge, Hungry Hobo. what would you stick in your pocket and walk around with, a baggie full of fly ash, or a baggie full of Pu?

      No, the Nuc plant has to be designed to a higher level of safety. I'm all for that.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:there are no safe levels by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      where did you get the insane idea that I'm against safety systems?

      to make your comparison fair I'd have to carry around a few hundred tons of that fly ash.

      "but if your engines quit on you, your outcome is a lot more uncertain than if your car quits on you"

      So? The fact is that doesn't happen much, you're painting an emotional picture.
      Would you choose to drive across the country instead of flying on the simple grounds that if your engine fails you're still safe? well congratulations, you'd still be significantly increasing your chances of death.

      "Because people are harmed by non nuclear methods of generation"

      Is this hard for you to understand: the power has to come from some source of some kind.
      given that it's only sensible to use the sources which lead to the least people dying.

      There's always going to be a body count, so be and intelligent human being and pick the options which have the smallest ones.

    8. Re:there are no safe levels by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
      Didn't think you'd like my comparison. Your protestations of how much fly ash you'd have to carry around sort of disproves your theory that it is just as dangerous. We can see that much fly ash very easily. Radioactivity cannot be seen at least with the naked eye.

      I'm not trying to paint "an emotional picture". I''m trying to say that if there is a chance of spectacular results in the event of an accident, the system should be designed with more inherent safety. It's difficult to do with airplanes because of weight and aerodynamic constraints, but in a power generating plant, it's a little different.

      And in the case of a nuc plant, let's deal with some non-emotional issues, like what the destruction does. Throw out any dead people, certainly any dead from the plant are not even in the background noise compared to the Tsunami itself. Now we have a contaminated area, one in which fishing and crops are a problem. You might be happy to eat the fish at the outlet from the plant, but not too many others would. That's a problem they will have to deal with for a long time. An economic issue.

      People some times think I'm anti-nuc power. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do however understand that there need for extraordinary safeguards. That is a lot of energy density packed into one of those plants. So problems tend to be concentrated, and big. When I see things like this disaster happen, it seriously pisses me off, because it sets the industry back, and there was no need for it to happen in the first place.

      That plant had a Death Star flaw. It was designed to withstand waves that were nowhere near the levels that have been seen in Japan. They have records going back hundreds of years. There have been a lot bigger waves than this one to hit the east coast of Japan. While shore topography can affect wave height, the designers made a bet that waves larger than their design were not going to ever hit there. They lost that bet. No, that plant should have been built beside a river, high enough in altitude that no wave of historic proportions, plus some buffer could reach it. Building on the shores of one of the most geologically active areas in the world is just plain foolish.

      It's a human disaster to be sure, but even more, it is an economic disaster.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    9. Re:there are no safe levels by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      My protest about the fly ash wasn't based on how much you'd need to be equally dangerous.
      it was about how much is produced to generate the same amount of power.

      I certainly wouldn't be happy to eat the fish at the outlet of the plant.
      even a few miles away I wouldn't want to long term or without first dosing up on some iodine tablets.

      It's likely going to destroy the fishing industry near there for a few years like BSE destroyed the British beef industry for a few years or the gulf spill fucked over fishermen in the gulf though at least it probably won't actually kill many of the fish so when they get the all clear in a few years there will be lots of stock (one up on the gulf spill at least).
      With any luck it won't be too long if ocean currents carry away and dilute what's leaked.

      To be fair planes are designed with vastly more safety systems, if your average car and average driver had the kind of safety systems a 747 has and the kind of training a 747 pilot has there would likely be almost no accidents on the roads... in part because every car would cost millions so there wouldn't be very many on the roads.

      the deathstar flaw was repeated up and down the coast in non-nuclear scenarios, there's a heartbreaking clip from a town up the coast which had been wiped out by tsunamis in the past so this time they'd gone all out, they'd build 2 huge sea walls and the town was a model of how to resist tsunamis.
      they'd sunk 30 years of time and money into building the massive wall yet it was a couple of meters too short for the wave that hit in this case and most of the towns population died.

      There's always a small probability that *something* extraordinary will happen, at the far end of the curve there could be a meteor strike.
      Again it's a decent parallel with plane crashes since there is a tiny chance of it happening but it's simply very very unlikely.

      http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/06/04/did-a-meteor-bring-down-air-france-447/

      âoeWhat is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?â They concluded that there was a 1-in-10 chance that this could happen

      I completely agree with you on the need for extraordinary safeguards but there will always be the case at the far extreme of the normal curve, if you build a wall 100 meters high there's the chance (p=0.00000....0001) of a wave 101 meters high hitting it.

      If you build it beside a river there's the chance of a dam collapse, some kind of natural flash flood or something really weird happening like, as mentioned before, a meteor strike directly on the reactor.

      life is all about probabilities, a car could swerve off the road and crash through the wall of the building you're in now but the cost of reinforcing that wall *and every other wall of every other building you're in regularly* isn't worth it vs the actual risk of that happening.

      so if you're looking for 100% certainty of no disasters or accidents you won't ever get it.
      with any energy source.

      A plant making solvents for the production of solar panels could leak and cause another Bhopal, a dam could collapse and cause a another Banqiao etc.
      there's always the possibility of something at the far end of the normal curve though we absolutely should try to make the chance of disaster as small as possible.

      The possible harm from a nuclear accident is significant and that absolutely does mean we should invest heavily in safety systems, backups, backups for backups etc but there's still always going to be the occasional event at the far end of the normal curve.

      The way it's looking to turn out the nuclear plant issues likely going to be almost entirely economic though as a human disaster you're right that it's eclipsed by what's already happened.

    10. Re:there are no safe levels by Glock27 · · Score: 1

      All of the fuel rods contain some plutonium you fuck.

      As far as the original content (which is the statement the OP made) you are quite wrong:

      Since September 2010, Unit 3 has been fueled by a small fraction (6%)[5] of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, rather than the low enriched uranium (LEU) used in the other reactors.

      Of course there is some Pu content in the spent rods (~0.89%), but not nearly as much as in the MOX fuel. Further, there is almost no chance that this Pu will become widely distributed. So it is pretty well a non-issue as far as we can tell now.

      From Wikipedia.

      I hope every nuclear apologist goes and chokes on a bag of cocks.

      I see your erudition and civility are right on par with your knowledge... ;-)

      I guess you could care less about the 200,000 folks dying every year from pollution? Did you know that burning coal spreads a good bit of radioactivity into the environment?

      "The smell of ACs burning in the morning - the smell of victory!" lol

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
  39. Re:Um, so they built a pipe that goes to the ocean by DrJimbo · · Score: 2

    Considering these buildings [the reactor buildings] are supposed to be nearly hermetically sealed, why the snot do the plans call for a pipe that goes out [to] the friggin ocean?

    Your mistake was believing the bullshit some people have been spouting that the reactor buildings were a third layer of containment after the ziroconium clad fuel rods and the containment vessel. Here is excerpt from an article from earlier in the crisis called Containment vessel failure unlikely:

    The containment vessel is the last line of defense for containing lethal radioactive materials, and significant damage would pose grave safety concerns.

    Drains and tunnels actually make sense. When a reactor is functioning properly, almost all of the radioactivity is contained within the zirconium clad fuel rods. The water circulating around the rods that acts as both a cooler and a moderator (a moderator slows neutrons down to enable the chain-reaction) is not highly radioactive. For example, the water that flooded the turbine building for reactor #2 and a nearby tunnel is 100,000 times more radioactive than the water found inside a functioning reactor. I believe the water that was pouring into the ocean from the pit was only 10,000 times more radioactive. The drain was also never intended to pass tons of water (radioactive or not) into the ocean. The amount of radioactivity was probably more than 6 orders of magnitude greater than what was intended.

    Your observation highlights the fact that the reactor buildings were never designed or intended to be a serious containment in the event of the failure of the containment vessel and fuel rods. Tens of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water have already escaped via routes other than the direct drain into the sea. It is therefore highly unlikely that plugging that drain will substantially reduce the amount of radioactivity that is spewing from the reactors.

    --
    We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
    -- Anais Nin
  40. Did anyone else read .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fukushima Radiation Levels High, Butt-Plug Leaked?

  41. Better site for information than NHK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suggest for a more technical and extremely current explanation of the status of reactors and radiation levels you look at http://www.IAEA.org - while the UN has its political moments this site/agency doesn't seem to have any agenda.

  42. Safe Radiation Practices and Exposure Protection by Homeopathic · · Score: 0

    Radioactive water found leaking into sea from pat at Japan nuclear plant. This radiation is now showing up in the rain water falling into the United States and Canada at levels 1000% of normal. 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 Zeolite. http://www.prlog.org/11417424-natural-treatment-for-radiation-exposure-what-you-need-to-know-to-not-get-sick.html 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 Radiation Sickness

  43. Make that alpha. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    Also the inverse-nth-power approsimations assume the radiation isn't absorbed by air at all (a good approximation for gamma, wildly pessimistic for beta)

    Make that "... wildly pessimistic for alpha."

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  44. Safest? by symbolset · · Score: 1

    I should think geothermal would give it a run for its money in safety.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  45. Perspective by symbolset · · Score: 1

    It's not good to dump more radioactive water into the ocean. I would not approve of such a plan except in the most dire conditions. But let's not get crazy. Apparently that water was less radioactive than this particular bit of ocean already was.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  46. Can Bacteria consume radioactive material? by failedlogic · · Score: 1

    Prob OT, but hoping someone can maybe answer this here. I seem to remember bacteria that can consume/metabolize radiation (I might not be using right terminology). I know a little about radioactive decay from HS science and realize that the site will be contaminated for 100's or 1000's of years. Would using this bacteria if it exists or could be used for this purpose be somehow help? Or is this worse assuming if its really not a good idea to let the buggers out into the environment, like the ocean which given the current status of the site is inevitable?

    Is there some current research in nuclear containment that I can contribute money to or push my government to put this to the UN, IAEA, academia or something for research? As in all other science research if government or private industry don't see it as a priority or profitable, it will never see light of day in research grants. Its sad to see the suffering caused not only by this incident but others people in Chernobyl area are still paying the price. :-(

    1. Re:Can Bacteria consume radioactive material? by DCFusor · · Score: 1
      Bacteria can consume things with radioactive isotopes in them, and do. They can even be used in leach mining of such things. So can yeasts and other organisms. So can you for that matter. Nothing can "metabolize" radiation. Metabolism is chemistry. Chemistry cannot change one element or isotope to another.

      Sorry, but the question isn't even wrong. Nuclei don't take part in chemistry directly, nor does chemistry affect them -- chemistry, and life, is all about exchanging electrons in bonds. Wrong level of detail here.

      You can burn up radioactive isotopes and even get net energy doing so, and one of the famous accelerator scientists, Carlo Rubbia (and others), has been pushing for this for quite some time. The concept is called the energy amplifier and requires a large accelerator (which is kind of a natural idea considering the source).

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier

      The wiki article is OK but I have his actual papers. Interesting enough so someone should look into it further -- you may not need to do it the expensive way he proposes, but even that is borderline economically feasible.

      And yes, I AM a nuclear physicist.

      --
      Why guess when you can know? Measure!
    2. Re:Can Bacteria consume radioactive material? by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 1

      you're right and he's wrong, but he's not so wrong as you think.

      what he's probably referring to is something i vaguely remember reading, about bacteria that can change soluble radioisotopes into insoluble form and thus immobilize them and prevent them from spreading in groundwater.

      still radioactive, but no longer mobile in the environment.

      --pm

    3. Re:Can Bacteria consume radioactive material? by failedlogic · · Score: 1

      Thanks for both for replying. Interesting info.

      @PeterM - I like reading about science as a hobby and a few years back I took an interest in learning the basic biology of extremophiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile. Its basically organisms that can live in environmental conditions that would kill anything else unless and some of those biology isn't well understood.

      So when I was reading about this, I came across reading about bacteria that were living and I think metabolizing (?) some of the radiation as a food source. There's a link in the wikipedia article about Radioresistant "organisms" but this only seems to explain tolerating ionizing radiation. I seem to recall metabolizing. I could be completely wrong but this is where I was getting the idea.

      As you mention, this would also help:
      "insoluble form and thus immobilize them and prevent them from spreading in groundwater."

  47. It's not per anything it is a dose, not a rate by DrJimbo · · Score: 1

    100 millisieverts per...? A millisievert is a specific amount.

    A millisiervet is a specfic amount. It is a measure of dosage and since the chart is a chart of dosages, there is no per anything.

    For example, the chart says one chest x-ray gives you a dose of 20 microsieverts. That is the total dose you get from the chest x-ray. There are no time units involved. It is like someone tells you that it is approximately 400 miles from Memphis to Knoxville and you then ask "miles per what?".

    I grant you that media reports often incorrectly give dosage rates in millisieverts instead of the correct millisieverts per hour. FYI, when this happens, just assume it is per hour unless otherwise stated. But the XKCD chart does not suffer from this flaw.

    Here is another example. The XKCD chart says that 8 sieverts is a fatal dose even with treatment. If a worker at the Fukushima Daiichi plant enters the turbine building for reactor #2 and is exposed to 1 sievert per hour, how long does he have to stay there before he receives this fatal dose? How long does he have to stay there before he exceeds his dose limit?

    Extra credit. Suppose you hear media reports that the radiation level in the turbine building of reactor #3 is 100 millisieverts. How long do you think a worker would have to be in that turbine building before he receives his dose limit?

    --
    We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
    -- Anais Nin
    1. Re:It's not per anything it is a dose, not a rate by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      A millisiervet is a specfic amount. It is a measure of dosage and since the chart is a chart of dosages, there is no per anything.

      Uh, the article says they measured 100mSv. If they measured only 100mSv, then by measuring it they absorbed the radiation; if there were only 100mSv there, then the area is now decontaminated.

    2. Re:It's not per anything it is a dose, not a rate by DrJimbo · · Score: 1

      My mistake. Thanks for the correction. Since your comment asking for the time unit was under the post about the XKCD chart, I had ASSumed you were talking about the chart. It never occurred to me that you had actually read the article.

      --
      We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
      -- Anais Nin
    3. Re:It's not per anything it is a dose, not a rate by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      I didn't really READ the article, per se; it's just that I've seen enough of the media to intuitively know the contents from just a few short words about it. Scientific things are different: anything competently written I need a look at. Incompetent sensationalism has a strong pattern, one centered around "you don't know what this means, so I'll throw out some numbers and meaningless babble." That's why $750Bn bail-outs to banks that gave $150M in bonuses made so much of a huge deal: $750,000 Million vs $150 million. Radiation is easier: 100 microsieverts, 100 millisieverts, nobody even knows the difference so just prattle off numbers and say "ELEVATED RADIATION!" and people will assume living within 10 miles of it is like you fashioned a dildo out of hot Plutonium and shoved it right up your ass. In fact, when they see 150mSv in an article today and 8000uSv tomorrow, they'll go "HOLY SHIT 8000 IS BIGGER!" even though it's 8mSv.

  48. one of these things is not like the other by epine · · Score: 1

    dBA
    CRI
    sieverts
    becquerel

    If you pass this test, welcome to your new career as a science journalist on planet "Actually Cares". You'll also need to pass a quick test on not adding to the confusion by stringing more than one word together.

    Your first assignment is to toss off a 500 word piece for Shaker Magazine on the Richter scale and moment magnitudes.

    If that goes well, your second assignment is a lively 2000 word in-depth backgrounder for Popular Metrology on the proposed CIPM reformation of the ampere.

    Answer to quiz: science and journalism.

  49. It's a dosimeter.. by symbolset · · Score: 1

    The time period is "since you were issued the dosimeter." Presumably at the start of your shift these days. It maxes at that exposure because at half that exposure you should flee. In normal plant operation you would then be banned from further work for a year.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  50. Re:Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times li by LastNewcomer · · Score: 1

    Obligatory: In Nuclear Japan you don't cook fish. Fish cooks you!

  51. They did what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My dyslexia kicked in and the subject read as:
    Fukushima Radiation Levels High, Leak Butt Plugged

  52. Re:Japan's ocean radiation is 7.5 million times li by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thank you. No, really, thank you...

  53. radiation levels to cause sickness/death/cancer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to a lecture of Dr. Muller at Cal Berkeley (you can even see his lectures on youtube), it takes 3 sieverts to your entire body to cause radiation sickness and then somewhere around 13 to kill you and around 25 to cause cancer at a 100% rate. So they're recording .1 sieverts outside of the building. Will that increase a chance of cancer? yes. Does that mean you'd get it with a good chance? not more than normal, but I wouldn't hang around there.

  54. Every evening they've fixed the worst problem by symbolset · · Score: 1

    And every dawn brings a worse problem to fix.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  55. Only one reactor uses Plutonium for fuel by symbolset · · Score: 1

    Look cowboy, we're three weeks into this thing and it's nowhere close to over. It still gets worse every day. There may still be (probably is) ongoing unplanned criticality in not one, not two, but three reactors at the same site. Reactor one has admittedly breached primary containment, and reactor two probably but not admittedly so. The potential for a much worse incident than Chernobyl still exists. If one of these three reactors pops the entire site is a no-operations zone, and that means the other three reactors and their spent fuel ponds also go up for lack of rescue, and maybe even spent fuel in five and six as well. We don't have any data on what that level of contamination does to the ocean because Chernobyl wasn't on the shore and it was only 1/10th this much fuel - but it can't be good. Before this is over the entire planet may be drinking Fukushima tea.

    Unacceptable levels of radioactivity have already been found in little fish 40 miles from this plant. Little fish are eaten by bigger fish, and big fish swim very far. As Cesium goes to the top of the food chain measurable amounts will be in our tin of tuna for the rest of time.

    Every ship that sails the sea has barnacles on its hull, and barnacles soak up iodine, cesium and plutonium like you wouldn't believe. Japan is completely hosed now, as they will shortly be cut off from the global economy. Ships will soon not even dare venture to the west coast of Japan, as they'll be delayed in every port thereafter for many years. India has banned all Japanese food imports, and they're India - they don't block incoming food trivially.

    That one reactor that used Plutonium MOX has enough toxic Plutonium in it to kill hundreds of millions of people. Saying there's only one reactor using Plutonium doesn't make it all OK now.

    Just... stop. We get that you're a nuke fan. Some of us are too. But now is just not the time for that. The time for poo-poohing the damage is after the crisis is averted. Come back in December and tell us this was overblown - if it was.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:Only one reactor uses Plutonium for fuel by Glock27 · · Score: 1

      Look cowboy, we're three weeks into this thing and it's nowhere close to over. It still gets worse every day.

      Er, no. It is now getting better every day. The one major issue, a water leak, has been plugged. Unless that plug fails, things will improve from here. Relax, princess.

      There may still be (probably is) ongoing unplanned criticality in not one, not two, but three reactors at the same site.

      I've seen not one claim for continued criticality. Citation?

      Reactor one has admittedly breached primary containment, and reactor two probably but not admittedly so.

      Citation? I've not seen those reports. I do agree that it's likely at least one vessel was breached, extent unknown.

      The potential for a much worse incident than Chernobyl still exists.

      That is simply not true, unless there's another major natural disaster in the area. Chernobyl released 1/3 of a reactor core into the atmosphere, nothing like that will happen at Fukushima.

      If one of these three reactors pops the entire site is a no-operations zone, and that means the other three reactors and their spent fuel ponds also go up for lack of rescue, and maybe even spent fuel in five and six as well. We don't have any data on what that level of contamination does to the ocean because Chernobyl wasn't on the shore and it was only 1/10th this much fuel - but it can't be good. Before this is over the entire planet may be drinking Fukushima tea.

      Once again, you're quite wrong. Much larger releases have occurred in the past, directly into the ocean. They were the H-bomb tests at Bikini atoll. You will note that life went on with barely a hiccup, looking at the Pacific as a whole (and yes I think it was horrible what happened to the residents and Japanese fishermen).

      Unacceptable levels of radioactivity have already been found in little fish 40 miles from this plant. Little fish are eaten by bigger fish, and big fish swim very far. As Cesium goes to the top of the food chain measurable amounts will be in our tin of tuna for the rest of time.

      "Measurable amounts" is a meaningless statement. Medically detrimental amounts? Highly unlikely. At any rate, tuna contains mercury and is best avoided. Mahi, on the other hand, is typically harvested at three years old and has a lot less time to concentrate pollutants of any kind. Salmon are similar. Both taste better. ;-)

      Every ship that sails the sea has barnacles on its hull, and barnacles soak up iodine, cesium and plutonium like you wouldn't believe.

      Clearly we should be creating barnacle farms all around the Fukushima area. :-)

      Japan is completely hosed now, as they will shortly be cut off from the global economy. Ships will soon not even dare venture to the west coast of Japan, as they'll be delayed in every port thereafter for many years. India has banned all Japanese food imports, and they're India - they don't block incoming food trivially.

      I can see that cleaning the scary barnacles off the ships would be a technical challenge of monumental proportions... :-P

      I think you'll find you're wrong again, and that Japanese food (and ships) will be welcome again worldwide before long. Say, three months from now at the most.

      That one reactor that used Plutonium MOX has enough toxic Plutonium in it to kill hundreds of millions of people. Saying there's only one reactor using Plutonium doesn't make it all OK now.

      Wow, I wonder how many billions of people the plutonium in (and produced by) the over 500 nuclear weapons exploded above ground during tested could have killed?!? It's amazing anyone survived, isn't it? lol

      Your alarmism is literally comical. Get a clue.

      Just

      --
      Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
      Score: -1 100% Flamebait
  56. Hello there "ne'er-do-well" (LOL!)... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Take a read in response to your feeble reply boy:

    http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070784&cid=35745894

    (Just getting back to you, & putting you in your rightful place as a mere "STUDENT NOOB + "ne'er-do-well" status that you enjoy in the field of the computer sciences...)

    APK

    P.S.=> Ah, yes... this was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2EZ'"... apk

    1. Re:Hello there "ne'er-do-well" (LOL!)... apk by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      For context to anyone reading this this is my creepy stalker.

      He's some pathetic unemployed bum who once made a screensaver and wrote some crapware+ PC magazine articles 15 years ago and gets buthurt when anyone points out when he says stupid things about networking and threatens to sue malware scanners which list his old malware/crapware.

      so now he stalks me.

    2. Re:Hello there "ne'er-do-well" (LOL!)... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But, check him out. He's got mad skilz y'all!

      http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050207062122/http://www.pixelstation.com/APKWeb/software.html

      (I had to use archives because APK's actually been banned from the internet. The only known case!)

  57. Telling lies about me, & libelling me also, Ho by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "For context to anyone reading this this is my creepy stalker." - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Friday April 08, @09:21AM (#35756306)

    Awwww, poor lil' HungryHobo: Trying to tell LIES, now?

    (In the past here, HungryHobo here trolled & "started up" w/ me once before:

    http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1945994&cid=34862876

    Now, I am simply 're-trolling' him, to show HIM how it feels having it done to he... & now, it seems that the 'great troller' in HungryHobo CANNOT TAKE WHAT HE DISHES OUT, lol!)

    ---

    "He's some pathetic unemployed bum" - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Friday April 08, @09:21AM (#35756306)

    LMAO... Gee, I wonder - Do YOU:

    1.) Own your own home paid in FULL?

    2.) Own your own sportscar, also PAID IN FULL??

    3.) Are ALL of your college debts PAID IN FULL???

    4.) Do you also own rental properties as well????

    No to ALL of the ABOVE on YOUR part? Yes...

    Guess what again on MY END though, for comparison - I DO to each & all are paid up fully... unlike yourself, STUDENT-NOOB!)

    (Fact is - I know you don't have ANYTHING but a LOT OF DEBT TO YOUR NAME, because you're JUST A STUDENT, lol!)

    By the way - I also have work in the computer sciences, & YOU, by way of comparison? DO NOT - after all: YOU'RE JUST A STUDENT ONLY, STILL! Rotflmao...

    ---

    "who once made a screensaver and wrote some crapware+ PC magazine articles 15 years ago" - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Friday April 08, @09:21AM (#35756306)

    Ahem: Since 1995, a lot more than just a screensaver is to my credit from the realm of both Freeware, Shareware, & since 1996, COMMERCIALLY SOLD SOFTWARE to MY CREDIT, whereas, YOU? You have "none of the above", lol!

    Man... heck, I've done 3-4 screensavers too, as you mention, like this one:

    ---

    APK Matrix ScreenSaver 1.0++

    http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/390/APK_Matrix_ScreenSaver.html

    ---

    HOWEVER - On ScreenSavers, since you mention them?

    Even though THAT one's VERY COOL??

    Heh - I don't even keep them on my PARTIAL FAVORITES LIST (posting it here again below once more, for your reference & those of others too, so they can see HOW MUCH YOU LIE & LIBEL others, HungyHobo):

    ----

    Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

    (&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

    PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

    PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

    CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

    GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

    HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

    Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

    Being paid for an article that made me mo

  58. APK is the DA Man! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  59. HungryHobo = a /. "ne'er-do-well" STUDENT NOOB! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2071668&cid=35756728

    (LMAO - That shows everyone here reading just how much of a lying, libelling, & trolling stalker + UTTER STUDENT NOOB "ne'er-do-well" that YOU REALLY ARE, HungryHobo!)

    APK

    P.S.=> Shouldn't have tried to "troll me" 1st as you did, HungryHobo... apk

  60. HungryHobo = a /. "ne'er-do-well" STUDENT NOOB! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2071668&cid=35756728

    (LMAO - That shows everyone here reading just how much of a lying, libelling, & trolling stalker + UTTER STUDENT NOOB "ne'er-do-well" that YOU REALLY ARE, HungryHobo!)

    APK

    P.S.=> You "Trolled ME", 1st, so... enjoy this "re-trolling" in return, where I shoot down the libel you've been speaking my way here... apk

  61. What have YOU ever done that was decent? Nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Show us what you've done better!

    "But, check him out. He's got mad skilz y'all!" - by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, @03:47PM (#35762014)

    Show us what you've ever done? Nothing?? Of course.

    "(I had to use archives because APK's actually been banned from the internet. The only known case!)" - by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, @03:47PM (#35762014)

    Funny, I'm still here aren't I?

    APK

    P.S.=> Bottom-line: The day you can show us all that you've done more than I have per the list below, and before I have, + that did BETTER than this only partial list of my favorites, is the day the "likes of you", a lowly cowardly little WORM can even BEGIN to speak to myself, or anyone else for that matter, that way:

    Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

    (&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

    PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

    PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

    CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

    GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

    HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

    Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

    Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

    Lastly, lately (this year)?

    It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html

    apk

  62. AC Cowardly little WORM is DA WoMan! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The day you can show us all that you've done more than I have per the list below, and before I have, + that did BETTER than this only partial list of my favorites, is the day the "likes of you", a lowly cowardly little WORM can even BEGIN to speak to myself, or anyone else for that matter, that way:

    ---
    Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

    (&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

    PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

    WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

    PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

    CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

    GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

    HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

    Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

    Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

    Lastly, lately (this year)?

    It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html

    ---

    You TOP that (& it's only a list of partial favorites of mine only, limited no less vs. the entirety of what I could put up)? Then, you can talk, worm.

    APK

    P.S.=> Bottom-line: You're a COWARDLY LITTLE WORM, worse than a gossiping talk behind someone's back WOMAN... apk