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Japan Raises Nuclear Plant Crisis Severity To 7
darkonc writes "Early Tuesday in Japan, the government decided to
raise the severity level of the accident to the maximum 7 on an international scale, up from the current 5 and matching that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The government declared the level 7 emergency because it is now estimated that the crippled plant was emitting over 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity for a number of hours at the height of the nuclear incident. Previously, on Monday, the government had expanded the evacuation zone around the plant to include at least 6 cities up to 60 km away from the plant. These cities, outside of the current 20-30 km evacuation area, are now expected to exceed the 20 millisieverts/year limit on residual radiation established by International Commission on Radiological Protection and the International Atomic Energy Agency in the case of an emergency."
As facts get passed from source to newspaper to news site to commenter, things are going up a notch in severity each time.
The government says "we might need to evacuate X and are making plans, we are monitoring the situation", which becomes "X preparing for evacuation", then "X ordered to evacuate" until eventually people are convinced that "X will be uninhabitable for 99999 years!!!!!11one!"
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
And some people still wonder why the public are opposed to nuclear power.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
typical /. pro-nuclear apologetic comments arriving in 3..2..1..meltdown!
I think using a scale based on 'the worst nuclear disaster so far' isn't a great idea. Do we add #8 'Fukushima' to the scale if it gets any worse?
You need to have at least a few deaths from radiation poisoning, Fukushima does not even have that. They are maximum at 4-5.
Rising or lowering the level won't fix anything.
... it's over 9 000!
22,000 people died in the tsunami. TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND. So why isn't the tsunami getting more press? Answer: your elites can't score political points from a tsunami.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
about fukushima always minimizing, belittling, or otherwise dismissing what is happening here as hysteria or science illiteracy?
it seems like a form of denial to me
we're talking about the end of nuclear power in japan, and perhaps elsewhere
if you don't understand why, you really are in denial, and you don't understand risk analysis
it's not hysteria going on here. really
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can't really put things into perspective until you look at this video:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/12/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1
A few filmmakers went into the evacuation zone. Watch how those geiger counters are going ballistic miles from the plant. Whole cities are going to be ghost towns for our lifetime for sure.
Does it mean beaming alpha/beta/gamma rays out from radioactive material that is basically contained, but not shielded (e.g. fuel rods in a storage pool with not enough water to block the radiation), or does it mean actual dispersal of the radioactive material itself into the environment, where it beams out alpha/beta/gamma rays? Because those two things are completely different.
Actually it's because we can't do all that much against natural disasters. I live in Florida and "Death by Hurricane" is sort of the deal you make to live here.
But we don't have to mismanage nuclear power, or focus our (distant) future on it.
Just imagine one second this type of accident in China...
Good question. Utterly moronic answer.
and washes all that radioactive material inland and then back out to sea we will have to increment the Crisis Severity again... and again... ...several thousand times.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
When did 'elite' become a pejorative?
22,000 people died in the tsunami. TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND. So why isn't the tsunami getting more press? Answer: your elites can't score political points from a tsunami.
People understand tsunamis. They can see it, it's terrible, but then it's over, and has been for a month. They weren't killed. Nuclear is invisible and poorly understood, and that leads to fear. Fear of the effects, but fear of the unknown.
The bigger story, which is under-reported, is the displaced people, and the shattered lives. Also, the hope and relief we should have as there haven't 220,000 deaths from disease and starvation after the tsunami.
But people aren't dying, and are unlikely to die
Because the tsunami happened and then was over with. The reactor situation is ongoing, and isn't getting better very quickly. There's little point on dwelling on the past, there's nothing anyone can do about the tsunami now, the damage is completely done and over with. There are no new developments. Obviously this translates to "no news".
Fighting to keep the reactors from melting down and further major radiation releases is a current and ongoing battle. Every day brings new developments, a new news story, and people want to know what's changed since yesterday. That's the essence of "news".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Japan is a great country and the Japanese wonderful people. I lived there in the 90's and loved it. They are showing tremendous resolve and strength during a natural disaster that just keeps on going. It seems like almost everyday I see a headline of yet another 7.x aftershock. Yet they are repairing their infrastructure at an incredible rate and keeping as much control over what they can better than anyone.
If and when the US has another natural disaster, I hope we can come somewhere close to what they are doing. The Japanese people's efforts are not only helping Japan, but much of the world. Many critical components and products for many industries are made or flow through Japan. If Japan were to stop or slow down noticeably, it would seriously affect economies all over the world including the US.
-Andy
When did 'elite' become a pejorative?
Whenever it was coined.
Ban tsunamies!!!! We must give our children a tsunami-free world.
With adequate safety design, effective corporate compliance, and government monitoring, nuclear energy could be safe.
The problem is that it would then be economically unfeasible.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
with false complacency
you walk the fine line between false complacency and false alarmism with a prudent understanding of what is going on, intelligence. sometimes, you are complacent. sometimes, you alarmed
and if you are intelligent, you are alarmed about what is going on in fukushima right now. that some people are also alarmed for stupid reasons does not change the fact that alarm is the proper reaction to fukushima right now
now go ahead, dismiss me as a hysteric or illiterate. denial, denial, denial
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
False equivalency. Much can be done against natural disasters, but none of it serves an agenda. Always ask yourself: who benefits from this?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Because the radiation will affect even more than 22k people, and takes much longer to clear than the damage from the tsunami (which after 5-10 years villages will be rebuilt), but radiation will remain there for another 50-70 years to make the land unhabitable.
so them dying off just puts us closer to being #1 again? mathamatically, as well as with the obvious physical advantages, the bird frienders may be right. many birds likely find us to be smelly & unappetizing (taste like poison), as well as fatal to them, so.. there can only be one (1) number one (1)? who's willing to wager that the birds survive us?
Did anyone see the area around the power Plant? Nobody survived the tsunami there but those working at the plant which was designed to take the earthquake and tsunami did fine. If it was a coal or gas plant it wouldn't have been built as well so those workers would have been dead too.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Because the tsunami happened and then was over with. The reactor situation is ongoing, and isn't getting better very quickly. There's little point on dwelling on the past, there's nothing anyone can do about the tsunami now, the damage is completely done and over with. There are no new developments. Obviously this translates to "no news".
Yeah I'm glad everything's fine with the tsunami and everybody else returned to their homes.
There are towns outside the radius that were getting 70 - 80 uSievert/hr. That's 1.6 mSievert/day. Saying they are worried that they will exceed 20mSievert a year is a joke, they exceeded that in the first 12 days once the radiation spiked. By my count that's the equivalent of a CT-scan every 3 days or so. Presumably indoors is not as bad, but the people have to eat and drink something, so that's not their only radiological load. http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/04/12/1304852_041119_1.pdf And the readings have been climbing. As of April 11, there are now hotspots outside the 20km ring that are getting 100uSieverts/hr. I haven't superimposed their map of readings on the map showing population centers, so hopefully most of the hotspots are relatively uninhabited.
We can anticipate a zone of exclusion in this case. When nuclear power breaks, it does so in an ungraceful manner. It poisons the surrounding land and makes it uninhabitable. It disrupts power supply by forcing the shutdown of plants around the world and within its own grid limits the ability to provide substitute power http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/04/nuclear-woes-boost-japanese-wind-but-supply-remains-limited These properties make nuclear power the most unreliable form of generation. It is not the whispers but the shrapnel that pose a problem for nuclear power.
Yes, GP should be modded up.
People need to understand that the decades long term effects are the reasons why people are against nuclear power.
Sad how much some people seem able to deny the reality that's right in front of them. I used to be a proponent of nuclear power. This event changed my mind about the safety of nuclear power, which clearly isn't so safe as all the experts were claiming before this - some of them were even claiming that in the early stages of this eent, it wouldn't be a big deal. Yet here we are, looking at long term evacuation of cities in Japan. At least I was honest enough to change my opinion based on reality, rather than cling to my former misguided opinion about nuclear power.
People seem to willfully miss the point: it doesn't matter that not so many people were killed, it matters that *huge swaths of land are being made uninhabitable for generations*. Just like in Chernobyl. Just like the next unpredictable nuclear disaster that we're all being assured won't happen, just like this one couldn't happen.
Sure, and what these articles keep forgetting to mention is that the prevailing winds drives all that crap right to North America, where it's been falling in our rain for a week or two.
What would you have done against this one?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
now go ahead, dismiss me as just another propaganda victim
I think he already did.....
But how do you know that your alarm is correct? Seriously. How do you know? You admitted before that you are trying to walk a fine line between complacency and alarm, so might it be possible that you have slipped to one side?
Perhaps there is a rational conversation to be had about this, and perhaps in listening to it you might have your mind changed. Perhaps. Just sayin'
No. Just no. Tsunamis are dangerous . We should not have them anymore. It is much better to have nuclear releases than tsunamis. Heck earthquakes are dangerous too. Lets cancel them.
Nice strawman there. The Japanese officials have raised the severity to a 7 all on their own. That's not a matter of people making the story worse with each retelling. Face it, your favorite industry is incapable of maintaining safety. Newer designs are less bad, but still not good enough. Keeping plutonium-laced spent fuel in swimming pools all over the country is dumb-as-fuck and sweeping it under the rug (er a mountain) is not even a valid long term solution. Plutonium does not exist naturally on earth, it's extremely toxic, and it lasts for millions of years. And that's just one byproduct.
it's where carbon is king, & life leaves (forever by real time measures). the spigot is open again. the censorship light is always on now.
Details details. My nuclear cluster fuck technically isn't as bad as some other one with the same severity rating... Blah blah. So what you're saying is that the industry can't even create a good rating scale for its accidents. The bottom line is that they need to not have accidents of such magnitude at all, and have been unable to achieve that goal and will probably continue to be unable to achieve it.
We expect the world population will be in decline by mid century, due to the liberation of women, access to birth control, etc. If given the option, women prefer having fewer children and investing more effort in each child. It follows that our overall world consumption could eventually be covered by reasonable usage of wind, wave, solar, and geothermal.
There are large wind turbines that power 500 homes already, for example. Yes, it'll require several ass wind turbines standing above every suburb to power both that suburb and the city, but hey the burb's always did suck anyways. Also, there is much faster technological progress on wind, wave, and solar than civilian nuclear because they exist at scales that human handle better.
Btw, aircraft, spacecraft, and ships are our only vehicles that fundamentally require high energy density. All our current car designs require high energy density too, but a ground level power standard for highways could solve that problem for electric cars.
Are you familiar with what most infrastructure projects look like after a couple decades in operation? Nuclear power simply doesn't give enough room for the inevitable screw ups. You simply cannot trust either governments or private enterprise to handle the task long term. You could mandate that the family of every power plant owner and worker lived inside the plant, but you'd still find people dangerously cutting corners.
There will for example be another Chernobyl coming down the line in Bulgaria's nuclear industry now that they're completely run by organized crime. ( see http://wlcentral.org/node/1568 http://wlcentral.org/node/1495 http://wlcentral.org/node/1488 ) Italy's mafiaa has also decided it wants some part of the nuclear power pie. Do you remember when the garbage was piling up in Naples?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Thanks for being our nuclear energy version of a Warmist. We needed one, and you're right here to volunteer with the initial comment. Thanks. You're great.
For everybody else: this reading of "over 10,000 TeraBequerels per hour" was in the hours after the Tsunami, when none of the reactors had yet reached recriticality. It's before the hydrox explosions. It measures atmospheric releases of steam, not the leaching into the sea of Fukushima Tea that's been going on for a month now. It's the level of release that TEPCO has been denying for a month. The "10% of a Chernobyl" you read here is from three weeks ago. This mess will be going on for months yet and Chernobyls will be the increment it's measured by.
Chernobyl was not on the sea, so seafood was not significantly impacted, nor was ocean-going commerce. That's a pretty big difference, since seafood is a major Japan export and source of sustenance, and one gull fed on radioactive fish can now slag a container ship several hundred miles out to sea with its droppings. Water soluble radioactive products, notable Cesium, are naturally concentrated at the top of the food chain - in this case Cesium in Pacific tuna. This may be the salvation of Pacific Tuna stocks, as nobody's going to want to eat that stuff.
Every day this thing still gets worse. Even with grid power, cooling systems are not online. It's still possible for a reactor or spent-fuel pools to catch fire and/or go critical. One of the reactors 1-3 may yet "pop", rendering the entire site unworkable and preventing the rescue of the other three. If that happens we have 11,000 tons of LEU on the site (over 1,000,000 pounds of pure U235, or enough Uranium to make more than 100,000 nuclear bombs) in varying states of criticality and/or fire - notwithstanding other nuclear products and not considering the amounts of Plutonium in reactor 3. It's a Very Bad Thing. If even .01% of that should escape into the environment, it would be hugely bad. Bad does not even begin to describe it.
Japan built these things to save money in the short term. They have geothermal assets that cost a bit more up front but didn't have this downside risk. Geothermal would have cost them 20% more per kilowatt hour up front, and over time much less overall as geothermal is amortized over a longer time (it requires no fuel, and hence less maintenance cost over time). It was a foolish gamble. It has cost them several hundred square miles of land they didn't have to spare, and has cost us several generations of delicious Pacific Tuna sashimi and the opportunity to drive a 2012 Prius when we really, really needed that fuel economy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The reason we stopped building nuclear plants is that it's too expensive. It had very little to do with safety concerns. With massive government subsidies, and with no liability for accidents or waste management, power companies could justify nuclear. Without it, in the US, nuclear just can't compete with coal.
We need power, and research has shown that the US public is very interested in safe, renewable energy, as long as it's nearly as cheap as burning coal. Short of that, we'll burn all the coal, all of Canada's oil sands, and all the oil shale first, and convince ourselves that we're not impacting the environment. If nuclear technologies ever become economical, we'll have them everywhere, regardless of safety issues. We'll do a lot of solar in the desert states, because it's getting to be cheaper than the alternatives, but everywhere else, we'll stick with fossil fuels until they're gone.
Here's something I don't get. Why do Republicans hate plug-in hybrids? I guess that means less profit for Exxon, and that's got to piss them off, but it also means we burn more coal, which they like, right? We're currently building 150 new coal plants in the US. Is there any good reason to expand nuclear when we've got so much coal that the public wants to burn?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
That is one more than 6.
about fukushima always minimizing, belittling, or otherwise dismissing what is happening here as hysteria or science illiteracy?
it seems like a form of denial to me
we're talking about the end of nuclear power in japan, and perhaps elsewhere
if you don't understand why, you really are in denial, and you don't understand risk analysis
it's not hysteria going on here. really
If this one incident is enough to convince you that nuclear power is totally unsafe, then you don't understand risk analysis, at least not in the technical sense. (The severity is high, but the likelihood is very low, and can be made lower....just look it up.)
Unfortunately, I'm quite confident that the vast majority of the (voting!) population does not understand risk analysis.
The byproducts of that oil fire will be mostly gone in a week. Nuclear accidents leave hundreds of square mile uninhabitable for decades if not thousands of years. That's not to mention the NORMAL byproducts of nuclear power - plutonium - that the industry can't seem to figure out how to get rid of. CO2 on the other hand is good for plant growth which we need to feed people. Not to mention coal is formed from dead bio-mass which used to be an active part of the biosphere anyway.
http://energyfromthorium.com
People could decide not to live in tsunami-vulnerable areas, except in tsunami-proof structures. Better warning systems could be created, too.
That's expensive, but so is safe energy.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
> People question the ability of enterprise and government to *manage* such incredible (and potentially destructive) power.
Governments have nuclear weapons. More and more of them will have them as time goes on.
As Stephen J. Gould said:
Nuclear power generation, however, at least has immense benefits. No one is sure if they outweigh the disadvantages, yet. Freezing research and development in this field is not going to help us find out.
You are an idiot.
Definetly, there is not much that can be done about the tsunami. It happened already and the Japanese are teaching the world a lesson regarding to displaced people management.
The point is just about the nukes. They are still there leaking and there is not known extent to the disaster at this moment. There are not possible forecast about toxic waste disposition in the next hundred years in that region.
That's all that fuss's about. Now you may go repeat mindlessly some pro nuke agenda.
The point of people opposing to nuclear power - and being labeled here and there as tree huggers or something similar - is that YOU can't control their worst effects after all. It's just risk management: There is a point when it becomes just unmanageable.
Think of the wasteland created by Chernobyl and the yet-to-be-known wasteland that's being created there in Japan right now.
Our threat levels are designated by colors! What color is seven?
Have gnu, will travel.
Tsunami? What tsunami? Weren't they all killed by the radiation? I saw guys in hazmat suits collecting the bodies on TV.
I believe this it the video you're referring to.
Watch how those geiger counters are going ballistic miles from the plant.
The highest it gets in the video is 7.85uSv/hour (most of the time it's at or near 1uSv/hour).
In a normal day you'd get around 10uSv.
Whole cities are going to be ghost towns for our lifetime for sure.
It depends on the half-life of the element(s) causing the radiation.
It could be a week, it could be 30 years - nothing is "for sure" right now.
Do they want to build a new nuclear power plant or just continue with rolling blackouts for the foreseeable future?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
....that the most severely damaged reactor was never actually shut down after the quake hit, but rather for some reason they kept it up and running then the tsunami rolled in and all hell broke loose.
Read this, then you may continue whining on regardless about how it's the end of the world:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/12/fukushima_ffs/
Because if you haven't read this already, or understood what it's telling you, chances are you just like scaremongering anyway.
Anderson Cooper Loves Juian Assange
Not since the Winklevoss Twins has the world seen a bigger pair of douche'
Typical insolation ranges from 4 kWh/mÂ/day in northern climes to 6.5 kWh/mÂ/day in the sunniest regions.
2 sqm per american = 600,000,000 sqm
Place 5 sqm per HOUSE HOLD, and you solved most of usa needs.
Now to get rid of the nazi MOFO local councils and yuppie fucks that say "oh solar panels look ugly" , yeah well so do you're swimming pools and rich wifes.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Wikipedia is full of shit. One of your industry shills probably edited the article. Find a REAL source! One that's not a paid industry shill either!
*marks checklist* totally called this on day one, as im sure many people did. its like japan is on the receiving end of some very bad universal juju. if they can start turning this thing around they might not lose even more of their land, unlikely but it could happen.
next item.
democratic liberal extremist presidential assassination, time table unknown.
By the time it reaches US, I believe it's become like a million or billion times more diluted, no? Dilution does matter.
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to 7. Look, right across the board, 7, 7, 7 and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most nuclear indicators go up to 6?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not 6. You see, most blokes, you know, will be setting everything at 6. You're on 6 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 6 on your nuclear freakout indicator. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to 7.
Nigel Tufnel: 7. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make 6 louder and make 6 be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to 7.
I live in the french west indies and our homes are designed to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. In case of hurricanes there is usually no more than a couple casualties due to foolhardiness or sheer bad luck. I guess you should rethink your building regulations.
Living in Japan, we get the "advantage" of taking typhoons lightly (as they are called in our part of the world.) Typhoons don't scare me a bit, been through extremely heavy ones and only miles from the coast. Once went out in a huge one to tear sheet metal off the car park roof that might of blown into neighbor's houses (felt manly that day.) Earthquakes are a whole nother story though, the big ones make you fear for your life within seconds. I get your point though I have to say. I suppose it's why we stay, it's our home for better or worse. Hurricanes, quakes, meltdowns be damned the rest of the quality of life is too important to stop fighting.
And as for not mismanaging nuclear power there was a wonderful old Buddhist nun on the news today talking about this, putting it into a wonderful old Buddhist perspective. Shortened and very paraphrased but, "When I grew up we had so much less power. Why do we need more today? Put on more clothes in the winter, and wear less in Summer."
Maybe the worst thing we can do is to not pursue modern, safe nuclear power and let these older reactors stay in use. Coal is not clean no matter how much politicians and coal companies want you to believe it is. There are no alternatives today except nuclear that can support our cities. Nuclear power is an excellent stop-gap but 'ancient' reactors that are still in service today are a disaster waiting to happen and my point is proven in Japan right now.
The fact is that these reactors are perfectly safe in ideal conditions but clearly cannot deal with multiple failures from a natural disaster (or worse?) a terrorist attack. That makes it very easy to leave them in service. Maybe Japan's current situation can be learned from but hopefully the solution isnt to *just* decommission old facilities but to replace them with modern designs such as Toshiba's 4S http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow. Apparently I still have a lot to learn about right-vs-left politics. You're saying the concern about the mess, is related to .. what, I'm not sure. Religious fundamentalism vs religious freedom? 10th-amendment-is-law vs 10th-amendment-is-obsolete? Personal responsibility vs social responsibility? Low interest rates with high inflation, vs high interest rates with low inflation? Feds-should-have-this-power vs states-should-have-this-power? Taxes-and-subsidies vs free market? 14-year-copyrights vs 90-year-copyrights? Iraq war vs Afghan war?
I'm trying to figure out WTF it means... Give me a hint: are the liberals the ones doing the scaring, or are they the ones being scared?
I think this is basically evidence that the INES scale is WAY too subjective and meaningless.
Three Mile Island at a 5. "Accident with Wider Consequences" - What were the wider consequences? Nothing outside of the plant boundary had a radiation increase higher than around 1/75th of a banana a day. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Radioactive_material_release
Of course, if the "consequences" include political and psychological effects, then TMI would be a 7. It was a political and psychological disaster.
Fukishima at a 7 - At this point, there has been enough radioactivity outside of the plant boundary to be "wider consequences". Now based on the logarithmic scale and TMI being a 5 - probably is pushing a 6. However I still question, as above, whether TMI really deserves a 5.
However, in terms of a 6 - so far as far as I can find, there is one known incident rating a 6 on the INES, and that is the Kyshtm disaster at the Mayak reprocessing facility. This disaster blew 70-80 tons of high level radioactive waste (with a significant portion being medium-lived fission products) into the air - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster. So how is Fukushima worse than this by a factor of 10, considering that the bulk of the Fukushima releases have been short-lived fission products with well established preventative measures in terms of human health effects?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The funny thing about having old unsafe nuke plants and abstaining from fuel reprocessing, and public opposition to nuclear power in general, is that I'm not sure which is the cause and which is the effect.
It's weird how when race cars crash, people don't oppose developing auto tech. When the space shuttle blows up, no one says we need to stop designing commercial airliners. But when 1960s design nuke plants fail, it means we need to abstain from building new nuke plants, thereby increasing the demand and lifetime of the old ones.
If you fail your math test, it means you need to stop doing your math homework, because math class only gets you in trouble.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I am very annoyed by a critical bit of misinformation being spread about this. Most reports imply that there was some kind of undisclosed escalation at Fukushima, and that the "threat level" was increased.
This is seriously wrong. INES is not a "threat level" like a hurricane warning. It is a post-mortem estimate of seriousness. This is a reassessment of events which happened weeks ago on the basis of more detailed information being available, not some new unfolding problem.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
european commission doesnt think so. french independent radiation commission doesnt think so.
http://enenews.com/french-radiation-commission-warns-europe-health-risk-fukushima-fallout-longer-negligible-west-coast-8-10-times-contamination
" The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer âoenegligible,â according to CRIIRAD [Commission de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité], an independent French research body on radioactivity. ⦠The document, published on 7 April, advises against consuming rainwater and says vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant or breastfeeding women should avoid consuming vegetables with large leaves, fresh milk and creamy cheese. The risks related to prolonged contamination among vulnerable groups of the population can no longer be considered âoenegligibleâ and it is now necessary to avoid âoerisky behaviour,â CRIIRAD claimed. ⦠[This] is applicable to other European countries, as the level of air contamination is currently the same in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, for instance. Data for the west coast of the United States, which received the Fukushima radioactive fallout 6-10 days before France, reveals that levels of radioactive iodine-131 concentration are 8-10 times higher there, the institute says.".
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.criirad.org/&ei=P6yiTZ2JGMyjtge6sIiIAw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCRIIRAD%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DMKC%26rlz%3D1R1GGLL_en___US409%26prmd%3Divnsl
and you americans are the only ones downplaying this like idiots. because you are told to do so, because it is more convenient to do so.
Let's do some back of the envelope math to show you smelly solar hippies how we ban the EPA-while-wearing-camo-weekend-warriors guys do it while we're playing engineer sock puppet on a website. According to Moore's law SOLAR WILL NEVER WORK, so take a bath and stop believing the idiotic propaganda machine.
Don't you understand radiation is dangerous?!?! The government lies about everything so how do we know that the graphite control rods aren't BURNING RIGHT NOW (click my blog for the shocking truth about 9/11) JUST LIKE IN CHERNOBYL!
Don't you understand COAL KILLS! It's killing right now. Coal is a serial killer. And there aren't any graphite control rods anywhere in Japan.
You pro nuke guys are all ...
and
Anyone who has seen the video of the plant post-earthquake and tsunami would note that the plant to survived the initial two disasters intact but failed nonetheless. It's well publicised that the explosions that destroyed the reactor buildings were from a hydrogen build up but not why there was a hydrogen build up and where that much hydrogen came from.
A reactor is a machine with design issues, refered to as Basis Design Issue or Design Basis Issues, that are mitigated by safety systems and procedures implemented to reduce the risk of these design issues becoming the vector for a disaster. The General Electric and Hitachi Reactors had two BDIs that had to be mitigated by safety systems.
The first Basis Design Issue of the General Electric reactor comes from the tests of the reactor prototype by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Brunswick in the 1970's. During the test the reactor was to be pressurised to 72psi, yet it only reached 70psi no matter how much more it was pressurised. This indicated that the reactor was leaking gas. Thus as the moderator in the reactor vessel got lower hydrogen gas was produced and leaked when the internal pressure reached 70psi. This was the first source of hydrogen.
The second BDI revolves around the spent fuel cooling pools. Due to the nature of the refueling gate pairs that separate the reactor head from the spent fuel containment. The design of the seals on the gates require them to be constantly powered to prevent a loss of coolant. There is a pool volume of 1300 tons of water and they are 12 meters deep. There is 850 tons of water above the spent fuel in each except for reactor 1 spent fuel pool which is smaller by 400 tons. There is 60 Million calories per hour heating capacity in the spent fuel rods in reactor 1 spent fuel pool, 400Mcal/h in reactor 2 spent fuel pool, 200 Mcal/h in reactor 3 and 1600 Mcal/h in reactor 4. Had those spent fuel containment pools not leaked there should have been several *months* to do something. However it seems the scenario that unfolded was *exactly* in line with what would happened if plutonium in those spent fuel pools was exposed, hydrogen was produced and conditions for a serious explosion were in place.
What is known is that to mitigate these two risks an availability of a constant supply of electricity is a requirement for a reactor facility. So why wasn't it? As is known the reason is that the tsunami took out the back-up power and the cooling pumps for the reactor. This, I believe, is the first piece of evidence for negligence on the part of TEPCO.
The [pdf warning] Regulatory Guide for Reviewing Seismic Design of Nuclear Power Reactor Facilities categorises react
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This argument doesn't work. If people gave press to preventable death, they would highlight obesity, gun ownership and safe driving. The reason people are scared of nuclear power is because they do not understand the issue. The reason people live in hurricane afflicted areas is probably because they do not think it will happen to them. If the same number of people died from artificial nuclear radiation in Florida as die from hurricanes, can you imagine the hysteria?
Short of a meteor hitting it, this is the worst natural disaster that could happen to a nuclear plant. A 9.0 earthquake, one of the biggest ever, and a bigass tsunami wave. The result? A problematic amount of leakage that requires evacuation, and likely the loss of lives of workers in the plant, though far less than the direct loss of life from the disaster.
Doesn't really sound that bad when you look at it like that.
You can't just say "What bad things have happened?" you have to compare it to the magnitude of what happened to it. If a disaster of this magnitude happened for no reason, like it was just a normal day and suddenly the plant lost cooling, and had hydrogen explosions and so on and so forth, well that would reflect really badly on it. If it could get that bad when nothing happened, how bad could it be when something really happened?
However that is not the case. The case is it got hit with close to the worst nature could throw at it. That there are some problems is highly unsurprising.
Does that mean we can't do better? No, we can, and we should, always learn from your mistakes. However this shit needs to be kept in perspective here. First it needs to be kept in perspective of what the damage is from the nuclear event itself, and then it needs to be kept in perspective with what happened to the plant.
Life is not without risk. The quake and tsunami proved that. Many people lost their lives just because they happened to live in Japan near the coast. Does that mean we should evacuate all coastal areas, that nobody should live anywhere a tsunami can hit? How about earthquake areas? What about areas for bigger disasters, like calderas? There are super volcanoes that will erupt some day with a force like nothing we've ever seen, and people do live near them.
You can't just say "We need to have stuff that has no risk!" because that isn't reality. Life has risk, the question is what the risk is. The events in Japan have actually given me more faith in nuclear energy, not less. A major disaster hit, and the results have not been another major disaster.
I do not think most people have noticed, but we the public have been subjected to a massive PR/marketing campaign by the nuclear industry in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and I don't think most posters here (or at some other Internet communities I frequent) have understood just how much they are parroting nuclear industry talking points.
Under more normal circumstances, I am quick to point out when people are getting hysterical at the mere mention of the word "nuclear" (and plenty of people do), but I am shocked to see people who normally don't fall for this kind of thing spouting nuclear industry talking points as if they were lobbyists themselves.
Has the media exaggerated some of the danger? Possibly. But to hear some people around here talk, it would be perfectly safe to raise a family in the remains of the Daiichi plant and we must never ever ever consider reviewing the safety procedures of older nuclear plants in other countries. This is patently absurd.
I am not interested in living in a nuclear-free world. I happen to think nuclear power may some day prove a critical transition technology as we move from one to another form of energy generation. However, I do not think it is unreasonable to occasionally review the safety of older plants, and be prepared to close them if they are found lacking.
Also, nuclear power is currently not economically viable without massive government subsidies. I'd love to keep nuclear power around in the hopes that someone will some day develop a nuclear power plant that is economically viable without massive government subsidies, but until that day comes, we should not have as many nuclear plants as we have. Furthermore, even though the current economic analysis suggests that it is not economically viable without massive government studies, whatever numbers you have heard thrown about do not include the cost of disposing of fuel. No estimate can include this information because no one yet knows how we will ever go about disposing of the stuff.
Nuclear power is simply not ready for large scale use yet, and it is absurd to pretend that it is.
10uSv/hr --> 90mSv/yr, i.e. 4.5 times the maximum limit for evacuation, 25 times the normal background dose
10uSv/hr --> ~1 Sievert a year. 10 times the lowest dose proven to have caused Cancer.
So before speaking about journalism hysteria, check your own facts first.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... so you only need 3 months and a half to get that dose of 100mSv linked to cancer
Such posters have spent a lot of effort supporting a technology that, by itself, had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, we humans seem incapable of creating the proper organizations to effectively manage such technology to the acceptable risk tolerance level.
Coming on Slashdot and downplaying the situation is not very costly for these people compared to what they have invested so far. However, do you think they will move to the effected area and buy a 440K USD house there (which is up for 400K, at the moment)? In contrast, do you think someone, like myself, who has been financially devastated by such a technology will ever indulge the idea ever again? Actions speak louder than words.
Their support at this point does not mean much . . . every idea has a fringe group and that is what they have just become.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
What a 'tard.
That chart is wonderful... for confusing the issue.
The greatest danger to them was NOT from background radiation levels; their danger is in the inhalation of particles in the area.
A gram of EXTREMELY radioactive uranium will NOT set off most gieger counters unless you're within 2 feet of it.
It only takes a SINGLE insignificant speck of the MOX fuel to kill you if you inhale it. The cells around that particle are getting LETHAL doses of radiation.
The detectors in the US that they're telling you are showing "Well below safe levels" are already showing a slight increase in the background radiation levels across the states.
The detectors won't show you the true danger unless a particle floats DIRECTLY PAST THE SENSOR OR LANDS ON IT. Period.
As cars pass they kick this stuff back up. When forests burn, this stuff will go back into the air. The only thing that makes it a non-inhalation hazard is for it to be washed into the ground where it pollutes the soil.
Fukushima will be putting these particles into the air for "DECADES". Anyone who knows the facts about what's going on will tell you the same.
Shave your head. Keep your kids inside. Look for particle dispersion maps so you can time the best days to get things done. Protect your breathing, filter your water and don't drink dairy products.
This is NOT a drill. *sigh*
The comments here are all either 1) Nuclear power is bad, 2) Nuclear power is not bad, or 3) the Japanese people are great. No one wants to talk about Fukushima. There are 3 reactor cores in which nuclear fission was happening when the earthquake hit. When the quake hit, the control rods were allegedly inserted and shutdown was initiated. Then the tsunami hit an hour later and took out all of the cooling. After that, the cores melted, hydrogen gas was produced, several hydrogen explosions occurred, four of the plants were heavily damaged by the explosions, some of the melted fuel reformed localized critical masses in Unit 2, the fuel storage ponds went dry and the stored fuel began oxidizing in fires, and portions of highly dangerous fuel were found up to a mile away. At present, we really don't know what is happening at Fukushima other than that large quantities of radioactive materials continue to be released every day and that as of today, through some unknown process, someone has calculated that 'only' 10 percent of what was released at Chernobyl (whatever that was) has been released at Fukushima. Perhaps tomorrow that number will be 11 percent. This will be an ongoing severe world crisis until all fission is stopped, all fuel is once again in proper storage and containment, and releases of radioactive material have been contained and stopped. That will take at least several months and more likely several years. The passage of time will help a little but mostly ending the Fukushima catastrophe will require new technology that has not yet been implemented on this scale...robotic workers, mobile robotic video inspection, containment, treatment and storage of radioactive debris and water, etc. Until that happens, the long half-life fission isotopes such as Cesion-137 and Strontium-90 will continue to be released and continue to spread in the environment worldwide through, air, water, food, shipping, etc. These are unprecedented quantities and the impact cannot be predicted. There is really nothing that can be done by receptors other than to try and screen for their presence and limit exposures to the extent possible. That and reassure the consumers of those materials that the levels are low and there's nothing to worry about.
The problem with geiger counters and even the SI 'becquerel' is that they only tell you about the radiation level right -now- and say nothing about radiation levels over the long term. All current information says that the vast majority of the radiation leaked from the reactors is from short-lived isotopes such as Iodine-131 (the one they inject people with in hospitals because it dies away quickly).This causes high radiation levels immediately following a leak but quickly decays to safe levels within a period of weeks. There is simply no comparison to substances like plutonium and uranium isotopes which stick around for 'ghost-town for life' kind of scales.
To use a metaphor which the scientifically illiterate might understand: It's like saying that you have a fire that's burning really hot, and it's nearly as hot as the 'great fire of Chernobyl' which was clearly a disaster of epic proportions. The difference being that some fires aren't that dangerous, because while they're still hot they burn out really quickly. Other fires burn for a much longer time and do a lot of cumulative damage. So far in Japan, we're still in the 'uncomfortably hot but short-lived' type of fire.
This is the reason why physicists and engineers are dismissing this 'Nuclear disaster' as a non-event. When the projected fatalities and/or economic impact exceeds that of the actual fucking earthquake/tsunami, it's worth paying attention to (about, say , half a week's worth of media coverage for 10000 dead?). The direct impact of this 'Nuclear disaster' will never exceed that of the recent Haiti earthquake, or the 2004 Boxing day Tsunami(That's half a million people wiped out between the two). Yet somehow even the slightest risk with the words 'nuclear' or 'radiation' attached to it is the devil incarnate, coming to punish us for playing with fire.
The sad thing is, this -is- a nuclear disaster, not because of any direct harm, but because media's created so much fear and panic surrounding this event. This will set back nuclear power for decades, this is the reason why we wont see new cleaner or safer nuclear reactors in our lifetimes.
The most stupid thing about the situation is that no one wants to deal with the long term storage of spent fuel when an outdated reactor is decommissioned. Currently that fuel has to stay on site since we are decades away from having adequate long term storage facilities. As long as the plant is functioning, the overheads for the active management of that storage can be buried in the accounting, but when a plant is decommissioned someone then has to openly take the responsibility for those costs (and risks).
Outside of military organizations, we do not have any human institutions that can handle this. To say this another way, in every corporate environment, mentioning any of this sordid mess where stockholders might hear of it is career suicide. So do not expect the nuclear industry to come up with solutions for long term storage. The solution is going to have to be imposed on them by big government. Which means it will be political, but again even mentioning the problem is currently political suicide.
If we could only get rid of all the humans involved with it, nuclear power would be a sweet solution to a lot of problems.
Will
Got family/friends in Japan? Tell them to get OUT!
Ignore the govt and leave the country.
Take a look at the particle dispersion maps covering the fallout across the U.S. We're 6,000 miles away and it's bad here. Tokyo, with 37 MILLION people, is less than 300km from Fukushima.
Take a look at the weather/Wind patterns of Japan and watch the satellite maps tracking the isotopes.... The entire island of Japan is getting hit with this as the winds sweep around like clock hands.
That's death dropping across that island. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about will agree.
Take steps to keep the dust off and start eating foods that draw heavy metals from the body and supply you with zinc, copper, magnesium, iron and iodine... to name a few. What your body has... it won't try to absorb from radioactive heavy metals that land on you or that you end up eating/breathing.
Stay Safe!
The inexcusable part of all this was the hydrogen explosion. Explosions. That's the cause of all the structural damage. The reactor buildings survived the earthquake and tsunami.
That's a known, expected problem. It was a big worry at Three Mile Island, but they managed to avoid it. It is preventable. There are catalytic recombiners, passive devices which recombine hydrogen and oxygen non-explosively. Many nuclear plants have them, but pre-TMI plants usually don't. If those had been retrofitted in the decades since TMI, this would have been a much smaller disaster. See this IAEA paper, "Mitigation of hydrogen hazards in water-cooled power reactors". They indicate that passive recombiners are necessary, and are in use in Germany, France, Canada, the United States, and Russia. They've been retrofitted to the GE Mark I reactor in other countries. But not, for some reason, in Japan.
The cooling pumps survived the earthquake and tsunami, and continued to run until the battery backups ran out. The hydrogen explosions probably damaged them and their plumbing and wiring. (Nobody can get through the wreckage and radioactivity yet to tell. A remote-controlled backhoe/grab and a dump truck are now being used to dig through the rubble.) If it hadn't been for the hydrogen explosions, restoration of power would have restored reactor and fuel pool cooling.
So that's where TEPCO screwed up. They failed to install a low-cost standard protective device that's been used elsewhere for decades.
You nuke apologist sound a nuclear physics professor I briefly knew that asserted nuclear power has taken no life. The fucking clown was the dept chair. My EE advisor, also a dept chair, advised that ethics was useless. I got the fuck out there fast.
You want everyone to push the "I believe" button and take it at that. Nuclear power has fantastic potential with no room for compromise. It is simply not ready for prime time. Stop pushing a work in progress as a full scale power delivery operation. Prove nuclear power is gold with a viable trash disposal system.
For the die hard adherents, go buy an island, link into the grid and laugh all the way to the bank. Don't forget your liability insurance.
we're talking about the end of nuclear power in japan, and perhaps elsewhere
Then we are talking about the end of japan as a competitive economic power, and perhaps the end of our civilization.
We will most definitely use nuclear power significantly within the next decade or two. This will come in either of the two forms,
You decide.
What do you think Iraq, Libya is? Sudan? The entire unrest in Middle East? These are all caused by shortage of resources.
And bulk of slashdot comments are minimizing dangers because the dangers are only significant next to the actual plant. The majority of the people are completely ignorant of what danger is. What do you think your danger from 2000 nuke explosions during the nuclear weapon "testing" era?? Yes, it is significantly more than from any power plant melting down.
Read 'Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT' by "Zbigniew Jaworowski". Full text is freely available. This is from the guy that is a major deciding factor in radiation safety in Poland. This may just open your eyes about low level radiation dangers and how much radiation we have naturally in the soil and air.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20585443
As to relative dangers of radiation, well, you live in New York, you get 5mSv/yr minimum. You love that granite countertop? That's another 10mSv/yr for you (depending how much you like it ;). You had that CT to check your heart? Well, welcome to another 25mSv. Have radiation therapy for cancer? Welcome to 20,000mSv to some vital organ(s). You live just outside the evacuation zone in Fukushima? You are getting a whopping 2-5mSv/yr if radiation does not decrease - that's still below world average "natural background" (radiation is impartial - natural or artificial, it is exactly the same)
So yes, it is hysteria and science illiteracy. The only people in danger are people at the reactor itself. Yet even there, the radiation from monitoring posts at plant boundary seems to be in 2uS/h range - that's 17mSv/year. The danger is not to get contaminated with alpha and beta emitters - ie. stay out from the heavily contaminated water.
Finally, I believe most of the radiation has leaked (into the air that is) from those spent fuel rods in building #4. The trace amount of plutonium found most likely originated there. When recirculation pumps are re-started, and site is slowly decontaminated, they may just be surprised how much radiation leaked from that spent fuel.
If we measured non-radioactive carcinogenic pollution to same standard as radiation, we would have no choice but to evacuate this unlivable planet right now. Food for thought.
I said NO PAID INDUSTRY SHILLS!
Find a REAL source, an IMPARTIAL source!
Nobody in the nuclear industry!
Please check this video... incredible some place are showing 110 mSv/h.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8 best video explaining the current situation near the nuclear power station.... they go as close to 1.5 km from the station !! Must see in 1080p
They will never "replace" old reactors, the economics and past actions prove this.
- There are no costs to an accident beyond some cement and some pumps and the loss of selling electricity, Price Anderson Act absolves operators from all costs.
- Hundreds of thousands of MW have been added of wind, gas, coal, hydro over the last 25 years since Chernobyl and very few reactors have been decommissioned
in the USA or elsewhere. Why would adding hugely expensive new reactors cause old cheap low cost if accident, high cost is properly shut down old unsafe plants
to shut down? New nukes does not magically shut down old nukes.
- We all see how captured regulatory agencies combine with greed to make a great banking system and effective "risk" calculations. New nukes are gonna be
the same as old nukes.
- "What about the Tsunami"? Well, when the Japanese built right over the old tsunami marking stones and were too greedy to let all that land sit during the land
boom of the 1980's that wrecked their economy so they built in the flood plain. Now their own greed has created a huge tragedy. New nukes will be the same,
huge amounts of cash and resources, captured regulators, ignoring past problems. New nukes will be as bad or worse.
Which when I first made this post early on, I was called a fear mongering western media whore.
Many pointed to the fact that Chernobyl was far worse, this is nothing like Chernobyl, when they themselves ignored the fact that one of the primary reactors used what most scientists call plutonium, I call it the element of "anti-life"". The reactor that contained this "anti-life" material was melting down and would prevent workers from doing anymore work. (Unless of course they wanted to bring back Kamikazi style thinking.)
Now, we just do not have a incident 7 upgrade of one reactor, we have 3 reactors of incident level 7 in various states of destruction.
Secondly, there are unconfirmed reports of one of the reactor buildings, that exploded and sent spent fuel rods hundreds of feet into the air and now litter a radius of up to 1/4 of a mile around the plant.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
But modern nuclear technology is untested against natural disasters like big earthquakes and tsunamis...
What about the nuclear waste? isn't that a big problem?
The pro-nuclear slashdot crowd says that modern reactors are safe and will withstand disasters like the one in Japan. But they are untested; they are not implemented yet anywhere.
I'll believe they are safe when there are in use and they have no problem after a big natural disaster.
In my opinion, this is a good discussion. I have looked at Huffington Post and several other sites.
They primarily say BE AFRAID or slap each other on the back for being antinuclear.
In my opinion, this is a public health and engineering event. It must be discussed in those terms. Other discussions I have seen on line are.. useless?
This is just one more reason we need a massive effort to develop Thorium reactors. It can't meltdown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
Score one big point for elite me!
The Japanese built right over the markers left from past tsunami warning people away from the flood plain. And the land bubble-bust of the 1980's that
sank the economy there only accelerated the building in the flood plain. Now there is a disaster from the greed and lack of regulation and noticing precedents of
hundreds of years. Tragedy? Yes. It is tragic when greedy developers and banker criminals kill 22,000 people. Time to swing a few from the remaining lamp posts.
But maybe that is why they don't want to mention the tsunami. Who owns the media in Japan?
this how godzilla started?
the one essential item "threat level raised to 7" (implying long term clean up) - is true. The rest ... doesn't entirely add up (reliable references please!)
I'm not entirely sure how they're supposed to connect.
http://www.iaea.org/ - my primary source. Please check here or another reliable reference
Authoritative reference : http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110412-4.pdf
After 1995
Just look at the map
Why is it that legal opinions tend to tag IANAL but every goofball sysadmin or help desker throws his 2 in on science with no disclaimer. How about some "IANAS but"?
Lawyers have already conquered, haven't they...
(obvious disclaimer- scientist.)
Yes and no. Risks are risks, whether they're man-made or natural, and it's all about how you prepare for or mitigate those risks. Currently, the only substantial form of mitigation we use in the US is insurance, but we *could* do quite a lot more, especially if we're willing to abandon wood for new construction. Concrete homes in Miami survived hurricane Andrew, for example, while neighboring structures built of wood were obliterated, and there are similar results for earthquakes and tornadoes. This isn't really anything new though; reinforced concrete was invented over 150 years ago. IMO, building codes should require new construction to meet the same standards that reinforced concrete provides, regardless of the building material, and as material science progresses, so too should minimum standards for construction.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
it doesn't matter that not so many people were killed, it matters that *huge swaths of land are being made uninhabitable for generations*.
Um, no. The damage done by the tsunami is far more significant. 20,000 dead, entire villages completely destroyed, economies wrecked.
This is what, the second time this has happened in all of history? Shall we count up how many coal miners have died over the years, the destruction of acid rain and huge areas made uninhabitable by mining? The effects of global warming if we keep on burning fossils...?
I'm not saying nuclear power is ideal but the alternatives aren't really much better.
No sig today...
When did 'elite' become a pejorative?
Some time around 1917 or so.
I'm guessing it isn't the best time to bring up whaling.
I've got to say that you're looking at the country with rose=colored glasses. I live here and can assure you that Japanese men - at least in Tokyo, are some of the most egotistical, racist, superior-acting, rigid, blindered, unworldly human beings I've ever met. They think the Japanese race is descended from on high and every other race is only slightly above chimpanzees on the evolutionary scale.
And their "orderly response" has been to hoard every last loaf of bread, sandwich, carton of milk, vegetable and piece of fruit in the supermarkets and cornerstores for a month, knowing full well they were stealing food from the very mouths of half a million homeless refugees - their own countrymen, women and children - 200 miles to the north.
If not for the intervention of the US, France and Britain, both TEPCO and the government would unquestionably have waited things out to protect their investments and reputations, risking a multiple meltdown and the near-certain, eternally uninhabitable status of Tokyo. Not to mention deaths reaching into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Japanophilism is all well and good, but your post is disingenuous and ignorant.
A 10 meter tall wall around the buildings in case of Fukushima Daiichi would have prevented almost all the damage that the power station withstand. The surge was 14.7 m but the highest level recorded inside buildings was of 5 m so with the proposed walls they will be prepared to withstand a tsunami of 20-22 m that has not been recorded in the area, but previous records show that the area was flooded by 10-12 m tsunami at least 3 times in the last 5 centuries. Unfortunately, I can't find the link of the article where I read about the records.
From TEPCO:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040910-e.html
Press Release (Apr 09,2011)
Results of the investigation regarding tsunami arrived in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station
At Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, on the ocean-side of the main building area, inundation with inundation height of approximately O.P. + 14 to 15 meters (inundation depth approximately 4 to 5 meters) occurred in most of the area. At Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station, inundation with inundation height of approximately O.P. + 6.5 to 7 meters occurred in the ocean-side areas, however, only surrounding areas of Unit 1 and 2 buildings and the south side of Unit 3 building was inundated within the main building area. Accordingly, we have confirmed that the impact of tsunami was relatively larger in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station than Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station.
O.P. Being the reference for sea level.
Best Regards
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
It's not actually apparent that the damage from the tsunami *is* far more significant. If you think of significant in terms of lives lost or economic cost to rebuild, then sure. But 10 years from now, Japan's population will be materially the same size as it was projected to be pre-disaster and re-building costs are unlikely to have made a material difference to the economy (to the extent they do, it's as likely to be a stimulus effect as anything; economies are weird like that). By contrast, the evacuated cities are quite likely to still be uninhabited. That may be true 40 years from now too. Or even 100. So that's arguably a much more profound effect.
It occurs to me, given the huge expense incurred in an accident, that nuclear plants should be installed deep underground. The ground would serve as a radiation shield, sealing the plant in a severe accident would be relatively easy compared to surface installations, and they would be far less vulnerable to natural disasters.
Yet again, it is not about nuclear power as such, but HOW we do it. Yet again, profit is ahead of everything. Yet again our bloody Ponzi scheme we call “world economy” is rearing its ugly head. I am literary physically sick from all this.
I am a fan of Japan. I really like this country and its people. But I am not a blind fan-boy. Before Fukushima I held two things against the Japanese - the invention and promotion of industrial fishing and their extreme xenophobic views. Now I have a third issue – the amazing cover-up, sweep under the carpet attitude of TEPCO and the government of Japan.
Somewhere in this thread /. –ter pointed a very informative text on the Chernobyl disaster (on the “green facts” website). Since so many years have passed, scientists are finally generating huge amounts of research and the picture of the disaster and its consequences is rather clear now. I was astounded by the quick response of the authorities to help local people (even though they withheld the truth from the rest of the world for a while). Emergency treatment in the first 30 hours after the blast lowered the contamination levels of the citizens 6 times! Remember this is western site and western report, moreover on “green” web page. These people can hardly be blamed for pro-communist propaganda! Facts like the one stating that for many years up to 20% of the national budget of Ukraine and Belarus was spent on helping the victims totally blew my mind. In total 7 million people were taken care of, compensations and special pensions are paid to this day. Even today a sizeable portion of the national budgets of Ukraine and Belarus (less in Russia since they are much bigger country) go to these people. 4-5 thousand cases of thyroid cancer in children! Other types of cancer did not show statistical correlation but even the above is enough to chill your spine.
Anyway, after reading this I send a small letter to my best friends, who happen to be Japanese family living in Europe. Here is the response I got (all names removed of course).
Quote:
Concerning Fukushima, oh baby make no mistake about it; we are extremely worried too. There are mainly two concerns for us.
1) .’s parents live near Fukushima, approximately 130 km. These people are honest hard-working working-class people who have had no more than high school education. They are unfortunately in no way able to seek out, assimilate and analyze information -let alone distinguishing between convincingly sounding misinformation and pure scientific facts-. They do not feel any need to move out of the area permanently and . and I have given up on that. In stead, we call them every day to keep really stupid ideas out of their heads. Like, "My, what a lovely weather it is this morning. Let's hang all our bed sheets and towels in this fresh air outside!"
2) and I have decided to absolutely not visit Japan the coming period. In the long run we might have to explain to .’s parents why we do not want to visit their house. We expect they won't comprehend our motivation.
The almost total absence of information in the media is very easily explained. TEPCO is the largest shareholder of all; yes ALL, television stations, radio broadcasters, newspapers and Internet providers.
Luckily, some of the Fukushima plant designers, engineers and technicians have thrown away their career (and presumably a whole lot more) and giving interviews to underground environmental organizations. Organizations, which have been labeled as communist or extreme right wing, by the Japanese propaganda machine. These rebel alliances run their own illegal television broadcasts on Internet. The Japanese government, needless to say, is hunting down these illegal Internet streams but of course new sites keep popping up every time they succeed.
Since the quake, . and I have faithfully been watching these daily status updates, presentations and interviews. They
I have to wonder if the administrators who made the decision to arbitrarily extend the service life or reactor one, and other similar decisions will be facing substantial public shame over this. You would think that given Japan's previous experience with radiological disaster, Japanese people in such positions would be inclined to make the conservative decisions, but I guess the "almighty yen" is powerful there as well. What sort of punishment should these people face?
From all the accounts that I read, the powerplant pretty much survived the quake. It was the tsunami that knocked out the cooling systems. So, why has no one asked the most obvious question: Why are they building these plants facing the open ocean in an area well-known for its tsunamis? Is there some reason why they couldn't instead build them on the other side of a comparatively narrow island? Or could a tsunami form in the Sea of Japan?
Turning the discussion to just nuclear power for a moment this event is another serious indicator that the business mind is not well suited to the use of nuclear power. Having spent many years as a nuclear reactor operator I was always a bit frightened by the ability of business (mostly materials providers but also power companies) to put their business interests above the safety of the public. They always talk a good game, but when push comes to shove they cover their business arses first and let someone else fend for the public. Sometimes it's the delivery of substandard components (lesser grade steels) to pocket higher profits, or falsify reports to get paid for work not performed (in weld radiographing for instance) and sometimes, as in this case, it is putting the desires of the company to protect its investment ahead of public safety both in reporting and response. I felt from the beginning that TEPCO was protecting their business interests and that the initial response to this disaster should have been to seal the site to protect the public. Nuclear power could be a major contributor to the world's energy future but I fear that implemented as a business, given the propensity for greed, cover up, and corruption it is, unfortunately, just too dangerous.