Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
And people on slashdot.org read that Japan has already released 10% as much radioactive material as Chernobyl, and somehow it's all a liberal scare. BP has the worst oil spill in US history, yet somehow this is a non-issue for the environment. And somehow, this is all related to tax breaks for the rich, and building up our military. Group think in full swing.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
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.
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...
It takes some time for the people affected by radiation to die unless exposed to insane amounts like the people who sacrificed their lives to contain the Tjernobyl disaster.
HTTP/1.1 400
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
Except one blew lots of plutonium and other fun stuff into the atmosphere, while the other has released mostly radioactive iodine and cesium.
- These characters were randomly selected.
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.
I think the difference is the visibility of the problem.If the nuclear waste being released into the air was green and therefore toxic looking then it would appear to be a lot worse.
Except ignorant scaremongering frequently prevails over truth and reason. Not all radioactive releases are equal. The source of the radiation is as important as where its released and how it was released.
The reality is, the current rating is based on radiation at the source NOT its comparability in scope to Chernobyl. That's not to say they will never or can never be comparable, only that comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-nuclear propaganda.
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!
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.
Good question! Radioactive materials (containing radioisotopes) emit radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) and it is this radiation that is directly harmful. Each radioactive atom is a teeny tiny time-bomb that goes off at a random time. Some radioisotopes go off faster than others. The time it takes for half the atoms of a particular isotope to go off is the half-life of that isotope. Health-wise, two of the most important radioisotopes created in nuclear power plants are Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 (Caesium-137) with half-lives of 8-days and 30-years respectively. They are important because they accumulate in the body in specific sites where the radiation they emit is concentrated in a small volume.
Nuclear fuel rods normally emit radiation but very little radioactivity. The radiation can be shielded and is also diminished by the r-squared law (for example the Sun emits a massive amount of radiation but it doesn't hurt us because it is so far away and is also because it is partly shielded by the atmosphere).
So while it is radiation that does the direct damage, the major problem in a nuclear power plant accident is the emission of radioactivity. It is all those little time-bombs waiting to go off, particularly the time-bombs that are absorbed by the body and have a half-life equal to or less than the human lifespan such as Iodine-131 and Cesium-137.
The problem at Chernobyl was the emission of radioactive materials in the smoke and gas after the explosion. At Fukushima the problem is the emission of radioactive materials in the released steam and water. At Chernobyl almost all of the radioactivity went up into the air. At Fukushima, most of it is going down into the ground and ocean.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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.
Yet this exact same technique does such a great job keeping American air travel safe.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What would you have done against this one?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
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.
Speaking of brittleness, nice demonstration of embrittlement of fuel rods by a nuclear engineer: http://www.fairewinds.com/updates
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
Except ignorant scaremongering frequently prevails over truth and reason. Not all kicks to the groin are equal. The source of the pain is as important as where its located and the force behind the kick. Some just really hurt others pop a testicle. Comparing a general kick to the groin to a popped testicle at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-groin kicking propaganda.
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.
Didnt you see #3 blow up? It went up to the height of WTC for gods sake at 3 x the speed.
Do some maths on the energy there dude.
Where do you think all those MOX fuel cells went? On to the beach or are still in perfect condition.
Yeah keep saying its safe, while you sell you stocks....
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
Why is it you say, "do some maths" and then you completely don't do the "maths".
Yet another reason why people are tired of the anti-nuclear propaganda idiocy and lies.
> 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.
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?
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.
The reality is, the current rating is based on radiation at the source NOT its comparability in scope to Chernobyl.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency disagrees with you. Their spokesman, Hidehiko Nishiyama, repeatedly compares Fukushima with Chernobyl:
"It's considerably different from Chernobyl," said Nishiyama. "The mount of radioactive materials released at Fukushima is about a tenth of that in the Chernobyl accident."
In the same article, (titled Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level) a TEPCO spokesman said:
Level 7 indicates a massive amount of radioactive leakage. We deeply apologize to residents around the plant and Fukushima Prefecture and people in the society for causing concerns and troubles,"
Your faith-based belief in the safety of nuclear power regardless of the actual facts is sad.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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.
By the time it reaches US, I believe it's become like a million or billion times more diluted, no? Dilution does matter.
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
These properties make nuclear power the most unreliable form of generation.
It is still far more reliable than solar generation, which fails every night, for many hours. Or wind power, which is completely unpredictable even with many farms over a large area.
This "uninhabitability" and "poisoning" is only in your mind. Chernobyl wildlife does not seem to care about it.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And when did Chernobyl become the bar for "holy shit! it's bad"? I guess until it's *exactly* equal to Chernobyl in *all* respects, it's "still good - nothing to see here, move along"!?!
When a boat sinks with 20 people, it's still a capsized boat. No Titanic - but still a tragedy. When an outbreak of some virus kills 20 people, it's no black plague - but it's still an outbreak. When millions of gallons of oil leaks out into the ocean, it may not be ixtoc, it's still a *big* problem. It's not a competition - it doesn't have to top the last worst shit of it's kind to qualify for a "holy shit" moniker.
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.
Renewables are the most reliable because they don't run out. http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/02/18/0056241/Stanford-UCD-Researchers-Say-100-Renewable-Energy-Possible-By-2050 The wildlife dies of Chernobyl fallout so their capacity to care about that is a merely philosophical question.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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's quite funny is that your post made me cringe more then all the scaremongering in the article.
Hmm, you may want to check what is the average "normal background dose" for the US. Hint, the place where I grew up naturally has 67.5 times your maximum limit... the US would stand on average at 160 times that same limit. Also 0.090 != ~1...
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.
When a boat sinks with 20 people, it's still a capsized boat.
No. A boat that sinks with 20 people may have capsized, but it may not. Capsizing is the process of rolling over and taking on water until the vessel is disabled. Doesn't have to sink, though it might. I can capsize my bass boat right this instant and it won't sink as its full of alternate floation materials to ensure that a roll over or leak the bilge pumps can't keep up with will not sink it and leave me stranded. Also, if a boat just starts leaking and sinks, it doesn't have to capsize. As far as we know, the Titanic didn't capsize, it went down bow deep, then broke apart, never rolled over before it was well on its way to the bottom. Its rather common for a boat to capsize, roll over to belly up, then float very low in the water for considerable time before all the air is released or absorbed by the water before it sinks. There have been plenty of cargo vessels that have capsized due to improper loading, dumped there cargo in the process and happily floated until someone came along to salvage it and get it righted, never leaving the surface and providing a floating island for the crew until someone came to rescue them.
And your post proves the exact point you're trying to refute. Your ignorance about the words your using twists it around to make it sound different than reality. You're just being an irrational ignorant mouth piece. You're twisting facts by your lack of knowledge into something more than it really is, both in your example about a boat and in your thoughts about the plant accident.
Yes, its still a problem, no its NOT A FUCKING THING LIKE CHERNOBYL which exploded exposing the core nuclear material to the environment and blasting tons of burning irradiated graphite and other products of the reaction into the atmosphere to be carried by the wind across the continent. This is still a localized event, and even if they dump all there current waste water into the ocean right now, it'll dissipate to levels that no monitoring agency or government even considers 'on the graph' with in about 2 weeks ... if they just dump it in the ocean right there. Even faster if they bothered to spread it out while dumping it at sea.
I wouldn't want to setup bunk beds and hang out at the plant for the next few years, but other than that ... this is not a fucking thing like Chernobyl. Everyone is being EXTREMELY careful to keep people away from it. The Japanese government is in essence overreacting, to be safe rather than wrong. They are doing exactly what they should do, pull everyone the hell out of the area, take some time, get a REAL damage assessment and THEN make a decision after things are calmed down and under control. Unfortunately, for them to do the right thing means people who like to live in constant fear like yourself think the sky is falling and the media sensationalize the hell out of it to get more viewers and make more advertising money.
It doesn't have to be the worst to qualify for 'holy shit' but it also has to be something worthy of saying 'holy shit', this isn't. Its sad. Its bad. It really sucks for the people its displacing, but so far, thats where it ends. Come back in a year and we'll talk about how well it qualifies for 'holy shit', right now its just 'shit'. In the meantime go watch Glenn Beck or some other sensationalist nutjob.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Use English much?
Comparable: adjective 1. Able to be compared or worthy of comparison.
If you listen to the press conference given by Japan's Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) you will hear them repeatedly comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl. The title of the FA from the Japan Times was: Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Comparable does not mean identical. If the release from Fukushima was 0.001% of the release from Chernobyl, I would say they were not comparable. I think 1% might be borderline but 10% certainly makes them comparable. The fact of the matter is that NISA spent a significant portion of their press conferencing comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl.
To put this in perspective, in previous reports of highly radioactive water pouring directly into the ocean and highly radioactive water in turbine buildings and tunnels, the total amount of radioactivity was six orders of magnitude lower than the amounts discussed now. These were the highest Fukushima releases I had heard about before yesterday. Before yesterday I was saying Fukushima was not comparable to Chernobyl. Now it obviously is.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
The wildlife dies of Chernobyl fallout so their capacity to care about that is a merely philosophical question.
Ahhh, popular ignorance at its best. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is FULL of wildlife prospering without human contact. If anything, Chernobyl HELPED the wildlife in the area because it got rid of the humans who were fucking it up for them. Sucks for all the people that lived there and are no longer allowed to, but I bet if you could ask any of the animals they'd say thanks for getting the fuck out.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=wildlife+around+chernobyl
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
And when did Chernobyl become the bar for "holy shit! it's bad"?
My guess would be the instant it became the worst nuclear accident in history was when it became the bar. We can infer what will happen for anything less than that bar, but anything above it, so far, we have no real world experience help judge what all the possible effects might be and to what extent.
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
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html
Achille Talon
Hop!
somehow... I've seen a lot of downplaying of legitimate concerns on many threads at Slashdot, not just "this could never be a Chernobyl you idiot...". No, you idiot, maybe it's worse than Chernobyl.
Perhaps this is part of the reason?
Could be it's not group think as much as group manipulation.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
A month ago, I told you so.
Commenters treated me like a troll, or chicken-little.
Oh well. Goodbye, sushi...
Or welcome the self-cooking variety.
I'd watch out for where the wasabi is cultivated.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
A month ago, I told you so.
Commenters treated me like a troll, or chicken-little.
That's because you are a troll, and a chicken-little. Even if you had turned out to be 100% correct, you would STILL have been a troll and a chicken-little. There are millions of scaremongering morons commenting on the internet every day - it's inevitable that one of them will eventually be right about something. That doesn't mean they're rational, or intelligent, or well educated; it means one of them got lucky.
Of course, the fact that you're actually still wrong is just the icing on the cake.
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.
I like you better, when you post under your OTHER other account.
But you know, there are agencies that now pay people 'turf the way you do, for big industry and finance.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My only mistake was quoting the wrong part of the post I was responding to. I should have quoted this phrase:
... comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-nuclear propaganda.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) spent a significant portion of their press conference yesterday comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl. ISTM both you and poster I was responding to are accusing the NISA of indulging in pure idiocy and scaremongering.
The fact that a lot of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima is coming out in highly radioactive water instead of smoke and dust like in Chernobyl, might mitigate the damage it causes. OTOH, it might not. Perhaps it will delay for a few years the time it takes for the radioactivity to enter the biosphere. ISTM you are making some pretty far-fetched assumptions and then presenting them as facts that should be obvious to us all. The truth is that, at this point, we just don't know what the health effects from Fukushima will be. One thing that is clear, at least to me, is that it is unhelpful to brand people as idiot scaremongers for merely repeating what the NISA said in their press conference.
Clearly, the harm caused by Chernobyl in both blood and treasure is much greater than the harm caused by Fukushima so far. But the release at Fukushima is ongoing and, unlike Chernobyl, effects of what has already been released may take months or years to reach their peak. For example, after the Chernobyl disaster the peak of radioactivity in fish high on the food chain occurred six months after the peak of radioactivity in the ocean.
If highly radioactive water is leaking into the ground it could take years before it gets into the water table. That will mitigate the harm from short-lived isotopes but won't substantially reduce the potency of Cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
mod parent up
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
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
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.
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
Nope, all were shutdown when the quake hit.
Interestingly enough - if they had kept running, we might not have had all these problems caused by loss of offsite power to manage decay heat.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Thank you for elevating the level of discussion.
The point is that before yesterday's press conference, whenever the NISA mentioned Chernobyl, they said that Fukushima was not comparable to it. The (scant) numbers they provided on the total amount of leaked radioactivity were many orders of magnitude lower than the Chernobyl release. Now they have revised their estimate upward by many orders of magnitude to 10% of the Chernobyl release which is why they spent most of the press conference comparing and contrasting Fukushima with Chernobyl.
The headline of the Japan Times Online was:
Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Are they stupid anti-nuclear scare-mongering idiots too? Whether you like it or not, whether it suits your agenda or not, the big news in Japan right now is that for the first time since the accident the NISA is comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl even though the damage caused by the Fukushima accident is, so far, much less.
Calling me a stupid pedant for using words as they are defined is rather ridiculous. If your definition of the word differs from what is in the dictionary, that's fine. Just say so and we can be done with it. It doesn't necessarily mean you are stupid. Likewise, I'm not stupid just because the definition I use happens to agree with definition in the dictionary.
I've spent over a week reporting the news about Fukushima I have gotten from the Japanese media before it trickles into the Western press, often delayed and garbled. For my efforts I've been called a stupid know-nothing idiot by people who have preconceptions that don't match the news I'm reporting.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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
"It is still far more reliable than solar generation, which fails every night, for many hours."
I don't think reliable means what you think it means.
What you're saying is true, but I don't think it makes the situation around Chernobyl any better. For once, we have actual wildlife reserves and natural parks where we leave nature (mostly) alone. They have the benefit that we can enjoy the scenery.
I also assume that not all animals reacted favorably to the radiation around Chernobyl. After all, humans can't be the only species that dies of radiation sickness.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
I like you better, when you post under your OTHER other account.
But you know, there are agencies that now pay people 'turf the way you do, for big industry and finance.
I think you may be interested in this offer.
The harm caused by Chernobyl is indescribably greater because it was an entirely different accident. A leak and a radioactive explosion + fallout are two very different things. Have you considered why it's mostly in water at Fukushima? It's because a containment vessel was damaged, and that's why radiation is leaking and why water that comes into contact with it contains radioactive isotopes. Fuel rods are not fully exposed. They're not on fire. They haven't exploded, and they won't either. You can't reasonably compare the two incidents because they aren't anything alike in characteristics, means of radiation exposure, amount of radiation exposure, types of radioactive material released and how much (totals of all kinds), location of radioactive material, and method and amount of spreading of radioactive material. Hell, they aren't even anywhere close in terms to length of high exposure.
Please point out where I made any assumptions and prove why they are assumptions. The only thing I'm reading here is wild speculation.
Your faith-based belief in the safety of nuclear power regardless of the actual facts is sad.
Quite a blanket statement there. Nuclear power is very safe, especially with newer designs. A few major incidents since the birth of the technology does not deem the whole concept unsafe. Just like how a few terrorist bombings at airports do not deem airports unsafe. That's just ridiculous.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Thank you for elevating the level of discussion.
I know you're being sarcastic, but I think any impartial observer would agree that it in fact was an elevation of the discussion.
Are they stupid anti-nuclear scare-mongering idiots too?
Apparently so, yes. Imagine that - a newspaper publishing misleading, scaremongering articles. Unthinkable!
Calling me a stupid pedant for using words as they are defined is rather ridiculous.
No, it's not. If someone said "I'm Gay!" and you said "Really? What are you so happy about?" you'd still be a fucking pedant. Maybe you need to look up the meaning of that word.
Likewise, I'm not stupid just because the definition I use happens to agree with definition in the dictionary.
That's true. I think you're a silly little man who's scared shitless of anything nuclear, and determined to see a disaster where there isn't one. But "stupid"? No, probably not.
Just look at the map
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
My homeopath says it's true ...
As for NISA, I clearly stated they acknowledge it's serious, and I acknowledge it's serious, but they are comparing to Chernobyl because everyone else is, and because it's one of the only nuclear disasters in history that reached a certain scale.
My point was that the poster I responded to said "... comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-nuclear propaganda." after the NISA was making that very comparison. I'm glad you now agree with me.
The Japanese media coverage of the quake, tsunami, and nuclear problem has been far, far less sensational than the coverage in the West. The media in Japan were not comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl before the NISA started doing it in their press conference yesterday. NISA were the ones that got the comparison ball rolling.
We agree that the harm done by Chernobyl is much greater than the harm done by Fukushima, so far. Your claim that the fuel rods will never explode at Fukushima was contradicted by a half-hour special on Fukushima aired by NHK World a couple of days ago. Their nuclear expert said that radioactivity will continue to leak out of the reactors because they have to continue to inject water into them in order to prevent an explosion that will burst open a containment vessel. This is an example of one of your assumptions.
Your other assumptions are confounded with your conclusions. As I said before, the truth is that we do not yet know the full extent of the damage that will be caused by Fukushima. TEPCO says the situation is not under control and it will take them a month (at least) to get it under control. You are assuming that after it is all said and done, the total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be dwarfed by Chernobyl and you use this assumption to conclude that the total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be dwarfed by Chernobyl. I am not the one speculating. I've been saying we simply don't yet know the full extent of the damage yet.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
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...
Seeing how every imaginable disaster has hit Japan recently, Godzilla is the only one missing. It will be arriving right after they finally contain the reactor, but before the invasion of Transformers. Any minute now...
Complete bunk: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/50985/wildlife-still-declining-in-chernobyl-exclusion-zone
When did 'elite' become a pejorative?
Some time around 1917 or so.
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
Yeah, I'm sure Slashdot is completely immune to those tactics. And I suppose you think /. is too insignificant a community to manipulate? It's not like the government operates sock puppet software allowing a single user to operate multiple user ids for just this purpose. I'm sure they just keep that software on the shelf, not really actually using it on live sites.
I'd rather wear a tin foil hat than protect my head by plunging it in the dirt.
Anyway, I've long since moved on to the more effective MuMetal hat!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
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?
Easy mistake to make. After all, they do look pretty much the same.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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?
But apparently this one is a level 7, which according to TFA is the maximum.
I just hope somebody isn't twiddling dials to get it up to 8. Because that's one worse.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Hey, here's this foreign-language only piece of software that sorta does what I said ... so all these Farsi-speaking guys on slashdot are Teh EEEEVIL GUBERMINT!"
You're an idiot. Plain and simple. The fact that the government has sorta finally caught up to the idiotic claims that people like you have been making for the last decade is kinda irrelevant. Even if there was no evidence of any such program existing, you'd still go around accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being a shill, a sock-puppet, or what have ya. You're unable to have a legitimate rational discussion, so you attack peoples motives instead. That strategy predates the internet, it predates print media, hell it probably predates modern language. So I'll just call you a dick, and move on.
I might actually be an idiot, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
I just demonstrated that sock puppet software is available and in use. How far a stretch do you really think it is to assume there's an English language version, in spite of the official pronouncement? Are you telling me there's no covert propaganda activities within the U.S.?
As far as the ad hominem attack, well, that only speaks to your lack of an actual argument. In fact, it's a common tactic used when one hasn't a proper argument to be made. I suggested that forums such as at Slashdot could be being manipulated, and demonstrated how that is done. You could not show otherwise. Thus, I win. Good day sir.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
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.
I might actually be an idiot, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
You're not even wrong.
My assumption that the reactors won't explode is a very sure one, given the current situation, control, design of the cores, etc. It's about the same "assumption" now as me assuming my car won't explode when I drive somewhere this weekend.
The reason the Chernobyl fuel rods exploded is because they used graphite as the neutron moderator. When exposed to oxygen, it becomes highly flammable. The Fukushima rods aren't like this. If there's an explosion, it's going to be due to hydrogen+oxygen buildup in containment vessels which they are mitigating by pumping nitrogen into the containment vessels, and it wouldn't be the fuel rods themselves exploding. So no, it's not an assumption (remember I said the fuel rods wouldn't explode, not that there wouldn't be an explosion). Trying to nitpick won't make the argument go your way. The probability of such an incident mixed with how much under control they have the cooling situation in now makes this a VERY safe "assumption" to make. While we don't know the full extent of total damages yet (since that's impossible), it's also for these reasons Fukushima will NOT, I repeat, will NOT reach anywhere near the same scope as Chernobyl. Quit overly-dramatizing it.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Sock puppet software in use against U.S. blogs, news broadcast circa 2005. In other words, this is old news.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.