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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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Our threat levels are designated by colors! What color is seven?
Have gnu, will travel.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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