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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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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
Plutonium does not exist naturally on earth, it's extremely toxic, and it lasts for millions of years.
From wikipedia: "Plutonium is the heaviest primordial element (see also primordial nuclide), by virtue of its most stable isotope, plutonium-244, whose half-life of about 80 million years is just long enough for the element to be found in trace quantities in nature." It exists in nature because it lasts for millions of years.
The Guardian posted an excellent rebutal to this point of view by Helen Caldicott: How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation . The article you linked dismissed this article disparagingly with a three word ad hominem attack: "mad Auntie Fear" without addressing, let alone countering, any of her arguments. Instead, the Register article repeats the very mistakes Caldicott had identified.
Helen Caldicott is a medical doctor. She taught pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School for two years before turning her focus to researching and reporting the health hazards of nuclear power.
OTOH, Lewis Page (assuming it is the same Lewis Page):
... served as an officer in the Royal Navy from 1993 to 2004, and is now an author and authority on military matters.
You can also get an idea of his expertise by looking at his other articles at the Register.
It is amazing that you think the article by Lewis Page is authoritative since he has absolutely no expertise on the subject; he totally ignores criticism from a person who is an authority; and he dismisses the authority with a rude ad hominem attack. OTOH, his level of discourse would fit right in with the irrational, faith-based pro-nuclear advocacy here on Slashdot.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
For the 8,672nd time, nuclear disasters are disasters in slow motion. Big wave comes up, slams into shore, retreats. A couple followup waves and it's done. Radiation exposure, however, keeps tick, tick, ticking. You can run from a disaster in slow motion. So few people tend to die in nuclear disasters. But what you can't do is pretend that they didn't happen, to ignore them. If you don't leave, *then* you get sick and die. You have to abandon the cities, you have to stop the farming nearby, the ranching, the fishing, etc. You have to put tremendous efforts into containment, or all of that gets even worse. Hence, nuclear disasters tend to be not about deaths, but about hardship, fear, and huge economic losses.
Oh, and FYI, wind turbines are extremely earthquake-resistant. The towers are way overbuilt in order to withstand the wind loading, and their shapes tend to be excellent for damping.
..my sister, who got the Donnie Darko numbers tattooed on her arm so she looks like shes making fun of Holocaust victims