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Japan Doubles Fukushima Radiation Leak Estimate

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-hey-only-in-base-10 dept.

DrBoumBoum writes "The severity of the Fukishima disaster continues to go up, from incident level 4 to level 5 to level 7, and now to 20% of total Chernobyl radioactive spill. The story is not over yet as the plant keeps on leaking radioactive material and may still do so for a long time."

10 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Nuclear Hologram. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Fools. The lot of them. Trying to hide the real nature of this accident has undermined nuclear power technology greatly.

    1. Re:Nuclear Hologram. by Jawnn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Fools. The lot of them. Trying to hide the real nature of this accident has undermined nuclear power technology greatly.

      Yeah, 'cause nuclear power has always been such a good idea. Right? I mean the fucking inevitableirresponsible behavior from profit-driven plant operators has never been a significant problem. Right?

    2. Re:Nuclear Hologram. by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All forms of energy have possible downsides to them, and some of them can be catastrophic in nature, hardly seems fair to single out the nuclear energy

      Well few other energy sources make an area completely unlivable for decades or centuries when they fail.

      Oil/coal have operational pollution issues, but they don't have catastrophic failure issues. Yes the Gulf Oil spill was a sort of catastrophic event, but even oil is eaten by microbes. The downsides are limited to a decade or so...and life continues there even during this time. Not great but not nearly on the scale of a nuclear accident.

      If humans are involved in design, construction or operation, failures will happen. With nuclear, failure is not an option. 100,000+ people in Japan are permanently homeless. At least it's a foreshadowing for when the oceans rise and 10s of millions of people need to be relocated.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    3. Re:Nuclear Hologram. by DarkOx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually no, as a Libertarian I don't think you get neuclear power at all. These things only get built with subsides and loan grantees, that we don't support. The free market does not build these.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    4. Re:Nuclear Hologram. by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well few other energy sources make an area completely unlivable for decades or centuries when they fail.

      Sea level rise from global warming is expected to flood some densely populated areas. Increased temperatures will make some currently hospitable areas inhospitable, and turn land presently viable for agriculture worthless. These changes are likely to be irreversible for thousands of years at the very least, possibly indefinitely, and the problems occur globally, not just within the closest few kilometers of the power plants.

      There is very little doubt that the cost of adapting to the consequences of our greenhouse gas emissions will vastly exceed even the worst outcome of nuclear accidents. Yes, that includes Chernobyl. You can't declare the entire world an exclusion zone when it's the global climate you're messing up.

    5. Re:Nuclear Hologram. by AlienIntelligence · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As for TFA...well...what did anyone expect?

      The truth... immediately.

      If you look that evening as a press conference was being
      made, the prime minister is talking about the quake, about
      the tsunami... everything is fine.

      Then he starts about the nuke plant and is just blatantly
      lying his ass off. I posted about it here and on my Facebook.

      If anyone is good at microexpressions and visual accessing
      cues, watch the very first press conference.

      They knew... THAT DAY... that it was worse than they were
      disclosing.

      So, to answer what did anyone expect? MORE OF THE TRUTH!

      -AI

      --
      For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
  2. 20% of chernobyl's radiation. by ravenshrike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To anybody with even a remote understanding of nuclear physics that number means absolutely nothing. What matters, especially for long term effect, is the form of radiation. Which the article of course doesn't mention.

    1. Re:20% of chernobyl's radiation. by publiclurker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To anybody with even a remote understanding of human behavior, the words of the people in charge of Fukushima mean absolutely nothing.

  3. Re:"But but but" blah blah. by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I am most angry about is that all the promises of "cheap" go right out the window with the observed accident rate and costs. None of the numerous promises about reactor safety even remotely resemble the truth. To me the whole nuclear industry is a scheme to transfer huge amounts of money into certain pockets.

    That they cause a lot of deaths and a completely unsolved long-term waste storage problem, which will increase cost even further (but for future generation and who cares about them) is just the icing on the cake.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  4. Re:"But but but" blah blah. by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is people losing their homes, farms and businesses to a nuclear exclusion zone for the next 300 years not bad enough?