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Fukushima Ocean Radiation Won't Quit
mdsolar writes with an update on how the oceans around Fukishima are doing. From the article: " The Fukushima disaster caused by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen. A new model presented by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts estimates that 16.2 petabecquerels (1015 becquerels) of radioactive caesium leaked from the plant — roughly the same amount that went into the atmosphere. Most of that radioactivity dispersed across the Pacific Ocean, where it became diluted to extremely low levels. But in the region of the ocean near the plant, levels of caesium-137 have remained fixed at around 1,000 becquerels, a relatively high level compared to the natural background. Similarly, levels of radioactive caesium in bottom-dwelling fish remain pretty much unchanged more than 18 months after the accident."
The article suggests run-off from contaminated land and possibly a leak in the plant itself are to blame for the levels not dropping as expected.
Stopped reading right there. It's the Slashdot equivalent of "An article on Fox news..."
Godzilla now?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
A petabequerel is 10^15 bequerels. Someone didn't check when they copy-pasted the paragraph out of the article. Metric doesn't solve negligence.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
It is expected to take the better part of this decade to even get at where the leaks are coming from, let alone stop them. The problem isn't going away any time soon.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The petabecquerel is an imaginary thing like orgone energy, homeopathy, human reason and Canada.
Obligatory: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120326002953/simpsons/images/8/87/Blinky_Art.png
Canada, tooi? I thought only Belgium was imaginary.
I have a hard time believing the first sentence given all the nuclear weapon testing we've done in the Pacific.
Per kg, per cubic meter, per cubic foot?
If the writer of an article is incapable of determining how to write meaningful data, the article isn't worth anything at all. (S)He's just a parrot of whoever wrote the original and has no understanding of what this is about.
Fukushima was more or less EOL right??? (and the designers drank to much saki when setting the tolerances)
Problem is Fukushima is not untypical of nuclear plants in Japan. It was thought to be fine when designed, based on the available knowledge and understanding at the time. It turns out that the earthquake did a fair bit of critical damage even before the tsunami arrived, and you just can't build a plant capable of surviving beyond a certain amount of lateral force/acceleration.
And yeah, the Navy didn't have any major accidents, just a few minor ones. The US military as a whole though is a catalogue of fuck-ups. No civilian nuclear programme in the entire world is free of serious accidents.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It was thought to be fine exactly until 1972, when the first studies revealed that the BWR Mark I was insufficient in case of a meltdown. That was before reactor #2 was even finished. It was definitely included in the 1975 WASH-1400 report. This report also said that floods and tsunamis are a major danger to a nuclear power plant and must be protected against.
The Japanese did nothing about either of those points, they didn't train their staff to handle emergency situations in a station blackout. They didn't do anything remotely compatible with European or American standards to ensure availablitity of emergency power. They didn't equip their containments with filtered vents, which have been implemented in Europe since 1988. They didn't equip the containment buildings with hydrogen recombiners - those were only required by law in 2012 in Japan. In Germany (and probably other countries as well) those are required since 1993.
Tokai and Onagawa were perpared for and hit by the tsunami without major damage. The problem was known, countermeasures were known, non were required by law.
How do you say "It's your own damn fault!" in Japanese?
1000 bq isn't that much. It might be much compared to the background radiation but to put it in context, recommended values in Sweden after Chernobyl is to not eat meat that radiates more than 1500 bq/kg. This radiation comes from Cesium-137 that mostly rained down over us. And 10 years after we could still kill game (mostly moose) with in excess of 4000 bq/kg. Many residential houses stand on granite that contains radon, and the limits for radiation from radon was 1000 bq/m^2,until 2009 when the EU lowered the limit to 200 bq/m^2. So.. We in Sweden lived with this kind of radiation for quite some time and we don't really consider this a problem. The halflife of Cesium-137 is about 30 years so the radiation is dropping steadily but slowly.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
It's no surpise that the sea is radiactive. Since the accedient there have been a series of leaks from the jury-rigged water purification setup:
December 2011
45 tons of water heavily contaminated with radioactive strontium escaped, of which 150 liters of water found its way into the ocean through a ditch connected with the beach
26 March 2012
80 litres radioactive water seeped into the ocean
5 April 2012
12.000 liters water with high levels of radioactive strontium escaped through a nearby sewer-system into the ocean
On top of that the contaminated water lying in the basements is leaking into the ground water and out to the ocean. TEPCO are building a wall to contain that, but it won't be finished until 2014.
For the Navy, money and personell in not a factor. Maybe that has changed or slowly changing now but the engineering was already done and the operating procedures and safety measures are already in place. I used to be in the Navy as a reactor operator back in the mid 90's on an older sub. There was not much automation and technology in use back then. The only thing that had a microporessor was the reactor protection and alarm system and it was an 8088. All controls, sensors, and gauges were mechanical and/or discrete electronic and electric. All procedures, actions, limits, and methods of operation were in print form in the reactor plant manuals and scaled down copies of those were embedded in your brain through training. It is my understanding that the nuclear training pipeline has got "easier" for folks going through now. Much less demanding and a much higher percentage of people that start actually make it to the end. The Navy now relies less on the operators and more on the supervisors and technology than they did before. Maybe that is good in that it minimizes the human error part of it or maybe that is bad as the human error factor gets shouldered or concentrated onto less people instead of spread across everyone as a collaborative effort. Having an exceptional DEEP understanding of everything coupled with technology and strong supervision would be the most ideal but I guess there aren't enough people that can make it to meet that demand.
The latter can be prevented, but costs for plants that burn stuff are pretty steep. My father works for a burner-based power plant manufacturer (I've seen them make stuff ranging from burning coal to burning trash to burning the weird ass crap which is about 30% oil and 70% crushed rock), and one of the things he did was handle certification and maintenance of the new plants across EU that had to comply to rigorous norms.
For example, the main cause of acid rains of the past, SO2 and NOx emissions are currently ZERO on some modern burner plants. Reason for this is extreme degree of burning process control (i.e. they can create burning conditions where certain gasses do not form, instead burning process forms far less harmful gasses such as CO2). Particles nowadays can be handled by filters which also have near-100% efficiency for particles they're responsible for. Basically they get particles out of the exhaust air and store it in a solid form which is then taken away to the appropriate dump.
This stuff is really expensive though, so only new plants get the appropriate upgrades due to rigorous standards applied to them. Older plants still crap on the environment, same thing as old nuclear plants being far more risky when major disaster occurs then new ones.
And yet nuclear still manages to be very much environmentally preferable to coal, even after taking such accidents into account!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The USSR has dumped over 39PBq in to oceans intentionally .
The UK has dumped over 35PBq in to the oceans intentionally.
A total dumping over all countries of 85PBq is known (ignoring of course military dumping, etc)
So I assume by 'largest' they simply mean as a single event, certainly a lot more than that has been dumped, and there are single sights with more than that also..
While we are at it..
Weapons testing released 2,566,087 PBq also, just for reference (a lot of it not that far from Vegas..)
Chernobyl released 12,060 PBq
Also for reference, 1kg of coffee, and 1kg of granite also has around 1000 becquerels, the remaining number we are supposed to consider 'relatively high'
So here is hoping no one has granite kitchen tops, or drinks coffee regularly..
Yawn.