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Fukushima Decontamination Cost Estimated $50bn, With Questionable Effectiveness
AmiMoJo writes "Experts from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology studied the cost of decontamination for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, estimating it at $50 billion. They estimate that decontamination in no-entry zones will cost up to 20 billion dollars, and in other areas, 31 billion dollars. It includes the cost of removing, transporting and storing radioactive waste such as contaminated soil. The central government has so far allocated about 11 billion dollars and the project is already substantially behind schedule. Meanwhile the effectiveness of the decontamination is being questioned. NHK compared data from before and after decontamination at 43 districts in 21 municipalities across Fukushima Prefecture. In 33 of the districts, or 77 percent of the total, radiation levels were still higher than the government-set standard of one millisievert per year. In areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where decontamination has been carried out on an experimental basis, radiation levels remain 10 to 60 times higher than the official limit."
This is dumb, insensitive, and offensive. Nuclear accidents have nothing to do with people lobbing atomic bombs at you, especially atomic that are redundant and being lobbed for the sake of doing a live test. Maybe it's the US who have a bad record with responsible use of weaponry...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
When you talk about technologies that have brought suffering, lots of suffering was caused in Japan (and other places) by incendiary bombs made with napalm, which is petroleum derived. Should Japan not use petroleum products either?
Except that a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor are only the same in that they have the same Joe Sixpack/media stigma attached to both of them. Here, let me use an analogy.
Not building a nuclear reactor in Japan because of the previous use of the atomic bomb due to concerns of insensitivity is roughly the same as the United States of America not building the Saturn V because the use of rocket propelled grenades against troops in Vietnam. Completely different devices for completely different ends.
You should read a history book that wasn't written in the U.S. by a nuclear bomb apologist.
The negotiations for Japans surrender started before the bombs were dropped. It is stipulated that one of the reasons the bombs were used anyway was to demonstrate the power of them to scare Soviet.
Regardless of the reasons both the targets were selected because they had a large population around them surrounded by high ground for the extra oomph. There were stronger military targets that could have been chosen, the amount of civilian deaths were intentionally high.
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - Dwight Eisenhower
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." - Admiral William D. Leahy
"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." - Herbert Hoover
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs." - Brigadier General Carter Clarke
Don't get me wrong, I don't try to defend Japans atrocities during/before the war, I'm just saying that one atrocity doesn't justify another.
This is dumb, insensitive, and offensive.
You know it, you admit it, and yet you use the monospaced font anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
Where are all those guys that said there was no contamination now? How about the ones that wrote here that containment would never be breached - right up until the point where the roof blew off one of the buildings?
It's an interesting exercise to look back at the comments posted here during the week of the disaster.
Another thing the fanboys cannot tell is the difference between not liking a 1970s era nuclear power plant run badly and not liking nuclear power in general. Calling for safer reactors is not cheering blindly for the team so is an enemy in their eyes.
Japan is paying about that much per year for the additional LNG and coal they have to import in order to compensate for the missing nuclear energy
The cleaned areas have a radiation level of 1mS a year. To put that into perspective, people living in Denver get 11.8mS a year from natural sources. This area is NOT uninhabitable. Not that this makes TEPCO any less foolish...
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
A coup that failed and that wasn't predicted before the bombs were dropped. It was completely irrelevant to the justification for dropping the bombs.
As far as anyone could tell it was just as likely the overaggression of the bombs that caused the officers eagerness to not surrender.
That statement is just as silly as if you said 'OH, well bullets kill, and are made of metal, maybe no one should use metal there either?!'
Well, that's pretty much the statement that you made.
I happen to live in Tokyo. The amount of actual damage from Fukushima is pretty small. They currently have a radius of 20 km from the plant closed off. That's not very big. Let's not forget that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami killed over 30,000 people. No one has died as a result of the radiation from Fukushima to date and current estimates are that it's not going to be very many, even when you look at the lifetime increased risk from cancer.
The comparison to petroleum is reasonable. BP claims to have spent, so far, $11B cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon spill and may wind up spending $37B which is in the same ballpark as the Fukushima mess. Is it acceptable? No. There were a number of ways that the Fukushima disaster could have been avoided. However, in the scale of industrial accidents, it's not that far out of line and it's killed a lot fewer people than other notable disasters, like Bhopal, and in the context of the overall disaster, it simply grabs the most headlines.
Your statement "Japan had first hand experience with how deadly radiation is. They should know the risks better than anyone, and I think the risks weren't worth it." is just as silly as your original point and is just as silly as the statement you yourself called out as being silly.
Do you take X-Ray exams? Do you fly with an airplane? Do you eat bananas? You should start to get your facts straight. The effect of nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors are significantly different. We had very little real nuclear catastrophes and on total the casualties are low, if you need the info, Wikipedia can help you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
Let's compare Deepwater Horizon to the Fukushima Daiichi.
Fatalities: 11 vs 0 (no significant increase in cancer risk projected, except two worker with added 10%)
Effect on Environment: the Gulf flora and fauna where almost fully eradicated vs minor radiation pollution, not more than some natural sources
If you think people should stop using nuclear power in japan. Well then start to advocate that all bordering the Gulf of Mexico to stop using cars.
I agree, this number is a non-sense. In fact it is not that easy to find a place on Earth, where the background radiation is as low as 1 mSv/y. Average US value is 3.1 mSv/y, Japan 1.4 mSv/y, there are exceptional places reaching over 100 mSv/y. To reach the 1 mSv/y mark, they are aiming at something that seems impossible to achieve. They say it is 10-60 mSv/y next to a blown-up reactor. How much is it in a place where people actually live? 2, 5, 10? These numbers are perfectly acceptable (I live in a town with average dosage 5 mSv/y).
Saw Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists several times on the TV after the disaster. He used it as an opportunity to call attention to regulation and safety procedures for reactors in the United States. He said current evacuation procedures for evacuation zones for nuclear reactors were insufficient. Physicians for Social Responsibility have a useful map for checking your proximity to a nuclear reactor http://www.psr.org/resources/evacuation-zone-nuclear-reactors.html From their site, "Current NRC regulations stipulate a 10 mile evacuation zone around nuclear plants. This is clearly insufficient and 50 miles has been recommended." They also note that 1/3 of all Americans live within 50 miles of a reactor.
No-one has any idea how many people this disaster has, or will, cause.
Im pretty sure radiation experts know what the dosages were in, around, and at a distance from the plant, and it is well documented what levels of radiation do what to the human body.
There were two workers who went into the plant during the meltdown to access the core who got doses that could be described as "concerning"; they were treated at a hospital and I believe released the same day. Only 3 workers (including the two I mentioned) recieved a dose over 100mSv; Wikipedia notes
In 2012 the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation stated that for typical background radiation levels (1-13 mSv per year) it's not possible to account for any health effects and for exposures under 100 mSv
The amount of hysteria here is unbelievable. For the record,
10 to 30 mSv -single full-body CT scan[17][18]
68 mSv -estimated maximum dose to evacuees who lived closest to the Fukushima I nuclear accidents