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New Radioactive Water Leak At Fukushima: 300 Tons and Growing
AmiMoJo tips this news from the BBC:
"Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, operator TEPCO says. Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which measures nuclear events. This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea."
There was a significant leak back in April as well.
It's florescent fucking green! Do you know what that means?! It means it's toxic radioactive ooze!! Fucking OOZE!
Not nearly as reactive as this FUD however.
TEPCO is pleased to announce that additional capacity has become available in one of the radioactive coolant storage tanks, a development certain to ease fears of a capacity shortage.
rephrase - the nuclear site is leaking so much radioactive wastewater into the sea that it would fill an olympic swimming pool each week!
79.3 k gals per day. Despite the headline the actual amount released per day is 300 tonnes.
"A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation"
Wow! that's slightly more radiation than you'd get from a flight over the ocean! Let's all freak out!
"In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea"
You fail at conversions. 100millSiverts = ~2000 Sydney Australia to Los Angles flights (1 flight is around .05 milliSieverts or 50 microSieverts).
Better check your arithmetic. It's giving off 100 mSv/hr = 876 Sv/yr (about 175x the fatal dose). If you flew in an airliner 24x7 you'd get 24 mSv/yr (a dose 36,500x smaller).
In parts of the US background exposure is 1700 mrem or 17 mSv per year. So the 5 year background exposure is 85 mSv.
In the US the normal power plant exposure limit is 50 mSv per year, and under emergency conditions it can be raised to 250 mSv per year.
According to the news report 100 mSv/hr was right at the surface of the puddle.
So don't go there.
Totally wrong on the puddle, not bothering with the rest.
http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/commercialflights.html
Nutshell:
"The corresponding annual effective dose, based on 700 hours of flight for subsonic aircraft and 300 hours for the Concorde, can be estimated at between 200 mrem for the least exposed routes and 500 mrem for the more exposed routes."
500 mrem is equal to 5 millisievert. So 100 msv is equal to 20 years of commercial airline employee exposure. In one hour.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
The end of nuclear power as something the public wants to invest in? Sure nuclear power is cleaner than coal. Coal guarantees health problems and death through air pollution. Nuclear power only poses a problem when things go wrong. This is half a century old technology, and a lot has changed. This is basically my same post as reddit, but I'm glad solar power is catching up, otherwise when electric cars get economical, the power grid would be taxed beyond its means.
God spoke to me
I swear it's going to come true in my lifetime.
homer simpson makes level 3's all the time
Things to consider:
A. How much radioactive water has actually leaked into the Pacific Ocean prior to the latest reports?
B. What is the true amount of radioactive water still leaking into the Pacific Ocean?
C. How long until the leaks are stopped?
D. Given A,B and C, what will be the total amount of radioactive water to be dispersed from the local site?
E. Given D, how may fish are likely to encounter this area, considering fish migrate thousands of miles?
F. Given E, How many predatory fish will each the contaminated fish, spreading radiation through the marine food chain?
G. What is the period of time the radiation will remain in the marine food chain?
I think I'll be testing my fish with a geiger counter for a while.
Except of course only ~300 tonnes of partially treated water IN TOTAL leaked (not 300 tonnes per day) and the leak has been stopped. Some of the water was recovered, and soil removed. It is also unclear if ANY of the water entered the ocean as nothing has been detected in any of the drainage ditches. And while 100 mSv of Beta radiation was detected at the surface of one of the puddles, only 1.5 mSv of Gamma radiation was detected (as the water was already partially treated to remove any Caesium). So don't go bathing in or drink the water and you'll be fine.
TEPCO has had a troubled relationship with the truth.
If it was actually for sale, I'd buy it for cheap. In 30-50 years it'd be clean enough to live on, the high rad stuff has short half lives, and the long live stuff has lower radiation, and it'd be cleaned up in 30-50 years. So, where's the Fukushima real estate link?
Learn to love Alaska
Before you kill the engineers, I'd like to meet them. I didn't even know it was possible for mankind to create a 30 meter wave that can kill 18,000 people.
Oh, wait, you meant the engineers that designed the nuclear plant that withstood the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan and then the subsequent tsunami? Hmmm, maybe we should agree to disagree.
The nuke plant gets all the play, and it is an ongoing expensive headache, but there are 18,000 people who would have rather been in Fukushima that day.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Things to consider: A. How much radioactive water has actually leaked into the Pacific Ocean prior to the latest reports? B. What is the true amount of radioactive water still leaking into the Pacific Ocean? C. How long until the leaks are stopped? D. Given A,B and C, what will be the total amount of radioactive water to be dispersed from the local site? E. Given D, how may fish are likely to encounter this area, considering fish migrate thousands of miles? F. Given E, How many predatory fish will each the contaminated fish, spreading radiation through the marine food chain? G. What is the period of time the radiation will remain in the marine food chain?
I think I'll be testing my fish with a geiger counter for a while.
H. Ignore A through G as you are probably more likely to win the lottery (even w/o every buying a ticket) than to suffer any ill effects from this unless you live in close proximity. And are more likely to get mercury poisoning than for this to affect you in any way.
And the regulators. They approved a design that, in the failure of grid power, a generator fault would guarantee a meltdown. A tsunami capable of reaching the plant had a near-100% chance of knocking out grid power and fouling the fuel. They approved a plant in a tsunami zone with a guaranteed meltdown in the case of a tsunami. The generator and fuel were at ground level. Putting them in a 10m tower (hardened for earthquake) would have prevented this meltdown. At a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars. To save pennies, a meltdown was guaranteed by bad design.
Learn to love Alaska
Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES)
The fact that its reported as a Level 1 incident is not reassuring, actually.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) seems to be highly subjective :-
And also, under Criticisms :-
if we're talking about water, weight and volume are near equivalent in both the sane and ridiculous measurement systems used by the world.
300 tons of contaminated water doesn't seem like a lot when you consider there are (roughly) 784,430,000,000,000,000.00 tons of water in the pacific ocean alone. I think I'll still eat fish...
Make that 300 tons of contaminated water per day, something that Japan's environmental agency says has been happening since very soon after the initial accident in March of 2011. According to NPR, the next plan is to dig a bunch of cooling pipes into the ground and create an underground "ice wall" to stop the contamination from flowing out in to the ocean. No, really
You can trivialize all you want, but if I were you I'd avoid eating the fish from anywhere near the Japanese coast, and anything that eats there during annual migrations. Could be bad for your health. Radioactivity builds up in plants and animals over time, and it's been pouring in for 2 1/2 years now.
If that isn't bad enough, a newly stated concern is the proximity of melted fuel in relation to the Tokyo aquifer that extends under the plant. If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, there will be 40 million people in the Tokyo area without access to safe water.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
So, you are saying that we should only be concerned when they dump enough toxic waste into the ocean so that it will more or less immediately affect everyone on earth?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The first thing you should have asked is: What kind of radiation from what type of source?
"While it had been treated to reduce radioactive caesium, tests of the leaked water found it was still highly contaminated with beta-ray emitting substances including strontium, which has a half-life of about 30 years and can cause bone cancers."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-20/toxic-puddles-discovered-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant/4899844
Enjoy your fish and osteosarcomas.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So yeah, if you decided, against all common sense, to bathe unprotected in the water leaking out of the reactor for an hour, then you would experience a statistically noticeable increase in cancer risk. Given that everyone knows there's radiation over there, nobody is doing this. That doesn't quite mean that it's 'safe' or 'trivial'... but it also doesn't mean you need to freak out and stop eating fish or anything.
They approved a design that, in the failure of grid power, a generator fault would guarantee a meltdown.
Indeed. I remember as a kid with an interest in nuclear power in the 1980s, reading about the design of the GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor and boggling at the lack of a PWR-style containment building because the suppression torus "should be enough". But accidents always happen, I thought. What if some disaster caused a meltdown or explosion? Well, the article said, because there was no containment, the result of a meltdown would be unthinkable and therefore hasn't been investigated. Instead there would be failsafes to make sure a meltdown absolutely could never happen.
And I felt a cold shudder run down my spine at the casual engineering arrogance of that design and that, I think, was the moment when I switched from thinking of nuclear power as "cool" to "incredibly stupid".
There was a file photo in the article of a Mark 1 under construction - it was quite probably this one at Harper's Ferry - and the sight of the naked reaction vessel with the pipes reaching through the torus like an evil alien root, a cancer nodule built in steel, gave me nightmares for weeks. I had an instinctive feeling of revulsion and horror. This is a radiological disaster waiting to happen. Why would humanity build this monstrosity? Tear it out! Burn it! Bury it! Entomb the ashes!
Actually, looking at that photo, I still feel that feeling today. But at least we've learned from this... right guys?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
It's not an engineering fault, but a business and regulatory one. Make it as safe as possible, and have multiple redundant failsafes. That costs too much, so they are axed. And the regulators sign off on it.
Learn to love Alaska
The nuke plant gets all the play, and it is an ongoing expensive headache, but there are 18,000 people who would have rather been in Fukushima that day.
Sigh, I KNEW there was going to be one of these comments here.... Guess what, I know you don't know this, but I feel it's important to pass this info on: NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO DIED, THEY ARE DEAD.
People like you really piss me off because you seem to think that if all we do is throw a big pity party then the people who died in the tsunami will come back to life. But you have really BELIEVE they will, and only talk about them and absolutely nothing else. Guess what, it sucks that they died, it sucks hard, but there isn't a god damn thing you can do about, no matter how much you talk about it. But the people's friends and relatives DO have to deal with the nuclear issue. They DO have to deal with being kicked out of their homes for who knows how long. Unlike the dead people their situation can be changed(for better or worse). So yeah, unlike your self-righteous claims to the contrary, talking about the nuclear situation is in fact more productive than a constant pity party. Moron.
Monstar L
Did you happen to see the story about Germany's renewable energy that was posted today? Turns out coal isn't the only other way of generating electricity.
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 a 15m wave, and the plant was designed only to withstand 7.5m tsunami and magnitude 7.1 quakes. Both the tsunami and the quake damaged the plant. Japan had experienced larger tsunami and quakes before.
In fact the nuclear regulator warned TEPCO that defences were inadequate years before the disaster. The engineers knew there was a problem, they are not to blame. It is, as ever, the managers and profit motive.
Also, it's a slightly bizarre argument to say that because 18,000 other people died that somehow mitigates Fukushima. If you want to go down that route then millions starved in Africa in the 80s, 500,000 Iraqis died in the last war... I'm not sure what your point is. It's a disaster in its own right and deserves to be scrutinized.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Each level is considered 10 times more severe than the level below, just like earthquake intensity scales.
I live less than 100 miles south the Fukushima plant.
On behalf of the people around me, I'd like to tell the Godzilla and Ninja Turtles-type of posters to go fuck yourselves. This isn't a fucking Internet meme to some of us.
Some of us who weren't killed or hurt in the earthquake or tsunami still have financial problems from the economic downturn in our businesses. We're not all in a position to just be able to pack up and move. We don't all live in trailers like some of you Godzilla-spouting fuckers.
Some of us have had to dig deeply into our savings.
To be honest, I'm more worried now than I was a year ago. We're back to trying to contain events instead of making any progress toward cleaning up and decontaminating.
I think a bigger problem is this:
How are they going to continue to find people willing to work at the plant? They quit after a while.
Would you work in a sealed decontamination suit and breathing gear outside in a heat index about 140F for about the same money the night shift kid-manager at Burger King makes? Just how smart and competent can someone like that be?
That's scary.
And the problem is not the engineers, it's the reckless, cost-cutting zealot-assholes from the accounting departments who become the presidents of utilities instead of engineers.
I think I'll be testing my fish with a geiger counter for a while.
Firstly, you'd be much better off testing your fish for mercury. This is a very widespread pollution problem, unlike this leak, and actually does harm a lot of people.
Secondly and more importantly, the spot price of Uranium only has to rise by about a factor of 5 before it becomes economically viable to extract uranium directly from seawater.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My point is that people lack perspective. The nuke plant problem is serious when viewed in isolation, but minor compared to the disaster that hit the area. If the meltdown had happened without any accompanying natural disaster (like Chernobyl), then I would be a lot more likely to be critical of the engineers.
Sure, the plant was not adequately protected from the tsunami. Neither were 18,000 people. Which is the bigger error in judgement?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Dear Whargoul,
I explained it fully.
Water is hydrogen and oxygen. Nothing else.
Hydrogen has only one radioactive isotope, which is manufactured in nuclear reactors. One source says that isotope (Tritium) is worth $30,000/gram (that is ~ $1 million/Oz.) World annual production is about 50 lb. So it is unlikely that any large quantity of Tritium would be left lying around in Japanese reactors.
As stated above Oxygen has a few radioactive isotopes, but the longest half life isotope of Oxygen (Atomic Wt 15) is about 2 minutes. That means that the radiation from a given sample of 15O diminishes by 999,999,999/1,000,000,000 every hour. If you are a layman, that means it stops being radioactive very quickly.
So if none of the components of water are radioactive, ergo, water is not radioactive.
I must say the quality of comments on /. has diminished noticeably in the last few years.