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Fukushima Daiichi Water Leak Raised To Level 3 Severity
AmiMoJo writes "Japan's nuclear regulators have raised the level of severity of the radioactive water leak from a tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It is now a level-3 serious incident. The revision from level 1 is based on estimates of the volume of radioactive substances leaked. The International Atomic Energy Agency supports the revision. They say the tank leak can be assessed separately from the Fukushima Daiichi crisis as a level 3 incident. Japanese experienced a level-3 nuclear event in 1997 with the fire and explosions at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture. 37 workers there were exposed to the leaked radioactive substances."
What was the fate of the 1997 workers exposed like that? That would be a good way to assess what kind of consequences we could expect from the current incident,
Holy crap! That's 1/10^4 Hiroshimas.
Workers must take the power!
Workers at Fukushima appear to be absorbing power, does that count?
Since this has all been flowing out into international waters, can the rest of the world sue Japan now?
Or at least a Godzilla reference in responses to this article. Here's one now!
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
thank god the level has not been raised from "incident" to "accident" (per the stupid pyramid graphic)
these useless terms smell like (profusely reek of) the result of years expensive international negotiations by diplomats lawyers and politicians until they reached the exact level of imprecision to not inform anyone of anything that is actually going on in any useful way
Ocean currents will bring this radiation from the Orient to the Occident
I learned about a new keyboard shortcut "Ctrl+Shift+T". It's kind of like the "Ctrl+Z" of radioactive water leak disasters.
The G
This suggests they had decided to raise it to level 3 a week ago:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/21/leap-fukushima-danger-ranking
...brings up a fun question: Under what aspect does ionizing radiation count as "power"? Obviously not from an EE's point-of-view (wattage), but...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I just thought it would be funny to put some blue plastic over a flashbulb, and use it near nuclear plant workers to see what their reaction is.
Sorry the leak is stopped and the clean up is nearly complete (of the water leak). Some people really enjoy spreading baseless fear.....
And socialism worked so well at Cherynobl.
well a single ionizing event has a bundle of energy. Power is the number of ionizing events per second, which is what rems are.
At least three unprecedented melt-throughs, plus fuel pool melts, in 2011, of which at least three melt-throughs are in bedrock evidenced by drilling samples.
So, again, don't worry, it's only a level 3 water leak incident, no cause for immediate harm.. ...At one of the storage tanks.
The men from 1997 have evolved and now have penis-tentacles, it's the hot new type of porn in Japan right now.
The radiation from the corium pockets underground is bad, but it's nothing compared to the mess is still waiting to make a disaster bigger (85 times bigger!) then Chernobyl..
Cherynobl
you're clearly a product of the socialist public school system.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
And socialism worked so well at Cherynobl.
Better than capitalism in Japan anyway. 2 years since accident - the freaking thing still massively leaks! Read about Chernobyl disaster - basically much larger hydrogen explosion and radioactive contamination was prevented with cost of liquidators lives.
Has anyone else seen the info where it's claimed that nuclear waste rods are dispelled of their radiation rapidly when exposed to a hydron/oxygen flame (Also called Brown's Gas by welders).
I ran across this information some years ago when I was experimenting with adding hydrogen to my car's engine.
So here's a web site where they make te case for the technique:
http://zapnuclearwaste.com/
I'd appreciate any constructive comments.
I learned something very interesting about zirconium. I don't remember when this was but I found the properties of this element very fascinating and it has come back to mind with this article. You see zirconium is a metal that is nearly transparent to neutrons. Because of this property, and other properties that metals have, it is used to make the fuel rods in all fission reactors today.
Using zirconium makes sense. Just like we use glass in light bulbs we use zirconium in nuclear fission reactors. A light bulb is not very useful unless the light can escape from the filament but no barrier exists to protect the filament from damage. We use zirconium to contain the fission fuel and also allow the neutrons that sustain the fission to reach the fuel contained in the other rods.
Zirconium has another very interesting property, it burns when exposed to steam. So, in every fission reactor we have today we place zirconium tubes filled with nuclear fuel in some very hot water. If the ability to cool this water is lost then the water begins to boil. The zirconium ignites. The tubes containing the nuclear fuel burns away. The nuclear fuel falls away from the control mechanisms and piles up at the bottom of the reactor vessel.
Once the nuclear fuel piles up high enough fission will occur. Dumping water on the fuel at this point moderates the fission, that is bounce any escaping neutrons back at the fuel to increase the fission rate, and creates more steam to burn away the zirconium. But not dumping water on the fuel means some very dangerous elements, ones that are solid at any lower temperature, boil away. What needs to be done is to dump enough water on the fire so that the zirconium and other stuff in the pile stops burning. At some point the mess that was once fuel rods melts enough metal and concrete in the reactor floor, and mixes with it, that fission stops.
I don't mention all of this to scare people away from nuclear fission power. I mention this to point out that the technology we use in nuclear fission right now is very stupid. We need nuclear fission power. What we need is nuclear power that does not require zirconium in contact with hot water.
We need molten salt reactors.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Wait, what? You think Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl was? Why?
Nonsense, the arrays are already encased in boron cages in the fuel storage racks, they will not go critical even if they are not cooled. Cooling is needed to keep the fuel arrays mechanically sound so they couldn't release the radioactive materials inside them. There is no serious damage in the fuel arrays in the spent fuel pool of unit 4. The damage in each of the 4 units destroyed is very different, so a single event making all of the remaining fuel release their radioactive materials is highly unlikely, and even if it happens, they have in their favor that the fuel in the spent fuel pools have already undergone 2.5 years more of cooling and decay of its radioactive material since the accident, so any new emergency in the pools will be easier to manage than in 2011. The fire in unit 4 was caused by the hydrogen released by the damage in the core of unit 3, not by any release from the fuel in its spent fuel pool. Still, there are a bunch of morons of TEPCO's management that should be behind bars due their criminal incompetence and negligence.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Wait, what? You think Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl was? Why?
See the wikipedia comparison. Maybe Chernobyl was bigger to start with, but Fukushima has 10x the amount of fuel. So potentially, if they cannot stop the leaking, it might become much bigger. It will probably and hopefully be more gradually. For Japan, most of the contamination leaks into the ocean, so that cleans up a lot I suppose, although for a fishing nation like Japan it might come back that way.
Wait, what? You think Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl was? Why?
I'm saying liquidation was handled much worse in Fukushima accident. Look how Chernobyl was handled - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Immediate_crisis_management. Fire containment, that prevented fire to spread another reactor, volunteers swimming in bubbling radioactive water to open the valve - 3 people prevented one more hydrogen explosion and died shortly afterwards, and later quarter million workers building sarcophagus over reactor 4, sealing it to prevent future contamination. If Chernobyl was handled same way as Fukushima - we would have have of Europe exclusion zone, with all what was inside reactors 3 and 4 blown around and scattered by the wind. Fukushima is not over yet after more that 2 years after disaster - there are still tons of radioactive water pouring into world ocean every day, and in case of an earthquake, that is not really uncommon in Japan, high possibility of massive disaster involving that huge amounts of spend fuel that is still on site.
the aspect of MARVIN Comics!
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
They should form a collective bargaining group, so they can get unioninzed.
Sad trombone.
...safe, clean, cost-effective. Wait... what?
In other, more positive news, TEPCO today announced that at the current rate of leakage, and the expected future increase, the entire site should be free of all radioactive elements in only a hundred years or so.
A TEPCO spokeperson was quoted as saying, " Isn't nature wonderful! It created this mess, by bringing the sea up to the reactor, but now it is cleaning it up , by taking the reactor elements out to sea. Such a beautiful circle."
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Protesters have dumped several chests of tea into Boston harbour.
Seriously, this was reported over a week ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23776345 I thought this was supposed to be a news website.
...brings up a fun question: Under what aspect does ionizing radiation count as "power"?
Not until you gain superpowers.