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More Bad News From Fukushima
PuceBaboon writes "Both Reuters and the BBC are carrying the story of an increase in radiation levels reported by Tepco for contaminated water leaking from storage tanks on site. When this leak was discovered almost two weeks ago, Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying. The latest readings (with upgraded equipment) are registering 1800-millisieverts which, according to both news sources, could prove fatal to anyone exposed to it for four hours. Coincidentally (and somewhat ironically), today is earthquake disaster prevention day in Japan, with safety drills taking place nationwide."
-Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying.
What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
1800 mSv is 36 times the maximum yearly dose permitted to US radiation workers. More here.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
This error, reporting such a dead end scale value, was also reported sometime ago by Tepco, and there was another time before that, sorry I cannot get the links out so quickly but I clearly remember this. This same mistake has occured more than once within the hole Fukushima disaster,
The scheme is also the same: First, horray everything is safe. Later, Ups the needle hit the scale end and we did not tell them to start running.
How could .. ?
Well, on the one hand untrained personel or simply intentional or both.
While everybody is writing about the water, the real issue is the spent-fuel-rod pool. If that thing is not secured very soon, Tokyo becoming uninhabitable within a very short time is a real possibility. There is so much radiation in there, it is staggering. The pool is inadequately cooled. The pool is damaged enough that even a minor earthquake could prevent cooling it more and a fire starting in there would both be impossible to put out and starting by itself very fast. If that happens, only the wind not blowing in the wrong direction could save most of Japans industrial base and a significant part of its population. With the probability of minor earthquakes in that area, they are already on borrowed time.
Personal prediction: TEPCO will go on blundering about, and eventually they will get a nuclear catastrophe that makes all others so far look like a summer breeze. After that, Japan will not play a role in the world for a few thousand years or longer, because for all intents and purposes it will not really be there anymore.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1800 millisieverts is a dose, not a level. It's as basic a mistake as confusing feet with feet per second.
From other sources, it's a logical guess that what's meant is millisieverts per hour but an article should not make the reader guess what it means.
It was deliberate, somewhat shortsighted lie. This is how every fuckin big fat corporation behaves these days. It is worse than communism. Just compare Fukushima fiasco to old commies handling Chernobyl. They did everything they could to NOT let this crap hit watertable. They've put liquid nitrogen injecting installation under the reactor to make sure it won't burn through the basement and won't contaminate ground waters. They've put 600 thousands people to work to clean up their mess (every man for one minute or so). Compare this to the crap, lies, corruption and cost cuttings TEPCO is doing on their site. Our corporate fascist system is failing us badly and if we won't put them all in check soon, consequences of their misdeeds, greed and corruption will hit us hard.
This has been going on since before the plants were built. The reactors were so vulnerable to the earthquake/tsunami because they deliberately ignored the historical record of flooding in that part of Japan. The collective decision was made to ignore the worst case scenario.
After the earthquake, flood and power outage, the upper management was incompetently slow to make decisions because they were unwilling to think about loosing the plants and the likelihood of radioactivity being released. It was only the heroic action of the technical team at the site that averted a disaster worse the Chernobyl. They ultimately had to disobey direct orders to save the situation.
In the period after the so called 'shutdown' the authorities have been maintaining a delusional belief that they are doing an acceptable job and events are under control. Neither is true.
Delusional thinking is supported by not doing obvious monitoring procedures. It's magical thinking: if they don't know how bad it is, then things must be OK.
There is an ongoing failure to monitor radiation at the plant site, in the ocean and on the land. NGOs and international entities have been denied permission to do independent monitoring in the exclusion area and the ocean near the plant. One NGO Safecast has been doing radiation monitoring outside the exclusion zone and making the data available.
Quibbling about whether beta radiation is lethal is an example of delusional thinking. The fact that there are an entire spectrum of recently discovered radioactive water leaks is the critical information. None of these leaks were found in a timely manor. This happening two years after the reactor failure is appalling.
Tepco does not know how bad things are because they don't want to know. The rest of the Nuclear Village is not much better. The Abe government is putting significant effort into trying to restart other closed reactors at the expense of dealing with Fukushima. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has no credibility, because they have done almost nothing to make Tepco more responsible. Tepco and the NRA have been hiding as much information from the public as they can, so no-one believes anything they say.
The prognosis is bleak. The situation is deteriorating, and two years have been wasted while ignoring the obvious. There does not seem to be any organization in Japan that has the leadership ability to manage the crisis. The likelihood of another very serious radiation leak is going up with time, not down.
It is completely possible that there will be a dramatic failure and an internationally chartered group will take over long term responsibility. This is in effect what happened at Chernobyl. See New Safe Containment.
Why is Snark Required?
This is not an anomaly but a continuing pattern of deception and lack of forthright information.This is of global concern and needs a global response.Sadly the worlds misleaders would rather play golf than address the most serious global contamination to date.
Source: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/announcements/2013/1230191_5502.html