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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.
Sounds like you sourced that from HystericGreenAlarmism.com
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.
Here's a scary thought: maybe most of their trained personnel has already received the maximum lifetime dose and has been given their retirement already..
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I presume you are referring to the spent fuel pool in the reactor 4 building as that's the one that's been reported by fantasists and alarmists like Arne Gunderson as exploding, imminently collapsing, bulging, disintegrating, sinking into the ground and catching fire ever since the accidents happened. Unfortunately for their delusions reactor 4 is still there as is its spent fuel pool which today has a water temperature of 38 deg C., not what I'd describe as "inadequately cooled".
Right now the engineers at Fukushima Daiichi are finishing building a crane and supporting structure on reactor 4 in preparation to start removing the spent fuel rods from the pool. They've been working on this project for more than a year, clearing away the rubble on top of the building and constructing a heavy foundation before erecting the crane structure alongside and on top of the building and enclosing the top of the building in a weather shield since, in the words of George RR Martin, "winter is coming".
The crane system has to be heavily built since it will be craning fuel canisters weighing over a hundred tonnes out of the pool after spent fuel bundles are loaded into them. It's not something that can be done safely in an ad-hoc manner despite the Chicken Littles running around in a panic screaming "the world is ending!". Once the crane's up and running in the next few weeks it should only take a month or two to empty the pool of fuel bundles at which time I'm sure the folks worrying about it will turn their attention to the other reactor spent fuel pools which are also in train to be emptied too.
This thread exemplifies the entire radiation insanity fear very well. I hope every intelligent Slashdot reader is watching this. Because this is what it is like to discuss Fukushima or Global Warming amongst the public.
Just this week I sat across from a veteran software engineer who, in all seriousness, said "Fukushima will be uninhabitable for 6,000 years. Probably 60,000 years." He had no basis for such a claim. I assumed engineers would not make such statements without any knowledge, but apparently not. Radiation fear goes deeper than that. People don't even understand the basics of how radiation works. But this kind of insanity is so ingrained into peoples minds that it doesn't need a source. The two ingrained assumptions seem to be that "Any amount of radiation = deadly" and "All radiation lasts for thousands of years." It is just treated as common sense, and doesn't need any backing. Oh, the other one is that "if radiation contacts something, that thing because radioactive, and so on into perpituity." Beware of these assumptions when discussing anything involving radiation.
As this thread continues, notice that gweihir claims that there is no need to backup his claims "unless you are illiterate." Wow. Just. Wow. If I wasn't having to debunk this kind of thing every week, I would shake my head and move on thinking "Troll." But folks: this is your peers. Your fellow voters.
So many of these claims are like saying a firecracker exploded a mile away, and you got hit by the debris. People seem to have a common-sense understanding of everyday physics: fire, explosions, guns, maybe even chemicals. But nuclear radiation is just magical. It can do anything, over any distance, any time..
I really have to thank durrr for his comment about HystericGreenAlarmism.com. That is not that far from the truth. Let me show how this situation is worse than one might think.
Last week I had a relative link to an article at some site like nature news blog or something named like that, which made similar insane claims to what gweihir is claiming -- BUT WITH CITATIONS. That is where things become a real problem. There is so much false science out there, and it isn't easy to determine what is real and what isn't. The claims in the article were so egregious that anyone with familiarity with the subject would instantly know it was false. It was like my firecracker example. But not everyone has that background. A 5 minute search turned-up a Scientific American article that basically showed the study was intentionally faked. But the nature blog had several such ridiculous claims and I don't have time to debunk each and every one. Real information is harder to find than fake information.
So what do we do about this?
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.