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."

Comments

Where were the professionals.

[PlusFiveTroll]

-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?

Re:Where were the professionals.

[tuo42]

That's what I was thinkng also!

Then again, it is a very interesting way of damage control. Simply bring equipment which can only measure up to the damage level we want.

I cannot understand how a company can make such a mistake. This is the most severe radioactive problem at the moment, threatening to change a country for the next decades.

They know how important this is, and fail to bring along the right equipment?

Unbelievable...

Re:Where were the professionals.

[jamesh]

-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?

Wouldn't be the first time testing was stopped as soon as a nice answer was found...

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Sqr(twg)]

Just wait a few weeks until they find out that 1800 mSv is the maximum reading on the new instrument.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is all intentional and just a big game of what they can cover up and with which lies they can get away with.
The whole Fukushima operation is just a big scam with Tepco and the government as key players.
The current LDP government is financially supported by all major Japanese companies that are heavily involved in the nuclear industry.
That was a very lucrative business because there were hardly any rules that could not be bend but that has all gone bad after the Fukushima disaster.
The main objective for Tepco and the LDP prime minister is to get nuclear energy accepted again.
Although there are many accidents and false reports, the national media does not pay much attention, fearing the wrath of the LDP patry and some of the major companies here in Japan. But that doesn't differ much from the US I guess.
Also, the national television company is just another propaganda media outlet but may Japanese are not aware of this fact.

Japan has a long history of cover-ups when the government and major Japanese companies are involved.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Joce640k]

Tepco needs to be taken out of the equation. Now.

(Though they can still pay the cleanup bill...)

Re:Where were the professionals.

[AHuxley]

It allows "smart" people note that the rates are like a medical xray or passenger flight and get modded up as the math is sort of correct.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[polar red]

Humanity has a long history of cover-ups when big organisations are involved.

FTFY

Re:Where were the professionals.

[gweihir]

You cannot measure radiation underwater. Usual measurement is 1m free-air-distance, but at the level they observe, they cannot sent anyone in there to make these measurements.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity. There are a wide range of radiation meters. But the type that can read up to 200 Rem/hr (2,000 mSv) aren't common. A typical meter won't even read up to 1 Rem/hr, because such high levels aren't common. Only casualty meters read higher.

Any decent health physicist is acutely aware of where the meter saturates (which can sometimes be caused by the electronics itself--you really need to understand how your meter works when you adjust the scales).

Simply bring equipment which can only measure up to the damage level we want.

No, you bring the meter with the radiation you expect to find. If it is higher, you back out and bring a meter for that. If your readings are 50 mRem/hr at most points, it is ridiculous to carry around a meter than reads 0-200 Rem/hr. It is not precise. It is like reading the speed on your speedometer when it is calibrated in units of 500 mph.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Joining Yet Again]

It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity.

Apologists need to stop trotting out equivalents to, "Don't attribute to malice.. bla bla stupidity," at every corner.

It's not the middle of the 20th century. We're awash with excellent physicists who can't find a job, and I can assure you that everyone in the highly competitive Japan who has a job in the nuclear industry has the technical ability.

What they don't have is a moral compass: it's a very obeisant culture.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[gweihir]

That is a lie. Well, the part about Beta is true, so yes, they can. But there is no feasible protection against Gamma rays for people. The only thing that is there (lead aprons) reduce it at best down to 50%, but they are so heavy that you move at half the speed or slower, so no protection at all. At Cernobyl, the experts decided that running was by far the best protection available, and have a look at how few of them are still alive.

Re: Where were the professionals.

[O('_')O_Bush]

But it should be obvious to anyone that if your equipment pegs to 100mSv and no higher that something is wrong, and you shouldn't go to the media claiming 100mSv was the likely extent of the radiation levels in the leak.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[thej1nx]

The same way, news medias like to make "intentional mis-interpretation" for sake of sensationalism and more eyeballs. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/announcements/2013/1230191_5502.html

Re:Where were the professionals.

[GNious]

It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity.

Apologists need to stop trotting out equivalents to, "Don't attribute to malice.. bla bla stupidity," at every corner.

People just need to understand that there is a point where Stupidity stops being a valid and reasonable excuse. Still having Tepco handling all of this is one such case, where it is not longer correct to attribute it to Stupidity.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[fnj]

If your equipment only registers to 100 and you read 100 on it, then it is WHOLLY imcompetent not to RUN and get better equipment to re-measure.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[AmiMoJo]

The Japanese government already practically owns TEPCO because it had to nationalize it to cover the clean-up cost. They just don't have any administrative control or use their shareholder rights.

So basically TEPCO is in charge but not paying the bulk of the bill. The situation is not unique to Japan, every country with nuclear power would be in the same situation if something like that happened because getting commercial insurance to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars it costs is impossible.

Oblig.

[bondsbw]

1800 mSv is 36 times the maximum yearly dose permitted to US radiation workers. More here.

Re:Wrong issue

[durrr]

Sounds like you sourced that from HystericGreenAlarmism.com

Argh. That's not a radiation level.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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.

This was NOT mistake.

[boorack]

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.

Re:This error was done more than once

[fritsd]

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..

Re:Wrong issue

[MobyDisk]

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?