Slashdot Mirror
Fukushima Cleanup, 5 Years On (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: Today is five years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, leading to a series of meltdowns. Nearly half a million people were evacuated at the time, with 100,000 still unable to return to their homes. The government has set a goal of 20mSv/year before people are allowed to live in affected areas again, and while progress is being made hotspots are still a problem in many areas. Reconstruction has been largely waiting for decontamination to be completed, allowing homes and businesses to fall into ruin. Those who do wish to return find their communities gutted, with essential services and jobs gone. Meanwhile, engineers are still unable to determine exactly what happened at Daiichi, particularly what saved reactor 2's pressure vessel from exploding. The initial reports were scary even before the nuclear plant problems were evident. Engadget notes that even now, the worst part of the cleanup remains a grueling work in progress, tough even for robots. Reader the_newsbeagle writes, too, with a link to the New York Times' take on the 5-year mark, and notes that The state and location of the melted fuel inside the reactors is still a mystery. The meltdown zone is too dangerous for human workers to enter, and robots have had limited success navigating in the wreckage. So Japan is recruiting subatomic particles called muons to map the reactors' insides. These particles, born of cosmic rays, constantly stream down from the atmosphere, passing through most matter unimpeded. But their occasional interactions with the subatomic components of uranium allow physicists to locate the blobs of the deadly stuff.
Sounds as if they had hired slashdot's own mdsolar to write the article.
When I was I high school in Ontario in the mid-90s, we got a presentation by a gentleman from the AECB (now renamed CNSC), the Canadian nuclear regulator. He passed a hefty chunk of uranium ore around the school auditorium. Every student got to hold it. Yet, I'm still here to tell about it, and just fine (other than having become a slashdot poster), and I have no concerns about my former classmates, either. Why? Becase playing with that chunk of uranium increased our overall environmental exposure to radiation imperceptibly.
Uranium can be deadly in the long run if you eat it, breathe in uranium dust, or put on a night face lotion laced with a good amount. Aside from that, it's only critical amounts of it, and the byproducts of uranium, that are deadly. The sly wording of the author, though, is intended to associate uranium with death in a general sense, and is FUD that reveals his bias.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Here are photos and an article in National Geographic from the massive quake and tsunami in the same area in 1896. Almost 27,000 people were killed and a tsunami was reported as high as 50 feet.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic....
The excuse that the tsunami was unprecedented and a "once in a 1,000- year event" is false.
The take away for me after five years is that it was criminally incompetent to not have planned for the possibility of a similar event so recent that there are photographs of it.
The engineers involved in the construction and operation should be in prison.
Disclaimer: I have a BSME with a Nuclear option, and I should be in prison if I had anything to do with the plant. I also live within 90 miles of the plant and remember thinking that I was in serious jeopardy when I saw a helicopter dropping water onto the stored fuel rods on TV. When the helicopters come out, it's the last straw.