Yes. This is a common mistake. Those public documents are not the terms
of the settlement that geohot is not allowed to discuss. Those documents
are part of the public record. It would be ridiculous for Sony to prohibit
geohot from divulging terms that are part of the public record.
Settlements have two parts: the public part (that in this case
has been splashed all over the web) and the private part. It is the private
part that geohot cannot discuss. Often when a corporation pays money to settle
a case, one of the terms of the settlement is that the person getting the money
can't divulge the amount. I'm not saying this therefore means that Sony paid
geohot, but ISTM that if the terms all favored Sony then they wouldn't demand
that geohot be silent about them.
We don't know what the deal was. We don't know what's going to happen to
the leftover donation money. But we do know that you can still
buy a t-shirt sporting Sony's private key. ISTM this is a major
victory. Doesn't this enable other people to continue hacking on
the PS3? I'm going to wait and see what is going to happen to the
donations before I condemn geohot.
When you get older (I'm referring to geohot, not the Slashdotter who
buys civilization with taxes) you learn to choose your battles.
I'd much prefer
that the question of whether the DMCA covers jailbreaking be decided
in a court that was not quite so bend-over-and-pick-up-the-soap
friendly to corporate interests.
As for NISA, I clearly stated they acknowledge it's serious, and I
acknowledge it's serious, but they are comparing to Chernobyl because
everyone else is, and because it's one of the only nuclear disasters
in history that reached a certain scale.
My point was that the poster I responded to said "... comparisons to
Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic
anti-nuclear propaganda." after the NISA was making that very
comparison. I'm glad you now agree with me.
The Japanese media coverage of the quake, tsunami, and nuclear problem
has been far, far less sensational than the coverage in the West.
The media in Japan were not comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl
before the NISA started doing it in their press conference yesterday.
NISA were the ones that got the comparison ball rolling.
We agree that the harm done by Chernobyl is much greater than the harm
done by Fukushima, so far. Your claim that the fuel rods will
never explode at Fukushima was contradicted by a half-hour special on
Fukushima aired by NHK World a couple of days ago. Their nuclear
expert said that radioactivity will continue to leak out of the
reactors because they have to continue to inject water into them in
order to prevent an explosion that will burst open a containment
vessel. This is an example of one of your assumptions.
Your other assumptions are confounded with your conclusions. As I
said before, the truth is that we do not yet know the full extent of
the damage that will be caused by Fukushima. TEPCO says the situation
is not under control and it will take them a month (at least) to get
it under control. You are assuming that after it is all said
and done, the total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be
dwarfed by Chernobyl and you use this assumption to conclude that the
total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be dwarfed by
Chernobyl. I am not the one speculating. I've been saying we simply
don't yet know the full extent of the damage yet.
People donated to geohot's defense to get him the legal advice needed
to fight Sony. Obviously, his legal advisors told him accept this
settlement. It would have been a far greater waste of the donations if
geohot had failed to follow the legal advice the donations paid for.
The point is that before yesterday's press conference, whenever the NISA
mentioned Chernobyl, they said that Fukushima was not comparable to it.
The (scant) numbers they provided on the total amount of leaked
radioactivity were many orders of magnitude lower than the Chernobyl
release. Now they have revised their estimate upward by many orders
of magnitude to 10% of the Chernobyl release which is why they spent
most of the press conference comparing and contrasting Fukushima
with Chernobyl.
The headline of the Japan Times Online was:
Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Are they stupid anti-nuclear scare-mongering idiots too? Whether you
like it or not, whether it suits your agenda or not, the big news in
Japan right now is that for the first time since the accident the NISA
is comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl even though the damage caused
by the Fukushima accident is, so far, much less.
Calling me a stupid pedant for using words as they are defined is
rather ridiculous. If your definition of the word differs from
what is in the dictionary, that's fine. Just say so and
we can be done with it. It doesn't necessarily mean you are
stupid. Likewise, I'm not stupid just because the definition
I use happens to agree with definition in the dictionary.
I've spent over a week reporting the news about Fukushima I have
gotten from the Japanese media before it trickles into the Western
press, often delayed and garbled. For my efforts I've been called
a stupid know-nothing idiot by people who have preconceptions that
don't match the news I'm reporting.
My only mistake was quoting the wrong part of the post I was responding to.
I should have quoted this phrase:
... comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering -
classic anti-nuclear propaganda.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) spent a significant portion
of their press conference yesterday comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl.
ISTM both you and poster I was responding to are accusing the
NISA of indulging in pure idiocy and scaremongering.
The fact that a lot of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima is coming out
in highly radioactive water instead of smoke and dust like in Chernobyl,
might mitigate the damage it causes. OTOH, it might not. Perhaps it
will delay for a few years the time it takes for the radioactivity to enter the
biosphere. ISTM you are making some pretty far-fetched assumptions and then
presenting them as facts that should be obvious to us all. The truth is
that, at this point, we just don't know what the health effects from
Fukushima will be. One thing that is clear, at least
to me, is that it is unhelpful to brand people as idiot scaremongers for
merely repeating what the NISA said in their press conference.
Clearly, the harm caused by Chernobyl in both blood and treasure is much
greater than the harm caused by Fukushima so far. But the release at
Fukushima is ongoing and, unlike Chernobyl, effects of what has already been
released may take months or years to reach their peak. For example, after
the Chernobyl disaster the peak of radioactivity in fish high on the food
chain occurred six months after the peak of radioactivity in the ocean.
If highly radioactive water is leaking into the ground it could take years
before it gets into the water table. That will mitigate the harm from
short-lived isotopes but won't substantially reduce the potency of
Cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years.
The Guardian posted an excellent rebutal to this point of view
by Helen Caldicott:
How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation
. The article you linked dismissed this article disparagingly
with a three word ad hominem attack: "mad Auntie Fear" without
addressing, let alone countering, any of her arguments. Instead, the
Register article repeats the very mistakes Caldicott had identified.
Helen Caldicott is a medical doctor. She taught pediatrics at the
Harvard Medical School for two years before turning her focus to
researching and reporting the health hazards of nuclear power.
OTOH,
Lewis Page (assuming it is the same Lewis Page):
... served as an officer in the Royal Navy from 1993 to 2004, and is now an
author and authority on military matters.
It is amazing that you think the article by Lewis Page is authoritative
since he has absolutely no expertise on the subject; he totally ignores
criticism from a person who is an authority; and he dismisses the
authority with a rude ad hominem attack. OTOH, his level of discourse
would fit right in with the irrational, faith-based pro-nuclear advocacy
here on Slashdot.
Comparable: adjective1. Able to be compared or
worthy of comparison.
If you listen to the press conference given by Japan's Japan's Nuclear
and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) you will hear them repeatedly
comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl. The title of the FA from the
Japan Times was: Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Comparable does not mean identical. If the release from Fukushima was
0.001% of the release from Chernobyl, I would say they were not
comparable. I think 1% might be borderline but 10% certainly makes
them comparable. The fact of the matter is that NISA spent a
significant portion of their press conferencing comparing
Fukushima with Chernobyl.
To put this in perspective, in previous reports of highly radioactive
water pouring directly into the ocean and highly radioactive water in
turbine buildings and tunnels, the total amount of radioactivity
was six orders of magnitude lower than the amounts discussed now. These
were the highest Fukushima releases I had heard about before yesterday.
Before yesterday I was saying Fukushima was not comparable to Chernobyl.
Now it obviously is.
"It's considerably different from Chernobyl," said Nishiyama. "The mount of
radioactive materials released at Fukushima is about a tenth of that in the
Chernobyl accident."
Level 7 indicates a massive amount of radioactive leakage. We deeply apologize
to residents around the plant and Fukushima Prefecture and people in the
society for causing concerns and troubles,"
Your faith-based belief in the safety of nuclear power regardless of
the actual facts is sad.
Good question! Radioactive materials (containing radioisotopes) emit
radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) and it is this radiation that is
directly harmful. Each radioactive atom is a teeny tiny time-bomb
that goes off at a random time. Some radioisotopes go off faster than
others. The time it takes for half the atoms of a particular isotope
to go off is the half-life of that isotope. Health-wise, two of the
most important radioisotopes created in nuclear power plants are
Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 (Caesium-137) with half-lives of 8-days and
30-years respectively. They are important because they accumulate in
the body in specific sites where the radiation they emit is
concentrated in a small volume.
Nuclear fuel rods normally emit radiation but very little
radioactivity. The radiation can be shielded and is also diminished
by the r-squared law (for example the Sun emits a massive amount of
radiation but it doesn't hurt us because it is so far away and is
also because it is partly shielded by the atmosphere).
So while it is radiation that does the direct damage, the major
problem in a nuclear power plant accident is the emission of
radioactivity. It is all those little time-bombs waiting to go
off, particularly the time-bombs that are absorbed by the body and
have a half-life equal to or less than the human lifespan such as
Iodine-131 and Cesium-137.
The problem at Chernobyl was the emission of radioactive materials in
the smoke and gas after the explosion. At Fukushima the problem is
the emission of radioactive materials in the released steam and water.
At Chernobyl almost all of the radioactivity went up into the air.
At Fukushima, most of it is going down into the ground and ocean.
On NHK World, a Japanese official is explaining why they are raising the
severity to 7. He is talking about Chernobyl a lot. He said that to date, the
amount of radioactivity released from Fukushima is 10% of the total release
from Chernobyl.
I hope you're right. Let's run some numbers. Say 2% of the Chernobyl
core got released and let's say only one reactor at Fukushima is
leaking and it has half the total radioactivity of Chernobyl. That
would mean the Chernobyl release was 4% of the leaking core at
Fukushima. The figures from the article indicate 0.1% (more
accurately, 0.07%) of the Chernobyl release escaped from Fukushima per
hour for two hours.
This would be 4% x 0.0014 =.0056% of the core of one Fukushima reactor.
Given that a sizeable fraction of the fuel rods have melted down (as
reported by TEPCO) and given that there is a significant leak out of
the containment vessel, and given they are pouring tons of water into
the vessel to cool it off, that doesn't sound extremely pessimistic
to me. YMMVG.
The trick at Fukushima will be to dissipate the heat without
dissipating the radioactivity. They should be able to accomplish this
trick if they can restore the primary cooling systems. But if they
can't, and they have to keep pouring tons of water into the reactors
then a significant percentage of the radioactivity in the core will
probably leave the reactor. It doesn't necessarily have to get into
the environment but it is going to be one heck of a messy problem.
According to the
Nuclear Energy Agency
the majority of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl was in
Xenon-33 with a half-life of 5 days. This was followed by Iodine-131
(half-life 8 days) and Tellurium-132 (half-life 78 hours). The next
most active element released (measured in Becquerels) was only 3% of
the Xenon released, and it has a half-life of 13 days.
If I read the report from the NEA correctly then ISTM I was comparing
apples to apples.
Furthermore, unless one or more of the reactor cores at Fukushima has
gone critical again after the shutdown then any direct product of the
fission reactions that has a half-life measured in minutes was gone
after the first day of the accident, well before the meltdowns and
hydrogen explosions and measured releases of significant amounts of
radioactivity.
There are certainly very short-lived isotopes that are part of the
decay chain of long-lived isotopes. Iodine-131 is a perfect example.
The problem is that they will continue to be created for the duration
of the longer-lived isotopes.
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary
calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of
radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake
and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the
accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international
scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on
the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the
1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
If the levels they are reporting are correct then every hour (for a
few hours) Fukushima was releasing roughly 0.1% of the total release
from Chernobyl. If those levels were maintained for a day (which they
were not), that would be almost 2% of Chernobyl per day.
My mistake. Thanks for the correction. Since your comment asking for the
time unit was under the post about the XKCD chart, I had ASSumed you
were talking about the chart. It never occurred to me that you had
actually read the article.
Uh, the Nazgul wouldn't have been around, as they were recipients of
the rings of power.
Uh, those would have been proprietary Rings of Power®, just like
the One Ring to Rule them All®, which was also mentioned in the
press release. The good peoples of Middle Earth had become suspicious
of the proprietary Rings of Power after seeing recipients turn
into Nazgul and such.
The newly released Open Source Rings of Power have all of
the power and benefits of the proprietary RoPs and have the
appearance of less of a downside. It is a win-win for both Sauron
and for his minions.
100 millisieverts per...? A millisievert is a specific amount.
A millisiervet is a specfic amount. It is a measure of
dosage and since the chart is a chart of dosages, there is no
per anything.
For example, the chart says one chest x-ray gives you a dose of 20
microsieverts. That is the total dose you get from the chest x-ray.
There are no time units involved. It is like someone tells you that
it is approximately 400 miles from Memphis to Knoxville and you then
ask "miles per what?".
I grant you that media reports often incorrectly give dosage rates in
millisieverts instead of the correct millisieverts per hour. FYI,
when this happens, just assume it is per hour unless otherwise stated.
But the XKCD chart does not suffer from this flaw.
Here is another example. The XKCD chart says that 8 sieverts
is a fatal dose even with treatment. If a worker at the Fukushima
Daiichi plant enters the turbine building for reactor #2 and is
exposed to 1 sievert per hour, how long does he have to stay
there before he receives this fatal dose? How long does he have to
stay there before he exceeds his dose limit?
Extra credit. Suppose you hear media reports that the radiation level
in the turbine building of reactor #3 is 100 millisieverts. How long
do you think a worker would have to be in that turbine building before
he receives his dose limit?
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but why can't they remove the fuel rods
instead of trying to cool them on site?
TEPCO has
reported that a significant percentage of the fuel rods
have been damaged. The hydrogen explosions indicate the damage
was actual melting. Melted fuel rods are causing all the problems and
no one even knows where the melted fuel has ended up.
The levels of radiation inside the reactor buildings was reported to
be too large to measure. I believe this means much greater than one
sievert per hour. It is quite possible people would be killed or
incapacitated before they were able to do much good. There is too
much debris in the reactor buildings (due to the explosions) to be
able to send in robots.
They are flooding the reactors with hundreds of tons of water per
day to keep them cool. A lot of this water is becoming highly
radioactive, making it deadly and, if anything, the level of
radioactivity in the water is even higher inside the reactor
buildings.
Work to restore the primary cooling system on reactor #2 has been
completely stymied for almost two weeks as they deal with the highly
radioactive water that leaked into the turbine building. AFAIK
there are no plans to send people into the reactor buildings. I
think it is unlikely people will ever go back inside them.
To make a medical analogy, we are a medic under fire on a battlefield,
and we are having trouble applying CPR to keep a soldier alive and you
are suggesting we could solve all his problems by performing open
heart surgery.
Considering these buildings [the reactor buildings] are supposed to be nearly
hermetically sealed, why the snot do the plans call for a pipe that goes out
[to] the friggin ocean?
Your mistake was believing the bullshit some people have been spouting
that the reactor buildings were a third layer of containment after the
ziroconium clad fuel rods and the containment vessel.
Here is excerpt from an article from earlier in the crisis called
Containment vessel failure unlikely:
The containment vessel is the last line of defense for containing
lethal radioactive materials, and significant damage would pose grave
safety concerns.
Drains and tunnels actually make sense. When a reactor is
functioning properly, almost all of the radioactivity is contained
within the zirconium clad fuel rods. The water circulating around
the rods that acts as both a cooler and a moderator (a moderator
slows neutrons down to enable the chain-reaction) is not highly
radioactive. For example, the water that flooded the turbine building
for reactor #2 and a nearby tunnel is 100,000 times more radioactive
than the water found inside a functioning reactor. I believe the
water that was pouring into the ocean from the pit was only 10,000
times more radioactive. The drain was also never intended to pass
tons of water (radioactive or not) into the ocean. The amount of
radioactivity was probably more than 6 orders of magnitude greater
than what was intended.
Your observation highlights the fact that the reactor buildings were
never designed or intended to be a serious containment in the event
of the failure of the containment vessel and fuel rods. Tens of
thousands of tons of highly radioactive water have already escaped
via routes other than the direct drain into the sea. It is therefore
highly unlikely that plugging that drain will substantially reduce
the amount of radioactivity that is spewing from the reactors.
Well it does look like they have finally got this under control, at least for the most part.
Plugging one leak does not mean the situation is even close to being
under control. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Japan's Nuclear and
Industrial Safety Agency,
said:
... no further leakage has been detected from the pit. But there is a
possibility that the water, which has lost an outlet, could show up
from other areas of the plant.
The highly radioactive water is believed to have come from the No. 2
reactor core, where fuel rods have partially melted, and ended up in
the pit. The pit is connected to the No. 2 reactor turbine building
and an underground trench connected to the building, both of which
were found to be filled with highly contaminated water.
Thousands of tons of highly radioactive water had already been found
in many places outside the reactor buildings even before the direct
leak into the ocean was discovered. Is there anything more
substantial than crossed fingers and wishful thinking that makes you
think the flow of highly radioactive water will halt now that they've
plugged the direct outlet into the ocean?
In addition:
According to estimates by TEPCO announced Wednesday, 25 percent of the
nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the No. 3 reactor. The company
earlier said that 70 percent of the No. 1 reactor's fuel rods and 30
percent of the No. 2 reactor's fuel rods have been damaged.
Nishiyama said past hydrogen explosions have likely occurred due to
hydrogen accumulation caused by the reaction of melted fuel rods'
zirconium with steam from the coolant water. But now there is concern
that hydrogen could accumulate in the No. 1 reactor under a different
process involving radiation-induced decomposition of water into
hydrogen and oxygen.
The
installation of billion dollar radiation shielding
around the reactor buildings has to be
delayed until at least September because, of the high level
of radioactivity. In other words, they need to wait for the current
levels of radioactivity to decay before it is safe enough to install
radiation shielding. So, ISTM, the September date is optimistically
assuming the ongoing contamination will magically stop.
Yet, even if the shielding could be installed tomorrow:
Some experts were sceptical about the feasibility of the measure as
the step would have only limited effects in blocking the release of
radioactive substances.
That is because the bulk of the release of radioactivity is downward
in the water, not upward into the air.
The shielding story highlights the challenge they are up against.
The level of radioactivity around the plants (and in the plants)
is so high, it is impeding their efforts to control the amount of
radioactivity escaping. For example, work to restore the primary
cooling system for reactor #2 has been halted for almost two weeks
because of the high levels of radiation in the turbine building.
The
radiation level, due to highly radioactive water in the building, is
over one sievert per hour. So a worker hits their lifetime dose limit
less than 15 minutes. Someone who lingers there for an 8 hour shift
will die regardless of what treatment they receive. It's been
reported that the level of radioactivity in reactor buildings 1, 2,
and 3 is too high to measure.
They are pouring hundreds of tons of uncontaminated water onto
(into?) the reactors every day to cool them. Thousands of tons of
this water has come out contaminated with radioactivity and has
flooded the turbine buildings, tunnels outside the buildings, and the
ground. They don't know how the water is getting contaminated or the
routes it is taking
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes. The goode olde days back before corporate America had completed their vise-like gripe on all four branches of government.
Yes. This is a common mistake. Those public documents are not the terms of the settlement that geohot is not allowed to discuss. Those documents are part of the public record. It would be ridiculous for Sony to prohibit geohot from divulging terms that are part of the public record.
Settlements have two parts: the public part (that in this case has been splashed all over the web) and the private part. It is the private part that geohot cannot discuss. Often when a corporation pays money to settle a case, one of the terms of the settlement is that the person getting the money can't divulge the amount. I'm not saying this therefore means that Sony paid geohot, but ISTM that if the terms all favored Sony then they wouldn't demand that geohot be silent about them.
We don't know what the deal was. We don't know what's going to happen to the leftover donation money. But we do know that you can still buy a t-shirt sporting Sony's private key. ISTM this is a major victory. Doesn't this enable other people to continue hacking on the PS3? I'm going to wait and see what is going to happen to the donations before I condemn geohot.
When you get older (I'm referring to geohot, not the Slashdotter who buys civilization with taxes) you learn to choose your battles. I'd much prefer that the question of whether the DMCA covers jailbreaking be decided in a court that was not quite so bend-over-and-pick-up-the-soap friendly to corporate interests.
Yes. I know he said that which is why I'd be very happy if my donation to his defense fund garnered him the advice that led to this settlement.
He is not allowed to discuss the terms of the settlement (and those terms have not been made public) but he has said:
I will address the donations in a forthcoming post, and I think people will be happy.
I suggest we cut him some slack and find out what is going to happen with the donations before we crucify him.
As for NISA, I clearly stated they acknowledge it's serious, and I acknowledge it's serious, but they are comparing to Chernobyl because everyone else is, and because it's one of the only nuclear disasters in history that reached a certain scale.
My point was that the poster I responded to said "... comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-nuclear propaganda." after the NISA was making that very comparison. I'm glad you now agree with me.
The Japanese media coverage of the quake, tsunami, and nuclear problem has been far, far less sensational than the coverage in the West. The media in Japan were not comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl before the NISA started doing it in their press conference yesterday. NISA were the ones that got the comparison ball rolling.
We agree that the harm done by Chernobyl is much greater than the harm done by Fukushima, so far. Your claim that the fuel rods will never explode at Fukushima was contradicted by a half-hour special on Fukushima aired by NHK World a couple of days ago. Their nuclear expert said that radioactivity will continue to leak out of the reactors because they have to continue to inject water into them in order to prevent an explosion that will burst open a containment vessel. This is an example of one of your assumptions.
Your other assumptions are confounded with your conclusions. As I said before, the truth is that we do not yet know the full extent of the damage that will be caused by Fukushima. TEPCO says the situation is not under control and it will take them a month (at least) to get it under control. You are assuming that after it is all said and done, the total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be dwarfed by Chernobyl and you use this assumption to conclude that the total harm done by the Fukushima accident will be dwarfed by Chernobyl. I am not the one speculating. I've been saying we simply don't yet know the full extent of the damage yet.
People donated to geohot's defense to get him the legal advice needed to fight Sony. Obviously, his legal advisors told him accept this settlement. It would have been a far greater waste of the donations if geohot had failed to follow the legal advice the donations paid for.
Thank you for elevating the level of discussion.
The point is that before yesterday's press conference, whenever the NISA mentioned Chernobyl, they said that Fukushima was not comparable to it. The (scant) numbers they provided on the total amount of leaked radioactivity were many orders of magnitude lower than the Chernobyl release. Now they have revised their estimate upward by many orders of magnitude to 10% of the Chernobyl release which is why they spent most of the press conference comparing and contrasting Fukushima with Chernobyl.
The headline of the Japan Times Online was:
Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Are they stupid anti-nuclear scare-mongering idiots too? Whether you like it or not, whether it suits your agenda or not, the big news in Japan right now is that for the first time since the accident the NISA is comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl even though the damage caused by the Fukushima accident is, so far, much less.
Calling me a stupid pedant for using words as they are defined is rather ridiculous. If your definition of the word differs from what is in the dictionary, that's fine. Just say so and we can be done with it. It doesn't necessarily mean you are stupid. Likewise, I'm not stupid just because the definition I use happens to agree with definition in the dictionary.
I've spent over a week reporting the news about Fukushima I have gotten from the Japanese media before it trickles into the Western press, often delayed and garbled. For my efforts I've been called a stupid know-nothing idiot by people who have preconceptions that don't match the news I'm reporting.
My only mistake was quoting the wrong part of the post I was responding to. I should have quoted this phrase:
... comparisons to Chernobyl at this point is pure idiocy and scaremongering - classic anti-nuclear propaganda.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) spent a significant portion of their press conference yesterday comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl. ISTM both you and poster I was responding to are accusing the NISA of indulging in pure idiocy and scaremongering.
The fact that a lot of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima is coming out in highly radioactive water instead of smoke and dust like in Chernobyl, might mitigate the damage it causes. OTOH, it might not. Perhaps it will delay for a few years the time it takes for the radioactivity to enter the biosphere. ISTM you are making some pretty far-fetched assumptions and then presenting them as facts that should be obvious to us all. The truth is that, at this point, we just don't know what the health effects from Fukushima will be. One thing that is clear, at least to me, is that it is unhelpful to brand people as idiot scaremongers for merely repeating what the NISA said in their press conference.
Clearly, the harm caused by Chernobyl in both blood and treasure is much greater than the harm caused by Fukushima so far. But the release at Fukushima is ongoing and, unlike Chernobyl, effects of what has already been released may take months or years to reach their peak. For example, after the Chernobyl disaster the peak of radioactivity in fish high on the food chain occurred six months after the peak of radioactivity in the ocean.
If highly radioactive water is leaking into the ground it could take years before it gets into the water table. That will mitigate the harm from short-lived isotopes but won't substantially reduce the potency of Cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years.
The Guardian posted an excellent rebutal to this point of view by Helen Caldicott: How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation . The article you linked dismissed this article disparagingly with a three word ad hominem attack: "mad Auntie Fear" without addressing, let alone countering, any of her arguments. Instead, the Register article repeats the very mistakes Caldicott had identified.
Helen Caldicott is a medical doctor. She taught pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School for two years before turning her focus to researching and reporting the health hazards of nuclear power.
OTOH, Lewis Page (assuming it is the same Lewis Page):
... served as an officer in the Royal Navy from 1993 to 2004, and is now an author and authority on military matters.
You can also get an idea of his expertise by looking at his other articles at the Register.
It is amazing that you think the article by Lewis Page is authoritative since he has absolutely no expertise on the subject; he totally ignores criticism from a person who is an authority; and he dismisses the authority with a rude ad hominem attack. OTOH, his level of discourse would fit right in with the irrational, faith-based pro-nuclear advocacy here on Slashdot.
Use English much?
Comparable: adjective 1. Able to be compared or worthy of comparison.
If you listen to the press conference given by Japan's Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) you will hear them repeatedly comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl. The title of the FA from the Japan Times was: Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level.
Comparable does not mean identical. If the release from Fukushima was 0.001% of the release from Chernobyl, I would say they were not comparable. I think 1% might be borderline but 10% certainly makes them comparable. The fact of the matter is that NISA spent a significant portion of their press conferencing comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl.
To put this in perspective, in previous reports of highly radioactive water pouring directly into the ocean and highly radioactive water in turbine buildings and tunnels, the total amount of radioactivity was six orders of magnitude lower than the amounts discussed now. These were the highest Fukushima releases I had heard about before yesterday. Before yesterday I was saying Fukushima was not comparable to Chernobyl. Now it obviously is.
The reality is, the current rating is based on radiation at the source NOT its comparability in scope to Chernobyl.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency disagrees with you. Their spokesman, Hidehiko Nishiyama, repeatedly compares Fukushima with Chernobyl:
"It's considerably different from Chernobyl," said Nishiyama. "The mount of radioactive materials released at Fukushima is about a tenth of that in the Chernobyl accident."
In the same article, (titled Fukushima crisis now at Chernobyl level) a TEPCO spokesman said:
Level 7 indicates a massive amount of radioactive leakage. We deeply apologize to residents around the plant and Fukushima Prefecture and people in the society for causing concerns and troubles,"
Your faith-based belief in the safety of nuclear power regardless of the actual facts is sad.
Good question! Radioactive materials (containing radioisotopes) emit radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) and it is this radiation that is directly harmful. Each radioactive atom is a teeny tiny time-bomb that goes off at a random time. Some radioisotopes go off faster than others. The time it takes for half the atoms of a particular isotope to go off is the half-life of that isotope. Health-wise, two of the most important radioisotopes created in nuclear power plants are Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 (Caesium-137) with half-lives of 8-days and 30-years respectively. They are important because they accumulate in the body in specific sites where the radiation they emit is concentrated in a small volume.
Nuclear fuel rods normally emit radiation but very little radioactivity. The radiation can be shielded and is also diminished by the r-squared law (for example the Sun emits a massive amount of radiation but it doesn't hurt us because it is so far away and is also because it is partly shielded by the atmosphere).
So while it is radiation that does the direct damage, the major problem in a nuclear power plant accident is the emission of radioactivity. It is all those little time-bombs waiting to go off, particularly the time-bombs that are absorbed by the body and have a half-life equal to or less than the human lifespan such as Iodine-131 and Cesium-137.
The problem at Chernobyl was the emission of radioactive materials in the smoke and gas after the explosion. At Fukushima the problem is the emission of radioactive materials in the released steam and water. At Chernobyl almost all of the radioactivity went up into the air. At Fukushima, most of it is going down into the ground and ocean.
On NHK World, a Japanese official is explaining why they are raising the severity to 7. He is talking about Chernobyl a lot. He said that to date, the amount of radioactivity released from Fukushima is 10% of the total release from Chernobyl.
I hope you're right. Let's run some numbers. Say 2% of the Chernobyl core got released and let's say only one reactor at Fukushima is leaking and it has half the total radioactivity of Chernobyl. That would mean the Chernobyl release was 4% of the leaking core at Fukushima. The figures from the article indicate 0.1% (more accurately, 0.07%) of the Chernobyl release escaped from Fukushima per hour for two hours.
This would be 4% x 0.0014 = .0056% of the core of one Fukushima reactor.
Given that a sizeable fraction of the fuel rods have melted down (as
reported by TEPCO) and given that there is a significant leak out of
the containment vessel, and given they are pouring tons of water into
the vessel to cool it off, that doesn't sound extremely pessimistic
to me. YMMVG.
The trick at Fukushima will be to dissipate the heat without dissipating the radioactivity. They should be able to accomplish this trick if they can restore the primary cooling systems. But if they can't, and they have to keep pouring tons of water into the reactors then a significant percentage of the radioactivity in the core will probably leave the reactor. It doesn't necessarily have to get into the environment but it is going to be one heck of a messy problem.
According to the Nuclear Energy Agency the majority of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl was in Xenon-33 with a half-life of 5 days. This was followed by Iodine-131 (half-life 8 days) and Tellurium-132 (half-life 78 hours). The next most active element released (measured in Becquerels) was only 3% of the Xenon released, and it has a half-life of 13 days.
If I read the report from the NEA correctly then ISTM I was comparing apples to apples.
Furthermore, unless one or more of the reactor cores at Fukushima has gone critical again after the shutdown then any direct product of the fission reactions that has a half-life measured in minutes was gone after the first day of the accident, well before the meltdowns and hydrogen explosions and measured releases of significant amounts of radioactivity.
There are certainly very short-lived isotopes that are part of the decay chain of long-lived isotopes. Iodine-131 is a perfect example. The problem is that they will continue to be created for the duration of the longer-lived isotopes.
The Japan Times reports:
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
If the levels they are reporting are correct then every hour (for a few hours) Fukushima was releasing roughly 0.1% of the total release from Chernobyl. If those levels were maintained for a day (which they were not), that would be almost 2% of Chernobyl per day.
Come on, the guy's got a point. Nobody "Youtubes" for anything nowadays. The whole secret Youtube plan to take over search never got off the ground.
Darl? Is that you?
My mistake. Thanks for the correction. Since your comment asking for the time unit was under the post about the XKCD chart, I had ASSumed you were talking about the chart. It never occurred to me that you had actually read the article.
Uh, the Nazgul wouldn't have been around, as they were recipients of the rings of power.
Uh, those would have been proprietary Rings of Power®, just like the One Ring to Rule them All®, which was also mentioned in the press release. The good peoples of Middle Earth had become suspicious of the proprietary Rings of Power after seeing recipients turn into Nazgul and such.
The newly released Open Source Rings of Power have all of the power and benefits of the proprietary RoPs and have the appearance of less of a downside. It is a win-win for both Sauron and for his minions.
100 millisieverts per...? A millisievert is a specific amount.
A millisiervet is a specfic amount. It is a measure of dosage and since the chart is a chart of dosages, there is no per anything.
For example, the chart says one chest x-ray gives you a dose of 20 microsieverts. That is the total dose you get from the chest x-ray. There are no time units involved. It is like someone tells you that it is approximately 400 miles from Memphis to Knoxville and you then ask "miles per what?".
I grant you that media reports often incorrectly give dosage rates in millisieverts instead of the correct millisieverts per hour. FYI, when this happens, just assume it is per hour unless otherwise stated. But the XKCD chart does not suffer from this flaw.
Here is another example. The XKCD chart says that 8 sieverts is a fatal dose even with treatment. If a worker at the Fukushima Daiichi plant enters the turbine building for reactor #2 and is exposed to 1 sievert per hour, how long does he have to stay there before he receives this fatal dose? How long does he have to stay there before he exceeds his dose limit?
Extra credit. Suppose you hear media reports that the radiation level in the turbine building of reactor #3 is 100 millisieverts. How long do you think a worker would have to be in that turbine building before he receives his dose limit?
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but why can't they remove the fuel rods instead of trying to cool them on site?
TEPCO has reported that a significant percentage of the fuel rods have been damaged. The hydrogen explosions indicate the damage was actual melting. Melted fuel rods are causing all the problems and no one even knows where the melted fuel has ended up.
The levels of radiation inside the reactor buildings was reported to be too large to measure. I believe this means much greater than one sievert per hour. It is quite possible people would be killed or incapacitated before they were able to do much good. There is too much debris in the reactor buildings (due to the explosions) to be able to send in robots.
They are flooding the reactors with hundreds of tons of water per day to keep them cool. A lot of this water is becoming highly radioactive, making it deadly and, if anything, the level of radioactivity in the water is even higher inside the reactor buildings.
Work to restore the primary cooling system on reactor #2 has been completely stymied for almost two weeks as they deal with the highly radioactive water that leaked into the turbine building. AFAIK there are no plans to send people into the reactor buildings. I think it is unlikely people will ever go back inside them.
To make a medical analogy, we are a medic under fire on a battlefield, and we are having trouble applying CPR to keep a soldier alive and you are suggesting we could solve all his problems by performing open heart surgery.
Considering these buildings [the reactor buildings] are supposed to be nearly hermetically sealed, why the snot do the plans call for a pipe that goes out [to] the friggin ocean?
Your mistake was believing the bullshit some people have been spouting that the reactor buildings were a third layer of containment after the ziroconium clad fuel rods and the containment vessel. Here is excerpt from an article from earlier in the crisis called Containment vessel failure unlikely:
The containment vessel is the last line of defense for containing lethal radioactive materials, and significant damage would pose grave safety concerns.
Drains and tunnels actually make sense. When a reactor is functioning properly, almost all of the radioactivity is contained within the zirconium clad fuel rods. The water circulating around the rods that acts as both a cooler and a moderator (a moderator slows neutrons down to enable the chain-reaction) is not highly radioactive. For example, the water that flooded the turbine building for reactor #2 and a nearby tunnel is 100,000 times more radioactive than the water found inside a functioning reactor. I believe the water that was pouring into the ocean from the pit was only 10,000 times more radioactive. The drain was also never intended to pass tons of water (radioactive or not) into the ocean. The amount of radioactivity was probably more than 6 orders of magnitude greater than what was intended.
Your observation highlights the fact that the reactor buildings were never designed or intended to be a serious containment in the event of the failure of the containment vessel and fuel rods. Tens of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water have already escaped via routes other than the direct drain into the sea. It is therefore highly unlikely that plugging that drain will substantially reduce the amount of radioactivity that is spewing from the reactors.
Well it does look like they have finally got this under control, at least for the most part.
Plugging one leak does not mean the situation is even close to being under control. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said:
... no further leakage has been detected from the pit. But there is a possibility that the water, which has lost an outlet, could show up from other areas of the plant.
The highly radioactive water is believed to have come from the No. 2 reactor core, where fuel rods have partially melted, and ended up in the pit. The pit is connected to the No. 2 reactor turbine building and an underground trench connected to the building, both of which were found to be filled with highly contaminated water.
Thousands of tons of highly radioactive water had already been found in many places outside the reactor buildings even before the direct leak into the ocean was discovered. Is there anything more substantial than crossed fingers and wishful thinking that makes you think the flow of highly radioactive water will halt now that they've plugged the direct outlet into the ocean?
In addition:
According to estimates by TEPCO announced Wednesday, 25 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the No. 3 reactor. The company earlier said that 70 percent of the No. 1 reactor's fuel rods and 30 percent of the No. 2 reactor's fuel rods have been damaged.
Nishiyama said past hydrogen explosions have likely occurred due to hydrogen accumulation caused by the reaction of melted fuel rods' zirconium with steam from the coolant water. But now there is concern that hydrogen could accumulate in the No. 1 reactor under a different process involving radiation-induced decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The installation of billion dollar radiation shielding around the reactor buildings has to be delayed until at least September because, of the high level of radioactivity. In other words, they need to wait for the current levels of radioactivity to decay before it is safe enough to install radiation shielding. So, ISTM, the September date is optimistically assuming the ongoing contamination will magically stop. Yet, even if the shielding could be installed tomorrow:
Some experts were sceptical about the feasibility of the measure as the step would have only limited effects in blocking the release of radioactive substances.
That is because the bulk of the release of radioactivity is downward in the water, not upward into the air. The shielding story highlights the challenge they are up against. The level of radioactivity around the plants (and in the plants) is so high, it is impeding their efforts to control the amount of radioactivity escaping. For example, work to restore the primary cooling system for reactor #2 has been halted for almost two weeks because of the high levels of radiation in the turbine building. The radiation level, due to highly radioactive water in the building, is over one sievert per hour. So a worker hits their lifetime dose limit less than 15 minutes. Someone who lingers there for an 8 hour shift will die regardless of what treatment they receive. It's been reported that the level of radioactivity in reactor buildings 1, 2, and 3 is too high to measure.
They are pouring hundreds of tons of uncontaminated water onto (into?) the reactors every day to cool them. Thousands of tons of this water has come out contaminated with radioactivity and has flooded the turbine buildings, tunnels outside the buildings, and the ground. They don't know how the water is getting contaminated or the routes it is taking
I think I see the distinction you're making. One case is about humans being stupid and greedy, the other is about greedy, stupid humans.
Always better to have the rocket ready *before* the first launch rather than after.