TEPCO Rose

[Octafish]

This nice Lady Barbara Judge, a former SEC lawyer and now UK regulator extraordinaire, wants to keep the world safe for nuclear power.



The mood at Fukushima Daiichi is "fantastic."

Lady Barbara Judge: Japan's smart nuclear weapon

The head of the UK's Pension Protection Fund has been drafted in to help assure the residents of Fukushima that its reactors are safe

MARGARETA PAGANO
The Independent (UK) SUNDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2013

Lady Barbara Judge is just back from inspecting the nuclear plants at Fukushima in Japan, the ones closed down after the devastating earthquake and tsunami two years ago. She visited the control rooms at Daiichi – plant one – where three of the reactors went into meltdown and met many of the men who risked their lives by working during the emergency to cool the over-heated reactors and eventually shut them down.

It's not what she expected but the mood there was " fantastic". "What was astonishing was the optimism and hope shown by the workers that these plants can be made safe, and that they can start operating again," she says. But this was in stark contrast to the mood of the Japanese public, still in a state of shock and strongly opposed to the restoration of the nuclear programme.

Already being hailed as Japan's nuclear saviour, Lady Judge was in Fukushima with the bosses of the plants' owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which was criticised for its bungled reaction to the catastrophe. It's her first trip since being appointed deputy chairman of Tepco's new Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, set up after the disaster to propose a new self-regulatory structure for the industry. If all goes well, Tepco hopes to persuade the new government – said to be more favourable than the last – to restart two of the plants later this year.

SNIP...

It's her long experience of Britain's nuclear industry that attracted the Japanese, who rarely bring in outsiders, let alone a woman. Lady Judge's credentials go back to 2002 when she became a director of the UK's Atomic Energy Authority, and was then chairman for six years until 2010. She is still closely involved with the industry so, a few days after returning from Fukushima, was able to take Tepco executives to the West Midlands' Oldbury site to show how it has been decommissioned using the strictest safety protocols.

SNIP...

Yet there's one group of people who stay stubbornly anti-nuclear – women, especially the more educated ones. Wherever you are in the world, she says, all the focus groups show that it's better-off women who don't trust fission.

CONTINUED...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/lady-barbara-judge-japans-smart-nuclear-weapon-8497747.html

It seems that government service in the United States can open doors to [s]money[/s] opportunity in the United Kingdom. From the comment section at e-news we learn:

weeman
February 17, 2013 at 10:29 am

Tokyo Rose I have named her, just like the second world war the propaganda machine is on full spin cycle and we all know the false lies that they promote and brainwashing of populace.

...

Time Is Short
February 18, 2013 at 2:09 pm

Here's a big reason she was brought in:

'Radioactive Asia: There Will Be 100 Additional Nuclear Reactors in Asia in 20 Years'

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/02/radioactive-asia-there-will-be-100.html

If she's working for those that control the majority of the uranium mining/processing, you can see the money involved.

Can't let the murder of 8 billion people get in the way of third-quarter profits, can we?

...

Sickputer
February 16, 2013 at 9:20 pm

Her track record has not always been so cheery:

April 23, 2010

"WASHINGTON—Massey Energy Co., owner of a coal mine where 29 workers were killed this month, on Monday said that the board member responsible for governance had resigned because of the demands of "other ongoing business activities."

Lady Barbara Thomas Judge's resignation, effective immediately, comes amid growing criticism of the management of the Richmond, Virginia, company. For months, shareholders had complained that Lady Judge was unable to devote enough time to the job because she served on too many corporate boards. The complaints about Massey's corporate governance intensified after a coal-mine explosion two weeks ago that was the deadliest in 40 years."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703757504575195070711065984.html

Another article in 2007:

"But questions remain. Why does Lady Judge need so many jobs? How did she land her role at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, when she had no relevant experience? Is it relevant that a female friend was on the selection panel?
Lady Judge bristles. She points out that, as a lawyer, it is her job to master a subject about which she is initially ignorant. To prepare for her role at the Atomic Energy Authority, she even studied her son's physics books. She also has a strategic business role, which she is well equipped to carry out.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-452635/Is-best-connected-woman-Britain

The monied class have zero compunction about irradiating the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere or any which way they slice up their planet and protect their loot with the nukes We the People have so kindly paid for.



It's getting apparent that us renters are SOL. Fantastic.

PS: Cross-posted from GD.

[wtmusic]

1. What "murder of 8 billion people" are you talking about?

[Octafish]

2. I imagine that refers to plutonium exposure.

You know how that stuff behaves, right?



What everyone should know:

DOE-STD-1128-98

Guide of Good Practices for Occupational Radiological Protection in Plutonium Facilities

EXCERPT...

4.2.3 Characteristics of Plutonium Contamination

There are few characteristics of plutonium contamination that are unique. Plutonium
contamination may be in many physical and chemical forms. (See Section 2.0 for the many
potential sources of plutonium contamination from combustion products of a plutonium fire
to radiolytic products from long-term storage.) The one characteristic that many believe is
unique to plutonium is its ability to migrate with no apparent motive force. Whether from
alpha recoil or some other mechanism, plutonium contamination, if not contained or
removed, will spread relatively rapidly throughout an area.

SOURCE (PDF file format): http://www.hss.doe.gov/nuclearsafety/techstds/docs/standard/DOE-STD-1128-2008.pdf

Some science news that seems to have been missed, with Kim Kardashian, the fiscal cliff, and all...

J Environ Radioact. 2011 Dec 27. (Epub ahead of print)

Radionuclides from the Fukushima accident in the air over Lithuania: measurement and modelling approaches.

Lujanienė G, Byčenkienė S, Povinec PP, Gera M.

Source

Environmental Research Department, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Savanoriu 231, 02300 Vilnius, Lithuania.
Abstract

Analyses of (131)I, (137)Cs and (134)Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs ranged from 12 μBq/m(3) and 1.4 μBq/m(3) to 3700 μBq/m(3) and 1040 μBq/m(3), respectively. The activity concentration of (239,240)Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011 was found to be 44.5 nBq/m(3). The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed at the site of investigation. (7)Be and (212)Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of (131)I and (137)Cs were found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of (134)Cs/(137)Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of (238)Pu/(239,240)Pu in the aerosol sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl accident.

SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22206700

And what a little bird told no one in particular...

Plutonium bioaccumulation in seabirds

Dagmara I. Strumińska-Parulska, Bogdan Skwarzec, Jacek Fabisiak

University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Chemistry, Analytics and Environmental Radiochemistry Chair, Sobieskiego 18, 80-952 Gdańsk, Poland

Received 7 April 2011. Revised 5 July 2011. Accepted 16 July 2011. Available online 23 August 2011.

The aim of the paper was plutonium (238Pu and 239+240Pu) determination in seabirds, permanently or temporarily living in northern Poland at the Baltic Sea coast. Together 11 marine birds species were examined: 3 species permanently residing in the southern Baltic, 4 species of wintering birds and 3 species of migrating birds. The obtained results indicated plutonium is non-uniformly distributed in organs and tissues of analyzed seabirds. The highest plutonium content was found in the digestion organs and feathers, the smallest in skin and muscles. The plutonium concentration was lower in analyzed species which feed on fish and much higher in herbivorous species. The main source of plutonium in analyzed marine birds was global atmospheric fallout.
Highlights

► We determined 239+240Pu in seabirds living in northern Poland at the Baltic Sea. ► We noticed plutonium was non-uniformly distributed in organs and tissues of seabirds. ► We found the highest plutonium content in the digestion organs and feathers. ► We found Pu content was lower in birds feeding on fish and higher in herbivorous.

SOURCE: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X11001676

Gee. The plutonium must be from Chernobyl, seeing how Lithuania's clear on the other side of the world from Fukushima. Right?

Invisible things don't just "move." Right? Ask any global warming denier or GOP candidate.

Are you hearing about this on the tee vee, wtmusic? Is it in your local newspaper? It should be, as it demonstrates the immediate health risk Fukushima has created for all the people of planet earth.

[wtmusic]

3. Sounds like the seabirds are healthy.

Who's murdering seabirds?

This isn't related to that Mayan Calendar thingy, is it? You know that was discovered to be a hoax.

[Octafish]

4. According to your way of thinking, wtmusic, plutonium must be good for you.

That's not what I got out of the articles.

[FBaggins]

8. Is that what passes for logic these days?

Either it's going to kill everyone on Earth (and apparently almost everyone in China twice)... or it's good for you?

[Octafish]

11. Fantastic catch!

BTW: Any thoughts on TEPCO's new spokesperson?

[FBaggins]

12. What about him/her?

And why should we care?

[Octafish]

13. Lady Barbara Judge is the subject of the post. Do you have anything to add about her?

That's what.

[FBaggins]

18. She's the subject of the thread... not the post.

Yout post asked me what I thought of Tepco's new spokesman.

She isn't their spokesman. She's on that relatively new outside advisory board.

I know almost nothing about her - and thus have no opinion. If she can help educate people away from their irrational and unfounded fears... great.

[Octafish]

29. Thanks. Very astute observation, FBaggins.

Except for the part about where you mention "educate people away from their irrational and unfounded fears..." Neither irrational or unfounded, nuclear power presents problems many orders of magnitude greater than any it solves. Nuclear power's impact on human health, the storage of waste, and the proliferation of material for weapons are just three problem areas the answers to which are not even up for discussion in a democratic manner.

Mrs. Judge seems, to me, anyway, to be just another industry lackey, hired most recently by TEPCO to protect its corporate interests and the continued promotion of nuclear power as a viable form of energy in Japan and around the world. So, that is...not so great.

[PamW]

34. This is where EDUCATION is needed..

Octafish states
Nuclear power's impact on human health, the storage of waste, and the proliferation of material for weapons are just three problem areas the answers to which are not even up for discussion in a democratic manner.

This is where EDUCATION is needed. Contrary to what someone has told you; there really IS NOT a "problem" of nuclear power's impact on human health. You may be able to point to some medical researchers that are anti-nuke activists before they are good scientists, but the VAST majority of the medical research shows that nuclear power is not having an adverse effect on human health. The radiation we receive due to using nuclear power is TRIVIAL compared to what we receive from Mother Nature and her radioactive planet. Courtesy of the University of Michigan Health Physics Society chapter:

http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm

The dose due to the use of nuclear power and all its supporting activities labeled "Nuclear Fuel Cycle" in the table, is <0.03% of the average person's annual radiation exposure. That's well within the capability of our body's radiation damage repair mechanism; so any exposure is repaired. Likewise we see from large studies conducted by the cancer researchers like the National Institute of Health's National Cancer Institute:

No Excess Mortality Risk Found in Counties with Nuclear Facilities

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/nuclear-facilities

Evidently you are a non-scientist, because most scientists know that the nuclear waste "problem" is really a solved problem, and has been so since the beginning. The solution to the longevity of nuclear waste is to reprocess / recycle the long-lived isotopes, like Pu-239; back to the reactors to be used as fuel. Nuclear physicist and Associate Director of Argonne National Laboratory, Dr. Charles Till, explains the process in this interview with PBS Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

By reprocessing / recycling, you can transmute the long-lived waste like Pu-239 which lasts for many thousands of years, into short lived fission products that have the short lifetimes Dr. Till relates above. We don't need to have to store / isolate nuclear waste from the environment for thousands of years in a repository. That was a problem created by the anti-nukes when they got the US Congress to mandate the USA's "once through" fuel cycle and outlawed the real solution back in 1978. That was a problem that the anti-nukes created for us so they could complain about the problem of long-lived waste. Other countries, like France; reprocess / recycle. The USA should do the same, as well as build reactors like the IFR Dr. Till speaks of since the IFR is a good "actinide burner" and can burnup our accumulated stockpile of long-lived isotopes.

The third point about nuclear proliferation is another "red herring" brought to you by the anti-nuke propagandists. There are specially built "production reactors" like those at Hanford and Savannah River in the USA that make all the plutonium in the USA's nuclear weapons. NONE of the plutonium in US nuclear weapons came from commercial power reactors. Commercial power reactors don't produce "weapons grade" plutonium, they produce "reactor grade" plutonium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor-grade_plutonium

The degree to which reactor-grade plutonium is less useful than weapons-grade plutonium for building nuclear weapons is debated, with many sources saying it is difficult or impossible, and others saying it is relatively easy with modern technologies like fusion boosting to overcome predetonation...

Nuclear reactions are much, much faster than any mechanical assembly of the bomb's core. There are isotopes of Plutonium, namely Pu-240 and Pu-242, that spontaneously fission without the introduction of a neutron. A certain level of Pu-240 and Pu-242 is found, even in "weapons grade" plutonium, but the production reactors minimize this. Even with weapons grade, one can't use the "gun assembly" method as was done in the Uranium-fueled "Little Boy" bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The Los Alamos scientists were working on a plutonium gun until they got the first samples of Hanford plutonium and found that the spontaneous fission of Pu-240 / Pu-242 gave so many neutrons that they couldn't assemble the bomb core fast enough with a gun, before the neutron-induced nuclear reactions blew it apart. You get a very small explosion, not a big nuclear explosion. That's the "pre-detonation problem" referred to in the above wiki article. That's why Los Alamos had to switch to an "implosion" type of bomb for the Fat Man that destroyed Nagasaki.

If there's enough Pu-240 / Pu-242 in the plutonium, then it's impossible for even an implosion system. The IFR makes spent fuel that is very high in Pu-240 / Pu-242 which is why Dr Till states in the interview above:

Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

You may have heard that weapons scientists made a nuclear bomb with "reactor grade" plutonium. That is true; they did that in 1962. It's also true that they did that with 1962-vintage "reactor grade" plutonium; not modern vintage.

Back in 1962, we had the Generation I nuclear power plants like Yankee-Rowe and Connecticut Yankee. The degree to which the levels of Pu-240 / Pu-242 are present is measured by a quantity called "burnup". The higher the burnup, the less suitable the plutonium is for weapons. In 1962, the Generation I reactors put out spent fuel with burnups of about 12,000 Mw-D/MT ( Megawatt-Days per metric tonne ). The AEC wondered if that spent fuel could be used to make bombs, and asked the weapons labs to check it out. They got some Generation I burnup fuel from the British as detailed in the wiki article above. They found they could; although they used some advance methods to accomplish it ( More on that later ). When the labs determined that spent reactor fuel could be used; that fact was classified.

However, nuclear reactor technology moved on, those old Generation I reactors were retired, and by the late '70s; we had a bunch of Generation II power reactors whose typical discharge burnup was 40,000 to 45,000 Mw-D/MT. That's WAY, WAY too high to be used for bombs. Since the spent fuel from the then current reactors was too high to be used for weapons; the DOE ( AEC's successor ) declassified the fact that those old Generation I reactors could be used to make bombs. It was now safe, because we didn't have them anymore.

Nuclear reactor technology has continued to improve, and those Generation II reactors are now getting about 55,000 to 60,000 Mw-D/MT burnup from their discharge nuclear fuel. So more than ever; one can't use current Generation II reactors to produce bombs.

As detailed by Dr. Till; Generation III and Generation IV reactors ( like IFR ) have even higher burnups and are even more impossible to be used to make bombs.

Additionally, the wiki article mentions that "fusion boosting" can help a bomb designer use less than "weapons grade" fuel. However, "boosting" is a rather advanced nuclear weapons design technique. Just like the "Teller-Ulam Principle", the basic idea of boosting has been declassified, but NOT the details of how you do it. The weapons designers that made that 1962 explosion with then reactor-grade fuel, were able to do experiments to learn the details of how to do boosting on bombs that didn't need boosting that were made with weapons-grade plutonium.

If all you have is reactor-grade plutonium when you make your first nuclear bomb; how do you learn to do boosting? You have a "chicken and egg" problem. You can't get your first nuclear explosion with reactor-grade plutonium unless you do boosting. You can't learn to do boosting until you have a way to do a nuclear explosion. "Chicken and Egg". Boosting doesn't help you do your first nuclear explosion with reactor grade plutonium.

Because of this; nuclear scientists consider the proliferation risk of modern power reactors to be pretty much a "red herring". The technique of boosting is useless to a new nuclear proliferant, and the current and future reactors can defeat ANY nuclear bomb building attempts.

Of course that doesn't stop a bunch of anti-nukes and anti-nuke organizations from complaining about a solved problem. To me it's a little like a bunch of people who would like to ban automobiles. They keep complaining about how much unburned hydrocarbons that cars put into the air. However, the numbers that they are using come from 1962 when cars didn't have catalytic convertors. Cars have had catalytic convertors for decades, and any future internal combustion engine driven cars will also have catalytic convertors. So these complainers are really quite dishonest.

So with a little scientific education; your seemingly intractable problems simply evaporate.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

35. I like education Thanks Pam

Now, I know you get upset when DUmmies like me ask questions, but that's what happens when education happens, right? More damn questions...

So bear with me here...

In your post above, you are saying that reactor produced plutonium can hardly be used to make weapons because: and I quote:

""Commercial power reactors don't produce "weapons grade" plutonium, they produce "reactor grade" plutonium:

The degree to which reactor-grade plutonium is less useful than weapons-grade plutonium for building nuclear weapons is debated, with many sources saying it is difficult or impossible, and others saying it is relatively easy with modern technologies like fusion boosting to overcome predetonation...

Nuclear reactions are much, much faster than any mechanical assembly of the bomb's core. There are isotopes of Plutonium, namely Pu-240 and Pu-242, that spontaneously fission without the introduction of a neutron.""

I think I have figured out what good ol' Arnie has been trying to tell us. This: Fukushima reactor plutonium experienced spontaneous fission.

And in so doing, was not a weapons grade explosion. But that the visual clues and the material clues of ex-containment nuclear debris spread around the world as detailed by this report that you posted elsewhere:

http://www.ctbto.org/press-centre/highlights/2011/fukushima-related-measurements-by-the-ctbto/

The CTBTO’s monitoring system, custom-tailored to detecting nuclear explosions, can detect a range of radioactive isotopes, among them Iodine-131 and Caesium-137. Looking at the ratios between the various radioactive isotopes – in particular Caesium-137 – enables the source of the emission to be identified. In the case of the current readings, findings clearly indicate radionuclide releases from a damaged nuclear power plant, which is consistent with the recent accident at Fukushima in Japan.

[PamW]

36. Spontaneous fission.

Last edited Sat Feb 23, 2013, 08:09 PM - Edit history (1)

RobertEarl stated:
I think I have figured out what good ol' Arnie has been trying to tell us. This: Fukushima reactor plutonium experienced spontaneous fission.

Just so you know; it was NOT a case of spontaneous fission not happening and then all of a sudden it happened and we got an explosion. That is NOT the case.

In any amount of Plutonium that contains Pu-240 and Pu-242; even weapons grade plutonium; spontaneous fission is happening ALL the time.

In any macroscopic amount of Pu-240 / Pu-242; there are huge numbers of atoms of Pu-240 / Pu-242. So even though the probability per atom is small; since there are a huge number of atoms; there is a constant background of neutrons due to these spontaneous fissions.

In weapons grade plutonium, the amount of Pu-240 / Pu-242 is low enough so that this background of neutrons is low enough. Even though when in a bomb the background neutrons will start multiplying as the bomb assembles, the original level is low enough that the bomb doesn't predetonate or disassemble before assembly is complete.

If you have reactor grade plutonium, the presence of more Pu-240 / Pu-242 means the background level is higher. This means that the amplification of the neutron population needed to get enough energy production to predetonate or disassemble the bomb core is less; because you started with a higher level to begin with. That means it takes less time, and the predetonation can "beat" the assembly and cause the bomb to fizzle out. That's why you can't make a bomb with reactor grade plutonium.

Arnie Gundersen was TOTALLY WRONG in EVERYTHING he said.

What you saw in the Unit-3 explosion was a hydrogen explosion that occurred OUTSIDE the containment building. As a result of that explosion, a bunch of non-radioactive structural material was dispersed. However, that explosion wasn't the source of the radioactive contamination as Gundersen claimed.

However, CTBTO claimed that it saw contamination from a damaged reactor. That is correct. So where did the contamination come from? The Fukushima reactors are BWRs. That means that the Rankine cycle working fluid, the water that turns to steam to drive the turbines goes through the reactor:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-bwr.html

Contrast that with the PWR which has separate water loops for reactor coolant and Rankine working fluid:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html

You can see the difference. The reactor coolant in the PWR is that yellow loop which gives up its heat in the heat exchanger / steam generator; but is otherwise sealed off from the Rankine working fluid water that goes through the turbine.

When Fukushima lost its diesel generators due to the tsunami, it lost the power to run the cooling pumps. Therefore, the plant couldn't circulate water and dump heat to the environment benignly. After the quake, the reactor shut down, but due to the radioactivity, there's still heat being produced, and the reactor needs to be cooled. The plant didn't have any offsite power to run the pumps, but it did have those diesel generators which kicked in automatically.

So for the first hour after the earthquake, the pumps circulated water through the reactor, and then through some valves that bypass the turbine ( "turbine bypass valves" ) and sent steam directly to the condenser where it was cooled by that dark blue loop at right. The condenser acts like the heat exchanger in the PWR and allows heat to be transferred from reactor coolant to that dark blue loop at right. Because the two loops are isolated from each other; there's no radioactivity that is discharged by that dark blue loop. Therefore, the plant can cool the reactor without discharging radioactivity, the same as it does when it's at power and turning the turbine.

However, an hour or so after the earthquake, the tsunami hit. No question, the Japanese had a very poor design of the "balance of plant". They had the fuel tanks for those backup diesel generators sitting at dockside above ground for convenience of filling. The diesel generators and their electric switchgear were in the basement which flooded. The fuel tank got swept away by the tsunami water.

So the plant was left without power to run those pumps you see in the diagram.

So in order to cool the plant, the operators purposefully opened valves to vent steam to the environment. Unlike PWRs, where the steam is separate from the reactor coolant; the steam in a BWR is the same water that goes through the reactor. Because the reactor overheated and the tubes that contain the fuel oxidized; radioactive fission products that were created when the fission reaction was going on before the quake, got into the reactor coolant water. The operators were venting the steam made from that water to the atmosphere as a way to cool the reactor. This operation therefore meant that the operators were venting radioactive fission products to the atmosphere, on purpose.

It was the radioactivity from those venting operations that CTBTO captured and analyzed. The explosion really had little, if any; effect on putting radioactivity into the environment. It looks bad; but that's not what contaminated the environment. It was the venting by the operators.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

37. Turbine steam was in direct contact with the MOX fuel?

Last edited Sun Feb 24, 2013, 12:47 PM - Edit history (1)

This is the Fukushima reactor #3, right?

Pipes carrying steam from the core to the turbine carry particles of MOX fuel?

When the reactor overheated, the steam, polluted with MOX, ended up being vented to the atmosphere?

What happened after the water boiled and vented, and there was nothing left to cool the reactor fuel? The MOX fuel melted through the containment?

And there are similar plants still in operation? OMG!

[PamW]

40. Actually...

RobertEarl,

The MOX is a ceramic. When ever I explain this, I think of a couple of blue glass tumblers that my brother and I got when we were children. One of the soda fountains we used to go to had an offer in which you got to keep the glass the float was served in. My parents still have those blue glass tumblers.

What makes the glass blue is a blue pigment. Suppose you had some blue glasses like my parents have. Are you concerned that the blue pigment is going to come off on your hand when you handle the glasses; even when wet? Are you afraid that the blue pigment is going to come off when you wash the glasses?

The blue pigment is trapped in the glass.

The same is true for the uranium and plutonium in the ceramic fuel; they are trapped in the ceramic.
As long as you don't melt the ceramic; the heavy metals are trapped.

However, the ceramic fuel pellets are encased in zirconium tubes. In order to load the tubes with the fuel pellets, the pellets just slide into the tubes. That's because the outer diameter of the pellets is just a shade smaller than the inner diameter of the zirconium tube. So there's a little gap between the pellets and the tubes. When uranium and plutonium fission, the fission products, which are the remnants of the split nucleus repel each other after the fission. Those remnants get a bunch of kinetic energy in the process, and when they slow down, that energy becomes heat, and that's the heat that we ultimately turn into electric energy. These fission products usually come to rest somewhere in the ceramic fuel pellet, and are trapped. However, sometimes they come to rest in that little gap between the pellet and the tube. Some of the fission products are Iodine-131, Strontium-90, and Cesium-137.

So in that little gap between the pellet and the tube, you have radioactive "fission gas". When the zirconium overheats and oxides, and the tube falls apart, the fission gas that used to be trapped by the tube is no longer trapped, and gets into the coolant water. In a BWR, like Fukushima, the coolant water for the reactor is the same water that gets turned into steam for the turbine. So there is a path for these released radioactive fission gases to contaminate the turbine steam piping. However, there is not normally a path from that loop to the environment.

However, when Fukushima lost its electric power, it lost the capability to use coolant pumps to keep the reactor cool. So the operators vented that contaminated coolant loop to the atmosphere as a way of cooling the reactor. That is why Fukushima released Iodine-131, Strontium-90, and Cesium-137.

However, the Plutonium is trapped in those fuel pellets. There can be a small amount of Plutonium that escapes from the pellet surface. That's why the measurements show that the amount of Plutonium that was released to the environment due to the 4 reactors and the fuel pools was about 2 grams.

Very little of the Plutonium will escape the pellets. That's why nobody should be surprised that the Fukushima accident only released a couple grams of Plutonium.

As far as Iodine, Strontium, and Cesium; which were in those gaps; the calculations / measurement of those releases are as detailed in this post from the University of California - Berkeley:

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5774#comment-21635

PamW

[RobertEarl]

41. Tell us what you think of this, Pam

www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvrad

Analyses of 131I, 137Cs and 134Cs in airborne aerosols were carried out in daily samples in Vilnius, Lithuania
after the Fukushima accident during the period of March-April, 2011. The activity concentrations
of 131I and 137Cs ranged from 12 mBq/m3 and 1.4 mBq/m3 to 3700 mBq/m3 and 1040 mBq/m3, respectively.
The activity concentration of 239,240Pu in one aerosol sample collected from 23 March to 15 April, 2011
was found to be 44.5 nBq/m3. The two maxima found in radionuclide concentrations were related to
complicated long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the
Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling. HYSPLIT backward trajectories and meteorological
data were applied for interpretation of activity variations of measured radionuclides observed
at the site of investigation. 7Be and 212Pb activity concentrations and their ratios were used as tracers of
vertical transport of air masses. Fukushima data were compared with the data obtained during the
Chernobyl accident and in the post Chernobyl period. The activity concentrations of 131I and 137Cs were
found to be by 4 orders of magnitude lower as compared to the Chernobyl accident. The activity ratio of
134Cs/137Cs was around 1 with small variations only. The activity ratio of 238Pu/239,240Pu in the aerosol
sample was 1.2, indicating a presence of the spent fuel of different origin than that of the Chernobyl
accident.

[PamW]

43. Sure....

RobertEarl,

The peak concentration of radioactivity that you quote above is the 3700 mBq/m3 of I-131.

Let's calculate just how much I-131 there is for 3700 mBq.

First 3700 mBq ( milli-Becquerel ) is 3.7 Bequerels

We need the radioactive decay constant of Iodine-131. The half-life of I-131 is 8.0197 days:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131

Let's convert that to seconds:

8.0197 days = 8.0197 days * 24 hours / day * 3600 sec / hour = 692902.08 sec

The decay constant is the natural logarithm of 2 divided by the half-life:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli2.html

decay constant lambda = ln(2)/692902.08 sec = 1.00035e-06 inverse seconds

The radioactivity in Becquerels is equal to the product of the decay constant in inverse seconds and the number of atoms of the radioactive material:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli2.html#c3

dN/dt = -lambda * N ( the negative sign means the number of radioactive atoms goes down due to the decay )

The radioactivity is the magnitude ( absolute value ) of dN/dt

So lambda * N = 3.7 Bq

So N = 3.7 Bq / 1.00035e-06 inverse seconds = 3.699e+06 atoms

A "mole" is 6.023e+23 atoms. So the number of moles we have is

#moles = 3.699e+06 atoms / 6.023e+23 atoms/mole = 6.141e-18 moles

The mass of a mole is the atomic weight in grams. Since the atomic weight of I-131 is 131; then there are 131 grams per mole of I-131.

So the mass of the Iodine-131 with 3700 mBq is

mass = 6.141e-18 moles * 131 grams/mole = 8.044e-16 grams

which is a bit less than 1.0e-15 grams. 1.0e-12 grams is a trillion-th of a gram. 1.0e-15 is one thousand times less.

So the amount of Iodine-131 in that 3700 mBq is less than one-thousand-th of one-trillion-th of a gram.

Congratulations your largest radioactivity above is a MANIFESTLY TRIVIAL amount of I-131.

The radioactivity measured in Lithuania from Fukushima is just like the radioactivity measured in California from Fukushima; a fantastically TRIVIAL amount.

That radioactivity is 10s of thousands of times LESS than what Mother Nature is giving you courtesy of the fact that her Earth is radioactive, and Mother Nature is making new radioactivity all the time due to cosmic rays.

Now WHY are we concerned about this manifestly trivial amount of radioactivity, when Mother Nature is blasting us with 10s of thousands of times MORE?

Do you think someone would get upset if you brought a handful of sand to the beach? Do you think they would get upset that you were doing environmental damage by adding a handful of sand to what the beach naturally has? Are you "over-sanding" your beach?

This is one of the problems with the anti-nukes; they don't understand the science. They see a number like 3700, and think that 3700 of anything is a lot. They don't understand that a Becquerel is a really, really small amount of radioactivity. A mBq is a thousand times less.

One of the things that the anti-nukes really fail to appreciate is that we have the technology to detect EXTREMELY small amounts of radioactivity.

In answer to your question about what I thought of the facts you posted; NOT MUCH.

Why should I, or you for that matter; be concerned with such a TRIVIAL amount of radioactive material?

Mother Nature is blasting us with orders of magnitude more; and the anti-nukes are focused on this minutia, just because it came from Fukushima.

Go figure.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

44. Plutonium Pam

Go back and look at what the readings are for plutonium from Fukushima all the way around the world in Lithuania.

You claim from an anonymous link that is almost 2 years old there was just 2 grams of plutonium released from Fukushima, and I showed you a REAL SCIENCE based article that says plutonium released from Fukushima was so much that it showed up half way around the world.


Yeah, we know you think radiation releases are trivial. So trivial that you argue Denver is as radiated as Fukushima. Yet Art, who lives near there told you you don't know what you are talking about and you just ignored him like you ignored the plutonium in the REAL SCIENCE article I posted.

Link to Art's reply to you:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112736085#post31

"For example, here, about 500 feet above sea level 100 miles south of the Dai-ichi complex, the natural radiation level is about 0.09 to 0.1 microsievert per hour. Converted into millisieverts per year (the usual unit used for Denver), that would be approximately 0.7-0.8 millisievert, compared to 10 millisieverts of radon as an annual dose in Denver. However, this map and accompanying graph, which were compiled from February 2013 data, show that there are many hotspots in Fukushima that have much higher radiation levels than Denver (shown with red or darker squares in the map). The hottest spot is the Ottozawa district of Okuma Town, which is still registering more than 30 microsieverts per hour-- which is more than 300 times higher than the ambient radiation level in my city, and more than 26 times higher than the annual dose in Denver."


Plutonium from Fukushima found in Lithuania, Pam. What do you think about that?

[PamW]

46. I've looked...

The levels of Plutonium in Lithuania are consistent with what most of the world has.

The entire planet got a good "dusting" of Plutonium during the years 1945-1962 when the USA and the former Soviet Union due to atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. Those tests dusted the planet with over 10 metric tonnes of Plutonium.

Although nitwits like Helen Caldicott will tell you that a single kilogram of Plutonium in the environment will wipe out all life on the planet; and the above figure is 10,000 times what Caldicott says will destroy all life on the planet; the scientific truth is something else.

You can see how much that dusting of Plutonium is contributing to your radiation dose courtesy of the University of Michigan chapter of the Health Physics Society:

http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm

If you look at the entry "Fallout" you will see that the radiation exposure from all that Plutonium is <0.03% of the average person's annual exposure. Mother Nature is giving you over 3000 times the radiation exposure that you get from all that Plutonium.

The Plutonium found in Lithuania was tracked back to Fukushima. They found Plutonium in Fukushima and ASSUMED it must have come from Fukushima. They don't know that there is Plutonium spread all over the world courtesy of the USA and Soviet Union back in the '50s.

Fukushima added 2 grams of Plutonium to the 10 metric tonnes that the USA / Soviet Union already dusted us all with. TEPCO increased our Plutonium exposure by a trivial amount. The USA / Soviet Union did 500,000 times worse in Plutonium exposure to us than TEPCO did. We've been living with the Plutonium that the USA / Soviet Union distributed for more than half a century. However, the radiation due to all that Plutonium is really "small potatoes" compared to what Mother Nature is blasting us with.

I didn't ignore Art; I responded. Art didn't have any independent measurements. He lives there and can only confirm for us that the Japanese authorities have closed down areas. We didn't need independent confirmation from Art. Dr. Richard Muller and I both know that the Japanese authorities have closed down areas around Fukushima. What Dr. Muller was pointing out in his WSJ article is that the amount of radiation that is the limit for the Japanese authorities to close an area is one-third the amount of radiation exposure we tolerate in Denver.

Dr. Muller and I both say that there are areas of Fukushima prefecture close to the crippled plant that are higher than Denver; and we agree that the Japanese authorities should close those area.

The question is over the areas that are NOT as high as in Denver. The people in Denver are living healthy lives bathed in more radiation and the Denver authorities don't close down the city; when Japanese authorities are closing down areas that have a third of the "Denver dose".

Evidently you didn't get Dr. Muller's message from his WSJ article. Basically, Dr. Muller is saying that the Japanese authorities are "over-reacting" to the Fukushima threat. The only thing Art can confirm is that the Japanese authorities are reacting by closing down areas. Art can't tell us how much, or more to the point, how little radiation is causing the Japanese authorities to react.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

49. Denying science again, aren't you, Pam? Yep.

Japan is "over-reacting"? You think this is some game they are playing?

And you claim that the scientist from Lithuania don't know what they are doing when sampling radiation?

[PamW]

51. I don't doubt the Lithuaninan scientists..

I don't doubt the Lithuanian scientists at all - I doubt YOU.

How come you are always missing the point. I tell you that you are misunderstanding something, or that something is wrong with what you are saying; and you never quite get it.

You always come back with a claim that I'm doubting the science, or some other scientists.

I don't doubt them without evidence. I believe the reason for the discrepancy is YOU.

You read something, and you don't know the science, but you interpret it the way you WANT it to read. When I tell you that you are wrong; you "think" that I'm doubting the original source.

I'm sure the source of all distortions and discrepancies is you.

Let's take the Lithuanian story. The USA / Russia "dusted" the entire planet with Plutonium. You can find Plutonium from US / Soviet nuclear weapons testing anywhere you really look. So they found some Plutonium in Lithuania. I expect that. Plutonium is all over due to US / Soviet weapons tests.

Now YOU claim that Plutonium came from Fukushima and that the scientists that found it also make that claims.

OK - how did they know it was from Fukushima? Did they do DNA testing on that Plutonium?

Either give me a link to the original words of the Lithuanian scientists; so I can explain to you why you MISREAD what they wrote.

Or; YOU need to tell us how the Lithuanian scientists whom you've read, came to the conclusions you say they did.

Right now; the story is distorted and incomplete.

PamW

[wtmusic]

38. Bravo.

[RobertEarl]

39. Pam sure made this clear

It is the elephant in the room....

Nuke plants blow to smithereens when they are starved of the most abundant molecule on the face of this planet: H2O.

The nukers forgot to remember to keep water in the reactors.

[PamW]

42. You need to cool a reactor..

RobertEarl,

Yes - you need to be able to cool a reactor; both while it is operating, and after shutdown because the reactor is hot, and it has radioactive material in it. How many people here have a video projector, or a slide projector, or use either one at work? What happens when you turn it off? The fan still runs for a while in order to cool down the hot light bulb. The manufacturers warn you not to unplug the projector until the fans turn off.

That's what it is like for reactors. They need cooling when they are operating and they need cooling just after they shut down.

Nobody "forgot" that the Fukushima reactors needed water. In order for the water to do its job of cooling, that water has to be pumped from reactor to heat sink and back. The coolant pumps in the plants are electric, and so the operator have to be sure they have a reliable source of electricity.

In the case of Fukushima, they had the grid as a backup electric power source, and they had their backup diesel generators. The earthquake took out the grid. That left the backup diesel generators which were working for the first hour after the earthquake. However, that's when the tsunami hit.

You'll get no argument from me that TEPCO did some really poor planning in how that plant was configured. Fukushima would NEVER have been licensed in the USA. The fuel tank for the backup diesel generators was located above ground at dockside for easy refueling. The tsunami swept that tank away so there was no fuel for the backup diesels. Additionally, they put the diesels in the basement along with their switchgear. The tsunami flooded the basement and took out the diesels and switchgear. Without those diesels, they didn't have electric power for the coolant pumps, and had to resort to venting, which released radioactive material to the environment.

The NRC wouldn't allow a reactor in the USA to have diesel generators in the basement. When I was a graduate student at MIT, we toured Boston Edison's Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant. Pilgrim is a GE BWR with Mark I containment like Fukushima. We were on one of the upper floors of the reactor building following our guide, when we came upon two big diesel engines. After viewing the diesels, we got into a nearby elevator and rode up about two floors, and we were at the top floor of the reactor building. So I know personally that the diesels in the Pilgrim plant are high up in the reactor building and not in the basement.

Reactor operating companies in the USA also have some imaginative ways of ensuring that they have electric power in addition to the grid and diesels. One of the largest operators of nuclear power plants in the USA is Exelon which own / operates all the nuclear power plants in the Chicago area; the largest concentration of nuclear power in the USA. Exelon also owns the Peach Bottom plant in Pennsylvania on the Susquehanna River, just north of the Pennsylvania / Maryland border. Just south of that border, on the same river is a "run of the river" hydro-electric dam called Conowingo Dam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conowingo_Dam

The dam was built in 1926. However, the Conowingo Dam is just downstream of the Peach Bottom Nuclear power plant. Exelon, which owns Peach Bottom, also bought the Conowingo dam. There is a dedicated, underground powerline from the dam to the Peach Bottom nuclear plant. Conowingo dam is another backup power source to run the coolant pumps at Peach Bottom should they lose both the grid and their diesel generators as Fukushima did.

I'd say Exelon is doing better planning than TEPCO did.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

45. Wow, Pam.

Pam claims: ""Exelon is doing better than Tepco."" Wow, Pam, that has to be the most truthful thing you've ever written here.

Hey, while were at it here's a reply you might have missed from someone in Japan who tells you that your idea that Denver has as much radioactivity as Fukushima is, well, the reader can make up their own minds whether you are biased or not:

Art says:

"For example, here, about 500 feet above sea level 100 miles south of the Dai-ichi complex, the natural radiation level is about 0.09 to 0.1 microsievert per hour. Converted into millisieverts per year (the usual unit used for Denver), that would be approximately 0.7-0.8 millisievert, compared to 10 millisieverts of radon as an annual dose in Denver. However, this map and accompanying graph, which were compiled from February 2013 data, show that there are many hotspots in Fukushima that have much higher radiation levels than Denver (shown with red or darker squares in the map). The hottest spot is the Ottozawa district of Okuma Town, which is still registering more than 30 microsieverts per hour-- which is more than 300 times higher than the ambient radiation level in my city, and more than 26 times higher than the annual dose in Denver.

[PamW]

47. Again...

RobertEarl,

The information that I'm passing along is from Dr. Richard Muller, Physics Professor at the University of California - Berkeley and author of "Physics for Future Presidents". Professor Muller teaches the course at UCB that is Physics for non-science majors. He has an excellent way of getting technical information explained to non-scientists.

Neither Dr. Muller nor I deny that there are areas of Fukushima Prefecture that are higher in radiation levels than Denver. The area close to the plant is certainly higher in radiation than Denver.

What Dr. Muller points out is that there are areas of Fukushima Prefecture that have radiation levels that are one-third of what one finds in Denver. People in Denver are living healthy lives in those radiation levels. Dr. Muller isn't saying that all of Fukushima Prefecture should be open. He just points out that there are areas of Fukushima that the Japanese authorities have closed due to radiation levels, when the levels in Denver are 3 times higher and we don't close Denver because the radiation is all caused by Mother Nature.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332.html

PamW

[RobertEarl]

50. Another profound statement

Pam says: "The area close to the plant is certainly higher in radiation than Denver."

You are on a roll, Pam. First Exelon is better than Tepco, and now this gem. Just a fount of science coming through. Where will it end?

[PamW]

48. I'm glad you AGREE!!

RobertEarl,

I've never said that TEPCO did a good job with the building / operation of Fukushima.

I'm glad that you agree with me in the statement you highlighted:

Exelon is doing better than TEPCO.

For a moment, I thought you were going to be one of those people that made the argument that since TEPCO was so bad at managing a nuclear power plant; that ALL nuclear power plant operators are as bad as TEPCO, including the nuclear power plant operators in the USA. Therefore, we shouldn't have nuclear power plants in the USA because the operators we have here are just as bad as TEPCO.

I see now that you agree with me; that our nuclear power plant operators are better than TEPCO!!

I thought you might subscribe to the phoney argument above.

PamW

[AtheistCrusader]

5. She's not suggesting they are thinking about re-starting parts of the Dai-ichi plant is she?

Because that site is pretty well forked. Even 5 and 6 were damaged. Good luck fixing all that shit, let alone cleaning it up.

[Octafish]

6. Her hiring may be a PR move of the first stank rather than as a professional fixer-upper.

She has Creds™, coupled with a photo-op or two and Japan and the world will be safe for nuclear power again.

What someone named Sickputer found:

Sickputer
February 16, 2013 at 9:20 pm Log in to Reply
Her track record has not always been so cheery:

April 23, 2010

"WASHINGTON—Massey Energy Co., owner of a coal mine where 29 workers were killed this month, on Monday said that the board member responsible for governance had resigned because of the demands of "other ongoing business activities."

Lady Barbara Thomas Judge's resignation, effective immediately, comes amid growing criticism of the management of the Richmond, Virginia, company. For months, shareholders had complained that Lady Judge was unable to devote enough time to the job because she served on too many corporate boards. The complaints about Massey's corporate governance intensified after a coal-mine explosion two weeks ago that was the deadliest in 40 years."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703757504575195070711065984.html

Another article in 2007:

"But questions remain. Why does Lady Judge need so many jobs? How did she land her role at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, when she had no relevant experience? Is it relevant that a female friend was on the selection panel?
Lady Judge bristles. She points out that, as a lawyer, it is her job to master a subject about which she is initially ignorant. To prepare for her role at the Atomic Energy Authority, she even studied her son's physics books. She also has a strategic business role, which she is well equipped to carry out.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-452635/Is-best-connected-woman-Britain

"She may be the best connected woman in Britain." Great work, there. Information.

[RobertEarl]

7. K&R

No Nukes is good nukes. The evidence is clear. The science is well established. Just three accidents and the world is again dosed with plutonium. And there are tons of plutonium sitting in bunkers spread around the world.

And many accidents just waiting to happen. Actually, not accidents, but consequences that in time will find a way to become world wide problems. Unless we halt the opportunities.

Einstein, in his later years, worried about what man would do with such a destructive force without a change in our mode of thinking. We have not changed our mode of thinking, so Einstein has been proven correct to be worried. We should all be worried.

Thanks, Octafish, for this timely report.

[Octafish]

9. Nuclear war is crazy. Nuclear weapons are crazy. Nuclear power is crazy.

Here's a selection of DU articles that may be of interest for the not-insane, mostly from 2011...

Before and After photo show significant tsunami damage...

On the Poet's Trail

Helicopter pictures show devastation inside Fukushima reactor towers

Governments Covering Up Nuclear Meltdowns for 50 Years to Protect the Nuclear Power Industry

Surviving Chernobyl Cleaner: 'Tell The People Of Japan To Run!'

What part of what he said wasn't true?

First thing I'd do if I were fighting this nuclear disaster is get the Team the best gear.

The Return of Nukespeak

TEPCO - Plutonium is not dangerous. Where's the Boss?

Toxic plutonium seeping from Japan's nuclear plant

Japan's Nuclear Rescuers: 'Inevitable Some of Them May Die Within Weeks'

Fukushima from Space

Japan Nuclear Power Plants

Absolutely. A real shame - man's hubris.

Japan Nuclear Power Plants

A more-recent satellite image of Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1-4...

The SCALE of the devastation is incredible.

Jimmy Carter, USN - Nuclear Hero

Utility Engineer Warned of Tsunami Threat at Japanese Nuclear Plant

Voyage to Fukushima Daiichi

TEPCO was warned and took the cheapskate's way out.

Fukushima owners failed to follow emergency manual - report

The people's ancestors left monuments to remind them of the dangers...

Fukushima tsunami plan a single page

Doubts deepen over TEPCO truthfulness after president's sightseeing trip uncovered

Atomic Samurai -IAEA Humbled By Worker Courage at Fukushima Daiichi

Fukushima Radiation Data Quarantined by Governments of Japan and the United States. Why?

Absolutely. And some, if not most, cancer deaths can be avoided with forewarning and knowledge.

''We never meant to conceal the information, but it never occurred to us to make it public.''

Fukushima Daiichi Mystery Man Steps Forward

The Fukushima Crisis Demonstrates how Lowly the Global Elites Hold the Common People

Plutonium detected 40km from Fukushima plant

Trivializing Fukushima

Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday

A Public Service Announcement about Plutonium

PS: Thank you, RobertEarl, for fighting the good fight all these years. Amazing to see how far we've come and how far we have to go. It's interesting, in a way, to see who sides with War Inc.

[PamW]

10. There's tons spread around the world WITHOUT the bunkers.

RobertEarl states:
And there are tons of plutonium sitting in bunkers spread around the world.

There are tons of plutonium spread around the world WITHOUT the bunkers. There are tons of plutonium that are just spread around the world in the environment due to the years of atmospheric nuclear testing by the USA and the Soviet Union back in the 1950s. To be precise, there are 10 metric tons, which equals 10,000 kilograms or 10 million grams of Plutonium in the environment due to atmospheric nuclear testing. Here's a reference from Clark University, see page 5:

http://www.clarku.edu/departments/marsh/projects/community/plutonium.pdf

The largest amount of plutonium released into the environment comes from atmospheric nuclear bomb testing (1945-1962). About 10 metric tons of plutonium were released into the atmosphere during these tests.

The 10 metric tons of plutonium, summed with the other radioactive debris from the tests including Strontium-90 and Cesium-137; in total provides less than 0.03% of the average person's annual radiation exposure. Courtesy of the University of Michigan Health Physics Society chapter; see Table entry denoted "Fallout":

http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm

From the above, University of Michigan website; nuclear weapon test fallout is <0.03%. The vast majority of the average person's annual radiation exposure is due to Mother Nature.

BTW, while we have 10 million grams of plutonium in the environment already due to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Fukushima just added 2 grams to that 10 million gram total:

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5774#comment-21635

The BRAWM team at the Nuclear Engineering Dept. of University of California-Berkeley has been measuring and analyzing the fallout from the Fukushima event since the beginning. One of their members, Mark Bandstra, provided the above summary in the forum maintained by the BRAWM team of the total releases from Fukushima by isotope. If you sum the plutonium isotopes; you get about 2 grams.

PamW

[Octafish]

14. That paper was published in 2002. It's a good bet there's a lot more plutonium now.

Any idea how much plutonium was introduced to the environment when Reactor 3 containment building exploded?

As that reactor ran and stored many tons of "spent" MOX fuel, my guess would be more than a couple of grams.

Almost forgot: While the Michigan researcher may have been accurate in stating that the average person's annual radiation dose is due to nature, the statement is misleading as most isotopes of plutonium are alpha emitters, meaning the radiation can be blocked by clothing. What's disingenuous about the statement is that a microscopic amount of plutonium can be ingested, where it can remain in direct contact with tissues and lead to genetic damage.

[PamW]

15. WRONG!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!! Everything you said was 100% WRONG!!!

Octafish,

100% WRONG on all counts.

Your last paragraph is all wrong. When you calculate DOSE, you take into account any effects due to shielding. There are actually two "doses"; dose and dose effective. The dose is the amount of energy per unit mass actually deposited in tissue and is measured in "Grays" ( old unit was "rads" ). Because dose is the amount actually deposited, the calculation of dose has to account for any shielding. Then there is "dose effective". Dose effective is just like dose, with the exception that one takes into account the actual biological damage done; and that alpha particles cause more damage per unit energy deposited than gammas or electrons, i.e. beta particles. Dose effective is in units called "Sieverts" ( old unit was "rems" ). Because all the points you raise about shielding and the greater damage due to alpha radiation is taken into account when dose is calculated in Sieverts; there is nothing misleading at all in the University of Michigan table. Contrary to your ill-founded and ill-considered statements above; the issues you raise are actually taken into account when dose effective in Sieverts is calculated.

Evidently you are NOT familiar with the design of the General Electric Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) and its containment system. You are in ERROR in saying that the containment exploded. The building you see exploding is NOT the reactor containment building. The GE BWR Mark I containment has a "light-bulb" shaped building INSIDE the boxy building, and that light-bulb shaped building is the containment.

In the explosion, hydrogen was vented into the outer building, and mixed with air in this outer building. That's where the explosion took place; inside the boxy outer building. but OUTSIDE of the containment. The containment building was not blown up in the explosion. Additionally, any plutonium would be inside the reactor pressure vessel which is inside the containment. Therefore, there were TWO VERY STRONG boundaries between the plutonium in the core and that explosion.

The figures cited by the University of California - Berkeley are correct. The scientific consensus of the Universities and National Labs that were tasked to evaluate the consequences agree that 2 grams is the proper figure for the amount of plutonium released.

Your first point is also 100% in ERROR Almost ALL of the plutonium in the environment is due to atmospheric nuclear tests carried on during the years 1945 to 1962. In 1962, the nations of the world signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty which OUTLAWED atmospheric nuclear tests. The tests that you've heard about during the last 50 years are carried out underground. In those tests, the bomb melts the rock surrounding the explosion, and the plutonium and radioactive fission products are entrained or dissolved in the molten rock. The molten rock then cools, and traps the plutonium and radioactive fission products inside the solid rock.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

16. Uhhh, Pam? You do know this, right?

Some of the nuclear core material from 3 reactors at Fukushima have exited containment. You do know that, right? You do know that some pieces of core material were found miles away and some has melted into the ground underneath the cores.

[FBaggins]

19. I hope she doesn't know it...

... because it isn't even close to true.

Some of the nuclear core material from 3 reactors at Fukushima have exited containment

Put it that way and you're correct... some of the material (e.g., the most volatile) escaped from containment either in gaseous form during venting, or carried in water that leaked out of the containment.

The problem is... you never stop with that. You move on to:

You do know that some pieces of core material were found miles away and some has melted into the ground underneath the cores.

This simply isn't true. There haven't been chunks of core material found miles away... there has been fallout contamination (e.g., cesium) that clearly had to have come from the core... but not solid pieces of core ejected in an explosion. Nor has there been any evidence that any core material has "melted into the ground". All of the available evidence indicates that whatever corium is not still in the reactor vessels, is sitting on the floor of the primary containment.

[RobertEarl]

20. Hey, ya seen #4

You were arguing a while back that #4 was in fine shape.

Guess what, it lost two upper floors. So what you know about Fukushima and what the truth is are two different things. Guess here is that you are just afraid to know the truth?

[FBaggins]

21. Another straw man?

You were arguing a while back that #4 was in fine shape.

Could you cite what I actually said and then see if you can show any of it to be incorrect?

You've been challenged to do so multiple times in the past... and always run away instead.

What I have said remains true. Despite your errant beliefs, there was no criticality in the #4s fuel pool... there was no explosion from within the pool... there was no fuel fire... the pool was not (and is not) in danger of imminent collapse... etc.

[RobertEarl]

23. Building #4 has crumbled

Your refusal to accept that is weird. The top two floors are gone.

Building 3 is also wrecked and too dangerous for humans. Even robots die there due to the radiation levels.

And here's a DU link to plutonium found miles from the explosions. Gee, where did the plutonium come from? From the core.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2047270

[PamW]

25. WRONG AGAIN!!!

RobertEarl,

Because you don't know the physics or the design of the facility; you should STOP making deductions on your own.

Just because there were rather small amounts of plutonium found doesn't mean it came from within the core. There are limited amount of material outside the core that could be the source of the material found offsite.

PamW

[Octafish]

32. There are TONS of spent MOX (PLUTONIUM and URANIUM!!!) outside that core in the spent fuel pools.

MOX Battle: Mixed Oxide Nuclear Fuel Raises Safety Questions

Who knows where all that is today? There are reports of plutonium at various places in Fukushima, as well as aerosilized plutonium over Europe.



[font size="1"]Helicopter view of Fukushima Daiichi NPP Reactor 3, March 17, 2011.[/font size]

One thing is for certain: No one in authority has made a public accounting of it all, making clear the undemocratic and unscientific nature of nuclear power. So, we're left to guess or rely on TEPCO.

[FBaggins]

33. Another thread you should review

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112737008

There are TONS of spent MOX (PLUTONIUM and URANIUM!!!) outside that core in the spent fuel pools. - Who knows where all that is today?

All of that is still sitting right there in the pools.

There are reports of plutonium at various places in Fukushima, as well as aerosilized plutonium over Europe.

But not chucks of plutonium. And not in amounts that could be associated with Fukushima other than right next to the plant.

One thing is for certain: No one in authority has made a public accounting of it all,

Sorry. That's simply wrong. Multiple authorities have made an accounting and the detected amounts are consistent with those estimates.

[FBaggins]

26. You're kidding, right?

Where on earth are you getting your facts from?

You've been corrected on some of these errors several times and have never been able to back it up.

Repetition does not add credibility.

And here's a DU link to plutonium found miles from the explosions. Gee, where did the plutonium come from? From the core.

Regardless of where it came from... it matches what I said in the earlier post. We're not talking about chunks of fuel blown out of the core (or a fuel pool) in an explosion. We're talking about microscopic amounts indistinguishable from the plutonium that was already there. They couldn't even find enough to know that it was from Fukushima at all (and any visible amount would be far more than enough)

Building 3 is also wrecked and too dangerous for humans. Even robots die there due to the radiation levels.

So all of that work they've been doing has been using telekinesis?

[PamW]

28. Self-righteous anti-nukes.

FBaggins,

As a scientist, this is one of the things that infuriates me most with the anti-nukes - they are so damn self-righteous.

Contrary to what scientists and engineers do, the anti-nukes play "fast and loose" with the facts. If they are corrected on their "facts", they don't take heed.

That's where the "self-righteousness" of the anti-nukes kicks in. They "know" ( term used loosely ) that they are right; so they don't have to take care with their facts and figures. They can spread any type of misinformation and crap that they want, and ignore anyone that corrects them; all because they are "right"!

FBaggins, you've corrected another myth that the anti-nukes spread. For Heaven's sake, don't they know that when you are up in space and exposed to the radiation from the unshielded fusion reactors that we call "stars", that the radiation is more than what one finds in the Fukushima reactor buildings. We send robots with names like "Voyager", "Opportunity", and the like out to study the Universe, and those little robots aren't "fried".

I wish the anti-nukes would use their brains and do a "sanity check" on the information they spew before they spew this crap.

People have a right to their own opinions, but they don't have a right to their own facts.

PamW

[FBaggins]

30. You'll get a kick out of today's Dilbert

[PamW]

31. I'll have to send this to my colleague..

FBaggins,

I will have to send this to a Lab colleague who is one of the top experts in the field of asteroid deflection using nuclear weapons.

If the asteroid is a real "planet killer" like the one that killed the dinosaurs, or if we get a comet like the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that bombarded Jupiter several years ago where we don't have 20 to 40 years of advanced notice to deflect the comet; nuclear weapons are the best and only hope.

I just saw a program out of Australia that considered the nuclear option in terms of blasting the comet / asteroid to bits. You don't want / need to do that; you want to deflect it.

You want to put the object into an orbit that doesn't intersect the Earth's orbit. Every orbit is characterized by its energy. For example, let's take the simplest case of a circular orbit. The acceleration of an object in circular orbit is v^2/r ( velocity squared over radius ). If the object is going to be in stable orbit, then the acceleration of the object in orbit has to equal the acceleration of gravity, g. Thus the condition for circular orbit is v^2/r = g. Now let's multiply top and bottom of the fraction by the mass m of the object. Doing so is equivalent to multiplying by 1. 2 ( 1/2 mv^2 ) / mr = g. The quantity in parentheses is the kinetic energy of the object, E. So we can rewrite this as:

2E/mr = g

Now if you want to increase the orbital radius r; you have to increase the orbital energy by the same percentage so that the above equation remains valid for the new orbit.

So if you want to deflect an asteroid to a higher orbit that doesn't cross the Earth's orbit; you have to give it some more energy. If we are going to deflect the object; we have to supply the energy.

These objects are big and we are talking about large amounts of energy. Additionally, we have to transport that energy to space; and we can't lift massive objects to space. It takes big rockets to get Shuttles and capsules into orbit. It took the Saturn V to lift a 3rd stage that was powerful enough to send a little Apollo command / service module and LEM to the moon.

So we need a lot of energy in a light package. The best we have for that is nuclear weapons.

You don't blow up the asteroid. You blow up the nuclear weapon NEAR the asteroid. The radiation from the bomb will vaporize part of the objects surface, and that will blow off. The reaction to that blow off accelerates the object away from the bomb. That's how we put a lot of energy into a comet or asteroid.

http://education.llnl.gov/sos/lecture/427/

http://education.llnl.gov/sos/lecture/427/bios

I'll make sure Dave gets a copy of the above. Thanks.

PamW

[PamW]

22. YES - volatile materials

RobertEarl,

Yes - volatile materials like Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 and other gases were intentionally released during the venting.

As of yet, we do NOT KNOW that "some has melted into the ground". The disposition of the core is presently unknown; but it could be like the Three Mile Island Unit 2 meltdown in which the melted core was found at the bottom of the intact reactor vessel. There has been a lot of speculation especially by the anti-nukes as to what MIGHT have happened. But do NOT say "we know" when we most certainly do not know.

Some of the material was discharged to the environment and found miles away.

However, as I stated, the Universities and especially the National Labs that were tasked with calculating how much was discharged given the amounts found and extrapolating the amounts not yet found; have come up with the figure I gave; for plutonium the release is about 2 grams.

PamW

[Octafish]

17. Thank you for straightening me out, PamW.

Just one thing: I can't find where I wrote what you said I did, but I'll take your word on it.

As for what I did write above, I'm sorry about the typos, a missing word here or there that would have helped join predicate clauses or some such crapola. My eyes are getting old and I was never perfect, anyway. So, even with a typo or two, I don't see where I made any error of fact or in my analysis:

The explosion of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 represents a major catastrophe with global implications. Going by what my own eyes tell me, based on the imagery from the explosion and the area after, whatever was inside Reactor 3 Containment got spread far and wide by the explosion and who-knows-what-else. Gosh. I don't have to be a nuclear engineer to see that.



Oh. You know who else says plutonium is no problem? TEPCO:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x760038

While the story's been scrubbed, it's still around the web. Plus, I have a copy of the original on a CD somewhere.

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/03/29/unbelievable-tepco-plutonium-found-on-5-locations-around-fukushima-plant-a-week-ago-but-the-deadliest-substance-on-the-planet-poses-no-human-health-risk/

While I do not know how much plutonium was released, I am keenly interested in knowing. My concern is not just for my own personal safety, I want to make sure you don't get exposed to any more radiation than absolutely necessary.

[PamW]

24. But you need to be an engineer...

Octafish,

But you need to be an engineer to evaluate this properly.

I've heard this from others; "I saw this with my own eyes, and there must have been tons of radioactive material released..."

What you saw was mostly tons of structural material from the plant released. That's where it helps to be an engineer or scientist. Because you are not an engineer or scientist, you don't know what fraction, if any; of that material that you saw dispersed was radioactive. For all you know, 100% of the radioactive material could be safely locked away inside the inverted light-bulb containment and you saw a bunch of structural material from the building around it dispersed.

There's no way anyone can make a proper assessment of how much radioactivity was released if they don't know what parts of the plant are radioactive and what parts are not.

So I categorically REJECT your assertion that you don't need to be a nuclear engineer to make an accurate assessment. Without knowing what is radioactive and what is not; you may have just seen a bunch of structural concrete from the outer building dispersed which is not radioactive.

You have to understand that good scientists and engineers with the national labs were tasked by the President and Congress to get them the best possible analysis of the consequences; and that is the information that I have passed along.

PamW

[PamW]

27. Scientifically - I agree with the TEPCO assessment

Octafish,

I have to agree with what TEPCO stated in that release.

We could dig up some soil in your own backyard, and when we analyzed it, do you know what we will find? Plutonium.

That's because you find a small amount of Plutonium anywhere you dig up some ground. The entire world got a nice "dusting" with Plutonium courtesy of the USA and Soviet Union back in the 1945-1962 time frame when both nations conducted atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. So if someone tells me that they found Plutonium in their backyard, at the beach, or a few miles from a damaged nuclear power plant, my response is, "Of course you do!"

In addition to the amount from weapons test; there are trace amounts due to Mother Nature. Uranium is one of the most uniformly distributed elements in the Earth's crust. You can dig up a football-sized area to a depth of about 6 feet, and you can get a few kilograms of Uranium from the dirt. Uranium in small quantities is practically everywhere. Most of that Uranium is U-238 ( 99.3% to be exact ). Energetic cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere all the time and interact with our atmosphere to yield a "shower" of sub-atomic particles including neutrons. Stray neutrons are in our environment naturally. What happens when these stray neutrons interact with the U-238 that is everywhere in the soil? What happens is the same thing that happens in a reactor:

U-238 + n --> U-239 --> Np-239 --> Pu-239

Uranium-238 plus a neutron gives U-239, which quickly beta decays to Neptunium-239, which then quickly beta decays to Plutonium-239.

So there are trace amounts of Plutonium in the ground due to Mother Nature.

Now is this a problem for us? NOPE!!

First, Plutonium outside the body is NOT a problem. Plutonium as you correctly stated above is an alpha emitter. Have you ever heard that alpha particle can't even penetrate a sheet of paper? They can't. The alpha particle is the nucleus of the Helium-4 atom; it is a doubly ionized Helium-4 atom. Since it has a charge of +2 from the 2 protons; and the Coulomb force ( which is the "electric" force responsible for attraction of unlike charges and repulsion of like charges ) is a long-rang force; then that alpha is attracting all the electrons in the material around it and repelling all the nuclei of the material around it. That makes for a powerful stopping or braking force on the alpha. In a very short distance, the alpha has lost all its energy and becomes a harmless inert Helium atom. The distance that happens in is so short that it is less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. That's why a sheet of paper can shield against alpha particles.

You know what else can shield against alpha particles? The dead layer of skin on your body. If someone were to hold a chunk of Plutonium just above your hand or exposed arm or wherever; you would be showered with alpha particles from that Plutonium. However, all the energy of those alpha particles would be deposited in the dead layer of skin. Since the dead layer of skin is already dead; it can't be harmed by the alphas. So any alpha-emitter like Plutonium that is external to you is HARMLESS.

However, you can ingest the Plutonium also. If someone kicks up the dirt so that the Plutonium is in the air, you can breathe it in. You may be gardening with an exposed cut on your finger, and some dirt gets inside, and that dirt contains Plutonium. There are a multitude of ways in which the Plutonium can get inside you. Once inside, it isn't harmless. Now those alpha particles are depositing their energy in a very short track, but now that track is in living tissue. Because the energy is deposited in such a short distance; that's a lot of energy per mass of tissue. That's why alpha particles are so dangerous when they are interacting with living tissue.

However, as above, the amount of radiation exposure due to environmental Plutonium that is external to you is ZERO. When the National Academy of Science BEIR study ( Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation ) calculated those numbers that are in the University of Michigan webpage; they also considered the damage due to internal irradiation due to environmental Plutonium. That is where that <0.03% of your natural background exposure of radiation came from.

The biological damage due to the Plutonium that the USA and Soviet Union spread around the globe is a very small percentage of the radiation exposure that you are already exposed to courtesy of Mother Nature. TEPCO has just added a very small addition; no where near the 10 metric tonnes that the USA and Soviet Union already exposed the planet to.

So, in comparison to what Mother Nature already doses you with; the amount of exposure due to what the USA / Soviet Union did, plus the relatively trivial addition that TEPCO added due to Fukushima; is a rather trivial addition to what Mother Nature is exposing you to.

The vast bulk of the radiation exposure you receive is all courtesy of Mother Nature.

I know you probably are unwilling to accept it; but if you are really intellectually honest; you will have to concede that TEPCO was correct.

Additionally, the way we calculate radiation dose effective, both the methodology and units; are NOT something that someone came up with to mislead the public. This methodology is what scientists use to ensure they are not unduly damaged when working with radiation. It is also the methodology that medical doctors use when they plan radiation therapy to treat cancers and tumors.

When you see quantities quoted in "Sieverts"; you can be assured that the number is the best possible metric of the amount of biological damage that we have.

PamW

[PamW]

52. Lady Barbara Judge to give David J. Rose Memorial Lecture at MIT

MIT honors one of its former professors, the late Professor David J. Rose with the David J. Rose Memorial Lecture.

This year's David J. Rose Memorial Lecture will be presented by Lady Barbara Judge on March 4:

http://web.mit.edu/nse/events/rose-lecture.html

As detailed at right in the announcement, some of the previous presenters of the David J. Rose lecture include John Holdren (2010), Susan Eisenhower ( 2008), Mohammed El Baradei (2005), Albert Carnesale ( 1996 ), and Hans Blix ( 1989 )

PamW