TEPCO discusses holes in reactors

[Yo_Mama]

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_20.html

It appears they have been calculating from water injection rate tests. That's the only way you would get these stats currently. They're discussing both containment and reactor vessel damage.

[JDPriestly]

1. Horrible. This will affect the whole planet.

And every living cell on it.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Well, I'm glad no one is exaggerating today.

[madokie]

3. no exaggerating there

thats fact, facts you don't want to admit but thats facts

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Every cell?

I mean, really.

What's different about Fukushima over Chelyabinsk? Or the USS Thresher? Or K-219? Or all the nuclear waste we've been dumping, as a species, into the sea over the last 60 years?

There were at least 8 operational naval reactors lost to the crushing depths of the much smaller Atlantic over the last 50 years. Rods. Containment. Hundreds of nuclear warheads. Nuclear torpedoes. And 55 gallon drums full of no one knows what, from who knows where, dumped all over the place.


But Fukushima is going to 'affect every living cell'.


I needed a laugh, thanks.

[madokie]

5. That laugh is at your expense so laugh all you want

[AtheistCrusader]

26. Oh, and I am.

I drank the local milk, and ate the local lettuce tonight.

I will be just fine.

[Yo_Mama]

6. No, it won't

That is a ridiculous statement - in most of the world, ambient radiation exposures just aren't going to change.

But it certainly is an extremely serious accident which has wide-ranging implications, we do not yet know the end point, and clearly it will be quite some time before the radiation contamination is halted.

It wasn't in this article, but TEPCO's plan to deal with the suppression chamber leak on 2 is basically to dig up the concrete floor and use a special compound to grout around the suppression chamber. When I last checked the roadmap, they were testing the compound in the lab.

[madokie]

7. but you have to admit that this is raising the ambient radiation throughout the world

or lie to me about that one and I don't think you're a liar. In fact I kinda like you as I agree with you most times. :hi:

[localroger]

8. Nobody is saying that

In fact what atheistcrusader was trying to get through to you is that unless you live fairly close to the plant -- in Japan, or across the Sea of Japan in nearby Asia, for example -- this is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to all the other things that have raised ambient radiation over the last 70 years. Fukushima will be a terrible disaster for those local to the site, a major headache for Japan as a nation, will most likely get (accurately) blamed for elevated death tolls in some nearby countries, but it does not in any truthful sense represent an existential threat either to life or the human species as a whole.

In the US we are most likely to see some statistical anomalies which suggest some old and sick people died who might have pulled through in other years, but nobody will be able to say "Fukushima killed Granny" because even if an omniscient observer might be able to know that Fukushima actually did push Granny over the edge into her casket, it will only be because Granny was pretty damn close to dying anyway and there will be no particular reason to suspect the extra radiation in any such particular case.

Even in the very worst case possible scenario there is a limited amount of nuclear material at Fukushima. There is no obvious mechanism to lift that material into the stratosphere, as there was with the carbon bonfire at Chernobyl, so most of it is going to either stay in Japan or go into the ocean where it will be at maximum dilution by the time it is transported half way around the world. If you are going to obsess over Fukushima while ignoring all the other factors already out there that atheistcrusader mentioned, such as the sunk nuclear reactors and dumped waste, you're just being irrational.

[kristopher]

9. "a drop in the bucket compared to all the other things that have raised ambient radiation"

I'm guessing you somehow think that exonerates using nuclear to boil water?

In fact you are making madokie's point for him since he certainly seems to be talking about the cumulative radioactive pollution that is, on a case by case basis, being dismissed by corporate apologists.

[madokie]

11. He's too busy trying to blow smoke up my ass to realize that though

funny how that works with that crowd, huh

[localroger]

14. And what crowd is that, madokie?

I don't see any pro-nuclear sentiment anywhere on this thread. What I see is anti hysterical overreaction sentiment, which is important because overreaction weakens the case that nuclear power truly is dangerous when we try to bring it up with powerful people whose financial interests might be threatened by doing the right thing.

[madokie]

16. I can tell by your avatar where you stand

might want to change that if you want me to believe what you're saying concerning bringing something up with the powerful people whose financial interest might be threatened by doing the right thing. :rofl:

[localroger]

19. Actually, you misread that badly

Nobody who is pro-nuclear would use the nuclear danger warning symbol as an avatar. My father was a nuclear physicist and I used nuclear sources in a project that went to and won at the international science fair. I am not afraid of radiation, because I know how to handle it, but I am very afraid of my fellow humans handling radiation because I know they don't.

I am not harping on you here because there is no danger or because I want to make the danger look small. I am harping on you here because you are making all of us who are wary of nuclear power look like idiots by blowing it all out of proportion.

[localroger]

13. As a matter of fact, no

I have a first edition of The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age in a spot where I am guaranteed to see it frequently. I am pretty down on the whole idea of humans using nuclear power on a widespread basis, but I was also raised by a nuclear physicist so I am pretty up on having my i's dotted and t's crossed. Hysterical overreaction does not win the case with someone who is truly undecided or does not have all the facts.

[kristopher]

20. Hysterical over-reaction?

Do me a favor, save your "objectivity" and apply it to the nuclear apologists that live here to protect the corporate interests behind nuclear power. If you want a real problem to focus your razor mind on, their falsehoods and misrepresentations are legion and some of that approbation directed at eliciting the facts about the claims made by the nuclear crowd and the manner of argumentation they employ would be far more effective at reaching those who are "undecided" than chiding someone who is worried about radiation from a multiple meltdown affecting their family.

[localroger]

22. Yes, hysterical over-reaction

Look, I was one of the first people saying Fukushima 1 and 3 had melted down. No, really, melted down. In the first couple of weeks. I was telling everybody that. But on the other hand, no, it's not going to affect us very much here. Be glad of that. If it had happened to one of the similar reactors in the US it would be affecting us very much, and something like that might still happen.

But it has not. It has happened about as far from here as it is possible for it to happen, and for that I am extremely thankful to whatever forces of Chance might (but probably don't) exist to influence such things. I have plenty to worry about. I have a swollen Mississippi rive running a few hundred feet from the place I work, I see tornadoes of unprecedented fury knocking down towns in my country. On a personal level Fukushima is NOTHING compared to those things. NOTHING. It is a rounding error. If you do not understand that then you are being an idiot.

This would not be true if I was in Japan, as a couple of my in-laws are; they are fortunately in the southern part of the country so my worry for them is properly moderated. As your worry should be moderated. Because you are using rhetoric that suggests this single event is somehow the END TIMES HARBINGER OF THE APOCALYPSE AND THEN WE ALL FAIL and all it is is just another punctuation mark on a sentence that has been being written since 1943. If you do not understand that you do not understand anything, you do not understand what you are talking about, and I think we've made that very clear by now.

I am firmly against the widespread use of nuclear power, which is one of several reasons I chose the nuclear danger symbol (out of a rather limited vocabulary) to be my avatar here. (I do favor having a few reactors for certain things that can't be done any other way, such as radiomedicine and space expedition power. But we're obviously not talking about that sort of thing here.)

If you persist in marking anyone who disagrees with you on any particular point as an enemy who is opposed to you on everything, you will have few friends and get nothing done. Our current President does a much better job of that. I'd guess you might not like him much either for similarly narrowly focused reasons.

[kristopher]

23. I don't think I've ever encountered so many strawmen in such a short rant.

I really don't give a rats ass if you want to think of yourself as a superior being of reason correcting those of lesser minds, but what you are actually doing is attempting to impose your values on others and falsely representing their positions to enable your bullpuckey to make sense to yourself.

So I'll repeat the same thing I said earlier, IF you are against nuclear power as you say, then put that razor sharp intellect to work exposing the nuclear industry for the liars and sneaks that they are and stop mischaracterizing the positions of those who DO oppose nuclear power.

[localroger]

24. Well, first, you don't understand what "strawman" means

Second, we're done. You have no clue what you're talking about and are more interested in blowing a bad thing up into the apocalypse than in talking about it truthfully.

[kristopher]

25. That's a strawman.

[AtheistCrusader]

27. You should probably calm down.

He's on your side. Relax.

[kristopher]

28. No, I don't think so.

NO more than I think the nuclear industry is actually on the side of the environment.

[AtheistCrusader]

29. Depends on the question.

There are pros and cons to all the major power production methods. Even hydro. It destroys habitat. (and significant CO2 investment upfront on construction) But it is very clean, and stable, and generates quite a lot of electricity.

Nuclear is the answer to certain questions, and it poses questions of its own around safety and fuel disposal.

The questions and answers hold varying degrees of weight with each person.


Edit: To be clear, the above is from my perspective, not what I see as his perspective. He is actually on your side, but determined to use reason, not hyperbole.

[NickB79]

30. Oh. My. God.

"I really don't give a rats ass if you want to think of yourself as a superior being of reason correcting those of lesser minds, but what you are actually doing is attempting to impose your values on others and falsely representing their positions to enable your bullpuckey to make sense to yourself."

My irony meter just exploded at reading Kris of all people post that here.

[Nihil]

31. .

:evilgrin:

[Yo_Mama]

10. But radiation detection monitoring

HASN'T shown ambient radiation levels rising across most of the world!

Even at the peak of the releases (so far!! it's not over yet) the vast bulk of the plume measurements were ambient (same as background levels), and even the plume never covered most of the world.

I think this is very serious incident. I can't compare it to Chernobyl, because the two accidents are so very different. Chernobyl was a sudden, massive disaster that through a hugely radioactive plume quite high into the atmosphere. Most of the contamination occurred in the first couple of weeks.

Fukushima is a much slower leaker, but in the end, it may discharge more net radiation into the environment. Chernobyl tossed most of it on land, it seems as if Fukushima will affect the ocean far more.

Radiation counts across most of the world haven't changed. It's clear that they have very serious local contamination. I also think that they still really don't have a means with which to address it; the reactors are leaking water by the ton and they still haven't made much progress in stopping it.

I may well be wrong, but IMO we still have most of the contamination to come. However it is now lower level and it is less atmospheric and the volume of the ocean is so huge that while local contamination off and along the coast of Japan is a very BIG problem (IMO, apparently a lot of people disagree with me) that will be with us for decades, the truth is, ambient radiation levels in most of the world aren't going to rise.

[madokie]

12. In the end it sure will though

Since we're all on the same planet we all share the same air and water, both carriers of radiation so please don't blow my opinion I stated to you earlier :-)

[localroger]

15. Oh, it will indeed be detectable

...but only because we can detect extremely low levels of radioactivity, down to a single particle emission. In Japan there will probably be some acute health effects on workers and locals and further afield children and old people who are particularly vulnerable to biouptake. Here, there will be a statistical blip in the number of very sick people who go ahead and die. As a relatively healthy person in my late 40's living in the US, though, I am completely unconcerned about Fukushima on a personal level. I am much more concerned about the rest of the detritus of the last 70 years of nuclear folly, because in total that stuff is much more likely to turn me into a statistical blip one day than the particular burp of Fukushima.

[madokie]

17. Its not you I'm worried about

my four year old grand daughter is where my concern lies

[localroger]

18. I sympathize then

I saw where the world was heading when I was still a teenager and decided it would be better not to reproduce. The world will indeed be an unpleasant place for your granddaughter. I'm doing what I can to make it less so, but the cold reality is that I am one of seven billion people and what I do doesn't really mean spit in the big scheme of things.

[Yo_Mama]

21. I don't have opinions

I only have measurements. Try ZAMG. Try this:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdb.eurad.uni-koeln.de%2Fprognose%2Fradio.html
That's University of Cologne inside Google translate. If you go down to the bottom, you'll see some graphics like this that show cumulative exposures:


A max of 10 becquerels cumulative for cesium 137 is just nothing.

The problem is there is a lot of radioactive material in the soil anyway; cumulative exposures from Fukushima from most of the world are negligible compared to what's already out there. Even in the US we have residual low levels of cesium isotopes in the soil. In a lot of places you can pick it up down in drainage areas.

Let's see. The human body normally has ambient levels of radiation in becquerels 4,000-8,000. Of which most - the vast majority - is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium. But there are other isotopes in there. You normally pick up about 30% of cesium (bioactive), so that's about 3 becquerels of cesium at max. 1 becquerel = 27.03 picoCuries; US limit for drinking water for cesium 137 is 3 picoCuries/liter. Because it's been so long since the domestic nuclear testing and the wave of Pacific testing, most of us don't get anywhere near that. However in Philadelphia drinking water tested close to the limit recently BEFORE the Fukushima accident; levels since have usually been dropping. Every once in while it gets picked up.

That's the best I can do to index it for you. The US level is set by assuming that you drink water that contaminated every day of your life. Basically, you are worried about a one-time exposure that's about half what the EPA thinks you can afford to drink every day for a 70 year lifetime without much risk.

That doesn't mean this isn't a huge disaster! It's just that you don't need to worry about your granddaughter if she is in the states. However many of the people local to the accident have received levels of exposure that will, statistically, show up as harmful later. And we don't know the end point yet.


PS: Cesium does accumulate - the I-131 is mostly gone already.