New Radioactive Water Leak At Fukushima: 300 Tons and Growing 198
AmiMoJo tips this news from the BBC:
"Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, operator TEPCO says. Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which measures nuclear events. This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea."
There was a significant leak back in April as well.
So.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Should I apologize to my kid before or after he's old enough to understand that humanity has no future?
Re:Works out to (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The engineers responsible should be killed, slo (Score:4, Insightful)
Before you kill the engineers, I'd like to meet them. I didn't even know it was possible for mankind to create a 30 meter wave that can kill 18,000 people.
Oh, wait, you meant the engineers that designed the nuclear plant that withstood the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan and then the subsequent tsunami? Hmmm, maybe we should agree to disagree.
The nuke plant gets all the play, and it is an ongoing expensive headache, but there are 18,000 people who would have rather been in Fukushima that day.
Re:Works out to (Score:2, Insightful)
if we're talking about water, weight and volume are near equivalent in both the sane and ridiculous measurement systems used by the world.
Re:useless article (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, if you decided, against all common sense, to bathe unprotected in the water leaking out of the reactor for an hour, then you would experience a statistically noticeable increase in cancer risk. Given that everyone knows there's radiation over there, nobody is doing this. That doesn't quite mean that it's 'safe' or 'trivial'... but it also doesn't mean you need to freak out and stop eating fish or anything.
Re:The engineers responsible should be killed, slo (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, I KNEW there was going to be one of these comments here.... Guess what, I know you don't know this, but I feel it's important to pass this info on: NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO DIED, THEY ARE DEAD.
People like you really piss me off because you seem to think that if all we do is throw a big pity party then the people who died in the tsunami will come back to life. But you have really BELIEVE they will, and only talk about them and absolutely nothing else. Guess what, it sucks that they died, it sucks hard, but there isn't a god damn thing you can do about, no matter how much you talk about it. But the people's friends and relatives DO have to deal with the nuclear issue. They DO have to deal with being kicked out of their homes for who knows how long. Unlike the dead people their situation can be changed(for better or worse). So yeah, unlike your self-righteous claims to the contrary, talking about the nuclear situation is in fact more productive than a constant pity party. Moron.
Re:Radioactive ooze! (Score:2, Insightful)
No this is proof that our diagnostic skills are improving.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-thyroid-cancer-ess.html
when you test everyone in a population you will find more cases of a illnes than would be "normal"
this is called “increased diagnostic scrutiny.”
Re:Radioactive ooze! (Score:5, Insightful)
I heard a thing a while ago about coal-burning plants emitting more hard radiation from their smoke stacks than nuclear plants leak in real-life operation
Perhaps you heard this [scientificamerican.com]. But you can't just conclude on that alone that coal is bad. It is possible to scrub the output of the smokestacks. Coal ash is even easier to keep contained.
Despite the sarcastic tone, everyone, even you, realizes nuclear power is dangerous. It might seem that the main question is, are the benefits worth the dangers? On balance, the answer seems to be yes, nuclear is worth doing. But hang on. Costs and benefits should be the big question, but sadly there are some other factors to consider. Given human failings, which is the safer power source? Nuclear power can be generated safely, but will it? Such is the pressure to make a profit that operators will cut corners on safety to save a few dollars. We have careful analysis and fairly good consensus on the measures that must be taken to operate a nuclear power plant with reasonable safety, and then that all gets thrown out the window when a plant is built on the coast, with a wall that is not high enough. They gambled that a tsunami of enough magnitude to top the inadequate wall they built would not happen during the plant's lifetime. They were wrong.
It's even worse than that. The owners deliberately fudged the data on tsunamis. They had enough information to know that they needed a higher wall. Instead, they took a fool's course. They leaned hard on the engineers to approve a lower height for the wall. At a plant further south, the chief engineer bravely fought back and refused to authorize a wall he knew would not be adequate. The owners, being greedy fools, complained bitterly about the additional expense, and threatened to fire the engineer for not "cooperating". This kind of unfair pressure is very common in our capitalist systems. Might as well threaten to fire the universe for not being nice enough. Today, the result is that that other plant came through the tsunami intact. But it didn't matter, because Fukushima, where the engineers bowed to the pressure, failed spectacularly and now the entire nuclear power industry is teetering on the edge.
The owners did not trouble to understand the scope of the gamble they were taking on behalf of everyone, and it was their responsiblity to understand. Then, having upped the risk of a nuclear disaster to unacceptable levels that we the public would never have agreed to had we known, they went further. They skimped on the design and maintenance of various backup systems. Diesel powered emergency generators were located below what the water level would be if a tsunami should top the wall. If a tsunami happened, disaster was guaranteed.
I'm still pretty impressed by the level of punishment a badly designed,badly sited, badly maintained nuclear reactor complex could take
I'm not impressed. Ultimately, it couldn't take the punishment. Almost isn't good enough, not with something as dangerous as nuclear power.
Another bit of deliberate blindness too often paraded here is ignoring alternative power. When compared to only coal, nuclear looks pretty good. But coal is a low standard to beat. How does nuclear power stack up against solar, wind, and water? Not so well.