Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation

SillySnake writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit. 'With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday." Also of interest: Cryptome is featuring high-res photos of the reactor site, taken by UAV.

"May Be"

[Anonymous Coward]

For Technophiles at /. its always "maybe" when things are already happening? Are you living in the past or something?

The cost of nuclear

[NotAGoodNickname]

$300 billion cleanup bill for this mess. Years of unusable land. Polluted ocean. Unknown effects on health of people within the radiation zone. What is the true cost of nuclear power? The sad part it what will really stop nuclear power dead is if this forces the PM to resign due to public pressure. The potential disruption of the political power structure are what the politicians are really going to be worried about. In my opinion this is the end of nuclear power plants.

Re:Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody was killed? Just wait a few years and you will have many deaths.
I think you just dont know how dangerous radioation is, otherwise I cant explain me how you can write such stupid text.

Radiation is in the air, in the sea, in drinking water, in foods and many peaople will get cancer the next years.
Also the whole area will be contamined for many many many many years.

Its a dead zone there.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[ultranova]

In my opinion this is the end of nuclear power plants.

Yeah. We'll just replace them all with coal plants which kill a couple hundred thousand people a year rather than a few every few decades, as nuclear power does.

Re:The cost of nuclear

[Synn]

I don't think it was a "perfect storm" of events that took out the plant, rather an inept/corrupt system of implementing nuclear power. I think we have the technical prowess to do nuke power safety, the problem is getting the current corporations and governments to do it properly.

Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.

Re:Wish the company would just fix the problems

[rubycodez]

and how would they "just fix the problems"? See things in perspective. This contamination is nothing next to what decades of above ground nuclear testing put all over the globe, nothing next to the radioisotopes centuries of coal burning has put into the environment. The level of contamination that has reached the US from this zero for purposes of breathing and ingesting food, the minute amounts are a marvel in that we have so sensitive instruments we can detect, for example, a Xenon atom every ten seconds decaying per meter of air (which is what the measured "contamination" is in California for Xenon. For any effect on you or any Californian, it's same as zero)

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[tsm_sf]

It's clearly a problem, but it's not like the radiation travels through the water and up into the air.

Look, I'm pro-nuke too but you're just making us all look bad at this point.

1) This is a catastrophic failure of the first order, and claiming that it's not that bad because the reactor didn't go "BLOOEY!" makes people think that could be a possibility. It's not reassuring.

2) Attempting to put a best-case spin on every aspect of the situation is entirely unhelpful. Nobody prepares for the best, they prepare (or should) for the worst. This isn't something people should be calm about, this is something people should be rational about. There's a difference.

3) Your grade school science teacher is shedding a single tear. [google.com]

Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep"

[mvdwege]

Have you been reading the same news I have?

From the very beginning the industry supporters were downplaying the severity of the incident: "Oh no, the plant was built to only withstand an 8.something quake, look at how beatifully it shut down when it turned out to be much worse!"; "Oh no, there is some radiation, but just a tad above background!"

And then you get industry shills like the MIT NSE guys who are clothing this "Rah! Rah! Go nuclear power!" attitude in scientific sounding jargon, so that ignorant Slashbots like you can make fun of concerned people.

I say, if it is really going so well there, why don't you go off and stand in reactor building two for an hour or so?

Mart