Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation 280
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" (Score:2, Insightful)
For Technophiles at /. its always "maybe" when things are already happening? Are you living in the past or something?
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Shut up, luddite! Nuclear energy is safe and clean! Nothing is happening! LALALALALAAAAA!
Original report from TEPCO (Score:5, Informative)
here:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040307-e.html [tepco.co.jp]
-Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose overc
1,000 mSv/h in the pit* where supply cables are stored near the intake
channel of Unit 2. Furthermore, there was a crack about 20 cm on the
concrete lateral of the pit, from where the water in the pit was out
flowing.(We already informed.) During the same day, we injected fresh
concrete to the pit, but we could not observe a reduction in the amount
of water spilling from the pit to the sea.
Therefore, we considered that a new method of stopping the water and
determined to use the polymer. Necessary equipment and experts of water
shutoff will be dispatched to the site and after checking the condition,
we're doing continuous work to stop water by injecting polymer(April 3rd).
-Monitoring posts of No. 1 ?No.8 set up near the boundary of power station
area have been restored. We will periodically monitor the data and
announce the results of monitoring.
This crack maybe explains why the levels of I-131 had not dropped at the same rate than in the previous days in the readings of I-131 and Cs-137 published by MEXT in their readings of radiation and contamination of water by prefecture page. [mext.go.jp] In most prefectures they have dropped to levels that are not detectable but in a few the levels of Cs-137 have increased.
WTF? (Score:2)
WTF?
"Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose over 1,000 mSv/h in the pit"
That doesn't make any sense. Sievert is a measure of absorbed radiation dose. The measure of 'radiactiveness' is Becquerel/Curie (per liter, kilogram, mole).
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Yah, I had the same WTF moment when they started using mSv all the time. Apparently they're also using it to weight different types of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma). First time I've seen it used like that.
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I guess that they are doing it this way to provide the public with a rough capability to do comparisons between what is reported in local measurements versus what they are reporting at the emergency site. In case of water contamination, they are using an equivalence of 1Bq/litter = 1Bq/kg that for practical matters is good enough.
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Millie bloody who? (Score:2)
I don't understand. Can someone translate that into old-fashioned units like luminous watches per hockey game?
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0 – 0.25 Sv (0 – 250 mSv): None
0.25 – 1 Sv (250 – 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
1 – 3 Sv (1000 – 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; de
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>> 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour
If it helps, this is equivalent to 1 Sievert/hour.
You're welcome.
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If it helps, this is equivalent to 1 Sievert/hour.
Thank you! milli = 1 / 1,000
I only first heard of millisieverts last month,
but the men reporting all throughout that month have NEVER heard of fractions and unneeded redundancy. More likely, the thousand must be there for shock value.
In real life, nobody ever says "1,000 millimeters" or "1,000 milliliters."
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I don't understand. Can someone translate that into old-fashioned units like luminous watches per hockey game?
Various sources[1,2] indicate a range of 1-100 mrem/hr for a radium watch face, with about 20 mrem/hr looking like a plausible average. 1 mrem == .01 mSv[3], so 1000 mSv is about 5000 watch faces/hr. Apparently a standard ice hockey game is 60 minutes[4], so:
1000 mSv/hr == 5000 radium watch faces/hockey game
[1] http://trusted-forwarder.org/elgin/help/luminous_dials.html [trusted-forwarder.org]
[2] http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/radium2.htm [nuenergy.org]
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert [wikipedia.org]
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_Lea [wikipedia.org]
Fukushima vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? (Score:2)
Do you think those high-res photos of the reactor site will give inspiration for some bad-ass fps even more realistic than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?
I don't, but they could.
article title FAIL (Score:2)
The title should be "Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radioactive Materials". When I hear "leaking radiation" I think of a neutron beam shooting out the crack. :-P
why 1,000 millisieverts? Why not ONE SIEVERT? (Score:2)
1,000 millisieverts implies four significant digits of precision... I wish they wouldn't do that... just say "1 Seivert" and be done with it.
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Why wouldn't they have four significant digits of precision? I believe it possible to measure even microsieverts per hour.
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because I keep hearing exactly 1,000 ... I never hear 1,005 or 1,002 .... I somehow doubt that the measurements are always exactly 1,000 millisieverts
false precision
Megameters (Score:2)
Japan Times has some more info (Score:2)
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FIlling the crack (Score:2)
They have tried twice now to plug the crack - first with a load of concrete, and then with an expanding polymer. Both failed, which makes me suspect the crack is a lot deeper than they think it is. Deep cracks in the ground are not terribly surprising after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. They may have to cofferdam the water upstream of the crack, and then dig it out the surface concrete, and fill it before patching it again. A cofferdam is a temporary barrier to keep water out of a construction site.
Rating system is broken .. (Score:2)
It appears to me the rating system is broken.
Why should a perfectly sincere and polite post end up with -1, just because it is against the opinion of the moderator?
If that is what moderating is for, then maybe there should be a -1 "disagree" option, and the easy to abuse "Underrated"/"Overrated" should be gone. I say easy to abuse because there is a small risk for negative metamoderation for these.
Why not have a multidimensional rating system, maybe using left wing and right wing or INTP as in the psycholog
Fixing this leak solves nothing! (Score:5, Informative)
NOTE: This post is mostly recycled from a previous post at the bottom of a thread under the previous Fukushima story. The thread started with a post I made warning that most of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima was moving downward into the ground and ocean, not upward into the air.
Filling the crack and fixing this leak won't reduce the amount of radioactive material spewing from reactor #2 into the environment. This pit and the concrete with the crack in it were never intended to be part of the containment system. If they succeed, then the HRW (highly radioactive water) will either (a) find another way into the sea, or (b) further contaminant the groundwater, or (c) flood the ground and then do (a) or (b). Depending on the total amount of radioactivity released, it *might* actually be better to pour this HRW into the ocean where it will be diluted down to safe levels.
The term "containment" has a fairly precise technical meaning (BTW: I've got a Ph.D. in nuclear physics but not nuclear engineering). These reactors are basically a bottle in a bottle. The inner bottle is the pressure vessel and it is used to maintain pressure for the creation of steam and electricity. The outer bottle is 10cm or 20cm thick stainless steel. It is called the containment vessel. Its sole purpose in life is to contain all the radioactivity in the event the fuel rods melt down. Normally almost all the radioactivity is contained in the zirconium clad fuel rods. That is why there can be HRW 100,000x higher than the water found in a functioning reactor. Almost all of the radioactivity in a functioning reactor of this type is contained in the fuel rods. When the fuel rods melt down, high levels of radioactive materials contaminate the water making it highly radioactive.
Up until last week, the word "containment" had the simple and obvious meaning of radioactive materials staying inside the massive stainless steel containment vessel. I believe TEPCO forged a new meaning in order to downplay the significance of the HRW that was found in the turbine buildings. I will use the traditional technical definition, not the new one invented by TEPCO.
You see, the idea was that as long as the radioactivity was kept inside the containment vessel then you could safely operate the plant and move around in it. The environment was safe. The control room was safe. The turbine building was safe. Even the reactor building was safe (as long as you stayed out of the containment vessel and storage pool). Everything was safe. One of the difficulties caused by a loss of containment accident is that it becomes difficult and dangerous to work on the plant. That is why they need to pump out the turbine buildings before they work on restoring the cooling. If they hadn't lost containment (in the traditional sense) this would not have been a problem.
The pit, the tunnels, and even the turbine buildings were not designed to contain radioactivity. The buildings were designed, like most buildings, to keep the rain out, etc. For example, right after they had those scary hydrogen explosions that blew apart the reactor buildings, I was assuring people it was not a big deal because those buildings were never designed to contain radioactivity. TEPCO and the government were offering the same assurances.
When I heard about the HRW in the turbine buildings I stopped issuing reassurances and I started to be greatly concerned because it meant they had lost containment. I was hoping against hope that the HRW in the turbine buildings was a fluke and that it hadn't spread elsewhere. When I then then heard the tunnels outside the turbine buildings were flooded with HRW I knew this was a serious accident, much worse than Three-Mile Island. When I heard there were 18,000 tons of HRW outside of containment (that number has now been reduced to 13,000 tons) I knew this was a big fucking deal and I was surprised that the Western press were ignoring these developments even though they had been h
Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to say up front, I think this is the most significant nuclear incident ever, and I expect it to have a huge effect on nuclear safety design and regulation. Chernobyl was being intentionally operated outside of spec and was a stupid design to begin with and TMI didn't actually release any harmful materials.
But to put it simply... you do not know very well what you are talking about.
No, in reality, there are many layers to the containment, each of which contains different things to varying degrees. The outermost containment is the building itself, and in the case of a boiling water reactor this includes the turbine building because H20 that comes in contact with the core is circulated through the turbines. For example, steam containing radioactive contaminants can be vented into the building (outside the steel vessel) and still maintain zero external contamination. The big problem at Fukushima is that the top half of the reactor buildings are GONE. "containment" by your definition was lost with the first hydrogen explosion because the vented gas could then escape into the environment.
This is so far beyond a simple loss of containment accident that it is not funny. But the containment of raw core material itself is not really in terrible shape. The big problem is that the buildings are half-demolished from the hydrogen explosions. So all the plumbing and wiring and such are completely trashed. Things don't just need to be "fixed" they have to be rebuilt almost completely. Working on site is difficult, but not impossible. Every time they localize some contamination is a huge step forward because it means they know what they are dealing with and can make progress.
But back to the core breach, or to be more precise the core coolant leak. They have been saying all along that there were good chances of a leak from the reactor core, and what is happening seems like one of the less bad types of that. The cores have partially melted, so that radiative materials can mix into the water. That water has been able to leak. So far there is evidence of mostly "volatiles", mostly iodine and cesium, not much heavier stuff. But they seem to have isolated it to reactor 2. This breach was caused by, wait for it... a hydrogen explosion (you seeing a theme here?).
If they can get the contaminated water under control then a big piece of the wider impact will be more or less under control. This is why they are trying to pump this stuff out of the basements, because nobody thinks they will be strictly water tight. But that has proven challenging (where do they put it?). In the mean time if they can plug a few leaks they can reduce (not yet stop) the external impact, so that's what they are trying to do.
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But to put it simply... you do not know very well what you are talking about.
You know, it's a funny thing, people were saying that and worse when I warned that most of the radioactivity was leaving the plant downward in the water, not upward in the air. What was a crackpot idea a few days ago is now obvious today:
If they can get the contaminated water under control then a big piece of the wider impact will be more or less under control.
Exactly my point. But that's a very big "if".
This is why they are trying to pump this stuff out of the basements, because nobody thinks they will be strictly water tight.
This is not what TEPCO and the Japan government have been saying. They have consistently said that they are pumping out the turbine buildings to make them safe enough so they can go back to work restoring the primary cooling sy
Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing! (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree that a constant level of HRW in the basements indicates that the basements are water-tight. Remember that they are pouring literally thousands of tons of water on the reactors in order to cool them. If the water level is steady then all it means is that the inflow is equal to the outflow. It is possible that both are zero but none of the information I've seen indicates this is so. In fact, it would seem rather remarkable to me that the leak (or leaks) leading from the reactors to the turbine buildings fixed themselves although it is possible that the spraying patterns changed enough to direct the HRW elsewhere. I think they should put dye in the HRW they've found because that would help them determine the flow rate and also find out if this water is leaking into the ocean. They use dyes to measure ocean currents so they can be measured even after being highly diluted.
It is certainly not true that the HRW is being contained in the buildings. Shortly after HRW was discovered in the turbine buildings, it was also discovered in three tunnels outside the turbine buildings. For some reason, this fact wasn't widely reported in the Western media. The tunnels are U-shaped. They go down from the surface about 15 meters, run horizontally about 80 meters and then come up 15 meters to the surface again. For some strange reason they call these tunnels "trenches". The HRW level in tunnel #1 was reported to be 10 cm from the surface. It was 1 meter and 1.5 meters from the surface in tunnels #2 and #3. The radioactivity of the water in the tunnels matched that in their associated turbine buildings.
The threat of the HRW in the tunnels overflowing onto the ground was so severe that they *reduced* the amount of water they were spraying on the reactors. This caused the outside temperature of the containment vessel of at least one of the reactors to rise by 20C.
I reiterate, fixing the leak in the concrete in the pit to stop HRW from pouring directly into the ocean will do nothing to fix the leak in the containment system. The flooded tunnels prove there are tons of HRW that have already escaped containment even by TEPCO's ridiculous definition.
Western media were pretty much ignoring Fukushima when news of the flooded tunnels broke. Their attention had shifted to Libya. A day or two after the flooded tunnels were reported, the focus in Japan shifted to the minuscule amounts of plutonium found outside the buildings. Now the news in Japan is about the direct leak into the ocean and the efforts to pump the HRW out of the turbine buildings so they can get back to work on restoring the cooling systems. It's been days since I last heard anything about the tunnels. You know, maybe they are not planning to drain the flooded tunnels right away and are instead concentrating on the buildings. This might account for the drop in the estimated total weight of the HRW from 18,000 tons down to 13,000 tons.
Wish the company would just fix the problems (Score:2)
All we hear is more of the same day in and day out. They're doing this, oh and we discovered that. They're now leaking cesium 141 into the ocean which has a half life of 30 years vs 8 days with the iodine. And ocean water flows clockwise towards the US and our fishing waters. After transocean were going to find we have very little seafood that's not contaminated because of human activity.
The government needs to get their power company out of the picture and work on real solutions, that power company is
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The government needs to get their power company out of the picture and work on real solutions
They would, but magic wands capable of dispelling multi-Sievert-level ionising radiation are highly restricted after the unfortunate international incidents which led to the 1948 Treaty of Avalon and the 1949 Geneva Conventions on Thaumaturgical and Faerie Invocations.
I'm sure no head of state wants to see a repeat of those dark post-war years when entire European cities were instantaneously converted to chocolate pie, rose petals, or in one particularly gruesome case, a gigantic olive martini.
A few thousan
2nd set of photos on Cryptome.org (Score:3, Informative)
includes lots of ground and non-aerial photos.
Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" (Score:5, Informative)
1000 milisieverts that's twenty times as much as the one-year limit for Radiation workers [xkcd.com], meaning spending some time there would make it impossible to survive (8 Sv).
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Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" (Score:4, Informative)
You're mixing up irradiation and contamination. Contamination means that you carry a radiation source in or on your body (ingested particles, dust on the skin, etc.). Irradiation means radiation is affecting your body, no matter where the source is. Contamination causes irradiation even when you leave the site (until you're decontaminated, if possible). Internal contamination is particularly bad because you can usually not get away from the radiation source anymore. That doesn't mean that "just" being irradiated isn't dangerous.
If you're close to a radiation source, whether you're contaminated or just physically close to a source that is not on or in your body, the radiation penetrates your body and damages the cells. Alpha radiation (helium nuclei) only interacts with the surface and is easily shielded. Beta radiation (electrons and positrons) penetrates a little deeper but can still be shielded. Gamma radiation (electromagnetic waves, beyond x-rays) can not be shielded sufficiently by a radiation suit and penetrates the whole body.
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Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" (Score:5, Informative)
Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation
I skimmed TFA and it seems the "may" was introduced by /. editors and not the evil "mainstream media". There is a leak and it is radioactive water that it is leaking. No maybe. Actually they already planned how to fix it [nhk.or.jp] , tried to do so and failed at it [nhk.or.jp].
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Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" (Score:4, Interesting)
I think YOU need to calm down. Nobody is saying that there MIGHT be a radiation leak. There is a leak, and that's confirmed. There's no denying the radiation in the water. The question is, where is it coming from. This cray MAY BE the source of that leak (or it may turn out to be something else, or a combination of several things...they aren't sure yet). If you RTFA:
Nishiyama told reporters on Saturday that the crack "could be one source" of the radiation leaks that have hobbled efforts to quell the damaged reactor.
On Sunday he added: "This(crack in the pit) for the first time clarified the relationship (of the contaminated water) with the sea."
As far as your other comment:
European energy commissioner said 'biggest disaster of the century' over chernobyl, yet, talking heads in mainstream media almost trying to convince people that radiation is good for their health. Despite EPA found 1000 times allowable radiation in groundwater in massachusetts.
LOL...are you expecting me to believe that fukushima is causing massachusetts ground water to be 1000 times allowable levels? Sorry, but that seems INCREDIBLY far fetched...so far fetched, I'm not even sure how to explain it to you. I'll just stick to what the EPA has said: “these detections were expected and the levels detected are far below levels of public-health concern.”
And you think the media is trying to keep people calm? Doesn't seem that way to me. For instance, a few days ago I'm watching the news and they give a teaser for an upcoming story saying that "radiation from fukushima has reached detroit". Then they go to commercial, come back, do another story, then do the fukushima story, which is about 4 minutes long, and then at the very end of the story, they throw in a quick note about "oh yeah, it's about 1/15 of the radiation you get from eating a banana". Seems to me they're more interested in freaking people out for ratings and then just throwing in a calming footnote at the end.
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Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" (Score:4, Insightful)
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]
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This discussion maybe ? (Score:3)
there are people who are going around and saying 'radiation is good for your health'. but more importantly, there ARE people believing them.
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Two of the data points that have brought this up:
1. The low cancer rates in Colorado. We have less atmosphere protecting us from cosmic/solar radiation, more uranium in the ground, and plenty of radon. Results: Those people living in areas having high levels of background radiation â" above 1,000 mrem (10 mSv) per year â" such as Denver, Colorado, have shown no adverse biological effects.
In fact, people living in Denver have the 3rd lowest lung cancer rates in the US.
2. Chernobyl. Despite being th
Re:This discussion maybe ? (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Chernobyl. Despite being the worst nuclear plant disaster, finding cancer after the original accident has been difficult. It's been mostly estimation using statistical analysis.
maybe it has been difficult for private think-thanks in usa, but it hasnt been difficult here around the black sea. the cancer rate around black sea among youth has skyrocketed and still much higher than normal.
i dont know why you people pull that 'chernobyl didnt cause much problem' bullshit from. people are dying here for decades.
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From what I remmeber, the problems in the area, most of the deaths, were from poor healthcare and nutrition, both of which ca
hahahah (Score:2)
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Maybe he means us discussing what he could possibly mean?
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How about you put in the work of getting a high karma so you can mod stuff up, instead of asking everyone else to act on you passions?
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Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Interesting)
What I find most disturbing is the lack of information they are telling us.
Have you seen anything in the news about the reactor in #3 blowing the lid off the primary containment vessel?
The Hydrogen explosions at 1 and 4 were the same shape cloud. It was a gas explosion. Number 3 on the other hand was a tall cylinder explosion with a cap of debris that fell out of the top of the cloud. I have not said anything about it yet as I could not confirm my finding, but today they released the high resolution drone photos. Another item is buildings 1 & 4 blew because of a hydrogen explosion. The hydrogen exploded and the resulting pressure blew the buildings apart. Number 3 on the other hand had a hydrogen explosion after the building ruptured. The big flash of the hydrogen fire lit when the building blew. Listen to the explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ [youtube.com] It is different.
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm#20%20March [cryptome.org]
Reactor 1 and 4 have a more traditional shape for a confined gas explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK0-scxGEak&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Take a very good look at the photos. Locate the primary containment dome in #4. It is bright yellow just like in the drawings. Note it is NOT in the center of the building. Note the roof truss of #4. The roof blew off, but most of the truss is intact. Now look at the elevation in #4 of the yellow containment dome.
Using that as a reference, now look at #3. Look for anything as high as the dome in #4. In the middle is a rubble pile. Note in the corner of the building in a mirror location to #4 look at the circular hole in the truss. It's where a plume of steam is rising. The fire and charred truss is at the other end of the rubble pile, or over the cooling pond. Where there is supposed to be a yellow dome is a steaming hole. Now look at the roof of the turbine hall next to it. Notice a hole in the roof about the right shape and size for that dome lid to have fallen in?
I'm not sure yet if the core blew off it's lid, but the primary containment did blow the top.
The above is my opinion based on my personal examination of the photos in the link above and the noted difference of the explosion of #3.
Due to the radiation levels, the torris may have ruptured resulting in the top blowing out of the primary containment building. This would explain the relatively low amount of radio active parts blown about the area.
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And here's another pic that shows refueling underway. http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/rflg-fl2.jpg [nucleartourist.com]
Notice the dome sitting on the floor in the back, out of the way. That is prob
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You have to wonder who actually ordered the gas not to be vented into the atmosphere.
That probably was established procedure for the reactors. Keep in mind that the alternative was to allow pressure to build up till something major broke. When this is all said and done, it'll be interesting to see how closely TEPCO hewed to the emergency procedures that were in place. There are obvious deviations, such as pumping sea water into reactors. But it surprises me how people with no information are willing to attribute all sorts of faults to the people making the decisions, even though it's usuall
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It's not really incompetent engineering IMO. Most of the stuff at the plant was built 30-40 years ago. For its time I imagine the engineering to be very sound.
If you cleared all the regulatory hurdles to building a nuclear power plant and started construction today, you'd be done in 5 years at the fastest. By that time, all of the engineering involved in the plant will, unsurprisingly, be outdated by five years.
I wonder if there's a way to crowdsource conceptual ideas. You start with a basic question like "
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Apparently these backup generators never really work, anywhere.
http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/ [gregpalast.com]
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Informative)
The 'crack' mentioned in this case is not in the reactor containment itself as the summary and article imply, but in a water storage pool next to the sea, with the crack being between the pool and the sea.
Not that lessons can't be learnt from this: gravity-feed coolant reservoirs would be a good idea, as well as separate backups for the storage pools and cores, but it's far from "getting steadily worse".
IAEA Incident page [iaea.org]
MIT NSE hub [mitnse.com]
WNN [world-nuclear-news.org]
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I cant explain me how you can write such stupid text.
Quite.
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Informative)
This reactor was hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, followed up by a 30 foot tidal wave. Had this happened to any other major source of power (coal, natural gas, hydroelectric) the death toll would have been in the hundreds... maybe in even the tens of thousands if it had been a hydroelectric damn.
Please, do some reading so you have some idea of what you're comparing this to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects
Chernobyl was a horrific even, orders of magnitude more devastating that what's happening in Japan right now. Just the initial released was equal to a 50 kiloton atomic bomb going off.
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Oh please, PR about a disaster that conveniently happened when "western" (US) media and "non-government" organizations were in a full attack mode against anything related to USSR economy or politics.
I am sure, I was counted among "victims" of Chernobyl disaster, too. If you are reading this in US, I am probably healthier than you are.
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I am sure, I was counted among "victims" of Chernobyl disaster, too. If you are reading this in US, I am probably healthier than you are.
If you're anything like the Ukrainians I've met, you likely have larger breasts.
Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Informative)
A dam used for irrigation and drinking water [wikipedia.org] (much like any hydroelectric dam anywhere in the world) in the hills above Fukushima town failed during the earthquake. The resulting flood killed at least four people and a bunch of others in houses downstream are missing, presumed drowned.
Several dams in the area are known to have sustained damage but many others have not yet been properly inspected.
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But those deaths were a result of the earthquake, not because of the problems with the nuclear reactors.
Two confirmed deaths at TEPCO from tsunami (Score:3)
From NHK:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/03_11.html [nhk.or.jp]
Tokyo Electric Power Company has said two employees who had gone missing since the March 11th disaster were found dead at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The bodies of Kazuhiko Kokubo and Yoshiki Terashima, both in their 20s, were found in the basement of the turbine building for the Number 4 reactor on Wednesday.
They had been carrying out a regular check-up at the plant.
The chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said in a statement that the company is extremely sorry about losing two young employees who had tried to maintain the plant's safety in the midst of disaster.
Sunday, April 03, 2011 13:02 +0900 (JST)
Rest in peace.
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I believe that Chernobyl will be nothing next to this disaster soon.
I don't know about that... one of the big differences here is that the Chernobyl core was actually exposed, and releasing radioactive materials which killed observers over a kilometer away. Look up the "Bridge of Death" in Pripyat.
By comparison, Fukushima is releasing (only) 1000 mSv per hour - this is concerning, and would poison anyone exposed to it, but compared to Chernobyl (estimates there were 350+ Sv per hour - several orders of magnitude higher), not even in the same ballpark. Furthermore, the op
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Where in the world did you get that 300 billion number?
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Haliburton, most likely.
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Scratch that, more likely Yakuza. Not that one can tell the difference -- both thrive on corruption and construction.
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I've heard that number thrown around at Foxnews, CNN, maybe WSJ. I believe it was some low-level Japanese politician just throwing out a number.
Sad part is that in the US everyone is going 'chicken little', even though the perfect storm of horrible circumstances in Japan don't apply to most (if any) of US nuke plants.
Re:The cost of nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
We already know an earthquake and tsunami took out Fukushima's cooling capabilities. Why do you have to trot out the myth of human fallibility where it isn't warranted?
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Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.
Right on the target. Society, politics, and mostly economics are holding us up from having more progress. Technical issues are long solved, there's just lots of lies and corruption that never moves forward that is gumming up the gears of progress.
Re:The cost of nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
The sad thing is that they have done it properly, you can only see Fukushima Daini and Onagawa NPS that survived without mayor problems the earthquake and tsunami. Hell, you can even point to Fukushima Daiichi units 5 and 6 as a proof that those installations were secure. The big question will be why units1 to 4 weren't upgraded to the safety levels of the other reactors.
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It's not the number for Fukushima reactor cleanup.
The Three Mile Island cleanup "took 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million" [world-nuclear.org] and was completed in the early 1990s. Here we're talking about a worse accident (not much debate anymore), with 3 operating reactors with damaged fuel, one of which may have a containment breach (reactor #2), and 4 spent fuel pools in various states of damage, and (unlike Three Mile Island) significant amounts of radiological material spread around the region, into the sea,
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And what exactly will Japan use to generate sufficient power to keep its industrial base going? They don't use nuclear power because it's got 1950s chic, they use it because Japan is not blessed with plentiful amounts of other sources of energy.
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Fusion! It's right around the corner, we promise!
Would be nice; failure mode is to just shut it off. Apparently, recreating the interior of a star in a smallish bottle is a bit harder than anyone thought/thinks. (Yeah, big surprise)
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That's the price of the whole damage by the earthquake and tsunami in the whole country. Is obvious that you are against nuclear power but lying is not helping your position. Is possible that people can consume far less energy than what they use today, but will need a enormous change in mentality from the "me" to the "we, humanity" that beside a disasters of this magnitude happening around the world, I don't see what else could make us change.
Re:The cost of nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The cost of nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
You are way off the mark. If the earthquake hadn't happened, it's likely that he would have resigned already. Here's [msn.com] a relevant link. Basically, his approval rating's gone up after the earthquake, from 24% (2011-03-03) to 35.6% (2011-03-17). 24% is slightly lower than the approval rating at which it's believed that a cabinet is on the way out.
BTW, Japanese cabinets come and go. As you can see here [wikipedia.org], very few Prime Ministers stay in office for four years or longer.
Re:The cost of nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
Because coal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania [wikipedia.org] ) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal [wikipedia.org] ) and natural gas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking [wikipedia.org] ) and dams ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure [wikipedia.org] ) are all 100% safe and contain zero ill effects to anyone, anywhere living within any distance to the source.
I just went with wikipedia because I felt really really lazy. A monkey randomly typing characters into Google search could find something like this without remotely trying. Yes, nuclear power has downsides. EVERY option of generating power has a downside.
Ok, fine, I'll play your little game. Let's shut down and replace every nuke plant with...well...what?
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(yeah, yeah, I'm replying to an Anonymous Coward posting currently rated at -1 Troll)
Let's revisit this question in ten years or so....THAT's when we'll probably see the results of the radiation.
Like smoking, you won't be able to pin a SPECIFIC death on radiation, but you'll see a statistical correlation and perhaps an unusual number of cancers in people in the area... yes, perhaps the cause listed on the death certificate will be "cancer", but there will be a rise in them and that rise is caused by the rad
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If we have to revisit it in 10 years, it's still nowhere near how bad Chernobyl was.
I wonder if in 10 years there will even be a blip statistically large enough to be significant.
I wonder if in 10 years we, in general, will even remember this ever happened...
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I think this is more among the lines of "Guantanamo was not as bad as a Soviet gulag".
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Presumably, we should only see that if radiation levels are significantly h
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Since this plant sits on the edge of the Japanese Current, Any thoughts on what 200,000 gals of this stuff per day will do to the Northern Pacific and Bering Sea fisheries?
Not much. It's a big, big, big (mindboggling big) ocean.
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"The solution to pollution is dilution"
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Perhaps the meter only measures up to 1 sievert. :)