Fukushima's Fallout Worse Than Thought 308
gbrumfiel writes "A new study posted for open peer-review suggests that the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi released far more radiation than the Japanese government initially estimated. The study [PDF] uses global radioisotope and meteorological data to calculate the size of the release from the plant. Nature News reports that, contrary to official claims, the model shows that fuel being stored in a pool at unit 4 released a significant amount of cesium-137, a long-lived contaminant that has spread across the countryside. It also says that some Xenon-133 may have been released early on in the accident, suggesting that the plant was already damaged before it was hit by a tsunami. Overall, it estimates that Fukushima released about twice as much cesium-137 as the government claims and half as much as Chernobyl."
half as much as Chernobyl? (Score:3, Informative)
That is to be nuanced (Score:4, Informative)
Read the article; do the math; calm down (Score:2, Informative)
These numbers aren't a big change from estimates 5 months ago.
42% of Chernobyl's Cs emission, but much lower land deposition - only 21% of total Cs emissions hit land.
And this is from 3 or 4 separate failures at old ill-prepared sites following a once-in-a-thousand-year quake which hit a chain of volcanic islands which are plagued by quakes.
Emission per failure is nearly a full order of magnitude below Chernobyl.
Total land deposition is also nearly a full order of magnitude below Chernobyl.
The lesson is to improve your game, not loose your cool.
Huh..Rariation?Wha Rariation???? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:If only big government had stayed off their bac (Score:4, Informative)
congress cant get their shit together to open up the storage facility.
Not to defend Congress, but we know that isn't the issue. No one wants the waste. Its not Congress, but the states. Yucca, we know now, is a political farse; all the science was bent to serve the politics.
Fallout worse than researchers naive assumptions (Score:4, Informative)
If they had really understood what happened during the accident, they would have made a very different "first guess" for the emissions. In fact, their first guess would have been that contaminated air was leaking from the reactor buildings before active venting started. Why?
Because of the hydrogen explosions. Containments are vented through the "smoke" stacks. If there had been no leak of the containment prior, during or after the venting, no hydrogen could have accumulated in the reactor buildings, because it would have left through the stacks. It didn't. Some of the hydrogen accumulated in the reactor buildings or they could not have exploded. This hydrogen came straight from the reactors and was as inextricably mixed with Xenon-133 as the proverbial piss in the water of the swimming pool.
No surprise there at all. It is astonishing that the authors of the paper didn't come to that simple conclusion, namely, that their first guess was naive and their "discovery" was not all that interesting to begin with and hardly worth mentioning.
Re:If only big government had stayed off their bac (Score:5, Informative)