More Bad News From Fukushima 268
PuceBaboon writes "Both Reuters and the BBC are carrying the story of an increase in radiation levels reported by Tepco for contaminated water leaking from storage tanks on site. When this leak was discovered almost two weeks ago, Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying. The latest readings (with upgraded equipment) are registering 1800-millisieverts which, according to both news sources, could prove fatal to anyone exposed to it for four hours. Coincidentally (and somewhat ironically), today is earthquake disaster prevention day in Japan, with safety drills taking place nationwide."
Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
-Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying.
What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, it is a very interesting way of damage control. Simply bring equipment which can only measure up to the damage level we want.
I cannot understand how a company can make such a mistake. This is the most severe radioactive problem at the moment, threatening to change a country for the next decades.
They know how important this is, and fail to bring along the right equipment?
Unbelievable...
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Informative)
It is all intentional and just a big game of what they can cover up and with which lies they can get away with.
The whole Fukushima operation is just a big scam with Tepco and the government as key players.
The current LDP government is financially supported by all major Japanese companies that are heavily involved in the nuclear industry.
That was a very lucrative business because there were hardly any rules that could not be bend but that has all gone bad after the Fukushima disaster.
The main objective for Tepco and the LDP prime minister is to get nuclear energy accepted again.
Although there are many accidents and false reports, the national media does not pay much attention, fearing the wrath of the LDP patry and some of the major companies here in Japan. But that doesn't differ much from the US I guess.
Also, the national television company is just another propaganda media outlet but may Japanese are not aware of this fact.
Japan has a long history of cover-ups when the government and major Japanese companies are involved.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Humanity has a long history of cover-ups when big organisations are involved.
FTFY
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Maybe it was an incompetent news agency reporting on a preliminary result. 100 millisieverts is a pretty high level on its own after all.
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If your equipments scale goes to 100 and the reading you get is 100; than its pretty incompetent to report that value as anything other than 'its at least 100'
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your equipment only registers to 100 and you read 100 on it, then it is WHOLLY imcompetent not to RUN and get better equipment to re-measure.
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I'm surprised the equipment wasn't designed to read up to 110% of the max displayed reading and show an error code when in that zone.
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At least 100 is the scientific statement - the correct statement in plain English is "the reading is off the scale". That also conveys the urgency properly. But of course PR prevented that from being publish - which means that now they have to deal with the fact that they have been lying to the public.
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The measurement likely was 1099, and the display was 099.
So everything was fine.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tepco needs to be taken out of the equation. Now.
(Though they can still pay the cleanup bill...)
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Japanese government already practically owns TEPCO because it had to nationalize it to cover the clean-up cost. They just don't have any administrative control or use their shareholder rights.
So basically TEPCO is in charge but not paying the bulk of the bill. The situation is not unique to Japan, every country with nuclear power would be in the same situation if something like that happened because getting commercial insurance to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars it costs is impossible.
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Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity. There are a wide range of radiation meters. But the type that can read up to 200 Rem/hr (2,000 mSv) aren't common. A typical meter won't even read up to 1 Rem/hr, because such high levels aren't common. Only casualty meters read higher.
Any decent health physicist is acutely aware of where the meter saturates (which can sometimes be caused by the electronics itself--you really need to understand how your meter works when you adjust the scales).
No, you bring the meter with the radiation you expect to find. If it is higher, you back out and bring a meter for that. If your readings are 50 mRem/hr at most points, it is ridiculous to carry around a meter than reads 0-200 Rem/hr. It is not precise. It is like reading the speed on your speedometer when it is calibrated in units of 500 mph.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity.
Apologists need to stop trotting out equivalents to, "Don't attribute to malice.. bla bla stupidity," at every corner.
It's not the middle of the 20th century. We're awash with excellent physicists who can't find a job, and I can assure you that everyone in the highly competitive Japan who has a job in the nuclear industry has the technical ability.
What they don't have is a moral compass: it's a very obeisant culture.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't damage control. It is technician stupidity.
Apologists need to stop trotting out equivalents to, "Don't attribute to malice.. bla bla stupidity," at every corner.
People just need to understand that there is a point where Stupidity stops being a valid and reasonable excuse. Still having Tepco handling all of this is one such case, where it is not longer correct to attribute it to Stupidity.
Re: Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I get that, but if your speedometer is pegged to the maximum reading at 150mph, the thought might occur to you that you are going faster.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there is a real takehome lesson for designing instrumentation here. A device should not show the value "100" for "everything greater than 100." Under overload it should just show a row of hyphens or something. Even my cheap little digital kitchen scale does this.
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If your readings are 50 mRem/hr at most points, it is ridiculous to carry around a meter than reads 0-200 Rem/hr. It is not precise. It is like reading the speed on your speedometer when it is calibrated in units of 500 mph.
In the really real world, we practically never see a nice round number like that. We're always seeing fractions. So if the number was that round, then I'd check it again just to see if the meter was doing something weird. And if I got precisely the same completely round number over and over again, then I'd certainly suspect the results.
Stupidity is too meek a word for this situation.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:4, Funny)
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Clearly it's because the pitot tube is behind the shock cone. Citroen's transonic aerodynamics were always a bit suspect.
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A high end radiation meter is not the same as a low end one. The principle you are using for multiple ranges is more complex than that of a DVM. You are literally talking about the ionization ranges of a gas (Rest In Peace Little Grey Cat--Recomb, Ionization, Proportional, Limited Proportional, Geiger-Mueller, Continuous Discharge regions, if I recall correctly). You can't simply make a meter with a selector switch that will work across all ranges. And if you are in a very high field, you may even need to s
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He didn't say it would work across ALL ranges, he said it would work across Several ranges. Stop putting words in his mouth.
Such meters are commonly available, in un-certified condition, and fully certified ones from reliable labs [campingsurvival.com] are in the hands of every hazmat team in the nation. (Its the exact same equipment, its just one is calibrated).
Any of these would have indicated more than the 100mSv that the Tepco meter pegged at. The common ones go up to 500rem. (The reported 100 millisieverts =10 rem).
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Those CDV-715 victoreen meters are considered a joke. They don't use Geiger tubes. They use Ion Chambers which are only useful at levels that would be fatal to a human within hours. If it detects anything then you are dead. So that was not a particularly good example and that $5 meter won't be particularly useful unless someone nukes your front yard and I think at that point you wouldn't need the radiation meter to tell you to run, not walk, away. Victoreen did make one meter that was a Geiger counter: the
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Your GENERAL PRINCIPLE is full of shit. Tell me how a multimeter does it first. Now tell me how a radiation meter would do it? And how a radiation meter is constructed? You feel that you can just apply order of magnitude higher voltages across a gas forever? Is that what you think? Again I ask, do you even know how a radiation meter is constructed? Do you????
+3 Interesting? For this fucking stupidity?
And then to cap it off, the asshole brings up the precision question. I mean, for fucks sake. Did you even c
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The point is, Tepco technicians used a 0-100 mSv instrument in an 1800 mSv area, then claimed that it was just a mistake.
Not credible.
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That's what I was thinkng also! Then again, it is a very interesting way of damage control. Simply bring equipment which can only measure up to the damage level we want. I cannot understand how a company can make such a mistake. This is the most severe radioactive problem at the moment, threatening to change a country for the next decades. They know how important this is, and fail to bring along the right equipment? Unbelievable...
In the measuring instrument business, you generally size the instrument to have a scale which is 50-80% of its range. So, for example, a speedometer for a Honda Civic might go to 140mph even though the vehicle is capable of only 115mph. It is bad to only use a very small % of the range of a measuring device for many reasons. If you have a speedometer in your Honda that goes to 5,000MPH, the accuracy at normal speeds is likely to suffer. If these were instruments for measuring leakage out of a storage ta
Re: Where were the professionals. (Score:2, Funny)
They were using the deluxe meter but forgot to bring the pro meter that day.
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I wonder how the values are measured. Is the values measured at some fixed distance to the source to do they have some waterproofed sensor they immerse?
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot measure radiation underwater. Usual measurement is 1m free-air-distance, but at the level they observe, they cannot sent anyone in there to make these measurements.
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Usual measurement is 1m free-air-distance, but at the level they observe, they cannot sent anyone in there to make these measurements.
According to TFA, they can, with basic protection:
Tepco said the radiation measured was beta rays, which would be easier to protect against than gamma rays.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is a lie. Well, the part about Beta is true, so yes, they can. But there is no feasible protection against Gamma rays for people. The only thing that is there (lead aprons) reduce it at best down to 50%, but they are so heavy that you move at half the speed or slower, so no protection at all. At Cernobyl, the experts decided that running was by far the best protection available, and have a look at how few of them are still alive.
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Gamma radiation 5cm from the bottom: 1 mSv/hour (Score:3)
Source: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/announcements/2013/1230191_5502.html [tepco.co.jp]
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It is pretty hard to tell how many are still alive. Te generla accepted (especially in the USA ans by the /. crowed) number of death is 300 - 600.
But all who are deeper in the subject know: 95% of them died in the first 2 years. Greenpeace estimates about 1,000,000 dead.
All Ukrainian/Russians I know claim far higher death toll numbers.
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That's what long poles and RC cars are for.
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Not to worry. The water all leaked out.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:4)
[...] but at the level they observe, they cannot sent anyone in there to make these measurements.
Oh, I'm sure they can locate some individuals in the upper management, who could/should be sent in.....
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
-Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying.
What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
Wouldn't be the first time testing was stopped as soon as a nice answer was found...
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Just be glad that it was an actual radiation detector and not a rebranded golf ball finder [slashdot.org].
This error was done more than once (Score:2)
This error, reporting such a dead end scale value, was also reported sometime ago by Tepco, and there was another time before that, sorry I cannot get the links out so quickly but I clearly remember this. This same mistake has occured more than once within the hole Fukushima disaster,
The scheme is also the same: First, horray everything is safe. Later, Ups the needle hit the scale end and we did not tell them to start running.
How could .. ?
Well, on the one hand untrained personel or simply intentional or bo
Re:This error was done more than once (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait a few weeks until they find out that 1800 mSv is the maximum reading on the new instrument.
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Just wait a few weeks until they find out that 1800 mSv is the maximum reading on the new instrument.
Ah "oops": Sorry, we didn't notice the new meter actually says Kilo-Sieverts; there was just a minor error where we put the decimal in the wrong place.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:4, Interesting)
What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
Well, situation was probably carefully evaluated, and everything considered, it was decided that this is a mistake worth making. Just speculating to provide an example, there may have been something else happening at the same time, some evaluation or hearing or whatever, and there it was important that the reading was not too high, so the short term mistake at the expense of looking like amateurs was deemed a good trade.
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-Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying.
What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
Yes, the test should have been repeated using measuring device with 10-millisieverts max scale: everything would be normal then, no reason to worry.
(ducks)
This was NOT mistake. (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, it's not. If the government won't let their friends corporation die, and won't let they suffer any negative consequence from their acts, then it's exactly like communism. Not worse.
Looks like the URSS won the Cold War.
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At least in the old USSR, if your screw-up was embarrassing enough you could fall out of favor. Under corrupt capitalism, as long as your bank balance stays high, you can do no wrong.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod up; this is a very good find.
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How could such a stupid mistake be made?
"Bring the meter that only goes up to 100 milliserverts."
Never attribute to incompetence that which can adequately be explained by self-reinforcing emotional behavior.
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It wouldnt be honorable to admit equipment is not suitable for the job = LIE IN YOUR FACE like a true Asian.
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What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?
Do not worry gaijin, we upgraded our dosimeters to a newest model that is capable of displaying up to 1.8 sieverts!
Re:Where are the professionals now? (Score:2)
making a statement about deadliness of a sievert level of water leaking into the ground is also nonsense. that would be for a full body exposure to a level of radiation, and the lethal dose is more like 5000 mS, 1800mS over four hours and a person would be almost to the point of "severe radiation sickness", but most would not die. perhaps 8% would die at that level without proper medical intervention.
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making a statement about deadliness of a sievert level of water leaking into the ground is also nonsense. that would be for a full body exposure to a level of radiation, and the lethal dose is more like 5000 mS, 1800mS over four hours and a person would be almost to the point of "severe radiation sickness", but most would not die. perhaps 8% would die at that level without proper medical intervention.
Exactly out thoughts, gaijin! It's 4 hours - nobody should swim that long, and only 8% anyway - not a big deal. We are waiting for a new tsunami that will wash all this inconvenient radioactive junk into the ocean, we do not need it any more, you see. Ocean currents will do the rest, nature will find the way! Pity about dolphins tho. Tasty, tasty dolphins!
Tepco - committed to bringing nuclear power to every doorstep in the world!
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Here's my dumb question: Is 1800 millisieverts from the new equipment an accurate reading?
Is the equipment well-calibrated and shown to be accurate when the reading indicates that, OR is 1800 near the maximum of the measurement range of that equipment as well?
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Where were the professionals. (Score:4, Funny)
. That sounds like a personal issue, not a mechanical one...
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I understand what you are saying, but it does not make sense. If your instrument scales to, say 500mS/h, but is calibrated at 100mS/h, you still see 500mS/h with a needle display and "over" with a digital one, you just loose accuracy at that measurement. Which you do anyways, since it is out of range. No the only possible explanation is that the maximum display range was actually 100mS/h, and they deliberately lied about the measurement, because a measurement that is hard at the upper end of the range can n
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Understood. Many have been caught in that trap. Using slashdot, it's as if UNICODE was never developed, eh.
At least I can read this thread with my iPad (Score:2)
There is something to be said for Slashdot's lack of Unicode support: if Slashdot had Unicode, trolls would have filled every thread with a certain invalid Arabic string and my iPad's browser would have crashed trying to read this thread.
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iPad browsers are pretty peerfect to browse unicode sites, see: http://slashdot.jp/ [slashdot.jp]
Oblig. (Score:5, Informative)
1800 mSv is 36 times the maximum yearly dose permitted to US radiation workers. More here [xkcd.com].
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Per hour.
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Interesting)
Another relevant XKCD (Score:2)
http://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ [xkcd.com]
As mentioned in http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/announcements/2013/1230191_5502.html [tepco.co.jp] (mentioned by another commenter), the high radiation was 5 cm off the bottom, and fell very quickly with height. So this seems to be almost exactly the same situation as that in the xkcd strip.
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Wrong issue (Score:2, Insightful)
While everybody is writing about the water, the real issue is the spent-fuel-rod pool. If that thing is not secured very soon, Tokyo becoming uninhabitable within a very short time is a real possibility. There is so much radiation in there, it is staggering. The pool is inadequately cooled. The pool is damaged enough that even a minor earthquake could prevent cooling it more and a fire starting in there would both be impossible to put out and starting by itself very fast. If that happens, only the wind not
Re:Wrong issue (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like you sourced that from HystericGreenAlarmism.com
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That is probably what the Japanese are thinking also. It is called denial, and it can kill on a large scale if practiced in the face of a severe risk.
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The end of the world is neigh? Which seal of the apocalypse is Fukushima?
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The end of the world is neigh?
OMG PONIES.
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You're the one making the claims. Back them up, please.
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All you've presented are your words. Please back up your extra ordinary claims with reliable sources.
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Speaking of bullshit, it's very hard to take you serious when you spew it yourself about Chernobyl. People did not go into panic mode and there was lots of measurements published, in fact the reason why the USSR admitted the accident was because Sweden (first) and then Denmark started picking up unusual high radiation readings. Granted, if you lived in the eastern block, you would probably have been spoon fed bullshit, but the scale of the catastrophe was quite clear to the western world.
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No, it was not. I did read the paper daily, I watched the news, and nothing was clear. It became clear later (when it was to late to run). The running was also not done in "panic", there were several days to decide, wind is not that fast. And sure, many people did not understand at all what was going on, but I know for a fact that many that did packed their children off to some place in the south for 2-3 weeks until actual information became available.
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Speaking of bullshit, it's very hard to take you serious when you spew it yourself about Chernobyl.
Check how Chernobyl was handled - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Q6VDQWtqk [youtube.com] . In short - 600 000 people finished sarcophagus in half a year. What is done to secure Fukushima in more than 2 years? Also check comparison - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accident [wikipedia.org] , look at radiation levels on site and amount of fuel in reactors. Fukushima is much easier to clean up than Chernobyl, and risk of apocalyptic contamination is much higher! One more tsunami and what? What w
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What will happen if all fuel that is now in reactors will be washed out to the ocean and spread worldwide by currents?
That's a really good question! I'd like to know the answer myself. Let's try a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation.
According to this [berkeley.edu], the risky fuel pond 4 has 1.4e18 Bq of mostly Cesium 137 which decays by beta and gamma radiation, releasing 1.176MeV per decay, giving 264 kW total. If dissipated uniformly in the ocean, this would result in 264 kW/1.3e18kg = 2.0e-13 W/kg = 2.0e-13 Gray/s. Since it is beta and gamma radiation and uniformly permeating, we can translate this directly into 2.0e-13 Sv/s = 6.4
Re:Wrong issue (Score:4, Insightful)
This thread exemplifies the entire radiation insanity fear very well. I hope every intelligent Slashdot reader is watching this. Because this is what it is like to discuss Fukushima or Global Warming amongst the public.
Just this week I sat across from a veteran software engineer who, in all seriousness, said "Fukushima will be uninhabitable for 6,000 years. Probably 60,000 years." He had no basis for such a claim. I assumed engineers would not make such statements without any knowledge, but apparently not. Radiation fear goes deeper than that. People don't even understand the basics of how radiation works. But this kind of insanity is so ingrained into peoples minds that it doesn't need a source. The two ingrained assumptions seem to be that "Any amount of radiation = deadly" and "All radiation lasts for thousands of years." It is just treated as common sense, and doesn't need any backing. Oh, the other one is that "if radiation contacts something, that thing because radioactive, and so on into perpituity." Beware of these assumptions when discussing anything involving radiation.
As this thread continues, notice that gweihir claims that there is no need to backup his claims "unless you are illiterate." Wow. Just. Wow. If I wasn't having to debunk this kind of thing every week, I would shake my head and move on thinking "Troll." But folks: this is your peers. Your fellow voters.
So many of these claims are like saying a firecracker exploded a mile away, and you got hit by the debris. People seem to have a common-sense understanding of everyday physics: fire, explosions, guns, maybe even chemicals. But nuclear radiation is just magical. It can do anything, over any distance, any time..
I really have to thank durrr for his comment about HystericGreenAlarmism.com. That is not that far from the truth. Let me show how this situation is worse than one might think.
Last week I had a relative link to an article at some site like nature news blog or something named like that, which made similar insane claims to what gweihir is claiming -- BUT WITH CITATIONS. That is where things become a real problem. There is so much false science out there, and it isn't easy to determine what is real and what isn't. The claims in the article were so egregious that anyone with familiarity with the subject would instantly know it was false. It was like my firecracker example. But not everyone has that background. A 5 minute search turned-up a Scientific American article that basically showed the study was intentionally faked. But the nature blog had several such ridiculous claims and I don't have time to debunk each and every one. Real information is harder to find than fake information.
So what do we do about this?
Wrong PLACE not "Wrong Issue" (Score:2)
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You have no clue. Really, none whatsoever. 300km only mean that they can see it coming, not that they can do anything about it. Shipping the rods to Tokyo would be pretty safe though, as they would still be contained. As long as you keep them cooled, you could even walk next to them. If they burn, however, all that radioactive material ends up in very fine particles for maximum effect.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg [wikipedia.org]
The Chernobyl exclusion area is about 700km from tip to tip. Varying from about 300km wide to 100km wide.
Total "lost" area is 2,600 km.
If a similar area were lost in Japan it would be .6% of their total land mass, concentrated in important areas (potentially including tokyo as noted above).
I agree, it's unlikely. But it's not impossible.
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I presume you are referring to the spent fuel pool in the reactor 4 building as that's the one that's been reported by fantasists and alarmists like Arne Gunderson as exploding, imminently collapsing, bulging, disintegrating, sinking into the ground and catching fire ever since the accidents happened. Unfortunately for their delusions reactor 4 is still there as is its spent fuel pool which today has a water temperature of 38 deg C., not what I'd describe as "inadequately cooled".
Right now the engineers at
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http://news.yahoo.com/fukushima-plant-steps-closer-fuel-rod-removal-010447411.html [yahoo.com]
Empty the pool of fuel bundles
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There is so much radiation in there, it is staggering. The pool is inadequately cooled. The pool is damaged enough that even a minor earthquake could prevent cooling it more and a fire starting in there would both be impossible to put out and starting by itself very fast. If that happens, only the wind not blowing in the wrong direction could save most of Japans industrial base and a significant part of its population. With the probability of minor earthquakes in that area, they are already on borrowed ti
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Argh. That's not a radiation level. (Score:5, Informative)
1800 millisieverts is a dose, not a level. It's as basic a mistake as confusing feet with feet per second.
From other sources, it's a logical guess that what's meant is millisieverts per hour but an article should not make the reader guess what it means.
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The article does NOT make you guess. The idiot who posted the summary chopped that part out, and the dutiful editor let it go without correcting it.
Re: Argh. That's not a radiation level. (Score:2)
Neither are barleycorns but that doesn't stop shoes from being sized using them.
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Of course "feet" is not a unit. Everybody in the world except a couple of countries knows that.
Well, I agree that feet usually come in pairs rather than units. Still, that's not a reason to mock disabled countries.
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Of course it's a unit. In fact a lot of so-called metric countries sell goods by the foot. So it's way more than a 'couple' of countries.
The idea that once you go metric ALL of the goods in that country are automatically converted to metric measures is bullshit. For a concrete example in the UK lumber is priced by the cubic foot.
Assume the best, ignore the worst (Score:3)
This has been going on since before the plants were built. The reactors were so vulnerable to the earthquake/tsunami because they deliberately ignored the historical record of flooding in that part of Japan. The collective decision was made to ignore the worst case scenario.
After the earthquake, flood and power outage, the upper management was incompetently slow to make decisions because they were unwilling to think about loosing the plants and the likelihood of radioactivity being released. It was only the heroic action of the technical team at the site that averted a disaster worse the Chernobyl. They ultimately had to disobey direct orders to save the situation.
In the period after the so called 'shutdown' the authorities have been maintaining a delusional belief that they are doing an acceptable job and events are under control. Neither is true.
Delusional thinking is supported by not doing obvious monitoring procedures. It's magical thinking: if they don't know how bad it is, then things must be OK.
There is an ongoing failure to monitor radiation at the plant site, in the ocean and on the land. NGOs and international entities have been denied permission to do independent monitoring in the exclusion area and the ocean near the plant. One NGO Safecast [safecast.org] has been doing radiation monitoring outside the exclusion zone and making the data available.
Quibbling about whether beta radiation is lethal is an example of delusional thinking. The fact that there are an entire spectrum of recently discovered radioactive water leaks is the critical information. None of these leaks were found in a timely manor. This happening two years after the reactor failure is appalling.
Tepco does not know how bad things are because they don't want to know. The rest of the Nuclear Village is not much better. The Abe government is putting significant effort into trying to restart other closed reactors at the expense of dealing with Fukushima. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has no credibility, because they have done almost nothing to make Tepco more responsible. Tepco and the NRA have been hiding as much information from the public as they can, so no-one believes anything they say.
The prognosis is bleak. The situation is deteriorating, and two years have been wasted while ignoring the obvious. There does not seem to be any organization in Japan that has the leadership ability to manage the crisis. The likelihood of another very serious radiation leak is going up with time, not down.
It is completely possible that there will be a dramatic failure and an internationally chartered group will take over long term responsibility. This is in effect what happened at Chernobyl. See New Safe Containment [wikipedia.org].
It does not now transpire (Score:2)
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Atranspires&oq=de&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i60l4.966j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 [google.com]
Transpire: occur, happen
It is now revealed.
meltdown (Score:3, Informative)