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."
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.
This was NOT mistake. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:This error was done more than once (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oblig. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:1, Interesting)
Excuse me if I say that sounds like bullshit to me. I have a surplus civil defense radiation survey meter. Cost me about five bucks. The meter is marked 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 r/hr with 5 minor ticks between each of those majors. It has a CLEVER DEVICE CALLED A RANGE SWITCH that selects x1, x10, or x100. The reading does not bounce around hopelessly on the lowest scale. It looks like it's fine to single minor ticks. So it can measure 0.1 r/hr with reasonable precision, and it can measure 50 r/hr. A SINGLE device. Don't tell me this exact device wouldn't be possible to read both 10 mSv/h and 2000 mSv/h. One using the same GENERAL PRINCIPLE could.
It's the same general principle as a DVM that has 0.2, 2, 20, and 200 volt scales. The 0.2 volt scale takes quite precise, repeatable, and accurate measurements, yet it can still read to 1000 times that high.
Hint: NOBODY with any smarts at all cares whether a reading is, say, 50 +/- 0.01. Whats matters is whether it is, generally speaking, 15, 50, or 150 for example. If you go into a disaster zone and take 100 readings in the same general area, they are all going to diverge by that much anyway. Put it another way. Someone who absorbs 601 rads is not going to definitely die within the next week, and a guy next to him who takes 599 rads is not going to be washed off and sent home because he got 0.16% less than the LD50.
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.
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:2, Interesting)
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 shield your meter to prevent the gas from being continuously ionized and your anode eroded by your high volts power supply.
Let me guess, you have never actually professionally used one of these meters. And now you are trying to lecture someone who has and calling bullshit?
Re:Where were the professionals. (Score:2, Interesting)
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 consider the the precision of a measurement that is within the magnitude of the scale always remains constant as long as you use the most precise scale available? If you read 25 mRem/hr on a 0-50 mRem/hr scale, you will have the same relative precision as 250 mRem/hr on a 0-500 mRem/hr scale. Oh, but now you want everybody to operate with the scales maxed, so you can read the 25 mRem/hr on a 0-5000 mRem/hr scale? Are you fucking stupid? Go get the right meter and measure it right. At that scale electronic noise will be enough to confuse you (it could be 0 or 100 mRem/hr).
tl;dr: the above poster doesn't know jack shit about what he is talking about.
Re:Wrong issue (Score:3, Interesting)
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 uSv/year. This can be compared to the natural background radiation, which is about 2.4 mSv/year.
However, Cesium may be subject to bioaccumulation. If we assume perfect bioaccumulation, then all the cesium at the bottom of the food chain will end up at the top (i.e. humans). This is a huge exaggeration (think many orders of magnitude), but let's see what we get. The total ocean biomass is about 2.24e14 kg, while the total human biomass is about 3.5e11 kg. So after all the ocean biomass has passed through humans, and if all the Cesium is retained (whch it won't be), then we would have magnification of 640, bringing us to 4.1 mSv/year, which is almost double the natural background radiation. So that might give measurable effects, but is still not dangerous.
So unless I have made any huge errors, it seems like Fukushima will not be able to threaten humanity. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be a local problem, though.