Some people will probably say the author must be some kind of pawn of the nuclear lobby, but I think this is by far the most comprehensive and compelling article about Fukushima Daiichi I’ve read yet.
A lot of people are still writing a lot of alarmist crap about the spent fuel pool at reactor 4 (which is still a very scary situation, especially for the Fukushima region) being “a survival issue for all mankind” so it was interesting to read a more realistic and science-backed take. I don’t think most people understand the scale of measurements such as sieverts and becquerels and how radiation disperses in the environment so they jump to very frightening conclusions. The people making decisions about American personnel in Japan at the time had access to much better information and projections, basically the best the world has to offer (Livermore lab being a prime example).
I’ll end with a disclaimer in that I still agree with those who call for curtailing nuclear power, as it’s becoming quite obvious that a pretty large area around the stricken plant is doomed indefinitely (even if it isn’t a global nuclear apocalypse). This could happen to any other area around the world that has n-plants (Taiwan being a particularly scary example!)
That’s an interesting report.
One problem is that people tend to only talk about aspects of the situation that they prefer to talk about.
“Exposure” means something different depending on whether your are subject to radiation that comes from somewhere around you or whether you ingest and inhale radioactive dust that has found its way into your food. And “acceptable level” or “dangerous level” also means something different, depending on whether it is your child that is born with a birth defect or develops leukemia or whether you are talking numbers on a spreadsheet. And who decides what is “acceptable” and “dangerous” anyway? (See below…)
And given the propensity of companies and politicians for putting business ahead of health and safety, we will continue to get polluted materials transported from affected areas to where we live: witness the scandal concerning concrete made with radioactive sand, the business of transporting earthquake and tsunami garbage around the country to have it burned in places far away from the disaster areas, the business of readjusting “acceptable levels” of this or that radioactive pollutant several times where and when it seemed opportune, the repeated occurence of TEPCO having radiation measured with instruments that have a limited range (so the officially recorded data are 100% of the instrument’s range, but nobody knows how much it really was), and the incidents where workers were given shields to cover their dosimeters with, so that their real exposure was not recorded…
As regards “acceptable levels” and “dangerous levels”, we are in a “frog in the heated pot” scenario: thanks to several decades of nuclear testing, deliberate dumping or spreading of radioactive materials (example: Windscale/Sellafield sea dumping, uranium munitions used in the Iraq and Balkan wars), and radioactive materials continually leaking into the environment from “storage areas” (some bad cases: waste deposits in the Ural area or near Hanford, rusting reactors in sunken submarines, Fukushima water leakage), the level of what people call “natural radiation” on earth is higher now than it was during human history - and it will be going up for a long time to come. Considering that as of yet nobody knows a method of safely storing radioactive material or permanently removing it from the biosphere into which humans have introduced it, and considering that humans have created and are still actively producing radioactive elements with half-lives that are magnitudes higher than a human lifespan, we can expect more and more radioactive pollution to be dispersed into and within the biosphere - and allwe can do is continue to adjust “acceptable levels”. And we haven’t even talked about the possibility of nuclear bombs being used in some hostile military exchange or what some call “nuclear terrorism”: some non-military entity or person making use of radioactive material to attack somebody…
Concluding that a “worst case scenario” would or could not have happened does not wipe away any of that “shit”.
The pot is slowly being heated - and the frog will do what?
[quote=“yuli”]That’s an interesting report.
One problem is that people tend to only talk about aspects of the situation that they prefer to talk about.
“Exposure” means something different depending on whether your are subject to radiation that comes from somewhere around you or whether you ingest and inhale radioactive dust that has found its way into your food. And “acceptable level” or “dangerous level” also means something different, depending on whether it is your child that is born with a birth defect or develops leukemia or whether you are talking numbers on a spreadsheet. And who decides what is “acceptable” and “dangerous” anyway? (See below…)
And given the propensity of companies and politicians for putting business ahead of health and safety, we will continue to get polluted materials transported from affected areas to where we live: witness the scandal concerning concrete made with radioactive sand, the business of transporting earthquake and tsunami garbage around the country to have it burned in places far away from the disaster areas, the business of readjusting “acceptable levels” of this or that radioactive pollutant several times where and when it seemed opportune, the repeated occurence of TEPCO having radiation measured with instruments that have a limited range (so the officially recorded data are 100% of the instrument’s range, but nobody knows how much it really was), and the incidents where workers were given shields to cover their dosimeters with, so that their real exposure was not recorded…
As regards “acceptable levels” and “dangerous levels”, we are in a “frog in the heated pot” scenario: thanks to several decades of nuclear testing, deliberate dumping or spreading of radioactive materials (example: Windscale/Sellafield sea dumping, uranium munitions used in the Iraq and Balkan wars), and radioactive materials continually leaking into the environment from “storage areas” (some bad cases: waste deposits in the Ural area or near Hanford, rusting reactors in sunken submarines, Fukushima water leakage), the level of what people call “natural radiation” on earth is higher now than it was during human history - and it will be going up for a long time to come. Considering that as of yet nobody knows a method of safely storing radioactive material or permanently removing it from the biosphere into which humans have introduced it, and considering that humans have created and are still actively producing radioactive elements with half-lives that are magnitudes higher than a human lifespan, we can expect more and more radioactive pollution to be dispersed into and within the biosphere - and allwe can do is continue to adjust “acceptable levels”. And we haven’t even talked about the possibility of nuclear bombs being used in some hostile military exchange or what some call “nuclear terrorism”: some non-military entity or person making use of radioactive material to attack somebody…
Concluding that a “worst case scenario” would or could not have happened does not wipe away any of that “shit”.
The pot is slowly being heated - and the frog will do what?[/quote]
No, I agree with you on all those points. I just wish there was more honest, factual discussion about it. It’s just like all other environmental issues - most either pretend it doesn’t exist or they blow it so far out of proportion as to lose any credibility. I’d rather hear activists making the points you are (that nuclear energy is a slowly simmering, but very serious, long term problem) rather than engaging in baseless, unscientific fear-mongering. Maybe I’m just getting the activists and the tin-foil hat crowd mixed up (nuclear energy seems to be a common ground for them lately).
Man, the internet hysteria about Fukushima Daiichi has been ramping up lately due to the removal of the fuel rods from building 4 that will be going on this month.
I even read crap like “Human Extinction Event” in the comments sections (I know I shouldn’t even read those graffiti walls of lowest common denominator humanity). Like we are all going to die of radiation burns or something. :loco:
And David Suzuki is saying “bye bye Japan and evacuate the west coast of the US” if they fuck up or there is another earthquake. I wonder what study his referencing. I know he is a credible scientist but he also seems like a pretty hardcore environmentalist. Is this credible or is he just trying to scare people.
Still, I am worried, as I should be. I’m planning on moving back to the US west coast next summer and I hope I don’t have to worry about fallout coming from Japan (like, worrying about a slight increase in cancer risk, not worrying about turning into a post-nuclear ghoul).
So tough to know what to think about all this. I feel like it is denial one side (TEPCO, Japanese govt., the media) and complete unscientific hysteria or agenda-driven fear mongering on the other side (environmentalists, anti-nuke activists).
(Fortunately, not everything coming out of Japan is characterized by prevarication and obfuscation. But that might change soon, since our government is set to pass a new secrecy law in December that could mean we will be kept even more in the dark after the next nuclear accident.)
I’ve watched the video and looked him up a bit. He seems like kind of a loose cannon but he’s won plenty of prestigious awards and honors, particularly in Canada. I still want to know what “paper” he is referencing because it sounds like it came to a drastically different conclusion from the one I read about in that Slate article I posted earlier.
After researching this topic for some time I ran across this fantastic organization that charted real radiation levels across most of Japan. After their findings were made public then the Japanese government started reporting real/similar numbers as well. If you’re curious about their efforts then check them out…
I’m considering buying a Geiger counter from them to take with me on my hikes across Taiwan. I have no doubts we’ll start to see elevated levels of radiation here in the coming years, I’d like to do my part by capturing levels today for a comparison.
Well, he’s not exactly what you would call “loose cannon”.
Anyway, what he talks about all hinges on a certain IF and a series of conseuquential IFs - this is how the reasoning goes (see the numbered lines - my comments are interspersed here and marked with “@”):
IF there is another earthquake near the Fukushima power plant…
@ Comment: from a geological point of view it is certain that there will be more than one such earthquakes in that area in the future - except nobody knows when.
… and IF, as a consequence, there is damage to the remaining structure of the power plant, such that any of the molten radioactive material that is inside of 3 of the 4 reactor buildings cannot be contained any longer…
@ Comment: this material is in the form of “blobs” made up of what once was fuel rods and control rods and of which nobody exactly knows where they are in the reactor structure because they burned their way down into (or possibly through) the steel and concrete of the containment vessels - these blobs are kept under control by a kind of random flow of a lot of water, thus the past, present and future flow of radioactively polluted water into the ocean there.
… then any of those “blobs” would heat up (since there are ongoing nuclear reactions going on inside) and, if not controlled with some new emergency measures, could start acting like a slow-motion nuclear bomb and spew massive amounts of radioative particles (smoke and dust) into the atmosphere, similar to what the world experienced with Chernobyl. In addition, we have the following situation: the fuel rods of the 4th reactor, where all or at least much of the matrix of fuel rods and control rods appears be OK (i.e., it has not melted down) would become an equally dangerous source of radioactive pollution on a large scale, if that reactor lost cooling. Tokyo Power is now preapring to remove those rods from the reactor and put them into a holding tank. This brings us to the remaining problem: there are already several holding tanks that have been holding fuel rods from the time before the accident 2.5 years ago, and now the rods from reactor 4 will be added. If any of these tanks gets damaged, so that they cannot hold water any longer, then some of the rods contained in them could also end up burning and spewing massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The risk of a reactor or holding tank failing as the consequence of an earthquake exists, of course, with any other of the many nuclear power plants and storage facilities located in earthquakle prone areas (Taiwan included), but the already heavily damaged infrastructure at Fukushiima makes this plant especially vulnerable.
Conclusion: there is a good chance that the plant at Fukushima will deliver a massive burst of radioactive pollution (as opposed to the ongoing flow - 2.5 years - of relatively low level pollution) at some time in the future.
I got you on those points, Yuli. I know there is still a lot of risk for mass emissions of radiation and that’s why I try to keep abreast of the situation on a weekly or even daily basis. However, like I said before it is hard to separate the good info from the lies and distortions coming from both sides of the nuclear-debate spectrum.
David Suzuki’s speech, whatever amount of scientific basis it did in fact contain, really did come off as alarmist propaganda to me. Which, in a sense is OK because we as a society shouldn’t be complacent about these risks. But it’s not useful information about the real world impacts of what might happen if shit does hit the fan, which as you and many others point out, is unfortunately quite possible.
I found an interesting article from Vice, of all places. The author was also freaked out by Suzuki’s speech so he asked some profs and scientists for their takes on it. They kind of had the same reaction I did - Suzuki was making good points and lost credibility with the whole “bye-bye Japan and evacuate the west coast of the US” bit. From the article:
[i]6. “It’s bye-bye Japan—and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate.” - Suzuki
David Measday
“I’m sorry, but that is ridiculous. It’s totally impossible! I can’t believe he would say that. When he’s in his own field, he’s usually reasonable. But this is just crazy.”
Marcello Pavan
“It doesn’t in any remote sense seem plausible. It’s contaminated material, yes, but certainly not on a scale that would devastate Japan, nor travel all way across the Pacific and cause an evacuation."[/i]
Yes, he apparently used unnecessary hyperbole, which is particularly unfortunate when one knows that threre are fierce supporters of the status quo who will use such hyperbole to deflect from the untenability of their own position, but “bye-bye Japan” is what a lot of people in Japan surely will feel after the next accident (even if they may not be able to act on it, meaning even if they can’t really go anywhere else but have to stay in the country).
Yeah it’s certainly hyperbole from a scientific standpoint, but if you consider Tokyo to be the heart and soul of Japan, then I guess he has a point. Tokyo seems to be right around the edge of most “worst-case scenario” potential evacuation zones. That would just be a horrific mess if the amount of radiation and prevailing winds conspired to make such a thing happen. Glad I don’t live in that densely-populated mega city - the panic and mayhem that would ensue in such a place scares me more than the actual radiation. The thought of people buying up all the fresh food and bottled water, crowding the airports trying to get out etc. I hope to God we never have a nuclear accident near Taipei. If there is any utility that’s more clueless and mismanaged than TEPCO it’s Taipower!
Anyway, on to another article.
Some people would add them to the “ignore and deny” conspiracy, while others complain that they quote activists like Arnie Gunderson, but Reuters seems to be a decent source of info so far, in my opinion. The articles tend to be in-depth and don’t tend to either downplay or overblow the situation too much.
Reading that article made me remember that they have MOX fuel (containing plutonium!) in reactors 3 and 4. The MOX fuel part of the equation is a pretty scary thing that no one has been talking about very much since 2011.
(Yes, i was mentioning the link that hansioux posted, and since i can read that stuff i was going to post a follow-up anyways, but thanks for the quick reaction . )
The problem is that somewhat hard to digest reports from the UNSCEAR always lose out against weird stuff like multi-pocked tomatoes…
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