It pains me to see large parts of the media still hyperventilating over the very modest amounts of radioactive material coming from the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the east coast of Japan.
Nothing has been made more plain that most journalists and editors have no ability to evaluate risk, especially when it comes to radioactive measurements in very unfamiliar units (millisieverts anyone?). Everything they appear to know about radioactivity appears to come from poorly understood science reports and 1950s era B-movies.
You wouldn’t know from the coverage that that very same reactor survived a truly massive earthquake and a towering tsunami with barely a scratch even though it was built around 40 years ago in the expectation of surviving much lesser events.
You wouldn’t know that Japanese people are struggling to survive in the bitter cold, while coming to terms with the loss of family members, friends and entire neighbourhoods. You won’t hear that some survivors are being housed in other nuclear plants, everything else having been washed away.
Witness the BBC reporting today:
Japan nuclear plant: Radioactivity rises in sea nearby
The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the Japanese government has tried to reassure people about the plant’s safety
Levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are 1,250 times higher than the safety limit, officials say.
The readings were taken about 300m (984ft) offshore. It is feared the radiation could be seeping into groundwater from one of the reactors.
But the radiation will no longer be a risk after eight days, officials say.
There are areas of radioactive water in four of the reactors at the plant, and two workers are in hospital.
The plant’s operator says the core of one of the six reactors may have been damaged.
It has announced that fresh water rather than seawater will now be used to cool the damaged reactors, in the hope that this will be more effective.
Why eight days? Because that’s the half-life of radioactive iodine. But that’s not what you find out from the BBC.
What of those two workers in hospital? Sounds serious doesn’t it?
Not all of the media are so poorly informed. The Register’s Louis Page has produced some well-researched articles which go a long way to explaining what is really happening:
The situation at the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan was brought under control days ago. It remains the case as this is written that there have been no measurable radiological health consequences among workers at the plant or anybody else, and all indications are that this will remain the case. And yet media outlets around the world continue with desperate, increasingly hysterical and unscrupulous attempts to frame the situation as a crisis.
Here’s a roundup of the latest facts, accompanied by highlights of the most egregious misreporting.
First up, three technicians working to restore electrical power in the plant’s No 3 reactor building stood in some water while doing so. Their personal dosimetry equipment later showed that they had sustained radiation doses up to 170 millisievert. Under normal rules when dealing with nuclear powerplant incidents, workers at the site are permitted to sustain up to 250 millisievert before being withdrawn. If necessary, this can be extended to 500 millisievert according to World Health Organisation guidance.
None of this involves significant health hazards: actual radiation sickness is not normally seen until a dose of 1,000 millisievert and is not common until 2,000. Additional cancer risk is tiny: huge numbers of people must be subjected to such doses in order to see any measurable health consequences. In decades to come, future investigators will almost certainly be unable to attribute any cases of cancer to service at Fukushima.
Nonetheless, in the hyper-cautious nuclear industry, any dose over 100 millisievert is likely to cause bosses to pull people out at least temporarily. Furthermore, the three workers had sustained slight burns to their legs as a result of standing in the radioactive water – much as one will burn one’s skin by exposing it to the rays of the sun (a tremendously powerful nuclear furnace). They didn’t even notice these burns until after completing their work. Just to be sure, however, the three were sent for medical checks.
So – basically nothing happened. Three people sustained injuries equivalent to a mild case of sunburn. But this was reported around the globe as front-page news under headlines such as “Japanese Workers Hospitalized for Excessive Radiation Exposure”. Just to reiterate: it was not excessive.
The entire article is well worth reading
But panic sells (as readers of WUWT are well aware), and sober analysis of scientific fact is nowhere near as exciting or is likely to spread like wildfire across the Internet.
No-one will die from radiation from Fukushima. No-one will mutate or develop super-powers. Godzilla will not rise from the sea and destroy Tokyo, except in cinemas.
It’s my view that the world deserves better than this. The real plight of the Japanese survivors of the earthquake and tsunami is being forgotten in the service of a bizarre fear about radiation that is more science fiction than science fact.
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This appeared just over an hour ago.
Plutonium Found in Soil Around Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant
Officials say evidence of highly radioactive plutonium has been detected in the soil in five locations around Japan’s earthquake-disabled nuclear reactor.
Operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant quoted by Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Monday they believed the plutonium was seeping out from the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactors.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that runs the plant said they did not believe the levels were high enough to be considered a risk to human health.
Partial meltdown
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier Monday he suspected a partial meltdown of one of the Fukushima earthquake-disabled nuclear reactors was leading to pools of highly radioactive water that plant operators say have been found outside the plant’s buildings.
Edano said the government’s top priority is to prevent the contaminated water from seeping into the ground water system. He urged residents to stay away from the 20-kilometer evacuation zone as the area continues to be very risky.
Contamination
Radioactive contamination has been spreading into the seawater and soil for the past two weeks, since the reactors’ cooling systems were seriously damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
[…]
Full article
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Radioactive-Plutonium-Found-in-Soil-Around-Damaged-Japanese-Nuclear-Plant-118779069.html
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/nova-inside-chernobyls-sarcophagus/
Those who think Japan’s Fukushima disaster is today’s headlines and tomorrow’s history need to take a good look at the Chernobyl disaster, which to this day is a continuing threat to the people of Ukraine. It will be hundreds of years before the area around the destroyed reactor is inhabitable again and there are disputes over whether or not Chernobyl’s nuclear fuel still poses a threat of causing another explosion. There is also a teetering reactor core cover and the deteriorating sarcophagus itself that may collapse and send plumes of radioactive dust in all directions. […]
Below is a sobering look at the Chernobyl disaster and the many men who fought and died trying to contain it. There is also the little known tale of the scientists who over the years have risked their lives to assess and direct the management of the threat Chernobyl’s destroyed reactor continuously poses. We must look to history and take the catastrophic effects of Chernobyl’s disaster to heart. Downplaying the threat in Fukushima, Japan today needlessly puts millions of people at risk who might otherwise begin making preparations to leave the area on a long-term basis.
NOVA – Inside Chernobyl’s Sarcophagus
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SUBJECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The plutonium in some of those samples is from weapons testing in the 50s and 60s and is stated as such in the press releases. There is plutonium everywhere because of this testing and BECAUSE of its long half life there has to be a lot of it to be a radiological hazard.
You cannot equate Bq/sqm directly to biological damage. One Bq is one disintegration per second. You need to know the type of radiation and the amount of energy released per disintegration before you can convert this to Sv or REM which are normalized to biological damage caused. Alpha particles do NOT result in any whole body dose for all of the reasons you state. Externally they result in no dose because they do not make it through a human’s dead skin layer. If exposed via an open wound or via the lungs or some other mucus membrane they result in a very high dose in a localized area. This is what radon, and its daughters, do to the lungs.
Cs-137 the isotope of primary longterm concern (actually its short lived daughter Ba-137) in a nuclear accident is a gamma emitter so IT IS a whole body dose issue.
Francisco says:
March 28, 2011 at 12:02 pm
This appeared just over an hour ago.
Plutonium Found in Soil Around Damaged Japanese Nuclear Plant
…
Operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant quoted by Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Monday they believed the plutonium was seeping out from the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactors.
Plutonium does not seep. It is almost insoluble in all aqueous forms. The spread of Pu is generally by air from an explosion such as Chernobyl, and exists in the form of “hot particles” which can be hazardous if inhaled.
Note however that all soil contains some uranium and / or thorium, also alpha emitters like plutonium.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Contaminated_pools_to_the_drained_2703111.html
As to the plutonium found on site:
The workers ignored their dosimeters, got burned. “Ten million times” was from reporting on the wrong radionuclide. And two of the five samples showed only “slightly higher” levels of plutonium. Oh, and the Japanese people, long-touted as examples of healthy living with long lifespans, live with “pervasive levels” of plutonium surrounding them.
I have what has proven to be a reliable indicator of how things are going at the site. I watch ABC News (US), note how horrifying “theoretically a physicist” Michio Kaku shouts that it is or will become, and know it’s not that bad nor will become that bad. It’s worked so far.
For a useful perspective on Chernobyl radiation and radiophobia, see
Zbigniew Jaworowski’s article
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Summer_2010/Observations_Chernobyl.pdf and his update on the resettlement of the
Belarus exclusion zone
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Summer_2010/Belarus_Repopulation.pdf
Jaworowski, a physician/nuclear scientist, is also a past chairman of the United Nations Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation.
Francisco says:
March 28, 2011 at 11:47 am
Doug Badgero says:
March 28, 2011 at 10:21 am
…
I will briefly refer to two Chernobyl studies in the west which falsify Wade Allison’s assertions. The first is a study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University. Tondel examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years.
Even professional epidemiologists struggle with the link between ionising radiation and carcinogenesis (the background rate is so high, one in 3-4 of us will get a cancer, I already have) and this heroic attempt at amateur epidemiology by Martin Tondel is sadly laughable. The trap he falls into is the well known problem of the “ecological study”; this refers for instance to looking at environmental radiation levels in several geographic locations, then looking at cancer incidence in these regions, and drawing a straight line between them. Many epidemiologist fundamentally reject the approach of such ecological studies since the small effect you are looking for is confounded by many much larger stronger carcinogens. Ionising radiation is, by the standards of chemical agents and socio-economic factors, a very weak carcinogen.
In fact, if you do ecological epidemiology seriously in regard to natural environmental levels of radiation (e.g. the work of Bernard Cohen) you find a strong and consistent result: background levels of radioactivity are INVERSELY related to levels of cancer incidence. But this is unreliable evidence for the safety or even benefit of radiation. There are many counfounding factors that can explain it. One example – background radiatio is higher in regions of natural beauty with low population densities, inhabited by rich people with good health care and good levels of health. Also, areas with very high natural background radiation levels, e.g. the Kerrala thorium sands in India, hot springs in Iran and Germany and elsewhere with high radon levels, Cornwall in England etc, have no consistent association with elevated cancer – more likely the reverse.
Remember, in epidemiology (the “cake of death” study of where disease and death come from) two (connected) factors COMPLETELY DOMINATE AND OVERWHELM ALL OTHERS in causation of death, cancer or otherwise, and life expectancy: these are social connectedness and socio-economic status. A change in one of these will take DECADES off your life. By comparison cigarettes might take months or a year or two and radiation a few hours to days at best.
So Tondel’s 11% is totally spurious and if he know anything about epidemiology he should have known this. He then blunders into an even greater mistake – assuming his 11% relative risk is linearly multiplicative. Nooooooo! You cant extrapolate from an epidemiological study, the errors and nature of the risk do not allow it. Radiation epidemiologists try to asses risks from large doses and extrapolate them to small ones (spuriously, using the ill-founded LNT linear no threshold model – sorry boys and girls, there IS a threshold). But you dont do it the other way round – extrapolate large risk from small. That is why the Japan WW2 bomb data is still the foundation of current (low-LET) radiation “protection”.
Using all available ecological correlations one would conclude from increasing levels of Chernobyl fallout a decrease, not increase, in cancers. But this would be to follow a discredited methodology (the “ecological correlation study”) and a conclusion of increased or decreased risk is unsound. There is no alternative to the case-control multi-decade cohort study in groups matched for socio-economic status. Without this, you are wasting your time.
Re:Francisco says:
March 28, 2011 at 12:15 pm
“Those who think Japan’s Fukushima disaster is today’s headlines and tomorrow’s history need to take a good look at the Chernobyl disaster….”
I think you’ll find yours to be a sane voice in the wilderness at this site (my favorite blog of them all, incidentally) on this particular subject. Having helped design BWR power plants almost exactly like the ones in question, I began where you are early in the Fukushima Daiichi affair and was shocked at the cavalier positions of many commenters to the effect that events there were “no big deal”. After another week of steadily deteriorating circumstances at the plant, including almost certain evidence of a reactor containment breach, I had presumed that at least some of the air would have gone out of the “its all a bunch of media hype over a minor incident” crowd. I returned today to find defenders of the nuclear Holy Grail redoubling their efforts, some almost to the point of claiming “nuclear radiation won’t harm you anyway”.
Even assuming all long-term damage is limited to the plant site, a very dubious outcome in view of the past week’s developments, decontamination of the site will cost $ billions and take decades of massive effort. That alone is a very “BIG DEAL”
phlogiston says:
There is no alternative to the case-control multi-decade cohort study in groups matched for socio-economic status.
Why do you suppose that the US government never conducted such a study in the aftermath of Three Mile Island? Any guesses?
Phil says:
March 27, 2011 at 10:20 pm
“Sigh. I had promised myself not to make any comments today.
[stuff deleted]
But, can you or anyone else guarantee that no meltdown occurred? Is all the fuel where it belongs, inside the fuel rods?”
Phil,
Obviously until the reactors are stabilized and opened up, no one will know for certain whether one or more of the cores have partially or totally melted. You seem to be implying that the evidence already indicates that one or more of the cores (or all?) have totally melted down. Based on what I’ve seen, while it is likely that there has been at least some damage to some of the cores, to imply that any of the cores have totally melted seems unjustifiedly pessimistic. If a core had already totally melted, there should be much more evidence of products other than iodine and cesium than there have been to-date. The water in the turbine room was not nearly as radioactive as it should have been had it leaked from a completely melted core. The plutonium being referenced in some of the reports today is in such small quantities that it may well have been there all along, and there are no reports of uranium or other products that would be expected if there has been a total meltdown of one or more of the cores.
I think few people would disagree that this situation is less severe than Chernobyl, where the core did completely melt and pool below its original location.
Daryl,
Are you actually unaware that the present situation in Japan is potentially, and at this point likely, more than an order of magnitude worse than Chernobyl?
aletho says:
March 28, 2011 at 2:29 pm
phlogiston says:
There is no alternative to the case-control multi-decade cohort study in groups matched for socio-economic status.
Why do you suppose that the US government never conducted such a study in the aftermath of Three Mile Island? Any guesses?
For the same reason that they suppressed the results of the shipyard workers study. Ever heard of it? There was an epidemiological study comparing a nuclear to a non-nuclear ship-yard. One of the best studies of its type, all socio-economic confounders were well controlled. These were shipyard workers in both groups, only difference the radiation exposure. Result? To quote Bernard Cohen:
Many other studies have been reported on cancer risk vs. dose
for normal occupational exposures. In response to heavy media
coverage of some nonscientific reporting, a $10 million study
[43 44] was carried out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) of workers in eight U.S. Navy shipyards
involved in servicing nuclear-propelled ships.The study included
28,000 exposed workers and 33,000 age- and job-matched
controls who worked on non-nuclear ships. The former group all
had exposures above 5 mSv and average exposures of 50 mSv. The
cancer mortality rate for the exposed was only 85% of that for the
unexposed, a difference of nearly two standard deviations. Hiring
procedures, medical surveillance, job type, and other factors were
the same for both groups; the study was specifically designed to
eliminate the “healthy worker effect,” which is often used to
explain such results. The issue of nonoccupational exposure was
not addressed, but there was a high degree of homogeneity among
the differentworker groups being compared.
Here is Cohen’s full article, entitled “The LNT theory of radiation carcinogenesis should be rejected”:
http://www.jpands.org/vol13no3/cohen.pdf
Myrrh says:
March 28, 2011 at 4:58 am
phlogiston –
Combine two mysterious unknowns, the workings of the Russian-Soviet political system, and health effects of radiation, and any number of conspiracy theories can be hatched. Yes, in the late 80’s the USSR was just about to emerge from decades of severe political repression, so it is not hard to argue governmental cover-up. But things changed completely within a few short years of the Chernobyl accident in April 1986. The era of Gorbachev, glasnost etc, while imperfect, suddenly made possible open and honest reporting of facts in a way previously unthinkable. For instance, in the 1950s there was a huge accident in the Urals releasing a large activity of plutonium, strontium and other radionuclides. Deep in the USSR both spatially and temporally, the accident was successfully hushed up. Of course, the Chernobyl cloud crossed into Finland and western Europe making cover up impossible in that sense. But as the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Chernobyl accident played a role in the massive political change that ended the Soviet Union.
Which statistics would you really prefer to be using for your analysis, the massaged by vested interests to deliberately and cynically downplay the effects of radiation, or the statistics mostly unknown from the local people actually affected by this?
After the accident, the opposite was more often true. Scientists and clinicians, suffering massive budget cuts in the end-Soviet collapse, desperately tried to attract Western collaboration and funding by talking UP, not down, the consequences of Chernobyl.
To quote the article you cited on Chernobyl being “worse than we thought”:
To buttress his point, Lupandin tracked down 235 people who originally lived in the Belarus village of Ulasy, located less than two miles from Chernobyl, which is just across the Ukraine border, and who were resettled after the village was evacuated.
Thirty-five of the relocated villagers, although they were in the prime of life and felt fine for three years after the nuclear accident, are now dead of cancer.
Of the survivors, many now suffer from goiter or diabetes, Lupandin said.
A radiation scientist at the Ukrainian Radiation Protection service explained to me that the decision to evacuate many elderly people from their villages in Ukraine and Belarus was disastrous. These folk were uprooted from villages where they had lived their whole lives. The trauma of this quite literally killed off many of them. This high mortality was associated with moving them from high to low radiation areas. Remember that in the 80-s and 90’s life expectancy in the former USSR dipped into the fifties. Radiation or no radiation.
Again, in a collapsing economy mortality will increase, and post-Chernobyl it was easy to pin this on ionising radiation. But the rigorous scientific studies aimed at quantifying the radiation carcinogenesis find much less than the extravagantly quoted figures of hundreds of thousands of deaths.
phlogiston cites study:
The former group all had exposures above 5 mSv and average exposures of 50 mSv.
Useless PR phlog. Low levels of external radiation are irrelevant.
You failed to address my question:
Why do you suppose that the US government never conducted such a study in the aftermath of Three Mile Island? Any guesses?
@Claude Harvey:
March 28, 2011 at 2:19 pm
==========
Yes, and I notice the shifting of the arguments. The fist week was “it’s no big deal, it will be under control in a few days”. Well that didn’t happen, a great amount of radiation is coming out, prospects are grim for any kind of quick resolution. So now the arguments have shifted to chanting the virtues of radiation, which is not only harmless, but, as it turns out, actually helps you prevent cancer.
I am reminded of something I read a few days ago:
“In the early 1950s, the disciples of nuclear power, or the ‘peaceful atom’ as it was then called, insisted that nuclear power would soon become so cheap and efficient that it would be offered to consumers for free. Visionaries that they were, they suggested that cities would be constructed with building materials impregnated with uranium so that snow removal would be unnecessary. Atomic bombs, they urged, should be used to carve out new coastal harbors for ships. In low doses, they swore, radiation was actually beneficial to one’s health.” http://www.counterpunch.org/ward03242011.html
From Myrrh on March 28, 2011 at 4:58 am:
Cancer arises from genetic changes (carcinogenesis). A major source of genetic damage is oxidative damage from Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). ROS are a normal product of cellular metabolism, including the biologically quite toxic superoxide, which actually leaks out of the mitochondria within our cells. Cancer does not NEED an external cause, we come pre-built with a potential cause within every cell.
Type II diabetes, that arises after you are born and formerly considered “adult onset,” comes from excessive carbohydrate intake. We eat far more carbohydrates than we were designed to, by evolution or otherwise. We consume too much at once, we consume carbohydrates that are quickly transformed to glucose, leading to large blood sugar spikes. Where before we went through cycles of feast or famine, including periods like winter when meat was the only available food, we have feasts sufficient to trigger insulin releases to reduce damage-inducing high blood sugar levels several times a day, all year long. With the onset of diabetes, the pancreas produces less and less insulin, finally the body becomes insensitive to insulin, resulting in continuous high glucose levels leading to disease and death. You can read about this in the Wikipedia entry “Low-carbohydrate diet”. Dr. Atkins did great work in this field, among his own patients he was able to effectively treat diabetes with his diet. Indeed, diabetics have to be careful, as after going low-carb on the Atkins diet their needs for insulin and medication quickly drop off, often they’ll only need some regular monitoring of glucose levels.
Autoimmune diseases are on the rise because, frankly, we’re no longer dirty enough. The various bodily mechanisms that we collectively call the immune system are always on alert, looking for attackers. Without enough things to be defended against, the immune system can grow ultra-sensitive, or not develop properly enough during early life to fully know the difference, and attack the body’s own cells. (Autoimmunity, the Hygiene hypothesis.) We raise our children in ultra-clean environments, obsessively clean and wash and even carry around hand sanitizer. Our immune systems don’t have enough to fight against. Indeed, there are several autoimmune diseases that are now being treated, by infecting people with parasitic worms (Helmintic therapy). The evidence is mounting, we need the environment we were designed to survive in, with parasites and germs and even regular exposure to allergens, to stay at our healthiest. Our sterile modern civilization is causing the rise in autoimmune diseases, not radiation.
You can no more point to “nuclear radiation” as “ONE actually known direct cause” of those ailments, than you can point to CO2 as “ONE actually known direct cause” of whatever “global warming” actually exists. Each of them are swamped by other factors that cause them other than radiation. And indeed, I think this is the first time I ever heard of radiation causing diabetes and autoimmunity! Do you have any sources for those claims, that are at least borderline reputable, even Wikipedia?
Claude Harvey
Thanks for coming back to comment. I want the view of someone that has worked in designing nuclear plants. I agree with you that some here are downplaying what is going on at Fukushima. The odd thing is that I recognized the names as some that have had reasoned questions about global warming. I don’t know why they are so quick to ride off fears about Fukushima and radiation in general. Why don’t they have questions in this also?
If you have any updates and opinions about Fukushima I will be reading them. Some may be quick to say you are exaggerating. But it’s obvious something is going on at Fukushima that we are not being told. The black out of radiation readings 2 weeks should have been enough for anyone, and everyone, to see it is worse than we are being told by some.
Latest helicopter footage of Fukushima, zoom-in on ruined reactors. I can’t see how anything there can be made to work. The place is a wreck.
No wonder the control unit of reactor 2 looks as it does: all monitors and indicator lights are off. The only working systems there seem to be bodies of 4 people walking around in protective suits, looking perplexed.
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4136147791/how-much-does-japan-know-about-the-status-of-its
Viv Evans says:
March 28, 2011 at 10:25 am
Of course, one can try and do open-cast mining, destroying vast areas of land in the process
What are you meaning by vast?
@Daryl M says:
March 28, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Pessimistic? I thought that I was showing with supporting material that the core temperatures may actually be dropping and that a good fraction of the radiation may have been and may continue to be effectively contained. The fraction that has escaped would be the volatiles, of which cesium would be the most worrisome. So far, in other comments I have shown that the fallout is not uniform and that there tend to be hot spots. I can think of only one ground sample outside of the plant that has shown dangerous levels of cesium, that has been reported so far. There does not appear to be any zone outside the plant where there is extensive (in area) contamination of soil or buildings, so far, but sampling has been necessarily incomplete. However, I would agree that precautions should continue to be taken in areas that could receive fallout and that the situation is still very serious.
One observation that can be made, however, is that there are assumptions that may not be true that may heavily affect perceptions. One such assumption is that meltdown = catastrophic radioactive fallout. The meltdown at Three Mile Island was of 20 to 30 tons of corium, IIRC, and there were, IIRC, no emissions above the legal limit. Chernobyl is a vastly different story. A dangerous design, poorly operated, essentially no containment and insufficient precautions taken with respect to potentially affected populations.
Despite the fact that Fukushima involves multiple reactors and probably also involves the first spent fuel accident, it differs from Chernobyl in almost every way and resembles Three Mile Island much more closely (i.e. better design than C, better operated than C, more effective containment than C and the precautions taken with respect to potentially affected populations were very prompt).
I would also like to point out that this is a thousand-year event. I have never heard of anything built or required to be built to a thousand-year standard, be it earthquake, flood, forest fire, volcano, etc. In fact, I would submit that most everywhere there is probably insufficient data to even be able to estimate such a standard. Let’s hope that progress continues to be made at Fukushima, even if it is sometimes of the two-steps-forward-one-step-backward variety.
Of course, one can try and do open-cast mining, destroying vast areas of land in the process
At least strip mining sites are amenable to a degree of restoration for some human use. But the point is a false choice. We don’t have to choose between strip mining and nukes, there is plenty of oil and gas. Scarcity is not the issue. In any event the scale of devastation is off by many orders of magnitude.
Nukes are not anywhere near economical either. They only exist because of the dominance of the military industrial complex, of which they are an integral part.
Phil claims that we are witness to a “1,000 year event”.
A quick check finds a 9.1 quake just over six years ago and 87 quakes of 8 or greater in the past century.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/mag8/magnitude8_1900_date.php
Phil states:
The meltdown at Three Mile Island was of 20 to 30 tons of corium, IIRC, and there were, IIRC, no emissions above the legal limit.
Apparently Phil is under the impression that the emissions from TMI were measured. One wonders how he supposes that this measurement could have been carried out.
>>Francisco says: March 28, 2011 at 5:30 pm
>>Latest helicopter footage of Fukushima, zoom-in on ruined reactors. I can’t
>>see how anything there can be made to work. The place is a wreck.
A bit silly of them to make a gas-tight building around the cores, with no easy way of manually opening up large vents, in case of a gas build-up. Never mind the earthquake and tsunami, without those hydrogen explosions the situation would be much much easier to control.
Bearing the volatility and destructive power of hydrogen, is it sensible to have hydrogen powered busses in London, with dozens of potential smokers on board?
.
aletho says:
March 28, 2011 at 3:18 pm
“Daryl,
Are you actually unaware that the present situation in Japan is potentially, and at this point likely, more than an order of magnitude worse than Chernobyl?”
If I didn’t know it wasn’t April Fool’s Day, I would think your post was a joke. Knowing that you are serious, all I can say is that if you think the situation in Japan is even as bad as Chernobyl, let alone worse, you are ignorant. They are not even on the same order of magnitude. The Chernobyl reactor was carbon moderated and it had no containment vessel. It exploded due to gross negligence of the operator and spread chunks of carbon moderator into the atmosphere and surrounding area. The fuel completely melted and ran down into the basement of the facility. It was an absolute worst case scenario, beyond anyone’s imagination. On the other hand, in Japan, the three reactors experiencing problems are all still holding pressure so irrespective of what happens to the core (even if they melt completely), the vast majority of the radioactivity will be contained. The only “leakage” has been due to venting of steam.
How you can say that the situation in Japan is worse than Chernobyl is completely beyond common sense.