Guest post by Michael Dickey (cross posted from his website matus1976.com)
The decline of nuclear power has had a significant effect on global carbon emissions and subsequently any anthropogenic global warming effect. To see the extent of this influence, let us first take a look at total U.S. carbon emissions since 1900.
According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, from 1900 to 2006, US carbon emissions rose from 181 MMT (million metric tons) to 1,569 MMT.
Taking a look at US electricity generation by type, according to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. generates 51% of its power from coal, and cumulatively about 71% of its power from fossil fuel sources.
Comparing the energy source to Carbon emissions, the burning of coal to generate electricity alone emits more CO2 than any other single source, about one-third of the total.
As the US Electrical Generation by Type figure shows, about 20% of the U.S. electrical supply comes from nuclear power. Let us now imagine that the U.S. never built any nuclear power plants, but instead built more coal plants to generate the electricity those nuclear plants would have generated.
According to the Energy Information Administration, since 1971, 18.6 billion MW•h (Megawatt hour) of electrical power have been generated by nuclear sources (1). According to the US Department of Energy, every kW•h (kilowatt hour) of electricity generated by coal produces 2.095 lbs of CO2 (2).
As the calculations in the table above show, every MW•h of electricity generated by coal generates 2,095 pounds of carbon dioxide. For 18.6 billion MW•h at 2,095 pounds of CO2 per MW•h, this amounts to 39.0 trillion additional lbs of CO2, or 17.7 billion metric tons. Finally, converting the 17.7 billion metric tons of CO2 to carbon results in 4.842 billion, or 4,842 million metric tons of carbon.
What all this shows is that had this power been generated by coal plants, an additional 4,842 million metric tons of carbon would have been released into the atmosphere. Breaking this calculation down by year, what would this have made our carbon emissions record look like?
Again in blue we see the real world US carbon emissions, but in green we see what the carbon emissions would have been if all the electricity generated by our nuclear infrastructure had instead been generated by coal power plants.
In all, carbon emissions would have been 14.6% higher, with 1,782 MMT of carbon released without nuclear power plants, while only 1,552 MMT are released with our current nuclear infrastructure. This is why many leading environmentalists, such as James Lovelock (author of the Gaia Hypothesis) are vocal supporters of nuclear power.
But this chart is not entirely fair to nuclear power, because the growth of nuclear power was severely derailed by environmentalist hyperbole and outright scaremongering. Because of the attacks by environmentalists on nuclear power, many planned power plants were cancelled, and many existing plants licenses were not renewed. The result, according to Al Gore himself in “Our Choice” was:
“Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage…Thus, only about one-fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating.” (3)
Let us take a look then at U.S. carbon emissions if the U.S. had simply built and operated the power plants that were originally planned.
Yup, that’s right people: if the US had simply built and operated the nuclear power plants it had planned and licensed, it would today be producing not only less carbon emissions than it did in 1972, but would in fact be emitting almost half the carbon emissions it is now.
But let’s not forget that the very planning and licensing of nuclear power plants was drastically affected by the anti-scientific opposition. Looking again at the Energy Information Administrations figures, the average sustained growth for nuclear generating capacity was increasing by about 28.8 million Megawatt hours for a 20 year period from 1971 to 1989
Here we see a chart taken from the EIA data which shows the growth of real nuclear generating capacity in blue, and the projected growth in red, had the growth of the previous 20 year period been sustained (remember, this is still only about one-fourth of the intended capacity). In this graph, any year which produced less than the average of the previous 20 years was increased to that average of 28.8 million MW•h.
Now let’s take this projected growth and imagine the U.S. had actually built a nuclear infrastructure at this level. What would our carbon emissions look like?
Incredibly, U.S. carbon emissions today would be almost one-fourth of what they are currently. These numbers are estimated by taking the average yearly increase from 1971 to 1989 in nuclear generating capacity and projecting it to the current day, and since these numbers are only one-fourth of the original planned capacity, the result is multiplied by four. In case you think my numbers are fanciful, let’s see if there are any countries out there that did not get entirely persuaded by the anti-nuclear hysteria, and how that affected their carbon emissions.
After the energy crisis of the 70s, France, which was highly dependent on imported oil for electricity production, decided to divest themselves of Middle Eastern oil dependence. Lacking significant fossil fuel deposits, they opted for a nuclear infrastructure. Today nuclear power generates about 78% of France’s electrical power supply, and it is today the world’s largest exporter of electrical energy. France alone accounts for 47% of Western Europe’s nuclear generated electricity (3).
While we do not see the production in France dropping to half of its 1970s levels as we would have in the U.S. had it continued the transition to a nuclear infrastructure, nevertheless the 40% reductions are close and tremendously significant.
Consider from the presented information what the total potential nuclear generating capacity for the US would be if it sustained the high level growth and achieved its planned capacity.
By the year 2000, the US nuclear infrastructure could have been generating 100% of the domestic electrical supply. This is not an extraordinary claim considering, again, that France generates 78% of electrical energy from nuclear power.
Extrapolating this to the global climate, let’s take a look at the global carbon emissions levels and compare them against a world where the U.S. sustained the first two decades of its nuclear infrastructure growth perpetually and ultimately achieved the original planned capacity.
In green, we see the existing global carbon emissions levels and in purple is the U.S. carbon emission levels if it continued to adopt a nuclear infrastructure. In red then, as a result, we see the global carbon levels would have been almost 15% lower than current levels.
I invite readers to extrapolate then where the total global carbon emissions would be if all the post-industrialized nations had adopted nuclear power – as their natural technological progressions would have dictated – if it were not for the hijacking of this process by anti-scientific hyperbole by scaremongering environmental activists. Many organizations – such as Green Peace, still ardently oppose nuclear power. And these levels, mind you, are only about one-tenth of what the Atomic Energy Commission was projecting based on demand during the 60s, where at its height 25 new nuclear power plants were being built every year, and the AEC anticipated that by the year 2000 over 1,000 nuclear power plants would be in operation in the U.S.. Today only 104 operate.
Let us project an educated guess as to what the resulting reduction in carbon emissions would have been had the European Union (which in 2005 generated 15% of their electricity with nuclear) Japan (34.5% nuclear) and finally, going into the future China and India as they fully industrialize.
All of these facts lead to one conclusion: if manmade global warming is a real problem, then it was in fact caused by environmental alarmism. That is not to say that some environmentalism has not been good, but this atrocious abandonment of reason hangs as an ominous cloud over everything environmentalists advocate. Rational environmentalists, such as James Lovelock, who want a high standard of living for humans and a clean planet are quick to change their minds about nuclear power. Irrational environmentalists who actually do not desire wealthy, comfortable lives for all people on the planet–as well as a clean planet–actively oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power is a litmus test for integrity within the environmentalist community.
If you want to spur the economy, stop global warming, and undermine the oil-fueled, terrorist-breeding, murderous theocracies of the world, the solution is simple: build nuclear power plants.
– Sources –
Energy Information Administration – http://www.eia.doe.gov/
US Electrical Generation Sources by Type – http://www.clean-coal.info/drupal/node/164
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
CDIAC US Carbon Emissions – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/usa.dat
CDIAC France Carbon Emissions – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/fra.html
(1) – “18.6 billion MW•h (Megawatt hours) of electrical power have been generated by nuclear sources” – Energy Information Administration – http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf
(2) – “every kW•h of electricity generated by coal produces 2.095 lbs of CO2” – US Department of Energy “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electrical Power in the United States” – http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/co2emiss00.pdf
(3) – Al Gore (2009). Our Choice, Bloomsbury, p. 157.
(4) – “France alone accounts for 47% of western Europe’s nuclear generated electricity” – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2008 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-report/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-re-1
The Bay Citizen is a New York Times affiliate:
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/california/sanfranciscobayarea/index.html
A story here reports high levels of Iodine-131 being measured in rain water by UC Berkeley Dept of Nuclear Energy about a week ago.
http://www.baycitizen.org/japan-disaster/story/government-under-fire-radiation-milk/2/
Exceprt:
A rooftop water monitoring program managed by UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during torrential downpours a week ago.
As shown in this graph published by UC Berkeley: http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/RainWaterSampling
Iodine-131 peaked at 20.1 becquerels per liter, a measure of radioactivity, on the roof of Etcheverry Hall during heavy rains a week ago. The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 0.111 becquerels per liter.
So that peak is some 200 times above legal level in drinking water.
This story is being followed by a certain Alexander Higgins on his blog. He says they also found low levels of iodine-131 in drinking water and shows what he says is a UCB log indicating so. He says:
¨[…] Since, I first posted my report UCB has suddenly stopped publishing updated sample results on their web site. It is possible that a gag order has been issued and the data may be scrubbed altogether. So here is a screen shot of the University of Berkeley results log¨
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/03/media-confirms-high-ca-rainwater-radiation-lies-tap-water-radiation-13742/
Thanks harrywr2, (April 2, 4:43 pm), for the links.
I have a vague recollection that ‘something’ is good for getting rid of stuff like heavy metals from the body, maybe there is something to counteract or boost immunity to these specifically. As iodine is to radioactive iodine, giving a measure of protection, perhaps it’s 100% don’t know, sources like kelp. The Japanese are big consumers of seaweeds, so perhaps we won’t see the same amount of thyroid problems there?
In the Cesium link it says it leaves the body along the same pathways as potassium. Now I think I’m right in saying that one effect of eating too much salt is that potassium gets depleted. Would this work for cesium? Once got rid of eat lots of bananas…
The Strontium link says can be more of problem for those fasting or on low calcium diets because the body takes it up thinking its calcium, somehow, if there’s not enough calcium? So perhaps making sure one’s diet was optimum for calcium would be some measure of protection.
ECRR Risk Model And Radiation From Fukushima
By Chris Busby, Scientific Secretary, European Committee on Radiation Risk
3-20-11
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/busby_radiation.htm
[…]
Authorities are downplaying the risk on the basis of absorbed dose levels using the dose coefficients of the International Commission on Radiological Protection the ICRP. These dose coefficients and the ICRP radiation risk model is unsafe for this purpose.
This is clear from hundreds of research studies of the Chernobyl accident outcomes. It has also been conceded by the editor of the ICRP risk model, Dr Jack Valentin, in a discussion with Chris Busby in Stockholm, Sweden in April 2009. Valentin specifically stated in a videoed interview (available on http://www.llrc.org and vimeo.com) that the ICRP model could not be used to advise politicians of the health consequences of a nuclear release like the one from Fukushima. Valentin agreed that for certain internal exposures the risk model was insecure by 2 orders of magnitude. The CERRIE committee stated that the range of insecurity was between 10 and members of the committee put the error at nearer to 1000, a factor which would be necessary to explain the nuclear site child leukemia clusters. The ECRR risk model was developed for situations like Fukushima
Since the ECRR 2003 Radiation Risk Model, updated in 2010, was developed for just this situation it can be employed to assess the risk in terms of cancer and other ill health. See http://www.euradcom.org. It has been checked against many situations where the public has been exposed to internal radioactivity and shown to be accurate.
Using the ECRR 2010 radiation risk model the following guide to the health effects of exposure can be employed.
Take the dose which is published by the authorities. Multiply it by 600. This is the approximate ECRR dose for the mixture of internal radionuclides released from Fukushima. Then multiply this number by 0.1. This is the ECRR 2010 cancer risk.
Example 1 : the dose from exposure to radioactive milk from Fukushima is said by the authorities to be so low that you would have to drink milk for a year to get the equivalent of a CT scan dose. A CT scan dose is about 10 milliSieverts (mSv) Assuming you drink 500ml a day, the annual intake is 180litres so the dose per litre is 0.055mSv. The ECRR dose per litre is at maximum 0.055 x 600 = 33mSv. Thus the lifetime risk of cancer following drinking a litre of such contaminated milk is 0.0033 or 0.33%. Thus 1000 people each drinking 1 litre of milk will result in 3.3 cancers in the 50 years following the intake.
From the results in Sweden and elsewhere following Chernobyl, these cancers will probably appear in the 10 years following the exposure.
Example 2. : External doses measured by a Geiger counter increased from 100nSv/h to 500nSv/h. What is the risk from a weeks exposure? Because the external dose is only a flag for the internal dose we assume that this is the internal ICRP dose from the range of radionuclides released which include radiodines, radiocaesium, plutonium and uranium particles, tritium etc. A weeks exposure is thus 400 x 10-9 x 24 x 7days or 6.72 x 10-5 Sv . We multiply by 600 to get the ECRR dose which is 0.04Sv and then by 0.1 to get the lifetime cancer risk which is 0.4%. Thus in this case, in 1000 individuals exposed for a week at this level, 4 will develop cancer because of this exposure. In 30 million, the population of Tokyo, this would result in 120,000 cancers in the next 50 years. The ICRP risk model would predict 100 cancers from the same exposure. Again we should expect to see a rise in cancer in the 10 years following the exposure. This is due to early clinical expression of pre-cancerous genomes.
Other health effects are predicted, including birth effects, heart disease and a range of other conditions and diseases. For details see ECRR2010.
These calculations have been shown to be accurate in the case of the population of Northern Sweden exposed to fallout for the Chernobyl accident, and also are accurate for the increased in cancer in northern hemisphere countries following the 1960s weapons testing fallout (the cancer epidemic). The public and the Japanese and other authorities would do well to calculate exposure risks on the basis of these approximations and to abandon the ICRP model which does not protect the public. This was the conclusion of a group of international experts who signed the 2009 Lesvos Declaration (this can be found on http://www.euradcom.org)
Reference
ECRR 2010. The 2010 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk. The health effects of exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation. Regulators Edition. EDs: Chris Busby, Alexey V Yablokov, Rosalie Bertell, Molly Scott Cato, Inge.Schmitze Feuehake, Brussels: ECRR.
http://www.llrc.org
I wondered about the recent spate of anti-oxidant reason for eating certain foods and began looking for specific to nuclear, found this on basil: http://www.aromatherapy-school.com/aromatherapy-schools/aromatherapy-articles/radioprotective-effects-of-holy-basil.html referencing two studies from India 1986 and 1997
Looking for what else I could find on the potassium angle, I found a reference to a study of cesium and mice and diets with less and less potassium; conclusion was that cesium half-life decreased with potassium intake. So, forget the extra salt! Keep up potassium levels.
Francisco – would you take a look at this page, it seems inactive, but my computer is reduced to basic at the moment so I’m not sure, I can’t call up any of the docs or sections. http://www.ithyroid.com/cesium.htm
There are several more interesting studies but without more detail they could be referring to different caesium, however, an alfalfa polymer recommended for everyone’s diet to block absorption of Caesium-137 and Strontium 85.
From Francisco on April 3, 2011 at 8:06 pm:
And you don’t get it…
Let the point source approach the skin, until in theory the point source lies on (in?) the flat plane of the skin surface. 50% of the emitted radiation is directed under the skin. Now move the point source under the skin. 100% of the radiation is released under the surface. Has the exposure now doubled?
Depends on the radiation. Alpha particles, which are basically large chunky helium nuclei, can’t penetrate a sheet of paper, or the skin which normally has outer layers of dead and dying cells. Thus a small amount of an alpha-emitting substance on dry skin poses very little risk. But said amount, when ingested or perhaps absorbed through the open pores of sweaty skin, is far more dangerous as the radiation is hitting living cells. As it says in the “Biological effects” section of the Wikipedia Alpha particle entry:
Beta particles are basically just electrons or positrons that are moving fast. They’re not particularly dangerous as they have very little mass. Shielding is easy, a few mm of aluminum works. Lower-atomic-number materials are preferred for shielding since when beta particles decelerate they may emit bremsstrahlung x-rays, with the production increasing with higher-atomic-number materials, so plastic is often used. (Reference on radiation shielding.)
Gamma rays are basically X-rays, they occupy the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The distinction is essentially artificial, gamma rays emerge from a nucleus, x-rays are emitted by electrons outside of a nucleus. Some portable “X-ray” devices actually use a gamma-emitting substance. As they are deeply penetrating, the radiation from an ingested gamma-emitting substance may just pass right out of the body. Higher-energy gamma rays are actually less damaging than lower-energy ones:
So “trillions” is wrong because it doesn’t take into account the type of radiation. It is also “wrong” in that it doesn’t properly take into account the risk level. Remember the chart? If you receive a 4 Sievert dose in a few hours, which can come from ingesting a highly-radioactive rapidly-decaying radioactive substance, that’s very bad and likely fatal. But a 40 micro-Sievert dose over a few hours (airplane flight from New York to Los Angeles) is trivial. That’s a factor difference of only 100,000.
Granted “TRILLIONS!!!” sounds much more alarming than “one hundred thousand,” but to speak in such terms when describing risk from radiation is very non-scientific, for multiple reasons.
From Francisco on April 3, 2011 at 4:23 am:
Wrong.
For someone willing to “dig into it” you really didn’t look very far into the numbers. Your reference cites Reference 2:
From there comes CSR section 28, “Childhood cancers” (pdf). Referring to Table XXVIII-2, “AGE-ADJUSTED SEER CANCER INCIDENCE RATES, 1975-2004” found on pdf page 3, comes the numbers for “All sites: All races.” First line is year, second is “Ages 0-14” (source of the provided numbers) rates, third is “Ages 0-19” rates, with rates being per 100,000.
1975 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 199511.5 12.9 14.5 14.2 15.1 13.4 14.9 13.9 14.012.9 14.3 15.9 15.6 16.3 16.0 16.1 15.5 15.71996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 200414.7 14.0 15.3 14.4 15.4 15.6 15.2 12.9 14.816.1 15.6 16.2 15.6 16.8 16.9 17.2 15.5 16.0Your “28% increase” is only valid when comparing 1975 directly to 2004 using 0-14 numbers. It does not indicate a trend. If 2001 and 2004 are selected, there’s a 5% decrease. For the 18 data points, 6 of them have higher rates than 2004. For 0-19 age range, 7 are higher than 2004 with 1 being equal.
Putting the data in a spreadsheet and graphing it, limiting to the one-year periods (1990-2004) to avoid the missing data of the five-year periods, applying a linear regression reveals a rate of increase of 0.0311/yr for 0-14, 0.0393/yr for 0-19 (same # of significant digits as data). That’s it. For 0-14 the average per year is 14.5, using the 0.0311/yr increase yields a yearly percentage rate of increase of… nothing, actually. The average is only known to tenths, the 0.0311 would be rounded to the tenths position for the percentage math [(((average + one year increase)/average)-1)*100], which would leave it at ZERO. Thus the yearly percentage rate of increase is ZERO. Same happens for 0-19 with the 0.0393, the yearly percentage rate of increase is ZERO.
Not quite as dramatic as your “28%!!!!” for the whole range, using only the beginning and end numbers, but there it is. The yearly percentage rate of increase from 1990 to 2004 is zero, nothing, zilch, nada, for 0-14 and 0-19. Now, if you wish to talk about the full 1975 to 2004 range, you’ll have to first locate the info for the missing years to have a meaningful examination.
From the same table, first line is year, second is leukemia for 0-14, third is for 0-19 (underscores for spacing purposes):
1975 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 19953.3_ 4.0_ 4.6_ 4.4_ 4.6_ 4.0_ 4.2_ 3.7_ 4.43.0_ 3.5_ 4.0_ 3.8_ 4.1_ 3.7_ 3.7_ 3.4_ 3.91996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 20044.6_ 4.2_ 4.8_ 4.7_ 4.6_ 4.4_ 4.8_ 4.0_ 4.93.9_ 3.7_ 4.2_ 4.0_ 4.1_ 3.9_ 4.5_ 3.7_ 4.3Again, that’s 0-14, and only using the beginning and end points, 1975 and 1985. Also, you can’t say “in 10 years” as you only have 3 of the 11 data points for the full 10 year period.
For the one-year periods, 1990 to 2004, do you want to guess what the yearly percentage rate of increase is for both 0-14 and 0-19? Answer: ZERO. For the same reason as before.
First off, you inadvertently left off the rest of that sentence without indicating the cut. The full line was:
Thus, for some mysterious reason, you inadvertently dropped the part that placed “the greatest increase” before the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. After the full line, possible reasons for “the greatest increase” are given, such as increased ability to detect tumors and also a classification change. But that last line of that paragraph is really important. I’ll highlight it:
Got that? Post-Chernobyl, essentially stable.
For consistency, here are the numbers, same layout. The numbers already given (2.3 in 1975, 3.2 in 2004) correspond to the listing “Brain & Other nervous” for 0-14 age range.
1975 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 19952.3_ 2.8_ 3.0_ 3.5_ 3.5_ 3.2_ 3.4_ 3.3_ 3.32.1_ 2.5_ 2.7_ 3.2_ 3.0_ 3.3_ 3.0_ 2.9_ 3.01996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 20043.1_ 2.7_ 3.2_ 3.4_ 3.4_ 3.8_ 3.6_ 2.9_ 3.23.0_ 2.5_ 2.8_ 3.0_ 3.1_ 3.4_ 3.3_ 2.8_ 2.8The yearly percentage rate of increase, for 1990 to 2004, as figured before, for both 0-14 and 0-19, is once again ZERO.
To summarize, according to the National Cancer Institute numbers, from 1990 to 2004, the yearly percentage rates of increase in incidence for the age groups 0-14 and 0-19 were:
All sites, all races: ZERO
Leukemia: ZERO
Brain & Other nervous: ZERO
By these numbers, your “astonishing increase in childhood cancers over the last few decades,” for the three groupings you mentioned, DOES NOT EXIST. If you’re looking for something you can blame on NUCLEAR POWER, and Chernobyl in particular, this ain’t it.
How to lie with statistics: http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtropic/dundrennan.htm
The clear example I gave earlier of the IAEA cleverly manipulating areas to obtain ‘there is no problem, they must be dying of fear, is an established pattern of deceit. Have you checked how the data you’ve presented was put together?
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
April 4, 2011 at 3:04 pm
============
Well, it looks like you are in full agreement with the points raised by Takashi and all the people who very reasonably insist that the methods being used to assess risk for internal radiation following ingestion, inhalation, etc, are woefully wrong. You are in full agrement but you keep complaining about it, somehow. For further agreement, see my post on April 4, 2011 at 10:15 am with quotes from this article: http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/busby_radiation.htm
Or see this: Comparing Japan’s Radiation Release to ‘background radiation’
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/03/comparing-japans-radiation-release-to.html where the utter silliness of thse comparisons is made clear. Background radiation does not contain the main culprits that you get from air, ground, rain, a food contamination after a nuclear accident like this. And all that stuff is pretty harmless unless you ingest it, which you eventually WILL if it rains on you, or gets in the soil, the food, etc. And again, you cannot compare in any way the effects of it once you ingest it with the equivalent radiation dose from an external source like an x-ray or a CT scan. Those comparisons are meaningless.
Or see this article: http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/deconstructing-nuclear-experts/ and begin reading at “Why is the ICRP model unsafe?”
Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear power engineer, has been putting out a series of short updates on video on Fukushima. They are worth watching. Very calm and clear headed guy.
http://www
There is something seriously insane about the supposition that we can keep creating and piling huge quantities of stuff whose nastiness is very long lasting and, in some cases, virtually eternal from a human timeframe perspective. These kinds of catastrophes are not comparable to any other for those reasons, and attempting to drown the voices of concern by whistling merry tunes about “background radiation” is rather moronic.
I should say that at the beginning, right after the earthquake, I was not very concerned about this and thought it was mostly alarmist reports. Within a few days it became very clear this was developping into a major mess, and I am astonished at the amount of nonsense that so many people here have posted in attempts to downplay it. We probably will never know the true amounts of radioactive contamination that has been released and will continue to be released to the environment from this plant.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/04/20114219250664111.html
“Sullivan uses Fukushima reactor No. 3 as an example, because it is fueled with Mox fuel uranium and plutonium. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means it is carcinogenic and mutagenic for up to 250,000 years, or 12,000 human generations.
That’s not really understandable or explainable in a conventional sense of knowing,” Sullivan said […] “We have to apply our moral imagination to 12,000 generations to even begin to understand what we are doing in this moment.”
Textbook case of demolition, using the very stats cited by Francisco to take down his argument. Thanks, kadaka, for spending that time on analysis.
Surprises never cease to arrive. I’ve just read this article by Greg Palast, titled:
“Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants”
http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/
What that article describes regarding the nuclear industry in general, and the Japanese nuclear industry in particular (yes they are going to be building plants in the US), is not very reassuring. Greg Palast is a reporter specialising in corporate crime. He was also a lead investigator, back in the 80s, in a civil racketeering case against a nuclear plant builder, the Long Island Lighting Company.
Then, shortly after I read his rather disturbing article, I ran into this one at Money Week, mentioning a few things about a book by Alex Kerr titled Dogs and Demons :
“The appalling track record of Japan’s nuclear industry”
http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/the-appalling-track-record-of-japans-nuclear-industry-00336
[…]
But there is one section of Japan that really is working all too well to type. The nuclear industry. In 1995, there was a major leak at Monju, a fast breeder reactor. The authorities (as represented by Donen which managed Japan’s nuclear programme) said it was “minimal.” It wasn’t. Instead it was the largest accident of its type ever. In the world.
Still as Alex Kerr points out in his excellent Dogs and Demons that was nothing that couldn’t be dealt with by “hiding the evidence.” Donen staff edited the film of the accident, taking out the 15 minutes that showed the actual damage and releasing only five minutes of very innocuous material.
However this level of secrecy was nothing next to what happened in 1997. Then drums filled with nuclear waste exploded at the Tokai plant just north of Tokyo. This was – or should have been – a particular worry given that only three years earlier it had been discovered that 70kgs of plutonium (enough for 20 bombs) had been lost in the plant’s pipes at some point.
Yet Donen simply pretended everything was fine. Managers pressurized workers to say the fire was under control when it was not and mis-stated the amount of material leaked by a factor of 20. But that’s not all. Incredibly, says Kerr, “on the day of the explosion, 64 people including science and engineering students and foreign trainees toured the complex… and no one ever informed them of the accident.”
The list of the madness is almost endless. There was the later accident at the Tokai plant which degenerated into uncontrolled fission (something it took the authorities seven hours to figure out as they couldn’t find a neutron measurer) and revealed that for years workers had been disposing of nuclear materials with buckets (rather than dissolution cylinders).
Then there were the 2,000 drums of radioactive waste stored in drums in pits filled with rainwater, and most surreal of all perhaps, a PR video produced by Donen to show that plutonium is not as dangerous as the activists say. Kerr quotes the storyline: “A small character named Pu… gives his friend a glass of plutonium water and says it is safe to drink. His friend, duly impressed, drinks no less than six cups of the substance before declaring ‘I feel refreshed!'”
Many secrets on (included 11 leaks of tritium in two and a half years) Donen was sort of shut down. I say sort of because it actually just carried on as before. Same staff and same ethos. Just with a different name – Genden.
For more on all this I strongly suggest reading Kerr’s book (it was written in 2001 but remains one of the best books I have ever read on Japan). But for now we should just note that it isn’t particularly reassuring. That’s particularly the case given that officials now say that current levels of radiation are “hazardous to human health.” When even the Japanese government is telling people “Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight,” it seems reasonable to worry.
Myrrh, try this in google
“zeolite” and “radiation”
The fragmentary, opaque nature of the reports, and the general lack of interest in this mess with no end in sight is remarkable. Here’s some stuff, starting with an excellent poem I found at the Oil Drum:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7762?page=1
–> In the western united states you can get
breathless hourly updates on the state of
a years old sample of a baseball player’s urine.
But nothing on the makeup and flow of this
continually evolving radioactive debris.
On five different stations it was
“Aliens and Egyptian monuments”. Another five had
a Punch-and-Judy show about Charlie Sheen.
“Coast to Coast” and “The Phil Hendrie Show”
OWN the night everywhere here in the states.
These are comments on a Japanese blog:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-radiation-level.html –> “I’ve seen an occasional slip or two where the newspapers report that TEPCO/NISA didn’t really know how radioactive it was (whether it’s air inside the Reactor 2 building or the water from the pit by the ocean), because the needle of the dosimeter immediately swung to the max (1,000 milli-sievert).
And that was precisely the case with the pit water. TEPCO made a worker measure the radiation about 1.2 to 1.4 meters from the surface of the pit water, and the worker couldn’t measure it because the needle of the dosimeter immediately swung to the max. So they announced it was “over 1,000 milli-sievert/hour”.
[…] I’ve had the same problem. I can’t find a counter that goes over 200 millisieverts. I’ve read that modern counters don’t go very high because we are more concerned with lower levels than during the threat of atomic warfare.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-neutron-measured.html#comments –> It has been three weeks and TEPCO is still using radiation survey equipment they know is under reporting the actual levels with the government blessing. This is going to work in the nuclear industry’s favor when they write the “official” history of the Fukushima “incident” they will claim the radiation levels were never measured above 1,000 milli-sieverts when in actuality they could be many times higher than the officially vague “above 1,000”. It isn’t like Japan doesn’t have access to proper high range equipment they run nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities and research centers. If they were really concerned about the health of their workforce they could have been issued small pieces of X-Ray film to measure their dose instead of having to rely on somebody else’s numbers. Radiation is very similar to light the guy with the dosimeter can be standing in a radiation “shadow” while the guy right next to him is bathed directly in the source’s deadly rays at a much higher level. You can bet none of the top officials would be willing to work without individual dosimetry … too bad it isn’t a law that they have to be the first responders regardless of the danger I bet safety would become paramount then. Nuclear power supporters around the world should make a point of buying all the radioactive food that has been turning up and eating it to prove how “safe” it is their kids can show the world just how harmless a few “sunshine units” can be.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tepco-says.html –> OK. So the water is going elsewhere.
It’s getting to be like “Whack a Mole”. One hole seemingly plugged, and water spews out somewhere else.
However, if any Fukushima I Nuke Plant news was reported in Japan in the past few days, it was either about this hole that was spewing radioactive water, or the dumping of contaminated water into the ocean. Wag the Dog.
The real deal is their sheer inability and impossibility to cool the Reactors on a permanent basis because of way too much radiation in the reactor buildings and turbine buildings. Sure they can use the temporary pumps hooked up to the external power, or concrete pumps to sprinkle water to the Spent Fuel Pools, but these operations simply generate more highly contaminated water.
NHK News:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/05_38.html –> A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.
The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant’s No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places. Pools and streams of water contaminated by high-level radiation are being found throughout the facility.
The monitor said he takes measurements as soon as he finds water, because he can’t determine whether it’s contaminated just by looking at it. He said he’s very worried about the safety of workers there.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/06_30.html –> “The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says at least 50,000 tons of wastewater contaminated with highly radioactive material has pooled in reactor turbine buildings and outdoor trenches.”
50,000 tons of water fills a cube of about 224 x 224 x 224 meters.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7765#more –> “But about 500 tons of fresh water is injected into reactor buildings each day to cool down the reactors. Some of the water is believed to be leaking outside after becoming contaminated.”
That would be a cube of water 22 meters side being injected daily.
Sorry for the alarm, I calculated the wrong root (square instead of cubic) and became paralyzed with horror before I realized it was a mistake.
50,000 tons of water take up only a cube of about 37 meters, and the 500 tons take up a cube of about 8 meters.
Sunspot – thanks, I hadn’t heard of zeolite before. The one I vaguely remembered for heavy metal removal was Chlorella, but it’s also a good food supplement also.
The zeolite is very interesting, if the references to it being used to give cows in contaminated from Chernobyl areas are right.
Why can’t they freeze it? They could use Carbon Dioxide..
From Francisco on April 5, 2011 at 3:39 am:
I am not in full agreement. After looking at the sloppy mess the ECRR is trying to pass off as science, I’d be hard pressed to find any of it I agree with. To wit:
When reporting doses in sieverts or rems, it has already been taken into account to what extent the dosing is internal or external. Thus the ECRR is double-counting.
Their simple numerical model (x 600) talks about “the mixture of internal radionuclides released from Fukushima” yet does not address which particular ones would be taken up in the milk, thus throwing off the ratio.
This guy can’t even keep his numbers right. He starts of talking about drinking a half-liter a day for a year, then finishes with drinking a full liter, while somehow dropping the “a day for a year.” The model says to start with the dose reported by the authorities. He doesn’t do that, and whips out some other number to arrive at something else.
When done with the number mangling, he reports 3.3 cancers per 1000 people, which apparently comes from drinking a full liter of that milk every day for a year, although he started off talking about drinking a half-liter, and all those cancers will manifest within 50 years.
If he had actually followed the numerical model presented, that would have been the does reported (10 mSv was chosen, which is high as a chest CT scan is only 5.8 mSv) times 600 times 0.1, yielding a 0.6 ECRR 2010 cancer risk, or 60% (0.010 Sv x 600 x 0.1). No wonder he fumbled his own numbers, as actually following the presented model yields a ludicrous result.
Heck, he even said the .33% is a lifetime risk, then says the intake will cause 3.3 cancers among 1000 people within 50 years. This will be quite surprising to those 50 years of age and up, to know such milk intake can give them cancer after they are dead.
Further, according to the National Cancer Institute, the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with cancer, all sites (invasive and in-situ), for all races, is 43.61%. That’s right, 436 of 1000 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Note those are US statistics. Thus using Busby’s mangled numbers, for US residents consuming an exceedingly high daily intake of this milk for a full year, that would be less than one percent additional cancers diagnosed.
They propose a model, don’t use the model, and pull out some number they believe sounds alarming enough. I don’t agree with that, and I should be amazed that you would agree with that. But given the postings you are making, by their quantity and their quality without you doing anything resembling analysis of what’s presented, I am not amazed.
Cancer was practically unknown before the 20th Century.
Now 44%?! Nearly half the population will get cancer in the US?!
@ur momisugly Myrrh on April 7, 2011 at 1:51 pm:
And that’s good news. We humans used to be slaughtered by infections. There were vast pandemics, like the Black Death which was estimated to have killed between 30-60% of Europe’s population. The 1918 flu pandemic (Spanish flu) killed 3-6% of the world’s population. Even now we still have infectious diseases that used to kill much more of us, like typhoid and cholera, that strike the developing world but will also devastate the developed world when our systems of clean water and sanitation are disrupted. There are many other such diseases afflicting us, from measles to tuberculosis. Then there are the common infections, which lead to even small cuts being lethal without treatment.
Such infections, of course, tend to preferentially kill those who are weaker, which can be those already weakened by an emerging cancer. Also cancer tends to hit later in life. We humans used to live rather short lives on the whole. Our expected lifespans increased tremendously from better prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and of other conditions such as cardiovascular disease, as well as increased knowledge and availability of things like better sanitation and even better nutrition.
Thus now we live long enough to get cancer, and don’t die of other things before the sickness is noticeable and cancer is diagnosed. When you hear that cancer is practically unheard of in the developing world, that’s why, something else will kill those people first. Heck, it wasn’t until late in the 19th century we had cytopathology (cellular pathology) so we could identify cancer microscopically. We’ve also developed imaging and other technologies that allow cancer to be diagnosed earlier, and diagnosed at all. That’s progress.
The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children (53 min)
The film exposes the use and impact of radioactive weapons during the current war against Iraq.
The story is told by citizens of many nations. It opens with comments by two British veterans, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called depleted uranium (DU), weapons …
…and
the congenital abnormalities of their children.
An award winning documentary film produced for German television by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn.
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408#)