Guest post by David Middleton
Radiation levels recorded inside Fukushima’s crippled nuclear power station are at the highest levels since its catastrophic meltdown in 2011.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc (Tepco) said the radiation level in the containment vessel of Reactor 2 in the Fukushima No 1 power plant had reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, Japan Times reports.
The “unimaginable” radiation levels were assessed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.
According to the institute, just 4 sieverts of radiation exposure would be enough kill a handful of people.
[…]
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2017/02/08/10/24/fukushima-radiation-reaches-unimaginable-levels#6AfOp4jyo5k3elmi.99
Fake News Item #1: “Unimaginable radiation levels.”
“Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc (Tepco) said the radiation level in the containment vessel of Reactor 2 in the Fukushima No 1 power plant had reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, Japan Times reports.
The ‘unimaginable’ radiation levels were assessed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.”
530 Sv/hr… “unimaginable”? I don’t think so…
High-level wastes are hazardous because they produce fatal radiation doses during short periods of direct exposure. For example, 10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour – far greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem received all at once.
530 Sv = 53,000 rem.
If “10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour,” 530 Sv/hr is not “unimaginable.” I would venture a guess that 530 Sv/hr would be well within the expected range inside a reactor core, loaded with hot fuel which had suffered at least a partial meltdown.
Fake News Item #2: “The radiation level in the containment vessel… had reached 530 sieverts per hour.”
The use of the phrase “had reached” clearly implies that radiation levels had risen. Other reports citing a previous high of 72 Sv/hr were also clearly intended to convey the impression that radiation levels had risen over the past 5-6 years. This is clearly fake news…
NO, RADIATION LEVELS AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI ARE NOT RISING
Saturday February 4th, 2017
— Yes, TEPCO has measured very high radiation inside Daichi Unit 2.
— No, it does’t mean radiation levels there are rising.
In response to visual investigation results and high radiation measurements recently taken by TEPCO inside Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2, many news outlets have published stories with headlines like “Fukushima nuclear reactor radiation at highest level since 2011 meltdown.” (The Guardian, Feb. 3, 2017).
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170202/p2g/00m/0dm/087000c
This has led to a number of alarming stories claiming that radiation at Daiichi has “spiked” to unprecedented levels. That’s not what the findings indicate, however. In addition, Safecast’s own measurements, including our Pointcast realtime detector system have shown radiation levels near Daiichi to be steadily declining. As described in the Safecast Report, Vol.2, Section 2.1.4, TEPCO and its research partners have been developing robots and remote visualization devices to search for melted fuel debris deep inside the Daiichi reactor units, and to help plan for its eventual removal. On January 30th, 2017, a long telescoping device with a camera and radiation measurement device attached was inserted through an existing opening in the reactor containment of Unit 2 for the first time, and successfully extended approximately 8 meters into in an area known as the “pedestal,” to measure and take images from immediately below the damaged reactor pressure vessel (RPV). In addition to finding the area covered with molten material likely to be fuel debris, radiation levels of 530 Sieverts per hour were detected, which would be fatal to a person exposed for only a few seconds.
It must be stressed that radiation in this area has not been measured before, and it was expected to be extremely high. While 530 Sv/hr is the highest measured so far at Fukushima Daiichi, it does not mean that levels there are rising, but that a previously unmeasurable high-radiation area has finally been measured. Similar remote investigations are being planned for Daiichi Units 1 and 3. We should not be surprised if even higher radiation levels are found there, but only actual measurements will tell. Unit 4 was defuelled at the time of the accident, and though the reactor building exploded and the spent fuel pool was dangerously exposed, it did not suffer a meltdown, so similar investigations are not being conducted.
[…]
Fake News Item #3: “Fukushima’s radiation is so bad it’s even killing robots.”
Five years after Fukushima, the exclusion zone is in better shape, but still a mess. The area around its once functional nuclear reactors are by far the most inhospitable. So much so that the radiation even managed to kill robots that had been sent in to help clean up.
Five robots that have gone into the reactor in order to help remove spent fuel rods have failed to return, reports Reuters. The issue? The radiation levels are so high that the robot’s internals just melt. We’ve seen this happen before.
Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s head of decommissioning, explained the difficulties the company faces in an interview. Not only do the robots tend to fail due to the failure of their wiring, but it’s also not easy to get replacements. These aren’t just off-the-shelf bots; they have to be designed specifically for the challenges of the particular building they enter, and that takes about two years of design.
[…]
None of the robots have been “killed” by radiation…
Melted Nuclear Fuel Search Proceeds One Dead Robot at a Time
by Stephen Stapczynski and Emi Urabe
February 16, 2017
The latest robot seeking to find the 600 tons of nuclear fuel and debris that melted down six year ago in Japan’s wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant met its end in less than a day.
The scorpion-shaped machine, built by Toshiba Corp., entered the No. 2 reactor core Thursday and stopped 3 meters (9.8 feet) short of a grate that would have provided a view of where fuel residue is suspected to have gathered. Two previous robots aborted similar missions after one got stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after finding no fuel in six days.
After spending most of the time since the 2011 disaster containing radiation and limiting ground water contamination, scientists still don’t have all the information they need for a cleanup that the Japanese government estimates will take four decades and cost 8 trillion yen ($70.6 billion). It’s not yet known if the fuel melted into or through the containment vessel’s concrete floor, and determining the fuel’s radioactivity and location is crucial to inventing the technology needed to remove it.
“The roadmap for removing the fuel is going to be long, 2020 and beyond,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an e-mail. “The re-solidified fuel is likely stuck to the vessel wall and vessel internal structures. So the debris have to be cut, scooped, put into a sealed and shielded container and then extracted from the containment vessel. All done by robots.”
[…]
The machines are built with specially hardened parts and minimal electronic circuitry so that they can withstand radiation, if only for a few hours at a time. Thursday’s mission ended after the robot’s left roller-belt failed, according to Tokyo Electric, better known as Tepco. Even if it had returned, this robot, like all others so far designed to aid the search for the lost fuel, was expected to find its final resting place inside a reactor.
[…]
No. 2 Unit
On Thursday, Toshiba’s scorpion-like robot entered the reactor and stopped short of making it onto the containment vessel’s grate. While Tepco decided not to retrieve it, the company views the attempt as progress.
“We got a very good hint as to where the fuel could be from this entire expedition” Tepco official Yuichi Okamura said Thursday at a briefing in Tokyo. “I consider this a success, a big success.”
Tepco released images last month of a grate under the No. 2 reactor covered in black residue that may be the melted fuel — one of the strongest clues yet to its location. The company measured radiation levels of around 650 sieverts per hour through the sound-noise in the video, the highest so far recorded in the Fukushima complex.
[…]
The Hitachi and Toshiba robots are designed to handle 1,000 sieverts and no robot has yet been disabled due to radiation.
[…]
Because the No. 2 unit is the only one of the three reactors that didn’t experience a hydrogen explosion, there was no release into the atmosphere and radiation levels inside the core are higher compared to the other two units, according to the utility.
[…]
“The Hitachi and Toshiba robots are designed to handle 1,000 sieverts and no robot has yet been disabled due to radiation.”
Fake News Item #4 (or Urban Legend): TEPCO is dumping/pumping radioactive water into the ocean.
While I can’t locate an article from a reputable news outlet for this one, it has been a persistent urban legend. They are neither dumping nor pumping radioactive water into the Pacific. This image was circulated around the Internet with the claim that it depicted the flow of radioactive water across the Pacific Ocean…
The map was generated at the time of the earthquake and is of the projected height of the tsunami.
At no time has TEPCO intentionally pumped or dumped radioactive water into the ocean. Some contaminated water leaks into the ocean by infiltrating the local groundwater flow…
March 8, 2016, 9:24 AM
5 years on, Japan nuke plant still leaking radioactive water
TOKYO — After battling radioactive water leaks for five years at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, the utility that ran it says it will need another four to finish the job.
“We will bring an end to the problem by 2020,” says Yuichi Okamura, who led the Tokyo Electric Power Co. team dealing with water at Fukushima from the early days to last summer.
The contaminated water, now exceeding 760,000 tons and still growing, has been a major challenge that has distracted workers from decommissioning the plant. It is stored in more than 1,000 industrial tanks, covering much of the vast plant grounds.
Okamura says TEPCO expects that by 2020, it will have collected and treated all contaminated water pooled around the reactors, and will need to continue processing only the water necessary to cool the reactors.
TEPCO has managed to reduce the flow of contaminated water and hopes to get regulators’ approval within a month to activate an underground “ice wall” that would block out more water. The final step, though, remains contentious: Getting permission to release the water into the sea, after it has been treated to remove most radioactive elements.
[…]
The three damaged reactors still need to be cooled with water to keep their melted cores from overheating. The water picks up radiation and leaks out through cracks and other damage from the disaster. The water flows to the basements, where it mixes with groundwater, swelling the volume of contaminated water.
TEPCO has cut groundwater infiltration to 150 tons per day, nearly one-third of the amount two years ago, mainly by pumping out groundwater upstream and directing it to the ocean. The utility hopes the underground ice barrier will eliminate all groundwater inflow.
Radioactive water continues to leak into the ocean, but at a far lesser rate than it did early in the disaster. Ocean radiation levels are about a thousandth of what they were soon after the accident, according to Ken Buesseler, a radiochemist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who has monitored the area. Because of concerns about the health of marine life, commercial fishing is still banned in waters just off the plant.
[…]
The only water they are directing into the ocean is uncontaminated groundwater and decontaminated waste water. By pumping out upstream groundwater, they have reduced the flow rate of contaminated water into the ocean.
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute…
What has been released from the Fukushima reactors and how dangerous is it?
Releases from the Fukushima reactors have included dozens of radioactive elements, but with regard to materials released into the ocean, most of the attention has been on three radioactive isotopes released in large amounts: iodine-131, cesium-137, and cesium-134. Iodine-131 decays quickly and any that was released from Fukushima is no longer detectable in the environment, but it was a significant health concern at the start of accident. Cesium-137 and -134 were released in the largest amounts. At the height of the accident, levels in the ocean near the docks at the reactors were 50 million times higher than before the accident and, at those levels, were a direct threat to marine life. Levels dropped quickly after the first month and today are many thousands of times lower, which is less of a direct health threat, but still an indication of ongoing leaks.
[…]
Are the continued sources of radiation from the nuclear power plants of concern?
The site of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is an ongoing source of radionuclides (pdf) in to the ocean—something I’ve seen evidence of in my data and published since 2011. However, the rate of release has fallen significantly since March 2011. At current rates of release, it would take 5,000 years to equal the amount of cesium that entered the ocean in the first month of the accident. For the workers at the site, direct exposure from leaking storage tanks is of greater health concern because exposure from these concentrated sources is much higher. For the general public, it is not direct exposure, but uptake by the food web and consumption of contaminated fish that is the main health concern from the oceans.
[…]
While Fukushima is still decades away from full decommissioning, the situation is currently far better than it was nearly six years ago.
Fake News Item #5: The Fukushima nuclear disaster was due to a failure of nuclear technology.
This is perhaps the most egregious fake news item of all. The Fukushima disaster was the result of the loss of external and backup power sources, rendering the cooling systems inoperable…
Events at Fukushima Daiichi 1-3 & 4
It appears that no serious damage was done to the reactors by the earthquake, and the operating units 1-3 were automatically shut down in response to it, as designed. At the same time all six external power supply sources were lost due to earthquake damage, so the emergency diesel generators located in the basements of the turbine buildings started up. Initially cooling would have been maintained through the main steam circuit bypassing the turbine and going through the condensers.
Then 41 minutes later, at 3:42 pm, the first tsunami wave hit, followed by a second 8 minutes later. These submerged and damaged the seawater pumps for both the main condenser circuits and the auxiliary cooling circuits, notably the Residual Heat Removal (RHR) cooling system. They also drowned the diesel generators and inundated the electrical switchgear and batteries, all located in the basements of the turbine buildings (the one surviving air-cooled generator was serving units 5 & 6). So there was a station blackout, and the reactors were isolated from their ultimate heat sink. The tsunamis also damaged and obstructed roads, making outside access difficult.
All this put those reactors 1-3 in a dire situation and led the authorities to order, and subsequently extend, an evacuation while engineers worked to restore power and cooling. The 125-volt DC back-up batteries for units 1 & 2 were flooded and failed, leaving them without instrumentation, control or lighting. Unit 3 had battery power for about 30 hours.
At 7.03 pm Friday 11 March a Nuclear Emergency was declared, and at 8.50pm the Fukushima Prefecture issued an evacuation order for people within 2 km of the plant. At 9.23 pm the Prime Minister extended this to 3 km, and at 5.44 am on 12th he extended it to 10 km. He visited the plant soon after. On Saturday 12th he extended the evacuation zone to 20 km.
Yes, the reactors were old (1960’s) technology… But it wasn’t the nuclear technology which triggered the disaster. It was a failure to anticipate anything more than a 3.1 meter tsunami.
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I am sure that people who owned properties close to the Fukushima nuclear plant were told how safe it was and how a nuclear accident was unimaginable. I guess they now see things very differently to people that are sitting at their armchairs at the other side of the world. Their properties might recover their former value in tens of thousands of years. I seriously doubt anybody commenting here would like to buy them even at a discount.
Most of their properties will recover just fine and much of the evacuation was totally unnecessary…
Conca, I have followed him for years, even conversed. He is not just a promoter of nuclear, he is a true believer, and a shill with a voice via forbes. Guaranteed slanted
Another bedwetter…
If what you say is actually true, it should be trivial to show where Conca is wrong.
Otherwise you are just attacking the messenger.
Those who died, and the property destruction that occurred was due to the tsunami. Not Fukushima.
Javier,
Thousands of years, eh? You don’t know much (or really anything) about nuclear physics, do you? If what you assert were true, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would still be barren wastelands, not thriving cities as they are today.
Background radiation at Hiroshima was back to background levels within about a year! Nuclear is the only way going into the future after fossil fuels whether we like it or not. Actually fossil fuels may become too strategic a resource for petrochemical feedstocks and burning it may become foolish for that alone. It may be fusion eventually but the atom is our destiny. Starting with this incontrovertible fact, ten percent of the cash being spent on CO2 hysterics would be enough to research all possible problems (nuclear waste, design parameters, control, etc. etc.). We just have to push past the Luddite mutants and let them whine. Like rescuing the Nile crocodile, we will be saving them, too, while they are trying to bite our asses off.
“I seriously doubt anybody commenting here would like to buy them even at a discount.”
You are wrong. I did and still feel tempted.
Whew! Just as long as it’s not leaking carbon dioxide.
David
fake news = promoting nuclear energy, when you know that building gas plants is 10 x cheaper and that the CO2 produced changes nothing to the weather….
I’m not promoting nuclear energy. I am refuting lies and fake news about nuclear energy. I make my living finding oil & gas. If I was going to promote something, it would be oil & gas.
then why not be happy with the ‘fake’ news and say nothing more about it? anyone still promoting the building of new nuclear plants must be insane, not least because of the costs, which have increased by multiples since the C + F incidents.
Because nuclear power is safe and it is future, particularly fusion.. Anyone who thinks otherwise is terminally ignorant.
yes David
they build a nuclear plant here, in Koeberg, on the coast,
and all the fish that were here, died. Can you tell me why?
Nuclear fusion is still dead because we do not know how to harness the magnetic field strengths.
[btw changing magnetic field strengths on the Sun is what actually causes climate change]
Who would you say is the ignorant person here?
I can’t explain your imagination and delusions to you.
I know exactly why the fish around the plant died. Apparently you do not. I am saying that anyone who promotes nuclear in the current world [economy & all that] must be mad.
Your imagination is your problem.
HenryP, so your position is that nobody should say anything about the lies being told, unless the lies hurt them personally?
The major reason for the increase in costs is due to idiots such as you HenryP, that cause unnecessary regulatory delays and equipment redesigns after construction has already started.
If all the fish did indeed die, it was probably due to pollution from the construction site. It wasn’t from radiation.
@MarkW – I was thinking maybe it was a change in the water temperature from the outflow of the plant. In Maryland many decades ago the warm water was used to grow oysters year round.
indeed
the change in T around a plant is what destroys an eco system
and sometimes it starts up another…
However,
why would you support nuclear? It is not economical at present.
HenryP, anti-nuclear power activists have never cared the value of a plague rat’s ass about cost. Some large portion of the cost of building a nuclear power plant is pure lawfare, which is the direct result of activism. If the greens as a whole really believed in greenhouse gasses as evil, and cared about not crashing the grid, they would support nuclear, as it is the only CO2 free source of power besides hydro (which they also oppose).
Tom
I am not a greeny beanie
I believe more CO2 is better.
It is just like dung in the air. Everything grows better. That is why they add it in the air of green houses to get bigger tomatoes…
Gas power plants are [much] cheaper than nuclear power plants. Why would you still want to support nuclear power?
@ur momisugly David Middleton,
Anyone reading this site or your posts, wants to hear the truth.
That is why they are here.
Remember that.
Because you are lying?
It is your position then, that unless one attacks nuclear power you are in fact promoting it?
Where I used to live near the coast there were 3 nuclear plants. We use to fish the outlets because fish there were larger. So Henry, why did those fish die and where is the data?
Different eco system has been established?
@ur momisugly Henry P
Try looking up Galen Winsor on youtube.
Or reading Robert Zubrin’s book: Merchants of Despair.
Zubrin is a PhD nuclear engineer with 9 patents to his name or pending.
John Doran.
it seems most sane people have agreed that we don’t need nuclear energy as other options are cheaper.
Did you even bother looking?
Is NucPwr cheapest or not?
Only a comparative set of DCF (Discount Cash Flow) analyses between competing power-gen alternatives will help answer this question objectively.
Capital Cost Inputs are:
1. Initial CapEx
2. Decommissioning costs
3. Measurable Externalities, capitalized (e.g., population displacement & loss-of-ag-land costs for a dam-scheme)
Direct Op., Maint. & periodic overhaul/refurbishment costs
Indirect costs such as Licensing, Insurance
Sales Revenues projected from long-term, capacity-maximizing operations (as a start-point before prioritizing dispatch).
Nota bene that in the context of hydrocarbon-powered power-plant, arguments will rage over the valuation of externalities such as CO2 (however spurious the competing claims might be). In the context of dams, methane production & impacts on fish habitat.
Nota bene also that Nuclear Power suffers few externalities in comparison:
a. It is free of emissions of CO2, Sulphates, NOX, toxic particulates (e.g., Mercury, heavy metals)
b. No aerial acidification & down-wind agricultural/aquacultural impacts
c. Minimal, below ambient irradiation
Yes, my critics will crow, but what about Chernobyl & Fukushima? To which my answer is:
i. They were rogue incidents, and the World has survived them with nary a blink globally;
ii. Modern reactor designs will accommodate lessons learnt therefrom and mistakes will *NOT* be repeated. Existing reactors will be retro-fitted concomitantly.
iii. The radioactive releases from these disasters have largely dissipated below ambient levels of radioactivity world-wide.
Yes sure, I looked it up. It is about people profiting on or from the fear of people.
My argument is that nuclear has become too expensive to build. Apart from that, you sit with the waste; I rather have more CO2.
Whether fear plays or played a part in that?
You tell me.
It’s actually about the falsely generated fear of nuclear. Nuclear has become too expensive through the generation of fear & the employment of bureaucrats to enforce unnecessary regulations. read the book I reco’d.
Not the case. Compared to what – other CAPEX that has maassive OPEX? I sent you the costs already. The amounts are not significant compared to even the waste in renewable subsidies -$7 or $8 B pa in UK alone, to make things worse than building nuclear.New nuclear $4.5-5B per GW. The table from IEA Data is mashed, you have to count the columns.
TYPE / CCGT Gas /Clean Coal / 90% CCS / Coal / Nuclear / Slow Fission / Onshore Wind Solar PV
CAPEX $M/MWh (i) 1,000.00 2,000.00 4,000.0 5,000.00 2,400.00 6,000.00
BUILD Years (i) 2.00 4.00 4.00 7.00 1.00 1.00
Life Expectancy 30.00 40.00 40.00 60.00 25.00 25.00
Annual Linear Depreciation 0% interest 33.33 50.00 100.00 83.33 96.00 240.00
If you look at the safecast website, the reading are all strangely “flat lined” it doesnt work like that
http://realtime.safecast.org/map/
There is always significant variations, say 30% on an hourly basis.
Abject nonsense. It only appears to be a flat line because of the scale of the x-axis. The Fukushima graph is averaging 0.20 μSv +/- 0.04 per hour. 0.04 is 20% of 0.20.
?w=680
Still it’s goofy, a 20% variation would be easily visible even on that scale, but it is not there, so what gives?
If you can’t see the bleeding obvious, i can’t help you.
What in your fevered imagination, is the cause of this alleged variation?
Unless the amount of radioactive material is constantly changing, or somehow the shielding between the sensor and the radioactive material changes, the total radiation will only change as the total amount decays. Slowly, over months and years.
You fail even the most basic research or knowledge, now where did I put that can of “troll begone”
Troll calls others a troll. How precious.
Mark, are you perhaps Homer Simpson’s boss and is this why you promote nuclear?
No, he – and most other informed individuals – promotes nuclear because unlike you he understands the technology and the risks and advantages of it and isn’t frightened by crackpot alarmist bedwetter fantasies, and doesn’t believe every “Green’ lie that achieves currency amongst the feebleminded.
It would be shameful to observe the massive die-offs of sea life and bird life around the Pacific and not at least consider the possibility that the 10000 to 20000 equivalent nuclear bombs of radiation that were released by Fukushima could be part of the cause.
The radiation sponge Chitin theory should be read.
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-scientific-basis-for-destruction-of.html
Hi Stock – a quick check of the state of corals at the Bikini Atoll – where they actually detonated in excess of 20 A-bombs…
http://www.livescience.com/2438-bikini-atoll-corals-recovering-atomic-blast.html
How do arrive at a figure of 10 – 20 000 equivalent nuclear bombs of radiation from a fairly well-contained nuclear power station?
cheers edi
Cool, 70 years…nice to see it bouncing back. Do you have 70 years to spare?
Here is the inventory of Fukushima, by now most of it is out. The coriums sitting in the underground riverbed are soluble.
Inventory of Fukushima, compared to hiroshima bomb is 2,009,000 Hiroshima bombs.
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2014/11/total-spent-fuel-inventory-at-fukushima.html
Well contained? Are you talking Fukushima? Its a sieve in a river bed.
It didn’t take 70 years, it barely took one year.
The only animals that died because of Fukushima radiation were in the immediate vicinity of the plant and even then only for a month or so after the accident.
If true, it isn’t because of radiation.
Nicely played Martin Clark! Facts
You wouldn’t recognise facts if a swarm of them scuttled under your bridge and bit youi on the snout.
Argument by ignorance.
You don’t know what it was, therefore it must have been radiation.
Since we both know that’s the best you can do. You can retire in full shame.
More likely the birds left when the people left. I bet the correlation between human population and bird population is much better than between bird population and radiation levels.
You note that bird populations have dropped. Without any evidence you assume that it must be because of the radiation. Any other explanation has to have proof, but yours doesn’t.
And that’s without even bothering to prove that there actually has been a drop in bird populations.
No one here has seen this number 10,000 to 20,000 “equivalent nuclear bombs” before so why don’t you give us a source. Also you should specify whether you’re using 1 KT battlefield nuclear shells or 50 MT thermonuclear bombs as the unit of measure. There is a difference, I believe.
I met people like you in the run-up to Québec making uranium exploration illegal. They didn’t use facts and figures, just anecdotes and made-up factoids.
Got to go, work to do.
Lol, bring a long tape measure to measure the size of the holes they make.
“No one here has seen this number 10,000 to 20,000 “equivalent nuclear bombs” before so why don’t you give us a source.”
Probably the Guardian.
That’s where most of the Green nutters get their alarmist BS from.
consider the possibility that the 10000 to 20000 equivalent nuclear bombs of radiation that were released by Fukushima
Where did you get that claptrap?
It is also insightful that as the Globalists made there last push for global control with their flawed horse in the race, that horse was the secretary of state during Fukushima, and she got advice from the head globablist himself, Kissinger, to conspire with Japan to cover up Fukushima and USA would buy their radioactive food without testing as long as Japan didn’t fight the NWO too much.
Data straight from her emails……
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2016/07/clinton-email-prove-she-made-shady-deal.html
One thing with conspiracy nutcases, is their firm conviction that lack of evidence to support their delusions is merely proof of how effective the conspiracy is.
My conspiracy theorist BS detector here just flew off the scale. 1000 Sv of toxic bullshit posting detected. Alert, Alert, …
You really must upgrade your tinfoil hat, the aluminium just isn’t up to the job in your case.
Try ten gauge builders’ lead flashing, fully covering your head and hermetically sealed round your neck.
That should prevent any further conspiracy theories penetrating.
The dead robots are true, Bloomberg reports. So the article claim of fake news is in fact fake news
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-17/race-for-japan-s-melted-nuclear-fuel-leaves-trail-of-dead-robots
Dead robots are true. Why isn’t.
Take your delusions and peddle some place where everyone else is as ignorant as you are.
The robots weren’t “killed” by radiation and their insides did not “melt”. They became disabled or stuck due to the debris and/or nature of the damage to the building they were traveling through. So yes, it was fake news when the facts were so easily obtainable.
The tuna may glow but is safe for your kids to eat….
Do us a favor and stick to climatology.
Wow, the delusions are inability to deal with the real world is strong in this one.
There are no glowing Tuna. In fact it takes the most sensitive instruments made by man to even detect the increase in radiation anywhere more than a few miles from Fukushima.
50% of Humpback whales in Hawaii were missing last year.
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2017/01/humpback-whales-in-hawaii-missing-in.html
So it took the Humbacks 10 years to die from the radiation? Fascinating.
Why in your demented opinion did it take 10 years for them to die when the radiation was higher years ago?
Beyond that, can your p@ranoid imagination come up with a reason why humbacks are uniquely vulnerable to radiation?
They eat krill, krill use Chitin as a structure. Chitin bio accumulates man made radiation at a rate of 200 time to 2,000,000 times what is present in the water.
Duh, you didn’t even read the material. Shameful little troll
I confess, I rarely read fake reports from well known conspiracy sites.
Shame on me.
PS: Both of your claims are nothing but BS.
To bad you are smart enough to realize that.
stock,
What you said makes so scientific sense at all. How does anything biological accumulate high energy photons (radiation)? And even if you are talking about radioactive compounds, you need to tell us which ones, and how they get into the tiny krill shells. Then you need to come up with a plausible explanation on how, in the short life of a krill, it can mange to concentrate these compounds up to a 2 million times the diluted concentration. And even if you can do all that, you still need to show some evidence that not only are the “missing” whales dead (and not just miscounted), but that they died of radiation poisoning. If not, then all you are selling is fear and loathing.
My reply is still stuck in moderation.
I think most of the primarily well educated people on this site understand the ramifications and odds of a massive Carrington type CME or EMP. With all power down and all electronic boards fried, and the world in panic…just how many nuclear plants would shut down successfully?
All of them, since none of them rely on outside power to shut down.
You poor pathetic little troll. They prefer to rely on outside power to shut down, or they can use their own emergency backup systems to shut down….unless those are all fried, like the electronics / motor control centers. Kind of surprised they let you stay here
“You poor pathetic little troll.”
Heh, typical troll, having lost the argument, you revert to abuse.
It’s like this, child. The grown-ups have decided to build nuclear reactors – here’s a list of 60 currently under construction:
https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics/Nuclear-Units-Under-Construction-Worldwide
And here’s a list of all the nuclear reactors currently running in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
So you just keep on sleeping on your rubber sheet, and the rest of us will enjoy keeping the lights on.
You really stop while you are behind. CMEs and EMPs can’t destroy hardened electronics.
CME’s can’t even destroy any electronics, they might be able to take out the power grid, but that is far from certain, especially with all the work that has been done on hardening them in recent decades.
All of them. I’m sure every nuclear plant has backup diesel generators to power water pumps to keep the cooling going. 3 / 5 days of such cooling and most of the short-term, ultra-active radioactive FPs are gone. So decay heat is no longer a serious problem. After that natural cooling will prevent a melt-down.
More fear and loathing, eh stock? Nobody knows what the extent of the damage would be from a Carrington type event today. Most of what you read about it is pure speculation. There are some things that the experts agree on, however. Power grids would probably all go down. Sensitive electronics that are not shielded will probably be damaged, but that will vary a lot by circumstances. Communications will be disrupted and some satellites will be lost. But in places with heavy radiation shielding, like nuclear power plants and critical defense installations, there will be no effect.
Exactly WHICH radionuclides are being released matters. For example, just looking at a given amount of radioactive hydrogen might be much different than the same amount of cesium. The hydrogen is generally bonded with oxygen as water. It readily dilutes as soon as it comes into contact with the sea. It also has a much shorter biological half life (time required for the body to flush half of the material). Water passes through the body with a biological half life of about 7 days. Cesium reacts like potassium in the body and has a biological half life measured in months. So a given amount of radioactive water will see half of it gone in a week while an amount of cesium with exactly the same level of radioactivity will take the body months to remove.
The majority of the contamination currently released is radioactive hydrogen which is the least dangerous of all the radionuclides. In fact, the current daily release of radioactive hydrogen is LESS than if the plant were operating normally. Current release is below that permitted for release under normal operations. The problem is that TEPCO set an expectation that they were going to prevent ANY release, which has proved impossible to actually do.
You refer to the biological half-life as time of retention in a (human) body. Do not forget the radioactive half-life. Hydrogen-3 has a half-life of 12.3 years Cs-137 is 30 years.
Hydrogen-3 has the most pathetic radioactive emitter. It decays via beta-emission, releasing 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron’s kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin.
I’d be more worried about UV light.
Radiation doses from Natural & Artificial Sources:
Blood: 20 mrem/yr
Building Materials: 35 mrem/yr
Food: 25 mrem/yr
Cosmic Rays (sea level): 35 mrem/yr
Cosmic Rays ( Denver altitude): 70 mrem/yr
Medical X-Rays: 100 mrem/yr
Air travel ( NY to LA round trip) 5 mrem
Nuclear power plant (limit at property line) 5 mrem/yr
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS (DOSE TO GENERAL PUBLIC) 0.01 mrem/yr
Average annual dose (general public) 270 mrem/yr
Figures from Robert Zubrin’s book Merchants of Despair.
Zubrin is a PhD nuclear engineer with 9 patents to his name or pending.
Book details the Anti-Humanist Malthusian/Darwinian agendas of the 1%s pushing the warming/climate scam & shows how clean & safe nuclear power is being suppressed.
John Doran.
Reminds me of a nuclear plant worker getting repeated warnings from her radition counting badge (that all plant workers & eg radiologists wear). On investigation, it was discovered that the cause was her eating 2 bananas a day. That gives you more radiation than is acceptable for a nuclear plant worker (due to the potassium therein, iirc).
It appears that the ‘banana’ has become an informal measure of radiation exposure, although I forget the value of said ‘banana’.
Whenever I get nuclear alarmism spouted at me, I ask “how many bananas is that?” When they admit to having no idea what I’m talking about, I explain, then ask them to read up about it before spouting nonsense.
Love it. Never knew this. 🙂
In early 1980’s, a medical products irradiator was built in Thorton, Colorado. It contained 12,000,000 Curies of Cs-137. At 1 meter, the gamma radiation level for one Curie of Cs-137 is 0.33 R/hr*. The dose rate for this 12 million Curies was therefore 3,960,000 R/hour at one meter (39,600 Sv/hr). I stood literally 26 feet away from the sources (~ 50,000 Ci/tube of Cs-137 in 200+ tubes) of Cs-137 and transferred the sources from the shipping cask into the storage pool. I got no dose of radiation as measured by ankle, waist, ring and collar dosimeters. How could this be? Was I behind a gigantic lead shield? Nope. Wearing my Superman cape? Nope. In fact I was shielded only by water – 24 feet of water.
Thus the “530 Sv/hr… “unimaginable” meme was rather snort worthy to me.
If I knew how to post a picture here, I could post one with all of the source tubes in the storage tank which shows the beautiful Cherenkov glow. The company which built the irradiator is Iotech. Unfortunately, a sister irradiator in Decatur, GA had a tube leak. A quick Bing search has this lawsuit citation over the Georgia failure: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/867/1465/1456365/ The one built in Colorado was working just fine, but they shut it down after the Georgia leak. FYI, much of the medical products in the US are sterilized via irradiators. Need a vaccination? Likely the needle and syringe were irradiated. Most US irradiators use C0-60, though there are some that use high energy X-Ray machines. CO-60 has a four times higher gamma radiation level per Curie than Cs-137.
* Radiological Health Handbook, 1970, US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Bureau of Radiological Health. The reference can also be found in scores of Physics and Health Physics books.
Radioactive Cesium-137 .. in … water.
How is that not an accident waiting to happen?
Can’t Cesium be first chemically converted to an chemically inert and low soluble salt?
Or was that done with the Cesium?
The lawsuit give no indication, always referring them as “cesium capsules” and the words compound or salt missing.
Stephen: The Cesium-137 was in the form of CsCl, a salt – as you are obviously aware. It was enclosed in a double wall stainless steel tube of about 3″ od x 3′ length. Most Cesium sources are encapsulated this way – double wall SS with special welding. The problem that occurred with the Decatur irradiator was traced back to a problem where one of the capsules of CsCl did not get properly dried. At the high levels and heat of the capsule, the little bit of moisture built up internal pressure which proved more than design specifications from heat expansion of CsCl and caused the capsule to develop a crack. Being a salt, the CsCl dissolved into the coolant water of the irradiator where the sources were stored when not in use. It was a huge mess.
Co-60 irradiators do their irradiation under water. The advantage of the Cesium irradiator was that it did its irradiation in air – the sources were brought up out of the water. A humorous story: the State regulators absolutely insisted on video cameras in the irradiation chamber. The State was told what would happen and it did, the cameras burnt out in less than two hours.
Actually only 7′ of water are needed for shielding, the rest is a design margin.
@ur momisugly Retired Kit P: Yep. I was with a company hired to check the shipping cask water for Cs-137 contamination. I had done this shielding calculation, plus measured the top of the storage pool so I had no concern. However there were nothing but project managers and workers around to off-load the sources, and they were hesitant to be the ones to move the sources. They asked me and I said, “Sure!” It put a feather in my health physics cap because there are damn few who can say they have moved 12 million Ci by hand (ala 24′ tongs). Thanks for the comment; it reinforces that even very, very large sources of radioactive materials can be handled safely.
I think I remember Harris having a Co-60 source, but I was never let near it. It was the military aero job that let me get a book on weapons effects to read, but I knew how all of it worked by like 10 thanks to the AEC and all of the free books they sent me 🙂
Nuclear power is the only energy source capable of powering most developed economies sustainably at even current energy use levels when fossil gas and coal are gone, or at least gas and oil become reserved fuels, and we depend on electricity for most heating and transport.. That’s the physics of energy intensity and intermittency. Most of the above is nonsense on the facts of radiation effects at the levels that apply. Contained melted reactors are just an expesnive decommissioning job 50 years on. Not a risk that we cannot deal routinely with. Where are the referenced facts or hard science. Just babble.
All radioisotopes decay. The fundamental ignorance of much of this reporting makes it wholly incredible to anyone with High SChool physics. I imagine most of the authors prefer to make up their own physics, based on the content.
And nuclear energy has caused the deaths of 50 people from radiation ever, no more are expected. The only suggestion they would was based on wholly bogus science by extremists, which some people prefer to reality. Fact: thousands still not dying. And won’t. The model used is based on science that was never proven, Linear No Threshold, then proved wrong. It isn’t linear and there is a threshold, way above the evacuation level, that occurs natuarlly around the world without medical effects. Up to 800mSv pa is harmless. We currently evacuate at 20mSv pa. The authorities don’t help by not revising safe levels to what is actually safe, of course.
Like Facts? I suggest all who have “opinions” about the risks and actual effects of Chernobyl and Fukushima read the UNSCEAR reports, whch are very conservative, but very detailed, really expert, and have clear conclusions. Also discuss the reality of safe levels, but do nothing about it, of course. This is the UN.
Or just keep making it up, if it makes you happy. Science doesn’t care what you believe.
Accidental deaths are rarely expected. Pretty much by definition.
I would hesitate to claim that no nuclear accident in the future would ever kill someone.
However I would gladly point out that year in and year out, nuclear power is by far the safest form of energy when you compare the entire fuel cycle and number of MW’s of energy produced.
or at least gas and oil become reserved fuels
Oil and Gas (and coal) are already “reserved” fuels through the mechanism of PRICE. Supply and Demand.
Perhaps you think there will come a time of government fiat that rations use or bars use for uses a government agency deems unfit. Could be… Stupidity is one resource unlikely to become scarce.
PRICE is and always should be the governor in the smart use of a resource and its alternatives.
While we now have a healthy supply, we have to do nuclear, as we have to have it in space. And what we really should build first, is a huge reactor to power a wall of ion jets the size of a football field, a tiny cabin and a ship sized set of clamps.
If we do, and still needed fossil fuels, there are oceans of the stuff on titan (?).
See Stephen Rasey on economics, how much energy to get it to our grid from TItan?. Forget space. No significant nunbers will live away from Earth this warm period. Nearest planets so far away everyone will be dead when they return. And we have all the nuclear fuel we need to the end of water right here on Earth. Actually, in the sea, at $200/lb. Not significant in fuel rod cost. No problem
HenryP
February 17, 2017 at 10:05 am
yes David
they build a nuclear plant here, in Koeberg, on the coast,
and all the fish that were here, died. Can you tell me why?
Nuclear fusion is still dead because we do not know how to harness the magnetic field strengths.
[btw changing magnetic field strengths on the Sun is what actually causes climate change]
Who would you say is the ignorant person here?
Hi Henry – you asked!
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2989/025776191784287484
No need to panic.
cheers edi
edi
your link did not work [for me here]
however, I did make my point to stock/
@stock
the dying of the fish around a nuclear plant has to do with the amounts of water used to for cooling. The fish cannot withstand the warmer water being released around the plant [near to sea]
Which makes you wonder, does it not? That extra energy into the water ultimately translates to more H2O (g) which is a stronger GH gas than CO2 and is a more probable cause of global warming than CO2.
Indeed, all of my investigations showed that more CO2 would be cooling the atmosphere, rather than warming it….
All power plants require cooling water, and in exactly the same amount.
PS: The amount of warming coming from all cooling towers is tightly regulated.
If you think that the fish were killed by warming water, than that is merely more evidence that you simply don’t think.
Mark, You got that one wrong. With a gas power plant you can just switch off the gas.
No need for big constant cooling like nuclear.
I would try to be less insulting if you want to enter into a discussion with me. This here is like a public lecture room and we are all students and teachers to each other.
Anyway, you have not told me why you or anyone would prefer nuclear energy if it is more expensive to make.
http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
Deaths from the Tsunami, yes. Deaths from the panicked & incompetent govt evacuation order, yes.
Deaths from nuclear radiation: zero.
Our traitorous MSSM (MainSlimeStreamMedia) have no obligation toward truth.
John Doran.
MarkW
why do you want nuclear?
There you go again you poor pathetic thing.
Refuting your lies is proof that I want nuclear.
I don’t care what’s built, as long as it’s the cheapest and safest.
Nuclear is by far the safest and the main reason why it’s so expensive is because of p@ranoid idiots such as yourself.
Mark
this shows me that you are the one who is pathetic
if you don’t even know that nuclear is more expensive to build [even before the C + F incidents]
Poor little Henry, he keeps repeating the same disproven “facts” as if repetition could change reality.
Because it scares the sh1t out of bedwetters like you would be one reason.
The other is because it is a very effective method of producing very large quantities of electricity very cheaply (ask the French) and if it wasn’t for ignorant paranoid nutters like you it would be the cheapest too.
Neighbour Belgium had forced shut downs of a number of nuclear power stations last year due to cracks in the reactor vessels. Nothing lasts forever…
The Hitachi and Toshiba robots are designed to handle 1,000 sieverts and no robot has yet been disabled due to radiation.
This (I think) is a cumulative radiation measure. so the following comment is confused in measurements.
If a robot is designed to handle 1,000 sievets, then it can handle 100 Sv/hr for ten hours, 200 sv/hr for 5 hours, etc.
I think you might be right about that. Although the robot that detected the 650 Sv/hr wasn’t disabled by radiation. I have edited that sentence.
The whole subject of the Fukushima reactors really bugs me. The Tohu Earthquake and tsunami killed almost 20,000 living human beings in the space of a few hours. It is one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent years. Yet the Mainstream Media neither noticed nor cared.
90% of their reporting was about the rather inconsequential meltdown of a couple of reactors, that in retrospect should have been sited on higher ground.
Why, because the true object of the media and the liberal elites is terrify the deplorables so that they will abandon the technology that has made them prosperous and live in the squalor, degradation, and misery that they deserve.
Walter
The media cares about dead bodies. If you have a dead body and no nuke plant that is. If a child dies in a house fire it is a tragedy.
If a child dies in a house fire and there is a nuke plant nearby, the headline is ‘fire near nuke plant kills child’.
Now that is a good story. The object is too get readers and sell advertising.
This was made a while after the event, and it’s very interesting for the approach of the media to the flat scientific facts from people working in the field, provided by the multi topic Science Media Centre in London, real experts were not wanted, just the experts who will support a headline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ0NvEcyqw
I know it sounds awful but Fukushima and Chernobyl have been a godsend for understanding the effects of radiation types on the human body. Before them there was really only Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they were high dose events. Scientists had to extrapolate to lower doses and this was highly unsatisfactory.
What Fuka and Chern showed was that these extrapolations were invalid. Little damage occurs at slightly higher doses than the extrapolations showed.
Yes, the anti-nuclear activists, and zealots of other persuasions, love to use the “linear response/no threshold model” of health risk. While calculating the health effects of a massive dose, and extrapolating down is mathematically simple, there is no evidence supporting that approach in the real world.
It is rather like the joke/parable of the drunk searching for the lost item under the streetlight, rather than in the middle of the block where it was lost, because it it easier to look there.
Check out the damage from “depleted” uranium in Iraq and to a lesser extent in other battlefields like Serbia. In places like Fallujah, the rate of birth defects is over 10%. Over several generations, this amounts to genocide, given that the half life of depleted uranium is in the thousands of years.
How many times does this DU nonsense need to be debunked?
No, it is awful. We already knew what the effects of radiation were. That is why the US has design standards to protect people. And it works.
The only reason to expose people to high level of radiation is for medical treatment.
[snip – noted, problem dealt with – thanks, mod]
The biggest failures at Fukushima was human error. Egregious human error. When the electricity failed and the internal water pumps stopped working, water could have been pumped in externally from the ocean just a few yards away. Boats could easily have been tasked with this. The reason this wasnt done isnt because sea water would have made the crisis worse, its because sea water would have ruined the billion dollar reactors the Japanese electric company executives thought they could save.
Wow, that is a new one! Where do you think boat in a harbor end up after a 45 foot waves comes through?
When a seismic event exceeds the design basis of a nuke plant, the end result is decommissioning the plant even if there was no damage. This happen after the 2007 seismic event.
These examples scarcely qualify as fake news. News items written and distorted by careless or technically uninformed copy writers and passed by inept or non-existent fact checkers and editors are not the same as fabricating misinformation out of whole cloth or saying “black is actually white”.
Here are some examples of REAL fake news that was happily accepted and propagated FOR DECADES by major news organizations and academics who should/must have known better:
1. that the German Wehrmacht murdered thousands of members of the Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Wood during the Second World War. It was only a few years ago that the truth was announced – it was the Soviet Army that did the deed.
2. that the Tang Shan Earthquake in China resulted in only 10,000 deaths. It was only a few years ago that the Chinese Government allowed the making of a movie that admitted a death toll of 200,000. The actual death toll was probably about 500,000, and was obvious at the time of the quake to a French delegation visiting the city, who reported that every second building was reduced to rubble.
Your examples a FAKE FAKE NEWS.
PS. The fact that radioactive water has been leaking in significant quantities into the ocean from the Fukushima site has been known for quite some time, as has the building of a frozen wall to try to contain it at great cost and with dubious chances of success. There has actually been far more REAL FAKE NEWS about the Fukushima situation minimizing the dangers and difficulties in dealing with this ongoing disaster.
What dangers, what disaster?
otropogo, I am thinking you do not know the relative meaning of ‘significant’.
Retired Kit P
February 17, 2017 at 4:43 pm wrote:
“What dangers, what disaster?”
In reverse order, disaster:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tepco-fukushima-costs-idUSKBN13Y047
dangers:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crippled-fukushima-reactors-are-still-a-danger-5-years-after-the-accident1/
“otropogo, I am thinking you do not know the relative meaning of ‘significant’.”
Anything that requires the expenditure or $360 million dollars on a fix that may not do the job…
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/science/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-cleanup-ice-wall.html?_r=0
Oops! Looks like I’ve just created $40 million dollars worth of fake news…
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/995/415/b30.jpg
No one has ever disputed the notion that the decommissioning and clean up at Fukushima will take a very long time and cost a helluva lot of money.