Japan reactors pose no risk?

What do you guys think about this article ? I am a little wary :-(.

http://www.businessinsider.com/japan...no-risk-2011-3

You Can Stop Worrying About A Radiation Disaster In Japan -- Here's Why


I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.
By "significant" I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on - say - a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.
I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.
We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.
The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.
The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world. The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before.

The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.
The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), which is filled with graphite, all inside the third containment. This is the so-called "core catcher". If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.
This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions: The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.
Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran).
In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “moderator rods”. The moderator rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the moderator rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C. The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the moderator rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up. This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.
So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods.

The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Xenon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.
This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.
What happened at Fukushima I will try to summarize the main facts.
The earthquake that hit Japan was 7 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 7 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the moderator rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions. The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.
When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario.

The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, moderator rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor. When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did. Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake.
The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in. This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown. It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.
But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems. Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C. This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in.
I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health. At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained.
It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima.
The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment. So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented.

Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail. And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting.
What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay - radioactive Cesium and Iodine - started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere. It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give.
The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems. The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core - it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.
But Plan A had failed - cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable - so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened: In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us. The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now.
The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is "liquid control rod". Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.
The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

What do you guys think about this article ? I am a little wary :-(. Originally Posted by ninasastri

It's just a bunch of partially true, partially false musing by a guy who had only a partial clue about what he was talking about.

Some of his assertions are absolutely correct. Some are completely false. Some are based on a mis-understanding of the situation in Japan.

For instance, his description about containment systems being about to hold back contamination during an accident is generally correct, but it ignores the fact that most of the fuel at the Japanese plant is outside the containment and that at least two of the reactors have had their containment systems breached. Given that milk and produce in the area is turning up with contamination in it I guess the entire premise of the article is already blown to hell.

He also claims that "nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion" which is just absolutely dead wrong when you're talking about the MOX fuel used in one of the Japanese reactors. There is more than enough plutonium-239 in a MOX reactor to cause an atomic explosion. The system is designed such that there's an extremely tiny chance of it happening, but an atomic explosion can occur in such a system. In fact, we almost had that happen at the Fermi plant outside of Detroit back in 1966. (But nobody remembers that accident because nuclear power in the US is perfectly safe and TMI was the only accident we've ever had here, right?.)

Unfortunately this piece has gone viral and has been quoted by pro-nuke activists activists as if it were the word of god.

See here for the full story on it.

Cheers,
Mazo.

Thanks Mazo for pointing this out to me. Unfortunately my own knowledge on physics is not deep and profound enough to make a distinction here on what is biased but i thought that there might be many pro`s and con`s to it. Thanks again...will read your link immidiately.

Thank you Nina for posting this and Mazo for explaining. I was just reading about the power cable that has just arrived and I'm curious as to how effective that will actually be. It's frightening that radiation levels have been reported (per this article) in California, although they are reporting that the levels are not anything of concern. Of course people are going to be concerned....especially when they start talking about it in the same sentence as Chernobyl

Emergency power cable reaches Japan nuclear plant

Hopes rise at Fukushima plant of restarting cooling systems for reactors and spent fuel pools

Engineers rolling out an emergency power cable have reached Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant and are preparing to try and restart water pumps to cool overheated fuel rods that are threatening to melt down.
Eight days after the tsunami, Japan's police agency has said 7,197 are dead and 10,905 missing. Some of the missing may have been out of the region at the time of the disaster. The waters are likely to have sucked many people out to sea - after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami many such bodies were never found.
There are hopes the external power cable can be attached on Saturday or Sunday, the plant operator has said. Further cabling is being added inside the complex before an attempt to restart water pumps. Engineers had managed to restart a diesel pump that they were using to cool reactor 5, authorities said.

"Tepco has connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied," the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said in a statement.
Another 1,480m (5,000ft) of cable is being laid inside the complex before engineers try to start the coolers at reactor 2, followed by numbers 1, 3 and 4 this weekend, company officials have said.

If that fails one option under consideration is to bury the reactors in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic radiation release. That method was used to seal off the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear reactor accident.
"If they are successful in getting the cooling infrastructure up and running that will be a significant step forward in establishing stability," said Eric Moore, a nuclear power expert at US-based FocalPoint Consulting Group.
"Power supply is an absolute necessity," said Michio Ishikawa, former president of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute. "It will take at least one week for things to stabilise and real stability will take much more time."
Until now crews have been using the crude tactics of spraying water from fire engines, water cannon trucks and helicopters to try and stop a meltdown.
"I humbly apologise to the public for causing such trouble. Although it was due to natural disaster I am extremely regretful," the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper quoted the Tepco chief executive, Masataka Shimizu, as saying.
The government has made its first report of radiation from the leak getting into the food chain. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said checks of milk from Fukushima prefecture, where the plant is located, and of spinach grown in Ibaraki, a neighbouring prefecture, had shown radiation levels surpassing limits set by the government.
Japan has raised the severity rating of the nuclear situation from 4 to 5 on the seven-level international scale, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although some experts say it is more serious. Chernobyl in Ukraine was a 7 on that scale.
In the humanitarian aftermath of the quake and tsunami that struck on 11 March, about 390,000 people including many elderly people are homeless and battling near-freezing temperatures in shelters on the north-east coast.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo retracted a report that a miracle survivor had been pulled alive from the rubble in Kesennuma city. News raced around the world of the supposed rescue but Kyodo said that in fact the man had already been at a shelter before he returned home on Friday.
Food, water, medicine and heating fuel are in short supply and a worm moon, when the full moon is at its closest to Earth, may bring floods to devastated areas where the geography has been changed by the disaster.
"Everything is gone, including money," said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter for the homeless.
Health officials and the UN atomic watchdog have said radiation levels are not harmful in the capital, Tokyo, 150 miles (240km) south of Fukushima. But the city has seen an exodus of tourists, expatriates and many Japanese. "I'm leaving because my parents are terrified. I personally think this will turn out to be the biggest paper tiger the world has ever seen," said Luke Ridley, 23, from London as he sat at Narita international airport using his laptop.
"I'll probably come back in about a month."
Experts are saying there is little risk of radiation at dangerous levels spreading to other countries. The US government said "minuscule" amounts of radiation were detected in California consistent with the leakage from Fukushima but there was no cause for concern.

Aid groups have said most victims are getting help but there are pockets of acute suffering. "We've seen children suffering with the cold, and lacking really basic items like food and clean water," Stephen McDonald of Save the Children said in a statement.
The Kyodo news agency is reporting that construction of temporary homes is under way in some areas, including prefabricated accommodation for up to 600 people being built in the coastal city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, on the grounds of a junior high school.
The prefecture planned to build 8,800 houses in total for evacuees, Kyodo said.
The Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, has sounded out the opposition about establishing a government of national unity to deal with a crisis that has shattered Japan and sent a shock through global financial markets, with major economies joining forces to calm the Japanese yen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ennuma-tsunami

If it sounds too good to be true, it almost always is.

Thanks Camille for the update......;-)

So the problem with this whole situation is, literally, that the science involved is nuclear physics. Over the years the public's knowledge of this field has been polluted by both sides of the nuclear energy debate. The pro-nuke forces have filled the books with drivel about how safe it is. The anti-nuke forces have filled the books with drivel about how dangerous it is.

The public is left in the squeeze. When something like this happens both sides just confuse everybody even more. The anti-nuke people scream insane things about this being as bad as Chernobyl (which it isn't yet but potentially could be) and Ann Coulter screams even more insane things about how radiation is actually good for you (for which she should be beheaded - there's no other solution for that kind of thing).

And then there's the wanna-be's. I've seen numerous "experts" all over the media who think that their college physics course was enough for them to prognosticate on what's happening in Japan. About half of what I've heard on the news is pure junk. The science around this is much harder than most people think. Unfortunately the media will just grab anybody who says "yeah, I know about nuclear power" and shove them on TV to spew nonsense.

As I said, the piece that was originally quoted in this thread is a typical wanna-be. The guy who wrote it wasn't a nuclear scientist. He clearly only had half a clue about what he was talking about. He had just enough clue, however, to sound like an authority on the subject. Now he's being used for political purposes and he's the most embarrassed man in the US.

In this environment it's perfectly understandable for people to be confused and scared. You should be confused and scared. The public isn't expected to understand stuff like this.

What I will say is to just use your common sense about it. Forget about what the news people say, watch what the people on the ground are doing.

If I pro-nuke activist comes on CNN and says that this is all just a minor incident then just ask yourself why they evacuated 170,000 people from around the plant. That doesn't happen unless somebody is damn worried about things.

If an anti-nuke guy comes on and tells you that they're going to lose Tokyo then ask yourself why they haven't evacuated even more people. It's pretty clear that, at least at the moment, they don't think they're going to have any more explosions or fires at the plant that could send significant radiation into even wider areas than have already been evacuated.

It's what's happening on the ground that will give you the real story, not what's being said in the news.

Right now I have to say that the situation is looking much better than it was a couple of days ago. However, we are far from out of the woods. This is going to play out over several months and it has the potential to turn ugly really, really fast. The measures being taken right now are absolute, last-ditch, fail-or-fry type maneuvers. I hope they work but I'm certainly not optimistic. At this point I'd say that best case is less than ten dead and a few hundred square miles of land permanently off limits. Worst case I don't even want to think about.

Cheers,
Mazo.

I think part of the problem is the members of media not being educated. But part of it is also that the media gravitates 1) toward extremists, and 2) away from people who say things like "at this point we just don't know". Everybody wants instant analysis and instant judgement. And that is the worst kind of judgement. So often what we don't know outweighs what we do know. And the MSM, especially TV, just puts some jackass on who speculates instead of telling the truth and saying, "we don't know that yet."

So the problem with this whole situation is, literally, that the science involved is nuclear physics. Over the years the public's knowledge of this field has been polluted by both sides of the nuclear energy debate. The pro-nuke forces have filled the books with drivel about how safe it is. The anti-nuke forces have filled the books with drivel about how dangerous it is.

The public is left in the squeeze. When something like this happens both sides just confuse everybody even more. The anti-nuke people scream insane things about this being as bad as Chernobyl (which it isn't yet but potentially could be) and Ann Coulter screams even more insane things about how radiation is actually good for you (for which she should be beheaded - there's no other solution for that kind of thing).

And then there's the wanna-be's. I've seen numerous "experts" all over the media who think that their college physics course was enough for them to prognosticate on what's happening in Japan. About half of what I've heard on the news is pure junk. The science around this is much harder than most people think. Unfortunately the media will just grab anybody who says "yeah, I know about nuclear power" and shove them on TV to spew nonsense.

As I said, the piece that was originally quoted in this thread is a typical wanna-be. The guy who wrote it wasn't a nuclear scientist. He clearly only had half a clue about what he was talking about. He had just enough clue, however, to sound like an authority on the subject. Now he's being used for political purposes and he's the most embarrassed man in the US.

In this environment it's perfectly understandable for people to be confused and scared. You should be confused and scared. The public isn't expected to understand stuff like this.

What I will say is to just use your common sense about it. Forget about what the news people say, watch what the people on the ground are doing.

If I pro-nuke activist comes on CNN and says that this is all just a minor incident then just ask yourself why they evacuated 170,000 people from around the plant. That doesn't happen unless somebody is damn worried about things.

If an anti-nuke guy comes on and tells you that they're going to lose Tokyo then ask yourself why they haven't evacuated even more people. It's pretty clear that, at least at the moment, they don't think they're going to have any more explosions or fires at the plant that could send significant radiation into even wider areas than have already been evacuated.

It's what's happening on the ground that will give you the real story, not what's being said in the news.

Right now I have to say that the situation is looking much better than it was a couple of days ago. However, we are far from out of the woods. This is going to play out over several months and it has the potential to turn ugly really, really fast. The measures being taken right now are absolute, last-ditch, fail-or-fry type maneuvers. I hope they work but I'm certainly not optimistic. At this point I'd say that best case is less than ten dead and a few hundred square miles of land permanently off limits. Worst case I don't even want to think about.

Cheers,
Mazo. Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

All that said I am LMAO at anyone coming to a SHMB to get the answers on this.

...even though I know some of you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night

I think part of the problem is the members of media not being educated. But part of it is also that the media gravitates 1) toward extremists, and 2) away from people who say things like "at this point we just don't know". Everybody wants instant analysis and instant judgement. And that is the worst kind of judgement. So often what we don't know outweighs what we do know. And the MSM, especially TV, just puts some jackass on who speculates instead of telling the truth and saying, "we don't know that yet." Originally Posted by TexTushHog

agreed...

"we don't know" is the only credible answer at this point

The Zombie Apocalypse is almost here! Are you ready for it?

Here a video on to stop the hysteria from Daniel Kahl someone who claims to have been working in Japan
"I am relating a message from the people of Japan to new services around the world -- STOP THE HYSTERIA. You are causing panic amongst the foreign community in Japan by exaggerating the situation at the Fukushima #1 Nuclear Power Plant. Listen to your own nuclear experts, and get back the job of reporting on the humantarian crisis evolving in North Japan."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH7JY...feature=autofb

any comments on that one?

Here is Daniel Kahls homepage: http://daniel.domos.jp/

Here a video on to stop the hysteria from Daniel Kahl someone who claims to have been working in Japan
"I am relating a message from the people of Japan to new services around the world -- STOP THE HYSTERIA. You are causing panic amongst the foreign community in Japan by exaggerating the situation at the Fukushima #1 Nuclear Power Plant. Listen to your own nuclear experts, and get back the job of reporting on the humantarian crisis evolving in North Japan."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH7JY...feature=autofb

any comments on that one?

Here is Daniel Kahls homepage: http://daniel.domos.jp/ Originally Posted by ninasastri

I didn't watch it, but misdirection is a common tactic used with toddlers. It's an insult to try and use it with adults. There are multiple issues here, and you insult people by trying to focus them on just one to the exclusion of others.

I've seen a decent amount of videos, and comments on blogs, news articles, and Twitter feeds with people screaming that EU and US media is hyping the situation out of control. I also have friends who live in Japan who are more terrified than anyone I've chatted with in the US, because the people of that country know what nuclear accidents can do in worst case scenarios and they also know that their gov't is rather hush hush on anything that may add to the widespread panic already taking place over there.

I agree with one of the above comments that the Business Insider article was written as pro-nuclear hype. Nuclear lobbying is one of the highest dollar lobbying movements in the world. Whereas a drug company will lobby for a med to pass through the FDA for a target group (such as Alzheimer’s meds for the elderly), nuclear lobbying literally targets every group (young, old, male, female) and then further targets by race to create custom "spin" and marketing to those groups.

Of course now with the new crisis, the spin really needs to be more of a catch all. Risk management is in high gear trying to create new terms like "eco-friendly green energy" to play on what the public will perceive as positives of nuclear energy.

I've heard several experts prattle on that our reactors are better (my dog is better than your dog) etc etc. That ours would never fall prey to so many internal failures of the fail-safe systems. They've stated the reactors in CA are build to withstand even the biggest quakes. Here's the big problem with that...they are built to withstand what was perceived (at the time of construction) as the greatest earthquake that would occur in that area. In CA they estimated that threat to be a magnitude of 7. Japan also studied the fault lines and estimated their worst would be an 8.2. With the initial statement that the earthquake was an 8.9, while it appears that a .7 difference in magnitude would not be that great, because the force is calculated logarithmically, the 8.9 was actually 5 times stronger than an 8.2 quake. FIVE TIMES! The quake was upgraded to a 9.0, so that just upped how much stronger the quake was that what was estimated.

We can only reinforce our current reactors so much. Without building foundations from scratch, there's a limited amount in the safety that can be added.

Our experts cannot assure the same crisis that hit Japan will never happen here. A disaster becomes a true disaster because you made A plan, then you made a B plan as backup for the A plan and a C plan to backup the B plan. Disaster occurs when the ish hits the fan because D, E, F happen that you could not have fathomed when creating A, B, and C plans.

Mind you none of those plans are effective if something other than natural disaster occurs (as in mass terrorist attacks on US soil). I don’t need to spell out what a nuclear nightmare that would be.

Concern is increased when you consider that the government will never be forthcoming with the true extent of a nuclear event....at least not for several decades.

There's a great deal of hype about Iodine-131 and thyroid cancer. It’s a nice distraction from the concerns over Cesium-137 and Plutonium. Thyroid cancer from the radiation, as most know now, can be prevented through the use of KI pills. Also, if detected early, thyroid cancer can usually be successfully treated through modern medicine. (I know several people to whom this applies.)

Cesium however, is a causative agent of lymphomas and leukemia. While the half life is considered short, it can still have quite an impact. While many reports surfaced after Chernobyl on the effects of the Iodine-131, studies and documentaries were done on the residents in the fallout zone in the last decade. Those documentaries are heartbreaking and demonstrate the lasting effect of the Cesium and the true extent of its effect on the population, despite original reports that the Cesium wouldn’t be a long term issue.

Similarly in the US, there were hundreds of nuclear bombs and tests conducted as part of larger operations in Nevada (Wiki: Nevada Test Site to learn more). Those tests were conveyed to the public as “safe” and “experts” claimed the public need not worry because the effects would not spread beyond the test area. That was completely untrue (declassified documents have revealed that). As recently as the middle of this decade, the US government was still settling lawsuits from those affected by that radiation.

You will hear experts claim that the Cesium from the Japan plant isn’t an issue because we already have that in our environment. In actuality, much of the radiation from the sun does not reach earth due to the magnetic field that deflects much of it. Most of the so called “environmental radiation” has stemmed from the nuclear testing conducted at various test sites around the globe. (The US conducted tests in Nevada and the Marshall Islands, China tested extensively in various areas, and the UK and other countries have conducted nuclear testing as well.) Keep that in mind when the pro-nuclear movement says you won’t be exposed to anymore radiation than is already in the environment. (Then do the math on how cancer rates have spiked since the 50’s and 60’s when much of the testing was conducted.) Due to the jet stream, fallout from one of the 1953 blasts made it from NV to as far as Troy, NY where it concentrated in higher levels due to rain. While NV and UT residents were included in a federal lawsuit for radiation poisoning, the Troy, NY residents were not, despite fallout testing and maps demonstrating they suffered greater effects than those in the path of the jet stream closer to NV where rain did not concentrate the radiation.

There are also many reports now that the Japan plant forged safety check logs for the last 11 years. Make no mistake… that is done in the US every day in all industries (though I’m sure they’re now doubling checking things in US nuclear plants since Japan’s crisis.). At the Peach Bottom plant in PA, there have been 2 separate incidents in the last decade where more than 1 safety guard in the plant have been caught napping …these are guys monitoring the reactor core, not some rent a cop security guard. Logs there were forged now and again as well. Three Mile Island had a “partial meltdown” though they claim no one was really affected. However there is a disproportionately high amount of cancers in the area and several of the farms have animals with multiple heads, extra limbs, and extra udders, yet cows and other animals from the same original stock that were raised on farms away from the TMI area have not had the same genetic anomalies in their progeny. Officials have been called in to check out the situation and have always declared things A-OK.

I’ve had family that worked in nuclear plants around the country and have mentioned how old and unsafe many sites are, how logs are forged, and how some of the sites are well past their lifecycle (see Indian Point plant in NY). They have worked inside the actual core areas (which they called “gator pits”) and said despite the unsafe structure of things, they generally monitor radiation levels of workers quite well, and they didn’t believe any level of radiation ever made it outside of the plant.

The current US administration yammers on and on that nuclear energy is a necessary part of our future to wean off of fossil fuels. I’m all for cutting back on oil, however there is effective technology to allow for alternative greener methods, including geothermal, wind energy, solar energy (which even Spain is ahead of the US on), and wave energy (from ocean and lake waves).

Why we would spend billions on new “mini reactors” that are purported to be so much safer than Japan’s when we have alternatives that even in a worst case scenario could not possible cause the extent of damage to the masses as a nuclear reactor, is beyond me. Arrogance kills. That’s been proven time and again.

In Japan they’ve elevated the “allowable” levels of radiation for both the plant workers, and now the civilians, and for milk, water, and spinach. Elevate those levels all you want, but people will still suffer repercussions at the same level. The body’s immunities to radiation won’t increase just because a new mandate was passed.

Watching the spokesman/head of TEPCO, generally a rather stoic man (as many Japanese execs are), breakdown in tears over the extent of the crisis and admit it was worse than originally stated, speaks volumes. Reactor 3 is still having issues, and that is the one that utilizes both Uranium and Plutonium. Reactor core rods are built in a shape to allow for small reactions, but not so they lose control. If the temperature increases enough and fully melts the plutonium inside causing it to alter shape and become more spherical, the point of nuclear criticality can easily occur. That leads to the big boom, as someone mentioned above with Plutonium.

It’s crucial for everyone to educate themselves on the realities of nuclear energy. It’s understandable that any government would not fully inform their peoples of the true extent of a crisis. Everyone knows what happens when riots and panic occurs. At the same time, not knowing the extent of a nuclear crisis can potentially cost us billions down the road in medical expenses, cleanup, loss of food sources etc. The more informed we are, the better we can react and take measures to protect ourselves, instead of waiting for the government to tell us what we should be doing.

(Apologies if this came off as a rant. Really meant it to be more informative. Just irks me to see mainstream media eatup what the spin machines are feeding them, and then trying to finger point to Japan for their plant's shortcomings while trying to lull us into believing we're so much more advanced that it would "never happen to us.")

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that the media would hype something. If they would do this about a disaster, do you think they might even hype a political candidate?

(Apologies if this came off as a rant. Really meant it to be more informative. Originally Posted by Grad Girl Next Door

A rant? Not at all. Thanks for taking the time to write such an informative post.

Welcome, enjoy yourself here, and hope to see more of your posts.