<

p class=”lead”>There is a lot of news in Ana’s Feed about the nuclear power industry world wide, as well as across Japan, and especially disturbing news related to the Fukushima plant in particular. In brief, the main reason that the situation at these reactors seems to be kinda-sorta under control (as in the water in the plants has stopped boiling uncontrollably) is that much of the nuclear fuel has melted its way into the underlying geology, and/or all over the plant’s foundation structures, and/or dispersed through groundwater that is moving through the system. Towards nearby rivers and/or the ocean.

Radiation Readings and Contamination

<

p class=”lead”>The catastrophic meltdowns at Fukushima’s Nuclear Power plant and associated plume of radioactive material were picked up some 60 kilometers away from the plant at a medical facility; These data are now available in a pretty, yet scary, graph (see Ana’s Feed). Good news: It may be the case that most of the radioactive substances in the vicinity, which would be Cesium, is on top of everything … i.e., the top 2 cm of soil. Bad news: The Cesium fallout covers a very very large area, including large areas of eastern and northeastern Japan. Having said that, it appears that very few people were zapped with large amounts of radiation at the outset of the disaster.

However, this may not be an accurate assessment, and hopes that decontamination would go fairly quickly because radioactive material is mainly on the surface and just has to be wiped or scraped off do not seem to be working out. Some of the preliminary decontamination efforts seem to indicate that the procedure being used reduces radioactivity by as little as 22%, which is unexpected.

But that’s OK, because TEPCO’s policy is that radioactive stuff that falls on your property is now YOURS, not theirs!

As decontamination of homes in the Fukushima disaster evacuation area begins, the government is considering sending in the “army” to help with decontamination, but other parts of the government want to see data on potential contamination, which is apparently not available, first. There is a plan to build a facility to bury Fukushma waste. The government is looking for a site. So far there have been no volunteers.

There was a complete botch-up regarding Radioactive Rice, in which a brilliant hypothesis of how rice would be not too contaminated was killed by the ugly fact of highly contaminated rice. Also, school children are, apparently, being given contaminated milk to drink. This was discovered by tests applied to milk over the objections of the milk industry. Similarly, baby formula seems to be contaminated as well.

The Cold Shutdown vs. the Meltdown

TEPCO claims that the planned cold shutdown is on schedule for the end of this month. At present, all of the water in all of the reactor machinery seems to be below boiling point. In fact, it turns out that the temperature inside the primary reactor vessels is even lower than expected. It is possible that this is because most of the fuel has leaked out of the vessels to an unknown location. That’s good, right?

TEPCO has produced a study that shows that the containment vessels for the reactors contained the melted nuclear fuel from the plant. This is based on a computer simulation produced a few days ago.

In contrast, the architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 suggests that nuclear fuel beneath the plant may be as deep as 12 meters below the foundation level, continuing to melt its way through the earth. If he’s right, that could mean future hydrogen explosions accompanied by massive radiation releases. TEPCO is also concerned about future hydrogen explosions.

Other experts claim that the material from the cores is mixed into the top 70 cm. of material above a steel containment barrier. Yet another suggests that the material is two meters deep into the concrete below the vessel. All of these suggestions are worst than the previously defined “worst case scenario” used by the plant’s engineers and designers.

As efforts leading to the cold shutdown continue, strange things keep happening in the plant with temperature and radiation readings, and there are uncertainties about the instrumentation being used in the plant.

Contaminated Water and Ground Water Problems

One of the major problems at the damaged reactor facilities is still contaminated water in the buildings. TEPCO is unable to remove water from the buildings, though the reasons are somewhat unclear as to why. One of the problems is that groundwater is flowing into the foundations. This is a concern, since the foundations are supposed to be a seal to keep contamination inside the plant in the event of a spill or meltdown. Presumably contaminated water is flowing out if it is also flowing in. It is of some concern that TEPCO can’t identify the source of the groundwater. Modern facilities that will contain dangerous materials are built after accurate groundwater maps and models are developed. This suggests that a review of existing nuclear power plant area groundwater maps is in order.

The good news is that maybe the radioactive stuff under the plants will not actually drill its way through the center of the earth, but rather, it may just flow out into the sea via a nearby river. Extremely high radiation readings have been identified at the mouth of the Abukumagawa River.

Plant Workers

The ex-skf blog expresses concerns over worker’s safety in the vicinity of the plant’s breached containment vessels. Masao Yoshida, the manager at Fukushima at the time of the disaster, has stepped down from his position due to an unspecified illness.

Told you so

More evidence that TEPCO was aware of the threat of a tsunami, but ignored or repressed it, has been brought to light.

Far away but still of interest

Highway 40 in Memphis saw a Uranium Truck crash. No big deal. This time. A coolant leak was reprted at Brunswick Plant in the Carolinas. A recent report suggests that all of the nuclear reactors in France need to be upgraded. Given the geography of much of Western Europe, a Chernobyl or Fukushima type disaster is sometimes called the “10 trillion dollar scenario.” Not only would a major contamination plume cause major direct effects, but at the moment, a huge percentage of Western Europe’s power comes from nuclear.

In Otter Matters

There is still a problem with pets, in the Fukushima area. Volunteers are barely able to handle current needs for care of animals left homeless due to the disaster. Concerns over radioactive contamination? There’s an ap for that! You an now get a Geiger counter attachment for your smart phone.

And now …

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 41: Good News – it’s bad. Bad news – it’s worse than we think →

The radiation at the Fukushima plants has gone up, rather than down, since June. This may be because contaminated water has become more concentrated due to evaporation. The release of radiation from the plant into the air continues, although a covering over Reactor 1 is almost completed. The release of radiation from the plant into the sea continues, and plankton are shown to be contaminated to a level that raises some concern. Mid month, the plant was measured to be releasing about 100 million becquerels per hour. The reactors are still not uniformly shut down to less than boiling. Additional pumps are being brought in to inject more water. And what goes in must come out, as steam into the atmosphere and effluence into the sea. So this is going to keep going for a while, at least a few more months.

Most of the facilities are too radioactive to enter or to spend very much time in.

TEPCO claims that if there was another earthquake knocking out their current “cooling” facilities at Fukushima, they could return to a state of the plant continuing to emit radiation out of control and boiling off radioactive steam and dumping radioactive water into the sea within just a few hours, so no need to worry about that eventuality.

Even though one of the “hot spots” found in Tokyo turned out to be, rather disturbingly, a small nuclear waste dump someone had in their home, many other hot spots at many localities ofairutside of the evacuation area have been found. It would seem that some sort of winnowing effect is concentrating radioactive material here and there. In at least one case, a rainwater pipe seemed to be the source of high radiation. In another case, in Kashiwa, a drainage ditch has very highly concentrated radiation.

Meanwhile, radioactive material is spreading throughout the region in another way: Radioactive sludge and dirt is being systematically shipped to numerous municipalities for them to put in to their own local dumps, and political pressure is being applied to make sure mayors or other community leaders keep quite about his and allow it to happen. One wonders if the population was warned of this during the initial hearings about whether or not to build this plant. Were the region’s municipalities told then that if there was a massive meltdown at the Fukushima plant, individual municipalities would be expected to become radioactive waste repositories?

Children in the Fukushima area are returning to schools as radiation levels at the schools are dropping. The children are being asked to wear long sleeved shirts and long pants when they go outside for their Physical Education classes.

The explosion at Reactor 3 may have been a prompt moderated nuclear critically within the reactor 3 fuel pool. Also, the containment at Reactor 3 was probably badly damaged and cracked independently. (see video below from Fairewinds)

Ana’s Fukushima Feed

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 39: Nuclear Explosion at Reactor 3? →

The latest update on the crisis in Fukushima. The hot spots are everywhere. Be careful where you step!

But first, we’d like to introduce the handy-dandy Fukushima Post and Ana’s Feed search engine. This search engine will return results from this series of posts we’ve done. This is a good place to start if you are researching anything about fukushima:

Later, we may produce a search engine that includes everything we’ve pointed to as well. That, of course, is roughly the same as searching the entire internet. We’ve not yet decided if we should pursue that strategy or something intermediate (such as our posts plus selected other sites).

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 38: Decontamination Edition →

For the purposes of discussion in the Japan Disaster threads, I’ve made a graphic that very roughly approximates the zone of likely future very high rates of cancer if the Fukushima nuclear power plant were located where our (somewhat similar but smaller) plant is located, upwind during the winter of the Twin Cities. The lightened up area (circular) would be the zone in which agriculture would probably cease. Anyone who knows this area knows that the main outputs are electricity and produce!

This is not meant to represent what would happen here … different plants, different conditions, etc. The idea is just to make it easier for people from the area to understand the scale of space we are talking about here.

It has been Just over six months since a magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the hours following that incident, nuclear power protagonists filled the blogosphere, the news outlets, and other media with assurances that little could go wrong, that the reactors would be managed, that the disaster would demonstrate, once things had settled down, that nuclear power was, indeed, safe.

One of the first things Ana and I noticed, and we were not alone, is that some of the same stories … in some cases the same exact wording … was showing up in various places, as though planted by apologists for the nuclear power industry. But more worrying than that may have been the naivete of many who were seemingly very trusting of the nuclear power industry than they probably should have been, quite innocently. And, it was becoming increasingly clear that many members of the skeptics community had become convinced over the last several years that anti-nuclear sentiment was irrational, and that somehow this translated into a blind trust for the nuclear power industry being the most rational course. Today, six months after the earthquake, we know that three of the plants fully melted down. We have a rough estimate of how much nuclear material was released from a point in time a few days after the accident to the present, but for the first few days, the estimates are very poor and the amount being released was probably very high, because that is when the meltdowns were occurring. And, there is reason to believe that most of the radioactive material released from this plant was released (and is still being released) into the sea, pretty much uncounted.

The following is a non-comprehensive timeline of some of the events over the first several days of the disaster mixed in with selected comments on this blog, mostly just the very few updates in this series or related posts.
Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster: Update # 35 →

Things at Fukushima are about as interesting as they’ve ever been. We want to talk about specific problems at the reactor site, with radioactive material, cooling systems, etc. but first a few words about things happening more broadly, beginning with the largest and work towards the smallest scale. Everything we discuss here is based on the material provided in “Ana’s Feed” below. There, you will find detailed notes from media and other sources since our last posting, and links. (See here for all of our postings on Fukushima.)

Globally, it is interesting and disconcerting that Japan itself is drawing back from further use of nuclear power while remaining very much involved in promoting this source of energy in other countries. In the US and elsewhere, the nuclear industries and institutions in various countries continue to make strong yet inconsistent statements about nuclear power. In the US, the heated discussion that arose from the big-ass reality pimp-slap we know of as Fukushima has caused a certain amount of friction and tension in the fractious relationship among the disparate nuclear-related regulatory agencies. In one tasty but bitter bit of irony, a nuclear power plant had to go to 50% power because the waters in the river used for cooling at that plant were too warm owing, presumably, the global warming that running nuclear power plants would curtail. If they worked as such.

In Japan, the contaminated beef story continues to develop, and problems continue with contaminated compost, fish, rice and tea (see more below regarding contamination). The Japanese Government, accused earlier of trying to control the message regarding Fukushima a bit too earnestly, has both denied those accusations and deleted the public data on radioactive contamination of children.

And now, a few details from on-site or nearby.
Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 33: Fukushima is as interesting as it’s ever been →

In the old days this was easy. The power plants were melting down but no one knew what was going on inside them; Water was being poured in and cooking off as steam, and every now and then the way they were getting the water in or the way they were powering the pumps would change, or one of the containment buildings would blow up, or whatever. If you’ve been reading the last few Fukushima Updates, however, you’ll know that things related to the crippled nuclear power plant have gotten more, not less complicated, which at first is counter-intuitive, but on reflection, expected. After all, engineers have more access to the inside of the plants now, though that is still limited. Pumping water into a big concrete box that blows up now and then is not as complicated as assembling a functiniong cooling system from parts that have been mauled by floods and earthquakes and that are highly radioactive. And the secondary but very important ramifications of an out of control set of multiple meltdowns at a large nuclear power plant are developing around the world as entire countries swear off nuclear power while at the same time major, influential industry entities revert to pretending that this is pretty much what we expected and everything is fine. The patterns and problems associated with contamination are starting to emerge and sink in; The fact that the industry expected this sort of meltdown to occur has been revealed.

One of the interested developments for the coverage period for this update was the declaration that Step 1 of the road map plan to bring the crisis to an end was completed. This involved stable cooling of the reactors and eliminating risks of hydrogen explosions. It is probably true that this has been accomplished, however things could change; Cooling systems are in place and hydrogen is no longer burning off, as it were. However even since this declaration there were interruptions in the cooling system. There have also been technical problems with the decontamination units that are supposed to clean the water that is being cycled through the cooling systems. At one point power went out for 5 hours stopping all cooling operations for some of the reactors and storage pools. We might be optimistic and call the situation stable but not trustworthy.

Also interesting is the attempt to redefine the meaning of the planned “Step 2.” This is “cold shutdown” of the reactors, to be completed within six months, which is actually a thing defined by standards. A cold shutdown has two major features: The reactors have to be below a certain temperature internally, and the radioactive stuff in the reactors has to be contained. The second of these two is of course impossible in at least two of the reactors, possibly three, because they melted down and the radioactive stuff will never be contained by any standard that the industry may have specified at any time in the past. The outcome of a “china syndrome” like event is that you get a bit of landscape that is really more like a new geological formation than an ex-power plant. And it will do what it does. The Japanese authorities seem to be interested in redefining both the temperature of “cool” and the meaning of “containment.” The current plan is to build an underground shield running 30 meters deep to contain the radioactive material and contaminated water. Below that is a geological layer that at this time does not absorb water. It is not clear how this feature would be built or how it would be made earthquake resistant. For the time being, engineers and plant managers are seriously considering plugging the holes in the reactors, though there is no known way to do this. Meanwhile, the IAEA has visited the site and tells us that everything is fine.

One of the most prominent features of contamination after a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima is the way radioactive material can become concentrated as it moves up the food chain. Therefore, authorities would naturally be prepared to focus on dairy products and animal meat, as these are well up the food chain from, for instance, grass or hay (or what seems to be called “straw” made from rice stalks, in Japan). But, ooops, they forgot about this problem and officials of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry allowed quite a bit of beef into the market from cattle that had been eating contaminated feed.

The problem is that while steps were taken to avoid having cattle feed on contaminated grass and certain stored feed, the memos regarding safe levels of contamination in feed never got to the rice farmers who provide this “straw” material. And of course, that stuff was contaminated. The beef did get into the market and some of it was even eaten by nursery school children. At first it was reported that almost a dozen cattle had eaten radioactive feed and then were sent to market. Then more such cattle were discovered. It now seems that the number is probably close to 1,400 over 3,000 cattle shipped.

Also, it appears that straw grown very far from the plant is contaminated, but is still being used as feed. And, some of the beef may have been sold abroad. Other plant products and eggs are also contaminated.

Some time over the next few years the process of removing the spent fuel rods will be initiated. This includes the rods that are inside the reactors. Removing rods so badly damaged from reactors so badly damaged in buildings so badly damaged has never been done before, according to engineers involved in the planning. (This implies that the removal of nuclear material from Chernobyl was easier.) The process is expected to take several decades.

Evacuations continue and evacuation zones continue to be expanded as contamination is discovered or spreads. People are still resigning or getting charged or investigated or otherwise sternly looked at, plant construction plans are being scrapped. Gangsters. There are gangsters benefiting from the cleanup projects. Whistle-blowers are blowing their whistles but the climate for them is just as dangerous as ever; Policies are being scrutinized or changed, except in the US where recommendations have been hastily cobbed together and are now being duly ignored. We have yet to see a good analysis of the effects of these political and economic shifts on global warming. Earthquakes continue to occur in Japan. Contamination of workers is an increasing concern at Fukushima.

Another plant in Japan, Genkai, may have a faulty reactor pressure vessel. You will recall from earlier updates that this is the plant that the industry pushed the local mayor to restart using methods that were not entirely ethical. Other plants have other problems.

One of the most interesting and possibly most important items to come up over the last few days is a simulation created by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization of a meltdown and “china syndrome” event at the type of reactor at Fukushima. The simulation was created before this disaster and appears to be what actual did happen. See below.

Japan has passed a law outlawing this blog post. Don’t expect to be reading this if you are in Japan, or if you do … watch out.

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 32: “Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in History” →

The International Atomic Energy Association issued its last report on Fukushima on June 2nd and appears to not be keeping their web site up to date any more. This is the last time I’ll be checking with them unless I hear otherwise. The email scandal reported last time continues “Analysts say the scandal reflects panic in Japan’s atomic power industry, long coddled by political, corporate and regulatory interests dubbed the “nuclear village” but now facing growing anti-nuclear sentiment as workers battle to end the Fukushima crisis.? (from Ana’s Feed, below). The magnitude of the tsunami wave that hit the plant (and vicinity) has been re-estimated, and it was quite a bit larger than previously thought. Radiation in sea-living organisms continues to be a concern.

UPDATE: On sundau, Goshi Hosono, the Japanese Government minister in charge of the accident, officially stated that “Step 1” of the recovery process was completed (as scheduled). This involves bringing cooling of the reactors to a stable level, and eliminating the risk of a hydrogen explosion.

These steps seem to have been only partially achieved, so it is a little premature to announce that “Step 1” has been completed. In any event, as of Sunday, July 17th, it is claimed that cooling is totally under control and there is zero possibility of a hydrogen explosion at Fukushima.

Ana’s feed has several items regarding tracking radiation both near Fukushima and around the world.

Questions: Would a newer reactor design have done better? Were poor decisions made when this and other reactors were built? For instance, one of the original options for siting Fukushima was above the level of the tsunami. Siting the plant within range of tsunamis was a conscious decision. Why was it made?

More questions: Are US plants, now being re-evaluated with the sudden realization that nuclear power can be dangerous, in need of safety re-evaluations, upgrades, or decommissioning?

It turns out that while the Fukushima reactors were busy melting down, a depleted uranium storage facility in Chiba caught fire when the adjoining oil refinery blew up. Other industrial facilities including other nuclear power plants are now understood to have suffered important damage that has not been discussed publicly.

The situation with Fukushima’s cattle herd has continued to develop since our last report on July 7th. Initially, 11 cattle were found to have 2,300 becquerels/kilo of radioactive cesium, which exceeds the allowable limit of 500. The beef from that herd of 11 was never sent to market. However, in a separate development reported four days ago, the meat of six cows form Fukushima was distributed widely in Japan, and at least some of it was consumed by unsuspecting patrons. The six cattle were from the same farm as the 11. Eventually, a total of more than 80 cattle were shipped out from farms with high-cesium feed.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited Fukushima on Saturday

Read all about these issues and much, much more in Ana’s Feed:

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 31: Radioactive stuff spreads, questions multiply →

The Fukushima Update #30 has been translated into German. So if German is your preferred language, you can go read it here. Thanks Frank Braun for the translation.

Perhaps the most interesting single thing on the table in today’s update is the revelation that at least one of Fukushima’s reactors suffered sufficient damage from the earthquake that hit the region … prior to the tsunami … to have likely gone out of control or melted down. This is hard to assess because the tsunami caused so much additional damage as to obscure earlier damage, and because cleanup efforts are not proper forensic methods to reconstruct what happened there, and because we can assume at this point that the untrustworthy TEPCO will cover up whatever it can, and it is in their interest to ignore any evidence that the earthquake itself resulted in significant damage. The problem is that there are people who saw the damage happen during the earthquake and some of them are talking.

This is important because NPA’s (Nuclear Power Apologists) including TEPCO (and don’t get us wrong …. we love the promise of nuclear energy!) wants everyone to think that THE problem at Fukushima was the totally unexpected tsunami, not the more likely to occur and totally planned-for earthquake. It would turn out that not only was this tsunami not unexpected at all (this has been covered before) but that the earthquake did enough damage that whatever other expectations Japanese nuclear regulators have regarding earthquakes may have are in serious question.

There are about 120,000 tones of contaminated water at Fukushima. That is roughly equivalent to the volume of about 200 modest town homes or almost 50- Olympic size swimming pools. The plant is essentially full of water … injecting more water into the plant can only happen if some of it boils off, which releases radioactive steam into the air (which is, essentially, what has been happening for weeks). The current plan is to decontaminate the water and use the decontaminated water to cool the plant.

What has been happening instead is that the decontamination system has failed or worked at a lower rate than expected and pumps that are supposed to push the water through containment vessels have been under achieving. There is no evidence that water is no longer leaking into the sea or steam into the air. So, the current situation is one in which efforts to cool the plant and contain the water are partially working but not entirely under control. The result of this is continuing and in some cases increasing spread of contamination.

And the contamination stories are starting to get worse, not better, though the meaning of it all is hard to assess. One model shows contaminated water reaching the US coast in a few years, though at low concentration. A handful of cattle radioactive to a much higher than allowed level were brought to market the other day, though they were detected and removed from the meat supply. Local tea (tea is grown in this area) is too contaminated to drink. A school group engaged in a fieldtrip in which they pick tea, process it and drink it almost consumed tea contaminated to what is considered an unsafe level. Increasing and alarmingly high levels of radioactive material is being detected on the sea floor near the Fukushima plant. People in one village had three times the allowed annual exposure to radiation indicated in test of their urine. Close to half of the children in the Fukushima area appear to have thyroid exposure, though the levels seem moderate. And so on.

Fukushima had a lot of nuclear material in it and a lot of that material has escaped, and the rate of escape is only somewhat slowed down, and the prospect of additional catastrophic events such as the collapse of a structure or an explosion is still very real.

Which brings us to the instability problems. There is still a distinct possibility of a hydrogen explosion. Measures to reduce the likelihood of this have been put into effect in two of the reactors, but a third reactor that has a high (though unmeasured) chance of an explosion has proved more difficult to secure. The spent fuel pool in Reactor #3 is not only structurally questionable due to the earthquake, but the vessel and fuel rods also appear to be under severe threat of corrosion.

This particular story is interesting because it illustrates the uncertainty of what happens when disasters occur. The Fukushima plants are designed to keep gasses that get out of the reactor or cooling system in place so they do not contaminate nearby areas. But one of the gasses that can build up in the case of a meltdown or even a lesser problem with cooling is very explosive hydrogen. If the overarching structure was built to withstand a hydrogen explosion, this would concentrate the explosive forces and certainly do excessive damage to the machinery inside the plant, or worse. Therefore the structure is designed to blow up gracefully. That happened at Fukushima. In the case of Plant #3, however, there was a spent fuel storage tank in the facility, and much of the gracefully blowed-up overstructure fell slap-dab into it. The cement from this structure has dissolved in the hot water in the tank (extra hot because unexpected fission events occurred, i.e., a mini-melt down of sorts) and this has caused the liquid in the spent fuel rod tank to become extremely alkaline. And that alkaline water is eating through things, such as the fuel rods and the containment vessel itself. Storing your spent fuel rods in Draino is generally not recommended, and as far a we can tell, this was entirely unforeseen, as have been most of the events at Fukushima over the last few weeks.

The political fallout, while not exactly radioactive, remains toxic. One local mayor was apparently strong-armed into allowing the restart of two nuclear power plants, though he backed off this position later. Heads are still rolling here and there. We also have an email scandal, of course. It turns out that journalists were systematically fed misinformation about what was happening here in a coordinated effort by governmental and private entities. You saw some of that happen on this blog, in the way of “Not-concerned troll” spamming.

And now, a record size record of information about the situation at Fukushima …

Ana’s Feed

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 30: It was, is, and will be worse than you thought →

Much of the current news is about exposure and fallout.

As a point of information, the Sievert is a unit of “dose equivliant” from exposure to ionizing radiation. It was designed to indicate relative levels of biological effects on living organisms. This measurement technique attempts to take into account the fact that radiation is absorbed differently by different tissues. Usually we speak in terms of humans unless otherwise specified. There are one thousand millisieverts in a sievert (mSv). Zero to 0.25 Sv in a day is considered to have no effect. At up to one Sv people feel sick and more susceptible tissues are damaged. 10 Sv in a day is deadly. As one goes from 1 to 10 Sv in a day things get worse. If a person is esposed to about 6 Sv in a day or more, they won’t die that day. But later, they probably will. Some of the numbers are given in microsieverts, one thousand times less than a millisievert.

In practice, it is common to measure the effects of radiation exposure accumulated over longer time periods. For example, one measures the maximum dose allowed for US radiation-related workers at 50 mSv per year. When mSv is being discussed in most of the text in Ana’s feed (below) you should assume “per year” is meant if not stated, unless otherwise indicated, although in some cases it seems that the measure being used is accumulated to date, which is closer to one fourth of a year.

The question has been raised; Are increased radiation levels across North America sufficient to explain a jump in infant mortality seen since Fukushima, or is that a coincidence? These deaths are concentrated in the region that would have a larger increase of exposure (the west coast). Probably not. Fukushima is so far away. Babies are so … tough and able to withstand toxic insults. And you can’t see radiation, so how bad can it be? Anyway, it ends up that this is probably some very creative data cooking.

One of the main problems at Fukushima at present is the highly radioactive water flooding the structures’ basements. As this water is being pumped around a certain unspecified (probably unknown) amount of radioactive material is being removed from it. In theory, it is possible to remove most of the raidioisotope from the water, but then one is stuck with a pile of radioactive carbon filtering material. An unknown amount of water is leaking from the plant before being contaminated. Efforts to decrease the amount of water being pumped into the plant, and thus becoming contaminated, were tried but resulted in increasing heat in a reactor core.

The other main, continuing story is the growing understanding of how poorly prepared TEPCO was for any sort of disaster at the plant, and how much sweeping under the rug was going on after the earthquake and tsunami.

Meanwhile, efforts continue to reinforce the Number 4 reactor spent fuel rod containment pool which is thought to be too weak to sustain a serious earthquake. Reinforcement is in fact being put in place but it will be several more weeks before that job is done. The water in the containment pool is still quite hot.

Enigmatically, even though the situation at Fukushima improves only very slowly and radiation continues to spew from the plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency no longer sees it as the top story, and it is now supplanted by various IAEA activities and an FAQ about nuclear safety, relegated to page two, as it were, of their web site. The latest update is still JUne 2nd.

Ana’s Feed

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 29: Indecent Exposure →