What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I agree. Several dozen people have effectively committed suicide in order to help millions of others. TEPCO still seems to be in a mind set that believes they can "clean it up" and get #4 and perhaps even #1 and #3 back into operations. I have little doubt that what will eventually happen is that they will be forced to cover the site with compounds of Boron, then 30 or more feet of fine sand, followed by 10 to 20 feet of concrete. The site will probably be surrounded by a 30Km no travel zone. What they plan to do at the sea-ward side is still a puzzle.

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

When the audio of the workers in Chernobyl talking on the radio to their supervisors and then saying "please tell my family.. "was released I cried.

Of course.....that audio has been sponged from the net because it reflects badly on a certain philosophical system which has been vogue in academia and the media and the net in particular...and is now gaining ascendancy..... they CERTAINLY don't want any "dirty linen" exposed.....

But....upon reflection.....I think.......that......when it was first released..... a lot of people cried when they heard it.

It is just beyond my lowly comprehension......what must be going on in Japan..

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I remember listening to that tape.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

TEPCO announced their plans to gain control of the Fucushima nuclear plant. The plans are detailed in two PDF's they released:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110417e13.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110417e15.pdf

An excellent discussion by Dr. Michael Kaku is here.

Also, this site is from the TEPCO and contains all sorts of data about the plants. The link I show is the Rads exposure in the plants. ALL of them are 20 Sv/hr or higher. A lethal exposure is 7 Sv/hr. The #1 nuclear reactor Rad data is not shown. I suspect that it is so HIGH that TEPCO does not want to show it. You can click on other links at the page and see a wide variety of information relating to Fucushima.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

FaireWindows Associates has a new video discussing the possible side affects of radiation leaking from Fucushima.

"While people living close to Fucushima can lower their dose by moving away from it, in America it would be much more difficult to change your dose by moving because the contamination, although lower, is more widely spread..... the exposure in America is not insignificant and can cause Thiroid and blood cancers, along with bone cancers."

What gets you is the "unknown unknowns".

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

The Japanese government has decided to control "misinformation" and is asking ISP's to delete stories and comments about Fucushima from their websites.
http://japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segawa/3516

Uesugi stated that since March 11th, the government has excluded all internet media and all foreign media from official press conferences on the "Emergency Situation". While foreign media have scrambled to gather information about the Fukushima Reactor, they have been denied access to the direct information provided by the government and one consequence of this is that "rumor-rife news has been broadcast overseas."

In fact, access has been limited in two ways. First, while Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio holds twice daily press conferences for representatives of the big Japanese media, registered representatives of freelance and internet media are limited to a single press conference per week. Second, in contrast to Japanese media who are briefed regularly by Edano and periodically by Prime Miniser Kan, foreign media are briefed exclusively by administrative staff.

Uesugi also notes that at TEPCO press conferences, which are now being held at company headquarters, foreign correspondents and Japanese freelancers regularly ask probing questions while mainstream journalists simply record and report company statements reiterating that the situation is basically under control and there is nothing to worry about. One reason for this, Uesugi suggests, is that TEPCO, a giant media sponsor, has an annual 20 billion yen advertising budget. "The media keeps defending the information from TEPCO!” “The Japanese media today is no different from the wartime propaganda media that kept repeating to the very end that ‘Japan is winning the war against America,’” Uesugi exclaimed.

There is one particularly telling example of the media shielding TEPCO by suppressing information. This concerns “plutonium”. According to Uesugi, after the reactor blew up on March 14, there was concern about the leakage of plutonium. However, astonishingly, until two weeks later when Uesugi asked, not a single media representative had raised the question of plutonium at TEPCO's press conferences.

On March 26, in response to Uesugi’s query, TEPCO stated, “We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it.” Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that “plutonium was detected”.

When TEPCO finally released data on radioactive plutonium on March 28, it stated that plutonium -238, -239, and -240 were found in the ground, but insisted that it posed no human risk. Since TEPCO provided no clarification of the meaning of the plutonium radiation findings, the mainstream press merely reported the presence of the radiation without assessment (link). Nippon Television on March 29 headlined its interview with Tokyo University Prof. Nakagawa Keiichi, a radiation specialist, “Plutonium from the power plant—No effect on neighbors.”

On March 15, Uesugi criticized TEPCO for its closed attitude toward information on a TBS radio program. For this, he was immediately dismissed from his regular program.
...
The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send “letters of request” to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they “take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. ”The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality.

So, the cover-up is escalating. Canada is trying to out-stupid America by turning off its radiation detectors, while the USA's EPA is raising the maximum radiation allowed to such a point that a single glass of water under the proposed limits would equal the maximum allowed LIFETIME radiation under the old limits.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1325

The internal documents show that under the updated PAG a single glass of water could give a lifetime’s permissible exposure. In addition, it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed.

In the previous post is a link to a Japanese gov site which posted various technical details about Fucushima. One was the radiation in the reactors. All of them were greater than 20 Sv, which is 3X the a single lethal dose, of 7 Sv, and that just the Alpha, Beta and Gama radiation streaming out fo the plant. It doesn't take into account the vaporized, particalized radioactive isotopes carried by explosions, fires and convection out of the plant and the area.

Japan also announced that they have run out of places to store the radioactive sea water the used to flood the plant so they are going to start dumping it into the ocean. The first dump will be 10,000 tons, or 2.4 million gallons. Because the reactors are NOT under control they must continue to pump water into them, which means the dumping of HIGHLY radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean will continue till the END OF THE YEAR, which is the time line TEPCO gave in one of their latest reports. The "theory" is that the ocean will dilute the radioactive water to such a degree that the radiation (Beq/m^3) is negligible. Of course, the idea that such through mixing from the surface down to an average of 6,000 feet would occur is ridiculous. So is the idea that if you turn off your radiation detectors you'll avoid any harm from incoming radioactive water, rain or air.

[MoonRise]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

I think we all knew that this disaster would be World Wide. Remember this was a 9.0 earthquake. The Earth is still active and we have many more of these things near faults, even in the US. Humans invite disaster in the name of progress. This is the norm.

[woodsmoke]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

while the USA's EPA is raising the maximum radiation allowed to such a point that a single glass of water under the proposed limits would equal the maximum allowed LIFETIME radiation under the old limits.

and THIS is the agency, which, after "climategate", moved "global warming" to the bottom right corner of their website, and later moved it AWAY....and replace it with "climate change" and then moved it to the bottom right of the page...

and...after the IPCC in S. Korea in October....said that their Himalaya glacier thing was...um wrong....and said...that there was NO entiity which could make a "global prediction".... which was NOT reported in the U.S. or Europe....

This agency.... what a JOKE!!!

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

The April 26, 2011 video from Fairewinds discusses the difference between the explosion at reactor #1 and reactor #3. (The essence of the tape starts at 6:10 but the whole things is a good view).

Bottom line... reactor three had a "prompt criticality" event. Translation: a small nuclear explosion which blew itself, and the building, apart before too much U and Pu went critical to create a Hiroshima size detonation. The key test of this hypothesis is the ratio of two isotopes of Xenon, information which government planes collected in the plume cloud but will not release. Gunderson also notes that pieces of fuel rods were found over two miles away from the plant, along with U and Pu dust, and that same dust was collected in sampling stations in Hawaii and California. Americium, not naturally occurring, was found in dust which contaminated New England.

It should be noted here that while U and Pu give off Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation during decay. Alpha can be stopped by a sheet of paper, or the skin, but Beta and Gamma cannot. IF the dust in inhaled or ingested then the full force of the radiation attacks cells in the vicinity of the radioactive isotopes.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

This video from Fairewinds answers the questions about the difference between radiation near the Fucushima plant compared to that which falls on other countries, and how the lower level widely dispersed radiation is more likely to be breathed in or consumed eating contaminated food. Those near the plant in danger of exposure to Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation from the plant can reduce or eliminate the risk by moving farther away. The fine, radioactive dust carried away into the upper winds by the explosions spreads out as it crosses the ocean and when arriving in North America it is widely dispersed and one cannot simply move to another location, unless they move to South America.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

The Japanese gov and TEPCO announced that they are going to cover the reactors with ... A TENT!

Reactor #1 is glowing with 70R, which means a person will receive a lethal dose in a couple hours.


Here is the video: http://vimeo.com/23680177

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

This video confirms what Arnie Gunderson stated in March, that Fukashima plants #1, #2 and #3 had nuclear meltdowns. In this video he also discusses the difference between pressure and non-pressure vessels, and the risk that the Fukashima type nuclear reactors pose because of the vents added as a band-aide measure to avoid explosions from over pressures.

http://vimeo.com/24112635

Comments include:

Now even Tepco admits that the 3 cores have melted and must therefore rest somewhere below in a configuration similar to Chernobyl. Unfortunately, 25 years later there is still no plan to contain radioactive material leaking into groundwater over there. Eventually this may indeed end up being the main as well as most costly challenge that Japanese engineers will have to solve ...

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Analysis of sea life in the ocean and on the sea floor 12 miles off the coast of Japan shows the presence of concentrations of Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 which are more than 50 times the legal limit.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-...ife-japan.html

What the article does not mention is the significance of the presence of Iodine-131, which makes up 3% of the products of fission of U-235. Since Iodine-131 has a half-life of only 8 days, in 80 days (10 half-lives) it would have already decayed away if the contamination were a one-shot affair. That it is present in such high concentrations so far away from the reactors indicates that the contamination hasn't abated but is continuing at a steady pace. It also exposes as deceptive the claims by the Japanese government and TEPCO that the ocean is "diluting" the radiation to harmless levels. The maximum iodine-131 limit is 2,000 Becquerels per kilogram for seaweed, but a level of 127,000 Becquerels per kilogram was found in some samples of the seaweed species Sargassum Horneri.

Even worse is the unmentioned Iodine-129 contamination. Where ever Iodine-131 is found one will also find Iodine-129. It makes up 1% of fusion products but has a half-life of 16 million years. It will be around in the environment for a LONG time.

[kubicle]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Even worse is the unmentioned Iodine-129 contamination. Where ever Iodine-131 is found one will also find Iodine-129. It makes up 1% of fusion products but has a half-life of 16 million years. It will be around in the environment for a LONG time.

One has to keep in mind that the long half-life of I129 makes it rather harmless. In other words a kilogram of I129 releases roughly the same amount of radiation in 16 million years than I131 does in 8 days...it's much less radioactive.

Combined with the facts that I129 has low radiation energy (mostly low energy beta particles and some low energy gamma radiation), the decay product is stable (Xe129) and that Iodine has a biological half-life of about 100 days, I129 is fairly safe as far as radioactive substances go.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

Even worse is the unmentioned Iodine-129 contamination. Where ever Iodine-131 is found one will also find Iodine-129. It makes up 1% of fusion products but has a half-life of 16 million years. It will be around in the environment for a LONG time.

One has to keep in mind that the long half-life of I129 makes it rather harmless. In other words a kilogram of I129 releases roughly the same amount of radiation in 16 million years than I131 does in 8 days...it's much less radioactive.

Combined with the facts that I129 has low radiation energy (mostly low energy beta particles and some low energy gamma radiation), the decay product is stable (Xe129) and that Iodine has a biological half-life of about 100 days, I129 is fairly safe as far as radioactive substances go.

One would think so, but the data speaks otherwise.
http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Iodine.pdf
Notice that the Iodine-129 presents more than twice the risk that Iodine-131 does:



The risk is only small if you are not the one in which decay products have hit a cell nucleus and caused a cancerous mutation.