What "might happen" with the Japanese Nuclear plants?

[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.

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:

You have to take into account that the mortality risk is measured per picocurie (the unit intake in pCi), and the activity of these Iodine isotopes is 0.00018 Ci/g (curies per gram) for I129 vs 130000 Ci/g for I131 (a difference of about 700 million in radioactivity), which means that the mortality risk of I129 is actually quite a bit lower than I131

EDIT: To put things into perspective, you might compare the numbers to those of naturally existing Potassium-40 (see how the mortality risk seems larger than that of Iodine at first glance, but of course it's again less radioactive), which is present (and radioactive) in all animal (including human) and plant tissue...among other things. Even though it's half-life is 1.3 billion years, people don't seem to be that worried about it:
http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/potassium.pdf

[GreyGeek]

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

Are we looking at the same data?

The life time cancer mortality risk for Iodine-129 is roughly 3x that of 131.

[GreyGeek]

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

Kubical, I inadvertently deleted your reply. Could you repost it please?
Sorry.
GG

[kubicle]

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

Kubical, I inadvertently deleted your reply. Could you repost it please?
Sorry.
GG

I can give it a shot, maybe I can word myself better the second time around.

Are we looking at the same data?
The life time cancer mortality risk for Iodine-129 is roughly 3x that of 131.

Yes, but not three times higher for the same amount of the substance (grams or atoms), but three times higher for the same amount of radiation received (curies, Ci). The chart gives you a figure of how dangerous particular radiation is, but it tells you nothing of how much of that radiation you get from a particular amount of the radioactive material in a given amount of time...you have to count that in to get the "real" risk.

To get that about three times higher risk, you need to get the same amount of radiation (curies) from I129 as you get from I131, and that would happen if you take in 700 million times more I129, or have it in your body for 700 million times longer.

An example: For a mass of 1000 atoms of I131, there will be 500 decays in eight days (500 radiation particles sent) because it's half-life is eight days. For I129, it takes 1000 atoms 16 million years to have the same amount of decays (and send 500 radiation particles), because it's half-life is 16 million years...or you need a mass of 700 billion atoms to send the same amount of radiation in eight days.

So to get a comparable amount of radiation (in which case the risk is about three times higher, as shown in the chart) for exposure to 1 mg (1/1000 grams) of I131 for 1 day, you need to take in either over 700 kg (700 000 grams) of I129 for 1 day or have 1 mg of it in your body for 2 million years, because I129 is over 700 million times less active than I131. That's why it doesn't show on radioactivity reports, it's not radioactive enough...or IOW, there's not enough of it to reach safety limits.

[woodsmoke]

Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake

This is not directly related to the thread but might be of tangential interest:

Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake


http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/...ct-earthquake/

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

I saw that. Unbelievable that such a gap in understanding could exist between scientists and political lay people. But, the politicians in the legislature in my state constantly assumes that computers can do anything they can conceive of ... like violate the distributive properties of addition and multiplication and still have a set of numbers give logical sums of products ... i.e., (A + B +C)*D should give a different result than (B + C + A)*D because political interpretation demands it.

[woodsmoke]

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

and when the "media giant" scientists act as if they DO know everything it spills over into other places

grr

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

Ya.

Where did those politicians get the idea that science understands plate tectonics well enough to predict earthquakes in advance, or at all?

IF this prosecution does stand and the scientists are convicted I expect a FLOOD of Italian scientists will be migrating to countries that exhibit more sanity just to stay out of jail because they don't know all there is to know and even what isn't possible to know given the current state of science.

[woodsmoke]

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

hmmmm hadn't thought of that...hmm

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

Dribbling the news out in bits and pieces, to soften the blow I guess, the Japanese government has announced that the radiation leaking from Fukushima's nuclear reactors is TWICE that intially reported.

Reactor #1's radiation level has risen to 4,000 millisieverts per hour. Half of all people exposed to that level will die. If the level goes up to 6,000 millisieverts ALL exposed to it will die.

Fairewinds Associates Arnie Gundersen explains how the USA NRA's standards for safety zone around nuclear reactors, 10 miles, was arrived at, and why he feels the standard requested for Americans living in Japan are good enough for Americans living in America -- 50 mile exclusion zone.
http://vimeo.com/24704313

Gundersen was rudely ignored when he testified by phone at the NRC meeting on May 26th.
http://www.fairewinds.com/updates

[GreyGeek]

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

Not only is the radiation from the Fucashima reactors TWICE that which TEPCO reported, it has been discovered that hot particles (microscopic amounts of Beta emitting isotopes containing hundreds of millions of atoms) were being filtered out of the air in SEATTLE!
http://vimeo.com/25002205

[woodsmoke]

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

This post is NOT about the "Japanese" plants but instead one(possibly two) in the U.S.

Here is an "about.com" article which is very short:

http://environment.about.com/b/2011/...ency-alert.htm

Here is one that has a LOT OF LOADED TERMS.... from the "flagship of the Left" The Nation.

In it the Russian Atomic Agency, supposedly using information from the International AA says that "there is a government news blackout" about one of the reactors which had a loss of coolant in one part caused by the flooding.

the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.

Then it gets into President Obama calling Nuclear Power a "green energy" and then it gets into how Pres. Obama is destroying the coal industry and is conducting "terrorism training across several states in the coal mining areas".

The latter part is just the tangential riff against Obama, the first part is the Power Plant stuff.

If one wants to verify the terrorism exercises, one can enter "terrorism exercise in (add state, Kentucky Virginia)" . I don't know that they are that "noxious" but there are articles on the net about the exercises.

What is rather amazing to me is that the Nation has an article that is so strongly anti-Obama.

http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-n...r-Plant-report

Anywhoooooo... if anyone has more info than is currently floating around, or being HIDDEN please post it.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

There is a LOT of media coverage by both TV and paper outlets in this, the Eastern end of the state, that claim the power outage on June 7th was insignificant. The Russian interpretation of events is that it was a "Level 4" event. Our media stories and government statements use identical phrases, suggesting that the reporters and anchors are merely repeating PR memos from Omaha Public Power District. The story is that "nothing of significance" happened on June 7, and no one was in danger. The INES document which defines events associated with nuclear facilities, processes and transportation states:

Events are classified on the scale at seven levels: Levels 4–7 are termed “accidents” and Levels 1–3 “incidents”. Events without safety significance are classified as “Below Scale/Level 0”. Events that have no safety relevance with respect to radiation or nuclear safety are not classified on the scale (see Section 1.3).

For communication of events to the public, a distinct phrase has been attributed to each level of INES. In order of increasing severity, these are:
1 ‘anomaly’,
2 ‘incident’,
3 ‘serious incident’,
4 ‘accident with local consequences’,
5 ‘accident with wider consequences’,
6 ‘serious accident’ and
7 ‘major accident’.
...

The significant part of the INES concerning the Fort Calhoun event is in 6.3.2:

6.3.2.
Events involving failures in cooling systems affecting the spent fuel pool
After some years of operation, the radioactive inventory of the spent fuel pool may be high. In this case, the rating of events affecting the spent fuel pool with respect to impact on defence in depth may span the full range up to Level 3.
...
Because of the large water inventory and the comparably low decay heat, there is usually plenty of time available for corrective actions to be taken for events involving degradation of spent fuel pool cooling. This is equally true for a loss of coolant from the spent fuel pool, since the leakage from the pool is limited by design. Thus, a failure of the spent fuel pool cooling system for some hours or a coolant leakage will not usually affect the spent fuel.

Therefore, minor degradation of the pool cooling system or minor leakages should be typically rated at Below Scale/Level 0.

Operation outside the OL&C or a substantial increase in temperature or decrease of the spent fuel pool coolant level should be rated as Level 1.

An indication of Level 2 could be widespread boiling of coolant or fuel elements becoming uncovered. Substantial fuel element uncovering clearly indicates Level 3.
...

The water in the pond did not boil, according to OPPD statements, so no Level 3. A 2 degree Celsius rise in temperature over 90 minutes of pump outage was not significant and did not accede the operation parameters of the cooling pond, so no Level 1.

So, based on the INES definitions, a Level 0 seems appropriate.

However, IF we are being lied to, or if the water breeches the levees or barriers and floods the plant all bets are off.

[woodsmoke]

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

GG you are just so smart!

Thanks for the very informative writeup.

There's a lot of conspiracy theories out that keep hits on websites "ginned up", so I imagine that is what it probably is, but, the actual photo of the "wall" around the plant is kind of amazing.

This image is relatively large so I won't put it on the post, but it shows where the water is, basically all around the plant, as of June 21 2011.

And although it looks fearsome, we might remember that three mile island actually "worked" in that it's third failsafe backup system contained everything except a small amount of gas leakage.

That means that the plans worked then and unless we treat this as a conspiracy theory the "plans" should work now.

And from the scale of things it looks as if there is probably what....maybe five feet of "wall" around the plant,

The tree in the parking lot might give a sense of how deep the water is ...so...anyway.

thanks again for the nice write up.


[img width=400 height=278]http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2011/06/20/20110620-190750-pic-306864819_s640x445.jpg?eae60e205b3b3dc3c1cf5af96de a367bbcb50bd7[/img]
woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

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

That Fort Calhoun picture shows it all.

It shows that both the intake and exhaust cooling water ports are below the water level.

It shows that an eight foot high rubber bladder, filled with water, surrounds the main buildings and is the only thing keeping water out of the basement and first floor. This reactor is essentially identical to Fucushima, where the reactor cooling pump and the spent fuel cooling pond pumps are both in the basement. That is where the electrical panel that was "smoking" is found.

It also begs the question: How did the Blair fire department get to that smoking panel? Boat? What kind of equipment did they bring if a fire truck couldn't make it?

Yesterday, Gavins Point Dam at Sioux City began releasing 160,000 cfs. This is its largest release on record. The previous high was 70,000 cfs in 1977. Here is an image of the Missouri river at Fort Calhoun, color coded to show the depths of water ABOVE flood stage.
[img width=400 height=258]http://www.nwo.usace.army.mil/html/op-e/20110603Maps/SiouxOma/maps/sc2oma_160kcfs_Page_51.jpg[/img]

The nuke plant is at the extreme left edge of the image, along and in the river.