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Japan Nuclear Crisis Part II


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World's worst nuclear incidents

  • Level 7: Chernobyl, Ukraine, 1986 - explosion and fire in operational reactor, fallout over thousands of square kilometres, possible 4,000 cancer cases
  • Level 6: Kyshtym, Russia, 1957 - explosion in waste tank leading to hundreds of cancer cases, contamination over hundreds of square kilometres
  • Level 5: Windscale, UK, 1957 - fire in operating reactor, release of contamination in local area, possible 240 cancer cases
  • Level 5: Three Mile Island, US, 1986 - instrument fault leading to large-scale meltdown, severe damage to reactor core
  • Level 5: Fukushima, 2011 - tsunami and possibly earthquake damage from seismic activity beyond plant design, leading to...?

Correct me if I am wrong, but in each of the first 4 instances listed above, the explosion or fire took place in only ONE reactor.

Are there any other nuclear incidents where 3 reactors (one with 6% MOX fuel) AND a spent fuel storage pool, were all releasing radiation?

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(Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Friday it has connected the external transmission line with the stricken Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan and confirmed that electricity can be supplied.

In a statement, the company said, "It planned to supply Unit 2 first, followed by Unit 1, Unit 3 and Unit 4 ... because Unit 2 is expected to be less damaged."

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To be fair, we are still a few days away from the worst radiation reaching our shores. This is still only associated with the damage suffered on days 1 and 2. I still don't fear much, but this isn't a fair measurement yet.

we wouldnt even be talking about it if people didnt like to freak out over nothing

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we wouldnt even be talking about it if people didnt like to freak out over nothing

It's a big story regardless of if it has health impacts on US citizens. The fact that any radiation reached us from a nuclear meltdown is a big deal. It just means eventually the entire globe will have some exposure to the event.

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To be fair, we are still a few days away from the worst radiation reaching our shores. This is still only associated with the damage suffered on days 1 and 2. I still don't fear much, but this isn't a fair measurement yet.

At the absolute worst, people on the West Coast may receive a level of radiation that's a small fraction of what they'd receive from using a cell phone.

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It's a big story regardless of if it has health impacts on US citizens. The fact that any radiation reached us from a nuclear meltdown is a big deal. It just means eventually the entire globe will have some exposure to the event.

it's all misleading scare tactics imo--at least as far as the u.s. is concerned. you can easily be exposed to higher levels of radiation in everyday life.

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we wouldnt even be talking about it if people didnt like to freak out over nothing

I think we would still be talking about it, and it can be discussed without people freaking out about it.

But of course much of the general public here(and in other nations as well-see China) are going to freak out over the word RADIATION no matter what the amount, or effects(if any) that it will have.

People are freaking out not over nothing, but over what they perceive as a possible threat. They just do not understand, either from being uninformed, misinformed, or just willfull ignorance, what the actual 'risks'(if any) are right now.

I think 'people tend to over react regarding certain things they do not fully understand' would be more appropriate than 'people like to freak out over nothing'.

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I think 'people tend to over react regarding certain things they do not fully understand' would be more appropriate than 'people like to freak out over nothing'.

perhaps tho it's become more of the latter of recent. people love a good conspiracy theory or reason to get in their bunker.

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perhaps tho it's become more of the latter of recent. people love a good conspiracy theory or reason to get in their bunker.

Well yes-there is always going to be that subset. And the worse they get, the more they scare the **** out of normal people, so as more harmless radiation is detected, it will only get worse. That subset will engage in the factless fearmongering.

Can people overdose/get sick from taking too many Iodide pills? If they can, then you just know some people will. Even if they are warned about it.

They will probably be taking the pills as the talk on their cellphone(spreading unfounded rumors) while waiting to get a chest Xray before a twelve hour flight to Australia or something. *sigh*

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Well yes-there is always going to be that subset. And the worse they get, the more they scare the **** out of normal people, so as more harmless radiation is detected, it will only get worse. That subset will engage in the factless fearmongering.

Can people overdose/get sick from taking too many Iodide pills? If they can, then you just know some people will. Even if they are warned about it.

They will probably be taking the pills as the talk on their cellphone(spreading unfounded rumors) while waiting to get a chest Xray before a twelve hour flight to Australia or something. *sigh*

This real story here is that our government lacks credibility in the eyes of the people. That's why everything invokes mass hysteria these days because the people know that if there was a real threat, they wouldn't tell us.

That's the only thing driving this.

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it's all misleading scare tactics imo--at least as far as the u.s. is concerned. you can easily be exposed to higher levels of radiation in everyday life.

If people are freaking out over this amount of radiation reaching our shores...they should probably swear off dental x-rays, bone x-rays and and other medical sources.

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If people are freaking out over this amount of radiation reaching our shores...they should probably swear off dental x-rays, bone x-rays and and other medical sources.

Most of them think the government might be lying about the seriousness of the situation. That's an entirely different issue that having an irrational fear of minuscule doses of radiation.

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summary from rueters of recent events

Latest developments:

- Japan's nuclear safety agency says cannot say if the quake-damaged nuclear reactors are under control.

- Japanese engineers say entombing the Fukushima Daiichi plant with concrete and sand may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation leak, the method used at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.

- Workers were dumping water to cool the most critical No.3 reactor and planned to run a power cable to reactors No.1 and 2 by Saturday to restart the water pumps needed to cool overheating fuel rods.

- Japan's nuclear agency says priority is to get water into spent fuel pools, particularly in reactor No. 3, which contains plutonium.

- The agency also raised the incident level at the stricken power plant to a 5 on a 1-7 scale. That would suggest a level of seriousness on par with the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States in 1979. But it said there was no need to expand the evacuation area beyond 30 km at this point.

- The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, says it could take weeks to cool the reactors. About 300 workers, wearing masks, goggles and protective suits are toiling in the radioactive wreckage.

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Correct me if I am wrong, but in each of the first 4 instances listed above, the explosion or fire took place in only ONE reactor.

Are there any other nuclear incidents where 3 reactors (one with 6% MOX fuel) AND a spent fuel storage pool, were all releasing radiation?

There is no equivalency. The various Japanese reactors were already hardened against earthquake and those

particular precautions worked. In fact, one or more of the Japanese reactors were in process of being decommissioned.

The problems in Japan arise from insufficient redundancy of cooling as well as poor planning for used fuel rods.

There is a reason that the Japanese are not the Chinese and are not the Koreans . The Japanese have a rather wise culture that has stood the test of time.

We should not be so quick to judge them harshly, they will learn from this and bring their A-game to nuclear energy technology in the future.

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It's a big story regardless of if it has health impacts on US citizens. The fact that any radiation reached us from a nuclear meltdown is a big deal. It just means eventually the entire globe will have some exposure to the event.

The amount of radiation is so inconsequential as to be deeply in the WGAF? category.

The idea that the Japanese are poisoning the Earth is bullcrap.

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Knowing how well everything has gone so far, I hope they really do check:

Power company official Teruaki Kobayashi warned that experts will have to check for anything volatile to avoid an explosion when the electricity is turned on.

"There may be sparks, so I can't deny the risk," he said.

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Knowing how well everything has gone so far, I hope they really do check:

Power company official Teruaki Kobayashi warned that experts will have to check for anything volatile to avoid an explosion when the electricity is turned on.

"There may be sparks, so I can't deny the risk," he said.

Volatile...like maybe hydrogen?

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1:39  p.m. ET Friday, 2:39 a.m. Saturday in Tokyo] Monitors  in Sacramento, California, have detected a small amount of radioactive  material from the earthquake-struck nuclear power plant in Japan, an  official with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization said. The  exact amounts were not available, but were far less than what would be  considered harmful to human health, the official said.

http://news.blogs.cn...diation/?hpt=T2

Several points.......

Yes, radiation has been already detected in California - and maybe some of you haven't seen the graphic yet so I've included it below. I'm not going to read through 46 pages of this thread or the other one to look for the dang thing. But the plume is moving EAST (your direction), and it's probably already here since we're right next door to Cali. Comparatively, when the 'plume' from Russia circled the globe several times, it was enough over the days/weeks to contaminate water in several European countries, contaminate reindeer populations so badly in Sweden that they had to be destroyed. Cesium was detected in many countries on the ground - you can connect the dots yourselves. I've included an abstract at the bottom regarding the contamination and lack of forthcoming acknowledgment from authorities afterwords.

Also, encasing the crippled plants in concrete and sand is a Holy-Mary Temporary Fix; if radiation is high enough (which seems to be indicated by the rising emergency levels), the concrete won't hold. High levels of radiation break down the concrete structure to where it cracks and crumbles. This has already occurred in Russia and they're STILL trying to figure out what to do next. Russia has gone through 2 interations at least of some type of containment - all which have failed. Radioactivity is still venting.

article-1366920-0B366A6E00000578-705_964x663.jpg

"Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20002040

Radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl meltdown spread over 40% of Europe (including Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Romania, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Iceland, Slovenia) and wide territories in Asia (including Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Emirates, China), northern Africa, and North America. Nearly 400 million people resided in territories that were contaminated with radioactivity at a level higher than 4 kBq/m(2) (0.11 Ci/km(2)) from April to July 1986. Nearly 5 million people (including, more than 1 million children) still live with dangerous levels of radioactive contamination in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia. Claims that the Chernobyl radioactive fallout adds "only 2%" to the global radioactive background overshadows the fact that many affected territories had previously dangerously high levels of radiation. Even if the current level is low, there was high irradiation in the first days and weeks after the Chernobyl catastrophe. There is no reasonable explanation for the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization (Chernobyl Forum, 2005) have completely neglected the consequences of radioactive contamination in other countries, which received more than 50% of the Chernobyl radionuclides, and addressed concerns only in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia."

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bbc

2330: As day broke on Saturday, steam was reported to be rising from unit 3, according to Associated Press. Water in that fuel pool is believed to be dangerously low.

Yeah it looked like #4 was steaming as well on NHK. Couldn't see #2. TEPCO used "hyper rescue troop", (some kind of fire truck I guess) last night at about 1 AM on #3 again.

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There is no equivalency. The various Japanese reactors were already hardened against earthquake and those

particular precautions worked. In fact, one or more of the Japanese reactors were in process of being decommissioned.

The problems in Japan arise from insufficient redundancy of cooling as well as poor planning for used fuel rods.

There is a reason that the Japanese are not the Chinese and are not the Koreans . The Japanese have a rather wise culture that has stood the test of time.

We should not be so quick to judge them harshly, they will learn from this and bring their A-game to nuclear energy technology in the future.

:lol:

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