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Japan Nuclear Crisis Part III


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imo that's even more reason to just give a number to it. I seriously doubt many people know what's a normal radation level in water circulationg through a reactor. I know they gave the number in becquerels, imo they could have stopped there.

lol...most people don't know wtf becquerels are. It's trying to help people understand a normal reference level. There is no fear mongering here...you're looking to hard. The water is extremely radioactive.

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From the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/asia/26japan.html

"The National Institue of Radiological Sciences said that 3.9 million becquerels per square centimeter of radiation had been detected in the water that the three workers stepped in — 10,000 times the level normally seen in coolant water at the plant. The injured workers’ dosimeters suggested exposure to 170 millisieverts of radiation. But the institute said that the actual amount of radiation the workers are thought to have been exposed to in the water is 2 to 6 sievert. Even 2 sievert is eight times the 250 millisievert annual exposure limit set for workers at Daiichi. "

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lol...most people don't know wtf becquerels are. It's trying to help people understand a normal reference level. There is no fear mongering here...you're looking to hard. The water is extremely radioactive.

I'll take your word that it's pretty bad in the water. Your are a scientist, i'm not. The whole 10,000x thing just sounds weird. When someone hears a number like 10,000x higher it's a easy way to spark fear when your talking about radiation. Hypothetical : Would 1/10 the radiation still be that bad? That would still be 1000 times normal level which still sounds really high, but are those levels really that bad? Kinda see where I'm coming from?

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I'll take your word that it's pretty bad in the water. Your are a scientist, i'm not. The whole 10,000x thing just sounds weird. When someone hears a number like 10,000x higher it's a easy way to spark fear when your talking about radiation. Hypothetical : Would 1/10 the radiation still be that bad? That would still be 1000 times normal level which still sounds really high, but are those levels really that bad? Kinda see where I'm coming from?

they got radiation burns on their feet from it...that tells the story. You need very heavy radiation to get burns from it.

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Can't say this would be a correct conversion but might be in the ballpark.

TOKYO, March 25, Kyodo

Two of the three workers who were exposed to high-level radiation and sustained possible burns at a crisis-hit nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture have likely suffered ''internal exposure'' in which radioactive substances have entered their bodies, but they are not showing early symptoms and do not require treatment, a national radiation research center said Friday.

The National Institute of Radiological Sciences, where the three arrived earlier in the day for highly specialized treatment, said the two were exposed to 2 to 6 sieverts of radiation below their ankles, whereas exposure to 250 millisieverts is the limit set for workers dealing with the ongoing crisis, the worst in Japan's history.

According to this article (http://www.washingto...l0MB_story.html) the workers at the Japanese nuke plant suffered Beta Ray burns.

I'm calling BS on their measurement of 170 to 180 milliseverts because you cannot suffer beta ray burns from that little. In fact, it would be MUCH MUCH more.

According to this chart (http://en.wikipedia....ation_poisoning) these workers if they were exposed to 6 sieverts have a 50% chance of surviving with medical care. They're also likely experiencing other problems as well.

If these guys are getting beta ray burns, that radiation is MUCH MUCH higher than what they're saying it is.

Edit, according to one source you can get as little as 2 Grays and still receive beta ray burns. Ok, that's 2 Grays = 2,000 millisieverts. or 2 sieverts No one is reporting that kind of radiation... and obviously it's present.

That's 200-600 rads, which is definitely lethal. Anyway, I called this a couple of days ago. There was no way these guys were taking Beta Ray radiation damage and being exposed to 180 milliseverts. Just complete BS. Now the truth finally comes out.. on a Friday after the Nikkei has closed for the weekend. Amazing. Watch by Sunday someone will announce that the situation "could be" under control so that the Nekkei goes up. Again, Japan is putting people's money over the importance of people's lives.

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A meter of water? I guess if one was likely to get a fatal dose anyway, it shouldn't matter, but I'd hope they'd pump out the building before sending in people in highly radioactive water right at or just above reproductive organ level.

I know rads and rems from the day, the uS and mS still confuses me.

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Latest on that from Kyodo:

http://english.kyodo...1/03/81131.html

Pools of water that may have seeped from either the reactor cores or spent fuel pools were also found in the turbine buildings of the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, measuring up to 1 meter and 80 centimeters deep, respectively, while those near the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors were up to 40 cm and 1.5 cm deep.

The US said last week they thought the spent fuel pools have leaks in them becuase the water couldn't just boil off in a few days enough to expose the rods

now would someone please tell me where these turbine buildings are in relation to the core or fuel pools. thanks

again is this something they just discovered or is this a new event?

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A meter of water? I guess if one was likely to get a fatal dose anyway, it shouldn't matter, but I'd hope they'd pump out the building before sending in people in highly radioactive water right at or just above reproductive organ level.

I know rads and rems from the day, the uS and mS still confuses me.

If you stand in knee or ankle deep radioactive water long enough, you won't be needing the reproductive organs anyway.

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The US said last week they thought the spent fuel pools have leaks in them becuase the water couldn't just boil off in a few days enough to expose the rods

now would someone please tell me where these turbine buildings are in relation to the core or fuel pools. thanks

again is this something they just discovered or is this a new event?

Probably neither. I'm guessing this has been known for some time, but they chose this moment to release the info for propaganda gains.
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That's 200-600 rads, which is definitely lethal. Anyway, I called this a couple of days ago. There was no way these guys were taking Beta Ray radiation damage and being exposed to 180 milliseverts. Just complete BS. Now the truth finally comes out.. on a Friday after the Nikkei has closed for the weekend. Amazing. Watch by Sunday someone will announce that the situation "could be" under control so that the Nekkei goes up. Again, Japan is putting people's money over the importance of people's lives.

And they came back once they evaluated the exposure better and admitted that the level of the surface water was 400mSv/hr.

You also don't seem to have an understanding of what are the other factors at play that is helping the Nikkei move up. It isn't solely because of actions by the Japanese government....

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I find it very disrespectful that a few of your are outright saying that the Japanese government is purposely withholding information to make sure the economy doesn't tank instead of caring about lives...

You have no idea of their leaders intentions.

Also, this exposure of radioactive water is something that has just occurred...it's a new event. Do we know for sure that they knew the radioactive water was there and what the levels were before this event?

Again, there seems to be conflicting information about what exactly the radiation was the workers were exposed to...radiation dose is not the same as radiation...and the fact they only took a ton of radiation in their feet instead of the same radiation dose all over the body is very important to their prospects of survival.

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A meter of water? I guess if one was likely to get a fatal dose anyway, it shouldn't matter, but I'd hope they'd pump out the building before sending in people in highly radioactive water right at or just above reproductive organ level.

I know rads and rems from the day, the uS and mS still confuses me.

Great website for conversion info....

http://unit-converter.org/en/equivalent_dose/nSv.html

1 Sievert = 100 rads/rems.

1 millisievert = 10 rads/rems

1 microsievert = 1 rad/rem

1 nano sievert = .1 rad/rem

1 pico sievert = .01 rad/rem

The workers received 2-6 sieverts worth of radiation. That's like saying it could snow from 3-30 inches. 2 sieverts is usually not lethal. 6 almost always is.

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Also, this exposure of radioactive water is something that has just occurred...it's a new event. Do we know for sure that they knew the radioactive water was there and what the levels were before this event?

so is this the first time someone has been in the turbine building and exposed to this water(in that case the radiation could of always been there) or have peple been there before but the radiation wasn't this bad?(which would mean a "new" radiation event)

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I find it very disrespectful that a few of your are outright saying that the Japanese government is purposely withholding information to make sure the economy doesn't tank instead of caring about lives...

You have no idea of their leaders intentions.

Also, this exposure of radioactive water is something that has just occurred...it's a new event. Do we know for sure that they knew the radioactive water was there and what the levels were before this event?

Again, there seems to be conflicting information about what exactly the radiation was the workers were exposed to...radiation dose is not the same as radiation...and the fact they only took a ton of radiation in their feet instead of the same radiation dose all over the body is very important to their prospects of survival.

Their feet absorbed the radiation into their body through their skin. How much radiation did their feet absorb I don't know, I'm not their doctor. I'm sure if it's enough to send them to the hospital, it's enough to make them quite sick.

In a completely OT subject: These people are heroes that are risking/giving their lives to try and somehow stop the flood of radiation from hurting the people in Japan. These people deserve medals and honors and glory... not sports stars. How backwards is our society that we don't even know the names of these people? It is very possible that some people will die trying to save the people of Japan from an even worse disaster.... dying to save millions of people's lives and our schools our TV commercials and our Wheeties boxes will only promote the names of people who can throw balls into baskets or hit them with bats. People who make a great deal of money playing sports vs. people who give their lives trying to save others. I dunno, maybe it's just me but I'd like to know the names of these workers who are trying everything they can with the nuclear plants who are putting themselves at grave risk so I can pray for them and their families.

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so is this the first time someone has been in the turbine building and exposed to this water(in that case the radiation could of always been there) or have peple been there before but the radiation wasn't this bad?(which would mean a "new" radiation event)

No it wasn't the first time and according to either TEPCO or NISA the water wasn't there the day before.

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It has now been over 2 weeks since everything began, what exactly is the endgame here? I am assuming they want to use the pumps to pump fresh water into the reactors and spent fuel pools as they normally would for a long period of time (i.e. years) until the fuel is cool enough that it can be removed where practical, similar to Three Mile Island. Of course if there are breaches causing radiation to leak then getting the pumps operating "normally" isnt going to solve the problem.

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I find it very disrespectful that a few of your are outright saying that the Japanese government is purposely withholding information to make sure the economy doesn't tank instead of caring about lives...

You have no idea of their leaders intentions.

you have no idea either. Now I'm not saying it's necessarily for financial gain, but they are withholding important information that they surely have KNOWN. It appears more and more likely that the USA and UN told the truth last week about the severity of the issues, and only now are we hearing the Japanese come clean about it. And yes, in my book that is considered purposely withholding information. Did they know the water was so radioactive? Probably not. But that isn't the point here. They aren't informing the people, and I find that distasteful and disrespectful of the Japanese govt.

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I find it hard to believe that all of a sudden there is water in 3 of the turbine buildings ...when there was none before in any of them..

As they become more and more hands on and a return of instrumentation along with limited functionality of the plant - I'm sure there will be plenty of things that are newly discovered. Some of it was probably known about and just now being reported while other discoveries are indeed new.

Not sure what people expected differently.

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more interesting info from the NYtimes article

Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building raised the possibility of a very different leak. Both materials typically occur not because of fission but because of routine corrosion in a reactor and its associated piping over the course of many years of use, he said.

The aggressive use of saltwater to cool the reactor and its storage pool for spent fuel may mean that more of these highly radioactive corrosion materials will be dislodged and contaminate the area in the days to come, posing further hazards to repair workers, Mr. Friedlander added.

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If that NY Times report is correct then is there any other fix for reactor 3 than pouring concrete around the structure to seal it? Just pumping water to cool it would simply not be an option here. I don't imagine it is very feasible to do a "patch job" on a breached reactor.

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It has now been over 2 weeks since everything began, what exactly is the endgame here? I am assuming they want to use the pumps to pump fresh water into the reactors and spent fuel pools as they normally would for a long period of time (i.e. years) until the fuel is cool enough that it can be removed where practical, similar to Three Mile Island. Of course if there are breaches causing radiation to leak then getting the pumps operating "normally" isnt going to solve the problem.

I can't help but think that they don't have any options to bring this to a good resolution. Of course I've been thinking that for about 10 days now... but the buildings and equipment and such seem too far damaged to expect to bring these things back under control. Some of that is from the earthquake and tsunami of course, but I think most of the damage was caused by those explosions. Once that happened they kinda decided to move everyone off-site and since then they really haven't made much progress because, quite frankly, what can you really do?

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Not breaking chops, but this is flat out wrong.

1 Sv = 100 Rem (correct)

milli, micro, nano, pico are factors of 1000 each time.

1mSv = 0.1 Rem = 100 mRem, and so on from there.

We all need to be way more careful with the numbers.

Great website for conversion info....

http://unit-converte...t_dose/nSv.html

1 Sievert = 100 rads/rems.

1 millisievert = 10 rads/rems

1 microsievert = 1 rad/rem

1 nano sievert = .1 rad/rem

1 pico sievert = .01 rad/rem

The workers received 2-6 sieverts worth of radiation. That's like saying it could snow from 3-30 inches. 2 sieverts is usually not lethal. 6 almost always is.

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I just realized, in a boiling water reactor, any leak in the steam plant is putting reactor coolant out. A pipe could have been damaged in the explosion, if they started a pump, any number of ways. But coolant in the turbine building could just mean leaking pipes.

One of the good things about a PWR like we had in the Navy, the steam in the turbines was clean.

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Great website for conversion info....

http://unit-converte...t_dose/nSv.html

1 Sievert = 100 rads/rems.

1 millisievert = 10 rads/rems

1 microsievert = 1 rad/rem

1 nano sievert = .1 rad/rem

1 pico sievert = .01 rad/rem

The workers received 2-6 sieverts worth of radiation. That's like saying it could snow from 3-30 inches. 2 sieverts is usually not lethal. 6 almost always is.

Yeah just to echo this is way, way wrong. mSV is .1 rads.

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