Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

Overheal

gbee wrote: »

And in fact the PC, especially the monitor has a fairly high radiation count, as does the Plasma TV, but don't turn it off, just don't sit within two feet of it, all day, every day.

Im not aware that PCs actually do emit radiation, perhaps negligible amounts. Are you thinking of the older CRT monitors perhaps?

peasant

gbee wrote: »

It's not the fact that radiation will arrive, but rather the question is if one could gather it all up and put in one place, it would probably fill and egg cup.

Except that it wouldn't fill the egg cup ...it'd go right through it

Rob A. Bank

Nuclear Plant Status from Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JIAF) as of 16.00 March 18

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300433768P.pdf

The fuel integrity in the spent fuel pools still problematic and still no power to the cooling systems in reactors 1,2 or3.

gbee

Overheal wrote: »

L="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube"]CRT[/URL] monitors perhaps?

Those CRTs were much higher alight. Newer LCDs are much lower, but they still have a small level as you say.

On the CRT, in fact the back of it, was worse than the screen for radiation emissions.

LCD's are safe apparently from two inches, not two feet like I said above.

Rob A. Bank

Fuel amounts in the reactor units

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3927635973/fuel-amounts-at-fukushima

Overheal

gbee wrote: »

Those CRTs were much higher alight. Newer LCDs are much lower, but they still have a small level as you say.

On the CRT, in fact the back of it, was worse than the screen for radiation emissions.

LCD's are safe apparently from two inches, not two feet like I said above.

They're safe at 2" too. You're again talking about more radiation from eating a banana

Spore

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

the IAEA, the UN body did a huge report on Chernobyl and the surrounding area. i read some extracts of it a while back, as expected its as about as interesting as you would expect a UN document to be.

so far after 20 years total total deaths related to the accident is...50. yes...50...five zero... now if you are one of the 50, that is bad, but do you remember when it happened...fuk me we were all supposed to have 2 heads by now.

keep in mind that over 200,000 worked on the site, some heavily exposed.

they did discover that 9 cases of children deaths with thyroid cancer can be blamed. i recall there was a peak in curable thyroid cancer that hit the low thousands after it also and that is terrible, awful. but here is a measurement, how many lives had chernobyl saved during it operational lifetime by supplying heat, light to homes, schools, farms,roads,cities, hospitals?

interestingly they also found no affect on reproduction rates, which is historically what people expect a problem

there was one issue however that had risen, mental health due to stress. If you look at the papers, web today -- i give you some examples of the same madness to sell papers, blogs newssites. it really is a case of 'never let a crisis go to waste'. by way of another example...what happened bird flu?, the pig flu?, mad cow disease? the list is freaking endless, christ throw in the ELE event from a asteroid for good measure. there are many groups want this constant state of fear because they have an agenda...fight it, by doing your own homework.

now i am not trying to diminish the nightmare of chernobyl. its terrible, awful horrible, any death is and i know if it was my son who was one of the nine i would be looking to blame someone , anyone. but thats where you need a perspective.

nothing we will use for energy is safe, nothing, the much vaunted solar panel...go check out what they are made of and the amount of poisons they use in fabrication and its disposal, those twirly light bulbs used for power saving in your house, you do know in some countries if you were to follow the law, you are technically supposed to ring a biological hazard company to clean up the mercury in them from your carpet for safe disposal if they break (and dont ask of the deaths in china making the fuking things)? by the way when they stop working i do hope you are not throwing them in the bin? you are poisoning the groudwater. no matter what we choose, someone is going to be affected. the fear of nuclear is that it could affect the planet, hell i feel it, i dont want some **** from japan in my lungs, but have i checked my house for radon gas, also a radioactive killer...no..now which is more likely to affect me in Ireland from radiation now? this is the issue, everyone wants to matter, and if that means screaming fire, when there is none, to some in the media, that is okay. of course some are fevered pro nukes, some fevered anti nukes, but you have a brain for a reason, use it. just because greenpeace says millions will die does not make it so, just because tepco says there is no trouble is also suspect and does not make it so. its time to put down the banners and look dispassionately at the facts. is it bad, yes it is, is it the disaster the tv blasted out last saturday with a million shows of a roof blowing off, no its not that either. now we talk of the deaths and the disaster and the deaths caused by the plant and its focus. after chernobyl there was the story of spikes in abortion rates in places like sweden as a result. the fear of this lead people to abortion, think of that for a moment. it is irrelevant if you are pro or anti abortion, the point is panic drove that decision. the blame for those decisions made in error in many many cases lies in the fevered tempo of people shouting disaster, when there was none. we need perspective.

finally i get the faint feeling of some tv shows the presenters are almost salivating at the prospect of a disaster. i am sure i am not alone thinking that. that is disgusting, outrageous and immoral. a simple read of the web and a little brain activity shows how totally bogus some of these reports are. they are made up. We have proof here from several members who showed they had the measurements all wrong. it isnt even our freaking job to find that out..so how come its so difficult for the media? if you accept they are not bothered then the next logical question is why? that 'why' is the scariest question to answer.

sooner or later, maybe its this plant maybe somewhere else, there will be a disaster, it could be the 3 gorges dam, it could be anything. you need the ability to react calmly and cooly and rationally to deal with it. currently the only place in ireland i have seen that cool dispassionate reporting is here...on this thread..now honestly, with no insult meant to boards, but how ****ing sad is that?

again just my opinion...

Fooking post of the day my friend. I'm printing this out for posterity!

Thrill

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Lets assume everything in the daily mail is automatically a lie and refer to a bastion of infallible truth like the Irish Times or the Guardian instead. Seriously, what is to stop the radiation getting here?, it is already on the west coast of the US and the bulk of it won't be there until Monday.

The link below contains a headline that would probably be a sacking offense if you worked for The Sun...but it might put your mind at ease.


http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/harmless-japan-radiation-may-reach-europe-soon-expert/

yammycat

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

the IAEA, the UN body did a huge report on Chernobyl and the surrounding area.

the funny thing is the guys who cleaned up the mess weren't from chernobyl and the surrounding area.

The anti-war group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War said Thursday that a UN report playing down the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster had seriously underestimated the number of victims. The report, published last September ahead of the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl on April 26 of this year, said fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all of them exposed rescue workers.
...


"These figures are an underestimation and completely false," the president of the German section of the US-based IPPNW, Angelika Claussen, told a news conference in Berlin.
Claussen said the exact number of victims would never be known.
But she said that IPPNW research had indicated that between 50,000 and 100,000 clean-up workers alone had died as of 2006, while up to 900,000 were permanently disabled.

andrew

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

Lets assume everything in the daily mail is automatically a lie and refer to a bastion of infallible truth like the Irish Times or the Guardian instead. Seriously, what is to stop the radiation getting here?, \

Several days and several thousand miles, by which time the mostly harmless levels of radiation will have decayed and been diluted such that they are completely harmless.

Solair

Can we clear up a few things here. Radiation comes in two types ... ionizing and non-ionizing.

What's being released from Fukushima is most definitely ionizing and is far worse than xrays as it also comprises alpha and beta particles which are very dangerous to biological organisms and they can rip DNA to bits.

Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) i.e. TV tubes were quite similar to X-Ray tubes in many ways, so they always potentially produced a tiny amount of x-rays at the front although this was generally a minute amount of radiation. This *is* ionizing radiation and is potentially dangerous.

Not very many of us sit in front of CRTs anymore. They were a bit of a questionable health hazard in offices though in the past.

Modern televisions and computer displays are LED or LCD based and do not produce any radiation at all other than in the normal light spectrum. They're just a LCD array backlit with a fluorescent lighting system or LEDs which emit their own light.

As for PCs giving out radiation. They might give out some microwaves i.e. from the WiFi card, bluetooth or any other radio frequency transmission systems they have on-board. They also give off some RF from the processors which are quite high frequency i.e. running at >1Ghz in most cases thesedays etc etc but they've nothing that emits ionizing radiation.

Unless you're somehow using a nuclear powered PC or something, you're OK!

There's a BIG difference between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation in terms of how it will interact with your body! Basically, ionizing radiation can detach electrons from molecules and cause DNA damage. Non-ionizing radiation e.g. light, radiowaves, microwaves etc can't.

vibe666

here's a report of the radiation levels (mostly outside the exclusion zone) yesterday near the fukushima daiichi plant.

http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/other/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/18/1303727_1716.pdf

Thrill

1. 1948: Engineers have successfully attached a power cable to the crippled Fukushima station - Reuters.
   
   

1. 1950: Statement from the station operator (Tepco): "Tepco has connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied."
   
   

Rob A. Bank

Dispersion model from the Austrian weather service showing the plume of radioactivity spreading over the Pacific.

http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110318_fuku_I-131_logo.gif

On Sunday, a frontal system is crossing the region, with heavy rain. Behind the front, northerly winds are predicted, increasing the risk for the Region around Tokyo.

NeedaNewName

The IAEA are simply putting in "nicely" for the masses.

I think of it as about a 36 hour lag in information.

Love the thread tags though

vibe666

Rob A. Bank wrote: »

Dispersion model from the Austrian weather service showing the plume of radioactivity spreading over the Pacific.

http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110318_fuku_I-131_logo.gif

On Sunday, a frontal system is crossing the region, with heavy rain. Behind the front, northerly winds are predicted, increasing the risk for the Region around Tokyo.

very dramatic until someone mentions that its only a projection and that the (very limited) red bit is showing the maximum recorded 100mSv per hour and the (mostly) purple bit at the other end of the scale is 100µSv per hour.

anything worse than that would require someone to fly around the area in a chinook with the cargo hold stuffed full of bananas. :pac:

Topper Harley01

New study shows the tsunami was almost 70 feet high :eek:


http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/study-japanese-tsunami-was-23-metres-high-497807.html

yoganmahew

Topper Harley01 wrote: »

New study shows the tsunami was almost 70 feet high :eek:


http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/study-japanese-tsunami-was-23-metres-high-497807.html

That's pretty severe... from the article, though:

A study has revealed that the tsunami which devastated Japan last week was at least 23 metres high.

Japan's biggest-ever tsunami was recorded at 38.2m high when a massive earthquake struck back in 1896.

Once in a thousand years, eh? :rolleyes:

Fallschirmjager

interesting article here...

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Insight_to_Fukushima_engineering_challenges_1803112.html


and this comment

'One hour later the plant was inundated by a tsunami said to be seven metres in height, compared to design basis surge of 6.51 metres.'

all this because of half a meter.....jesus of all the bad luck...

peasant

vibe666 wrote: »

anything worse than that would require someone to fly around the area in a chinook with the cargo hold stuffed full of bananas. :pac:

The banana joke is getting a bit tired.

The spent fuel pool in reactor three still contains MOX fuel rods, which in turn contain plutonium.
Unless you can 100% convince everyone that even the remotest possiblity of any of that escaping into the athmosphere is definetly over, it still is a bit early to be joking about bananas.

Plutonium carried over/into Tokyo would be very much beyond a joke.

vibe666

peasant wrote: »

The banana joke is getting a bit tired.

The spent fuel pool in reactor three still contains MOX fuel rods, which in turn contain plutonium.
Unless you can 100% convince everyone that even the remotest possiblity of any of that escaping into the athmosphere is definetly over, it still is a bit early to be joking about bananas.

Plutonium carried over/into Tokyo would be very much beyond a joke.

its already been explained in several links as to exactly why that can't happen, but short of someone causing a meltdown to prove that it can't happen, nothing is going to convince the scaremongers that its not possible.

long after this whole sorry mess is all done and dusted and nothing happens they'll still be harping on about how it 'almost' happened and how close we came to armageddon etc. etc.

the only joke is that everyone is focused on this BS instead of the real tragedies that are still ongoing in japan.

Ickle Magoo

Zayden Hallowed Bayonet wrote: »

Slightly not important but why is the main focus on tokyo? Like whats worse than tokyo getting affected than the rest of the country?

Is Tokyo not home to around a third of the population? Not that that is any consolation to all those that have been affected.

Run_to_da_hills

peasant wrote: »

The banana joke is getting a bit tired.

The spent fuel pool in reactor three still contains MOX fuel rods, which in turn contain plutonium.
Unless you can 100% convince everyone that even the remotest possiblity of any of that escaping into the athmosphere is definetly over, it still is a bit early to be joking about bananas.

Plutonium carried over/into Tokyo would be very much beyond a joke.

As I said earlier MOX Plutonium is 2 million times more toxic than enriched uranium.

You don't see this mentioned in the main stream media.

peasant

vibe666 wrote: »

the only joke is that everyone is focused on this BS instead of the real tragedies that are still ongoing in japan.

That is no joke either

Fallschirmjager

peasant wrote: »

That is no joke either

peasant, no one here is taking it as a joke and i dont mean this in any way disrespectful but i think selectively cutting one line completely destroys the whole sombre tone posted by vibe IMHO

vibe666

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

peasant, no one here is taking it as a joke and i dont mean this in any way disrespectful but i think selectively cutting one line completely destroys the whole sombre tone posted by vibe IMHO

to be fair it's hardly surprising given the lack of (credible) scientific evidence supporting some of the wacky hollywood disaster movie style ideas being punted round here recently, the selective quote/statistic mining tactic has been the bread and butter of the scaremongering crowd since this whole thing started.

thousands dead and hundreds of thousands more losing everything and despite this, everyone is instead focusing their attention on something that hasn't caused the loss of a single life and is unlikely to, even for the (still heroic & very brave) workers in the plant itself.

at this point i've read at least a dozen articles from various different viewpoints (mostly taken from links here in this thread) from credible scientific sources explaining how the whole fukushima nuclear disaster has been drastically blown out of all proportion and that there is likely to be very little (if any) short or long term effects as a result of the disaster at fukushima daiichi.

this is information available to anyone reading the thread, yet we still continually get the same few people with the same scaremongering BS posting little titbits of (mis)information either taken out of context or just made up altogether for dramatic effect.

even the absolute worst case scenario for fukushima pales into insignificance in comparison to the current and future loss of life, pain & suffering of the people of japan, yet here we still are, talking the arse out of it.

if you want something serious to think about, think about the current death toll in japan rising sharply once everyone starts getting into the cleanup properly and realises that the true cost of life is so much higher than current estimates because whole familes have been wiped out and there has been nobody left to report them missing.

Rob A. Bank

peasant wrote: »

The spent fuel pool in reactor three still contains MOX fuel rods, which in turn contain plutonium...

Plutonium carried over/into Tokyo would be very much beyond a joke.

Possibly good news on this.

Apparently TEPCO only started using MOX fuel recently. They announced the MOX fuel (which was held in the pool) was loaded into the core of reactor 3 last antumn, so there is a good chance that it may not be in the pool which is open to the air.

The MOX is most probably in the core, which has its containment intact, making the chance of Plutonium contamination less likely, unless things degerate further.

Rob A. Bank

The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) help out too.

“The day after the earthquake the Inagawa-kai (the third largest organized crime group in Japan which was founded in 1948) sent twenty-five four-ton trucks filled with paper diapers, instant ramen, batteries, flashlights, drinks, and the essentials of daily life to the Tohoku region. An executive in Sumiyoshi-kai, the second-largest crime group, even offered refuge to members of the foreign community—something unheard of in a still slightly xenophobic nation, especially amongst the right-wing yakuza. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime group, under the leadership of Tadashi Irie, has also opened its offices across the country to the public and been sending truckloads of supplies, but very quietly and without any fanfare.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-18/japanese-yakuza-aid-earthquake-relief-efforts/#

peasant

vibe666 wrote: »

to be fair it's hardly surprising given the lack of (credible) scientific evidence supporting some of the wacky hollywood disaster movie style ideas being punted round here recently, the selective quote/statistic mining tactic has been the bread and butter of the scaremongering crowd since this whole thing started.

To be fair ...the same could be said about the side that continually insists on downplaying the issue.

Fact is, nobody knows exactly what is going on on the ground, not even the people who are there ...and we won't really know until it's over in a few weeks down the line.

Until that point all we can do is speculate ...be that about bananas or plutonium.

We can do that politely on a semi-educated level or we can do that on kindergarden niveau.

What we shouldn't do however is use the victims of the quake and the tsunami as leverage to win points in the discussion ..that's just wrong

Fallschirmjager

saw this over on tepco

At 2:00 pm, March 18th , water discharge by fire engine has started with
the cooperation of Self-Defense Forces and Military of United States of
America. At 2:45 pm, March 18th , they had finished water discharge.
At 0:45 am, March 19th , water discharge by hyper rescue troop has
started with the cooperation of Tokyo Fire Department. At 1:10 am, March
19th , they had finished water discharge.

Notice...the US military is on site....

also from the same site

On March 18th, regarding the spent fuel in the common spent fuel pool,
we have confirmed that the water level of the pool is secured. A detailed
inspection is under preparation.

i am guessing that is 5 and 6 secured....so that means they have a regular supply from the on site generator...

and one more, apologies for the edit


As of March 18th , power from offsite transmission line has received
until temporary substation for backup power. Now, cabling to unit
receiving facility is underway.

it looks like they have attached the cable to an on site substation and are going to link that power to the water systems.

here is the link
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031901-e.html

all the underlined bits is the new stuff...