Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

peasant

Malty_T wrote: »

Relatively speaking plutonium isn't actually that bad. It's not really a toxic substance, just purely a radioactive one. If you ingest or inhale it that's when you should start worrying.

Relatively speaking, it doesn't really matter.

Assume an inconvienient hydrogen explosion in reactor three (the one with lots of plutonium in it) and combine it with a wind blowing from the wrong direction and you have large areas of Japan spattered in plutonium particles.

At that point the question of how deadly plutonium really is becomes relevant only to those who will have to live with it as the rest of the world will simply stop buying/importing anything that has been made in Japan either as a whole or in parts.

I'll be the end of Japan as an economy.

The good news for the plutonium victims would then be that they have a choice ...die of plutonium poisoning or just simply starve.

Fact is ...plutonium is highly toxic ...one way or the other.

Canis Lupus

peasant wrote: »

Relatively speaking, it doesn't really matter.

Assume an inconvienient hydrogen explosion in reactor three (the one with lots of plutonium in it) and combine it with a wind blowing from the wrong direction and you have large areas of Japan spattered in plutonium particles.

At that point the question of how deadly plutonium really is becomes relevant only to those who will have to live with it as the rest of the world will simply stop buying/importing anything that has been made in Japan either as a whole or in parts.

I'll be the end of Japan as an economy.

The good news for the plutonium victims would then be that they have a choice ...die of plutonium poisoning or just simply starve.

Fact is ...plutonium is highly toxic ...one way or the other.

Well how about we don't assume, then it's not so bad, relatively speaking.

My name is URL

Even New Scientist are getting in on the drama..

Run_to_da_hills

peasant wrote: »

Relatively speaking, it doesn't really matter.

Assume an inconvienient hydrogen explosion in reactor three (the one with lots of plutonium in it) and combine it with a wind blowing from the wrong direction and you have large areas of Japan spattered in plutonium particles.

At that point the question of how deadly plutonium really is becomes relevant only to those who will have to live with it as the rest of the world will simply stop buying/importing anything that has been made in Japan either as a whole or in parts.

I'll be the end of Japan as an economy.

The good news for the plutonium victims would then be that they have a choice ...die of plutonium poisoning or just simply starve.

Fact is ...plutonium is highly toxic ...one way or the other.

A hydrogen explosion is not necessary for mass dispersion of plutonium.

Once the molten MOX core breaches the base of containment vessel and then continues on burning through the concrete foundations beneath the reactor it will eventually contaminate the water table.

Once this happens one would want to be a fool to drink water out of a tap anywhere in the catchment area possibly for decades to come.

This same diagram could also apply to radioactive contamination.

Fallschirmjager

http://survival.us.com/wp-content/uploads/general-electric-boiling-water-reactor-mark-I.jpg

i would include the image but the IMG code is off

that is a boiling water reactor. Now here is the question. Where is the water. Is it in the TORUS , that the ring shaped thing at the bottom, is that the 'trench'? (honestly i dont know)

because if that is the trench they are mentioning, thats one of the things the TORUS does, its a location for decay heat to cool. it is also a design feature to these reactors to use the TORUS in the event of a power cut.

now lets assume the worst, its in some other trench as some are saying are holding cables, pipes etc outside the TORUS and outside the usual containment but inside the building.

So over the last 2 weeks we have them pumping water into the building. It has to go somewhere. you also have them spraying water everywhere, it has to go somewhere. you had a tsunami - it has to go somewhere.

now if the torus was overwhelmed, the power is out, the torus is meant to store decay heat and assuming it got swamped with heat, you will get overspill, mix that with vented steam that condenses in the building, you will get radiation pooling in water at the bottom of the building. By the way just because you got high or really high reading from the trench that doesnt mean all the water is contaminated.

My point? i hear you shout.

well you have vented steam condensing within the building, you could have surplus overspill from the TORUS, you could have water from the cooling pools at the top of the reactor sloshing all over the place and steaming...LETS again assume the worst, lets say you have all of that. You pump the water into temporary storage or cleaned water back into the TORUS to get access to the building. When the water reduces so will the radiation readings.

They now have fresh water being pumped into reactor 1,2,3 and apparently now the cooling pools from the supplies the US delivered on site. they are now running this on electric pumps, not the temporary ones they were using and thats good news either if you are for or against. remember these reactors are now running on decay heat, there is no reaction taking place in them.

There is a lot of reasons for radiation in the building and you dont have to jump and assume that primary containment has been breached. yet again the assumption is you have this great term with super magical properties melting through the planet. For the record the only other similar problem took .5 cm (yes a half a cm) off the bottom of the 3 mile island containment vessel which was 10cm to 15 cm thick (thats from memory). hardly something from the death star.

Also the 3 workers who were in this building for hours a few days back in ankle boots have been discharged from hospital, again hardly an example of nightmare scenario or scare stories posted in the press of plutonium stalking them like something from the serengeti.

so lets not crap our pants just yet or rather disturbingly run around in thongs, jeasus its not that bad! We have the japanese working through this one step at a time, methodically which is exactly what you want to do in any power plant problem not just nuclear due to the pressures involved. To be honest the team working on this - they are the real heros of this.

just my opinion

Hotblack Desiato

peasant wrote: »

Assume an inconvienient hydrogen explosion in reactor three (the one with lots of plutonium in it)

A hydrogen explosion can't breach the containment. The explosions that happened were because steam containing hydrogen was vented, the hydrogen accumulated in the outer building, mixed with the large amount of air in the building and exploded. The outer building was damaged but this is really just a cosmetic cover, it is not the reactor containment. That's not to say there aren't leaks but if there are, they weren't caused by the hydrogen.

I'll be the end of Japan as an economy.

Scaremongering nonsense.

Hotblack Desiato

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Plutonium is the worlds most dangerous element.

It's bad, but polonium-210 is worse, and has successfully been used to poison people. Estimated LD-50 is 0.089 micrograms according to Wikipedia.

Hotblack Desiato

Rob A. Bank wrote: »

Radiation cause cognitive impairment at a dose of 2 Sv.

The nuclear choirboys appear to have suffered a blast of radiation, judging by some of their contributions here.

:cool:

If the best you can do is call people who disagree with you retarded, why do you bother?

Run_to_da_hills

Suicide squads are paid 80,000 to 100,000 yen a day (£608 to £760).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suicide-squads-paid-huge-sums-to-stabilise-nuclear-reactor-2256741.html

andrew

Still no mechanism by which radiation could spread far and wide in significant doses, so no biggie. /nuclear_choirboy :rolleyes:

Hotblack Desiato

Suicide squad is just more media bullcrap. They'll still be subject to the occupational exposure limits (which were raised, but are still pretty conservative.)

Run_to_da_hills

ninja900 wrote: »

Suicide squad is just more media bullcrap. They'll still be subject to the occupational exposure limits (which were raised, but are still pretty conservative.)

I wouldn't be seen dead working near the place even if they added an extra zero to the rate. Its not just radiation, the place is also a potential minefield.

andrew

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I wouldn't be seen dead working near the place even if they added an extra zero to the rate.

Exactly. The radiation levels are too low.

Run_to_da_hills

New 6.4M quake strick coast of Fukushima, no damage reported.

Workers on the plant must be shi*ting themselves if they felt that.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-03/30/c_13804909.htm

vibe666

here is a very interesting article about Hiroshima & Nagasaki and subsequent nuclear weapons testing which will help put some perspective on the current problems at Fukushima.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf52.html

Both cities (and their citizens) are doing exceptionally well after nuclear events many hundreds of times worse than anything that could be reasonably expected (or even unreasonably imagined) to happen in Fukushima.

Japan has bounced back from not only what happened to them in WWII, but from several major tsunami's and earthquakes in the last hundred years.

as a country they are an exceptionally resilient people who's strengths include an almost military work ethic as well as unrivalled precision & efficiency. they will bounce back from this stronger than ever and better prepared to face the future.

Rob A. Bank

http://www.zamg.ac.at/pict/aktuell/20110330_fuku_I-131.gif

Looks like Tokyo is due to get another dusting of whatever witches brew of radioactive isotopes is released into the air from Fukushema.

shadowninty

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Suicide squads are paid 80,000 to 100,000 yen a day (£608 to £760).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suicide-squads-paid-huge-sums-to-stabilise-nuclear-reactor-2256741.html

yeah, I was looking at career choices, nuclear energy workers get relatively mediocre pay

Turtwig

shadowninty wrote: »

yeah, I was looking at career choices, nuclear energy workers get relatively mediocre pay

Most scientist and engineering types are.

USGS summary of the monster quake.
Edit : Pdf is better.

Run_to_da_hills

Smoke spotted at Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant kilometers 6 miles from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant


http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/30/japan.daini/?hpt=T2

vibe666

some expert opinion on the xkcd radiation infographic from earlier & the general misreporting of radiation exposure, relative doses and health consequences in the media.

http://dashes.com/anil/2011/03/tmi-fear-fukushima-and-facts.html

Run_to_da_hills

Bad News.

"Reactor feared in meltdown, radiation spreads. Radiation measured at a village 40 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear plant now exceeds a criterion for evacuation.

As dangerously high levels of radiation spread beyond the Fukushima exclusion zone in Japan, there are fears the race to contain the nuclear crisis has been lost and meltdown has already taken place".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/31/3178263.htm

vibe666

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Bad News.

"Reactor feared in meltdown, radiation spreads. Radiation measured at a village 40 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear plant now exceeds a criterion for evacuation.

As dangerously high levels of radiation spread beyond the Fukushima exclusion zone in Japan, there are fears the race to contain the nuclear crisis has been lost and meltdown has already taken place".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/31/3178263.htm

and as usual, you sound delighted to hear it. :rolleyes:

Edano said the reported radiation levels in Iitate will not have an immediate impact on human health but could be harmful if exposed over a long period of time. He said the government will closely assess the long-term impact and take appropriate action.

Rob A. Bank

The IAEA is reporting that measured soil concentrations of Cs-137 as far away as Iitate Village, 40 kilometers northwest of Fukushima-Dai-Ichi, correspond to deposition levels of up to 3.7 megabecquerels per square meter (MBq/sq. m). This is far higher than previous IAEA reports of values of Cs-137 deposition, and comparable to the total beta-gamma measurements reported previously by IAEA and mentioned on this blog.

This should be compared with the deposition level that triggered compulsory relocation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident: the level set in 1990 by the Soviet Union was 1.48 MBq/sq. m.

Thus, it is now abundantly clear that Japanese authorities were negligent in restricting the emergency evacuation zone to only 20 kilometers from the release site.

My name is URL

vibe666 wrote: »

and as usual, you sound delighted to hear it. :rolleyes:

That's a bit harsh isn't it? All he did was post a link to a news article.

vibe666

My name is URL wrote: »

That's a bit harsh isn't it? All he did was post a link to a news article.

no not at all considering all the crap him and rob a bank have posted here, the pair of them are like giddy school kids every time they find a story showing something bad about fukushima and neither have posted anything but doom & gloom scare stories since this whole thing started.

Canis Lupus

My name is URL wrote: »

That's a bit harsh isn't it? All he did was post a link to a news article.

Not at all if you take a moment to look at their posts. It's almost disturbing how he and Rob gleefully post anything remotely 'bad' about the place. (usually with big bolded sentences)

EDIT: See how Rob posted the same story as RTDH but like him also only posted the 'scary' bit (in bold letters).

Second edit: and in the case of Rob he won't enter into any discussion. He's posted around 100 links in this thread alone at this stage I reckon. Not bad going for someone with such a low post count.

Run_to_da_hills

vibe666 wrote: »

no not at all considering all the crap him and rob a bank have posted here, the pair of them are like giddy school kids every time they find a story showing something bad about fukushima and neither have posted anything but doom & gloom scare stories since this whole thing started.

I do not post anything without a link.

People want to know whats going on out there, what do you want next, the matter played down and censorship. :rolleyes:

vibe666

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I do not post anything without a link.

People want to know whats going on out there, what do you want next, the matter played down and censorship. :rolleyes:

no, just reality rather than scaremongering bullsh*t stories from tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy sites interspersed with whatever alarmist articles happen to appear in the mainstream press which you conveniently and consistently quote mine for the scariest sounding paragraph to post with your links (usually in big bold type to add effect) whilst ignoring anything that doesn't fit with your doomsday scenarios.

Canis Lupus

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I do not post anything without a link.

People want to know whats going on out there, what do you want next, the matter played down and censorship. :rolleyes:

It's got nothing to do with censorship. I'd like calm and reasoned information rather than attention grabbing headlines.

My name is URL

vibe666 wrote: »

no not at all considering all the crap him and rob a bank have posted here, the pair of them are like giddy school kids every time they find a story showing something bad about fukushima and neither have posted anything but doom & gloom scare stories since this whole thing started.

Has there been much else other than scare stories reported? Even the New Scientist ran an article yesterday which stated (in the title) that the caesium-137 fallout from Fukushima rivals that of Chernobyl. Is there an opposite to fear-mongering.. perhaps false-sense-of-security-mongering?

People can only comment on what is being reported