Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

Rob A. Bank

Simulation of the Radioactive Iodine-131 plume over Ireland from The Norwegian Institute of Air Research

http://zardoz.nilu.no/~flexpart/fpinteractive/plots/tracer_h_1511.gif

And here is the Cesium-137 plume.

http://zardoz.nilu.no/~flexpart/fpinteractive/plots/tracer_h_1510.gif

Fukushima continues to pollute the northern hemisphere.

:mad:

Rob A. Bank

"Data released on April 28, 2011 by TEPCO is now unequivocal in showing ongoing criticalities at Unit 2, with a peak on April 13. TEPCO graphs of radioactivity-versus-time in water under each of the six reactors show an ongoing nuclear chain reaction creating high levels of “fresh” I-131 in Unit 2...

When a nuclear reactor goes “critical” it means that the fissioning of U-235 or Pu-239 becomes a self-sustaining process, called a chain reaction... But instead of seeing that expected decrease in I-131 levels relative to Cs-134 and Cs-137 in the regular TEPCO press releases, I-131 was seen to be increasing, instead of decreasing as the physics said it should.

Unit 2 has I-131 levels roughly 20 times its levels of Cs-134/137. The only possible source of I-131 would be “pockets” of molten core in the Unit 2 RPV settled in such a way that the boron in the injected water is insufficient to stop the localized criticalities."

http://www.glgroup.com/News/TEPCO-Data-Shows-Ongoing-Criticalities-Inside-Leaking-Fukushima-Daiichi-Unit-2-53751.html

:eek:

Coles

Where have all the clowns gone? Nothing to say, eh? Useful fools.

And meanwhile the truth will keep coming out.

A senior nuclear advisor to the Japanese Prime Minister is resigning, alleging the government ignored his safety advice. Toshiso Kosako says the wrong radiation limits were set for schools near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, endangering the lives of children.

YouTube - Japan's top nuclear man resigns over Fukushima

geetar

Coles wrote: »

Where have all the clowns gone? Nothing to say, eh? Useful fools.

And meanwhile the truth will keep coming out.



YouTube - Japan's top nuclear man resigns over Fukushima

i dont think anyone has once denied a bad thing is currently happening. i dont think anyone has acted like clowns.

there's only two clowns on this thread. they keep posting links of sensationalising, media hungry scientists on youtube that are looking for attention.

yes fukishima is bad, it could be getting worse. i wouldnt mind people posting facts and figures and interesting developements, but its only the two true "clowns" on this thread doing it, and they are doing it with a horrible sense of arrogance and contrived empathy. people understand whats going on. excuse us for being underwhelmed by trickling media releases and facts about low level radiation travelling in "plumes" around the world. you guys keep posting and thanking yourselves. :rolleyes:

this thread should be closed IMO. its become something i hate and im sorry i ever took part in it. make a new thread about "fukishima - post disaster" or something.

vibe666

geetar wrote: »

another problem with solar is the issue of getting more energy in the summer and getting much less in the winter when we actually need it.

the sun intensity in ireland is pretty lame aswell. it wouldnt be viable.

i would have said the same thing too only a couple of weeks ago, but i'm currently sitting in my dads newly renovated house in the lake district (at about the same latitude as Belfast and with similar weather) as i type this on my laptop which was charged by his newly installed PV solar array that is generating 20-30kWh per day whilst the suns been out over the last few weeks.

even on a cloudy day it still generates a moderate amount of electricity and with some minor changes to his electricity usage (using big ticket items like the washing machine & dishwasher during the day when he's generating it, rather than at night when he has to buy it back from the electricity company) it's a sound investment as he generates far more than he uses in the summer and gets a small amount of money for himself on the side for anything he feeds back into the grid, which will cover the winter months when he is generating less energy than he is using.

he's also got a geothermal heating system (which i didn't even know you could do outside of iceland etc.) which heats all his water to half temperature for the underfloor heating and other water needs.

add to that, thermostats in every room, very good insulation & double glazing in his very sturdy brick built house and he's laughing.

i'll definitely be looking into the same or similar setup when i move from my current house into our long term permanent residence, but when that will actually be, who knows.

i've taken some pictures of the solar panels at my dads whilst i was here if anyone is interested, but it's probably better suited for the DIY forum. i just wanted to say that despite my own doubts regarding the effectiveness of alternative energies like PV solar and solar & thermal heating etc. in this temperate climate, it's doing wonders for my dad in the summer here so far. he's only had it 3 weeks and his excess electricity generation has already earnt him over £100 according to the little bluetooth (and also directly solar powered, as you'd expect) info station thing which comes with his solar kit.

amacachi

Rob A. Bank wrote: »

Gundersen Postulates Unit 3 Explosion May Have Been Prompt Criticality in Fuel Pool.


:eek:

What the hell does that sentence mean?


:eek:

Mr Benevolent

amacachi wrote: »

What the hell does that sentence mean?


:eek:

TL;DR: Nuclear Kaboom.

Coles

geetar wrote: »

i dont think anyone has once denied a bad thing is currently happening. i dont think anyone has acted like clowns.

Oh? What about the clowns who p!ss and moan about people posting information that clearly shows how serious this situation is? The clowns that try to silence people for posting the truth?

there's only two clowns on this thread. they keep posting links of sensationalising, media hungry scientists on youtube that are looking for attention.

You have nothing to offer this thread, so I'm not sure why you bother. You have not provided any link to information of any value and your opinions are, I'm sorry to say, worthless. Fairewinds are the best source for information on this disaster that is available. If you can't understand the language then move on.

I wouldnt mind people posting facts and figures and interesting developements, but its only the two true "clowns" on this thread doing it, and they are doing it with a horrible sense of arrogance and contrived empathy.

Sorry? We're clowns for posting up to date information that isn't available elsewhere on the mainstream media? That makes us clowns?

people understand whats going on. excuse us for being underwhelmed by trickling media releases and facts about low level radiation travelling in "plumes" around the world.

God, that's funny. So you know it all. eh??? Certainly the quality of your post suggests otherwise!! There's no need to provide any links to outside sources because you know it all! Excellent!!

this thread should be closed IMO. its become something i hate and im sorry i ever took part in it.

I'm sorry you did too. You've become emotionally involved in defending a position that's ill-informed and blinkered. Move on and allow this thread develop as a source of information for people who are concerned/interested in the Fukushima disaster.

up for anything

vibe666 wrote: »

he's also got a geothermal heating system (which i didn't even know you could do outside of iceland etc.) which heats all his water to half temperature for the underfloor heating and other water needs.

OT: How is he finding the bills for the electricity needed to run that. I have friends who have much the same items as your father but find themselves crippled by the electricity needed to run their geothermal system.

Micky Dolenz

Coles Banned.

Statistician

That's a pity coles was banned. His/her posts are one of the main reasons I keep checking this thread.
How long is the ban for?

Here are two other threads people may be interested in:
http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=36504&start=1065
(Coles also posts on this one)
and
http://www.politics.ie/environment/155638-huge-blast-nuclear-power-plant-japan-soe-declared-second-plant-289.html

Rob A. Bank

Coles wrote: »

And meanwhile the truth will keep coming out.

YouTube - Japan's top nuclear man resigns over Fukushima

Nice to see someone with principles confronting the ongoing TEPCO/Japanese Government bullsh*t and display of gross incompetence, as a senior nuclear adviser resigns, lambasting his government’s response to crisis.

“In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international limits set for the public.

“I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/asia/01japan.html?_r=1&hp


"The prime minister's office and administrative organizations have made impromptu policy decisions, like playing a whack-a-mole game, ignoring proper procedures," the radiation expert said.

The guidelines announced by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology "are inconsistent with internationally commonsensical figures and they were determined by the administration to serve its interests," he said

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110430p2g00m0dm018000c.html

There used to be a time when a government’s first duty was to protect its citizens.. and not big companies like the nuclear industry (or in this country’s case, the banks).

TEPCO has been taking profits since 1951, established when they privatized the state-run electric industry, but the Japanese taxpayers will now bear the losses, just like ourselves and the banks.

But in Japan’s case the government are sacrificing their children too !

:eek:

Rob A. Bank

amacachi wrote: »

What the hell does that sentence mean?


:eek:

A prompt criticality is a small nuclear explosion.

Technical details here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_critical

vibe666

up for anything wrote: »

OT: How is he finding the bills for the electricity needed to run that. I have friends who have much the same items as your father but find themselves crippled by the electricity needed to run their geothermal system.

from what i understand, it's primarily run during the day by the PV solar on his roof, but he's not really had it in long enough to be able to say for sure i don't think.

if it was me (i didn't even know he was getting it till it was all in) i'd have gone for solar heating as well, but i guess he had someone in to plan it all for him. i have a feeling i should probably have asked him more about the background behind the install, but i was too busy playing with the little gadget showing how much solar power he was generating, using & had sold back into the grid.

Overheal

Japanese export cars, trace radiation.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5797882/new-japanese-cars-are-slightly-radioactive

The panic crowd should get a thrill from that.

Rob A. Bank

Overheal wrote: »

Japanese export cars, trace radiation.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5797882/new-japanese-cars-are-slightly-radioactive

The secondhand cars they sent to Russia earlier in April were also contaminated...

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_656739.html

Rob A. Bank

Fukushima parents revolt...

"A group claiming to represent 250 parents in Fukushima visited the upper house of parliament and presented government officials with a bag of radioactive dirt from the playground of one of the affected schools. A geiger counter clicked over it with a reading of 38 millisieverts.

Mori Yuko, an upper house member, said she was disgusted by the decision to loosen the safety limit [from 1 to 20 millisievert/year]. “Would politicians and bureaucrats allow their own children to go to a contaminated school,” she said. “This makes me furious.”

The allegations of cover-ups and shifting safety baselines are taking a heavy political toll. A mere 1.3% of respondents in a weekend poll by the Kyodo news agency thought Kan was exercising sufficient leadership."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/parents-revolt-radiation-levels

1.3% ! Thats a lot worse than Brian Cowen !

.

Rob A. Bank

Overheal wrote: »

Japanese export cars, trace radiation.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5797882/new-japanese-cars-are-slightly-radioactive

BTW... They were Korean cars, contaminated when the ship sailed through Japanese waters, according to AFP.

"The ship sailed from South Korea and then docked at the Japanese ports of Osaka and Yokohama, located 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the reactor in Fukushima."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gsYh4tbk44ggAE2INMRjZgtKADhw?docId=CNG.4ec0d644f5638e40f182b6d39cbee4b3.331

:eek:

AskMyChocolate

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

Coles Banned.

That's a pity. There are drumbangers on both sides, but (s)he seemed very well informed. I wouldn't like to lose Overheal, Rob A. Bank,Vibe666 or Ninja900 from this thread. It's a good thread.

Especially for people who don't know that much .

Has anybody got an idea as to where we stand now?

Btw, did anyone read the letter from the Japanese Prime-minister to the Irish Times during the week?

I know it's only politics, but I thought it was nicely worded. It made me feel that globalisation has a possible daffodil that could grow out of a pile of manure.

I'm such an optimist/child.:o

Boardstock went well and the tsunami (at the moment) was far more devestating than the nuclear problem.

vibe666

AskMyChocolate wrote: »

That's a pity. There are drumbangers on both sides, but (s)he seemed very well informed. I wouldn't like to lose Overheal, Rob A. Bank,Vibe666 or Ninja900 from this thread. It's a good thread.

indeed he did appear to be (mostly) well informed, but he didn't seem to be able to make his point without directly attacking the other posters in the thread, rather than their posts.

most of us have been guilty of it at one time or another, myself included (probably more than most), but we all know its wrong and maybe we'll learn something from his banning and the thread will be better off for it.

Rob A. Bank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc0sV0OyZAw

Japanese government apologises for cover-up of 'shocking radiation data.



I would not be a happy camper if I lived in one of the highly contaminated areas, when the government witholds data which could be used to protect my family and the general population from high doses of radiation.

"Computer projections taken on March 16 showed that people from as far away as 30 kilometres from the nuclear plant would be exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation if they were outdoors for 24 hours between March 12 and 24.

It also indicated that the radiation could spread northwest and southwest of the facility.

The normal level of background radiation people are exposed to in their daily lives without harm is about one to 1.5 millisieverts a year."

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/breaking-news/japanese-withheld-information-on-high-radiation-at-fukushima/story-e6frea73-1226033453621

Rob A. Bank

A 7 week update on Fukushima

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/5173479472/fukushima-7-week-update

"While details of the damage to the nuclear fuel at the site are not known, it appears that more total fuel damage has occurred during this accident than all previous reactor accidents combined."

Botton line :-

"Seven weeks later the situation at the facility has improved and stabilized relative to the crisis in the first few weeks, but serious difficulties remain. A better description is that the situation has become less unpredictable than it was."

Coles

Good find Rob. A Bank, but the report overlooks a very significant event. There's no mention of the explosion at Reactor 3, the 'prompt criticality'/nuclear explosion that launched the contents of the fuel pool into the atmosphere.

And why did Reactor 3's fuel pool explode? I think the answer lies in the fact that it was using MOX, rather than pure Uranium fuel. Here's an interesting link with some good information in it. MOX: The Fukushima Word of the Day and Why it's Bad News - Time.com

But MOX is also temperamental. Physicist Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takma Park, MD., spoke to TIME earlier in the week and heaped scorn on the Mark 1 reactors used at the Daiichi site. His criticism in that conversation was the comparatively flimsy (by nuclear reactor standards at least) containment vessels used in the Mark 1s. But he's no fan of the use of MOX either.

"This sort of fuel is more difficult to control than uranium fuel," he told the Augusta Chronicle. "The risk of accidental criticality are different. You have the same kinds of problems, they are just more intense with plutonium."

What Makhijani means by "accidental criticality," of course, is that the stuff just combusts more easily. That's particularly dangerous in a Mark 1, according to some studies. A report by the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, for example, found that in the event of a core meltdown, a Mark 1's containment vessel has a 42% chance of failing—a whole lot closer to a coin flip than you want with something like a nuclear reactor.

And when plutonium is dispersed into the wind you want to be pretty much anywhere else.

And just how much more harmful is MOX than Uranium?

"In the event of such accidents (involving the accidental release of MOX), if the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) recommendations for general public exposure were adhered to, only about one mg of plutonium may be released from a MOX facility to the environment. As a comparison, in [sic] uranium fabrication facility, 2kg (2,000,000 mg) of uranium could be released in the same radiation exposure."
- Link

And it's great to be back... I've learned a very valuable lesson, whatever the f*ck that is.

AskMyChocolate

Sorry, I'm a neutral. Does the fact that the pro-nuclear self-satisfied people have stopped posting, mean anything?

Is everything locked down? I may be becoming paranoid, but I worry when only the anti-nuclear people are posting.

Is there an update? Well, it's not in the news so everything must be grand.

Honestly people, from both sides, is there an update?

Cathaoirleach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj8oZe-NLzY

AskMyChocolate

Coles wrote: »

Good find Rob. A Bank, but the report overlooks a very significant event. There's no mention of the explosion at Reactor 3, the 'prompt criticality'/nuclear explosion that launched the contents of the fuel pool into the atmosphere.

And why did Reactor 3's fuel pool explode? I think the answer lies in the fact that it was using MOX, rather than pure Uranium fuel. Here's an interesting link with some good information in it. MOX: The Fukushima Word of the Day and Why it's Bad News - Time.com


And just how much more harmful is MOX than Uranium?



And it's great to be back... I've learned a very valuable lesson, whatever the f*ck that is.

It's great to have you back. You're a huge addition to this thread/argument/debate.

The lesson to be learned, is that , arrogance and certainty are in and of themselves, forms of stupidity. If you could explain that to your adversarial drumbanging scientists, and take a look in the mirror...well.

Just from a layman's point of view. But, while I have posted rarely in this thread, I find it both fascinating and important, and I would hope (as I have said in previous posts) that the drumbangers keep posting as they seem to be the most knowledgable and well informed on both sides of the argument.

Chocolate

It sure beats the sh!t out of Fox News.

gbee

AskMyChocolate wrote: »

Sorry, I'm a neutral. Does the fact that the pro-nuclear self-satisfied people have stopped posting, mean anything?

Well it's like this, you look down the barrels of a shotgun aimed right at you.
You are warned that it could discharge.
You argue that you know what you are doing and the person holding it is an expert.
Besides it is only loaded with bird-shot and it cannot possibly harm me, even if it did, somehow, which is impossible, fire itself.

It does of course and you are now dead, so you can't argue anymore.

gbee

AskMyChocolate wrote: »

The lesson to be learned, is that ,.

Not to use MOX in a reactor that was not specifically designed for it. As the article above says, "42% chance of" and too close to the flip of a coin.

From the beginning many have had a viewpoint, as time expands we see that those on the pro nuclear side have had to quieten down and those on the anti nuclear side have had a little more grist added to their mill.

However, if procedures and recommendations had been followed and MOX had not been used in a MKI reactor, this crisis would not be as bad.

It was evident from the beginning the wrong procedures for the event had been both taken and then not taken in time. The Japanese have been caught doing something that was NOT recommended and so many events happened that it seems almost God like in exposing this flaw.

This is where diligence is a must, we design for one fuel we must use it. And in the incinerator, we design to burn at a certain temperature and certain material and change scrubbers at certain intervals, we must do so.

In Cork harbour we have had contamination for many years and a good proportion of it came from a chemical factory which had not changed it's scrubbers in the exhaust chain. It only came to light when one of the chimneys fell down due to rot, it had been spewing untreated goo into the atmosphere for years and years.

andrew

I havn't posted around because the arguments were just going in circles. Anti-Nuclear post a story article which is like 'ZOMG RADIATION' and then 'pro' nuclear people point out that it's not really that dangerous, ad infinitum.

For the record:
Number of deaths due to radiation: 0.
Number of people hospitalised due to radiation: 2.

Coles

andrew wrote: »

I havn't posted around because the arguments were just going in circles. Anti-Nuclear post a story article which is like 'ZOMG RADIATION' and then 'pro' nuclear people point out that it's not really that dangerous, ad infinitum.

For the record:
Number of deaths due to radiation: 0.
Number of people hospitalised due to radiation: 2.

There's no argument, only information.

If you want to keep score on the cancer deaths, fair enough, but it's going to be a very long game.

Incidently, is the disaster worse than you initially thought? Is there any threshold where you start accepting that what has occurred is actually harmful to human health? Does it even warrant reporting in your opinion?