Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

Statistician

More problems:

Contaminated water has leaked from a treatment system at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, with some potentially entering the sea, the plant's operator says.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16032975

When will it end?
The sea there is hugely polluted already.

shadowninty

Very worrying indeed, hope that they have contained the rest of it now

Run_to_da_hills

Deleted User wrote: »

About 90%+ of all posts since April have been about the nuclear power plant being wrecked!

That's because the Fukushima powerplant is a deadly serious and ongoing invisible problem that will no doubt linger on for decades. Unlike the Tsunami the Fukushima power plant situation was /is a cover up and I doubt very much we will ever hear the full extent of the situation.

Overheal

It sure seems that way but it will be hard to hold onto all the details for long. Even if most of the fine minutiae never reaches the public the incident will be dissected by energy commissions for decades and be applied to existing and future projects.

Hal Emmerich

Overheal wrote: »

minutiae

Where did you come across this word before?

Ficheall

Aragh, 'tis not that unusual a word.

Anyway, enenews.com in case people need reassurance that things aren't okay...

Hal Emmerich

Ficheall wrote: »

Aragh, 'tis not that unusual a word.

Anyway, enenews.com in case people need reassurance that things aren't okay...

There's to much use of the words potentially and possibly used in those Articles.

Head wrecking.

There's enough depression inducing ****e flashing up on my screen as it is without reading them...especially when there's not a thing that any of us can do about it.

The only good thing to come from this is that Humans will get Mutant Powers alot quicker than through natural evolution with all this radiation floating around*.

*I may be joking/talking ****e here.

el diablo

Radiation levels in Fukushima are lower than predicted.

www.newscientist.com

The fallout from the radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan may be less severe than predicted.

Radiology researcher Ikuo Kashiwakura of Hirosaki University, Japan, and colleagues responded immediately to the disaster, travelling south to Fukushima prefecture to measure radiation levels in more than 5000 people there between 15 March and 20 June.

They found just 10 people with unusually high levels of radiation, but those levels were still below the threshold at which acute radiation syndrome sets in and destroys the gastrointestinal tract. Geiger-counter readings categorised all others in the area at a "no contamination level".

How did the population of Fukushima prefecture dodge the radioactivity? Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, says the answer is simple. "Not an awful lot [of radioactive material] got out of the plant – it was not Chernobyl." The Chernobyl nuclear disaster released 10 times as much radiation as Fukushima Daiichi.

Rapid response

Thomas says the quick and thorough response by the Japanese government limited radioactive exposure among the population. On 12 March, the same day as the first explosion at Fukushima Daiichi, the government ordered the evacuation of residents within 20 kilometres, and asked various institutions to begin monitoring contamination levels.

"They had no faxes, no emails, nothing was working," says Thomas, adding that other countries might not have coped as well with a combined earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant malfunction. "Given the circumstances, they did phenomenally."

The Japanese authorities also removed contaminated food and gave iodine to those who were very young, she says. Radioactive iodine can contaminate the thyroid gland in the body, leading to radiation-induced cancer, but can be counteracted by introducing non-radioactive iodine into the body.

Health researchers will have to keep an eye on radiation levels, however. "There are many 'hotspot' areas where radioactivity has accumulated locally," says Kashiwakura. This is because rainfall deposited radioactivity unevenly. "The Japanese people have a responsibility to continue research on the effect of radioactivity in humans."

take everything

Looks like it's still a mess there.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0221/1224312115686.html

100 million litres of contaminated water (not sure if they know what to do with it).
Decades (40 years?) before it's dismantled.
Christ.