Is the west coast of the U.S.A. going to be evacuated due to panic over "radiation"?
For those not in the know: spent nuclear fuel is kept in water-filled pools to cool the fuel rods. Once cooled sufficiently, the fuel rods are removed from the pool and STORED OUT IN THE OPEN AIR!!
This whole article stinks of sensationalism.
This is just a cover story. The real truth is Gojira was seen leaving Monster Island and he had this “this time it is for keeps!” look.
Bah, no need to worry! People eat more radiation in a banana!/s
Sick of the Freepers in total denial (yes, even you SatinDoll). I am sorry, but it’s one thing to over sensationalize the dangers, and yet another to be in total and complete denial.
I find it hard to understand that the radiation output and contamination from this is as great much less greater than from a pair of atomic bomb blasts, one Uranium and the other Plutonium based, upwind from Tokyo in August of 1945. Or from the multiple atmospheric tests conducted in the American southwest deserts within a couple hundred miles of Santa Fe and Las Vegas. Japan and the States of Nevada and New Mexico seem to have survived those just fine.
Funny, I just read another article here that said the fish from Fukushima are safe to eat, but somehow they’re worried about evacuating Tokyo... I don’t think so.
“Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour and any attempt to send robots in to accurately gauge the situation will require them to have greater resistance than currently available, experts said Wednesday.
Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
The experts said the high radiation level is due to the shallow level of coolant water — 60 cm — in the containment vessel, which Tepco said in January was believed to be 4 meters deep. Tepco has only peeked inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. It has few clues as to the status of reactors 1 and 3, which also suffered meltdowns, because there is no access to their insides.
The utility said the radiation level in the reactor 2 containment vessel is too high for robots, endoscopes and other devices to function properly.”
No matter how bad the radiation leaks or fallout gets in Japan, it isn’t going to be a problem for any part of the US.
For crying out loud, we dropped NUCLEAR WEAPONS on Japan...TWICE and nobody here in the US was harmed by radioactive fallout or anything else related to it.
Jeez...people are so gullible.
I’ve asked that my post be pulled.
Since the link to The Mainichi Daily News takes you to a non-existent page, there is no way to verify any of this.
I call BS on the whole thing. Tabloid sensationalism to get blog hits.
It may be sensationalism but those of us FReepers who did initial FR-looksies into this last year came to appreciate that there are decades worth of spent rods stored onsite, in pools two stories above the damaged reactors. And if the rods in the pools are not continually covered in water they will burn and meltdown “OUT IN THE OPEN AIR”.
Btw, open air storage only works when rods are separated from each other. The problem with the pools is that the rods are bunched together and require a constant pool of water to keep from overheating, burning and releasing fine particulate radioactive smoke into the air. Like the smoke emitted by the burning reactors the first six months.
So yes, if a spent containment pool(s) is holed and not retaining water the rods will burn and the potential radiation release is many times what was released in the initial reactor meltdowns.
PING!