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ransomenote,

Seems to me you’re guilty of the same flaws/tactics you accuse the “pro-nukes” of......I eat bananas for the soluable postassimum.....And yes its possible to create radioactive isotopes of potassimum. But we do this with a lot of substances for a varity of reasons - mostly medical.
The key, IMO, is the “half-life of the isotopes being examined.

As I’ve noted from the outset, my limited nuclear experience has been of the “hairy-knuckled” variety; i.e. confined to the practical aspects of servicing critical components in operating plants. As such my operating dictum regarding exposure has always been “less is best” and “hands and feet before body and brain”.... IOW, I’ll trade a “dose” to my hands if it reduces my brain/body dose any day......

If you were involved, (you didn’t mention at what level), in the design/construction of Fukishima, then you know far more about these plants than I do. My only information of them and the operator is hearsay from from fellow reps that worked there. But when an island larger than NJ moves laterally 17’ and tilts some 4 meters I suspect its only natural buildings grounded in its bedrock should likewise “tip” in comparison to an independent verticle baseline .....

No argument Dr. Openheimer was brilliant. He was also a traitor, passing critical information to the Soviets via the Rosenbergs. As for his later contentions regarding radiation, they don’t “stand up” very well to history. Early hominids were exposed to “dose rates” much higher than we experience now. So were our near ancestors. During the industrial age - and even now - coal miners, ( not to mention a lot of other jobs ) subject workers to higher “dose rates” than are acceptable for nuke plant workers. (Just how many “rems, etc does a teenage lifeguard get in the course of a summer’s employment ?)

Its pretty well established the “explosion(s)” were chemical ones coming hard at the heels of venting of the reactor vessels. (When you break down water you get hydrogen (2) and oxygen (1) IOW all that’s needed is a spark.) To get a “nuclear” explosion implies that a critical mass/containment was created in a fuel pool with some level of water and fuel bundles in individusal containment by a chemical explosion.......When the esteemed Dr. Openheimer was doubtful if the “implosive” Trinity test article would work......For the TEPCO operators it was a “damned if you do/don’t situation”, I suspect.

Human decisions” are part and parcle of any construction project. I’ve read the twin towers of the World Trade center were designed to withstand the impact of a 707. But the impact of a much larger aircraft at much higher than ancipated speed with full fuel load overmastered the design criteria. But do we know the cited reactor vessel has “failed “? Engineers design in a safety factor to guard against manufacturing defects. Fukishima was designed in the “slipstick” era. That is when a slide rule and calculator were “tools of the engineering trade”, rather than a computer and its exotic software. It may well be the vessel is doing its job, despite any defects revealed by a remorseful employee that’s already spent the bonus money he received for concealing the problem.

RN you can “accept or reject”, as you like but history is fact. Following TMI construction/planning of evolutionary - technology plants was seriously impacted. All for a human failure incident that harmed no one !! Worse, all design/research into better, more efficient, safer nuclear plants came to a crashing halt as government reacted to the political stridence of a minority. But our nation’s “energy policy” has ever been thus. In the Sixties a “clean burn” MHD technology for coal emerged. It got so far as a successful demo plant in New England. But its “father” was ousted from his post and soon died, and a antoginistic presidency soon condemned it to a “death by study”, because its revolutionary technology would have major political impact.

Regardless of how the unaffected/remotes of the world feel, Japan - and particularly the residents of one prefecture - are going to become a “case study” in how to recover from disaster. We need to pay close attention to the process. We also need to create safer, more efficient nuclear plants less vulnerable to natural events. For Japan its nuclear or nothing. Unless the world is ready to face the ravages of an energy-starved people - that have tasted the good life - again..... >PS

I am not sure what you mean by tactics I use re bananas. I eat them or used to until they began, over time, to make me think of mushy glue. I was pointing to the number of times on FR and other threads where pro nukers mocked those concerned re Fukushima contaminants that they should likewise fear bananas, a comparison I found pointless.

I see that you comment on Oppenheimer and - while I enjoyed reading your comments - I wanted to point out that I never referenced Oppenheimers work so if it doesn’t ‘stand up’, I am not influenced to change my opinion re low dose radiation. Portions of my reading have focused on John Gofman and I mentioned Oppenheimer in relation to Gofman because at one point, Gofman had the trust of the inner circle of radiation reseach (Oppehnheimer) until he reported that his research indicated low dose radiation was harmful - and then Gofman was mocked and derided etc.

“Early hominids were exposed to “dose rates” much higher than we experience now. So were our near ancestors. During the industrial age - and even now - coal miners, ( not to mention a lot of other jobs ) subject workers to higher “dose rates” than are acceptable for nuke plant workers. (Just how many “rems, etc does a teenage lifeguard get in the course of a summer’s employment ?)”
Ok and they had shorter lifespans and died of diseases for which we were unable to study or compare to modern populations so this line of inquiry seems to have no relevance to human exposure to dose - its a black box with a short life span coming out of it, including early industrial people. Comments like ‘how many rems to lifeguards get’ is another poor comparision - to compare a voluntary EXTERNAL dose with potential for mitigation (sunblock, sun hat etc) to concern over unknown quantities of radioactive material releases fielding contaminants that can be inhaled/ingested seems pointless. It seems like the attempts I often see to disperse concern ‘hey if you’ve been outside then you’ve been irradiated - that’s what sunlight is’ does not adequately compare to radioactive Xenon, Cesisum, Iodine, Plutonium, Uranium etc. venting in to the air and water.

“Its pretty well established the “explosion(s)” were chemical ones coming hard at the heels of venting of the reactor vessels”
I don’t believe so. I’ve seen a variety of analysis of the film and conditions prior, during and after and TEPCO’s recent statements regarding the high presence of radioactive iodine in the water of spent pool 3 seems to indicate practicality after the initial explosion just based on the decay rate of that isotope. Gunderson noted the distance from the reactor building that a piece of fuel had been found by TEPCO then did the calculations to see what speed a piece of fuel that size would have to reach upon ejectio to travel that distance. That calculation and others like vid analysis seems to indicate detonation rather than deflagration. I think that both a hydrogen explosion and a criticality could account for what was seen in the vid and why the iodine level is so high in the spent fuel pool.

“But do we know the cited reactor vessel has “failed “? “
The known circumstances have changed since we started this exchange - by now you’ve read that TEPCO has said that reactor 1 drains water and must have a few holes in the bottom and that fuel has melted down. TEPCO has also said that the gauges on the other reactors (2,3) are probabaly also incorrect and the situation is probably the same for those two. Reactor 3 - the temperature continues to rise unabated.
In his materials posted online, John Gofman talked of the problem of containment in lab settings. No lab could ever guarantee that no hazardous material would be released. Gofman thought about the toxicity of Plutonium and did a quick back-of-the-envelope type of calculation using what he knew about realistic values of released materials in a lab setting. His calculations showed him that realistically (now comparing science lab release rates with ‘real world’ reactor) it would be necessary to keep the unintentional releases of radioactive plutonium below the level which was feasible. Sitting next to a nuke engineer on a plane, Gofman asked the man how low he believed nuke engineers believed they could keep accidental releases of radiation based on design of the facility. The nuke engineer said that the scientists just tell the engineers what the required specs are and the engineers would build it. Gofman was stunned and said he’d worked in labs for over 30 years and there’s no way engineering design could ever guarantee that radioactive releases would be kept below ‘x’ level (I forget the number. The engineer disagreed and said that they would build to whatever spec the scientists said was needed. Gofman used that example to note the unrealistic expectations that nuke engineers had for the capacity to control emissions. ‘Just tell us and we’ll build it’ versus ‘but my 30 years working in a lab shows that we cant control down to an infinite level (limitations exist). Now I have heard that containment vessel appears to have holes in it - when nuke engineers have said that it can’t be breached - impossible. I think I observe unrealistic expectations in the example of the warped containment vessel - other companies ‘fix’ defective components to avoid extreme cost or bankruptcy but that just won’t happen with a reactor vessel.
Early on I read nuke guys saying that the ‘reason’ for Chernobyl was lack of containment (faulty design). I used to think that until I read and watched some vids. No other reactor of the same design failed like that in Russia. The failure was management and human error compounded again and again by bureaucracy. The fact that all the reactors in Japan had containment vessels didn’t really ward off the situatio we are in now - TEPCO now believes it’s like that all 3 reactors have melted fuel and holes in the containment vessel etc. and well...there’s all those spent fuel rods in pools or blown out of pools. Placing the reactors near seismic faults in known Tsuanmi regions where it is possible that extreme failure of any one reactor will prevent stabilization of others on the site. It really wasn’t the tsunami and earthquake - the problem didn’t exit control at that time and the buildings came through all that shaking and water. But - the back up generators were placed where they were and the one and only electrical tower feeding the plan was the only one that collapsed. Japan didn’t do what it needed to do to get back up generators flow in. And here we are. So I don’t compare this with the Twin Towers - which received damage beyond specs. In fact, the human response to that act of sabotage was superior to the one we are watching unfold now.

We will have to agree to disagree on TMI. When you first brought it up I went and started researching it. Soon I found people experiencing radiation burns and iodine filled rain eating through new tin roofs and the way TMI is able to deny responsibility is to control the statement of radiation released. No one else ‘gets’ to weigh in on radiation released. So people who suffered symptoms of ARS and later, cancers, are ignored when they say that TMI was related because TMI’s statement is ‘only X amount of radiation was released, therefore all claims of harm resulting are false) Found the same thing when I looked up above ground testing in NV (Later I would learn a scientist like Knapp infuriated the NRC by releasing a research report stating that the radiation levels from the testing were ten times higher than the NRC claimed). So the way this works is the people around the plant report an accident and their medical records, veterinarian records etc. are not deemed ‘official’ - only the statements of the nuke establishment make it into the ‘official record’ and so officially there was zero harm.

“Regardless of how the unaffected/remotes of the world feel, Japan - and particularly the residents of one prefecture - are going to become a “case study” in how to recover from disaster.”
More than one prefecture - tea crops south of Tokyo have found to be extremely contaminated with Cesium, two surrounding prefectures have had to pull radioactive produce, more must be learned before we know how many prefectures must ‘recover’

“We also need to create safer, more efficient nuclear plants less vulnerable to natural events.”

That won’t address the problem. Japan had laws saying that the warped vessel must be discarded and people got past them - it’s physically possible to ‘cheat’. TEPCO has quite the record of falsifying safety records and I will not assume they are the only ones. The plants came through the ‘natural events’ better than anticipated - they were fine. But the decision by the company and Japan to hide the status, decline offers of help (Russia), avoid asking for needed materials - these are human flaws that can’t be designed out. Again, we must agree to disagree. I appreciate the time you took to write an intersting response.