Posted on 03/13/2011 5:26:08 PM PDT by Scutter
Along with reliable sources such as the IAEA and WNN updates, there is an incredible amount of misinformation and hyperbole flying around the internet and media right now about the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation. In the BNC post Discussion Thread – Japanese nuclear reactors and the 11 March 2011 earthquake (and in the many comments that attend the top post), a lot of technical detail is provided, as well as regular updates. But what about a layman’s summary? How do most people get a grasp on what is happening, why, and what the consequences will be?
Below I reproduce a summary on the situation prepared by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston. He is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. This was first posted by Jason Morgan earlier this evening, and he has kindly allowed me to reproduce it here. I think it is very important that this information be widely understood.
Please also take the time to read this: An informed public is key to acceptance of nuclear energy — it was never more relevant than now.
Click here to read the entire article
(Excerpt) Read more at bravenewclimate.com ...
I’m not following your question. Can you elaborate?
You can easily verify the information he presents. It’s certainly a more credible source than CNN. And it’s a more credible source than the panic-stricken, potassium iodide swilling idiots that seem to have flooded FR over the last few days. I mean for heaven’s sake, one of these idiots has posted a map showing 1000’s of RADs falling on the US. That isn’t a possible scenario no matter WHAT happened at the plant.
Of course, everyone will have to decide for themselves. If you want to go hunker in the bunker, be my guest.
Excellent overview - Chernobyl was a disaster, Fukushima (so far) has been a problem, Three Mile Island was a blip, in that order.
But getting info on this incident from the standard media has been about as useless as getting it from a Jane Fonda movie - read the posted article for a rational treatment of the situation.
No, sorry, I must be not as knowledgeable as you are.
I know quite a bit of physics, but to form an opinion on this matter, that is not enough: one needs to know (i) nuclear engineering, (ii) construction of the specific plants in question, and (iii) events at those plants as they actually occurred rather than reported.
I do find it grossly misleading and unbecoming for a scientist to be misrepresent his qualifications: it is not true that he is a "Ph.D. scientist:" his Ph.D. is in a completely different "science," which is not even natural one.
Excellent read, and excellent level of detail.
This is all kinda funny. I hate to tell them but Chernobyl was not even in the same league as these reactors. It was so bad (typical Soviet construction crap) it was made out of Chinese drywall.
I had an opportunity to visit the site that included the first Soviet Nuclear reactor. Brick masonry construction containment building, I kid you not.
With such a cynical remark - cynics aren't always wrong - I decided to check this guy out, especially since he is described as a "scientist" rather than a physicist or a chemist or a biologist, which is how most scientists describe themselves. Here is Dr. Josef Oehmen's bio on his MIT webpage.
The main research interest of Dr. Josef Oehmen is risk management in the value chain, with a special focus on lean product development. Risk management allows companies to design and achieve the optimal risk-return balance in their portfolio of activities, successfully take entrepreneurial risks, increase their performance, and focus their attention on where it is needed most. ... He is a member of the supervisory board of Climate InterChange, a company developing and implementing projects for the reduction of carbon emission.
So, turns out Dr. Scientist is no scientist at all, and one who bought into the carbon emissions thingee.
Bflr.
You mean that the reactor isn't going to fall into the ocean? And if it does, it's not going to poison the whole Pacific? I kid you not. That was a statement/question posted last night on a thread.
It could poison the entire Pacific ocean.
Another one wondered if the fallout would poison us all if it crossed the Pacific and made it to America.
People need to get a grip on reality.
I understand there is reason for concern, but it seems as though there are Freepers who jump from thread to thread deliberately trying to get people worked up.
I think it is stupid and senseless. Trying to educate some of them (as this article does) is nearly useless. Many times they don’t even bother to reply back, just leave the thread and go find another one.
It is disturbing. Many of them don’t have a clue about anything radiation related, but fly all over the Internet looking for stuff.
I liken it to someone who has a health problem, and they look on the Internet for information.
The stated facts fit with my own knowledge and the ebb and flow of affairs over the last couple of days.
Some of the details that will be interesting to find out is how/why a tsunami took out the back-up generating capablity. I have seen no information that the plant was directly hit by the tsunami. It was interesting to learn about the problem that portable generators did not work because the plugs did not fit. Now what I would normally expect here is a bunch of guys would starting hacking off things and hacking into things to make the electrical connections anyway. It will be interesting to know.
I was on another thread where was someone going around posting a graphic showing fallout coming across the Pacific and contaminating the West/midwestern USA. Apparently it is a well circulated graphic.
They said people on the west coast were going to get 750 Rads of exposure.
Here is what I posted:
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Hey. Calm down. Have a seat. I just want to talk to you to help you calm down. There are a lot of things to be concerned about, but there is no reason to get crazy about this 750 RADS thing you hear. There are people out there throwing these numbers around, moving decimal points three ways to one side or another, not realizing they are doing it, mistaking millicuries for curies, Rads for millirems, sieverts for grays, and so on. Look. Don’t get crazed. When someone tells you that 750 Rads are going to contaminate an area, it is nonsensical. The units are wrong. It is like telling someone they need a kilometer of flour to bake a loaf of bread. It is nonsensical and irresponsible, because it is scaring the crap out of people.
Here’s the thing. A Rad measures the amount of absorbed radiation on something. Not the amount of radiation, but the amount of energy transferred to something, typically human flesh. (note, you may hear someone refer to rads and rems...for the purposes of human flesh and discussion, they both mean about the same thing...so we will just stick to “rads” because that is what you hear out there a lot) Basically, a Rad measures EXPOSURE to radiation.
If you hear someone mention curies, millicuries or megacuries, that is an amount of decays of an isotope in a given amount of time. When you know what the isotope is, and you know how much energy or what kind of energy is given off when that particular isotope decays, then you have an idea how much radiation there will be.
When you know THAT, then you can figure out how much exposure human flesh will get in a given amount of time when exposed to certain levels of that radiation, and that exposure is measured in Rads.
Now. Here is the thing. EVERYONE gets exposure to radiation, and when your tissue absorbs that radiation, you get exposed to a certain amount of rads of radiation. We ALL get exposed. The average annual exposure to the average person living on this planet is 310 millirem. That is very, very small. That is .31 Rads, spread out over a year. Think of it as eating a cup of salt. Would it be bad for you if you took a cup of salt, mixed it in a glass of water and drank it in one minute? You bet it would be bad. But if you eat that cup of salt over the period of a year, you would probably be fine, but if you eat that much all the time, you will probably have cumulative problems from it, right? Radiation is the same. If you get it spread out over time, it isn’t that bad, your body fixes it, but a fair amount over time might have cumulative effects.
I worked in nuclear medicine for 15 years, and I was allowed to have up to 5 rads (that is 5,000 mrad, but we refer to it as mrem or a millirem) a year of exposure to my body. I could have a lot more than that to my hands, which I probably did. But I was allowed to get up to 50 Rads (that’s 50,000 mrad!!!!) over the course of a year to my hands because you don’t have much in your hands that can be damaged by radiation. I am still here. And I worked with people who handled radiation at much higher levels than I did, and they are in their eighties now, without a problem.
The have a measurement they use called the “LD50/30” dose. It means, the amount of radiation (Rads) that a person can get at one time, all in one shot, that will give you a 50% probability of being dead in 30 days. That amount of radiation is about 600 Rads, more or less.
*******************
To be honest, it is starting to piss me off. There is plenty to worry about. This situation is cause for concern. BUT WE ARE NOT GOING TO IRRADIATE EVERYONE ON THE WEST COAST WITH 750 RADS. It is stupid and irresponsible. And some of the people hopping from thread to thread still persist.
These dumb asses wouldn’t know the difference between a rad, a sievert, a millicurie and a bequerel. But they know enough to shoot their mouths off and freak people out.
An economist who actually wrote a clearer explanation of the overall situation than most media outlets have provided.
well, per the link on Chernobyl, it was 1-131 exposure that caused thyroid cancer - and yet 1-131 (Potassium iodide) is recc. for protection of the thyroid in the event of 'an event' in your area.
I used to live in the back yard of a Nuke plant years ago and remember people stocking up on 1-131 - which is sold OTC for the same price as iodine.
I use iodine commonly for cuts, scratches, etc - as my grammie always used it.
I'm not sure what the difference is between regular iodine and potassium iodide - if there is one?
Even without the disinformation campaigns, people need to just sit and think for a minute instead of checking their common sense at the door.
They act like they never considered that something might dilute in the ocean or atmosphere.
Unreal.
Now, where does that leave us?
* The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
* Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
* Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
* There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
* The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
* The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water
* The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.
* Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.
* The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)
* I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. About half of Japan’s nuclear reactors will probably have to be inspected, reducing the nation’s power generating capacity by 15%. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. That will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to potential power shortages during peak demand, in Japan.
An economist whose specialty is risk assessment and who fully knows that any assessment is only as good as information on which it’s based. Do you think this man has relied on anything other than what he’s seeing on TeeVee? What make you think that information is accurate? We all know politicians never lie, so when a nation is facing its greatest crisis since WWII do you honestly believe that we are being told the unvarnished truth?
Well, JR's never insisted on an I.Q. check as a prerequisite to membership here. Anyone can sign up (as we well know).
But I hear you. It's mind blowing to see that sort of stuff posted here. Best we can hope for, is that posts like the one up top, will dissipate the hysteria through dissemination of solid and factual information.
Now, y'all watch out for the 1000 ft. tsunami washing clear to Canada from the Gulf of Mexico when the ocean floor collapses from the oil companies pumping all the oil and gas outta there, y'hear! (/s, as if!)
ping...
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