Nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html ^

[Scythian]

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens

'In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster.'

[MamaB]

I learned from genealogy that if you want true facts, you have to do research and that is what I did with this. People just seem to take everything they hear as truth when it is a total lie. I have seen a lot of those on youtube. They are very, very sad. I know our own gov’t did not tell my AF brother and his group of bomber squads the truth about what they were doing when they flew through the mushroom clouds during testing. He said they just did what they were told. He was taking about 35-40 different kinds of meds when he died in 06. If a plane is still hot after nearly a week of scrubbing, then that was a lot of radiation they flew through. Oh, how he loved flying. It was his life. He was my hero.
‘’

[Aleya2Fairlie]

Scythian wrote:
“We will not know the true level of the threat until the radiation particles emitted as a result of the three explosions that devastated Fukushima hits the west coast over the weekend and into Monday.”

Save your keyboard and your time Scythian. Let them sleep. A full-scale meltdown of several nuclear reactors spewing radiation into the atmosphere is nothing compared to those evil airport scanners or that sneaky radon gas that seeps into some of our homes. And don’t forget that saturated fat and coal dust that’s killing us as we speak!

And, oh yeah, those evil happy meals that are attacking our children! Priorities, please!

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

And don’t forget 3rd hand smoke.

[socialism_stinX]

That’s all reasonable, but there is a difference between Tsunami victims and people who end up being victims of radioactive contamination. The people who lost their homes or even their lives in the Tsunami, they willingly took the risk of living on the coast in the path of a potential Tsunami wave. Just like people who live in earthquake zones in CA, they knew they could get hit with a catastrophic Tsunami wave and they took that risk for their own reasons. But people who live inland in Japan didn’t think they were taking a risk from Tsunami waves and very few of them knew that the nuclear power plant was so vulnerable to a Tsunami wave. So a lot of people right now within 50 miles of that plant (and maybe farther that that as this accident continues) are getting their houses and cars contaminated with radioactive material and never chose to take that risk.

We still don’t know how this accident will end. If a couple of these reactors melt down completely and the wind sends a lot of radioactive material into Japan, this could cause great economic chaos in a large part of Japan. I would agree that the Tsunami itself is going to end up killing many more people than the power plant ever does, because they’re going to evacuate people out of the area if it turns into another Chernoybl type of meltdown.

I think the other issue is just the practicality of prevention. It’s very difficult and probably unreasonable for a government to stop people from living within 10 miles of the coast because they could be wiped out in a Tsunami. But the nuclear power plant could easily have been built 20 miles inland. So if you look at the cost/benefit ratio for building that plant inland, it’s a very favorable ratio because it’s highly beneficial and not very costly, and it’s highly practical. Anyway, you’re right about the death toll being much higher from the Tsunami itself, but I still think it’s a slam dunk decision that this nuclear plant should have been built 20 miles inland. We don’t have the Tsunami threat in America because of different geophysics off of our coast, but they should have considered this risk in Japan and built the power plant inland.

[OA5599]

You should look up Elena Filatova’s website. She rode her motorcycle through parts of that area. She does not have any good words for the gov’t at that time. Some of the people she has talked to have said it would be radioactive for thousands of years. One was her own father who was a noted physicist in that country at that time. She said he started teaching her about nuclear education as a child.

Your Elena isn't exactly a reputable source of information. From the NY Times:

About two years ago, Mr. Tatarchuk said, a Ukrainian woman booked a tour, wore a leather biker jacket and posed for pictures. Soon there appeared a Web site in which the woman, using the name Elena, claimed that she had been given an unlimited pass by her father, a nuclear physicist and Chernobyl researcher (''Thank you, Daddy!'' she wrote) and now roamed the ruins at will on her Kawasaki Big Ninja.

The site, www.kiddofspeed.com, billed as a tale ''where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog,'' was a sensation, duping uncountable viewers before being discredited.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902EEDD163BF936A25755C0A9639C8B63&sec=travel

[MamaB]

So, she went with a group instead of by herself. She took the pictures, wrote the story which has brought a lot of attention to that disaster. I see the same pictures on many other sites so she did something good. Frankly, I do not believe anything your site says. Her site was discredited because she was getting way to much traffic for it. Did the NY Times go over there to take their own pictures? If not, they are hardly an authority. Did they live there like she did? I have seen facts she quoted on other sites as well. If you don’t want to believe her, that is your problem. Who is the person quoted? Did he know her? I would do more research if I were you.

[chimera]

They built this power plant too close to the coast and in the path of a potential Tsunami wave. Even if it cost more, it should have been built at least 20 miles inland, to make sure an earthquake and Tsunami didn’t disable the power supply and the backup generators. I know it’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but this is an obvious blunder considering the Tsunami risk in Japan. America doesn’t have that Tsunami risk, so we can build nuke plants right next to the ocean. But this was a bad mistake to build this plant on the east coast of Japan right next to the ocean. I’ll bet that will be one of the conclusions of a commission that reviews this disaster.

Well, it's interesting you brought this up and I am glad you did. Because it allows me to mention an important point. Did you ever wonder why the Japanese have multiple units at these sites, right on the ocean, like Fukushim Daiichi (4 units) and Fukushima Daini ( 4 units)? It is because initially those were single unit plants sited near a large thermal reservoir (ocean) with one or two units. In the 1970s and 1980s, the utilities sought to build plants at other sites, dispersed through the country, some at inland locations, to meet the growing electrical demand. But the burgeoning Japanese anti-nuclear movement fought those permits, and successfully blocked the utilities from obtaining land for alternate sites. But he utility was still obliged to meet the growing power demand, so they were forced to install multiple units at sites already approved for power generation. Where were a lot of those early-approved sites? On the coastlines. So that is why in Japan you have relatively "high density" power plant build, multiple units, sometimes four or six units, at one site. Because the anti-nuclear precluded them from building them in a more dispersed, lower-density manner. So in some ways this multiple-unit common-mode failure is the fault of the anti-nuclear movement.

So, betcha didn't know that, didja? Didn't make the papers, did it? I wonder why? I wonder how many people reading this thread knew the truth about this?

[potlatch]

Radiation can take years to kill though. Yesterday when I saw snow falling in Japan I thought of all those who had been without food and water for many days.

My first thought was that they would have water from the snow and then the thought struck me that perhaps that snow was contaminated by falling through the radiation in the atmosphere! The thought that they could be harmed even more!

Maybe it doesn’t work that way, don’t know!

[OA5599]

Have you seen the graveyard of the military equipment which was used during that time? Every one had people in them. Look it up and tell me that only a few people died during that time. That stuff still has so much radiation that people are not allowed to be near it. The solidest who had to go to Chernobyl died within a very short time of being at the site. Some only lived a few minutes.

You may want to look up Leonid Telyatnikov. He was a fireman on the roof of reactor 3 putting out the fires from reactor 4, and was subsequently named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

By your account, he should be dead within minutes. Yet he didn't die until 2004. I doubt any of the liquidators you reference received doses as high as those firemen.

[DBeers]

RE: Nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people

Other than this boiler plate statement in regards to what a level 5 event rating equates to and could entail as per some international body:

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.

I see nowhere where the 'Japanese', let alone the weeping nuclear plant chief, are quoted as stating that people will die?

I am pretty sure that this event rating system is based upon plant conditions and NOT deaths anticipated. The deaths anticipated estimates are premised upon many assumptions dealing with Time Distance and Shielding relative to the event.

Level 5 is what Three mile Island was classified as -where are all those deaths?

I will admit to being a nuke worker myself and a product of the nuclear navy (submarines) -I am not a novice; however, neither am I an expert... In my opinion, there is much more hype than facts right now.

Any with expertise care to comment?

[OA5599]

You don’t find it a bit curious that the only photos of her motorcycle are those which show nothing specific to the Chernobyl exclusion zone? I mean, I rode my motorcycle across the US and snapped a photo next to the sign in Vegas and the Arch in St. Louis for example. I think I’d want one with Chernobyl-4 somewhere in the background!

If she took the tour, then why did she not come out with that info instead of pretending to be riding free like some cool cat? It casts doubt on any and all of her claims.

“My site” as you call it, is the NY Times. I do have to chuckle at your statement “I do not believe anything your site says.” LOL. Ordinarily I’d agree, but this was their *travel* section!

What’s so amazing about the photos anyway? Can you just see the radiation oozing out of them or something?

[MamaB]

Do you know what he died of? Cancer.

[MamaB]

Go look at the incredible number of tanks, trucks, helicopters. You will be amazed. I had seen them on a tv show last year. They can never be used again. Just think of the lives lost while in those vehicles. Pictures of them are on many different sites. My family knows what it is like to have a family member suffer from radiation exposure. It is not a pleasant experience.

[OA5599]

What kind? Points if you can find out.

My father died of cancer too. People die of cancer all of the time. The interesting thing about Chernobyl is that it cured every and all forms of cancer other than what reactor 4 directly caused.

Now if we can only figure out how to isolate Chernobyl-4’s ability to prevent all other forms of cancer...

[Frantzie]

I think if the Japanese and Tokyo Electric had called the SeaBees very early - they probably could have gotten the cooling pumps back on line.

[driftdiver]

“To be fair they had an 8 hour window to contain this when the plant was still on battery power and the cooling systems still worked.”

A whole 8 hours eh.

[OA5599]

Sure there are a lot of them. It’s interesting that they appear to be stripped of useful parts. None of the equipment would have been activated, so it’s a matter of surface contamination. Nothing that can’t be cleaned, but in most cases would be cheaper to replace.

As long as the occupants didn’t ride around with the windows open enjoying the breeze, the truck cabs would help prevent bodily contamination. Depending on the time the workers were exposed to radiation while working (the truck cabs would not shield gammas), it doesn’t mean that X amount of quarantined vehicles equals Y amount of deaths.

It appears that having a family member suffer from what you attribute to radiation exposure has affected your opinion on anything nuclear.

[MarMema]

Oh ok. I guess this WSJ blog post is all lies then and you know better.

[AndyJackson]

a lot of people right now within 50 miles of that plant (and maybe farther that that as this accident continues) are getting their houses and cars contaminated with radioactive material and never chose to take that risk.

The radiation levels at the site boundary are perfectly safe. No one is getting "contaminated" even a mile away, not at levels that matter.

[MamaB]

Believe me, I am all for nuclear power since we have 2 in our backyards so to speak. But, when a disaster happens, I want the truth from the beginning not 20 years later. My brother did not blame the AF since this country had to know what to expect if the worst happened in this country. In a newspaper interview, he said he would do it all over again if possible even knowing what he did. I hate it when the gov’t lies for any reason but especially about something like this. It is like when a tornado hits this area. We want to know the damage or as much as possible as soon as possible. Don't lie to us. We can handle anything IF we are told the truth. It is the unknowing that drives people nuts. The worst we imagine is more than likely much worse than the truth anyway. Some of us have very active imaginations. I am very proud of my brother and the people he served with all those years ago. They loved this country and wanted to do their best for it. Some gave a little but many gave their all.