Posted on 03/18/2011 11:13:39 AM PDT by brityank
Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA
Shameful media panic very slowly begins to subside
By Lewis Page • Posted in Physics, 18th March 2011 12:56 GMTThe situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, badly damaged during the extremely severe earthquake and tsunami there a week ago, continues to stabilise. It is becoming more probable by the day that public health consequences will be zero and radiation health effects among workers at the site will be so minor as to be hard to measure. Nuclear experts are beginning to condemn the international hysteria which has followed the incident in increasingly blunt terms.
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Main killer in all this? The panic
Analysis
The Fukushima reactors actually came through the quake with flying colours despite the fact that it was five times stronger than they had been built to withstand. Only with the following tsunami – again, bigger than the design allowed for – did problems develop, and these problems seem likely to end in insignificant consequences. The Nos 1, 2 and 3 reactors at Daiichi may never produce power again – though this is not certain – but the likelihood is that Nos 4, 5 and 6 will return to service behind a bigger tsunami barrier.
The lesson to learn here is that if your country is hit by a monster earthquake and tsunami, one of the safest places to be is at the local nuclear powerplant. Other Japanese nuclear powerplants in the quake-stricken area, in fact, are sheltering homeless refugees in their buildings – which are some of the few in the region left standing at all, let alone with heating, water and other amenities.
Nothing else in the quake-stricken area has come through anything like as well as the nuclear power stations, or with so little harm to the population. All other forms of infrastructure – transport, housing, industries – have failed the people in and around them comprehensively, leading to deaths most probably in the tens of thousands. Fires, explosions and tank/pipeline ruptures all across the region will have done incalculably more environmental damage, distributed hugely greater amounts of carcinogens than Fukushima Daiichi – which has so far emitted almost nothing but radioactive steam (which becomes non-radioactive within minutes of being generated).
And yet nobody will say after this: "don't build roads; don't build towns; don't build ships or chemical plants or oil refineries or railways". That would be ridiculous, of course, even though having all those things has actually led to terrible loss of life, destruction and pollution in the quake's wake.
But far and away more ridiculously, a lot of people are already saying that Fukushima with its probable zero consequences means that no new nuclear powerplants should ever be built again. ®
Personal bootnote
As one who earns his living in the media these days, I can only apologise on behalf of my profession for the unbelievable levels of fear and misinformation purveyed this week. I have never been so ashamed to call myself a journalist.
Hit the Register Link to read it all.
“There’s no reason why technologically we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way,” Obama said. “Japan does it and France does it and it doesn’t have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way.”
You forgot to add $6 billion for scaring the crap out of people on Long Island. They built a nuclear plant but refused to use it because of TMI and their lack of an evacuation route.
So this is yet another thing Obama is wrong about.
The most toxic part of that stew is benzo-A-pyrene. One of the very few PROVEN causes of cancer.
Not to worry burning any oil product releases LOTS of it...
There is no difference in radiation of a nuclear warhead or nuclear fuel. Gamma ray is gamma ray, beta ray is beta ray and alpha ray is alpha ray. The most significant difference is: Less mass means less radiation, more mass means more radiation. Don’t forget nuclear power is the strongest power we know.
Radiation levels in the air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is true on Bomba!
A couple billion is needed for a new one so a billion is not bad in perspective. A normal shut down would be expensive too but that's the way it is getting free heat from neutrons.
Nicely done.
They really tried to sign me up for that. Not sad I didn’t do it, but somewhat wish I had. Does that make any sense?
I do have enough of a background to more than somewhat follow what is happening. Most of the reporting and hysteria is just sad. Especially that here at FR.
Just to make sure, it is your contention that a 3 month old nuclear power plant that basically melted is a success story?
No, nuclear is a success story and the plant that melted is only a small dent in that overall success.
So how many people are dead?
With respect to the nuclear plants, I heard that two died from accidents during the quake - so far non from radiation exposure. There are reports of less than a dozen workers getting excess exposure, and those individuals have been moved off the site, but nothing over the 100mSv level. They raised the level to 250mSv, so it may take awhile to get more reports.
I hope to hell that they take a moment to condemn one Michio Kaku, the formerly well-respected physicist, who poured gasoline on the raging fire of hysteria this week.
Even tonight, he was on CNN with Piers Morgan, breathlessly declaring that Fukushima is almost on a par with Chernobyl. I was a big fan of his, until now. He's proved himself to be a complete fraud, in my opinion, and nothing more than a worthless media creature.
Give him a minute, would'ya? Let the man finish his waffle. He'll get right on it. /s
I'm sorry, Mom. Couldn't help myself.
The size of the generators used for this sort of job is huge. 1 MW generator for this job would weigh about 100 tons or more.
There’s only a few planes in the world that can fly that type of weight around the world.
Now, there’s one more wrinkle that might have made a difference: I think TEPCO’s system runs on 50Hz, not 60Hz. To my knowledge (and I could very well be wrong, since I’m recalling this from a conversation with a Japanese engineer when I visited Japan in the 90’s, and he mentioned this as an aside, not a detailed conversation), Japan is the only modern country that has two power frequencies in their grid.
This could limit the availability of generators out there in industry that are “ready to go” and be dropped into their application.
This, BTW, is part of what is likely leading to their rolling blackouts to conserve power. The western region of the country cannot wheel power into the eastern shore grid around Tokyo without frequency conversion.
Instead of disappointment we should realize that we may end up with the upper-hand on this if we approach it with intelligence. This was not just one reactor but how many? six? And with no electricity these guys kept these reactors relatively under control.
Up to now the anti-nukes have nothing. This could end up making nuclear power look even better. The plants shut down it was a major Tsunami which followed a 9.0 earthquake that destroyed the emergency generators. The chances of this happening again are very low. Much has been learned from this experience so far and the lessons do not yet benefit the anti-nuke crowd. Yes, they can say we want to evaluate ours to be sure nothing like this can happen but their conclusions could in no way be in their benefit and be believable.
This situation is even more clean than the BP crisis.
I am assuming that all will only get better from now in Japan.
I used the adventure as a intelligence gathering tool, I saw first hand certain attacks upon FR of what I would say are groups with an agenda of internet pacification.
Now should an event occur of a simultaneous attack upon several dozen nuclear powerplants in America were to happen I have a better handle on identifying how they will flood FR to keep for the best description of “Keeping us in the dark”.
The next Moslem attack may be just pure simple kamikaze runs such as an airliner into a cooling tower, a ship with explosives near the cooling waters, or something as ingenious as an air cannon or trebuchet with explosives.
Get a dozen plants all saying “no damage” and then you get one group on one side egging on panic for sensationalism (MSM) and other groups that wants everybody to ignore it, take your sleepy pills and go back to bed.
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