Posted on 04/11/2011 1:30:40 PM PDT by TennesseeProfessor
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.
According to an evaluation by the INES, level 7 accidents correspond with a release into the external environment radioactive materials equal to more than tens of thousands terabecquerels of radioactive iodine 131. One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.
Haruki Madarame, chairman of the commission, which is a government panel, said it has estimated that the release of 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour continued for several hours.
The commission says the release has since come down to under 1 terabecquerel per hour and said that it is still examining the total amount of radioactive materials released.
The commission also released a preliminary calculation for the cumulative amount of external exposure to radiation, saying it exceeded the yearly limit of 1 millisieverts in areas extending more than 60 kilometers to the northwest of the plant and about 40 km to the south-southwest of the plant.
It encompasses the cities of Fukushima, Date, Soma, Minamisoma, and Iwaki, which are all in Fukushima Prefecture, and some areas including the town of Hirono in the prefecture.
Within a 20-km exclusion zone set by the government, the amount varied from under 1 millisieverts to 100 millisieverts or more, and in the 20-30 km radius ring where residents are asked to stay indoors, it came to under 50 millisieverts.
The commission used the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information to calculate the spread of radiation.
A perfect 10!
More fear mongering, everything is just fine. (sarc)
I’d guess at this point, the Japanese people have likely lost whatever trust they had with their government. Seems to be a trend.
Fukushima evacuation zone expanded
And the total radiation exposure over time to the land apes is not looking good.
S T O P ~ L Y I N" ~ T O ~ U S ! !
What happened to six??????
It’s been a six but they didn’t want to admit it.
terabecquerels is that like a pterodactyl???
10000 TBq is 270,270 curies. Per hour.
If that is correct, then this accident is SEVERAL orders of magnitude worse than originally reported.
We don’t even have many of the kind of hand-held instruments you’d need for that sort of radiation field. GM tubes are useless at that range. You’d need something from the Cold War like the CDV-715.
I can’t even compute in my mind how far the hot zone (2 Mr line) would extend from that if it were a point source. I guess we’d have to operate from Okinawa.
Incidently, we 15 days from the 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl: April 26, 1986.
15 days and counting...
The meaning of the word Chernoybl needs to be posted in a Christian Forum on Freerepublic.com, as 2000 years ago there was not word for radiation or radiation poisoning.
The English meaning of Chernobyl (mugroot or wild wormwood) is short of found in the last book of the Bible. And it is about a form of poisoning (making things bitter).
and yet many here called everything under the sun when we knew the japanese were lying through their teeth about the danger level.
Not surprised. The lid probably came off when those behind the scenes started leaking the truth and were seen leaving on extended vacations.
The long term implications depend greatly on the isotopes involved. Iodine 131 decays very rapidly. It has a very high specific activity, which means it is extremely radioactive, but that also gives it a short half-life of just over 8 days.
As a function of math, on day 72 the radiation is 1/512 that it was on day 1. But, if it is a heavier isotope, like Cesium 137 or Strontium 90, then the half-life is 37 years or 29 years, respectively. It will hang around the environment a lot longer. Plus, Sr-90 is a ‘bone-seeker’. Its chemistry mimics that of calcium (it’s right under Ca in the periodic table). The body doesn’t distinguish between them.
Cesium is like sodium. The body will eventually excrete it but it takes a long time. Meanwhile, it is radiating tissues. Sometimes it can be help along by administration of Prussian Blue but still very bad nonetheless.
Hey, RC,—looks like you and I were right, and all the “experts” were wrong!
I just want to know if the Japanese have finally dropped their damned “we can do it all ourselves” mentality on this and finally accepted the offered international aid? If they are still being stubborn as always, then they can raise the INES level to 700 and it won’t make things any better.
1. The government of Japan does not evaluate or set the INES level. That is done by the IAEA. They have as much authority to change the INES level as Greenpeace does.
2. The accident doesn’t rise to the severity of a Level 7 event:
“Major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures”
The only event that rose to this level was Chernobyl, which had 56 immediate radiation deaths and maybe as many as 4000 additional deaths from the delayed affects of cancer.
3. A becquerel (Bq) is the activity of ONE decaying nucleus per second. It is an extremely tiny amount. A terabecquerel is 1,000,000,000,000 Bq. Sounds like a big number, huh? Well an 8oz cup of water contains 7,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules.
4. There was one Level 6 event in history - in 1957, a Soviet nuclear waste processing facility exploded and release 70 tons of radioactive material into the environment.
= = =
At present, the Fukushima event has produced ZERO immediate deaths from radiation and the largest dose received by anyone is well under 25 rem (which may increase an individuals rate of cancer by 2%). The amount of radioactivity released is way less than what would happen in either a Level 6 or 7 event.
Question for more knowledgeable FReepers - I saw where there is virtually an island size mass of junk from stuff washed out to sea from the tsunami that’s floating towards our west coast. My question is what is the likelihood that the island size mass of junk includes some level of radioactivity from portions of the nuclear plant that washed washed away by the tsunami? Is that a possible concern?
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