Posted on 11/08/2013 1:57:13 PM PST by Errant
Scientists Warn of Extreme Risk
We’ve long said that the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima.
The Japanese nuclear agency recently green-lighted the removal of the spent fuel rods from Fukushima reactor 4′s spent fuel pool. The operation is scheduled to begin this month.
The head of the U.S. Department of Energy correctly notes:
"The success of the cleanup also has global significance. So we all have a direct interest in seeing that the next steps are taken well, efficiently and safely."
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Agreed.
Oh' please....stop the fear mongering...
When Chernobyl melted down... did they evacuate all of Europe...
Sounds like a suicide mission. One false move; one dropped rod; and these crews are goners...
“Award-winning scientist David Suzuki says that Fukushima is terrifying, Tepco and the Japanese government are lying through their teeth, and Fukushima is “the most terrifying situation I can imagine”.”
Environmentalist fear mongering nut job.
Chernobyl didn't have nearly the amount of fissionable material that exists at Fukushima. The size of any area of evacuation will depend on the amount of material released and direction of the wind.
I know...Fukushima is a much large "potential" problem than Chernobyl
Japan is 5,500 miles from California....I seriously doubt enough radiation will blow across in high enough concentrations to warrant an west coast evacuation...
But buy stock in iodine pills../S
While I agree with your sentiment on this silly comparison, you are way off on your number of Soviet ICBMs--
While a nuclear war in the Fall of 1962 would have been a catastrophe, especially to me and my family living in Houston, Texas, at the time. It would have not been a world ending event as Khrushchev had nowhere near 1,000 nuclear tipped rockets able to reach the US from Mother Russia. The correct number has been reported as from none to less than two dozen on operational status, ready to launch in that 1962 time frame.
Those intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Cuba and the few Soviet sub IRBMs available could have given us a hard knock in the opening attack, but not one that would have destroyed us completely. Far from it, the counterattack by US ICBMs, Polaris Missiles from US subs, our IRBMs in the Western Europe/Turkey area and our massive B-52 SAC strike force would have leveled the Soviet Union's capacity to wage war within 48 hours.
Kennedy knew this and so did those in the Kremlin. That is why it eventually went our way. In the bottom line results, we has the stronger military/nuclear strike position and there were sane people at the top of both governments those days--
And THAT is not something we cannot say today--
Hope you're right and also that these rods are safely removed. If they go up, the radiation will be emitted for years. While the concentration initially might not be that bad for the western US, over time radiation will accumulate across the entire US and could build to unsafe levels.
Iodine pills are useless for old farts like us. Save 'em for your grandkids if these pools go up, and then they can only be safely used for a week or two. After that, I don't know what can be done to keep the thyroids of the young saturated with iodine.
Another issue would be our food supply over time. Maybe we can import most from the southern hemisphere after long term supplies are exhausted. But I guess this all comes under "fear mongering" and not "what if"...
Ya might wanna proofread before ya post.
Fissionable material is of no concern. It takes high energy neutrons to induce fission in fissionable material, and you could probably count on one finger the fast neutron flux present in a SFP. Thermal neutron fission is induced in fissile nuclei.
Too bad the Fukushima planners didn’t consider “what if” we get a monster tsunami. If they had, maybe I could still find Alaskan salmon instead of only the Atlantic farm-raised stuff on local grocery shelves. The planners probably figured consideration of monster tsunamis would get them fired or at least snickered at as being fear mongers.
All this because some stupid engineers didn’t place the emergency generators on high ground, allowing for a controlled shutdown.
Same story in NOLA, as Katrina flooded out the generators needed to power the emergency pumps
All this because some stupid engineers didn’t place the emergency generators on high ground, allowing for a controlled shutdown.
Same story in NOLA, as Katrina flooded out the generators needed to power the emergency pumps
LOL! That's what I was trying to get across to someone on another thread about thorium reactors.
SHHHH!!!! Stop that!!! We've got too many f***ers from LA headed this way as it is!!!
One could argue the Soviets won.
We did pull our missiles from Turkey.
Yep, very familiar with that, and some other issues. I wrote an app to track some of the FEMA funding of the response outside NOLA proper, and had the honor to meet some of the folks in charge and hear a few stories of what went down.
They did plan for a 6 meter monster tsunami. They built a 10 meter tall sea wall. Then they got a ginormous über-monster 13 meter wave, far bigger than their largest “realistic” estimate of what could happen.
In hindsight, even worse than miscalculating the size of a possible tsunami, was the placing of reactors in such close proximity to one another where a strong release of radiation by one could contaminate the entire site. Then it’s only a matter of time before others start to go due their operating personnel being driven away by the radiation.
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