Posted on 02/08/2017 5:55:27 PM PST by Tours
Radiation inside one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to experts. Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year that “it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks“. And now we have just learned that the radiation level inside reactor 2 is so high that no human could possibly survive being exposed to it.
According to the Japan Times, the level of radiation inside the containment vessel of reactor 2 is now estimated to be “530 sieverts per hour”…
The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.
Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.
The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.
It is hard to find the words to convey how serious this is.
If you were exposed to a radiation level of just 10 sieverts per hour, that would mean almost certain death. So 530 sieverts per hour is simply off the charts. According to the Guardian, this recent measurement is being described by scientists as “unimaginable”…
The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.
A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.
And the really bad news is that there appears to be a 2 meter hole that was created by melted nuclear fuel “in the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactor’s primary containment vessel”. The following comes from Bloomberg…
New photographs show what may be melted nuclear fuel sitting under one of Japan’s wrecked Fukushima reactors, a potential milestone in the search and retrieval of the fuel almost six years after it was lost in one of the worst atomic disasters in history.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest utility, released images on Monday showing a grate under the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor covered in black residue. The company, better known as Tepco, may send in a scorpion-like robot as soon as February to determine the temperature and radioactivity of the residue.
If that isn’t frightening enough, one Japanese news source is reporting that this melted nuclear fuel “has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side”…
The melted fuel has since come in contact with underground water flowing from the mountain side, generating radioactively contaminated water every day. In order to dismantle the reactor, it is necessary to take out the melted fuel, but high radiation levels inside the reactor had hampered work to locate the melted debris.
If this disaster was just limited to Japan, the entire northern hemisphere would not be at risk.
But that is not the case.
Most of the nuclear contamination from Fukushima ended up in the Pacific Ocean, and from there it was literally taken around the rest of the planet. The following was reported by PBS…
More than 80 percent of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Of this, a small fraction is currently on the seafloor — the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio current, a western Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea where it mixed with (and was diluted by) the vast volume of the North Pacific.
We don’t know if there is a connection, but it is extremely interesting to note that fisheries up and down the west coast of the United States are failing because of a dramatic decrease in fish populations. Just check out the following excerpt from a story that was posted on January 18th…
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker today determined there are commercial fishery failures for nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington.
In recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass or loss of access due to unusual ocean and climate conditions. This decision enables fishing communities to seek disaster relief assistance from Congress.
Things are particularly bad up in Alaska, and biologists are “stumped” as to why this could be happening…
In 2016, the pink salmon harvests in Kodiak, Prince William Sounds, Chignik and lower Cook Inlet came in woefully under forecast and stumped biologists as to why.
The estimated value of Kodiak’s 2016 haul was $2.21 million, compared to a five-year average of $14.64 million, and in Prince William Sound the ex-vessel value was $6.6 million, far less that the $44 million five-year average. The total state harvest was the smallest since the late 1970s.
Although state biologists weren’t ready to declare a cause for the poor pink salmon performance, the Commerce Department press release attributed the disasters to “unusual ocean and climate conditions.”
Further south, it was being reported last month that millions of dead sardines are washing up on the shores of Chile.
I could go on and on with a lot more examples like this, but hopefully you get the point.
Something really strange is happening in the Pacific, and a lot of people believe that there is a link to Fukushima.
Not too long ago, I wrote about how the elite of Silicon Valley are “feverishly prepping“, but the truth is that all of us should be. If you need some tips on how to get started, you can find my prepping book right here. Our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster is just one piece of the puzzle.
But it is definitely a very important piece. The nuclear material from Fukushima is continuously entering the food chain, and once that nuclear material gets into our bodies it will slowly irradiate our organs for years to come. The following is an excerpt from an absolutely outstanding opinion piece by Helen Caldicott that was published in the Guardian…
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
Are you starting to understand the gravity of the situation?
Sadly, this crisis is going to be with us for a very, very long time.
According to Bloomberg, they are not even going to start removing melted nuclear fuel from these reactors until 2021, and it is being projected that the overall cleanup “may take as long as 40 years”…
Decommissioning the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($70.4 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Removing the fuel is one of the most important steps in a cleanup that may take as long as 40 years.
The unprecedented nature of the Fukushima disaster means that Tepco is pinning its efforts on technology not yet invented to get the melted fuel out of the reactors.
The company aims to decide on a fuel removal procedure for the first reactor during the fiscal year ending March 2019, and to begin removing fuel in 2021.
A lot of people that end up dying as a result of this crisis may never even know that it was Fukushima that caused their deaths.
Personally, I am convinced that this is the greatest environmental crisis that humanity has ever experienced, and if the latest reading from reactor 2 is any indication, things just took a very serious turn for the worse.
Is that real from the deep or a Ghost Adventures photo-shopped deal?
It is not a plot of radionuclide dispersion. That is a plot of the maximum tsunami wave height predicted by a NOAA model. It has been passed off by purveyors of FUD as a plot of “contamination” for years now on the internet.
That is a plot of the results of a theoretical model of maximum tsunami wave amplitude and has nothing to do with radionuclide concentration.
Oh, where’s the plot for the radioactive ocean?
The cleanout of the core debris from the TMI-2 RPV presented similar challenges. It took some time (a few years) to work out the details of the approach, but eventually the job was done.
oops. :D
This article is just rife with FUD. Saying 530 Sv/hr is “unimaginable” or “off the charts” is pure bunk. Hell, I worked with 60Co sources that produced exposures in the megarad-tissue per hour range all the time. When PIE studies were done of prototype fuel assemblies for the Navy and commercial firms at Idaho Lab and other places (e.g., Battelle Labs) the exposure rates were in the tens of millions of rem per hour on contact. Hardly “unimaginable”. Sure, you had to take precautions, but you have to do the same thing with materials you work with every day. Only when fear and ignorance are the drivers do you have “unimaginable” situations.
I thought it was something like 5 rem. We were measuring double digit milli rem per hour in workspaces. It has been 35 years so those details are fading a bit.
That is certainly the first limiting factor.
I expect that a number of ingenious techniques are being developed for making rad-hardened control components and cabling.
The second limiting factor will be ordinary mechanical wear and tear on the machines.
I am supposing that they will be too expensive to be sent into hot zones for only one use. We are talking about heavy equipment that will be used to move tons of hot wreckage to disposal centers.
The machines will need to be designed for maintenance and repair by remote controlled units rather than human mechanics. Critical parts must be field-replaceable without a human touch.
The third limiting factor will be the destructive effect of hard radiation on mechanical working surfaces. I would agree with you that this won't be of immediate concern to the equipment design engineers.
I may be overly pessimistic about the need for long-lived and field-repairable equipment ("untouched by human hands"). I am supposing that the contaminated site is too unstable to ever be sealed and will need to be excavated and transported somewhere else.
Preferably a desert area that is likely to remain so for geologic time periods.
I have seen a number of possibilities floated but nothing long-term has been decided yet. Certainly geologic disposal is a possibility.
“Absolutely fried with radiation”
But the writer conveniently neglects to include any before and after radiation levels from the “frying” California coast.
So, a worthless article.
I’m thinking there is a lot of Exaggeration and dare I say inaccuracy with the levels of Radiation in this article. For the most part, ... I venture to say.... there isn’t an instrument on the planet that can measure these (mentioned Rad) levels with any kind of accuracy. As for the math problem and extrapolation(s) there are factors that are not consistent and yet cannot be ignored. Conditions for Sky Shine are not always predictable, and Ionizing Radiation interacts in various ways with differing results (buildup, etc.,) to attenuation by differing natural materials.
I agree at Fukushima, some localized...Rad levels are lethal, -however to project such Grave Danger conditions to Spikes of Unimaginable Levels to the Northern Hemisphere, - is reminiscent of the Connie days at TMI. BTW, With those levels, the electronics integrity in any Robotics, or drone device(s), would be let us say ? somewhat ..... unstable.
Counterpoint: http://blog.safecast.org/2017/02/no-radiation-levels-at-fukushima-daiichi-are-not-rising/
“Safecast” is grassroots radiation monitoring project...their “DIY” geiger counter to use for project data is a bit pricey at $600.: https://shop.kithub.cc/products/safecast-bgeigie-nano
Smallest pink salmon harvest since 2006: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/fishing/PDFs/commercial/southeast/2017_se_pink_salmon_harvest_forecast.pdf Also the biologists in the writeup do not seem stumped.
Half-lives are not our friends...this problem will be here long after we're gone...
The problem with that is they're having to keep the cores cool by keeping them covered with water which adds to the amount & the amount being released.
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