back to article Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

The situation at the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan was brought under control days ago. It remains the case as this is written that there have been no measurable radiological health consequences among workers at the plant or anybody else, and all indications are that this will remain …

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      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Pirate

        "The total dose taken by these men at the feet-level was 5-6 Sievert!"

        Sounds like a case for amputation to me.

        I still would like to know where that number is coming from though. The NYT?

        1. Guido Brunetti
          Alert

          Source

          OK, let's do the math.

          Here is the measurements of radiation in the water sample taken, according to Tepco:

          http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032503-e.html

          The dominant radiation comes from Ce144 with 2.2 million decays per second per cm³. This emits a (rather weak) electron (beta decay) on its way to Pr144. That element has a half life in the seconds range and thus goes almost immediately into another beta decay to Nd144, this time with a very strong output (~ 3 MeV), which gives it a high penetration range (> 1 cm in water/tissue, up to 15m in air).

          Organ exposures and effective exposures are both measured in Sievert. As I said, the total dose

          was significantly less, "more than 170 mSv", according to Tepco, but since most of that dose occured at the feet through direct contact with the contaminated water, it creates an organ equivalent dose well in the single digit Sievert range. These workers may or may not get radiation sickness, but their cancer risk is already orders of magnitude raised.

          BTW: The existence of relatively large amounts of Ce144 in the water confirms a significant core meltdown. One cm³ (!) of that water can contaminate a thousand litres of ground water with over 22.000 Bq/kg, which is way over any safety limit. And with a half-life of 284 days that problem will stay for a while.

          1. Chris Miller

            @Guido: "their cancer risk is already orders of magnitude raised"

            Given that the lifetime cancer risk for a normal, healthy human is ~25%, please explain how it can be increased by two orders of magnitude.

            1. Andydaws

              Presumably,

              they'll die several times over...

          2. Andydaws

            I think you've misread the powers of ten

            Iodine 131 - 1.2 x 10^6

            Caesium 134 - 1.8 x 10^5

            Caesium 137 - 1.8 x 10^ 5

            Cerium 144 - 2.2 x 10^5

            Ignoring the others (they're all an order of magnitude lower) gives Ce 144 contributing about 12%. Iodine 131 contributes 67%.

        2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Pint

          NYT fail: The IAEA still can't find an integer Sv value.

          Updates of 26 March 2011:

          http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

          "We understand that a total of 17 TEPCO workers and contractors have received doses between 100 and 180 millisievert. TEPCO measured the dose rate of 400 millisievert per hour above the surface of the water in the Unit 3 turbine building where 2 workers had been contaminated."

          There is leeway in that statement for hiding a couple of workers having been hit with 5 Sv, but still...

      2. K. Adams
        Boffin

        @Guido Brunetti: Wrong base? Maybe, but who knows for sure?

        Well, the news reports that I have read have neglected to say anything even close to "10,000 times the normal level for X" where "X" is the qualifying phrase (i.e., "water in the cooling loop", "spilled water within the containment building", etc.).

        They just say "10,000 times normal" and stop there.

        As for the workers hospitalised by stepping into a pool/basin of radioactive water, I can grant that the level of radioactivity of the water in that pool may have been very high; enough to cause some radiation sickness, in fact.

        However, I have not read any news report to this point that defines what "normal" is, so one must presume "normal" equates to "natural background radiation".

        In my mind, "normal" most certainly does NOT equate with "contaminated water lying about a damaged nuclear reactor containment building".

        So, even if the "normal" background radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant (when undamaged) is twice the average found elsewhere on Earth, a person would still need to be exposed for almost 2 straight days to reach the 0.250 Sievert threshold, if radiation at that particular location was at a level 10,000 times "normal".

      3. Andydaws

        It's hard to make a call on the significance of the doses recieved.

        Sievert-range doses aren't good news for anyone, but it's hard to honestly make a call on this.

        Where there's a discussion of mortality levels with multi-Sv doses, that's on a "whole body" basis, which can compormise the more sensitive organs.

        However, doses in the tens of Sievert ranges, albeit spread over several treatment sessions are routine in medial radiotherapy. The usual limit is a total 20Sv for exposure to healthy tissue in the area of tumours undergoing radiation therapy, with the maximum allowed in normal practice at 1.5Sv/day. .

    1. Andydaws

      yes we do.

      "The problem is that we don't know exactly where these "10,000 times the normal level" measurements were taken"

      yes, we do - in a pool in the reactor basement.

  1. DN4

    Health consequences

    Unfortunately, widespread health problems are already unavoidable whether anyone receives any measurable radiation dose or not. Auto-suggestion can cause them equally well as actual radiation.

    1. Andydaws

      Well, most radiotherapy subjects seem fine...

      And FWIW, the three contaminated workers have been released from hospital. They'll continue to be monitored, but aren't under treatment.

  2. veskebjorn

    A little science might be a useful corrective here

    1.) The burns suffered by the three workers have been ascribed to beta radiation. Radioactivity comes in three forms: alpha, which is essentially helium nuclei and has a hard time penetrating paper; beta, which is high-energy electrons and is much more dangerous; and gamma, which is the most energetic electromagnetic radiation, and requires lots of shielding to be dangerous.

    Point is, the burns were in fact caused by nuclear radiation.

    2.) No scientist claims to know exactly what the consequences are of almost any sort of exposure to almost any sort of radiation. The reason for this ignorance is that ethics prohibit using humans as test subjects. The only four large-scale experiments--Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island--are inclusive, except that it is scientifically clear that all man-made radiation adds risk. All the rest of this talk about milli-sieverts is little more than ignorant arm waving.

    3.) The earthquake in Japan occurred at about 7 a.m., London time, on March 11. It is now 14 days later, and increasing quantities of the iodine 131 isotope are being detected in groundwater. The significance of this development lies in the facts that the half-life of this iodine is only 8 days, and the iodine is only produced by fission. The most reasonable conjecture is that fission is still occurring in one or more "shut down" reactors and finding its way out of the containment vessel(s) and into the groundwater. As iodine 131 is a weak beta emitter, the beta radiation that burned the workers suggests there's a heck of a lot of it inside the reactor buildings.

    1. Andydaws

      " The most reasonable conjecture is..."

      No, the reasonable conlusion is that iodine produced earlier is being either vented (with steam), or more likely (in the case of the seawater samples) had been washed down by the various spraying activiites is finding it's way via the rainwater drain system (which isn't treated as active) at the plant.

      I suspect you've not much background in matters nuclear, but there'd be a lot of clues were there ongoing criticality - heat production a couple of orders of magnitude than that observed anywhere, intense neutron fluxes and so on. Not easy to miss.

      1. veskebjorn
        Thumb Down

        "Not easy to miss"

        1.) Iodine 131 is being detected now in ground water as far away as Tokyo (approx. 130 miles or 205 km). Levels of this isotope have increased in the ground water near the damaged Fukashima plant. This isotope is produced by nuclear fission; it is not the decay product of some other isotope (in the context of Fukashima). The half-life of this isotope is almost exactly 8 days, which implies (among other things) either that an extraordinary amount of iodine 131 was produced early on and not detected or that some continuing process is at work. The only credible process for producing iodine 131 in the context of Fukashima is nuclear fission.

        The assertion that the iodine 131 was "produced earlier" has implications that do not seem to be supported by the facts. Since 131 is produced only by active fission, it then follows that all of the 131 had been produced by fission BEFORE the Fukashima Daaichi reactors were shut down. If one can give credence to the claims of the operator, this shut down occurred on March 11. The assertion that 131 was "produced earlier" implies that the increasing levels of 131 in the groundwater--when simple physics says a short-lived isotope concentration should be decreasing rapidly--result from some hitherto unknown mechanism whereby a radioactive isotope can elude the most careful testing, be stored in some unknown location, and make its way into the groundwater by some unknown route.

        The amount of 131 in the atmospheric emissions of Daaichi has been and is being measured and is less than the amount of 131 in the groundwater. It could be that "the various spraying activities" [to try to cool reactor cores and irradiated fuel rod pools] are picking up 131 and dumping it into groundwater--but the isotope being picked up is highly likely to be the result of some continuing nuclear fission somewhere. Absent continuing fission, the groundwater should be showing a decrease in 131 levels, such that every day the amount of iodine 131 decreased by 12 percent. Painstaking and continuing tests do not show this decrease.

        2.) With respect to Mr. Daws' "intense neutron fluxes," he appears to be ill-informed. The English-language edition of the Kyodo News (along with hundreds of other sources) said on March 25: "Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster." Extraordinary thermal excursions have occurred on dozens (scores?) of occasions

        As Mr. Daws says, "not easy to miss," unless you don't want to see it;.

        1. Andydaws

          Oh, dear....

          Except, of course, that we know that there's been steam venting in the earlier days post -tsunami - that's how surplus heat is removed from a BWR core. We also know, (from the general levels of radiation around the plant) that that was contaminated with i131.

          Now, Iodine is fairly volatile, i.e. it's gaseous at even relatively low temperatures. It even sublimes, once condensed. Didn't you ever do those experiments at school?

          Which means it tends to get blown around. And which means that there's been plenty to condense, and find it's way into things like the rainwater drains on the plant (or further aflield). And, of course, it's decaying all the time.

          Local concentrations mean little, in a case like this.

          As to neutron fluxes, the numbers tell the tale. As reported by the BBC's Richard Black:

          "Perhaps the most tantalising is a report by Kyodo News, Japan's principal news agency, to the effect that neutron radiation was observed more than a kilometre from reactor buildings 1 and 2....

          ...The neutron flux outlined by Kyodo - 0.02 microsieverts per hour - is within levels that are observed naturally in some locations - which raises the question of why it became an issue in conversations between reporters and Tepco representatives in Tokyo."

          So, neutron emissions at a range that're routinely observed naturally. An issue that seems to have arisen because TEPCO are publishing exhaustive listings of observations from their monitoring sites, get's blown up into a conspiracy theory about ongoing criticality. And it get's picked up by f**kwits who've never previously bothered to learn anything in this area.

          I'll point out one thing, btw. At a kilometre from an operating reactor, you'd not detect an observable neutron flus, even at full power.

      2. Mikel

        The bar is ongoing criticality now?

        A criticality accident rarely occupies more than a few seconds.

        Some background, and this is going to be a vast oversimplification:

        Almost all atoms split, but generally heavier atoms split faster. We don't know if any one atom will survive forever or not, but the average time it will take an atom to split is called its half-life. When a heavy atom splits, it gives up heat and becomes two or more atoms - usually losing some neutrons and electrons along the way. This is fission. The freed electrons become photons, which are heat and light. In atomic science the neutron is the heavy beast, containing far more mass than protons and vastly more than the third element of this trinity, electrons.

        Free Neutrons are the bowling ball of nuclear physics. If they happen to strike a heavy atom that's already teetering on the edge of splitting, it will split too, releasing more electrons and neutrons. This is called reaction, and the devices constructed to use this are called reactors. If it's freed in an area that's densely populated with heavy atoms like a nuclear fuel rod, this is more likely to occur. If you measure this scale on the number of neutrons freed for each free neutron, it's a scale that goes from zero to over ten. But there are some interesting nuclear effects as the number approaches one. At room temperature and one atmosphere of pressure though, even U235 is mostly vacuum and many freed neutrons can get away without amplifying the reaction.

        Masses where the average freed neutron will not collide with an atom and release more neutrons than you started with are "subcritical". Eventually their reactions will peter out. At exactly one on this scale, for every released neutron there is exactly one additional released neutron. This is called "critical" because at this point the reaction is self-sustaining until it runs out of big atoms. Since this happens at an atomic level, the reactions are very fast. Remember that in addition to the neutrons, they're also producing huge numbers of freed electrons, or heat. This is what make nuclear power work.

        Now, if power nuclear reactors required criticality they would be much more dangerous things than they are. By carefully spacing the masses of the heavy atoms and adding other elements that slow the reaction called moderators, the reactor can do its business of generating heat by approaching, but not quite reaching, criticality, and the timescales can be reduced to something that humans can deal with.

        If, however, the fuel melts and goes out of the operator's control then it can of course reach this critical mass as molten bits of fuel fuse to become the critical mass. The natural result is that the mass will get so hot that it will expand until the heavy atoms are so sparse that the reactivity falls again below one. This is called a criticality accident. When it happens the nuclear material typically becomes so hot that it expands until it's no longer critical. If in the process it becomes very hot it fuses with whatever mass is available and becomes diluted and is a new composition. This substance is called "corium".

        By measuring the specific types of radiation released the Japanese government has announced that at least 13 criticality accidents have occurred on this site since the Tsunami. If somebody's trying to tell you this isn't a big deal, they're lying. Criticality accidents are as big a deal as they get in civilian nuclear power.

        So why no boom?: There are elements like carbon, iron, boron and silicon that can absorb neutrons without splitting. They are reaction "poison". So containments are made of steel. Nuclear reactors are designed such that the corium if it occurs will alloy with these substances and damp the reaction. Also, the heat produced causes the radioactive materials to expand until they are not critical any more. Nuclear weapons lack these dampeners, and in addition are not only surrounded be reaction amplifiers (elements that give up more than one neutron per collision) but are surrouded by explosives that compress the reaction materials much closer together faster than they can expand through heat to trigger the explosion known as "supercriticality". This can't occur in nature.

        So ongoing criticality? No. There is no such thing in an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. It can't happen. But does that make this event less serious? No.

        1. Andydaws

          I started off that post vaguely optimistic

          And despair set in about 1/3rd of the way through...

          "This is called reaction" No, it's called fission.....

          "Now, if power nuclear reactors required criticality"...rest assured, they do indeed require criticality. A decent power reactor probably has the potential to get up to a criticality ratio of about 1.02 to 1.05 (i.e. for every neutron in one "generation", 1.02 to 1.05 will be produced in the next). THat's how reactors area able to ramp up to a given power level, of course. At normal operation, a reactor is just critical.

          "By carefully spacing the masses of the heavy atoms and adding other elements that slow the reaction called moderators,"

          No, moderators don't "slow the reaction". In power reactors, they make it possible. Atoms have differing propensity to absorb neutrons dependent on the energy - literally, spped - of the neutrons. Uranium (and plutonium) are a couple of orders of magnitiude more likely to absorb a neutron travelling at about 2200 m/s (the so-called "thermal" range) than they are one travelling at thousands of metres/second - the "fast" range. That's why "thermal" reactors - ones that have moderators, like graphite or water - can work at levels of enrichment much lower than "fast" reactors. Some thermal reactors can run with natural uranium, at just 0.7% of U235. LWRs like those at Fukushima (BWRs are one of the two types of LWR) need about 3% enrichment. A fast plant needs around 40% enrichment.

          "If, however, the fuel melts and goes out of the operator's control then it can of course reach this critical mass as molten bits of fuel fuse to become the critical mass"

          Well, no. Because you couldn't get fast criticality in thermal reactor fuel even if you tried. And since melted fuel can't contain water (there's a small temperature issue...), it can't embed moderator in anything like sufficient proportions for thermal criticality.

          You're confusing decay heat, from things like beta decay of fission products, with ongoing fission.

          "By measuring the specific types of radiation released the Japanese government has announced that at least 13 criticality accidents have occurred on this site since the Tsunami. "

          No - Tepco announced that it'd pobserved neutrons being emitted on 13 occasions, through it's monitoring sites throughout the exclusion zone. In no case did that amount to a flux in the order of more than 1/10th of a microsievert - all within natural levels.

          "There are elements like carbon, iron, boron and silicon that can absorb neutrons without splitting."

          Carbon can absorb neutrons? That's news to me - it's odd, then, that I spent a couple of years building a couple of thousand tonnes of it into the core of Heysham II and torness - to act as moderator. And, unsurprisingly, one of the things you look for in a good moderator is very limited absorbtion of neutrons. You want it to bounce the neutrons off, and absord kinetic energy, to slow them (once again) to the thermal range.

          "So containments are made of steel."

          No, reactor vessels are made of steel because it's strong, and if you pick the right allow, it doesn't embrittle. And containments are more usually made of prestressed concrete than steel - BWRs are unusual in using steel. And back again to Heysham and Torness - the pressure vessel wasn't steel, other than a thin lining. There, the pressure vessel itself is prestressed concrete.

          "Nuclear weapons lack these dampeners, and in addition are not only surrounded be reaction amplifiers (elements that give up more than one neutron per collision"

          Those are "reflectors", not "amplifiers. And go look at a schematic of a BWR internals, particularly one of the later models. You'll see a large steel sleeve surrounding the core (open at top and bottom). That has two purposes - it helps manage the water flow, and acts as a neutron reflector, improving neutron economy in the core.

    2. Will 30
      Stop

      Not so...

      Umpteen people are exposed to high levels of radiation as part of cancer treatment, and lower levels for medical imaging. It's just not true to say that, in general, there's little known about the effects of exposure.

      The few significant leaks of fission products that have occurred have been studied to hell and back. Of course, medical science is a young, imprecise profession with a much shallower understanding of its domain than we'd all like, but that applies across the board, not just to radiation.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      FAIL

      Half-life, we don' need no steenkin' half-life

      "3.) The earthquake in Japan occurred at about 7 a.m., London time, on March 11. It is now 14 days later, and increasing quantities of the iodine 131 isotope are being detected in groundwater. The significance of this development lies in the facts that the half-life of this iodine is only 8 days, and the iodine is only produced by fission."

      Iodine 131 has a half-life of 8 days. Correct.

      There's is still some iodine 131 around after 14 days. Correct

      Your conclusion: It's still being produced.

      My conclusion: Half-live means half of it will be degraded in 8 days. After another 8 days, half of the remainder will be degraded too. After another 8 days, half of that will be degraded.

      The clue is in the "half" part of half-life.

      Getting back to the levels of radiation,it's worth bearing mind that many people in the the world, even in the UK, are living and working with far higher natural background radiation levels than the world average. Not sure if it's as much as "10,000 times" though

      http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733749409

      That map might explain a few things about the Welsh and Cornish folk :-)

  3. [Insert Title Here]
    Pint

    Go, Lewis!

    Me personally, I'm fecking amazed at all the nuclear doom-sayers. Can ye not all feck away off and join ranks with the flat-earthers and these who thought PARIS would burn up a-la-Icarus if she got too close to the sun? (You might need to rent a a mobile home to meet in...) Or perhaps, get a little education and develop the power of critical thought and analysis? It's not like we're asking you to develop the power to kill yaks, form 30 yards, with mind-bullets.

    Lewis, PM me your paypal addy and I'll actually transfer you some beer-funds, not just wish you some (You OK with Euros? Can do Sterling...). I personally would need a beer after reading a week or so of the bullshit comments on here. Mind you, kudos to all the folks here who don't subscribe to the FUD. I'd like to be able to buy you all a tasty beverage or three as well, you're equally deserving.

    I read the [shock! horror!] 'news' today courtesy of a number of 'news' outlets that a couple of sparks got irradiated. Whoopee-doo. Apparently they decided their dosimeters were malfunctioning and thus disregarded the warning (Darwin, come on down....). Coupled with that they had 'inadequately secured footwear' (WTF? sandals?) so standing in a puddle of contaminated water did get them a minor dose. Their skin is not peeling off. They don't even have a rash, apparently. A triumph for stupidity rather than for the nuclear doom-sayers?

    I really hope Lewis's articles serve a dual purpose for the good of mankind. A) Dispel FUD. B) So the delectable Ms Bee (we're not worthy, etc....) can compile a list of utter fucktards and ban them forever from this august forum so the rest of us can have a critical and reasoned debate, based on facts.

    I personally want a nuclear reactor right behind my house. Why? Main reason, I wouldn't have a NIMBY panic-merchant-daily-mail-reading-fuckwit living withing 30 miles of me, if they practice what they preach. Plus, cheap, clean, safe power...

    Keep her lit, Lewis. Intelligent minds care.... Beer because, by the Great Sky Fairy, you deserve a lot for putting up with the uninformed flak....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    L1ma

    The radioactive fallout is completely unpredicable in where and what dosage of radiation it will give you, the 3 workers who fell into this trap walked from a low dose area into a high one without knowing. One of the critical problems is that alpha radiation only penetrates 6cm through air, so hand held detectors and badges at chest hight will not pick up radiation from the ground level. Very little xray and gamma radiation producing isotopes have been released to mark out fallout deposits with the current lab equipment.

    Relying on the fact of radioactive decay of 6 hours for Iodine and 20 days for Caesium ignores the fact it will be continuously building up in the environment faster than it decays. Only rainfall and wind direction has saved this area from greater damage. But again dosage and deposits are cumulative, the worst of it however has been around the plant, but this area like Chernobyl will be abandoned, regardless of what Mr Page tries to rant on about the reality is totally different http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23948. There is a huge amount of fuel sintering away in those broken reactors, 170 tonnes in each.

    In some ways this is worse than Chernobyl, the local area is receiving more Caesium and Iodine in 4 days than was released in at Chernobyl in 10 and unlike in Russia which was in denial, the problem here is that millions who need to be evacuated have no place to go.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Pint

      I don't know why globalresearch should be taken seriously.

      They have weirdo things like affirmations that the polar ice caps are increasing and that the Lybian revolt has been fomented by the West to grab some oil. It's worser than El Reg.

    2. David Ward 1
      FAIL

      oh where to start with the fail in this comment!

      "One of the critical problems is that alpha radiation only penetrates 6cm through air, so hand held detectors and badges at chest hight will not pick up radiation from the ground level." - its also stopped by skin, or even paper, they may be in trouble if they were drinking it, however I guess you are in fact speculating that it is alpha radiation and that they are in more trouble because it is in fact beta and they decided to ignore their dosimeters.

      "Relying on the fact of radioactive decay of 6 hours for Iodine and 20 days for Caesium ignores the fact it will be continuously building up in the environment faster than it decays." ehm do you mean a half-life of 8 days for iodine by any chance? and if so it means wherever it is it will be half of the mass it is now in 8 days, which means it is NOT building up!

    3. Steve X

      Without knowing?

      So you missed the bit in the official report where it said they'd ignored the warnings from their dosimeters, which they assumed to be faulty? They knew, seems that they either were too daft to react, or (more likely in my view) none wanted to be the first one to run. Which is also daft.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    L1ma

    For my next post about the only thing to fear is fear itself, pro nuke lobby its all safe to live in my Radioactive rose garden Mr Page wishes to act as guinea pig and go to the plant, eat the radioactive vegetables; walk under the Fallout cloud, and drink the rain water around Fukushima be our guest in fact please go and take your children and experience first hand what my Aunt went through in 1957 after drinking contaminated milk from Windscale.

    Radiation sickness is the least of the problems exposure to radiation causes, cateracts, lymphonia, infertility, bowel and bladder cancer, brain tumors, melonomas are all common to those who were harmed during Windscale. Radiation gives a shortened, blighted lifespan, only the fact we have such good medical care mitigates this (NHS). If you wish to compare what is the real death and disease rate caused by radiation, go to Mururoa or the outback of Australia where the Natives were left to die from fallout without medical care.

    Do you remember the Curies, the first people to discover radon - Xrays, were also the fist Nobel prize winners to both have radiation poisoning, Marie Curie died from it -decades after exposure. Of course there is no absolute proof that radiation causes death or cancer, but there is also no proof of a real safe limit either - only one cell in a body has to mutate to cause a Tumour.

    Anyone who wishes to prove the nuclear case that it is safe to be around a melting nuclear reactor please book a ticket to Fukushima and become a Guinea pig, either proving your case or helping human evolution by reducing the number of idiots in the population.

    1. Chris Miller
      Thumb Down

      Enough!

      Look L1ma, we're all very sorry about your aunt, but I'd like to reassure our foreign readers that the northwest of England hasn't been subject to a mass outbreak of radiation poisoning. (I was five at the time of the Windscale fire and lived less than 80 miles SW of the site.. I've had 14 days off work in the last 38 years, so clearly exposure to radiation at an early age is good for you.</irony>)

      To be sure, exposure to massive levels of radiation (several Sv) can cause immediate illness and levels 1/10 of that *may* increase the risk of cancer by a few percent - but no-one who wasn't working at the plant got within several orders of magnitude of those doses as a result of the Sellafield/Windscale fire.

      The Curies exposed themselves to massive radiation doses in (completely understandable) ignorance of the health consequences. One of Mme Curie's notebooks is on display in Paris - it has to be kept behind lead glass, because it's too radioactive to meet modern safety standards for public exposure. It's true that: "only one cell in a body has to mutate to cause a Tumour", but you do realise that millions of such mutations are occurring in your body every day? The body has very effective methods for catching almost all of them, and preventing them from developing into cancer.

      1. Andydaws

        Chris Miller

        "(I was five at the time of the Windscale fire and lived less than 80 miles SW of the site.. "

        I was born four years later, and lived even closer......

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      ain't propaganda wonderful

      > only one cell in a body has to mutate to cause a Tumour.

      True enough. Of course cells mutate every day from causes that are unrelated to radiation. Almost all get repaired or dealt with by the body's own systems. Most of those that don't will never lead to cancer anyway. Note also that one of the largest sources of radiation-induced cell damage is the sun, but I'd be pretty pissed off if anyone suggested switching that off.

      I'm probably more at risk of reproductive cell damage from the laptop sitting on my lap a few cm from my balls than I am from Fukushima. For that matter I'm way closer to Chernobyl than I am to Japan.

      Still, don't let the facts get in the way of paranoia.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Remember the Curies

        "Do you remember the Curies, the first people to discover radon - Xrays, were also the fist Nobel prize winners to both have radiation poisoning, Marie Curie died from it -decades after exposure."

        And her husband Pierre was run over by a horse cart - further proof that radiation KILLS!

        Jokes aside, the Curies ground and sifted through tons of uranium ore by hand, without any protection. Marie was surrounded by highly active sources in her laboratory material for the rest of her life.

        Yes, Marie Curie died from radiation-induced bone marrow damage, but she was 66 when she died, which would very likely be above the average life expectancy of white females at that time.

  6. Guido Brunetti
    Coat

    This is what you call "under control"?!

    http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-66135.html

    Mine is the lead lined coat, btw.

  7. Jon Green
    Grenade

    Jog the bloody needle...PLEASE!

    I think you've done all you need to to troll the anti-nuclear contingent, Lewis. It's time to stand down and stop repeating yourself, because you're no longer adding any useful content.

  8. James Gibbons
    Flame

    Someone is talking bullshite here!

    Mr. Page: "Their personal dosimetry equipment later showed that they had sustained radiation doses up to 170 millisievert."

    IEEE Spectrum article: "The three TEPCO subcontractors were laying electrical cables in the basement of the turbine room behind the No. 3 reactor building when they stepped into water contaminated with radiation, and received doses of between 173 and 180 millisieverts."

    New York Times: "It said that the amount of radiation the workers are thought to have been exposed to in the water was 2 to 6 sievert."

    How could the NYT get it so wrong? If it was that high it is very serious. Beta burns are not similar to sun burns. Beta radiation goes much deeper into the tissue and can cause more damage, but the exact nature of damage depends on the type of emitter and we don't know the details yet.

    I'm willing to bet that the initial 170 mSv was based on their wearable detectors which were higher on the body and not near the water. The direct dose on their skin could be much higher by the factor reported in the NYT.

    My opinion is the manager who sent them into this area with boots that were too short should be fired. TEPCO's handling of this situation has been very poor from the start.

    Perhaps Mr. Lewis Page will finally have been shown to be a fool with this statement.

    1. Justin Forder

      IAEA reports the 2 to 6 sievert local exposure estimate

      http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

      in the update for 27 March 2011, 03:00 UTC:

      "For two of the three workers, significant skin contamination over their legs was confirmed. The Japanese authorities have stated that during medical examinations carried out at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture, the level of local exposure to the workers' legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts.

      While the patients did not require medical treatment, doctors decided to keep them in hospital and monitor their progress over coming days."

      Note that this is local exposure, not whole body exposure.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      iaea source

      from http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

      > the level of local exposure to the workers legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts.

      Please note that the iaea is obviously very pro atomic industry and having them publish such numbers is double memorable.

      Mr Page everyday tells us that the situation is perfectly under control, but every following day he gets proven to be wrong.

      PS: currently hear in official jap. gvt news that all workers have been removed from the plant again due to heavily exceeding radiation...

      Of course there was no nuclear explosion and the containments are still partly ok. But the existence of heavy radiation is a proof that a few of the containments are at least partly broken.

      If all works well, it will take a minimum of 3 months in total to really shut down all blocks.

      It could be worse, but lots of the surrounding square kms are not a picnic zone anymore, and wil not be for a long time. Take alone the real estate prices, the damage exceeds billions of $.

    3. Abremms

      re: bullshite

      I think we can be reasonably sure that the NYT numbers are exagerated. even if it was on the low end of 2sv, the workers would be in far FAR worse shape than burned leg and a 4day stint in the hospital for observation. they would be treated for severe radiation sickness and possibly die.

      if they took 6sv, they would already be dead.

  9. teslar_lu
    FAIL

    If you keep going on about facts, you gotta get them straight...

    The limit for radition workers is 50 milliSievert, not 500. A YEARLY dose of 100 milliSievert is linked to increased cancer risks, the effect is stronger if the radition is absorbed in a shorter time frame. So yeah, these workers are probably screwed.

    xkcd.com/radiation for a little chart.

    1. Abremms

      chart

      that chart is brilliant, but you have to remember, the workers aren't being exposed constantly, they work in shifts and avoid areas with higher radiation whenever possible. also, the 50msv is for non-emergency normal day to day operations. for lifesaving emergencies, the limit is 250msv, and when its downgraded to just saving the equipment it will be 100msv.

      100msv is the smallest amount of radiation linked to an increased risk of cancer, but its the smallest measurable increase to an already sizable risk. I doubt the workers are "screwed" since thier radiation intake is monitored and they are pulled when they hit 250msv, which none of them have so far. only 4 (?) have gone over 100msv.

  10. steve 124
    Flame

    seriously?

    Lewis,

    This article is as shameful as the complete blackout of real news about the reactor problems for the last week by mainstream media. They were downplaying the problem when there were 4 FOUR! reactors in danger of cascade failure and that was less than a week ago. Even if only one of those reactors leaks out cesium 139 in large amounts it will be disastrous to the world (not just Japan). The media were thanking God for the radiation blowing out to sea last week, but are you going to eat any pacific cod caught after last week? Take a look at some of the fish products in your kitchen (Starkist tuna for instance) and you'll get a quick idea of how much is caught in Asian countries fishing the pacific ocean and then shipped world-wide. The ocean feeds Asia and if they can't get that food where will it come from? Nay, I say this is still a very worrisome event and the fact that the catastrophe is happening in slow-motion doesn't make it any less deadly. I can't blame the Japanese government for blacking out the news (I mean, where are they going to evacuate the entire country's population?) but you really should look at the current maps of contamination from Chernobyl and see what kind of area one controlled meltdown can affect (after 30 years) before you start blowing your horn and declaring "mission accomplished" to the internet.

    I pray that this event does not continue to develop, but nuclear fuel is not a burning piece of coal that can be snuffed out... it lingers and burns for a very long time.

    1. [Insert Title Here]
      FAIL

      Pacific Cod? Yum

      @Steve 124.

      Yo, troll! If you don't bugger off back under the Misinformed Bridge, I'm gonna steal your spot.

      I quote you..."The media were thanking God for the radiation blowing out to sea last week, but are you going to eat any pacific cod caught after last week?"

      I suspect, like me and other informed minds, Lewis would chow down happily. Sorry about the Wikipedia reference, but it's actually factually correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_cod

      I'll quote the salient bit for you about Pacific Cod... "A bottom dweller, it is found mainly along the continental shelf and upper slopes with a range around the rim of the North Pacific Ocean, from the Yellow Sea to the Bering Strait, along the Aleutian Islands, and south to about Los Angeles, down to the depths of 900 meters."

      Wise up, muppet.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Linux

      I would hazard a guess...

      That fish will be far worse shape from the chemicals that have been washed off the heavily populated coastline by the tsunami than by the cesium.

      Hell, there whole reactors and open, bleeding nukes already in the Pacific. No-one actually cares.

      Penguin icon because in the end he's gonna get it in his fatty layer.

  11. Highlander

    Hmmm... let's see now....

    Can we sum this up easily yet?

    OK, here goes. 9.0 Earthquake hit's Japan. 12 meter Tsunami hit's north eastern cost of Honshu, more than 50 aftershocks of Magnitude 6 or greater. 3 aftershocks of magnitude 7 or greater.

    A nuclear power plant designed to withstand an earthquake two orders of magnitude smaller and a Tsumani approximately half the size of the monster that hit - surprisingly, survives intact. Local infrastructure is destroyed, reactors scram with the initial earthquake and emergency cooling begins. The damage caused by the Tsunami takes away external power and onsite emergency backup generators leaving the operators with nothing but batteries. Cooling continues until the batteries die.

    The rectors have scram'd so they are shutdown, but they must be physically cooled to cool down from their active state and to remove the excess head from the decay heat that is emitted while the fission products produced inside the reactor decay. This is mostly radio-iodine.

    World wakes up to apocalyptic scenes of destruction from Japan. Tsunami sweep entire towns away and take 1,000s and 1,000s of lives. An oil refinery fire makes for spectacular news footage. The Japanese people respond incredibly and begin picking up the pieces with calm dignity that should shame us all because we know that if this were our country, it would not be so. It's not exciting enough for the world's media, because pictures of people calmly recovering are not very sexy.

    Fukushima is still without power, and the batteries have run out. The operators are desperate to do something, they are in a station blackout with no external support. They rig sea water supplies to inject water into the reactor cores of the reactors that scram'd to keep cooling them while they go through the decay heat phase of the shutdown. The high pressure injectors are unusable, and the emergency improvisation that they use cannot inject water at a high enough pressure to overcome the pressure inside the reactor and steam has to be released.

    Meanwhile the media has discovered a new chew toy - Fukushima Daiichi. Ignoring the fact that the station scram'd as it should, neglecting to mention the 9.0 earthquake and 10 meter Tsunami damage at the site, the world's press then indulges in one of the most disgusting feeding frenzies I've ever seen. Blowing ever tiny development way, way out of proportion. Delayed reporting of events as if they were mew, when in fact they are already resolved and outright lying ensue.

    But the simple fact is that the reactors are cooling down, they are not runaway reactors, and can't become runaway reactors. They require cooling and monitoring. Without external power and the normal equipment both of these aims are difficult. Time passes, steam venting leads to hydrogen build up and explosions, which look incredible on TV but are no threat to the reactors themselves. Cooling continues. In the absence of the China syndrome that the media's 'experts' predicted at the start of this, the press turns it's attention to the spent fuel ponds, because they might catch fire and become a new Chernobyl....and then they don't. They Japanese manage to control that too.

    Time passes, water drops from Helicopters look spectacular and tell the world that Japan is doing something. The fact that the most important operations going on are the restoration of external power and water spraying to top up the (not dry) spent fuel ponds is lost on the press who ignore the fact that if these are the most important things, that means the reactors are under some semblance of control. More time passes, the Japanese engineers and authorities continue working hard to restore external power and keep the cooling water supplied. progress is made to reconnect some pumping equipment and it becomes clear that there won't in fact be a fire in a spent fuel pond.

    Ah, wait, here comes the inevitable news that some radioactive iodine and cesium have been found in the surrounding areas - not a surprise since both elements are found in the steam vented to allow cooling sea water to be injected. However, the world's press once again trips over itself to scream the headlines about nuclear contamination. Never mind that it's trace amounts except for at the Fukushima facilitiy. Then there is a radio-iodine detection in Tokyo city water, a new media orgasm occurs as the world's media batters on about babies drinking contaminated waste.

    Along with all of this there is a constant air of catastrophism and panic being driven by the media's reporting, a constant undertone of mis-trust in the TEPCO and government officials.Even in Japan, people begin to believe the international media because it's easier to believe that the BBC and CNN are right especially when you can't trust TEPCO or your own media/government. But wait, what is it that the government has done wrong here? They have been forthcoming with information as they have it. TEPCO too has been forthcoming, all you have to do is read the reports at the appropriate sites, or look at the IAEA's site. Quite apart from that though, there is no local infrastructure, no onsite external power and as a result most of the instrumentation at the plant is useless, so what is it that the officials in Japan are supposed to tell us? Right from the first of this disaster, people wanted up to the minute precise information that simply wasn't available. The lack of this information was taken as a sign of a coverup instead of a natural consequence of shattered infrastructure.

    And the mis-reporting by the mass media continues. I read the headlines about a loss of containment at reactor 3 today, and struggled to find anything but speculation until I read about the 3 workers exposed to radioactive water while working. Not quite the same thing, but the media likes to jump to conclusions while forgetting things that have already been reported - like the possible loss of pressure in the pressure suppression ring of reactor 3's containment system reported something like a week ago.

    I actually think it's incredibly sad how many people seem to have emotionally invested in Fukushima being the most terrible disaster ever, and subsequently get offensive and angry when the facts destroy their scenario. That's true of mainstream media and many commentards alike.

    The mass media and many people in general, should be ashamed of themselves. Hyperbole is no substitute for thought people.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Looked at another way...

      Day after day we hear, alternately - "hoping to regain control" and "increasingly pessimistic".

      Lies have quite obviously been told on an industrial scale.

      "Reactors 5 & 6 are OK" and then "workers had to break holes in the roofs of 5 & 6 to prevent hydrogen build ups leading to explosions" (cus that's just perfectly normal behaviour for a nuclear reactor isn't it?).

      It looks like they may have pumped contaminated water into the sea.

      At least one core is possibly breached.

      No one's been inside the buildings yet to see with eyeballs what's actually there, leading to great deal of supposition, on both sides of the subsequent argument.

      Even if the worst case scenario had happened do you honestly think the information would be made public? What purpose would it serve to have millions in panic?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Pint

        Old 70's scare stuff is old and has to updated for the 21st century.

        "Even if the worst case scenario had happened do you honestly think the information would be made public? What purpose would it serve to have millions in panic?"

        So .... currently there are not millions in panic fearing a coverup? It would actually be feasible to cover up a "worst case scenario" when you can buy a very good dosimeter for around USD 200 and upload data to Google Maps? Really now.

        This story is stunned, it's pining for the Fjords.

      2. Highlander

        @AC Looked at another way...

        Reactors 5&6 are in cold shutdown. The holes being drilled are precautionary to prevent any hudrogen build up since the normal equipment for scrubbing steam and exhaust gasses, and cooling the reactor systems are off line. I'd call that a sensible precaution.

        Actually there are technically two possible core breeches since any fault in the pressure suppression ring is considered a core breech in the rather careful nuclear industry, despite the fact that it's not a breech of the reactor vessel itself.

        The very fact that the contractors that received excess radiation in radioactive water on Friday received that dose in the basement of reactor building 3 indicates that i act people have been in the buildings. Not to mention the whole reconnecting the external power, checking the operation of lights and gauges in the control rooms and checking that the cooling pumps and other systems are still operable and not submerged in water so that they can be used. All these things require at least some feet on the ground. Some of the work can be done robotically, but much is done by humans. the actual dose levels on site are tolerable in shifts with the appropriate equipment. You should do the research and check the radiation monitor levels that are available.

        As for having millions in panic, I don't know about you, but a fucking magnitude 9 earthquake and 12 meter Tsumani hitting my region would cause millions to panic. The subsequent misreporting of a nuclear power plant in trouble might cause panic to - as it has. Thanks mass media. The point being that the impact of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi are dwarfed by the impact of the events of March 11, yet all people want to bloody talk about is a nuclear holocaust - that isn't going to happen (and never really was on the cards either). The media have talked this up to the max without ever wanting to exercise any caution in their reporting lest it cause panic. In fact it often has seemed they were hoping for some panic since there was a fairly clear absence of panic in Japan.

        As for lies on an industrial scale, if that's how you describe mainstream media coverage, so be it.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Lies?

        ""Reactors 5 & 6 are OK" and then "workers had to break holes in the roofs of 5 & 6 to prevent hydrogen build ups leading to explosions" (cus that's just perfectly normal behaviour for a nuclear reactor isn't it?)."

        The reactors are fine. The risk of hydrogen buildup came from the spent fuel pools where some fuel rods were insufficiently cooled. Have you actually read any of the factual details of this incident?

        "It looks like they may have...'

        "At least one core is possibly..."

        Well, it sure is great to see someone bringing some hard facts to the discussion.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Sums it up so far.

      Yup yup. Several thumbs up.

    3. Keith T
      Thumb Down

      The interest in Fukishima is that it could occur anywhere

      The interest in Fukishima is that it is an on-going situation, where as tsunamis is over.

      The interest in Fukishima is that it could occur anywhere, where as tsunamis require you to be on the coast of an ocean.

      Storing 10 times the design amount of nuclear waste in the storage pool.

      Inspection failures.

      Cutting corners.

      Inadequate training of staff.

      Improperly sited and inadequately protected vital equipment.

      Failure to provide redundant backup systems.

      At Fukiashima a fatal industrial accident is on going, and similar fatal industrial accidents could occur at other nuclear power plants elsewhere in the world triggered by other events, unless we ensure adequate inspections, regulations, and oversight.

    4. Highlander

      I'd actually be interested to know from the 11 folks who....

      ...felt that this original post needed a down vote, why did it need a down vote? Seriously, what factual element in the post is wrong? It's sort of pointless to downvote something because you disagree with it when factually it's correct. Seriously folks, if you have a factual argument with the post, then say so, otherwise I don't see the point in down voting on the basis of fact contradicting your opinion. In fact, when you let your opinion override fact, you have entered the realm of American politics and/or mass media reporting, and that my friends is not a place for a morally centered human being to be.

  12. heyrick Silver badge

    Oh, I'm sorry, I think I must have dozed off...

    ...there's something still going on in Japan? Really?

    <clicky clicky bbc.co.uk/news >

    Libya. Syria. Horny bastard priests. Ivory Coast.

    Oh yes. I see it. They're going to launch an enquiry. This is a little bit under the "Asia Pacific" section of the map, below such items as "US beauty queen wins 'fat' case".

    I think even the media is getting bored with the non-activity. After all, for a while there, radiation levels in some part of Tokyo were FORTY TIMES NORMAL (forty times practically nothing being...?) and... shit... NOBODY dropped dead. Nobody glows in the dark. There isn't a mass exodus from eastern Japan and Tokyo hasn't been razed in a mushroom cloud.

    Now, Libya, on the other hand...

    Likewise, there is a "minor scare" story on the Daily Fail website... after Mylene Klass, some old person given an incontinence test for their meds (wtf?), a ridiculous mark-up on pizza (yeah, why d'you think I roll my own?), schoolgirls texting naked pictures of themselves (umm, is that then NOT "texting"?), and some other stuff that might pass as actual news. Fukushima is no longer the lead story because... there's other nastier stuff to get bothered about.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Movie distortions.

    To those of you whose basic argument is "I don't see screaming people running in fear with their skin melting off them therefore it's just the media hyping things up" there is only one thing to say - you've watched far too many movies and need to come back to earth.

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