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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. jimmy
        Reply Icon
        WTF?

        i'm a dr

        and this chap or chapess is talking out of his bottom.

        it is widely accepted that dr shipman killed several hundred people. impossible to prove in the sense you guys are talking about but accepted by the greater establishment based on population studies only.

        you see it's all down to stats, expose radiation to enough people no matter what the level and you will cause 'cancer'. Even chest xrays cause cancer just because we do so many of them. so yes in my opinion this incident will cause cancer and perhaps death but who exactly is affected it will be impossible to tell before or after they have been diagnosed in the majority of cases.

        The numbers will be low and as the article suggests distracts from the real disaster from the tsunami itself.

        I think the point with these reactors going tits up is that they are going to cost a lot to clear up and are going to be there for a very long time. i've read somewhere recently the land around chernobyl will be uninhabital for at least 600 years. so for a 1 in a 1000 year tsunami it kind of proves that building reactors near earthquake zones is not a good idea since the clearup will take as long as the time between these tsunamis

        but hey for a 5 year termed government i suspect this line of reasoning is disregarded ie it most likely won't be their problem if an incident does occur.

        some other quick points:

        this mr lewis blokes article i feel is a bit of tosh in places, it's made me return for rereads though so el reg's advertisers must be happy but i think publishing this isn't good for el reg's journalistic reputation.

        those adverse to stats (me included) have to accept its use as quantum physics (eg fissile radioactive processes) relies totally on stats hence the use of half lives to describe radioactive decay.

        i'm broadly in favour of nuclear power given the current options.

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  2. Beachrider

    GFL on this...

    Too much of the article is the writer's OPINION. It could be right and it could be wrong. Anecdotal facts about dosage levels don't agree with NYT accounting. Impact of those dosage-levels is heavily salted with OPINION.

    So long as people are cautious and follow official guidelines and warnings, then this kind of piece is harmless and can counterbalance the too-worried. If this is used to ignore official information, then this piece is irresponsible. It is not the first such piece on this website.

    There are key things that are still not under control. People can inflate or ignore them as part of their free will. When all of the fissionable materials are under 'normal' procedures, then I will stop making it a priority to read about it. We are WEEKS away from that, at best.

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  3. D Cliffe
    FAIL

    Dick Cliffe

    It seems likely that the writer of article is going to wish he never wrote it . It seems likely now that the core of one or more of the reactors burnt through the containment vessel spreading fiercely radioactive material into the environment. Nobody is going to living near this reactor site for a generation or two.

    The plutonium refered to comes from the fuel in No 3 reactor which is a mixture of uranium and plutonium - it has clearly got out of the reactor - ummmm nice!

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    1. Andydaws
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      Thumb Down

      Another hysteric

      "It seems likely now that the core of one or more of the reactors burnt through the containment vessel spreading fiercely radioactive material into the environment."

      really?

      so, how come all of the reactor vessels have held positive pressure of up to six atmospheres since the accident? It's hard to do that, when a hole's been melted through the bottom.

      This is a lovely example of the hard done when the more idiotic press coverage falls into the hands of the "hard of thinking".

      BTE, there are a few things also to consider.

      1 - there have been no actinides detected in the building basements, nor at the perimeter monitoring stations, nor at the stations in and around the exclusion zone

      2 - According to WNN, the reason that it's assumed that the identified sample (I'll crunch the numbers to work out how big it is) comes from fuel, rather than being bomb-test residue is it's high in Pu238. Pu238 exists in bomb residues, but it's not common. It wasn't found in three of the five samples, but was in two. Now, unlike other Plutonium isotopes, Pu238 has a shortish half-life - 87 years. But, the Pu that goes into MOX fuel will have typically left the reactor 40 years or so earlier (it's good to give fuel rods time to cool, and shorter lived products to decay). So, although it's got quite a lot of Pu238, it's lower than you'd see in ordinary fuel just out of a reactor. If it is from within the plant, it's at least as likely to be from the fuel ponds as the reactor, and if anything more likely.

      The jury's out on the origin, As I said, I'll do the numbers, but I suspect the assay is working at the limits of detectability. The absence of other finds makes me doubt gross fuel failure, and certainly MOX Fuel failure.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    L1ma

    Laugh this off as a minor incident not worthy of Chernobyl

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8414554/Japan-nuclear-crisis-workers-losing-race-to-save-reactor.html

    What do you do when several tonnes of liquid plutonium decides to melt through and burn its way down underneath your superbly engineered containment vessel?.

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    1. Andydaws
      Reply Icon

      Now, you'd think from that that the expert quoted

      had access to data about the plant. He doesn't. He also seems to have left GE 35 years ago.

      He's (Richar Lahey) is now best known for being associated with "bubble fusion", a variation on cold fusion - and one where his co-author on the paper he produced has subsequently been suspended for academic fraud. He also seems to be a bit of a serial self-publicist

      That's a lovely example of the Telegraph's approach on this story - it's been as hysterical as any red-top.

      When I last looked, at 7 this morning, NISA, the Japanese HSE, was reporting that the containment was maintaining a negative pressure relative to atmosphere, and that reactor temperatures were around the 100-120C mark. No termperature or pressure spikes. It's be interesting to see, given that, what are the reasons for claimoing an RPV breach

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    I often fail to panic in the most ordinary of circumstances.

    Sorry Lewis, not sure if you are joking or not . . . but this really is dreadful.

    Remember:

    "What the nuclear industry tell you is never the truth, merely a preparatory base for telling you something worse, which is never, ever the truth, and only a summary avoiding the very worst points".

    This was a Level 7 on the Saturday it first went pop, containment failed in more than one unit and PRV, and TEPCO now no longer know the state of any of the key components.

    They had seriously overloaded the Unit 4 Pool and have used dodgy "dry storage" as an unapproved, un-regulated hiding place. Even the UK's "Coffin-dodging" old fogey Inspectors would have blanched at that !

    Instead, the Japanese inspectors get new cars every 6 months . . .

    Welcome to my world . . .

    The way the Operators run these sites, you'd think they are trying to make the world glow independent of provision of AC . . .

    and they own the civil servants in each countries government intended to watch and audit their activities . . . especially in the UK.

    Couldn't happen here ? Where does Gordon Brown's brother work ?

    Maybe the citizens of Japan can one day reflect on whether they would rather have traded a few hours without air-con each day and a change to working hours (to make best use of daylight) in exchange for less of this mess . . .

    Still Fusion is the perfect Baby Boomer Gift to the rest of us - short-term, badly thought-through, very expensive - for future generations, ultimately very dirty, and the pollution is most likely to kill children and young adults . . . thanks !

    Good Luck everybody, go buy your own Iodine tablets before you have to queue for them . . .

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tell ya what....

    When I see these people who are all saying nothing is wrong and radation is 'good' for you are splashing around in the sea next to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant then I 'may' start to believe its alright.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Get your napkin ready sir.

    Whatever the state of the containment and other key components in each of the reactors, there seem to be some inescapable truths here. There is quite a lot of high level radiation which is not contained in any protective system as a result of this accident. Some of that may be plutonium, much of it is certainly iodine. Significant quantities, at least of the latter, have reached the sea.

    I don't know just how this is going to go from here, and it may get no worse that it is now. Even in that best case scenario I cannot see, but the author is merely waiting for the day he is forced to eat a considerable portion of humble pie.

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    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
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      That's the fun thing about iodine

      It's gone faster than dioxine or PCB. And doesn't move up the food chain a lot.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Big Brother

        Iodine clarification

        Apologies for my loose use of language. What I was refering to is iodine as an indicator material which shows there is a transfer of material from a region containing fision products to the the sea. Whilst iodine 131 has a half life of about 8 days, its presence gives rise to concern that other longer lived or more toxic materials may be leaking along with the iodine. Plutonium, for instance, is highly radioactive, but even more dangerous because of its toxicity. If it were leaking along with the iodine that would be a concern of far greater severity.

        My reference as to where it goes from here was to the situation, not the iodine. Since then, the leak from the containment to the sea has been pretty much confirmed, so I would assert the situation has been confirmed as worse than was the case at the time of my previous post.

        I really do not think this is a dead horse by any means. There is still a lot to play out in Fukishima and I suspect there will be many significant hurdles to clear in the coming weeks and months.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    George Monbiot supports nuclear power on NPR

    Our leading enviromentalists George Monbiot supports nuclear power even after "Japan" and says coal power kills more.

    Need to have a drink now and think about the implications of this

    Listen to it by searching "NPR Environmentalist Monbiot Supports Nuclear Power" if you don't believe me.

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  10. Tom 7

    Scaredy Cat

    Lewis - too scared to open up your latest wish list to comments?

    Amazing how those weapons test managed to put plutonium under the nukes in Japan.

    Just sell you shares and relax.

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    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)
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      Re: Scaredy Cat

      Sorry to disappoint you, but it's a site glitch. Lewis is always happy for people to yell at him. And if you don't believe me, well, enjoy your warm conspiracy fuzzy.

      You can always email, although that does mean that you don't have the whole internet looking at you.

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