gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2011 at 2:43pm:

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I haven't yet had the time to read this lengthy report in depth, however what I have read does not look good, from the perspective of the current event.

Chernobyl
Consequences of the Catastrophe
for People and the Environment

7. Mortality after the Chernobyl Catastrophe
The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout.

The number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.

7.1. Increase in Antenatal Mortality
Irradiation has an adverse effect on the ovum and the sperm, as well as on the embryo.

The major observable components of antenatal mortality are spontaneous abortions or miscarriages (spontaneous interruption of pregnancy until the 27th week) and stillbirths (after 27 weeks).  

Increased numbers of stillbirths and miscarriages are among the first effects of irradiation, with a delay of only some weeks or months after exposure. These effects can occur after exposure to very low doses, that is, at whole body doses as low as 5 mSv (Loganovsky,
2005), but the reasons are not yet understood.

[b]5. Until 2004, the estimated total number of miscarriages and stillbirths in Ukraine as a result of Chernobyl was about 50,000 (Lypic, 2004).[/b]


Conclusion to Chapter IV
In the last days of spring and the beginning of summer of 1986, radioactivity was released from the Chernobyl power plant and fell upon hundreds of millions of people. The resulting levels of radionuclides were hundreds of times higher than that from the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The normal lives of tens of millions have been destroyed. Today, more than 6 million people live on land with dangerous levels of contamination—land that will continue to be contaminated for decades to centuries. Thus the daily questions: how to live and where to live

In the territories contaminated by the Chernobyl fallout it is impossible to engage safely in agriculture; impossible to work safely in
forestry, in fisheries, and hunting; and dangerous to use local foodstuffs or to drink milk and even water. Those who live in these areas ask how to avoid the tragedy of a son or daughter born with malformations caused by irradiation. Soon after the catastrophe these profound questions arose among liquidators’ families, often too late to avoid tragedy.

Link -
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
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Will the Japanese event have similar outcomes, in terms of personal health & mortality, time will tell, although even without a full meltdown of one or more of the 6 reactors, one would have to suspect that the future for many Japanese in the affected areas (including Tokyo), may not be what they thought, only some 3 weeks ago!  

However, the health outcomes for those in affected areas, whilst that may be bad enough, pales when looking at the Economic effects of this event on the Global Economy, compared to the miniscule outcomes of Chernobyl, which we will come to later!

muso wrote on Apr 1^st, 2011 at 6:17pm:

But not as the basis for the scenario in question!

In any event, we do not know how much water there is and where it's coming from & going to. That's part of the problem, there's a lot of guess work going on and that includes both of us!

As I said, there's a lot we don't and this scenario in question IS POSSIBLE, as reported by experts in the field, as this fellow is reported to be and others!
It is clearly an operating scenario and it is NOT related to Godzilla!

The question of whether the entire Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami & Nuclear problem, is better or worse than Chernobyl, is arguable, depending how it is viewed.

From an immediate perspective, the Earthquake & Tsunami casualities make this Japanese event much greater than Chernobyl.

From a longer term perspective, the casualities from both Nuclear problems will both be large and at this point it is too early to argue the toss.

However, from the Economic standpoint, either short, medium or long term, the Japanese Tri-fecta will be a clear winner or loser, depending on your perspective.

Nothing against Chernobyl residents, but it was a small town, in mid no-where-ville, which caused an Economic ripple roughly equivalent to a gnat, one quick swat and it was gone.

However, the Japanese situation is more akin to being trampled by a herd of rapaging elephants.

The combined effects, on the Global Economy, of this Tri-fecta will be enormous and the timing absolutely abysmal!

With the Baby Boomer Bust & Peak Energy (Oil) already in action, the Japanese situation could reduce Real Global GDP by a further 2-3%, over the next 3-5 years.

When I say "real GDP, I mean what the REAL Global GDP would be, if or should I say when, the Keynesian subsidaries are withdrawn and governments & the agencies cease printing "money" and devaluing currencies!  

Btw, the Global GDP would currently be in the order of $60-$65 Trillion annually.

Thanks to the unfamiliar but sophisticated art of atomic forensics, experts around the world have been able to document the situation vividly. Over decades, they have become very good at illuminating the hidden workings of nuclear power plants from afar, turning scraps of information into detailed analyses.

For example, an analysis by a French energy company revealed far more about the condition of the plant’s reactors than the Japanese have ever described: water levels at the reactor cores dropping by as much as three-quarters, and temperatures in those cores soaring to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to burn and melt the zirconium casings that protect the fuel rods.

Scientists in Europe and America also know from observing the explosions of hydrogen gas at the plant that the nuclear fuel rods had heated to very dangerous levels, and from radioactive plumes how far the rods had disintegrated.

At the same time, the evaluations also show that the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi escaped the deadliest outcomes — a complete meltdown of the plant.

Indeed, the detailed assessments of the Japanese reactors that Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave on Friday — when he told reporters that about 70 percent of the core of one reactor had been damaged, and that another reactor had undergone a 33 percent meltdown — came from forensic modeling.

The bits of information that drive these analyses range from the simple to the complex.

Governments and companies now possess dozens of these independently developed computer programs, known in industry jargon as “safety codes.” Many of these institutions — including ones in Japan — are relying on forensic modeling to analyze the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi to plan for a range of activities, from evacuations to forecasting the likely outcome.

The atomic age has seen the construction of nearly 600 civilian power plants, but according to the World Nuclear Association, only three have undergone serious accidents in which their fuel cores melted down.

Now, as a result of the crisis in Japan, the atomic simulations suggest that the number of serious accidents has suddenly doubled, with three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex in some stage of meltdown. Even so, the public authorities have sought to avoid grim technical details that might trigger alarm or even panic.

If events in Japan unfold as they did at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the forensic modeling could go on for some time. It took more than three years before engineers lowered a camera to visually inspect the damaged core of the Pennsylvania reactor, and another year to map the extent of the destruction. The core turned out to be about half melted.

By definition, a meltdown is the severe overheating of the core of a nuclear reactor that results in either the partial or full liquefaction of its uranium fuel and supporting metal lattice, at times with the atmospheric release of deadly radiation. Partial meltdowns usually strike a core’s middle regions instead of the edge, where temperatures are typically lower.

Robert E. Henry, a developer of the code at Fauske & Associates, an engineering company near Chicago, said that a first sign of major trouble at any reactor was the release of hydrogen — a highly flammable gas that has fueled several large explosions at Fukushima Daiichi. The gas, he said in an interview, indicated that cooling water had fallen low, exposing the hot fuel rods.

The next alarms, Dr. Henry said, centered on various types of radioactivity that signal increasingly high core temperatures and melting.

First, he said, “as the core gets hotter and hotter,” easily evaporated products of atomic fission — like iodine 131 and cesium 137 — fly out. If temperatures rise higher, threatening to melt the core entirely, he added, less volatile products such as strontium 90 and plutonium 239 join the rising plume.

The lofting of the latter particles in large quantities points to “substantial fuel melting,” Dr. Henry said.

He added that he and his colleagues modeled the Japanese accident in its first days and discerned partial — not full — core melting.

Micro-Simulation Technology, a software company in Montville, N.J., used its own computer code to model the Japanese accident. It found core temperatures in the reactors soaring as high as 2,250 degrees Celsius, or more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to liquefy many reactor metals.

“Some portion of the core melted,” said Li-chi Cliff Po, the company’s president. He called his methods simpler than most industry simulations, adding that the Japanese disaster was relatively easy to model because the observable facts of the first hours and days were so unremittingly bleak — “no water in, no injection” to cool the hot cores.

“I don’t think there’s any mystery or foul play,” Dr. Po said of the disaster’s scale. “It’s just so bad.”

Tokyo Electric Tries Again to Halt Radioactive Water Leak (1)

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. will try injecting a special polymer into a leaking pit at its stricken nuclear plant after a concrete plug failed to stop radioactive water from draining into the nearby sea.

Tokyo Electric will inject the polymer through a pipe connected to the pit, and is working to devise alternatives if that effort also should fail, the company said at a press conference that ended early today in Tokyo. The pit, used as storage for power cables near reactor No. 2, is cracked and leaking radioactive water.

Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, is preparing to infuse nitrogen into reactors to reduce the threat of a hydrogen explosion, and is connecting power cables to some cooling pumps as it tries to contain the spread of radiation and avert a meltdown 23 days after a crippling earthquake and tsunami.

A company executive said today he isn’t optimistic about the prospect of containing damage at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant’s No. 3 reactor.

“I don’t know if we can ever enter the No. 3 reactor building again,” Hikaru Kuroda, the company’s chief of nuclear facility management, said at a press conference.

Radioactive Seawater
Radiation in contaminated seawater near the Fukushima Dai- Ichi plant was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour, Tepco said yesterday in a statement. Exposure to that level for an hour would trigger nausea, and four hours might lead to death within two months, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency yesterday ordered Tepco to increase its monitoring of seawater near the No. 2 reactor after the leaks led to a rise in radiation, agency Deputy Director Hidehiko Nishiyama said. Above-normal levels of radioactive iodine were detected in seawater 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the plant, the agency said.

About 10 centimeters (4 inches) to 20 centimeters of radioactive water was found in the leaking pit, which is 1.2 meters by 1.9 meters across and 2 meters deep, and had a crack about 20 centimeters wide, Takashi Kurita, a company spokesman, told reporters at a briefing at Tepco’s Tokyo headquarters.

Plugging the Leak
Tokyo Electric tried to plug the crack by filling the pit with concrete yesterday, Junichi Matsumoto, another company official, said at a later press conference. Water in the pit was found to have 10,000 times the normal level of toxic iodine 131, he said.

The pit is at a different site from the trenches where the company found contaminated water earlier, Susumu Tsuzuki, a Tepco nuclear facility maintenance official, told reporters.

Radiation Slows Work
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu estimated as much as 70 percent of the core in one of the six reactors may have been damaged. High radiation levels have impeded progress at the plant, Chu said April 1 during a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington

The Japanese government may buy a stake in Tepco as the company tries to recover from the disaster and control the radiation leaks.

Link -
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRRJU1_eLLz8
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So, everything is fine, right?

Well, maybe not, so is it time for a Government/Public cash injection/donation?

perceptions_now wrote on Apr 3^rd, 2011 at 5:02pm:


Yes PN, but the 'several hundred thousand' includes EVERY cancer related death in the old USSR that has taken place since Chernobyl......regardless of WHEN the cancer was first diagnosed, or what the actual cause was...

So how is it possible for people (for example) who were diagnosed with cancer in 1980 and died in 1990 to have been killed by Chernobyl???

And what about unrelated cancers??......The people who smoked 50 cigarettes a day since 1950....Did Chernobyl kill them too???

Have read of this link....it's a more indepth critique of the report...
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-chernobyl-consequences-of.html

gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 8:19am:


Good link. Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending the Chernobyl disaster in any way. It was a travesty of mismanagement.  I'm just exposing some of the inaccurate hype.

The amount of radioactive material spread as a result of Chernobyl makes Fukushima look like a minor accident.

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 9:54am:


I don't think so - the results of the monitoring are freely available.