Australian Politics Forum - Fukushima

perceptions_now

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 11694
Perth WA
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #465 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 3:26pm

Radioactivity rises in sea off Japan nuclear plant

04.16.11

TOKYO -- Levels of radioactivity have risen sharply in seawater near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in northern Japan, possibly signaling new leaks at the facility, the government said Saturday.

The announcement came after a magnitude-5.9 earthquake jolted Japan on Saturday morning, hours after the country's nuclear safety agency ordered plant operators to beef up their quake preparedness systems to prevent a recurrence of the nuclear crisis.

There were no immediate reports of damage from the earthquake, and there was no risk of a tsunami similar to the one last month that crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, causing Japan's worst-ever nuclear plant disaster. Japan has been hit by a string of smaller quakes since the magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit the country March 11.

Since the tsunami flooded the Fukushima plant and knocked out cooling systems, workers have been spraying massive amounts of water to cool the overheated reactors. Some of that water, contaminated with radiation, had leaked into the Pacific. Plant officials said they plugged that leak on April 5 and radiation levels in the sea dropped.

But the government said Saturday that radioactivity in the seawater has risen again in recent days. The level of radioactive iodine-131 spiked to 6,500 times the legal limit, according to samples taken Friday, up from 1,100 times the limit in samples taken the day before. Levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 rose nearly fourfold. The increased levels are still far below those recorded earlier this month before the initial leak was plugged.

The new rise in radioactivity could have been caused by the installation Friday of steel panels intended to contain radiation which may have temporarily stirred up stagnant waste in the area, Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters. However, the increase in iodine-131, which has a relatively short eight-day half life, could signal the possibility of a new leak, he said.

Link -
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/04/16/general-as-japan-earthquake_8411589.ht...

Back to top

IP Logged

muso Gold Member Offline Posts: 13151 Gladstone, Queensland Gender:	Re: Fukushima - Consequences? Reply #466 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 3:48pm Foolosophy wrote on Apr 15^th, 2011 at 1:33am: img]http://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/conflict-of-interest.gif[/img] i wonder what muso thinks about this question? Well, at least we now know where you get your material from.
Back to top	1523 people like this. The remaining 7,134,765,234 do not IP Logged

gizmo_2655

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 16010
South West NSW
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #467 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 4:10pm

muso wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 3:48pm:

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 15^th, 2011 at 1:33am:

img]http://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/conflict-of-interest.gif[/img]

i wonder what muso thinks about this question?

Well, at least we now know where you get your material from.

No great surprise though, was it???

And PN, no one said the clean up at Fukushima would be fast or easy.......there'll be cracked pipes and stuff ALL over the plant (outside the RPV's) which will need to be fixed...I have NO doubt that the place will never operate again.

The 'art' will be in minimising the leakages, which they've done rather well so far..

Back to top

"I just get sick of people who place a label on someone else with their own definition.

It's similar to a strawman fallacy"
Bobbythebat

IP Logged

mozzaok

Gold Member

Offline

OzPolitic

Posts: 6741
Melbourne
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #468 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:15pm

Quote:

Greenpeace just want to worry as many people as possible and cause even more anguish.

muso

Well I cannot blame them, because we are not playing with play doh over there, it is highly radioactive waste, and just saying that we will do better next time, is what they always say, even while we are experiencing this current next time, for nuclear accidents.

I concede that there are times, and places, where Nuclear deserves to be considered as part of the energy generation options, but places prone to large earthquakes, like Japan, is probably somewhere that other choices would have made better sense.
Australia is also somewhere I consider Nuclear as unnecessary, as we can use gas until we get renewables up to base load efficiency.
The under statement of the risks, and costs, of Nuclear Power is something the pro Nuclear lobby are always guilty of, and because of that, an organisation like Greenpeace, which can do a bit of finger pointing from time to time, is not such a bad thing.

Back to top

OOPS!!! My Karma, ran over your Dogma!

IP Logged

gizmo_2655

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 16010
South West NSW
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #469 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:32pm

mozzaok wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:15pm:

Quote:

Greenpeace just want to worry as many people as possible and cause even more anguish.

muso

Well I cannot blame them, because we are not playing with play doh over there, it is highly radioactive waste, and just saying that we will do better next time, is what they always say, even while we are experiencing this current next time, for nuclear accidents.

I concede that there are times, and places, where Nuclear deserves to be considered as part of the energy generation options, but places prone to large earthquakes, like Japan, is probably somewhere that other choices would have made better sense.
Australia is also somewhere I consider Nuclear as unnecessary, as we can use gas until we get renewables up to base load efficiency.
The under statement of the risks, and costs, of Nuclear Power is something the pro Nuclear lobby are always guilty of, and because of that, an organisation like Greenpeace, which can do a bit of finger pointing from time to time, is not such a bad thing.

Why is nuclear unnecessary in Australia?? Given the percentage of nuclear ore HERE....doesn't it make sense to use what we have in this country???

Back to top

"I just get sick of people who place a label on someone else with their own definition.

It's similar to a strawman fallacy"
Bobbythebat

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #470 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:56pm

gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:32pm:

mozzaok wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:15pm:

Quote:

Greenpeace just want to worry as many people as possible and cause even more anguish.

muso

Well I cannot blame them, because we are not playing with play doh over there, it is highly radioactive waste, and just saying that we will do better next time, is what they always say, even while we are experiencing this current next time, for nuclear accidents.

I concede that there are times, and places, where Nuclear deserves to be considered as part of the energy generation options, but places prone to large earthquakes, like Japan, is probably somewhere that other choices would have made better sense.
Australia is also somewhere I consider Nuclear as unnecessary, as we can use gas until we get renewables up to base load efficiency.
The under statement of the risks, and costs, of Nuclear Power is something the pro Nuclear lobby are always guilty of, and because of that, an organisation like Greenpeace, which can do a bit of finger pointing from time to time, is not such a bad thing.

Why is nuclear unnecessary in Australia?? Given the percentage of nuclear ore HERE....doesn't it make sense to use what we have in this country???

gizmo is very sensible and has obvioulsy given this very serious issue a lot of thoughtful consideration

Back to top

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #471 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:04pm

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Company said Sunday that it hopes to bring the reactors at its hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into a stable state known as cold shutdown within the next nine months, ...

9 months!

so during the next 9 months we will have radiation belching out, radioactive water being dumped and the possibility of further explosions.

What a superb corporate citizen TEPCO is ladies and gentlement.

By the end of this period the estimated additional cancers generated in the 200km zone over the next decade would have climbed from the Busby prediction of 400,000 to almost 3 million.

Must keep the balance sheet in check and CEO bonuses rolling out.

How many TEPCO CEOs and managers will contract cancer or die whilst working to get these reactors under control?

Back to top

IP Logged

Equitist

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 9632
NSW

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #472 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:26pm

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:04pm:

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Company said Sunday that it hopes to bring the reactors at its hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into a stable state known as cold shutdown within the next nine months, ...

9 months!

so during the next 9 months we will have radiation belching out, radioactive water being dumped and the possibility of further explosions.

What a superb corporate citizen TEPCO is ladies and gentlement.

By the end of this period the estimated additional cancers generated in the 200km zone over the next decade would have climbed from the Busby prediction of 400,000 to almost 3 million.

Must keep the balance sheet in check and CEO bonuses rolling out.

How many TEPCO CEOs and managers will contract cancer or die whilst working to get these reactors under control?

From what I've read today, they don't anticipate getting the radiation leaks under control for a period of 3 to 6 months - apparently they reckon they'll need a further 3 months to achieve cold shutdown...

So, the best case scenario seems to be ongoing radiation leaks for at least 3 months - and that's assuming no further unforeseen incidents...

Moreover, assuming that the estimates of 10% of Chernobyl releases in the first month, TEPCO seems to be admitting that the final figure is likely to be several times that released to date...

Back to top

Lamenting the shift in the Australian psyche, away from the egalitarian ideal of the fair-go - and the rise of short-sighted pollies, who worship the 'Growth Fairy' and seek to divide and conquer!

IP Logged

perceptions_now

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 11694
Perth WA
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #473 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:28pm

gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 4:10pm:

muso wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 3:48pm:

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 15^th, 2011 at 1:33am:

img]http://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/conflict-of-interest.gif[/img]

i wonder what muso thinks about this question?

Well, at least we now know where you get your material from.

No great surprise though, was it???

And PN, no one said the clean up at Fukushima would be fast or easy.......there'll be cracked pipes and stuff ALL over the plant (outside the RPV's) which will need to be fixed...I have NO doubt that the place will never operate again.

The 'art' will be in minimising the leakages, which they've done rather well so far..

And that's just the media leaks!

Back to top

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #474 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:33pm

Here’s an example: Chernobyl wafted cesium 137 into Germany. We’re talking about more than 300 miles. Even now, 25 years later, the wild boar that eat the mushrooms on the soil that’s absorbed the cesium 137, can’t be eaten.

I am sure that TEPCO will keep everybody informed about HOW much radionuclide release has occurred - and will occur over the next 9 months

Apparently 9 months is what TEPCO thinks will be needed to get the reactors cores into cold shut down mode

SPent fuel rod Pools???

Back to top

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #475 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:41pm

Equitist wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:26pm:

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:04pm:

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Company said Sunday that it hopes to bring the reactors at its hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into a stable state known as cold shutdown within the next nine months, ...

9 months!

so during the next 9 months we will have radiation belching out, radioactive water being dumped and the possibility of further explosions.

What a superb corporate citizen TEPCO is ladies and gentlement.

By the end of this period the estimated additional cancers generated in the 200km zone over the next decade would have climbed from the Busby prediction of 400,000 to almost 3 million.

Must keep the balance sheet in check and CEO bonuses rolling out.

How many TEPCO CEOs and managers will contract cancer or die whilst working to get these reactors under control?

From what I've read today, they don't anticipate getting the radiation leaks under control for a period of 3 to 6 months - apparently they reckon they'll need a further 3 months to achieve cold shutdown...

So, the best case scenario seems to be ongoing radiation leaks for at least 3 months - and that's assuming no further unforeseen incidents...

Moreover, assuming that the estimates of 10% of Chernobyl releases in the first month, TEPCO seems to be admitting that the final figure is likely to be several times that released to date...

I dont know of any independent nuclear experts who agree with the 10% Chernobyl radiation release figure

That is a minimum - a TEPCO spin to justify the 20km exlusion zone which was criminally too small.

There are also indications that some areas 50 km away have cesium concentrations higher than Chernobyl.

Japan is in big trouble

And they can enlist all the spin doctors they want but they wont escape the morbid reality that awaits them over the next century and beyond

very sad situation

Back to top

« Last Edit: Apr 17^th, 2011 at 11:29pm by Foolosophy »

IP Logged

gizmo_2655

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 16010
South West NSW
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #476 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:43pm

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:33pm:

Here’s an example: Chernobyl wafted cesium 137 into Germany. We’re talking about more than 300 miles. Even now, 25 years later, the wild boar that eat the mushrooms on the soil that’s absorbed the cesium 137, can’t be eaten.

I am sure that TEPCO will keep everybody informed about HOW much radionuclide release has occurred - and will occur over the next 9 months

Apparently 9 months is what TEPCO thinks will be needed to get the reactors cores into cold shut down mode

SPent fuel rod Pools???

What about them??...The spent fuel rods will be movable a whole lot sooner than 9 months...If it comes to that, the spent fuel rods might even be movable NOW....but stabilising the cores is more important...

Back to top

"I just get sick of people who place a label on someone else with their own definition.

It's similar to a strawman fallacy"
Bobbythebat

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #477 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 11:41pm

gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:43pm:

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 10:33pm:

Here’s an example: Chernobyl wafted cesium 137 into Germany. We’re talking about more than 300 miles. Even now, 25 years later, the wild boar that eat the mushrooms on the soil that’s absorbed the cesium 137, can’t be eaten.

I am sure that TEPCO will keep everybody informed about HOW much radionuclide release has occurred - and will occur over the next 9 months

Apparently 9 months is what TEPCO thinks will be needed to get the reactors cores into cold shut down mode

SPent fuel rod Pools???

What about them??...The spent fuel rods will be movable a whole lot sooner than 9 months...If it comes to that, the spent fuel rods might even be movable NOW....but stabilising the cores is more important...

gizmo re-assures everyone in the world that everything is fine

Back to top

IP Logged

muso

Gold Member

Offline

Posts: 13151
Gladstone, Queensland
Gender: male

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #478 - Apr 18^th, 2011 at 10:18am

mozzaok wrote on Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:15pm:

Quote:

Greenpeace just want to worry as many people as possible and cause even more anguish.

muso

Well I cannot blame them, because we are not playing with play doh over there, it is highly radioactive waste, and just saying that we will do better next time, is what they always say, even while we are experiencing this current next time, for nuclear accidents.

I concede that there are times, and places, where Nuclear deserves to be considered as part of the energy generation options, but places prone to large earthquakes, like Japan, is probably somewhere that other choices would have made better sense.
Australia is also somewhere I consider Nuclear as unnecessary, as we can use gas until we get renewables up to base load efficiency.
The under statement of the risks, and costs, of Nuclear Power is something the pro Nuclear lobby are always guilty of, and because of that, an organisation like Greenpeace, which can do a bit of finger pointing from time to time, is not such a bad thing.

I think I've said it before, (in fact I promised to eat my hat) but Nuclear Power will probably not be approved in Australia. You're right - we have better choices. However, nuclear power will have to continue to be part of the mix elsewhere. It will do far more harm to start decommissioning nuclear plants and replacing them with coal.

The way the anti-nuclear brigade works is that they look for cancer statistics, and they ignore the variation that happens from year to year. Any slight increase in cancer (pick a cancer - any cancer) will be attributed to radiological causes. In fact, we could pick just about any period over the last century and show how the cancer rates increased for that period by the process of straight line extrapolation.

There are of course examples from Chernobyl where certain cancers have increased from a level of almost nil. These include childhood thyroid cancers, which have increased by about 4000 over the years.

Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were tragic accidents, but Fukushima is in no way comparable to the scale of Chernobyl in terms of both the total activity emitted and the emission of Actinides due to the extensive graphite and core fire.

At Fukushima, there is no evidence of any gross loss of Actinides (eg Plutonium, Uranium etc)

It might sound ominous, but the main thing that actually worked in favour of the Japanese was that most of the radiation was released to the sea, where dilution effects will be enormous.

Back to top

1523 people like this. The remaining 7,134,765,234 do not

IP Logged

Foolosophy

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 1171
Australia
Gender: female

Re: Fukushima - Consequences?
Reply #479 - Apr 18^th, 2011 at 12:08pm

muso thinks that the individual reactors at Fukushima are still at level 5 but the incident overall is level 7.

Each level increase escalates the threat by a factor of 10.

muso makes a lot of sense doenst he ladies and gentlemen

In order to save face due to his gross miss reading of the severity of this situation he has resorted to even more apologetisms and spin to cover the arses of TEPCO and the puppet Japanese and international nuclear authorities.

Its pathetic to watch muso attempt to trivialise the criminality that has occurred as a result of the worst nuclear disaster seen on this planet.

perhaps muso would like to explain to everyone WHY reactor 2 alone hasnt been at level 7 seeing as the core has fully melted through the bottom of the reactors and is making its way through the concrete slab below?

Perhaps muso can explain to everyone why nitrogen is being pumped into the reactor buildings and various cavities?

Surely there isnt hydrogen being produced - STILL!

Surely there isnt fissioning going on in the reactors and spent fuel rod pools?

And now this situation will continue for another 9 months according to TEPCO.

Well I think that we can ignore anything TEPCO or muso for that matter has to say on this issue.

Remember folks

CHERNOBYL: Total nuclear material inventory = 200 tonnes of Uranium (50 tonnes released due to explosion and fire). Situation was under control in 10 days. Soviet government sent in 600,000 military people. Including 10,000 miners to dig a tunnel underneath the reactor (2500 of these miners died within several years of this exposure)

Total estiamated deaths due to CHernobyl as at 2006 = 985,000

FUKUSHIMA: 2000 tonnes of Uranium

do the math - already one of the worlds leading experts in readiological exposure and its health effects Prof Chris Busby, has modelled and predicted that 400,000 additional cnacers will occur in the 200 km zone over the next decade (double that cancer toll oevr the next 50 years)

And remember the radiation release figures given has been grossly underestimated to limit corporate damage and stock market panic. And for that alone there will be more deaths.

This is a cirminal act of the highest order

To support it is nothing short of being an accomplice

shame on those that have done this

Back to top

« Last Edit: Apr 18^th, 2011 at 12:15pm by Foolosophy »

IP Logged