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by vanlose kid » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:33 am
eyeno wrote:Does anybody know how to interpret this? This looks like it may be cps cycles per second like a regular gieger counter type reading. Agree? Gamma rad column.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cemp/recent/all.html
by 23 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:37 am
TOKYO, March 18 (Reuters) - A "Chernobyl solution" may be the last resort for dealing with Japan's stricken nuclear plant, but burying it in sand and concrete is a messy fix that might leave part of the country as an off-limits radioactive sore for decades.
Japanese authorities say it is still too early to talk about long-term measures while cooling the plant's six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools, comes first.
"It's just not that easy," Murray Jennex, a professor at San Diego State University in California, said when asked about the so-called Chernobyl option for dealing with damaged reactors, named after the Ukrainian nuclear plant that exploded in 1986.
"They (reactors) are kind of like a coffee maker. If you leave it on the heat, they boil dry and then they crack," he said.
"Putting concrete on that wouldn't help keep your coffee maker safe. But eventually, yes, you could build a concrete shield and be done with it."
Experts say the cores at the six battered reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, are likely to be safely contained, but worry about the cooling pools for spent fuel, one of which contains plutonium.
So far, authorities have failed to cool the pools, where normally water circulates continuously, keeping racks of spent nuclear fuel rods at a benign temperature.
Helicopters and water cannon trucks have dumped tonnes of water on the reactors, but still the water in the pools is evaporating and the rods are heating up. It is also feared that the quake has smashed the rods into each other, which could cause a nuclear reaction.
"It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," a Tokyo Electric Power official told a briefing on Friday.
OPEN NUCLEAR WOUND FOR MONTHS
At Chernobyl, an army of workers conscripted by the then Soviet government buried the reactor in tonnes of sand, then threw together a concrete container known as the "sarcophagus" within months of the fire and explosion there.
It failed to set properly and it cracked, leaking radiation into the atmosphere and water. Partly supported by the damaged walls of the reactor building, it has had to be reinforced.
Under a new plan for Chernobyl, a massive structure will be assembled away from the reactor at a cost of billions of dollars, then slid into place over the existing sarcophagus.
Chernobyl-style methods would be even more difficult at Fukushima Daiichi, given the number of reactors involved.
As Japanese officials have said, cooling is still the top priority. Pouring sand onto hot fuel could theoretically produce glass, and that same heat would prevent working on a durable concrete shell.
That means the stricken complex is likely to become an open sore, leaking radioactive particles into the atmosphere, for weeks and possibly months before the Chernobyl solution could even be implemented.
Authorities say radiation outside the Japanese plant is not high enough to cause harm. Still, the 20 km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant may end up as a permanent no-man's land, a major problem for small, populous country.
A 30 km (19 mile) exclusion zone remains around Chernobyl.
Tokyo, though, is likely to remain largely unscathed no matter what happens because of its distance from the reactors, no matter how nervous its citizens may be.
It is not accidental that the nuclear plant was built so far away from Japan's biggest city, said Yuki Karakawa, international coordinator at the International Association of Emergency Managers, an extension of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Those reactors in Fukushima are there for Tokyo's power and Tokyo's benefit, not for Fukushima's," he added. "After all, Tokyo is more than 200 kilometres away." (Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Daniel Magnowski)
by crikkett » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:39 am
82_28 wrote:My girlfriend had to get iodine today for some surgery she had. She had her big toe nail removed. They immediately asked if it was because of "Japan radiation". I feel like we're all about to live in Dhalgren realized.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:42 am
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:37 am
vanlose kid wrote:eyeno wrote:Does anybody know how to interpret this? This looks like it may be cps cycles per second like a regular gieger counter type reading. Agree? Gamma rad column.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cemp/recent/all.html
this?
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/article ... 708947.txt
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... Site#Areas
*
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:37 pm
by 23 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:40 pm
The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.
Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.
After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.
He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said: 'The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans.
'In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster.'
Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the crisis' severity.
It is now officially on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Only the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 has topped the scale.
Deputy director general of the NISA, Hideohiko Nishiyama, also admitted that they do not know if the reactors are coming under control.
He said: 'With the water-spraying operations, we are fighting a fire we cannot see. That fire is not spreading, but we cannot say yet that it is under control.'
But prime minister Naoto Kan insisted that his country would overcome the catastrophe
'We will rebuild Japan from scratch,' he said in a televised speech: 'In our history, this small island nation has made miraculous economic growth thanks to the efforts of all Japanese citizens. That is how Japan was built.'
It comes after pictures emerged showing overheating fuel rods exposed to the elements through a huge hole in the wall of a reactor building at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.
by Laodicean » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:42 pm
Only the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 has topped the scale.
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:44 pm
Few radioactive particles on U.S. west coast: sources
By Fredrik Dahl Posted Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:19am PDT
0 votes
Buzz up!
VIENNA (Reuters) - Minuscule amounts of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, two diplomatic sources said Friday.
The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said. One diplomat, citing information from a network of international monitoring stations, described the material as "ever so slight," consisting of only a few particles.
"They are irrelevant," the diplomat added.
Another diplomatic source also said the level was "very low."
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), a Vienna-based independent body for monitoring possible breaches of the test ban, has more than 60 stations around the world, including one in Sacramento in California.
They can pick up very small amounts of radioactive particles such as iodine isotopes.
"Even a single radioactive atom can cause them to measure something and this is more or less what we have seen in the Sacramento station," said the first diplomat, who declined to be named.
Asked if they were believed to originate from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which has leaked radioactivity since being damaged by last week's massive earthquake and tsunami, he said: "That is the obvious assumption."
The CTBTO continuously provides data to its member states, but does not make the details public.
A Swedish official, also citing CTBTO data, told Reuters on Thursday that low concentrations of radioactive particles were heading eastwards and expected to reach North America in days.
Also Thursday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said radioactivity would disperse over the long distance and it did not expect any harmful amounts to reach the country.
The New York Times earlier said a CTBTO forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume showed it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting southern California late Friday.
Radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the west coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall; editing by Tim Pearce)
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:45 pm
Very low’ level of radiation reaches U.S. west coast
Published On Fri Mar 18 2011
George Jahn Associated Press
VIENNA—Radioactive fallout from Japan's crippled nuclear plant has reached Southern California but the first readings are far below levels that could pose a health hazard, a diplomat said Friday.
The diplomat, who has access to radiation tracking by the U.N.'s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, cited readings from a California-based measuring station of the group.
Initial readings are “about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening,” the diplomat told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the CTBTO does not make its findings public.
The organization forecast earlier this week that some radioactivity would reach Southern California by Friday. A CTBTO graphic obtained Thursday by the AP showed a moving plume reaching the U.S. mainland after racing across the Pacific and swiping the Aleutian Islands.
The diplomat's comments backed up expectations by IAEA officials and independent experts that radiation levels — which are relatively low outside of the immediate vicinity of the Japanese plant — would dissipate so strongly by the time it reached the U.S. coastline that it would pose no health risk whatsoever to residents.
The diplomat did not specify the location of the CTBTO station and the organization's website lists three in California. But only one, in Sacramento, is listed as measuring radionuclides. The others, in Pinon Flat and Yreka, are classified as “infrasound” or “seismic.”
While set up to monitor atmospheric nuclear testing, the CTBTO's worldwide network of stations can detect earthquakes, tsunamis and fallout from nuclear accidents such as the disaster on Japan's northeastern coast that was set off by a massive earthquake and a devastating tsunami a week ago.
Since then, emergency crews have been trying to restore the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's cooling system and prevent overheated fuel rods from releasing massive doses of radioactivity.
Japanese officials on Friday reclassified the rating of the accident at the plant from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The International Nuclear Event Scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 as having wider consequences.
Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the severity of the nuclear crisis.
Yukiya Amano, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Organization, left for Tokyo on Thursday to assess the situation. He plans to return on the weekend and to brief the IAEA's 35-nation board in an emergency session Monday.
In Geneva, the World Health Organization said Tokyo's radiation levels are increasing but are still not a health risk, and the group sees no reason to ban travel to Japan because of its nuclear crisis.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said Friday the organization “is not advising travel restrictions to Japan” outside the 30-kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.
Hartl said includes Tokyo where “radiation levels have increased very slightly, but are still well below the absolute levels of radiation where it would be considered a public health risk.”
He also said “in general travellers returning from Japan do not represent a health hazard.”
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:58 pm
by Julia W » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:14 pm
eyeno wrote:One thing I noticed is the News story about a contaminated plane in Denver. Said source of contamination was passengers from Japan. Lets assume that is correct.
But I also notice the readings in the mile high city of denver are up to 65 on the geiger counter networks. Touchdown of radiation has been confirmed in the U.S. Spidey sense would suspect that might be the effects of the jet stream bringing that in. Shit people.
by WakeUpAndLive » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:27 pm
Julia W wrote:eyeno wrote:One thing I noticed is the News story about a contaminated plane in Denver. Said source of contamination was passengers from Japan. Lets assume that is correct.
But I also notice the readings in the mile high city of denver are up to 65 on the geiger counter networks. Touchdown of radiation has been confirmed in the U.S. Spidey sense would suspect that might be the effects of the jet stream bringing that in. Shit people.
Denver's readings I've noticed tend to be higher anyway (Mile high city- closer to sun??) I've saw it up to 75 yesterday. I'm watching it though, if it gets around 100 cpm's, I going to re-evaluate.
Typical background radiation levels for most of the USA are in the 5 to 28 uR/hr range. Readings can be higher for brief periods of time due to normal variations in radiation levels. They can also be consistently higher for areas at high elevations, or with larger natural deposits of uranium, thorium, radon, etc.
by eyeno » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:51 pm
by 82_28 » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:04 pm
Which state is "highest" and "lowest" is determined by the definition of "high" and "low". For instance, Alaska could be regarded as the highest state because Mount McKinley, at 20,320 ft (6,194 m), is the highest point in the United States.[2] However, Colorado, with the highest mean elevation of any state as well as the highest low point, could also be considered a candidate for "highest state". Determining which state is "lowest" is equally problematic, as California contains the lowest point in the United States (Death Valley's Badwater Basin, at 282 ft (86 m) below sea level[3]), while Florida has the lowest high point as well as the smallest difference between highest and lowest point, and Delaware has the lowest mean elevation.
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