The "more political thread" besides "Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants" scientific one

LKofEnglish

would you argue that Tepco has been this way all along? It seems fairly straightforward to call Tepco's response to the crisis as at best "evolving." Are their dangers of radioactive material spreading through the debris of the tsunami throughout the Pacific Ocean? Why isn't this patently obvious issue even being discussed? What about the possibility of recriticality? "Blaming the instruments" seems rather incredulous. How can one have poor instrumentation on the biggest industrial accident in human history? What about the disposal of nuclear waste into landfills in and around Tokyo Bay? Are these people insane? the list is so long as to beg the question "why are they hiding so much" and not "why does the data fit the image being portrayed." (as a point of reference i'm coming at this issue from the standpoint of a financial person trying to figure out what the Japanese currency is going to do as a result of this catastrophe. currently it is selling off dramatically.) i am here because folks like me are constantly in the need for "all the data" and not merely what we are told to think. is there anyone here who can make "best guesses" as to what they think is in fact going on? anyone here who can explain "what are the implications to recriticality"? what is the implication of radioactive flotsmam washing ashore the islands of Hawaii and the State's of Washington, Oregon and California even if only at the theoretical level?

etudiant

The instrumentation deficiencies simply reflect that the reactors have experienced catastrophic damage and are sufficiently radioactive that new instruments could not be installed even with human sacrificial volunteer help.
The radioactive debris claims are pretty far fetched. The tsunami that washed the debris out to sea was over and done with by the time the plant blew up two days later.
The radiation contamination is real, but at levels found elsewhere on earth in areas people that people live in, in Iran, Brazil, India and parts of China. Getting frantic about burying the debris begs the question what other option exists?
With cancer the cause of death of over 40% of all Japanese, the accident will be difficult to see in the mortality statistics. However, the cleanup will be a $100 billion class dead weight on the Japanese economy.
Recriticality is a concern primarily because the site will take decades to clean up enough for the fuel to be removed. Only then will the situation be safe again.

nikkkom

I have no idea what you are talking about. But assuming some mildly contaminated material is indeed used that way - why is that bad? What do you propose instead? Remember - the less contaminated material is, the more there is of it. For example, there will be A LOT (many tons) of ground scraped in various "hot spots" during decontamination, but ground from even the most dirty hot spot is not particularly dangerous. Say, 20000 Bq/kg? As long as no one _eats_ it, it's not a big deal. But where to put all these tons?

No.
Are you done with screaming and ready for adult dialogue?

There is no radioactive flotsam from Japan. If you'd have just a little bit of common sense, you'd know that.

Yamanote

Thanks nikkkom, not more to say here.

r-j

http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article23550

etudiant

Just to put these levels into perspective, bananas have about 130 Bq/kg, whereas this study notes the seawater is incrementally contaminated up to as much as 0.1 Bq/kg.
Note also that the Hawaii comment refers to the physical damage from large pieces of debris,
not to any putative radioactivity.
There has not been any reports that I've seen about any damage from these debris anywhere in the US.

Borek

Not to mention fact that the title ("Fukushima radioactive water and tsunami debris spread in the Pacific Ocean") is misleading, as it it can suggest tsunami debris is radioactive as well.

r-j

Maybe I am wrong, but even if all of the radioactivity from all the reactors spilled into the ocean, by the time it reached America it would be so diluted it wouldn't matter. Right?

seeyouaunty

Biological life has a habit of concentrating such things up through the food chain.

tsutsuji

In the following report http://www.irsn.fr/FR/Actualites_pre...n_26102011.pdf (October 2011), the French research institute IRSN says that with 27 E15 Bq, the Fukushima sea release is the largest single event of radioactive sea release ever, in the history of mankind. When it will be fully, uniformly diluted into the Pacific Ocean, the Cesium 137 concentration in that ocean will be brought to 0.004 Bq/l . This will be twice the value before the Fukushima accident : 0.002 Bq/l which was caused by the atmospheric atomic weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean in the 1960s. Both values are much lower than the concentration of Potassium 40, a natural radioactive substance, which is 12 Bq/l .

According to Federal Guidance Report No. 11 - Limiting Values of Radionuclide Intake and Air Concentration and Dose Conversion Factors for Inhalation, Submersion, and Ingestion EPA-520/1-88-020 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1988) table 2.2 pages 166 and 156, the ingestion dose coefficients of cesium 137 and potassium 40 are respectively 1.35 E-8 Sv/Bq and 5.02 E-9 Sv/Bq. This means that one Becquerel of cesium 137 is 13.5/5= 2.7 times more harmful than one Becquerel of potassium 40 when ingested by a human being.

But 2.7 times 0.004 is still much lower [12/(0.004*2.7)= 1110 times lower ] than 12.

There is also Cesium 134, and it is more harmful (1.98 E-8 Sv/Bq) when ingested, but its quantity was, roughly speaking about the same as Cs 137, and it will decrease with time more quickly than Cs 137 because its half life is about 2 years instead of 30 years for Cs-137.

This half life of 30 years also means that 30 years ago, in 1982, if the IRSN is correct, the Cesium 137 concentration in the Pacific Ocean was 0.002 * 2 = 0.004 Bq/l . So the Pacific Ocean in the 1970s was probably worse than what is expected as a result of Fukushima after full dilution.

By the way, I found a funny comic about how science is reported in the media : http://www.translucid.ca/site/2009/0...ce-news-cycle/

etudiant

The oceans have much more of the longer lived radiactive materials than humans have.
However, relatively short lived species such as cesium 137 are man made and so they sharply increase the ocean burden of that specific isotope.
The prospect of widespread seafood contamination from Fukushima cesium is nevertheless minimal, simply because the ocean potassium content, about 4 parts per 10,000 of sea water, is enough to swamp the available cesium. Cesium is not preferentially absorbed by the body for mammals or fishes afaik, although there are some fungi that do show a preference for it. Moreover, the body's potassium is in continued flux, so that the half life of absorbed potassium or cesium is about 90 days. The material is not preferentially absorbed or concentrated, unlike iodine for example.

Astronuc

Freshair - http://www.npr.org/templates/rundown...Date=2-28-2012
Frontline -http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...lear-meltdown/

Some of the technical details are a bit muddled, but nevertheless it is a rather important narrative.

tsutsuji

Here are my impressions after reading that report :

There are a few obscure statements (in note 5 page 33, they imply that the HPCI "did require electricity" ; page 10 "the revised design-basis tsunami was now 1.4 meters above the seawater pumps" is contradicted by the IAEA mission report which mentions that the seawater pumps had been retrofitted). Perhaps this is inevitable when one summarizes a complex event in a few pages.

Saying on page 10: "As a result, we believe it would be unfair to apportion significant blame for the accident on the actions the operators took (or failed to take) after the tsunami, as the official investigation committee has done", Acton and Hibbs attack and dismiss the Japanese Government's investigation committee's interim report, although they have probably not read it. If they had read it, they would have provided an internet link to the full report rather than to the English summary. The official investigation committee drew its conclusions from the analysis of the facts mentioned in the report. It seems that Acton and Hibbs want to dismiss the Tepco-unfriendly conclusions of the report regardless what the uncomfortable facts might be. Criticizing Tepco must be a sort of taboo in their mind.

The demonstration that the whole world is so much better protected against severe accident than Japan seems to be a little far fetched. That two or 3 plants in such or such country are better protected than Fukushima Daiichi does not mean that those countries as a whole are better than Japan as a whole. After all, Tokai Daini, Fukushima Daini, or Onagawa etc... resisted the tsunami.

The report provides also plenty of examples of weaknesses in countries different from Japan "In many plants in the United States, one expert said, the on-site AC power supply is not stronger than that at Fukushima Daiichi" (page 19). Most French plants lack an alternative heat sink (page 21).

What I disagree most is the way the report flatters the IAEA and extols its supposed virtues.

Page 24: "Nonetheless, given Japan’s participation in the [IAEA tsunami safety] project, it should have been well aware of how far its own practice was lagging behind international standards, and this should have prompted remedial actions." I think this can be understood the other way round. The IAEA should have been aware that Japan was lagging behind, and the IAEA should have distanced itself from Japan and from Tepco. During all these years the IAEA's attitude toward Japan was an attitude of approval. Or where, during all these year, do we find instances of IAEA disapproving Japan and disapproving Tepco ? Isn't the present IAEA president a Japanese ? If Japan was such a bad country, the IAEA should not have elected a Japanese as its president. And the IAEA should not have promoted the November 24-26, 2010 Kashiwazaki international symposium on seismic safety where Tepco's Makoto Takao says in his presentation on "Tsunami Assessment for Nuclear Power Plants in Japan" http://www.jnes.go.jp/seismic-sympos...sionB/B-11.pdf page 14 "Fukushima Daiichi NPS : we assessed and confirmed the safety of the nuclear plants based on the JSCE method which was published in 2002". If the IAEA had been the paragon of tsunami safety Acton and Hibbs claim it was, the IAEA should have said "This is not good science. We don't want to have anything to do with that. We repudiate the kind of symposium where such approaches can be presented in guise of good science". Instead of that, we find on the IAEA's website at http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/...ahead2010.html : "An International Workshop on Seismic Safety of Nuclear Installations will be held in Kashiwazaki in Japan from 17 to 19 March 2010. It is being organised by the IAEA and the International Seismic Safety Centre (ISSC) in co-operation with the IAEA Asia Nuclear Safety Network (ANSN)".



Look at the flower bunch. Isn't it cute ? During all these years, the IAEA was in love with Tepco, giving or receiving flowers to it or from it.



See also Yoko Iwabuchi's presentation http://www.jnes.go.jp/seismic-sympos...sionB/B-10.pdf about an historical database of tsunamis from 1596 to 2003. This leaves the Jogan tsunami of 869 out.　[1]


K. Satake was in the room. What was he thinking ?

(All presentations and pictures are available at http://www.jnes.go.jp/seismic-sympos...a/content.html )
[1] http://tsunami3.civil.tohoku.ac.jp/ Japan Tsunami Trace Database

zapperzero

You make a valid and valuable argument. My question to you and the rest of the participants to this discussion is: how to get from being right to doing right? I am quite sure that some political changes are in order (also I think many others here think the same). How can we best start making these changes happen?

I am sure that publicizing the issue, as is already being done here and in a few other places, is a good start. What more can be done?

nikkkom

Writing more about the need to upgrade safety of NPPs. All aspects of it: tsunami protection. EDG placement. Flood protection for electrical systems. Addition of totally passive cooling systems. Make personnel know how to use it. Air-mobile rapid response teams for nuclear disasters.

I think it's best if the written material will not focus exclusively on whom to blame, but be more focused on what needs to be done.

If you personally can't write something like this, I'm sure Japan has no dearth of talented journalists.

zapperzero

http://fukushima.ans.org/

Supposedly has a report on fukushima that I cannot (yet?) access for reason of it being password-protected. Can anyone get to it?

zapperzero

I'm sure writing about it in newspapers isn't the be all end all of political action. Any other ideas?