
Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe' - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561
======
jre
I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO
debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the
technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up
(lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at
all.

It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system,
where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs /
maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to
fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a
bankruptcy.

We have to find a way to make those critical industries transparent and honest
so that citizens can trust them again.

~~~
samatman
I can think of one thing, and no one will swallow it in our society: The
engineers who work on nuclear plants must pledge their lives for its safety,
and ritually kill themselves in the event of an incident.

I'm perfectly serious, in that it's within the human experience and it would
work. I also suspect our world society can't wrap its head around that kind of
medieval pact, and I'm not even sure _I_ want to live in that world.

Still, knowing you have to hang yourself if the plant goes critical is pretty
good motivation to do things right and not cut corners.

EDIT: well, this is getting misunderstood. My point here is: would you accept
a _lesser_ guarantee of safety? If you _really believe_ that nuclear power can
be made safe, these hypothetical engineers aren't at risk.

Let's say I took a pledge to kill myself if a meteor ever knocks the flame off
the Statue of Liberty. Would any of you worry about me? No?

Maybe we shouldn't build nuke plants at the moment, then.

~~~
potatolicious
Mistakes aren't deterministic, they are largely probabilistic.

While ritual suicide might make the victims of an accident feel better, they
are ultimately unproductive - there are many classes of disastrous errors that
have nothing to do with negligence.

Not to mention also, even in incidents with a preventable cause, it is
exceedingly rare for there to be a singular cause. Chernobyl, for example, was
the culmination of a vast number of errors and safety lapses. Should the
entire plant workforce kill themselves?

Things like nuclear meltdowns are black swan events, with a multitude of
causes and guilt. What you're basically suggesting is that, in the case of
such a black swan event, we will kill off a large proportion of the only
people who can prevent it from happening again.

~~~
samatman
While I do think a "vast number of errors and safety lapses" is unlikely to
come out of a cult (note the word) of engineering which embraces ritual
suicide as the cost of failure...

This is about human psychology, rather than reliability in the engineering
sense. I truly believe it would lead to better safety, but not _perfect_
safety.

The idea is that yes, all or most of the engineers involved in a nuclear
accident of any significance would kill themselves. Not only would their
knowledge be lost, their fellow nuclear engineers would carve their names on a
black stone, bury it in the earth beneath their corrupted stain, and never
mention them again. Their families would be rewarded only if they showed honor
by staying to fight the nuclear corruption, and dying honorably when the
disaster is contained.

This won't work perfectly, but it would let society as a whole live with the
contradiction inherent in nuclear power: it sustains us, while running the
risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous
mutation.

This is also pure thought experiment: what would it take to have a culture of
safety as serious as the threat of nuclear disaster? I'm not willing to pay
this price, and yet, I'm thoroughly familiar with the mass balance equations
governing extractable energy and haven't a clue how to post-carbon without at
least some nuclear.

~~~
pdonis
_running the risk of turning our children 's children into walking bags of
cancerous mutation._

But here's the thing: we have already had two "nuclear accidents of any
significance": Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Neither of those came even
remotely close to "turning our children's children into walking bags of
cancerous mutation". Nor will Fukushima. Yes, it's very bad for people near
the plant, and for fishermen in the surrounding waters. But on a global scale,
it's just not that big.

 _what would it take to have a culture of safety as serious as the threat of
nuclear disaster?_

Wrong question; the answer to it ask you ask it is that we already have a
culture of safety at least that serious, with regard to nuclear power, because
we treat nuclear power far more strictly than we treat other sources of power
(like coal) that pose greater overall risk to humans. If we're going to
effectively ban nuclear reactors because we're worried about radiation, we
should also ban coal because we're worried about deaths from mining. And we
should ban oil because of the risk of something like the Deepwater Horizon
spill.

There isn't a simple solution to any of this; but a good start would be to be
open and realistic about _all_ the risks of _all_ power sources.

~~~
redblacktree
Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near
the power plant.

~~~
pdonis
_Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant._

Oh, I should have added: this claim isn't really true either. The WHO
estimates that a million people die each year due to air pollution from coal
plants. This is many orders of magnitude higher than the annual average deaths
related to nuclear energy.

The difference is, there isn't a worldwide push to ban coal because of this;
instead, there's a push to scrub the plant emissions to remove the pollution.
So again, nuclear is treated much more strictly than other power sources,
relative to its actual risk.

~~~
reddit_clone
Its like motor vehicle accidents Vs airplane crashes. More people die on car
accidents but infrequent airplane accidents get a lot more press and strict
government regulation.

------
veidr
I'm so fucking sick of this. This level of ass-clownery makes Japan look so
bad, and so diminishes its national prestige in the world, that it's almost
like when Bush the junior was president of the USA.

Yes, TEPCO is a private company. But it reflects on Japan the same way it
would if the US government just left BP and Halliburton to decide entirely for
themselves how to clean up the New Horizon oil rig disaster, with no
meaningful oversight nor repercussions.

Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New
Horizon spill.

TEPCO should have been nationalized, or at least put into a decade of
receivership, within a few days of the fail, when it became clear that they
were completely unequipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude and their
president checked himself into a hospital for stress/mental issues.

~~~
lmm
>Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New
Horizon spill.

Really? Everyone is terrified of the radiation bogeyman, but I'd bet there
were more injuries and deaths as a result of New Horizon.

~~~
veidr
Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out
hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it.

Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of
thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives.

17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't
really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contemplate.

~~~
benihana
> _Yeah, well, it 's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing
> out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it._

Is that why you lead off with a fine example of it when you said that
Fukushima was "about 100 times worse" than New Horizon?

------
ChuckMcM
I can't say I'm a Lewis Page fan, but his coverage on the Register [1] added
an interesting insight which was that contamination in the water was resulting
in primarily beta radiation, not gamma radiation. I know the folks who are
reporting this, the "World Nuclear Industry Status Report" [2] are not exactly
unbiased. Read through other reports they have on their web site and they
don't seem to be coming at the debate from a particularly balanced
perspective.

In general though I find it hard to read coverage of nuclear power, gun
control, and civil liberties these days given the very strident positions. It
feels to me like walking in a room of people screaming at each other.

[1] "OMG! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again"
\--
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/21/omg_new_crisis_disas...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/21/omg_new_crisis_disaster_at_fukushima_oh_wait_its_nothing_again/)

[2] [http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/](http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/)

~~~
mtdewcmu
The part that wasn't explained very well in these articles is the nature of
the threat from water leaking into the ocean. I would think, perhaps naively,
that once it entered the ocean, it would dissipate and be relatively harmless.
It would also be a relatively benign place to contaminate the groundwater. The
groundwater would be too salty to drink, anyway, and it would flow directly
into the ocean.

------
JonnieCache
Anyone wishing to become more familiar with the murky process which led to the
proliferation of the unsafe Boiling Water Reactors such as Fukushima should
watch Adam Curtis' film _A is for Atom,_ which details how the US government
and General Electric conspired to ignore the warnings from the Atomic Energy
Commission about the designs.

He made it available in full on his (excellent) blog in the wake of the
earthquake:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom....](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom.html)

If those from outside the UK can't watch that one, it's also on youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc)

Those wary of Curtis and his psychedelic editing tricks should still give it a
go - this one is from 1992, before he got so into Boards of Canada and flash
cuts.

------
beefman
It's really sad and frightening for me to see such hysteria in the media and
even in the comments here. I want to address all of it, but it's not possible
even to make a dent. But I can offer the following numbers:

    
    
      Fukushima release to groundwater
       TEPCO estimate, August 2013
         0.024 PBq (< 5g Sr-90) in 300 m^3 water
    
      Fukushima releases to the sea
       TEPCO estimate, May 2012
        11 PBq I-131
         3.5 PBq Cs-134
         3.6 PBq Cs-137
    
      Fukushima releases to air
       TEPCO estimate, May 2012
        500 PBq I-131
         10 PBq Cs-137
         10 PBq Cs-134
       NISA estimate, June 2011
        160 PBq I-131
         15 PBq Cs-137
    
      Chernobyl releases to air
       Wikipedia, retrieved Aug 2012
       1760 PBq I-131
         85 PBq Cs-137
    

And here's a picture of the leak
[http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20130820/14/noraneko-
okayam...](http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20130820/14/noraneko-
okayama/4f/0a/j/o0640048012654876903.jpg)

The highest seawater activity level I've ever seen reported is 650 Bq/L
Cs-137. If it weren't for the salt, I'd drink it all week long.

Edit: Ongoing Fukushima coverage can't really be made interesting, but Leslie
Corrice[1] and Will Davis[2] do a good job.

[1] [http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com](http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com) [2]
[http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com](http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com)

~~~
KVFinn
You're quoting a bunch of year or more old stats... there's been a flurry of
recent news coverage because recent measurements have either exceeded past
limits, or past measurements are now considered to have been underestimates,
with respect to ocean release.

Example:

[http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-bay-radiation-levels-
hi...](http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-bay-radiation-levels-highest-
since-measurements-began-2034175/)

>Reports from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the disaster-
stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, say that measurements of
radioactive tritium in seawater – seeping out of the nuclear complex via
groundwater into the sea – show levels at 4700 becquerels per liter, the
highest tritium level in the measurement history. The highest tritium levels
have come in the past 15 days, the same reports show.

It is very very strange to be seeing such Tritium levels this late, it dilutes
so quickly. It's so strange it's to even figure out probably causes.

~~~
beefman
No, I'm not missing recent events. Year-old stats are still valid because
almost all the release occurred during the accident sequence in 2011.

I'll drink the 4700 Bq/L tritium water too. That level doesn't even exceed the
WHO limit for drinking water (10,000) let alone the Finnish one (30,000) or
Australian one (76,103). The 4.7kBq measurement was made in the quay in front
of the plant, not the open sea. Rising tritium levels there may be a result of
leaks of cesium-stripped water from the onsite treatment system, or simply
natural variation in groundwater drainage from the site.

I don't want to get personal, but the way your post is written as if it comes
from a place of knowledge, is a worthwhile example of a larger phenomenon.

------
hkmurakami
Honestly, this is just business as usual for Japanese govt/bureaucracy here.
The only difference is that it's the first time in a while that its
bullshittery has been thrust onto the international stage.

If you're living in Japan or are any how strongly affiliated with it, you'd
have to be a moron or just hopelessly incurably optimistic to believe anything
the government or these pseudo governmental organizations say about anything
remotely controversial. I've never trusted any statements or numbers issued by
any Japanese entity since day 1. Since I can't trust anything, I just largely
stay out of the country. Of course, its waste waters are being dumped into the
ocean all the time so I'm getting owned anyways across the ocean.

~~~
adrianwaj
repeat of my last comment:

"Who's the real terrorists in 2013?" Comfort-maximizing system-lickers.

------
DennisP
Although it's possible this is really bad, I'm surprised by the lack of
skepticism in this discussion so far. Mycle Snyder is described as an
"independent consultant," with no mention of scientific or engineering
credentials. There are quite a few people who make a living as consultants by
exaggerating nuclear dangers.

The article also didn't give any numbers at all. How much radioactivity are we
talking about here? Talking about "tonnes of radioactive water" is
meaningless.

Presumably someone has measured actual radioactivity levels in the nearby
ocean. Where are those numbers?

~~~
api
Nearly every Fukushima mega-scare story I've encountered seems to go back to
Arnie Gunderson, who is a professional anti-nuclear consultant.

At the same time, I see a near information blackout from other authorities.
There just doesn't seem to be much good information on this one way or the
other.

Radiation is very easy to detect. If there's a serious leak, people outside
Japan could see it. Where is this data?

~~~
rangibaby
I take some reassurance that the anti-nuclear guys say we're fucked and pro-
nuclear guys say nuclear is still the safest. That means the truth is probably
somewhere in the middle ;-)

~~~
MichaelGG
Sorry if I downvoted sarcasm. Unless you meant "middle" literally as in
anything exactly as written by the most extreme of either side, this is a bad
way to reason about things.

It's the kind of thinking that lets people say "well the anti-vaccine people
are pretty strong about their views, but doctors disagree; it's probably
somewhere in the middle" and slide about while being incorrect.

~~~
anon1385
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation)

 _Argument to moderation (Latin: argumentum ad temperantiam; also known as
[argument from] middle ground, false compromise, gray fallacy and the golden
mean fallacy) is an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found
as a compromise between two opposite positions. This fallacy 's opposite is
the false dilemma._

------
cygwin98
I don't know why Japan can get away with this for so long. I remember when the
Chernobyl disaster happened, Soviet Union was shamed to death by all western
media for years. I had high respect for the Russians for their great efforts
to contain the damage. A great many of red army soldiers died when building a
concrete substrate underneath the ruined reactor, which prevented the
underground water from being contaminated by radioactive pollution. In
contrast, the Japan government hasn't been capable to do this for the past two
years, which is apparently irresponsible and shockingly incompetent.

~~~
yxhuvud
Japan is getting away with it because there is no radioactive rain impacting
other countries.

~~~
hkmurakami
I guess it helps that the winds blow from west to east (i.e. straight into the
ocean where the next country is ~8000 miles away)

~~~
205guy
3800 miles and the next country is ... USA (Hawaii). However, both winds and
water currents tend to go north of Hawaii, so it is more like 5200 miles on
the great circle to California.

------
lignuist
Why is the japanese government letting TEPCO deal with the disaster on their
own? Why is the rest of the world letting Japan deal with the disaster on it's
own? Contaminating the Pacific Ocean constantly with radioactive water surely
affects a lot of other states.

This is something experts (TEPCO is obviously not in this position) should
handle. The bill for handling the disaster could then be presented at a later
time to TEPCO and Japan.

~~~
toyg
The relationship between Japanese governments and corporations is much more
incestuous than their Western counterparts'.

In any case, I don't think Tepco is completely alone in the cleanup effort,
otherwise you wouldn't have people like Schneider talking about it. In fact,
the irritation here comes from the fact that Fukushima continues to be a
clusterfuck and _everybody knows it_... except TEPCO's PR people, who keep
interpreting their best _Chemical Ali_ impersonations.

~~~
caf
I think you mean _Comical Ali_ (former Iraqi Information Minister) rather than
_Chemical Ali_ (former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service).

~~~
toyg
You're, of course, right.

Ahh, the early '00s, when black was black and white was white, GWB bad / Obama
good, Powell doing stand-up at the UN, Darth Cheney ruling with an iron fist
over the applauding masses... There's a reason I forgot most of that.

------
sampo
It would be nice to see some numbers.

 _" around 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked from a storage
tank on the site."_

Ok, 300 tonnes, but during which time period? Between 2011 and now? And how
radioactive? What elements and how much does it contain?

~~~
eliasmacpherson
another bbc article: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
asia-23764382](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23764382) From that I
think this is a one off discovery of 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water
leaking, and in general 300 tonnes of 'not as radioactive' per day leak from
the radioactive buildings.

Odd that the numbers given are so similar.

------
brudgers
_" All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose
officials smoke the same hashish they give out." \-- I. F. Stone_

Though the disaster site is in Japan there is nothing particular to Japanese
culture in the information flow.

------
fossuser
I remember reading an article around the time of the Fukushima leak where a
Chernobyl clean up crew survivor was interviewed. One of the key points was to
get out as quickly as possible, that it'll be much worse than the
government/industry initially says it is. I made a mental note to see if that
ended up being true - looks like it unfortunately may be.

Here's the article: [http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/22/chernobyl-cleanup-
survivor...](http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/22/chernobyl-cleanup-survivors-
message-for-japan-run-away-as-qui/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook)

------
Symmetry
Have we gotten to the point where the Fukushima disaster has caused as many
deaths as an equivalent megawattage of coal powerplants operating over
Fukushima's lifetime would have?

~~~
Symmetry
Ok, so the lifetime output of the plant is 188 GW-years. Most estimates for
the expected cancer deaths due to radiation are around 120. The evacuation
itself caused 46 deaths due to disruption in medical care and suicide.

That means that Fukushima had .88 deaths per GWyr. That's 1/3 the death rate
of coal according to an EU study, but twice the death rate of coal according
to another study that looked at a different set of countries. Which I guess
makes sense, most coal related deaths are going to be due to mining safety and
particulate emissions which rich countries can do a lot to combat by investing
in technology for safer money and scrubbing coal emissions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties)

[http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml)

~~~
pessimizer
What a great answer to your own great question.

So depending on the accuracy of the estimates - which may be drastically low,
but also should be spread amongst the plants currently running without
incident and their likelihood to continue that way - nuclear could end up
being far more damaging to human health than coal for an equivalent amount of
energy.

~~~
Symmetry
Well, the .88 deaths per GWyr is just for Fukushima. If you're talking about
all nuclear power you have a lot of reactors that didn't have any problems but
also Chernobyl, which was really very bad. So the global number is actually .1
for nuclear in general, historically. In the long run I expect both nuclear
and coal to get safer.

I would say that in general we shouldn't be blind to the fact that nuclear
power has serious problems, but we should also be aware that coal and oil have
even more serious problems. In the long run we ought to be thinking of ways we
can get by on renewable energy.

------
uptown
Why are nuclear facilities frequently built near oceans and rivers? Is it due
to the easy-access to water for cooling purposes? I've seen it in many places,
and it just seems short-sighted in light of the potential to spread
contamination when something goes wrong.

~~~
kaybe
Yes, that's the reason. Without massive amounts of water for cooling it's not
possible to use current technologies.

~~~
uptown
Interesting. The NSA facility is designed to use a massive amount of water
daily (17 million gallons a day), and it is nowhere near an ocean.

[http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/massive-nsa-
data-...](http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/massive-nsa-data-center-
will-use-17-million-gallons-water-day.html)

~~~
samstave
??? Yes, but that is not a reactor which will have catastrophic fallout if it
stops getting cooling.

In fact, it would do the world a great service if the cooling failed there :-)

------
mcantelon
Let's remember the post-Fukishima gloating by pundits such as George Monbiot
that naively deemed Fukishima a validation of nuclear power.

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-
nuc...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-
japan-fukushima)

------
frank_boyd
> 'much worse than we were led to believe'

We've heard this one before, from the same people.

We're too slow to learn. Too slow compared to the ever increasing amplitude of
the technology we create.

~~~
josephcooney
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his
auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on
to him and they still give him much trouble at times. \- Sigmund Freud

------
walid
The worst part is that everyone wants to present their situation as being in
control and not admitting that control over the situation was lost when the
floods initially happened. If Fukushima was left to political entities to
handle it, we'll end up with radioactive materials in everything all around
the globe. Considering that today we eat food grown all over the plant, the
worst part is the amount of radiation that will slip into our food supply.

------
dharma1
Can someone translate this to plain English? What is the worse case scenario,
in terms of damage to the environment and people? What kind of radius will the
effects be contained to - is it just the coast of Japan or much further out?

------
throwaway1979
Any HNer knowledgeable on the matter shed light into how bad this can get?

~~~
reirob
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6232104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6232104)

------
ericdykstra
Here is an interesting video describing a model of the spread of radiation
from the Fukushima plant over the next 10 years. I'm not sure how accurate it
is, but it's an interesting watch nonetheless (and under 3 minutes):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAU00aL-
_ic](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAU00aL-_ic)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
Here's the paper behind that:

[http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/3/034004/article](http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/3/034004/article)

Lest the logarithmic scale confuse anyone, the concentrations over most of the
ocean are _tiny_. The scale has a 5 order-of-magnitude range.

As a reference point, Cs-137 background from atmospheric testing is a median 3
Bq/m^3 [1] in the Pacific. (Total weapons fallout was 25 MCi = 925 PBq of
Cs-137 [2], about 30x Fukushima's 36 PBq [3]). Both are dwarfed by natural
radioactivity, which includes 11 kBq/m^3 of K-40 [4].

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15245845](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15245845)

[2]
[http://books.google.com/books?id=JLFX6EMPqBkC&pg=PA34](http://books.google.com/books?id=JLFX6EMPqBkC&pg=PA34)

[3]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5984.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5984.full)

[4]
[http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm](http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm)

------
loceng
I believe the figure going around is that 200 tonnes of radioactive water, per
day, is leaking. This will cause a lot of problems for everyone.

~~~
gngeal
_200 tonnes of radioactive water_

There is a (long) trillion of tons of radioactive water in all the world's
oceans. C14, see? "Radioactive water" is a meaningless term.

~~~
e12e
I think _meaningless_ is a little strong. We talk about CO2 emissions, even
though the air contains CO2. My understanding would be more radioactive than
ambient radiation, or something along those lines.

I do agree that seeing some actual numbers would be helpful (eg: types and
amount (estimated) of isotopes).

~~~
saalweachter
The total increase in CO2 levels over the last couple hundred years is about
30%, from 280 PPM to around 400 PPM.

By contrast, the total increase in the ocean's radioactivity from Fukushima is
about 0.000002%, give or take a zero. While "trillions of Bq" sounds bad, and
probably isn't _good_ , the oceans contain something like 14,000 _exaBq_ worth
of Potassium-40 alone.

The problem with radioactive releases is more about concentrating it. There's
sort of an anti-goldilocks situation. If a radioactive release doesn't spread
very well at all, that's kind of OK. The radioactivity at the point of release
is extremely dangerous, but hey, it is well contained and you can clean it up.
If the radioactivity spreads extremely well, that's kind of OK too. It freaks
people out, but realistically if you dilute radioactive materials enough they
stop being dangerous. You're pissing in the ocean.

But if the radioactive material spreads JUST RIGHT, you can contaminate too
large of an area to clean up while still leaving the radiation levels high
enough to be dangerous.

------
Snowda
I remember back when the earthquake hit we were in the engineering lab at
university and we were gathered around one of the workstations watching
YouTube video's of the even half way around the world. We were shocked but we
were fairly confident that their government had a handle on the situation.
They are an earthquake prone country after all, they surely planned for this.
My roommate was a transfer studying English and had a few friends from South
Korea and Japan. They were going to a pub and I came along for the ride. I
will never forget that night.

1\. One of his friends got a phone call telling him his best friend was
missing. He left and I never saw the guy again, I don't know what happened to
his friend. This made the situation really feel real to me. Not just something
just happening on TV.

2\. While talking to a Japanese guy there (who I knew well and had a history
of being BRUTALLY honest about his own country) said straight up: "This is
worse than the government is admitting". Even before problems with Fukushima
were announced he said this. I was dumbstruck by how the people could truly
not believe their own government in any of the slightest and how despite this
the Government perpetually wants to pretend everything is fine to keep the
populous calm. As time has gone on I only further believe him on this fact.
And I believe that it is still worse than they are currently admitting.

------
kevcampb
can someone explain why they are accumulating so much extra water? surely they
can just reuse the already contaminated water in the tanks? obviously there's
good reason, just curious why.

~~~
MichaelGG
Well if they're actually _leaking_ that much water every day, then they'd
probably not have a way to recapture it. If they did, it wouldn't be a leak.

------
hardwaresofton
As a person who was in japan during the touhoku earthquake, and I'd like to
point out that most of the japanese people probably have no idea what is
happening in regards to this. If it's on the news, they are probably airing it
BECAUSE of the global shitstorm tha has emerged. The only news I trusted while
I was there was the BBC (Japanese news told you nothing, American news were
sensationalizing every thing, slow at best, wrong at worst)

------
ajarmst
This "story" is simply a press release from Mycle Scneider, who has a clear
and consistent record as being anti-nuclear power and a probable agenda to
elevate concern about it. I'd like to see a real "independent" report which
cites multiple views and has real measurements, not meaningless twaddle like
"tons of radioactive water."

------
PaulHoule
This is very bad news for the nuclear industry although I think the threat to
the global environment is overblown.

For instance, they speak as if going into the ocean was the worst place the
leakage could go. But face it, the ocean is a huge place and spread out that
thin, it's an infinitesimal part of the natural background radiation.

Sure, radiation puts stress on life forms, but so does SO2, CO2, POPs and all
the other pollution we create and in the big picture Fukushima has far less
impact than, say, rice farming, has in Japan.

------
nateabele
I was in Tokyo recently and had a chance to speak to some friends about this.
Many of false claims and lack of transparency by the Japanese government are
driven by the fact that affected areas around Fukushima are heavy tourist
areas.

Combined with lack of growth in exports, over which their economy is already
expected to be heading into a crisis in the next few years, the impact of a
long-term reduction in tourism has potentially serious national implications.

------
consultant23522
I can't imagine why anyone is surprised by this. The people in the know will
never tell us the true depth of the problems with the economy right now, the
floor of the gulf is absolutely destroyed from being covered in oil, etc. A
conspiracy theorist sized dose of cynicism when reading the news is about the
only way to get any sort of reality out of it.

------
orblivion
"They are worried about the enormous quantities of water, used to cool the
reactor cores, which are now being stored on site.

Some 1,000 tanks have been built to hold the water. But these are believed to
be at around 85% of their capacity and every day an extra 400 tonnes of water
are being added."

Are they _still_ cooling down the reactors?

~~~
mpyne
Probably they are still cooling down the reactors, as least somewhat. The
effect is called "decay heat" and does take quite some time to completely
dissipate for reactors of that scale.

However there is also a lot of groundwater leaking into the basement/reactor
complex apparently, which then needs to be pumped back out.

------
Gravityloss
Numbers would be good. How radioactive? Compared to background and something
which we know to be dangerous?

------
davvid
Californians should be up in arms about this (where do you think the radiation
is going?)

Just the other day there was that story about how 80% (?) of our pollution in
CA comes from China. The earth is one giant network. </saddened>

------
niuzeta
it's about time the three countries closest to Japan - Korea, China, and
Russia, all of whom have great power and relation(trade and diplomatic) with
Japan, to respond. I mean, they've already done but it's time to make the
pressure more concrete... economic sanction, albeit partial?

This is a globe-wide matter.

------
pvaldes
... as always since 2011

sadly nothing new, layers of lies over more lies with some crunchy lies in
between. Bon appetit!.

------
Tichy
I know what the deniers are going to say: the risk is just equivalent to
dumping a banana into the ocean.

Whatever.

~~~
adam-f
76 million bananas, to be precise.

[http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-
resources/storie...](http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-
resources/stories/fukushima-radiation-leak-the-same-as-76-million-bananas)

~~~
gus_massa
76 millons bananas are approximately between 220 and 500 TEUs (standard
containers)
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28volume+76+million+ba...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28volume+76+million+bananas%29+%2Fteu)
Let's multiply that by 2 to account the overhead and space between bananas.

A cargo ship can carry up to 16000 TEUs.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship)

------
NN88
/r/Conspiracy was right. Hot damn.

------
bengrunfeld
Honestly, internet snarkiness and 2 minute rages aside, I wonder what this
will mean for us in the future. I wonder how US crops, the Australia climate,
and Chinese drinking water quality will be affected. Is this so bad that Japan
has essentially damned the entire region? Or are we going to see a mass die-
off of fish around the world? It's just a really scary situation, and totally
not cool.

~~~
rtpg
Not to be rude but I think you're highly overestimating the effects this could
have globally. The ocean is really big, and it's not like radioactivity is
contagious. As for the local effects, who knows...

EDIT: by who knows, I just mean I'm not aware of the scale, I could imagine it
getting pretty bad. It's just that with all the sensationalism and non
comprehension of basic statistics in some articles, I feel pretty misinformed
on the subject.

~~~
bengrunfeld
I'm not overestimating, or indeed estimating, anything. I was interested in
other people's opinions. Rudeness pardoned.

------
iamshariq
Why the heck is this on top?

Is this site turning into reddit for world news?

