
Radiation Near Japanese Plant’s Tanks Suggests New Leaks - ghshephard
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/asia/radiation-near-japanese-plants-tanks-suggests-new-leaks.html
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frank_boyd
First, they said, "oh, it's just level 1, don't worry..."

Then, they said, "uhm, it's level 3, but still, don't worry..."

Now, they say, "it's actually x18 as bad".

Lesson learned: Never trust people in power in the slightest way, it's always
full of lies and incompetence.

One of the new things that society needs on all levels is: Transparency.

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ghshephard
" The highest reading was 1,800 millisieverts per hour, or enough to give a
lethal dose in about four hours, Tepco said."

... "About 430,000 tons of contaminated water, or enough to fill 170 Olympic-
size pools, are stored in rows of tanks at the plant, which appears to be
running out of open space to put them all. The contaminated water increases by
400 tons every day as groundwater flows into the basements of the damaged
buildings housing the three ruined reactors, which melted down in the worst
nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Tepco must draw off that water to prevent it from overwhelming jury-rigged
cooling systems that keep the reactors’ melted cores from reheating and
melting into the ground in a phenomenon known as the China syndrome. Tepco has
struggled to safely handle and store all the water."

~~~
ghshephard
reading through [http://xkcd.com/radiation/](http://xkcd.com/radiation/)
really makes it clear (to me) how much 1800 milliseverts/hour is. The Maximum
_yearly_ dose for a US Radiation worker is 50 milliseverts. And Radiation over
a year does much less damage than all at once. You really, really don't want
to be anywhere near those storage tanks without a LOT of protective gear. No
idea how they are going to clean up all that spilled water...

~~~
jlgreco
> _And Radiation over a year does much less damage than all at once._

With some obvious cutoffs on the upper end (that 1800 millisieverts/hour may
very well be over), that does not seem to be entirely clear. It is a topic
that has gotten some debate: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-
threshold_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model)

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snogglethorpe
Whatever happened to the French-designed water filtration systems they were
testing at Fukushima _last year_...?

They were supposed to remove most of the radioactive material from the water,
leaving behind a thick radioactive sludge (nasty stuff, but much less volume
to store) and much less radioactive water (safer to store and much less
problematic if there are leaks etc).

I remember they were having some clogging issues, but the system basically
worked, and I'd have thought they would have worked out the kinks by now...

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Someone
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/09/01/japan-
fukushim...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/09/01/japan-fukushima-
reactor-radiation-levels-spike.html) is way more worrying: _" Instruments used
previously had only been capable of measuring radiation up to 100
millisieverts, but the new instruments were able to measure up to 10,000
millisieverts"_

If true, that could mean people received a significant dose earlier.

On the other hand, I cannot find what kind and energies of radiation we are
talking about. The Sievert may be the best we have for standardizing health
effects across radiation types, but it does not really work well
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ASievert](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ASievert)),
and there is a big difference in the ease of protecting against different
types of radiation.

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ams6110
Intellectually I like the idea of nuclear power. It should be safe, cheap, and
environmentally clean.

Unfortunately I think the evidence shows that humanity is not intelligent
enough to pull it off.

~~~
nitrogen
Judging nuclear power by 50 year old designs at Fukushima is somewhat like
judging the computer revolution by early networks.

Imagine someone saying, "I like the idea of the Internet, but the Morris Worm
shows that humanity is not intelligent enough to pull iy off."

One of the problems nuclear power is the incredibly long generational cycles
keeping old tech running and slowing the iterative improvement cycle you see
with e.g. aviation and detailed NTSB reports.

