Earthquake off Japan

[His Divine Shadow]

I feel this might be tangentially relevant here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/p ... _debate_on

[Xess]

I feel this might be tangentially relevant here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/30/p ... _debate_on

I read the transcript and Helen Caldicott came off as a raving conspiracy nut. According to her the WHO and IAEA are involved in a conspiracy to hide cancer caused by radiation.
She has a good point about the dangers of ingesting/inhaling or what not alpha and beta emitters but that's offset by her large levels of apparent crazy.

[Broomstick]

I started losing respect for Caldicott when she wouldn't let the opposition speak without interruption, then lost what remained when she descended into conspiracy theories. She clearly engages in cherry-picking and just as clearly refuses to listen to anything that contradicts her viewpoint, calling it a lie. She insisted on her opposition listening to her simply because she's a doctor which in my mind is an appeal to self-authority. Being a pediatrician does not automatically make her an expert in radiation. I want to know what other credentials, other than simply reading articles in journals, makes her an authority. If it's self-propelled research that makes her an expert I want to know more about her sources and how credible they are.

As for that - with her being so anti-radiation, if a child breaks a leg does she refuse to x-ray the injury? Is she opposed to CAT scans and radiotherapy for cancer? If not, why not? Because those are sources of radiation FAR more common than nuclear accidents, and there are documented cases of actual injury or death as a result of too many CAT scans or mishandled radiation therapy.

[Pendleton]

I've been looking around lately at the economics of nuclear future build out, and it doesn't look very promising. Safety concerns are certainly one thing, especially when they invoke powerful primal instincts such as fear of radiation (and not without good reason), but economics are an inescapable aspect that put aside all other concerns. We are not living within an economy that can stomach much in the way of price increases for basics such as electricity. Oil prices along could stall any possible recovery (recovery which only seems to exist in the minds of state statisticians, it seems) without any help from pumping money into keeping the lights on as well.

It's behind a paywall this particular study right now, so I can only look at it from work, but the journal Energy Policy has a good in-depth analysis of two major nuclear powers, namely the US and France, and how their nuclear industries have stacked up. The general gist of it is that, even with the centralised, very well controlled and mostly homogeneous nuclear industry of France, compared to the more neo-liberal, free market attitude of the US, the French nuclear costs are going up, not down. This trend is actually apparent in all future build out proposals, for instance Ontario's declining of a nuclear reactor from Areva due to the high capital costs they'd have to swallow if costs overrun (costs which Areva would not guarantee) and he Finnish experience with such cost problems, which quickly made nuclear power producers sit up and take notice before they start work.

Remember, the biggest part of nuclear right now is the cost of construction. Since that is certainly not getting cheaper, certainly not too cheap to meter when we're looking at up to $10k/kWh, which is over double solar and even wind according to the DOE NREL reports, we also have to consider the rising spectre of uranium costs, which some would say are "too cheap" right now given the demand expected from China alone. Yes, there is the potential around uranium shortages via breeder designs as I have outlined, but they do not exist for actual consumer generation, and the test-bed plants have all been shutdown for reasons of either safety or economics. Even with no uranium fuel costs, the prices quoted for production of the plant initially make it uneconomical next to coal and CCGT nat. gas plants. Renewable systems have zero fuel cost, and already demonstrably have far lower initial investment costs. The one way to get around nuclear plant costs rising with design, tends to be to follow a multiple reactor site that is highly modular. Today, we see that idea being questioned with Fukushima being one such plant.

There have been studies showing that a large build out of renewables, along with efficiency measures, could adequately replace power generation today (Jacobson & Delucchi, 2011) were it not for social and political obstacles, although one can see the same be said of other types of plant, from dirty coal to expensive nuclear. Solar PV and wind costs have been coming down, incidentally, while all other power generation systems have seen increased costs, if not due to complexity in design, then by fuel input costs at the production end.

In news related to Fukushima, I have seen the NY Times report on the NRC threat assessment, which paints a picture that potentially far worse problems may be just down the road. In case anyone thinks this is liberal media scaremongering, keep in mind that the NRC is not, as I have noticed at least, a very well known anti-nuclear body. The link to the article is here, with an incorrectly scanned PDF of the report here.

TEPCO are also voluntarily releasing irradiated water on the order of 8,000 tonnes after plugging the leak successfully, because they are unable to contain the large volumes of hot fluid in situ.

[Sea Skimmer]

If TEPCO had sense they would have simply bought a small oil tanker by now and used it to hold the slightly radioactive water until it is less radioactive, or at the least the tanker could dumped the water in small amounts over a vast area of sea. Its just TEPCO being incompetent again. If they setup a offshore loading buoy in the longer term it'd be possible to bring in 200,000 ton class tanker which could eat up months of radioactive water leaks. The tanker can then simply hold all the water until it can all be turned into concrete or at least dumped in the ocean when less radioactive.


The problem with renewables remains load balancing if it were to become the majority share of national grids. We can solve that, but only for a vast amount of money on new power lines and grid storage which usually isn't counted against wind/solar costs. Nukes are rather attractive for the very reason that they let us locate high power energy sources relatively close to cities. Given a proper containment design this whole disaster would be far less serious, even if total meltdowns occurred. A decent modern concrete dome has blow out plugs for explosions, which would then be fairly easy to block back up instead of a totally destroyed building like no.3. This disaster certainly does show that you cannot go cheap on a nuclear plant... but GE didn't just go cheap, then went as cheap as possible. I'd expect we wont see any great increase in world reactor counts, but replacement of existing plants still seems pretty likely. Its not like demand for energy is going down; we may see a lot of the energy we get from oil needing to turn into energy from the electrical grid or natural gas.

[Pendleton]

If TEPCO had sense they would have simply bought a small oil tanker by now and used it to hold the slightly radioactive water until it is less radioactive, or at the least the tanker could dumped the water in small amounts over a vast area of sea. Its just TEPCO being incompetent again. If they setup a offshore loading buoy in the longer term it'd be possible to bring in 200,000 ton class tanker which could eat up months of radioactive water leaks. The tanker can then simply hold all the water until it can all be turned into concrete or at least dumped in the ocean when less radioactive.

This was actually a proposal I read somewhere after hearing that the US was sending several large fresh water carrying barges to Japan after condemning the seawater flooding procedure. Don't quite recall what happened to them, so if anyone has a link, I'd be grateful. I have read that VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) shipping isn't as busy as it could be, even with high oil prices, so presumably a couple could've been rented out and cycled freshwater over in the fashion mentioned, until all the dangerous short lived isotopes of cæsium and iodine were decayed sufficiently.

The problem with renewables remains load balancing if it were to become the majority share of national grids. We can solve that, but only for a vast amount of money on new power lines and grid storage which usually isn't counted against wind/solar costs. Nukes are rather attractive for the very reason that they let us locate high power energy sources relatively close to cities. Given a proper containment design this whole disaster would be far less serious, even if total meltdowns occurred. A decent modern concrete dome has blow out plugs for explosions, which would then be fairly easy to block back up instead of a totally destroyed building like no.3. This disaster certainly does show that you cannot go cheap on a nuclear plant... but GE didn't just go cheap, then went as cheap as possible. I'd expect we wont see any great increase in world reactor counts, but replacement of existing plants still seems pretty likely. Its not like demand for energy is going down; we may see a lot of the energy we get from oil needing to turn into energy from the electrical grid or natural gas.

Agreed on centralised renewable costs. This is why, depending on the situation, decentralised may be preferable. The DESERTEC concept may be doable in North Africa, but not Seattle, thus a one-size-fits-all route would be unworkable. Obviously, storage for baseload power needs would be good for large scale wind and solar thermal, such as graphite stores or water pumps.

I concur with the nuclear assessment too. The UK, for instance, will likely only replace what is already in use for nuclear, rather than add to it, which faces us with a receding horizon effect for power, at least for nuclear. An unfortunate addition to this burden will also be more stringent regulations and reviews now that Fukushima has reignited the nuclear hysteria crowd in the public eye. At a time when electrical supply is at it's shakiest and the need for more power is ever growing (EVs, for instance), this can not help things.

[Sea Skimmer]

This was actually a proposal I read somewhere after hearing that the US was sending several large fresh water carrying barges to Japan after condemning the seawater flooding procedure. Don't quite recall what happened to them, so if anyone has a link, I'd be grateful. I have read that VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) shipping isn't as busy as it could be, even with high oil prices, so presumably a couple could've been rented out and cycled freshwater over in the fashion mentioned, until all the dangerous short lived isotopes of cæsium and iodine were decayed sufficiently.

At least two barge trips have been made bringing about 1,000 tons of freshwater to the plant; they need twice that to purge out all the seawater, and far more to purge out all the salt but I can't tell if the barges have completed a second trip yet.

[LaCroix]

Just in :

7.4 Quake hit Japan, same area as the big one - 1 m tsunami warning

Seems the feared big after shock has finally come.

[folti78]

Japan: Tsunami warning for north-east after earthquake

A tsunami warning has been issued for north-eastern Japan after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck off the east coast of Honshu.

The tsunami is predicted to have a wave 1m (3ft) high. Those in the warning zone should move to high ground, Japanese TV said.

The area was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami last month which severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Thursday's quake was 118km (78 miles) north of Fukushima, 40km offshore.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which operates Fukushima, says it is checking on the situation at the damaged plant following the latest earthquake.

The quake was strong enough to shake buildings in Tokyo.

USGS report

[CaptainChewbacca]

Could this be a new thread?

[Kryten]

The BBC is reporting that the warnings have been lifted, and the Quake has been downrated to 7.1-about the size of as several earlier aftershocks

Authorities in north-east Japan ordered a general evacuation and workers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant took shelter after an earthquake triggered a new tsunami warning.

However, the tsunami warning was lifted after 90 minutes and the earthquake - with a magnitude of 7.1 - did little obvious damage.

Fukushima officials said the quake had no detectable effect at the plant.

[SCRawl]

Could this be a new thread?

Not really earth-shaking enough (yeah, I know, bad pun) to warrant a new thread.

[folti78]

This is just in, the Fukushima Daiichi accidents are now classified as Level 7 on the INES scale. Although not as severe as Chernobyl.

Japan: Nuclear crisis raised to Chernobyl level

Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of their nuclear crisis to the highest level, seven.

The decision reflects the total release of radiation at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is ongoing, rather than a sudden deterioration.

Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where 10 times as much radiation was emitted.

There have been no fatalities resulting from the leaks at Fukushima, and risks to human health are thought to be low.

Meanwhile a 6.0-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday prompted the plant's operator to evacuate its staff.

The operator of the Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said it was checking the status of the plant after the quake, the second to hit in as many days, but said there had been no reports of problems with external power.

The aftershocks come a month after a huge quake and tsunami hit north-east Japan, leaving 13,219 people dead and 14,274 missing. More than 150,000 people have been made homeless.

Impact of leaks

An official from the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan announced in a televised statement that the crisis level at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was being raised, adding that it was a preliminary assessment that was subject to confirmation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The level seven signifies a "major accident" with "wider consequences" than the previous level, officials say.

"We have upgraded the severity level to seven as the impact of radiation leaks has been widespread from the air, vegetables, tap water and the ocean," said Minoru Oogoda of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa), the government's nuclear watchdog.

Reporting the commission's decision, the IAEA said previous level five ratings had been provided separately for accidents at Reactors 1, 2 and 3 but had now been combined as a single event. Another affected unit, Reactor 4, has retained its level three rating, it said.

One official from Tepco said that radiation leaks had not stopped completely and could eventually exceed those at Chernobyl, Reuters news agency reported.

However, a nuclear safety agency spokesman told reporters the leaks were still small compared to those at the plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.

"In terms of volume of radioactive materials released, our estimate shows it is about 10% of what was released by Chernobyl," he said.

The decision to raise the threat level was made after radiation of a total up to 630,000 terabequerels had been estimated at the stricken plant.

That would classify the crisis at level seven on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines).

It was not clear when that level had been reached. The level has subsequently dropped to less than one terabequerel an hour, reports said.

In comparison the Japanese government said the release from Chernobyl was 5.2 million terabecquerels.

Evacuations extended

The severity level of Japan's nuclear crisis had previously been set at five, the same as that of the accident at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.

Japan has also said it is extending the evacuation zone around the crippled nuclear plant because of radiation concerns.

The zone will be widened to encompass five communities beyond the existing 20-km (12-mile) radius, following new data about accumulated radiation levels, officials said.

Japan's nuclear commission said that according to preliminary results, the cumulative level of external radiation exceeded the yearly limit of 1 millisievert in areas extending more than 60km (36 miles) to the north-west of the plant and about 40km to the south-southwest.

On Monday, a 7.1-magnitude quake hit north-east Japan, leaving three people dead. It also triggered a brief tsunami warning, and forced workers to evacuate the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Tuesday's quake rocked buildings in the capital, Tokyo.

There were no immediate reports of fresh damage, though Japan's Narita international airport temporarily closed its runways, and metro and train services were interrupted.

The cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were damaged in last month's disaster and workers have been struggling to prevent several reactors from overheating.

Officials have warned it will be several months before the situation at the nuclear facility is brought fully under control.

Tepco said on Tuesday that a fire had broken out briefly at Reactor 4, before being extinguished.

[Big Orange]

Well that's just great. We need energy more than ever and we have a nuclear disaster brought about by sheer Murphy's Law (old reactors based on even older blue prints, built in a earthquake zone right by the sea, on sea level, managed by an inept company).

But hey, at least the radiation levels are "only" 10% that of Chernobyl's...

[adam_grif]

Gotta love the misleading headlines. "Raised to Chernobyl level" is all a lot of people are going to see, rather than the bits about being 10% of the radiation released at Chernobyl, nobody dying and minimal health risks. Oh well, I suppose it can't damage Nuclear's public perception any worse given that most people already think it's satan from decades of smear campaigns.

[Rahvin]

Already had someone on another forum do exactly that. Didn;t even look at the relative radiation levels, ignored death tolls and expected risks, focused right in on "it's as bad as Chernobyl!!!"

Then he quoted Greenpeace at me, and I laughed.

[Nephtys]

The IAEA's being pretty irresponsible, declaring this to be anywhere near as terrible as Chernobyl. Seriously, this incident which has left a somewhat annoying lump of debris, vs something that was out of pure negligence that lead to thousands dead and terribly ill, and a whole massive chunk of land polluted and abandoned?

[Pendleton]

The IAEA's being pretty irresponsible, declaring this to be anywhere near as terrible as Chernobyl. Seriously, this incident which has left a somewhat annoying lump of debris, vs something that was out of pure negligence that lead to thousands dead and terribly ill, and a whole massive chunk of land polluted and abandoned?

With respect, the nuclear watchdogs (notably of Austria and France) have already stated that Fukushima has released at least 60% the radionuclide aerosol volume of Chernobyl, as discussed some pages back. This is not something to be taken lightly, and as there is still no end in sight for this predicament, an INES 7 rating is perfectly reasonable. We do not value these threats based on present death tolls, which is actually a fairly insidious way of doing the complete opposite of what many in Greenpeace and the media have been doing with the more gloomy outlooks. When dealing with nuclear power, it would be wise to er on the side of caution, not pretend that everything is A-OK. The Japanese were doing that on 12 March. Look where we are now. On top of that, comparisons to Chernobyl are not helpful for a number of reasons. A number of reactors have suffered a critical meltdown scenario and not SCRAM'd properly, or at least are undergoing possible fission episodes of sub-criticality due to subsequent damage. A lot of the problems encountered are in no way analogous to Chernobyl, and in many respects, can be far worse than Chernobyl in point of fact. We had one reactor blow the majority of itself up in '86, which despite what one may think by intuition, was actually a better outcome compared to several intact cores constantly leaking radioactive contaminants into the environment.



One such threat is bioaccumulation of some of these radionuclides, which are already out in the environment en masse.

As an aside, while I'm not one to entertain the more die hard Greenpeace activists, if you're ever confronted with someone posting their material in a debate, it is best to do a point-by-point rebuttal of the piece being discussed, rather than just laugh out the source because of bias. It doesn't endear anyone to your position, and can be readily copied when it comes to posting your own sources. Whether this changes the original poster's mind is immaterial. It is the people on the fence watching your debate that are important, and blithely hand-waving away sources can give the wrong impression without going into the why.

[Broomstick]

Well, I'm not an expert, but it may be that some land around Fukushima may be declared unfit for long-term habitation for awhile if the cesium levels are excessive, or if there is some other sort of contamination with a different isotope. Certainly, the land the plant itself is on would not be safe for, say, gardening or farming at this point.

By certain arbitrary standards I can see putting this in a certain category with Chernobyl, but it's a one-dimensional view of the problem. As noted - Fukushima has not, to our knowledge, killed anyone while Chernobyl indisputably did. Which is worse, a reactor blowing itself up, or a malfunctioning reactor slowly leaking into the environment. While there is plenty of theory we actually don't have a lot of real world incidents to study (which, in a way, is a good thing because who'd want more nuclear accidents?). The only way to get good long-term answers is to study such incidents long term... which means we don't have all the answers right now, nor will we for a few decades.

Or, to discuss a different sort of disaster - the Haiti quake was "merely" 7.0 or something, while the Japan quake was roughly 9.0... but the effects in regards to loss of human life and property destruction was, in fact, greater for the less severe of those two quakes. This comparison holds whether you add in the tsunami to the Japan disaster or not. Details count, preparation counts, even two disasters in the same "level" on a disaster scale can have significantly different impacts.

The way this is presented is detrimental to understanding. The addendum "...but Fukushima only released 1/10 the radiation of Chernobyl" (or whatever the figure is) so often is skipped, or the by end of the hysterical headline the reader is no longer paying attention.

Or maybe we need a new rating system for nuclear accidents, if the current system does not convey the relevant information in a useful way.

[PeZook]

There is also a major difference between a small continuous release over a long time and a massive blast and five day fire that released the equivalent amount of isotopes in a short time.

That said, I don't agree it's irresponsible to increase the incident level: it crossed the treshold, so it's now level 7. The public doesn't understand all the implications, but they never really did.

[Sea Skimmer]

It’s illogical that this is level 7 when the only level 6 accident was a 100 ton class explosion of a tank of the worst radioactive waste possible, blowing dozens of tons of it in the air and leaving the land heavily contaminated to this day. Level 6 would be far more appropriate in relative scale but really this all just points to the nuclear incident scale being too shitty and simplistic, which people have been saying for a while. I mean this same scale says Windscale and Three Mile Island were the same... when Windscale almost really was a Chernobyl.

[Pendleton]

It’s illogical that this is level 7 when the only level 6 accident was a 100 ton class explosion of a tank of the worst radioactive waste possible, blowing dozens of tons of it in the air and leaving the land heavily contaminated to this day. Level 6 would be far more appropriate in relative scale but really this all just points to the nuclear incident scale being too shitty and simplistic, which people have been saying for a while. I mean this same scale says Windscale and Three Mile Island were the same... when Windscale almost really was a Chernobyl.

Operative word is "almost", though. Windscale was a potentially very serious incident, and seeing as I grew up just downwind of the site and have visited Sellafield, I'd rather not downplay it. But the point remains that what it could have been, and what it was, are different levels of catastrophe, and given it was one of the first major nuclear accidents, it could have been a lot worse. I was always more concerned with lax storage and disposal regulations for the site before reprocessing at Springfield, myself.

In any case, the scale was revised a few years ago to more accurately convey what each level stands for. Right now, taking into account amount of radioactives present in the environment or continually being added, along with the severity of damage to multiple reactors, I can't say I find much fault with this rating. If it was a 6, it could easily be moved to a 7 if this situation persists. In regulatory inspections, a minor fault that is continually found can be elevated to make it a major or a critical fault that requires serious consideration, even if the problem initially is only very small and somewhat contained. Until the reactors are stabilised and the site free of any more contaminant risks, a level of high alert will be maintained. This could be for weeks, months or years. We just don't know, and that factors into how we gauge this threat rating. The simplistic destruction and then burying of Chernobyl by hundreds of thousands of "bio-robots" was something of a blessing, at least for the industry. With the spectre of nuclear fallout in the news for a lot longer, public image will be tainted probably even more than any previous incident. There's only so long you can make soothing statements about radiation levels not being dangerous before people lose trust in your words or ability to handle the situation.

At this point, I'm hoping the IAEA is getting better informed if nothing else. Most media reports are now just echo chambers for public figureheads stating a release of contamination occurred, but was not dangerous. I prefer quantitative data to qualitative, I have to say.

[fnord]

With an 8-day half life, how the hell can iodine-131 bioaccumulate? I can see that happening for Cs and Sr, but not I.

[Broomstick]

The problem is that I-131 pretty much goes straight to the thyroid and fucks it up, doing damage from the inside. And if the reactor(s) are still leaking that into the environment then it's not diminishing every 8 days because "fresh" stuff keeps getting put out.

Remember, too, it's not 8 days and it's done, it's 8 days and only half as radioactive. Start with a big enough quantity and it's still enough to be a problem after 8 days, or 16....

[Sky Captain]

The main differnece between Chernobyl and Fukushima is Chernobyl released its contents into the air while leaks from Fukushima are mostly radioactive water that seeps into ocean. Most seriuos release into air from Fukushima was fire in reactor 4 fuel pool but fortunately that was put out quickly. In this case leaks into ocean may be better than leaks into air, after all it is easier to avoid eating contaminated fish than a avoid breathing air conaminated with radioactive particles. Also water leaking in ocean will mix with millions of cubic km of ocean water and contaminants will disperse much more quickly than thay would if deposited in soil.