Topic: Fukushima enters "China Syndrome" stage (Read 3351 times)

According to this recent video it could already be in China Syndrome stage. If you assess more credibility to other sources than TEPCO that even seems likely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H7LjPIBfkU

The only real problem was not only powering the pumps.
The real problems are how the whole industry works. It does not work, and its all over the world it does not really work.
Problems are ignored and silenced down in Russia, India and all over the world.

This is how it works, or does not work in the US:

http://vimeo.com/29929825


They knew about the problem in Japan.

"Japan earthquake: Japan warned over nuclear plants, WikiLeaks cables show
Japan was warned more than two years ago by the international nuclear watchdog that its nuclear power plants were not capable of withstanding powerful earthquakes, leaked diplomatic cables reveal."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8384059/Japan-earthquake-Japan-warned-over-nuclear-plants-WikiLeaks-cables-show.html

But they chose not to correct them because they thought such event could not happen...

Here is a good lecture about unexpected dangers and why they do happen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmwEjL6K1U

These unexpected "impossible" events happen all the time.
In Sweden they recently discovered that jellyfish could clog the water intake leading to a meltdown.

The US three mile island that almost lead to a meltdown was caused by a worker using a candle, since the light was out.

Recently a fire happened in a Swedish nuclear plant...Because a vacum cleaner turned on started burning. This could lead to smoke being released...

Workers could suddenly get stomach sick because of food poisening. There are millions of unexpected events that can occur and sometimes two or more of these happens at the same time and things go really wrong.

In US powerplants are built close to earthquakes epicentra.
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/23/virginia-earthquake-epicenter-close-to-nuclear-power-plant.html

"On NBC News, Jim Norvelle of Dominion Power said the plant was designed to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 5.9 to 6.1. As noted earlier by Rob, this earthquake was initially reported as a 5.9, so... that's not too comforting."

In India nuclear powerplants are being built in one of the world worst earthquake zones.

The government is planning to build the world’s largest nuclear power plant in Jaitapur, on the west coast of India, in Maharashtra.  The site is an ecological and biodiversity ‘hotspot’ that's also known to have high seismic activity. The plan is an untested, expensive and dangerous gamble with health and land, which is being vehemently opposed.

http://www.greenpeace.org/india/en/What-We-Do/Nuclear-Unsafe/Nuclear-Power-in-India/Jaitapur-nuclear-power-plant/


Here are other political problems with security of nuclear power plants:

http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/06/09/after-fukushima-wikileaks-points-to-the-disasters-waiting-to-happen/

Other problems is that often several plants are built next to eachother. If one explodes has a meltdown it could get impossible to stay in the area meaning that the others can also melt.


One must be utterly naive to think there is such a thing as safe nuclear power.
In theory on drawing table yes. Not in reality.

Example:

27-1956: US plane crashes into nuclear ammunition storage in the UK


There is a reason that Germany decided to close and not build any more powerplants.


Fact is, that there has been close to meltdowns on several occasions.

Only this year France had one quite serious accident, Sweden 2 accidents, USA 2 serious situations.

Here are some more...

December 12, 1952

A partial meltdown of a reactor's uranium core at the Chalk River plant near Ottawa, Canada, resulted after the accidental removal of four control rods. Although millions of gallons of radioactive water poured into the reactor, there were no injuries.

October 1957

Fire destroyed the core of a plutonium-producing reactor at Britain's Windscale nuclear complex - since renamed Sellafield - sending clouds of radioactivity into the atmosphere. An official report said the leaked radiation could have caused dozens of cancer deaths in the vicinity of Liverpool.

Winter 1957-'58

A serious accident occurred during the winter of 1957-58 near the town of Kyshtym in the Urals. A Russian scientist who first reported the disaster estimated that hundreds died from radiation sickness.

January 3, 1961

Three technicians died at a U.S. plant in Idaho Falls in an accident at an experimental reactor.

July 4, 1961

The captain and seven crew members died when radiation spread through the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered submarine. A pipe in the control system of one of the two reactors had ruptured.

October 5, 1966

The core of an experimental reactor near Detroit, Mich., melted partially when a sodium cooling system failed.

January 21, 1969

A coolant malfunction from an experimental underground reactor at Lucens Vad, Switzerland, releases a large amount of radiation into a cave, which was then sealed.

December 7, 1975

At the Lubmin nuclear power complex on the Baltic coast in the former East Germany, a short-circuit caused by an electrician's mistake started a fire. Some news reports said there was almost a meltdown of the reactor core.

March 28, 1979

Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, America's worst nuclear accident occurred. A partial meltdown of one of the reactors forced the evacuation of the residents after radioactive gas escaped into the atmosphere.

February 11, 1981

Eight workers are contaminated when more than 100,000 gallons of radioactive coolant fluid leaks into the contaminant building of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah 1 plant in Tennessee.

April 25, 1981

Officials said around 45 workers were exposed to radioactivity during repairs to a plant at Tsuruga, Japan.

April 26, 1986

The world's worst nuclear accident occurred after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It released radiation over much of Europe. Thirty-one people died iin the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Hundreds of thousands of residents were moved from the area and a similar number are belived to have suffered from the effects of radiation exposure.

March 24, 1992

At the Sosnovy Bor station near St. Petersburg, Russia, radioactive iodine escaped into the atmosphere. A loss of pressure in a reactor channel was the source of the accident.

November 1992

In France's most serious nuclear accident, three workers were contaminated after entering a nuclear particle accelerator in Forbach without protective clothing. Executives were jailed in 1993 for failing to take proper safety measures.

November 1995

Japan's Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor leaked two to three tons of sodium from the reactor's secondary cooling system.

March 1997

The state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation reprocessing plant at Tokaimura, Japan, contaminated at least 35 workers with minor radiation after a fire and explosion occurred.

September 30, 1999

Another accident at the uranium processing plant at Tokaimura, Japan, plant exposed fifty-five workers to radiation. More than 300,000 people living near the plant were ordered to stay indoors. Workers had been mixing uranium with nitric acid to make nuclear fuel, but had used too much uranium and set off the accidental uncontrolled reaction.


http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Japan/Accidents.shtml


2006 Sweden:

The culprit was as simple as it was troubling: a short-circuit. But that short-circuit caused an electricity failure that nearly led to catastrophe at Sweden's Forsmark 1 nuclear reactor.
Nearly two weeks ago, around noon on July 25, a power outage occured at Forsmark, throwing the plant's control room into a state of chaos. As the power failed, so did two of the plant's four emergency backup generators. The numbers on the controls started to go berserk, and it took a full 23 minutes before the workers, who for a time had no idea what was happening inside the reactor, were able to bring Forsmark 1 back under control.

1986, 1992 and 2004 Germany
They included a power failure at Germany's Biblis B nuclear reactor on Feb. 8, 2004. "And that was just because the weather was bad and there was a short in the power line," he recalled. Less than a decade earlier, in 1986, lightning disrupted operations at the plant. And in 1992, at a plant in Philippsburg, Germany, a defective electrical component caused an incident that had similarities with the July 25 incident in Sweden.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,430458,00.html

Another impressive list:

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html

Sorry for this long post. But the more you study and learn the more you understand that there is no such thing as safe nuclear power.

45 tons is like half a backyard swimming pool worth.  Not a huge amount compared to what has already been leaked.

"Japan's crippled nuclear power plant leaked about 45 tons of highly radioactive water from a purification device over the weekend, its operator said, and some may have drained into the ocean."

http://news.yahoo.com/water-leaks-crippled-japanese-nuclear-plant-133831478.html

:/

Yep, but I was being sarcastic.

~ http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/57991--oppd-hopes-to-restart-nuclear-plant-in-early-2012 ~

Can anybody punch holes in or find fault(s) with what's written here?: http://fairewinds.com/content/america%E2%80%99s-nuclear-nightmare

Could still have an earthquake large enough to take out the the backup generators or disrupt the water supply.  No place is 100% safe against mother nature.

And some of those plants are located in the Great Plains where we don't ever have worry about them becoming flooded.

Yes, and yes.  Still scares the crap out of me, because even though Fukushima was built 4 decades ago, we still have many plants in operation just as old.

No need for uranium bombs... use plutonium breeders.
Works every time.

Ironically this is the only viable "permanent disposal" method for the waste along with the most sustainable energy economy. (Longer than the expected lifetime of the sun)

I can argue that any nuclear industry is inherently connected to nuclear warfare and thus potentially dangerous.  
You are right there are safer designs, there are also safer cars, but if you drive drunk against a tree it doesn't matter that much at least not ruling out luck

All in all, there's a Carnival Starship Cruise, 100% booked with Beings that were looking forward to a ten-year-tour and are now highly upset for being rerouted to Risa, which could never be compare to Pattaya, due to our planet's Level 3 quarantine status.

I haven't said that it is life threatening, nor that it is particularly dangerous. I also don't give as much to scientific consensus where there is in fact none, that research is in up-front presented as discredited speaks books.
That particular reasoning is encountered every time where the mainstream has a conflict of interest in respect to theories who challenge the status-quo. This has been this way all over history, so I don't attribute any less merit to any "discredited" research than any other.

But lets assume for a moment that hot particles are really not more dangerous than external radiation. The effect is double cumulative.
At first there is continuous release of nuclear fallout till the disaster is fixed, that was the case with Chernobyl and is even more so with Fukushima. In contrast to a nuclear weapon there is no exponential decay happening since the supply of fallout is continuously replenished.
Then there is the effect in the body where even while particles have a shorter biological half life, because they are expelled sooner or later if they are continuously replenished you will end up with a certain level of exposure over a long time.

Now you can claim that this level is below a certain threshold, like eating a banana climbing a mountain, and so on. But until there are discrete figures on this is just a rhetoric.

But I know for instance that where I live eating wild mushrooms is still something where you get unusual high dose of exposure, even now over 2 decades after Chernobyl. There is no tremendous risk in eating them once a year but eating them frequently is still advised against by any doctor.

There's actually probably more ionizing particles in the banana itself.

Most of these scare stories on hot particles rely on a 30 year old widely discredited paper. For some perspective:


In summary: in very broad terms (within a factor of ~ ± 3) the results of a very large number of animal studies and a growing number of in-vitro studies are in agreement regarding the lack of evidence to support a significant hot particle enhancement factor.  Human evidence is limited but does not support any significant hot particle enhancement.  All of this is in stark contrast to the claims made more than 30 years ago, which fuelled so much concern, that this could be as much as 5 orders of magnitude.

http://www.cerrie.org/committee_papers/Paper_6-02.doc

If you like to read the full report, including data on leukemia as a result of nuclear bomb testing, have a look here:
http://www.cerrie.org/pdfs/cerrie_report_e-book.pdf

Humans have this irrational fear for radiation. I dont want to trivialize what happened in Japan, but the idea that its life threatening to people across the globe is ridiculous. Breathing "5 hot particles" is probably about as dangerous as eating a banana.

You are so wrong, EM! To prove to you that there's no problem, I've compiled a list of upper management from Tepco, lobbyists, and renown dignitaries from around the globe who have visited 'Ground Zero' in Fukushima since the minor incident, below (caution: the list is long):

Feel free to add to the list if I've forgotten anyone.

And just an hour ago, Bloomberg is putting out more misinformation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/tepco-reports-more-radioactive-water-leaks.html

Hot particles are the highly radioactive ones, afik.

The size doesn't matter either, it could be a single ion or a chunk "speck of dust". Once the wrong cell absorbs at the wrong time voila - you have a tumor.
Mentioning iraq and DU munition and saying that this is ok is pure hypocrisy. That stuff was never intended for normal warfare and it's a entire different animal. Here it's the sheer mass of stuff, tons but barely radioactive. With fukushima its highly radioactive stuff spread over the globe, in relatively small quantities compared to DU.


I'm not saying that we are all gonna die of cancer, what I am saying is, is that this incident reduces the average life expectancy by a small fraction every day.

Don't quote me regulations, those are made without considerations of medical science but rather are just so that what the lobbyists "would like" to be safe in order to be able to operate.

Pure scare mongering. Without saying what particles and how big, its utterly meaningless but, 10 "particles" per day of anything is ridiculously small. One could call natural uranium particle a "hot particle" but its abundant in our environment.  UK Health and Safety Executive regulations restrict long-term workplace air concentrations of soluble uranium to 0.2 mg per cubic metre (!). Make an estimate of how big that "hot particle" is and how much you breath in 24hr and do the math. And lets not mention what an average Iraqi (or US soldier in Iraq) inhales every day in the form of depleted uranium dust.

You do know that 10 particles is extremely few, no matter what particles they are?

I am, kind of... and while I don't believe any of them what is happing certainly fits their description. Most of them provide a view that the disaster is happening on purpose. The problematic thing about them though is that they almost have no common ground and dispute each other.

I guess the best thing to do is watch out what people equipped with hepa filters and mass spectrometers are discovering...

From a interview with Arnold Gundersen: ( part1, part2)

How can anyone really know though?  Do they have sensors below the concrete?  Nope.  And steam coming up through fissures in the ground is rather telling... as least, it seems to be.

They (TEPCO and the Japanese government) have already hidden so much from us, why would they bother telling the truth now?  With regards to this situation, they've always put out "news" that equates to the most optimistic lie that is still believable.

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but there's been too many lies for me to take anyone's word for what is happening right now.