Is/Was there a nuclear disaster in Japan?

[rehmwa 2]

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Weren't they the designers of TMI?
Did they survive bankruptcy?

I remember them being a MAJOR supplier of Navy boilers as well as reactors.

I got to make a customer visit with them while I was working at Naval Reactors

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[mdrejhon 8]

I've been paying attention to maybe over 100 articles on this material. I think it's a nuclear disaster so far, that's escalating. Here's some material I've dug up.

[This info is up to date as of noon EST on March 17th. By the time you read this, all this information may be hopelessly out of date.]

Good sources include:

- CHARTS at http://www.jaif.or.jp/english and click the latest Status Report. One example is the CHART CLICKY for March 17 at 22:00. Although they are not 100% in the tune, they appear to seem to be a more accurate information source than uninformed executives talking to media and government contacts. (Based on looking at these charts, I correctly deduced that spent fuel pool at #4 could become the biggest worry)

- Yesterday, New York Times reporters had a great Q&A at http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/q-and-a-on-the-nuclear-crisis-in-japan/?partner=rss&emc=rss ... This Q&A answers a lot of common questions relatively more accurately than many other sites.

- Although Reuters vary in accuracy, this reuters status update (read all 4 pages) is unusually good:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/17/us-japan-quake-fukushima-idUSTRE72G33Z20110317
As of this time of writing, reactor 5,6 seems safe and could be even safer once the electric line gets hooked up (almost there). Reactor 1 & 2 appears to be under control (despite damage to buildings and potentially #2's outer concrete containment shell), with parts of the damaged buildings potentially intact enough to re-electrify with new electric line. Reactor 3 & Spent Pool 4 seems too radioactive to approach and might be out of control, requiring long-distance water jets or helicoptor drops. Spent pool 4 appears to be Japan's potential Chernobyl.

- Recent photo of damage to all 4 buildings (most media don't show this, yet):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/mar/16/japan-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-pictures
The damage to the bottom halves of both building 1 & 2 is relatively minor, with some major damage at the top of building 1. Building 3 is totalled (it's also the only reactor fuelled with plutonium -- MOX fuel). Building 4 is probably totalled even though no fuel in reactor, it is presumed at least part of the pool dried out and the top of the fuel rods in the spent-fuel pool started burning, igniting the fires, and the explosion at #4, if hydrogen, may have come from flaming fuel in the spent fuel pool (which is actually not spent fuel -- fresh fuel taken out of the reactor during maintenance of #4). Recent news indicates helicoptor drops and water cannons are being focussed on #3 and #4, which seems accurate with my analysis.

- [EDIT] One location at Fukushima (the gate, according to a Japan-English translation) spiked on March 15th at 9:00am to 11,930 uSv/h. Source (top of last page of PDF): http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110315g.pdf
... Wikipedia has a visualization of this official TEPCO data (the owner of the nuke plant): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fukushima_I_accident_radiation_monitoring.PNG
Observe the escalating spike-decay nature of the green line. There may be mini-criticality events happening in some locations? This is worrisome -- radiation spikes may become a lot worse before it gets better, dooming at least some the 180 heroes to certain death since the spikes are getting stronger, and not all the measurement points are close to the reactors/pools.

- Multiple-crisis overload: The problem in Japan is babysitting 13 potential mini-crises happening simultaneously in one location (6 reactors and 7 spent fuel pools), and when one of them throws a temper tantrum (radiation outburst) it hinders the japanese ability to fix one thing. Mega-spike of radiation, and nobody will be able to stay around to babysit #3 and #4 (and possibly not even #1 and #2) -- then we've got Chernobyl, if Spent Fuel Pool #4 goes critical. (it is common for power stations to re-rack the spent fuel pool to put the fuel closer to each other, when running out of space in the pool, and keep things in control only by boron walls between the bundles of rods. In addition, pool #4 has relatively fresh fuel -- temporarily taken out of reactor #4 during maintenance. And the damage in recent photos of buildings #3 and #4 looks severe enough on these that the pools might have sprung leaks, keeping it hard to keep filled. Now, if that pool goes dry, the boron walls disappear, and the pool has leaks making it impossible to fill, and the mass is so radioactive you can't get near to separate the fuel away from each other -- and if you paid attention to even a day nuclear physics primer in your final year of high school or any one of the university years, you can then begin to understand how risky Pool #4 is to possibly becoming Japan's Chernobyl, especially if further mistakes are made regarding resolving pool #4.

P.S. I am not anti-nuclear, though very wary. More than 50% of my home's power is coming from nuclear. I am currently not opposing the nearby construction of new CANDU nuclear reactors near my current hometown, in principle, due to the far safer CANDU design (it survives better in unattended situations). That said, I hope our country learns from Japan to make nuclear even safer, and consider other alternative energy options but not coal -- I'm glad Nanticoke is shutting down. The smogs of 1989 used to be awful! (the tail end of the old Acid Rain days).

[billvon 2,471]

>What the media hasn't reported is that one location at Fukushima spiked
>on March 15th at 9:00am to 11,930 uSv/h. ONE dose of that is fatal.

No, one dose of 11,930 mSv (millisieverts) would be fatal. 11,930 uSv (microsieverts) is about what a smoker gets for smoking a pack a day for a year, or about what a chest CT scan gives you.

[mdrejhon 8]

Billyvon, see this:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/ral.htm

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10,000 mSv (10 sieverts) as a short-term and whole-body dose would cause immediate illness, such as nausea and decreased white blood cell count, and subsequent death within a few weeks.
Between 2 and 10 sieverts in a short-term dose would cause severe radiation sickness with increasing likelihood that this would be fatal.

The chart shows that radiation hovered near 10,000 for almost a full hour in one specific location. An instantaneous dose versus an hour of sustained dose? There's a world of difference.

Obviously, different parts of the nuclear campus would be much lower, but no wonder the emergency workers had to temporarily abandon their posts near the spikes. (which they appears to do at the time, according to news articles of events that coincided with the time of this graph)

The workers are heroes -- some of them may be dying soon -- for saving Japan from Chernobyl (which it definitely isn't at this time, and optimistically probably isn't, but it's definitely far worse than Three Mile Island.)

[GeorgiaDon 340]

You're getting mixed up on the units. 11,930 uSv/hr (microsieverts/hr) is only ~12 mSv/hr (millisieverts/hr), which is actually no-where near a lethal dose.

micro is 1/1,000th of milli

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[mdrejhon 8]

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You're getting mixed up on the units. 11,930 uSv/hr (microsieverts/hr) is only ~12 mSv/hr

OK, you're right -- I need to doublecheck on that portion. I'll make an edit to the original post.

I just noticed that in the chart, that it says the measuring point location is "gate" (the Japan-English translation) No wonder I got confused -- that's far away from the reactors. If that's the gate to the entire complex/campus, then 11 mSv/h (11,000 uSv/h) means things are much more severe when working a fire engine pump or military water pump sitting next to the reactor building! (I think we can agree that the workers are still heroes)

[billvon 2,471]

>The chart shows that radiation hovered near 10,000 for almost a full hour
>in one specific location.

Right. That's microsieverts. Another way to express it would be to say 10 millisieverts.

>An instantaneous dose versus an hour of sustained dose?

I think there might be some confusion here. A sievert is a dose of radiation. If you are in the presence of strong ionizing radiation for a minute you might get ten millisieverts; if you are there for ten minutes in the same field you'd get 100 millisieverts.

The radiation that you see in those charts is sieverts per hour. So if you were in that field for an hour you'd get the equivalent of a chest CT, which gives you a similar dose in a few minutes. In other words, although the chest CT hits you with ten times the ionizing radiation, the overall exposure (and thus danger to you) is the same in both cases because an hour is a much longer time.

That's why exposure time is such a big deal. If you were a worker in that field for an hour (a field ten times weaker than a chest CT) you are OK. If you are there for a few days, you might have an increased risk of cancer. If you're there for a few months you'd likely start showing signs of radiation poisoning.

[mdrejhon 8]

Right, you're right about the unit confusion.

THAT said -- I learned something new about the chart: That's a measuring point at the gate (which gate?). Translate the japanese to English, and the translation suggests the gate location, and even the Wikipedia graphic chart visualization of this TEPCO data uses the word "gate". According to Google Earth, the main gate to the campus of 6 reactors is more than a kilometer away.

If we're getting 10 uSv/h more than a kilometer away from the reactors, I fear to think how strong the radiation is near the strongest source -- believed to be Spent Fuel Pool #4 (which is in the building furthest away from the gate!! Over 2km from the gate, I think, if I'm correct about the gate location -- I may be wrong). I don't think anybody can easily get close to #4, making cannons and helicoptor drops necessary. (water and boric acid) And, the wind seems to be consistently blowing in the opposite direction (towards sea, rather than inland towards the gate), so the plumes are not going through the gate measuring point.

When all of this is considered, it's still scary.

[1969912 0]

Today's (3/18) USA Today had a pretty good article about possible outcomes. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-18-1Ajapannuclear18_CV_N.htm

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[ridestrong 1]

Is/Was there a nuclear disaster in Japan? NO


Is there potential for a disaster? Yes


Strange how many people are already voting yes... not sure what they're thinking or if they misunderstood the question?

*I am not afraid of dying... I am afraid of missing life.*
----Disclaimer: I don't know shit about skydiving.----

[quade 3]

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Is/Was there a nuclear disaster in Japan? NO
Is there potential for a disaster? Yes

I'm curious what you think the "event" at Three Mile Island was; disaster or no?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[lawrocket 3]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/japan-declares-tsunami-crippled-nuke-070656704.html

The Fukushima Death toll stands at, I think, three. None of which from radiation exposure.

I think that "disaster" is a much tougher thing to call the Fukushima event. I think that the earthquake and tsunami events certainly qualify as disasters.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kelpdiver 2]

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The Fukushima Death toll stands at, I think, three. None of which from radiation exposure.

Can we trust that figure? The Soviets lied pretty spectacularly about the effects of their meltdown, both for immediate deaths and the secondary effects of the radiation.

[BillyVance 34]

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/japan-declares-tsunami-crippled-nuke-070656704.html

The Fukushima Death toll stands at, I think, three. None of which from radiation exposure.

I think that "disaster" is a much tougher thing to call the Fukushima event. I think that the earthquake and tsunami events certainly qualify as disasters.

I would hazard a guess that the earthquake and resulting tsunami displaced a large portion of the population immediately surrounding the nuclear power plant before the melt-down a few days later, hence the low death toll attributed to that crisis...

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban