Worse than Chernobyl?

[likearock 1]

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So what is the unpleasant truth?

Two things:

1) After a month of nothing more than desperation measures, there is still no visible end game in the works.
2) While Chernobyl dealt with one reactor, Fukushima has six (three in immediate danger) and the amount of radioactive material at risk is several times that of Chernobyl.

Focusing on the immediate fatalities alone does not give the full picture of how this disaster will ultimately impact the Japanese. For a month now, their strategy has consisted of dumping large amounts of water continually on the problem reactors to keep them from going critical. That highly radioactive water then has to go somewhere and it does, either into the ocean or into the ground water. How long do you think they can keep doing that without creating permanent no-man's lands similar to areas around Chernobyl? What do you think that's going to mean for the long-term health of the people in the area?

[likearock 1]

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It seems you have an agenda?

You would be wrong. I actually argued on some other forums that this incident showed the resilience of the nuclear plants. From all accounts, the reactors survived the initial 9.0 earthquake - they did exactly what they should have done in terms of disaster recovery. It was only because the subsequent tsunami took out the backup generators that we're even talking about this right now.

I'd like to continue to believe in nuclear power as part of our energy policy, but it's hard not to be alarmed at the Fukushima situation as it stands today. No one can say with any confidence when it will even be stabilized, let alone when it will end.

[lawrocket 3]

Long term is unknown. Long term is pure conjecture. Of course, proponents of the linear no threshold model of radiation exposure are going nuts while believers in hormesis (like me) are interested in how it plays out.

Now, of course, they are discussing matters more specifically with regard to ingestion of radioactive substances and the like. Yeah. That is a new hazard. But they also dismiss the radiation we ingest and receive every day.

There is so much that just seems like so much rhetoric from all sides. From "there is no problem" to "catastrophe." How about neither?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Krip 2]

Hi

No way to suger coat this?

Sure there is it's called propaganda. Put out enough BS that people can't understand eventually they will just suck it up and stop worrying about it.

How long did it take before we found out the actual amount of oil leaking into the gulf of mexico from the BP oil leak ? Anyone believe the long term effect on the enviroment have beeen resolved?

BP's disaster plan

Katrina and New Orleans? did the levee's failed due to tideal surge or poor construction practice's by the COE.

Haiti and the earth quake. The NGO's collected a lot of $$$ but a year later S.O.S.

I live on the west coast of the US, lucky for my family unit we don't have to worry about any long term effects from "low" level's of radiation exposure. We're going to die from OLD first. Our little children? no problem here, we don't have any.

Anyone on the west coast with little children willing to admit they've already bought the little pills just in case the situation gets worse.

Reality check folks, trust no one and believe nothing anyone tells you. Even in SC.

Spelling nazie's ? live with it.

One Jump Wonder

[DaVinci 0]

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So by one measure it's more than an order of magnitude greater than what qualifies is the highest level of disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale, but . . . gee that's not as big as another disaster, so it's not really a big deal.

It can be a big deal and be ranked as the worst on a scale.... And still only be 10% of another example.

So to claim that it is a big deal... would be true.

To claim that it is ranked the same as Chernobyl ... would be true

To claim it is not as bad as Chernobyl... is also true.

[thomas.n.thomas 0]

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So what is the unpleasant truth?

Two things:

1) After a month of nothing more than desperation measures, there is still no visible end game in the works.
2) While Chernobyl dealt with one reactor, Fukushima has six (three in immediate danger) and the amount of radioactive material at risk is several times that of Chernobyl.

Focusing on the immediate fatalities alone does not give the full picture of how this disaster will ultimately impact the Japanese. For a month now, their strategy has consisted of dumping large amounts of water continually on the problem reactors to keep them from going critical. That highly radioactive water then has to go somewhere and it does, either into the ocean or into the ground water. How long do you think they can keep doing that without creating permanent no-man's lands similar to areas around Chernobyl? What do you think that's going to mean for the long-term health of the people in the area?

Likearock, please provide credentials or proof of knowledge to support your claims. You are all about focusing on the long term impacts when you have no knowledge base for even estimating what they would be. It would be like me saying we should be worried about asteroids because I watched the movie, "Armageddon." I have no idea how to estimate sizes and speeds of near Earth asteroids, nor the probability of intersecting orbits. So, I don't start telling people to worry about them.

Statements you make such as "nothing more than desperation measures" and "dumping large amounts of water continually on the problem reactors to keep them from going critical," lead me to believe that, like much of the media, you have no clue what you are talking about.

If I was buying a core from you and you gave me a core that didn't go critical, I would be pretty darned pissed, because I just wasted a few hundred million on your defective product. Go look up criticality in a textbook.

Do you know why they are dumping water on the reactor, when in fact water is a moderator and provides the ability for those types of cores to go critical? (hint: it has to do with something called decay heat)? Please go learn more before making these statements.

Contaminated groundwater? Yeah, not something I'd like, but where are your numbers to show what the impact? How much groundwater is being contaminated? How much could be? Any volume measurements? What depth is the water table?

As for the ocean, they can dump every darn bit of spent fuel, nuclear waste, etc. from the entire world into the ocean for all I care. Do you know what it would do? NOTHING. Do you know how big the oceans are? And before you start saying how some delicate hydrothermal vent life will be impacted, those suckers would LOVE it. Thermovores would be all over those spent cores and we would be providing a life sustaining habitat to "the delicate creatures."

If you really want to convince us of your concerns, go look up the legal limit for contaminated coolant (a.k.a. water) release into the environment, then multiply it by the 10,000 or 20,000 factor or whatever over a number of days, then divide that by the total volume of the Pacific Ocean, and then tell me why we should be so concerned about that instead of 13,000+ people who just died, massive amounts of standing water over corpses and other organics that will be a huge breading ground for disease, and the thousands upon thousands of displaced individuals from the TSUNAMI.

Am I saying the Daiichi plants accident is no big deal? Nope - I think it's a problem, but it's not really all that bad compared to Chernobyl, and it's nothing compared to the Tsunami that was the proximate cause.

Oh yeah, and for another homework assignment, look up the number of thyroid cancer cases that were claimed to be caused by Chernobyl, and then look up how many of them were cured.

So for those who have read this far.
Q: is Fukushima worse than Chernobyl?
A: no, it's not even as bad.

Ok, I am sick of being baited by homo sapiens ignoramous. Good luck with all your speculations and uninformed opinions. I'm out like a light.

[Calvin19 0]

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So for those who have read this far.
Q: is Fukushima worse than Chernobyl?
A: no, it's not even as bad.

That is what i see as well. INES level 7, that all you people are freaking out about could mean anything from the current Fukushima events to the worldwide extinction of all life on earth from a "Major release of radio active material".

I bet if we make this like the YDS, that Chernobyl would be a 7.8 and Fukushima is a 7.1
(7.9 being worse that Chernobyl and 7.0 being just barely classified as level 7)

[kallend 1,635]

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So for those who have read this far.
Q: is Fukushima worse than Chernobyl?
A: no, it's not even as bad.

That is what i see as well. INES level 7, that all you people are freaking out about could mean anything from the current Fukushima events to the worldwide extinction of all life on earth from a "Major release of radio active material".

I bet if we make this like the YDS, that Chernobyl would be a 7.8 and Fukushima is a 7.1
(7.9 being worse that Chernobyl and 7.0 being just barely classified as level 7)

7.1 is almost nearly more than 7.8

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[likearock 1]

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Likearock, please provide credentials or proof of knowledge to support your claims. You are all about focusing on the long term impacts when you have no knowledge base for even estimating what they would be. It would be like me saying we should be worried about asteroids because I watched the movie, "Armageddon." I have no idea how to estimate sizes and speeds of near Earth asteroids, nor the probability of intersecting orbits. So, I don't start telling people to worry about them.

Call me Wayne. If you look at my DZ.com profile, you can see that's my real name. And while we're on the subject, mind if I call you Thomas? I suppose in spite of the fact that you haven't filled in your profile yet, it is possible your name really is Thomas N. Thomas.

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Statements you make such as "nothing more than desperation measures" and "dumping large amounts of water continually on the problem reactors to keep them from going critical," lead me to believe that, like much of the media, you have no clue what you are talking about.

Great! We have ourselves an expert who will clarify the situation. I can't tell you how glad I am that you came on the scene. Because you're right, all I have to go on is the Internet and what I hear on news shows. With so much misinformation coming out of this, it's a real boon to have nuclear experts such as yourself to help us mere mortals understand things.

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If I was buying a core from you and you gave me a core that didn't go critical, I would be pretty darned pissed, because I just wasted a few hundred million on your defective product. Go look up criticality in a textbook.

Do you know why they are dumping water on the reactor, when in fact water is a moderator and provides the ability for those types of cores to go critical? (hint: it has to do with something called decay heat)? Please go learn more before making these statements.

You're absolutely right. That's certainly an important reason to cool the cores - to prevent the reactor interior from overheating and subsequently melting the fuel rods themselves. BTW, you are aware that TEPCO has admitted that there's already been a partial meltdown at the site? Also, apparently the NRC believes that the containment vessel in reactor #2 may have been breached. I look forward to your reassurance that these occurrences are really nothing we should be overly concerned about.

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Contaminated groundwater? Yeah, not something I'd like, but where are your numbers to show what the impact? How much groundwater is being contaminated? How much could be? Any volume measurements? What depth is the water table?

As for the ocean, they can dump every darn bit of spent fuel, nuclear waste, etc. from the entire world into the ocean for all I care. Do you know what it would do? NOTHING. Do you know how big the oceans are? And before you start saying how some delicate hydrothermal vent life will be impacted, those suckers would LOVE it. Thermovores would be all over those spent cores and we would be providing a life sustaining habitat to "the delicate creatures."

See here's where we can really benefit from your superior knowledge base. In my limited understanding, I would think that the residual effect of dumping radioactivity into the ocean would be more than just raising the temperature a few degrees. I'd also think that the introduction of such material and its ingestion by fish at the dump site would lead to food products that become more and more radioactive. But perhaps you don't buy into that liberal theory that exposure to radioactivity leads to higher incidents of cancer. I look forward to your reassurance in that regard!

Another crazy notion I had was that radioactive material when dumped into the ocean would not just disperse but some of it would get absorbed in the plant life nearby the dump area. In particular, the local coral that provide the basis for the entire food chain could become a radioactive breeding ground for many species of fish. And yes, I am aware that the bulk of the radioactive material currently being dumped is the short half-lifed iodine. However it also includes cesium as well and that shit stays around for a long damn time. But I'm sure my concerns are based on some faulty reasoning that you will have the good grace to point out for us all.

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If you really want to convince us of your concerns, go look up the legal limit for contaminated coolant (a.k.a. water) release into the environment, then multiply it by the 10,000 or 20,000 factor or whatever over a number of days, then divide that by the total volume of the Pacific Ocean, and then tell me why we should be so concerned about that instead of 13,000+ people who just died, massive amounts of standing water over corpses and other organics that will be a huge breading ground for disease, and the thousands upon thousands of displaced individuals from the TSUNAMI.

See, this is a classic "false choice". If someone is concerned about the nuclear problems somehow that means they can't also be concerned about the overall effects of the earthquake and tsunami, which of course have been much more devastating in terms of human life. But why does one necessarily imply the other? Why can't we just agree that both events are terrible and both have affected large numbers of Japanese, either with death, injury, or displacement?

It's clear to everyone that human casualties from the earthquake itself are much worse than anything that has of yet been directly caused by the Fukushima incident. However, the effects and recovery procedure for the earthquake/tsunami are a known quantity. The world has been there before and we know how to deal with it. By contrast, the situation in Fukushima is one with which we have very little prior experience and even those earlier incidents at TMI and Chernobyl were not an exact match. As far as I can see, we don't know exactly how bad the situation is, we don't really know how to stabilize the situation, and we don't have any idea how or when it will all end.

But hey Thomas, if you disagree with all or part of that last sentence, I'm sure you'll let us know in no uncertain terms.

[billvon 2,412]

>Another crazy notion I had was that radioactive material when dumped into the ocean
>would not just disperse but some of it would get absorbed in the plant life nearby the
>dump area.

Both, of course, will happen.

>In particular, the local coral that provide the basis for the entire food chain could
>become a radioactive breeding ground for many species of fish.

This would actually be a very good thing. If coral sequestered the radioactive material, it would be kept there and not enter the food chain. (Most fish don't eat coral; coral is an organism that grows, dies and leaves behind a hard skeleton; the skeleton is what most people think of as "coral.")

>Why can't we just agree that both events are terrible and both have
>affected large numbers of Japanese, either with death, injury, or displacement?

That would be akin to comparing the 9/11 disaster to the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420. Sure, only 11 people were killed and the rest survived - but think of what COULD have happened! If every 737 crashes like that tomorrow, tens of thousands of people could die! Why won't people agree that both were terrible, terrible disasters? Heck, you hardly ever hear about Flight 1420!

The Japanese earthquake and tsunami was a disaster of near-Biblical proportions, killing tens of thousands and destroying hundreds of billions of dollars of homes, industries, roads, cars, power plants, transmission lines, airplanes etc etc. The nuclear power plants that were destroyed are a very, very minor part of the tragedy. Imagine how happy the Japanese would be if the Fukushima disaster was ten times worse, and 20 people had been killed - but the tsunami had been averted.

>we don't know exactly how bad the situation is, we don't really know how to
>stabilize the situation, and we don't have any idea how or when it will all end.

That's far more true about the cleanup after the tsunami. To most Japanese, the shortage of fresh water is a far greater health risk than the disabled power plant.

[Calvin19 0]

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Imagine how happy the Japanese would be if the Fukushima disaster was ten times worse, and 20 people had been killed - but the tsunami had been averted.

What an excellent point. What I see is the world in trembling fear of a historically comparatively MINUTE radiation leak when just a month ago there was terror that no one could have imagined. People being buried alive by unstoppable walls of water tearing through entire cities.

The news reference volume of the nuke plant VS the earthquake is very interesting. The earthquake and tsunami had the most traffic and news written for only about 5 days, then the nuke plant had almost double the news coverage and continues to lead in total traffic.

I blame the the humans.

[likearock 1]

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>Another crazy notion I had was that radioactive material when dumped into the ocean
>would not just disperse but some of it would get absorbed in the plant life nearby the
>dump area.

Both, of course, will happen.

>In particular, the local coral that provide the basis for the entire food chain could
>become a radioactive breeding ground for many species of fish.

This would actually be a very good thing. If coral sequestered the radioactive material, it would be kept there and not enter the food chain. (Most fish don't eat coral; coral is an organism that grows, dies and leaves behind a hard skeleton; the skeleton is what most people think of as "coral.")

That was not my experience when I used to spearfish in Mexico. As you say, the dead coral is typically surrounded by living coral, but the latter is fed upon by a great number of fish. That's why divers and other fishermen tend to hang out by the reefs in order to get the best prey.

In terms of absorbing radioactive material, I'd think that the living coral would be more likely to do that since it is ingesting water as part of its natural life processes.

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>Why can't we just agree that both events are terrible and both have
>affected large numbers of Japanese, either with death, injury, or displacement?

That would be akin to comparing the 9/11 disaster to the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420. Sure, only 11 people were killed and the rest survived - but think of what COULD have happened! If every 737 crashes like that tomorrow, tens of thousands of people could die! Why won't people agree that both were terrible, terrible disasters? Heck, you hardly ever hear about Flight 1420!

Don't discount the significant numbers of people who have been displaced by the radiation leaks, especially now that the evacuation zone has been officially expanded from 20 km to 30 km. Japan is not what you would call a sparsely populated country - a 30 km zone will encompass a lot of people.

In terms of human life, once again, the incident at Fukushima is ongoing. We don't know how bad it could get and, worst of all, there doesn't seem to be a cogent plan for getting back to a stable situation. I'd love to believe that somehow they'll figure out a way out of this but their strategy hasn't changed much from day 1 - dump as much water as possible on the problem reactors to reduce the chances of any further fuel rod melting.

Believe me Bill, if you with your knowledge of science has anything encouraging to say about the Japanese prospects for dealing with this mess, I'd love to hear it.

[thomas.n.thomas 0]

Wayne, I appreciate your candor and your concern. Yes, please call me Thomas.

I hope you included me in the "us mere mortals." I could be some wannabe-lookhowsmartiam-internet poseur who is misleading every single person here with what he has just read on wikipedia. If nothing else resonates with this crowd, please let it be what I just wrote.

What I hope, in all of this back and forth between people, is that people approach whatever they read with proper skepticism and a desire to learn about what is going on, rather than a desire to push whatever emotional gut reaction or agenda they have.

I apologize for my impatience in previous posts. You are a freefall and canopy photographer. If I started making statements about how to photograph in freefall or under canopy I'm guessing you would probably be a little impatient with me (and you'd be well justified, given that I have 5 jumps to my name). As an aside, what you do is something I eventually aspire to and I recognize that I could learn a whole lot from you.

I thought this was a more scientifically oriented discussion, so I won't comment on liberal or conservative theories, postulates, notions, etc. because I care about neither in this thread.

I am glad we got the criticality/meltdown issue resolved (at least I think). Yes, release of fission products to the environment is always a bad thing. The question is how bad? Next thing to do is look up REM limits for people. Then look at the correlations that are the basis for those REM limits and realize that 5/yr actually shows a potential decrease in risk of cancer, so if I'm going to think about the likely impacts, I had better center on somewhere around 10/yr and above, maybe even more. I don't know, I haven't done the actual statistics work on those data.

Then, I still need those numbers on how much activity is actually going to be sustained and over what area/volume. If I consider the entirety of the Daiichi SNM and expended SNM stockpile to be dumped into the neighboring sea, then make some assumptions about dispersion, wildlife consumption and survival from acute doses that might actually be detectable by the time humans eat those particular fish, and then calculate how many of those fish a single human would have to eat, I think (keyword think) I will be coming up with a low probability of someone being harmed. But I haven't done the calculations, so I couldn't say that's how it really is. I am not an expert in ocean currents, marine biology, agricultural marketing, Japanese eating habits, or the other myriad disciplines that have an input into this complex modelling problem you appear to think is of a dire nature. I'll give you my stance on it - I'm not going to cry wolf when I can justifiably reason that the probability is low and everything I know and have learned supports my view.

To address your cesium concern - the longer lived an isotope is, the less radioactive it is. If there's a big concern about it, just take some agent to bond with the cesium to excrete it with whatever you eat. Again, I wouldn't want to be eating raw activated cesium, but again, I think it's not as big of a concern as the media is making it out to be.

My problem with generating so much hype and concern over the nuclear concerns is that some people react without forethought and want to devote resources to that overlyhyped issue, instead of devoting resources to the much more present and still very dangerous issues of food, water, disease, and shelter for the many displaced (from the Tsunami) that you mentioned concern for.

TMI - I hate when people mention TMI as a disaster or put it in the same sentence with. New sentence. Chernobyl. It's not even close, don't try to lump it in there. I can't even register TMI as anything but a loss of $.

For your last sentence, we do know how to stabilize the situation - that's what we are doing. Cool with water. Restore long-term decay heat removal. The situation will end when decay heat generation is less than the cooling capacity of whatever long-term medium surrounds the components generating that heat, and loose contamination is cleaned up acceptable levels (if you want this number, it will require more of those calculations nobody seems willing to undertake). I'm guessing someone should invest in a local concrete supplier shortly.

[billvon 2,412]

>As you say, the dead coral is typically surrounded by living coral, but the latter is fed
>upon by a great number of fish.

Hmm, in my experience the only fish that eat coral (or more accurately the algae that coexists with coral) are fish like parrotfish and angelfish, fish that have very specialized mouths that can deal with the skeletons. But if you've seen places where most fish are parrots/angels I could see that.

>In terms of absorbing radioactive material, I'd think that the living coral would be
>more likely to do that since it is ingesting water as part of its natural life processes.

Right, coral naturally captures and deposits minerals it absorbs from the water, including radioactive ones. Then it dies and the next layer of corals grow over it. That's how they do radioisotope dating of coral structures.

>Don't discount the significant numbers of people who have been displaced by the
>radiation leaks, especially now that the evacuation zone has been officially expanded
>from 20 km to 30 km.

I'm not; it's a big problem. But again, ten thousand people forced to move is nothing compared to ten thousand people killed. (I mean, do you really lament the hundreds of thousands of people forced to move away from the shore by the tsunami? Or should we be thankful that the warnings allowed them to do so?)

>Believe me Bill, if you with your knowledge of science has anything encouraging to say
>about the Japanese prospects for dealing with this mess, I'd love to hear it.

Well, the best news is that the problem gets more manageable every day. As the short-lived isotopes in the fuel decay the fuel cools off, so every day that goes by less water is needed for cooling, less steam is produced, less radiation is given off etc. Reactors can go into cold shutdown (i.e. a state where you just shut everything down, close the valves and let it sit) after a few months of being idled, so after a few months the problem of dealing with active nuclear fuel will be greatly diminished.

The second best news is that so far all the radiation observed has been pretty low on the scale of danger. About the only dangerous levels that have been seen are on the plant grounds itself in close proximity to the reactors.

More and more plants are using dry cask storage, a system where fuel is first removed from the core, let sit in a pool for six months to a year, then transferred into a concrete cask. These have proven to be a pretty reliable way of storing waste. So I'd expect the plan to be something like:

1) Control the issue for a few months by circulating water through the damaged reactors

2) Fix the leaks via ROV's

3) After several months, start cutting up the fuel and moving it to dry casks

4) Remove the irradiated parts of the reactor and treat as low level waste (i.e. more-careful internment in a landfill)

5) Cover the remaining contaminated infrastructure (i.e. the foundations, concrete containment building) with concrete

[kelpdiver 2]

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>As you say, the dead coral is typically surrounded by living coral, but the latter is fed
>upon by a great number of fish.

Hmm, in my experience the only fish that eat coral (or more accurately the algae that coexists with coral) are fish like parrotfish and angelfish, fish that have very specialized mouths that can deal with the skeletons. But if you've seen places where most fish are parrots/angels I could see that.

the butterfly fish species and the tangs also eat coral, though not in the same volume that the larger parrotfish does. That guy is making those white sand beaches.

Most of the fish hang around the reef because that's where the food chain is. The little fish use coral for protection, but get eaten by the larger ones and so forth.

[billvon 2,412]

>Most of the fish hang around the reef because that's where the food chain is. The
>little fish use coral for protection, but get eaten by the larger ones and so forth.

Yeah, that's what I figured. We have lots of "artificial reefs" out here (they are even sinking old ships to create reefs!) that have a lot of fish clustering around them, but they definitely aren't eating coral. At least up here, the big attraction seems to be places where currents are less and protection is available.

[likearock 1]

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I apologize for my impatience in previous posts. You are a freefall and canopy photographer. If I started making statements about how to photograph in freefall or under canopy I'm guessing you would probably be a little impatient with me (and you'd be well justified, given that I have 5 jumps to my name). As an aside, what you do is something I eventually aspire to and I recognize that I could learn a whole lot from you.

Thomas, as long as you stick with it, I'm sure you'll get there. No worries. As far as the issue at hand, there's a lot conflicting information out there. I've been trying to process all of it, and that includes the worst case scenarios whose probability may be low but is still non-zero.

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>Believe me Bill, if you with your knowledge of science has anything encouraging to say
>about the Japanese prospects for dealing with this mess, I'd love to hear it.

Well, the best news is that the problem gets more manageable every day. As the short-lived isotopes in the fuel decay the fuel cools off, so every day that goes by less water is needed for cooling, less steam is produced, less radiation is given off etc. Reactors can go into cold shutdown (i.e. a state where you just shut everything down, close the valves and let it sit) after a few months of being idled, so after a few months the problem of dealing with active nuclear fuel will be greatly diminished.

And that's really an important metric, isn't it? Whether the heat/radioactivity emanating from the plants is increasing or decreasing over time. Because until they've restored the fully regulated, sealed pipe cooling system, it just appears to the outside world to be a crap shoot one way or the other.

But it is encouraging that both of you see a reasoned path out of this. Let's hope that events prove out that optimistic view. Meanwhile, here's a bunch of articles on the topic that underscore the complexity of the situation.

[jakee 1,257]

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Whether the heat/radioactivity emanating from the plants is increasing or decreasing over time.

It's decreasing. That's the way it works. The ongoing reaction that is used to generate power when the plant is operational has stopped. The problem at the moment is the decay heat from the unstable isotopes created by the 'main' reaction. As those isotpes decay and generate heat (the current problem) they are being used up - and they aren't being replaced because, again, the main reaction has stopped.

So it's not a case of continually dumping water into the reactors with no end in sight, it's a case of cooling them until the decay heat problem goes away. Which, as Bill points out, is not going to take that long. And this decay heat problem is not something that is unexpected, or poorly understood - it's something that always needs to be dealt with when a reactor of this type is shut down. The problem comes from the cooling system being damaged, not from the fuel doing anything unpredictable.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[thomas.n.thomas 0]

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Whether the heat/radioactivity emanating from the plants is increasing or decreasing over time.

It's decreasing. That's the way it works. The ongoing reaction that is used to generate power when the plant is operational has stopped. The problem at the moment is the decay heat from the unstable isotopes created by the 'main' reaction. As those isotpes decay and generate heat (the current problem) they are being used up - and they aren't being replaced because, again, the main reaction has stopped.

So it's not a case of continually dumping water into the reactors with no end in sight, it's a case of cooling them until the decay heat problem goes away. Which, as Bill points out, is not going to take that long. And this decay heat problem is not something that is unexpected, or poorly understood - it's something that always needs to be dealt with when a reactor of this type is shut down. The problem comes from the cooling system being damaged, not from the fuel doing anything unpredictable.

This is correct, and I believe what Wayne is now saying is that the concern is variation in the contamination being released from the plant, which does exist. Depending on the amount of water leaking from a damaged reactor vessel, which will fluctuate with hydrostatic pressure from more water volume in the core, you will have different levels of contamination spilling out of the plant. [edit to add: I assumed conservatively the RV is damaged, don't actually know that. I have stopped following news reports and am relying instead on people involved with the issue for info and have not received many updates as of late]

BUT, the facts you have stated, that the source radioactivity is continually decreasing, is part of the story that provides perspective - that day by day, the situation is getting better and not worse. Although there still may be environmental releases, the average levels on any significant time scale are dropping, and will continue to drop in the coolant that leaks out and in the contamination already outside the vessel.

I'm not saying we don't have to do anything and can leave things be (need to re-establish long term cooling, permanent storage of affected material, cleanup of loose contamination), but with that work, the ultimate impacts will be so minor in comparison to the tsunami, which, even with a lot of work, still has devastated so many lives and consumed so many national resources.

One thing to consider too - look at # of people it will have taken to recover from the nuclear accident vs # taken to recover from tsunami.