Radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant at unimaginable levels

a reply to: loam

un-immaginable - WTF ? i can imagine 5.6 BILLION - so the allegation that the radiation is now 530 / hour is really quite mundane

a reply to: 5StarOracle
The vessel is inside of a giant containment structure. The containment structure is intact the vessel is not. Two different things. Speculation doesn't equal facts. If the core had been ejected the situation would be infinitely worse(see Chernobyl). Trust me you would know if the core of an aged nuclear reactor was ejected into the atmosphere, you can't cover that up.

Also the core is not intact, this we know. It's a molten pile now, but is still being cooled. That's why there is an established cooling system. The cooling system is what is releasing contamination. If the containment structure wasn't intact that 530 sieverts would be the area radiation and a robot would have fried before entering and people wouldn't even be able to get remotely close enough to the site to do anything.

I don't honestly care if you believe me, that's your call. I'm just trying to throw some of these ridiculous theories out the window and stop people from believing exaggerated and alarmist news articles or videos of a dude on the coastline with a radiac. The motto of the site is deny ignorance after all.

a reply to: truttseeker

I'm glad you said you don't care if I don't believe you because I don't... Everything I have said has been said before by experts... Something these experts have also done is fully admit their inability to say for certain the things you claim to know for sure... So I will deny the ignorance you are putting forth...
What do you mean it couldn't be covered up?
Are you also claiming tepco was truthful and forthcoming?
Are you saying news agencies are absolutely truthful?
Are you saying radiation monitoring stations were never taken offline?
Are you saying airborne radiation never circumnavigated the globe?
Are you saying there was only hydrogen explosions and no steam explosions?
Are you saying there is no effect on the food chain and it is not cumulative and that the effects won't multiply and spread throughout the food chain outside of the region?
Are you of the opinion nuclear energy is both necessary and safe?
Are you saying there has not been an ongoing attempt at cover up for the last 6 years?

originally posted by: baburak
Does that mean that Fukushima is even worst disaster then Chernobyl? How much sieverts were there after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings?

The cores of the bombs that destroyed Japanese cities were small, @ ten kilograms by weight. The fuel in the reactors and the spent fuel pools were in the tens, hundreds of tons.

In bombs the event is over in a second, air bursted and turned to fallout that, except for PU in the Nagasaki bomb was mostly consumed in the detonation.

The hundreds of tons of reactor fuel involved in the meltdowns isn't dissipated, its still in there, down in the basement of the reactor buildings somewhere, being cooled with water spray thats leaking out, daily.

There is no reaching them, let alone removing them, the rads are so intense even robot cameras electronics fry in the gamma radiation.

The fresh releases of higher and higher radiation levels is expected, as the contamination spreads outward, eating away at expedient methods of containment.

This is the worst case scenario, times three.
a reply to: intrptr

Wow this is spot on, well written, unfortunately all true.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

40 years to complete the decommissioning of the entire plant.

Last month an image of what is though to be fuel rods was obtained.
www.theguardian.com...

The top of the mass of congealed fuel rods and the racks that contained them. Below the reactor pressure vessel in the basement. Judging by the size of the ends of the racks, that mass of fuel is yuuuge.

a reply to: loam
a reply to: concernedUScitizen

A close comparison for cleanup can be reviewed in the two part video series "clean up at three mile island".

The difference being the core at Three mile island was only partially melted, still contained within the Primary Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and reachable from the top of the RPV inside the reactor building. In the case of Fukushima the much larger cores in three reactors have totally melted down and out the bottom of the RPV into the concrete containment structure of the building itself.

In the case of reactor number two building at Fukushima, the confirmation of this is the recent meter wide hole seen in the bottom of the RPV.

Procedure for clean up at three mile island part 1 :

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: loam

Radiation is a slow poison, deadly, silent and mostly unrecognized by the public for its long-lasting effects on all life. Your biggest fears should not be about nuclear missiles raining down from an adversary but your local plant going haywire.

Agreed. And that local plant has the possibility to go haywire due to many reasons:
1) Human error
2) Equipment failure
3) Natural disaster (flood/earthquake/hurricane/solar CME/+more)
4) Terror attach (domestic or foreign)
5) sustained power outage causing economy distress
6) Possible things we haven't even considered (meteors and such)

Even if we are not "next" to a reactor, you will be affected if you are downwind (aka East of it)

I am prepared with iodine tablets, which are stored at my work, car, and home. They are inexpensive, if anyone wants info on where/what to buy, let me know.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: Phage

To give you some idea of what's at stake for me, personally, my family lives on about 1/3rd to 1/2 of our meat coming from sport and subsistence catches of salmon, rockfish, halibut, and fresh water fish. By late August I usually have several hundred lbs of salmon in my deep freeze plus another hundred lbs plus smoked and canned. Losing the health of that resource would be devastating to many Alaskans.

I feel for you, geeze I'm scared and I live on the East Coast USA. If things doesn't change for the better, I suggest concerned Alaskans should price out moving to the northeast. Lots of snow, mild summer, less radioactive nuclear fuel (I hope)

a reply to: neutronflux

LD50 is 5Gray or 500 RADS
10,000 is from a used / controlled reactor cycle

It was my understanding that the cores were brought offline during the earthquake, SCRAM'd not injected.
Thus they were on hot standby, then the Tsunami wiped out the cooling pump capacity by flooding out the Generators.
The rods although not fissile, boiled off the water that was cooling them and melted out the control rods next, thus the whole core melted into a mass described as Corium...

Thus Unit 2 contamination is estimated at 650 SV=650 GY= 65,000 RADS now. or like 130x the LD50

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: BurbGirl378

Gee, i dunno, do ya think they might be... connected?

No. I don't think so. Whales have been beaching themselves since long before there were nuclear disasters.

This is your opinion, my opinion is that Fukushima is the cause. Who is right?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: ColdChillin

They can't find the core or the rods though, right? Or is it that they know where they are but can't retrieve them bc of the lack of technology? I would imagine anything battery operated would die before it even got close.

Imagery from #2 has been returned which indicates at least some of the core material has not even reached the containment barrier. At this point, there is no reason to think that any has left it.

Here is a good reason: why are you trusting this info, taking to heart? Didn't they say over and over that there were Zero Meltdowns for years, good thing we didn't trust that info (at least I didn't)

And also I do believe that they are "redoing" the imagery since the robots cannot handle the radiation. time will tell

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Riffrafter

Obviously you don't think it's a problem.

On the contrary. It is a serious problem for the region. I have pointed that out more than once in this thread and others. But shouting about how terrible it's going to get, that the entire Pacific is highly contaminated, is nothing but alarmist bullcrap. Ignorance of the worse sort. Granted, that's not uncommon on ATS, but it does no one any good.

That simply doesn't jive with the new info posted by the OP. Unless his sources are incorrect, it's much worse than people expected and worse than it was at the beginning.

What makes you think more contamination is being released than was released when the disaster first occurred?

530 Sieverts per hour is *bad*.

Yes. Very bad. Do you know what it actually means? What makes you think it is higher than it was immediately after the disaster occurred? This is the first time any reading has been made in this area of the plant. It was expected that radiation levels would be very (extremely) high there.

It must be stressed that radiation in this area has not been measured before, and it was expected to be extremely high. While 530 Sv/hr is the highest measured so far at Fukushima Daiichi, it does not mean that levels there are rising, but that a previously unmeasurable high-radiation area has finally been measured. Similar remote investigations are being planned for Daiichi Units 1 and 3. We should not be surprised if even higher radiation levels are found there, but only actual measurements will tell.

blog.safecast.org...

When I have more time in a few hours I'll do some more intensive research and find/post a map that accurately shows the current status of the spread of nuclear material in the Pacific (if one exists) as this issue is concerning to me.

Hopefully from a better source than a blog posted on Zerohedge. I posted links to two independent organizations which have been testing the waters of the west coast and elsewhere, including near the Fukushima plant.

I have a hard time following you Phage, and it seems your the only one (or at least stick out the most) who is downplaying this ongoing event. For years there has been so many lies, deceit, misdirection, that personally I wouldn't be downplaying it like you are, I would make noise, exactly what they dont want.

I know your saying Japan is in trouble and the ocean next to the reactor is in trouble, but im not buying that the ocean is not in trouble, including sea life and USA west coast.

Please note this is not an attack on you, you voiced your opinions, here are mine.

a reply to: Nyiah

You cant be serious?

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, X, Neutron, microwave, electromagnetic, thermal, solar, light

So youre stating Coal is no Different than Diamond or carbon fiber.
So breathing in smoke from coal is not harmful? Yet a diamond is? But wait what does carbon fiber dust do to the lungs?
Of course life itself on this planet is carbon based, yet carbon can kill you. Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide...

originally posted by: ChrisM101
a reply to: Nyiah

You cant be serious?

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, X, Neutron, microwave, electromagnetic, thermal, solar, light

And every one of them is the same no matter their source. Any alpha is a helium nucleus. And any way you get one, it's the same as any other one. Any photon of a particular frequency is the same as any other of that frequency. Etc.

So youre stating Coal is no Different than Diamond or carbon fiber.

No. She didn't say that at all. She said "carbon is carbon". And that is true. She didn't say that if you make a #9 coal mallet and hit someone with it it wouldn't hurt. She DID say that any carbon atom is identical to any other, no matter the source.

And it's true. Any alpha, from any source, is the same as any other. Any beta particle, from any source, is the same as any other of the same energy. Any photon, of any source, is the same as any other of the same energy. There aren't really 'artificial ones' and 'natural ones'.

eta: if you read back a few posts for context, you would have seen that the original argument put forth by rickinva was basically "there are bad man-made/artificial radiations and good/neutral natural radiations, and even though they're both, say, gamma rays, only the bad manmade unnatural gamma rays are detrimental", at least that's what I got from it. THAT is what you are responding to, a couple of generations later, and that's the origin for Nyiah's statement that carbon was carbon. NOT that you can gouge someone's eye out with a lump of coal or suffocate them with CO2, but that carbon from any source of the same form was the same.

a reply to: concernedUScitizen

What are the lies and deceit if they cannot even get a robot to imagine the fuel rods? You don't know what you don't know?

Lies about containment? The reactor blew up and released contamination from day one. Contamination is leaking to the sea! There is no lie about containment. Contamination was lost day one and never reestablished since the accident.

The fuel rods are not dangerous because of an ongoing critical fission process. The danger is from ongoing half life decay of the concentrated wasted fuel, the decay products, the resultant radiation, and the heat produced because of the concentration of radioactive decay.

The only crazy question I have, could they try to speed up the half life decay by adding energy. Like hitting the waste with a high powered gamma ray to encourage the radioactive isotopes to achieve stable states faster?

a reply to: truttseeker
According to INform, you are incorrect. Are you familiar with Jay Cullen, truttseeker?
INform

So that we are clear on credibility:
INform Scientists

a reply to: ColdChillin
fukushimainform.ca...


fukushimainform.ca...

That's your same source, which is saying radiation levels are returning to normal in the pacific, there is no hazard from eating fish, and the estimated doses were highly inaccurate.