How bad was the Fukushima disaster?

[bldysabba]

Almost a year down the line should be a good time to assess this, but my google-fu is not strong enough. The reports and articles that I can find are old and somewhat incoherent and/or incomplete. The sense of the incident varies from it being fairly small (especially considering the massive natural disasters that caused it) to being reason enough to stop considering nuclear energy as a power source. In any such situation, one turns to the Dope. What was the scale of the Fukushima disaster? Here's an idea of what I'm looking for
As a direct result of the plant meltdown -

How many people lost their lives or are at risk of serious adverse long term effects?

How many people were completely displaced and are likely to remain so?

How much of the area around the plant has been rendered inhabitable or
significantly risky to inhabit, and for how long?

What is the likely environmental impact - in terms of radioactivity in the food chain etc. (Can we get Godzilla? Please?)

Other commentary is, of course, welcome.

[coremelt]

wikis page is fairly balanced:

A few of the plant's workers were severely injured or killed by the disaster conditions resulting from the earthquake. There were no immediate deaths due to direct radiation exposures, but at least six workers have exceeded lifetime legal limits for radiation and more than 300 have received significant radiation doses. Future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima have been estimated to be between 100[24] and 1,000.[20] Fear of ionizing radiation could have long-term psychological effects on a large portion of the population in the contaminated areas.

in comparison the Tsunami itself killed 16,000 with another 3000 still missing and unaccounted for.

AFAIK, the reaction on nuclear power here in Japan it a toughening of safety standards but I don't believe there is any serious talk of phasing Nuclear power out.

[Lumpy]

One factor is that a lot of radioactive contamination went into the ocean. The same disaster in the middle of a populated continental land mass might have been almost as bad as Chernobyl.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by Lumpy

The same disaster in the middle of a populated continental land mass might have been almost as bad as Chernobyl.

Yea, but its also tougher to get large earthquates + mega-tsunamis in the middle of continental land masses.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by coremelt

wikis page is fairly balanced:

A few of the plant's workers were severely injured or killed by the disaster conditions resulting from the earthquake. There were no immediate deaths due to direct radiation exposures, but at least six workers have exceeded lifetime legal limits for radiation and more than 300 have received significant radiation doses. Future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima have been estimated to be between 100[24] and 1,000.[20] Fear of ionizing radiation could have long-term psychological effects on a large portion of the population in the contaminated areas.

in comparison the Tsunami itself killed 16,000 with another 3000 still missing and unaccounted for.

AFAIK, the reaction on nuclear power here in Japan it a toughening of safety standards but I don't believe there is any serious talk of phasing Nuclear power out.

Can I say it?

Great username/post content combo!

[KneeSid]

I don't mean to hijack this but I would like to add a question to this.

What has the scientific community learned from this, so we can apply said lessons to other nuclear facilities to keep them safer

[Kinthalis]

Well, this particular nuclear facility is not of a new design, and was not built with the level of earthquake + Tsunami that it received.

.. and yet, the environmental and human life impact while sucking majorly, never rose to the level of what the usual anti-nuclear nutjobs out there were predicting.

Modern reactors can be built that are MUCH safer than Fukishima's design. And I'm sure the earthquake's damage on various structures has been/will be studied in order to make safer buildings overall.

There are designs that literally self contain, and self cool if something goes wrong, not because of some contraption/lever/button/program/some system that can fail, but because the way the reactor is built, physics simply takes over.

The issue with nuclear, here in the states specially, is that there are a lot of ignorant, hysterical people that make building new, safe plants an extremely expensive, time consuming, sometimes impossible endevour.

So instead of building plants that last longer, are more efficient, and critically, are much safer, companies update old, outdated, not as safe designs.

There are also some resistances to modern fuels (like molten salt reactors), possibly because older style reactors can produce weapon grade byproducts which apparently governments (like ours) loves.

[XT]

Originally Posted by KneeSid

What has the scientific community learned from this, so we can apply said lessons to other nuclear facilities to keep them safer

I'd say the biggest one would be 'don't let your reactors get so old. Replace them periodically with newer generation reactors.' Also, look into your backup power and disaster planning more carefully.

They might also want to learn that 'shit happens' sometimes, and disasters can exceed planning. To me, the biggest problem with Fukushima was that they simply weren't prepared, planning wise, for the scale of what actually hit them. That's where emergency planning comes in, and that's the core of where they failed, IMHO. Of course, you never think you are going to get hit by an 8.0+ earthquake AND a huge freaking tsunami, and the probability of such an event happening are small. Even smaller that it's going to happen to hit a fairly old nuclear power plant that had planned on a tsunami that was 20 feet less than what they got and an earthquake that was a magnitude less, plus who's backup power was poorly positioned (to where the tsunami waters would be in the event they topped the wall), was fairly isolated logistically (assuming the roads were cut and all land power was completely destroyed) and far from any immediate possible assistance from emergency teams (who were also busy with the massive casualties the disaster that started all this had done).

That's why you do worst case disaster planning though, and you do periodic drills. I wish my own emergency managers and administration would learn these lessons, but sadly the thinking always seems to be 'well, it could never happen HERE'.

-XT

[Kevbo]

Originally Posted by xtisme

I'd say the biggest one would be 'don't let your reactors get so old. Replace them periodically with newer generation reactors.'

-XT

Compared to the capital, and it's time value, the remaining costs of nuclear power pale in comparison. This means that in order to be economical, nuke plants must achieve long active lives. Frequent replacement would price this energy source out of the market.

[XT]

Just going from memory here (and they are BAD memories of endless wrangling 'debates' with folks like FXMastermind ), but the Fukushima plant was an older design built in the 80's. Yeah, you definitely want to get the most out of your plants, and it hadn't reached the end of it's life (yet), so your point is a good one. But the disaster planning on it was pretty sub-par and hadn't been updated (afaik), and the tertiary backup power system was definitely poorly thought through.

-XT

[Chronos]

The Fukushima disaster was an earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami was caused by the earthquake, and neither was caused in any way by nuclear power. The fact that one of the structures severely damaged by the disaster was a nuclear power plant is no more relevant than any of the other structures damaged.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Just going from memory here (and they are BAD memories of endless wrangling 'debates' with folks like FXMastermind ), but the Fukushima plant was an older design built in the 80's. Yeah, you definitely want to get the most out of your plants, and it hadn't reached the end of it's life (yet), so your point is a good one.

The reactors were put online in the 70's.

[bldysabba]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

.. and yet, the environmental and human life impact while sucking majorly, never rose to the level of what the usual anti-nuclear nutjobs out there were predicting.

See this is the point I want to address with facts. The only ones I can find are the ones coremelt mentioned. But can we quantify the other impact. Some of the land around the plant has been cordoned off as no-entry zones. How much? There are apparently three levels of access allowed to irradiated areas. Do we know how much area has been apportioned to each of these?

[bldysabba]

Originally Posted by Chronos

The Fukushima disaster was an earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami was caused by the earthquake, and neither was caused in any way by nuclear power. The fact that one of the structures severely damaged by the disaster was a nuclear power plant is no more relevant than any of the other structures damaged.

Maybe so, but I'm referring only to the incident caused at the nuclear plant. Googling "Fukushima Disaster" results in the nuclear incident being the only hits on the first page. Still, if it confuses people, can a mod please change the title to read Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Thanks.

[jovan]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Yeah, you definitely want to get the most out of your plants, and it hadn't reached the end of it's life (yet), so your point is a good one.

As a matter of fact, it had (in part): reactor 1 was to be retired on March 26 2011, only three weeks after the accident.

[coremelt]

Originally Posted by bldysabba

Maybe so, but I'm referring only to the incident caused at the nuclear plant. Googling "Fukushima Disaster" results in the nuclear incident being the only hits on the first page. Still, if it confuses people, can a mod please change the title to read Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Thanks.

Chronos is wrong. Fukushima disaster refers to the Nuclear disaster where the outer containment buildings exploded due to hydrogren leaks and everything else that happened.

The Fukushima disaster was caused by the Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami, which is the much more serious disaster that wiped out entire villages and left around 250,000 up homeless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T&...ke_and_tsunami

[Isamu]

Originally Posted by jovan

As a matter of fact, it had (in part): reactor 1 was to be retired on March 26 2011, only three weeks after the accident.

Hate to ask for a cite for this but it just seems too outlandish. Was it really scheduled to go offline three weeks later, or is that just Tepco claiming so?

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by Isamu

Hate to ask for a cite for this but it just seems too outlandish. Was it really scheduled to go offline three weeks later, or is that just Tepco claiming so?

I believe it was originally to retire in March '11, but had just recently had its license extended to continue operating.

[XT]

Weren't several of the older reactors shut down prior to the earthquake/tsunami? I thought a few of them were being used for storage (it's been a while and I'm probably misremembering, since I was off bya decade as to when most of the reactors were brought online).

-XT

[Rhythmdvl]

A giant, 1400+ foot wave of personal blog sediment washed over Doperville and threatened to fill up the Pit. It lasted a few months, but things seem to have returned to normal.

[XT]

Gods, don't remind us! *shudder*

-XT

[Shalmanese]

Originally Posted by jovan

As a matter of fact, it had (in part): reactor 1 was to be retired on March 26 2011, only three weeks after the accident.

See, the problem was that Fukushima showed another reactor a photo of it's baby girl that it had in it's wallet...

[jovan]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

I believe it was originally to retire in March '11, but had just recently had its license extended to continue operating.

Reactor #1 became operational on March 26 1971, and Japanese regulations set the lifetime of nuclear reactors at a maximum of 40 years, so until February 2011, reactor #1 was indeed supposed to be retired on March 26 2011. However, it's true that a plan to extend its life for another 10 years had just been made public.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/wo...r.html?_r=2&hp

The point is that the reactor really had reached the end of its originally-planned life.

[The Second Stone]

Originally Posted by Chronos

The Fukushima disaster was an earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami was caused by the earthquake, and neither was caused in any way by nuclear power. The fact that one of the structures severely damaged by the disaster was a nuclear power plant is no more relevant than any of the other structures damaged.

If it is irrelevant, then why are you and others posting about it? What do you mean by relevant here? There was an earthquake and tsunami on the east coast of Japan. Fukushima was only a small part of that, and the sequelae of the general e and t caused a third disaster at the nuclear power plant, which is what people refer to by "Fukushima".

This thread hasn't yet pointed out that the 250,000 people rendered homeless is the harm of socialism: spreading the cost of the disaster on home dwellers and letting the profit takers skate. Let's figure out how many acres of private land are now unusable for how long a period of time in adding up the cost.

[coremelt]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

This thread hasn't yet pointed out that the 250,000 people rendered homeless is the harm of socialism: spreading the cost of the disaster on home dwellers and letting the profit takers skate. Let's figure out how many acres of private land are now unusable for how long a period of time in adding up the cost.

250,000 homeless is from the Tsunami, NOT from Fukushima. I don't think you can blame "socialism" for the tsunami.

And the government is going pretty hard on TEPCO, they got a massive fine and are paying all sorts of cleanup costs, don't see any problem with "socialism" there either.

[Askance]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

This thread hasn't yet pointed out that the 250,000 people rendered homeless is the harm of socialism: spreading the cost of the disaster on home dwellers and letting the profit takers skate. Let's figure out how many acres of private land are now unusable for how long a period of time in adding up the cost.

That's hugely more characteristic of unrestrained "privatise the profits and socialise the losses" capitalism. How you manage to blame it on socialism, in Japan of all places, is beyond me.

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by coremelt

And the government is going pretty hard on TEPCO, they got a massive fine and are paying all sorts of cleanup costs, don't see any problem with "socialism" there either.

Are they paying the fine with the $13 billion government bailout they're getting? Ow, that must sting.

[jovan]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

Are they paying the fine with the $13 billion government bailout they're getting? Ow, that must sting.

On one of political tv shows here, two former high ranking bureaucrats turned to the light side went through several different scenarios of how the government and TEPCO might end up dealing with the mess. They had a really complicated chart up, but all the threads connected to the same conclusion: regular folks get to foot the bill. Either through the government, or through electricity bills (directly and indirectly).

[robinson]

Reactors are designed and built by engineers, not scientists. I think the main lessons are:
1) Don't put your cooling pools on the roof.
2) Have a completely independent source of backup power.

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by jovan

On one of political tv shows here, two former high ranking bureaucrats turned to the light side went through several different scenarios of how the government and TEPCO might end up dealing with the mess. They had a really complicated chart up, but all the threads connected to the same conclusion: regular folks get to foot the bill. Either through the government, or through electricity bills (directly and indirectly).

Yeah, I get a kick out of the article when it says TEPCO will have to pay back some of its loans with its profits, and its profits are going to come from turning their nuclear power plants back on and raising rates 10%.

[robinson]

Farmland has been rendered unuseable within 20km of the plant, with spotty outliers from airborne Cs137 contamination extending another 20km or so. Unfortunately, some contaminated food is still getting to market. A lot of radioactive runoff to the sea, but I'm not up on what restrictions there are on fishing or use of seafood from the area. I still favor the use of nuclear power, but no matter how hard you try, something, somewhere, sometime, will go very wrong.

[jovan]

Originally Posted by robinson

Farmland has been rendered unuseable within 20km of the plant, with spotty outliers from airborne Cs137 contamination extending another 20km or so. Unfortunately, some contaminated food is still getting to market. A lot of radioactive runoff to the sea, but I'm not up on what restrictions there are on fishing or use of seafood from the area. I still favor the use of nuclear power, but no matter how hard you try, something, somewhere, sometime, will go very wrong.

Here's a recent map of the pollution pattern:
http://blog-imgs-26-origin.fc2.com/k...ka/09decJG.jpg

It's not as easy as saying "20km from the site", as the shape of the affected zone is elongated.

Fukushima Prefecture is monitoring cesium levels and keeps a list of products that producers should refrain from taking to the market. The latest list is here:
http://wwwcms.pref.fukushima.jp/download/1/subject.pdf
A number of fish are still listed.

This is less an issue now, but some hay that had been left to dry and was sprinkled with radio-isotopes ended up all over the country, causing a bit of a scare as beef produced far from the accident ended up getting polluted, so the problems certainly aren't confined to Fukushima.

Somewhat relevent: map of Cs137 in soil

[coremelt]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

Are they paying the fine with the $13 billion government bailout they're getting? Ow, that must sting.

Letting TEPCO go bankrupt would potentially leave most of northern Japan with no electricity. Not really an option.

TEPCO could face ¥2 trillion ($23.6 billion) in special losses in the current business year to March 2012,[3] and Japan plans to put TEPCO under effective state control as a guarantee for compensation payments to people affected by radiation.[4] The Fukushima disaster displaced 50,000 households in the evacuation zone because of radiation leaks into the air, soil and sea.

IMO, the disaster was caused by insufficient government supervision of safety standards, the solution is higher supervision of safety procedures for Nuclear plants. Eg more socialism.

[jovan]

Originally Posted by coremelt

IMO, the disaster was caused by insufficient government supervision of safety standards, the solution is higher supervision of safety procedures for Nuclear plants. Eg more socialism.

Which was itself caused by crony capitalism: bureaucrats and politicians are in the pocket of TEPCO, who is, even still, in a position to exert considerable influence.

The situation is a result of taking the worst of capitalism and the worst of socialism and blending them in a toxic mix of power and greed.

Solutions to the problem actually are actually on both side of the spectrum. On one hand, better and more neutral oversight is certainly needed. On the other hand, deregulating so that other companies can send electricity on the grid would go a long way in breaking TEPCO's clout. Once companies operating power plants for their own needs are able to sell their surplus electricity, we'll get a much more healthy market.

[The Second Stone]

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-25/a...ion?_s=PM:ASIA

About 78,000 people according to CNN.


But they are really ignoring similar dangers to people further away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiati...clear_disaster

Up to 307,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram of soil was detected during a survey held in Fukushima City, 60 kilometers away from the crippled reactors on 14 Sept 2011. This was triple the amount for contaminated soil that by Japanese governmental orders should be sealed into concrete. According to "Citizens Against Fukushima Aging Nuclear Power Plants", these readings were comparable to the high levels in special regulated zones where evacuation was required after the Chernobyl accident. They urged the government to designate the area as a hot spot, where residents would need to voluntarily evacuate and be eligible for state assistance. Professor Tomoya Yamauchi of the University of Kobe, in charge of the study, in which soil samples were tested from five locations around the district, noted that the decontamination conducted in some of the areas tested has not yet reduced the radiation to pre-accident levels.[183]

On 18 October 2011 a hot-spot on a public square was found in the city of Kashiwa, Chiba in the Nedokoyadai district, by a resident walking with a dosimeter. He informed the city-counsel, their first readings went off scale, their Geiger-counter could only measure up to 10 micro-Sieverts per hour. Later measurements by the Chiba environment foundation gave a final result of 57.5 micro-Sieverts per hour. On 21 October the roads around the place were sealed off, and the place was covered with sandbags three meters around. Further investigations and check-ups were planned on 24 October 2011.[184] These investigations showed on 23 October levels up to 276,000 becquerels radioactive cesium per kilogram soil, 30 centimeters below the surface. The first comments of town-officials on the find of 57.7 micro-Sieverts per hour were: that there could not be a link with the Fukushima disaster, but after the find of this large amount of cesium, officials of the science ministry could not deny the possibility that the cause could be found at the Fukushima-site.[185]

In October 2011, radiation levels as high as those in the evacuation zone around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant have been detected in a Tokyo suburb. Japanese officials said the contamination was linked to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Millions of people live within these non-evacuated but unsafe areas.

[johnpost]

some buildings that were constructed to house displaced persons were found to be radioactive. materials from quarries that were contaminated were used in their construction.

[Lumpy]

The first comments of town-officials on the find of 57.7 micro-Sieverts per hour were: that there could not be a link with the Fukushima disaster,

Umm... they were hoping that there was some other source of radioactive contamination?

[The Second Stone]

Originally Posted by Askance

That's hugely more characteristic of unrestrained "privatise the profits and socialise the losses" capitalism. How you manage to blame it on socialism, in Japan of all places, is beyond me.

I was taking a sarcastic swipe at the modern forms of capitalism and conservatism that attack any program that might incidentally benefit those who need it as "socialism" while shifting all of the costs of the negative side of capitalism onto those who can least afford it and suffer most from that lack of putting the costs into the calculation of the profit making activity. I'm an anti-socialist in the sense that as a general policy it should be a last choice solution, but I do not object to a government program that happens to have some socialist features while getting a government function done. I am a capitalist, except when it comes to a false capitalism that spreads the costs to people who do not share the profits. The 78,000 people made homeless from the radiation in the official exclusion zone are victims of the most evil kind of economic socialism. Their land and their homes were instantly seized from them by people far too arrogant to understand or care that they put countless people in danger for their own personal profit. At least armed bank robbers know that they are endangering innocents.

[jovan]

Originally Posted by Lumpy

Umm... they were hoping that there was some other source of radioactive contamination?

Yes. One of the unintended effects of the relatively large number of people walking around with geiger counters and scintillators now is that previously unknown contaminated spots were found. There was an old house in Tokyo that spiked the counters. It turned out that there was a stash of radium under the floor. No one knows how it got there, but it had to be used to make radium paint back in the old days. There are of course also sources of natural radioactivity. You can't simply assume that a hot spot comes from Fukushima unless it has the right isotopes.