In what appears to have been an understatement, the plant operator described the situation at the Number 4 reactor as “not so good.” But in some ways the rupture at the Number 3 reactor is especially troubling, because it’s the only reactor that uses plutonium as part of its fuel mix. If absorbed into the bloodstream, plutonium can stay in the liver or bone marrow and cause cancer.**
AP news from this morning about water air drops (on reactors 3 and 4) and workers
concerning storage pool in reactor 4
…
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all the water was gone from that unit’s spent fuel pool. Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.
Tokyo Electric executives said Thursday that they believed the rods in that pool were covered with water, but an official with Japan’s nuclear safety agency later expressed skepticism about that and moved closer to the U.S. position.
“Considering the amount of radiation released in the area, the fuel rods are more likely to be exposed than to be covered,” Yuichi Sato said.
…
But experts said that anyone working close to the reactors was almost certainly being exposed to radiation levels that could, at least, give them much higher cancer risks.
“I don’t know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war,” said Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor of the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo Hospital.
Magiver, no one is disputing the situation is bad, but you are sounding just a trifle hysterical over this. And cherry-picking the worst information and most biased websites for your information. Is it that unreasonable to consider the possibility that the folks on the ground might, actually, have a better grasp of the situation than a bunch of armchair quarterbacks on the other side of the planet?
Yes, there’s uncertainty and almost certainly some of the workers at the plant are ill or even dying - but this is NOT the end of the world.
Folks, any reputable site to place donations?
I guess I could go over to the Red Cross site, but there should be other organizations channeling donations to the people in Japan.
I’d say either Red Cross or Intermon Oxfam: both are international, both act as umbrella organizations (i.e., they will distribute money around to other people who already happened to be on the spot) and both already have structures in place in Japan.
UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, is good. No preaching or proselytizing, just help on the ground where it’s needed. Methodist churches worldwide fund its administration through a special annual collection so donations don’t have to- if you specify an effort to which you want your money to go, 100% goes to that effort.
engineers in things like nuclear power and governments do look for worst case situations. though that analysis may be modified when cost is factored in.
the industry and government may not be all that trustworthy.
You said it couldn’t go full Chernobyl and I simply pointed out it can. They’re not just dealing with radiation problems inside the plant, they’re dealing with it outside the plant. The cores are leaking and they can’t get water to them. How you don’t grasp the seriousness of this I don’t understand. If one of the 4 reactor cores blows up it’s Chernobyl. If one of the 4 holding pools catches fire then it will be a mess. The difference between Chernobyl and one of these reactors exploding would be one of scale. It would still be a 20 km irradiated mess. There is no clean up in aisle 5 if this happens.
I don’t know what the probability of a core explosion is since the information has been less than forthcoming but there is already elements of cesium outside the plant so it’s likely the holding pool ran dry on #4 and caught fire. This seams to be the focus of their efforts.
Chernobyl blew the hella up and caught fire (and good).
Their reactor core/containment might rupture and might catch fire. Even if both of those happen its still not going to be Chernobyl bad.
It is certainly is made worse because unlike Chernobyl, there are many/more people/homes around and closer to the plant.
But as for the reactor itself possibly being Chernobyl level bad, IMO its going to be hard pressed to do it.
Of course I guess that depends how equal something has to be to be about the same. If its one tenth of bad, is it a Chernobyl? What about one hundredth? Or to take it to an extreme, is TMI just as bad a Chernobyl (because some shit happened and some radiation was released)?
How exactly would one of the Fukushima reactors “blow up”?
Additionally, my understanding is that none of the reactors’ core containment has been breached and that seawater cooling is continuing to work. I have no idea where Magiver is getting “they can’t get water to the cores” from.
They are, it seems, having difficulty maintaining water levels in the spent fuel pools, which is a major source of concern, but that’s pretty different from “the cores are leaking and liable to explode” which just doesn’t seem to accurately reflect the situation in the slightest.
Thats why I choose the word “rupture”. They are still producing heat/power (my WAG probably somewhere between 0.1 and 1 percent of the reactors full power). Now, if you can’t keep the heat down and the pressure builds (and you can’t release it), somethings gotta give. Probably a slightly weaker pipe or something. If all the pipes and stuff hold, then maybe the vessel itself.
If you get really “lucky” you could have a dramatic rupture that you could probably characterize as an explosion if you were so inclinded.
Now, Chernobyl when it blew? It had just minutes before been shut down for a test, so right there is was in the 5 percent power level give or take. It suffered a massive power spike MANY times its full power level. And it was some absurdly high number of times.
So, the power of the two explosions, assuming the Japanese one can even do so at this point, is going to be WAY different.
Except for the possibility that additional earthquakes are being triggered by the original one. There was a 6.0 in Nagano less than a day after the big one, if I remember correctly. And a 6.4 in Shizuoka yesterday. Although nobody seems to be saying there is a definite causal link between these.
Which experts? According to the US NRC, we are exposed to about 3 millisieverts per year from natural sources, and (on average) another 3 millisieverts per year from manmade sources (mostly medical X-rays). Occupational radiation exposure is supposed to be limited to 50 millisieverts per year.
I would not freak out if I learned I had received an acute dose of 1 millisievert.
My impression is that this line is built to connect to the power lines of a competing company (not Tokyo Electric), which is why it wasn’t built before. Is this true?