Yesterday, 09:29 AM:
Hon, there is dangerous radioactive material outside the “BUILDING.”
High-level radiation detected in trench outside Fukushima reactor building
Go ahead, keep on denying everything as it happens. That article’s from yesterday morning. It was all over yesterday and there’s even more information about it today and there you go, denying, denying, denying, right here in front of everybody.
It’s a little sad, really.
Yeah, it’s hard to get the very latest, partly because, as the UCS scientists recognize, just about everyone who is actually in the area of the plant right now is working as hard as possible to prevent further damage to the plant itself, and really doesn’t have the time or the resources right now to spend a lot of time working out exactly how much radiation is in the surrounding soil and groundwater. Once they get the situation at the plant itself under control, and can be sure that long-term cooling and containment are assured, they will be able to direct their attention to exactly how much radiation has escaped, where it is, what type it is, and how to deal with it. There is little doubt that this will be quite a task, and it seems likely that the immediate area around the plant might suffer some significant contamination as a result of overflow from the tanks and radiation leakage from the reactors.
For anyone who has a couple of hours to spare, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources had a briefing on the situation and its implications for the United States this morning.
The first panel consists of Dr. Peter Lyons, Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, and Bill Borchardt, Executive Director for Operations, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The second panel includes Anthony R. Pietrangelo, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Nuclear Energy Institute and David Lochbaum, Director, Nuclear Power Project, Union of Concerned Scientists.
David Lochbaum, on the second panel, is one of the UCS scientists who conducts the daily briefings that i linked earlier. His testimony is very interesting, because he focuses on the issue of how the US needs to improve its backup systems in order to avoid the power blackouts that led to all the problems in Japan.
You can view the briefing here.
The video doesn’t start immediately. Move the slider to about the 17-minute mark to see the start of the first panel. For the second panel, and particularly Lochbaum’s testimony, go to 88:20.
None of the briefings, reports or data will speak to the real problem. The inability to measure, observe or monitor conditions inside the spent fuel pools, the reactors, or the containment buildings. The most important things to know about.
They also won’t be reporting what is in the constant steam coming out of multiple areas, because apparently it is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to stick any kind of measuring device up on a pole and find out. Or to fly a drone around and sample the air.
No, what you get is people walking around digging up a little soil, pointing some counters around, whatever. There certainly aren’t any remote controlled data feeds from multiple sensors mounted all over the fucking place. Which you JUST MIGHT think would be important.
We have better data from a roof top in San Diego on radiation levels and radioactive elements in the air that anybody anywhere near the plant.
Now of course I’m being sarcastic, and they might actually have all kinds of real time feeds of data. In which case they are liars and selfish assholes for not letting anybody see them.
Either way, it’s a fuck parade of clowns and idiots.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Hon, there is dangerous radioactive material outside the “BUILDING.”
[/QUOTE]
Hon? 
So, there are dangerous levels of radioactive material ‘outside’ the plant in a tunnel that sounds like it’s a pipe underground (they go back and forth on whether it’s a trench or ‘tunnel-like trench’, so no idea what that means)…which, if it IS a pipe underground connecting it to the contaminated water, would read that high, but would say nothing about how this would be relevant, since while technically ‘outside’, is really in a pipe connecting it to the plant, and says nothing about whether this outside pipe is contaminating the grounds at that same rate. At the same time, here is what the IAEA has to say about contimination outside the plant:
So…who to believe? On the one hand we have a report of what I admit is a VERY high level (even ‘deadly’, if you stayed in it long enough) of radioactive contamination (1000 mSv), and on the other…no mention of anything that high outside of the plant itself. Both reports were from yesterday. So…who is right here? Unless you have something else I’m going to take a wait and see, though I’d lean towards the IAEA…that’s a REALLY high level of radiation contamination, and if they are reading that outside the plant then I’d think it would be being reported widely everywhere, since it would be a huge deal.
-XT
I promised myself I would no longer respond to FX on this topic (DNFTT and all that) but in about 10 seconds of Googling I found the following (if it has already been posted my apologies).
From that I think most if the info he rants about not having can be gleaned.
If he actually bothers to read any of it much less understand it.
Maybe I’m just making it too hard to follow.
You are not being fair. I think that parade of clowns is frighteningly smart.
Think about it. 50 years ago the fledgling nuclear power industry pulled off one of the most expensive and costly (to us, not them) scams ever in the history of humankind.
They sold us this crap with the promise things would be cool for 50 years and of course, in 1960 telling people things will be all wonderful and flying cars around the year 2010 was easier and far more profitable than their usual stealing candy from babies.
So here we are, dealing with the problems they promised would never be a problem. We fell for it. Fool me once, and all that.
I’m not going to let them get away with it again, especially now when we’re supposed to actually pretend to be serious about energy, and how we get it.
Fortunately I have billions of like-minded friends now.
I can see at least three different scenarios, all of which make the TEPCO, the Japanese, the US government and the media fuckhead clown, idiots and liars.
There is no way out of it at this point.
They have no possible way to set up any armored remote cameras and radiation detectors, any place at all near the site, much less close to the problems areas.
They do indeed have such things, but they are liars about it.
They have them, they admit it, but they still won’t allow anyone to see the data. Not in real time, not in any reports.
I really hope 3 is the reality.
Option 4 is that no such thing exists, nor could it be built, much less set up to monitor a nuclear power plant.
Which makes you a fucking idiot if you believe that for even a moment.
I don’t. That they actually had no remote controlled device with a fucking camera on it to fly around the place, that is fucking stupid beyond belief.
An average teenager could fucking MAKE something to do that, in about an hour. Then fly it around and upload the video to YouTube. From off the shelf equipment that anyone can buy.
But the smartest people in the world can’t figure out how to get a shot of what is inside any of the buildings.
How many people have died from poisoning due to nuclear radiation from power plants in the US? (Hint: Zero)
How many people have died from coal burning power plants in the US? (Hint: 24,000/year)
Coal doesn’t cause 24k deaths/year. It simply shortens everyone’s life by a few months. If you turned off all coal tomorrow, you wouldn’t see a 24k reduction in deaths per year.
Furthermore, I’m pretty sure if you turned off all coal tomorrow, you’d see a lot more deaths directly resulting from that sudden a loss of energy and fuel.
You’re talking about end of life stuff, and that’s no different than concerns about long-term risks from radiation. It’s hard to prove if it only takes 6 months off your otherwise 90-year-long life.
Chernobyl wasn’t really that long ago, so it’ll be awhile yet (decades) before we know for sure if exposed people start kicking off ten years early.
We’re trying to make coal cleaner. Most people understand it isn’t going away anytime soon, and if it’s cheaper and safer to replace coal with non-nuke renewables that will be a good thing.
Oh, it’s also not fair to compare the two until nuke provides all the energy and electricity that coal does.
Then why are solar and wind even allowed to be mentioned then? Because compared to nukes, oil, coal, and natural gas, solar and wind are like pissing in a biblical flood by comparision.
Of fucking course they are “allowed” to be compared. Then again some of us aren’t so fucking stupid that we can’t compare a 20 percenter with a 40 percenter and make allowances for the factor of 2 difference in our heads.
So you concede that small but measurable effects on human health need to be balanced against society’s need for large amounts of energy?
I’ll keep that in mind next time you dismiss nuclear energy out of hand.
You’ll never see me comparing wind and nuclear death rates, unless I’m mocking your silly nuke vs. coal death rate argument.
Actually though, there are communities here and there who get more power from wind than coal or nuke, so it might be worth looking into some of those.
No…it is not a matter of seeing a 91-year old die at 90.5 years of age unless “deaths from asthma, heart attacks and other ailments linked to coal plant emissions” only strikes old people.
From the cite I provided:
And regardless, the number of deaths from nuclear power in the US is still zero so missing how you were fooled. So what if they produce half the power that coal does? 2 x 0 = 0.
Meryl Streep died from radiation poisoning related to a power plant.
I never dismissed nuke out of hand, I just think it’s ridiculously expensive and will never do the earth, or humanity, any good in the short or long term. It’s gourmet power, for gourmet power consumers. Nuke subs are a great example of nuke done right.
Commercial power for millions of people? Nope.
I think we need to acknowledge that when a coal plant blows up after an earthquake and tsunami, it’s really not that big a deal. Nuclear evacuees in Japan are starting to really complain about how people affected only by the earthquake and tsunami are getting their lives back together. Those that can return, are returning. Those who don’t have homes anymore, are cleaning up getting ready to rebuild.
The nuclear evacuees are sitting in shelters eating rice balls, wondering how much radiation and danger there really is, because information hasn’t been very complete or reliable - ten million times the normal what??? Oh, so sorry. Little mistake with zeros.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
The nuclear evacuees are sitting in shelters eating rice balls, wondering how much radiation and danger there really is, because information hasn’t been very complete or reliable - ten million times the normal what??? Oh, so sorry. Little mistake with zeros.
[/QUOTE]
And what are the other 220,000 refugees that evacuated due to non-nuclear reasons doing right now, pray tell?
As for the rest, have you looked at the latest update from the IAEA by chance?
-XT
I cited here that nuclear power, when all things are considered (construction, operation and so on), is about as cheap as it gets except for coal.
We also cited in the other thread that there are new designs which are inherently safe. Physics itself prevents a meltdown. No need to worry about human error because a human could not make it melt if they tried.
It was also noted in the other thread that green energy, while it has its place and can be useful, can come nowhere near meeting the energy needs of the planet.
Natural gas has maybe a 30-50 year horizon till the fuel starts to become too expensive for “cheap” power production. Oil has similar problems.
That leaves coal and nuclear as the major power sources for the future.
Care about global warming? Coal plants are already the major contributor to that and our resident expert on power said that scrubbing CO2 from industrial sized coal power plants is not feasible short of some magic, not-yet-invented technology coming along.
What do you think will happen when India and China add massive power generation capacity using coal (they need lots of power). Think China cares overly much for environmental concerns?
That really leaves nuclear power as the main source of future energy 50+ years out. I may live another 50 years to see it. Kids today certainly will so it is not the unimaginable future. Given the time needed to build a nuclear plant and test some of the new nuclear technologies starting on them right now would not be a bad idea.