Japan Widens Evacuation Zone Around Fukushima 483
mdsolar writes "Japan has started the first evacuations of homes outside a government exclusion zone after the earthquake and tsunami crippled one of the country's nuclear power plants. 5100 people are being relocated to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities."
Re:Nuke power (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nuke power (Score:5, Informative)
Chernobyl was new but read this:
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pbawa/421/ETHICAL%20ISSUES%20CHERNOBYL.htm [purdue.edu]
And before you vilify the Soviet system for fraud, incompetence, corruption etc,; read up on the Diablo canyon reactor. It had serious quality issues as well. Such as the shock absorbers on the foundation which were intended to protect it from, IIRC, 7.3 magnitude earthquakes being installed in reverse. Quality issues abound in all construction even reactors. I don't even trust the Germans to do it right.
Diablo canyon and Chernobyl also points out that if a good reactor design can be made, building it to spec is still a problem.
Trivia tidbit: I do believe that the author of the Chernobyl memo is Uri Andropov who chose Gorbachev as his successor to the post of General Secretary of the CP of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev who instituted Glasnost and Perestroika, which eventually led to the peaceful downfall of the Soviet Union.
Re:Nuke power (Score:5, Informative)
or three mile island ?
"According to the American Nuclear Society, using the official radiation emission figures, "The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year.""
Accidents happen. Nobody died. Can we stop bringing up TMI as one of the poster children for why nuclear power is dangerous and deadly, because TMI is a horrible example for that purpose given how it pretty much proves the opposite.
Re:Nuke power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nuke power (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nuke power (Score:3, Informative)
Coal pants also release Thorium and Uranium which is a byproduct of coal composition, and is the largest source of radioactive release worldwide. Coal plants produce radiative waste and dump it into the air all day long, Nuclear Power plants do not.
Re:Nuke power (Score:4, Informative)
"Nobody died" This is the tired old logic of the nuclear appologist. Only count the deaths. Ignore the fact that some of the health effects like cancer and birth defects take years to become evident. And ignore the fact that the huge swaiths of land has become uninhabital and that the groundwater has become poisened. Oh yes, then the idiotic chest x-ray comparison. Chest x-ray is external radiation, but people living near Fukusima are in danger because of internal radiation (ingesting radioactive isotopes from air, dust, food, etc.)
How many years are we supposed to wait? Three Mile Island happened over 30 years ago and there has been no evidence of increased cancer rates as a result of that accident. And the only other accident that caused any injury in the history of nuclear power in the United States was in 1967 when somebody fucked up and improperly removed a control rod from the reactor, causing an explosion and the death of its three operators. That's it. Stop being blindfolded by the sensationalization and the stigmas related to the word "nuclear" and look at the facts.
Contaminated Groundwater (Score:2, Informative)
Things are worse than people realise. Units 1 and 2 are both leaking water from the pressure vessel and containment vessel. Also, the quake craked the site foundations. So the contaminated water is seeping into the groundwater.
http://fairewinds.com/content/fukushima-groundwater-contamination-worst-nuclear-history [fairewinds.com]
They have found highly radioactive sludge in several sewage treatment plants. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110513p2a00m0na019000c.html [mainichi.jp]
Re:Nuke power (Score:5, Informative)
And I'm glad Chalk River is still on line. My wife needed the isotopes they make to help treat her cancer.
Their "spill" was 47 liters of heavy water. No damage, nobody harmed. If they stopped making radioisotopes, they'd kill tens of thousands of patients due to lack of treatment options. And it's not like they can stockpile those compounds. The half life of the useful ones are all pretty short.
There's this fragile thing called perspective. I don't know why so many people lose it when they hear the word "nuclear".
Re:Nuke power (Score:1, Informative)
Congradulations!
Pratically all your information about Fukushima is wrong:
> primary containment appears to be intact but we won't know for some time.
No. Both unit 2 and unit 1 containment and pressure vessel have leaks.
> WHO has stated that there is no evidence of any significant release of radiation.
No. Material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels and continues at 154 terabecquerels per day.
>Measured increased amounts of radiocative caesium and iodine in the vicinity of the plant, but not at dangerous levels.
No. It is at danerous levels - hence the exclusion zone.
> No evidence that any uranium or plutonium has been released.
Yes there is. The explosion in Unit 3 blew pieces of fuel rod up to a mile from the site. Uranium and plutonium was vapourised and detected both in the soil in Fukushima and as far away as California.
Re:Nuke power (Score:4, Informative)
You should not believe everything you hear. There is no fly ash anymore in a modern plant since 15 - 20 years (in EU especially, not sure about USA, the last discussion with a /. er from there revealed that they "should" have even stricter limitations but seem not to be enforced).
I personally know a guy who was paid to climb stacks here in the states and you can find out-of-spec plants as fast as you can pay people to climb them.
Anyway, regarding fly ash: it is separated in a way that most of it can be used as building material, e.g. for roads or as hard plaster in buildings. Only a very small amount gets deposited.
We did actually have a case with some sheet rock from china sweating radioactives and toxics, as you may recall; it was made from fly ash. A great deal of fly ash seems to be made into concrete, which seems like a decent way to entomb radioactives if it's sufficiently uniform, except that the suckers who are working with the stuff are going to breathe a certain amount of it past the sides of their respirators, assuming they're even in the first world where they get to use them. Here in the USA you can track increased radioactives downwind of pretty much any coal plant. I would guess that it's worse in China. The jet stream brings a crapload of Chinese pollution here. There are now days where there's more Chinese pollution in Los Angeles than there is of the local kind.
Re:Nuke power (Score:5, Informative)
>> primary containment appears to be intact but we won't know for some time.
>No. Both unit 2 and unit 1 containment and pressure vessel have leaks.
Right, primary containment is intact, which means that the core is still protected. Leaks from water lines are not loss of primary containment, and water leaks are not as hazardous as you have been led to believe.
>> WHO has stated that there is no evidence of any significant release of radiation.
>No. Material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels and continues
> at 154 terabecquerels per day.
No, the WHO did in fact state that. You should visit their website, its a fact.
Currently measuring shows that I-131 has been detected in three prefectures, with values ranging from 1.5 Bq/m2 to 4.5 Bq/m2. Cs-137 was detected in eight prefectures, with values ranging from 3 Bq/m2 to 44 Bq/m2. Gamma dose rate for Fukushima prefecture was 1.7 Sv/h, in all other prefectures where sources where detected, reported gamma dose rates were below 0.1 Sv/h with a decreasing trend.
>>Measured increased amounts of radiocative caesium and iodine in the vicinity of the plant, but not at dangerous levels.
>No. It is at danerous levels - hence the exclusion zone.
No, the exclusion zone is not a measure of dangerous release, its to get people away in case there is a dangerous release.
> > No evidence that any uranium or plutonium has been released.
> Yes there is. The explosion in Unit 3 blew pieces of fuel rod up to a mile from the site. Uranium and plutonium was vapourised and detected both in the soil in Fukushima and as far away as California.
Nonsense, neither WHO nor IAEA support your claim here. As the party making the affirmative assertion has the burden of proof, if you have a reliable source for all these claims I would be happy to retract my statement. I can find no evidence to support your assertions.
Re:Contaminated Groundwater (Score:4, Informative)
The IAEA has stated regarding possible ground water contamination:
"As of 10 May, the restriction on the consumption of drinking water relating to I-131 - which had been applied since 1 April as a precautionary measure for one remaining location (the village of Iitate in Fukushima prefecture), and only for infants - was lifted."
Re:Nuke power (Score:4, Informative)
Heavy water is 11% more dense, so 1ml of it weighs 1.1g (hence the name).
Not that it matters much - that's what, 4 liters extra?