I'm sure everyone remembers the 9.0 earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, 2011. And though the country has already passed the aftermath stage and already started to rebuild one thing that hasn't ended is the outcome of the Nuclear Disaster which occured due to the Earthquake. After months of working to contain the threat everything seemed, to the public, to be in order. Until July 22nd:
TOKYO — A Japanese utility said Monday its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is likely leaking contaminated water into sea, acknowledging for the first time a problem long suspected by experts.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, also came under fire Monday for not disclosing earlier that the number of plant workers with thyroid radiation exposures exceeding threshold levels for increased cancer risks was 10 times what it said released earlier.
The delayed announcements underscored the criticisms the company has faced over the Fukushima crisis. TEPCO has been repeatedly blamed for overlooking early signs, and covering up or delaying the disclosure of problems and mishaps.
Company spokesman Masayuki Ono told a regular news conference that plant officials have come to believe that radioactive water that leaked from the wrecked reactors is likely to have seeped into the underground water system and escaped into sea.
This interview is already under fire as the expert is being labeled as a mouthpiece of the Nuclear Industry.
The Government pledged to start helping control the leak and work towards stopping entirely and now news has broke that tritium levels are getting higer, and higher.
Readings of tritium in seawater taken from the bay near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has shown 4700 becquerels per liter, a TEPCO report stated, according to Nikkei newspaper. It marks the highest tritium level in the measurement history.
Other than that, my comment would the that tritium may be radioactive but it has a relatively short half-life so won't pollute for that long and it isn't like it is a toxic heavy metal like uranium or fission by-products. Not that I've read too much but the source cites "tritium levels" which isn't, by and large, very concerning to me.
Last I heard TEPCO wanted to freeze an underground "wall" of soil around the plant to prevent further water contamination. They must really be desperate, that idea sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Tritium levels are below half the WHO standard for safe drinking water. Drinking that seawater all year will get you less than 10% the "background dose" of radiation (aka what you get from the sun and cosmic rays etc etc).
People sure like to be scare-mongerers with respect to nuclear stuff. Not @OP just reporters and stuff.
As soon as I saw "RT" I knew it was going to be fearmongering bullshit. Any leakage is a serious concern even if health risks are minimal but "China syndrome"? Please. And CC, if that expert is just a shill then it should be fairly easy to determine whether or not what he is saying stands or falls on its own merits. People criticizing him as a "Nuclear Industry" mouthpiece is just poisoning the well. (Not that you are doing so but others obviously are you are just reporting on that.)
Hey, now we can all eat mercury contaminated, poisonous AND radioactive dolphins!
On a serious note, this is really sad Hopefully we dont get too many cancer cases out of this one, and most importantly, we learn an even harder lesson from this disaster
On August 20 2013 04:23 Sn0_Man wrote: Tritium levels are below half the WHO standard for safe drinking water. Drinking that seawater all year will get you less than 10% the "background dose" of radiation (aka what you get from the sun and cosmic rays etc etc).
People sure like to be scare-mongerers with respect to nuclear stuff. Not @OP just reporters and stuff.
It's because people are far more responsive to intense disaster events than to regular disaster events. Nuclear energy provides big disasters, while fossil fuels provide gradual tragedies. So we end up demonizing an incredibly benign event that was only instigated by a massive earthquake PLUS a tsunami (which caused vastly greater loss of life, not to mention property) while ignoring the ongoing damage from conventional power. It's just insane. I wish the government and the corporation had the balls to educate the public instead of feeding into their fears.
Just for comparison, immediately after the earthquake / tsunami when the plant was leaking radiation like crazy, they were measuring becquerels in sludge and water near the plant at levels hundreds of times higher than 4700 per liter.
I don't know if they were measuring seawater out in the bay at the time but, considering that RT is not exactly known for accuracy or fairness, saying that the levels are the highest detected is probably bullshit.
Yeah, I'd take anything Russian Today reports about nuclear issues with a grain of salt. In fact, the best thing is probably to ignore it. Not worth your time.
I'm no nuclear scientist but I've read on the subject in order to better understand it. It seems that anyone who has any type of expertise in the area are saying that while having a healthy concern is warranted over the whole situation, it's by no means at the point where we should be freaking out.
Of course, pro-Russia (and thus pro-oil, anti-nuclear) news resources will do everything they can to push fear mongering agenda over nuclear power.
If its tritium they are concerned about, then this could be serious. Beta particles from the decay of tritium can pass through about 6mm of air and can't even penetrate the outermost layer of human skin. Although ingestion, inhalation or skin contamination can be toxic. I thought this would be helpful before someone came along and tried to tell us about how it can't even penetrate our skin as though it makes it so much better.
On August 20 2013 04:34 MoonfireSpam wrote: Someone know how to convert becquerels (activity per volume) into sieverts (biological dose) so that I might know exactly how many fucks to give?
Until then this will be filed in "bullshit tabloid news".
There isnt a simple conversion from bq to sieverts. I could work out the conversion with a bunch of basic assumptions, but its really not worth doing as 4700 bq/liter for an isotope that decays by beta emission is pretty pitiful. I wouldn't be afraid of drinking this water.
On August 20 2013 05:00 T U P A C wrote: If its tritium they are concerned about, then this could be serious. Beta particles from the decay of tritium can pass through about 6mm of air and can't even penetrate the outermost layer of human skin. Although ingestion, inhalation or skin contamination can be toxic. I thought this would be helpful before someone came along and tried to tell us about how it can't even penetrate our skin as though it makes it so much better.
Well the calibre of discussion in this thread just went seriously downhill.
Usage of fossil fuels is going to be the greatest disaster in our lifetime. In 2020 there won't be polar ice (north pole) left in the summer. And with rising temperatures, methane will be released from the permafrost, which will speed up the process again. etc etc.. In the end far more people are going to die because of fossil fuel instead of nuclear energy. Mankind is on the path of self destruction. Imo it's better to store fission waste deep in the earth than to emit enormous amounts of pollution into the atmosphere. If you don't believe that we can alter the chemical composition of the air we breath, think again.
On August 20 2013 04:34 MoonfireSpam wrote: Someone know how to convert becquerels (activity per volume) into sieverts (biological dose) so that I might know exactly how many fucks to give?
Until then this will be filed in "bullshit tabloid news".
Okay, let's assume you consume a liter of this water (you can totally drink a liter in a matter of seconds), and let's assume this water is in your body for exactly one hour (you'd almost certainly vomit after chugging a liter of seawater). And let's assume every single tritium decay hits your tissue (worst-case scenario, won't happen in reality...many beta particles will decay into the contents of your stomach without hitting tissue).
1 Bq is 1 count/second. A Sv is biologically absorbed energy. A Gy is energy absorbed by any material. For beta-particle emission, 1 Sv = 1 Gy. Basically.
The beta-particle released from Tritium decay has an average energy of 5.7 keV.
Sv is J/kg, so...take a guess as to how much tissue gets irradiated. Let's say 1 kg because of how poorly these beta-particles penetrate (again, this assumes an impossible worst-case scenario).
0.015 uSv. So nearly nothing. Even if you allow for two or three orders of magnitude in error on either side. Eating one banana is ~0.1 uSv.
Source: Wikipedia. I'm also a chem grad student and have a radiation safety certification, have worked with beta-emitters, etc. But anybody could do this calculation.
EDIT: To be fair, the detection of this Tritium is indeed a reason to be concerned about the integrity of the containment at the reactor, even if the Tritium itself doesn't pose much of a risk to anything. If there is more dangerous waste within the reactor, it could be on its way out, and it would behoove the people in charge of safety/containment to lock this down. And I suppose some ocean-life could get kinda messed up by longer-term exposure. I'm not a biologist/zoologist/etc and wouldn't really know about that.
On August 20 2013 04:59 NonFactor wrote: Of course, pro-Russia (and thus pro-oil, anti-nuclear) news resources will do everything they can to push fear mongering agenda over nuclear power.
O_o
Atomstroyexport is currently building nuclear reactors in multiple countries, for example 6 reactors in China, 2 in Iran, 2 in India. Several other countries plan to build russian constructed reactors and for example in Vietnam and Bangladesh the Russian state is giving loans for these projects. Inside of Russia they plan to have 2 new reactors operational every year until 2020. Furthermore almost 50% of it's shares are owned by Gazprom.
Russia isn't pro-oil, anti-nuclear. They have a shitload of all resources be it oil, gas or uranium. It's like they are playing with hax :D