Fukushima
stoat | June 20, 2011
Yes, its the wazzocks at the Beeb yet again. It would be quite nice to have some decent estimates of the reactor death toll - or at least, whether the confirmed killed-by-radiation toll is above zero.
But The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute is fun.
Refs
* Deaths per unit of electricity generate
stoat | June 3, 2011In the comments to Romm Echoes Groundless Cell Phone/Cancer Fears? we've degenerated into an argument about the safety of nuclear versus solar power ("which do you think has killed more people: radiation from Fukushima, or solar-voltaic installers falling from ladders?" was my question. It is a trick question, of course, because no-one has died from Fukushima as far as I know. But the correct question, of course, is deaths per unit of 'lectric generated). MV, beng something of a spoilsport (just joking, don't worry) pops the bubble by pointing to someone who has actually worked some numbers…
sastyk | May 17, 2011The old punchline "Practice, practice, practice" applies to more than musical performance. It applies to the project of coming to terms with our new circumstances, and perhaps embracing our new lives. If you live in parts of Japan right now, or in the flooded Mississippi, or in areas recently devastated by tornadoes, you know that the day when we leave off practicing and begin performing can be far closer than you ever thought.
Ideally, I feel like my last post in the Adapting In Place series ought to be something rousing and inspiring. But at the moment, I think the quiet exhortation to…
sastyk | April 22, 2011Mark Notaras has a terrific piece on what things are like in Japan, in a culture that has for several generations not had to worry too much about their food. There are useful lessons there for all of us:
But to what geographic point do people's concerns about radiation extend? Once nearby prefectures are associated with contamination, even if the contamination is confined to one small area or a few products, shoppers in Tokyo may choose to stay away from all raw or fresh products from an entire prefecture. When the Japanese government prohibited the sale of spinach from Ibaraki prefecture,…
sastyk | April 22, 2011I've been very grateful for my colleague Greg Laden's regular updates of the raw discussions on the Fukushima situation, but it is nice to have a coherent, visual overview, and Nicole Foss has provided another wonderful analysis at The Automatic Earth. It is very hard to synthesize all the information, because there is so much and so many conflicting reports, so it is helpful to have it all pulled together.
On April 17th the same site had the following radiation levels recorded for units 1-3:
Reactor 1
Dry Well: 121.4 Sv/hr
Suppression chamber: 97.5 Sv/hr
Reactor 2
Dry Well: N/A…
lborkowski | April 15, 2011In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He begins with the story of 55-year-old Masayuki Ishizawa, who was at the plant when the earthquake struck and had to plead with the security guard to be let out the of the complex to flee the tsunami:
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he…
sastyk | April 4, 2011There's a very good piece in the Guardian about the ways that Eastern Japan's energy crisis is a model for experiences we might have in the future:
For large parts of eastern Japan that were not directly hit by the tsunami on 11 March 2011, including the nation's capital, the current state of affairs feels very much like a dry-run for peak oil. This is not to belittle the tragic loss of life and the dire situation facing many survivors left without homes and livelihoods. Rather, the aim here is to reflect upon the post-disaster events and compare them with those normally associated with the…
sastyk | April 1, 2011The Oil Drum has a well-referenced, thoughtful summary of the present situation at Fukushima - bad and getting worse as it gets harder and harder for workers to get close to the facility. The word "entombment" has been mentioned - which may be the only viable outcome. More than a million Japanese people risk losing their homes for a very long time, if not for good.
There are a lot of discussions of the future of nuclear power out there. Most of them don't assume declining other energy resources, however. The emerging assessment I see is that while modern nuclear plants are much safer,…
sastyk | March 30, 2011On some level, all disasters are agricultural disasters. When seawater washes over land, when the earth cracks and collapses buildings, when livelihoods and lives are lost, farmers die and lose their jobs. It is easy to forget this, of course, but it is always true - and there's something immensely sad about people loving a place and having to leave it at any time. But there's something particularly poignant about this:
Mr. Sato, 59, is a 17th-generation family farmer, a proprietor of 14 acres of greenhouses and fields where he grows rice, tomatoes, spinach and other vegetables. Or did grow…
lborkowski | March 24, 2011Mitsuru Obe reports in today's Wall Street Journal that three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to moderately high levels of radiation, due to contact with radiactive water on the ground. Their reported exposures of 170 to 180 millisieverts are less than the new emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, but more than the usual limit of 100 millisieverts for workers' exposure during recovery efforts.
This follows an earlier report from the New York Times that five workers have died since the quake and 22 more injured, 11 of those in a hydrogen explosion. Those…
catdynamics | March 23, 2011NISA has a concise summary of the status of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi (pdf)
Includes temperatures on reactor vessel surface where available.
They show reactor 2 as cold and unpressured, the rise in temperature in reactor 1 - so something in there is generating heat at a significant rate, but at least the rector vessel is pressurized; and reactor 3 is a mess, warm core and unpressured.
sastyk | March 23, 2011In the latest news from Fukushima, water in Tokyo has been deemed unfit for babies to consume because of high radiation levels. Not surprisingly, shortages of bottled water are emerging, as people buy up larger quantities.
A top Japanese official urged residents of the nation's capital not to hoard bottled water Wednesday after Tokyo's government found that radioactive material in tap water had exceeded the limit considered safe for infants.
"We have to consider Miyagi and Iwate and other disaster-hit areas," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. "I'd like to again urge consumers not to…
catdynamics | March 21, 2011It will probably be some years before we get the full story of what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex after the earthquake.
Information has not exactly been put out coherently or comprehensively, but we can make some inferences from the data that is out there.
It is likely that one or two reactor vessels were breached with release of fuel and radioactive ash into the containment vessel.
There are a lot of nuclear agencies in Japan:
the JAEA - Japan Atomic Energy Agency - whose online environmental radiation monitors are now online (Oarai is the interesting one, between…
sastyk | March 21, 2011
One of the things I've been arguing for years is that most people in the developed world, given a perceived lack of alternatives and no narrative to explain change and sacrifice, will do almost anything to keep their present way of life. I point out that if they become cold enough most people would shovel live baby harp seals into their furnace to keep warm, while carefully justifying why this is reasonable and necessary and probably convincing themselves that baby harp seals like to be burned alive.
I have been thinking much about this metaphor lately, as the tone of the discussion of…
sastyk | March 18, 2011From Time/CNN:
The ongoing struggle to snuff out the nuclear crisis occurred amid mounting confusion about key elements of risk now in play. At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, called the radiation levels at one of the plant's units "extremely high." He added that "for a comparable situation in the United States, we would recommend evacuation for a much larger radius than is currently being provided in Japan." And he said his information suggested that there was no water left in the pool containing the spent…
catdynamics | March 16, 2011The Japanese Atomic Energy Authority has online environmental radiation monitors.The list of stations is here.
View Larger Map
The monitoring station at O-arai is the one between Fukushima and Tokyo.
Ambient radiation levels there are 30-40 nGy per hour.
Current levels are around 300 nGy/h - ten times normal.
Acute radiation effects are seen around a dosage of a Gy,
so long way to go - currently getting close to μGy/h.
Things get serious around milliGy/h.
7 day graph is here
Watch that curve.
lborkowski | March 16, 2011The workers remaining at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are braving extremely risky conditions as they try to avert a nuclear catastrophe. They are working to keep fuel rods - both those inside reactors and in the spent rods stored in ponds - cool enough to avert a Chernobyl-type meltdown, which would spew radioactive particles across the region. The most recent reports state that there are 50 workers remaining at the power station; all others have been evacuated as radiation levels have risen.
The New York Times' Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi describe the workers'…
catdynamics | March 15, 2011there are a number of questions that need answer regarding the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, aka Fuk-D.
As a starting point, here is an amateur online feed of radiation in Tokyo (Park18).
It is a geiger-counter, the normal count rate is 10-20 cpm, around noon on march 15th the count rate peaked at about 120 cpm, the counts then dropped before there was another broad rise on march 16th to about 40 cpm.
The first question is: why am I having to link to an amateur with a geiger counter?
The Japanese Atomic Energy Authority has four online environmental radiation monitors.…
hrynyshyn | March 14, 2011At one end of the hyperbole scale we have Helen "If you love this planet" Caldicott, who raises the specter of "cancer and genetic diseases" if things get any worse at the growing list of nuclear power reactors crippled or destroyed by last week's earthquake in Japan. At the other we have Republican congressman Mitch McConnell, who argues that we shouldn't abandon nuclear power, especially "right after a major environmental catastrophe."
In between the pundits and genuine experts are pointing out that the mining, processing, and burning of fossil fuels kill hundreds or even thousands of times…