Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

[claphamboy]

Radiation Experts Determine 200,000 Cancers Likely from Fukushima

I am VERY weary of any ‘expert’ who chooses to self-publish instead of submitting their work to recognised scientific journals so that the ‘research’ and conclusions can be subjected to proper peer-review.

He's clearly got an agenda, one he likes to avoid being questioned.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

..
If you want to be able to compare it to Chernobyl, eg is is 100x worse, then can I ask whether you think you know what the true and full affects of Chernobyl were?
...

Who knows? Nobody - that is the scariest thing. Growing up on the Welsh borders at the time (of Chernobyl), I saw mutated lambs and calfs being born. Several people died of pancreatic cancer shortly afterwards. A disproportionate number of men died very young. Most of the drinking water came from very shallow springs - the previous years rainfall.

It may have been coincidence.

Thatcher allowed France to build nuclear power stations on the NW coast in an agreement that they would feed the UK national grid in times of need in the full knowledge that any accident wuld drift our way.

Japan has money to lose over this.

 

[blueplume]

Reactor 1 continues to generate some interesting stories. They have had several battles with temperature and pressure at this reactor, including within the last week, and they are now talking about injecting nitrogen into the containment vessel sometime this coming week, in order to prevent possible further hydrogen explosions according to press reports. There have been a number of very badly worded stories in recent days that reactor 1 may be occasionally going critical again, but the lack of detail in reports makes it hard to persue this story further right now. Im certainly interested why the radiation dose rate measured inside the reactor has sometimes been going up quite a bit recently, when at the other reactors its been steadily falling.

 

[elbows]

Cheers. Thats an excellent summary of all it seems possible to deduce about reactor 1 right now. I've been looking at the reactor & contamination data myself for a week or so, and noticed the same things. Some discussions elsewhere on the net explained to me what this stuff may mean (since I dont know enough to deduce all this myself and could easily make a mistake) and it is the same as what the bloke on that video is saying.

The media on the other hand tend to make a botch of this issue, for example there was an awful fox news video that just mentioned the unit 1 recriticality possibilities as resulting in 'flashing blue lights in the sky', with no mention as to whether such light had actually been observed at Fukushima, or whether they had just done 30 seconds research on criticality accidents and decided that blue light was the most easily described phenomenon that criticality can in theory induce. It was such a bad report that it almost came across as an april fools, except the rest of the report was all the serious nuclear news of the day from Fukushima.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

There are still no real facts. Strange. With all the knowledge we have today.

However, it is looking like Two reactors have gone into partial, if not full meltdown. It was looking like that very early on - the best information comes early always.

Massive iodine radiation has been measured in plants already. Plutonium has been measured at scary levels upto 50KM away already. There are stats and graphs all over the internet which are pretty meaningless to all of us. You can't learn a Three year degrees worth of specifics in a couple od months. We don't know, but others do know, and they're not telling us it's safe, so I assume the worse.

 

[elbows]

Well I've said a few times that the explosions, captured on video, somewhat tempered their ability to play things down, certainly some of the most reassuring of the 'experts' on tv had to change their tune a little after all that.

Beyond all that, the devil is in the detail and even for a geek like me who loves to try to get my head round some of the details, I cannot claim to have anything like the full picture. I have some rough sense of how bad things probably are, but I dont know how to put it into terms that would be universally understood. Its bad and they only have partial control of the situation, the evacuation policies of the Japanese government have failed people in some specific locations, and have risked their long term health. The company managing the plant is inept in multiple ways and has certainly taken unacceptable and unnecessary risk with the health of some of their workers. And we certainly havent been given the full picture about some of the worst-off reactors and fuel pools. Its not been a complete cover up, as we have been told enough to get some sense of what has broken and what has got out, but the news is certainly being managed, drip drip. Its impossible to say to what extent because some of the things we'd like to know, they may not know either, due to difficult conditions. A proper assessment of the state fo the various cores is very hard to do, for example.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Six months after Chernobyl extremely high levels of plutonium radiation were dedected in the Welsh mountains. They are probably still there....



Heavy elements don't just wash away. Sea water is no solution. We're not being given any information because there is no good news. Most of this is going 'wash up' on the SW coast of the States. They can ask for compensation!

Still reactors are polluting and going into meltdown. Weeks later. When we are finally given the facts...

 

[elbows]

These graphs made from released data of various parameters at the different reactors tell a few stories. The one for reactor 2 seems to show the moment that things went to poop early on. The graph for number 1 doesnt start early enough to capture what happened there early on, but it does tell the story of the sometimes rising temps, pressures & radiation levels inside the reactor. The one for reactor 3 gives me an incomplete and unclear story really, but the important thing right now with reactors 2 and 3 is how low the pressure readings are, which suggests they cannot pressurise them because they are leaking.

http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/EXPORT/projects/fukushima/plots/v6/Main.html

As for the future, at any moment something new and dramatic could happen at one of the reactors, or some of the pools, with reactor 1 quite probably being the one to watch. Or not, nothing new and dramatic may happen, in which case we will either be looking at a painfully slow multi-month struggle to control, contain & clean as much as possible, during which time some new revelation about the state of things/stuff that already happened a while ago will occasionally emerge. Or they will either run out of patience or discover some new fact that causes them to give up this struggle for more sophisticated control, and will just cover it all up for ages and leave a future generation to clean it up properly if we ever learn how to.

 

[elbows]

Six months after Chernobyl extremely high levels of plutonium radiation were dedected in the Welsh mountains. They are probably still there....

Plutonium is heavy and does not travel too well compared to various other radioactive contaminants, it is radioactive versions of Iodine (in the rather short term) and Caesium (longer term problem due to 30 year half-life, and which I sometimes spell cesium) that have tended to be the main things looked at in terms of polluting areas further afield from nuclear disasters. This includes Chernobyl's affects on the UK, and Fukushimas affects as presently being measured at various locations in Japan.

Plutonium probably gets a lot of attention on the public imagination because it does have a stupidly long half-life, its a well know name with several negative connotations. And it really is very bad, if you eat it or breathe it in. But its probably not the main enemy for mass health affects, not by a long shot, because of the limited quantities of it that are likely to be found very far from the plant.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

These graphs made from released data ...

I am not entirely sure where you're coming from. Graphs are interesting, but they're just graphs. Mutated animals and humans (I say and humans, but we're just vulnerable animals also) are a bit more real.

Come post here in 6 months time with your graphs.

Your info seems to be well researched on this (and, the flu scares), but you are just into numbers rather than reality.

The reality will be very ugly. Graphs won't disguise that.

 

[elbows]

Still reactors are polluting and going into meltdown. Weeks later. When we are finally given the facts...

I ask you one more time, exactly what facts you want, seeing as you dont seem to have any use for the individual scientific measurements. Is it facts you want or certain words? What does the term meltdown mean to you? They have admitted to partial meltdowns at multiple reactors, the question is the full extent of the fuel damage, and whether any of the melted core has escaped from various layers of containment.

This week we got important facts. They messed some of the results up a bit, but we still got data that showed extremely contaminated water has been escaping from at the very least one of the reactors. Thats something real that tells us something important. As usual it leads to many more questions that are even more important, but thats just the way it goes, coverup or not.

Three reactors and several fuel pools are fucked to one extent or another, and have ben releasing nasty radioactive substances into the environment which have long0term implications. The questions now are largely all of scale, eg how wide will the permanent evacuation zone need to be, and so long as more radioactive material continues to be released, we cannot judge the ultimate scale of pollution yet, nor even hazard a guess about deaths etc. Well people can and are starting to guess, but its way premature in my book. I suppose if the majority of radioactive substances that have travelled far were released by the initial events such as the explosions, then it probably is possible to get some sense of the scale of things, but I'll probably be waiting some weeks before I start to explore this much further.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

The point is that we all want to believe good news that affects us, or bad news that affects others That's a bit shit really.

Numbers, graphs, statistics, graphics in newspapers... they can reassure without any real evidence. Photographs also - they lie.

A question for Elbows;

Can you list factual data here? Stuff you have absolutely no doubt in your own mind about. Can you list it in words without numbers and graphs?

For me it looks pretty simple.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

I ask you one more time, exactly what facts you want...

Well, let's try and imagine a World with just one measure of radioactive levels and start from there.

 

[elbows]

I am not entirely sure where you're coming from. Graphs are interesting, but they're just graphs. Mutated animals and humans (I say and humans, but we're just vulnerable animals also) are a bit more real.

Come post here in 6 months time with your graphs.

Your info seems to be well researched on this (and, the flu scares), but you are just into numbers rather than reality.

The reality will be very ugly. Graphs won't disguise that.

I think I get what you mean, but I cannot accept it. Im only interested in the data and the graphs because they can, ultimately, give a sense of the broader reality. The environmental & human consequences are what really matter, but I cannot pretend they will ever be easy to judge.

We dont often get pictures that really tell the story. There were few if any that really told the story of Chernobyl. Rather there is reams of data that people argue about to this day. We know some people have died or been damaged by this stuff, but the overall health trends have not been significant enough to be obvious in a really dramatic way, at least not in locations very far away from the disaster zone.

I cannot think about thi stuff at all without getting insanely annoyed at the amount of nuclear testing that went on up until a few decades ago. Silly quantities of bad shit was released. But I cant neglect all the non-radioactive shit we've exposed ourselves to since the industrial revolution either. Nor the improvements we sometimes make, eg being able to tackle other health issues so that in many countries life expectancy has risen despite all the new shit we expose our bodies to. And what of the pollutions of the mind, the horror that tv spews out, the untold damage it has done for our future prospects. See how far our individual or collective arrogance can take us down the path of destuction, see the human cost, see the human side-benefits, see who profits most, see how we are ill equipped to care enough or to overcome the corrupting influence that power has on the soul.

The horror, the horror, its all around and certainly, take a look at this pie chart, its a how many of you are going to die' chart, does not cut the mustard. Science and technology, knowledge and wisdom, these have fallen well short of saving us from our plight.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

That is hugely disappointing.

You stick to your graphs and when all the mutated animals and babies are born you can make pretty patterns in 'Graph Maker'. Then, when all the young men die prematurely you can colour the deaths purple and the survivers green. They will just be numbers and blocks of colour - nothing you really have to think about until someone you really love dies from the cancer that this huge disaster is going to cause. It might be you! Perhaps you can colour in blocks of colour from your hospitial bed whilst someone wipes your arse clean when you post here?

Sorry, but, you have lost me.

 

[two sheds]

That is hugely disappointing.

You stick to your graphs and when all the mutated animals and babies are born you can make pretty patterns in 'Graph Maker'. Then, when all the young men die prematurely you can colour the deaths purple and the survivers green. They will just be numbers and blocks of colour - nothing you really have to think about until someone you really love dies from the cancer that this huge disaster is going to cause. It might be you! Perhaps you can colour in blocks of colour from your hospitial bed whilst someone wipes your arse clean when you post here?

Sorry, but, you have lost me.

Stanley, have you had a late night at the bar or something? You're really not helping the thread. Elbows has done some great work explaining what's going on. He's doing it out of interest alone.

I can give you a single number for exactly how bad it is. Fifteen. Satisfied?

 

[southside]

7

 

[elbows]

Well, let's try and imagine a World with just one measure of radioactive levels and start from there.

Possible to an extent, but will end up betraying the real facts, the real human cost, when simplified to such an extent. But I will spend some time trying to come up with something for you in the coming week, although I really dont feel like there is enough data yet and I've no way to judge how much more stuff will be emitted from the plant in future.

As for factual data, I've already said a lot but I will try to give a summary here, starting with the human cost.

In terms of deaths it will take a very long time for the numbers to exceed the number killed by the tsunami, and if governments took as much care as they should, it will never be easy to say that such numbers have died as a result of Fukushima. People will be arguing about this in 20 or more years so I cant say more right now. Workers at the plant are at more immediate risk. People who have refused to evacuate are at risk. People in some locations to the north west of the plant are at risk. Other people in a variety of locations are at risk too, but as its a medium-long term risk and may show up in a variety of ways, with individual deaths not being attributed to Fukushima, only overall statistical trends. A variety of animals are at risk of dying from neglect in the evacuation zone. Large numbers of people face the pain of losing their hometowns forever, of never being able to move back. Large numbers of farmers and fishers may face a variety of burdens for many many years to come. Further afield, including globally, we face yet another addition to the sources of radiation that will cause some of us to get cancer, but in the grand scheme of human death it will probably not make a very noticeable difference. Perhaps there are one or two additional horrors that could yet unfold, Im not a fan of complacency, but its just impossible to say anything on this front without indulging in meaningless speculation.

On the technical side, the nuclear industry in Japan and generally has been exposed yet again. It should be a wakeup call. Lessons will no doubt be learnt, and we'll never know what future disasters we've avoided as a result, but at some point there will be a new nuclear reactor problem which will demonstrate yet again how high the stakes are with nuclear safety. Humans remain trapped in a 'little bit of knowledge can be dangerous' phase, and all things nuclear fall squarely into this category in my book.

Many things have made me very angry since this nuclear power plant went to fuck, I've always tried to pay attention to nuclear issues and will be paying even greater attention to the pro-nuclear people in future now that I've seen how they operate at a time like this. Not that many of the anti-nuclear people are immune from departing from facts in order to further a propaganda agenda either.

 

[elbows]

That is hugely disappointing.

You stick to your graphs and when all the mutated animals and babies are born you can make pretty patterns in 'Graph Maker'. Then, when all the young men die prematurely you can colour the deaths purple and the survivers green. They will just be numbers and blocks of colour - nothing you really have to think about until someone you really love dies from the cancer that this huge disaster is going to cause. It might be you! Perhaps you can colour in blocks of colour from your hospitial bed whilst someone wipes your arse clean when you post here?

Sorry, but, you have lost me.

OK, you tell me, following your own rules about how to talk about such things, what the legacy of Chernobyl was. Because Im not convinced you know what answer you are actually looking for. Do you want me to speak about mutants, is that really going to help? Im certainly not going to start reeling off statistics about possible German downs syndrome increase after Chernobyl because it will just be a bunch of numbers that you are allergic to. If you want me to list every single possible health consequence, and perhaps make up some numbers about how many will be affected, then you are asking the wrong person. Radiation is bad and it often works on timescales that are not very compatible with human perception.

Can we even count the cost of non-nuclear stuff properly? Id be rather interested to know what the real human costs were of a coal-fired power station that used to operate just a dozen or so miles to the west of my hometown, and was once upon a time the largest coal-fired power station in europe. It existed when I was growing up, and we were downwind of it. Its closed now. Can I determine what affects it had? No, not least because a myriad of other factors give this area poor health, with poverty being the most obvious underlying cause.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Simple facts.

That is all I want and all anyone wants. If Elbows cant condense the knowledge to very simple facts, then ...

It's not like there is any obligation here. If you can't deliver simple facts, then you don't have the knowledge to report as a reporter, so STFU. There's no point in regurgitating the crap here in pictures, graphics, or words. We can get them all elsewhere.

 

[Pickman's model]

Simple facts.

That is all I want and all anyone wants. If Elbows cant condense the knowledge to very simple facts, then ...

It's not like there is any obligation here. If you can't deliver simple facts, then you don't have the knowledge to report as a reporter, so STFU. There's no point in regurgitating the crap here in pictures, graphics, or words. We can get them all elsewhere.

that's an opinion, isn't it. so STFU.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

that's an opinion, isn't it. so STFU.

No. It's not an opinion.

I can Google all over the shop just as Elbows can. Just as you can. But, the real facts just aren't out there. Why not?

If someone wanted to be really honest about this they could produce a Chernobyl comparison right now. That's the info' we all want. Why isn't it here?

I put it to Elbows to do a very simple Chernobyl comparison for all of us to understand. I suspect that won't happen.

 

[Pickman's model]

No. It's not an opinion.

I can Google all over the shop just as Elbows can. Just as you can. But, the real facts just aren't out there. Why not?

If someone wanted to be really honest about this they could produce a Chernobyl comparison right now. That's the info' we all want. Why isn't it here?

I put it to Elbows to do a very simple Chernobyl comparison for all of us to understand. I suspect that won't happen.

i don't want a chernobyl comparison, i'd like to see discussion. if i want news i go to a newspaper, if i want to read complete shit i'll look at your threads. is it so very difficult to let those who can discuss while you go back to your urine thread?

 

[Stanley Edwards]

i don't want a chernobyl comparison, i'd like to see discussion. if i want news i go to a newspaper, if i want to read complete shit i'll look at your threads. is it so very difficult to let those who can discuss while you go back to your urine thread?

That's why you are so stupid and ill informed

Let's keep the thread ontrack now. It's quite important to many.

 

[southside]

i don't want a chernobyl comparison, i'd like to see discussion. if i want news i go to a newspaper, if i want to read complete shit i'll look at your threads. is it so very difficult to let those who can discuss while you go back to your urine thread?

Be fair,

I agree with Stan, without sounding off there is so much information and second guessing going on its almost impossible to make the comparison. I've tried to understand the full affect of this disaster and I did quite a bit of research to understand what the ramifiactions of it all will be and I've given up on it. We're not being told because I doubt the authorities want anyone to know at this stage because governments like to fuck around with nuke shit. Those reactors are spewing out shit all day every day and the affects of it will never be fully understood because no fucker really knows. The deaths realted to the Chernobyl disaster are estimated to be between 4000 and 250000? No one knows for sure. The birth defects after Chernobyl and the cancers suffered by the children were horrific, and if no one is interested in finding out if we are now in a similar situation is beyond me. Pro nuke bastards don't give a fuck, governments don't give a fuck because of what nuke power provides. I care though and I think we all need to know, it seems to be like trying to find a needle in a hay stack to get some honest no bullshit answers at the moment.

 

[Pickman's model]

Be fair,

I agree with Stan, without sounding off there is so much information and second guessing going on its almost impossible to make the comparison. I've tried to understand the full affect of this disaster and I did quite a bit of research to understand what the ramifiactions of it all will be and I've given up on it. We're not being told because I doubt the authorities want anyone to know at this stage because governments like to fuck around with nuke shit. Those reactors are spewing out shit all day every day and the affects of it will never be fully understood because no fucker really knows. The deaths realted to the Chernobyl disaster are estimated to be between 4000 and 250000? No one knows for sure. The birth defects after Chernobyl and the cancers suffered by the children were horrific, and if no one is interested in finding out if we are now in a similar situation is beyond me. Pro nuke bastards don't give a fuck, governments don't give a fuck because of what nuke power provides. I care though and I think we all need to know it seems to be like trying to find a needle in a hay stack to get some honest no bullshit answers at the moment.

so the facts aren't known.

i didn't think this was supposed to be a newswire or even a source of informed comment, i thought this was a messageboards where people discuss stuff, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails.

 

[Pickman's model]

Let's keep the thread ontrack now.

yeh, despite your best efforts to fuck it over

 

[toblerone3]

Unfortunately the containment which prevents Stanley Edwards from polluting this very valuable thread with trolling nonsense is cracked.

 

[southside]

so the facts aren't known.

i didn't think this was supposed to be a newswire or even a source of informed comment, i thought this was a messageboards where people discuss stuff, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails.

My post is in no way an attempt to nullify what elbows has provided on this thread, he's done excellent research and covered what has happened brilliantly.

Not that I'm blowing smoke up his arse but credit where credit is due.

 

[robbo180265]

Simple facts.

That is all I want and all anyone wants. If Elbows cant condense the knowledge to very simple facts, then ...

It's not like there is any obligation here. If you can't deliver simple facts, then you don't have the knowledge to report as a reporter, so STFU. There's no point in regurgitating the crap here in pictures, graphics, or words. We can get them all elsewhere.

I usually lurk rather than post, but I have to drop in and say that I really don't understand what it is you are asking Stanley?

Elbows posts are some of the most informative posts I've seen , I tend to come here and see what he's written then pop over to the physics forum and see what they've come up with. Between the two I find more information than I ever could if I was relying on just the press.

I think your posts are incredibly naive or you're just spoiling for a fight - either way, I personally think you should STFU before you make yourself look a bigger prat than you have already.

Just saying...