Fukushima

[Caribou]

The first two minutes are about Fukushima and the last minute is advertising.

 

[Meerkat]

Why doesn't the world come etogether and help Japan repair that leak?

 

[Woody]

Why doesn't the world come etogether and help Japan repair that leak?

Because there really is nothing that can be done. There is no way to stop it, no way to contain it and no way to clean up the mess. They went through the motions early on, to make it seem as if there was something they could do, and were doing it for PR is all.

 

[Weedygarden]

Why doesn't the world come together and help Japan repair that leak?

This is only ONE nuclear power plant. If we have a grid down situation, how many more nuclear plants would there be spewing radiation?

 

[Weedygarden]

The first two minutes are about Fukushima and the last minute is advertising.

This is another thing that we really have no information about. It is one of the topics that is banned from the news. No more tuna for me!

 

[The Innkeeper]

Come on now, glowing in the dark has advantages

 

[Meerkat]

Come on now, glowing in the dark has advantages

Yea, your never without light for one thing.

 

[SheepDog]

The radiated fish are not harmful to eat unless you are eating the bones and organs. The flesh has no more than standard background radiation in it.
It is not just one reactor. Three reactors were involved. The fish that migrate through the area do not pose any threat because they are in the area for a short time and by the time they get to the coast of North America the radiation has been metabolized and is laying on the bottom of the ocean.
We heard all the same horror stories back when Chernobyl melted down. Guess what, nature has taken the sight over. The wild animal population has exploded in the area most damaged by the radiation release. The herds of reindeer that were supposed to die and the native populations that used them for meat, milk and clothes have not contracted leukemia and other radiation triggered cancers. There are no wolves walking on two legs or eight eyed birds - the wildlife is basically healthy and thriving. The area is still off limits for humans and radiation levels at the site are still dangerous.
Turn to Fukushima and We hear the same predictions all over again. I have seen testing of fish followed by testing of the flesh once the fish is filleted. The meat has nothing more than a trace of radiation while the skeleton has high levels of some isotopes that are dangerously radioactive. The half life of most of the isotopes getting into the water is accelerated in the metabolic action of the fish that consume it.
The real question is why three atomic reactors were built on the shoreline of an area known for large earthquakes and tsunamis. The only way to clean it up would be to encase it all in sand and concrete and throw it into the Mariana trench and let the earth recycle it. It is most likely going to be an area that is off limits for human habitation and serve as a monument to the stupidity of mankind for building things where they don't belong.

 

[Caribou]

This is another thing that we really have no information about. It is one of the topics that is banned from the news. No more tuna for me!

I bought five cases of tuna when this happened. I wish I'd have bought ten.

Come on now, glowing in the dark has advantages

No fumbling for the light switch in the middle of the night.

 

[The Innkeeper]

No fumbling for the light switch in the middle of the night.

always look on the bright side of life

 

[Caribou]

always look on the bright side of life

Pun intended?

 

[The Innkeeper]

Pun intended?

@Caribou ... yup ... never miss a chance if I can help it

 

[Weedygarden]

I bought five cases of tuna when this happened. I wish I'd have bought ten.

Me, too! Or more! I won't buy any now.

 

[angie_nrs]

The radiated fish are not harmful to eat unless you are eating the bones and organs. The flesh has no more than standard background radiation in it.
It is not just one reactor. Three reactors were involved. The fish that migrate through the area do not pose any threat because they are in the area for a short time and by the time they get to the coast of North America the radiation has been metabolized and is laying on the bottom of the ocean.
We heard all the same horror stories back when Chernobyl melted down. Guess what, nature has taken the sight over. The wild animal population has exploded in the area most damaged by the radiation release. The herds of reindeer that were supposed to die and the native populations that used them for meat, milk and clothes have not contracted leukemia and other radiation triggered cancers. There are no wolves walking on two legs or eight eyed birds - the wildlife is basically healthy and thriving. The area is still off limits for humans and radiation levels at the site are still dangerous.
Turn to Fukushima and We hear the same predictions all over again. I have seen testing of fish followed by testing of the flesh once the fish is filleted. The meat has nothing more than a trace of radiation while the skeleton has high levels of some isotopes that are dangerously radioactive. The half life of most of the isotopes getting into the water is accelerated in the metabolic action of the fish that consume it.
The real question is why three atomic reactors were built on the shoreline of an area known for large earthquakes and tsunamis. The only way to clean it up would be to encase it all in sand and concrete and throw it into the Mariana trench and let the earth recycle it. It is most likely going to be an area that is off limits for human habitation and serve as a monument to the stupidity of mankind for building things where they don't belong.

I watched a PBS program a while ago about Chernobyl. The crew could not get very close to the plant without getting past security. They showed the wildlife around the area and it looked like it was thriving. Apparently mother nature is pretty tough. However, they did mention that the radiation causes the deadwood around the area to not decay like it should. So, there is dead wood and leaves all around that doesn't do anything but sit there and get drier and drier. They said their fear was that someday a lightning strike would cause the whole thing to go up in flames and carry the radioactive ash in the air and deposit it downwind. If what they were reporting is correct, the world hasn't seen the last of the nasty effects of Chernobyl.

 

[fteter]

Nuclear power is really great potential as a clean, nearly inexhaustible power source. But we have a long way to go in developing containment technology before we can consider it to be safe.

 

[Weedygarden]

The radiated fish are not harmful to eat unless you are eating the bones and organs.

That may be true, or not. I am going to not eat fish especially from the Pacific, probably for the rest of my life.

 

[Caribou]

New Fukushima Nightmare for Japan Utility
April 29, 2018/by WND


There’s a building boom going on at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan where on March 11, 2011, as the coast was catastrophically flooded by an earthquake-triggered tsunami, three of the six reactors melted down . . .

Tepco, which owns the site, has built hundreds of massive storage tanks to hold the radioactive water that is leaking from the disaster . . .

The report explained there have been improvements in the filtering system since the disaster seven years ago, but none of the processes so far has been able to catch tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen . . .

“Some of those tanks and pipes will eventually fail. It’s inevitable,” Dale Klein, a former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the publication.

Klein says the concentrations are low enough that the water can safely be released into the sea, Wired reported, but “the notion of dumping tons of radioactive water into the ocean is understandably a tough sell.”
http://joemiller.us/2018/04/new-fukushima-nightmare-japan-utility/

 

[The Lazy L]

...
The real question is why three atomic reactors were built on the shoreline of an area known for large earthquakes and tsunamis. The only way to clean it up would be to encase it all in sand and concrete and throw it into the Mariana trench and let the earth recycle it. It is most likely going to be an area that is off limits for human habitation and serve as a monument to the stupidity of mankind for building things where they don't belong.

And If I'm remembering what I read correctly the standby generators were built below sea level. When the grid went down and the generators were flood there was no power for the cooling pumps.

Same mistake the City of New Orleans made. Installing the pumps that kept the City dry below sea level.

 

[Caribou]

And If I'm remembering what I read correctly the standby generators were built below sea level. When the grid went down and the generators were flood there was no power for the cooling pumps.

Same mistake the City of New Orleans made. Installing the pumps that kept the City dry below sea level.

I'm not sure that they were built below sea level per se but rather in a manner that was not protected by a tsunami.

Three out of six reactors went China Syndrome. Why couldn't they use the power from the other three or from other sources on the grid?

 

[backlash]

That may be true, or not. I am going to not eat fish especially from the Pacific, probably for the rest of my life.

The problem with not eating fish from the Pacific is there is no way to tell where it comes from unless you catch it yourself.
A lot of fish sold in stores and restaurants is not even they type of fish advertised.
If they get the type of fish wrong there is no way they can tell where it comes from.
I fish down stream from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
We are advised to limit the amount of fish we eat from the Columbia River.
Especially children and pregnant women.
American radiation will get me long before Japanese radiation.

 

[Justin76]

I was stationed in Japan from 1994~2005. I have a very good friend that was on the George Washington during that time as an ABH ( flight deck rat) they were deployed to go help and drop aid. Well the ship ended up going through a plume of the radiation. A year later he told me people were getting sick. Lumps on their bodies and tired all the time. He came down with diabetes, that may or may not have anything to do with it.
But, he has always been a health nut, non smoker, light drinker (for a sailor) in shape and no family history of diabetes...
Tepco has a lawsuit against them on their behalf because of this. (the Navy wants nothing to do with it as usual)

Funny story about Fukushima...
A few days after it happened, the local Chinese being as shallow and gullible as they are....a rumor was going around about the radiation...iodized salt will save you from the radiation. You couldnt buy salt or anything white and granular for 2 weeks. It was all bought up. Even the soy sauce, except the Japanese soy sauce because well thats radioactive...

On idiot even killed her 6 year old granddaughter...made her drink salt water and didnt realize that her kidneys were failing because of it...


A lot of my fish in the restaurant comes from Japan. Im not worried about it actually....the pollution over here will kill us before the radiation does....

 

[Weedygarden]

Nuclear power is really great potential as a clean, nearly inexhaustible power source. But we have a long way to go in developing containment technology before we can consider it to be safe.

IMHO, the development of containment technology should have happened first, before any nuclear power plants were ever built.

 

[Homesteader33]

This is only ONE nuclear power plant. If we have a grid down situation, how many more nuclear plants would there be spewing radiation?

All of them!

 

[SheepDog]

IMHO, the development of containment technology should have happened first, before any nuclear power plants were ever built.

All nuclear plants are built with containment buildings around them. The problem at Fukushima was that when they lost coolant they poured sea water into the reactor instead of letting it melt down. Which is worse? The hydrogen explosions inside the containment buildings broke the structure and it leaked into the surrounding area. If they had let the reactors melt down the problem might have been worse - or not.
Nuclear plants are built with redundant backup systems to prevent 99% of any problems. A tsunami that flooded the backup generators and shorted out the backup electronic safeties was not thought possible when the plant was built. Why the plant was built where it was is a valid question but the answer has more to do with economics and political reasoning than with safety. We learn by making mistakes but we don't always put the lessons to good use. I live about 100 miles from a power reactor that is fed water for cooling from a river. Gravity should keep it cool no matter what happens to the electrical and electronic safeties. I would be a lot more confident if the bottom of the containment vessel had a graphite catch basin in case of melt down but they don't employ that "absolute" safety in reactors at this time.

What happened is done. Now they are faced with remedies that must be applied to clean up the mess. Dumping the tritium into the ocean is a good idea. It doesn't have the energy to pass through an inch of water and it has a half life of about 12.5 years. It is a naturally occurring product of cosmic rays interacting with our atmosphere. The element produces neutrinos in the decay process which have no effect on matter at all. That means it will not turn the elements in the water to radioactive material at all.
Here is some information on tritium:

"While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, the National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 4,500 ± 8 days (12.32 ± 0.02 years).[1] It decays into helium-3 and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron's kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin.[2] The unusually low energy released in the tritium beta decay makes the decay (along with that of rhenium-187) appropriate for absolute neutrino mass measurements in the laboratory (the most recent experiment being KATRIN).

The low energy of tritium's radiation makes it difficult to detect tritium-labeled compounds except by using liquid scintillation counting."

Tritium is used to make glowing numerals in gauges and night sights for guns. The glow normally lasts for about 12 years before it has to be replaced. Just because something is radioactive doesn't make it life threatening. The potassium in that banana is a radioactive isotope that is also anti-matter and yet it does no harm.