Starfleet Jedi

Trinoya wrote:*nod* This seems more like a case of people determining: "Well, this reactor is old, it's due to be shut down, and it'd be very expensive to add in new safety measures that much of the world has standardized."

2 weeks. 2 weeks and the plant would have been shut down. The lesson is it is never too late to install new safety features.


That said: I'm more upset over the fallout (no pun intended) on the nuclear industry as a whole. I have friends who were considering buying radiation suits and all I could do was facepalm. The fact of the matter is: Unprecedented disaster + Stupidity in regards to how you build your nuclear plants = problem...

Nothing that can be done about it now, just got to clean it up the hard way. While nuclear programs have been set back 10,000 some odd years politically... hopefully some good will still come out of it and we may learn new methods to clean it up.

2046 wrote:The main lesson here is that only having active cooling is silly, as if that wasn't obvious.

In any critical system (or more specifically in this case, any system with critical failure modes), not having passive failsafes or otherwise basic-mechanical failsafes is just poor design.

Government Under Fire as Radiation Is Found in Milk, Rain wrote: "We have accelerated our precipitation and drinking water sampling and expect to have results in the coming days," EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said in a statement.

The EPA’s tardy response to widespread alarm about radiation in rain and the air has been sharply criticized by Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"It’s troubling that the EPA has to date not provided any precipitation data of its own, while measurements that have been made by states and others across the country are indicating somewhat surprising elevations of iodine-131,” Hirsch said Friday.

A rooftop water monitoring program managed by UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during torrential downpours a week ago.

As shown in the graph below, published by UC Berkeley, Iodine-131 peaked at 20.1 becquerels per liter, a measure of radioactivity, on the roof of Etcheverry Hall during heavy rains a week ago. The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 0.111 becquerels per liter.

...

The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as maximum contaminant levels, or MCL, by as much as 181 times. However, the material has a half-life of eight days, meaning it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment. Drinking water safety standards are based on prolonged exposures.

"Now, it isn't drinking water, and the MCL can be averaged for a period of up to a year," Hirsch said. "But it is striking that rainwater could be measured in Berkeley with radioiodine that is that far above the level you would generally be permitted to drink."

The material, which is one of the most toxic radioactive elements spewed when nuclear power plants melt down, is being ingested by cows, which are passing it through into their milk.

The UC Berkeley researchers also discovered trace levels of iodine-131 and other radioactive materials believed to have originated in Japan in commercially available milk and in a local stream.

Low levels of ioidine-131 were detected by state officials this week in milk harvested from San Luis Obispo. Milk from that region is tested frequently for radioactive material because its located near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

“It’s absolutely no public health risk,” California Department of Public Health spokesman Mike Sicilia said.

Physicians for Social Responsibility Deeply Concerned About Reports of Increased Radioactivity in Food Supply wrote: Washington, DC - March 23, 2011 – Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) expressed concern over recent reports that radioactivity from the ongoing Fukushima accident is present in the Japanese food supply. While all food contains radionuclides, whether from natural sources, nuclear testing or otherwise, the increased levels found in Japanese spinach and milk pose health risks to the population. PSR also expressed alarm over the level of misinformation circulating in press reports about the degree to which radiation exposure can be considered “safe.”

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”

“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The Japanese government should ban the sale of foods that contain radioactivity levels above pre-disaster levels and continue to monitor food and water broadly in the area. In addition, the FDA and EPA must enforce existing regulations and guidelines that address radionuclide content in our food supply here at home.”

As the crisis in Japan goes on, there are an increasing number of sources reporting that 100 milliSieverts (mSv) is the lowest dose at which a person is at risk for cancer. Established research disproves this claim. A dose of 100 mSv creates a one in 100 risk of getting cancer, buta dose of 10 mSv still gives a one in 1,000 chance of getting cancer, and a dose of 1 mSv gives a one in 10,000 risk.

Even if the risk of getting cancer for one individual from a given level of food contamination is low, if thousands or millions of people are exposed, then some of those people will get cancer.

Recent reports indicate the Japanese disaster has released more iodine-131 than cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid, especially of children, with a half-life of over 8 days compared to cesium-137, which has a half-life of just over 30 years. Regardless of the shorter half-life, doses of iodine-131 are extremely dangerous, especially to pregnant women and children, and can lead to incidents of cancer, hypothyroidism, mental retardation and thyroid deficiency, among other conditions.

“Children are much more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and stand a much greater chance of developing cancer than adults,” said Dr. Andrew Kanter, president-elect of PSR’s Board. “So it is particularly dangerous when they consume radioactive food or water.”

All food contains some radioactivity as a result of natural sources, but also from prior above-ground nuclear testing, the Chernobyl accident, and releases from nuclear reactors and from weapons facilities. The factors that will affect the radioactivityin food after the Fukushima accident are complicated. These include the radionuclides that the nuclear reactor emits, weather patterns that control the wind direction and where the radionuclides are deposited, characteristics of the soil (e.g., clays bind nuclides, sand does not) and the nature of the food(leafy plants like spinach are more likely to be contaminated than other plants like rice that have husks, etc.).However, radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.

“Reports indicate that the total radioactive releases from the Fukushima reactor have been relatively small so far. If this is the case, then the health effects to the overall population will be correspondingly small,” said Ira Helfand, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But it is not true to say that it is "safe" to release this much radiation; some people will get cancer and die as a result.”

One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.