Japanese nuke problems

[renormalised (Carl)]

Thanks for that info, Stephen. Very comprehensive, but still missing vital info, unfortunately. What we need is the rate of outflow from the discharge pipes on each of the reactors...which is where most of the radioactivity will be coming from.

[Brian W (Brian)]

Yes Stephen it truly does help.
Brian

[morls (Stephen)]

I've found some more figures. This time from http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/
I'll upload the pdf...

Some figures:

Reactor building 1 basement contains 3,900 m³ of water with a radiation level of 4.0E+5 Bq/cm3.

Reactor building 2 basement contains 6,000 m³ of water with a radiation level of 1.9E+7Bq/cm3.

Reactor building 3 basement contains 6,400 m³ of water with a radiation level of 3.8E+5Bq/cm3.

If I remember my high school physics, 1 cm³ of water weighs 1g. So, if we multiply the above radiation figures by 1000, we should get the figures for Bq/kg...

(Naturally Occurring Uranium - 12,356,000 Bq/kg)
Reactor building 1 basement water radiation level: 400,000,000 Bq/kg
Reactor building 2 basement water radiation level: 19,000,000,000 Bq/kg
Reactor building 3 basement water radiation level: 380,000,000 Bq/kg

I hope I've got the above figures wrong.

Some more:
Reactor 1 turbine building basement contains 8,400 m³ of water at the same level of radiation as the water in the reactor building 1 basement. At the water surface the radiation dose is 60mSv/h.
Reactor 2 turbine building basement contains 11,400 m³ of water at the same level of radiation as the water in the reactor building 2 basement. At the water surface the radiation dose is 1,000mSv/h.
Reactor 3 turbine building basement contains 8,400 m³ of water at the same level of radiation as the water in the reactor building 3 basement. At the water surface the radiation dose is 120-750mSv/h.

The total volume of accumulated water at the facility is 105,000m³.

In trying to understand these figures, the following website is useful:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/measurement.asp

from that site:
"Measuring Biological Risk
A person's biological risk (that is, the risk that a person will suffer health effects from an exposure to radiation) is measured using the conventional unit rem or the SI unit Sv.

To determine a person's biological risk, scientists have assigned a number to each type of ionizing radiation (alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, and x-rays) depending on that type's ability to transfer energy to the cells of the body. This number is known as the Quality Factor (Q).

When a person is exposed to radiation, scientists can multiply the dose in rad by the quality factor for the type of radiation present and estimate a person's biological risk in rems. Thus, risk in rem = rad X Q.

The rem has been replaced by the Sv. One Sv is equal to 100 rem."

And from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/phys_.../ionizing.html

"What effects do different doses of radiation have on people?

One sievert is a large dose. The recommended TLV is average annual dose of 0.05 Sv (50 mSv).

The effects of being exposed to large doses of radiation at one time (acute exposure) vary with the dose. Here are some examples:

10 Sv - Risk of death within days or weeks

1 Sv - Risk of cancer later in life (5 in 100)

100 mSv - Risk of cancer later in life (5 in 1000)

50 mSv - TLV for annual dose for radiation workers in any one year

20 mSv - TLV for annual average dose, averaged over five years


What are the limits of exposure to radiation?

The Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) published by the ACGIH (American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists) are used in many jurisdictions occupational exposure limits or guidelines:

20 mSv - TLV for average annual dose for radiation workers, averaged over five years

1 mSv - Recommended annual dose limit for general public (ICRP - International Commission on Radiological Protection)."

[CraigS]

Not hard to come up with accurate information by avoiding clearly biased, sensationalist journo sites like 'Aljazeera'.

Man, what's this place coming to when all we seem to get is questions about reviewing either purely pseudoscientific authors, seeking to obtain revenues from book-sales, or political journalistic websites ?



Isn't the bias obvious before one even reads the article ?

Does anyone bother to check the source of information before accepting the content ?

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Not hard to come up with accurate information by avoiding clearly biased, sensationalist journo sites like 'Aljazeera'.

Man, what's this place coming to when all we seem to get is questions about reviewing either purely pseudoscientific authors, seeking to obtain revenues from book-sales, or political journalistic websites ?



Isn't the bias obvious before one even reads the article ?

Does anyone bother to check the source of information before accepting the content ?

What's this place coming to.?.? Its great. ..bias is not always obvious nor are all adgehdahs apparent and it is easy to be conned so pointing that out can't be a bad thing. ... Android Craig you should be happy to have part of the job of pointing that out

[Brian W (Brian)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Not hard to come up with accurate information by avoiding clearly biased, sensationalist journo sites like 'Aljazeera'.

Man, what's this place coming to when all we seem to get is questions about reviewing either purely pseudoscientific authors, seeking to obtain revenues from book-sales, or political journalistic websites ?



Isn't the bias obvious before one even reads the article ?

Does anyone bother to check the source of information before accepting the content ?

To answer some of your objections;

In opposition to your 'opinion' of AJE many people find it a credible source of information. Perhaps you should check the credentials of its contributors and on staff personnel.

So you decided without even reading the article that it was biased and unworthy of serious consideration. Perhaps if you had read it you would have found the following information informative...

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

As for does anyone even check the source of information, gee maybe that's what I was attempting to do?

Anyway, cheers and have a good one.
Brian

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

What's this place coming to.?.? Its great. ..bias is not always obvious nor are all adgehdahs apparent and it is easy to be conned so pointing that out can't be a bad thing. ... Android Craig you should be happy to have part of the job of pointing that out

Now look Alex ..

I don't mind being called aloof ..
I don't mind being called on being opinionated ..

I don't even mind being referred to as a 'carbon based life-form' …

but dude …. just don't call me an 'Android' again …. please !!


Cheers

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Now look Alex ..

I don't mind being called aloof ..
I don't mind being called on being opinionated ..

I don't even mind being referred to as a 'carbon based life-form' …

but dude …. just don't call me an 'Android' again …. please !!


Cheers

It was unintentional honest but take it as a compliment Android denotes super human qualities on the positive side

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by Brian W

To answer some of your objections;

In opposition to your 'opinion' of AJE many people find it a credible source of information. Perhaps you should check the credentials of its contributors and on staff personnel.

So you decided without even reading the article that it was biased and unworthy of serious consideration. Perhaps if you had read it you would have found the following information informative…

You have assumed that I did not read the article.

I did.

The way it was written, highlighted the sensationalist bias. As a matter of fact, I didn't even notice the source, until I read the article !

Originally Posted by Brian W

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

As for does anyone even check the source of information, gee maybe that's what I was attempting to do?

Anyway, cheers and have a good one.
Brian

Brian,

As mentioned in the past, Science (and rational thinking) is not a story the last bloke told you. Even if that bloke IS your esteemed 'Dahr Jamail'.

In the quote above, Gundersen is merely offering his opinion about the likely state of the situation .. who cares about his opinion of the likely situation ? If he doesn't know from first-hand knowledge, its irrelevant to the reality of the situation ..

(As assistance: DavidU did a whole thread on this topic in the 'General Chat Forum', when all this occurred. The links presented there, were carefully selected by all of us, to make sure we got close to the reality … many interesting and valued views were presented in the 2 Japanese nuclear reactors may be in meltdown thread.)

The IAEA, Tepco and NY Times sites were the most accurate and factual at the time.

Cheers

[morls (Stephen)]

There is a program on SBS tonight at 9.35 looking at the Fukushimi incident. Very timely....

[morls (Stephen)]

Looks like you might be able to catch it online Brian, although it may take a day or two to be posted on the sbs site...

http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSON...Sydney#1688916

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Not necessarily....we've yet to really play around with this physics. In any case, if you can't measure the quantity of energy within a system due to quantum uncertainty, who's to say the law applies anyway. It maybe like GR, only a macroscopic level reality and when you consider quantum level processes then the law becomes approximate or even untenable at a certain level of process. That doesn't mean to say that perpetual motion is possible. Just that we don't know what's really going on and it maybe that we have to modify our understanding of energy conservation on these levels (like gravity) in order to be able to see what's really happening.

Still doesn't let off the EU guys or any other mob of crackpots

Fair enough, Carl. I think I get where you're coming from.

Actually, interestingly and along the same lines, I was reading this article the other day ..
Quantum physics first: Researchers observe single photons in two-slit interferometer experiment

The interesting bit is right at the end in the Abstract of the paper …

A consequence of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle is that one may not discuss the path or “trajectory” that a quantum particle takes, because any measurement of position irrevocably disturbs the momentum, and vice versa. Using weak measurements, however, it is possible to operationally define a set of trajectories for an ensemble of quantum particles. We sent single photons emitted by a quantum dot through a double-slit interferometer and reconstructed these trajectories by performing a weak measurement of the photon momentum, postselected according to the result of a strong measurement of photon position in a series of planes. The results provide an observationally grounded description of the propagation of subensembles of quantum particles in a two-slit interferometer.

.. so there ya go … this may be a practical example of what (I think) you might be alluding to.
The trajectory has been cunningly measured by thinking around the seeming 'obstacle' of the Uncertainty Principle.
Very clever, and full marks to 'em ! ...

It shows that long-neglected questions about the different types of measurement possible in quantum mechanics can finally be addressed in the lab, and weak measurements such as the sort we use in this work may prove crucial in studying all sorts of new phenomena.

Great stuff !
Just goes to show that scientific 'Laws', 'Principles', 'Theories', etc are all fair game in science .. and they don't necessarily inhibit progress (unlike what many 'critics' mistakingly claim).

Cheers

[Brian W (Brian)]

[QUOTE=CraigS;734171]You have assumed that I did not read the article.

I did.

The way it was written, highlighted the sensationalist bias. As a matter of fact, I didn't even notice the source, until I read the article !

-well that would be your opinion and bias and I thought you wanted all parties to leave opinions and biases at the door?

As mentioned in the past, Science (and rational thinking) is not a story the last bloke told you. Even if that bloke IS your esteemed 'Dahr Jamail'.


-He is not my esteemed anyone or anything. He just happened to write the article. The last bloke to tell me a story about science and rational thinking is you. And I will take your recent advice so until you can show some credentials ie degrees, articles, discoveries, that make your 'definitions and or opinions the only worthy ones I just might reserve the right to disagree with you.

In the quote above, Gundersen is merely offering his opinion about the likely state of the situation .. who cares about his opinion of the likely situation ? If he doesn't know from first-hand knowledge, its irrelevant to the reality of the situation ..

- I care about his opinion because with his academic qualifications, work experience, and all around education his opinion is worth listening to. Unless I am mistaken you have no first hand experience in this situation and yet you feel capable and worthy to voice your opinion though as far as I can tell you have much less to back it up than Gunderson

(As assistance: DavidU did a whole thread on this topic in the 'General Chat Forum', when all this occurred. The links presented there, were carefully selected by all of us, to make sure we got close to the reality … many interesting and valued views were presented in the 2 Japanese nuclear reactors may be in meltdown thread.)

- indeed I enjoyed reading the thread. These interesting and valued views were given by people with first hand experience of the situation?

The IAEA, Tepco and NY Times sites were the most accurate and factual at the time.

- well that is your opinion of the most accurate sites but you have already, and many times, said we should leave our opinions at the door so perhaps you can qualify your opinion with something to back it up?

In any case I am returning to the main discussion cause this will go nowhere.

Brian

[morls (Stephen)]

Originally Posted by morls

Some more:
Reactor 1 turbine building basement contains 8,400 m³ of water.... At the water surface the radiation dose is 60mSv/h.

Reactor 2 turbine building basement contains 11,400 m³ of water...at the water surface the radiation dose is 1,000mSv/h.

Reactor 3 turbine building basement contains 8,400 m³ of water...at the water surface the radiation dose is 120-750mSv/h.


-------------
One sievert is a large dose. The recommended TLV is average annual dose of 0.05 Sv (50 mSv).

10 Sv - Risk of death within days or weeks
1 Sv - Risk of cancer later in life (5 in 100)
100 mSv - Risk of cancer later in life (5 in 1000)
50 mSv - TLV for annual dose for radiation workers in any one year
20 mSv - TLV for annual average dose, averaged over five years


What are the limits of exposure to radiation?

20 mSv - TLV for average annual dose for radiation workers, averaged over five years

1 mSv - Recommended annual dose limit for general public (ICRP - International Commission on Radiological Protection)."

To continue my little research project, I want to calculate the radiation dose received after working in each of the turbine building basements for one hour, and then compare to the dosages the workers at Chernobyl received.

1 hour in turbine building 1 basement: radiation dose = 60mSv.
- 60x the recommended annual dose for general public.
- 3x the annual dose recommended for radiation workers.
- Exposure time to receive maximum annual radiation worker dose: 50min


1 hour in turbine building 2 basement: radiation dose = 1000mSv (1 Sv)
- 1000x the recommended annual dose for general public.
- 50x the annual dose recommended for radiation workers.
- 5% risk of cancer in later life
- Exposure time to receive maximum annual radiation worker dose: 3m


1 hour in turbine building 3 basement: radiation dose = 435mSv (mid point between 120 and 750mSv)
- 435x the recommended annual dose for general public.
- 22x the annual dose recommended for radiation workers.
- 0.023% risk of cancer in later life
- Exposure time to receive maximum annual radiation worker dose: 7min


Dosages received by Chernobyl workers:
Quoting from http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

"The Chernobyl accident caused many severe radiation effects almost immediately. Of 600 workers present on the site during the early morning of 26 April 1986, 134 received high doses (0.8-16 Gy) and suffered from radiation sickness. Of these, 28 died in the first three months and another 19 died in 1987-2004 of various causes not necessarily associated with radiation exposure. In addition, according to the UNSCEAR 2008 Report, the majority of the 530,000 registered recovery operation workers received doses of between 0.02 Gy and 0.5 Gy between 1986 and 1990. That cohort is still at potential risk of late consequences such as cancer and other diseases and their health will be followed closely."

As far as I can tell, Gy (Gray) and Sv (Sievert) are equivalent units.

So, 1 hour in turbine basement 2 would be equivalent to the lower end of a high dose at Chernobyl, would cause radiation sickness and have a mortality rate of up to 20.9% in the first 3 months.

1 hour in turbine basement 3 would result in radiation exposure in the upper range of that received by the majority of the workers at Chernobyl. There would be potential risk of late consequences such as cancer and other diseases.

1 hour in turbine basement 1 would result in exposure equivalent to the lower range of that received by the majority of the workers at Chernobyl. There would be potential risk of late consequences such as cancer and other diseases.

----------------
So, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the incident at Fukushima is comparable to Chernobyl in terms of potential radiation exposure of workers trying to address the situation.
----------------

I think it's probably important to quote further from the UNSCEAR webpage:

"The Chernobyl accident also resulted in widespread radioactive contamination in areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine inhabited by several million people. In addition to causing radiation exposure, the accident caused long-term changes in the lives of the people living in the contaminated districts, since the measures intended to limit radiation doses included resettlement, changes in food supplies and restrictions on the activities of individuals and families...

(The second sentence above would also be the case in Japan....)

For the last two decades, attention has been focused on investigating the association between exposure caused by radionuclides released in the Chernobyl accident and late effects, in particular thyroid cancer in children. Doses to the thyroid received in the first few months after the accident were particularly high in those who were children and adolescents at the time in Belarus, Ukraine and the most affected Russian regions and drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2005, more than 6,000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake. It is expected that the increase in thyroid cancer incidence due to the Chernobyl accident will continue for many more years, although the long-term increase is difficult to quantify precisely.

Among Russian recovery operation workers with higher doses there is emerging evidence of some increase in the incidence of leukaemia. However, based on other studies, the annual incidence of radiation-induced leukaemia would be expected to fall within a few decades after exposure. In addition, recent studies of the recovery operation workers indicate that opacities of the eye lens might be caused by relatively low radiation doses.

Among the 106 patients surviving radiation sickness, complete normalization of health took several years. Many of those patients developed clinically significant radiation-induced cataracts in the first few years after the accident. Over the period 1987-2006, 19 survivors died for various reasons; however, some of these deaths were due to causes not associated with radiation exposure.

The present understanding of the late effects of protracted exposure to ionizing radiation is limited, since the dose-response assessments rely heavily on studies of exposure to high doses and animal experiments. Studies of the Chernobyl accident exposure might shed light on the late effects of protracted exposure, but given the low doses received by the majority of exposed individuals, any increase in cancer incidence or mortality will be difficult to detect in epidemiological studies.

Conclusions (this is also on UNESCEAR site)

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 was a tragic event for its victims, and those most affected suffered major hardship. Some of the people who dealt with the emergency lost their lives. Although those exposed as children and the emergency and recovery workers are at increased risk of radiation-induced effects, the vast majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health consequences due to the radiation from the Chernobyl accident. For the most part, they were exposed to radiation levels comparable to or a few times higher than annual levels of natural background, and future exposures continue to slowly diminish as the radionuclides decay. Lives have been seriously disrupted by the Chernobyl accident, but from the radiological point of view, generally positive prospects for the future health of most individuals should prevail."

I'm sorry if I'm putting up too much information...I can get a bit carried away when things capture my attention.

[jeff65 (Jeff)]

morls,

Thanks for posting that data.

It's important to note that published exposure guidelines are for external radiation sources. If a person ingests or inhales a radioactive particle the situation is a great deal worse.

The intensity of the radiation is inversely proportional with the square of the distance to the source. If you've swallowed a particle I think it's safe to say you're very near the source. You'll also be hit by every decay.

I think that the official safety statements comparing the risk to humans with that of background radiation or chest x-rays is definitely soft pedalling the issue.

If someone really wanted to know something about what happened at the time, there were many commentators at various web sites (The Oil Drum was one) who were interpreting the officially released data and painting a picture much worse than officially acknowledged. The un-official analysts often later turned out to be correct.

There were plenty of analysts saying that the data released by official sources showed core meltdowns were likely within a day or two of the initial incident. TEPCO acknowledged this only in the last few weeks!

The situation described by the Al Jazeera article is nothing radical. I'd say it could be more thorough but none of it would surprise anyone actually following the situation beyond the major media outlets.

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Extracting useful ZPE results in violation of Conservation of Energy …

Thar ain't no such thing as a 'perpetual motion machine' (except in the hallowed church of cosmic plasma).

Cheers

I'd be more concerned about false vacuums.
Harnessing ZPE in a false vacuum can be bad for your health.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_...tability_event

Regards

Steven

[morls (Stephen)]

Hi Jeff,

Originally Posted by jeff65

It's important to note that published exposure guidelines are for external radiation sources. If a person ingests or inhales a radioactive particle the situation is a great deal worse.

The intensity of the radiation is inversely proportional with the square of the distance to the source. If you've swallowed a particle I think it's safe to say you're very near the source. You'll also be hit by every decay.

So this would account for the large numbers of thyroid cancer cases associated with Chernobyl?

I've followed up on what I'd half-remembered about the radiation exposure guidelines being changed following the incident at Fukushima. On April 29th 2011 Fukushima school authorities were informed the allowable dose for children would be increased from 1mSv/year to 20mSv/year.

I found the website for Physicians For Social Responsibility, who in 1985 won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'll quote their statement made April 29, 2011, and attach a .pdf




"April 29, 2011

PSR Statement on the Increase of Allowable Dose of Ionizing Radiation
to Children in Fukushima Prefectur

It is the consensus of the medical and scientific community, summarized in the US National Academies’ National Research Council report Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII (BEIR VII report, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030909156X), that there is no safe level of radiation. Any exposure, including exposure to naturally occurring background radiation, creates an increased risk of cancer. Moreover, not all people exposed to radiation are affected equally. Children are much more vulnerable than adults to the effects of radiation, and fetuses are even more vulnerable. It is unconscionable to increase the allowable dose for children to 20 millisieverts (mSv). Twenty mSv exposes an adult to a one in 500 risk of getting cancer; this dose for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered "safe" for children."




From the JAIF Status of Countermeasures report dated 18/6/11 I uploaded earlier, these are the situations listed as "Severe (need immediate attention):"

- Reactors 1, 2 and 3 Core Integrity: Damaged (core melt)
- Reactors 1, 2 and 3 Core Cooling: Not functioning

- Reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4 Spent Fuel Pool Cooling: Not functioning

- Scattering of radioactive materials to the outside of the facility: Radioactive materials and radioactively contaminated debris scattered due to the hydrogen explosion at Unit 1 and 3 R/Bs (reactor buildings) and other events.

In addition, the fuel integrity status of the nuclear material in the spent fuel pools is unknown for all 4 reactors.

The status of the Reactor Pressure Vessels in reactors 2 and 3 is unknown. Damage and leakage is suspected in the Primary Containment Vessels of reactors 1, 2 and 3.

[morls (Stephen)]

Here's the PSR statement...

[xelasnave]

My emotions have taken over It scares me and yet I am not sure I am being rational.
alex

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by sjastro

I'd be more concerned about false vacuums.
Harnessing ZPE in a false vacuum can be bad for your health.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_...tability_event

Regards

Steven

Interesting … sounds quite nasty !

I notice that cosmic ray collisions observed ~ 10^20 eV or 10^14 eV (depending on which source one looks at .. that's 0.999c !), have been predicted to be matched in particle accelerators by 2150 (John Leslie, 1998 (1998). "The End of the World:The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction.").

.. an adventuresome prediction .. but there ya go, Carl !

Expulsion events from AGNs seem much more likely .. don't know about containing that one, though.

.. But do we live in a false vacuum, anyway ?

Cheers