Fukushima apocalypse:

The problem is the contamination is reaching California and entering the food supply. Much of that food finds it's way to the UK and in that Fish and Chips order we all enjoy.

Providing $ and engineering talent to resolve the issue helps everyone

 

Offer help and advise to a friendly nation is ok. Obama concentrating on telling another country what to do is another. The original comment was worded more to the latter.

 

Well said but not intended.

So now on to bigger and better things. Who has the best Fish and Chips? Will the food source he safe?

 

It would help if the exposure that people may get from this is put into context, compared to the natural radioactivity already present in the ocean, and in our air and food. But few outlets attempt to do this, so I cannot tell from the publicity whether or not this is a big problem or mostly hysteria.

The Pacific Ocean already has a couple billion tons of dissolved primordial Uranium. Yet even its radioactivity is far lower than that of the natural potassium and rubidium also dissolved there. And modern detection levels are orders of magnitude lower than that which should concern me, so just because the labs detect it doesn't mean I should worry about it.

So -- context please?

 

In my opinion any concentrated radio active material released into the Pacific Ocean is not natural and can lead to bigger problems. The size and scope of the problem would require an Environmental Impact Study.

 

I love the irony.

The UK advising the US not to meddle in the affairs of other countries!
That's almost as cool as your Parliament giving the US government a lesson in representative democracy.

 

You probably get less exposure taking a ship to Japan than flying.

 

Thanks to a post from someone else on TiVocommunity.
-- begin quote --
NOVA on PBS this week is "Nuclear Meltdown Disaster." The description is:

"The minute-by-minute story of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which resulted from the earthquake and tsunami, and its aftermath."

I've got my recording set.
-- end quote --
I too have my TiVo set to record it.

 

What is its place in disaster dollar cost? Must be a top 10 list somewhere.

TEPCO's Fukushima compensation cost to reach over $57 bn

 

Before the Nova program there was a two-part, hour each on uranium that my wife enjoyed . . . Me too.

Bob Wilson

 

Thanks to a Google search that something else reminded me of, I stumbled across TEPCO : Decommissioning Plan of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power which led to TEPCO : News | Photos and Videos Library - Videos, which has an insightful video.

 

^^^
Well, IIRC, they did consider a tsunami at the time of design, just one nowhere near the height and magnitude that the plant experienced.

 

Hind-sight is 20x20. Most of aviation is written in the blood of the dead. Nuclear the same way.

Bob Wilson

 

On this note, a quick Google search turned up http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/commission/comm-william-ostendorff/comm-ostendorff-20140923a-slides.pdf which says:
Site designed to withstand ~6 meters (20 foot) tsunami
Actual tsunami estimated to be ~14 meters (46 feet)

 

Specifically, is was designed to withstand a tsunami that hit that very site less than 10 years earlier, from the Peru quake 10,000 miles away ...

... with zero safety margin.

 

Put a large 'nuke'
in a seismic hot spot
on the coast

and see if you get lucky. Many, probably will, for their design life cycle. But one might hope big engineering addresses a higher standard than getting lucky.

Don't make nukes look dumb, because I think we're gonna need you.

 

Knowing a tidbit or two about nuke plant design, the big picture can be missed by over focusing on the details. The tsunami being 14 meters for plant designed for 6 actually reveals very little. Is the design brittle (at 6.1 meters the plants all completely self destruct with total meltdowns) or robust (at greater than 6 meters, the plants shutdown safely, but cannot return to service within a specified time). The design of these plants was extraordinarily brittle. This is one of the major problems with huge nuclear plants, they compromise robustness for overwhelming size.

 

Just read an article in a National Geographic from last year about tourism in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. According to the author's dose meter, he got a larger radiation dose during the flight from Chicago than from the trip.

Some time has passed to let things cool down around Chernobyl, but coal plants still expose nearby residents to more radiation than a nuclear one.