Japan hit by 8.9 earthquake w/tsunami

I'd consider the 100x figure minor even in an absolute sense, as long as it is being dumped into wide-open ocean instead of inland waters, or a protected bay, or the atmosphere. Water is fairly protective against radiation, radioactivity will dilute to legal levels very quickly, and the area is not an active harvesting zone.

Even the 7.5Mx figure didn't bother me, because it was I-131. It decays so fast that, even completely undiluted, this batch would be legal in six months. With ocean dilution away from actively harvested kelp beds, it will be legal much quicker. This is completely different than the normal I-131 hazard: an atmospheric release precipitated and concentrated onto downwind vegetation leaves, consumed by dairy cattle, and into the local grocery dairy case early next week. (Or into the produce section, as nearby spinach farmers recently learned.) As a Hanford 'downwinder', milk was the source of my greatest exposure.

There are plenty of serious radiological concerns developing there, but this just didn't seem like one of them.

I saw the CNN piece in Tom's link this morning, but was unable to post then. Here are some snippets I find important:

Note that my comments apply only to the present releases into the ocean. The near future likely holds uglier releases of nastier stuff before anything gets better.

 

Is this approach already in use in this incident? I wasn't aware that the situation had stabilized enough to even start this, and most nuclear 'news' here is seriously stripped of meaningful detail.

That is the second of the three ways I expressed seawater uranium content in various earlier posts.

 

Don't spend any time with the "nuclear news"... go to the source :

 

And the NISA website as well:

NISA - Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency

 

A drive towards Fukushima (and associated radiation level readings)

 

We are looking at two different sides of the same event. I don't disagree that when that contamination is diluted to the ocean, that dilution would indeed reduce to levels that are a low threat to remote populations. (Prior to that, it literally burned the workers that stepped into it.)

My issue is that these releases are a result of not attacking the problem head on, but the result of requiring TEPCO to solve the problem with tepid government support, if not antagonism. The problems with the site has to be staggering if the justification of the problem now being "manageable" is that the ocean has the capacity to dilute the present contamination.

One of the reasons for inadequate information is that the messengers keep getting blamed for the news. Putting prior TEPCO missteps aside for a second, a Tsunami created this situation and now is not the time to start holding court on TEPCO. Right now it's time for the Japanese government to take the responsibility for evaluating and reporting the situation to the world, not TEPCO spokesmen.

(Please note that your comments and viewpoint are valid and worth reading. Don't hesitate to take issue with what I present.)

 

Sources?

From what I am seeing (spiderman's link is excellent), downstream stories have been confusing different pools of water with different levels of contamination.

Those workers were in the turbine building of Unit 3. I'm seeing nothing in the incident reports consistent with 'literally burned'. Early reports indicate that they 'may' have received burns on the feet, and were to be kept in the hospital for several days for observation. Later reports indicate that they received 170-180 mSev at their dosimiters (below the emergency worker limit of 250) over three hours at the pool, but 2000-6000 to their feet from beta emissions. At last report they needed no treatment. Another source reports the water as 10,000 times over limit. This water has not been released.

The water intentionally pumped into the ocean came from the radioactive waste treatment plant and from the sub drain pits of Units 5 and 6. Many sources portray this has having low level contamination, with one listing it as 100 times over limit. This dump frees space to hold water listed as 10,000 times over limit.

The water accidentally flowing into the ocean through a crack, came from the turbine building of Unit 2. At this moment I don't have a contamination level figure for it.

 

Interesting, at Lack Of Stable Power Brings Japan, there's a table of the status of TEPCO's 17 nuclear reactors.

 

2 of 3 radiation-exposed workers suffer internal exposure | Kyodo News

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/asia/26japan.html?_r=1

The truth of the matter is the actual dose is not known and the degree to which their feet were affected is a detail probably not followed up in the press. It takes time for radiation burns to express themselves. Past history has always been that when someone is exposed to extensive contamination but was not instrumented, the "estimates" are often extremely low.

 

The abandoned/homeless dogs and cats will be a problem. Hate to say this, but it would be best if they are humanely euthanized

 

NY Times: Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job
Japanese tsunami survivors camped out in a nuclear power plant - Boing Boing

People have started moving into the re-purposed hotel that was to be set to be demolished. Judging by the stories, it's apparently still is slated for demolition in a few months. I wonder if it'll happen.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/84183.html
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110409p2a00m0na011000c.html

Bloomberg TV was at a Toyota shipping facility in an area hit by the tsunami showing brand new mangled cars. They mentioned Sendai airport is reopening Wednesday (being confirmed by stories like http://atwonline.com/airports-route...ted-during-tsunami-partially-reopen-week-0408). They also talked about the Honda production cuts in Swindon, UK.

 

Wait till some lawyer gets a hold of this info...

Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk - Jeff McMahon - The Ingenuity of the Commons - Forbes

 

There has been another M 7.1 (prelim) aftershock south of Sendai along the coast - May lead to another evacuation of Fuku 1 plant - must await the news cycle

 

Finally! A video (not very good though) released recently shows the tsunami hitting the Fukushima plant. See

.

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Before and After Photos Tsunami Photos | Japan News Today

I also saw much lower res versions of these photos on other news sites: New Photos from Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant Released | Japan News Today.

I also happened to stumble across these aerial photos: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Hi-Res Photos.

 

I haven't had a chance to watch the video from post 305 yet, but http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/wor...ity.cnn?hpt=T1 has video of a ghost town within the mandatory Fukushima evacuation zone.

 

The severity of the nuclear incident at Fukushima Dianchi has been raised to 7 - the highest IAEA level. Previously only Chernobyl qualified. THe evacuation zone has also been increased in size.

I and probably others would hope that this will lead to additional international assistance in resolving the situation.

 

I was looking for two things. To the first issue, the water that 'burned' the workers being the same water later pumped into the ocean, nothing here supports that scenario. The daily IAEA reports (Thanks Spiderman) mentioned earlier shows different batches.

On the other issue, whether or not the workers were burned, your sources illustrate a discrepancy I noticed among other reports that very day. Many reports used weasel words or qualifiers similar to your first link: 'possible burns', 'likely suffered', so the workers were being held for observation. Others were like your second link: no qualifiers, just an outright statement that they were burned.

Such discrepancies put me on alert to possible sloppy reporting or media hysteria.

Since then, the daily IAEA reports have provided more detail:
March 24 - 'may have suffered radiation burns';
March 25 - 'since there was a possibility of Beta-ray burning of the skin ... They are expected to be monitored for around four days';
March 27 - 'While the patients did not require medical treatment, doctors decided to keep them in hospital and monitor their progress over coming days.'
March 28 - 'At noon today in Japan, the three workers mentioned in previous briefings were released from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences where they had been kept under observation. The result of analyses performed indicates that the level of localised exposure received by two of them is between 2 000 and 3 000 millisievert (i.e. somewhat lower than the previous estimate of 2 000 to 6 000 millisievert). '

With this outcome, I have to set aside reports of actual burns as media exaggeration or hysteria or error or spin. Unfortunately, this is no different than a lot of other non-nuclear reporting.

These workers were instrumented, though not at ankle level. They ignored their dosimeter's alarms.

 

CNN ran this online Sunday, but I wasn't able to find the YouTube version at that time.

The surge was 14 to 15 meters. The tsunami wall was only 5 or 6 meters, for a facility designed in the late 1960s, at a location that suffered a 6 meter tsunami driven by the May 22, 1960 Chile quake.

After the post-disaster engineering study is written, what will be the political repercussions for permitting a design that couldn't protect against a repeat of a very recent quake 10,000 miles away, let alone a similar one just a few hundred miles away on the same "Ring of Fire"?

 

Hey, they left us out!

Seattle's rainwater went way over the EPA drinking water limit too, at the same time as Boise. But unlike Boise, our numbers were not released until late last week. (Boise was still 5x higher). But no excitement because few people use rainwater catchment for drinking, and the limit is designed around two quarts of water ingested daily for 70 years.

I-131 was detectable in the air for two days, but at about 4 orders of magnitude lower than detected after Chernobyl.

I'll have to go dig up some links.