the pursuit of profits by all means by TEPCO has resulted in the biggest man made disaster of our life time.

Tokyo is the largest city in the World with 30 million plus I think.

one would hope that this would teach people that govt for the people by the people always works better than govt for the corporations by the corporations.

biggest man made disaster of our life time

Where to begin?

Spewing from Meltdowns: Dangerous Plumes of Disinformation
by John LaForge

The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “… every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremen­tal increase in the risk of cancer.” The Environmental Protection Agency says, “… any exposure to radiation poses some risk, i.e. there is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk.” The Department of Energy says about “low levels of radiation” that “… the major effect is a very slight increase in cancer risk.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says, “any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer … any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk.” The National Academy of Sciences, in its “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII,” says, “… it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers ….”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/23-1

I forgot this bit:

Governments have set up “permissible,” “allowable” and “legal” radiation exposure limits because reactors can’t operate without venting or dumping contaminated gases and liquids. Exposure to this radiation, during routine operations or from partial meltdowns — say in milk, tap water, or vegetables — is never safe. It is merely permitted under law.

This is interesting. The Union of Concerned Scientists is urging that the Japanese government widen the exclusion zone and begin an orderly evacuation of a larger area. Despite all the “happy talk” from pro-nuke and government sources this situation is still serious. Of course you couldn’t tell that by viewing any media outlets save for reuters.com

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4044685587/japan-squandering-the-chance-for-orderly-evacuation#disqus_thread

Invest in Oncology research?

Better put down that banana then.

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Take that Daily dosage of living near Fukushima, make it 365 time bigger and you might start to recognize the problem.

if its only iodine, it will fade very rapidly over a few weeks, due to its short halflife.
If the water is cont with cesium, youre talking about a whole other kettle of fish.

They didn’t die of radiation silly, they died of cancer. You’re so unscientific./s

Considering it is the cumulative exposure to radiation that produces reaction, this isn’t getting better. The la ti dah response of the media, especially the financial media is gob smacking.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-global-fallout-dispersion-animation-update
The scope of the destruction is so massive, where will they put the ruins, detritus and trash?
Reactor 4 which was the one scheduled for shut down and got an extension before the quake was rife with malfeasance and corrupt maintenance.
Perhaps criminally so.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp
You can bet CNBC and MSNBC won’t be covering this with GE being the still partial parent company of that network.
The land in the north, which was farm land, is a huge part of Japan’s rice sustainability. That soil is ruined.
I won’t be surprised to see world rice prices start to spike, that will effect Asia, India and Africa.
In time, there is rain.

Tangentially related U.S. caused birth defects in Iraq.

Japanese like their own rice who ever buys the rice they like will see a price gain.

if its only iodine, it will fade very rapidly over a few weeks, due to its short halflife.
If the water is cont with cesium, youre talking about a whole other kettle of fish.

What do we know is leaking from the reactor? News has been hard to get but I doubt its only iodine.

If only they weren’t immovable objects they wouldn’t have to remain near the “biggest man-made disaster of our life time” for a year.

Just infants? Delusional.

This is the first time I’ve seen Japanese officials admit that any radiation existed above recommended levels, if only for infants.

How old does an infant have to be before they magically get protected from radiation?

Older children and adults are supposedly OK. In fact, they’re still trying to say that any water consumed prior to this point by babies is fine.

No mom with a science degree is going to buy this crap.

All you need to know about this is something Izzy Stone told us generations ago:

All.
Governments.
Lie.

Emptywheel has a fresh cross-post up: 8 Years Ago Today, KSM Was Probably Being Waterboarded for the 179th Time

That and how far you should move from a nuclear reactor to avoid radiation.:)

Lying losers……………….

Exactly, Teddy.

Japan could off-load that tap water by bottling it, branding it as Fiji Plus, and exporting it for sale to status-conscious consumers in America. Only $12.98 for 6 bottles.

“Look! It glows in the dark!!”

Pretty good read over at Engelhardt’s place…

Causing even more devastation, governments keep secrets.

Here’s the classic example.

My husband said that all the parts coming into his auto plant from Japan are being tested for radiation……….

Most of the sources for that site are either the government or Wikipedia so I am very much discounting the information.

You could wear those blinders to the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Disbelieving will protect you.

Those birth defects can’t be true. alan1tx doesn’t have a space in his chart showing depleted uranium’s relative emission intensity. Besides, those kids didn’t die did they? I call fear-mongering. /s

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/22/vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant-renewal_n_839270.html

Oh, great. 20 year renewal on a nuke plant just like Fukushima. Thanks, Obama administration! Way to go!

That radiation of any intensity contributes to cancer risk is apparently true, though this fact has been technically difficult to establish because at very low levels the effects are extremely small and are confounded by the effects of background radiation, which varies from place to place–living in a basement apartment in Florida is probably a lot riskier than rooming next to a power plant. The real issue is whether the burden imposed by radiation from the Japanese event is significant relative to other sources of health risk. It will surely be very minor compared to the 20,000 or so who perished in the earthquake and tsunami, but it may also be much lower than the number of excess cancer cases that will result from chemical pollution from the conventional fossil plants that replace the destroyed nuclear plants.

And it is surely much greater than transforming your life to use radically less energy, and not building it in the first place.

The non-snarky response to that is that Japan is going to have to build new generation to replace the nuclear plants even assuming serious conservation efforts. Using less energy is a great idea, but like wind mills and lots of other things, it simply isn’t a panacea, especially if one is talking about politically realistic levels of lowered consumption.

The snarky response is that we should immediately undertake an emergency evacuation of Denver, Santa Fe, Laramie, and other populated areas over 5,000 feet since people there are subject to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation. And that’s just a preliminary step because there is really is no such thing as safe elevation. Meanwhile, to fight global warming, we should all agree to lower CO2 levels by not exhaling…

Hey, 4cdave,

Last night, in the comments section, you and a couple of other FDL writers were questioning maximum/normal/current operating temperatures at Fukushima, along with radiation levels.

Have you seen this new story from Kyodo News? It appears to speak directly to some of those concerns:
BREAKING NEWS March 23, Restoration at nuke plant disrupted, radiation fears spread to Tokyo:

It also turned out that the surface temperatures of the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor vessels have topped the maximum levels set by their designers. The rise of the temperatures came to light after data measuring instruments became available with the power restored Tuesday, the agency said…

While the maximum vessel temperature set by the reactors’ designers is 302 C degrees, the surface temperature of the No. 1 reactor vessel briefly topped 400 C and dropped to about 350 C by noon, and that of the No. 3 reactor vessel stood at about 305 C, the agency said.

Although the facilities are not expected to start melting at those temperatures, according to agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama, TEPCO increased the amount of seawater injected into the No. 1 reactor by nine times to help cool it down.

Nishiyama said TEPCO will carefully continue to inject massive amounts of water into the No. 1 reactor so as not to raise the pressure in the reactor.

What are your thoughts?

And then there is a deafening silence concerning the worst case scenario which has just as much chance of occurring as does any possible out come. Not the reactors, but rather, the storage pools where the “spent” rods are stored – which have NO containment vessel. If they run dry (which they are are on the way to) the rods will over heat to the point where they melt through the steel pool liners at which point they hit wet concrete. When a superheated mass drops onto a cold wet material it will go BOOM and all that radioactive materials gets blown to the winds – then it ceases to be a local problem.

and what responses are they getting to the testing?

BTW, just wanted to add that FDL’s highly informed, frequently-updated coverage and its incisive analysis of the Fukushima crisis is second to none.

A few days ago, on one of these threads, I asked the diarist to suggest other blogs that were staying on top of the issue. Since then, I’ve been all over gawd’s creation, and FDL is THE place to be. Hands-down and hats-off!

have you decided yet on a comparison to using solar and wind?

Perhaps it’s not my place to interject, but here goes…It appears that a couple of commenters on some of these threads are here to pooh-pooh and minimize the scope of the problem in Japan — specifically the crisis ensuing from the Fukushima plant. There usually isn’t much informed substance to these comments and their role is primarily disruptive.

IMHO, it is not usually beneficial to expend much valuable time and energy on them. It clogs up the comment threads with their BS and makes it harder to pick out the relevant stuff that’s being posted by people who are here out of genuine concern for the public interest. That being said, I still do take the bait sometimes ;-(

Can someone help me here? I’ve seen multiple comparisons in the media between the level of exposure from the releases at Fukushima and exposure to normal background radiation. This seems to me to be a false comparison, as radiation from certain isotopes — such as Iodine-131, Cesium 137 and Strontium 90, which are the ones of most concern that would come from a meltdown — accumulate in nature and in your body in different ways and places, with different half-lives, etc than Xrays, cosmic rays, radon, etc. In other words, isn’t it unnecessarily, and perhaps intentionally, confusing to lump all sources of radiation together and weight their risk equally? Would appreciate a discussion of this. I simply don’t know the answer.

The Union of Concerned Scientists notes that, “on March 16th, The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission advised US citizens within a 50 mile radius around the Fukushima site to evacuate”.

I wish The Union of Concerned Scientists had not waited until March 23rd to issue a statement advising that this wider evacuation zone be applied to at-risk people in the Japanese population as a whole: Japan: Squandering the Chance for Orderly Evacuation. Nevertheless, glad they’ve finally come out with it.

Astute observation and a good question. I believe there are a number of diarists who have expertise to shed some light on the matter.

I ran across a post (I think it was on dKos) today saying that the normal temperature for a reactor in cold shutdown is 95C. Now, that’s with functioning coolant circulation. I’m just wondering if the temperatures we are seeing represent solely the issue of lack of coolant circulation, or whether there is more activity in the reactors (presumably due to partial melting) than we should be expecting this many days after initial shutdown.

NHK

Water sampled in Iitate village on Sunday contained 965 becquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per liter, more than 3 times the government safety limit of 300 becquerels per liter.

Water sampled in Tamura city last Thursday contained 348 becquerels of iodine, but the level was down to 161 becquerels 2 days later.

Water from 4 other cities in the prefecture had iodine levels above the 100-becquerel per liter safety limit for infants as of Monday.

I-131 will decay swiftly.

NHK

… black smoke was seen rising from the No.3 reactor building … at around 4:20 PM on Wednesday … 1 hour later that the smoke had gradually cleared … the level of radiation near the main gate of the plant, 1 kilometer west of the No.3 reactor, was 265.1-microsieverts-per-hour at 5 PM. They added there had been no major change in the levels after the smoke was observed.

The logs show that the winds were erratic, but blowing mostly from the north and west during that time. As I noted last night, there just aren’t enough monitoring stations in place to understand what is happening with these emissions in a gusty, ocean-side site.

IAEA

Black smoke was seen emerging from the Unit 3 reactor building, spurring the temporary evacuation of workers from Units 3 and 4. The emission of smoke has now decreased significantly. Crews continued today to use a concrete pump truck to deliver high volumes of water into the Unit 4 spent fuel pool.
At Units 5 and 6, workers have successfully restored off-site power to the reactor, which had previously reached a safe, cold shutdown status.

Are the workers evacuated due to an abundance of caution, or because they are picking up high radiation readings in their immediate vicinity, which are not showing up at the monitoring sites a km away?

My hypothesis, on the basis of no more evidence than the rest of you have seen, is that these dark smokes are small fuel rod fires in the SFPs, and the white “smoke” (steam) are leaks from the reactor, perhaps through their O-rings. The radiation levels spike up, the workers retreat, and the gusty winds take the clouds away, mostly offshore, but sometimes inland. Once in a great while, they take the clouds past the monitors.

Russia Today tweets: Radiation levels at Fukushima 2nd reactor highest since start of disaster – nuclear security agency

I can’t find any followup to that.

See Reuters, today, March 23, 2011: Highest radiation level so far at No.2 nuclear unit: Japan agency:

Radiation at the crippled Fukushima No.2 nuclear reactor was recorded at the highest level since the start of the crisis, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Wednesday.

An agency spokesman said 500 millisieverts per hour of radiation was measured at the No.2 unit on Wednesday.

Engineers have been trying to fix the plant’s cooling system after restoring lighting on Tuesday.

BTW, there have been reports of higher levels than that — perhaps at one of the other reactors. I could find the links if you don’t already have them.

It was a Daily Kos post by kbman whose bio says he “has a background in physics and worked at Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station providing computer support for the reactor core engineering group”. Link, Fukushima Status Update Tuesday:

Thermal imaging reports from a few days ago suggest that the vessels at units 2 and 3 are each close to 100 C. Cold shutdown would bring them down to around 95 C.

Dunno if the cited temperature at units 2 and 3 still pertains.

Is anybody else having a problem with opening Elliott’s new post, 3/23/11: Nuclear Power Plant Primer: How They Work and Why the Radiation Matters?

I keep getting an error message saying: The page you were looking for was not found.

opened right up for me.. try this link

Ironically, I click on Suzanne’s link @50 and get the error message that piehole@49 writes about.

But when I click on piehole’s ‘nonworking’ link, I get to Elliott’s new post 3/23/11 (and yes, I was having trouble getting there before I tried piehole’s link). No idea why. I’m on a Mac, using Safari, in case that is somehow relevant.

pdaly, when you used my link, it took you to the page that says FDL Coverage of the Japan Earthquake, right? But once you were on that page, did you try to click on Elliott’s post: Nuclear Power Plant Primer: How They Work and Why the Radiation Matters?

When I try to click through to the story I still get an error message saying: The page you were looking for was not found. Same thing happens when I use Suzanne’s link. FWIW, I’m on a Mac, using Firefox.

I agree. There is so little information about the relative amounts of the radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium.
All the news reports I come across usually stop discussing the types of radiation at iodine.

I agree that constant exposure to low levels of the iodine, cesium, and strontium could lead to dangerous levels accumulating in the body. From what I can gather from eHow and wikipedia (not always the most authorative sources, but at least it’s a start for this conversation):

radioactive Iodine concentrates in the thyroid, causing thyroid cancer–and I assume iodine will be shooting off its radioactive DNA-damaging energy as it travels through the body “looking” for the thyroid, so it’s not so easy to assume adults and older children are “safe” from cancer. Adults and older children are safe from dying of “thyroid” cancer, because thyroid cancer is a near death sentence in pediatric patients, but adults tend to survive well despite thyroid cancer. While the fast radioactive decay of radioactive iodine means high energy exposure to the person who has ingested the iodine, fortunately it also means a relatively quick period (weeks) for the radiation to decay in the environment. Radioactive iodine is the “Best” case scenario. No wonder newspaper articles like to stick to the “happy news.”

Cesium acts like potassium salt in the body. Potassium is required for life in most living organisms (definitely in humans) and cesium is usually NOT present in the natural environment. The cesium can be ingested by fish, the fish eat each other and cesium accumulates in the food chain reaching humans eventually. Since the decay half life of cesium is around 30 years, that is plenty of time for the fish to find their way onto your plate and for the cesium to remain radioactive.

Strontium-90, which forms in fission nuclear reactors, has a half life of about 29 years. It acts like calcium in the body so it can concentrate in the bones. Once there, it is less likely to leave–like a radioactive brick in a brick wall, emitting radiation day and night for decades.

oops. You’re right. Error message when I click on the Nuclear Power Plant Primer: How They Work and Why the Radiation Matters? from the page your link directed me to. I did not realize that until now, because I was typing the above @53 comment and was going to read Elliott’s post now.

Hope mods can find an easy fix.

Well, I should temper that “death sentence” comment @ 53 with some good news. More children are surviving thyroid cancer these days:
http://www.thyca.org/pediatric/about.htm

And they could get Ann Coulter to promote it: “Tastes good and good for you!”