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always wanted super powers and or my hair falling out
win/win for us
In fairness, 40 times normal levels is really nothing to worry about.
always wanted super powers and or my hair falling out
win/win for us
kefka is like god damn I didn't even do this good
(Edit - actual tweet)
@andersoncooper Anderson Cooper
Due to safety concerns we are leaving this area an therefore not live for the second hour
Last edited by Chomag; 03-14-2011 at 11:20 PM.
the whole country?
I think the most important part of that is "near Tokyo". I looked at a map and that's pretty damn near Tokyo. I think I heard even 1,000 times isn't that entirely bad but the radiation seems keep getting closer to the millions of people close to Tokyo.
Terrible.
I think it was more leaving the area he was in, but I dont have a twitter to check out how much truth is to that.
They didn't complete the second hour of their 2 hour live show though.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
stream for anybody interested
-Tokyo city govt: Radiation levels ticked up on Tuesday, numbers not problematic
-Tokyo city govt: Not considering telling residents to stay indoors
Kyodo news:
-NEWS ADVISORY: No-fly zone set for 30-km radius over Fukushima nuke plant: ministry
Hang in there!
what a strong cat.
Hang in there!
This is what I fear. Tokyo is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. You have millions and millions of people inhabiting that area, if radiation is to reach that area, there is absolutely no way to conduct a large scale evacuation in time.
tokyo about 200 miles from plant.
I would not believe 1 word from the authorities. Stay indoors? WTF, like that is gonna help much. Radiation is not going to wait at the door because it's not been invited.
At the very least ppl will develop cancers in large numbers.
You have more danger from developing cancer due to a sunny day than you do from 40 times normal radiation.
I meant when this is all said and done. This is just the beginning. And why then goverment advicing ppl to stay indoors?
Another earthquake. Japan just can't catch a break.
http://jibtv.com/program/fullscreen.aspx?page=0
Nuclear expert: “50-50 chance of a catastrophic radiation” from Japan
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...tdown-disaster
GlobalPost: Officials have said the possibility of a large-scale radiation release is small. Do you agree?
Arnold Gundersen: I think that the probability of a large scale release is about 50-50, and I don’t call that small.
GlobalPost: Why do you think that?
Gundersen: For several reasons. One, you’ve got three reactors involved. Two, you’re already picking up radiation on aircraft carriers a hundred miles away at sea, on helicopters 60 miles to the north, and in town. So clearly, as these plants become more and more difficult to control, it becomes quite likely that a containment now will have a gross failure. And a gross failure will release enormous amounts of radiation quickly.
GlobalPost: The New York Times is reporting that radioactive releases could go on for weeks or months. How concerned should we be about that? At what point does a reactor like this becomes less menacing?
Gundersen: The chain reaction has stopped. That happened in two seconds. But the radioactive isotopes are still decaying away. They’ll decay for at least a year. So you have to release the pressure from that containment pretty much every day. With releasing the pressure will come releasing radioactive isotopes as well.
.So yes, the Times is right that every plant — there are now three or four of them — will be opening up valves every day to make sure the pressure is down. And there will be releases from these plants for at least a year.
GlobalPost: How much of a health threat is that?
Gundersen: Within 90 days, the iodine health risks will disappear, because that will decay away. But the nasty isotopes — the cesium and strontium will remain for 30 years. And they’re volatile.
After Three Mile Island, strontium was detected 150 miles away from the reactor. That ends up in cow’s milk and doesn’t go away for 300 years. The releases from these plants will last for a year, and will contain elements that will remain in the environment for 300 years, even in the best case.
If we have a meltdown, it will be even worse than that.
GlobalPost: The ultimate risk in any nuclear accident is that the heat can grow so intense that the steel containment vessel is ruptured, releasing a large amount of radiation. You say there’s a 50-50 chance of this happening. What kind of health effects can we expect?
Gundersen: First, it’s important to know that this steel containment is about an inch thick. It’s not some massive battleship of steel. The reactor is already open, because the pressure relief valves have to stay open.
On top of that, these containments have already breached. We saw iodine and cesium in the environment before the first unit exploded. When you see that, that’s clearly an indication that the containment has breached.
Now, is it leaking 1 percent a day? Probably. Is it leaking 100 percent a day? No. I think for the neighboring towns out to 2 miles, they won’t have anybody back in them for five years. Out to 15 miles, I doubt you’re going to see anyone back for six months. And that’s in the best case, without a meltdown.
If we have a meltdown, I don’t think anyone will be back within 20 miles for 10 or 15 years.
GlobalPost: What would happen if they did return?
Gundersen: There would be higher incidence of cancer. The groundwater would be contaminated. With a meltdown, you’re worried about surface contamination of everything within miles of the plant, and groundwater contamination as well.
GlobalPost: How far would the ground water contamination spread?
Gundersen: Chernobyl had a meltdown, and that groundwater wedge is gradually working its way toward Kiev, which is a very large city [about 80 miles away]. That groundwater contamination lingers for 300 years. It’s not something that’s easy to mitigate.
GlobalPost: That’s a serious issue in a country like Japan with a large population and a small land area.
Gundersen: That’s right.
GlobalPost: You mentioned that the containment vessels have already been damaged. It appears that officials are reporting the opposite. How do you know you’re right?
Gundersen: We’re seeing iodine and cesium in the environment. That’s an indication that the containments are leaking. Exactly how much they’re leaking it’s hard to say.
I can’t understand how officials can say that the releases are low, when they don’t have any instruments that are working. Their batteries have failed, and when the batteries fail, all of the instruments stop working. So it’s hard to determine what the radiation levels are, and what the pressure levels are.
The Japanese and the nuclear industry are heavily, heavily financially invested in this. My experience is that, after Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl, everybody said there wasn’t a problem, until there was a problem. So I really don’t put much faith in official pronouncements the first week of an accident.
GlobalPost: So the people who have access to information have a self interest in making that information look as benign as possible?
Gundersen: Yes. On top of that, the officials don’t want to provoke a panic. So there’s a financial long term interest to try to minimize the impact. The flip side of that is that in the process you lose transparency. There is no transparency right now. We’re dealing with second hand information.
I understand from one source that the second unit cannot be vented, because the vent is jammed. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have one source, and I like to have two. But this accident hasn’t played out yet. It could clearly get worse before it gets better.
GlobalPost: When you say the venting system is jammed, does that mean that pressure will keep building up until something catastrophic happens?
Gundersen: Yes.
GlobalPost: That sounds bad. There have been explosions at two of the buildings where the reactors are housed. You used to operate nuclear reactors. Would the control rooms be affected by these explosions? And how do they continue controlling the reactors under these cir stances?
Gundersen: Yes. The control rooms have become almost uninhabitable. The operators would have to be in Scott air packs, because the ventilation failed. Otherwise they would be breathing contaminated air. The control room is very close to these reactors. Probably 200 feet away. I doubt there’s much being done in the control rooms. They’re contaminated, and the air is unfit to breathe. It’s very difficult to get anything done if you’re wearing an air pack and a bubble suit.
GlobalPost: So how do they release the pressure? Are they sending people to the reactor to manually do these things?
Gundersen: They’ll send someone out to manually open a valve. And then that person will go back out to manually close a valve. In a high radiation field, there are only so many trips you can make before you’ve exceeded what they call emergency limits. So these people are picking up very large doses in very short periods of time. For their personal health, you can’t send them out again.
So they’re running through the available number of operators to do these high risk maneuvers.
GlobalPost: Is it highly skilled work?
Gundersen: Yes.
GlobalPost: Do these doses endanger their health, or are they below thresholds that would cause a problem?
The probability of these workers getting cancer is dramatically increasing, because the doses they receive in a day are higher than what they get in a year. For every 250 rem received, there will be a cancer. That’s pretty well defined. So if one person picks up 2.5 rem, for every hundred people, one of them will get a cancer. That’s just a statistical crapshoot.
GlobalPost: How safe is Tokyo at this point?
.The radiation is being diluted by the wind and spread out. Tokyo is a long way away. Germany is a long way from Chernobyl, and the ground in Germany is so contaminated that they are still prohibiting the hunting of wild boars, 25 years later.
But we don’t have a lot of accurate measures. There’s a U.S. aircraft carrier 100 miles away, and the workers on that aircraft carrier received in one hour the dose they would normally get in one month.
GlobalPost: Is there any risk that the radiation would reach American shores?
Oh it will. Chernobyl reached the U.S. The question is how much radiation? There’s not a lot of data to make that determination right now.
GlobalPost: Should people be concerned about food contamination?
Certainly in Japan they should.
I’ve gone out and bought potassium iodine pills, and I plan to take potassium iodine starting in about 10 days, just because I’m concerned about food contamination. That’s a personal choice right now. My experience says that it would be prudent to get potassium iodine pills and take them, to avoid any of the iodine that might come over. But there’s not a lot of data to support whether or not potassium iodine really helps.
GlobalPost: Is that something that you can buy in a health food store?
Yes, you can get these pills in health food stores and online, although I hear that they’re selling out.
Cali Nuclear plant built to less rigid standards than those in Japan:
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sanon...,1512796.story
Heavy isotopes of the kind seen in this sort of crisis tend to fall to ground quickly. There are two trains of thought here:
1) Inhaling the falling particles is much more hazardous than being irradiated from the outside in. Staying indoors reduces the radiation burden quite a bit in this regard.
2) Those isotopes will by and large fall on the ground outside, thereby increasing your distance from them on average. Dose/exposure fall off as the inverse of the square of the distance between you and the source (ie at 3m you get about 11.11% of the exposure you would get at 1m....neglecting any sort of shielding between you and the source). Clearly this makes a big difference.
Remember time, distance, and shielding are all helpful in this sort of situation.
A 25' tsunami wall isn't enough.
Yes, inhalation is the most serious way to be exposed to low levels of particulate radiation.
CNN: A fire has been found in the northeastern corner of Reactor 4 building at Fukushima Daiichi plant, a power official says.
Tell that to the children of Chernobyl.
chernobyl radiation was much worse
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