Has the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster changed your mind?

[baseline bum]

Check the news again. There appears to be a major problem with the reactor 4 cooling pools, possibly exposed rods. Radiation levels around the plant have risen significantly, the exclusion zone has been widened, and the situation continues to worsen. Your faith in technology that has so clearly failed is absurd to say the least.

The 50 remaining workers at the plant are staying put and risking their lives to do so - they are heroes in this horrible crisis like the men who died at Chernobyl. Radiation poisoning is a horrific death, but with typical Japanese stoicism they are willing to sacrifice themselves to help the greater good.

To everyone - take a look at the number of nuclear reactors currently sitting on the world's major faultlines and ask yourself whether that makes any sense whatsoever, or whether there should be a serious push to move nuclear power away from earthquake-vulnerable areas.

I bet the Japanese workers are a lot more informed than the people who worked Chernobyl. I remember the Red Army took volunteers, offering medals and accolades to kids who had no idea of the danger. They sickeningly called them bio-robots after their remote controlled robots failed in clearing the roof near the blown reactor due to high levels of radiation destroying the electronics.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Yes, I work in a field known as radiologic physics. I did a lot of work at reactors and in design earlier on as well. It a broad based field encompassing radiation oncology, radiology, nuclear medicine, as well as radiation safety for those types of practices. We also do a lot of field work to train folks for missions such as this one. Most of the military members over there were probably trained by a colleague or even myself at some point.

I appreciate your point of view here Ruff, and I understand that the ecosystems are quite sensitive to these sorts of things. It's been my experience that the information given is usually suspect as you point out. I base much of what I think on the actions of the crews on the ground though. Are they still there? Did they leave all of a sudden (like last night)? Putting the two together gives a clearer picture than either alone. It's borne of experience and not really anything you can teach from a book, much lss adequately convey in a typewritten message.

Apologies if my tone came across as harsh. I was simply attempting to clarify my point as it's tricky to do online sometimes.

Thanks for the rundown.

As for the tone and clarifying online, totally I understand as I often shorten things (I have a bad shoulder from typing) which leads to misunderstandings. That's one of the reasons I avoid detailed discussions online these days.

Which then still requires high levels of security, because of the desirability of such waste for a dirty bomb on the part of certain elements of humanity that hate the west with a murderous rage.

As I understand it, the waste from the thorium cycle is far more difficult to use to build weaponry.

You might want to browse the pages here for a thread started by Marcus Bryant about biologists studying the Chernobyl area. I seem to remember he had a thread on the subject, or maybe it was something I read.

The faster breeding things like mice, have developed resistance to radiation, and overall evolution is proceding at a much quicker pace due to increased mutations.

The mice are of particular interest for cancer research, obviously.

Let's not forget that increased mutation rates will also be leading to higher cancer and mortality rates.

Anyway, thanks for finding that article, I'll have a read.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

I bet the Japanese workers are a lot more informed than the people who worked Chernobyl. I remember the Red Army took volunteers, offering medals and accolades to kids who had no idea of the danger. They sickeningly called them bio-robots after their remote controlled robots failed in clearing the roof near the blown reactor due to high levels of radiation destroying the electronics.

Wow, that's sick.

I have no doubt that the Japanese workers know what they are doing and the risks involved. My experience of the Japanese tells me that these people are willing to risk their lives to attempt to avert disaster, that's just the kind of culture they have. From a young age they are taught to sacrifice for the greater good.

[Wild Cobra]

It was never about the reactor cores. It's all about the spent fuel pools. Those aren't shielded and are in the open. Once a situation occurs where the water drops to critical levels, those may ignite. It would be a la Chernobyl.

I could see problems if that happened, but as bad as Chernobyl.

[johnsmith]

I wonder if the two "sort of's" explained.........ya know, the way RG asked?

[RandomGuy]

I'm more confident in its safety.

All the alarmist, apocalyptic nattering aside, it appears (as of now) the reactor cores will maintain their integrity and the radioactivity will mostly be confined to the area around the plant.

Given the worst of cir stances, it does not appear we are going to see another Chernobyl.

It was never about the reactor cores. It's all about the spent fuel pools. Those aren't shielded and are in the open. Once a situation occurs where the water drops to critical levels, those may ignite. It would be a la Chernobyl.

Since you don't post here often:

Yoni is a pure political hack.

He will take the position most likely to support anything even vaguely considered "conservative" such as nuclear power, and then do so in the most misleading, intellectually dishonest, or inflammatory way.

Occasionally he manages to set this aside, but I once browsed his recent post history for a few pages and came up with about 12 instances of the phrase " ing liberals" or the equivalent.

He is here less for any reasoned discussion than for the emotional satisfaction of "sticking it to liberals", IMO.

FWIW.

[Agloco]

I could see problems if that happened, but as bad as Chernobyl.

Well, I did say "a la Chernobyl", but clarification is warranted. I meant that the same mechanism of spread would be in play here. I wasn't referring to the magnitude of that spread.

Here is a quote from the Brits:

"This is a very different situation from Chernobyl, where the reactor went into meltdown and the encasement, which exploded, was left to burn for weeks without any control. Even with Chernobyl, an exclusion zone of 30 miles would have been adequate to protect human health. The problem was that most people became sick from eating contaminated food, crops, milk and water in the region for years afterward, as no attempt was made to measure radioactivity levels in the food supply at that time or warn people of the dangers. The secrecy over the Chernobyl explosion is in contrast to the very public coverage of the Fukushima crisis."

Link: http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/16...reat-to-tokyo/

For comparison, the dose rates at Chernobyl just after the reactor roof blew off were around 10-100 Sv/hr. This is an estimate of course, but those numbers are from locations analogous to the points at which the reported readings at Fukushima came from (.1 -.4 Sv/hr).

It's on a different scale than Chernobyl at this point. I don't see it scaling up to a Chernobyl-like scenario unless there's a major explosion involving the either the main reactor core or the spent fuel rods.

[Agloco]

Some news on the political front out of the EU:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...s-at-risk.html