Experts: Three Reactors in Meltdown…but Nuclear Catastrophe ‘Unlikely’
- Posted on March 14, 2011 at 4:49pm by
Meredith Jessup
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Water levels dropped suddenly inside a Japanese nuclear reactor Monday, leaving a number of uranium fuel rods completely exposed and further raising the threat of nuclear meltdown. Hours earlier a hydrogen explosion tore through a building housing a separate reactor. The situation at a number of Japanese nuclear plants is perilous right now, but reports are mixed as to how the situation may unfold.
The cascading troubles at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant Monday compounded the immense challenges faced by the Tokyo government, already struggling to send relief to hundreds of thousands of people along the country’s quake- and tsunami-ravaged coast where at least 10,000 people are believed to have died.
Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said it was “highly likely” that the fuel rods inside all three stricken reactors are melting.
Some experts class this as a partial meltdown of the reactor. One such expert spoke Monday to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, predicting that a complete Chernobyl-like meltdown is unlikely to happen at the quake-damaged plants in Japan:
International scientists say there are serious dangers but little risk of a catastrophe like the 1986 blast in Chernobyl, where there was no containment shells.
And, some analysts noted, the length of time since the nuclear crisis began indicates that the chemical reactions inside the reactor were not moving quickly toward a complete meltdown.
“We’re now into the fourth day. Whatever is happening in that core is taking a long time to unfold,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the nuclear policy program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’ve succeeded in prolonging the timeline of the accident sequence.”
It is “unlikely that the accident would develop” like Chernobyl, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a news conference Monday, noting several differences, including the design and structure of the nuclear plants.
The earlier hydrogen explosion actually lessened pressure building up inside the troubled reactor and officials insisted the reactor’s thick concrete containment shell had not been damaged. In addition, officials said radiation levels remained within legal limits, though anyone within 12 miles of the plant was ordered to remain indoors as a safety precaution.
The damaged Unit 1 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant (AP)
“We have no evidence of harmful radiation exposure,” deputy Cabinet secretary Noriyuki Shikata told reporters, despite some 190 people having been exposed to some radiation from the plant, including 17 U.S. military personnel involved in helicopter relief missions who were found to have been exposed to low levels of radiation. U.S. officials said the exposure level was roughly equal to one month’s normal exposure to natural background radiation, and the 17 were declared contamination-free after scrubbing with soap and water.
Nuclear safety officials have confirmed that monitoring devices surrounding the plant briefly showed elevated radiation levels but they have since gone down. But as a precaution, the U.S. said the carrier and other 7th Fleet ships involved in relief efforts had shifted to another area.
On Saturday, a similar hydrogen blast destroyed the housing around the complex’s Unit 1 reactor, leaving the shell intact but resulting in the mass evacuation of more than 185,000 people from the area.
Despite experts’ assessments, many residents across the region are fearful of the situation.
People in the port town of Soma had rushed to higher ground after a tsunami warning Monday — a warning that turned out to be false alarm — and then felt the earth shake from the explosion at the Fukushima reactor 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. Authorities there ordered everyone to go indoors to guard against possible radiation contamination.
“It’s like a horror movie,” said 49-year-old Kyoko Nambu as she stood on a hillside overlooking her ruined hometown. “Our house is gone and now they are telling us to stay indoors. “We can see the damage to our houses, but radiation? … We have no idea what is happening. I am so scared.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Comments (62)
Eyeball
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 1:08amIf they are pumping sea water onto the rods, they why is the water level dropping and exposing the rods? Also where is the sea water runoff going?
Report Post »GingerC
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 1:48amThe water level continues to drop because the water is boiling off. That is what the explosions were.. steam from the water boiling off in the reactor.
Report Post »Chicago Ray
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 12:07am“Experts: Three Reactors in Meltdown…but Nuclear Catastrophe ‘Unlikely’”
Excuse my while I run to Walgreens and buy all their iodine pills available in a 20 mile radius like Elaine did on Seinfeld with the sponges.
If the ‘experts’ say ‘don’t worry‘ I wouldn’t worry either …..Just start running your azzes off …..in the other direction (like I am even though I’m crippled). ;(
Report Post »TheSchu
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 11:14pmNo matter how you look at it this is very bad. I would say a level 6 problem!
Report Post »rdk
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 11:09pmThe facilities look as if they are on the sea shore and all of Japan is earthquake prone. I don’t know why a safety analysis during design did not apparently take into account the potential for a tsunami and earthquake. It would seem that during the life of a nuclear plant such an event was predictable.
Report Post »lane829
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 10:17pmok mossbrain, go for it and put em out here. we rednecks will make it work, i mean really even i have the ability to make diesel engines run under water and connect up power wires even if the back up back up gen “has the wrong plug”. Then i might have to dump the waste on crops i sell to you….
Report Post »hiramsmaxim
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 10:16pmThe Asian people are mysteriously resilient.
Report Post »They will be ok.
5410amh
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 9:31pmYet another reason why America should be the only country aloud to use nuclear power. Don’t get me wrong I all for nuclear power as long as Americans are in charge of it.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 11:52pm5410amh:
Report Post »“Yet another reason why America should be the only country aloud to use nuclear power. Don’t get me wrong I all for nuclear power as long as Americans are in charge of it.”
______________
I’ll “second” that!
yippyio
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 9:28pmWE must start censoring the news coming out of Japan. These people are starting to make American blacks look bad. Can not have that.
Report Post »blackhawk56
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 9:42pmI didn’t see one television or one loaf of bread being stolen. No clothes or radio’s, no shoe’s , what the hell is the matter with these people actin all normal and stuff. Who do they think they are, civilized people or what.
Report Post »dawg of gawd
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 11:28amThe Japanese people are indeed an example of maturity and grace in handling adversity. YippyIO on the other hand, is an example of the opposite. Graceless, juvenile bigoted, resentful of all the things real people do and have in life.
Report Post »veruca salt
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 8:56pmRegardless of what happens to this reactor, Glenn still found a way to link nuclear meltdowns to the collapse of the dollar and his boogeyman, Soros, today on his show. Never let a crisis go to waste!
Report Post »Constitutional
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 8:44pmWhatever they are saying, it appears that a catastrophe couldn’t be more likely.
Report Post »Lets pray their spin on this story accidently becomes truth.
blackhawk56
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 8:39pmWatching and listening to all this unfold, proves to me, without a shadow of a doubt that we cannot get the proper information from ANY news organization!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These people simply think we are as dumb as 4 o’clock. I am a fox watcher and they are running as big a cover up as any of the other boot licking media. Do they honestly think you can just wash off uranium with soap and water, or that it will just travel 12 miles out to sea and then just drop like a bunch of scared January birds. No of course not< but they count on you being DUMB enough to be a good little boot licker and buy whatever they say. The msm's day's are coming people, they are coming.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 11:47pmblackhawk56:
‘Watching and listening to all this unfold, proves to me, without a shadow of a doubt that we cannot get the proper information from ANY news organization! These people simply think we are as dumb as 4 o’clock. I am a fox watcher and they are running as big a cover up as any of the other boot licking media. Do they honestly think you can just wash off uranium with soap and water, or that it will just travel 12 miles out to sea and then just drop like a bunch of scared January birds. No of course not< but they count on you being DUMB enough to be a good little boot licker and buy whatever they say. The msm's day's are coming people, they are coming.'
_______________
Hawk…I'm all in with you on this! Dumb? Yep, that's what they all think! Not so much…It is truly disgusting…know what? I'll at least give CNN kudos for showing the actual people and what they are enduring and a lot of the videos of the events as they unfolded…
Last thing I want is ANOTHER commentator telling me things I KNOW are not true or are LAST NIGHT'S UPDATES! They should either get up to par or shut up…all of them!
AND, as far as the PM of Japan? A joke…can't answer an honest question to save his life! Shame on all of them for misleading their own people and the rest of the world! People aren't going to forget that they weren't forthcoming on this…BECAUSE…they are going to be dealing with the after effects of this for YEARS!
Report Post »forthepeople
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 8:03pmExperts ? Now I’m really worried, like weathermen and politicians they are mostly wrong /now a days !
Report Post »Dandylyon
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:56pm“Three plant’s melting down but catastrophe unlikely“ I wonder if the Japenese know what an ”oxy-moron” is.It would seem that they have been putting out so much miss-info that there not even trying any more.
We will get the truth when the hospital’s start filling up with radiation poisoning,as hard as they try they won’t be able to cover that up.
Report Post »NOTYERHUCKLEBERRY
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:53pmYou don’t have to build them in rural areas necessarily, just build them in fault free areas outside cities. I live in Central Washington, less than 50 miles from the infamous Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Yes, the place where vast amounts of plutonium were made, and (sorry mossbrain), I don’t glow. Went through the whole Washington Public Power Supply System (W.P.P.S. or WOOPS) as we call it debacle. Five power plants to be built, only one finished and operating (#2). Number one sits less than a mile from it, It was 95% complete. Needed only a bit of wiring and paint, load the core and testing (three years). Now, all that is left is the structure, almost all else has been scrapped.
Report Post »In the long run, nuke power is the safest and cheapest and environmently friendly thing we have at the moment.
Oh, and mossbrain, you must be a city rat. Don’t expect us country boys to support you when the world comes crashing down.
Gumby27
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:35pmOne factor that has yet to be explained is the apparent detection of radioactive isotopes of caesium.
This is produced during the nuclear reaction, and should be confined within the reactor core.
If it has been detected outside the plant, that could imply that the core has begun to disintegrate….so how badly has it disintegrated?
Report Post »Rob
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:29pmOkay, I may be a jerk… BUT I AM TIRED OF BEING ASKED TO BAIL OUT OTHER NATIONS!!!
Japan OWNS a hell of a lot of America… and we are asking people to give to charities to help them out??
I am tired of ******* our money away around the world while we fight with each other over spending… TIRED OF IT!
When was the last time some other nation passed the freaking hat to help us????
Report Post »Salamander
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:32pmThey’re caught between a rock and a hard place! As they vent to lower pressure, the superheated water goes into a flash boil, so they need to add more water! They don’t want to blow the pressure vessel, AND they dont’ want to uncover the fuel assemblies, nor cause such rigorous boiling that they are effectively uncovered! All this, with probably bad instrumentation and valves and pumps which may be indicating one state while operating in another! Reminds me of a Lou Grant episode when he goes on vacation with the parting words for his staff “You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor!”, which meaning they argued about until meltdown! (Actually shown as a burst of light in the distant sky as he was sipping an umbrella drink on the beach!) Despite the many problems, the plant maintenance staff, operators, management and regulators are resorting to true heroics to mitigate the disaster! It will be contained, it will be mostly local (I’m worried about Unit 3, running MOX since September, however!), and it will probably result in these plants being permanently mothballed! However, the real story is the humanity caught in the tsunami, how many will survive and what hardship are they suffering right now! If we’re smart, we’ll learn from the nuclear issues–and we’ll respond accordingly! There are additional safeguards that will be revealed or invented that will prevent such an occurrance in the future; meanwhile, we need to slow down the TV News antics! Beck, bless him, certainly outdid Geraldo–not even remotely close, but still far off the mark in trying to portray what is going on inside one of these marvels of engineering! The cruise ship industry didn’t die with the Titanic. The space program didn’t die with the Challenger or Columbia accidents, or with the Apollo 1 fire. Our very real power needs shouldn’t be thwarted by the Fukushima disaster(s)!
Report Post »Oathkeeper1775
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:26pmI believe you AZDEBI
Report Post »vorpal
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:20pmGeorge Soros and his band of thieves just want to get rid of all traditional energy sources so they can control us. Yep – a couple of sticks and leather dragged behind a horse might do – no wait PETA would not approve. Ugh! What to do – what to do?
Report Post »sbleve
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:48pmGovernment officials took the high rod in the 1986 Soviet melt down. Our government experts said “china syndrome” melt down. Did it happen?
WNA‘s site states ’ It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.’ Correct on this point, a politician made all of the calls – the worker-supervisor feared for his life if the “safety test” did not happen according to the Party doctrine.
Most nuke physicist that did not work for any government said baloney. Their explanation of then seems to fit the Chernobyl of today, a center hot Zone with abundant animal and plant life in the surrounding warm zone (experts of government said that this area would be dead for several hundred years).
Science and Politics do not mix. And our academia/most government type want to centralize more and more? Chernobyl had an engineering flaw. That flaw was exasperated by the Party rep inside of the plant.
Engineering safety considerations on the Japanese plants were in most part theoretical academic experts. None had dirt under their finger nails for 2 consecutive days in their lives. Like – how long will an internal combustion engine without/snorkel run under water?
Report Post »our-man-t
Posted on March 17, 2011 at 1:13amYes BRAVO! I was wondering if anyone else caught that “flaw” of engineering….when the two greatest dangers (to be considered within the design specifications) are earthquakes and tsunami’s and Heaven forbid both happen at the same. Hello??? why would they locate the plant and or backup system beside the ocean at or near sea level and not protect that vital backup system from flooding!!!,,,or better yet have it and possibly the plant itself on higher ground. Seems so simple but surely that would have added some (miner in the sheme of things) expense for the added safety factor…but then again I had contracts with oil companies and had to set up meetings with “engineers” that continuosly screwed up designs and installs of new stations….when I asked them why they would choose to micky-mouse design they replied it would save the company 100 ft of pipe and somewhere in the range of a measly couple of thousand dollars….like you said they have zero real life experience and can only design (think) based on the “specifications” they have been provided by their master. Unfortunatley when the master is a corp. entity the bottom line prevails over common sense.
Report Post »fishstx777
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:39pmMy prayers to the people of japan. .Also to the family of hockey legend and member of the french connection rick martin.Aurevoir I hockey Magnifique.
Report Post »Harry Palm
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:15pm“but Nuclear Catastrophe ‘Unlikely’”
This is not good news for the liberal nutters here in America who want to end Nuclear energy plants.
I am wondering however…have the algore goons blamed the earth quake on global warming yet?
Report Post »JD Carp
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:45pmThe left is so incontinent with anger, a GREAT crisis averted. Watch how they spin this. No nukes since 1979 in USA and probably never see another one now. Let me see, no nukes, no coal, no oil, no dams because of muddy the mud skipper so what are we going to produce energy with? Oh I know, windmills!
Report Post »Showtime
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:10pmWell, did or didn’t the concrete sustain damage when the explosion blew it away?
It sounds to me like the Japanese government or news media is trying to keep the Japanese from al-out panic!
First the radiation is up 700 times normal (I think they said), and then it’s down. “Gone With the Wind” comes to mind!
Report Post »Showtime
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:12pmAnd, didn’t I read that if the core melts down, it would contaminate the environment? Forget milk. Got iodine?
Report Post »mooseman
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:42pmThe radiation has never been 700 times normal as far as what I’ve read. The radiation levels were actually reported as being ‘down’. I‘m not saying this isn’t a dangerous situation but I don’t think the Japanese are trying to hide any impending doom scenario. If the situation worsens I’m sure appropriate measures will be taken to protect human life.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:08pm@SHOWTIME:
“Got Iodine?”
____________
You mention iodide treatment in the case of radiation exposure >25mRem. It is an important thing to note that iodide is useful only to protect against one radionuclide that might be released in an accident, I-131. This radionuclide will be concentrated by the thyroid. If absorbed in moderate doses only, it can be a carcinogen. In high doses, it will fry the entire gland, and thus is not carcinogenic (estimated glandular doses on the order of 10′s of thousands of rads). Further it does not appear to be carcinogenic in other parts of the body at these dose ranges.
They iodine essentially saturates the gland with cold iodine, and the trace amounts of radioiodine will essentially be diluted out.
It does not have any protective effect whatever from particles or gammas in the environment. Thus, it is not a panacea for radiation exposure.
Report Post »Showtime
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:39pmY’all, I never claimed to be a nuclear physisisisisissisist!
I feel for those people!
Report Post »Showtime
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:07pmAnderson Cooper, get your butt and your crew HOME!!!
Report Post »lampshade
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:12pmSeems he has more guts than Shepard Smith who‘s reporting from Tokyo and I’m a FOX watcher.
Report Post »Showtime
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 9:31pmMy dog has more guts than Shepard Smith, and I watch Shep only when necessary.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 11:34pm@Showtime:
Report Post »“My dog has more guts than Shepard Smith, and I watch Shep only when necessary”
_____________
Ditto…That’s why I call him “Schlep”….fits, doesn’t it?.
dawg of gawd
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 11:24amAt least Shep has the guts to speak the truth on Fox every now and then. Nobody else has the cajones to do that.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 4:59pmJapanese site, in English, where citizens are reporting on local news from the Fukushima plant area, where they are sporadically in contact with an employee in one of the plants via mobile phone.
Warning; this is a Japanese anti-nuke site.
http://www.greenaction-japan.org/modules/wordpress1/index.php?p=2
Report Post »Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:27pm@AZdebi
Thanks for the link; I remember the protesters when Palo Verde was built and how much trouble they caused trying to stop it from happening. One thing I have a hard time accepting is when a ‘expert’ says something is ‘nearly impossible’ that it actually is ‘nearly impossible.’
It reminds me of a ‘unsinkable ship’ now on the bottom called the Titanic.
Report Post »godlovinmom
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:38pmListening to Glen on this very subject…my husband and I were watching MSNBC last night on the nuclear plants…and the impression we got from it…big bad nuclear power plants….so there you go…biased?…think so
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 5:54pm@Snow:
Report Post »I reported earlier that I worked at Palo Verde…gotta tell you, once I worked there and ACTUALLY became educated on the subject…AND…learned about all the NRC Regs and Mandates…AND…all of the back-up procedures to the back-up procedures involved…AND…realized that most of the workers at the plant were previously trained on Nuclear Submarines (in the Military)…I no longer had ANY fear…NOW…I‘m not saying that it isn’t a technology to be highly RESPECTED…it has its’ risks…but, as far as Palo Verde goes…NO FEAR! Infact, we need all of them to be modeled after it…and…unfortunately, they are not!
AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:01pmPosted by: LikeMinds 05:46 AM 3/13/11
I’m a veteran of the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program. I’m a qualified Reactor Operator and Reactor Technician and served 4 years in that capacity on the nuclear powered U.S.S Enterprise. I also worked at Lawrence Berkeley and Sandia National Laboratories. I have many friends and acquaintances still working in the nuclear power industry.
I read the article suggested by Mr. Adams as to the worst possible outcome from an accident of a light water nuclear reactor. The article was written by nuclear industry representatives. It is more like a best case scenario than a worst case scenario. Nuclear power plants can be operated safely, but the fact is they are risky. The backup and containment systems are hardly as robust and foolproof as the article makes them out to be.
The article cites the Three Mile Island accident as proof there is little chance of a Chernobyl-like disaster from a meltdown in a light water reactor. Rubbish! TMI is NOT a good analog for what is happening in Fukushima. TMI never suffered a loss of power, or a complete failure of all of their cooling systems. They never had an overpressure situation. They never lost the ability to maintain coolant flow to the core. They made a series of boneheaded operator errors that uncovered the core for a relatively short time resulting in partial melting of some of the fuel assemblies in the core.
We are talking orders of magnitude difference in severity of accident. For instance there was never a thought of injecting cooling pond water + boric acid into TMI. At Fukushima, they have already resorted to the absolute last ditch, desperation effort to prevent a total core meltdown and containment breach — injection of seawater + boric acid. This is unprecedented and has never happened in any light water reactor, military or otherwise — ever!(Exception: there was serious nuclear accident aboard a Russian nuclear sub, that resulted in the crew abandoning ship and the sub sinking.)
The Mark I containment at Fukushima is nowhere near as robust as the containment at TMI. In fact, basically it’s just a thick steel tank. Most credible nuclear engineers believe it would almost certainly fail if subjected to a complete core meltdown. If it breaches then we are looking at something way more like Chernobyl than TMI.
Finally the article cited only “30 provable deaths” from radiation at Chernobyl. I wish it were so. Most credible estimates put the immediate death toll at around 1000 and the long term toll from cancers and other radiation induced illness at 100s of thousands!
also:
If you just cited an article that said there were only 30 provable deaths due to Chernobyl then you deserve no respect whatsoever.
Look at the deformed children that come out of it! My friends used to take children from the Chernobyl childrens project who were horribly deformed because of it. If you are saying that has nothing to do with radiation then you are an idiot and scum in my eyes as you are putting your agenda high
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-core&page=2
Report Post »kryptonite
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:07pmI am so relieved that the elevated radiation levels were “brief”. Phew!! Just out of curiosity, what caused that fleeting nightmare, and where did that radiation go?
Say, AzDebi, no need to be apologetic. Judging from the number of comments on the Fukshitma accident today, I’d say most Blazers have stuck their heads in the sand to avoid contamination (pun intended). Thanks for reposting LikeMinds comment on the thread about our Navy heroes. I had read the Scientific American article myself and thought it was B.S. too. I don‘t agree with LikeMinds’ conclusion, but it is a really excellent, expert analysis of the situation. Thanks again.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:43pmA useful non-governmental, non-industry site is Nuclear Information and Research dot org,(nirs.org)
Report Post »They have a great fact-sheet on this family of GE Reactors too, and updates from Japanese correspondents(citizens).
AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:50pmProblematic design of Japan’s imperiled nuclear reactors common in U.S. The nuclear power disaster triggered by the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday is worsening by the day and raising concerns about nuclear safety in the United States.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/03/problematic-design-of-japans-imperiled-nuclear-reactors-common-in-us.html
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 6:54pmFINALLY…Some Great News!
Miracle of the baby girl plucked from the rubble: Four-month-old reunited with her father after incredible rescue
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366155/Japan-earthquake-survivor-reunited-baby-daughter–tsunami-warning-sounds.html#ixzz1GbiaSKd3
Made me weep!
Report Post »kryptonite
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:02pmSnow,
But half of America is politicizing the issue and suffering from the Titanic Syndrome. Their reaction to the Japanese tragedy goes something like this: “The left doesn’t want nuclear, because the left’s agenda is to reduce our global status to one of poverty and dependence. While that statement may be perfectly true, that kind of reasoning addresses motivation not the pros and cons of nuclear energy, per se.
Yesterday I read a commenter who called the Chernobyl fallout a GOOD thing because of some stupid book she had read. How insane is that? I felt such indignation, but also deep disappointment that some conservatives are so politicized. Politics is an ugly thing. As Glenn has rightfully pointed out, it can cause an individual to lose his soul. We have to be on the side of righteousness and truth, regardless of the traitors’ position on any given issue.
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:07pm@Showtime:
“Y’all, I never claimed to be a nuclear physisisisisissisist!
I feel for those people!
___________
Sorry Show…didn’t mean to come across as a smart a*s…just wanted to cover the iodine issue! I wish they wouldn’t get people all drugged up on false hope…that’s all…
I woke up this morning and started to complain about something…then…I stopped and thought to myself, “Welp, so far today I haven’t been thrown down to the ground by an EARTHQUAKE…AND then washed away in a TSUNAMI…AND…don’t seem to have any RADIATION BURNS covering my body…soooooo…what on earth could I possibly have to complain about, huh?
Report Post »AzDebi
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 7:11pmOMG…just heard on Fox that a huge explosion just took place at Reactor #2…God please help those poor people!
Know what really ****** me off BIG TIME? Would I sound really stupid in saying that perhaps they should have build those back-up generators on an elevated concrete slab, perhaps so many feet off the ground…..JUST IN CASE OF A TSUNAMI? AND…JUST MAYBE…more than a COUPLE of generators!!!!!!
Report Post »GONESURFING
Posted on March 14, 2011 at 8:52pmI do not support nuclear power for the reasons we are now seeing and the problems with the waste. Nuclear power is “safe” until something goes wrong, and when things go wrong it goes very, very wrong. I really hope and pray that they get this under control. Green energy is still a joke, so we need to drill for more oil which seems to be abundant still.
Report Post »PaBitterKlinger
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 2:20amCuriously absent from every major reporting source is the fact that 5 of the 6 reactors in use are designed and manufactured by our “Eco magineering” friends who run the line dancing; elephant prancing ,self-promoting commercials touting revolutionary technology apparently worthy of receiving the lion’s share of our stimulus $$$.
Report Post »I’m all about clean safe nuclear power. Just more than a little annoyed with G.E’s level of honesty.
ZeitgeistBuster
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 9:20amAzDebi
Maybe you or somebody on here could find for me How much environmental radiation exposure you would have to have to equal one strong treatment of Chemotherapy?
I’ve been looking, but I haven’t come up with anything yet.
I have worked with NORM in the oilfield for years, which you inject in pipelines to aid you in tracing them out with Metal-Detector type equipment before doing major digging.
As long as you didn’t get norm in your mouth or nose, you would have no health concerns at all. The Tyvex suits would keep your clothes from becoming saturated, and most of the radiation could not penetrate your epidermis.
But the half life of NORM is 1500 years. The radioactive Isotopes released from the cooling systems in Japan, don’t they decay in a few days?
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Posted on March 15, 2011 at 11:13amZeitgeistBuster:
AzDebi:
“Maybe you or somebody on here could find for me How much environmental radiation exposure you would have to have to equal one strong treatment of Chemotherapy?”
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I’m sure not an expert on environmental radiation, but I think we are talking about the difference between exposure to Alpha versus Beta particles…
As you already know from your work, most ALPHA emitters occur naturally in the environment. For example, alpha particles are given off by uranium-238, radium-226, and other members of the uranium decay series. These are present in varying amounts in nearly all rocks, soils, and water and the opportunity for environmental and human exposure increase greatly when soils and rock formations are disturbed by the extraction of minerals. As long as you do not ingest or inhale these alpha particles, there are no adverse effects…and they are not easily absorbed through the skin and even more so because of the the use of Tyvex suits.
On the other hand, BETA emitters are used, especially in medical diagnosis, imaging, and treatment:
Iodine-131 is used to treat thyroid disorders, such as cancer…
However, there are both radioactive and non-radioactive isotopes of iodine. Iodine-129 and -131 are the most important radioactive isotopes in the environment. Some isotopes of iodine, such as I-123 and I-124 are used in medical imaging and treatment, but are generally not a problem in the environment because they have very short half-lives. Not all chemotherapy is introduced into the system using radioactive Iodine…
But as we know from the events in Japan, when Iodine-131 gets into the environment, it’s a problem…Iodine-131 is a gaseous fission product that forms within fuel rods as they fission. Unless reactor chemistry is carefully controlled, they can build up too fast, increasing pressure and causing corrosion in the rods. As the rods age, cracks or wholes may breach the rods. Cracked rods can release radioactive iodine into the water that surrounds and cools the fuel rods. There, it circulates with the cooling water throughout the system, ending up in the airborne, liquid, and solid wastes from the reactor. From time to time, reactor gas capture systems release gases, including iodine, to the environment under applicable regulations (like what we’ve been seeing released in Japan).
Does this help answer your question? It‘s early and I’ve not had my second cup of coffee yet!
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