{"id":35954,"date":"2011-03-19T10:27:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=35954"},"modified":"2011-03-19T11:24:44","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T16:24:44","slug":"radiation-bullshit-levels-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/radiation-bullshit-levels-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"Radiation, bullshit levels increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: For those following this from an astrological perspective, one chart to start with in understanding anything of a nuclear nature is the Nuclear Axis, which I covered here last weekend<\/a>. If you want to explore the industry and anti-nuke sites that I’m using to write summaries like this, we have a special page for that — All Things Nuclear<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

While the world’s attention has suddenly shifted to the military crisis in Libya (the UN Security Council approved a war there last week), the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in northeastern Japan continues to develop. CBS News said that radiation has reached the Los Angeles area as of yesterday<\/a>, but says that the levels are a billion times less than can make someone sick. That suggests authorities believe things would still be fine if 999 million times more radiation reached LA, so if you ask them we have a long way to go.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Homer Simpson didn't take my dad's refresher course for nuclear plant operators.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MSNBC: Japan confirmed the presence of radioactive iodine<\/a> contamination (a core meltdown byproduct) in food products from near a crippled nuclear plant and ordered a halt to their sale, the U.N. nuclear body said on Saturday. “Though radioactive iodine has a short half-life of about 8 days and decays naturally within a matter of weeks, there is a short-term risk to human health if radioactive iodine in food is absorbed into the human body,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Here’s how The New York Times<\/em><\/a> put it: “While officials downplayed the immediate risks to consumers, the findings are likely to further unsettle a nation worried about the long-term effects of the damaged nuclear power plants. The crisis, which has entered its second week, has caused alarm in some countries that fallout from Japan might reach their shores.” Wait, people are just figuring this out now? The Times<\/em> continues:<\/p>\n

“Tokyo Electric Power Company, with help from the Japan Self-Defense Force, police and firefighters, continued efforts to cool the damaged reactors on Saturday. About 500 workers from the utility connected a transmission line almost a mile long to Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station. They hope to restart a cooling system there on Sunday.” Comment: this would have been more helpful last weekend. We had better get the Boy Scouts involved helping out.<\/p>\n

World Nuclear News<\/a>, an industry website, also reported that “Radiation levels exceeding the Japanese government-set level have been detected in samples of milk and spinach collected in the region of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. However, the levels measured are said to pose no immediate threat to health.”<\/p>\n

No immediate risk? Get out your doublespeak dictionary.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meantime, the Nuclear Information Resource Service, a reputable antinuclear website, published the following report Saturday morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Officials believe they are having some success using a variety of methods to cool the damaged reactors at the Fukushima site, including fire trucks and a remotely-operated system that can spray water for seven hours at a time. A power cable has apparently finally been placed at the site (after several incorrect reports that this already had happened), and may be hooked up later on Saturday. If successful, this would provide power to the site. However, the condition of the safety systems inside the reactors is unknown, so it is also unknown whether offsite power will prove to be the savior it would have been a week ago.<\/p>\n

The condition of the fuel pools, especially at Units 3 and 4, appears to remain more serious.<\/p>\n

TEPCO has cut holes in the roofs of the Units 5 and 6 containment buildings in an effort to remove building pressure and prevent explosions such as those that severely damaged Units 1, 3 and 4. This means some radiation is certainly being released through these holes.<\/p>\n

Contaminated milk and spinach has been found; the spinach was growing 60 miles from the site. More food contamination can be expected in the coming days and weeks.<\/p>\n

Most alarming are reports from AccuWeather and CNN that wind directions\u2014which through the week have been steadily west-east toward the Pacific Ocean\u2014are shifting: first from the site to the north and northwest, then on Monday south toward Tokyo. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Union of Concerned Scientists continues to provide daily press briefings. Here is some audio of Friday’s briefing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

David Lochbaum said, “The spent fuel pools have basically one system to cool them and a very flimsy, nonreliable structure around them in case radioactivity is released. So, you have more fuel that sits in the reactor core in a place where you have one system and no reliable barriers in case something happens. It’s a recipe for disaster, and that disaster is now unfolding in Japan. In the United States, we’re even worse off, because our spent fuel pools are more filled than in Japan, and we’re in the same risk level. So, we need to do something rapidly to better protect Americans.”<\/p>\n

He added: “It’s a very common design. It’s a common design. Thirty-one of our reactors are very similar. It wasn’t a cost consideration as much as an oversight. When the plants were originally designed, it was thought that the spent fuel would remain on the sites only two or three months after they came out of a reactor, during refueling outage, and then the fuel would be shipped off-site for reprocessing and disposal. When those plans changed, we just filled the pools up to capacity without ever rethinking whether we should provide more safety and better barriers.”<\/p>\n

This part of the transcript is interesting:<\/p>\n

REPORTER: If containment were to fail, there’s conflicting reports about whether there’s any water in the Number 4 pool at all. How long does it take for a serious release to happen once that fuel is exposed?<\/p>\n

MR. LOCHBAUM: We’re talking hours. Once that condition is reached, it’s hours before you start getting the radioactive cloud.<\/p>\n

REPORTER: And this would be mostly cesium?<\/p>\n

MR. LOCHBAUM: Cesium would be the worst, but there’s an awful lot of other radioisotopes that would follow along. You have krypton. There’s just a whole litany of things that are in that spent fuel that are posing the risk. You have to remember, the reason it’s in the spent fuel pools in the United States and elsewhere is that no one has come up with a repository to safely isolate that material for 10,000 years into the future. The material\u2014it’s not just the cesium; it’s a bunch of other things that have that hazard for that length of time. So, that radioactive cloud will contain cesium and a bunch of other things that people downwind need to be protected from.<\/p>\n

REPORTER: Would you expect, absent some sort of extraordinary weather event, that this would tend to fall within the 30-kilometer zone? <\/p>\n

MR. LOCHBAUM: The challenge there is that the most likely outcome of a spent fuel problem of this nature is a fire, and a fire tends to propel the radionuclides higher up into the atmosphere than if it was just the metal rods breaking and the gases leaking out. Because of the mode of force of the smoke carrying materials higher into the air, they tend to get spread further and over a wider area [by the jet stream] and other winds, and further complicating that situation is the meteorological conditions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: For those following this from an astrological perspective, one chart to start with in understanding anything of a nuclear nature is the Nuclear Axis, which I covered here last weekend. If you want to explore the industry and anti-nuke sites that I’m using to write summaries like this, we have a special page for … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}