Fukushima: Two Years & Counting

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

Three reactor cores are missing.
300 tons of contaminated water flow out of the site into the Pacific ocean every day.
Stanford University caught and tested tuna and found that every single fish they caught had tiny amounts of Cesium traceable to Fukushima
Contaminated emergency cooling water is building up in storage tanks at site. By next year they should have 800,000 tons of contaminated water in more than 1,000 big tanks at the site.
11,000 spent fuel rods are stranded at the site, with more than 1,000 of them in especially awful condition.
TEPCO alone remains in charge and responsible despite years of evidence they are overwhelmed and incapable of managing the situation.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

So it is even more distressing that, as Science Journal reports, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, destroyed 4 years ago in explosions and meltdowns triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, won't be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors' nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it...

The image below is from a TEPCO handout (in Japanese). As expected, the Fukushima scans revealed no fuel in the reactor vessel.

Don, your private message folder is full and cannot accept an answer to yours from me.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

Three reactor cores are missing.
300 tons of contaminated water flow out of the site into the Pacific ocean every day.
Stanford University caught and tested tuna and found that every single fish they caught had tiny amounts of Cesium traceable to Fukushima
Contaminated emergency cooling water is building up in storage tanks at site. By next year they should have 800,000 tons of contaminated water in more than 1,000 big tanks at the site.
11,000 spent fuel rods are stranded at the site, with more than 1,000 of them in especially awful condition.
TEPCO alone remains in charge and responsible despite years of evidence they are overwhelmed and incapable of managing the situation.

The dilemma of nuclear waste has never been solved and now we have hit the Mother-of-All conundrums.

Don

The question remains hanging in mid air; who is listening? The UN should have taken action at least two years ago, but instead are silent.

Again, where is EJ? His silence and the obvious lack of any replacement video on his home page leave me to believe he has abandoned his own venture; leaving it to run unattended; when he could have opened the debate into another level.

It is unconscionable that Japan have done nothing to prevent the movement of contaminated water out into the Pacific Ocean. It would be a very simple operation to sheet pile a dam around the coast and at least keep the water close at hand. Gosh! Even dispersed mud would do the trick of containing the contamination in one place.

Sadly, as many of us here on iTulip will know only too well; many faced with exceptional decisions are incapable of operating and close down; TEPCO being a classic example. So we are faced with the obvious question; what to do next?

How do we take the lead in this debate to force new thinking?

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

The question remains hanging in mid air; who is listening? The UN should have taken action at least two years ago, but instead are silent.

Again, where is EJ? His silence and the obvious lack of any replacement video on his home page leave me to believe he has abandoned his own venture; leaving it to run unattended; when he could have opened the debate into another level.

It is unconscionable that Japan have done nothing to prevent the movement of contaminated water out into the Pacific Ocean. It would be a very simple operation to sheet pile a dam around the coast and at least keep the water close at hand. Gosh! Even dispersed mud would do the trick of containing the contamination in one place.

Sadly, as many of us here on iTulip will know only too well; many faced with exceptional decisions are incapable of operating and close down; TEPCO being a classic example. So we are faced with the obvious question; what to do next?

How do we take the lead in this debate to force new thinking?

just the latest . . .


The South China Morning Post reports,

Soil underneath a slide at the children's playground in the northwest of the Japanese capital showed radiation readings of up to 480 microsieverts per hour, the local administrative office said.

The radiation level is over 2,000 times that at which the national government requires soil cleaning in areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where reactors melted down after the March 2011 tsunami.

Anyone directly exposed to this level would absorb in two hours the maximum dose of radiation Japan recommends in a year.

"Many children play in the park daily, so the ward office should explain the situation," Kyodo News quoted a 62-year-old local woman as saying.

...

Officials were made aware of the contamination after a local resident reported it on Monday and say they do not think it is connected to the disaster at Fukushima. "Because the area in which we detect radioactivity is very limited, and readings in surrounding parts are normal, we suspect radioactive materials of some kind are buried there," local mayor Yukio Takano said in a statement.




The park was built in 2013, two years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, a local official said, on what was previously a parking lot for Tokyo's sanitation department. Top soil at the lot was replaced before the land was turned into a park, said the Toshima official.

Many families in eastern Japan continue to survey the levels of radioactive contamination around their houses, distrustful of government assurances that most places had not been affected by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

Such efforts have led some people to discover radioactive materials that had been dumped in their neighbourhoods.

[GRG55]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

just the latest . . .


The South China Morning Post reports,

Soil underneath a slide at the children's playground in the northwest of the Japanese capital showed radiation readings of up to 480 microsieverts per hour, the local administrative office said.

The radiation level is over 2,000 times that at which the national government requires soil cleaning in areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where reactors melted down after the March 2011 tsunami.

Anyone directly exposed to this level would absorb in two hours the maximum dose of radiation Japan recommends in a year.

"Many children play in the park daily, so the ward office should explain the situation," Kyodo News quoted a 62-year-old local woman as saying.

...

Officials were made aware of the contamination after a local resident reported it on Monday and say they do not think it is connected to the disaster at Fukushima. "Because the area in which we detect radioactivity is very limited, and readings in surrounding parts are normal, we suspect radioactive materials of some kind are buried there," local mayor Yukio Takano said in a statement.




The park was built in 2013, two years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, a local official said, on what was previously a parking lot for Tokyo's sanitation department. Top soil at the lot was replaced before the land was turned into a park, said the Toshima official.

Many families in eastern Japan continue to survey the levels of radioactive contamination around their houses, distrustful of government assurances that most places had not been affected by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

Such efforts have led some people to discover radioactive materials that had been dumped in their neighbourhoods.

Hmmm. A radioactive Love Canal.

[don]

No Problemo - We Got Ya Covered

“Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne”
a Pentagon nuclear scientist

The photograph shows John Wayne with his two sons during a break in filming on the set of The Conqueror, a big budget blockbuster about Genghis Khan shot in the Utah desert in 1954. It was one of Hollywood’s most famous mis-castings. The duke could do many things but playing a 13th century Mongol warlord was not one of them. Film geeks consider it one of the great turkeys of Hollywood’s golden age.

There is another, darker reason it endures in film lore. The photograph hints at it. Wayne clutches a black metal box while another man appears to adjust the controls. Wayne’s two teenage sons, Patrick and Michael, gaze at it, clearly intrigued, perhaps a bit anxious. The actor himself appears relaxed, leaning on Patrick, his hat at a jaunty angle. The box, which rests on a patch of scrub, looks unremarkable. It is in fact a Geiger counter.

It is said to have crackled so loudly Wayne thought it was broken. Moving it to different clumps of rock and sand produced the same result. The star, by all accounts, shrugged it off. The government had detonated atomic bombs at a test site in Nevada but that was more than a hundred miles away. Officials said the canyons and dunes around St George, a remote, dusty town where the film was shooting, was completely safe.

Last week, half a century later, Rebecca Barlow, a nurse practitioner at the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP), which operates from the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St George, now a prosperous little city with an airport, leafed through her patient records. “More than 60% of this year’s patients are new,” she said. “Mostly breast and thyroid, also some leukaemia, colon, lung.”

This is a story about cancer. About how the United States turned swathes of the desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it, bequeathing a medical mystery which to this day haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities and raises a thorny question: how much should you trust the government?

“It’s gone into our DNA,” said Michelle Thomas, 63, an outspoken advocate for the so-called downwinders, the name given to the tens of thousands exposed to fallout. “I’ve lost count of the friends I’ve buried. I’m not patriotic. My government lied to me.”

Hollywood is set to remember its own cameo in the story with next year’s 50th anniversary of the release of The Conqueror, the film which allegedly killed Wayne plus leading lady Susan Hayward, director Dick Powell and dozens of other cast and crew members. In the meantime there will be another anniversary: this summer it will be 70 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

The Manhattan Project scientists conducted the first atomic tests in great secrecy in 1945 in New Mexico. After the second world war, testing shifted to the southern Pacific Ocean on the grounds of public safety. But the war in Korea and escalating rivalry with the Soviet Union prompted a shift back to the US mainland for greater security. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), an agency with near Olympian powers which ran the nuclear programme, selected a government-owned bombing and gunnery range in Nevada partly because winds would blow “radiological hazards” away from Las Vegas and Los Angeles towards “virtually uninhabitable” land downwind to the west, home to ranches and Mormon communities.

From 1951 to 1962 the AEC detonated more than 100 bombs, sending huge pinkish plumes of radioactive dust across the stony valleys and canyons of southern Utah and northern Arizona. It gave each “shot” names like Annie, Eddie, Humboldt and Badger. The official advice: enjoy the show. “Your best action is not to be worried about fallout,” said an AEC booklet. Families and lovers would drive to vantage points for the spectacle, then drive home as ash wafted down on their communities. It was a cheap date.

At first the local press cheered the chance to beat the Russians and be part of history. “Spectacular Atomic Explosions Mean Progress in Defense, No Cause For Panic,” said an editorial in the The Deseret News. Clint Mosher, a columnist, said he never saw a prettier sight. “It was like a letter from home or the firm handshake of someone you admire and trust.’’

Seated in her home in St George last week, Claudia Peterson, 60, another downwinder advocate, gave a wry smile at the memory. “We were Mormons and very patriotic. Perfect guinea pigs. We weren’t going to question anything. It was impossible to believe our government would consider us expendable.” Peterson has lost a father, sister, daughter and nephew to diseases she attributes at least in part to radiation.

Eleven bombs were detonated in 1953, including several between March and June that coated St George and other towns in grey dust. The most notorious were a 51-kiloton shot called Simon and a 32-kiloton shot called Harry (later dubbed Dirty Harry). Thousands of sheep died. An AEC press release blamed “unprecedented cold weather”.

A year later St George’s 4,800 residents found themselves hosting an exotic invasion of actors, producers, technicians and stuntmen. Howard Hughes, the eccentric head of RKO Pictures, lavished money on what he envisaged as a stirring tale of romance and epic battles on Asia’s steppes. The cast and crew filled the motels and enlisted locals as labourers and extras. About 300 Shivwit Indians played Mongol villagers.

Dick Powell, the actor-turned-director, took the gig for the pay check, said his sonNorman, himself a director, speaking from his home near Hollywood. “He told me of these meetings in the middle of the night with Hughes and how weird it was.”

Norman, who accompanied his father and worked as a labourer and an extra, recalled hot, dusty weeks filming battle scenes in Snow Canyon, a wind-trap. Nobody worried about radiation. “There was no concern. None.”

It was an arduous shoot but left happy memories. “This is the way we like to think of America – people cheerfully helping people because that’s simply a good way to live,” Wayne recalled. The locals collected autographs and made good money. Everyone seemed to do well except the Shivwit, according to Rob Williams, a California writer who researched the film for a novel he is writing. “They were paid $2 or $3 a day and left to sit in the sun while the stars were in air-conditioned trailers.”

The film fared reasonably well at the box office, earning nearly $12m. But risible dialogue (“I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, ‘take her’”) and the duke’s efforts to pass as Asian with a Fu Manchu moustache and furry cap convinced no one, least of all Wayne, who was quoted saying the moral was “not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you’re not suited for”. The film became a laughing stock.

And then, as years passed and cast and crew fell sick, it acquired a darker reputation. Powell got lymph cancer and died in 1963. “It got him pretty quickly,” said Norman. The same year Pedro Armendáriz, a Mexican actor who played Khan’s right-hand man, Jamuga, shot himself after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hayward, who played a Tartar princess, died of brain cancer in 1975.

By the time Wayne succumbed to stomach cancer in 1979, The Conqueror had been dubbed an RKO Radioactive Picture. His sons Patrick and Michael battled – and survived – their own cancer scares. Whether out of guilt or some other reason, Hughes bought up all the copies of The Conqueror and reputedly watched it every night in his final, reclusive years.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne

[Polish_Silver]

The real risk

[QUOTE=don;295433]

“Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne” [quote}


It's much more likely that Wayne died from smoking than radiation exposure. A few clicks on a Geiger counter do not constitute a public health risk. The risks of radiation have been well known for almost a century. If people want to make a case that the fallout is a public health risk, they need to get out some film badges, record radiation, and look up the statistics. Should you trust the government? No, especially in areas where there is no way to verify what they claim. However, radiation is easy to measure by the many people trained in it's use, detection, and hazards. Therefore, the government could not easily lie about fallout levels, because contrary individuals could disprove any false statements. The article provided no information useful in establishing risk from exposure to fallout.

[lektrode]

Re: The real risk

“Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne” [quote}


It's much more likely that Wayne died from smoking than radiation exposure. A few clicks on a Geiger counter do not constitute a public health risk. The risks of radiation have been well known for almost a century. If people want to make a case that the fallout is a public health risk, they need to get out some film badges, record radiation, and look up the statistics. Should you trust the government? No, especially in areas where there is no way to verify what they claim. However, radiation is easy to measure by the many people trained in it's use, detection, and hazards. Therefore, the government could not easily lie about fallout levels, because contrary individuals could disprove any false statements. The article provided no information useful in establishing risk from exposure to fallout.

as 'the facts' become more GLARING, in that combustion in all its forms = The Real Danger to ALL life on the planet?

the antinuke/luddite HYSTERIA PROPAGANDA brigade will krank up its efforts - including trotting out one of the original 'marlboro men' as a prop to SCARE even more with its efforts - the most recent redux of GODZILLA being the most flagrant

and what better way to make a 'new point' than to dredge this up - esp to draw attention away from the fact that 'other forms of research' are QUITE a bit more threatening (while no where near as deadly as a .gov-subsidized product IN ACTUAL FACT vs the inuendo involved with the above)

[don]

Re: The real risk

Eleven bombs were detonated in 1953, including several between March and June that coated St George and other towns in grey dust. The most notorious were a 51-kiloton shot called Simon and a 32-kiloton shot called Harry (later dubbed Dirty Harry). Thousands of sheep died. An AEC press release blamed “unprecedented cold weather”.

Still a buyer's market in St George?

[lektrode]

Re: The real risk

Still a buyer's market in St George?

in any case, something seems to working quite well there vs a lot of other places where 'the recovery' isnt ?

[shiny!]

Re: The real risk

[QUOTE=Polish_Silver;295451]

“Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne” [quote}


It's much more likely that Wayne died from smoking than radiation exposure. A few clicks on a Geiger counter do not constitute a public health risk. The risks of radiation have been well known for almost a century. If people want to make a case that the fallout is a public health risk, they need to get out some film badges, record radiation, and look up the statistics. Should you trust the government? No, especially in areas where there is no way to verify what they claim. However, radiation is easy to measure by the many people trained in it's use, detection, and hazards. Therefore, the government could not easily lie about fallout levels, because contrary individuals could disprove any false statements. The article provided no information useful in establishing risk from exposure to fallout.

You're right, a lifetime of smoking probably did him in; it does most people. But smoking doesn't fully explain the high cancer rate of all those other people on the movie set and living in the area. I also don't think the article must "provide information useful in establishing risk from exposure to fallout" in order to have merit. There are other sources for that information. See my links below.

Perhaps I'm reading you wrong, but it sounds as if you're saying there are no serious health consequences to above ground nuclear testing. That it didn't do any harm. That back in the 50's and 60's the government didn't lie and minimize the risks of their nuclear testing program.

At the time that movie was filmed, the government had collected almost a decade's worth of information on the effects of radioactive fallout on living things. Sheep in the area were dropping dead. What you flippantly refer to as "a few clicks on a Geiger counter," was a Geiger counter clicking so furiously, they thought it was broken. They thought it was broken and stayed in the area because the U.S. government assured them there was no danger. The same government that had Geiger counters of their own. The cancer rate among the people who were on that set and in that town was far above average.

On a purely personal, anectdotal level, my mother was a non-smoker who always lived in a non-smoking household. She got thyroid cancer in her twenties while living in Texas, in the plume path of those Nevada nuclear bomb tests. Her cancer was detected a few weeks after I was born in 1958. Then she got lymphoma in 1964. I was born with a tumor in my mouth that had to be surgically removed in infancy. My thyroid has never worked properly; I've had to have half of it removed. I got breast cancer when I was 39. In the decades since above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada began, breast cancer has risen to epidemic levels, hitting 1 in 8 women. It's estimated that radiation exposure causes a 200% increase in breast cancer.

* Compilation of Radiation Studies Showing Health Risks

So I guess I get a little touchy when lethal levels of nuclear fallout gets waved off as only "... a few clicks on a Geiger counter. Nothing to see here. Move along... "

Just for the record, I do support safer, modern nuclear power plant technologies. I think it's madness to block their development. Just as it's madness to still be operating dangerous, GE Mark 1 boiling water reactors like Fukushima's, especially on fault lines.

* Someone is bound to reject the article because it's from an anti-nuke website. I don't give a rat's fanny about the source as long as the data is accurate.

[don]

Re: The real risk

Shiny!

The alarmist that make careers out of the dangers of radioactivity and those that reject any criticism of radiation exposure are two heads of the same coin.

[shiny!]

Re: The real risk

The alarmist that make careers out of the dangers of radioactivity and those that reject any criticism of radiation exposure are two heads of the same coin.

You and I are on the same page about that, Don.

[lektrode]

Re: The real risk

The alarmist that make careers out of the dangers of radioactivity and those that reject any criticism of radiation exposure are two heads of the same coin.

yes, of course - the sensationalist treatment by most of the media today is THE PROBLEM

....
So I guess I get a little touchy when lethal levels of nuclear fallout gets waved off as only "... a few clicks on a Geiger counter. Nothing to see here. Move along... "

Just for the record, I do support safer, modern nuclear power plant technologies. I think it's madness to block their development. Just as it's madness to still be operating dangerous, GE Mark 1 boiling water reactors like Fukushima's, especially on fault lines.

* Someone is bound to reject the article because it's from an anti-nuke website. I don't give a rat's fanny about the source as long as the data is accurate.

+1
(esp the rats fanny)
however one has to ask just what are the most urgent/pressing dangers - esp with regard to energy production?

sure the .gov made some wild-ass-umptions about the dangers of nuke BOMB testing - it was a 'new science' afterall - and sure 'they lied' about these dangers, primarily the ones regarding atmospheric testing - which i agree was complete madness.

but i still have to ask, what is the worse madness - 100's to THOUSANDS of people dying DIRECTLY - annually - from coal mining - either thru mining 'accidents' or blacklung etc - never mind the 10's to 100's of THOUSANDS who die from indirect exposure to its products of combustion (maybe ask the chinese about that)

and THEN we have the effects of coals combustion on the oceans

and just never mind the 'fallout' from tobacco...

vs just how many have died from direct exposure to nuke power - and in particular - the fallout from the very few (and predictable+preventable i'd add) mishaps ?

esp when the 'vicinity exposure' from nuke plants is typically less than one gets on an airplane at 38000ft - or a dentist xray - never mind the TSA's machines...

and i wont even get into the TRILLION$ its cost us, or the THOUSANDS of US .mil lives that have been lost for ENDLESS WAR OVER OIL, with additional HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of annual interest cost on the ENDLESS BUDGET DEFICITS TO PAY FOR IT ALL?

all because a small % of the population 'is afraid' ? (respectful of those who have suffered due to the .govs mishandling of the real risks and then denying it)

all the while thinking 'we're safe' because we've fastened our seatbelts as we hurtle along at 60-70mph on 2-lane roads????

madness, indeed.

[shiny!]

Re: The real risk

Who are you arguing with, Lek? Someone wrote an article about a shameful historical event. It doesn't read like rabid, anti-nuke propaganda, but you guys are reacting like it does.

Sometimes a duck is just a duck.