Fukushima to get 370 tanks for radioactive water 'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk
TOKYO (Japan): Hundreds of water tanks are to be sent to Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to hold thousands of tons of water contaminated in the effort to keep its reactors cool, the operator said Sunday.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has sourced 370 tanks with a total capacity for more than 40,000 tons of radioactive water, a company spokeswoman said.
"Two of the tanks got on the way to the plant late Saturday," said TEPCO spokeswoman Ai Tanaka, adding that they would reach the site in two days or so. "It will be in mid-August that all the 370 tanks will get to the plant."Those tanks are kept in open space storage in Tochigi prefecture, south of Fukushima, will all be transported to the plant by road, she said.
A massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and monster tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the plant on the Pacific coast on March 11. In a stop-gap measure to contain the emergency at the plant, workers have been pouring massive amounts of water onto reactors where fuel rods are reported to have melted, and topped up pools for spent fuel rods.
A huge floating structure to hold radioactive water was berthed at the quay by the plant in May to contain part of nearly 90,000 tons of contaminated water stored at the facility. TEPCO said Saturday workers had spotted video footage of steam rising from a crevice between a pipe and the floor of a reactor building.
Radiation levels as high as 4,000 millisievert per hour were detected from the nearby atmosphere, way above the safe level for workers to enter the area, it said. Workers at the plant are now focusing on setting up a water reprocessing facility in order to start cleaning contaminated water from mid-June, Tanaka said.
The facility, provided by French nuclear group Areva and other companies, is expected to lower the radiation levels of the contaminated water to about one ten-thousandth. But as summer approaches, the environment is becoming more severe for workers who have to wear heavy protective suits.
On Sunday, two workers, both men in their 40s, were taken to hospital with heatstroke, a second company spokeswoman said, while another worker had fallen ill on Saturday with chest pains and heatstroke. TEPCO has said it hopes to bring the plant to a stable state of "cold shutdown" between October and January. http://www.pakistantimes.ne...ail.php?newsId=22225
Five more days until the three month anniversary of the beginning of this ongoing disaster, and they're still not sure when or even if they're going to get it under control, or even what the extent of the damage is so far? Are there still over 60,000 people who are refugees from their homes and farms? Is anyone any closer to figuring out when or if they'll be allowed to return to their homes to start rebuilding their lives? What about the bodies, are they still rotting in place?
There have been many disasters in the world since March 11, including several right here at home, in Joplin, in Birmingham. Many tragedies, many deaths, but the one thing they all have in common is that people are recovering, rebuilding their lives, their homes, their societies. Not in Fukushima. There, many tens of thousands are still living in limbo, forcibly driven from their homes and farms by police, kept away under threat of arrest, living in shelters, with no ability to plan for their future, no permission to start rebuilding their lives. Many are elderly, and many will die before ever being allowed to see their homes again, before being able to administer the last funereal rites to their family members killed in the original tsunami and earthquake. In many ways, the disasters of the world including tornadoes, typhoons, earthquakes, fires, all pale to the disaster of the Fukushima's nuclear power plants.
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Tepco Plant Radiation Level Estimate Doubled by Safety Agency By Tsuyoshi Inajima - Jun 6, 2011 7:14 AM CT
Japan’s nuclear safety agency doubled its estimate of radiation released by Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The station released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive material into the air between March 11 and March 16, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general at Japan’s nuclear safety agency, said at a briefing in Tokyo today.
The agency previously estimated that about 370,000 tera becquerels of radioactive material were released during the period.
From your article, "Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.". Its amazing when you consider the news back in March said it was impossible for these types of reactors to melt down. I just hope this whole incident teaches the masses to think for themselves and not let the news anchors think for them.
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phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
A full meltdown is when the rods melt through all containment, if they have melted through the containment vessel then it is a full meltdown. Chernobyl had a full meltdown. The only difference is the graphite burned and the smoke carried the radioactive dust in to the atmosphere, but other things can cause the dust to get into the atmosphere. If it does then this will be chernobyl style. They need to stop lying.
Funny because it has been said here, and all over the news, that the containment vessel couldn't be breached in this type of reactor.
What the story says
quote
Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis. It had already said fuel rods at the heart of reactor No. 1 melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck. The remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.
A "major part" of the fuel rods in reactor No. 2 may have melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel 101 hours after the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the plant, Tokyo Electric said May 24. The same thing happened within the first 60 hours at reactor No. 3, the company said, in what it called its worst-case scenario analysis, saying the fuel would be sitting at the bottom of the pressure vessel in each reactor building. But Tokyo Electric at the same time released a second possible scenario for reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but may not have completely melted.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 06-06-2011).]
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Plutonium that is believed to have come from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been detected in the town of Okuma about 1.7 km away from the plant's front gate, a Kanazawa University researcher said Sunday.
It is the first time plutonium ejected by the stricken facility has been found in soil beyond its premises since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami led to a core meltdown there.
Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto of Kanazawa University said the level of plutonium detected in soil in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, is lower than the average level observed in Japan after nuclear tests were conducted abroad.
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has found plutonium in soil on the nuke plant's grounds, but it was believed to have been fallout from bomb tests abroad.
By analyzing the ratio of three types of isotopes in the plutonium, Yamamoto was able to determine that it was emitted by Fukushima No. 1 and not past bomb tests.
The soil samples were collected by a team of researchers from Hokkaido University before April 22.
... That also indicates containment breach.
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Jun 7th, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Mark Willacy reported this story on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 12:18:00 Listen to MP3 of this story ( minutes)
Alternate WMA version | MP3 download
ELEANOR HALL: To Japan now where nearly three months after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Japan's nuclear authority has dramatically revised up its estimates of the amount of radiation emitted from the Fukushima nuclear plants in the week after the earthquake.
In a statement overnight, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency more than doubled its original estimate of the radiation in the atmosphere.
Plutonium has also been found for the first time in soil just a few kilometres from the plant. Tests have confirmed the plutonium came from the plant, but researchers say the levels are not a cause for alarm.
A short time ago I spoke to Tokyo correspondent Mark Willacy.
ELEANOR HALL: Mark this is an extraordinary admission from Japan's nuclear safety agency isn't it, that the earlier estimates of the danger were out by more than 100 per cent?
MARK WILLACY: Well the safety agency says that it was taking on board figures that were provided to it by TEPCO because they're based on basically water injection assumptions. Now that's quite technical but that water was pumped in to try and stop the meltdown - as we know now there were partial meltdowns in three of the reactors.
Now the nuclear safety agency is saying it's pushing up - it's doubling the amount of radiation released in the week after the crisis. It's more than doubling it to 770,000 terabecquerels. Now that probably doesn't mean much to people but it is quite a lot of radiation escaping into the atmosphere.
If you take that figure it's about 10 per cent of what was released in Chernobyl 25 years ago - obviously the worst nuclear accident in history. Now only 10 per cent, yes, but it's still a massive figure in its own right.
ELEANOR HALL: So has TEPCO responded to these allegations that essentially it got the numbers so wrong?
MARK WILLACY: No it has not. TEPCO has obviously been revising its own figures in the last few weeks as it says it's getting more information, more data from inside the plant. It's getting computer systems up online, it's sending in robots, taking readings.
It's saying this is a moveable feast - we're really in unchartered territory for the Japanese nuclear safety industry and that basically it's a case of getting new figures all the time and revising old figures.
ELEANOR HALL: So what's the reaction from people who were in the affected zones and people who are now wondering whether they're in danger?
MARK WILLACY: Well I think it really does re-enforce some of the moves that the Japanese government has been taking in the last couple of weeks. Now there's a 20 kilometre exclusion zone around the plant. The communities inside that exclusion zone have all left but in recent weeks we've seen the government say, look there's a couple of communities outside that exclusion zone we think should move.
And in fact I was in one of them last week, documenting some of the people who were moving from there and they were saying yes, we're not comfortable here because we do believe that the radiation levels are higher than the government and TEPCO are letting on.
Now these figures released overnight by the nuclear safety agency would bear that out.
ELEANOR HALL: Now you mentioned Chernobyl a moment ago - are people on the ground there making those comparisons themselves?
MARK WILLACY: Well they're certainly saying that, you know, being able to return to their homes is the major factor for them and they're looking at Chernobyl just saying, well look at those people in the Ukraine, a lot of them can never go back.
And I suppose that's the biggest concern for these people, they just don't know when they'll be able to return to their homes.
Also their livestock - this is a major farming area around Fukushima and, you know, Japan has raised the severity level of this crisis last month or in April rather to seven. Now that's the maximum on the international nuclear event scale, as it's called, and it puts it on a par with the Chernobyl disaster - not quite as big in scale but in terms of, you know, that scale on the nuclear accident level it's right up there.
ELEANOR HALL: And Mark there are also revelations today that plutonium has been found in the soil outside the nuclear plant for the first time. How big a concern is that?
MARK WILLACY: Well it is a concern. It's been found in the township of Okuma which is about 1.7 kilometres away from the plant's front gate. It was found by some university researchers who then analysed the ratio of the three types of isotopes in the plutonium.
Now that's like taking a fingerprint. And they determined that this was plutonium that was emitted by the Fukushima plant and not from past bomb tests. Now that's important because they are saying that usually they can detect plutonium on the ground in Japan, microscopic levels from bomb tests overseas.
So that's important that they've been able to narrow it down to Fukushima.
ELEANOR HALL: And how is the government responding to these figures on the contamination on the soil?
MARK WILLACY: Well they haven't said too much about it yet, but the researchers are saying look, don't get too concerned yet because the levels of plutonium that we found in this township are lower than the average level observed in Japan after nuclear tests which have been conducted abroad.
What the Japanese researchers are saying - that fallout is greater than what we're seeing from this plutonium from the Fukushima plant.
ELEANOR HALL: Mark you say you were in Fukushima last week, do these figures scare you?
MARK WILLACY: Yeah well we got within about 21-22 kilometres of the plant. We were there to film and to interview a farmer who had to leave his Wagyu beef herd behind and we took in two Geiger counters and I have to say, they were screeching at us quite a bit these Geiger counters and some of the readings we got were quite high, in fact they were higher than some of the readings that we understand the Japanese government has released.
So I suppose yes, it is concerning because the figures that we are hearing - they are always higher, there are always upward revisions, we're not hearing downward revisions and that is a cause for concern for all the Japanese population and for anyone who lives here in Japan.
"There are several other ongoing concerns at Fukushima some three months after the natural disasters hit, according to arms control expert Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund. Among them, he said: some 40,000 tons of highly radioactive water that threaten to overflow the holding tanks in the next few days. There is also, he added, the very serious possibility that the molten fuel now pooled at the bottom of the reactors could start nuclear reactions again." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ybl...sis-is-far-from-over
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Melted Fuel at Fukushima May Have Leaked Through, Yomiuri Says By Go Onomitsu - Jun 7, 2011 1:02 AM CT
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The melted fuel at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station may have leaked through the pressure vessels of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.
The Japanese government will submit a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency that raises the possibility the fuel dropped through the bottom of the pressure vessels, a situation described as a “melt through” and considered more serious than a “meltdown,” according to the report, which cited the document.
To contact the reporter on this story: Go Onomitsu in Tokyo at gonomitsu@bloomberg.net
"Tokyo's nuclear regulator revealed an apparent leak in the lid of Reactor No. 2's containment vessel. That container was a crucial barrier between the overheating nuclear fuel rods at the reactor and the outside world, and the new information suggests radioactive substances were surging through holes that were collectively the size of a business card. " http://online.wsj.com/artic...369753543372860.html
The farmer who had to leave his heard of cows behind, I wonder what's happening to him and his family now? And did I read that right, they're now going to run people outside of the 20km exclusion zone off their land as well?
I wonder, given the range of effects from a nuclear disaster, if perhaps reactors should all have 20km exclusion zones around them? In other words, not built near human habitation or farm/ranch land? A significant chunk of the costs of Fukushima will be compensation to victims forced off their farms and out of their homes, the permanent loss of arable farmland, the loss of crops and animal stocks, etc, plus monetary compensation for being put through the radiological wringer, so to speak. If reactors were built where the inevitable disaster would affect very little in terms of economic land use value and residences then the costs would be lower.
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
The farmer who had to leave his heard of cows behind, I wonder what's happening to him and his family now? And did I read that right, they're now going to run people outside of the 20km exclusion zone off their land as well?
I wonder, given the range of effects from a nuclear disaster, if perhaps reactors should all have 20km exclusion zones around them? In other words, not built near human habitation or farm/ranch land? A significant chunk of the costs of Fukushima will be compensation to victims forced off their farms and out of their homes, the permanent loss of arable farmland, the loss of crops and animal stocks, etc, plus monetary compensation for being put through the radiological wringer, so to speak. If reactors were built where the inevitable disaster would affect very little in terms of economic land use value and residences then the costs would be lower.
In the USA, that would be possible, Japan is so small and over populated, I am not sure where they could build them for lower impact. Maybe underground?
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03:45 PM
Jun 10th, 2011
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Sludge from contaminated water would be packed with radioactive substances: TEPCO
Sludge that will be generated in the process of treating radioactive water at the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is estimated to contain 100 million becquerels of radioactive substances per cubic centimeter, the plant operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) made the estimation in a report on the water treatment system submitted to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).
While trying to begin treating the increasing volumes of radioactive water at an early date, TEPCO has failed to indicate how it will store the toxic sludge or a final disposal site in its road map to bring the crippled plant under control.
TEPCO will launch treatment of the radioactive water on June 15 at the earliest. Specifically, it will use special equipment produced by Kurion Inc. of the United States and France-based Areva -- which have broad experience removing radioactive substances -- to separate sludge contaminated with radioactive substances from the water. The sludge is expected to contain such high levels of radiation because radioactive substances in it will be condensed.
TEPCO estimates that about 2,000 cubic meters of sludge will be generated through the treatment of radioactive water at the plant by the end of this year, and intends to keep the toxic substance in the plant's intensive radioactive waste disposal facility.
However, the facility can only hold 1,200 cubic meters of the sludge because radioactive waste generated in the plant's ordinary operations is already kept there, forcing the utility to build a new facility to keep the sludge on the plant premises.
However, because it is so highly radioactive, the sludge is extremely difficult to manage. Areva acknowledges that it has never handled sludge generated through the treatment of water emitting more than 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour.
While radioactive waste generated in the plant's ordinary operations is regularly transferred to a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, the final disposal site for the sludge and other waste generated as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster has not been determined.
NISA councillor Hidehiko Nishiyama fears it will take a long time to establish the radioactive sludge treatment process.
"Since such sludge has never been generated in Japan, the treatment technology must be created from scratch, from the research and development phase," he says. "It will likely take a long time, considering the safety regulations need to be enforced, development of an actual treatment method, and legal procedures."
Junichi Matsumoto, a high-ranking TEPCO official, also admitted that it will need to develop treatment methods. "We haven't decided how to produce containers for the sludge, or how to treat it," he said. (Mainichi Japan) June 10, 2011 http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnn...2a00m0na010000c.html
Radioactive strontium up to 240 times the legal concentration limit has been detected in seawater samples collected near an intake at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday.
The utility said the substance was also found in groundwater near the plant's Nos. 1 and 2 reactors. The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it is the first time that the substance has been found in groundwater.
The agency said it is necessary to carefully monitor the possible effects of the strontium on fishery products near the plant.
Strontium tends to accumulate in bones and is believed to cause bone cancer and leukemia.
Strontium is one of the things I've been more concerned with than iodine, which is short lived and whose cancers are fairly easily treated. Once strontium gets into the food chain, and Japan's food chain is firmly rooted in fishery products, it's nearly impossible to remove due to its 30+ year half life.
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dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Today, workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan tested out a system that will start cleaning up an enormous volume of radioactive water there.
The water has flooded many buildings at the complex, and it has seriously complicated efforts to bring the crisis there to an end. But it's also essential to keep the reactor cores from overheating.
In fact, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, has been pumping water continuously into the crippled nuclear plant, ever since the March 11 tsunami knocked out the system that was supposed to keep the reactor cores from overheating.
The result is that there's now enough radioactive water there to fill something like 40 Olympic swimming pools.
Per Peterson, chair of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, says that contaminated water is actually a good thing — if you consider what could have happened instead.
"Most of the radioactive material that was released from the damaged fuel was actually washed out into this water, instead of going out into the environment," Peterson says. "And that's good."
But it's also a huge problem when it comes to cleaning up the plant, because the radioactive water keeps workers at bay. So TEPCO hired several companies to build a water decontamination plant. They're hoping the plant will be fully operational later this week.
Removing Radioactive Sludge
The challenge is to remove radioactive cesium and other elements that are dissolved in the water.
The water is being pumped from the flooded basements into holding tanks. From those tanks it will go through a filtration system, something like a charcoal filter, and that captures some of the radioactive material.
We can reduce the radioactivity of the contaminated water by a factor of at least a thousand, so it will be significantly less radioactive than when it was coming in.
- Jarret Adams, spokesman for AREVA, the French nuclear company working with TEPCO
Next, the water will run into a system built by the French nuclear company Areva. They use a chemical reaction to turn the dissolved cesium into a solid material.
"In our step of the process, the radioactive material precipitates out like rain and settles in the bottom of the tanks, where it forms a radioactive sludge," says company spokesman Jarret Adams. "And that sludge can be removed from the tanks and sent for long-term storage."
They use this process at other nuclear facilities, and Adams says it works quite well.
"We can reduce the radioactivity of the contaminated water by a factor of at least a thousand, so it will be significantly less radioactive than when it was coming in."
Cleaning up all this water is likely to take a couple of months. If the water is clean enough, Japanese officials could decide to dump some of it into the ocean. But in the short term, they plan to run it back into the plant. That will keep the cores relatively cool. And as long as they stay cool, they won't ooze more radioactive cesium into the water.
"I think this is an important step forward because once they begin treating this water, then they'll be able to get into the plant and start doing significant repairs," Adams says.
Plugging The Leak
And one of the most important repair jobs will be to stop the reactor vessels from leaking water in the first place. Those leaks mean TEPCO has to keep pumping more and more water into the reactors to keep them cool. There are several ideas are in play to plug the leaks.
"One of the ones that's been suggested is to literally fill the space between the containment vessel and the building walls with cement or grout," says Peterson from Berkeley. "It's possible that one might also be able using robots to get in and patch places where the leaks are occurring as well." Related NPR Stories Some Japanese Children To Wear Radiation Detectors June 15, 2011 In Report, Japan Says It Was 'Unprepared' For Fukushima Disaster June 7, 2011 Is The Future Of Nuclear Power In Minireactors? June 6, 2011 Germany Moves To Shutter Nuclear Power Stations May 31, 2011
Once the leaks are patched, the utility can fill the three damaged reactor vessels completely with water, without flooding the rest of the plant. Not only would that keep the reactor cores cool, but this clean water would serve as an effective radiation shield. In fact, a water shield proved to be key to cleaning up the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania, back in 1979.
"It was possible to remove the fuel because you could flood water up above the level of the fuel, provide shielding, and then workers could get in to manipulate damaged fuel, and get it out," Peterson says.
Eventually, they'll need to do the same thing at Fukushima Daiichi, though as with Three Mile Island, that process is likely to take many years.
Disclaimer: The following is from a Japanese blog. What's happening to children in Koriyama City in Fukushima right now? Nosebleed, diarrhea, lack of energy - "Effect of radiation unknown" says the doctor
Report by Ao Ideta, Tokyo Shinbun, June 16, 2011
On June 12, a non-profit organization called "The Bridge to Chernobyl" (チェルノブイリへのかけはし) held a free clinic in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, 50 kilometers [west] from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.
Worried about the effect of radiation exposure, 50 families brought their children to see the doctor.
A 39-year-old mother of two told the doctor that her 6-year-old daughter had nosebleed everyday for 3 weeks in April. For 1 week, the daughter bled copiously from both nostrils. The mother said their doctor told her it was just a seasonal allergy from pollen. Her other child, 2-year-old son, had nosebleed from end of April to May.
The pediatrician from The Bridge to Chernobyl, Yurika Hashimoto, told the mother it was hard to determine whether the nosebleed was the result of radiation exposure, but they should have the blood test done for white blood cells. It was important to keep record, the doctor advised.
The family move out temporarily from Koriyama City to Saitama Prefecture after the March 11 earthquake, but came back to Koriyama at the end of March.
The mother said about 10% of pupils at the elementary school have left Koriyama. Each school in Koriyama decides whether to have the pupils drink local milk that the school provide, which tends to concentrate radioactive materials. In her daughter's school, it is up to the parents to decide. But the mother said she let the daughter drink milk with other children because the daughter didn't want to get excluded by other children for not drinking milk with them.
A 40-year-old father of a 4-month-old baby daughter was so worried that he never let the daughter go outside, even though she didn't exhibit any ill effect of radiation so far. He said, "I'm so worried. I don't know how to defend ourselves."
I [the reporter of the story] used the radiation monitoring device over the low bush near the place where this event was being held. It measured 2.33 microsieverts/hour. As I raised the device higher, the radiation level went down to 1 microsievert/hour. The highest air radiation measured in Koriyama City was 8.26 microsieverts/hour on March 15. Since middle of May, it has been about 1.3 microsievert/hour.
If you live one year in a place with 1.3 microsievert/hour radiation, the cumulative radiation will exceed 11 millisieverts. [And that's only the external exposure.]
A 40-year-old mother with a 6-year-old son was angry, and said "Doctors, researchers, they all say different things. I don't understand how the evacuation areas are determined. Take Iitate-mura, for example. They just let the villagers get exposed to high radiation for a month, and when the air radiation level got lower they told them to move out. We can't trust the national government, we can't trust Fukushima prefectural government." Her family just built a new house, and she was not sure how they could survive economically if they moved. If they moved, when would they be able to come back? What about cost of moving, or the psychological effect on her child? She just couldn't decide what to do.
Japanese nuclear plant halts operation to clean contaminated water because of a rapid rise in radiation
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The caesium absorption tower at Fukushima Fukushima workers detected a sharp radiation increase in the system's caesium-absorbing component. Photograph: AP
Officials at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant suspended an operation to clean contaminated water hours after it had begun because of a rapid rise in radiation.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which operates the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is investigating the cause and could not say when the clean-up will resume, company spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said.
Fresh water is being pumped in to cool damaged reactor cores, and is becoming contaminated in the process. Around 105,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water have pooled across the plant, and could overflow within a couple of weeks if action is not taken.
In earlier tests, the water treatment system reduced caesium levels in the water to about one ten-thousandth of their original levels. The system began full operations on Friday after a series of problems involving leaks and valve flaws.
The system was suspended in early Saturday when workers detected a sharp radiation increase in the system's caesium-absorbing component, Matsumoto said. Radioactivity in one of 24 cartridges, which was expected to last for a few weeks, had already reached its limit within five hours, he said.
Japan's 11 March earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to the nuclear plant, incapacitating its crucial cooling systems and causing three reactor cores to melt. Tepco aims to bring the reactors to a stable cold shutdown state by January next year.
The water treatment system is to be eventually connected to a cooling system so the treated water can be reused. But treating the water will create an additional headache – tons of highly radioactive sludge will require a separate long-term storage space.
The Fukushima crisis shattered Japan's confidence in the safety of nuclear energy and prompted anti-nuclear sentiment. But there are also concerns that Japan will face a serious summertime power crunch unless more of its reactors get back on line.
Of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors, more than 30 – including six at Fukushima Daiichi and several others that stopped due to the quake – are out of operation.
The economy and industry minister, Banri Kaieda, said on Saturday that the rest of the nuclear plants in Japan are safe and their reactors should resume operations as soon as their ongoing regular checks are completed. He said nationwide inspections this week have found that Japanese nuclear power plants are now prepared for accidents as severe as the one that crippled Fukushima Daiichi.
Resumption of about a dozen reactors undergoing regular checkups is up in the air amid growing local residents' fear of nuclear accidents. Many of the plants' hometown officials have said restarting any pending reactors would be impossible amid the ongoing crisis.
Kaieda, however, said Japan needs the power. "Stable electric supply is indispensable for Japan's reconstruction from the disaster and its economic recovery," he said in a statement.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency instructed Japanese nuclear operators to improve their preparedness for severe accidents earlier this month and then conducted nationwide on-site inspections.
The inspections focused on measures to reduce the risk of hydrogen explosions inside containment buildings as one of the lessons learned from the Fukushima crisis, the world's worst atomic accident since Chernobyl.
Japanese nuclear plant operators have already taken other steps to improve accident management since the disaster to maintain core cooling capacity during blackouts. http://www.guardian.co.uk/w...ater-decontamination
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dennis_6 Member
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Features Fukushima: It's much worse than you think Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 12:50 Email Article Email Print Article Print Share article Share Send Feedback Send Feedback
Many Japanese citizens are now permanently displaced from their homes due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster [GALLO/GETTY]
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."
Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.
"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."
Radiation monitors for children
Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.
TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.
Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.
In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.
"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.
Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."
Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.
"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."
According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".
"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."
Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.
The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.
"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."
Blame the US?
In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.
Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.
"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."
Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.
"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."
As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.
"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."
A problem of infinite proportions
Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years. "But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that."
Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".
Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.
"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."
Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.
"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."
Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.
"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."
Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.
"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."
Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.
"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."
Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
Saturday marked the 100th day since this disaster started, and it is still getting worse, either in fact or in our understanding of just how bad it is. Neither the nuclear industry or the government even has a meaningful timeline or cost estimate to fully remediate this mess.
For the rest of Japan the disaster ended when the last waves of the tsunami rolled back into the ocean on March 11, but Fukushima is trapped in a never-ending limbo of ever-worsening news.
It was just one small industrial facility on a beach, how could it have such a large, destructive foot print?
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10:52 AM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Features Fukushima: It's much worse than you think Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 12:50 Email Article Email Print Article Print Share article Share Send Feedback Send Feedback
Many Japanese citizens are now permanently displaced from their homes due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster [GALLO/GETTY]
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."
TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.
"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"
Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.
"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."
Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.
"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."
Radiation monitors for children
Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.
TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.
Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.
In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.
"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.
Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."
Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.
"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."
According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".
"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."
Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.
The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.
"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."
Blame the US?
In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.
Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.
"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."
Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.
"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."
As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.
"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."
A problem of infinite proportions
Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years. "But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that."
Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".
Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.
"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."
Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.
"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."
Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.
"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."
Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.
"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."
Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.
"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."
Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
It's only whacko to you because you choose to believe that nuclear fission is the best thing since sliced bread and refuse to even acknowledge its deficits in both cost and safety terms. In your opinion, events like Fukushima, Chernobyl, TMI, etc, are just aberrations and do not serve to illustrate the severity of negative consequences when something goes wrong in the nuclear power industry.
More importantly, the 60 some odd thousand Fukushima nuclear refugees now know the truth that you choose to ignore.
Maybe in some pretend-land where perfect engineers get it perfect one hundred percent of the time nuclear power is a viable option, but in the here and now with human engineers and managers the certainty of another Chernobyl, another Fukushima, is just that, a certainty.
To put it in to scale: The mistakes that happened with Fukushima weren't even hard to predict. In fact, they'd been predicted ahead of time. They could have protected the generators. It would have cost a million, maybe even two, sure, but the consequences are going to cost hundreds of Billions of dollars. Since the nuclear industry can't even come close to being able to afford that the taxpayers are going to foot the bill.
Maybe the taxpayers are thinking that it's whacko that they're going to have to bail out TEPCO for the second (and possibly the) worst nuclear disaster in the history of this planet.
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04:05 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Another "whacko" article... http://www.q13fox.com/news/...0617,0,5968165.story Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima Medical professionals publish report highlighting post-Fukushima mortality spike.
Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima
Berit Anderson Q13 FOX News Web Reporter
8:44 p.m. PDT, June 17, 2011
Physician Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published a report Monday highlighting a 35% spike in northwest infant mortality after Japan's nuclear meltdown.
The report spotlighted data from the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on infant mortality rates in eight northwest cities, including Seattle, in the 10 weeks after Fukushima's nuclear meltdown.
The average number of infant deaths for the region moved from an average of 9.25 in the four weeks before Fukushima' nuclear meltdown, to an average of 12.5 per week in the 10 weeks after. The change represents a 35% increase in the northwest's infant mortality rates.
In comparison, the average rates for the entire U.S. rose only 2.3%
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06:29 PM
Jun 21st, 2011
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
The article doesn't link to the Sherman/Mangano essay, but a quick search reveals this piece that begins "U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate.” The authors churn through recently published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to justify their claim that the mortality rate for infants in the Pacific Northwest has jumped since the crisis at Fukushima began on March 11. That data is publicly available, and a check reveals that the authors’ statistical claims are critically flawed—if not deliberate mistruths
quote
More important, why did the authors choose to use only the four weeks preceding the Fukushima disaster? Here is where we begin to pick up a whiff of data fixing. Though the CDC doesn’t provide the data in its weekly reports in an easy-to-manipulate spreadsheet format (that would be too easy), it does provide a handy web interface that allows individuals to access HTML tables for specific cities. I copied and pasted the 2011 figures from the eight cities in question and culled all data aside from the mortality rates for children under one year old. You can see those numbers in a Google doc I’ve posted here. (Note: Because I use the most recent report, my mortality figures are slightly higher than the Sherman and Mangano’s, as some deaths aren’t reported to medical authorities until weeks afterward. The small difference doesn’t change the analysis.)
Better still, take a look at this plot that I’ve made of the data:
quote
The Y-axis is the total number of infant deaths each week in the eight cities in question. While it certainly is true that there were fewer deaths in the four weeks leading up to Fukushima (in green) than there have been in the 10 weeks following (in red), the entire year has seen no overall trend. When I plotted a best-fit line to the data (in blue), Excel calculated a very slight decrease in the infant mortality rate. Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.
This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should). But picking only the data that suits your analysis isn’t science—it’s politics. Beware those who would confuse the latter with the former.
quote
phonedawgz
Your story is wacko
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05:43 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
Another "whacko" article... http://www.q13fox.com/news/...0617,0,5968165.story Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima Medical professionals publish report highlighting post-Fukushima mortality spike.
Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima
Berit Anderson Q13 FOX News Web Reporter
8:44 p.m. PDT, June 17, 2011
Physician Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published a report Monday highlighting a 35% spike in northwest infant mortality after Japan's nuclear meltdown.
The report spotlighted data from the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on infant mortality rates in eight northwest cities, including Seattle, in the 10 weeks after Fukushima's nuclear meltdown.
The average number of infant deaths for the region moved from an average of 9.25 in the four weeks before Fukushima' nuclear meltdown, to an average of 12.5 per week in the 10 weeks after. The change represents a 35% increase in the northwest's infant mortality rates.
In comparison, the average rates for the entire U.S. rose only 2.3%
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05:45 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Seriously Dennis it doesn't take much of a thinker to realize that if there were a real 35% increase in infant mortality in the northwest the government, the CDC and the main stream media would have been all over it.
Post your wacko posts. The non-thinking wackos will read it and believe it. Everyone else will just doesn't care what you post anymore.
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08:06 PM
PFF
System Bot
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
Seriously Dennis it doesn't take much of a thinker to realize that if there were a real 35% increase in infant mortality in the northwest the government, the CDC and the main stream media would have been all over it.
Post your wacko posts. The non-thinking wackos will read it and believe it. Everyone else will just doesn't care what you post anymore.
35% increase in mortality does not mean huge numbers of infant deaths, check your math, or just maybe read the article.
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08:27 PM
DeLorean00 Member
Posts: 4251 From: Sacramento, CA / Reno, NV Registered: Aug 2005
So ok. I haven't been able to read this whole thread. Can someone summarize the situation in a short simple post? Also how does this rank when compared to other nuclear disasters?
Thanks for any help. Forgive my small brain.
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08:38 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
So ok. I haven't been able to read this whole thread. Can someone summarize the situation in a short simple post? Also how does this rank when compared to other nuclear disasters?
Thanks for any help. Forgive my small brain.
Core Melt through suspected.
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08:41 PM
Jun 22nd, 2011
carnut122 Member
Posts: 9122 From: Waleska, GA, USA Registered: Jan 2004
35% increase in mortality does not mean huge numbers of infant deaths, check your math, or just maybe read the article.
I read the article. Anyone (read YOU if you believe it) who believes there is a real 35% increase in infant mortality in the northwest United States caused by Fukushima is simply put...
a wacko.
edit ----
btw I think your reference is not actually a wacko but instead just a liar. They can't be totally wacko and be intelligent enough to manipulate the data to make it say what the lies they want you to believe.
[This message has been edited by phonedawgz (edited 06-22-2011).]
... if there were a real 35% increase in infant mortality in the northwest the government, the CDC and the main stream media would have been all over it.
Curious, who do you consider "mainstream" in the media today? Print? Radio? Broadcast TV? Cable?
And, for the record, I don't attribute much to the infant mortality story, but do realize that the attacks on it are primarily a diversion from the real story at Fukushima.
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01:49 PM
dennis_6 Member
Posts: 7196 From: between here and there Registered: Aug 2001
An article in Japanese, if you put it through google translate you will find it is talking about 30 workers who can not be identified, due to Tepco not keeping proper documentation, including radiation dosage. http://mainichi.jp/select/j...0000m040069000c.html
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04:15 PM
phonedawgz Member
Posts: 17091 From: Green Bay, WI USA Registered: Dec 2009
