Voice of America reports:
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was informed by Japanese authorities that the fire took place at a storage pond for spent fuel rods at the plant’s number 4 unit, and that radioactivity was released directly into the atmosphere at dose rates equivalent to 4,000 chest X-rays every hour.
This site is a real contribution to public understanding of climate science and public policy. So, I hope you will not take this comment wrongly. I think all the posts about the nuclear power problems in Japan are off target. Actually, given the double whammy of an extreme earthquake and a tsunami, they have held up well. Remember the Japanese plants are 40 plus years old. Let’s not be alarmist about the wrong things. Nuclear power is one alternative along with renewable sources that may get us off the oil and coal treadmill. Are nuclear power plants more dangerous than coal fired plants? Read Lovelock’s latest book for an revealing comparison of the negative effects of the two sources. Many of us who were once adamantly opposed to nuclear power have changed our minds. In a few years we may regret having frightened the public into banning new nuclear power, as CO2 rises above 450 ppm and the acceleration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have continued to accelerate beyond the levels established in the latest study in Geophysical Research Letters. I would like to see a post that considers these issues and promotes rational discussion rather than panic. Please keep this site active. I check it every day. Thanks.
appreciate your perspective – got it that these are old nukes – if they manage to get thru this with minimal public casualties, that is potentially an argument in favor.
understand also that newer designs are supposed to address these problems –
however – there is a record of hubris in regard to nuclear power, of engineers assuring us from the beginning, that “We’ve thought of everything”
Unfortunately, in each case where there is a problem, the flaws are glaringly obvious, and especially to those who have been tracking the industry for as long as I have.
Emergency cooling vulnerability has been a serious issue since 1971, when tests showed serious problems. Those were papered over at the time, (I attended those hearings in DC as a teenager) but cropped up at TMI, and here.
The issue at this point is really not a safety one, it’s an economic and liability one.
It wasn’t that a ragged bunch of protesters in overalls shut the nuke industry down, the guys in Brooks brothers suits had already done that based on egregious construction flaws and cost overruns that put a number of utilities into chapter 11.
This accident will undoubtably necessitate a costly review, probably multiple retrofits, and redesigns as well. That will take years, and cost billions. Meanwhile, the economy will move on.
We’ll either solve the problem going forward with renewables, which are available, and can provide base load power, or we won’t – because I just don’t believe we can build nuclear plants fast enough, or afford to build as many, as we need.
Just a teeny bit alarmist with your headline. Alarmism is OK if there’s something to be alarmed about, but there isn’t yet. Even VOA seems to have taken down the 4000 chest X-ray claim. For an objective view, try:
http://www.simon-cozens.org/content/radiation-tokyo-how-read-geiger-counter
You make good points, and I hope you’ll stay in touch to keep me informed, I’d like to do something with your graphs but I’m on a tight deadline right at this moment.
There are several factors about “radiation level” measures that can lead us astray –
obviously, counts at the reactor gate are going to be high after a release –
after which they “decline” – meaning, I guess that nuclides are dispersed in the atmosphere ie they “go away”.
except, they don’t go away, they are circulating, being absorbed into the soil, ocean water, and biota, where, depending on what element you’re talking about, they will be taken up, re-taken up, and begin to have effects in the food chain.
Some may possibly contaminate soils and affect the marketability of ag products in the region. Some will concentrate in the food chain up through the top level predators, perhaps on the order of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of times.
If there are products there of the “Mox” fuel from reactor 3, ie plutonium, some could be inhaled, which means, since it’s an alpha emitter, there is no
“sheet of paper” to shield delicate lung tissues from the alpha waves that will
be crashing thru them.
Alarmism is not a good thing, but many people remember the experience of those rescuers at Chernobyl, and Ground zero 911, who believed their government’s assurances that all was safe and well, and later found out differently.