Fearmongering over water leaks at Fukushima

[wtmusic]

You would have to drink more than 2 liters of water every day for a year - directly out of an irradiated water tank at Fukushima - to equal your annual radiation exposure in the U.S. Sorry to break the poutrage/hysteria balloon (not really).



"I’ll start with the bottom line first: despite all word to the contrary, there is no reason for anyone to be concerned that “contaminated” water from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station is going to cause them any physical harm, now or in the future. The only way my bottom line statement could possibly be wrong is if some really nutty activists decide to occupy the site and drink directly from the water tanks that have been assumed to be leaking. Those nutty activists would have to be very patient people, because they would have to drink that water for many years before any negative effects might show up.

Fish swimming in the harbor have nothing to worry about; people who eat fish that swam in the harbor have nothing to worry about; people who decide to swim in the harbor would have nothing to worry about. A basic tenet of radiation protection is that the farther from the source you are, the less you have to worry about, but I am not sure how I can state that you have less than nothing to worry about.

Nearly all of the fear mongering stories I have read about the water leaking from the large number of tanks on the site of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station contain few, if any facts that allow an accurate risk assessment. A long time ago, I learned that there were several ways to respond to a report of “contaminated” water. The most effective way was to make a fairly quick determination of the level of contamination so the appropriate resources could be applied to the problem."

http://atomicinsights.com/fear-mongering-over-water-leaks-at-fukushima-dai-ichi/#comment-61648

Annual U.S. exposure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

[nebenaube]

1. Yeah, these days it's harmless

20 years ago it would have been an act of war. Thirsty? You drink first.

[villager]

2. you can always tell how instantly dismissable a post is, by use of the word "poutrage"

n/t

[wtmusic]

3. And there is no one more dismissive than the poutraged. nt

[villager]

7. actually, no one more poutraged than those using the word!

[darkangel218]

4. lol!! +1

[darkangel218]

5. .

thanks for the laugh!

[WovenGems]

6. I don't believe anything I can't see

Thus there is no such thing as radiation. If there were I would feel a bit hinky about swimming in glowing waters. Just sayin'. Whoever wrote that article rolled their Phd in physics into a joint and then did some writing.

[wtmusic]

8. In this situation, that maxim will serve you well. nt

[Downwinder]

9. Tell that to the Japanese Government. They are the ones that

seem concerned about it.

Personally with my MS I find radiation invigorating. I noticed it first on the weekend when the cloud came over.

[johnd83]

11. It would be interesting to see a comparison of coal sludge vs. this water

People seriously underestimate the huge amount of radiation released by coal plants.

[wtmusic]

12. You get just over 3 times as much radiation living within 50 miles of a coal plant

as a nuclear plant.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html

[johnd83]

13. That is the atmospheric exposure

My interest is in the radiation of the coal ash byproducts that are stored in open pits in the US (there was a dam break a few years ago) vs the contaminated water. The fear mongering about nuclear power is unhelpful when it is historically pretty safe compared to coal. The problems with past accidents have been poor designs, aging reactors, and corner cutting.

[johnd83]

14. FYI

http://science.time.com/2013/08/05/amidst-economic-and-safety-concerns-nuclear-advocates-pin-their-hopes-on-new-designs/

I saw a technical presentation by TerraPower a few years ago (ah, grad school memories). They are a very impressive group.

[dumbcat]

16. Jury Results

Received via PM. I wasn't on the jury.

You serve your ALEC Masters well, little WT...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=52907

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

This is an outright attack on another DUer. Blatantly calling the original poster an ALEC member merely for posting a factual article from a respected source. The poster being alerted on has a propensity to call names and make personal attacks on anyone disagreeing with his ideology. He should be sent an indication that DU does not accept this type of behavior in one of the more civilized groups.

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Wed Aug 28, 2013, 05:42 PM, and voted 6-0 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: I disagree with the OP but the ALEC reference is below the belt- Hide
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given

Thank you.

[FBaggins]

18. It won't make a difference.

He's entirely blind to how childish and inappropriate that behavior is... and actually thinks he's scoring points with that line. Obsessively replying to his own thread to try to bump the accusation.

It's as obviously fallacious as "Reagan loved football... so anyone who likes football (especially if they also fail to agree with my judgment on the #1 basketball team in the world) is just like Reagan!"

A 6-0 will just convince him that DU is overrun with hidden ALEC minions.

Laughable if it weren't so sad.

[wtmusic]

21. I don't know what ALEC is

but apparently this is a poster I've blocked , and apparently for good reason.

Thanks for heads up.

[caraher]

26. ALEC is a right-wing "think tank" that writes legislation

The American Legislative Exchange Council is basically a fountain of conservative talking points and bad laws. The ALEC smear in use here is that anyone who favors nuclear power is (allegedly) just promoting the ALEC agenda, characterized in the realm of energy as being pro-nuke and anti-renewables, with a healthy dose of fossil fuel promotion.

[Yo_Mama]

17. This is beyond-belief-BS

Sorry, but they have some very highly irradiated water in some of those tanks, and it's contaminated enough to kill you if you drank it, or make you very sick indeed if you just stood next to it for a day.

100 milliSieverts an hour was tested off water in the recent leak from the tank. That's not safe at all. Nor is this disputable - TEPCO's own testing showed very high levels of radiation.

http://news.yahoo.com/operator-crippled-japan-nuclear-plant-says-tank-leaked-025549782.html

The latest leak is so contaminated that a person standing half a meter (1 ft 8 inches) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.

After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

To have leaks of water this contaminated at the site poses a clear risk to the workers at the site and to continued work at the site, which is why Japan suggesting to the IAEA that it was a level 3 incident after receiving the test results, and why the IAEA agreed with that rating. That is also why the Japanese government is getting involved.

Currently these leak don't pose any threat at all to people in the US, but that has nothing to do with the dangers in Japan or to those workers, and international standards of nuclear safety prohibit releases of water that contaminated.

I'm not even going to read the full link you posted - what you quoted is enough to prove that I might as well use my Bible as a radiation counter to determine risk. To believe that crap, one must believe that the IAEA, the Japanese government and TEPCO are in a conspiracy to pretend there are much higher risks that there are. Does that seem even remotely plausible to you?

[caraher]

19. It's worth looking at the link

That's because it's easy to spot the error - the blog author uses a New York Times piece from June about a different contaminated water sample to establish the baseline contamination of the water. Needless to say, that source was less concentrated and leads to all the "safe to drink" nonsense claims that follow.

I'm going to guess that was not an innocent error...

[Yo_Mama]

22. But what does that leak have to do with this leak, or with the overall situation at the plant?

At best, it's irrelevant. At worst, it is a deliberate attempt at obfuscation, which I do not really accuse WTMusic of because I don't believe it.

But this is a group which hopefully aims for information, and not misinformation, so I thought I'd correct the record.

And really, can't we all just sit down and contemplate the fact that Japan thought this was a Level 3 incident, and the IAEA agreed?

[wtmusic]

20. If you're not going to read the whole link I posted

then you'd never know that in the comments someone challenged Rod on the very point you brought up (see comments by Jon Weston).

Rod has had to retract statements before and he's been forthright about doing so. In this case, apparently Tepco released two different numbers which disagree by a factor of 1 million, and he has pledged to look into it. Maybe Rod saw the two numbers and deliberately chose the lower to make his point. Or maybe Reuters deliberately chose the higher number to get more clicks on their story. Or both.

The difference is that you will never get a retraction from Reuters if the lower number does prove correct, so it may be worth following up with the nuclear engineer, don' t you think?

[Yo_Mama]

23. No, because I read the TEPCO releases still.

And there is independent confirmation from the IAEA and the Japanese government.

I have highly respected your contributions to this board, but this one happens to be unmitigated bullshit. There is less highly irradiated water in many tanks at the plant, But even in June, anyone who had actually been following along should have known that this claim was complete and absolute nonsense:

"I’ll start with the bottom line first: despite all word to the contrary, there is no reason for anyone to be concerned that “contaminated” water from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station is going to cause them any physical harm, now or in the future. The only way my bottom line statement could possibly be wrong is if some really nutty activists decide to occupy the site and drink directly from the water tanks that have been assumed to be leaking. Those nutty activists would have to be very patient people, because they would have to drink that water for many years before any negative effects might show up.

Among the stuff in those water tanks is water that was pumped out of the basements of the turbine rooms, which is very highly contaminated indeed. Most has been filtered to some extent, but it remains very highly contaminated. There is no way a competent nuclear engineer who has been following the ins and outs of this thing could possibly have believed the above statement in June, unless he were insane.

Seriously. That's true. It has been true and although a more serious attempt is being made now to address the situation, it remains true. And it will be true for years to come. I am not amused and I don't regard this as a good faith error. I place it in the same class as those people who maintain that if you eat tuna caught off the West Coast you are going to get harmful doses of radiation. Complete, obvious nonsense that's clearly not innocently promulgated.

[wtmusic]

24. Do you have links to the TEPCO releases/IAEA/government statements?

Thanks.

[Yo_Mama]

27. Here's the link to TEPCO standard bulletins

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

Of particular interest regarding the new plan for water:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu13_e/images/130828e0101.pdf

TEPCO has set up this page for sampling reports:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/index-e.html

IAEA you can google, but it's been widely reported. Here's a link to the Level 3 designation:
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201308280037

And here's an article reporting TEPCO's press conference at which they said the most recent leak in the water tank was probably going on for a while, because workers near that tank were showing elevated radiation exposure levels in July:
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201308280059

representative of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, told a meeting of a working subcommittee of the Nuclear Regulation Authority on Aug. 27 that the leak had likely already begun by July. He said that inference is based on a study of beta-ray doses in workers who each spent about 2.5 hours a day at a radio relay station, some 20 meters from the storage tank where the leak occurred.
...
The leaking tank, which utilizes steel sheets connected by bolts, entered service in October 2011. It used to hold highly radioactive water, one liter of which contained 136,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium in addition to 200 million becquerels of beta-ray source materials, which include radioactive strontium.

Not drinkable, my friend.

[wtmusic]

29. Ok, and I'm supposed to wade through how many reports only to find out

your claim was without merit to begin with?

Case in point: I googled the IAEA Level 3 designation and discovered not only has the IAEA never confirmed it (what you say has been "widely reported" ) but has criticized Japan's NRA for making it, saying it is creating confusion:

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/fukushima-messages-confusing-iaea-1.1569629#.UiAseGa3Otk

If you're going to make these claims you can back them up with specific references, because I'm not going to do your fact checking for you. Preferably avoiding sources like Asahi Shinbun, whose writer seems to think a becquerel is a unit of weight.

[wtmusic]

25. TEPCO releases from area H4 which the media has seen fit to induce the current fit of hysteria:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

I see three very high radiation readings, one from a pool of leaked water of .1 cubic meters in volume:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2013/1229867_5130.html

and two more at dry locations around the bottom of the tanks

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2013/1229955_5130.html

The rest of samples range from below detectable levels to about ten times the safe drinking level, which diluted in seawater is nothing of consequence. If you want to extrapolate that this one tiny sample is representative of all the water in many, or even one of the tanks, you'd have a hard time justifying it.

[Yo_Mama]

28. I never said ALL the water was this contaminated!

That's a total misdirection. You posted a nonsensical screed from a Person Who Damned Well Should Know Better saying that the water at the site was all fine - not dangerous.

I'm telling you that it is not true - that there are hundreds of tons of highly contaminated water at the site.

I've provided the links to show you that any reasonable person who had been keeping up with news from the site would KNOW that the OP was BS.

The contaminated water at the site has many different levels of contamination. But the basic clue as to why anyone with any knowledge of the situation at all would never write what the person at the OP link did write is that a very major source of contaminated water at the site is from the cooling water constantly sprayed into the reactors, which then drains into the basements of the turbine rooms. That water is flowing the holed reactor vessels, where it is exposed to melted-down fuel, through the torus value (according to TEPCO) and finally into those basements. From those basements water is constantly pumped out and sent through filtration as fast as is practical. The filtration cuts the radioactivity down a lot.

TEPCO's strategy to try to contain the groundwater contamination from the reactor cooling is to try to keep water levels in those basements lower than water levels in the surrounding soil - because they know the basements aren't watertight, so they are trying to keep a situation where the surrounding groundwater flows into the basements as their contamination control.

This is nothing that anyone could possibly call a closed-loop system. It's a mitigating system. Under these circumstances, TEPCO is constantly checking water in drains and so forth and trying to keep contaminant levels there as low as possible.

And why has nothing been down about the none-watertight basements, or the open torus valves? Because it's too hot to work there!

TEPCO also publishes its "roadmap" updates, which can be found here:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/roadmap/conference-e.html

Might want to look at this one:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/roadmap/images/d130627_01-e.pdf

[wtmusic]

30. You could save yourself a lot of time and energy

by avoiding drawing conclusions about how much radiation the water is carrying away from the reactor building, because until I see some kind of reputable link in support of your contention

there are hundreds of tons of highly contaminated water at the site

I'm going to assume this is just a guess.

[BlueToTheBone]

31. Then why not just let it all flow to the sea?

They seem to be expending extraordinary energy to stop that from happening.