Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit | Hacker News Reader

Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit

latimes.com

30 pointsjdp2335 comments

I don't know how to consume news about Fukushima anymore. 100 times the legal limit, 1000 times, a million times. What are we going to do? Evacuate the entire North? A billion times. Evacuate all of Tokyo? A trillion times. Evacuate all of Japan? That's obviously not going to happen.

I just have patience and ignore people telling me they know that the full scale of one in only a handful of major nuclear disasters is going to be relatively harmless/harmful.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

It would appear that this article is exhaggerating more than a little.

The coverage of Fukushima by the mainstream press has only gone to show just how far they are willing to stretch the truth for a headline.

Had this article been written on the basis of actual data from IAEA readings, it probably would have been more moderate.

The measurements in the article are probably these:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040506-e....

Up to 200,000 - 300,000 Bq/cm^3 (200 - 300 MBq/L) of I-131, measured at the outflow screen right next to reactor unit #2. (This inside the protective "harbor" of seawalls; there's maps in the TEPCO link). The statutory limit is given there as 0.04 Bq/cm^3.

For comparison, at the ~30 km seawater sampling perimeter, the I-131 measurements don't appear to have exceeded 0.08 Bq/cm^3 (80 Bq/L):

http://www.mext.go.jp/english/radioactivity_level/detail/130...

This explains part of the confusion: they're sampling at the plant, and they're sampling tens of miles out, where the levels are diluted by 6 - 7 orders of magnitude. So wildly different numbers are being reported, but they are in fact consistent.

IAEA is the nuclear industry's main lobby agency. Is like asking OPEC what do they they think about the Gulf oil spill. So no, coming with data provided by them is no better than what you see in the newspapers.

So we trust no-one? There is a healthy level of scepticism but I think you are taking it a bit far.

The data is what has been actually recorded by Tepco and others and is certainly reported in good detail without being fudged or sensationalised like the mainstream media is doing.

It would seem that to trust no-one but be cautious of all reports is the correct stance.

We know there IS radiation and we know that pretty much ANY radiation coming from any plant that has the words "disaster" "chernobyl" "meltdown" "breach" or any other range of descriptors is certainly BAD.

So, take-aways == radiation escapes, radiation bad, don't know truth == stay very far away.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/201142...

As well.

It cites a lot of numbers, but doesn't seem to give reference to actual reports. Nor does the article consider that Cherynobl is still not fully understood. The UN report on the effects of Chernobyl put the total casualties to ~4000. This article claims a New York University study reports almost a million. That's a big gap.

The IAEA report may be giving out false data. Yet it's hard to find any other organization that is publishing their data to corroborate or falsify the IAEA findings.

The mainstream media isn't helping to clear up the issue either. My point is that they're just making it worse. Some are heinously using it to further some political bias or agenda.

All I'm saying is that reporting levels as 7.5 million times some un-stated limit isn't very good journalism.

[Waits for XKCD to revise his cute infographic.]

I dislike all the trumpeting of the levels of radiation compared to some "legal limit". I wish it was in terms of effect on humans. I guess that is a conversion I could do, but many people will not do that, and will just be horrified by the 7.5 million figure without knowing how bad things actually are.

This is especially true if the government requires zero radioactive material to appear in the sea water. So any accidental discharge is going to have some scary multiplier over the near zero levels.

The media also seem to also like the Becquerel scale along with cm³ instead of m³ to make the numbers extra scary.

I found an interesting article that describes some safe levels and also the calculation of Becquerel to Sieverts. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110321p2a00m0na006000c...

Did this high radiation persist in the time between the two cited measurements? That is very important information, especially considering how other anomalous measurements have been reported in the media.

Look at this presentation/PDF from stanford which shows what happened within the reactors. Look at THE LAST slide in which is says that the entire core of reactor 4 was outside the containment vessel at the time of the disaster for inspection and was housed in the cooling pond. It states that it believes the reactor went into full meltdown in fresh air

The materials from reactor 4 core appear to be completely dissipated into the atmosphere, and that we are really really not hearing the truth from japan.

http://iis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/6615/March21_JapanSeminar.p...

> It states that it believes the reactor went into full meltdown in fresh air.The materials from reactor 4 core appear to be completely dissipated into the atmosphere [...]

You COULD read it that way, but the bottom of the slide says in big bold red letters that 'It is currently unclear if release from fuel pool already happened'.

To me it seems most of the bullet points on this slide are conjectures, not statements of fact (though note I haven't been keeping up to date on other news sources about the situation in Fukushima).

You don't need to question a statement that is already couched in terms like "it believes" and "appear to."

Or were you meaning to question whether they believe what they say they believe?

Well, considering that this was from 3/21 and since then there have been further revelations that things have only gotten worse.

Look at these pictures and tell me if you think it is possible that a reactor core outside the containment would not have release material.

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

Sure, we can speculate that it has not yet released 100% - and given the fact that refugees are being turned away for fear of contamination at hospitals, bodies from the Tsunami are too radioactive to be recoverable, and reports are stating levels that are just freaking scary - I prefer to err on the side of caution.

I think that in such cases its bettr to assume the worst case as opposed to saying "its probably less than we think".

Those pictures show the outer roof blown off by the hydrogen explosions. If you'd watched that Stanford presentation, you'd know that it's just a superstructure that essentially provides weather shielding. The fuel pools are deep in concrete in the actual containment structure. Sure, it looks bad, but you really can't tell at all from those pictures what's going on below.

And where did you hear that "bodies from the tsunami are too radioactive to be recoverable"? That's such a fantastic claim that it definitely requires a citation. (Unless you refer to the plant workers that were killed. They may very well be contaminated, but that's inside the plant. We've known the radiation levels inside the plant have been high since it happened, no news there.)

I'm not a nuclear apologist by any means, but I don't like such obvious speculation however way it goes.

The reactor vessels are within concrete, but the spent fuel pools (what was possibly exposed at reactor 4) are outside of the containment and ARE open to the air. That's why the tried to use the helicopters and were able to use the pumping truck to put water into them.

http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...

Also, we are seeing reports, such as this thread of extremely high radiation - we already know that Japan was slow to report actual numbers and each report that comes out is something along the lines of "XXX times [whatever] levels"

Look again at the last slide where is specifically says "into fresh air"

I am not saying the pools are like backyard swimming pools with open exposure to the sky - but I would believe that if pretty every other report is claiming that radiation is very high there is clear evidence to show that being the case.

EDIT: Try clicking the link and reading it, there are multiple articles that clearly state "Up to 1,000 bodies of victims of Japan's quake and tsunami remain uncollected in the exclusion zone around a stricken nuclear plant because of radiation fears."

EDIT 2: please make an attempt to google fantastic claims if you don't believe them, and others should make it a point to link to sources when posting something that seems fantastical/really alarming.

"Too radioactive to be recoverable" and "because of radiation fears" seem rather different.

Just like you might not recover a body from a minefield, but it doesn't mean the body is explosive.

Correct - and I am not making claims either way, though I guess I could be more clear -- the fact is that the radiation is too high to recover - either the bodies themselves are too dangerous, or the surrounding environment is too dangerous. Either way -- recovery of more than 1000 bodies is hampered by radiation.

If I understand what you're saying, I think your analysis is alarmist.

The fact is that there is an evacuation area around the Fukushima plant established out of an abundance of caution. The highest readings that have been taken within that region --- not including the plant itself, which is a different story --- are still below a level that would pose a plausible threat to human health; they're in the single-digit mSv/hr range.

It's also important to understand that the evacuation area is designed to address multiple vectors for radiological health threats. Not all radionuclides disperse the same way, and the ones with the strongest impact on the environment settle out of the atmosphere as sediment. Presumably, you don't want kids stuffing their mouths with I-131 that settled in their sandbox. To avoid scenarios like this, you evacuate.

But most laypeople (of which I am definitely one) start with a conception that is much more primitive than reality. They imagine gamma radiation zinging through the air and making people's hair stand up and giving the carp in the lake third eyes. Not so. The most radiologically active stuff dispersed over a distance around the plant is probably no longer airborne; it settles out of the air quickly (and, not for nothing, but also has a short half-life).

It is also a problem that these bodies have been in some (tragic) cases sitting out in the air --- not because of radiation, but because of the scale of the disaster across Japan --- and thus the same rationale that motivates the evacuation (to avoid pointless exposure to Cs-137 and I-131 sediment) also suggests maybe it's not a good idea to distribute the personal effects of contaminated disaster victims. But that doesn't mean the corpses are glowing. It may, for instance, mean that the jackets of 1 out of every 400 people have to be bagged differently.

It is simply not the case that the region within 30km of the Daiichi plant is a nuclear hellscape.

Agreed, and you're right - maybe the tone should be more properly metered. With that said, it is important to note that it is apparently difficult to get a clear idea of the truth.

Yes, you did: "bodies from the Tsunami are too radioactive to be recoverable".

Deleted comment

Thanks for the guidance, however when one is commenting on the content of my post such in such a way to make it seem as though I am spreading FUD when they have failed to do even the most cursory check on the claim themselves, it is quite ok to point that out.

If we are going to try an impose some sort of posting etiquette here on HN such as reminding me to discuss content rather than commentors then I suggest we remind people to make attempts to look into things themselves before hitting the down arrow and asking for sources of information that should be readily available to anyone staying abreast of the details surrounding the topic at hand via a simple google search.

Deleted comment

Point taken - Ill redact such a statement made in a moment of heightened emotionality :)

I really haven't been following this too much. I've been using HN as my news source -- but last I recall from some threads a week or so ago was that everything was overblown and you'd get more radiation from eating a banana?

Is it still the case and this is overblown or have things actually gotten bad enough that if you lived near the power plant moving further away might be recommended?

The Union of Concerned Scientists' recent 3-week update is at http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

You might consider getting news from other sources as well. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has dailyish updates at http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/tatsujiro-... ...

That's fear mongering. The presentation says nothing of the sort. It says that if the reactor 4 pool went dry, there would be fuel meltdown and release of fission products directly into the air. It then boldly says that it's unclear what the water level was.

Also note that what's dispersed is the fission products, i.e. noble gases, iodine, cesium, etc. The fuel itself will not leave in any significant quantity.

Fair enough, I am not trying to fear monger though, I think multiple reactor meltdowns, lack of clear information and continuous reports of radiation levels XXX times [some factor] are doing a good enough job.

Now, even though my Grandfather was a nuclear engineer for GE for 50 years and worked on Hanford and many other plant designs during his career -- I really am quite naive to the matter.

However, that doesn't preclude me from taking a cautionary stance simply because I don't know the empirical truth of the matter directly.

Actually, that presentation comes from an Areva engineer, not from Stanford. Here's the original (internal?) version:

http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/03/30/areva-fd-presentatio...

Some interesting intrigue here. Apparently the version you linked redacts the author's name from the second page (Matthias Braun), and removes the signature with his name and the Areva logo from every following page.

There's a NYT article that confirms this much:

Stanford, where Dr. Hanson is a visiting scholar, posted the slides online after the March presentation. At that time, each of the roughly 30 slides was marked with the Areva symbol or name, and each also gave the name of their author, Matthias Braun.

The posted document was later changed to remove all references to Areva, and Dr. Braun and Areva did not reply to questions about what simulation code or codes the company may have used to arrive at its analysis of the Fukushima disaster.

“We cannot comment on that,” Jarret Adams, a spokesman for Areva, said of the slide presentation. The reason, he added, was “because it was not an officially released document.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/science/03meltdown.html?pa...

http://www.houshasen-pref-ibaraki.jp/present/result01.html

This is a site with real-time radiation levels . The readings from this, and several other sites, have been verified as accurate.

I see a disaster, but not a coverup.

edit: http://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/kankyo/saigai/ is the radiation report from Yokohama.

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