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Post by Roger Clifton on Sept 28, 2013 18:19:45 GMT 9.5
Thanks Ed, for the link. For readers who may be too busy to study the 3-page article, it ends with a punch: "The claim that an evacuation of Tokyo could have been necessary is based on flimsy, easily rebuttable evidence. Furthermore, the falsity of that claim is indicative of the distortions in much of the Fukushima news coverage. That coverage has given rise to baseless fears about Fukushima that have heavily influenced public opinion. It is time to dispel those fears."The footer says the article was first published in Japanese in Newsweek Japan, and that the author is Tokyo based. It seems to me that Newsweek was willing to tell the Japanese people that the hysteria was created and fueled by their own media.
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Post by quokka on Sept 29, 2013 15:52:46 GMT 9.5
Perhaps Slate ran it because the material had to be coaxed from the U.S. government under an FOIA request. Or perhaps its because (by sheerist coincidence) IPCC released AR5 this morning and Slate still has an editor or two who remains a closet realist. It is a bit shocking that this had to be extracted by an FOI request, but I suppose we should be used to that by now. More Fukushima news: Fukushima fisheries to resume trial fishing after samples prove safeVia Hiroshima Syndrome which is very good for news updates. My take on the water situation is that TEPCO have a serious problem, but off site consequences are, at the very worst, small.
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Post by sod on Oct 6, 2013 4:41:31 GMT 9.5
My take on the water situation is that TEPCO have a serious problem, but off site consequences are, at the very worst, small. I actually agree with this assessment, though i believe that we might have different views on how big the problem is. TEPCO is showing again and again, that theyy do not care about security. It is blatantly obvious that saving a few dollars is more important to them than security of radioactive material. a significant number of their top managers should be in prison by now. ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201310040068There seems to be opposition to nuclear power growing even inside the party of prime minister Abe: ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/AJ201310050040Meanwhile TEPCO keeps bribing villages to accept the build up of nuclear facilities: ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201310040060
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Post by quokka on Oct 6, 2013 10:55:44 GMT 9.5
I actually agree with this assessment, though i believe that we might have different views on how big the problem is. A comment I posted elsewhere: Latest leak by the numbers: Volume of leaked water: 430L Activity of water in tank: 200,00 Bq/L (Total beta activity) Cesium-134: 18Bq/L Cesium-137: 54Bq/L Leaked Water Including Radioactive Materials from the Top Plate of a Tank at B Area (South)If all the radioactive materials in the leaked water reached the ocean (unlikely) the total release of radiation was 86 million Bq. It seems very likely that tritium was the main radio-nuclide released. The amount of radio cesium is trivial. How significant is this? The IAEA reports the radio-nuclide content of Australian coal in Bq/kg to be: 238-U : 8.5–47 230-Th : 21–68 226-Ra : 19–24 210-Pb : 20–33 210-Po: 16–28 232-Th: 11–69 228-Ra: 11–64 40-K : 23–140 IAEA Technical Report 419If we take the minimum of the range for each of these isotopes and sum them, the absolute minimum radioactivity of Australian coal would be about 130 Bq/kg. Of course in reality all Australian coal would have a higher activity. A 460 MW coal plant burning Australia coal (same power as the damaged Fukushima Daiichi #1 reactor) would burn about 3,000,000 kg of coal per day releasing more than 390 million Bq of radioactive materials per day. Furthermore the radio-nuclides in coal are far more hazardous than tritium. Summary of environmental release: Leaky Tank at Fukushima: < 86 million Bq 460 MW coal plant: > 390 million Bq of far more hazardous materials each and every day No that is your spin and absolutely nothing more. And, I might add, quite arrogant as you do not have a detailed knowledge of conditions at the plant or any significant knowledge of the multiple issues that TEPCO must concurrently manage. One of the best metrics of security and safety is the overall radiation dose to workers at the plant and on that count TEPCO has done quite well in the context of the seriousness of the accident. While outside assistance may well be an excellent idea, political micro-management of what goes on is a recipe for not getting on with the job and addressing the important issues. Here's the other side of what is happening at Fukushima Daiichi: Readying for Fukushima fuel moveLook at the state of the service floor in reactor #4. It looks ready to go. Time for a balanced view, don't you think?
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Post by QuarkingMad on Oct 9, 2013 14:20:56 GMT 9.5
For what it's worth, Yallourn power plant (1480MW) uses 2,400 tonnes of Coal per HOUR. That's 57,600,000 kilograms per day, 19.2 times higher than your hypothetical scenario. What I would find interesting is the level of radioactivity from Leigh Creek coal mine seeing as it is very close to a known radioactive hot-spot in the Flinders Ranges.
This is a very good summary of the allowed radio-pollution form Coal plants versus that of a Nuclear meltdown.
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Post by quokka on Oct 9, 2013 20:39:41 GMT 9.5
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Post by Ed Leaver on Oct 11, 2013 14:47:01 GMT 9.5
For what it's worth, Yallourn power plant (1480MW) uses 2,400 tonnes of Coal per HOUR. That's 57,600,000 kilograms per day, 19.2 times higher than your hypothetical scenario. What I would find interesting is the level of radioactivity from Leigh Creek coal mine seeing as it is very close to a known radioactive hot-spot in the Flinders Ranges. This is a very good summary of the allowed radio-pollution form Coal plants versus that of a Nuclear meltdown. Could you perhaps provide a source for your 2,400 tonnes coal/hr at Yallourn? Not saying its wrong, but it does seem a bit high. U.S. EIA estimates lignite conversion at about 1000 tonnes CO2e per GWh, while WNA gives a range between 790 and 1370 tonnes CO2e per GWh (Table 2). 1.48GW * 1370 tonnes CO2e/GWh = 2,030 tonnes CO2e / hr, or 550 tonnes carbon, but perhaps your brown coal is inefficient even by lignite standards. Using 1000 tonnes CO2e/GWh, Quokka's 460MWe coal plant would emit 11 kt CO2e/day or 3 kt carbon, very close to his 3 million kg/day estimate. To put these numbers in perspective, the U.S. currently stores something like 70,000 tonnes SNF -- that's our total from fifty years commercial nuclear power generation. Solid, on the ground, where we can deal with it (should we ever feel the need). At 2,000 tonnes CO2e/hr Yallourn emits 70kt CO2e every 1.5 days. 48,000 tonnes CO2 emitted each day from one 1.5 GW coal plant. Our 70 kt solid SNF is, of course, an intractable problem and an insurmountable barrier to further nuclear power deployment in the US. On the other hand, the 5.3 GT total CO2 we emit into the atmosphere each year :boggle: admits a relatively simple solution: More Wind! More Solar! No More Nukes! [/irony]
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Post by Roger Clifton on Oct 15, 2013 16:47:32 GMT 9.5
_@EdLeaver: I am surprised that no one has answered you with a more or less professional analysis of Yallourn coal. From heresay, I gather that the stuff is 60% free water, and the dry matter has such low rank that it resembles CH2O more than CH. I wouldn't be surprised if the figures that QM quoted are accurate.
There is talk of drying the stuff to transport for export. But locally, just boiling off the water is the way of raising power - the royalty cost for digging the necessary extra is negligible and they have a near-unquestioned right to dump its waste into the greenhouse. One Victorian Minister for Mines said that talk of nuclear or renewables is pointless when there is a 300-year supply of readily available brown coal. (It seems that our solar and wind friends should stop using the word "renewables"!)
Smoke in that valley is notorious. Yet that is precisely what some would wish upon a non-nuclear Japan. If they only remember the sound of a child coughing, they should prefer nuclear instead.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Oct 16, 2013 8:51:12 GMT 9.5
So: Thanks, Roger. At 60% water I guess it would pay to dry the stuff before shipping, rather than in the fire tubes afterward. Sounds like a good fit for sol ... Gah! What am I thinking??? With 300 years proven reserves right at hand, and Sol some 150 million km off, the drying source is obvious! Sheesh. In other cheery news, there's No sign of King Coal's demise as Asian demand rises. The solution to Japanese pollution would simply be to site the brown coal plants on Japan's east coast, where there are existing unused power grid feed points and the prevailing westerlies can blow any emissions crud back to the United States where it belongs. However, and not to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, but there remain a few surviving neanderthals who consider Nuclear power still a vital part of Japan energy mix: But he would say that, wouldn't he? [/irony]
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Post by sod on Oct 20, 2013 16:44:36 GMT 9.5
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Post by edireland on Oct 21, 2013 0:45:21 GMT 9.5
And there is any particular hurry to advance the decomissioning process?
The cheap solution is to wait.
Just as instead of spending billions decontaminating farmland they should have just compulsarily purchased it all and thrown up perimeter fencing (as it would be far cheaper). It could then be periodically checked (every decade or so) and slowly released back into general use.
Would probably form one hell of a nature reserve.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Oct 21, 2013 12:08:49 GMT 9.5
Just as instead of spending billions decontaminating farmland they should have just compulsarily purchased it all and thrown up perimeter fencing (as it would be far cheaper). It could then be periodically checked (every decade or so) and slowly released back into general use. Would probably form one hell of a nature reserve. Heh. There's cost, and then there's value. What value (for example) should one place upon Japan restarting its nuclear fleet sometime within our lifetime?
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Post by Ed Leaver on Oct 21, 2013 12:14:02 GMT 9.5
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Post by Roger Clifton on Oct 21, 2013 18:43:21 GMT 9.5
What value should a government place upon a functioning family community with agriculture, light industry and forestry? The government of Japan decided, against the advice of its Chernobyl experts, to evacuate to avoid the wrath of the freshly-triumphant naysayers. However, I notice that adults are being allowed back in to work in certain areas during the daytime, despite being in areas where the naysayers shout that the boogie man will get them.
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Post by sod on Oct 22, 2013 1:20:19 GMT 9.5
And there is any particular hurry to advance the decomissioning process? The cheap solution is to wait. Just as instead of spending billions decontaminating farmland they should have just compulsarily purchased it all and thrown up perimeter fencing (as it would be far cheaper). It could then be periodically checked (every decade or so) and slowly released back into general use. Would probably form one hell of a nature reserve. yes, wait and spill nuclear waste into the environment. www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-japan-fukushima-strontium-idUSBRE99K01B20131021if you want to purchase the land, you have to pay real money for it NOW. And if the wind had blown the other way, we would just declare Tokio to be a wildlife paradise? cool!
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Post by edireland on Oct 22, 2013 2:47:37 GMT 9.5
And there is any particular hurry to advance the decomissioning process? The cheap solution is to wait. Just as instead of spending billions decontaminating farmland they should have just compulsarily purchased it all and thrown up perimeter fencing (as it would be far cheaper). It could then be periodically checked (every decade or so) and slowly released back into general use. Would probably form one hell of a nature reserve. yes, wait and spill nuclear waste into the environment. www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-japan-fukushima-strontium-idUSBRE99K01B20131021if you want to purchase the land, you have to pay real money for it NOW. And if the wind had blown the other way, we would just declare Tokio to be a wildlife paradise? cool! Obviously not since the land in Tokyo is actually worth something, so it would be worth decontamination. Farmland isn't worth as much as it would cost to decontaminate it so they should not bother to decontaminate it and just compulsarily purcahse it all and leave it for a few decades. And you should probably read that article before you post it.... the water was "as highly concentrated at 710Bq per Litre of Sr-90". That is to say.... pretty much uncontaminated.
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Post by sod on Oct 22, 2013 3:48:43 GMT 9.5
Obviously not since the land in Tokyo is actually worth something, so it would be worth decontamination. Farmland isn't worth as much as it would cost to decontaminate it so they should not bother to decontaminate it and just compulsarily purcahse it all and leave it for a few decades. And you should probably read that article before you post it.... the water was "as highly concentrated at 710Bq per Litre of Sr-90". That is to say.... pretty much uncontaminated. The level is much too high for release: www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-japan-fukushima-strontium-idUSBRE99K01B20131021Nuclear power can not constantly claim high security standards and then simply ignore them all the time.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Oct 22, 2013 10:16:16 GMT 9.5
Sod: Tokio is a wildlife paradise -- but you gotta keep the lights on. I think you may be confusing the process of decommissioning a reactor (damaged or not) with the ongoing process of just stabilizing (halting) further contamination of the environment, which of course must be done as rapidly as is safely possible.
As edireland alluded, "as highly concentrated as 710 Bq/l" is not the same as "highly concentrated." In this case it's the opposite. For context, one Banana Equivalent Dose is taken to be 15 Bq from Potassium-40, which decays to Ca-40 by beta emission (1.33MeV) 89% of the time and to Ar-40 by gamma emission (1.46MeV) 11% of the time. Sr-90 undergoes (double) beta decay to Zirconium-90 with energies of 0.546 MeV and 2.28 MeV. Until I find out otherwise, for purpose of this discussion I assume the biological damage done by a K-40 beta is roughly the same as a Sr-90 beta. Then each liter at 710 Bq/l has 710/15 = 47 BED, almost 50 bananas worth or 5 uSv. Your body contains about 160g K of which about 19mg is K-40 giving you a continuous internal ionizing radiation dose of 4.4kBq from K-40 alone -- that's 294 BED or 29 uSv. And its inescapable: swearing off banana for a year won't decrease your K-40 irradiation by more than a few Bq, because if your body can't get enough potassium from bananas it'll for sure get its K requirement from somewhere else. Either that, or drop dead on you. So what is the "level set by the company as safe for release?" 10 Bq/l, or 2/3 of a banana :eek: I sure hope those TEPCO radiation physicists know what they're about. But how are TEPCO going to get 710 Bq/l down to 10? Well, one of two ways. First, they can just cut the stuff 10:1 from a nearby bulk water source -- that is, just dump the lot into the Pacific. Which isn't likely and I don't expect it. Or they can do as edireland suggests and wait it out. 71-fold is a bit over 8 half-lives. Sr-90 decays with a half-life of 29 years, 8 of these are 232 years, which may be a bit long to maintain in storage tanks, some of which were bolted together rather hastily under somewhat less than ideal circumstance. My uninformed guess is TEPCO will eventually want to precipitate the Strontium out as carbonate to be dried and placed in dry-cask or other long-term storage. Japan will need one of those within the next Sr-90 half-life if they're to continue (or decommission) their nuclear program anyway. We'll see. UPDATE (28 October 2013): Well... my uninformed guess was uninformed, all right. It seems Tepco has opted for high-efficiency ion-exchange resin technology in its Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which will remove every radioisotope from those storage tanks save tritium (part of the water itself) which would be really really hard, incredibly expensive, and totally unnecessary. At 6 kev tritium is one of the weakest beta emitters known, with half-life 12 years. Tritium levels at Fukushima-Daiichi are estimated at 630 kBq/l and are essentially harmless even if ingested. However, after the other isotopes are separated, the remaining purified tritiated water will nonetheless need be diluted 12 fold before release to the Pacific (shrug). Details at Fukushima and the Inevitable Tritium Controversy. The article was posted 25 October, scroll down until you find it. The two articles following it -- Lady Barbara Judge Causes Token “Balance” in Japanese Press and Doomsday Prophecies Precede Fukushima’s Spent Fuel Removal -- are also worth a glance. Ed.
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Post by QuarkingMad on Nov 1, 2013 12:59:40 GMT 9.5
That's a really informative post Ed. If you don't mind me asking what's your professional background? You seem to know your radionuclides.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Nov 4, 2013 1:29:59 GMT 9.5
@ QM: This turn of The Wheel I'm but a humble computer programmer. In previous carnation I was physicist. Before that I dabbled in chemistry. Mostly though, I just hone my google-fu -- all the stuff I posted above is straight off the web. If you've taken any chemistry, it's simple to see that equations for nuclear reactions (neutron capture, fission, radioactive decay) are written pretty much as are equations for molecular reactions. The only problem being that a nucleus is not a molecule and a confined bag of neutrons and protons doesn't behave quite the same as discrete atoms combined in the reasonably defined structure of a molecule. Quantum probability plays a much bigger role, particularly when trying to predict the daughter products from the fission of any particular nucleus. The best brief explanation I've found is What is Nuclear Waste over at Hiroshima Syndrome. Once past that recognition, for most purposes understanding of basic chemistry stands one to at least superficially follow what goes on inside a nuclear reactor, nuclear waste issues, and radiation safety. All of which are hugely complex fields once you look into them, rife with subtleties. But basic understanding of chemistry allows one to at least take the peek.
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Post by sod on Nov 4, 2013 2:14:14 GMT 9.5
And there is any particular hurry to advance the decomissioning process? The cheap solution is to wait. Just as instead of spending billions decontaminating farmland they should have just compulsarily purchased it all and thrown up perimeter fencing (as it would be far cheaper). It could then be periodically checked (every decade or so) and slowly released back into general use. Would probably form one hell of a nature reserve. Japan is moving into the direction you predicted: ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201311030016The problem is, at that moment TEPCO and the State of Japan will have to pay compensations for driving 25000 people permanently from their homes.
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Post by QuarkingMad on Nov 4, 2013 13:58:02 GMT 9.5
For what it's worth, Yallourn power plant (1480MW) uses 2,400 tonnes of Coal per HOUR. That's 57,600,000 kilograms per day, 19.2 times higher than your hypothetical scenario. What I would find interesting is the level of radioactivity from Leigh Creek coal mine seeing as it is very close to a known radioactive hot-spot in the Flinders Ranges. This is a very good summary of the allowed radio-pollution form Coal plants versus that of a Nuclear meltdown. Could you perhaps provide a source for your 2,400 tonnes coal/hr at Yallourn? Not saying its wrong, but it does seem a bit high. U.S. EIA estimates lignite conversion at about 1000 tonnes CO2e per GWh, while WNA gives a range between 790 and 1370 tonnes CO2e per GWh (Table 2). 1.48GW * 1370 tonnes CO2e/GWh = 2,030 tonnes CO2e / hr, or 550 tonnes carbon, but perhaps your brown coal is inefficient even by lignite standards. Using 1000 tonnes CO2e/GWh, Quokka's 460MWe coal plant would emit 11 kt CO2e/day or 3 kt carbon, very close to his 3 million kg/day estimate. To put these numbers in perspective, the U.S. currently stores something like 70,000 tonnes SNF -- that's our total from fifty years commercial nuclear power generation. Solid, on the ground, where we can deal with it (should we ever feel the need). At 2,000 tonnes CO2e/hr Yallourn emits 70kt CO2e every 1.5 days. 48,000 tonnes CO2 emitted each day from one 1.5 GW coal plant. Our 70 kt solid SNF is, of course, an intractable problem and an insurmountable barrier to further nuclear power deployment in the US. On the other hand, the 5.3 GT total CO2 we emit into the atmosphere each year :boggle: admits a relatively simple solution: More Wind! More Solar! No More Nukes! [/irony] Sorry it took a while to respond, I got the 2,400 tonnes/hour from Energy Australia's (operator) webpage: www.energyaustralia.com.au/about-us/what-we-do/generation-assets/yallourn-power-stationVictorian coal isn't known for it's high energy content either.
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Post by sod on Nov 18, 2013 7:25:22 GMT 9.5
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Post by Roger Clifton on Jan 24, 2021 14:55:53 GMT 9.5
On 23 January 2021, WNN reports that the Tokyo High Court absolved the Japanese state of responsibility for the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. That seems quite unfair, as the Japanese central government was responsible for the settings that caused failures and allowed hysteria to spread. Check me if I'm wrong in the following. Following an automatic scram, a restart required (and probably still does require) permission from the Prime Minister's office. By the time an independent expert could be found, vetted and consulted, any reactor would be buried in the xenon pit period. If the operator could have obtained a tick from the same expert directly, an answer might be obtained early enough to restart in the first few hours of shutdown – assuming any problems be found and fixes Jerry-built in that time. As we know, permission never came so the entire plant was left without even enough power to cool the idled reactors, leading to the explosions and the "disaster" of Fukushima. The central government was responsible too for the setting of absurdly tight contamination standards. Although justified as "precautionary", fallout exceeding them could be (and was) rendered by the scaremongers as a lethal threat. Direct release of steam and radiolytic hydrogen from the RPVs would have averted the explosions, but no, those releases too required permission from the Prime Minister because they breached the guidelines. In fact, no one has been found to be injured by radiation in the years since. The threat was an invention of the scaremongers that would have been averted by guidelines with levels that actually referred to likelihood of injury, such as 100 mSv. The resulting hysteria and rise to panic was only possible because of the absence of leadership at various levels in the Japanese government. Authority fell into the hands of the scaremongers. When the Prime Minister stopped the buck, he was standing almost alone. His Cabinet and appointees had been absent when they were needed. Ironically, to stop the panic, the Prime Minister had to be seen to order an evacuation, which he had been advised was medically unnecessary and economically destructive. More than 1000 mostly frail people were killed by the evacuation, the local economy was hobbled, and the echoing fear has inhibited repopulation after the all-clear was given. Yet the butcher's bill is routinely ascribed to TEPCO, not just by its enemies but by uncritical observers as well. Sure, TEPCO failed to have engineers at top levels of the company to assess and advise the Government. But it was TEPCO's engineers who knowingly defied the unnecessary order to evacuate so that they could control the dying reactors. While the Japanese government unloads all the blame onto TEPCO, they – and we – have not learnt the lessons of Fukushima.
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