The situation in Japan - some thoughts on Radiation

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I'm going to load up on potassium iodide the week before and take some extra with me. Medical geniuses, is that OTC or do I need a script?

Australian government is giving out KI tablets to Aussies over there, but in a months time it will probably be a waste. The reported iodine levels in Tokyo water is 2/3rds of the adult safe limit. Double the infant limit. Also 8 day radioactive half life so with no more releases there will be stuff all left, roughly 6% of whatever is there now. Of course, keep an eye on Australian govt advice to see how things develop.

If you do take it, the uptake is pretty quick, also the biological half life is about 5 days.
 
Yeah, I don't imagine it'll be an issue. I like to eat bananas.

When I asked my Tokyo based mates about whether I should still buy tickets as planned, they said "Quick, come and enjoy Tokyo before all the ex-pat trader morons come back!"

:D
 

Not sure that is quite correct-the workers at ther plant would be at risk.likely that at least a couple will have their life shortened.
I have to admit thoughg my thoughts are definitely contrarian-this reactor has very nearly survived a 9.0 earhquake not that far from its epicentre then a 10 metre tsunami.If the back up diesel generators had been built above the tsunami level then the cooling system would not have failed.Seems to me that would be not too difficult and costly to acheive.
Also remember that this reactor was built 40 years ago-I am sure there have been some advances in technology since then.
I must say the Germans in particular seem to be overreacting.I can find no records of a large tsunami ever affecting it.
 
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The other thing is that the whole coastline has actually dropped 1-1.8m as a result of the quake, so that was a factor in increasing the height of the tsunami.
 
Just read an interesting article on Bloomberg Businessweek in relation to Nuclear Technology and the like.

More on the link below;
The Prospect for Safe Nuclear Power - BusinessWeek

I said
As for the 7% idle, might be a good time to debate if these high efficiency pile/pack reactors are wanted, and if lower efficiency ones are better. I seem to recall reading that the all the boron rods were inserted after the earthquake, and generators kicked in for 1/2 hour before getting wet, then batteries gave another 13 hours or so.
So we have a 1st class reactor, where everything was done right - except the 7% on design meant it would blow up if....

I 100% agree with this article - walkaway is the expression I was looking for.
I stated nasty stuff would boil off - and indeed it has. I did not predict plutonium in the ground water from a leak, but it appears so. In this case the nasty stuff has a short half life - but the loss of it may make whats left boil away more furiously.

Its like leaving your house for a 2 week holiday with all stove hotplates on low.
It is a galactically stupid idea building a reactor that cannot be turned 'off' - as I understand was the feature of this reactor. How many others in operation is not something the press seems to print.

On Pile reactors (like the one that could not be turned off) - after the fact it was a bad idea. Rocket scientists may love the theoretical efficiency. This is the model 'Ziggy' recommended for Australia. I say no thanks, and no again to buying US made reactors which also feature too costly to decommission problems.

Thorium , or the ping pong ball reactors seem a better bet. I understand the only design flaws in these reactor designs is that is does not produce sufficient bomb making stuff, so no good for countries interested in joining the club. But at least they are walkaway.
 
Thorium , or the ping pong ball reactors seem a better bet. I understand the only design flaws in these reactor designs is that is does not produce sufficient bomb making stuff, so no good for countries interested in joining the club. But at least they are walkaway.

Thorium fuel of the future. Safe, abundant, dense. Russia Today

[video=youtube;-k2cWD2mjhQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2cWD2mjhQ&feature=related[/video]



Far from my understanding, Thorium still needs a "kick start" of Uranium to get the ball rolling, but not to maintain the reaction. It uses up Nuclear waste (a very good advantage over U Plants) and Thorium is just as abundant as lead in the Earths Crust. There have been some debates over Thorium Power-plants, I'll have a dig on the net and see what l can produce. Like everything out there, there are pro's and con's.

I guess the biggest problem with Nuclear is that it can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye and have very long lasting effects (cancer) across a very wide area and also make it uninhabitable for a long period of time (Chernobyl). Imagine if the Fukushima plant did indeed have a meltdown, and only 250km from Tokyo (Japan -126 million people in the size of Victoria anyone)??? The Japanese economy would be in tatters, tourism would be history and there would be a large percentage of residents effected from the "fallout". This is the Achilles' heel of Nuclear power, when the s**t hits the fan, it does so in a very, very bad way.

If a coal/hydro plant blew up in Sydney, i don't think that people in MEL/BNE would really be that worried, but replace that with a Nuclear Power Plant (complete Melt-Down), you'd be 'on edge' and checking the weather channel every 5 minutes for wind pattern updates.

The Chinese are building (Liquid Fluoride/Salt) Thorium reactors (LFTR) and also "pebble' reactors. I saw Ziggy on TV during this whole crisis, "You know the Japanese, they will come back from this disaster and completely re-engineer Nuclear Power and probably come out as world leaders in this field". This is something that l agree on 100% considering some of the N-Powerplants are close to 40 years old, survived a 9.0 Earthquake and Tsunami.
 
I guess the biggest problem with Nuclear is that it can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye and have very long lasting effects (cancer) across a very wide area and also make it uninhabitable for a long period of time (Chernobyl). Imagine if the Fukushima plant did indeed have a meltdown, and only 250km from Tokyo (Japan -126 million people in the size of Victoria anyone)??? The Japanese economy would be in tatters, tourism would be history and there would be a large percentage of residents effected from the "fallout". This is the Achilles' heel of Nuclear power, when the s**t hits the fan, it does so in a very, very bad way.

If a coal/hydro plant blew up in Sydney, i don't think that people in MEL/BNE would really be that worried, but replace that with a Nuclear Power Plant (complete Melt-Down), you'd be 'on edge' and checking the weather channel every 5 minutes for wind pattern updates.

I taught a class the week after the tsunami with a lot of information and photos about the before and after of where I used to live in Tohoku, and one of my slides was a Japan-Inside-Australia map for size comparison. A tsunami that size would stretch from Brisbane to below Sydney on our east coast. Put that into perspective for the kids.

Anyways, just bought my tickets tonight - $1600 return in Starclass to NRT. And that wasn't sale prices either!
 
There seem to be a few half facts being put here about reactor technology. These seem to be a confusion of different ideas and facts. For a start these are not pile reactors, they are boiling water reactors. Probably the most famous pile reactor is windscale, I seriously doubt anyone is suggesting to use pile reactors in this day and age. I love the way that nuclear weapons are inferred by the raising of pile reactors. Honestly, there are so many things wrong with that suggestion that I'm not even going to bother.

As for the shut down thing. The reactor does shut down shortly after the control rods are inserted. They, BWRs cannot blow up, as it a nuclear explosion. But that doesn't mean there isn't residue heat that requires the reactors to be cooled. I'm pretty sure a pebble bed reactor also requires cooling immediately after shutdown. There are a whole heap of radioactive things in the fuel rods that are creating heat, but not from a nuclear reaction. The point remains that to say they can blow up is misleading especially when there is no further attempt to actually provide details of exactly what that is supposed to mean.

Finally, again there is a mention of 7%. The question remains 7% of what, what does that even mean? :confused:
 
...
Finally, again there is a mention of 7%. The question remains 7% of what, what does that even mean? :confused:
From here: (Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation « BraveNewClimate [see tuppaware's post #2 of this thread])
...
In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use control rods. The control rods are made of boron which absorbs neutrons. During normal operation in a BWR, the control rods are used to maintain the chain reaction at a critical state. The control rods are also used to shut the reactor down from 100% power to about 7% power (residual or decay heat).

The residual heat is caused from the radioactive decay of fission products. Radioactive decay is the process by which the fission products stabilize themselves by emitting energy in the form of small particles (alpha, beta, gamma, neutron, etc.). There is a multitude of fission products that are produced in a reactor, including cesium and iodine. This residual heat decreases over time after the reactor is shutdown, and must be removed by cooling systems to prevent the fuel rod from overheating and failing as a barrier to radioactive release. Maintaining enough cooling to remove the decay heat in the reactor is the main challenge in the affected reactors in Japan right now. ...
 

Ah ok. But that 7% does not mean there is a nuclear reaction taking place, it is not producing 7% of max nuclear reactions. The power of a nuclear reactor is a measure of it's heat generating capacity, i.e. a 1000 MW reactor can generate 1000MW of heat nominally. So that 7% means it is producing 7% of it's maximum heat generation capacity. Insert the control rods and the nuclear reaction stops, but it takes time to cool down. As the quoted bit of that piece states the decay heat decreases over time, so that 7% reduces towards 0.

As we can see from the situation in fukashima, even with the 7% the reactor does not "blow up". For this reason I still think that a statement like

except the 7% on design meant it would blow up if....

Is extremely misleading, especially with the .....
If What?
 
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Flyjin: A foreigner or expat in Japan (gaijin) who heads for Narita (or Kansai) at the first sign of a nuclear holocaust. Not a Japanese word and not familiar to or used by Japanese, flyjin was coined by English-speaking Twitter users.

Flyjin
 
Geez, this thread would have come in handy back in March. I landed at Narita about 18 hours after the quake struck and spent the next week fending off emails from panicked family members and friends about how bad the situation was, how there was widespread panic in Tokyo and it was Chernobyl all over again etc.
 
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It would appear that the radiation issue is far from over. There is still much debate

Fukushima Will Not Go Away | Dr. Mark's Blog

Ok A few problems:

  1. That blog you linked to is unreferenced. Sorry but it is simply not good enough to say "A study says...." What study? What scientific peer reviewed journal was it published in? I can pull out plenty of studies that are nothing more than self published opinions by lobby groups. The European Committee of Radiation Risk for a start.
  2. Failure to reference these "studies" shows that Dr Mark has absolutely zero credibility.
  3. Some of the study "findings" are full of holes, such that they sound made up. Think of an answer and then do the study to get that answer. Typical anti-nuclear approach.
  4. I see they quote that so called scientific report that gets every child born with birth defects in the Ukraine and blames them all on Chernobyl. Riddle me this batman: Why are there no birth defects from any other cause in the Ukraine? Unlike the rest of the world.
  5. The blog is also full of emotive language. Again zero credibility
  6. That blog is not a debate it is just emotive rubbish from people who cannot accept the truth.
 
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Geez, this thread would have come in handy back in March. I landed at Narita about 18 hours after the quake struck and spent the next week fending off emails from panicked family members and friends about how bad the situation was, how there was widespread panic in Tokyo and it was Chernobyl all over again etc.

I did start it in March. ;) I guess you were too caught up in the widespread panic and mushroom clouds to notice. :rolleyes:
 
I'll check and see if I glow in the dark when I return form Japan next week. Though I would not try to pass that off as a scientific study ;)
 
I'll check and see if I glow in the dark when I return form Japan next week. Though I would not try to pass that off as a scientific study ;)
The radiation in Tokyo makes you sleepy.Non randomised study of 2 people making second trip to Tokyo since the Tsunami.Study published as a TR on AFF.Now that makes it scientific!
 
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