Fukushima: damage limitation | 319 comments (319 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 0)

It's not the radiation, it's the heavy metals.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 5th, 2011 at 02:47:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (4.00 / 2)

EPA to raise limits for radiation exposure while Canada turns off fallout detectors

Yes indeed, friends, we have reached a moment of comedic insanity at the EPA, where those in charge of protecting the environment are hastily rewriting the definition of "radioactive contamination" in order to make sure that whatever fallout reaches the United States falls under the new limits of "safe" radiation.

The EPA maintains a set of so-called "Protective Action Guides" (PAGs). These PAGs are being quickly revised to radically increase the allowable levels of iodine-131 (a radioactive isotope) to anywhere from 3,000 to 100,000 times the currently allowable levels.

The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is all over this issue, having obtained internal emails from a FOIA requests that reveal some truly shocking revelations of the level of back-stabbing betrayal happening inside the EPA. For example, under the newly-revised PAGs, drinking just one glass of water considered "safe" by the EPA could subject you to the lifetime limit of radiation. (http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.ph...)

"In addition," PEER goes on to say, "it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed."

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Apr 5th, 2011 at 03:07:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

[Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

NaturalNews is the green-ink website of a purveyor of fantasy-based medicine (the art form formerly known as quackery). If Mike Adams tells you that the sky is blue, you should look out your window before agreeing.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Apr 5th, 2011 at 07:38:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

Thought so,

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Apr 5th, 2011 at 09:03:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 2)

Either EPA is raising limits post factum or not. Either Canadian authorities measuring or not. Who else is gonna tell us that beside crackpots?

Washington's blog reports that Radiation Standards Are Up to 1,000 Higher Than Is Safe for the Human Body, apparently because they don't differentiate external and internal emitters. Particularly, he points that Canadians are not testing milk and other food products even if radioactive particles are detected in rain water in North America, and in milk in the Washington state, US.And yes, he refers to Chris Busby and Helen Caldicott (among others). But when cold-blooded official priorities are evident, you take other sources with all the salt as well.

Other Wahington Blog's post is How High Are Radiation Levels in Japan?, with this video of Greenpeace measurements:

by das monde on Tue Apr 5th, 2011 at 11:38:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 3)

Let's pick apart what Washington's Blog is saying: Radiation Experts: Radiation Standards are up to 1000 times higher than is safe for the human body. It is true that internal emitters are more dangerous than external emitters. However, this doesn't mean that you can apply the standard for drinking water to rainwater.

Presumably, the standard for drinking water (3 picocuries per liter, or 0.1 Bq/l) is not unsafe. Let's take that at face value. Let's also take at face value the fact that levels of 200 times that have been found in rainwater. This means you shouldn't drink rainwater in those regions. However, that doesn't mean that the drinking water at the point of delivery is unsafe. What we should be asking is the level of radioactivity in water reservoirs and at the outgoing end of water purification plants, and in people's faucets.

So, there should be cause for concern but the EPA is not telling people it's safe to drink that rainwater.

Anyway, let's hear it from an actual expert from that hotbed of radical leftism called UC Santa Cruz Government Under Fire as Radiation Is Found in Milk, Rain (April 2, 2011). Note the anti-government editorializing by The Bay Citizen, by the way.

Government Under Fire as Radiation Is Found in Milk, Rain - The Bay CitizenThe EPA's tardy response to widespread alarm about radiation in rain and the air has been sharply criticized by Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

So that's our expert.

"It's troubling that the EPA has to date not provided any precipitation data of its own, while measurements that have been made by states and others across the country are indicating somewhat surprising elevations of iodine-131," Hirsch said Friday.

Now for the data:

As shown in the graph below, published by UC Berkeley, Iodine-131 peaked at 20.1 becquerels per liter, a measure of radioactivity, on the roof of Etcheverry Hall during heavy rains a week ago. The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 0.111 becquerels per liter.

I would be much much more concerned about a sustained level of 5Bq/l (45 times not unsafe) than a peak of 20Bq/l, to be honest. Because a sustained level will not be diluted whereas a single rainfall will.

The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as maximum contaminant levels, or MCL, by as much as 181 times. However, the material has a half-life of eight days, meaning it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment. Drinking water safety standards are based on prolonged exposures.

There's a mistake here which is that the half-life has nothing to do with dissipation in the environment, just with "breaking down".

How bad is this? First, it takes 6 half-lives for a level of 50 times the not unsafe level to decay to below that threshold. So we're talking about waiting for up to seven weeks before being able to drink that rainwater if it were collected and not diluted. As for the 180-times level collected on a single day, you'd have to wait for 8 half-lives or two months before drinking. So that should be a cause for concern.

However, given dilution in existing reservoirs and streams, and so on, it may not be so much of a concern. Like I said, I'd be more concerned about the sustained level of 5 Bq/l because if there is no dilution of a sustained input.

Now for milk:

The UC Berkeley researchers also discovered trace levels of iodine-131 and other radioactive materials believed to have originated in Japan in commercially available milk and in a local stream.
Low levels of ioidine-131 were detected by state officials this week in milk harvested from San Luis Obispo. Milk from that region is tested frequently for radioactive material because its located near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

What is "trace quantities"?

Local News | Radiation likely from Japan found in Spokane milk | Seattle Times Newspaper

The sample, taken March 25, remained 5,000 times below levels of concern set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even for infants.

Nobody's giving an actual figure.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 05:01:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

Berkeley Radiological Air and Water Dose Calculation | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

The Dose calculation for water and air intake was performed based upon the annual limit on intake (ALI) for effluent release in table 2 from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations(10 CFR) part 20 appendix B. The NRC numbers are based on the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Publication 30.
This annual limit corresponds to the limit of radiation in water and air being released from a site handling nuclear materials (i.e., hospitals, nuclear reactors, research laboratories, etc.). The "reference man" is assumed to drink 730 liters of water per year or breathe 2.4 million (2.4E6) liters of air per year, and if the person drinks water or breathes air at the stated limit for one year the person would would receive a total effective dose of 50 millirem. The total effective dose takes into consideration the method of intake (ingestion for water or inhalation for air) and the combined biological and radiological removal of the isotope from the human body.
These figures are conservative because any exposure to these radionuclides in California would be for a short time (days or weeks at most), while the NRC and ICRP numbers assume a yearlong constant exposure where the radionuclides reach equilibrium in the body.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 05:10:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 1)

Activity Correction Method | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

Isotopes such as I-131 and Te-132 have half-lives of several days. This means that over a few days, these isotopes transform into other, non-radioactive isotopes. Since we want to know how much of these isotopes were present when the sample was collected, the constant decrease in their activity as time goes by must be corrected for in our calculations.
The radiation levels we have reported have now been corrected for this radioactive decay between sample collection and radiation detection, as well as the changing rate of decay during the long sample measurement. Reported numbers now correspond to the radiation levels in the sample at the time of collection. The corrected numbers are slightly higher than previous calculations because there is about one day delay before measurement due to three effects: the long sample collection time, any sample preparation time such as distilling rainwater to a smaller volume, and the long sample counting time.

(my emphasis)

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 09:46:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 1)

So, there should be cause for concern but the EPA is not telling people it's safe to drink that rainwater.

The real concern (whether Busby or UC Santa Monica mean it or not) is how much of the rain radioactivity gets into the food chain. EPA (and the Canadians) are not concerned with researching that, apparently.

How does that rain compare with the Swedish rain from Chernobyl?

by das monde on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 05:23:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

France Detects Radioactive Iodine In Rainwater, Milk « Eurasia Review

A sample analysed on 28 March showed radioactivity levels of 8.5 becquerel [per litre?]
In parallel testing, the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), the national public institution monitoring nuclear and radiological risks, found iodine 131 in milk.
According to the institute, concentrations from a sample collected on 25 March showed levels of less than 0.11 becquerels per litre.

0.11 Bq/l being the not unsage level for drinking water according to the EPA.

8.5 bq/l is 80 times that level, and again would take 7 weeks to decay below the threshold assuming no dilution into uncontaminated water.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:03:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

Same wording on EurActiv.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:05:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

8 weeks, sssuming that most of the contamination is from Iodine.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 02:29:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

There are two competing processes here: dilution in the environment and bioaccumulation in the food chain.

Given the levels detected in rainwater I'd say there's risk for two months unless proven otherwise (by measurements at water purification plants, by estimates of dilution in reservoirs and streams, etc).

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:08:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 1)

There is also the decay between the time the radioactive elements enter the food chain and the time the food is consumed by humans. Since we don't care about thyroid cancers in cows and poultry. On the other hand, if there are nasty daughter elements from the decay, they have to be accounted for as well.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 01:19:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

I meant there is risk to humans for two months, precisely because of that.

Bioaccumulation operates to lengthen the time, dilution to shorten it.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 01:52:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Chernobyl rainwater (4.00 / 2)

Monitoring of 131I in milk and rain water in Japan... [Health Phys. 1988] - PubMed result

Iodine-131 in milk and in rain water in Nagoya, Japan, (a location 8,000 km from Chernobyl) was monitored between May and July 1986. The 131I concentration in rain water ranged from 43.1 Bq L^-1 on 4 May to 15 mBq L^-1 on 12 July, and that in milk ranged from 21.8 Bq L^-1 on 19 May to 11 mBq L^-1 on 14 July. Iodine-131 concentrations in milk were estimated to be 4 to 6 times greater than those in rain water during the first few weeks after the accident. Both concentrations decreased with approximately the same effective half-life of 5.9 +- 0.3 d for rain water and 5.0 +- 0.2 d for milk.

So we're talking twice as much peak concentrations of iodine in Japanese rainwater in Japan from Chernobyl as in Berkeley from Japan. Twice as much means an extra week to decay below threshold.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:19:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 3)

UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Air Monitoring Station | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

Response to some misleading claims about our measurements
Some claims have been made recently that our data shows that Bay Area water exceeds EPA regulations by a factor of 181 -- sometimes this has been reported as 18,100% higher, or erroneously as a factor of 18,100 higher. This claim is misleading. Specifically, the reports refer to the I-131 activity of 20.1 Bq/L measured in rainwater on 3/23. The EPA limit for I-131 is 3 pCi/L, or 0.111 Bq/L. There are a number of things wrong with this claim.
First, the measurement we made was of rainwater, not drinking water, so the drinking water limit does not apply. We instead should be discussing tap water, in which we detected a small amount of I-131 (0.024 Bq/L). This is a factor of almost 1,000 below the rainwater measurement and a factor of 4.6 below the EPA limit.
It should also be noted that the EPA limit assumes the water is ingested over the course of an entire year. That is, someone drinking 3 pCi/L water for an entire year would reach the EPA dose limit of 4 millirem, which is a very small dose. The tap water measurement of 0.024 Bq/L on 3/29 is our only detection of I-131; on subsequent days it could not be detected, probably due to the radioactive decay of I-131. So this tap water could have been ingested for at most 1 day, giving the public a dose 365 times smaller than if one assumes an entire year of ingestion. That means the tap water is effectively a factor of 1,700 below the EPA limit.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:24:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

Amount of radiation in Vancouver rainwater decreasing - scientist

VANCOUVER - Radiation in B.C. rain water is decreasing, a trend that could mean either the end of radiation emissions in Japan or just a change in the weather pattern, a nuclear scientist told The Vancouver Sun.
"We see a consistent decreasing trend. I looked into the sample for yesterday and I see very little iodine-131," Krzystof Starosta, a nuclear chemist and physicist and associate professor at Simon Fraser University, said in an email. "I am not sure if this is the end of the releases or a change in the weather pattern; the time will show."
A chart provided by Starosta shows that iodine-131 in Vancouver's rainwater peaked on March 20 at 12 becquerels (Bq) per litre. Levels were at zero up to March 18, 2011, and as of March 29 had fallen to just above three Bq per litre. (A becquerel is an international measurement of radioactivity related to radioactive decay per second.)
Meanwhile, seaweed samples were still showing increasing iodine-131 as of March 28, according to data provided by Starosta. In samples of dehydrated seaweed taken on March 15 near the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal, the count was zero; on March 22 it was 310 Bq per kilogram; and by March 28 it was 380 Bq/kg.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 07:11:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 2)

Migeru:

The EPA limit for I-131 is 3 pCi/L, or 0.111 Bq/L

Note the following: the EPA's acceptable level of Iodine in drinking water equals the Minimum Detectable Activity. That is, statistical noise is of the same order as the EPA acceptable limit.

How we calculate Minimum Detectable Activity (MDA) | The Nuclear Engineering Department At UC Berkeley

The Minimum Detectable Activity, or MDA, represents the smallest quantity of a radioisotope which can be detected with 99.7% confidence in one of our systems (rainwater, or the various air sampling systems). It is fundamentally based on the statistical variation of detector counts in the region where a peak from the isotope would appear. If the statistical variation is greater than the counts from an actual amount of radioactivity of that isotope, it is not statistically significant and it is not detected.
...
As of 3/24/2011, the MDAs for our five measured isotopes in rainwater are:
Te-132 0.074 Bq/L
I-131 0.115 Bq/L
I-132 0.115 Bq/L
Cs-134 0.106 Bq/L
Cs-137 0.084 Bq/L

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 09:53:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 2)

Exposure to Iodine 131 makes people vote Republican:

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:47:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

How far is the therapeutic level for them? (none / 0)

Due to its mode of beta decay, iodine-131 is notable for causing mutation and death in cells which it penetrates, and other cells up to several millimeters away. For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes paradoxically less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues which would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation. For example, children treated with moderate dose of I-131 for thyroid adenomas had a detectable increase in thyroid cancer, but children treated with a much higher dose did not. Similarly most studies of very high dose I-131 for treatment of Graves disease have failed to find any increase in thyroid cancer, even though there is linear increase in thyroid cancer risk with I-131 absorption at moderate doses. Thus, iodine-131 is increasingly less employed in small doses in medical use (especially in children), but increasingly is used only in large and maximal treatment doses, as a way of killing targeted tissues. This is known as "therapeutic use."

by das monde on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 07:06:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

So Ann Coulter was right!!!! (4.00 / 2)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 11:46:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 1)

If you magnify it, there seems to be a vaguely red spot at NYC, which explains Giuliani and Bloomberg.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 07:07:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 0)

well im sure that democrats drink Water

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 07:20:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (none / 1)

Either EPA is raising limits post factum or not. Either Canadian authorities measuring or not. Who else is gonna tell us that beside crackpots?

There are Unserious people who are not crackpots.

The problem with Mike Adams is that he, well, lies a lot. If he says anything that looks interesting, you're better advised to go to the primary source.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 08:54:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: [Crackpot alert] (4.00 / 4)

However, on a visit to their site, PEER (the org cited by the snake-oil salesman) doesn't look crackpot. (Unless being environmentally-focused is constitutive of crackpottery.) Its aim is to monitor the activities of public authorities with the help of public servant whistleblowers it can help to protect from retaliation.

From its press release on EPA radiation standards:

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: News Releases

The radiation arm of EPA, called the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (ORIA), has prepared an update of the 1992 "Protective Action Guides" (PAG) governing radiation protection decisions for both short-term and long-term cleanup standards. Other divisions within EPA contend the ORIA plan geometrically raises allowable exposure to the public. For example, as Charles Openchowski of EPA's Office of General Counsel wrote in a January 23, 2009 e-mail to ORIA:
"[T]his guidance would allow cleanup levels that exceed MCLs [Maximum Contamination Limits under the Safe Drinking Water Act] by a factor of 100, 1000, and in two instances 7 million and there is nothing to prevent those levels from being the final cleanup achieved (i.e., it's not confined to immediate response of emergency phase)."
Another EPA official, Stuart Walker of the Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, explains what the proposed new radiation limits in drinking water would mean:
"It also appears that drinking water at the PAG concentrations...may lead to subchronic (acute) effects following exposures of a day or a week. In a population, one should see some express acute effects...that is vomiting, fever, etc."
"This critical debate is taking place entirely behind closed doors because this plan is `guidance' and does not require public notice as a regulation would," stated PEER Counsel Christine Erickson. Today, PEER sent EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a letter calling for a more open and broader examination of the proposed radiation guidance. "We all deserve to know why some in the agency want to legitimize exposing the public to radiation at levels vastly higher than what EPA officially considers dangerous."

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 01:44:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Busby predicts (4.00 / 2)

417,000 cancers forecast for Fukushima 200 km contamination zone by 2061

Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), Professor Chris Busby, has released calculations of the cancer incidence to be expected in fallout areas of Japan. Using data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and official Japanese web sites he has used two methods to estimate the numbers of cancer cases. He compares these results with estimates derived from ICRP modelling [...]
The report with all methods, assumptions and data as a pdf.

by das monde on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 12:32:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 1)

Popping potassium iodide already? Really bad idea - Health - Health care - More health news - msnbc.com

He warned that the drug could cause serious reactions in some people and even backfire in the case of an actual emergency, putting people past a two-week window of safe dosage. After that period of time, the drug can induce severe hypothyroidism, a condition that essentially shuts down thyroid function.
...
In the event of a nuclear emergency, potassium iodide is most useful in protecting infants and children younger than 18, whose bodies are most vulnerable to the effects of radioactive iodine, according to the CDC.
Adults older than 40 are warned not to take KI unless contamination with a very large doses of radioactive iodine is expected. They're at the lowest risk for developing thyroid cancer after radiation exposure and at highest risk for having allergic reactions to KI.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 07:14:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (4.00 / 3)

It's the whole stinking mess.
Plutonium, a heavy metal, has been distributed worldwide since the bomb tests of the 1950's.
Cancer mortality is about 20 per 100 deaths now, compared with 3 per 100 a century ago.
As bad as it is for adults, children are at far greater risk. After Chernobyl, regional adult thyroid cancers shot up by a factor of 6, but for children the factor was 45. A cancer might not kill an adult too much ahead of one's normal life expectancy, but a child isn't so fortunate. Beyond that, there's a host of developmental risks foetuses, infants, and children face.
And then the assaults on immune systems are just anyone's guess. Do governments even want to know?

by Andhakari on Fri Apr 8th, 2011 at 03:41:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

How long was MOX used in Fukushima? [TNR] (4.00 / 2)

Last August, workers at Japan's now infamous Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant loaded the first batch of mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, into one of their reactors. The event went largely unnoticed in the United States; but in Japan it was deeply controversial. Unlike traditional nuclear fuel, which is pure uranium, MOX is a far more dangerous blend of both uranium and plutonium (the latter is among the most carcinogenic substances on Earth). Dogged by bitter public opposition, Fukushima's operators had spent a decade fighting for permission to deploy their MOX cache, which had been languishing at the plant ever since arriving by ship from Belgium in 1999. They finally won the battle, but only after a scandal toppled Fukushima's anti-MOX governor.
In a grim bit of foreshadowing, just after MOX was loaded into Fukushima's reactor no. 3, an alarm light flickered on, indicating a problem with the emergency core-cooling system. Operators decided it was just a glitch. Of course, no one knew then that Japan would be ravaged by an earthquake and a tsunami, knocking out the plant's main power supply--or that the back-up cooling would fail, leaving workers scrambling to cool Fukushima's reactors by any means possible.

by das monde on Mon Apr 11th, 2011 at 01:57:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Fukushima: damage limitation | 319 comments (319 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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