Chernobyl Cleanup Survivor's Message for Japan: 'Run Away as Quickly as Possible'

[protheus]

Originally Posted by godwine

While I wasn't expecting (and definitely don't agree to) the Japanese government to make the hash decision of just dumping the water into the ocean (plus, none of our statement were made with the knowledge that the government will do this), we were not debating over whether or not there will be an impact.

Actually this was to be expected, as they were pouring every day thousands of liters of water to cool those troubled reactors. Although they poured radioactive water in the ocean, its level of radioactivity and the amount of radioactive dangerous elements (such as Cesium) are too low to be a danger for an area bigger than at most 50 square km of seawater*. Most of the radioactivity was from Iodine, which has a half life of about 9 days, so besides being diluted in millions of liters of water, it looses about half its radioactivity every 9 days.
Also the impact on marine life is almost nonexistent, since the area it was poured in, was already struck by a tsunami that ravaged everything there and scattered the fauna away.
Anyway, to comply with BJ, RUUUUUUUN, I heard jogging is good for the health and releases endorphins.


*forgot to mention, this is for most 2-3 days after pouring, until it gets diluted

[godwine]

Originally Posted by protheus

Actually this was to be expected, as they were pouring every day thousands of liters of water to cool those troubled reactors. Although they poured radioactive water in the ocean, its level of radioactivity and the amount of radioactive dangerous elements (such as Cesium) are too low to be a danger for an area bigger than at most 50 square km of seawater. Most of the radioactivity was from Iodine, which has a half life of about 9 days, so besides being diluted in millions of liters of water, it looses about half its radioactivity every 9 days.

Anyway, to comply with BJ, RUUUUUUUN, I heard jogging is good for the health and releases endorphins.

Yeah I know about the water being pumped in, but i was expecting it to either have vaporized due to the heat within the reactor core, and whatever not vaporized will goes in to some sort of circulation system. Failing that, I was expecting them to pump the water to an alternate container

On a different note, depending on the type of material, short half life may not be a good thing, because that also dictates how long it will take to be "depleted" dud to diffusion and "radiation". But in this case, I don't think Iodine falls in that category of "Extremely toxic substance"

[termogard]

Originally Posted by protheus

Actually this was to be expected, as they were pouring every day thousands of liters of water to cool those troubled reactors. Although they poured radioactive water in the ocean, its level of radioactivity and the amount of radioactive dangerous elements (such as Cesium) are too low to be a danger for an area bigger than at most 50 square km of seawater*. Most of the radioactivity was from Iodine, which has a half life of about 9 days, so besides being diluted in millions of liters of water, it looses about half its radioactivity every 9 days.
Also the impact on marine life is almost nonexistent, since the area it was poured in, was already struck by a tsunami that ravaged everything there and scattered the fauna away.

Without day-to-day monitoring of sea contamination it's too early to speak about completely safe situation.

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by termogard

Why Germany? Leave Europe!

well 1000km around Germany basically leaves Portugal, Spain, South Ireland...
So yeah Europe! Good point!

[godwine]

Originally Posted by RealJames

well 1000km around Germany basically leaves Portugal, Spain, South Ireland...
So yeah Europe! Good point!

I am pretty sure she said 1000 miles, that will be around 1600KM... if we draw a circle of 1600 KM around Chernobyl how far will that be? And how far will that be if we draw a circle of the same distance around Fukushima?

Sorry, me geography as bad as BJL spelling...

[RealJames]

Well that would be almost all of germany and a huge chunk of the middle east...

For Fukushima it would be 99% of Japan (everywhere except okinawa, but almost there actually), ALL of south korea, and north korea and a big chunk of eastern China and part of eastern Russia.

I bet there are very few places in the world, on land, that are more than 1600km from any nuclear plant...

[godwine]

Originally Posted by RealJames

Well that would be almost all of germany and a huge chunk of the middle east...

For Fukushima it would be 99% of Japan (everywhere except okinawa, but almost there actually), ALL of south korea, and north korea and a big chunk of eastern China and part of eastern Russia.

I bet there are very few places in the world, on land, that are more than 1600km from any nuclear plant...

Ah, so the solution is to either get rid of all the nuclear plant (BJL will be jumping up and down cheering for this), or just fly everyone to the moon......

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by godwine

Ah, so the solution is to either get rid of all the nuclear plant (BJL will be jumping up and down cheering for this), or just fly everyone to the moon......

Well clearly there are only two smart solutions, entirely change to natural energy sources asap, or improve nuclear power to a point of safety that nothing short of intentional sabotage could cause it to go wrong.
The best solution in the mean time is to do both while somewhat phasing out nuclear power dependency...
That's my opinion.

[godwine]

Originally Posted by RealJames

Well clearly there are only two smart solutions, entirely change to natural energy sources asap, or improve nuclear power to a point of safety that nothing short of intentional sabotage could cause it to go wrong.
The best solution in the mean time is to do both while somewhat phasing out nuclear power dependency...
That's my opinion.

That will be the long term solution that make sense. There were other articles discussing the use of geothermal energy, i am not sure how close we are to that.

Its really sad that the efficiency of solar power is still very poor, I don't think there are any major breakthrough in that area for the last 10 years, it still cost a fortune to produce very little power, and its maintenance fee is so frigging high

[termogard]

Originally Posted by RealJames

Well clearly there are only two smart solutions, entirely change to natural energy sources asap, or improve nuclear power to a point of safety that nothing short of intentional sabotage could cause it to go wrong.
The best solution in the mean time is to do both while somewhat phasing out nuclear power dependency...
That's my opinion.

Here is a my translation of interview of russian specialist of nuclear energy. He describes an emergency situation that occured at nuclear power plant located in Spitak-town of Armenia in 1988.

On December 7, 1988 an enormous earthquake destroyed Spitak-town (nowadays in Republic of Armenia) and caused huge human losses. Armenian NPP, located near an epicenter of earthquake, suffered a short-out of electric power and reactor began to overheat. Personnel of NPP quickly escaped the station.

All Soviet nuclear-power plants were state-owned.

In a very short period of time Soviet Ministry of Nuclear Energy was fully informed of the critical situation and worked upon solutions of urgent tasks.
They delivered by air crews of technicians and engineers from other Soviet nuclear power stations. Further, they enforced a huge amount of firefighting cars, wheeled tanks filled by fresh water, to overheating reactor.
Working fast in a very hard conditions, engineers and technicians restored electrical power to damaged reactor and run an emergency cooling system of reactor core. Later the reactor was carefully shut down and scrappped. No hydrogen explosions and radioactive steam / water into environment were allowed.

Unfortunately, Fukushima nuclear facility was owned by a private company. Seems, their managers had neither skills nor desire to colllect and study a positive foreign experience regarding to urgent operations in emergency conditions at damaged nuclear reactors.....

Source

The point is : no need to blame nuclear energy for rude human mistakes or plain irresponsibility......