paperboywriter
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Thanks buddy
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Nuclear experts: Fukushima is much worse than Japan is letting on. Leaks everywhere.
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Thanks buddy
I don't suppose you're aware of the 10+ magnitude 7-7.5 earthquakes that have been occurring every few months since the big one? Big aftershocks have been rocking that fault and will continue for years (though they'll be spaced further apart).
Earthquakes themselves have never been the issue with this facility, it was the doomsday-level tsunami that fucked shit up.
Would be fun (or rather not) if the rocket failed mid-launch
Well, without a scale that picture is more or less useless. It could show everything that's dangerous or just everything that's slightly above natural radiation, which would mean you'd probably get ten times more radiation by flying to Japan (and no, not Fukushima) than by eating fish from that region.
Aren'twealreadydeadtho?
Aren'twealreadydeadtho?
That map most likely shows where traces of the radioactive isotopes have been detected. Detection meaning an amount that could be as small as a billionth of what would be considered harmful.
Even just a few miles off the coast the levels are low enough for safe swimming for example.
I should've been a bit clearer. I meant an Earthquake pretty much right below the Reactor, practically making it the epicenter.
Fallout-NL
Member
Whatever, I'm stocking rad-x.
I sure hope you're right Irminsul
skinpop said:
What do you guys make of this? I hope it aint true because I truly love Japan. Always. But i dunno man.
its probably just too difficult, sending a robot in to fuck around with dodgy fuel rods is pretty much asking for a criticality accident.
It's still happening, too. Infuriating.
which reminds me of a story I heard about the Chernobyl accident. When it happened there was a widespread concern that the weather would bring clouds and with that contaminated precipitation to Sweden even though scientists and officials stated risks were minimal. So during that time a guy living on the eastern coast with his family said in a newspaper interview that he had sold his house and was just about to move inland to avoid the nuclear rainfall. As it turned out, ironically the place he moved to had far higher background radiation than any of the contaminated rainfalls in sweden.
The uneducated fear of eating pacific sea fish because of fukushima reminds me of this. People rather go back and eat their big macs and mayo-hotdogs than actually look into whether their fear is warranted or irrational.
reactors are pretty cool
i want one.
i want one.
Well, this is it. So what exactly is going on round there?
Just glancing through it:
On the rain graph it shows levels up to 100 bq/m^3, under 150 is considered safe in most countries.
Fukushima can contaminate entire pacific ocean? Sure but only to such an insignificant degree that the levels would be no more than some millionth higher than before. Pacific ocean is something like 700 million cubic kilometers, fukushima leaks a couple of hundred cubic meters every day. It would take a few million years to increase the levels in the pacific by 1/700th. Of course, by that time any leaked waste would already be inactive.
EDIT: this math is bad, since it depends on the concentration of radioactive material in the leaked waste but you get the point.
Bio-accumulation doesn't work like that. For some substances(like quicksilver) it accumulates quickly but that is not the case for cesium. Unless the fish is staying near the coast of fukushima where levels are high enough cesium will be exuded quickly(several percentages every day). This means fish that leave the zone soon will not have levels high enough to pase a health risk.
This video is obviously done by someone who doesn't really know what he is talking about so you shouldn't listen to him. Same goes for me, so look it up and learn about it for yourself if you want to be certain.
Some countries are building offshore windparks.
Since you don't have a consistent suppy of wind or sun one would need storage technologies (batteries for example). Factoring in enegetic cost it would make sense for solar energy but not (yet) for wind power.
Ether_Snake
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Wave power will develop in the future too. And as with all things, it's just a question of investment->production->innovation->lower prices.
SpoonyBard
Banned
Some countries are building offshore windparks.
Since you don't have a consistent suppy of wind or sun one would need storage technologies (batteries for example). Factoring in enegetic cost it would make sense for solar energy but not (yet) for wind power.
So far the best storage technology seeme to be combining solar or wind with water energy. Basically you use energy from wind and solar to pump water upstream, and then using turbines to generate electricity as needed. Needles to say this is a pretty expensive solution.
It's a rather common solution in Germany and has been for quite some time, even before the government decided to shut down all nuclear power plants.
SpoonyBard
Banned
One of the reasons why electricity is so expensive in Germany...
http://theenergycollective.com/lindsay-wilson/279126/average-electricity-prices-around-world-kwh
Not really. That has much more to do with the oligopoly we have in our energy market.
Lazy vs Crazy
Member
This is terrifying.
fabricated backlash
Member
Pretty much this. Tidal power plants will inevitably become very important. Unlike Wind or Waves, the tides are constant and much more predictable.
iamaustrian
Member
dude
I live in Austria; 1200km away from chernobyl, and we had one of the worst nuclear fallout/rainfall in entire europe. in fact only Belarus and some small scandinavian parts had worse contamination.
The nuclear rainfall was very real at that time. Austria had/ lots of up-to-150 kBq/m² (Cäsium-137) hotspots. There are still areas where you are warned to eat deer/boar meat and mushrooms.
level of contamination after chernobyl disaster
I remember that time in 1986 very well. My mom slapped me because I tried to eat cherries(we were warned not to eat fruits/veggies by the gov) from our tree that summer.
it was surreal and the situation was actually pretty bad.
not "moving somewhere else"-bad but nevertheless frightening, to say at least.
if fukushima continues to leak at this rate, the fear of pacific fish is reasonable imo.
maybe not now but sometime in the future
hydragonwarrior
Member
Still annoys me why they just don't replace them with the salt reactors.
SpoonyBard
Banned
Dude, homeopathy is not real. Pacific ocean is so damn huge there's no chance of a single nuclear reactor can leak enough to have any effect apart from very local effects.
im not saying it wasn't bad in your country.dude
I live in Austria; 1200km away from chernobyl, and we had one of the worst nuclear fallout/rainfall in entire europe. in fact only Belarus and some small scandinavian parts had worse contamination.
The nuclear rainfall was very real at that time. Austria had/ lots of up-to-150 kBq/m² (Cäsium-137) hotspots. There are still areas where you are warned to eat deer/boar meat and mushrooms.
level of contamination after chernobyl disaster
I remember that time in 1986 very well. My mom slapped me because I tried to eat cherries(we were warned not to eat fruits/veggies by the gov) from our tree that summer.
it was surreal and the situation was actually pretty bad.
not "moving somewhere else"-bad but nevertheless frightening, to say at least.
if fukushima continues to leak at this rate, the fear of pacific fish is reasonable imo.
maybe not now but sometime in the future
the fear of pacific fish isn't reasonable unless things escalate to doomsday levels. USA cold war bomb tests probably had a bigger impact overall.
Eighty Deuce
Banned
This stirs something primal inside me; I want that power.
-- This. Becquerels are very tiny units of radiation activity in the first place, and there is no simple or easy way to estimate either exposure or absorption of radiation from that alone. Worse, it's often reported in a way that is further misleading because it doesn't show concentration per unit of volume or weight, which is rather important - even when it IS reported it's often grossly misleading. Hence in Oct (the last leak) there were 430 liters of waters with an activity concentration of 580,000 Bq/L (extremely high). As soon as that hit the ocean it would diffuse by orders of magnitude. Even the raw numbers are often little more than guesses, based on an assumed volume of radioactive material becoming volatilized and released.
-- Note that because the number of Bq in reporting can be extraordinarily high: "trillions of Becquerels!" it leads to exaggerated public reaction. This is partly why in the US we still use Curies (specifically, picoCuries per gram or pCi/L) as the standard unit of reporting radiation activity.
-- Bioaccumulation rates vary from organism to organism, and isotope to isotope. But as noted, fish have a poor bioaccumulation potential for Cs-137 and will quickly shed it once they move into lower-concentration waters. It's more of a problem for plants and ground mammals. But I certainly wouldn't eat fish from immediately around the reactor (see http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130429/srep01742/full/srep01742.html?WT.ec_id=SREP-704-20130501).
-- The concentration levels around Fukushima are of great concern, but do keep some perspective and realize the assumptions and limits of the interpolation and modeling output in maps that you see (even when they have a legend).
Is money more important than our environment? Unfortunately that seems to be the case for a lot of people.
Surplus energy from wind or solar energy can also be saved as gas.
SpoonyBard
Banned
For many people posting on a video game message board on the internet is more important than the environment. Think of all the data centers and servers wasting all that energy just so that you can share your very important and unique opinion that no-one remembers a couple of hours after you have posted it. Anyway....
I think many people can choose nowadays where they buy their electricity. I must confess that I just picked the cheapest one, even if they used fossil fuels for quite a large portion. Clean alternative (hydro & nuke) would have been maybe 50-100 euros more per year. I'm a bit shamed about this, but money's tight these days...
Moral Panic
Member
How many people have died again?
Actually nuclear power is extremly expensive. In case you really count in all the costs.
It's just "so cheap" for the end-user currently, because it's heavily subsidized. Even then, none of the costs of longterm storage are taken into account. It's "let's dump it here / build the reactor at this place and hope that nothing will ever happen - fingers crossed-".
Just take a look at Japan. Was Tepco insured against those problems? Of course not, because noone would be crazy enough to do that. Oh no, the tax payer will pay for it.
Instead they should send out all the invoices to people, that bought this type of electricity including the investors, that had Tepco stock including all the higher ups of Tepco - and noone else. And then tell similar companies and investors that the same will happen to them, if anything happens. You don't want to know how fast all nuclear reactors would get shut down. Additionally all this talk about "cheap nuclear power" would die out as well.
It takes time.
http://japandailypress.com/six-more...ushima-diagnosed-with-thyroid-cancer-2134350/
Do you understand, that it's pretty obvious that noone has a clue what to do? They can't really do anything, because well radiation. Just think about what could happen, if another earthquake strikes that region. And sooner or later that will happen. The whole mess won't just "go away". Oh wait, yes it will. But at that time, noone currently active on NeoGAF will be alive anymore.
And I think Japan doesn't want to send in 240.000-600.000 "liquidators" to clean up the mess. Also nowadays people know what the consequences are. I doubt there would be many helping hands.
It shouldn't be for those with the actual power. I don't judge regular people. They probably can't do much. Those with the power should make it so everyone can help without going out of their way.
Buggy Loop
Member
Main reason for abandoning nuclear power is not even because of one or two accidents that can poison a small area (relatively with the earth's size), but because they ALL require "outside" power to function. Huge weakness.
Huge solar storms for example that would shutdown the power grid for many continents (heck, if enough, even the world). Whatever the reason for a power grid shutdown.. If its long enough, the nuclear central goes boom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91JZCbGLCvk
Huge solar storms for example that would shutdown the power grid for many continents (heck, if enough, even the world). Whatever the reason for a power grid shutdown.. If its long enough, the nuclear central goes boom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91JZCbGLCvk
Upsidedown Fuji
Member
Not sure if this is snarky or not but no direct deaths to the initial fallout. That kind of data takes years if it is even being recorded at all. Given Japan's ts track record it's probably going to be heavily skewed against any direct findings because of the ties between the government and nuclear community.
The real question is how many people have lost their livelihoods, homes, and have been displaced by the disaster and spread of nuclear fallout? Hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands still sit in temporary housing and school gyms to this very day.
Thanks skinpop. I'll definitely look into it!!
Shouta
Member
The earthquake itself wasn't the primary reason, as I recall. Had it just been that, there might not have been a nuclear incident at the plants. It was the additional Tsunami that really screwed things up.
Supposedly, they designed the plant to protect moreso against earthquakes but in doing that, basically put themselves more at risk for a tsunami. Their walls were designed to withstand something along the lines of quakes and tsunamis they had had previously in Japan, somewhere between 6.9 to 8.3 in magnitude. That tsunami really was far beyond anything they had expected.
I haven't seen anyone bring this up: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/6/japan-asks-for-worldshelponfukushimaleaks.html
way more
Member
McDonald's probably false flagged it just to get people to eat their corporate, nanny state food.
Well, yeah, except that one time.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=85024249&postcount=134
Yeah, I had meant to include the Tsunami as well. It was a "1-2" punch that did them in. Just one of them would've been bad enough, but the combo is what did them in.
SpoonyBard
Banned
I'm not sure where you get that information... Greenpeace? Almost all renewable energy is very heavily subsidized. When it comes to wind power it's just insane. Nuclear energy doesn't get much in comparison, and what it does, it's mainly for RnD, not the actual building of the plants and energy production. And fossil fuel production is subsidized also, when everything points to it needing to be taxed more instead. So, saying that nuclear energy being subsidized is just meaningless without actual data to support it:
http://www.iisd.org/gsi/sites/default/files/relative_energy_subsidies.pdf
When the tsunami hit Japan, only 3% of the damage was covered by insurance. By your logic 97% were stealing from the taxpayers by living too close to the coast. Hell, my previous employer lost shitloads of money because of the tsunami, and was partly bailed out by the Japanese taxpayer. And I still lost my job because of the internal financing problems the company met after the tsunami.
What is nice, is that even after all this anti nuclear nonsense more and more reactors are being made. Especially in China, where 29 new reactors are under construction, and even more are planned.
That's wrong. For example, no one insures a nuclear power plant, meaning the insurance should anything go wrong is essentially subsidised by the state. Additionally, storing the nuclear waste is done by the state in most countries. And that's no small thing, bearing in mind there is still is no final depot in the whole wide world that's actually in use. Even then, you'd have to pay for its maintenance for a few thousand years. Yes, you can write it off over time, but that's still pretty expensive.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Statistically, more workers have fallen off of windmills than there are deaths from nuclear power (in deaths per k/Wh). And dams break and kill people all the time.
As a direct result of Chernobyl, about 50 people died. The World Health Organization states that 4,000 people may die earlier due to Chernobyl; these deaths would take far off into the future, however, and the causes of said deaths would be edgy.
What we DO know is that of the 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer that have occured after the accident, there have only been nine deaths. And, to quote the aforementioned WHO, "Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents."
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
"Averaging about 2100 TWh (terrawatt hours) from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh. There are no reactors in existence that are as unsafe as the Chernobyl reactor was. Even the eight of that type that exist have containment domes and operate with lower void co-efficients."
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html
In other words, there are more deaths per TWh for solar than for nuclear, even counting Chernobyl. In fact, wind has an average of .15 deaths per TWh.
False. In the US, every nuclear plant has at least $375 million in private insurance. Beyond that, each plant pays into a pool of "second-tier" insurance, currently totalling over $11 billion. It's virtually impossible for a plant built today to cause that much in damages.
Which countries? Countries that have private plants like the US have storage covered by the plant.
SpoonyBard
Banned
Code:
Coal world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal China 278
Coal USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)Now that's something that should give people some perspective to the issue. Even natural gas, which is pretty damn clean compared to most energy, kills people.
What this tells me is that clearly Solar/Wind /Hydro is the way to go. Negligible differences compared to Nuclear WITHOUT the insanely long-term risk that Nuclear poses to ourselves and our environment. Not to mention that the STAIN Chernobyl has put on the earth's face around the accident zone is not expressable with a human death / tw ratio. Same goes for Fukushima.
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