Fukushima nuclear disaster now rated on par with Chernobyl

ElectricAye

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_05.html

The Japanese have now elevated the nuclear disaster's rating to a 7 (on a scale of 1 to 7).

Chernobyl was a 7, too.

ElectricAye

IAEA wrote:

The re-evaluation of the Fukushima Daiichi provisional INES rating resulted from an estimate of the total amount of radioactivity released to the environment from the nuclear plant. NISA estimates that the amount of radioactive material released to the atmosphere is approximately 10% of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, which is the only other nuclear accident to have been rated a Level 7 event.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html


I wonder whatever happened to the photographs they took with helicopter drones? They said a couple days ago that they would release those to the public. Instead, they expanded the evacuation zone and upped the disaster rating from 5 to 7.

Heater.

ElectricAye,

You mean these from the 24th March?

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

Or these:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13017282

Scary stuff.

localroger

I think there is an understanding that for the time being there is nowhere for things to go but down. They have to keep pumping in water to keep things from getting worse, but the water leaks out and is tainted with radioactive fission products, and they're running out of places to put this contaminated water. So it is all but inevitable that there will be further releases, perhaps lots of them, as they either give up and let the fuel rods heat up and hope for the best (good luck with that) or discharge contaminated water into the environment to make room for even more contaminated freshly leaked water.

ElectricAye

Heater. wrote: »

ElectricAye,

You mean these from the 24th March?

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

Or these:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13017282

Scary stuff.

Heater,

Wow! Those are some excellent pictures!
But as I understood it, there were supposed to be some sort of unpeopled remote-controlled helicopters of some sort that were going to hover over the reactor buildings and get very detailed pictures of what's inside and how the reactor vessels themselves were holding up, spent fuel ponds, etc. Maybe they're not yet done "developing" the pictures???

Anyway, thanks for the links to those March photos, though. I had not seen those before. Very interesting. You can actually see what the people on the ground are doing with the fire trucks, hoses, etc.

Heater.

Now that you mention it I think I did hear of such an idea.

Here is another batch of drone aerial pics from April 11th. http://photos.oregonlive.com/photo-essay/2011/04/new_aerial_images_of_fukushima.html

ElectricAye

Heater. wrote: »

...

Here is another batch of drone aerial pics from April 11th....

Yes, I bet that's the photo op I had heard about. These look like the video feed, however. Nice and pixelly. I wonder what TEPCO did with the still shots? Hmmmm....

Thanks.

LoopyByteloose

Though I've been generally pro-nuclear for a long time, this incident has made be reconsider. At one time, I worked in nuclear reactor construction on the Hanford Nuclear Area, Tricities, Washington, so I am quite aware of all the safe guards that go into a reactor. I begin to wonder if many of the world's cultures are as safety conscious about nuclear power as the US.

Many of the reactors in the USA are staffed with employees that were originally trained in the US Navy, which has the luxury of intense military discipline and serious damage control training.

But I believe that "The Economist" recently mention the average Fukishima maintence worker was earning about the same as a McDonald's employee before this incident.

Taiwan has similar 1970s boiling water reactors in operation (two sites, 4 reactors) and the fuel rod ponds were a big bone of contention when a foreign contractor was brought in to clean them recently. It seems local workers have considered radiation as culturally dirty and the ponds became a place to conveniently toss trash of all sorts. The contractor's divers were spending too much time being exposed to radiation as the clean up was far more than usual. So they pulled off the job before completion. I can't help but think of the Union Carbide incident in Bhopal, India as a parallel where the local culture just ignored rigorous maintenance which is an absolute necessity in both the chemical and the nuclear industries out of fear and disdain for the low pay in a hazardous occupation.

And of course, we are seeing at Fukishima that a big part of the problem is accumulated spent fuel rods that were supposed to be removed from the site for reprocessing at some time - but they really have no place to go.

In sum, the world may not be really ready for nuclear energy - even if some societies can properly handle it.

Vern

I don't agree Loopy. I am a firm believer that the human races ability to solve problems will always outpace its ability to create them. If anything we should be pouring MORE money into nuclear R&D.

LoopyByteloose

The R&D of nuclear reactors is quite mature. What we need is the retirement and replacement of early generations of reactors AND a complete cycle of spent nuclear fuel management.

These were promised in the 1970s, but have yet to appear. Cheap nuclear energy has been available because corners have been cut.

ElectricAye

Vern wrote: »

... I am a firm believer that the human races ability to solve problems will always outpace its ability to create them.....

I agree that this is true in a technical sense. Unfortunately, there are social and political processes that are inescapably involved, processes that tend to drive monumental decisions like these into regions where true risk is ignored, corners get cut, loopholes are exploited, and actual costs vs. benefits are left unanalyzed. Even in the case of the Fukushima reactors, it's not like people could not foresee the potential problems - it's just that it was socially/politically/economically expedient to overlook the dangers. And, from the looks of things recently, "learning the hard way" seems to be a very hard way indeed.