Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

374 252 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

veidr4• 13 years ago

I'm so fucking sick of this. This level of ass-clownery makes Japan look so bad, and so diminishes its national prestige in the world, that it's almost like when Bush the junior was president of the USA.

Yes, TEPCO is a private company. But it reflects on Japan the same way it would if the US government just left BP and Halliburton to decide entirely for themselves how to clean up the New Horizon oil rig disaster, with no meaningful oversight nor repercussions.

Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill.

TEPCO should have been nationalized, or at least put into a decade of receivership, within a few days of the fail, when it became clear that they were completely unequipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude and their president checked himself into a hospital for stress/mental issues.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

Yes, it's not about public/private. At a certain "screw-up" level, it doesn't matter anymore.

This is a Japanese problem, but it's close to becoming a worldwide problem

The containment has failed, as the leaks show, now what's the solution for that? Can we just pour tons and tons of sand on top so it melts and becomes a glass cocoon? (I don't know)

Or it has breached the soil?

justatdotin2• 13 years ago

it is certainly not just a Japanese problem. Japanese uranium mines didn't fuel the reactors, and the radiological contamination does not recognise national borders. The mismanagement of this disaster is not solely the responsibility of the Japanese government, but has been enabled by the hopeful silence of other nations. Why didn't all our governments stand up and denounce the misinformation around declaration of a 20msv 'acceptable' public dose limit, up from 1msv? Hoping to continue on with business as usual, international authorities stayed silent while their Japanese counterparts misled their people about what was 'safe'.

lmm• 13 years ago

Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill.

Really? Everyone is terrified of the radiation bogeyman, but I'd bet there were more injuries and deaths as a result of New Horizon.

veidr4• 13 years ago

Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it.

Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives.

17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contemplate.

doctorstupid• 13 years ago

Because they occurred together, people conflate the natural disasters of the earthquake and tsunami with the nuclear one.

But there were no deaths caused by radiation exposure, and this year the WHO claimed that the health risks to evacuees attributable to radiation are below detectable levels.

A shallow look onto the Deepwater Horizon spill makes it pretty clear that it had far more serious environmental and health effects.

rwmj• 13 years ago

You've not been paying much attention to the Japanese nuclear industry. This is the industry that allowed junior staff to mix nuclear materials together unsupervised, causing a chain reaction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_...

iyulaev• 13 years ago

And engineers in Europe or the US have never had criticality incidents ;)

zsombor• 13 years ago

By what standard do you see Fukushima as being worse? Number of casualties? Number of people who had their livelihood directly affected? The effect on the biosphere?

lispm• 13 years ago

Let's just say that hundreds of people will work in extreme conditions (high radiation, damaged nuclear material, damaged buildings) for the next 20 years to keep this thing from collapsing/... before the next heavy earth quake hits.

veidr4• 13 years ago

Personally, my weighting factors are:

1. Number of people who died, or will die, weighted by how they die -- painful slow death by internal organ cancers being pretty far up there on my chart.

2. Number of people who have traumatic long term health episodes, like cancer, that degrade their quality of life. Even if it isn't until much later.

3. Number of people who have to leave long-established hometown territory and give up their homes, to live in crappy housing (way better than an American FEMA trailer, but still sad) until they die.

4. Number of children who get thyroid cancer caused by radioactive contamination that would not have otherwise -- even though Japan has arguably the best health care system in the world, and virtually all of these kids will live. Still sucks to have cancer and surgery when you're 8.

5. Incidental casualties (including cleanup workers). The actual local Fukushima plant boss became something of a hero after telling Tokyo (as in Tokyo Electric Power Company) to fuck off and calling his own shots during the worst of it. He died of cancer[1] last year, and also had a brain hemorrhage last year, ostensibly none of which was related. But there were a lot of young workers that went in there and like, did manual labor. They might be alive, but a lot of them aren't all gonna be fine.

6. Degradation of the best food on earth. I read in a Seattle newspaper (I'm pretty sure) that effectively all tuna now commercially caught have higher levels of cesium than before Fukushima. First the mercury, now this? NO FUCK YUO!!

And here in Japan it's like spinach, potatoes, meat, fish... they can only test like 0.1% of it (which is bullshit but that is another post).

7. And, since I am me, my personal standard of how fucked it was accrues bonus points for: each of the 17 times I was forced to choose between not bathing or bathing in cesium water (we did Perrier sponge baths at first but then bottled water became too scarce to use other than for drinking), the 1 time my local supermarket (high-end rich-people supermarket btw) had to hand me a letter apologizing for selling me beef with illegally high cesium levels, and the 50 hours I spent roaming Tokyo in search of clean bottled water in the aftermath.

I just can't see any reality where Fukushima isn't worse than New Horizon, on balance. Not that New Horizon wasn't bad. It just wasn't one of the worst disasters since I have been alive, where Fukushima was.

[1]: ht NO tp NO NO SORRY ://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/09/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-masao-yoshida-dead-cancer_n_3568293.html

[2]: Man I really thought I was linking to NY Times, which I will now: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/asia/masao-yoshida-n...

At least that accidental huffington link explains why my computer had been audibly churning out all sorts of sad (but unrelated) human interest stories while I typed that post....

pnathan• 13 years ago

I agree that TEPCO is not earning itself any medals, and the Japanese government is not earning medals in terms of checking TEPCO's foolery.

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

'much worse than we were led to believe'

We've heard this one before, from the same people.

We're too slow to learn. Too slow compared to the ever increasing amplitude of the technology we create.

josephcooney• 13 years ago

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times. - Sigmund Freud

chiph2• 13 years ago

A rule of thumb I use for dealing with pronouncements from the government: If it's bad news, it's actually twice as bad as they say it is. If it's good news, it's actually half as good as they said. Thus far, it's proven reasonably accurate.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

Honestly, this is just business as usual for Japanese govt/bureaucracy here. The only difference is that it's the first time in a while that its bullshittery has been thrust onto the international stage.

If you're living in Japan or are any how strongly affiliated with it, you'd have to be a moron or just hopelessly incurably optimistic to believe anything the government or these pseudo governmental organizations say about anything remotely controversial. I've never trusted any statements or numbers issued by any Japanese entity since day 1. Since I can't trust anything, I just largely stay out of the country. Of course, its waste waters are being dumped into the ocean all the time so I'm getting owned anyways across the ocean.

adrianwaj• 13 years ago

repeat of my last comment:

"Who's the real terrorists in 2013?" Comfort-maximizing system-lickers.

throwaway1979• 13 years ago

Any HNer knowledgeable on the matter shed light into how bad this can get?

reirob3• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6232104

lignuist3• 13 years ago

Why is the japanese government letting TEPCO deal with the disaster on their own? Why is the rest of the world letting Japan deal with the disaster on it's own? Contaminating the Pacific Ocean constantly with radioactive water surely affects a lot of other states.

This is something experts (TEPCO is obviously not in this position) should handle. The bill for handling the disaster could then be presented at a later time to TEPCO and Japan.

toyg3• 13 years ago

The relationship between Japanese governments and corporations is much more incestuous than their Western counterparts'.

In any case, I don't think Tepco is completely alone in the cleanup effort, otherwise you wouldn't have people like Schneider talking about it. In fact, the irritation here comes from the fact that Fukushima continues to be a clusterfuck and everybody knows it... except TEPCO's PR people, who keep interpreting their best Chemical Ali impersonations.

panacea• 13 years ago

"The relationship between Japanese governments and corporations is much more incestuous than their Western counterparts"

On a scale of 1 to [citation needed], guess where the answer lies.

caf• 13 years ago

I think you mean Comical Ali (former Iraqi Information Minister) rather than Chemical Ali (former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service).

Datsundere• 13 years ago

capitalistic society at it's finest.

consultant235222• 13 years ago

Because the government does not have the equipment or expertise to handle the situation. And quite frankly, neither does anyone else.

loceng2• 13 years ago

I believe the figure going around is that 200 tonnes of radioactive water, per day, is leaking. This will cause a lot of problems for everyone.

gngeal• 13 years ago

200 tonnes of radioactive water

There is a (long) trillion of tons of radioactive water in all the world's oceans. C14, see? "Radioactive water" is a meaningless term.

loceng2• 13 years ago

Of course it would be based on concentrations - but no one is announcing what that is, nor do they seem to really be able to get a clear idea of it - because it's not contained and therefore not accurately measurable.

e12e• 13 years ago

I think meaningless is a little strong. We talk about CO2 emissions, even though the air contains CO2. My understanding would be more radioactive than ambient radiation, or something along those lines.

I do agree that seeing some actual numbers would be helpful (eg: types and amount (estimated) of isotopes).

brudgers• 13 years ago

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." -- I. F. Stone

Though the disaster site is in Japan there is nothing particular to Japanese culture in the information flow.

jre2• 13 years ago

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all.

It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy.

We have to find a way to make those critical industries transparent and honest so that citizens can trust them again.

justatdotin2• 13 years ago

I also see a similarity: both GMOs and the nuclear industry pose poorly-managed threats to genetic integrity of all forms of life.

tonyedgecombe• 13 years ago

I'm not sure the government would lie any less in this situation so that only leaves one option, no nuclear.

jre2• 13 years ago

I agree, I don't think a traditional government-controlled company is the answer. It's probably a mix of public and private entities, with a very strong and independent control authority that doesn't fear shutting things down if they find some wrongdoings (even if this means losing a lot of money in the short-term).

mbq• 13 years ago

The gov can kill you equally well with nuclear power as with bad food/water supervision, wrong medical policy (like inoculation strategy), chemical plants, mining operations, waste management, insufficient or corrupted law enforcement, finally by causing some war or economic collapse.

samatman5• 13 years ago

I can think of one thing, and no one will swallow it in our society: The engineers who work on nuclear plants must pledge their lives for its safety, and ritually kill themselves in the event of an incident.

I'm perfectly serious, in that it's within the human experience and it would work. I also suspect our world society can't wrap its head around that kind of medieval pact, and I'm not even sure I want to live in that world.

Still, knowing you have to hang yourself if the plant goes critical is pretty good motivation to do things right and not cut corners.

EDIT: well, this is getting misunderstood. My point here is: would you accept a lesser guarantee of safety? If you really believe that nuclear power can be made safe, these hypothetical engineers aren't at risk.

Let's say I took a pledge to kill myself if a meteor ever knocks the flame off the Statue of Liberty. Would any of you worry about me? No?

Maybe we shouldn't build nuke plants at the moment, then.

potatolicious2• 13 years ago

Mistakes aren't deterministic, they are largely probabilistic.

While ritual suicide might make the victims of an accident feel better, they are ultimately unproductive - there are many classes of disastrous errors that have nothing to do with negligence.

Not to mention also, even in incidents with a preventable cause, it is exceedingly rare for there to be a singular cause. Chernobyl, for example, was the culmination of a vast number of errors and safety lapses. Should the entire plant workforce kill themselves?

Things like nuclear meltdowns are black swan events, with a multitude of causes and guilt. What you're basically suggesting is that, in the case of such a black swan event, we will kill off a large proportion of the only people who can prevent it from happening again.

Qworg• 13 years ago

The "Fukushima 50" walked back into the plant after being ordered to evacuate. Not ritual suicide, but close: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_50

veidr4• 13 years ago

If only there was a culture that had a centuries-old tradition of committing painful ritual suicide to atone for failures... I would totally trust those guys to safely run a nuclear plant...

Retric• 13 years ago

The real problem in this case has far less to do with the reactor design than the horribly mismanaged cleanup efforts.

hansjorg• 13 years ago

Aren't engineers and other employees already committed just by the fact that they are living near the plant with their families?

What about getting that level of commitment from the owners? And if that's not practical, why not remove the profit incentive?

Maybe activities with as massive negative externalities as running nuclear plants should be run as non-profit organizations. Possibly as research institutions, with a strong anchoring in the surrounding local community.

ghostDancer• 13 years ago

I think it will be more effective if you put the politicians in power or the owners to live next to them, i can assure you there will be no lack of money for building and maintenance of the nuclear plants.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

Nuclear power plants are too big to be built and run by one person. While I might be willing to make the pledge for my own work why should I die because the knucklehead in the next cube makes a mistake, or an operator does something stupid, or a plane crashes into the reactor, or terrorist blow up the plant? There are just too many what ifs that are not within any single person's control.

bluecalm• 13 years ago

You touched on very important idea applicable not only to nuclear industry: it's good when workers at all levels have personal stake in success of the enterprise the work for- stake as in part of profit but part of responsibility as well. Unfortunately our current culture/economic system introduces disconnect in that respect. It's bad enough in non-critical endeavors and very dangerous in industries like nuclear or say medical research.

My observation is that the biggest obstacle to things going into desired direction of aligned incentives is hierarchical management system. You can't expect workers (engineers in nuclear example) to take all responsibility or even feel responsibility when they rarely have a say in budgeting, safety policy or overall strategy of corporation they work for. If the system was more democratic so to speak then I can see it happening but currently most endeavors are interested in "minimal pay, no say" policy when it comes to hiring.

ant512• 13 years ago

Just the engineers?

Did you ever work on a project where you said to your boss, "We need to do X or this won't work," and your boss said, "X is too [expensive | time consuming | difficult], we won't do that."

Or a project where your boss hired a bunch of incompetents at the last minute because the project was running late, and the new hires made endless mistakes that you then had to fix?

Do you want to seppuku because your nuclear plant blew up because your boss was an idiot and wouldn't listen to the engineers?

And don't suggest that the engineers become whistleblowers. We all know how that turns out.

digikata• 13 years ago

Engineers usually aren't the ones to make funding and budgeting resource decisions. Engineers killing themselves when a plant fails does little if the failure is because they couldn't get budget approved for replacement parts, or if the decision is to continue operating the plant when the tech is beyond its original operating life, or deciding to fund the seawall height at a safety factor of 50% above a 50 year tsunami records, or 300% over 2000 year tsunami records...

jasonkester• 13 years ago

Terrible idea, but there are examples of it in modern society.

Example: Technician with respirator samples gas levels in giant "empty" natural gas tank, gives OK to welder and steps out of the tank. Welder grabs technician by the arm, escorts him back into the tank and invites him to hang out for a few minutes while he fires up his torch. Technician waves his probe around a few extra times, double checks the display, and crosses his fingers.

I'm sure there's plenty of this sort of thing going on in industry today. Still, probably better not to formalize it.

WalterBright4• 13 years ago

If you desire to punish the engineers for making mistakes, what will happen is you'll develop a culture of denial and coverup of any problems.

In the various projects I've worked on, I've seen that happen first hand. What works better for the quality of the product is to have a collaborative, open process about finding bugs, fixing them, and rewarding people for having a quality result.

angersock2• 13 years ago

Yes, by all means, let's kill off the only people in a unique position to learn from their mistakes and make safer reactors!

Your idea is the latest in a long list of stupid, short-sighted, and ignorant semi-articulated fears.

ekianjo4• 13 years ago

Mouhaha. Ridiculous comment (worth killing yourself for, following your silly logic). Stuff happens. Science is built on the mistakes of the past. If you take this approach we will end up never building anything new and stay stuck in technology.

So, we shouldnt build driverless cars unless some engineer is ready to kill himself over it? Seriously, stop the drugs.

yaix• 13 years ago

Its both cases of failing government oversight of these industries. Fukushima got worse and worse, because the company was basically doing and saying whatever they wanted (and seemingly still is) with the government just repeating it.

Same goes for GMO. Its a good but potentially very dangerous technology. We should not simply allow it because a few billion USD in turnover and GDP growth are promised.

Bluestrike2• 13 years ago

No, we should allow it because GMO represents the potential for increases in agricultural efficiency and total output that mean the difference between millions starving to death or not.

api3• 13 years ago

Both of these things are tests of our ability to be conscientious, honest, and to take the power we have seriously and act accordingly. They're tests of maturity and responsibility -- at a civilization level.

So far on the nuclear front we've failed that test. Fukushima had its backup generators in the basement -- in a tsunami zone. There is no global nuclear emergency response team. There is no long-term waste solution in many countries including the USA. Managers of plants routinely slack off on safety, reporting, etc.

We are quite simply too irresponsible and immature for such toys... yet. Humanity has a little bit of growing up to do.

I don't think GMOs are an exact comparison, as I think the risk is much smaller there (at least with most GMO technologies). But it's the same class of thing-- a technology that demands maturity and responsibility. I'd extend that to biotech in general.

RyanMcGreal2• 13 years ago

Regulatory capture is a big problem. One of the more bizarre twists in the Japanese nuclear story is that a program to develop robots that could remotely work inside damaged nuclear generating stations was canceled out of fear that it would send a message that nuclear power isn't safe.

furyg3• 13 years ago

If that's true it's very interesting... Do you have any sources?

CWuestefeld• 13 years ago

Regulatory capture is a big problem.

Regulatory capture is THE problem. Contrary to the parent post's claim, the problem is not with our "economic system". It's that, if you're going to regulate something (particularly something as complex as nuclear energy), then you need experts. And the only place to get those experts is from the industry. Generally, those people are naturally going to look at the industry from a certain perspective, one that views the activity of the industry as important, and its status quo as something other than an historical accident.

Until you can find a way to extract human nature from the regulatory process -- and that's even before we start talking about corruption -- you're not going to get anything better.

So sure, the industry tries to push the boundaries, and we should call them out for that. But while doing so, we must also consider how the regulators -- themselves humans -- might do even worse. That side of the equation is too often overlooked.

coldtea4• 13 years ago

That was a government sponsored program that was government canceled in the first place. A private company, would not have even bothered with it in the first place, especially if there was no subsidy.

jeffdavis• 13 years ago

"It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits."

That sounds more like an unfortunate law of nature rather than our "current economic system". Even under communism or in hunter/gatherer groups there is pressure to do more with less; it's just not called "profit".

The important thing to do is avoid hiding long-term large risks with short-term safety. Our modern economic systems actually make that easier; although technology makes the long-term large risks larger.

wissler7• 13 years ago

"I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all."

If you look around you'll find a lot more examples than these two, and you'll trace the root cause as illegitimate use of government force, i.e. use or threat of violence for what is simply peaceful activity.

If someone threatens you with violence, "for your own good", you tend not to trust. But for some reason, when government does this very same thing, most people still trust it. It's like how children still trust parents even though the parents might restrain or even spank them (and this makes good evolutionary sense), but the difference is that the government is not your parent, it does not actually have a concern for you as an individual, it doesn't love you. It is a collection of strangers with their own agendas.

Somehow, government has figured out how to not only co-opt this evolutionary circuitry that was meant for trusting parents at a time when the child really doesn't know what's good for him, and what's more, extend this infantile frame of mind beyond childhood.

All of this recent NSA stuff is just getting toward the final consequences of allowing yourself to adopt such a childish frame of mind. The government has no more right to take a threatening or coercive action against innocent people than any stranger does.

moens• 13 years ago

I think this childishness is the essential requirement of centralized power. Our current economic system rises from our (personal) taste for the conveniences of centralized power. For it we are willing to relinquish personal responsibility and individuality.

Many early people groups (nomads, pueblos, even manors and unfederated fifedoms), had optimized for small communities. Presumably they were not aware of the efficiency of centralized power, or capable of the centralization we can accomplish today. Some apparently were aware, and chose the benefits of small communities.

I believe we are now at a crossroads. We choose small communities and relinquish the convenience of centralized power, or we submit to the requirements of centralized power (lack of privacy, lack of individuality, etc).

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

What does this have to do with the government not exerting sufficient regulatory force against bad actors in the nuclear industry? After all, people who don't like being regulated frequently trot out your very complaint as an excuse for why they should not be subject to more regulation. I think you're confused.

mtdewcmu4• 13 years ago

Has GMO ever been confirmed to have harmed anybody? Confusion between real and imagined threats could be part of the problem. Nuclear accidents will kill you, as in -- dead.

leot• 13 years ago

When those in power (in the U.S.) take as a prior that gov't can't/won't work, then they're given an excuse to not really act in the public's interest in good faith, or to try hard to design a regulatory framework that could actually function. Belief in government dysfunction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (that conveniently most benefits those who are already most powerful, those individuals whose power can only be checked by government).

The solution to "regulatory capture" is sometimes less regulation, but at other times transparency and better regulation. This is the real world, and there aren't any silver bullets.

kenster073• 13 years ago

Why is it fundamentally stupid to be opposed to it?

Nuclear power in its current form presents tremendous, potentially country-altering downside when things (can and will) go wrong.

Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?

cobrausn2• 13 years ago

Is this really the best humanity has got -- The side effect of a decades-old weapons program?

You are asking the question this way hoping someone has a better answer - they don't. Nuclear is our best option for making clean and reliable power that will get us to that next best option. Some of the new designs out there are quite amazing feats of engineering.

baddox2• 13 years ago

Why is it appropriate to compare the worst case for various methods of power generation? I think it's more appropriate to weigh the potential failure cases of each by the probability of them occurring, and I suspect if we did that, nuclear wouldn't be the most harmful method of power generation.

DennisP5• 13 years ago

Because the worst nuclear accidents have done less damage than coal plants do every year as part of their normal expected operation. If we were rational we'd replace those coal plants as fast as we could, even if it took nuclear to do it.

Because the accidents have all been with very old designs. Even at Fukushima, in the face of a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, reactors built in the 80's instead of the 70's got through it all just fine.

Because climate change is turning into such a desperate problem that we can't afford to leave any solutions on the table. And nuclear works quite nicely with solar power...nuclear all the time, solar for extra peak load during the day.

Nuclear is not just the side effect of a weapons program. It's an amazing energy source. With the most advanced reactors, all the energy you need for your entire life can come from a lump of fuel smaller than a golfball.

It's very sad that our first use of this technology was to kill people. Perhaps if we hadn't figured it out in the middle of WWII, things would have been different, and climate change would be a hypothetical instead of an imminent nightmare.

angersock2• 13 years ago

"Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?"

You mean, like integrated circuits, GPS, and the Internet?

leoc• 13 years ago

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all.

It's not just the industry or governments, it's also the shamelessly, breathlessly partisan pros and antis who seem to dominate the broader debate on nuclear.

It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy.

There are definitely serious incentive problems. However, making everyone a public employee and so notionally an agent of the public interest doesn't necessarily make such problems go away, viz. Chernobyl.

prewett• 13 years ago

I'm not convinced that nuclear power is safe, regulators or no. Accidents, mistakes, unforeseen problems, sabotage all will happen, and when it does, it makes an area of land potentially uninhabitable for many years. A system where the failure mode is long-term uninhabitability is not what I call safe.

ArkyBeagle• 13 years ago

Risk is cost we can't measure because it would require the ability to predict what we cannot. Rents are profits that aren't really profits.

The thing to do is be open, transparent and honest about risk and rents. But at our core, we're all liars when the stakes get high. The math is also error prone.

Remember the political climate those old GE nuke plants were built under - "too cheap to meter" and run by people like Leslie Groves who had infought enough to be at the top of the heap. there was this strange, willful naievete.

"Making those industries transparent and honest" seems impossible.

walid• 13 years ago

The worst part is that everyone wants to present their situation as being in control and not admitting that control over the situation was lost when the floods initially happened. If Fukushima was left to political entities to handle it, we'll end up with radioactive materials in everything all around the globe. Considering that today we eat food grown all over the plant, the worst part is the amount of radiation that will slip into our food supply.

uptown2• 13 years ago

Why are nuclear facilities frequently built near oceans and rivers? Is it due to the easy-access to water for cooling purposes? I've seen it in many places, and it just seems short-sighted in light of the potential to spread contamination when something goes wrong.

kaybe• 13 years ago

Yes, that's the reason. Without massive amounts of water for cooling it's not possible to use current technologies.

uptown2• 13 years ago

Interesting. The NSA facility is designed to use a massive amount of water daily (17 million gallons a day), and it is nowhere near an ocean.

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/massive-nsa-data-...

agumonkey• 13 years ago

It's a double-edged sword obviously. How much flow does a plant need ? and is it unrealistic to build an isolated water pond/stream to cool one ?

seren• 13 years ago

And the one that are not closed to the sea, are closed to rivers, and so are also at risk of being flooded. Another risk is that after severe heat waves, the river's water can become to "hot" to efficiently cool the reactor... Not to mention severe drought where the river level can become too low... All in all, plenty of different ways to fail.

speeder• 13 years ago

I visited brazillian nuclear plants.

They on purpose built them near the ocean, so they can just pump water inside it, and then throw back the hot water in the ocean, yet the heat is so big that it still heats up by half a degree one square kilometer of ocean or something like that.

I doubt it is feasible with a man-made pool of water.

But at least, they don't repeat fukushima stupidity of leaving the fuel rods on the ceiling (here the fuel rods are moved to a special building in a hill nearby).

chiph2• 13 years ago

The Shearon Harris reactor in North Carolina has a man-made lake for it's cooling. The water in there is slightly warmer than ambient temperatures. I believe one of the reasons not to add any additional reactors (when the NRC made additional licenses available a few years ago) was because they'd have to significantly increase the water acreage and the utility didn't have the land for it.

cygwin98• 13 years ago

I don't know why Japan can get away with this for so long. I remember when the Chernobyl disaster happened, Soviet Union was shamed to death by all western media for years. I had high respect for the Russians for their great efforts to contain the damage. A great many of red army soldiers died when building a concrete substrate underneath the ruined reactor, which prevented the underground water from being contaminated by radioactive pollution. In contrast, the Japan government hasn't been capable to do this for the past two years, which is apparently irresponsible and shockingly incompetent.

yxhuvud• 13 years ago

Japan is getting away with it because there is no radioactive rain impacting other countries.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

I guess it helps that the winds blow from west to east (i.e. straight into the ocean where the next country is ~8000 miles away)

reirob3• 13 years ago

This might be, but at the same time the problem is not resolved and contained as it was in Chernobyl.

"We have three 100-ton melted fuel blobs underground, but where exactly they are located, no one knows. Whatever 'barriers' TEPCO has put in place so far have failed. Efforts to decontaminate radioactive water have failed. Robots have failed. Camera equipment and temperature gauges...failed. Decontamination of surrounding cities has failed. " [..] "If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people"

Considering these future threats have not been resolved in any way I must say I respect for Soviet Unions reaction in Chernobyl case.

EDIT: Quotes taken from article linked in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6232104

bengrunfeld3• 13 years ago

Honestly, internet snarkiness and 2 minute rages aside, I wonder what this will mean for us in the future. I wonder how US crops, the Australia climate, and Chinese drinking water quality will be affected. Is this so bad that Japan has essentially damned the entire region? Or are we going to see a mass die-off of fish around the world? It's just a really scary situation, and totally not cool.

rtpg2• 13 years ago

Not to be rude but I think you're highly overestimating the effects this could have globally. The ocean is really big, and it's not like radioactivity is contagious. As for the local effects, who knows...

EDIT: by who knows, I just mean I'm not aware of the scale, I could imagine it getting pretty bad. It's just that with all the sensationalism and non comprehension of basic statistics in some articles, I feel pretty misinformed on the subject.

bengrunfeld3• 13 years ago

I'm not overestimating, or indeed estimating, anything. I was interested in other people's opinions. Rudeness pardoned.

lignuist3• 13 years ago

I would expect something between slightly higher levels of radiation in fish (which might sum up if you eat it and might "surprisingly" lead to cancer) and an apocalyptic disaster that affects every creature on earth if TEPCO fucks up anything with the large number of fuel rods, which are still stored at Fukushima.

pdonis15• 13 years ago

Um, let's try to keep things in perspective, please. This is very bad for the people that are near the plant, no question. But in global terms, the total amount of contaminated water that could potentially leak is miniscule. The Pacific Ocean is really, really big.

The article says that 400 metric tons of contaminated water are being added every day. Let's say that leakage rate goes on for 5 years. That's about a million metric tons of contaminated water.

The volume of the Pacific Ocean is about 660 million cubic kilometers. One cubic kilometer of water weighs about a billion metric tons; so the a million metric tons of radioactive water is one 660 billionth of the volume of the Pacific Ocean.

Now let's talk about the fuel rods. An accident involving those could potentially have effects similar to Chernobyl in terms of spreading radiation; but since there are four reactors at risk at Fukushima, we would expect the global effects to be about four times the global effect of Chernobyl. While the global effects of Chernobyl were certainly measurable, they hardly amounted to "an apocalyptic disaster", or even one fourth of one.

Symmetry3• 13 years ago

Have we gotten to the point where the Fukushima disaster has caused as many deaths as an equivalent megawattage of coal powerplants operating over Fukushima's lifetime would have?

losvedir• 13 years ago

Has it caused any?

ori_b• 13 years ago

We haven't gotten to 1 yet.

Symmetry3• 13 years ago

Ok, so the lifetime output of the plant is 188 GW-years. Most estimates for the expected cancer deaths due to radiation are around 120. The evacuation itself caused 46 deaths due to disruption in medical care and suicide.

That means that Fukushima had .88 deaths per GWyr. That's 1/3 the death rate of coal according to an EU study, but twice the death rate of coal according to another study that looked at a different set of countries. Which I guess makes sense, most coal related deaths are going to be due to mining safety and particulate emissions which rich countries can do a lot to combat by investing in technology for safer money and scrubbing coal emissions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml

reirob3• 13 years ago

I guess this does not include all the radiation that we are still going to have, for decades and possible bigger damages yet to come: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6232104

pessimizer4• 13 years ago

What a great answer to your own great question.

So depending on the accuracy of the estimates - which may be drastically low, but also should be spread amongst the plants currently running without incident and their likelihood to continue that way - nuclear could end up being far more damaging to human health than coal for an equivalent amount of energy.

sampo• 13 years ago

It would be nice to see some numbers.

"around 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank on the site."

Ok, 300 tonnes, but during which time period? Between 2011 and now? And how radioactive? What elements and how much does it contain?

eliasmacpherson2• 13 years ago

another bbc article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23764382 From that I think this is a one off discovery of 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water leaking, and in general 300 tonnes of 'not as radioactive' per day leak from the radioactive buildings.

Odd that the numbers given are so similar.

DennisP5• 13 years ago

Although it's possible this is really bad, I'm surprised by the lack of skepticism in this discussion so far. Mycle Snyder is described as an "independent consultant," with no mention of scientific or engineering credentials. There are quite a few people who make a living as consultants by exaggerating nuclear dangers.

The article also didn't give any numbers at all. How much radioactivity are we talking about here? Talking about "tonnes of radioactive water" is meaningless.

Presumably someone has measured actual radioactivity levels in the nearby ocean. Where are those numbers?

api3• 13 years ago

Nearly every Fukushima mega-scare story I've encountered seems to go back to Arnie Gunderson, who is a professional anti-nuclear consultant.

At the same time, I see a near information blackout from other authorities. There just doesn't seem to be much good information on this one way or the other.

Radiation is very easy to detect. If there's a serious leak, people outside Japan could see it. Where is this data?

rangibaby• 13 years ago

I take some reassurance that the anti-nuclear guys say we're fucked and pro-nuclear guys say nuclear is still the safest. That means the truth is probably somewhere in the middle ;-)

throwaway_yy2Di2• 13 years ago

The article also didn't give any numbers at all. How much radioactivity are we talking about here? Talking about "tonnes of radioactive water" is meaningless.

80 MBq/L * 300,000 L = 24 TBq

Investigations showed that the level of water in the tank was about 3 metres lower than expected, indicating that some 300 cubic metres had escaped.

Tepco told WNN that the leaked water had already passed through the first 'SARRY' stage of decontamination, which had removed most of the radioactive caesium. It was yet to pass through the 'ALPS' treatment that would remove strontium and other beta-emitting radionuclides. As such its radioactivity is considered medium-to-low at 80,000 becquerels per cubic centimetre. Dose rates measured for gamma and beta radiation were high at over 100 milliSieverts per hour, while the dose rate for gamma only was low at just 1.5 milliSieverts per hour. Tepco did not specify if these were dose rates at the water surface or, more likely, a standard 1 metre above the ground.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Leak_from_Fukushima_tan...

dharma1• 13 years ago

Can someone translate this to plain English? What is the worse case scenario, in terms of damage to the environment and people? What kind of radius will the effects be contained to - is it just the coast of Japan or much further out?

kevcampb• 13 years ago

can someone explain why they are accumulating so much extra water? surely they can just reuse the already contaminated water in the tanks? obviously there's good reason, just curious why.

MichaelGG2• 13 years ago

Well if they're actually leaking that much water every day, then they'd probably not have a way to recapture it. If they did, it wouldn't be a leak.

Tichy• 13 years ago

I know what the deniers are going to say: the risk is just equivalent to dumping a banana into the ocean.

Whatever.

adam-f• 13 years ago

76 million bananas, to be precise.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/storie...

gus_massa• 13 years ago

76 millons bananas are approximately between 220 and 500 TEUs (standard containers) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28volume+76+million+ba... Let's multiply that by 2 to account the overhead and space between bananas.

A cargo ship can carry up to 16000 TEUs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

iamshariq• 13 years ago

Why the heck is this on top?

Is this site turning into reddit for world news?

pvaldes• 13 years ago

... as always since 2011

sadly nothing new, layers of lies over more lies with some crunchy lies in between. Bon appetit!.

Gravityloss• 13 years ago

Numbers would be good. How radioactive? Compared to background and something which we know to be dangerous?

niuzeta• 13 years ago

it's about time the three countries closest to Japan - Korea, China, and Russia, all of whom have great power and relation(trade and diplomatic) with Japan, to respond. I mean, they've already done but it's time to make the pressure more concrete... economic sanction, albeit partial?

This is a globe-wide matter.

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

Anyone wishing to become more familiar with the murky process which led to the proliferation of the unsafe Boiling Water Reactors such as Fukushima should watch Adam Curtis' film A is for Atom, which details how the US government and General Electric conspired to ignore the warnings from the Atomic Energy Commission about the designs.

He made it available in full on his (excellent) blog in the wake of the earthquake: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom....

If those from outside the UK can't watch that one, it's also on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc

Those wary of Curtis and his psychedelic editing tricks should still give it a go - this one is from 1992, before he got so into Boards of Canada and flash cuts.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I can't say I'm a Lewis Page fan, but his coverage on the Register [1] added an interesting insight which was that contamination in the water was resulting in primarily beta radiation, not gamma radiation. I know the folks who are reporting this, the "World Nuclear Industry Status Report" [2] are not exactly unbiased. Read through other reports they have on their web site and they don't seem to be coming at the debate from a particularly balanced perspective.

In general though I find it hard to read coverage of nuclear power, gun control, and civil liberties these days given the very strident positions. It feels to me like walking in a room of people screaming at each other.

[1] "OMG! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again" -- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/21/omg_new_crisis_disas...

[2] http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/

mtdewcmu4• 13 years ago

The part that wasn't explained very well in these articles is the nature of the threat from water leaking into the ocean. I would think, perhaps naively, that once it entered the ocean, it would dissipate and be relatively harmless. It would also be a relatively benign place to contaminate the groundwater. The groundwater would be too salty to drink, anyway, and it would flow directly into the ocean.

consultant235222• 13 years ago

I can't imagine why anyone is surprised by this. The people in the know will never tell us the true depth of the problems with the economy right now, the floor of the gulf is absolutely destroyed from being covered in oil, etc. A conspiracy theorist sized dose of cynicism when reading the news is about the only way to get any sort of reality out of it.

hardwaresofton• 13 years ago

As a person who was in japan during the touhoku earthquake, and I'd like to point out that most of the japanese people probably have no idea what is happening in regards to this. If it's on the news, they are probably airing it BECAUSE of the global shitstorm tha has emerged. The only news I trusted while I was there was the BBC (Japanese news told you nothing, American news were sensationalizing every thing, slow at best, wrong at worst)

gonehome• 13 years ago

I remember reading an article around the time of the Fukushima leak where a Chernobyl clean up crew survivor was interviewed. One of the key points was to get out as quickly as possible, that it'll be much worse than the government/industry initially says it is. I made a mental note to see if that ended up being true - looks like it unfortunately may be.

Here's the article: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/22/chernobyl-cleanup-survivor...

mcantelon• 13 years ago

Let's remember the post-Fukishima gloating by pundits such as George Monbiot that naively deemed Fukishima a validation of nuclear power.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuc...

ajarmst• 13 years ago

This "story" is simply a press release from Mycle Scneider, who has a clear and consistent record as being anti-nuclear power and a probable agenda to elevate concern about it. I'd like to see a real "independent" report which cites multiple views and has real measurements, not meaningless twaddle like "tons of radioactive water."

orblivion• 13 years ago

"They are worried about the enormous quantities of water, used to cool the reactor cores, which are now being stored on site.

Some 1,000 tanks have been built to hold the water. But these are believed to be at around 85% of their capacity and every day an extra 400 tonnes of water are being added."

Are they still cooling down the reactors?

mpyne4• 13 years ago

Probably they are still cooling down the reactors, as least somewhat. The effect is called "decay heat" and does take quite some time to completely dissipate for reactors of that scale.

However there is also a lot of groundwater leaking into the basement/reactor complex apparently, which then needs to be pumped back out.

beefman2• 13 years ago

It's really sad and frightening for me to see such hysteria in the media and even in the comments here. I want to address all of it, but it's not possible even to make a dent. But I can offer the following numbers:

  Fukushima release to groundwater
   TEPCO estimate, August 2013
     0.024 PBq (< 5g Sr-90) in 300 m^3 water

  Fukushima releases to the sea
   TEPCO estimate, May 2012
    11 PBq I-131
     3.5 PBq Cs-134
     3.6 PBq Cs-137

  Fukushima releases to air
   TEPCO estimate, May 2012
    500 PBq I-131
     10 PBq Cs-137
     10 PBq Cs-134
   NISA estimate, June 2011
    160 PBq I-131
     15 PBq Cs-137

  Chernobyl releases to air
   Wikipedia, retrieved Aug 2012
   1760 PBq I-131
     85 PBq Cs-137

And here's a picture of the leak http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20130820/14/noraneko-okayam...

The highest seawater activity level I've ever seen reported is 650 Bq/L Cs-137. If it weren't for the salt, I'd drink it all week long.

Edit: Ongoing Fukushima coverage can't really be made interesting, but Leslie Corrice[1] and Will Davis[2] do a good job.

[1] http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com [2] http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com

KVFinn• 13 years ago

You're quoting a bunch of year or more old stats... there's been a flurry of recent news coverage because recent measurements have either exceeded past limits, or past measurements are now considered to have been underestimates, with respect to ocean release.

Example:

http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-bay-radiation-levels-hi...

Reports from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, say that measurements of radioactive tritium in seawater – seeping out of the nuclear complex via groundwater into the sea – show levels at 4700 becquerels per liter, the highest tritium level in the measurement history. The highest tritium levels have come in the past 15 days, the same reports show.

It is very very strange to be seeing such Tritium levels this late, it dilutes so quickly. It's so strange it's to even figure out probably causes.

beefman2• 13 years ago

No, I'm not missing recent events. Year-old stats are still valid because almost all the release occurred during the accident sequence in 2011.

I'll drink the 4700 Bq/L tritium water too. That level doesn't even exceed the WHO limit for drinking water (10,000) let alone the Finnish one (30,000) or Australian one (76,103). The 4.7kBq measurement was made in the quay in front of the plant, not the open sea. Rising tritium levels there may be a result of leaks of cesium-stripped water from the onsite treatment system, or simply natural variation in groundwater drainage from the site.

I don't want to get personal, but the way your post is written as if it comes from a place of knowledge, is a worthwhile example of a larger phenomenon.

Snowda• 13 years ago

I remember back when the earthquake hit we were in the engineering lab at university and we were gathered around one of the workstations watching YouTube video's of the even half way around the world. We were shocked but we were fairly confident that their government had a handle on the situation. They are an earthquake prone country after all, they surely planned for this. My roommate was a transfer studying English and had a few friends from South Korea and Japan. They were going to a pub and I came along for the ride. I will never forget that night.

1. One of his friends got a phone call telling him his best friend was missing. He left and I never saw the guy again, I don't know what happened to his friend. This made the situation really feel real to me. Not just something just happening on TV.

2. While talking to a Japanese guy there (who I knew well and had a history of being BRUTALLY honest about his own country) said straight up: "This is worse than the government is admitting". Even before problems with Fukushima were announced he said this. I was dumbstruck by how the people could truly not believe their own government in any of the slightest and how despite this the Government perpetually wants to pretend everything is fine to keep the populous calm. As time has gone on I only further believe him on this fact. And I believe that it is still worse than they are currently admitting.

nateabele• 13 years ago

I was in Tokyo recently and had a chance to speak to some friends about this. Many of false claims and lack of transparency by the Japanese government are driven by the fact that affected areas around Fukushima are heavy tourist areas.

Combined with lack of growth in exports, over which their economy is already expected to be heading into a crisis in the next few years, the impact of a long-term reduction in tourism has potentially serious national implications.

ericdykstra• 13 years ago

Here is an interesting video describing a model of the spread of radiation from the Fukushima plant over the next 10 years. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's an interesting watch nonetheless (and under 3 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAU00aL-_ic

throwaway_yy2Di2• 13 years ago

Here's the paper behind that:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/3/034004/article

Lest the logarithmic scale confuse anyone, the concentrations over most of the ocean are tiny. The scale has a 5 order-of-magnitude range.

As a reference point, Cs-137 background from atmospheric testing is a median 3 Bq/m^3 [1] in the Pacific. (Total weapons fallout was 25 MCi = 925 PBq of Cs-137 [2], about 30x Fukushima's 36 PBq [3]). Both are dwarfed by natural radioactivity, which includes 11 kBq/m^3 of K-40 [4].

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15245845

[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=JLFX6EMPqBkC&pg=PA34

[3] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5984.full

[4] http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

NN88• 13 years ago

/r/Conspiracy was right. Hot damn.

PaulHoule• 13 years ago

This is very bad news for the nuclear industry although I think the threat to the global environment is overblown.

For instance, they speak as if going into the ocean was the worst place the leakage could go. But face it, the ocean is a huge place and spread out that thin, it's an infinitesimal part of the natural background radiation.

Sure, radiation puts stress on life forms, but so does SO2, CO2, POPs and all the other pollution we create and in the big picture Fukushima has far less impact than, say, rice farming, has in Japan.

davvid• 13 years ago

Californians should be up in arms about this (where do you think the radiation is going?)

Just the other day there was that story about how 80% (?) of our pollution in CA comes from China. The earth is one giant network. </saddened>

Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

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