Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

appleannie1943

(1,303 posts)
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 11:11 AM Feb 2017

Fukushima Reactor #2 pressure vessel breached, rising to "unimaginable" levels of radiation.

Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are at their highest since the plant suffered a triple meltdown almost six years ago.

The facility’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said atmospheric readings as high as 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded inside the containment vessel of reactor No 2,...

The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/3/1629551/--Fukushima-Reactor-2-pressure-vessel-breached-rising-to-unimaginable-levels-of-radiation?detail=facebook

One of the scariest parts is that in the age of Trump, this is relegated to back page news.

16 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies

Esse Quam Videri

(685 posts)
1. So many things to talk about if you've been
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 11:27 AM
Feb 2017

Paying attention since this disaster happened. I think one the most telling is the difference between how the Russians responded to Chernobyl versus how the Japanese responded (or didn't) to Fukushima . The Russians immediately set to work to encase their reactor in a concrete sarcophagus and have just recently completed a massive second outer sarcophagus. The Japanese? Just a temporary structure that I think is more to keep rain water out than to keep the radiation contained.

But let's not kid ourselves. With the actual fuel from one, two or even three reactors now residing somewhere in the ground below the reactors the real problem is the mixing of ground/sea water. While the Japanese have tried constructing an ice wall, its efficacy remains to be seen.

chelsea0011

(10,115 posts)
2. Some serious questions need to be asked about safety concerns.
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 11:33 AM
Feb 2017

The article hints that what could happen isn't known. The Japanese government need to be much more open about his than they appear to have been. But again. What do I know. This ongoing story has been all but forgotten.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
4. The Daily Kos story is so stupid, so ignorant, that it defies imagination.
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 03:36 PM
Feb 2017

The obvious fact is in the stupidity that is clear in the title: Anything that is measurable is by definition not "unimaginable."

This is just scare rhetoric.

In the 48 hours since the stupid fest at Daily Kos began, 16,000 people on this planet died from air pollution. Kossacks, including Markos couldn't care less about those people.

How many people died because a robot measured radiation levels in reactor 2?

As many as will die in the next hour from air pollution?

Did the fuel suddenly fall out yesterday, or has it been there since the reactors failed?

Does the discovery of a fact make it dangerous, or is the danger determined by, um, physics?

Is the total radioactivity in the reactor core higher or lower than it was in 2011? (This is a simple physics question which an average high school student should be competent to answer.)

How much exposure have human beings had to this measured radiation level?

The ocean contains 500 billion curies of potassium-40, the removal of which would cause all life in the ocean to cease. If we crowded all 500 billion curies into a building the size of the reactor, would the radiation levels be high or low?

Ignorance exists on both sides of the political spectrum, and the environmental assholes who run Kos - and let's be clear that this rhetoric kills people, since even including every single nuclear accident ever, including Fukushima, according to one of the most read papers in the primary scientific literature nuclear energy SAVES lives - are in fact, prima facie evidence of just how stupid people on the nominal left can be.

Neither the reporter who rote the article, or the fools talking it up at Kos know a damned thing about physics.

This is unsurprising. The "environmental" editor over there is Tim Lange, with whom I've had many very unpleasant interactions. Tim Lange - who in my view is a very poorly educated person discussing topics he knows nothing about, specifically issues in the environment and environmental justice - acts as if the 63 "extra" lung cancer deaths among native American uranium miners is somehow more tragic than the 70 million people who died from air pollution since 2006, 35 million of them since Fukushima was struck by an earthquake, an earthquake that killed 20,000 people, zero of whom died from radiation.

How come nobody complains about um, the danger of living in coastal cities, particularly in the age of climate change, climate change that is largely the result of the demonization of nuclear energy?

The Kos story is pure idiocy, as is the Guardian article it quotes. It is morally disgusting that this topic gets so much positive feedback, criminal actually.

When I pointed this out at Kos, the criminality, the management had, an unsurprising, Trumpian (kill the messenger) response. This is fine with me. Ignorance disgusts me, and as I age, I'm less and less tolerant of it, and frankly, I am at a point where I recognize that it will do what it will, and I may as well, as often as possible, ignore it, since raising my blood pressure will not do a damned thing to destroy it.

Ignorance, nevertheless - I still insist - kills.

OKIsItJustMe

(19,933 posts)
6. Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report 2017
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 05:42 PM
Feb 2017
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2017/1371751_10469.html
[font face=Serif][font size=5]Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report 2017[/font]
[font size=4]Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report (Jan 31,2017)[/font]
[font size=5]Recent Topics:IMAGES INSIDE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI UNIT 2 NEED FURTHER EXAMINATION INCLUDING THE POSSIBILITY OF FUEL DEBRIS[/font]

Additional information likely to be obtained when Scorpion robot is sent in soon

[font size=3]TOKYO, Jan. 31-A camera placed inside the Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) of Unit 2 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has captured intriguing images that may be fuel debris from the March 2011 accident, but further examination is necessary before that can be verified.

Reports that have been widely circulated in the media may be premature, TEPCO Holdings believes. Images said by some reports to be of “black chunks” may in fact turn out to be fuel debris, but may also be the result of missing paint or rust discoloration.

TEPCO Holdings recognizes that the matter has generated great public interest because a sighting of fuel debris would represent an important ‘first.’ But it is important that TEPCO Holdings carefully verifies what these images appear to be showing before reaching conclusions.

The pictures can be viewed at http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/handouts/2017/images/handouts_170130_02-e.pdf.

…[/font][/font]

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
8. How interesting. I didn't know anyone was counting. But, well, everybody wins, well,
Sat Feb 4, 2017, 10:05 PM
Feb 2017

Last edited Sat Feb 4, 2017, 10:48 PM - Edit history (3)

...except for the 8,000 people who will die tomorrow from air pollution and the day after that, and the day after that, days 1308 of the big bad "bojo," day 1309 of the bojo.

The remark that caused the genius who runs the place to offer the big, bad, terrifying "bojo," was this one:

How about you ASK the families of the 3.3 million
...people who died last year from air pollution.

Let me guess why you don't raise this point. Um...um...um...let me guess. Oh yeah, I know, because you don't give a fuck about the 33 million people who died in the last decade from burning gas, coal, oil and biomass, and would rather burn more gas, oil and coal to express your dire hope that someone, anyone will die from radiation at Fukushima so as to justify your bizarre obsession.

Did anyone die from radiation at Fukuishima, anything like the 37 dead yesterday from the oil train crash? The 167 who died at the Piper Alpha explosion? Anything like the 200,000+ who died from the great Banqioa renewable energy dam collapse?

The great climate scientist Jim Hansen has published in the primary scientific literature a paper with something called scientific references, data that shows that nuclear energy 1.8 million lives. (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895) Hansen shows that were it not for fear and ignorance, nuclear energy might save 10 million lives more, with just a minor tech.

It follows that anti-nukes are not merely enemies of the people, they are murderers, pure and simple, murderers whose weapons are fear and ignorance.

Have a nice of evening.


It was a perfect ending, facing the awful terrifying "bojo" for, um, telling the truth, although the 3.3 million figure has been updated in the scientific literature to, um, 7 million per year, after the Gates Foundation funded the comprehensive study published in Lancet in 2012 on the effect of various risks on human mortality. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

It turns out that the previous WHO estimate for air pollution deaths was off by a factor of 2; the figure was much higher.

Note "nuclear power" accidents doesn't even appear in the paper, although according to Kos and Kossacks, nuclear power, and not air pollution and climate change, is the most dangerous thing, um, ever.

What a bunch of idiots!

So it's not like I'm ever going to apologize for that remark.

You know, I have very, very, very, very little respect for Kos as a person, and he's made it clear he no respect for me. This said, I agree with his statement that our goal should be to elect more and better Democrats, but we obviously disagree completely on what a "better" Democrat might be.

I clearly don't regard Kos as a "better Democrat."

I prefer Democrats who respect climate scientists like Jim Hansen, um, because he's an um, highly cited and highly respected scientist, and that even if every democrat cannot be a scientist, they at least hold in respect the views of those who are scientists.

The assholes at Kos spent a lot of computer electrons telling everyone they had all this respect for Jim Hansen until he said something they didn't want to hear. It didn't matter whether what Hansen said was true, only that it was not what they wanted to hear, not what they, and the world needed to hear. Neither Kos, nor little Timmy Lange have ever evinced even the remotest evidence of ever having any kind of scientific training at all or any competence to evaluate scientific work. They don't cite the primary scientific literature, they cite Guardian articles, and, um, each other.

How this kind of reaction to Hansen's honest and irrefutable scientific views differs from say, the reaction of certain Republicans to Hansen's oft stated views that climate change is, um, real and human driven - which it clearly is - is difficult to discern, at least for me, if not the people running around asserting that thousands of people are about to cram into the containment building at Fukushima #2 to be irradiated. In this respect their decision to reject a well stated and highly read scientific work is no different from say, James Inhofe, when he does the same damned thing, since there is no evidence that he has any less scientific training than they do.

I will not live much longer, in some ways a relief, but however many days I have left, I assure you you can add to the 1307 you, but not I, counted.

When I die, I have to face what I have done, and nothing makes me more proud than some of the efforts I made to fight ignorance on our side, because to me, ignorance on our side is worse than ignorance on their side, because our honor is something we can control and if we choose to do nothing, we are not deserving of respect. I know I changed my views on nuclear energy, and I worked very hard to be justified in doing that.

Kos and little Timmy Lange can go fuck themselves. They may be serving some purpose in the Democratic party, but their views on energy are not serving humanity, and it is ultimately, humanity that counts, not the number of votes in Ohio.

The reason I'm a Democrat is not to repeat mindless cant about so called "renewable energy," like a chanting Priest. The reason I'm a Democrat is because it is my hope that Democratic liberalism is better for humanity, but it is not because everything said by everyone who is a Democrat is right, or true, or need be identical to what every other Democrat says.

Have a nice day, give my regards to those folks who didn't get "bojo'd" because they never bothered to think for themselves.

madokie

(51,076 posts)
9. Rails against deaths due to air pollution
Sun Feb 5, 2017, 01:02 AM
Feb 2017

when the fact is the majority of people who die from air pollution are mostly women and children who are exposed to indoor air pollution due to the fact that many of the people in third world countries are dependent on piss poor stoves and open fires for heat and cooking. not to mention also for light.
As if nukular energy would change any of that. When you look at the big picture of nukular energy from paper to energy produced it is not that clean, nor is it cheap, in fact these two are why most sane people want nothing to do with it.

Right now, today, the brains, have no idea of how to deal with Fukushima, same as they didn't know what to do with Chernobyl. At least the Russians had the good sense to encapsulate theirs with concrete and now with the huge steel arch, that has been in the making for years. It does nothing for the actual problem but rather only covers it up so the release of radiation is held to a minimum. In Japan they really have no idea as to what is going on other than having to finally admit that indeed there were meltdowns of the cores, three 'cores' in fact. How to deal with that very dangerous and on going catastrophe is a seat of the pants operation. Hardly a reassuring means to deal with this as denial and obfuscation is not a plan.

On paper nuclear energy is the cats meow, (I agree,) but in reality it's one of the most dangerous means of obtaining the energy we so need in todays world. Due to the Lie that nuclear energy is, cheap, safe and clean we've lost 60 some odd years where we could have been researching and developing more benign ways to obtain the energy our world depends on.

Anyone who takes these screeds as anything except what they really are, which is, an angry man who is railing against anyone who does not agree with him concerning nukular energy, are barking at the moon.
Its his way or the highway, hardly what this place's stated purpose is as I understand the rules of this group.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
10. Um, once again, you pretend that air pollution deaths on a massive scale are...
Sun Feb 5, 2017, 09:14 AM
Feb 2017

Last edited Sun Feb 5, 2017, 08:35 PM - Edit history (1)

...only connected to indoor air pollution.

I often advise people holding this morally awful view to enter a good quality academic library and actually find out what is what, but some of the people I so advise are clearly not competent to read an academic paper of any kind.

Their brains, from what I can tell, are filled with concrete.

It is unsurprising to hear such a person commenting like this: "Right now, today, the brains, have no idea of how to deal with Fukushima, same as they didn't know what to do with Chernobyl."

This statement comes from a person who has never, obviously, opened a science book in his life, and therefore is unacquainted with what technical people, scientists and engineers -who, by the way are more than their "brains" - do and do not know.

The matter is simple arithmetic. The reactors at Fukushima - as opposed to the 20,000 people who died in the tsunami from, um, living in coastal cities about whom morally vapid anti-nukes couldn't care less - and Chernobyl combined, didn't kill as many people as will die this afternoon from air pollution.

This means, for anyone who has a decent sense of risk, would recognize that it would be wise rather than spend billions of dollars chasing after every radioactive atom at Fukushima, to spend billions - trillions of dollars - to fight air pollution.

How many lives were saved per dollar by the Chernobyl sarcophagus? How many lives might have been saved if the same amount spent of the sarcophagus were spent on providing decent sanitation for some of the 2.4 billion people who lack it?

The moral problem is that the uneducated intellectual weaklings who oppose nuclear power have in the bizarre calculus that any death from radiation is billions of times worse than all other deaths.

This is not only stupid, it's evil.

It's interesting that the assholes holding to this very, very, very questionable rhetorical nonsense love to rail about me but they care not a whit for the rest of humanity. They're trumpian in their outlook, with their heads so far up their asses that the shit will never get out of their eyes.

But I will say this; these asses are correct about one thing. I am in fact, bitter, very bitter. Nuclear power, were it not demonized by the uneducated and the stupid, might have saved many of the 70 million lives lost to air pollution since 2007. It breaks my heart, and yes, makes me very bitter. As it was for John Donne, "Every man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.."

As for indoor vs outdoor pollution, and the stupid claim that indoor air pollution has no bearing on nuclear energy, this is also pig headed indifference.

Indoor air pollution is connected to human poverty, and human poverty is connected to a lack of access to clean energy. India and China know something about human poverty, even if lime brains in the West don't. This may be why their scientists and engineers are building more nuclear reactors than anyone else on the planet. A person with an electric hot plate won't be burning biomass, including dung, with a little coal thrown in, to cook his or her food.

I wrote at length on this relationship here: Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come. I strongly suspect that what I wrote is over the tiny little heads of some of the people who burn gas and coal to rail here that an atom of cesium from Fukushima might end up in a tuna fish can in Ohio.

One can wallow all one wants in open contempt for intellectuals, but basically, we don't give a shit what blockheads think.

Have a nice Sunday.

madokie

(51,076 posts)
11. And you are an INTELLECTUAL
Sun Feb 5, 2017, 09:20 AM
Feb 2017

Spare me! LOL

I notice you picked up on my "have a nice day" rhetoric of days gone by.

The only person you are fooling is nnadir. Don't forget that

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
15. One of the more amusing things I note about the anti-nukes here...
Tue Feb 7, 2017, 09:31 PM
Feb 2017

Last edited Tue Feb 7, 2017, 11:04 PM - Edit history (1)

...is their repeated use of the giggle emoji.

One suspects that they utilize this emoji because they're uniformly inarticulate, because, as is clear from the their rather lockstep nonsense, they rarely, if ever, open a book or read anything worthwhile.

This is why they have the sort of mentality that can make leaps like statements half of the 7 million deaths from air pollution take place from indoor air pollution, therefore the other half do not matter.

Earlier in this thread, in response to another example of the anti-nuke claiming, in complete ignorance that is typical of their type, that the "brains" don't know what to do about Fukushima or Chernobyl, I remarked that a person whose rhetoric drips with mindless drivel that obviates that he has never opened a science book, an engineering text, an engineering paper, or a scientific paper is obviously unqualified to make any rational statement about what engineers and scientists know.

It is reasonable to extend this concept to examining whether anyone who is barely literate is qualified to adjudge what an intellectual is or is not.

Most of the emoji generating giggling idiots here, I've taken the liberty of using the wonderful "ignore" key here at DU. Their stupidity is frankly uninteresting, and I question whether their is anything to be gained by engaging their vast human indifference and immoral selective attention. It's not like the fact that we are well over 400 ppm at Mauna Loa, and will never go below it again has caused them to question anything. They still go on and on with their "by 2050" talk, even though their previous, "by 2000" talk half a century ago was Trumpian in its disconnection with reality. Clearly the majority of them are sheep, and have never had an original thought in their pathetic lives.

But for some of the really, really, really, really stupid ones, well, they're so cute, that they're amusing.

I'm not there yet on using the ignore key on this set of fools with cement between their ears.

Yes, have a nice day tomorrow.


madokie

(51,076 posts)
16. I'm so fucking happy that I get under your thin fucking skin
Tue Feb 7, 2017, 09:40 PM
Feb 2017

Tell me genius what is the plan for fukushima as you see it? You have to be the most ignorant Asshole I've ever encountered in my life. Stupid is as stupid does is sure true here with you.
The only tools you have are put downs, ignorance and obfuscation.

FOAD

 

dbackjon

(6,578 posts)
14. LOL - posting UK's version of Alex Jones, which in turn quotes Putin's Russia Today
Mon Feb 6, 2017, 01:53 PM
Feb 2017

Disgusting.

Sickening.

Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Environment & Energy»Fukushima Reactor #2 pres...