Records shattered’ at Fukushima — Radiation levels surge after typhoon — Tepco “doesn’t know why” th

[spike91nz]

http://enenews.com/japan-times-records-shattered-fukushima-surging-radiation-levels-after-typhoon-tepco-doesnt-happening-warning-crisis-could-worse-180-kmhr-storm-heading-area

Looks like it has made a serius turn for the worst.

[FBaggins]

1. The woo belongs in the creative speculation forum.

It will only get laughs here.

[Paper Roses]

2. Help this old timer: What does woo mean? n/t

[madokie]

6. Woo is shit like Alex Jones, rush limbaugh

and fox noise etc push. Sensationalism designed to get notice but not really have anything to do with reality. Thats my simple answer.
In my 50 plus years of worrying about nuclear energy one thing I've learned and that is to Not put much stock in a pro-nuclear pundit whether it be in the m$m or on message boards like here. Long on words but short on answers with lots of put downs added for effect.

[bananas]

9. enenews isn't "woo", it's just a news aggregator.

They excerpt some keywords from the articles, so you have to read the article to understand the context.
If you just read the keywords, it looks like "sensationalism", but it isn't.

[madokie]

10. Whatever

[FBaggins]

12. No.... it most certainly is not

They make things up out of whole cloth.

For instance - "US gov’t analysis says Fukushima is more serious than ‘China Syndrome’ — doesn't just "look like sensationalism"... it's entirely false.

[bananas]

16. This article? Correctly references an NRC document.

Last edited Mon Oct 13, 2014, 08:58 AM - Edit history (1)

Accurately quotes an official document on the NRC website: http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0210/ML021080117.pdf
- "There are two basic types of meltthrough to consider."
- "First is the possibility of basemat meltthrough (the China Syndrome)"
- "The second type of meltthrough ... can lead to more serious consequences"

So the headline is correct.

http://enenews.com/govt-analysis-fukushima-serious-china-syndrome-worst-type-containment-failure-all-3-reactors

US gov’t analysis says Fukushima is more serious than ‘China Syndrome’ — Destroyed reactors suffered worst type of containment failure (PHOTOS)

Published: October 8th, 2014 at 8:35 am ET
By ENENews

<snip>

NRC on Containment Failure Due to Drywell Shell Melt-through (pdf): There are two basic types of meltthrough to consider. First is the possibility of basemat meltthrough (the China Syndrome)… This failure mode is not generally catastrophic, because of the long time available for emergency response actions and the possibility of some retention in the soil. The second type of meltthrough is most applicable to Mark I BWR containments [All 3 Fukushima reactors used Mark I boiling water reactor containments]. In this case, molten material can exit the area beneath the reactor and flow across the floor, directly contacting the steel liner and causing it to fail. This type of failure… can happen much more quickly than basemat meltthrough and can lead to more serious consequences… A phenomenon of importance primarily for Mark I BWRs is shell (liner) meltthrough… The Mark I drywell floor area is small and the drywell shell is within ten feet of the pedestal doorway…

<snip>

[Generic Other]

22. Ene News is more reliable than its detractors at DU

Even though the detractors come out every time they link to an article.

How is their linking to the Japan Times, Washington Post, Voice of America, NBC News, CNN mean they are "woo"? Woo is a word that means ridicule someone as a way of preventing others from seeing what they have to say. Always the same posts from the same people on all Fukushima threads. I don't even post on the topic anymore unless it is unavoidable news because I am so sick of being told that there's nothing to be alarmed about coming out of Fukushima if EneNews is the source of the information. As far as I am concerned they have way more credibility than the DUers who feel the need to distract us from real dangers because of their all encompassing fear of us finding out what is happening in Fukushima.

It is ridiculous and yet predictable to hear cries of "woo." The same cry that sailors made when Columbus set out to prove the world was not flat.

http://enenews.com/japan-times-monstrous-supertyphoon-course-smash-japan-weekend-cnn-could-be-hypothetical-category-6-cloud-field-stretch-across-entire-among-strongest-storms-weve-nbc-waves-already-high-50-ft-phot

[FBaggins]

29. How does anyone read that site and come away...

...thinking that all they do is link to "Japan Times, Washington Post, Voice of America, NBC News, CNN"?

[Generic Other]

30. Woowooowoooo

No typhoon, no nuclear catastrophe, no news fit to print...wooowooooowoooooooo.....

[FBaggins]

32. Where did anyone say any of that?

A common tactic of the lunatic fringe (which makes enenews their home - along with the UFO sites of course) is claim that if you don't buy their world-ended-last-week nonsense, then you must believe that everything is just fine.

Such use of the bifurcation fallacy is transparent... and tiring.

[Generic Other]

35. Who is transparent and tiring...

Put up a better place to stay informed about Fukushima or shut up about EneNews. They at least collect the articles others post. Most DUers are capable of following their links. And making up our own minds about what is and is not credible info.

[hunter]

38. How is EneNews transparent?

For all we know they could be funded by the gas fracking or coal industry.

Who benefits most if Japan quits nuclear? Probably nations that export coal and liquefied gas. Australia? Is that you?

It's easier to buy an off-the-shelf fossil fuel power plant than it is to build a solar, wind, and geothermal electric power system from the ground up.

Anyways, that's just an anonymous conspiracy theory from hunter, who is not nearly so secretive as the EneNews publisher.

I'm a little circumspect about my identity here on DU not because I feel threatened by the agencies and corporations and gun humpers I despise, I'm circumspect because I don't want to be harassed by clueless twits.

I got burned by the Black Box Voting noise machine, as did a few other DU members, including activists who were actually getting their hands dirty in the legislative sausage mills cleaning up the mess. Mostly I know what was going on in Sacramento. I saw how Bev Harris and her crew twisted reality and I'm somewhat ashamed of a few things I wrote here in that debacle. But it did give me some insights how smoke and mirrors are used to obscure the truth, often in ways that cause harm to the cause the cause the activist claims to support.

I had similar experiences previously in the anti-nuclear movement in regards to the shut down of the Humboldt and Rancho Seco power stations, opposition to the San Onofre Expansion and Diablo Canyon power plant, and the cleanup of the accident site at Santa Susana. I wasn't the cynical son of a bitch then that I am now.

Transparently, EneNews is an anonymous aggregator. Big deal. Anyone who can figure out the news sorting functions of Google can do that -- it's not computer science.

[Generic Other]

44. "Who benefits most if Japan quits nuclear?"

Pretty much all of us! What a ridiculous question.

I didn't say EneNews was transparent. I said the previous poster seemed to be transparent and tiring. And the more some here try and tell others what they can and can't read or post, the more questions will be raised about what their agendas are.

I am the transparent one. I'm Casper the friendly ghost. I read news on DU. And anywhere else I feel like reading. I may not be a scientist but neither am I an idiot. My agenda can be boiled down to this: Don't try and tell me what I should or should not read and don't tell me what to think.

I am anti-nuclear power, anti-fracking, anti-GMO, anti-military-industrial complex. People involved in those industries embody evil to me. That's pretty transparent.

If Ene News or HuffPo or the New York Times or TMZ -- or any other MSM rag offers me information, I will read it, click the links and read more. But I will not rate them for honesty or accuracy or transparency. EneNews or any news! I don't find any of them more credible than another. They gave us Bush and defended that action. They manipulated us into more than one war. I don't fucking believe anything I read generated by corporate America. Except that any evil revealed is probably ten times worse than I imagine. And that everybody is pretty much lying to me. It always turns out to be so.

So who benefits most when we are all friendly ghosts?

[FBaggins]

40. That's the entertaining part of this

Most DUers are capable of following their links. And making up our own minds about what is and is not credible info.

That's true... most are... and they ignore the site because if it.

The few that are incapable of seeing the conflict between what a source says and what enenews says that it says... tend to be the ones constantly posting their nonsense as evidence (sic).

[sue4e3]

43. enenews is a conspiracy site in my opinion

http://radiationnetwork.com/
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

[FBaggins]

27. No... it doesn't. In fact it isn't even close.

Once again - the title is "US gov’t analysis says Fukushima is more serious than ‘China Syndrome’ "

The document you linked to is a decades-old reactor safety course discussing multiple modes of failure. Nowhere in there do they talk about Fukushima (which suffered neither type of meltthrough).

That portion of the document is discussing something that we talked about at length back in 2011. One of the main reasons that the Mk1 containments were replaced was that it was thought that a quick meltdown and failure of the reactor vessel would drop too much of the core into the primary containment and the pool of molten corium would flow to the sides of the basemat and burn through the side wall of the containment.

The problem here is that that failure mode was for station blackouts that occurred while the reactor was running... so the decay heat would be much MUCH higher than at Fukushima and meltdown and meltthrough would occur far more rapidly. In the case of Fukushima, the backup generators operated for almost an hour before the tsunami knocked them out... so the meltdowns occurred with far less heat and over a much longer time.

Note that they've released photos from those toroid rooms. Had a side wall meltthrough occurred, there would be mounds of corium in there and radiation levels hundreds of times higher. That isn't the case.

So again... no... the headline is in no way correct. Rather, it is intentionally deceptive (enenews' M.O.)

They then go on to cite "Generally, the most severe [containment] failure modes are ones that occur early in time "

Which is absolutely true... but notice how they intentionally leave the reader with the impression that that's what happened at Fukushima. Again... it wasn't.

The other document isn't an analysis of what happened at Fukushima, it's an alignment of the SPAR model with some postulated events there. They're checking their model... not using their model to evaluate Fukushima.

[spike91nz]

24. check the readings yourself

http://jciv.iidj.net/map/?__r=/var/www/jciv/map

looks like 110,00 nS/H which is the highest I've seen it. The report is a repost of Japan Times article.

[FBaggins]

28. ??? Was that supposed to be responsive?

So you're going to compare readings taken in a well right next to the reactors to readings taken many miles away by private individuals? Why not look at the readings from inside the containment (many many times higher)? Or just look at the readings from around the plant in March 2011?

Of course it's going to be higher. That's not at all the same thing as what is implies in the OP (that levels in general are rising - when just the opposite is happening). Radioactive material flushing from one part of the plant to another is not "making a serious turn for the worst".

Thousands of readings are released all the time - and of course they fluctuate. It's intentionally dishonest for enenews to cherrypick one that's gone up and imply that the reactors are released even higher levels of radiation. Just read some of the nutty responses to those types of threads and you'll see that the lunatic fringe eats it up... they think something going on inside the reactors is getting worse (causing radiation to increase overall). They would never do the same thing with the vast bulk of the readings that naturally continue to decline.

[FBaggins]

7. Internet quackery entirely divorced from reality

Nonsensical pseudo-science, etc.

[Generic Other]

31. Because we all know you are the expert on all things we should not worry about

Find us more credible reports than those EneNews has linked to concerning the typhoon. As I said, linking to articles in the Japan Times, Washington Post, NBC News, CNN is not good enough for you, so you must have better sources.

Or maybe you just don't want anyone to be informed about any sort of nuclear problems at Fukushima. Keep it out of our sight and hope it never crosses our minds. Predictable response from the pro-nuke side.

[FBaggins]

33. Lol... hardly. But miles ahead of anything you'll find there.

Japan Times, Washington Post, NBC News, CNN are fine sources to cite... so go ahead and cite them. Not enenews' twisting of those sources to fit their own narrative.

You do know that there are actual news aggregators what can give you all of the news related to Fukushima, right?

Or maybe you just don't want anyone to be informed about any sort of nuclear problems at Fukushima.

On the contrary. The only reason that I reply to these types of threads is because I want to make sure that they ARE informed.

[Generic Other]

34. Waiting for your link to these better aggregators of Fukushima info

I find EneNews as good a source as DU where Fukushima is concerned. Should we too be labeled "wooo" posters?

[FBaggins]

39. Here's one

http://nucnews.com/whatsnew.php

Lots of anti-nuclear content there (including some links to enenews), but they don't make the news up and they don't twist the content to suit their own agenda.

And, of course, you can always go to the actual news sites.

[Generic Other]

45. Thank you...Bookmarked

Your link links to EneNews. Isn't that a tad bit of a contradiction?

[FBaggins]

46. Any time

Your link links to EneNews. Isn't that a tad bit of a contradiction?

Not even a little bit. Do you not see the difference?

One is a true news agregator - they don't comment on the article/news/report/whatever... they just present "here's what Reuters says". The reader is left to determine the quality of the source. Some of those sources are straight news, some are analysis of the news, and some are little more than propaganda for a given position.

ENENews, OTOH, does not do this... they are not only propaganda - they actively alter the news (occasionally making it up entirely). Their titles do not come from the report/article/whatever, and often have little to do with what the reports actually say (often saying exactly the opposite). Then they often attribute these claims to "experts" or "admissions" by government agencies.

And that's before we even get to the added nonsense provided by the usual suspects in their comments.

[Generic Other]

47. I only click the links to original articles on EneNews

Again, I could care less what they say about articles I can read for myself. Just as I do not take DUers' word for anything I can read for myself.

The problem with dismissing EneNews is that they are one of the few sites linking to relevant articles on a daily basis. Your aggregator collects all info on nukes. This is a bit different than only posting Fukushima news. I see what you are saying about the

alarmed tone to the headlines, but to downplay the dangers is just as bad. The fact that they alter titles does not alter the facts -- if one clicks the links one can read the articles. Just like DU. I wish there was a better aggregator site for daily Fukushima news. Since we don't have one...even your link requires filtering through a lot of peripheral info every day. I don't know if it is biased info or not. I guess this is the real issue with the links. Do the aggregators have a pro or anti nuke agenda or are they objective. I don't trust the pro nuke POV at all. 100% not interested in what they have to say. So this limits my sources too.

[bananas]

11. An example is Barry Brook, who is "happy to be quoted forever"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11277017

One year on, Fukushima is still spinning
Jim Green

The first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster is fast approaching and it promises to be another silly-season for Australia's pro-nuclear zealots.

They have form. While the crisis was unfolding in March last year, Ziggy Switkowski advised that "the best place to be whenever there's an earthquake is at the perimeter of a nuclear plant because they are designed so well."

Switkowski wants dozens of nuclear power plants built in Australia - dozens of places to shelter from earthquakes.

Even as nuclear fuel meltdown was in full swing at Fukushima, Adelaide University's Professor Barry Brook reassured us that:

"There is no credible risk of a serious accident... Those spreading FUD at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong ... but I won't be."

<snip>

[bananas]

13. history of the word "woo"

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/21826/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-woo

[closeupready]

14. It's a purely DU euphemism for any entity competing with established parties.

[FBaggins]

15. Lol... only if "established parties" is a new synonym for "reality"

And no... it's not unique to DU at all.

[closeupready]

17. lol, no professional uses the term 'woo', and it's not even vernacular.

Also, it has a racist etymology. So that's another thing.

5 Gold stars to the first person who can post a link to a reputable source using the term 'woo'. Don't worry, I won't hold my breath.

[FBaggins]

19. Of course not... It's slang

Professionals ignore that kind of nonsense entirely... Our just laugh at them.

[Demeter]

20. It means Baggins in denial mode

Ignore it

[bananas]

23. LOL - the people who use it don't even know what it means!

The meaning has been completely morphed by people who don't know what it means.

It refers to supernatural or mystical explanations, and is from the sound ghosts make: "Wooo! Wooo!"

Here's an example from a children's book:

http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/book.asp?bookid=72

WOO! The Not-So-Scary Ghost

Written & Illustrated by Ana Martín Larrañaga

[bananas]

26. Ironically, it's now used by crackpots and true believers to attack anyone with common sense. nt

[MisterP]

41. it's the sound technocracy makes when it looks in the mirror and realizes it'd been dead all along

[madokie]

3. Linking to enenews won't win you many friend around here

having said that the thing that I worry with concerning nuclear power plants comes home to roost every time I read something about Fukushima or Chernobyl. The potential for going wrong is so great and there's just not much humans can do once it does. Our life spans aren't long enough to ever see the end to it so it seems it's permanent. I know that given enough time it will be all but forgotten and not much of a threat going forward but that time is not measured in days, weeks, months, years but rather in lifetimes, human lifetimes. Thats way too permanent for me. I'd really like to see a safer more sustainable way of using the energy of splitting atoms and keep hoping against hope that it will be discovered but as it is today that day is still in the future. The new smaller nuclear power plants show promise but the problem with them is we'll have to site too many of them to do us much good and with each one the chance of something going wrong grows.
After all the pro's and con's are sorted out my thoughts is that we'd be better served if we'd move away from Fission. Just too dangerous and too permanent when things do go wrong. As with any machine, (a nuclear power plant is a big ass machine after all,) there will be mistakes made both in making it and in operating it. With nuclear the potential is greater than with more benign forms of producing our energy for that mistake to cause great harm and last for a long time. Burning anything is not the answer though as its killing us as sure as the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west. We're on borrowed time so we have to do something and that something had better be right is all I know for sure today. We're running out of time to get this right.
In my personal life every time I let money make a decision for me it turns out to be a bad decision so to me cost should be taken into consideration but not be the deciding factor. Thats a lesson I've lived long (66 YO,) in learning

[stonecutter357]

5. this

[stonecutter357]

4. enenews

[bananas]

8. Thanks for posting this.

I went and posted an update in LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014916547

[hobbit709]

18. enenews has about as much credibility as Faux Snooze.

[SmittynMo]

21. Where is the common sense factor?

Record levels of radiation? Next to ocean water? Doing nothing to contain the mess? When are we going to learn to stop building nuclear reactors and destroying our planet and humankind? Are we going to wait until the oceans glow at night and all humans have cancerous tumors? It just amazes me that we have allowed this to happen with no consideration as to the risks of a blown reactor. A good offense starts with a good defense. We, as humans, planned for no defense. When they went to the drawing board when first building a nuclear reactor, was our answer "A major catastrophe will never happen? Therefore we do not need address a disaster?" How stupid was that?

[Generic Other]

25. No one cares about this stuff

because EneNews has linked to articles about it. Sorry, all Fukushima news is "woo" on DU.

[jeff47]

36. The common sense factor is already there. Where it's missing

is in the article in the OP.

Record levels of radiation next to ocean water? How bout these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle
Operation Castle is when we set off multiple fusion nuclear weapons in the Pacific. That was a metric fuckton more radiation. Next to ocean water.

Including the very exciting Castle Bravo test where we discovered Li-7 will fuse just as well as Li-6. So we set off a bomb we expected to be 6 megatons, and got 15 megatons. Oops.

How bout these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_explosion#List_of_underwater_nuclear_tests
Those are 5 nuclear explosions we set off IN the Pacific ocean, along with a few the USSR set off. In the ocean is pretty close to in the ocean.

To call these "record levels" is fearmongering.

When are we going to learn to stop building nuclear reactors and destroying our planet and humankind?

Well, if we hadn't been fearmongering about nuclear plants for the last 40 years, we would have burned a lot less coal. Resulting in a lot less CO2. And a much smaller climate change problem.

Common sense is to consider the potential danger of the activities you are choosing between. Back in the 60s and 70s we had two choices for energy: fossil fuels or nuclear power. Renewables are an option now, but that required decades of R&D.

So which should we have chosen?
1) Nuclear power meant a very small chance of a very bad problem in a relatively small part of the planet.
2) Fossil fuels were guaranteed to cause a very bad problem over the ENTIRE planet.

Instead of using common sense, we latched on to the spectacular. China syndrome instead of climate change.

[OKIsItJustMe]

37. The Japan Times: Tritium up tenfold in Fukushima groundwater after Typhoon Phanfone

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/10/12/national/tritium-surges-10-fold-in-groundwater-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant-typhoon-effect-suspected/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Tritium up tenfold in Fukushima groundwater after Typhoon Phanfone[/font]
JIJI
[font size=3]The radioactive water woes at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant got worse over the weekend after the tritium concentration in a groundwater sample surged more than tenfold this month.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that heavy rain caused by Typhoon Phanfone probably affected the groundwater after the storm whipped through Japan last week.

Some 150,000 becquerels of tritium per liter were measured in a groundwater sample taken Thursday from a well east of the No. 2 reactor. The figure is a record for the well and over 10 times the level measured the previous week.

In addition, materials that emit beta rays, such as strontium-90, which causes bone cancer, also shattered records with a reading of 1.2 million becquerels, the utility said of the sample.

…[/font][/font]

(The story talks about another sampling well where readings were up, but not as much.)