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Fukushima Daiichi latest - hows the clear up going?


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk0WzCtF0yY

Basically they haven't got a f+*>ing clue what they are doing and are just messing things up more and more and refusing proper international help. By the time this problem is sorted I will be abou

And here's this mornings new news

 

東京電力は8月31日深夜、福島第一原子力発電所の原子炉建屋の山側にある井戸から、放射性物質のトリチウムを地下水1リットルあたり最大900ベクレル(法定許容限度は同6万ベクレル)検出したと発表した。

 昨年12月~今年3月の掘削時に比べて2~15倍の濃度に上昇していた。東電は、貯蔵タンクから漏れた汚染水300トンが地中に拡散した可能性があるとみて調べている。

 同原発では大量の地下水が建屋に流入し、汚染水を増加させている。抑制策として、地下水を井戸でくみ上げ、海へ放出する計画があるが、井戸の汚染で影響が懸念される。政府の汚染水処理対策委員会の大西有三委員長(京都大名誉教授)は「地下水の流れを正確に把握し、原因を調べねばならない」と話している。

 

Pollution concentration rise in well water around the plant

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The problem - well, one of the problems - is that as the contamination increases, there is need for a bigger dome.

Though, one good thing is that our dome could probably apply to the Guinness Book of Records and get into that. Which is always nice.

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In terms of funding, because obviously such a dome would not be cheap..... I was thinking that they could perhaps turn it into a tourist attraction.

If the dome is see-through, people could look down from the top at the Daiichi plant and all the three-headed gazelles and three-breasted women wandering about below within the domed off area.

They could even perhaps spill out some of the goo from the melted down rods to accellerate the changes, as a kind of experiement.

There's lots of options really.

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When will need to keep on making 3 new tanks a week?

And eventually what happens to all that water.

 

The mind boggles at it all.

 

Can the water be de-irradiated (?) ?!? If so, how and why isn't it being done now?!

 

If not, then what are the options? They can't just keep building 3 tanks a day for the next 10,000 years until the goo from the rods are not radioactive anymore

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Ya know...this is one thing about living here amongst the Japanese and all the "shoganai" sentiment that pervades every challenge. There's a fatalistic sense of what will be, will be and if the ship is going down we'll all go down with it.

 

However, If this were the US or France etc... in control, I wonder how different they would be handling the whole thing? I'm kinda with Arnie on it at this point... Turn the whole thing into the world biggest block of concrete and worry about it in a hundred years..

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They'd have the dome up by now, for sure.

 

There's a delayed response here though isn't there. Abenomics hasn't been in place since the beginning, and as there's no fannying about with Abenomics I have no doubt that he'll jolly well get it sorted soon.

 

:thumbsup:

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Do you mean to just encase it a concrete tomb and leave the Gloop to heat up and do its radiation thing and not try and cool it etc.

 

Would that work? If the rods are allowed to react uncontrollably, won't it produce über heat and just melt through the concrete and into the earth? A kind of China syndrome

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Do you mean to just encase it a concrete tomb and leave the Gloop to heat up and do its radiation thing and not try and cool it etc.

 

Would that work? If the rods are allowed to react uncontrollably, won't it produce über heat and just melt through the concrete and into the earth? A kind of China syndrome

 

It would definitely not be a good idea to let the heat build back up inside.

 

Actually, there was something in the paper the other day about a suggestion that someone made to switch to air cooling instead of water for the cores. Idea being that the cores may have cooled off enough by now that it may be possible to keep them from reheating by just blowing forced air into the containments instead of water. Would stop the accumulation of more and more contaminated water.

 

Problem, though, is that the water also provides shielding, without which it may not be possible to proceed with dismantling efforts.

So one would really be making the decision to just entomb the place, Chernobyl-style, at that point.

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Today's Shit News from Fukushima:

 

Fukushima nuclear plant still 'unstable', regulator says

 

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant "has not ended", the country's nuclear watchdog has warned, saying the situation there is "unstable".

 

Watchdog chief Shunichi Tanaka also accused the plan's operator of careless management during the crisis.

 

He added that it may not be possible to avoid dumping some contaminated water into the ocean.

 

The comments come a day before the Japanese government is due to unveil plans to rescue the clean-up operation.

 

Mr Tanaka's comments come after Fukushima's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), said radiation levels near one tank were 18 times higher than previously thought.

 

However, Mr Tanaka said that reports that this level of radiation could be lethal to workers after four hours of exposure were exaggerated.

 

"Supposing the figure of 1,800 millisieverts per hour is correct, it is beta radiation. It will not penetrate as long as there is a 5-10 millimetre-thick plastic shield or you wear leather shoes," he said.

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Calm down, calm down.... as Abe's on the case! :party:

 

 

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has promised to act quickly to address the buildup of huge quantities of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Abe, who recently suggested that the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), was incapable of overseeing the operation on its own, said the government would soon announce a comprehensive plan to deal with the world's largest nuclear cleanup.

 

It'll all be fixed and cleaned up in time for tea on Friday night. :thumbsup:

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This is all softening the public up for when they actually dump the water into the sea IMO. I think that's always been their plan and they know its not popular so they're building up to the release. I can't see how the government will do a better job unless it involves turning the place over to an independent group of experts from around the world......sadly I can't see Japan doing that

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A nuclear expert has told the BBC that he believes the current water leaks at Fukushima are much worse than the authorities have stated.

 

Mycle Schneider is an independent consultant who has previously advised the French and German governments.

 

He says water is leaking out all over the site and there are no accurate figures for radiation levels.

 

Meanwhile the chairman of Japan's nuclear authority said that he feared there would be further leaks.

 

The ongoing problems at the Fukushima plant increased in recent days when the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) admitted that around 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank on the site.

 

Moment of crisis

The Japanese nuclear energy watchdog raised the incident level from one to three on the international scale that measures the severity of atomic accidents.

 

It is leaking out from the basements, it is leaking out from the cracks all over the place”

 

This was an acknowledgement that the power station was in its greatest crisis since the reactors melted down after the tsunami in 2011.

 

But some nuclear experts are concerned that the problem is a good deal worse than either Tepco or the Japanese government are willing to admit.

 

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.

 

"The quantities of water they are dealing with are absolutely gigantic," said Mycle Schneider, who has consulted widely for a variety of organisations and countries on nuclear issues.

 

"What is the worse is the water leakage everywhere else - not just from the tanks. It is leaking out from the basements, it is leaking out from the cracks all over the place. Nobody can measure that.

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From swellnet.com.au

 

It's probably un-PC to call it so but I'm sure everyone is aware of the game Chinese whispers. You know, whisper a message to a friend, they pass it on but alter the facts slightly, the next person does the same till it gets to the end of the line. Then, when the message is retold it bears little resemblance to the one first communicated.

The phenomenon occurs because individual interpretations alter during each retelling of the message. And although only a game it's instructive as it shows how easily information can become corrupted by indirect communication. Chinese whispers has a corollary in the media: whenever possible journalists should speak directly to the protagonists of a story lest their version of events gets coloured by second-hand retelling.

Recently a modern version of Chinese whispers has emerged, and it's been created and perpetuated by internet journalism. It's presence highlighting the flaws and limitations of the medium.

A story that's currently gathering global interest is the spread of radiation from cooling water at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Two and a half years after the initial incident the after effects are starting to be detected and reported upon. Namely radiation in fish caught far from the Japanese coast, some as far away as California. The leaking radiation is entering the food chain, increasing as it climbs the trophic levels, ending up in apex predators such as Bluefin Tuna, which then migrate away from the Japanese coast. It's a disturbing and also dynamic news story.

About a month ago a news outlet - I'm not sure which one now - covered the story using a wholly incorrect graphic to represent the spread of Bluefin Tuna across the Pacific Ocean. The image used was the visual representation of the Japanese tsunami that caused the Fukushima meltdown. In it, almost every corner of the Pacific was coloured leading readers to believe the radiation in the stories headline was also present everywhere. An alarming proposition.

Since then the 'radiation map' has been relayed and used in many similar stories. Last week Surfing magazine used it, though they explained its use away in the story. Today it's US surf news site The Inertia who are using the fallacious map and they're combining it with a hearty dose of sensationalism. "This is the predicted radiation plume from Fukushima," says their Facebook link to the story. "The scariest thing you'll read all year."

For a serious news site, one with esteemed writer Ted Endo at the editorial helm (although he didn't write said article), it's a black mark. The false map has been circulating the 'net like a LOL cats meme for a month, online mythbusters Snopes debunked it, every time it surfaces on Facebook someone calls out the author in the comments.

It's not only the oversight that is of issue here, of equal concern is the absence of fact checking. Something for which The Inertia are not solely to blame, many other news outlets did the same. And this is where the modern day Chinese whispers comes into play. Rather than going to the source, or at least verifying the information, anyone who passed on the radiation 'whisper' kept the chain of misinformation going.

 

The greater risk here is integrity, not of the news outlets but of the news story. If the lead graphic is patently wrong, used intentionally, some may suspect, to clickbait readers onto the story, how much credit should be given the actual written information in the story? Doubts arise before the first word is read. And that's a travesty for a story as far-reaching and consequential as this.

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Well if there were only two blokes checking the tanks and they didn't have radiation meters, and what radiation meters were around only went up to 100 when the actual levels were 1800, I think we can conclude they are not measuring and in fact have no idea about something much more difficult, i.e., how much water may be seeping into the ocean.

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I can't see how the government will do a better job unless it involves turning the place over to an independent group of experts from around the world......sadly I can't see Japan doing that

 

I'd be willing to give some of my time, Tubby.

:thumbsup:

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I can't see how the government will do a better job unless it involves turning the place over to an independent group of experts from around the world......sadly I can't see Japan doing that

 

I'd be willing to give some of my time, Tubby.

:thumbsup:

 

Aren't you over invested already in the dome project?

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