Japanese Radiation

[LEDO]

I am not sure where to post this, so maybe it doesn't belong on the board. If the board has any questions about the Japanese nuclear fiasco, I can most likely answer them without the BS put out by the nuclear industry. I worked at TMI for 3 years in various capacities during the clean-up phase. I know the isotopes and the issues associated with them. I am aslo familiar with GE BWRs, having worked at many of them also. I can read those IAEA reports or TEPCO reports and know what they saying, and more importantly what they are not saying.

It is not going well in Japan. If you have some specific geek science type of question. Shoot.

[ib.me.ub]

What is the actual risk to the people of Japan, the wider World, the Ocean life around Japan, & the Ocean life of the wider World?

[Jax]

I heard from my geology teacher that the media exaggerated on the dangers of the risk of the nuclear radiation. He claims that it isn't as life threatning as it told. Is this true?

He said something about the atoms falling as soon as they escape. I should've payed more attention.

[Welsh cake]

Would you agree with the French ASN nuclear safety authorities' determination that Fukushima is in fact a far more serious accident than Three Mile Island and Windscale? That we should reconsider the severity of the nuclear accident as a "Level 6" (one level below Chernobyl) on the International Nuclear Event Scale?

[Skipper]

What super powers are we likely to see develop in the Japanese population over the coming months and in your expert opinion, will they use their powers for good or evil?

[DeistPaladin]

Now that the disaster has happened, is there anything that can be done that we and they are not already doing?

Will there be sections of Japan, like Chernoble, that will be uninhabitable in the aftermath? How large will this area be?

[LEDO]

The actual risk is in potential future cancer deaths. This is done my a BIER model of non-threshold dose. The assumption of this model is that a cancer can be caused by any level of radiation dose, which has not been proven or disproven. The actual number used is 10,000 person-Rems will equate to one cancer death, or 100 Sieverts is one person death for the rest of the world outside of the US. (The world uses the international Sievert unit whereas the US uses Rem. 100 Rem= 1 Sievert).

Because of this, the non-nuclear worker is limited in the US to less than 100 millirem (.1Rem) a year while guys like me can get 5 Rem/year. If say 300 million people (US population) recived 1 mrem (1% of the general population allowed dose) that would result in a theoretical increase of 30 cancer deaths in the entire US, something that would be impossible to measure. This is less than what we are seeing outside of Japan, so the world impact from radiation dose will not be detected by any means.

In Japan, that is a different story. People have been moved from areas, but some stayed behind. This is a post I made (edited) on March 23 at another web site:

The I-131 most likely did not come from Unit 4 SFP. Unit 4 has been de-fueled since November of last year. Unit 4 has the most spent bundles in it at 1300 plus 200 new fuel bundles. (US plants typically have more.)

There are holes in the roofs of units 1,2 and 4. They are in a constant release state. A radioactive plume is being constantly created and released every time they spray water on the darn thing. The first part of this reached California in the form of Xe-133 from Unit 1 on March 16. It has a 2 day half-life and this is just the tip of the iceberg of what is on its way. Radioactivity WILL reach us here in Augusta (low levels but measurable).

20 miles away from the plant, the plume caused radiation levels as high as 17 mrem/hr. Radiation areas are posted at 5 mrem/hr and the public is restricted from those areas. Their limit is 100 mrem/year. In 6 hours they will exceed their annual allowable dose for the public. The limit for a fetus during pregnacy for a radiation worker is 500 mrem. This will be exceeded in 24 hours.

40 miles away from the plant the does levels from contamination and the plume is just under 1 mrem/hr (50-100 times normal background). Even at this low level, the public should not be in more than 4 days. The contamination levels are 150,000 dpm beta-gamma on a gross wipe, or 15,000 dpm/100 cm2 beta-gamma. Nuclear plants across the nation post contamination areas (places where one must wear those funny clothing) anywhere from 100 to 1,000 dpm/100cm2. They have what we would call a contamination area, 40 miles from the plant.

The radioactivity is just now getting into the food chain. It will continue to get into the food chain until the roofs are covered, which may be months.
No one has really mentioned tritium or Sr-90 which was a big problem at TMI. It is a pain to measure.

At one point they had 40 REM/hr between units 3/4 with 1,200 mrem/hr at the fence line. In our country this is a locked high radiation area. Access is severly restricted. Those levels have gone down. The turn around point for those heroes in 1 Rem/hr. At that level they run out of the plant and let the thing melt down. One of the problems is that dose rates from one unit is hampering efforts in others. It was not wise to put all your nuke plants in one location. Think maybe the no-nukes might have a legitamate challenge to putting more nukes at Vogtle? This could have a local impact. (That turn around limit was raised to 10Rem.yr when they couldn't do they job at 1 Rem/hr).

Right now I would evacuate everyone north of Tokyo, except in Japan with 138 million people and being the size of Montana, this is not practicable, so they have to suck it up.

Oh yes, and I seriously doubt if those silly surgeon masks they wear block out any airborne radioactivity.

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Part II.

This is something I else I posted elsewhere:

One of the things not mentioned by TEPCO or the media (and I am the guy who mentioned the SFP problem in this thread before it happened) is Sr-90. Sr-90 is a bone seeker and its levels are far more restrictive than Cs-137. It is produced in about equal amounts as is Cs-137.

It is more difficult to detect and the instruments (GeLi) used to identify I-131 and Cs-137 will not detect Sr-90/Y-90 because of it low yield gamma activity, which is generally masked. You need to run a beta-spec on the sample or better yet, perform a Sr separation and then analyze it (something I did at TMI).

There is also tritium present which I am sure is exceeding all kinds of limits too. It requires that the sample be filtered to eliminate other radioisotopes and then counted in a special liquid scintillation. Most likely they are not doing this either.

I did on one of their isotopic reports Y-91. Y-91 is the daughter product of Sr-91 which has a shorter half life than Sr-90. This should be causing someone to at least think in those terms. It looks like Japan is going to re-invent the nuclear accident wheel instead of learning from other's mistakes.

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Part 3

The ocean has a large dilution. The problem will be for the long lived isotopes of Cs-137 and Sr-90 which have about a 30 year half life. Scientist typically figure 5-7 half lives until most of the stuff is gone, unless you start out with a lot, in which case it can be more. These elements will be absorbed by ocean life and concentrated, then work their way up the food chain like anything else. Sr-90 which decays to Y-90 emits a very high energy beta which is very damaging. It is more limiting or dangerous than Cs-137. For instance where I work we can release an item as "clean" if it has 1,000 dpm/ 100 cm2 Cs-137, but Sr-90 limits are 200 dpm. Sr-90 goes everywhere calcium goes to. So, if you released calcium into the ocean, what would absorb it? Coral? Shell? Bones? Cs-137 likewise gets absorb, but is slightly different chemically. Certain species absorb these items more than others. For instance a Beechwood or gum tree will suck up Cs-137 but a pine will not. I am certain the ocean has certain plants and critters that will absorb these specific isotopes more than others. What they are, I don't know, and it may be no one really knows because there may be no real research done in this area. I am skeptical of those nuclear spokepersons with no scientific background telling us there is no danger when in fact we just don't know.

[Tearjerker]

What super powers are we likely to see develop in the Japanese population over the coming months and in your expert opinion, will they use their powers for good or evil?

I believe they'd be pretty busy getting the hell away from Godzilla when he came out of the ocean and ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!

[LEDO]

Part 4.
Japan is far worse tham TMI. After the initial release TMI controlled all of its releases. The area of the plume of TMI was far less. At Japan we have 3 melted cores plus a fuel pool that has about 5-6 cores worth of fuel. Pieces of that fuel were blown a mile away. Nothing like that happened at TMI. You could drive 5 miles SW of TMI and have been out of danger. Japan will affect a larger population. As of right now the activity released has been estimated at 40% that of Chernobyl and I think that is low considering the water being dumped into the ocean. In every sense of the word, Japan is worse than TMI. I am not an expert on level events. These are based upon specific criteria, of which I am not familiar. Normally the criteria is based upon the extent of the area that is effected and the level of government involvement and maybe curie release.

I don't know about atoms falling as soon as they escape. Perhaps he is referring to radioactive isotopes falling from the sky as soon as it rains. The isotopes are just like dust, they are heavier than air, but depending on the airstream they can get carried around the world as we have seen. If you are really concerned, the southern hemisphere would be safer, although I don't recommend anyone move, unless they live near the plant.

What can be done? As far as people who live outside of Japan, wash your vegetables would be my only advice at the moment. As for me I face a possible lay off in August so I am trying to learn Japanese. It seems they have a different word for everthing except "pen." As for the Japan, move SW from the plant as that appears to be the least affected by the plume, i.e. stay upwind.

What I would do in Japan...

Block off all roads going into the area where the dose and contamination rates exceed limits. I woudl get 10,000 TLDs (devices worn to detect exposure). I would hold one day training classes for Rad workers, get rescue people badged and into damaged areas so they can conduct proper search and rescue.
I woudl divide the affected areas into districts and have a group of guys like myself constantly measuring rates, and using mobil labs that can do more than a simple GeLi count. I would use my universities to do the alpha spec, Beta spec, and tritium analysis needed to determine what areas can be reoccupied. They need to start training workers to do what I do-now.

The plant is a mess. They create 400,000 gallons of waste a day. They have no where to put it. They have emptied their tanks (pre-accident radioactive water) into the ocean to make room for the hotter stuff. They will need shielding, lots of lead and scaffold to hold it up and I mean lots of it. They need to shield those tanks BEFORE they pump water into them. They also need to process that water, which will be nearly impossible to do because of the seawater. They may have to boil it off. They need to get engineers on that ASAP. They will also need dry cask storage units, cherry pickers, and water processing to make sure they have clean water so they can decon their own people. They need better respirators too, something that forces air into the face via a fan which has a higher protection factor than the ones they are currently using. (Powered Air Purifing Respiartor). Thsoe poor workers are just sucking up contamination. They can also use lead to shield the control room as "shadow shielding." they can use grunts to hang the lead and get dose so their operators can work in the control for longer periods.

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Part 5. There are sections in Japan which exceed contamination limits to the NW and south of the plant. A few good rains and a bulldozer will take care of most of it, although I might not want to plant a garden for a few years. The contamination will get into the soil and be dispersed through the vegetation. Trumpet Vine soaks up soil contamination very nicely, I am sure Japan will find something that will work for them. They will be occupied again, although there will be a radius around the plant that TEPCO is going to have to control for awhile, my guess is about a mile.

Skipper, Japanese people will be able to stare at goats and cause them to have a heart attack, however they won't use their powers unless they are hungry.

[Minimalist]

I worked at TMI for 3 years in various capacities during the clean-up phase.

Do you glow in the dark?