Radiation Cloud

[LKY2009]

Make no mistake people, This accident is WORSE than Chernobyl! Chernobyl had no containment structure but 2 of these reactors containment shrouds where blown open by 2 massive explosions releasing everything directly into the atmosphere. To make things worse, The spent fuel rods are stored ABOVE the reactor! Here is a quote from a news article released yesterday: "Yesterday, Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour. With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health."

 

[millirad]

That would mean that there is no choice but to cool down the spent fuel rods enough to manipulate and remove them. Don't know if that's possible. The design of the plant seems to be flawed. Edit: unless you could inject a layer of concrete underneath the spent fuel rods and above the reactor. Probably not though.

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

My last measurement here was 11.7 counts per minute. No significant change from background. If my calculations are correct, 11.7 C/M = 0.19 microSv.
What is being released and what is the half life? I saw some crap from Chernobel come here but it was gone in a day.

HMike

 

[MarioMaster]

The main ones people are worried about are Cesium-137 (30 year half-life) and Iodine 131 (8 day half-life)

There are lots more being spewed out of the reactor, but as the rods cool down they dissipate quickly since they have very short half lives.

 

[millirad]

I wonder how much stronger the radiation release is compared to the nuke weapons tests in the Pacific ocean? Or Tsar Bomba? Edit: Although fission is much dirtier than fusion reactions.

Edit: another possibility "might" be to reconstruct the containment buildings original concrete structure with cranes and prefab concrete to reseal the building if it's reactor/fuels can be cooled enough.

 

[Arayan]

Nothing (yet) here in Italy, at least not in beta and gamma (i don't have a working alpha detector, at the moment), but you can never say ..... radiations cannot just be "washed away" (nor "dissipated", as some idiotic CNN speaker said ) ..... and metereology is anything, except an exact science, in matter of long-time previsions .....

Currently I'm away from home, but as soon as I get back I'll perform a similar experiment to that of Mike to monitoring the situation in Italy

 

[HIMNL9]

Actually i have a very little increase in beta count (not gamma, yet), but can be 10 / 15% more than the standard background value ..... and this is not significative, cause normally the background counts also changes randomly.

As example, it go randomly from 15 to 20, and yesterday was from 16 to 22 (measures took automatically each 30 minutes, in the 24 hours), so it can also be a standard fluctuation.

Also, i'm surrounded from mountains, so the wind currents can be differents from an open site ..... a significative result can be obtained only from different points of the nation, i think.

 

[Benm]

I wonder how much stronger the radiation release is compared to the nuke weapons tests in the Pacific ocean? Or Tsar Bomba? Edit: Although fission is much dirtier than fusion reactions.

Interesting question. All atomic bombs rely on a fission powered primary load, to wich a secondary fusion weapon can be added, which is initiated by the energy of the fission bomb. This is named the teller-ulam design, and has been public knowledge for a few decades.

Sometimes a third outer layer is added that is fissile, increasing the yield even further, using the neutrons from the fusion reaction.

The amount of fission products released by atomic bomb tests is likely to be far greater than what was emitted at chernobyl, or will be emitted worst case from japan right now. The difference is that the higher yield bomb tests were all performed on deserted islands or at sea, with no immediate inhabited surroundings.


As for measurments with geiger counters: The background varies naturally over time, the main source of it are either cosmic rays or even radon gas coming from the soil. If you have one of those counters that make a click noise on each hit, the time to worry is when the clicks become a constant tone indicating overload of the detector. Its completely normal to get readings of double value for background in different locations using the same meter.

Radiological workers don't even use geiger counters, the standard solution is a dosimeter badge that stores cumulative exposure over a long period of time, and is read out monthly or so. These badges are very reliable devices, but they are likely to cause an alert if you make a few long haul flights carrying one.

 

[millirad]

I'm thinking that eventually, the injured/killed Fukushima 50(energy plant workers) as they are known, would need to be replaced to continue a very long road ahead. It's not clear how that will play out, keeping the necessary work going and coming to some resolution/containment.

 

[HIMNL9]

I know, i also have an "electronic dosimeter" (sorta of ..... an old russian unit that take long time reading and shows you only the final result in mR/h .....

Also, yes, i'm not preoccupied from low readings ..... i also had in the past occasional readings around 70 or over (compared with the "normal" 15/20 ones from my zone) ..... maybe i start to be preoccupied when the readings become all over 100 for all the times


BTW:

..... the time to worry is when the clicks become a constant tone .....

Uhm, isn't this when the display of the geiger counter, instead of a number, shows you in blinking red letters "GAME OVER - YOU'RE DONE" ? ..... (J/K )

 

[Benm]

I'm thinking that eventually, the injured/killed Fukushima 50(energy plant workers) as they are known, would need to be replaced to continue a very long road ahead. It's not clear how that will play out, keeping the necessary work going and coming to some resolution/containment.

It would seem clear that several of the workers will eventually die from exposure indeed. Awful as it is, these do not count as casualties in the risk analysis for power plants, as those only consider civilians unrelated to the installation.

The number of civilian casualties will likely be a statistics game, calculating the amount of radiation released and the increase of cancer risk related to it. Such calculations show that, for example, the number of casualties from the three mile island incident will be about 1. For chernobyl the estimate is in the order of 4000 (UN estimate), though there is plenty of speculations by environmental groups that go up to a million.

 

[jeffreythe00]

I was wondering if you guys are going to continue to update this. It is kind of cool to see the radiation levels fluctuate. Sorry if this thread is dead. I thought I'd bump it a bit since the gradation levels seem tobstill be rising.

Thanks,
Jeff