RoR: Forum

Another news article is less confident of the success in containment, an explosion caused by chemical reactions or pressure built up from water vapor could spread nuclear material around.

Post 1

Monday, March 14, 2011 - 7:17pm

Thanks, Dean.

Good article. I have been watching the 'experts' that are brought in to speak to the 'talking heads' on TV and noticing that even without any technical knowledge I could smell the agendas and the spin. One fellow made me suspicious enough to Google him and it turns out that the he is a full out anti-nuclear activist who was attempting to give the impression of being a neutral expert.

Post 2

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 7:23am

Steve,
I'm curious why you think this "expert" is any better than those you describe. He wrote a book entitled "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey", so I'm not sure about his objectivity.

The author stated that

There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate.

Well, according to the US Navy, who has no reason to exaggerate these numbers:

Navy fleet officials emphasized that the maximum potential radiation dose received by anyone aboard a ship that passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about a month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil and the sun.

A "month of exposure to natural background radiation" is much more than a dental X-ray. It's more like 10 dental X-rays. And this was off the coast, not "in the immediate vicinity".

It's too early to tell how bad this will turn out to be. So, I agree that people shouldn't panic. But this guy is much too casual about it. Why does everyone think that this has to be either Chernobyl or Three Mile Island?

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 3

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 7:30am

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 7:45am

Glenn to be fair the quote from the Navy said the radiation exposure was less than a month's worth of exposure from natural background radiation.

But without knowing the measured radiation exposure and the methodologies used it's hard to determine any kind of dishonesty. A citation for the second quote would be appreciated.

(Edited by John Armaos on 3/15, 7:57am)

Post 5

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 8:21am

What the Navy was emphasizing was that we live with radiation every day - as part of natural background... there is NO SUCH THING AS A RADIATION FREE LIVING, as we bathe in it each and every day of our lives, as with ALL living organisms......

Post 6

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 8:31am

John,
Here's a source of the Navy's statement. Granted that it said "less than", but if it was less than a week's radiation, they would have said that.

I'm not necessarily suggesting dishonesty, just a bias, which can lead to overlooking relevant material. The author had access to the information about the navy vessel but didn't include it. He also didn't give the methodologies he used, or based his numbers on, for the dental X-ray analogy.

I heard an anti-nuke woman say on TV the other day that when Three Mile Island happened, there was so much radiation released that the detectors were turned off. Then yesterday I heard a pro-nuke person say that the radiation released at TMI was negligible. Who can we believe?

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 7

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 8:49am

Glenn that is a good question. For myself I've discovered so many lies and exaggerations from the Environmentalist Movement that any claim made by an opponent to nuclear power I automatically place a lot of skepticism on that person's claims. For example the banning of DDT is a huge black mark hanging over the environmentalist movement that to me they have to confront and acknowledge they were wrong and quite frankly outright dishonest about it before I begin to take any claims they make today seriously. A lot of the opponents to nuclear power too seem to always gloss over the costs associated with other energy sources. As if no death has been associated with fossil fuels (emphysema, mine collapses, refinery explosions, CO poisoning etc) or that other energy sources are at all practical (solar, wind etc). Just another example, Anthropogenic Global Warming, has me thoroughly convinced it's bunk. They deserve the extra scrutiny considering their awful track record. I place them on the same level I would place psychics and UFOologists.

Also why would they turn off the detectors? Do people put away their thermometers if it gets too warm? I don't get why someone would turn off a measuring device because it's measuring something large.

(Edited by John Armaos on 3/15, 8:55am)

Post 8

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 9:07am

Robert,
You're right, but the effects of radiation are cumulative. If you increase the dose you increase the probability that damage will be done. So you still want to minimize the amount you're exposed to. Also, if that's all they were saying, why did they move the ships further out to sea?

John,
They turned off the detectors so there would be no record of the large amounts of radiation released. That way they could say that the overall amount of radiation released was not enough to worry about.

Thanks,
Glenn

(Edited by Glenn Fletcher on 3/15, 9:15am)

Post 9

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 9:15am

Glenn that explanation sounds conspiratorialist to me. My baloney detection senses automatically pique when I hear something like that.

Post 10

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 10:14am

I agree, John. Just because those in charge might benefit from some action doesn't mean that they took that action.

Those who disagree with the claim that very little radiation escaped from TMI point to an above average leukemia rate in that area, and it's known that increased radiation exposure can lead to an increase in leukemia in children. Therefore, there must have been a significant amount of radiation leakage at TMI. QED. However, that's the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. It's one possible explanation of the increased leukemia rate, but it's not the only possible explanation; if there was an increased leukemia rate.

I'm not supporting these arguments, just reporting them. As I asked: who should you believe?

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 11

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 11:28am

The two quotes at the end of the article Merlin supplied in post #3 are interesting: "This is not a Chernobyl. The difference is Chernobyl did not have a containment structure, which these plants do," Mr. Jennex said.

"But Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union for Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that has been critical of nuclear power in the past, said containment vessels such as the one at Daiichi are known to be vulnerable to failure if melted nuclear fuel reaches the bottom of the reactor.

"That would essentially mean a large radiological release to the environment," he said.
-----------

So, I read where the environmentalist says, "...containment vessels such as the ones at Daiichi are know to be be vulnerable to failure if melted nuclear fuel reaches the bottom of the reactor." That is a statement that smells bad! Known by who? Based upon what principle? We know there is no historical incident to back that.
------------

We look for logic errors, or the kinds of phrasing used to in spin or to obscure. It is all we can do. The article that I was relieved to read, the one where Glenn asked why I credited it but not the other, read like the reasoning that assumes readers want to hear cause-effect reasoning. It read more like an honest engineers report. That doesn't mean it was right, or that it wasn't cleverly disguised propaganda. But it makes it less likely to be so in my mind and when it described the different kinds of containment approaches and the time factor, I had reason to believe I was reading thoughts reasoned from causal principles and not scare tactics or that awful practice of assuming that anything is possible and using that assumption like a bridge to go from reality to scary-land.

Post 12

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 1:24pm

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/16/going-bananas-over-radiation/

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/fear-the-media-meltdown-not-the-nuclear-one/

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/14/morning-bell-nuclear-facts-to-remember-while-following-japan/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

http://bravenewclimate.com/
(Edited by robert malcom on 3/15, 11:57pm)

Post 13

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 10:47am

There's a good article here that discusses the possible dangers of the radiation leakage at the power plants in Japan. The person quoted, David Brenner, does a good job, I think, in pointing out the over-reaction to the dangers, especially by people in California.

One reason I like this is that I remember David Brenner from when I did Medical Physics. He made a splash 4 or 5 years ago when he coauthored a few papers on the dangers to children of the radiation from CT scans. This led to a change in how CT scans are done on children. So, he's not someone who generally downplays the dangers of radiation. That doesn't mean he's right, just that he has some credibility in my opinion.

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 14

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 4:13pm

My local paper* had a table. Below, I adapt the table and add-in two reports regarding the amount of radiation detected:

Millisieverts of Radiation Exposure ................ Effects

                   10,000 .................................Single dose, fatal within weeks
                     5,000 ................................ Single dose kills half (LD50) within a month
                     1,000 ................................ Single dose could cause radiation sickness, but not death
                        640**............................. Detected (per hr) on Monday at the north-west monitoring posts
                        400* .............................. Detected (per hr) on Tuesday at No. 3 Reactor (inside nuclear plant)
                        100 ................................ Recommended 5-yr exposure limit for radiation workers
                          16 ................................ CT scan, heart
                          10 ................................ CT scan, full body (equivalent to 5-yrs of baseline radiation exposure)
                            2 ................................ Yearly exposure for most free living humans (baseline exposure)
                           0.01 ........................... Dental X-ray

Ed

Reference:
*St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3-16-2011
**Nuclear scare grows with an orange flash and a violent blast

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/16, 4:25pm)

Post 15

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 4:21pm

Good article Glenn.

Ed, interesting numbers, thanks for posting them.

Post 16

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 7:40pm

From the article Glenn's post links to:

To put things in perspective, Chernobyl was a far worse disaster than Daiichi ever could be�Chernobyl was going full-bore when it exploded, it had no containment vessel, and it was an extremely flammable graphite pile reactor, so there was far more airborne contamination>" Quote from David Brenner.
------------------------

I notice we don't get very useful information on the radiation. (I was working on this... Not knowing that Ed had already posted some very useful information).

It is more complex than the descriptions are helpful with. There is the quantity of particles emitted per unit of time from a point in space, then there is the distance away from that point, then there is the absorption rate which differs depending upon the type of particle and upon the what kind of thing is doing the absorbing (e.g., a human thyroid gland, an insect, a lump of dirt, etc.), then there should be a comparison to normal background radiation or a familiar radiation event (like eating a banana which has Potassium-40 that is decaying, or like a dental x-ray), and then they use different measurements (curies, sieverts, grays, Rads, Rems, Rotogens, etc.)

Just once I'd like the talking head say something like, "The amount of radiation released during the that spike on the 14th, for someone who was standing inside the control room, was equivalent in its effect on 170 pound man to eating 38 bananas." (I just made up those numbers because I'm still figuring out to convert between the various standards)

Post 17

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 9:25pm

Fun Fact:
Due to overzealous bureaucratic legislation, each human has more potassium-40 in their body than would be legal to carry across state lines.

In other words, if you travel to another state, you are technically guilty of breaking a law regarding interstate transfer of nuclear materials.

Don't tell the collectivists.

:-)

Ed

Post 18

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 7:23am

Steve,
Roentgens, rads, rems, curies, etc. aren't just different measurements, they're either different units of the same physical phenomenon, or they correspond to different phenomena. If I have time I'll post something about what the different quantities represent, but one thing I can say right now is:
In order to compare apples to apples, the concept of "effective dose" was introduced. That is, in order to compare the biological effect of radiation from an abdominal x-ray with that of a head CT scan, a calculation is done which, for each case, determines the whole-body dose which would have the same biological effect as the particular exam.

This calculation gives the effective dose, measured in Sieverts (usually milli-Sieverts or mSv), which is the more formal unit, or in rems (usually mrems), which is an acronym standing for "radiation equivalent man": 100 mrems = 1 mSv. So, you can then compare the effective dose of a CT scan with that of another exam, like a chest x-ray. It also allows you to compare the dose from an exam with the dose you get from the environment (cosmic rays, radioactive material in the ground and building material, radon gas, etc.), which is a whole-body dose. So, the annual effective dose from background radiation in the US is, on average, about 300 mrems (3 mSv). This is higher than the value in Ed's table, but it's the number we used for St. Louis.

For purposes of comparison, a chest x-ray exam (two views) has an effective dose of about 10 mrems (0.10 mSv). So, we can say that it would take 30 chest x-ray exams in one year to give the equivalent effective dose that we get from background radiation each year.

I hope that helps.
Glenn

Post 19

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 8:29am