http://www.businessinsider.com/level-7-fukushima-vs-chernobyl-how-do-they-really -compare-2011-4
Comparisons Chernobyl vs Fukushima
After the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the most highly contaminated areas were defined as those with over 1,490 kiloBecquerels per square metre (kBq/m2) of caesium. Agricultural produce from soil with 550 kBq/m2 was destroyed. People living within 30 kilometres of the Fukushima plant have evacuated or been advised to stay indoors. Since March 18th, MEXT has repeatedly found caesium levels above 550 kBq/m2 in an area some 45 kilometres wide lying 30 to 50 kilometres north-west of the plant. The highest was 6,400 kBq/m2, about 35 kilometres away, while caesium reached 1,816 kBq/m2 in Nihonmatsu City and 1,752 kBq/m2 in the town of Kawamata, where iodine-131 levels of up to 12,560 kBq/m2 have also been measured. [New Scientist]
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What Does A Level 7 Mean?
A level seven rating is defined as "An event resulting in an environmental release corresponding to a quantity of radioactivity radiologically equivalent to a release to the atmosphere of more than several tens of thousands of TeraBecquerels (TBq) of Iodine-131." One TeraBecquerel (TBq) equals one Trillion Becquerels of radioactivity. The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) puts the Fukushima figure at 370,000 TBq of Iodine-131 equivalent; the Nuclear Safety Commission, which has a more over-arching role in the Japanese system, says 630,000 TBq. Either way, it (Fukushima) is clearly beyond the threshold for classification as an INES -- International Nuclear Event Scale -- level seven event, although an order of magnitude lower than the 5.2 million TBq released from the Chernobyl accident, ie, only 10% of that radiation quantum so far.
Conclusion
Level 7 is the most serious level on INES -- International Nuclear Event Scale -- describing "a major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures." Although, by some measures, Fukushima has not reached the level of radioactive contamination caused by Chernobyl yet, we would advise caution because of the presence of plutonium and spent fuel rod pools with hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear material. Even when we discount the Russian view and the caesium fallout levels rivalling Chernobyl, if things do not continue to go right, the potential exists for Fukushima to be much bigger than Chernobyl. The uniqueness and specificity of the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents is such that posterity will remember the two events as being very distinct, although they both involve nuclear contamination.
The Hitachi-led proposal will vie against plans from groups led by Toshiba Corp. (6502) [bloomberg.com] and Areva SA (CEI) [bloomberg.com] as Tokyo Electric Power Co. begins preparing to clean up a nuclear disaster that’s led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Decommissioning the reactors may take three decades and cost more than 1 trillion yen ($12 billion) to complete, engineers and analysts say.
“It’s unclear how much the contract will be worth but it’s going to be a large amount given it would take decades to complete,” said Yuichi Ishida, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. “This isn’t an ordinary dismantling.”
Es ist wie beim Roulette: die Bank gewinnt immer
Eindrucksvolle Bilder von den Tsunami-Steinen!
Ist es bei den Bewohnern der Umgebung aktiver Vulkane wie Ätna, Stromboli oder Vesuv nicht ähnlich?
Wie dem auch sei, be(d)rückend wirkt, dass das japanische Volk zum zweiten mal der Welt zeigt, was es heißt, mit atomaren Unglücken umgehen zu müssen, also von Menschen erzeugten Tsunamis oder Vulkanausbrüchen, vermutlich allerdings ohne schnelle Wiederbesiedlung der betroffenen Landflächen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbje3ub5Dio
Er lenkt den Fokus auf den Zustand von Brennstabbecken 4.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85244.html
Prime Minister Naoto Kan is considering developing an environmentally friendly town with a population of about 50,000 to 100,000 in the event residents need to leave their homes near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for many years, a person close to the premier said Wednesday.
Kan is thinking of designing a downtown area ''modeled on a German garden city,'' Kenichi Matsumoto, a renowned writer who serves as a special adviser to the Cabinet, told reporters after a meeting with the premier.
Matsumoto, also a historian, said he proposed the idea of creating such an eco-town somewhere in an inland area during the meeting, adding that Kan was supportive of his idea.
Matsumoto said a possible area where people affected by the nuclear crisis could move to is already in ''the premier's mind.''
When Matsumoto met the press shortly after the meeting, he quoted Kan as saying that people with homes around the plant who have been evacuated will not be able to go back to their hometowns ''for 10 or 20 years.''
But he later said that Kan did not make such remarks. Kan himself told reporters before leaving his office, ''I did not say that.''
The idea of building an eco-town will most likely be discussed by the Reconstruction Design Council, launched on Monday -- exactly one month after the most powerful earthquake and tsunami in Japan's history.
The council will hold its first meeting on Thursday. Its members include internationally known architect Tadao Ando.
Vielleicht wie in Hellerau/Dresden?
Wir haben da 100 Jahre Erfahrung.
http://www.dresden.de/dtg/en/sightseeing/sehenswuerdigkeiten/ausflugsziele/13201 0100000299176.php
Oder wie in meiner Stadt:
Metro-Anschlag vom 11-4-11 geklärt:
...Geständnis abgelegt. Die Männer hätten sich auch zu früheren Anschlägen in der ehemaligen Sowjetrepublik bekannt.
http://www.radiobasel.ch/aktuell/nachrichten/bombenanschlag-von-minsk-gekl%C3%A4 rt-2011-04-13
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85295.html
The firm known as TEPCO said its analysis of a 400-milliliter water sample taken Tuesday from the No. 4 unit's spent nuclear fuel pool revealed the damage to some fuel rods in such a pool for the first time, as it detected higher-than-usual levels of radioactive iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137.
The No. 4 reactor, halted for a regular inspection before last month's earthquake and tsunami disaster, had all of its 1,331 spent fuel rods and 204 unused fuel rods stored in the pool for the maintenance work and the fuel was feared to have sustained damage from overheating.
The cooling period for 548 of the 1,331 rods was shorter than that for others and the volume of decay heat emitted from the fuel in the No. 4 unit pool is larger compared with pools at other reactor buildings.
According to TEPCO, radioactive iodine-131 amounting to 220 becquerels per cubic centimeter, cesium-134 of 88 becquerels and cesium-137 of 93 becquerels were detected in the pool water. Those substances are generated by nuclear fission.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the confirmed radioactive materials were up to 100,000 times higher than normal but that the higher readings may have also been caused by the pouring of rainwater containing much radioactivity or particles of radiation-emitting rubble in the pool.
The roof and the upper walls of the No. 4 reactor building have been blown away by a hydrogen explosion and damaged by fires since the disaster struck the plant. The water level in the spent fuel pool is believed to have temporarily dropped.
TEPCO said the fuel rods may have also been damaged by steel frames that fell into the pool in addition to overheating caused by the loss of cooling functions after the twin disasters.
The utility plans to examine the condition of the plant's reactor buildings by deploying a small unmanned helicopter to see whether it is possible to extract spent fuel from pools.
The nuclear agency said now that the condition of the No. 4 unit pool is partially known, workers can better prepare for recovery works there.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85295.html
Earlier in the day, the government's nuclear regulatory agency ordered TEPCO to check the quake resistance of reactor buildings at the Fukushima plant, which have been rocked by strong aftershocks from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that wrecked the site and triggered tsunami on March 11.
The agency told the utility to immediately examine the buildings and consider reinforcement work if they are judged as not sufficiently quakeproof.
In addition to the No. 4 unit, the Nos. 1 and 3 reactor buildings have also been severely damaged by hydrogen explosions in the early days of the crisis.
''As strong aftershocks occur almost daily, we have to consider what will happen to buildings already damaged by blasts,'' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear agency.
He acknowledged the difficulties involved in the work to reinforce the quake resistance of the buildings, where radiation levels are high, but said, ''We must devise some ways.'' The agency urged TEPCO to report back to it on the matter as soon as possible.
Kürzlich spinnte die jap. Regierung und einige Freunde der Kernkraft, dass lediglich Fische unmittelbar in der Nähe der Reaktoren belastet sein könnten.
Wir erinnerten uns, dass sich Radioaktivität zwar im Meer verdünnt , sich zugleich aber in der Nahrungskette anreichern kann.
Nun kommt die nächste Trivialität:
Fische können schwimmen und zwar grössere Distanzen.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85289.html
Radioactive cesium 25 times above the legal limit for consumption was detected Wednesday in young sand lance caught off Fukushima Prefecture, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.
One of the sample fish had a level of cesium of 12,500 becquerels per kilogram about 500 meters off the city of Iwaki, and 35 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, it said. The limit is 500 becquerels under the Food Sanitation Law.
Herr Edano wird wohl demnächst auch Fisch öffentlich verspeisen.
Transkript eines neuen WebCasts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiGzleep1K4&feature=share
mit dem Nuklearphysiker Kaku, veröffentlicht nachdem Stufe7 ausgerufen wurde.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, TEPCO is like the little Dutch boy. All of a sudden we have cracks in the dike. You put a finger here, you put a finger there. And all of a sudden, new leaks start to occur, and they’re overwhelmed.
I suggest that they be removed from leadership entirely and be put as consultants. An international team of top physicists and engineers should take over, with the authority to use the Japanese military. I think the Japanese military is the only organization capable of bringing this raging accident under control. And that’s what Gorbachev did in 1986. He saw this flaming nuclear power station in Chernobyl. He called out the Red Air Force. He called out helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and buried the Chernobyl reactor in 5,000 tons of cement, sand and boric acid. That’s, of course, a last ditch effort. But I think the Japanese military should be called out.
AMY GOODMAN: To do...?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Because of the fact that the radiation levels are so great, workers can only go in for perhaps 10 minutes, 15 minutes at a time, and they get their year’s dose of radiation. You’re there for one hour, and you have radiation sickness. You vomit. Your white corpuscle count goes down. Your hair falls out. You’re there for a day, and you get a lethal amount of radiation. At Chernobyl, there were 600,000 people mobilized, each one going in for just a few minutes, dumping sand, concrete, boric acid onto the reactor site. Each one got a medal. That’s what it took to bring one raging nuclear accident under control. And I think the utility here is simply outclassed and overwhelmed.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, these workers are in for much longer periods of time.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: That’s right. And we don’t even know how much radiation levels they’re getting, because many areas around the site have no monitors. So we don’t even know how much radiation many of these workers are getting. And that’s why I’m saying, if you have access to the military, you can have the option of sandbagging the reactor, encasing it in concrete, or at least have a reserve of troops that can go in for brief periods of times and bring this monster under control.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the evacuation zone? Is it big enough?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: It’s pathetic. The United States government has already stated 50 miles for evacuating U.S. personnel. The French government has stated that all French people should consider leaving the entire islands. And here we are with a government talking about six miles, 10 miles, 12 miles. And the people there are wondering, "What’s going on with the government? I mean, why aren’t they telling us the truth?" Radiation levels are now rising 25 miles from the site, far beyond the evacuation zone. And remember that we could see an increase in leukemia. We could see an increase in thyroid cancers. That’s the inevitable consequence of releasing enormous quantities of iodine into the environment.
AMY GOODMAN: What has to happen to the plant ultimately?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, in the best-case scenario—this is the scenario devised by the utility itself—they hope to bring it under control by the end of this year. By the end of this year, they hope to have the pumps working, and the reaction is finally stabilized by the end of this year.
AMY GOODMAN: Oddly, it’s sounding a little bit like BP when they were trying to plug up the hole.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: "It will happen. It will happen."
DR. MICHIO KAKU: They’re literally making it up as they go along. We’re in totally uncharted territories. You get any nuclear engineering book, look at the last chapter, and this scenario is not contained in the last chapter of any nuclear engineering textbook on the planet earth. So they’re making it up as they go along. And we are the guinea pigs for this science experiment that’s taking place. Then it could take up to 10 years, up to 10 years to finally dismantle the reactor. The last stage is entombment. This is now the official recommendation of Toshiba, that they entomb the reactor over a period of many years, similar to what happened in Chernobyl.
AMY GOODMAN: Entomb it in...?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: In a gigantic slab of concrete. You’re going to have to drill underneath to make sure that the core does not melt right into the ground table. And you’re going to put 5,000 tons of concrete and sand on top of the flaming reactor.
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