Posted on 09/03/2013 7:34:05 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
1 September 2013 Last updated at 09:09 GMT
Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought
Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.
Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground.
It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.
The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour.
However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.
The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
If it wasn’t such a disaster, it would be funny: “Sir, did you know you were going 150 mph?” — “But officer, my spedometer only said 100” — “But sir, your spedometer only goes UP to 100”......
The bigger leak they had last week was about 71,000 gallons of water a day, or about 1 very large swimming pool. Put into the ocean, you wouldn’t notice it. The Pacific ocean contains about 187,189,915,062,857,142,857 gallons of water.
The newer leak is smaller. It is highly radioactive though — at least highly relative to what a human should be subjected to over a year. Not “chernobyl” high.
The “good news” is that the government is taking over, and has a plan to stop the leaking and seal things up. They are going to freeze the ground under and around the plant, at a cost of about half a billion dollars. It’s a very innovative solution, since they don’t have to do a lot of construction, just install a large amount of chiller units — and that will also help them cool the plant.
But they have not published enough information yet to know really how this will work.
I’m waiting for someone to suggest we nuke the plant.
However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.
Time for some new equipment...
How the heck could they use an instrument and report it's reading when it indicated Full Scale?
This appears to be a rare situation where the truth is better than supposed. The Ex-SKF blogger has been covering this - the dose is assumed to be gamma, in which case then yes, 4 hours of exposure would be lethal. But the media failed to report that almost all the dose is Beta, and therefore 4 hours would not be lethal. Here’s the link:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/09/ro-waste-water-leak-at-fukushima-1800.html#comment-form
The mass of radioactive materials in all those bombs is a fraction of the mass in a reactor.
Or rather, the reactors at Fukushima.
THOUGHT????? No wonder they are in trouble. These are the same folks who said it was fine for kids to play in the park and drink the milk. I'm betting it's waaaay more than the 18 times higher than they're now admitting.
Warning like buy a ticket on that flight to Mars.
How convenient for them to use meters that only go as high as they want to admit to!
If we think Americans are getting discouraged about our national situation—just imagine being Japanese.
Also, for all those Freepers who do and did belittle their fellow citizens who fought against nuclear power in the US, can we at least acknowledge that in some circumstances plants have been built that weren’t worth the risk?
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