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Earth Japan Power

Fukushima Daiichi Water Leak Raised To Level 3 Severity 92

AmiMoJo writes "Japan's nuclear regulators have raised the level of severity of the radioactive water leak from a tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It is now a level-3 serious incident. The revision from level 1 is based on estimates of the volume of radioactive substances leaked. The International Atomic Energy Agency supports the revision. They say the tank leak can be assessed separately from the Fukushima Daiichi crisis as a level 3 incident. Japanese experienced a level-3 nuclear event in 1997 with the fire and explosions at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture. 37 workers there were exposed to the leaked radioactive substances."
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Fukushima Daiichi Water Leak Raised To Level 3 Severity

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  • by vivaoporto ( 1064484 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @06:51PM (#44701905)

    Japanese experienced a level-3 nuclear event in 1997 with the fire and explosions at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture. 37 workers there were exposed to the leaked radioactive substances.

    What was the fate of the 1997 workers exposed like that? That would be a good way to assess what kind of consequences we could expect from the current incident,

  • Level 3? (Score:4, Funny)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @06:52PM (#44701911)
    Holy crap! That's 1/10^4 Hiroshimas.
  • by themushroom ( 197365 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @07:17PM (#44702089) Homepage

    Or at least a Godzilla reference in responses to this article. Here's one now!

  • *cident (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @07:43PM (#44702269)

    thank god the level has not been raised from "incident" to "accident" (per the stupid pyramid graphic)

    these useless terms smell like (profusely reek of) the result of years expensive international negotiations by diplomats lawyers and politicians until they reached the exact level of imprecision to not inform anyone of anything that is actually going on in any useful way

  • by RedHackTea ( 2779623 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @07:54PM (#44702333)
    I learned about a new keyboard shortcut "Ctrl+Shift+T". It's kind of like the "Ctrl+Z" of radioactive water leak disasters.
  • by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @08:50PM (#44702635) Journal

    I just thought it would be funny to put some blue plastic over a flashbulb, and use it near nuclear plant workers to see what their reaction is.

  • by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @10:21PM (#44703251) Homepage Journal
    The radiation from the corium pockets underground is bad, but it's nothing compared to the mess is still waiting to make a disaster bigger [berkeley.edu] (85 times bigger!) then Chernobyl..
    • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @10:59PM (#44703443)

      Bollocks. TFA states the pools contain "85 times the cesium released" at Chernobyl, which tells us little by itself.
      How much cesium might be released into the atmosphere by a fire? An how much of the exposure at Chernobyl was caused by cesium? I thought most of the exposure was from iodine and other shorter-lived isotopes.
            To says an "85 times bigger disaster" is shameful dishonest scaremongering.

      • by ka9dgx ( 72702 )

        That's only the #4 pool, and there are others that will go if there is a "gamma shine" event.... it could be worse than that. The article mentions that they believe 1/2 of Japan would be uninhabitable after that.

        There's plenty of scare to go around in Fukushima, without any mongering

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          I'd hardly dignify the post by calling it an article. As a recent comment states:

          So according to this article the total world wide contamination of CS-137 would go up by 50% compared to the near undetectable levels that are already there from previous events.
          But somehow that's going to extinguish all life on earth?

    • Nonsense, the arrays are already encased in boron cages in the fuel storage racks, they will not go critical even if they are not cooled. Cooling is needed to keep the fuel arrays mechanically sound so they couldn't release the radioactive materials inside them. There is no serious damage in the fuel arrays in the spent fuel pool of unit 4. The damage in each of the 4 units destroyed is very different, so a single event making all of the remaining fuel release their radioactive materials is highly unlikely,

  • Has anyone else seen the info where it's claimed that nuclear waste rods are dispelled of their radiation rapidly when exposed to a hydron/oxygen flame (Also called Brown's Gas by welders).

    I ran across this information some years ago when I was experimenting with adding hydrogen to my car's engine.

    So here's a web site where they make te case for the technique:

    http://zapnuclearwaste.com/ [zapnuclearwaste.com]
    I'd appreciate any constructive comments.

    • A problem with this solution is that some claim there is a 250 billion dollar industry in nuclear waste containment, plus governments like to use the nuclear waste for weapons. So there are financial interests at stake. On the other hand the world would have a nice reduction in the cost of living if they could just get an under water robot with a hydrogen flame down to treat those nuclear waste rods.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      No, there is no way to get rid of nuclear waste by chemical means like your hydrogen/oxygen flame or by my auntie's suggestion of boiling the drinking water first. Sorry, you have been misinformed.

      Physical means that might work are: speeding up the transmutation process by bombarding it with neutrons in an extremely radioactive fast breeder reactor (BAD idea, IMHO), or maybe some scientists suggest that a neutrino flux seems to have some influence, like e.g. if you hold a star like our sun next to it impr
      • I think it's worth trying the hydrogen flame.
        I'm not suggesting boiling drinking water... although using the hydrogen flame might help if this technique is proven out.
        Thanks for your comments though. I really do appreciate them.

  • Zirconium (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@noSPAm.earthlink.net> on Thursday August 29, 2013 @12:50AM (#44703857)

    I learned something very interesting about zirconium. I don't remember when this was but I found the properties of this element very fascinating and it has come back to mind with this article. You see zirconium is a metal that is nearly transparent to neutrons. Because of this property, and other properties that metals have, it is used to make the fuel rods in all fission reactors today.

    Using zirconium makes sense. Just like we use glass in light bulbs we use zirconium in nuclear fission reactors. A light bulb is not very useful unless the light can escape from the filament but no barrier exists to protect the filament from damage. We use zirconium to contain the fission fuel and also allow the neutrons that sustain the fission to reach the fuel contained in the other rods.

    Zirconium has another very interesting property, it burns when exposed to steam. So, in every fission reactor we have today we place zirconium tubes filled with nuclear fuel in some very hot water. If the ability to cool this water is lost then the water begins to boil. The zirconium ignites. The tubes containing the nuclear fuel burns away. The nuclear fuel falls away from the control mechanisms and piles up at the bottom of the reactor vessel.

    Once the nuclear fuel piles up high enough fission will occur. Dumping water on the fuel at this point moderates the fission, that is bounce any escaping neutrons back at the fuel to increase the fission rate, and creates more steam to burn away the zirconium. But not dumping water on the fuel means some very dangerous elements, ones that are solid at any lower temperature, boil away. What needs to be done is to dump enough water on the fire so that the zirconium and other stuff in the pile stops burning. At some point the mess that was once fuel rods melts enough metal and concrete in the reactor floor, and mixes with it, that fission stops.

    I don't mention all of this to scare people away from nuclear fission power. I mention this to point out that the technology we use in nuclear fission right now is very stupid. We need nuclear fission power. What we need is nuclear power that does not require zirconium in contact with hot water.

    We need molten salt reactors.

    • You'll find those kinds of crazies are present in many different industrial processes. I often wonder who came up with this stuff. Like a Fluidised Catalytic Cracking Unit which has been used for upgrading the heavy crap into gasoline products after distilling crude oil. In an FCCU you have hydrocarbons at about twice the auto ignition temperature in a top vessel which contains cyclonic separators, and the resulting catalyst (hopefully now hydrocarbon free) is then gravity fed into a bottom vessel where it'

    • Dumping water on a grease fire comes to mind reading this. Very informative.

      Makes you wonder why some sort of dry agent hasn't been developed to cope with this as with any fire where water is a bad idea, but still better then the alternatives. I guess this goes to show that nuclear is still in it's infancy.
  • ...safe, clean, cost-effective. Wait... what?
  • In other, more positive news, TEPCO today announced that at the current rate of leakage, and the expected future increase, the entire site should be free of all radioactive elements in only a hundred years or so.

    A TEPCO spokeperson was quoted as saying, " Isn't nature wonderful! It created this mess, by bringing the sea up to the reactor, but now it is cleaning it up , by taking the reactor elements out to sea. Such a beautiful circle."
  • Protesters have dumped several chests of tea into Boston harbour.

    Seriously, this was reported over a week ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23776345 [bbc.co.uk] I thought this was supposed to be a news website.

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