Patterico's Pontifications

4/12/2011

Japan: Yeah, Um, That Nuclear Disaster… Is in the Chernobyl Zone Now

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 8:38 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

From the first moment I heard about the nuclear reactors in Japan, I had a bad feeling about the whole thing.  And I was convinced that the authorities were not telling us the truth.  Now we hear this:

Japan raised the crisis level at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to a severity on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing high overall radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.

Japanese nuclear regulators said they raised the rating from 5 to 7 – the highest level on an international scale of nuclear accidents overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency – after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.

The new ranking signifies a “major accident” that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA. But Japanese officials played down any health effects and stressed that the harm caused by Chernobyl still far outweighs that caused by the Fukushima plant….

But Edano told reporters there was no “direct health damage” so far from the crisis. “The accident itself is really serious, but we have set our priority so as not to cause health damage.”

Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, that it had to do with the overall release of radiation and was not directly linked to health dangers. He said most of the radiation was released early in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores.

The change was “not directly connected to the environmental and health effects,” Unesaki said. “Judging from all the measurement data, it is quite under control. It doesn’t mean that a significant amount of release is now continuing.”

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, in a national television address, urged the public not to panic and to focus on recovering from the disaster.

“Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline,” he said. “But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guards down.”

One report, which I can’t locate now, said that radiation levels were still less than one tenth that of Chernobyl.  And let’s not forget that Chernobyl hasn’t exactly screwed up the whole planet, either.  It wasn’t the end of the world.  So even though this is bad news, we are not justified in freaking out.

That is, unless Japan still isn’t telling the whole truth…

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

30 Responses to “Japan: Yeah, Um, That Nuclear Disaster… Is in the Chernobyl Zone Now”

  1. Talked to a guy who does some business in Japan. I asked him how many guys are there between the poor chump reading the radiation meters and the guy making the public statement.
    “You don’t want to know,” he said, adding that most of those intervening guys are culturally averse to passing on bad news.

    Richard Aubrey (cafc94)

  2. It hurts conservatives to attempt to tell the truth about nuclear disasters.

    Patterico (906cfb)

  3. Any sightings of huge, fire-breathing lizards?

    C. S. P. Schofield (8b1968)

  4. I think the scale needs to be revised. If something is “the worst case scenario”, I’d expect to see people, many people, already dead from radiation poisoning.

    The psychology of risk is interesting. I’ve been told that people do very poorly at being able to incorporate knowledge of low risk/high consequence events. That is why many people who routinely get in a car and drive 70 mph worry about all kinds of things, including nuclear energy.

    I never liked it when someone tells me there is “zero” chance of something bad happening. That’s what made me distrust, to some degree, the nuclear power advocates of 30-40 years ago, what I heard seemed to say it was impossible to have a significant accident. I guess when someone tells me “it’s impossible”, I find it hard to trust them, but if they say “virtually impossible”, then that communicates to me that “one heck of a lot of stars would have to be aligned perfectly” for the bad event to occur. That concept I can grasp.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  5. Patterico

    lol i tried very hard to avoid calling out a certain blog for getting angry at me for being pessimistic.

    MD

    well, ironically in the long term this might be useful for nuclear power advocates. now the “worse case scenarios” are no longer speculative, you take out alot of the fear.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  6. Is there a good place to find an objective assessment, long-term, for the damages from Chernobyl? From the BP oil spill that is going to change Gulf coast life for generations? Has Mothra arrived in Japan yet?

    JD (822109)

  7. From the begining, here and in other countries, the risk scales for “nuclear events” have been on the “super-cautious” side. That is why, in every “nuclear event” the actual casualty rates have proven to be many times lower that the projections. It was believed that being “super-cautious” would make nuclear power more acceptable but the result was that, the more caution made people more worried.

    Michael M. Keohane (4e0dda)

  8. Well one thing about the Japanese culture-I was raised by the Japanese my parents were both really busy-anyways-maybe I am defensive but I was absolutely horrified by a representative of the Prime Minister of Japan getting interrogated by the likes of Elliot Spitzer.

    The dignity of the Japanese people when put into contrast against almost any of our media…

    It was embarrassing to put it mildly.

    There is a blogger Hector Owen (-and actually he claims he got it in an email from someone who didn’t write it-) that has summed a lot of it up in one succinct post:

    ****

    Japan catastrophe
    Received in email from Bud Tyler, the Old Marshal of Frontiertown, who claims not to have written it.

    10 Things to learn from Japan–

    1. THE CALM
    Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.

    2. THE DIGNITY
    Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture.

    3. THE ABILITY
    The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall. (?????)

    4. THE GRACE
    People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something.

    5. THE ORDER
    No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding.

    6. THE SACRIFICE
    Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid?

    7. THE TENDERNESS
    Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak.

    8. THE TRAINING
    The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.

    9. THE MEDIA
    They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage.

    10. THE CONSCIENCE
    When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.

    I think number 3 has a lot to do with building codes, but the architects and contractors need to be willing and able to follow them.

    The whole thing says something about media. Someone said something recently about how different real catastrophes are from Hollywood catastrophes. In movies, we always see panicked mobs. In real life, we more often see this kind of cooperative and often selfless behavior. Compare news coverage, largely fictitious, of what was supposedly happening in New Orleans when Katrina hit, with the reports that came later, when real witnesses began speaking up.

    ****
    hectorowen.blogspot.com

    madawaskan (fd190b)

  9. MD in Philly, some things really are impossible. For instance, I’ll bet there are a lot of people who are worried about the possibility of a nuclear explosion at a nuclear power plant. That is literally impossible, and it’s important to tell people so. There is no conceivable circumstance in which Fukushima could become Hiroshima. Not unless the laws of physics were to suddenly and radically change on us.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  10. Yeah, Um, That Nuclear Disaster… Is in the Chernobyl Zone Now

    and you know what that’s ok cause you’re good enough, you’re japan enough, and goshdarnit people like you

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  11. JD

    > Is there a good place to find an objective assessment, long-term, for the damages from Chernobyl? From the BP oil spill that is going to change Gulf coast life for generations?

    I don’t believe so. This is an area of politicized science.

    > Has Mothra arrived in Japan yet?

    No, but the New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion are having a smackdown in Miyagi.

    (I’m probably going to hell for that joke.)

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  12. Um no it is not but let’s not let facts get in the way of the left’s nuclear power for iran but nor for US agenda.

    DohBiden (984d23)

  13. So long as Godzilla stays away, they should be able to weather this storm.

    Way off-topic, but that line in the Hangover where the one man wolfpack tells the crazy naked gay asian dude that he hates Godzilla too is epic funny.

    JD (0d2ffc)

  14. Milhouse, I agree that it is OK to say that what is impossible is impossible, especially if it is done with respect and enough reason on a level that the hearer can understand. For example, “An atomic explosion cannot occur because in an atomic bomb there has to be enough uranium (no need to confuse things mentioning plutonium or isotope numbers) all together in one lump to explode, but in a nuclear reactor the uranium is all spread out”. [I assume that is a correct-enough explanation, never having taken a nuclear engineering course.]

    madawaskan- I agree that much of what was impressive about the Japanese reaction was indeed how well buildings held up, how well civil society maintained order, etc. In fact it seems that the 9.0 (that was it, right?) earthquake that moved the entire main island 8 feet (again, correct?) did “relatively little damage”, but it was the tsunami that was bigger than defended for.

    But before we totally trash US culture in comparison, it was only 65 years ago that Japanese culture permitted abuse of POW’s, etc., that we have not done.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  15. Fallout references, I get it,

    narciso (8a8b93)

  16. I’ve still not seen any report of a single civilian casualty. Has anyone else?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  17. And likely will be zero deaths and probably no statistical increase in any disease from it. Maybe if they just nuked the plants they’d be done with it. Call it one above ground nuke test ala 1950s.

    cedarhill (903f1c)

  18. An atomic explosion cannot occur because in an atomic bomb there has to be enough uranium (no need to confuse things mentioning plutonium or isotope numbers) all together in one lump to explode, but in a nuclear reactor the uranium is all spread out

    It’s not just that; it’s that the fuel in a typical power plant is less than 5% U-235. Weapons-grade uranium is more than 85% U-235. There is simply no way that a uranium mix which is less than 6% U-235 can ever become a critical mass, no matter how much of it you pack into one place.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  19. Milhouse, are not aware of what an isotope is? MD acknowledged the enrichment issue clearly, if you read his comment.

    His point is not to impress people with his brilliance, but rather to distill information. The simple truth is that this is a disaster, and it isn’t going to blow up like a nuclear bomb. Some people don’t understand nuclear engineering, but can understand a basic explanation.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  20. it’s like if you forget to make a slit in your tasty microwave lasagna it will splode but if you just cut a little slit or peel back one corner you can have tasty lasagna and then you just need to brush some toast with garlic butter

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  21. Off topic, I guess but, happyfeet, brush some toast with garlic butter? Do you also put mayonnaise on your pastrami on rye?

    Michael M. Keohane (996c34)

  22. So how stupid and arrogant do you have to be to build nuclear power plants on a enormous fault line AND what looks to be 10 feet from the edge of the ocean where the tsunamis originate from after the earthquakes?

    After the horrible experience of being nuked by us?

    Somehow I feel the average Japanese citizen was against this folly. But as usual, the powers that be are under the delusion that they are intelligent.

    sablegsd (b5b2a9)

  23. sablegd, “the horrible experience of being nuked by us” is irrelevant, because as MD and Dustin and I just got through explaining, a nuclear explosion is impossible in a nuclear power plant, no matter what happens. The very worst that can happen at Fukushima is nothing even remotely like what happened at Hiroshima.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  24. For those who want to know how on earth there’s a scale that has THIS as the worst possible level:
    Here it is.

    Without PDF:
    Major Accident
    Level 7
    • Major release of radioactive material
    with widespread health and
    environmental effects requiring
    implementation of planned and
    extended countermeasures.

    Serious Accident
    Level 6
    • Significant release of radioactive
    material likely to require
    implementation of planned
    countermeasures.

    Accident with
    Wider Consequences
    Level 5
    • Limited release of radioactive material
    likely to require implementation of
    some planned countermeasures.
    • Several deaths from radiation.
    • Severe damage to reactor core.
    • Release of large quantities of
    radioactive material within an
    installation with a high probability of
    significant public exposure. This
    could arise from a major criticality
    accident or fire.

    Accident with
    Local Consequences
    Level 4
    • Minor release of radioactive material
    unlikely to result in implementation of
    planned countermeasures other than
    local food controls.
    • At least one death from radiation.
    • Fuel melt or damage to fuel resulting
    in more than 0.1% release of core
    inventory.
    • Release of significant quantities of
    radioactive material within an
    installation with a high probability of
    significant public exposure.

    Serious Incident
    Level 3
    • Exposure in excess of ten times the
    statutory annual limit for workers.
    • Non-lethal deterministic health effect
    (e.g., burns) from radiation.
    • Exposure rates of more than 1 Sv/h in
    an operating area.
    • Severe contamination in an area
    not expected by design, with a
    low probability of significant public
    exposure.
    • Near accident at a nuclear power plant
    with no safety provisions remaining.
    • Lost or stolen highly radioactive
    sealed source.
    • Misdelivered highly radioactive
    sealed source without adequate
    procedures in place to handle it.

    Incident
    Level 2
    • Exposure of a member of the public
    in excess of 10 mSv.
    • Exposure of a worker in excess of the
    statutory annual limits.
    • Radiation levels in an operating area
    of more than 50 mSv/h.
    • Significant contamination within the
    facility into an area not expected by
    design.
    • Significant failures in safety provisions
    but with no actual consequences.
    • Found highly radioactive sealed
    orphan source, device or transport
    package with safety provisions intact.
    • Inadequate packaging of a highly
    radioactive sealed source.

    Anomaly
    Level 1
    • Overexposure of a member of the
    public in excess of statutory annual
    limits.
    • Minor problems with safety
    components with significant
    defence-in-depth remaining.
    • Low activity lost or stolen radioactive
    source, device or transport package.

    Foxfier (24dddb)

  25. at least it wasn’t an 8 God love these people we should be doing a lot more for them instead of scampering aimless around Libya for no good reason

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  26. happyfeet,

    Scale only goes to 7.

    Frankly, it still sounds more like a 6 than a 7 to this observer and the death toll remains (and will remain) 0.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  27. Clarification on my 26: death toll due to radiological effects. Four drowned in the lower levels when the tsunami hit and I believe one more suffered a heart attack and died in a crane operator’s booth, which is still less than the refinery explosion on Tokyo bay.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  28. Rodney-
    I think seven just requires that there be “long-term” countermeasures used… which would be anything from testing the area every year to see if radiation is leaching out to the possible entombment of the reactor they’ve been talking about since day 1.

    Foxfier (24dddb)

  29. Foxfier @ 28,

    Then the scale needs serious re-tweaking. What has happned (and continues to happen) at Fukushima is serious and bad. It is in no way on the scale of Chernobyl.

    Radiation and radiological contamination are a lot like poison: the poison is in the dose.

    Most of the radiation and radiological contamination has gone into the Pacific Ocean. When last I checked that was one hell of a sump/source of dilution.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  30. Very true!

    Which is why all the talk of “this is the same as Chernobyl” drives me insane, since nobody is explaining the metric used.

    I’ve got ZERO work experience with radiation, but I know metrics, and this looks like someone was using a kitchen scale to weigh children, or maybe using a neighborhood sound ordinance meter on a jet engine.

    The scale is just fine, it’s just useless for something besides “K… there’s radiation… is this an event?” (You’re halfway through the scale before it gets to the point of observable damage from radiation.)

    Foxfier (24dddb)


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