NBC New York - Brian Thompson – 6 hours ago
AP Rutgers University scientist and radiation safety officer Patrick McDermott says he would not hesitate to drink a glass or two of Tokyo water, or even water closer to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. …
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from Scientific American – today
By Davide Castelvecchi | March 25, 2011
Orbach and other physicists warned about the current “hysteria”—caused in part by human errors and a lack of transparency on the part of plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company—and the possible consequences of abandoning nuclear power, such as the environmental impact that would result from producing the same electricity with fossil fuels. Instead, more research and better engineering are called for, he says, adding: “I’m hopeful that cooler heads, wiser heads, will prevail.”
Nuclear engineers have long promoted intrinsic safety features that could make future reactors safer, but retrofits at existing nuclear power plants could make intrinsic safety features available at old reactors, too, Orbach said. Such improvements would particularly pertain at 23 reactors in the U.S. that are based on the same 1970s General Electric design as the Fukushima reactors.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improving-nuclear-safety
So, the U.S. should learn lessons from that ongoing disaster and seriously consider retrofitting at least some of its reactors, Raymond L. Orbach, former undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, said here this week at a meeting of the American Physical Society.
Brown's Ferry Nuclear Reactor Mark I design like Fukushima Daiichi plants used - from Scientific American article
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improving-nuclear-safety
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My Note -
It has actinides in it – which is uranium and stuff like that.
So, that is apparently okay to drink according to Rutgers University professor and radiation safety officer Patrick listed above. Hmmm ……….. Thank God he isn’t teaching any of my kids but God help us for the ones who have been taught by him and his kind. They want us to believe all is well, there is no danger with radioactive isotopes like Cesium and Iodine and Strontium in the water. In fact, there have been eight different isotopes found in the water at the basement of the Fukushima reactor facility, but the scientists on the news assure us that it must have come from the turbine and not the reactor itself – because they figure we wouldn’t know that the turbine isn’t supposed to have radioactive isotopes in it at a million times the normal background radiation levels and these specific isotopes.
Hell, what could I know – they are getting paid, I’m not.
But here – Happy Friday after you’ve finished watching whatever Snooky says in a drunken stupor on the tv –
Posted on 26th March 2011
http://www.inewsone.com/2011/03/26/eight-radioactive-substances-found-in-water-at-plant/38479
Seventeen workers at the plant have been contaminated since the plant was damaged in a March 11 earthquake and resulting tsunami, Kyodo news agency reported Saturday.
That figure includes only those who have been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation, the maximum exposure for a nuclear plant worker for an entire year.
The highest levels found in the water in block 1 of the plant were of caesium 137, a radioactive isotope that was released into the environment in the Chernobyl disaster. It appeared at levels of 1.8 million becquerel.
Caesium 137 (Cesium 137), in contrast to radioactive iodine, has a relatively long half life of 30.2 years. It is created during nuclear fission. The water also contained Caesium isotopes 134 and 136 as well as iodine-131.
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Now I don’t care who you might be or how many degrees are coming at the end of your name, or how much the people are paying you to sit on some damn commission on nuclear stuff or if you have four degrees in that –
The above information is a serious indication that this is not some fluffy small accident. I don’t know how you are going to tell America that and convey those facts in a task appropriate manner – but saying you’ll drink the water there is stupid. And, I’m ashamed of Scientific American for promising a highly regarded critical scientific look at the situation by virtue of their reputation and then sticking a fluff piece with their name behind it to express that we shouldn’t give up on nuclear plants in our “hysteria,” as Mr. Orbach told everyone . . .
Found this too –
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/stream/m_news/vn110325_3.htm
Video of a Japan Defense Forces flyover – of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors -
And, I kept thinking all the way through it that they are too close – why isn’t that a drone with a camera rather than a helicopter with men in it?
Totally bizarre – like the workers who were sent into a plant known to have radioactive contamination without heavy boots on their feet. Apparently the Japanese government scolded TEPCO for not taking the radiation readings correctly before the workers were sent into the plant, as well – according to the discussion from AC360 on CNN tonight about the mid-way through the hour. I think that when our professors are talking about this as if it is nothing and our ex-energy officials are looking and talking about it like “hysteria” has overtaken anyone demanding that our nuclear plants be made safer, and our financial news sources have talked about it like the problems weren’t that bad and nearly fixed by Saturday – that it isn’t helping anything.
That’s what I think.
And, further – after having a friend over to my house who is literate but could not put the letters for “real estate” into the computer using its typewriter keyboard, (and the recent overwhelming information about how “most people in America” don’t care about this stuff and don’t know anything about it – from my family and friends) – I think maybe as science geeks, we need to explain all this in simpler terms – which I thought about it awhile and then wrote them down -
Yes – I’m being shitty and mean because it isn’t funny anymore. That the men around where I live and that I’ve known in the last thirty years mostly can’t cook for themselves and are required to go out to eat after they retire, is not funny. That they can’t use a keyboard on a computer to type out the simple words for a google search to look up something they want to know, isn’t funny. And, having the whole damn lot of them judging me from the community around me, while the only thing important is what snooky said this week – also isn’t funny. To say to somebody about nuclear power plants, that they are essentially boiling water – and then have the person say, “oh, I don’t understand anything about that.” And, then I say – “I’m telling you, they are using it to boil water so it turns the turbine and makes electricity. They are boiling water with all that.” And, they tell me that none of that is anything that they can understand because they were never any good with math and science. So, they can’t understand it right now even though I’m telling them right there that this expensive science contraption called nuclear power is just a big thing to boil water . . .
Okay, so I’m over it.
Here is an easy way to understand nuclear power.
Yes, it is dangerous.
Yes, it would be safe if it weren’t dangerous.
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It can go along quite awhile looking pretty reliable until it is suddenly really dangerous.
That danger down’ there at the nuclear plant doesn’t stay down there at the nuclear plant.
No, that fence around it down there at the nuclear plant doesn’t do much good . . .
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And, the terms we use about this can be understood better like this -
A Nuclear Reactor Is A $10 Billion Dollar Steam Kettle.
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Nuclear Physics (as it involves nuclear power plants) -
they are using radioactive uranium to boil water.
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The “Radioactive” part – gets hot.
That boils the water around it and makes steam.
The steam turns these big fan things in the “turbine” to make electricity.
The only part we want is - the electricity.
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Here is what happened at Fukushima -
When the electricity went off and the water wasn’t moving at the nuclear power plant reactors – it boiled dry in places and went boom the same way a steam kettle will do on the stove when you forget it was there . . .
If you forgot that steam kettle on the burner with the burner on till the next day, the pool of metal would greet you where it melted all over the burner and the stove along with whatever was nearby . . . (it would probably be black too and the air would stink.)
When the same thing happens in a nuclear power plant and it goes boom, that usually means there was a lot of really weird radioactive stuff that doesn’t show up anywhere else on the planet which gets out of wherever they originally had control of it.
If you step in it, that kind of radioactive stuff can make you very sick and die.
If you fly through a cloud of it in a helicopter, even though you are there for a good reason – it can still make you sick anyway.
And, when a Rutgers University professor or anybody else who is expert in this “officially’, tells anyone that it is okay to drink the water which has been found to have Cesium (one of those funky radioactive things) or radioactive Iodine in it – neither he nor they will be the one who gets sick or gets cell damage from it.
When there is a choice about who to believe and who to trust and who to listen to that could know what they are talking about and be right about it – (and you are reading this) -
Please remember these three things –
1. It isn’t going to hurt them if you do things based on their information and they are wrong.
2. Don’t trust any of them to have the same agenda that you think would be the first priority, like “public good” in the same way you or I would think about that.
3. If you wouldn’t stand near a burning fire that is out of control and you wouldn’t stand nor allow anyone else to stand next to a building that is damaged by an earthquake and about to fall down – then consider radioactive dangers in the same manner and take every reasonable precaution.
(and I’ll add a fourth one, just for me because I want to)
xxx – Just because someone has a portion of authority or education, even a seat on the nuclear regulatory commission or the university professorship, or the seal of expertise about something – or college degrees in it – that means they passed a number of classes with at least “C” – but not necessarily all of them even in their major – and that they got through it sober or not – but they were passed and given that piece of paper on the wall.
It doesn’t mean they ever truly understood the principles involved in any of it.
And, I really wish that were not so, but it is.
You are just as capable of understanding what these experts know about these things and applying common sense to the things they may have missed or may have never truly understood about it.
- cricketdiane
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Any of us would have known to make sure the workers had heavy boots on to protect them . . .
Any of us know that we want water, milk, juice, fruits and vegetables free of radioactive isotopes which have been manufactured at some nuclear power plant and don’t want radioactive isotopes of Cesium 137 in our children’s water, milk and foods.
Any of us know that we also don’t want to breathe that either.
And that isn’t rocket science – that is common sense.
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