Fukushima: Just a quick update

So now it has been almost two weeks since that 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan.  I am still a little hesitant to make statements about the future of nuclear power at this point, but I do want to fill you guys in on some of the developments that have happened over the last week at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

If you haven't noticed, the media has seemed to move on past the nuclear incident.  I guess the media doesn't seem to think that the nuclear incident at Fukushima will result in the killing of thousands and thousands of people anymore.  The talking heads are not going to win any awards for their coverage on the situation there, so they have gone on with it.  We are now getting better coverage of what has always been more important.  I am glad the media is now getting the proper perspective and the people that deserve the attention are now getting it.  Though I do suppose that the situation in Libya has also given them a convenient way to veer away from Fukushima.  Just shows the attention span of the mass television media.  Sorry, I shouldn't sit here and cry over spilled milk.

So is the situation at Fukushima over yet?  Well, the short answer to that is no.  There are still a lot of concerns to be dealt with there.  The difference is that the media buzzwords are getting less and less meaningful.  A meltdown is no longer eminent, and we are getting the truth on what the radiation levels being measured mean.  All in all, the danger element is not near as high as I think the media would like it to be, so they are finding something with a little more action...like Libya.

Yesterday, power was restored to all the reactors.  This was a major victory in restoring cooling to reactors, but it is not the final step.  There are a lot of inspections that need to be completed to make sure that the system is safe to start again.  The last thing they want to do is further damage the cooling system by starting it when it is not ready.  What we must also keep in mind is that the reactor is now much cooler than it was last week.  Remember that the heat in the reactor cores was due to the decaying fission products?  Well even if you didn't, these fission products have largely decayed away, meaning the heat being produced in the reactor is thousands of times less than it was right after the loss of power.  The danger is no longer in the reactor it seems.

Right now, the concern is that the pools with the spent fuel rods remain full of water.  These are what we have seen the fire trucks spraying water at the last few days.  They have been successful so far in keeping the levels suitable over the past week, but now that the thermometers in the pools are once again working, we will finally be able to know what is actually happen there.

There have been rumors that there has been a reactor vessel breech, but what we are seeing from the measurements of radioactivity do no support this.  If there was a breech in the reactor vessel, we would expect to see core fission products such as cobalt-60 as well as core elements such as uranium and maybe even plutonium in the area near the reactors.  These just simply have not been observed, which gives us some confidence that the reactor containment vessels are intact.  This is encouraging and gives us some testament as to how well they were designed.

As far as the measured radiation levels near the Fukushima power plant, I don't think we have to worry about many health dangers.  For further discussion on this, I want to point you to a wonderful page that Dr. Jeffrey King has put together on facebook.  He does a great job giving a fair assessment toward the radiation releases at the plant.  I also want to point out that Dr. Schneider is also posting a lot of good articles on the site about how the nuclear industry is communicating about the event.  If you want to really learn what is going on at Fukushima, invest some time and read through what has been posted by several of the nuclear and radiation safety experts here at Mines. 

If you want a good visual to understand what radiation doses mean and what will cause health effects, I want to point you toward a great chart that XKCD put together.  And yes, the consensus among the experts here say that it is accurate.  It just gives you an idea as to how small the radiation doses being measured there are compared to what is considered to have any health effects.  To me, it is just an illustration of how little people know about radiation.  It is a scary word, and any presence of radiation to most is dangerous.  In fact, this is not true and the dangers of the radiation released at Fukushima are really low.  Even if you were in the fallout area, it appears that you would have to eat on the order of 100 gallons of contaminated dirt to get your yearly allowed dose (as pointed out by Dr. King on the facebook page).  It is pretty ridiculous to say that this is the most dangerous situation that the people of Japan are facing.

Let's not forget the destroyed petrochemical plants and industrial plants that did not have near the containment abilities of the nuclear power plants.  They were not so successful in containing their toxic waste, and now it is spilled all over the coast of Japan.  I think this says something for the regulations the nuclear industry faces.  It might be a more dangerous way of producing power, but when regulated properly, it seems that it can be safer than those that are considered less risky, something pointed out by the disaster in Japan.

Sorry that I don't have many answers for you guys now as to what actually happened.  We don't know to what extent the cores melted, nor are we 100% sure that the containment vessel is totally intact.  The truth is that these questions will take a lot of time to answer.  The only way to see if the reactor cores are still intact is to open the containment vessel, which can only be done when the reactor has been completely cooled.  Keep in mind that it was years before they were able to observe the core at Three Mile Island.  I will be sure to update as we know more about the situation, but it will be slow...so slow that I don't think it will keep the public's interest.  Such is anything with science though.

The biggest news now will be to follow how this alters nuclear power's growth in the world.  I don't want to go get too deep into it now as I will definitely in future posts, but I tend to remain hopeful about the future.  I think that the American people are smart enough to sort out what the risks and benefits are.  We have many more media outlets than we had after the Three Mile Island incident, and the people are following them.  Now that the people are looking, we just need to get out there and tell them what we have to say.  This moment is nothing more than an opportunity!

I hope that you all will continue to keep the people of Japan in your hearts.  They are truly an amazing culture and have done an amazing job at keeping calm (calmer than the rest of the world) in the face of such a tragedy.  Let's continue to support them as they move toward restoring their livelihoods.