Ok, I tried, but I can't hold it any longer

I know that I said I was going to leave Fukushima and discuss other things for a while, but I think it is appropriate to give just a little attention to it due to recent happenings.  I know the question in floating around in everybody's head right now is "Is Fukushima another Chernobyl?"  Before I get to that though, let me address a few other issues.

I must first do a little pulling of my own foot out of my mouth.  Recent reports are indicating that the problems at the Fukushima Diiachi plant seem to have released much more radiation than I ever thought they would.  Reading reports about the contamination levels near the plant itself show some areas that have fairly high levels of radiation.  It looks as if there will be some areas that some people will not be able to go back to and there will definitely be some areas which will need to be decontaminated before people can live there again.  At this point, it is looking like cesium-137 will be the largest factor for contamination as radioiodide (radioactive iodine) will have decayed away within a month or so.  I just want to be upfront and say that there is contamination from the incident at Fukushima.

So is this another Chernobyl?  Many people, including the media in general, seem to be thinking that the answer to this question has become a definitive yes since the nuclear accident level was raised to a 7, the highest level when it comes to nuclear accidents.  Since Chernobyl has been the only nuclear accident to reach this scale in the past, it is logical to assume that Fukushima has become another Chernobyl.  In reality though, that is not really how the rating scale works.  Though they are both rated a 7 now, they are still in totally different categories.

As the nuclear industry is quickly learning, maybe the current rating system does not have enough resolution to distinguish between such incidents.  It is kind of like trying to separate the world into two types of people, say males and females.  That doesn't really describe different types of people that well you see.  There isn't enough resolution.  From the current reports, it looks like the amount of contamination estimated to be released by the nuclear power plant at Fukushima is about 10 times less than what was released during Chernobyl.  So why are they both classified the same?  Well, the rating system is quantitative, meaning that when a power plant releases so much contamination it is automatically given the corresponding rating.  Fukushima has reached that level and is thus given a 7 rating.

We also need to keep in mind that not all emissions of radioactivity are equal.  For the rating system, the radioactive emissions are measured in Becquerels, which is a unit of one radioactive event.  The higher the amount of Becquerels released, the higher the activity of the contaminated area.  Being that this is just a description of the radioactive decays per second, it doesn't really tell about the level of contamination.  You see, what has mainly been released due to Fukushima is cesium-137 and iodine-129.  The iodine has a fairly short half-life, meaning that most of the iodine-129 released is all ready gone.  The cesium has a longer half-life, so the will be dealing with that for a years to come, but it will all be gone within a reasonable time frame.  It is also not as big as a threat to human health as some radioactive substances.  Chernobyl on the other hand had quite different releases.  Because the reactor actually exploded, parts of the reactor core itself was spread all over the countryside as well as into the atmosphere.  This includes substances such as uranium-235, uranium-238, and plutonium-239 as well as other fission daughter products such as cobalt-60.  These all are much more hazardous to human health than cesium-137 and have much longer half-lives.  Though the Fukushima plant's releases are estimated to be about 10% of what was released in Chernobyl, the danger that the releases pose to human health is no where near what was seen  by Chernobyl.  Can we call the Fukushima incident another Chernobyl?  I still don't think so...

And what about the fact that we have not seen any direct deaths from Fukushima?  I mean even the worst that the workers have seen is some minor skin burns, which is much different than what was seen at Chernobyl.  There were 56 direct deaths from the events at Chernobyl.  There have been none from Fukushima.  In this way, Chernobyl was a much different animal than Fukushima.  Also keep in mind that the Japanese don't have the iodine deficiency in their diets that the Russians did near Chernobyl.  Because of this, the thyroids of the Japanese will not absorb the radioactive iodine like the Russian's thyroids did, and therefore they don't have as high of chance for developing cancer. 

With the upgrading of the incident rating to 7, many people as well as some of the mass media are led to believe that the situation is getting worse there.  This just simply is not true.  This rating is based on what has already happened, and probably due to the happenings of the first couple days after the earthquake.  The rating system is based on releases and harm to the surrounding area.  It is not a measure of the threat level of the current situation.  Currently, the reactors are under control and the cleanup process is beginning.  There is still concern about one of the spent fuel pools, but there is no longer the threat of a reactor meltdown. 

I want to conclude with an interesting phenomenon I am observing.  It seems that some people are realizing that a worst case scenario at a nuclear power plant is not as bad as what Hollywood or Greenpeace led them to believe.  There will not be any mutant Godzillas attacking Japan and there is no massive death toll from the incident.  In fact there is no death toll accompanying what happened there.  Does nuclear power have risk associated with it?  Of course it does!  But the point is that so does everything else we do.  Energy is not a clean business, no matter what type you are talking about (and yes that includes solar power).  Just maybe the Fukushima incident will show the world that our fears about a nuclear incident are a little bit romanticized.  I would even call them exaggerated.  But again, people are less afraid of what they have experienced.  After all, the world didn't end over the last month.

As a quick aside, I have to partially attribute the explanation I have put together here to discussions that Dr. King and Dr. Kozak have held in my classes.  Dr. King is an expert in nuclear energy and Dr. Kozak is an expert in radiation risk and health assessment.  Some of what I have mentioned here is a product of their opinions and discussions.  I hope that I passed a little of their expertise in the field to you.