Japan nuclear crisis: IAEA, Greenpeace report high contamination outside evacuation zone

Consequences of the nuclear crisis in Japan continue to expand. The March 11 quake and tsunami left 28,000 people dead or missing, and triggered a series of increasingly grave problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Separately, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Greenpeace have measured radioactivity levels outside the exclusion zone that exceed the limits established by the government of Japan.

From the IAEA's update, which includes details on the data readings and locations:

The highest values were found in a relatively small area in the Northwest from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. First assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village. We advised the counterpart to carefully access the situation. They indicated that they are already assessing.

These findings may add to pressure for the government of Japan to widen the exclusion zone beyond 20 kilometers (12 miles) around the Fukushima power plant.

In related news, earlier today smoke was seen rising from electrical equipment in the turbine building at the No.1 reactor of the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant.

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PHOTO—CLICK FOR LARGE: A medical staff screens a boy for signs of radioactivity contamination at an evacuation center in Fukushima, northern Japan, on March 30, 2011. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

UPDATE: a clarification for BB, from Dave Walsh at Greenpeace:

Our measurements were comparable to that of the Japanese authorities - where we differed was on the action that should be taken. Our criticism is that the 20km evacuation zone is too arbitrary, and doesn't take into account pockets of high radioactivity elsewhere. The high levels of radioactivity in places like Iitate are high enough that anyone spending time there would get the maximum allowable annual dose in just few days. So, although our measurements are in line with the authorities, we're advocating evacuation of places that they are not.

• [Colorado Bob]

  ” a small leak in a Japanese reactor that will probably be patched in the next 2-3 weeks. ”

  And a “turd sandwich is just a wheat based fecal containment device “.

• [Anonymous]

  Economics dictate that EVERY nuke plant in the USA be run until an accident closes it. Why? Simple: the Price Anderson Act removes responsibility for damages from the power companies, it externalizes any “accident” costs.

  – It is extremely rare for a plant to close and the NRC grants extensions to
  operating permits to every plant that asks for one.

  – 100,000′s MW of additional power have gone online in the US, (coal, gas, water, wind) yet very few nukes close. The argument of “build new nukes and close old ones” is false. They will run the new nukes and the old ones too.

  – Getting electric generating revenue from an old unsafe plant vs. expensive shutdown and cleanup (estimated at billions for each reactor). If an “accident” happens the costs to the company are probably less. Free land buffer zone like a 50 mile radius is no problem and FREE.
  Killed people? Free. Some cement and lawyer costs? a lot less than the billions to properly close a plant and the environment standards of closing a plant are far lower for an “accident”.

  – NRC fines for unsafe operation could cost maybe (cue “Austen Powers”) a miillliion dollars vs. known billions for proper shutdown and cleanup.

  Conclusion: EVERY plant will run until inoperable because of accident.

• [Anonymous]

  One of the few substances found to have a protective effect against radiation sickness are the Polychlorinated Biphenyls. Although iodine is useful, the Japanese would be well advised to increase their dietary intake of polychlorinated biphenyls. The good news is that they have one of the world’s best sources of this substance in ample supply on their front door. The source is, of course, whale blubber. Alternatively, they could buy this from the chemist under the Japanese name of Santotherm or Kanechlor.

  It’s a very simple solution but could easily reduce the risk of mortality by between 70-80% if taken within the first 8 hours of exposure to radiation.

• [Colorado Bob]

  The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site…………………. “The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell,” Lahey said. “I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards.”

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/japan-lost-race-save-nuclear-reactor

• [Jack]

  Nuke the entire site fom orbit.

  • [LeSinge]

    It’s the only way to be sure.

• [efergus3]

  The latest – they’re going to give up on 1-4. http://gizmodo.com/#!5787298/fukushimas-four-troubled-nuclear-reactors-will-be-permanently-shut-down

• [Anonymous]

  the axis of the earth has shifted. the continents have shifted. every structure under the water, and on land would have shifted also. oil and gas rigs, nuclear plants,mining operations, bridges and tunnels, and airports to name a few. the sun would shine on changed landmasses at a different angle affecting plant growth, winds and rain. birds would get eye damage from increased radiation, not be able to see food, and starve. phytoplankton, tiny plants that produce oxygen will die from many causes, hypoxia, or oxygen starvation will result planet wide. we have finally murdered nature. knowledge without wisdom.
  Stephanie

• [awjtawjt]

  cueing the nukepologists, 1…2…3…. go!

• [Anonymous]

  A nuclear reactor that requires a continuous supply of power just to avoid catastrophe reminds me of the bus in Speed. Who would buy such a thing?

• [blackbrain]

  SO, basically Japanese people are “sheeple” because they believed the JP gov. numbers, and now the great super-skeptics in the west get to feel all justified for believing the same numbers, now reported by Greeepeace an IAEA, and they are going to “add pressure” to the lying(?) JP gov.

  I live in Brasil, it would be nice to have authorities who “lie” like that.

• [mjd]

  It’s not just on the Web interface to Zuckerberg’s data silo, the IAEA article is also available on the Web:

  http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

• [anwaya]

  I don’t think the Guardian article’s opening statement is correct, it’s an overstated “hook”. In particular, it is not true that “the radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel”. The journalists are confusing the pressure vessel with the containment vessel.

  There’s a diagram of the reactor design at the Wikipedia article for Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. It shows that the drywell (11) is outside the pressure vessel (7), and both are inside the containment vessel (19).

  What I think is happening is that there is a leak in the containment vessel, and cooling water is getting out of it. That’s pretty bad, but it would be very serious indeed if the containment vessel were breached by a still molten core, as the article makes out. I don’t think there’s any evidence for this.

  Wikipedia page with reactor design diagram showing pressure vessel != containment at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant

  Official report on the state of the reactors from Sunday at http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110327-2-2.pdf

• [blackbrain]

  Ito Kagehisa, thanks.
  You’re probably right, I saw the comment on the thread so I thought it was “published”.
  As I said, I was too lazy to read all the comment policy.

• [blackbrain]

  What actually happens when you nuke 1000s of tons of nuclear fuel?
  I’m serious, does it blows up too?
  I mean they blow up a lot of explosives to “start” a nuke bomb, wouldn’t a nuke detonation initiate the “somename” reaction in the fuel too?
  What would be the size of the explosion of 1000s of nuke fuel?

  • [travtastic]

    Not very likely. Explosive chain reactions occur when a sufficient density is achieved. Fission weapons use directional explosives to smash two chunks or uranium into each other.

    Gun-type fission weapon – Wikipedia diagram

    So basically, you have to either fire fissile material down a cannon, and cap one end with more material; or simultaneously explode a ton of standard explosives that are in a shell around it, and hope your explosives fire symmetrically, as in the Fat Man bomb.

    Exploding the material in any other way, even with a nuke, would just scatter it everywhere.

  • [awjtawjt]

    It’s a good question. The answer is that blowing up widely scatter nuke material is a dirty bomb. It doesn’t go critical and explode in a nuclear too. A full-fledged fission explosion happens, in a nutshell, because the conventional explosives force radioactive material (plutonium) to “be near itself” long enough to go into a critical state, meaning decay into other isotopes, release of energy. The explosion shoves it into itself in a confined space. It reacts with itself. Its power overcomes the force holding it together, and then it blows up. All of this in milliseconds, mind you.

    Nuclear power generation is this process… vastly slowed down and controlled by some kind of mediator like water. They have all kinds of mediators too, like liquid sodium and weird stuff nobody ever heard of. Chernobyl was mediated by graphite carbon. A massive block of it with holes that the rods got inserted into. Read wikipedia. There is a metric assload of information on reactors and nuclear science on there, for your consumption. Report back. *heh* ;)

  • [awjtawjt]

    It’s a good question. The answer is that blowing up nuke material that is separated by anything more than a few inches is basically a dirty bomb. It doesn’t go critical and explode in a nuclear way too. A full-fledged fission explosion happens because the conventional explosives force radioactive material (plutonium) to “be near itself” long enough to go into a critical state, meaning decay into other isotopes, then big release of energy. The conventional explosion shoves it into itself in a confined space. It reacts with itself. Its power overcomes the force holding it together, and then it all blows up. All of this in milliseconds, mind you.

    Nuclear power generation is this process… vastly slowed down and controlled by some kind of mediator, like water. They have all kinds of mediators too, like liquid sodium and weird stuff nobody ever heard of. Chernobyl was mediated by graphite carbon. A massive block of it with holes that the rods got inserted into. Read wikipedia. There is a metric assload of information on reactors and nuclear science on there, for your consumption. Report back. *heh* ;)

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    An hour on Wikipedia will give you a pretty good understanding of how various nuclear devices work.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design

• [Aloisius]

  I love how each of these articles contains the obligatory mention of the tens of thousands of people who are dead and/or missing from the disaster that actually had a serious impact before jumping into the potential disaster that may kill someone someday.

  • [Kaden]

    Very astute observation. There’s also no mention of Steampunk, bananas, or magnets either, because they too are completely different subjects.

    • [Aloisius]

      Very astute observation. There’s also no mention of Steampunk, bananas, or magnets either, because they too are completely different subjects.

      Really? Completely different subjects? I would put them all under the umbrella of the effects of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.

      I’m confused as to why if it is a completely different subject it seems to be mentioned in this and other articles on the nuclear disaster. Why, it is almost as if people think they are related!

  • [bcsizemo]

    Nothing really.

    You’d create more radioactive fallout but that’s it.

    There would be no super nuke or anything of the like.

    Without the proper pressure created IN the actual bomb any amount of external radioactive material is just going to get destroyed and carried along in the cloud of dust and fire that is emitted from the blast.

• [msbpodcast]

  Why, oh why do the electric companies have reactors above ground?

  Bury the damn things right from the start under half a kilometer of rock/sediment and get rid of:
  • terrorist threat
  • pollution objection
  • disaster preparedness
  • provisioning

  As the fact that NO TALL BUILDINGS fell down in the 9.0 earthquake can attest, we know how to build.

  As the Chunnel, CERN and New York City’s Water Tunnel #3 can attest, we know how to dig.

  As every above ground facility can attest, they attract attention from everybody.

  • [bcsizemo]

    Why?

    Because that way you aren’t closer to the water table.

    Worst case scenario – China Syndrome
    -core goes critical, super heats and melts right through until it reaches a large supply of wet ground. At that point you get a massive steam eruption, pieces of hot/molten radioactive core go shooting out, ground water is highly contaminated, and pretty much everything in a 30-50km radius would considered a hot zone.

    Chernobyl didn’t even reach that stage and you still have a 30km containment area around it.

    I suppose if you built one in a mountain (of fairly solid rock) you could get away with some of those issues. But if there is enough radioactive material put in a localized place to generate megawatts of energy then that same material could have the ability to get hot enough to melt most rock. (Assuming a worst case scenario and all that.)

    I’d think the best way would be a concrete structure that has some type of safety shell and pressure bleeder system.

    You could easily do a closed loop water cooling system with one way valves. The water would have to boil, but at least it would stay contained and more or less be self running.

    That and we are dealing with a generation II reactor built more than 30 years ago. Canada has built generation III+ reactors that are much safer that this. (Not that I live in Canada, but the US hasn’t really brought any new nuclear facilities online since Chernobyl.)

  • [Anonymous]

    Burying them would limit sites to only those with non-permeable rock layers, since you don’t want radioactive waste leaking into the groundwater. There’s also the problem that in the event of an earthquake, the reactor might be rendered inaccessible by a cave-in, melt down, and then once the fuel has run rampant and vaporised everything, a hydrogen explosion blasts a hole somewhere and radioactive material shoots out like a cannon.

    There’s also the fact that people want to put all these limits on nuclear plants, when coal ash produced in vast quantities by coal-fired plants is much more likely to give you cancer and is produced in much higher quantities per kilowatt. If it isn’t justified for coal(and I’ve never seen anyone suggest that it is), then it isn’t for nuclear.

• [Anonymous]

  Let me begin by stating my credentials: I’ve worked in the nuclear power industry for over 30 years and was one of the experts who provided advice to the Russians in the first 24 hours after Chernobyl. I have been involved in over 15 interventions in nuclear power station failure and was called the “Red Adair of Nuclear Meltdowns” by Time Magazine in the late 90s.

  Much of the media coverage about the Japanese “nuclear crisis” is exaggerated and overstates the risk to humans. The current levels would need to rise by at least 30-40% before there would be a risk to humans. In fact, the current recorded levels are broadly equivalent to what one would experience if standing in front of a first generation microwave oven for 30 mins (Nature Magazine, January, 2009) or using one of the early Motorola “brick phones” for a 40-50 minute phone call (IEEE Spectrum, May 2002). In short, there is nothing to worry about and it is unfortunate that the events in Japan are distracting us from what is happening in Libya; a far more serious development that is likely to have more immediate consequences for the world than a small leak in a Japanese reactor that will probably be patched in the next 2-3 weeks.

  • [Cowicide]

    Let me begin by stating my credentials: I’ve worked in the nuclear power industry for over 30 years and was one of the experts who provided advice to the Russians in the first 24 hours after Chernobyl

    Um, from looking at how well Chernobyl went after that first 24 hours, we can all take it you provided the Russians with some pretty shitty advice.

    The current levels would need to rise by at least 30-40% before there would be a risk to humans … In short, there is nothing to worry about

    Thanks for the info, nuclear industry person. I’m sure there’s no cancer risk to the population of Japan at all. Thanks for clearing that up.

  • [travtastic]

    You should probably leave that Chernobyl stuff off of resumes.

  • [Mark Dow]

    I doubt your credentials. You should know that there is a big difference between microwave and radiofrequency radiation and ionizing radiation (of nuclear decay). Both have risks, but there is a huge difference in the type and qualities of risk. It is not professional to conflate those risks.

• [Anonymous]

  FYI: I’ve worked in the US nuclear industry for 25 years. My novel “Rad Decision” culminates in an event very similar to the Japanese tragedy. (Same reactor type, same initial problem – a station blackout with scram.) The book is an excellent source of perspective for the lay person — as I’ve been hearing from readers.

  The novel is free online at the moment at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com . (No adverts, nobody makes money off this site.) Reader reviews are in the homepage comments.

  Unfortunately, my media presence consists of this little-known book and website, so I’m not an acknowledged “expert”. I just do the nuclear stuff for a living. And I think I have explained it well in a non-yawn-producing manner. But it’s a bit of a tree falling in a forest………

  I believe there isn’t a perfect energy solution – just options – each with their good and bad points. And we’ll make better choices about our future if we first understand our energy present.

  • [Cowicide]

    FYI: I’ve worked in the US nuclear industry for 25 years.

    FYI, it’s hard to know what other post you’re referring to when your name is Anonymous. You might want to consider getting an account with a name here or at least try being much more specific in how you refer to your previous posts.