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Japan Considers Raising Nuclear Disaster from Level 5 to 7 Based on Extremely High Radiation Readings
As I wrote on March 29th, radioactive cesium levels from Fukushima already rival Chernobyl, and a study conducted by a team of experts from Kyoto University and Hiroshima University found extremely high levels of cesium outside of the 30 kilometer evacuation zone:
[A] study was conducted by a team of experts from Kyoto University and Hiroshima University ... found cesium-137
at levels between about 590,000 and 2.19 million becquerels per cubic
meter [outside the 30 kilometer evacuation zone].
After
the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986,
residents who lived in areas where cesium-137 levels exceeded 555,000
becquerels were forced to move elsewhere.
***
The amounts of cesium-137 found in Iitate were at most four times the figure from Chernobyl.
If more radioactive materials are emitted from the crippled Fukushima plant, the level of cesium-137 could rise even further.
Today, In the department of the obvious, Kyodo News is reporting
that - due to extremely high radiation levels - the Japanese government
is considering raising the nuclear crisis from a 5 to a 7 - the highest
possible level of disaster:
The Nuclear Safety
Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying
that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up
to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some
point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March
11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising
the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international
scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the
International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986
Chernobyl catastrophe.
***
According to an evaluation by the
INES, level 7 accidents correspond with a release into the external
environment radioactive materials equal to more than tens of thousands
terabecquerels of radioactive iodine 131. One terabecquerel equals 1
trillion becquerels.
Haruki Madarame, chairman of the commission,
which is a government panel, said it has estimated that the release of
10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour continued for
several hours.
The commission says the release has since come
down to under 1 terabecquerelper hour and said that it is still
examining the total amount of radioactive materials released.
As I noted yesterday:
The Japanese government reports radiation levels in the number 1 reactor of at least 100 sieverts per hour:
In contrast, radiation levels were apparently about 300 sieverts per hour - 3 times higher - right after Chernobyl exploded.
As MIT explains,
the reason that different units for measuring radiation are so
confusing is that the U.S. uses a different system from metric countries
and different units measure different things:
There are a number of reasons for the confusion. In part, it’s the usual disparity between standard metric units and the less-standard units favored in the United States,
added to the general confusion of reporters dealing with a
fast-changing situation (for example, some early reports mixed up
microsieverts with millisieverts — a thousandfold difference in dose).
Others are more subtle: The difference between the raw physical units describing radiation emitted by a radioactive material (measured in units like curies and becquerels), versus measurements designed to reflect the different amounts of radiation energy absorbed by a mass of material (measured in rad or gray), and those that measure the relative biological damage in the human body (using rem and sieverts),
which depends on the type of radiation. (Rem, rad and gray are all
used as the plural as well as the singular form for those units).
In
other words, becquerels measure radiation emitted while sieverts
measure biologic damage to the human body. That is why one measure
can't be converted into the other ... they measure different things.
Figures on Chernobyl radiation are a little harder to come by in becquerels. But New Scientist noted last month:
In the 10 days it burned, Chernobyl put out 1.76 × 1018 becquerels of iodine-131, which amounts to only 50 per cent more per day than has been calculated for Fukushima Daiichi....
Similarly,
says [Gerhard Wotawa of Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and
Geodynamics in Vienna], caesium-137 emissions are on the same order of
magnitude as at Chernobyl. The Sacramento readings suggest it has
emitted 5 × 1015 becquerels of caesium-137 per day; Chernobyl put out 8.5 × 1016 in total – around 70 per cent more per day.
1.76 × 1018 becquerels of radioactive iodine over 10 days equals 7.33 × 1015 becquerels per hour during the fire at Chernobyl.
Similarly, 8.5 × 1016 becquerels of radioactive cesium over 10 days equals 3.54 × 1014 becquerels per hour during the fire at Chernobyl.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima have also released radioactive strontium, called strontium 90. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates:
As a result of the Chernobyl accident, approximately 216,000 curies of Sr-90 were released into the atmosphere.
This is the amount released over the entire time the Chernobyl reactor leaked. 216,000 curies equals 7.992 × 1015
becquerels. Being conservative, and assuming that all of the
strontium was released during the initial 10-day fire, results in an
hourly strontium release of 3.33 × 1013 of becquerels of strontium 90 per hour.
7.33 × 1015 plus 3.54 × 1014 plus 3.33 × 1013 equals 7,717,300,000,000,000. In other words, Chernyobyl put out an average of 7.717 times 1015 becquerels per hour of radioactive iodine and cesium during the fire.
In
contrast, Fukushima put out 10,000 terabecquerels per hour of
radioactivity for at least a couple of hours. 10,000 terabecquerels equals 1 x 1016 becquerels, more than Chernobyl.
The above back-of-the-envelope calculation is not definitive, because
there were some other (although less important) radioactive materials
were also released from Chernobyl, and because the Japanese government
has not released enough information to make a definitive comparison.
But
the bottom line is that - as even the Japanese government is now
reluctantly being forced to admit - the amount of radioactivity being
released from Fukushima appears to rival Chernobyl.
- advertisements -
Hamy Wanger is a first class wanker! The DOW was up .01 today, which is equal to the amount of brain cells in your fat head!
Shhhh...
...problem all fixed...
...not on MSM news anymore...
...must mean there is no problem...
...Sony...Bony...
Progressive disclosure and boiling frogs
Anyway, HW, we all know the Dow will be green right up to the very last gasp of the very last trader, which of course will be the GS computer.
In 2300, aliens will land and probe the infamous GS computer and marvel at its optimism.
The rating could not be raised up to a 7 until all of "The Best People" had positioned themselves accordingly. ;-)
GW,
A question for you because you are better than I am at converting all of these different measurements of radiation. CRIIRAD says that children should not drink milk in the EU and reports levels of 0.17 Bq per litre in milk. The EPA is showing milk in Hawaii with 24 pC/L Cesium-134, 19 pC/L Cesium-137, and 19 pC/L Iodine-131. What is the contamination level in the Hawaiian milk in Bq per litre?
Also, non-math question--Why is it OK for us to let our kids drink milk but its not OK in the EU?
0.17 Bq per litre equals 4.59 pCi/L (picocuries per liter)
Thanks GW!!!
Sure thing ... I'd like to find out if any PhD scientists are associated with CRIIRAD. I'd like to site their work, but I don't really know who they are...
GW,
Here's a link with info about CRIIRAD's lab director, Bruno Chareyron (doctorate in nuke engineering & particle physics).
http://nonuclear.se/waste2007chareyron
Thank you!
George, I can send you the CRIIRAD staff list by mail, if you care to provide one.
Amazing that it took them this long to admit it was a 7. I think they were probably there a couple weeks ago.
Unfortunately it seems that eventually they will need to create a new scale to properly put this disaster in perspective.
TPOG
It defeats the whole purpose of the rating system. It's supposed to be a guide for the less scientifically literate, so they can understand the severity of the situation more quickly. What it has become is a backward looking measure, which is only raised when the weight of scientific data forces them to. Whatever, to my mind its not relevant - from the moment unit three blew skyward, it was obviously going to be a mess on the scale of Chernobyl, even if the loss of life was not as great.
Again the Criirad.fr Lab has fully translated reports on available data and consequences on daily life in europe. Naturally, the reports say that the US is much more exposed...People should be checking into that, particularly for children and infants. I'm serious. Low level doses may be minimal, they become dangerous when the radioactive flows persist over a long period of time, which is the case..and we're only talking about cesium 131.
reports on inhalation and digestion will be available in english on criirad.org over the week.
destiny, I looked at the Criirad website and tried to determine if they have any scientists on their board, but couldn't tell ...
GEORGE, Just saw the comment, THEY DO...you can also drop them a line to fine out...I translate for them.....They are often consulted by the media.
with four reactors spewing gargantuan amounts of shit, does the multiplier kick in, making this presently a 20, about to get upgraded to 28?
...exactly, this is really a perception problem for TEPCO.
<sarcasm on> (necessary, you know who you are)
Mark it 7, Smoky.
I thought it was already raised to a 6, about 2 weeks ago?
Japanese failed to create robots for such emergencies, instead they create a stupid dog and a break dancing robots.
Japanese central bank will now use trillions of printed yen to paper mache the nuked plant.
I really dont see any commercially available robot being able to do much, especialy in the enviroment of an exploded, damaged building... Most locomotive robots in existance tooday can operate only with 100% knowledge about the surface they try to negotiate (i.e. Mars rovers- they get path and dynamics data from mission controll based on picture analysis) or they operate only on 100% perfect surfaces (Honda assimo, Sony qrio- all the breakdancing and stairwalking ones... basicaly a carpet is their worst nightmare)...
So its not that the Japaneese waisted their time making robotic dogs (well maybe it was a waist of time), the problem is: most robots arent advanced enough to work in that enviroment... Only thing that could perhaps walk across that exploded building is the Boston Dynamics Big Dog. Unfortunetly all it does apart from walking is making creepy 2-stroke engine sounds. So not much help at all. Perhaps an RC rover with a camera and dosimeter can scout places in a situation like this... but cleaning everything up- no robot will get its manipulator arm dirty for us here.
This Israeli 'snake-bot' might work quite well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t2nFHjtIJQ
Your robot point is well taken. I thought about doing a post on it.
In Japan they also have robots who can kiss each other and I don't think radiation hurts them.
just a reminder. 1 becquerel = 1 atomic disintegration every second.
So you need to know the size of the 'thing' being talked about... take a randomly chosen example:
2000 Bq per litre of milk = 2 thousand 'clicks' a second from your milk carton. . . .
but
2000 Bq per cubic centimeter of milk = 2 million 'clicks' a second from your milk carton!!!!
WATCH THOSE UNITS.. . . :-)
PS A litre of milk here (europe) is only about 1 click every 5 seconds = 0.08 Bq per litre
Some of their 'safe limits' in food are higher than I would be happy to eat!
CRIIRAD.fr has complete update on ingestion, inhalation cesium 131.
How the fuck do you know this stuff? And if you do, why would I wanna listen to any views about the financial world from an acedemic that, in order to learn this stuff, probably hasn't seen sunlight in like, years? Still, very interesting.
Just google "understanding radiation at Fukushima," it won't take more than 30 slides to bring you up to speed.
People who junk and don't say why suck ass.
So many people junked me yesterday that my post was deleted. What offensive, distasteful thing did I say? I said to be careful, the inflation trade was a fad and commodities in particular and silver could pull back!
the viewership here at ZH is definitely becoming more academic, liberal, and politically correct. never touched a nerve like that with such a light comment. oh well, its a brand new day....
I'll tell you why I junked you. People like you just clog up the thread with your stupid comments because apparently you have nothing better to do. Yes this is a financial blog, apparently you cannot see the correlation between what's going on in Japan and the greater world economy as it relates to not only investors but lay people also. It's really rather sad.
you mean, like what we're both doing now....?
Because your post demonstrates that you are ignorant, uneducated and proud of it..... and your wasting my time!
Impressive pshyco-analysis from a post - one post. You nailed it...I mean you nutted that thing. Amazing. Inspiring, actually.
Why state the obvious?
junked for comparing physicists to vampires.
fowl language, good enough ?
First - sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities....I thought the joke would shine through. Second, maybe it did and people like you didn't get it since you can't even spell FOUL!
I have an excuse, I m european...I would nt catch on your spelling would you try to write in german..this is really small. But anyway, intelligence is luckily not measured by that. Jokes using FOUL language is funny just for a very few..I don't like it I say it, since you asked for the reasons you were junked...you got mine.
fair enough - but its safe to say you respond to something even while admitting you don't fully grasp the language, so you make a fool of yourself responding so strongly. Should I, or should I have had to actually posted <sarcasm on> for you to get it?
that was sarcasm on for you......
did I stutter?
I'd be grateful if someone could find the amount of radioactive strontium released from Chernobyl per hour or during the 10 day fire.
Thanks!
Does this help?
"Major releases of radionuclides from unit 4 of the Chernobyl reactor continued for ten days following the April 26 explosion. These included radioactive gases, condensed aerosols and a large amount of fuel particles. The total release of radioactive substances was about 14 Ebq5 [1 EBq = 1018 Bq (Becquerel)], including 1.8 EBq of iodine-131, 0.085 EBq of 137Cs, 0.01 EBq of 90Sr and 0.003 EBq of plutonium radioisotopes. The noble gases contributed about 50% of the total release".
http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/3-chernobyl-environment.htm
well its 25 years to the event and we are still paying for chernobyl.
Who cares???
The DOW is green today, to the great disappointment of doomers.