ScribbleLive

@Sky I would also add that the media in most countries is not always free to publish what they know without negative consequences.

@ids kinda. The testing times of the same sample were hours apart, I believe they are both right, it's just that they tested it later and the nuclides had broken down substantially .

Interesting Info I've run across re ocean issue: en.rian.ru As well as what's coming up in my home state, this is a weird one: www.huliq.com

@radioguy, another thing to keep in mind is Chlorine (Cl) can become irradiated as well, meaning that gamma radiation is turning some of the salt water into an additional radioactive substance (although with a very short half-life, {which also means far more radioactive})

According to Tepco, the level of I-131 in the southern discharge water canal during past days:

@kb I-134 has a half life of about an hour, if you test for it 5 hours later, you can find almost no trace.

@kb That's exactly what I tried to write. New report showed "mistaken" in the column for the old measurement for I-134. They are claiming there was none.

@kb where is your source, I've read it was about an hour later they tested it

This is a comment posted by a Japan Today reader. I do not have the knowledge to assess its plausibility but here it goes: "Couple of words of experience: I think 10M measurement was true. But it did not represent level of radioactivity of all water there. They have to realize, that content of radioactive water is not homogeneus. It may be additional proof that at least part of fuel rods got melted and fuel from them went outside of fuel rods and went to water inside of reactor. It's not possible to tell for sure wich way this microparticle of fuel found it's way out of containment vessel - or through vents together with the steam during reactors venting, or through some cracks in parts of containment vessel, but most probably this microparticle of nuclear fuel came out of containment vessel. Of course, it was only the first microparticle found - they will find a lot more. At Chernobyl times these microparticles were called "hot points". Once, soon after Chernobyl explosion, somebody have brought pack of cherries to Kiev Institute of Nuclear Physics to check radioactivity and found out, that it's crasy radioactive. They have taken it to lab, and divided pack in to halves. One half was radioactive, another half - clean. Then they divided dirty half in to quarters with the same result: one part clean, another - dirty. They continued this procedure until one cherry dirty left - all the rest of cherries were clean. Then they started to divide this dirty cherry in pieces and found out, that microscopic particle of nuclear fuel, just of size of speck of dust, was sitting at point where cherry was connected to petiole. I quess, 10M radiactivity readings was made close to similar "hot point". (sorry it's so long, and if irrelevant).

The CERN slides posted by Tenzing half an hour ago, although dated March 16th, are extremely interesting in describing what likely happened and correlating structures seen in photographs with understanding of what occurs within the reactors after scramming. indico.cern.ch

@kb exactly, thank you for proving my point.

Yeah, if the enormous quantities of I-134 were supposed to have been there 10h after the original sample was taken, it just doesn't make sense. For such quantities of I-134 to be there 10h after extraction, the sample would have had to be almost pure I-134.

@Dom Which is why "very low" radiation readings miss the point. There may be a very low probability of ingesting a microparticle, but if you are unlucky enough to do so, the consequences are just as bad as if the readings were high.

@Dom Very interesting. Thanks for that.

Although the CERN author plainly has a mission to promote nuclear energy by describing other reactor designs. I'm not real interested in the other reactor designs but only in how these BWRs have failed.

@Matsuoko God knows, but if they really didn't want to disclose information, they could've refrained from reporting the original, worrying results.

@Matsuoko What chlorine? Sorry, I've been away for a couple of hours.

@kb Or, they realized the high reading was caused by a tiny particulate, very heavr, and siphoned off the water to get a read without it, then said "That's a truer reading." Then they told testing agencies to soil test for plutonium.

@kb www.nisa.meti.go.jp I've been saying this for days... Cl68 only possible with fission. (28min half-life) IMHO Tepco is as bad as the conspiracy theorist sites.

It seems TEPCO's lies are lies of omission.

@NHK Good point