ScribbleLive

@General Armchair that has been the constant cycle. The media points out some obvious or stupid thing TEPCO does. A day or two later they act. You know the people on the ground likely can't take the initiative to make larger decisions like that even though it is a simple act to go get more dosimeters or feed your workers actual food.

@dean how hot is that spent resin? Can they put it in drums then dumpsters like regular waste or does it need to go into a casket?

@Scilla But, speaking of that "burn" on the leg:
3 – 6 Sv (3000 – 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.

"Beware the Data Diddlers" by John W. Gofman
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists May 1993
www.ratical.org

"Under a watchdog authority, everyone wins. The scientists win by being liberated from humiliating pressures to please their employers. The victims of nuclear accidents win by having objective, reality-based evaluations of the harm or lack of harm they have been exposed to. And of greatest importance, humanity gains by being freed of the specter of 100 years of biomedical un-knowledge about the health effects of radiation."

@Nancy Sadly, if Fukushima is already dosed, it becomes the best place in Japan to put new nuclear plants. Tokyo needs POWER! Make the whole prefecture a nasty, radioactive, power-generating superfund site.

@Rob in SF They may correct for this, but if dosimeter is up on lapel, it may not give a very accurate reading at what is going on at ankle level. I recall the very different readings TEPCO was getting in the "pit" that was leaking #2 reactor water into the ocean. They measured radioactivity at two different levels over the water. Something like a 40 cm (sorry, 60 cm) difference in height over the water led to a different radiation reading of 400 mSv/hr and 1000 mSv/hr. The old inverse square law, I guess.

Took me a while to find it, but here's a diagram from TEPCO showing how a difference of about two foot can mean 2 and a half times more radiation:

www.tepco.co.jp

@Rob in SF You know someone will have that idea. They ran the other reactor at chernobyl for years. Chubu is wanting to restart Hamaoka, considered the world's most dangerous NPP. They have two units identical to Fukushima's older units. They opted to shut those down, said it was too expensive to make them earthquake safe.

@Nancy There has been much talk about how badly needed the Daiichi power is. Assuming the area remains somewhat hot, they'll be generating power there, one way or another. It actually makes sense rather than abandoning the land.

@Peter @Dean I don't think I have even heard anyone mention Radon in years. How easily things are forgotten. (also, re: my earlier comment -- I should probably have said first large scale nuclear incident of the Digital Age and not of the Information Age, which isn't really accurate)

Link for below: japanfocus.org

I also found this interview of Robert Baker on NPR insightful: www.npr.org . The man seems quite level headed with a good grasp on the issue: www.npr.org .

Even in normal times, in this part of the reactor, you have to move very quickly to receive the smallest dose possible. That you can’t do with lead soles. There exist coveralls with full masks, but these devices seem poorly designed and primitive compared to the challenge of the task.
So, in the absence of effective protection, one uses what is called "radiation protection".

In Japanese, one speaks of "management of radioactivity". That’s exactly what it is: Manage the imposed collective dose administered to workers. The issue of radiation protection enters in direct conflict with that of plant safety, because the more a plant ages, the more it "showers," as the Japanese workers say, the more it must be cleaned, and the more you must ask personnel to carry out repairs and maintenance. Hence the extensive use of subcontractors.
japanfocus.org

@Nancy I wonder..., if almost no one lives in the prefecture, how much power will they have left to exert? I don't think they have state's rights like the ole' USofA...

@Nancy I think as long as #5 and #6 foundation is damaged enough that it can't stop infiltration of radioactive groundwater, they're going to stay closed!

@Peter As level-headed as he sounds, some of the comments on that article are fairly scathing of his work and comments. One links to a reuters article on the birth defect rate www.reuters.com and another comment references (but does not source) that Baker's position was reversed only after getting DOE funding, and also suggest that his new position is not backed by data.

I guess my feeling is, if you have to dump stuff from basements of #5 and #6 into the ocean, fine, do it, but that means you're busted and you're not opening up anytime soon.

Of course until the once-strong Japanese anti-nuke movement gets better mobilized, who knows what will happen. They need to be turning out in the hundreds of thousands in Tokyo, not in the hundreds...sigh....