ScribbleLive

Time to go watch Anthony Bourdain visit Chernobyl. Back in a bit.

Folks, a message that was forwarded to me by a friend:

What's amazing to me is that I seem to be the only one who thinks that I-131 levels should be decreasing with 8-day halflife because its only parents in the "standard NRC 60-nuclide list for reactors" are Te-131and Te-131m, both with shorter halflives, so they can't be causing any I-131 buildup and certainly can't cause the high levels of I-131 being reported in the flood of measurements that were published by TEPCO all on April 19, with measurements of seawater as far away as 15 km showing I:Cs rations of over 2:1 and as high as 3:1, but sometimes they're equal, with few to none where I-131 is measured at levels less than Cs-134 and Cs-137 on a Bq/gram-water basis with 1000-second counting time of 1-liter sample, which matches up with usage of a gamma spectrometry machine like the GAM-AN1 by Canberra: http://www.canberra.com/literature/994.asp

Can you do me a favor and ask one of your nuclear engineer contacts how and why I-131 can be over double the reported levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137, after five halflives of I-131?

I'm not a nuclear engineer who can try to run the Origen code for their reactors and the SNF pools to see what could be making the I-131. I'm the consequence analyst who developed the MACCS2 code and have used it and its predecessor MACCS since the 1980s for nuclear accident analysis.

All I know is that when people use the MACCS2 code, which is the NRC-approved code for reactor PRA consequence calculations, and is used worldwide for well over 500 nuclear facilities and operations since its release in 1997, the MACCS2 code shows ZERO consequences from I-131 from reactor accidents after 40 days of decay. It's not just the direct exposure doses from groundshine and inhalation, it's also the food doses calculated by the code with both of the "food models" that are available to the code user. Milk from cows grazing during a large release shows very low levels of I-131 after 40 days according to the MACCS2 calculations.

And it's also my understanding that "normal levels" of I-131 in SNF pools should be practically zero, with the million-year, weak emitter, I-129 being the only iodine that should be detected to any significant degree in SNF water from an intact pool under normal operation. So, if my MACCS2 code is wrong about I-131, then all the safety analyses that use to MACCS2 to calculate nuclear accident impacts are also wrong. That's why this is an important question.

Even if criticalities are ongoing, it's impossible for me to imagine that they could be creating so much I-131. I've used "standard decay tables" that all derive from ICRP 38 and were calculated by Keith Eckerman, at ORNL, who calculates the internal and external DCFs for US and international agencies which all rely on the ICRP 38 decay chains, where decay-chain calcs are necessary because of the decay and buildup of progeny after an intake both on the ground for deposited material and in the human body from inhlaed or ingested material.

I have not tried to use this database from KfK to solve the puzzle.: http://www.nucleonica.net/unc.aspx

So my question, which you can forward around with all the above ane below is: Why are the I-131 levels of April 19 in "plant-water" and seawater from http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html so high after 5 halflives? The NRC says that the MACCS2 code is essentially error-free. I'm curious if that's true because I learned way back in school that there is no such thing a bug-free large-scale software such as MACCS2, which has received little-to-none verification and validation for complex scenarios.

I have no qualms whatsoever being known as the source of this request. I've never pretended to know everything.

David Chanin

chaninconsulting.com

Re NYT article of April 5, 2011, "U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant":

"Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment." end of email.

Damn lilly, that is an astonishing amount of information you have gathered there! Fantastic job! (as usual)

@bo I get what he is saying about the iodine levels. Both Peter and Dean should be able to shed some light on the models he is talking about.
I saw a passing mention yesterday about continuing I 131 levels at the plant but no link to something documenting such. If there are still releases today it signifies something but exactly what is over my head. His point about april is certainly a valid one.

@bo sounds like a plan. I was thinking we could do updates about Hanford related info as we find more or something comes together on a certain portion of it.

@bo have not heard of Gallagher. The whole Hanford-Nevada subject seems really interesting. There seems to be so much information held in all the people who lived in the region that isn't in the textbook versions of the events.

Here's Carole's website. I put a chapter by her in my edited book last year. americangroundzero.blogspot.com

Well, big day tomorrow, flying out tomorrow night for 6 weeks. So off to bed for me. See you all in the radiant dawn.

nite bo

Fukushima plant chief apologizes over the accident

The head of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station has apologized for the nuclear accident at his plant.

The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, released footage of workers at the facility on Wednesday, exactly one month after the utility entered stage 2 of its timetable toward ending the nuclear crisis.

The plant chief, Masao Yoshida, apologized to all Japanese people for causing the trouble, and said that with the help from people in Japan and from around the world, his plant has cleared the first stage of the timetable.

Yoshida said efforts are being made to achieve the goals required for the second stage so that evacuees will be able to return home as soon as possible.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 22:26 +0900 (JST)
www3.nhk.or.jp

Fukushima plant leaking less radioactive material: TEPCO

TOKYO, Aug. 17, Kyodo

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday the amount of radioactive substances leaking from the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has declined over the past month, but stopped short of declaring that one of the conditions to achieve a cold shutdown has been cleared. [???]

The data was included in the latest version of a road map to contain the nuclear crisis. It left unchanged the time frame to stabilize the reactors by January and highlighted a need to train and deploy experts on radiation dose management.

According to the plant operator TEPCO, the amount of radioactive substances leaking from the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors dropped to a maximum 200 million becquerels per hour, from 1 billion becquerels per hour a month earlier. english.kyodonews.jp

strange.

tv news from germany: fuku children blaiming the govj in a press conference for doing nothing, nobody knows real numbers, they only hear "everthing is great", they cannot play outside, contaminated soil in school yards is only covered, not removed. govj says people can move away if they don't believe. a new study shows health damage in fuku children (it is not clear if they mean the thyroid study or another, newer one).

@lillymunster www.zdf.de found the clip.

interesting.

@lillymunster politicians are employed by the people they pay the wages not the comps bstrds

@Ian WTF!!!! With all the utter garbage on YouTube? Now I really worry what happened to Leakspinner. Can you make a video about the censorship and BS? :-) Or are you not allowed to upload now too? This really is horrible.

@Mona it says he closed his youtube channel. We don't know if he did as it said and why or if Youtube pressured him etc.