DanMcQ
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Japan
Mar 25, 2011 18:17:57 GMT -5
Post by DanMcQ on Mar 25, 2011 18:17:57 GMT -5
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 2,844
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Japan
Mar 26, 2011 0:58:17 GMT -5
Post by The Stig on Mar 26, 2011 0:58:17 GMT -5
Not bad. Only $9 million behind Michael Schumacher's donation for the 2004 tsunami.
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SirSaxa
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
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Japan
Apr 11, 2011 23:49:57 GMT -5
Post by SirSaxa on Apr 11, 2011 23:49:57 GMT -5
Terrible news. Pray for the people of Japan. Japan Nuclear Disaster Put on Par With Chernobyl
Excerpts TOKYO — Japan has decided to raise its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency said on Tuesday.
The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale amounts to an admission that the accident at the nuclear facility, brought on by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is likely to have substantial and long-lasting consequences for health and for the environment. Some in the nuclear industry have been saying for weeks that the accident released large amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had played down this possibility.
The new estimates by Japanese authorities suggest that the total amount of radioactive materials released so far is equal to about 10 percent of that released in the Chernobyl accident, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Mr. Nishiyama stressed that unlike at Chernobyl, where the reactor itself exploded and fire fanned the release of radioactive material, the containments at the four troubled reactors at Fukushima remained intact over all.
But at a separate news conference, an official from the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric and Power, said, “The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl.”
On the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 nuclear accident involves “widespread health and environmental effects” and the “external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.”
“This is an admission by the Japanese government that the amount of radiation released into the environment has reached a new order of magnitude,” said Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University. “The fact that we have now confirmed the world’s second-ever level 7 accident will have huge consequences for the global nuclear industry. It shows that current safety standards are woefully inadequate.”
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 2,844
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Japan
Apr 12, 2011 17:32:06 GMT -5
Post by The Stig on Apr 12, 2011 17:32:06 GMT -5
Not really terrible news, since it doesn't come as a result of a deterioration in the situation. There are certain thresholds for total amount of radioactive material released that determine the event level. Those thresholds don't have a direct correlation to human health. Reading between the lines, it sounds like the thresholds for radioactive material were crossed quite a while ago, but for whatever reason the level wasn't updated at the time. The reality is that the situation at Fukushima has actually improved in the past few days. The leak that was allowing radioactive water to leak into the sea has apparently been plugged, so the uncontrolled release of radioactive material has stopped. A good analysis of the situation: www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13048916
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