Thursday, June 23, 2011

Nuclear and Radiation Updates June 23

Phoenix Radnet Data for June 23
Beta at 120
Bakersfield, Fresno, Eureka, Los Angeles, San Diego UNDER REVIEW AGAIN
Riverside at 131 Beta

Looks like all that Fukushima Radiation is again visited upon us in the US southwest

Meanwhile, if you missed it, Flooding Brings Worries to 2 US Nuclear Plants
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/21flood.html?_r=1
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/project-flood-nuclear-alert-obama-red-cross-declare-emergencies?

Amy Goodman reports on America's nuclear plants in trouble: 
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/amy_goodman/article_c0e30a30-29af-5665-a68a-9064191c0339.html
"The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches...At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant’s two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.


"Enormous upfront construction costs, safety concerns and the problem of storing radioactive nuclear waste for thousands of years drove away private investors. Instead of developing and building new nuclear plants, the owners — typically for-profit companies like Exelon Corp., a major donor to the Obama campaigns through the years — simply try to run the old reactors longer, applying to the NRC for 20-year extensions..."


MEANWHILE IN JAPAN
Water filters at Fukushima still not working

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/23_04.html

"The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is still struggling with a malfunctioning water-decontaminator---the key to dealing with highly-radioactive water accumulating at the site.

"The new water decontaminating system was shut down only 5 hours after it went into operation on Friday..."

WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT RADIATION BEING MEASURED?

Here is a blog entry that helps explain the significance of exposure levels at Greg Laden's Blog
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/06/japan_nuclear_disaster_update_8.php

Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 29: Indecent Exposure

Posted on: June 23, 2011 5:10 AM, by Analiese Miller and Greg Laden

"Much of the current news is about exposure and fallout.

"As a point of information, the Sievert is a unit of exposure to radiation that was designed to indicate relative levels of biological effects of ionizing radiation. This measurement technique attempts to take into account the fact that radiation is absorbed differently by different tissues. Usually we speak in terms of humans unless otherwise specified. There are one thousand millisieverts in a sievert (mSv).
 Zero to 0.25 mSv in a day is considered to have no effect.
At up to one mSv people feel sick and more susceptible tissues are damaged.
10 mSv in a day is deadly.
As one goes from 1 to 10 mSv in a day things get worse. If a person is esposed to about 6 mSv in a day or more, they won't die that day. But later, they probably will. Some of the numbers are given in microsieverts, one thousand times less than a millisievert...."

In practice, it is common to measure radiation exposure accumulated over longer time periods. For example, one measures the maximum dosage allowed for US radiation-related workers at 50 mSv per year. When mSv is being discussed in most of the text in Ana's feed (below) you should assume "per year" is meant if not stated, unless otherwise indicated, although in some cases it seems that the measure being used is accumulated to date, which is closer to one fourth of a year."


MAJIA HERE: KEEP IN MIND THAT THESE LEVELS CITED BY GREG HAVE BEEN DISPUTED FOR THEIR SAFETY BY THE LOW LEVEL RADIATION COMMITTEE AND THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON RADIATION SAFETY CHAIRED BY BUSBYhttp://www.llrc.org/

They are however a useful index for seeing how governments set safety standards






1 comment:

  1. Incredibly depressing and dangerous. :( Guess Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or Santa Susana or the Hanford Site DIDN'T teach the world or the Nuclear Industry ANYTHING except to keep building more toxic waste sites. Sad it had to get to this point and that there are still people in the world that are for nuclear energy. What an extremely costly and asinine way to heat water.

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