Fukushima Forever
September 21st, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
Recent disclosures of tons of radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima reactors spilling into the ocean are just the latest evidence of the continuing incompetence of the Japanese utility, TEPCO. The announcement that the Japanese government will step in is also not reassuring since it was the Japanese government that failed to regulate the utility for decades. But, bad as it is, the current contamination of the ocean should be the least of our worries. The radioactive poisons are expected to form a plume that will be carried by currents to coast of North America. But the effects will be small, adding an unfortunate bit to our background radiation. Fish swimming through the plume will be affected, but we can avoid eating them.
Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.
I have a real problem with this article because of the exaggeration. He claims Fukushima will endanger “all of humanity” -which is simply not true.
I know a lot more than most people do about radiation, but even the average person will look at that claim and call BS.
Yes, he’s trying to draw attention to the problem and make people do something, but why must he exaggerate? Isn’t the truth bad enough? If number 4 collapses, Tokyo will have to be evacuated, for goodness’ sake. Thousands of people will die from cancer due to eating contaminated fish. The truth is bad enough without exaggerating, and exaggeration only makes people in other parts of the world ignore the issue and undermines the credibility of everyone trying to break through the mainstream noise with the truth about this and other problems.
Whatever. All get ready to mutate.