Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

As the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake's effects on nuclear power have been significant, …

[Andydaws]

who do you mistrust more?

Lewis, or the people who produced this?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3504160/Fukushima-50-deaths-imminent.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

"Fukushima 50 "deaths imminent""

[Killing Time]

The balanced view

It's been refreshing to read Lewis Page's commentary on the Fukushima issue's, pitched with the typical El Reg's sense of irreverence. The perfect antidote to the guff that's been broadcast since the tsunami.

Whatever you believe, from my career experience, ranging from working within the controlled areas at a nuclear plant on the south coast to IT work for the DOE on tracking systems initiated in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the commentary on this site is closest to the truth.

[ThomB]

Measurements and dosimeters.

Given TEPCO's double failure in reporting correct radiation data, I would venture the guess that this organization is simply out of its depth when it comes to dealing with the damage. It's a piss-poor performance, even if you're all for building more nuclear power plants. And those responsible deserve to be fired and sent to jail.

Regarding dosimeters, yes, the majority was lost in the tsunami. But it couldn't have hurt to pick up a few in addition to the 320 or so that were left by official accounts.

[Andydaws]

Double dealing?

So far as I can tell, both times they've been found to be giving out incorrect data, they've erred on the high side, not the low. In the latest one, it looks as though they've been using code that overestimates exposures from some of the lesser fission products.

They may be making cock-ups, but how's that "double dealing"

Rather, what's more likely is you've got a firm that's scared s**tless of being accused of holding back data, so is ruching stuff out before applying checks.

[ThomB]

Double failure vs. double dealing

All I stated was that they failed twice to give the correct data. That doesn't have anything to do with accusing them of actively falsifying the results, as you seem to think. And if they are scared in the way you assume, they have enough reason to, given their track record of past cover-ups.

Essence: nobody said anything to suggest that TEPCO was or could be double dealing -- but thanks for making the point.

[Peter Rowan]

Lewis has got them going today

I have to say Lewis it is a Friday and you are doing yourself proud, 6 pages of a flame war. I can't wait for your next article try and get it to ten pages, that would be good. Now what subject can we talk about.... hummmm.

[TakeTheSkyRoad]

A few things aparently sent to Japan...

I'm suprised there's space for the reports but a bored trawl through google spawned this list of things that have been/will be sent to Japan. Some genuine, some bizzare !!

The US and Germany are sending robots to help repair and explore the site.

US sending 450 Rad specialists in to Fukushima

QinetiQ North America, a Virginia-based technology company, has deployed robots controlled by Xbox 360 pads to assist relief efforts at the plant.

GE sending gas turbine generators to Fukushima

IAEA to send experts to Fukushima-1

France to send nuclear experts to Japan

iRobot Sending Packbots and Warriors to Fukushima Dai-1 Nuclear Plant

S. Korea to send boric acid to Japan

France to send boric acid to Japan

America send “elite” robots to Fukushima nuclear plants

Ann Coulter ????

[TakeTheSkyRoad]

The comments are getting old now

I've been a regular reader of the reg for years and since this is a specialist technical site had assumed a level of basic education and integrity from both writers and readers.

Now the writers are writers.... you read an article and then judge for yourself how for feel about it's accuracy be it here, NYT or a "red top" paper. Ideally researching if you see suspicious statements which you think look dodgy. I've been fine with the acticles personally, no issue and while some elements have looked questionable I've ended up using the reg & Lewis's acticles as my primary news source on Japan (plus gizmodo, slashdot & others).

The comments on here though have been very disappointing, think it's getting over taken now by extreme anti nuke campainers who are seeing a site not "towing the line".... wild speculation ? Sure but nothing compared to what I've seen here. One comment talked about workers putting out the "nuclear fires" when there are no such thing (88 degrees is hardly a fire).

Anyway thanks for the acticles Lewis... I'm happy to keep reading though I think I'll be avoiding the comments section in future. You seem to be attracting all the wrong opinionated sort

A pint cos it's Friday, my common as muck mates down the pub have more sense than some of you lot

[James Gibbons]

That was a joke

"nuclear fires"

As Lewis appears to like to downplay the seriousness of the situation at Fukushima, I was simply joking when I suggested he act as a cheerleader for the workers. I do have a physics degree and had a chance to intern at Hanford but declined. There *WERE* likely zirconium fires that caused the hydrogen explosions in the early days, so there.

My main problem is with plant operators and pro-nuke industry people who don't look at the full range of issues, such as forgetting to pour water on the spent fuel rods and placing the emergency generators on a lower elevation where the tsunami could wipe them out. I've even heard they delayed the cooling water pumping at the start because the PM paid a visit and they didn't want radiation steaming around while he was there. Had someone been thinking of these two simple to fix problems, perhaps this mess wouldn't be so bad.

If the reports yesterday about shipping concrete pumps are true (and I believe the one I read) then TEPCO is going to simply bury the problem if they can't get it under control soon.

[42]

Towing the line where?

It toeing the line. The views of anyone who cant even spell......

[Hermes Conran]

It's it's

You should proof read your post if you're going to criticise.....

[Abremms]

not misspelled

its not misspelled. did a quick google search and while "toeing the line" does seem to be the more popular form of the phrase, i saw nothing saying outright that "towing the line" is wrong. to my mind they both represent similar ideas.

besides, there are far better things to comment here than people's word choice. how about the actual post content?

[The Grinning Duck]

that's a bit harsh

Dissapointing? I have no idea what you mean!

I'm a forecast analyst for an energy risk management consultancy. We like to try and keep vaguely clued up on the business of nuclear generation (obviously not too clued up, where's the fun in that), and as such we've been playing Crazy Argument Bingo in the office since this article was posted. I tell ye, it's been full houses all round.

I, for one, would like to thank the commenters for their sterling work, so far I've won a packet of sweets and a bottle of wine. Keep 'em coming guys, there's still the grand prize of 'next Tuesday off' to be won.

[Highlander]

As if any further confirmation of media stupidity were required....

Feast your eyes on this my friends.

First up is a scare piece from MSN that regurgitates a story from Fox, that reported an interview with the mother of a worker at Fukushima and conflated it with the whole 50 nuclear samurai thing. MSN reframes the story saying that deaths are certain and then further conflates the doom by talking of a huge concrete pump being set to pump water t first, and then entomb the reactors in concrete.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42371032/ns/world_news-asiapacific/?GT1=43001

Now, read the report at the next link. It turns out that TEPCO is going to build a water treatment plant on site to deal with the water from the cooling operations. That indicates a continued pumping operation to keep the reactors cool, and a major clean up of contaminated water that remains contained on site. Secondly, the report also makes it clear that no worker so far at Fukushima Daiichi has been exposed to anything more than about 200millisieverts, which is below the threshold set when they increased the permissible level from 100 to 250 milli-sieverts.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Tepcos_plans_for_water_issues_0104112.html

I also noted that the World Health Organization has an excellent website for those interested.

http://www.who.int/hac/crises/jpn/en/

[hrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm]

no danger no lives lost all is well

I had impression that the register is a source of reasonable factual if not always balanced information yet t he article and discussion force me to state that the ignorant bunch here is just unbearable. I am still ready to read the posts of ignorants with patience if at least one of the 'hurra nuclear is safe' camp volunteers to clean up the shit in Fukushima. I donot even care what you are going to do but show us how safe that really is by own example. Let us judge on results.

OTOH no not really the nonsense about 15 (or less) dead children in Chernobyl did it for me.

By by register.

[Destroy All Monsters]

"if at least one of the 'hurra nuclear is safe' camp volunteers to clean up the shit in Fukushima"

I am sooo tired of people who in their infinite retardation think they have a killer argument against nuclear power and push a variation of the "then why don't you go live there" tirade.

Well, why dontcha work in a plant that produces solar cells? Why don't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving along now (part 2?)

The discussion is fine. Most discussions are.

In this one we debated observable and speculative interpretation of those.

And while that was going on quite a lot of people were still in evacuation centres some 3 weeks after mega-quake. And not a lot of discussion has looked at the real plight of those human beings rather than the speculative fantasist harm or non-harm that may or may not come about.

I suppose quite a few geeks might not have had a wash, bath or shower for 3 weeks or so but survivors ... well you know.

Plus containing elderly (or the young or the infirm) in a confined space for quite a while with a "settling in to doing nothing" routine is going to produce real harm?

As an additional stress survivors in at least some evacuation centres have to endure seeing list of missing or confirmed dead in their (the survivors that is) collective lounge/bedroom/dining room/ ... possibly further compounding survivor guilt or preventing them from moving on.

El reg: an equally worthy topic for discussion?

[Anonymous Coward]

sebmel

@Sebmel.

Ok, so I slipped in some other news items. Are you going to not look around at the big picture yourself or are you being pedantic about Lewis's article in isolation. Lewis made a claim, it was expanded on by others.

Neither are you an oncologist. If you read any of Lewis' articles and those of many others about radiation and cancer you will find that the levels involved increase the "risk" of getting cancer by very small levels, typicall something like .1% above the normal level of 25%. So it can appear much later but it's just about impossible to attribute the cancer to a particular radiation exposure indicident of such low levels as at the Fukushima.

The hospitalisation was precautionary because the of the hyped up fears about anything nuclear means that the authorities, including IAEA, bend over backwards to check everything and make all expsoure levels extremely low. Again Lewis mentions this in other articles.

You might have background in marine toxicology, but not in nuclear radiation. Posions like lead will stay and build up in marine life. Radiation will disappear over time. The Iodine found will disappear to miniscule amounts within about 3 months.

So giving subsidies to wind turbine companies is just funding research? As for subsidings, have you looked at the regulatory costs of doing anything nuclear. The decommisioning is still a cheap part of the overall cost of running a nuclear power plant for over 30 years. At least the UK government is stating that there won't be any more subsidies for nuclear.

The size of the earthquake. Aceh was around 7.8. Fukushima was 9. Read, and re-read the way the magnitudes are calculated. 9 is not just a little bit bigger than Aceh's 7.8. It was hundreds of times more powerful. Possibly incaccurate, but to give a sense of the scale, if Aceh was a ton of TNT, Fukushima was a nuclear bomb. Do you plan for something that might happen once in 500 years or something that happens every other year. The plants were designed for the scale of a magnitude 7 earthquake. They survived a 9 quake. What broke them was the tsunami which breached the walls that were designed for waves around 6m, but the actual height was 14. These knocked out the cooling systems which caused the damage.

Nuclear would not have taken so long if the regulations weren't so onerous and the green lobby didn't delay through legal processes the build of new nuclear power plants.

SBML

[Anonymous Coward]

eh

Sorry 7.8?

[Anonymous Coward]

@eh 11:22 GMT

What I cannot quite understand is a limitation.

It may be a limitation in my understanding or a limitation in calculating earthquake magnitude.

The rupture zone does not seem to be factored in.

For example, is a magnitude 9 over a 5 kilometre front the same as a magnitude 9 over a 400 or 500 kilometre front?

To the physicists/geologists out there: does magnitude calculation consider the spread of the active earthquake as hinted at above? (Magnitude and rupture zone?)

[Sebmel]

Listen to the experts on their subject

Yes, I am not an oncologist. They should be consulted on cancer risk: not me, and not an engineer such as Lewis.

I suggested you read about the Minamata Bay poisoning to understand that the movement of toxins through the ecosystem throws up surprises that not even experts on the scene always anticipate. Lewis' articles demonstrate the type of dismissive attitude that caused the Minamata Bay poisonings. I trust that the Japanese scientists on the scene have learnt the lessons and aren't being as cavalier as Lewis suggests they ought to be.

I think I was clear that I am pro research grants and anti industry subsidies. Do current green electricity payments add up to subsidising an industry? That's an arguable point. A decade of help to get a new industry up to scale can be argued as justifiable. Public subsidies for a 50-year-old industry clearly can't. My view of green energy help is that I would not support it were it not for concern over global warming. Since that is an issue I take a cautionary view and support a higher price for all electricity that doesn't produce CO2... until we have a solution. The nuclear industry should be offered the same price, since it's competitive in this regard.

As it is we are on the cusp of local solar generation taking off. Southern European panels on houses take just 5 years to pay for themselves at current prices. All they need is a grid-feed credit system.

The nuclear industry has been regulated as it has because it has constantly misrepresented its competence. It now rightly has a reputation as being untrustworthy. That's a shame. They have a stunning potential technology in their hands and they have let us and themselves down with their accidents, poor design, cover-ups and begging bowl antics.

Apologists for incompetence, and ideologues, breed more incompetence. That's my issue with Lewis. Calling a serious accident a triumph celebrates incompetence.

Having said that, Lewis could well be posturing. I suspect he thinks that TheReg could find a greater audience through importing some American 'Shock Jock' posturing... especially since about 50% of the site's traffic comes from the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Listen to the experts on their subject

About 25 per cent of Reg traffic comes from the US - and about 45 per cent from the UK; Canada and Australia about 3 per cent each; and Germany about 2.5 per cent.

[Bilby]

How dangerous is it?

If the very low levels of radiation exposure above background currently seen in Tokyo were as dangerous as some media outlets and pressure groups are suggesting, then Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden and the north and west of the British Isles would be a derelict wasteland piled with corpses. This is not the case (apart from Liverpool), so observational evidence in the 30 odd years since Chernobyl tells us that the effects of low level exposure to radio-caesium or radio-iodine are just not that big a deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost Benefit Analysis Anyone?

Mr Page is absolutely right. Over the last century or so it is the availability of affordable electrical power that has actually made the developed world 'developed'.

If we accept that everything has a cost and a risk associated with it, overall the many demonstrated benefits of electricity have, to date at least, far outweighed any of the actual downsides arising from its generation. Given the current feasibility and status of the other power generation methods (fossil or otherwise) this cost/benefit balance can only realistically be maintained (or even improved?) in the foreseeable future through the introduction of the latest nuclear technologies.

So we need to be prepared to sensibly and realistically assess the possible risks of nuclear power and plan accordingly for them (as best we can). Perhaps most importantly though we need to get away from the almost irrational 'Nuclear? Nuclear is BAD so NO! NO! NEVER!' knee-jerk reactions which seem prevalent whenever it's mentioned. In return we can hopefully continue to enjoy clean(er) & cheap(ish) power which will allow us to go on improving our standard of living and generally making things better for our children than they were for our great-grandparents (although we might be struggling to even maintain the status quo if some of the UK's generator capacity/demand forecasts are to be believed).

[Mr. Ed]

Please don't start a fear campaign...

... against coal. :-)

"Not one person has died from radiation," Sir David King told the Guardian. "Let me put that in context – in the same week, 30 coal miners died. Generating electricity from coal is far more dangerous."

Coal is cheaper, safer and more abundant. Let's figure out how to get the C out of it and burn it for the next thousand or so years.

[Andy Watt]

Ground water...?

http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-thursday-march-31-2011-3

So is this more lies? More spin? I hope you have some salt for your hat Lewis, in the event this whole event turns out not to conform to your particular crystal ball.

Note - I watch things unfold here, I don't take sides. I'm pro nuclear because I believe there are no credible alternatives at the moment. Renewables are a farce, compounded by political vanities, which require backup for peak loads. Only nuclear can give us the baseline supply without burning shit up.

I'll get me lead lined jacket.

[Jarmes]

Comparing to Chernobyl

Aside from the actual incident itself, a lot of the discussion is about comparing nuclear to other sources of energy. The other main thread i find intersting is about comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl.

When it comes to comparing nuclear, i don't get the impression anyone really has a clue what the facts are. There are many costs involved (i'm not claiming to be an expert by the way), from sourcing raw materials through loss of land, production, decommissioning, clean up etc. These costs apply to all forms of energy production, including solar and its virtually impossible i would say, to accurately compare true total cost. When it comes to the cost of life for each, its much easier to accept a dribble of single person incidents than it is a major one involving the potential or real loss of lots of lives - even if the long term impact of nuclear might be a lot lower.

That leads on to the other point about Chernobyl. The author refers to 46 official deaths, and the supposedly miniscule increase in cancer. From the whole article, which i find overall has a detrimental effect on the nuclear cause because of its virtiolic bias, the Chernobyl aspects do the most damage. It's widely known that the official deaths are meaningless. Numerous respected documentaries have been made and there are thousands of articles online about the liquidators - one aspect of the cost of life which is deliberately hidden for political reasons. Depending on what article you read, between 600,000 and 1m people were tasked with cleaning up and preventing a much worse disaster immediately after the initial incident. Many of them suffered huge radiation doses, and most reports say that either tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of the have died as a result. Many of their children have been born with disfigurements or disabilities, and the mean and women continue to die. The liquidators prevented the most catastrophic incident, a thermal explosion that would have been hundreds of times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The true number of liquidator deaths are impossible to obtain because of the break up of the soviet union, lack of official medical reports etc. This is completely aside from the whole issue of cancer incidence, which again the author seems to hugely downplay.

I dont want to rurn off my tv any more than anyone else, but nuclear accidents can be enormous. Although the technology is no doubt safer than it was, who feels comfortable as more and countries build more and more reactors. Solar has enormous potential now the costs are coming down, of course its not without its problems, but personally id rather have solar parcs and panels oneveryones roofs than nuclear plants dotted around the landscape. If the economics become viable (which they increasingly are),then who would disagree?

[Highlander]

Chernobyl is a false comparison.

The levels of radiation and amounts of radioactive material released at Chernobyl were something like 1000 times the levels and quantity here - actually, much more than 1000 since the actual core at Chernobyl caught fire, the building that served as the only containment exploded and the nuclear fuel was released as vapor in the smoke from the graphite fire. There has been *no* confirmed or suspected release of fuel at Fukushima. A trace amount of a plutonium isotope that is normally a fission product (not a fuel) was found in 3 of 5 soil samples taken at the plat itself. The amount and activity was so low as to be at the threshold of detection. Were that plutonium from the MOX fuel, there would be other elements present in larger quantities, and there are not.

No one at Fukushima (remember we are three full weeks after the fact of the initial scram now) has yet been reported to have received a dose above 250 millisieverts. The firefighters that died at chernobyl were exposed to hundreds of sieverts of radiation directly from the core as well as the deposition of radioactive material. That is why many of the men who entered the building to fight the fire at Chernobyl never came out.

For perspective, a simple CT scan will result in exposure to about 20 millisieverts, and that's a modern scanner. Older Xray machines and older CT scan systems used much higher exposures, but the technology has improved and the dose required for the scan has reduced. That doesn't even begin to look at the kind of dose rates common with Radiotherapy.

But the point is that in terms of direct radiation exposure, the release of fission products or the release of the nuclear fuel itself, Chernobyl is orders of magnitude worse than anything that has happened at Fukushima. It is a false comparison to make, and all it does is serve to confuse people by conflating the huge release of material at Chernobyl with what is happening at Fukushima, despite the *fact* that the events at Fukushima really bear no resemblance to Chernobyl at all. None.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Smell an expert...

"a thermal explosion that would have been hundreds of times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

You mean 1.5 to 2.1 megatons or multiple thereof? *Thermal* explosion? What have you been smoking?

Obviously, just because you managed to put together a couple of scientifically-sounding words that does not mean you have a slightest clue...

[Jarmes]

Correct, I am not an expert.

I said I wasn't an expert, what is your problem? It was referred to as a thermal explosion in a BBC documentary. And yes, it was claimed to be potentially 3 to 5 mega tons.

Why do people have to get rude? It doesn't really help the debate. What's the average age on this forum? It's not much different to the comments on YouTube sometimes.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Sorry, I did not want to be particularly rude

A thermal explosion is a common type of chemical explosion where the heat is generated by a chemical transformation inside a body of explosive material which cannot be effectively transferred out of the explosive. As the result, the temperature inside the explosive rapidly increases, which in turn accelerates the chemical transformation and intensifies the explosion.

To achieve 3 to 5 megatons thermal explosion you, by definition, must explode 3 to 5 million tons of TNT - a high explosive. If you use lesser explosive, you will need even more of it.

Not only you have to somehow store all that conventional explosive material inside or around a power station but you also have to somehow ensure that it holds together until all of the material explosively reacted (practically impossible as the force of the explosion will scatter most of the piled up explosives without them detonating).

Therefore, the thought of a *conventional* explosion of that size, occurring *accidentally* even *without* the use of high-explosives by dipping a piece of molten metal in a small volume of ground water is plainly ridiculous, I'm sure you would agree.

[Jarmes]

It doesn't strike me as conventional

When it involves rather hot nuclear fuel just after a massive explosion. This is obviously an unknown source but it Explains the theory:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Chernobyl_nuclear_radiation

This article has eye witness extracts from Chernobyl, taken from a book. Very moving, some of it. There is one of the nuclear physicists from Chernobyl talking about the risk of the 3 megatonl explosion (referred to as a nuclear explosion here), I only referred to it as a thermal explosion from the documentary)

http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.ukraine?cat=environment&type=article

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Conventional alright

"This is obviously an unknown source but it Explains the theory"

He is *trying* to explain the theory (probably to himself) but not very successfully. The explanations about neutrons being "propelled" from the reactor by the explosion or them being "attracted" to moderator are as scientific and correct as the "mutating neutrinos" in the movie "2012". You cannot really go lower than that :-)

There probably was a thermal explosion at Chernobyl (during the criticality excursion caused by the destruction of the control and cooling systems of the reactor after the first steam explosion) because the heat was generated inside the reactor assembly far faster than it could be transferred out of it - so it just burst itself apart. The estimates are that it was equivalent to about 10 tons TNT.

As far as his idea that the remnants of the reactor could go supercritical if they'd touched water, and the explanation he attempts to make about the mechanics of that are simply ludicrous.

Conceivably, all that could happen was that the molten fuel mixed with chunks of moderator could remain critical (patchy and intermittently) and could burn through the bottom of the reactor pit and into the ground. Any water encountered would have been vaporised instantly, so would not have affected the nuclear reactions.

Anyway, water *around* the fuel cannot become moderator because it has to be *between* the fissile atoms to work. Even it some neutrons were reflected and caused fission in the outer layer of the molten fuel, the new neutrons produced by that fission would have been fast and incapable of causing further fission in low-enriched fuel, so no chain reaction would have been possible.

[jimmy]

30 millisieverts

hey Highlander have you read this:

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/pdf/sfty_xray.pdf

probably as it's one of the first things that comes up in google. i have not checked the provenence.

CT scan radiation doses depend on what you're scanning, chest low dose as you're scanning mostly air. But then there's hi-res CT for chests, i digress. Anyway pelvis and abdomen = dense = high dose. 30millisieverts this article says, lifetime additional fatal cancer risk = 1:1000.

200milisieverts doesn't sound so nice now. you only need to expose 100 people to this and on average you've definately killed someone via lovely safe nuclear power. it's not just radiation levels that matter it's the number of people exposed as well.

still much safer than mining coal though.................maybe - depends how many people are mining compared to the number of deaths.

ps CT scans aren't 'simple' and aren't safe that's why you need a doctor to order them.

[Jarmes]

That's a good reason to compare

Not a false one. Comparing things that are the same is much more pointless. And anyway, my point was that Chernobyl was a lot lot worse, I was pointing out evidence about how severe Chernobyl was, and how Page belittled it's impact.

[MNB]

Re: Comparing to Chernobyl

"... Depending on what article you read, between 600,000 and 1m people were tasked with cleaning up and preventing a much worse disaster immediately after the initial incident. Many of them suffered huge radiation doses..."

so a *million* people were involved in clearing up Chernobyl? This doesn't quite sound credible to me.

Correct me if I make a mistake or an incorrect assumption but my thought process goes like this:- Chernobyl is in Ukraine (and I know it was Soviet Republic at the time, but bear with me) which has 32 million people aged 16-64 (I'm making an assumption that it's population hasn't changed in twenty years... it's currently slowly declining, like much of western europe). Belorus the other nearby country (ex Soviet Repulic) is approximately one third the size and has a working age population of 6.9 million. I'm assuming that the elderly and children would not be involved and that people would not be bought in from further afield (and therefore the population of the Ukraine itself can be used a reasonable estimate of the population of a similarly sized area centred on Chernobyl/Prypiat).

This means that what you are trying to tell me is that 3.1% of the working population of the country was involved in the clean up. If you assume that only men of working age are involved then it rises to 6.5% of men in the entire Ukraine (that's just less than one in fifteen). If you notice that the population density of Belorus is actually lower than Ukraine, you require even higher proportions of working age men to be involved (as our guess at the population of a Ukraine sized chunk of the USSR goes down as we include chunks of Belorus instead of the furthest parts of Ukraine).

Sorry, I don't buy it. If you'd put it at a hundred thousand I might have beleived you without thinking about it much, but a million? That number would count as an Extraordinary Claim.

[Jarmes]

It's easy to find, like I said

Seems like a reputable source, which mentions 600,000:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Cracked reactor leaking radioactive water (AFP) NOW!

Cracked reactor leaking radioactive water

[OY.. WOT's THIS THEN??]

Japanese workers struggling to contain a crisis at a crippled nuclear plant discovered a crack in a pit leaking highly radioactive water straight into the sea, the firm operating the facility said

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/02/3180696.htm

Lying Japanese and the Lying Corrupt Companies that feed them

[Highlander]

Contaminated water that has accumulated in...

...the reactor building has found it's way out via a crack, that will be patched. The crack is in the building, not the reactor, not the pressure vessel, not the primary containment at all. Each of the reactor buildings has a large quantity of water sloshing around that was used for cooling the reactor and has collected in the basements. It's actually good news that they found this because it means it can be a) patched and b) the water can be pumped to a holding tank to prevent further release.

[Destroy All Monsters]

"leaking highly radioactive water straight into the sea"

SHOCK HORROR! SURFING GUY FALLS IN, GETS SUPERPOWER!

Who cares? No seriously, I would think leaking the "highly radioactive water" (so what exactly does it carry?) straight into the sea is preferable to leaking it straight into the countryside.

[Abremms]

solution

the solution to polution is dilution!

and what better way to dilute radioactive water from fukushima down to completely harmless quantities than the worlds largest ocean? the redioactive iodine will be inert in another couple weeks anyways, getting rid of a good bit of the bad stuff.

[cnapan]

Google Earth: Take a trip over the disaster zone

See for yourself what is causing the suffering in Japan:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=fukushima&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=2gJ&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=ivnsum&biw=1600&bih=1116&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=il

This is the location of the fukushima nuclear plant.

Now take a trip north up the coast towards Sendai Airport. What can you see?

That's right:

-Countless towns and villages simply washed away or seriously damaged. Massive damage to industrial sites in many places.

-Large expanses of farmland despoiled by seawater and the materials - some of it undoubtedly toxic - from the destroyed infrastructure.

The region around Fukushima is already devastated. Tens of thousands of people are already dead. Hundreds of thousands of people already have their lives wrecked, and will be suffering for a long time to come.

It seems a common theme on here by those who are unable to meet reason to say "why don't you go and live there?"

A quick trip there courtesy of google earth demonstrates why it is a bad idea right now. The place is utterly shattered.

I certainly wouldn't be afraid of the radiation there, but I would be afraid of picking up a nasty sewage-borne infection or having to deal with the stench of rotting bodies which are sitll being extracted from the mud and debris for literally miles on end.

So, no. I'm not going there. Not because of trivial increases in my exposure to background radiation, but because it happens to be the site of one of the most deadly natural disasters in living memory.

[cnapan]

In answer to 'hhhrrrrrmmmm'

I'd like to respond to your post:

"I had impression that the register is a source of reasonable factual if not always balanced information"

Fair enough...

"yet t he article and discussion force me to state that the ignorant bunch here is just unbearable."

So rather than respond with reason to what you don't agree with, instead you just shout names. Do you know how unlikely that is to win people round to your view?

"I am still ready to read the posts of ignorants with patience if at least one of the 'hurra nuclear is safe' camp volunteers to clean up the shit in Fukushima."

But you already have read them, because you are commenting on their 'ignorance'. Now you're telling us that you won't read them until someone decides to 'clean up the Shit in Fukushima'. Do you know how unlikely that is to win people round to your view?

(Oh, and if you want to see the 'shit' that needs clearing up, fire up Google Earth and see for yourself the towns and villages washed away. There's plenty of shit to clear up alright.)

"I donot even care what you are going to do but show us how safe that really is by own example. Let us judge on results."

But people *have* travelled from Europe to help 'clean up the shit' (both at Fukushima and elsewhere). Yet you're *still* claiming it isn't safe.

"OTOH no not really the nonsense about 15 (or less) dead children in Chernobyl did it for me.

By by register."

Gosh well goodbye to you too. I guess that'll give you more time to concentrate on your IT job, which, judging by your reasoning abilities is possibly not going as well as it might...

[Anonymous Coward]

Denial has never changed reality

Lewis can stay in denial forever but it won't change reality. Yes some in the media can and do exaggerate disasters but more often than not the scientific community gets it right. Lewis' beliefs are simply not supported by hard scientific data. Lewis is on a campaign if mis-information that simple does not pass muster. Time for Lewis to get in touch with reality.

[David Gale]

Viability?

Since there are quite so many who insist on the economic viability of nuclear power, will they agree that ALL government subsidies can be dropped, to include long-term waste storage and decommissioning? No? I thought not.

[Steve Murphy]

Josef Oehnen : Some minor details turned out to be mistaken,

The whole point of the Oehnen blog was to suggest the nuclear reactors are massively over engineered with so many levels of containment that there would no be a radioactive release outside of the fence and it would not be a another Chernobyl.

Now we have Lewis telling us that is is safe to take a bath in radioactive isotopes and Chernobyl was not that bad.

The plant is still leaking, TEPCO are unable to read radiation monitors and the system is not under control.

[Anonymous Coward]

L1ma

33% core meltdown in reactors 1 - 3 with reactors in 2 & 3 with compromised housing.

.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/science/03meltdown.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

.

in this article sources are named with notable scientists confirming findings based on the data released and compared to three mile island.

.

Also:

.

http://current.com/news/93119678_radiation-monitors-not-given-to-each-worker-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant.htm

.

The workers do not know their individual dosage unlike the prior claims by Mr Page, only team leaders have radiation monitors. I hope they are holding hands. They were stored outside the main complex when the Tsunami struck.

.

Matters are bad it is three 3 mile islands or more in one, it is of course bad design, awful planning and decision making which made it so, of course this would also have been a disaster if it had been a toxic chemical plant. The problem here is not that we are wise after the event, humans are part of the design which is often why it fails, it is people that have created the disasters by design which have discredited the Nuclear industry.

.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oEqd0IeAhccC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=who+was+the+manager+in+charge+of+chernobyl&source=bl&ots=K6-m7lQynE&sig=Yg83_bYz_ZDOLIXMlcmPJSkpvTM&hl=en&ei=Y4uXTb-iM4-WhQed7

.

Still think this 'accident waiting to happen' was not like Chernobyl ?.

[Destroy All Monsters]

This accident was not like Gengis Khan!

"Matters are bad it is three 3 mile islands or more in one,"

Judging by the hot air and panic generated so far, I will say.

"Still think this 'accident waiting to happen' was not like Chernobyl?"

Uh.. yes, actually?

[interested_reader]

These articles will serve as an epitaph for the credibility of El Reg on nuke issues

Downplaying Chernobyl is risky business, journalistically speaking. It's nice that Orlowski & Page think they have the figures to back up their absurd claims that cesium-137 is the healthiest thing since momma's milk, a li'l ol' radioactive iodine never hurt nobody, and the number of fatalities from a nuclear power plant explosion that showered radioactive isotopes all over Western Europe can be easily counted on two mutated hands. I searched the intardweb for "TORCH Chernobyl report" and found a somewhat different set of conclusions, however. Said conclusions did not appear to be sourced from a nefarious cabal of stinky long-haired hippies feverishly hacking away at their (all-manual) Underwood typewriters whilst high out of their anti-Jetsons minds on ganja.

El Reg has always won my admiration and respect with its inimitable style. This style includes brilliance on the order of referring to Google as "the world's largest ad broker", effectively characterizing Larry Ellison as an evil being from outer space, the creation of the Paris commenticon, the PARIS project, and on and on and on... this is genius that the world would be hard-pressed to do without.

The recent series of articles relentlessly trolling the El Reg readership on the issue of nuclear power safety, in the wake of one of the worst earthquakes to be witnessed by man in recent memory no less, is not the kind of brilliance I associate with Le Vautour Rouge. Thumbs up to sticking it to the mass media for going into hysterics and blathering disinformation... but that's not what El Reg is doing at this point with these articles stirring the pot about the Fukushima incident. And it really comes off as unconscionably crass (though normally I am a huge fan of a certain amount of crassness, judiciously applied) to do so well before the final reports on the total exposure are in, even before the decision has officially been made whether or not to just shit-can the whole operation and bury it under concrete. Which is what I think the Register should do with this whole series of articles fellating the nuclear power industry.