Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

Source: The Independent UK

Japan has been slow to admit the scale of the meltdown. But now the truth is coming out. David McNeill reports from Soma City

The triple meltdown <...> has elevated Japan into unknown, and unknowable, terrain. Across the northeast, millions of people are living with its consequences and searching for a consensus on a safe radiation level that does not exist. <...> Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident..........Many experts warn that the crisis is just beginning. <...>

Some scientists predict that one million lives will be lost to cancer. <...> Chris Busby, a professor at the University of Ulster: “ Busby said the disaster would result in more than 1 million deaths. ‘Fukushima is still boiling its radionuclides all over Japan <...> Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse.’”
“Professor Busby says the release is at least 72,000 times worse than Hiroshima.”


Professor Tim Mousseau, a biological scientist who has spent more than a decade researching the genetic impact of radiation around Chernobyl: “ Mousseau worries that many people in Fukushima are ‘burying their heads in the sand.’”
“His Chernobyl research concluded that biodiversity and the numbers of insects and spiders had shrunk inside the irradiated zone, and the bird population showed evidence of genetic defects, including smaller brain sizes.” “There are very likely to be very significant long-term health impact from prolonged exposure.”

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/why-the-fukushima-disaster-is-worse-than-chernobyl-2345542.html

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http://news.yahoo.com/japan-nuke-plant-radiation-leak-exceeds-hiroshima-131930665.html

AP - Japan nuke plant radiation leak exceeds Hiroshima

TOKYO (AP) — The amount of radioactive cesium that has leaked from a tsunami-hit nuclear plant is about equal to 168 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, Japan's nuclear agency said Friday.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency supplied the estimate at a parliamentary panel's request, but it noted a simple comparison between an instantaneous bomb blast and long-term accidental leak is impossible and the results could be "irrelevant."

The report estimated for each of the 16 isotopes released from "Little Boy" and 31 of those detected at the Fukushima plant but didn't provide the total. NISA has said the radiation leaked from Fukushima was about one-sixth of what the Chernobyl disaster released in 1986.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to melt. Several blasts and fires also sent massive radiation into the environment. The report said the damaged plant has released 15,000 tera becquerels of cesium-137, which lingers for decades and could cause cancer, compared with the 89 tera becquerels released by the U.S. uranium bomb.


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http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110828p2a00m0na002000c.html

Mainichi Daily News: What we face is a great unknown to all of mankind — 10 sieverts/hour outside and levels must be much higher closer to reactor core, says Japan nuclear prof.


<...> “If there’s 10 sieverts per hour of radiation outside, then the levels must be much higher closer to the reactor core,” says Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor at Meiji University and an expert in reactor engineering and reactor policy who was once a member of an anti-nuclear non-profit organization called Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC). “The fuel has melted, and we haven’t been able to cool it consistently.” <...>

Katsuta predicts that it will probably take at least 10 years just to determine whether it is possible to remove the fuel. He adds that it could very well take 50 years before the task of dismantling the reactor and other facilities is completed.

What Katsuta has in mind is a Chernobyl-style concrete sarcophagus, which would entail cloaking the melted tomb with massive amounts of concrete. “How could we simultaneously dismantle four reactors that have been contaminated to the extent that they have by radioactive materials?” asks Katsuta. “Japan has little experience in decommissioning reactors, and this case is quite different from standard decommissioning processes. <...>“

<...> what we face is a great unknown to all of mankind.



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Radiation Above Chernobyl Evacuation Limits Found In Tokyo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmwfKDllHMU&feature=player_embedded

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http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/08/nisa-neptunium-239-in-august-29-press.html

Report: 76 trillion becquerels of Plutonium-239 released from Fukushima — 23,000 times higher than previously announced

<...> The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)’s daily press conference is ongoing (August 29). The NISA spokesman Moriyama mentions neptunium-239′s conversion ratio to plutonium-239 as 1 to 1.

According to the June 6 estimate by the NISA <...> Neptunium-239: 7.6×10^13 <...>
At a ratio of 1:1, Plutonium-239 releases are also 7.6 x 10^13, or 76 tera(trillion)becquerels.

23,000 higher than previous gov’t estimate

<...> According to the June 6 estimate by the NISA : Plutonium-239: 3.2×10^9 <3.2 billion becquerels> <...>

The amount of plutonium-239 has increased 23,000-fold. <...>


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http://fairewinds.com/content/newly-released-tepco-data-proves-fairewinds-assertions-significant-fuel-pool-failures-fukush

Dr Arnie Gundersen -- 220 Million Bq/liter of Cesium now in No. 2 Spent Fuel Pool — SFP No. 1, 2, & 3 “clearly have significant spent fuel damage” (VIDEO)

<...> Just 2 days ago, TEPCO released a report that has a water analysis of the condition of the spent fuel pools at Fukushima. This data was taken in August, August 19th and 20th, so it is very current and I wanted to share it with you today. <...>

he combination of both Cesiums in the fuel pool on Unit 2, is 220 million disintegrations per second in a liter of water.

So think of a liter Coke bottle and inside it the water is disintegrating at 220 million disintegrations every second, and that is just for Unit 2. The table also shows similar very high concentrations of Cesium in Unit 1 and in Unit 3. It clearly shows that there is damage to the fuel in those 3 units. <...> Units 1, 2, & 3 clearly have significant spent fuel damage. <...>


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another day, another dose :nuke:

:puke: Well, I K&R'ed, sorry it's still zero.

:argh:

To say it's worse than Chernobyl, you need to either ignore 99% of Chernobyl, or exaggerate Fukushima by several orders of magnitude. The reality is that Chernobyl killed about 4,000 or so people. Fukushima hasn't killed anyone, at least not from radiation, and likely won't--unless you listen to anonymous YouTube conspiracy theorists, and guys like Arnie Gundersen who make a living off terrorizing people.

Except, you seem to seek to deny reality in FAVOR of the nuclear industry.

Despite the people who have been trying to spin Fukushima into a massive world-ending disaster, predictions of having to abandon all of Japan, claims that it would kill 500,000 people, etcetera, etcetera, the REALITY has consistently been proven to be what some of us have said from the beginning: an accident due mostly to human error, one which has been brought under control without killing anyone or exploding.

seriously--this is your idea of "under control?" :eyes:

hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! Say hello to the nuke industry for us... "control"...lol

:eyes:

Which is still a low figure considering that Cherobyl killed everyone east of Oder and west of the Urals. :nuke:

Arnold Gundersen Bio,
Arnie is an energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience. A former nuclear industry senior vice president, he earned his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering, holds a nuclear safety patent, and was a licensed reactor operator. During his nuclear industry career, Arnie managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants around the country. He currently speaks on television, radio, and at public meetings on the need for a new paradigm in energy production. An independent nuclear engineering and safety expert, Arnie provides testimony on nuclear operations, reliability, safety, and radiation issues to the NRC, Congressional and State Legislatures, and Government Agencies and Officials throughout the US, Canada, and internationally. In 2008, he was appointed by the Vermont Senate President to be the first Chair of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Oversight Panel. He has testified in numerous cases and before many different legislative bodies including the Czech Republic Senate. Using knowledge from his Masters Thesis on Cooling Towers, Arnie analyzed and predicted problems with Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers three years prior to their 2007 collapse. His Environmental Court testimony concerned available and economically viable alternatives to cooling towers in order to reduce consumptive water use and the ecological damage caused by cooling tower drift and heated effluents. As the former vice president in an engineering organization, Arnie led the team of engineers who developed the plans for decommissioning Shippingport, the first major nuclear power plant in the US to be fully dismantled. He was also an invited author on the first DOE Decommissioning Handbook.

That is just half his bio so you know better than an actual Nuke engineer like Arnie & Dr. Michio Kaku
CBS exposes extreme Fukushima radiation human rights violations while U.S. media remains silent. (a win for mainstream media) Australia's CBS exposed the "unspeakable" realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity. The nuclear energy power industry violation of the right to health is apparent throughout the new Australian report.

*WARNING - Video may not be suitable for younger audiances or those who are blind to truth and facts*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BoY79KPZz68#!

Obfuscate the truth, putting party politics over the Common Good.

Is he a Democrat or a Republican? Maybe he is a Green? His party affiliation is not listed on the net.
I think he is like me a member of the Human Party and cares enough to raise his voice when he sees a wrong that must be righted!

I believed them in the 50s when they said radioactive fallout would not bother you. And it didn't for thirty years.

Read Carole Gallagher's "American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War." I can vouch for it. I lived it, and am still living it.

A more accurate figure would be at least 250,000, up to 1 million (main naysayers of this are the pro-nukers)

The study (From The New York Academy of Sciences) That show 1 millon deaths

http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments.

Posted 4/28/2010

NEW YORK—“Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” Volume 1181 of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, published online in November 2009, was authored by Alexey V. Yablokov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexey V. Nesterenko, of the Institute of Radiation Safety (Belarus), and the late Prof. Vassily B. Nesterenko, former director of the Belarussian Nuclear Center. With a foreword by the Chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, Dimitro M. Grodzinsky, the 327-page volume is an English translation of a 2007 publication by the same authors. The earlier volume, “Chernobyl,” published in Russian, presented an analysis of the scientific literature, including more than 1,000 titles and more than 5,000 printed and Internet publications mainly in Slavic languages, on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

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A review

http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=3146

snip

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is authored by three noted scientists: Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long-involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

The book is solidly based on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in all.

It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.

snip

Further worsening the situation, she said, has been “the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA.” WHO, the public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA’s claim that 4,000 will die as a result of the accident.

“How fortunate,” said Ms. Slater, “that independent scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident.”

The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,” and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a “need to change,” it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the “hiding” from the “public of any information”unwanted” by the nuclear industry.


snip

much more at link above (including a rebuttal by a pro nuke blog)


additional links

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

http://www.alternet.org/environment/146619/book/'s_astounding_allegation%3A_chernobyl_radiation_killed_nearly_one_million_people

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Greenpeace , in 2006, came out with study showing at least 250,000 cancer cases from Chernobyl as of 2004

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/chernobyl-deaths-180406/

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Chernobyl also caused a dramatic increase in cancer here in Sweden, especially Norrbotten (the northermost part)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4028729.stm

The study :

http://www.liu.se/en/news-and-events/news/1.10658?l=en

Increase In Cancer In Sweden Can Be Traced To Chernobyl

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070530080956.htm


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Chernobyl in heartbreaking picture essay

http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl

I wondered what happended to those damned republicans. Slim to none!

Thank you for the updates.