Radiation from Japan found in Chicago area

Trace amounts of the radioactive isotope radioiodine- 131 where found at the Dresden nuclear power plant in Morris, IL.

Meanwhile emergency drills and evaluations of all six of Illinios plants are underway.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_localchi/20110330/ts_yblog_localchi/report-radiation-from-japan-found-in-chicago-area?bouchon=602,il

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/03/23/state-officials-conduct-nuclear-crisis-drill/

Finding out: Fallout from Fukushima

Where can you get information about the amounts of radioactive material being dispersed from the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi reactors?  It hasn't been easy to get reliable information about radiation levels, as we've discussed in class.  A few places to look that go beyond what's in the mainstream news:

1)  The United States EPA "RadNet" system
This is a system of radiation monitors all around the US that is constantly taking data.  Graphs and information are made publicly available, although they are not always extremely easy to interpret, and there are often gaps in the data due to equipment issues and upgrades.  The EPA also releases news updates that provide a summary view based on the radiation readings.
RadNet "Data Map" interface for getting information from the stationary monitors
EPA daily data summary

2) The CTBTO radionuclide stations
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is an international organization dedicated to monitoring the world for evidence of nuclear weapons tests as a part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  While the treaty is not yet in force, the international network of monitoring stations still is producing data, and it shares this data with its member states.  This data is not made public directly by the CTBTO, but in Austria, researchers have been making public some of the CTBTO radiation measurements and climate modeling.  The central web pages are all in German, but many of the updates and links are in English.
Main web page for ZAMG - Austrian meteorology information
Latest update on the fallout from Japan
An animation from fallout modeling
A report (in English) from March 25
Another report (in English) from March 22

3) "Crowdsourcing"
I've seen a bunch of articles on "crowdsourcing" radiation measurements, both in Japan and in the rest of the world.  The idea is that a bunch of ordinary citizens buy geiger counters and monitor radiation levels where they live, contributing the data to a central database.  There are a lot of potential problems with this (unless the users of the geiger counters really understand the details of making radiation measurements), but it has the advantage of being totally decoupled from any authority source.  Below are a few articles and some of the web sites where this information is collected.
NPR article on "citizen science" radiation measurements in Japan
CNET article on radiation "crowdsourcing"
The RDTN network (Japan)
alTokyo website (measurements in Tokyo)
Radiation Network (U.S., with links to similar projects in Japan and Europe)


4) Physics graduate students!
I was personally super excited to find a research paper written by one of my grad school professors and some of his current students at the University of Washington in Seattle.  They measured the radioactive isotopes that arrived in Seattle from the Japanese reactor and were actually able to use this information to infer some details about the disaster.  Really cool!
A blog article about the research

Very moving - emails from nuclear workers in Japan

An email exchange between a worker at Fukushima nuclear plants and a Tepco employee in Tokyo has been published by the Wall Street Journal.  It is very moving and disturbing:

"Crying is useless. If we’re in hell now all we can do is to crawl up towards heaven."

Read more here

Finding out: Global Nuclear Energy Policy

I found a couple of interesting summary sites discussing how different countries are reacting to the Japanese nuclear crisis.

Here's an article from Spectrum (the magazine of the IEEE, which is a professional organization of electrical engineers in the U.S.) that gives a nice summary of the different reactions around the world:


IEEE Spectrum article.

And, here's an interesting set of commentary pieces from a Harvard policy center, discussing reactions in China, Russia, South Korea, India, and Iran. 

Harvard Belfer Center article on Global Future of Nuclear Power after Fukushima

Could Fukushima lead to better studies of the effects of Chernobyl?

The Chernobyl accident led to huge releases of radioactive materials over a wide area of Europe.  While some health effects of the accident have been studied, there hasn't been enough funding to do the huge, detailed studies that would really tell us something about the final impact of that disaster. 

Interestingly, one thing that might come out of the Fukushima disaster is a renewed interest in long-term studies of the effects of radiation, including studies of the impact of Chernobyl. 

Here's an LA Times article on this possibility.

couple of pictures...

....in the control room of reactors 1 and 2.


http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/23/6327867-first-look-inside-crippled-fukushima-dai-ichi-nuclear-power-plant-control-room

-Andrew Shen

Earthquake victims denied rooms

Complaints have been made from people in the Fukushima prefecture that they have been denied lodgings in hotels because they were from the same district of the nuclear crisis, in fear of contamination. Official reasons giving by the hotel chains were because of over crowding.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110319/t10014780791000.html

-Andrew Shen

Great Radiation Comparison Graphic

Here's a neat way to visualize comparative radiation doses from various sources (click on picture to go to the original, where you can actually read the text)

Earthquake and Tsunami Death Toll

Hi folks,

Amy sent a link to answer the question about the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami.  Sounds like it's currently at around 7,000 with over 10,000 people still missing.  Here's a link to the article and video:


http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/18/japan.disaster/index.html

Art and Radiation

Take a look at these powerful images taken by photographer Paul Fusco in 2006, 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster. He documents the lives of those affected by the release of radiation to this day.

Warning: graphic images

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

-Elliott Beazley

Reactions from two ends of the spectrum

On the one hand, we have Greenpeace, which has always taken an anti-nuclear-energy stance.  Read about their reactions in this Vancouver Sun article. 


On the other hand, we have the nuclear industry itself, as represented by the Nuclear Energy Institute.  Check out their ongoing coverage, as well as their press statement.

Three ways the nuclear disaster could end

Basically,
1) the reactors are basically destroyed, but public radiation exposure is minimal
2) fires and small explosions in the cores and spent fuel ponds spread radiation around the area, leaving an area highly contaminated and uninhabitable, but only within a few miles of the nuclear plant
3) absolutely everything goes wrong, and major explosions or fires cause significant fallout plumes to spread to a wider radius

This comes from a decent summary by USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-18-1Ajapannuclear18_CV_N.htm

Presented Without Comment...

-Liana Jegers

"This is a situation in which people may be called in to sacrifice their lives"

That quote comes from the Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. agency responsible for regulating nuclear power.  He believes the situation in Japan may be far worse than the Japanese are admitting, and the quote continues: "...It's very difficult for me to contemplate that, but it's… it may have reached that point."

In the mean time, the U.S. has evacuated all its military personnel to a radius of 50 miles around the reactors, whereas the Japanese evacuation radius is only 12 miles. 

Read more in this LA Times article

Fallout predictions

Hi folks,

After class this week one thing I wondered was whether I'd exaggerated the possibility of fallout spreading all the way to the U.S.  A big difference between this disaster and Chernobyl (which I was using as a worst-case baseline) is that in the Chernobyl case, extremely hot fires were capable of launching the radioactive material high into the atmosphere.  Even in the very worst cases, that can't happen in the same way in Japan.

However, that doesn't mean there won't be a large fallout "plume" creeping its way across the globe.  The levels of radiation are not likely to be significant outside the local area of Japan, but they will be measurable, so we will definitely be hearing about it.  Some predictions for the wind flow patterns (not showing actual radiation levels yet):



The image above was generated by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (which we'll discuss a lot more later in the semester), and comes from an interactive graphic from the New York Times.

here is a really useful and informative site with updates on the nuclear crisis in Japan
http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm?

sam york

Reactor design in Japan has long been questioned; Wall St Falls on nuclear power crisis

Design weaknesses in General Electric designed Mark 1 nuclear reactor in Fukushima Daiichi, Japan make it prone to coolant failure and is at severe risk in the Japanese crisis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html

US stocks tumbling today in fear of nuclear catastrophe
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/markets-stocks-idUSN1524249620110315

sam york

Nuclear Disaster in Slow Motion

If past nuclear disasters (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) are any guide, we should expect this news story to be unfolding and changing for weeks, months, even years.

A couple of observations in comparison to those past disasters:

1)  It will likely take weeks or even months to get these reactors into a stable, unchanging state (say, no more risk of explosion, for example).  The latest news stories say that workers have to abandon the most damaged reactor.  If radiation levels are that high, there will not be any safe way for anyone to approach to implement containment, repair, or additional emergency measures.  Will helicopter tankers be brought in?  Other extreme measures?  In any case, there aren't any quick fixes for the conditions that have developed.

2) If there is a breach of containment and a large radiation release, we'll all be watching the plume travel around the world for weeks.  The fallout plume from Chernobyl traveled around the world in a few weeks, leaving radioactive cesium-137 and other isotopes everywhere.  The amounts were minimal in most places, but measurable, and they caused mass anxiety, to say the least.  I still don't see the radiation releases in this case getting to be as bad as Chernobyl, but even at the current levels, we'll be hearing about the fallout reaching the US...

3) It will likely be years before the full extent of the damage is known and understood.  In the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, it took until 1986 until a meltdown was actually confirmed.  It took that long to safely enter the reactor core with a remote-operated camera to actually figure it out.  Things have advanced a lot since then, but we may not have a straight answer on the status of these reactor cores for a long time.

So, get ready for the long haul!  Yikes.

it seems that four days after the earthquake, they're still having trouble coming up with a clear picture of whats going on. the confusion between search and rescue and trying to understand whats going on in the core could be troublesome to the future of nuclear tech if a large amount of workers are contaminated or worse. part of the problem i think is the media that would make it worse. i heard somewhere (or maybe it was a previous article) that this was the worst inccident since chernobyl. but they didn't mention it was the ONLY inccident since chernobyl and not casued by malfunction, but the 4th biggest recorded earthquake in history.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We're now into the fourth day. Whatever is happening in that core is taking a long time to unfold," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the nuclear policy program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They've succeeded in prolonging the timeline of the accident sequence."

"On Saturday, a similar explosion took place at the plant's Unit 1, injuring four workers and causing mass evacuations. A Japanese official said 22 people had been confirmed to have suffered radiation contamination and up to 190 may have been exposed. Workers in protective clothing used hand-held scanners to check people arriving at evacuation centers."

"On Monday, the U.S. Seventh Fleet moved its ships and aircraft away from Japan's northeast coast after discovering low-level radioactive contamination on crews returning from relief missions."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42066534/ns/world_news-asiapacific/?gt1=43001


Andrew Shen

The China Syndrome

"The China Syndrome" is a 1979 movie that I have not seen but apparently it is a movie about a hypothetical idea of an extreme result of a nuclear meltdown...
----------------------
The 'China Syndrome' refers to the most drastically severe meltdown a nuclear reactor could possibly achieve. In this case, the reactor would reach the highest level for a sustained period of time, resulting in the melting of its support infrastructure. The uranium in the core would behave in a similar manner to a delta-class fire, self-sustaining temperatures in excess of 2000°C. Since these temperatures would melt all materials around it, the reactor would sink due to gravity, effectively boring a hole through the reactor compartment's floor. (Lapp, Ralph E. "Thoughts on nuclear plumbing." The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1971)

Continue: http://www.examiner.com/law-enforcement-in-national/china-syndome-japan-u-s-officials-assess-nuclear-emergency-response


-ALicia

Japan fights to avert nuclear meltdown after quake

More about the damaged nuclear plants in Japan that exploded...


FEARS OVER OTHER REACTORS

The complex, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co, is the biggest nuclear concern but not the only one: on Monday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Japanese authorities had notified it of an emergency at another plant further north, at Onagawa.

But Japan's nuclear safety agency denied problems at the Onagawa plant, run by Tohoku Electric Power Co, noting that radioactive releases from the Fukushima Daiichi complex had been detected at Onagawa, but that these were within safe levels at a tiny fraction of the radiation received in an x-ray.

Shortly later, a cooling-system problem was reported at another nuclear plant closer to Tokyo, in Ibaraki prefecture.

Fukushima's No. 1 reactor, where the roof was ripped off, is 40 years old and was originally set to go out of commission in February but had its operating license extended by 10 years.

Continue here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-news-us-japan-quaketre72a0ss-20110311,0,7597594.story?track=rss

-Alicia

Updates on radiation exposure in Japan

Above is a pretty disturbing picture from the New York Times of a worker checking a child for contamination with radioisotopes from a nearby nuclear plant.


Here's a quote from the article:

"The emergency at the plant that suffered an explosion appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.
The government confirmed that radiation had escaped from the worst-hit plant, and local officials said that 22 people outside the plant showed signs of radiation exposure and about 170 other people near the plant had likely been exposed, but it was unclear if they had received dangerous doses. Early Sunday, the government said three workers were suffering full-out radiation illness"

Find the rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14nuclear.html?_r=1&hp

aliens disarming nuclear weapons

on a lighter note...

-Alex Ryan

This will change everything...

Wow, I can't believe this is all really happening.  One of the damaged nuclear plants in Japan had an explosion that blew off part of the roof. While they claim that the reactor "core" has not been breached, this explosion does increase the chances of radiation leaks to a wide area.  As I read about this, what's on my mind is the workers at the plant:  how are they working in this environment?  How are they problem-solving when the major parts of the reactor are in such unstable conditions? 

A 12-mile radius has been evacuated, and the authorities are passing out iodine pills.  Remember how we talked about those in class?  Horribly, the evacuation and radiation concerns are interfering with rescue operations related to the initial quake.

At this point, there is no question in my mind that we're witnessing a major game-changing historical moment in nuclear technology.  Wow.

A photo and some news:



New York Times article

Japan trying to prevent meltdown at nuclear plant in Fukushima

"A portion of Japan's nuclear reactors have been shut down in the wake of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, but officials are worried about the Fukushima plant, where the emergency cooling system is problematic."

"Emergency authorities have ordered the evacuation of all civilians in a two-mile radius around the power plant, a total of about 3,000 people, and are planning to vent slightly radioactive steam from the plant, which is located about 160 miles north of Tokyo. Those within a six-mile radius were warned to stay in their homes."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-japan-quake-nuclear-20110312,0,2627198.story

-Elliott M. Beazley

Ballistic Missiles may trigger Nuclear War

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/new-icbms-vs-terrorists-plan-now-50-less-crazy/#more-41976

Chia Chang Koo

New York Times investigative series on radiation regulation

 

 

Above are a couple of graphics from the New York Times series on excessive radiation exposure and lax regulation in medical radiation technology.  The full series has covered everything from dental x-rays to cancer treatments that involve beams created by particle accelerators.  The total volume of material collected on their website associated with this series is kind of amazing.  Check it out:


New York Times topic page for the "Radiation Boom" series of articles