Massive earthquakes have caused nuclear reactors in japan to go into critical mode. I am not educated in nuclear reactors but I deal with radioactive isotopes and radiation daily. The max anyone not monitored by the state is 2 milirem a hour. The max allowed is 1250 milirem per a three month time frame. For there to be an area of 12 miles cleared around the most critical reactor the levels must be approaching 2 mr at a considerable distance. 450 rem is deadly dose. Any release of radioactive isotopes could be a desaster for japan. Diffrent isotopes have diffrent halflives. For example a release of ceisum would have a halflife of 37 years. It would take 37 years for the radioactive intensity of ceisum to be cut by half. Another chernoybl is brewing in japan. If clouds of radioactive isotopes travel over the pacific fallout can occur in the west coast
theyve already released radioactivity in attempts to prevent the core from melting and the half life depends on the isotope not the element. cesium has numerous isotopes with vastly different half lives. i have much more faith in the japs to handle it than the russians. besides the prevailing winds go east i expect, so even a chernobyl type incident should have relatively minimal effect
The isotopes I am familiar with are ceisum 137 , iridium 192 and cobolt 60. The jet stream could carry fallout eastward. In ww2 japan released ballons with small bombs into the jet stream and many found their way to the USA. The release of radioactive isotopes from Chernobyl still to this day keep people from entering the area except for limited amounts of time. Reports have said that radiation levels are 400 times safe levels. The safe level in the USA is 2 mr per hr. This would put the level at approx 800 mr per hour. This would cause any one person exposed to this level for one full day to pick up more than what would be allowed in a three month peoriod. Thousands of people live around these reactors. Many may not be able to return to their property for some time.
Workers would have to be swapped out to keep anyone from being over exposed. Many that worked on the Chernobyl meltdown gave their lives to contain the meltdown. However, U.S. nuclear experts told ABC News late Friday ET that they were regaining optimism as a high-level Japanese nuclear official told them that water levels were stabilizing. On the other hand, a meltdown could lead to a breach of the reactor's steel containment vessel and allow radiation to escape into an outer, concrete containment building, or even into the environment. "Up to 100 percent of the volatile radioactive Cesium-137 content of the pools could go up in flames and smoke, to blow downwind over large distances," said Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, which is an advocacy group that opposes nuclear weapons and power. "Given the large quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel in the pool, the radioactivity release could be worse than the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe of 25 years ago. This is why I referenced ceisum 137. The halflife of any realease would be 37 years.
obviously its not a good situation, but i cant imagine that it will be even 1/10 as bad as chernobyl.
Japan uses light water reactors that are safer than the old soviet models. Explosion of the core isn't as easy to happen. If they can cool the core everything will settle down. If the core can't be cooled the a release can happen. Just the release of radiation isn't that bad it's the release of radioactive isotopes that would contiminate large areas.
More problems. 11 missing more injured in reactor 2 exploision. Core fuel rods are now exposed and they should be under water. It's going to get bad. Japan is the third largest world economy. It's going to be very bad for the world economy. Japan has almost half the population of the USA in the size of California. Everyone should be vary worried about this. Japan also is a stablizing factor in the far east. A weakened japan emboldens north korea and china. I don't see a good outcome in this.
According to this Times Picayune graph, there are 8 levels of nuclear accidents, graded 0-7 A 0 has no safety threat, a 7 is a major accident. Chernobyl was a 7, Three Mile Island was a 5. The Fukushima Dai Ichi crisis has been upgraded from a 4 to a 6: http://media.nola.com/news_impact/photo/graphic-japannuke2-031611jpg-9957f91af1335f18.jpg
The biggest issue with Chernobyl was a lack of a containment chamber around the reactor itself so when it exploded it immediately began to spit radioactive debris into the air. The explosion also started a fire that spread poisonous fumes for ten days. It wasn't until four days later that alarms went off in Sweden that anyone even knew of the disaster because the Soviets were tight-lipped. The lack of containment vessel allowed the radioactive smoke and debris to be spread, contaminating a good 25 square miles around the facility and deeming it unlivable. Also the Russians used graphite as a modrrator to slow down the particles before they were split. Current reactors use water. The difference of course is that graphite burns, which led to the main explosion that exposed the core of the reactor. In all honestly, the Chernobyl reactor shouldn't even have been operating. It was outdated, first generation technology. The Fukushima plant shut down automatically mere seconds after the first shockwaves of the earthquake. The Japanese have three containment systems and they use sea water instead of carbon. The wind is also carrying the radiation out into the Pacific that last I heard which is a pretty lucky break.
