The media frenzy about the detection of water leaks from the vast tank farm that Tokyo Electric Power Company has been forced to build to store water used to cool the three damaged cores at their Fukushima Daiichi power station continues to sizzle, even in the face of the potential for US attack on Syria….
After posting Fear mongering over WATER leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi a number of people challenged the concentration numbers I used in the supporting calculations. This August 23, 2013 Tepco press release contains numbers that roughly correspond to those I used, so I pressed the challengers for a source. They pointed me to a Tepco handout…
Update: (Posted August 30, 2013 0646) There is a companion post in response to comments and additional information developed in the period since the original publication. End Update. I’ll start with the bottom line first: despite all word to the contrary, there is no reason for anyone to be concerned that “contaminated” water from the…
By A. David Rossin Internationally recognized radiation engineer Ted Rockwell raised more than a few eyebrows when he maintained, in the aftermath of the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan, that the fear of radiation does more harm than the radiation itself. Responsible health experts know that outside the plant boundaries, radiation levels are detectable but low,…
Galen Winsor was a hands-on nuclear expert in the fullest sense of the phrase. Before irrational radiation protection rules were imposed, he and his colleagues directly handled used fuel. Since they needed to touch radioactive materials to accomplish their mission, they could not maximize distance or use shielding. Instead they limited their exposure time and…
Dr. James Conca has published another important post about the aftermath of Fukushima and the efforts of the people opposed to the use of nuclear energy to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about imaginary health effects of low dose radiation. The article is titled Fukushima 2.25 — The Humanitarian Crisis; it is a “must read”…
Correction: (Posted at 6:43 on 6/16/2013) I made a boneheaded error in the below computation and dropped an important prefix in my units. That error resulted in my final number being off by a factor of 1000; I wrote 0.001 mrem when it should have been 0.001 rem. I apologize for the math error. I…
Jim Hopf recently published a thought provoking post on ANS Nuclear Cafe titled New EPA Guidelines for Response to Radioactivity Releases. In that post he points out the illogical way that the EPA applies and enforces its assumption that any ionizing radiation is hazardous, even down at levels far below natural background. Jim points out…
After reading Dr. Jerry Cuttler’s paper about the need to restore the basis of radiation regulations to tolerance doses, an Atomic Insights reader provided the link to the above video posted by bionerd23 on YouTube. It is one of several informative videos that she has shared with the world about her explorations to increase both…
Dr. Jerry Cuttler has been concentrating his research on the health effects of low dose radiation for more than 15 years. The events at Fukushima and the human tragedy of the poor decision making both during and after the release of modest quantities of radioactive material have reinforced the importance of his work. Dr. Cuttler…
After deliberating for a period of time approaching a decade, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a new draft Protective Action Manual that includes Protective Action Guides (PAG) for people responsible for responding to radioactive material releases that might come from one of the following sources: a fire in a major facility such…
I stumbled across the above video from DNews. Here is how DNews describes itself: DNews is dedicated to satisfying your curiosity and to bringing you mind-bending stories and perspectives you won’t find anywhere else. New videos, twice daily at youtube.com/dnews Though there are some points that could be improved, I think the presenter did a…