Realistic dose limits and better predictive models will help Fukushima recovery
World Nuclear News published an article titled Consistency required for Fukushima return that mentions several topics worth increased discussion.
It mentions the report recently completed by the IAEA that complimented Japan on its efforts to decontaminate areas that were affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station radioactive material releases. Then it went on to provide a gentle reminder to the government leaders that science does not provide any extra credit for excessive effort once decontamination has reduced annual exposure levels to 20 mSv. Any expense or effort spent getting any lower than that is wasted.
Of course, the diplomatic IAEA said it a little differently. Here is how World Nuclear News reported it.
The IAEA team encouraged Japanese institutions to “increase efforts to communicate that in remediation situations, any level of individual radiation dose in the range of 1 to 20 mSv per year is acceptable and in line with the international standards and with the recommendations from the relevant international organisations.” Here they refer to studies from the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the IAEA itself.
Once again, I will point out that if 20 mSv is acceptable, any resources expended to move dose rates any lower are wasted. Since many of the remediation efforts involve scraping valuable topsoil and treating it as a waste product, I submit that extra effort imposes the lasting harm of less productive farm land.
The World Nuclear News report includes the following statement.
In 22 towns across Fukushima prefecture a study of 77,400 people recorded individual doses some three to seven times less than those predicted by the generic formula.
“There needs to be a continued movement towards the use of individual doses, as measured by personal dosimeters,” said the IAEA. This would support planning for resettlement, and can also reassure people in the wider prefecture – particularly parents of small children.
(Emphasis added.)
I’d like to propose a utilitarian solution that would increase overall happiness and safety.
- Invest in a well designed communications effort to help people understand that an annual dose rate of 20 mSv is perfectly acceptable by even the most conservative professional radiation protection organizations in the world.
- Include information about the fact that the dose that matters is the one measured based on actual behavior, not the one predicted using overly conservative models. Since the models exaggerate actual dose rate by a factor of at least three, areas that have been calculated to have doses rates as high as 60 mSv should be considered safe enough to repopulate now.
- Evaluate areas with modeled dose rates up to 140 mSv per year to see if the actual dose to people might still be within the conservative standard of 20 mSv/year.
A higher limit is probably justifiable, but let’s take this step now to reassure people and reduce stresses associated with displacement, disruption and excessive fear of radiation. I suspect that most of the people who were evacuated would love to have their life back.
PS The formal title of the IAEA report is The Follow-up IAEA International Mission on Remediation of Large Contaminated Areas Off-Site the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The report documents observations from an IAEA visit to Japan from Oct 14-21, 2013. It was issued on January 23, 2014.
It’s Time to Go Home And fire the nukes back.
My predicted Bob Applebaum response to this post:
“Japan is a democracy and the representatives elected by the people have decided what limits to evacuate for. Who am I or who are you, Rod, to tell them what to do? Blah blah blah. LNT!!!!”
Joel – You forgot to throw in gratuitous uses of the word “denier.”
I’m afraid that you make a sad Bob Applebaum. It’s hard to find a substitute for the original.
Keep trying, however; you just might yet manage to pull it off. By the way, you might want to ask for help from a couple of grade-school children, if you happen to be passing by an elementary school playground anytime soon. I’ve found that these young people are masters at the style of debate that Bob likes to engage in.
I did rush that comment a bit and forget to include an accusation of denier.
I actually spent a few minutes over the weekend on Bob’s blog, the RIB Joint. I find his overall position to be extremely unique. He, like the majority of pro-nuclear power advocates, finds Helen Caldicott’s hysterical claims about the dangers of radiation to be hysterical, yet he also denigrates pro-nuclear advocates anytime they actually point out that radiation at low enough doses is safe enough that more risk is incurred from worrying about it than the actual health risk that it poses.
I can’t imagine Bob having too terribly many friends considering his overall stances, but I will say right now, that if Bob still lives in Memphis, I will join him for a meal out there sometime the next time I make it to visit my younger brother who lives out there.
Joel – Bob’s position is not unique at all. There are many people out there who have a very personal interest in preserving the status quo. Bob’s just a bit more vocal and a bit more of an a-hole than most of them.
As Rod has pointed out on several occasions, Bob very much has a conflict of interest when it comes to this topic. As far as that goes, so do I, but at least I admit it. Take what you will from what we say. I try to frame my arguments on critical evaluation of the scientific literature — not simpleminded appeals to authority, false analogies, and name calling.
@Brian Mays
I certainly would love it if this were the case. It would be a welcome change, and a major benefit to others on the site to better understand these studies (their major strengths, weaknesses, application, etc.).
Thanks for making your view on this so clear … it should likely go a long ways to improving the quality of the discussion on the site.
Sorry, EL, I ain’t rising to the bait. Go play somewhere else. Nice try though.
If you’re paid by the comment, I guess it still counts, eh?
@Brian Mays
Nobody is getting paid for their contributions to the site (certainly not me). Do you have any basis for this (or just more name calling).
If you are still confused, please take it up with Rod.
Brian – although I frequently agree with your positions, you lost me with the above post, where in paragraph 1 you call Bob and “a-hole” and in paragraph 2, you say you don’t argue by “name calling.”
Gmax – What’s there not to understand? There was no argument in paragraph 1.
I never said that I don’t insult people whom I find to be utterly repugnant. When have I ever claimed that Bob is wrong because he’s an a-hole? (Cf. Bob’s liberal application of the label “denier.”) The two — his wrongness and his “holiness” — are mutually orthogonal, which I thought would be obvious to anyone who is paying attention.
“Brian – although I frequently agree with your positions, you lost me with the above post, where in paragraph 1 you call Bob and “a-hole” and in paragraph 2, you say you don’t argue by “name calling.””
Well, thats “debate” In Brain’s world.
Comical that he is so conspiracy minded that he accuses El of being a paid troll. If any “payments” make sense here, Rod would be paying Brian to STFU with the the abrasive braying Brian thinks he needs to add to the conversation.
Liar.
Let’s see …
Doesn’t believe in human induced climate change, attacks proponents of advanced nuclear technologies, often misleads on health science literature, is a conservative ideologue who attacks subsidies and government roles in regulation and technology development, takes pleasure in name calling and ad hominem (which he considers comical), lies about other people contributing to the site, gets frustrated when others offer substantive and well documented and independent arguments (which he labels as dubious debate tactics), and storms off in a huff when he loses an argument.
Yep … everyone else is a liar.
EL – You forgot “successfully baits simple-minded and predictable anonymous trolls on the Internet.” 😉
Yet, for all of your moaning, bellyaching, and highly dubious claims about me (all unsubstantiated of course), you have failed even to attempt to demonstrate that Piss is not a liar.
All I can conclude is that you woke up in a bad mood this morning. Please tell me again who is doing the huffing and puffing?
Brian, you know, you really are an obnoxious braying ass. Heres your insinuation…
“If you’re paid by the comment, I guess it still counts, eh?”
So, you gutless jackass, deny the gist of your insinuation.
@Brian Mays
Duly noted.
I will add cluttering up the site with evasive and “baiting” attacks to your list of dubious accomplishments! Good to know next time you claim: “I try to frame my arguments on critical evaluation of the scientific literature — not simpleminded appeals to authority, false analogies, and name calling..”
Piss – Since Rod’s favorite subject in school was English, I hope that he’ll forgive this slight off-topic digression.
A clause that begins with “if” is called a conditional clause, which is the natural lead in to a conditional sentence. It is not an accusation, nor does it “accuse” anyone of anything.
It appears that your knowledge of English grammar and semantics is as poor as your knowledge of science, technology, or anything else that doesn’t exclusively focus on attacking other people on the Internet over things that have nothing to do with the substance of the topic at hand.
If you ever do decide to get back to the original topic (which was Bob Applebaum, by the way), then please feel free to contribute something meaningful. Otherwise, you’re just as predictable as ever and highly entertaining to boot.
Heh … “gutless jackass” … and I’m supposed to be the obnoxious name-calling one.
EL – Why do you assume that I’m trying to make an argument here?
I am making no arguments at this time. There are no arguments. I’m merely trying to defend myself from constant spurious, and rather vindictive, attacks from a couple of anonymous Internet trolls. Indeed, it appears that you and Piss are now trying to tag team me, which hardly seems fair.
As for “cluttering up the site,” I’m not the one who has been suspected by the site owner with cluttering up (or rather “hijacking”) the comments on this site with off-topic nonsense — whether you’re being paid to do so or not is irrelevant. But on that note, yes, this BS has gone on long enough. While it has been fun making you and Piss dance your pathetic dance, the music has to end sometime, and my purpose was merely to demonstrate what worthless, vicious nonsense you two are more than willing to bring into this site.
Mission accomplished. Time to sign off. If you want to take this as a concession of defeat, EL, then more power to you. However, you should know that when someone “storms off in a huff” he is not usually laughing his ass off, as I am doing now. Have a nice day.
Yes, “gutless jackass”. Frankly, I’m suprised you offered that weasel like “if” horseshit. Your insinuation was blatant, and only an idiot would accept your back pedaled and disingenuous misrepresentation of the intent of the insinuation. “Gutless” pretty well covers it.
“Dishonest” is even better.
“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. — Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), 1888
Piss – Just because you are ignorant and sloppy in your choice of language, please don’t assume that everyone is as content to wallow in your lexicographic gutter.
But, perhaps I have been going about this the wrong way. Maybe this is something easier for you and EL to understand (since it has come to this): “Sticks and stones may break my bones …” You can google the rest.
@Brian Mays
I thought you said you were “laughing your ass off.”
What changed … had to get in one last joke?
EL, Brian and POA – please grow up and take your bickering elsewhere. No more comments along these lines will be allowed to remain in this thread.
Build 1000’s of LWR’s and the waste and contamination problems will overwhelm the world. The issue is that nobody wants to pay the huge bill of cleanup. Nations like Italy are paralyzed with the costs of non-radioactive trash disposal. And you want a competitive nuclear free-for-all on top of that?
You realistic dose limits will always be adjusted upwards. Thats your game.
Pray tell, what are the waste and contamination problems from the current 400-odd LWRs in the world? A few spent-fuel pools? Dry canisters baking ominously in the sun, threatening to crush someone to death if terrorists tried to steal one and it fell off their forklift?
Do you consider the 1.8 million people that nuclear power has saved from death by fossil-fuel pollution to be a “contamination problem”?
You normally set the local standard for vacuity, but this time you’ve really out-done yourself.
“Build 1000′s of LWR’s and the waste and contamination problems will overwhelm the world. The issue is that nobody wants to pay the huge bill of cleanup.”
Yes because the waste problem for the 58 reactors in France is so large. A whole room is used. How can they cope…
You really are against energy, you just want to see peak energy as soon as possible.
Now I hope the IAEA will put boots on the ground and deliver the news in person and do proper PR.
Its one thing to write the report, its another one to have it sink in.
As for the japanese media, like NHK news, no mention of this in the last few days.
The pro nuclear thought leadership in Japan comes from the cab drivers as one company refused passage to an anti nuke. Funny but here it is:
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201401160046
“I suspect that most of the people who were evacuated would love to have their life back.”
Why don’t they go to that other nuclear paradise in Russia? Oh wait, they can’t, its closed…no doubt due to all the tourists demanding beneficial radiation treatment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozyorsk,_Chelyabinsk_Oblast
Ozyorsk or Ozersk (Russian: Озёрск) is a [b]closed[5] town [/b]in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia.
Ozyorsk was and remains a closed town because of its proximity to the Mayak plant, one of the sources of Soviet plutonium during the Cold War, and now a Russian facility for processing nuclear waste and recycling nuclear material from decommissioned nuclear weapons.
The plant itself covers an area of approximately 90 km² and employs about 15,000 people.
The Mayak is primarily engaged in reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear submarines and icebreakers and from nuclear power plants
particularly during the Soviet atomic bomb program. Built and operated with great haste and disregard for safety, between 1945 and 1957 the Mayak plant dumped and released large amounts of solid, liquid and gaseous radioactive material into the area immediately around the plant. Over time, the sum of radionuclide contamination is estimated to 2-3 Chernobyl explosions.
Did I miss the point of this? The waste contamination came from the Atomic Bomb program. Not really relevant to nuclear power or current technology and likely at a levels in those areas that isn’t really “low dose.” Also significant heavy metal contamination. So no, they didn’t build a thriving health spa resort and theme park there. Its all really surprising.
60 closed cities in Russia alone. Guess who administrates them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_town#Closed_cities_of_the_former_USSR
“There are currently 44 publicly acknowledged closed cities in Russia with a total population of about 1.5 million people. 75% are administered by the Russian Ministry of Defense, with the rest being administered by the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, formerly the Ministry for Atomic Energy (Minatom).[4] Another 15 or so closed cities are believed to exist, but their names and locations have not been publicly disclosed by the Russian government.[5]”
“The list cites air pollution by particulates (including radioisotopes strontium-90, and caesium-137 and metals ”
“There were two closed cities in Estonia: Sillamäe and Paldiski. As all the other industrial cities, the population of them was mainly Russian-speaking. Sillamäe was the site for a chemical factory that produced fuel rods and nuclear materials for the Soviet nuclear power plants and weapon facilities”
———————–
Russia: The Nuclear Paradise. So safe but they won’t let you in to see for yourself
So you think Russia represents the height of environmental technology, sensible government oversight/regulation and ethical business practice?? – “If they cant do it no one can”?
Ok. I see.
Russia is becoming one of the developing world’s default nuclear venders now as American nuclear has withered, been bought out, transferred overseas and crippled by unreasonable FUD.
So if that was what the anti nukes wanted they should be quite proud.
“Russia: The Nuclear Paradise. So safe but they won’t let you in to see for yourself”
I love the anti nuke people. Do you want to read the rest of the environment destruction that the former Soviet Union did because they did not care about people or nature in their hunt for a new man?
Do you live in a bubble where it is only nuclear that is bad?
“The Most Senseless Environmental Crime of the 20th Century”
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774/
– “in 1957, the ship’s crew discovered dense conglomerations of humpback whales to the north, off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. There were so many of them, packed so close together, the Slava’s helicopter pilots joked that they could make an emergency landing on the animals’ backs”
– “In five years of intensive whaling by first one, then two, three, and finally four fleets,” he wrote, the populations of humpback whales off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand “were so reduced in abundance that we can now say that they are completely destroyed!”
I dunno, I’m going by a news article (linked below) as opposed to the full report, but the appearance is that the IAEA is agreeing with the notion of having a “goal” of reducing dose rates down to 100 mrem/yr.
http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2014/01/24/iaea-report-praises-japan-s-efforts-to-reduce-residual-radiation-doses
The resulting impression is that even nuclear expert bodies concur with the notion that reducing dose rates down to that level is justified, and is not an extreme waste of public money (that could be used to save large numbers of lives if put to another purpose). Shame on the IAEA for not making a forceful statement that no efforts should be made to reduce dose rates that lie within the natural range (e.g., ~1 Rem/year). There are countless sources of collective exposure (man-Rem) that are thousands to millions of times higher, and would be orders of magnitude less expensive to reduce, but no efforts are being made in those areas.
BTW, might this (link below) possibly be a reason why the Fukushima event is being hyped so much, particularly in the Japanese press? Perhaps one for the smoking gun file…..
http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/commodities/articles/liquefied-natural-gas-LNG-Fukushima-nuclear/1/27/2014/id/53507
Once again, I will point out that if 20 mSv is acceptable, any resources expended to move dose rates any lower are wasted. Since many of the remediation efforts involve scraping valuable topsoil and treating it as a waste product, I submit that extra effort imposes the lasting harm of less productive farm land.
They weren’t hyper hysterical for long over Love Canal being closed out for good, and Fukushima’s land ain’t any Love Canal!
So according to STARVINGLION he cannot see the difference between HEU irradiated in a weapons program production reactor to be reprocessed for weapons grade material and LEU used in a LWR for electricity production and reprocessed to be used again in a LWR for electricity generation.
Let’s put his argument another way…
The USSR had an extensive bio weapons program
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopreparat
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program
This program contaminated towns and killed civilians. Following SL’s logic that means we should not use biological engineering to produce vaccines or medicine.
Seems a little silly when put that context doesn’t it?
Realistically, Fukushima never needed to recover as it never needed to be evacuated, nobody outside of the plant itself received levels of exposure that was even considered to be in the zone suitable for radiation Hormesis to be effective. The ridiculously low levels they are trying to achieve in Japan are certainly going to make many clean-up contractors (criminal gangs) very wealthy, though not the workers themselves. To use Galen Winsor as an example of just how cavalier we could be with radiation and get away with it might certainly raise some eyebrows, but I liked the guy. And I would really have liked them to have tried re-starting TMI just as an experiment. He based his opinion on the logs of the event, that a prompt criticality or something had ocurred, and that it had not melted down, so what would have happened? It couldn’t explode, but would the junk lying at the bottom of the vessel have prevented getting it going again, or would there have been another ‘event’?
If the morbid fear of radiation could ever be overcome, then there are many more benefits that could be gained, not just in power generation, but in waste treatment, water purification, portable heat sources, a tan much safer than from a tanning salon or even from the Sun, cost savings in spent fuel handling and storage, and perhaps even a chance to revitalise much industry by building small, safe, even portable nuclear generation systems in places such as railway locomotive fabrication shops or other under-utilised capacity that the USA now has lots of. It may be too late to turn around public opinion, the fear has become engrained in the publics mind by a long, concerted effort by those who stand to lose the most from a nuclear enabled economy, and we know just who those players are.
Some of the control rods were damages or melted and I am pretty sure would be unable to be moved as well as there would have been major cooling/moderator blockage. I don’t know enough about the chemistry but I would guess that even if the rods could be moved the neutron absorbing material from the rods and possibly any boron from the coolant that melted together would poison any criticality. With some of the middle of the core relocated to the bottom head I don’t even think the geometry existed for criticality.
If you’ve never seen them check out the tmi-II recovery videos on you tube. You can see the core bore footage showing a gap in the core where prices of fuel assemblies were.
I liked the videos I saw of Galen but on restarting tmi I think he did not have all the information at that time to make an accurate assessment. Even Met-Ed made statements that the plant would be repaired and restarted early after the event. I wish they could have developed a way to replace the reactor vessel and bring that valuable resource back on line.
garyn wrote:
He based his opinion on the logs of the event, that a prompt criticality or something had occurred, and that it had not melted down, so what would have happened?
Galen Winsor apparently discovered some heretofore unknown principle of nuclear physics. By design, the uranium enrichment in a commercial power reactor is WAY too low for it to go prompt critical.
Someone should tell Arnie Gundersen that….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW5Z77-woCQ
It’s a while since I watched Galens video, but I thought he had said that the event was some kind of ‘flash in the pan”, or vessel in this case. And I’m not a nuclear scientist so not up on the definition of a prompt criticality, but I have a better understanding now. If what Arnie is saying is true though, and evidence were found to support his theory, then it would lead me to consider that something was done intentionally. Maybe not a micro-nuke, and maybe sometimes my imagination gets the better of me, but…