Radiation Suppression in Japan

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Today I read it has gone beyond Chernobyl in amount released, and has crossed the ocean and and is falling in Idaho rain.

What to do? Raise the exposure limits.

In another article, "Living in LA causes brain damage." Smog plus particles=brain damage in rats, at lower levels than people in LA get.

This wonderful modern era, Tetra Ethel Lead reduced IQs some 20% mostly the children born in cities from 1955 to 75.

Fallout from atomic testing contamated the southwest, but the cattle were still sent to market. Decades of atomic beef.

DDT, Dioxen, PCBs, and a long list of chemicals now banned, but cleanup is impossible.

Radiation is from particles, standards and limits are for radiation, not ingesting or breathing a particle. The main reason they cannot burn the dead is the plume of smoke would carry the particles high, and they would be in North America in days.

We have not gotten to the good stuff yet, MOX, fuel rods with Plutonium, when that goes up, it has long lasting effects.

One leak has been reported as being fixed, low level from spent fuel rod pools, the water they now will dump in the ocean, The buildings are filled with much hotter water, which they will store, from the reactor leaks.

Once I saw them spraying the outside with water to cool the reactors, they had lost control. When they did get water inside the reactors they got Hydrogen explosions. The core is too hot for water cooling, now they are trying Nitrogen injection, but a melted core will not be cooled, as it is far hotter than the design the reactor was to hold.

Basement water is a direct reactor leak, much like going inside a reactor. Pump it out the place is still highly radioactive. Placing the pipes, pumps, generators, electrical lines, below the reactor, could be called a design flaw.

As the reactor design was for a submarine, open a sea cock and let the ocean flow through was the last defense. Nothing will explode underwater. Using the same design on land with electrical and diesel pumps in the celler, no gravity fed water system, could be called a design flaw.

Using Plutonium fuel rods is another flaw, the half life is very long. The only way I see to stop the meltdown progression is pumping in a lot of water and letting it flow to the ocean. The Japan Current will carry it to British Columbia and Washington State.

The good is the fish will be to hot to eat. Like most of the ocean it has been overfished. Ending fishing will be good for the fish.

As the radiation moves up the life chain, Killer Whales will mutate, grow legs and return to land to feed. That could help with the overpopulation problem we have. As a protected species they will be free to eat humans.

Some good could come of this.

Tell me Inventor.

How do you know THAT particular mutation will occur in Killer Whales? Not all organisms affected by radiations have mutated into developping a 3rd leg (or more).

I can only hope for the best. Fish have short lives, seals eat them, they are whale food. With a seal shortage, whales will have to find something.

All life comes from the ocean, some like seals and whales are land animals that returned to the sea, they could return to the land by reversing the DNA change that adapted them to the sea. The potential for being a land animal is still there.

Broader, we know radation causes mutation, and most is a third leg and not useful. The ocean gets a few billion shots at producing the few who will survive. Like the little jellyfish that recently grow to six hundred pounds, directly caused by pollution from China, life is always ready for change.

When something figures out how to eat six hundred pound jellyfish, we get a new Megladon. This is not a few Fruit Flies exposed to X-Rays in the lab. The whole ocean is being exposed. For one, most of the Oxygen is produced in the ocean by plankton. A mutation there would change things.

I will have to admit, I know of no record of sea mammals returning to the land, except some say humans did. They have the attached skin and fat layer of a marine mammal.

It does seem possible, but a divergence would have left some marine humans.

Little is known in science about results, even when we know the causes. Radiation causes mutation, The Geologic record has periods of mass mutation, Short in Geology, long in our years.

I rely on early B Movies. Godzilla started this way. The six hundred pound jelly fish came suddenly. Will they grow to a ton? Five tons? When killed they spawn thousands. We have changed the balance of life in the ocean, over fishing, pollution, and it is responding before dumping the waste of at least four reactors.

After gaining control, which could take years, it will take decades to decomission the plant, and while the zone of contamination is still spreading, the land around will be off limits for fifty years or more. Chernoybl is closed for hundreds of years. We have never had an ocean contaminated.

No huge Chernobl bats killing everything yet, but give it time.

Killer whales growing legs is far fetched, most likely the dolphins,

Finally, Japanese government acknowledges the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi is as bad as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at Pripyat, Ukraine.
Both disasters are at level 7 with longterm effects on people and environment due to the release of high levels of radiation.

I used to argue with my recently departed Aspie father about Nuclear Power back in the sixties. I said that you generate and concentrate all these really toxic materials that have such a long toxic life that no security measures would ever be enough or even feasible. He said we would come up with a way to treat the waste and make it safe (his first job was with the uranium division of Mallinkrodt). In Vermont here we have the same type of reactor as the Japanese ones that were hurt in the earthquake/tsunami. The Vermont plant finds low levels of unexplained toxic radioactives in the ground water, but can never seem to find and fix the leak. The gov is probably going to shut it down this year much to the dismay of those who think we are missing out on "cheap" power. The true reality is that like so much else in business, the eventual cost of shutting down the plant and making the waste on-site safe for the next 20,000 years is not reflected in the current sale price of the electricity. Guess who pays?

PS - father dear, I think I won the argument

Nuclear waste can be reprocessed for further use as nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants. The only reason why it's not done in the US is because of the politics involved due to fears that the reprocessed uranium could be used for nuclear weapons. The newer breeder reactors also produce about no radioactive waste at all because they use up about all the uranium as well as the the radioactive products, eventually transmuting them into non-radioactive substances such as lead.

Lead is used as a coolant. I haven't read anywhere that the wastes get transmuted into lead.

I probably have to look up what the resultant product of the nuclear reactions I'm thinking about are. However, the older reactors in the first place produce an extremely small amount of waste compared to the amount of carbon emissions released by coal power stations. Plus that waste may not even be properly called waste because it can reprocessed and reused as fuel. What I was saying about the fast breeder reactors is that they continue to use the fission products as fuel. In fact they are designed to produce more fuel than they use, thus eliminating the need to dispose of the fission products as waste and eventually only produce about 1% of the quantity of radioactive waste that normal reactors do. Also yes, even that radioactive waste can be treated by transmuting it into less radioactive substances. I need to look up what products the of nuclear reactions used to transmute them are, it may not be lead. However, my arguments still stand.

Virtually all heavy radioactive metals transmute to lead.

ruveyn

Breeder reactors have their positives, but what about the extra Uranium-233 hanging around? Do we really need a surplus.

Ruvey, what I meant was, I haven't read about Thorium being transmuted into lead in breeder reactors. I read about thorium producing U-233. There's a thorium reactor in India, it's still experimental. There are no commercial thorium reactors at the moment, according to the stuff I have read so far on the internet.

It can be recycled. By other types of breeder reactors. The ultimate product is lead.

ruveyn

You don't seem to understand how breeder reactors work. Breeder reactors do not necessarily have to be thorium fueled reactors. With, regards to the thorium fuel cycle, thorium cannot be used directly for nuclear power because it is not fissionable. The actual fuel used in thorium fueled reactors is the uranium-233 which is transmuted from the thorium, so the uranium will not be dumped anywhere because it is not waste. Secondly, the breeder reactors also re-use the fission products of the uranium as fuel as well, and again re-use the products of those etc (or if not, it can be re-used in another different kind of breeder reactor). Lead would be the final end product of this whole chain of nuclear reactions, it does not mean that thorium has to be transmuted directly to lead.

I read there will be a surplus of U-233 in such breeder reactors and it can be sold to other places needing fuel or used to manufacture missiles.

The problem with breeders is, the local power company would have bomb grade material. I do not trust Entergy that much, neither does the Atomic Energy Commission, or the international oversite groups.

Using warheads for fuel has to be secure, very secure. 16 pounds makes a bomb, suitcase nuke.

Hanford and Oak Ridge could be secure, already have the bomb, we must dispose of a lot, various grades, a breeder works, and we get energy to do other things.

10% of our warheads could destroy the planet, We still have bombs made in the 40's. Other people have more.

Disposing of excess overkill is a good idea.

That's what I was getting at Inventor. Ouch, the power companies would have all this spare U-233. I knew someone would have it, didn't know who. Private citizens, energy regulating committees, energy corporations, government personnel, nuclear regulatory commission or just private uranium brokers, lol.
My problem with hatching this breeder program is too much Uranium floating around. It could backfire on us. We could be hit with a dirty bomb if it gets in the wrong hands. With domestic and international terrorists as potential markets, do we want to risk it?
Some experts think there are suitcases of spare Plutonium already in this country waiting to be made into dirty bombs.

Thing is, since power companies will have the excess, and they are companies, they are going to be tempted to make some money by selling it.

Or it could just be used as fuel at other nuclear power stations, which I think is a good use for it. If we banned every technology that could be used for bad things and could be dangerous then humans would never of been able to utilize fire even after it was discovered it discovered how to control it. I don't see the potential of nuclear weapons proliferation as a reason to ban breeder reactors altogether anymore than the possibility of murdering someone with a spear is a reason to ban hunting spears. I also think that the fact that the extra U-233 can be used for energy is actually a good thing. Besides, the IAEA can regulate the usage and send inspectors to make sure that you're not manufacturing nuclear weapons.