Vocal Voices

It is nice to see a BBC articlewhich is showing the reality of the situation.

From the Article.

As our bus left reactor four and drove along the sea front, I pointed my new monitor out of the window towards reactor building three. Suddenly the needle started to spike - 1,000 counts per second, then 2,000, 3,000, finally it went off the scale.

There, outside the bus, just a few dozen meters away is the real dead zone, a place where it is still far too dangerous for anyone to go. No human has been inside reactor three since the disaster. To do so would be suicide. No-one knows when it will be possible to go in.

When I asked the same experts how long it would be until reactors one, two and three could be dismantled, they shook their heads. When I asked them where they thought the melted reactor cores were, they shook their heads again.

Yes, I read the report.

The first part is factual. It gives a bit of history and background, then:

So what can I report? Mainly that I feel somewhat reassured by what I have seen. The preparations for the fuel removal appear meticulous.

From that point the article explains what has gone on and what is hoped for the future.

Then the article descends into the scare story. We have the Dead Zone and the terrors that lie within. We have the counts: 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, off the scale. He has been zapped, sterilised, and will be lucky to alive by the time the plane lands at Heathrow. Or will he?

The counts will be Bequerels, they have to be, so let's take a look:

1 adult human (100 Bq/kg) 7000 Bq
1 kg of coffee 1000 Bq
1 kg superphosphate fertiliser 5000 Bq
The air in many 100 sq metre European homes (radon) up to 30 000 Bq
1 household smoke detector (with americium) 30 000 Bq
Radioisotope for medical diagnosis 70 million Bq
Radioisotope source for medical therapy 100 000 000 million Bq (100 TBq)
1 luminous Exit sign (1970s) 1 000 000 million Bq (1 TBq)
1 kg uranium 25 million Bq
1 kg uranium ore (Canadian, 15%) 26 million Bq
1 kg uranium ore (Australian, 0.3% 500 000 Bq
1 kg low level radioactive waste 1 million Bq
1 kg of coal ash 2000 Bq
1 kg of granite 1000 Bq

Whatever you do don't go to hospital. The demons there are ready to zap you with 100 000 000 million Bq, not 3,000.

Hmmm,

they'll talk about the 500 tonnes of spent fuel they are going to take out of the cooling pool.

They won't talk about the tons of highly radioactive melted cores they can't go anywhere near or fix which have breached the containment walls and are leaking highly toxic materials every day.

No, they are confident in the stuff that doesn't really matter that much....

The rest they won't talk about.

Maybe so, but it was an environmental not an operational disaster, and we need to cut them some slack.

Fukushima is not a Three Mile Island or a another Chernobyl, it is unique.