5 ms·

Japan to raise Fukushima crisis level to worst, same as Chernobyl

22 points by chailatte 16y ago

phlux 16y ago
Here is a vid talking about how the fuel rods shattered/melted: http://vimeo.com/22209827 http://vimeo.com/22209827
chailatte 16y ago
"Haruki Madarame, chairman of the commission, which is a government panel, said it has estimated that the release of 10,000 terabecquerels (a trillion becquerels) of radioactive materials per hour continued for several hours (after the quake)" http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/84721.html http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/84721.html
- Aron 16y ago
  I noticed that since it was quantitative. Hiroshima was 8 Yottabecquerels, which would require 9,000 years at 10,000 terabecquerels per hour to accomplish.
  - usaar333 16y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but these units seem all messed up. A becquerel is the number of radioactive emissions per second. So stating becquerels per time is like talking about power per time. Are we talking about a mean over a period, a cumulative total (becquerels hour), or what? I'm guessing the Hiroshima blast number is the instantaneous peak.
    - Aron 16y ago
      Yeah I mixed my units. We'd have to assume that's a peak figure and that it continued for a full second (or equivalent) to fix my comparison. I suspect the peak output was much briefer than a full second. Probably best to throw out my original comment.
  - dan_netwalker 16y ago
    Hiroshima's "Little Boy": the first in history nuclear explosive device used to attack an enemy faction. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: approximately 600 to 860 milligrams of matter. Milligrams! And a big part of that got aniquilated in the explosion. Chernobil: one nuclear reactor explodes spreading radioactive materials in aerosol form. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: 180 tonns. Fukushima: six nuclear reactors, one of them a plutonium reactor, gets severilly damaged after several eathquakes and a tsunami hits the nuclear plant, starts spreading radioactive materials in aerosol form and dumping tonns of contaminated water to the sea. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: 7,200 tonns. Call me pesimistic, but I think this is an entirelly different leage, one that may make Chernobil look like a propane gas escape. And I wish I'm wrong...
    - usaar333 16y ago
      Well, Little Boy was undergoing nuclear fission which releases far more energy than some radioactive materials. Fukushima is much better contained than Chernobyl; namely, the whole plant isn't on fire, spewing massive amounts of radioactive gasses.
rhygar 16y ago
No need to worry, nuclear power is just fine and perfectly safe for day to day power needs.
patio11 16y ago
This makes for a good lesson in marketing and measuring things. In marketing, if you change the name of a thing on an arbitrary scale, that's newsworthy. If it hits the best/worst thing on the arbitrary scale, that's newsworthy. No actual human being gets a banana worth of radiation more or less because this is a 7 as opposed to a 6 -- it is totally a marketing event. In terms of measuring things: scales with < 10 points on them do very, very poor jobs at compressing certain distributions. It's kind of like saying that someone is in income quintile 5 -- the same quintile as Bill Gates! If you didn't know that the underlying distribution of incomes looks like what it looks like, you might assume that second person is omg rich. (Quintile 5 starts at about $90k a household.) Similarly, the scale of nuclear accidents from "non-event" to Chernobyl to "hypothetical-end-of-the-world" has an awful lot of very consequential dynamic range in it. The overwhelming takeaway among lay people from this marketing event is going to be "Fukushima is about as bad as Chernobyl" -- that is objectively, dangerously false, just like "X is about as rich as Bill Gates" is likely catastrophically wrong and would lead to terrible decisions if you acted on it.
- afterburner 16y ago
  I don't think the scale was meant as a public marketing tool, but rather as something to indicate the level of attention international organizations need to give an event (in order to help/react/contain). Also, plenty of the articles mention the amount of material released is about 10% of Chernobyl's release. What this really means is, as everyone has hopefully already realized, this crisis is worse than had originally been thought.
- harisenbon 16y ago
  Definitely another case of the media being idgits when it comes to any news regarding a disaster. While OP's title "Same as Chernobyl," is technically correct when talking about the level, the amount of radiation is not comparable. in fact, from the article: The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl. And now we're going to start getting phone calls in the middle of the night again from worried relatives. :/
  - 16y ago

22 points by chailatte 16y ago

phlux 16y ago

Here is a vid talking about how the fuel rods shattered/melted: http://vimeo.com/22209827 http://vimeo.com/22209827

"Haruki Madarame, chairman of the commission, which is a government panel, said it has estimated that the release of 10,000 terabecquerels (a trillion becquerels) of radioactive materials per hour continued for several hours (after the quake)" http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/84721.html http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/84721.html

Aron 16y ago
I noticed that since it was quantitative. Hiroshima was 8 Yottabecquerels, which would require 9,000 years at 10,000 terabecquerels per hour to accomplish.
- usaar333 16y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but these units seem all messed up. A becquerel is the number of radioactive emissions per second. So stating becquerels per time is like talking about power per time. Are we talking about a mean over a period, a cumulative total (becquerels hour), or what? I'm guessing the Hiroshima blast number is the instantaneous peak.
  - Aron 16y ago
    Yeah I mixed my units. We'd have to assume that's a peak figure and that it continued for a full second (or equivalent) to fix my comparison. I suspect the peak output was much briefer than a full second. Probably best to throw out my original comment.
- dan_netwalker 16y ago
  Hiroshima's "Little Boy": the first in history nuclear explosive device used to attack an enemy faction. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: approximately 600 to 860 milligrams of matter. Milligrams! And a big part of that got aniquilated in the explosion. Chernobil: one nuclear reactor explodes spreading radioactive materials in aerosol form. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: 180 tonns. Fukushima: six nuclear reactors, one of them a plutonium reactor, gets severilly damaged after several eathquakes and a tsunami hits the nuclear plant, starts spreading radioactive materials in aerosol form and dumping tonns of contaminated water to the sea. Total amount of nuclear fuel on site: 7,200 tonns. Call me pesimistic, but I think this is an entirelly different leage, one that may make Chernobil look like a propane gas escape. And I wish I'm wrong...
  - usaar333 16y ago
    Well, Little Boy was undergoing nuclear fission which releases far more energy than some radioactive materials. Fukushima is much better contained than Chernobyl; namely, the whole plant isn't on fire, spewing massive amounts of radioactive gasses.

rhygar 16y ago

No need to worry, nuclear power is just fine and perfectly safe for day to day power needs.

patio11 16y ago

This makes for a good lesson in marketing and measuring things. In marketing, if you change the name of a thing on an arbitrary scale, that's newsworthy. If it hits the best/worst thing on the arbitrary scale, that's newsworthy. No actual human being gets a banana worth of radiation more or less because this is a 7 as opposed to a 6 -- it is totally a marketing event. In terms of measuring things: scales with < 10 points on them do very, very poor jobs at compressing certain distributions. It's kind of like saying that someone is in income quintile 5 -- the same quintile as Bill Gates! If you didn't know that the underlying distribution of incomes looks like what it looks like, you might assume that second person is omg rich. (Quintile 5 starts at about $90k a household.) Similarly, the scale of nuclear accidents from "non-event" to Chernobyl to "hypothetical-end-of-the-world" has an awful lot of very consequential dynamic range in it. The overwhelming takeaway among lay people from this marketing event is going to be "Fukushima is about as bad as Chernobyl" -- that is objectively, dangerously false, just like "X is about as rich as Bill Gates" is likely catastrophically wrong and would lead to terrible decisions if you acted on it.

afterburner 16y ago
I don't think the scale was meant as a public marketing tool, but rather as something to indicate the level of attention international organizations need to give an event (in order to help/react/contain). Also, plenty of the articles mention the amount of material released is about 10% of Chernobyl's release. What this really means is, as everyone has hopefully already realized, this crisis is worse than had originally been thought.
harisenbon 16y ago
Definitely another case of the media being idgits when it comes to any news regarding a disaster. While OP's title "Same as Chernobyl," is technically correct when talking about the level, the amount of radiation is not comparable. in fact, from the article: The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl. And now we're going to start getting phone calls in the middle of the night again from worried relatives. :/
- 16y ago