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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the close-to-double dept.

Dissident Voice reports

After a week of limited coverage of "unimaginable levels" of radiation inside the remains of collapsed Unit 2 at Fukushima[...], Nuclear-News.net reported February 11 that radiation levels are actually significantly higher than "unimaginable".

Continuous, intense radiation at 530 sieverts an hour (4 sieverts is a lethal level), was widely reported in early February 2017--as if this were a new phenomenon. It's not. Three reactors at Fukushima melted down during the earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 3, 2011, and the meltdowns never stopped. Radiation levels have been out of control ever since. As Fairewinds Energy Education noted in an email February 10:

Although this robotic measurement just occurred, this high radiation reading was anticipated and has existed inside the damaged Unit 2 atomic reactor since the disaster began nearly 6 years ago.... As Fairewinds has said for 6 years, there are no easy solutions because groundwater is in direct contact with the nuclear corium (melted fuel) at Fukushima Daiichi.

What's new (and not very new, at that) is the official acknowledgment of the highest radiation levels yet measured there, by a factor of seven (the previously measured high was 73 sieverts an hour in 2012). The highest radiation level measured at Chernobyl was 300 sieverts an hour.

[...] This coverage relates only to Unit 2's melted reactor core. There is no reliable news of the condition of the melted reactor cores in two other units.

[...] Whatever is actually going on at Fukushima is not good, and has horrifying possibilities. It is little comfort to have the perpetrator of the catastrophe, TEPCO, in charge of fixing it, especially when the Japanese government is more an enabler of cover-up and denial than any kind of seeker of truth or protector of its people.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:33AM

    by anubi (2828) on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:33AM (#470010) Journal

    I bought this book many years ago.... The Truth about Chernobyl" [amazon.com] written by one of its engineers..Grigori Medvedev.

    It was during a time when I, myself, was under pressure to "cut corners", and I was desperately searching for things to back me up concerning the risks of not paying sufficient due diligence. Seemed to me that people with a business education did not have the same concerns as one with an engineering education.

    It is a very fascinating account, play by play, of how this disaster went.

    I paid full price for it at the bookstore, but I see Amazon has it now at a small fraction of the price I paid for it.

    If nothing more, its an eye-opener of just how important it is to pay attention to detail. There are so many things in the physical world that pay no attention at all to the prestige and power of office, obeying only the inevitable laws of physics.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:43AM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:43AM (#470012)

    ...Seemed to me that people with a business education did not have the same concerns as one with an engineering education...

    Did the suits pay attention in the end?

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:49AM

      by anubi (2828) on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:49AM (#470016) Journal

      No... they laid me off.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:42AM

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:42AM (#470082)

        ...Seemed to me that people with a business education did not have the same concerns as one with an engineering education...

        Did the suits pay attention in the end?

        No... they laid me off.

        Bastards.

        On the up side, you don't need to associate with them any more.

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:57AM

          by anubi (2828) on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:57AM (#470098) Journal

          Guess I don't.

          Seems just about the time I feel like I have a good handle on things, how they work, how to design stuff - I end up being put to pasture.

          Oh, well, maybe when I get my Arduino-based E4OD transmission controller designed, I'll open-source it onto the truck forums... That transmission controller has been the one thorn in my side with that diesel van I bought last year. The previous owner of that van had monkeyed with the wiring big-time... and I had just as soon re-wire the whole thing so at least I know exactly how it works. I have plenty of time now, that I am no longer committed to other people's projects. Other than that, the whole thing is mechanical.

          Its an old van, in need of either retirement or being reborn into someone's pet project, so I don't feel so bad tossing out deteriorated innards and replacing them. Its not like I am butchering a brand new vehicle. Not only that, this one is so old its grandfathered into California's smog laws so I can do extensive changes to the system as long as I do not mess with the original emissions system. It never had one. I was lucky enough to get one that was taken care of by previous owners. It does not smoke unless I floor it. Which I very rarely do.

          I want to build the controller for it so I know exactly what its doing, let me set the shift points for the way I drive, and also make it really hard for anyone to steal the van, as well as keep "friends" from borrowing it. I intend to have my controller communicate in morse code! The dash display will be three Delta HMI's [youtube.com] like this. I intend to set it up to look like the HAL-9000 displays on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

          ( One thing about morse code... I don't have to pay any attention to any displays or switch settings... once I get my hand on the key - I can tap the morse out almost as fast as I can type. An arduino would have no trouble interpreting it. ).

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:44AM (#470083)

      Obviously not. Op cit