Scary Japanese Nuclear Radiation Disaster?

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A lot of people are talking about and asking about the radiation from the Japanese reactors. Should we be worried? Is the government lying? Is the media over-hyping? Nothing I’m going to say or print here is definitive or authoritative. Just another voice in the wind. So take it for what it’s worth.

The principle I always start with is “follow the money”, and in a broader sense, who benefits from a particular reaction? Look at who benefits from raising the scare level of the nuclear situation in Japan:

• Environmentalists: any nuclear concern helps them with their extreme, anti-human, anti-American agenda
• Politicians: never let a good crisis go to waste (works hand in hand with the environmentalists)
• Companies that can profit from it: survivalists, green products, various kinds of services
• Sensationalist religious groups: even evangelicals who like to hype up every news event to point out the end of the world is imminent, not to mention all the kook spiritualists who are pronouncing the end of the world
• THE MEDIA – they have a vested interest in sensational and nerve-racking possibilities… stay tuned for more!

Given all those who benefit, you have to consider that the Japanese nuclear plant situation is being over-hyped, sensationalized and analyzed ad nauseum. A good friend of mine sent me the following which is one of the more reasonable things I’ve read on the topic:

Regarding the risk to us of the Japanese nuclear explosion:

The word ‘radiation’ is the boogey man of the media, and they don’t understand what they are talking about.  Could some radiation reach us – possibly.  However, the QUANTITY and BIOLOGICAL THREAT of such radiation will be non existent.

The news media dwells on the term ‘meltdown’ because they love new drama, even when they have to generate it.

The meltdown is overtemperatre of the fuel rods from not enough cooling, while cooling down from residual heat that diminishes over several days.  This is not a nuclear fission reaction, nor is there likelihood to be one.  I note there is ‘meltdown’ with ice, and no one plays Chicken Little’s “THE SKY IS FALLING!!!”, because they understand that one.  This is all about ignorance.  The worst of it is that it will destroy the reactor(s) which the Japanese economy depends on for electrical power.

The high temperature of the uncooled rods is also breaking down water in the air, and generating hydrogen and oxygen.  Hydrogen is very buoyant, and collects in the outer containment shell.  An electrical spark can and did set it off – which was the explosion.  That was a chemical hydrogen explosion that blew off wall panels.  Apparent error of the designers of the reactor system not to make their outer containment shell electrically-safe for a hydrogen environment.  However, there was no nuclear explosion, now will there be.  More Chicken Little by the news who could not understand the important difference..

The reactor’s own pressure shell, made of very heavy steel, will remain intact, and the core will not melt through because the nuclear fission reaction was successfully shut down in the first minute of the earthquake.  The heat problem they are having comes from residual radioactivity decay that produces a lot of heat in the first few days after a high-power reactor stops nuclear fissioning operation.

Under this Japan reactor(s) situation of only needing to deal with the heat from radioactive decay, there is no chance the containment pressure vessel will be ‘melted through’.  They had a similar situation in the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and the core melted.  The pressure vessel of the Three Mile Island reactor was five inches of strong steel.  The melted core affected only 0.5 in inches of the inner surface of the five inch shell — nowhere near a problem.

When they vent gas that has some radiation in it, the key question is was it filtered to remove radioactive particles?  I don’t know if they did that, so:

1.  If the vent gas was filtered and thus free of particles, you are dealing only with gas that is not very radioactive and quickly dilutes in the atmosphere.  No problem after less than a mile from the site.

2.  When the vent gas was not filtered, there will be some radioactive particles in it.  These are coarse particle and fine particles.  The coarse particle will come to ground quickly by gravity, the fine particles will ride on the wind very long distances.  However, the gas release was small, so not a lot of radioactivity was released.  It is supposed to be raining there today, which will ground air-born particles.  It is very unlikely any particles will reach far from Japan.  It is a zero biological threat to the USA.

If anyone wants to be really concerned about radiation, then stop eating bananas.  They contain some radioactive potassium.  Radiation is an inevitable part of our life – get over it.  Drinking wine or alcohol is a bigger threat, because it is a strong carcinogen — cancer causing.  People still do it because they think they understand the risk.

The Japanese reactor problem is not a Chernobyl accident which was totally different and a real threat due to a bad design:  No containment shell on the Chernobyl reactor, and use of carbon which burned and made huge quantities of particles and gases.  These Japanese reactors use water, rather than carbon — so they cannot burn like the Soviet reactor.  Also, the chief engineer at Chernobyl was very stupid and actually caused the accident.  He was a communist party member who got his nuclear engineers degree from a correspondence school.  He caused the accident by doing something the procedures said never never to do.  The Japanese are excellent operators.

The really bad part of this is that nuclear reactors are the only path for clean electrical power that really works, and could to reduce our dependence of foreign oil with its negative effects to our economy.  We must drill for our own oil (mostly blocked by Obama) and generate electrical power with new nuclear reactors.  Now I fear that Obama and other theatrical politicians will cry Chicken Little’s: “THE SKY IS FALLING”, and we will not build any new reactors in the USA – a really bad decision that will greatly harm us economically.  I would worry about Obama’s bad decisions, not the Japan reactors.

Any new USA reactors that would be built would not require electrical power to pump core cooling water during a shutdown.  The new one will be naturally cooled without requiring operating pumps, just gravity.  And, their cores will not be able to go over temperature very much, because a significantly higher temperature suppresses the core nuclear reactions.

But, the politicians will probably play on the panic of the public not understanding, and we will again not get the new nuclear reactors we desperately need.

By the way, all this solar energy and wind energy are just theater.  These sources will never make a difference, no matter how much tax payer money is thrown into them.  Bad, a waste and diversion from real solutions.

So, I recommend worrying about our own government which is much more hazardous to your family’s health.

Best, Jim

(For the record: My Master of Engineering degree is in Nuclear Engineering, hold a Professional Nuclear Engineer license, and my Doctorate of Engineering degree is in Physics.)

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