We simply don’t know. There are enough radionuclides in the outflow to the sea and in the water in the plant that it looks like a leak is possible, but there are too many other things that we don’t know. If there is a leak, it is not a big one. It’s not a big […]
Tag: Fukushima
Ryuki Kassai: Update from Fukushima – the second seven days of the disaster
First of all, I want to express my sincere gratitude to those who provided us with useful information, who kindly donated to us, who warmly encouraged us, who thoughtfully conveyed our messages abroad, and who continue to pray for Japan after the disaster. […]
Cheryl Rofer: Radiation exposure standards – some hard judgments
Radioactive decay is inherently probabilistic. It’s not possible to point at a particular unstable atom and predict when it will decay. Further, some types of unstable atoms have more than one path for decay; it’s also not possible to predict the path of a single atom. The behaviour of large numbers of atoms, however, is […]
Cheryl Rofer: Reading Fukushima status reports
Now that things are happening less rapidly at Fukushima, I’ve been looking less frequently at the status reports. It became obvious early on that the general aftermath of the earthquake, the loss of electrical power and communication, and other factors were leading to erroneous reports and too much instant interpretation. Taking some time helps to […]
Cheryl Rofer on the nuclear reactors damaged in the Japanese earthquake
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has six reactors. It is located on Japan’s northeast coast, close to the earthquake’s epicenter. A tsunami higher than any anticipated took the plant’s generators out of service. In a nuclear power plant, the core, where the nuclear reactions take place, generates heat, which boils water and further heats […]