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In the interview with RT below, he doesn't seem to know "1,800 mSv/Hr radiation" is almost all beta radiation (dose equivalent), and doesn't seem to be aware of what's inside the leaky tanks (hardly any gamma nuclides).
The latest surge in radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant may suggest not only additional water leaks at the site, but could also mean fission is occurring outside the crippled reactor, explains Chris Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk.
The increase in radiation reading is too significant to be blamed on random water leaks, believes Busby.
Chris Busby: I think this is an indication that it has actually deteriorated significantly, very suddenly in the last week. What they are not saying and what is the missing piece of evidence here is that radiation suddenly cannot increase unless something happens and that something cannot be leakage from a tank, because gamma radiation goes straight through a tank. The tank has got very thin metal walls. These walls will only attenuate gamma radiation by 5 per cent, even when it is 1 cm thick.
Although they may think this is a leak from the tank, and there may well be leaks from the tank, this sudden increase of 1.8 Sieverts per hour is an enormously big doze that can probably kill somebody in 2 to 4 hours.
Today there was another leak found at 1.7 Sieverts per hour in more or less the same place. This huge radiation increase, in my mind means something going on outside the tanks, some radioactive fission is occurring, like an open air reactor, if you like, under the ground.
RT: What impact will this have on the clean-up operation and those who are involved in that operation?
CB: First of all it is clearly out of control and secondly no one can go anywhere near it. Nobody can go in to measure where these leaks are or do anything about them, because anybody who is to approach that sort of area would be dead quite quickly. They would be seriously harmed.
I’ve seen a photograph taken from the air recently, in which the water in the Pacific Ocean is actually appearing to boil. Well, it is not boiling. You can see that it’s hot. Steam is coming off the surface. There is a fog condensing over the area of the ocean close to the reactors, which means that hot water is getting into the Pacific that means something is fissioning very close to the Pacific and it is not inside the reactors, it must be outside the reactors in my opinion.
1800 mSv/hr is not gamma radiation but beta radiation, expressed in 70 micrometer dose equivalent to show the effect on skin and eye lens, with effective dose 1/100 of that amount.
It is not "sudden increase" in radiation. This waste water has that order of beta radiation all along, as evidenced by the measurement in the leak in February 2012.
The water leaking is very high in all-beta including strontium but almost devoid of gamma nuclides including radioactive cesium, incapable of giving off gamma radiation to the tune of 1,800 mSv/hr.
For a scientist, Busby makes claims in this interview in a way too non-scientific way, i.e., not backed up by credible reasoning and verifiable information. Just overlooking the obviously significant difference between gamma and beta radiation is pretty pathetic for a scientist actively dealing with just that field. Likewise, the RT reporter does anything but dig into the statements made. Seriously unimpressive and unconvincing all the way around, at least for my taste.
Tritium is a very damaging beta emitter since tritium can pass through the skin and passes thru anything (glass, metal, plastic, etc.) for that matter except the most densest materials, like gold. And there is no shortage of tritium onsite. More easily absorbed in the body when combined with chlorine and there is plenty of chlorine in seawater. Where is all the tritium coming from?
Your counterpart is reporting high radioactivity being found upstream now before the Daiichi site. Also reports, TEPCO is neglect in using the proper monitoring tools for reporting radiation.
Where is all this recent radioactivity coming from? Released from pent up underground basements all of a sudden?
I'm guessing sudden unwelcome criticalities may yet occur through fractional distillation within the water moderated underlying strata.
Anon at 10:59AM, so where is Busby's data to base his assertions that it is gamma radiation and that the Pacific Ocean is boiling? Oh excuse me "appearing to boil"?
Anon at 5:07AM, your logic is flawed. Busby seems to think fissioning is occurring because he thinks 1800mSv/hr radiation is gamma radiation and because the ocean looks like it is boiling. Without these two reasons, what else is there to base his theory?
I think someone ought to tell Busby that he is basing his theory on wrong information. He will further lose credibility in Japan if someone translates this into Japanese, though hard-core fans won't be swayed no matter what.
Anyone who thinks underground criticality is warming the sea water (but not the ground water under the reactors) has automatically disqualified themselves from any further discussion me thinks.
If the readings from the leaks are that high and represents all the holding tanks then TEPCO is reassembling part of the cores back inside the holding tanks. It is not just some cooling water diluted with ground water that was used once or twice besides what was already removed in filters, it is radioactively 'hot' and to unstable to send back through for cooling.
Of course, there is nothing to see here, move along, go about your own business, everything is fine, go back to your homes.
Just want to throw this out there for those with much more insight..Given the geology and the geography of the site..reports of seams and fissures in the substrata caused by earthquakes, and old underground water flows..is it not possible that all the hundreds of thousands of tons of seawater dumped to cool the cores is actually flushing them out through the seams to sea? Would that not account for the sudden and intense spiking?
Earlier this year, the Unisys sea-surface temperature chart clearly showed a huge hotspot ballooning out into the ocean from the Fukushima area. That was enough to convince me, even then, that an uncontrolled reaction was heating the groundwater before it flowed into the sea. Soon after, alomost overnight, the chart showed no such anomaly. It's as if the sea-surface temperature chart was doctored to hide the obvious - which is what we're discussing now and is plain to see.
corium may be reacting with earth natural thorium in a runaway reaction ... black sands may be the culprit , if that is so we might see japan burning and sinking in the sea...somewhat alike atlantis sunk eons ago ,,,,
tell japan to detonate a 2,000 megaton hydrogen warhead to incinerate all the nuclear fuel in a single event , leaving a molten crater sunk in the sea ... fukishimma was predicted in their manga movies, along with the solution I tell ..
Oh, horsefeathers to all of this. Because, as everyone knows, "Nuclear power plants are a safe and efficient way to produce electricity".
(Can you imagine what would happen if an EMP from the sun knocked out the cooling systems of the plants of whatever side of the Earth the EMP struck? And if diesel backup generators for cooling survived the EMP, how long will they run as the EMP has also knocked out the infrastructure of getting more fuel to the diesel engines? Jeepers. The mind boggles.)
What you are seeing is an actual China syndrome. The cores have melted into the earth but have hit a layer through which they can no longer melt. Once ground water was reached, there was no explosion. You have molten radioactive material sitting on a layer of rock boiling away groundwater.
Kidding or not, ignorance or not, nuking SPF pools is like spreading more nuclear poisons around the earth in aerosol form. Daiichi has more than 600,000 spent fuel rods onsite. Spent fuel rods are highly radioactive nuclear waste. The common fuel pond at ground level holds holds up to 6291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods.
Because plutonium is a daughter by-product of fissioning uranium. 1% of all spent fuel rods is plutonium.
So, it is not a good idea to drop a nuke on a nuclear plant, operating or not because of all the spent nuclear fuel waste onsite, not counting cask air-cooled storage which Daiichi also has.
Busby is more than competent in his field of nuclear epidemiology but has little apparent expertise in the physical dynamics of nuclear meltdown. I wonder if he has ever seen the video from the Chernobyl basement of how those coriums solified or vitrified into pahoehoe lava pouring out of the ducting a level or two below the breached, empty pressure vessel. Sure did not see fission happening there afterwards.
Total non-expert here but have known since Day 1 it was worse than bad... But question to the experts: could it actually be a GOOD thing that the cores (or whatever stuff leaked out and is going "China Syndrome") are hitting groundwater rather than not? Doesn't the groundwater now serve as a giant cooling pool that can't (or probably won't) run out of water? I mean of course it sucks in terms of contaminating the groundwater but isn't that going to help prevent further "criticality?"
Dr. Busby was about the first one on scene (within weeks of 3/11?) in Japan trying to warn their people about fallout from Daiichi. Even got in trouble for pushing calcium supplements to displace or prevent strontium-90 uptake in the human body. He was also the first person I heard say the burning of radioactive debris throughout Japan was intentional by the Japanese government to spread the contamination around so comparisons to Fukushima radiation wouldn't appear as elevated...if the government there didn't bother to report until 3 months after the fact that 3 cores melted down within 48 hours of 3/11 then that government is capable of anything.
Arnie Gundersen wrote a pamphlet early on in Japanese warning of the risks of Daiichi and what happened there. Visited many small towns to give talks to the locals to help them understand what was happening.
Greenpeace had boots on the ground trying to take readings and other private citizens trying to report readings.
The US government congratulated Japan on the 'cold shutdowns' at Daiichi and ceased reporting fallout in the US shortly after 3/11 and continues allowing the importation of Japanese meats, rice, fish, etc., from Japan without testing. Also raised the allowable radiation exposure rates after 3/11...Wouldn't matter much except the radioactive poisons bio-accumulate in the food chain.
When you read in general about nuclear reactors, water is used to carry off heat and turn it to steam to drive turbine generators and also at the same time acts as a 'moderator' and a moderator slows down the speed of 'neutrons' so they have a better chance of hitting the uranium fuel and fracturing it to cause a sustained chain reaction of fission to create the heat.
Usually graphite and/or boron are used to absorb the neutrons and stop the chain reactions. Decay heat continues as there is no 'OFF' switch that can stop it.
In Chernobyl, the worry was the melted core would find groundwater or even rainwater and water would moderate neutrons and cause whatever fuel was left to fission uncontrollably and exploded again (the melt there never made it out of the building). At Daiichi, the US sent Japan boron to be mixed with the water or seawater used for cooling to prevent any fission.
What happened to the worries of the core melts finding plenty of underground freshwater to moderate neutrons to hit any remaining fuel and cause uncontrolled fission and possible nuclear explosions is kind of a mystery to me but water can be both good and bad when surrounding nuclear fuel. It carries off the heat and keeps the melt a solid but moderates neutrons at the same time.
What kind of idiots put a nuclear power plant on one of the most geologically active regions of Earth? In a few million more years when the Asians have evolved a bit more I think they may look back at the slant eyes of today and realize that they are a stupid people.
The USA had Project Gnome (1961) which was a program to test whether or not nuclear bombs could be used in all the ways envisioned by the atomic utopianists (i.e for construction not destruction) They did some deep underground nuclear explosions one of which was to hollow out a mountain to see if it could be then used for human habitation.How does this relate to Fukashima? Well maybe a nuclear explosion(s) deep (miles?) under Fukashima could create a large cavern(s) they could then channel all the radioactive water into rather than dump it into the ocean? Maybe the entire Fukashima plant (all the fuel rods) could be dumped into this cavern and then fill it in and seal it off?
Fukushima is actually in melt down,, in other words there is a spot where molten pit is burning into the earth, as it melts more earth, it goes deeper, eventually it will seal itself off but right now it is MELTING DOWN literally in a downward direction, once that is deep enough, then the whole surface can be burried under a mound and sealed off
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I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.