Here is the post in full. I have attached a second one from the same author on the same subject that was posted a day earlier than the first post. That is to say the second post is older than the first one although that doesn't matter as far as content is concerned.
I would like to add something as far as murahachibu goes.
You need a mura to be excluded from it.
In the present situation the villages/towns are gone. On a more important note I think the idea that a Japanese potter is going to NEED to or want to leave Japan is a deep misreading of what Japan and the Japanese are made of. I did a podcast a while back wherein I told the person I was interviewing that I thought the stewardship of land by the Japanese is exceptional and rooted in a 7 generations type of thinking. He scoffed at me but my opinion wasn't and hasn't changed. The Japanese I know in the village I live in were, for the most part, born here, have lived here, (here in this sense refers to Japan) and will die here, in this sense "here" refers back to the village. This is their home, their great-great-great grandfathers home. The walk I take everyday is through the mountains they have maintained for generations and will continue to maintain long after I am gone. It is in that sense I am talking about stewardship of home, land, and village. If looked at in this way it seems silly to leave when there is a hard time.
Begin first paste.
In response to the question by Yen-Ling Chang, I should say first
that I doubt very much that any of the fuel rods have been breached
and leaked fuel (uranium or plutonium) into the environment, and that
it appears quite unlikely that this will occur.
On the specifics, it should be very easy for experts examining the
radiation spectra from contamination to determine whether any of it
came from fuel, but it is fairly unlikely that such measurements
would identify specifically which fuel had leaked. However,
measurements at the reactor site should give immediate and
unequivocal indications of the location of a leak, should one occur.
If there were a fuel leak, I feel pretty certain that it would be
impossible to conceal such sensational news for long. This is not
North Korea, or the old Soviet Union. That is why I feel so confident
that none has occurred. From what can be determined from official and
press reports, it appears to me that the situation is largely stable
and getting generally somewhat better, so I don't think there is much
risk of a leak in the future. The big risk right now is that some
victims of the Tsunami will suffer owing to inability to meet their
needs quickly enough, not that there will somehow be a nuclear catastrophe.
Turning to the onsite fuel inventory, it may very well be true that
it is larger than it should be. That is certainly the situation at
many places in the United States. The rational approach to spent fuel
is to remove rods after five years of cooling in the pool and place
them in shielded air-cooled "casks" for dry storage. The risks posed
by these casks are not great and it should not be too hard to find
places to store them. But in practice it is difficult for political
reasons. So rods remain in spent fuel pools.
I don't know a lot of details about the French system. France of
course has minimized its waste problem by reprocessing, and a large
proportion of French fuel is MOX. I understand that there are
above-ground dry storage sites in France and that there is active
work in developing a deep long-term storage site.
While I know of the concept of burning nuclear waste, I don't know
much about the status and problems of such an approach. I am fully
convinced that it is possible to store high level wastes in ways that
are quite safe. But if we continue to avoid dealing with the problem
then at some point it will become impossible to continue using
nuclear power. This would force use of alternatives which are likely
to be more dangerous overall and almost certain to be more
environmentally damaging, but would be deeply satisfying to many
people who would regard it as a victory for the forces of light.
Perhaps their psychic income should be counted in the balance against
the real costs.
End of first paste.
Beginning of second paste.
At 08:20 PM 3/21/2011, Rodney E. Armstrong wrote:
>
>Except for my questions about plutonium: Do we know if MOX including
>plutonium was used in the fuel rods in Fukushima? How much danger is
>that the rain now descending here has plutonium particles in it?
My overall judgment is that plutonium is one of the very last things
I worry about in connection with the accident, and that MOX is a red
herring. I outline my reasons below.
While I cannot swear to it, I believe that I read that one of the
Fukushima Daiichi reactors was refueled with MOX fuel. This requires
some changes in procedures and recertification of the reactor.
I have seen nothing to suggest that any of the fuel has been released
into the environment. The radionuclides that have been released seem
all to have been from secondary sources. According to
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_imag ... 58392P.pdf
elevated levels of I-131, Cs-134, and Cs-137 have been detected in
the sea at the plant discharge. This is undesirable but not a major
immediate hazard.
I have seen no reports of any uranium (or plutonium) reaching the
environment. I feel pretty certain that any release of these elements
would be major news.
I do want to point out that there is nothing much special about MOX
fuel. Yes, it has plutonium in it, but so does uranium fuel once it
has been in an operating reactor. In an operating reactor, a
self-sustaining chain reaction involving the U-235 produces a steady
flux of neutrons -- each fission event releases them. About 94% or so
of the uranium in the fuel initially is U-238. This is not fissile
like U-235, but it can absorb neutrons and transmute to plutonium.
(Most of this plutonium is Pu-239, but there are other isotopes in
the mix as well.) So once fuel has been in use for a while it has a
significant plutonium content, regardless of whether it started as
UOX (uranium oxide) or MOX (mixed uranium/plutonium oxide).
It is certainly very important to keep plutonium out of the
environment. But there are plenty of other things in a reactor that
are at least equally dangerous. It is important to keep them all out
of the environment.
One thing to note is that the Chernobyl disaster did release fuel
into the environment, and that the fuel unquestionably had plutonium
in it. The plutonium and uranium were for the most part not widely
dispersed, because they are very dense. The accounts I've read
suggest that they were not significant sources of the health risks
from Chernobyl.
Plutonium alarmists make much of the fact that a very small amount of
Pu in your lungs can result in lung cancer that is likely to kill
you. It's quite true, but it's well to reflect on the fact that a
minute quantity of anthrax spores in your lungs will kill you even
more surely and swifty. And anthrax is everywhere -- there are large
areas of the world where you cannot turn over a spadeful of earth
without getting enough anthrax spores to kill thousands of people.
Yet with very basic precautions (of which most of us are quite
unaware) anthrax has now become quite rare among humans and our
domestic animals. If we can live with anthrax we can live with
plutonium, and so far have done so quite well.
Finally, I'd like to say a few more words about the desirability or
otherwise of nuclear power. It has been suggested that if it reduced
its standards of consumption and overall level of population, Japan
could subsist on renewable and locally-produced energy. Without
trying to judge the technical feasibility of this, I question whether
there is sufficient popular support for such a course. In the absence
of such steps, Japan must have substantial power generation
facilities which depend on imported fuels of one sort or another. Any
major power generation facility involves a considerable concentration
of energy, and such concentrations involve inherent dangers. It is
far from clear that the dangers of nuclear generation are greater
than those of the alternatives, measured by objective standards.
As Japan replaces obsolete generation facilities, or adds more
capacity, I would hope that there will be an effort to objectively
weigh the benefits, costs, and risks of the available alternatives. I
would hope that decisions will not be driven by unanalyzed
extra-rational fears.
In any event, I certainly hope that Japan (and the United States,
inter alia) will develop far better mechanisms to regulate power
production in the public interest.
End of second paste.
