The leak of highly radioactive water at Fukushima has stopped, as less radioactive water is dumped into the sea to make room in storage tanks for more radioactive water. A scary NRC report leaked to the press recommends, among other things, that nitrogen be injected into the containment at the plants to stave off another hydrogen explosion, and TEPCO will will be doing that today or tomorrow.
One of the interesting take homes from this disaster is that the IAEA is fairly useless, or as the former director of the Soviet effort to clean up Chernobyl put it:
The IAEA should share blame for standards, he said, arguing it was too close to corporations building and running plants. And he dismissed an emergency incident team set up by the Vienna-based agency as “only a think-tank not a working force”:
“This is only a fake organization because every organization which depends on the nuclear industry — and the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry — cannot perform properly.
“It always will try to hide the reality.
“The IAEA … is not interested in the concentration of attention on a possible accident in the nuclear industry. They are totally not interested in all the emergency organisations.”
BR
What’s going to happen to a nation that eats fish with every meal now that fish are turning up with low levels of radiation in them? (So much so that other countries are stopping imports from Japan.)
eponymous
Not quite sure what the issue with the IAEA – while the IAEA is an autonomous entity, it does report to the United Nations (General Assembly and Security Council).
While I share the concerns of the individual regarding Chernobyl, the IAEA is only as strong as other countries willing to fund and support their efforts. Since Russia is a Security Council member, maybe they should do more to give the IAEA support necessary to deal with these kinds of issues.
This is not to say that other countries shouldn’t do so as well – but any international organization that doesn’t get broad support from countries – especially those countries with economic and military clout – will not be as effectual as they could be.
NobodySpecial
Isn’t this the guy who basically ordered folks into the containment area with concrete and sentenced them to death to build the sarcophagus?
If so, why am I not particularly concerned about his opinions on dick?
4tehlulz
Imagine that, a Russian nuclear “expert” shitting on the IAEA.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
Ah, but the NRC is “serious”.
MobiusKlein
@NobodySpecial: Well, he does know something about nuke plants. And knows something about useless oversight too.
Jack
Like health care and several other issues that inherently cannot be “market-based”, nuclear power and the disaster in Japan is showing how wrong the GOP is in saying “government is always the problem”.
We’re all going to eventually die one way or another because some jerkwad is trying to increase his profit.
Joey Maloney
In the early hours and days after the tsunami, the only person on the teevee box whose guesses and predictions I recall coming at all close to the actual scope of the nuclear problem at Fukushima was an IAEA scientist.
Brachiator
I realize that some people want to focus on the nuclear disaster in Fukushima as though it is the only problem Japan is facing, but damn, get some perspective. Hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless, villages, farms and entire industries have been wiped out. Some World Bank estimates:
And there is this, from an Aid Worker’s Diary:
And this:
TJ
OTOH
Reuters
This pretty much means they’re going back, oh, I’d say sometime just this side of never.
Brachiator
@TJ: RE: The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.
Some of the hardest hit areas were Sendai and Minamisanriku, which are north of Fukushima. There might be circumstances where the problems at Fukushima will add to problems elsewhere, but still it is only part of a much larger disaster:
virag
it bears repeating, the iaea is solely a lobbying organization for the nuclear power industry. it’s purpose is to spread the use of nuclear power with the bonus of limiting the membership in the club of nuclear-armed nations, aka places we won’t bomb for freedom.
Ruckus
How similar this all sounds. Nuclear power, health care, financial services, public safety.
None of these work well when the call is for profit instead of actual service. Government may not work as well as intended or desired but it sure can work a whole lot better than screwing profits out of modern necessities does.
lonesomerobot
fwiw, in the NY Times article mistermix linked:
So… this could mean perhaps some of the fuel could have ended up in the ocean. Another possible source for the ridiculously high readings there. And now it appears that they basically can’t get into the buildings 1-3 at all because radiation is literally off the meter.
interesting times.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
lonsomerobot: I wouldn’t worry about fuel in the ocean so much as the approx 3k tons of fuel (of which some 500 to 1k tons is in a damaged or melted state) that is still very localized and dangerous.
I wouldn’t underplay the danger of seabourne contamination, but further explosions, melting, melt-through, and fires are where the greter dangers lay.