The 10 million times normal figures originally reported were for Iodine 134

[PA Democrat]

Tepco originally reported that the water had a concentration of 2.9 Becquerels per cubic meter of Iodine 134. Tepco now says they think that it is not Iodine 134 but some other radioisotope with a longer half-life. If the substance was Iodine 134 it would probably mean that re-criticality had occurred, i.e. nuclear fission was happening within the core. That would be very bad news.

The radiation level inside the turbine room of reactor #2 was reported at 1,000 millisieverts per hour and Tepco is standing by that figure.



http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/tatsujiro-suzuki/daily-update-japan

Edit to add link

[PA Democrat]

1. Half-life of Iodone 134 is less than 1 hour.

[originalpckelly]

2. And how would they know?

What other isotope is it?

How are they so certain?

One of the biggest problems during a disaster is a lack of imagination on the part of those in charge.

Sometimes it's also an avoidance of the most logical truth, one that may be unwanted.

In this case, at the start, they lost power from the grid, the diesel generators went out, and the batteries could only keep the cooling systems working for a while.

Someone should have seen the logical problem at the end of that, and they should have done everything they could have to get everyone out immediately.

And what seems so scary is that a loss of cooling could happen at any reactor, and even if they shut it down, there is still heat called decay heat that has to be taken away from the core.

Yeah, earthquakes don't happen everywhere, tsunamis don't happen everywhere, but all kinds of scenarios might cause a loss of coolant. And then what?

The control rods should be keeping from going critical, right? So maybe there's something wrong there.

Can they verify everything is alright with the control rods?

[PA Democrat]

4. You won't get any arguments from me.

I don't like nuclear energy because there is very little room for error and "no one could have possibly imagined" type scenarios.

[enough]

3. Thank you for this link. Useful. (nt)