Firstly let us get something clear. There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster. Total number of people killed by nuclear radiation at Fukushima was zero. Total injured by radiation was zero. Total private property damaged by radiation….zero. There was no nuclear disaster. What there was, was a major media feeding frenzy fuelled by the rather remote possibility that there may have been a major radiation leak.

At the time, there was media frenzy that “reactors at Fukushima may suffer a core meltdown.” Dire warnings were issued. Well the reactors did suffer a core meltdown. What happened? Nothing.

Certainly from the ‘disaster’ perspective there was a financial disaster for the owners of the Fukushima planJapan Tsunami pushes carst. The plant overheated, suffered a core meltdown, and is now out of commission for ever. A financial disaster, but no nuclear disaster.

Amazingly the thousands of people killed by the tsunami in the neighbouring areas who were in shops, offices, schools, at the airport, in the harbour and elsewhere are essentially ignored while there is this strange continuing phobia about warning people of ‘the dangers of Fukushima.’ We need to ask the more general question: did anybody die because of Fukushima? Yes they did. Why? The Japanese governJapan tsunami boatment introduced a forced evacuation of thousands of people living up to a couple of dozen kilometres from the power station. The stress of moving to collection areas induced heart attacks and other medical problems in many people. So people died because of Fukushima hysteria not because of Fukushima radiation.

Recently some water leaked out of the Fukushima plant. It contained a very small amount of radioactive dust. The news media quoted the radiation activity in the physics measure of miliSieverts. The public don’t know what a Sievert or a milliSievert is. As it happens a milliSievert is a very small measure.

Doubling a very small amount is still inconsequential. It is like saying: “Yesterday there was a matchstick on the football field; today there are two matchsticks on the football field. Matchstick pollution has increased by a massive 100% in only 24 hours.”

The statement is mathematically correct but silly and misleading.

At Fukushima a couple of weeks ago, some mildly radioactive water leaked into the sea. The volume of water was about equal to a dozen home swimming pools. In the ocean this really is a ‘drop in the ocean.’

The radiation content was so little that people could swim in the ocean without the slightest cause for concern. Any ocean naturally contains some radioactivity all of the time anyway. There is natural radiation around us all of the time and has always been there since the birth of the earth.

Understandably the general public do not understand nuclear radiation so the strangest comments occur. On an internet blog some person stated that people on the north coast of Australia must be warned about the radiation in the sea coming from Fukushima. Good grief!

Meantime the Fukushima site now looks like an oil refinery. A lot of storage tanks have been built there to hold water that has been flushed through the damaged reactors to aid in cooling. Quite frankly, scientifically speaking, the best thing to do with the mildly radioactive waste water would be to intentionally pour it into the sea. The water which is currently in the new Fukushima storage tanks has already been filtered to remove radioactive Caesium.

All that is left is a bit of radioactive Tritium. Tritium is actually part of the water molecule anyway…so what we really have is…well, water in water. The Tritium atom is a hydrogen atom, Hydrogen Tritiumwhich has two neutrons in its nucleus which is a normal but rare variation in the hydrogen atom. Most hydrogen atoms have only a single proton in the nucleus and no neutrons. A rare hydrogen variation is called Deuterium and such atoms have one proton plus one neutron. Even rarer than Deuterium is the Tritium form of hydrogen which has one proton plus two neutrons. These variants are known as isotopes. Water is H2O and water molecules in which the Tritium isotope of the hydrogen atom is found are molecules referred to as ‘Heavy Water.’ It really is just water, so you can’t filter it out of the normal ‘light water.’

The Tritium heavy water is very mildly radioactive and is found normally in the sea all over the world all of the time. This Tritium concentration in the one thousand storage tanks at Fukushima is higher than that found naturally in the sea, but is still so low as to pose no real danger at all.

No doubt the Japanese government is too scared to release this water into the sea because of the howl of criticism which would no doubt follow.

A further complication is that in the last couple of weeks the press has reported further spillage of water. These reports are such that it looks like a continuous failure of the Fukushima engineers to contain the situation.

The latest spillage was about 400 litres of water, which is about as much liquid as would fill four motor car fuel tanks. Reportedly, one of the one thousand storage tanks was not totally horizontal when it was built so when it was filled to the top some water overflowed on one side.

As soon as the spillage occurred they fixed the problem. But the rules require the incident to be reported, even though the spillage was not of any biological consequence to anyone, or to any fauna or flora.

The Fukushima incident will continue to attract media attention for some time to come, I imagine. It has become such a good story to roll with that it will not just go away. However, in sober reflection and retrospection one has to come to the conclusion that far from being a nuclear disaster the Fukushima incident was actually a wonderful illustration of the safety of nuclear power.

The largest earthquake and consequent tsunami on record struck an ageing nuclear power plant which was built to a now obsolete boiling water reactor technology, and no nuclear damage resulted to people and property in the neighbourhood

- See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/#sthash.PI9BOupy.dpuf

But who can think the BS that guy says is truth!??

Millet, thanks for the rest of the story or actually the story. Tom

Sylvain, ask who can believe. --- I can Sylvain. (and that is no BS)

Sylvain, tell us what is your credentials in nuclear energy generation?

Please don't say your chemistry, I was also a chemistry major - University of Colorado.

Millet.

Millet,

thank you very much for the article!
I think author's credentials speak for him:

About the Author: Kelvin Kemm

Dr Kelvin Kemm is the CEO of Nuclear Africa, a nuclear project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a member of the International Board of Advisors of CFACT. Dr. Kemm received the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa.
- See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/#sthash.PI9BOupy.QUKPJngk.dpuf

I really have no time to lose on such things but I can show few points that could make you think.
- he compares the tsunami and the nuclear disaster. He just forget that tsunamis are natural. We cannot do anything against it. But nuclear plants are man made. We are responsible for it.
- he says the radioactivity will dilute in the ocean but we all know that in fact it concentrates in the living chain. They already cannot eat the fish of that coast.
- he says that in fact it was a financial disaster for the owners of the plant. But we all remember that from the beginning the owners said that they won't pay for the disaster and that they had no insurance. The state (it means the people) had to pay.
- he says that tritium is chemically water, so it is not dangerous. You don't need to be a great chemist to see the trick. Putting chemistry where it is physics. Tritium IS very dangerous.

And so on, for each line of that text.

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Sylvain, you remind me a lot of George Bernard Shaw's famous locution. Anyway, I think it best at this point to just let it stand, and let People believe what they wish to believe. Regards - Millet

> Sylvain, you remind me a lot of George Bernard Shaw's famous locution.
Thank you.

Millet, I get it. Sit back in the dark ages or get busy trying to make things better. If we sit back there is no progress. The key thought is progress. Some times we have to take a step back to take two steps forward. I'm with you 100%. We need a game changer from time to time or we would not be communicating with computers. We are consuming more electricity all the time. Nuclear electric power generation is progress or we can go live in tents with a candle for light. Tom

"the Fukushima incident was actually a wonderful illustration of the safety of nuclear power"

Hardly IMHO. From what I've read it illustrates that the old design of some of the reactor cooling system allowed a disaster to occur that let the reactors overheat. The backup cooling system wasn't designed to survive being flooded, being designed for a 30 foot tsunami and they got a 40 foot tsunami. Apparently the newer reactor cooling system at the same site were designed to survive. What is left is an expensive horror story to clean up, most likely bankrupting the power company that owns it.

However the earthquake that caused the disaster was the worst in recorded history or close to it. When I heard 9+ on the Richter scale for the earthquake the day of the tsunami I thought it must be an error.

The tritium released is only dangerous if ingested as tritiated water as it a a weak beta radiation emitter with the radiation stopped by your skin. Half life is 12.3 years. Most will be gone in a lifetime. Any tritium release is bad but was the quantity significant? Don't know.

I'm not a Nuclear Engineer by any means but a retired Chemical Engineer that took a beginning Nuclear Engineering course back in the 1970s. I had a chance to work at a government nuclear fuel re-processing but chose not to.

I'm a general supporter of nuclear power. The chance of something really bad happening in a US reactor(the safest by far on the planet) is very very small. Not too worried about the USA.

Can't say the same for the ticking time time bombs in the former Soviet Union like 10 Chernobyl design reactors still operating in the former Soviet block. The Soviet reactors are a massive chunk of graphite that can and will catch on fire like they did at Chernobyl releasing massive quantities of very dangerous material. They are also not as inherently safe to operate as US design reactors.

For a real scare read the "containment" section of this article about the 10 Chernobyl design reactors still running the the former Soviet block.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

I agree with you.
What you say on tritium is right. We could add that the biological half time is much shorter. After one year nearly all the tritium has been excreted from the body, but that doesn't mean it is harmless!
Just one think made me smile:
"US reactor(the safest by far on the planet)"
because they say exactly the same thing in France.

Just a line on the Kemm CV:
"In 1994, Dr Kemm was appointed to the International Board of Advisors of the Washington DC-based environment and technology lobby group"
Where we understand that that man is paid to say what he says.

Millet, I am very very disappointed to see this is your and others opinion on the Fukushima daiichi nuclear disaster. Only two events in human history have reached an INES level 7. For Kelvin Kemm to even suggest there was no disaster makes him a fool and a fraud. He is nothing more than a lobbyist trying to promote his agenda and widen his pockets. I don't have the time right now to write what I want but, I will follow up this post.

Ryan re-read the article. Dr. Kemm did not say that there was no disaster at Fukushima.. One thing the Fukushima event did do was drastically raise the price of scrap metal here in the USA. - Millet

Its the title of the friggin article.