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30-40 fois plus de matériel radioactif à Fukushima qu'à Chernobyl

Fukushima radioactive inventory is “30 to 40 times as high as in Chernobyl”: German radiation expert (Google Translation)

How long does it take for a contaminated area can be inhabited again?

[Renowned radiation biologist Edmund Lengfelder:] There is a rule of thumb: For a nuclide such as cesium-137, the half-life of 30 years. It takes ten half-lives, so you can populate an area again, making a total of 300 years. But in Japan is still added a difficulty: the nuclear fission process, radioactive substances, it is called the radioactive inventory of a reactor. In a boiling water reactor in Fukushima this inventory is 30 to 40 times as high as in Chernobyl, it can thus escape much more radiation. If we summarize it: In Japan, more people are concerned because the population density is higher than in Chernobyl and there is a higher contamination.

Nuclear engineer: Death toll from Fukushima catastrophe could top 500,000
March 20th, 2011 at 08:13 PM

… One expert predicted that the death toll in the years ahead could top the 500,000 attributed to the Chernobyl accident of 1986 and warned that panicked repair attempts could lead to an even greater disaster. John Large, a British nuc­lear engineer, said: “The Japanese don’t know how to deal with it. They’re ad-libbing.

“Just throwing water on to the reactors, when they cannot get inside to see what the situation is, could mean the fuel goes critical again.

“And while the radiation leak so far is only a tenth of that at Chernobyl, that was in a rural area with a low population. In Japan it’s an urban, densely packed area so the potential numbers of deaths and cancers are much higher.” …

Trouble: Still not enough power to run crucial machinery after connecting power line – NYT

Efforts to stabilize the hobbled nuclear power plant in Fukushima hit a snag on Monday when engineers found that crucial machinery at one reactor requires repair, a process that will take two to three days, government officials said. …

After connecting the transmission line on Sunday, engineers found on Monday that they still did not have enough power to fully run the systems that control the temperature and pressure in the building that houses the reactor, officials from the Japanese nuclear safety agency said. …

As Radioactive Rain Starts To Pour, Japan Engages In Another Cover Up As It Increases Decontamination Threshold Sixteenfold

No surprise there: by now everyone is well aware that the fuel rods are if not completely then certainly partially destroyed. However, the real danger, and explains why we have been following atmospheric conditions over Japan so closely, is that as Kyodo just reported, the rain is now pouring radioactive cats and dogs. But the most troubling development is that instead of being proactive and finally warning its citizens about the dangers, the Japanese government has just raised the decontamination threshold by nearly 20 times from 6,000 cpm to a stunning 100,000 cpm. Is is rather safe to assume that this number was not picked arbitrarily.

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