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March 17, 2011
From the Desk of The People's Chemist
My main goal as The People's Chemist is to expose those things that prevent you from living your healthiest life. I do this via my Natural Cures Watchdog for FREE so that NOBODY IS LEFT BEHIND! Please join me in my efforts to educate the laymen by FORWARDING this email to your friends and loved ones.
Is the US Safe from Nuclear Fallout in Japan?
By Shane “The People’s Chemist” Ellison
Riddled with radiation, the “Fukushima Fifty” are sacrificing their lives to prevent a radioactive meltdown. Is the US at risk?
The nuclear plants at Fukushima are Boiling Water Reactors. Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT explains that they are akin to a pressure cooker. The uranium atoms are split, which generate heat, plus neutrons; much like dropping a ham sandwich produces bread and mayonnaise on the floor. The heat (250 degrees Celsius or 480 degrees Fahrenheit) converts water to steam, which drives the turbines to generate electricity. Subsequently, the steam is cooled and condensed for a repeat cycle. Without cooling, you get explosions, which is what happened due to a power outage.
Since Tupperware and everything else melts at such low temperatures, nuclear plants use heat resistant uranium to build the hardware that makes up the “drive train.” During the explosion, heat and water vapors caused the uranium parts to expel radioactive intermediates, primarily cesium and iodine. Others exist, but they decay (nuclear transmutation) in seconds. Not true for iodine and cesium where it can take days and up to 60 years, respectively, for them to “wind down” and become inert.
These won’t be dangerous to the US because they’ve never been shown to traverse more than 1000 miles (at the very furthest), as was the case at an earlier and even more tragic nuclear disaster, Chernobyl - wind or no wind. From Los Angeles to Tokyo, it’s about 5500 miles. Learning from Chernobyl, the core of radioactive uranium presents a master disaster if unleashed. Therefore, designers made three containments to protect the outside world from a meltdown at Fukushima.
A zircaloy (metal resistant to high temperatures and corrosion) casing is the first containment separating the uranium fuel from the environment. Pressure vessels are the second to cover the core and can withstand several hundred degrees Celsius of heat. These two are then encased in a third containment, an air tight, thick bubble of steal. If a meltdown occurs, it’s designed, built and tested to contain it. If this happens, the pressure vessel – the second containment – will burst and this third one will trap the molten fuel until it spreads out and cools down so it can later be transported from the damaged site.
Because of distance and technology, the US appears to be safe from the tragedy in Japan. And ultimately, radiation monitoring in Hawaii and the West coast will substantiate this.
About the author
Shane Ellison is an award-winning chemist with a masters degree in organic chemistry and author of Over-the-Counter Natural Cures. Sign up FREE for his Natural Cures Watchdog at http://www.thepeopleschemist.com |
