Fukushima Reactor Disaster: Japan to Restart Nuclear Plants, Post #7824

[Cascadians]

So what is the point opf posting the news titles? Most of them are sensationalist, designed to grab your attention.....and the titles themselves convey absolutely ZERO uselful information. SO why post them?

Because it shows what a person doing a search at this time finds, and what the trend is, and is a barometer of how much time is left for last-minute topping off, which is DO IT NOW !!!

I don't know about you, but I glean a lot from glancing at headlines, including which articles I want to read to get good info, some of which I've posted on this thread and which have really good solid new info.

[Reborn]

So what is the point opf posting the news titles? Most of them are sensationalist, designed to grab your attention.....and the titles themselves convey absolutely ZERO uselful information. SO why post them?

Possibly to give readers here a quick idea of the main topics going around right now in the MSM about this? Possibly as a break between long news articles? I don't agree that the titles themselves give zero useful information. If posts of "only titles" were frequently placed on the thread then I'd agree, but sometimes there is such a flood of news that a "titles only" post can be instructive.

[Reborn]

Because it shows what a person doing a search at this time finds, and what the trend is, and is a barometer of how much time is left for last-minute topping off, which is DO IT NOW !!!

I don't know about you, but I glean a lot from glancing at headlines, including which articles I want to read to get good info, some of which I've posted on this thread and which have really good solid new info.

Well said.

[Publius]

[QUOTE=undead;4022775]I am confused.


If hooking up power lines to get the water pumps restarted is going to fix everything, then why didn't they bring in as many industrial diesel generators as they needed days ago to accomplish the very same thing?








I made that statement many, many, many posts ago and why they did not go all out to get them there?!! Someone thats in control that should not be.

[Dazed]

Well said.

It's not like you can't use google yourself rather than clogging this discussion with a 1/2 page list of rehashed sensationalist headlines.

I do appreciate when Cascadians posts a decent article with good info. But the list of headlines is apparently copied from Google or something like that. You can't link from her post here on TB2k, nor can you tell where the headline came from.

It's just Drivel without the above.

[Jeffrey Thomason]

The skipper said...women and children first, followed by non-essential, then essential...then himself. Doesn't sound voluntary to me.

Watch it again, specifically at 37 seconds:

"The President has Authorized a military assisted VOLUNTARY departure of dependents from Japan"

[Cascadians]

Flood of news is right! No time to read all those articles. New ones pouring in. Situation dynamically changing!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...uake-live.html

16.43 British Search and Rescue teams are due to pull out of Japan tomorrow, along with their American counterparts, it has been announced.

This next one: Now you KNOW the S is about to HTF:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wor..._Nuclear_Plant
5:15pm UK, Thursday March 17, 2011

Japan Admits Nuclear Problem Is 'Severe'

A spokesman for the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has admitted the situation is now considered to be "severe".

"This is a severe incident that is occurring right now," the spokesman said at a news conference.

"We have vented and used seawater as cooling, followed the accident management plan but this is a very severe operation."

The admission comes as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) continues attempts to stop the six-reactor Fukushima 1 complex from going into nuclear meltdown.

"We have to keep cooling the fuel so it doesn't reach criticality," the Tepco spokesman said, adding that radiation levels have barely fallen at the site.

The UK's chief scientific officer John Beddington explained that spent nuclear rods were stored in 'ponds', which kept them cool.

"The situation has changed," he said.

(It's) the beginning of the catastrophic phase... Maybe we have to pray
President of the Society for Radiation Protection Sebastian Pflugbeil

"The pond in rector four is the cause of very considerable concern. What has happened is that this has been damaged by explosions and is leaking very fast.
"We've had reports that it has gone dry."

Low concentrations of radioactive particles from the power plant have been heading eastwards and are expected to reach North America in days, a Swedish official said.

Lars-Erik De Geer, from the government-run Swedish Defence Research Agency, cited data gathered from international monitoring stations used to detect nuclear weapons tests.

Meanwhile, international energy authorities and other nations voiced concerns over the situation at the Fukushima plant north-east of Tokyo.

Japanese Chinook helicopters - reportedly fitted with lead radiation shields - attempted to dump tons of seawater into cooling ponds to prevent spent fuel overheating.

Operators working in short shifts also pumped water into the reactor cores.

The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) said that four water drops had been made to prevent the reactor overheating.

A police riot control water cannon attempted to replenish the cooling pools but was withdrawn, while two military airport fire trucks continued afterwards.

Sebastian Pflugbeil, from the private German-based Society for Radiation Protection, said Japan's efforts at Fukushima 1 plant signalled "the beginning of the catastrophic phase".

"Maybe we have to pray," he said.

The head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, said he believes the situation is more serious than the Japanese government is letting on.

Mr Jaczko warned water in reactor 4's cooling pool may have run dry and a second reactor could be leaking - something experts say could accelerate the release of radiation.

"We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation," he said.

[Cascadians]

If you read between the lines, that 24 or 48 hour window has closed.

[Reborn]

It's not like you can't use google yourself rather than clogging this discussion with a 1/2 page list of rehashed sensationalist headlines.

I do appreciate when Cascadians posts a decent article with good info. But the list of headlines is apparently copied from Google or something like that. You can't link from her post here on TB2k, nor can you tell where the headline came from.

It's just Drivel without the above.

What's the difference between one post (1/2 page?) of headlines and bickering posts about what one likes to read in a thread and what one doesn't like to read? P'raps if we keep this up we too can clog the discussion and get to a 1/2 page full of drivel.

[Dazed]

What's the difference between one post (1/2 page?) of headlines and bickering posts about what one likes to read in a thread and what one doesn't like to read? P'raps if we keep this up we too can clog the discussion and get to a 1/2 page full of drivel.

I said my piece. Feel free to disagree. I'll not mention it again.

[Cascadians]

" .... Beginning of the catastrophic phase .... "

[Jeffrey Thomason]

http://plainenglishnuclear.blogspot....ctor-post.html

1. I live on the West Coast. Am I in danger?

No. Absolutely not.

You won’t even notice except that everyone will keep talking about it for ages, and it’ll take us even longer to get off coal and oil and natural gas because people will be afraid of nuclear power again. Go outside, get some sunshine (or rain, depending), be grateful for the fact that your city isn’t completely destroyed in an earthquake or a tsunami, hug your loved ones, and then find a way to donate to the relief efforts.

You might get cancer years from now, but it won’t be from this. It’ll be from smoking or sun damage or plastics or those horrible processed foods with the carcinogens you keep eating.

3. Even if the reactor has a meltdown? The media keeps saying we’re headed for a meltdown. Isn’t that a very very bad thing?

Not necessarily. “Meltdown” is a very broad term – it applies to a range of conditions. “Meltdown” is basically any time that the fuel gets hot enough that the cladding (the metal wrapper that holds the fuel in place) gets holes in it. But “meltdown” could mean just one teeny spot on one single fuel pin (the cladding starts to fail at about 2200 degrees F) all the way up to the entire reactor core in a liquid pool on the bottom of the pressure vessel (the fuel itself melts at about 5000 degrees F). The media seems to think it’s that whole-core thing. But that isn’t going to happen.

So far they’ve had a partial failure of some of the fuel pins in two of the reactor units, and that’s about where it’s expected to stay. It may turn out that a third reactor unit also had a partial failure of fuel pins. This is a sad situation – we try not to have fuel failures, because it’s a giant hassle – but it’s not by itself a dangerous one. It’s very important to remember that these fuel pins are sealed inside a giant steel pressure vessel, which itself is sealed inside a giant concrete containment structure (you may also hear this called the “drywell”). Even if the core *did* melt all the way down, either one of those two things on its own would keep the radiation from the melted fuel from getting to the public.

Short version:
- Chernobyl used a different kind of fuel, and its fuel caught on fire and the ash went everywhere in a great cloud that lasted for months in affected areas. That can’t happen here; for one the fuel can’t catch on fire, so no ash, and for two, any radiation release would be in gaseous form and the cloud would pass over affected areas in hours.
- Chernobyl didn’t have a containment structure. These reactors do.

This is more like Three Mile Island, if you insist on picking an accident for comparison.

5. But Three Mile Island was terrible!

Three Mile Island a) didn’t kill anyone, b) didn’t injure anyone, and c) only released a very small amount of radioactive material, mostly gases that went harmlessly into the atmosphere. (Seriously! Read about it!) [1]

During Three Mile Island about half of the core (including fuel) melted and fell to the bottom of the pressure vessel [1]. But it didn’t melt through the steel pressure vessel – in fact it only melted about 5/8 of an inch through the wall.[2] (A typical pressure vessel is ~6 inches thick.) And even if it had, it would have had to get through like 6 feet of concrete after that. (We design it that way.)

Right now our best evidence indicates that yes, a small portion of the cores in Fukishima One Unit 1 and Unit 3 have failed (although we don’t think the fuel has melted, just the cladding), and maybe Unit 2 also. But it’s thought that the majority of the fuel didn’t melt, and that the cleanup will probably be less difficult than Three Mile Island.

8. What’s the worst thing that could happen? What about the most likely?

My short-version prediction: The fuel in Units 1 and 3 of Fukushima One have been damaged, and the status of the fuel in Unit 2 is unknown. Fuel in all three of these units could melt further, but the radioactivity will remain contained by the containment structures. Small amounts of radioactive steam and gases have already been released, and more small releases could occur. Right now I think 150 people are being monitored for radiation exposure and 23 have been sent for decontamination – but that includes workers. (Can’t remember a source; would appreciate one.) Worker injuries (there have already been 15 injuries) will be due to explosions, not radiation. No harm will come to members of the public. No harm will come to the environment, except for any little algae and bacteria critters caught up in the seawater they are using for emergency cooling.

The worst thing that could happen is getting a hole in one of the containment structures. That has possibly happened in Fukushima One Unit 2, due to the hydrogen explosion there. But radiation levels near this unit fell after an initial spike – which is what you would expect to happen if the suppression pool exploded but the containment held – so their guess is that if there is a hole, it’s actually in the pressure vessel and not the containment structure. (It’s also expected to be a small hole.) If there were a hole in the containment structure, radioactivity carried in liquid coolant could leak out of the hole and into the surrounding reactor building. Radioactive gases could leak out of the hole and up into the atmosphere. It’s important to emphasize that the only members of the public who would be at risk in this situation would a) be downwind, and b) probably not get a dose that would kill them or cause cancer - probably a dose closer to 2 or 3 CT scans put together. I’m not a health physicist, though, so I could be wrong.

There is one complicating factor, though. If radiation levels from a unit with a hole in the containment structure are too high, it could mean workers trying to make sure the other units at Fukushima One stay shut down would have to evacuate or risk radiation poisoning by staying to operate the reactors. Probably if this happened they would rotate the workers in on short shifts to minimize exposure. If workers were completely evacuated, Units 1 and 3 would probably melt down. Again, as long as the main containment didn’t get compromised, there wouldn’t be a major release of radioactivity.

9. That sounds pretty bad, still.

It is. It’s never good when people get hurt. And I bet some investors are going to be mad. And it’s going to take some work to clean everything up and repair it. But listen: this is not the thing that needs your fear and attention right now.
Here’s some perspective: There are over 10,000 missing and presumed dead from the quake and tsunami. [13] Over 3600 people are confirmed as having died in this quake, so far – more than 9/11. Property damage is estimated to be as much as $100 billion, according to some reports. [14] And aftershocks keep happening.

Quit freaking out about the reactors; freak out about the dead and the wounded. Freak out about the towns wiped off the coastline. Get out there and do what you can: donate money, donate time, let Japan know we support them. And spread good information, not fear.

More at link.

[bw]

...

More at link.

And not a word about spent fuel.

[Cascadians]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/wo...html?src=twrhp
March 17, 2011, by Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi

Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat

Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors is now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants — Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while Chinese nuclear reactors send them to a desert storage compound in western China’s Gansu province. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the power plant.

Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves. The electric utility said that a total of 11,195 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site.

That is in addition to 400 to 600 fuel rod assemblies that had been in active service in each of the three troubled reactors. In other words, the vast majority of the fuel assemblies at the troubled reactors are in the storage pools, not the reactors.

Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles heel, as the water in the pools either boils away or leaks out of their containments, and efforts to add more water have gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones, there are strong indications that the fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Japanese authorities struggled Thursday to add more water to the storage pool at reactor No. 3.

Four helicopters dropped water, only to have it scattered by strong breezes. Water cannons mounted on police trucks — equipment designed to disperse rioters — were deployed in an effort to spray water on the pools. It is unclear if they managed to achieve that.

Nuclear engineers around the world have been expressing surprise this week that the storage pools have become such a problem. “I’m amazed that they couldn’t keep the water in the pools,” said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer who worked as a consultant to the Japanese nuclear reactor manufacturing industry in the 1980s and visited the Fukushima Daiichi reactor then.

Very high levels of radiation above the storage pools suggest that the water has drained in the 39-foot-deep pools to the point that the 13-foot-high fuel rod assemblies have been exposed to air for hours and are starting to melt, he said. Spent fuel rod assemblies emit less heat than fresh fuel rod assemblies inside reactor cores, but the spent assemblies still emit enough heat and radioactivity that they must still be kept covered with 26 feet of water that is circulated to prevent it from growing too warm.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made the startling assertion on Wednesday that there was little or no water left in the storage pool located on top of reactor No. 4, and expressed grave concern about the radioactivity that would be released as a result. The spent fuel rod assemblies there include 548 assemblies that were only removed from the reactor in November and December to prepare the reactor for maintenance, and may be emitting more heat than the older assemblies in other storage pools.

Even without recirculating water, it should take many days for the water in a storage pool to evaporate, nuclear engineers said. So the rapid evaporation and even boiling of water in the storage pools now is a mystery, raising the question of whether the pools may also be leaking.

Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator who worked 13 years at three American reactors, said that storage pools typically have a liner of stainless steel that is three-eighths of an inch thick, and they rest on reinforced concrete bases. So even if the liner ruptures, “unless the concrete was torn apart, there’s no place for the water to go,” he said.

At each end of a pool are 16-foot-tall steel gates with rubber seals, used to swing fresh fuel rod assemblies into a reactor and to swing out and store the spent assemblies. The gates are designed to withstand earthquakes, Mr. Friedlander said, but could have sprung leaks given the power of last Friday’s quake, now estimated to have had a magnitude of 9.0.

Even if water gushed out of the gates, there would still be about 10 feet of water left on top of the fuel rod assemblies.

When the water in a storage pool disappears, residual heat in the fuel rods’ uranium left over from their time in a nuclear reactor continues to heat the rods’ zirconium cladding. This causes the zirconium to oxidize, or rust, and even catch fire. This breaks the seal of the rods, and pressurized radioactive gases like iodine, which accumulated in the rods while they were in the reactor, suddenly spurt out, Mr. Albrecht said.

Each rod inside the assembly holds a vertical stack of cylindrical uranium oxide pellets. These pellets sometimes become fused together while in the reactor, in which case they may stay standing up even as the cladding burns off. If the pellets stay standing up, then even with the water and zirconium gone, nuclear fission will not take place, Mr. Albrecht said.

But Tokyo Electric said this week that there was a chance of “recriticality” in the storage ponds – that is to say, the uranium in the fuel rods could become critical in nuclear terms and resume the fission that previously took place inside the reactor, spewing out radioactive byproducts.

Mr. Albrecht said this was very unlikely, but could happen if the stacks of pellets slumped over and became jumbled together on the floor of the storage pool. Tokyo Electric has reconfigured the storage racks in its pools in recent years so as to pack more fuel rod assemblies together in limited space.

If recriticality occurs, pouring on pure water could actually cause fission to take place even faster. The authorities would need to add water with lots of boron, as they have been trying to do, because the boron absorbs neutrons and interrupts nuclear chain reactions.

If recriticality takes place, the uranium starts to warm. If a lot of fission occurs, which may only happen in an extreme case, the uranium would melt through anything underneath it. If it encounters water as it descends, a steam explosion may then scatter the molten uranium.At Daiichi, each assembly has either 64 large fuel rods or 81 slightly smaller fuel rods, depending on the vendor who supplied it. A typical fuel rod assembly has a total of roughly 380 pounds of uranium.

One big worry for Japanese officials is that reactor No. 3, the main target of the helicopters and water cannons on Thursday, uses a new and different fuel. It uses mixed oxides, or mox, which contains a mixture of uranium and plutonium, and can produce a more dangerous radioactive plume if scattered by fire or explosions.

According to Tokyo Electric, 32 of the 514 fuel rod assemblies in the storage pond at reactor No. 3 contain mox.

Tokyo Electric has said very little about the biggest repository of spent fuel assemblies at the site: 6,291 assemblies located in a common storage pool immediately inland from reactor No. 4.

The electric utility has been making elaborate plans for years to build an intermediate-term storage facility elsewhere. The plan was to take spent fuel rod assemblies from the common storage pool and put them in more secure dry casks.

Construction on the intermediate-term storage facility was supposed to have started next year.

[Cascadians]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

1740: Reuters is also reporting that the IAEA says that Japan plans to reconnect power to unit 2 of the Fukushima's nuclear plant once the spraying of water on unit 3 has been completed.

1734: Unconfirmed reports on Reuters suggest that the IAEA was told by Japanese authorities that engineers were able to lay an external power cable to the nuclear plant's unit 2.

[Jeffrey Thomason]

And not a word about spent fuel.

It mentions them, but doesn't address them nearly as much as I would like.

[Masterphreak]

The electric utility said that a total of 11,195 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site.

At Daiichi, each assembly has either 64 large fuel rods or 81 slightly smaller fuel rods, depending on the vendor who supplied it.

A typical fuel rod assembly has a total of roughly 380 pounds of uranium.

That's a total of roughly 4,254,100 pounds of uranium on site.

[Dazed]

[QUOTE=Cascadians;4022913]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/wo...html?src=twrhp
March 17, 2011, by Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi

Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat

The electric utility has been making elaborate plans for years to build an intermediate-term storage facility elsewhere. The plan was to take spent fuel rod assemblies from the common storage pool and put them in more secure dry casks.

QUOTE]


So in reading this, I see that some of the fuel can be stored dry (as I thought). So it is only SOME of the fuel that is still thermally hot. Therfore (and this is a question) only the "newer" fuel is an issue, so not all 60 tons or whatever is likely to get hot enough to burn? Only the relatively newer fuel in the pools. Or am I missing something?

[Catbird]

As a former military dependent, I can explain what this means. The evac is VOLUNTARY. Family members are NOT being ordered out of the country.

What the military is saying is, "We know that your family might want to leave but you can't afford to buy tickets to fly them out. So, we're making flights available for free, and/or reimbursing money you spend on tickets."

IF/WHEN the military ORDERS dependents out, then it's an indication that the S has HTF.

From: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...01498320110317

"Some 20,000 US military dependents can leave Japan

WASHINGTON, March 17 | Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:21pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Around 20,000 dependents of U.S. military personnel in Japan are eligible for voluntary evacuation under plans announced on Thursday by the Pentagon, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Japan told Reuters.

Families of U.S. military personnel who choose to take part can buy tickets on commercial aircraft and get reimbursement. The military says it may also use its aircraft to fly dependents out of the country, if needed."

[willowlady]

Would like some comprehensive answer to my question: Were there spent fuel rods on top of reactors #1 and #3, which have already blown their tops? If so, is the material from those spent, but still very dangerous, rods, go airborne?

[mt4design]

" .... Beginning of the catastrophic phase .... "

Wow. He said that in public, huh?

argh Leska... 11 years out from the rollover and the radiologic shhhheeeet is apparently going to hit the fan.

You two have any good caves scoped out?

Mike

[Masterphreak]

Would like some comprehensive answer to my question: Were there spent fuel rods on top of reactors #1 and #3, which have already blown their tops? If so, is the material from those spent, but still very dangerous, rods, go airborne?

Yes, all 6 buildings have spent fuel storage pools. The ones in units 3 & 4 are of the highest concern.

[Tom McDowell]

Arnold_Gundersen
bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Gundersen

RT Video clip MAr 16 5:20min.

Nothing can be done, Claims there's nothing anyone (experts) can do at this point, thinks the reactors are on runaway.

===


.

[jehu]

My question is what is this doing to the ocean life? Does it affect it?

Absolutely.

Mutations and death.

What also concerns me, is if this stuff remains on top of the water and is washed ashore in high concentrations.

[Masterphreak]

After running some more rough figures there is an average of 310,000 pounds of uranium in each pool. Yikes!

[LONEWOLF]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7JvuUwpq40

The RT - The A. Gundersen interview vid.....

[bw]

Would like some comprehensive answer to my question: Were there spent fuel rods on top of reactors #1 and #3, which have already blown their tops? If so, is the material from those spent, but still very dangerous, rods, go airborne?

No, the material did not go airborne. The rods are down in a well, and at the time the hydrogen explosions happened they were still in a secure building and more or less fully covered with water. The blast popped apart the buildings' shells and may have damaged the spent pool, but would not have been able to launch the entire water body including the fuel rods, so they stayed put at that time.

When they catch fire, of course, particles will go airborne.

[MichaelUK]

http://twitter.com/W7VOA


# If Geiger counter starts registering 20,000+ cpm I'd feel a little uneasy. (My boots Thursday: 3,000 cpm). A colleagues' shoes: 10,000 cpm 26 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# If the exposed spent fuel rods at Fukushima-1 again go critical we should be much more worried but not alarmist. 29 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# I got tested for exposure & while my levels are indeed up to 10x normal that's not high enough for me to be concerned about my health. 31 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# Personally, I believe everyone should be able to determine whether they want to stay or leave Japan. 32 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# I should stress the US, UK search team pull out is based on other media reports -- we have not had confirmation. 33 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# Getting reports that US, UK quake rescue search teams to pull out of Japan due to radiation fears. 42 minutes ago via TweetDeck

# Our White House correspondent says Pres. Obama expected to make a statement on Japan in a few hours. about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

# markmackinnon Japanese remain (relatively) calm as foreigners press the panic button - my audio report from Tokyo: http://tgam.ca/BlOB about 1 hour ago via web Retweeted by W7VOA and 36 others

# VOA_News Japanese Tsunami Survivors Face Daily Struggle http://bit.ly/hRGdjU about 1 hour ago via twitterfeed Retweeted by W7VOA and 12 others

# Kyodo: Germany to temporarily move functions of embassy in Tokyo to Osaka amid nuclear crisis. about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

# RT @AmbassadorRoos: There is no double standard - what we advise our Embassy personnel will be provided to all Americans. about 3 hours ago via ÜberSocial

# RT @martyn_williams: TEPCO has released video shot from SDF helicopter on March 16, 4pm, of Fukushima reactors http://youtu.be/lBXqiw6EJUk about 3 hours ago via ÜberSocial

# RT @AmbassadorRoos: If we assess radiation poses a threat to public health, we will share that info & provide relevant guidance immediately. about 3 hours ago via ÜberSocial

# A reminder that all six reactor plants at Fukushima-1 have some degree of cooling issues, not just #3 and #4. about 5 hours ago via TweetDeck

# Japan gov't: Water shots tonight had no immediate effect on rad levels, more repair work on electrical lines into Fukushima nuke plant Fri.

[Dazed]

Arnold_Gundersen
bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Gundersen

RT Video clip MAr 16 5:20min.

Nothing can be done, Claims there's nothing anyone (experts) can do at this point, thinks the reactors are on runaway.
.

He is a paid shill for anti-nuclear groups. No doubt love this situation so he gets more coverage and speaking fees.

[Cascadians]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/0...7?pageNumber=1
5:29pm GMT, by Kevin Krolicki

Special report - Mistakes, misfortune, meltdown: Japan's quake

TOKYO (Reuters) - By Thursday morning the last line of defence came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter manoeuvre designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just short of a week into Japan's nuclear crisis, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and underpowered.

A police riot control truck was hauled in over uneven roads to keep a spray of water on the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors. In the air above, Japan Self-Defence Forces helicopters made runs with baskets of water in a desperate attempt to cool exposed fuel rods believed to have already partly melted down.

Meanwhile, technicians were dashing to complete what amounts to the world's largest extension cord: an electric cable to connect the stricken plant from the north and allow Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the plant, to restart critical water pumps taken out by the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on the afternoon of Friday, March 11.

An examination by Reuters of Japan's effort to contain its escalating nuclear disaster reveals a series of missteps, bad luck and desperate improvisation. What also emerges is a country that has begun to question some of its oldest values. Japanese have long revered the country's bureaucratic competence, especially when it is contrasted with its political dysfunction. Japan has also proudly often chosen to go its own way and turn down outside assistance. But what happens when competence begins to break down? And what happens when a disaster is so overwhelming that outside help is vital?

The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand a violent earthquake. But the massive tsunami that followed knocked out both the plant's electric-powered cooling system and its diesel-powered backup generators.

As the first pictures of the destruction around the northern town of Sendai were beamed across Japan and around the world in the hours after the quake, authorities initially said they had safely shut down the four nuclear plants closest to the earthquake and tsunami zone.

It wasn't true. With no power to the plant's cooling system, the water that circulates around the fuel rods inside the six reactors at Fukushima had already begun to boil off. Within a few hours authorities declared a "nuclear emergency situation" at the plant. While no radiation release had been detected, they said, residents around the plant should evacuate.

It was the beginning of a new nightmare. Over the ensuing days, as Japan has struggled to come to terms with what could be more than 10,000 dead and raced to bring food and clean water to more than 500,000 people who lost their homes in the quake and tsunami, rapidly deteriorating conditions inside Fukushima have threatened a meltdown with the potential to spread radioactive particles across the country and beyond.

"They might have been prepared for an earthquake. They might have been prepared for a tsunami. They might have been prepared for a nuclear emergency, but it was unlikely that they were prepared for all three," said Ellen Vancko, an electric power expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

FIRST TROUBLE

Before last week, Japan's 55 nuclear reactors had provided about 30 percent of the nation's electric power. That percentage had been expected to rise to 50 percent by 2030 with a boom in new plant construction.

But nuclear power plants stop if they don't have enough power. Stranded nuclear reactors cannot circulate water to cool their fuel rods. When the existing water boils off, the nuclear fuel begins to heat, a process that can set fire to surrounding materials and touch off powerful hydrogen blasts.

"Power is the lifeblood for a power plant," said Harold Denton, who headed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission team that handled the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis in the United States. "If you've got power, you can do a lot, but if you don't have any power, the water in the reactor vessels heats up and boils away and the fuel begins to melt. It's a problem they've gotten into now."

The threat for the Fukushima plant, 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Tokyo, is compounded, experts say, by the design of its 40-year-old reactors, known in the industry as the General Electric Mark 1.

Unlike newer models, the Tokyo Electric reactors in Fukushima each contain an upper chamber for storing spent fuel rods in a pool of water housed together in the same concrete shell as the active core of the reactor. A failure in one can lead to problems in the other.

On Saturday morning, Japanese officials reported increased pressure inside number 1 reactor. A few hours later, there was an explosion in one of the reactors.

TEPCO, the plant operator, said it had detected increased radioactivity levels around the plant but that the reactor's primary containment vessel had not been breached and no major leakage had occurred.

The company said it was about to begin pumping sea water into the reactors. They didn't explain it, but experts watching overseas immediately understood what it meant: the situation was so dire that the plants would never be saved. The priority now was to prevent a runaway meltdown.

As the level of radiation around the Fukushima complex topped safe levels, Japanese authorities began making preparations to hand out iodine -- used to protect the thyroid against radioactive exposure -- in the affected areas.

The following day, Sunday, Japan's nuclear safety agency said the Fukushima incident ranked as a 4 under the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. By comparison, Three Mile Island was a 5 while Chernobyl was a 7 on the 1 to 7 scale.

Authorities were worried, but still optimistic that they could bring the plant back under control.

"SHUTTERS ROLLED"

The drama in Japan began just a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation Board of Governors had wrapped up its quarterly meeting in Vienna. Set up to "promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies" the IAEA has on staff some of the world's leading experts on nuclear safety.

But it quickly became apparent that the agency was struggling to keep up with what was unfolding on the other side of the world. The IAEA put out a series of short statements over the weekend, though at one point its website crashed and for several hours the press department had to refer journalists to statements posted on its Facebook page. It took three days for Director General Yukiya Amano, himself Japanese, to hold a news conference to address the emergency.

"Atomic contamination is threatening from Japan and what do you hear from the Vienna-based IAEA: dignified silence," a popular Austrian tabloid wrote. "The shutters are rolled down, just like for a weekend off."

When the markets in Tokyo opened on Monday, the response was inevitable: Japanese stocks fell more than six percent. On Tuesday, they would finish another 10 percent lower. The yen has spiked against the dollar this week as traders unwind their positions and Japanese investors pull out of foreign markets because they'll need the money at home.

On Monday a second hydrogen blast rocked the plant. TEPCO again said the explosion had not damaged the primary containment vessel. But by this stage even the stoic Japanese had begun to question the information they were receiving.
"They don't tell the truth. It's in their DNA," said Taro Kono, a member of the Liberal Democratic party and a long-time opponent of nuclear power.

Nuclear power analysts, officials and executives said they had seen nothing in the response to suggest that mistakes on the ground had compounded the crisis that now threatens a wide swath of Japan including Tokyo's nearly 13 million residents.
But the speed with which the crisis spun out of control has exposed a fundamental flaw in the risk planning that still governs much of the nuclear industry in Japan and elsewhere.

In diplomatic cables acquired by WikiLeaks and seen by Reuters, U.S. diplomats said a top Japanese official at the International Atomic Energy Agency had neglected safety in Japan.

Tomihoro Taniguchi, a Japanese official who headed the IAEA's department of Nuclear Safety and Security, hindered progress for years, according to a December 2009 cable to Washington from the U.S. embassy in Vienna.

"Taniguchi has been a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan's own safety practices, and he is a particular disappointment to the United States for his unloved-step-child treatment of the Office of Nuclear Security," said another cable, sent on July 7, 2009.

Marin Kostov, an earthquake engineering expert in Bulgaria and a member of the IAEA expert team sent to Japan after the 2007 quake that hit the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, said one of the main problems is not how plants are built but where they are built.

"Selecting where these nuclear power plants have to (be) built is a crucially important task," he said. Nuclear engineers had too "much belief that they are going to cope with these external events with making the buildings very strong, very safe."
"At the same time you have a situation like what has happened (in Japan) where although the building is safe -- nothing has happened after the tremor, after the shaking everything is there -- but then you do not have infrastructure, you do not have water, you do not have power, you have nothing."

BLACK SWAN

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 book The Black Swan described how the commonly held views of risk exclude the truly unexpected events that shape history and markets. The book has fuelled new thinking on how to manage the risk from apparently low-probability, world-shaking events such as the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Nuclear experts have thought a lot about that over the past few years. In the wake of the Sept 11. attacks, U.S. regulators required plant operators to develop plans to deal with potential airline attacks.

In February last year, the IAEA posted a report on its website about the 2007 Japan quake, saying it was a "wake-up call that reverberated around the globe."

"There has been a misconception since the early days of nuclear power that human error or mechanical failure, in other words risk factors within the plant itself, are the most significant variables regarding possible radiological release to the environment," the story read. "In fact, the greatest threat to a plant's operation may lie outside its walls.

"Nuclear power plants all over the world are exposed to natural hazards, such as hurricanes, floods, fires, tsunamis, volcanoes and earthquakes. With safety always a key concern, engineers, safety specialists and architects also have to take extreme natural forces into consideration."

Avinash Nafday, a California-based researcher who consulted for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has written on the Black Swan effect for nuclear plants, agrees. "In doing nuclear plant designs, you have to look at the consequences of events, no matter how low the probability," Nafday said.

But Ed Lyman, a physicist and nuclear plant design expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said watching plant workers put their lives at risk in a bid to prevent meltdown is a good reminder that even the most thorough plans will never be enough.

"I think we need to reevaluate the realism of those plans in light of what we're seeing here, because they involve the reliance on heroic actions on the part of workers and possibly life-or-death decisions to protect (against) larger scale releases," he said.

A RARE ADDRESS

Tuesday brought worse news: blasts in two of the reactors and a fire in a third at Fukushima as water levels in a pool used to store spent fuel dropped sharply. Radiation levels in the plant soared so high at one point that workers were pulled out of the control room.

Little is known about the skeletal crew that has battled to bring the plant under control. Even Japanese media have not identified any of the 200 or so workers involved.

"What is clear is that those working there are receiving radiation and should be treated as heroes," Javier Dies, head of nuclear engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona told Reuters.

The sense of dread grew almost by the hour. In Tokyo on Tuesday, radiation levels shot to 10 times normal levels, a worrying elevation if not yet a level that would cause acute radiation problems.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan appeared in a televised news briefing to urge people living up to 30 km (19 miles) from the reactor to stay indoors. The Bank of Japan pumped eight trillion yen ($102 billion) into the jittery financial system after a record 15 trillion yen injection on Monday.

As bulldozers begin clearing an emergency route to the Fukushima nuclear plant to allow access for fire trucks, the country's reclusive Emperor Akihito delivered a rare address to the Japanese people, offering his concern about the scale of the crisis. In his televised Wednesday statement Akihito said he was deeply worried and asked people to treat each other with "compassion" during a crisis he called "unprecedented in scale."

Coming in a week of mass evacuations and dwindling food on store shelves, the emperor's address reminded older Japanese of the end of World War Two when a recorded message from Akihito's father had marked the surrender.

Though the sense of helplessness is hardly as profound as it was then, the impact of last week's disaster is already profound. After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, Japan refused offers of help from the United States. This time around, Tokyo welcomed offers of help early. On the day Akihito made his address, the government even said it might have to seek direct U.S. military intervention in the crisis.

A FAST CAR AND A GEIGER COUNTER

The government now planned to use helicopters to drop water onto the reactors in an attempt to cool them. Authorities had also brought in troops to help pump water at the stricken plant as part of their last-ditch efforts to prevent a meltdown.

Washington had offered help almost immediately after the quake. But its navy had also pulled back from the Japan coastline in an apparent effort to avoid any possible nuclear contamination.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Chairman Gregory Jaczko questioned Japan's order to evacuate citizens within a 20-km radius from the plant. Under the Japanese order, people living within 30 km are advised to stay indoors. Jaczko said U.S. citizens would be told to evacuate to an 80-km radius.

By Wednesday afternoon, workers at Fukushima had resorted to taking radiation levels from a moving car as it drove past the main gate of the plant. The eight automated radiation monitoring points at Fukushima No. 1 relied on the same power that went down with the plant itself.

With gasoline reserves at the site dwindling, scientists initially decided to drive to the West Gate, stop, and then monitor radiation levels there.

Now the levels were so high that those sent in didn't stop. With only a single data point -- and a lot of noise -- it became harder to draw conclusions on what was happening at the plant.

"Readings can change with the weather and be affected by radiation in dust and other materials that accumulate," Tetsuo Ohumura of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters. "We'll have to see how things change."

By Thursday morning, the cores of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors were believed to have partly melted. Just as worryingly, backup systems to provide water for a pool of spent fuel rods in No. 3 and No. 4 had also failed.

Japan's Air Self Defence Force had begun using Chinook helicopters to dump water on the damaged No. 3 and No. 4 reactors but with seemingly little impact.

Without water in the pools, radiation levels will spike to levels high enough to prove lethal with exposure of less than 20 seconds, according to a U.S. projection based on a 1982 incident in a plant of the same design in Connecticut.

Absent some intervention, U.S. experts predicted a wave of radiation that would drive workers back for their own safety.

PRESSURE GROWS

The sense of panic was now fuelled by rolling blackouts in some of the country's biggest cities. ATMs stopped working, households sat in darkness.

"I don't think the situation on the ground or the psychological pressure that we're under is understood," Sakura Shoei, mayor of a small town ordered to stay indoors because of the threat of rising radiation told broadcaster NHK. Many of his residents wanted to flee but couldn't because they didn't have access to gasoline, he said. "We need the power of the central government."

Nurses at one Tokyo area hospital resorted to using sealed plastic bottles with little rocks inside when call buttons went dead. Patients would shake them for attention. Neighbourhoods like Shibuya -- known around the world for its giddy excess of light and neon advertising -- blinked out.

Foreigners scrambled to get out of Japan, with the number of countries advising its nationals to consider leaving Tokyo and the area north of the capital growing.

Bankers chartered private flights. Washington and other capitals said it would send in planes to rescue its nationals.

Beijing, which has ambitious plans to expand its nuclear power stations, urged Japan to disclose any developments concerning radiation risks in an "accurate and swift" way.

In Vienna, the IAEA has begun giving daily briefings, though there are still plenty of questions.

"The situation is completely unclear, there are huge questions, especially regarding unit 4. We do not know if the fuel core will melt. The focus is the battle to cool it down," said a diplomat accredited to the agency.

"We got no answer from the IAEA on detailed questions about the development of radioactivity, the changing levels. The radioactivity rose dramatically. It is very, very difficult to say why."

The diplomat also said he and others accredited to the IAEA wanted more discussions on whether the agency needed powers to enforce nuclear safety and security.

Shiro Ogawa, 75, a now-retired engineer with Toshiba, watched the developments play out with a note of sadness and regret.

Ogawa had been involved in the design of safety pumps for the No. 1 reactor in 1971 and No. 2, completed in 1974, a year after the oil shock had convinced Japan that nuclear was the power of the future.

Ogawa said he had never questioned the earthquake design standards of the reactors and never questioned the durability of back-up power plans. He never thought about a tsunami big enough to take out the generators like last week's wave of 10 meters or more.

"We had almost no experience in Japan with nuclear power at the time," Ogawa told reporters. "It's a terrible thing to say, but we were ignorant. We didn't think that we were in a position to judge the standards we were given. We were close to being ignorant."

[rafter]

Watch it again, specifically at 37 seconds:

"The President has Authorized a military assisted VOLUNTARY departure of dependents from Japan"

Watch it again at the very end.... that is what I quoted.

[Jeffrey Thomason]

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/arc...pc-statement-2

Update to Information Sheet Regarding the Tohoku Earthquake

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) Washington DC Office

As of 10:15AM (EST), March 17, 2011

Radiation Levels
o At 9:20AM (JST) on March 17, radiation level at elevation of 1,000ft above Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: 4,130 micro sievert.

o At 9:20AM on March 17, radiation level at elevation of 300ft above Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: 87,700 micro sievert.

o At 11:10AM on March 17, radiation level at main gate (approximately 3,281 feet from Unit 2 reactor building) of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: 646.2 micro sievert.

o At 7:50PM on March 17, radiation level outside main office building (approximately 1,640 feet from Unit 2 reactor building) of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: 3,599 micro sievert.

o For comparison, a human receives 2,400 micro sievert per year from natural radiation in the form of sunlight, radon, and other sources. One chest CT scan generates 6,900 micro sievert per scan.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor
o Since 10:30AM on March 14, the pressure within the primary containment vessel cannot be measured.

o At 12:50PM on March 17, pressure inside the reactor core: 0.185MPa.

o At 12:50PM on March 17, water level inside the reactor core: 1.7 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor
o At 12:25PM on March 16, pressure inside the primary containment vessel: 0.40MPaabs.

o At 12:50PM on March 17, pressure inside the reactor core: -0.027MPa.

o At 12:50PM on March 17, water level inside the reactor core: 1.8 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor
o At 12:40PM on March 16, pressure inside the primary containment vessel: 0.23MPaabs.

o At 6:15AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber was observed to fluctuate.

o At 7:00AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.22MPa.

o At 7:05AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.44MPa.

o At 7:10AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.26MPa.

o At 7:15AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.52MPa.

o At 7:20AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.13MPa.

o At 7:25AM on March 17, pressure inside the suppression chamber: 0.57MPa.

o At 9:48AM on March 17, a Self Defense Forces helicopter made four water drops aimed for the spent fuel pool.

o At 4:35PM on March 17, pressure inside the reactor core: 0.005MPa.

o At 4:35PM on March 17, water level inside the reactor core: 1.95 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

o At 7:05PM on March 17, a police water cannon began to shoot water aimed at the spent fuel pool until 7:22PM.

o At 7:35PM on March 17, five Self Defense Forces emergency fire vehicles shot water aimed at the spent fuel pool, until 8:09PM.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 5 reactor
o At 2:00PM on March 16, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 6 reactor
o At 2:00PM on March 16, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Update: FEPC has released more information, including a status on cooling pool at Unit 4.

Update to Information Sheet Regarding the Tohoku Earthquake

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) Washington DC Office

As of 11:30AM (EST), March 17, 2011

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 reactor
o No official updates to the information in our March 16 update have been provided.

o Through visual surveys from the helicopter flying above the Unit 4 reactor secondary containment building on March 16, it was observed that water remained in the spent fuel pool. The helicopter was measuring radiation levels above Unit 4 reactor secondary containment building in preparation for water drops. This report has not been officially confirmed.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 5 reactor
o At 12:00PM on March 17, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 147.56 degrees Fahrenheit.

o At 5:00PM on March 17, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 148.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 6 reactor
o At 12:00PM on March 17, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 144.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

o At 5:00PM on March 17, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 147.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Our official sources are:

Office of The Prime Minister of Japan
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Press Releases
Twitter Facebook 4

[Cascadians]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-sto...5875-22996869/

Japan nuclear plant crisis: Helicopter pictures show devastation inside Fukushima reactor towers - see the photos

Photos at above link -- Mike can you copy these here? For some reason I can't enlarge them.

[Catbird]

More possible complications.



"RT @makiwi: heh now this: NHK: warnings about high tides starting on 18th along Tohoku/ n Kanto coasts due to subsidence caused by quake.
Twitter - 7 minutes ago

[rafter]

As a former military dependent, I can explain what this means. The evac is VOLUNTARY. Family members are NOT being ordered out of the country.

What the military is saying is, "We know that your family might want to leave but you can't afford to buy tickets to fly them out. So, we're making flights available for free, and/or reimbursing money you spend on tickets."

IF/WHEN the military ORDERS dependents out, then it's an indication that the S has HTF.

From: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...01498320110317

"Some 20,000 US military dependents can leave Japan

WASHINGTON, March 17 | Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:21pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - Around 20,000 dependents of U.S. military personnel in Japan are eligible for voluntary evacuation under plans announced on Thursday by the Pentagon, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Japan told Reuters.

Families of U.S. military personnel who choose to take part can buy tickets on commercial aircraft and get reimbursement. The military says it may also use its aircraft to fly dependents out of the country, if needed."

Did you watch the video? He said, "Women and children first. Followed my non-essential, followed by essential....Then myself" I doubt that he (the skipper)can voluntarily leave his post.

[Exodia]

[QUOTE=Publius;4022884]

I am confused.


If hooking up power lines to get the water pumps restarted is going to fix everything, then why didn't they bring in as many industrial diesel generators as they needed days ago to accomplish the very same thing?








I made that statement many, many, many posts ago and why they did not go all out to get them there?!! Someone thats in control that should not be.

Maybe because in reality, it won't make a difference. It's too late to save the day with power. In the long term, they will need the power to conduct whatever sealing operations they will have to do, so might as well continue the work that has to be done anyway.

[Jeffrey Thomason]

Did you watch the video? He said, "Women and children first. Followed my non-essential, followed by essential....Then myself" I doubt that he (the skipper)can voluntarily leave his post.

He was simply reiterating the standard order of departure in general, watch the beginning of the video again. He clearly states that it is currently voluntary for dependents.

It's still big news, and shows the level of concern among the families, but it doesn't mean the military is bugging out (yet), which would be a far, far more troubling development.

[jehu]

Watch it again at the very end.... that is what I quoted.

Can all the volunteers to remain behind please raise your hand, and sign this waiver form....

[Cascadians]

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/n...,4216493.story
12:06 p.m. CDT, March 17, 2011

Tokyo flight triggers O'Hare radiation detectors

Mayor Richard Daley acknowledged today passengers on a flight from Tokyo had set off radiation detectors at O’Hare International Airport, but he offered no details and said federal officials will be handling the situation.

“Of course the protection of the person coming off the plane is very important in regards to any radiation, especially within their families and anything else,” Daley said at a downtown news conference to discuss his trip to China this week.

City Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino would only say, “We are aware that occurred yesterday. We are working with Customs and Border Protection on this issue." She referred reporters to the Department of Homeland Security.

[Catbird]

Did you watch the video? He said, "Women and children first. Followed my non-essential, followed by essential....Then myself" I doubt that he (the skipper)can voluntarily leave his post.

I am trying but in our house, nothing streams.... it just sort of gurgles.

ETA - and now, after trying to reload it for the nth time, I am getting this message: "This video has been removed by the user. Sorry about that."