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Satellite image of damage to Fukushima Daiichi reactors numbers 1 through 4 (from right to left). (Photo: DigitalGlobe)
As of Thursday night Japan time, it appears that delivery of water from helicopters and the ground has been ineffective, radiation rates are still high around the reactor buildings, installation of an electric supply to run coolant pumps is delayed until Friday at the earliest, the US is organizing evacuation flights and China is calling for more information from the Japanese government.
The Guardian reports on the ineffective aerial and ground water delivery:
Attempts to cool down a stricken reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have suffered a further setback with radiation levels rising rather than falling after attempts to douse it with high-pressure hoses.
Six fire engines and a police water cannon were sent in on Thursday evening to spray the plant’s No 3 reactor. But afterwards radiation emissions rose from 3,700 microsieverts per hour to 4,000 per hour, the Kyodo news agency quoted Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) as saying.
Part of the futility of this approach was explained a bit later in the article:
Each helicopter can carry 7.5 tonnes of water per load but the pools each hold 2,000 tonnes, an expert has told public broadcaster NHK.
In addition, NHK is reporting that 30 tonnes of water were sprayed in the aborted attempt, so it is clear that this route provides an insignificant amount of water compared to what is required for the spent fuel storage pools alone, not to mention what is needed for the reactors, as well.
Forbes reports on how the extremely high radiation levels around the reactor buildings has forced TEPCO to bring in additional workers as many of the current workers have reached the maximum permissible radiation dose for a year:
More workers were drafted for the frontline of Japan’s biggest nuclear disaster as radiation limits forced Tokyo Electric Power Co. to replace members of its original team trying to avert a nuclear meltdown.
The utility increased its workforce at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi plant to 322 today from 180 yesterday as it tried to douse water over exposed nuclear fuel rods to prevent melting and leaking lethal radiation. Levels beside the exposed rods would deliver a fatal dose in 16 seconds, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear physicist for the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety instructor.
As mentioned in the water story above, these extremely high exposure rates around the reactor buildings are what forced the aerial water drop and ground spraying attempts to be aborted. These same rates are now responsible for TEPCO having to rotate through plant workers very quickly.
Multiple sources have been reporting that TEPCO also is attempting to provide a high voltage electrical line to the Fukushima Daiichi plant from the outside power grid, but NHK television now is reporting that those connections will not be complete before Friday at the earliest. Also, multiple sources point out that there will be some time required for the coolant pumps to be put back into service before they can be effective in supplying cooling water to the reactor cores and spent fuel pools.
Meanwhile, the US, while not advocating that US citizens leave Japan, is making arrangements for those who wish to leave Japan to do so:
After reports that some spent fuel rods at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may now be completely dry, the US embassy on Thursday urged American citizens within 50 miles of the threatened plant to relocate and announced it would help US citizens evacuate the country by plane.
“The Department of State has authorized the voluntary departure, including relocation to safe areas within Japan, for family members and dependents of US Government officials who wish to leave northeast Japan. The US Government is also working to facilitate the departure of private American citizens from the affected areas – that is a 50-mile radius of the reactor,” announced US Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy.
The poor quality of information coming from TEPCO and the Japanese government has frustrated China:
China on Thursday urged Japan to provide prompt, precise information about its nuclear crisis in a bid to control a flurry of rumors sweeping the region about possible dangers
/snip/
The Foreign Ministry called on Japan to provide information swiftly.
“We hope the Japanese side will release information to the public in a timely and precise manner as well as its evaluation and prediction of the situation,” ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular briefing, when asked about the panic buying. She added, “I do not see any necessity to panic.”
For those who wish to monitor NHK’s English broadcast, it can be seen here.
The poor quality of information is leading to rumors swirling in China, with panic-buying of iodized salt stripping supplies in Bejing and other parts of China.
We will continue to monitor developments and provide updates as events dictate.
190 Comments
Has this Chernobyl link been posted here yet?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html
The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosisc. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people on-site and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot necessarily be attributed to radiation exposured. Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects although a large proportion of childhood thyroid cancers diagnosed since the accident is likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine falloutd.
Expert pups…this seems like an optimistic assessment of Chernobyl’s damage. I’ve read that one of the main problems associated with Chernobyl is heart deformities in children. How accurate is this article?
Jim,
I agree with Lobster’s sobering and depressing, yet realistic comment @ 3:45 am this morning to Scarecrow’s piece entitled, “Japan Nuke Watch, Thurs am JST: Water Drops and Fire Hoses.” What he said brings to mind Edgar Allan Poe’s famous words,
“Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary.”
This is what Lobster said,
“Alright. We have evidently reached the end of mitigation efforts that have more than an infinitesimal chance of working. These makeshift water injection efforts must be considered failures, unfortunately.
IMO, this is now a level 7 incident — the same level as Chernobyl. Given the proximity to highly populated areas, it will be worse than Chernobyl with respect to impact on humans. It is still too early to know which accident will have released more radiation.
I know that some of us have disagreed over the likely outcome of this disaster over the last few days. I have been more cautious in my assessments of the severity than most here. At this point, I believe further evacuations are needed as well as a great deal more discussion about the radiological effects likely in Japan. The plume calculations for North American impacts that started showing up yesterday are, to my mind, more alarming than my back of the envelope estimates.
I am quite certain that at this point there are extensive estimates about the radiological effects to be expected in North America under various scenarios. It is vital that these estimates become part of the public discourse. Let us focus our attention on this single issue today. It is time to shake the USG tree hard.”
BBC just covered an IAEA briefing. I missed it, but they provided this description:
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
That is a bleak prospect, but it is very hard to see how things can be pulled back from the brink at this point.
Hi Jim,
As luck would have it, I’m teaching a class on nuclear policy this semester. We meet this afternoon for three hours. I’ve had the students assigned to keep track of this event since Saturday morning at 8 AM EST. (Little do they know how I’ve dived in!) Anyway, sometime after class I may have some aggregated material to contribute, and shortly after that we may put up a website for technical, independent information. I will let you know. Either way, I will keep posting here, but it may be that I can open the spigot a little wider there, and allow the political/policy discussion to flow more freely here.
I just have not yet seen a technical site yet. Has anyone else? I’m guessing there will be dozens by the end of the weekend. Probably we should all figure out a niche. What would the pups want to see?
Yes. While I haven’t been watching much MSM, what I *have* seen has been careful to avoid mention of wind patterns blowing radiation over the west coast. Perhaps it has been discussed, but I have not seen it.
That’s tremendous. Please do keep us informed on what you do in the longer term and please do put up a diary later today if possible.
It comes down to how you measure the deaths over all. In the area around the accident the instance of childhood and thyroid cancers is 500 times greater than normal. You can make a good inference that this is directly attributable to the accident.
But that is different from the Acute Radiation Sickness they are talking about. That is something that will kill you in fairly short order and is usually (IIRC) caused by exposure to penetrating radiation which can only happen very close to a radioactive source, like being at the reactor itself.
Right. Aren’t the deaths that occurred later due to cancer caused by exposure to radiation and genetic problems fairly extensive? Or have I exaggerated the effects in my primitive lil’ lizard brain?
Wish I could take your class (or at least audit). By “technical,” what do you mean? Perhaps, now that you mention it, you and your students can figure this out. Will this be an upper-level or graduate-level site, or will it be basic. I would like to see something in between. Richard Feinman-esque, just before he launches into the equations, like that time where he used tennis balls bouncing off the walls in a room, to explain volume and pressure. He elegantly used simple language to explain technical information, and, for once, I got it! Then, he totally went Einstein on me, oh well. Vicariously enjoyed CalTech for a while there, made me feel kinda smart.
The new thread? Thank you, Jim, recommended.
‘Six Easy Nuclear Reactor Disaster Pieces,’ by Professor lobster and his class, the new best seller!
The critical issue now is whether or not the spent fuel will catch fire on its own. It may not do so. Opinion is divided. Even without further cooling, it may sit there hot but not burning. If so, this is as bad as it gets (thank goodness). If it burns, then presumably more than just the fuel will catch fire. The blazes could be large, huge even, and this will create a large, possibly massive fallout cloud. The actual quantity of radioactive material there is alarming. This is many, many, times more than there was at Chernobyl. It all depends on whether or not fire breaks out. I’ve read reports saying that once exposed, if the ZrO (2, 3 – what valence is it?) were going to catch fire, it would do so quickly. Perhaps we are very lucky and this is as bad as it gets. Still horrible and uncontrolled, but stable.
I asked about forest fire fighting equipment yesterday. Why the hell aren’t the U.S. and Canada offering to assist? The U.S. has 6 scoopers capable of dropping 2500 gallons per drop. Canada has them too. Russia has them but is fighting forest fires right now.
I have been commenting for days where is the worst case scenario and what people should be doing????
We have watched for almost a week with the assumption that this disaster could and would be arrested and were told not to panic.
But why weren’t we be prepared for the WHAT IF things could not be arrested? What would that look like and what could the people be doing now to deal with that with a bit of heads up?
This was mismanagement on every level.
The Oil Drum is doing a good job, again, of providing technical explanations.
http://www.theoildrum.com/
Yeah, just going to suggest oildrum, too. It has lots of links as well.
Jim,
It can not be said enough, thank you. Thank you Scarecrow, Bill, lobster, Crane-Station, 4cdave and all the other contributors to the discussion whose insight and input have made it possible for us to understand this mess.
Thank you.
Basically, I recall seeing a chart estimating the time it would take for radioactive particulate matter that reaches the upper atmosphere to reach the following places:
Anchorage: 7 days
Hawaii: 8 days
Seattle: 10 days
Los Angeles: 11 days
I wrote this from memory and don’t recall where I saw the chart, but I think it was somewhere in one of the threads here.
Odd, although I lived in Seattle for 30 years and traveled to Hawaii many times, I didn’t realize until I saw the chart that Anchorage actually is closer to Japan than Hawaii.
By the way, lots of factors apply. Radioactive particulate matter has to get high up in the atmosphere and the wind has to blow in the “right” direction at sufficient speed to travel the 5,000 to 7,000 mile distance over the ocean. Rain and/or snow at any point along the way will carry a lot of the radioactive particulate matter down to the ocean, so it isn’t at all certain that enough would complete the journey to cause harm to humans. Nevertheless, I don’t believe anyone knows for certain what might happen.
All life forms in Japan and eastern Asia, including people, are in far greater danger than those in North America.
These threads are my ONLY source for Daiichi news right now. Great minds, current updates, nuclear experts. Freaking wonderful.
Agree. Not to take away from this very critical situation in Japan, but it reminds me so much of the BP oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico. As someone stated on an earlier thread today: the Gulf of Mexico is *still* a crisis and an ecological disaster. We read on FDL last week that Al Jazeera is reporting on instances of illnesses *now* showing up in the USA related to Corexit dispersant being so widely used in the Gulf. Of course, I’ve yet to see anything in the USA “nooz” about this.
So, what’s next on the roster with Japan? I watch little to no tv, but what little I’ve seen has mostly been soothing words of the variety of either “it can’t happen in the USA,” and/or “no need to worry re radiation over here, folks.”
LIAR LIAR pants on fire!!!
Yes: here, here!! Thank you sooo much. I truly do appreciate being *informed,* and I know of only a few other places to go. Great reporting and thanks again.
The worst case is a large fire, one that engulfs all the plant and causes release of vast quantities of radioactive ash and soot.
It would be highly radioactive. There is far more radioactive material in there than in a nuclear bomb for instance. It’s hard to say how serious this would be, but I would be very surprised if there were not at least some consequences for the food chain in the western US.
I too can not get enough of these threads. Was reading Scarecrows 300+ comments at 3:15 CDT this morning.
One technical quibble, Jim (or any mod that may be around) –
Is there a way to format these Fukushima updates not as MyFDL diaries, but normal articles? With 300-400+ nested comments, no numbers, no link or quote tools, etc., it makes it very difficult to follow the conversation sometimes.
But see my earlier post. It doesn’t have to burn. It may be with pure luck (the first anyone will have had throughout this) that the cladding fire never starts.
Heh. So was I. But that’s because I have the epic flu from hell and couldn’t sleep because I’m so congested that every time I drifted off I couldn’t breath.
This flu is trying to kill me.
Here’s where it gets complicated. (Warning: I have no actual expertise)
Cancer can have a number of origin-events, few of which can be verified via testing.
One of the ways that companies and governments dance around environmental disasters is by testifying that there is no documented evidence that your cancer or birth defect was actually caused by this spill/leak/meltdown.
My guess is that the total cancers and birth defects in global population due to exposure to radiation and radioactive particulates from Chernobyl will be substantial, but ya’ just can’t document it.
(Although total population cancer and defect studies over decades, mapped to the known radiation “footprint” could present some evidential indication of exposure-based correlation.)
I read an estimate by a Ukranian citizen the other day (not an expert at all, just a citizen of the area) that 300,000 – 400,000 have died as a result of diseases or conditions that could be directly tied to their exposure.
Here’s some good close up video of the plant. I can’t help but think that restoring power to the pumps might not do as much good as they’re hoping since a lot of the plumbing is obviously destroyed.
I forgot to mention life forms in the sea.
When radioactive particulate matter gets into the food chain, dire potentially dire consequences to all living things might follow.
Consider plutonium, for example, that has a half-life of 230,000 years. MOX fuel rods contain about 6% plutonium, I believe. One of the reactors (possibly #3 and/or #4 might have been using them).
I don’t want to venture further down this road of fears and tears because I don’t have sufficient knowledge or expertise to state anything with certainty or speculate reasonably and responsibly. I think all of us are going to learn a lot more over the course of the next few days.
The New York Times has a simulation done by the Nuclear test people of the plume. I wish they’d clean these things up for PDE solver artifacts for prime time. It shows that before any radiation spreads on the wind to any intuitive spots like, say, Tokyo or Kamchatka or something, it will show up in bigger small amounts than those places, of what the legend says are “Arbitrary relative units,” in — Lake Tahoe! At 2:00 am on 3/17. Flee! Flee!
Everything is bad to worst. MSNBC had an interviewee saying it’s almost time to do a Chernobyl and entomb the reactors before they blow and cause a domino effect and all 4 reactors go up in smoke and begin irradiating whichever way the wind blows.
Forgot the link
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html
one of the nuclear workers said the pumps are very damage
if this is true hooking up some power is not going to do much
There was a report late last night that the storage pool in unit 4 was observed, by a helicopter, to have water in it. It wasn’t clear if this was before or after the helicopter drops. This might contradict the earlier statement yesterday from the NRC chair that the pool was dry.
There’s a dearth of information right now, pretty much has been since this began.
Personally, I’ve been very disturbed by the fact that US news networks haven’t covered one Japanese press conference live, or even after the fact in a substantial manner. I recall CNN covering every press conference in this country that it could post 9/11. And I don’t mean in the days or weeks to follow. I’m talking about showing Rumsfield and the DoD press secretary in their entirety well into 2002. Yesterday, Fox, CNN, and MSCNBC didn’t even show the helicopters dumping water live. CNN didn’t report it for 30 minutes, despite Anderson Cooper reporting live.
Anyway, both TEPCO and the Japanese government have daily press conferences. Yesterday, there were also conferences from NISA (Japan’s NRC) and their Defense Minister. American TV showed none of them. My sister wondered, half jokingly, if our networks were waiting for permission from our government before reporting.
Margaret, thanks for that video. Quite amazing.
Look forward to the information. Thanks much to you, and to all who are contributing to this story.
This site has a lot of information.
It is; however, less crtitical of the nuclear industry than seems warranted at this point.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/17/fukushima-17-march-summary/#more-4112
forgot to add:
It would be hilarious if not so frightening that my best sources of breaking news on this topic are a guy (Katz from yokosonews) doing a skype broadcast from his home in Japan and an Internet Relay Chat channel.
It’s reactor #3 that has the fuel rods containing plutonium:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4214120/Plutonium–fuel-rod-reactions-stoke-nuclear-tensions
Copy that. If there’s anything comparable on the World Wide Intertoob Machine Box, you’d have to send out a search party to find it. Top notch reporting here.
How many hours do they have left before the 140 they had starting out are used up?
Whether the pumps are damaged or not, the plumbing quite obviously is. Maybe they should get people to piss on it for all the good they seem to be doing. (I’m not suggesting incompetence, just that the situation seems pretty hopeless at this point. And to think all this could have been prevented or greatly reduced if they had just put the generators higher up.) This was entirely foreseeable.
It was very “pro-nuke” early in the crisis. Take a look at the entries from March 12 when the poster is basically saying “everything is going to be fine”, even after the hydrogen blew the top off unit 1.
Yes, it’s way past time to get rid of this worthless pain-in-the-ass nested format.
Jesus H. Christ on a goddamn bicycle!
WTF is it going to take to be rid of it?
WTF, do we need a fucking revolution to get these important articles front paged?
We’ve been complaining for months.
THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I remember after 9/11 our govt said the air was safe and many brave souls working at ground zero later became sick and some died. I am not sure one can trust anything any govt says. also the pentagon can tell if you have dandruff on your shoulder when spying on you. Why has are media not been more aggressive in demanding pentagon release what they know? because they know exactly what is going on.
Does anyone have a feel for what satellite imagery (classified and/or otherwise), and US military sniffer airplanes are picking up? I assume this info is pretty solid, if the Great Unwashed were privy to it…
Wasn’t there a troll here who was pumping that site early on? Or am I thinking of some entirely other incident?
Can’t vouch for the nested format, but this has been up on the front page for at least the past ten minutes — it was there when I logged in via the front page.
“Yesterday, Fox, CNN, and MSCNBC didn’t even show the helicopters dumping water live.”
With very few exceptions, just freakin’ worthless…
And how do they suggest stopping the reactions over at MSNBC? At Chernobyl, the explosion scattered the fissile material and while it’s going to be hot for thousands of years, it’s no longer reacting.
It’s an awfully long way from North America to Japan. Probably, as the disaster unfolded, TEPCO and the government of Japan continued to believe they could handle it. All the way up to when they couldn’t. And then there was no more time to bring in equipment.
You’re giving the corporate press too much credit. They don’t know much more than we do, but they can’t come out and say that, so they say what they’re told to say.
Yes, that is true.
Today Professor Brook has recanted that assessment.
” My initial estimates of the extent of the problem, on March 12, did not anticipate the cascading problems that arose from the extended loss of externally sourced AC power to the site, and my prediction that ‘there is no credible risk of a serious accident‘ has been proven quite wrong as a result.”
Agent Orange didn’t harm U.S. soldiers, the wasn’t any Gulf War syndrome, depleted uranium is perfectly safe.
Timeline, an FDL specialty.
Tech summary for non-techies. Stuff you-all have shown us and diagrammed and explained.
Wind dispersal diagrams, either updated daily with current wind patterns combined or interactive. Hopefully integrating the wind since some defined day, like say today.
Radiation basics and precautions. Perhaps. I’m not sure this would be useful and might lead to negative reactions. I’d just go with the above three, actually. I’d use ‘em.
Thanks again for all your help, along with the rest of the core group. You have be amazing!
The US media is owned by the same people with a vested interest in making money with nuclear power plants. For profit news soon becomes for profit narrative.
Interesting trivia from one of the oildrum threads:
The 40 year operating license for Reactor #1 was scheduled to expire on March 24, 2011. After which it was to be decommissioned. In February, Japanese regulators granted an extension of ten years for the continued operation of the reactor.
Something to keep in mind as ongoing debate whether to extend the operation of 40-year-old US nuclear plants continues.
That needed being fixed.
Revealing that this shill failed to clearly identify his assumptions OR his biases when making his ridiculously bald risk assessments. Might as well just say, “Ha ha, busted! Guess you can’t believe a word I write on this topic.”
The US is celebrating the release of Raymond Davis.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/133842/drone-strike-kills-8-in-datta-khel/
Please, name names. That was Christie Whitman who vouched for the clean air at Ground Zero. That blood is on her hands.
Yep. No quality of technical information can overcome how badly he’s discredited himself as an industry cheerleader.
There is not much burnable material in these plants vs their volume compared to most ever building you could think of. The are mostly concrete and steel. This is especially true at the top where the fuel pools are. Not that there can’t be fires but a towering inferno no.
I am not discounting anything. Any fire is going to spread contamination. In which case hopefully the wind stays out of the West.
I remember now. I kept asking whoever was pumping the site how s/he knew it had no connection to the nuke industry, and s/he finally produced a statement by Brook claiming he had none. That of itself was pretty funny.
But now that Brook’s been proved so wrong, I can’t imagine why anyone would pay any attention to him anymore.
Do you have a link for the plume reports for North America?
Go write a diary.
Whitman was just the designated hitter. Everyone in NYC went along with the assessment.
TMI Unit 1, next to the abandoned Unit 2 which was the source of the 1979 accident, had its license recently renewed to operate until 2034. It was due to expire in 2014. The Obama administration gave than an additional 20 years.
eCAHN~ That was lobster doing that.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
There was a young guy on Twitter who is studying to be a nuclear engineer. He spent much of one night last weekend trying to tell me that meltdowns weren’t that big a deal, no plutonium would be released, coal fly ash was far more radioactive, yadda yadda yadda.
Haven’t seen him around much on Twitter lately.
Well, that is a good example of human error.
Yes, Professor Brook has been pro nuclear and his initial assessment was clearly wrong.
Despite that, the site does have useful information and commentary. Many of the individuals who comment there do not share Professor Brook’s perspective and the give and take is interesting.
And whether Brook is getting industry money or not is pretty irrelevant. His bias of being pro nuclear power couldn’t be more obvious. His own website is damning evidence of his defending the industry no matter what.
And it pretty much ruined her when she said it.
BT is up.
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/17/top-republican-on-ways-and-means-committee-proposes-even-lower-taxes-for-millionaires-and-corporations/
Many things will burn though if you get them hot enough. The fire would reach >1700C as I understand it. There are probably other exotic metals and alloys in there that have very strange reactions when subjected to enough heat and air. And concrete could be severely compromised if the spent fuel melted onto the outer containment.
I have noticed in the past day or so the nuclear management hacks have been pushing media stories around the issue of radiation not being as harmful as we think.
This is the a predictable pattern of course, and I suspect that as this crisis continues to unfold that we will be hearing much more of this type of pro-nuke propaganda.
Still, tis fascinating to me how this disaster really underscores peoples growing lack of trust in official opinion (this is a reversal of the Fox pattern that so confounded us for the last decade or so.)
These politico-economic forces who shoved this stuff down our throats, and told us not to worry, and arrested and harassed those who protested for years now have Fukushima and Katrina to account for. And there is no accounting, if they get their way.
The only spin is to keep lying.
She should have refused to do it, and then noisily resigned. She didn’t. She could have made a difference. She chose not to.
I remember critiquing his glibness that “all would be fine” – based on good general knowledge but as limited information as everyone else had – when he first start commenting. It is refreshing that he’s recanted; something Bush, Gingrich, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Really? and their ilk never do.
I totally agree
I agree, a lot of the talking heads on the TV are really down playing the idea of radiation being harmful
On CNN and MSNBC last night this nuclear expert who must work for the nuclear lobby, made it sound like when people sign up to work for nuclear plants, they know that one day, they may have to undertake a suicide mission.
From Alaska or Yukon, with permission to refuel in Kamchatka? Are you joking? I can believe they didn’t ask on time, I can’t believe they haven’t offered yet.
I’m not defending her, nor will I ever.
I can find many reports covering the statement from the UN but I cannot find the UN report. This is bothersome for me because I once worked at the UN and can usually find such reports in a jiff.
It’s an artifact of the s/w chosen for My FDL, not the article’s placement on the front page. My understanding is that the s/w is slated for improvement – being brought up to the standard on the main site – but it takes time and money. Chip in if you can.
The physical damage from the explosions is a lot worse than I imagined. It seems likely that a lot of the systems inside some of those buildings won’t work even if they get power to them.
My thoughts are this became a level 7 accident the moment #3 building blew up. Even a fool like me could see that the destruction of that blast would make any sort of recovery unlikely.
Aluminum ship superstructures burn too, not just melt, as the Falklands War demonstrated. But for metal to burn takes a lot of heat that there shouldn’t be outside the reactor, much greater heat than the building, its equipment or containment pools are designed to tolerate without degradation. So if there’s a fire, it’s not “machine oil” and it’s damn hot.
Agreed. Pretty ugly.
Martha Raditz of ABC reported U.S. satelites reveal the spent fuel glowing red hot
http://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-nuclear-crisis-helicopters-operation-cool-fukushima-nuclear/story?id=13154536
Are we watching a Kabuki dance in Japan?
the Nuclear Expert on Cenk yesterday gave a dire warning
Cenk ask him what would he do if he was in Tokyo
the Nuclear Expert said I would not be in Tokyo
just in
High radiation level detected 30km from (Fukushima) nuke plant (Outside Japan Gov’s exclusion zone)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×4775338
Are TEPCO and Japanese govt. trying to keep people calm in Tokyo, knowing that a nuclear meltdown is on the way
I cited the site with warnings as to their political bias. I am not a troll, but a founding member of FDL. Oldgold’s link above, the 3/17 update, is a very reasonable summary of the last 24 hours for folks who want analysis bounded by physical law and without personal attacks substituting for reason.
For the most part I haven’t been following FDL comment threads on this crisis since then as I simply haven’t found the hysterics and reason-by-character-assessment to be value-added.
the General on MSNBC said if you see the US Military starting to move their families things are really dire, because the US Military does not like to abandon bases.
Guess what just happen
“US military begins evacuations of families from Japan due to nuclear threat”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×4775385
Me Thinks the US Military has seen enough, and they are getting out of dodge.
Those are very fortunate students; I wish I could join them.
WRT to a wish list, I’d love to see detailed discussion of the long term effects (increased morbidity and mortality) found after widespread fallout deposition.
If you use powerpoint and felt comfortable sharing such,that would be a gift.
Don’t know if vid over plant has been posted yet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lBXqiw6EJUk
Terrific video. Thanks.
where in the article does it say that, can you give us the quote?
Even as the U.S. military ramps up a massive relief effort, it is also creating new restrictions meant to safeguard troops from the effects of radiation — including by declaring a 50-mile no-go zone for troops around the Fukushima plant.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42124586/ns/world_news-asiapacific/
WordPress provides templates, or the FDL technical crew has created them for the site. A standard template with formatting tools is used on the other FDL sites. There is no reason to have MyFDL use a different template. Someone must have decided we’d prefer them for individual diaries.
The fact that it has been up on the front page is meaningless. If you click on the post title or on the Read More button, you are dumped into the underlying MyFDL site and into the nested comments.
I don’t think it’s a difficult fix to replace this template with the one used at the other partner sites and the main page. It takes tech work, but it isn’t rocket science.
IAEA
The spraying of water on the unit 3 reactor building was temporarily stopped at 11:09 UTC (20:09 local time) of 17 March.
being reported radiation detected on flights coming from japan. also been detected on post coming from japan. we know our govt lies. we know those saying it is perfectly safe at this level are funded by the nuclear industry and or are part of the revolving door. we know regulation industry has failed over and over again.
This is what we know. What we don’t know is the Truth. That we will not be told.
Al Jazeera blog
NEWS ADVISORY: Obama signs condolence book at Japan embassy in Washington – Kyodo News Ticker
Wasn’t Areva the outfit that sold and installed the MOX fuel for Reactor 3? Nice they are helping out.
Oldgold, why are you still promoting Brave New Climate?
Oh sure, as you said: “the site has a lot of information”.
But, why would we want to get our information from a pro-nuclear site that got it wrong on the Japan nuclear crisis from day one?
Furthermore, the Brave New Climate website has no mission statement. However, it appears to be dedicated to the highly dubious cause of promoting nuclear power as sustainable ‘clean energy’ and a primary means of countering climate change.
IOW, Brave New Climate is ideologically in step with the energy/climate policy of the Obama administration and the nuclear industry.
Forgive me if I continue to get my “information” elsewhere.
We’ve all BEEN chipping in – becoming members. This info on what’s happening in Japan is too important to delay the fix. As I keep saying, these nests are an impediment that is very frustrating.
On the Guardian’s site:
“The UK and the US are to pull government search and rescue teams out of Japan tomorrow. Some reports suggested it was due to the levels of radiation reported in the country.”
There is a hell of a lot we aren’t being told.
The devastation from the explosions looks awful. I didn’t see anything in reactor #4 that looked like a spent fuel-rod cooling pool with water in it, although I’m not sure that the helicopter was in position to view it (assuming it’s intact, full of water, and visible to see from directly above, which is a possibility that I regard to be extremely unlikely).
Margaret @8:56am
Do understand what he’s saying on the video?
Have I missed it or have you guys already had a discussion about the “core on the floor” scenario. Wondering your thoughts or could you direct me to where this discussion has taken place. Thanks…you guhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Beg4Nothing/japan-nuclear-crisis-us-officials_n_836772_80957851.htmlys are awesome.
If you can manage watch the video that accompanies the link you can find it there.
I heard someone on CNN and I think it was Gupta, say that “no amount of radiation is safe”…that we guess at levels that the body can tolerate but that in general radiation is not safe. He said that variables within individuals means that even having xrays has some risk. This seems closer to truth and would explain why my having 5 MRI’s in a year was a reason to stop doing MRI’s for awhile if I was stable.
Obviously radiation can be harmful in small amounts depending on the person, size, age etc…
And if all this isn’t bad enough, avian flu has now surfaced on poultry farms in Japan. The aftermath of the disasters seems to create conditions conducive to the spread of the avian flu.
Jim,
Thank you for a fantastic, well-written and highly informative post.
QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS:
1) What is the process whereby stories make it to the front page of FDL? Is it like Daily Kos (god forbid) where the visibility of a diary is dependent on readers’ ratings?
2) The crisis in Japan will, no doubt, continue to merit FDL front-page status for the foreseeable future. It would be great if there were a series of carry-over links to significant stories (external and internal); links to expert progressive entities and organizations (like Beyond Nuclear.org); and links to news sources that are doing live blogging and/or 24/7 updates.
Couldn’t it just be that it’s too late for rescue teams – time to shift to recovery?
I hate to say it, but when I heard about the incident initially, I realized the Japanese were screwed. In a former life as an undergraduate, I took several classes in nuclear engineering. When I realized that there was little future in nuclear, I switched to chemical engineering.
As soon as I heard that all power was down at the site, I new that each reactor would probably melt-down in succession. At this point sand appears to be the most promising option.
WRT the Japanese government: 1. The voters will throw them out, 2. The government will be found to have misinformed the people in the area.
My heart goes out to the Japanese and I hope that they somehow get really lucky and stabilize the situation fast (but alas . . )
the editor’s decide what goes on the front page at FDL, and what gets front paged here at myFDL.
and fyi, FDL has a Japan page now to help us keep track of all the great info that’s been published.
I wish I still had access to that. I’m sure that infrared imagery would be very revealing as to the scope of the problem.
Industry talking heads describe current levels in Tokyo and the US as being safe. They rarely talk about levels at the plant site. They dismiss consideration of what happens if things worsen at the plant site and the radiation migrates as negative thinking. It’s cult-like thinking that has no place in public debate or rational planning.
BTW, what’s the USG saying about its own state of preparedness? My sense is that they’ve STFU about the Japanese preparedness since appreciating they might be called on to demonstrate their own.
1970cs @10:18a within a nest
thank you very much for the link. it was instructive watching.
BTW, what’s happening at all the other nuclear plant sites in Japan? Has there been an estimation of quake or wave damage to these and other infrastructure? Photos show entire roadways and bridges tossed aside like rubber bands.
I haven’t seen this mentioned here yet. The latest report from Kyodo news indicates that white smoke was seen billowing from Unit 2 on Thursday. As the external structure there is still intact, it’s not clear where the smoke was coming from exactly . . . or what they are thinking it means. Also, despite the clearly desperate attempts to get water onto/into Units 3 and 4, Kyodo reports that Unit 2 actually has the highest priority.
Yes, except that they specifically mention radiation as a possible reason. You may well be correct.
MRI = Magnetic Resonance Imaging
MRIs do not use ionizing radiation and have no chemical interaction with cells. There might be some slight increase in temperature, but that’s it. While you might say that magnetic energy is “radiant”, no radiation is involved in an MRI. There is literally no health hazard to having an MRI, or 20 of them, performed if you don’t have metal inside your body.
CT scans are completely different, and actually pump more radiation than any other type of typical imaging technology.
There are few reasons to perform multiple MRIs per year on a person. Multiple Sclerosis is one of them. That said, if a medical condition is considered stable, then why would someone continue receiving them?
While the chances of finding living people may be diminishing, search and recovery is still very important.
Would boric acid do anything at this point?
It’s a form of pollution and god only knows what the affects of all the pollutants we are exposed to, not only individually, but collectively, is.
A Tepco employee’s blog about this disaster
This is the first 3 paragraphs; the full story can be found here:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_646210.html
ONE lone voice has emerged from the group of heroic workers at Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), which runs the quake-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, where workers are scrambling to cool the nuclear plant and avoid a meltdown.
Michiko Otsuki – a female worker at Tepco – has written on her blog, speaking up for her ‘silent’ colleagues who remained behind at the plant.
She had been quoted a little in some overseas English reports but The Straits Times Online tracked and translated her blog to find out her full story when she first posted on popular Japanese social networking site Mixi.
Yeah. Seven days is typically it for quake and other disaster survivors.
Isn’t it ironic that the water cannons the Japanese are using on the damaged nuke plants were used on anti-nuke demonstrators.
It’s a neutron killer. You pour it on hot fuel that has the potential to chain-react (basically, fuel that still has U-235).
One of the concerns about the material in Unit 4′s storage pond is it could contain “fresh” fuel about to be loaded into the empty #4 reactor. You definitely want to use a neutron poison like Boric acid on that stuff in this type of situation.
Also, depending on how much core damage there is in reactors #1, 2 and 3, you could have significant damage to the control rods, which means having a neutron inhibitor a good thing. When they first started putting sea water into reactors it was reportedly spiked with boric acid. I could be wrong about this part, not knowing the difference between when the Uranium fuel melts and the control rod components.
Thanks. That’s why I asked (Unit 4 in particular).
I am having trouble with the video. If you could provide more specific information I would be most grateful.
Thanks!
From what I’ve read all of the “active” rods in Reactor 4′s core were transferred into the spent fuel pool (where they joined the “spent” rods) as part of maintenance on the reactor vessel in December (or possibly November) 2010. Definitely not good news.
Sorry, correction: Richard Feynman.
Thanks Eliott. That’s a GREAT start. I keep returning to FDL because its doing an infinitely better job than any other prog blog.
I am writing out of my own sense of urgency and frustration about the simultaneous overload of MSM crap and the lack of vital information from the “vaster wasteland”. I trust that my feedback will be perceived as constructive suggestions rather than criticisms.
*Imho, it would be outstanding if the FDL “Japan Page” were expanded to include links to established anti-nuclear entities and organizations who are prominently addressing the crisis in Japan — i.e., to start with, the Tokyo-based Citizen’s Nuclear Information Center — and, state-side, Beyond Nuclear.org.
*It would also be great for the FDL “Japan Page”to have links to significant stories/opinion pieces/reports from other progressive analysts and organizations.
I apologize for missing information that FDL has already posted and for making suggestions that may be unwelcome or redundant.
Yokoso is a treasure amidst the debris.
…and Professor Foland too, thank you!
Wondering where all this water, mainly ocean water, they are pumping to cool the nuclear reactors in Japan is draining to? Is it radioactive? Seriously has anyone seen anything pertaining to this?
I can hear the sound of chromosomal breakage from here.
Doing a rain dance here. Too bad the whole roof was not taken off of reactor #4 initially, as it now is impeding efforts to get water in. But just the roof, not the pool wall.
OUCH.
At about the halfway point in Raditz’s 30-second report (there’s no counter visible, at least on my display):
“The US can see from satellites that spent nuclear fuel rods are red hot and urgently in need of cooling.”
No source cited, no specifics as to which unit(s) this refers to.
UCS says the rods were removed on December 10, 2010. Which means they’re still hot and boiling water off quickly, assuming there’s any left.
According to the Guardian, units 1 and 2 sustained at least partial core damage.
AFAIK, it is mostly turning into steam and being vented.
I’m expropriating this phrase. Thanks in advance.
Hmmm. So…it seems that cancer/genetic death numbers are not easily (or accurately?) compiled. NPR had a segment today that stated a Kiev anti-nuclear group estimated 100,000 deaths. Quickly, a caveat was added that some believe that number was inflated as anti-Soviet(!!) propaganda.
Catch fire, melt … if you mean “whether it is now in a stable state or not” I agree. I did not expect to make it to 5 PM EDT today without another development. This is a curious moment in time. Taking the long view, Japan is suffering through an enormously bad run of luck; there has to be a day when that lack turns. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if today were that day? I do not think it is, but there are an enormous number of unknowns.
But those two questions are not closely related. The worst case scenario is unlikely. Defining the response as if the worst case scenario were certain would likely be the wrong thing to do, from any perspective. I share your frustration! However, in the face of tremendous uncertainty and the welfare of a huge number of people, there is not a straightforward answer.
“What people should be doing” in many, many possible (very bad) scenarios is basically evacuating the immediate area and waiting.
Top notch, per the usual. We pups are spoiled rotten by the high caliber reporting and expert information routiely found at the Lake.
Margaret, I don’t know what you’ve got against me, but this is the second time you have made a baseless allegation.
I do not recall ever typing a single word about the Brave New Climate site.
As far as I can recall, I have never visited the Brave New Climate site, though given the rec from bobash, I will do so now.
Safer than corn syrup in baby food, I’m sure…
All other plants are reported to working properly. I don’t recall the link; I was digging through a technical site that had all such reports filed. Mostly it is all very boring stuff.
Actually; I recall now why I did not link to it. It was just around the time that Unit 4, which had been reported as perfectly normal up to that time, suddenly had the fire. I decided it would be foolish to point out that all the reactors in the country were reportedly functioning normally.
I agree with lbjdem’s response. I have been assuming that the boric acid has continued to be included in the sea water injection exercises, and at some point flagged the lack of reporting that this was continuing as a worry.
I love that lobster has a double life now.:)
Kyodo
And it begins …
Kyodo
The forecast looks like the winds will be blowing from Fukushima into Tokyo starting around 6 pm Monday continuing through midnight Tuesday (as far out as the forecast goes), with some precipitation.
That’s not good news.
Wouldn’t it be great if we still made those parts in the US?
Here is an excellent interview on Russia Today with the Emergencies Minister:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZsUHTJyX5g
He points out the water cycle. The water dumped onto the reactors will end up in the sea.
Also posting to this thread, not sure which is our working thread.
Bingo! Lovely radiation graphs with sources.
linky
This is the article I was looking for: NY Times
The Union of Concerned Scientists comes up with 7345 assemblies (while showing #4 as having fuel, which we know is wrong, it was emptied into its pool), with 90 rods per assembly for a total of 661,050 rods.
Somewhere in a previous thread someone said the site has capacity for 600,000 plus rods, and was 87% full.
The NY Times number would indicate just over a million rods. Also, “spent” fuel is not current reactor fuel, so I would assume you would need to add in the current assemblies in 1-6.
Could someone knowledgeable run those numbers against how often fuel is replaced and how long we’ve been in operation, and see if these numbers are in the ballpark?
This page has a site map of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but is labeled in Japanese. I would love to see an English version to match against the satellite photos.
A few interesting things here, Japanese page translated by Google.
Prime contractors for each reactor:
#1 GE
#2 GE/Toshiba
#3 Toshiba
#4 Hitachi
#5 Toshiba
Heat outputs, pressure vessel dimensions, containment dimensions
Various interesting things. Nothing Earth-shattering.
NEWS ADVISORY: 130 Tokyo firefighters sent to Fukushima nuke plant
NEWS ADVISORY: Water-dousing at nuke plant eyed for Fri. afternoon: Defense Ministry
BREAKING NEWS: Radiation down consistently at one point in Fukushima plant
Kyodo News Ticker
9:51am
White smoke or steam was seen rising from Reactors 2, 3 and 4 at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan’s nuclear watchdog said on Friday, adding that it believed there was still water in the spent fuel pool at Reactor 3
Al Jazeera blog
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tepco.co.jp%2Fnu%2Ff1-np%2Fpavilion%2Fshisetu-j.html
scroll down, google translate
Also good to follow TheBradBlog site on Twitter:
http://www.bradblog.com/
The INSC site has been firewalled (!) but luckily I downloaded at least reactor #1′s data over the weekend. Reactor 1 is ~440 MWe.
There are 60, not 90, rods per assembly accoridng to INSC.
Reactor 1 has 400 assemblies in the core. They rotate out about 60 per year. They have been accumulated rods since 1982, but I don’t know if any have ever been sent for reprocessing. Assuming a typical storage time of 15 years, that would give 900 assemblies for 440 MWe. So ~54000 rods for reactor 1.
Scaling by 7 for the whole plant, it comes to 6300 assemblies, 378000 rods.
That number would be doubled to ~12600 assemblies, ~750000 rods, if they have not sent any for reprocessing.
The numbers are certainly in the ballpark. There is a substantial “fudge fraction” in my scaling up to the whole plant, and in the factor of two for lack of knowledge about possible reprocessing. 11,195 spent fuel rod assemblies would be about 670,000 rods. 87% of 600k+ would be in the 550-600 range, so that number and the NYT number are not so different. The UCS and NYT would agree on the number of rods, so I bet that the UCS incorrectly backed out the assembly number using the wrong number of rods per assembly.
Great! The “Shared Pool” is what I was looking for, I’m pretty sure it is just behind and to the left of #4 in the satellite photo from yesterday. The ground-floor windows may be missing, otherwise it looks intact.
Does the shared pool receive spent rods from all six? If so, good thing it is intact!
Kyodo
On top of all the radioactive waste, they also dumped thousands of tons of lead on the inferno at Chernobyls core. I wonder what vaporized lead did to the local environment.
More graphs of radiation levels here
I thought the reaction continued after the explosion and didn’t really begin to lose strength until the corium lava started to leak into the basement and spread out.
Pretty good thumbnail synopses of what’s happened at each reactor.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/world/asia/reactors-status.html?ref=asia
Good graphics too.
Idly wondering to mice elf when Anonymous is going to hit BOA again…?
Unbelievable! Really, really nice work. Tweeted, with credit to “4cdave at Firedoglake.” Thank you.
Situation worsening further. Key grafs from the NYT this morning:
[me: It will be raised all the way to 7 eventually.]
…
[ me: Reporting on the use of boron has been spotty for a couple of days. They must not run out of boron onsite. Without boron, there could significantly more energy released as you can shift from trying to remove weak radioactive decay heat to having the chain reaction restart. How big is this problem? The cooling problem would get 16 times greater. (This is 1 / 0.06). ]
[ me: as reported here multiple times since Saturday. This is a really big deal. We do not need a 16-fold surge of heating of the fuel on site when there is no way to cool it.]
[me: Translation: watch for reports of high counts per minute on shoes. This is the buildup of Cs-137 (mainly) which will not disappear for many decades.]
Regarding the threat of this event to distant locations:
Here (warning: large PDF) is the map of Cs-137 contamination from Chernobyl. The effect of the radiation in the yellow-orange areas is at most a long-term threat; people disagree on the severity of this level of contamination and I do not want to wade into the discussion of health effects in a comment on a thread. There is not disagreement on the severity of the contamination in the three reddish colors (the lightest of which is exemplified by a little patch just ESE of the letter “F” in the word “FINLAND”). Regions that are in the darkest two shades (down closer to the plant, which is marked as “Chernobyl NPP” in small black print) remain largely evacuated.
There is no point on this map that is 5,000 to 8,000 miles from the Chernobyl power station, so I cannot show you direct evidence, but it is clear from this map that the worst contamination occurs much less frequently as the distance from the source increases. London, for example, is approximately 2,000 miles away from Chernobyl. In the present conditions, most of the US is more than twice as far again from Fukushima.
The regions of high contamination correspond to regions where the wind carried the cloud repeatedly over the days of the accident, and to regions where there was local rainfall when the radiation was overhead.
Much less radiation has so far been released from Fukushima compared to Chernobyl, but that may still change. Even if that happens, this map shows that the acute, known effects will very likely only afflict Japan.
I am not going to minimize the long-term effects of contamination of the ocean or of lesser amounts of deposition. However, one must understand that there is nothing that can be done about this for the present crisis, and even if the effects of low levels of contamination are real, they are weak compared to the effects of higher levels of contamination. Also, most of the low-level contamination on this map of Europe is from the era of atmospheric nuclear weapon testing, which is again not something that can be currently controlled.
As we discuss the implications of this accident, there should always be a clear distinction between the health effects that can be mitigated by evacuations and actions taken now and those that should guide the discussion about what to do with other existing nuclear power plants which remain in operation.
I know this kind of statement generates controversy:
“even if the effects of low levels of contamination are real, they are weak compared to the effects of higher levels of contamination.”
What I mean is only that in the area with more contamination you have all the toxicity of the more weakly contaminated areas plus more. This is a statement that is not trying to minimize the problem of weak contamination; it is just a statement of undeniable fact.
UCS has updated their post, moving the rods out of #4, and saying that there are 60 rods per assembly. Also that 130 assemblies each from #5 and #6 were transferred to the pools as part of the maintenance they were undergoing. The MOX assemblies are currently loaded into the #3 core (that’s good).
morning, lobster and everyone. time for a new thread?
I hope everyone reads her comments.
Apparently, the integrity of the spent-fuel cooling pool in the building housing reactor 4 has been damaged by the earthquake. It’s leaking and will not hold water. That presents an SAT type leaking bathtub problem where one is asked how long will it take to fill a leaking bathtub, if it’s filling at X gallons per minute and leaking at Y gallons per minute? Except they can’t even add water faster than the leaking rate.
And then there’s #3 that is so badly damaged by multiple hydrogen explosions that I don’t think the storage pool even exists anymore. God only knows where the spent fuel rods are. Probably teencie weencie pieces all over the damn place.
I’d say, it’s time to come up with a Chernobyl type solution and entomb this place, except that I don’t know how they can get under the reactor buildings and prevent the molten radioactive melt from getting into the water table.