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Click here for overwrought background music from the “Heavy Rain” video game to accompany this post
A tropical storm will rake the east coast of Japan over the next couple of days, bringing heavy rain and strong winds to Fukushima Prefecture. NHK reports, “Japan’s Meteorological Agency says heavy rain is expected in the area around the power plant beginning on Sunday night. In some areas, torrential rain and strong wind are expected from Monday to Tuesday.”
Remember that crucial scene in Jurassic Park, where the storm screws up Nedry’s (aka Newman’s) plans, leaving all the security systems off?
[TEPCO] says if rain and wind become intense, all operations except for patrolling will stop.
The level of contaminated water in the turbine buildings of the Number 2 and 3 reactors and tunnels has been rising.
The company says it will closely monitor the level to prevent contaminated water from overflowing and seeping into ground water and the sea.
The utility is also studying ways to stop radioactive substances deposited on debris and buildings from being washed away by rain and flowing into the sea via gutters.
(NHK)
I doubt that there will actually be a particularly obvious outcome from this storm, but have a look at the third through sixth graphs of radiation data at this site. You should see big spikes around March 13-15, when there were explosions and big releases. Now notice how the radiation levels from March 20-22 changed. See the big rise that then takes days to weeks to fall back down? That was a result of the first real rains after the accident. It will be interesting to see if radiation levels change over the next few days as a result of tropical storm Songda.
You can follow the action by occasionally checking this link (scroll down) to see the data as it is updated at one particular site that is not too far from the nuclear power station. You might also just want to check back with NHK (link above) to see any new reporting associated with the storm.
24 Comments
Link to Bloomberg article that claims radiation alarm preceded tsunami.
OMG! You said “fukushima” Cue the industry trolls in 5…4…3…2…
Day-old link to Yahoo story, pre-typhoon.
thx lobster! Interesting that dataset coincides with the rain. As there are many different kinds of radiation there are also different kinds of measuring and monitoring. As there are changes in weather and simply barometric pressure, local environmental levels of things like radon can tip scales and show up on those monitoring atmospheric levels of radiation. It seems likely what you may propose that greater levels of radiation would show up, not just in scattering winds. But I’m not sure how. It would be interesting to learn if it weren’t so horribly toxic.
Thanks for the update, lobster.
Related: looks like parent pressure convinced officials to lower the acceptable level of radiation for kids.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-radiation-children-20110529,0,6286849.story
Hi M. Early on, you pointed out the risks of having the back-up generators placed in harms way in the event of a tsunami.
I’ve noticed a couple of things in the online discussion lately.
1) The tsunami response plan from TEPCO was a single page document, and was accepted by the government regulator as adequate. (lost link; I can dig it up again, but was widely reported a couple of days ago)
2) The official Fukushima disaster response plan in general was a complete joke. The main tool they envisioned for controlling the disaster was a fax machine.
3) The basements of all the reactors, including Units 5 and 6, evidently contain the generators and pumping systems. The basements continue to flood…and the cooling system for Unit 5 (so far safe) was off line for 15 hours yesterday, presumably as a result. Temperatures rose to near boiling before it was noticed, but it was noticed and controlled.
Thanks for the update. I have been wondering why Fukushima has sorta disappeared from the news although it still has to be extremely dangerous. This is disturbing news.
At the time of the larger known releases, there was a large inventory of radionuclides in the atmosphere. They were precipitated out in the first rains. This is a well-known pathway for generating local contamination from atmospheric fallout.
Rain NNW of the facility caused the main stripe of land contamination that you can see in slide 7 of the presentation dated May 13, here.
There are now presumably no major atmospheric releases, so one would expect no new significant deposition associated with the typhoon — but it is interesting to watch the monitors to see. Assuming you have a slow weekend because of a national holiday, that is…
Also, there most likely will be new local releases to the ground and ocean from rain runoff. That won’t be measured at the time of release (how would they?) but it will show up to some extent in measurements reported from offshore in the next few days.
Ummm, yeah. I read that last night but can’t remember where.
Thanks Lobster
When can we expect Godzilla ravaging downtown Tokyo? :-)
We wondered what led the USG to do what it did in the early days of the accident. Story today from Mainichi News:
Continuing:
Note from me: The existence of significant fuel melting was thought to lead to conditions favorable for much larger radiation releases than occurred, with steam explosions, etc. That is what drove the specific 80-km recommendation.
Widely recognized international watchdog group is still recommending further evacuations of 70,000 more people in the NNW direction, outside the 20-km restricted zone.
In areas that have already been evacuated, inhabitants are allowed a 2-hour visit to retrieve belongings. That seems silly to me; they could spend a few days and be safe at the reported radiation levels. Something doesn’t quite make sense here.
Meanwhile, workers at the facility continue to work without adequate radiation monitoring. Morale is low.
Retired nuclear workers are making themselves available for duty.
We don’t need no stinking robots!
*Radiation enhanced* Godzilla due any time now.
Thanks for the update. I was hoping to see a post today after the news about cooling pump failures at # 5 last night.
Reuters now reports the cooling system’s restored
Saw that cooling resumed last night. I’m curious about the details…
Q: “Will accidents take place at nuclear power plants? What kinds of accidents? When?”
A: Yes. Terrible Tsunami and multiple meltdown, explosions kind of accidents. Sooner than you think.
But hey, this is the perfect opportunity for the JOB CREATORS to work their magic!
I mean, the sarcophagus to cover the entirety of Fukushima Daiichi is going to be huge. Great Pyramids be damned, there’s work there for 100′s of thousands of workers for years.
More seriously… as they’ve acknowledged that they don’t even know where all the cores are at is anyone read anything giving any indication of a plan beyond “Keep pumping water?”
Evacuate Japan is the next logical plan the more water you pump the more likely the local water table is contaminated. This coming storm won’t help.
US NRC official now defending rationale behind 50 mile evacuation zone because it is scaring Americans.
Link
I expect that the 50 mile zone in Japan will finally be relaxed sometime soon.
You can get the maps of prevailing winds in the area of the power station on an hourly basis here.
Click on a day and a time and you can see the wind maps. All days since March 11 are there, behind the earliest day on the page I linked to above. Here is a map of the winds that were blowing around the time of a large radiation release. This is why you see the plume on page 7 of the May 13 posting here.
Most of the rest of the time around the worst of the accident the wind was either blowing south or a bit out to sea. I have not clicked on them all, or tried to correlate the timeline with the winds. If you see that someone has done so, let me know. Interesting stuff blowin’ in the wind back in March.