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"fukushima #3 steam rises" by daveeza on flickr
Soon to be widely reported and today in Asahi news there was evidently a fourth meltdown at Fukushima, on March 21. The fuel in Unit One had been cooled, but then things got out of control again. There were significant radiation releases to the environment (which we discussed at length here at FDL at the time, in comments) which were attributed to the first big rain after the first phase of the accident. [UPDATE: TEPCO is now contesting this interpretation of the data, so the story is still developing.]
This is a really big deal! The rises in radiation on March 21 were visible on monitors in Tokyo and elsewhere — I remember following them. It remains to be seen how much of the contamination of the environment outside the plant itself came from this fourth meltdown. Coupled with the front page NYT article blasting the Japanese government’s handling of the knowledge they had of the radioactive plumes, it is clear that the Fukushima accident is continuing AND continuing to have strong repercussions.
I strongly recommend reading this Asahi article. Here is a quote:
Between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on March 21, the pressure within the pressure vessel of the No. 3 reactor core increased sharply to about 110 atmospheres, likely caused by an explosion within the pressure vessel due to a lack of cooling of the fuel. That was probably the start of the second meltdown, Tanabe said.
As for the sudden pressure increase, Tanabe points to the possibility that the clump of melted fuel in the pressure vessel may have fallen apart due to a lack of cooling. The magma-like substance with high temperatures may have leaked out of the vessel and emitted large amounts of steam when it came in contact with water.
At the No. 3 reactor building, black smoke spewed from the reactor building on the afternoons of March 21 and March 23. Tanabe said the smoke may have been the result of what is referred to as a core-concrete reaction, when melted fuel comes in contact with the concrete of the containment vessel. Such a reaction typically occurs when insufficient cooling follows a core meltdown.
[At the time,] TEPCO officials said the black smoke was probably caused by rubber or lubricant oil catching fire.
It would be interesting to go back to what was being reported on March 22-23. I’m sure there were lots of articles saying the accident was over, nothing to see here, etc. Sort of like today…
35 Comments
What has happened since your last post regarding the astronomic levels of exterior radiation “detected” (admitted to finally). Are workers still doing anything on the grounds of the reactor sites?
Thanks again for staying on this. Rec’d.
Thanks for keeping up on this.
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies …
Every story is about how they lied, AGAIN, with the full collusion of the Japanese government.
I’m certain radiation leaking into the environment has no effect on us humans. I’m positive. I saw an ad on TV that said so. /s
I expect Japanese to start leaving Japan soon in huge numbers.
That is big news. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Lobster.
It would be interesting, too to try to track that plume, since it was before th US adopted its “nothing to see here” policy and ramped down its additional atmospheric radiation sampling.
I am friends with a japanese lady whose parents still live in Tokyo. I keep trying to get her to stay here in my house for her own safety but she keeps leaving. I tell her I have lead casing in the walls of the bedroom but she just won’t listen.
“Plume”? Was it just that? Is that what has happened – there have been short bursts or plumes of radiation that have escaped and things then subside or is it an ongoing leak? I am honestly asking. I know so little about the aftereffects.
Lobster, is there a web site that is dedicated to tracking this catastrophe where one can get the truth about what is going on? I want to know the damage assessment in terms of who will be affected by all of this radiation. Has it made it’s way over here to the United States? What about China and Korea? I have a friend that is about to head back to her home town of Dalian China (north-east coast of China) soon and am wondering how safe she truly is. What about the food supplies, especially from the sea, in that area?
I truly feel for the Japanese people and, again, I obviously do not know too much about it but I think if I had been there and had the means I would have left Japan at the first sign of reactor trouble. I would have never trusted the Government or any “official version” of what was going on.
Just now getting around to telling us, eh?
Okay, so every reactor that could melt, did melt. In each case, information was withheld from the public. Yeah, we figured it out here and we weren’t the only ones. Though we might have been first.
Obviously, ObamaLLP knew it too when they declared the larger exclusion zone. If not, they SURELY knew it after the drone overflight. They neglected to leak that to the press, an oversight I’m sure.
Greenpeace is still not allowed to sample inside Japanese waters. I’m sure that’s just a problem with passports.
And those sampling hotspots? Given their location, I translate that to mean they’re emitting a LOT more radioisotopes into the air then they’ve admitted. They’re right at the base of exhaust ports. Either that, or containment is broken, corium is leaking into the waste stream and falling out almost at once. I notice that they AREN’T mentioning the composition of the radiation and they aren’t admitting to taking samples. If I had a robot with a scoop, sampling that would be a high priority. Unless I already knew what I’d find.
Boxturtle (Would love to ask ObamaLLP why they neglected to mention the meltdowns)
Recommended and reposted at Progressive Alaska. When does the good news from ANYWHERE start again?
Wow.
Well, here in Xenia, the county fair was a success, we voted a tax increase and we’re getting nearly 60% more work for our money than we expected, a new discount tobacco shop opened downtown, and my dog get better from a torn ACL without surgery.
Boxturtle (I’m amazed none of that made the Alaska papers)
Just go to the top of lobster’s post and click on the previous post. Keep doin’ that ’til you arrive at the first. Quite a task, but if you read the posts, the threads and the links contained therein, doubt there’s anyplace to go where the info is all in one place any better.
Not going to happen. Maybe further south, but leaving Japan will be hard for most. Very few can speak or understand English at all. They’d have great difficulty immigrating anywhere, even Canada or Australia. Also, after 20 years of slow economic decline, many are barely making it. It costs money to leave if you have a family. The kids are getting worse and worse English education and exposure and studying abroad pretty much guarantees they’ll be cut out from the best jobs due to their hiring system.
So, the only option for most is moving to Osaka, Fukushima, or Okinawa. But they have to worry about jobs (most of the best jobs and schools and universities are in Tokyo), family, etc. I think IF the government were being more honest and upfront with them and made it more clear what the danger was, more would be moving. What’s happened is the government has been aggressively covering up the situation. They just passed a law a few weeks ago allowing them to somehow censor any negative comments made about Fukushima if the government deems the information inaccurate. Without this certainty from their government, many are not going to take the risks of leaving, even moving further south, based on a hunch.
The foreigners who have chosen to stay in the area (between Tokyo and north), who aren’t helping out, who have the chance to leave, I think are making a poor choice. In fact, some of them are quite aggressive about their choice, using similar reasoning (“the government says we’re fine, bananas have radiation, flying has radiation, you’re a despicable coward if you leave, blah, blah, blah.”) So, whatever. Their choice.
FDL had the best coverage around of Fukushima. Be sure to read the comments too, as there is an extraordinary amount of information there as well as in the body of the posts.
Gracias for the post, Rec’d, I believe this is THE major issue of our time.
blink – http://www.fairewinds.com , http://www.collapsenet.com , I think that’s a good start, collapsenet is an ongoing center for news feeds and they usually report a lot about Japan, as well as its soil / meat contamination. Fairewinds is run by Artie Gunderson, usually the guy you see on TV commentating on what the hell is actually going on. Fairwinds has a lot of great videos, and yes the corporate media won’t pick that up…..
What’s a world to do?! We should direct all focus to Japan, any country that can afford to support in any way shape or form. We need to contain this nightmare as soon as possible. There’s a guy in Canada on youtube, I forget the link….his name is “connectingdots1.” Holding a geiger meter, an instrument to detect radiation, sampled the rain on his windshield in Alberta, Canada. Let’s just say not a great reading…..
Plumes, explosions, release the radioactive material into the atmosphere….high up in the jet stream that connects the entire world……when it rains, the water brings its radioactive friends down to our level…..to play.
What kind of government can you run when your soil is contaminated by radiation? Japan is trying to figure it out…..America may soon be in the same boat if we’re not already.
Arghhhh, there’s gotta be some kind of positive light to all this? Maybe the radiation will help us mutate into beings that we all dreamed about…..like growing wings????
People left in the way because the flow of information stopped:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2087568,00.html
Boxturtle (Bungling or intentional? Dunno)
Hi blink,
Personally, I have not found a website that does justice to the full scope of this accident. I tend to follow several sources, with different focal lengths.
So, I check this for a timeline that has a record of what has been reported, for example. It is a nuclear industry site and it does not place the same weight that I do on various aspects of things, but there is a lot of basic information there that is as good as you will find anywhere. (Remember, Noam Chomsky advises one to read the Wall Street Journal every day. Even if you don’t agree with the editorial slant, you can be sure that the people who are reading it have a stake in knowing what the agreed upon “facts” are at any given time.) I subscribe to the IAEA RSS feed here to see what is bubbling up in the news generally. I also read 10-15 other sites daily (including several Japanese newspapers in English and 2-3 “wild-eyed” sites on the anti-nuke side) or maybe three times a week, to look for common threads and recognizable variants of the news.
There are a lot of sites that (in my opinion) get too wound up about the immediate health risks here in the US. Sometime in the last few months I posted links to the map of radiation deposits left by the Chernobyl accident, to make the point that there wasn’t much radiation recorded at the distance from Chernobyl that the US is from Japan. The Pacific Ocean is very big. Also, it is easy to measure radiation at levels 1,000,000 times too faint to be an immediate health risk. There is a lot of room between measuring Fukushima fallout in the US (there was definitely some!) and any known health effects. This accident is affecting Japan. The radiation from it is not something to worry about if you live in Europe or in the US. It is a problem if you live in Japan (esp northeast of Tokyo, or if you eat food from the Fukushima region, etc). I have posted from time to time on the radiation effects in Japan, and have been critical of the government’s long-term evacuation plans. I think they are erring on the side of expediency, and the health effects (while unknowable) will be hotly debated for decades. When the truth is not known, it is important to err on the side of caution.
Much more interesting to me is the political fallout from the accident. Germany, Italy and others have voted to go nuclear-free. Evidently they will replace the lost capacity with a mix of renewables (good) and fossil fuels (bad). Even more interesting, the people of Japan are rapidly developing a deepening cynicism with respect to corporations, captured regulatory agencies, the revolving door of government and business, and government itself. This is happening in one of the largest economies of the world. There will be big implications world-wide.
Long answer to a short question, I guess.
As to your other question:
Radiation continues to be released to the environment from the Fukushima accident daily (mostly into the groundwater). The overall levels are evidently much lower today than they were in mid to late March, but the reactors are not yet under control. The bigger risks (IMO) to people in Japan are associated with eating contaminated food, and also from the long-lived radioactive particles that were released months ago. What is bizarre is that it is VERY easy to detect radiation (for the same reason that it is dangerous — it announces its presence), yet the people of Japan are having to arm themselves with radiation detectors, because the government can’t seem to acknowledge (with the full range of corrective actions required) just how much radioactive fallout has been deposited in the country. It is likely less than Chernobyl, yes, but that isn’t a great achievement. It has been a terrible accident, it could still get worse, it is not yet under control, and it will take decades and a LOT of money to clean up.
Last thought from me: The long-term health risks are unknown, for many reasons. Encouragingly, there have not been serious, large-scale health effects. (Of course I know that some workers have died, and I have posted about the plight of the thousands of workers they are cycling through the work site.) What I mean is, there has not been widespread radiation sickness among the population. The stress levels associated with evacuations, etc, have extracted a greater toll than the radiation itself, so far. And it must be remembered that the tsunami itself was absolutely terrible.
Good points, Boxturtle. Reactor One even melted down twice! I wonder if they’ll get to six. (Reactors 1, 2 and 3 each melting down twice.)
Also, you are right to point out how weird it is that we have not yet heard more about those hotspots @ the exhaust stacks. That, too, was bad news, though it isn’t yet clear just how bad.
I’d prefer a flying car to wings.
Gunderson has been an interesting source of information. The one thing I would criticize is that he has the timescale of the accident wrong. He has generally (IMO) sounded like the sky is falling RIGHT NOW in his reports. However, this accident is evolving very slowly now. It is still bad, but I feel like the appropriate response is to keep an eye on it and to think about the long-term implications rather than feel like every few days is the beginning of the end. It is a bit too much like May 21 (or the boy who cried wolf) for my taste. The world ends with a whimper, not with a bang, after all.
The government was too afraid in the early days. There will be more news like this, I’m afraid.
Boxturtle wonders about this, too, Robert. I haven’t seen a peep anywhere.
The industry story is that whatever caused that hotspot has stopped, and that they can get around to cleaning it up later. The problem is that we haven’t yet heard a clear explanation of how that hotspot (in an exhaust stack!) came to be, whether it is still accumulating, whether the filters that have evidently been working on that exhaust stack are still working, …. Lots of questions and not a thing is being reported anywhere that I can find.
Rec’d.
As always, thanks lobster.
Here’s another thought. The hotspots are located between R1 and 2. We now have good reason the believe that the black smoke on the day of R1′s second meltdown was concrete burning when the melt hit it.
This means containment in R1 is breached and if it rains the melt gets wet.
So the hotspots could be caused by fallout from the concrete burning. The U and Pu would fall out of suspension rapidly and it looks to me as though the winds took that smoke from R1 towards R2.
Or the hotspots could be caused by corium from the melt when it hit the concrete. Which would mean containment is badly breached.
Boxturtle (Where’s Millie Sievert? I wanna know what’s said in Japanese about this)
http://enenews.com/
Here’s a little more and there is a link to when workers tried to enter the area. It would be nice is govt. would tell the truth but we know that isn’t going happen any time soon in Japan or Amerika
Thank you very much, lobster. I like many of us was too caught up in the Grand Bargain mess when your previous post appeared – then it disappeared before I could get to it. I will follow Robert’s suggestion and click onto the link now.
Recommended!
We irradiated two of their cities.
The Japanese government irradiated their entire country.
Talking about the most bitter of ironies.
You would think they would have known better.
Well……
I am not ready to agree to most of your scenario BT, but I will point out that TEPCO did say that the hotspots could be composed of corium (melted fuel rods, depending on translation). That would be in the direction of supporting your line of thinking.
I’m still thinking that the filters at the bottom of the exhaust stack caught lots and lots of radioactive particles (from March 15, 21, whenever else) and that’s probably what is making up the 10 Sv/hour source. I’m speculating, though; I have no solid information.
chebetts @ 5:05pm
finally: a reason to cheer the lack of rain in texas. it’s giving us some measure of protection from rain driven radiation.
Another great post Lobster. Do you know if there any recent pictures of the reactor site?
How about a live feed? Click here.
You can watch the cranes and so forth if you have a project at work that you are trying to avoid. I’ve even seen some kind of fox-looking animal wander by!
Thanks for the reply Lobster. Speaking of “tracking the plume,” what do you make of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXh8vsedMtA
(Thanks to whoever it was down thread that told me about these videos.)
The readout said around 1.5 uSv/hour (micro-Sieverts / hour). That is a normal background level in many parts of the world (before 1945). Rain probably does increase the background from time to time, but the danger from radon in the basement is MUCH higher.
It is easy to detect radiation at tiny, tiny levels, which is what makes the discovery of areas of lethal radiation outside the containment at Fukushima months after the accident so weird. Walk around with what the person in this video has and you would have found the exhaust stack easily.
I’m speculating based on the data available also. If they gave me more data, I could come up with better speculations. It COULD be just a chunk of metal that took a blast of neutrons during one of the events and became hot.
Boxturtle (So far, I think your filter theory fits the facts bast)
Lobster, thanks again for the response. Ok so you are saying that that is not a harmful amount of radiation and nothing to be really worried about then? That the guy is over hyping it because he doesn’t really know what levels are harmful an what levels aren’t?
I guess I would think that when I see a radiation detector light up red and display what it considers to be “dangerous” levels of radiation found in rain water here in the United States that that would be a cause for concern. Maybe it isn’t though. Maybe it is only if those levels are sustained? As I said I don’t know enough about it.
One last thing, do you think there is any doubt that what that guy recorded in Oklahoma City rain water is radiation from the Fukushima disaster?
Hi blink,
There is no safe level of radiation, so the question is never easy. Certainly micro-Sv (uSv) levels of radiation are very common on Earth, so (IMO) there are other worries that should be higher on one’s list. Here is a good graphical summary of the various levels of radiation one encounters in life.
Is that radiation from Fukushima? I don’t know, but it could be. Generally though, there can be elevated levels of radiation when it rains, as naturally-occurring radioactive particles in the air are also concentrated when it rains.
http://enenews.com, as i am sure others have recommended.
for a rather exhaustive set of reference material and background information invaluable when orienting one’s research with respect to this disaster, do check out
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-crisis-really-useful-links.html
(easy tinyurl alias: “nukushima” http://tinyurl.com/nukushima)
(also available as interactive mind map: http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2011/04/awesome-nuclear-crisis-resource-mind.html
(easy tinyurl alias: “newkushima” http://tinyurl.com/newkushima)