f13.net

Oregon and California have tsunami warnings now.

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SEHW70 PHEB 110901
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HIZ001>003-005>009-012>014-016>021-023>026-111101-

TSUNAMI SEISMIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NUMBER   1
NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
1101 PM HST THU MAR 10 2011

TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII

SUBJECT - LOCAL TSUNAMI INFORMATION

THIS STATEMENT IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

   ORIGIN TIME - 1058 PM HST 10 MAR 2011
   COORDINATES - 19.3 NORTH  155.0 WEST
   LOCATION    - ON THE SOUTH FLANK OF KILAUEA VOLCANO
   MAGNITUDE   - 4.6

EVALUATION

 NO TSUNAMI IS EXPECTED. REPEAT. NO TSUNAMI IS EXPECTED.
 HOWEVER...SOME AREAS MAY HAVE EXPERIENCED SHAKING.

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY STATEMENT ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.
...SP...

The areas of most concern, according to the National Weather Service, are the north end of Monterey Bay near the Santa Cruz harbor.

All coastal residents in the warning area who are near the beach or in low-lying regions should move immediately inland to higher ground and away from all harbors and inlets including those sheltered directly from the sea. Those feeling the earth shake, seeing unusual wave action, or the water level rising or receding may have only a few minutes before the tsunami arrival and should move immediately. Homes and small buildings are not designed to withstand tsunami impacts. Do not stay in these structures.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hawaii/detail?entry_id=84799#ixzz1GIeVvSuT (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hawaii/detail?entry_id=84799#ixzz1GIeVvSuT) 

I'm very, very disappointed in all of you that I had to be the first one to post this.

The video on the news this morning was just horrifying, but the coverage was worse.

Watching some of that tsunami video is surreal.

Just proves the stuff you hear on the documentaries all the time that offshore quakes are more devestating than ones that are centered under land due to the tsunami.

That is going to be Seattle someday soon. We are well overdue for a massive offshore quake. Hopefully it will hold off until I have long since shuffled off this mortal coil.

Though the images are a bit unnerving, the buildings are doing they way they were designed to do - move and flex with the seismic motion rather than stiffly resist it, which would cause them to crack and topple.

I'm very, very disappointed in all of you that I had to be the first one to post this.

(http://reporter.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/11/30/godzilla.jpg)

Today 5:57 PM Losing Control

According to NBC Nightly News' Twitter feed, Tokyo Electric Power Company has lost control of their numbers one and two nuclear power reactors. Temperatures are rising.

Nah, an offshore quake is not what Seattle has to worry about, it is the pyroclastic flow coming off Ranier when it finally blows. 

Local Fox (because it's 10pm and Friday Nights are shitty TV) reported that "several reactors are in danger, one nearing critical on its coolant" and "another is leaking over 1,000 times normal radiation."

 :awesome_for_real:

1000 times normal sounds scary, but it's considerably less than a medical X-ray.  Not someplace you'd want to live, but not enough to require lead overalls.

--Dave

(Reuters) - Japan's nuclear authorities said on Saturday that radioactive pressure was successfully relieved at the No.1 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi plant by opening valves.

They just had a Tsunami.  Isnt there enough fuckin water?

There are reports, some appearing to be official, that cesium has been detected from the vented steam, which would indicate that there has been some melting in the fuel rods.  That's not quite the same thing as a "meltdown", and it's a long way from a Chernobyl-like event (which should be impossible with this design, Chernobyl was a "first generation" design).

--Dave

Major radiation leak in Fukushima. Explosion 4 minutes ago. Now shut the fuck up and stop being an expert.

Edit: The ceiling on No.1 has collapsed. Explosion assumed to be the hydrogen that HAD been used to cool the reactor.

The US Navy has people on site, and there is nobody better in the world at this kind of thing.

It doesn't look like what I would have expected from a hydrogen explosion (no visible flame).

The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

Can't remember all the details, but the denial was heavy on most levels. One of the obvious examples being the firefighters who weren't informed of the risks of what they were doing.

It is apparent that the various "actors" involved in civilian nuclear accidents act in a remarkably consistent fashion when confronted with a crisis. Those responsible attempt, as far as possible, to conceal the extent of the accident and to promulgate an optimistic view of the situation. Such a reaction, therefore, was not unique to the Soviet government after Chernobyl. This author has stated elsewhere that, as a test of glasnost in the USSR, Chernobyl was a failure. However, the reaction of the Soviet authorities - silence until confronted with incontrovertible proof that radiation had spread beyond the borders of the USSR - was not dissimilar to that of Metropolitan Edison in the case of TMI, or of the UKAEA after the fire at Windscale/Sellafield (President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island 1979). This does not mean that any of these organizations were overtly callous or reckless. The individuals involved most probably believed that the consequences of the respective accidents could be contained in secret, free from the attentions of troublesome and irresponsible media. In all three cases cited, the evident secrecy surrounding the accidents served to decrease public trust of the industry and to inflame the media and other interest groups.

The media reacted to the lack of information in two different ways. First, reporters began to speculate what might have happened. Such speculations included two reactor explosions at Chernobyl, mass graves for thousands of victims, a nuclear meltdown, and similar stories. Apart from the differing scale of events, this development paralleled what had happened after TMI seven years earlier. There, an unrelated fire that broke out the day after the accident was quickly reported as a reactor fuel fire. Metropolitan Edison was also reported to be burning radioactive material at night, out of the public eye. Both of these reports were false, but they were partly a result of failure to provide timely and accurate information.

Why did the authorities react in such a fashion? There are several possible reasons. The one that is most often cited (and it was referred to with regularity after Chernobyl) is that they wished to avoid panic among the population. Ivan Yemelyanov, one of the designers of the Chernobyl plant and a deputy director of the USSR Institute of Energy Technology, informed the Italian Communist Party newspaper, Unita, that selective information had been released about the accident in order to forestall panic (Marples 1986: 170). (Literature on human responses to disaster would suggest that generally confusion, shock, and trauma are more likely than outright panic, and the majority of the population in Pripyat appears to have conformed to this norm.) The most charitable explanation for holding May Day parades in Kiev and Minsk, only five days after the accident, is that the Ukrainian and Belarusian governments were anxious to portray life as "normal."

Can't remember all the details, but the denial was heavy on most levels. One of the obvious examples being the firefighters who weren't informed of the risks of what they were doing.

Human nature, people only get 100% honest at work when things are really fucked up.

Edit, besides at Chernobyl, wasn't the guy in charge lying that the reactor shell was intact even after the explosion?  Pretty hard to convincingly do that when a massive explosion has been caught on camera.

along with the pants-on-head retarded reactor design and the inexperienced crew deliberately seeing how far they could push things before something went wrong.

I guess that might make some sense since the radiation dropped afterward, yes?  One pump exploded but another might be circulating fresh coolant in.

I'm not sure that part of your post is entirely accurate, I thought that was just part of the first cover story.

The main factor still being Chernobyl's design was ridiculously bad

Yesterday, we reported that three people had tested positive for elevated radiation levels. That number has now jumped to 160, says a Japanese nuclear safety official.
...
AFP says the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where a second reactor system is overheating, says there is a risk of a second explosion. We'll keep you updated right here.
...
All the functions to keep cooling water levels in No.3 reactor have failed at the Fukushima No.1 plant.

As of 5:30am, water injection stopped and inside pressure is rising slightly

Yeah, I guess the current design in Japan is just bad, only not ridiculously so.

The heat at the moment is from secondary and tertiary decay, and is steadily dropping as per the expected half-life curves.

A meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors, an official with Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency told CNN Sunday.

“In addition to the reactor cores, the storage pool for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel is also at risk. The pool cooling water must be continuously circulated. Without circulation, the still thermally hot irradiated nuclear fuel in the storage pools will begin to boil off the cooling water. Within a day or two, the pool’s water could completely boil away. Without cooling water, the irradiated nuclear fuel could spontaneously combust in an exothermic reaction. Since the storage pools are not located within containment, a catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment could occur. Up to 100 percent of the volatile radioactive Cesium-137 content of the pools could go up in flames and smoke, to blow downwind over large distances. Given the large quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel in the pool, the radioactivity release could be worse than the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe of 25 years ago.”

Heh, so much for any more nuclear reactors in the US ever. Hope you all enjoy fly ash from coal-burning plants, because the not-in-my-backyard crowd literally has won forever now.

Probably?

http://blogs.forbes.com/williampentland/2011/03/11/risk-of-nuclear-catastrophe-escalates-in-japan-worse-than-chernobyl/


I'll go out on a limb here and say I'm fairly certain they will want to keep cooling the reactors and the storage pools.

Kamps is a specialist in nuclear waste at Beyond Nuclear

They've got bigger problems, like entire fucking towns being washed out to sea.

Another nuclear reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 facility in Japan has lost its emergency cooling capacity, according to the Associated Press, bringing to three the number of reactors at that facility to fall prey to Friday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami. Added to failure of three reactors at Fukushima No. 2, the count is now six overall.

You have a Japanese PM who was running sub 20% approval ratings and admitted to accepting campaign contributions from a foreign national (against Japanese law) running things. Perfect reason to expect "Heck of a job, Brownie!" type stuff to be coming out of official channels.

Holy shit you find some weird people when Googling for information.  Apparently this earthquake was planned by "The Globalists" using the HAARP.  The information on how bad the meltdown actually is is all being withheld so that these same Globalists can move their money out of Toyota, Nissan, Sony, etc because Japan's economy is now going to crumble.  This is why the comments section from MSN and other news sites has been turned off on all related stories.  :uhrr:

The internet: Providing crazy people with fuel for their fires.

Japan's top government spokesman says a partial meltdown is likely under way at second reactor affected by Friday's massive earthquake.

"There was a partial melting of fuel rod. There was a part of that... but it was nothing like a whole reactor melting down," he added, saying he was being briefed hourly on the situation.

TEPCO has been pumping seawater into the reactor in an effort to cool the core and says the top of the fuel rods are three metres above water. A TEPCO spokesman later told AFP that the rods were covered again.

FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN (RNN) – Hours before a Japanese official announced a nuclear meltdown was possibly under way, 200,000 people were evacuated from a 12.5-mile radius around a failed nuclear power plant.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi unit 3 reactor "exceeded legal limits," and it was "highly possible" a meltdown is occurring, according to the Associated Press.

"Because it's inside the reactor, we cannot directly check it, but we are taking measures on the assumption of the possible partial meltdown," Edano told reporters.

Before/After photos of devastation in Japan, including nuclear plant: roll your mouse over the pic to reveal (http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm).

Before/After photos of devastation in Japan, including nuclear plant: roll your mouse over the pic to reveal (http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm).

Got any sources other than fringe lunatics who've made a career from scaremongering about nuclear energy?

?  I'm not suggesting anything I was quoting from the bio-robots bit of the horizon documentary.

Yeah, I guess the current design in Japan is just bad, only not ridiculously so.

Yeah, pretty much.  It's coal, damns and Windmills from here on out.

You have a Japanese PM who was running sub 20% approval ratings and admitted to accepting campaign contributions from a foreign national (against Japanese law) running things. Perfect reason to expect "Heck of a job, Brownie!" type stuff to be coming out of official channels.

How they get enough boric acid to mix to the sea water and how they'll mix is so that the boric acid is distributed homogenuously throughout is anybody's guess.

Better damnation that dam nation?

I wouldn't presume to judge Japanese politics by comparing it to the US.

Triforcer was in Japan, wasn't he?

Yeah, pretty much.  It's coal, damns and Windmills from here on out.

I'm not sure if he was still in Japan or if they had made it over.  I know they were working on the paperwork for his fiancée way-back-when and I think a Spring wedding.  Nor do I remember what area he was in.

Someone else was over in Japan, too, though I never remember until they bring it up. :|

I wouldn't presume to judge Japanese politics by comparing it to the US.

Instead of commissioning plants to run 20-40 years longer than they were supposed to with old much less safe tech (the current shit in Japan is very unlikely to have happened with a more recent nuke plant design) they will see that the chance of failure in extreme conditions really is too high on the older stuff.

Is joke, tovarich, you laugh, yes?

Cooling system problems continue to plague two nuclear plants in earthquake-hit Fukushima Prefecture.

The level of coolant water in the Number Three reactor at the Fukushima Number One power plant dropped on Sunday, leaving the fuel rods exposed by two meters. The situation continued for at least until 3pm, possibly causing a partial melting of the rods.

As a result, masses of hydrogen gas have accumulated in the inside top of the reactor building. The gas may cause an explosion similar to that which occurred at the Number One reactor on Saturday.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, also known as TEPCO, is considering ways to remove the hydrogen from the structure.
The Number One reactor and its containment structure are being pumped with seawater in an effort to secure cooling.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the amount of seawater should entirely fill the reactor structure, and that the building should be safe as long as the water flow continues.

At the Number Two reactor, the amount of coolant continues to be lower than usual, and the pressure within the containment vessel is above normal.

TEPCO attempted to restore the functioning of an electrical pressure-relief device by connecting a generator, but has not succeeded.

The company is considering other means to relieve the reactor pressure, such as releasing air from the containment vessel.
Inadequate cooling is also occurring at the Fukushima Number Two power plant, where the pumps to send seawater to cool the Number One, Two and Four reactors have failed due to the tsunami.

TEPCO says it will try to restore the cooling systems by replacing the pump motors overnight.

Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano said Sunday that radioactive meltdowns may have occurred in two reactors of the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant.

Asked in a press conference whether meltdowns had occurred, Edano said "we are acting on the assumption that there is a high possibility that one has occurred" in the plant's number-one reactor.

"As for the number-three reactor, we are acting on the assumption that it is possible," he said.

Following a high-level meeting called by lame-duck Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Japanese government agencies are no longer releasing independent reports on the state of the nuclear reactor facilities damaged by the Tohoku earthquake, newly upgraded to 9.0 on the seismic scale, and devesatting tsunami without prior approval from the top.

Official silencing of bad news is one way of reassuring the public.
...
A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center five kilometers (About three miles) from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in three residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 160.
...
Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass."
...
In an unprecedented move, China has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to most, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record" China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally." When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad, because if one of China's exports was ever needed now, it's their radiation blanket.

If I understand it correctly, thorium plants are only just coming online in the world. It's very new tech for mass power production, often with the term "prototype" attached to it.

Besides, most industries avoid the huge expense of replacing old (but functional and revenue generating) infrastructure until absolutely necessary. I'm not sure the process of retrofitting an existing reactor, but good luck in convincing nuclear reactors that are functioning perfectly well, thank you (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/japan-quake-nuclear-ge-idUSN1227232120110312), that they really should completely update themselves. A refit probably means a shut down, which means huge expense while having no revenue.

Alternatively they can try to build new thorium nuclear power plants, but that's a political minefield in and of itself (all existing nuclear reactors in the US were started by 1974 (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/nuclear-renaissance-is-short-on-largess/), apparently - there hasn't been a 'new' power plant approved since then).

My point, if I have one, is that these older nuclear power plants are going to be in the US for years, probably decades, to come. Just because thorium is seen as the safe option now doesn't mean the industry will move to it or that it will even be as safe as people say.

partial or complete draining of a plant’s spent fuel pool might be capable of starting a high-temperature fuel cladding fire that could lead to the “release of large quantities of radioactive material into the environment
...
fuel newly removed from the reactor needs about five years cooling time in a water pool before it can be loaded into casks.

(all existing nuclear reactors in the US were started by 1974 (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/nuclear-renaissance-is-short-on-largess/), apparently - there hasn't been a 'new' power plant approved since then).

In the United States, perhaps the most vulnerable plants are the two in California built on the Pacific coast near the San Andreas fault.

Those plants were built to withstand a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert at the Institute for Policy studies and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The San Francisco quake of 1906 measured 8.3, said Alvarez, while Friday's Japanese quake was a massive 8.9.

"I don't think we should renew those operating licenses," he said.

And an older design without the negative-feedback fail-safe features of newer designs.  If they weren't actively managing it, it would get a lot worse, fast, but newer designs would (and are, elsewhere in Japan) just quietly not do anything.

That volcano is on Kyushu. About 950 miles south of Sendai. It may or may not be related to the earthquake.

Umm, if they don't know that is or isn't related to the earthquake, how can they 'take a position'?

If Mt. Hood or Rainier blew anytime this year, you'd have plenty of people willing to swear it couldn't be a coincidence, but it almost certainly would be.
--Dave

Uhrr no. They are now predicting this. Either volcano or earth quake on western US coast. They say all the events this year through out ring of fire area has relieved stress everywhere BUT the western US coast line.

I am fully admitting I dont know jack shit about geology so take my ramblings with a grain of salt.
But, it doesnt seem like it would be that hard to discern?
1, Huge thing called ring of fire in the pacific.
2. Volcanoes (geographically near epicenter of quake) that have been inactive 52+ years start spewing shit out within the last 70 days (indicating seismic/mantle activity?)
3. Boom! Huge earthquake (and all kinds of related volcanoes all near the same geographic region start spewing)

Is it that hard to make an educated judgment on?
(I've been drinking as well, so dont hold this against me)

I don't know if your drunk ignorant self would know more about geology than those who are not drunk or ignorant and tackle it professionally every day of their lives, but I am willing to bet that any correct assumptions on your part would certainly be coincidence only.

0221: Urgent: Explosion at Reactor 3 - AFP.
0220: Sea level has dropped five metres off Fukushima, confirming imminent arrival of tsunami - Japanese TV.
0218: Column of smoke escaping from Reactor 3 at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant - Japanese TV.
0216: Grimmer news on the recovery operation in Minamisanriku: about 1,000 bodies found there, according to Kyodo.
0214: Evacuation order issued in the city of Hachinohe in the north-east - Kyodo
0212: Tsunami feared to reach north-eastern coast "in minutes" - Kyodo.
0210: North-eastern coast on the alert for a 3-metre tsunami - Japan's Jiji news agency.

I can't imagine what will happen if they lose control of even one of those reactors.  I read that they have five in one site.  This is just unimaginable.

Worst case? Probably less than 2% of what's already been done by the tsunami. Nuclear hysteria is at an all-time high.

I don't know if your drunk ignorant self would know more about geology than those who are not drunk or ignorant and tackle it professionally every day of their lives, but I am willing to bet that any correct assumptions on your part would certainly be coincidence only.

Looking at what happened at Chernobyl, the hysteria is justified. 

We have like 20 Reactors in Ontario alone or something like that, but I have no idea on their specifics of operation.

No, the hysteria is in no way justified.

If you even read just what was said in this thread so far, you would know that the only real similarities between Chernobyl and these plants were that they were both producing electricity with nuclear fission.

CANDU. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor)

I'm just not sure I buy this line of reasoning. How bad does it have to be before people are allowed to be worried? We're at probable partial melting of fuel rods we hope we can keep this emergency cooling with seawater going right now and you're basically saying I don't see why anyone could imagine this might get worse.

Calm down folks: Here is a calming piece written by a Nuke PHD over at MIT

https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

Ours can apparently use Thorium? Isn't that supposed to be the big deal thing these days? Also that name is hilarious.

-edit- At the Japanese plants, what DOES happen if containment is breached?

-edit2- On the other end, what is the shutdown of half a dozen nuke plants doing to Japans hydro? That seems like a non-trivial amount of power to not have access to anymore.

Excellent link, that was 1000 times more informative than *anything* that's come out of the news media so far.

. The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.
...
The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel and concrete. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown

As part of the reporting on the Fukujima situation Al Jazeera and other news organizations offer 'insight' on just how fucked up the Japanese energy sector is. Like Enron bad.

Tepco for example is notorious for essentially blackmailing customers. They even insinuated that they could just switch off a few nuclear plants in the summer if the Japanese public wasn't comfortable with their security standards or business practices, which would 'unfortunately' lead to brown- and black-outs. They also fought the original switch off date (which would have been 2001) in court and got an extension till this year.

They have also a history of falsifying maintenance reports, skimping out on maintenance, shady bookkeeping and keeping severe incidents at their plants from the public.

Low alloy is apropos of nothing, and 15cm thickness is actually a shitton of steel.

One of the things i have to wonder about, aside from the Loss of Life and looming nuclear / radiation issues is the cultural impact.   How many culturally priceless historical sites along the coast may have been totally fucked by this?   I mean, I realise that Japan as a country has been through quakes and Tsunamis before, but you have to wonder if this one didnt scrub a 1000+ year old castle or shrine or landmark of great signifigance off the face of the earth.

Insane footage of tsunami at ground level. (http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-snc6/81489/34/1605260179420_2624.mp4?oh=ac31b4d8738221641ba490396dc19636&oe=4D7F9F00&l3s=20110313100648&l3e=20110315101648&lh=0a6cfa5eeaecd6dc12abf)

Technically it's not "Hydro" in Japan. :awesome_for_real:  Yeah, they're probably going to see brownouts depending on their total output capacity.

In response, water injection into Unit 2's reactor were being carried out by the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System. However, as the Reactor Core  Isolation Cooling System failed today, it was determined that a specific  incident (failure of reactor cooling function) stipulated in article 15,  clause 1 has occurred at 1:25 pm today.

Jiji news agency said fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor had been entirely exposed and a fuel rod meltdown could not be ruled out. The plant operator confirmed there was little water left in the reactor. The explosion happened at the No. 3 reactor, two days after a blast at the No. 1 reactor.

A meltdown raises the risk of damage to the reactor vessel and a possible radioactive leak. Levels of cooling sea water around the reactor core had been reported as falling earlier in the day. Jiji said the pump had run out of fuel.

Later, officials said seawater and boric acid were also being pumped into reactor 2.

They were still encountering problems - among them, a stuck valve. Its exact purpose was not revealed.

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.
...
Japanese reactor operators now have little choice but to periodically release radioactive steam as part of an emergency cooling process for the fuel of the stricken reactors that may continue for a year or more even after fission has stopped. The plant’s operator must constantly try to flood the reactors with seawater, then release the resulting radioactive steam into the atmosphere, several experts familiar with the design of the Daiichi facility said.

That suggests that the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period, and that shifts in the wind could blow radioactive materials toward Japanese cities rather than out to sea.

Re-establishing normal cooling of the reactors would require restoring electric power — which was cut in the earthquake and tsunami — and now may require plant technicians working in areas that have become highly contaminated with radioactivity.

Inside the plant, according to industry executives and American experts who received briefings over the weekend, there was deep concern that spent nuclear fuel that was kept in a “cooling pond” inside one of the plants had been exposed and begun letting off potentially deadly gamma radiation. Then water levels inside the reactor cores began to fall. While estimates vary, several officials and industry experts said Sunday that the top four to nine feet of the nuclear fuel in the core and control rods appear to have been exposed to the air — a condition that that can quickly lead to melting, and ultimately to full meltdown.
...
To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used firefighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been difficult because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.

One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”

The problem was compounded because gauges in the reactor seemed to have been damaged in the earthquake or tsunami, making it impossible to know just how much water is in the core.

And workers at the pumping operation are presumed to be exposed to radiation; several workers, according to Japanese reports, have been treated for radiation poisoning. It is not clear how severe their exposure was.

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

Apologies for being snarky but it's kind of disappointing that the media is utterly focused on "nuclear power plant meltdown!!11!1" when the rest of the country is utterly devastated. This is a big problem but it would have to get much, much worse to start being comparable to what just happened by itself.

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

In a way, its a chant for it to become worse.

Micro-Simulation Technology (MST) is a software development and consulting group. The company is engaged in designing windows PC based applications to nuclear industry. It has designed PC-based reactor simulation software Personal Computer Transient Analyzer (PCTRAN) to model nuclear power plant and radiological dispersal device events for emergency response planning. MST is specialized in designing TPCTRAN which was selected as the training material by IAEA for its annual Advanced Reactor Simulation workshop. The plant models of the company include GE/Hitachi Economic Simplified BWR (ESBWR), Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), Westinghouse AP1000 (AP1000), Generation III-Plus PWR EPR (Areva). The company installed plant specific models at nuclear power plants and institutions all over the world for practical application in training, analysis, probabilistic safety assessment and emergency exercises. The company distributes its products through its distributors such as AF-Colenco Ltd. and CSA of Japan. AF-Colenco has also entered into agreements with a number of universities to license PCTRAN for their educational use. It operates principally in the US, Switzerland, and Japan

Don't blame me because I can read.

Don't blame me because I can read.

The late (cancer) death estimate for the worst case SFP release is in the order of
 D. 10,000's.

So I keep hearing that the water levels in the reactors aren't rising.  Is this because the fuel is so hot it's evaporating it all near-instantly or something more dire, like the quake cracked the reactor floor and it's all just spilling out?

All you're doing is regurgitating words.  You have little to no context for anything you're saying but you're emphasizing things as though they mean something relevant.

That they sell training software means what?  Training software is training software and doesn't mean they have any information or insight into any current issue.  Which they haven't commented on.

OMG THE PRESSURE VESSEL IS MADE OF LOW ALLOY STEEL!!!  LOW ALLOW IS BAD!!!  BECAUSE IT'S LOW!!!

A BAD accident WOULD BE BAD!!!

Dude, get outside and breathe.

Also, the condition of the steel containment is a big "?" in my eyes.  Anyone who works with steel knows that as strong as it may seem, it's a pretty fragile metal.  This is a Japanese plant, likely using japanese steel (which sux btw), from 40 yrs. ago, along a seawater coastline, just went through a 9.0 quake, tsunami, two hydro. explosions, radiative degradation, crooked management, molten temps, and on and on.  Sure, a meltdown wont do nothin' at all.  Yah... nothin to see here, move along now.  :awesome_for_real:

Low alloy steel, thickness 15cm is a quote from link, aka a fact, "sturdy piece" is an opinion devoid of fact, that's why I pointed it out, not because I don't think 15cm is good enough.   :why_so_serious:

This thread is approaching neckbeard supercritical mass

The article you provided reads like it was written by someone who's primary sources are nuclear fearmongers and Wikipedia, desperately trying to find some big words so that he didn't look like a putz in front of a room full of PhD's. :oh_i_see:

To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used firefighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been difficult because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.

One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”

Really? While it's going to make the area around the plant very, very much not some place you'd want to be it'd have to be pretty fucking awful to start making the earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people seem like a minor problem.

Apologies for being snarky but it's kind of disappointing that the media is utterly focused on "nuclear power plant meltdown!!11!1" when the rest of the country is utterly devastated. This is a big problem but it would have to get much, much worse to start being comparable to what just happened by itself.

The AP reports:

Japanese officials say the nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday: "Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening."

#
1422: Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima's reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant's builders, Toshiba, knew this. More on Mr Goto's remarks to follow.

#
1431: More from Japanese nuclear engineer Masashi Goto: He say that as the reactor uses mox (mixed oxide) fuel, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. Should a meltdown and an explosion occur, he says, plutonium could be spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear fuel explosion. The next 24 hours are critical, he says.

This was my thinking the moment the quake happened.  If the water levels are consistently dropping and they dont know why, the only explanation is a crack in the flooring allowing seepage into the groundwater.
It's no different then when you've got a leak in the vinyl lining of a pool.

Keep your pants on.  The steel container being discussed is the second of three vessels.

 Can anyone at that plant say definitively the condition of ANY of those reactors w/o turning into a pile of goo or waiting 5 yrs for it to cool enough?

Japanese officials say the nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday: "Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening."

Man, what a tragedy on a grand scale.

Sand:  They always do death tolls like this.  They don't consider them dead until they have corpses, and they don't consider them missing until they are formally reported as such.  Knowing a train got swept away is one thing, having it officially reported that there were 500 people on it by the proper authorities is another.  I think everyone knows that we are talking tens of thousands, though.  Like you, I often wonder why the media dance around it so much.

So I keep hearing that the water levels in the reactors aren't rising.  Is this because the fuel is so hot it's evaporating it all near-instantly or something more dire, like the quake cracked the reactor floor and it's all just spilling out?

The 1st vessel being a 16cm steel container.  The 2nd being the outer concrete "blanket."  The third being the now blown away containment building yes?

anti-scientific data conspiracy theories

What I'm worried about, with my layman understanding, is a hydrogen blowout/explosion in the core.  

I just hope that NE japan does not become uninhabitable, the wave crushed enough, they don't need another issue to contend with.

In the last 48 hours, Tepco has carried out repairs to the emergency core coolant systems of units 1, 2 and 4 and one by one these have come back into action. Unit 1 announced cold shutdown at 1.24 am today and unit 2 followed at 3.52 am.
 
Repairs at unit 4 are now complete and Tepco said that gradual temperature reduction started at 3.42pm. An evacuation zone extends to ten kilometres around the plant, but this is expected to be rescinded when all four units are verified as stable in cold shutdown conditions.

The perimeter radiation monitors have measured a whopping 15 uSv according to tepco (http://bravenewclimate.com/).  You get more standing next to a granite wall.

I like how news outlets are shitting their pants about trace releases of Caesium-137 and Iodine-121.

Oh, jeesus christ.

- The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
- Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
- Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
- There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
- The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
- The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water
- The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.
- Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.
- The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)
- (Updated) I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. 11 of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors in different plants were shut down and will have to be inspected, directly reducing the nation’s nuclear power generating capacity by 20%, with nuclear power accounting for about 30% of the national total power generation capacity. I have not looked into possible consequences for other nuclear plants not directly affected. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well.  I am not familiar with Japan’s energy supply chain for oil, gas and coal, and what damage the harbors, refinery, storage and transportation networks have suffered, as well as damage to the national distribution grid. All of that will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to power shortages during peak demand and reconstruction efforts, in Japan.
- This all is only part of a much bigger picture. Emergency response has to deal with shelter, drinking water, food and medical care, transportation and communication infrastructure, as well as electricity supply. In a world of lean supply chains, we are looking at some major challenges in all of these areas.

Nuclear reactors and the words Meltdown scare people. Mainly because they don't understand any of it beyond knowing "oh shit, that's bad."  Scared people read more web pages than concerned people who will empathize with toxic sludge or washed away cities, meaning more revenue.   Never forget this and be disgusted by it and what it's done to reporting.

The what now?

The meltdown that is being described here is the partial melting of the rods that enclose the uranium which is just going to leave a mess in the bottom of the containment vessel and means that there is no hope of salvaging the core and putting it back in use.

another concern: has there been any (goldbug) chatter about JP defaulting on its soverign debt because of these disasters?

Arthur Baylis doesn't believe in climate change, and spammed the last ACC thread in politics with unresearched, borderline irrelevant quotes from dubious sources. Much like he is doing with this one re: nuclear science, in fact.

Let's just hope nobody starts an "Theory of Evolution" thread, eh?  :awesome_for_real:

But first, a FAQ (updated at 8:15AM GMT, March 14th):


What in the hell is going on here?

In the aftermath of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, two nuclear power stations on the east coast of Japan have been experiencing problems. They are the Fukushima Daiichi ("daiichi" means "number one") and Fukushima Daini ("number two") sites, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (or TEPCO). Site one has six reactors, and site two has four. The problematic reactors are #1, #2, and #3 at site one, which are the oldest of the ten and were due to be decommissioned this year.

In short, the earthquake combined with the tsunami have impaired the cooling systems at these reactors, which has made it difficult for TEPCO to shut them down completely. Reactor #1 is now considered safe after crew flooded the reactor with sea water. Reactor #3 was starting this process as this was originally written (6:00PM CST/11:00PM GST on March 13th). Site crew began preparing to add sea water to reactor #2 around 7:30AM GMT on March 14th, if a cooling procedure does not work.

The four reactors at site two did not have their systems impaired and have shut down normally.

Can this cause a nuclear explosion?

No. It is physically impossible for a nuclear power station to explode like a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear bombs work by causing a supercritical fission reaction in a very small space in an unbelievably small amount of time. They do this by using precisely-designed explosive charges to combine two subcritical masses of nuclear material so quickly that they bypass the critical stage and go directly to supercritical, and with enough force that the resulting supercritical mass cannot melt or blow itself apart before all of the material is fissioned.

Current nuclear power plants are designed around subcritical masses of radioactive material, which are manipulated into achieving sustained fission through the use of neutron moderators. The heat from this fission is used to convert water to steam, which drives electric generator turbines. (This is a drastic simplification.) They are not capable of achieving supercritical levels; the nuclear fuel would melt before this could occur, and a supercritical reaction is required for an explosion to occur.

Making a nuclear bomb is very difficult, and it is completely impossible for a nuclear reactor to accidentally become a bomb. Secondary systems, like cooling or turbines, can explode due to pressure and stress problems, but these are not nuclear explosions.

Is this a meltdown?

Technically, yes, but not in the way that most people think.

The term "meltdown" is not used within the nuclear industry, because it is insufficiently specific. The popular image of a meltdown is when a nuclear reactor's fuel core goes out of control and melts its way out of the containment facility. This has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

What has happened in reactor #1 and #3 is a "partial fuel melt". This means that the fuel core has suffered damage from heat but is still largely intact. No fuel has escaped containment. Core #2 may have experienced heat damage as well, but the details are not known yet. It is confirmed that reactor #2's containment has not been breached.

How did this happen? Aren't there safety systems?

When the earthquakes in Japan occurred on March 11th, all ten reactor cores "scrammed", which means that their control rods were inserted automatically. This shut down the active fission process, and the cores have remained shut down since then.

The problem is that even a scrammed reactor core generates "decay heat", which requires cooling. When the tsunami arrived shortly after the earthquake, it damaged the external power generators that the sites used to power their cooling systems. This meant that while the cores were shut down, they were still boiling off the water used as coolant.

This caused two further problems. First, the steam caused pressure to build up within the containment vessel. Second, once the water level subsided, parts of the fuel rods were exposed to air, causing the heat to build up more quickly, leading to core damage from the heat.

What are they doing about it?

From the very beginning, TEPCO has had the option to flood the reactor chambers with sea water, which would end the problems immediately. Unfortunately, this also destroys the reactors permanently. Doing so would not only cost TEPCO (and Japanese taxpayers) billions of dollars, but it would make that reactor unavailable for generating electricity during a nationwide disaster. The sea water method is a "last resort" in this sense, but it has always been an option.

To avoid this, TEPCO first took steps to bring the cooling systems back online and to reduce the pressure on the inside of the containment vessel. This involved bringing in external portable generators, repairing damaged systems, and venting steam and gases from inside the containment vessel. These methods worked for reactor #2 at site one, prior to complications; reactors four through six were shut down before for inspection before the earthquake hit.

In the end, TEPCO decided to avoid further risk and flooded reactor #1 with sea water. It is now considered safely under control. Reactor #3 is currently undergoing this process, and reactor #2 may undergo it if a venting procedure fails.

The four reactors at site two did not have their external power damaged by the tsunami, and are therefore operating normally, albeit in a post-scram shutdown state. They have not required any venting, and reactor #3 is already in full cold shutdown.

Is a "China Syndrome" meltdown possible?

No, any fuel melt situation at Fukushima will be limited, because the fuel is physically incapable of having a runaway fission reaction. This is due to their light water reactor design.

In a light water reactor, water is used as both a coolant for the fuel core and as a "neutron moderator". What a neutron moderator does is very technical (you can watch a lecture which includes this information here), but in short, when the neutron moderator is removed, the fission reaction will stop.

An LWR design limits the damage caused by a meltdown, because if all of the coolant is boiled away, the fission reaction will not keep going, because the coolant is also the moderator. The core will then only generate decay heat, which while dangerous and strong enough to melt the core, is not nearly as dangerous as an active fission reaction.

The containment vessel at Fukushima should be strong enough to resist breaching even during a decay heat meltdown. The amount of energy that could be produced by decay heat is easily calculated, and it is possible to design a container that will resist it. If it is not, and the core melts its way through the bottom of the vessel, it will end up in a large concrete barrier below the reactor. It is nearly impossible that a fuel melt caused by decay heat would penetrate this barrier. A containment vessel failure like this would result in a massive cleanup job but no leakage of nuclear material into the outside environment.

This is all moot, however, as flooding the reactor with sea water will prevent a fuel melt from progressing. TEPCO has already done this to reactor #1, and is in the process of doing it to #3. If any of the other reactors begin misbehaving, the sea water option will be available for those as well.

What was this about an explosion?

One of the byproducts of reactors like the ones at Fukushima is hydrogen. Normally this gas is vented and burned slowly. Due to the nature of the accident, the vented hydrogen gas was not properly burned as it was released. This led to a build up of hydrogen gas inside the reactor #1 building, but outside the containment vessel.

This gas ignited, causing the top of the largely cosmetic external shell to be blown off. This shell was made of sheet metal on a steel frame and did not require a great deal of force to be destroyed. The reactor itself was not damaged in this explosion, and there were only four minor injuries. This was a conventional chemical reaction and not a nuclear explosion.

You see what happened in this photo. Note that other than losing the sheet metal covering on the top, the reactor building is intact. No containment breach has occurred.



At about 2:30AM GMT on March 14th, a similar explosion occurred at the reactor #3 building. This explosion was not unexpected, as TEPCO had warned that one might occur. The damage is still being assessed but it has been announced that the containment vessel was not breached and that the sea water process is continuing.

Around 7:30AM GMT on March 14th, it was announced that the explosion at reactor #2 has damaged the already limping cooling systems of reactor #2. It may also receive the sea water treatment if they are unable to use a venting procedure to restart the cooling systems.

Is there radiation leakage?

The radiation levels outside the plant are higher than usual due to the release of radioactive steam. These levels will go down and return to their normal levels, as no fuel has escaped containment.

Here is a chart showing the effects of various radiation poisoning levels. For perspective, note that this chart starts at 1 Gy, equivalent to 1 Sv; the radiation outside the problematic Fukushima reactors is being measured in micro-Svs per hour. The highest reported levels outside the Fukushima reactors has been around 1000 to 1500 micro-Svs per hour. This means that one would have to stay in this area for four to six weeks, 24 hours a day, without protection in order to experience the lowest level of radiation poisoning, which while unpleasant is not normally fatal. And this level will not stay where it is.

Also note the chart of normal radiation exposure levels from things like medical x-rays and airline flights.

There have also been very minor releases of radioactive reactor byproducts like iodine and cesium along with the steam. This material is less radioactive than the typical output of coal power plants. It is significant mainly as an indicator of the state of the reactor core.

I read that there's a plume of radioactive material heading across the Pacific.

In its current state, the steam blowing east from Japan across the pacific is less dangerous than living in Denver for a year. If it makes it across the ocean, it will be almost undetectable by the time it arrives, and completely harmless as the dangerous elements in the steam will have decayed by then.

What's this about fuel rods being exposed to the air?

When the coolant levels inside the reactor get low enough, the tops of the fuel rods will be exposed to the air inside the containment vessel. They have not been exposed to the external atmosphere and the containment vessels are all intact.

Can this end up like Chernobyl?

No, it cannot. for several reasons.

Chernobyl used graphite as a neutron moderator and water as a coolant. For complicated reasons, this meant that as the coolant heated up and converted to steam, the fission reaction intensified, converting even more water to steam, leading to a feedback effect. The Fukushima reactors use water as both the coolant and the neutron moderator, which means that as the water heats up and converts to steam, the reaction slows down instead. (The effect of the conversion of water coolant to steam on the performance of a nuclear reactor is known as the "void coefficient", and can be either positive or negative.)

Chernobyl was designed so that as the nuclear fuel heated up, the fission reaction intensified, heating the core even further, causing another feedback effect. In the Fukushima reactors, the fission reaction slows down as the fuel heats up. (The effect of heating of the nuclear fuel on the performance of a nuclear reactor is known as the "temperature coefficient", and can also be positive or negative.)

Chernobyl's graphite moderator was flammable, and when the reactor exploded, the radioactive graphite burned and ended up in the atmosphere. The Fukushima reactors use water as a neutron moderator, which is obviously not flammable.

Note that while Chernobyl used light water as a coolant (as distinct from heavy water), it was not a "light water reactor". The term LWR refers strictly to reactors that use light water for both cooling and neutron moderation.

The news said this was the worst nuclear power accident since Chernobyl, though.

It's the only nuclear power plant accident of its type since Chernobyl. It's easy to be the worst in a sample size of one.

Is this like Three Mile Island?

There are similarities. The final effect on the world is likely to be similar: no deaths, minimal external contamination, and a tremendous PR disaster for the nuclear industry due to bad reporting by the media.

How can I keep up with developments?

The western media has been very bad about reporting this event, due to a combination of sensationalist reporting, ignorance, and the use of inexact or unexplained terminology.

One of the safe sources of information is the TEPCO site, which has been posting press releases on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this site is often unresponsive due to the immense traffic it is receiving.

The important thing to remember is that most of the "experts" appearing on the news are engaging in speculation. Very few of them are restricting themselves to what they can be sure about, and those that are have often been misrepresented.

Where can I find more information about these issues?

Reading:

Timeline and data sheets for the incident by the Nuclear Energy Institute
The International Atomic Energy Agency is providing regular announcements
Wikipedia on light water reactors and nuclear weapon design
The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems manual - the Fukushima reactors are BWRs, a subset of LWRs
More about BWRs
Tokyo Electric Power Company site with press releases - currently hard to reach due to traffic

Video:

"Physics for Future Presidents" lecture ten, on nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors
Footage of the hydrogen explosion at reactor #1

Photos:

before and after satellite photos of Fukushima site one

I think everyone posting here hopes things turn out for the best

A natural decaying process means that the amount of heat the fuel produces has fallen dramatically, by more than 90 percent, experts said on Monday.

One of the safe sources of information is the TEPCO site

This is due to their light water reactor design.

No, I actually suspect that's not the case.  Most, sure, but probably not all.  This is a world that turns, after all, on things NOT turning out for the best.

Arthur Baylis doesn't believe in climate change, and spammed the last ACC thread in politics with unresearched, borderline irrelevant quotes from dubious sources. Much like he is doing with this one re: nuclear science, in fact.

Let's just hope nobody starts an "Theory of Evolution" thread, eh?  :awesome_for_real:

arent the reactors in emergency status actually BWR designs? That was but the first of a few and didnt feel like dissecting the entire post.

Japan nuclear disaster risk seen receding fast (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/14/us-japan-nuclear-radiation-risk-idUSTRE72D6UC20110314).

This sounds like good news.   :heart:

Anyone else remember the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami)? Estimates of up to 300k people killed with most of those bodies never found because they they were washed away.

We probably dance around it because we can't comprehend it.

The reporting in that article seems somewhat contradictory to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

The reactors should be in the long tail now, ie. the remaining heat production recedes ever slower.


 

For this reason, at the moment of reactor shutdown, decay heat will be about 7% of the previous core power if the reactor has had a long and steady power history. About 1 hour after shutdown, the decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power.

I'm not a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but the article and this bit don't sound mutually exclusive.  

the WSJ's top editorial is pretty good, at least some news organizations are being responsible:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

From the wikipedia article:

I'm not a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but the article and this bit don't sound mutually exclusive. 

An official with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which runs the site, said seawater was being pumped in both by fire engines and via the system installed to extinguish fires in the power station's turbine hall.

He told BBC News that the use of this methodology had never been foreseen - it had been invented by the team on the ground at Fukushima

Figure 2 shows the typical rate at which heat from a shut-down reactor core boils away water when the cooling systems are not functioning. The vertical axis shows the boil-off rate in gallons per minute. The horizontal axis shows the time, in days, since the reactor was shut down. Even a week after being shut down, the heat from a reactor core boils water at a rate of nearly 60 gallons per minute

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven.

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world's admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan's nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology.

Part of the problem is the lack of media proportion about the disaster itself. The quake and tsunami have killed hundreds, and probably thousands, with tens of billions of dollars in damage. The energy released by the quake off Sendei is equivalent to about 336 megatons of TNT, or 100 more megatons than last year's quake in Chile and thousands of times the yield of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. The scale of the tragedy is epic.

Yet the bulk of U.S. media coverage has focused on a nuclear accident whose damage has so far been limited and contained to the plant sites. In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.

It is an awesome name.

Heavy water designs burn pretty much everything.  This is because rather than enriching the fuel and using normal distilled water as a moderator which absorbs a small portion of the radioactive decay (neutrons) which starts fission, the heavy water design uses deuterium (heavy water, which has an additional neutron), which absorbs no neutrons and therefore fission occurs in fuels not normally considered fissile (unenriched uranium, thorium, spent fuel from LWR's).

I don't actually hear that much crazy overreaction. The videos and assessment of the aftermath of the disaster have been just as predominant in the news as the nuclear issue.

It's NOT their editorial, it's pro-nuclear propaganda: Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

I work in the news media. I report accurately, unlike you.

So what is the downside to our design, if it can just use everything for fuel? ...
Why doesn't everyone use a CANDU?"

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?, simply because in all the rush to discuss potential disasters and the worst case scenarios people seemed to utterly miss the fact that even worse things had already actually happened.

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?

06:17 15 March: Fukushima nuke plant's No. 2 reactor still unstable: Edano

06:58 15 March: Partial defect found in No.2 reactor's container: Edano

06:58 No sharp rise seen in radiation from No. 2 reactor: Edano

BREAKING NEWS: Radiation tops legal limit after blast heard at Fukushima nuke plant (08:16)
BREAKING NEWS: Suppression pool may have been damaged at No. 2 reactor: gov't agency (08:07)
BREAKING NEWS: Blast heard at 6:10 a.m. at Fukushima's No.2 reactor: gov't (08:02)
NEWS ADVISORY: Kan criticizes Tokyo Electric's response to nuke plant blasts (07:55)

And assuming that people interested in the nuclear situation don't care about casualties and survivors of the tsunami/earthquake isn't distasteful?

Maybe the thread should have been split, you certainly weren't the only person to say similar to this.

the absolute worse case scenario would be hugely preferable to what they've had and possibly not as bad as other stuff that's actually happening

Personally I found the focus, distasteful I guess?, simply because in all the rush to discuss potential disasters and the worst case scenarios people seemed to utterly miss the fact that even worse things had already actually happened.

Nowhere,
They didnt miss it. But the government was claiming "maybe" the death toll will reach a 1,000. So the lack of concentration on the tsunami and devastation could be seen as a direct result of the Japanese government down playing the catastrophe.
So the story initially was a shit load of mud and property damage, but no human loss since the government says only "maybe" the death toll will reach a 1,000. So the potential for a nuclear accident was a bigger lead story.

Wow, the map on that site is wonderful news, as we'll be in Seattle from the 18-25th.   :oh_i_see:  Rads for everyone!

2253: The tweet by Katie Hinman of ABC News about the lonely horse in Sendai (See 2146) prompted Breda Gahan in Dublin to email in: "Can't believe I read this. Please return horse to Natsuko Komura." The BBC's Damian Grammaticas interviewed Ms Komura on Sunday as she searched for her trusty steed near Sendai's beach. She had been riding it when the tsunami approached on Friday, but had not seen it since. "Deepest sympathy to all the Japanese people affected by this terrible tragedy. I am speechless when I see the images," Ms Brehan adds.

And any journalist worth his or her salt would have looked at that number, looked at a map of where the tsunami hit, look at the magnitude of the 'quake, put two and two together, and said "bullshit". And maybe then, I don't know, done some actual bloody journalism.

Christ, the steel thing, if it had said pink furry steel, I'd have quoted that, just cause it has "low" in the title doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing.  I do imagine they thought about it some.

It's actually a translated document from Japanese Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, so  :sad_panda:

What is a Sievert?

NHK (via Tepco) is saying the pressures in the No. 2 containment have gone down post-explosion (this is obviously bad).

Supposedly this is due to the suppression pools being damaged (the coolant systems at the base of the vessel), as they heard specific explosions coming from that region of the system.  Rads are at around 1000 micro-sieverts right now and they went up to near 10k micro-sieverts after the explosion.

So? He wrote a book on it I think he knows a thing or two about nuclear power. Unless you specifically know this man to be a liar, your offhand dismissal of an expert's opinion is fairly reactionary.

NHK (via Tepco) is saying the pressures in the No. 2 containment have gone down post-explosion (this is obviously bad). 

So all four have now exploded in some fashion yes?



Stupid question time, if the ambient pressure in the containment has fallen to 1 ATM, doesnt that inherently mean there is some way for pressure to get out? So doesnt that mean the container vessels arent sealed? So when they keep saying containment hasnt been breached, they are uh wrong?

I don't think anyone was buying the official estimates that lowballed the potential casualties. Nuclear emergencies are simply better copy than drowning people, we see dead earthquake victims every few months from one part of the globe or another but a juicy nuclear emergency is a rarity. Additionally as most people (journalists included) don't understand the science there's a lot more scope for doomsday predictions that provide linkbait and get eyeballs on screens.

Stop thinking that news corporations are running an information service, it's entertainment paid for by advertising and driven by suffering.

There were 6 reactors in the facility, 4-6 were completely shut down for maintenance cycles and weren't considered to be of any concern.

If #2 is completely depressurized, that means at a minimum containment is compromised.  Doesn't mean we have had a full containment breach (fuel getting outside of the vessel), but there's no longer anything preventing gas from inside the reactor from flowing directly out.  We're in a more serious level of problem, where there are no options that don't involve spreading contamination.

--Dave

The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the three have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

Were the spent fuel rods in the pools to catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.

“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”

Secy. also said they've gotten readings of 100-400 MILLISIEVERTs (in spikes), which is a helluva lot more than a MICROsievert.  100 Millisieverts will sterilize your gonads.

Before/After photos of devastation in Japan, including nuclear plant: roll your mouse over the pic to reveal (http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm).

So how far could this spread, if the spent fuel rods are indeed burning?

So are we back to the "mundane" situation of a partial meltdown?  :why_so_serious:

reactor 2 might have blown its pressure suppression pool, radiation levels up to 400 milliSieverts/h, which is 40,000 microSieverts -- over 50,000 it becomes a health risk, over 100,000 and shit gets real

oh and Nikkei stocks plummeting nearly 13%

"I can see the explosion happening ON TELEVISION yet Tepco doesn't report anything to us for a full hour. WHAT IS GOING ON"

"you're not evacuating, you're going to see it through, or it'll mean the end of Tepco 100%"

uh ok as of three hours ago the building housing reactor 4 was burning. The pool nearby reactor 4 contains 783 spent fuel rods, and Tepco has requested the JSDF and the stationed US military to assist (with what it doesn't say), while continuing to fight the fire and cool the reactor core.

the "pressure suppression pool" within the containment unit of reactor 2 may be damaged, creating a path for possible material escape.

So. From my friend in Japan:

He's wrong, 1 milliSievert is 1,000 microSievert (so 400,000).  People who were on-site during that period are in some deep shit, medically.

--Dave

Meanwhile, in Kesennuma, in the Miyagi Prefecture (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=kesennuma&aq=&sll=38.277809,141.015701&sspn=0.102146,0.191574&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Kesennuma,+Miyagi+Prefecture,+Japan&ll=38.899016,141.578236&spn=0.005928,0.025685&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=38.899021,141.578228&panoid=ZU--NQExOOwqoysPg7ax4Q&cbp=11,25.32,,0,7.56), watch how the tsunami washes a city away (http://gizmodo.com/#!5781566/this-is-the-scariest-first+person-video-of-the-japan-tsunami-yet).

here (http://www.timelordcardiff.com/1440/index1440.html) is a one-link feed merge for anyone who has ADD and wants to watch the streams.

Insane footage of tsunami at ground level. (http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-snc6/81489/34/1605260179420_2624.mp4?oh=ac31b4d8738221641ba490396dc19636&oe=4D7F9F00&l3s=20110313100648&l3e=20110315101648&lh=0a6cfa5eeaecd6dc12abf)

What is a CVN?

"The French embassy in Tokyo warned in an 0100 GMT advisory that a low level of radioactive wind could reach Tokyo in about 10 hours, advising its citizens to leave the city."

One can hardly imagine what the scenes are like with the weather being below 0 degrees, when many areas are still covered in water(now ice), bodies, and mud.  Horrible.
Place has to thaw before cleanup can really commence one would assume.

Nuke question:  how do nuke plant cooling ponds react to decatons worth of mud and debris being poured into them?  I know of no pump that could handle it.  Kind of a given they're left with firehoses, even if they still had power.

Cooling of No. 5, No. 6 reactors appears not to be working properly: Edano 16:42 15 March

Fukushima's spent nuke fuel pool may be boiling, reducing water 17:29 15 March

They may be getting to the point that the Russians faced at Chernobyl where dealing with the situation is going to require people who are going to die. I don't think they're going to be able to do what the Russians did, which is basically conscript people and lie to them about the consequences.

As I understand it, these are variations on piston pumps (they're pushing water in against hundreds of kPa).

Ok, does it change the fact that shit got much worse than "was possible?" No. Ok. Thanks for the correction.

Can I just say how much I hate local news with a passion?  I never watch it but caught the first lead story on after something else. The LEAD STORY was a breathless report about how two Salt Lake City attorneys happened to be a few hundred miles south of the epicenter and felt the earthquake. Fucking parochial assholes.

It appears that for the first time, the containment system around one of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors has been breached.

Officials have referred to a possible crack in the suppression chamber of reactor 2 - a large doughnut-shaped structure below the reactor housing. That would allow steam, containing radioactive substances, to escape continuously.

This is the most likely source of the high radioactivity readings seen near the site. Another possible source is the fire in reactor 4 building - believed to have started when a pool storing old fuel rods dried up.

The readings at the site rose beyond safe limits - 400 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr), when the average person's exposure is 3mSv in a year.

A key question is whether this is just a transient spike, which might be expected if number 2 is the source, or whether the high levels are sustained.

The containment vessels are still doing what they're supposed to and haven't gotten any worse, '"Than was possible"' or otherwise.  That part hasn't changed.

Richard Black, BBC reporter:


Come on. Is it so hard to say, "Ok, maybe we underestimated what could happen?" This is the kind of thing that yesterday more than a few experts were saying, "Don't worry, can't happen, not possible". Right, I know the fall-back position: no, no, the experts were only refuting the dumbshit China-syndrome radioactive reaction falling into the earth's core or blowing up like a bomb stuff, or refuting the idea that these reactors would burn in the exact same way that Chernobyl did. Read back some, or read the various experts who've been linked to, and you'll see them saying something stronger: that containment would not be breached, that the situation was under control, and that there would be no significant release of radiation. The WSJ guy said, "Oh, stand on top of the chimney of any of these reactors and maybe it'll be like flying on a plane". Does it look like that to you this morning?

France's ASN nuclear safety authority said on Tuesday the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi plant could now be classed as level six out of an international scale of one to seven.

On Monday, the ASN had rated the ongoing accident at the plant, located 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, as a five or six.

Level seven was used only once, for Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the United States was rated a level five.

"We are now in a situation that is different from yesterday's. It is very clear that we are at a level six, which is an intermediate level between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," ASN President Andre-Claude Lacoste told a news conference in Paris on Tuesday.

"We are clearly in a catastrophe," Lacoste added, citing the deterioration of the containment structure at Daiichi 2 as one of the key elements supporting the ASN's more pessimistic assessment.

The Kyodo news agency has a very useful update on the status, as of Tuesday evening in Japan, of each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant:

Fukushima No. 1

Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.

Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, damage to containment system, potential meltdown feared.

Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby.

Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused possibly by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.

Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

Fukushima No. 2

Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 3 - Cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 4 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

TEPCO unable to pour water into No. 4 reactor's storage pool for spent fuel

Radiation levels at the No. 4 reactor of Japan's earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant had become too high on Tuesday to conduct normal work from its control room, Kyodo news agency said.

Workers cannot stay long and are going in and out of the control room as well as monitoring from a different place, Kyodo said.

Come on. Is it so hard to say, "Ok, maybe we underestimated what could happen?" This is the kind of thing that yesterday more than a few experts were saying, "Don't worry, can't happen, not possible". Right, I know the fall-back position: no, no, the experts were only refuting the dumbshit China-syndrome radioactive reaction falling into the earth's core or blowing up like a bomb stuff, or refuting the idea that these reactors would burn in the exact same way that Chernobyl did. Read back some, or read the various experts who've been linked to, and you'll see them saying something stronger: that containment would not be breached, that the situation was under control, and that there would be no significant release of radiation. The WSJ guy said, "Oh, stand on top of the chimney of any of these reactors and maybe it'll be like flying on a plane". Does it look like that to you this morning?

Murgos the containment vessel lid for a cooling pool is the water, that's been reported as boiling off, there's well over 1500 tons (http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf) of spent Uranium fuel in the 7 pools at site.

The reading at the time around the gate was apparently about 12mSv.

Before/After photos part two: roll your mouse over the pic to reveal (http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter2.htm).

Seriously though, even though I have a comp sci degree I've 20 years of experience as a voluntary firefighter. I have a whole lot of material on reactor safety measures and emergency response planning here at my home since in case of an emergency we'd probably have to coordinate emergency response measures or help with setting up those countermeasures.

We even have two entire fire engines that are dedicated to the handling of hazardous materials alone, including hazmat suits for chemical and nuclear emergencies and a whole array of specialized pump equipment to handle that.

At a certain point most of this is course material you have to learn and the physics behind that isn't that hard to understand.

being an armchair expert on the internet

Uh, if you want to change the definition of the reactor containment vessel go ahead.  But don't expect me to discuss it with you.

I don't know about US or Japanese fire engines but the standard water pumps used by european firefighting units use pumps that pump water at 700/1400 l/min at 6 - 8 bar pressure (8000 hpa) and have a maximum lift of 7 metres. You cannot increase pressure much over that 8 bar because the pumps aren't designed for more, you only put pumps in serial config to increase lift or to bring pressure back to 8 bar if you need to transport water over longer distances.

The pumps are also only designed to handle water from hydrants or natural sources of water, the intake has a coarse filter that keeps most of the dirt and mud out. Thex can't handle other liquids that are corrosive (we hav especial pumps for that), they can't be operated in environments with potentially explosive mixes of gas or dust (we have special pumps for that). They would be rather inadequate to pump water/steam mixed with boric acid into a hot reactor that is operated at 70 bar (70.000 hpa).

Maybe the on-site fire services have access to specialized pumps (they should be euipped to handle all of the hazardous materials on site) but I don't assume that they use standrad fire hoses (made from hemp or linen) and standard attack equipment

They are getting more and more desperate, right now radiation levels on site are too high for the remaining personnel to stay. Japanese nuclear safety recommended strongly that the last 50 people leave the site immediately. So they now consider delivering the coolant by helicopter and even asked the US navy for help.

So now we are basically at 'throw stuff into the containment from helicopters' - a familiar sight for those who were alive in '86.

Throw water into the containment from helicopters? How do you do that if the containment is, well, contained? A hose from the helicopter? Or would cooling the outer skin of the containment help just by dumping a ton of water on it?

How does a scenario that desperate sounding reconcile with "oh, the radiation at the gate isn't that high"?

i've always wanted to do that does it pay well????

Where is this information coming from?

Throw water into the containment from helicopters? How do you do that if the containment is, well, contained? A hose from the helicopter? Or would cooling the outer skin of the containment help just by dumping a ton of water on it?

How does a scenario that desperate sounding reconcile with "oh, the radiation at the gate isn't that high"?

Where is this information coming from?

Nominally the pumps are meant to operate at 1050 kPa, but ratings are provided up to 1750 kPa, and the entire unit is hydrostatically tested to 4200 kPa.  The highest credible estimate for reactor vessel pressure I can find is 1764 kPa, which is 2.1 times the design capacity.

Borates has been used as firefighting foam and retardant for a long time, though it's more or less phased out now.  Finding/diluting an appropriate mixture and inserting it into the foam eductor would not be an issue.

Murgos, I'm totally not snarking here--I just want to be sure I'm reading the radiation monitor figures you linked to correctly. There's a big spike in between 8am and noon March 15th, right? With a couple of other intermittent smaller spikes on the 13th and 14th for much shorter time intervals. But after the radiation levels at the gate fall over the rest of the day on the 15th, they've stayed higher even at the lowest point than almost any other time since the tsunami hit. So regardless of the consequences outside the plant itself, this is evidence that something has changed inside, correct?

(Reuters) - Japan's Cosmo Oil has not yet extinguished a fire at its 220,000 barrels per day Chiba refinery, a company spokesman said on Monday.

The fire at the storage tanks broke out after a powerful earthquake rocked the country on Friday. The company shut down the refinery, east of Tokyo after the quake.

A nuclear crisis at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant deepened Tuesday as fresh explosions occurred at the site and its operator said water in a pool storing spent nuclear fuel rods may be boiling, an ominous sign for the release of high-level radioactive materials from the fuel.

The government ordered the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., on Tuesday night to inject water into the pool at the No. 4 reactor to cool it down ''as soon as possible to avert a major nuclear disaster.''

TEPCO said the water level in the pool storing the spent fuel rods at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 4 reactor may have dropped, exposing the rods. Unless the spent fuel rods are cooled down, they could be damaged and emit radioactive substances.

The firm said it has not yet confirmed the current water level or water temperature in the pool and will try to pour water into the facility from Wednesday through holes that were created following an explosion earlier Tuesday in the walls of the building that houses the reactor.

Due to high radiation levels at the No. 4 reactor, workers on Tuesday were unable to prepare for the pouring of water into the troubled pool. Difficult conditions have led the utility to evacuate around 730 of the 800 workers from the site, according to TEPCO.

The firm said its workers were only able to remain in the central control rooms at the Fukushima plant for 10 minutes to avoid exposure to excessive radiation levels. They have retreated to a remote site to monitor data on the reactors, it added.

At 6:14 a.m. on Tuesday, a blast occurred at the No. 4 reactor and created two square-shaped holes about 8 by 8 meters in the walls of the building that houses the reactor. At 9:38 a.m., a fire broke out there and smoke billowed from the holes.

The utility said it could not deny the possibility that the early morning explosion was caused by hydrogen generated by a chemical reaction involving the exposed spent nuclear fuel and vapor.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a press conference, ''We believe very high-level radioactive substances have not been emitted continuously from the No. 4 reactor,'' citing radiation monitoring data at the plant.

The nuclear agency said the water temperature in the pool stood at 84 degrees C as of 4 a.m. Monday, higher than the normal level of 40 to 50 degrees. Usually, the upper tip of the fuel rods is at a depth of 10 meters from the surface of the pool, it said.

Agency officials said the fuel rods will not reach criticality again as they have been stored in racks containing boron to prevent it.

Edano said water temperatures in the pools at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors at the Fukushima plant have been rising as well.
...
The agency said among the three, the situation is the severest at the No. 4 reactor because all the fuel rods are stored in the pool due to the change of the reactor's shroud. At the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, up to one-third of the rods are being kept in the pools. The more fuel rods are kept in a pool, the more radioactive substances could be emitted.
...
The utility firm said later in the day the massive radiation amount of 400 millisievert per hour, or 400,000 microsievert, was recorded around debris in front of the No. 3 reactor and that the material may have come from the nearby No. 4 reactor.

TEPCO has been continuing operations to pour seawater into the troubled No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors to prevent overheating and further damage to their containment vessels. But despite the injection of water, fuel rods in the three reactors remain partially exposed.

But it's petrochemical, so nobody in the media cares.

So do any of you guys that understand all this stuff have any idea of what we should believe coming out of the news outlets?  I find all the varied information to be a bit misleading. 

So if a core melts through the containment/core catcher, or if the storage pool boils away and 1500 tons of spent fuel starts burning, won't that be another Chernobyl situation?

Having said that, I'm another thoroughly confused by the conflicting stories, blogs and forum posts across the Net. I've seen lots of very good counterpoints to media hysteria, and explanations of how it can never be another Chernobyl.  This is at the same time as watching huge explosions, fires in storage pools, and some other expert opinions, all pointing to things being FUBAR indeed.

So if a core melts through the containment/core catcher, or if the storage pool boils away and 1500 tons of spent fuel starts burning, won't that be another Chernobyl situation? I don't understand how it can only be localised environmental damage that would result from either scenario. Is there no chance of a failed containment leading to the core burning or hitting water, and would the storage pool contents not give off radioactive smoke particles?

The pool is too far from the hole in the roof to cool via chopper

Taking anonymous internet dickheadishness a bit too far.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/14/warning-do-not-trust-death-reports-on-google-person-finder/

Fire breaks out again at 5:45 a.m. at Fukushima's No. 4 reactor: NH

A fire broke out again early Wednesday at the troubled No. 4 reactor of the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Around 5:45 a.m., a worker at the plant saw a fire at the reactor's building, where an apparent hydrogen explosion caused a fire Tuesday morning in the wake of last Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake.

#
2216: The BBC's Matt Frei in Tokyo says spent fuel rods in reactors five and six are also now believed to be heating up.

BBC live feed also mentions some evidence of panic buying of iodine tablets in British Columbia and US Northwest.

Updated: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 04:06 PM
Nuclear event in Japan poses no health risk in King County

The Washington Department of Health advises that there is no health risk to Washington residents from the nuclear reactors in Japan. Air sample readings in our state remain normal. The Department of Health Radiation Protection Program doesn't expect any change in environmental measurements taken in Washington.

Information updated March 15, 2011
Japan Earthquake 2011 - What does it mean for Washington?

Frequently Asked Questions: How the nuclear reactor event affects Washington (http://www.doh.wa.gov/Topics/japan-faq.htm)
 
    How much radioactivity do you expect to come to Washington from Japan’s reactors?

    We don’t expect significant levels of radioactivity in our state, and there’s no health risk. Japan is thousands of miles from our state, and if radioactivity from the reactors there is released to the upper atmosphere it would be thinned-out by the winds before it could reach us. We could see a very small increase in radiation levels — well below levels that would be a health concern. We’re working with federal, state, and local agencies in a coordinated effort to monitor radiation levels in the air and rain water.

    Would increased radiation levels cause health effects?

    It’s not possible for enough radioactive material to cross the ocean to cause any health effects to our residents. There’s no need for people here to take protective action....

How the Map Works:A growing number of Radiation Monitoring Stations across the country, using various models of Digital GeigerCounters, upload their Radiation Count data in real time to their computer using a Data Cable, and then over the Internet to this web site, all of this accomplished through GeigerGraph for Networks software.

TEPCO, which operates the Fukushima power plant, is still considering the use of high-pressure fire hoses to spray cooling water into the spent-fuel pool.
Radiation levels are far too high to permit workers to bring hoses anywhere near the pool’s edge to re-flood it manually.
U.S. nuclear safety experts agreed. David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says a study done for Connecticut nuclear power plants concluded that in a situation such as this one, radiation would be so intense that a worker at the pool’s edge “would receive a lethal dose in something like 16 seconds.”

So I don't think it's just some horrible media distortion that explains why this is a story that people follow: it's because it is, in some profound sense, a story where the ending is unknown, and every attempt to skip to the last page and say what happened afterwards has so far been wrong.

and safe enough as long as you don't take excessive doses

ETA on first death due to (non-radioactive) iodine overdose/poisoning?

Your pressure numbers for the containment vessel seem off, though. As far as I know the coolant pressure in BWRs is maintained at 75 bar/1000psi/7.6MPa and it therefore reaches boiling point at roughly 280 °C, in PWR-designs it would be maintained at 150bar/16 MPa/2100 psi.

That's nothing a fire pump could handle even if it could handle the steam or the temperature without cavitation.

Radiation Map (http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870) (Grateful if somebody explains the scale on this, cpm?)

Radioactivity forecast system down

A computer system that forecasts the spread of radioactivity has not been working due to malfunctioning monitoring posts around a troubled nuclear power plant in quake-hit Fukushima Prefecture.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says it does not know when the system will be back in operation.

The system, called SPEEDI, predicts how radioactive substances will spread in case of radiation leakage from nuclear power plants, based on measurements taken at various locations, prevailing winds and other weather conditions.

SPEEDI data are intended to be used to draw up evacuation plans for residents around power plants in case of accidents.

Have I mentioned how completely fucking worthless the cable news channels have been throughout this?  Not just being at least an hour behind what I could find out online, but just *completely* useless?

Anyway, the workers on-site were pulled out for a while, which was a very bad sign (you'd only do that if the toxicity or radiation had reached "Dead Right There" levels).  They're back in, with no explanation of why in either direction, but the cable news shows seemed to not even notice.

Headline News was the most disappointing.  It used to be that if something significant was happening, watching HLN would give you the latest information.  Instead, I found them showing Showbiz Tonight.  Gack.

The workers were pulled out entirely, but the govt. just raised the legal limit of exposure so that they could go back in emergency situations... something like 250 mSv I believe.  This is when I believe some workers went back in for short periods, voluntarily.

Anyways yah, if you dont watch NHK you're essentially misinformed.

You're talking about the last few days (when they raised the legal limit so 50 workers could stay). I'm talking about the last half hour.

Where are you getting info. to the contrary?  Anyways, it matters not.  Standing in a bunkered control room wont solve the problem.  They have to be able to go outside.  So they revised the allowable levels whilst devising a new plan to attack this problem.

Have I mentioned how completely fucking worthless the cable news channels have been throughout this?  Not just being at least an hour behind what I could find out online, but just *completely* useless?

A U.S. nuclear expert said he feared the worst.

"It's more of a surrender," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who now heads the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group. "It's not like you wait 10 days and the radiation goes away. In that 10 days things are going to get worse."

"It's basically a sign that there's nothing left to do but throw in the towel," Lochbaum said.

8.40am (5.40pm JST): Tania Branigan has been speaking again to Professor David Hinde, head of the department of nuclear physics at the Australian National University. He says that the status of the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima plant is very concerning. Water levels are reportedly dropping in unit 4, and the temperature of the pools in 5 and 6 are now rising.

It's been suggested that the Japanese Self Defence Force could use helicopters to drop water onto the plant (see 8.06am). But even if the military is willing to risk exposing pilots to radiation, Hinde says this is far easier said than done:
He said the ideal situation would be to re-establish the cooling system, which seems to have been knocked out by the tsunami.

Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report

In response to a request from Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Homeland Security sponsored a National Academies study to assess the safety and security risks of spent nuclear fuel stored in cooling pools and dry casks at commercial nuclear power plants. The information pred in this book examines the risks of terrorist attacks using these materials for a radiological dispersal device. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel is an unclassified public summary of a more detailed classified book.

A paper by Alvarez et al. (2003a; see also Thompson, 2003) took the analyses in NUREG-1738 to their logical ends in fight of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: Namely, what would happen if there were a loss-of-pool-coolant event that drained the spent fuel pool? Such an event was not considered in NUREG-1738, but the analytical results in that study were presented in a manner that made such an analysis possible.
Alvarez and his co-authors concluded that such an event would lead to the rapid heat-up of spent fuel in a dense-packed pool to temperatures at which the zirconium alloy cladding would catch fire and release many of the fuel’s fission products, particularly cesium-137. They suggested that the fire could spread to the older spent fuel, resulting in long-term contamination consequences that were worse than those from the Chemobyl accident. Citing two reports by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, 1987, 1997), they estimated that between 10 and 100 percent of the cesium-137 could be mobilized in the plume from the burning spent fuel pool, which could cause tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths, loss of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land, and economic losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The excess cancer estimates were revised downward to between 2000 and 6000 cancer deaths in a subsequent paper (Beyea et at., 2004) that more accurately accounted for average population densities around U.S. power plants.
Alvarez and his co-authors recommended that spent fuel be transferred to dry storage within five years of discharge from the reactor. They noted that this would reduce the radioactive inventories in spent fuel pools and allow the remaining fuel to be returned to open-rack storage to allow for more effective coolant circulation, should a loss-of-pool-coolant event occur. The authors also discussed other compensatory measures that could be taken to reduce the consequences of such events.
The Alvarez et al. (2003a) paper received extensive attention and comments, including a comment from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff (USNRC, 2003a; see Alvarez et al., 2003b, for a response). None of the commentators challenged the main conclusion of the Alvarez et al. (2003a) paper that a severe loss-of-pool-coolant accident might lead to a spent fuel fire in a dense-packed pool. Rather, the commentators challenged the likelihood that such an event could occur through accident or sabotage, the assumptions used to calculate the offsite consequences of such an event, and the cost-effectiveness of the authors’ proposal to move spent fuel into dry cask storage. One commentator summarized these differences in a single sentence (Benjamin, 2003, p. 53): “In a nutshell, [Alvarez et al.] correctly identify a problem that needs to be addressed, but they do not adequately demonstrate that the proposed solution is cost-effective or that it is optimal.”

EDIT: Now they're reporting that water is being poured into the used fuel pools on #5 and #6.  Either somebody volunteered for a suicide mission, or somebody is on site with robots or isolation suits.

Not just the photos, but the vieos.  Schild had one on his Facebook where you saw the stereotypical wall of water Tsunami wave crashing into buildings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-BzcO3AEHM&feature=player_embedded

I saw another one that I can't find the link for where a ship was absolutely destroyed by a highway overpass.  That made me realize yet another issue in the infrastructure damage, widespread weakening or destruction of bridges.  Anything in the area will need a full inspection, and who knows how many will have to be rebuilt/ replaced. 

The National Police Agency is considering using a special water cannon truck held by the Metropolitan Police Department to cool a pool storing spent fuel rods at the troubled No. 4 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, police sources said Wednesday.

The operation could start as early as Wednesday night, they said.

Fire was what created the fallout after the explosion at Chernobyl, so yes that would be a similar disaster. Prevailing winds would blow radioactive dust over Hokkaido and out into the Pacific where most of it would sink and disappear. In the former Soviet Union, they blew directly over land.

Not just the photos, but the vieos.  Schild had one on his Facebook where you saw the stereotypical wall of water Tsunami wave crashing into buildings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-BzcO3AEHM&feature=player_embedded

I saw another one that I can't find the link for where a ship was absolutely destroyed by a highway overpass.  That made me realize yet another issue in the infrastructure damage, widespread weakening or destruction of bridges.  Anything in the area will need a full inspection, and who knows how many will have to be rebuilt/ replaced. 

How did the person making that video survive?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday put a temporary hold on a 20-year license extension for the controversial Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The commission had instructed its staff to issue the renewal last Thursday, the day before the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Vermont Yankee, in Vernon near the Massachusetts border, has suffered a series of problems in recent years that have frayed the public trust, including the collapse of a cooling tower and leaks of tritium into groundwater from underground pipes that company officials initially said were not there.

I have a horrible feeling he didn't.  As the comments point out, in the upper right it says "Live"  so that could have been taped and transmitted just before the videographer's death.

If spent fuel rods are left exposed long enough they will become so hot as to suffer damage, though this takes some time. Edano stated this morning that efforts to get water into the pool are to begin shortly using pumps on the ground, an earlier plan to drop it from helicopters having been abandoned.
Edano said it was important to add water gradually "as there are safety concerns" with dumping a large amount in at once. This would indicate that the rods are believed to be exposed and hot, and a steam explosion could result from a sudden massive water dump.

Asked if it was possible for the spent rods to restart a powerful reaction of the sort seen in a reactor core - which would make it very hard to cool them effectively in the storage pool - Edano stated that this is not a realistic risk.

   

Press Release (Mar 16,2011)
Impact to TEPCO's Facilities due to Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake (as of 2:00PM)


Below is the status of TEPCO's major facilities that suffered from the
Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake that occurred at 2:46PM, March 11th 2011.
*new items are underlined

[Nuclear Power Station]
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station:
 Units 1 to 3: shutdown due to earthquake
 Units 4 to 6: outage due to regular inspection at the occurrence of
               earthquake

*The national government has instructed to evacuate for those local
 residents within 20km radius of the site periphery and to remain
 indoors for those local residents within 30km radius of the site
 periphery.

*Since the value of radioactive materials (iodine, etc) at the site
 (outside) measured by monitoring car exceeded the ordinary level,
 it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in article 15,
 clause 1 occurred (Extraordinary increase of radiation dose at site
 boundary).
 - 4:17 pm, March 15th at the main gate of the site
 - 11:05 pm, March 15th at the main gate of the site

* Unit 1
 The explosive sound and white smoke was confirmed near Unit 1 after
 the big quake occurred at 3:36pm, March 12th. We have started sea
 water injection at 8:20 pm and then boric acid into the reactor.

*Unit 2
 At 1:25 pm, March 14th, since the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System
 has failed, it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in
 article 15, clause 1 occurred (failure of reactor cooling function).
 At 5:17 pm, while the water level in the reactor reached the top of the
 fuel rod, we have restarted the water injection with the valve operation.
 At approximately 6:14 am, March 15th, the extraordinary sound was
 confirmed near the suppression chamber and the pressure inside the
 chamber decreased afterwards. It was determined that there is a
 possibility that something extraordinary happened in the suppression
 chamber. While sea water injection to the reactor continued, TEPCO
 employees and workers from other companies not in charge of injection
 work started tentative evacuation to a safe location.
 Sea water injection to the reactor is still under operation.

*Unit 3
 At 6:50 am, March 14th, while water injection to the reactor was under
 operation, the pressure in the reactor containment vessel increased to
 530 kPa. As a result, at 7:44 am, it was determined that a specific
 incident stipulated in article 15, clause 1 occurred (abnormal increase
 of the pressure of reactor containment vessel). Afterwards, the pressure
 has gradually decreased (as of 9:05 am, 450 kPa).

 At approximately 11:01 am, March 14th, an explosion followed by white
 smoke occurred near Unit 3. 4 TEPCO employees and 3 workers from other
 companies (all of them are conscious) have sustained injuries and they
 were already dispatched to the hospital by ambulances.

*Unit 4
 At approximately 6:00 am, March 15th, an explosive sound occurred and
 the damage in the 5th floor roof of Unit 4 reactor building was
 confirmed. At 9:38 am, the fire near the north-west part of 4th floor
 of Unit 4 reactor building was confirmed. At approximately 11:00 am,
 TEPCO employee confirmed that the fire was off.

 At approximately 5:45 am, a TEPCO employee discovered a fire at the
 northwest corner of the Nuclear Reactor Building. TEPCO immediately
 reported this incident to the fire department and the local government
 and prepared to extinguish the fire. However, during an inspection at
 approximately 6:15 am, TEPCO staff found no signs of fire.

Also, I don't know if this link has been posted before or not, but MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering are posting regular updates with analysis at the same time:

http://mitnse.com/

   
It was determined that there is a possibility that something extraordinary happened in the suppression chamber.

That sentence makes it sound so nice. Like a portal into fairyland opened inside the reactor and magical ponies came out.

I thought this would help people visualize what's going on.

Also, I don't know if this link has been posted before or not, but MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering are posting regular updates with analysis at the same time:

http://mitnse.com/

1837: Gregory Jaczko, head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has said there is no water left in the spent fuel pool in reactor four, adding: "We believe that radiation levels are extremely high." Mr Jaczko was speaking to Congress in Washington and it was not immediately clear where his information had come from.

Can anyone give a rough idea of scale for that picture? I'm trying to visualise it and can't really get a handle on size.

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


Next few hours should be interesting, I think he's guessing, I don't see how they could have verified that.

It's about 4 stories.  There is another building built around the outside if it, those are what you see in the TV footage.

How is the powerline going to fix anything?   I understand the diesel engines being gummed up/ washed away by the tsunami so the pumps aren't running.  If this powerline is meant to get them running again, why weren't they simply able to fly replacement generators in from southern Japan in the last 7 days?

I think this site is a fraud.  
Linkage (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/)

Of course the main MIT NSE website (http://web.mit.edu/nse/) links to it, so maybe not. 

Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko ... who was briefing US politicians in Washington, said the NRC believed "there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the spent fuel pool".

"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool. And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."

How is the powerline going to fix anything?   I understand the diesel engines being gummed up/ washed away by the tsunami so the pumps aren't running.  If this powerline is meant to get them running again, why weren't they simply able to fly replacement generators in from southern Japan in the last 7 days?

Christopher D. Wilson, a reactor operator and later a manager at Exelon’s Oyster Creek plant, near Toms River, N.J., said, “normally you would just re-establish electricity supply, from the on-site diesel generator or a portable one.” Portable generators have been brought into Fukushima, he said.

Fukushima was designed by General Electric, as Oyster Creek was around the same time, and the two plants are similar. The problem, he said, was that the hookup is done through electric switching equipment that is in a basement room flooded by the tsunami, he said. “Even though you have generators on site, you have to get the water out of the basement,” he said.

Another nuclear engineer with long experience in reactors of this type, who now works for a government agency, was emphatic. “To completely stop venting, they’re going to have to put some sort of equipment back in service,” he said. He asked not to be named because his agency had not authorized him to speak.

"In addition to the three reactors that were operating at the time of the incident, a fourth reactor is also right now under concern. This reactor was shut down at the time of the earthquake," said NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko.
 
"What we believe at this time is there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the spent fuel pool," he said, noting the explosion happened several days ago but its effects were cause for concern.
 
"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."
 
Jaczko briefed lawmakers about the latest developments as part of a House of Representatives hearing on the US energy budget, after meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House.
 
He said that if the United States were facing a similar situation, it would order a much larger evacuation zone than Japan has (12 miles, 20 kilometers), and so the US has called on Americans within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Japan nuclear plant area to leave.
 
"Recently the NRC made a recommendation that based on the available information that we have that for a comparable situation in the United States we would recommend an evacuation for a much larger radius than has currently been provided in Japan," he said.
 
"As a result of this recommendation the ambassador in Japan has issued a statement to American citizens that we believe it is appropriate to evacuate to a larger distance, up to approximately 50 miles."

This is tangential, but I just watched this document on Chernobyl: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/

Gives perspective on both the physical and political aspects of nuclear disasters.

edit: fyi, it has some disturbing imagery.

Thanks. Chernobyl has always fascinated me... a little morbund on my part, but something of that magnitude is so out of range of thought that it keeps me riveted.

2336: Kuni Yogo, a former nuclear power planner at Japan's Science and Technology Agency tells the New York Times that the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the troubled nuclear plant, "try to disclose only what they think is necessary, while the media, which has an anti-nuclear tendency, acts hysterically, which leads the government and Tepco to not offer more information".

10.39pm: Greg Jaczko of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was buttonholed by journalists in Congress and pressed on his claims of no water remaining in a No 4 reactor's spent fuel pool, subsequently denied by Japanese officials. Jaczko says:

    The information I have is coming from staff people in Tokyo who are interfacing with their Japanese counterparts. I've confirmed that their information is reliable.

The NRC has 11 staff currently in Japan. Jaczko did also say: "It is my great hope that the information is not accurate."

Fire

"They need to stop pulling out people -- and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the unnamed U.S. official was quoted by ABC as saying.

You have to have material to combust to have a fire so that's not necessarily true.  It could just sit there and be hot.

I find this whole thing a little shocking. You figure as soon as it looked like there might be any problem with any reactor they would be preparing backup plans to the backup plans and have everything in place assuming the worst scenario unfolds. Instead this from the outside looks like a video of a guy trying to catch his hat but constantly kicking it in front of him. At every step it's like "well, let's prepare for scenario X - oops, it's worse than X."

Of course unlike half the people in this thread I am not a nuclear physicist.

Like a lot of engineering disasters, it's not any one thing, but a collection of problems that are each making it more difficult to deal with the others.

--Dave

24hrs. until the wind shifts prevailing again and starts to blow south, then southwest, etc.
If they dont make headway by then I'd expect some panic to start setting in.

“The potential for a fire from damage or loss of water is so remote that we believe it is misleading,” he said.

For cases where active cooling (but not the coolant) has been lost, the thermal-hydraulic analyses suggested that operators would have about 100 hours (more than four days) to act before the fuel was uncovered sufficiently through boiling of cooling water in the pool to allow the fuel rods to ignite. This time was characterized as an “underestimate” given the simplifications assumed for the loss-of-pool-coolant scenario.
The overall conclusion of the study was that the risk of a spent fuel pool accident leading to a zirconium cladding fire was low despite the large consequences because the predicted frequency of such accidents was very low. The study also concluded, however, that the consequences of a zirconium cladding fire in a spent fuel pool could be serious and, that once the fuel was uncovered, it might take only a few hours for the most recently discharged spent fuel rods to ignite.