Japan's nuke reactors being hit by Stuxnet as well as HAARP earthquake?

[redeux]

There was a pdf posted in another one of these threads that shown they were stored on top parts of the reactor towers. It also stated Japan was getting a new storage facility together but is slated to be done in 2012, they started in 2010.

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how really messed up this is. Storing them in pools near the top? Really?

...the storage facility is for offload rods from the fuel pool after the mandatory 10 yrs in the pool.... there is no other place to put the damn things..... the risk to workers is too great, these things are usually refueled every 2 yrs..... you can't drag rods through the building..... this was a FREAK accident, horrible, yes but so abnormal......

[grapecrusher1]

Its not 40 yrs of rods... rods should only stay 10 yrs, after that decay heat is low enough they can be dry casked..... and stored onsite, the dry cask's are indestructible....literally.....

...we are forgetting the statistical probability of what has happened, it is so low so utterly low it boggles my mind, if anyone of you walked inside a BWR plant like these, your mind could not process the level of Structural Engineering, trust me I have practiced Structural Engineering, and nothing prepared me for the scale... this is why this is called an ACCIDENT....

... I think we should pray and hope for the best, my heart goes out to the BRAVE 180 men that are working 50 men cycles to try and continue pumping in of seawater to both the core and fuel pools.....

Well aware this is a horrible and tragic accident of very low probability, but there has also been plenty of criticism surfacing from the nuclear industry that this particular design was flawed.  This compounded with the "rationale" of building in a quake/tsunami zone makes one wonder.

Thanks for the clarification on the rods these details help with the comprehension.

[redeux]

Well aware this is a horrible and tragic accident of very low probability, but there has also been plenty of criticism surfacing from the nuclear industry that this particular design was flawed.  This compounded with the "rationale" of building in a quake/tsunami zone makes one wonder.

Thanks for the clarification on the rods these details help with the comprehension.

listen my first thoughts were why the hell build the damn thing there..... but just because these reactors have failed in this situation does not mean throw the whole lot of 'em into the fire.... NRC shut down Nuclear Advancement in this country..... up until a few years ago the concept of license extension did not exist.... the industry will learn from this, I can assure you.... it is the only industry of this type that freely shares Operating Experience between plants and companies... there will be a full review and I guarantee you I will be designing mods to address any discovered pitfalls.....

[worcesteradam]

its a very suspicious event

[Letsbereal]

DISCLAIMER: Very Pro Nuclear Reactor biased but piece contains some good info and explanations

The Ongoing Events at the Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Power Plant No. 1
15 March 2011, by Michael Flagg
http://futurejacked.blogspot.com/2011/03/situation.html

Summary

This is my personal opinion of what is going on at the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Dai'ichi Power Plant Number 1. Reactor Units 1, 2, and 3 were all operating when the massive 9.0 earthquake popped off the coast from the power station on March 11th. The tsunami that hit shore roughly an hour after the quake absolutely devastated the infrastructure around the reactors, wiping out the backup power. The lack of backup power helped cause a cascading series of failures that has led to partial "meltdowns" of the fuel in reactor units 1, 2 and 3. The plant operators have vented radioactive steam to help ease the high pressure in the reactor pressure vessels. This steam has raised radiation rates in the area, but that is not to levels that are immediately dangerous. Unit 2 has suffered a breakdown in its containment that has led to the release of more radiation that has reached levels that could be dangerous in the local area. Unit 3 may have breached as well tonight. Radiation rates have risen in Tokyo and other areas downwind, but so far these levels of radiation are not high enough to be immediately dangerous to the public (that I know of, as of March 15th at 9:00 p.m. Central Time in the U.S.).
 
Nuclear Power Terms

A lot of unfamiliar words are being tossed around in the media, so here are some definitions that might help. I am putting in links to Wikipedia for those wanting more detail:

Reactor Core: This is basically a big metal lattice holding 12 foot tall fuel rods. A fuel rod is a stack of uranium oxide pellets, each pellet roughly the size of .22 round. These are kept in a stack inside a metal alloy called "zircaloy." The core for these types of nuclear reactors stays hot for several days, even after they have been shut down and need pumps operating constantly to keep the water flowing around to cool off the core. It is like your car's radiator, except in this case, even after you shut off the car, you need the radiator to work for awhile because the "engine" (the core) is extremely hot.

Click here for more details on a nuclear reactor core: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_core

Pressure Vessel: This is a very large steel container that holds the core. It is at least 20 cm (nearly 8 inches) thick of stainless steel. Possibly thicker, but I am not an expert on the specific reactor designs at Fukushima. This is built to hold up under enormous pressures and heat.

For an example of what they can handle, when the core at Three Mile Island Unit 2 partially melted down (about half the core melted and dropped to the bottom of the core), the steel pressure vessel did not break or melt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Consequences_of_stuck_valve

Click here for more details on a pressure vessel: http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/r/reactor-pressure-vessel.htm

Containment or Containment Building: The core is in the pressure vessel. The containment is the final barrier to radioactive release. The pressure vessel sits inside a large, thigh concrete building designed to seal the pressure vessel and core from the outside world. This building is constructed to handle a big pressure rise or explosion and still keep all the nuclear materials inside the building. It has penetrations to allow for water to be pumped in to keep the core cooled down.

Click here for more details on a containment building (FYI, the reactor type at Fukushima are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR)): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building

Boiling Water Reactor (BWR): The type of reactor at Fukushima. In this kind of reactor you boil the water inside the pressure vessel and that turns to steam to drive turbines to make electricity. For you folks in Missouri, the Callaway plant is a different design - it is a pressurized water reactor (PWR): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor

Click here for more details on boiling water reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor

Boron or Boric Acid (as in pouring in seawater laced with boron or boric acid): Boron is a "neutron poison" - that means the boron absorbs neutrons and keeps them from splitting uranium atoms. This is used to keep deformed fuel or melted fuel from "going critical" or releasing lots of energy from the splitting of the atom. Think of it as a sponge, used to soak up neutrons and keep the situation from getting out of control.

Click here for more info on neutron poisons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison

Also, translating very technical terms from Japanese into English can cause some real communication problems. Please note that sometimes the way it is worded may be confusing.
 
What Happened

Please Note, this is my personal opinion and is based on what I can find that I regard as reputable. I could be wrong on some particulars, but details are hard to come by at the moment, so don't take this as gospel.

When the quake hit, units 1, 2 and 3 all survived the quake and shut down safely. When I say "unit" that just means that there are multiple reactors, all with their own containment buildings, at this site. For those of you in Southeast Missouri, a way to compare it is that the Sikeston Power Plant has one coal-fired unit and the AECI power plant at New Madrid has two coal-fired units at the plant.

Fukushima has 6 units. Units 4, 5, and 6 were already shut down for maintenance.

The reactors shut down. The electrical grid, which powers their pumps, went down, so they turned on their backup diesel generators. Remember, they need this power to keep water circulating over the hot core. They need their "radiator" working. The backup diesels operated fine for an hour. Then a 30 foot tall tsunami caused by the quake washed ashore. This was a taller tsunami than they had designed the plant to withstand. The water got over all the barriers and then wiped out the switch yard (where you would hook up to the grid or where you would hook up extra diesel generators). This also apparently wiped out the diesel fuel supply and the backup power went down.

There are batteries that then kicked in to run the pumps to keep the cooling system working.

They ran out of juice (these are big pumps and put a hard drain on the batteries).

For a variety of reasons, including this loss of all power systems the coolant systems began to fail.

They had a very, very, very hot "engine" and their radiator had stopped circulating properly.

Over the next few days, the water began to boil off, exposing the core to air Unit 1, then Unit 3, then Unit 2. Recall, the pressure vessel and containment is sealed off, so the steam that was boiling off began to create enormous pressure inside the reactor pressure vessel and containment. Think of it like a pressure cooker you might use to cook with, except the bleed off valve is stuck shut. The fuel rods were then exposed to air. Air does not conduct heat away very well and so the temperature of the fuel rods began to rise. Eventually they got hot enough to melt the zircaloy, which meant part of the core deformed and some/much has probably fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel. This also put a lot of radioactive material into the air, which got entrained in the steam.

Okay, so now we have a very hot, very highly pressurized and very radioactive atmosphere inside the containment building.

Well, the plant operators began to vent some of the steam to the outside. This caused the radiation levels nearby to rise (we'll talk about rad levels in a minute).

While this is going on, the Japanese know they have to get water over the core. So they begin pumping seawater laced with boron into the pressure vessels. This eventually worked in Units 1 and 3, though radioactive material did continue to be vented. Also, seawater is corrosive, so who knows what damage it is causing - but it is the only way to stabilize things at the moment. Unit 2 had another problem with stuck valves and they couldn't vent steam at one point. It was so hot and so pressurized that they couldn't pump the water in. This caused pressure to build up so much that it ruptured the containment building and dropped material into a big pool of water below the pressure vessel. This is still contained in the building, but it is not good. Hydrogen began to build up as well. That was the source of some spectacular explosions over the course of a few days, but these explosions, while making scary TV, did not significantly damage the containment building.

Radiation levels got high enough that they evacuated all but 50 guys from the plant. The 50 people remaining are mostly in the shielded control room (I assume) but they are getting significant radiation dose. These are people who have lost their homes, possibly lost their families and haven't slept in days and they are hanging in there, trying to get a handle on things.

So why not just bring in new diesel generators and hook them up and get that cooling water flowing again? Well, the tsunami was so bad that it wiped out all the connections you'd need to quickly feed power into the plants when the switchyard was wiped out. I don't have details of that situation, but I know they are working to get power restored, but having real troubles on that front.

As of tonight, things are still bad, but not catastrophic with regards to the units 1, 2, and 3 (though apparently there was a fire at unit 3 again today and word is that containment may have been breached here as well).

By "not catastrophic" I mean that three reactors are still hot (but cooling down) and some radioactive material has been spewed out and nearly 200,000 people have had to evacuate the area, but there has been no deadly release of radioactive material outside the plant to where locals would be immediately made sick or hurt.

The above is a very brief synopsis of a very big problem and I've skipped a few parts that are highly technical. Check out the wikipedia link below for more details.

Now, we move on to Unit 4. Unit 4 was shut down and the fuel had even been moved over to what is called the spent fuel pool before the quake hit. So this unit should have been fine, right? Well, the spent fuel pool is basically just a big swimming pool where fuel rods are stored after being used. They cool down over the course of a few years and are much cooler than rods that are in a core that has just been shut down. You need to circulate the water a bit, but this is a much easier task than in the pressure vessel. Well, apparently the pumps or the diesels failed here too (this is very unclear to me what actually happened. I can't believe they would just forget about the spent fuel pools. This will be a big topic studied after this mess is all over and done with) and the fuel rods stored here, while not as hot as ones in the cores that were just shut down, were still hot and the water began to boil off.

Well, just like in the cores, once these fuel rods lost the water around them, they got very hot, which made the water evaporate further, which made them hotter, and so on and so on. Hydrogen began to build up in the building that holds the spent fuel and we had a large hydrogen explosion today. This ripped a huge hole in the wall of the spent fuel pond (which is part of the reactor building) and released a cloud of radioactive material. This caused rad levels to spike again and forced the evacuation of more workers. It now sounds like they are going to bring in helicopters to pour water into the spent fuel pool building. Not clear how they are going to accomplish this.

In short, things are still bad. Every time I think they have a handle on the situation, there is another explosion or we learn about something like this problem with the spent fuel pool in Unit 4. The U.S. is sending significant help, as are the South Koreans.
 
Radiation Levels and Health

I'll spare you the lecture on radiation safety. Just keep this in mind - if you hear about radiation levels measured in "milli-sieverts" that is bad. If you hear about radiation levels measured in "microsieverts" this is not nearly as bad and is a radiation level you can probably work in or evacuate through. When your teachers told you that prefixes matter, they weren't kidding.

Earlier tonight Minister Edano from Japan misspoke and said that radiation levels were in the 600 - 800 milli-sievert/hr range (a very large dose to take) when he meant to say 600-800 micro-sieverts (not good, but a lot, lot less radiation to deal with).

Also, the rate is important. Most every radiation level reported will be in dose per hour.

If things become catastrophic and a big release of material happens, Japan will be significantly affected, but the U.S. will not. Don't believe the rumors and hype that might follow such an event. We are far enough away that the worst radiation will be diluted.

For details on what levels of dose begin to cause health problems, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Exposure_levels

Conclusion

The Japanese are working hard to keep these reactors from spewing out large amounts of radiation that would affect public health. So far they have been successful. There have been releases, but they have not been of sufficient dose to cause immediate health problems. The spent fuel pool problem is my biggest worry right now. Keep an eye on things.

Words to watch for that indicate things are getting worse:

• the spent fuel has dried out and has caught fire (unlikely, but this is my big worry right now - it would lead to a big release of radioactive material)

• massive breach in containment for unit 1, 2 or 3

• dose readings in the high milli-sievert/hour range

Let me know what you have questions about and I can update this as we go along.
 
Online Resources

NHK World (English language news broadcast, constantly streaming): http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/

The wikipedia article on this has a lot of good info as well and is updated constantly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

CNN has a timeline that looks fairly complete for more details and pictures: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/japan.nuclear.disaster.timeline/index.html?hpt=C2

[worcesteradam]

from Real Science:

Les Johnson says:
March 16, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Bullshit. Radioactive sources stored above ground? In the roofs of buildings? Loose?

We work with Cesium 137, a few micrograms at a time. We need to store the sources in lead and steel containers, with a rotating window to get access to the emissions.

Between uses, this has to be stored in an underground steel bunker. All movement must be recorded. The bunkers must be surveyed monthly, and readings taken before and after removal of the C 137.

The reason for the storage in underground bunkers, is so that potential damage to the source container is minimized, even in fire, flood or explosions.

Failure to do any of the above, and a dozen other things, would result in the loss of our license, regardless of whether we work in Nigeria, the US or Japan or dozens of other countries.

I refuse to believe that larger, more powerful sources, would be allowed to be handled in such a cavalier manner.

Reply
suyts says:
March 16, 2011 at 5:07 pm
I am incredulous at this, too. Just gleaning the information available, I couldn’t understand why this would be so difficult to fix. Obviously, there’s much more to the story. And I’m just ………. they surely can’t be storing the spent rods in the attic?!?!?!??!?!

Reply
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 17, 2011 at 12:47 am
If they do have them in an upper level I don’t think they just laid them out on the floor.

I hope you’re right about them being in underground bunkers Les. I really don’t know what to believe in all of this. Every new story contradicts the previous story.

[Letsbereal]

Source PDF - FROM

Pictures New Slideshow

[Letsbereal]

Source Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems PDF

Pictures New Slideshow

[larsonstdoc]

  Those pictures of those destroyed plants/reactors are amazing.

[bigron]

Japan
Mar 18, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Japan/MC18Dh03.html 
 
Japan catastrophe sends shock waves


By Victor Kotsev



As the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant continues to deteriorate, increasing panic has gripped Japan and the world. By early Thursday, last-ditch attempts to prevent a full-blown disaster appeared desperate, and fears about the status of spent fuel at the plant added to speculation that the authorities were withholding vital information about the scope of the catastrophe.

The signs of distress to the plant struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake last Friday are everywhere; foreigners are leaving the island nation en masse. In North America, which is down wind from Japan, frantic buying led to a shortage of potassium iodide and Geiger counters. A number of countries, including Germany and China, halted operations at older reactors and/or construction plans for new nuclear power plants, pending an exhaustive review, and it now appears that a major debate on the future of nuclear energy will follow.

The wider geostrategic consequences of the crisis are only beginning to emerge, and speculation ranges from a new economic recession to repercussions in the Persian Gulf and global energy markets.

On Wednesday, authorities admitted that the inner container vessel of a second reactor - number 3, running on a mix of plutonium and uranium fuels - may have ruptured, and extraordinarily high levels of radiation at the plant halted for a brief period of time all efforts to relieve the troubled reactors. Reports indicate that the army is becoming increasingly involved in dousing the fires; on Thursday, Japanese military helicopters were sent to dump sea water on the plant, at great personal risk for the pilots. without any clear results. [1]

The Japanese government turned to the United States with an appeal for help even as American military personnel were ordered to stay clear of the plant. Nuclear operators stationed at Fukushima reportedly sent their families farewell messages, adding to the sense of a deja-vu with the Chernobyl catastrophe (where the army was similarly forced to intervene, helicopters flew through highly radioactive clouds in brave attempts to contain the meltdown, and firefighters and nuclear engineers sacrificed their lives).

Moreover, accusations surfaced that the Japanese authorities were withholding important information about the meltdown. According to many experts, the 30-kilometer safety perimeter set up around Fukushima is grossly inadequate.

American officials characterized the radiation levels as "extremely high',' and warned all American citizens to stay at least 80 kilometers away from the damaged plant. The New York Times writes, "American officials concluded that the Japanese warnings were insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they had understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility."

Though, according to the official narrative, only "small amounts" of radioactive material have reached Tokyo, a sense of gloom hangs over the capital, 240 kilometers from Fukushima. Sources on the ground report a subtle shift in government messages: while up to now the authorities have claimed there was no danger to people there, more recently they started saying that there was no "immediate" danger. In a culture known for very carefully measured statements, this speaks volumes.

Some of the panic, at least internationally, is clearly excessive. A nuclear fallout map that surfaced this week and caused distress by predicting high levels of pollution in North America appears to be a hoax, since most of the radiation would dissipate within a few days and over a few hundred kilometers of distance. [2]

Even so, the map captured more or less accurately the wind patterns that would deliver at least some radioactive dust to the United States and Canada. [3] This prediction is bolstered by anecdotal evidence and by what appears to be a declassified map of nuclear fallout from a "small" Chinese nuclear test in 1966. [4]

More precise predictions of the fallout patterns are hard to come by; early on Thursday, The New York Times quoted a United Nations report that confirmed the above projections. "The agency declined to release its Japanese forecast," the American newspaper wrote, adding that it obtained it "from other sources".

Meanwhile, grave additional concerns arose as some of the attention shifted from the reactors themselves - where the situation is bad enough as it is - to spent nuclear fuel stored at the plant. On Wednesday, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, pointed to reactor number 4, where spent fuel had ignited and caused explosions alongside major radiation pollution. According to most experts, the stored fuel can be almost as dangerous as the active rods themselves.

To top off these concerns, there is a lot of speculation about the status of spent nuclear fuel at the rest of the afflicted reactors. For example, information about storage pools at reactors 1 through 3 is pointedly missing from reports provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency. [5] In the analysis of Kirk James Murphy, "Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods," accumulated over several decades, whose ignition threatens to lead to "Chernobyl on steroids". [6]

While it is not immediately clear that Kirk James Murphy is a definitive authority on the issue, numerous other reports also suggest that there were spent fuel tanks on top of all the reactors at Fukushima; it is hard to imagine that the blasts that damaged severely the structures of the first three reactors spared these tanks. Satellite images of the plant add weight to these suspicions and to speculation that tons of radioactive fuel rods might have been sent up in the air by the explosions. [7]

The presence of plutonium, both in spent fuel and in active fuel at reactor number 3, is also a major source of worry. More information on the health effects of plutonium can be found here.

Aside from pressing concerns for human safety, the shock waves of the nuclear meltdown in Japan will be felt on many other levels; these repercussions are only beginning to emerge. Amid a massive sell-off of stocks, many have speculated that the global economic recession might return in force. [8] Russian analysts have suggested that if Tokyo is spared major radiation damage, such a scenario would be averted, but currently both the premise and the result are open to question.

The global nuclear industry faces an uncertain future, especially in light of revelations that Japan ignored several warnings that its plants would not withstand a major earthquake. [9] "In the short term," Leon Gettler wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald, "we can expect what's happening in Japan to completely rewrite the debate on nuclear power as the solution for climate change."

Some observers are predicting that in the long run, the catastrophe could lead to an increasing dependence on natural gas, which in turn would be a positive development both for the environment and for the economy of the United States. According to Steve LeVine writing for Foreign Policy, "The implications are serious for geopolitics - countries endowed with much natural gas, such as Qatar, Australia and the United States, will see shifts in their relative influence. Another big shift will be in climate presumptions - gas emits just one-third of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] as coal, and half that of oil."

If this analysis is correct - LeVine cautions that "other analysts predict an interregnum while safety concerns are addressed, and then a revived nuclear buildout" - Russia (another major natural gas exporter) would undoubtedly benefit as well. In fact, Russia might benefit even more than the United States. It is even possible to foresee collusion in the long run between Russia and Japan. The two countries are still technically at war over the Kuril Islands, but Japan's pressing need for energy, exacerbated by the loss of the nuclear reactors and instability in the Persian Gulf, might force it closer to its former enemy. [10] In turn, Russia's need for new technologies would almost certainly make it prone to compromise.

Such speculation is still far-fetched, but it is not altogether ungrounded. (Yet more bizarre are statements by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Russian politician with the reputation of a loose cannon, who on Sunday called on the Japanese to "leave the dangerous islands" and to settle in unpopulated Russian territories).

American think-tank Stratfor suggests that in the wake of the disaster Japan might reconsider its foreign policy course:
Japan's nuclear power sector seemed invulnerable, which no other part of its energy infrastructure was. For Japan, a country that went to war with the United States over energy in 1941 and was devastated as a result, this was no small thing ... The question is how the political system will respond. In dealing with the Persian Gulf, will Japan continue to follow the American lead or will it decide to take a greater degree of control and follow its own path? The likelihood is that a shaken self-confidence will make Japan more cautious and even more vulnerable.
Beyond Japan's reaction, the nuclear meltdown will almost certainly have wider consequences for the Persian Gulf crisis, and these are far from straightforward, but will probably surface soon.

On the one hand, the disaster will likely make the international community even less accepting of Iran's nuclear program. On the other hand, however, tolerance toward sabotage of Iran's nuclear program, which both Israel and the United States have allegedly carried out with striking success, might plunge even lower. It might be that the nuclear crisis will put paid to any plan to strike Iranian nuclear installations.

Overall, at this stage it is difficult to predict the extent of damage - much less the precise geostrategic consequences - of Japan's unfolding nuclear catastrophe. It appears certain, however, that the world will not be the same in its wake.

Notes
1. Radiation level unchanged despite choppers dousing nuclear reactor, Japan Today, March 17.
2. Projected Nuclear Fallout Map, Japan.org.
3. JAPAN NUCLEAR FALLOUT MAP PREDICTION MARCH 12 - 18, Stormsurf.com via www.youtube.com.
4. http://www.ki4u.com/free_book/nw151.jpg, ki4u.com.
5. IAEA Update on Japan Earthquake, International Atomic Energy Agency.
6. Fuel rod fire at Fukushima reactor “would be like Chernobyl on steroids”, March 14, 2011.
7. New Satellite Image of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site in Japan From March 16, 2011 Institute for Science and International Security, March 16, 2011.
8. World Markets Dive as Investors Retreat to Safety, New York Times, March 15, 2011.
9. Japan earthquake: Japan warned over nuclear plants, WikiLeaks cables show, The Telegraph, March 15, 2011.
10. Kuril islands dispute between Russia and Japan November 1, 2010.

Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv.  
 
VISIT PAGE FOR LINKS TO ABOVE NOTES

http://atimes.com/atimes/Japan/MC18Dh03.html

[bigron]

   
 
Nuclear Watchdog IAEA Confirms Partial Meltdown of Reactors 1 to 3


By NewsCore

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27695.htm

March 16, 2011 "Pocno Record" - -"TOKYO -- The UN's nuclear watchdog the IAEA warned Japan's nuclear crisis was "very serious" Wednesday as Tokyo resorted to increasingly desperate measures to cool overheated reactors and fuel pools at the stricken Fukushima plant.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Yukiya Amano confirmed reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3. had partially melted down. He added that Japanese authorities had also reported concerns about the spent nuclear fuel pools of reactors No. 3 and No. 4.

The deep tanks contain used fuel rods which are extremely radioactive and normally kept immersed in cooling water. Unlike the fuel rods that are used in the reactor vessel, the spent rods are not surrounded by a steel-and-concrete containment vessel. If water in the pools evaporated, the spent rods would be exposed to the air and radioactive material would be released into the atmosphere.

Amano also announced he would travel to Japan as early as Thursday to observe the situation and report back first hand.

Earlier Wednesday, following the cancellation of a helicopter mission to pour water on No. 3 reactor due to high radiation levels, a water cannon normally used by riot police arrived at the plant to pump water into the spent fuel pool of No. 4 reactor.

The US military said it had delivered high-pressure water pumps to Japan to help with the operation at Fukushima.

"High-pressure water pumps were offloaded from USNS Safeguard in Yokosuka last night and delivered to Yokota Air Force Base for further transfer to the government of Japan for employment at the Fukushima power plant," the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

The US military also increased its own operational exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant to 50 miles. The Pentagon also confirmed some flight crews were issued with potassium iodide tablets to combat the possible effects of radiation.

Earlier US Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House of Representatives hearing that the crisis appeared "to be more serious than Three Mile Island," referring to the 1979 accident in Pennsylvania.

French Industry Minister Eric Besson said the situation at the plant appeared to be getting out of control. "Let's not beat about the bush. They have visibly lost the essential control [of the situation]. That is our analysis, in any case, it's not what they are saying," Besson told French news channel BFM.

France, Europe's leader in nuclear power, earlier said its nationals should leave Tokyo, which is 155 miles (250km) south of the plant.

Besson's comments were echoed by the European Union's energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, who told a European Parliament committee the site was "effectively out of control."

"In the coming hours there could be further catastrophic events which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island," he said.

The crisis has sparked international concerns over the safety of nuclear power, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he would call a special meeting of G-20 energy and economy ministers to discuss energy strategy. France holds the G-20 presidency.

Russia said it would begin evacuating dependents of its diplomatic and commercial personnel from Tokyo on Friday.

The Chinese government ordered safety inspections of all nuclear facilities in the wake of Japan's atomic crisis, and said it was freezing approval of all new plants. China is one of the fastest-growing consumers of nuclear power as it seeks to meet energy demands of its booming economy.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, the government's spokesman, said radiation levels posed no immediate health threat outside a 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone that has already been evacuated.

Workers returned to the plant after an evacuation order due to a spike in radiation, although a spokesman for the embattled operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), told Fox News the plant was never totally abandoned and workers outside were told to take cover indoors.

Edano later said that the alert was designated as a false alarm due to a misreporting of the radiation levels at the plant's gate. He said that a decimal point was placed incorrectly, giving a reading of 100 millisieverts instead of 10 millisieverts.

A single dose of 1,000 millisieverts -- or one sievert -- causes temporary radiation sickness such as nausea and vomiting.

Engineers have been battling a nuclear emergency at the 40-year-old plant since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami -- which left more than 3,700 dead and thousands more unaccounted for across Japan -- knocked out cooling systems last Friday and fuel rods began overheating.

There have been four explosions and two fires at four of the plant's six reactors, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere.


See also -

US Energy Chief Says Partial Meltdown Has Occurred At Fukushima, Urges All Us Citizens Within 80 KM To Evacuate: We urge Japanese readers who have not already done so, to follow Chu's advice and to get the hell away from Dodge, and evacuate to a minimum 50 mile safe distance.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-energy-chief-says-partial-meltdown-has-occurred-fukushima-urges-all-us-citizens-within-80

Nuclear Meltdown in Japan Could Make Major Impact in America: The nuclear meltdown in Japan has become a greater crisis by the day. With the potential meltdown now ruled as a level six, according to Reuters, preventing total disaster is getting harder.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110316/us_ac/8076216_nuclear_meltdown_in_japan_could_make_major_impact_in_america

Japan's Growing Nuclear Calamity Compounded By History of Neglecting Safety, Downplaying Accidents: Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreyev put the blame on corporations and United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, saying they had “willfully ignor[ed] lessons from the world's worst nuclear accident 25 years ago to protect the industry's expansion.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27694.htm

Dangers Of General Electric's Mark 1 Reactors Known For 40 Years : The New York Times reported this week that the Mark 1 nuclear reactors were developed in the 1960s by General Electric
http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/03/930863/dangers-of-general-electrics-mark-1-reactors-known-for-40-years-ge

GE Scientist Quit Over Troubled Reactor’s Design: Scientist Dale Bridenbaugh and two colleagues at General Electric quit their jobs in the 1970s to express their concern about the company’s Mark 1 nuclear reactor — the design of the troubled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/GEScientistQuitOverTroubledReactor-sDesign/2011/03/16/id/389647

'We're not afraid to die': Extraordinary courage of the Fukushima Fifty as they return to stricken power plant to fight nuclear disaster.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366670/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-French-claim-scale-nuclear-disaster-hidden.html



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27695.htm


 
 

[bigron]

Red Alert in Japan: An Unfolding Nuclear Catastrophe


by Stephen Lendman

March 16, 2011

http://uruknet.com/?p=m75910&hd=&size=1&l=e

Since March 12, a potentially unprecedented catastrophe has been unfolding in Japan, despite official denials and corroborating media reports - managed, not real news. Believe none of them. Nonetheless, on March 15, Reuters suggested what's ongoing, headlining: "Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe," saying:

"Japan faced potential catastrophe on Tuesday" after a fourth Fukushima reactor explosion, fire, and high-level radiation release, posing grave human health risks to an expanding area, including Toyko's 20 million population 170 miles south.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority rated the disaster a six on the international seven-point nuclear accident scale. Clearly, it's the worst ever. Europe's energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger called it an "apocalypse," telling the European Parliament that Toyko lost control of events.

Independent experts agree. It's an unprecedented disaster spreading globally. All six Fukushima reactors are crippled, four of them spewing unknown amounts of radiation.

On March 15, city officials said levels were 20 times above normal, later stating they'd dropped, downplaying the risk. Government authorities also claimed Fukushima levels were falling. For residents throughout the country, believing them is hazardous to their health, given the gravity of the situation, likely deteriorating, not improving.

In Maebashi, 60 miles north of Tokyo and Chiba prefecture further south, Kyodo News reported radiation levels 10 times normal, perhaps downplaying much higher ones. Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan was alarmed, saying "(t)he possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening," meaning very likely it reached extremely hazardous levels. Earlier official reports downplayed the danger.

According to Hokkaido University Professor Koji Yamazaki, "Radioactive material will reach Tokyo but it is not harmful to human bodies because it will be dissipated by the time it gets" there.

False! Any amount of radiation is harmful. Moreover, it's cumulative, causing cancer if one human gene is affected. Depending on the type and amount, it damages chromosomes and DNA. In her landmark book, "Nuclear Madness," Helen Caldicott said:

"Lower doses of radiation can cause abnormalities of the immune system and can also cause leukemia five to ten years after exposure; (other) cancer(s), twelve to sixty years later; and genetic diseases and congenital anomalies in future generations."

Moreover, "nuclear radiation is forever," says Caldicott. It doesn't dissipate or disappear. Downplaying its danger is hypocritical and outrageous. For a scientist like Yamazaki, it's scandalous.

In 1953, Nobel laureate George Wald told students (including this writer) that "no amount of radiation is safe," explaining that "Every dose is an overdose."

Radiation is unforgiving. Exposure to elevated levels for short periods is harmful. If longer, cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses may develop. It's why using nuclear reactors to generate power is irresponsible, in fact, crazy.

On March 15, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, David Sanger and Keith Bradsher headlined, "Fire and Damage at Japanese Plant Raise Risk of Nuclear Disaster," saying:

Fukushima's operator Toyko Electric Power (TEPCO), a notorious industry scofflaw, "expressed extreme concern that (they) were close to losing control over the fuel melting that has been ongoing in three (Daiichi) reactors...." After Unit 2 exploded, "pressure had dropped in the 'suppression pool" - a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected."

Afterward, radiation levels soared. According to Hiroaki Koide, senior reactor engineering specialist at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute:

"We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released."

Moreover, a plant official said breaching would make it hard to impossible to maintain emergency seawater cooling for an extended period, and if workers are evacuated, "nuclear fuel in all three reactors (will likely) melt down," causing "wholesale releases of radioactive material...."

Further, already over 200 magnitude five or greater aftershocks have occurred, and authorities warned of a 70% chance of a magnitude seven or greater one in days, perhaps making a bad situation much worse. In addition, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said previous radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts - 1,000 times stronger. Earlier he said the situation isn't similar to Chernobyl. In fact, potentially it's far graver, unprecedented.

Nuclear experts also explained that even without a full meltdown (perhaps ongoing), today's emergency will last a year or longer because of problems cooling the affected cores. As a result, long-term evacuations will be necessary. Already, nearly 500,000 people are affected, a total likely to grow, besides vast destruction, spreading contamination, growing threat to human health, and tens of thousands still missing, by now presumed dead, though not reported.

"Red Alert: Radiation Rising and Heading South in Japan"

On March 15, Stratfor Global Intelligence headlined that danger, saying:

After more explosions and risk of one or more full meltdowns (perhaps ongoing though unreported), "(t)he nuclear reactor situation in Japan had deteriorated significantly." Even Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Fukushima's No. 2 reactor radiation level rose 163-fold in three hours. At No. 3, it was 400-fold.

Muted Japanese media report rising radiation levels south and southwest, already reaching Tokyo and numerous prefectures. "The government says radiation levels have reached levels hazardous to human health," omitting that any level causes harm.

Reports "suggest a dramatic worsening as well as a wider spread than at any time since the emergency began." All Japan and the Pacific rim are threatened. "The situation at the (affected) facility is uncertain, but clearly deteriorating." How gravely, the fullness of time will determine.

A Final Comment

On March 12, nuclear expert Mark Grossman headlined, "Hydrogen, Zirconium, Flashbulbs - and Nuclear Craziness," saying:

Coolant loss causes hydrogen gas eruptions "because of a highly volatile substance called zirconium," chosen "in the 1940's and 50's" to build nuclear plants, "as the material (for) rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded."

Each plant has "30,000 to 40,000 rods - composed of twenty tones of zirconium." It alone works well, allowing "neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained."

But not without "a huge problem...." Zirconium "is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam." With tons used in nuclear plants, in "a compound called 'zircaloy,' it "clads tens of thousands of fuel rods."

Any interruption of coolant builds quickly. However, because of zirconium's explosive power, the equivalent of nitroglycerine, it catches fire and explodes "at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown."

Before it happens, it can cause hydrogen explosions "by drawing oxygen from water and steam letting it off," what happened at Fukushima. They, in turn, create more heat, "bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level," what may, in fact, have happened, perhaps bad enough to cause a full meltdown.

Using tons of explosive material like zirconium is "absolutely crazy." Doing it makes every nuclear plant a ticking time bomb, vulnerable to explode, spewing lethal poisons into the atmosphere.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.


http://uruknet.com/?p=m75910&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

[agentbluescreen]

They are now admitting the pool wall(s) is(are) gone or the (a) containment wall -I can't tell. NHK cut off the news conference coverage

[Nailer]

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html?_r=2&ref=williamjbroad

[larsonstdoc]

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html?_r=2&ref=williamjbroad

  Get your potassium iodide tablets IF YOU CAN FIND THEM.

[Letsbereal]

Reports Are Inaccurate and I Suspect Faul Play At the Daiichi Fukushima I Plant
17 March 2011, by Youri Carma (FPP)
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=203287.msg1216326#msg1216326

Reports are inacurate and I suspect faul play. On the pictures you can clearly see that Unit3 (of 6) at the Daiichi Fukushima 1 Plant has been severely blown out and damaged:

PICTURES NEW: http://tinyurl.com/4wxngp8

Each reactor building pool holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods.

In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains OVER 600,000 SPENT FUEL RODS – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the atmosphere.

CIA Sends USAID to Japan to Manage Nuclear Disinfo Campaign http://clipsnews.com/cia-sends-usaid-to-japan-to-manage-nuclear-disinfo-campaign/

NEWS RELEASE: Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, March 16, 2011 http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110317-1.pdf

Nuclear Crisis: NRC Says Spent Fuel Pool at Unit Four Lost Massive Amounts of Water; Japan Disputes Claims (ABC News) http://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-nuclear-crisis-nrc-spent-fuel-pool-unit/story?id=13146516

They claim that the second explosion at Unit 3 was also an hydrogen explosion like the first one. I severly doubt that cause I think the second one was a nuclear one and als damaged the fuel storage pools and spent fuel storage racks at the top of the building like seen on two schematics, Schematic 1: http://tinyurl.com/5wplqxv and Schematic 2: http://tinyurl.com/6kfu7ak

Second Explosion at Unit3 (Sound for real?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ

Nuclear Watchdog IAEA Confirms Partial Meltdown of Reactors 1 to 3 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27695.htm

“Japanese authorities had also reported concerns about the spent nuclear fuel pools of reactors No. 3 and No. 4.

The deep tanks contain used fuel rods which are extremely radioactive and normally kept immersed in cooling water. Unlike the fuel rods that are used in the reactor vessel, the spent rods are not surrounded by a steel-and-concrete containment vessel. If water in the pools evaporated, the spent rods would be exposed to the air and radioactive material would be released into the atmosphere.”


Radiation From Fukushima Would Take 7 Days To Reach U.S. – posted 2 days ago http://twitwall.com/view/?what=0208030E0650


IODINE – Nuclear contamination: The options http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gcWK52roN0AkTwjknyX1r1X6jjRA?docId=CNG.c105341bf1df5116fb348c673eb9322d.a01

The goal is to saturate the thyroid with “healthy iodine,” shielding it from radioactive iodine, said Gourmelon.

Timing, though, is essential. Preferably, the iodine is taken an hour before a known fallout incident. You can also take it in the following 24 hours after the incident,” he said. “It does work but the protection is reduced to 25%.

Site on potassium iodide http://www.ki4u.com/


Alternatives:

- TIP: Use Salt with iodide in it. That’s what I did and still do

- You can eat Kelp witch contains a lot of iodide.

- Spiderwort plant http://www.claybaths.com.au/professional/radiation.html

– For extreme veggy behavior – Basically, an anti-radiation diet should focus on the following foods:

· Miso soup

· Spirulina, chlorella and the algaes (kelp, etc.)

· Brassica vegetables and high beta carotene vegetables

· Beans and lentils

· Potassium, calcium and mineral rich foods

· High nucleotide content foods to assist in cellular repair including spirulina, chlorella, algae, yeast, sardines, liver, anchovies and mackerel

· Cod liver oil and olive oil

· Avoid sugars and sweets and wheat

· A good multivitamin/multimineral supplement

[larsonstdoc]

  You know the Japanese may be in good shape when it comes to iodine.  The average American gets 4/365's of what a Japanese does.  That's right--the average American gets 4 days worth of the average daily requirement of iodine per year.  The Japanese eat fish and seaweed daily which are rich in iodine.

[bigron]

U.S. Officials Alarmed By Japanese Handling of Nuclear Crisis


U.S. Officials Fear Fukushima Could Become 'Deadly For Decades'


By MARTHA RADDATZ
March 16, 2011


U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be "deadly for decades."

ARTICLE & VIDEO HERE

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-send-special-nuclear-team-japan-nuclear-regulatory/story?id=13148044&om_rid=NVTZHe&om_mid=_BNggA1B8ZuDr1-


   

 
 

[Letsbereal]

#Danger of Losing Control of the Reactor Is Greater with MOX

Conventional LWRs are designed to decrease the reactivity when the temperature rises.

- But when using Pu-239 as fuel, heating of the core from an increase in reaction rate tends to increase the reaction rate still further.

This is called the positive temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning there is a danger of losing control of the reactor by accelerated chain reaction of fissioning.

From: TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF MOX FUEL IN LIGHT WATER REACTORS/THE REACTOR OPTION http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/mox/puupdat4.txt


IMPORTANT PIECE:  2006 study perfomed by the National Research Council of the National Academies

Why Fukushima’s “spent” fuel rods will continue to catch fire
15 March 2011, by Kirk James Murphy, M.D. (FDL)
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/

Excerpt:

Why did the spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 catch fire again today?  

Yesterday the Institute for Energy and Enviromental Research‘s  Arjun Makhijani wrote a very detailed report that answers this question.  

In his report he quoted extensively from the 2006 study perfomed by the National Research Council of the National Academies.  

Their report tells us:


“The ability to remove decay heat from the spent fuel also would be reduced as the water level drops, especially when it drops below the tops of the fuel assemblies.


FEPC Information Sheet for Fukushima Daiichi on March 16 2011
16 March 2011, by Rod Adams (Atomic Insights)
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/fepc-information-sheet-for-fukushima.html

Update to Information Sheet Regarding the Tohoku Earthquake

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor: At 6:55AM on March 16, The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.8 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor: At 6:55AM on March 16, The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.4 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor: At 9:55AM on March 16, The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.9 meters below the top of the fuel rods.


This would cause temperatures in the fuel assemblies to rise, accelerating the oxidation of the zirconium alloy (zircaloy) cladding that encases the uranium oxide pellets.

This oxidation reaction can occur in the presence of both air and steam and is strongly exothermic—that is, the reaction releases large quantities of heat, which can further raise cladding temperatures.

The steam reaction also generates large quantities of hydrogen….

These oxidation reactions [with a loss of coolant] can become locally self-sustaining … at high temperatures (i.e., about a factor of 10 higher than the boiling point of water) if a supply of oxygen and/or steam is available to sustain the reactions….

The result could be a runaway oxidation reaction — referred to in this report as a zirconium cladding fire — that proceeds as a burn front (e.g., as seen in a forest fire or a fireworks sparkler) along the axis of the fuel rod toward the source of oxidant (i.e., air or steam)….

As fuel rod temperatures increase, the gas pressure inside the fuel rod increases and eventually can cause the cladding to balloon out and rupture.

At higher temperatures (around 1800°C [approximately 3300°F]), zirconium cladding reacts with the uranium oxide fuel to form a complex molten phase containing zirconium-uranium oxide.

Beginning with the cladding rupture, these events would result in the release of radioactive fission gases and some of the fuel’s radioactive material in the form of aerosols into the building that houses the spent fuel pool and possibly into the environment.

If the heat from one burning assembly is not dissipated, the fire could spread to other spent fuel assemblies in the pool, producing a propagating zirconium cladding fire.

The high-temperature reaction of zirconium and steam has been described quantitatively since at least the early 1960s….”


Translation for laypeople:  Without enough water to cover the, the fuel rods will keep on igniting, just like trick birthday candles keep re-igniting after we blow them out.  

Just like trick birthday candles, the only way to put out the fuel rods is to put them under water.  

That’s why even after Monday’s reactor 4 spent fuel rod fire was quenched, the spent fuel rod pool caught fire again this afternoon.

Unlike trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods burn hot (3300 degrees F) enough so that the radioactive material in the rods is aerosolized: carried into the atmosphere in clouds of hot smoke.  

And unlike our trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods in reactor building 4 are four stories off the ground – just like the other five reactor spent fuel pools at Fukushima.  

And unlike our trick birthday candles, right now the radioactivity around the spent fuel rods is so high that no one can approach them to put out the fire.


This video explains what can happen when spent fuel rods are not properly cooled http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjvreetxU9Y It is from the National Geographic depopulation propaganda piece “Aftermath: Population Zero”


FEPC Information Sheet for Fukushima Daiichi on March 16 2011
16 March 2011, by Rod Adams (Atomic Insights)
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/fepc-information-sheet-for-fukushima.html

Highest Radiation Levels

At 4:10PM on March 16, a radiation level of 1530 micro sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

For comparison, a human receives 2400 micro sievert per year from natural radiation in the form of sunlight, radon, and other sources. One chest CT scan generates 6900 micro sievert per scan.

ABOUT RADIATION LEVELS

The ICRP sets a standard for occupational exposure to radiation at 100 mSv over 5 years, with a maximum of 50 mSv in any one year.  

From: TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF MOX FUEL IN LIGHT WATER REACTORS/THE REACTOR OPTION http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/mox/puupdat4.txt

[bigron]

Pentagon preparing for a nuclear worst-case scenario at Fukushima


By Chris Carroll
Stars and Stripes
Published: March 16, 2011
http://www.stripes.com/news/http-www-stripes-com-news-pentagon-preparing-for-a-nuclear-worst-case-scenario-at-fukushima-1-1379-1.137969#



 WASHINGTON — If the deteriorating situation at a Japanese nuclear plant veers toward a worst-case meltdown scenario, people across the country — including 86,000 American servicemembers, civilian employees and their dependents — could face an unprecedented atomic disaster.

The Pentagon on Wednesday began laying out precautions to keep troops safe, announcing a 50-mile no-go zone around the unstable Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex that is wider than the official Japanese evacuation zone. The U.S. Embassy in Japan told American citizens within 50 miles of the plant to evacuate if possible or stay indoors.

Meanwhile, military doctors began advising U.S. air crews flying rescue missions within 80 miles of the stricken complex to take potassium iodide tablets to combat harmful radiation effects. Already, troops on some bases in Japan and aboard ships offshore — including two air crew members on the USS Ronald Reagan who had to take iodide tablets Tuesday — have been exposed to radiation from the nuclear plants, although at levels not believed high enough to pose a serious risk.

Despite the precautions, there is no single Pentagon policy that determines how much radiation troops should be allowed to endure before they must be evacuated. Instead, the judgment is left to individual commanders. Several Pacific commanders contacted by Stars and Stripes for clarification referred questions back to the Pentagon.

In Washington, a spokesman for the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs referred questions about permissible radiation exposure levels to Pentagon media staff.

“We train and equip all of our people to operate in all kinds of environments," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. “We know how to measure, we know how to test, we know how to take precautions.”

Dr. Fred Mettler, a leading expert on the effects of radiation and a radiologist at the New Mexico Veterans Health System, oversaw a 1999 Institute of Medicine study that led to the recommendation against a single stringent Pentagon policy governing battlefield radiation exposure.

“Commanders should always seek to minimize the dose in the context of the requirements of the mission,” Mettler said in an interview. “Think of it like getting shot. Do you have a guide to how many bullets a soldier should be allowed to take?”

AdvertisementThe 1999 report, however, doesn’t address the question of what the military should do when entire bases are downwind from an unstable reactor, as is the case in Japan.

Some nuclear experts are now saying the Fukushima crisis could rival the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union.

Nuclear scientists use the term “core-on-the-floor” to describe radioactive fuel burning through protective containment layers, hitting water and bursting into the atmosphere in a huge steam explosion, spreading clouds of radioactive gas and dust.

It’s never happened before, but experts fear it may soon become reality in one or more reactors at the Fukushima nuclear complex, which was gravely damaged in last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

“We are right now closer to core-on-the-floor than at any time in the history of nuclear reactors,” said Kenneth Bergeron, a former Sandia National Laboratory researcher who spent his career simulating such meltdowns, including in reactors of the type at the Fukushima plant.

Even in such a scenario, only people very near the plant — and well inside the 12-mile exclusion zone the Japanese government has set up — would be in danger of burns and other acute radiation effects, experts say.

But on U.S. bases hundreds of miles away, people still would need to take quick steps to limit exposure or else risk long-term cancer effects.

In the most devastating nuclear accident to date, at Chernobyl, there was no meltdown. Instead, the reactor exploded and burned for days, hurling radioactive dust laced with cesium, strontium, and radioactive iodine high into the air, which later menaced broad swaths of Europe as the materials fell back to Earth.

If one or more of the Fukushima reactor cores melt out of their containment vessels, the release could be smaller and less violent. But whether the effects would be less risky than Chernobyl, which officials estimate killed 50 people initially and will eventually lead to the cancer deaths of thousands, is an open question.

Fukushima “could even be more dangerous, depending on wind and weather,” said Bergeron, who is now a nuclear safety consultant and writer.

Large concentrations of radioactive material were found hundreds of miles away from Chernobyl’s ground zero, said Mettler, who, as the U.S. representative on radiation danger to the United Nations, was deeply involved with Chernobyl.

“What tends to go out are the things that are volatile, or gases,” he said. “Cesium 137 can easily go hundreds of miles.”

That means they could hit U.S. bases after a meltdown. Defense Department policies require commanders to have emergency procedures for distributing potassium iodide and Prussian blue, medications that block the uptake of radioactive iodine and cesium, respectively.

Prussian blue is stocked regionally at Trippler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. The Pentagon said Wednesday it has enough iodide on hand in Japan.

Even in its current state, Fukushima has released radiation measurable on U.S. bases. A measurement of 20 millirems of radiation exposure over 12 hours was made at Naval Base Yokosuka, not Naval Air Base Atsugi, although officials at the time recommended personnel at both locations take precautions.

Though health officials agree that’s not a harmful level in itself, it could become serious if it becomes a pattern. A 1998 U.S. Army guideline on low-level radiation set 50 cumulative millirems as a threshold at which exposed individuals should begin being monitored for harm.

From 50 to 500 millirems, one extra cancer death will occur in a population of 4,000 people, according to the Army’s data. The next threshold is 500 millirems, at which an extra cancer death will in a group of 400 people.

Though they won’t talk about specific disaster plans, base officials in Japan are trying to ease concerns among their military communities.

In Misawa, Air Force officials have repeatedly told residents they are in no danger of radiation from the failing nuclear reactors in Fukushima, which is about 240 miles south of the base.

“I am not moving my family out or secretly taking iodine pills,” Col. Michael Rothstein, the base commander, told Stars and Stripes Wednesday. “There is no threat here.”

Rothstein took that message on the radio with a live address Tuesday night as radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant spread to U.S. military bases in central Japan.

MORE

http://www.stripes.com/news/http-www-stripes-com-news-pentagon-preparing-for-a-nuclear-worst-case-scenario-at-fukushima-1-1379-1.137969#

[carlee]

YouTube Has Been Restricted In Japan. A Last Message Sent Out From Man In Japan.(           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15gGuQJzD-U&feature=player_embedded

[stymo1]

YouTube Has Been Restricted In Japan. A Last Message Sent Out From Man In Japan.(           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15gGuQJzD-U&feature=player_embedded

WOW.....
No info being given to the Japanese People at all since the second explosion?

They have the right to know exactly what the truth is.... and so do we!

[Ghost of Oliver Cromwell]

Japan's nuclear plant stable but critical

They have a power line which they hope to hook up tomorrow to restart the pumps and increase the water to the reactors and pools. I hope it works

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-crisis-critical/

Radiation levels remain unchanged at Japan’s earthquake-stricken Fukushima-1 nuclear plant even after helicopters dropped tons of water onto the hardest-hit reactor. The focus of the crisis is shifting to the overheated pools storing spent fuel rods.

The firefighting vehicles of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (SDF) have started watering the overheated damaged Unit 3 reactor using high-pressure water-cannons.

This comes after two SDF helicopters dumped seawater onto reactor 3 on Thursday morning in an attempt to cool down its overheating fuel pool, delivering 7.5 tons of water in four raids. No less than a hundred raids were required to produce the required effect, but due to the high radiation level of 87.7 millisievert per hour at an altitude of 300 feet the operation had to be aborted.

The radiation level remained unchanged and showed 3 millisievert per hour around the plant’s roof, while safe exposure levels do not exceed 1 millisievert per year.

The helicopters have resumed spraying water over reactor 3 later in the day. The operation has been on and off due to high radiation levels. Japan’s police force has also prepared to spray water with a water cannon truck through cracks in the walls and roofs. The first priority is pouring water into the pools storing spent fuel rods at reactors 3 and 4, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The pools are located outside the steel containment vessels for enclosing toxic radioactive substances.

The US military plans to dispatch a Global Hawk unmanned high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday to take images of the inside of reactor 4’s premises, as reported by Japan’s Kyodo news agency.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of Fukushima-1 nuclear plant, declared it was close to finishing a new power line to the plant on Thursday. The new power line would recover electric-powered pumps that send water to the reactor cores and pools, allowing the company to control the rising temperatures and pressure that have led to at least partial meltdowns in three reactors.

Apparent hydrogen blasts at reactors 1, 3 and 4 have destroyed the buildings housing the reactors. The containment vessel of reactor 2 has been damaged in its pressure-suppression chamber at the bottom.

The cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3 are believed to have melted as they lost cooling functions in an ensuing tsunami, according to Kyodo news agency.

The temperature at initially intact reactors 5 and 6 has risen to 60 degrees Celsius as opposed to the norm of 25 degrees. The water level in the fuel pool of reactor 5 has dropped, posing the risk of overheating, the Nuclear Safety Agency says.

Over 70 per cent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at reactor 1 and over 30 per cent at  reactor 2, Tokyo Electric Power Company stated on Wednesday.

The government has set the evacuation zone covering areas within a 20km radius of the plant, and urged people within 20-30km to stay indoors. Over 140,000 people have been evacuated from the area.

[Letsbereal]

This factsheet will be updated as new information becomes available. Michael Mariotte

NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE

http://nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf

FACT SHEET ON FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

UPDATE, 4:30 pm, Wednesday, March 16, 2011. NRC Chairman Greg Jazcko told a Congressional committee this afternoon that the Unit 4 fuel pool has no water and is releasing massive amounts of radiation. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is recommending that the current 30-kilometer (18 miles) evacuation zone be expanded to 50 miles.

UPDATE, 10:00 am, Wednesday, March 16, 2011. The situation at Fukushima Daiichi continues to deteriorate. All plant workers were evacuated for some hours due to extremely high radiation levels onsite, but a skeleton crew is said to have returned. Solid information is sketchy and even the Japanese government is publicly complaining about the quality and quantity of information coming from Tokyo Electric Power.

We hope to update radiation levels in the next two or three hours; we have seen some contradictory figures and need to clarify before we post. It is clear, however, that radiation is now elevated across northern Japan, and at least one report indicated elevated levels as far south as Tokyo.

Unit 2 primary containment is believed to be significantly breached.

NIRS believes there are now multiple meltdowns in progress along with significant releases from irradiated fuel pools.

UPDATE, 6:15 pm (note: all Update times are Eastern U.S. time), Tuesday, March 15, 2011. We have just learned that TEPCO has announced that at 5:45 am Tokyo time (4:45 pm eastern us time)

flames have appeared again at the northwest side of Fukushima Daiichi (Unit 4). It is impossible to go near the fire since the radiation is so high.

UPDATE 8:15 am, Tuesday, March 15, 2011. The situation at Fukushima is going from bad to worse. There was briefly a fire in the irradiated fuel pool at Unit 4. The fire is said to be extinguished for now.

Most disturbingly, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has evacuated all but 50 people from the reactor site. This skeleton crew (of heroic workers) is not likely to be enough to handle simultaneous crises at four reactors and four fuel pools. This may well be a sign that Tepco has given up hope that it can successfully contain this crisis and prevent full meltdowns.

Radiation levels at the site increased overnight (US time) but have dropped a little more recently. Reading in one location was about 4 Rems/Hour. At the site gate readings have dropped from slightly above 1 Rem/hour at 9:30 am (Tokyo time) to about 50 millirems/hour at 3:30 pm (Tokyo time).

Detectable (although still quite low) radiation levels have been recorded in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles to the south.

A 30 kilometer (18.6 miles) exclusion zone has been set up around the site. No one is being allowed inside this zone. However, only residents within 20 kilometers of the site so far have been evacuated; residents from 20-30 kilometers are being told to take shelter indoors.

There is no indication whatsoever that grid power will be available anytime soon. Without power to run safety systems and the clear inability to provide adequate backup power, there is unfortunately little likelihood this crisis can be contained.

UPDATE 7:30 pm, Monday, March 14, 2011. Tokyo Electric Power is holding a press conference at this hour. Video stream is at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-gtv2. NHK TV reports that there has been an explosion at Unit 2 at Fukushima Daiichi. There is speculation that this explosion has damaged the primary containment (inside the concrete containment building, which is the secondary containment. Tepco is evacuating some non-essential personnel from the reactor site. 2.5 meters of the core are currently uncovered by water—which means it is almost certainly melting. Winds from the site are currently blowing toward the North.

UPDATE 12:30 pm, Monday, March 14, 2011. According to our colleagues in Japan, Tokyo Electric Power states that Fukushima Daiichi-2 “has again lost its coolant (sea water was pumped in but is dropping). They cannot ease the reactor pressure because the relief valve is stuck closed. Air dose rate on site (outside the reactor building) was 3,130 at around 9:30pm.” We believe the 3,130 figure means 3130 MicroSievert/hour, which would be highest reading yet recorded—about 310 millirems/hour. For comparison, the U.S. EPA allowable dose to a member of the public from a single reactor is 25 millirems/year, the U.S. NRC’s allowable dose is 100 millirems/year from all nuclear sources.
FEPC Information Sheet for Fukushima Daiichi on March 16 2011 , 16 March 2011, by Rod Adams (Atomic Insights) http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/fepc-information-sheet-for-fukushima.html

At 4:10PM on March 16, a radiation level of 1530 micro sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
UPDATE 10:00 am, Monday, March 14, 2011. An explosion has occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELR3hdlce2g This explosion appears to be even more violent and destructive than Saturday’s explosion at Unit 1.

Unit 2 at Fukushima Daiichi is reported to have lost coolant and may be experiencing melting of the core. In a press release, Tokyo Electric Power said: “Given the events at Units 1 and 3, procedures to release hydrogen gas through the walls of the reactor building in advance are now being considered for Unit 2.” We are not clear what Tepco means by this statement.

There is growing concern about the status of irradiated fuel pools at all of the Fukushima reactors. At these reactors, the pools are located inside the outer containment building above the core and, like the reactor cores, require constant cooling. Given that at least the top third of two containment buildings have been blown off, the integrity of the fuel pools is unclear.

17 U.S. Navy members on an aircraft carrier offshore of Japan were discovered to be contaminated with radiation; the U.S. Navy is reportedly moving ships farther away from the Fukushima area.

More than 200,000 people have been evacuated from the Fukushima area.

UPDATE 2:30 pm, Sunday, March 13, 2011. Tokyo Electric Power is reporting that some six feet of the core of Unit-3 remains uncovered and has been for some time despite efforts to pump water into the core. Tepco speculates there may be leaking pipes and water is not remaining in the core. A translation of part of the statement from our Japanese colleagues: "The fuel's integrity has been considerably compromised. We are assessing a considerably serious situation."

UPDATE, 1 pm, Sunday, March 13, 2011. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that a first-level (lowest-level) emergency has been declared at the three-unit Onagawa nuclear station north of Fukushima. Immediately after Friday’s earthquake a fire broke out at this facility, but it was said to have been extinguished fairly quickly. However, on Saturday, elevated radiation levels were measured at the Onagawa site (about 10 microSievert/hour or about 1 millirem/hour) for a few hours. The emergency was declared due to these elevated levels, but utility officials say the reactors there are under control.

Venting of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3 containment took place on Sunday morning, according to the IAEA, to relieve pressure building up inside the containment. Venting of a containment releases radiation into the air. According to an IAEA statement, “Subsequently, following the failure of the high pressure injection system and other attempts of cooling the plant, injection of water first and sea water afterwards started. The authorities have informed the IAEA that accumulation of hydrogen is possible.” IAEA statement at: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html.

An accumulation of hydrogen is believed to be the cause of Saturday’s explosion at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. As noted below, Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3, unlike every other reactor at the site, uses plutonium-based MOX fuel.

UPDATE, 5:30 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. Reuters is reporting that Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3 has lost cooling capability: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-japan-quake-nuclearcooling-idUSTRE72B3GI20110312 This is of particular concern since, unlike all of the other reactors in trouble, Unit 3 has been using plutonium-based MOX (mixed oxide) fuel since September 10, 2010. Consequences of an accident at a MOX-powered reactor would be even more severe than at a more typical uranium-powered reactor.

UPDATE, 3:25 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that a total of 140,000 people have now been evacuated from zones 20 kilometers around Fukushima Daiichi and 10 kilometers around Fukushima Daini. The IAEA says that evacuation has not been completed.

At a Washington DC press event this afternoon, former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford pointed out that no government would evacuate so many people in the midst of an ongoing natural disaster unless the situation were extremely serious.

UPDATE, 1:45 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. It is being reported that Japanese authorities are preparing to distribute potassium iodide to the public in the most affected zones. This helps protect against thyroid cancer caused by exposure to radioactive Iodine-131. The release of Iodine-131 to the environment indicates melting of reactor fuel.

UPDATE, 1 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. World Nuclear News is reporting that a worker who was apparently trapped in the exhaust stack of Unit 1 at Fukushima Daiichi has died.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has announced that it will begin venting the containments of three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daini site in an effort to reduce pressure inside those containments. This will cause additional radiation releases to the air. Evacuation of a threekilometer zone around the Daini site has begun; people from 3 to 10 kilometers from the site are being told to take shelter indoors and have been notified that they may be asked to evacuate.

UPDATE 12:30 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. Japanese government officials state that radiation levels at the Fukushima Daiichi site have decreased from 1015 micro/Sieverts per hour to about 70 microSieverts/hour. There is no independent confirmation of these levels. Officials state that the primary containment remains intact.

However, there are indications that there has been some fuel melting, and there are reports that some radioactive cesium has been detected. Utility officials are reportedly now planning to pump in seawater directly, perhaps with boron added, in an effort to cool the reactor and avert further fuel melt. This may, if it works, also permanently disable the reactor (although at this point we believe this reactor could never operate again in any case).
The U.S. official says experts believe there is a rupture in two, maybe three of the six reactors at the Fukushima power plant, but as worrisome is the fact that spent fuel rods are now exposed to the air, which means that substances like cesium, which have a long half-life, could become airborne. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-send-special-nuclear-team-japan-nuclear-regulatory/story?id=13148044&om_rid=NVTZHe&om_mid=_BNggA1B8ZuDr1-

Its the Caesium 137 thats going to cause long term problems not Iodine. There are 10s of M Curies of Caesium 137 in each used fuel rod pool. Gamma rays from its decay is why all the land around Chernobyl is off limits.
UPDATE, 11:30 am, Saturday, March 12, 2011. Official reports are that radiation levels have decreased from those reported below; however radiation monitoring systems are either still down or not available to the public.

Some experts say the containment building at Unit 1 may not be completely destroyed; that the portion enclosing the steel liner (the primary containment) may still be intact. Available photos and videos are inconclusive. Clearly at least the top third of the building has been destroyed. In this reactor design, the irradiated fuel (sometimes incorrectly called “spent” fuel) pool sits inside containment above the reactor core. It is not clear from the photographic evidence whether a roof remains over the fuel pool.

UPDATE, 9:30 am, Saturday, March 12, 2011. An explosion has occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Unit-1. Video of the aftermath of the explosion shows that the containment building has been destroyed. In a General Electric Mark I reactor, the containment building is fairly weak and is considered the secondary containment. The primary containment is a steel liner that surrounds the reactor core. So far, video and photos have not been clear enough for us to determine whether this steel liner is intact.

Radiation levels at the site are reported to be 1,015 micro/Sieverts per hour. This is roughly equivalent to 100 millirems/hour. The allowable annual dose for members of the public from nuclear facilities in the U.S. is 100 millirems/year. The allowable annual dose for nuclear workers is 5,000 millirems/year. The average annual background dose from all radiation sources in the U.S. is about 360 millirems/year.

The explosion in Unit-1 was almost surely a hydrogen explosion. Pressure has been building up in the containment since offsite power was lost to the reactor because of the earthquake/tsunami. The GE Mark I reactor design is called a “pressure suppression” design. Rather than be built to withstand large pressure increases, General Electric sought with this design to attempt to reduce such increases in an accident scenario. The design has been criticized by independent nuclear experts and even Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff for many years (see: http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/bwrfact.htm). In this case, the design clearly did not work. 24 U.S. reactors use the GE Mark I design.

The evacuation zone around the site has been expanded to 20 kilometers (about 12 miles).

Another reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, Unit 2, is reported to be without cooling capability at this time. Three reactors at the nearby Fukushima Daini site are reported to be without cooling capability. These are GE Mark II designs, which are considered a mild improvement over the Mark I design. Both sites are on the Pacific Ocean, about six miles apart.

Video of the site after the explosion from NHK TV in Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELR3hdlce2g

Video of the explosion itself, from Japanese TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEV-_X5b_8

UPDATE, 8 pm, Friday, March 11, 2011. Venting of the containment began at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 around 9:00 am Tokyo time. This will release some radiation into the air. Because radiation monitors at the site are inoperable (see below), it will be impossible to know how much radiation is being released.

UPDATE, 7:45 pm, Friday, March 11, 2011. An evacuation of a three kilometer zone has been ordered at a second reactor site in the Fukushima area. Apparently there are also problems cooling three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daini site. All of these reactors are later model General Electric Boiling Water Reactors.

UPDATE, 7:30 pm, Friday, March 11, 2011: Units 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi site have lost offsite power. Pressure is building up inside Unit 1 (a General Electric Mark I reactor, see below). The normal procedure to release the pressure is to vent the containment (a procedure that releases radiation into the air), but the utility has been unable to do so because of the lack of power. Plant workers may need to enter the containment to do so manually.

UPDATE, 6: 45 pm, Friday March 11, 2011: Numerous sources are reporting radiation levels at Fukushima to be 1,000 times higher than normal inside Unit-2 (though some sources have also reported high radiation levels inside Unit 1) and at least eight times higher than normal at the plant gates outside. The evacuation zone has been expanded to 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) from the Fukushima reactor site.

UPDATE, 4:45 pm, Friday March 11, 2001: NHK News in Japan is reporting that some mobile “electric power source units” have arrived at the Fukushima reactor site and been connected, and that at least some power is being provided to the Unit-1 and Unit-2 reactors. We don’t yet know the nature or capability of these units.

UPDATE, 3:30 pm, Friday, March 11, 2011: A Japanese Cabinet Office report released at 12:30 am Saturday, March 12, 2011 (Japanese time) predicts that fuel damage will occur at the Fukushima Daiichi Unit-2 reactor late Saturday night (Japan time, early Saturday morning US time) if cooling is not restored before then.

Environmental activists in the area report that radiation monitoring stations in the Fukushima Daiichi area are not operating. Tepco's (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) monitoring website is at: http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/pamp/index-j.html At the top it says that "monitoring goes on around the clock year round". At the bottom it says in red: THIS SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY SHUTDOWN" Activists believe this is indicative of an attempt to downplay potential radioactive releases, especially as Tepco says it plans to vent the containment to relieve pressure, which will cause release of radioactivity into the air.

---------------------------------

There are six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power site, located near the town of Okama in the Fukushima Prefecture. Another site in the same Prefecture, Fukushima Daini, contains four nuclear reactors. The sites are on the eastern Japanese coast about 200 miles north of Tokyo. All of these reactors are owned and operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco).

The earthquake of March 11, 2011 appears to be causing the greatest problems for the Fukushima Daiichi reactors, although several reactors at both sites were affected by the earthquake. Specifically, Fukushima I-2 has lost backup power and necessary cooling capability. As of 11:30 am Eastern time March 11, cooling capability has not been restored.

About 3,000 people within three kilometers of the reactor site are being evacuated. People living three to ten kilometers from the site are being told to stay indoors.

At 2:20 am Tokyo time (12:20 pm eastern US time); it was reported that pressure is rising inside the Unit-2 reactor and that radiation may be vented to the atmosphere.

At 1:45 eastern US time, the Associated Press reported that venting of the reactor containment to reduce pressure building up inside the containment is about to begin. This venting will release some radioactivity into the air. Elevated radiation levels were also reported inside the control room of the Unit 1 reactor. These reactors are:


Fukushima Daiichi 1

Reactor / Design / Size / Commercial / Date of Operation

Fukushima I-1 General Electric Mark I BWR 439MW March 1971

Fukushima I –2 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW July 1974

Fukushima I - 3 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW March 1976 - PLUTONIUM

Fukushima I - 4 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW October 1978

Fukushima I - 5 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW April 1978

Fukushima I - 6 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW October 1979


Fukushima Daini II

Fukushima II-1 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW April 1982

Fukushima II-2 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW February 1984

Fukushima II-3 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW June 1985

Fukushima II-4 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW August 1987
 

In 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top safety official, told an industry trade group that the "Mark I containment, especially being smaller with lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 1400 safety study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of that containment failing."

Some modifications have been made to U.S. Mark I reactors since 1986, although the fundamental design deficiencies remain.

For more information about the GE Boiling Water Reactor designs and some of their drawbacks: http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/bwrfact.htm

Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a Japanese environmental group, has documented previous safety problems and cover-ups by Tepco at the Fukushima reactor complex: http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html

On June 17, 2010, the same Fukushima I-2 reactor experienced a loss-of-power accident. According to Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, “On June 17, Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima I-2 (BWR, 784MW) scrammed due to a problem with the generator. Power was lost for a time, because the switchover to the offsite power supply was unsuccessful. As a result, the feedwater pump stopped and the water level in the reactor core fell about 2 meters. The emergency diesel generator started up just in time, so the Emergency Core Cooling System was not activated. The water level was restored by an alternative pump in the core isolation cooling system.” At least one reactor at the complex, Fukushima I-3, began using MOX (mixed plutonium-uranium) fuel in September 2010.

This factsheet will be updated as new information becomes available. Michael Mariotte, March 11, 2011.

[Jackson Holly]

The more I read, the more confused I get!
All this nuke~lingo is baffling ... and I
can't make any sense of most of it ...
and I know we can't believe anything
our loving government says anyway.
 

QUESTION: In plain English ... what is the
worst case scenario?

Let's say that the four reactors currently
involved totally meltdown, with explosions,
the whole nine yards. What then?

Can we expect heavy fallout across the USA
for the forseeable future? Months? Years?

Can we forget eating fresh produce?

Will we be able to move about normally?

Anyone? 

[stymo1]

The more I read, the more confused I get!
All this nuke~lingo is baffling ... and I
can't make any sense of most of it ...
and I know we can't believe anything
our loving government says anyway.
 

QUESTION: In plain English ... what is the
worst case scenario?

Let's say that the four reactors currently
involved totally meltdown, with explosions,
the whole nine yards. What then?

Can we expect heavy fallout across the USA
for the forseeable future? Months? Years?

Can we forget eating fresh produce?

Will we be able to move about normally?

Anyone? 

This thread has a video featuring Michio Kaku explaining what he would do.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=203754.msg1216574#msg1216574

[redeux]

This thread has a video featuring Michio Kaku explaining what he would do.

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=203754.msg1216574#msg1216574

he's an idiot.......... let him go ponder light sabers.....

[grapecrusher1]

he's an idiot.......... let him go ponder light sabers.....

Your opinion on Busby?

obviously you dont agree about the storage of spent rods but how bout the more important issues like his 3 scenarios?

[stymo1]

he's an idiot.......... let him go ponder light sabers.....

OK, you are entitled to your opinion. I disagree. Enough said.

[Polaris]

Kaku told it like it is. Kudos to him.

[redeux]

Your opinion on Busby?

obviously you dont agree about the storage of spent rods but how bout the more important issues like his 3 scenarios?

...a lot of his info is generalized, and focused on Int. Governmental Agencies... and sounds like bias towards the Nuclear Industry, I believe his disdain for the Nuke weapon industry has wrongly been applied to the Power industry...... I believe this is bad, and has the potential to become much worse..... but I can tell you we (US Power Producers) have already begun a complete reboot and reevaluation of all natural disaster risk mitigation....

[redeux]

OK, you are entitled to your opinion. I disagree. Enough said.

....anyone that claims to be a theoretical astrophysicist cannot produce a single goddamn thing, he has a 10,000 ft view and is speaking out his ass....... this event is not Chernobyl...... someone sold this ass hat the idea that he is a visionary...

[Ghost of Oliver Cromwell]

Emergency Power Reaches Crippled Japan Nuclear Plant

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/03/18/2011031800375.html

Japanese engineers through the night Thursday to extend an emergency power cable to a nuclear reactor complex crippled by the country's earthquake and tsunami a week ago.

A steady supply of power could enable workers at the Fukushima plant to get water pumps working again in their urgent effort to cool off overheated nuclear fuel rods. The cooling problem is particularly critical at one of the plant's six nuclear reactors, where the risk of an increased level of radioactive leaker is considered particularly high.

The UN nuclear agency reported the situation at the Fukushima nuclear station was "very serious" Thursday, but that the problems caused by last week's natural disaster had not become significantly worse during the previous 24 hours. That assessment was delivered before the announcement late Thursday night that the circuit delivering electric power to the plant had just been restored.

In Vienna, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency told reporters radiation levels had risen "significantly" in some locations up to 30 km away from the Fukushima plant. However, in Tokyo, 240 km away, radiation levels have been well below levels considered dangerous to human health.

In Washington, top U.S. military officials at the Pentagon said they are sending a team of experts to evaluate how the U.S. can help Japan deal with its nuclear crisis.

The risk of radiation poisoning has already forced the evacuation of more than 200,000 people who lived within 20 km of the reactor site. Many are in makeshift shelters, with inadequate food, water and other supplies, in frigid winter weather. For anyone still living inside a wider radius from the plant -- 30 km -- Japanese authorities said everyone should remain indoors and take measures to minimize the amount of outside air entering their living quarters.

And Japan's Kyodo news agency reported late Thursday that a new government directive would instruct local officials to begin testing for radioactivity in domestically produced food. Japanese authorities have promoted the idea that a restored water-pumping system can ease overheating at the reactors, but the government's chief spokesman warned that even then, seawater has corroded much of the original pump system and it will have to be replaced.

Three of the Fukushima plant's six reactors were operating when the quake struck, while three others were shut down for maintenance. Explosions have rocked all three of the three units that had been in operation, causing varying degrees of damage to the elaborate systems meant to contain the reactor's core material and prevent a runaway nuclear reaction.

[redeux]

I change my opinion on this f*ck stick Busby, he is clearly a shill.... with an agenda... he can say what the f*ck ever, and AJ can take the bait hook line and sinker..... I see the f*cking dose reports, I f*cking design shielding and countermeasures constantly, we scrub all our off gas, rad water in the flow loop never comes out..... we have upgraded a multitude of systems that Fuji 1 had not..... I am done listening to this utter f*cking bullshit...... we now get our info from theoretical astrophysicists, and shills when it fits our conspiracy theories?, tomorrow when the theoretical astrophysicists speaks of the insignificance of humanity and the vast nothingness of space time, you'll crucify him too... these events have opened my eyes up to so much more.... no wonder America is in the shape it is..... our Info is bullshit!... I have learned from this experience, because I KNOW what takes place behind the security fence that Mass Communications in GENERAL seek to DESTROY anything for the sake of hype and popularity..... it is insane.... people running around without the SLIGHTEST bit of insight into why things are done, and rendering judgement and analysis on issues they have no business determining..... Now Nuke Power is part of the Eugenics program? Give me a f*cking break.......... AJ listening to the UN now saying the death plume is coming....... Quote the UN when convenient, discredit when needed, quote MSM articles about dose already showing up...... holy shit and I the only one that sees a HUGE contradiction here?

[redeux]

thank you Ghost!
I still cannot understand why they insist on running water through there; will that stop the meltdown or just slow it?
What would happen if every heli was dumping soil and rocks instead of water that evaporates like someone else here said? why not erect containment walls around the site and simply bury it? or fit some nuke-hardened robots/drones to shovel it into care packages for whatever site we dump our radioactive waste in?

seems like we are just ready to let japan burn in USA or we would truly devote real resources to it.
those drones are too precious for putting down USA counter insurgency to waste on saving lives!

think about what you are saying..... that would take months... they need to get the recirc pumps up and running they move tremendous, mind blowing amounts of water.... they need to get Keffective very low and then get pressure stability within the cores, just because they have melted on the inside does not mean that the vessel is compromised..... then they can develop the plans for containment....

[thnkfstpal]

I change my opinion on this f*ck stick Busby, he is clearly a shill.... with an agenda... he can say what the f*ck ever, and AJ can take the bait hook line and sinker..... I see the f*cking dose reports, I f*cking design shielding and countermeasures constantly, we scrub all our off gas, rad water in the flow loop never comes out..... we have upgraded a multitude of systems that Fuji 1 had not..... I am done listening to this utter f*cking bullshit...... we now get our info from theoretical astrophysicists, and shills when it fits our conspiracy theories?, tomorrow when the theoretical astrophysicists speaks of the insignificance of humanity and the vast nothingness of space time, you'll crucify him too... these events have opened my eyes up to so much more.... no wonder America is in the shape it is..... our Info is bullshit!... I have learned from this experience, because I KNOW what takes place behind the security fence that Mass Communications in GENERAL seek to DESTROY anything for the sake of hype and popularity..... it is insane.... people running around without the SLIGHTEST bit of insight into why things are done, and rendering judgement and analysis on issues they have no business determining..... Now Nuke Power is part of the Eugenics program? Give me a f*cking break.......... AJ listening to the UN now saying the death plume is coming....... Quote the UN when convenient, discredit when needed, quote MSM articles about dose already showing up...... holy shit and I the only one that sees a HUGE contradiction here?

What, exactly is your problem again? Do you understand what corroborating information from a variety of sources is? Do you know what that means? Seriously.

[Jackson Holly]

....anyone that claims to be a theoretical astrophysicist cannot produce a single goddamn thing, he has a 10,000 ft view and is speaking out his ass....... this event is not Chernobyl...... someone sold this ass hat the idea that he is a visionary...

redeux:

So, what is your assessment so far?
Is this a minor event?
What is the worst case scenario with the four involved reactors?
Are the locals the only people who should worry about fallout?
Will there come a time for the Chernobyl option ... bury it?

[thnkfstpal]

I don't understand how people always expect a non MSM journalist to have the story right every day.
I;ve learned enough about the world from this site by accident to be grateful to AJ for the alternative.
There is a chance that this site plays a part in instability and that's why it has not been taken down, that because of the information void out there in Japan we are inciting some fear here. I think that stems in part from a lot of people online being used to talking about issues rather than dealing with them directly.

We cannot deal with some of these issues directly without making calls to presidents and agencies that will harass.
A.J. seems fairly on target for someone with so much energy. that is a rare thing today and people should treasure those who are still healthy enough to do the work, unless there is clear evidence, like an alex jones phone log from washington d.c. contact (hypothetical) proving that AJ is being paid off.

surely the money he makes is dwarfed by the money the corporations lose because of him?
surely the good he does for those who have no voice compensates for a tendency to jump to conclusions?

We expect our leaders to decisively jump to conclusions all the time. They have groups of idiots paid to think aloud together to help them jump to conclusions. AJ's people do this for free or for very little, and based on the humanitarian non prejudiced slant on the articles here, I choose to believe that they are trying to help.

Fear is a part of life, we can only control its severity and frequency.
He cannot be blamed because I don't remember reading him say "follow me everyone".
in fact he said"grain of salt" and "handle with care, explosive".

it's rubes like me who propagate theories. they are usually more concrete than theories by the time Alex is talking, and by then most listening post and say "Alex is slow" because he checks his sources unlike us.

This post is f**king WIN WIN WIN.

I love how if AJ say's something he can't change his mind later without all hell breaking loose. I also love how everyone expects AJ to be broke or not make much money but everyone else can get paid handsomly

I especially enjoy how much info these sites have opened me up to but if I find ONE THING I disagree with I have to hate ALL the info.

childish, rubbish thought processes. In other words, TROLLS.

[Georgiacopguy]

I say shit around here all the time, and reverse course if it turns out I'm wrong, or had a poor understanding of things, so why can't Alex? He's human, we all are, we can be right, or we can be wrong. Its not if you are right or wrong, it's in how you change course upon determining you chose the wrong path. There are ways to save face and be gracious, or there are ways to be band wagon jumpers. Alex isn't a bandwagon jumper.

[stymo1]

....holy shit and I the only one that sees a HUGE contradiction here?

I guess so. Why don't you explain it to me.