Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

[cybertect]

Part of the reason the media reduced their coverage was because the pace of developments slowed, and no new exciting explosions that were captured on video became available.

I tend to think that's most of it. Nothing's blown up lately and there's no radioactive "Cloud of Doom" heading for the UK, or even the US, so it drops right down the media agenda.

And there's Libya.

 

[Barking_Mad]

One thing I find very suspicious about this is the fact the the media have reduced their coverage and I for one don't trust what we're being told. Also no one has even considered the fact that sea water is being used so where is it going? back into the sea where the delicate ecosystems are being contaminated? another thing that has astounded me is no one has reported the affect the gulf stream is having after some 15 days of radiation being pumped into the atmosphere, that is being carried on the gulf stream that incidentally stops in the UK and is part of the reason our weather is so changeable, our weather reporters don't really report the gulf stream here, ever. Looking back at WW2 the Japanese launched balloons that carried bombs to the USA using the gulf stream and although the accuracy wasn't really there some of the bombs did hit the main land this tells me that Euorope and the Americas if not the whole world will have some problems with radiation from Fukushima and it's probably being played down for obvious reasons.

Reuters just pulled their long running and excellent blog with reader feedback - saying they needed journos elsewhere.....

 

[Barking_Mad]

Nothing to see here, just a little explosion....move along please...(photo from earlier but worth showing again to remind people of the size of the blast).

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Oil Drum has some good comment

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7706#comments_top

 

[laptop]

Actually this document appears to answer the question decently:

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/docume...40503-ucs-bg-bwr-containment-overpressure.pdf

Ta!

Bit of a kluge, then

 

[Dr Jon]

Nothing to see here, just a little explosion....move along please...(photo from earlier but worth showing again to remind people of the size of the blast).

I have been wondering about that. It looks to be far more forceful than a hydrogen explosion, which I would expect to be more of a big pop which would blow the building walls out. That is a very powerful blast upwards, like the lid of the reactor had blown off or something.

I'm with in thinking it's time to start burying these nukes a la Chernobyl, while the option is still there.

ETA
I see the oil drum comments saying more or less the same.

 

[weltweit]

Interesting drawing.

Does not make completely clear to me where the cooling water resides and where the water that is turned to steam to turn the turbines. So it is also unclear where the leak may be that resulted in the fuel rods being partially exposed, except I suppose it must be in the container that contains the fuel rods, which means there is a leak in the reactor vessel. Which is bad.

 

[elbows]

I'm with in thinking it's time to start burying these nukes a la Chernobyl, while the option is still there.

Im so glad I have avoided US tv media coverage of this event - its shit.

I mean its not like everything that bloke says is wrong, but the hysteria and rushing through the discussion of what has happened, and some very sloppy emphasis on the 'only 50 workers to do all this & they cant get close to anything' is not helpful.

Now its not impossible that something could happen which would make the 'chernobyl option' more difficult. But generally this option is the last resort, you dont try it until you have exhausted the other options, and they have not exhausted all other options yet. And it would be better for long-term containment if you could get some stuff under control first. The reason to rush ahead and do the Chernobyl option already would be to prevent the further release of radioactive substances into the air. That such substances are still emerging from the plant is of huge concern, so if lots more time goes on without too much progress then I will start shouting for that option too. But at this stage I dont blame them for trying other things.

 

[elbows]

No 2 reactor joins numbers 1 & 3 in now receiving fresh water rather than seawater. They are trying to do the same for spent fuel pools at 2 & 4 in the days ahead too. The lights are back on at unit 2 control room as well now.

Temperature of common spent fuel pool seems under control now, since they restored cooling system there a couple of days back the temp has come down a lot.

Radiation levels at monitoring posts around the perimeter of the plant continue to decrease, although its now been many days since I saw a reading from the north office which is only 0.5km from the reactors.

 

[elbows]

Also note that they were hoping to use the plants own pumps to do the fresh water pumping, but the high radiation levels detected near the reactors pumps mean that they are having to use pump trucks instead.

 

[elbows]

Latest news is mostly a little more info on things from recent days:

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81266.html

Abnormally high levels of radioactive materials have been found in the sea near the troubled plant, the government said, fanning concerns over the safety of fishery products in the region.

According to the government's nuclear safety agency, evidence of water having flowed through an ordinary drainage outlet has been found at the No. 2 reactor building, with a radiation level of about 15 millisieverts per hour detected. The outlet is believed to lead to the sea.

Radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,250.8 times the legal limit was detected Friday morning in a seawater sample taken around 330 meters south of the plant, near the drainage outlets of the four troubled reactors, the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday.

The level rose to its highest so far in the survey begun this week, after remaining around levels about 100 times the legal limit. It is highly likely that radioactive water in the plant has found its way into the sea, TEPCO said.

TEPCO's Fukushima office acknowledged Saturday that it had known earlier that the radiation in the underground level of the turbine building of one of the reactors was extremely high, but had not made the information available to pertinent parties.

Edano criticized the utility's handling of the data, saying unless it reports necessary information to authorities in a timely manner, ''the government will not be able to give appropriate instructions and (TEPCO) will make workers, and eventually the public, distrustful'' of the firm.

 

[weltweit]

No surprise that radiation levels in the sea are up, if you pump gallons and gallons of sea water into the reactors to cool them and it just leaks out needing replacing, where did they expect it might go except back into the sea?

 

[iswhatitis]

if you want a scary thread, check out the arstechnica forums, specifically the 30+ page thread in the observatory (science section).

there are very knowledgable people who have looked at the different isotope levels in the recent published reports, and have come to the conclusion that the corium slag in at least one of the reactors having suffered meltdown has managed to achieve criticality again. superbad

with that ongoing, these recent reports of sea radiation seem to be a little irrelevant.

personal opinion - nuclear power is a great source of power, shame is we dont seem to be able to trust any companies to do the job properly. check out the list of criticality accidents on wikipedia - and those are just the ones that they couldnt cover up.

 

[elbows]

Information about the water at units 2 & 4 seems to have come out and the unit 2 water appears to have fairly insane levels of various things, generating over 1000mSv/h of radiation! I expect there will be some news stories about this soon enough.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Uh oh, that@s not good. Nothing on the TV news or on in the papers here today so far.

 

[elbows]

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_12.html

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has detected radioactive materials 10-million-times normal levels in water at the No.2 reactor complex of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The plant operator, known as TEPCO, says it measured 2.9-billion becquerels of radiation per one cubic centimeter of water from the basement of the turbine building attached to the Number 2 reactor.

The level of contamination is about 1,000 times that of the leaked water already found in the basements of the Number 1 and 3 reactor turbine buildings.

The company says the latest reading is 10-million times the usual radioactivity of water circulating within a normally operating reactor.
TEPCO says the radioactive materials include 2.9-billion becquerels of iodine-134, 13-million becquerels of iodine-131, and 2.3-million becquerels each for cesium 134 and 137.

These substances are emitted during nuclear fission inside a reactor core.

The company says the extremely contaminated water may stem from a damaged reactor core, and are trying to determine how the leakage occurred.

University of Tokyo graduate school professor Naoto Sekimura says the leak may come from the suppression chamber of the Number 2 reactor, which is known to be damaged. The chamber is designed to contain overflows of radioactive substances from the reactor.
Sunday, March 27, 2011 13:44 +0900 (JST)

 

[elbows]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12872707

Leaking water at reactor 2 has been measured at 1,000 millisieverts/hour - 10 million times higher than when the plant is operating normally.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has been criticised for a lack of transparency and failing to provide information more promptly.

The nation's nuclear agency said the operator of the Fukushima plant had made a number of mistakes, including worker clothing.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Big arse show on telly about this now. You can tell it is serious because they are not playing 80s music over everything and using pointing sticks and dont have a comedians face for reactions in the bottom right hand corner.
Also it the first time I have seen a member of my family even romotly interested in events at the plant (father in law and myself only though).
Slightly anoying though because I just saw something that seemed to defy physics on the other channel (a ball type object that is able to bounce twice as high as the hight it is dropped from).

 

[xes]

This is rather bad, isn't it. I'm presuming there's been an evacuation. What'll happen to the reactors when left unatended, and damaged? This is really really bad, isn't it?

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Two weeks ago there was an endless parade of nuclear experts on 24hr news declaring that a nuclear calamity on the same level as Chernobyl could never happen at Fukushima...

It might not be at the level of a Chernobyl disaster (yet) but 10 million times normal radiation levels sounds quite bad to me

 

[elbows]

The company now says that the readings from the water at number 2 were inaccurate and that they will do another test.

 

[laptop]

if you want a scary thread, check out the arstechnica forums

Found it: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1139141&start=1520

NHK press conference says these numbers are not evidence of criticality. They say it's cladding damage on the fuel rods coming into contact with the new water and then leaking.

Horrible lies. That iodine-134 (halflife 53 minutes) cannot be two weeks old.

Yes, there's a chain reaction going on - criticality - in a reactor that's supposed to be shut down (or a fuel pool).

 

[elbows]

Some more details are in about the doubts the company has about number 2 water analysis.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81345.html

Radioactivity at the surface of the puddle at the No. 3 unit was 400 millisieverts per hour, still far below the more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour detected at the puddle of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building.

Tokyo Electric was not able to confirm how much the actual amount of radiation was at the No. 2 reactor, because the radioactivity level was too high for workers to continue measuring.

But Tokyo Electric said it will reanalyze the data after some doubts were raised. Nishiyama said the utility company will review the part which showed a massive release of radioactive elements with relatively short so-called ''half-life'' periods, such as iodine-134.

 

[elbows]

This is rather bad, isn't it. I'm presuming there's been an evacuation. What'll happen to the reactors when left unatended, and damaged? This is really really bad, isn't it?

It was likely only a partical or temporary evacuation, they have resumed various water-pumping operations on Sunday according to official status updates.

The problems posed by the very radioactive water at various units is that it prevents access to parts of the building that they need to access in order to restore a variety of systems. So they need to find a way to deal with the water, to move it somewhere.

 

[laptop]

they need to find a way to deal with the water, to move it somewhere.

Into the ocean, according to those arstechnica posters

 

[laptop]

Now Tepco is saying it'll "review" the separate measurement that found short-lived Iodine-134 in seawater, too: http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81345.html

So if there has been criticality somewhere in the (now presumably melted) crud, they're in denial.

 

[elbows]

Now Tepco is saying it'll "review" the separate measurement that found short-lived Iodine-134 in seawater, too: http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81345.html

So if there has been criticality somewhere in the (now presumably melted) crud, they're in denial.

Thats ther same article I linked to, as best I can tell it doesnt mention reanalysing of seawater, only the water at unit 2.

 

[laptop]

Thats ther same article I linked to, as best I can tell it doesnt mention reanalysing of seawater, only the water at unit 2.

My bad: that was I-131 (half-life 8 days) in the sea, and I-134 (53 minutes - shouldn't be any measurable quantity left from reactor shutdown a fortnight, i.e. > 300 half-lives, ago) in the #2 turbine building.

Still: not at all happy

 

[elbows]

A new video showing zoomed in shots of parts of the different reactor buildings has been made available by the Japanese MOD:

 

[Barking_Mad]

...

NHK World is now running updates with "the plant may be leaking plutonium". They say TEPCO has sent samples for specialist evaluation but it will be several days before the results are known.