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Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

I dont know, guess so, he even mentioned the Fukushima plant in his report!

Anyway a few things have been happening. The work at unit 1 seemed to go ok because they have now moved onto the next phase, opening a door so that workers can go in on Monday:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_21.html

They also released a video of workers in the turbine building (I think) after installing new ventilation equipment the other day. This equipment seems to have brought air contamination down to a level where the above plan can go ahead.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/index-e.html

Also note that they have another new video at the above link, a 2nd, much longer and more vivid video of the unit 4 spent fuel pool. It seems rather intact and does not have the sort of damage to the fuel & fuel racks that many people were expecting, which is good news indeed, but has left people even more curious about the explosion at unit 4.
 
Also, another reactor was shut down at Tsuruga.
TSURUGA, Fukui Prefecture--A reactor at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture has been shut down May 7 for an emergency check following a jump in radioactive readings.

Japan Atomic Power Co., the plant operator, said May 6 the irregular readings at the No. 2 reactor could indicate damage to fuel assemblies in its core.

During scheduled maintenance May 2, radioactive noble gas was measured at 3,900 becquerels per cubic centimeter, 750 times normal, while iodine was two to four times normal.

However, the readings were still within safe levels, Japan Atomic Power said.
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http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105070140.html
 
I wouldnt pay too much attention to the nighttime fire images, images from the live feed can be quite misleading for a number of reasons. Its not impossible that something happened, but nothing has emerged since to hint at a fresh problem/fire. The temperatures at reactor 3 have been going up for a lot of days though, so who knows.

As for Tsuruga, this was in the news a little while back as they detected something which may point to fuel damage, but there was not enough reporting on it. I would imagine that something bad has happened there, that in normal times could make big news, but is somewhat dwarfed by the problems at Fukushima.

In other news, the operator of Hamaoka nuclear reactors has decided to comply with the governments request to close the plant. This is because it is located in an area where severe tectonic activity is predicted, and they will need to massively upgrade their safety plan if they ever want to be able to operate this plant again in future.

Returning to Fukushima, humans indeed managed to enter reactor building 1 before dawn today. In one area they detected radiation levels of 700 millisieverts, which is high, and they will need a plan to shield workers from that if they want to work in that part of the building for any length of time.
 
Also, in slightly related news, a nuclear power plant in the US has had a bit of a booboo, and dumped a load of shite in the mississippi river. What with the levies being blown up, and the floods their having along there, I just hope that this isn't as big a dissaster as it could be. Maybe this deserves another thread, it's being totally ignored by the mainstream media. Flood plains + radiation infected water = not good.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032303_tritium_nuclear_power_plant.html
 
xes said:
Also, in slightly related news, a nuclear power plant in the US has had a bit of a booboo, and dumped a load of shite in the mississippi river. What with the levies being blown up, and the floods their having along there, I just hope that this isn't as big a dissaster as it could be. Maybe this deserves another thread, it's being totally ignored by the mainstream media. Flood plains + radiation infected water = not good.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032303_tritium_nuclear_power_plant.html
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FFS.
 
Further confirmation of the most contaminated areas:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_04.html

10_04_v_s.jpg
 
In news that really should not come as a surprise, after repairing some gauges by sending humans into reactor 1 building the other day, TEPCO have discovered that their estimates for the water level in unit 1 reactor were wrong. The water is much lower, so now they have to talk about the probability that the fuel rods melted completely. They also dont seem to think that there is a lot of water in the drywell, which means its been leaking somewhere and also that their 'fill the drywell with water' plans are going to struggle.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...a-after-no-1-reactor-s-fuel-rods-exposed.html
 
I read something on ATS this morning about fully melted rods in reactor 1, but discounted it as another ATS thread with no real proof. Was going to post it up here to see what you'd say (you seem to be keeping the best tabs on this at the moment) He didn't have a link, said it was on the Russia Today ticker.
 
Well the reasons I said it was not a surprise, is that all 3 reactor cores were without water for long enough at various moments that its hard to imagine the cores being anything other than extremely melted. But the precise details are likely to dribble out rather more slowly than the water, perhaps over many years.
 
I'm certainly not the best person to be checking the info in this video. It may well be blown out of proportion/filled with arseburger.


But, when TEPCO don't tell you what's going on, you have to look at everything. Even the bollocks, infact, especially the bollocks. :D

there are links in the video discription, which may or may not be relevent to something.....
 
Bollocks remains bollocks whatever the circumstances.

I havent got much time right now, but for a starter Id say it would have been better if he paid more attention to what the scale means than the film Zardos. And choosing that name for a subdomain is hardly sinister, its just a sign of geeks with a wacky sense of humour.
 
An interesting piece on the Automatic Earth. Discusses the role of Japanese culture in the mismanagement of this disaster. Also the use of casual labour for "clean-up" duties:

Job offers come not from TEPCO but from Mizukami Kogyo, a company whose business is construction and cleaning maintenance. The description indicates only that the work is at a nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture. The job is specified as 3 hours per day at an hourly wage of 10,000 yen. There is no information about danger. Those who answer these offers may have little awareness of the dangers and they are likely to have few other job opportunities. $122 an hour is hardly a king’s ransom given the risk of cancer from high radiation levels.
Click to expand...
 
By the sounds of reports from years gone by, the use of casual labour to deal with the most radioactive areas of nuclear plants in Japan is something thats been going on for a very long time, so unfortunately its no surprise to hear that its happened in the aftermath of Fukushima.

Earlier this week another pit with contaminated water leaking into the sea featured in the news, this time at reactor 3. Well it seems that this was the companies own fault, doh:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_02.html

The company transferred radioactive water from the turbine building of the No.3 reactor earlier this month. It says during that process radioactive water leaked out from an underground pipe connected to the pit.

The company admitted in a news conference on Thursday that prior inspections to prevent leaks were inadequate.
Click to expand...

The word clusterfukushima is becoming more and more appropriate.
 
Now then, what are the most immediate implications arising from the big news of the week that unit 1 meltdown has pretty much been confirmed?

Well, despite some reassuring bullshit that tried to move people away from the word meltdown in the past, the news was not really that surprising, and so does not radically alter the big picture of what happened. What it does mean is that their roadmap for bringing the situation under control is now further out of whack with reality. Specifically they will struggle to fill containment with water as it has likely got some leaks, although they are still trying to figure out a way to measure water levels in the drywell in order to be sure.

But as they are pretty sure that a lot of the water they presumed was in the drywell is not, we get funny headines like this one:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_34.html

TEPCO searching for 'missing' radioactive water

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is trying to locate thousands of tons of radioactive water that has leaked from one of the damaged reactors.
Click to expand...

Wibble.
 
Parp, the wider contamination ramifications are starting to mount up, with news of contaminated foodstuffs south of Tokyo, and this classic:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110513p2a00m0na019000c.html

On May 12, the government announced that highly radioactive sludge will be tentatively kept at sewage plants in the prefecture, while sludge with relatively low-level radiation could be recycled into cement and other material.

While highly-radioactive sludge will be treated in the same way as radioactive waste for the time being, no plans for the final disposal of such sludge were presented. It will also be difficult to promote the recycling of sludge with high-level radiation contamination. Since relevant laws and regulations do not cover highly-radioactive sludge at sewage plants, the government faces serious challenges in handling the issue.

According to the announcement, sludge with radioactivity levels of over 100,000 becquerels per kilogram should preferably be incinerated and melted in Fukushima Prefecture before being kept at sewage plants. Ash generated through sludge incineration should be contained in metal barrels to prevent it from scattering. Sludge with radioactivity levels of under 100,000 becquerels per kilogram can be temporarily kept at sewage plants and controlled disposal sites, with radioactivity monitoring required.

"Radioactive sludge should be treated in the same way as radioactive waste," said an official with the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters, adding, "We will look into how to ultimately dispose of it later."

Sludge with radioactivity levels of under 1,000 becquerels per kilogram can be recycled into cement and other material if the levels can be reduced to under 100 becquerels through mixture with other materials and dilution.

"The volume of radioactive sludge should be reduced as much as possible through recycling," said an official with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, adding that the recycling of such sludge into fertilizer should be withheld for the time being.
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Im not entirely sure incinerating it is a good idea.
 
Cheers, as you can probably tell I have quite some capacity to talk to myself for days on end, but its very nice to get some company and feedback on this thread.
 
xes said:
I'm certainly not the best person to be checking the info in this video. It may well be blown out of proportion/filled with arseburger.
Click to expand...

Ive got time to go into this a bit more now.

These models work pretty much the same as the one that was used to track potential plume from the Iceland volcano. Such models are quite good these days, but only as good as the data fed into them. The biggest problem with Fukushima is that data on exactly what is being released from the plant at any moment in time is hard to come by. The amounts said to be being released now are a lot less than during the initial phases of the disaster, to the extent that some people running these models have given up bothering. I note that the site which caused that bloke to make a wibbly wobbly video has a message on their site that explains this:

We have discontinued our Flexpart forecast of the atmospheric dispersal of radionucleides from Fukushima. This due to the fact that we do not have access to reliable release rates reflecting the current situation at the plant to be used as input to our simulations. It is likely that the release of radioactive material is significantly reduced compared to the initial period, and that levels no longer pose a health risk at distance from the plant.
Click to expand...

It says that message was last changed today, so maybe they clarified the points as a result of the attention his video may have received. No doubt this will lead to some further babbling on the net.

Another site that did such modelling contains more explanations about this stuff, and they also got some real data from monitoring posts at some point,w hich they could use to test & refine their model.

http://www.eurad.uni-koeln.de/index_e.html

I would recommend that those concerned about wider contamination rely more on actual data from detection posts around the world than these models. I am out of date on this front, but will be attempting to update my knowledge on this stuff at some point this weekend.
 
No problem.

Details of a not too surprising early coverup emerge:

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105130370.html

The unpublished information shows that at 1:17 p.m. on March 13, 300 millisieverts of radiation per hour was detected inside a double-entry door at the No. 3 reactor building. At 2:31 p.m., the radiation level was measured at 300 millisieverts or higher per hour to the north of the door.

Both levels were well above the upper limit of 250 millisieverts for an entire year under the plant's safety standards for workers. But the workers who were trying to bring the situation under control at the plant were not informed of the levels.
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