Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

[elbows]

Work to install support structures under reactor 4 spent fuel pool:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110607_1f_2.pdf

 

[elbows]

The other thing about melt-through is that what really matters is where the corium ends up and what it is doing, eg is it eating away at the base of containment, how much of it is going to come out into the outside world, is it being cooled, etc. Not very much is clear on this front, other than no massive and obvious events having happened since the early days, nothing to tell us that something new and hideous has happened. Mostly all thats happened in terms of reactor events since the first week or two is that there were concerns about rising pressure in reactor 1 for a while (which were probably meaningless as pressure readings have now been shown to have been wrong, presumably for quite some time). And there have been concerns about temperature of reactor 3, mostly recently in may.

I would not quite go as far as to say that we are none the wiser than we were by the end of march, but the bulk of whats come out since has been stuff that was withheld from the early days, and analysis that could also have been done a long time ago. As expected, they decided to try to control the psychological & economic impact of the nuclear disaster by stretching the bad news & ugly data out over a long period.

Numerous previously withheld contamination data & contamination prediction model data has been dribbled out in recent weeks. Combined with new data thats coming in from various locations, and an initial unwillingness to evacuate many places outside the original circular zone, and we end up with new evacuations still being considered, for example:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/09_22.html

The Japanese government says it will quickly decide on whether to evacuate more people from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which have radiation levels exceeding the state limit.

This comes after it was found that accumulative radiation exposure levels in parts of Date and Minamisoma cities exceed the 20 millisieverts per year limit set by the government. The areas are outside the current evacuation zone.

 

[elbows]

Humans at work spraying green stuff in the foreground of the TEPCO webcam, after about 18 seconds of this speeded up clip. Other videos from the same day shows spraying of brown stuff onto wall of reactor building 1 on the 10:00-11:00 footage, and the same sort of thing being done around reactor 3 in the distance at around 11:30.

 

[xes]

Hopefully elbows can make this seem a little less worse than it looks
http://www.myweathertech.com/2011/0...-radiation-detected-in-tokyo-at-ground-level/

Perhaps the reason why so far nobody has been too concerned about the radiation levels in and around Tokyo, some 140 miles southwest of Fukushima, be that everyone is looking for radiation in all the wrong places? As the following very disturbing video demonstrates, a quick trip down the street with your personal Geiger counter indicates, the radiation gradient between the air and the ground is orders of magnitude. It is unclear if the ground is such a more generous source of radiation due to radioactive rains seeping into the ground, due to irradiated water in the subsoil, or for some other reason. What is pretty certain, is that unless Japanese citizens have learned to fly and avoid the ground altogether, by walking each and every day, they absorb substantial abnormal amounts of radiation. How soon before we transition from videos of earless mutant bunnies to those of something far more tragic?

is it time to evacuate Japan yet?

 

[elbows]

Hopefully elbows can make this seem a little less worse than it looks

Well the article you linked to is a bit stupid, but the data still speaks for itself.

Its not good, if you lay on that spot of ground for a year you would get a dose thats much higher than the 'safety' limits. And that does not tell the whole story, because the substances that are causing these readings can get breathed in or eaten.

It is not surprising that the levels are much higher on the ground, because rainwater causes it to accumulate (eg would expect high figures around pipes that drain water from roofs), and it will also accumulate in plants.

Its also not surprising to me because the bullshit that often made it sound like the weather was helpfully blowing the nasties out to sea was clearly overdone at the time, and it was clear Tokyo had taken a bit of a hit after some days. Data about radioactive sludge accumulating in Tokyo sewage treatment facilities has been around a while too.

Personally if Id been anywhere within a wide range of Fukushima at the time, I would have tried to get out. But as for evacuating Japan, thats obviously not practical and could easily cause far more misery than the health affects of radiation will. For a much clearer picture we will have to wait and see what noticeable cancer and other health trends emerge over the next decade. Personally if I had any power in that country I would be trying to come up with ways to try to deal with the ground contamination in Tokyo, although Im not sure how easy this would be to achieve.

 

[elbows]

Also cesium in tea continues to provide evidence for how far the contamination spread:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/10_01.html

Cesium detected in Shizuoka tea
Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefectural government confirmed the contamination on Thursday, detecting 679 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. The legal limit is 500 becquerels.

The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product.

After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo.

Starting last month in Shizuoka Prefecture radioactive cesium has been detected in tea leaves and processed tea from many production areas, including Shizuoka city, up to the level of about 460 becquerels per kilogram. This is the first time that cesium beyond the legal limit was found in tea leaves picked in the prefecture.
Friday, June 10, 2011 06:45 +0900 (JST)

 

[elbows]

A quick update on a variety of news.The story of recent days is one of frustration as multiple efforts are hampered in different ways.

They sent humans into reactor 3 building to survey stuff. Radiation levels were high so they had to abort the work early because they reached the maximum dose that was planned for the work. A diagram is available showing radiation readings across the half of the reactor level they managed to get round before time ran out. There are also a few photos and a couple of gamma camera images.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/images/handouts_110610_02-e.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_001e.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_06.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_07.jpg

Humans also went into reactor 4, surveying whether they could carry out the spent fuel pool cooling plan that they have in mind. But a pipe they want to use was shown to be mangled, and the working conditions on that level were difficult due to debris, so they are scratching their heads about what to do next. The current method of spraying the pool at 4 is not keeping it anything like as cool as they want, so they'll have to try to come up with something.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_02.html

And a couple of photos inside reactor 4 building:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_04.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_05.jpg

Given the bad humidity news they learnt when they looked at reactor 2 building again recently, they have now gone ahead with a door opening procedure that is similar in many ways to what they previously did at reactor 1. They have hooked up an exhaust system, likely inside the turbine building where there are doors to the reactor building, in an attempt to improve conditions, but with the potential risk of letting bad stuff out into the wider environment. There are some photos of this stuff, again with similarities to what they did at reactor 1 weeks back.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_08.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_09.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_10.jpg
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/images/110611_11.jpg

The other setback is that their initial testing of the water treatment facility revealed some problems. I havent studied the details of this much yet, and it may only delay things by a few days, but its crucial they get this stuff up and running before they totally run out of storage capacity & things start leaking into the sea again.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_09.html

This past week they have also been doing a lot of spraying of anti-scatter substances onto various reactor buildings, including the 'roof' of reactor 1. Much like the situation with the water waste treatment, this is a bit of a race against the weather, since they havent managed to get all of this work done before the rainy season.

 

[laptop]

Thanks, elbows.

anti-scatter substances

Would that be something absorbent (Fuller's Earth?)

 

[elbows]

Oops:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_26.html

A worker at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant apparently worked outdoors without putting a filter in his full-face mask to prevent the inhalation of radioactive particles.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will examine the worker for possible internal radiation exposure and look into whether inadequate safety management can be blamed for the incident.

The utility disclosed that the worker, a man in his 60s, worked outside the No.2 reactor building for 2 hours on Monday morning. He realized only afterward that he had forgotten to put on a filter in his face mask.

 

[elbows]

Thanks, elbows.



Would that be something absorbent (Fuller's Earth?)

Some kind of resin, several photos and video show it being sprayed around. They seem to use green stuff at lower levels and when spraying the reactor buildings the substance is a coffee-like colour.

 

[xes]

oi oi, here I am with more worse case scenario type stuff.



1 million killed by Chernobyl, Fukishima could be worse.
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov Chernobyl book.pdf

 

[elbows]

I hope to be in a position to rant in detail about the wildest claims once I have learnt more about certain aspects of contamination. At the moment I am starting with the source emissions, because the analysis used to come up with estimations of total radioactive emissions seem to be based on the idea that 90% of the release to the environment happened on March 15th, with reactor 2 getting the blame.

Meanwhile, not the right environment to have a crafty smoke at work really now is it...

At approximately 11:05 am on June 16, we confirmed that one employee from a partner company was smoking without a full mask when he was assembling a crane at the shallow draft quay as preparation work for an installation of a cover for the reactor building of Unit 1. Each density of radioactive materials of particulate and iodine in the air at the site was below measurable limit.
Today as a result of dose evaluation for the employee internal exposure dose was 0.13 mSv and external exposure dose was 0.24 mSv.

(Taken from end of TEPCO status update document http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/images/handouts_110615_02-e.pdf ) Date must be wrong as it hasnt been 11.05am on June 16th in Japan yet.

 

[laptop]

I hope to be in a position to rant in detail about the wildest claims once I have learnt more about certain aspects of contamination.

Haven't watched the video above. But fear that Caldicott may be using Rosalie Bertell's estimates of radiation harm. Which are, er, controversial.

 

[xes]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

 

[elbows]

Gundersen has a poor track record during this disaster, he has misstated things on a number of occasions, the most obvious being when he waved around his knowledge with words like 'I know a thing or two about fuel pools' and then proceeded to incorrectly state that the unit 4 refuelling bridge had fallen into the pool, and that we could see fuel racks in the open air. He was utterly wrong on this, and someone like me who had no prior knowledge of nuclear plants was able to look at the video he was using and call bullshit on it.

What pisses me off, is why people like him feel the need to excessively ramp things up. We already have a nuclear disaster on our hands that has many extremely serious facets, many of which are unprecedented, and where a very large release into the environment has happened. Multiple cores have melted and likely melted through (we just dont know how far through they have travelled), and several fuel pools that are not in a great state. But thats not enough for Gundersen, he wants to be a dick and talk about 20 cores. Why isnt 3 enough for him? Back when we had no idea about the state of the fuel in pool 4, I could just about have taken his '20 cores' stuff without getting really pissed off, but not now, there is no excuse for parping out such pumped up numbers at this stage, not if your agenda is to inform people. He has his reasons for hyping this up, not least of which is self-publicity.

At the end of the day this is just another reason to be disturbed about how humans manage nuclear power. I dont think I've found a single expert who was prepared to talk in public about this disaster, who hasnt gone too far to one extreme or the other. Fuckers pretending there was not much of a problem in the first days, and not saying much since, and a handful of anti-nuclear 'experts' finding the wildest numbers they can possibly come up with. Pathetic. I dont expect it to get better, because the medium and long term health issues are going to get discussed along much the same lines, plenty of shits pretending there is hardly any problem, and some others trying to find every death they can to pin on Fukushima.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

The Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, Nuclear power plant is going down fast due to massive flooding.

The Omaha Public Power District declared it a level 4 emergency.

The FAA has issued the following directive, shutting down airspace over the plant:

FDC 1/6523 ZMP FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS FORT CALHOUN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT BLAIR,NE EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 91.137(A)(3) TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS ARE IN EFFECT FOR FLOOD RELIEF EFFORTS WITHIN A 2 NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF 413113N/0960438W OR THE OMAHA /OVR/ VORTAC 316 DEGREE RADIAL AT 26.1 NAUTICAL MILES AT AND BELOW 3500 FEET MSL. NEBRASKA STATE PATROL, LT. FRANK PECK TELEPHONE 402-450-1867 IS IN CHARGE OF THE OPERATION. MINNEAPOLIS /ZMP/ ARTCC TELEPHONE 651-463-5580 IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY.

http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/06/nebraska-nuclear-plant-at-level-4-disaster/

They had an electrical fire yesterday which knocked out the coolant facility.

What's really interesting is that this hasn't been reported by the local news. I had to learn about it on a radio station in Chicago.

 

[elbows]

Haven't watched the video above. But fear that Caldicott may be using Rosalie Bertell's estimates of radiation harm. Which are, er, controversial.

Yeah I believe she came up in the thread in science & environment forum ages ago. At the time I was mad at Monbiot for going to far with his 'nuclear doesnt do much harm relative to other nasty energy sources' articles he was writing at the time, and I think she was one of his main targets. Having since learnt a little about her, I can now see why, she isnt someone I would turn to to learn the reality of things. Another shameful example of an anti-nuclear predisposition causing a lot of sloppiness when it comes to evidence, reports and use of hyperbole.

I dont know how we will learn the true extent of radiation health problems because there are so many people out there who have already decided how safe or dangerous this stuff is. Personally I am more than ready to blame the nuclear age for a variety of instances of cancer, but I really feel like I have no way to judge what proportion.

 

[elbows]

http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/06/nebraska-nuclear-plant-at-level-4-disaster/

They had an electrical fire yesterday which knocked out the coolant facility.

What's really interesting is that this hasn't been reported by the local news. I had to learn about it on a radio station in Chicago.

Its worth keeping an eye on because of the continuing threat from flooding, but the fuel pool cooling problem did not sound very major. It generally takes days for the pool to overheat badly, and it sounds like the system was only out of acton for an hour or two.

The 'level 4' emergency doesnt seem to be confirmed either, it may be a simple error that has lead to rumour. The nuclear plant emergency preparedness system in the US has 4 levels. The first level is 'Notification of an unusual event' and they had already hit this level due to the flood issues. When there was a fire and fuel pool cooling went out for a while, they moved to the next level, 'Alert'. I think they have probably gone back down to the first level since then.

 

[elbows]

This weeks on-site news in brief:

They have been testing and going live with the water treatment facility, which is designed to reduce the amount of contamination in the water which has been gathering on site. They have found a few issues, including leaks, but still hope to have it fully up and running today.

They posted more detail on plans to erect a structure around reactor 1. The parts are being constructed off-site and it will likely be July before they start erecting this structure.

They have an alternative plan for cooling pool 4. Original plan was thwarted when they entered the building and discovered that a pipe they wanted to use was mangled. New plan is pretty basic, involves running a hose up from ground level and fastening it to railings of the green refuelling bridge.

Work continues to reduce the radiation in the air of reactor 2, so that they can open the doors to reduce humidity.

Updated roadmap is expected from TEPCO. And a report of the first 5 days of the accident, also by TEPCO. Then next week IAEA have a big international meeting where I expect another report to emerge.

 

[elbows]

And here is a video that was released earlier in the week, of the workers inside reactor 3 building, taking samples. This work was ended early when they reached the planned human radiation dose sooner than hoped.

 

[elbows]

Problems at the water decontamination facility after just a few hours of operation:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/18_18.html

A new system aimed at decontaminating highly radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was halted only 5 hours after a full-fledged operation started on Friday night.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company says the suspension may affect the entire cleanup plan.

The new system began operating at around 8PM on Friday to clean the huge amount of radioactive water that had accumulated in the plant and to recycle it to cool the reactors.

However, the operation was manually stopped shortly before 1 AM on Saturday, as the radiation level on the surface of a US-made absorption device reached 4 millisieverts per hour, the level at which it needs to be replaced.

TEPCO had expected the device to last about a month before replacements are needed.

Im not at all impressed with how radioactive contamination of foodstuffs etc is being handled either:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/18_14.html

France has detected radioactive cesium exceeding the EU limit in green tea leaves imported from Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.

The French food safety authority announced on Friday that it had examined dried tea leaves transported by air from Japan at Charles de Gaulle airport, outside Paris.
It said 1,038 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was discovered.

The amount is about twice the EU limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. The figure is equal to the Japanese legal limit for considering shipment suspension.

The European Union has been requiring member countries to conduct radiation screening of Japanese food imports from 13 prefectures, including Fukushima and Tokyo, since the end of March.

But products from Shizuoka have not been included in the items for examination.

The French government says it will demand the EU add products from Shizuoka to the inspection list.

 

[elbows]

The IAEA conference is ongoing, the documentation coming out of it so far is quite tedious and from what I have read so far does not add anything noteworthy to our knowledge. Not really surprising as the technical information was already available to us via report that Japanese authorities sent to IAEA.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Meetings/cn200_documentation.asp

Some of the safety & regulation improvements suggested are sensible, but there are still factors which make the IAEA less than ideal.

For example this article highlights certain issues of non-transparency which are being well demonstrated at this conference.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...behind-closed-doors-at-un-atomic-meeting.html

When you have a desire to promote nuclear energy, close ties to the industry, lack of resources, and are completely reliant on nation states to co-operate and provide info, and you will cause a political/diplomatic stink if you say anything too strong, its no surprise that things turn out like this.

 

[xes]

I know you love these doom and gloom links I post really
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/prestigious-doctor-japan-us-nuclear-valley-of-death

Sunday, the prestigious Doctor Mark Sircus released a new report concurring with a host of scientists and other doctors giving evidence that people of Japan and United States have been subjected to dangerous levels of radiation since Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, and also subjected to a tight cover-up by authorities and media, the result of which will be millions of baby deaths and new cancer victims. Japanese and American children are already suffering with symptoms that appear to be the first signs of Radiation Sickness.

"Finally, three months later, we are getting some numbers on what the real dangers are. And finally we can begin to understand the enormous cover-up of the nuclear doom that is reaching lungs all over the west coast of America, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii and at least half of Japan!" stated Dr. Mark Sircus.

On a scale of 1 - 10 Just how reactionary is this?

 

[elbows]

You already know the answer to that, and I think the scale breaks at the point where I read about his acupuncture and oriental medicine credentials, and the titles of some of his books. Its a circus alright.

 

[xes]

Yeah I was going to point out the irony in his name.

 

[elbows]

Try some government produced doom instead. The Guardian did a freedom of info things and managed to get some documents released. The one I looked at so far features plenty of worst-case radiation dose horror planning, I'll look at more tomorrow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/20/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-japan

The British government made contingency plans at the height of the Fukushima nuclear crisis which anticipated a "reasonable worst case scenario" of the plant releasing more radiation than Chernobyl, new documents released to the Guardian show.

The grim assessment was used to underpin plans by the British embassy in Tokyo to issue protective iodine pills to expats and visitors. It also prompted detailed plans by Cobra, the government's emergency committee, to scramble specialist teams to screen passengers returning from Japan at UK airports for radioactive contamination.

And on a separate note I leave you now with just one of the many lessons learnt by the IAEA fact finding team.....

The presence of high radiation fields in the plant needs to be considered to ensure manual actions can be executed under accident conditions.

No shit. This and a number of other 'lessons' seem to indicate that most nuclear safety stuff has been designed to try to prevent certain kinds of horror from happening, but if things actually reach a horror stage then there is precious little preparation for what to do next.

 

[elbows]

A little more IAEA comedy.

The Japanese Government strives for open, sincere and complete information of the international community. Initial failures had objective reasons and no intention of concealing facts has ever occurred to the Japanese officials

Information of the general public and especially the international community is a crucial and very delicate issue in case of a large scale emergency. Information techniques should be elaborated and practiced to cope with this issue.

Yeah, delicate indeed, bring on those information techniques.

From page 130 of http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Meetin...tion/cn200_Final-Fukushima-Mission_Report.pdf

 

[Fuchs66]

Meanwhile in Russia:

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/rosatom_report

A report stunning in its candor prepared for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by the county’s state nuclear monopoly in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster reveals that Russia’s atomic reactors are grievously under-prepared for both natural and man-made disasters ranging from floods to fires to earthquakes or plain negligence.

Bellona nuclear physicist Nils Bøhmer called the Rosatom report “shocking.”

“It makes for dramatic reading with a view to the fact that the report comes from the owner of the nuclear plants,” he said, describing it as “the most serious description of the status of Russian nuclear plants I have ever seen from Rosatom.”

Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of Russia’s Ecodefence – one of the first Russian environmental groups to get hold of the report – was quick to point out the contrast between the Russian government’s initial statements that what had happened at Fukushima could never be repeated in Russia with the report, which says that it could.

 

[mwgdrwg]

Meanwhile, 8 new Nplants for the UK.

 

[elbows]

Recent news is that they have had a series of woes with the water decontamination system, and have been reducing water injection rates at the 3 reactors in a bid to buy themselves more time before they totally run out of water storage capacity, with the potential for very bad water starting to leak out again. The start of the rainy season doesnt exactly help matters.

After opening some doors to reactor building 2, which brought down humidity levels as hoped, they've had humans inside doing the same sort of thing as we've seen before at other reactor buildings. Surveying levels of radiation at various points, taking some pictures of the very radioactive basement water which shows the level it has reached up the stairs. And even more recently preparing for stuff at reactor 2 they have previously managed at reactor 1 - nitrogen injection and fixing up a temporary pressure gauge system. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/images/handouts_110622_02-e.pdf

A very large crane has been erected on site in the last day or so. It may well be the one thy will use to put up a temporary structure around reactor 1 building. At the time of writing this post it is just about visible on a TV networks live feed of the plant, a view that is often poor due to weather conditions. http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi#p/l/ZIa6yble2gk The crane presently cannot be seen from the TEPCO official webcam, its beyond its viewing angle, but when it eventually starts to assemble the structure around reactor 1 this will be visible, although it wont be all that interesting unless something goes wrong.

Various things got discussed and agreed at the IAEA, but I dont think any interesting new info about the events at Fukushima really emerged, the public arent privy to everything that was said in the various sessions, and much of the detail may be better placed in a more general thread about nuclear safety, if I can ever bring myself to deal with the tedious detail of it all.