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Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Monbiot continues to park out an interesting mix of valid points and some hideous downplaying of nuclear woes, a quite disgusting mix really. Specifically he is taiking bollocks about health stuff, and about the other Fukushima plant, which did not enter automatic cold shutdown in the manner he suggests. He also tends to avoid concepts such as evacuation and the affect this has on people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/04/nuclear-industry-stinks-cleaner-energy
 
They put steel plates on the floor of part of reactor 3 building in order to try to shield workers from the radiation.

They sent a robot on a raisable platform to investigate the pipes that they would like to inject nitrogen through for reactor 3, but I think something went wrong and they didn't get all the measurements they wanted.

The water decontamination plant seems to be working a bit more reliably these days.

The very large crane that will construct temporary structure around reactor 1 has swung into action in recent days, although I think it will take well over a month to complete this construction work.

Meanwhile Japan struggles with much reduced electric supply as so many reactors are still shutdown around the country. As plant operators battle to get some restarted, we get shit like this:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/06_37.html

Utility admits to dishonest e-mails on restart
It has come to light that the operator of the Genkai nuclear power plant had requested its staff and affiliates to send e-mails supporting the restart of the reactors to a meeting to explain the government's safety measures.

On June 26th, the government held a meeting in Saga City to answer questions from residents in preparation for the resumption of the operation of the nuclear reactors.

The meeting was shown live by a cable TV station and via the Internet, and viewers were invited to send in their opinions by e-mail or fax.

On Wednesday, Kyushu Electric Power Company President Toshio Manabe revealed that 4 days before the meeting, its head office instructed some company members and 4 affiliated firms to send in e-mails expressing support for restarting the reactors.

Manabe offered an apology, saying that his company's action undermined the credibility of the meeting.

He said he does not know how many e-mails were sent.

Manabe also said the company hoped to help deepen residents' understanding by stating its opinion as the plant operator.

He said he is responsible for the inappropriate act, but added that he is not considering stepping down as president.

Industry minister Banri Kaieda issued a statement saying it is outrageous to do such a thing and the incident undermines the aim of the meeting.
Thursday, July 07, 2011 02:57 +0900 (JST)
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Oh and a followup story:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/07_21.html

Kyushu Electric employee questioned over e-mails
The president of the operator of the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture says he will make a decision on stepping down next week.

A senior employee of Kyushu Electric Power Company instructed staff and affiliates to send e-mails supporting the restart of the plant at a government-hosted briefing session for local residents on June 26th.

Kyushu Electric President Toshio Manabe questioned the employee on Thursday.

Manabe told reporters earlier in the day that he would decide next week whether to step down after consulting with company Chairman Shingo Matsuo, who's due to return from an overseas trip on Sunday.
Thursday, July 07, 2011 12:58 +0900 (JST)
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That's why I passed it over to elbows, he'll be able to verify the souce better than I can. I can't say wether or not it's good info, just putting it out there.
 
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
Are they fucking kidding???
That can not be true. Is it a reliable source?
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I haven't looked into this yet, about to start now.

But if it is true then we should not really be surprised, it was always a pretty likely outcome, especially as they gradually admitted to damage to other barriers that stood in the way of this scenario.

But as I am fascinated by other peoples perception, do you mind if I ask you more about what you thought the state of play was with the reactors?

Anyways, research time.
 
elbows said:
I haven't looked into this yet, about to start now.

But if it is true then we should not really be surprised, it was always a pretty likely outcome, especially as they gradually admitted to damage to other barriers that stood in the way of this scenario.

But as I am fascinated by other peoples perception, do you mind if I ask you more about what you thought the state of play was with the reactors?

Anyways, research time.
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I mean along the lines of - is it true that it can be stopped but they won't do it because it is too expensive and will damage their stock price?
It is of course their responsibility and they should spend all the money they have nothing or it is sorted.

When you ask about what I thought the state of play was with the reactors do you mean recently or when it all kicked off?
 
I think I would like to make a TV show about this, other reactors globally, their history, the cover ups, plans to build more stations and (germanys) plans to get rid of them. Not sure where to start though.
 
OK I looked into the story. Its not based on any new information, and the exact location of the cores in the 3 reactors remains unclear. In the past they've admitted that the cores likely melted and penetrated the bottom of the reactor pressure vessels, but they have clung to the idea that much of the core still remains within this vessel. And they really haven't talked much about what will have happened to the core once it fell down into the containment vessel. I don't think there is a basement directly below the area of containment that is directly below the reactor vessel. There are basement areas further away from the centre though, the suppression chamber/torus is housed within basement rooms. And there is an old study which suggests that if this type of reactor melts, we can expect the core to leak down where the drywall containment connects to the suppression chamber/torus, and end up in this basement area.

We know these basements are filled with radioactive water now, so we know it leaked out from containment somewhere. But as the containment vessels all ended up under far more pressure & higher temperatures than they were designed to withstand, it is also possible that the holes in containment that they have acknowledged were caused by parts of containment failing for reasons other than coming directly into contact with molten core.

When I look at all the official information including estimates of radiation released from the reactors, its reactor number 2 that they blame for around 90% of the total. And this is the reactor where explosion happened near the torus, which would be the torus rooms which are the very same basement I was just going on about. And the water in reactor 2 basement is especially radioactive, as was the leak from a pit near reactor 2 into the sea. So reactor 2 in particular has my attention when it comes to the issue of core melting through containment.

The main data which confuses this picture is that according to quite an array of temperature sensors, all the reactor vessels remain rather hot. So there is an assumption that at least some of the core must still be in these vessels in order to generate heat.

As for the issue of groundwater contamination and company response, I've only seen the barrier discussed in the news very briefly some time ago, so its not possible for me to get a full picture of how much this is about money, r quite how necessary and urgent it is. So far the big scandals as far as Im concerned are the way regulation and risk was handled before the disaster, the very slow way that the government released info & responded to contamination outside original evacuation zone to the north west of the plant, the lack of care for TEPCO employees and subcontractors especially in the first month, possible long-term denials about radioactive contamination with things like food, especially further away, including the Tokyo region. Beyond the first days and explosions, I don't think the response on site, in trying to bring things under control, has been proven to be a complete fuckup yet. Certain outcomes with the cores & the ground could change that, but simply have to wait for more reliable data before we can begin to judge.
 
Only a few bits and bobs happening recently. Some more water decontamination glitches, more human activity inside reactor 3 as they get exceedingly close to injecting nitrogen into that reactor. A survey of radiation levels in a couple of areas on slightly higher floors of reactor 2 building by a robot. A group of mothers around the country setting up a network over concerns about their children and food contamination.

And the dodgy emails sent by company employees in support of a different reactor restarting saga continues:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_25.html

Over 100 involved in Kyushu Power's e-mail scam
Over 100 people are now thought to have been involved in a scam by the operator of the Genkai nuclear power plant to get its reactors turned back on.

Kyushu Electric Power Company is under fire after its executives told about 50 subordinates at its head office and affiliates to send supportive e-mails and faxes to a meeting hosted by the government.

The meeting was called to explain safety measures before restarting the Number 2 and 3 reactors of the Genkai plant in Saga prefecture.

On Tuesday, it was found that workers at a company branch in Saga were also told to send messages to the meeting, bringing the total involved to over 100.

That accounts for more than 30 percent of the opinions at the meeting that were in favor of restarting the reactors.

Kyushu Electric warns that the number may increase further and says it will submit a report of its investigation to the government by the end of the week.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 15:56 +0900 (JST)
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Oh dear, more evidence that they've made a complete arse of contaminated food issues:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_31.html

Beef from a cattle farm in Fukushima Prefecture that was found to be contaminated with radioactive material has been sold at 21 stores in 8 prefectures.

Radioactive cesium exceeding government safety levels was detected in 11 heads of cattle shipped last Friday from a farm in Minamisoma City to a meat-processing facility in Tokyo.

Officials conducted a follow-up survey on another 6 heads of cattle that had been shipped from the same farm to meat-processing facilities in Tokyo and Tochigi Prefecture in May and June.

They found that beef from the cattle had been sold by wholesalers to meat shops and restaurants in 11 prefectures.

Some 370 kilograms of beef were sold to customers in 21 shops and restaurants in 8 prefectures. The beef may have already been consumed.

Tests on beef that was left unsold at the stores show that it contained radioactive cesium 4 to 7 times the government safety level of 500 becquerels per kilogram.

Tokyo government officials say that the unsold beef has been withdrawn from shops to prevent it from being consumed.

Officials plan to continue testing the unsold beef and to investigate where the meat might have ended up.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 16:24 +0900 (JST)
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A long piece about workers at the plant, ones doing the temporary 'casual labour' type stuff, or nuclear gypsies as they seem to have been labelled in the past.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/13/fukushima-nuclear-gypsies-engineers-labourers

One thing makes me scratch my head a bit:

He is part of the team of 25 men removing and packing 23,000 firefighters' uniforms dumped near reactors No 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the first chaotic days of the crisis, when three of the plant's six reactors suffered core meltdowns. One group retrieves the uniforms, which he collects by truck and drops off for another crew to sort and pack before they are taken away for disposal.
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23000 uniforms!?!
 
Yeah that would make some sense, cheers.

Meanwhile the 'final' numbers are in for the email scandal I've mentioned a few times:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/14_38.html

Kyushu Power:141 people involved in e-mail scam
Kyushu Electric Power Company says an internal investigation uncovered 141 employees at its head office and affiliates who were involved in an e-mail scam to sway public support for restarting its Genkai nuclear power plant.

The company presented the investigation results to the government on Thursday.

The report says 2 company executives, including a vice president in charge of nuclear energy, instructed a manager to influence opinion at a meeting held by the government last month.

The meeting was designed to explain safety measures to local residents before getting the No.2 and 3 reactors back on line at the plant in Saga Prefecture.

The report says the manager ordered his subordinate to make employees at the head office and affiliates send supportive e-mails to the meeting.

Among opinions sent to the meeting, 286 were in favor of restarting the reactors with 163 against, showing the e-mail plot worked to turn the tables.

President Toshio Manabe told reporters that he's taking seriously a problem he admits has significantly undermined public trust.

He added that he will do all he can to prevent similar occurrences and win back public confidence.

The utility will set up a panel including third parties to come up with a final report to the government on further steps and punitive action against those involved.
Thursday, July 14, 2011 20:40 +0900 (JST)
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More on the beef, I believe they were in deliberate denial about this stuff and that measures to check food safety outside the evacuation zone, and possibly also within it, have been a disgrace.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_20.html

All Fukushima cattle may face radiation checks
Japanese health minister Ritsuo Hosokawa has said he is considering a plan to expand radiation tests on cattle to include animals raised outside the evacuation zones in Fukushima Prefecture.

Hosokawa made the remarks on Friday after it was learned that hay kept by a farmer in Asakawa Town in Fukushima was found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium.

Tests conducted on the hay revealed that it contained up to 97,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram -- 73 times the government-set safety limit.

Asakawa Town is located about 60 kilometers away from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. It is outside the government-designated evacuation zones.

The farmer said he has already shipped 42 heads of cattle that ate the hay to meat-processing plants in Tokyo, Yokohama, Chiba and Sendai.

Hosokawa says the health ministry is considering a plan to expand radiation testing to more cattle in Fukushima. Prefectural authorities have already decided to test all cattle in the evacuation zone.

Hosokawa also said the government will do its best to trace the whereabouts of the meat from the 42 cows.

The cattle farmer told reporters that he never imagined the hay would be contaminated because it came from far away from the damaged nuclear plant.
Friday, July 15, 2011 14:15 +0900 (JST)
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We are just days from TEPCO publishing their update to the roadmap, and its a crucial one because this is supposed to be the time when phase one is completed and they can move on to the next major stage.

News of what the update will say already seems to have gotten out to some news organisations, and as widely expected it seems they are going to declare that they are on track and reached the milestones set out in phase one. Its kind of true, in that there has certainly been progress on most fronts, but in some areas such s the water decontamination system there are still problems and they haven't actually achieved what they hoped for. They haven't got the proper cooling working at spent fuel pool 4 yet either, but it sounds like they will downplay this. Some of the language they will use may make me cringe, but I suppose I will just about live with their use of the term 'stable' because months have passed without further major incident, even if its not exactly what Id describe as really stable. They did manage to start injecting nitrogen at reactor 3 (to reduce possibility of hydrogen explosion) with just a few days to spare before their deadline.

I haven't seen any stories in english about this yet, but if translation is right then perhaps the biggest news will be to do with the groundwater contamination barrier, which we were talking about here not so long ago because of that scary story about the location of the reactor cores. Apparently according to previous versions of the roadmap they were going to start thinking about this as part of phase 2, but now they are actually going to start constructing it as part of phase 2.
 
Can I as a definite layman just ask, if the container vessel was breached and the fuel sank through the bottom, where is it now? Would it keep burning a bloody great tube in the earth as it gets deeper and deeper? Or will it have fizzled out now and we can relax?
 
Thats the big question, Im not sure that anyone really knows. 'China Syndrome' where it just keeps burning through the earth is seen as a joke, but I don't know what the reality would be. I do not think it would fizzle out due to the amount of deca heat that will keep being generated for a long time to come. I believe they are assuming that lots of the cores are still somewhere near the reactor vessel because temperatures are still high there and go higher if they reduce cooling water delivered to the area. Beyond that we may have to wait years to find out.
 
TopCat said:
Can I as a definite layman just ask, if the container vessel was breached and the fuel sank through the bottom, where is it now? Would it keep burning a bloody great tube in the earth as it gets deeper and deeper? Or will it have fizzled out now and we can relax?
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According to a friend of mine who happens to be a very clever person who 'dropped out' after a career with BA. It will never stop.
 
Open Sauce said:
...

In fact, what are you credentials to call someone clever?
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Spelling and grammar give a base level to judge by.

The guy has been interested in science from a very early age. Had a career as an engineer with BA working on jet engines. He knows more about physics and science than I ever will. I trust his word as much as I would trust anything I read in New Scientist. He can tell me what is bollocks in the press and give a very erudite explanation as to why it is bollocks.
 
you say interesting example of them playing stuff down I say first occurrence of them doing so in the whole scaremongering farce which this 'disaster' has been; nothing less than a triumph of hysteria over fact from beginning to end. Shame it's only now they can all fall in on murdoch et al that they are treating this as the non story it always was...

Never in the history of atomic science has one non-disaster generated so much ill referenced, bullshit science, of little or no worth and no connection at all with the reality and facts of the matter...
 
GarfieldLeChat said:
you say interesting example of them playing stuff down I say first occurrence of them doing so in the whole scaremongering farce which this 'disaster' has been; nothing less than a triumph of hysteria over fact from beginning to end. Shame it's only now they can all fall in on murdoch et al that they are treating this as the non story it always was...

Never in the history of atomic science has one non-disaster generated so much ill referenced, bullshit science, of little or no worth and no connection at all with the reality and facts of the matter...
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Fair do's. You'd not have evacuated with any wife and children if you'd lived next to it then. :)
 
GarfieldLeChat said:
Never in the history of atomic science has one non-disaster generated so much ill referenced, bullshit science, of little or no worth and no connection at all with the reality and facts of the matter...
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Where? The little US media coverage I saw was hysterical, and some corners of the internet went bonkers, but in general the media did not go crazy over Fukushima, and the masses didn't go crazy either, as demonstrated by this thread not attracting too much apocalyptic ranting (apart from Stanleys mutant baby bullshit)
 
They have now banned Fukushima beef, months later than they should of:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/19_h21.html

The roadmap got updated as expected, and the leaks to the press that I mentioned some days ago seem accurate. The next phase, which will probably be about 6 months long if they stick to their targets, does indeed feature the beginning of work to put groundwater barriers in place, although the design of this stuff isn't finished yet either so they can't start right away. The previous roadmap in June only envisaged see barriers going through the planning during this 2nd stage, not implementation, so this change could indeed be seen as an indication that they are speeding up this aspect of the work.

Unfortunately this does not actually tell me very much about the key question of where the reactor cores have gone. This is because groundwater contamination is already an issue because of the large amounts of very radioactive water that are in the basements of certain buildings. This water is radioactive because its been up close & personal with some of the core, but as the water is originally injected into the reactor itself, this cannot be used to tell us where the bulk of the cores are, we cannot for example assume that they must be in the basements or below. Such things remain a real possibility in one or more reactors, but theres no detailed evidence with which we can build upon this possibility to reach firm conclusions. The reactor cores ended up in a very bad way, but we may wait a very long time to find out much more than that.

Given how much time has now passed, and the lack of much new detail as to the most important facts in this disaster, I have been reducing the amount of time I am spending following this stuff, and will only be keeping half an eye on it for now. The human consequences bother me most so I am still likely to rant about contamination news here and there, but I am not attempting to cover all stories about this stuff anymore, nor have I been for some weeks now.

If you wish to follow the more political and human aspects of Fukushima, especially contamination issues, then this blog tends to cover a lot of the news including lots of stuff that they helpfully translate snippets of that we would otherwise not get to see:

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

The tone of the site is perhaps slightly too hysterically critical at times, at least for my tastes, but then again there has been plenty to get very upset about when it comes to the way the authorities have handled such matters.
 
elbows said:
Given how much time has now passed, and the lack of much new detail as to the most important facts in this disaster, I have been reducing the amount of time I am spending following this stuff, and will only be keeping half an eye on it for now. The human consequences bother me most so I am still likely to rant about contamination news here and there, but I am not attempting to cover all stories about this stuff anymore, nor have I been for some weeks now..
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I just want to say that I have been following, though I do not post all over the thread, I always appreciate your updates.
The updates you give here have pretty much been my best source of in information.
 
Cheers. Given that I am not an expert in nuclear stuff I am alarmed that it came to this. I thought there would be far more experts & quality media articles that would keep talking at length about Fukushima for some months after the disaster. But what actually happened is that only a few media entities ever got to grips with all the detail, and they didn't have a large amount of either will or opportunity to keep asking the right questions to try to get more detail on certain matters and build further on the story. And as some of the biggest questions may take many years to answer, they haven't had enough new info to keep running with the story. I expect there is some pressure not to be 'irresponsible with words in a way that may harm national interests & the future energy supplies of the country'. And the strange setup in Japan means that the political shitstorm that should come from the botched response when it comes to evacuation locations & contaminated foodstuffs etc, has not quite evolved in the manner we might expect if such a disaster happened here. Sections of the Japanese media have retained an interest, and they don't pull every single punch, but plenty of these stories don't make it into english in full it seems.

I thought there may have been far more ongoing discussion with more people on forums such as this one, but I guess it is not actually surprising that things went the way they did. I don't like having more apparent knowledge about certain aspects of a story than others, its a lonely place, and I am a human who will make mistakes and I want peers around to put me straight when I err. But I only got my knowledge by investing silly amounts of time into reading many documents that were often extremely tedious, and I do not fault anyone for not bothering to invest so much time into similar activities. Especially as it was always apparent that any truly massive facts about the state of the reactors would likely leap out into the world without requiring a geek like me to drone on about it. Lets face it, I don't think anything especially notable has happened since I became the main poster of news in this thread, most of the big stuff happened early on. At best I have hopefully helped people to get some sense of proportion and balance, considering that many other sources of info have been keen to paint extreme pictures in this regard, either in terms of horror stories or false reassurances.
 
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