Japan's turn

[DB008]

•Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor
o At 1:00PM on March 30, water level inside the reactor core: 1.6 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

•Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor
o At 1:00PM on March 30, water level inside the reactor core: 1.5 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

•Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor
o At 1:30PM on March 30, water level inside the reactor core: 1.85 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

Scary!

 

[tothemax6]

Are those reactors still bubbling away? Jeez, if there was any nation in the world I would expect to have their act together it would be the Japs. Disappointing.

But besides, there is something inherently dangerous about a reactor design in which "if you do not keep it cool, it will naturally melt into a big blob of radioactive goo". Tut tut, engineers.

 

[tothemax6]

In view of the consequences of such an event, those odds are still disturbingly high.

We're talking about a massive impact on the environment and human life here. It's not as though it's something comparatively trivial like a cruise ship sinking, oil spill or collapse of a city building.

The odds may well be low, but the consequences are huge and that's the problem.

Well the thing is that no one seems prepared at all for nuclear events. Its kind of like having a city with no fire service. Its unbelievably poor. There should be proper crack teams with appropriate equipment to do everything from sealing a station, to rapidly cooling and containing an obstreperous core, to mapping and cleaning up released contamination in a rapid manner. I fail to see how companies can even go ahead and build nuclear stations with out having these teams - they would simply not get insurance and the station would constitute too great a compensation risk if it broke.

 

[Glen48]

This will start the global down turn with Japan having to sell USD, OEM not being able to get supplies from the 3rd largest economy.
3 reactors melting like cheese in a pizza oven not power for years, cars sale in Japan down 37%

Get out your guns, hide your PM's (not Gillard ) stock up on food, medicine and buy books on fixing everything for dummies besacue ever one will be at home trying to survive.

 

[Smurf1976]

But besides, there is something inherently dangerous about a reactor design in which "if you do not keep it cool, it will naturally melt into a big blob of radioactive goo". Tut tut, engineers.

That's a bit like saying we shouldn't have petrol that can sustain combustion by itself due to the possibility of a tanker accident. As with the nuclear reaction, once it's burning - it's burning and we're stuck with the consequences.

If we don't want these sorts of hazards with uranium then there's really only one solution - don't use it.

 

[Smurf1976]

Well the thing is that no one seems prepared at all for nuclear events. Its kind of like having a city with no fire service. Its unbelievably poor. There should be proper crack teams with appropriate equipment to do everything from sealing a station, to rapidly cooling and containing an obstreperous core, to mapping and cleaning up released contamination in a rapid manner. I fail to see how companies can even go ahead and build nuclear stations with out having these teams - they would simply not get insurance and the station would constitute too great a compensation risk if it broke.

Agreed in principle. But nuclear power is already hugely expensive and if there were actually these sorts of precautions then it would never be viable to use nuclear power in the first place.

Such is the problem. Either we do it sort-of cheaply and take these sorts of risks, or we can't do it at all. Personally, I'd rather some other form of power production but that's just me.

 

[Smurf1976]

Somthing that isn't getting any real attention is that amongst electrical infrastructure, it is not only the Fukushima nuclear power plant that has been damaged. There is also significant damage to coal-fired power stations as well.

Thankfully, damage to a coal plant just means a power shortage and some repairs to make. No huge exclusion zone, no radioactive fish, no need for any real concern as long as you aren't literally standing next any damaged structures at the plants themselves. You get my point...

http://www.electricalworld.com.au/onestory.php?idNum=1705

 

[skc]

China Syndrome was the term used on the 3 mile island incidend (or the movie anyway) - that the melt down will keep going until it comes out the other end of the world in China.

However, having consulted the world map, Japan's melt down will come out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean... so she will be right, mate.

 

[burglar]

"U.S. Stocks recently rolled over in response to reports that Japan has been hit by another earthquake, but the major averages have begun to rebound with news that the integrity of nuclear facilities has not been compromised by the latest quake."

 

[Sean K]

"U.S. Stocks recently rolled over in response to reports that Japan has been hit by another earthquake, but the major averages have begun to rebound with news that the integrity of nuclear facilities has not been compromised by the latest quake."

7.1

Will depend on how deep and loc for the effect.

Must be another 'aftershock'.

Or, these are all pre shocks until the big one.

 

[skc]

7.1

Will depend on how deep and loc for the effect.

Must be another 'aftershock'.

Or, these are all pre shocks until the big one.

Only reports of minor damages and injuries so doesn't sound that bad.

There's a prediction that Mt Fuji is due for a blow. That would put a huge dent on the collective national psyche / confidence of Japan.

Until Gozilla comes out and sacrifices himself to save everyone of course.

 

[adobee]

Nuclear disaster now on par with Chernobyl April 12, 2011 - 11:37AM

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/nuclear-disaster-now-on-par-with-chernobyl-20110412-1dbpa.html

 

[adobee]

here is the INES - The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale
definetly worth a review

http://www-news.iaea.org/news/whatsnew/ines.pdf

 

[Agentm]

Fukushima rated at INES Level 7 – what does this mean?

Posted on 12 April 2011 by Barry Brook
Hot in the news is that the Fukushima Nuclear crisis has been upgraded from INES 5 to INES 7. Note that this is not due to some sudden escalation of events today (aftershocks etc.), but rather it is based on an assessment of the cumulative magnitude of the events that have occurred at the site over the past month (my most recent update on that is here).
Below I look briefly at what this INES 7 rating means, why it has happened, and to provide a new place to centralise comments on this noteworthy piece of news.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to rate nuclear accidents. It was formalised in 1990 and then back-dated to events like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Windscale and so on. Prior to today, only Chernobyl had been rated at the maximum level of the scale ‘major accident’. A useful 5-page PDF summary description of the INES, by the IAEA, is available here.​

A new assessment of Fukushima Daiichi has put this event at INES 7, upgraded from earlier escalating ratings of 3, 4 and then 5. The original intention of the scale was historical/retrospective, and it was not really designed to track real-time crises, so until the accident is fully resolved, any time-specific rating is naturally preliminary.​

The criteria used to rate against the INES scale are (from the IAEA documentation):​

(i) People and the Environment: considers the radiation doses to people close to the location of the event and the widespread, unplanned release of radioactive material from an installation.
(ii) Radiological Barriers and Control: covers events without any direct impact on people or the environment and only applies inside major facilities. It covers unplanned high radiation levels and spread of significant quantities of radioactive materials confined within the installation.
(iii) Defence-in-Depth: covers events without any direct impact on people or the environment, but for which the range of measures put in place to prevent accidents did not function as intended.
In terms of severity:

Like the scales that describe earthquakes or major storms, each of the INES scale’s seven levels is designed to be ten times more severe that the one before. After below-scale ‘deviations’ with no safety significance, there are three levels of ‘incident’, then four levels of ‘accident’. The selection of a level for a given event is based on three parameters: whether people or the environment have been affected; whether any of the barriers to the release of radiation have been lost; and whether any of the layers of safety systems are lost.
​

So, on this definitional basis, one might argue that the collective Fukushima Daiichi event (core damage in three units, hydrogen explosions, problems with drying spent fuel ponds, etc.) is ~100 times worse than TMI-2, which was a Level 5.
However, what about when you hit the top of the INES? Does a rating of 7 mean that Fukushima is as bad as Chernobyl? Well, since you can’t get higher than 7 on the scale, it’s impossible to use this numerically to answer such a question on the basis of their categorical INES rating alone. It just tells you that both events are in the ‘major league’. There is simply no event rating 8, or 10, or whatever, or indeed any capacity within the INES system to rank or discriminate events within categories (this is especially telling for 7). For that, you need to look for other diagnostics.
So headlines like ‘Fukushima is now on a par with Chernobyl‘ can be classified as semantically correct and yet also (potentially) downright misleading. Still, it sells newspapers.

There is a really useful summary of the actual ‘news’ of this INES upgrade from World Nuclear News, here. It reports:​

Japanese authorities notified the International Atomic Energy Agency of their decision to up the rating: “As a result of re-evaluation, total amount of discharged iodine-131 is estimated at 1.3×1017 becquerels, and caesium-137 is estimated at 6.1×1015 becquerels. Hence the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has concluded that the rating of the accident would be equivalent of Level 7.”​

More here from the IAEA:​

The new provisional rating considers the accidents that occurred at Units 1, 2 and 3 as a single event on INES. Previously, separate INES Level 5 ratings had been applied for Units 1, 2 and 3. The provisional INES Level 3 rating assigned for Unit 4 still applies.
The re-evaluation of the Fukushima Daiichi provisional INES rating resulted from an estimate of the total amount of radioactivity released to the environment from the nuclear plant. NISA estimates that the amount of radioactive material released to the atmosphere is approximately 10 percent of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, which is the only other nuclear accident to have been rated a Level 7 event.
​

I also discussed the uprating today on radio, and you can listen to the 12-minute interview here for my extended perspective.​

So, what are some of the similarities and differences between Fukushima and Chernobyl?​

Both have involved breeches of radiological barriers and controls, overwhelming of defence-in-depth measures, and large-scale release of radioactive isotopes into the environment. The causes and sequence of the two events were, however, very different, in terms of reactor designs, the nature of the triggering events, and time-scale for resolution ”” this is a topic to be explored in more depth in some future post. The obviously big contrast is in the human toll and nature of the radioactive release.​

The Chernobyl event killed 28 people directly via the initial explosion or severe radiation sickness, and other ~15 died as directly attributed result of radiation-induced cancer (see the summary provided today by Ben Heard on Opinion Online: Giving Green the red light). Further, Chernobyl led to a significant overexposure of members of the public in the local area and region, especially due to iodine-131 that was dispersed by the reactor fire, and insufficient protection measures by authorities. An increase in thyroid cancers resulted from this.​

In Fukushima, by contrast, no workers have been killed by radiation (or explosions), and indeed none have been exposed to doses >250 mSv (with a ~1000 mSv being the dose required for people to exhibit signs of radiation sickness, through to about 50 % of victims dying after being exposed to >5000 mSv [see chart here]). No member of the public has, as yet, been overexposed at Fukushima. Further, much of the radionuclides released into the environment around Fukushima have been a result of water leakages that were flushed into the ocean, rather than attached to carbon and other aerosols from a burning reactor moderator, where they were largely deposited on land, and had the potential to be inhaled (as occurred in Chernobyl).​

So is Fukushima another Chernobyl? No. Is it a serious accident? Yes. Two quite different questions ”” and answers ”” which should not be carelessly conflated.​

 

[Aussiejeff]

Today's update...

Japan began evacuating people from outside the official exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant after it was revealed fuel rods there probably melted hours after March's devastating earthquake.

With radiation levels remaining high, small children and pregnant women were the first to be moved, with thousands more to be shifted into shelters and temporary housing.

After the plant's operator, TEPCO, told the Japanese people that things were stabilising at Fukushima, it is now clear they knew far less about the situation than they were willing to admit.

About 8,000 Litate residents and those in the nearby village of Kawamata are being asked to move, joining the tens of thousands who have already been forced out of their homes by the nuclear crisis.

They will be put up in hotels, public housing and evacuation shelters, and no-one knows when they will be allowed to return.

"It's such an incredible shame to have to leave the house I've lived in for so long," one elderly resident said.

"I can't express it in words."

My sentiments regarding this disastrous shambles too....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/16/3217488.htm

 

[Glen48]

I saw were 1 worker from Fookedshma power plant die assume from to many X rays.

 

[jbocker]

Not sure of the best thread to post this but since the decision by the Germans was triggered on the Japanese nuclear power plant disaster...

Germany pulls plug on nuclear power
By Georg Ismar, Berlin
May 31, 2011

GERMANY has announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants, with the last to be closed by 2022.

...

The decision means Germany will have to find the 22 per cent of its electricity needs covered by nuclear reactors from another source.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/germany-pulls-plug-on-nuclear-power-20110530-1fcrx.html#ixzz1NqkKQE1U

 

[Aussiejeff]

Not sure of the best thread to post this but since the decision by the Germans was triggered on the Japanese nuclear power plant disaster...

Germany pulls plug on nuclear power
By Georg Ismar, Berlin
May 31, 2011

GERMANY has announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants, with the last to be closed by 2022.

...

The decision means Germany will have to find the 22 per cent of its electricity needs covered by nuclear reactors from another source.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/germany-pulls-plug-on-nuclear-power-20110530-1fcrx.html#ixzz1NqkKQE1U

Since they are soooo keen on bailing out the sinking S.S. Euro, mebbe they could re-employ all those unfortunate unemployed Portugese, Irish, Greek & Spanish to pedal 10,000,000 stationary bicycles fitted with dynamos, 24/7?

 

[IFocus]

Not sure of the best thread to post this but since the decision by the Germans was triggered on the Japanese nuclear power plant disaster...

Germany pulls plug on nuclear power
By Georg Ismar, Berlin
May 31, 2011

GERMANY has announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants, with the last to be closed by 2022.

...

The decision means Germany will have to find the 22 per cent of its electricity needs covered by nuclear reactors from another source.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/germany-pulls-plug-on-nuclear-power-20110530-1fcrx.html#ixzz1NqkKQE1U

The political problem is Germans have blinked, I understand the old stations being closed but not the newer.

Still if they cannot replace the megawatts with renewable power then it wont happen but in a way its good news in as much the Huns are really good at technology development and this could be a motivation to make it happen.

 

[Smurf1976]

Today's update...

If this were any other type of power plant (coal, oil, gas, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, wood, whatever...) then this would have been over long ago.

The "odds" of something going wrong may be small, but the consequences when they do are so large and that's the inherent problem with nuclear power. You can never reduce the chances of an accident to zero - sooner or later it's going to happen and we've got no effective response when it does.