Japan's turn

Smurf1976 said:

What if there had been a 9.5 earthquake straight under the plant? What if terrorists attacked the plant after the earthquake and tsunami? What if...

Will man never learn that we can not possibly foresee every scenario and that there is always some risk?

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Man you speak my mind. I think these people should pick up trading to keep their arrogance in check.

The US seems to be getting increasingly nervous about the unfolding situation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/17/us-nuclear-usa-idUSTRE72C2UW20110317

drsmith said:

The US seems to be getting increasingly nervous about the unfolding situation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/17/us-nuclear-usa-idUSTRE72C2UW20110317

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Just a side thought, maybe we will get to see the effect of radiation fall out combining with genetic engineering as the winds blow the radiation from Japan accross the pacific ocean to the American farmlands. The red necks really could have rednecks, both of them.

Fukushima Nuclear Accident – 17 March update

Posted on 17 March 2011 by Barry Brook
The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station is approaching a weeks’ duration. The on-site situation remains extremely serious, with glimmers of hope being shrouded by a shadow of deep uncertainty.
If you’ve not been following the situation on BraveNewClimate, and want to recap, please read these recent updates:
Japan Nuclear Situation – 14 March updates
Further technical information on Fukushima reactors
Fukushima Nuclear Accident – 15 March summary of situation
Fukushima Nuclear Accident – 16 March update
These are assumed knowledge for understanding the rest of this post. The preparation of the material below was aided greatly by the private advice of my acquaintances in the nuclear engineering field.
As predicted yesterday, attention over the last 24 hours has focused on the critical situation with the ponds used for temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel at the individual reactor units, before it is moved to a centralised facility on site. Although this old fuel has lost much of its original radioactivity, the decline is exponential (see this figure) which means that thermal energy must continue to be dissipated for months.
This figure shows the location of the spent fuel ponds:
The spent fuel pool temperature has been rising gradually since last Friday due to the loss of cooling pump (presumably no power source). As we know from previous updates, the side of the Reactor 4 building has been lost (it’s the left-most of the 4 buildings in the following image):
The Unit 4 reactor was already shut off for periodic maintenance when the earthquake struck. IF the fire was caused by hydrogen, its only plausible source would be spent fuel degrading in steam. Under this scenario, initial inventory was probably reduced by sloshing during the earthquake, and heat generation and resulting evaporation/boiling would thereafter be more than double that in other pools due to it containing freshly off loaded fuel. Temperature indications in the absence of water would be that of the mixture of steam and air in the location of the thermowell.
Nothing can be confirmed at this stage. As has been the case throughout this crisis, information is hard to come by and must be pieced together.
Are the spent fuel in the pools in Units 3 and 4 are now uncovered? TEPCO claims that NRC Chief Jaczko was wrong in claiming this, that the spent fuel pools in both Units 3 and 4 need some refilling but are NOT dry. (The Japanese authorities are apparently saying they’ve seen water still in the Unit 4 pool.) The big concern here is that unlike the releases from damaged fuel in the reactor cores of Units 1, 2, and 3, which were largely filtered by scrubbing in the containment suppression pools (wetwell torus), releases of volatile fission products (e.g., cesium and iodine) from these spent fuel pools have direct pathways to the environment, if they remain dry for an extended period.
Efforts to deliver water to these pools have proven to be very difficult, and fuel damage may be occurring. If they are exposed, then the use of the evaporation of salt water as a heat sink over periods of more than a few days is not viable because the quantities of salt deposited as the water evaporates becomes large in volume and plugs the flow paths through the fuel, degrading heat removal. Everything that is cooled becomes a heat sink to condense anything volatilised. Unfortunately, a fresh water supply seems difficult to come by.
One option is to bring fresh water by helicopter, but the amounts needed imply a large number of flights and gamma radiation levels are high above the pools making overflights hazardous. NHK has reported a number of successful water dumps using helicopters today. If radiation levels on the ground increase further, personnel access will become more challenging. Additional spent fuel is stored in pools in Units 5 and 6 and in a large centralized storage pool. A key issue is how to continue to make up water to these pools in the longer term, particularly if site access becomes more difficult.
Some additional key information from NEI:

””””””””””–
• Radiation Levels
o At 6:40AM (JST) on March 16, a radiation level of 400 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside the west side of the secondary containment building of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
 At 6:40AM on March 16, a radiation level of 100 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside the west side of the secondary containment building of the Unit 4 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
o At 8:47AM on March 16, a radiation level of 150 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside the secondary containment building of Unit 2 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
 At 8:47AM on March 16, a radiation level of 300 milli sievert per hour was recorded between the exteriors of the secondary containment buildings of Unit 2 reactor and Unit 3 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
 At 8:47AM on March 16, a radiation level of 400 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside the secondary containment building of Unit 3 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
 At 8:47AM on March 16, radiation level of 100 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside the secondary containment building of Unit 4 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
o At 10:40AM on March 16, a radiation level of 10 milli sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
o At 4:10PM on March 16, a radiation level of 1530 micro sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
o For comparison, a human receives 2400 micro sievert per year from natural radiation in the form of sunlight, radon, and other sources. One chest CT scan generates 6900 micro sievert per scan.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor
o At 6:55AM on March 16, the pressure inside the reactor core was measured at 0.17 MPa. The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.8 meters below the top of the fuel rods.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor
o At 6:55AM on March 16, the pressure inside the reactor core was measured at 0.043 MPa. The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.4 meters below the top of the fuel rods.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor
o At 8:37AM on March 16, white smoke was observed emanating from the vicinity of the secondary containment building.
o At 9:55AM on March 16, the pressure inside the reactor core was measured at 0.088 MPa. The water level inside the reactor core was measured at 1.9 meters below the top of the fuel rods.
o At 11:32AM on March 16, the Japanese government announced that the possibility of significant damage to the primary containment vessel was low.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 reactor
o At 4:08AM on March 15, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 183 degrees Fahrenheit.
o At 5:45AM on March 16, a fire occurred in the vicinity of the third floor of the secondary containment building.
o At 7:26AM on March 16, no flames or smoke was observed and thus it was concluded that the fire extinguished on its own accord.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 5 reactor
o At 4:00AM on March 16, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 141 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 6 reactor
o At 4:00AM on March 16, the temperature of the spent fuel pool was measured at 137 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant and Accompanying Facilities
o As of 12:00PM on March 15, power generation of all facilities was restored to the commercial electricity grid from backup power generation systems. It was confirmed that no fire, damage to equipment, injuries to personnel occurred. Radiation levels were measured at a normal level of safety.

At California Nuclear Plant, Emergency Response Plans Don't Include Earthquakes

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/california-nuclear-emergency-response_n_836751.html

Agentm said:

My initial estimates of the extent of the problem, on March 12, did not anticipate the cascading problems that arose from the extended loss of externally sourced AC power to the site, and my prediction that ‘there is no credible risk of a serious accident‘ has been proven quite wrong as a result. It remains to be seen whether my forecast on the possibility of containment breaches and the very low level of danger to the public as a result of this tragic chain of circumstances will be proven correct. For the sake of the people there, I sure hope it does stand the test of time.​

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I sure hope your forecast of a very low level of danger turns out to be right.

But, and this is my argument against nuclear power (though I accept that we're going to keep using it for the foreseeable future), I really don't think that we will ever be able to foresee every possible scenario and have a plan to cope with that.

There would have to be literally millions of possible scenarios for a nuclear disaster. I just can't see man ever being able to think of them all, let alone be able to cope with them.

The same applies to many things of course. But with nuclear the difference is the potential impacts of a disaster should one occur. No other man-made disaster comes close in terms of worst case long term effects.

Fukushima – 18 March morning updates, radiation and tsunamis

Posted on 18 March 2011 by Barry Brook
There have been further developments at Fukushima overnight that have, according to the IAEA, made the situation ‘reasonably stable‘ (although it is still serious). Given the state of play over the last week, I’ll take any positive sign I can get.
Other points to note, as of the morning of Friday 18 March:
1. FEPC says the following:2. WNN says:3. The two statements above are supported by the updates from the NEI:If all of this is successful, the plant will be able to take over from the workers in cooling the fuel in the reactor.
I’ll provide a further update at the end of today. Meanwhile, you can track the comments on this post (Note: I suggest we switch to this thread for the rest of today), which are once again doing a great job at providing a minute-by-minute feed of the latest developments.

Below I reproduce a short essay by Ted Rockwell. Dr Rockwell is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His classical 1956 handbook, The Reactor Shielding Design Manual, was recently made available on-line and as a DVD, by the U.S. Department of Energy. Back in 2002 he was co-author on an article in Science journal, “Nuclear Power Plants and Their Fuel as Terrorist Targets“. It’s definitely worth reading as it’s highly relevant to the current situation ”” if you bear in mind that the ‘terrorist’ in this context was Mother Nature ”” and a brutal one at that.
Ted’s short essay (Rod Adams has also reproduced this), given below, explains well what I meant by my earlier statement:

””””””””””””””””””-
Fukushima: it’s not about radiation, it’s about tsunamis
A lot of wrong lessons are being pushed on us, about the tragedy now unfolding in Japan. All the scare-talk about radiation is irrelevant. There will be no radiation public health catastrophe, regardless of how much reactor melting may occur. Radiation? Yes. Catastrophe? No.
Life evolved on, and adapted to, a much more radioactive planet, Our current natural radiation levels””worldwide””are below optimum. Statements that there is no safe level of radiation are an affront to science and to common sense. The radiation situation should be no worse than from the Three Mile Island (TMI) incident, where ten to twenty tons of the nuclear reactor melted down, slumped to the bottom of the reactor vessel, and initiated the dreaded China Syndrome, where the reactor core melts and burns its way into the earth. On the computers and movie screens of people who make a living “predicting” disasters, TMI is an unprecedented catastrophe. In the real world, the molten mass froze when it hit the colder reactor vessel, and stopped its downward journey at five-eights of an inch through the five-inch thick vessel wall.
And there was no harm to people or the environment. None.
Yet in Japan, you have radiation zealots threatening to order people out of their homes, to wander, homeless and panic-stricken, through the battered countryside, to do what? All to avoid a radiation dose lower than what they would get from a ski trip.
The important point for nuclear power is that some of the nuclear plants were swept with a wall of seawater that may have instantly converted a multi-billion dollar asset into a multi-billion dollar problem. That’s bad news. But it’s not unique to nuclear power. If Fukushima were a computer chip factory, would we consider abandoning the electronic industry because it was not tsunami-proof? It would be ironic if American nuclear power were phased out as unsafe, without having ever killed or injured a single member of the public, to be replaced by coal, gas and oil, proven killers of tens of thousands each year.
Moreover, the extent and nature of the damage from seawater may be less than first implied. Rod Adams, a former nuclear submarine officer, who operated a nuclear power plant at sea for many years, says that inadvertent flooding of certain equipment with seawater was not uncommon. He includes electronics-laden missile tubes. “We flushed them out with fresh water,” he said. “Sometimes we had to replace insulation and other parts. But we could ultimately bring them back on line, working satisfactorily.”
The lessons from Japan involve tsunamis, not radiation.
””””””””””””””–
Footnote – Some additional comments from Ted Rockwell, by email correspondence:
I must admit that our Science articles did not give much attention attention to the small-volume containment plants, and we should do so after the information on Fukushima has come in. Our focus was on getting past the proving that scenarios that led to intolerable situations were tolerably improbable. This traditional approach is an essential but not sufficient part of plant design.
My approach was to come in from the other side: To assume that the worst situation was one that led to some molten fuel, coupled with loss of containment integrity, and ask: what then? Does radioactivity get out in great enough quantities, into enough lungs? That’s essentially the TMI situation, and I concluded that it led to the TMI outcome: a disaster for the plant owner, but a wholly tolerable situation radiologically. We’re going to have to go back and apply a wider range of conditions to that analysis.
But radiation must still be treated like any other variable, and not the ultimate injury. It should not outrank death by inhalation of coal particles, for example. The obsessive fascination with radiation as the worst possible danger leads to mass evacuation as the most conservative response. I don’t know any experienced disaster manager who agrees that mass evacuation is always a conservative response.

a few pics worth thinking on

also this

I keep hearing and reading that the people in the tsunami area are still without enough food, water, or basic medical supplies. Why? People in the evacuation centres were getting half a banana for breakfast, some 'gelatinous' drink, for lunch and it was not known what dinner would be, according to an article in today's Australian.

The suggestion was that the Japanese government are insisting they have everything under control and do not want to lose face by admitting how much help they need.

They are reluctantly accepting a large team of nuclear experts from the US.

If this is correct, it seems pretty amoral that their pride is coming before the care of their devastated people.

Didn't Japan have a shiny blue cable similar to the one we are getting here? Did it save them? Has it improved their way of life? What good is it to them now?

China Telecom Corp. (CHA), China's largest fixed-line operator by subscribers, was making emergency repairs on Friday to undersea cables damaged by the earthquake, Xinhua News Agency reported. The company said submarine fiber-optic cables connecting Japan and North America and a Pacific Crossing 1 cable near the city of Kitaibaraki, in Japan's northern Ibaraki Prefecture, were malfunctioning due to the earthquake. A China Telecom spokeswoman wasn't immediately available to comment on Monday on the status of the repairs.

http://www.optoiq.com/index/photoni...ts/2011/3/Tsunami-submarine-cable-damage.html

The more I see and learn about this the more incredible I find it!

But, there was apparently a precident of 38 meters in 1896. This one was less than half the size!

Tsunami topped 15 meters on Sanriku coast

The Yomiuri Shimbun


The tsunami that devastated the Sanriku coast after last week's massive earthquake reached heights of more than 15 meters, according to investigations by the Port and Airport Research Institute.

After reaching land, the tsunami collided with coastal mountains, and the water was pushed up to heights of more than 20 meters, the institute said. Experts believe it was one of the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan.

The institute began examining the ports in the tsunami zone Wednesday. At Onagawa Port, investigators discovered wreckage atop a three-story building near the ocean. Windows had been broken all the way up the side facing the sea, leading investigators to estimate the height of the tsunami at over 15 meters high.

Sanriku, which extends from Aomori Prefecture to Miyagi Prefecture, is a ria coast--a jagged coastline--a factor that increased the height of the tsunami.

Shizuoka University Prof. Motoyuki Ushiyama, a specialist in disaster information, concluded the tsunami reached 20 meters along the mountains after analyzing aerial photographs of the damage to Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture.

The largest recorded tsunami to hit the area was a 38.2-meter wave that struck Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, following the 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake and Tsunami.

(Mar. 19, 2011)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110318004192.htm

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Some great posts here , doesnt any one want to put in a couple of line summary of the current situation or how they see it .. I can handle reading any more monster posts on nuclear science - .... Please ...

adobee said:

Some great posts here , doesnt any one want to put in a couple of line summary of the current situation or how they see it .. I can handle reading any more monster posts on nuclear science - .... Please ...

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Odds of meltdown resulting in nasty radiation spew: 5%.
Odds the situation slowly calms down from here on in, with relatively minor radiation issues: 85%.
Odds of something else unforeseen: 10%.

The radiation 'leakage' that they say is happening is the kind that fades away quickly (steam from the reactor etc). The kind they are worried about is the 'exposed plutonium sets on fire and spews into the air' kind. That's really bad news if that happens - airborne plutonium is really nasty. It will hurt Japan for a long time. Like I say, odds that something like that will happen are currently about 5%.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/user/MOXNEWSd0tCOM#p/u/0/5TimeGBHY7I[/video]

adobee said:

Some great posts here , doesnt any one want to put in a couple of line summary of the current situation or how they see it .. I can handle reading any more monster posts on nuclear science - .... Please ...

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• Odds of meltdown resulting in nasty radiation spew: 0.01%.
• Odds the situation slowly calms down from here on in, with relatively minor radiation issues: 99.9%.
• Odds of something else unforeseen: 0.01%.
• Odds of the media needing to beat up the story 100%

Julia said:

I keep hearing and reading that the people in the tsunami area are still without enough food, water, or basic medical supplies. Why? People in the evacuation centres were getting half a banana for breakfast, some 'gelatinous' drink, for lunch and it was not known what dinner would be, according to an article in today's Australian.

The suggestion was that the Japanese government are insisting they have everything under control and do not want to lose face by admitting how much help they need.

They are reluctantly accepting a large team of nuclear experts from the US.

If this is correct, it seems pretty amoral that their pride is coming before the care of their devastated people.

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Or the media is full of **** and have a need to report negatives.

So_Cynical said:

• Odds of meltdown resulting in nasty radiation spew: 0.01%.
• Odds the situation slowly calms down from here on in, with relatively minor radiation issues: 99.9%.
• Odds of something else unforeseen: 0.01%.
• Odds of the media needing to beat up the story 100%

Or the media is full of **** and have a need to report negatives.

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LOL.
It would be 99.98% to make 100% btw .
My odds for the bad things were higher simply because Tokyo Electric appears to be really sh-t at taking care of distressed reactors. I could probably do a better job. Seriously, they bring in diesel generators after the backup batteries had drained and, I believe the quote was, "the plugs did not fit".
FFS.

One Plus One – Fukushima’s legacy

Posted on 19 March 2011 by Barry Brook
There have been some slow but positive developments in Fukushima Daiichi today (Saturday 19th March), despite the ongoing seriousness of the situation. Engineers are now on the brink of getting external AC power restored to parts of the site, and water dousing operations on the spent fuel ponds continue, as does cooling by sea water at reactors 1 to 3. I will provide a full update on the situation at the end of today.
Meanwhile, follow the comments in this thread for the real-time updates by commenters.
Below is a 10 minute interview with me that was shown on ABC TV (Australia’s national television broadcaster) during the weekend, on the conversation magazine-style program “One Plus One“. I’m interviewed by Mike Sexton.
Please watch this if you really want to understand where I’m coming from on all of this (including my background and motivations), and for my speculation on what the legacy of Fukushima might be, if rational and logical heads are not kept.









For readers in Australia, you can also watch this on ABC iView.
For other videos on the BraveNewClimate YouTube channel, see here. For my 16 x 5-min audio podcasts (and ongoing), which cover nuclear power and climate change, see here. This one is a good starter: Integral Fast Reactor nuclear power – what is it and why should you care?