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Japan Nuclear Crisis Update
- Radiation levels at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi
complex have varied wildly, with a reading of 11,930
microsieverts at the main gate of the plant at 0000 GMT, up from
596 microsieverts as of 0630 GMT. - Elsewhere at the plant, levels reached as high as 400,000
microsieverts an hour (or 400 millisieverts an hour). - The government gave no update on the status of a steel
container surrounding the core of the plant's No.2 reactor,
deemed by observers as most at risk of a meltdown. - An explosion on Tuesday at the No.2 reactor had caused
some damage to its suppression pool, which helps to cool and
trap the majority of cesium, iodine, strontium in its water. - Later, there was a fire and explosion at the complex's No.
4 reactor and this is likely to have contributed to rising
radiation levels. - The No. 4 reactor had been shut down for maintenance ahead
of the quake, but a spent-fuel cooling pool associated with that
reactor caught fire, causing the explosion. - The No.4 reactor's cooling pool, where spent nuclear fuel
is stored, may be boiling and the water level may be falling. - Radioactivity at the cooling pool is high and Tokyo
Electric cannot make checks at the site or determine what has
burned. - Radiation leakage from complex is likely to spread after a
fresh explosion at the plant.
Via Reuters
A blast, the third in the past two days, ripped through the Fukushima
1 Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, escalating concerns about a
possible nuclear disaster in the country devastated by a powerful
earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
World news agencies reported earlier that a spent fuel storage pond
was on fire and radiation leaked "directly" into the atmosphere. The
Japanese Transport Ministry declared a no-fly zone within the range of
30 km from the blast-hit station "because of detected radiation after
the explosions."
CNN said that radiation levels measured at the troubled plant's front
gate dropped to 596.4 microsieverts per hour at 06:30 GMT on Tuesday,
with the highest reading of 11,930 microsieverts per hour registered at
0:00 GMT.
Temperatures have also been rising slightly in units Five and Six, raising concerns that more reactors may overheat.
Third blast reported
A fire was extinguished on Tuesday at the 4th reactor of Japan's
quake-hit Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, Kyodo news agency reported
early on Tuesday. The agency also reported that the 4th reactor was also
hit by a blast, caused by the build-up of hydrogen.
Reuters later said that a spent fuel storage pond was on fire and radiation leaked "directly" into the atmosphere.
Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged all people residing within 20
kilometers (13 miles) of the nuclear power plant to immediately leave
the zone due to increased radiation levels.
He also advised those living more than 20-30 km (13-17 miles) from
the NPP to stay in their houses, to shut their windows and doors and not
turn on air-conditioning or heating systems.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano confirmed the blast at
the 4th reactor and added that the radiation level near the 3rd reactor
of the plant is very high and poses danger to health.
The French Embassy in Japan said earlier in a statement on its
website that the radiation leak is likely to reach the country's
capital, Tokyo, in 10 hours with the current speed of the wind, but
later withdrew its statement only advising French citizens to remain in
their houses and shut all their doors and windows firmly.
Radiation in Russia 'normal'
Radiation levels in the air around the damaged nuclear power plant
rose after the explosion at the 2nd reactor at around 6:10 local time
(22:10 GMT Monday).
Reuters reported, citing the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power
Co., that the radiation levels had risen fourfold at the reactor. The
agency added that the blast damaged the roof and steam was seen rising
from the nuclear complex.
Monitoring revealed no excessive radiation levels in Russia's Far
East, a spokesman for the office of the presidential envoy in the Far
East said on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the local emergencies service dismissed media reports
of growing radiation levels in the Far Eastern Primorye Territory. He
said exposure rates in the region stood at 12 micro-roentgens per hour
on Tuesday. Exposure rates of up to 30 micro-roentgens per hour are
considered "natural."
"We have enough resources and equipment to tackle possible radiation
pollution in the federal district. But there is no threat to the
population at the moment," he added.
Stock indices plummet
The nuclear accident reports sent Japanese stock indices down
9.5-10.5% at the end of a trading day on Tuesday, their lowest since the
2008 international financial crisis, exchange data showed.
From RIA Novosti
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At that rate of exposure, how many working hours has Japan got left to use there given they only have a certain number of technicians who can each only take so much of a dose?
Not many and dropping. The men and women staying behind to try and control the situation are taking significant dose. Slight damage to white blood cells begins at 10 rem (100 msv). It gets worse from there.
See this for reference: http://bit.ly/bRheP6
50.
Kyodo breaking news: They can't pour water into #4
this is what I'm waiting for...the evac. call on the personnel currently there. Heroics aside they're obliged to make that call if it does get too hot, so to speak. You could probably mark that point down as the point in time all sense of control of the situation was lost.
The workers at the site are not attending to the SFP in unit #4 due to the radiation hazard. The SFP is approx 40 ft x 40 ft x 20 ft and once the water boils away there will be another fire/explosion/radiation release.
In a matter of days that site will become so hot they will pull all the surviving personnel.
Thanks Sushi,
where are you getting that data on?
Sushi was extrapolating and seeing things that weren't there several days ago, although what's projected here is not too far off the mark ...
This is bad news. Things continue to deteriorate.
FYI, for those scoring at home, 1 sv = 100 R. For reference, a rad worker in the US is limited to 5 R per year. With a reading of 400 mSv/hr at the plant, that means a dose of 40 R per hour. Won't be this bad as it disperses, but they can't seem to get a handle on things. Bad, bad news.
Earlier, I thought ZH was going overboard on this issue. Not now. We are deep in the woods here.
TY
Deep shit were in for sure.
what is the delay at this point, for a world wide plea for assistance?
Hopefully someone with more knowledge than I will be able to tell you what assistance the rest of the world could possibly provide.
FRNs and Euros. Add enough paste and they make fair-to-middlin' walls. Can use for roofs if in Sahara.
Any to clue to the half-life of these various emission objects?
I believe they range from a few seconds for some of the gases to 24000 years for the Pu. It depends what gets released and how. No-one knows at this stage.
First priority is to worry about the short-lived stuff like radioactive iodines. I-131 has a half-life of roughly a week. There is a whole soup of other fission products that could be coming out now - we just don't know.
Second priority comes with the longer-lived stuff like cesium-137 - this has a half-life of roughly 30 years and can get into the food chain. We'll know more about how much got out once they (finally) get these reactors (well, piles of molten goo at this point) stabilized.
The others, like plutonium are toxic and do last a very long time, but frankly that is a very minor worry compared to the mess we have right now.
One good analogy is that radiation is like fire - if it burns hot (short half-life) it is generally more immediately dangerous, but it will decay out quicker. The stuff that "burns" slow (long half-life) is generally less hazardous, but can be a pain in the butt for the clean-up phase.
I was wondering if you were going to take a pie to the face after your bullshit tirade on ZH yesterday.
These fuckers lied all the way while this was getting worse and worse. Typical spoon-feeding of awful news to the public.
You are spot on. I totally blew it yesterday. I never would have thought it would get out of hand like this. The numbers I was seeing did conform to gas venting. Shit has hit the fan. I was wrong and painfully so.
Don't worry about it. It hardly matters at this point.
Earlier, I thought ZH was going overboard on this issue. Not now. We are deep in the woods here.
Agree. Time to leave.
With truck access to the plant and an entire world to help you, how did it get this far?
"how did it get this far?"
No sense of risk management among other things.
black swan, unfortunately...didn't see it coming Friday morn when I learned of a quake in Japan....didn't realize 10's of thousands already dead, nuclear disaster to follow...wow, these are days we'll never forget
I stayed up most of the night following the story. Even though I'm tired as hell as I head out for work, I assume(d) I am watching history unfold. Sad history, terrible in nature, but history nonetheless.
Phook going to work, it only encourages the scum to tax you more to keep the fraud/ponzi going.
My prayers and thoughts remain with the people of Japan.
May God's blessing be with them in this ordeal.
Someone junked this...twice?
LOL, man, there are some sick-ass wierdos here now.
Not as many as reside in Lafayette.
WEST Lafayette....we didn't mix it up with those Eastside scumbags...
Kyodonews seem to be a reliable source -
Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plantsTOKYO, March 15, Kyodo
The following is the known status as of Tuesday evening for each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, both in Fukushima Prefecture, crippled by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
Fukushima No. 1
-- Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.
-- Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, damage to containment system, potential meltdown feared.
-- Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby.
-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused possibly by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.
-- Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.
-- Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck.
Fukushima No. 2
-- Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
-- Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
-- Reactor No. 3 - Cold shutdown.
-- Reactor No. 4 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.
Yesterday, I believe, there was a single mention of "criticality concerns" but nothing since -
This would beg the questions: Is there sufficient fissile material in a melt-down pool to reach a critical condition? This would mean an atomic explosion at the plant site. How big?
Or do we get a 'China Syndrome" where the melt pool just sinks into the earth?
Concerned People Want To Know ...
A nuclear explosion is rather hard to achieve. You need to keep all the material in one place - and it doesn't want to be there.
In a basic atom bomb you need a large focused conventional explosion to keep everything together (strange as it may seem). For some of the larger thermonuclear devices you actually have conventional explosives setting off a nuclear explosion and it's that pressure wave from that which sets off further nuclear explosions. Please see the Tsar bomb.
I wouldn't worry about the China syndrome thing. Assuming it did burn through the earth's crust (and I had to suspend disbelief to even write that sentance), the fuel would get mixed up in the magma to very little effect.
edit:
I would have thought that having a situation with four cores on fire releasing hundreds of tons of hideously radioactive and toxic waste into the atmosphere is the worst case scenario. Unless they can stop it, it will pump out radioactivity almost endlessly. But how do you stop it if people are receiving fatal doses within minutes?
There is only one way. Nuke it. You stop the reaction, but there might be some fallout....
Thanks, I guess.
God help us all.
Both. Neither. It doesn't matter. Just BTFD. BOOOOYAAAAA
Zero chance of nuclear explosion. "Criticality" in this circumstance means enough fissile material gets together to cause increased output of (mainly) gamma radiation. The fuel in the rods does not have the required purity, and achieving a nuclear blast requires some serious geometrical shaping, various materials interfacing, and a way to produce a lot of neutrons in a hurry.
Nuclear devices can be crudely described in terms of their "frequency response." Weapons, by design, have a very high frequency response, burn fuel at a very high rate and consume large amounts of it before the thermal and nuclear effects separate the pieces into a non-critical mass that ends further reactions. Power reactors, being almost infinitely lower-frequency devices, are not capable of achieving this. Even a prompt criticality at a power reactor such as that at Chernobyl produces a large thermal event and a mechanical explosion of sorts, but not a mushroom cloud.
That is generally correct. There are more dissimilarities between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear weapon than there are similarities.
Christian Science Monitor reports that older reactors that depend on electricity for cooling need to secure their primary and secondary electrical supply sources.
Well .... YEAH
This is a link to some .pdfs that give a synopsis of the damage at the reactors at Fukushimi: http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/
I don't believe that info is up to date as it conflicts with other reporting.
The SFP on unit #4 is reported to have low water level with ongoing water injection (via fire hose?). Other reporting on BBC is that the SFP is boiling and the crew are unable to attend to it due to the present radiation hazard.
If the BBC report is correct we should get a report of further fire and explosion in unit #4 within the next 24 hours.
[edit: the SFP on units 5 and 6 is reported to show increasing temps. With no coolant flow these will also boil off resulting in further fires and explosions. ]
I agree that the chart is not immediatley up to date.
How the f*ck can the pumps be failing at the SFP? Call the US Navy, tell them to drop in diesels and fuel on pallets and keep the power going from that. I know I am not on-scene, but there are resources they could be tapping.
No there isn't. In any event, its too late.They might minimize the damage, but it is unlikely.
The response of both Tepco and the Japanese government has puzzled me from the beginning. Seems like if a nuke plant in the US had no power the govt would have the military dropping diesel generators right and left on the place within hours, and not relying on firefighting equipment to cool the reactors. At one point the workers allowed the lone surviving pump to run out of fuel(though I'm sure contamination was a fear even then) causing the fuel rods in No2 to get fully exposed a second time. There's probably no remaining gear that can do the job.
MSM in full denial last night still running the; "This is no Chernobyl" stories.
That's basically what I thought and posted yesterday. I even went as so far as to suggest pulling backup pumps from non-effected reactors in safe zones AND calling up the manufacturer. (and I'm sure hundreds of other ZH-ers thought it)
I mean these things are just common sense, and the Japanese as with anybody, have a lot of it. So I just don't get it.
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This would be the PERFECT opportunity to field some robots to do the 'dirty work' ... so, where are they?
.