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Kyodo Reports Cooling System At Third Nuclear Power Plant Fails
Breaking news from Kyodo: the cooling system at Tokai, a third nuclear power plant now said to have cooling failures, has stopped according to the fire department. Tokai was Japan's first nuclear power plant. The plant has two reactors: a 1965 built Magnox-type 166MW, and a 1978 built Boiling Water Reactor generating 1100MW. As Wikileaks reports: "This Boiling Water Reactor was the first nuclear reactor built in Japan to produce over 1000 MW of electricity. By some formalities in the paperwork, the unit is technically separate from the rest of the nuclear facilities at Tokai-mura, but it is managed with the rest of them and even shares the same front gate. The power produced at the unit is sold by both the Tokyo Electric Company and the Tohoku Electric Company." SkyNews adds that the cooling has failed at the bigger, BWR reactor.
Location of the Tokai plant, which is just south of the two Fukushima complexes... and only 100 km from Tokyo:
And the token picture:
A quick summary of the reactors:
Unit 1
This reactor was built based on British developed Magnox technology. Unit 1 will be the first nuclear reactor to be decommissioned in Japan. The experience in decommissioning this plant is expected to be of use in the future when more Japanese plants are decommissioned. Below is a brief time-line of the process.
* March 31, 1998: operations cease
* March 2001: last of the nuclear fuel moved off-site
* October 4, 2001: decommissioning plan announced
* December 2001: decommissioning begins, spent fuel pool is cleaned
* 2003: turbine room and electric generator taken down
* Late 2004: fuel moving crane dismantled
* 2011: the reactor itself is dismantled
Unit 2
This Boiling Water Reactor
was the first nuclear reactor built in Japan to produce over 1000 MW of
electricity. By some formalities in the paperwork, the unit is
technically separate from the rest of the nuclear facilities at
Tokai-mura, but it is managed with the rest of them and even shares the
same front gate. The power produced at the unit is sold by both the Tokyo Electric Company and the Tohoku Electric Company.
A quick summary of all Japanese power plants:
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http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyid=192296
14/03/2011 5:48:00
There are reports the cooling system has failed at a third nuclear plant in Japan, following the nine magnitude earthquake.
The Tokai plant is in Ibaraki prefecture, around 120 kilometres north of Tokyo.
Meanwhile, a state of emergency has been declared at Onagawa plant, where Japanese authorities say radioactivity readings have gone over allowed levels.
And at Fukushima plant, where there was an explosion at the weekend, venting of one of the reactor units has begun.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says, through a translator, the reactor is showing signs of failure.
"And the failure in the valve has to be solved and the air pressure inside has to be lowered and we are working on that."
Yukio Edano says there has been no change in radiation levels since the effort to cool the reactor began.
Excellent note by someone who actually has a clue about nuclear energy (as opposed to NBC, NYT, ABC,Reuters,.....and other "journalists" ) . http://bit.ly/gYCnPO
Thanks... Interesting read.
I wonder how many of the Nuke staff is missing from work, period? Cops often don't come in for emergencies, they opt to protect their own families. Never mind a Tsunami rolls in...and out.
I've spent several years working directly with the Japanese at Sony and, given their culture, I would think quite the opposite to be true.
Ms, I'm betting the opposite. Ya, maybe pack up the family, off to Uncle Seiji's, then back to work. Emergency planning is pretty standard world wide. Will be a management facility at like 10 mi+ where work teams will be organized.
One of the lessons after TMI: let the crew do the work, keep the technical assessments teams away and working efficiently. Emergency communication out of the control room. All well thought out and exercised. See, e.g.: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr0737/sup1/s... and the derived (later) "nuclear data link" that transmits key information to outsiders (utility management and regulators). Only way that IAEA can be making independent assessments is to have access to this near-real time data.
So, very strict crew control, management of crew burn-up (exposure, margin to limits, age/fertility considerations), marshalling of crews without all the 'driving to work'.
But we'll see.
- Ned
Both you and snowball777 make excellent points about the culture and the occupation itself I over looked. They could still be short handed given they have no idea who is dead, injured, or just washed out to sea with as yet a indeterminate fate.
I was looking at it as another potential hardship for them. I'd work better if I knew my family was safe, so let's hope that is one of the perks of their job, a special family barracks if needed, away from the emergency itself.
I agree that missing even a tiny percentage of "the right people" could be crippling, but they hopefully know that the best protection they can give to their families will be to focus on dealing with the emergency.
With an offshore breeze it seems somewhat disconcerting that any attempts to monitor the level of radiation leaks into the atmosphere (never mind the sea water for now) do not specifically identify if existing levels are being reported only from onshore locations.
If it all blows out to sea it's apparently not a problem until the wind shifts and you can count on the MSM to only ask such insightful questions as "has an investigation into the cause begun?"
Is there really protection from a 30 foot wave? The largest detected is over 1,000. What can be done to protect the world from a 1,000 foot tsunami? What utterly blithering idiots the MSM are. Ron Burgundy rules!
To be clear, the latest information appears to indicate that two more plants, Tokai and Onagawa, have entered states of emergency. Those two plants have four operational (and one closed) reactor units between them.
So there are four nuclear plants with fourteen operational (and one closed) reactor units now in states of emergency. The situation has deteriorated each day thus far.
I now think we are witnessing the worst nuclear incident in history unfolding. I seriously hope that I am wrong.
At the minimum, this has to be a Guinness record for how many of them are in crisis at the same time, you know, assuming all of them turn out just fine.
They need help.
North Korea just said if Japan doesn't keep its disasters in check it will consider them an act of war
Like Kim Jong-il's hair is not a disastrous provocation?
+100
dup - and needs more scotch
Here's an excellent write-up by a reactor designer that should put peoples' minds at ease concerning these "meltdowns". I found it at IKN the latin american website by Otto:
http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-...
Right, look for the NWO to rise and demand global approval of proposed sovereign/domestic developments such as nuke plants... then the Scope expands
FEMA online education course for emergency managers:
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is3.asp