This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Latest Fukushima Headlines
The latest in the tragic story that just gets weirder by the minute.
- TEPCO's mishandling of info on nuclear crisis 'unacceptable': Edano
- Partial meltdown of fuel rods believed to be temporary: Edano
- Radioactive water from No. 2 reactor due to partial meltdown: Edano
- Contaminated water due to condensed steam, not reactor crack: Edano
And our personal favorite:
- Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
As this whole farce has gone beyond the surreal, we are now actively waiting for a cartoon Mr. Burns to show up at any ongoing press conference and announce that Springfield Nuclear Power Plant has LBOed Fukushima with Discount Window financing, at a #Ref! EV/EBITDA considering 9501.JP will not see any positive cash flow for millennia, and is appointing Mr. Sparkle (aka Homer Simpson) chief safety inspector.
Source: Kyodo
»
- 16697 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
"Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now"
He was taking about the temporary return of those who evacuated.
"condensed steam" theory is for Reactors 1 and 3. For 2, it's still water from the Pressure Vessel somehow leaked.
That man is insane....
If it is at all posible to see a silver lining to all this, maybe , just maybe, Kim Jong Un will be the ultimate victim of this nuclear diasater - next time he tries to extort more concessions by letting go a nuclear device, the japanese would just stick him the middle finger and ask him how many sievert his puny nuclear device emits.
Obviously the Japanese have built their reactor using memory metals, so the reactor returns to its original shape after a short meltdown intermezzo.
This stuff from Japan is truly shocking. If there is 1 Sievert/hr of Iodine 131 in huge pools of water under the reactor, the thing either melted down, or the spent fuel pond went critical. Large amounts of Iodine don't get into the water unless fuel rods have burned/melted/exploded from pressure and opened up their partially spent fuel to be dissolved into the cooling water. Pretty basic.
BTW: If significant amounts Iodine 134 are present, then fuel has gone critical in the last 24 hours. somewhere on the site. This report was recanted as accidental. I find this HIGHLY unlikely. Modern radiation equipment doesn't make mistakes like that.
None of this is good, and the world should be told without prevarication what's really going on.
The issue is can they now cool ALL the rods on the premises? Or are there some that are still burning and/or melting? They've had 2+ weeks to get a handle on this, so if they still can't cool everything now, there is a significant chance they never will.
The real danger is that radiation will just build up until workers can't get near the problem. Then, radiation will slowly spread to the entire facility, and eventually other equipment will fail where workers can't get to it. Eventually, more and more rods will begin to melt/burn/go critical.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what it looks like: slow loss of control until Hoover Dam amounts of concrete are the ONLY option. I think they are already past that point with parts of the facility, but they aren't being aggressive enough.
Of course, this is all made vastly more difficult by the huge recovery effort, but don't use concrete to repave highways, bury your f*ing reactors NOW!
Just in: [Dow Jones] ASIAN SUMMARY: Regional equities markets were mostly lower, with Tokyo shares hit by renewed concerns about a stricken nuclear power complex as radioactive water slowed repair work. The Nikkei is down 0.6%, the S&P/ASX is down 0.2%, the HSI is down 0.7%, the STI is down 0.7%, the Taiex is down 0.7%, Indonesia shares are down 0.5%, Thailand's SET is down 0.2% and the KLCI is down 0.1%;
and sell on those rallies...
Nearby option expirations today include vanilla USD/JPY 81.00 (so-so large), EUR/USD 1.4200, GBP/AUD 1.6030 and AUD/USD 0.9800, 0.9900, 1.0000, 1.0100 and 1.0300 strikes.
My trades are in place.
believed to be temporary
That was a whole pile of humor in 4 words.
"Let's just hammer gold and silver and everything else will fall into place".
Blythe Masters
http://dawnwires.com/politics/tepco-presidentmasataka-shimizu-taken-ill-radiation-suspected/
Tepco President taken sick.
For anyone who missed (like me): ZAMG assessment of Fukushima iodine and cesium level compared to Chernobyl: iodine 20%, cesium 20 to 60%.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-austrias-zamg....
I am wondering what fellow-ZHers think about this version of Japanese events:
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2011/03/japan-tsunami-caused-by-haarp.html
yes, it is a conspiracy, but that doesn't mean that there is no any rationale behind it.
Hard to imagine how the high frequency waves that they use to tickle the ionosphere could penetrate down through thousands of metres of seawater (water absorbs electromagnetic waves) to a subduction zone many kms below the ocean bed to trigger this slip in the plates.
Go back to sleep Snoopy/Sheeple. Try googling scalar waves/warfare (haven't we been here before?).
Imagine vibrating tectonic plates at their resonant frequencies at precisely the location of greatest tension.
When masses are tweaked at their resonant frequencies, it is easy to move or even shatter mountains with relatively tiny amounts of energy.
i-dog, just add me to your list of "worst nightmares". I am awareness.
FFS, dude ... lay off the shrooms, re-connect the earthing strap to your tinfoil hat and concentrate!
Ready? OK ... What is the "resonant frequency" of an irregularly shaped plate a few thousand miles across and up to hundreds of miles thick when damped by quite a few thousand feet of water?
If you can't work out the answer, then ask your domestic science teacher in class tomorrow. There will be a test.
I agree B.R. HAARP technologies appear to be activated at very, very interesting times.
Co-inky-dink? Not to me.
Those bastards are either in way over their heads, or they plan to create much destruction as quickly as possible. I wonder if they expected the disaster at Fukushima when tweaking the plates off the coast of Japan. My guess is that they got more than they bargained for, but that guess may be charitable.
un-junk and.... un-junk again :-)
Here is my proposal. Lets have Bernanke get in the helicopter and drop dollars on the Fukushima reactors, until the nuclear fuel is sufficiently diluted by melted dollars and stops being a danger.
Or we could just hope that by MSM toning down reporting on this event, temporary melted rods will solidify in their original state, the leaks will close up and the cooling system will repair itself.
ALERT! TEPCO said there may be a hole at the bottom of Pressure Vessels in Reactors 1, 2, 3. TEPCO said it in early hours on March 28, but Asahi Shinbun only reported at 3PM.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-reactor-pressu...
Its funny how the japanese government is real angry about TEPCO giving a wrong statement reading too HIGH values..
Everything is acceptable for TEPO, except giving out too high values scaring people... says a lot.
...SO WHERE IN THE WORLD IS IT SAFE?...
tia
Radiation above 1,000 millisieverts per hour was found in surface water in trenches outside the No. 2 reactor of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power said on Monday. (Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/28/idUSLKE7DP00A20110328
Surface water, a fucking trench! So much for containment. This shit is just everywhere.
You pour firehoses on it for days, the water is going to run out. This is not surprising. They are dribbling the news out slowly. The panic they hope to avoid will come anyway. Those with the knowledge and the means have already left to avoid the stampede.
Isn't it funny how the phrase 'partial meltdown' has suddenly appeared during this crisis.
Isn't it basically like saying a 'partial car crash'?
When this does finally go very very bad (if it isn't already) - do you think we'll get apologies from all the 'experts' who assured us it was safe and 'couldn't be another chernobyl' in the first 2 days of the crisis?
....or will they magically 'disappear'?
"we are now actively waiting for a cartoon Mr. Burns to show up at any ongoing press conference and ... appointing Mr. Sparkle (aka Homer Simpson) chief safety inspector."
At least he'd have the sense to hand the job over to someone else and get back to his donut.
There is no question that the fuel rods have melted. I did not hear him say anything about temporary melting. I suspect it's a translation error. It's not unreasonable to surmise that the partially melted fuel rods put out steam containing radioisotopes into the piping into the turbine and if it then leaks into the turbine building then, yes, that water will be reactive. That's one of the problems with the BWR design. During normal operation the steam into the turbine is radioactive with short lifetime species, e.g. N-16.
This morning JST we also learned that the condensers were full and that they were going empty them (but what's the radioactivity of this water??) and pump the radioactive water from the turbine building floor into the condensers.
In the best TEPCO tradition of understating everything by several orders of magnitude, here are some barely related items.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1QQR-xH0w
The Nuclear Powerplant Z. Inside an abandoned, unfinished cold war reactor building of similar design to Fukishima. Good shots of the spent fuel pools and core vessel, giving an idea of the scale. Much more, very atmospheric without even the radiation, steam, ruins and darkness of Fukushima.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mechanicalmonster/sets/72157625347586254/de...
And here are the still shots we can see in the video...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mechanicalmonster/5189681960/
Nuclear Power Station-East Germany 1996
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=42562
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPmlP0dRjgo
Another power plant. Not nuclear, very used, the full ferny goodness.
More scaremongering crap from ZH. During Chernobyl:
"Average effective doses to those persons most affected by the accident were assessed to be about 120 mSv for 530,000 recovery operation workers, 30 mSv for 115,000 evacuated persons and 9 mSv during the first two decades after the accident to those who continued to reside in contaminated areas. (For comparison, the typical dose from a single computed tomography scan is 9 mSv)"
Chernobyl blew up at full power and the hot reactor mass was exposed to air for days. Nothing like this accident. You will start getting radiation sickness only after about 1000 mSv, deaths around 4000-6000 mSv. Even smoking 1.5 packs/day: 13-60 mSv/year.
someone is quite scared
monday dis in form a tion
"nothing to see here..."
Go back to school, idiot.
behold the power of poetry
Suddenly a wave.
Some unseen design errors.
All plans in ruins.
C E O in tears.
Our vast sadness unfolding.
Tears are not enough!
Those whom fate has spared
Are we to envy the dead?
I do not know yet.
Among total loss,
Beautiful girl sits weeping.
This world is broken.
Your grasp of Haiku is impressive. Well done.
So what's wrong with the official statement that locals cannot return to the evecuated zone, "for now".
This is true. The evacuation is only temporary, and they can return in 20,000 years time.
Haha! Love that avatar.
But will it be safe in 20,000 years?
“The concentrations are so low as to be absurd,” Ballinger said, when contacted by the Herald. “The event is pretty much contained, right now. They have power back to the site.”
Wishful thinking does not good public policy make. Neither does avoidance and misdirection. My guess is that when the Teleprompter addresses his adoring masses tonight he will make no attempt to reassure americans that radioactive rain falling on the Eastern seaboard as a result of events half way around the planet is something that his administration takes seriously. No, he will seek to explain why he has taken a patently absurd decision to open a third foreign war. Meantime, back in Japan, there is something to worry about. The situation is not well in hand, nor is it well understood at all. My guess is that, wishful thinking to the contrary, a china syndrome type of melt down is a very real possibility for one or more of these reactors. Why? People who are assuming that the fuel involved cannot reach criticality do so based on the assumption that the material involved is diluted by both non-fissionable and fission damping contaminants. It is further assumed that this mixture (presumably molten at this point is sitting in a homogenous pool at the bottom of a reactor vessel. Think about the fallacy of that assumption though. If the material is molten and it is being heated then it has convection currents within it. It has motion and that motion will tend to stratify the molten material. The plutonium and uranium components which are both the most fissionable and heaviest will collect at the bottom of the mass where they can reach critical mass. Once they reach critical mass, and assuming they stay more or less confined they will involve the material around them, burning inexorably downward ala "china syndrome". This situation is unique and not at all well understood, therefore all possibilities are open. Any one who seeks to reassure the population either in Massachusetts, Tokyo or Timbuck-fucking-too that there is "nothing to worry about" or that the "situation is contained" should be cordially invited to take a flying hump at a rolling donut. The situation is not contained and until it is a great deal of caution and planning for emergent scenarios is called for. That, by the way is known as Leadership. What part of Leadership don't you get Barry?
Well didn't Ballinger make a prize idiot of himself. Or maybe he thinks 1000 milliseiverts a scratch.
From my limited knowledge of nuclear explosions, relating to weapons design, there is virtually no danger of these atomic reactor and storage pool witches brews going kaboom, but history tells us there is a possibility of their going kaphut - as happened to a Russian storage pond.
If they go kaphut it might be for one of two reasons:
(i) enough fissionable material collects at the base of a reactor vessel for the material to go super-critical, but the problem here, I think, is that as it went super critical it would fly apart and go sub-critical.
(ii) the neutron flux from the mass of material at the base of a reactor vessel makes the steel brittle, cracks develop and the material pours out rapidly and hits water.
I think it is however far more likely that the contents of these reactor vessels would leak and "steam" out slowly; in fact I think that is what is happening.
Are "worser" and "worserer" already existing words ?
How about "even more worserer"?
Around here "worslier" would probably cut the mustard :)
+1
Maybe we should calibrate with "worse x 3" or "better x 2".
6.5 ( later 6.1) earthquake could be the third of foreshocks to a larger Aftershock ( >M7) somewhere nearby, soon (few weeks) :
http://www.saposjoint.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2657&start=180#p31416