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Magnified Picture Of Reactors 3 And 4 Post Explosion
Tis but a scratch. We have just one question: why isnt Fukushima crawling with iRobots armed with cameras and geiger counters?
And a close up of the Reactor 4 blow out per an ongoing NISA conference:
and a last one, slightly better contrast
h/t asdasmos
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+1000 rems
Reading comprehension, you has none of it. Break is at 11, my feed flatlined at 10:30, hence my questioning what was going on. Restarting resolved my issue. Now go kill yourself for your stupidity
MIT Professor has a new video out, explaining that people should remain calm, because there is little risk in the current situation:
I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors says MIT's Dr. Josef Oehmen
Haven't read it yet, but I suspect he doesn't live in the area then?
He doesn't need to. He's like Benny B. His models tell him all he needs to know.
i will believe him if he go to the site and have a sushi dinner on the spot.
He can't have sushi - it'll be deep fried before he can eat it. Got to laugh or you'll cry - what a complete and utter clusterfuck. This is so terrible.
I'll worry for both of us...
Link switch? A new low...
Here is the real link if you were vagina hurt (really?):
Why I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors Also, here is the story on the good (/sarc) MIT Professor:
MIT Researcher Is Not a Nuclear Scientist, Radioactivity Claims DebunkedJesus Diaz — Salon has published this article about "MIT research scientist" Dr. Josef Oehmen and his post Why I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors, which went viral after its publication.
In that article, Oehmen said that "there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors". A claim that has proven to be completely wrong several times already, as announced in repeated occasions by the Japanese government: The latest radioactivity escape occurred this morning, releasing "a radiation 800 times more intense than the recommended hourly exposure limit in Japan", according to the New York Times.
According to Salon, Dr. Oehmen is employed at MIT but he is not a nuclear scientist of any kind. He actually works at the Lean Advancement Initiative, focusing on business management issues:
Since its publication, Oehmen's post was republished by MIT in an edited version, taking out the title and any claim about radiation escapes. Oehmen has declined any comment about Salon's article. [Salon]
"vagina hurt"? Is somebody home sick? You could probably crawl back up your Mom's vagina after the lifetime workout that open pit mine has had...give it a try Sparky...
Pamprin + Celestial Season's Lemon Zing tea = your vagina all better
Damn this has literally turned into Fight Club. Not that I'm immune to the criticism after last night, but we all need to focus on the issues.
Hmm. Imagine that, another shill for corporate interests. Thank you, TD, for this little patch of financial news sanctuary.
Debunked: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/remember-mit-all-safe-paper
Not worried ! Did he see the picture at the top of this article ? Does he think this is a picture of a concrete building with a nice safe watertight room in it ? On the third floor ? where the forty square foot empty hole is yawning open? Is that what he thinks ? does he think the nice perfect water tight room can be filled up with a fire hose? because it doesn't leak.? Dr. Oehmen is either an idiot or not paying attention.
Don't they have access to computers to tell them how the cooling attempt is going? Do they really need to send in employees intermittenly to gauge the levels.
Um, yeah, cuz computers are all knowing, all seeing, oracles of mystical, magical powers...OOOOOOO.
that just cracked me up. good job.
I'd be really surprised if ANY sensors are working at this point. You know the old saying (garbage in garbage out). No sensors = garbage out.
Poor technophiles, waiting for iinspector gadget to come and make it all okay again.
Don't be so reactive, they said. It's just a little owie.
Fix the EVM, fix the geiger counters, fix the information, fix the photo... the fix is in.
The spent fuel pools, anyone seen pictures of them, looking all blue and cool?
Somethign wicked this way comes takes on a whole new meaning here, because you will never see it coming. All the information is controlled iinformation.
Such memories of the GOM nightmare. Add to the fact that radiation levels were elevated in GOM leak too.
But we tend to forget because this new disaster is so much more compelling.
I read yesterday that the US is rushing assistance to Japan, all of 2 NRC "experts", said NRC havign cleared these Grossly Egregious (GE) designs in the first place.
Days to go now anyways, anyone who believes this is just going to BLOW away is probably right.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/axis-trembles/
So many conflicting reports coming out.
For example:
Workers evacuating because they are reporting radiation levels are FALLING?
It must be really bad if this level of doo doo is being spewed.
Damn it where is Baghdad Bob when you need him?!
I'm numb. This is terrible. I have been following the news since it started. Though I often have a dim outlook on negative events, this one is moving into dark places faster than my imagination.
There should be an app for this.
There is. Geiger app
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id391274853?mt=8
I finally figured out why this is happening....All the Jeenyus Nookyaler Fizzicysts are busy blabbing away on zero hedge instead of inserting the control rods into the reactor core!!!
You tell me man, I just work here
The troopers sit, more subdued now, swaying and
bouncing in the heavily sprung vehicle. Wierzbowski
is in the saddle. Ripley and Newt sit side by side
just aft of the driver's cockpit.
NEWT
I was the best at the game.
I knew the whole maze.
RIPLEY
The 'maze'? You mean the
air ducts?
NEWT
Yeah, you know. In the walls,
under the floor. I was the
ace. I could hide better
than anybody.
RIPLEY
You're really something, ace.
Ripley's gaze shifts out the windshield as the
processing station looms ahead.
EXT. APC/STATION 79
The vast structure towers above the parked personnel
carrier. Deploying in front of the APC, backlit by
its lights, the troopers cast long shadows. They
look ominous. Hulking techno-samurai.
The base of the station is a depthless maze of
conduits and pressure vessels, like an oil refinery.
Or a Dantean version of one. The THRUM of
functioning machine systems echoes through the
labyrinth.
GORMAN
(voice over; static)
Forty meters in. Ramp on
axial two-two. Access to
sublevels.
The troopers start down the open rampway. Light
filters down through several levels of steel mesh
floor, catwalks and pipes. Below that is darkness.
GORMAN
(voice over; static)
B-Level. Next one down.
The thrumming of machines grows louder as they
descend.
INT. APC 80
Huddles around the screens are Ripley, Burke and
Gorman. Newt squeezes in from behind. Gorman is
doing his video wizard bit, dancing on the buttons.
GORMAN
(to team)
We're not making that out too
well. What is it?
HUDSON
(voice over; static)
You tell me. I only work
here.
INT. COMPLEX 81
The group stands before a bizarre tableau. Among
the refinerylike lattice of pipes and conduits
something new and not of human design had been
added.
Hard to believe the same director went on to do Avatar. That movie just made me laugh, it was so heavy-handed.
Breaking news on NHK: Warning about an imminent earthquake. Take precautions.
They just showed 2 live video footage from 2 high-rises. Looks like it was just a warning.
They will use this tragedy to sell to the world that there must be a world government to cope with these types of big natural disasters.
NHK just issued a "strong earthquake" advisory. Japan can't catch a break right now.
NHK warning people against sudden jolts and and tsunamis.
NOW they can predict earthquakes?!?!?!?!?!?!
NYFD.
Amazing, still no equipment staging efforts.
"The good of the many outweigh the needs of the few"
OK. Spock.
No robots or Drones in a country that's obsessed with robots simply because they don't want you to know the truth.
Remember the BP feed ...
The difference is that families will see where their husbands and sons are getting their lethal dose ... it might be a bit different in that respect.
I sure wouldn't want to be confronted with it ... but then again, ... I would want to know what was happening to them.
Tepco lied at the beginning. The design problem of reactor has long existed. Now no top managers from Tepco show up. This tragedy has once again caused by human being!
My heart goes out for Japan.
CNN has a guy on now. MIT fellow who seems to know something about this. When they flashed the news that the workers were leaving he shit in his pants. Now I'm worried.
where does this go?
It goes down at first then it goes up.
National reactor fleet shutdown, until they are sure the rest are not going to pop, or get waved. Remember, No.4 was out of operation for months ... and yet ... here it is ...
A reactor in the off position, is not really in the off position.
I'm guessing general human misery focused on the poor, as usual.
I haven't seen an intelligent "worst case" as of now.
Running away seems bad is the sum of my nuclear plant knowledge.
I always value your comments...
Love your work Bruce; second to none,
No one knows, not even the nuclear scientists. This is unprecedented.
We have SIX reactors in trouble, two blew (loaded with plutonium/uranium rods) although there have been 4 explosions, one containment vessel is reported to be cracked, and the engineers are getting the fuck out of dodge.
It should also be noted that the U.S military is no where near this and that is very telling. If there was a chance of this being anything less than catostrophic there would be ships showering those plants with water or something...they are FAR FAR away.
This is a worse case scenario as it pertains to this type of "accident"
the dark forces of nature seem to be in control now
if spent fuel rods are exposed in the pools, and they were pumping water there... I have a hard time believing the steam off rate (sorry, definitely not tech savvy in this area) is higher than their pumping in of water rate... so there must be structural leaks in the pools, caused by the earthquake, tsunami, or hydrogen explosions?
It's hard to know because engineers can't get in there.
So even if they can continue keeping the reactors cool for the time being what's the next logical step if radiation levels are so high it prevents humans from fixing it?
It appears to me that they are going have to have those reactors go into full meltdown and hope it doesnt cause too much collateral damage...than I would guess level it and turn it into a parking lot.
I have no idea what can be done in this situation...
There probably isn't much that can be done once they lose control completely. Those early reactor designers (me included) always assumed (not always comfortably) that the systems, the mass, a huge amount of water availability, careful design, redundant power and human ingenuity of the operators would win the day in an accident. We modeled every accident we thought possible (pre personal computer days....had to send our calcs out and get them modelled on an IBM 360)....but, somehow I do not remember modelling a 9.0 earthquake, and a 30 ft. Tsunami hitting a plant. That is something they do these days, and they do not consider the Richter magnitude at the epicenter, but the ground vibration in acceleration directly under the plant. What happened at Fukuchima was the earthquake/Tsunami took out the power, the water and the systems. The radiation took out the ingenuity of the operators. The careful design was, in retrospect, never there. That leaves the mass. The only problem with the mass is the penetrations of it to make systems work and allow outside monitoring and control. I always hated those, but had to have them. It appears that at least in one case the suppression pool (Torus) may well have been compromised. I guess we have learned something since those early designs, but I am sitting here wondering if we have learned enough. Knowing human nature, I doubt we have.
Thanks - great post.
bob, such a cogent response...wow.
That's exactly what I've been saying.
If they cannot cool this shit, they are going to have to let it melt down and prevent a fire at all costs
@bob_dabolina
Amen. When was the last time TPTB shied away from the U.S. military? It's the goto institution that does everything and it can't handle this? Bad medicine.
Kamikaze mission abort ? !
everything we think about Japan just isn't true... no super robots.. kami attacks.. ninjas??? not even any Ninjas???
that is the real disaster
Either the government spokesman or the translator has to have made a hash of that. Not even TEPCO would have the brass balls to just pull everybody out.
I'm no expert, but if there is not heavy discussion going on of where they can get several tons of sand, concrete, boric acid, and lead, then these people are officially idiots. At this point, it doesn't matter very much whether you can restore power to the site, or what exactly is going on in which reactor. Find the hottest spot and bury it.
There might be a slight problem trying to convince people to carry out this remediation. Personally, TEPCO couldn't pay me enough to respond to this incident, and I am more than qualified.
Fair enough. But if you worked in that plant, and all your friends and family and neighbors were at risk, would your answer change?
I'm sure you intended that to be rhetorical. It's sorta like asking someone if they would engage in canibalism if faced with starvation.
No, it's actually meant as a serious, although not personal, question.
The story goes that during Chernobyl there was a fear that corium would burn through to the suppression pool under the reactor and cause a massive steam explosion. Three men volunteered to dive into that pool and open the sluice gates so the pool would drain.
I honestly do wonder what those three men were thinking when they volunteered, what drove them.
Okay, I would say that if permanent relocation were an option, I would gather my family up and put as much distance between us and the incident as possible.
I'm wondering if you would do the opposite and offer your life to the clean-up effort?
I would argue that, like my cannibalism analogy above, no one can say with absolute conviction what they would or would not do in a life or death situation.
Obviously, as you point out it's an impossible question to answer until the time comes.
I think, bad as it sounds, that it would depend a great deal on the quality of the leadership and my own assessment of the situation. If I believed that my family would be taken care of, that the situation was truly dire and would lead to many other deaths, and that the sacrifice would not be wasted by fools and incompetents, then yes I would like to think that I would feel it was my duty to stay and do whatever was necessary to stop it.
But, returning to your original reply...this is TEPCO we're talking about here. The range of things I would do on the say-so of these assclowns is very narrow.
You know, BK. We all know where this is going.
Not good news Bruce. I'm in the US nuke industry, very familiar w/ GE BWRs...we have to hope that we're missing something in the translation or that there are other plans not being mentioned. But if not, they have abandoned ship. Rad levels aren't going to improve w/ time, at least near term. All 6 Rx's are in distress of some sort. We know they've melted U1, U2, U3. TEPCO has made statements about % melting on each but not sure how they've come up with that given no ac or dc power in the plants. I suspect its a SWAG to make them look like they know something. Their status updates have been garbage since the event started. For a day or so they were reporting only 50 people left on site. No way...No way that 50 can handle 6 Rx's in this state. Normal compliment at a US BWR is about 500 people per plant. And they have 50 there now? I realize the need to evac non-essentials but why haven't they got every spare diesel generator and cable reel in Japan at that site right now to get power back to fuel pool cooling and other loads? Nothing TEPCO has said since Friday has been informative or given the impression that they have a handle on the situation. Now we learn they've abandoned ship. We suspect now that the "smoke/steam" is coming from the damaged Unit 3 and not Unit 4's Spent Fuel Pool inside the Rx Bldg. Unit 1's spent fuel pool is also fully exposed. Reports indicate Unit 5 and 6 SFP's have no cooling w/ temperature increasing - not sure how long those have to boil. Basically, we don't know anything about plant status, there is no cooling to any SFP, they state they've injected water into U1, U2, U3 but no idea if that water is really in the vessel or in the containment bldg or leaked out. Its believed the H2 explosion at Unit 2 damaged primary containment so its possible water is leaking out of that containment - certainly radioactive gas/steam would be leaking out. Also - with no power - its dark in these plants so not sure how anyone could walk around and perform even basic damage control. Its not going to get better soon, meaning this week. It could get a lot worse in terms of radiation release, which is now completely uncontrolled and largely unmonitored. If Japan/TEPCO can't fix this they need to let people in who can.
The wind is supposed to shift onshore on Saturday. I thought Cooper and Gupta were going to have twin heart attacks right there as their studio weatherman said "once we get easterly winds....it will blow highly radioactive material over, well, millions and millions of people....it's just a highly, densely populated country" or something very close to those words.
My fear is that after the explosions, fires, and other attendant damage that even if they had power onsite, they wouldn't have the ability to get the existing cooling systems in working order. Is it feasible to rig something that can do the job instead?
For unit 2, what's the contingency for cooling the reactor if you determine that primary containment is broken?
They clearly don't know the state of their equipment even in the most basic ways. How do they accomplish the work that's needed if they can't even tell what the hell is going on?
The plan is that it is hopeless. All those spent fuel containers need to be accounted for and moved asap, a job they know is impossible under current conditions. It is all going to become so highly contaminated it will set a new record.
+26 trillion... this is exactly what i've been thinking/saying ever since the beginning of this whole mess. I have no idea where their primary off-site power is coming from, but I would have thought they would have been able to get that back online by now, even if it meant putting 20,000 people to work stringing in 100 miles of transmission lines from somewhere else. Aside from that, they should have been trucking in multiple massive diesel generators from elsewhere.
Thanks your input. PWR guy here. Just learned on net [?] that TEPCO got go-ahead to partner on 2 Texas nuc gen plants. Check out Greg Palast at
http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/I'm glad I wasn't the only one to see it. "I hope something was lost in translation. You can't just walk away from an event like this and say, oh well, we did our best." Dark comedy.
that was riveting tv
-
Tis but a scratch.
-
Well said, Mr. Durden, well said.
-
If it is so bad, why aren't you mofo's dead yet?
Geez, a cat needs sleep....
Go play in traffic furball.
Wake me when you're dead, morons.
Fuck you - pussy.
O M G ...
In the time of crisis like this, career bureaucrats continue to play their petty game.
"Career bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (what a stupid name), after measuring for the first time the radiation level in the evacuation zone, tell reporters that they should ask the Prime Minister's Office for the interpretation of the data. Sorry we are not about to tell you.."
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-now-japanese.html
Pray for the Fukushima 50
NEWS ADVISORY: High-level radiation may be emitted from damaged No. 2 reactor: agency (12:21)
N225 bulltrap activated...anyone watching crosses (FX) its nervous dumb trading. Huge brain-dead Japanese pension funds have been buying - pump primed by the BoJ
It's a bad joke they way the Japanese are handling this disaster, sparse information, poorly coordinated, as if someone in the street who is breathing in shitload of toxic dust gives a F*** up the stock markets.
The Black Knight lives another day for more dismemberment... "tis but a scratch" classic Monty Python.
Serious: AC 180 on CNN is saying now that the last 50 workers are now leaving the plant due to high radiation levels. That's it folks, multiple meltdowns appear to be forthcoming.
We are all gonna die! Purrfect. Keep it up.
after AC reported it he looked at his partner like, "what in the fuck are we doing here"
He got paler than ever, if that is possible.
"Please disperse. There is nothing to see here."
- quote from the movie Police Academy
or
"Everybody, assume crash positions."
- quote from the movie Airplane
"I don't want to go on the cart"
Monty Python's 'Holy Grail'
"Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8384059/Japan-earthq...
Funny how regardless of the culture, imbalances look the same: corrupt, cutting corners, leaving a society atrophied in terms of future changes, and their seedy relationship with regulators, officials, and any other poor excuse for a human being that allowed business as usual to happen.
"why isnt Fukushima crawling with iRobots...?"
Tyler, all the robots have been amassed at the global exchanges to run algos and "add liquidity".
When posed with the decision whether to save society or banks, well...
Now we have S&P ratings drawing a line for Japanese pension funds. On wires now, saying no threat to down grade, Japan will be just fine...'nothing to see here'.
Disgusting, all the while poor suckers are getting their lungs burnt to nothing trying to contain a full blown nuclear meltdown.
The Japanese government is a despicable pile of crap...I hope the Japense people throw these F****** into the ocean.
I think GW is in charge of this thread. Excuse me,please, whilst I don the tin-foil appliance....
Lead foil, wrapped about a collendar. Electric coil optional, but recommended.
GW can't afford lead foil, might as well ask for gold....
I do. At every opportunity. You wouldn't happen to have any you're not using ATM?
IF WORKERS LEAVE, DOES ARMY TAKE THEIR PLACE?
They can't just LEAVE the PLANT and WAIT FOR IT TO "BURN OUT"~!
WHERE ARE THE B.M.CHOPPERS with WATER and BORON?
your avatar is rude
Piss off. Though bouncing boobs are better.
[just for you mynhair]
___
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
To smash a simple atom
all mankind was intent
now someday, the atom may,
return that compliment!
Don't know the poet but remembered it from junior high school.
I see a helicopter... wait, it's Blackhawk Ben coming to the rescue with plenty of new $500 and $1,000 US dollar bills. Yeeeeeeehhhhh, our hero! Fresh bills from the printers!
Just saw that new footage of the buildings swaying from a new strong earthquake. on NHK right now. 6.0 10km deep.
Is Japan going to fall into the ocean?
@ss123
It's a good bet that the land "reclaimed" from the sea will be reclaimed by the sea.
give me a timeline on that bet plz
Quick, chain it to Kalifornia!
Nikkei June futures just went down sharply (12 EST)
deleted
I so would like to =deleted= those bouncing boobs.
I dedicated a song for you
6 breasts up
Just had a small earthquake here. (I am spitting distance from the NHK studios). Intensity 3 on the Japanese scale for us. It was 5- nearer the quake center. Here we experienced 5- last Friday, which was pretty intense.
The shot with the interesting looking tower you see on NHK is in Mito City halfway toward the nuke plants.
NHK report No.3 reactor is smoking
Bad for it's health. Is it break time?
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
lol. laughter the best medicine.
Reactor 3 is like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.
If you add water it melts.
YO WIZARD.... better push some more buttons and pull some more levers and get on that mic and LIE TO EVERYONE IN JAPAN.
Man this is just pathetic.
LIAR! ....... LIAR!
This is going to be much worse tha Chernobyl, simply becasue Chernobyl had 4 reactors, and 3 out of 4 HAD WORKING COOLING SYSTEM.
It took 5 hours to put fires @ Chernobyl:
The immediate priority was to extinguish fires on the roof of the station and the area around the building containing Reactor No. 4 to protect No. 3 and keep its core cooling systems intact. The fires were extinguished by 5 a.m., but many firefighters received high doses of radiation. The fire inside Reactor No. 4 continued to burn until 10 May 1986; it is possible that well over half of the graphite burned out.[5]:73 The fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping over 5,000 metric tons of materials like sand, lead, clay, and boron onto the burning reactor and injection of liquid nitrogen
LAST TIME I HEARD FUKUSHIMA was using Sea Water??!?
Borated sea-water.
Cant drop sand and lead and clay ect in a sealed chamber with a new wee hole at the bottom
Sure you can. Especially if your choices are:
1. Entombment.
2. Lose some or all of the Kanto Plain, Japan's largest flat/arable area.
Compelling point
You seriously need to check your ears. To repeat, Cherobyl was a graphite core, yada yada yada.
yah, is it being stupid on purpose?
NHK: Gov't: no rad information for YOU
Radioactivity forecast system down
A computer system that forecasts the spread of radioactivity has not been working due to malfunctioning monitoring posts around a troubled nuclear power plant in quake-hit Fukushima Prefecture.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says it does not know when the system will be back in operation.
The system, called SPEEDI, predicts how radioactive substances will spread in case of radiation leakage from nuclear power plants, based on measurements taken at various locations, prevailing winds and other weather conditions.
SPEEDI data are intended to be used to draw up evacuation plans for residents around power plants in case of accidents.
The system is monitored at government offices, including the industry ministry and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in Tokyo.
Friday's earthquake caused power outages around the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The agency says it cannot expect the SPEEDI system to function fully, since many monitoring posts are not operating due to power outages.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 10:25 +0900 (JST)
Which is, you know, total bullshit, because we really (really really) want SPEEDI for the actual current radiation measurements, not some silly forecast modeling.
Seemed to work fine before with some cities reading 'under servey' (sic)....
#winning!
That's a picture of a reactor building? WTF. they may be some public health consequences from this; who is going to keep the nice watertight room on the third floor full of water, for the next year?
Tokyo has had a couple 6.0+ on both sides of it now. I think I'd get the fuck out of town. At the risk of stating the obvious, clearly, the ground is not stable over there.
Such earthquakes are not a big deal. The Japanese scale is much more useful since it provides information about the degree of "shaking" (as they put it). It was 5- in parts of Chiba and Ibaraki.
The buildings here are constructed to deal with such tremors. The destruction in northern Japan was 99.9% due to the Tsunami.
I realize that, but are 450+ aftershocks, many 6.0+, the norm? There is junk moving around.
That is perfectly normal for such a large quake. The aftershock magnitude is a function of the primary quake.
Well, yes, if you set your "norm" to 9.1.
We have several friends in the city. I have been trying as gently as possible to suggest that they get the hell out. In a city of 12 million, you either go early or you're not going at all.
Evidently Narita airport is hard to get to, but still functioning and outbound planes, believe it or not, have lots of empty seats. For the time being.
Only crazy gaijin are worried and fleeing.
Nevertheless, I just booked a ticket to BKK from Haneda for Thursday night. Fortunately there is now limited international service from HND. Otherwise people can catch a domestic flight to Okinawa.
Nice to see that the winds are going to be from the NW through Thurs.
Earlier we heard that the spent fuel pools in Units 5 and 6 were slowly heating up. Now, the reactors themselves are acting up. From NHK:
Agency: Water level falls in No.5 reactor
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the coolant level has fallen in the No.5 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The Agency had earlier said the No.5 reactor stopped safely during a regular inspection when the massive earthquake and tsunami occurred on Friday.
At the time of the quake, nuclear fuel rods were already in the reactor and workers had to circulate water to cool them down.
But the tsunami damaged a diesel generator for circulating the coolant, allowing the pressure in the reactor to rise.
Workers opened a valve to reduce the pressure.
But the procedure allowed water to evaporate from the valve.
As of 9 PM on Tuesday, the water level was 2 meters above the fuel rods. That was 40 centimeters lower than 5 hours earlier.
The Agency says it can adjust the water levels by using the No.6 reactor's generator, which wasn't damaged by the tsunami. Workers are currently pumping water into the No.5 and No.6 reactors.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 07:34 +0900 (JST)
This is bullish for TZA, nyet?
Obambi lies, Japan dies.
40cm in 5 hours
That's some pretty furious boiling, but sounds about right.
I suspect they aren't actually pumping the sea water into the inner core vessel, they're just filling the outer chamber below it, and to the sides of it.
It seems they allow the inner core to run dry, it then melts, it pools the fuel at the base, the pressure goes up, they let the pressure out, it spits out isotopes as it ablates the inner chamber's bottom away. Then it burns through and sinks into the sea water, and then on to the outer chamber's floor ... cue hydrogen and steam ... and boom!
Some radiation in the resulting steam ... but not so much ... and the steam punches out the sides and top of the reactor.
The thing is, this could 'work' … fairly well ... to quench the reaction, but only if they can keep adding water to the outer chamber.
Getting the fuel/metal out of there is going to be the trick though.
They'd better put some serious effort into restoring grid power to that station. One diesel generator isn't going to keep running forever.
So, any linesmen feel like working in high radiation?
It's priced in. BTFD
I wonder if those last 50 got a raise or anything you know, for the effort. Nothing like doin your job and at the end of the day your only claim to fame is being one of 50 living put options.
Nice way to cheapen their heroism. Good one...seriously...
TODAYS QUESTION:
- OUT OF 6 REACTORS at FACUSHIMA HOW MANY WILL REMAIN INTACT?
5, what did I win? A date with your sorry ass?
Funny how some commodities are priced in BUSHels.
Japan's PM is telling his people to remain calm, go inside and watch TV. of course, he is probably broadcasting safely from Hawaii.
Japan obviously needs "Nippon Idle".
Everyone pray Mt Fuji doesn't act up.
Why? Vesuvius did wonders for Pompeii.
Game over, people. GAME OVER.
Well....just for info, if this is game over, what is happening to just ONE reactor at Fukushima was originally modelled by GE as being a 1 in 100,000,000 reactor year scenario. Financial guys in the 2000's took pretty much that same risk formula and ran with it...and everything has turned out ok there...right?
No. The finance guys were creating a fog cloud to hide control fraud. Engineers err, but they aren't bankster scum.
I agree...but there were people who believed in those risk formulas...staked their fortunes and reputations on them. You can never model risk - of any system - under the comfortable bell curve of a 100 year event (another stupid assumption), affordability and ease of use if that system represents a threat to society. Just my thinking.
I heard an expert a few days ago say this was a "1-in-300-year event."
All I could think was; so, there was nuclear power 300 years ago then?
According to GE's original modellling, this is a 100,000,000 reactor year event PER ON REACTOR. They have four pretty much in the same shape.
I'm waiting to see the CEO of TEPCO do a swan dive into the #4 reactor spent fuel pool.
I think Bill Gross gets first dive.....
Too frail, we will need plan a) Summers and plan b) Fwank. And if that does not work, someone call Berkeley, Romer should fit tight.