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TEPCO Releases Helicopter Overflight Fukushima Devastation Video
Dramatic images from Fukushima as TEPCO releases yet another perspective of the crippled nuclear power plant, this time from a Helicopter overflight from March 16 at 4pm local time. Too bad there is no Geiger counter caption to go with all the other ones.
h/t Martyn Williams
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Does it really matter if they die in a few months? Would you like to be a billionaire for one month or a hundredaire for a lifetime?
Probably won't be enough to pay for their funerals.
the-Fukushima-50-fight-to-stave-off-disaster
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8386413/Japan-earth...
I'd be very surprised if there's anyone in that plant at all. The '50' number is um... too round and constant to be believable any more. They might as well have claimed 300 - that at least would suggest a sense of humor still alive somewhere.
* Where in the plant is there likely to be an area with intact airlocks, scrub-down facilities, food and water, lights, toilets, sleeping area, air filters, etc? I don't think so. Outside the buildings the levels seem to be up in the 'rapidly lethal' range. All windows in the vicinity are blown, there are major holes in several roofs from falling rubble.
* Look at the latest hi-res digitalglobe sat image here: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5296/5535116638_0a067c07f1_o.jpg Full size of the 20110317 overhead view. Some of the site access roads seem to have been cleared of debris enough to drive on, but many are still littered with random explosion and tsunami debris. Means no one has driven there at all.
* Nobody mentions resupplying these '50 heros' with anything. No mention of them meeting the crews of police or fire water cannon trucks. Bullshit govt PR wonks too busy with the panic and spin to add details to the lie for believability.
* No direct communications with the 50 at all, just reports by government and TEPCO sources they are 'bravely working'. What's the problem with getting them some satelite phones or something?
* What would they be doing anyway? Just looking at the pics of the damage, it's clear there can't be any instrumentation working back to the control room, even if they had power. Was ALL instrumentation electrical, or were there some direct pressure measuring pipes? Even with direct pipes they'd be suspect now, after so much explosion damage crushing and breaking plumbing.
Plus it's clear from the meagre announcements that no one has any idea of parameters from the 1 to 4 reactor buildings in the last few days. For instance, no idea of SFP water depth or temp. Such data still available from the undamaged reactor 5 & 6 buildings. Now the 1, 3 and 4 buildings are so destroyed and rad-hot, it's very unlikely anyone can actually go into them to visually inspect or turn valves, and expect to live.
* There's evidence there are still staff present in the buildings of reactors 5 and 6, which are only lightly damaged by the tsunami. But how long can they last there with the radiation spreading from 1-4?
If there ARE people present in the main Fukushima plant, I stand in awe of their bravery. And would like to take the political and company executive potato-heads who are betraying them (and all Japan) by cutting off open communication, outside and shoot them.
This would probably be a good idea for multiple reasons, and things may well get to the stage where someone will do just that.
Actually, I'll go on record here. The current leadership has clearly demonstrated incapacity to respond adequately to this crisis. Their obfuscation and secrecy instincts, indecisiveness and inability to recognise the extreme nature of the crisis and hence the extreme nature of necessary responses, are directly endangering the actual continued existence of Japan. Those SFP's MUST be refilled with water, by any means possible. A few fire trucks isn't going to cut it. Suggest:
- Immediate removal of TEPCO executive and Japanese government oversight of reactor containment efforts. By military force if necessary.
- Replace them with JDF command structure, plus actual nuclear physicists and engineers in command positions. Plus IAEA collaboration.
- Immediate direct communications established between personal at the site and public media outlets, including non-MSM web news sources. Audio and video links. No intermediaries.
- Immediate public request for volunteers willing to perform suicidal missions at the plant. Such as running hoses up inside the stairwells to the SFPs, or heli-dropped into roof areas to secure final hose placement. Using as many lives as it takes. Might require mission staging involving multiple people, much like an Everest climb.
- Another idea- Attach large weight to end of long, robust hose. Heli-lift weighted hose end to above SFP, drop. Better yet, lower it accurately. Other end of hose draped over side of building wreckage to ground on seaward side. Connect to pump truck, drawing from sea.
Do this with a heli pilot prepared to go low enough over building to get the hose end exactly where it's needed. Probably a suicide mission, and the helicopter will have to be graved in the vicinity too.
I'm aware of how much it sucks to be suggesting this from a safe, warm chair far away. Sorry. But I think these things need to be said, and done, and fast.
Please believe me I'd volunteer myself, except that I'm involved in a research project that has a... faint... chance of someday making nuclear fission power unnecessary. Well, it might work, I think it might, and someone's got to try it.
Freeze frame on the big pipes at about 00:49-00:50. Not nice looking.
Looks like those run to the 'exhaust stack' - meant for vapor handling rather than fluids ...
It's going to be tough to find the plug in that mess.
Oh yeah, those internal cooling systems look intact all right. Just a little duck tape and plastic is all that's needed. Just run the power in and hook her right up.
Clearly TEPCO and the Japanese government considers everyone to be fool and we will all buy the "once we run the power line in and make a few connections we'll begin cooling the plants down" meme hook line and sinker.
It will be like a virtuous self sustaining electrical green shoot.
Looks like Detroit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-d...
Did they fly through steam/smoke at 0.33?
Certainly looked like it.
Looks like a lot of highly effective risk assessment went into the planning of the Fuku nuke facilities. Failure of the highest order.
Haven't you heard? GE brings good things to life!
"GE brings good people to death!" didn't go over too well with the marketing focus group(s)! :>D
Looks like an extension cord should solve the problem.
So they are hooking a giant extension cord to this train wreak. Maybe at least get the lights back on in the cafeteria.
Like I said yesterday--coffee, a shower and Internet access (for ZH not tentacle porn you losers)...
Official status as of now--several items to note (bolded), very dynamic situation when taken as a whole.
Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plantsTOKYO, March 17, Kyodo
The following is the known status as of Thursday night of 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, which were crippled by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
Fukushima No. 1 plant
-- Reactor No. 1 - Operation suspended after quake, cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, building housing reactor damaged Saturday by hydrogen explosion, seawater being pumped in.
-- Reactor No. 2 - Operation suspended after quake, cooling failure, seawater being pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, vapor vented, building housing reactor damaged Monday by blast at reactor No. 3, damage to containment vessel feared, potential meltdown feared.
-- Reactor No. 3 - Operation suspended after quake, cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater being pumped in, building housing reactor damaged Monday by hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby on Tuesday, plume of smoke observed Wednesday and presumed to have come from spent-fuel storage pool, severe damage to containment vessel unlikely, seawater dumped over pool by helicopter on Thursday, water sprayed at it from ground.
-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire Tuesday possibly caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, abnormal temperature rise in spent-fuel storage pool, fire observed Wednesday at building housing reactor, pool water level feared receding, renewed nuclear chain reaction feared.
-- Reactors No. 5, 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck, water temperatures in spent-fuel storage pools increased to about 64 C on Thursday.
-- Spent-fuel storage pools at all reactors -- Cooling functions lost, water temperatures or levels unobservable at reactors No. 1 to 4.
Jim, what's your take on the common pool situation? thanks.
The 'common pool' building, from what I could see of it in that video looked intact ... so far ... it's to the south of reactor bldg #4 ...
In fact, upon further review, that building appears in the first couple seconds of the video ...
6300 fuel assemblies, 1000 tons uranium equivalent
I think, based on the TEPCO material we saw last night, that the common pool holds rods after they are held for 19 months in the reactor buildings. That is not how Tyler interpreted those slides but it is how I interpret them. The fuel is loaded out at the reactors and left for a year and a half right next to the reactors. Then it's moved to the common pool.
What that means is the common pool rods are a lot cooler than the reactor building rods. As debated with much snark last night, the rods cool at inverse exponential rates--so after 18 months a tiny fraction of the original heat remains, like 0.1%. That's the good news.
The bad news is that the common pool is so large that it holds numerous reactor core loads' worth of fuel--something like 50 loads. That means a lot of MW of energy is available. Let's call it an original 5000 MW worth, reduced by heat decay to 0.1%, so around 5 MW of heat left. Take it down even further because a lot of the stuff has been in the pool for years. But even 1 MW worth of heat can boil/evaporate a lot of water if left along long enough.
Someone could calculate the approximate time it would take to boil off enough water to expose the common pool rods at which point Very Bad Things can start to occur....we've heard nothing as of yet, and just like Units 5 and 6, until you hit 100 degrees C it just sits there quietly.
I would love to hear that the common pool was a nice mellow 20 degrees. Something else to watch for.
@Jim in MN
One saving point is that it's been cold at night, should assist in dispersing heat in such a system in the power is off. Any idea of the pool's volume and the length of a fuel bundle?
If it's the size of an olympic swim bath (say) and the residual heat is in the ball park you suggest, then there may not be an immediate problem, as it may be in a steady (warm) state.
I get 9.6 days using 1 MW of energy. Assuming 2/3 of pool volume is displaced by assemblies (and/or not filled to absolute brim). That's to get water to 100C. Boiling it off would take more.
quick note to ease confusion:
there are about 250 fuel-rods in each assembly and about 200 fuel-assemblies in each loaded reactor core, or total about 50,000 fuel-rods. [numbers vary with design, but this gives a fair idea].
Spent-fuel assemblies are stored in spent-fuel pools and, when radioactive decay slows enough, they are transferred to other storage, e.g., special concrete casks.
thanks
I ran across some speculation yesterday re the pool that was rather bleak, but I couldn't assess the validity of the source.
It does sound good if the fuel there is the oldest stuff. Well, not good, but better than bleak. We can use all of that that we can get.
Ya that extension cord they are rolling out should take care of things. Just a few dust busters should do. Nothing to worry about.
Next comes the Boron dumps.
Lots of salt water from the bambi buckets laying around, no on sight inspection, and they are just going to plug up a glorified extention cord and hope for the best.
Pray there isn't a buildup of Hydrogen in reactor #2 when they flip the switch.
Yepper, just run that power chord to unit 2 and all of this fixed.
buy buy buy
Maybe they could construct a massive sheet of lead with two gloryholes in it. They could then let Godzilla and King Kong have a pissing contest through it and drown those reactors in coolant... (I couldn't resist)
Wow ...
Why aren't they using unmanned aircraft and robots to do the surveillance ?
With radiation that high the robots are non-operational.
Tell that to Spirit and Opportunity.
Send a shuttle to Mars and pick them up, as they may be insulted by your comment.
If radiation was so high that robots would not survive it, than how do you expect humans to survive
I've been saying since reactor 3 detonated that I don't believe there is anyone (alive) at the plant any longer. I think it is part of a misinformation campaign to prevent people from panicking.
They may be quite literal when they say a skeleton crew has stayed behind.
One thing I noted last night is that there have been reports that workers go missing or are killed yet somehow there is always 50 workers there.
I agree. See comment 1069345 above.
And no one ever takes them sandwiches.
I am no longer very interested in hearing the "experts" talk about this. I don't need an expert to interpret these pictures. I can understand all I need to know just by looking at those pictures and the stats on the quantity of U they had on the site before this all started. When something is as blasted to hell as that is any damn fool can see it's irreperable. As for cooling pipes.... do me a favour.
Too bad there is no Geiger counter...
Doesn't the new I gadget have an app for that?
If not, it'll be as useless as, well....
if i remember correctly 3 mile island was without water for 2 hours and had a partial meldown? 30-50%? not certain. are we looking at a complete meltdown of the reactor core? if so, what are the cooling options of a molten reactor core? can you physically get water into the vessel and if so will it even cool it down? thanks.
Complete meltdown of multiple cores
I thought US Predator drones could hover? With high res cameras?
they can. you can be that tepco, japanese and american gobmints have great high resolution pics and vids....
we get this choppy crap to passify the masses....
@ Ann
Excess radiation and a shortage of intelligence help people live longer and be happier!
Wow, they dropped 70 tons of water on the forces that have created the universe - I had no idea that nuclear fission was hydrophobic - this is Pandora's Box writ large - there is a solution to every problem if we can find it in time, also there is the ultimate solution to problems - death.
The real issue is going to be whether ANYTHING works after all those explosions. When they hook the plant back up to the grid, in theory they could run the main cooling pumps again, but in practice it doesn't look like anything will work.
And of course it's not the reactors, but the spent fuel pools. This disaster is NOT about reactor safety, but about waste disposal. Once people stop freaking out, they'll realize that we can build safe reactors, but those spent fuel pools are a real problem. The spent rods are too radioactive to transport safely, so the store them on site. ZH has a great power point on the spent fuel facilities at Fukushima. Best practices are TOTALLY unacceptable.
There is FAR more dangerous Uranium outside the containment vessel than within it. This may become painfully obvious in the next few days. If they can't refill the pools and circulate water, they will have a huge dirty meltdown of the spent fuel rods, fully exposed to the atmosphere. Fires, explosions and radiation around the globe are the consequences of this idiotic practice.
If somehow they mange to get this under control, we will have dodged a bullet by the thinnest of margins. However, anti-nuke politics will have a good point. Until we solve the waste problem, nuclear power as currently practiced is unacceptably dangerous.
Bingo -- spent fuel storage is the big-picture issue which emerges from Fukushima. Because long-term nuclear waste storage hasn't been solved, older nuclear plants (such as Fukushima's US twin, Vermont Yankee) have become giant, constipated dumping grounds for hundreds of tons of radioactive spent fuel.
Politics made this mess, and now will be galvanized to 'do something' about it. No way that people are going to tolerate living next to what are effectively open-air dumping grounds for vast quantities of nuclear waste sitting in concrete swimming pools.
Look for strict new regulatory limits on used fuel assembly storage, plus a vast state-industrial project over the next two decades to draw down and dispose of the bloated inventories backed up in the radioactive large colons of nuke plants worldwide.
agreed, this is what I have been saying for years, if the power is clean but the waste is not and there is no good idea of what to do with it...then you are just kicking can down road, letting the grandkids deal with your toxic trash.
In MN the spent fool is sitting on a island in a river, in a flood plain...seriously....can you imagine the entire MS river getting contaminated?
They need about a hundred chinooks dumping sand and cement on it round the clock. Not sure if Japan has the capability to handle this now. At least puts a temp seal on top of the mess.
16:20 17Mar11 RTRS-US MILITARY SAYS ALL FAMILIES AT BASES ON JAPAN'S HONSHU ISLAND ELIGIBLE FOR VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE
16:27 17Mar11 RTRS-PENTAGON SAYS ORDER APPLIES TO "THOUSANDS" OF DEPENDENTS OF US MILITARY PERSONNEL
Good grief -- this doesn't seem to be about the radiation risk, which is minimal to nonexistent in western Honshu.
This announcement seems to imply a risk of a breakdown in civil order, transportation, sanitation and food delivery.
Do they know something we don't -- or just being super-cautious?
some of this may just be responding to troops...their families are likely freaking out, so military has to give them options...and why the freak not, so what if it was wasted effort....how times had Japanese taken high ground after an earthquake to have no tsunami happen...but you keep on doing it because there is 1 in 100 chance...
good thing there was no jet fuel in there....lest i point out that a few thousand gallons of jet fuel reduced the world trade to dust with 'no' explosions
or maybe thats what they should use to cool the fuel rods...
What happens when you expose electronics to water/boron/explosions?
What do they expect this power cord to do?
Maybe they should tell us they hooking up the flux-capacitor. It's about as believable.
ok. so they are releasing water from choppers into the spent fuel ponds. There is a fuel transfer canal between containment and SFP. That is how fuel is transferred from the containment to SFP. It is possibe that they will breach the containment if they keep doing this. Also , at reactor four it looks like the SPF could be ruptured. That means that the water could leak out and evaporate. Sorry for my English. ZH is not firefox friendly and the spellcheck is not working.
there are nuke experts that also say water could speed/contribute to reaction of spent fuel in some cases, so if it is not immediately successful in cooling....
My local newstation chopper generates better pictures than this flyover did. Suspiciously jerky and too close in to provide any meaningful perspective on the scale of devastation in my opinion...
I would hope your local news station would generate better pictures. They aren't flying in a military helicopter with a half-ass camera and shorts full of shit as they pass over a leaking nuclear plant!
Do you have any idea of what radiation can do to a CCD?
A CCD detects even the "radiation" from an infrared remote control -which is invisible to the naked human eye. Try turning on your digital camera and aiming your remote control at it. Press keys on your remote and watch a beam of light on your digital camera's LCD.
Good luck trying to detect that "beam" of light with your naked eye.
There's a lot of "noise" on those pics because them CCDs have a wider wavelenght acceptance.
Mother Nature cracks the earth and sends a giant wave to destroy nuclear power plants in Fukushima.
Is it too early to say Mom Nature just gave us a massive Fuk-u?
dear papa-san,
i just got home with the refilled spare gasoline cans you wanted, and put them in the barn next to the dry hay. we also got a delivery today of "easy-strike" matches, which of course i'll store in the explosives shed.
your proud son in seppuku,
Naoto Kan
Also ,if I am wright and the SFP at reactor four has been breached and it has a leak (no more water) spraying water on it will feed a reaction that will ignite the zirconium cladding of the spent fuel rods. We shall see tonight.
Look for gradual detioration in conditions in Japan. Get out while you can from the Entire Island.
Has anyone else looked at the posted video frame to frame from about 29 through 31 seconds?
Any idea as to what appears to be green wispy looking splotches visible at the top floor of reactor containment building #3?
They don't appear to be glint or reflections on the helicopter window or camera lens.
Shit, at 0:31 it looks like they've fucking got Kryptonite on the roof. Green crystals scattered in the rubble.
Sea water contains salt (NaCl), which under heat and high gamma radiation may break down to Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl)? Sodium is highly thermally reactive with water and chlorine is toxic. Chlorine gas is greenish-yellow (or yellowish-green?). Not sure what gas, minerals or metals would glow bright fluorescent green under intense X-rays and heat. Although, from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
"Uranium glass also fluoresces bright green under ultraviolet light and can register above background radiation on a sufficiently sensitive geiger counter, although most pieces of uranium glass are considered to be harmless and only negligibly radioactive."
Those copters didn't do much. There will be another desperate and failed attempt at something. Where's Bruce Willis when you really need him?
1. Edano said yesterday that the powerline would be used to drive makeshift pumps when they finally get it up and functional.
2. It seems clear from the video that the coolant delivery and dispersal systems are hopelessly damaged. Apparently, the plan is to also set up makeshift coolant delivery systems to effectively deliver the coolant.
3. Even using materials designed for this kind of ad hoc installation, it will require focused labor and time for the men on-site to make effective connections.
Time. How much time do we have before this goes from apocolyptic to eschatological?
Containment is now being mentioned more and more often in interviews I have seen.
When I watched that video I tried to imagine how many men, how much equipment and material it would take to accomplish either of these tasks - and how much time.
The only conclusion I can come to is that many people are going to die before this thing is brought to an end.
I hope I am wrong.
yes, having been on too many construction sites, even heroic actions of trained quick action military engineer types would need days to get some very iffy cooling systems working for all these pools...just fireman trying to run their regular hoses to all these buildings and locations with buildings with debris everywhere, without radiation, would be difficult...
Wow, NHK is saying that TEPCO says "a glint of silver" is visible in between the shattered building frames and that may be the surface of the spent fuel pool in Unit 3.
That's all they have I guess. A glint of silver on a shaky video.
Asahi Shinbun has some more vids. And photos. And we're supposed to take TEPCO's employees' word for it that they saw water in the spent fuel pool in Reactor 4. I can't see any water..
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0317/TKY201103170518.html
in the video, i didnt see any images of the "neat"little hole in the wall of the containment building in Reactor # 2.......any further word on this and what might have caused it?
A bit more details on what the Self Defense Force and Police did on Reactor No.3. It is extremely hard for me to imagine it made any significant difference.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-more-details-o...