Meltdown Likely Under Way At Japan Nuclear Reactor

[maidu]

For the record, I'm a proponent of sustainable energy sources (e.g. concentrated solar). My points against NPPs are the unsolved waste storage problems, the massive local effects of accidents (admittedly irrational plane crash vs. car accident syndrome) and the cost-ineffectiveness of timely decommissioning (stretching reactor run times beyond their scheduled expiry dates, as was the case with Daiichi 1-4, among many others).

May I add, in relation to Thailand, an additional drawback to NPPs: possible take-over by a group wanting to get publicity. Note how easy it was for the Yellows to take over Gov't House (twice) and both airports. Also, how relatively easy it was for the Reds to commandeer downtown Bkk in 2010. All those things happened in the past 3 years. How much easier or difficult would it be for a determined group to take over one or more Thai nuclear power plants?

Note: when the Yellows marched on Thailand's biggest airport, security personnel didn't even lock the doors to try and keep them out. Also: at the end of the Reds 2 month take-over of Bangkok, large buildings were set ablaze, yet no security officials tried to stop it, nor have there been any real efforts by law enforcement to apprehend those responsible.

Edited June 3, 2011 by maidu

[Chopperboy]

Two Fukushima Workers Are "Cooked"

Two Tokyo Electric Power Co. employees working at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have been exposed beyond the 250-millisievert limit set for the crisis, Tepco and the government said Monday.

The two men, one in his 30s and the other in his 40s, have been at the plant since the March 11 disasters triggered the crisis. Both may have a cumulative exposure of several hundred millisieverts, a company official said, while adding the two are "not at a stage that would require emergency medical treatment."

To cope with the country's worst nuclear plant crisis, the government raised the legal limit on the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to in emergencies to 250 milliseiverts from 100 millisieverts.

The two workers were involved in work at reactors 3 and 4. In a measurement on May 23, their thyroid glands were found to have absorbed 7,690 and 9,760 becquerels of radioactive iodine-131, respectively, 10 times more than other workers.

Their external exposure levels were between 74 and 89 millisieverts, Tepco said.

The two were working in the plant's reactor control room, a building where the headquarters for the crisis is located.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20110531a1.html

[Chopperboy]

Memo emblematic of disaster plan flaws

Regulators never questioned one-page document

Nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 complex were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from Tokyo Electric Power Co. nearly a decade ago.

In the Dec. 19, 2001, document — one double-sized page obtained by The Associated Press under the public records law — Tepco rules out the possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock the plant offline and gives scant details to justify this conclusion, which proved to be wildly optimistic.

Regulators at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had asked plant operators for assessments of their earthquake and tsunami preparedness.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20110529a1.html

Edited June 28, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Steam, high radiation detected at No.1 reactor

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.

Tokyo Electric Power Company inspected the inside of the No.1 reactor building on Friday with a remote-controlled robot.

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/04_16.html

Edited June 28, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Holes feared in two Japan nuclear reactors

By Kyung Lah, CNN

Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Two of the damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan may be riddled with holes, according to the facility's owner.

The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters ( 2.8- 3.9 inches), Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in a 225-page document submitted to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

In the report, Tokyo Electric says the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 may have developed a hole as big as 3 centimeters in diameter 18 hours after the quake.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/japan.nuclear.report/index.html

Edited June 8, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Staggering financial costs of Fukushima continue to rise

it is clear that holes not only exist in the reactors at Fukushima but also in plans to bring the crisis under control……the issue of who is left holding the bag for the many costs associated with decontamination of the plant and surrounding facilities as well as rebuilding the dozens of communities wiped out by the tsunami. The amounts are staggering. Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch estimates TEPCO may face claims of 11 trillion yen ($136 billion).

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/05/23/staggering-financial-costs-of-fukushima-continue-to-rise/

Edited June 8, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS on the state of American Nuclear Power Plants

[Chopperboy]

Robot video of radioactive steam rising - ground floor unit 1

Edited June 4, 2011 by Chopperboy

[Crushdepth]

Germany has just announced that it will scrap its nuclear energy programme (although decommissioning it will take many years).

[Chopperboy]

Japan Nuclear Plant Could Leak More Radioactive Water

The operator of the stricken Japanese nuclear power plant said on Friday that more radioactive water could begin spilling into the sea later this month if there is a glitch in setting up a new decontamination system.

TOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of the stricken Japanese nuclear power plant said on Friday that more radioactive water could begin spilling into the sea later this month if there is a glitch in setting up a new decontamination system.

Nearly 110,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water -- enough to fill about 40 Olympic-size swimming pools -- are stored at the plant, the utility said in a report to Japan's nuclear regulator presented on Friday.

Managing the growing pools of radioactive water is a major challenge with the start of Japan's month long rainy season, and the plant, on the Pacific coast 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, is running out of storage space.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=japan-nuclear-plant-could-leak

[Chopperboy]

SAVING TOKYO ELECTRIC & JAPAN INC

A dozen people involved in backroom discussions that led to the plan to compensate Fukushima victims tell Reuters how Tepco won a government declaration that it was too big to fail at a time when its survival had been in question.

IN a choreographed act of contrition, Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power, bowed deeply and resigned to take responsibility for the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

From the outside, the news conference on Friday appeared to follow the familiar script for a Japanese corporate shaming. But behind the scenes, it also represented the successful culmination of a period of intensive deal-making by Tokyo Electric, its powerful allies in Japan’s bureaucracy and its main bank.

Full article here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/japan-tepco-idUSL3E7GN23G20110523

Edited June 8, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[maidu]

Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch estimates TEPCO may face claims of 11 trillion yen ($136 billion).

Last year, the US writers of the 'Feasibility Study' hired by Thailand's EGAT, claimed that nuclear is a very low cost option for Thailand's power generation.

The US company is in the nuclear plant engineering business, and EGAT paid them 175 million baht for that report, so they must know what they're talking about.

Edited June 4, 2011 by maidu

[elcent]

Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers Of Fukushima Are Worse And Longer-lived Than We Think

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689

"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land.

Edited June 5, 2011 by Scott
Edited to comply with fair use policy

[Scott]

Please don't post lengthy portions from other sources. About the first 3 sentences and then a link to the source.

[maidu]

Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers Of Fukushima Are Worse And Longer-lived Than We Think

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689

"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land.

Good interview. They touched upon many important facets of the Fukushima mess that regular media aren't aware of yet. Newspapers and TV news are always playing 'catch-up' and they know their viewers have the concentration of finches. Some of the interesting facets that will make news later (when the major media venues catch up) are how to try and keep the radioactive water from spreading (Gunderson advises digging 20 meter trenches and filling them with special dirt). Also; how best to deal with damaged reactor #4 - where the problem is up high. His suggestion: build a giant outer building to contain water, which will shield the radioactive material and the people dealing with it - in order to dispose of the bad stuff, using cranes. Then the giant cranes will have to be demolished, as they too will become radioactive in the process.

[Chopperboy]

Fukushima cleanup could cost up to $250 billion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTZcbNssVnU

Purchases land in the 20 Km zone = $54bn

Compensation = $8bn

Scrapping Reactors = $9-188bn

Proving yet again, that nuclear is the cheapest option!!

In fact "almost too cheap to meter"

[Chopperboy]

Windscale: Britain's Biggest Nuclear Disaster - Parts 1-8

On the night of 10 October 1957, Britain was on the brink of an unprecedented nuclear disaster. A fire ripped through the radioactive materials in the core of Windscale, Britain's first nuclear reactor. Tom Tuohy, the deputy general manager at the site, led the team faced with dealing with a nightmare no-one had thought possible.

"Mankind had never faced a situation like this; there's no-one to give you any advice," he said. Tuohy and his men were confronted by a terrifying dilemma.

If they let the fire burn out, it could spread radioactivity over a large area of Britain. But if they put water on the reactor, they risked turning it into a nuclear bomb that could kill them all.

Now tapes of the inquiry into the accident, heard for the first time in a BBC film, reveal the reasons why the politicians covered up the causes of the accident. Scientists had been warning about the dangers of an accident for some time. The safety margins of the radioactive materials inside the reactor were being further and further eroded...

Edited June 6, 2011 by Chopperboy

[Chopperboy]

‘There’s no safe radiation level’ - IAEA

IAEA ‘s focus is on commercial benefit of rare earth plant, not on safety

The IAEA standards are not based on what is safe but how great the benefit, said CAP after a meeting with the panel. PUTRAJAYA: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today admitted there is no such thing as “safe” levels of radiation.

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/06/02/theres-no-safe-radiation-level/

Edited June 8, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Japan says Fukushima's radiation twice as bad as first reported

TOKYO -- The Japanese government more than doubled its estimate Monday for the amount of radiation released from the Fukushima nuclear plant during the first week of the atomic crisis in March, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), a government nuclear watchdog, also said it believed that reactor cores at some of the units at the complex melted much more quickly than the plant operator previously suggested, in fresh evidence on the severity of the nuclear disaster.

NISA said that it now estimates the total amount of radiation released into the atmosphere in the first week of the crisis at 770,000 terabecquerels.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/japan_says_fukushima_radiation_twice_XaK4NjwL5gkcgYcbXIZzOM?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=

Edited June 7, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[animatic]

And todays good news.

3 nuclear reactors melted down after quake, Japan confirms

By the CNN Wire StaffJune 6, 2011 -- Updated 1530 GMT (2330 HKT)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/japan.nuclear.meltdown/index.html?hpt=hp_p1

[Chopperboy]

And todays good news.

3 nuclear reactors melted down after quake, Japan confirms

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/japan.nuclear.meltdown/index.html?hpt=hp_p1

But Tokyo Electric at the same time released a second possible scenario for reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but may not have completely melted.

"On the basis of what they showed, if there's not fuel left in the core, I don't know what it is other than a complete meltdown," said Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, "It's hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors."

[TheWalkingMan]

Japan admits to being unprepared for nuclear disaster

Wednesday 08th June, 09:12 AM JST

By Mari Yamaguchi

TOKYO —

Japan admitted Tuesday it was unprepared for a severe nuclear accident like the tsunami-caused Fukushima disaster and said damage to the reactors and radiation leakage were worse than it previously thought.

In a report being submitted to the U.N. nuclear agency, the government also acknowledged reactor design inadequacies and a need for greater independence for the country’s nuclear regulators.

The report said the nuclear fuel in three reactors likely melted through the inner containment vessels, not just the core, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s power and cooling systems. Fuel in the Unit 1 reactor started melting hours earlier than previously estimated.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-admits-to-being-unprepared-for-nuclear-disaster

no duh...

Edited June 8, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy

[Chopperboy]

Report of Japanese Government to the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety - June 2011

385-page document download includes situation on individual reactors (IV-5), and of each unit.

http://min.us/mvoVGLP

http://i.min.us/icQDTk.pdf

[Chopperboy]

Radiation levels recorded 220Km south of Fukushima

"Another beautiful day in Japan, I am 135 miles / 220 Km south of Fukushima, on the outskirts of the Tokyo area. It is Tuesday, June 7th, as you can see in the video, I just walk outside of my house and .... radiation. The air is not dangerous but the ground is. The radiation is much higher in low lying areas and the government here is desperately trying to keep it quiet."

Edited June 8, 2011 by Chopperboy

[Chopperboy]

Chris Busby Explains Why Uranium Is Bad For You (Part 1)

Chris Busby Explains Why Uranium Is Bad For You (Part 2)

Prof Chris Busby explains precisely how uranium - including natural, enriched, and depleted uranium - causes health problems.

Busby explains it in this detailed and convincing presentation.

[Chopperboy]

MIT Faculty Report on Fukushima

http://mitnse.com/2011/06/03/mit-faculty-report-on-fukushima/

Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan

By the Nuclear Science and Engineering - MIT

[flying]

Worse than meltdown, government report says devastating 'melt-through' has occurred at Fukushima; Official suggests Japan could become 'uninhabitable'

http://www.naturalnews.com/032657_Fukushima_meltdown.html#ixzz1OrGx6ZAz

[Chopperboy]

Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant

9 June 2011

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.

The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8565020/Nuclear-fuel-has-melted-through-base-of-Fukushima-plant.html

[Chopperboy]

Japan ‘may have no N-reactors running by next April’

All 54 of Japan’s nuclear reactors may be shut by next April, adding more than $30bn a year to the country’s energy costs, if communities object to plant operating plans due to safety concerns, trade ministry officials said yesterday.

Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which triggered a radiation crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo, concern among local authorities has kept nuclear generators from restarting at least four reactors that had been expected to come online after routine maintenance and inspection.

Several more reactors have since shut for regular maintenance, slashing Japan’s nuclear generating capacity to just 7,580 megawatts, or only 36% of its registered nuclear capacity. In May, Japan’s average nuclear run rate fell to 40.9%, the lowest in at least a decade and well below 62.1% a year earlier.

Although a reactor is legally cleared for restart once it receives approval from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), a trade ministry watchdog, nuclear operators always seek local government approvals as well, in recognition of the importance of support from the community around the plant.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=439908&version=1&template_id=45&parent_id=25

[TheWalkingMan]

Bastids!!!!

Link is here

Shizuoka retailer told to stay quiet about radiation level in tea

Friday 10th June, 01:20 PM JST

SHIZUOKA —

Shizuoka Prefecture told a Tokyo-based mail order retailer to refrain from carrying information on its website that radioactive materials in excess of the standard limit were detected in tea grown in the prefecture, the retailer said Friday.

A prefectural official told Radishbo-ya Co, after the retailer made a query to the local government Monday, not to disclose the finding for a while on fears that the message could cause unwarranted harm to Shizuoka tea growers, adding that the prefecture would confirm it on its own, the firm said.

The firm, for its part, sent purchasers of the tea letters informing them about the finding, while offering to recall the products.

*****

TheWalkingMan

Edited June 10, 2011 by Scott
edited for fair use policy