Meltdown Likely Under Way At Japan Nuclear Reactor

[Jdietz]

T @BreakingNews: Chicago mayor says passengers on flight from Tokyo had set off radiation detectors at O'Hare - Chicago Trib Tokyo flight triggers O'Hare radiation detectors - Chicago ...‎ -

http://www.chicagobr...0,4216493.story

edit to add, not that I am overly worried by this development but wondering about flights landing here from Japan? Any monitoring being done?

OK Thread Nazi is Back again (in reply to one of the more sour posts)

- We try to get sources as there is a lot of misinformation / misquoting / misunderstanding of what radiation levels / units mean.

- We do have a couple of real experts on this site, which helps a lot of getting a grip on the current situation

- We also try not to allow pro/anti nuclear energy politicking as this only detracts from the ongoing situation

- Also a lot of "news" agencies, especially foreign ones love to cherry pick the news or use laden terms to further push their agenda.

In reply to this post:

- Yes, there is radiation monitoring done here in Thailand on all flights arriving from Japan

- There are KI pills being distributed to travelers to Japan or coming from Japan when needed.

Source: BKK post.

[Jdietz]

The (Air Force) personnel were scrubbed down with soap and water, then declared contamination-free.

Sounds like a job some Thai professional women would be good at. I bet the aviators wouldn't mind.

Just wondering: The core reactor containment vessels are metal, are they not? If you dump cold water on super hot metal of a car motor, you crack the block. I assume the experts on the scene have their bases covered, ...though they appear to have done some bloopers thus far.

The Steel core (10cm+ of steel) is covered by a concrete containment structure. No worries on it cracking by spraying water.

[Jdietz]

Without citing the source, a Swiss daily newspaper reported in its ticker with the time stamp 07:58 UTC that a representative of TEPCO told AFP that the Prime Minister's order that TEPCO must not withdraw its workers from the site means that these workers have to expose themselves to radiation and "die". "The question is not whether TEPCO collapses, but whether Japan collapses", Prime Minister Kan reportedly said.

Don't know how to search the AFP site for this.

If this is true, I would recommend to have the workers pulled out and instead have the PM and the TEPCO board of directors take their place.

BTW I'd think the engineers on the ground wouldn't have to be ordered in but will go willingly knowing very well what's at stake.

[Jdietz]

IAEA has posted an update to their web site today, including on the issues with Reactors 5 and 6.. But nothing about worker radiation exposure.Japan Earthquake Update (18 March 2011, 06:10 UTC) Temperature of Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - UPDATED

Unit 4 13 March, 19:08 UTC: 84 °C Unit 5 17 March, 03:00 UTC: 64.2 °C 17 March, 18:00 UTC: 65.5 °C Unit 6 17 March, 03:00 UTC: 62.5 °C 17 March, 18:00 UTC: 62.0 °C The IAEA is continuing to seek further information about the water levels, temperature and condition of all spent fuel pool facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

http://www.iaea.org/...miupdate01.html

The IAEA can only confirm that they received the data but didn't measure itself. Normal temperature should be around 25 degree C.

IIRC normal temperature is around 40C, temperatures now around 60C, and increasing by around 5C per day, reaching boiling point in about 7-8 days. After that, if the pools are full, there is still 15x15x15 meters of water to boil off, so no immediate danger there.

Edit: This is for the #5 and #6 plants, #3 is boiling (or close to boiling dry), #4 is next.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jdietz

[webfact]

REUTERSFLASH: Japan nuclear agency: electric cables expected to be connected to reactors no.1, no.2 generators by Saturday morning

[bkkjames]

T @BreakingNews: Chicago mayor says passengers on flight from Tokyo had set off radiation detectors at O'Hare - Chicago Trib Tokyo flight triggers O'Hare radiation detectors - Chicago ...‎ -

http://www.chicagobr...0,4216493.story

edit to add, not that I am overly worried by this development but wondering about flights landing here from Japan? Any monitoring being done?

OK Thread Nazi is Back again (in reply to one of the more sour posts)

- We try to get sources as there is a lot of misinformation / misquoting / misunderstanding of what radiation levels / units mean.

- We do have a couple of real experts™ on this site, which helps a lot of getting a grip on the current situation

- We also try not to allow pro/anti nuclear energy politicking as this only detracts from the ongoing situation

- Also a lot of "news" agencies, especially foreign ones love to cherry pick the news or use laden terms to further push their agenda.

In reply to this post:

- Yes, there is radiation monitoring done here in Thailand on all flights arriving from Japan

- There are KI pills being distributed to travelers to Japan or coming from Japan when needed.

Source: BKK post.

Sorry mate, you lost me: were you having a go at me or something?

[jfchandler]

There was a similar quote from Kan when he met with the TEPCO president the other day, with Kan saying at the time that if Tepco withdrew its workers it could mean the end of the company in Japan... This version below is a bit different from the one I'm mentioning, which was widely reported earlier in this week. Maybe he's repeating himself with a bit of a different twist.

Without citing the source, a Swiss daily newspaper reported in its ticker with the time stamp 07:58 UTC that a representative of TEPCO told AFP that the Prime Minister's order that TEPCO must not withdraw its workers from the site means that these workers have to expose themselves to radiation and "die". "The question is not whether TEPCO collapses, but whether Japan collapses", Prime Minister Kan reportedly said.

Don't know how to search the AFP site for this.

[bkkjames]

RT @REUTERSFLASH: Japan nuclear safety agency says level 5 incident at Fukushima reatcors no. 1, 2, 3, raised from level 4

[Jdietz]

Elcent, from your post, it's not at all clear where these readings were taken, or what they're supposed to represent... If the graphic itself isn't clearly self-explanatory, you as the poster have the duty to provide the explanatory information for those reading here.

compare from April/May 2010 and today

http://park30.wakwak...iger_index.html

Tokyo Geiger Counter Japan Live: Tokyo Geiger Counter Live

I will try to interpret the graphs.

The bottom one is from December 2010, before all the trouble, and shows a Mean value of 14 cpm (counts per minute), which translates in around 0.14μSv/h. Normal background radiation can be anywhere between 0.10-0.30μSv/h depending on your location.

The top one is from the last couple of days, and shows a mean value of 18cpm, so around 0.18μSv/h, just a tad elevated but well within the normal background radiation variation.

Doesn't seem at all worrying to me. You do see a nice one-shot peak today around 14:00 of 33μSv/h maybe the start of spraying?

Compare this with a peak of 27μSv/h at the 'normal situation' bottom graph, and you'll agree that at this particular site there is nothing much happening.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jdietz

[jfchandler]

Well, and here is Kyodo News' different version from the Mainichi one... Take your pick... They're not at all the same:

Kyodo News (from Tuesday, I believe):

[Prime Minister] Kan strongly ordered the company [TEPCO] not to withdraw its employees from the power plant, which has been facing a series of problems since Friday's massive quake, ranging from explosions to radiation leaks. ''In the event of withdrawal from there, I'm 100 percent certain that the company will collapse,'' Kan said. ''I want you all to be determined.''

Part of the issue here may well be that I doubt there were any reporters standing around taking notes when the Kan met with the president of TEPCO... So the accounts probably are all 2nd hand or passed down versions of what supposedly was said... I don't doubt, however, that something like that was said...

Without citing the source, a Swiss daily newspaper reported in its ticker with the time stamp 07:58 UTC that a representative of TEPCO told AFP that the Prime Minister's order that TEPCO must not withdraw its workers from the site means that these workers have to expose themselves to radiation and "die". "The question is not whether TEPCO collapses, but whether Japan collapses", Prime Minister Kan reportedly said.

Don't know how to search the AFP site for this.

TEPCO initially requested its workers be permitted to withdraw completely from the plant, AFP reported, citing Japanese daily the Mainichi Shimbun.

But their request was reportedly turned down by the Japanese Prime Minister, with Mainichi Shimbun quoting him as saying: "Withdrawal is impossible. It's not a matter of whether TEPCO collapses. It's a matter of whether Japan goes wrong."

Edited March 18, 2011 by jfchandler

[jfchandler]

Thank you for the translation, JD...

The original items that we post either need to include that kind of self-evident explanation, or the person posting the item ought to provide one.

We're not all scientists here, and posts ought to be understandable by a general audience befitting TVisa.

[Jdietz]

Sorry mate, you lost me: were you having a go at me or something?

No not you, if you read back a bit, there was a name-calling post I was referring to. Didn't want to waste a post to it, so included it in my first reply.

Edit: was referring to this one:

Well I appreciated it, thanks Elcent.

At least it's a change from the usual copynpaste news articles which none of us really need because we know where to get news if that's what we want.

It would be good if attempts to DISCUSS the news weren't squashed by the bombardment of news pastes by the self nominated thread nazi.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jdietz

[JulianLS]

What they should have done is put the generators and backup pumps in water tight areas.

Well yes, however on land it's still subject to potential quake damage and sadly with all the quake engineering they still overlooked or dismissed the possibility of the current scenario which is why an additional redundant system is required.. By the way the very engineer who helped design this plant sadly made that admission..

Well, it certainly seems that way..... Japan has a history of major, devastating earthquakes (every 70 years is the average, the last one was 1923) and ensuing tsunamis. This plant was clearly not designed with enough redundancy to cope with what it was recently exposed to. The tsunami protection was clearly insufficient (I seem to recall them saying it was designed to withstand 5 metres (someone will correct me with the right figure) but well below the 10m+ tsunami that arrived last week. Given that tsunamis have recently exceeded this by a long way (some parts of Aceh got hit by a 30 meter tsunami) one has to question the level of protection, it can only be described as totally inadequate.... Similarly, a backup generator failed soon after kicking in. Because it got inundated by the tsunami..... but wasn't the tsunami fairly predictable for a "power outage after earthquake scenario"?.

The Japanese officials continually talk about the systems damage and failures as a result of either the earthquake or the tsunami, as if it was unpredictable and beyond their control. But based on Japan's past, it is exactly what you would predict to happen in that location. There is a major tectonic plate line (asia and pacific plates) right off the coast of the fukushima plants, after all. And there have been constant earthquakes in that area for many, many years. And therefore surely the design on the plant should have been to deal with "the enivitable", comfortably.

The Russians got heavy criticism for the design flaws of Chernobyl.... but in some ways I dont think the design at Fukushima is any less flawed, given its position in the highest earthquake zone in the world. The reactor may be more advanced, but as a whole the design is woefully short of the redundancy required to maintain safety.

Only through the bravery of guys risking their health to conduct desperate safety measures, might the outcome of Fukushima Daiichi be less disastrous than chernobyl....

[WarpSpeed]

What they should have done is put the generators and backup pumps in water tight areas.

Well yes, however on land it's still subject to potential quake damage and sadly with all the quake engineering they still overlooked or dismissed the possibility of the current scenario which is why an additional redundant system is required.. By the way the very engineer who helped design this plant sadly made that admission..

Well, it certainly seems that way..... Japan has a history of major, devastating earthquakes (every 70 years is the average, the last one was 1923) and ensuing tsunamis. This plant was clearly not designed with enough redundancy to cope with what it was recently exposed to. The tsunami protection was clearly insufficient (I seem to recall them saying it was designed to withstand 5 metres (someone will correct me with the right figure) but well below the 10m+ tsunami that arrived last week. Given that tsunamis have recently exceeded this by a long way (some parts of Aceh got hit by a 30 meter tsunami) one has to question the level of protection, it can only be described as totally inadequate.... Similarly, a backup generator failed soon after kicking in. Because it got inundated by the tsunami..... but wasn't the tsunami fairly predictable for a "power outage after earthquake scenario"?.

The Japanese officials continually talk about the systems damage and failures as a result of either the earthquake or the tsunami, as if it was unpredictable and beyond their control. But based on Japan's past, it is exactly what you would predict to happen in that location. There is a major tectonic plate line (asia and pacific plates) right off the coast of the fukushima plants, after all. And there have been constant earthquakes in that area for many, many years. And therefore surely the design on the plant should have been to deal with "the enivitable", comfortably.

The Russians got heavy criticism for the design flaws of Chernobyl.... but in some ways I dont think the design at Fukushima is any less flawed, given its position in the highest earthquake zone in the world. The reactor may be more advanced, but as a whole the design is woefully short of the redundancy required to maintain safety.

Only through the bravery of guys risking their health to conduct desperate safety measures, might the outcome of Fukushima Daiichi be less disastrous than chernobyl....

Exactly, Did you see my suggested solution posted previously for any similar future scenarios Julian? This thread is moving along at warp speed (pun intended) so it's a few pages back already, that's what inspired this discussion..

I wonder how many people would suddenly give up their life literally and their future knowing a potentially slow and painful death awaits them, it's like having a looking glass into their future and these people are the quintessential heros unlike the press likes to sensationalise about a mother for example who saves her child from choking since it's her child disqualifies her from being a hero..

Edited March 18, 2011 by WarpSpeed

[jfchandler]

Here, by the way, is the full document explaining the International Nuclear Events rating scale, including past examples of how different incidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were rated.

International Nuclear Event Scale.pdf

Also, someone above was discussing the pressure readings inside the various reactors...

Here is a TEPCO chart showing some of those readings from earlier this week.

Edited March 18, 2011 by jfchandler

[Jdietz]

2nd day of SDF water injection completed

http://www3.nhk.or.j...lish/18_28.html

Interesting tidbits:

- Speaking to reporters, the chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Force, Shigeru Iwasaki, said SDF members who engaged in the operations were exposed to no more than several millisieverts of radiation.

- Later on Friday, elite units from the Tokyo Fire Department are to discharge more water at the plant.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jdietz

[JulianLS]

The (Air Force) personnel were scrubbed down with soap and water, then declared contamination-free.

Sounds like a job some Thai professional women would be good at. I bet the aviators wouldn't mind.

Just wondering: The core reactor containment vessels are metal, are they not? If you dump cold water on super hot metal of a car motor, you crack the block. I assume the experts on the scene have their bases covered, ...though they appear to have done some bloopers thus far.

The Steel core (10cm+ of steel) is covered by a concrete containment structure. No worries on it cracking by spraying water.

Well, at least they were before the various explosions....

[Maestro]

TEPCO initially requested its workers be permitted to withdraw completely from the plant, AFP reported, citing Japanese daily the Mainichi Shimbun.

But their request was reportedly turned down by the Japanese Prime Minister, with Mainichi Shimbun quoting him as saying: "Withdrawal is impossible. It's not a matter of whether TEPCO collapses. It's a matter of whether Japan goes wrong."

Thank you for that. I have not been able to find it on Mainichi Shimbun (which I guess is in Japanese language) but your quote enabled me to find English-language sources quoting it, among them the New Zealand paper The Marlborough Express with the date stamp 20:35 18/03/2011 UTC+13 (14:35 Bangkok time ?):

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/world-news/4782791/Power-plant-workers-battle-on-in-earthquake-tsunami-hit-Japan

[Jdietz]

Hydrogen explosions merely damaged the outer structure in reactors #1, #3 and #4, and the torus at the bottom in #2

The containment structure you see around the reactor vessel is mostly intact (reports of possible cracks in #2 and maybe #3 reactors)

Edited March 18, 2011 by Jdietz

[JulianLS]

Exactly, Did you see my suggested solution posted previously for any similar future scenarios Julian? This thread is moving along at warp speed (pun intended) so it's a few pages back already, that's what inspired this discussion..

I wonder how many people would suddenly give up their life literally and their future knowing a potentially slow and painful death awaits them, it's like having a looking glass into their future and these people are the quintessential heros unlike the press likes to sensationalise about a mother for example who saves her child from choking since it's her child disqualifies her from being a hero..

Do you mean the submarine idea, WarpSpeed? in which case, yes, I did read that. But I don't really have a clue on the power requirements of a big plant like Fukushima Daiichi, vs the potential power output of a nuclear submarine. I dont suppose the submarine power plant is designed to put out much more power than the submarine needs itself (the advantage over diesel power being the ability to stay underwater for longer periods, rather than the power output). Or how long it would take for a submarine to travel to a disaster site (could be days or maybe even weeks?)

[animatic]

Sorry mate, you lost me: were you having a go at me or something?

No not you, if you read back a bit, there was a name-calling post I was referring to. Didn't want to waste a post to it, so included it in my first reply.

Edit: was referring to this one:

Well I appreciated it, thanks Elcent.

At least it's a change from the usual copynpaste news articles which none of us really need because we know where to get news if that's what we want.

It would be good if attempts to DISCUSS the news weren't squashed by the bombardment of news pastes by the self nominated thread nazi.

"self nominated thread nazi"

HUH!

Well I for one am extremely glad for the short list of people who are finding this info and putting it here in one place, via link, cut/paste, or any other method. It is a public service, and allows comparative analysis and hasn't stopped any direct commentary.

Some commentary such as nuclear vs alternative HAS been moved by mods to other threads, not by any "self nominated thread nazi", to keep this thread open for current announcements and a compendium from a multitude of sources, minus the bikering about political positions vis a vis the environment and energy etc, ad infinitum.

The short list has include people who provide lucid explanations of arcane data sets as well as those finding duplicates of data and making comparisons.

Please do NOT stop adding to this thread in the same manner as before. If someone doesn't like it they can look elsewhere.

And if someone wants to talk about a tangental subject, write a topic starter, and ask a Mod to start the topic for you.

[jfchandler]

For people trying to keep track of the fire truck activities, there apparently are three different elements involved:

-- trucks (a half dozen or so) from Japanese Self Defense Force bases, who have been doing the initial water spraying on Reactor 3, in rotating one by one fashion.

-- the newly arrived trucks, reportedly 30 or so in all, from the Tokyo Fire Department, who supposedly will be used for spraying on Reactor 1 if/when that begins.

--some kind of U.S. military provided fire truck, which I think I heard was being staffed by a TEPCO contractor personnel. [No U.S. military firefighters directly involved there.] I haven't seen much detail on what that apparatus is all about.

Edited March 18, 2011 by jfchandler

[animatic]

What they should have done is put the generators and backup pumps in water tight areas.

Well yes, however on land it's still subject to potential quake damage and sadly with all the quake engineering they still overlooked or dismissed the possibility of the current scenario which is why an additional redundant system is required.. By the way the very engineer who helped design this plant sadly made that admission..

Well, it certainly seems that way..... Japan has a history of major, devastating earthquakes (every 70 years is the average, the last one was 1923) and ensuing tsunamis. This plant was clearly not designed with enough redundancy to cope with what it was recently exposed to. The tsunami protection was clearly insufficient (I seem to recall them saying it was designed to withstand 5 metres (someone will correct me with the right figure) but well below the 10m+ tsunami that arrived last week. Given that tsunamis have recently exceeded this by a long way (some parts of Aceh got hit by a 30 meter tsunami) one has to question the level of protection, it can only be described as totally inadequate.... Similarly, a backup generator failed soon after kicking in. Because it got inundated by the tsunami..... but wasn't the tsunami fairly predictable for a "power outage after earthquake scenario"?.

The Japanese officials continually talk about the systems damage and failures as a result of either the earthquake or the tsunami, as if it was unpredictable and beyond their control. But based on Japan's past, it is exactly what you would predict to happen in that location. There is a major tectonic plate line (asia and pacific plates) right off the coast of the fukushima plants, after all. And there have been constant earthquakes in that area for many, many years. And therefore surely the design on the plant should have been to deal with "the enivitable", comfortably.

The Russians got heavy criticism for the design flaws of Chernobyl.... but in some ways I dont think the design at Fukushima is any less flawed, given its position in the highest earthquake zone in the world. The reactor may be more advanced, but as a whole the design is woefully short of the redundancy required to maintain safety.

Only through the bravery of guys risking their health to conduct desperate safety measures, might the outcome of Fukushima Daiichi be less disastrous than chernobyl....

Agree with you 100%

It's not the generation system that was the problem, Japanese engineering is typically quite thorough or more, but in this case a financial issue coupled to lack of political will to spend more on the WHOLE organic system and not just a properly setup generation system with typical safeguards. This was NOT a typical installation risk location.

The issue of preparing for a 'worse case scenario' was no doubt politically whittled down for cost reasons, and politicians are typically not as worried about logic as making points or gaining control. One part of the problem is that it HAD been 40+ years, since 1923, when the last really serious tsunami earthquake took place, and most of those adult enough to have known it first hand had gone into retirement, or were just not conversent enough about nuclear risks at that time (60's), to raise enough objections.

Just like the political will wasn't there for decades to properly repair the New Orleans levee system, because nothing bad had happened in contemporary memory, the will to actual do, and act on, worse case predictions of for this event scenario also were whittled down. Sadly for millions, that old fashioned attitude has proved to be quite inadequate in the face of modern nuclear technology coupled with mother nature at her harshest.

Edited March 18, 2011 by animatic

[WarpSpeed]

Exactly, Did you see my suggested solution posted previously for any similar future scenarios Julian? This thread is moving along at warp speed (pun intended) so it's a few pages back already, that's what inspired this discussion..

I wonder how many people would suddenly give up their life literally and their future knowing a potentially slow and painful death awaits them, it's like having a looking glass into their future and these people are the quintessential heros unlike the press likes to sensationalise about a mother for example who saves her child from choking since it's her child disqualifies her from being a hero..

Do you mean the submarine idea, WarpSpeed? in which case, yes, I did read that. But I don't really have a clue on the power requirements of a big plant like Fukushima Daiichi, vs the potential power output of a nuclear submarine. I dont suppose the submarine power plant is designed to put out much more power than the submarine needs itself (the advantage over diesel power being the ability to stay underwater for longer periods, rather than the power output). Or how long it would take for a submarine to travel to a disaster site (could be days or maybe even weeks?)

Right me either, can't find the numbers anywhere but suffice it to say that if virtually the entire power output was dedicated to simply powering pumps since minimal other systems are really required for the subs operation beyond that it stands to reason that it should be more then enough output. Besides there is no reason additional power gens could not be installed as well if the subs were completely gutted of all but the required operating equipment and then refitted with whatever is necessary for such a project..

I dare say that their power output would far exceed what is required though given all that they produce now and say an Akula class sub is plenty large enough..

[Tywais]

An inflammatory post deriding posters in this topic has been removed. Several posters are using their time to keep us up to date on this important topic and doing an excellent job of it. I suspect this site has the best concentrated information out there now that can't be obtained from any other single site. Any further attacks will not be tolerated.

[jfchandler]

NHK reports that the official police death toll for the quake and tsunami, now at more than 6500, has now surpassed the number from the 1995 Kobe earthquake, making it Japan's worst death toll since World War II.

[Jdietz]

In other good news, it looks like the reported SPEEDI radiation levels are falling across the board.

http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/

Ibaraki is down from 950+ two days ago, to 860 something yesterday, to 761nGy/h right now. That station has continuously reported the highest levels, at least 10x the other sites. All other numbers also look lower.

SPEEDI reports levels in nGy/h, divide by 1000 to get MicroSievert/h (μSv/h)

[bkkjames]

Thanks Tywais: john and others like yourself should be thanked for a week of updates-others who want to prove how book smart they are can go open a thread elsewhere to prove it;)

[elcent]

Japan raises nuclear alert level

Nuclear safety agency raises severity rating of accident at Fukushima plant, signifying higher risk of radiation.

Japan has raised the severity level of a nuclear crisis at a quake-hit nuclear power plant, the UN nuclear watchdog has reported.

An entry on a monitoring website on Friday gave the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi site in the northeast of the country a level 5 rating, up from level 4 previously on a 1-7 scale.

That would suggest a level of seriousness on par with the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/03/201131823117439114.html

We're getting very contradicting messages out of Japan, don't we?

[elcent]

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

• Timestamp: 7:27pm
  The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says that the UN atomic watchdog plans to hold an extraordinary meeting on Japan's nuclear plants next Monday. Yukiya Amano, the head of the agency, announced plans for the meeting during a news conference in Tokyo.

Aljazeera