Japan Tsunami

[southsider2k5]

Possibly. If you had a high pressure water line that ruptured underground, it might do the same thing on video. I'd guess you're right, but I can't say for certain.

 

The part about it being reclaimed land from Tokyo Bay is what really cinched it for me.

[Balta1701]

The part about it being reclaimed land from Tokyo Bay is what really cinched it for me.

Depends on what it was reclaimed with. If they dumped in a lot of boulders and then filled it with clay around it, that's different than if it was all just fine silt/clay. I also don't know the sediment types flowing into Tokyo Bay that well.

[Balta1701]

It sounds like reactor #2 at the site, which is the 1 of the 3 damage reactors that has not yet suffered an explosion, has in the last 12 hours gone from being relatively stable to being the biggest potential crisis of the 3.

In reactor No. 2, which is now the most damaged of the three at the Daiichi plant, at least parts of the fuel rods have been exposed for several hours, which also suggests that some of the fuel has begun to melt. Government and company officials said fuel melting has almost certainly occurred in that reactor, which can increase releases of radioactive material through the water and steam that escapes from the container vessel.

 

In a worst case, the fuel pellets could also burn through the bottom of the containment vessel and radioactive material could pour out that way — often referred to as a full meltdown.

 

"There is a possibility that the fuel rods are heating up and starting to melt,” said a Tokyo Electric spokesman told a late-night conference on Monday, televised on public broadcaster NHK. “It is our understanding that we have possible damage to the fuel rods,” he said.

 

By Monday night, officials said that radiation readings around the plant reached 3,130 micro Sievert, the highest yet detected at the Daiichi facility since the quake and six times the legal limit. Radiation levels of that magnitude are considered elevated, but they are much lower than would be the case if one of the container vessels had been compromised.

 

Industry executvies in touch with their counterparts in Japan Monday night grew increasingly alarmed about the risks posed by the No. 2 reactor.

 

“They’re basically in a full-scale panic” among Japanese power industry managers, said a senior nuclear industry executive. The executive is not involved in managing the response to the reactors’ difficulties but has many contacts in Japan. “They’re in total disarray, they don’t know what to do.”

[Balta1701]

At this point, they've moved into "vague pronouncement of risk but bad enough that you don't want to read between the lines" territory.

 

It sounds like there's a serious risk now of a full failure of containment of reactor number 2. And the people who are pronouncing things fine are also saying stay indoors and don't use your air conditioning.

“We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario,” said Hiroaki Koide, a senior reactor engineering specialist at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. “We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”

 

Another executive said the chain of events at Daiichi suggested that it would be difficult to maintain emergency seawater cooling operations for an extended period if the containment vessel at one reactor had been compromised because radiation levels could threaten the health of workers nearby.

 

If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl.

 

....

While Japanese officials made no comparisons to past accidents, the release of an unknown quantity of radioactive gases and particles — all signs that the reactor cores were damaged from at least partial melting of fuel — added considerable tension to the effort to cool the reactors.

 

“It’s way past Three Mile Island already,” said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton. “The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.”

[southsider2k5]

This is a pretty cool program! More details at the link.

 

http://news.vzw.com/news/2011/03/pr2011-03-14d.html

 

Verizon Makes Calls Free To Japan From March 11 To April 10

news.vzw.com

To help its customers contact loved ones in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami, Verizon is making calls to Japan free for most wireless and residential customers through April 10.

[southsider2k5]

Also

 

You can donate online at www.redcross.org, or text REDCROSS to 90999 from your cell phone to donate $10 to the Red Cross’ Japan relief efforts.

[Balta1701]

Additional varieties of plant trouble.

Even as workers race to prevent the radioactive cores of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan from melting down, concerns are growing that nearby pools holding spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger.

 

The pools, which sit on the top level of the reactor buildings and keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems and the Japanese have been unable to take emergency steps because of the multiplying crises.

 

By late Tuesday, the water meant to cool spent fuel rods in the No. 4 reactor was boiling, Japan’s nuclear watchdog said. If the water evaporates and the rods run dry, they could overheat and catch fire, potentially spreading radioactive materials in dangerous clouds.

 

Shigekatsu Oomukai, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said the substantial capacity of the pool meant that the water in it was unlikely to evaporate soon. But he said workers were having difficulty reaching the pool to cool it, because of the high temperature of the water.

 

Temperatures appeared to be rising in the spent fuel pools at two other reactors at the plant, No. 5 and No. 6, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary. Meanwhile, workers continued to pump seawater into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, where cooling systems remained unusable.

 

The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the reactors have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

 

If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.

 

“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”

Worth noting that storage and processing of spent fuel rods is an issue in this country as well.

[BigSqwert]

Study: U.S. States 'Poorly Prepared' For Radiation Emergency

[BigSqwert]

Japan Nuclear Situation "Out of Control"

The European Union's energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger said today that the Japanese nuclear disaster is a lot worse than what Japan is declaring. In fact, he believes it could be an apocalypse:

There i

s

tal

k

of an apocalyp

s

e and I thin

k

the word i

s

particularly well cho

s

en [...] I hope that it doe

s

n't happen, but we can't rule out that the wor

s

t ca

s

e

s

cenario [a complete meltdown a la Chernobyl] happen

s

in the next few hour

s

or day

s

.

The European view on the subject is way darker than what the IAEA, the Japan government and most of the United States' media is portraying.

 

Oettinger said that the situation is "almost completely out of control" and that it's only going to get worse as workers get evacuated. Nuclear emergency experts believe that you can't keep the situation from escalating without enough personnel on site, pointing at the 50 engineers now at the nuclear complex. Spanish radiobiology scientist Eduard Rodríguez-Farré says that Fukushima is like a "slow-motion camera Chernobyl". According to him, the situation is now "running wild."

 

Yesterday, André-Claude Lacoste, president of France's national organization for nuclear safety, said that the level threat should be 5 and perhaps 6. Today, the French energy agency said that this disaster is only second to Chernobyl and has recommended to raise the alert to 7, the maximum in the nuclear event scale. France has 58 operating reactors, only second to the United States' 104.

 

Japanese officials previously suggested that the primary containment vessel at the No. 2 reactor of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi may have been breached. European experts, however, are saying that all signs and known data point to a certain breach.

 

Japan is still insisting that this is a level 4 accident—even after officials removed all workers from the plant and extended the evacuation area to a 30 kilometer radius. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kasays that, while the situation is bad, "people need to keep calm" after the third explosion. Japanese officials said that, despite the morning spike, the radiation level is now "down to the level that can do no harm." However, all the plant personnel have now been evacuated except for 50 engineers who are managing the situation.

 

The International Atomic Energy Agency hasn't changed its previous statement yet. Speaking yesterday in a news conference at the agency's Vienna headquarters, the IAEA president Yukiya Amano said that a Chernobyl was "very unlikely":

Let me

s

ay that the po

s

s

ibility that the development of thi

s

accident into one li

k

e Chernobyl i

s

very unli

k

ely [...] there i

s

no chain reaction going on.

Japan Nuclear Situation "Out of Control" But Chernobyl clean-up expert Iouli Andreev accused the IAEA of not being "interested in the concentration of attention on a possible accident in the nuclear industry. They are totally not interested in all the emergency organizations." He also accused the United Nations organization and the companies involved of willingly ignoring the lessons from the worst accident in history:

After Chernobyl all the force of the nuclear indu

s

try wa

s

directed to hide thi

s

event, for not creating damage to their reputation. The Chernobyl experience wa

s

not

s

tudied properly becau

s

e who ha

s

money for

s

tudying? Only indu

s

try. [...] The Japane

s

e were very greedy and they u

s

ed every

s

quare inch of the

s

pace. But when you have a den

s

e placing of

s

pent fuel in the ba

s

in you have a high po

s

s

ibility of fire if the water i

s

removed from the ba

s

in.

For their part, the Russians are closely working with their Japanese neighbors, and already have nuclear emergency workers on site providing assistance. Andreev said that they need to think creatively and improvise to solve this crisis or face a complete catastrophe.

Edited March 15, 2011 by BigSqwert

[Balta1701]

Desperation move time.

As they raced to avert a potential nuclear catastrophe, Japanese officials said Tuesday that they were considering a risky plan to spray water from a helicopter to prevent new fires in a pool of spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

 

All but about 50 workers were evacuated from the plant, where at least three reactor cores are believed to be imperiled, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan hailed those who remained, saying they “are putting themselves in a very dangerous situation.”

 

Explosions destroyed the tops of two buildings housing reactors at the plant, one on Saturday and another on Monday. An explosion Tuesday in another reactor, unit 2, “may have affected the integrity of the primary containment vessel,” the International Atomic Energy Agency reported.

 

A fire burned for two hours Tuesday in the pool containing spent nuclear fuel rods at the unit 4 reactor. News services quoted a government official as saying the pool could still be near the boiling point.

 

In addition to the helicopter operation, Tokyo Electric will also try to spray water from trucks on the ground through a hole in the building around the pool, NHK television reported.

 

Such drastic measures would be a last-ditch effort to prevent the spent fuel from burning and to keep cesium-137 and other radioactive isotopes from being released into the air, experts said.

 

“This is scary,” said Luke Barrett, a nuclear engineer who directed the clean-up of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. “The plans in a severe accident are to just get a firehose in there, get any kind of water to keep water in the pool above the fuel. To try to lower buckets of water through the roof with a helicopter is a huge challenge, especially for the pilots.”

 

With the outer containment building at unit 2 primed for a possible explosion, any helicopter crews hovering over nearby unit 4 would be in grave peril, Barrett said.

....

Robert Alvarez, an analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies who has long warned of the dangers of spent fuel pools at reactors, said that — unlike the reactors themselves — the fuel pools typically do not have backup pumps to maintain water flow. “They were so overwhelmed,” he said of the workers straining to contain the disaster, “maybe they weren’t checking water levels, and water started heating up and boiling” in the pool.

When Chernobyl blew up, the Russians had helicopter pilots dropping cement into the structure to try to contain it. Most of those pilots did not survive.

[Balta1701]

A new fire has been found in the Unit 4 spent fuel storage area. This is the same area which caught fire yesterday causing a 1000x spike in radiation levels. There is a report out that 2 workers are missing.

 

I don't know how they were able to extinguish the first fire, but if they can't contain this, it's game over for the whole plant.

[StrangeSox]

The NEI has running updates on the situation.

 

http://nei.cachefly.net/newsandevents/info...in-that-region/

[Balta1701]

The head of the U.S. NRC testified before Congress today and said that things are much, much worse than what the Japanese have currently admitted. He recommended that U.S. citizens evacuate to > 50 miles from the plant.

 

It also sounds a lot like the people currently working at the plant are being exposed to potentially lethal levels of radiation.

[StrangeSox]

Kind of assumed that the 50 or so people still working at the plant are basically sacrificing themselves.

[southsider2k5]

Kind of assumed that the 50 or so people still working at the plant are basically sacrificing themselves.

 

I heard an interview where one of them acknowledged as much.

[Balta1701]

Kind of assumed that the 50 or so people still working at the plant are basically sacrificing themselves.

It was up to 180 yesterday.

[Balta1701]

One other valid point...the location and length of this rupture probably means that this earthquake has significantly increased stresses on the segment of the subduction zone off of Tokyo.

[southsider2k5]

One other valid point...the location and length of this rupture probably means that this earthquake has significantly increased stresses on the segment of the subduction zone off of Tokyo.

 

Isn't that pretty much true in any earthquake though? You are moving stresses from one place to another.

[Balta1701]

Isn't that pretty much true in any earthquake though? You are moving stresses from one place to another.

Yes it is certainly true...the reason to point it out in this case though is that the section you're stressing is near a population center.

[Balta1701]

Radioactive food.

The Japanese government halted the sale of all food from farms near a tsunami-affected nuclear plant Saturday after abnormally high levels of radiation were found in milk and spinach.

 

The news of food contamination came as emergency workers scrambled to curb a nuclear crisis sparked by last week's monster earthquake and tsunami.

 

Crews came closer to restoring electricity needed to power up failed cooling systems in stricken reactors at the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear plant and an unmanned contraption was able to spray seawater continuously to cool down an overheating spent nuclear fuel pool.

 

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said levels of radiation exceeding safety limits stipulated by Japanese law were found in some samples of spinach and milk from the Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures but authorities said the radioactive iodine-contaminated food posed little risk.

 

Tainted milk was found 30 kilometers from the plant and spinach was collected as far as 100 kilometers (65 miles) to the south, almost half way to Tokyo.

Radiation in food is quite a bit more deadly than skin exposure, because it gets past your skin.

[southsider2k5]

Brings a whole new meaning to irradiated food, huh?

[lostfan]

So who else immediately thought about a Fallout game... come on... I know I'm not the only one

[Balta1701]

UK sources are reporting that 5 of the 50 nuclear workers who stayed behind at the plant have died, and another 15 may have received lethal radiation doses.

[Texsox]

I know there is a small difference in the boiling point of sea water versus freshwater, but it seems rather minimal in this situation, or is it? Why do they make a big deal about using saltwater, now freshwater?

[Balta1701]

I know there is a small difference in the boiling point of sea water versus freshwater, but it seems rather minimal in this situation, or is it? Why do they make a big deal about using saltwater, now freshwater?

The difference is not the boiling point, it is what happens in the event of evaporation. If you evaporate fresh water, you're left with only small amounts of deposits. If you evaporate ocean water, you're left with substantial deposits of salt.

 

If you're pumping salt water into a reactor around fuel rods, and that water is evaporating, that deposits the salt on the fuel rods. The fuel rod design is such that they're supposed to get really hot in the middle but have reduced temperature at the edges where they release that heat into the water. A diffusion gradient is set up in temperature. However, if you wrap the fuel rod in salt, you create another barrier to effective heat removal into the water. The salt acts as an insulation layer, causing the temperature in the fuel rod to go up as heat removal becomes less efficient. If heat removal becomes less efficient, this can cause the rods to reach their solidus (melting point), at which point the rod integrity will fail, you have a meltdown, and potential release of the material from the rods.

 

Furthermore, salt in water is an electrolyte, it's corrosive. If you're pumping salt water through metal pipes, that dramatically enhances the corrosion of those pipes and can cause additional spillage.