Japan: Massive Tsunami

[johnnya24]

Add to all this the horrific new video that is going about of the first wave to hit the town with 10K people missing ...

[Fresno Bob]

Joe, Eric and others can much better comment on Japanese nuance than I can as they have lived there, but from what I understand this kind of direct speech and appeal for calm reads as very disquieting to me. Anybody with first hand Japanese experience want to comment on that?

it's less than it used to be, but if it is the Emperor that gets on, then you know it's really really bad....my wife just told me that this reactor was supposed to be decommishioned this year....

[johnnya24]

Add to all this the horrific new video that is going about of the first wave to hit the town with 10K people missing ...

This is the video ... they have cropped the bottom of the picture not to show the people fleeing the path of the wave:



From 0.50 onwards, you get a fuller picture of the end of this video

[johnnya24]

Some perspective:

The heat that was being generated by the reactors was 10% of the heat when teh reactor was turned on before the Earthquake hit. Chernobyl was so serious because the reactor exploded while it was still at 100%.

Earlier we heard that 400 milliSieverts of radiation an hour had been recorded at Fukushima Daiichi's unit 3 reactor this morning. The Guardian's science correspondent Ian Sample has provided some context to the units being used to describe radiation levels.

"The levels of radiation being released by the nuclear power station are given in Sieverts. A microSievert is one millionth of a Sievert," Ian writes. "A milliSievert is one thousandth of a Sievert."

Ian offers these comparisons:

• 2 milliSieverts/year: The level of natural background radiation we are all exposed to.

• 9 milliSieverts/year: The typical dose received by an airline crew flying the New York to Tokyo polar route. Flying at altitude increases radiation exposure to cosmic rays.

• 100 milliSieverts/year: The lowest level at which an increase in cancer is evident.

<----------- READINGS OUTSIDE REACTOR (400) HERE ... (just downgraded to 60 ms) --------------->

• 1,000 milliSieverts accumulative: Estimated to cause a fatal cancer many years later in 5% of people.

• 1,000 milliSieverts single dose: Temporary radiation sickness, including nausea, lower white blood cell count. Not fatal.

• 5,000 milliSieverts single dose: Fatal within a month to half those who receive it.

• 10,000 milliSieverts single dose: Fatal within weeks.

Guardian

Currently 60ms at reactor site, 0.8ms in Tokyo. So right now, not a huge disaster. Although the French have just upgraded this disaster to a 6 (out of 7) on the disaster scale (7 being Chernobyl).

[cardboardbox]

this whole thing makes me so sad.

[nullnor]

facts on Chernobyl nuclear accident: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...72E42U20110315

1) Unlike the nuclear crisis in Japan which was caused by a natural disaster, the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl power plant on April 26, 1986 -- the world's worst nuclear accident -- was caused by human error.

2) Facility operators, in violation of safety regulations, had switched off important control systems at the Ukrainian plant's reactor number four and allowed it to reach unstable, low-power conditions, according to a United Nations report. A power surge led to a series of blasts, at 1.24 a.m., which blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid and sent a cloud of radioactive dust billowing across northern and western Europe, reaching as far as the eastern United States

3) they say between 4,000 to 734,000 ppl died.

4) Chernobyl engineers shut down the last functioning reactor, Number Three, in December 2000. Radioactive nuclear fuel is still being removed from the plant.

5) A make-shift cover -- the 'Sarcophagus' -- was built in six months after the explosion. It covers the stricken reactor to protect the environment from radiation for at least 30 years. This has now developed cracks, triggering an international effort to fund a new encasement.

6) Officials say it could be up to 100 years before the station is completely decommissioned.

7) A 30-km (19-mile) exclusion zone is in place round the disaster site.

8) Wildlife has made a comeback in this area and there are said to be more than 60 different types of mammals living there including wild boar and elk.

a book i actually read 15 years ago:

Medvedev, a chief engineer at Chernobyl when it was built in 1970, graphically describes the events leading up to and following the world's worst nuclear accident. Asked to conduct an investigation less than two weeks after the explosion, he interviewed most of the major participants, including many who died within weeks from radiation sickness. In lucid detail and with an insider's understanding, Medvedev describes the human and technical failings that led to the accident and, with enormous compassion, recounts the efforts of firefighters and many of the reactor's operators who gave their lives in the struggle to contain the disaster.

i didn't understand the book. but without a containment vessel, i did grasp, that ppl really did intentionally sacrifice their lives to make one at the last minute..

[johnnya24]

This kind of political knee-jerk reacting makes me sick:

Angela Merkel's U-turn on nuclear energy became even more gear-crunching on Tuesday when she announced the temporary closure of seven of Germany's nuclear power stations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/15/germany-merkel-switches-nuclear-power-off

This just seems like a completely ridiculous response.

[johnnya24]

I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't know if I would characterize the response as ridiculous at all.

Even as a proponent of nuclear power, I think it's pretty clear that the fallout from a disaster at this type of facility is far more severe than pretty much any other facility known to man.

I think temporarily closing 7 old plants in order to do a safety review is pretty responsible, actually.

The catalogue of events that conspired to create the Fukushima incident are off the scale in terms of odds. Fingers crossed, and I hope I'm not tempting fate by saying this ... but despite the sh8tstorm that has hit that place:

9.0 Earthquake
Tsunami
Cooling Failure
4 massive explosions
Meltdowns
Fires in the storage reactors

... the likely outcome is that no serious radiation leaks will occur that could damage human life (touch wood again).

I know it might seem counter-intuitive to say this, but the seriousness of this incident, combined with the failure of many of the safety mechanisms at the plant (all of which are outdated by modern nuclear safety standards), combined with the fact that the plant was built in an earthquake/Tsunami hotspot, combined with the fact this is a very old reactor design, combined with the [hopefully] limited repercussions from the incident (touch wood again), actually proves that nuclear energy is actually a relatively safe and clean energy solution.

I mean if an old plant can basically blow up, have all it's (old and insufficient) safety mechanisms fail, and still we only get a localised incident with no loss of life as a consequence of radiation ... this is a big tick for Nuclear power (which is a big debate in the UK right now).

[johnnya24]

[Bob Kohm]

I know it might seem counter-intuitive to say this, but the seriousness of this incident, combined with the failure of many of the safety mechanisms at the plant (all of which are outdated by modern nuclear safety standards), combined with the fact that the plant was built in an earthquake/Tsunami hotspot, combined with the fact this is a very old reactor design, combined with the [hopefully] limited repercussions from the incident (touch wood again), actually proves that nuclear energy is actually a relatively safe and clean energy solution.

I mean if an old plant can basically blow up, have all it's (old and insufficient) safety mechanisms fail, and still we only get a localised incident with no loss of life as a consequence of radiation ... this is a big tick for Nuclear power (which is a big debate in the UK right now).

Not to be a pessimist here, Johnny, but I'd hold that commentary for at least a few more days. I think it's pretty clear that TEPCO & the Kan Admin are not telling the whole story on this event and the persistent fires at #4 coupled with the "We have a containment breach, er uhm, no we don't have a containment breach well, maybe we have a containment breach at #2" aren't sitting well with me. We now have five and perhaps six units between two plants experiencing coolant system failures, a containment pool that is or isn't (depending on whom you ask and at which minute you ask them) boiling fast enough to cook pasta and major crew evacuations all in a zone that is still expecting a 7.0 aftershock offshore that could produce another tsunami. Couple that to the possible thermal and shock degradation of the containment vessels (which, as mentioned, may have already seen a failure) and, well...

Edit to add: Oh, and now heavy white smoke (hopefully not steam...) is pouring out of Daiichi #3, with TEPCO officials saying they don't know why.

[johnnya24]

Edit to add: Oh, and now heavy white smoke (hopefully not steam...) is pouring out of Daiichi #3, with TEPCO officials saying they don't know why.

Yeah just saw that after I posted ... many twitter reports saying its steam, but nothing concrete ... radioactive steam?

One other thing that has taken my eye is the contrast between how the Japanese authorities what to deal with the situation: the old fashioned way, holding back details so as not to cause public panic etc, and the international press, which wants to know and report everything instantaneously ... and sensationalise every single bit of information even when they don't have all the facts.

I half expect the head of Tepco to offer to fall on his sword when this is all over.

I was watching one of the stations Asian broadcasts late last night, with some really rude anchor interviewing a nuclear expert. He kept explaining the facts as he saw them, and she kept trying to get him to agree to possible worst-case-scenario outcomes for every little detail. It was as if they made an editorial decision to hype up every little incident for ratings purposes.

So we end with this situation ... we want to watch to see what is unfolding, but the fact that we are watching is effecting how they are reporting the news, because they want us to keep watching and in greater and greater numbers. Thank god for the BBC's ad-free and slightly boring coverage (minus the dramatic theme music and disaster jingles).

Edit: then I go to Twitter to see if the chatter is bringing up anything new ... making me, in some small way, part of the cause of the decline in journalism standards.

[PaleoMan]

Insight on the disaster from a former nuclear power professional:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/82300.html

[johnnya24]

Yeah just saw that after I posted ... many twitter reports saying its steam, but nothing concrete ... radioactive steam?

Chatter now suggesting fresh fire at reactor 4 ...

White smoke / steam coming from Reactor 3.

I also heard that radiation too high at Reactor 1 for workers to go there.

But Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano also just said radiation levels falling during the day after briefly rising earlier ... so many mixed signals.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

[Bob Kohm]

Chatter now suggesting fresh fire at reactor 4 ...

A major "Oh Sh*t" moment now-- Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announces that the source of the "smoke" is the containment vessel of Daiichi #3, that radiation levels have spiked and are too high to continue firefighting in the complex and that all workers have been evacuated.

That cannot be good, although I'm not able to say how dire it is. It sounds, well... yeah, dire. Are they really saying that they've abandoned the complex with these reactors doing what they're doing? Good god, I hope not.

[PaleoMan]

5:50 mark covers the folly of nuclear facilities without around the clock maintenance. Given the incredible half-lifes of the isotopes we use for fuel, is it really worth it?