Emergency Declared at Fukushima. last sunday a 6.0 earthquake shook Fukushima

[annm4peace]

I didn't see this in the news... I received it on my facebook
http://nsnbc.me/2013/08/06/emergency-declared-at-fukushima/



Christof Lehmann (nsnbc),- After a 6.0 earthquake shook Fukushima on Sunday, the crippled nuclear power plant has attracted renewed national and international attention. Now, Shinji Kinjo, the head of Japan´s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, NRA, admits to a Reuters journalist, that “right now, we have an emergency”.

On Sunday, an earthquake, measuring 6.0 on the Richter Scale, shook the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan. The epicenter of Sunday´s earthquake was near the epicenter of the 2011, 9.0 earthquake, that caused the death of more than 15.000 during a subsequent Tsunami, and which crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, causing the meltdown of the core of several reactors, and as some experts claim, the meltdown of stored fuel rods.

The earthquake on Sunday directed renewed national and international attention to the situation at the crippled Fukushima power plant. The immediate response from the side of the operator of the plant, TEPCO, was that the earthquake had not caused any new or additional damage.

However, in July it transpired, that the plant continues leaking highly radioactive contaminated water directly into the Pacific Ocean. Now, the head of Japan´s Nuclear Regular Authority, NRA, admits that “Right now, we have an emergency”.

Approximately 400 tons of groundwater percolate into the basements of the crippled plant every day. There, the groundwater mixes with the water, which is pumped into the plant in the, according to some sources desperate” attempts to cool down the reactor cores which are in a state of meltdown. The temperature of the cores however, continues to rise. The highly contaminated water is escaping directly into the Pacific Ocean.

On Sunday, a nuclear physicist stated to nsnbc international, on condition of anonymity, that the situation at Fukushima can best be described as an open air nuclear power plant in meltdown mode, with the cooling water being pumped directly into the ocean.

Moreover, the contaminated water is also entering the surface soil and the groundwater. The consequences could be described as catastrophic.

The Fukushima plant operator, TEPCO, has over the last two years claimed that it has managed to prevent the escape of radioactive contaminated water into the groundwater, because it is storing spent cooling water in storage tanks, and because it has “hardened the earth” around the reactors by injecting a chemical compound into the earth surrounding the reactors, which, so TEPCO, contains the water in a kind of basin.

In July, TEPCO then had to admit, that the lethally toxic water could not be contained anyway. The shell or basin around the crippled reactors “is not holding water”. The technique only works from a depths of 1.8 meters and below, but the contaminated water is spilling from the basements and onto the top soil because more water, including groundwater enters, than TEPCO can pump out. A nuclear engineer who has been working for TEPCO told the Reuters news agency:

“If you build a wall, of course the water is going to accumulate there. And there is no other way for the water to go but up or sideways and eventually to the ocean. So now, the question is how long do we have?”

According to some Japanese experts and news media, a massive leak could appear within no more than three weeks. TEPCO has promised to begin pumping enough of the highly contaminated water by the end of the week, to stop the water from rising, but does not explain how it will manage to make good on the guaranty, since its available storage tanks are 85 % full already. An entirely different question is, how long can one poor water into a leaking bucket in the hope that the hole will fix itself ?

[Esse Quam Videri]

1. Hopefully people will start to take notice.

Been trying to tell people about this disaster for two and a half years with little success.

[GP6971]

3. If you're like me

absolutely no success. It's in Japan..........Oh..... where is that ????? If it's not in their backyard, then it's of no consequence.

[annm4peace]

4. I keep getting posts with scientific info on my facebook

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/05/fukushima-nuclear-plant-emergency-radioactive-groundwater

here is another one.

Fukushima emergency declared as radioactive water spills over
Nuclear watchdog warns contaminated groundwater has breached underground barrier meant to keep it out of sea.

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an "emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, according to the country's nuclear watchdog.

The contaminated groundwater had breached an underground barrier, was rising towards the surface and exceeded legal limits of radioactive discharge, said Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) taskforce. Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) were only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak", Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone [to deal with the situation].

"Right now, we have an emergency."

Tepco has been widely castigated for its failure to prepare for the 2011 tsunami and earthquake that devastated its Fukushima plant, as well as being lambasted for its inept response to the reactor meltdowns. It has also been accused of covering up shortcomings.

It was not immediately clear how much of a threat the contaminated groundwater could pose. In the early weeks of the disaster the Japanese government allowed Tepco to dump tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific as an emergency measure.

The toxic water release was heavily criticised by neighbouring countries as well as fishermen and the utility has since promised not to dump irradiated water without the consent of local townships.

"Until we know the exact density and volume of the water that's flowing out I honestly can't speculate on the impact on the sea," said Mitsuo Uematsu, of the Centre for International Collaboration, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo.

In the US, across the Pacific, there was no sense of alarm. "With the amount of dilution that would occur, any kind of release in Japan would be non-detectable here," said David Yogi, spokesman for the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Tepco said it was taking measures to prevent contaminated water from leaking into the bay near the plant. In an emailed statement to Reuters a company spokesman said Tepco deeply apologised to residents in Fukushima prefecture, the surrounding region and the larger public for causing inconveniences, worries and trouble.

The utility pumps out 400 tonnes a day of groundwater flowing from the hills above the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the basements of the destroyed buildings. There it mixes with highly irradiated water that is used to cool the reactors and maintain a stable state below 100C (32F).

Tepco is trying to prevent groundwater from reaching the plant by building a bypass but recent spikes of radioactive elements in seawater have prompted the utility to reverse months of denials and finally admit that tainted water is reaching the sea.

In an effort to prevent more leaks into the bay of the Pacific Ocean plant workers created the underground barrier by injecting chemicals to harden the ground along the shoreline of the No 1 reactor building. But that barrier is only effective in solidifying the ground at least 1.8 metres below the surface.

By breaching the barrier the water can seep through the shallow areas of earth into the nearby sea. More seriously, it is rising towards the surface – a break of which would accelerate the outflow.

"If you build a wall, of course the water is going to accumulate there. And there is no other way for the water to go but up or sideways and eventually lead to the ocean," said Masashi Goto, a retired Toshiba Corp nuclear engineer who worked on several Tepco plants. "So now, the question is how long do we have?"

Contaminated water could rise to the ground's surface within three weeks, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said on Saturday. Kinjo said the three-week timeline was not based on NRA's calculations but acknowledged that if the water reached the surface "it would flow extremely fast".

A Tepco official said on Monday that the company planned to start pumping out a further 100 tonnes of groundwater a day by the end of the week.

The regulatory taskforce overseeing accident measures of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, which met on Friday, concluded that new measures are needed to stop the water from flowing into the sea that way, Kinjo said.

Tepco said on Friday that a cumulative 20tn to 40tn becquerels of radioactive tritium had probably leaked into the sea since the disaster. The company said this was within legal limits. A becquerel is a measure of the release of radioactive energy.

Tritium is far less harmful than caesium and strontium, which have also been released from the plant. Tepco is scheduled to test strontium levels next.

Tepco said on Monday that caesium levels at an observation post 53 metres from the sea had jumped in the past week. Readings for caesium-134 were almost 15 times higher at 310 becquerels a litre.

Caesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years, was also 15 times higher than it had been five days ago at 650 becquerels a litre. A much larger spike in radioactive caesium in July in a different well led to Tepco overturning months of denials and admitting that radioactive water had been leaking into the sea.

[Gregorian]

6. Major mistake in that article. 100C is not 32F, but 212F. But I got the message. Open air meltdown.

So it sounds like they're trying to stay below boiling. And two years later and the temp is still rising. It sounds bad.

[Art_from_Ark]

24. The article lied about there being a 6.0 earthquake in Fukushima on Sunday

as well as confusing Centigrade versus Fahrenheit, so I wouldn't exactly consider it a reliable source of information.

[Katashi_itto]

56. Denial is the last refuge of the....

[Art_from_Ark]

57. Denial?

Please see my posts downthread.

I live 100 miles south of Fukushima Dai-ichi so I very much have a dog in this race

[Katashi_itto]

58. KK, see it, my appologies

Best of luck to you. I want to be in Tokyo in 2015 for the world Kendo championships. Not to mention eventually move or retire to Japan. I'm hoping it will still be there.

[TBF]

63. But is the overall point of the article correct?

Just because a fact is incorrect doesn't mean we should discount the rest. I see down thread that you are in the area. Is there any local press on this subject? Sitting here in the US it seems an international team should be put together to try to help out. Does that seem reasonable?

[FBaggins]

71. Of course not

It's a load of odd spin and paranoid imaginings.

Some examples?

There are no experts who claim that fuel in the spent fuel pools melted down. There were some who feared this in the earliest days of the incident... but it has been known that this was incorrect for over two years now. In fact, it has been known since they found out that the pools are not leaking.

It hasn't been established that the plant is "leaking highly radioactive contaminated water directly into the Pacific Ocean". It's clearly leaking into the sub-basements and these test wells, but the only thing that has been detected in the water of the quay (right next to the plant) is a small amount of tritium (and not even that has been detected outside of the quay). There can be little doubt that there is some leakage to the sea... but it is such a tiny percentage of what was released in 2011 that it can't be picked up.

It hasn't been "desperate attempts to cool down the reactor cores" in a very long time. They have a long slow job ahead of them, but there isn't a need for desperation apart from those who wish to instill the fear.

He can only be lying about the supposed "nuclear physicist" (or just as likely... the physicist is) that it's an "open air nuclear power plant in meltdown mode, with the cooling water being pumped directly into the ocean". That's shockingly disingenuous. It isn't "open air"... hasn't been in "meltdown mode" in years... and the cooling water is hardly "being pumped directly into the ocean".

The water isn't "lethally toxic". The highest levels certainly reach the point that you wouldn't sink a drinking water well there... but come on. Hyperbole much? (Oh yeah... "catastrophic" for a leak billions of times smaller than the initial release pretty much proves that he lives by hyperbole).

[TBF]

83. It's hard to know what to believe

when there are different stories flying around. I guess we're still not getting a lot of information from Japan on this. Are there any particular sources you'd recommend on this topic?

[joeunderdog]

90. I noticed several grammer/spelling errors.

just sayin...

[annm4peace]

89. was there even an earthquake on that Sunday?

I didn't hear there was one but I think this link was for international NBC

[AtheistCrusader]

16. This is the same EPA that decided the dust from the twin towers wasn't a threat.

That said, it IS a big-assed ocean, primary threat is to the locals, and maybe some migratory fish we shouldn't be eating right now.

[JDPriestly]

13. A lot of people probably feel like I do: speechless because this is beyond my comprehension

or imagination. I do not understand what this means. Not at all.

[Journeyman]

2. The contained water in the "basin" surrounding the reactors increases the risk of liquefaction. . .

eventually, if the land becomes too waterlogged, the next earthquake may loosen the earth enough the reactors will simply sink into the ground.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. None of this surprises me...none.

Waiting with bating breath for "the experts."

Good, I don't have a granite counter top.

[zappaman]

7. Do we know this for sure?

How are the granite counter tops holding up there?
I'm gobsmacked but not surprised.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

8. And Japan has earthquakes all the time

Why is there not an international effort to help contain the worlds worst, ongoing, nuclear catastrophe?!

WTF, over!

[snot]

9. Does anyone know what the worst case scenario is?

[jimlup]

10. seems like we're in it.

the worst case would be total loss of containment of the melted cores. There is reason to be concerned that this is in fact occurring. Not that the reports are that but TEPCO has been so dishonest in this whole episode that nothing they say should be taken seriously. I would anticipate catastrophic loss of ground water around the reactors and perhaps what would essentially become an exposed nuclear core leaking directly or indirectly into the pacific ocean.

To quote the unknown unnamed physicist:

On Sunday, a nuclear physicist stated to nsnbc international, on condition of anonymity, that the situation at Fukushima can best be described as an open air nuclear power plant in meltdown mode, with the cooling water being pumped directly into the ocean.

They need international help

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. Temperatures high enough to melt rock and bore through the earths crust....

Classic "China Syndrome".

In this case it will hit the water table and send a virtually unending highly radioactive cloud of steam up like an erupting geyser.

[jtuck004]

19. From above

"On Sunday, a nuclear physicist stated to nsnbc international, on condition of anonymity, that the situation at Fukushima can best be described as an open air nuclear power plant in meltdown mode, with the cooling water being pumped directly into the ocean."

That's the one.

[JayhawkSD]

11. If they are still pumping large amounts of water to cool the reactors

Then they have not achieved cold shutdown. They have melted cores thet are out of control. At Chernobly they buried the mess in concrete, but they seem to have no such plan here. WTF?

[jimlup]

12. They probably can't bury it because ...

it would just seep into the ground water and ultimately the Pacific. This is a nuclear shit storm and may ultimately prove to be worse than Chernobyl.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Still has a long way to go, but it could.

It's certainly in the range of possibilities.

Chernobyl itself might up the ante, if the current Sarcophagus fails before the New Safe Containment is in place. It's too 'hot' in there for welders to work on the failing ironwork of the current sarcophagus, and it's in bad shape.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. Untrue.

Cold shutdown was achieved a long time ago. You still have decay heat to deal with, however. That is what they are actively cooling.

Cold Shutdown in relation to a nuclear reactor is a technical term, not just whatever you think or want it to mean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_shutdown

The fuel is clearly not critical anymore, and likely lacks the geometry to achieve criticality, in the catchment on the containment floor. It's still hot though. And will generate heat for a long time to come. If it is not actively cooled, things can start burning, without criticality being present.


Chernobyl is far from contained, by the way. They are building yet another sarcophagus/containment to replace the failing one. The interior of Reactor 4's sarcophagus is so radioactive, they can't even send in welders to repair the structure. They are going to have to let it fail, and cap it with yet another concrete structure, called the New Safe Confinement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Safe_Confinement

They didn't bury Chernobyl under concrete, if the current sarcophagus falls down, an enormous amount of radioactive dust, 200 tons of corium, and who knows what else will be exposed to the environment again, for the winds to carry where they please.

Chernobyl is, and remains, fucked. Fukushima is on the same scale, at this point. Burying either in concrete is little more than covering your eyes and pretending no one can see you.

[jtuck004]

25. Clearly it is not in cold shutdown else they would not be making steam. They are.

Not intentionally, it seems. I know they announced cold shutdown. And George Bush announced victory in Iraq, too.

And if the containment was intact there shouldn't be a transfer of radioactive particles to the cooling water. There is.

Since it is broken, between the overheating and the earthquakes it could be in a thousand pieces, or two. And there is no way to tell at this point, with no way to get into the ground to see what is there.

And maybe it's just people not wanting to accept what is in front of their eyes, but how do you stop a bucket from leaking, open on the bottom, by covering the top with sand and concrete? You can't, obviously, yet people still suggest that as a "fix". It might keep the dust from scattering, contain minor explosions, but this stuff is just going to seep in and out with groundwater flooding, in the best case scenario, for another, what, 50,000 to 100,000 years? Given the composition of the fuel, I'm not sure anyone really knows what they have now, other than this core of poison that is slowing poisoning everything around it for potentially hundreds of miles or more.

I think the most likely scenario is that cooler heads are going to get together and convince each other that they can seal it like they did Chernobyl, (which, as you said, they are trying to build a second cover over because the first one is crumbling), because they simply don't know what else to do. There will be occasional steam vents and minor explosions, and the groundwater will seep in and out continuing to spread the poison, while everyone wrings their hands.

And over the next few decades while they try and engineer a fix an earthquake and tsunami is going to wreck and scatter the whole thing, making it much worse than it is now.

Or am I being too optimistic? Other than the academic argument about cold shutdown, in which there should be no need for 300+ tons of water having to be pumped through it.

[Gravitycollapse]

27. I'm not sure you understand how much heat the fuel assemblies can generate.

Long after cold shut down and long after separation, the rods generate an immense amount of heat. That's why they have to be left in cooling ponds for so long before transfer to dry casks. And that's also why long term storage facilities have to demonstrate effective thermal insulation.

[jtuck004]

29. Uh, I know the difference between a cooling pond and a pressure cooker. Cooling ponds DO NOT boil.

They run around 200 or so. Hot, too hot to touch, but it doesn't create steam. They don't require 300+ tons of cooling water every day.

Fukushima is boiling, and periodically has large releases of steam. That's not cold shutdown, at least not any published definition that I have seen.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. In pools and containments in which cooling water can no longer circulate properly?

With the cores mostly slag on the catchment floor? We've already seen the wreck fuel assemblies in some of the cooling pools. Steam is inevitable. You simply cannot cool the fuel properly in that condition to remove waste decay heat.

That does NOT imply criticality. It simply means the situation is made harder by the physically damaged configuration of the fuel/corium.

[jtuck004]

78. No one implied criticality, just said the heat and radiation are uncontrolled, as did you.

And your assumption that the floor of the single reactor is intact is just that, with no way to verify. Yet, somehow, radioactive material is being found in wells, where the hydraulic pressure of the water on the edge of the ocean should be enough to keep most anything out, yet it keeps showing up. Which implies that perhaps things aren't as contained as the lying fucks at Tepco said.

We will see where it goes...I have other things to do.

[AtheistCrusader]

79. Criticality is REQUIRED for the cores/fuel to be in anything other than Cold Shutdown.

Cold doesn't actually refer to temperature here, in this context. It's hot as fuck, and will be for some time.

[quakerboy]

51. Are there pictures of Fuk Boiling?

Water boils at 212, IIRC. Pretty close to that "200 or so" you mention.

But then there are other conditions that create steam. If I urinate in a cold restroom, it get steam. And I feel safe saying that I dont pee anywhere near 200 degrees.

Not to say it isnt an unmitigated shitstorm of bad going on over there. Maybe if it gets bad enough, it will finally cause some changes in world political policies regarding Nuclear power.

I wonder what the worst case scenario is, as far as practical results. Say it all melts down, blows up, leaks every bit.. then what? Do we(humanity) loose a quarter of japan and have to take iodine tablets if we eat pacific fish? Does it make all of japan uninhabitable, and fish in all oceans more dangerous than all the mercury already does? I mean, we've blown up nuclear bombs. How does a reactor meltdown, even a multiple reactor melt down, compare?

[AtheistCrusader]

62. Unfortunately...

A nuclear bomb compares rather well. Chernobyl released approximately 280x as much radioactive iodine as the bomb at Nagasaki, for instance. Other isotopes averaged around 30x more at Chernobyl.

Nuclear bombs are, of course, horrible, but they tend to 'burn' most of their radioactive products in the process, and start out with a whole lot less fuel to begin with.

Chernobyl was particularly bad, not really having a containment at all, and the core blasting, burning, into the sky. Fukushima is ALSO bad, an unmitigated shitstorm, as you say, between THREE reactors and four cooling pools (#4 being VERY heavily laden, with fresh hot fuel), but while leaking, at least the cores are mostly still inside the concrete containments. Leaking, yes, but a far cry from 80% of the core material going airborne, on fire.

A burning reactor is much worse, over the long run, than a 10-30kt atomic weapon, from a contamination standpoint. (Obviously not so from a blast/heat standpoint)

[FBaggins]

64. Actually... that's incorrect.

You'll often see comparisons of the amount of cesium or iodine released at Chernobyl/Fukushima to nuclear weapons... but this is usually a dishonest attempt to make the reactors seem far worse. The reality is that nuclear bombs don't put out much of those elements, but do put out things that are far worse. You will never, for instance, see those same sources compare the amount of plutonium released... even thought it's many MANY times more dangerous... because Fukushima released almost none at all... while the bombs released loads of the stuff.

Bombs do not, in fact "burn" most of their radioactive products. A very VERY small percentage is actually converted to energy.

In the Nagasaki bombing, for instance, the bomb contained about 14 pounds of plutonium. Less than one gram of that was converted into the explosion. The rest (minus the tiny percentage that a 24,000 year half-life subtracts) is still with us - along with hundreds of other nuclear explosions.

[AtheistCrusader]

65. Also incorrect for another reason...

I don't know where the hell I got 280x the Iodine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Chernobyl_and_other_radioactivity_releases#Chernobyl_compared_with_an_atomic_bomb

Your point about the Plutonium is correct, and I agree, comparing the two events is highly problematic.

However, if I had a choice, I'd rather have lived 50 miles downwind of Nagasaki, than 50 miles downwind of Chernobyl.

[jtuck004]

76. Condensate precipitating out of the air isn't the same as steam, but

hang on to your wanker, everyone needs a friend.

But even with one hand you can google up the steam release from the boiling that occurred within the last two weeks.

If your home, neighborhood, city, became uninhabitable tomorrow, you lost your job, friends died, couldn't eat the food you planted in the ground or the fish you catch, you would be screaming. But since it's someone else, it's relatively inconsequential. Got it.

Enjoy the echo.

[FBaggins]

81. And what they've seen hasn't been the same thing as steam either

But it hasn't kept people from misreporting it as such.

you can google up the steam release from the boiling that occurred within the last two weeks

There have been no reports of boiling in the last two weeks. There have been a bunch of nuts who have misconstrued a thin whisp of condensed water vapor to mean that something is boiling... but infrared imaging and temperature gauges within the reactor show clearly that this has not been the case. There isn't anything even close to the boiling point of water.

[AtheistCrusader]

28. I linked you the meaning of Cold Shutdown in context of Nuclear Reactors.

Quell surprise it was too much effort for you to click on it and read.

More errors.

"And if the containment was intact there shouldn't be a transfer of radioactive particles to the cooling water. There is."

Incorrect. The containment could be 100% intact, and there could still be transfer of contamination to the cooling water, if the RPV is ruined. Something that occurred at Three Mile Island, in fact. (Different reactor design however) We know for certain that the RPV's were ruined in 1-3 at Fukushima. Most or all of the core material is on the catchment floor of the Containments.

That said, the containment is clearly not 100% intact, or it would not be losing water.

"Since it is broken, between the overheating and the earthquakes it could be in a thousand pieces, or two. And there is no way to tell at this point, with no way to get into the ground to see what is there."

Water loss rates alone give us an idea how bad the containments are, there is no need at this time to dig under the foundation into the dirt. Even if the contamination wasn't so high, geologically speaking, it's not a good idea. Who the hell knows what would collapse or start sinking.

"but how do you stop a bucket from leaking, open on the bottom"

What is your evidence the containments are leaking from the bottom?

"Other than the academic argument about cold shutdown, in which there should be no need for 300+ tons of water having to be pumped through it."

Physics does not lend itself to laymen euphemisms. Reactor fuel will produce decay heat for decades. Period. This is not unusual. Cold shutdown means something very precise, and very important. Pretending decay heat means cold shutdown has not been achieved is just completely bizarre.

[jtuck004]

34. Cold shutdown means you can move the spent or contained fuel to a cooling pond, where they do

not generate enough heat to create steam. These are creating steam.

What is your evidence that it is secure, like I asked? The presence of radioactivity in the test wells indicates that these heavy particles are moving down through the earth. Maybe it is going through the side, maybe the bottom. If it was from the initial damage it should be decreasing, but there is no evidence of that. Rather it appears to be re-supplied, as if there is a leak in the inner containment. Just like I can't prove there are condescending assholes trying to pretend they know it all and everyone else is too stupid to see what is in front of their face. But the smell is there.

In this design there should be no radioactivity present in the water being flushed, yet there is. And if it was just fuel rods that are so cool they could move them out into cooling ponds, that would be done and they wouldn't be poisoning everything around them. But they aren't, because it's too hot. Because it's not in Cold Shutdown. Buncha fucking liars have been running the place for too long, and they need to be removed and competent people need to take over.

Say what you want, but we are living through a financial crisis with a bunch of apologists telling everyone that it's complicated and nobody understands. Yet the wealthy have the money, and a hundred million people are living lives ranging from tragic to no fucking hope. It doesn't take a degree in economics to think that maybe the people who hold themselves out as experts, are, just maybe, lying sacks of shit.

So here we are again, with things happening that shouldn't be, lots of spin, and people being hurt while we hear how we don't understand.

Uh huh. Bet we/I understand more that one might think.

[AtheistCrusader]

37. Again, you don't seem to understand what 'cold shutdown' means.

You are using it as a non-technical euphemism, not what it actually means.

"The presence of radioactivity in the test wells indicates that these heavy particles are moving down through the earth."

True.

"If it was from the initial damage it should be decreasing, but there is no evidence of that. Rather it appears to be re-supplied, as if there is a leak in the inner containment."

Requires assumptions. It is possible that enough fuel from the corium was moved as sediment to the lower levels of the building via seawater and other leaked cooling water in the days/weeks after the meltdown to account for that on-going contamination, or it could be leaked water from the containments today, again, carrying corium material out. It could be coming out the sides. It could be coming out of a broken pipe, any number of locations. (The condenser pools seem the most likely culprit, after the hydrogen explosions, and the nature of the initial leaks)

Given the readings they discovered in the basements, it seems there might be enough fuel sediment in the basement to drive groundwater contamination for a long time to come.

"In this design there should be no radioactivity present in the water being flushed, yet there is."

The fuel melted. It is no longer in its zircalloy sheaths. It's bare fuel pellets and slag. So yes, there is going to be contamination in the water. If TEPCO was trying to tell us the fuel is still in the RPV, or the fuel didn't melt, THEN the presence of contamination in the water would mean something useful to show they are lying.

"And if it was just fuel rods that are so cool they could move them out into cooling ponds, that would be done and they wouldn't be poisoning everything around them."

Multiple problems here, including but not limited to the fact that the gantries and other hardware designed to handle the rods were blown to shit, and a lot of that material fell INTO the pools, on top of the fuel assemblies, and must be cleared out FIRST.

"Because it's not in Cold Shutdown."

You are entirely inventing a meaning for 'cold shutdown' that does not have any bearing on reality.

[AtheistCrusader]

45. Let's flip this around.

You are asserting the steam shows cold shutdown has not been achieved.

That means, you are prepared to show independent (since we can assume the Japanese Government and TEPCO won't admit it, I'll grant you that right up front) monitoring that has found the short-lived isotopes that indicate ongoing criticality at the site?

I mean, you MUST have that data in hand, to make such a claim right? Since the steam would be coming off the hot, critical fuel, right?

[jtuck004]

48. Flip this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_shutdown

Your data. 200 degrees. No steam. People and water still being poisoned. No containment.

I tire of this. Cya.

[AtheistCrusader]

60. Ok, lol.

So any steam coming from anywhere in a plant, OR any cooling rod too hot to lift out of the pool means the plant isn't cold shutdown.

Right. Thank you for the new industry term, reactor complexes around the world thank you for your new contribution to their operating standards.

Please by all means, keep making up terms convenient to your hyperbole. OF COURSE you couldn't cite the detection of short-lived isotopes that would show any criticality had occurred. If you could, you'd have an argument.

Throwing in shit about 'containment' and 'people and water still being poisoned' is emotionally satisfying to your argument, I'm sure, but has fuck-all to do with whether the plant has achieved Cold Shutdown.

[AtheistCrusader]

80. By what mechanism could the plant produce steam

that would not be possible with simple decay heat, that does not also involve the fuel going critical?

[JayhawkSD]

68. From the source that you yourself cited:

"A reactor is in cold shutdown when, in addition, its coolant system is at atmospheric pressure and at a temperature below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 95 degrees Celsius). This temperature is low enough that the water cooling the fuel in a light water reactor does not boil even when the reactor coolant system is de-pressurized." (emphasis mine)

A reactor in that state does not need to have large amounts of cooling water continuously pumped onto it.

I actually believe that nuclear energy can be used with a reasonable degree of safety, and my education in the US Navy Nuclear Power School at Mare Island Naval Shipyard and near Idaho Falls contributes to that opinion.

That does not mean that I will serve as an apologist for reactors of poor design, such as the boiling water reactor which I believe to be an unsafe design, or attempt to support inadequate regulation and poor operation such as was the case at Fukushima.

[FBaggins]

70. A couple corrections.

A reactor in that state does not need to have large amounts of cooling water continuously pumped onto it.

That's incorrect. A reactor in cold shutdown does, in fact, have lots of water pumped through it to maintain the cold shutdown state. As you've no doubt seen, even the spent fuel continued to need water cooling for a few years. The amount currently used at Fukushima necessarily exceed the amount needed to cool the corium... not because it's producing more heat than it otherwise would almost two and a half years after shutdown... but because it leaks out the bottom. A true "cold shutdown" would have the fuel subnmerged within that well, but obviously that isn't a possibility.

A second correction is this frequently repeated (recently) notion that there is currently water boiling in the reactor. There's simply no evidence for that at all. Temperatures within the reactor are well below the boiling point. What people have seen (and confusingly labeled "steam&quot is condensed water vapor... which can and does occur at well below the boiling point.

[AtheistCrusader]

72. Are you saying that

when I take a leak, and there's steam coming off the stream, my bladder is NOT running 210F+?

MIND BLOWN

[FBaggins]

73. Well...

I was thinking more of the "steam" that rises off of an asphalt road when the sun comes out after the rain...

... but yeah... I presume that like other mammals, your body temperature is below the boiling point of water.

[AtheistCrusader]

74. Awww.

Here I thought I had finally discovered my super power.

[Avalux]

91. Thank you for such an informative post. n/t

[mathematic]

18. Lol @ Nsnbc

I love their primetime lineup. Can't get enough of that Rachael Naddow.

On Sunday, a nuclear physicist stated to nsnbc international, on condition of anonymity, that the situation at Fukushima can best be described as an open air nuclear power plant in meltdown mode, with the cooling water being pumped directly into the ocean.

The purpose of this "anonymity" seems to be convincing the reader that the nuclear physicist has some sort of first-hand knowledge of the situation. I give it even odds this quote was wholly fabricated. I'm supposed to believe that some german guy is getting real inside information on a nuclear meltdown in japan for his amateur journalism blog?

[another_liberal]

21. Hey, we have a sighting!

It is indeed a full-throated, yellow-breasted nuclear power industry apologist. They are very rare these days.

[mathematic]

32. Oh, sorry. Didn't realize how much you trusted Nsnbc.

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time I've been critical of them as a news source and seeing the ever credulous DU readership in action, it won't be the last.

But by all means, continue to pretend my post was about the nuclear industry and not about the crank-hosting "news" site Nsnbc.

[another_liberal]

36. Rachel Maddow is her name.

At least you could get that much right.

[FBaggins]

59. I think you missed the point.

Maddow is on MSNBC.

This is just some guy's blog... and he doesn't appear to know much.

[another_liberal]

87. Ahhhh . . .

Thanks for the heads-up.

[another_liberal]

20. What a real life horror story.

Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2013, 02:43 AM - Edit history (1)

It was all to make a make a bunch of quick loot out of building and running nuclear power plants based on technology that was little better than experimental, and whose potential for causing unparalleled disaster no one even took seriously.

[Art_from_Ark]

22. There was no 6.0 earthquake in Fukushima on Sunday

or anywhere else in Japan, for that matter. The strongest earthquake (in terms of magnitude) that occurred in Japan on Sunday was a 3.8 that occurred off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture. But it was so weak on land that it only registered a maximum of 1 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 1 to 7 (with 1 signifying "barely noticeable&quot .

http://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/

On edit:
Even if by "Sunday", you mean "Monday morning in Japan", the strongest quake was only a 4.8, whose strongest Japanese intensity was 3 in Urakawa, Hokkaido, hundreds of miles from Fukushima.

[jtuck004]

26. Always best to have the news from the source. Thank you.

Hope things are going well for you.

[Art_from_Ark]

31. When I read "6.0 earthquake in Fukushima on Sunday",

I immediately had my doubts about the claim, since in all likelihood I would have felt it where I am.

At any rate, it is tough to get information about the progress of the cleanup and exactly what is happening at the site. The current prime minister is really gung-ho about restarting idled nuke plants, and given that his party and its allies won a landslide victory in last month's Upper House elections, I have to wonder about how forthcoming he will be about the situation at Dai-ichi.

For me, personally, I'm trying to figure out how my cukes and tomato plants all died (but thrived last year), while the pepper plants are going strong and the mulberry trees which were planted 7 years ago have doubled in height within the course of a couple of months.

[another_liberal]

39. You might want to think twice . . .

In my opinion, you might want to think twice before you eat any of that.

[Art_from_Ark]

40. The company I work for can test soil for radiation levels

It might be a good idea to bring in a sample or two for the techies to analyze.

[another_liberal]

41. Before I had any of those mulberries with my breakfast cereal . . .

I would at least do that.

[Art_from_Ark]

43. The mulberry picking season has long passed

In this part of the world it only lasts a couple of weeks, and this year it was over by late June. The only things that are harvestable right now are some peppers. But I will still take some soil samples around the mulberries, because that growth spurt was kind of weird.

[Art_from_Ark]

53. Here is a picture of one of the mulberry trees

In the first year, when I had planted it as a seedling, its growth was pretty good, then for the next 4 years it was very, very scraggly. However, this year, it has shown remarkable growth, doubling in height since late May. Here is a picture of it as it is today. In late May, the tree reached only to the top of the first floor window.



I received a DU mail from a DUer who referred me to an article which claimed that mulberry trees might be "canaries in a coal mine" as far as radiation is concerned. I will definitely have to get some soil samples and have them analyzed.

[Bonobo]

67. "Kuwa no mi" is delicious. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

69. That's another thing--

There was just a handful of "kuwa no mi" this year. Last year I could have filled a large popcorn bowl with them.

[Bonobo]

77. That was true here as well, so

I don't think it is necessarily related to radiation. Could be any of a host of factors.

[Art_from_Ark]

82. I agree, the lack of berries could be due to a host of factors

I am also puzzled about the growth spurt. It could be that the roots just hit an area of particularly fertile soil, but that seems unlikely since the soil tends to get rather rocky just below the surface around here. At any rate, I will take some soil samples and have them analyzed by people I can trust. And the cucumbers and tomatoes are perplexing, too, since I rotated them from last year's locations, and the weather here, with the exception of the localized flash flooding we had a week or so ago, doesn't seem to be much different from last year.

[Art_from_Ark]

54. This is a picture of my lone remaining tomato plant

I planted 4 this year, and while I had good results last year, this year has been a big disappointment.

[another_liberal]

85. That is not good.

Your soil looks like it might be kind of low on nutrients. You could get a few bags of some commercial potting soil and work it in where you plan to have your plants. To increase the overall biomass available might make a big difference.

[Art_from_Ark]

88. It isn't the greatest soil, for sure

But I compost it throughout the year (leaves and kitchen scraps), and add a little bit of liquid fertilizer when planting seedlings. It's been productive in the past, but this year has been awful.

I will ask some techies at my company to analyze some soil samples. Right now, everyone's on holiday due to "O-bon", so I won't get any results until at least next week. As Bonobo noted, there could be many reasons for this situation. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm about 100 miles south of Fukushima Dai-ichi, but the wind does not usually blow straight from there to where I am. One of the local research organizations has posted on its web site a graph of local radiation trends, which appear to be normal, but it hasn't been updated since February or March.

Anyway, I'll try to post the soil test results when I get them.

[Art_from_Ark]

55. This is what is left of my cucumber plants

I also planted 4 of them this year. Last year, there was bumper crop of cucumbers. This year, there was nothing.

[another_liberal]

86. That is sad. I love fresh cucumbers.

We make a cold cucumber salad by peeling and slicing them and then letting them soak overnight in vinegar, with a little sugar, parsley, basil and just a pinch of cayenne pepper.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. There was a 5.8, but that's still a far cry from 6.0 and a long way from the

Fukushima prefecture.

[Art_from_Ark]

42. Where was Sunday's 5.8?

It doesn't show up at all on Yahoo. And searches of M5.8地震 in Japanese search engines turn up no recent news in Japan, but do turn up news about the Wellington earthquake, as well as one in the southern area of the Sea of Okhotsk.

[AtheistCrusader]

44. Saturday the 3rd. (Sunday the 4th local time of the epicenter)

I think the headline above is a couple days old. Anything about Fukushima is breathlessly repeated as long as it sounds dire.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000iv4w#summary

This quake was off the coast of Sendai, and pretty deep.

[Art_from_Ark]

47. OK, I looked up that earthquake

It was, indeed, a 6.0. Its seismic intensity, which is a more useful gauge of its power, was 4 in the Hamadori district of Fukushima (where Dai-ichi is located). According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, a seismic intensity ("shindo&quot of 4 means that " it would startle nearly everyone", "hanging lamps and similar items would sway", and "some things might be knocked off of shelves".

[uppityperson]

50. Thank you Art, I always look for you for local stuff there, appreciate your letting us know what all

is going on, etc.

[Art_from_Ark]

52. Thanks for the nice post

It's good to know that I can provide some useful information

[applegrove]

23. ****!

[Kablooie]

30. There is nothing about an earthquake in any of the Japanese newspapers.

Ashahi and Yomiuri Shinbuns have no mention of an earthquake.
Only a 3.0 a few days ago.

This report seems to be bogus.

[Art_from_Ark]

33. There have been several earthquakes in Japan in the last 2 days

but none of them have exceeded 4.8 in magnitude.

http://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/

[AtheistCrusader]

46. I assume it refers to the 5.8 that happened just after midnight, on Sunday the 4th.

By not specifying the day, we get to breathlessly recycle the dire-sounding report.

[Demo_Chris]

49. Yeah, but that's just facts man! nt

[theHandpuppet]

61. Here are some handy links

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

[madokie]

66. Sad situation

Its not like many of us hasn't been warning about this for years. Splitting atoms to boil water is the stupidest thing man has done yet, energy wise that is. The MO of the nuclear power industry is to obfuscate and when that isn't good enough, out right lie. Any one who is pro-nuker should not be trusted with telling the truth either. IMO

[Safetykitten]

84. "Big Ocean Expert Time" BOET.