U.S. helicopters detect radiation 60 miles from damaged Japanese plant

[nadinbrzezinski]

BreakingNews Breaking News
U.S. helicopters detect radiation 60 miles from damaged Japanese plant, suggesting wider contamination - nytimes http://nyti.ms/fp9b7L
19 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

And no, I cannot go to the NYT story... as I am not a subscriber... alternate media must be covering it

[tabatha]

1. here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I don't have a sub...

I can get to the link I just cannot get IN THERE

[Gravel Democrat]

20. if you're using firefox here's a way to bypass nyt login and many others

get the addon called "user agent switcher", install and then before you go to login site click tools>default user agent>search robot>msnbot

both msn and google bot work, at least for now

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Best I can do for the moment

Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include Cesium-137 and Iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.

If you had followed our analysis over the weekend, we were probably the first in the internet to suggest that radiation from Fukushima plant is only going to get worse and Japanese are lying on the face to keep a clean record intact. They have messed up big time by building plants that can only withstand a quake 7.9 when reactors around the world (even India and China) have reactors which can withstand quake of 11 on richter scale. We were mocked by many and even made the Japanese government to issue a clarification that there is negliglbe radiation, a fact now clearly understood to be a lie as US helicopters are on site confirming high radiation levels.

http://dawnwires.com/politics/breaking-news-us-helicopters-detect-high-radiation-60-miles-from-fukushima-this-is-not-to-endtime-soon/

Will look for another source

[meow mix]

4. "no immediate threat" indeed

[tabatha]

8. Reading the story makes me realize that there is

absolutely no safety in nuclear plants.

They should have 3 times the redundancy with a variety of technologies to do the same function so that if failure occurs under a set of circumstances, then another method should pick up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. They should at least be engineered up to NAVAL reactor standards

but that costs too much money.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. They should at least be engineered up to NAVAL reactor standards

but that costs too much money.

[Fool Count]

14. Or even simpler, they could have abstained from building

nuclear plants in earthquake-prone areas. Nuclear power can be very safe if not located in places where 9 point quakes are possible,
that is to say almost everywhere in the world. In Japan? Not so much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Should I point to the one UP THE ROAD

from me, on a branch of the San Andreas, and on SANDY SUBSTRATE?

[NoTimeToulouse]

19. What were they smoking when they came up with the idea to build that one?

[tabatha]

5. couple paragraphs

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include Cesium-137 and Iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination. In a country where memories of a nuclear horror of a different sort in the last days of World War II weigh heavily on the national psyche and national politics, the impact of continued venting of long-lasting radioactivity from the plants is hard to overstate.

Japanese reactor operators now have little choice but to periodically release radioactive steam until the radioactive elements in the fuel of the stricken reactors stop generating intense heat, a process that can continue for a year or more even after the fission process has stopped. To control that heat, the plant’s operator must constantly try to flood the reactors with seawater, then release the resulting radioactive steam into the atmosphere, several experts familiar with the design of the Daiichi facility said. That suggests that the 200,000 people who have been evacuated may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period and that shifts in the wind could blow radioactive materials toward Japanese cities rather than out to sea.

[tabatha]

6. last paragraphs

But the dramatic blast was also a warning sign of what could happen inside the reactor vessel if the core was not cooled. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that “as a countermeasure to limit damage to the reactor core,” Tokyo Electric proposed injecting seawater mixed with boron — which can absorb some of the reactive elements — and it began to do that at 10:20 p.m. Saturday.

It was a desperation move: The corrosive seawater will essentially disable the 40-year-old plant; the decision to flood the core amounted to a decision to abandon the facility. But even that operation has not been easy.

To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used fire-fighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been extraordinarily difficult, because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.

One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”

The problem was compounded because gauges inside the reactor seemed to have been damaged in the earthquake or the tsunami, making it impossible to know just how much water is in the core.

And workers attempting the pumping operation are presumed to be exposed to radiation; several workers, according to Japanese reports, have been treated for radiation poisoning. It is not clear how severe their exposure was.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. It is not good in any way, shape or form

They also used salt water on Reactor Three... that essentially rusts the control rods... it ain't pretty

[tabatha]

9. see #8

Nuclear is borderline secure.

[Cetacea]

12. K&R

Thanks

[roamer65]

13. I am not surprised, they are venting heavy duty.

They have no choice. They are flooding and reflooding with seawater to try to cool down these reactors.

This is just a nightmare.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Number three just went off, like number one the other day

and they are admitting to "large leak."

NHK now.

I think we have gone from nightmare to apocalyptic...

They claim no impact to the vessel on three...

[thewiseguy]

17. The Japanese government should stop fucking lying

[tabatha]

24. I think things are very chaotic there right now.

Possibly without electricity, as the developer of the plants said, they probably do not fully know what is going on.

[roamer65]

18. Wow, the Americans beat the Russians to the announcement.

[NutmegYankee]

21. With the amount of steam that is being vented, that's no surprise.

What a mess.

[thewiseguy]

22. They are claiming there is very little radioactivity being released in the steam

and there was very little radioactivity released after the first explosion. That is why 9 people or more walked in sick to the hospital with radiation sickness.

[DearAbby]

23. US helicopters detect radiation 60 miles from damaged Japanese plant, suggesting wider contamination

US helicopters detect radiation 60 miles from damaged Japanese plant, suggesting wider contamination http://nyti.ms/fp9b7L


Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say

WASHINGTON — As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.

The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation.

So far, Japanese officials have said the melting of the nuclear cores in the two plants is assumed to be “partial,” and the amount of radioactivity measured outside the plants, though twice the level Japan considers safe, has been relatively modest.

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Half life on some of that crap is not measured in months

I know they are trying to avoid shame, but hey, whatever, At this point they need to start coming clean panic or no panic.