I’m not an engineer but there was a massive explosion, the Japanese government reported damage to the container shielding the reactor, there was a sudden spike in radiation (spiked after the explosion to 8,217 microsieverts an hour from 1,941 about 40 minutes earlier), water started pumping in faster than it would if the container were sealed (The U.S. official said water being pumped in is disappearing faster than it would if it only were caused by evaporation) and Japan began urgently requesting help from American and UN experts. Further, the Japanese officials were giving out varying information at different times to different people, that tells me something happened they couldn’t coordinate for a while. All this makes me believe there has been a breach in the containment vessel.

From the BBC –

The blast occurred at reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which engineers had been trying to stabilise after two other reactors exploded.

The protective chamber around the radioactive core of reactor 2 has been damaged and radiation levels near the plant have risen, officials say.

From The Telegraph –

From ABC News –

The U.S. official said water being pumped in is disappearing faster than it would if it only were caused by evaporation, which suggests there may be a leak in the reactor’s containment vessel. But, the official said, it also could be that there is so much pressure inside the reactor that it is hard to pump in water.

A government official said that though the level of radiation rose around the reactor, there was no danger.

“The radioactive level near unit 2 has gone up, but at this juncture, the level is not judged to be immediately harmful to human bodies,” said Noriyuki Shikata, a spokesman in the prime minister’s office.

But Japanese news agency NHK reported that the radiation levels at the front gate of the Daiichi plant were so high that a person would receive more in one hour than they would receive naturally in an entire year.

From the New York Times –

This explosion, reported to have occurred at 6:14 a.m., happened in the “pressure suppression room” in the cooling area of the reactor and inflicted some degree of damage on the pool of water used to cool the reactor, officials of Tokyo Electric Power said. But they did not say whether or not the incident had impacted the integrity of the steel containment structure that shields the nuclear fuel.

Radiation levels around plant spiked after the explosion to 8,217 microsieverts an hour from 1,941 about 40 minutes earlier, the company said. Some emergency workers there were evacuated, though the levels would have to rise far higher to pose an immediate threat to health, officials said.

Any damage to the steel containment vessel of a nuclear reactor is considered critical because it raises the prospect of an uncontrolled release of radioactive material and full meltdown of the nuclear fuel inside. To date, even during the four-day crisis in Japan that amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, workers had managed to avoid a breach of a containment vessel and had limited releases of radioactive steam to relatively low levels.

This is an alarming report from the former editor of the Japan Times –

This is a particularly good report and it reports the various arguments as to whether or not radioactivity will reach the United States.

America on nuclear alert: Could fallout from Japan explosion reach U.S. West Coast?

Officials revealed fuel rods are melting inside three damaged reactors at the Fukushima plant, triggering fears of a serious radiation leak.

Scientists in the U.S. warned today of a ‘worst-case scenario’ in which the highly radioactive material could be blasted into the atmosphere and blown towards the West Coast of America.

They said it could be picked up by powerful 30,000ft winds, carrying the debris across the Pacific and hitting America within four days.

From the New York Times – Obviously, the longer the leakage of radioactive material last, the more danger.

Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say

More steam releases also mean that the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. On Sunday evening, the White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying that modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded that “Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

But all weekend, after a series of intense interchanges between Tokyo and Washington and the arrival of the first American nuclear experts in Japan, officials said they were beginning to get a clearer picture of what went wrong over the past three days. And as one senior official put it, “under the best scenarios, this isn’t going to end anytime soon.”

This is from the Daily Kos. I don’t think we are at a point of such certainty but I think a close monitoring of the situations is wise.

When the Radiation from Fukushima Reaches the US

I am sorry to have to report this, but it is clear that the efforts to contain radiation from multiple nuclear power plants melting down in Japan is failing and that the radiation entering our atmosphere is in all likelihood going to arrive in the United States in a matter of days or weeks. When Chernoby had its explosion and meltdown nearly a quarter century ago, the radiation reached the United States after it blew across the Pacific Ocean and came down across North America in the rain. The Nuclear Industry will obfuscate and lie and cover up as it has done for more than a half century, but the reality is that we need to be prepared for the fact that no matter what anyone does now, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle and the price will be high. Yet there are some steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones if the very worst happens.

American warships detect radioactive contamination more than 100 miles offshore.

UPDATE – From MSNBC –  The U.S. Seventh Fleet moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant Monday after discovering low-level radioactive contamination more than 100 miles offshore.

The fleet said that the radiation was from a plume of smoke and steam released from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where there have been two hydrogen explosions since Friday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles offshore when its instruments detected the radiation. The fleet said the dose of radiation was about the same as one month’s normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment.

The ships did not move because helicopter crews were contaminated. The ships themselves were contaminated. They have been contaminated by a radioactive plume from one of the reactors.

From Yahoo News – Seventeen U.S. military personnel involved in helicopter relief missions were found to have been exposed to low levels of radiation upon returning to the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier about 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore. U.S. officials said the exposure level was roughly equal to one month’s normal exposu … Read More

via Pilant’s Business Ethics Blog

This guy, Karl Stephan, knows his stuff. I’ve been reading his blog for more than a year and I don’t always agree with his conclusions but his science and engineering knowledge is superb.

In short, I trust him.

This is from his post on Sunday –  (I am serious — Go read the whole thing.)

Nevertheless, things are still dicey. Even if the nuclear reaction is shut down by emergency flooding or moderator-rod insertion, you still have a tremendous amount of heat to deal with, and the failure of the cooling-water pumps means that the reactors have already overheated and sustained a certain amount of damage. And of course, most of the instrumentation that engineers would normally use to figure out what is going on inside the plants has also gone flooey. Plus, nobody wants to get near the things with radioactive fuel sloshing around. Possibly it is a job for some radiation-hardened robots. If there are any such things, you can bet they have them in Japan and they’re trying to use them now.

A late report mentions that engineers working with at least one plant have thrown in the towel, and are pumping seawater mixed with boron into one reactor vessel. This is a last-ditch emergency measure that will cool the reactor core fast, but will also corrode it to the point of destruction. It’s likely that the reactor was beyond salvaging anyway, but this action seals its fate. At this point, this is an appropriate action that puts public safety ahead of the power company’s investment.

I’m asking him for an update and will put it up as soon as I can.

James Pilant

From Yahoo News –

Seventeen U.S. military personnel involved in helicopter relief missions were found to have been exposed to low levels of radiation upon returning to the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier about 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore.

U.S. officials said the exposure level was roughly equal to one month’s normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment, and after scrubbing with soap and water, the 17 were declared contamination-free.

But as a precaution, the U.S. said the carrier and other U.S. 7th Fleet ships involved in relief efforts had shifted to another area.

This is a very interesting little news piece. The crews were on “relief” missions presumably not helping with the reactor problems. And I’m sure they were. Helicopter crews and rescue personnel would be of precious little use at the reactor sites.

Now, add this from the beginning of the article –

The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked a Japanese nuclear plant Monday, sending a massive cloud of smoke into the air and injuring 11 workers. The blast was felt 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, but the plant’s operator said the radiation levels at the affected unit were still within legal limits.

Are the Japanese telling the truth?

How are Americans on relief missions getting contaminated if the radiation is still below the legal limits?

And if everything is under control, why is the navy concerned for its ships?

James Pilant

If radiation reaches the United States from the partial meltdowns in Japan, you may need

Potassium Iodide.

Why?

From Katy Waldman’s Article at Slate – Me, Myself and Iodine –

Of these, the most troubling is iodine-131, which can be absorbed by the thyroid when inhaled, causing thyroid cancer and leukemia. Gases like krypton-85 and xenon-133 don’t interact with bones or tissue, but since they are highly unstable they decay in bursts of radiation that can prove harmful to other bodily systems. But the body tolerates a certain amount of radiation every day, from cosmic rays to watching TV, and it’s only in much larger quantities that the byproducts of a nuclear power plant become dangerous. While radiation spiked to 1,000 times normal levels in one reactor control room, Japanese officials insist that exposure levels outside the plant are not highly hazardous. Even so, area residents have been advised to drink bottled water, stay indoors, and hold washcloths over their noses and mouths. As a precaution against iodine-131, officials have also announced plans to distribute potassium iodide pills, which saturate the thyroid with a stable form of iodine before the more dangerous isotope can be absorbed. They only work, however, if swallowed pre-emptively.

The CDC’s take on it (Centers for Disease Control) –

Following a radiological or nuclear event, radioactive iodine may be released into the air and then be breathed into the lungs. Radioactive iodine may also contaminate the local food supply and get into the body through food or through drink. When radioactive materials get into the body through breathing, eating, or drinking, we say that “internal contamination” has occurred. In the case of internal contamination with radioactive iodine, the thyroid gland quickly absorbs this chemical. Radioactive iodine absorbed by the thyroid can then injure the gland. Because non-radioactive KI acts to block radioactive iodine from being taken into the thyroid gland, it can help protect this gland from injury.

This is Wikipedia’s take on it –

SSKI may be used in radioiodine-contamination emergencies (i.e., nuclear accidents) to “block” the thyroid’s uptake of radioiodine (this is not the same as blocking the thyroid’s release of thyroid hormone).

Potassium iodide was approved in 1982 by the US FDA to protect the thyroid glands from radioactive iodine from accidents or fission emergencies. In the event of an accident or attack at a nuclear power plant, or fallout from a nuclear bomb, volatile fission product radionuclides may be released, of which ¹³¹I is one of the most common by-products and a particularly dangerous one due to thyroid gland concentration of it, which may lead to thyroid cancer. By saturating the body with a source of stable iodide prior to exposure, inhaled or ingested ¹³¹I tends to be excreted.

Potassium iodide cannot protect against any other causes of radiation poisoning, nor can it provide any degree of protection against dirty bombs that produce radionuclides other than isotopes of iodine. …

Buy some.

James Pilant