Lauren Bloom writes on ethical issues. I follow her blog on a regular basis (you should too). I like the thoughts in this entry. They are certainly relevant when so many workers  are putting their lives on the line in Japan. Some have already died and many have been injured.

Here, she discusses the ethical criteria for decision makers to send people in harm’s way.

James Pilant

An excerpt from the post –

Of course, the world has always been full of dangerous jobs and, luckily for the rest of us, there have always been brave souls willing to do them. Still, if those of us who stay safe at home while heroes risk their lives are going to be able to look ourselves in the mirror, it’s critically important for a few things to happen. First, the folks who go into danger need to do so voluntarily – no coercion allowed. Second, they need to be told honestly in advance how serious the risks appear to be, not misled by falsely optimistic estimates. Third, they need to be given the necessary logistical support – safety equipment, medical attention, escape craft, you name it – to do the job and get out in one reasonably healthy piece.

(this is just a part of the post, you should click on the link and read the whole article – jp)

I posted 11 times yesterday and I have spent the last six days frantically trying to keep up with events. So, I am only going to post a few times tonight, so I can catch my breath. I will be in the middle of writing something and scanning the Internet at the same time, and what I am writing needs to be revised or dropped because of new events. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at full power.

I want to thank the many people who have commented in the past few days. You have made my work much easier because you have reassured me that what I am writing is informative and useful, you challenge me with your questions, test my knowledge and training regularly, and have been very polite and kind in your comments. Thank You!

James Pilant

I strongly suspect the United States government is fed up with the lack of accurate information being provided by the Japanese government. This will give the American government an independent source of information with a powerful radar capable of seeing through the smoke and dust of the reactor site. These drones can stay in the air for almost 24 hours on one mission.

James Pilant

From the New York Times –

United States Air Force officials announced Wednesday that a Global Hawk remotely piloted surveillance plane would be sent on missions over Japan to help the government assess damage from the earthquake and the tsunami. A Pentagon official said the drone was expected to fly over the stricken nuclear plant.

From Wikipedia –

In role and operational design, the Global Hawk is similar to the Lockheed U-2, the venerable 1950s spy plane. It is a theater commander’s asset to provide a broad overview and systematic target surveillance. For this purpose, the Global Hawk is able to provide high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)—that can penetrate cloud-cover and sandstorms— and Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) imagery at long range with long loiter times over target areas. It can survey as much as 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) of terrain a day.

Missions for the Global Hawk cover the spectrum of intelligence collection capability to support forces in worldwide peace, crisis, and wartime operations. According to the Air Force, the capabilities of the aircraft allow more precise targeting of weapons and better protection of forces through superior surveillance capabilities.

Spent fuel rods stored on top of the damaged reactors are using up the water meant to keep the cool. At least one pool is boiling.

Is it common practice to store spent fuel rods on top of a reactor? Apparently, there were some inside the buildings housing the containment chamber. Since two of these have exploded, it would appear they have been scattered about.

Does anybody else store spent nuclear fuel on top of reactors?

James Pilant

“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.”

A spokesman for the Japanese company that runs the stricken reactors said in an interview on Monday that the spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants had been left uncooled since shortly after the quake.

The company, Tokyo Electric, has not been able to cool the spent fuel pools because power has been knocked out, said Johei Shiomi, the spokesman. “There may be some heating up,” he said.

From the article –

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.

In small numbers under a hundred thousand perhaps even double that, local nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan would probably be willing to bear the weight of a temporary evacuation.

The issue becomes more problematic as the numbers increase.

The Chinese and the Koreans have memories of Japanese occupation before and during the Second World War. It is unlikely they will allow any large numbers of refugees.

The Philippines are also unlikely to accept any large numbers for the same reason. Other Asian countries have an underdeveloped infrastructure unlikely to absorb any large numbers of foreigners.

The United States is the most logical nation for a large number of Japanese.

Why? First the United States already has 1,204,205 Japanese. And there is a fairly wide geographic distribution.

From Wikipedia –

In the 2000 census, the largest Japanese American communities were in California with 394,896, Hawaii with 296,674, Washington with 56,210, New York with 45,237, and Illinois with 27,702.

The United States is already a multicultural society open to new languages and new ideas. Unlike most countries there is a great deal of land resources available. Declines in population in the “rust belt” and in some Northeastern leave large areas with excess capacities – closed schools, factories and numerous other building, houses and businesses. An energetic and well educated population could radically change the nature of these parts of the United States.

Once there has been a series of meltdowns, these kinds of considerations will have to be taken into account

James Pilant

From the New York Times -(Article by William J. Broad)

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.

The forecast, calculated Tuesday, is based on patterns of Pacific winds at that time and the predicted path is likely to change as weather patterns shift.

Forecast for Plume’s Path Is a Function of Wind and Weather

Here is a frame by frame set of picture in the following order 3/12, 3/13, 3/14, 3/15, 3/16, 3/17, and 3/18.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows how weather patterns this week might disperse radiation from a continuous source in Fukushima, Japan. The forecast does not show actual levels of radiation, but it does allow the organization to estimate when different monitoring stations, marked with small dots, might be able to detect extremely low levels of radiation.

Val Gand sent me this site he recommends called the Radiation Network.

This is the caption at the top of the page when you visit –

Welcome to RadiationNetwork.com, home of the National Radiation Map, depicting environmental radiation levels across the USA, updated in real time every minute.  This is the first web site where the average citizen (or anyone in the world) can see what radiation levels are anywhere in the USA at any time (see Disclaimer below).

Here are several documentaries about the Chernobyl reactor disaster.  Each of these three stories is on You Tube. As you play the first one, the next ones appear on the right side listing or on the screen itself at the end of each part.

I think it’s wise to look at these, if only for the reactions and miscommunications that facilitated the disaster.

James Pilant

This is a ten part documentary. It is fascinating for its exposure of new information including much, much larger death tolls. I was particularly surprised that the Soviets used thousands of miners to dig a room beneath the stricken reactor which was filled with concrete and formed a base that the melting core could not penetrate.

Here is the first part of a six part documentary.

This is a five part.

If there is a nuclear catastrophe, is there enough space on the islands remaining after a significant loss of land due to radiation to support the entire population?

Japan is approximately 145,925 square miles in size. The Chernobyl disaster rendered 10,800 square miles uninhabitable. Compared to the total area of Japan, this is not a lot of land. However, Chernobyl was a single reactor and it issued a plume of radiation for several days. In Japan, the plumes from radiation from as many six reactors and unprotected discarded fuel rods could last for weeks or even months.

What if they lose 1/3rd of the islands? That would be 48,642 square miles. Remember it is not just refugees, there will be hundreds of thousands, more likely millions of Japanese exposed to varying levels of radiation.

It may well be necessary to evacuate Japanese from the home islands.

The numbers could be from a few hundred thousand to many millions.

It would have to begin almost immediately after a meltdown.

The best way initially would be by commercial airliner. But if there were considerable numbers, there would have to be ships.

The costs would be enormous particularly the medical costs.

It’s hard to hypothesize without some estimate of how much land will be too irradiated to be safe and for how long.

Nevertheless, planning should go forward. The situation at the plants is critical and apparently getting worse.

It is better to begin thinking about these things now, rather than waiting until confronted by a desperate situation.

James Pilant

We have entered totally uncharted territory.

There could be a meltdown of a single reactor or as many as six. There appears to be a burning pile of spent nuclear fuel rods on the surface outside any containment vessel. This type of problem is more like Chernobyl than anything else we have seen.

There are already containment breaches in No. 2 and No. 4. There is some evidence that No. 3 has breached. I believe it has because No. 3 was a special reactor using partially reprocessed fuel rods with a plutonium component. It burned much hotter than the other reactors.

The weather in this area features wind that has changed pretty dramatically over the last few days. At one point, the wind was blowing South South East directly toward Tokyo.

If there are further explosions and the containment vessels are further damaged, will the containment vessel be shattered or merely holed? If the containment vessel is destroyed there will be a massive release of radiation. However, material to dampen the radiation can be dropped directly into the reactor. If, on the other hand, a hole is blown in the containment vessel, a continuous plume of radioactive will issue. It will be very difficult to get material to cover and neutralize the meltdown under that circumstance because the intact section of the containment vessel will protect the meltdown.

There is evidence that there are more discarded fuel rods near the reactors. I do not know this for a fact. But it is consistent with what we have seen of the practices of the Japanese nuclear industry.

I’m probably missing a few things but look at a list of the factors I have cited.

1. From one to six reactors could meltdown singly or together.

2. Surface fuel rods could be as dangerous as reactor meltdown and at least one storage area is burning. It could produce a surface explosion similar in a way to Chernobyl.

3. The changing wind patterns (this is winter and a rough one) could drive a radioactive cloud in almost any direction. If the reactors meltdown at different times the individual radiation clouds could go in different directions.

4. Will the containment vessels be shattered revealing the core or will they be fractured or holed in different places? That will be a major factor in the initial release of radiation. After that, it will be a major factor in how much radiation the plant emits continuously.

5. Will the core be exposed enough so that chemicals slowing or stopping the nuclear reaction can be delivered to the core? If not, we could be in for a very lengthy expulsion of radioactive plume into the atmosphere.

6. Are there more discarded fuel rods discarded near the any of the six reactors? If so, how many and under what storage conditions? This could radically effect the situation in terms of creating explosions and fires as well as the potential of a meltdown outside a containment vessel.

Because of these six factors, I think there is no way to develop a coherent prediction of how much radiation will reach the United States. But these factors are certainly not encouraging for the Japanese.

James Pilant