Of course, it’s prudent. Do you see any signs of the disaster getting smaller? I, myself, have predicted a very limited exposure to radiation in the United States but I still think it is prudent and intelligent to prepare for a very difficult time. The situations seems to get worse every few hours, sometimes a lot worse. So, I don’t think there is any reasonable certainty about American exposure. And without certainty, precautions are wise.
The fear that a nuclear cloud could float from the shores of Japan to the shores of California has some people making a run on iodine tablets. Pharmacists across California report being flooded with requests.
State and county officials spent much of Tuesday trying to keep people calm by saying that getting the pills wasn’t necessary, but then the United States Surgeon General supported the idea as a worthy “precaution.”
U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is in the Bay Area touring a peninsula hospital. NBC Bay Area reporter Damian Trujillo asked her about the run on tablets and Dr. Benjamin said although she wasn’t aware of people stocking up, she did not think that would be an overreaction. She said it was right to be prepared.
The situation is rapidly becoming unmanageable. It appears the reactors are so hot that they are producing hydrogen gas which eventually reaches enough concentration to explode damaging efforts to cool the reactor. The damaged reactor then produces even more hydrogen gas and we have a downward cycle where we eventually arrive at destruction of the containment vessel and radioactive venting.
Two workers are missing after Tuesday’s explosion at one of the reactors at a crippled Japanese nuclear plant, the country’s nuclear safety agency said.
The agency did not identify the missing workers, but said they were in the turbine area of the No.4 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was damaged by last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.
Agency official also told a news conference there was a crack in the roof of the reactor building.
Authorities are desperately trying to prevent the water which is designed to cool the radioactive cores of the plant’s reactors from running dry, which would lead to overheating and the release of dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere.
It was possible the water in the reactor was boiling, the agency said.
I have been on the internet and seen various web sites predict everything from serious contamination to apocalyptic conditions.
Of course, the nuclear industry does not believe there is going to be a problem.
However, since they predicted that the current calamity was virtually impossible, and then that it would not get worse, and on at least one occasion suggested that the Japanese crisis was a “positive” development for nuclear power – I don’t believe anything they say.
Where does that leave us? I agree with those that say that if there is a meltdown at a Japanese nuclear plant, a great deal of the radiation will be dispersed on the way here. I do need to point out that there are now 6 nuclear plants in serious difficulty. Six meltdowns will produce a great deal more radioactivity than one.
I would like to point out that we have never actually had a nuclear plant like this do a full meltdown and almost certainly meltdown until it hits the ground water. This may be a far more difficult event than has been predicted.
But my biggest worry is duration. After a meltdown, how long will the reactor (or reactors) vent? One of the reasons that concerns me is that at Chernobyl, the Soviet Union had enormous resources to call upon. Japanese society, infrastructure and military are all in disarray. Can they seal a radiation vent from a meltdown? If so, how many vents from how many reactors? And how long will it take them?
Now, it appears that there is a great deal of nuclear waste at the site, at least some of which is in the form of used control rods. This is going to complicate efforts to get the situation under control now and to deal with any other crisis that develops.
My prediction is that those parts of the United States in the Pacific Northwest will receive radiation roughly equivalent to the amount at the far reaches of Chernobyl, about the same as the United Kingdom received from that incident.
In terms of their surface areas, Belarus (22% of its land area) and Austria (13%) were most affected by higher levels of contamination. Other countries were seriously affected; for example, more than 5% of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden were contaminated to high levels (> 40,000 Bq/m2 caesium-137). More than 80% of Moldova, the European part of Turkey, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria and the Slovak Republic were contaminated to lower levels (> 4,000 Bq/m2 caesium-137). And 44% of Germany and 34% of the UK were similarly affected.
Of course, I am hypothesizing a rapid transit by wind across the Pacific and a continuous post meltdown venting at the reactors for some weeks.
Japanese workers fight to contain nuclear accident.
Map: Fukushima Daiichi
“There is still a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, asking people to remain calm.
About 200,000 people living within a 12.4-mile radius of the plant already had been evacuated.
Authorities also banned flights over the area and evacuated most workers from the plant.
Those who remained behind continued a seesaw, last-ditch effort to flood reactors with seawater to keep them cool and prevent a wider environmental and public health catastrophe.
The beleaguered crew had to abandon the plant control room Tuesday night because of high radiation levels, Kyodo News reported, citing plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company.
“Their situation is not great,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. “It’s pretty clear that they will be getting very high doses of radiation. There’s certainly the potential for lethal doses of radiation. They know it, and I think you have to call these people heroes.”
There cannot be any more dangerous job on earth right now. And there will be casualties.
If they have to leave because the radiation levels become too dangerous, the pumping of sea water into the containment vessels will become impossible.
The worst situation (that I can think of) and unfortunately a likely one is that reactor No. 2 which has breached its containment somewhere at the base of the containment vessel, will meltdown and the super heated steam will shatter the remainder of the containment dome. This will creat an intense local zone of high radiation while scattering further radiation into the atmosphere.
Wikipedia Commons
But it gets worse. If that happens they will be unable to maintain a human presence at reactors No. 1 and No. 3 to keep the water level in those reactors. Once they are abandoned, each of those reactors will melt down destroying their containment domes.
Thus all three plants are likely to melt down in a brief period of time and are likely to all be spewing radiation at the same time.
Now, Reactor No. 4 appears to be a storage area for spent nuclear fuel rods. There are conflicting reports that a fire is either ongoing or put out at that location. Considering the accuracy of what we have told so far, I am assuming that it is still burning. It seems that the Japanese store significant quantities of nuclear waste on site. (Yes, I know, it took me a while to wrap my mind around the idea that someone would want to do that.)
It would seem likely to me that after three meltdown explosions destroy the containment vessels, a new fire will be started at the spent fuel rods in Reactor No. 4.
The big question after this is “How long will these meltdown reactors spew radiation into the air and in what quantities?
I have heard repeatedly that these reactors are not as bad as the one at Chernobyl. I’m not convinced. It seems to me that the Russian reactor did not melt into the earth for any real depth. I think that these Japanese reactor cores could travel some distance into the earth and that area has a high water table.
After you ask the question about how much radiation and for how long, you get to ask a new question, “How do we stop it?”
Probably, you will want to drop some kind of neutralizing agent into the reactors to slow and eventually stop the nuclear reaction. That’s all very well and good, if the containment vessels are breached upward. But what if they breach the reactor walls sideways? How will you get a neutralizing agent into the building under those circumstances?
This problem could be ongoing for months and cleanup could last decades.
These are just my thoughts. Please criticize them or add to them. This is what I think is likely.
This is a cable from the United States Embassy in Japan which was sent to the State Department in Washington on 10/27/2008.
To summarize, the Japanese government and the power companies routinely deceive the public and elected officials about nuclear accidents, the true costs of various nuclear energy progjects and have no effective plan to dispose of nuclear waste.
As you can imagine the part about deceiving the public about nuclear accidents caught my attention. It jives nicely with the strangely comforting but rapidly disproved claims of the Japanese nuclear industry and Japanese government over the past few days.
able dated:2008-10-27T08:20:00
C O N F I D E N T I A L TOKYO 002993
SIPDIS
DEPT FOR EAP/J, ISN/CTR, ISN/MNSA, ISN/NESS DOE FOR KBAKER, NA-20 E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/24/2018 TAGS: PARM, ENRG, TRGY, NRR, MNUC, PUNE, JA“>JA“>JA SUBJECT: MP CRITICIZES JAPANESE NUCLEAR PLANS REF: STATE 107836
Classified By: Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer; reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
1. (C) Summary: Lower House Diet Member Taro Kono voiced his strong opposition to the nuclear industry in Japan, especially nuclear reprocessing, based on issues of cost, safety, and security during a dinner with a visiting staffdel, Energy Attache and Economic Officer October 21. Kono also criticized the Japanese bureaucracy and power companies for continuing an outdated nuclear energy strategy, suppressing development of alternative energy, and keeping information from Diet members and the public. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the current election campaign law. End Summary.
2. (C) Member of the House of Representatives Taro Kono spoke extensively on nuclear energy and nuclear fuel reprocessing during a dinner with a visiting staffdel, Energy Attache and Economic Officer October 21. Kono, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party first elected in 1996, is the son of Yohei Kono, a former President of the LDP who is currently the longest serving speaker of the House in post-war history. Taro Kono, who studied and worked in the United States and speaks excellent English, is a frequent embassy contact who has interests in agriculture, nuclear, and foreign policy issues. He is relatively young, and very outspoken, especially as a critic of the government’s nuclear policy. During this meeting, he voiced his strong opposition to the nuclear industry in Japan, especially nuclear fuel reprocessing, based on issues of cost, safety, and security. Kono claimed Japanese electric companies are hiding the costs and safety problems associated with nuclear energy, while successfully selling the idea of reprocessing to the Japanese public as “recycling uranium.” He asserted that Japan’s reprocessing program had been conceived as part of a nuclear cycle designed to use reprocessed fuel in fast breeder reactors (FBR). However, these reactors have not been successfully deployed, and Japan’s prototype FBR at Monju is still off-line after an accident in 1995.
3. (C) Kono said following the accident at the Monju FBR, rather than cancel plans to conduct reprocessing, the electric companies developed the Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel program. However, Kono criticized the MOX program as too expensive, noting it would be cheaper to just “buy a uranium mountain in Australia,” or to make a deal to import uranium from other sources. Kono claimed the high costs of the reprocessing program were being passed to Japanese consumers in their power bills, and they were unaware of how much they paid for electricity relative to people in other countries. In describing the clout wielded by the electric companies, Kono claimed that a Japanese television station had planned a three part interview with him on nuclear issues, but had canceled after the first interview, because the electric companies threatened to withdraw their extensive sponsorship.
4. (C) In addition to the electric companies, Kono was also very critical of the Japanese ministries, particularly the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). He claimed the ministries were trapped in their policies, as officials inherited policies from people more senior to them, which they could then not challenge. As an example, Kono noted that Japanese radiation standards for imported foods had been set following the Chernobyl incident, and had not changed since then, despite other nations having reduced their levels of allowable radiation.
5. (C) In a similar way, he alleged, METI was committed to advocating for nuclear energy development, despite the problems he attributed to it. Kono noted that while METI claimed to support alternative energy, it in actuality provides little support. He claimed that METI in the past had orchestrated the defeat of legislation that supported alternatives energy development, and instead secured the passage of the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) act. This act simply requires power companies to purchase a very small amount of their electricity from alternative sources. Kono also criticized the government’s handling of subsidies to alternative energy projects, noting that the subsidies were of such short duration that the projects have difficulty finding investors because of the risk and uncertainty involved. As a more specific example of Japan neglecting alternative energy sources, Kono noted there was abundant wind power available in Hokkaido that went undeveloped because the electricity company claimed it did not have sufficient grid capacity. Kono noted there was in fact an unused connection between the Hokkaido grid and the Honshu grid that the companies keep in reserve for unspecified emergencies. He wanted to know why they could not just link the grids and thus gain the ability to add in more wind power.
6. (C) He also accused METI of covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry. He claimed MPs have a difficult time hearing the whole of the U.S. message on nuclear energy because METI picks and chooses those portions of the message that it likes. Only information in agreement with METI policies is passed through to the MPs. Elaborating on his frustrations with the ministries, Kono noted that the Diet committee staffs are made up of professional bureaucrats, and are often headed by detailees from the ministries. He said he had no authority to hire or fire committee staff, and that any inquiries he made to them quickly found their way back to the ministries.
7. (C) Kono also raised the issue of nuclear waste, commenting that Japan had no permanent high-level waste storage, and thus no solution to the problem of storage. He cited Japan’s extensive seismic activity, and abundant groundwater, and questioned if there really was a safe place to store nuclear waste in the “land of volcanoes.” He noted that Rokkasho was only intended as a temporary holding site for high-level waste. The Rokkasho local government, he said, had only agreed to store waste temporarily contingent on its eventual reprocessing. Kono said that in this regard, the US was better off that Japan because of the Yucca mountain facility. He was somewhat surprised to hear about opposition to that project, and the fact that Yucca had not yet begun storing waste.
8. (C) In describing how he would deal with Japan’s future energy needs, Kono claimed Japan needed to devise a real energy strategy. He said while he believed Japan eventually would have to move to 100% renewable energy, in the meantime he advocated replacing energy produced by nuclear plants ready for decommissioning with an equal amount of energy from plants using liquid natural gas. To this he would add new renewable energy sources.
9. (C) Kono also made a few side remarks concerning the Japanese election process. He expressed dissatisfaction with the current election campaign law, which he called outdated. He noted, for example, that during the official campaign period he was not allowed to actively campaign on the Internet. He said he could print flyers during this time, but only a limited number, which had to be picked up by constituents at his campaign office. So, to get around these and other limitations, MPs had to campaign before the official campaign period began. Given the current uncertainty on a date for elections, he noted in a humorous manner that if the government delayed elections long enough, he and the other MPs would go broke.
This is reactor number 4 of the site where the other reactors are having problems. The Japanese apparently didn’t mention this to anyone until after the second explosion at No. 2.
A fire at a fourth reactor in a quake-damaged nuclear plant sent radiation spewing into the atmosphere Tuesday. Earlier, a third explosion at the plant in four days damaged a critical steel containment structure around another reactor, as Japan’s nuclear radiation crisis escalates dramatically.
The problem at the fourth reactor had not been reported before late Tuesday morning. According to officials, a fire broke out at that reactor, which had been offline at the time of the earthquake but was storing spent nuclear fuel.
“No. 4 is currently burning, and we assume radiation is being released. We are trying to put out the fire and cool down the reactor,” the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, said at a televised press conference. “There were no fuel rods in the reactor, but spent fuel rods are inside.”
Spent fuel rods, depending on their age, can still emit large amounts of radioactive material and need to remain immersed in cool water. Even so, and despite the fact that the No. 4 reactor was emitting large amounts of radioactive material, Mr. Edano said the reactor “did not pose an imminent threat.”
Radiation is now coming out of the breach. We are in unknown territory but with the Japanese evacuating the workers at No. 2, it is likely that the fuel rods will fully melt down.
Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and a fire at a fourth reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.
“No. 4 is currently burning and we assume radiation is being released. We are trying to put out the fire and cool down the reactor,” the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, told a televised press conference. “There were no fuel rods in the reactor, but spent fuel rods are inside.”
Government officials also said the containment structure of the No. 2 reactor had suffered damage during an explosion shortly after 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
They initially suggested that the damage was limited and that emergency operations aimed at cooling the nuclear fuel at three stricken reactors with seawater would continue. But industry executives said that in fact the situation had spiraled out of control and that all plant workers needed to leave the plant to avoid excessive exposure to radioactive leaks.
Japanese authorities trying to stave off meltdowns at an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant reported more grim news Tuesday as radiation levels soared following another explosion at an overheating reactor.
The risk of further releases of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains “very high,” Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday. In addition to an explosion at the No. 2 reactor, the building housing the No. 4 unit — which had been shut down before Friday’s earthquake — was burning Tuesday morning, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano announced.
The plant’s owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, evacuated all but about 50 of their workers from the plant following Tuesday’s explosion at the No. 2 reactor. Radiation levels at the plant have increased to “levels that can impact human health,” Edano said — between 100 and 400 millisieverts, or as much as 160 times higher than the average dose of radiation a typical person receives from natural sources in a year.
“Howard” wrote me today with the following information which I now pass on to you. By the way I had a look the web site showing the track of the jet stream. It’s quite good.
James Pilant
Full text of Howard’s post:
James,
I found this website that shows the track of jetstreams. They have an option to choose animation or still images. Here’s the link:
I worked with nuclear power many years ago, and so am not current on modern design of reactors. But the basics should still be the same. The fuel rods interact with each other (a fission reaction), causing extreme heat. The reaction is controlled (read “cooled or shut down”) by the control rods being inserted between the reacting fuel rods.
The reason I’m putting this information on here is the explanation being given on the news (about attempts to “cool the reactors with water”) seems nonsensical. No water I know of can slow or stop a nuclear reaction. That’s what the control rods are for. The water circulating through a reactor is there to transfer heat from the fuel rods to a secondary water system, where pressure is relieved allowing the secondary water to flash into steam. The steam then drives turbines that perform work such as generating electricity.
If the reactor is melting, that means something must have gone wrong with the insertion of the control rods. My guess is the earthquake damaged their control systems, preventing the emergency shutdown of the reaction. I don’t know how any amount of water passing over an uncontrolled fission reaction can even begin to cool it down. It certainly can’t be put out like a fire.
Maybe the control rods were successfully inserted partway, and what we’re seeing really is a “partial meltdown”. Maybe there’s only a small amount of exposed fuel, and it’ll use itself up soon. In any case, it’s a good idea for all of us to keep an eye on the situation and on any fallout that may come our way.
Prayer is always a good idea. For anyone who isn’t already a born-again Apostolic Christian, I encourage you to read Acts 2:38 in the Bible. None of us knows when our time here on Earth will end, and it’s best to be ready to meet our Maker at any time.
Howard
His post concludes here. I want to thank Howard and invite him back to comment whenever he wishes.
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.
“There was a huge explosion” between 6:00 am (2100 GMT Monday) and 6:15 am at the number-two reactor of Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, a Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) spokesman said.
The government also reported apparent damage to part of the container shielding the same reactor at Fukushima 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, although it was unclear whether this resulted from the blast.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters the suppression pool of the number-two nuclear reactor appeared to have been damaged.
This is the bottom part of the container, which holds water used to cool it down and control air pressure inside.
From further down –
The Fukushima crisis now rates as a more serious accident than the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, and is second only to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, according to the French nuclear safety authority. After insisting for three days that the situation was under control, Japan urgently appealed to US and UN nuclear experts for technical help on preventing white-hot fuel rods melting.
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.
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.
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