This is all I have. It came in on Reuters “comments.” I want this to be right. If the workers are on site, there is a chance that meltdown can be avoided.

Japan nuclear agency: Evacuation order of plant workers lifted at 0230 GMT after radiation falls

This came in later —

I am very pleased.

James Pilant

From MSNBC

Workers at a quake-damaged atomic power plant briefly suspended operations and evacuated Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous to remain there, dealing a setback to Japan’s frantic efforts to stem a nuclear crisis.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing the overheated reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

“All the workers there have suspended their operations. We have urged them to evacuate, and they have,” Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Edano said, according to a translation by NHK television.

The workers were allowed back into the plant after almost an hour when the radiation levels had fallen.

It’s possible that evaporation from reactor No. 3 may have caused the temporary surge, Edano said, although that can’t be immediately confirmed.

This popped up on Yahoo news just as I had finished posting that the Japanese government had abandoned the nuclear station after the radiation became too dangerous for the workers.

I suppose comment is not necessary at this time.

James Pilant

From Yahoo News –

President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended the use of nuclear energy despite the calamity in Japan where a nuclear power plant leaked radiation in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The president told Pittsburgh television station KDKA that all energy sources have their downsides but that the U.S. — which gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power — needs to look at the full array of them.

The president said facilities in the U.S. are closely monitored and built to withstand earthquakes, even though nothing’s failsafe. Proponents of nuclear power fear their efforts to win over the public to the safety of their industry have been dealt a tremendous blow by the disaster in Japan.

By ERIC TALMADGE and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press –

Japan suspended operations to prevent a stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous for workers to remain at the facility.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

The level of radiation at the plant surged to 1,000 millisieverts early Wednesday before coming down to 800-600 millisieverts. Still, that was far more than the average

“So the workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now,” Edano said. “Because of the radiation risk, we are on standby.”

Experts say exposure of around 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause radiation sickness.

There is no one there to pump water into the plants. A meltdown is inevitable at all four plants. The two others, No. 5 and No. 6, will be in danger from the crisis at the other four. I have no idea whether or not they will be damaged or not.

James Pilant

Greg Harris very kindly sent me this link – http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetstream_model.html or here.

This can show you a time lapse map of the jet stream path over the Northern hemisphere for whatever time you want to enter in the box.

Pretty good stuff.

Here’s what a still picture looks like –

CBS news consultant was told that one of the workers in the plant said he wasn’t afraid to die  that this was his job.

Incredible courage.

James Pilant

 

From Huffington Post –

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hajimi Motujuku says the blaze erupted early Wednesday in the outer housing of the reactor’s containment vessel. Fire fighters are trying to put out the flames. Japan’s nuclear safety agency also confirmed the fire, whose cause was not immediately known.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out in the reactor’s fuel storage pond – an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool – causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere.

Reuters reported that two workers are missing inside the plant, and a Japanese official said that there was a crack in the roof of the No. 4 reactor.

 

This must be two of the fifty workers who remained on site after the other 750 were evacuated. There appear to be firefighters on the scene, so we don’t know how many are risking their lives to try and prevent a meltdown.

James Pilant

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.

James Pilant

From Investment Watch –

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.

James Pilant

Reuters –

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.

 

We have heard many reassurances that it will not reach “harmful” levels, whatever that means.

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.

This is from the Executive report from THE OTHER REPORT ON CHERNOBYL (TORCH).

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.

 

James Pilant

Japanese workers fight to contain nuclear accident.

“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.

I’m sure they will hold out as long as possible.

James Pilant