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Japan Nuclear Crisis Part II


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I sense sarcasm..... I'd bet my life the Japanese already have a think tank setup with some great minds.... Be willing to bet they have explored the hose option.

think tanks are win.

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Looking at the 7-day forecast it appears that the only non-offshore winds will be on Sunday (S 9 km/h) and Sunday night (S 31 km/h).

I did analysis on this today. Looks like high pressure squeezes in today (could stagnate the air/wind a bit, which could be an issue). Wind flips S-SW tomorrow...then ahead of the storm on Sun-Mon, flips easterly...still don't see a NE trajectory yet, but it's also 3-4 days out on the GFS, and I'm unfamiliar with that model's biases in Asia. But, then looks like it's back offshore most of next week.

So only real concerning period is going to be Sun-Mon or Tue, with both onshore winds and precipitation.

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Speculation but I think maybe things are getting better. Instead of this heading towards the catastrophe the rest of the world was saying yesterday are we just heading towards a situation between TMI and Chernoybl but weighted heavily towards TMI?

I hope so.

What is the status? Some sites say radiation levels are down, others are up.

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Would the precip help get it to the ground quickly and keep it from covering a large area?

As I understand it (and I'm not an expert), precip does a very good job at both spreading it, and the vertical lift within the storm does a good job of getting it up into the atmosphere. So in other words, the way I understand it: Precip is not good in this scenario.

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Speculation but I think maybe things are getting better. Instead of this heading towards the catastrophe the rest of the world was saying yesterday are we just heading towards a situation between TMI and Chernoybl but weighted heavily towards TMI?

I hope so.

What is the status? Some sites say radiation levels are down, others are up.

There isn't usually much new right now, since it's the middle of the night. Info usually starts picking up around 7 pm EDT.

There was a report overnight that TEPCO was declaring the water drops a success, but that radiation levels at the plant hadn't dropped any (but also hadn't risen).

Good spot to scroll back through to catch up:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

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I love bureaucratic double speak...

  • 1745: US nuclear plants are robust, assures a senior US nuclear official. "Every plant in the United States is designed to deal with whatever seismic activity is likely to occur," Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said according to Reuters, adding that all the country's plants in coastal areas have been built to withstand tsunamis.

I'm pretty sure the Japanese didn't think a 9.0 was likely to occur, but it did.

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I love bureaucratic double speak...

  • 1745: US nuclear plants are robust, assures a senior US nuclear official. "Every plant in the United States is designed to deal with whatever seismic activity is likely to occur," Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said according to Reuters, adding that all the country's plants in coastal areas have been built to withstand tsunamis.

I'm pretty sure the Japanese didn't think a 9.0 was likely to occur, but it did.

I wonder how well they hold up to planes flying into spent fuel pools?

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I'm pretty sure the Japanese didn't think a 9.0 was likely to occur, but it did.

They are expecting an 8.0+ -- probably mid-8 -- in the Tokai region however, sometime during our lifetimes probably. Hopefully any nuke plants in that region will be better prepared; though it's still likely that the tsunami was the main culprit here.

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There's a lot of focus on Tokyo (people worried about radiation there, followed by NBD people saying that there's no worry about radiation there) -- Japan isn't just Tokyo. There has to be some assumption that the area around the Fukushima plant is going to be uninhabitable for a long long time. How close would you feel comfortable living?

What if the US government one day said, gosh, sorry, everyone within a 50 mile zone around the Crystal River plant in Florida has to evacuate because of an accident. Tampa/St. Pete (90ish miles to the south) might not have radiation levels that would cause illness, but do you think that would then make anything happening in the Crystal River area no big deal?

FYI- Crystal River has been shut down since SEPT 2009 due to problems with the containment dome. Looks like it could be down for many more months as more problems have recently been detected. It is costing out power company a huge amount of money, which they will surely pass along to their customers.

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Not sure if this was posted yet

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/local/chibrknews-tokyo-flight-triggers-ohare-radiation-detectors-20110317,0,4216493.story

Mayor Richard Daley acknowledged today passengers on a flight from Tokyo had set off radiation detectors at O’Hare International Airport, but he offered no details and said federal officials will be handling the situation.

“Of course the protection of the person coming off the plane is very important in regards to any radiation, especially within their families and anything else,” Daley said at a downtown news conference to discuss his trip to China this week.

City Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino would only say, “We are aware that occurred yesterday. We are working with Customs and Border Protection on this issue." She referred reporters to the Department of Homeland Security.

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FYI- Crystal River has been shut down since SEPT 2009 due to problems with the containment dome. Looks like it could be down for many more months as more problems have recently been detected. It is costing out power company a huge amount of money, which they will surely pass along to their customers.

Was using it more because I was more familiar with the geography and also its distance from a big city (along with general population around it), but thanks for the clarification.

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Kiyoshi Takenaka and Junko Fujita, Reuters March 18, 2011, 5:09 am

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese engineers worked through the night to lay a 1.5 km (one mile) electricity cable to a crippled nuclear power plant in the hope of restarting pumps desperately needed to pour cold water on overheating fuel rods and avert a catastrophe.

Officials could not say when the cable might be connected, but said work would stop on Friday morning to allow helicopters and fire trucks to resume pouring water on the Daiichi plant, about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

"Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped," an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that a cold snap was hampering the effort.

Washington and other foreign capitals have expressed growing alarm about radiation leaking from the plant, severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami a week ago that triggered a series of destructive explosions which compromised the nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage tanks.

Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later on Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japanese authorities on the crisis.

Even if TEPCO manages to connect the power, it is not clear the pumps will work as they may have been damaged by the natural disaster or subsequent explosions. Work has been slowed by the need to frequently monitor radiation levels to protect workers.

U.S. officials took pains not to criticize Japan's government, but Washington's actions indicated a divide with its close ally about the perilousness of the world's worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

COOLING POOL MAY HAVE RUN DRY

The top U.S. nuclear regulator said the cooling pool for spent fuel rods at the complex's reactor No.4 may have run dry and another was leaking.

Gregory Jaczko, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a congressional hearing that radiation levels around the cooling pool were extremely high, posing deadly risks for workers still toiling in the wreckage of the power plant.

"It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time," he said in Washington.

Japan's nuclear agency said it could not confirm if water was covering the fuel rods. The plant operator said it believed the reactor spent-fuel pool still had water as of Wednesday, and made clear its priority was the spent-fuel pool at the No.3 reactor.

On Thursday, military helicopters dumped about 30 tons of water, all aimed at this reactor. One emergency crew temporarily put off spraying the same reactor with a water cannon due to high radiation, broadcaster NHK said, but another crew later began hosing it.

Latest images from the plant showed severe damage, with two of the buildings a twisted mangle of steel and concrete.

"The worst-case scenario doesn't bear mentioning and the best-case scenario keeps getting worse," Perpetual Investments said in a note on the crisis.

http://au.news.yahoo...rt-catastrophe/

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Tokyo Passengers Trigger U.S. Airport Detectors, N.Y. Post Says

Radiation detectors at Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O’Hare airports were triggered when passengers from flights that started in Tokyo passed through customs, the New York Post reported.

Tests at Dallas-Fort Worth indicated low radiation levels in travelers’ luggage and in the aircraft’s cabin filtration system; no passengers were quarantined, the newspaper said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/tokyo-passengers-trigger-u-s-airport-detectors-n-y-post-says.html

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1836: An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant operator, said the pool at the no 4 reactor at Fukushima "seemed to have water" on Wednesday, based on aerial observations carried out by the military helicopters, AFP reports. Another TEPCO spokesman said: "We have not confirmed how much water was left inside but we have not had information that spent fuel rods are exposed."

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1836: An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant operator, said the pool at the no 4 reactor at Fukushima "seemed to have water" on Wednesday, based on aerial observations carried out by the military helicopters, AFP reports. Another TEPCO spokesman said: "We have not confirmed how much water was left inside but we have not had information that spent fuel rods are exposed."

that is the problem.....everything seems this or that.....very few absolutes.

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Do we even know what the radiation levels are near the reactors? The NRC says it would be tough to get near but the most recent measurements I saw were above the exposure levels but not fatal.

I dont think I have seen radiation levels from within the structures.. Only ones quoted that I have seen were either from the gate or 300m above the surface..

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Do we even know what the radiation levels are near the reactors? The NRC says it would be tough to get near but the most recent measurements I saw were above the exposure levels but not fatal.

There haven't been any released in a while, except for at the gates and above, as was just posted. Which I think says something in its own right.

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I love bureaucratic double speak...

  • 1745: US nuclear plants are robust, assures a senior US nuclear official. "Every plant in the United States is designed to deal with whatever seismic activity is likely to occur," Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said according to Reuters, adding that all the country's plants in coastal areas have been built to withstand tsunamis.

I'm pretty sure the Japanese didn't think a 9.0 was likely to occur, but it did.

This line of reasoning is why we can't have things like nuclear power. Plants get built fr whatever is within a couple of standard deviations of normal. They put them all over the place and, voila, one of them gets hit with a 1 in 200 event or so. When you look at the ring of fire, you see that 8+ earthquakes are pretty common, thought they are unlikely to occur in the next few decades in any single spot. However, we seem to be OK with ringing the entire area with nuclear plants that can only withstand a 7 and are not built to withstand a tsunami.

Humans, therefore, virtually assure themselves that this type of thing will happen. Now, how hard would it have been to put the generators on a platform that would be high enough to get them out of the way of a large tsunami?

It's not very hard but it cost money. If the designer of a beachfront condo is smart enough to use steel and concrete pilings to keep storm surge from destroying the condo, then why aren't the people that design nuclear plants able to figure this out?

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It's not very hard but it cost money. If the designer of a beachfront condo is smart enough to use steel and concrete pilings to keep storm surge from destroying the condo, then why aren't the people that design nuclear plants able to figure this out?

It's like Phin likes to say -- the engineers know all about this kind of stuff, but then the bean counters and management come in and put a kibosh on it.

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1836: An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant operator, said the pool at the no 4 reactor at Fukushima "seemed to have water" on Wednesday, based on aerial observations carried out by the military helicopters, AFP reports. Another TEPCO spokesman said: "We have not confirmed how much water was left inside but we have not had information that spent fuel rods are exposed."

Heres some short video of the flyover....

don't know if it's been posted yet..

Heres a very RECENT(yesterday), flyover of the Damaged Area(s)...

Getting power back on-site, may NOT have much effect...... As mostly everything is destroyed....

Pipes/pumps, switchgear etc..... Containment areas... :whistle:

http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded

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It's like Phin likes to say -- the engineers know all about this kind of stuff, but then the bean counters and management come in and put a kibosh on it.

This.........and when something bad does happen the engineer gets pointed at.......this second guessing is pretty futile really.....the more degree of safety you design for the higher the cost to design and build it and thus the return on investment goes down until the project is no longer justified......pick your poison I guess....

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Do we even know what the radiation levels are near the reactors? The NRC says it would be tough to get near but the most recent measurements I saw were above the exposure levels but not fatal.

Either TEPCO or the safety agency said earlier that they couldn't obtain any readings at parts of the plant because of the lack of power. Gave another excuse about why they stopped taking readings at the main gate and moved it to another gate.

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Heres some short video of the flyover....

don't know if it's been posted yet..

Heres a very RECENT(yesterday), flyover of the Damaged Area(s)...

Getting power back on-site, may NOT have much effect...... As mostly everything is destroyed....

Pipes/pumps, switchgear etc..... Containment areas... :whistle:

http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded

Here is the entire vid. About six minutes. The site is a wreck. You can see steam coming from both the #3 and #4 reactors. Hard to tell where it's coming from on #3. #4 does look like it's coming from the area of the fuel pool.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwj7

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