8.9 Earthquake (upgraded to 9.0) and Tsunami hits Japan
It would seem the emergency power plants have failed, and the cooling systems are now not working, the latest broadcast implied if thats the case then there is nothing they can do except more people away quickly - each of these things is a Chernobyl(sp).
Japanese police are turning cars away 60 miles from the plant.
My own understanding from a brief knowledge of this field from the Sellafield site is that all components in a nuclear plant are specifically constructed to withstand a level of earthquake damage, expressed as a figure on the Richter scale, but maybe the contingency factor is too low. In any event this is a real concern
Japanese police are turning cars away 60 miles from the plant.
My own understanding from a brief knowledge of this field from the Sellafield site is that all components in a nuclear plant are specifically constructed to withstand a level of earthquake damage, expressed as a figure on the Richter scale, but maybe the contingency factor is too low. In any event this is a real concern
Since 1410 most Welsh people most of the time have abandoned any idea of independence as unthinkable. But since 1410 most Welsh people, at some time or another, if only in some secret corner of the mind, have been "out with Owain and his barefoot scrubs." For the Welsh mind is still haunted by it's lightning-flash vision of a people that was free.
Gwyn A. Williams,
Gwyn A. Williams,
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Hachimitsu
- Formerly Wilma
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For some reason I was optimistic enough to think their day (and now potentially ours) couldn't get any worse.
BBC has a video of what appears to be an explosion near or in one of the reactors. This is so many levels of awful and it does not seem to be getting any better.
I wanted to believe reports that they had the reactors under control, but I knew in the back of my mind that they didn't.
BBC has a video of what appears to be an explosion near or in one of the reactors. This is so many levels of awful and it does not seem to be getting any better.
I wanted to believe reports that they had the reactors under control, but I knew in the back of my mind that they didn't.
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Lidless
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"The United States stands ready to help the Japanese people in this time of great trial," added Obama, who has visited Japan twice as president. "The friendship and alliance between our two nations is unshakeable, and only strengthens our resolve to stand with the people of Japan as they overcome this tragedy."
Unshakeable?
Err...
Unshakeable?
Err...
It's about time.
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Voronwë the Faithful
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I saw someone else point that out on Facebook. I find that reaction incomprehensible. To me President Obama's response was quite appropriate, and parsing out his words to find criticism just seems odd to me. But that's just me.
Meanwhile, the damage here in Santa Cruz -- while negligible compared to the incomprehensible devastation in Japan -- is still substantial. Twenty boats were sunk, over 100 sustained major damage, and a dock was destroyed. Estimates of the damage done is about $24 million dollars, and is likely to go up.
Tsunami Damages At Least 100 Boats In Santa Cruz Harbor
Meanwhile, the damage here in Santa Cruz -- while negligible compared to the incomprehensible devastation in Japan -- is still substantial. Twenty boats were sunk, over 100 sustained major damage, and a dock was destroyed. Estimates of the damage done is about $24 million dollars, and is likely to go up.
Tsunami Damages At Least 100 Boats In Santa Cruz Harbor
Last edited by Voronwë the Faithful on Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
[edit: For some reason the link wont take]
Factbox: Experts on explosion at Japan nuclear plant
(Reuters) – Radiation was leaking from an unstable nuclear reactor north of Tokyo on Saturday, the Japanese government said, after an explosion blew the roof off the facility following a massive earthquake.
The development has led to fears of a disastrous meltdown. Here are comments from experts about what might have happened.
PROF PADDY REGAN, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SURREY
"It looks as if the coolant pumps had initially stopped working. They shut down automatically when the reactor shuts down, but there is a backup system running off a diesel generator -- it looks as though that's the bit that failed.
"As a result there is no way of pumping heat out of the reactor, so it has to cool naturally. If the reactor gets too hot, in principle this means the fuel rods can melt - but it looks unlikely this has happened to any great extent in this case.
"To reduce the pressure, you would have to release some steam into the atmosphere from the system. In that steam, there will be small but measurable amounts of radioactive nitrogen - nitrogen 16 (produced when neutrons hit water). This remains radioactive for only about 5 seconds, after which it decays to natural oxygen.
"But if any of the fuel rods have been compromised, there would be evidence of a small amount of other radioisotopes in the atmosphere called fission fragments (radio-caesium and radio-iodine).
"The amount that you measure would tell you to what degree the fuel rods have been compromised. Scientists in Japan should be able to establish this very quickly using gamma ray spectroscopy as the isotopes have characteristic decay signatures. Current reports seem consistent with a small leak to relieve pressure."
"But we still need to establish the cause and exact location of the explosion, which is a separate issue. So far it looks like it's not the reactor core that's affected which would be good news.
"We must remember that there are 55 reactors in Japan and this was a huge earthquake, and as a test of the resilience and robustness of nuclear plants it seems they have withstood the effects very well."
TIMOTHY ABRAM, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR FUEL TECHNOLOGY AT
BRITAIN'S MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY
"By sampling the air around the station, you'd be able to tell how much radioactivity has been released. The thing they'll be looking for more than anything is whether there's any evidence of the fuel actually degrading," he told Reuters.
"If the fuel is substantially intact, then there'll be a much, much lower release of radioactivity and the explosion that's happened might be just due to a build-up of steam in the reactor circuit.
"The most probable (cause of the explosion) is the coolant, particularly if it's water, can overheat and turn to steam more rapidly than it was designed to cope with."
He said it was unlikely it would develop into anything more serious, but this would depend on the integrity of the fuel, which contains nearly all the radioactivity of the plant. He said he thought it would be "pretty unlikely" that the fuel itself had been significantly damaged.
He said if this did occur, some radioactive material might be released into the primary circuit, which in turn might be vented into the containment building to release the pressure.
"Even the worse case scenario from there is the pressure in the containment building itself builds up to dangerous levels and has to be released," he said.
"Consequently you are releasing pressure from in the containment building, some of which contains radioactivity, out into the environment. There are a lot of ifs in that chain of events."
VALERIY HLYHALO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE CHERNOBYL
NUCLEAR SAFETY Center
"The explosion at No. 1 generating set of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which took place today, will not be a repetition of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster," Interfax quoted the Ukrainian expert as saying.
He said that the Japanese nuclear power plants use reactors of a totally different design to Chernobyl's.
"Japan has modern-type reactors. All fission products should be isolated by the confinement (the reactor's protection shell). Only gas emission is possible."
Hlyhalo said that Japanese nuclear power plants are earthquake resistant.
"Apart from that, these reactors are designed to work at a high seismicity zone, although what has happened is beyond the impact the plants were designed to withstand. Therefore, the consequences should not be as serious as after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster."
IAN HORE-LACY OF THE WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION, AN INDUSTRY
BODY REPRESENTING 180 COMPANIES IN THE NUCLEAR SECTOR
"It is obviously an hydrogen explosion ... due to hydrogen igniting. If the hydrogen has ignited, then it is gone, it doesn't pose any further threat."
"The whole situation is quite serious but the actual hydrogen explosion doesn't add a great deal to it."
He said it was "most unlikely to be a major disaster" and he also did not believe there would be a full fuel meltdown.
"That would have been much more likely early yesterday in the European time. We are now 24 hours into the situation and the fuel has cooled a lot in that time and the likelihood of meltdown at this stage I would think would be very, very small."
ROBIN GRIMES, PROFESSOR OF MATERIALS PHYSICS AT IMPERIAL
COLLEGE LONDON
"It does seem as if the back-up generators although they started initially to work, then failed," Grimes, an expert in radiation damage told BBC TV.
"So it means slowly the heat and the pressure built up in this reactor. One of the things that might just have happened is a large release of that pressure. If it's that then we're not in such bad circumstances.
"Despite the damage to the outer structure, as long as that steel inner vessel remains intact, then the vast majority of the radiation will be contained.
"At the moment it does seem that they are still contained and it's a release of significant steam pressure that's caused this explosion. The key will be the monitoring of those radiation levels."
NUCLEAR EXPERT MARK HIBBS OF THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL PEACE
"We don't have any information from inside the plant. That is the problem in this case.
"If it melts down the probability that there would be a breach or that radiation would get outside of the plant because of weakness of the structure of the plant ... is much greater."
(Reporting by Michael Holden and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna)
Factbox: Experts on explosion at Japan nuclear plant
(Reuters) – Radiation was leaking from an unstable nuclear reactor north of Tokyo on Saturday, the Japanese government said, after an explosion blew the roof off the facility following a massive earthquake.
The development has led to fears of a disastrous meltdown. Here are comments from experts about what might have happened.
PROF PADDY REGAN, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SURREY
"It looks as if the coolant pumps had initially stopped working. They shut down automatically when the reactor shuts down, but there is a backup system running off a diesel generator -- it looks as though that's the bit that failed.
"As a result there is no way of pumping heat out of the reactor, so it has to cool naturally. If the reactor gets too hot, in principle this means the fuel rods can melt - but it looks unlikely this has happened to any great extent in this case.
"To reduce the pressure, you would have to release some steam into the atmosphere from the system. In that steam, there will be small but measurable amounts of radioactive nitrogen - nitrogen 16 (produced when neutrons hit water). This remains radioactive for only about 5 seconds, after which it decays to natural oxygen.
"But if any of the fuel rods have been compromised, there would be evidence of a small amount of other radioisotopes in the atmosphere called fission fragments (radio-caesium and radio-iodine).
"The amount that you measure would tell you to what degree the fuel rods have been compromised. Scientists in Japan should be able to establish this very quickly using gamma ray spectroscopy as the isotopes have characteristic decay signatures. Current reports seem consistent with a small leak to relieve pressure."
"But we still need to establish the cause and exact location of the explosion, which is a separate issue. So far it looks like it's not the reactor core that's affected which would be good news.
"We must remember that there are 55 reactors in Japan and this was a huge earthquake, and as a test of the resilience and robustness of nuclear plants it seems they have withstood the effects very well."
TIMOTHY ABRAM, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR FUEL TECHNOLOGY AT
BRITAIN'S MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY
"By sampling the air around the station, you'd be able to tell how much radioactivity has been released. The thing they'll be looking for more than anything is whether there's any evidence of the fuel actually degrading," he told Reuters.
"If the fuel is substantially intact, then there'll be a much, much lower release of radioactivity and the explosion that's happened might be just due to a build-up of steam in the reactor circuit.
"The most probable (cause of the explosion) is the coolant, particularly if it's water, can overheat and turn to steam more rapidly than it was designed to cope with."
He said it was unlikely it would develop into anything more serious, but this would depend on the integrity of the fuel, which contains nearly all the radioactivity of the plant. He said he thought it would be "pretty unlikely" that the fuel itself had been significantly damaged.
He said if this did occur, some radioactive material might be released into the primary circuit, which in turn might be vented into the containment building to release the pressure.
"Even the worse case scenario from there is the pressure in the containment building itself builds up to dangerous levels and has to be released," he said.
"Consequently you are releasing pressure from in the containment building, some of which contains radioactivity, out into the environment. There are a lot of ifs in that chain of events."
VALERIY HLYHALO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE CHERNOBYL
NUCLEAR SAFETY Center
"The explosion at No. 1 generating set of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which took place today, will not be a repetition of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster," Interfax quoted the Ukrainian expert as saying.
He said that the Japanese nuclear power plants use reactors of a totally different design to Chernobyl's.
"Japan has modern-type reactors. All fission products should be isolated by the confinement (the reactor's protection shell). Only gas emission is possible."
Hlyhalo said that Japanese nuclear power plants are earthquake resistant.
"Apart from that, these reactors are designed to work at a high seismicity zone, although what has happened is beyond the impact the plants were designed to withstand. Therefore, the consequences should not be as serious as after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster."
IAN HORE-LACY OF THE WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION, AN INDUSTRY
BODY REPRESENTING 180 COMPANIES IN THE NUCLEAR SECTOR
"It is obviously an hydrogen explosion ... due to hydrogen igniting. If the hydrogen has ignited, then it is gone, it doesn't pose any further threat."
"The whole situation is quite serious but the actual hydrogen explosion doesn't add a great deal to it."
He said it was "most unlikely to be a major disaster" and he also did not believe there would be a full fuel meltdown.
"That would have been much more likely early yesterday in the European time. We are now 24 hours into the situation and the fuel has cooled a lot in that time and the likelihood of meltdown at this stage I would think would be very, very small."
ROBIN GRIMES, PROFESSOR OF MATERIALS PHYSICS AT IMPERIAL
COLLEGE LONDON
"It does seem as if the back-up generators although they started initially to work, then failed," Grimes, an expert in radiation damage told BBC TV.
"So it means slowly the heat and the pressure built up in this reactor. One of the things that might just have happened is a large release of that pressure. If it's that then we're not in such bad circumstances.
"Despite the damage to the outer structure, as long as that steel inner vessel remains intact, then the vast majority of the radiation will be contained.
"At the moment it does seem that they are still contained and it's a release of significant steam pressure that's caused this explosion. The key will be the monitoring of those radiation levels."
NUCLEAR EXPERT MARK HIBBS OF THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL PEACE
"We don't have any information from inside the plant. That is the problem in this case.
"If it melts down the probability that there would be a breach or that radiation would get outside of the plant because of weakness of the structure of the plant ... is much greater."
(Reporting by Michael Holden and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna)
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Voronwë the Faithful
- At the intersection of here and now
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- Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:41 am
- Contact:
German television reports that there is a meltdown in the reactor, but that the shield protection shield seems so far still holding. There are radioactive leaks, that is sur and the evacuation area is widened. The impact of those radioactive leaks depends also on the weather.
An accident comparable to Tchernobyl is not excluded, but this is a different kind of reactor.
An accident comparable to Tchernobyl is not excluded, but this is a different kind of reactor.
"nolite te bastardes carborundorum".
They've doubled the evac zone around one of the reactors and they're getting ready to distribute iodine tablets. The main issue seems to be they can't get the coolant system back online. They've been dumping seawater and boron in and presumably they've stopped fission but I guess it's still too warm in the thermal sense. They've also found traces of radioactive Cs in the environment, indicating that the core of the reactor that had the explosion was compromised and it's currently estimated that 160 people were exposed to radiation. No word on how bad the exposure was.
When you can do nothing what can you do?
They are also venting gas from a neighboring station.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-0 ... land-.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-0 ... land-.html
A neighboring nuclear power station, Fukushima Dai-Ni, has four reactors. Tokyo Electric has also started preparing to vent gas from containment areas at that plant, Akitsuka Kobayashi, a company spokesman, said yesterday.
“When the pressure starts building up, the emergency procedure is to start venting,” Dave Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a telephone interview. “They’ve essentially entered a beat-the-clock game. As long as there is no fuel damage, there will be radioactivity, but it will be very low.”
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
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ToshoftheWuffingas
- Posts: 1579
- Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 3:34 pm
I have a friend from my language class working at a school in Japan. She's about 80 miles/130km south of Tokyo. She said it wasn't too bad where she was but she gave no more details.
I have a couple of elderly Japanese friends about 50 miles/80 km north east of Tokyo in a small town on the side of a wide river plain. I sent an e mail to their son to check how they were. They are ok but have no power or water. With the nuclear power shutdowns that must be so for many millions of people. The logistical situation for the authorities in a modern complex heavily populated society must be daunting.
I have a couple of elderly Japanese friends about 50 miles/80 km north east of Tokyo in a small town on the side of a wide river plain. I sent an e mail to their son to check how they were. They are ok but have no power or water. With the nuclear power shutdowns that must be so for many millions of people. The logistical situation for the authorities in a modern complex heavily populated society must be daunting.
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Primula Baggins
- Living in hope
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Nin, that is the most chilling set of before and after aerial photos I've seen.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
one "authority" on the radio said that the use of Sea Water was very much a last resort.
Since 1410 most Welsh people most of the time have abandoned any idea of independence as unthinkable. But since 1410 most Welsh people, at some time or another, if only in some secret corner of the mind, have been "out with Owain and his barefoot scrubs." For the Welsh mind is still haunted by it's lightning-flash vision of a people that was free.
Gwyn A. Williams,
Gwyn A. Williams,
It's strange the way the human mind works in some circumstance, obviously the news was weighing heavily on the mind of the president or his speech writer, and the unfortunate link was made.Lidless wrote:"The United States stands ready to help the Japanese people in this time of great trial," added Obama, who has visited Japan twice as president. "The friendship and alliance between our two nations is unshakeable, and only strengthens our resolve to stand with the people of Japan as they overcome this tragedy."
Err...
As someone with a proclivaty for putting his foot in his mouth I have great sympathy. I can remember speaking at an HR conference in Tel Aviv and coming to the end of my piece - concluding with a demonstration of the result of the exercise; the solution if you will - and into my mind the phrase " Final Solution " materialised. Fortunately I was able to suppress the words, just before my speech centres will fully engaged.
Since 1410 most Welsh people most of the time have abandoned any idea of independence as unthinkable. But since 1410 most Welsh people, at some time or another, if only in some secret corner of the mind, have been "out with Owain and his barefoot scrubs." For the Welsh mind is still haunted by it's lightning-flash vision of a people that was free.
Gwyn A. Williams,
Gwyn A. Williams,
You know, I had the EXACT opposite reaction to the word "unshakeable". I thought it was apt, and still do. I thought it made clever use of the word and was absolutely perfect under the circumstances.
The "sea water being the last resort" is hooey. They're using sea water because they have lots of it - and it's doing what it is meant to do: cool. The supply of regular coolant, and fresh water, has been interrupted.
The "sea water being the last resort" is hooey. They're using sea water because they have lots of it - and it's doing what it is meant to do: cool. The supply of regular coolant, and fresh water, has been interrupted.
Dig deeper.