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Massive quake hits Japan 9.0 Magnitude

they called off their plan to use helicopters for dropping water because of radiation exposure so i think your comments about "not more than 1 millisievert" is a little wrong ;)

1 mSievert/h isn't even worth talking about while operating a vehicle
neither is 10 mSv/h
even 100mSv/h is acceptable for a helicopter pilot which will fly away after a few minutes
all even more so while wearing protection suits...

if it's really 1mSV/h on site they wouldn't really need to cycle their workers either nor would it be necessary to increase the dosage limit for workers ... which they did

the last day tepco has been rather tightlipped in regards to sievert-information so i'm looking forward to the next hours where morning starts with the usual press conferences



in regard to not happening in germany: you have to keep in mind that the japanese plant was built to a 8.0 standard for earthquakes _and_ had a tsunami protection wall because of the higher risk there
you know the usual earthquake protection level for central european nuclear plants ? 5.5 (some older even 5.0) and i don'T even want to think about eastern europe
quakes in that category aren't that uncommon as one would think in europe and even 6.0+ quakes have happened in the past (italy)
and neither are floodings of rivers uncommon ... and where are most plants built ? oh yes .. next to rivers ;)
for example in switzerland they built one plant right on top of a smaller geological rift

betting on "such quakes simply won't happen in the future" when there is evidence that such strong quakes did indeed happen in europe over last few centuries or *grasp* within the last 100 years, isn't quite a good idea IMHO
 
awmazz said:
I'd like to believe you. I really would. And believe all the academics giving assurances with great confidence it'll only be like Three Mile where the maximum dose was equivalent to having two x-rays. Really, truly I want to believe you. Except I continually see in the news photos that the people on the ground appear to know something you don't. Like these two guys in the white suits I saw on the BBC site an hour ago:

_51700348_011538104-1.jpg


Now unless that's their standard travel apparel for when flying on a commercial airliner, I'm a gonna believe their actions, and my eyes, rather than your words, sorry.
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Being locked in a room with an X-ray machine that cannot be turned off is not healthy for you. I'm not saying there's zero danger for someone who is right next to the site. A person who is a few miles away, on the other hand...

If there is an earthquake and my 40 year old car explodes three times, blows all four doors, the roof and hood off, melts the tyres including the spare, spews steam from the radiator and the fuel tank catches fire and is spraying petrol everywhere so the firefighters can't get near it, I shall remember to refer to it as being 'offline'. And look, the pistons are all shattered and it's leaking oil but the casing is still intact except for a big crack which is hissing, so proof positive as to the brilliant engineering my car is!

Not in the real world. The rest of us would call it what it is - a piece of sh** jalopy that shouldn't have even been on the road in the first place.
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Actually, the reactor didn't explode from the earthquake. Most of them properly shut down. The ones having problems are having problems because the earthquake shut them down and then they drown in a tsunami which completely covered the backup power generators that ran the cooling systems.

If you have a car that can drive through an earthquake and then be completely thrashed and covered in a tsunami and not leak any gasoline, by all means, I would like to buy it from you.

I mean, the nuclear plant literally went through this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpuLlIrUYsI (Skip to the last minute if you're lazy, but I'd suggest watching the whole thing)

And came out of it without leaking any radioactive waste or damaging the environment yet.


Yes, let's get rid of them! Because the alternative is much safer and a lot better for the environment.
 
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obeygiant said:
Well if they were warned or not, which they obviously were, what could they have done about it other than building a new plant? I can't imagine its easy to bring that particular facility up to 9.0 resistant.
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I think it has been established that Fukushima dai-ichi weathered the quake and was entirely stable up until the wave laid out all the backup generators. It is a rather minor quibble, especially given the location and the virtual inevitability of the wave, though it would seem that the generators could have been fitted with snorkels or something to prevent them dying.
 
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jamisonbaines said:
(in the least crass way imaginable) it's a shame they don't have more capable robots to tackle this.
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The US does. They have lots of drones that can theoretically fly over and do constant "liscense plate" survailance of the reators. Dunno if they plan on sending some or relocating them from Afghanistan. There are bomb bots that can go in and do some limited stuff too but I'm not sure if heavy radiation will disable them. There's a Nasa Robonaut that is radiation proof, but I think they sent the one or two we have up into space already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g3qzOZLs6s


Japanese are leaders in "industrial" robots, but they don't move. And that Honda Asimo robot is pretty useless other than as a showpiece. It's a misconception about robots and the Japanese because of all the anime and "cute marketing". They are leaders in manufacturing technologies (which involve robots), but they are really far from the kinds that move arround and do practical things. Though maybe that will change after this event.

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OK, regarding this "radiation exposure" let me contribute how I think it works from my understanding of genetics and cell biology.

The dangerous part of the radiation that doesn't kill you right away or "soon" is the DNA damage.

DNA actually repairs itself...because if it didn't no life would exist on earth. But of course theres a RATE of repair. You can be exposed to a lot of radiation "over time" and the repair will catch up for the most part constantly. But if your are exposed to a spike and it just so happens that the repair mechanisms miss the chance to prevent some cells to become irreversable mutated into cancerous cells (or severely reduce the timebomb ETA to be cancerous) you will get early cancer within your leftover lifespan.

Of course, the longer you are exposed to this "spike" increases the chance of this happening. And the chance is likely different between different people to a certain extent.

So when you are exposed to those increased levels for "only 1 hour", it doesn't mean it didn't affect your life. Maybe 1 out of 10 ppl will get early cancer...maybe 1 out of 100. We don't really know, but a lot of it is also chance based. Like if some particles happen to hit some DNA's all at once that it makes a cancer timebomb in the 1st minute...vs. 1:01 minutes into the exposure.
 
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http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

they just dropped a few water loads from the helicopters (not all were accurate i'm afraid) after they did some meassurements from another helicopter fly over

they retrofitted the water-helis with lead plates for additional protection of the crew on top of personal gear

but currently they have pulled out again ...

edit: well looks like i had my hopes up too early: after 2 drops each they had to pull back the C-47s because of the radiation. i hope they got at least got a ton or two of water into the spent fuel pool of reactor 3 to increase the water level by a few centimeters and buy some time for the trucks (11 of them)
i think reactor 3 got priority because of the lack of roof and also because they have very likely MOX fuel rods stored there ... and keeping that plutonium safe has to be priority
edit2: they are saying operations are limited to 40 minutes per helicopters per day over the reactors
 
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Yeah - that helicopter thing was tried with Chernobyl - I remember seeing video taken from one while flying nearby - and there was "static" that was really ionizing radiation bombarding the film reel as it went through. People in the aircraft had no idea they were in the midst of a cloud, eerie video to watch. They had placed a lead plate on their helicopters too in order to protect the pilots (history repeats itself?) - which proved massively ineffective as while it may have provided partial shielding from the reactor below - it provided zero shielding from radiation emanating from the isotope-laden clouds which they were flying through.

The point Japan seems to be at with the water drops - I now wonder how much longer until people consider airlifting sand / concrete to begin entombing? If they can't lower radiation levels by aerial cooling - and they can't get close enough to cool from the ground due to radiation levels.... what's next?
 
The whole thing is a series of cascading crises.

Those of us who work in corporate IT or in surgery or in any other situation where the job involves dealing with failure modes of complex interlinking systems while under time constraints and funding issues will recognise the symptoms and the underlying panic.

A look at Tepco's history:
wikipedia said:
On August 29, 2002, the government of Japan revealed that TEPCO was guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents. All seventeen of its boiling-water reactors were shut down for inspection as a result.

The utility "eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities". Upon taking over leadership responsibilities, TEPCO's new president issued a public commitment that the company would take all the countermeasures necessary to prevent fraud and restore the nation's confidence. By the end of 2005, generation at suspended plants had been restarted, with government approval.

In 2007, however, the company announced to the public that an internal investigation had revealed a large number of unreported incidents. These included an unexpected unit criticality in 1978 and additional systematic false reporting, which had not been uncovered during the 2002 inquiry. Along with scandals at other Japanese electric companies, this failure to ensure corporate compliance resulted in strong public criticism of Japan's electric power industry and the nation's nuclear energy policy. Again, the company made no effort to identify those responsible.
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I also have strong concerns over plant design. The current principle of designing to a 1 in 1000 years event is simply inadequate. I can accept that a single nuclear installation could possible survive 1000 years.

However, according to the IAEA, 29 countries currently operate 442 reactors, with another 65 plants now under construction worldwide. That's 500 plants. Each individual plant has a maybe 1 in 1000 chance of a serious event in any one year. If you roll enough dice, you're going to get snake-eyes sooner or later. 1 chance in 1000, times 500, is 500 chances in 1000 every year.

That means that globally, there is a 1 in 2 chance of a serious accident each year, and every few years a major event. Which I suggest is exactly what we're seeing.

Furthermore, the IAEA expects between 10 to 25 new countries to bring their first nuclear power plant online by 2030. That's 10 to 25 new sets of national governments groping their way towards regulation and dealing with their internal issues and working cultures. That doesn't fill me with confidence.

The IAEA also says 21 African nations have shown interest in the technology. I don't know about you, but looking at the standard of governance in Africa, with the best intentions in the world, this is just a recipe for diaster. The major energy companies would love to build reactors in Africa as they can hoover up all the funding and international aid, but what happens next?
 
Just curious on the design of these power plants. Why don't they do it underground, like how missile silos are housed. Or is it just that they never really expected something like this and figured a "concrete russian doll" is good enough? Also, when you're done with the plant and decomm it, you can just leave it there...and maybe even buldoze it with earth or pour concrete over it.
 
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Live timestamped text updates at the BBC

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

BBC now seems to be better than the Guardian - they are getting more info and faster, probably due to putting a lot more resources onto the Japan story.

Odd-note: BBC is using a middle-east URL for the live updates, even though the story is in the asia-pacific section of the website. I suspect this is because the live updates page was originally set up for the Egypt/Libya protests, and it got taken over by the Japan earthquake.

BBC probably decided against giving the page a new URL because of the number of hits, and the urgency of the information. When this blows over and they stop doing live text updates, BBC will probably review their URL naming policy for live pages.
 
I found this interesting study:

Underground Nuclear Parks and the Continental Supergrid

http://www.w2agz.com/SG 2 Proceedings/7 Myers Nuclear SG2 Presentation Oct 18.pdf

Big-TDI-Guy said:
Yeah - that helicopter thing was tried with Chernobyl - I remember seeing video taken from one while flying nearby - and there was "static" that was really ionizing radiation bombarding the film reel as it went through. People in the aircraft had no idea they were in the midst of a cloud, eerie video to watch. They had placed a lead plate on their helicopters too in order to protect the pilots (history repeats itself?) - which proved massively ineffective as while it may have provided partial shielding from the reactor below - it provided zero shielding from radiation emanating from the isotope-laden clouds which they were flying through.

The point Japan seems to be at with the water drops - I now wonder how much longer until people consider airlifting sand / concrete to begin entombing? If they can't lower radiation levels by aerial cooling - and they can't get close enough to cool from the ground due to radiation levels.... what's next?
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That's Michio Kaku's recomendation too. Here's a video of him explaining the situation to the reporter.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42130567#42130567

At this point, it's almost as if they are like trying to "save" the reactors and get them under control. But it like keeps getting worse and worse and soon there will be like nothing they can do and they are just going to kill all the workers if they don't actually get it under control. Then they will have to entomb it anyway while the radiation is spewing out more. I guess they don't really give up easy.

Maybe if it melts down, it might seep into the ocean? That would suck. I suppose then you have no choice but to get in under control. That's like a food chain thing I guess.


Also, I don't know if the US can help with V-22's. It's supposed to be NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical proof)
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/osprey/

Maybe they can "aim" better or like lift hoses or something closer to the buildings. Japan prolly doesn't have these kind of things because they were like resticted in having a military of any significant size after the war. But if there are some in the aircraft carrier that is arround there, maybe that would be an option, if the US wants to risk it.

Don't panic said:
it reeks of desperation.
how much of that water will end up in the pool anyways?
and wasn't the reactor with the spent fuel pool issue the #4?
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Why don't they drop ice? or like big ice blocks. It would be more accurate, like a WWII bombing run. But easier on a helicopter.
 
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awmazz said:
Italian fellow (with wife in Japan) writing into the BBC about the media coverage after the embassy in Tokyo measured current radiation on the roof to be lower than in Rome:
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LOL, yeah. No doubt the media professionals know how to exagerate things just to glue ppl to the TV. Next up, Lybia air strikes. It's going to sound like WW3 is about to start even though it's just some pot shots to aid a side of a tiny civil war.
 
rasmasyean said:
Why don't they drop ice? or like big ice blocks. It would be more accurate, like a WWII bombing run. But easier on a helicopter.
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That might actually damage the facility more.

And the temperature difference won't make that big a difference. They're trying to cool something that is hundreds of degrees hot...the water'll absorb the heat, turn to vapor, and take it away. Sure, the colder the water, the more heat it can absorb, but the difference between ice and cold water isn't going to be that enormous that it's worth the risk of dropping big ice blocks that might break things.

awmazz said:
Italian fellow (with wife in Japan) writing into the BBC about the media coverage after the embassy in Tokyo measured current radiation on the roof to be lower than in Rome:
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Source link?
 
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GFLPraxis said:
That might actually damage the facility more.

And the temperature difference won't make that big a difference. They're trying to cool something that is hundreds of degrees hot...the water'll absorb the heat, turn to vapor, and take it away. Sure, the colder the water, the more heat it can absorb, but the difference between ice and cold water isn't going to be that enormous that it's worth the risk of dropping big ice blocks that might break things.
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this plus:

2. liquid water afaik has a higher/faster heat absorbtion rate and thus there is little no none temperature advantge
3. refilling the helicopters is a lot easier with sea-water ... using ice would be massivly more complicated
4. looking at the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBXqiw6EJUk it looks there is a lot of debris lying around and water can flow around this lying o ntop the reactors/pools
 
GFLPraxis said:
That might actually damage the facility more.

And the temperature difference won't make that big a difference. They're trying to cool something that is hundreds of degrees hot...the water'll absorb the heat, turn to vapor, and take it away. Sure, the colder the water, the more heat it can absorb, but the difference between ice and cold water isn't going to be that enormous that it's worth the risk of dropping big ice blocks that might break things.
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Yeah, the temperature difference is not that big, true, but I wouldn't think ice blocks would do anything to something that's pressumable all metal and concrete. But I guess it depends on how big the block is. It should theoretically shatter itself if it hits something though. Like if you drop ice on the sidewalk, nothing happens to the sidewalk.

Anyways, come to think of it, why is spent fuel in pools on top of a building? Am I understanding this correctly? That doesn't seem like a safe way to store it.
 
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i don't understand this half-baked approach to the water drops.
if it is to do something, they surely must go all in and have tens of trips, so that enough water reaches the target, not one trip here and there.

and regarding the ice, even if the temperature advantage of the ice would offset the disadvantage of it not being liquid (and thus, smashing things, not flowing to it's target and not cooling hot surfaces on touch), which i don't think it would, where are you going to get the tons of ice necessary?

besides, seawater is probably 5-10 degrees (°C) , so it's already pretty chilling.

for some reasons i am getting a positive sensation that they are actually making progress and the situation will get back under control.

the real problem is the people up north that are literally freezing to death.
 
Don't panic said:
the real problem is the people up north that are literally freezing to death.
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That's prolly more news hype. You'd figure with all that debri, survivors can find blankets and clothes and stuff. Just take it off the dead ppl if you have to.
 
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