Fukushima, Japan’s Happiest Nuclear Power Plant

BY 

ARTHUR HU

 – MAY 16, 2011(EDIT POST)POSTED IN: EARTHQUAKES AND DISASTERS, HU'S ON FIRST, INTERNET MEDIA, NEWS

[Hu's on First | Nuclear Crisis]
The Wall Street Journal noticed this futuristic documentary on the history of the Fukushima nuclear plant from 1985. It looks like the Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds episodes I watched as a kid, and it’s impressive to see how it was all put together and run, and evolve from the first paper teletypes to the PC’s of the 1980s. Here is the original Japanese posting from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTshYXmN1AY (1985 27min) In 1966, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) started construction of this nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. This movie explained the mechanism of nuclear electric power generation, and the procedure of construction of the power plant. Many Japanese people visited the movie theater to watch this movie at that time. This movie was digitized by the support of Saitama Culture Promotion Grant. This movie was kindly provided by Science Film Museum for free (http://www.kagakueizo.org/english/). I have personally obtained permission of the head of the museum, to upload this video . If someone can translate this film to any language, please feel free to do so. We truly appreciate your cooperation.

And here is somebody that put english subtitles in it:

1985 Movie: Fukushima, The Happiest Nuclear Power Plant in Japan

Part 2

Some highlights:
* unbelievable attention paid to safety!
* built on sturdy land, built three times stronger than a normal building to withstand earthquakes easily.
* containment built of two meter thick concrete (thank goodness that’s holding the molten mass of uranium there now!)
* pressure vessel made from 16 cm sheets heated to a moldable temperature. (that’s what the uranium burned through)
* Fukushima is a thriving , healthy community (now a ghost town)

Making Sense of Ruined Reactor Pictures

Here is an excellent attempt at figuring out what is in the pictures. The main new thing I noticed is the that two big black bars across the tangled mess that is now the roof of #3 are the overhead crane. I can now see the round “manhole” shape which seems to indicate the concrete plugs disintegrated, no sign of the big yellow cap reactor cap, that might mean even if the pressure cooker pressure vessel is somehow there, the containment is open to the air on top, which would be very, very bad. TEPCO is supposedly sure the reactor core is fine, but if the meters in unit 1 were useless, #3 is in MUCH worse shape, we have no idea if they have any way to confirm their statements

New Unbelievable Pictures of Fukushima

based on this house of oust website

Thermal images: 1 shows heat mostly around reactor core. 2 just shows a hot roof. 3 shows a hot fuel pool and reactor core, maybe the equipment pool on right side, but that corner of the floor is collapsed on the upper right corner.

Thermal images

Here’s an attempt to match up features of wreck of unit 3 with nice schematic painting:

Matching up wreck of #3 with diagram

This photo analysis picks out collapsed overhead crane on top of reactor well which is producing steam from the overheated reactor core. If it’s not deliberately vented, that means it’s like opening the valve on the pressure cooker. The well lies between the fuel pool and the equipment pool, and is not supposed to be flooded. If that’s the edge of the fuel or equipment pool, all the water is gone, also BAD BAD BAD.

Steam from #3

REGARDING THE EXPLOSION & WRECKAGE AT UNIT 3

source The “cattle chute” is a channel to move fuel rods from the pool into the reactor in the center. That seems to be where the steam is coming from, perhaps leakage from the pool into the reactor core. The reactor and pools take up the east half of the floor with the fuel pool to the south and pool for equipment that has to be removed from above the rods to the north.

Schematic of floor layout from above, West is up

 TT
 TT
+-------------------+
| SS          CCC   XX|
| SS          CCC   XX|
+----------------XX+
| FFFF  RR  EEEE  ?? |
| FFFF  RR  EEEE      |
+-------------------+
F= fuel pool
R= rector well
E= equipment pool
C= yellow reactor cap unit 4
S= fuel transfer crane shaft
T= truck entry first level
X= demolished unit 3

Crane and refueling platform is over fuel pool in unit 4
Crane appears to be over reactor well in unit 3.
Crane runs on rail between top 2 "squares", it is covered
  with debris on unit 1, collapsed in unit 3, looks fine but probably
  damaged beyond repair in unit 4. It is needed to
  a) move fuel cask from ground to fueling floor
  b) remove concrete "manhole cover" plug
  c) remove reactor cap
  d) remove pressure vessel head
  e) remove equipment above fuel
  It would take months to install a new crane if there were NO
  radiation. It is probably impossible to replace this crane unless
  you build a giant ramp and drive up a big wheeled crane to the
  "new roof".

Bus-sized refueling platform seems to be on collapsed north
  section in unit 3. Runs on track straddling fuel and reactor
  well.
  It is needed to remove and put in fuel rods. Of course all
  hot fuel rods in units 1, 2, and 3 are probably toast, and
  there is too much debris in unit 3 even if they aren't blasted to
  shreds like everybody is sure they are.

Still wondering if anyone else thinks this is more like a jet of steam venting than a more diffuse cloud of steam rising from a pool of hot water.

If the orientation is correct as per jensjakob’s observation, post #576, could this jet of steam be from the region of the "cattle chute" transfer channel between the SPF to the left and the region of the reactor vessel on the right?

Very interesting in light of minerva’s post #588 regarding the pump and seal failure on the gate as a potential source for leakage of the fuel in the SFP.

Could water leakage from the SFP into the reactor containment contribute to a steam explosion upward out of the reactor containment, from around the outside of the reactor vessel, and if not blowing the plug, then perhaps blowing out the gates on the chute? Might it then also blow out a good portion of what was in the SFP as well as the the roof over the SFP, leaving a residual venting steam leak from the gate region, but leaving the reactor vessel intact?

What else might have resulted in the very different, vertical blast dynamic at unit 3 if the reactor vessel is still intact and venting steam?

Whatever blew vertical should have at least blown a hole through the roof, if not blowing the roof off completely, as well as blowing the side panels outward. The only obvious candidate for a hole in the roof looks, after the subsequent collapse, to be over the region of the SFP. Could a sidewise and upward blast out of the gate and upward out of the SFP blown out 3 walls with the wall opposite the pool and reactor gate being spared, then collapsing inward, together with what was left of the roof?

It looks like at least two layers of steel girders have collapsed over the region of the reactor at unit three. One is a portion of the roof, I believe. The other is diagonally oriented with respect to the roof girders and appears to be part of the upper wall structure over the reactor area, but if so, it appears to me it would have had to have fallen inward rather than being blasted outward.

What is the significance of two fuel cask transfer trucks out back of unit 3? Were they likely to have been uploading or downloading fuel?

So many questions. So few answers.

Here’s a wonderful shot of sunlight streaming into Unit 3. Which is BAD if you consider there ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ANY WINDOWS. Of course, blowing out a wall is bound to improve the view. Oh, TEPCO has reported a 60-ish worker died after collapsing. No radiation, but it’s still a worksite death. So much for that sign “XX” days since the last injury. Reminds me of the “XX” days since the last serious onsite radiation leakage sign when I interviewed at Los Alamos labs

Sunlight on ground floor unit 3 (TEPCO)

Here’s a TEPCO shot of the crane under the collapsed roof of unit #1. Green refuel platform is probably under it just like #4. No way that will ever work again.

Crane #1

May 15 reactor core status presentation says essentially all the fuel melted within hours of the tsunami and fell to the bottom of the pressure cooker. The good news is that based on temperature readings they don’t think it’s melted through to the concrete containment (which what I though the news reports said it did) so we shall see. Since it’s cool (well if you can call 100-120C cool, that’s boiling water 100C=boiling away into the atmosphere) it’s “not likely” to do the large scale releases like it was when it was melting down. However they have still not mentioned without a roof, crane or vent ducts, they have no way to control radioactivity released into the air, they have no way to stop leaks into the ground or water, and no way to open up the reactor core to have a look inside as they did in Three Mile Island. They have also never mentioned that the Mark I’s so-called containment lacks the big concrete dome of TMI and the Mark III. Though a boom as big as #3 probably would have blown such a containment like a balloon given it cracked and blew out wall pillars several feet thick.

Gunderson’s not-so-rosy Report

Here is Gunderson’s latest May 13th update, and I’m sorry to say I think he’s right

Fukushima – One Step Forward and Four Steps Back as Each Unit Challenged by New Problems fromFairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

He says the upside down light bulb massive steel/concrete containments, not just the pressure cooker part, are leaking water. The ground has shift downwards a lot so the concrete foundations must be cracked. Most of the water they’ve poured in the reactors has either turned to steam or gone into the ground, and there is not even a plan to stop either kind of leak. Even if they could capture the water, there is no technology that can clean up or store that much nuke water. People somehow managed to replace the water meters, but I can’t imagine they sent somebody into the “drywell” to tack sensors on the pressure cooker rpv, and that told them it was basically dry, and situation is probably same or worse in 2 or 3. Unit 3 has temperature above boiling and low (near normal air pressure) which means it’s probably being cooled by !@# air, which is bad. Remember a pressure cooker works because water boils at a higher temperature under pressure (you know you could cook a LOT of chickens really fast in these things when they work…) Like I said, the unit 3 pool doesn’t look much different than if it had a “prompt critical” explosion which broke everything into the junk pile the cameras saw, he didn’t mention the “experts” are sure the fuel rods are probably just fine under all that crap. Pool 4 does look fine (you can read the numbers and see all the handles) BUT THE BUILDING IS LEANING AND COULD COLLAPSE IF YOU SNEEZED AT IT. So they need to prop it up somehow. That would be a hell of a mess to clean up.

The Three Explosion Theory

Here’s the big boom at #3 again. The very first thing is that the roof actually goes down a little bit. Then you see a bright yellow flash at the upper right corner above the fuel pool, but at the exact same instant also a big black cloud coming out of the left – that’s where the top floor and next building completely collapsed. The other thing is that when the cloud hits the top of the tower level, it looks like an airburst ball, like when they dropped bombs from the air and exploded at midair, but this one is travelling up. It’s not a mushroom going up, but a ball which means things went boom in all directions up and down, about the size of the building. So maybe what happened is that the hydrogen explosion started downstairs, taking out the north west corner. This set off a second explosion above or in the fuel storage pool, sending some enough fuel into the air to go critical and burst (that would be a third explosion) as it was traveling out of the pool. This might explain why the pool was not blown to bits, but the roof section above it was blasted, and you see what looks like an air burst about 100 ft above the old roof. The tower is 100 m/ 300 ft high, the reactor roof about 50m. I think the north and south walls are not as strong as they are not stressed to hold the cranes as are the east and west wall, so they blew out first – you can see a black cloud going directly north, but it slows down rapidly, so you’re looking at a pressure explosion, not a lot of material. You can see on the top floor the relatively light vent ducts are still there, so they were inside the high pressure area that pushed out the walls. The concrete walls are reinforced just enough that I believe that when they were pushed out they also pulled on the meter-thick pillars to snap because of the massive pressure rather than a direct impact like at the Pentagon. Even the advanced BWR containments have walls like this one, The walls were not stressed to survive a hydrogen explosion, some engineer out there can probably figure out how big a boom it takes to blow out the walls and take out a few pillars. If there are THREE booms on the soundtrack, that would support this theory.

I also checked the movement of the cloud. It reaches the tower height of 300 ft / 100 m in the first second, that’s about 200 MPH. It takes about 10 sec to reach the top of the frame which is about 1000 ft, and stuff starts falling back down at about 600 ft. Gravity slows down objects at 10 meters per second / per second, but air resistance slow things down faster. The big rug of a roof are not as aerodynamic as uranium pellets which Gunderson theorized had to be supersonic to be carried off two miles. Now (5/17) TEPCO theorizes hydrogen might have been carried into unit 4 from unit 3, but the stack is between the two buildings and would have vented hydrogen up, and the #3 connection was destroyed in the explosion which did not trigger an explosion in #4.

trackbacks:
http://www.private-lounge.com/1985-movie-fukushima-the-happiest-nuclear-power-plant-in-japan/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzn6gY2iPBg&feature=player_embedded
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/article/019wgkj0wV0HV

More Deaths at Fukushima Than Chernobyl?

[Hu's on First | Nuclear]

originally published May 13, 2011 AsianWeek

Update: Nov 18, 2011:  I am more firmly convinced that Fukushima has already killed more than Chernobyl. They can only prove that in the first year only a dozen or so people died quickly from radiation exposure, and only a dozen or so from thyroid cancer from I-131.

But while authorities continue to state no one at Fukushima has died from radiation, this is very misleading. We had 3 people die outright from the tsunami and earthquake, which isn't supposed to happen at any industrial site. We had the worker who died evidently from exhaustion, but no research was done to see if it was related to radiation, then there was the acute lukemia fellow worker, with symptoms that are a dead ringer for radiation sickness, but that wasn't investigated either because they didn't measure enough radiation exposure to even consider it, and there was the third guy who died suddenly for NO REASONS AT ALL, who may have been the guy in the photo standing next to the cesium stained pipe that was releasing radiation like crazy.  Now there's unconfirmed stories of a rescue worker / fireman who was coughing up blood and died of renal failure, which just doesn't happen to healthy people. Then we have medical evacuees who were neglected, there are at least 25 more than they had the last year, and the largest number may be people who committed suicide because they lost their homes or livelihoods or farms. Nobody has tried to come up with an accurate estimate, but since there at least a dozen ancedotes out there, it must be another dozen to small hundreds out there out of the 100,000 affected evacuees and surrounding areas, not counting animals who have been destroyed or neglected. I don't buy the estimates of 100,000 or so excess deaths from the conspiracy theorists like Leuren Moret who is a Cheerleader for Palestine and says the earthquake was a CIA/Mossad plot.

Right now the biggest problem is panic over radiation levels. Honestly, I'm with the Khalili BBC professor who says the biggest harm is from the evacuation, not relatively low radiation levels, or at least levels low enough they won't kill you for a long time, and even then they can't come up with anybody who actually died from cesium contamination at Chernobyl. The radiation level is bad enough that it will sooner or later cover all of Japan bad enough to exceed some government limit, and the only way to completely get away from it  is to abandon the entire island and put up a big stay away sign, and I really don't think that is a good idea for something that isn't going to kill more than a handful of people working at the plant site, worst case.

 How many people died / will die at Chernobyl or Fukushima?

Well if you believe a website put up by people who make a living making nuclear power, two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation poisoning. "UNSCEAR says that apart from increased thyroid cancers, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident."
*** Disclaimer - links provided to characters of dubious intentions are purposes of exposing rather than promoting their agendas. Follow at your own risk with your skeptic glasses firmly in place ***
If you ask the anti-nuclear left, Greenpeace figures a quarter of a million cancer cases and 100,000 fatal cancers, plus another 60,000 deaths in russia and 140,000 in the Ukraine and Belarus because of the accident. A russian publication "Chernobyl" calculates nearly a million excess deaths occurred to 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination. Chris Busby is a scientist who shows up on 9-11 "truth" conspiracy sites like Veterans Today and Alex Jones's Infowars, and was interviewed by Al-Jazeera Arabic (you know, the network where everybody left comments cursing our president, and wishing that Bin Laden meet his maker as a lion and a blessed martyr) on his study of the good people of Falluja (the town that gave ourMarines such an explosive welcome) concluding that ""Falluja is Worse Than Hiroshima". He told Russian Today (another 9-11 truth outlet making a killing on the Japan disasters) that hydrogen explosion at unit 1 was nuclear blast. He figures Chernobyl had killed 1.5 million people and predicts Fukushima's will be as bad or worse.
The Wikipedia page on the accident records 0 fatalities, while a NY Times reader asked "And how many people has the calamity at Fukushima killed so far? A million? Ten million? How about a big fat zero?"

Reactor 3 roof

Now here's how I figure a death toll based on the few reports I've seen. This isn't based on radiation, but on reports say of wind power where yo u count ALL deaths due to research, building and operating the plant, including the poor lady who parachuted into one of the giant props. One guy in the Daini #2 plant died after being injured in the earthquake in the overhead crane. Two guys who were missing were found dead in turbine building #4. The Telegraph had a report that six Self-Defence radiation team members were killed under concrete when unit 3 blew up, but I could never find a confirmation and it seems to have vanished from even that article. Other reports are that 11 were "injured" or missing and TEPCO won't confirm any other deaths. Two were also missing when #4 exploded, but they have not been found. Worse case, that's crane guy, 2 tsunami victims, 6 #3 explosion deaths, and the 2 missing #4 explosion people, or 11 people, or 3 confirmed, none from radiation.
BUT if you consider the fourty-five hospitalized people who died "mysteriously" when they were abandoned by hospital staff who got out of Dodge, you'd have to say their deaths were pretty much directly caused by the panic from the radiation, if not radiation itself. That's the problem when you try to implement something that sounds fine on paper, but then "90 patients were temporarily left behind at Futaba Hospital in Okuma". On early morning March 14, after Unit 1 was blowing up and the day that Unit 3 blew sky high and Unit 2 was trashing its basement and containment, their National Guard delivered 130 patients and workers to a welfare office, screened them for radiation, and sent them on to a shelter only a 40 minute drive away. But it took 6 hours to detour around the stricken nuclear plant. By the time they arrived at the school, the principal who was in charge found at his doorstep a bus with two persons who had died, suffered from incontinence, or had IV lines disconnected. The school had no medical supplies, and the patients not only had no medical files, but no identification is some cases. Nurses resorted to making diapers out of curtains. A desperate principal appealed for help on an FM radio station but by early next day they had lost two more patients. After news of explosions of the plants, there were 100 left at the hospital, but police came at 1AM to tell people who could to leave.  I could summarize the next 8 paragraphs, but all told, the tally that this newspaper came up with was 45 dead. My impression is that the Japanese are so sick of having been told that the plants are safe that they think it's Hiroshima when they aren't. Actually Hiroshima is more like what just plain water did to scrape away all those coastal towns. There is no doubt in my mind that if they told the medical staff to stay put and deal with water and power problems, most of those people would be alive, as nobody, even the people running around treating the flooded basement as a wading pool with radiation detectors going off-scale has died from radiation. They were too scared to even ask a Japanese OR American P-3 to overfly the site and take some decent pictures closer than space. Either way, whether it's 3 confirmed or 11 maybe directly killed trying to operate a plant through an earthquake and tsunami, it's 50 or 60 dead because of the panic, which is .... MORE THAN CHERNOBYL, and I'm assuming any similar cases would have been publicized by the anti-nuclear left long ago.
I have problems with two groups of people. The first are the idiot Dilbert managers in the nuclear industry who say that NOTHING really bad happened. It's in their interest that nobody panics even if people do get killed. Hey what's a blown roof or walls or a few billion units of radiation release in to the air and sea. At least "we don't think the reactor is busted". TEPCO is finally saying they're pretty sure now that just about all the water is gone from #1, and the fuel has probably melted down through the bottom of the "kettle" pressure cooker part, but not the thick concrete containment part. Oh that's good news, that's like the bottom of the pot melted so you just have a bunch of molten uranium on top of your burner, but the kitchen isn't blasted to smithereens yet, it's just leaking radiation all over the house. Oh, and all the cooling systems are inoperable unless you count a concrete pump truck.
The Packbot robots came from the US (to the displeasure of Japanese who wonder why Japanese robots weren't used) made by, yes, the Roomba people that can open doors (usually) but can't drive over debris on the floor of unit 3 (NOT a good sign). Instead of hiring the Youtube guy with the $5000 rc helicopter they got a i-hawk drone used by the Army to scout for IEDS ahead of people. They also have a remote controlled dump truck and loader like something my kids used to play with. Boy they look cool, but can you actually fix anything with them?
They finally got a camera into fuel pool #4 where they had the fire, most of the bundles look fine (which makes you wonder what in the blazes did blow up in there), and #3 where all they can see are rods broken out of reinforced concrete but they're sure the fuel rods must be fine (riiiiight). It's a miracle the pools still hold water at considering that looking at the side of building 3, pillars the size of the wall in the pentagon are sheared off as if hit by an airliner (ok you 9-11 truthers, don't say I said they got hit by an invisible airliner that got through the 9-11 portal). The entire north corner of building 3 is collapsed to BELOW the top refueling floor, which is inconsistent with the biggest boom coming from the pool acting as a mortar. I think you can see the crane on 3 across the middle of the building which explains why that part of the roof is still there, while the green refueling platform is on the north side shattered. The big square opening in the SW corner is the vertical shaft where fuel casks are moved from the truck to the top floor by the overhead crane. I've seen a youtube comment (hell, that's more reliable than what we get from TEPCO) report that the concrete reactor top plugs (like a big manhole cover) are blown out like coins. Keep in mind, TEPCO didn't have any of this stuff because the GE manual said they'll NEVER have to worry about working around radiation or blown up buildings. I'll bet dollars to donuts the American plants with BWRs don't have any toys like this either or contingency plans otherwise they could go over there and say "just use our plans we figure out years ago" instead of looking across the pond with a gaping OMG and then signing off on a NRC study saying we're fine instead of acting like the kids before the test that got ahold of bootleg copy of the test questions and adjusting accordingly. Somebody is going to dig up the old pro-nuclear editorials I did at the Tech when they were trying to put up Seabrook. I do remember somebody responding to "split wood, not atoms" with "5 billion people burning wood for energy would end life as we know it on this planet".
All General Electic has to say, the guys who built the thing and the instruction book is that "it's their reactor now, we built that thing a LoNNNNNG time ago" and "oh, that's wayyyyyy beyond design basis, we're proud it held up as well as it did" never mind that their design study still says in Wikipedia that it's not supposed to melt down in a bazillion reactor years, and every safety cooling system either failed, blew up or both spilling enough radioactivity to be measured in milk and rainwater across the planet, and huge chunks up to 2 miles away.
The other group of people that scare the hell out of me is the conspiracy / "alternative-media" left (Democracy Now, Russia Today, Destroy Israel/ World Jihad Now and worse) and loony white-nationalist right (Alex Jones, Rense and worse) who are pushing people like Busby. I don't think they are crazy or stupid. They make a living trying to make as many people panic as possible and rise up in a revolution to smash capitalism or who/whatever is currently in power be it Republicans or Gaddafi.
Even scarier is that I'm finding through following the links that such people graciously volunteer on their youtube channels and even spam sent by Ron Paulbots that people like our old friend Grand Wizard David Duke and Ron Paul supporters at Stormfront link the Muslims, Arabs and Christian Arabs Who Hate Zionists(tm) with the Nazis and White Nationalists Who Hate Zionists(tm) even while you'd think they'd hate each other. I don't think there's a correct answer when I actually like SOME of what Alex Jones has to say about education reform and CPS child-snatching, and the Arab Spring people have even John McCain and Joe Lieberman calling for bombing the crap out of Gadaffi.
Even that Arnie Gunderson nuclear executive guy I was quoting about "prompt critical" explosions on further investigation is buddies with Vermont protesters. He interviewed with the good folks at Democracy Now who were arrested for rioting at the Republican convention, and the Sharif Abdel Kouddous who interviewed Gunderson has since returned back to Egypt. That's where the Muslim Brotherhood is now #1 in power now that Mubarak isn't around to harass to brutally repress and jail Al Queda types, and the "Democracy Spring" is about to abrogate the treaty with the Zionist Occupation Government, and just had huge protest of the Catastrophe 1948 / al-Nakba (jihad for the founding of Israel)
I can't believe that even when we're trying to talk fixing or patching-up or at least try to make sure the Fukushima plant doesn't kill anybody it still all boils down to who you think the good guys are. And I'm completely amazed that these people have NO trouble at all finding people who need to be persuaded as to whether the "real terrorists" or the "real patriots" are the ones who are fighting or defending either Bush and Israel or Bin Laden's buddies at Hamas or Hezbollah. But this Asian American conservative is truly worried when the only conservatives raising real questions about the nuclear screw up are anti-Israel ones like David Duke and Pat Buchanan.
Apollo 13 or the good sailors of Taffy 3 in the Battle Off Samar / Leyte are models of how this needs to be handled.  You lose the service module, and follow the manual, and you won't get home. Taffy 3 found themselves armed with spit wads against the mighty battleship Yamato, but fought on and won. The Japanese followed the book, but Americans know when the book says "end of game" but figure out how to keep playing. At least the Japanese were inventive enough to survive as well as they did without really killing many people at all. Fukushima is still a ticking bomb, and we're downwind. Never mind the moms in the rest of Asia next door rinsing out their spinach to get the radioactive particles out. The president needs to call up GE and apologize at least as much to the Japanese for selling them such a dangerous piece of equipment as for US crimes against Islam. Then call up their experts (assuming they haven't died, been laid-off or retired by now) or call back the retirees, put all the broken parts on a table, and tell them FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. None of this "we offer help". We do whatever it takes to secure the place if it takes sending in the Marines. If we can go into Pakistan whether they like it or not, isn't this at least as important? Dr. Michio Kaku had it right in that once the cooling system fails, THERE IS NO SAFE WAY TO OPERATE THE PLANT. You look at all the specs and it's never supposed to leak any radioactive anything, let alone blow up with the same effect as an airliner crash or a small nuke. It doesn't matter that we're getting radiation in "safe levels", we're all on the same planet and we can't just sit back and look at pictures of TEPCO playing with the robots, remote controlled dumper and crane or T-Hawk drone like executive toys on Christmas day. Everybody in US plants, this is like the day the gave out the answer to the test. In the 80s they used computers to discovered a gob of cases they never thought of in the 1950s and came up with fixes like explosion proof exhaust vents to prevent hydrogen explosions. STILL  don't know if the Japanese ever installed those (heck somebody outthere ought to be able to look at the shattered vent hanging in the air next to #3 and see if that's a hard one), or if they failed because the fans had no power.
The first BWRs were operational in 19-freaking-57, about when they were studying reactors grafted into B-36 bombers followed around by paratroopers in case they had to bury the thing in a crash (I kid you not, look up NB-36), and the Army's Jeep-mounted Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka which was withdrawn when they figured out it couldn't fire the thing far enough away to not kill the people that launched the thing. What ever happened to the good old days? We need to figure out what the hell happened out there, how broken things are, and how to figure out to make sure they don't kill anybody before they have to seal off a Fukushima  wilderness refuge like Chernobyl where the animals that have adapted to wierd genetic defects are taking over because all the people have left, and nobody will ever bother the fish.
update 5/14: Ugh, it's worse. Measured radiation levels are worse than the levels that mandated evacuation around Chernobyl, which never had an explosion that scattered radioactive debris miles away horizontally. Nothing to worry about, it's just a harmless hydrogen explosion my arse: "levels of radioactive cesium137 (30 year half-life) registering between 3 million and 30 million Becquerel per square meter (Bq/m²)....populations in Ukraine were ordered out of areas contaminated at 550,000 Bq/m"

US/Japan release radiological readings around Fukushima: Hot zones higher than those prompting 1986 Chernobyl evacuations

New radiological monitoring data jointly collected and published on May 6, 2011 by Japanese and US authorities reveal ground level radioactive cesium contamination beyond Japan's declared twelve (12) mile no entry zone higher than radiation levels that prompted the mandatory evacuation of populations from around the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. Radiation readings taken by helicopter and plane found levels of radioactive cesium137 (30 year half-life) registering between 3 million and 30 million Becquerel per square meter (Bq/m²). Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, populations in Ukraine were ordered out of areas contaminated at 550,000 Bq/m². Those areas are still officially declared to be an uninhabitable zone now more than twenty five years later.

Seconds From Disaster - S01E07 - Meltdown In Chernobyl
 

The Chernobyl disaster was a well-known nuclear accident of catastrophic proportions that occurred on 26 April 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and is the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

The disaster occurred on 26 April 1986, 1:23 A.M., at reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near the town of Pripyat, during an unauthorized systems test. A sudden power output surge took place, and when an attempt was made at an emergency shutdown, a more extreme spike in power output occurred which led to the rupture of a reactor vessel as well as a series of explosions. This event exposed the graphite moderator components of the reactor to air and they ignited; the resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive area, including Pripyat. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union, and much of Europe. As of December 2000, 350,400 people had been evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. According to official post-Soviet data, up to 70% of the fallout landed in Belarus.


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so did they pass the safety test...?

zoroarkissueregion 1 month ago 12