The situation in Japan is dire and besides reactors out of control the logistical situation is not so hot either. Fuel and heating oil are in short supply. The food situation is not looking so good either.
Nearly a week after the disaster, police said more than 452,000 people were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more help.
“There is enough food, but no fuel or gasoline,” said Yuko Niuma, 46, as she stood looking out over Ofunato harbor, where trawlers were flipped on their sides.
Along the tsunami-savaged coast, people must stand in line for food, gasoline and kerosene to heat their homes. In the town of Kesennuma, they lined up to get into a supermarket after a delivery of key supplies, such as instant rice packets and diapers.
Each person was only allowed to buy 10 items, NHK television reported.
With diapers hard to find in many areas, an NHK program broadcast a how-to session on fashioning a diaper from a plastic shopping bag and a towel.
At the same link you can see video of a helicopter dropping water on a nuke plant. What does it mean? Nothing good that is for sure.
All of the water from one of the spent fuel-rod pools is gone, according to the chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. With no water to cool the fuel rods, they could just get hotter and eventually melt down.
Gregory Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, warned there was no water left in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4, resulting in “extremely high” radiation levels.
A police water cannon was deployed to help top up the water in the containment pool and expected to go into action early Thursday, Jiji Press news agency reported.
Workers at the plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), have struggled to maintain water levels as the rods have heated up the water, threatening to evaporate it and expose the rods to air, which would send out radioactive material.
Helicopters which were to dump water on the plant were forced back by the radiation levels.
Right now the accident is rated level 6 by most knowledgeable observers. That would be one level above Three Mile Island and one level below Chernobyl. The problem is: until the situation is under control (it is not at this time) it could get worse. I expect it will.
One explanation may be corruption in Japan’s nuclear industry.
“Everything is a secret,” said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who now lives in California. “There’s not enough transparency in the industry.”
Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing against time to prevent a full meltdown following Friday’s 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami.
In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.
The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan’s half-century reliance on nuclear power has strained its credibility with the public.
Well that is not very encouraging. Neither is this.
Japanese authorities experimented with new measures Thursday to bring the country’s stricken nuclear power plant under control, as the United States gave a dire assessment of the nuclear crisis and warned radiation levels at the plant are “extremely high.”
Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, where explosions and fires have hampered efforts to cool overheating reactors, began using helicopters to dump water on the reactors and said they were close to finishing a new power line, AP reports.
But early reports said efforts to dump tons of water on reactor No. 3, which reportedly experienced damage to its containment vessel during an explosion earlier in the week, had failed to bring down radiation levels.
What I’m seeing is one ad hoc plan after another. Water cannons? Helicopter drops spreading a few tons of water per drop over a wide area? My guess is that they have lost it. Almost totally.
OK. They are bringing in electrical power. Excellent. But some one had better be checking the pumps, the pumped coolant, and the coolant pipes so that the pumps last beyond a few minutes. In the military you think about these things because people are throwing heavy things at you filled with explosives. The equivalent of an earthquake + a tsunami. So you think about making things work in adverse conditions. I wonder if the Japanese – having a non-nuclear Navy – think about that sort of thing as much?
Of course the reactors are American designed. By GE.
I live near the Byron Nuclear Plant and I’m happy to say it is not a GE and not a Boiling Water Reactor.
The Byron Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located in Ogle County, Illinois, 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the Rock River. The reactor buildings were constructed by Babcock and Wilcox and house two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors, Unit 1 and Unit 2, which first began operation in September 1985 and August 1987 respectively. The plant was built for Commonwealth Edison and is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation.
The plant provides electricity to northern Illinois and the city of Chicago. In 2005 it generated on average about 2,300 MWe, enough power to supply about 2 million average American homes.
Pressurized water reactors have two loops so that the water that circulates next to the fuel is not the same as the water that circulates through the steam plant. This is handled by a device called a steam generator. Boiling water reactors (BWR) have no separation between reactor water and steam plant water. They are the same. Thus with boiling water plants you have one less level of containment. On the other hand BWRs are a lot cheaper to build. No primary loop pumps. No steam generator. Lower operating pressures and temperature differentials (OK not in every detail but generally).
But back to Japan – half a million homeless, supplies running low, and a nuclear disaster. The worst disaster for Japan since the end of WW2.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
17 responses to “The Worst Disaster Since The End Of WW2”
A grim assessment.
From Munger’s Atomic City site, linked last night by Reynolds, a rundown by Dr. Michael Allen:
If workers are unable to get additional cooling water into the reactor vessel, the molten fuel core will collapse into the water in bottom of the vessel…Should that happens, “It’ll melt through it like butter,” Allen said. “It’ll be like somebody dropped a bomb…
Remember, there are 6 of these cores at risk.
Should these events happen, the best outcome would be if the winds are blowing east and push the radioactive plume over the Pacific Ocean. “It (the radioactivity) will fall out in the ocean and everything will be fine,” he said.
Yeah, and what if it doesn’t fall out in the ocean, but reaches the West Coast?
No matter what the outcome, this is game over for nuclear energy.
About.com
http://localfoods.about.com/od/searchbyregion/a/CAFruitsVeggies.htm
California grows about 80% of all fruits and vegetables in the U.S….
Frank,
8,000 miles of ocean (more or less) is a very powerful dilutant.
I think you are correct about nuclear power.
only for those who have neurotic fears like Americans have about nuclear power
The situation looks really, really bad, and I hope disaster can be averted, whether through luck or human effort.
Michael,
I’m a former Naval Nuke. I know the plants. I have my doubts. My fears come from knowledge. Where does your confidence come from? Ignorance?
Frank,
Three cores are at risk. So is one cooling pool. The other two reactors were shut down.
This page has a nice chart. (two days old though)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/update-japan-nuclear-meltdown-fukushima-1-tsunami-earthquake-nukes.php
Also this for more recent updates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nuclear_accidents
M.Simon,
Note that between Monday and Wednesday the building housing No.4 was severely damaged, presumably from the explosion at No.3. Also note that even though 4, 5, and 6 were shut down, between Monday and Wednesday the spent fuel pools in all three went from satisfactory to temperature rising.
This means that they have spent fuel stored in pools of water that is draining or evaporating, at all 6 reactors.
No use in speculating what can or will happen. I think we know anyway.
BTW, I see that Obama and family are heading into the Southern Hemisphere for a vacation. Bush would have been here, and on TV reassuring and pledging as much help as necessary.
What a weaseling, contemptible, chickenshit of a man we have as president.
Frank,
I get your point. And I agree. If the area has to be abandoned as too hot for even jumpers it could all go up.
More news here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-uk-pull-search-teams-out-japan-tepco-admits-situation-severe#comment-1067365
You get to start out with my comment.
M. Simon,
I was reading zerohedge as you typed. He is on top of this like no one else. If, as the article states, we are pulling our search and rescue guys out, it is ominous, and tells us more than any official statement, also the fact that they have blacked out radiation readings surrounding the site.
Sometimes events are just out of our control. I am a fatalist, not in expecting the worst, but in acknowledging reality. Unfortunately, this is shaping up as reality at its worst. With 30 million plus downwind in and around Tokyo, if there is a God, I hope He spares them.
Frank,
I like the place because for the most part you have a fairly savvy group and some real wits.
Plus you have to beg to get commenting privileges.
===
The reports that have been coming out of Japan are pablum in my estimation. It is much worse than is being reported.
Even by the low standards of the US Civilian Nuclear industry what is going on in Japan is a clown show.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-uk-pull-search-teams-out-japan-tepco-admits-situation-severe#comment-1067486
M. Simon,
I don’t remember how I found zerohedge, probably from you, but yes TD (he/they) are very good.
Not good, from a thread comment there, U.S. Navy is evacuating all dependents from Japan, now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0o-NmvPurw
The information officer says “because of radiation readings out to sea” they’re flying 10,000 a day to Korea for 3 to 5 days, and then back to U.S. or elsewhere. He advises to take baby food, diapers, and medicine for that duration.
I’m heading into town myself right now, to do a little shopping.
I don’t base it on ignorance but your claim that the nuclear industry is finished is indeed nonsense. Its an opinion about opinion. Technology goes through several cultural phases. First people don’t think it will work, then they accept that it does but condemn it as too expensive, then too hard to use, then they speculate on dangers, or exaggerate real problems. Eventually the new generation just grows up with the tech and see no problem with it. If you are truly a Naval Nuke as you claim in your post then you’re an even bigger moron than I initially thought.
Michael,
M. Simon is what he said, and knows what he’s talking about. However it happens, nuclear energy in this country is now crippled going forward. The cost of building fail safe sites will be prohibitive. The necessary money will likely not be diverted into research. And most of all, after 40 years we still don’t have an answer to disposal. Leaving spent fuel in ponds on site has just been proven extremely dangerous.
You sound like a young man caught up in the glowing potential of this industry, like a Gollum attached to his precious.
Give it up. It’s literally and figuratively a dead end now.
If you are truly a Naval Nuke as you claim in your post then you’re an even bigger moron than I initially thought.
I’m honored.
Still Frank has it right. I have been on about the tension between profit and safety since day one. If you have to spend “too much” on safety the profits go away.
Are there designs on the drawing board that “might” mitigate this? Possibly. But none of them have 100,000 hours of operating experience. Or have suffered a LOEPA or LOCA. So what will happen in those cases is at best engineered conjecture.
As of today there is no viable commercial nuclear industry in America.
BTW I’m not the only mil Nuke who thinks that way. See the work of “subsunk” and others.
I do like Polywell if that is any consolation. But it is not here now. And may never be.
More from Dr. Michael Allen:
Allen said there’s no clear evidence at this stage that the utility company is really getting control of the situation.
“But, you know, if my children were there I’d ask them to come home.”
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/2011/03/dr-michael-allen-if-my-childre.html#more