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Japan: Earthquake, Tsunami + Nuclear Disasters


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Posted
  • Location: Doncaster South Yorkshire 4m( 13ft) ASL
  • Location: Doncaster South Yorkshire 4m( 13ft) ASL

FLASH: Explosion heard at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi No.2 reactor: Jiji News Agency

Oh Dear

dont sound too clever

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Meltdown alert at Japan reactor

post-10773-0-72502700-1300144750_thumb.j

A satellite photo of the Fukushima Daiichi plant showed the damage done to reactors 1 and 3, where there was an explosion on Monday

2308: An explosion is heard at Fukushima's second reactor, the Kyodo news agency reports.

Technicians are battling to stabilise a third reactor at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant that has been rocked by a second blast in three days.

Sea water is being pumped into reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after its fuel rods were fully exposed twice.

International nuclear watchdogs said there was no sign of a meltdown but one minister said a melting of rods was "highly likely" to be happening.

2316: Kyodo now says that the suppression pool may have been damaged at reactor 2.

2320: A spokesperson from Tokyo Electric says said some staff have been evacuated from the site

Edited by MKsnowangel
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Posted
  • Location: Cheddar Valley, 20mtrs asl
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and lots of it or warm and sunny, no mediocre dross
  • Location: Cheddar Valley, 20mtrs asl

Sorry very strange logic there.

They haven't taken notice of the technical specifications so therefore it's the companies fault for going ahead when knowing the limitations could well be tested and exceeded. The blame doesn't lie with the designer at all.

Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima's reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes or tsunamis and the plant's builders, Toshiba, knew this.

Now if the above is true some heads should roll. Again if True it shows that the Japanese nuclear industry weren't taking safety seriously enough and putting cost cutting first. Of course this depends on whether the statement has been truelly reported by the press.

Eh? You've lost me.

Are you saying the construction company ignored the the technical spec and built a sub standard structure or that the design was sub standard?

If it's the former then I agree, heads should roll, if it's the latter, why submit a sub standard design?

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
2333: More details on the reported blast at Fukushima's reactor 2. The explosion is feared to have damaged the reactor's pressure-suppression system, Kyodo says. It adds that "radiation tops legal limit" after the explosion.
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Posted
  • Location: Chevening Kent
  • Location: Chevening Kent

The news conference just given by the plant owners did not instill any confidence at all tbh.

I don't think they now have any control of the reactor at all and we are looking at total meltdown. Its just a question now of how much radiation will be released?

Staff being evacuated / US Navy retreat / Atmospheric Radiation levels rising / No video released, so there really is only one observation to make.

Edited by HighPressure
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Posted
  • Location: Lower Brynamman, nr Ammanford, 160-170m a.s.l.
  • Location: Lower Brynamman, nr Ammanford, 160-170m a.s.l.

I wonder why we are not seeing footage of the explosion?

Because the military have imposed an exclusion zone? The BBC got turned away about 20 miles away yesterday. That the the owners don't want anyone to see

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Posted
  • Location: Cheddar Valley, 20mtrs asl
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and lots of it or warm and sunny, no mediocre dross
  • Location: Cheddar Valley, 20mtrs asl

What actually happens in a meltdown situation? Does it generate an archetypal mushroom cloud? Normal type of explosion and fire?

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Posted
  • Location: Devizes Wiltshire
  • Location: Devizes Wiltshire
reactor 4 on fire: Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says: "Now we are talking about levels that can impact human health. I would like all of you to embrace this information calmly. These are readings taken near the area where we believe that the release of radioactive substances is occurring. The further away you get from the power plant or reactor the value should go down". Edited by lfcdude
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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

The drip drip of information continues. So there's a danger to human health which has probably been the case from day one.

If the beeb had been allowed near you bet your bottom dollar they have got radiation recording equipment on board.

Balancing act between telling the truth and preventing panic.

Jethro I'm saying if the statement is true someone somewhere was ignoring the tech specs.

I feel very sorry for the Japanese public who are suffering from a double whammy one of which may have been due to human gambling that failed.

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Posted
  • Location: Bramley, Hampshire, 70m asl
  • Location: Bramley, Hampshire, 70m asl

Increased radiation coming from plant....and the wind going around to the north/northwest which could blow any fallout towards the Tokyo region. Not good.

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

The drip drip of information continues.

With the conflicting information it's difficult to assess what's really going on. I read yesterday one report that said if they had managed to basically retain the steel structure this far after the initial problems, that they had pretty well got on top of it. However, articles appearing this morning would say otherwise.

Japan has told the U.N. nuclear watchdog a spent fuel storage pond was on fire at a reactor damaged by the earthquake and radioactivity was being released "directly" into the atmosphere, the Vienna-based agency said on Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing information it had received from Japanese authorities, said dose rates of up to 400 millisievert per hour have been reported at the Fukushima power plant site. It did not give details or comparisons on the radiation level but the yearly background radiation from natural sources is estimated at around 3 millisieverts, a unit the IAEA uses to measure doses of radiation received by people.

"The Japanese authorities are saying that there is a possibility that the fire was caused by a hydrogen explosion," the IAEA said in a statement. In Japan, authorities warned radiation levels had become "significantly" higher around the nuclear power plant on Tuesday after explosions at two reactors, and the French embassy said a low-level radioactive wind could reach Tokyo within hours. The IAEA said it had been informed "that the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is on fire and radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere". It added: "Dose rates of up to 400 millisievert per hour have been reported at the site. The Japanese authorities are saying that there is a possibility that the fire was caused by a hydrogen explosion."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/japan-nuclear-iaea-idUSLDE72E07320110315

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

0709: There is a fire at a spent fuel pond of a reactor and radioactivity has been released into the atmosphere, says the IAEA according to AFP news agency.

0738: More on the fire at a spent fuel pond at Fukushima: It is at the number 4 reactor and "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere", AFP quotes the IAEA as saying

Winds over the stricken nuclear plant are blowing slowly towards the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo. Higher than normal radiation levels are detected in Tokyo, the AFP is quoting the city government as saying.

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Radiation alert http://forum.netweather.tv/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/excl.gif

post-10773-0-18068900-1300180550_thumb.j

Amid reports that the wind direction at the Fukushima plant is turning inland, David Brenner, director of radiological research at Columbia University, tells the BBC World Service: "That would certainly impact on the amount of radiation exposure that individuals inland are getting. If one is thinking of Tokyo, it is a good distance away, and there's still going to be a great deal of dispersal of the radioactive plume before it gets that far... But this also depends on how much radioactivity is released from the reactors. " Those still working in the plant are now "at significant risk. In many ways they are already heroes... [they] are going to be suffering very high radiation exposures."

Philip White, of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo, tells the BBC he honours the courage of some 50 workers remaining in the nuclear plant, saying they are risking their lives by exposing themselves to what are conceivably very high doses of radiation. Says the authorities' unwillingness to listen to past advice about the dangers of quakes and tsunami has led to this situation, and they should have taken these well-founded critiques seriously.

Edited by MKsnowangel
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

Apart from the obvious devastation to life and property, the financial implications are starting to emerge and they are truly mammoth and worrying:

  • The tsunami is expected to be the world’s most expensive natural disaster, with predictions that the repair bill will top 14 trillion yen (£106  billion)
  • The disaster caused a 6.2 per cent drop in Japan’s Nikkei share index, wiping £90 billion off stocks and shares traded there. That in turn dragged share prices to a six-week low in many countries.
  • Experts suggest that the tragedy could at least hinder worldwide recovery from the economic downturn.
  • Among the major businesses that could not operate factories were Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Canon, Nestle, Sony and Panasonic. Mitsubishi Motors was down 11.8pc, Nissan 9.5pc and Toyota 7.9pc as the country's car industry was halted. Toshiba fell more than 16pc, Sony by 9.2pc and Panasonic by 8.1pc as Japan's famous, export-led electronics industry suffered disruptions including rolling energy blackouts.
  • Banks were also hard hit. Mizuho Financial Group was off 10.5pc. Insurers around the world reeled, including our own Lloyd's market, as the likely bill rose
  • Prices for DRAM and NAND flash memory chips shot up yesterday in the wake of Japan's crisis, as markets displayed concern over fabrication plant shutdowns, power outages and supply chain shortages. Spot prices for DRAM were up by as much as 7.56% and as much as 20.48% for NAND flash memory chips, according to DRAMeXchange.
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Posted
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Misty Autumn days and foggy nights
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire

A fire at a spent fuel storage facility is a step up in severity from what we appear to have seen so far - Is it clear whether the storage area is enclosed or open? It might well be open, in which case the nature of the contaminants are likely to be hugely more damaging than the 'steam' discharges that have apparently been the case so far. It was the reactor fire that caused much of the worst of the contamination as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.

If the IAEA monitoring starts to pick up materials like Caesium 137 or Strontium 90 at high levels, then the situation is deteriorating very rapidly.

Those in the plant still fighting the situation define the word bravery.

*Edit*

BBC reporting that radiation levels at Fukushima now reading 400 millisieverts per hour - 1 milliseivert = 0.1 rem, so the current radiation levels are 40 rems per hour. The permitted annual 'safe dose' is considered to be 5 rem per year (I think - it's not easy to work out and my memory is a bit hazy on this - confirmation welcomed) so 40 rems per hour is well beyond this. I'd have to go back and look at some of the work done by people like Cresson Kearney on radiation exposure, but I think this level of exposure is just below the estimated range of prompt injury and immediate health impacts (I think thats between 50-100 rems per hour, but that's from a very hazy memory, and if anyone knows different feel free to correct me), but workers will need to be rotated in and out on an almost hourly pattern on that basis, and will be taking radiation doses well beyond recognised health limits.

As I said, that pretty much defines courage to me.

Edited by Just Before Dawn
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Posted
  • Location: Rochester, Kent
  • Location: Rochester, Kent

What actually happens in a meltdown situation? Does it generate an archetypal mushroom cloud? Normal type of explosion and fire?

A "meltdown" is an apocrophal term, probably made-up by Hollywood, and continually misued by the mainstream media. The term is not recognised by the IAEA [1]

That said, what happens in fission reactors is remarkably simple even though technologically difficult to construct - the seperation of the different isotopes of uranium from it's oxide being the most challenging part. As fuel is brought to bear a fission reaction (the release of subatomic particles that fly all over the place and cause other atoms to 'split' and release more subatomic particles) the energy released, which is governed, mainly, by E=mc2 causes the fuel to heat up. That's why it works - that heat, by condution, heats the primary liquid of reactor (water) until it turns to steam which is then used to drive turbines and thus ultimately generate electricity.

What is required, however, is that transfer of heat is continuous until the fuel is cool. One might be able to push the control rods in place - control rods absorb the subatomic particles and therefore moderate the chain reaction - but the fuel still needs cooling. If it fails to cool sufficiently the fuel melts and effectively falls to the bottom of the reactor core where the temperatures may be enough to melt through the container and thus expose the outside world directly to the nuclear reaction.

That's a "meltdown" The Japanese are currently using sea-water and boronic acid to control the situation. Sea-water to cool the fuel, and boronic acid to stop fission. One thing to observe, though, is that there have not been enough "meltdowns" to typically identify what one actually is!

Edited by VillagePlank
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Posted
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Misty Autumn days and foggy nights
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire

A "meltdown" is an apocrophal term, probably made-up by Hollywood, and continually misued by the mainstream media. The term is not recognised by the IAEA [1]

That said, what happens in fission reactors is remarkably simple even though technologically difficult to construct - the seperation of the different isotopes of uranium from it's oxide being the most challenging part. As fuel is brought to bear a fission reaction (the release of subatomic particles that fly all over the place and cause other atoms to 'split' and release more subatomic particles) the energy released, which is governed, mainly, by E=mc2 causes the fuel to heat up. That's why it works - that heat, by condution, heats the primary liquid of reactor (water) until it turns to steam which is then used to drive turbines and thus ultimately generate electricity.

What is required, however, is that transfer of heat is continuous until the fuel is cool. One might be able to push the control rods in place - control rods absorb the subatomic particles and therefore moderate the chain reaction - but the fuel still needs cooling. If it fails to cool sufficiently the fuel melts and effectively falls to the bottom of the reactor core where the temperatures may be enough to melt through the container and thus expose the outside world directly to the nuclear reaction.

That's a "meltdown" The Japanese are currently using sea-water and boronic acid to control the situation. Sea-water to cool the fuel, and boronic acid to stop fission. One thing to observe, though, is that there have not been enough "meltdowns" to typically identify what one actually is!

Good post - thanks VP.

In a pressurised water reactor, the water itself, as well as boron (as either boronic acid or as part of the control rods)serves as a neutron inhibitor.

As VP says, 'meltdown' is a generic term often used to describe any set of circumstances which results in a breach of the biological shielding aimed at preventing the escape of radioactive materials beyond the reactor core itself.

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Posted
  • Location: Brighouse, West Yorkshire
  • Location: Brighouse, West Yorkshire

Those in the plant still fighting the situation define the word bravery.

Incredible bravery.

These workers aren't like those at Chernobly that were sent in without any awareness of the risks.

They know exactly what the risks are. They know it is very likely that they are going to suffer an early death, probably from cancer, because they decided to turn up for work this morning.

True heros.

Edited by eddie
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

JAPAN’S MAINLAND has been hit by a significant aftershock – the largest to have struck inland since last Friday’s main magnitude-9.0 earthquake. The seismic event – registering a magnitude of 6.1, according to the US Geological Survey – was also unusually shallow, striking just a kilometre under the surface. Its epicentre was about 72 miles south-west of Tokyo – and only a few kilometres away from Mount Fuji, which remains semi-active, although it has not had a full eruption since 1708.

The quake struck at 1:31pm Irish time and was felt by many in Tokyo itself, which has escaped largely unharmed since Friday’s quake and the resulting tsunami. It also struck in a region of the country which had largely escaped any direct seismic activity thus far; the area to the south-west of Tokyo had not witnessed any quakes thus far, with only four quakes striking in the waters off the country’s west. Local television reported that the quake had caused fires in Tokyo’s Fujinomiya and Shizuoka prefectures, and there were injuries reported in the latter district as well as scattered power outages.

The quake also caused significant outages to public transport, with bullet trains and metro systems in the city slowing to a halt. The 6.1-magnitude quake was mirrored by a quake of magnitude 5.8 to the north-east of Tokyo – which, too, struck a mere kilometre below the surface of the earth. Another quake – just minutes later – struck slightly to the west of that one, though its own depth of 21.3km helped to dampen its effects, with a magnitude of 5.2. The rolling count for the total number of earthquakes in Japan and its offshore territories in the last seven days now stands at 484

http://www.thejournal.ie/japans-mainland-rocked-by-magnitude-6-1-aftershock-2011-03/
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