Japan: Earthquake, Tsunami + Nuclear Disasters

[Snowyowl9]

Saw something on one of the news yesterday,plans been drawn out to rebuild the towns that were all swept away and build 3 layers of high walls on the sea front,one planted with trees 2nd was trains while the 3rd where the cars tarvel.

Cost is certainly going to be one of the biggest problems upto 20 trillion yen however that much is in pounds I don`t know.

This really has been a wake up call this disaster.

[bobbydog]

Saw something on one of the news yesterday,plans been drawn out to rebuild the towns that were all swept away and build 3 layers of high walls on the sea front,one planted with trees 2nd was trains while the 3rd where the cars tarvel.

Cost is certainly going to be one of the biggest problems upto 20 trillion yen however that much is in pounds I don`t know.

This really has been a wake up call this disaster.

20 trillion Japanese yen = 154.429128 billion British pounds

[john pike]

11/03/2011??

click on update situation

dated 19/06/2011

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?edis=NC-20110311-29877-JPN

Edited June 19, 2011 by john pike

[Rainy]

Problems in flooded US nuclear plant.. Link here

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2011/6/15/it-doesnt-take-a-tsunami.html

Apologies if this has already been posted here.

[Coast]

Could be worse than first thought, according to some sources:

Fukushima: It's much worse than you think. Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively." TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?" Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water." Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns. TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable. In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant. The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera. Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported. "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days." According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles". "We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well. The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer. "These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan. Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design. "Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."

Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem. "Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy." As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb. "I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."

Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years.

"But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that." Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".

Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation. "They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids." Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.

"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."

Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely. "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.

"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."

Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.

"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

[Coast]

Now the trash is going to become a problem:

Debris from Japanese tsunami headed for Pacific 'garbage patch'

Millions of tons of debris washed out to sea from north-east Japan by the March 11 tsunami has embarked on a 10-year circuit of the Pacific, endangering shipping and wildlife.

The French environmental group Robin des Bois estimates that a large percentage of the 25 million tons of debris created by the magnitude 9 earthquake and the tsunami that it triggered has been sucked out to sea.

After being caught in the swirling currents for a number of years, it will congregate into two floating "garbage patches," one in the east and the other in the west of the Pacific. The debris includes damaged fishing boats, cars, shipping containers and the contents of thousands of houses, including refrigerators, along with plastics, wood, rubber and items made of PVC. Many of the vehicles will discharge their oil and fuel, creating numerous spills, while containers from industrial facilities will leak pesticides, chemicals and a wide range of other pollutants, the organisation said.

The waste will move at a speed of between 5 and 10 miles a day, catching the North Pacific Current and crossing the ocean in as little as 12 months.

Off the coast of California, debris is expected to circulate either north or south, taking either the Alaskan or North Equatorial currents back to the western reaches of the ocean. Much is predicted to end up caught in the vortex of the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is estimated to measure between 270,000 square miles and 5.8 million square miles. "Over time plastic debris eventually fragments into tiny particles creating 'plastic plankton' or 'microplastic,' which is a serious long-term concern, particularly for marine food webs." the organisation said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8593432/Debris-from-Japanese-tsunami-headed-for-Pacific-garbage-patch.html

[Rainy]

Another US nuclear reactor at risk of flooding. "Fukishima's evil twin".

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2011/6/21/fukushimas-evil-twin-the-cooper-atomic-reactor-in-nebraska-a.html

[Rainy]

Video here showing the global dispersal of the radioactivity from Fukushima.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/video/

[john pike]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-japan-nuclear-idUSTRE75Q1EV20110628

[Snowangel-MK]

Fukushima radiation fears: children near nuclear plant to be given monitors

Dosimeters to be given to 34,000 children in city 45 miles from Tepco plant after high radiation readings

Tens of thousands of children living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are to be given personal radiation monitors, as concern grows over the long-term health effects of exposure to radiation.

http-~~-//www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/28/fukushima-radiation-fears-children-monitors

[john pike]

http://news.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/2011/07/breaking-news-explosion-and-smoke-at.html

link reference french reactor plus updates on Fukushima.

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?edis=NC-20110311-29877-JPN

click on situation update for updates

[Rainy]

Has anyone comments to make on this?

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2011/07/mapping_the_dynamic_changes_of_nuclear_radiation_over_germany.html#extended

Interesting video on that link showing results from German geiger counters.

Natural or man made effects? Any connection to Fukushima?

[Crepuscular Ray]

Has anyone comments to make on this?

http://infosthetics....y.html#extended

Interesting video on that link showing results from German geiger counters.

Natural or man made effects? Any connection to Fukushima?

Does this post about levels of radiation in Germany have any relevance to this thread? Can it be moved to the relevant thread otherwise? TKS.

Edited August 6, 2011 by crepuscular ray

[Rainy]

Does this post about levels of radiation in Germany have any relevance to this thread? Can it be moved to the relevant thread otherwise? TKS.

Well, is it relevant or isn't it? That's the whole point CR. Have a look at the link. There's quite a lot about Japan and Fukushima there. .

I was hoping some experts on here could have commented. Is the fluctuation shown in Germany associated with rain-out from weather systems in the last month or so? And where did the radiation come from? I suspect Fukushima must have contributed some.

[Crepuscular Ray]

I had read it. Sorry, it seemed more about an activist's propaganda trying to provoke other people into getting the German government into doing more monitoring than a scientific study. There's nothing about whether the levels are higher post Fukushima or not (presumably they are), by how much they're raised if so or whether the radiation is directly traceable to the plant.

[john pike]

http://enenews.com/nursery-school-geiger-counter-nearly-off-the-scale-near-play-equipment-topsoil-had-already-been-replaced-video

Nursery School: Geiger counter “nearly off the scale†near play equipment

worrying for the families living there

[Snowyowl9]

Been 2 more earthquakes in Japan one a few days ago of 6.2 and another today 6.8 this one got reported on the radio.

[Coast]

http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ml5gKbStfY

Medical tests on children living in three towns near the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan’s government said in a statement. While the statement didn’t comment on the source of the contamination, the announcement follows reports of radioactive material found in food after radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant.

The tests covered 1,080 children aged up to 15 in three towns, Iwaki, Kawamata and Iitate, between 38 to 47 kilometers from the reactors. The tests between March 24 and 30 showed none of the children’s thyroid glands exceeded the safety threshold of 0.2 microsievert per hour set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, according to the Aug. 17 statement. At least one child had 0.1 microsievert per hour, the highest level observed, while more than half of those exposed absorbed 0.01 microsievert per hour, the statement said. Children are susceptible to poisoning from radioactive iodine, which can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization.

On June 6, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the reactor meltdowns at the plant released about 770,000 tera becquerels of radioactive material into the air between March 11 and March 16, doubling an earlier estimate.

http://www.bloomberg...epco-plant.html

[yamkin]

NASA: Tohoku Tsunami Creates Antarctic Icebergs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAn-QtBBlPY&feature=uploademail

[Snowyowl9]

20million ton of debris heading towards US coast TV`S,fridges,fishing boats etc.

http://truthfrequencynews.com/?p=17224

[Coast]

Japan PM says Fukushima nuclear site finally stabilised

The crippled nuclear reactors at Japan's Fukushima power plant have finally been stabilised, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has announced.

An earthquake and tsunami in March knocked out vital cooling systems, triggering radiation leaks and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Mr Noda's declaration of a "cold shutdown" condition marked the stabilisation of the plant. The government says it will take decades to dismantle it completely. The six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was badly damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Blasts occurred at four of the reactors after the cooling systems went offline. Workers at the plant, which is operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), have been using sea water to cool the reactors. Waste water has built up and some contaminated liquid has been released into the sea. A 20km (12m) exclusion zone remains in place around the plant.

'Battle not over'

"The nuclear reactors have reached a state of cold shutdown and therefore we can now confirm that we have come to the end of the accident phase of the actual reactors," Mr Noda told a news conference We are now moving from trying to stabilise the nuclear reactors to decommissioning them. "The Japanese government promises to clarify the roadmap from here and do our utmost, while ensuring we operate the nuclear reactors as safely as possible, to decommission them." The "battle is not over", he said, adding that the next phase would focus on the clean-up operation, including decontaminating the ground around the plant. With the reactors stable, Mr Noda said the government would review the evacuation zones established in the immediate aftermath of the incident. Earlier this year, the government said it was aiming for a cold shutdown by the end of the year. This is where water that cools nuclear fuel rods remains below boiling point, meaning that the fuel cannot reheat. Tepco has also defined it as bringing the release of radioactive materials under control and reducing public radiation exposure to a level that does not exceed 1mSv/year at the site boundary. Speaking to cabinet ministers of his nuclear task force earlier on Friday, Mr Noda said: "We can now maintain radiation exposure at the periphery of the plant at sufficiently low levels even in the event of another accident." But some nuclear experts have said that the repairs made to the plant after the accident are makeshift and could break down without warning.

Forty years

More than 80,000 people had to leave the area, but radiation levels in some places remain too high for them to return home. Earlier this week, the government said it could take up to 40 years to fully decommission the plant and clean up surrounding areas. Spent fuel rods and melted fuel inside the reactors must be removed. Waste water must also be safely stored. Contamination has been found in foodstuffs from the region including rice, beef and fish, while radioactive soil has also been found in some areas. Some experts have also warned that the plant could be further damaged if a powerful aftershock were to strike. Engineers are also continuing to encounter new problems - last week Tepco officials confirmed that 45 cu m (1,590 cu ft) of water had leaked into the sea from a crack in the foundation of a water treatment facility.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...d-asia-16212057

[Coast]

[Snowangel-MK]

We remember: Japan falls silent one year on from tsunami and earthquake...

People across Japan today remembered the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the nation one year ago, killing just over 19,000 people and unleashing the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-anniversary-victims-758193

[PersianPaladin]

Gov’t sources say No. 4 pool a grave concern ...Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/gov%E2%80%99t-sources-say-no-4-pool-grave-concern-tokyo-metropolitan-area-would-be-forced-evacuate

[Red Raven]

Gov’t sources say No. 4 pool a grave concern ...Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.

http://www.nuc.berke...forced-evacuate

That's rather alarming. Are there any other sources of the news? If this a one off report then it may be just being overplayed but if the concerns are being expressed elsewhere and publicly then its a lot more worrying.