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Fukushima Nuclear Accident – 16 March update

This is an update of the situation as of 10 am JST Wednesday 16 March. (For background on events of 15 March and earlier, start with this post and its included links.) Note that this is a blog, not a news website, and thus the following analysis, like all others on BraveNewClimate, is a mixture of news and opinion — but facts remain paramount.

First, the situation is clearly (but slowly) stabilising. As each day passes, the amount of thermal heat (caused by radioactive decay of the fission products) that remains in the reactor fuel assemblies decreases exponentially. When the reactors SCRAMed on 11 March after the earthquake, and went sub-critical, their power levels dropped by about 95 % of peak output (the nuclear fission process was no longer self-sustaining). Over the past 5 days, the energy in the fuel rods dropped by another ~97 %, such that the heat dissipation situation is getting more and more manageable. But we’re not out of the woods yet, and the reactor cores will need significant cooling for at least another 5 days before stability can be ensured.

Yesterday there appears to have been a fracture in the wetwell torus (see diagram: that circular structure below and to the side of the reactor vessel) in Unit 2, caused by a hydrogen explosion, which led to a rapid venting of highly radioactive fission product gases (mostly noble [chemically unreactive] gases, the majority of which had a half-life of seconds to minutes). It also caused a drop in pressure in the supression pool, which made the cooling process more challenging. However, despite some earlier concerns, it is now clear that containment was not breached. Even under this situation of extreme physical duress, the multiple containment barriers have held firm. This is an issue to be revisited, when the dust finally settles.

Units 1 and 3, the other two operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi when the earthquake struck, continue to be cooled by sea water. Containment is secure in both units. However, like Unit 2, there is a high probability that the fuel assemblies have likely suffered damage due to temporary exposure (out of water), as the engineers struggled over the last few days to maintain core coolant levels. Whether there has been any melting of the clad or rods remains unclear, and probably will continue to be shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty for some time yet.

The other ongoing serious issue is with managing the heat dissipation in the spent fuel ponds. These contain old fuel rods from previous reactor operation that are cooling down, on site, immersed in water, which also provides radiation shielding. After a few years of pond cooling, these are transferred to dry storage. The heat in these rods is much less than those of the in-core assemblies, but it is still significant enough as to cause concern for maintaining adequate coverage of the stored fuel and to avoid boiling the unpressurised water. There have been two fires in Unit 4, the first tentatively linked to a failed oil pump, and the second, being of (currently) unknown cause, but the likelihood is that it was linked to hydrogen gas bubbling.

There appears to have been some exposure of this spent fuel, and radiation levels around this area remain high — making access in order to maintain water levels particularly troublesome. Note that apart from short-lived fission product gases, these radiation sources are otherwise contained within the rods and not particularised in a way that facilitates dispersion. Again, the problems encountered here can be linked to the critical lack of on-site power, with the mains grid still being out of action. As a further precaution, TEPCO is considering spraying the pool with boric acid to minimise the probability of ‘prompt criticality’ events. This is the news item we should be watching most closely today.

An excellent 2-page fact sheet on the spent fuel pool issues has been produced by the NEI, which can be read here: Used Nuclear Fuel Storage at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (this includes an explanation of what might happen under various scenarios).

This figure illustrates the current reported state of the Daiichi and Daini reactors, last updated 1230 on 16 March (click to enlarge):

The status report from the The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) is given below:

• Radiation Levels

o At 10:22AM (JST) on March 15, a radiation level of 400 milli sievert per hour was recorded outside secondary containment building of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

o At 3:30PM on March 15, a radiation level of 596 micro sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

o At 4:30PM on March 15, a radiation level of 489 micro sievert per hour was recorded on the site of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

o For comparison, a human receives 2400 micro sievert per year from natural radiation in the form of sunlight, radon, and other sources. One chest CT scan generates 6900 micro sievert per scan.

• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 reactor

o As of 10:00PM on March 14, the pressure inside the reactor core was measured at 0.05 MPa. The water level inside the reactor was measured at 1.7 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor

o At 6:14AM on March 15, an explosion was heard in the secondary containment building. TEPCO assumes that the suppression chamber, which holds water and stream released from the reactor core, was damaged.

o At 1:00PM on March 15, the pressure inside the reactor core was measured at 0.608 MPa. The water level inside the reactor was measured at 1.7 meters below the top of the fuel rods.

• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 reactor

o At 6:14AM on March 15, smoke was discovered emanating from the damaged secondary containment building.

• Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 reactor

o At 9:38AM on March 15, a fire was discovered on the third floor of the secondary containment building.

o At 12:29PM on March 15, TEPCO confirmed extinguishing of the fire.

• Fukushima Daini Units 1 to 4 reactors: all now in cold shutdown, TEPCO continues to cool each reactor core.

This indicates a peak radiation level of 400 mSv/hr, which has come down to about 0.5 mSv/hr by the afternoon. This ‘spot’ radiation level was measured at a location between Unit 3 and 4. It was attributted to a hydrogen explosion in the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 — but this is still under debate. The radiation level at the site boundary is expected to have been much lower and, to date, there is no risk to the general public.

Two other useful sources of information are from the WNN: Radiation decreasing, fuel ponds warming and Second fire reported at unit 4. ANS Nuclear Cafe continues to be a great collator of key official channels and top news stories.

Finally, this is a useful perspective from an MIT staffer that is well worth reading:

What happened at the Fukushima reactor? Events in Japan confirm the robustness of modern nuclear technology — not a failure

Kirk Sorenson, from Energy from Thorium blog, also has this very interesting piece: Thoughts on Fukushima-Daiichi. A concluding excerpt:

What is known is that this is a situation very different than Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. There was no operator error involved at Fukushima-Daiichi, and each reactor was successfully shut down within moments of detecting the quake. The situation has evolved slowly but in a manner that was not anticipated by designers who had not assumed that electrical power to run emergency pumps would be unavailable for days after the shutdown. They built an impressive array of redundant pumps and power generating equipment to preclude against this problem. Unfortunately, the tsunami destroyed it.

There are some characteristics of a nuclear fission reactor that will be common to every nuclear fission reactor. They will always have to contend with decay heat. They will always have to produce heat at high temperatures to generate electricity. But they do not have to use coolant fluids like water that must operate at high pressures in order to achieve high temperatures. Other fluids like fluoride salts can operate at high temperatures yet at the same pressures as the outside. Fluoride salts are impervious to radiation damage, unlike water, and don’t evolve hydrogen gas which can lead to an explosion. Solid nuclear fuel like that used at Fukushima-Daiichi can melt and release radioactive materials if not cooled consistently during shutdown. Fluoride salts can carry fuel in chemically-stable forms that can be passively cooled without pumps driven by emergency power generation. There are solutions to the extreme situation that was encountered at Fukushima-Daiichi, and it may be in our best interest to pursue them.

More updates as further information comes to hand. Otherwise, for me, it’s back to the mad TV and radio media circus.

UPDATE: From World Nuclear News: Problems for units 3 and 4

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano had outlined problems that had occured on the morning of 16 March with Fukushima Daiichi 3 and 4.

At 8:34am local time white smoke was seen billowing out of Fukushima Daiichi 3. Efforts to determine the cause of this development were interrupted as all workers had evacuated to a safe area due to rising radiation readings. Readings from a sensor near the front gate had fluctuated for some time, although Edano said that on the whole there was no health hazard. Earlier in the morning readings had ranged between 600-800 microsieverts per hour, but at 10am readings rose to 1000 microsieverts per hour. Readings began to fall again from around 10:54.

Edano said that one possibility being considered was that the unit 3 reactor had suffered a similar failure to that suffered by unit 2 yesterday, although there had been no reported blast or loud sound, which had been the case for unit 2. The immediate focus, said Edano was on monitoring of levels and checking pumping operations.

Edano also outlined plans for units 4-6. Preparations were being made to inject water into unit 4, however the high levels of radiation from unit 3 were imparing those preparations. When possible, the water injection would be done gradually as there were safety concerns over pouring a large amount of water at once. The water will be pumped into the reactor building from the ground, plans to drop water from a helicopter having been abandoned. Although he said that “all things were possible” Edano did not believe that recriticality at unit 4 was a realistic risk

Second fire at unit 4

Earlier, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that a blaze was spotted in the reactor building of Fukushima Daiichi 4 at 5.45am local time this morning.

Attempts to extinguish it were reportedly delayed due to high levels of radiation in the area. A spokesperson for TEPCO said that by around 6:15am there were no flames to be seen.

The incident at unit 4 is believed to be in the region of a used fuel pond in the upper portion of the reactor building.

Origins

Tokyo Electric Power Company issued a notice of an explosion at unit 4 at 6am on 15 March. This was followed by the company’s confirmation of damage around the fifth floor rooftop area of the reactor building.

On that day, a fire was discovered but investigations concluded it had died down by around 11am.

At present it is not clear whether today’s fire was a completely new blaze, or if the fire reported yesterday had flared up again.

By Barry Brook

Barry Brook is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He researches global change, ecology and energy.

485 replies on “Fukushima Nuclear Accident – 16 March update”

I’d really like an update on the Nuclear Waste Storage Facilities in Japan and how they’re holding up after the earthquakes.

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How can the reactor affectively be cooled if the water level is 1.7 meters below the top of the fuel rods? How long is each fuel rod? I wonder what % of it is actually under water…

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According to the IAEA, unit 4 was shutdown for routine maintenance and refuelling on 30 Nov 2010 and all the fuel core (548 fuel assemblies) transfered to the SF pond. Units 5 and 6, although shutdown, have the fuel back in the core, so there will only be about third of the core spent fuel from refuelling in their SF ponds. Similarly for units 1-3, I would expect there to be SF from the last refuelling in the reactor SF pond as most of the previous SF will have been transfered to the shared SF pond. This may explain why unit 4 reactor SF pond is more sensitive to loss of normal cooling.

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After reading the factsheet you suggested by NEI, it seems to suggest only when core temperature rise to above 1k C will suffient hydrogen be generated to have cause an explosion.

If the source of the second explosion at No. 4 Reaction is indeed due to hydrogen build up, does that imply the spent fuel rods are fairly new and in your opinion what kind of further degradation will we expect? Do correct me if i have some of my concepts wrong

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Just to add on. If on the other hand, the spent rods are still submerged with the temperature of the water being at the reported temperature of around 80 degree C and the cause of the 2nd explosion is found to be hydrogen build up. I would like to ask why would hydrogen dissociation occur at such a high rate to cause hydrogen gas build up if the temperature of water is at such low level (relatively).

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Curiously, fixation on the broken nuclear reactor simply because it’s radioactive. The whole affair really shows how fragile the built world is in the face of perfectly natural forces. The faces of Venus and Mars show that what we call the biosphere is probably a temporary phenomenon.

As do individual human creatures, the biosphere as a whole will die someday. It’s all really in the natural order of things.

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The TepCo guys were on the news a few minutes ago.
They clearly stated that, over the night the radiation levels reached a maximum of 1000 mSv/h and they stressed the fact they are talking about mili not micro.
during the course of the night the radiation levels seemed to stabilize around an average of 600 mSv/h.
Also as of this morning, the readings at the main gate of the plant, not the reactors are in mSv/h but did not say the exact amount. They just said we are counting levels of radiation near the main gate in mili seivert units.
Clearly, if the above statements are true, then they totally contradict your estimation that radiation went back down to 0.5mSv/h in the afternoon.

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So with a radiation dose of 400 milli sievert per hour recorded outside secondary containment building of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, and a chest CT scan giving a dose of 6.9 milli sieverts each … then the radiation rate outside unit 3 was equivalent to 58 CT scans an hour (400/6.9) or nearly one per minute). Yikes.

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There’s a new report that the workers have been evacuated due to the radiation risk and are suspending efforts. Any truth to this?

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In addition, there is something more missing from the report.

The Tepco guys said last night that during the earthquake #4 was shut down for regular maintenance.
For that, the fuel from reactor #4 have been removed and stored in the spent fuel pool.

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I’ll add my thanks for the update, Barry. Good to get some actual facts about the situation…
I was in equal parts amused and disgusted by the front page reporting in The Australian today – particularly the bit where an “expert” stated that the safe dosage is only 1 milliSievert.
The layout of some of the media stories is dodgy, at best – I saw one story entirely about the nuclear situation, with casualty figures from the quake+tsunami inserted out-of-context into the middle. A quick perusal of the article would lead a careless reader to think that thousands of people had been killed by radiation!

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I thought the supression pool was used as a source of spray water for the BWR, thus the water would contain absorbed radioactive isotopes of I and Cs and the long lived Strontium. Given the exposure of the fuel rods at one point, or even the lack of flow of coolant causing melting of the Zr casing, the fissile materials emitted from the UO2 increases. Thus the problem appears greater than during a usual failure. We have a double failure scenario.

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If this is “clearly stabilizing” I’d hate to see what you consider unstable.

In this “clearly stabilizing” situation they’ve just been forced to evacuate building #4 completely due to the high radiation level.

And meanwhile in this “clearly stabilizing” situation there’s also been some unexplained change in reactor #3 which is producing a plume of steam.

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Barry, I don’t think technical detail is relevant. What puzzles and annoys me is that it happened. What does this say about human capacity to plan, design and manage. They knew the site was prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and possible consequences such as loss of power for cooling systems. Did they ignore this, or did they fail to take it into account properly; one or the other. I would have thought the nuclear industry would have made super-sure that something like this could not happen; or is it that they can’t do so. (The fact that the reactors are old is not crucial; they chose to continue running them and that’s a comment on mangement wisdom too.) To me the main implication seems to be this kind of event is part of the nuclear package, given that highly fallible humans make the decisions. If you want nuclear energy then you’d better accept this kind of event now and then. I don’t think humans can be trusted to run such things well…evetywhere, all the time…when you’d need maybe 20,000 of them to provide all people with our lifestyle.

ted

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Speaking as an advocate of nuclear power, there needs to be a worldwide moratorium on all new construction of nuclear power plants for a minimum of two years. Time that should be used by the broadest possible selection of experts to sort out the weaknesses in safety that were exposed in Fukushima.

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It’s interesting to note how the information flow by English press websites of the key Japanese organizations starting from TEPCO itself has collapsed since yesterday morning and they now resort to releasing all public information via TV conferences.

For example, they showed the following picture (showing the damage to reactor buildings 3 and 4) to TV cameras, but no high resolution file available anywhere:

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I came here for a scientific perspective, but I seem to be getting a near fatal dose of competing Ideologies instead. I am seeing the reports here on American TV that the workers have abandoned the plant. I don’t have any technical expertise on the matters discussed, but I rue the lack of objectivity I have seen here through recent days. It feels like the normal vicious U.S, political blog back and forth BS and competing agenda promotion. Why no clarification on the plant abandonment issue? That doesn’t sound like good news. Will somebody spin that?

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Since I am in Tokyo as we speak, my reports come straight from Japanese media and not their English translation.

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“First, the situation is clearly (but slowly) stabilising.” Thank you for the updates but this statement is obviously incorrect. The facility has been evacuated of all workers.

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[…] This is an update of the situation as of 10 am JST Wednesday 16 March. (For background on events of 15 March and earlier, start with this post and its included links.) Note that this is a blog, not a news website, and thus the following analysis, like all others on BraveNewClimate, is a mixture of news and opinion — but facts remain paramount. First, the situation is clearly (but slowly) stabilising. As each day passes, the amount of thermal hea … Read More […]

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Levels overnight were apparently ~1 mSv/h (1,000 uSv), and declined to 600-800 uSv/h this morning at the front gate. However, just after 10 am local time that level rose sharply (to an unspecified number), forcing the evacuation of personnel. Levels declined somewhat in the hour after that time.

Considering that they were measuring 1 mSv/h at the front gate, I wonder what the levels are in the actual work areas.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110316/t10014708741000.html

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Acc. to those on the Something Awful forum, the evacuation news is reportedly a couple of hours old and it has been confirmed that workers have been allowed to return. The evac. order was given because of some mis-readings. Not sure what sources they are quoting for this.

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Slowing the build of new reactors will mean slowing the retirement of old reactors. I can’t see how that makes any sense at all.

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Man, this is getting head-snapping. Here’s what seems the central statement from the author of that MIT student newspaper article Mr. Brook linked to:

“… the situation is under control, it is unlikely that the nuclear fuel has melted, the risk to the public is effectively zero, and, depending on whether facts on the ground have been reported correctly, it is possible that the reactors will remain capable of producing power in the future.”

Well of course “depending on whether the facts on the ground have been reported correctly” it may be that no earthquake or tsunami has even occurred. And as to the rest, not only has damn near every report indicated that at least some fuel has melted, but to have said that the situation is “under control” is just laughable given the new report that they have just evacuated the plant because it’s too dangerous for anyone to be trying to do anything in same.

“[N]ear fatal dose of competing ideologies” indeed, as rpl has said, or at least a heaping big dose of over-confidence.

Amazes me that even given the wild, utterly unexpected events of the last couple of days, and the clearly wild uncertainty that still exists, how people will just go about willy-nilly putting their names on the line instead of just saying “who the hell knows what might happen?”

At this point then what I at least would regard as the smartest commentary would concentrate on just telling us the parameters of the possible: What’s the best possible theoretical outcome, and what’s the worst?

Now *that’s* something that would seem to have some credibility. In my opinion at least everything else has just been proven to pretty much be baloney, within hours if not minutes.

(This said, still gotta say I love this site and have great respect for the host and the great majority of commentators. I have no problem with speculation; it’s over-confidence in projections that make me wince.)

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American, on 16 March 2011 at 2:23 PM — Read the article linked in my previous comment from WNN; it seems the workers have now returned.

I’m just an amateur at this, but as best as I can make out units 1, 2 and 3 are now finished generating and will have to be disposed of, eventually. It appears to me that TEPCO is trying hard to save unit 4; it remains unclear whether that will be possible. Units 5 & 6 will be fine provided TEPCO can, quite soon, arrange for makeup water and appropriate cooling of the spent fuel pools of those shut-down reactors.

I’m not in a position to have that much confidence in my reading of events, but there it is.

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Just to clarify the topic of the generator use from reactor 6 for reactor 5 cooling water level adjustment.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the coolant level has fallen in the No.5 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The Agency had earlier said the No.5 reactor stopped safely during a regular inspection when the massive earthquake and tsunami occurred on Friday.
At the time of the quake, nuclear fuel rods were already in the reactor and workers had to circulate water to cool them down.
But the tsunami damaged a diesel generator for circulating the coolant, allowing the pressure in the reactor to rise.
Workers opened a valve to reduce the pressure.
But the procedure allowed water to evaporate from the valve.
As of 9 PM on Tuesday, the water level was 2 meters above the fuel rods. That was 40 centimeters lower than 5 hours earlier.
The Agency says it can adjust the water levels by using the No.6 reactor’s generator, which wasn’t damaged by the tsunami. Workers are currently pumping water into the No.5 and No.6 reactors.

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“URGENT: UPDATE1: Fukushima No.3 reactor’s container feared damaged: Edano

TOKYO, March 16, Kyodo

The container of the No.3 reactor of the quake-hit Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant is feared to have been damaged and may have leaked radioactive steam Wednesday, emitting high-level radiation, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

The radiation level briefly topped 2 milisievert at the plant, its operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. separately said.

The explanations were given after smoke was seen rising from the No.3 reactor since around 8:30 a.m., according to Edano.”

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78456.html

That’s the MOX-fueled reactor.

–bks

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I suppose for me the idea expressed in this post that “there was no operator error” (and the human errors were design errors, in a sense, failures of imagination), so everything is somehow a-okay, is not particularly satisfying to me. The designers failed to envision an exceptional event, yet one happened. It is true that the plant is performing beyond its design capabilities, yet _at best_ this event/accident is comparable in scale to only a handful of nuclear/radiological events in the past. Long-term consequences are still unclear (and may well remain unclear for many years). Is a failure of imagination a satisfying excuse?

In any case, at 10:40 am levels at the front gate spiked to 10 mSv/h (10,000 uSv/h), which dropped to 2.7 mSv/h (2,700 uSv/h) by 11:10 am.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110316/t10014710431000.html

There is no mention of an erroneous instrument reading leading to this spike (which presumably triggered the evacuation). One would hope that there are enough instruments in place to rule out inexplicable measurement error.

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It’s strange that they would pull the remaining crews out after just receiving a lift in the authorized total dose from 100 mSv to 250 mSv for carrying out the emergency coolant injection and firefighting efforts.

I sure hope they are using any time of total evacuation to bring in fresh shifts from other TEPCO plants (Daini as the closest with stable situation) or even plants of other companies.

Because there is really no such option as abandoning the plants, because that would almost guarantee that they all burn to the ground and a large fraction of their total radionuclide inventories get released. Besides, there are about 5 more cores worth of spent fuel in the secondary cooling pool facility and the new dry storage facility.

The worst case scenario of the whole plant area is left to burn, is a release of possibly several orders of magnitude more radiation as from Chernobyl. It was estimated that at most 4% of the Chernobyl 4 load of 150 tons was released in the environment, while there are over 4,000 tons of fuel at Fukushima Daiichi, based on March 2010 public inventory of total spent fuel storage and the loaded cores of the 6 reactors (reactor 4 load in the SFP).

I’m not saying that the worst case scenario is credible, only that there is no way the Japanese government would completely abandon even extraordinary attempts to bring the fires and cooling failures under control.

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The ABC (Aust} lost the plot

NUCLEAR THREAT WORKERS EVACUATED
later
update, workers were briefly evacuated ,

then an opinion piece , Chernobyl , run and hide,

thank goodness there is somewhere to get info

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“There is no mention of an erroneous instrument reading leading to this spike (which presumably triggered the evacuation). One would hope that there are enough instruments in place to rule out inexplicable measurement error.”

One explanation given to the lack of usually reliable real time radiation measurements is that the normal dose rate stations have all failed since their battery backup ran out and the only monitoring being done is by a car that drives between the monitoring stations and sends data from short stops at each post.

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If the situation gets *really nasty*, i hope the really good folk here put their minds together to help rescue the situation.

Currently I am full of hope and very positive

all the best

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Red_Blue, if all your guys are already at, close to, or past 100 mSv, and you get the government to allow 250 mSv, that gives you 150 mSv left to work with.

When just standing at the front gate (to say nothing of the actual work area) gives you a dose of 2-10 mSv/hour, that gives your workers only 15-75 hours before they’re legally “dosed” again. It seems to make sense to pull them back to minimize their exposure during particularly high periods of time.

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Why not let the rods in the reactor core melt, bottle up the concrete (fail-safe outer containment unit, collect the melt in the concrete containment, focus in on making sure the spent water pools remain full with water, and come in a few years time for the now solidified melted rods? Wouldn’t this address the problem?

I realize this would be going into uncharted territory, a hail-Mary pass so to speak. After all that was what the concrete containment was designed for.

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Mike,

An entire train full of people disappeared in the tsunami, and yet no civilians have been killed by the radiation leaking from this plant. Since there is no anti-train lobby freaking out about that “failure of imagination”, people like Barry have to put this situation in the proper scientific context.

Buildings crush people in earthquakes, but no one calls for a moratorium on buildings, do they? No, we build safer ones. That will happen with nuclear power once the hysteria subsides, perhaps once energy prices start to skyrocket. Nothing is 100% safe, so we might as well enjoy the affordable power while driving our electric cars on a highway system that kills tens of thousands per year.

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Red_Blue wrote,
“One explanation given to the lack of usually reliable real time radiation measurements is that the normal dose rate stations have all failed since their battery backup ran out and the only monitoring being done is by a car that drives between the monitoring stations and sends data from short stops at each post.”

I suppose I do not find that explanation particularly convincing. Even in the “car” scenario, multiple instruments and/or at least multiple measurements seems eminently possible. If their mobile monitoring contingency plan is one guy with an uncalibrated G-M counter and no spare batteries in a 1989 Honda, the situation is even more disastrous than any of us had previously imagined.

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In the wake of the Fukushima incident, it has really helped me to understand what happened in 1979 at Three Mile Island, with nonsense all throughout the media, and FUD, and panic spreading, with good information almost impossible to find, with the over-abundance of bad information leading to hysteria.

But this is the first time it has happened to the Facebook and Twitter generation; I’ve yet to determine whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. We need to keep working hard to make sure it’s a net benefit for the good information, not the dodgy information.

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Red_Blue wrote:

“The worst case scenario of the whole plant area is left to burn … [but] there is no way the Japanese government would completely abandon even extraordinary attempts to bring the fires and cooling failures under control.”

Ah, thank you Red_Blue for giving what does indeed on reflection seem the worst case. Thank you very much indeed.

I do have a further question though: Just how “extraordinary” could the government get? I mean … how could it order people in to do something there when that would likely mean certain death?

I have no doubt there’s already been heroes over there who have sacrificed themselves, and indeed anyone working there right now seems to me to qualify for that honor anyway. But thing can always get worse, right? I.e., even more certainly lethal.

Seems to me to maybe argue for the Japanese gov’t not to wait too long to take whatever further action it can to help. (Such as trying to order in troops to do so.) It’s one thing to issue such an order when there’s just the possibility of death/sickness, it’s another whole ball of wax when that’s a virtual certainty.

Wonder if now’s the time, esp. given the likely breach of containment?

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American, on 16 March 2011 at 3:22 PM — It is best to determine the factual situation as best we can and avoid (pointless) speculation.

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Matt,

Though I understand where you’re coming from, as I posted above (for it is indeed my post, it seems that there are two posters posting as ‘Mike’), comparing the death toll from the earthquake/tsunami and the current issues at Fukushima Daiichi, to me, borders on the absurd. At the very least, it’s a flawed metric to use at this point in time (maybe in thirty or fifty years it will be more appropriate, but even then I imagine it will be difficult to deconvolute the specific effects of whatever additional dosage results from this event).

Much ink has been spilled on the issue of the risks of a modern society (including buildings, transportation, and power generation) and “acceptable” levels of risk; I am not an expert on the subject. But, indeed, as you point out, there were design failures in other arenas as well (e.g., buildings, transit systems). I can’t really comment on the cost (including risks)/benefit analyses associated with those.

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Hank,

Fine, substitue “buildings, boats, small towns, and villages” for the word train, and the point is still valid. Nothing is 100% safe, and relatively little harm has come from this plant.

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David Benson, seems to me another term for “speculation” can be “considered forethought,” and I fail to see why that’s bad.

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“I do have a further question though: Just how “extraordinary” could the government get? I mean … how could it order people in to do something there when that would likely mean certain death? ”

I don’t image them ordering anyone to certain death, even the soviets didn’t go that far. However, I would expect them to order TEPCO and the other Japanese nuclear power companies assign personnel to Fukushima, so that experienced and trained crew can be rotated to keep their doses below even radiation sickness levels (1 Sv).

Work can be accomplished in quite high radiation environments with a large enough crew and good coordination. History of reactor and research criticality accidents have some pretty harrowing rescues and retrievals of bodies or equipment from places where one could get a fatal dose in matters of hours. The way to cope is to spread the dose among a group of volunteers, each working like a runner in a relay race, going quickly in, doing a small part of the task, then running out, with the next guy (or a small team such as a pair or two pairs etc.) going in. Each person would do only one run and then be replaced or relegated to support duties.

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Quoted from the MSNBC breaking news story: “Workers briefly evacuate stricken nuclear plant”:

“It’s basically a sign that there’s nothing left to do but throw in the towel,” Lochbaum said.

Lochbaum was identified in the story as a “nuclear engineer who now heads the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group that opposes the expansion of nuclear power.

I guess Lochbaum is getting pretty confident he’ll be able to offer comment as the world ends, soon.

Some of this stuff is good for a laugh. This morning I heard one breathless podcaster telling the world that because sea level would rise 1 foot by 2050, reactors located close to the sea must now be assumed to be at risk – and obviously for this and the many other reasons he offered, it was well past time the world should prohibit nuclear power.

I don’t like the sound of guys getting orders or volunteering to be the guy who goes where it is death to go to do the vital thing. I hope it isn’t coming to that anywhere in this mess.

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“I don’t image them ordering anyone to certain death, even the soviets didn’t go that far.”

Just to clarify that, I meant during the Chernobyl accident and really, they didn’t order anyone to a task that was known to a high degree of certainty to result in a fatal dose. Some level of negligence existed in properly estimating the risks and also the initial response was highly uncoordinated. But they didn’t cold heartedly calculate some “acceptable loss of life” and then plan their operations based on that criteria.

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BNC is a little haven of rationality and information amidst the sound bites and dross of mainstream media. Thanks Barry and others sharing their knowledge and experience.

Luke: I’ll be interested in the “fall out” amongst the twitter generation. I was 25 at the time of TMI and firmly anti-nuclear but have no clear memory of the event. My life was filled with other concerns. If you asked me a few years back what happened at TMI my recollection would have been completely and utterly wrong. I suspect most Australians without a strong interest will just be letting the evening news wash over them and will form totally false memories of this event. It would be useful to run a poll in 6 months to test what people got from mainstream coverage … it won’t be pretty!

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Anyone have a guess when the 200,000 people evacuated from around the plant will be able to return to their homes? A month, a year, a decade, ….?

–bks

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Hi. Does anyone know if they are using seawater to cool the spent fuel in #4 and the reactors in 5 and 6? I imagine that the salt would flaw the reactor enough to where they couldn’t use it in the future (without SIGNIFICANT restructuring). I just wondered if they were ready to scrap the whole plant or if they are hoping it won’t get worse and worse and worse..
There are many people here who say that this isn’t as serious as others make it out to be, and vice versa.. but consider that there has never been a time in our (world) history when multiple reactors have been at risk. containment systems can fail just like cooling systems can. This is a horrible tragedy, and one we can learn from. I support nuclear energy, but like any technology we should certainly respect it’s dangers.

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Barry: The paper by the “MIT staffer” you refer to appears in MIT’s student newspaper and appears to be written not by a staffer but by Keith Yost, who is a graduate student (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/you-dont-have-to-be-a-nuclear-engineer-to/).

His most recent claim to fame was a rather notorious article claiming that allowing gays into the military would weaken US armed forces (http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N9/dadtpro.html) among other conservative-leaning political articles (http://tech.mit.edu/author/Keith+Yost/). He is not written elsewhere on scientific topics, and he apparently left a post-undergraduate gig in Dubai for the Boston Consulting Group under a cloud (which he wrote about in a series of articles last year).

Is this really the kind of fact-based, objective, authoritative source you want to be presenting to your readers?

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After just Googling around I see just now that Edano has broached the idea of sending in some of Japan’s military, and some high Japanese official has now noted his government’s potential to ask the U.S. military in to help.

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American wrote,
“After just Googling around I see just now that Edano has broached the idea of sending in some of Japan’s military, and some high Japanese official has now noted his government’s potential to ask the U.S. military in to help.”

Japan’s SDF (“Self-Defense Force,” the Japanese equivalent of a military) is already on-scene, and has been actively participating. So I’m really not sure what you mean…?

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From the online The Sunday Times “Chernobyl hero remembers the men who saved Europe”

“As the plant managers and technicians fled or frantically tried to contact Moscow, the firefighters rushed straight into the inferno.”

28 firefighters died in 1986.

“If they had not done what they did”, said one who lived through an accumulated dose of 260 ber “the fire would have spread to Reactors 1,2, and 3.”

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@Luke Weston

Interesting post, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I remember TMI quite well, because I was going to university in eastern Canada at the time. I knew nothing about radiation except it was bad. And, I knew that if President Carter or the Pennsylvania Governor was going to call an evacuation, I was going to high tail it back to western Canada to get out of the way of the prevailing winds. I didn’t give a damn if I had to forfeit my tuition fees. I just picked up that panic from the news situation at the time.

But, I see that panic now in man-on-the-street interviews with people in Japan leaving Tokyo and heading to the southern part of Japan. I can sympathize.

However, since, TMI (and Chernobyl) I have had the opportunity to be taught by some really great physics profs and did some self-learning to the point I wouldn’t have any qualms about sitting tight in the zone 20-30 km out from the Fukushima plant until this situation is resolved.

It really is about education. Educating people about doses and what they mean, putting the doses into context. Unfortunately, people would rather sit in front of their computer/TV monitor or game the stock market than educate themselves. And, then when something like this happens it is too late to educate them on the basics.

If people do want to start and become educated on radiation and nuclear reactors, a good spot to go is Dr. Richard Muller’s Physics for the General Student at the Univ. of Berkeley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVB0F7kORII
see Lectures 5,6, 7 and 8.

I am still of the mind that nuclear power is our best option to combat global warming. The German experiment with solar and wind has shown that those sources just aren’t ready for prime time, or else why would they have fallen back to building coal-fired power plants.

Nonetheless, the panic and mass hysteria component to this incident is, from an academic point-of-view, very interesting.

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Mike: I didn’t know that the SDF were already there and so when I just read that Edano had apparently talked about sending in SDF *helicopters* I thought this was the first potential appearance of the Japanese military. Sorry.

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Allright, I’ll play a bit – DV82XL I appreciate that you have come out as a major stakeholder on the nuclear power side. Perhaps others knew that already, but newcomers to this blog (such as I) are just now figuring it out for sure. It seems that the line of argument has morphed from “there is not a real problem” to “the problem doesn’t really matter” to “it can’t happen here”. Good to know where you stand , though I can see the sand shifting under your feet.
Susanne, good spinning. but somehow I am not reassured by the contention that the Japanese company in charge of these failing nuclear reactors can not even measure radioactivity reliably. I am not necessarily anti nuclear energy, despite living 5 miles from the largest Nuclear weapon storage facility in the U.S.A. And despite having witnessed an actual Mushroom cloud in the Nevada desert in the 1950’s. I am trying to keep an open mind. but disingenuity on this thread is not making that very easy.

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Hank: MIT student/nuclear engineer/staff member Yost’s opinion piece about how “Global warming not worth the fight” (http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N45/yost.html) is even more enlightening and probably also of interest to readers of this blog:

“Global warming is real. It is predominantly anthropogenic. Left unchecked, it will likely warm the earth by 3-7 C by the end of the century. What should the United States do about it?

“Very little, if anything at all.” . . . .

“To act unilaterally, or even in conjunction with the rest of the developed world, would mean paying the full measure of mitigating climate change while receiving only a fraction of its benefit.”

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Barry: I have to say I’m confused by the apparent deletion of my post about Keith Yost, whom you (unintentionally, I’m sure) misrepresent as a MIT staff member.

How are readers to gauge the authenticity of the material on this site if you don’t allow them to gauge the authority (or lack thereof) of the sources?

I honestly felt that my post was a corrective, not an accusatory one, and I included a number of links to support each of my statements about his background. Yost is a political writer, not a science writer; he is a student, not a staff member. These are relevant facts.

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Barry: I’m not sure what in the post might have been considered a “character attack,” but I will try to avoid anything that hints of it and do appreciate that you reinstated the post.

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@T-Squared “The German experiment with solar and wind has shown that those sources just aren’t ready for prime time, or else why would they have fallen back to building coal-fired power plants.”

Just found bravenewclimate during this Fukushima incident, so my reply to your comment is very off-topic, but I’d say compare solar incidence in Germany with that in the US and ask why utility-scale solar and wind are not viable sources of 100’s GW’s. Maybe this has been discussed in another area of the blog?

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TerjeP – As a rule I think it is great to have Bolt reference this blog on occasions, but not to return the favour… nasty man nasty blog. He also prefers the studies that suggest there was no such thing as a stolen generation and that Aborigninal folks have it all on a taxpayer funded platter. He is not a friend of science by any stretch of the imagination.

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savalle wrote,
“http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300252224P.pdf

Damage suspected to the containment Integrity of Unit 2 and 3.”

While it’s likely only a point measurement, this link shows a 3.4 mSv/hour dose rate at the power station boundary. To me, that qualifies as “serious”, particularly since the dose rate is likely higher as one gets closer to the source.

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@rpl – When I wrote my last comment I was writing as a Canadian, not as a stakeholder in the nuclear industry. Click on my name for my full profile, I have no other interest in the nuclear industry beyond, my considered opinion that it the only available technology that can supply us with clean energy in the future

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“As a further precaution, TEPCO is considering spraying the pool with boric acid to minimise the probability of ‘prompt criticality’ events. This is the news item we should be watching most closely today.”
WTF ? How is even possible for reaching prompt critical ?
Even with full meltdown of nuclear materials reching critical should be impossible. Has to be.
So far it looks Japans underestimated the situation and used too few and not well-equipped people to handle the crysis.
70 people? To maintain cooling in 6 damaged reactors + pools with fuel?
70 would be enough when everything functions, not now. These people can’t work for more than several hours in the zone, there must be fast rotation of personel.
(In Chernobyl soldiers were used to “collect and drop” hot nuclear material from the roof into the exposed core. Due to extremely high doses, one had to run, collect anything and go back in 30 seconds and thousands were used. Still there were dead, including the commanding officer, but they did what had to be done)

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On a related note, please correct me if I’m wrong but it seems that by going with the “hose it down from a distance” option there is an implicit admission of containment rupture. Otherwise I see no way to possibly get water into a pressurized and sealed enclosure with a hose. Physics would protest.

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Just a reminder that this situation at Tokushima is not as a result of a nuclear “accident” (as were Chernobyl and TMI) caused by human error, mismanagement or faulty design. That the 40 year old utility has stood up so well to the massive onslaught of record breaking(at least for Japan) natural disasters which wiped out all the usual utilities (power, water, etc.) designed to provide back-up is surely a testament to the designers and engineers. To the people labouring to contain any further damage I think we should all say a heartfelt thank you.

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Just posted a riposte at the Jim Green article, however many others have got there before me. Seems you have lots of loyal supporters Barry.

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Great effort Barry. Keep up the good work. I am starting to detect the media’s disappointment that the operators and technicians at Fukushima actually manage to keep things from getting worse ,against all odds.

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Ms. Perps,

Does human error in the form of designer error count? The plant was not designed for an event which did in fact occur–could you explain to me how this is not an “accident”?

In a sense I will acknowledge that it is in fact “intentional”, in that the facility was intentionally not designed for an event which did occur, but I don’t see how that’s a satisfying justification for anything. In fact, from that perspective it’s a powerful indictment of the designers.

But we absolutely agree in that the people laboring at the site deserve the highest form of honor possible. They are true heroes (and, like many heroes, will probably only admit to doing their job).

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Barry: there is a difference between thermal heat of the reactor fuel and the temperature of the reactor fuel that your readers may not appreciate.

While it is certainly true that the thermal heat (energy) of the fuel decreases exponentially each day there is still a huge amount of potential energy in the system. The short-term danger is that the workers at the plant do not have good control of the TEMPERATURE of the fuel and its surroundings.

They are venting radioactive steam in attempts to regain control of the temperature.

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Barry Brook, on 16 March 2011 at 5:01 PM said:
>It’s already in the top post, savalle

As my link was the status update #6 i believe it is an update to the top post (update #5, which states unit 3 as not damaged)

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Ah, I see. The “hose it down from a distance” plan is for the fuel storage pool at both units 3 and 4, not for the #3 reactor. Question answered.

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“On a related note, please correct me if I’m wrong but it seems that by going with the “hose it down from a distance” option there is an implicit admission of containment rupture. Otherwise I see no way to possibly get water into a pressurized and sealed enclosure with a hose.”

Perhaps the reason is that they are now shifting priority to what remains of the spent fuel pools at the top of the reactor building remains of each reactor. If they can get the fuel rods at these locations covered with water, that would drive down the activity in the immediate environment and then perhaps allow turning attention back to the reactor vessels at each unit.

I’m wondering which US unit would be in a position to provide fire trucks with sufficient capacity. The closest I can think of is the 374th Mission Support Group with their heavy airbase ARFF vehicles, but they are based in Yokota, some 200 miles away.

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“…they are based in Yokota, some 200 miles away.”

The article above states that they are indeed based at Yokota.

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Sorry, I accidentally hit “Post comment” before I finished. They are indeed based at Yokota, but apparently there are some pumper trucks in the vicinity of Fukushima Daiichi, and TEPCO people were instructed in their use by the folks at Yokota.

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I am posting this link and quote to counter Jim Green’s outrageous claim of hundreds of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure near Chernobyl (on his current Uleashed article) How does he get away with this?
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
“The Chernobyl accident caused many severe radiation effects almost immediately. Of 600 workers present on the site during the early morning of 26 April 1986, 134 received high doses (0.8-16 Gy) and suffered from radiation sickness. Of these, 28 died in the first three months and another 19 died in 1987-2004 of various causes not necessarily associated with radiation exposure. In addition, according to the UNSCEAR 2008 Report, the majority of the 530,000 registered recovery operation workers received doses of between 0.02 Gy and 0.5 Gy between 1986 and 1990.”

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I have posted the same link and quote on the Unleashed article by Green. My comments have not yet appeared (only 6 have so far) moderation must be slower than on BNC:)

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