Japan Quake

[Fist and Faith]

It seems dumping seawater and boron onto the reactor to cool it is both a very "Please God let this work" desperate, last-ditch effort, and the end of the reactor. At least this is what I heard on one of the reports. The reactor won't ever be usable again. And there's no saying it won't still go total meltdown. If celisium has already been released, it means there's been at least a partial meltdown.


Sendai is finding bodies everywhere, and not finding many others.


I have a friend southwest of Tokyo. The nuke is northeast. Tokyo and all the surrounding areas are on 3-hour blackout rotations. His area seems to be getting three 3-hour blackouts per day. Maybe they need the electricity more for Tokyo. Gas stations are closed, with no idea when they'll open again. The bullet trains are still down.

[Avatar]

A second explosion from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

The explosion at the plant's Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

The blast follows a similar explosion on Saturday that took place at the plant's Unit 1, which injured four workers and caused mass-evacuations.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said six workers were injured in Monday's explosion but it was not immediately clear how, or whether they were exposed to radiation. They were all conscious, said the agency's Ryohei Shomi.

Earlier, Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the reactor, said three workers were injured and seven missing.

Inner containment vessel intact

The reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods was intact, Edano said, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public. TV footage of the building housing the reactor appeared to show similar damage to the previous blast, with outer walls shorn off, leaving only a skeletal frame.

More than 180 000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation.

--A

[duchess of malfi]

This is the only good news coming out of Japan that I have been able to find:
www.keiblog.com/Keiblog/Keiblog/Entries ... elled.html
Our Kentucky Derby winners standing at stud over there are all safe and well.

I know that in the face of so many immeasurable and unimaginable human tragedies it is a very little thing...but it is something. And right now I feel like I have to grab at any little good thing over there with both hands and cling to it dearly.

I am on news blackout right now. This on top of the NZ quake, the Haiti quake, the Australia floodings and storms - I just cannot take any more at this time. So much misery and harm and death. And, of course, wanting so much to help - to do anything - but not being able to do anything but hope and pray and open my wallet.

How can anyone see so much devastation and not be heartbroken for the people and their suffering?

[peter]

I find disasters on this scale too epic to be real - and I don't mean that in a bad way, I just can't get my head around that much destuction. My God the despair and suffering of an event like this! How can the country recover? Can the country recover? What do you do? If you have a God (and luckily for me I do) now is the time to ask for some miricles.

[High Lord Tolkien]

www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/this-is-the- ... unami-yet/


The scope of this is beyond my imagination.
Just imagine this tiny filmed perspective spread out over ......I don't know how many miles of coast this affected.
Anyone have a US State comparison?
Like all of Maine and Mass coasts?

[Worm of Despite]

www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/this-is-the- ... unami-yet/


The scope of this is beyond my imagination.
Just imagine this tiny filmed perspective spread out over ......I don't know how many miles of coast this affected.
Anyone have a US State comparison?
Like all of Maine and Mass coasts?

Very awesome vid, HLT. The cameraman was obviously a real pro.

[Seareach]

Well, it all looks like it's going to shit. These poor people.

[Orlion]

It'll get better. It just takes a bit to get the ball rolling on recovery, but once it's started, things will roll along.

[aliantha]

As long as the no nuclear reactors blow up....

I can't even look at this stuff today. It's one thing to see a wall of water engulf a town. It's another thing to see the faces of those who've lost loved ones, or who are reunited with those they thought they'd never see again. One is special effects; the other hits me in the solar plexus....

[Damelon]

I've always thought Gilbert Gottfried was a putz.

Aflac fires duck voice Gottfried over tweets on earthquake


New York Disability insurer Aflac Inc fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of its iconic duck on Monday after a series of Twitter jokes about the earthquake in Japan, Aflac's most important market.

Since 2000, Gottfried has voiced the duck in the insurer's TV ad campaign in the United States, quacking "Af-LAC!" in the comedian's famously abrasive voice.

Gottfried fired off a dozen jokes on the social media service over the weekend, all riffing in one way or another on the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

But the company said his comments "were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac."


Aflac said it would start a nationwide casting call to find a new voice -- and noted that it was already using a different voice in the Japanese market, where it is the No. 1 foreign insurer.

The company made its name selling cancer expense policies in Japan in the 1970s, and still derives about three-quarters of its revenue in the country.

N

[Orlion]

The reactors are probably all shot, yes. But right now, they're just trying to keep everything from going full meltdown, as it were. Pumping the sea water helps to carry away the heat the fission reaction in the rods is causing. Experts say the fact a meltdown hasn't happened yet seems to point to the possibility of a very slowed down fission reaction.

As far as it being a last ditch effort, I say the seawater is there, any other effort would need preparation, so go for the seawater in the mean time.

[Orlion]

To further expand why I'm not too concerned:
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_japan_quake_core_factbox

What is happening now in the core of the nuclear reactors?

* The core of a nuclear reactor consists of a series of zirconium metal pipes or rods containing pellets of uranium fuel bundled into what engineers call fuel assemblies.

* Water is pumped between the pipes to keep them cool and create steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.

* Back-up cooling has struggled at various times over the past three days at reactor units 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima plant.

* In the normal running of a reactor, high-energy neutrons from the uranium fuel bash atoms and break them into pieces in a chain reaction which creates heat, new radioactive elements such as strontium and caesium, and new neutrons which continue the process.

* The chain reaction halted within a few seconds of the earthquake at all the nuclear reactors in Japan, including those worst affected, as they automatically shut down: control rods made of boron were inserted into the fuel, absorbing the neutrons.

* However the natural decay of the radioactive materials in the reactor core continues to produce heat, called decay heat, which falls to a quarter of its original level in the first hour, and then disappears more slowly.

* Normally that heat is removed by coolant pumps whose back-up power supply was knocked out by the earthquake, tsunami or both at the Fukushima plant.

* Emergency workers are trying to cool the inner reactor cores and remove this decay heat by pumping seawater inside. They have added boric acid to the seawater to try and further halt nuclear reactions in a "belt and braces" measure.

* It is important to cool the reactor cores because even though the chain reactions have stopped, there is still enough heat to melt the metal sheaths surrounding the uranium fuel. If these are hot enough they react chemically with the surrounding water, producing an explosive gas hydrogen.

* It is that hydrogen gas which has caused the two explosions at the Fukushima plant, at unit 1 on Saturday and reactor unit 3 on Monday, experts and authorities say.

* Engineers have tried to vent the hydrogen into the atmosphere, which has also contributed to some local radiation because the gas contained small amounts of radioactive particles.

* The core of the reactor is inside a thick steel container called a reactor vessel, and around that there is a concrete containment shield. Around the whole there is a more open building with quite a thin covering not intended to be structurally important.

* The hydrogen explosions only damaged the outer building, which collapsed, not the inner shells, say authorities.

* If an inner reactor vessel were breached that would raise radiation levels. But there is no longer enough heat to blow these apart, experts say.

* The worst remaining risk is that the core melts, which would make it much more difficult and perhaps impossible to remove the fuel, which is what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. The site would have to be sealed permanently.

* Chernobyl in 1986 was a different situation where the control rods failed to control the fission chain reaction, leading to blasts which blew the reactor apart, releasing radiation which contaminated Ukraine and Europe in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

[Orlion]

Ok, now I'm bummed

[lurch]

O...the first clue was that they lost the ability to keep these boilers cool right after the quake/tsunami...They've been BS'ing the world ever since. Whats worse,,is that they have been believing their own BS all along..Even the US Navy got the hell out of there earlier.

See..I have Palo Verde sitting 50 miles west of me with prevailing winds west to east..Brilliant huh?..A fellow worker has his father, brother and cousin working there. So I ask him today..what of it? Whats that thing built to withstand?..He tells me..7.8 earthquake..maybe 7.9...Okay,,the Mogollon Rim runs from Texas to California..a natural fault line that last quaked in 1933 right here in Az..So its still active in geological terms. ..and is less than a hundred miles north. As I heard one pointer outter of the obvious say this afternoon..the past calculation and permutations of odds based on 7.8 earthquakes may have to be reassessed...In other words..all the odds makers..insurance companies..business men who have been selling these wonderful atomic teapots..have not considered survivalbility past 8 on the richter,,simply cuz of the odds. Well now..8.9 -9 rolls in and its hittin the fan big time..Like your signature Melville quotation says!

You're BUMMED??..really?..Well SCHITT!!..I've seen 3 Mile Island come and go,, Chernobyl reck its freekin havoc...and now Fuckedhama..What in the hell is it going to take for folks to wake up?

[duchess of malfi]

Ok, now I'm bummed

may God protect the fifty workers who have stayed behind at the plant to try to keep cooling the reactors. they must have known that to stay carries a good possibility of serious radiation poisoning/cancer/death and that this could turn out to be a suicide mission on their part undertaken to protect others.

courageous courageous people

[Avatar]

Things are bad, but it's still not looking like a meltdown yet. As long as that doesn't happen, it's still fairly minor as potential nuclear disasters go.

--A

[Rigel]

Japan’s nuclear reactor overreaction

Also,

Scott Adams on Vacation. In Hawaii. Last Thursday night.

[Seareach]

It's hard to know what's going on. Japan has a habit of underplaying these kind of things.

The friends of my friend Fe managed to get back to Tokyo and have flown out (thank goodness).

My ex and his family (wife and 4 kids under 12) live in Mashiko (north east of Tokyo). They survived the quake (although their house--which is quite old--was significantly damaged). They have just evacuated because of concerns about radiation and have gone to his wife's parents who live over the mountains. It will be safe there, he says.

<sigh>

[duchess of malfi]

ansnuclearcafe.org/

This seems to a good source of the latest news from a reputable and non sensationalistic scientific group. They are updating twice daily.

[lorin]

The Organization of Concerned Scientists explains the crisis very well

www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_po ... aster.html

www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_po ... risis.html

worth reading