When the Japanese nuclear disaster began

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There's some video currently making the rounds, released by Tokyo Electric Power Company, of the tsunami hitting Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Here's the ITN report:

CNN has more:

The video shows the giant wave generated by the historic March 11 earthquake crashing over the plant's seawall and engulfing the facility, with one sheet of spray rising higher than the buildings that house the plant's six reactors. Tokyo Electric Power, the plant's owner, told reporters the wall of water was likely 14 to 15 meters (45 to 48 feet) higher than normal sea levels -- easily overwhelming the plant's 5-meter seawall.

And of course it's not over yet.

Just how bad are things at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Pretty bad:

Workers' struggle to plug a gush of highly contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, using sawdust, shredded newspaper and an absorbent powder, appeared to be failing early Monday as the radiation threat from the crippled plant continued to spread.

Water with high amounts of radioactive iodine has been spewing directly into the Pacific Ocean from a large crack discovered Saturday in a six-foot-deep pit at the coastal plant north of Tokyo. The pit is next to the seawater intake pipes at the No. 2 reactor. 

Ummm... sawdust, newspaper, and a powder? Okay, it's a powerful powder that apparently can expand up to 50 times its size (meaning, it can absorb a lot of water), but still, is this really what it's come to? I'm hardly an expert on such matters, but it all seems rather hopeless.

Unblogging

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

I'm sorry there's been nothing new from me the past couple of days. I've had to deal with some other priorities that unfortunately have prevented me from blogging.

Thankfully, there have been, as usual, some great posts from my co-bloggers.

I hope to be back at it later today.

In the meantime, I'll just note that the U.N. has approved military action against Libya. This would obviously be far preferable to, say, unilateral U.S. action. I consider myself something of a liberal interventionist, and I could be persuaded to support such action here, but, needless to say, serious questions remain.

I would also note -- though I'm sure you're paying attention to this -- that the situation in Japan continues to be, well, bad. And apparently getting worse. (I've spent some time the past couple of days reading up on nuclear power. We all think we know something about it, but of course most of us don't really know how it works. For a quick overview, both on how nuclear reactors work and what happens during a meltdown, I'd recommend this slideshow.)

Japan's new nuclear nightmare -- in progress

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As if the earthquake and tsunami weren't bad enough, Japan is facing a worsening situation with regard to its nuclear facilities damaged in last week's disaster. Here's the latest:

Japan's nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials. In a brief address to the nation at 11 a.m. Tokyo time, Prime Minister Naoto Kan pleaded for calm, but warned that radiation had already spread from the crippled reactors and there was "a very high risk" of further leakage. Fortunately, the prevailing winds were sweeping most of the plume of radioactivity out into the Pacific Ocean, rather than over populated areas.

The sudden turn of events, after an explosion Monday at one reactor and then an early-morning explosion Tuesday at yet another — the third in four days at the plant — already made the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl reactor disaster a quarter century ago. 

I don't really have anything to add. Like so many others, I'm just watching and reading about what's going on, trying to make sense of it all. There was some hope that pumping in sea water would keep the reactors cool, but it's not clear that will work, nor how much radiation has gotten out and will get out in the days ahead:

The critical two questions over the next day or so is how much radioactive material is spewed into the atmosphere, and where the winds carry it. Readings reported on Tuesday showed a spike of radioactivity around the plant that made the leakage categorically worse than in had been, with radiation levels measured at one point as high as 400 millisieverts an hour. Even 7 minutes of exposure at that level will reach the maximum annual dose that a worker at an American nuclear plant is allowed. And exposure for 75 minutes would likely lead to acute radiation sickness.

The extent of the public health risk depends on how long such elevated levels persist — they may have declined after the fire at No. 4 reactor was extinguished — as well as how far and fast the radioactive materials spread, and whether the limited evacuation plan announced by the government proves sufficient. 

We may not be witnessing another Chernobyl, a massive disaster at a facility without adequate safeguards, but it's still way too early to determine just how damaging this will be.

For more, see our recent posts by Distributorcap and Capt. Fogg.

* It's a nightmare, yes, but obviously not another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That was a different degree of nuclear nightmare altogether.

The other high cost of energy

By Capt. Fogg

"Your Mr. Obama doesn't like nuclear power"

said R___. It was back in '08 during the "drill baby drill," cheap energy at any cost nonsense. He's an engineer, like many of my friends and acquaintances and you would think he'd share a concern with proper design and planning of nuclear facilities but then, as now, if Obama is for it, the Republicans area against it.

Then there was J___, an ex military man with several graduate degrees who told me in robotic tones that "we don't need any more government regulation" when I mentioned that a bit of responsible enforcement of the rules might have prevented the inevitable Gulf blow out disaster.

It really is like arguing with robots, because humans can, at least in theory, learn from experience. Robots need programming and repeat what they are programmed to repeat. It's not quite exclusively American, of course and R___ is Swiss after all. The overall safety of nuclear power is a question subject to debate, preferably between those with a great deal of technical expertise and not unduly influenced by those with a great deal of financial interest in building them. There will always be a danger, of course and there will always be an increasing need for energy pace the neo-Luddites and those who think we can feed and house the world's population using pre-industrial revolution technology, but building a nuclear plan on a coastline and in an earthquake zone seems to this layman a triumph of short sighted greed.

I read with horror this morning of a radiation leak and explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant resulting from the emergency backup power system being installed where it could -- and did - flood. Of course the plant is located so as to put a great many people in a danger zone and they've had to be evacuated. Odds are that the current plan to flood the reactor with sea water will succeed, and so far the leak is small, or so they say, but it's not really the kind of risk most people would subject themselves to voluntarily. People other than my Republican friends, that is.

I'm concerned enough that I live just down the coast of Florida from a nuclear facility. I'm part of a group organized to provide emergency communications should all else fail and an 'incident' occur and we have regular drills that are based on frightening scenarios. I'd rather they hadn't built it on the coast and within yards of the sea. Tsunamis aren't common here, but hardly impossible and hurricanes with storm surges happen all too often, but the convenience of having a large labor supply, saving money and cutting corners made the site attractive -- and of course we don't need no more Gummint regulation, do we?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

The Japan Syndrome

by Distributorcap

I am not a fan of nuclear power. I understand the need for it and I understand why it is necessary. But I also understand the risks of having to have to depend on nuclear energy. New York City and over 20,000,000 people sit 50 miles away from Indian Point, a nuclear plant that has had many problems.

One would also think the Japanese would understand the nightmare of an uncontrolled nuclear power release.

The 8.9 magnitude Sendai Earthquake of March 11 is the 5th strongest quake in recorded history. The stronger quakes are as follows:

1. Chile - 5/22/1960   9.5 magnitude
2. Alaska - 3/27/1964    9.2 magnitude
3. Indonesia - 12/26/2004   9.1 magnitude
4. Russia - 11/4/1952   9.0 magnitude

Japan is located in one of the most seismically active areas of the planet. The Great Tokyo quake of 1923 killed almost 150,000 people and leveled the city of Yokohama. In 1996, Kobe was the center of another power quake that killed 6,500. Neither of those quakes release energy to cause a major tsunami, and neither of those quakes caused an explosion at a nuclear power plant.

Japan is highly dependent on nuclear energy.  The Fukushima power plant sits on the Pacific Ocean, relatively close (in nuclear terms - any reactor is probably too close to earthquake faults) to the epicenter (which was 80 miles off the coast of Japan) of the Sendai quake.  The force of this quake cause the Fukushima plant to suffer severe damage and explode. The potential of a core meltdown at Fukushima is very real.  Core meltdowns are - to say the least - not good things.  They are not good on Star Trek, and they are definitely not good in the non-Gene Roddenberry real world.  25 years ago Europe woke up to the effects of a core meltdown - and it was devastating.

The worst nuclear disaster in history was the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The explosion at the #4 reactor released a toxic cloud that covered much of Eastern Europe. A zone around the plant in Ukraine has been rendered uninhabitable.  Food and livestock had to be destroyed.  Cancer deaths have increased. The US is not immune to a potential nuclear nightmare. Not as environmentally damaging, but perhaps equally as bad from a public relations angle was the Three Mile Island disaster in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. TMI released minimal radiation, and brought to the forefront a much needed discussion about nuclear safety. In a stroke of marketing luck - the film The China Syndrome opened 12 days prior to the accident at TMI. In the film, a physicist says that the China Syndrome (which refers to a core meltdown) would render "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable.

The term 'China Syndrome' was coined by Dr. Richard Lapp in 1971.  It refers to the most severe meltdown a nuclear reactor could achieve. A reactor would reach its highest level of 'supercriticality' for a sustained period of time, resulting in the melting of its support inginfrastructure. The core (consisting of uranium) could then reach temperatures in excess of 2000°C. These temperatures would melt all materials around it, and theoretically the reactor would sink due to gravity, effectively boring a hole through the reactor compartment's floor - heading straight for China. (of course there is no way the molten core would ever get to China or Japan).

One would think that between the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the political turmoil in the Middle East and now the potential of another meltdown at the Fukushima plant the world would really get serious about alternative energy - no matter the cost.  Then again this is the human race - controlled by the likes of Exxon and the Koch brothers who are much more concerned about profits that preservation.

I guess the Koch boys do live in a Gene Roddenberry world and have their escape pods all ready to shoot them to Romulus or Klingon.