What angers me here is the clearfailure of engineering design conception that was never caught from beginningto end. You have a clear risk of a majorquake and a clear risk of a tsunami. That means that the cheapest protection is to place backup power outsideone of the risk envelopes. A superearthquake resistant building is always impractical but a the tsunami risk issolved as easily as placing the hardware in a robust steel frame building thatis high enough to allow wash through by a massive flood wave. It is even cheap.
All disaster abatement programsbegin with securing power sources.
This mess looks like a designfrom the USA simply liftedand dropped on Japan
As Hirose makes clear, thewreaked cores are dangerous and will not cool easily. The first question today is whether the meltzones are even cooling at all. He points out that pumping water on them ispossibly even counter productive.
TMI took a special built robot toextract the core in the end. I think weare looking at something as difficult here.
What They're Covering Up at Fukushima
"You Get 3,500,000 the Normal Dose. You Call That Safe? And What Media Have Reported This? None!"
By HIROSE TAKASHI
Introduced by Douglas Lummis
Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on thenuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex. Probably hisbest known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he tookthe logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so surethat they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead ofhundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?
He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhatagainst his present impulses. I talked to him on the telephone today(March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclearpower back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remainsilent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that hecannot remain silent.
I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you cansee the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertainsparticularly to what is happening at the Fukushima
After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep onsprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagussolution [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete.
Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers. One, thosereactors were expensive, and they just can't bear the idea of that huge afinancial loss. But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solutionmeans admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn't fix thethings. On the one hand that's too much guilt for a human being to bear.
On the other, it means thedefeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religiousdevotion. And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors,it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe. If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See,nuclear power isn't so dangerous after all. Fukushima
Hirose's account can help us tounderstand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis
Hirose Takashi: The Fukushima
Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00
Interviewers: Yoh Sen'ei and Maeda Mari
Yoh: Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactorsfrom the air and from the ground, but is this effective?
Hirose: . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, youhave to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has nomeaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity. Otherwiseit’s like pouring water on lava.
Yoh: Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the coolingsystem?
Hirose: Yes. The accident was caused by the fact that thetsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fueltanks. If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.
Yoh: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of thenuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.
Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there. But what’sworrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic picturesshow (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV). Thisis just a cartoon. Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactorcontainer (shows a photograph). This is the butt end of thereactor. Take a look. It’s a forest of switch levers and wires andpipes. On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simpleexplanations, but they know nothing, those college professors. Onlythe engineers know. This is where water has been poured in. Thismaze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy. Its structure is too wildlycomplex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring waterthrough there. And it’s salt water, right? You pour salt water on ahot kiln and what do you think happens?
You get salt. The salt will getinto all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won’t move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can’t believe that it’s just asimple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin tocirculate. I think any engineer with a little imagination can understandthis. You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actuallydump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how thiscould work, but I can’t understand it.
Yoh: It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools thatcontain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4. This morning 30tons. Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons fromfive trucks. That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up. Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?
Hirose: In principle, it can’t. Because even when areactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperaturedown to where it is barely safe. Now it’s a complete mess inside, andwhen I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes. Iassume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and thatthey have accepted that they face death by staying there. And how longcan they last? I mean, physically. That’s what the situation hascome to now. When I see these accounts on television, I want to tellthem, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!” Really,they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoidpanic. What we need now is a proper panic. Because the situationhas come to the point where the danger is real.
If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the SovietUnion did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, burythe whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, anddump cement over it from the sky. Because you have to assume the worstcase. Why? Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with sixreactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors. Ifeven one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must eitherevacuate the site or stay on and collapse. So if, for example, one of thereactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time. We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them willgo. And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably thereactors there will also go down. Because I assume that workers will notbe able to stay there.
I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low. This is the danger that the world is watching. Only in Japan
Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan Japan Tokyo ,Osaka Tokyo
Yoh: Every day the local government is measuring theradioactivity. All the television stations are saying that whileradiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. Theycompare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan. What isthe truth of the matter?
Hirose: For example, yesterday. Around Fukushima
Yoh: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has nomeaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.
Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s notelling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especiallypregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine andcesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detectioninstruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount ofradiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What theymeasure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .
Yoh: So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactivematerial are not the same.
Hirose: If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima
Yoh: Is there any way to detect this?
Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not inshape even to do regular monitoring. They just take an occasionalmeasurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements. You haveto take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that. And youneed to investigate just what is escaping, and how much. Thatrequires very sophisticated measuring instruments. You can’t do it justby keeping a monitoring post. It’s no good just to measure the level ofradiation in the air. Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’slow – that’s not the point. We need to know what kind of radioactivematerials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system inplace for doing that now.
Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of RadicalDemocracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com
Status report: Reactor-by-reactor at the Fukushima
By the CNN Wire Staff
April 2, 2011 5:03 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Since March 11, the six reactors at the Fukushima
Here is the latest on each reactor and efforts to prevent furtherreleases of radioactive material.
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Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official with Japan's nuclear and industrialsafety agency, on Saturday knocked down a claim made a day earlier by U.S.Energy Secretary Steven Chu that 70% of the No. 1 reactor's core has sufferedsevere damage. Noting that sensors have been unreliable, Chu said the calcuation was based on the fact that radiation levels have been toohigh for workers to get inside. But Nishiyama said that Japanese authorities'data indicates only 3% damage to the unit.
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Workers are preparing to inject nitrogen into the No. 1 reactor (aswell as at least two others) in an order to prevent another explosion caused bya buildup of hydrogen, Nishiyama said Saturday. A hydrogen explosion -- anindicator of possible core damage -- blew the roof and upper walls off thebuilding housing the reactor on March 12.
Just after midnight Friday, a Tokyo
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Water levels in an exposed maintenance tunnel leading from the No. 1unit's turbine building had dropped 1 meter from its previous measure, a Tokyo
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Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company that runsthe nuclear power plant, said Wednesday, "Looking at currentconditions, ... there are no options other than decommissioning" the No. 1reactor, as well as Nos. 2, 3 and 4 units. This would mean that the reactorwould never be used to produce electricity again.
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This reactor's core has been damaged, but its containment vessel wasnot, according to the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, an industry trade group that tracks information fromgovernment and Tokyo
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Lighting has been restored to the No. 1 and No. 2 units' control room,though the overall power supply in both is subpar.
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Water from a two-meter deep, concrete-lined basin outside the No. 2reactor complex could be seen escaping into the sea through a roughly 20-cm(8-inch) crack, an official the Tokyo Electric Power Company told reportersSaturday afternoon. But the company could not explain how the water was gettinginto the sump.
Radiation levels in the pit have been measured over 1,000 millisievertsper hour, which is more than 330 times the dose an average resident of anindustrialized country naturally receives in a year. Utility company officialssaid Saturday that the plan was to to fill the sump with concrete in order tostop the leakage.
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A planned two-day project began Saturday to install a camera inear n anexposed maintenance tunnel connected to the No. 2 unit's turbine building inorder to help pinpoint potential leaks, a Tokyo Electric official said.
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A day earlier, a utility company official said that water levels inthat tunnel had fallen one meter. This followed earlier official reports thatthis water had radiation levels of 1,000 millisieverts per hour -- which ismore than 330 times the dose that an average individual living in a developedcountry receives per year and can result in vomiting and up to a 30 percenthigher risk of cancer, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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There was no immediate response Saturday to a claim, made by U.S.Energy Secretary Steven Chu, that the No. 2 reactor core had suffered a 33percent meltdown. But Nishiyama, of Japan 'snuclear safey agency, did try to debunk Chu 'sclaims about the No. 1 reactor.
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As with the Nos. 1 and 3 units, there is a plan to inject nitrogen intothe No. 2 reactor in order to prevent a buildup of hydrogen that might cause anexplosion. One such blast occurred at the No. 2 unit on March 15.
Katsumata said Wednesday that, "looking at currentconditions," the No. 2 reactor and three others would be decommissioned --meaning it would never be used to produce electricity again.
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Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has said that he hasreceived a report that the No. 2 unit's containment vessel "is damaged andwater is leaking."
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Workers have been pumping freshwater into the No. 2 unit's reactorcore, which the Japan
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Lighting has been restored to the No. 1 and No. 2 units' control room,though the overall power supply in both is subpar.
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Reactor No. 3
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The water levels in the exposed maintenance tunnel leading from the No.3 unit's turbine building has decreased by 1.5 meters, a Tokyo Electricofficial said Friday. Earlier, tests revealed that water in this tunnel hadhigh levels of radioactivity -- prompting authorities to make it a priority todrain the tunnels, to prevent this water from overflowing and seeping into theground. But by Friday, the utility company said the drainage had been largelyeffective.
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Like the Nos. 1, 2 and 4 reactors, the No. 3 reactor is likely to putout of service permanently even after the crisis resolves, Katsumata saidWednesday. Among other issues, the use of seawater in the post-crisis responsehas corroded the reactor, experts have said.
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The No. 3 reactor had been of particular concern because it is the onlyone to use mixed-oxide fuel that contains a small percentage of plutonium,which is also a byproduct in other reactors. A small amount of plutonium wasdetected in soil samples on the plant grounds last week, Tokyo
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The cooling pool where spent fuel is stored may also have been damaged,the Japan Japan
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Freshwater is being injected into the No. 3 reactor core in order toprevent overheating of nuclear fuel inside.
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The No. 3 reactor is believed to have suffered core damage, anda hydrogen explosion did extensive damage to the building surrounding thereactor March 14.
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Freshwater was injected into the No, 4 unit's spent nuclear fuel poolon Friday using a concrete pump truck, a Tokyo
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Workers restored power in the reactor's control room Tuesday -- a movethat officials say could be a key step in efforts to bring cooling systems backonline.
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This reactor was offline in a scheduled outage when the earthquake hit.Still, it has had several major problems since then, including a March 15 firethat damaged the building that houses the reactor.
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The nuclear fuel rods were in the unit's spent fuel pool, but not inthe reactor itself. The reactor's pool of spent nuclear fuel was "possiblydamaged," which is why authorities have made repeated efforts to pourwater onto the structure.
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Reactors No. 5 and 6 were not in operation at the time of the earthquakeand are in "cold shutdown," Japan
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The reactors were shut down for a scheduled outage when the quake hitand there are no major issues with the reactors and cores themselves. Thecooling systems in the pools of spent nuclear fuel are thought to befunctioning, though there are continued concerns about keeping power running tothe systems.
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Three holes were punched in each building earlier to relieve pressureand prevent a feared hydrogen explosion.
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