IAEA= International Atomic Energy Agency – update here
Story below from the Register:
The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, badly damaged during the extremely severe earthquake and tsunami there a week ago, continues to stabilise. It is becoming more probable by the day that public health consequences will be zero and radiation health effects among workers at the site will be so minor as to be hard to measure. Nuclear experts are beginning to condemn the international hysteria which has followed the incident in increasingly blunt terms.
Seawater cooling of the three damaged reactor cores (Nos 1, 2 and 3) at the site continues. US officials and other foreign commentators continued to remain focused on a spent-fuel storage pool at the No 4 reactor (whose fuel had been removed and placed in the pool some three months prior to the quake).
Despite this, operations by Japanese powerplant technicians, military personnel and emergency services at the site focused instead on cooling the spent-fuel pool at the No 3 building, and on restoring grid electrical power at the plant. Japanese officials continued to contend that water remained in the No 4 pool and the situation there was less serious than that at No 3. Police riot vehicles mounting powerful water cannon and fire trucks were used to douse the spent-fuel pool at No 3 with water, causing steam to emerge – confirming that some cooling at least was being achieved. One of the fire trucks was reportedly lent by US military units based locally, though operated by Japanese troops.
World Nuclear News reports that radiation levels have generally decreased across the plant, though they remain hazardous in the immediate area of reactors 2 and 3; levels also climb temporarily when technicians open valves to vent steam from the damaged cores in order to allow fresh seawater coolant to be pumped in, prompting teams to retreat before venting is carried out. Nonetheless 180 personnel are now working within the site where and when radiation levels permit them to do so safely.
An external power line has now been laid out to the plant and latest reports indicate that this will be connected to its systems by tomorrow: final hookup has been delayed by steam-venting operations from the cores. Powerplant technicians hope that this will restore cooling service to reactor cores and spent-fuel pools across the plant, in particular to the pools at reactors 3 and 4. If normal water levels can be restored to the pools high levels of radiation above and immediately around the buildings will be cut off by the liquid’s shielding effect. The buildings’ roofs would normally help with this, but both have been blown off in previous hydrogen explosions.
Meanwhile, plant operator TEPCO said that on-site diesel generation serving units 5 and 6 – which are safely shut down, but which also have spent fuel in their storage pools – has been restored. The plant’s diesels were mostly crippled by the tsunami which followed the quake: the wave was higher than the facility’s protective barriers had been designed for. The prospect of any trouble at these reactors now seems remote.
…
The IAEA seems to accept that things are settling down: a senior official at the agency tells Reuters that the situation is now “reasonably stable”.
Radiation readings at the site boundary remained low through Friday morning in Japan, dropping to 0.26 millisievert/hour. Personnel at the site are normally permitted to sustain 20 millisievert in a year: this has been raised to 250 millisievert owing to the emergency.
Normal dosage from background radiation is 2-3 millisievert annually: a chest CT scan delivers 7 millisievert. The highest radiation level detected anywhere beyond the site was a single brief reading of 0.17 millisievert at the boundary of the evacuation zone, but on average (Japanese government PDF/72KB) readings at the zone boundary are hardly above background.
Read the complete and detailed report here
h/t to Bernd Felsche via Facebook
Maelstrom’s media time-line of the quake/tsunami/Dai-ichi mashup:
1. Quake was a 7, tsunami might’ve killed 1000 people, radiation monitors at the daiichi fukushima plant registering normal background radiation.
2. Quake was 8 point something maybe, might be more dead from tsunami, slight increase inside the plant, no worries.
3. Quake was magnitude 8.9, there might be 10,000 dead, minor release of radioactive steam, no worries…
4. Quake was mag 9.0 or 9.1, dead might be 10,000, minor release of radiation outside plant, no worries….
5. 9.1, ~10,000, some reactors exploded, no worriers, no breaches…
6. “, “, previously unmentioned spent fuel rods above reactors are fissioning…
7. “, “, plant has 30 years of accumulated spent rods plus 10 years of plutonium oxide mixed fuel…
8. Hundreds of civilians found contaminated, Japanese PM declares 10 km exclusion zone around plant as radioactive cloud hits Tokyo, Austrian embassy evacuates to Oosaka, USS Ronald Reagan reverses course 100 miles out to sea due to plutonium pollution.
9. Situation according to Japanese PM now “grave,” TEPCO president weeps on international television admitting there will be human deaths (there already have been), TEPCO withdraws personnel from plants (they actually refused to go but that’s not reported) except for 50 kamikaze rescue workers who make a splendid media distraction.
10. Radiation officially, according to anonymous Test Ban staff, reaches California, Washington state admits xenon isotopes from Fukushima detected two days earlier, Japanese flee country, Russia considers offering aid to Japanese refugees, Japanese public fully understands they were lied to by their unpopular PM, meltdown in reactors continues, Fukushima reactors 5 and 6 thought secure, four other reactors elsewhere in Japan still in danger.
Some of the details might be slightly achronological, but the official media have alternated between horror and “nothing to worry about” during the whole event, sometimes in the same paragraph. I, for one, see nothing strange in the nuclear industry’s attempt to downplay the danger to the public. That’s just what they do.
Core exposed; satellite image catches glow from reactor in building #3:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/presenting-latest-digitalglobe-satellite-photos-fukushima-thermal-imaging-continues-be-top-s
Zero Hedger calls “Core Meltdown”
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/presenting-latest-digitalglobe-satellite-photos-fukushima-thermal-imaging-continues-be-top-s#comment-1074565
Looks like the reactor core in reactor bldg #3 is showing through in this high-res satellite image (it is that bright object three over and one up from the left on the sea-side facing side of the reactor building):
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/von%20havenstein/japan_earthquaketsu_fukushima_daiichi_march18_2011_dg.jpg
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A crop (and magnification) of Reactor bldg 3 with the area thought to be the ‘core’ showing as a bright spot in the picture:
http://oi53.tinypic.com/dz9jj6.jpg
The Chase.
Watching the news media reporting impending disaster at Japans damaged nuclear plants I got the impression I was watching a rerun of Charlie Sheen’s movie The Chase where the media hyped, lied and made every move to report the story as anything except what it was. Rather than report the event they attempted to create their own event.
To all: I fully understand the nuclear power plants, as I’m a chemical engineer by training (attorney now). I also fully appreciate the need for safe, clean, affordable energy in the world. I give formal lectures on the subject. On my blog, I write on this under the subject of the Grand Game.
I am also fully aware of the various nuclear incident reporting sites. What is never written there are many of the near-misses – because they are not required to be reported.
As to “Each barrel of oil contains 100,000 man-hours of work,” that is ludicrous. A barrel of oil is priced at approximately $100 today. A man-hour of work would be worth $100 divided by 100,000 if that statement were true, or $0.001 per hour. Clearly, in Western societies, a man-hour of work is worth more like $10 per hour. One could use $10 per man-hour and conclude that a barrel of oil contains only 10 man-hours of work. But that is completely irrelevant. Work is not the only component of the price of oil. The cost to produce a barrel of oil is a more appropriate measure, or metric for those who prefer such labels. The cost to produce a barrel of oil depends on many factors, and ranges from less than one dollar per barrel, to more than $20 per barrel. If we were to use a nominal value of $10 for the cost of production, then the barrel of oil “contains” only one man-hour of work. Even that is a flawed conclusion, because the cost to produce is not limited merely to man-hours of work. There are capital costs, energy costs, maintenance costs, overhead costs, taxes, insurance, and many other components of the cost of production. As I stated above, a claim as “100,000 man hours of work” for a barrel of oil is ludicrous.
I stand by each and every statement I made above. Nuclear is finished. The hue and cry and public demonstrations and loss of votes for incumbents who vote for any approvals will be beyond anything seen to date. The reason?
The mothers of the world are VERY unhappy over this Japanese disaster. My email and facebook accounts are full of missives from concerned mothers. They vote. They march and demonstrate and are very vocal.
This post is about the reactor situation being “stable.” I hope that is true, and continues to be true. I hope the workers, and those making decisions, can and do cool everything down safely and in a timely manner. I hope there are no radiation exposures, and no workers’ lives shortened or made worse from illness. I hope the US West Coast, where I live, does not have harmful levels of any radiation. Other than some Pacific islands, California is first in line to receive the wind-blown radiation. I hope the same for all the countries, that no one has to live in fear of a radiation dose. I’m pulling for the Japanese on this one, go, guys, go!
And when this is over, if indeed the Japanese pull this off with no loss of life or illness, the rest of the world with nuclear power plants can ask themselves, could we have done that? After all, they are the Japanese, with incredible work ethic, world-class engineering talent, and they barely pulled this off. What will the other countries do when the earthquake occurs at their nuclear power plant? What will California do when a massive tsunami inundates their four operating reactors? California has far more spent fuel rods stored at their reactors than does Fukushima Dai-ichi.
And if the Japanese fail to stabilize their disaster, and people are harmed domestically and abroad, what then? Which country can honestly say to itself, well, we would have done better than the Japanese.
We live in interesting times. A key indicator is the stock price of companies in the nuclear world, and those in the fossil-fuel world. Investors are a savvy bunch. I would not be at all surprised to see the nuclear stocks falling, and fossil-fuel stocks rising.
Nuclear has had its chance, its day in the sun, and it has failed via meltdown. Or perhaps 3 meltdowns plus two spent fuel pools running dry. Watch for new orders for natural-gas fired power plants to increase.
Yet the NYT fearmongers with their map…
Leg says:
March 19, 2011 at 3:49 am
I have so much respect for these men who are working so hard to keep you and I safe.
There are commenters saying it was never unsafe. It looks like there are exaggeration about it being safe just as there was exaggeration about how bad it was.
>>Jim
>>It really is time for true greeniacs to go off grid and show
>> commitment to their beliefs
Agreed, I have said this for a long time. All those in favour of wind and other renewables, should be disconnected from the fossil and nuclear electrical grid.
After the second week without power, they would be begging for more oil and coal, and praying for nuclear power.
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1DandyTroll says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:34 am
That the plants started to have problem has, I’m sure been explained: Major earth quake and major tsunami.
Earthquakes and tsunamis aren’t supposed to happen?
Not news; the bright image has been identified as a new ‘rice cooker’ brought in by a work crew early yesterday … they were just re-heating something one of the workers brought in …
>>Roger Sewell
>>As to “Each barrel of oil contains 100,000 man-hours of work,” that is
>> ludicrous. A barrel of oil is priced at approximately $100 today. A
>>man-hour of work would be worth $100 divided by 100,000 if that
>>statement were true, or $0.001 per hour. Clearly, in Western societies,
>>a man-hour of work is worth more like $10 per hour.
Roger. For an intelligent man, you are now just being plain stupid.
Was my comparison in dollars? Did I mention dollars? Is the dollar the only unit you understand?
The comparison between oil and manpower is quite obviously in energy. A 100 acre field once took 100 workers 1 day to plough (the definition of a acre, assuming a 12 hour day). It now takes a JCB tractor 3 hours and 25 gallons of fuel.
This is why we are rich, and Medieval society was poor. 95% of farm workers are now free to produce other goods. Andnthe reason why you cannot make the comparison in the price of labour, is the reason why the Romans plateaued in theirwealth and abilities. There was a finite limit to manual labour, whereas the oil slave can be throttled up as much as one wishes (until the oil runs out).
But the problem is that the oil WILL run out, sometime. And if, when that time comes, the Greenies have directed us down the renewable cul-de-sac, then civilisation as we know it ceases to exist. That, Roger, is the future you are suggesting for Western society – a slow and painful death through energy strangulation.
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>>Roger
>>Nuclear has had its chance, its day in the sun, and it has failed via meltdown.
And I will have to remind you, Roger, that wind, wave, solar and geothermal power is only nucler power by proxy.
In other words, dear Roger, you are an ardent supporter of nuclear power. I am glad you made that point clear. Hooray for nuclear power, eh?
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On the price of a barrel of oil:
It’s not just the production process that goes into the price. Speculators/hedgers drive up the cost. This video is an easy to understand explanation from a reporter that actually investigated the 2008 gas price spike when a barrel of oil went to $147.00. He also talks on why the housing bubble happened :
:
Daniel H says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:41 am
We had beautiful spring-like weather here in Tokyo today.
An unrelated question:what are the Japanese women like? Are they as friendly toward men as I have been hearing?
A situation can be stable but still dangerous. Some commenters don’t seem to get that.
The earthquake and tsunami exceeded the design basis accident and overwhelmed the defense-in-depth provisions of the reactors. The plant was outside the envelope of normal and emergency parameters, procedures, and training. So at that point, management of the emergency becomes on-the-ground information gathering, analysis of information, decision-making, and action. An element similar to the fog of war most likely existed and likely still exists to a lesser degree in this situation since the normal installed instrumentation was probably useless.
It is almost for sure that after this emergency is over and a full investigation can be done, it will be revealed, with 20/20 hindsight, that not all decisions and actions taken even by technically competent persons were perfectly optimal.
Hopefully, when the plant staff were in the fast moving, fog of war stage of the emergency they kept focused on managing the emergency and not feeding the news media beast aside from advising on evacuations.
Roger and others,
I also have an engineering degree (Mechanical), I also have 25+ years in nuclear operations and training. I was a licensed operator for 8 years and senior operator for another 8.
Some have downplayed the significance of this event but FAR more have overplayed the significance. Yes there are areas on the site that have lethal doses of radiation if you spend enough time standing in that location. For instance if you stood in the 40R/hr field for ten hours you would incur a dose approximately equal to the LD50 dose. There are areas of any plant that have lethal doses of radiation if you are dumb enough to stand there long enough, these areas are locked at commercial plants. Dose rates off site have NEVER been immediately dangerous to life and health.
This is a serious nuclear accident and I concur with the INES scale rating of 5 based on what we know. However, it isn’t the nuclear or public health catastrophe you , and others, are making it out to be. If, as it seems, the contamination off site is primarily I-131 then it will be gone in about 1 month because radio iodine has a half-life of 8 days. As others have pointed out, the rest of Japan’s infrastructure is responsible for far more deaths than these nuke plants during this event.
@Ralph on March 19, 2011 at 8:38 am
(the name is Sowell)
You wrote, “The comparison between oil and manpower is quite obviously in energy. A 100 acre field once took 100 workers 1 day to plough (the definition of a acre, assuming a 12 hour day). It now takes a JCB tractor 3 hours and 25 gallons of fuel.”
Ok. Let’s analyze this statement for accuracy. Even granting that the assertions are true (100 workers? 12 hours? What type of field? Stony, sandy, loamy soil, wet clay, dry clay, with sod or without? What type of plowing? How deep? Spacing?). And, that one can plow said 100 acres by using 25 gallons of diesel fuel. The numbers just don’t work out.
You assert 100 workers who labor for 12 hours to achieve the plowing task. That then is 1200 man-hours of work. Also, 25 gallons of fuel, which is barely more than one-half of a barrel (there are 42 US gallons in a barrel of oil). The actual number is 0.59 barrels and change. Dividing out, (1200 divide by 0.59) yields 2,016 man-hours per barrel. That is a far cry from your original assertion that a barrel of oil contains 100,000 man-hours of work.
As to the larger point, that oil is a good thing for society, I could not agree more. see this for my views on that: http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/oil-industry-saved-planet-from.html
As to the world running out of oil, I disagree. It never has, and never will. All such predictions are wrong, and are based on a flawed model of how the world operates.
And, I disagree that renewables are a cul-de-sac. Hydroelectric power works quite well and is cheap. It is also renewable. The oceans are the true and ultimate energy source for the planet, with wind, wave, thermal differences from top to bottom, and the most important of all, ocean currents. Renewable energy that converts sunlight directly to oil, via algae is also quite promising. Renewable energy that converts sunlight to hydrogen by splitting water via synthetic photosynthesis is also viable.
There is zero need for a nuclear powered earth, other than military ships and submarines. The nuclear power advocates are desperate in their frantic efforts to prolong the radiation nightmare they have produced all around us. The geeks are winning, and they know it.
The level of professionalism in the reporting of the nuclear events in Japan by Register’s Lewis Page is very high.
I just registered there to express my thanks with such good job of him. Very good journalism. Thanks also for WUWT for pointing it to us.
Roger Sowell says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:15 am
That horse you’ve been relentlessly flogging. Is it dead yet?
_Jim says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:12 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection
Roger Sowell says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:15 am
I hope the US West Coast, where I live, does not have harmful levels of any radiation.
Bad news, Roger. It has widely occurring and extremely harmful levels of UV radiation. One can wear a protective suit but but the ‘birthday suit’ is not recommended.
Thanks for posting this Anthony. Once again proving that yours is one among but a few places where truth matters.
Cheers!
Roger Sowell says:
Indeed, and one can view the vilification of the oil industry by partisan political hacks as an attempt by the non-productive to destroy the political power of productive people.
Re Japanese nuclear industry cover-ups and screw-ups:
” “Everything is a secret,” said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who now lives in California. “There’s not enough transparency in the industry.”
Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing against time to prevent a full meltdown following Friday’s 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami.
In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.” [bold added]
source: http://news.lp.findlaw.com/ap/f/1310/03-17-2011/20110317005000_19.html
Note that this is from AP. If they’re lying, they could be sued for defamation.
A question for Roger Sowell:
Suppose that a national policy decision were made this year to phase out nuclear power in the United States in an orderly fashion, but with all deliberate speed. What specific plan would you offer for implementing that decision in terms of: (a) your proposed schedule for plant shutdowns, (b) your proposed disposition of spent fuel and nuclear infrastructure, and (c) your proposed contingency plans for coping with power shortages while alternative sources of power are being implemented?