Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation.
Here’s more from CNN:
Contaminated water likely seeped through the containment vessel protecting the reactor’s core, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Three employees working near the No. 3 reactor Thursday stepped into water that had 10,000 times the amount of radiation typical for a nuclear plant, Nishiyama said. An analysis of the contamination suggests “some sort of leakage” from the reactor core, signaling a possible break of the containment vessel that houses the core, he said.
Bloomberg reports, “The agency said yesterday it doesn’t think there is a physical crack in the pressure vessel or containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor.” Back to CNN:
Plant workers were also carefully watching the plant’s No. 1 reactor, concerned that an increase in pressure noted inside that reactor could be a troublesome sign. Earlier, buildups of hydrogen gas had driven up pressure that led to explosions at three of the nuclear plant’s reactors, including the No. 1 unit.
Nishiyama conceded that “controlling the temperature and pressure has been difficult” for that reactor, which on Friday had been declared stable.
Pretty remarkable that after two weeks, the situation still isn’t stabilized.
Related Posts:
- Intro to nuclear power
- CNN opinion: Japan and future of U.S. nuclear power, “The U.S. government and nuclear industry must take new actions to ensure that nuclear power is safe for the American public.”
- The Nukes of Hazard
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
A nuclear physicist friend described the situation yesterday as “A slow moving Chernobyl”.
This is heartbreaking. Americans, including our government, need to help any way we can, including sending technical and cleanup personnel. We bear some responsibility here- the “atoms for peace” idea, and General Electric’s engineering culpability.
Nothing has yet stopped the pro-nuclear zealots. We are being subjected by a steady drumbeat of assertions that this disaster is nothing much, no-one has died, this proves nuclear is safe (yes!)blah, blah, blah. Oh, and denialists smirking that nuclear failure means more coal will be burned, which pleases them immensely. Rightwing zealotry in action is a joy to behold.
What does “clean-up” mean? Where can you put the radioactive Cesium? I saw a video on the Today show of US sailors scrubbing the deck of a US aircraft carrier to remove radioactivity. The video is labled “decontaminating” the aircraft carrier. But the radioactivity is just dumped in the ocean. And always the banal phrase: “Experts say the radiation did not pose any significant health risk”. So why clean it up?
Obviously, in Japan the cunulative exposure to radiation is after a couple of weeks reaching dangerous levels. Local media are saying that some areas in the evacuation zone have received up to 500 millisievarts of radiation, a very high amount. The immediate health risk of nuclear power is small, but the cumulative health risk is large to everyone on the planet. And we are powerless to stop it. This is our reality. With so many clean alternative energy technologies available, the meltdown in Japan leaves one sputtering in frustration. Optimistically, we will eventually find our way through the dilemma of climate change, but sadly, at what ultimate cost in lost life and health.
The New York Times reported yesterday:
Chernobyl wasn’t fueled with MOX!
Plutonium is a significant part of the “mixed oxide” fuel in Reactor #3, and it’s about the most toxic stuff on earth.
One microgram inhaled Pu is the dose to positively cause cancer. Many hundreds of kilograms are in the fuel that’s apparently being released to the environment.
In health impact are we already looking at “worse than Chernobyl” for Reactor 3 alone, making this the worst nuclear accident in world history?
#3 Ken – extremely well said.
#2 Mulga – very true, but its not just the right wing nuts, don’t forget to include the current US Administration who made a statement after the accident in Japan that they were going to continue to push forward with nuclear energy (after the Chinese said they were pausing, that a Democratic President would be saying this, boggles the mind). I personally think its just where the most money comes from in the US, the political process has become so corrupt that it doesn’t matter democrats or republicans for most things anymore, its what the money says that controls what ends up happening – its what happened with climate change and renewable energy initiatives over these last two years especially with the current US administration.
I read another article that said the leakage may be from a cooling system leak as a big chunk of it is housed in the basement where the highly radioactive water was. Hopefully this is the case, since it could possibly be fixed easier than a ruptured containment vessel – either way this is a ongoing nightmare and I hope they can stop it.
From Koyodo news:
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a press conference Friday evening that the situation at the plant involving leaks of radioactive materials and other serious problems ”still does not warrant optimism.”
Please see this site: http://www.nirs.org/ for good updates on the reactor situation.
They maintain and update a pdf summary here: http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
There is a reasonably good summary of the effects of radiation and associated terms and units via that page, here: http://www.psr.org/resources/health-risks-releases-radioactivity.pdf
How can the cost of the response to this disaster be incoporated into the cost of nuclear-generated electricity? How much does the potential for disaster from nuclear power affect our ability to combat climate change? I think we can’t count on this wedge.
Bitter reminder that Reactor 3 is unique among the 6 reactors at Fukushima:
“One big worry for Japanese officials is that reactor No. 3, the main target of the helicopters and water cannons on Thursday [17 March 2011], uses a new and different fuel. It uses mixed oxides, or mox, which contains a mixture of uranium and plutonium, and can produce a more dangerous radioactive plume if scattered by fire or explosions.
According to Tokyo Electric, 32 of the 514 fuel rod assemblies in the storage pond at reactor No. 3 contain mox.”
From “Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat” originally published
Thursday 17 March 2011 by: Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times News Service | Report; republished today 3/25/11 by truth-out.org
Energy balance isn’t there with nuclear
even when it is free nuclear power to
all. Try solar, wind, hydro., and tidal
Power for a better lifestyle.
We must do far more than switch to clean energy:
Scientists call for rationing in developed world: Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.
That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
The nuclear situation in Japan is a tragedy.
One of the interesting things about modern nuclear power in the US is that few really understand how it works day to day, and I include in that bin most scientists and journalists who are commenting to the media on the topic. It’s kind of treated as a black box from which occasionally spews toxic goo. While not necessarily leading to incorrect assumptions, this is perhaps not the best way to look at any of our potential energy supplies if we are to make better decisions about them in the future. Hundreds of nuclear workers are busy every day at every reactor. What are they doing?
I’ve worked in the US nuclear industry for 25 years. My novel “Rad Decision” culminates in an event very similar to the Japanese tragedy. (Same reactor type, same initial problem – a station blackout with scram.) The book is an excellent source of perspective for the lay person — as I’ve been hearing from readers.
The novel is free online at the moment at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com . (No adverts, nobody makes money off this site.) Reader reviews are in the homepage comments.
Unfortunately, my media presence consists of this little-known book and website, so I’m not an acknowledged “expert”. I just do the nuclear stuff for a living. And I think I have explained it well in a non-yawn-producing manner. But it’s a bit of a tree falling in a forest………
I believe there isn’t a perfect energy solution – just options – each with their good and bad points. And we’ll make better choices about our future if we first understand our energy present.
Wit’s End (#7) – I’m with you! Bringing things up like rationing might help some understand how serious what we’re facing is.
Of course pigs will fly our F-16s and bomb Libya then land on the frozen reaches of hell where Fox is fair and balanced before this happens voluntarily, or is even seriously discussed on all the major media outlets.
But being prepared for necessary triage is so much better than being broadsided that this needs to be seriously discussed.
Of course we’d have to take the train (at best) or bicycle (at best to me) to meet with our other CP soul mates to discuss the science, plan and activate our activist selves as we did at the University of Washington Botanical Gardens last summer. How about we all meet when I get Joe Romm on the docket (if he wants) as a weeklong panelist at the University of Colorado’s 65th annual Conference on World Affairs the first week in April, 2012? See you there!
Hi James @12, I would say the challenge for most people is not to understand how a nuke works day-to-day as planned, but how it potentially fails under “unlikely scenarios”. If the general public understood what happens when cooling function is lost, which sounds like something that can easily happen, and just how little time can be lost to re-establish cooling, no-one would accept the risks of the 1st generation or 2nd generation reactors.
3/25/11 LA Times reports 6 of 12 EPA radiation monitors in California designed to give immediate warnings of radiation releases from nuclear plants, including ALL THREE around Diablo Canyon, ARE NOT WORKING PROPERLY. NRC spokesman say not to worry, that the operator, PG&E, has its own radiation monitors and that the public could rely on PG&E for a warning. A PG&E spokesman was unable to tell the Times about its monitoring system or warning protocols. Somehow I’m just not getting a warm fuzzy feeling of reassurance.
Radioactive plume and Carbon dioxide are both invisible to the human eye.
And that squishy, scraping sound is George Monbiot trying to remove several litres of egg from his face… ‘Oh, look what a daring, independent free-thinker I am, I’m going to pick the week after the Fukushima disaster to announce loudly that I now fully endorse nuclear power, which is safe because I can see the future and am fully confident that my currently limited knowledge of this incident clearly delineates the full extent of the worst that can ever happen…’
You’d think you might have enough sense to wait until the smoke wasn’t billowing from the broken reactor buildings and the radionuclides were safely re-contained before throwing out hostages to fortune, would’t you? But nuclear advocates are nothing if not gung-ho! Throw caution to the winds, along with various radioactive isotopes…
Since this grand announcement we’ve had the ‘Tokyo tap-water unsafe for infants’ scare, the plant workers in hospital, Caesium and Iodine releases approaching Chernobyl levels, global food-import bans, highly-contaminated sea-water, reports of contaminated ships and travellers being identified in China, and now a clearly very disturbed Japanese PM, a confirmed probable breach in containment – and at least another month to run!
(Didn’t learn much from jumping right in over the CRU hack, did he?)
Japan Earthquake: Two Weeks Later
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/03/japan-earthquake-two-weeks-later/100034/
“… a forest which stopped the wave caused by the earthquake and tsunami”
The end of nuclear power is nigh…
with the current failure rate of nukes and the recent proliferation, and the current acceleration of extreme events, both weather and geological, and SLR … I can see another incident happening in the near future.
A world awash with hot spots.
Just lovely.
Japan to Investigate Nuclear Industry
Japanese authorities have announced a review of the country’s nuclear industry to determine whether to continue using the energy source to provide electricity. http://www.newslook.com/videos/300107-japan-to-investigate-nuclear-industry?autoplay=true
Famous anti-nuclear campaigner and physician Helen Caldicott has given a full-length interview to Radio Ecoshock, on the Japanese disaster, it’s relationship to U.S. reactors, as well as Canada and France.
She explains the crucial difference between merely measuring radiation outside the body, say with a Geiger counter, and the insidious health impacts of ingesting or breathing radioactive particles. Some of these lead not only to cancer and other diseases, but also can cause genetic changes that can damage the next generation.
The news coverage is misleading in this respect, she says.
Here is a link to my blog with audio, a link to download if you wish, and a transcript of her interview. 27 minutes, broadcast Friday March 23rd on 25 stations.
http://www.ecoshock.info/2011/03/nuclear-nightmare-continues.html
Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock
Levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the Fukushima nuclear plant are eight times higher than a week ago.
Although officials say the radiation will no longer be a risk after eight days, it is a cause for a concern because it is unclear where the leak is coming from.
There are areas of radioactive water in four of the reactors at the plant, and two workers are in hospital.
The plant’s operator says the core of a reactor may have been damaged.
It has announced that fresh water rather than sea water will now be used to cool the damaged reactors, in the hope that this will be more effective.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation was “very unpredictable”.
The official death toll from the 11 March earthquake and tsunami has passed 10,000, and more than 17,440 people are missing.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been made homeless; an estimated 250,000 people are living in emergency shelters. Food, water and fuel are in short supply.
The Japanese government has put the rebuilding cost at $309bn (£191.8bn). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12869184
well, soon they’ll have at least 15*15=225km^2 of NIMBY land to develop solar/wind power and an ecological experiment only one place in the world previously has (that would be the area around Chernobyl). interesting times, indeed. Greenpeace nuclear expert stated Fukushima to be a 7 on the scale, European experts at 6, Japanese government at 5, and TEPCO initially at 4, so the arithmetic may well be 4 = 7, as I guessed in facebook about a week ago. I’m rather expecting to see some cesium-induced deformed crabs in coming years, bottom dwelling, they’ll eat most anything that dies faster and falls to the bottom. It’s probably a good time for EU to consider mandatory radiation checks for any seafood from northern Pacific.
Someone wondered elsewhere why bring a new electric line to a damaged electric coolant pump, my guess is it can be used for new electric pumps not needing a refill of diesel/petrol, to prepare for the long term containment of the damaged reactors.
11 Wit’s End,
Things are very bad. Well, were toast. But we cant even get started, its just crazy.
One feels like an outsider still when you try to bring this topic up amongst everyday people.
No one in general seems to want to take it seriously.
Sad times.
The BBC is reporting that Iodine 131 is being measured at 1250 times the legal limit, 300 meters off shore from the complex.
As of this week, scientists have counted nearly 200 bottlenose dolphin carcasses found since mid-January along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, about half of them newly born or stillborn infants.
That tally, about 14 times the numbers averaged during that time of year between 2002 and 2007, coincides with the first dolphin calving season in the northern Gulf since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded last April.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/25/gulf-dolphin-deaths-investigation_n_840566.html
Colorado Bob #24m is that the ‘legal’ limit or the ‘lethal’ limit? I see this slowly evolving nuclear catastrophe as being alike to the financial implosion. That man-made calamity, the result of greed and blind faith in imbecilic ideology and constant media brainwashing that ‘This time it’s different’ or, my favourite ‘We seem to have abolished the business cycle’, is still slowly evolving as more funny money is produced out of thin air, as more debt gets piled up, as countries go bust and crucify their populations to rescue financial grifters and as new bubbles, new ‘asset securitisation’ scams and new chicanery are already back in vogue. Moreover, just like the nuclear debacle, the ‘authorities’ are constantly lying to befuddle the plebs that everything is under control. Even more than panic, they fear that the proles might finally wake up to how they are being led like lambs to the slaughter. And, of course, the global ecological collapse will be just the same. One crisis will exacerbate another, the synergies, the symbioses, and the interconnectedness that underlies the natural equilibrium will collapse, each one pulling the other down. These epochal disasters take millions of years to recover from, hardly a pleasant prospect. The ‘authorities’ will dispense the soma of ‘everything’s under control’ or ‘there’s nothing to get worried about’, and ‘always look on the bright side of life’, as they fortify their bunkers and redoubts. Then, one fine day, they’ll all disappear and no-one will know where they’ve gone.
Money money money
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/25/european-union-wants-nucl_n_840729.html
Mumblebrain — I really like what you said and your choice of words. My favourite is, “Nobody could have seen this coming.” Classic stuff. It seems that a consensus has formed on how corporations handle the media in disaster scenarios. This became very obvious with the BP Gulf oil fiasco. I truly became alarmed when the media reported optimistically that everything was under control. Ever since 9/11 I found that media omissions = methane emissions as the escape of burbling farts from the ugly talking heads.
If water is chanelled to sea or if cannon main runoff stream are found; the channel can be enacted or a point of existing runoff located, that is most suitable for later capturing the water in a tanker or train, for removal away from site. Maybe all water is already quick surface runoff to sea.
The are pools of water everywhere on site. As lonog as the aquifer isn’t confined or otherwise under pressure (known aquifer behaviour may be altered from quakes/wave), if a hole is drilled near a pool (or under the pool or drilled and water channeled to the hole), the water will seep beeath the powerplant under a soil shield. If the water table rises or if dry surface soil wicks water up, it would be the equivalent of putting the powerplant on lava. If the soil is clay or otherwise poor drainage, the volume of the hole may be the only volume removed. A high water table would limit water volume buried as well. If a way of removing and storing water from random pools is soon found, previously putting it underground would ruin such a contingency.
Reactor #3 is extreme radiation source and reactor #4 cooling pond was and potentially extreme. Mass between buildings #2 and #3 for starters, would contain individual plant radiation sources. IDK magnitude of radiation from these sources. 5ft of concrete provide non-trivial shielding? 25ft? Lead curtains could be brought inside the plants (at least somewhat intact #2) and changed out periodically. I wish the were stackable cars; stackable lego cinder blocks are hollow. Vehicles brought between the plants and filled with water or concrete (or?) would provide some line-of-sight protection for neighbouring plants. IDK about obstructing intra-plant transportation paths. Heavy vehicles placed near adjacent plant walls (ie, South #2 and North #3) would provide exterior forms of a dyke/ridge concrete/sand/soil slab formed by cement/dump trucks or a train. To my knowledge this is a labour intensive but even derelict buses can be used to form part of a dyke. Wouldn’t want to collape reactor ruins (aftershock). I don’t think air dropping mass is safe.
The Japanese government announced that cattle should not be allowed to graze, crops shouldn’t be harvested over a large area. And they widened the evacuation zone yesterday/today (Saturday in Japan). On an island nation that is dependent upon its own food production.
For what? A source of energy that is more expensive than solar or wind? Why? Because some engineer wanted to see if it could be done?
Nuclear energy is insanity. I understand why these were built 40 years ago; but why today?
Rob (#31) – I agree, “Nobody could have seen this coming” is a classic. That’s what both Bush and Bill Clinton (to his shame) said after Katrina.
Nobody could have seen that coming, except anyone who read or saw any of the National Geographic, Discovery or History Channel articles or shows about what a powerful hurricane would do if it hit New Orleans.
Actually a 9.0 within 75 miles followed by a 30 foot tsunami (tsunamis tend to rebound off steeper shorelines, seeking bays estuaries and rivers unless they came from something like recorded history’s fourth largest earthquake so close) during the lifetime of those power plants is a far bigger outlier than a Category 3 (by landfall) hurricane hitting New Orleans in its lifetime. Geologists didn’t think that part of that subduction zone could generate an earthquake that big, and if it could they probably thought it wouldn’t be likely for hundreds or more likely thousands of years.
Not that that is any excuse, but nuclear is dangerous enough without overreaching (not that you are, but others have and let’s leave that to the Republicans), which hurts our valid arguments. There are myriad reasons not to like nuclear (and more myriad reasons not to like coal), but a 9.0 earthquake and accompanying tsunami anywhere other than a Ring of Fire subduction zone earthquake is probably not among them. The big New Madrid earthquake of 1811 was a 7.8, around 40 times less powerful.
I opposed the Trojan nuclear power plant on the Columbia west of Portland that closed in 1985, which is a good thing because it’s in prime liquefaction zone in alluvial soils that shake like jelly, magnifying any earthquake. At the time it was built and even decommissioned it was thought that Oregon couldn’t have large earthquakes until they found the evidence for the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake that generates a 9.0 every few hundred years, the last coming in 1700 (a 9.0 that sent the “Orphan Tsunami” across the Pacific to Japan in a mirror image of this event).
You build enough nuclear power plants, especially with outdated designs (a nuclear physicist friend of mine says you don’t judge the safety of the safest current cars by the safety standards of the Model T) and you’re going to get problems.
Essentially all of Oregon’s oil is stored in extremely vulnerable large tanks also in alluvial soils, this time the Willamette in NW Portland, and when the Cascadia earthquake hits those will surely break and not only create an environmental nightmare everywhere downstream (essentially destroying the Sauvie Island habitat, where a decades long anti-oil, anti-car activist friend of mine lives on a motorless sailboat with a folding bike), but Oregon won’t have access to sufficient oil to rebuild for months (maybe by that time years, or ever).
And all the fossil fuels will create climate change crisis that together within decades will make even the one in Japan look small by comparison, and within a century or two the totality will make the situation in Japan look very small indeed. So I’m with you opposing nuclear, but we need to oppose fossil fuels even more.
I would be a lot more open to nuclear as a partial solution to non-GHG energy production if we had stringent governmental regulation and strict safety standards. But it appears that in both the US and Japan that the industry has captured the regulators and weakened safety standards. Citizens United just makes the political situation worse.
Huge anti-nuclear protests in Germany and Greens to claim a state prime-ministership from Merkel’s party for the first time in 63 years on the back of the issue?
The industry and its camp followers may be spinning enough to run a turbine, but with today’s dreadful news from Fukushima – and every day of further bad news that passes – it’s hard to see how this technology can ever recover whatever public confidence it may have had, let alone become the low-carbon wave of the future…
Tepco reports via Reuters that the water on the floor of reactor 2 is now 10 million times the normal level (up from 10 thousand times since yesterday) and that sea contamination has risen from 1,250 times the legal limit to 1,850.
Happy talk from govt about how ioding decays out in a fortnight while being diluted, so it won’t be ingested by fish and seaweed. No info on caesium, cobalt, plutonium, etc.
Given that there haven’t been any intense pressure spikes (reported) in R2 in recent days, the most likely leak is in piping, due to the ultra corrosive effect of seawater chlorine in steam on stainless steel. Quite why they took two weeks, rather than two days, to get fresh-water barges to the site is a question that needs asking of Tepco, of the Japanese prime minister, and of the secretary general of the IAEA, any of whom could have required it.
If this leak is due to the prolongued avoidable use of seawater for cooling, then all three have been culpably negligent in massively compounding the problems.
How does one even start replacing corroded pipework under those conditions ?
Let alone maintaining the supply of cooling water to prevent a total meltdown of many tonnes of fuel rods and zirconium casings ?
And what is to be done with an outflow of water that contaminated ?
Regards,
Lewis
Current radiation levels in Tokyo are .115 microsieverts per hour. This works out to about 1mSv per year if this unusually high amount of background radiation persists. You may be surprised to know that this is about one third of the average amount of background radiation Americans receive in a year. In other words, the elevated radiation we are currently receiving in central Tokyo is far less than the average American receives in the US. Those of you who are frightened about the situation here should get on a plane and fly here so that you can reduce your exposure to natural background radiation.
The situation at the Fukushima reactors is not optimal and the appropriate accounting for mistakes and adjusting will need to be done when the crisis ends. Start pointing your fingers then.
As for Lewis’ criticisms about taking two weeks to get freshwater to the Fukushima site, does he have the faintest idea as to what happened here? More than 20,000 people are dead and more than 500,000 are homeless and dealing with that disaster was the first priority and this problem at the Fukushima plant was secondary in comparison. Should the government have ignored all of the human suffering in order to respond to the situation at Fukushima?
A close friend and colleague buried three relatives today, all young children and victims of the tsunami. This is what people here are focused on and they are angry that people like you are focused on this. Continue to focus on a problem that will be of little long term consequence here and absolutely none there.