Earthquake in Japan

[degrub]

Brian,

some very similar thoughts on BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12860842

[Evildead666]

NHK world is reporting erroniously that 1200x the normal level of radioactive iodine has been detected 330km south of the plant in the seawater instead of 330m as was said before.
Its an audio only error probably (I can't read japanese).
I just watched NHK now to check if it had been modified, it hasn't.

I mean FFS, you're translating to the world, and repeating the translated error.

THIS is what creates panic. Correct information given in a timely manner is key here.

[Evildead666]

true enough, by itself. But with real time "data" you have to interpret it - it is not just the absolute value that matters in most ER cases, it is the dosage that counts. That is where the judgment of the IC comes into play on ordering evacuations, exclusion zones, and coordinating the response.

Clearly the IC did not do a good enough job communicating in this case - part cultural, part just not knowing what is happening, and part not wanting to create a panic which often causes unnecessary harm of itself. IC in ER is about making reasonable and conservative decisions in the face of sparse and sometimes conflicting information and managing the message that is communicated while many others are speculating and spouting.

Been there.

One of the Japanese towns is so confident with what they have been (not) told they are hiring an independent nuclear expert to explain it to them because they don't have the information they want from the people who are giving it to them at the moment.

The way it is being explained to them, they believe they are being kept in the dark.
Without total transparency on this, people will continue to panic the world over, and politicians will continue to use it for their own means.

edit : I'm sure, with the real-time data, we can all find someone with a good brain on the subject to explain things rationally. With only one or so sources, and bad translations/explanations, the only outcome is speculation.
With hard data, there should be no speculation, its there, in numbers. Live. (Should be anyways).

[Evildead666]

Tepco have apologised for getting the information wrong, stating that the radiation levels in the N°2 reactor water had reached 10 Million times the normal levels.
They have stuck by the measures they stated of 1000 milliSieverts/hour, or 1Sv/Hr.

From the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12875327

[Brian Ellis]

I have added a section "Fukushima: 4 weeks later" to http://www.cypenv.info/worldee/files...fukushima.aspx

[UtwigMU]

Japan raised accident level to 7 (Chernobyl) and asked some places outside 20km to evacuate. People in 20-30km zone are being asked to prepare for evacuation.

They have power going and are injecting water into reactors.

[Evildead666]

They had a thing on NHKWorld on sunday with a Doctor and another guy, and he was asking about the total release of radioisotopes, including the ones that hadn't been disclosed in the news.

Increasing the evacuation area is good, but they have 4 weeks to do so iirc.
From what I saw, the new evacuation zone is beyond the 30km zone. It basically follows where the prevailing winds have been dropping radioactive particles and gases, like Litate, the town the UN said should be evacuated.
The UN said it was 2x their limit for evacuation. They measure differently to the Japanese.
The Japanese now say it is 3x their limit of 5000 Bq/kg of soil, and that people should be evacuated within the month.

[Brian Ellis]

In the light of the new INES rating, that has not been ratified by the IAEA, I have added yet one more section, somewhat more accusatory, to my page.

[VJ]

I would just like to comment on the text on your page:

At the same time, they have announced that they will examine closely the safety of existing power stations, in the light of the Fukushima "disaster". This implies that the politicians who have made these announcements have jumped to the conclusion that what happened at Fukushima was, in fact, an environmental disaster caused by an earthquake.
....
There was one design error that was the cause of all the subsequent problems of radiation leakage
....
It is unlikely that this would have happened with a modern plant
...

I don't agree with the implies as highlighted in the text.
The main problem at Fukushima was caused by "side effects" of some event (in this case an earthquake) and might not have occurred with a slightly similar design (as you write).

In a way, it does not matter what triggers the "side effects": in some locations it might be an earthquake, for others a dam breaking, a landslide or whatever. Not all plants in use are modern plants, so there might be plants out there that have design flaws that may give similar issues - if not triggered by an earthquake then by some event that is possible at the location.

It basically implies that politicians want to make sure the plants are safe for possible side effects at the plants location. Fukushima showed that some small changes to the design could greatly improve safety and robustness for side-effects of whatever event is possible to happen near the powerplant.

Just my 2c..

[Umfriend]

"Slightly similar" as in "mostly different"? :d

[Brian Ellis]

In a way, you are right. The points I was making are that a) modern nuclear plants are earthquake-proof and b) that politicians jumped in with both feet that the disaster was caused directly by the earthquake. If the latter were the case, it would be a paradox. I agree flooding could be caused by other than a tsunami under conditions particular to individual sites. The sequitur to my argument is that governments of countries with nuclear power stations (and other types) should evaluate the risk that may be caused by unusual flooding, knowing that the risks from earthquakes themselves are quasi-zero. That is why I mentioned hydroelectric dams that may be potentially more catastrophic than nuclear power stations (look at the mortality statistics from dam failures). Personally, I would feel a lot safer next to a nuclear power station than downstream from even a relatively small dam.

Heaven forbid, but think what would happen if the Three Gorges dam failed for whatever cause: >1 million dead in 20 minutes and >10 million dead in 6 hours.

It is impossible to generate GW of electricity without some form of risk. Engineers try to foresee and mitigate the risk. In the case of Fukushima, they foresaw the risk of an earthquake but not of a major flood caused by a record-breaking monster tsunami.

[VJ]

I see your point about the dams... but it is difficult to compare statistics: dams have been around for a much longer time and with much more primitive technologies... A dam break also poses less long term effects (no contaminated land or so), but your Three Gorges example would indeed be a catastrophy beyond comparison.

It is impossible to generate GW of electricity without some form of risk. Engineers try to foresee and mitigate the risk. In the case of Fukushima, they foresaw the risk of an earthquake but not of a major flood caused by a record-breaking monster tsunami.

The sad thing is that there could have been some simple changes to the design that might have made it possible to even cope with the tsunami.

Impossible is a big word... but at the moment I agree with you: wind farms and solar energy just require too much area to be a full alternative. But it is improving: if the electricity generation would be more spread out over small generators, it could be possible. The net energy production could be less as less will be lost in the powerlines. As an example consider the solar panels my father has installed. They generate over 5000 kW per year, which is more than enough to support his household. While at this time it needs a powergrid (to put excess power on it and get power back when the panels don't generate enough), the systems exist to make your house fully self supporting by storing excess energy for when your panels don't generate. Granted, the surface area of the panels per person is too big to make it viable in a city (the roofs of the apartment buildings are not big enough ), but this at a large scale could reduce the number of risk-prone powerplants.
But to reiterate, I agree the technology is not quite there yet, and big structural changes will have to be made to make it work.

A professor of mine always says we should put research on many things on hold and fully invest in research for nuclear fusion: it is proven to be possible, and the sooner we can get it to work the better it will be.

[Brian Ellis]

Re dams: there have been quite a number of failure mechanisms causing deaths. One of the problems is that, once a dam wall is breached, positive feedback ensures that it gets progressively worse. Known mechanisms (two or more may be combined):
- earthquake breaking dam wall (Fréjus)
- earthquake causing a water rush over the wall (mini-tsunami)
- overflow due to excessive water retained (Turkey)
- weight of water causing dam wall to break lateral anchorage (Rawyl*)
- lateral anchorages ceded in friable rock (Fréjus)
- nearby tunneling (Rawyl*)
- freak tempest emptying reservoir (happened in China)
- half a mountain falling into reservoir (N. Italy - could happen in 3-Gorges)
- block of glacier falling into reservoir (Mattmark)
- domino effect when upstream dam fails (China)
- landslide damming water upstream and ceding (China)
- penstock failure (Val d'Anniviers)
- methane explosion caused by silting (Egypt)
* The Rawyl affair was a near-disaster: the Loetschberg tunnel was being bored ~100 m from the dam and it is surmised that the vibration in the rock broke the lateral anchorages with the weight of the water behind it. The whole dam moved downstream ~6 cm. Fortunately, they had time to emergency-empty the reservoir before it ceded, as there is a 50,000-inhabitant town a few km downstream. Interestingly, the fault was revealed from a satellite.

A dam burst can cause long term damage by scouring fertile soil down to bedrock.

I agree renewables where possible but the grids can support only ~20% RES capacity, otherwise a rapid unexpected (<24 h) weather change can cause instability, leading to wide area blackouts. The only practical large capacity storage method is pumped hydroelectric storage and this is very limited in the number of places where it can be done.

Experts agree that fusion is still a pipedream. The ITER prototype project probably will not come on line with a positive energy output before about 2050, 2045 at the earliest, and this is the most advanced.

[Evildead666]

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/

there is lots of info here. Up to date as well.
Japan Atomic Industry Forum.

[Evildead666]

A little update is needed I think, what with the DSK affair, and Libya, they have had it quiet

A release from Tepco about what happened two months ago :

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110515e10.pdf

A little video from a guy at Fairewinds has some sombre news :

http://vimeo.com/23680177

Basically, Reactor 1 had a near complete meltdown 16Hrs after the quake. The reactor pressure vessel is pierced, and the container vessel is cracked/pierced also. Both are leaking radioactive water from the core, or whats left of it.
Reactor 2 is leaking 'like a sieve'.
Reactor 3 is possibly becoming critical again, as it has been heating up in the lest few days, and another Hydrogen explosion is likely. The spent fuel pool in the Number 3 reactor is in a very bad shape.
Reactor 4 storage pool is fine, the building housing it though is slanting like the tower of pisa.

The biggie is that the plant has dropped a foot down into the ground.
One explanation for this, is the core of Number 1 (and/or others) having gone through the reactor, and containment vessel, and into the concrete foundations of the plant. Once cracked, water would be seeping into the ground underneath, literally liquefying it, maybe even eroding it as the water finds a channel out to sea.
Not where the water is getting through, but the general consensus is that the radioactive water is flooding the groundwater at the site, especially after a few 10's of thousands of tonnes of water have been pumped in there.

I'm surprised there aren't people from around the whole world over there helping to sort this out.