Japan - 9.0 Earthquake-Tsunami -Reactor Status, 2011 #6

[Quiche]

Smoke rises from control panel at TEPCO nuclear plant in Niigata

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85943.html

Okay, is it just because we're all looking? Does stuff like this happen? Good grief!!

 

[Quiche]

Fukushima seawater radioactivity rises inside containment fence

Quote: The company said the level of radioactive iodine rose Saturday morning to 260 becquerels per cubic centimeter in seawater inside the fence near an intake leading to the No. 2 reactor.

The figure, 6,500 times the legal limit, was around six times the 42 becquerels detected the previous day, the company said, adding the reading of radioactive cesium had also jumped by four times.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85935.html

 

[Daisyjane]

I'm not seeing anything that would indicate a pool, other than the title.

eta: here's a more thorough pictorial-- watch the little video first.

http://martynwilliams.posterous.com/spent-fuel-pools-at-fukushima-daiichi

Here's what the first few lines/links on that page say:

A picture taken from the concrete pumping vehicle of the spent fuel rod pool of Unit3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Video analyzing Spent Fuel Rod Pool of Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant

 

[essies]

[video=youtube;SbP9B4TVsT4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbP9B4TVsT4[/video]

Tokyo Electric Power Company says the level of radioactive water is increasing in a tunnel at the No.2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The large amount of contaminated water in basements and tunnels is hampering operations to restore the plant's cooling systems.

On Wednesday, TEPCO finished transferring some of the wastewater -- about 660 tons -- from the No.2 reactor tunnel to a condenser in a turbine building.

It says the water level in the tunnel dropped 8 centimeters after the transfer, but had returned to its previous level by Friday morning.

Earlier this month, TEPCO found highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a pit near the No.2 reactor.

The utility suspects that plugging the leak has trapped radioactive water from the No.2 reactor in the tunnel.

TEPCO says there are at least 50,000 tons of contaminated water at the plant. It will use a waste-processing facility, makeshift storage tanks and a floating tank to store the radioactive water.

The company is also preparing for a possible shutdown of external power sources, as major aftershocks continue. It plans to finish moving emergency diesel power generators to higher ground on Friday to protect them from tsunami.

Friday, April 15, 2011

 

[Niner]

Essies - on the videos you posted... unbelievable!! 2 Questions: WHERE in the heck are they going to put ALL this debris??? :waitasec:
and... how in the heck are they going to move all those BIG ships to the water??
Couldn't believe the one with the car on top of a house, which is on top of an apartment building!!
and again - I want thank ALL the people posting links here!! :seeya:

 

[coastal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/world/asia/17cleanup.html

Nuclear Cleanup Plans Hinge on Unknowns
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: April 16, 2011

>>>(madly) snipped

...A global team led by Hitachi said Thursday that it would take at least three decades to return the site to what engineers refer to as a “green field” state, meaning within legal limits of radiation for any residents. Toshiba, Japan’s biggest supplier of nuclear reactors, said it could take as little as 10 years...

...Billions of dollars are likely to be at stake in the cleanup, which could help Hitachi and Toshiba buoy their sinking bottom lines. The two said last week that annual profits would fall short of their forecasts because of the widespread disruptions in production and supply chains caused by the disaster.

...

Still, Toshiba’s engineers expect the plant to stabilize “in several months,” Mr. Sasaki said, and for full-scale cooling to resume. It would be five years before engineers would be able to open the pressure vessels to remove the nuclear fuel, he said, and dismantling the reactors and cleaning up radiation at the plant would take at least another five years...

...

A Hitachi spokesman in Tokyo, Yuichi Izumisawa, said that the 10-year projection was overly optimistic. He said that Hitachi’s engineers expected it to take that long just to remove the nuclear fuel rods from the plant and place them in casks to transport to a safe storage facility.

Only then can the dismantling of the plant’s structures begin, he said, followed by the cleanup of the remaining radiation.

...

(article continues)

<<<snip

Really? The "experts" opinions on cleanup differ by 20 years, but everybody can agree that there are billions of dollars - up for grabs?

This disgusts me. Who gives a happy damn about some "bottom line" in the face of such a thing? Really! Really?

I want to hide under the bed.

 

[Daisyjane]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/86072.html

TOKYO, April 17, Kyodo
The following is the gist of steps Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced Sunday that it will take to bring under control the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

:STEP 1 (In roughly three months)
-- Filling containment vessels of Nos. 1, 3 reactors with water.
-- Sealing with sticky cement part in No. 2 reactor's containment vessel believed breached.
-- Injecting nitrogen into Nos. 2, 3 reactors to avoid possible hydrogen explosion.
-- Restoring circulatory cooling system for spent fuel pools.
-- Installing facility to decontaminate highly tainted water and purify seawater.

STEP 2 (In roughly six to nine months)
-- Bringing reactors into stable condition known as 'cold shutdown'.
-- Blanketing buildings housing Nos. 1, 3, 4 reactors with covering.

MIDTERM GOALS
-- Extracting fuel assemblies from pools holding spent fuel.
-- Covering reactor buildings with containers, such as those using concrete.

 

[Quiche]

Not much about the current status of the plant-- seems many sources ran with the same story Daisy posted, above. I'm frustrated, and not ready to hear a step by step, since they haven't quit stumbling yet! jmo

 

[Daisyjane]

Not much about the current status of the plant-- seems many sources ran with the same story Daisy posted, above. I'm frustrated, and not ready to hear a step by step, since they haven't quit stumbling yet! jmo

Yeah, the news has really dried up over the last week or so, and I doubt that's a good sign. You know, like when the kids or pets get too quiet, it usually means they need to be checked on.

 

[Verity]

Well here's a curious thing:

Mike and Dutch (You Tube: patrioticspace) made a video that starts with looking at the storms of the last couple of days and a connection with HAARP rings/ weather manipulation, but bear with it, because 10 minutes in they show a couple of maps of the radiation plume from Japan, and a discrepancy between public and private files:
YouTube - patrioticspace's Channel

I didn't know what to make of all this, so I watched an earlier video in which Mike calls the EPA asking for information about testing rain water and well water for Cesium 137. He complains that the rainwater was burning his skin for about 10 minutes on Friday. http://youtu.be/IQhWsIbYYXA

 

[Quiche]

I'm not sure I understand any of those youtubes. jmo

 

[essies]

[video=youtube;TgupMRj_4vk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgupMRj_4vk[/video]
New data released by the EPA show three of the five highest readings for radioactive iodine in the U.S. are in the Philadelphia drinking water supply.

A blogger on Forbes first spotted the data on Sunday in a database of water tests posted on the EPA Web site.

Read All Findings at: www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html#water

The EPA site shows the effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident on American supplies of milk and water.

The EPA said in a previous statement "detections in air, precipitation, and milk were expected, and the levels detected have been far below levels of public-health concern."

However, some scientists don't agree with the EPA guidelines on radiation. The Physicians for Social Responsibility, a prominent anti-nuclear group, believes there is no safe level of exposure to radiation .

The EPA says the most common source of Iodine-131 from the "fission of uranium atoms during operation of nuclear reactors and by plutonium (or uranium) in the detonation of nuclear weapons."

The newest data release has samples from 66 sites across the U.S. and 21 sites picked up traces of Iodine-131 in the water supply.

The sample from Philadelphia's Queen Lane Treatment Plant showed 2.2 picoCuries per liter&#8212;the highest drinking-water level shown in the U.S. after the Fukushima accident.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/radioactive-iodine-in-philly-w...

Dr. Mike: Iodine 131 In Philly's Water

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/good_day_philadelphia/doctor_mike/Radioactive_...

 

[coastal]

April 12, 2011 is the latest collection date of the data published here (your link, above):

http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html#all

- which was five days ago.
:waitasec:

It's still a great link, so thanks for posting it!

 

[Verity]

essies, great link, thanks.

To get this into perspective, using a "safe" limit of 100 millisiverts per year, I converted the old system of picocuries (pCi) , (still used in the US on your link to measure radiation levels), to the new International system of "intensity millisieverts". By my calculations:

100 millisieverts = 0.1 millicuries = 100,000,000 picocuries

The worse rain April 4th was measured at 190 picocuries = 0.0000019 millisieverts. There are 8,760 hours in a year (365x24), which equates to 0.016644 millisieverts per year.

At that rate, it only needs the rate to increase by 600 times, and a person would have reached the 100 millisieverts threshold and could reasonably expect to have some long term health issues, possibly cancer.

I have never done this before, so please correct me if this is wrong.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/occup-travail/radiation/dosim/res-centre/conversion-eng.php

http://online.unitconverterpro.com/...a/convert.php?cat=radiation---dose-equivalent

and the radiation chart: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

I don't have a link for it yet, but a friend just told me France is telling pregnant women to be careful and stop the intake of fresh milk and large leaf vegetables.

 

[Kat]

Hi everyone! I haven't been able to come to WS for about a week except here and there, and it will be a few more weeks before I can check in daily as I usually do (nothing negative going on just have a lot on my plate right now).

Question please? Is there a trusted website that is giving levels of radiation that is reporting levels of radiation (daily, weekly---etc.) in other parts of the world besides Japan? I'm just curious, not worried. I live much closer to Japan than many here and I wanted to know the levels because of agriculture and livestock and by products of the livestock----curious minds want to know

Thanks for keeping this thread up to date this helps not only me but I'm sure a lot of guests that come for info.

 

[Verity]

Here's a link a Huffpost article about the French Research Institute mentioned above, with a couple of additional links in the comments. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/socia...verity-level-chernobyl_n_847849_84276278.html

Kat, I don't know of any other monitoring closer to Japan than the US, sorry, but I'm listening to the French. I'm in an area of the US with one of the higher readings April 4th, so i think it's time to make the same lifestyle changes I did 23 years ago in Europe when I found myself under the Chernobyl radiation rain storm.

I think I am going to get a RadSticker though, more to keep myself calm than anything else. I'd rather know. http://www.ki4u.com/products1.php

 

[coastal]

Hi everyone! I haven't been able to come to WS for about a week except here and there, and it will be a few more weeks before I can check in daily as I usually do (nothing negative going on just have a lot on my plate right now).

Question please? Is there a trusted website that is giving levels of radiation that is reporting levels of radiation (daily, weekly---etc.) in other parts of the world besides Japan? I'm just curious, not worried. I live much closer to Japan than many here and I wanted to know the levels because of agriculture and livestock and by products of the livestock----curious minds want to know

Thanks for keeping this thread up to date this helps not only me but I'm sure a lot of guests that come for info.

I don't know if any of these are quite what you're looking for, Kat, but since I found them, here they are:

Here's a link to the Health Protection Agency (looks like the UK version of the FDA):
http://www.hpa.org.uk/

HPA'a latest weekly-updated report re: radiation levels in England and Scotland:
http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2011PressReleases/110414Fukushimaupdate/

US FDA's list of standards for radionucleotides in food, here:
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm247403.htm

World Health Organization/ Western Pacific Region - daily reports on food safety and water quality, here:
http://www.wpro.who.int/sites/eha/disasters/2011/jpn_earthquake/list.htm

 

[Quiche]

Ban lifted on more Fukushima milk shipments

Quote: The government lifted its ban on shipment of raw milk from another 25 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110418a6.html

:tsktsk:

 

[dsntslp]

Any word on the High Point Reactor in NC?
I was looking at pics of damage in NC due to tornadoes and I swear one of those pics has that reactor looking like it is sitting slanted...

Looking for the pic to link so what I am saying can be seen, I tried to screen shot and it was protected.

 

[dsntslp]

I can't find it, sorry.