Ahab passes along these links:
This NHK World feed
http://jibtv.com/program/?page=0
I have no idea how this shit works. The above is the 512k feed, but I’m not sure if it’s a functional lnk.
Below is a link to the NHK World website with the embedded 128k 256k stream:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
and the ustream link for same:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv
This is not good.
cathyx
No, it’s not good but your links are working.
Eastriver
Meh. Mutation is the spice of life. Literally.
Everyone go see Rango. Best film of the year!
D. Mason
Soooo what you’re saying is that we’re going to war with japan for using a nukular IED on our rescue troops?
Corner Stone
You’re gonna hat tip Ahab but not eemom?
I smell Blogdamonium ahead!!
Comrade Mary
It’s not good at all. The Metafilter threads are killing my computer, but I keep reloading them to see what’s happening. I’ll bring back anything useful I can find.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Obviously, the nuclear industry in Japan needed more loan guarantees from the government.
.
.
hilts
2 more good sources of information
http://www.beyondnuclear.org
http://www.nukefree.org
srv
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html
#2 plants rods were clearly exposed for awhile and it appears to be getting worse after an interior explosion. The reactor is at 1 atmosphere, so it’s leaking. The 50 or so guys trying to keep the water going into it are getting to exposed to whatever is in there. I’m presuming the cooling effort is going to require manual labor for quite some time.
fuzed
Rachel Maddow’s covering the nuclear situation pretty thoroughly tonite.
srv
And they also have on-site storage of fuel rods (uranium and plutonium) elsewhere on the plant and they don’t know if they’re going to maintain water levels there.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Imagine how much worse the situation would be had the Japanese government not achieved a historic bipartisan compromise with the nuclear industry.
.
.
Xboxershorts
The overall impression I get is that they totally lost #2. The outside bldg is gone. The suppression pool (salt water feed) has no cover and is leaching radiation.
GenIII Nuclear reactors that use dense nuclear fuels have this……shortcoming.
We have a meltdown with exposed dense nuclear fuel.
Fuck.
Yutsano
@Xboxershorts: I hope this is not as dire as it sounds. Otherwise Sendai will become a wasteland.
hilts
Good backgrounder post
How Black is the Japanese Nuclear Swan?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7638
patrick II
According to FDL a problem may exist with spent fuel rods stored on sight. The rods are stored in water filled pools on the upper floor of each reactor. If the water evaporates or the pools are damaged by the explosions, the rods will overheat and burn off radioactive fumes and particles.
Although the amount of spent fuel is currently unknown, there may be as much as twenty years of radioactive waste still stored in the onsite pools at the nuclear facilities.
srv
So I think it’s time for that vitamin/potassium supplement comment again – what those of us in the left coast should be taking presuming plant #2 is going to be doing a low-level Chernobyl for the next few years.
Pigs & Spiders
I hate to sound like that guy, but I just don’t see this getting farther than a completely ruined reactor site. Exposed rods is bad, but not that bad. A lot of that “secondary” radiation is able to pretty quickly dissipate itself. They still aren’t getting levels of radiation that kill. Someone feel free to point me to news to the contrary, but most of what I’ve read all day on this has been more sensation than anything else.
freelancer
Since this is an OT, Beware Doug Hill, you’re about to agree with Rush Limbaugh in laughing at Bobo:
Cat Lady
“Uncharted territory”. Not what you want to hear if you’re in Japan, or anywhere for that matter. Wind is now shifting from offshore to the west, since mother nature has decided that northeastern Japan has not suffered enough. Is there such a thing as karma for an entire population? Holy fucking shit.
Xboxershorts
We all hope this.
GenIII reactors have this weakness.
Yutsano
Okay who broke the Balloon Juice?
asiangrrlMN
@Eastriver: I had to look that up. Johnny Depp? I’m there!
Mark S.
@patrick II:
I don’t know anything about nuclear reactors, but isn’t a little counter-intuitive to store fuel rods in the upper parts of the reactor if they need to be submerged in water?
Mark S.
@Yutsano:
That was a scary three minutes where I couldn’t get the site to load.
hilts
Overview and Analysis from The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
http://www.ieer.org/comments/Daiichi-Fukushima-reactors_IEERstatement.pdf
geg6
Just checking in with more detail on my friend and her sons who live in Japan. Dawn (my friend) is safe but cold and miserable and at a shelter in the base gym at Masawa AFB. Her two sons had left Masawa last Thursday to attend two separate sporting events in two separate parts of Japan, the older, Zach, to a basketball tournament in Tokyo and Alex, only 15, to a soccer tournament in a place I’m not clear on but well south and west of the worst of it. The boys were frantic to get to mom, but travel to the northeast is impossible (and no way can Dawn get out of Masawa at this point. The boys have since found each other and are being housed at a military base (not sure where) and are waiting to either go in to get mom or do what they can to get her out. At least the boys are together and they’ve got contact with mom. A relief all the way around but, if I was them, I’d still be freaking out until my family was all together. My heart goes out to the poor Japanese people. A perfect storm of shit has hit them and it’s just astonishing and too sad and scary for words.
Yutsano
@geg6: My guess considering where they were when everything hit is Yokosuka, assuming there was little to no damage to the harbor or the docks there. Hopefully they all stay well and Mom gets to her kids soon.
Martin
@Pigs & Spiders: Well, in general I think you’re pretty correct, however the radiation levels are going to be high enough that nobody can really go in there to work on it. That’s going to mean dumping concrete on it until the problem goes away. Not easy under the circumstances – and they better fucking pray there isn’t a large aftershock and tsunami to wash away all of that now exposed material.
AhabTRuler
#4 reactor is burning.
patrick II
@Mark S.:
Yes it is. It is from an old design and the idea, as I understand it, was so that a crane could lift spent fuel rods out of the core and quickly place them in the cooling pool. It is not the way it is done anymore.
hilts
@freelancer:
Rush Limbaugh is a useless blob of protoplasm and a malignant media carcinogen
Rush Limbaugh: ‘The Media Wants A Disaster In Japan’
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-limbaugh-the-media-wants-a-disaster-in-japan
srv
liveblogging NHK here.
Fukushima #4 is on fire now. The commentary is contradictory, about whether it just has rods that are in the storage pool or in the reactor itself. But it’s leaking radiation.
#1, #2, #3 water injection still continuing “smoothly” and cooling.
Martin
@Mark S.: Yeah, actually. But it’s a usable place inside of the containment area.
These plants were designed with the notion that a way to deal with the waste would be developed. Alas, we’re seeing the outcome the anti-nuke folks were playing for.
AhabTRuler
Radiation near reactors 2 & 3 is ~100 milliSieverts.
srv
Japanese PM – If you aren’t out of the 20 km zone, don’t go the fuck outside.
AhabTRuler
@srv: Yeah, avoid radiation that may pass your way.
Yutsano
OT but uh-oh, teh Tea Party is having a fit.
srv
Cabinet speaker: “very high probability” #2 pressure vessel is damaged.
geg6
@Yutsano:
Well, Dawn lives within a mile of Masawa AFB and is a DoD teacher there. So she immediately went to the base and has been there since. Am told conditions are bad there but not nearly what they are seeing in Sendai. I don’t have a clue if anyone will let the boys travel north, though. And based on the video I’ve seen of the infrastructure in the north and the fact that they have not had a bunch of ships or even planes getting civilians off the base, I’m sceptical she’ll get out any time soon. Too many other humanitarian emergencies at the moment, I’m thinking.
srv
@AhabTRuler: Earlier, one of the guys said don’t breathe if you are outside.
Neutron Flux
@AhabTRuler: Are you finding this information from the links that Doug J posted?
Pigs & Spiders
@AhabTRuler: Which, it’s worth pointing out, is a shitload less than the amount required to even make you sick.
Yutsano
@geg6: Best chance is to hope the kids can squeeze on a hop north or she can catch one south at some point. I’m certain there are a few aircraft connections going in between, but if the radiation levels are getting as bad as they fear then they might be separated for some time.
Martin
@AhabTRuler: 100? Last I read it was a bit over 10. IIRC, 100 over 2 days would be quite lethal.
Comrade Mary
PM and Edano speaking on Japanese tv: there’s a spent fuel rod fire at No. 4. Everyone within 19 miles to remain indoors.
Quoting various people at Metafilter:
I have no idea how accurate these quotes are.
Live NHK in English here.
hilts
US embassy cables: MP criticises Japanese nuclear strategy
h/t http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/175295
Good commentary from the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/14/fukushima-nuclear-industry
srv
@Neutron Flux: I think we’re both watching the NHK feed I linked to above. Hit play on “NOW ON AIR”
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html
AhabTRuler
@Neutron Flux: I am getting this from NHK World, same as SRV, same as the links I sent to John.
@Pigs & Spiders: What happens happens, but it still represents a new data point.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Gilbert Gottfried Fired by AFLAC.
The 11 year voice of the AFLAC duck was fired today for making humorous tweets about the Tsunami in Japan.
http://tinyurl.com/4lfcemk
Everyone is so touchy, these days.
Martin
@Pigs & Spiders: No it’s not. It’s the equivalent of 7 chest x-rays hitting you simultaneously and continuously.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Reactor operator confirms fire near reactor building of Daiichi No.4 unit
http://twitter.com/Reuters
Neutron Flux
@AhabTRuler: I found a converter to change sieverts to Rem. I am more familiar with REM. 100 milisieverts = 10 Rem. 10 Rem is a big number
AhabTRuler
@Neutron Flux: Yup. This is not good and getting worse. Really scary shit.
asiangrrlMN
@Mike Kay (True Grit): When I saw this and read that he was the voice of the AFLAC duck, I realized why that dingdang duck always annoyed me so.
@geg6: My thoughts go out to your friend, her sons, and all of Japan. This is almost incomprehensible.
cyd
@Pigs & Spiders: Bear in mind that this reactor isn’t situated out in the middle of nowhere—they’ve evacuated 200,000 local residents during this crisis. Those residents won’t be able to safely return if this plant is going to be emitting low-level radiation for the forseeable future. It doesn’t have to be a Chernobyl to be a major fiasco.
srv
Looked it up, the average yearly dose for a human is a couple of milliSieverts/yr (cosmic, crustal, radon, food, etc exposure).
#4 is at 400/hr.
hilts
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Gilbert Gottfried is an insult to comedians who are actually funny
Neutron Flux
@Comrade Mary: 400 miliseiverts=100 REM.
This is a huge number
srv
@cyd: Wonder what the sealife impact is going to be – they eat a lot of fish.
Tim
Jane Fonda was correct.
srv
They’re talking about firefighters, so presumably someone is working on that fire.
Nerull
400mSv/hour would cause a dangerous radiation dose within a few hours. 2-6Sv can cause radiation sickness, 30Sv+ can cause death.
Nerull
@Neutron Flux: 40 Rem, actually. 1Rem = 0.01Sv
Neutron Flux
@Nerull: I agree.
Linda Featheringill
Article on lethal dose, and other dosages, of radiation. With discussion of measurements, etc.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/R/Radiation.html
Neutron Flux
@Nerull: I am using this converter. The HP techs talk about Grey’s and Sieverts, but I am an Rem Milirem legacy kind of guy.
http://hptech.org/nuclear/convert/sievert.html
Arclite
@Xboxershorts: Are there any pics of building number 2? I can’t find any.
Also Reactor number 4, which is shut down, still has spent fuel rods that need cooling. Apparently it has caught fire.
Neutron Flux
@Nerull: Oops. Correct, I pushed the calibrate button instead of the calculate button. Thanks for the correction.
Nerull
Actually, 21Sv killed Louis Slotin, so it doesn’t take 30.
John D.
Argh. Guys, everyone is conflating numbers from various reports.
One of the reports talked about a level 400 times the normal level. Which was 1557.5 uSv on Sunday. The current “1000x normal levels of radiation!” reports after the explosion this afternoon? 8217 uSv (8.217 mSv).
It’s bad, very bad. But it is not nearly as bad as a whole lot of people seem to think.
Nerull
@John D.: The 400mSv number comes directly from the japanese government, after the latest explosion. Are they wrong?
John D.
@Nerull: Link? I’ve not seen that ANYWHERE.
Neutron Flux
@John D.: If the number is in fact 40 Rem, then I am not sure how you figure that it is not as bad as I think it is.
Martin
@John D.: Actually I think one of the Japanese officials said it was 400 mSv at the plant due to the fire exposing the spent rods. That came after the 8000 µSv report taken at the gate of the plant.
John D.
@Neutron Flux: If the 400 mSv number is correct, then it is that bad. I have not seen anything approaching that number though. I seen a lot of people CLAIM it, but nobody has provided a link that I can see.
Like I said, the only confirmed #s I am seeing are the 8 mSv ones after the explosion at #2 today. I’d love to see ones from the gov’t, so I would appreciate links if available.
Nerull
@John D.: I’m watching NHK right now, they were giving radiation levels at the reactors. The numbers you are quoting are at the plant gate, I believe, not the reactors.
Comrade Mary
Guys, that 400 mSv came from me, from the Metafilter thread, based on a transcription of a press conference. It may be in error: I’m still trying to find a link.
I won’t bring anything else here unless I’ve got a link.
AhabTRuler
@Comrade Mary: No, it was repeated several times on NHK world. The point was clearly made that the figures were an order of magnitude greater.
Comrade Mary
BBC says the level is 400 TIMES, not 400 mSv:
NHK reporting the value has been 5.7 mSv.
I screwed up. No more quotes without links from me.
Martin
@Comrade Mary: Not just you – I’ve seen that in quite a lot of places. Someone translated wrong. 6 mSv is bad, but less bad.
Comrade Mary
Oh man, the NHK stream is really choppy, but yeah, I think I heard her say around 400 mSv around No. 3 just a few moments ago. The No. 4 reactor is around 100 mSv.
I’m still looking for text from a reputable news source instead of trusting my ears, though.
Arclite
Here’s a link to someone broadcasting their geiger counter in Ota ward in Tokyo. It’s at 22 CPM right now. The broadcaster claims 10-20 is normal. Since it’s in the middle of the day, one would expect it to naturally be higher. So 22 CPM isn’t too much above normal.
Comrade Mary
Right, I just found a text source confirming 400 mSv. From Bloomberg, the levels have been very high at the plants themselves, posing danger to workers:
Shadow's Mom
@John D.: It’s from the NHK World report. The 400 Msv is AT reactors 3/4. At reactor 1 it was 100. UStream went down. Livestream here: http://www.livestation.com/channels/123-nhk-world-english
They are now discussing 400 Millisv versus Microsv. Confirmed 30 Millisv between 2/3 400 Millsv @ #3 100Millsv @ #4
John D.
I take it back then, it does look like Edano says they recorded 400 mSv at the reactors.
I pray this is just as a result of exposure from the cooling pool and not a containment breach.
Shadow's Mom
They are repeating cautions about not hanging laundry outside, not bring hanging laundry in, dust off and clean before reentering a home. Do not open windows or operate anything that would create an air exchange.
@John D.: They also explained that they had been reporting in microsieverts, now reporting in millisieverts.
Comrade Mary
Jesus Christ. Tired translator lady on NHK is repeating an official’s advice: If your laundry is outside, don’t take it inside because radioactive substances could be on them. And if you think you have radioactivity or ash on you, brush it off.
Martin
@Comrade Mary: LOL. “If you have radioactivity on you, brush it off”
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@geg6: I keep thinking about all the families going through just this. The notes put up places saying that children are looking for parents, sisters are looking for sisters… I just – at some point, I genuinely can’t begin to fathom it.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Comrade Mary: This makes me think of the advice the British government gave UK citizens in Israel during the first Gulf War — at one point, it literally included the instruction to “duck.”
freelancer
@Martin:
You gotta get that (glowing) dirt off yo shoulder.
Yutsano
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Duck and Cover?
In seriousness, there will be a massive human toll from this that we have yet to realize, and that will be played out over the months and years to come. And that’s just the tsunami victims.
Comrade Mary
OMG, actual good news. There were reports that 10,000 people were missing from a coastal area hit by the tsunami. 9700 of them have been found. They had previously been evacuated. Google translation, based on Japanese original found by someone at Metafilter.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Yutsano: No — that protected us American kids from Soviet nuclear weapons! Silly.
Also: Yes, I know. And I’m horrified even trying to think about it.
gwangung
@Comrade Mary: Fuck. We can certainly can use some good news.
Comrade Mary
A smoother translation from a japanese speaker at Metafilter: “The town had 17,000 total inhabitants. 10,000 of those were missing, 1000 dead. Of the 10,000 missing, 9700 have been found. So, out of the 17,000 population, 1000 are confirmed deceased with another 300 still missing.”
Arundel
Awesome, Comrade Mary. Thx.
Martin
@freelancer: Heh. I really needed that laugh. Thanks.
RalfW
A Forbes finance blogger just put up some dire news from a Japanese colleague of his.
Appears there is no gasoline to be had in the Fukushima area.
My heart is literally racing with fear for these people half a globe away.
wes
NHK World also has an iPhone/iPad app that live streams their English-language broadcasts if you want to follow the news that way.
iTunes link:
http://goo.gl/jtTcV
mclaren
Don’t panic. Faux News and the other airheads have wildly overblown this thing.
Here’s a simple step by step explanation of what happened.
There is no health crisis, no significant amount of radiation has been released, there is no death cloud of fallout heading across the Pacific to turn us all into radioactive Roger Corman monsters in our sleep (“The Day the World Ended,” 1955), there was no nuclear explosion, no mushroom cloud, people in Japan are not dropping dead in their tracks from radiation, there was no full meltdown of any of the fuel rods, containment was never lost, the explosions occurred outside the crucial reactor containment vessel and never threatened to release any nuclear fuel.
It’s all a case of our grossly innumerate media panicking in wild hysteria.
Bottom line?
The Japanese reactor was designed to survive a Richter 8.2 magnitude quake without releasing any core material or significant (i.e., staying radioactive for more than about 10 seconds) radioactivity into the environment. The quake was Richter magnitude 8.9, which is about 7 times as strong as a magnitude 8.2, and even so, the Japanese reactor held up. No fuel was released, there was no core meltdown, there was no China syndrome, everything operated as it was designed to.
This incident offers final definitive proof that nuclear power is safe. If a Richter 8.9 quake followed by a tsunami couldn’t cause a core meltdown, then basically nothing can.
zoej
FWIW, I finished up donating some more to Japan Relief, but it felt incomplete without sending something for the animals so I poked around and found this link:
Japan Animal Earthquake Relief
At this point, I have no idea whether they are good or bad, but they used paypal so I felt relatively safe handing over the bucks. I sent them this week’s lunch money.
Svensker
@mclaren:
?
RalfW
mclaren said
Five days of cascading failures post-tsunami says you’re wrong. Which really, really sucks.
mclaren
@srv:
Every single thing you have said is wrong.
Wrong, wrong, 100% wrong.
The tops of the zircalloy rods inside the containment vessel were exposed to the air briefly. The tops of the zircalloy fuel rods partially melted. They melted inside the containment vessel. No radiation from the fuel rods was ever released into the air, it stayed entirely inside the containment vessel, as the engineers designed it to happen. That’s why it’s called a “containment vessel,” because even in the case of a full core meltdown it would contain all the radioactive fuel. There was no full core meltdown. Only the tops of several zircalloy fuel rods partially melted before the engineers vented seawater into the cooling system and the core was cooled down below the melting point of the zircalloy fuel rod casing.
Second, the explosion occurred outside the containment vessel. It as probably caused when the steam dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen due to extreme heat. The hydrogen ignited and blew apart portions of the outer concrete housing of the reactor building. That outer concrete housing does not serve to keep radiation in; it keeps weather out. No radiation was released as a result of the explosion because even if the concrete housing of the reactor building were reduced to rubble and demolished, the inner steel containment vessel will still keep all the radioactive fuel inside. Once again, that’s why it’s called a ‘containment vessel.’
Stop panicking, folks.
No it doesn’t. And the explosion isn’t “interior” to anything but the concrete housing of the reactor building. The actual interior of the reactor is inside the containment vessel, where there has been no explosion of any kind.
No, utterly wrong. The reactor is at 1 atmosphere because the engineers vented seawater into the cooling system. The reactor is at 1 atmosphere because it’s cooling down. There is no evidence of any leak whatsoever in the containment vessel.
No, utterly wrong. The containment vessel has not been breached. None of the reactor engineers or technicians are getting “exposed” to anything. The radioactive cesium in the steam that vented has a half life of less than 10 seconds. The uranium, which is the really dangerous stuff, is still mostly contained inside the zircalloy casing of the fuel rods, which themselves are safely contained inside the two-foot-thick steel shell of the containment vessel. No one is being ‘exposed’ to anything other than wildly misinformed garbage news reports and crazy panic.
TRANSLATION: The cleanup in the aftermath of this 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami will require a lot of people doing a lot of work.
No duh.
Arclite
@RalfW:
My Japanese wife has been glued to the TV for four days straight. And all her family is safe. It’s just horrifying and riveting.
Yutsano
@Arclite: I have a couple of co-workers with Japanese spouses. I imagine they are beside themselves trying to keep their wives calm even if everyone in their family is fine.
Arclite
@mclaren: And that 400mSv reading between plants 3 and 4 is caused by? And you’re not worried about the fire in plant num 4 caused by the spent fuel rods? Once all that boric acid laced water boils away, what happens then?
mclaren
@RalfW:
Your gross ignorance says you don’t have a ghost of a clue what you’re talking about.
Each of these cascading failures was designed for and anticipated and none of them, not one of them, produced any significant release of radiation from the containment vessel, not one of these cascading failures produced a core meltdown, not one of these cascading failures damaged the containment vessel.
Let’s summarize, shall we?
Disaster #1: Magnitude 8.9 quake, 7 times larger than the plant was designed to handle. The containment vessel didn’t crack.
Disaster #2: The reactor loses power to its cooling systems. That was expected, so diesel generators provided backup power to the cooling system.
Disaster #3: The tsunami wiped out the diesel generators. That also was expected, so the reactor shifted to battery power to run the cooling system.
Disaster #4: The portable diesel generators that were trucked in had the wrong plugs (!) and wouldn’t interface with the cooling system, so battery power failed.
Disaster #5: The zircalloy casing of several fuel rods partially melted at the top. This was anticipated and designed for, and the radiation stayed inside the containment vessel.
Disaster #6: When several fuel rods partially melted, the reactor operators used their last resort and cooled the reactor with seawater. Reactors are normally cooled with distilled water so that no minerals or salts in the water can get irradiated and become radioactive.
End of the day?
Big whoop, the reactor core was cooled down using seawater. A tiny amount of radioactivity caused by irradition of salts and minerals in the sea water was produced. Less radioactivity than you’d get in a basement full of radon.
Everything you’ve said, RalfW, shows you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Take a chill pill. Everything operated as it was designed to — in fact, better than it was designed to, since the reactor was only designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2 quake.
Nerull
@mclaren: So you know more about the situation than the engineers working on it? Because a lot of this information comes directly from them and a recent briefing by the PM and cabinet.
Yes, a lot of it is being overblown. That doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. Your information is out of date.
Nerull
@mclaren: So when the guy in charge of containing this mess says it is “Highly likely” that the containment vessel was damaged, that means there was no damage?
And wow…your ‘end of the day’ comment shows you have no idea what is currently going on. Major problems pumping seawater into reactor #2, a fire a reactor #4. Radiation levels at the reactors that can cause burns in a few hours and death in a day or two. You aren’t paying attention.
jheartney
@mclaren:
Yeah, stop worrying, y’all! Those buildings were designed to explode.
not one of these cascading failures produced a core meltdown, not one of these cascading failures damaged the containment vessel.
mclaren knows these assertions are true because he put on his Kreskin hat and looked inside all four containment vessels.
mclaren
@Arclite:
Let’s see some hard evidence of 400 mSv readings between plants 3 and 4. So much gross misinformation has been bruited about that nothing the general media squawks should be taken seriously unless it’s confirmed by multiple knowledgeable reputable scientific experts.
No, I’m not. It’s a fire caused by hydrogen outside the containment vessel. Not inside the containment vessel. The inside of the containment vessel is what counts. That’s where the partially melted fuel rods are located.
Let me get this straight: the entire Pacific Ocean is going to boil away. Is that correct?
Is that what you’re telling me?
Nerull
TEPCO directly contradicts you about the pressure thing:
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@mclaren:
.
.
Also too, nuclear power is too cheap to meter, as predicted by experts even more expert than mclaren.
.
.
Nerull
…so you’re claiming that TEPCO is lying about the radiation levels they are reading. Right. It’s apparent that you haven’t been monitoring the official statements about this incident. Several people here, including me, have been. If you can’t be bothered to keep up with current events, shut the fuck up and stop shouting down people who are.
mclaren
@Nerull:
Thank you for displaying your gross ignorance and massive incompetence in things scientific and technological.
There is no evidence that the reactor containment vessel has been breached.
“Major problems pumping seawater into reactor #2”–of course, the power is still out. They’re working on that. Unless you’re trying to get me to believe that power will never be restored, this is not a doomsday scenario.
Is that really what you’re trying to tell me? That power will never be restored in any way, shape or form? That no amount of portable diesel generators and no high tension transmission lines strung out there will ever succeed in restoring electric power to the pumps?
Are you really trying to get us to believe that?
eemom
@Svensker:
heh. Your tiny little brain can’t process cognitive dissonance, can it?
mclaren
@Nerull:
Now you’re lying. TEPCO is reading radiation levels inside the containment vessel.
Show us hard evidence that they’re reading those high radiation levels in the outside environment, or stand revealed as an ignorant incompetent liar.
mclaren
@Nerull:
You’re a typically ignorant sociopath with no clue what’s going on. Keep screaning lies: it will destroy your credibility that much faster.
Nerull
@mclaren: Jesus Fucking Christ. The radiation levels within the reactors are a hell of a lot higher than that, I can assure you. They have quite clearly said those readings are from outside the reactors. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Nerull
@mclaren: You show up screaming with no facts, directly contradicting official statements, and I’m the sociopath? Someone has issues. Just how much credibility do you think you have?
RalfW
@mclaren
Your ability to shout is, um, so impressive. Howzabout you take your incredibly smart, informed ass and get over to Japan post-haste to fix everything.
I’m pretty sure they need your expertise more than BJ does.
mclaren
@Nerull:
No, clearly you’re lying, like the rest of the people on this thread. One the one hand, one of the commenters above hysterically claims that the pressure inside the reactor vessel in at 1 atmosphere which allegedly proves that the containment vessel is venting radiation to the outside environment. Now you hysterically claim that `explosion at the No. 2 reactor may have damaged the ‘’suppression chamber,’’ a facility connected to the reactor’s container which is designed to cool down radiation steam and lower the pressure in the reactor.’
If that were true, the pressure inside the containment vessel should be much higher than one atmosphere.
So which is it, ignorant liar? Is the containment vessel pressure high, as TEPCO claims? Which means the containment vessel is still intact and not venting radiation into the environemnt?
Or is the pressure in the containment vessel at 1 atmosphere, as someone else claims, which allegedly proves that radiation is being leaked?
You people need to get your lies straight. Make up your minds. Either the pressure is high, or it’s not. You really need to get together and figure out which lies to tell, because you’re not making any sense.
Nerull
@mclaren: Err…okay. That statement was a direct quote from the cabinet member in charge of the cleanup operations. I didn’t write it. Take it up with the people working on the reactor, clearly you know more about it than they do.
It’s not a difficult concept, really. The surpression chamber is directly connected to the reactor vessel. If the chamber is breached, pressure can escape from the reactor vessel through the chamber. There would also be low pressure in the chamber. This is exactly what TEPCO is saying, and you’re simply making up the claim that it’s at high pressure.
srv
@mclaren:
The electric company is the provider of the 2.5 meters of exposed rods info on #2. I never said the rods were outside the pressure vessel. That’s #4, not #2. This was all then regurgitated by the PM’s cabinet spokesman on the live feed. Take it up with them. They called it an explosion, and he also said “highly probable” that containment was “leaking.”
As far as interior – it could be a translation thing, I took it as inside the bldg, outside the containment vessel also. They implied the “noise” subsequent increase in radiation and fall in reactor pressure meant their was a leak and the reason they evacuated more people from the plant.
Ash Can
Let’s see — mclaren contradicts everything the Japanese authorities themselves are saying, from the prime minister on down, then supports his arguments with ad hominem attacks. Yep, that establishes cred, all right.
Yutsano
@Ash Can: Pretty typical response from that one. I notice she used her favorite word in there as well. And her source is ONE ARTICLE from a man who admits he’s not even a nuclear engineer, but his dad is! Hell by that criteria I’m a fucking expert here.
srv
More LIES from Japanese gov’t via NHK:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_13.html
During the press conference, the reporters were clearly (at least from the translation) asking about the pressure vessel, and not the suppression pool. It’s possible the PM’s guy or translator does not know the difference. But why would their be radiation coming from the suppression pool if containment hasn’t been breached?
Calouste
@Ash Can:
mclaren’s cred is an F on a scale from AAA to D-.
mclaren
@Nerull:
I’ve linked to a variety of facts and you can follow the links. You prefer instead to scream hysterically.
Among the many facts I linked to, but which you are too ignorant, and apparently too incompetent to bother to click through to are:
battle to stabilise earthquake damaged reactors
Media updates on nuclear power stations in Japan
And so on. But you’d prefer to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, screaming hysterically, rather than studying the facts.
Let’s take an example of typical media hysteria. this is from the New York Times:
Oooohhhh! Sounds very impressive. “Deadly gamma radiation.”
Guess what? Those spent fuel rods have always been releasing “deadly gamma radiation,” it’s just been absorbed by the water in the cooling ponds. So there’s no news here. When the water boils away, the spent fuel rods are no more radioactive than they were months ago, there’s just no water to prevent the gamma radiation from irradiating objects and people nearby.
So big deal. When spent fuel rods are removed from a reactor, there’s no water to prevent the “deadly gamma rays” from irradiating people or objects nearby. So the spent fuel rods get dumped into water.
The obvious solution to this non-problem is that water will be dumped back into the ponds where the spent fuel rods are located. This is non-issue. In the meantime, people will stay away from the spent fuel rods, just as people stayed away from while they were removed from the reactor (remote operated machinery was used to move around the spent fuel rods because, as mentioned, they do emit gamma radiation).
Nerull, you clearly have not a ghost of a clue what you’re talking about. If you take this kind of wildly hysterical misreporting from the New York Times at face value, you’re not only ignorant, you’re a fool to boot.
When the New York Times says “several workers at the plant have been treated for radiation poisoning,” it’s once again not clear what this means. The hysterically panicking kooks and ignorami on this thread assume it means that workers are dying with skin lesions and their faces are peeling off and they’re glowing from radiation.
What it most likely means is that health officials took the precaution of giving the workers KI (that’s potassium idoide) dietary supplements to prevent any of the radioactive cesium or iodine from being absorbed into their bodies. As you no doubt know, cesium is chemically similar to potassium and is a bone-seeker (it gets incorporated into the calcium phosphate of human bone if absorbed into the body) and iodine is absorbed by the thyroid gland.
These are precautions. There is no hard evidence that anyone is seriously ill from radiation.
mclaren
@Calouste:
Your ignorance and incompetence and dishonesty on a scale of A (best) to D (worst) rates at a ZZZZZ.
Ash Can
@Calouste: There ya go. I’d say you nailed it.
eemom
so, is it just me — or is everyone else kind of surprised that mcpsycho is apparently pro-nuke?
Arclite
If anything the Japanese government and TEPCo are downplaying the incidents. They both have a history of covering up and lying about nuclear event severity over the years. But this is from the horse’s mouth from ABC news:
Are you saying they are lying and overstating the case?
As for your contention that the reactor survived an 9.0 earthquake when it was designed for an 8.2 earthquake, I’d like to point out that the power plant was not the epicenter of the earthquake and did not get hit with the full force of the quake.
Comrade Mary
mclaren, I checked your links.
Your first goes to a story dates March 12 at @World Nuclear News. I checked some more recent stories and found these:
Is this story a hysterical aberration by your chosen site?
How about this?
Mark S.
@eemom:
It wouldn’t have been my first guess.
srv
Mary, I think that’s a sticky page with updates.
Y’all will have to play with him tonight, I’m going to bed.
Yutsano
@Mark S.: And not only that, but downright evangelistic about what the “truth” is. Disconcerting doesn’t begin to cover it.
Arclite
For those interested here are some Geiger counter readings in Tokyo. The top was today. The bottom graph is from a year ago.
http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html
Comrade Mary
More from your second link (a collection of links):
It includes the IAEA Alert Log, whose top story now is this update from 6:15 CET:
The story isn’t DOOM DOOM DOOM, but it does back up the findings of 400 mSv readings at the site, not within the reactor vessel itself. It's calm, but not dismissive nor Pollyannaish.
In short: you found some relatively calm and optimistic stories from a day or two back and have ignored what your linked sources are saying today. Yeah, some stories in the Times and other sources have been ridiculous, but when several media sources echo what we heard on the NHK broadcast directly from government officials: we tend to beleive that these somewhat ominous developments don't mean that we are guaranteed DOOM DOOM DOOM, but it doesn't mean everything is perfectly under control.
eemom
well, let’s look on the bright side: even trolls have the capacity to surprise us…to morph into something new and different, right before our very eyes.
Calouste
@mclaren:
Funnily enough, ZZZZZ is exactly the reaction I get from mclaren’s posts.
Ecks
@mclaren: You realize this article you are quoting about how everything is fine was written 3 days ago before the latest series of explosions, right? It says so right at the top. The containment was definitively not broken then. Maddow had a guy from Princeton on her show this evening (not 3 days ago) saying that it might be cracked now.
@Comrade Mary: Ah, I see you found out the same thing and already called her on it. Good show.
I gave up on Mclaren a few days ago when the discussion was education policy. She made the assertion that research had found teacher quality doesn’t matter. It wasn’t my area, but I did a quick googling and found a couple of large meta-studies which say that it did matter. “Yeah,” Mclaren says, “but they have bad methodology.”
“That’s interesting,” says I. “And exactly how it their methodology bad, pray tell? I’m skeptical, but am open to your convincing me.”
“YOU ARE IGNORANT AND FOOLISH AND WANT TO HURT PEOPLE” replies Mclaren (I’m paraphrasing, but that was the general tone). But somehow in all this vitriol she never actually got around to saying what it was that was actually wrong with the studies. You might almost think, if you didn’t know any better, that she had no idea what was wrong with them, other than she didn’t like what they were saying. But that can’t be, because she is on the INTERNET and that makes her an authority. Plus if you don’t believe everything she says, she will call you ignorant, and that PROVES that she knows better.
Ecks
@Ecks: She might reply to this in the morning. If she does I promise you that her message will contain several scathing insults about me, and still zero analysis about the methodological problems with those studies.
Not that I even care about that issue much, it just establishes lack of credibility when you consistently make strong claims that you can’t back up.
Ija
Has it been established that mclaren is a “she”?
4tehlulz
I just want to point out that anyone who believes anything that TEPCO says is a moron.
AhabTRuler
@4tehlulz: You’d rather we depended on METI for our information? I’m afraid there are no good sources available, but you go through a nuclear emergency with the sources you have . . .
DPirate
No doubt. He needs to figure out how that shit works.
Didn’t we go through this before with him and some whale? Didn’t turn out well, if i remember correctly.
Hob
Pardon the incredibly inappropriately trivial comment, but I just read the Vernor Vinge novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and it’s really spooky how well his depiction of interstellar message boards matches the current discourse. In the book, some careless humans cause a massive disaster where large swathes of the galaxy are now basically possessed by Satan. And various species are sitting at their terminals typing things like “I think all these reports are exaggerated” and “Everyone’s acting like this is the end of the world, LOL” and “See I told you we should wipe out the humans” and “Who are these ‘humans’? They have six legs, don’t they? I believe hexapodia is the key to the whole thing” and “You fucking moron, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” It doesn’t really fill you with confidence about the potential of intelligent life.