Japan - 8.9 Earthquake - Fukushima Meltdown

[Kaigen]

looks like it was a mistake

TOKYO – Officials say a measurement showing a huge spike in radiation levels at a stricken Japanese nuclear complex was a mistake.

The readings, which showed water testing 10 million times higher in radioactivity than normal in the reactor's cooling system, drove workers to flee.

On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was inaccurate.

"The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110327/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake

 

[Kaigen]

TOKYO (Reuters) – Workers were withdrawn from a reactor building at Japan's earthquake-wrecked nuclear plant on Sunday after potentially lethal levels of radiation were detected in water there, a major setback for the effort to avert a catastrophic meltdown.

The operator of the facility said radiation in the water of the No. 2 reactor was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour, the highest reading so far in a crisis triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

That compares with a national safety standard of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause hemorrhaging.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. later said the extremely high radioactivity readings might have been wrong, adding the levels were being re-checked.

"The situation is serious. They have to pump away this water on the floor, get rid of it to lower the radiation," said Robert Finck, radiation protection specialist at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, speaking before the operator expressed doubt about the high reading.

"It's virtually impossible to work, you can only be there for a few minutes. It's impossible to say how long it will take before they can gradually take control."

The Japanese government said the overall situation was unchanged at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

"We did expect to run into unforeseen difficulties, and this accumulation of high radioactivity water is one such example," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news briefing.

Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the nuclear emergency could go on for weeks, if not months. "This is a very serious accident by all standards," he told the New York Times. "And it is not yet over."[nN2679678]

Two of the plant's six reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke.

At Chernobyl in Ukraine a quarter of a century ago, the worst nuclear accident in the world, it took weeks to stabilize what remained of the reactor that exploded and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. engineers have been working around the clock to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant since the earthquake and tsunami knocked out the back-up power system needed to cool the reactors.

The operation has been suspended several times due to explosions and spiking radiation levels inside the reactors.

Last Thursday, three workers were taken to hospital from reactor No. 3 after stepping in water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor.

LEVELS 10 MILLION TIMES ABOVE NORMAL

The latest scare came as engineers were trying to pump radioactive water out of a turbine unit after it was found in buildings housing three of the reactors.

Officials had earlier said the water in No. 2 was found to contain 10 million times the amount of radioactive iodine than is normal in the reactor, but noted the substance had a half-life of less than an hour, meaning it would disappear within a day.

"It's a dramatic headline for sure, but if it is iodine, after three weeks it will be down to about one-tenth (of the radioactivity) and it will be dispersed in the seawater," said Paddy Regan, a nuclear physicist at the University of Surrey in England.

"Ten million times is a massive number but if you were right up close to the fuel rods it would be ten million times normal because normal is (almost) zero."

Radiation levels in the sea off the plant rose Sunday to 1,850 times normal, from 1,250 Saturday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

"Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior agency official.

TOKYO RADIATION LEVELS NORMAL

The elevated radiation detected Sunday was confined to the reactor, and radioactivity in the air beyond the evacuation zone around the plant remained in normal ranges.

In downtown Tokyo, a Reuters reading Sunday afternoon showed ambient radiation of 0.16 microsieverts per hour, below the global average of naturally occurring background radiation of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour.

Several countries have banned produce and milk from Japan's nuclear crisis zone and are monitoring Japanese seafood over fears of radioactive contamination.

The accident has also triggered concern around the globe about the safety of nuclear power generation. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime.

The crisis also looks set to claim its first, and unlikely, political casualty. In far away Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's party faces a defeat in a key state Sunday, largely because of her policy U-turns on nuclear power.

OVERSHADOWING RELIEF EFFORT

The drama at the plant has overshadowed a relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered that left more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan.

In Otsu, 70 km (42 miles) south of the stricken nuclear facility, the townsfolk are faced with livelihoods derailed by the natural disaster and now the fear of radiation in the air.

Ninety-three-year-old Kou Murata sat cross-legged on the floor of a school classroom, her home for the past fortnight. Surrounded by piles of quilts and blankets, she fretted over what was to become of her in the twilight of her life.

"I am afraid because people are leaving, and we are alone," she said, looking small and frail in a jacket decorated with snowmen.

Murata's daughter, Hisae, said the government had not helped them.

"I want to go back home, but the situation is impossible," she said. "I applied to the government to get a temporary house, but we need a certificate to say the house was destroyed. Now all the temporary houses have been taken. We thought the government would come to us, but we need to go to them."

The first opinion poll to be taken since the disaster showed the approval rating for Prime Minister Naoto Kan had edged higher, to 28.3 percent, but more than half disapproved of how the nuclear crisis had been handled.

Prior to the earthquake, Kan's approval rating had sunk to around 20 percent, opposition parties were blocking budget bills to force a snap election that his party was at risk of losing, and critics inside his own camp were pressing him to quit.

The government estimated last week the material damage from the catastrophe could top $300 billion, making it the world's costliest natural disaster.

(Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Chizu Nomiyama, Elaine Lies and Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo, Phil Smith in Otsu, Jon Herskovitz in Kamaishi, Gerard Wynn in London and Alister Doyle in Oslo; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Dean Yates)

_http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110327/wl_nm/us_japan_quake

My family is going back to Tokyo tomorrow. I couldn't stop them. They always said "We can't do anything about it" :( "We have our life's"

 

[Cosmos]

Geiger Counter Reading in Central Tokyo (March 16):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSHVgWcMrUk&feature=channel_video_title

Geiger Counter Reading from Tokyo at 4pm, 3/17/2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rp2nqBt04A&feature=channel_video_title

Geiger Counter Reading in Tokyo, Friday, 3/18/2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y9IYQzsyC4&feature=channel_video_title

Geiger Counter Reading for Tokyo on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU3fHFwiSB4

 

[Cosmos]

here are two live streams that claim that they are from Tokyo :

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%E3%82%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AB%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF
(currently: 0000,023.07cpm)

and

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%E6%94%BE%E5%B0%84%E7%B7%9A%E6%B8%AC%E5%AE%9A-%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC-%E7%8B%9B%E6%B1%9F
(currently: 0.13 MicroSievertPerHour ?)

I guess both are placed inside of a house ?

 

[Cosmos]

something strange happens when I click on this link:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/226444-Japan-Huge-Radiation-Spike-at-Nuclear-Plant-Was-a-Mistake

has anyone the same problem ?

 

[1984]

something strange happens when I click on this link:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/226444-Japan-Huge-Radiation-Spike-at-Nuclear-Plant-Was-a-Mistake

has anyone the same problem ?

The video is working fine and the article itself looks OK (complete) - for me anyway.

 

[Beau]

Another quake hits Japan:

Magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattles eastern Japan again; tsunami alert issued

NEW YORK — A magnitude-6.5 earthquake shook eastern Japan off the quake-ravaged coast on Monday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, prompting Japan to issue a tsunami alert.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, but the Japan Meteorological Agency announced that a tsunami of up to 1.6 feet (a half meter) may wash into Miyagi Prefecture.

The alert was prompted by a quake that the U.S. Geological Survey measured at 7:23 a.m. Monday Japan time (2223 GMT Sunday) near the east coast of Honshu.

The USGS said the quake was 3.7 miles (5.9 kilometers) deep.

A magnitude-9 quake off Japan’s northeast coast on March 11 triggered a tsunami that barreled onshore, triggering a humanitarian disaster that is thought to have killed about 18,000 people.

 

[sitting]

The worsening nuclear disaster in Japan, on top of the earthquake and tsunami devastation, is just plain disheartening. Yet in this dark period, the enormous spirit of the Japanese should not be underestimated. They are cohesive, and they are resourceful.

Below is a discussion by two individuals with intimate knowledge of the country and its people. They have lived there for over 20 years and are married to Japanese women. Neither one is a scientist but both are keen observers of Japanese society.

Most interesting is Tom's view of the future. It is his belief that Japan has free energy devices (for some time now). And this disaster will give an opportunity for this technology to come out into the open. Out of desperation.

This idea is of course highly speculative. And I have no way of knowing whether it's fact or fiction. But it is something I didn't dismiss out of hand.

The relevant segment can be found at 45:55 minutes into the interview.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/grok-the-talk/2011/03/19/japanophile-banzai-special-grok-the-talk-11318

 

[Cosmos]

Most interesting is Tom's view of the future. It is his belief that Japan has free energy devices (for some time now). And this disaster will give an opportunity for this technology to come out into the open. Out of desperation.

even if they have this technology, the PTB wouldn't allow it to be used or known to a wide range of people.

 

[sitting]

"even if they have this technology, the PTB wouldn't allow it to be used or known to a wide range of people."


I agree with you on this. However I should amend my post. I think what he had in mind was the movement of free energy from a deep deep buried status to a kind of hidden deployment. I think that's what he meant. That they would use it increasingly but still fly under the radar.

 

[Cosmos]

"even if they have this technology, the PTB wouldn't allow it to be used or known to a wide range of people."


I agree with you on this. However I should amend my post. I think what he had in mind was the movement of free energy from a deep deep buried status to a kind of hidden deployment. I think that's what he meant. That they would use it increasingly but still fly under the radar.

yes he didn't said what you said

 

[sitting]

"yes he didn't said what you said"



Agreed.

I will take this reminder to heart and be more precise the next time. : )

 

[Kaigen]

The script of Kenichi Ohame Live #579 "A week after the earthquake -- The present condition and future of the nuclear accident of Fukushima " has just released.

You can download PDF here. _https://files.me.com/yukio_fujiwara/pokaiu

This script made by Open Translation Project; a voluntary crowd-source project to make English scripts of speaking words of wisdom in Japanese for brighter future.

The live presented by Dr. Kenichi Ohmae was recorded on March 19th 2011 and uploaded to YouTube on 20th. The number of access has exceeded over 460,000 for the last 8 days.

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GqwgVy9iN0&feature=player_embedded


The summary is;


Dr. Kenichi Ohmae, described as “Mr. Strategy” worldwide, previously Chairman of the Japan Atomic Industrial Conference, talks on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident inside out - what is happening and how Japan... should cope with it.

What Is Happening?

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident reaches Level 6 on the international nuclear and radiological event scale. It is worse than the Three Mile accident which was Level 5, but unlikely to be devastating as the Chernobyl disaster which was Level 7.

The key cause of this disaster was that both the earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi simultaneously, which damaged all the backup systems and eventually its control facility.

Industrial policy that promoted nuclear energy without due national consensus made the situation worse. Firstly, spent nuclear fuels were preserved in the same facility because an interim storage facility had not been built. Secondly, too many plants were built at the same site.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant operator that has a shameful record of cover-ups, now lacks the competency of managing the problem since it has no nuclear energy experts on its board. TEPCO had purged them in the past incidents.

The government needs to set up a “control cower” with nuclear energy experts to cope with the challenge. The current organizations have not functioned properly. Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) cannot make sound decision because they are the one that has been promoting nuclear energy. Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) lacks experts who can manage the ground. Academic nuclear experts who appear on the media are not qualified for this role, because they are nuclear engineering experts with no experience in designing a plant.

The death toll would rise to tens of thousands as I predicted right after the earthquake. Japan can no more be proud of its capacity of coping with earthquakes and tsunamis. The mega earthquakes and tsunamis have exceeded every assumptions Japan had made. The tsunamis visualized one of the most petrifying scenes which the world had ever witnessed. We should utilize those valuable records for the future.

Taking Actions

First of all, we must secure enough time for the workers to operate on-site. However, the radiation leak has made it difficult to do so. I propose that they build a frontline base entirely covered by lead. Since lead provides very effective radiation shield, the base would enable the workers to operate on-site.

Then, radiation diffusion must be stopped. However, it will take 3 to 5 years for decay heat to cool down, which means that the risk of radiation leak remains for that period. To prevent radiation from flowing out, a huge tent covering the whole facility would be effective. When it comes to utilizing tents for buildings, Japan is one of the best countries. The world’s best tent maker could build the tent in 3 months. Once the tent has been installed, the cranes can be reinstalled and facilities can be rebuilt.

I propose to bring the nuclear power plant experts to Japan, and establish a team of specialists to find solutions. This team will arrive at unified opinion on the current issue. This work would have an impact on not only the nuclear energy policy in Japan but also all others in the global arena. I am willing to lead the team.

Based on available information as of March 19, the government policy to evacuate residents living within 30 km from the Fukushima Daiichi is reasonable. However, there is no official “control tower” that overlooks the entire evacuation zone. The “control tower” must be set up immediately.

There are two measures to secure recovery funds: 1) Implementing “Disaster Recovery Consumption Tax” for a limited time and purpose only. 2% increase in the consumption tax would generate 4 trillion yen. 2) Mandatory electricity saving and pricing review on electricity. Government bonds are out of the question. Over-issuing government bonds would make the nation melt down.

My proposal is not to restore, but to create new Tohoku district. To minimize the risk of tsunami, new communities should be built on the uplands. Only green spaces and public buildings could be built in the low elevation areas. Restore few fishing ports and have fishers commute from the community area. Change the structure of seawalls into the water gate type to prevent floods more effectively

People in Japan are seriously concerned about blackouts due to electricity shortage. But the important point should be to manage the peak demand. Introducing summer time (day light saving), working five days a week out of seven days from Monday to Sunday, and shifting peak demand in the summer should be more effective than scheduled blackouts. Another effective measure is to align frequency of the western and eastern electricity companies so that the east can borrow electricity from the west. It would be worth the cost.

the complete PDF is here: _https://files.me.com/yukio_fujiwara/pokaiu

 

[go2]

Then, radiation diffusion must be stopped. However, it will take 3 to 5 years for decay heat to cool down, which means that the risk of radiation leak remains for that period. To prevent radiation from flowing out, a huge tent covering the whole facility would be effective. When it comes to utilizing tents for buildings, Japan is one of the best countries. The world’s best tent maker could build the tent in 3 months. Once the tent has been installed, the cranes can be reinstalled and facilities can be rebuilt.

Tonosama, the paragraph on page 21 of the download clearly says the radiation will continue to flow from the reactors for 3 to 5 years. This is not a risk, but a fact. The tent is a long shot idea to contain the radiation from entering the atmosphere. Kenichi Ohmae goes on to state that this 3 to 5 year tent containment depends on the assumption that the reactor cores have not been breached.

There are reports that reactor 3 has a vertical crack in the stainless steel containment vessel and is responsible for the extremely high radioactive contamination at the site. It is unlikely workers can survive the high levels of radiation to implement Ohmae's containment tent proposal. The presence of plutonium at the Fukashima nuclear power plant is further indication that the reactor core has been breeched.

Kenichi Ohmae was a leading advocate for corporate control of a globalized, stateless economy while a partner at Mckinsey & Company. These are the people who brought us a brave new radioactive world. Why should I trust Kenichi Ohmae, the man who popularized the word globalization?

Kenichi Ohmae (TOK, 72-94), described as a world-class management guru by The Economist and London’s Financial Times, is as outspoken and creative as when he was a McKinsey director and Japan Office manager in the 1980s and ’90s.

One of the first proponents of the idea of globalization, Ken began talking and writing about the irrelevance of borders in the mid 1980s, long before the rest of the world understood the profound changes coming to the business and political landscapes.

“Twenty years ago,” Ken says, “globalization was a theoretical concept. Now it is a reality. Capital, communications, corporations, and consumers all criss-cross borders almost at will.”

……………………
Ken and McKinsey

Ken, who retired from the Firm in 1994, says, “I can’t separate myself from McKinsey. It is in every one of my chromosomes.” As the Firm is one Firm, Ken says, he and McKinsey have become an inseparable “one thing.”

 

[Woodsman]

I just ran across this documentary called, "Nuclear Ginza" about nuclear power workers and the (unbelievably horrid) way they've been treated by Japan's nuclear power industry.

The film was shot in 1995.

It's 25 minutes long and available for free viewing on Google's video archive. . .

_http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4411946789896689299#

After watching this, I understand why Japan has been so reluctant about telling anything resembling the truth. Rather than train workers properly and provide safe systems, they instead hire homeless people to perform the yearly maintenance work inside the reactor cores, paying hush money when they grow sick and die. I guess when you hire the homeless and the illiterate, most of them simply don't have the wherewithal to sue when they grow weak and sick. That's some cost/benefit ratio!

Much of what I'm seeing in Japan today makes a lot more sense. :(