Almost 48 hours since the re-rated magnitude 8.8 earthquake and following tsunami ravaged a large area of Honshu Island NE of Tokyo the weasel words from its nuclear industry have given way to some appalling realities.
The Tokyo electric company has lost control of a total of seven reactors, four in the Fukushima Daini plant, and three in the Fukushima Daiichi plant, one of which exploded yesterday.
It is the second plant at Daiichi which has been the focus of most attention given the blast that removed an outer wall from its No 1 unit yesterday afternoon, and admissions within recent hours that its No 3 unit is ‘probably’ experiencing partial meltdown because of the failure of its fail safe emergency cooling system, putting it in the same parlous state as that assigned to the No 2 Daiichi unit yesterday.
However this afternoon Tokyo Electric said that it was trying to ‘gain control’ over the four reactors at its physically separate Fukushima Daini site. A water condensate system used to supplement the cooling system at Fukushima Daini Unit 1 stopped working when temperatures reached 100 degrees Celsius early in the crisis, the company has finally disclosed.
Tokyo Electric also announced that it would carry out controlled releases to ease pressure in the containments of all four units at Fukushima Daini. This is the same process that was being used at Daiichi 1 before the outer wall of its reactor block was destroyed by a violent explosion attributed officially to a build up of hydrogen gas. It is the same process now underway at the other two Daiichi reactors as well as the four at Daini.
Extensive evacuations of more than 200,000 people living in the immediate vicinity of both plants are underway, and potassium iodide tablets are being distributed to inhibit the uptake of radioiodine nuclear contaminants by the thyroid gland.
The authorities at Fukushima have revealed that at least 160 people are being treated for radiation exposure in hospital according to one media report, all of them believed to be employees at the Daiichi plant. Other reports put the number of radiation exposure patients as much lower, at 19, and a third report now says one not two power company employees have been killed at the Daini plant in a crane accident.
The Japanese authorities, who lied unashamedly about the nature of the emergency until mid morning yesterday, claiming that there was no evidence of melt downs in the reactors nor unmanageable consequences, have now confirmed the detection of caesium and radioiodine nuclear contaminants outside of the Daiichi complex. This confirmation came in two stages, the caesium being acknowledged yesterday afternoon before the Daiichi 1 explosion and the radioiodine today. Both would have been detected at the same time.
It has been apparent to independent nuclear scientists since yesterday afternoon that the presence of caesium particles outside that bank of reactors and low key official announcements of the ‘harmless’ release of ‘slightly radioactive’ steam from the Daiichi 1 unit were unambiguous signs that coolant levels in the core of the reactor had fallen and exposed part of the fuel rods, leading to a partial melt down as they began to burn in contact with air instead of being fully immersed in coolant.
On Saturday nuclear industry apologists in the western media said that the situation in Japan would only be serious if such desperate measures as flooding the reactor cores with sea water occurred.
Sea water drowning of the No 1 Daiichi reactor has been confirmed, and there are references by Tokyo Electric this afternoon to sea water being used in other reactors as the water injection systems which use high pressure water used for fire fighting emergencies is for some reason no longer available or effective.
The drowning of the reactors, as well as references to introducing boric acid to the cores mean that the power company no longer expects to use them in the future given the damage that will be done to them. In fact the Daiichi plant’s 40 year licences are due to expire in May this year. The media in Japan says it is unknown if there was an intention or application pending for the Daiichi licences to be renewed, of if the plant was intended to be decommissioned.
The submerging of reactor cores with sea water means that no further attempt to use control rods as part of the normal process of moderating reactor activity will be made. It also explains the relevance of references yesterday to unspecified damage to the fuel rods, as fuel rod breakages or deformation would prevent the use of control rods.
Those reactors in which Tokyo Electric is trying to prevent further meltdown or atmospheric combustion of the fuel rods by dousing them under sea water are by definition, in a state of uncontrolled nuclear activity that will require massive physical intervention to end, or to securely entomb.
35 Comments
There is a definite contest going on between the knee jerk PR spin of reassurance from nuclear industry apologists and the increasingly desperate needs of officials on the ground to control an escalating situation. Sea water and boron, from the US navy, are last resort measures that should permanently disable all these plants. You can be certain that billions of dollars of infrastructure being effectively destroyed was a last resort. If this measure fails there is no quick fix, particularly during the major disruption due to the earthquake and tsunami. If the situation deteriorates, and there is a full breach of containment, and the weather changes as predicted, it may become necessary to evacuate Tokyo city. Two small low pressure systems are forecast over the next two days in the affected area. This could bring winds from the area directly over Tokyo. You can be certain in a fully wired culture that Tokyo residents are alert and alarmed.
Boron is really dangerous.
Thanks for updating us Ben.
Union of Concerned Scientists updates: http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3824043948/update-on-fukushima-reactor
I want to post this link just for a bit of…. Not counter argument, but tempering of the doomsday talk.
http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/
For those interested in an accessible and accurate account of events at Fukushima:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/#comment-114345
To clarify, I’m not suggesting the words in the link I post are gospel or not. But it seems inevitable during situations like this where levels of understanding of the nuclear industry are very low, that a lot of talking heads emerge on TV, print and online, each purporting to be an exert. I don’t know any more about the union of concerned scientists any more than I do about Dr Josef whatever of MIT. Where does the actual truth lie??
Which also has me pondering, Ben, that I find it unusual that you are also now commenting on this matter in Plane Talking, albeit with a focus on Japanese officials and their message (and in a way that reminds me of you going after Boeing and Jetstar in recent times).
I hope the nuclear accident does not end up being worse for the people of Japan than the earthquake and tsunami. On Insiders this morning Andrew Bolt claimed that only 50 people died as a result of Chernobyl, yet the report he referred to clearly states that 50 people died as direct result of the accident and ‘only’ 4000 deaths will be attributable to the accident indirectly.
Thanks for putting that link up Fran, I was just about to do the same thing.
Haha, we’ve got scientific expert danr here now telling us that boron is dangerous. Maybe he made a typo, he meant to type “morons are dangerous”. He is living proof of that.
Has anyone said just yet what effect the tsunami may have had on the situation?
I noticed the fukushim daiichi plant sits right next to the ocean.
dkr,
The common thread that you are missing is the ‘management of information’. Boeing has not said anything materially truthful about the 787 program since it began, and efforts are now being made to recall Jetstar and Qantas executives to a Senate inquiry to further explore differences between what they said they did, and what they did.
I began my coverage on Friday of the disaster because of the air transport situation. It rapidly became apparent this was a triviality considering the disaster that had happened, and knowing how long it had taken some nuclear incidents to be admitted to in Japan in the past, began to log who said what and when.
It has been fascinating to observe industry references to the unlikely need to do anything as drastic as drowning the problem with sea water to the attempts to make sea water and boric acid sound like perfectly normal responses to a situation which is really of no proper concern in terms of public health at all.
For the record, I’m strongly interested in the prospect of more advanced applications of nuclear energy in the future, and locked away in dusty newspaper files somewhere you will discover that I was the first reporter to interview the late Dr Ted Ringwood on his initial breakthroughs with SYNROC in 1978.
The nuclear establishment set out to crucify Ringwood for daring to challenge the orthodoxy of vitrification of nuclear waste, and for a much younger reporter, taught me a lesson in how seriously vicious and closed the scientific mind can be.
I am very interested in the process by which lay readers can become better informed about science and engineering, but after decades of practice, acutely aware of how message management can block or filter this process.
Actually the bravenewclimate article explains that the tsunami took out all the diesel generators. Although, I’d still love to see more details.
At least we have someone who knows some science.
Boron is NOT dangerous.
It is found in cock roach bait and hand – skin conditioner.
As for the responses here; many show the usual AGW histrionics.
cud chewer,
It is I suggest not that the severity of the earthquake and tsunami was an unknown risk to the owners, designers and scientific advisers to the Fukushima plants.
Rather, I suggest, it is that the risk analysis took a bet on such an extreme set of events not occurring within the lifetime of the plants.
That bet was lost.
The apologista want to turn this into a discussion about the merits of nuclear power.
In fact it is about the merits of truthful communications, and responsibility for decisions taken, something that science in general I regret to suggest shows itself to be as fallible in as other disciplines.
The fact that the plants were to be decommissioned in a month (to be replaced in a year by new reactors of a design that would have easily shrugged off the tsunami) might have played into the decision by TEPCO to flood the reactors and not bother with trying to rescue them.
As pointed out above, now that they have been flooded these things don’t pose a risk to public safety except as an object of media hysteria.
Thank heavens for nice, safe coal-fired power stations, which produce plant food at their chief by-product.
I want to post this link just for a bit of…. Not counter argument, but tempering of the doomsday talk.
http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-
——————————
I don’t know if you looked up the author of the explanation, which makes it all sound while scary but ‘ok’ ish, is that the author is not a scientist. He has a mechanical engineering background as well as an MBA. The group he works with at MIT is a government-academia-business think tank. Whether this colors his interpretation of events remains to be seen.
I have no doubt that this will remove nuclear from the australian agenda for a long time, and it does look like a nuclear emergency is on the cards, but to claim the media has been dominated by “nuclear apologists” is just fricking insane.
literally insane
as in i doubt your sanity
the media has done nothing but make this seem far worse than it could ever possibly be. how many times have you heard the word chernobyl in the last 2 days? considering you seem to have a grasp on the science you have to know that that is not even vaguely likely, maybe a 1 in a million from here.
the media problem is less now – now there is an emergency, and the japanese government has responded well by all accounts.
the problem was on day 1. people bandying around words like meltdown and explosion without explaining them. Journos describing levels of radiation “8 times normal” outside the plant, without putting that in context ie that the level was still around 10 times less than you would get outside a coal fired power station, or as an occupational exposure in a radiology department
I think it is clear that there will need to be a discussion in japan about the merits of building nuclear reactors on fault lines. the people might (probably fairly) turn against nuclear power altogether, although considering the huge investment they have it is unlikely.
But you are seriously doing what you are fighting against. This is terrible journalism. What is happening here is knowable, and bad. Very bad. You dont need to make things up to sound worse.
ps anyone see that Maddow show on Friday? Her segment was great, but that League of Concerned scientists guy just lied outright. He claimed the linear no threshold model was proven fact – that is like saying the higgs boson is proven fact. It is useful as a concept, but it has never, ever been proven.
pps at the risk of doing the old apologist cliche (“I’m no shill!”), I will do full disclosure. I am a doctor that specialises in radiation. I know, intimately, the risks of radiation. I am not trying to minimise this catastrophe. But this kind of scaremongering … it is what the Liberals do!
STOP THE REMS!
The government over there, and the company itself has been the single source of useful information about the scale of this disaster. The media has been absolutely useless to get any facts whatsoever.
I am moved by your gracious, elegant and logically consistent compliments. Thank you
When a 9.0 Earthquake hits anywhere in the world there will be devastation, reading the insensitive comments from Green doomsayers about nuclear safety sickens me as these vultures pursue their own agendas at the expense of thousands of lost lives due to a natural disaster. We have never seen anything like what we saw at Sendai in our lifetime, yet evil Green parasites choose to use this as political motivation to denounce nuclear safety. (did anyone see footage of that bus trying to escape? perhaps we all shouldn’t ride the bus anymore?)The world is not a safe place at any time, it is a volatile bumpy ride we are on and we have 7 billion people riding the rollercoaster of life and death. KRudd’s insensitive requests from the Japanese Government highlight just how out of control that man is. Earthquakes, Tsunami’s, Volcanoes, Floods, Bushfires are all part of the evolution of planet earth and now we have 7 billion people living on this planet we just might get in the way of mother nature a little more regularly, i would hope that people from all political parties would stick their agendas up their backsides instead of attempting to score points. The people who have lost their lives in Japan deserve better from us. Kevin Rudd should resign immediately. Once again our PM is left floundering.
John,
Very good points. Perhaps we can also expect that greed and inadequate risk analysis in nuclear plant design might also receive some attention in the future.
First I am not a nuclear scientist or power engineer (thoug I studied under one) and so I do not claim any expertise. However I think it is easy to understand how the tsunami could have taken out the diesel generators. Any such generators would have exhausts and air intakes. If these were inundated with water from a tsunami, mixed with mud etc, they would soon be clogged.
Second, while I agree the failure to report this event honestly is shamefull, if the reacors have all been switched off, and containment vessels were not breached, I do not see how a Chernobyl type event is possible. The Daichi plant has been a huge economic loss (nuclear reactors cost $5 billion each and Tokyo faces blackouts) but I don’t see the cause of hysteria here.
Beat me to it gregb…boron/moron indeed.
That these reactors are designed to contain radioactive material even in the remote case of a “meltdown” is never mentioned, while allusions to Chernobyl imply that this accident is possibly of that order.
Judging from the updated reports, the reactors behaved quite well, were shut down by the earthquake so that they were not able to explode catastrophically, but the resulting tsunami knocked out the capacity to run the cooling systems to take out residual heat. Venting of the resulting pressure build up caused an explosion in the outer shell of the building on the #1 unit with some small release of radioactive material, but the containment vessel was not damaged.
But of course the world’s media just loves the drama of using the term ‘meltdown’ and throwing around wild speculations about anything to do with radioactivity.
The ‘problem’ started off with the video of the explosion at the nuclear power plant, followed by the pillar of smoke. Nuclear power plant is not suppose to explode, and the public tends to get a bit upset when it does.
The video of fire engines spraying water onto the reactor core also give the ‘impression’ that everything is not under control, because you’re not suppose to use fire engines to cool down your reactor.
I’m sure that the ‘venting’ of the steam to relieve pressure from the nuclear reactor should be relatively harmless, except that under normal operation, nuclear plants are not suppose to ‘vent’ steam which has come into contact with radioactive material, and resident within a 15km radius are not evacuated.
This is definitely the fault of the media acting in a hysterical manner.
Seriously speaking, we had a disaster, and the Japanese Nuclear Agency had not been truthful. Let’s hope we don’t have a re-run of Chernobyl. Most of the 50 who died directly are firefighters who went to put out the fire at the reactors, knowing fully they will not survive. To see Andrew Bolt referring to them as ‘only 50 died’ is somewhat disrespectful to their sacrifice.
Chernobyl was bad.
The rusting of their nuclear powered fleet was bad.
Politics at its worst; but “Nuclear’s creeping new respectability vanished in that explosion”. Are we sure.
Apparently the plants shut down automatically but retained some of heat.
Yes H2 was vented. Then at temperature, the reason for its venting, it hit O2 in the atmosphere.
A serious explosion occurred producing.
WATER VAPOUR.
This is the same reaction we see when we watch the space shuttle being launched.
Lots and lots of water vapour.
A local doctor (radiologist) tells us that he works in an environment with greater radiation exposure than that reported in Japan.
Let’s wait for the correct facts.
Apologies for the boron thing.
Couldn’t resist mimicking the hysteria.
Ben, perhaps you could point out the logically inconsistent areas of my comment?
Your next articles seem to imply that risk analysis or cost-benefit analysis are all gambles? Like informed decision making is throwing up your hands and tossing a coin?
Like driving a car. Oh, wait… that is far more dangerous (factor of … 1000s?) than living near a nuclear reactor. And everyone does that everyday.
This IS a tragedy. Dont make it worse with scare tactics.
Sorry if you were offended, but when you throw out something even you must see is a teensy bit unbalanced, dont expect gracious back. It is because of articles like this I have to use the word xrays/gamma rays at work instead of radiation when talking to patients.
They just can’t cope with the idea the big bad radiation death chernobyl monster might get them. Some even refuse testing or treatment because of this very scare campaign.
I care very little about power generation, other than we damn well need to lower our CO2 output. I care a lot about irrational fears that actually lead to my patients’ deaths.
Please dont take this as hyperbole. This is a real problem. Dont make it worse
I’d go further and suggest that TSA employees working scanning devices of uncertain calibration and with inadequate training are probably at more risk than radiologists only half in jest, because the TSA has banned employees from wearing dosimeters.
It is not that the finite exposure to such radiation is of consequence to even frequent flyers, but as these devices proliferate in stores, malls, airports, rail stations, sports venues, pubs, and other places of congregation and entertainment, people may find themselves being scanned so many times a day, or for sustained intervals in some cases, that those who have undergone dental or medical imaging as well as flying the Atlantic or Pacific for example will push the limits as to frequency and dosage.
Just a thought!
ben,
i dont know who that was in response to, but it may interest you to know several hospitals (including my own) are trialling real time dosimeters now. It is pretty valuable to see what activities alter your personal dose, in real time
its a great technology, and will probably filter through and change how everyone in a radiation exposed industry approaches radiation issues
SoulManz,
I haven’t compared this to Chernobyl except to dismiss the comparison in passing. The distinction between the massive tragic loss of life in the tsunami has been introduced firmly into the report. I am as interested in the good news as the bad, and the IAEA note on Daini today was I thought important positive news and promptly added to the copy.
My concern and interest is in message management. There is a long and civilised discussion underway on the Crikey site in relation to the report I did for them, and if it helps explain where I am coming from I will repeat something I posted there in response to that discussion immediately below:
##
My first encounter with the nuclear industry was either in late 1978 or 1979 when the SMH had me interview a ‘crazy nuclear scientist’ at the ANU, Professor Ted Ringwood, who had led a team that invented SYNROC.
This process was predicated on rendering nuclear power plant waste into an impervious synthetic rock and putting it back down the mineshaft from which it came once the energy had been extracted.
The ferocious condemnation from the nuclear ‘establishment’ that followed was totally unexpected, just as the concept was somewhat elegant yet ahead of its time. Ringwood had offended the orthodoxy of vitrification of high grade nuclear waste (which is a failure), and was left somewhat isolated and hurt by becoming public charlatan No 1 in the US, UK and French nuclear industries, although following his death from tumors which he said might have been induced by radioactivity, but also perhaps because ‘I like red wine, smoking and sun’, his concept has been rehabilitated and is under serious development and consideration abroad.
IN part that episode has made me more inclined to examine the public administration of science in general, and the various policy settings that are applied to it, than get my head kicked in over the science itself.
The worst enemy of nuclear power is arrogance, greed, flawed risk analysis and political expediency, whether with good intentions or base intentions.
That leaves unanswered the question as to whether we can ever make it ‘work.’ I suspect not in its current form, but some time, some where, the necessary combination of bright invention and a fertile environment may prevail.
END OF CRIKEY EXTRACT
yeah, I saw that
The problem is, you are message managing too. If all you do is denounce the filthy gummint and electric companies, without denouncing the media playing the other side of the same fiddle, you are guilty too.
I almost feel like I have been watching a different disaster. It seems (obviously ignoring the electric company itself) that the government and the authorities involved are doing ok. They have already made very significant moves (mass evacuations, iodine tablets, salt water quenching to permanently destroy the reactors) and those words you put in very pointed quotation marks like “slightly radioactive” are actually fairly accurate.
From the start the nuclear authority seemed to be on top of things, and acting prudently.
I would love to see examples of why this isnt so. I havent seen weasel words from those who matter, but you seem very sure of it, sure enough to write several articles on the same topic
I reackon we will see nuclear produced power in this country in a maybe 10-20 years, due to the science behind it being more correct. If anything is to become of this disaster, then technology is to to benefit.
Like 1 poster commented, driving a car is far worse odds than being radiated by a nuclear reactor. I for one would not like either option thank you.
gasman in a year Aussies will see Japan rebuild their power plants properly and we will probably use the same technology for our first plants.
It’s cheaper than wind, solar and GeoT.
Complete Bulldust danr.
At over $6million per megawatt Nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of power there is.
Nuclear power plants are only economical at all due to massive government subsidies and government insurance underwriting.
Construction time is measured in decades and with more than 50 reactors in Japan your idea that Japan will “rebuild their power plants properly” is utterly ludicrous. And you know it.
Please crawl back under your rock and keep your attempts to manufacture dissent against renewables, to yourself and your fellow oil/gas/coal industry PR employees.
“At over $6million per megawatt Nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of power there is.”
Yeah I know Captain.
That’s why most countries in the world use Nuclear power.
They like using expensive power.
“Most countries in the world”
With over 200 countries in the world, presumably you can list more than 100 who have nuclear power, danr?