JAPAN: Will This Be The Big Meltdown? - What's Going On

(photo: Kyodo/Reuters. caption: Military personnel prepared to transfer workers exposed to radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to a hospital. March 25, 2010.)
28 March 2011 Last updated at 12:07 ET

Radiation leak found

outside Japan nuclear reactor

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The BBC's Mark Worthington says many people in Japan are becoming increasingly concerned about what is going to happen in the future

Japan quake

Highly radioactive water has been found for the first time outside one of the reactor buildings at Japan's quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, officials say.

The leak in a tunnel linked to the No 2 reactor has raised fears of radioactive liquid seeping into the environment.

Plutonium has also been found in soil at the plant, but not at levels that threaten human health, officials say.

Earlier, Japan's government strongly criticised the plant's operator, Tepco, over mistaken radiation readings.

Tepco announced on Sunday that a highly radioactive pool of water in the No 2 reactor was 100 times more radioactive than it actually was.

Officials said the radiation scare was caused by a partial meltdown of fuel rods.

Underground tunnel

The discovery of highly radioactive water outside a reactor building is a worrying development, says the BBC's Mark Worthington in Tokyo.

Up until now, pools of water with extremely high levels of radiation have only been detected within the reactor buildings themselves.

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FUKUSHIMA UPDATE (28 MAR)

  • Reactor 1: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas explosion. Highly radioactive water detected in reactor
  • Reactor 2: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage suspected. Highly radioactive water detected in reactor and adjoining tunnel
  • Reactor 3: Damage to the core from cooling problems. Building holed by gas blast; containment damage possible. Spent fuel pond partly refilled with water after running low. Highly radioactive water detected in reactor
  • Reactor 4: Reactor shut down prior to quake. Fires and explosion in spent fuel pond; water level partly restored
  • Reactors 5 & 6: Reactors shut down. Temperature of spent fuel pools now lowered after rising high

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The water was found in an underground maintenance tunnel, with one end located about 55m (180ft) from the shore.

Radiation levels were measured at 1,000 millisieverts an hour, a dose that can cause temporary radiation sickness. This is the same as the levels found on Sunday.

However, Tepco said there was no evidence that the contaminated water had reached the sea.

Tepco later said that plutonium had also been detected in soil at five locations at the plant but not at levels that represented a risk to human health.

It said the results came from samples taken a week ago and would not stop work at the plant.

Plutonium was used in the fuel mix for only one of the six reactors, number three.

The twin discoveries came hours after the government criticised Tepco for issuing incorrect readings from the plant.

On Sunday Tepco said radiation levels at reactor No 2 were 10 million times higher than normal before correcting that figure to 100,000.

"Considering the fact that the monitoring of radioactivity is a major condition to ensure safety, this kind of mistake is absolutely unacceptable," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

Tepco has apologised but the mistaken reading at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has called into question the operating company's handling of the current crisis, our correspondent says.

Tepco has been criticised for a lack of transparency and failing to provide information more promptly and for making a number of mistakes, including worker clothing.

Two workers were taken to hospital last week after wading though contaminated water with inadequate protection. They were expected to be released on Monday.

Foreign aid

Workers are battling to restore power and restart the cooling systems at the stricken nuclear plant, which was hit by a quake and tsunami over two weeks ago.

A child holds bottled water in Tokyo, Japan (24 March 2011)

A 9.0-magnitude earthquake on 11 March and the powerful tsunami it triggered is now known to have killed 10,901 people, with more than 17,000 people still missing.

More than 190,000 people are living in temporary shelters.

The BBC's Roland Buerk in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, says prefabricated houses are being wired for electricity, but there is initially room for only 150 of the 1,000 survivors there.

In Miyagi prefecture - another of the worst-hit areas - the authorities estimate it will be three years before all of the rubble and debris has been cleared.

Some 20,000 US troops are bolstering Japan's Self-Defence Forces, delivering aid in what is said to be the biggest bilateral humanitarian mission the US has conducted in Japan.

As well as shortages of food, water and fuel, survivors are also having to endure frequent aftershocks.

Japan lifted a tsunami warning earlier on Monday that was issued after a 6.5-magnitude quake struck off the northern coast.

It is not reported to have caused any injuries or damage.

For the first time since the disaster, the government has permitted a foreign medical team to enter the country to treat victims, the Japan Times reports.

The health ministry has lifted a ban on holders of foreign medical licences from practising in Japan, allowing a team of 53 medical aid workers from Israel, including 14 doctors and seven nurses, to work.

via bbc.co.uk
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MARCH 24, 2011

The “Fukushima 50”

By Michael Shaw

These are pictures of the 50 workers who have tended Fukushima since the catastrophe. The Daily Mail says five have died and that the remaining know that they will die from  radiation exposure in the future. They’ve since been joined by 150 more workers.

Deputy Publisher Karen Hull writes:

I do not know how the Japanese perceive their leaders at this point and it may be difficult in any case to appear to be effectively in control while facing this level of catastrophe.  I can imagine the need to find these men to be heroes and create a cult around them.  Not sure what would have happened had this happened in the West.  There may be a more lethal version of Chilean Miners coming to town.

I find the photos interesting in their anonymity — consistent, I assume, with the way Japanese orient to the group as much as Americans obsesses over the individual, and look high and low, even more intensely since 9/11, for “the hero.”

I’m sure there is pride and deep respect for these men (and these photos) in Japan as these workers take one (likely, the ultimate one) for the team. It seems to me, though, that the prototypical American in Peoria, or certainly the Nightly News producer in New York, process these photos quite differently than their Asian counterparts. On this side of the Pacific, I can imagine the viewer reading less about solidarity than about courage, accompanied by an impulse to somehow connect with (and even bask in the glow, excuse the pun) of the man behind the mask.

(photos: AP. Daily Mail caption 1: Aiming high: Workers in protective suits work on a transmission tower to restore electricity to Units 5 and 6. caption 2: Teamwork: Outside the men connect transmission lines to restore electric power supply to Unit 3 and Unit 4. caption 3:Conundrum: Two of the Fukushima Fifty pour over plans as they try to work out how to fix the stricken plant.)

>via: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/03/the-“fukushima-50”/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bagnewsnotes+%28BAGnewsNotes%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

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Is Fukushima

About To Blow? 

By Mike Whitney

March 28, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- - Conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are deteriorating and the doomsday scenario is beginning to unfold. On Sunday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) officials reported that the levels of radiation leaking into seawater at the Unit 2 reactor were 100,000 times above normal, and the airborne radiation measured 4-times higher than government limits. As a result, emergency workers were evacuated from the plant and rushed to safe location. The prospect of a full-core meltdown or an environmental catastrophe of incalculable magnitude now looms larger than ever. The crisis is getting worse.

If spent fuel rods catch fire from lack of coolant, the intense heat will lift radiation plumes high into the atmosphere that will drift around the world. That's the nightmare scenario, clouds of radioactive material showering the planet with lethal toxins for months on end. And, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna, that deadly process has already begun. The group told New Scientist that:

"Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl. ("New Scientist", March 24 ---thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

So, volatile radioactive elements are already being lofted into the jet stream and spread across continents. What's different here is that the quantities are much larger than they were at Chernobyl, thus, the dangers are far greater. According to the same group of scientists "the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site" (while) "the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes." The troubles at one nuclear facility now pose a direct threat to humans and other species everywhere. Is this what Obama meant when he called nuclear power, "Safe and green?"

This from CNN:

"Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation."

And this from the New York Times:

"A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan said that there was a long vertical crack running down the side of the reactor vessel itself. The crack runs down below the water level in the reactor and has been leaking fluids and gases, he said....

“There is a definite, definite crack in the vessel — it’s up and down and it’s large,” he said. “The problem with cracks is they do not get smaller.” (Thanks to Washington's Blog)

The media has switched into full "BP Oil Spill-mode", making every effort to minimize the disaster and to soothe the public with half-truths and disinformation. The goal is to conceal the scale of the catastrophe and protect the nuclear industry. It's another case of profits over people. Still, the truth is available for those who are willing to sift through the lies. Radiation has turned up in the Tokyo water supply, imports of milk, vegetable and fruit from four prefectures in the vicinity of Fukushima have been banned, and the evacuation zone around the plant has widened to an 18 mile radius.

Also, monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and Europe...According to Reuters: "It's only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere," said Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research."

Here's more from Brian Moench, MD:

"Administration spokespeople continuously claim "no threat" from the radiation reaching the US from Japan, just as they did with oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf. Perhaps we should all whistle "Don't worry, be happy" in unison. A thorough review of the science, however, begs a second opinion.

That the radiation is being released 5,000 miles away isn't as comforting as it seems.... Every day, the jet stream carries pollution from Asian smoke stacks and dust from the Gobi Desert to our West Coast, contributing 10 to 60 percent of the total pollution breathed by Californians, depending on the time of year. Mercury is probably the second most toxic substance known after plutonium. Half the mercury in the atmosphere over the entire US originates in China. It, too, is 5,000 miles away. A week after a nuclear weapons test in China, iodine 131 could be detected in the thyroid glands of deer in Colorado, although it could not be detected in the air or in nearby vegetation." (Washington's Blog)

The smoldering Fukushima hulk is a perpetual death machine poisoning everything around it--sea, sky and soil. Here's a clip from the Collin's article:

"...The soil contamination is really high. Soil found 40 kilometers away.... the levels on the soil were very high—in fact, a thousand times iodine, 4,000 times the cesium standard. And we just got a report from the Kyoto Research Reactor Institute, Dr. Tetsuji Imanaka, that said that—he had to look a little bit more into the sampling of the Japanese government, but depending on how the sampling was done, this level of contamination in the soil could be twice the amount that was compulsory evacuation for Chernobyl. Aileen Mioko Smith, March 24 (thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

Twice as high as Chernobyl already, and the disaster is likely to persist for months to come. Things are getting worse, much worse.

The Japanese government has been downplaying the crisis to make it look like they have matters under control, but it's all a sham. They control nothing. The rescue mission has been a flop from the get-go and now things are at a boiling point. The emergency effort has been overtaken by events and now it's a matter of "wait and see". We're approaching zero hour.

So why the cover up? Why is the media trying to soft-peddle the real effects of a nuclear cataclysm? Does the Japanese government really believe they can make things better by tweaking their public relations strategy? They should focus on saving lives and abandon "perception management" altogether. This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists website:

"Our assessment is that the Japanese government is squandering the opportunity to initiate an orderly evacuation from larger areas around the site–especially of sensitive populations, like children and pregnant women. It is potentially wasting valuable time by not undertaking a larger scale evacuation at this time."

The Japanese government is trying to protect the powerful nuclear lobby. The same is true of Obama, who continues to promote nuclear energy even while radiation belches from battered Fukushima. He's not thinking about the public; he's thinking about the deep pocket constituents who fill his campaign coffers.

Japanese workers are putting their lives on the line to regain control of the broken facility, but with little success. The probability of another fire, another monstrous explosion, or a full-core meltdown increases by the day. The Fukushima fiasco is gaining pace putting tens of thousands of people at risk of thyroid cancer, childhood leukemia and other life-threatening ailments.

On Saturday, Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, said the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant was ''serious''. That might be the understatement of the century.

>via: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27778.htm
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By D. Parvaz in on March 25th, 2011.

IWATE PREFECTURE - In the event of the unthinkable (yet horribly possible) nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, we have to wonder: Where would the evacuees go? How will they be cared for?

After all, the half a million residents left homeless by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are taxing the government's emergency response, as are infrastructural issues dealing with water, electricity, petrol and in some areas, a rather pronounced food shortage.

NHK reported tonight that there are several remote areas that were hit hard by the tsunami but two weeks on, have not yet been reached by emergency efforts. One man interviewed said he was digging through the rubble of his home for food and burning what was left of the house for heat.

So, then, what will happen if on top of all of this, there needs to be a mass evacuation around the nuclear plant in Fukushima? What will the roads look like then? Where will these folks go?

That isn’t a question anyone seems ready to answer, but the gist of the official response seems to be: We hope they go anywhere but here.

When I put the question to Kazuo Shimizu, a spokesperson for Iwate's office of government disaster response, he said in all likelihood, most evacuees would go west.

But when I pointed out that there's more country up north then west of Fukushima (Japan is a narrow country), Shimizu said it was possible, and that "at this time, we do not have a plan for that".

He was more concerned about getting necessities to those in shelters.

Kimiaki Toda, the mayor of Ofunato, also said there was no plan to deal with evacuees coming to Ofunato (he might have a point – much was lost there, but then, any port in a nuclear storm might do). 

"We will stay inside our homes," said Toda. But would the homes that remain standing in his devastated city be able to hold anyone coming north? 

"I don't know about that." said Toda. "Of course, we will comply with national orders..." whatever they may be. 

Naoto Kan, Japan's prime minister, gave a press conference tonight saying that the situation at the nuclear plant is "still grave and serious" and that Japan "can't be in a situation where we're optimistic".

Just what is going on at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima is unclear. Certainly, the sense one gets here is that the only ones in the know are the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co and the impression I get from the people I’ve interviewed is that they’re not certain they’re being given vital information about their own safety.

Every day, there’s news of something burning, steaming or smoking at the plants and advisories on food and water supplies contaminated by radioactive iodine seeping from the unstable reactors don’t help.

Tonight, we learned that tested water in the area of the planted contained 10,000 times the acceptable amount of radioactive iodine. It is speculated by experts on the press here that the source of the radioactive material is reactor number 3, which, they say, is leaking.

Just how damaged that reactor is remains unknown (perhaps cracked pipes leaked coolant rather than damaged the containment function. And even though that's the best-case scenario, cracked pipes in and of themselves are not good news as functioning ones are needed to maintain cooling).

There's also aerial footage released by the Japanese security forces, showing the extent of the damage on the reactors, and the images certainly look dramatic.

The control room at the plant still isn't up and running, and the damage -  such as in the number 1 reactor, where the roof has entirely caved in – doesn’t do much to ease people’s mind.

It’s doubtful that being told they’re expected to move in a westerly direction might do the trick.