Earthquake off Japan

[Todeswind]

Fukushima well may result in the loss of life on a grand scale, but not because the power station is melting down but because the power station might stop producing electricity.

It's apparently become the lynchpin in the power-grid on the mainland. There are numerous redundant power stations but a number of them were lost in either the earthquake or the tsunami, losing the remaining Fukushima reactors would potentially mean even more blackouts on the mainland, complicating emergency services more than they already are. Think the large-scale blackout on the east-coast of the United States a couple years back.

They're already talking about having scheduled blackouts on all the Islands in the hopes of being able to provide Emergency services and relief centers with sufficient electricity to provide emergency care if the Fukushima reactor stops being able to provide power.

[CaptHawkeye]

The power plant is fucked. Rescuing the reactors for future use is pretty much off the table at this point.

[Todeswind]

Google has collected all the pertinent information for for emergency services and travel and place them on a single site.

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/ja ... e2011.html

[Duckie]

There's a whole lot of stuff in japanese about some thing going on in Fukushima 2, but I'm slow at reading Twitterspeak and there's hundreds of things on google news most of which just say the same thing over and over.

Nearest I can tell someone official (something about Nikkei, a newspaper, maybe announced through that?) has asked people who are within (3 kilometers, I think? I can't remember) to take refuge indoors.

Might be someone bullshitting on twitter however, or I might be repeating old news someone was talking about.

Not sure why. English news is really slow at night.

[phongn]

The Something Awful guys are reporting readings of 400 mSv/hr were detected --- and that Unit 4 caught fire.

[Duckie]

Yeah that's what I'm reading too. Probably people are being told to take refuge inside to minimize exposure.

Granted that level of radiation won't start causing any significant health problems for a few hours, but if whatever is causing it doesn't abate, well, that's bad.

That'd explain why everyone was suddenly talking about wind charts on the news.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Reactor No.4 is on fire, radiation levels have spiked to 400mSv/hr, and TEPCO is sending all personnel back in despite this, which is in the honourable Japanese kamikaze tradition--eight hours of exposure at the plant is now LD50/30. TEPCO's obsession with saving the reactors led to them neglecting the waste pool where the old fuel from Reactor No.4 was being stored, leading to a fire.

There is an incredibly small but non-trivial possibility of a criticality accident in fact having occurred inside the fuel pool which was poorly sited on top of the dome at No.4; regardless it is certainly the cause of this spike in radiation.

We are now at INES 6--much worse than Three Mile Island, though still no Chernobyl.

[Broomstick]

Even yesterday they had told people withing 20 km to leave the area. If they were unable to leave, then should stay inside. This is pretty standard instruction anywhere (much earlier I mentioned referencing the civil defense information for my area - it also says if you can't evacuate then shelter in place).

I do caution anyone reading the news to confirm things and read/view with some skepticism, as many media outlets are getting hysterical.

Yes, due to prevailing winds stuff blowing off Japan could, theoretically, reach North America. Doing so would take days, and thus any radioactivity that left Japan via wind would decay significantly, not to mention be very diluted by the atmosphere by the time it reached the US or Canada. Even the mid-ocean islands like Hawaii would get a highly reduced, diluted dose.

[Broomstick]

Reactor No.4 is on fire, radiation levels have spiked to 400mSv/hr, and TEPCO is sending all personnel back in despite this, which is in the honourable Japanese kamikaze tradition--eight hours of exposure at the plant is now LD50/30. TEPCO's obsession with saving the reactors led to them neglecting the waste pool where the old fuel from Reactor No.4 was being stored, leading to a fire.

There is an incredibly small but non-trivial possibility of a criticality accident in fact having occurred inside the fuel pool which was poorly sited on top of the dome at No.4; regardless it is certainly the cause of this spike in radiation.

We are now at INES 6--much worse than Three Mile Island, though still no Chernobyl.

...>sigh<...

OK, that's getting worse. Didn't know about the waste pool problem. Grrrrr....

As far as it goes - the "kamikaze" thing isn't just Japanese, think of the poor guys at Chernobyl. But yes, some people are engaging in self-sacrifice for the benefit of everyone else.

ETA: Of course, the stupid thing is that this will be blamed on the reactor when it's really a mishandling of garbage that is the problem.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Some reports are suggesting that radiation levels are fluctuating rather wildly in the facility, which would strongly suggest that the fuel pool at No.4 suffered a criticality accident as I feared, as that is a hallmark of a criticality accident.

[Ekiqa]

From what I've read, the issue with all the reactors is that they built them in the low lying coastal areas, and were all damaged by the tsunamis. All of the back up generators were knocked out by the tsunami, after the quake shut down the plants. If they'd been built away from the known risk, there wouldn't be this whole nuclear fiasco going on.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

From what I've read, the issue with all the reactors is that they built them in the low lying coastal areas, and were all damaged by the tsunamis. All of the back up generators were knocked out by the tsunami, after the quake shut down the plants. If they'd been built away from the known risk, there wouldn't be this whole nuclear fiasco going on.

No you moron, the reactors aren't the problem. They rode out everything with radiation contained. The problem is that the uncontained fuel pool in defueled No.4 apparently drained, TEPCO failed to monitor it (!? they're worse than the personnel at Chernobyl, jesus christ!) and it burst into flame, POSSIBLY as the result of a criticality accident, perhaps due to the Earthquake shoving all the fuel rods together inside the pool.

[Ryan Thunder]

What happened to the control rods? I thought modern reactors were supposed to shut down before they got to the point where they could meltdown...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

What happened to the control rods? I thought modern reactors were supposed to shut down before they got to the point where they could meltdown...

This is not occurring in a reactor. It is occurring in the fuel pool. The place where nuclear fuel removed from the reactor is stored before being sent for reprocessing (or in the US, disposal).

[phongn]

What happened to the control rods? I thought modern reactors were supposed to shut down before they got to the point where they could meltdown...

Control rods were all in place and locked. There are still residual fission products that produce substantial heat (these things produce GW of thermal energy - so even a small fraction is considerable amount of power)

[Broomstick]

OK, latest official news from NHK:

They have confirmed that radiation levels have spiked at Fukushima and are now in a range that is hazardous to human health.

Everyone within 30 km of the complex have been told stay stay indoors, windows and doors shut.

They have confirmed a fire in the #4 reactor builder.

As of 8:31 am Tuesday in Japan, the radiation at Fukushima spiked to 8,218 mSv per hour. Yes, that is definitely an unhealthy amount of radiation. One hour of that and you will definitely be sick, very sick, and even with modern medical care the mortality rate can run 50% from an hour at that level. This looks like we've entered the territory of people being mortally injured from this.

ALL reactors at Fukushima are now shut down. This new radiation spike is apparently NOT from the reactors but from the fuel pool.

No, I wouldn't say these guys are worse than the ones at Chernobyl. I will also point out that according to the references on line at 8 Sv/hour a significant percentage of people start suffering cognitive impairment, which may be a factor, as well as the stress of surviving a quake, tsunami, worry about family, loss of homes, and, oh yes, four days struggling with a nuclear emergency. They guys at Chernobyl started fucking up even before the accident occurred, not days later.

Meanwhile, 120 km south (and closer to Tokyo) the Ibaraki nuclear facility reported radiation levels "exceeding legal limits". It spiked to 5 mSv. It has since dropped to 3 mSv.

[CaptainChewbacca]

For people who don't think the plant was built well enough; The place was built to withstand a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, because they felt 7.2 or 7.3 was the most powerful that you could have in the region. You can't fault the builders for not anticipating something there was no historical precedent to expect.

[Todeswind]

11 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are out of commission for now and TEPCO can only provide 31 million k/w of power to the needed 41 million.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

11 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are out of commission for now and TEPCO can only provide 31 million k/w of power to the needed 41 million.

I'd be more concerned about what happens when the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi reaches Tokyo in 10 hours. The wind is blowing south.

[Broomstick]

What happened to the control rods? I thought modern reactors were supposed to shut down before they got to the point where they could meltdown...

As soon as equipment at the power plants detected an earthquake the control rods were automatically inserted into the core. This occurred. Fission reaction may have stopped even before the quake was over. At that point, the emergency cooling system engaged and ran as intended for about an hour. What happened at one hour was that a 10 meter wall of ocean slammed into the plant and flooded the diesel generators supplying power, as some idiot had designed the layout with the back up generators at a low point. At that point, battery back up kicked in and ran until the batteries went dead, several hours later. Meanwhile, workers at the plants were trying to get the diesel generators going and the government was trying to get additional generators in place.

Then reactor #1 one started to boil off its water. This is analogous to how, if you keep a pot of water over a hot stove it will, eventually, boil dry. The heat was the residual heat from the reactor's normal operation plus the heat generated by normal radioactive decay. This takes several days or even weeks to cool down to sub-boiling temperatures. Without being able to pump water into to replace what was boiled away the reactor started to run dry.

THAT's the point reactors start to melt down. The control rods are still in place, and have been since Friday. This is just a matter of a "hot stove" cooling down.

Since a meltdown is a Bad Thing they triggered their last-ditch cooling mechanism, which was to pour large quantities of sea water over the reactor. This is actually quite effective, although it permanently ruins the reactor. It's like using a firehose to add water to a pot that's boiling dry. It works, but it's drastic and messy. Still, it works.

To continue our stove analogy, though - they were so busy worrying about the stove and the pot and the firehose they forgot to keep an eye on the woodpile next to the stove. Said "woodpile" (the pool of fuel rods) has now been ignited and is now causing a worse problem than the pot on the stove had been, as it is a much less controlled situation.

And I'm sure if any of that's off base someone will correct me shortly.

[Simon_Jester]

No, I wouldn't say these guys are worse than the ones at Chernobyl. I will also point out that according to the references on line at 8 Sv/hour a significant percentage of people start suffering cognitive impairment, which may be a factor, as well as the stress of surviving a quake, tsunami, worry about family, loss of homes, and, oh yes, four days struggling with a nuclear emergency. They guys at Chernobyl started fucking up even before the accident occurred, not days later.

Duchess' point is that the fuel pool has only reached this multi-Sievert/hour range of radiation (because of fuel going critical) because they forgot to do anything about it. For days.

The Chernobyl workers, once things started going wrong, did pretty much everything they could think of and took a lot of personal risks to limit the damage. I believe her condemnation is that the workers at Fukushima did not take those measures and risks when it would have been timely and effective, and have now created a crisis of high magnitude by forgetting something important.

While they are no doubt under a tremendous amount of stress, that stress cannot be chalked up to the radiation itself, which has risen to such high levels mostly because of something they forgot to do in the first place.

[Broomstick]

deleted: accidental double post

[Todeswind]

11 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are out of commission for now and TEPCO can only provide 31 million k/w of power to the needed 41 million.

I'd be more concerned about what happens when the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi reaches Tokyo in 10 hours. The wind is blowing south.

WHAT! IS IT HEADING TO KYUSHU? WHERE IS THERE A MAP OF THE PREVAILING WINDS!!!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

11 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are out of commission for now and TEPCO can only provide 31 million k/w of power to the needed 41 million.

I'd be more concerned about what happens when the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi reaches Tokyo in 10 hours. The wind is blowing south.

WHAT! IS IT HEADING TO KYUSHU? WHERE IS THERE A MAP OF THE PREVAILING WINDS!!!

Pfft. I doubt it will do more than slightly elevate cancer rates even in Tokyo in the extreme worst case scenario. I mean, Kiev isn't a dead wasteland after Chernobyl. Calm the fuck down. It's mostly what elevated radiation levels in Tokyo will do to the nuclear power industry.

[Todeswind]

Pfft. I doubt it will do more than slightly elevate cancer rates even in Tokyo in the extreme worst case scenario. I mean, Kiev isn't a dead wasteland after Chernobyl. Calm the fuck down. It's mostly what elevated radiation levels in Tokyo will do to the nuclear power industry.

Oh give me a break, this hasn't exactly been the most stress free couple days.