[Brenda]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

BRAH BRAH:

The media is having multiple orgasms at the thought of Japanese nuclear reactors going Chernobyl.

I know. And the fact that nothing even Chernobyl like could ever occur isn't even being reported.

Actually, it has been, on CNN.

Just not as frequently repeated as "it is ALL gonna blow up!!"

[DrCaleb]

Brenda Brenda:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

BRAH BRAH:

The media is having multiple orgasms at the thought of Japanese nuclear reactors going Chernobyl.

I know. And the fact that nothing even Chernobyl like could ever occur isn't even being reported.

Actually, it has been, on CNN.

Just not as frequently repeated as "it is ALL gonna blow up!!"

I'm just judging from the online media. AP, Reuters, BBC etc. I gave up on TV news channels long before they became the "Natalie Holloway" or "whatever irrelevant story of the week was" and "Let's ask and broadcast our viewers opinions" channel, a while back.

[hurley_108]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

A few things:

3. A geologist-tectonics expert was on CNN last night talking about how the only quadrant of the Pacific Ring of Fire that has not had a major quake is the West coast of the US & Canada. He said that a major quake on the San Andreas fault is likely but that a major quake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone was probable.

Yea, that's curious isn't it? The Juan de Fuca plate hasn't had a megathrust earthquake along its subduction zone with the North American place since 1700. That quake, though, unleashed an enormous tsunami upon the Pacific coast of North America, and which was recorded in Japan. One does wonder, given the three 9.0 range earthquakes within the last 6 years following a 40 year lull, if there's a big one coming, geologically speaking, imminently.

The San Andreas is a different type of fault line. It's not a subduction zone, it's a strike-slip fault line. Capable of no less damage given the proximity to enormous population centres, but not the sort that generates 9.0 range quakes or tsunami.

[Scape]

The 1st 2 explosions were not that bad but the third one looks to have breached containment. Furthermore, and far more concerning, is reactor 4 which was offline and used for storage has caught fire. That fire is a major contaminator. This will force workers to be removed from the site and that could mean that the situation they had just started to get a grip on with the other 3 reactors by flooding with sea water will come to a halt and endanger their containment as well.

[BartSimpson]

martin14 martin14:

Can't see how you could move (the 30 million people in Tokyo), or where.

How would initially be by road and by rail to other parts of Japan. After that, they could be put on cruise ships chartered for transport and the refugees could end up in North America.

Not that I wish Japan ill - but the prospect of 30 million literate, polite, law abiding, productive, thrifty, industrious immigrants coming to the USA makes me want the whole damn bunch of them.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

martin14 martin14:

Can't see how you could move (the 30 million people in Tokyo), or where.

How would initially be by road and by rail to other parts of Japan. After that, they could be put on cruise ships chartered for transport and the refugees could end up in North America.

Not that I wish Japan ill - but the prospect of 30 million literate, polite, law abiding, productive, thrifty, industrious immigrants coming to the USA makes me want the whole damn bunch of them.

Hey, hey, hey, we get our share. We take more immigrants than you do per capita, so we should get that share of this crowd too. I'd be all for that as long as we shut down our current immigration system to make up for it, and retool it during down time.

[BartSimpson]

Hell no! We get all the Japanese and you can have the Mexicans in exchange.

[Scape]

Spent rods on fire

The external fire has been put out but the internal one is unchecked.

[martin14]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

martin14 martin14:

Can't see how you could move (the 30 million people in Tokyo), or where.

How would initially be by road and by rail to other parts of Japan. After that, they could be put on cruise ships chartered for transport and the refugees could end up in North America.

Not that I wish Japan ill - but the prospect of 30 million literate, polite, law abiding, productive, thrifty, industrious immigrants coming to the USA makes me want the whole damn bunch of them.

Nahh, Zirinovsky will get them with cheap sake and hot Russian chicks.

[martin14]

Scape Scape:

Spent rods on fire

The external fire has been put out but the internal one is unchecked.

nytimes, please log in..

cut and paste pls Scape

[Scape]

$1:

In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and HIROKO TABUCHI

Even as workers race to prevent the radioactive cores of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan from melting down, concerns are growing that nearby pools holding spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger.

The pools, which sit on the top level of the reactor buildings and keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems and the Japanese have been unable to take emergency steps because of the multiplying crises.

Experts now fear that the pool containing those rods from the fourth reactor has run dry, allowing the rods to overheat and catch fire. That could spread radioactive materials far and wide in dangerous clouds.

The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the three have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools did indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.

“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”

A spokesman for the Japanese company that runs the stricken reactors said in an interview on Monday that the spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants had been left uncooled since shortly after the quake.

The company, Tokyo Electric, has not been able to cool the spent fuel pools because power has been knocked out, said Johei Shiomi, the spokesman. “There may be some heating up,” he said.

Before Tuesday's fire, some scientists said that a worst-case outcome was unlikely and that the Japanese would probably have enough time to act before too much water boiled away. Firefighters with hoses can pour in water, they said, or helicopters could drop tons of water.

“I’m still hopeful that they can contain all this,” Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. “You’ve got time to put fire hoses up there and get it filled if it’s not leaking,” he said of the pool.

A 1997 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island described a worst-case disaster from uncovered spent fuel in a reactor cooling pool. It estimated 100 quick deaths would occur within a range of 500 miles and 138,000 eventual deaths.

The study also found that land over 2,170 miles would be contaminated and damages would hit $546 billion.

That section of the Brookhaven study focused on boiling water reactors — the kind at the heart of the Japanese crisis.

The threat is considered so severe that at the start of the crisis Friday, immediately after the shattering earthquake, Fukushima plant officials focused their attention on a damaged storage pool for spent nuclear fuel at the No. 2 reactor at Daiichi, said a nuclear executive who requested anonymity because his company is not involved in the emergency response at the reactors and is wary of antagonizing other companies in the industry.

The damage prompted the plant’s management to divert much of the attention and pumping capacity to that pool, the executive added. The shutdown of the other reactors then proceeded badly, and problems began to cascade.

Mr. Shiomi of Tokyo Electric said that in addition to the power and cooling failures, some water had spilled from the pools.

But he said that the company thought there “was relatively little danger that temperatures would rise.”

“If you compare this to everything that’s been going on,” Mr. Shiomi said, “it’s not serious.”

Each of the crippled reactors in Japan has one cooling pool sitting atop the main concrete structure. Thin roofs and metal walls usually surround the pools.

In a reactor pool, the time it takes uncooled fuel to begin boiling the surrounding water depends on how much fuel is present and how old it is. Fresh fuel is hotter in terms of radiation than old fuel is.

Mr. Lochbaum, who formerly taught reactor operation for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the pools measured about 40 feet long, 40 feet wide and 45 feet deep. The spent fuel, he added, rested at the pool’s bottom and rose no higher than 15 feet from the bottom.

That means that in normal operations, the spent fuel is covered by about 30 feet of cooling water.

Depending on the freshness of the spent fuel, Mr. Lochbaum said, the water in an uncooled pool would start to boil in anywhere from days to a week. The water would boil off to a dangerous level in another week or two.

Once most of the fuel is exposed, he said, it can catch fire.

If the spent fuel is a few months old, most of the iodine 131 — one of the most dangerous radioactive byproducts in spent fuel — will have decayed into harmless forms.

But the cesium 137 in the spent fuel has a half-life of 30 years, meaning it would take about two centuries to diminish its levels of radioactivity down to 1 percent.

It is cesium 137 that still contaminates much land in Ukraine around the Chernobyl reactor, which suffered a meltdown in 1986.

“I assume they are doing triage,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the Japanese, with emergency personnel first trying to avoid core meltdowns and then turning their attention to the cooling pools.

He added that the explosions at the reactors at Daiichi could complicate efforts to try to reach the cooling pools and keep them filled with water.

“There’s no telling what’s up there,” he said.

William J. Broad reported from New York, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Scape Scape:

Spent rods on fire

The external fire has been put out but the internal one is unchecked.

Wow, this could get seriously phucked, with a capital PH.

[BartSimpson]

Sh*t.

[Scape]

[martin14]

$1:

The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the three have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools did indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.

“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”

oh, fuck me, I thought most of the spent fuel was in #4..

$1:

“I assume they are doing triage,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the Japanese, with emergency personnel first trying to avoid core meltdowns and then turning their attention to the cooling pools.

Guess again.. earlier, TEPCO pulled all but 50 workers out of the area,
the radiation levels were getting lethal.. and those 50 can only work 10 minute shifts.