Due to the quake, the power outage caused a domino effect that disabled the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. As a result, it’s being reported that radiation levels around the plant are 8x normal, suggesting some sort of dangerous leak has occurred. Evacuations are underway.
Update: Front page of Drudge reporting radiation levels at 1000x now.
Tokyo Electric Power Co operates said plant.
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How the f#ck could that disable the pumps and protection systems? They have autonomous back-up power sources. Besides, when shit happened the operators were supposed to shut down the reactor. I guess the pipelines carrying sodium or whatever they use in their cooling circuits could break down, and that resulted in radioactive leakage. Will check tomorrow with specialists from that industry. They were very helpful about Iran’s Busher NPP. Hope this time will dig something more.
I just spoke with my partner in Kagoshima. All reactors in Japan are on an auto shutdown protocol in the event of earthquakes of this magnitude. That being said, the shutdown procedures rely on electric power to shut them down. The grid in Fukushima is severely damaged, so the back-up is power from a diesel generator, However the force of the tremors has disabled the diesel generator. Secondary back-up is via battery power. Battery power obviously isn’t going to last too long. Battery truck units are in transit to the Fukushima plant, I believe at least one has arrived, however roadway damage is severe. Japan forces have been mobilized and I believe US military forces (likely from Hokkaido) have been deployed in order to assist in transport of battery or replacement diesel generators. That’s all I know (or surmised) for now.
Fukashima 1 is a GE BWR4 – light water moderated Boiling Water Reactor — NOT Sodium cooled. The Rx did auto scram (shutdown) BUT in any nuclear reactor there is about 7% decay heat that has to be removed post-s/d. The radioactive leakage sounds like it was intentionally vented as a result of venting steam from primary containment – likely to reduce pressure/temp buildup as it sounds like they don’t have a heat sink – that is the plant’s emergency core cooling systems are not working / significantly degraded…
Show me some liquid nuclear material bubbling or this is just another bullshit news piece designed to get people to hate nuclear power, the cleanest and most efficient of all energy sources.
Be careful what you believe the media says.
there will be more hysteria than warranted by any likely outcome, for sure. CNN is just stupid “radiocactive substances may have leaked out of the reactor.” That’s just bullshit. LIkely an intentional vent of Primary Containment…which will have relatively low levels of radioactivity. CNN talking head (certainly not a technical person), characterizing it like there is junk just oozing out. Fucking stupid people.
Failure of an initial backup generator. Google it.
I think the japanese have similar requirements to US nukes, in that japan’s nuclear regulatory agency parallels the US NRC in some ways. It seems the plant is right on the ocean and was subject to a considerable tsunami surge. That could reak havoc. The plant went commerical in 1971..there could have been lesser standards in place then, in terms of flood assumptions and design protections. But that’s speculation. They should have redundanct diesels that supply power to redundant emergency ac electrical buses…which each also have redudant dc batteries and electrical buses for supporting controls etc.
Does this mean weaker Yen?
wouldn’t be surprised to see the markets closed over there for a few days (possible)…in any case a sell off drives strength into Yen as a rule
Tsunami, possible nuc reactor radiation exposure, doesn’t that carve out an exception? Or is this hype, as supra and infra?
Geez I hope not. Would love to see silver move up a few notches from here.
What did Helen Caldicott MD tell us?
Fly, bring back the other news feed. You have people linking to PrisonPlanet on this new feed, it’s a joke.
Deal with it. This is the new news feed
Deal with it. This is the new news feed. If you want the old feed, see the footer of the site under link ibcnewsbot3000.
Don’t tell the fucking Blogfather how to manage his site.
PrisonPlanet is a little closer to reality than CNN, Fox, CNBC, or BBC. Propanda isn’t quality or worthwhile news. It’s just propaganda. Just because a shitload of idiots subscribe to the reality purported by propaganda does not make it worthwhile.
Serious, it’s “Publish OR Perish,” “Publish AND Perish” is “ol’ skewl.”
Fuck you.
Go back to your sheep world. Bahhhhh.
backup batteries? I could buy backup diesel generators. This is a GE BWR/4 Unit…if its like US GE BWR/4’s…there are no dc-driven emergency core cooling pump/motors. They are all ac – supplied by offsite power (preferred) or emergency diesel generators. Batteries supply 125Vdc to controls, MOVs, etc., which you need or a lot of manual actions are required (or some systems won’t operate properly). They may have had an EDG out of service (maintenance) or they failed to start/run, or electrical faults inop’d the emergency ac power system. Don’t know those details. Though maybe they need batteries to replace ones that were damaged/flooded…though you could probably repair several batteries and get a couple/few working ones to energize control functions. Hard to say what’s really going on. I work at a US GE BWR site.
someone posted a link to a tepco site inside. Appears to be a running radiation level and windspeed data set. If I am reading it right, they have rad levels of 0.25-0.50 millirem/hr the past 4 hours – wherever the reading was taken. Likely these readings are on or near the Fukushima site. Point of reference…US NRC occupational radiation dose limits for US workers is 3 Rem/Qtr and 5 Rem/Yr (ignoring whether its internal or external dose). So while elevated, these radiation levels are not a public safety threat, with the caveat that I’m not sure where they are being taken. Pregnant women have a limit of 300 millirem/qtr and 500 millirem/year. So it would take about 1000 hrs of continuous exposure to these levels for a pregnant woman to reach US occupational limits (which are believed to be very conservative from a fetus standpoint based on the literature). Intersting that levels have been elevated for past 4 hours of published data. I could think of a few reasons why but just speculation w/o knowing what’s really going on or their emergency operating procedures.
US occupational limits, can you explain, ever so kind si vous plait?
US occupational limits are those applied to workers at US nuclear facilities or work with nuclear technologies. Those are whole body dose limits. There are actually higher limits to specific body parts – extremitites like arms, legs, that aren’t as sensitive to radiation damage (as compared to say some internal organs).
Thanks Dr. Strangelove! As General Ripper might add: “There’s impurity in the water.” From fluoride to this, HolyMoley !!!
One of the Drudge headlines is typically idiotic. “Coolant Water Reaches Boiling Point.” Hey – fucktard – Boiling Water Reactors operate at about 500 degrees F. Even after a plant scram, it won’t be cooled to less than boiling for typically many hours or days. Having said that, appears they have a Station Blackout – no ac power. That’s not good. Most US plants have up to 8 hour coping strategies…after which some source of ac power needs to be re-established…or you go into more complicated procedures like venting and such. If Fuk 1 has RCIC problems then they are in deeper problems…which may explain why there are MSM reports of other plants having “issues”. There may be several in SBO or running on diesels w/ various states of equipment functionality. Battery depletion also a problem.
Zero’s analogies and metaphors aren’t for the scientifically minded.
Not even remotely.
The news flow is starting to pick up on this. A bunch of self-described “experts” showing up with Doomsday scenarios. No way they will have a meltdown that compromises the containment integrity. This guy on MSNBC saying the Japanese reactors are “state of the art”…same stuff we have here, guy. My guess is still 1 unit w/ no heat sink and SBO in progress, and an indeterminate # of others on emergency diesels…
Might be a lot of Thorium reactors are built as a result of this.
The anti-nuclear “sustainable development” crowd is going to milk this for all it’s worth. We start with an earthquake, get a tsunami, and the green movement leverages their media circus and turns this into an anti-nuclear energy show.
Next we’ll get “experts” on TV telling us how dangerous nuclear energy is due to natural disasters such as this. They’ll then tell us how important it is to replace nuclear energy with solar and wind energy.
Business as usual on planet Earth, where the imbeciles continue to rule the planet.
5am local time update from TEPCO indicates everything stable at all the Fukushima Units except possibly Unit 1. Although the statement now says they do not believe there was any reactor coolant leakage…offsite power is available at all Units…doesn’t indicate whether this is supplying s/d cooling loads or diesels or neither. I’d assume they have power to required cooling pumps now as they state that reactor coolant injection is by the condensate system now. Leads me to believe that they are not in danger of a meltdown by any means. There could be complications going on but not anything that dire at this point…
Surprised they didn’t have DC back-up power in place. Even if the reactor is commissioned in 1971, they might upgrade it. But enough with speculations. What I’m thinking about is that if there are problems with their NPPs, then it means they have problems with base power load. To make long story short their electricity prices should go up.
Forget it. Looked at their NPP map, only a small number is affected.