Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Reactors

[dorispulaski]

IAEA has their afternoon status for April 5th at 2:30 UTC

They have been starting to take measurements closer to the plant, now.

Presentation:
→ Summary of Reactor Status

On Tuesday, 5 April 2011, the IAEA provided the following information on the current status of nuclear safety in Japan:

1. Current Situation

Overall, the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant remains very serious.

On 3rd April, transferring of water from the Unit 1 condenser to the condenser storage tank was started in preparation for transferring water in the basement of the Unit 1 turbine building to the condenser. On 2nd April, transferring of water from the Unit 2 condenser to the condenser storage tank was started in preparation for transferring water in the basement of the Unit 1 turbine building to the condenser.

TEPCO has identified a possible leakage path from the Turbine building of Unit 2 to the sea via a series of trenches/tunnels used to provide power to the sea water intake pumps and supply of service water to the reactor and turbine buildings. On 4th April, a tracer was used in an attempt to determine where the water was coming from. So far, the tracer has not been observed in the water leaking into the sea.

In Unit 1 fresh water has been continuously injected into the reactor pressure vessel through feed-water line at an indicated flow rate of 6 m3/h using a temporary electric pump with off-site power. In Units 2 and 3 fresh water is being injected continuously into the RPVs through fire extinguisher line at indicated rates of 9 m3/h and 7 m3/h using a temporary electric pump with off-site power.

In Unit 1 the indicated temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV decreased from 243 °C to 234 °C and at the bottom of RPV stable at 115 °C. The RPV pressure indications are fluctuating and Drywell pressure is stable. The RPV pressure indications for the 2 channels are diverging. For Unit 2 the indicated temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is stable at 142 °C. The temperature at the bottom of RPV was not reported. Indicated Drywell pressure remains at atmospheric pressure. In Unit 3 the indicated temperature at the feed water nozzle of the RPV is stable at 114oC and at the bottom of RPV is about 85 °C. The validity of the RPV temperature measurement at the feed water nozzle is still under investigation.

In Unit 2 additional water was injected via the Spent Fuel Cooling System line to the spent fuel pool by a temporary pump on April 4. In Unit 4, 180 T of fresh water was sprayed to the spent fuel pool by concrete pump on April 3rd.

There has been no change of status on Units 5-6 and the Common Spent Fuel Storage Facility.

2. Radiation monitoring

On 3rd April, deposition of both iodine-131 and cesium-137 was detected in 7 prefectures. The values for iodine-131 ranged from 2.4 to 82, for cesium-137 from 5.2 to 57 becquerel per square metre. On 4th April, deposition of iodine-131 was detected in 7 prefectures ranging from 3.1 to 75 becquerel per square metre. Deposition of cesium-137 in 6 prefectures ranging from 7.4 to 46 becquerel per square metre. Reported gamma dose rates in the 46 prefectures showed no significant changes compared to yesterday.

As of 3rd April, iodine-131 and cesium-134/137 was detectable in 8 and 5 prefectures respectively. All values were well below levels that would trigger recommendations for restrictions of drinking water. As of 3rd April, restrictions for infants related to I-131 (100 Bq/l) are in place in only one village of the Fukushima prefecture. The restriction is still in place as a precautionary measure.

Currently, the IAEA monitoring team is working in the Fukushima region. On 5th April, measurements were made at 7 locations at distances of 16 to 41 km, South and South West to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The dose rates ranged from 0.3 to 31 microsievert per hour. At the same locations, results of beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.01 to 3.2 megabecquerel per square metre. The highest dose rates and beta gamma contaminations were measured at the location closest to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Since our written briefing of yesterday, data related to food contamination was reported on 4 April by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. These reported analytical results covered a total of 24 samples taken on 31 March (4 samples) and 1st, 3rd and 4th April (20 samples). Analytical results for all of the 24 samples for various vegetables, fruit (strawberry) and seafood in five prefectures (Gunma, Ibaraki, Niigata, Saitama and Tochigi) indicated that iodine-131, caesium-134 and/or caesium-137 were either not detected or were below the regulation values set by the Japanese authorities.

The IAEA/FAO Food Safety Assessment Team has completed its tasks and returned to Vienna. The team met with relevant local government officials and stakeholders in the agriculture sector in the four prefectures (Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma) most affected by the nuclear emergency in Fukushima. The team were appraised on the local situation and provided relevant technical information.

On 31st March, the team reported to the Japanese Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Tokyo. The team returned from their mission on 1 April.

Seawater is collected daily close to the discharge areas of Units 1 - 4 and of Units 5 and 6 at the Dai-ichi NPP. The data show a decreasing trend from 1 to 3 April from about 66 kBq/l to 24 kBq/l for I-131 and 21 kBq/l to 10 kBq/l for both Cs-134 and Cs-137 at Units 1-4. The concentrations at Units 5 and 6 also showed a decreasing trend until 3 April. These values were measured before the discharge of low level contaminated water authorised by the Japanese Government on the 4th April.

New data were provided for the off-shore survey on 8 sampling points about 30 km east of the NPPs. Concentrations are between 5 and 18 Bq/l for I-131 and between roughly 1 and 11 Bq/l for Cs-137. For the new coverage of the coastal transect in the south, about 35 km south of Fukushima Daiini, the highest concentrations were detected at the sampling point closest to the coast in the south with about 38 Bq/l for I-131 and 4.5 Bq/l for Cs-137. The concentrations at all sampling points have decreased over time.

3. IAEA Activities

The two agency experts in BWR technology are in Japan. A third agency expert will join them in Tokyo to have additional meetings with TEPCO at the end of the week.

[dorispulaski]

TEPCO 9 PM April 5th status update

TEPCO was able to confirm that their second notion of how the Unit 2 water got into the pit, using a tracer. They have published drawings of their plan to confine the water.

7:00 PM Status April 5th
Gamma Radiation
Daini Measure Point Four 9:00 PM April 5th 3.3 microSieverts per hour
Daiichi West Gate 9:00 PM April 5th 66.7 microSieverts per hour
Radiation Dose
Daiichi Main Office Building 9:00 PM April 5th 0.73 milliSieverts per hour
Daiichi Main Gate 9:00 PM April 5th 107 microSieverts per hour
Daiichi West Gate 9:00 PM April 5th 49 microSieverts per hour

Data from 6 of the restored measure points on the property's periphery are being reported, too, now.
Measure points 3 through 8 read:
50, 51, 106, 160, 308, 204 microSieverts per hour respectively

From 7:08 am to 7:11 am on April 4th, we put the tracer into the pit and began an investigation of water flows. Additional tracer was put through the two new holes drilled near the pit. At 2:15 pm, April 5th, it was observed the water with tracer came out from the crack on the concrete lateral of the pit. At 3:7 pm, April 5th, injection of coagulant from the holes was initiated. Additional countermeasure to prevent discharge of radioactive material from the pit will be implemented. Iodine and Cesium were detected from the water sampled in the pit and in the sea near the water discharge. Additional nuclide analysis will be implemented

Plan for dealing with leaking

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110405e37.pdf

Cause of water leakage

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110405e36.pdf

A site map
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110405e35.pdf


Operation for cooling the spent fuel pools

-Water spray by the concrete pump truck to Unit 4 was conducted from 5:35 pm to 6:22 pm on April 5th.

* On March 21st, 23rd to April 4th we detected technetium, cobalt, iodine, cesium, tellurium, barium, lanthanum and molybdenum from the seawater around the discharge canal of the station. (We are reevaluating) * On March 20th, 21st, 23rd to 30th, we detected iodine, cesium, tellurium and ruthenium in the air collected at the site of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. (We are reevaluating)

[dorispulaski]

For those wondering, this is a sand lance:
http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biolo.../sandlance.jpg

It looks like bait to me.

http://wanderinweeta.blogspot.com/20...ies-three.html

Their habit is to bury themselves in the sand, especially at night.

[Olympia]

Looks like bait to me too, Doris. And yet, if it's a fish, it has exactly the same vertebral and rib construction as we do. Amazing, isn't it.

It always astonishes me how many species of everything exist on this planet. As Star Trek used to say, infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

[mot]

I am overwhelmed by the fact so many experts are flying in from all over the world to help the situation in Fukushima. It seems now it has become an international mission of some sort. If anything, at least valuable lessons are to be learnt from this tragic event and leads to better design, management and emergency and operational procedure concerning nuclear power plants across the world.

And now liquid glass - I need to look into what exactly that is. I am now learning so many things, let alone names of various radioactive materials and all sorts of units used so far to talk about the radiation-related matters.

BTW, here is an article comparing the radiation level in different cities in the world.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...an-crisis.html

The radiation level in Tokyo is now lower than that in Hong Kong, and only slightly higher than that in New York. According to Bob Bury, former clinical lead for the U.K.’s Royal College of Radiologists;

“The situation in Japan looks set to follow the pattern of Chernobyl, where fear of radiation did far more damage than the radiation itself,”

Finally, I hope there is not going to be a massive radiation scare among Japanese people about their domestically caught / farmed fish, which could lead to the increased demand for fish caught in foreign water. Japanese craze about 'fish more fish' is already causing decrease in fish stock in various parts of the world, I heard.

[dorispulaski]

This sounds like good news!!! I will have to write something about how cesium and iodine travel (and don't travel) through the food chain, though.

And I'll write something about liquid glass.
http://www.physorg.com/news184310039.html
If that is the stuff, it cleans well, has no harmful additives, and also kills bacteria.

Press Release (Apr 06,2011)
Out flow of fluid containing radioactive materials to the ocean from areas near intake channel of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2 (continued report)


At around 9:30 am on April 2nd, we detected water containing radiation dose over 1,000 mSv/h in the pit* where supply cables are stored near the intake channel of Unit 2. Furthermore, there was a crack about 20 cm on the concrete lateral of the pit, from where the water in the pit was out flowing. At around 12:20 pm on April 2nd, we reaffirmed the event at the scene.We have implemented sampling of the water in the pit, together with the seawater in front of the bar screen near the pit. These samples were sent to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station for analysis.
(We already informed on April 2nd, 2011)

We also injected fresh concrete to the pit on April 2nd, but we could not observe a reduction in the amount of water spilling from the pit to the sea. Therefore, we started to inject the polymer (April 3rd).

From 7:08 am to 7:11 am on April 4th, we put the tracer into the pit and began an investigation of water flows. Additional tracer was put through the two new holes drilled near the pit. At 2:15 pm, April 5th, it was observed the water with tracer came out from the crack on the concrete lateral of the pit. At 3:07 pm, April 5th, injection of coagulant from the holes was initiated.
(We already informed on April 5th, 2011)

At 5:38 am on April 6th, we observed the stoppage of the water spilling from the crack on the concrete lateral of the pit. Details of the situation will be announced after checking the blockage of the water flows.

We will continue the countermeasure in order to prevent further outflow of high level radioactive materials to the ocean.

*pit: a shaft made of concrete

Chernobyl today has a lower radiation count than, say, Finland, or parts of Washington State, not to mention Ramshar, Iran, nor Colorado. But I don't think the Japanese will be as impractical about this as the Ukrainians & people of Belarus. I don't think Japan can afford to throw away a piece of land the size of the state of Rhode Island, the way people of the former SSR's have. And after all, they reclaimed Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

What may well happen is that ever fish-selling store will have a riggus for measuring the radiation of your eel or tuna before you buy it.

This is pretty much how the people that work in Chernobyl manage eating wild game and fish.

Someone will get rich.

[Blue Bead]

For those wondering, this is a sand lance:
http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biolo.../sandlance.jpg

It looks like bait to me.

http://wanderinweeta.blogspot.com/20...ies-three.html

Their habit is to bury themselves in the sand, especially at night.

Hmmmm....if those sand lances bury themselves in the sand I wonder, with all the radiation, if they glow in the dark; it would certainly make finding them a lot easier, LOL.

[dorispulaski]

I'm wondering how much one weighs. They are calculating radiation per kilogram, but if those things weigh an ounce, I would be very surprised. I will be interested to see what IAEA has to say about the measurement, because they are much clearer about this than any other source. It just seems very high to me for this soon since the incident. Presumably we will know more when they measure a lot more fish.

[Olympia]

Doris, the major online news sources are reporting that the leak has been stopped. Is that possible?

[Blue Bead]

My question would be...is that the only leak? I guess will find the answer to that one eventually.

[dorispulaski]

Yes, the leak is stopped. Blue Bead is correct that there may be other leaks, and we'll find out the usual way-by watching what happens to the sea water monitoring data. Even before the leak was stopped, it had been dropping some what, but considering how highly radioactive the water is, it won't be subtle-we'll know in a day or two. Presumably they will be looking for more leaks.

The 9:00 AM morning status report says that even though the leak was stopped, the water level is not rising in the Unit 2 turbine building In general, that's good news, but of course, it could just mean the water is draining out somewhere else. It also could mean that not much water is leaking out of Unit 2 into the turbine building any more, which is my hope.

we have confirmed the outflow from the crack on the concrete wall of the pit has stopped at 5:38 am, April 6th. We confirmed water level has not been rising in the turbine building of unit 2.

And JAIF's 2:00 PM status confirms. By the way, I think the iodine level multiplication factor was larger, last I heard. The sample is from before the leak was stopped on the 6th.

April 5th:
About 7.5 million times the legal limit of radioactive iodine, I-131, was detected from samples of seawater, which had been collected at 11:50 on Apr. 2nd, near the water intake of Unit 2.
15:07 A hardening agent was injected into holes drilled around the pit of Unit 2 in a bid to stem the flow of highly radioactive water into the sea.
April 6th:
5:38 It was confirmed that the highly radioactive water flow mentioned above stopped.

That last sample still had the short lived radioactive materials typical of water from inside the reactor:
Monitoring

On March 21st, 23rd to April 4th we detected technetium, cobalt, iodine, cesium, tellurium, barium, lanthanum and molybdenum from the seawater around the discharge canal of the station. (We are reevaluating)

What's really good about the leak being fixed was that the method of injecting liquid glass into the ground stopped the leak. Next time, they will be using this method earlier. It sounds like a safe, relatively quick method.

And now that they are less concerned about the Unit 2 water (the leak they know about is stopped, the water is not rising in the building, and they have emptied out space so they have places to pump radioactive water to and store it), we are beginning to hear something about the reactors themselves again:

Unit 1
As it is suspected that hydrogen gas is accumulated inside reactor containment vessel, we are considering injection of nitrogen gas inside the vessel.

I'm going to do a little babbling aloud here, because I don't really know anything else about this. TEPCO was talking about perhaps doing this before water became their number one priority.

It doesn't say why they suspect that-they don't have a whole lot of instrumentation working. There has been no spike in temperature or pressure or anything that I can see from the JAIF data. However, of the 3 reactors not in cold shut down, its the one still acting most like a reactor. (Temperature at the one place they can measure it, 221.6℃ at feed water line nozzle.)

They may be going by the Three Mile Island experience, where a hydrogen bubble did form in the reactor, and the engineers spent about a month after the original incident worrying about it. In the absence of being able to make the usual measurements, that would be the logical thing to do-take preventive action.

Hydrogen only explodes it meets air. It does not react with nitrogen. That's why they would be doing that. Again, going by the TMI experience, as the reactor finally cools down, the bubble eventually dissipated without exploding.

They are still keeping an eye on the temperature of the spent fuel pools, using thermography. Whenever a pool gets too hot, they are pumping in water:

Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool
From 5:35 pm, April 5th, the water spray by the concrete pumping vehicle was started. At 6:22 pm, the water spray finished.

And since the experience with the two workers who stepped in water, they are being very careful with the fellow who fell overboard:

Safety
* At 11:35 am, April 1st, a worker fell into the sea while stepping into the ship from the pier during the hose laying work of the barge. Other crew immediately rescued the worker. While no injury or contamination was confirmed, whole body counter has been implemented to check the contamination inside the body just in case.

[dorispulaski]

Radioactive Contamination moving up and down the food chain in water.

A meditation.

The world missed a great opportunity with Chernobyl. They could have spent the money to study how different levels of radiation, and differing radioactive materials interact with a wide variety of species, and they didn't spend the money. People that hate nuclear power plants didn't want to spend the money on understanding something that they wanted to eliminate from the world entirely. And the Ukrainian government that was still running the other 3, then 2, then 1 reactors at Chernobyl until they stopped in the year 2000, didn't want to draw any more attention to the situation than necessary. Studies have been done, but not in the long term, controlled way that would be ideal, in my opinion, and what's been done has centered on humans, particularly the "liquidators" who worked on the cleanup crews that did what site remediation that was done. There were some studies, but a lot of opportunities were wasted.

There are no fences for fishes in the ocean, and if you are fish farming, and fence in the fishes, you will still get the water the ocean sends you. When you catch a particular fish, you can't tell where he's been. The fish you catch off Ibaraki prefecture today could just as well have been in Fukushima a week ago. Or the current could be running from Fukishima, even if the fish stayed still. The good part is that its a big ocean, the Pacific, and in the scheme of things, the amount of contaminated water added to it will be relatively small.

Also, of the list of radioactive materials released at Fukushima, the one thing released in quantity that will stick around in the environment for a while is cesium.

If fish are like people, (oh if only they studied more about the fish at Chernobyl!) the body treats cesium as if it were potassium. The body has only a certain level of potassium (or cesium) that it can maintain, and after that threshold is exceeded, it gets rid of it. If a person stops eating food that is contaminated with a little bit of cesium, eventually potassium replaces the cesium in the human body. "Wormwood Forest" (which I warn is not a scientific text) says the cesium turns over in about 100 days. Cattle moved to a clean pasture from a contaminated pasture have their flesh cesium free in about the same length of time, and birds who winter in other places than Chernobyl become cesium free in their wintering grounds. I don't see why ocean fish wouldn't be the same.

It isn't the water that the fish swim in that's the big deal; its what they eat. If they are algae eating species, the fish will get whatever cesium is in the algae. And algae are big time concentrators of radioactive material (at least in fresh water in Chernobyl). And the big fish that eat the little algae eating fish get still more. But ultimately, with both radioactive iodine (which the body treats like regular iodine-if your thyroid gland has a full stock of iodine, it gets rid of the rest of it in urine) and cesium, which turns over in 100 days, the problem goes away.

If we were seeing materials that the body treats like calcium, which goes to the bones and stays there, it would be another problem. But at this point, levels of strontium and plutonium are not high at Daiichi.

The amount of cesium allowed in food varies by country.
(Wormwood Forest, p. 122)
In Ukraine, the most cesium 137 you can have in meat is 200 Becquerels per kilogram.
In fish, it is 130 Becquerels per kilogram. I have no idea why you are allowed to eat more cesium in beef; the cesium is the same cesium. In fruit, you are allowed only 70 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, but you can have 500 becquerels in berries or mushrooms.

The rationale seems to be that as mushrooms and berries tend to concentrate cesium its OK to have more. This is a logic that I am not understanding. Ukraine sets the threshold comparatively low.

The UN set the standard for food in general for "cross-trading" at 1,000 becquerels per kilogram.

In Japan it's 350 becquerels per kilogram.

In Europe it's 600.

And in Belarus, you can have 500 becquerels per kilogram in game meat.

I definitely think there should be more sense and uniformity to this sort of thing. The numbers above were given by Mycio in 2006 or so, and since these numbers make little sense to begin with, there is no reason that they wouldn't have been changed in the last 5 or 6 years, since there was little science behind them to begin with.

Mycio says that soaking meat in brine for an hour removes nearly half the radionucleides (I presume you throw away the brine and wash off the meat). Soaking for a day removes 80% of them, although it removes some of the nutrients as well.

Brining turkeys for Thanksgiving is very popular here. If you add the right herbs and spices to the brine, the result might be better tasting, and less radioactive food.

[dorispulaski]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tel...lity-fukushima

There are discussions running around the internet about whether having tellurium 129 in the very contaminated water necessarily proves that one or more of the reactors is having "recriticality" incidents.

The above article explains why that is not so, even though its half life is 69 minutes. Even after several months, tellurium 129 is still one of the most numerous isotopes in spent fuel.

How's that work? Well suppose you have 129 grams of tellurium 129 (its gram atomic mass). There are 6.23 time 10 to the 23rd power atoms (Avagadro's number) in one mole of any substance, so that's how many atoms are in that 129 grams. This is such a radioactive substance that you need very little to detect it. Even losing half of it every 69 minutes, it takes a long time to get rid of Avagadro's number worth of atoms.

However, there's more: you will see that we're also seeing tellurium 129m, a higher energy state of tellurium 129. The m is for "metastable". It has a half life of 34.1 days for decaying back to tellurium 129.

So it's not surprising we might be seeing it.

Additionally TEPCO is not entirely sure it's detecting tellurium 129, which is what the "reanalyzing" part is about.

So no, we don't have evidence of "recriticality" at this time.

[dorispulaski]

The TV says they are injecting the nitrogen.

This is just another case of "the solution to pollution is dilution." If you can keep the percentage of hydrogen in the air in the reactor at less than 4%, it won't explode. So if you inject nitrogen, you can dilute the air still further. We did the same with tools that were called "epi reactors" at IBM (no they were not nuclear). They were tools for creating a doped (either n or p type) epit taxial layer of silicon on a silicon wafer. Yes, they had "blow outs" too from time to time, which is what we called those smaller scale explosions.

[dorispulaski]

TEPCO Update for Noon April 7th

Since they have been getting their fixed monitoring points back up again, there is some screwiness with whether the car or the fixed monitoring is measuring this or that.

Wind is southeast
Monitoring Car data of gamma radiation
3.3 Daini
83.6 Main Gate (it's moved here) 3 PM)
65.2 West Gate (11 AM)
Radiation Dose, fixed points.
Office Building 0.69 milliSieverts
West Gate 47 microSieverts
Monitoring poinst 3 through 8
50, 50, 101, 153, 297, 234 microSieverts per hour
There are some datapoints for 1 & 2 for today
15, 49 on April 5th

-As it is suspected that hydrogen gas is accumulated inside reactor containment vessel, we are considering injection of nitrogen gas inside the vessel.

More info on water leakage (If you remember the Fukushima nuclear waterfront was totally destroyed by the tsunami).

-As a countermeasure against outflow of radioactive water into the sea near the cooling water intake at unit 2 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, we have injected coagulant into the pit from April 5th and we have observed stoppage of spilling of water from the crack on the concrete lateral of the pit at 5:38 am, April 6th. -Continued work from yesterday, we have put 6,000 litters of coagulant into the breakage and surrounding ground after investigation of the leakage route by putting tracer into the 9 holes drilled around electrical conduit and the pit. As at 9:30 am, we have been observing there is no leakage of water into the sea from the pit. -For the sake of completeness, we put further reinforcement for the stoppage of leakage and consider countermeasure including continuous injection of coagulant. We will also note the water level of turbine building of unit 2 remain unchanged. We will further investigate if there is any other leakage. (Previously announced on April 6th)

-From 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm, April 5th, in order to prevent diffusion of radioactive contaminated water out from the site port facility to breakwater area which is south to the power station, we began repair of breakwater by founding the large sandbag around it to replace damaged steel water bar. We will continue the operation to prevent diffusion.