Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Reactors

[dorispulaski]

TEPCO has given their time line for events at Unit 1 on March 12th (which includes the explosion)

With regard to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station due
to the Tohoku-Chihou-Taiheiyo-Oki Earthquake that occurred on March 11th,
2011, we are currently doing our best to bring the situation under control
and are proceeding with a factual investigation.

Amidst this backdrop, regarding the major time-line of seawater injection
to Unit 1 which was conducted on March 12th, we would like to announce
the facts identified so far as follows.

<Major time-line on March 12>
Approx.12:00pm President confirmed and approved the preparation for seawater injection
Approx.2:50pm President confirmed and approved the implementation of seawater injection
Approx.2:53pm Injection of freshwater stopped (80,000l were injected at this point)
Approx.3:18pm Reported to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) that we were scheduling to inject seawater once ready.
Approx.3:36pm Hydrogen explosion
Approx.6:05pm Received instruction from the government regarding seawater injection
Approx.7:04pm Seawater injection was started
Approx.7:06pm Reported to NISA about seawater injection
Approx.7:25pm Based on the situational decision by our staff dispatched to the prime minister's office, the message stating "Prime minister's approval is not obtained regarding seawater injection here" was received at our headquarters and the power station. As a result of the discussion between headquarters and the power station, we decided to suspend the injection. However, seawater injection was continued per a decision by the site superintendent at the power station.(*)

(*) As a result of the hearing conducted with relevant parties, we found out that the seawater injection conducted at approximately 7:25pm was not actually suspended and that the water was continually being injected per a decision by the site superintendent. (In order to prevent the accident from getting worse, continuous water injection to the reactor is considered to be the most important measure)

[dorispulaski]

When the new leak was found at Unit 3, TEPCO closed up a building and used it as a tank, as they had done for Unit 2. Apparently Unit3's tank has a leak. The building is well away from the ocean, but they have some work to do. Liquid glass again?

TEPCO suspects new leak at Fukushima

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is inspecting a wastewater disposal facility for possible leaks, after finding that its water level had dropped.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has been removing highly radioactive wastewater from the plant's Number 2 and Number 3 reactors to waste disposal facilities within the compound.

The utility initially planned to transfer 14,000 tons, but it now wants to remove an additional 5,000 tons because there has been no noticeable drop in accumulated water in the reactors.

TEPCO suspended the transfer from the Number 3 reactor on Thursday to check whether the disposal facility could hold more water.

It found that the water level at the facility had dropped by 4.8 centimeters over a 20-hour period, meaning some 57 tons of water had been lost.

TEPCO says there has been no increase in radiation levels in nearby groundwater, but that the water level continues to fall.

The utility plans to begin running a water purifier on an experimental basis in early June.

If a leak is found at the waste disposal facility, it could delay the resumption of water transfer from the Number 3 reactor, raising the risk of radioactive wastewater spilling into the sea or seeping underground from the reactor.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 13:06 +0900 (JST)

If you remember, the women were only allowed 20 milliSieverts per year of radiation whereas the men were allowed 250 milliSieverts of radiation per year.

TEPCO admonished for sloppy radiation control

Japan's nuclear regulatory agency has admonished the operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for failing to prevent another case of workers being exposed to radiation.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says 2 Tokyo Electric Power Company workers were exposed to 3 millisieverts of radiation, while doing clerical work at the plant over a period of about 10 days after the March 11th disaster. The figure is 3 times the annual permissible level.

The two women had not been registered on the list of workers engaged in radiation-related operations.

The agency, which belongs to the industry ministry, said the utility should have reacted to the problem of radiation more quickly.

TEPCO was also reprimanded for not taking any measures to protect workers from radiation exposure at an earthquake-resistant shelter facility until April 3rd, despite high levels of radioactive substances there.

The utility was admonished for failing to take necessary steps to shield workers from radiation at the Fukushima Daini plant as well, when outdoor radiation levels remained high through March 21st.

The agency ordered TEPCO to carry out measures to ensure there will be no similar occurrences in the future, including regular radiation monitoring of its workers.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 18:04 +0900 (JST)

There is so much debris that people don't even know where all the debris is, two months later.

Survey of debris left by tsunami starts at port
Fisheries experts have begun examining debris left in the bottom of a bay in Iwate Prefecture after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Yamada Bay is known for being a good fishing port and a farming ground for oysters and scallops. Currently, a large amount of debris piled up on the seabed is hampering marine farming and the movement of fishing boats.

On Thursday, 3 experts from the Fisheries Research Agency began surveying the bay from a local fishing boat, using devices including a GPS-equipped sonar unit that can accurately survey the seabed.

After a 2-week-long survey, the experts will report to local and central governments on the results.

A member told reporters he hopes the data obtained by the survey will be used in the debris-removal work in the future.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 15:14 +0900 (JST)

Families of tsunami victims visit no-entry zone

People who lost family members in the March 11 quake disaster are visiting the no-entry zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to offer prayers for their loved ones.

On Thursday, 111 people who were forced to evacuate from Namie and Futaba towns are making brief home visits on a supervised bus tour. This is among the special visits the nine municipalities near the nuclear plant began on May 10th.

Among the participants on Thursday's tour are some 50 people whose relatives were killed or are missing. They were forced to leave their homes after those areas were designated as a no-entry zone.

They came to a pick up location, carrying flowers and fruits as offerings, and left for the no-entry zone wearing protective gear. They are allowed to stay in the areas for only about 90 minutes.

In Namie Town, 55 people have been confirmed dead and 125 went missing in the disaster.

Thursday, May 26, 2011 14:21 +0900 (JST)

This story reminds of how In Chernobyl, once a year, on the Sunday after Easter, some 15,000 people come to the abandoned villages of the exclusion zone to visit their families' graves. Half the total visitors to the exclusion for the whole year come on that day. They bring a picnic lunch and spend their day in the graveyard, eating and drinking. It is called in Ukrainian "provody" which means "bidding farewell."

[dorispulaski]

As more results of investigations of what exactly went on the first week after the tsunami at Daiichi, NEI is issuing reports more frequently. They have another report for yesterday

UPDATE AS OF 5 P.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 25:

Plant Status

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues to deal with water management issues at the Fukushima Daiichi site. The company is plugging concrete enclosures at the plant to retain contaminated water and is studying the feasibility of building a system to purify seawater. The Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has ordered TEPCO to complete a plan for storing and treating contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi site by June 1.

TEPCO has begun to build a concrete structure to provide additional support to the spent fuel storage pool for reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi facility. Work is planned for completion by the end of July.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

The Japanese government announced plans to appoint a panel to investigate the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. The head of the committee will be Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency has arrived in Japan for a fact-finding mission on the nuclear accident. Its objective is to make a preliminary assessment of safety issues at the facility and identify areas that need further study. The team is composed of 20 international and IAEA experts for a dozen countries and is to complete its work June 2. Leading the team is the United Kingdom's chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, who will present a report on the mission at IAEA's Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety June 22-24.

NEI President and CEO Marvin Fertel will speak at a public meeting of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences on the aftermath of Fukushima, beginning at 12:45 p.m. EDT on May 26 in Washington, D.C. Other speakers include the Natural Resources Defense Council's Thomas Cochrane and the Union of Concerned Scientists' Ed Lyman.

NEI Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo will participate in a briefing for NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards on events at Fukushima, beginning at 1 p.m. EDT on May 26 at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md.

NEI Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Doug Walters will speak at "Preparing for the Unthinkable: Joint Crisis Leadership in the Event of an Energy Systems Breakdown" at 5:30 p.m. EDT on May 26 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

New Products

NEI has updated its frequently asked questions about issues relating to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats...rgy-situation/

NEI has created a new fact sheet on used fuel pools.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats...-power-plants/

Upcoming Events

Challenges of Nuclear Spent Fuel Management: Lessons from Around the World, 3 p.m. EDT, June 3 at American Association for the Advancement of Science Headquarters, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.

[Olympia]

Doris, I hope you're saving your research and findings in some integrated form. It would make a great study of the incident, either written up (with care to avoid permissions problems) or as a class somewhere. I feel I'm sitting in on a college-level course, and I'm learning so much, as well as staying sane about the situation, which would otherwise be making me a lot more anxious.

[let`s talk]

Some trains lines are not in hurry to start air-conditioning properly. They prefer to keep windows open. I thought it depended on the train company, its budget and the neighborhood with its taxes, since I didn't notice any big changes in major JR lines and in other lines that I normally use. But yesterday I discovered that even surely not poor Tokyu Toyoko line (that connects Yokohama with central Tokyo) is not keeping its usual comfortability inside the trains. Luckily, there are other options and other lines to tarvel but still I have no idea what will be in summer.

[mot]

Doris, I hope you're saving your research and findings in some integrated form. It would make a great study of the incident, either written up (with care to avoid permissions problems) or as a class somewhere. I feel I'm sitting in on a college-level course, and I'm learning so much, as well as staying sane about the situation, which would otherwise be making me a lot more anxious.

^^^ I second this!

When I was working a lot with communities in the most economically and socially deprived areas, it was the fear of crime that was the hardest issue to tackle. To remove the fear of crime was often more challenging than reduction in crime rate itself. No matter how much factual information we provided, people would not listen and change their views until they can see and feel the changes in their surrounding environment in their own daily lives. The stories of sometimes unfounded fear of radiation makes me think of that.

I have posted this in another thread, but there is a first sign of recovery in figure skating front. Yuzuru Hanyu's home rink in earthquake-struck Sendai is planning to reopen in August.

[dorispulaski]

mot, That is wonderful news about Hanyu's rink.

I totally agree about fear. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The antidote to fear is definitely personal experience and knowledge.

I have decided to try to save my posts. Even if I do nothing with them, I may want to refer to them.
mot and Olympia, thank you for your kind words about them.

May 26th 9 pm JST Daini
Six measure points ( 1.8, 1.4, 1.9, 1.6, 1.6, 1.6) microSieverts per hour
manual 1.1 microSieverts per hour
wind ssw

May 26th 9 pm JST Daiichi

Eight measure points (5, 25, 16, 1,6 20, 41, 128, 107} microSieverts per hour

Main Building 387 microSieverts per hour

West Gate 15 microSieverts per hour

Cart Near West Gate 15.5 microSieverts per hour

TEPCO reports

-From 10:06 am to 11:36 am on May 26th, we sprayed fresh water to the spent fuel pool of Unit 2 with the fuel pool cooling and filtering system (from 10:10 am to 11:10 am on the same day, hydrazine was also sprayed).

-At 2:45 pm on May 26th, we started to remove water from the condenser of the turbine building in order to be prepared for the construction for water injection through feed water system piping arrangement into the reactor of Unit 2.

-On May 26th, at the north areas of the reactor building of Unit 1, with unmanned crawler dumps, we continue to spray dust inhibitor which prevents radioactive materials from scattering. On May 26th, we also continue to spray dust inhibitor to areas including incombustibles treatment facility with a conventional method.

I'm glad to hear they are finally able to resume work in the turbine building.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110526e20.pdf

TEPCO has a new truck with a bending arm
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110526e19.gif
for spraying dust inhibitor (map and picture above) rather than the concrete pump truck
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110526e19.gif



And From NHK, it sounds like TEPCO has found their leak in the building they are using to store water from Unit 3.
By the way, the water hasn't shown up as an increase in radioactive material in either the subdrains or the inner harbor. It looks like they should be able to fix it before it really causes trouble.

TEPCO probes into possible leak at Fukushima

The operator of Japan's troubled nuclear plant is trying to determine where contaminated water from a waste disposal facility is leaking to, after finding that the water level inside the facility has dropped.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has been removing highly radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant's crippled reactors to the waste disposal facility within the compound.

The utility suspended the transfer from the No.3 reactor on Thursday and checked the water level in its section of the disposal facility.

Engineers learned that the water level had dropped by 4.8 centimeters over a 20-hour period, meaning some 57 tons of water has been lost.

The utility says it inspected inside the disposal facility and found contaminated water leaking to a passageway leading to another building.

TEPCO attributes the problem to a failure to stop the water leaking before the transfer began.
Thursday, May 26, 2011 19:57 +0900 (JST)

This is just sad. And the farmer going to Fukushima City is not getting that great a swap of radiation levels, depending on where he's coming from and where exactly in the city that he is going (there are some hot spots there.

Fukushima farmers auction off their beef cattle

Livestock farmers who have been urged to evacuate from areas near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant sold off about 400 heads of cattle at an extraordinary auction on Thursday.

The farmers who took part in the auction in Motomiya City came from Iitate Village and Kawamata Town located about 30 to 40 kilometers northwest of the plant. The government is urging the residents to evacuate by the end of this month for safety reasons.

After the auction, market officials said the calves were sold for slightly below their going price but adult cattle fetched market prices.

One farmer from Iitate Village said he will sell 2 remaining heads of cattle, close his business and evacuate to Fukushima City, located west of the village.
Thursday, May 26, 2011 19:25 +0900 (JS

More direct measurement from ground samples is an excellent idea, but I hope they bite the bullet and test for strontium as well as cesium, and measuring the radioactivity of the soil.

Fukushima radiation monitoring map to be made

Japan's science ministry has decided to draw up a map showing radiation levels in soil of Fukushima Prefecture, following the disasters at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The ministry is to start surveying radiation levels at more than 2,200 locations across the prefecture at the beginning of June.

The ministry plans to survey every 4 square kilometers within 80 kilometers of the plant, and every 100 square kilometers elsewhere.

25 universities and research institutions across the country are to take part in the survey.

The participants are to collect soil samples 5 centimeters below the surface and submit results to the ministry.

The ministry plans to release the map by the end of August.
Thursday, May 26, 2011 19:57 +0900 (JST)

And if you wanted to know what the magic dust fixative is, they have revealed it is one of the encapsulants used for asbestos abatement. While this product may not be the one used, it is typical of the breed: (Lagkote II)
http://www.norkan.com/encapsulants.html

Lag-Kote is a 100% acrylic, high-solids encasement/encapsulation coating, specifically formulated for application over a variety of asbestos containing materials. Tested and EPA accepted at Battelle Laboratories of Columbus, Ohio, under EPA Contract #68-03-2552-T2005, Lag-Kote was found to be an acceptable encapsulant. Lag-Kote was designed to encase asbestos-containing spray-on fireproofing, transite, and thermal insulation. Lag-Kote's viscous formulation minimizes dripping, clean-up and product waste. Lag-Kote provides a smooth, washable, aesthetically superior finish that will provide years of lasting protection. Lag-Kote has excellent resistance to alkalis and can be applied directly over galvanized metal, ferrous metal, masonry or other sound surfaces. UV inhibitors make Lag-Kote suitable for encasement of exterior asbestos containing materials including transite. Lag-Kote is water-base and non-toxic.

Antiscattering chemical to be sprayed on buildings

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will spray an anti-scattering agent onto its buildings to prevent radioactive dust from spreading.

Radioactive dust appears to be scattered on the reactor buildings and turbine buildings due to the explosions last month. The containment work is scheduled to begin on Friday. The chemical hardening agent selected for the task is usually used to contain asbestos.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will use two fire engines to spray the chemical onto building walls.
However, TEPCO says it cannot spray all the walls because debris still blocks access to some areas.

Since April, a chemical hardening agent has been sprayed over the ground and debris to prevent radioactive dust from being blown away.

However, the chemical won't be applied to all areas because if it gets inside the pool that contains spent fuel rods it might interfere with the circulation of cooling water. Prevention of radioactive substances from spreading to the air and ground is one of the main goals of the utility's plan to stabilize the reactors.

TEPCO is also planning to put covers over the reactor buildings.
Friday, May 27, 2011 06:47 +0900 (JST)

By the way, Mycio reports that radiation levels in the air in the Chernobyl evacuation zone were at 1% what they were 30 years ago. Apparently, all the decayed vegetation that has fallen on top of the original deposits, somewhat shields you (which makes sense). So despite that only 1/2 of the cesium and strontium should have decayed, and the plutonium level has not changed at all, the result is better than one would have thought.

[dorispulaski]

May 27th, various morning reports:

May 27th 10:00 AM JST

TEPCO reports (Every time they work on repairing electrical wiring this happens, partially due to the corrosive effects of having been immersed in seawater). Everything is OK now. THIS IS AT DAINI, not DAIICHI.

At approximately 10:01 am, May 27th, 2011, a fire was found at the distribution switchboard for lighting located in the power panel room for the high pressure core spray system on the first basement level of the Reactor Building Annex Area of Unit 1 which has been shutdown. At 10:04 am, workers of a partner company extinguished the fire and the operator of TEPCO confirmed it. Afterward, at 10:08 am, we reported it to the fire station. The fire station will conduct a site confirmation. There were no injured persons from this incident. There was no impact in terms of the external release of radioactive substances from this incident.

They are continuing to drop the amount of water being injected into Unit 3, but the temperatue has stayed low.

At 8:52 pm on May 26th, we changed the rate of water injection to the reactor through the fire extinction system piping arrangement from approximately 3 m3/h to approximately 2 m3/h. - The current rate of water injection is approximately 2 m3/h through the fire extinction system piping arrangement and approximately 13.5 m3/h through the reactor feed water system piping arrangement

And it looks like the building is now full that they are pumping to from Unit 2 (at least that is what I am guessing)

Since 10:08 am on April 19, we had been transferring high level radioactive wastewater from the vertical shaft near the turbine building of Unit 2 to the Centralized Radiation Waste Treatment Facility. At 4:01 pm on May 26, a transferring operation was stopped

And from NHK on the subject of the leak in the Unit 3 makeshift tank building:. What did you think they were going to do? Let it just dribble? Maybe. The water is leaking into a passage. If the passage can be leak proofed, then it just becomes part of the whole Buildings As Water Storage Tanks complex that they are constructing. If you think about it, that's how the Unit 2 and Unit 3 pipe chases and basements and so forth are functioning now, in addition to the two buildings they are using explicitly as tanks.

TEPCO may need to plug leak at Fukushima plantThe operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant says highly radioactive water continues to leak from a waste disposal facility in the complex.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Friday that the water level had dropped by around 3 centimeters as of 7 AM from the level observed at 5 PM on Thursday.

TEPCO had transferred to the facility some of the highly radioactive water flooding the basement of the No.3 reactor's turbine building and nearby tunnel, before it suspended the work earlier this week.

On Thursday, the transferred water was found to be leaking into an underground passage to another building.

The utility firm says it is likely that the water level in the facility will stop falling, but added that it may need to plug the leaks.

The work is expected to be difficult as radiation levels of up to 70 millisieverts per hour have been detected on the water's surface.

TEPCO also faces the urgent task of preventing the contaminated water around the No.3 reactor from spilling into the sea or underground.
Friday, May 27, 2011 12:16 +0900 (JST)

And the G8 and Sarkozy are willing to help Japan

Sarkozy:G8 willing to help Japan
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says Group of Eight leaders have offered Japan their support as it strives to reconstruct itself in the wake of the March disaster and the ensuing nuclear crisis.

Sarkozy is chairing the 2-day G8 summit taking place in the French city of Deauville. He spoke to reporters on Thursday evening about discussions on the first day.

Sarkozy stressed the 7 countries' readiness to support Japan in its efforts to tackle the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and restore the economy in the wake of the disaster.

The French leader said many of the G8 countries, while recognizing the need to develop renewable energy, think there is no alternative to nuclear power.

Sarkozy added that the leaders are aware there should be enhanced international standards on nuclear safety and are engaged in discussions toward this goal.

France has been promoting nuclear power generation as a national policy.

G8 comprises Italy, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Friday, May 27, 2011 09:24 +0900 (JST)

And this is good (at least I think so!) I'm glad to see a university doing some decent data collection. One reason that conclusions about radiation effects of Chernobyl are so highly disputed is that data collection about the doses that people received are very badly documented.

And the board of education is exactly right: If parents know their kids haven't yet been overexposed, their fears will be eased, which is an excellent thing.

Radiation monitors given to Kawamata children
A town near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will distribute dosimeters to all school children and monitor their radiation exposure.

Kawamata Town will deliver the dosimeters to about 1,500 children at local kindergartens, day care centers, elementary and junior high schools. Part of the town falls within the evacuation zone around the stricken plant.

Children will be asked to put on the monitors to measure their radiation exposure. The data will be sent once a month to laboratories to check their cumulative levels of exposure.The dosimeters will be provided by Kinki University, which has proposed to measure radiation levels of soil on school grounds.

The Fukushima prefectural board of education says this will be the first municipality in the prefecture to provide radiation gauges to every child.

The town's board of education says it hopes the move will help to ease the fears of parents.
Friday, May 27, 2011 10:11 +0900 (JST)

And the screenings should also relieve people's fears, too.

190,000 get radioactive screenings
Fukushima Prefecture, location of the troubled nuclear power plant, says it had conducted radioactive screenings of more than 190,000 people by Wednesday.

That is about one-tenth of the prefecture's population.

The prefecture began the screening service at welfare centers and other locations on March 13th. It uses special equipment to scan a person's entire body and even the soles of the shoes for radioactive contamination. The prefecture says many of those who come for the screenings are residents with health concerns or persons who make business trips to the prefecture and want to be checked before leaving.

A Fukushima resident in his 60s who received the test on Friday said he was relieved to find he was not contaminated.
Friday, May 27, 2011 14:11 +0900 (JST)

and

Govt to reduce school ground radiation levels
Japan's education minister says the government will strive to keep cumulative radiation levels at school grounds in Fukushima Prefecture below one millisievert per year. The prefecture is home to the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Yoshiaki Takaki also told reporters on Friday that if the levels exceed a benchmark of one microsievert per hour, the topsoil will be removed, and most of the cost will be paid for by the government. Removing the surface soil is said to be an effective method of limiting the radiation exposure of children who use the school grounds.

The government had earlier set a yearly limit of 20 millisieverts of accumulated external radiation for children taking part in outdoor activities. But parents have protested the decision.

Twenty millisieverts per year is in line with the levels set by the International Commission for Radiological Protection when dealing with emergency situations, although it recommends one millisievert per year as a benchmark.

Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato welcomed the decision. He stressed that the government should shoulder the cost of achieving the goal, saying that nuclear power generation has been promoted as a national policy.
Friday, May 27, 2011 13:45 +0900 (JST)

And yes, this is the problem with having a "benchmark" that is unachievable in many places. What if Denver, Colorado, had had a nuclear accident? It's over the limit to start with. 100 milliSieverts per hour is the first point at which anyone claims statistical meaningful correlation between exposure and cancer rates-and even at that point it is disputed.

Really, all the data where the dose people got is well known is from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. And in that case, the dose is well known, because people know exactly where they were when the bomb went off,. However, they received a high dose in one narrow period of time, so that circumstance is well characterized, but extrapolating that data to a low dose received continuously over time is quite a stretch.

1. Consider the case of heat. If you put your hand on a hotplate, and its elements are at 200C, you will get a very bad burn, all in a moment. However, if you hold your hand on a hot plate at 30 C all year long, nothing happens at all, even though the temperature is elevated above room temperature. While that may not be how low leverl exposure to radiation works, it may be. The research really has not been done in a way that the results are inarguable.

2. The people are not the same. The people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a people at the end of a long and debilitating war. There were severe food shortages in Japan, and people were probably worn out from depression and stress.
http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/c...m/food_rations

At the end of World War II, citizens throughout Japan suffered from poverty, hunger, and food shortages. In order to help distribute food, Japanese people were given assigned rations. In reality, living just on the rationed food often did not provide adequate nourishment, and a thriving black market developed amidst the constant food shortages. In this photograph, taken on Sept. 21, 1945 in Tokyo, just after the end of the war, the people lined up are waiting for their rations of beans, as rice was not available to them at this time. The bottles they were carrying were used to transport clean water.

In Hiroshima, food shortages were acute:
http://atomicbombmuseum.org/4_ruins.shtml

When food scarcity became especially acute in the summer of 1946, the city imposed compulsory evacuation of 50,000 people to surrounding farm villages, and arranged for relief rice supplies to be provided.

As we've discussed before, your body (and for that matter the bodies of animals) prefers calcium and potassium and non radioactive iodine to strontium, cesium, and radioactive iodine. This is why Connecticut advises dairy farmers in the case of a nuclear accident to give the maximum amount of calcium to their cattle. The cattle will not store as much strontium or plutonium if they are not calcium deficient.

However, if you are eating a diet deficient in calcium, potassium, and non-radioactive iodine, more of the radioactive materials will be stored in your bones (strontium & plutonium), in your muscles, primarily, and liver and spleen secondarily (cesium) and in your thyroid (radioactive iodine) than in a properly nourished person, where much, if not all of the substances, just pass through him. It's likely then, that the effects of ingesting radioactive materials will be more severe in a malnourished person, such as many of those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time the bomb fell and during the first few years afterward. I would worry particularly about children born during the War, who might never have had adequate nutrition until siginificantly long after the War.

The state of the health of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki does not invalidate the results of the studies done on them, but it does not clarify whether they would have more cancers (or the same) due to radiation than in an adequately nourished population, as to date, there has been no proper control group.

3. The fallout materials are not the same:

Furthermore, what cancers they experienced depend partially on what radioactive materials they experienced. A person exposed only to Iodine 131 for example, would be more likely to get thyroid cancer than leukemia, while a person exposed to more strontium internally would be more likely to get leukemia.

Consequently, the material people were exposed to at Hiroshima (mainly a huge blast of gamma radiation) and what people were exposed to at Chernobyl (long term fallout of iodine, cesium, strontium and plutonium) and now in Fukushima prefecture (mostly iodine and cesium, with a little bit of strontium in some of the worst areas) may show different results.

There are adjustment factors in dosing to adjust for the different types of radiation produced by different radioactive materials, and adjustments have to be made between "internal dose" (due to radioactive materials having been incorporated either temporarily or permanently into your body) and "external dose".

From what I have read to date, I don't really believe we have advanced much from what was known in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan. 1958,"Somatic Effects of Radiation," by Austin M. Brues, Pages 12 to 14
http://books.google.com/books?id=dQk...page&q&f=false

The above page discusses at length the inconsistencies in research in 1958. Mice exposed at low doses actually lived longer. Mice who were exposed over their whole bodies to a higher dose got leukemia, but mice exposed over half of their body did not get leukemia. A Dr. Lewis was advocating what we'd call now the Linear No Threshold theory, but though many other people subscribed to that theory, many others found significant inconsistencies in it. Lewis studied data from infants whose thymus had been irradiated, patients who had received heavy radiation for spinal arthritis, people who were in the three central zones at Hiroshima, and in radiologists, and was looking at the incidence of leukemia. (Notice that other than the radiologists, the doses were received in high amounts for a limited number of times). And the radiologists were not getting a low, continuous dose either, nor was their actual dose known, especially prior to 1950.

The author says:

"It would not seem necessary to devote so much space to a critique of this particular aspect of a broad subject, were it not that Lewis' tentative hypothesis has met with wide acclaim and acceptance as a proven fact by scientists with less familiarity with the subject who have undertaken to predict categorically that so-and-so many case of leukemia have caused by very small additions to the natural radiation background. This has been used as an argument against the continuation of bomb tests; it might only be observed that much stronger arguments can be brought both for and against tests than this very tenuous and sentimentally loaded one."

A recent article on cancer in radiologists:
http://radiology.rsna.org/content/233/2/313.full

"The authors reviewed epidemiologic data on cancer risks from eight cohorts of over 270,000 radiologists and technologists in various countries. The most consistent finding was increased mortality due to leukemia among early workers employed before 1950, when radiation exposures were high. This, together with an increasing risk of leukemia with increasing duration of work in the early years, provided evidence of an excess risk of leukemia associated with occupational radiation exposure in that period. While findings on several types of solid cancers were less consistent, several studies provided evidence of a radiation effect for breast cancer and skin cancer. To date, there is no clear evidence of an increased cancer risk in medical radiation workers exposed to current levels of radiation doses."

Which of course, leads people to argue that there is or is not a threshold, or there is or is not a linear relationship. In the early years, where cancers were definitely found, dosing of radiologists had little hard data. In that era, your have for example, Marie Curie carrying around a bottle with radium in it in her pocket all the time so that she could show it to people. And doses were measured by how red your skin might have gotten when you were exposed. It was not very exact. In the later periods, when no clear cancer risk could be found, and dosing measurements were fairly reliable, people were trying to keep the dose low enough so that they didn't get cancer, and they didn't.

And you can't be definitive about cancer risks till all of the members of a particular cohort have died. Even the BEIR study in Japan is not definitive yet, because there still are a large number of survivors of the bomb blast.

In Chernobyl, the effects are opposite: men especially tend to die of the effects of smoking and drinking prior to when any of the "large cancers" (i.e. not thyroid or leukemia) would typically appear.
In the article following Brue's in the 1958 January Journal of the Atomic Scientists, the following is said:
In the next article in the same issue:

"Brues argues very capably that the dose response curve shouldn't be linear, and that Lewis' analysis doesn't prove that it is. Lewis argues that the response curve could be linear, and by his analyis, it may be. The point we wish to make here is that the data available now cannot prove anything."

Sadly, that is still true. The same arguments are made. Here in Fukushima, there is a chance for definitive data to be gathered on low exposure over a long time to people who are in a good state of health. The delay in gathering it has already been too long.

[dorispulaski]

Meanwhile, these were posted on youtube.

If you've wondered how they took apart the Three Mile Island reactor, and what its fuel looked like after melting down, this is an amazing movie of (not a simulation!) of the inside of the reactor, the tools they used to remove stuff, diagrams, the whole nine yards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL7FB...layer_embedded

Fourteen minutes long- Part one
Removing all the fuel at Three Mile Island

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nf7z...layer_embedded
Part two. 10.75 minutes; finishing defueling and shipment to Idaho of the big pieces.
Further work in done in the mostly empty reactor using a mini robot submarine .!

And for completeness' sake, here's a film of a large portion of melted fuel in Chernobyl's Reactor number 4. The structure is usually called "The Elephant's Foot".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z82GkhcqDKw

[dorispulaski]

And the IAEA mission has now published a brief report on its visit to Daiich. It's nice that Dr. Weightman had some good words for the workers at Fukushima Daiichii:

UPDATE: Fact-Finding Mission Visits Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (27 May 2011)


The IAEA's Fact-Finding Mission in Japan visited the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on 27 May 2011, the final site visit of the team's programme to identify lessons from the Japanese nuclear accident that could help improve global nuclear safety.

The team's international experts from 12 nations held discussions with top plant operating officials and toured the six-reactor facility.

"Visiting Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was a once-in-a-lifetime experience - once in 10 lifetimes, I suspect. Our team left with great admiration for the extraordinary workers who have been undertaking such immensely difficult tasks," said team leader Mike Weightman, the United Kingdom's chief inspector of nuclear installations.

Next for the team are continuing discussions with Japanese officials from a variety of agencies as part of an exchange of technical data that will assist the mission in drafting its report, which will be presented to the Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on 20 to 24 June.

[dorispulaski]

-At 8:52 pm on May 26th, we changed the rate of water injection to the reactor through the fire extinction system piping arrangement from approximately 3 m3/h to approximately 2 m3/h.

-At 4:01 pm on May 26th, considering the amount of water accumulated at Centralized Radiation Waste Treatment Facility, we stopped transferring water from Unit 2's turbine building's vertical shaft to Centralized Radiation Waste Treatment Facility.

-At 9:00 am on May 26th, we started transferring accumulated water on the basement of Unit 6's turbine building to temporarily-installed tank again. We stopped the transferring pump at 7:00 pm on the same day (approximately 400 m3).

-On May 26th, using unmanned crawler dump, we sprayed dust inhibitor, which prevents the radioactive materials on the ground surface from dispersing, at the north side of Unit 1's reactor building and its near area, totaling the size of around 6,000 m2. On May 26th, with conventional method, we sprayed dust inhibitor over areas surrounding Incombustibles Treatment Facility with the size of approximately 7,875 m2.

-At 9:00 am on May 27th, we started transferring accumulated water on the basement of Unit 6's turbine building to temporarily-installed tank again. -On May 27th, using a bending spray tower vehicle, we have implemented spraying dust inhibitor, which prevents the radioactive materials from dispersing, to the roof and the wall of Unit 1's turbine building. On May 27th, our workers have sprayed dust inhibitor over areas surrounding Incombustibles Treatment Facility.

Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station: Units 1 to 4: shutdown due to the earthquake -At approximately 10:01 am on May 27th, a fire broke out at the distribution panel for lighting at power supply room for High Pressure Core Spray System on the 1st basement floor of Unit 1's reactor building annex. At 10:04 am on the same day, workers of partner company extinguished the fire, and TEPCO's employee confirmed the fire had been extinguished. We report the incident to the fire station at 10:08 am on the same day. At 11:19 am on the same day, the fire station staff confirmed at the site that the fire had been extinguished. This incident has been judged as a small fire of building.

It's good that the workers will have more hours of medical help easily available.

Regarding medical system in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, we attempted to have the medical doctor to attend every day with widespread support including University of Occupational and Environmental Health; however, previously there were some periods in the midnight or early in the morning when no medical doctor is attend. Recently, by the cooperation of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the medical doctor will be dispatched through Japan Labour Health and Welfare Organization, as a result, the medical system with 24 hour attendance of medical doctor will be established. We appreciate very much the great support from Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in such a severe situation to secure medical doctors. We will endeavor to make further enhancement of medical system such as multiple attendance of medical doctor or improvement of carrying system, with the cooperation of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Since May 27th, we have started spraying dust inhibitor to Unit 1's turbine building. We will implement spraying the dust inhibitor to other buildings including Unit 1 to 4's turbine buildings as well as reactor buildings one by one.

and stuff is actually starting to happen that will lead to a better situation at Dai ichi

. -From 2:45 pm on May 26th to 2:30 pm on May 27th, we removed water from the condenser of the turbine building in order to be prepared for the construction for water injection through feed water system piping arrangement into the reactor of Unit 2.

Workers check contaminated water in No.1 reactor
Workers have entered one of the damaged Fukushima reactor buildings to survey a pool of radioactive water that the plant operator plans to recycle as a coolant.

The No.1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is thought to have suffered a meltdown after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

Highly contaminated water is apparently leaking from holes created in the pressure and containment vessels, flooding the building's basement.

Workers entered the reactor building on Friday, preparing to pump out the leaked water before cooling it and sending it back to the reactor.

In the morning, 8 workers lowered a depth sensor into the basement and found that the water is about 5 meters deep. Five other workers then collected samples for analysis.

In the afternoon, different workers attached a hose to the pool for spent nuclear fuel on the 3rd floor. The hose will be part of the pool's new heat exchange system that is due to be installed around July.

Highly radioactive water is also accumulating in other reactor buildings, and some is being pumped into storage at a waste water disposal facility.

However, water from the No.3 reactor building is apparently leaking from the storage site into a passage leading to another building. Workers are monitoring the flow of water, and aim to prevent it seeping into the ground.
Friday, May 27, 2011 19:45 +0900 (JST

I thought this was already being done, but in any case, I'm glad to see it going forward:

Fukushima begins to decontaminate school grounds
Work has begun to remove radioactive contaminated topsoil from school grounds in Fukushima Prefecture, where efforts are continuing to bring the disaster-stricken nuclear power plant under control.

The decontamination work began in 26 elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima City on Friday.

In one, Watari Elementary School, the top 5 centimeters or so of soil will be scraped off and replaced with uncontaminated earth.

[/b]The municipality says it expects the removal of the topsoil to substantially lower radiation levels at the school to about 0.6 microsieverts per hour from Friday's reading of 3.0 microsieverts per hour.[/b]
Friday, May 27, 2011 19:45 +0900 (JST)

And just for comparison, what are the readings at the Fukushima Daini Power Plant in Tomioka-cho right now?

Six peripheral points ( 1.8, 1.4, 1.9, 1.6, 1.6, 1.6) microSieverts per hour and
1.1 at the manual measurement point. (9:00 PM JST May 27th)

Tell me again who should be in the shelters and who should not?

Meanwhile, it is politics as usual

Opposition camp may submit no-confidence motion
The opposition Liberal Democratic and New Komeito parties may jointly submit a no-confidence motion against the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

LDP Secretary General Nobuteru Ishihara met with his New Komeito counterpart, Yoshihisa Inoue, on Friday.

Ishihara said LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki is thinking of submitting the motion to the current Diet session, scheduled to end next month. He urged the New Komeito to cooperate.

Inoue said his party believes that it is favorable to sponsor such a motion jointly with the LDP.

The 2 agreed that the parties will consider jointly sponsoring the motion after analyzing developments in discussions about the ongoing nuclear accident and a debate between party leaders in the Diet next week.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the opposition parties have the right to submit such a motion.

He said the government should first and foremost make maximum use of the mandate given by voters to rebuild the disaster-hit areas, bring the troubled nuclear plant under control and provide relief and compensation to the survivors.

Edano also hinted that the Prime Minister's right to dissolve the Lower House would not be restrained by the disaster.
Friday, May 27, 2011 13:45 +0900 (JST)

However many anti-nuclear protesters you can get together in Germany or Switzerland (25,000 a short while back), the French still like their nuclear plants. If you can only get 100 people to a protest in France, home of "to the barricades" and student protest as a way of life, you are not very popular. Only about 10 people made it to a protest in Buchanan, NY, home of Indian Point NPP.

Protests against G8, nuclear power held in France
About one hundred people staged a protest in northern France on Thursday to protest the Group of Eight summit and nuclear power.

The demonstration was held in the northern town of Le Havre, near Deauville, where the summit is being held.

G8 leaders are discussing ways to step up the safety of nuclear power plants following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station. They will also look at ways to support the transition to democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

The protesters held a 100-meter-long banner to express their opposition to the G8. They said the group symbolizes the attempt by rich industrialized countries' to deal with global problems by themselves.

Some anti-nuclear protestors went into a bank in a downtown area, wearing protective gear. They demanded that financial institutions immediately halt funding for nuclear power plants to ensure there is no repeat of accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

One protest organizer said the use of nuclear plants should be stopped soon, saying they are not a solution to energy problems.
Friday, May 27, 2011 09:52 +0900 (JST)

Just what this means is yet to be seen. This is a political statement trying to represent countries heavily vested in nuclear power (UK, Canada, US, Russia, and France) and countries opposed (Germany, Italy) and Japan, which is in transition. The point about not clustering plants too close together on a single site is a good one-

G8 calls for new nuclear safety standards
Leaders of the Group of Eight industrial countries have called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to establish new international standards for nuclear power plants, following the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan.

The G8 leaders announced a declaration focusing on nuclear safety before wrapping up their 2-day summit in the French city of Deauville on Friday.

In the joint declaration, the leaders urge the IAEA to create new international standards for the construction and operation of nuclear power plants in areas of high risk, including threats posed by terrorism and earthquakes.

The document says the major industrial countries should toughen treaties related to nuclear safety.

It also notes the need to take into account locations when new plants are built, to avoid a concentration of reactors, which has compounded problems at the Fukushima plant.

In addition, the G8 countries recognize the resilience of the Japanese economy and Japan pledges to make every effort to minimize the impact of the disaster on the global economy.

They also call on member countries to base trade and travel restrictions on scientific grounds alone, addressing import bans imposed by some countries on Japanese products after the nuclear accident.
Friday, May 27, 2011 21:15 +0900 (JST)

And on the back-to-normal front, YES! People fear the monster under the bed, the criminal in the dark alley, the thing unknown and unseen. The cure for fear is always light, always knowledge. Give Them The Measurements!! And Tell Them What They Mean.

First foreign cargo arrives in Miyagi after quake
A foreign cargo ship has docked in Miyagi Prefecture for the first time since the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 11th.

The Panamanian-registered freighter, Global Splendour, sailed into Sendai-Shiogama port on Friday, carrying 10,000 tons of coal.

Many foreign ships have stopped calling at the port after the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, south of the terminal. Sendai-Shiogama is officially one of Japan's major international ports.

Miyagi Prefecture has tried to contain what it says are groundless fears about radioactive contamination by providing radiation readings at the port. Authorities are also working to restore facilities in an effort to encourage foreign cargo ships to return.

A port official says a survey shows the area has not been affected by radiation.

The official added that he hopes more vessels, both Japanese and foreign, will return to the port, as the recovery of the facility and its transport and logistics businesses is critical for the local economy.
Friday, May 27, 2011 17:25 +0900 (JST)

[dorispulaski]

And, it being Friday, NEI has a week end summary

I wasn't aware that June 15 was the scheduled date for the Areva facility to come on line.

UPDATE AS OF 3 P.M. EDT, FRIDAY, MAY 27:

Plant Status

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues working toward a solution for managing radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The company has suspended transferring water from the reactor turbine buildings to a centralized radiation waste treatment facility because that complex has reached its capacity. The company also reported a leak in the water treatment facility that must be fixed before the transfer of water from the turbine buildings can continue. A new water treatment facility is expected to begin service June 15 at the plant.

TEPCO began spraying a synthetic resin dust inhibitor onto the walls and roof of the reactor 1 turbine building and other areas at the site as one way of reducing the release of radioactive material. Plans are to spray the resin onto the reactor and turbine buildings of reactors 1-4.

A minor electrical fire in the basement of a building at Fukushima Daini reactor 1 was quickly extinguished with no injuries. The reactors at the Daini plant have been safely shut down since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

NEI President and CEO Marvin Fertel, Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman, Institute of Nuclear Power Operations President and CEO Jim Ellis, and NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko will speak at a May 31 conference sponsored by the Center for Transatlantic Relations and The Atlantic Council, "After Fukushima: The Future of Nuclear Energy in the United States and Europe." Also speaking at the Washington, D.C., event are former Congressman Lee Hamilton and the ambassadors of France, Germany and the European Union.

At the G8 summit May 26, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan proposed that Japan host an international nuclear safety summit later this year. He said Japan would fully support International Atomic Energy Agency safety standards and would work to strengthen the Convention on Nuclear Safety. "Many among the G8 think that there is no alternative to nuclear power, even if we are convinced of the need to develop alternative energy, renewable energy," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "But we all want to give ourselves a very high level of regulation on nuclear safety that applies to all countries wishing to use civilian nuclear power to make the safety levels the highest ever known," he said.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has admonished TEPCO for failing to prevent the exposure of two clerical workers at the plant to levels of radiation three times above the annual limit.

The Japanese government announced plans to reduce radiation levels at school grounds in Fukushima prefecture to below 100 millirem per year, shifting from its previous limit of 20 times that amount after local parents protested. Possible measures include removing topsoil at the schools and individual monitoring of radiation for students.

Fukushima prefecture has conducted full-body radioactive screenings of more than 190,000 people since March 13-about one-tenth of the prefecture's population. In addition, Japan's science ministry will survey radiation levels at more than 2,200 locations within Fukushima prefecture and will draw up a map of soil contamination.

Media Highlights

NEI sent 10 tweets to the news media from Thursday's meeting of the National Academies of Sciences' Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. The featured remarks from NEI's president and chief executive officer Marvin Fertel and NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis can be found on NEI's @NEI_media Twitter account.

NEI participated in a live interview about the implications of the Fukushima accident on NTN24 TV broadcast in South America.

Upcoming Events

The International Atomic Energy Agency's 10-day fact-finding mission in Japan began May 25 and ends June 2. Team leader Mike Weightman, the United Kingdom's chief nuclear safety inspector, is to present a report at the IAEA's ministerial conference on nuclear safety June 20 in Vienna. The United States has one representative on the IAEA team.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science will host a session on the Challenges of Nuclear Spent Fuel Management: Lessons from Around the World at 3 p.m. EDT June 3 in Washington, D.C.

[dorispulaski]

They continue to lower the rate of water injection to Reactor 3, checking that the temperature does not go up significantly. The less water injected, the less water to find room for in tanks later.

-At 8:42 pm on May 27th, we changed the rate of water injection to the reactor of unit3 through the fire extinction system piping arrangement from approximately 2 m3/h to approximately 1 m3/h. -The current rate of water injection is approximately 1 m3/h through the fire extinction system piping arrangement and approximately 13.5 m3/h through the reactor feed water system piping arrangement .

There is more spraying of water to spent fuel pools.

And there has been more spraying of resin dust inhibitor.

TEPCO has put up a new version of the site radioactive survey maps, and although these are very confusing for me to look at, you can tell that some progress is being made clearing up radioactive debris in close proximity to the plants.
They seem to be focussing on spots labelled "Water transfer pipes," and the radiation there is definitely very intense.

2 Water transfer pipes May 20 near Unit 4 (140, 160) milliSieverts per hour surface
2 Same spots May 24 to 26 (45, 100,) milliSieverts per hour

And they have put a .csv file of all the radiation measurement glommed together that is giving me a headache.

NHK says it looks like rain all week, a typhoon in fact. TEPCO says that's of concern for radioactive water control at the plant.

There's one thing that's either good or bad, depending on where you're coming from and where you live. Rain takes radioactive particles out of the air and deposits them on the ground (or ocean, as the case may be). It should clean out the air around Daini a bit.

Rain likely to induce more radioactive leaks
The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it is closely monitoring contaminated water levels in the facility as heavy rain is forecast next week.

Tokyo Electric Power Company is continuing to inject water to cool reactors. As a result, the level of highly radioactive water around reactor buildings is rising.

The company is concerned that contaminated water in the basement of reactor buildings and nearby tunnels may overflow and seep into the ground and the sea.

Rain is forecast on Sunday and Monday because of an approaching typhoon.

As of Saturday morning, the water height is 57.6 centimeters below ground level around the Number 2 reactor and 43.1 centimeters below ground level for the Number 3 reactor.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 13:45 +0900 (JST)

Meanwhile, Kan outlines (in extreme vagueness) his energy plan. He's still saying 20% "renewable" (which is not a well-defined term. For example, some people include hydroelectric and/or geothermal, and some only include solar or wind in the category "renewables"). I have no idea what he means by drawing on the private sector. It may mean putting solar roofs on houses. Or once again funding some kind of joint electric company / government geothermal project. He talked to both Merkel (GER) and Cameron (UK) at the G8 to get their points of view on energy policy and nuclear safety. It's interesting that whereas last week he was talking "solar & wind" suddenly he's now quoted as saying "renewable" only without specifying.

Given that the weekend at Daiichi is usually when there are more terse reports to discuss, I may do some discussion on the options that Kan and Japan have in energy policy, if anyone is interested and if I have the time.

Kan outlines plan for more renewable energy
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke after the end of the G8 summit in France. He said Japan will step up its use of renewable energy by drawing on the private sector.

Kan told the other G8 leaders that Japan will increase the proportion of power generation from renewable resources to one fifth by the early 2020s. He said the plan is viable despite Japan's tight fiscal situation. He said the government should use technologies and funds from the private sector to achieve its goals.

Kan also said the other G8 leaders had all expressed their sympathy over the earthquake and tsunami. He said their encouragement had brought home the fact that Japan has friends around the world.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 08:58 +0900 (JST)

[Olympia]

A rainstorm...that's a scary thought. Fingers crossed that things aren't complicated by this event. And what condition are the people in--are their shelters able to withstand a typhoon? Man, Japan's really getting the Book of Job thrown at them.

I'm glad the G8 leaders made a point of expressing sympathy and I think promising help. If one good thing can come out of this, it is a greater unity of purpose both in energy production and in nations working together. I always have hope!

Interesting that you mentioned Marie Curie. (Pierre, of course, died rather young in a road accident, so that the effect of radium on his body longterm can't be assessed.) A biography of Marie by one of her daughters (I forget if it was Eve or Irene--I think Eve) pointed out the damage to her eyes (the lens chiefly, resulting in cataracts) from radium exposure. (I'm citing from memory, so I'm willing to stand corrected.) As you say, in those days, nobody knew any better, and people just carried it around.

Trivia to lighten the discussion: Marie won the Nobel Prize twice: once in physics (shared with Pierre and with Henri Becquerel) and once in chemistry. Her daughter Irene won also, with her husband. I'm willing to bet that Marie and Irene are the only mother-daughter Nobel winners. They may be the only parent-offspring winners, too. But I don't think Marie is the only two-time winner. Linus Pauling won for chemistry and peace.

[dorispulaski]

You'd win the bet on Marie & Irene on mother daughter!

As to shelters, I know Kitamura is in a convention center; I don't think anyone is in tents or anything. And as all of these shelters were above the tsunami, I don't think we should worry about any tidal wave with the typhoon.

The TEPCO folk are just worried about how much rain they will get, and whether it will overwhelm their pumping ability.

Meanwhile, in the 9:00 AM May 29th status:

- - At 9:14 pm on May 28, we confirmed temporary RHRS pumps were out of
service, we started replacement of these pumps with spares at 8:12 am on
may 29th.

- At 1:28 pm on May 28th, we started freshwater injection to the spent
fuel pool of Unit 3 by the Fuel Pool Cooling and Filtering (Clean up)
System (we also injected hydrazine from 1:42 Pm to 2:40 pm), and
finished at 3:08 pm.

- From 4:47 pm to 5:00 pm on May 28th, we conducted the leak test for Unit
1 spent fuel pool by fresh water injection using Fuel Pool Cooling and
Filtering System.

- At 8:54 pm on May 28th, we stopped water injection to the reactor of
Unit 3 through the fire extinction system.

- At 5:56 pm on May 28th, we started water spray to the spent fuel pool of
Unit 4 by the concrete pumping vehicle (we also injected hydrazine from
6:02 pm to 7:45 pm), and finished at 7:45 pm.

- From 9:00 am on May 28th, we started transferring accumulated water on
the basement of Unit 6's turbine building to temporarily-installed tank
again,and finished at 7:00 pm.

- On May 28th, we sprayed dust inhibitor for the area of 4,375m2, over the
surrounding area of Incombustibles Treatment Facility.

And they didn't find any unusual amount of uranium in the soil, again.

NHK about the pump failure (Note that since the reactor temperature did not rise above 100C, it is still technically in cold shutdown).

No.5 reactor temperature rises after pump failure

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says temperatures in the Number 5 reactor and its spent fuel storage pool have risen due to pump failure. The reactor has been in a state of cold shutdown.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it found at 9 PM on Saturday that a pump bringing seawater to cooling equipment for the reactor and pool had stopped working.

TEPCO says temperatures have been rising since then.

The water temperature in the reactor rose by about 24 degrees Celsius to 92.2 degrees at 11 AM on Sunday. The temperature in the fuel storage pool increased to 45.7 degrees from 41 degrees.

On Sunday morning, TEPCO installed a new pump that started operating shortly after noon.
The company suspects failure in the pump motor caused the malfunction. It is now working to detect the cause of the failure while monitoring temperatures in the reactor and pool.

Sunday, May 29, 2011 13:08 +0900 (JST)

Yes there is a typhoon coming, but it is a weakened typhoon. If it is 108 km/hr at worst, that's 67 mph, and would not be classified as a hurricane, for example. It's the huge amount of rain expected that is the problem.:

Storm moving northeast

A severe tropical storm is sweeping over the ocean off Kochi Prefecture in western Japan and moving northeast.

The Meteorological Agency says as of noon on Sunday, weakened typhoon Songda was located 100 kilometers south of Kochi and was moving northeast at 55 kilometers per hour.

The severe tropical storm has atmospheric pressure of 975 hectopascals, and winds of up to 108 kilometers per hour near its center.

The storm has brought heavy rain to a wide area of western and central Japan.

In the disaster-hit Tohoku region, heavy rain is expected through Monday.

Weather authorities have issued warnings for strong wind, high waves, possible landslides, and flooding.

Sunday, May 29, 2011 12:39 +0900 (JST

And yes, TEPCO is preparing for the typhoon:

Fukushima prepares for heavy rain

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is preparing for an approaching severe tropical storm by piling up sandbags and moving cranes to a safe place.

Japan's Meteorological Agency says heavy rain is expected in the area around the power plant beginning on Sunday night. In some areas, torrential rain and strong wind are expected from Monday to Tuesday.

Tokyo Electric Power Company is piling up sandbags around electric facility buildings and sealing the doors to keep rainwater out.

The company says if rain and wind become intense, all operations except for patrolling will stop.

The level of contaminated water in the turbine buildings of the Number 2 and 3 reactors and tunnels has been rising.

The company says it will closely monitor the level to prevent contaminated water from overflowing and seeping into ground water and the sea.

The utility is also studying ways to stop radioactive substances deposited on debris and buildings from being washed away by rain and flowing into the sea via gutters.

Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:08 +0900 (JST)

All the fixative they have sprayed should definitely help

And some really good news!

Cooling systems restored for fuel pools

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has now successfully restored cooling systems to the spent fuel pools of reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4.

On Saturday, TEPCO injected about 5 tons of water to the spent fuel pool of reactor 1 on a test basis. It was the last system to be restored.

The power company is also working to install new water-circulating systems that will more efficiently cool all the fuel pools. The new systems for reactors 1 through 4 are scheduled for completion by July.

Sunday, May 29, 2011 05:08 +0900 (JST

For one thing, there should be less random spilled water. For another thing, these things mostly take care of themselves (other than pump failure as at Unit 5 today).

And someone is making money-sellers of energy saving devices. And the giving of cardholder points for energy savings is a nice touch by AEON.

Power-saving products sell well

Retailers in Japan are launching sales campaigns to help customers save energy. A shortfall in electric power is expected this summer.

Major supermarket chain AEON is handling about 30 percent more energy-saving products than it did previously. Among those goods are sunshades to mitigate higher room temperatures, plastic films to keep cold air inside refrigerators, and bedding covers containing refrigerants.

Beginning in July, AEON will give extra points to its e-money card holders who show that they have reduced power consumption by 15 percent from last year.

Major convenience store chain Seven-Eleven Japan will start evening savings campaigns beginning in June. The price of some food items will be reduced at 6 PM.

The chain hopes to target people leaving work early in the evening as businesses close earlier to avoid using power at night and shoppers who do not want to go outdoors while it's hot during the day.

Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:55 +0900 (JST)