Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Reactors

[dorispulaski]

TEPCO 9 PM APril Monitoring data and 6:00 PM Status

Radiation Monitoring
Wind is south south west

Gamma Radiation
Daiichi 35.5 microSieverts per hour

9:00 PM April 15th Daini
Six Peripheral Measuring Points (2.9, 2.1, 3.1, 2.4, 2.4, 2.4) microSieverts per hour

9:00 PM April 15th Daiichi
Main Building 0.53 milliSieverts per hour
Main Gate 68 microSieverts per hour
West Gate 28 microSieverts per hour
Daiichi 8 Peripheral Monitoring Points (11, 36, 33, 31, 55, 90, 203, 179) microSieverts per hour


Seawater data up to 4/14. Concentration generally dropping.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110415e11.pdf

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110415e10.pdf

Operation for cooling the spent fuel pools -From 2:08PM, April 15th, we began spraying water to Unit 4 by the concrete pumping vehicle.
-From 8:02 to 9:55 am on April 15th, an unmanned helicopter was flown over Unit 1 to 4, in order to check the condition of the reactor buildings.

Press Release (Apr 15,2011)
The receipt of directive from NISA on offsite power supply security of nuclear power stations We, Tokyo Electric Power Company, received the directive (*) on "Offsite power supply security of nuclear power stations and reprocessing plants" from Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) today.

Following this instruction, we will take measures regarding the offsite power supply security of nuclear power stations immediately. We will summarize and report the progress of the measures to NISA.

*: Directive: "Offsite power supply security of nuclear power stations
and reprocessing plants (directive)" (April 15th, 2011, NISA No.3)

 

[dorispulaski]

Learning from Daiichi & Chalk River & TMI

Almost immediately after the crisis at Daiichi began, people began to be thinking about what lessons could be learned from Daiichi.

Here's some of the better thoughts:

Palo Verde is a nuclear plant about 50 miles outside of Phoenix. It is cooled primarily with grey water from the city's sewage treatment plant. Here's a great article about their "Japan Room", whose purpose is to help them think of the unthinkable:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarep...o-verde-generating-station-disaster-plan.html

Some good ideas:

1. Have connections with everyone who can help you before there is any disaster: the Army, the National Guard, the Navy, and foreign countries, not to mention the IAEA.

Deprived of all power, could they call on nearby Luke Air Force Base to fly in a backup generator using a heavy-lift helicopter?

...

On one wall in the new emergency room is a map of every military base, power plant or other industrial facility within several hundred miles.

Powell and his group are contacting each one to determine what generators or other equipment they have that could help the power plant in the event of a catastrophe, and whether they have heavy-lift helicopters that could deliver it fast.

I have wondered why US heavy lift helicopters haven't been used to move generators and tanks to Daiichi for quite some time.

2. It's worth checking whether you could get what the Japanese did have: 12 to 13 fire pumper trucks at all times, and water lifting helicopters.

Would local fire departments have enough pumper trucks to spray water on the hot reactors, as they did in Japan?

3. Definitely, the 23 or so US reactors that have the spent fuel pool 140 feet in the air need to take lessons from this disaster.

Another difference at Palo Verde, besides the design of the reactors and the safety equipment, is the pools where spent fuel is kept.

In Japan, those pools were 140 feet off the ground in the same building as the reactors. Spent radioactive fuel needs to be kept underwater, but without power some of the Japanese plant's rods overheated and released radiation into the atmosphere.

At Palo Verde, the spent fuel is about 40 feet high and kept in an adjacent, hardened building, where it would be much easier to keep cool because water wouldn't have to be pumped so high, assuming the plant had a power source

.

It's a good point that the higher you have to lift water with pumps, the more of your backup power you must expend to lift it. And if the pool is on fire, it's a lot harder to put out a fire that is 140 feet up in the air.

4. The total fallacy of circular evacuation. Check out the pattern of radiation levels at Fukushima, and at Chernobyl. Weather is never circular. A more evidence based evacuation plan would be a good idea.

If radiation were released from Palo Verde, the Departments of Defense or Energy would conduct routine flights over the plant to take radiation readings and map the plume of radiation to help direct evacuation orders, if they were needed, Bement said.

Mobile teams also would be sent into the desert around the plant to measure radiation and coordinate evacuations.

In this case, you wouldn't have Iitate Village being not evacuated, while areas that probably didn't need to be evacuated were. Coordination with the Weather Service would be smart to model likely air flows and radiation patterns before they ever occur.

The NRC also has a task force.

The NEI just put up this video:

Idaho National Laboratory's Director John Grossenbacher explains how the U.S. nuclear industry has boosted its safety procedures as a result of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979 and how the industry plans to use current events at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plants to further enhance safety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTKdVM53ULU&feature=player_embedded#at=19

He makes the obvious point that:

1. It's a bad idea to put reactors too close to each other on the same site. Reactor 3 was damaged by the explosion at Reactor 2. Better placement could perhaps have avoided that.

2. Putting as many as 6 reactors on the same site is perhaps not a great idea.

And the IAEA scheduled and held a "lessons learned" conference on April 14th
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/cnsmeetingends.html

and has another scheduled for June:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/cnsmeetingends.html

But there's one set of lessons that I don't think anyone's talked about, and it's lessons learned from Chalk River:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news...an+reactor+accident+shaped/4557310/story.html

On Dec. 12, 1952, a series of mechanical malfunctions and human errors resulted in the sudden overheating of Chalk River's NRX reactor, major damage to the nuclear core and a significant spill of cooling water in the basement of the reactor building.
...[ETA sounds familiar, doesn't it?]

The book describes how, at the time of the Chalk River accident, Carter was a 28-year-old U.S. navy scientist working on nuclear submarine development at a research lab in Schenectady, New York.

Carter was promptly sent to Canada to lead a 24-man U.S. military team that — along with scores of Canadian soldiers and Chalk River employees — shared the task of entering the flooded basement of the damaged reactor facility to carry out repairs and cleanup work, with the shifts carefully timed to minimize each individual's exposure to radiation.


Each man was permitted to spend no more than 90 seconds near the reactor's overheated core. A mock-up of the reactor was built on a tennis court so Carter and the others involved in the decontamination effort could practice their assigned tasks before dropping into the radioactive basement area to complete the job for real.

,

Here's the technical details of the accident:

http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionD.htm#x

This accident is historically important, not only because it was the first of its type and magnitude, but also because of its legacy to Canadian and international practice in reactor safety and design. Nobody was killed or hurt in the incident, but a massive clean-up operation was required that involved hundreds of AECL staff, as well as Canadian and American military personnel, and employees of an external construction company working at the site. In addition the reactor core itself was rendered unusable for an extended period. Environmental effects outside the plant were negligible, as was radiation exposure to members of the public. The health record of AECL and Canadian military personnel involved in the clean-up was scientifically reviewed in the 1980s (no significant health effects were observed).

The fact is that to clean up after a nuclear accident, and to do it quickly, it requires a huge group of people.

1. Before the accident, that group of people should already be known. Maybe they should be part of the Armed Forces. In the US, probably part of the nuclear Navy.

2. The more the delay in the cleanup, the worse for everyone.

All the clearances and understandings needed to be sure that emergency personnel can do the work that's needed, and take the doses of radiation that are entailed (even in 90 sec bursts, with the exposure spread amongst a large group, like at Chalk River). At Daiichi, they had to go to the government to get an extension so emergency nuclear workers could have a larger radiation exposure than regular nuclear workers. That kind of regulation should be in place before there is a disaster.

And they still can't put anyone into the radioactive water, even in 90 second bursts, to get any of the cooling systems fixed. There should be plans for dealing with this kind of highly radioactive situations, where work must be done. Robots, yes, but people too.

3. Workers need to know that working on a nuclear cleanup, even one like Chalk River, is not a death sentence.

While one can construct conspiracy theories by the government about the health of this or that group of people in this or that situation, the health of presidents and ex-presidents is an absolute matter of public record. Jimmy Carter is 86 years old, and the only illnesses I know of that he has had are a tendency to hemorrhoids and getting sick in a airplane. After Chalk River, Jimmy had radioactive urine for about 6 months, due to the high exposure he received there. Jimmy has never had cancer. This is interesting, because Jimmy's family is a matter of study because of their very high susceptibility to pancreatic cancer. His father, mother, brother & 2 sisters all had it. His mother also had bone & breast cancer Jimmy hasn't had cancer. Jimmy credits it to his not smoking; however, it is clear that a large dose of radioactivity didn't catapult him into cancer. And he's still healthy and active at 86.

What other lessons do you feel nuclear plant operators should learn from Daiichi?

 

[Olympia]

Doris! You found the information about Carter. Thanks for posting it. You're right: because he was a President, his health profile is a matter of public record, and his continued visibility makes it hard to hide any health issues today.

It's such a singular irony that Carter's family members seem to be predisposed to pancreatic cancer, and he is the sole surviving sibling, in fine health at the age of 86.

I don't know whether one can generalize about the risks and effects of exposure to nuclear radiation from Carter's lone example, but his situation certainly shows that it's possible not to be endangered by such exposure. For now, the best purpose of such information is to give the Japanese nuclear workers some peace of mind.

Speaking of health, I hope you're pacing yourself, Doris. The situation in Japan has been at an acute stage for over a month, and you've been going strong the whole time. Are you getting enough rest?

 

[dorispulaski]

I'm probably not getting enough rest.

And yes, I was talking about Carter because I wish someone would give the workers some reassurance, and people in the US moving from west to east because of their perception of radiation risk (which is crazy).

The discussion of Carter for me was triggered by watching an NHK video (from yesterday) of a young crane operator who is going to Daiichi giving a fancy bottle of sake to a friend of his in an evacuation shelter. The crane operator is talking about "not coming back". Good gracious! Yes, radiation is dangerous, and yes, at high doses people get sick and may die, and yes you can get thyroid cancer near term. The proofs for other forms of cancer tend to be 20 to 40 years from the event, and very difficult to show, given that some 30% of people get some kind of cancer some time. The best thing you can do in all cases, if you worry, is to stop smoking, since the stress of smoking seems to raise your risks of almost everything, particularly if you have any risk factors for cancer (genetics, radiation exposure, chemical exposure, whatever)

Jimmy was exposed to both high doses while working on the reactor at Chalk River, and lower chronic doses during the remediation work. It is possible (even if not sure) for a person to suffer no damage from something like that, even a person who may have a genetic predisposition to cancer.

None of the people at Daiichi are being allowed to get over 200 to 250 mrems. If Jimmy was peeing radioactive urine, he got a lot more. Unless they fall and break their necks or have other such industrial accidents, they have a good chance of being fine.

 

[dorispulaski]

Status Rollup of 6:44 AM April 16th Eastern Daylight Time

Daini 3:00 PM April 16th
Wind is west north west
Six peripheral measurement points ( 2.8, 2.1, 3.0, 2.4, 2.4, 2.4) microSieverts per hour
Daiichi 3:00 PM April 16th
Eight peripheral measurement points (10,35,32, 31, 53, 88, 200, 176) microSieverts per hour
Temporary Monitoring Points
Main Office Building 0.51 milliSieverts per hour
Main Gate 65 microSieverts per hour
West Gate 27 microSieverts per hour
Gamma Radiation monitoring cart near west gate 34.5 microSieverts per hour
Now that the leak is stopped, water in the Unit 2 cellar rises about 3 cm per day [NHK].


TEPCO 9:00 AM status

[Nuclear Power Station] Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station: Units 1 to 3: shutdown due to the earthquake (Units 4 to 6: outage due to regular inspections)

*At 5:00 pm, on April 15th, we had completed transferring emergency power sources to spray water to reactors of Unit 1 to 3 to the upland.

*From 2:30 pm on April 15th, water spray to the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 was started with the concrete pumping vehicle and the water spray was finished at 6:29 pm, on April 15th. *On March 20th and 21st and from March 23rd to April 14th, we have detected radioactive materials in the air which were collected at the site. The data of detected three nuclides (Iodine-131, Cesium-134 and Cesium-137) are released as fixed figures. Other nuclide figures are to be re-evaluated based on improved measures for recurrence prevention which have been prepared in accordance with a strong warning by NISA on April 1st.

*On March 21st and from March 23rd to April 14th, we have detected radioactive materials in the seawater around the water discharge canal of the plant. The data of detected three nuclides (Iodine-131, Cesium-134 and Cesium-137) are released as fixed figures. Other nuclide figures are to be re-evaluated based on improved measures for recurrence prevention which have been prepared in accordance with a strong warning by NISA on April 1st.

*From 3:00 pm April 5th, a construction of installing large sandbags around the pier to prevent the outflow of the contaminated water from station's port on the south side to the ocean was started. From April 15, we started to throw in sandbags including zeolites in front of the screen of Unit 1 to 4. In order to prevent water containing radioactive materials from spilling from a plant's port to the sea, we installed approximately 120 meter wide double silt fences around a breakwater on the south of the station at 10:45 am on April 11th. On April 12th, 13th and 15th, we installed a total of 7 iron plates in front of the screen of Unit 2. At 1:50 pm, April 13th, double silt fences were installed in front of the screen of Unit 3 and 4. At 12:20 pm, silt fences were installed in front of the screen of Unit 1 and 2 and the water intake canal.

*From 7:03 pm, April 4th, we started discharging the low level radioactive wastewater stored in the Centralized Radiation Waste Treatment Facility to the ocean from the south of the water discharge canal. The discharge was finished at 5:40 pm, April 10. Total amount of discharged water is approximately 9,070 tons. Also, from 9:00 pm, April 4th, we started discharging the low level radioactive subsurface wastewater stored in the sub drain pits of Unit 5 and 6 by using one pump to the ocean from the water discharge canal of Units 5 and 6. At 6:52 pm, April 9th we finished discharging water. The amount of discharged water was approximately 1,323 tons. The total amount of emitted radioactivity is approximately 1.5*1011 Becquerel. We evaluate approximately 0.6 mSv of effective radioactive doses per year per an adult as the impact on the discharge of the low radioactive stored water to the ocean if an adult eats adjacent fish and seaweeds every day. The amount (0.6 mSv of effective radioactive doses per year) is one-forth of annual radioactive dose (2.4 mSv) to which the general public is exposed from nature and equivalent to that when we evaluated before discharging the water to the ocean.

Wonderful! Now NISA wants TEPCO to do the fishing for them. If there are unemployed fishermen out there, they're all set. They can catch sand lances for TEPCO.

Press Release (Apr 16,2011)
Receipt of instruction document from NISA regarding discharge of drained water with concentrations of radioactive materials exceeding discharge standard to the ocean

On April 15, we received an instruction document* from Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ("NISA"), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry,on "Discharge of drained water with concentrations of radioactive materials exceeding the discharge standard to the ocean."

Based on the instruction, we would like to take measures against the discharge of drained water with concentrations of radioactive materials exceeding the discharge standard to the ocean as soon as possible, summarize implementation status and report it to NISA.

*Instruction document
"Discharge of drained water with concentrations of radioactive materials
exceeding the discharge standard to the ocean (Instruction)"
(NISA no.5 on April 15, 2011)

Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (hereinafter called "NISA") received a report on above mentioned subject from TEPCO on April 15. We inspect it and conclude that, because we have not find any significant changes in monitoring data before and after the discharge, but we have to consider the leakage of water with highly concentrated radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, we also need to continue scrutinizing its impact.

Therefore, NISA considers that we need to continue conducting the monitoring and environmental impact assessment regarding the leakage of the water with highly concentrated radioactive materials as well as the discharge to the ocean and instructs TEPCO to implement following measures.NISA will accordingly confirm monitoring results.

1. Regarding the impact due to the discharge to the ocean, TEPCO should conduct detailed evaluation including the impact of ocean currents based on the actual data of discharged volume and the monitoring results and submit the evaluation result by May 2nd, 2011.

2. In order to understand impacts in broader areas and on a longer term basis, TEPCO should increase the number of monitoring points, conduct monitoring and periodically announce results.

3. TEPCO should catch or collect the fish and shell fish in the surrounding ocean area of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, measure radioactive dose, evaluate impacts and periodically announce
results.

However, the fishermen in Ibaraki are busy again. TEPCO may be combing the shelters for people from Namie town, who often are fisherpeople.


Fish caught off Ibaraki trade at normal prices

The first catches of fish in nearly 2 weeks off Ibaraki Prefecture have been shipped to Tokyo's Tsukiji market. Fishing in the area had been suspended due to the detection of a radioactive substance exceeding the legal limit.

Four kinds of fish were shipped to the market on Saturday morning in 40 boxes that had a note attached attesting that they do not contain radioactive substances exceeding the limit.

The Tokyo metropolitan government says all the shipped fish from Ibaraki Prefecture traded at almost normal prices.

Fishing cooperatives in Ibaraki Prefecture had suspended their activities as brokers and retailers refused to buy fish from the area.

Above-legal-limit levels of a radioactive substance were found in small fish called sand lances caught off the prefecture on April 4th.

On Friday, fishermen resumed catching other varieties of fish that do not contain radioactive substances above the legal limit.

A wholesaler says he was waiting for fish caught off Ibaraki Prefecture. He says he will sell them and wants consumers to buy them because they are proven to be safe.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 10:46 +0900 (JST)

This is one of those "couldn't hurt and might help" sort of things.

Mineral used to absorb radioactive materials

The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun placing a mineral in the sea to absorb radioactive materials contaminating the seawater around the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, on Friday dropped sandbags containing the mineral zeolite into the sea near the plant's water intakes. Zeolite is widely used to absorb contaminating materials.

TEPCO hopes the zeolite will absorb radioactive materials, including cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.

The utility company plans to drop in 10 sandbags each containing 100 kilograms of zeolite. It will raise the bags at regular intervals to check the radiation levels on their surfaces.

Earlier this month, highly radioactive water was found leaking into the sea from a facility at the No.2 reactor. The health ministry later detected radioactivity above the legal limit in fish caught off the plant.

TEPCO has carried out construction work to stop the leak and is checking for others.

In other efforts to prevent the spread of radioactive substances in the sea, the company has already installed metal boards and underwater barriers near the plant.
Friday, April 15, 2011 22:20 +0900 (JST)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite#Nuclear_industry

Nuclear industry
Zeolites have uses in advanced reprocessing methods, where their micro-porous ability to capture some ions while allowing others to pass freely allow many fission products to be efficiently removed from nuclear waste and permanently trapped. Equally important are the mineral properties of zeolites. Their alumino-silicate construction is extremely durable and resistant to radiation even in porous form. Additionally, once they are loaded with trapped fission products, the zeolite-waste combination can be hot pressed into an extremely durable ceramic form, closing the pores and trapping the waste in a solid stone block. This is a waste form factor that greatly reduces its hazard compared to conventional reprocessing systems.[6]

 

[dorispulaski]

NHK new stories:

Moscow has higher radiation values than Tokyo ...

Russia may lift advisory against travel to Japan

The head of a Russian science agency says he will recommend that his government lift its advisory against travel to Japan. The Director of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency, Vladimir Uiba, made the remarks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday. He's leading a team of Russian officials studying the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Uiba said the radiation level at the Russian embassy compound in Tokyo was 0.07 microsieverts per hour on Friday, lower than in Moscow.

He also said checkups have found no thyroid problems among the 200 embassy staff and family members. Immediately after the March 11th quake damaged the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Russian government urged its citizens not to travel to Japan.

Uiba said evacuees from areas near the Chernobyl nuclear plant endured excessive psychological burdens. He spoke of the importance of supporting evacuees from towns near the crippled Fukushima plant.Saturday, April 16, 2011 08:02 +0900 (JST)

●Noda: Japan must send disaster information quickly

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said Japan must offer quick and accurate information on problems stemming from the March 11th disaster to gain international support for its rebuilding efforts. Noda was speaking to reporters in Washington on Friday after a 2-day meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 nations. They ended the meeting by issuing a joint statement expressing solidarity with the Japanese people over the March 11th earthquake and confidence in the resilience of the Japanese economy and financial sector. The Japanese minister said other countries had promised to provide any needed
cooperation.

Noda said he had candidly explained the ongoing problems at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, circulation of harmful gossip, and electricity shortages.Saturday, April 16, 2011 12:42 +0900 (JST)

I'm not sure how this makes sense. If the ships are too radioactive, the European port will wash them???

●EU sets radiation threshold for ships from Japan

The European Commission has advised European ports to check radiation levels on ships and cargoes arriving from Japan to see whether they exceed a new limit.In an announcement on Friday, it suggested a new limit of 0.2 microsieverts per hour above the normal level, which is 0.1 microsievert per hour. The announcement says if port authorities detect radiation levels above the limit, the relevant government should inform the Commission and the ship in question should be thoroughly washed.

The announcement came a day after the first ship to leave Japan since the start of thenuclear crisis docked in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. An EU spokesperson says no abnormal levels of radiation have been detected in the ship. EU member nations including Germany and Spain had already set their own radiation limits for ships and cargoes arriving from Japan.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 09:04 +0900 (JST)

And some of the most important news of the day, the word from survivors of horrible disasters that life can indeed be rebuilt, and life can be good again:


Survivors of past disasters send messages

Survivors of past natural disasters and nuclear accidents are offering support and encouragement to those affected by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The worst-ever nuclear accident was the 1986 meltdown in Chernobyl, Ukraine. An area within a 30-kilometer radius of the doomed plant remains off-limits, and all residents have been relocated. Farming has continued just outside the zone, and regular inspections have reportedly found no traces of radiation in locally produced wheat, rye or milk. The leader of a local agricultural cooperative, Alexander Luchenyuk, says advanced technology will help Japan overcome its problems much more quickly than Ukraine. He says it may take time, but the disaster-hit regions can be rebuilt.

Indonesia's Ache Province has been rebuilding since the Indian Ocean tsunami in December of 2004 left more than 220,000 people dead or missing. 63-year-old Azmi Ansyah, who lost a son and a grandchild, says he regained his strength one month after the disaster and started to focus on reconstruction.
He urges Japanese survivors to look to the future.

59-year-old Zaelani lost his home in the Indian Ocean tsunami. He says the province was buried in mud and rubble, but people can rebuild their communities better than they used to be.

The powerful earthquake in China's Sichuan Province in May of 2008 killed nearly 70,000 people. In the hardest-hit Beichuan County, many people are still living in temporary housing. 44-year-old Xu Changjun lost 2 of his children. He says a daughter born after the quake gives him hope. Xu said he can understand the grim situation in the disaster-hit regions in Japan because he saw footage of the tsunami. He urges survivors to keep going and rebuild their lives.
Friday, April 15, 2011 19:51 +0900 (JST)

 

[treeloving]

My relative who live in Tokyo told me that people in Tokyo try to buy product from Fukushima not for eating but to help improve the economic situation there resulted in sold out of fukushima argiculture products. Really touching!

 

[dorispulaski]

That is really touching.

 

[dorispulaski]

Air doing better, seawater not. I would like to know what schedule they plan to pump the highly contaminated water out of the basement so that they can fix the cooling.

April 16th, 9:00 PM
Wind is in the northwest

Near West Gate Gamma Radiation 33.9 microSieverts per hour

Daini 6 peripheral Measure Points (2.8, 2.1, 3.0, 2.4, 2.4, 2.3) microSieverts per hour
Daiichi
Eight peripheral measurements (10, 35, 32, 30, 52, 87, 198, 175) MicroSieverts per hour. First time all measurements are under 200.
Main Office Building 0.52 milliSieverts per hour
Main Gate 65 microSieverts per hour
West Gate 27 microSieverts per hour

Seawater April 15th last data

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110416e8.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110416e10.pdf

-From 10:13 am to 11:54 am on April 16th, we conducted injecting fresh water to Unit 2 by a temporary motor driven pump
From 2:30 pm to 3:45 pm on April 15th, we installed 3 sandbags containing zeolite (as an absorbent material) between the screen pump rooms of the Unit 3 and Unit 4. -From 10:19 am to 5:00 pm on April 15th, we transferred distribution panels of the pumps to inject water to the reactors of Units 1 to 3 as a countermeasure against tsunami.

NHK

Radiactivity rises again in sea near No.2 reactor
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says levels of radioactive substances in seawater have risen again near the water intake of its No.2 reactor.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, says it detected 260 becquerels of iodine-131 per cubic centimeter in samples taken on Friday. That is 6,500 times the legal limit.

In the same area, levels of iodine-131 had been declining since April 2nd when 7.5 million times the limit was detected. On Thursday, the level was 1,100 times the safety limit.

TEPCO says the level of radioactive cesium-137 was also up in the same area. It detected 130 becquerels per cubic centimeter, 1,400 times the legal limit.
The firm says radioactive densities are leveling off or falling in most other areas.

TEPCO has installed underwater barriers and metal boards near the intake to prevent contaminated water from leaking into the sea.

The power company says the rise in the levels of radioactivity may have been caused by the installation work, but no new sources of leakage have been found.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 23:55 +0900 (JST)

TEPCO to step up discharged water monitoring
The operator of the troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant says it will step up monitoring to assess the environmental impact of radioactive water discharged into the ocean from the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will measure radiation levels in seawater in 4 locations 3 kilometers off the coast, and 2 locations 8 kilometers off the coast.

This is in addition to the existing monitoring locations along the shore and 15 kilometers offshore.

The increased monitoring is in response to an instruction by the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The result of the investigation will be reported to the agency by May 2nd.

TEPCO discharged about 10,000 tons of relatively low-level radioactive wastewater from the plant between April 4th and 10th. This was done to make storage space for highly radioactive water from the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building to the plant's waste processing facility. Removal of the contaminated water is needed before workers can continue efforts to restore the cooling system.

The water discharged into the sea was found in the nuclear waste processing facility, where water containing high levels of radioactive materials is stored, and in facilities, called sub-drain pits, where water from the 5th and 6th reactors is collected.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 17:11 +0900 (JST)

 

[mot]

Doris, please please do get plenty of rest and pace yourself!

One thing, amongst many, that impresses me most is the breath of information and news materials you cover - from updates and supplementary information on the situation of Fukushima Nuclear Plants, histories of other nuclear accidents, and stuff about radiation and associated health risks (and myths) in general, to the messages of support from the survivors of the past disasters. Utterly impressive and much appreciated.



What I am also finding out is the sheer range of influences the natural disasters, the earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima is having, due to globalisation. I have learnt that a number of scheduled art exhibitions are being cancelled in Japan, because the foreign art galleries, museums, etc are unable to send / loan artworks to Japanese galleries because a) they cannot send accompanying staff to the artworks; b) they are unable to insure the artworks; and c) general fear of contamination, and risk of failed environmental control to protect works due to powercuts, etc. French government has apparently banned transporting of the artworks from their national galleries and museums, citing the unavailability of information on potential risks. (Japanese news source: http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20110407-00000538-san-soci )

Another article I have found is that global sale of smartphones (iPhones, etc) is predicted to be down by 5% this year, because of 'a chemical for lithium-ion batteries, used in mobile phones, tablets and laptops, for which 70% of the production comes from a Japanese factory shut by the quake.' ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/11/japan-disaster-hits-smartphone-sales?intcmp=239 )

I have been receiving tweets from those working for Japanese higher education that Japanese universities are suffering as many overseas students have decided to cancel / postpone their studies - some universities are based in Osaka or even in Kyushu, hundreds of miles away from all the happenings.

What has been proven to me is this interdependence amongst countries at all fronts of life. The overall effects of what's happened and what's been happening in Japan and how long they will last are yet to be established.



On a separate note - one of the most famous and respected American japanologists, Donald Keene has decided to obtain Japanese citizenship and move there for good. He's 88 years old, and already spends half of a year in Japan and the other in the US, teaching at Columbia University. He simply states the reason for his action as 'because I like the country', but somehow this becomes a news piece in Japan as the decision was made public in the midst of stories of many avoiding travelling to Japan and some Japanese fleeing from the country. (Japanese news source: http://www.nikkei.com/news/headline...19695E3E4E2E3E38DE3E4E2E6E0E2E3E39180E2E2E2E2 ) Professor Keene was my hero when I was studying Japanese literature at university many many many moons ago; he was the one that made me think of coming abroad and see what Japan is like from outside - so in a way, without him I would not have ended up being here in the UK.

Wiki on Professor Keene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Keene

 

[dorispulaski]

This is a very interesting story that is on Kyudo news:

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85919.html

New cooling systems may be installed outside Fukushima reactor buildings
TOKYO, April 16, Kyodo

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is considering installing circulating water cooling systems for nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage pools outside the reactor buildings at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sources familiar with the matter said Saturday.

The new systems would cool nuclear fuel inside the reactors and spent fuel pools in a stable manner. They would involve heat exchangers and circulation pumps to drain reactor coolant water from the containment buildings, cooling it with seawater and then sending it back to the reactors, the sources said.

TEPCO appears to have already placed orders for dozens of gasketed plate heat exchangers -- each measuring 3 meters high, 1 meter wide and 2 meters long -- for such systems, the sources said.

The existing circulating water cooling systems at the plant were crippled by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

The utility has been pumping water into reactors and storage pools in a desperate bid to cool them. But the move has created large puddles of water contaminated with high levels of radiation inside the reactor containment and turbine buildings, as fuel rods in the reactors and storage pools have been partially damaged.

The presence of the large puddles in the buildings has blocked restoration work at the plant.

TEPCO has therefore determined that it is necessary to cool the reactors and storage pools with new circulating water cooling systems to be installed outside the containment buildings, they said.

It is impossible to sufficiently cool the reactors and storage pools simply by pumping water into them without circulating water through the reactors and pools. The pumping operation has also had the negative side effect of raising the water levels of the radiation-contaminated puddles.

It would be necessary to secure five or six heat exchangers to cool one reactor, but the cooling efficiency of the gasketed plate heat exchangers is twice that of conventional heat exchangers for nuclear plants, according to the sources.

Radiation levels inside the containment buildings remain high. TEPCO plans to utilize the pipes that it has been using to pump water into the reactors in the new circulating water cooling loops, so it can minimize the need for work inside the dangerous buildings.

This could definitely work, and the fact that the assemblies have been ordered is very promising. The way that reactor cooling is done is that fresh water is run through the reactor as a primary (probably borated in this case to suppress all neutrons) and sea water, is run through the secondary to take away heat from the primaries.

The primaries will be heavily radioactive, so they will have to build shielding as well.

I don't know why TEPCO hasn't mentioned this on their website, and it isn't in NHK.

Kyodo also has this story. It's about something that has frustrated me. I know there are a lot of things that the US has (and people) who could be very helpful in this situation, but other than people connected with GE, Babock & Wilcox, and Shaw, they have not been asked.

U.S. offers unmanned chopper to help remove Fukushima spent fuel
TOKYO, April 17, Kyodo

The U.S. government has told Japan that it can use a U.S. unmanned cargo transport helicopter to set up cranes to remove spent fuel rods from storage pools at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japanese and U.S. sources close to the matter said Saturday.

The K-MAX helicopter, developed jointly by Lockheed Martin Corp. and KAMAN Aerospace Group of the United States, is being considered to set up the huge cranes.

The proposal has been communicated to the unified command headquarters set up by the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to deal with the nuclear crisis. Japan has not yet made a formal response to the proposal.

Since the ground positioning system-equipped chopper can be operated remotely, it would enable emergency workers to implement restoration work even in areas contaminated by high levels of radiation, they said.

TEPCO has been cooling down the spent fuel storage pools on the fifth floor of the reactor buildings by pumping water using a truck-mounted concrete pump.

Spent nuclear fuel is usually transported away from nuclear plants inside steel casks after being cooled in storage pools for a few years.

Since the original fuel transportation equipment at the Fukushima plant's reactor buildings was damaged by hydrogen explosions following the March 11 quake and tsunami, TEPCO is considering employing a huge crane to lift casks into the storage pools so that spent fuel rods can be placed in them.

The United States has proposed transporting partially assembled cranes to the plant using the unmanned helicopter. It has also proposed starting full-fledged installation of the cranes after radiation levels fall.

The proposal was originally conveyed by Adm. Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, at a meeting in late March with his Japanese counterpart Self-Defense Forces Chief of Staff Ryoichi Oriki, the sources said.

The U.S. side is ready to transport the unmanned helicopter by plane from the United States to the Matsushima base of the Air Self-Defense Force in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, they said.

The K-MAX helicopters belong to the U.S. Marine Corps. The remote-controlled choppers were introduced by the U.S. military after a number of manned helicopters were shot down by insurgents in Afghanistan.

The improved version of the K-MAX can lift around 1.4 tons.

But there is a nice story on NHK:

Vietnam cherry festival raises funds for Japan
Visitors to an annual cherry blossom festival in Hanoi, Vietnam, have offered support and made donations for people in eastern Japan who are struggling after the devastating March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The 2-day event is held every April to introduce Japanese culture to the people of Vietnam.

The garden of an international exhibition center has been decorated with 300 cherry tree branches flown in from Japan. Many visitors were seen taking photos of the blossoms.

A series of Japanese cultural activities are being held including a performance of Yosakoi, one of the most energetic Japanese dances, and demonstrations of origami paper folding and walking on bamboo stilts, known as "takeuma."

Visitors offered donations for the people in northeastern Japan. A part of the sales from octopus dumplings and other food stands at the festival will also be donated.

A Vietnamese woman wearing a Japanese kimono said she is praying for the people in the affected areas and hopes they will overcome the difficult times.

Saturday, April 16, 2011 23:54 +0900 (JST)
Video Quality
Low (256K)High (512K).

In Washington, DC, also had a Cherry Blossom Festival, in honor of trees given the US by Japan

http://www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org/

Welcome to the Nation’s Greatest Springtime Celebration!
Each year, the National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates spring in Washington, DC, the gift of the cherry blossom trees and the enduring friendship between the people of the United States and Japan. The Festival produces and coordinates 16 days and 3 spectacular weekends of festivities, primarily free and open to the public. Explore the site to learn more about the Festival and its events, the spectacular gift of trees, and everything you can do to make the most of your visit to the nation’s capital!

They are also collecting aid for Japan.
http://www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org/2011/03/11/disaster-relief/

 

[mot]

Ahhhh... Cherry blossom season is one thing I miss most about Japan - I haven't seen it since I visited Japan in March for my sister's wedding in 2005. Stories of Cherry Blossom Festivals in Vietnam and Washington DC made my eyes teary.


Another story that caught my interest; allegedly the sultan of Oman decided to place this enormous order of water purifiers with a small manufacturing company in Fukushima Pref. as he thought sending donation to either Japanese government or NGO is too slow a precess. Also he offered the water purifiers to be used in the stricken areas in Japan first, I heard.

A small factory in Minami Soma received a large order of water purifiers from Oman as a means of support

http://www.kahoku.co.jp/news/2011/04/20110408t62021.htm
(translated by me)

It became known on April 7 that Ochiai Koki, a small manufacturing company in Ichihara, Minami Soma City, received a large order for water purifiers from a company in Oman in the Middle East. Ochiai Koki is located within the zone affected by the government’s order for its inhabitants to stay indoors to avoid radiation risks. The order is worth approx. ¥2.6billion (approx. $31.3million). The manufacturer has decided to resume production, and considering hiring more workers as well as bringing back those existing employees who have evacuated from the area. The director of the company is encouraged, ‘we’d like to overcome many obstacles to reopen the factory.’ The city has also expressed their support, as it will lead to restoration of the manufacturing sector in Minami Soma.

The order came from a company related to the sultan of Oman, an existing client of Ochiai Koki. They learned of the plight of Minami Soma’s caused by the earthquake and related disasters, and decided to place the special order for 700 water purifiers and 14 large-scale water purifying systems.

Ochiai Koki used to be specialized in working with sheet metal and used their technology to venture into water purifier manufacturing. Last December, they established a business co-op with J-Action Commerce (a business set up by Tokyo-based NGO, supporting agriculture in the Middle East), and started producing mobile water purifiers especially for the use in the Middle East.

Ochiai Koki stopped production because some employees lost their homes to the tsunami and it is included in the zone for indoor evacuation order since March 15. The order was made via J-Action Commerce.

J-Action Commerce have secured temporary accommodation of 100 bed spaces, for 16 employees and their families, who lost their homes. Ochiai koki is planning to hire 20 new staff from those in Minami Soma who lost their jobs due to the disasters.

The director of Ochiai Koki, Mr. Saito, said ‘all employees are itching to start working again. They are planning to resume production this month. Mr. Hashimoto, the director of J-Action Commerce, said ‘the support Ochiai Koki received proves how much their technological expertise is appreciated internationally.’

 

[dorispulaski]

Now that made me tear up a bit, mot. Thank you. What a practical thing for the Sultan to do. But I do wonder what he is going to do with all those water purifiers when he receives them.

For whatever reason (geography, weather pattern) , radiation level in Minami Soma is not all that bad, despite being just outside the evacuation zone.

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1302831814P.pdf

And today's values:
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/04/17/1305090_041619.pdf

They did not get a huge spike on the 15th of March, and so they are well down below 1 microSievert per hour today (0.7 microSievert per hour at one monitor and 0.6 microSievert per hour at another monitor).

It's good to know that life is starting again for some people.

 

[dorispulaski]

9 AM April 17th

Wind is in the West at Daiichi

Daini
Seven peripheral measurement points (2.7,2.1,2.9, 2.4, 2.3, 2.3, 1.7 ) microSieverts per hour

Daiichi

Eight peripheral measuring points ( 10, 35, 31, 30, 51, 85, 194, 174 ) microSieverts per hour

Main Office Building 0.52 milliSieverts per hour
Main Gate 57 microSieverts per hour
West Gate 27 microSieverts per hour

Gamma Radiation read by the mobile cart at the West Gate 33.2 microSieverts per hour.

Nothing much seems to be going on today, other than spraying down the Unit 2 spent fuel pool.

However, in NHK, they report that NHK has issued their Containment Plan

TEPCO issues 6-9 month containment plan
The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has issued a schedule for putting the crisis under control in 6 to 9 months.

The chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tsunehisa Katsumata, explained the plan at a news conference on Sunday.

The utility firm said a two-phase process is scheduled.

In the first stage over the next 3 months, it will build new cooling systems outside the Number 1 and 3 reactor buildings to cool down the nuclear fuel, and to ensure that radiation levels around the plant continue to decline.

Note than temperature readings at Unit 3 put it nearly in cold shut down level right now. On the other hand; Unit 1 is the hottest of the 3 reactors. It's hard not to have radiation levels around the plant declining; that's what radiation levels do, if you don't have another massive release from the reactors.

The company says it will contain the radioactivity leakage from the Number 2 reactor by patching the damaged section.

I would love to see more detail about this part of the plan. If it were so easy to patch Unit 2, they would have done so already.

In the second stage, TEPCO plans to lower the temperature of the nuclear fuel in the reactors to below 100 degrees Celsius to stabilize its condition.

The firm says the cooling will considerably lower the radiation levels in the environment around the plant.

The two-phases will be completed in 6 to 9 months.

The firm also plans to cover the reactor buildings with giant covers with filters to prevent the release of radioactive substances into the air.

This is probably where the concrete pumps come in; making giant covers.

It will also set up equipment to purify the contaminated water in tanks and other facilities.

This bullet makes no sense to me and may be a translation error or a huge over-simplification.

At the same time, the company will increase the number of monitoring points within the government-set evacuation areas. It will use the data to neutralize the radioactive substances in soil and on buildings.Sunday, April 17, 2011 16:35 +0900 (JST)

This makes less sense, but it is good to know that TEPCO is committing to clean up the evacuation areas. Obviously data alone never neutralized anything.

Right now there are areas in the evacuation zone that are less dangerous than Namie town and Iitate village, which are not in the zone.

Another article on the plan, essentially on the external cooling system.

TEPCO finalizes plan to cool down reactors

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has finalized a new plan to cool down the troubled reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Company will install a new cooling system that filters contaminated water and recirculates it back into the reactors.

Following the quake and tsunami, cooling systems broke down in reactors 1, 2 and 3. TEPCO workers have been pumping in cold water in an effort to keep them from overheating.

However, the water inside the reactors quickly becomes contaminated with high levels of radioactive substances. Due to possible structural damage in the quake, contaminated reactor water has been leaking into the basements of neighboring turbine buildings and service tunnels. This has impeded emergency repair work and created a disposal problem.

To best deal with the present circumstances, TEPCO plans to first pump contaminated wastewater outside the turbine buildings where it can be more safely cooled and filtered. Radioactive substances and salt are removed and a continuous supply of treated water is circulated to gradually cool down the reactors.

TEPCO is scheduled to start operating the new cooling system by summer.

Sunday, April 17, 2011 09:20 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_06.html

There is a picture at the above link.

The thing I want to see explained is the filtering. Needless to say, when you filter out radioactive material from water (to the extent that such material is particulate, and therefore filterable) you end up with filtration materials that are more intensely radioactive to deal with than the water you started with. Furthermore, you are going to have to change your filtration material and dispose of it in a way where it is cooled continuously.

The good thing about this system is that it is a continuous loop, and that there will be no more "bleed and feed" going on.

Storing highly radioactive water in a confined space without cooling is a disaster, and in fact it is what occurred in the former USSR at Kystym in 1957 at a nuclear processing plant, dedicated to making plutonium for bombs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster

Cooling failed on a large tank that was storing highly radioactive water. A huge non-nuclear explosion resulted, and spewed radioactive material into the air. This disaster was, long after the fact, given a level 6 on the INES scale, but in truth, it's hard to know how much material was actually released, given that the most radioactive material (Iodine 131 and even more radioactive material) had decayed within a year.

If it is in fact the case that

"In 1992, a study conducted by the Institute of Biophysics at the former Soviet Health Ministry in Chelyabinsk found that 8,015 people had died within the preceding 32 years as a result of the accident."[1]

in fact it would be a worse disaster than Chernobyl. It is not clear how reliable this wiki page is. The wiki reports the area as still uninhabitable (as opposed to just "uninhabited"), a fact that is a bit strange, considering that Chernobyl is in considerably better shape than that.

Another article

http://www.logtv.com/films/chelyabinsk/nuclear.htm

claims no one died.

About 10,000 people lived in the 1,000-square-kilometer area contaminated with more than two curies of strontium 90 per square kilometer.One-fifth of these people eventually showed a reduction of leukocytes in their blood.There are no records of deaths caused by the accident.

This accident is only part of Chelyabinsk-40's deadly legacy, because there was no management of radioactive waste at all before September 1951: for years the high-level nuclear waste was simply discharged directly into the Techa River.And over the years, workers at the complex have been exposed to astonishing levels of radiation.

During 1949, the first full year of operation, workers at A Reactor received an average dose of 93.6 rem -- three times the standards then set by the ministry, where were too high to begin with: about 30 rem per year. (Standards for nuclear workers in Russia, as in the United States, are now about 5 rem per year, although they are about the be lowered in the United States to 2 rem.)Workers were exposed to an average of 113.3 rem in 1951, and a small percentage received more than 400 rem annually during this early period.

And the description of the lake

Reservoirs were created to keep water from flowing out of the most contaminated areas, and plant wastes were discharged into Karachay Lake, which has no outlet, instead of into the river.The lake, actually a bog, eventually accumulated 120 million curies of the long-lived radionuclides cesium 137 and strontium 90.By comparison, the Chernobyl accident released one million curies of cesium 137 and 220,000 curies of strontium 90.In 1967, wind dispersed radioactivity from the lake, contaminating about 1,8000 square kilometers.Today, radioactivity in the ground water has migrated two to three kilometers from the lake.A person standing on the lake shore near the area where wastes are discharged from the plant would receive about 600 roentgens of radiation, a lethal dose, in an hour.The lake is now being filled with hollow concrete blocks, rock, and soil to reduce the dispersion of radioactivity.

If this is in fact true, this is significantly worse than Chernobyl, where it will not kill you to spend an hour there.

 

[champs]

Thanks Doris and mot for updates and interesting topics.

This is a very interesting story that is on Kyudo news:

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85919.html

This could definitely work, and the fact that the assemblies have been ordered is very promising. The way that reactor cooling is done is that fresh water is run through the reactor as a primary (probably borated in this case to suppress all neutrons) and sea water, is run through the secondary to take away heat from the primaries.

The primaries will be heavily radioactive, so they will have to build shielding as well.

I don't know why TEPCO hasn't mentioned this on their website, and it isn't in NHK.

Here is the piece on NHK World, with a video including the diagram of the circulation.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_06.html

But true it's not as detailed as the Kyodo News article you cited.

@mot
I believe the character for the Yen mark you typed in your translation is OS/locale-setting dependent so you probably want to avoid using it (displayed as backslash, Won mark, and maybe some localized European/Asian characters/symbols.)

 

[dorispulaski]

Thanks, champs!

And it sounds like they are close to being able to pump some more water out of the Unit 2 trenches, basements, and so forth to the tank they have for radioactive wastes that they emptied into the ocean previously. (also from NHK). If only there will be no aftershocks between now and then, so that all the checking has to be done over again.

Work under way for transfer of contaminated water

The level of radioactive water that has accumulated on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant keeps rising amid concern that the water might overflow, further polluting the ocean.

The radioactive water is believed to originate from water injected to cool the Number 2 reactor, which was seriously damaged by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

In the utility tunnel outside the reactor, the contaminated water is rising despite the firm's effort to move some of it to a condenser tank last week. As of Sunday morning, the water reached 85 centimeters below ground level, threatening to overflow into the ocean.

Tokyo Electric Power Company hopes to begin transfer of the water some time this week to a nuclear waste facility that can hold 30,000 tons of such water. It is now conducting final checks so that leaks of radioactive material will not occur from the facility.

Underground water at the plant is no exception from radioactive contamination. The level of radioactive substances is increasing at facilities where underground water from the Number 1 and 2 reactors is collected. The concentration of cesium-134 on Wednesday was 38 times the reading a week earlier.

In another development, the utility firm will start using US-made robots on Sunday for measuring radiation levels and taking pictures inside the reactor's buildings.

High levels of radiation have kept workers from entering the area to contain the situation.

Sunday, April 17, 2011 14:34 +0900 (JST)

.

And the government is importing houses. Sort of, from NHK:

Foreign firms to build temporary housing

The Japanese government will allow foreign companies to build temporary housing in order to speed up reconstruction efforts in disaster-stricken northeastern Japan.

Local authorities in affected regions have asked for 72,000 temporary houses to be built. However, so far construction is under way on only 10,800 units.

The Land and Infrastructure Ministry decided to allow foreign companies to build temporary housing as long as they meet certain conditions. One is that they must have the capacity to build more than 100 units in 2 months. They are also required to meet Japanese standards for electrical voltage and wall plugs, and must form joint partnerships with Japanese construction companies for maintenance work.

Ministry officials say they have already received inquiries from house construction companies in the United States, Italy, South Korea and China.

Local governments will consider ordering temporary houses after receiving bids from foreign companies.

After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, 3,000 of 47,000 temporary houses were imported.

Sunday, April 17, 2011 06:49 +0900 (JST)

And in Miyagi Prefecture, the Sunday market has reopened
NHK

Sunday market reopens in tsunami-hit Kesennuma

Residents of Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, have enjoyed shopping at a local market that reopened on Sunday, more than one month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the city.

Around 30 shops, less than half the pre-disaster number, sold vegetables and dried marine products to regular customers who came to the market early in the morning.

The market had been open every Sunday for the past 37 years near Kesennuma Port, the center of the local fishing industry. But the tsunami swept it away.

The new market is about 2 kilometers from the old one.

Fish dealers from Hakodate in Hokkaido, northern Japan, came to celebrate the reopening of the market and gave away crabs to shoppers.

One shopper said residents had awaited reopening of the market as the first step toward reconstruction.

The vendors' group says it still plans to hold the market every Sunday.

A member of the group says fish dealers are unlikely to return to the market for some time, but the group wants to cheer up local residents by resuming business.

Sunday, April 17, 2011 16:23 +0900 (JST)

Free crabs! Definitely, mot, you should have been there.

 

[mot]

Doris, I went to the Japanese version of the same NHK news piece to decipher the below sentence;

At the same time, the company will increase the number of monitoring points within the government-set evacuation areas. It will use the data to neutralize the radioactive substances in soil and on buildings.Sunday, April 17, 2011 16:35 +0900 (JST)

The Japanese version says;

さらに「周辺環境のモニタリング」については、ステップ１で、計画的避難区域や緊急時避難準備区域などでも実施し、モニタリングを拡充させて正確な情報を提供するとともに、ステップ２で、家屋や土壌などに付着した放射性物質を取り除く除染作業などを行い、これらの区域の放射線量を十分に低減させるとしています。

As for the environmental monitoring of the surrounding area, they are going to increase the number of monitoring points in the planned evacuation zone and the areas preparing for the emergency evacuation, in order to provide more accurate information in the first stage (next 3 months).
In the next 6-9 months (the second stage), they will carry out decontamination of the soil and the buildings to lower the radiation level sufficiently in those areas.

It is good to know that they now have room to plan for the next stages and how to start decontamination of the affected areas in details, rather than firefighting with the emerging situations 24/7.

Crabs! It is definitely inappropriate to admit this, but I am a little bit envious...

PS. Thank you, champs, for letting me know about the yen mark. It must be something to do with me being a mac user.

 

[Olympia]

When I hear of things reopening, it always makes my heart lift. It's definitely a step forward.

By the way, there was something on an American classical music radio station that made me think of why it's so important for the Japanese skaters to give performances during this time. The World Trade Center attack of 2001 happened shortly before the arranged opening night of the New York Philharmonic orchestral season. As with everything else in New York, there was debate about whether and how it should proceed. The conductor, Kurt Masur, decided to do away with the original program and have a performance of Brahms's German Requiem, a beautiful choral work written for mourning. As Masur recalled in an interview on the radio program this week, he asked the audience not to applaud as is customary at concerts. Instead, the performance ended to total silence, and everyone filed out. He said that it was one of the most powerful moments in his conducting career, to hear everyone walking out in silence. The radio station played that recorded performance of the Requiem right before providing Masur's recollections, so the music was still in my ears as he spoke. It brought back the intensity of feelings from that terrible time for me, but it brought solace and hope as well. That's what art does, and in this case I think we won't argue that skating is an art form too. I'm glad that skaters can give that to Japan. Both bread and roses are important at a time like this, and the skating will be roses.

 

[dorispulaski]

Ah! That is really beautiful Olympia, and makes the point so well.

Meanwhile, TEPCO has its English translation of its plan moving ahead on its website:

Step 1 is the next 3 months
Step 2 is 3 to 6 months
Step 3 is 6 to 9 months

Press Release (Apr 17,2011)
Roadmap towards Restoration from the Accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station


With regard to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station due to the Tohoku-Chihou-Taiheiyo-Oki Earthquake occurred on Friday, March 11th, 2011, we are currently making our utmost effort to bring the situation under control. This announcement is to notify the roadmap that we have put together towards restoration from the accident.

1. Basic Policy
By bringing the reactors and spent fuel pools to a stable cooling condition and mitigating the release of radioactive materials, we will make every effort to enable evacuees to return to their homes and for all citizens to be able to secure a sound life.

2. Targets
Based on the basic policy, the following two steps are set as targets:
"Radiation dose is in steady decline" as "Step 1" and "Release of radioactive materials is under control and radiation dose is being significantly held down" as "Step 2." Target achievement dates are tentatively set as follows:

"Step 1" is set at around 3 months and "Step 2" is set at around 3 to 6 months after achieving Step 1.

3. Immediate Actions

Immediate actions were divided into three groups, namely,
"I. Cooling",
"II. Mitigation",
"III. Monitoring and Decontamination."

For the following five issues—"Cooling the Reactors," "Cooling the Spent Fuel Pools," "Containment, Storage, Processing, and Reuse of Water Contaminated by Radioactive Materials (Accumulated Water)," "Mitigation of Release of Radioactive Materials to Atmosphere and from Soil," and "Measurement, Reduction and Announcement of Radiation Dose in Evacuation Order/Planned Evacuation/ Emergency Evacuation Preparation Areas"—targets are set for
each of the five issues and various countermeasures will be implemented simultaneously.

Please see the attachment for detailed actions.

We would like to deeply apologize again for the grave inconvenience and anxiety that the broad public has been suffering due to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. We will continue to make every endeavor to bring the situation under control.

Here are the Attachments:

One version of Immediate Actions:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e13.pdf

Another version of actions (oriented towards goals)
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e12.pdf

The map/flow chart for immediate actions (it's a pdf file) (Oriented towards dates)

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e14.pdf

Here's their schematic drawing of the new reactor layout:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e15.pdf

Given that they have 4 versions of this, I found it rather confusing, and found myself writing out a file for myself to figure this out. It may have its errors; please correct any you see.

Units 1 and 3:
Step 1:
Continue injecting nitrogen to Unit 1, at least up until they decide to put in the heat exchanger cooling (not clear to me from the drawing) and from the rest of the info, they plan to do nitrogen injection in the other 2 units.

Soon they will flood (presumably with fresh water, I hope borated) the containment vessel up to the level of the fuel (as of now, they have kept part of the fuel out of the water, to be sure that most of the leaking water is only from Unit 2. I think this means they believe Unit 1's & Unit 3's containment vessels will hold water. (This is consistent with JAIF's charts, too.)

Once that works, they are going to examine everything, and put in place their external heat exchanger solution, if possible.

In Unit 2, first they will fix the hole in the containment, and then they will flood with fresh water and put in heat exchanger cooling (it appears, after Units 1 & 3 heat exchanger solutions are done). They plan to use grout = "glutinous cement" to fix the hole, and say it may take a while.

In the drawing, they explicitly label the damaged part of Unit 2 which needs repair as the suppression chamber.


Their goal by the end of Step 3 is cold shutdown condition (as at Units 5 & 6)., followed by defueling, includingof Units 5 & 6, so it looks like these Units are also scheduled for decommissioning, I'm sorry to say. They are also two phases of building enclosures (with filters) over the 4 units whose buildings are damaged. In fact, it looks like there might be two different designs going on entirely, one temporary.

Spent Fuel Pools 1 to 4.

These projects are to be carried on concurrently with with Reactor Immediate Actions.

In Step 1, Unit 4's spent fuel pool's structure needs to be reinforced, so that the pool is more earthquake proof. They will be doing a seismic evaluation of it first. In the same phase, they plan to improve the efficiency of water injection and start the spent fuel pool circulation systems for all 4 spent fuel pools. They mention checking on the pool's status by "Giraffe"-I'm not sure whether this is a radio controlled helicopter or some kind of crane.

In Step 2, they will will restore cooling function to the spent fuel pools, via external heat exchangers, and make control of the system automatic.

In Step 3, they will remove the spent fuel from the pool. [I believe they will be using the US drone helicopter and casks to do this, but they also might use a crane built on site. The existing spent fuel cranes were all destroyed in the explosions.]

Concurrent with these activities, they will be dealing with radioactive water.

They report that they are dumping bags of zeolite in the water to adsorb cesium, and they are making barriers between units to prevent/slow water from getting into one unit from another.

Step 1:
Highly radioactive water.
They will be transferring highly radioactive water, and building storage & processing facilities for it.

Low radioactive level water:
They will be storing it in situ, and building storage & decontamination/processing facilities for it. It appears that "decontamination" is done by "adding decontaminants". What decontaminants are not specified. This sounds more feasible than filtration to me.

They also say Countermeasure [39]: Examination and implementation of backup measures (installment of additional tanks or pools or leakage prevention by coagulator, etc.

This sounds to me like they are going to turn the water to Jello, so to speak, so it won't leak as readily; but I could be totally missing the point of this item.

And they plan to pump up the water in the subdrains.

Step 2:
They intend to have facilities that will decontaminate & desalt radioactive water thoroughly enough that it can be reused to either cool fuel pools or reactors. [This will limit the total amount of radioactive water, if it can be reused.]

Step 3 is to have a full-fledged water treatment facility.

From their drawing of this:

They explicitly say that the low dose radioactive water will be stored in barges, megafloats, the tanks they build, and something they are terming a "reservoir." They also show a tank truck for transporting the water to where it is easy to pump into those structures.

They show the highly radioactive water as stored in the existing Centralized Waste Treatment Building and a new tank, yet to be built.


General Site Control

Through step 1 & 2, they will be removing rubble and spraying inhibitor to limit dust rising into the air.
In step 3, they will "solidify" contaminated soil (and remove it), and they will install the concrete building covers they have discussed.

In monitoring, in Step 2, is where they place the monitoring and mitigation of the evacuated areas. (In step 2, both reactors & spent fuel pools would be in a decently stable state, that risk of a further large release of radioactive material should be low.)

In this document, they say what mot said:

Target [12]: Sufficiently reduce radiation dose in evacuation order / planned evacuation / emergency evacuation preparation areas.

Countermeasure [62]: Monitoring of homecoming residences <in cooperation and consultation with national / prefectural / municipal governments.>

Countermeasure [63]: Examination and implementation of necessary measures to reduce radiation dose (decontamination of homecoming residences and soil surface) <in cooperation and consultation with national/prefectural/municipal governments.>

The use of the word "Homecoming" there is sweet indeed.

 

[dorispulaski]

9:00 PM April 17th

Wind is northwest

Daini
Six Peripheral Measure Points (2.7, 2.0, 2.9, 2.3, 2.3, 2.3) microSieverts per hour
Daiichi
Eight Peripheral Measurement Points (10, 34, 31, 29, 49, 83, 192, 171) microSieverts per hour
Main Office Building 0.52 milliSieverts per hour
Main Gate 63 microSieverts per hour
West Gate 27 microSieverts per hour

Gamma Radiation monitor cart near West Gate 32.3 microSieverts per hour


Seawater values down today vs yesterday inshore, pretty much ev erywhere. Possibly the rise next to the Unit 2 grate in front of where the highly contaminated water was exiting yesterday was due to stirring up the bottom while installing those metal plates. However, ratio of iodine to cesium shows that some this water leaked out a reactor more recently than the water outside the artificial harber. (highest value Iodine 131 at the screen: 240 becquerels per cubic centimeter; Cesium 137: 89 becquerels per cubic centimeter)

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e2.pdf



http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e7.pdf

Particles of cesium are no longer detected in either Daiichi or Daini; volatile Cs 134 is no longer found in Daini. However, volatile I 131 and Cs 137 are found there. Volatile cesium 134 is found at Daiichi..

Outside the enclosed Daiichi artificial harbor.

Furthermore, the amount of I131 has dropped below the Cs 137, indicating that new iodine has not been deposited in large quantities.
All quantities are between 4.4 and 12.0 times the regulatory limit.



Data is from the afternoon of April 16th

North discharge Daiichi
I131 0.48 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 134 0.62 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 137 0.66 Becquerels per cubic centimeter

South discharge Daiichi
I131 0.36 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 134 0.66 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 137 0.68 Becquerels per cubic centimeter

North discharge Daini (10 km off Daiichi)
I131 0.49 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 134 0.69 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 137 0.69 Becquerels per cubic centimeter


Iwasawa shore (16 km off Daiichi)
I131 0.30 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 134 0.38 Becquerels per cubic centimeter
Cs 137 0.40 Becquerels per cubic centimeter

Graph Daiichi air radioactive materials:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e4.pdf

Graph Daini air radioactive materials
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110417e5.pdf

Subdrains Iodine and Cesium levels didn't increase since last measurement
Deep Well level shows slight trace iodine, no measurable cesium.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11041706-e.html

If you take a look at the data, you can see that the Iodine concentration for 5, & 6 is half the cesium concentrations. That argues that it is a relatively long time since the radioactive material in those units found its way into the sub drain. Units 1 and 3 have about the same amount of iodine and cesium, which argues some new contamination mixed with the old (perhaps coming from Unit 2, as 1 & 3 are both neighbors to 2). At Unit 2, the iodine amount is way larger than cesium, arguing that that reactor is actively leaking right now.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11041706-e.html

TEPCO has also furnished a nice Site Map, so that you can see where all these drains are.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11041706-e.html

In their 4:00 PM Status for the day:

From April 15th to April 17th, we threw in ten sandbags including zeolite in front of the screen rooms of Units 1 to 4. (On April 17th, we threw in two sandbags between the screen pump rooms of Unit 1 and 2, and five sandbags between the screen pump rooms of Unit 2 and 3, seven sandbags in total, and finished the work at 11:15am.) [ETA the zeolite is there to take cesium out of the water]

*At 2:34pm on April 17th, power supplies to a common spent fuel pool was stopped due to an electrical short circuit at the end of the circuit. We are investigating the details of the cause. [ETA this is the first problem there has been with the common site spent fuel pool.

*At 10:00am on April 17th, we sprayed dust inhibitor at around the Centralized Radiation Waste Treatment Facility in order to prevent diffusion of radioactive materials on a trial basis and finished it at 1:30 pm on the same day.

*We conducted surveys of the situation of the inside of the nuclear reactor building of Unit 3 (a dose of radiation, temperature and existence or non-existence of a puddle of water, etc.) by a remote control robot. We are planning to conduct surveys of the situation of inside of the nuclear reactor building of Unit 1. [ETA I think this is the radiation proof robot that Idaho National Labs furnished to TEPCO?]

JAIF

On Apr. 17th, TEPCO announced that that it plans tol expand the monitoring of the evacuation area and then decontaminate the houses and soils in the area to reduce the level of radioactive materials within about 3 to 6 months.

17th, TEPCO announced that that it will fill the containment vessels of Unit 1 and 3 with water up to the levels of covering the fuels in the reactors while considering fixing the damaged containment vessel of Unit 2. It will also install heat exchangers to remove the decay heat from the reactors and lead them into cold shutdown within about 3 to 6 months.

On Apr. 17th, TEPCO announced that it will install facilities and tanks to process and store the highly radioactive water accumulated in the buildings and tunnels. It will also install huge covers with special filters to contain the reactor buildings so as to control the release of radioactive materials to the environment within about 3 to 6 months.