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Klaus
03-14-2011, 10:41 AM
Get your iodine tablets! Hopefully, this isn't the case as it's a extreme what if prediction.


http://www.rumormillnews.com/pix3/falloutmap.JPG

Ender
03-14-2011, 11:16 AM
It probably won't be serious enough to affect us, but this is more serious than Japan is leading everyone to believe, I can guarantee you that. Knowing a bit about how Nuclear plants work, the fact that the reactors are reaching temperatures hot enough to create hydrogen explosions from the seawater that they are trying to pump through it to cool it is a pretty telling sign that a meltdown is imminent.

Those plants have newer safeguards and containment, but probably aren't totally fail safe in extreme situations. Could be bad.

Klaus
03-14-2011, 11:23 AM
I agree the government is not telling the entire truth. Hopefully, our Aircraft carriers can be of some help.

I saw this on Reuters:


The Japanese accident rated a 4 on an international scale of severity that goes from one to seven -- Chernobyl was worst at 7 and Three Mile Island was a 5.


Three Mile Island involved a partial meltdown but it was contained in the reactor. The Japanese are working to do the same thing here -- a meltdown won't spell a health disaster if it is contained within the reactor.
by Alister.Doyle at 11:24 AM

Ender
03-14-2011, 11:58 AM
Latest report says the rods are probably melting, which doesn't surprise me given the explosions. So technically it is a meltdown. It will only have catastrophic consequences though if the containment fails, which they say right now is intact.

Klaus
03-14-2011, 12:00 PM
The U.S. nuclear regulatory commission says the Japanese government has formally asked the U.S. for help with cooling nuclear reactors

Took long enough.

Ender
03-14-2011, 12:11 PM
I bet one of the guys I went to school with would be part of helping them... he went into the Navy after college to run a nuclear reactor on a submarine.

Dath
03-14-2011, 01:21 PM
Going to shrink Japan's habitable land mass in half if it goes at the rate it seems to be. The global concern that I have with it is how it will affect ocean waters/marine life as radioactive particles will no doubt be pretty heavily distributed into the ocean if a full meltdown occured.

Chernobyl's radiation affected most of Europe, but not to any severe levels outside of the contaminated zone, so I don't believe that there is a whole lot to fear in that regard in America.

Klaus
03-14-2011, 01:26 PM
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/bwr-cycle.gif

Jomama
03-14-2011, 01:49 PM
Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

Jomama
03-14-2011, 01:58 PM
That map is likely bullshit..


Originally Posted by Australian Radiation Services
DISCLAIMER: Australian Radiation Services is aware of information about radioactive contamination being spread from the Japanese nuclear reactor incident released under the ARS logo and name. We wish to be clear that this information has not originated from ARS and as such distance ourselves from any such misinformation.


The map looks fishy even from a first glance. It was not issued with any warning, link to a regulatory organization, or press release. It was not vetted by any organization. Instead it contains the logo of "Australian Radiation Services".

A simple search on the internet reveals that this is a small private company in Australia which offers clients services in dealing with legal compliance and radiation monitoring. As fas as I could tell, the handful of employees working here have no expertise in climatology, which would be needed to determine wind strength and other factors necessary to model weather patterns.

Neither would they be expected to have any idea of what state the reactors were in (which was not already a part of the public domain). After all they are not a government regulatory agency!

Lastly, simply googling the numbers would reveal to anyone that they are preposterously high. The total dose per person in a defined area of Europe with closest proximity to the more-serious Chernobyl explosion was predicted to be 0.5 Rads over a period of three weeks of exposure.

The map circulating over the internet showed a ballpark number that was 6,000 times more serious that Chernobyl without any given time-period.

No, what probably happened was some conceited bastard with a lot of time on his hands photoshopped the map from a a screenshot of a Google map and added the Australian Radiation Services logo. All he or she needed to do was to tweet it or post it.

Klaus
03-14-2011, 02:00 PM
Yeah I thought it was just some random nutjobs map didn't even see the ARS logo. It was just meant to start conversation.

Jomama
03-14-2011, 02:04 PM
One of my college roommates/Rosemount grad married a Japanese girl and moved to (Tokyo I think)... He's been posting on FB, 50 aftershocks in the first 12 hrs, mandatory 3hr blackouts in the afternoons... and pictures of nearly empty shelves in his local store...


Ongoing nuke news..

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/

Jomama
03-14-2011, 02:05 PM
Yeah I thought it was just some random nutjobs map didn't even see the ARS logo. It was just meant to start conversation.

Scared the shit out of me, had to check it out, 750 rads is bad..

Jomama
03-14-2011, 02:16 PM
Two Japanese volcanoes have erupted after the quake.

http://youtu.be/04HPOmJ8vfE
http://youtu.be/Y44fKaTDjLI

Also a pair of volcanoes on the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula erupted.

Whats next, Gor-zirrah?

Ender
03-14-2011, 03:21 PM
Maybe the apocalypse is beginning a year early... :rolleyes:

Dath
03-14-2011, 11:06 PM
/use Tainted Core
/y <------- TAINTED CORE TO: %t ! ! !
/s <------- TAINTED CORE TO: %t ! ! !
/script SendChatMessage("!!! YOU HAVE THE CORE !!!", "WHISPER", nil, UnitName("target"))

Ender
03-15-2011, 08:13 AM
Wow, now THIS is bad... a spent fuel pool at a different reactor caught fire somehow (no idea how that would have happened since the pool is just water) and it is likely that a bunch of the water is boiling off, possibly exposing the spend fuel rods that are stored in the pool. The actual radioactive metals should be within their protective casings, but if any of those casings are damaged, you will have radiation leaking all over the place.

This is a much worse situation than the actual reactors melting down because the reactors have the concrete shielding around them that should prevent any radiation from leaking even if the whole core melts down. But these pools only have water shielding the radiation, and if that water is now gone or at least partially gone enough to expose the rods, they have a big problem.

Since high levels of radiation were reported near the plant after that fire (11,930 mSv/hr), my guess is that is exactly what happened.

Klaus
03-15-2011, 08:17 AM
Looks like the radiation levels are dropping and I believe they plan to dump water into the damaged building to cover the rods. First lesson learned from this is to not have steam venting into buildings that caused the Hydrogen build up and explosion.


Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.

“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,” said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.

People familiar with the plant said there are seven spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed.

Ender
03-15-2011, 08:47 AM
Yeah, I have no clue why those reactors would be designed to vent steam from the reactor into the building rather than directly outside. My guess is the thinking behind that is maybe the building will partially contain any vented decay byproducts that are radioactive until they also decay. It seems to me though that there is more risk in the possibility of explosion which may damage the concrete shielding.

MnWilly
03-15-2011, 05:07 PM
According to WIKI the earthquake's released energy was 600 million times more than that of the Hiroshima bomb. WOW!

Klaus
03-15-2011, 06:05 PM
http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N13/yost.html

I hope this is correct.

It is interesting to watch the American news after reading Reuters and reading the article Joe posted. I just heard an anchor say the fuel rods in reactor 4 are burning..... But the actual reports say its the building and not the actual rods.

Trany
03-15-2011, 08:04 PM
You're welcome Japan, after all we showed you how to handle fallout.

Jomama
03-15-2011, 08:18 PM
http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N13/yost.html

I hope this is correct.

It is interesting to watch the American news after reading Reuters and reading the article Joe posted. I just heard an anchor say the fuel rods in reactor 4 are burning..... But the actual reports say its the building and not the actual rods.


Yeah, they clearly don't have the level of scientific support & understanding to report accurately, and it seems there are some translation problems too.. Like the fuel rods don't burn, and the spent fuel rod pool was not on fire....


From NEI:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that an oil leak in a cooling water pump at Unit 4 was the cause of a fire that burned for approximately 140 minutes. The fire was not in the spent fuel pool, as reported by several media outlets. Unit 4 was in a 105-day-long maintenance outage at the time of the earthquake and there is no fuel in the reactor.

He keeps updating that article @bravenewclimate.. Good diagrams.. I still don't really understand where/what the secondary containment is.

MnWilly
03-15-2011, 08:42 PM
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.php

Looks like they are getting 5.0-6.0 earthquakes about every 10 minutes or so since the big one.

Klaus
03-15-2011, 10:18 PM
I think the secondary containment is the hardened concrete building around the reactor. At the Japan plants they have a wooden building over the concrete containment building to protect the workers but does not contain anything.

Klaus
03-15-2011, 10:29 PM
I find Reuters the best source for live info.

http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tepco_status_5.jpg

Jomama
03-16-2011, 12:58 AM
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/15/unit-2-explosion-and-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-fire/


Hydrogen gas from the cladding oxidation with steam collected in the suppression pool and ignited. This scenario differs from those of units 1 and 3 where the explosion occurred outside the primary containment in the upper part of the reactor building. The reasons why the steam/gas mixture was not released to the reactor building are still not clear. This breach of primary containment is certainly more serious than the situation in units 1 and 3.

Klaus
03-16-2011, 08:38 AM
My favorite mis-information from last night was all the "all workers told to abandon the plant" stories. Pure reporting without knowing the details.


BBC: "Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times tweets: "More on plant workers: they took cover for 45mins on site&left water pumps running. There was no suspension of operations. TEPCO official""
comment by sputnik at 5:27 AM

Klaus
03-16-2011, 11:38 AM
I would think we could provide more help then just a Global Hawk but I guess it's a start...


TOKYO, March 17, Kyodo

The U.S. military will operate a Global Hawk unmanned high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft over a stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, possibly on Thursday, to take a closer look at its troubled reactors, a Japanese government source said Wednesday.

Photographs taken by the plane equipped with infrared sensors could provide a useful clue to what is occurring inside the reactor buildings, around which high-level radiation has been detected.

The planned mission comes as the Japanese government appears unable to contain the crisis days after the coastal nuclear plant was struck by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

It would represent a deepening of Japanese-U.S. cooperation in coping with the escalating crisis, with the U.S. military having already provided logistical transportation, and search and rescue efforts in the wake of the disaster that hit northeastern Japan.

Chadwick
03-16-2011, 06:51 PM
I think the US has basically been waiting for Japan to ask for things, specific aid or help, etc. And per their culture they don't typically do so, maybe dishonorable or whatever...

Jomama
03-16-2011, 06:55 PM
It is weird that the Power company is still in charge (apparently they don't have a particularly stellar reputation), and that the govt hasn't taken over at some point.. I know the military is helping elsewhere.. I wonder what really could be done to help after the explosions/fires tho...

Did you catch that early on they were not able to use the back up generators that were brought in to run the plant, because they didn't have the right type of plugs? So the batterys died and pump systems stopped and thats what caused the pools to initially lack fresh water being pumped in and started the whole mess... Foiled by plugs.. Are you kidding me..?

Chadwick
03-16-2011, 07:12 PM
I gotta believe we could get a thermal imaging satellite over that area to get some information on the various reactors and spent fuel pools conditions. I'm surprised we have not seen such images. Perhaps the military has them but does not release that type of info...

I have to believe the circling aircraft can do so as well...

Jomama
03-16-2011, 07:15 PM
FFR

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2046/web0316radiation.jpg

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/6876/radiationchart.jpg


Just for reference, to give it some scale. There is still the "short term/high exposure - long term/low exposure" aspect..

Klaus
03-16-2011, 07:34 PM
I just think it's time to stop fucking around and bring in whatever resources are needed to fight this. The power company and some firemen with a riot hose? Really. Even the helicopters turned back that were going to dump water on the reactor buildings because the radiation levels were too high...... I bet if they were military copters with pilots ordered to dump we might be in a better position.

Tonight the US started to split from the Japan and tell US citizens to evacuate further from the plant. It appears Japans leadership is in way over it's head..... And where the fuck is Obama? Vacations need to be cancelled when shit like this is going down.

Jomama
03-16-2011, 08:05 PM
I've read comments that it wasn't just radiation that turned the helo back, but that it may not be the best idea to go dumping water in on some of those buildings that have blown because the debris will just deflect the water and flood the surrounding area with more radioactive materials... The roofs were designed to catch water and route it into the pools but all that was lost when they hydrogen explosions ripped the roofs off/collapsed the gantry cranes.. ?

Its pretty apparent there are reasons they don't make these types of plants like this anymore, and have refined the designs....

I was out in the field today, just got caught up, man its bad... Pray the bottom of the containment(s) wasnt breached and will hold all the mass meltdown(s), but in the meantime the real challenge will be to cap each with all that debris.. Bad news..

Jomama
03-16-2011, 08:10 PM
Now they are dropping some helo loads?

Ender
03-17-2011, 07:51 AM
It is weird that the Power company is still in charge (apparently they don't have a particularly stellar reputation), and that the govt hasn't taken over at some point.. I know the military is helping elsewhere.. I wonder what really could be done to help after the explosions/fires tho...

Did you catch that early on they were not able to use the back up generators that were brought in to run the plant, because they didn't have the right type of plugs? So the batterys died and pump systems stopped and thats what caused the pools to initially lack fresh water being pumped in and started the whole mess... Foiled by plugs.. Are you kidding me..?

Standardization is key...

Klaus
03-17-2011, 07:56 AM
http://images.scribblelive.com/2011/3/17/ea2d8111-2cdf-4189-86e7-ab8a04d12095_500.jpg


According to Kyodo News TEPCO claims that helicopter drops were effective at cooling the spent fuel pool and that operations will be comenced tomorrow morning.

Ender
03-17-2011, 07:59 AM
U.S. officials, meanwhile, said Unit 4 also was seriously at risk.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a congressional hearing in Washington that all the water was gone from that unit's spent fuel pool. Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.

"We believe radiation levels are extremely high," he said.

This is the big problem they have right now that is causing all the radiation, and Japan has been totally downplaying it. The fires in that spend fuel pool were likely the actual fuel rods burning since the water was gone.

Ender
03-17-2011, 08:03 AM
There are other news reports that say the helicopter water drops seemed unsuccessful:


Crews were flying missions of only 40 minutes each to limit their exposure. Television pictures showed four loads of water being dropped, but much of the water appeared to have been blown over a wide area.

It's probably all they can do right now though. They can't get in there for any extended period of time to do major repairs on the cooling systems, and for some reason they have been unsuccessful in setting up any kind of system to pump water into the pools. I don't see why they just cant setup a pump to lift seawater and pump it directly into the pool through a fire hose.

Klaus
03-17-2011, 08:08 AM
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eVIt0DYKssI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Also the pool at reactor 4 is full of rods that were removed from the reactor during some maintenance. They are not used up but a full load of fuel.... Probably why they are REALLY concerned about that reactor pool.

I say get more helicopters and add fire boats with the big water cannons. They just need to get the water into those pools and it sounds like AC power will be hooked up on Friday.

Ender
03-17-2011, 08:15 AM
This doesn't appear to have done shit. The water sprayed all over, and maybe some of it landed on the reactors or in the pools, but would likely be vaporized within a short amount of time.

<object type='application/x-shockwave-flash' data='http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=196661927' id='rcomVideo_196661927' width='460' height='259'> <param name='movie' value='http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=196661927'></param> <param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'></param> <param name='allowScriptAccess' value='always'></param> <param name='wmode' value='transparent'> <embed src='http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=196661927' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' allowfullscreen='true' allowScriptAccess='always' width='460' height='259' wmode='transparent'></embed> </object>

Klaus
03-17-2011, 09:22 AM
Are the pools empty?

Focus on food, water, shelter. Dr. Greg Jaczko is wrong and giving dangerously bad advice
by Rod Adams
At about 2:22 Eastern Daylight Time a journalist sent me a brief email to inform me that Dr. Jaczko had just told the House Energy and Commerce committee that the fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi unit 4 was dry.

I had just read a status report that indicated that the temperature in that pool as of the morning of March 15, four days after the earthquake and tsunami struck, had been measured as 183 degrees F (about 84 degrees C). Since fuel pools are normally maintained at about 100 F, my "radcon math" brain immediately told me that the fuel pool would not even begin to boil for at least another day after that.

Even that was a very pessimistic number, because as the temperature in a container of water rises, the heat losses to the container and the surfaces increases. Of course, the elevated temperature was an operational concern - the higher the temperature, the greater the rate of evaporation and the greater the amount of fogging on the surface. (Think about what a hot tub surface looks like, especially at a ski resort where the air is pretty chilly. Now imagine that pool at about 60 - 70 F hotter. Lots of fog, not all that much water departing the pool.)

In the past several hours, with a break for a nap, I have done a lot of fact checking and communicating. One of the nice things about being an old ring knocker (I graduated from the Naval Academy almost 30 years ago) is that you can have a pretty useful set of highly placed friends. Some of them gave me enough information to confirm what I suspected. I cannot think of any way to say this gently - Dr. Jaczko was wrong. It is possible someone in his staff provided bad information, but it should not be all that difficult to see the problem with some simple, back of the envelop calculations.

I would think a guy with a PhD could do the math in his head - or at least enough of the math to ask for a verification of the analysis. I would expect someone who is in charge of a large, technically competent organization would double and triple check numbers and statements before going in front of C-Span cameras and a congressional committee and making statements and recommendations that distract the entire world from a real and growing food, water and shelter crisis. If I was in charge, I would not have asked anyone to evacuate any area that did not have a measured, significantly elevated radiation level. I would CERTAINLY not recommend an evacuation radius that was 3 times longer than the one recommended by a very technically competent host country.

In all of this, there are far too many people who are far too narrowly educated and far too polite to strongly question the statements of people who have been appointed to a position of authority - even if they know that the appointee has no professional background that would provide them with the ability to independently verify their statements.

In the interest of time, I am going to repurpose an email that I just shared with some colleagues and friends in response to a NY Times piece in which Dr. Jaczko is quoted as saying "We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."
It is time to move from "extremely high" to real numbers. Kyodo News is reporting that the helicopter crews have measured levels above the cooling pool as follows:

At an altitude of 1,000 feet, the dose rate was 4.13 millisieverts (413 millirem)
At an altitude of 300 feet, the dose rate was 87.7 millisieverts (8.7 rem).

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78838.html

Those numbers do not exactly match the normal equations, but I assume that the helicopter crews were reporting their elevation above the ground, not their distance from the spent fuel pools. I have no way of knowing how high those are above the ground, but the distance between the helicopter and the top of the fuel rods is shorter by that elevation. Those dose rates require some attention and care, but they are not, by themselves, life threatening.

Based on those numbers, here is my analysis:

The spent (aka used) fuel pools are not generating much hydrogen. They are not boiling away. They are not empty. UO2 CANNOT burn, it is almost fully oxidized already. (That is what the O2 part of the compound equation is.) Between 90-95% of the material in a used fuel pool is UO2.

The water level in the pool at unit 4 is significantly lower than normal, which leads to higher radiation levels above the pools than normal.

The measured levels can be caused by a reduced amount of shielding above the still radioactive used fuel. Pools normally contain about 6M of water, the tenth thickness of water is .7 meters. You lose 70 cm of water, the dose rate above the water increases by a factor of 10.

As swimmers or hot tub lovers know, it is never surprising to see clouds of vapor rising from hot water on a cold day. However, even with an increased rate of evaporation, pools full of water take a long time to empty out.

The temperatures in the pool at unit 4 rose from about 40 C to 84 C during the first 4 days after the quake/tsunami. That should give you numerically inclined people the confidence to assert that boiling off of 6 meters of water could not have occurred during the 5th day. (Don't forget about the latent heat of vaporization.)

All that said, adding even centimeters of water back to a pool is not something that a few helicopter loads can handle. They cannot carry all that much water; the stuff weighs a kilogram per liter.

It takes a 200,000 liters to raise the level of a pool that is 10 meters wide by 20 meters long by a meter. A CH-46 medium lift helicopter has a capacity of about 3,180 kg. It would require 63 trips to raise the water level one meter if my guess on fuel pool dimensions is reasonable.

See why they want to bring in fire cannons to top off the pool? This is not desperation, it is simple math and logistics.

Here is a great fact sheet from NEI about spent fuel pools.

Ender
03-17-2011, 10:25 AM
I figured a lot of that "smoke" was probably just water vapor too. Lots of reports said there was some huge fire at the fuel pool though, so I thought something else must be going on based on that. Those reports could be entirely mistaken though... wouldn't surprise me.

And I would not be the least bit surprised if that US official was talking out of his ass... wouldn't even be close to the first time.

This is all dependent on those temperature measurements being accurate and the report of that being correct, though. His source on that would have to be very credible. But obviously if the temperature in the pool is below the boiling point, the water is still mostly there aside from some minimal vaporization... unless the pool was damaged somehow by the earthquake.

Ender
03-17-2011, 10:39 AM
The dousing is aimed at cooling the Unit 3 reactor, as well as replenishing water in that unit's cooling pool, where used fuel rods are stored, Toyama said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), said earlier that pool was nearly empty, which would cause the rods to overheat and emit even more radiation.

No idea about the validity of that, but it is apparently a quote straight from the company that owns the plant. That is the pool for Unit 3 though, not 4.

Klaus
03-17-2011, 11:09 AM
Yeah but not "totally empty" like was reported to congress. I wish there was better sources for all this info it's all over the place.

Grafton
03-17-2011, 12:02 PM
I wish there was better sources for all this info it's all over the place.

If only CNN still existed... I think BBC still does a decent job with international news.

Klaus
03-17-2011, 12:22 PM
This is not good from Link (http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/17/fukushima-17-march-summary/)


“…my prediction that ‘there is no credible risk of a serious accident‘ has been proven quite wrong as a result. It remains to be seen whether my forecast on the possibility of containment breaches and the very low level of danger to the public as a result of this tragic chain of circumstances will be proven correct.”

Klaus
03-17-2011, 04:10 PM
Update - doesn't sound like it's getting worse at the moment.



UPDATE AS OF 11:35 A.M. EDT, THURSDAY, MARCH 17:

Fukushima Daiichi
The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are in stable condition and are being cooled with seawater, but workers at the plant continue efforts to add cooling water to fuel pools at reactors 3 and 4.

The status of the reactors at the site is as follows:

Reactor 1's primary containment is believed to be intact and the reactor is in a stable condition. Seawater injection into the reactor is continuing.

Reactor 2 is in stable condition with seawater injection continuing. The reactor's primary containment may not have been breached, Tokyo Electric Power Co. and World Association of Nuclear Operators officials said on Thursday.

Access problems at the site have delayed connection of a temporary cable to restore off-site electricity. The connection will provide power to the control rod drive pump, instrumentation, batteries and the control room. Power has not been available at the site since the earthquake on March 11.

Reactor 3 is in stable condition with seawater injection continuing. The primary containment is believed to be intact. Pressure in the containment has fluctuated due to venting of the reactor containment structure.

TEPCO officials say that although one side of the concrete wall of the reactor 4 fuel pool structure has collapsed, the steel liner of the pool remains intact, based on aerial photos of the reactor taken on March 17. The pool still has water providing some cooling for the fuel; however, helicopters dropped water on the reactor four times during the morning (Japan time) on March 17. Water also was sprayed at reactor 4 using high-pressure water cannons.

Reactors 5 and 6 were both shut down before the quake occurred. Primary and secondary containments are intact at both reactors. Temperature instruments in the spent fuel pools at reactors 5 and 6 are operational, and temperatures are being maintained at about 62 degrees Celsius. TEPCO is continuing efforts to restore power at reactor 5.

Fukushima Daini
All four reactors at the Fukushima Daini plant have reached cold shutdown conditions with normal cooling being maintained using residual heat removal systems.

Jomama
03-17-2011, 09:37 PM
March 18 morning update


There have been further developments at Fukushima overnight that have, according to the IAEA, made the situation ‘reasonably stable‘ (although it is still serious).

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/18/fukushima-radiation-tsunamis/

Jomama
03-18-2011, 08:56 PM
lol, they are tracking all the bad reporting on this event at this site..

http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame

Klaus
03-21-2011, 11:23 AM
http://maps.google.com/staticmap?size=540x640&maptype=mobile&markers=43.000629854450025,140.537109375,greena|40 .94515773672476,141.3329315185547,greenb|38.400872 86420115,141.4990997314453,grayc|37.44651604783348 4,141.02737426757812,grayd|36.39144034515155,140.5 1376342773437,rede|35.25171727727828,139.676313400 26855,bluef|37.42947840636068,138.59785079956055,g reeng|37.06024576418369,136.72725677490234,grayh|3 5.54046787429262,135.6529998779297,greeni|34.62120 128542015,138.14449310302734,greenj|34.38807095584 581,135.34761428833008,greenk|35.31526526349745,13 3.94033432006836,greenl|35.536696378395035,132.995 6817626953,greenm|33.487294457231286,132.309722900 39062,greenn|33.51649559899222,129.83264923095703, greeno|31.833524235080695,130.19073486328125,green p&key=ABQIAAAAriWY6VN2eq0XjjFKUdLrvBSVo5uNAna0IGBr7A 5fE2H0gZW6dxSbnR_A-0Zpnh5FLUk69fa9L9hi0A

Grafton
03-21-2011, 12:03 PM
^^ Context?

Klaus
03-21-2011, 12:08 PM
It's just a google map with some push pins that show cities.... actually it believe its updated with radiation levels. Guess we will see if the colors change.