ScribbleLive

@WolfDK That is recycled news they stole from the NYTimes. And the NYTimes took the article down.

In other news, tomorrow morning is going to be below freezing again in the Tohoku region :'(.

It seems to me that much (most?) of what we see here is essentially reactive (no pun intended). Does anyone have a sense of where, if the situation ever is stabilized, we would look to try to move towards? Does anyone have a feel for what a good outcome might look like? In a month? In a year?

@stef you know, at 51, my science based classes come from hours on internet ;-)

@Alin There is no good outcome. If everything went perfect from here on out clean up would still take years and years.

Right- am I totally pessimistic to think something like this could really turn into a much larger scale of disaster...Maybe its my ignorance- but I really feel like Japan is done for sometime. I get the impression with all the speculation and silence- the problem is nothing quite like what we've seen before. We choose to compare it and look for anything similar- but development by development its turning out to be a totally foreign topic. It alarms me when quotations from "Experts" or Speakers are purely speculation and "We don't knows" ...without disrespecting- sounds like some of these people are stumped just like us. (Only maybe a tad less stumped) . Okay...sorry for the novel. I owe you all a beer.

@Alin It's going to be a mess no matter what. Only good thing is if it raises awareness and makes people think that there are worse things than a few hundreths of a per cent rise in CO2.

@alin let's face it : these reactors should have been stopped this years, they just get a 10 years more licence. They are 40 years old. When sea was puped in the core, it's like if you put sand in your motor oil... so, 3 reactors will never start up again. 1,2,3 . the 4 is really damaged, but the core was empty . so, what's next ? they can work for months to try to just stop a bad evolution . For now, it's normal to try to cool it , to prevent real big damage. but, after a while, when things will be under control, it's easier to burry the whole thing than to dispose of all the waste parts

its all about profit, tepco is criminal.

@ Janis; Thanks. In addition to my comment: I hate how everyone talks about Chernobyl like entombing it was totally the right thing to do as a last ditch effort. You know, I'm shocked that throwing a bunch of cement and pounding sand on top of it is STILL to this day a genuine option once this is "controlled". Really? Again, maybe its my ignorance on the situation- but from a newbies standpoint, maybe we shouldnt be playing with these big boy toys before we fill big boy shoes. Now we have a monumental situation and the people who we look up to in such a time are trying to sweep it under the carpet and call us crazy for asking too many questions. Total bs.

@stef Yea the crowd sourced stuff is a mixed bag but there is some interesting stuff. My favorite was this person's post. "A good place to start would be to look at Soviet tactics at Chernobyl (April 26 1986), both during and after the immediate crisis (quotes from Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly, c.2007)

1) "By Sunday May 4 Soviet Army engineer units had brought in oil-drilling equipment and had begun drilling into the soil below the reactor. Through these channels they pumped liquid nitrogen at the rate of 1,000 cubic feet per day to freeze the soil against a possible core meltdown."

2) ". . . the engineers pumped five million gallons of water out of the bubbler pool. In the coming days they used shaped-charge explosives to blow holes through the concrete foundation, laid pipe into the empty pool, and pumped in enough concrete to fill it to a solid block." The book he quotes has a preview on google books too books.google.com

3)"'Liquidators' by the hundreds of thousands, perhaps half a million in all - 340,000 soldiers, many of them recently returned from service in Afghanistan, new draftees, minor government officials such as teachers and inspectors - were pressed into service and took their brief turn scraping away topsoil, paving over roads. . ."

4) "In November 1986, after a heroic effort, workers finished entombing Reactor Number Four within a sarcophagus made of half a million cubic yards of reinforced concrete, and only then did it cease releasing radiation into the environment."

Fukushima differs in that the reactor cores do not have a massive graphite neutron moderator, the source of the Chernobyl fire. However, the spent fuel rods are also located in the same building as the reactor (an insanely idiotic arrangement), and Reactor #3 is fueled with MOX fuel (apparently about 5% plutonium).

The major risk is core meltdown followed by containment breach followed by steam explosions that eject tons of nuclear fission products and plutonium into the atmosphere. Note that the Soviets only barely prevented this outcome at Chernobyl by a massive effort involving thousands of people - and they only had ONE reactor to deal with. It's unclear whether Japan even has the resources needed.

Thus, there is a possibility that significantly larger volumes of radioactive particles could end up being emitted to the atmosphere than occurred at Chernobyl."

@Jeff et al: I hear you. I can't help thinking that sites and conversations like this one are potentially great incubators for ideas for grappling with these big issues. Kind of like growing, as opposed to manufacturing, consent.

From a purely personal "selfish" point of view, I'm becoming angrier by the minute, at OUR government and media. It scares me that we are barely being informed about what's going on in Japan, much less what we might expect in our own country.

Problem is, if a plant were built and run properly (not next to the ocean, to use cheap cooling), the whole venture would be economically unfeasiable. I don't like it also because it takes away research money for fusion.

@Jim Carver Yes, related to that I am hoping that this incident will help spur interest in renewable energy.

@ Janis- oh totally selfish is acceptable for a minute. Like I said, I have a ton of friends in the navy now and I'm worried about these guys over there. I got into a warm convo on the reuters facebook page in the news section over someone saying "THE US NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING". I broke the no chat rule haha.

@Bobby1 @Stef @radioguy @Nancy... Thanks. None of us alone here then. What's sickening me is that any scant coverage we do get is all the manicured glass-half-full stuff. I'm thinking of compiling a list of the cliches they keep churning... "... no immediate threat to health"; "... less radiation than a banana/x-ray"; "... no evidence to suggest..."; "... power restored"; "... safe to drink"; "... just as a precaution". No-one's yet told us where the two Japanese travellers hospitalised in China had/hadn't been before they flew out from Tokyo, or have I missed something? The media didn't even ask that question as far as I could find.

@Janis In France, we have waited 15 years after the Chernobyl "Incident" to have an independant association (Criirad) to take mesurments. and It have changed a lot of things, but not all.

Don't want to hijack the conversation but this has me very upset. If Reuters wanted to take down the blog (for some reason) they did a perfect job. First, they suspiciously put it "on hold" when things are not good, and make the viewership go from 950 to barely 200. Then, they put it back on for 3 hours, but now they say "There's not enough interest from people". "Smart" move?

Thanks, Dennis and Stef. Future, at least France seems to be asking the tough questions when it comes to this disaster, instead of acting as if it never happened, the way I feel our government is acting.

@Rucco: I think so. I started to worry, when they removed the link from their front page

@Rucco that meet my "conspirationist dark side" point of view. But people were not 950 on the last week.