ScribbleLive

@Nancy Since we know there's not nothing, I'd assume heavy fog still.

Conditions at Tokyo, lt. showers and rain, 63F.

Oh meti document www.meti.go.jp

Hi all..not sure if this posted yet...Workers locked in battle at Fukushima, exposure to radiation rising
TOKYO, April 23, Kyodo

Workers at a nuclear power plant damaged by last month's earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northeast continued battling to deal with radioactive water Saturday as their exposure to radiation is constantly increasing. english.kyodonews.jp

@Nancy R6 seems to have been the mystery machine all along.

@Nancy K

Have to bid goodbye for now, catch up on some rest deficit. Thanks.

@LM I think there is going to be more sea dumping. The amount they are pumping in has to go somewhere.

@LM I can hardly wait for that press conference: "Well, we really have no place else to dump all that radioactive water except into the ocean, but it's not as bad as it sounds. The industry has been dumping more than that into the ocean for decades. This is actually pretty safe by comparison."

@Nancy You've probably already seen this, but just in case: Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that a piece of concrete rubble with a high radiation emission of 900 millisieverts per hour was found near the plant's No. 3 reactor and a worker removed it using heavy equipment.

@Nancy, Marie rich. Maybe the cement piece lying on piping we saw in pics?

@Scilla There are 3 big chunks that landed. The one on the pipe by #4. The one that went through the turbine building roof and one on the land side that skimmed the top of a free standing building and landed past that. There were at least 3 big objects going in 3 directions that came out of the blast plume first. I am guessing it is those. Now what one would they need to remove? If they could even get in the turbine building the one that fell in there would be a problem but really impossible to fetch out with a piece of equipment. The one by the free standing building seems to be far away from any work areas and fell into pieces as it landed. So I am thinking the pipe one. It was seen smoldering right after it landed on a digital globe image. So what would make a concrete chunk so radioactive? It is a good guess that at least the roof chunk and the pipe chunk are containment cap pieces. Why would the containment cap be so radioactive?

@Scilla That was my first reaction: We know that piece! ;)

Here is what is throwing me for a loop: The stats claim containment. The blast is massive with that upward plume. Now this concrete chunk that is massively radioactive over a month later. This does not add up. The only thing I can think of is the stats were wrong or falsified.

found this on physics forums - interesting issue with SFP. would explain the blue glows: ahh, here. IAEA says there may be criticality,
TEPCO responds

'The reactors are stopped, so it's hard to imagine re- criticality,' occurring, Tsuyoshi Makigami, a spokesman for the utility, told a news conference today.

news.businessweek.com

In spent fuel pool(s) especially, I don't understand why one would just dismiss criticality or be highly sceptical of it. There's boral plates between fuel assemblies, to prevent criticality.
www.nrc.gov
Those boral plates (the lowest melting point of all the things involved) fail, and it will go critical when covered by water. Yet the people here go on with theories that involve failure of a notable percentage of fuel rods and ill-defined 'weird chemistry' keeping out 99.9% of expected caesium, just to avoid highly inconvenient conclusion that the spent fuel pool gone critical.
Some sort of misplaced 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' while the claims are extraordinarily inconvenient, but not at all scientifically extraordinary.

nrc link www.nrc.gov

@Jim Carver this is what bothers me about the blast. To get that kind of column plume wouldn't it need something pushing it straight up? We already know they were unwilling to vent until way beyond the point they should have. Belching hydrogen and pressure in the containment bulb seems like it could cause that.

@James Ward so they stuck numbers in there until the 20th? Seeing the total news black out that started friday nothing surprises me. If info doesn't start coming out again (pictures, more than just the reactor stats and radiation readings) I am going to start poking around with some of the other non govt. groups to see if a coordinated demand to IAEA, NRC or GoJ might get information opened back up.

@Nancy k, I'm falling asleep. Weird dreams last night.

@Nancy I think we also have to look at what the GoJ is doing to put the clamps on what's being reported in both the Japanese and foreign news media. They simply do not want the outside world to know how bad the situation at Fukushima really is. Now, is the GoJ doing anything that any other government would not do under the same circumstances? Sadly, no.