Japan Earthquake

Japan Earthquake | Page 1697

@Peter Melzer Those are in sheet steel buildings and some of the concrete prefab ones. The tsunami and the blasts wrecked lots of the steel paneled walls. The one you just posted looks on purpose since they stacked panels beside.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:04:31 AM

Nitrogen injection to follow venting
Tepco airs out humid reactor No. 2 building
Kyodo
search.japantimes.co.jp
by LM 6/20/2011 3:12:42 AM

@LM um I thought the venting was to relieve humidity. So why do they need to put nitrogen in it? Sounds like we are not being told something.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:14:58 AM

Monday, June 20, 2011

Tepco plays down decontamination failure
search.japantimes.co.jp
by LM 6/20/2011 3:15:16 AM

@lillymunster , exactly they took them off. I notice something else. Remember I found that the buildings were designed to funnel an explosion in the primary containment downward into the loading bay, blowing out its walls. This pic demonstrates just that effect, ONLY it is unit 4. If the primary containment was not the culprit, how did hydrogen accumulate in the basement to cause such a forceful explosion? www.flickr.com

by Peter Melzer via Flickr 6/20/2011 3:15:59 AM

@Lilly I agree...not to mention ..they supposedly cooled the pool down with a new system. Why then is the humidity still 100%? Curious....
by LM 6/20/2011 3:16:35 AM

More radioactive water pooling at Fukushima plant
www.japantoday.com
by LM 6/20/2011 3:19:57 AM

@Peter Melzer 4 has the garage walls blown out. They are intact on 3. There is other evidence of walls being blown out below the refueling floor. the corner to the left of that garage bay that is blocked by the beige building has blow outs rather low. TEPCO claims 3's hydrogen ended up in 4 via the venting pipes. It seems more like it made its way across at a low level.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:21:28 AM

@LM Right the sfp was the excuse at 2. Something is not right.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:22:27 AM

This is nicely explained: "
www.anengineerindc.com
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:22:34 AM

@all back
by bo 6/20/2011 3:26:19 AM

More on what people who lost their homes are up against. blog.japantimes.co.jp
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:26:27 AM

I hit return too early once more. The quote is: "Fukushima has some distinct design differences from Oyster Creek. For example, item 10 above (Isolation Condensers) do not exist in Fukushima Unit 1. If I am not mistaken only Oyster Creek and two others in the world have them. This design feature was removed after 2 BWR/2's basically to save GE/utilities money. Fukushima 1 is BWR/3. If this one feature alone existed at the Fukushima plants, they could have relieved reactor pressure without electricity, without venting radioactive gasses/hydrogen, and without losing reactor inventory resulting in uncovering fuel. It's critical valves are DC operated, so loss of power is irrelevant, and it works without pumps, by gravity. GE BWR's brought these simple and effective condensers back in its new designs. If Fukushima 1 had isolation condensers, they would have attained stable hot shutdown and the plant would not have been destroyed, this goes for the other units as well. The spent fuel pool would have still been an issue, but it also would have received more immediate focus and could have been kept full using diesel pumps." This the comment was posted under blog here: www.anengineerindc.com . Only the explanation does not match the following yomiuri description of events: www.yomiuri.co.jp !
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:29:57 AM

@Peter Melzer So is that comment right that there was no IC designed into it? I remember in the events documents they tried to run something on the battery system but it died quickly?
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:31:12 AM

Energy industry shapes lessons in public schools: www.washingtonpost.com
by bo 6/20/2011 3:33:29 AM

Nancy, sorry I am jumping topics. I don't believe so. The yomiuri article says: "At 2:52 p.m., an isolation condenser--a system designed to cool the reactor--was automatically activated." One cannot be careful enough!
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:33:34 AM

"CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called “The Greening of Planet Earth,” which says that “our world is deficient in carbon dioxide, and a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is very beneficial.” Mainstream scientists widely dispute that assertion."
by bo 6/20/2011 3:33:36 AM

@lillymunster , not that I feel the need to defend Tepco's actions. But such contradictions bug me.
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:35:19 AM

@Peter Melzer So why are people in the US going to such lengths to pretend there is missing equipment on FUKU?
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:36:53 AM

@lillymunster , perhaps the guys behind these statements dream of selling more of 'em things, ;)
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:40:29 AM

@Peter Melzer LOL :-)
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:42:28 AM

@lillymunster , actually thinking about this, I had to deal with a few service contracts for high end computer-assisted technology. The contracts were always expensive and a number of clients let them lapse. When the eqipment failed the first question was , "have you got an up-to-date service contract?" and the next was, "did you carry out all our recommended upgrades?" I f you did not, everything was your fault, no warranty and no liability. Perhaps this philosophy applies also to nuclear power reactors.
by Peter Melzer 6/20/2011 3:48:42 AM

@Peter Melzer I think it does. :-)
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 3:50:37 AM

Oh thank goodness!
NRC issues new policy on safety culture: www.theday.com
by bo 6/20/2011 3:53:03 AM

"By law, NRC cannot force owners to have good safety cultures," Lochbaum wrote in an email. "But when bad safety cultures cause regulations to be violated, this policy statement helps the NRC ensure that real cause of the problems is fixed. Thus, NRC is better able to heal the disease rather than treat its symptoms."
by bo 6/20/2011 3:53:51 AM

The "safety culture" doc at the NRC: www.nrc.gov
by bo 6/20/2011 3:54:40 AM

@bo Or they could just go with the pain aversion theory. If your not running your plant in a safe and intelligent manner we shut you down. Reminds me of the pineapple sized hole they found in a reactor vessel
in Ohio because the guy who was supposed to do the metal inspections didn't bother to do them.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 4:02:12 AM

@lilly I think they will just probably stick with their traditional Wishful Thinking theory.
by bo 6/20/2011 4:03:37 AM

All this "fog" you see on live cams isn't fog, it's fume/steam. Look at 13:05 TEPCO Pic.
Temp ~ 24ºC.
pointscope01.jp
by estacion 6/20/2011 4:06:23 AM

@bo the article about safety culture, if they are mandating certain kinds of training that would be good. The fact that manuals on how to operate the emergency venting were not in each control room and the emergency command building is a good sign that such things were not seen as important by TEPCO corporate. If corporate won't allocate time for training it can't be done. Nobody knew how to operate the vents meant that there was not ongoing refresher training on such systems.
by lillymunster 6/20/2011 4:06:37 AM

All the EPA graphs I have looked at show large spikes for June 16-17th, some are very disturbing www.epa.gov
by Deb via Epa.gov 6/20/2011 4:52:51 AM

60 Minutes Australia news piece on Fukushima Fallout! sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au 13:04 minutes. Thanks to Angie.
by Mid Valley 6/20/2011 4:57:27 AM

@Deb - I am in Oregon, my geiger readings spiked June 12th through 17th. Back to normal now.
by Lurking 6/20/2011 4:57:28 AM

@Lurking The worse part is that all the milk, water, rain samples date back to March & April. It's completely irresponsible of our government to stop weekly testing, and only test every 3-4 months. Just criminal :(
by Deb 6/20/2011 5:01:17 AM

@Deb, I agree, that's why I got my own geiger. I don't have fancy equipment to test anything else but at least I can see spikes.
by Lurking 6/20/2011 5:04:41 AM

Can someone put the readingsd in one post anbd publish it at the Simply websitee please, so we can Push" it out ?
by Veenie 6/20/2011 5:38:33 AM

Tetsunari Iida on the renewable future of Japan: ourworld.unu.edu
by bo 6/20/2011 6:17:34 AM

@Mid Valley good news piece. Ty
by bo 6/20/2011 6:21:48 AM

In the Ilda interview below: Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear researcher/engineer, has a radical but straightforward idea — that Japan can go 100% renewable.
by bo 6/20/2011 6:23:15 AM

Small spikes even here in Houston, I hope they are not the "Hot particles" Gunderson was talking about. www.epa.gov
by Ralph Unger via Epa.gov 6/20/2011 7:55:38 AM

Japan's Renewable Energy Blogs and Resources: www.hiroshimagab.com
by bo 6/20/2011 8:05:50 AM

G'day @all
by hudebnik 6/20/2011 8:10:21 AM

G'morning @hudebnik
by bo 6/20/2011 8:11:08 AM

The operator of the damaged Fukushima power plant is struggling to fix the problem that caused the suspension of a system to decontaminate highly radioactive wastewater.
The system is designed to filter radioactive material, oil and salt from the contaminated water and to reuse the treated water to cool the reactors.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, halted the filtering system only 5 hours after it went into full operation on Friday. Readings around one of the system's devices indicated higher-than-expected radiation levels.
TEPCO engineers suspect that the density of radioactive substances in the contaminated water was greater than had been predicted.
They initially thought that the device had absorbed large volumes of oil and sludge containing radioactive material. But in a test conducted on Sunday, high radiation levels were registered for equipment set to the lowest of 3 absorption levels.
In another test on Monday, TEPCO adjusted the flow of the contaminated water through the equipment.
The radioactive wastewater is hampering work to bring the plant under control. The amount is increasing by 500 tons a day as fresh water is continuously being injected to cool the reactors. Storage facilities are filling up and a delay in restarting the filtering system could cause the water to overflow in about a week.
Monday, June 20, 2011 14:17 +0900 (JST)
www3.nhk.or.jp
by hudebnik 6/20/2011 8:11:14 AM

Interesting that the Japanese press (Kyodo has the same story) is now openly questioning the 'small problem, soon be fixed' spin from Tepco.
by hudebnik 6/20/2011 8:17:09 AM