ScribbleLive

@all Just a note....plants are in the midst of a major steam show.

@Lilly It's probably still raining..pressure of steam release over the last 24 hrs...even during the day...is definitely noteworthy. Has anyone seen a recent post on SFP temps?

@lillymunster , I noticed on the pics of the cleanup around unit 1 posted last night that the panels of this garage are entirely intact, whereas in unit 4 which was shutdown they are blown out. Strange!

Britain Announces Sites for Eight New Nuclear Power Plants
Britain’s government has initiated plans to build eight new nuclear power plants throughout the country. This is the country’s first major announcement on the direction it is taking nuclear power since the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
More: ohsonline.com

Fingers crossed but not holding my breath................Decontamination system to fully operate on Monday
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it hopes to begin full-scale operation on Monday of a system to decontaminate highly radioactive water.

Contaminated water is still accumulating in the plant, as water is being injected to cool the reactors.

Tokyo Electric Power Company was forced to suspend the test run of the system a number of times due to problems with a device that removes radioactive substances.

The utility says it managed to resolve the problem by using a different absorbent material for the devices, and the equipment that removes salt is working normally.

The company says it will review its procedures, and will consider replacing the absorption devices more frequently than once a month. www3.nhk.or.jp

a bit too late, eh ?

Gov't panel calls for preparations for once-in-millennium class tsunami

TOKYO, June 26, Kyodo

An expert panel under the government's antidisaster council urged authorities Sunday to prepare for once-in-a-millennium class tsunami in an interim report on its work to review countermeasures against earthquake and tsunami following the March 11 disaster.

The panel of the Central Disaster Prevention Council under the prime minister said in the report that Japan's previous antidisaster measures did not anticipate the scale of the March natural calamities and may have exacerbated the resulting damage.

Japan ''must fully reflect on'' its failure to take into account the possibility of a recurrence of the massive Jogan Earthquake in 869 when compiling its disaster countermeasures, it said.
english.kyodonews.jp

OPINION: Nuclear power requires perfection

By Jonathan Schell
NEW YORK, June 24, Kyodo

It has been three months since the Fukushima nuclear power disaster, and a clear global consequence is emerging.

The ''nuclear renaissance'' that supposedly was getting under way before the accident looks as though it has been stopped, and the world may even have begun the long process of getting out of the nuclear power business altogether.

In Japan, of course, all of nuclear power is under review, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan has had to assure the country that he will step down after the Fukushima crisis is over.

In Italy, the people have voted down nuclear power. The Swiss parliament has set the same course. Germany will phase out nuclear power altogether.

The German case is of special historical importance. In 1938, the chemist Otto Hahn first split uranium atoms, releasing the energy in them, making possible both nuclear power and nuclear bombs.

In this respect, the nuclear age began in Germany. Will it also end there?

However that may be, it is interesting to inquire how this result is being reached. The basic answer is not that governments have reconsidered. Ordinary people have.

The reversal in the German policy came after the ruling party suffered defeats in local elections. In Italy, it was the voting public that vetoed the government's plans.

Ordinary people are not nuclear experts. But they know some things that many experts prefer to forget. They know that even in the best-run enterprises, things go awry.

The contractor takes a kickback. The operator at the control panel falls asleep. The battery runs out sooner than expected. The scientist shades his findings because he has received a grant from the industry under inspection.

All this forms the inescapable background when the big, rare challenges arise: the earthquake, the tsunami, the airliner crash into the containment structures.

Of course the people in charge come up with new, improved safety plans -- more batteries, more generators, thicker containment walls, more security guards.

But the truth known to ordinary people is that these are subject to the same ineradicable human foibles as the old safety plans. When the stakes are a cost overrun on a factory or heavier taxes or potholes in a highway, everyone eventually accepts the cost and moves on.

But when the cost could be six nuclear reactors belching radiation wherever the winds have to carry it, rendering large territories uninhabitable, the cost is too high.

Nuclear power requires perfection. But human life is a scene of error and turmoil. The problem is not a broken valve or an inadequate flood wall or even the earthquake or tsunami.

It is the fundamental mismatch between fallible human beings and a universal power that is too great for us to control. That is what Fukushima teaches and that is what the world is learning.

(Jonathan Schell, born in New York in 1943, is known as a journalist who has had influence on antinuclear movements in the United States. He has written books such as ''The Fate of the Earth'' and ''The Gift of Time.'')

==Kyodo
english.kyodonews.jp

@Edano Shell put it so simple, and TRUE.

I meant, "The Fate of the Earth".

Black smoke, is a sign of incomplete combustion. Something is smoldering in unit 3 and it is worse now that they pure less water into the reactor. The chemical compounds in the smoke can be identified with gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy for example. Tepco must know what is smoldering.

Mass spectrometry, I should have said.

Flood berm collapsed at Nebraska nuclear plant
Posted: Jun 26, 2011 9:59 AM PDT Updated: Jun 26, 2011 9:59 AM PDT

FORT CALHOUN, Neb. (AP) - A berm holding back floodwater at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station has collapsed.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it's monitoring the Missouri River flooding at the plant, which has been shut down since early April for refueling.

The 2,000-foot berm collapsed about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, allowing the swollen river to surround two buildings at the plant. The NRC says those buildings are designed to handle flooding up to 1014 feet above sea level. The river is at 1006.3 feet and isn't forecast to exceed 1008 feet.

The NRC says its inspectors were at the plant when the berm failed and have confirmed that the flooding has had no impact on the reactor shutdown cooling or the spent fuel pool cooling.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko will visit the plant Monday.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

@elainekirk It's right up there with the realization that these levees are meant to protect for about two weeks and we're looking at a summer-long flood
.

@es LOL

i just wait to see someone peeing in the bushes ....

@Veenie : this is horrible news.

i guess they don't evacuate fuku city because it's cheaper if they leave voluntarily.