Uh, It's Jayvee.

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - The World Health Organisation said on Monday that radiation in food after an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant was a “serious situation”, eclipsing clear signs of progress in a battle to avert a catastrophic meltdown in the reactors.

Engineers managed to rig power cables to all six reactors at the Fukushima complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, and started a water pump at one of them to reverse the overheating that has triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami left more than 21,000 people dead or missing and will cost an already beleaguered economy some $250 billion (154 billion pounds), but Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the situation at the nuclear plant was slowly improving.

Overshadowing the good news from the facility, however, was mounting concern that radioactive particles already released into the atmosphere have contaminated food and water supplies.

The health ministry has urged some residents near the plant to stop drinking tap water after high levels of radioactive iodine were detected.

Cases of contaminated vegetables and milk have already stoked anxiety despite assurances from officials that the levels are not dangerous. The government has prohibited the sale of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture and spinach from a nearby area.

“Quite clearly it’s a serious situation,” Peter Cordingley, Manila-based spokesman for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) regional office for the Western Pacific, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“It’s a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometres … It’s safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone.”

He added that there was no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima reaching other countries.

Japan is a net importer of food, but has substantial exports — mainly fruit, vegetables, dairy products and seafood — with its biggest markets in Hong Kong, China and the United States.

MOODY’S SEES INCREASED DOWNSIDE RISK

The World Bank, citing private estimates of between $122 billion and $235 billion for the cost, said the disaster would depress Japanese economic growth briefly before reconstruction kicks off and gives the beleaguered economy a boost.

Moody’s Investors Service said in a report that the downside risks from the crisis had increased over the past week for the country’s economy, sovereign credit, banking, insurance and non-financial corporate sectors.

However, in a much-needed boost for Japan’s battered stock market, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the earthquake and tsunami were an “enormous blow” but should not prompt the selling of Japanese shares. Instead, he called the events a “buying opportunity”.

“It will take some time to rebuild. But it will not change the economic future of Japan. If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them,” Buffett said during a visit to a South Korean factory run by a company that is owned by one of his funds.

read more here.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

Online posts from families and colleagues pull back the curtain on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant workers whose heroism has inspired the nation.

 Who are the “Fukushima 50” — the workers trying to take regain control of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant?

Twitter messages and blog posts by the workers’ families offer an inkling of the “Fukushima 50,” so nicknamed because the 180 employees at the site work in 50-person shifts.

One of the workers is a veteran power plant worker, a 59-year-old who volunteered to take on the assignment, according to Jiji Press, a Japanese news wire service, quoting a woman who claimed to be his daughter on Twitter. The job puts him at risk of exposure to dangerous amounts of radiation that could cause death or lead to a higher risk ofcancer.

“I fought back tears when I heard that my father, who is to retire in six months, had volunteered,” @NamicoAoto wrote. “At home, he doesn’t seem like someone who could handle big jobs…but today, I was really proud of him,” she wrote. “I pray for his safe return.”

@nekkonekonyaa said her mother wept when her father left work to head to the nuclear plant. “Please dad come back alive,” she said in her tweet.

Power plant employees were running out of food, read one e-mail from a worker’s daughter.

“He says he’s accepted his fate. Much like a death sentence,” the e-mail said, which was read aloud on the national television network, NHK.

It has been reported that five employees of the operator of the nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as TEPCO, have died and 22 have been injured since last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami.

Michiko Otsuki, an employee who evacuated from Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) on Monday, expressed pride in the coworkers who stayed behind.

“The staff of TEPCO have refused to flee and continue to work even at the peril of their own lives. Please stop attacking us,” Otsuki wrote on her blog, which has since been taken down but wasreprinted by the Singapore newspaper Straits Times.

Otsuki said employees at the plant worked bravely after the magnitude 9 quake, after the plant lost power and alarms sounded.

“We carried on working to restore the reactors from where we were, right by the sea, with the realization that this could be certain death,” Otsuki wrote.

“The machine that cools the reactor is just by the ocean, and it was wrecked by the tsunami. Everyone worked desperately to try and restore it. Fighting fatigue and empty stomachs, we dragged ourselves back to work.”

Otsuki apologized for the unfolding disaster.

“To all the residents [around the plant] who have been alarmed and worried, I am truly, deeply sorry,” she wrote.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - Japanese engineers raced to restore a power cable to a quake-ravaged nuclear power plant on Friday in the hope of restarting pumps needed to pour cold water on overheating fuel rods and avert a catastrophic release of radiation.

Officials said they hoped to fix a cable from the grid to at least two of the six reactors on Friday, but that work would stop in the morning to allow helicopters and fire trucks to resume pouring water on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

Even if the engineers manage to connect the power, it is not clear the pumps will work as they may have been damaged in the earthquake or subsequent explosions and there are real fears of the electricity shorting and causing another explosion.

“Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped,” an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that engineers had to be constantly checked for radiation levels.

Washington and other foreign capitals have expressed growing alarm about radiation leaking from the plant, severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami a week ago that triggered a series of destructive explosions and compromised the nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage tanks.

Worst case scenarios would involve millions of people in Japan threatened by exposure to radioactive material, but prevailing winds are likely to carry any contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area to dissipate over the Pacific ocean.

Nuclear agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said the priority was to get water into the spent fuel pools. He was unsure how effective the helicopters had been inn cooling the reactors.

“As to what we do beyond that, we have to reduce the heat somehow and may use seawater,” he told a news conference. “We need to get the reactors back online as soon as possible and that’s why we’re trying to restore power to them.”

Asked about the “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete, he said: “That solution is in the back of our minds, but we are focused on cooling the reactors down.”

Japan’s nuclear disaster is the world’s worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the crisis posed no risk to any U.S. territory. He nevertheless ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants.

“We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States, whether it’s the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific,” Obama said. “That is the judgment of our Nuclear Regulatory Commission and many other experts.”

Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later on Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japan.

Graham Andrew, his senior aide, called the situation at the plant “reasonably stable ” but the government said white smoke or steam was still rising from three reactors and helicopters used to dump water on the plant had shown exposure to small amounts of radiation.

“The situation remains very serious, but there has been no significant worsening since yesterday,” Andrew said.

read more here.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

WASHINGTON — The first readings from American data-collection flights over the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan show that the worst contamination has not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by Japanese authorities.

But another day of frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the stricken reactors and the plant’s spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials.

Japanese officials said they would continue those efforts, but were also racing to restore electric power to the site to get equipment going again, leaving open the question of why that effort did not begin days ago, at the first signs that the critical backup cooling systems for the reactors had failed.

The data was collected by the Aerial Measurement System, among the most sophisticated devices rushed to Japan by the Obama administration in an effort to help contain a nuclear crisis that a top American nuclear official said Thursday could go on for weeks. Strapped onto a plane and a helicopter that the United States flew over the site, with Japanese permission, the equipment took measurements that showed harmful radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant — a much heavier dose than the trace levels of radioactive particles that make up the atmospheric plume covering a much wider area.

While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a far larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release specific radiation readings.

American officials said their biggest worry was that a frenetic series of efforts by the Japanese military to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors — including water cannons and firefighting helicopters that dropped water but appeared to largely miss their targets — showed few signs of working.

“This is something that will likely take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as eventually you remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent fuel pool,” said Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, briefing reporters at the White House.

The effort by the Japanese to hook electric power back up to the plant did not begin until Thursday and was likely to take several days to complete — and even then it was unclear how the cooling systems, in reactor buildings battered by a tsunami and then torn apart by hydrogen explosions, would help end the crisis.

“What you are seeing are desperate efforts — just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work,” said one American official with long nuclear experience who would not speak for attribution. “Right now this is more prayer than plan.”

After a day in which American and Japanese officials gave radically different assessments of the danger from the nuclear plant, the two governments tried on Thursday to join forces.

Experts met in Tokyo to compare notes. The United States, with Japanese permission, began to put the intelligence-collection aircraft over the site, in hopes of gaining a view for Washington as well as its allies in Tokyo that did not rely on the announcements of officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates Fukushima Daiichi.

American officials say they suspect that the company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage.

Aircraft normally used to monitor North Korea’s nuclear weapons activities — a Global Hawk drone and U-2 spy planes — were flying missions over the reactor, trying to help the Japanese government map out its response to the last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the tsunami that followed and now the nuclear disaster.

President Obama made an unscheduled stop at the Japanese Embassy to sign a condolence book, writing, “My heart goes out to the people of Japan during this enormous tragedy.” He added, “Because of the strength and wisdom of its people, we know that Japan will recover, and indeed will emerge stronger than ever.”

Later he appeared in the Rose Garden at the White House to offer continued American support for the earthquake and tsunami victims, and technical help at the nuclear site.

But before the recovery can begin, the nuclear plant must be brought under control. So American officials were fixated on the temperature readings inside the three reactors that had been operating until the earthquake shut them down, and at the spent fuel pools, looking for any signs that their high levels of heat were going down. If they are uncovered and exposed to air, the fuel rods in those pools heat up and can burst into flame, spewing radioactive elements.

read more here.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - Japanese engineers toiled frantically to avert a catastrophic release of radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant north of Tokyo on Friday, but the United States said it could take weeks to cool the facility’s overheating fuel rods.

Officials said they hoped to fix a power cable to at least two of the six reactors in the hope of restarting water pumps and were preparing to douse them in the afternoon with water from fire trucks.

However, no one was holding out hope that the crisis — about to enter its second week after last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami — could be overcome anytime soon.

Japan’s nuclear agency spokesman conceded that a “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete was in the back of the authorities’ minds.

Millions in Tokyo remained indoors on Friday, fearing a blast of radioactive material from the complex 240 km (150 miles) to the north, though prevailing winds would likely carry contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated city to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean.

Japan’s nuclear disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl in Ukraine 25 years ago, has triggered alarm and reviews of safety at atomic power plants around the globe.

President Barack Obama, who stressed the United States did not expect harmful radiation to reach its shores, announced that he had ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants and pledged Washington’s support for Japan.

“In the coming days, we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the safety of American citizens and the security of our sources of energy,” he said. “And we will stand with the people of Japan as they contain this crisis, recover from this hardship, and rebuild their great nation.”

The Group of Seven rich nations, stepping in together to calm global financial markets after a tumultuous week, agreed to join in rare concerted intervention to restrain a soaring yen.

The United States’ top nuclear regulator said it could take weeks to reverse the overheating of fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

“This is something that will take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as you eventually remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent-fuel pools,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko told a news conference at the White House.

Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later on Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japan.

Graham Andrew, his senior aide, called the situation at the plant “reasonably stable” but the government said white smoke or steam was still rising from three reactors and helicopters used to dump water on the plant had shown exposure to small amounts of radiation.

“The situation remains very serious, but there has been no significant worsening since yesterday,” Andrew said.

The nuclear agency said the radiation level at the plant was as high as 20 millisieverts per hour. The limit for the workers was 100 per hour.

read more here.

mohandasgandhi:

• • Kono heavily criticized Japan’s nuclear power industry, “especially nuclear fuel reprocessing, based on issues of cost, safety, and security.Kono claimed Japanese electric companies are hiding the costs and safety problems associated with nuclear energy, while successfully selling the idea of reprocessing to the Japanese public as ‘recycling uranium.’”
  • “Kono claimed the high costs of the reprocessing program were being passed to Japanese consumers in their power bills, and they were unaware of how much they paid for electricity relative to people in other countries. In describing the clout wielded by the electric companies, Kono claimed that a Japanese television station had planned a three part interview with him on nuclear issues, but had canceled after the first interview, because the electric companies threatened to withdraw their extensive sponsorship.” - All of these high costs are attributed to a program that doesn’t work efficiently while a less expensive allocation of uranium was possible.
  • He claimed the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) “was committed to advocating for nuclear energy development, despite the problems he attributed to it. Kono noted that while METI claimed to support alternative energy, it in actuality provides little support.He claimed that METI in the past had orchestrated the defeat of legislation that supported alternatives energy development, and instead secured the passage of the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) act. This act simply requires power companies to purchase a very small amount of their electricity from alternative sources.”
  • “He also accused METI of covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry. He claimed MPs have a difficult time hearing the whole of the U.S. message on nuclear energy because METI picks and chooses those portions of the message that it likes. Only information in agreement with METI policies is passed through to the MPs.”
  • “Kono also raised the issue of nuclear waste, commenting that Japan had no permanent high-level waste storage, and thus no solution to the problem of storage. He cited Japan’s extensive seismic activity, and abundant groundwater, and questioned if there really was a safe place to store nuclear waste in the ‘land of volcanoes.’”

  [Source]

  It’s become abundantly clear that Japan’s nuclear plants really weren’t that safe, partially due to the nature of nuclear power but also due to bureaucratic mismanagement. 

Shocking information.

rodrigoebr:

As of 0500 GMT (01:00 a.m. ET) from DJ Newswires:

• • Japan’s Self Defense Force dropped 7.5 tonnes of ocean water on top of the overheated units four times Thursday morning.
  • Power cables from an outside source could be available by the afternoon, a significant development.
  • NHK pictures showed helicopters making repeated runs with water spraying on top of the reactors.
  • Reactor no. 1: the first explosion happened at this reactor on Saturday as hydrogen built up outside the containment vessel after the quake knocked out the cooling system. Low-level radioactive steam has been released.
  • Reactor no. 2: Concern over suspected containment vessel damage. An explosion was heard Tuesday in the area around the suppression pool at the bottom of the vessel. Some high-level radiation is thought to have come from the reactor afterward in addition to low-level radioactive steam released to relieve pressure.
  • Reactor no. 3: High concern over spent fuel that could release high levels of radiation if not cooled. Self Defense Force helicopters started pouring water on the reactor from the air at 0084 GMT Thursday. The use of water cannon trucks was planned for later Thursday.
  • Reactor no. 4: High concern over spent fuel that could release high levels of radiation if not cooled. A Self Defense Force helicopter spotted water in the spent fuel pool Wednesday suggesting Reactor No. 3 was the greater priority. Two fires have already struck this reactor, one on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday morning.
  • Reactor no. 5: Govt doesn’t expect any troubles in the near term.
  • Reactor no. 6: Govt doesn’t expect any troubles in the near-term

producermatthew:

The Governor of Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture says misinformation and panic are keeping much-needed supplies like food, medicine and fuel from reaching grocery stores, hospitals and refueling stations in areas not affected by last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.

Speaking on Japanese broadcaster NHK Wednesday evening, Governor Yühel Sato urged the central government to pass along accurate information regarding the nuclear emergency so shipping companies could resume the delivery of goods to the Fukushima Prefecture.

“We’re lacking everything,” Governor Sato said. “We need help, we need the understanding of the rest of the nation.”

Governor Sato said misinformation is causing suppliers to stop short of Fukushima Prefecture even when they are delivering to areas that are safe.

“Fuel and other supplies are not coming into the prefecture,” Governor Sato said.  “There is fear and panic caused by misinformation.”

Governor Sato went on to say the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was a “nuclear disaster” and called on the central government to deliver “accurate information.”

Fukushima Prefecture was one of the hardest hit areas of Japan by a strong earthquake that spawned a large tsunami on March 11th.  More than 500 evacuation shelters are currently housing 100,000 people displaced by the earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear crisis in the area. [Audio: Governor Sato’s NHK interview in English]

inothernews:

“A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems they faced was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant.

The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference.”

—

“Workers at Fukushima Plant Brave Radiation and Fire,” the New York Times.

They are the faceless 50.

(via shortformblog)