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:

(Reuters) - By Thursday morning the last line of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just short of a week into Japan’s nuclear crisis, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and underpowered.

A police riot control truck was hauled in over uneven roads to keep a spray of water on the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors. In the air above, Japan Self-Defense Forces helicopters made runs with baskets of water in a desperate attempt to cool exposed fuel rods believed to have already partly melted down.

Meanwhile, technicians were dashing to complete what amounts to the world’s largest extension cord: an electric cable to connect the stricken plant from the north and allow Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the plant, to restart critical water pumps taken out by the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on the afternoon of Friday, March 11.

An examination by Reuters of Japan’s effort to contain its escalating nuclear disaster reveals a series of missteps, bad luck and desperate improvisation. What also emerges is a country that has begun to question some of its oldest values. Japanese have long revered the country’s bureaucratic competence, especially when it is contrasted with its political dysfunction. Japan has also proudly often chosen to go its own way and turn down outside assistance. But what happens when competence begins to break down? And what happens when a disaster is so overwhelming that outside help is vital?

The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand a violent earthquake. But the massive tsunami that followed knocked out both the plant’s electric-powered cooling system and its diesel-powered backup generators.

As the first pictures of the destruction around the northern town of Sendai were beamed across Japan and around the world in the hours after the quake, authorities initially said they had safely shut down the four nuclear plants closest to the earthquake and tsunami zone.

It wasn’t true. With no power to the plant’s cooling system, the water that circulates around the fuel rods inside the six reactors at Fukushima had already begun to boil off. Within a few hours authorities declared a “nuclear emergency situation” at the plant. While no radiation release had been detected, they said, residents around the plant should evacuate.

It was the beginning of a new nightmare. Over the ensuing days, as Japan has struggled to come to terms with what could be more than 10,000 dead and raced to bring food and clean water to more than 500,000 people who lost their homes in the quake and tsunami, rapidly deteriorating conditions inside Fukushima have threatened a meltdown with the potential to spread radioactive particles across the country and beyond.

“They might have been prepared for an earthquake. They might have been prepared for a tsunami. They might have been prepared for a nuclear emergency, but it was unlikely that they were prepared for all three,” said Ellen Vancko, an electric power expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

FIRST TROUBLE

Before last week, Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors had provided about 30 percent of the nation’s electric power. That percentage had been expected to rise to 50 percent by 2030 with a boom in new plant construction.

But nuclear power plants stop if they don’t have enough power. Stranded nuclear reactors cannot circulate water to cool their fuel rods. When the existing water boils off, the nuclear fuel begins to heat, a process that can set fire to surrounding materials and touch off powerful hydrogen blasts.

“Power is the lifeblood for a power plant,” said Harold Denton, who headed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission team that handled the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis in the United States. “If you’ve got power, you can do a lot, but if you don’t have any power, the water in the reactor vessels heats up and boils away and the fuel begins to melt. It’s a problem they’ve gotten into now.”

The threat for the Fukushima plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, is compounded, experts say, by the design of its 40-year-old reactors, known in the industry as the General Electric Mark 1.

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)

iwriteasiwrite:

Something has still been sticking with me when it came the Arcilla interview yesterday. Basically, it ran counter to much of what I have heard from various sources about the BNPP (and no, not from just laymen).

Anyway, since he is a geological expert and posited that the BNPP is in a geologically sound location, I thought it would be interesting to see what othergeological experts who have actually surveyed the area think. Oh, would you look at that, there is someone who has done just that. Even better, he’s written a whole series of articles for the Philippine Star on this very subject; including a statement after Mark Cojuangco (you remember the Cojuangos right? The ones who are desperate to open up the BNPP and get San Miguel in there to operate it?) erroneously used data from a study Rodolfo and others did on Subic Bay.

Dr. Rodolfo’s stance on the geological implications of the location of the BNPP can be summed up by:

In the 1970s, the volcanic nature of Natib was virtually ignored, but technicians were quite concerned about how earthquakes might affect the plant. Recognition of the dangers that earthquakes posed to the BNPP was recognized very early, but apparently was ignored. A year after construction began, nuclear technologists Elmer Hernandez and Gabriel Santos submitted an alarming eight-page “Report on the evaluation of the geological and seismological studies made on the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant — I Site” in which they said that the probability of an earthquake occurring there “is unacceptably very high,” and that 49 significant earthquakes had occurred in the area over 74 years, one within one to two kilometers of the proposed site itself. They also noted the presence of a possible fault in satellite photographs, which they confirmed on the ground with a magnetometer survey. 

The dangers posed by the location of the BNPP have long been known, even prior to the construction. Those efforts were ignored, for obvious reasons. Yet today, bad science and faulty reasoning are being used to support, not only the re-opening of the BNPP, but its current location.

The most disturbing part, I believe, of the entire series is also found soon after the paragraph cited above:

When the plant was designed and built, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations had not yet made rules governing what must be done to build a plant on volcanic terrain. IAEA announced those criteria only in 1997, three years after volcanologists began to develop them, in the document “Volcanic Hazard in Nuclear Power Plant Siting — An IAEA Guidance — Provisional Safety Standards Series No. 1.”Had those standards existed in the 1970s, the BNPP would never have been built. And if applied today, the site would be unacceptable to the IAEA.

Curious indeed that someone like Dr. Arcilla keeps arguing to the contrary.

To read the series, follow these links:

The Geological Hazards of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Part 1

The Geological Hazards of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Part 2

The Geological Hazards of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Part 3

The Geological Hazards of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Part 4

His response to Mark Cojuangco et al misrepresenting his research can be found here:

Justifying the Activation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: More Official Abuse of Scientific Data

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.

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]

bbcworldnews:

A text message alleging radioactive rain in the Philippines and Hong Kong did not originate from the BBC.

Just to set things straight. This is coming from straight from the lips of BBC World News.

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)

producermatthew:

Radiation exceeding nine times the normal level was briefly detected in Kanagawa, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported Tuesday morning.

The news came as Japan is dealing with a nuclear emergency at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant. Three explosions were reported over the past three days in three reactors at Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant, with a fourth reactor currently on fire.

Japan’s Prime Minister Nyoto Kan said radiation was likely leaking from the nuclear plant and advised anyone within a 20-kilometer radius to stay indoors.

It’s unclear if the radiation detected at Kanagawa is related to the nuclear emergency at the Fukushima plant. Kanagawa is 280 kilometers south of Fukushima.