7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

Into Ibaraki

When we arrived at city hall, workers informed us that about 40 people were staying on the second floor of that building and needed socks. They checked their maps for current demand to send us to the most needy locations. While they worked on that, we took socks to the people upstairs, past emergency signs and missing people reports posted at the entrance. Yoshiko received a radiation update by cell phone. Levels were low and we thought it rude to suit up around people living close to the reactors without suits, so we wore normal clothes and sometimes masks:

With map in hand and shelters prioritized by need, we set out through town. Our first stop was an athletic center that had been hastily converted into housing for the recently homeless. Heaps of donated clothing lay around the gymnasium, as we expected to find, but there was not a sock among them. We carried in our boxes, arranged them by category, and announced that we’d come to distribute new socks and care letters from around the world.

A charge of excitement rose up from the sad, stationary groups of people huddled on mats or curled up under blankets. They came over. “For us?” one asked. “Finally, socks!” another cried out, and that word spread quickly through the ranks and people began pouring in from side entrances and doorways we hadn’t previously noticed.

. . .

An old man with a face stretched tight like a lizard’s had fallen into a hole cracked through his house by the earthquake. Then, the tsunami hit. He couldn’t pull himself free of the hole. Trapped, he knew he was going to die as the water rose up his body, over his feet then knees then thighs then waist then belly then chest. “This is it,” he thought, but the water stopped. An odd calm settled across the surface of the water inside his home. Submerged in it, he gazed across the ocean in his room, motionless and numb and alone, not dead but not sure about life anymore. For two days he remained like that. The water receded and he shivered until he was dry, then shivered more in the cold. Finally, a helicopter arrived and pulled him up through a hole in the roof above him. He arrived at the shelter by himself with just the seawater-soaked clothes on his body. Everything else washed away. He asked if he could take two pairs of socks. I said he could take ten.

was talking with a friend who works fundraising desk job at MSF and she said that part of the problem with allocating help and funds is that a lot of this is long term fixes that MSF doesn't do. Like there's people who need help but there's not people who need rescue a week later. There's the living and the dead. Which reminds me of 9/11 in the city; I spent the day with thousands of people standing in front of st vincents trying to give blood or offer sweat labor and their was no one to give blood to and there was nothing to be done.

Was watching 'Summer Wars' today, and parts where there was a threat to a nuclear power station was :(

haven't watched this yet, heard it was extraordinary
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3a7_1301163352

yeah i watched that one earlier this evening, utterly unspeakale

damn, that is unreal

o_O http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/27/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1

way not to be alarmist, cnn

Shutting them down.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12903725

I mean, they've already been shut down but now they're scraping them.

As if they had any choice at this point. Those reactors 1-4 were toast already.

As I've told my wife, however they spin their efforts to bring this situation under control, until the situation is actively improving, it is guaranteed to be actively getting worse. There is no stable place between these alternatives. So far, nothing they've tried has started to improve the situation, afaics.

Yes, and it's kinda of bleakly funny how it was on every front page when the situation looked like it was getting under control and now it just seems to be getting worse it's back on page 5.

There were pictures released yesterday of the reactors and it was pretty dismal... i mean, on one hand the reactors aren't billowing radioactive steam and spoke into the atmosphere anymore, now it's far more sinister, the megagallons of cooling water has run off back into the ocean with insanely high levels of radiation, and the fuel rods of reactor #2 "may have" melted down (oozed? blobbed?) through the bottom of the containment chamber.

spoke = smoke

13,300 tons of radioactive water now surround the facilities...

.....

Breaking: Govt considers increasing evacuation zone to 40km radius from Fukushima Daiichi after harmful radiation surges detected.

can I just say that the CNN coverage of this I saw last night was bordering on weird nationalist/racist kinda stuff, weird
"exposes" about working conditions and such... like we did any better with Katrina.

Nobody cares anymore but the radiation damage is getting worse and spreading (air/sea):

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20110401p2g00m0dm010000c.html

I care... Been reading all of your updates, I just don't always know what else to say except wow/fuck/holy crap this is scary.

I don't like to think where this is headed. Seems like the numbers get revised up everyday, and TEPCO looks worse and worse.

Heard a story on NPR this morning about why there didn't appear to be any looting (or confirmed cases of it being rampant)...and I sort of felt annoyed that they were trying to create a story when there are actual story lines, huge story lines already. I dunno, I was tired too..

Am all over the place tonight but hopefully at some point someone will look back at this and roast US news networks for their useless scaremongering reporting...and thank god for people who are actually trying to report science.

There actual was a pretty big looting scandal yesterday, an ex NBP (pro baseball) player got caught looting in Sendai with 3 other accomplices. The article is not in English though.

http://www.sponichi.co.jp/society/news/2011/03/31/kiji/K20110331000539860.html

Really bad quick g-translate:

... 30 km area of ​​primary wire theft arrest yuan player Softbank
For stealing utility pole wires were damaged by retreating indoors in areas within 30 km from the first nuclear power plant in Fukushima homeless police on suspicion of theft police Minami Souma, Fukushima, a former player Ina suspect Tatsuya Fukuoka Softbank Hawks (22) from three that 31 people had been arrested, OK.

According to police, three people, "Hoshisa did it for money," and that the suspect admitted.

Ina suspects in 2006, was named third round of the draft in high school, high school Oumi (Shiga) and joined the Softbank. Resigning to accept a notice outside forces in 2007.

The three suspects arrested at around 3 pm on December 30 at 1:40 at City Haramachiku Minami Souma, about 10 meters from the utility pole damaged wires dangling to the ground (equivalent to 9330 yen market), suspected of stealing.

The site has been ordered to evacuate areas indoors. 110 men and passers-by, an officer is 取Ri押Saeta 駆Ke付Keta.

http://www.topics.or.jp/data/news/worldMain/2011/03/PN2011033101001232.-.-.CI0002.jpg

from my understanding, it seemed like TEPCO acted in the first couple of days w/ the idea of possibly saving the plant? I wonder what would have happened if they had decided to shutter the plant from the start.

Here's a graphical overview of the current situation:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12911190

sanpaku

oops....

Was just trying to search for a link upthread from the Ministry of Education etc. They have the most useful maps of the how extensive fallout has been:

http://i53.tinypic.com/2myvwgw.gif

That one cluster of four monitoring points (32, 33, 79, 81) on an uninhabited, uncultivated mountainside some 21 km NW of Fukushima 1 were the most significant off plant site radiation, peaking as high as 150 μSv per hour about a week ago. There must have been a local rainfall after one of the hydrogen explosions.

Not that this is surprising but...

BREAKING

Radioactive water from damaged Japan nuclear plant is leaking into the Pacific Ocean, officials tell CNN.

Regulator Says Radioactive Water Leaking Into Ocean From Japanese Nuclear Plant
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON
Published: April 2, 2011

TOKYO — Highly radioactive water is leaking directly into the sea from a damaged pit near a crippled reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, safety officials said Saturday.

Related:
Reactor Core Was Severely Damaged, U.S. Official Says (April 2, 2011)
Contaminated Water Escaping Nuclear Plant, Japanese Regulator Warns (March 29, 2011)
Marine Life Faces Threat From Runoff (March 29, 2011)
Japan’s nuclear regulator said that workers discovered a crack about eight inches wide in the pit, which lies between the No. 2 Reactor and the sea and holds cables used to power seawater pumps.

The operator of the plant said that air directly above the water leaking into the sea had a radiation reading of more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Although higher levels of radiation have been detected in the ocean waters near the plant, the leak discovered Saturday is the first identified direct leak of such high levels of radiation into the sea. Earlier Saturday, Mr. Nishiyama had said that above-normal levels of radioactive materials were detected about 25 miles south of the Fukushima plant, much further than had previously been reported.

The pit was filled with four to eight inches of contaminated water, said the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company. It was unclear where that water was coming from. Highly radioactive water has also been discovered in the reactor’s turbine building in the past week.

Workers will try to patch up the crack with concrete, the company said.

Saturday’s announcement of a leak came a day after the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima plant had suffered a 33 percent meltdown. He cautioned that the figures were “more of a calculation.” Speaking from Washington, Mr. Chu also said that roughly 70 percent of the core of Reactor No. 1 had suffered severe damage.

The crisis at the nuclear plant has overshadowed the recovery effort under way in Japan since the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami hit the northeastern coast on March 11. Earlier Saturday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan made his first visit to the region since last month’s disaster, where he promised to do everything possible to help. His tour came a day after asking Japan to start focusing on the long hard task of rebuilding the tsunami-shattered prefectures.

“We’ll be together with you to the very end,” Mr. Kan said during a stop in Rikuzentakata, a town of about 20,000 people that was destroyed on March 11. “Everybody, try your best.”

Dressed in a blue work jacket, Kan also visited with refugees stranded in an elementary school and then visited a J-Village about 20 miles south of the disabled nuclear plant. The training facility has been turned into a staging area for firefighters, Self-Defense Forces and workers from Tokyo Electric, which owns the nuclear reactors.

Despite the massive destruction in Iwate, Miyagi and other parts of northeastern Honshu, the largest and most populous of Japan’s islands, the government has also been battling to gain control of the damaged nuclear station. Tokyo Electric has struggled to find a place to dump water that has been contaminated during efforts to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools.

On Saturday, contaminated water was transferred into a barge to free up space in other tanks on land. A second barge also arrived.

Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata and Chika Ohshima contributed reporting.

there it is

Crack in concrete called source of radioactive water leaking into sea
By the CNN Wire Staff
April 2, 2011 3:19 a.m. EDT

An 8-inch crack is detected in a concrete-lined basin near the No. 2 reactor, a utility official says
Water, believed to be highly radioactive, can be seen leaking from that location into the Pacific
Authorities have been trying feverishly to explain a spike in radiation in seawater off the plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from a cracked concrete sump near the No. 2 reactor, an official with the plant's owner said Saturday.

Water from the two-meter deep, concrete-lined basin could be seen escaping into the sea through a roughly 20-cm (8-inch) crack, an official the Tokyo Electric Power Company told reporters Saturday afternoon. But the company could not explain how the water was getting into the sump, which is a pit in which liquid collects.

Radiation levels in the pit have been measured over 1,000 millisieverts per hour, or more than 330 times the dose an average resident of an industrialized country receives in a year. Utility company officials said Saturday that the plan was to to fill the sump with concrete in order to stop the leakage.

Authorities have been working feverishly to explain a sharp spike in contamination in seawater measured just off the plant, which is located 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Tokyo. The company has retracted some alarmingly high readings in recent days, and Japanese regulators said Saturday that new figures were being reviewed to ensure their accuracy.

TEPCo's answer to all this is to just pump concrete over the site after they attempt to remove the fuel rods... which won't be pretty.

I'd wager that this is equal to Chernobyl scale now... What are you hearing Sanpaku?

jesus christ

for every day of "x is contained/not leaking/whatever" its a new day of "the thing that was under contol is actually, well, fucked"

sorry to state the obvious.

that whole May 2012 thing might not be far wrong, fuck

this made me happy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12944317

They should get BP on the case re: that underwater crack.

I'd wager that this is equal to Chernobyl scale now

When you consider that Chernobyl was a massive fire burning in tonnes of graphite (think: coal) stoked by a molten core of radioactive material, sending columns of smoke and steam into the upper atmosphere laden with heavy isotopes, which fell out more than 1000 km away, then I reckon Fukushima hasn't hit that scale of a nuclear catastrophe, yet. We need to give it more time.

From the latest status report

Radiation level: 0.83mSv/h at the south side of the office building, 131 μSv/h at the Main gate, 59 μSv/h at the West gate, as of 15:00, Apr. ２nd.
Radiation dose higher than 1000 mSv was measured at the surface of water accumulated on the basement of Unit 2 turbine building and in the tunnel for laying piping outside the building on Mar. 27th.

For comparison, Chernobyl first responders were exposed to 200000 mSv / hr, and horses on an island 4 km downstream on the Pripyat were exposed to 150-200 Sv / hr and died. So if the plant gate and 4 km distant island are considered comparable, the contamination just outside plant grounds was (at present) 1.1 million times greater at Chernobyl than at Fukushima.

As of 3 or 4 days ago, there were three Fukushima responders who were exposed to radiation doses that will increase their lifetime cancer risk by around 10%, but not enough to cause acute radiation sickness. Everyone else working at the plant was also exposed to radiation, but at much lower doses. It all adds up, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if the total premature death-toll was ultimately in the 2 digits.

Rule of thumb with fission products is its not too bad to be in the same room with them (skin will stop alpha particles), but do not ingest or inhale. As for 137Cs and 90Sr in the Pacific (where the majority of the reactor contaminants have and will probably continue to fall/leak), I wouldn't cast lines from Fukushima piers but the Pacific is a big volume and dilution matters. I don't know if radionuclides are concentrated in predatory fish as dioxin-like compounds and methylmercury are. Those scared me enough to forgo all apex predators (swordfish, mackerel, tuna) years before I became vegan.

Longer term (over the next decade), I'd expect spent fuel from reactors #1-#4 to be removed to other storage facilities, and the reactor buildings (outside the enclosures) knocked down and covered in concrete. The south side of the Fukushima 1 plant will be closed to all but scientific monitoring. Planned reactors #7 & #8 may still be built on the north side, but in 2025 rather than 2014. There will be a restricted access zone maybe 2 km in diameter north of the town of Tsushima 20 km northwest of the plant, where there was a localized fallout peak possibly due to a rainfall after the building #1 and #3 explosions (150 μSv at peak, 38 μSv now).

Thanks for your perspective, Sanpaku. Hard to work against my own built up fear of nuclear disaster...so easy to fly into panic mode even when I try to be pragmatic.

Dunno where I'd be without this thread.

Just noticed that I dropped my first line, which would have read:

At present, the dimension of the Fukushima plant accident is orders of magnitude smaller than Chernobyl, but also orders of magnitude greater than Three Mile Island.

I didn't mean to give an impression of trivializing Fukushima. The news just seems to get worse and worse, largely as other reactors are brought into fray (#1: chemical explosion, #3: chemical explosion, #4: spent fuel rods exposed, #2: cracked containment vessel). The only consolation is that Fukushima has run out of operational reactors for mishaps to happen to.

http://vimeo.com/21731200

umm can someone reassure me about this please.

Matt, I saw that earlier. I don't disagree with any of it, and Mr. Gundersen is very highly qualified.

I would note that:

1) the contaminated zone around the plant is highly irregular. There are areas 20 km/6 mi due West and South of the plant itself that aren't that bad (about 1/6th of the radiation airline crews are exposed to throughout their careers). There is a spot 22-24 km NW which is higher (presently 6 times aircrew exposure). There won't be any rice from those few paddies for decades. I think the issue was those two major hydrogen explosions, releasing mostly shorter lived fission products in the vented reactor vessel steam, were carried by a NW wind to fall in precipitation. Fortunately for Japan, this latitude gets mostly winds toward the Pacific.

2) 200 tons water / day in doesn't mean 200 tons / day of radionuclides out. Iodine and strontium are heavier than water, so like the deposits around an uncleaned teapot they are more likely to be left behind. I suspect Mr. Gundersen would agree with the assessment: short-lived contamination will make the immediate environs (plant grounds) and small stretches where early steam venting products fell unhealthy, and the continued apparent leak of heavy products like plutonium at reactor #2 is a serious problem for coastal sea water in the immediate vicinity.

3) At the moment, I haven't read about any nsoluble problems. Tokyo Electric Power will go into receivership given their leverage and the cleanup costs, but a Japanese government that can pave all their rivers and beaches could also consider entombing part of the Fukushima Dai-ichi site a "stimulus program".

4) It's still strictly a Japanese problem, especially now that ground-level coolant leakage is the main issue. The innumerate anchors on CNN may still stir panic and ratings, but the numbers speak for themselves.

It's likely that the next breath I take will contain at least one atom of plutonium (most likely from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s/1960s). But every breath I've taken since birth has had that, plus a few atoms Voltaire or T. Jefferson or Julius Caesar exhaled. Fortunately, I don't live in a home with exposed brick interior, where I'd be exposed to thousands of times as much radiation (from radon). We live with the stuff every day, and if normal background didn't cause you sleepless nights a month ago, a Chernobyl that increases global background a few percent, or a Fukushima that increases it a small fraction of a percent, shouldn't perturb you.

--

As an aside, I'd like to note that nearly all the Japan-wide economic disruption is due to fuel shortages, and these were caused primarily by motorists filling up their tanks following the earthquake. As in other nations (I only have the numbers for the U.S.), the empty volume in vehicle fuel tanks is larger than the working volume of all the pipelines, distribution centers and retail storage. All it takes to shut down a motorized economy is much of the population filling up simultaneously.

that's interesting, was not aware
feels a little like the old "everyone in china jumps off a chair at the same time" WMD story

fyi, Mr. Gunderson's wife is named Margaret. I really want to know if she went by "Marge" before or after Fargo came out.

the part of the video that really alarmed me was when he mentioned the study about exposed fuel rod pools and the ensuing lung cancer rates. The idea of a hundred thousand Japanese people suffering the terrible fate of lung cancer death is tough to handle.

But I guess the fuel rod pools being completely exposed is still just a small possibility at this point?

Breaking:
Kyodo: Radioactive iodine 7.5 million times legal limit found in seawater near Reactor 2.

i hate how i never know what any of these terrifying breaking news announcements mean to the people living nearby and to the environment.

Relax it's only the equivalent of getting 9000 x-rays in 1/10th of a second or sticking your head in a microwave for 30 minutes...

you mean sextuple popcorn?

Given the confusion about radiation doses it's not really that helpful to make statements about exposure to radioactive iodine being equivalent to sticking your head in a microwave is it? They're not equivalent in any way whatsoever, microwaves are nonionizing radiation and act by heating biological tissue, whereas radioactive iodine exposure increases your risk of getting thyroid cancer.

seriously