7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

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

pretty sure Steve was making a joke as opposed to a statement...and given all the misinformation in the media, dare I say I giggled

Kyodo: One type of edible fish (ammodytidae) found in Ibaraki-ken with cesium exceeding legal limit.

7.4 earthquake hits off Japan; tsunami alert issued

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/

Shit!

:-(

7 April 2011 Last updated at 14:50 GMT
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Japan: Tsunami warning for north-east after earthquake
Breaking news

A tsunami warning has been issued for north-eastern Japan after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4.

The tsunami is predicted to have a wave 1m (3ft) high. Those in the warning zone should move to high ground, Japanese TV said.

The area was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami last month which severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The quake struck 40km (28 miles) offshore, the AFP news agency said.

waht

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/140_40.gif
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/Legends/legend.gif

Couldn't be in a worse place for the 9.0's victims/cleanup crew.

:(

Amazing to see how many earthquakes they have in a week though, I'm kinda o_O at that. I mean, I knew it, but I always assumed like tiny, tiny 1-3 magnitude quakes, not regularly 5 or greater.

Oh great, a tsunami of radioactive debris.

Tsunami warning lifted according to BBC.

thank fuck

This morning the Japanese government raised Nuclear Crisis level from 5 to 7
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_05.html

Japanese government are expanding the radiation evacuation zone to 50km from around the melted down Fukushima Daiichi reactors. The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl... but they aren't positive.

Death/Missing toll is approaching 27k people.

One month later, massive aftershock quakes shake Honshu island.

ughghgh

Yesterday there was a huge rally/march in the Tokyo neighborhood of Koenji yesterday in protest of nuclear power and the government's accountability of.

http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/2898/Anti-nuclear-march-Koenji-April-10

6.4 Earthquake earlier today jeopardizing efforts to stabilize critical reactors:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576256150197787470.html

3 part NatlGeo Witness on the 'tube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvC1uvCKlT8

Watched the HD version of this and am still o_O at everything.

BTW, the fuel rods at Fukushima #1 are fully exposed. A cold shutdown is not expected until October at the earliest.

NBD, just a little meltdown, let's all be cool.

Would like to see some sort of estimate of the radiation released from Chernobyl vs. Fukushima-D. 7 weeks is a lot of time to match Chernobyl's one day release, right?

This all dovetails so nicely with the estimated 2 billion dollar pricetag for resealing Chernobyl, btw.

2 bil seems like a good deal, imo

Japan: Land of the rising silence

Junko Yoshida

5/31/2011 7:56 AM EDT

TOKYO – I landed in Tokyo last week – for the first time since the great earthquake and tsunami hit Japan 75 days ago.

While the reason for my visit was to see my aging mother, I arrived with much trepidation— largely driven by what I didn’t know. I had no real feel for the magnitude of impact the recent disaster must have had on the country and its people. Everything I learned about what happened on March 11th — and what I deduced about it — seemed almost theoretical.

Walking through the customs at Narita airport initially calmed me. People, places and things were as efficient, clean and as orderly as always. Nothing at Narita was broken; the whole scene screamed out the Japanese national motto: “Business as usual.”

The rude awakening, however, hit when I attempted to buy a train ticket at the airport. Narita Express trains are running on an irregular schedule, “due to the Great Tohoku Kanto earthquake,” according to a woman at the Japan Railway ticket counter. The next available Narita Express train I could take wasn’t due for three hours. While surprised, I told myself, “Oh, well. So, I’ll take the bus to Yokohama.”

Arriving at Yokohama station after 90 minutes on the bus, I discovered that Japan Railway had stopped running every escalator to every platform at every station. I could either hike up a stairway that looked like it went to the stars, or I could line up at one lonesome elevator — which I did, not because I’m not fit, but because I was schlepping a suitcase. I looked wistfully at a nearby escalator, chained and motionless, bearing a notice that read: “Please cooperate with us in conserving energy.”

In the public rest room at the station, the toilets — thank God — were flushing. Everything seemed normal until I went to dry my hands. Every dryer had a notice, saying: “Please cooperate with us in conserving energy.”

I walked out waving my hands, and resigned to the message of post-tsunami Japan. Forget the little conveniences we’ve all come to take for granted. It’s post-war all over again — and saving energy was everybody’s job, just like it had been in 1946.

Finally installed on a local train, I opened a newspaper. While the Asahi Shimbun had a number of stories related to the quake’s aftermath, the most eye-catching was a large map of Tohoku and Kanto.

It mapped out each village and town affected by the disaster, complete with death tolls, the missing and those evacuated to temporary facilities in each municipality. The newspaper also devotes a sizable space for a list of full names of “Those who passed away.” This has become a regular feature of each newspaper, day in and day out. Clearly, Japanese authorities are still discovering bodies. When those bodies are identified and publicly acknowledged, the newspaper adds a measure of finality.

But the thing that really freaked me out was the daily nuclear report (it looks a lot like a weather forecast map) – listing radiation levels in the air in various cities in Tohoku and Kanto. Again, this is now a regular feature -- both on NHK (Japan’s public broadcast) news, and in the paper.

I learned that Chigasaki, where my mother lives, registered 0.052 microsieverts per hour the day before my plane landed. Although this was a marked difference from the 6.6 microsieverts found in Namie-cho, a town 31 kilometers northwest of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of either number.

I was supposed to feel reassured about the low-level of radiation in the city I was heading for. But then, I also know that there’s no scientific data, at this point, on the impact on human bodies of a low-level dosage of radiation over a long period of time. It’s the unknown that fuels everyone’s fear.

The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) six-reactor complex on Japan’s northeastern coast continues emitting radiation into the air and water. Tepco itself has said it will not be able to bring the three heavily damaged reactors under control until late this year or early next year. That’s the hard reality.

No solutions in sight for containment
While the plant continues to spew radioactivity, Japan’s largest electric power company will be pumping water into the damaged reactors and venting radioactive steam for a year or more. Tepco has built a low-level waste storage facility on the site. But it has no plans to move the waste elsewhere.

More bad news came from Tepco last Thursday [May 27th]. A new leak in a storage container had dumped an additional 60 tons of radioactive water into the environment.

It’s clear that no credible solutions are in sight to contain the deteriorating reactors. No concrete plans are laid out for how to deal with the growing nuclear waste, either.

Look no further than a recent controversy over the radiation exposure limit for schoolchildren in Japan. The government set off an uproar in April when it set a radiation exposure limit of 20 millisieverts per year, the same dosage the International Commission on Radiation Protection recommends for nuclear plant workers.

Under pressure, the Japanese government announced last week that it will pay schools near the Fukushima nuclear plant to remove radioactive topsoil; it re-set the target radiation exposure for schoolchildren at one-twentieth the previous limit.

NHK had reported that before this new policy was announced, one school in Fukushima had jumped the gun and scraped the surface of the radioactive soil on its playground. The school’s quick action and independent thinking seemed laudable. But there was a hitch. They had no place to put the contaminated soil. No farmers could use it and no neighbors wanted it in their backyard. The school was told to keep the heap of radioactive soil in the middle of the schoolyard — for now.

The Japanese may be better prepared for earthquakes than any other country. But this is scant consolation in today’s post-earthquake and tsunami problem — the absence of a plan by the combined leadership of government and industry for the future, especially when it comes to dealing with nuclear energy.

It’s only been a week, but I’m starved for information. This is the big worry.

Or, more accurately put, I worry about the tendency for “self-restraint” among Japanese bureaucrats, government officials, politicians, industry leaders and even some in the academia here to keep disclosure of information at a minimum. Early in the crisis, for instance, the Japanese government had detailed information on radiation levels in towns near the Fukushima nuclear plant. Government officials only released the data via the Internet. The names of town were masked – reportedly to prevent mass flights of panicked people, causing “unnecessary” chaos or confusion in the society.

Similarly, in my humble opinion, Japanese consumers are as guilty as their so-called leaders.

Harmful rumors
“Fuhyo higai” is Japanese term I had never heard until I got here this time. Roughly translated as “harmful rumors,” it discourages anyone from discussing the safety of produce or products originating in affected areas. People who live in the “Fuhyo Higai” belt will be compensated by Tepco and the Japanese government. But it’s almost as though the government would prefer that people don’t know they’re victims until they get their compensation. I understand the need to keep “harmful rumors” from running rampant. But the Japanese consumers and the Japanese press are turning common sense into a moratorium on tough questions. It’s almost eerie.

I can live with fewer pachinko parlors and vending machines on the streets in Japan – both of which were labeled power hogs by the governor of Tokyo. I am OK with fewer neon signs in the Ginza; I am certainly for Japanese companies closing their offices at 4:30 p.m. so that they can turn off lights, sending employees home early and allowing them to work from home. Flex-time might even catch on in Japan.

The Japanese auto and auto-parts manufacturers decided to close on Thursdays and Fridays, operating instead on Saturdays and Sundays from July to September to limit power use during the midweek peak.

Because of the damage to power plants in the eastern part of the country, the government has set a target to cut electricity use by manufacturers by 15% this summer, when demand normally picks up with air-conditioner usage. Certain industries deemed critical to the Japanese economy – such as Japan’s semiconductor sector – are exempt from the regulation. But the nation is united behind the 15 percent conservation target. Most experts I talked to remain confident that Japan can stay in business without any serious power interruptions through the summer.

The Japanese are great at setting, communicating and achieving goals like that 15-percent cut. In contrast, we tend not to discuss, or make plans, or even face up to issues — like the nuclear mess in Fukushima — that require solutions more complicated than the March of Dimes. So, as we worry mutely about Fuhyo-Higai, deplore speculation, and tut-tut worst-case scenarios, little is said in public.

The silence is deafening.

It extends to the big uncertainty about the next big quake. What’s the worst that could happen?

Everyone knows the answer: Tokyo. Masaya Ishida, publisher of EE Times Japan, along with 13 million other people, lives here. He said, “The problem is that we don’t know when the next big one will hit us. It can be three years from now, or 300 years.”

Quiet, Ishida-san! If we don’t talk about it, maybe it will go away.

I liked reading that until I started wondering what the point was. Do official or governments have to start admitting they don't have a clue what's going on and who could die? Immediately after a disaster, they cannot know this, but we, the public, demand reassurance that someone is in control. If not a deity, then our government officials.

Whether they talk about The Big One that'll hit Tokyo or not, they can't prepare for everything, it's just not possible. (the whole of North America should move because the Yellowstone supervolcano will one day erupt, we should all move underground as long as asteroids could hit?) - the simplest option is to not talk about it all until it happens. There's enough artificially created panic that is selling newspapers without them having to remind us that we could die anytime and there's nothing they can do.

Fukushima nuclear plant may have suffered 'melt-through', Japan admits

For when 'melt-downs' just aren't enough...

What I can't tell from that story is why that's a worse outcome that what was known before. How catastrophic is this catastrophe? It doesn't sound even in this worst-ish case, that anyone is much endangered by what's happened.

Good timing... convenient too:

"Japan has more than doubled its initial estimate of radiation released from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in the week after the March 11 tsunami, ahead of the launch of an official probe Tuesday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110607/ts_afp/japandisasteraccidentnuclear_20110607091539

I mean, it's not that the American government is particularly honest about many things, but the Japanese government seems particularly shady with their dealings in this disaster.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

A very informative, if not alarming, article on the current situation, with former nuclear industry senior vice president Arnold Gundersen deeming Fukushima "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind" and estimating it will take around 10-15 years for the reactors to be dismantled. Jesus, I really hope Japan gets through all of this somehow.

Not sure how much of this is already covered upthread, but the last section is definitely news to me.

they need cites on some of the stuff they mention in that article. where are they getting some of the studies and statistics -- have they been published elsewhere? corroborated?

not saying it's not true but it left me w/ more questions than answers.

Don't have much experience with using that website and not sure what the writer's sources are, but it doesn't strike me as something that isn't legitimate or factual.

btw kinda late on this but arnold gundersen, nuclear expert he may be, is also a known for-profit anti nuke campaigner so i'd def take most of what he says w/ at least a little bit of salt

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-12/radioactive-material-found-250km-from-fukushima/3554608

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/251011/full/478435a.html

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2011/10/25/japanese-tsunami-debris-headed-to-the-west-coast/

http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/users/hafner/PUBLIC/TSUNAMI_DEBRIS/GIF_NO_VECTOR_large/movie_tracer.gif