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[Phys-l] Japan situation : information, or lack thereof



I recommend NHK World. The information there is broader, deeper, and
more timely than anything I've seen from other sources.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/

Another source is NISA : Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. I found
some details here that I could not find elsewhere. Alas the reports
are not very timely.
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/

At the following site, the information is remarkably scanty and remarkably
untimely:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/

I'm not saying I trust any of the above. I'm just saying that the stories
don't get any better when they are excerpted, delayed, and misquoted by
the usual reporters and pundits.

If you are having trouble finding good information, you are not alone.
The Prime Minister cannot get straight answers from TEPCO, and he's
none too pleased about it:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_18.html

It's possible the TEPCO guys don't fully understand what they're dealing
with. Whatever they do know, they're not telling us.

By way of precedent: The guys at Three Mile Island didn't know there
had been a meltdown, not until some 24 hours after the fact.

==============

NISA provides the following remarkable document
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110315-1.pdf

It indicates that in reactor #1 and reactor #3, seawater was being
pumped into the primary containment vessel -- outside the main
reactor pressure vessel. Wow. I reckon they wouldn't be doing
that unless all attempts to get water into the reactor core had
failed, including:
-- failure of the primary working fluid circuit
-- failure of the backup core cooling system
-- failure of the second backup core cooling system

I am not an expert, but I strongly suspect that filling the
primary containment with water is not just abnormal, more like
unprecedented and risky. So as of 24 hours ago, it looked
like reactor #1 and reactor #3 were in serious trouble ... on
track for a full-scale meltdown, possibly followed by a steam
explosion that would shatter the primary containment.

(AFAICT none of the media have picked up on this remarkable
situation. They've been showing diagrams of seawater flowing
into the reactor vessel only.)

As of now, however, it appears that reactor #2 is in the most
trouble, including possibly some kind of breach of its primary
containment vessel. Note that the so-called toroidal suppression
pool is part and parcel of the primary containment.
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/bwr-cycle.gif

And then there is the fire in unit #4. I didn't see that coming.
Units 4, 5, and 6 were supposedly already safely shut down, long
before the earthquake. Evidently the fire resulted from a LOCA
(loss of coolant accident) in the spent fuel holding pool. That's
an expensive reminder of how dangerous routine nuclear waste is.

==================

There has been some speculation that the recent problems could be
attributed to continuing "plant blackout" i.e. lack of sufficient
power to operate the pumps and control systems. However, according
to TEPCO documents such as
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031311-e.html
there is plenty of power available from the grid, and has been since
the day after the earthquake. This implies that the plant was well
and truly damaged early on -- in ways that have not been explained --
and that operators have not yet been able to overcome the damage.

==================

There was previously some discussion of this site:
http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

That post was deleted, but not before thousands of people made copies.
A copy of the original version can be found here:
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/

A heavily edited version is now hosted on an MIT-operated site.
http://mitnse.com/
Among other things, they seem to have edited out the conclusion:
"The plant is safe now and will stay safe."

The MIT nuclear scientists and engineers still haven't figured out how
to calculate earthquake magnitudes correctly. And they still seem to
think the secondary containment structure is "supposed to keep the weather
out, but nothing in".

It just cracks me up when MIT Research Scientists and similar "experts"
confidently reach conclusions that cannot possibly be true. Untold
thousands of people thought the original author was an expert. According
to his own web page:
http://lean.mit.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=845&Itemid=816
Josef is the author of the essay “Why I’m not worried about Japan’s
nuclear reactors”. It was an email he sent to his family in Japan.
When his cousin posted it on his blog, it went viral.

Josef is working hard with a team from MIT to provide an appropriate
response to the interest the post has generated. The original blog
will be migrated to an MIT site, managed by a team of experts from
MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. The link will be
posted here when it becomes available.

Josef is not a nuclear scientist or engineer. He is a mechanical
engineer by training, working on product development processes with
MIT's Lean Advancement Initiative and the MIT-KFUPM Center for Clean
Water and Energy.

Please direct all media inquiries to MIT's News Office.