Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants

zapperzero

Making new holes in the RPV to install piping would be difficult.

jlduh

An article describing the situation, and a picture of what you describe (they eat with their suits...). No more a plant but a "battlefield" as one worker describes it...

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/04/20/...e-workers.html


Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/04/20/...#ixzz1LQjG0NFE

rowmag

Yes, thanks, I will do that from now on.

jlduh

Technical details on ventilation installation at reactor N°1 building:

http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2011050300567

RealWing

If this is a live feed - then what is burning????

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/youtube_live/

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Danuta

They have showers but not enough of them and they are not being used in frequency they are supposed to. More are going to be built in May. "Messed up" is putting it mildly.

"Workers other than senior TEPCO officials work four days on and take two days off. During the four-day work period, they are unable to take showers or bathe although they sweat heavily in radiation-protective gear, the doctor said. ---Kyodo news

imandylite

Full Live Feed:

Fukushima Live Feed

Has full sound as well (nice waves crashing on shoreline and birds squawking as they fly by)

But - whenever something interesting occurs the live feed fails! Oh, and don't confuse failure with poor visibility - a problem I have seen with some commentators on some sites.

Jorge Stolfi

I think the poster was referring to the yellow thing that is barely visible behind the twisted steel framework.

The damage to that building does suggest that something small but heavy smashed obliquely through the roof and south wall, and came to rest right where that hypothetical yellowish thing seems to be.

Jim Lagerfeld

Apologies if this has already been posted but here is TEPCO's plan to get reactor number one under control, with timeline and diagrams showing how they plan to recalibrate the sensors and jury-rig a closed loop cooling line.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110504e13.pdf

zapperzero

In the TBS/JNN webcam feed
http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi.../l/-ZPYlazljME
the right-most building appears to me to be leaning towards the right side. I added guidelines to a cropped screen cap to illustrate. The building next to it seems reasonably straight.

Was it always like this (post-explosion)? Am I seeing things?

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AntonL

This livecam is some 13 km away from fukushima, very strong telephoto lens is used and these do tend to show barrel or pin-cushion distortion. You have just re-discovered the pin-cushion phenomena. Once you factor away the distortion of the lens then you can make a judgement on the verticality of the building,

Susudake

Greetings all. I've been following this forum for a couple of weeks, and now that I've signed up I'd first like to thank all of you who are devoting time and sharing your expertise with us non-scientists. This seems to be about the only active forum keeping up to date on developments. Even theoildrum.com has dropped the subject.

I have little technical expertise but do have many years experience living in Japan, so I hope to be able to raise some awareness on the cultural/social side of things. That will mean more criticism than praise, for though I love many things about Japan this crisis is exposing--as it would anywhere--the weaknesses and faults of Japanese society.
My motivation isn't to bash Japan but to--I hope--clarify misunderstandings, since, IMO, few if any countries in the world are more "familiar" yet less understood than Japan. It's a continually perplexing place so those of you with actual experience living here (sorry to delineate but so many outsiders have huge misconceptions about Japan) feel free to correct my assumptions/observations.

To begin with the issue of the workers. Yes, it's deplorable how they're being treated, but not a surprise. Japanese society is so hierarchical that worker bees are expected to be pretty much just that--work their stingers off, and not complain regardless of what they have to deal with. The group is everything, so people raised like this put themselves last; but at a certain point, the instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and then finally they'll resist further exploitation. In this sense, there's a kind of brutality, a lack of compassion for individuals, that Westerners can find hard to comprehend.

Speaking to the bigger picture, my opinion after watching this unfold over the last two months is that this is a gigantic mess that's being mostly papered over. IMO leaving it up to the Japanese government and TEPCO to take care of is a huge mistake; their no. 1 goal is managing damage not to the plant but to their reptutations, political futures, and bottom line. So far no one on the international stage is willing or able to make a call for international intervention, but this is exactly what's necessary IMO (and I know that opinion is worth about .0000001 yen).

And most of the Japanese populace (also long-term foreign residents) seem too drugged up on hi-tech toys to realize or perhaps care about the scary potentialities at play right now. I see that around me this very moment as I type (though I will be leaving soon, better to be labelled a "flyjin" than be a down-winder if things go south--or south west as the case may be).

It's good to see other Japanese speakers/readers helping out with translations, as time permits I'll contribute there what i can.

Though this is a science-oriented forum, IMO the social/cultural aspects of this or any science "project" are inseparable from the technical aspects, and so my hope is that by some of us contributing what insights we can about the former we might speed progress towards the necessary technical solutions. I hope the scientists here and elsewhere will get active politically---in the sense of making their voices heard--because without a better political response to this I hope for the best but fear the worst.

Pardon my long rambling first post, I will try make subsequent ones more concise and coherent.

rowmag

Welcome aboard, Susudake. (Though I'm a relative newbie here myself.)
Glad to see more local residents signing up.

Just as a note, so you don't accidentally get your posts pulled, this thread is for technical discussions. There are a couple of other threads devoted to political and management aspects:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=486089
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=493101

Looking forward to your input!

AntonL

The one thing I do not understand why men are put at risk to install a close loop air scrubbing system into unit 1. Surely the additional radiation released to the environment by venting and purging unit 1 to atmosphere is minimal compared to that what is released by units 2, 3 and 4 on a continues basis. Is this a case of the regulators and overseers being too zealous and not practical?

jim hardy

found video of a fire truck spraying unit 3, that little building is right next to the car they filmed from. Yellow object looks like a concrete wall inside the tin roofed building.
i think it's same video where another post showed u3 refueling crane , in rubble on north side of unit and it's pretty clear.

sorry for the board clutter.

TCups

Not aware of a specific conversion factor for infants vs. adults. In the fetus and infants, before complete development of the nervous system, the biological effects of hypothyroidism are much more severe than in adults. If thyroid hormone is not present, neurological and physiological development is severely retarded, resulting in cretinism.

(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretinism )

Also, the volume of thyroid tissue at risk in the fetus or infant would be much less than in an adult, so, the amount of absorbed radiation (ie, I-131) needed to induce significant hypothyroidism would be, relative to an adult, much less.

rowmag

Updated sub-drain isotope measurements through 5/3:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu...es/110503o.pdf

(For criticality-watch fans.)