It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The 507-page interim report, compiled by interviewing more than 400 people, including utility workers and government officials, found authorities had grossly underestimated tsunami risks...
...a better response might have reduced the core damage, radiation leaks and the hydrogen explosions that followed at two reactors and sent plumes of radiation into the air, according to the report.
Sadder still was how the government dallied in relaying information to the public, such as using evasive language to avoid admitting serious meltdowns at the reactors, the report said.
The government also delayed disclosure of radiation data in the area, unnecessarily exposing entire towns to radiation when they could have evacuated, the report found.
www.google.com...
RADIATION WATCH 2011
Tepco Cut Backup Power at Fukushima Before Crisis, Sankei Says
By Chisaki Watanabe - Jan 18, 2012 9:15 PM ET
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) disconnected an emergency power source at its Fukushima nuclear plant four months before the earthquake and tsunami in March last year wrecked the station, the Sankei newspaper said.
The supply was cut during maintenance work in November 2010 and wasn’t reconnected, the paper reported, without citing the source of its information.
The backup would have provided power for transmitting temperature and radiation data from monitors near the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s reactors and helped assess the severity of the situation once the main electricity supply was knocked out, the Sankei said.
Tokyo Electric is checking the Sankei report and can’t immediately comment, spokeswoman Ai Tanaka said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Langan at [email protected]
www.bloomberg.com...
Yesterday I participated in an anti-nuclear power demonstration in Yokohama, which took place in conjunction with Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World ... and at this, my fourth demo, I realized how much I enjoy taking pictures of the eclectic group of people--monks, grandmothers, Catholics, college students, a German Green Party politician, and other citizen activists--who gather with the most interesting signs and messages for the world.
Here are some signs and images, with translations as necessary.
A big earthquake is much more likely to hit the Japanese capital, Tokyo, in the next few years than the government has predicted, researchers say.
The team, from the University of Tokyo, said there was a 75% probability that a magnitude 7 quake would strike the region in the next four years.
The government says the chances of such an event are 70% in the next 30 years.
The warning comes less than a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's north-eastern coast.
The last time Tokyo was hit by a big earthquake was in 1923, when a 7.9 magnitude quake killed more than 100,000 people, many of them in fires.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo's earthquake research institute based their figures on data from the growing number of tremors in the capital since the 11 March 2011 quake.
They say that compared with normal years, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of quakes in the Tokyo metropolitan area since the March disaster.
They based their calculations on data from Japan's Meteorological Agency, They said their results show that seismic activity had increased in the area around the capital, which in turn leads to a higher probability of a major quake.
www.bbc.co.uk...
Making Hamaoka a special concern to its opponents is the presence of plutonium. Chubu is the only utility in Japan to have signed a contract to process mixed oxide fuel containing plutonium and uranium with the Sellafield plant in the UK.
The industry’s clout, its collusion with government watchdogs and a largely compliant media have helped smother concerns about this potentially explosive collision of state-of-the-art atomic power with primordial seismic instability
The Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan closed its last running reactor on Saturday, after the March quake left another plant in the north-east leaking radioactive material, its operator said.
Chubu Electric Co shut reactor five on Saturday amid concerns over its location near a fault line in Shizuoka prefecture.
Reactor four was shut down Friday, Japanese media reported.
Reactors one and two have already been decommissioned, and number three is currently shut down for routine maintenance.
[color=Cyan]The most dangerous accident that humanity has ever witnessed is happening but don’t worry, the nuclear power industry is ‘safe’. The elites’ media team will have a hard time double-speaking this one. You will see their editorial hands moving every time you see the word safe.
If you want to close your eyes for a second and imagine what is really going on over in northern Japan just imagine the invisible level of energy and radiation like a hot fire radiating out in 360 degrees of direction, including right down into the ground and the waters below, sending death rays (yeah sure, safe ones) hundreds and now thousands of miles away.
[color=Chartreuse]So powerful is this nuclear firestorm that hundreds of miles away it’s unsafe for the children to be drinking the public water. In twelve days the contamination has spread powerfully into the local area where it is becoming unsafe to live. It’s an invisible fire but a deadly one.
[color=Cyan]Everything is safe to the monsters that have enriched themselves by poisoning humanity and polluting the world. This is a dramatic book about many converging forces that are breaking across the neck of humanity.
[color=FDD017]It really does not help our present world situation that it is mostly psychopaths who roam the top of the human heap and it has always been that way. We have trusted the wrong people and organizations and now we will pay for that huge mistake.
Denial is the name of the toxicity game that industry has played for well over a hundred years. To the chemical industry, then the petrochemical one, on into the pharmaceutical universe and then the atomic one those who make money from toxic substances deny that there is any problem with them in terms of health.
[color=FDD017]Do you think we can relax with the authorities and have confidence that they will get it all under control?
[color=Chartreuse]Can they stabilize the situation?
Or will it get explosively worse?
Originally posted by kdog1982
reply to post by thorfourwinds
I love your elaborate posts, but , and don't be offended, but maybe less is more, if you get my drift.
A more direct approach vs flash and a whole lot of stuff for those with ADHD, if ya know what I mean.
BTW,did you catch on to this FEMA website?
fema.ideascale.com...
Originally posted by Human0815
reply to post by Arbitrageur
I think they just "forget" to find a amount for the final Storage,
When you watch "Into Eternity"
(...)
Japan do not have a Place like this and need to rent Space,
maybe in the U.S. or Australia,
this will be not cheap either,
and most important what is the price for the related Death, Diseases
and the lost of Work Force...
They need to store that Stuff for at least 100.000 Years,
nothing ever existed that stayed so long,
the Pyramids are max. 12-15.000 Years old!
No, no, no - this Stuff is a nasty Stuff
(...)
@ thorfourwinds,
i just want to show you the type of Reports
Tepco need to send when there are broken things like the Pipes:
Regarding the event which leakage of water containing radioactive materials at the water desalination apparatus (evaporative concentration apparatus) of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on December 4, we have received the directive document *1 from NISA of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry "Regarding Response to Leakage of Water Containing Radioactive Materials from Evaporation Concentration Device at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (Direction)."
As for the environmental assessment of the ocean, since the ascertainment of the condition for radioactive material's diffusion is not enough, we only reported the result of monitoring implemented up to date. We will submit the final report to NISA by the end of March, 2012 reflecting the additional analysis results.
End Attachment 1 *The attachment is only available in Japanese.
obfuscate, verb
to make (something) unclear to the understanding i.e., irrelevant matters that only serve to obfuscate the fundamental issue of guilt or innocence.
We have provided a Japanese press release version of the instruction document received from NISA in our Japanese website. However, at this time we reserve the right to not provide an English version due to potential misunderstandings that may arise from an inaccurate rendering of the original Japanese text. We may provide the English translation that NISA releases in our press releases. However, in principle we would advise you to visit the NISA website for timely and accurate information.
Feb 2 (Reuters) - More than 8 tonnes of water have leaked from Japan's stricken nuclear power plant after a frozen pipe burst inside a reactor buiding, but none of the water is thought to have escaped the complex, Kyodo news agency said on Thursday.
Kyodo, quoting the Fukushima plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said the water had leaked from the No.4 reactor when a pipe "dropped off" but that the liquid had all been contained inside the reactor building.
The plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The major leak follows the discovery and plugging of smaller leaks at the same reactor last weekend.
Kyodo quoted Tepco officials as saying the latest leak had been found late on Tuesday night and was stopped by closing a valve. The report did not make completely clear if the leaked water was radioactive but implied it, noting that water inside the No.4 reactor was being used to cool spent fuel rods.
...but none of the water is thought to have escaped the complex...
Kyodo quoted Tepco officials as saying the latest leak had been found late on Tuesday night and was stopped by closing a valve. The report did not make completely clear if the leaked water was radioactive but implied it, noting that [color=Chartreuse]water inside the No.4 reactor was being used to cool spent fuel rods. www.reuters.com...
Unit 4 was shut down and had been in an outage since November 30, 2010.
[color=Cyan]All the fuel was in the spent fuel pool to facilitate reactor pressure vessel shroud work.
The cavity gate was installed, isolating the spent fuel pool from the upper pools. The 4A emergency diesel generator was out of service for planned maintenance, with the 4B emergency diesel generator operable and in standby.
Subsequent analyses and inspections determined that [color=FFF017]the spent fuel pool water levels never dropped below the top of fuel in any spent fuel pool and that no significant fuel damage had occurred. Current investigation results indicate that any potential fuel damage may have been caused by debris from the reactor building explosions.
According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, the [color=Cyan]failure to maintain pools of water that keep the 20 years worth of spent fuel rods cool could cause “catastrophic fires” and turn the crisis into “Chernobyl on steroids.”
The BBC is now reporting that “spent fuel rods in reactors five and six are also now believed to be heating up,” with [color=00FF00]a new fire at reactor 4, where more spent rods are stored, causing smoke to pour from the facility.
“Japanese news agency Kyodo reports that [color=00FF00]the storage pool in reactor four – where the spent fuel rods are kept – may be boiling. Tepco says readings are showing high levels of radiation in the building, so it is inaccessible.”
At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too.
Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that Unit 1’s pool may now be outside.”
[color=00FF00]The rods must be kept cool because otherwise they start to burn and, in the case of reactor number 3, would release plutonium and uranium in the form of vapor into the atmosphere.
“That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without plutonium,” writes Kirk James Murphy.
“We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods from a single holding pool. We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at ground level in a separate building.
[color=Cyan]Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450 fuel rod assemblies. [color=00FF00]The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly destroyed by the tsunami. [color=FFF017]Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods.
This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods.
There have been massive design issues with the Mark 1 nuclear reactor stretching back three decades. As ABC News reports today, “Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing — the Mark 1 — was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.”