Fukushima International Association Stops Reporting Iitate Radiation Figures

The air measurement of radiation in Iitate, Japan, which remains stubbornly high compared to other areas at 2.59 microsieverts per hour, was routinely published here at the English version of the Association's website through September 9, 2011:

As of September 10th, Iitate has been de-listed from the report, along with three other reporting points:

Fukushima Radiation Hysteria Lives on at Naked Capitalism and Washington's Blog

The latest example is here.

For a self-described moderate, Yves sure does showcase a lot of left-liberalism, conspiracy theory, anti-capitalism and fear-mongering.

I can't take her claim to moderation seriously. I think it's meant to deceive. She's obviously working for the other side, so much so that for her, even socialist Bernie Sanders is a Quisling.

Maybe she's a moderate communist: Who else would link to Gorbachev's NYT defense of Russia's war in South Ossetia?

Real Clear Politics' Image of Obama Doesn't Match The Video

Are they having just a little too much fun?

We do that, but should they?

Seen here:

'And the glory of the Lord shone round about him.'

Radiation of 10 Sieverts Per Hour Detected Between Reactors 1 and 2 at Fukushima

The measurements were made yesterday and reported here and here.

Just 2 sieverts in an hour can be fatal.

Treating Radioactive Water at Fukushima is Not Going Well

Components made in the US and France have been able to treat only 2,000 tons of approximately 110,000 tons of radioactive water.

More water storage tanks are being installed while efforts continue to improve removal of radioactive cesium.

As presently configured, the systems work for about five hours instead of for weeks at a time, and remove only 10 percent of the radiation.

Story here.

Anonymous Eyewitness Fukushima Workers Allege Quake Caused Meltdowns, Not Tsunami

The Atlanticwire.com has the long story here, including testimony from three different workers:

 “I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.”

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.” (first worker)

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

“There were holes in them [the walls of Unit 1]. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.” (worker two)

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion that was almost deafening. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’” (worker three)

Worker three, quoting a supervisor: “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.”

It's a little odd that the story concludes with this statement:

[S]haking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s [sic] approved design specifications.

Three readings from TEPCO's own report of the seismic data, updated June 16, 2011, contradict this statement for Units 2, 3, and 5, and Unit 1 got very close to not just its E-W limit, but also its N-S, which would cohere with its geographic position at the plant, bearing the brunt of the forces from the north, and sharing in the record-setting forces from the east:

Workers fleeing west before the tsunami hit were reported here to have heard a radiation alarm sounding at a point 1.5 km distant from reactor Unit 1.

Fukushima Prefecture Residents Have Absorbed 3.2 MilliSieverts Between March and May

According to this story.

The total is over 3 times the annual limit, in just 2 months, while Americans typically get 6.2 millisieverts per year from natural background radiation, air travel, and medical diagnostic scans.

Levels of radiation in the air in Fukushima have declined steadily, but concentrations of radiation in soil and water have contaminated food which residents are urged to avoid.

Residents of Iitate and Kawamata had their food and urine tested in the study.

Fukushima City Checks Radiation at Over 1000 Sites, 6 Are Above 3.4 MicroSv/Hr

The city itself is 60 km inland from the nuclear power plant on the coast.

Reported here.

The levels are over 30 times normal, three months and counting since the accident.

Aging US Nuke Plants: 48 of 65 Sites With Tritium Leaks, Rusting Underground Systems

The AP has a long and detailed accounting here of its investigation of radioactive contamination of groundwater from leaks at 75 percent of the US nuclear power sites where 104 aging reactors routinely get re-licensed by an industry-compliant US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, despite mounting evidence of problems associated with deteriorating underground infrastructure.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that much of what is rusting underground would be depended upon to bring critical cooling water to the plants in an emergency, but they don't routinely test it or inspect it.

Meanwhile, 110,000 tons of cooling water contaminated with radioactivity has piled up at Fukushima in Japan and threatens to go to sea unless operators can get a de-contamination facility working properly.

Neither this nor our own problems with nuclear power have done much to move our feckless leaders in either party, while Barack Obama enjoys a very cozy relationship with GE head Jeff Immelt, whose company built many of the units in question, including the ones which have melted down in Japan. 

Too busy golfing.

Fukushima Cooling Water Requirements Total 500 Tons Per Day

The water gets contaminated with radioactivity and must be stored on site. A new system to decontaminate this water was unsuccessfully tested on Friday.

NHK World reports here:

Contaminated water is increasing by 500 tons a day as fresh water is continuously being injected into the reactors to cool them down.

The storage facilities for the contaminated water are filling up and a delay in restarting the system could cause the water to overflow [into the sea] in about a week.

A story via Reuters here says 110,000 tons of the stuff has already accumulated since 3/11 and that space is running out.

Top 5 Radiation Hot Spots of 50 Air Measurement Points Inside Fukushima 20 km Zone

Okuma town is the hardest hit at points 2.5 to 5 km distant from the nuclear power plant:

Koirino 93.9 microSv/hour

Ottozawa 68.4 microSv/hour

Kumagawa 41.2 microSv/hour

Shimonogami 35.6 microSv/hour.

Futaba town, 5 km distant, also has many points with high readings, the highest of which is:

Nagatsuka 30.8 microSv/hour.

The measurements were made June 3 and reported here.

Normal readings would be more like 0.11 microSv/hour.

It's been three months since the tsunami and meltdowns.

Radiation in Iitate, Japan, is Down to 2.69 Microsieverts Per Hour

Per the June 8th report of environmental radiation in the districts of Fukushima Prefecture, here.

The reading remains the highest of the 13 reporting locations and is roughly 24 times normal for the area.

Robot at Fukushima Reactor 1 Finds Crevice in Floor, Steam and Highest Radiation Yet Measured in Air Pouring From It

NHK World has the story here:

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.

Tokyo Electric Power Company inspected the inside of the No.1 reactor building on Friday with a remote-controlled robot.

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

That's an astounding number, also expressed as 3 to 4 sieverts per hour. See this series of charts to appreciate the significance of the level, which is deadly:

It seems pretty clear that the earthquake damaged the floor of the reactor building, causing the crevice. And it also seems pretty clear that the water which has had to be supplied continually to the core to cool it has been leaking out, along with melted fuel materials, from holes caused in the pressure vessel by the meltdown and out onto the floor and into the crevice. Or something close to that.

A monumental mess.

Holes/Cracks in Fukushima Reactor Pressure Vessels/Containments Estimated at 3-10 Centimeters

So reported NHK World on Wednesday, here:

Tokyo Electric Power Company analyzed the changes in pressure levels inside the pressure and containment vessels to gauge the scope of the damage.

TEPCO said the analyses show that holes in the Number 1 reactor containment vessel amounting to 3 centimeters in total may have formed 18 hours after the quake. ...

The utility said holes and cracks equivalent to 10 centimeters in diameter may have formed in the Number 2 reactor's containment vessel about 21 hours after the quake. ...

TEPCO said these results were obtained through data calculations, and that it has yet to confirm whether such holes actually exist.

Presumably high radiation conditions near the reactors continue to prohibit the actual physical inspections which would confirm such estimates and calculations.

Fukushima Waste Water Treatment Facility is Leaking

So says this report, which indicates that the water in question had been transferred from the Unit 3 reactor's turbine building and tunnels earlier in the week.

The surface radiation of the water was said to be 70 millisieverts per hour.

It seems like these people just can't catch a break.

Radiation in Iitate, Japan, at 3.09 Microsieverts Per Hour as of May 25

As reported here, 39 km northwest of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station 1.

Normal for the area would be more like 0.11 microsieverts per hour.

The long term repercussions of a nuclear accident such as this have faded from the news, but they are real, on-going, extremely difficult to mitigate, and costly.

Cheap, safe production of such electricity is cheap and safe until it isn't.

Radiation Conditions at Fukushima Nuclear Power Station on May 23rd

Radiation level: 389 microSv/h at the south side of the office building, 16 microSv/h at the West gate, as of 09:00, May 23rd, 42 microSv/h at the Main gate, as of 10:30, May 21st.

More here.

Because of water leaking from the containments, the fuel in reactors 1-3 continues to be fully or partially exposed to the air.

Need for Cooling Water at Fukushima Reactors Due to Leaks, Not Boil-Off

Leaks in the pressure vessels themselves, where the fuel is. In other words, perhaps three of the reactors are technically in a state of meltdown and breached containment.

This appears to be the conclusion this week, ever since repair of a water gauge has resulted in data showing that the water is disappearing at a faster rate than otherwise expected, and apparently accumulating in the lower levels of the plant, in the turbine buildings. Radiation levels where the water is pooling are said in a Wall Street Journal story to be in the range of 1 to 2 Sieverts per hour. A two hour exposure at such levels would kill you in 30 days.

Scientific American has these details via Reuters:

"There must be a large leak," Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility [TEPCO] told a news conference.

"The fuel pellets likely melted and fell, and in the process may have damaged...the pressure vessel itself and created a hole," he added.

Since the surface temperature of the pressure vessel has been holding steady between 100 and 120 degrees Celsius, Matsumoto said the effort to cool the melted uranium fuel by pumping in water was working and would continue.

VESSEL HAS A HOLE

Based on the amount of water that is remaining around the partially melted and collapsed fuel, Matsumoto estimated that the pressure vessel had developed a hole of several centimeters in diameter.

Read the full story, here.

Fukushima Reactor 1 Melting Fuel Rods Put Small Holes in Pressure Vessel by 3/12

According to a report at NHK World here, and The Wall Street Journal here.

Without quick action to pour on water and keep it on, it would have been much worse. But as it was, it was and is far worse than some realized.

Fukushima Reactor 1: Damage to Pressure and Containment Vessels Now Official

(source)