Fleep.com/earthquake Has The Most Comprehensive Fukushima Accident Radiation Data

Here is a sample, graphing the differences between the histories of the radiation levels measured at the two gates to the reactor facility, compared with the main building of the complex itself, from March 24th until April 1st:

Note that the radiation in the main building is still close to a full millisievert per hour (1000 microsieverts). You would absorb there in just 6 hours what the average American absorbs in a year.

Radiation in the most sensitive areas of the reactors themselves, and the turbine buildings, has been reported as high as 1000 millisieverts per hour, even now. Expressed in full sieverts, an hour of such exposure equals 1 sievert. 8 of those will kill you very quickly.

When it comes to radiation, distance away is your friend: first the main building, then the main gate, then anyplace else, even Iitate.

Fukushima Reactors 2, 3 and 5 Jolted Beyond Worst Case Projections

As reported here:

Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a jolt stronger than a worst case projection when hit by Japan's largest-ever earthquake March 11, provisional data by the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. showed Friday. ...

According to the data, the lowest underground levels of the Nos. 2, 3 and 5 reactor buildings faced a seismic movement of 550, 507 and 548 gals in the east-west direction, respectively, and each figure exceeded the projected level.


The limits, according to the following data (source), were 438, 441 and 452, respectively:

This means the effect of the 9.0 quake on these reactors was 25%, 15% and 21% beyond the design parameters.

All Four Reactor Cores or Spent Fuel Pools Leak Highly Radioactive Water

So says Kyodo News here:

[H]ighly radioactive water was later found leaking near all four troubled reactor units at the plant.

A day after three workers were exposed to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building, a water pool with similarly highly concentrated radioactive materials was found in the No. 1 reactor's turbine building, causing some restoration work to be suspended, it said.

Pools of water that may have seeped from either the reactor cores or spent fuel pools were also found in the turbine buildings of the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, measuring up to 1 meter and 80 centimeters deep, respectively, while those near the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors were up to 40 cm and 1.5 meters deep.

Recent reports describe two phenomena: surface temperatures on reactor vessels far exceeding the prescribed limits, and the need to keep re-filling the spent fuel pools because of rapid evaporation and/or leakage loss.

Add to these observations the new information that radioactive water is now observed pooling in various places in all four reactor facilities, and the plain statement "Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday it has begun injecting freshwater into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor cores at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant," and it is difficult not to conclude that the nuclear reactors at Fukushima I are themselves damaged and that their spent fuel ponds were cracked in the earthquake and cannot retain water without constant attention to refilling.

This is a disaster for the people of Japan, and a terrible rebuke of the hubris of the nuclear power industry.

Main Radiation Effects at Fukushima I From No. 4 Spent Fuel Cooling Pond

So says Tony Irwin of the Australian National University for France24 here:

"Reactors 5 and 6, they are now in what's called cold shutdown, and the spent fuel cooling ponds are at normal temperatures.

"They are in the sort of situation now we would like to see 1, 2, 3 and 4 in.

"There was already spent fuel in there [before No. 4 was drained and emptied last November] so there was quite a high load of spent fuel in that pond. And that has been giving the main radiation effects on site."


One presumes from that that the high heat coming off the pond kept boiling away the water during the crisis and not that an earthquake related leak in the pond kept drawing down the level.

For the first time I read in the article a concern about all the sea water being poured on the stricken reactors because it thereby becomes radioactive waste.

Where is it all going, ton after ton? To air and back to sea?

Undoubtedly.

Jeff Immelt: Obama's Crony Nuclear Capitalist

Rachel Layne for Bloomberg has a lengthy article about GE's nuclear business, which its chairman Jeff Immelt, was hoping to expand dramatically in India:

General Electric Co. (GE)’s goal of broadening its $1 billion nuclear service-and-parts business with sales of new reactors risks stalling as world leaders reconsider the future of atomic energy.

Governments from Germany, which halted 25 percent of its nuclear-generated electricity, to India, with $175 billion in planned spending by 2030, are reassessing the technology after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled a power plant and raised the threat of a meltdown.

Immelt is the new head of Obama's team of economic advisers, on which he also sat before he replaced Paul Volcker.

He was among numerous American corporate figures who accompanied Obama on his lavish trip to India after the November elections in 2010.

Watch for GE to make a huge contribution after Obama is out of office to his presidential library.

Fukushima Reactor No. 2 Update: Did the Fire Engine Run Out of Fuel?

The UK Daily Mail has these details, reported here:

There were reports that a fire engine pumping water in to the Number Two reactor failed shortly before last night's explosion -- which would have led to an increase in temperature inside the reactor and could have caused the blast. ...

The latest explosion last night is feared to have cracked the main protective barrier around reactor number two at the plant.

The International Atomic Agency said radioactive material is leaking 'directly' into the air from the stricken plant at a rate of 400 millisieverts per hour.  Anyone exposed to over 100 millisieverts a year risks cancer.

Engineers are using sea water to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods.

That is a sign of the desperation of the situation because the corrosive salt water will put the reactors permanently out of action. It is the first time in 57 years that sea water has been used to cool a reactor.

Although the plant’s three working reactors shut down automatically when the magnitude nine earthquake struck on Friday, the cooling systems which keep the radioactive uranium and plutonium fuel rods cool have been hit by a series of failures. ...

'It is too dangerous to go outside and even if they did they would not be able to be transported to a safe place because we have no fuel for our vehicles,' [the mayor of Fukushima City] said.