And i'd like to see if diametrically opposed positions can find a way to discuss without dissing. And i'd especially like to see whether and how pro-nuclear people now view their industry, and how they adjust to this, should i say?, unmitigated disaster?

methinks Japan is fucked. are there other views? methinks the damage might have wider effects than Japan.

Thinking it through, i wanted to have a discussion about the technology, the economics, the social policy... without resorting to a discussion of the biological effects of low-level radiation.

But that's wishful thinking, you can't separate the two.

So on with it, please.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

While the internet appears to be ephemeral it can in reality provide a trace, and we can use this trace to assess exactly what we were being told by the BBC. On 14 March BBC churnalists were reporting the view of 'international nuclear watchdogs' (presumably the IAEA) that there was no sign of a meltdown, balanced by the comment of an unnamed minister that the 'melting of rods' was 'highly likely'. On 27 March the BBC reported that workers were 'trying to cool the reactor core to avoid a meltdown' at a time when we now know that three meltdowns had already occurred. Perhaps strangest of all was the constant repetition of the bizarre phrase 'partial meltdown', as though nuclear fuel could somehow resemble a chocolate fondant pudding.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on June 9 began testing cleaning equipment designed to remove radioactive materials from contaminated seawater around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

A full trial of the equipment was expected to be conducted on June 10, and unless major problems are detected, TEPCO will then begin treating the hundreds of tons of radioactive seawater around the stricken plant. The tests were initially scheduled to start on June 1 but were postponed because of problems with the power supply.

Radioactive seawater will first be pumped into a container and passed through a filter to clear it of algae and other materials. Two tons of zeolite, which absorb cesium, will be placed in the container. The designers of the equipment say the zeolite will absorb 60 to 70 percent of the radioactive cesium in the water. The treated seawater will then be pumped back into the sea.

TEPCO will install two of the cleaning machines, each capable of purifying a maximum of 30 tons of radioactive water per hour.

Talk about a low bar!

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

We Nearly Lost Northern Japan  (an Orange diary):

The Japanese government forced the utility company to flood the reactors; the company wanted to save its investment. But if they hadn't flooded the reactors with seawater, there would have been three giant explosions -- he calls it "three Chernobyls" and northern Japan would have been lost. Radiation is still coming from two breaches in the contaiment vessels. The professor flat out states that "we came this close to losing all of Northern Japan."

On 22 May 2011 Bernard re-posted a comment from Malooga, which struck me as eye-opening.  

Where b Was Wrong On Fukushima

by Malooga
lifted from a comment

Before I say what I am going to say, let me explain a little about my background. I spent a number of years as one of the head trainers in what at the time was the second largest oil refinery in the western hemisphere. In that capacity, I trained operators, and wrote training manuals of the type that b has linked too.  . .  I played a key role in dealing with accidents at our plant -- and there were many -- though obviously none even approaching this in magnitude. . . .

I consider that I know a lot about industrial accidents from a number of different angles,  . . .

Having described his background (in a different industry) he considers accidents as a phenomenon:  

One thing I know for sure, all accidents are political events and financial events involving gargantuan corporations. The larger the event, the truer this is. The safety of workers and the public is subordinate to those facts. That is simply how things work on the planet at this point in time. Workers lives may be insured for $250k and it may be cheaper to "expend" a number of workers, rather then use an intermediary device. It is simple cost-benefit analysis, made simpler if the tax payers are now picking up the tab.

Well, actually we knew this, but it gets grimmer:  

Lest anyone think otherwise after saying this, I am against nuclear power categorically. The fact that a "cold shutdown" requires "hot powered" circulation pumps is Orwellian. An entire oil refinery can be rapidly shut down. Everything is designed with a failsafe mode. In other words, I reject nuclear power from a design point of view even before I consider radiation contamination such as we are seeing, or the geologically long-term unsolved issues of waste storage.

In other words, a nuclear plant has no off switch.  Shutting a plant down requires a large, long-term, exterior source of power.  If exterior power is not available, the plant burns and melts down.  

Now some of us were suspecting that the plants were melting down--especially after the first two explosions, but we didn't know.  People with more technical knowledge did know within fifteen hours of the earthquake that all three operating reactors were melting down, and could "understand" all of the (seemingly bizarre) actions taken by TEPCO in the ensuing days and months.  

Now let's examine what the implications of this awakening means in retrospect.

A. If you have finally figured this out -- when the reactors began melting, you must presume that everyone who knows anything about Nuclear Power knew this immediately. (Unless you think that you are smarter than them; see above) Therefore, they (the plant operators and the government) knew the unprecedented magnititude and danger they were facing within several hours of the earthquake. Therefore, all news, accusations, finger pointing, disclosures, intentional contradictions of story, official lies, etc. have been managed from the start as political events of the highest import by the highest levels of power. For example, say you want to evacuate people from a radius of twenty kilometers around the plant. If you said that initially, you would create general panic leading to many deaths. So you start with two k, bump it up once the core has evacuated, and then repeat as necessary. That is exactly what they did.

Repeat: All news is political. As in the Bin Laden assasination, and all disinformation campaigns, creating contradictions and ambiguities encourages people to accept the basic assumptions: In the former case, that Bin Ladin was actually alive; in the later, that events were unfolding incrementally, rather than that the entire scenario was envisaged from the start and therefore had to be managed.

B. This is what I tried to explain from the start. You can go back to the official timeline, and the Japanese legal regulations (which I did before posting my second criticism) and see that --  -- all communications with the government were timely. The legal regulations REQUIRE the plant operator to seek permission from the government in the case of severe emergency. The granted permission has many implications, liabilty, etc., but specifically empowers the plant operators to take whatever measures are necessary. This makes sense as they are the ones who know what is happening in real-time at the site. Once granted authority, plant actions were taken in a timely manner. I don't have the government regulations in front of me to quote from (dead computer), but if someone wants me to reconstruct and quote regulations and timeline, I certainly can, I believe it was paragraph 64 or around there.

You misunderstood events, seizing upon a planted disinformation story of the government criticizing TEPCO, which as I pointed out contained no hard evidence and was a political document. Knowing, as you do now, that everyone knew an unprecedented series of meltdowns was underway and that therefore all information and ongoing narratives had to be managed, and that the government had ceded control to TEPCO, the story makes no sense, as I said. Yeah, the minister was once a big honcho at TEPCO, but that doesn't mean that he understands the intricacies of emergency procedures and vessel stress tolerances. Tom Kean, of 9-11 comission infamy, was a big honcho where I worked, but he didn't know a pump from a dump, much less metal fatigue tolerance catastrophic failure probabilities. (My boss at the oil refinery made a big name for himself in the industry by increasing throughput a mere 15% beyond design. Don't think that that small amount did not increase injuries and accidents, it did, but it still made money.)

Everything we have seen and read since the earthquake and tsunami is fed by a disinformation campaign designed to manage public attitudes toward nuclear power:  

When narratives are designed to manipulate public opinion we see:

1. Rosy scenarios: Someone here posted an industry article painting the fairytale that reactors were designed to completely safely melt down. Similar to: Iraq, Libya cakewalk. They know its not true, in fact they NEED a quagmire to permanently position troops there, but they can't say that, so the public is manipulated by rosy scenarios.

2. Blame game stories. As above, also as above on this thread. We will see more. Similar to the Bush being blamed for not knowing that there were no WMD false narrative, as oppossed to the real "US knew there were no WMD and that was why they felt safe to invade at that time" narrative. It is easier to find a fall guy then to have the public accurately assess the dangers and imperil the industry.

3. Contradictions in stories. Self - explanitory. Confuses public about details, while reinforcing general narrative.

4. Complete lies, with the truth leaking out much later after the mass of the public has moved on, and when a mass change of belief would simply be too threatening for most people.

This is why there have been so many actions that do not appear to make sense.... based upon the information they have told us. In situations like this one is better off trying to figure out what is really going on based upon what they are actually doing, rather than thinking you are smarter than them and that you know what they should be doing, an approach you take far too often.  . . .

This is why so many of the things that you didn't understand why they were doing were actually easily explained. For instance, burying with concrete from above vs. groundwater contamination from below. The real problem was waiting until you were ready to make a paradigm shift in how you framed the accident.

C. You spent a lot of energy criticizing the sea water injection operations. But as you now know, by the time power was restored to cooling systems, the damage had already been done. This is proved by the fact that there is no correlation between when sea water injection (lagtime) was started and the later explosion times for the three units. The cooling would not have prevented the explosions. When you assumed they were incompetently managing for cooling, they were actually managing for vessel integrity against further explosions, knowing that there were three different meltdown scenarios underway. Again, someone even posted some pro-industry propaganda here early on which said that the reactors were designed to "safely" melt-down.

Thus is the public disinformed.  But now, finally, we in the blogosphere, know that three plants have melted down.  That's bad, but how bad?  Current stories about radioactive water in the basements mean that not only have the reactor vessels been breached, but the reactor containments and the containment buildings have also been breached.  Okay, fine, but where is the corium?  Is it melting through the concrete floor?  Is it about to contact the groundwater?  Ignore what they say, and watch what they do, and eventually we will know.  Meanwhile:  

Finally, there are a minimum a 5 potentially fatal design flaws in these reactors that others who know more than me have detected, notably nitrogen blanketing systems, off gas systems, and fuel pool gate seals. But an examination of those issues is beyond the scope of this post and any free time I have available.

The takeaway:  Despite all industry propaganda, now is a good time to start working on shutting down all nuclear plants, worldwide.  

But! What will we do without the energy?  And where will the energy to shut them down come from?  

Well, it is like this:  We will never have more energy than we have right now.  If we fail to shut these plants, the most habitable regions of North America, Europe, and Asia will become--this century--nuclear exclusion zones.  

The Fates are kind.

Fukushima nuclear disaster
Libyan uprising
DSK's arrest

Economics is politics by other means

Greenpeace called on Japan on Thursday to evacuate children and pregnant women from a town about 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant because of high radiation.

The environmental and anti-nuclear group said its own data from Fukushima town roughly matched that of the government, but that it drew radically different conclusions, especially on the health threat for children.

It demanded Japan's government "provide full financial and logistical support for the prompt evacuation of pregnant women and children living in high-radiation areas and conduct a full clean-up of contaminated areas."

Greenpeace chief Kumi Naidoo, after a visit to a kindergarten in the town where parents have been removing contaminated topsoil, said that Fukushima's people now face both a "radiation catastrophe" and an "information limbo".

Three months have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered a nuclear crisis that shows little sign of ending anytime soon.

This is the fourth installment in a series that examines what caused the unprecedented crisis, which has dealt a fatal blow to the myth of the safety of nuclear power plants in this country.

"The lands of Mutsunokuni were severely jolted. The sea covered dozens, hundreds of blocks of land. About 1,000 people drowned."

This is a description of the massive Jogan Earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region about 1,150 years ago. It is contained in "Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku" (The official history of three reigns of Japan), which was compiled during the early Heian Period (794-1192).

Mutsunokuni is the name of the region that covered most of the present-day prefectures in the Tohoku region.

It is now clear the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. did not learn from history.

Since 1990, Tohoku Electric Power Co., Tohoku University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have researched the traces left by the Jogan Earthquake. Their studies have shown that the ancient tsunami was on the same scale as that caused by the March 11 earthquake.

No.2 reactor air filter starts running

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has begun running air-filtering equipment at the Number 2 reactor building on Saturday to remove airborne radioactive material.

Intense radioactivity and high humidity inside the building have been hampering work to restore the reactor's cooling system.

Humidity inside the reactor building is as high as 99.9 percent due to moisture that is believed to have come from a spent nuclear fuel storage pool and the basement. Workers cannot remain in the building for a long time even with protective gear and masks.

Tokyo Electric Power Company had set up 2 air-filtering units at a building adjacent to the reactor building.
The devices will filter radioactive materials out of air pumped from the reactor building through a duct. The cleaned air will be fed back into the reactor building.

TEPCO says it plans to run the devices for about 3 days and check internal radiation levels before opening up the doors of the reactor building.

Saturday, June 11, 2011 12:59 +0900 (JST)

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami criticised his country's pursuit of nuclear power in an acceptance speech for Spain's 2011 International Catalunya Prize, a news report said Friday.

Murakami said that Japan's people, having suffered the world's only atomic bomb attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, should have rejected nuclear power in the post-war era, the Kyodo News agency reported.

The author made the comments at a ceremony in Barcelona three months after the March 11 quake and tsunami disaster sparked the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

"The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is the second major nuclear detriment that the Japanese people have experienced," he was quoted as saying, speaking in Japanese, by Kyodo.

"However, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands."

The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."

If I'm understanding this correctly, there is a sustained nuclear reaction heading for the water table.  So ... we're looking at a high probability of a steam explosion?

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Treatment of highly radioactive water at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is likely to be delayed by a problem with the flow of water.

The system being installed at the plant includes a device to remove cesium using zeolite, as well as equipment that settles out radioactive substances using specialized chemicals.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said on Sunday that it has found that water does not flow in one of the 4 units as expected.

The number of people who died or are listed as missing from the March disaster now stands at 23,482.

Police say 87 percent of the 15,413 people who died have been identified.

8,069 people, who were reported to the police, remain missing.

Perhaps the largest single cause of unpredicted failures in complex systems is that multiple components, supposedly independent and redundant, can all fail at the same time for unforeseeable reasons. These can be "commonmode" failures--multiple failures of identical, redundant components in the same manner--or "common-cause" failures--multiple failures, caused by a single initiating event, of components that are different from each other but are supposed to do the same task. For example, identical valves can fail at the same time if they are all exposed to conditions for which they were not designed, or if they were designed or built wrongly: a common-mode failure. Different energy systems that are supposed to back each other up independently-- for example, programs for mining coal, making oil from shale, and generating electricity from coal and uranium--could all fail to be built because Wall Street will not pay for them or because Westerners do not want them: a common-cause failure. Common-mode and common-cause failures cannot be identified simply by cataloguing individual failure modes and their probabilities.

AMY GOODMAN: And you say Japan is equal to or worse than Chernobyl, the Fukushima Daiichi plant?

ROBERT ALVAREZ: That's correct, because if--the Soviet Union and Russia basically have claimed that about 50 million curies of radioactivity were released to the environment--this is roughly comparable to what the Japanese government has currently admitted--and that this site continues to release significant amount of radiation in the atmosphere, nowhere near as large as it did during the first week or two, but it's still quite significant.

The other issue here is the workers on the site. I was astounded to learn that some 5,000 workers have positive evidence of internal exposure to radioactive materials. This is a huge number of people to be exposed over such a short period of time. In the U.S. nuclear weapons program, which operated at a sort of a brisk pace for nearly 50 years, this is roughly comparable to what all workers at nuclear weapons sites during that period were recorded to have received from internal exposures.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/10/as_japan_nuclear_crisis_worsens_citizen

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting(1). Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Sludge that will be generated in the process of treating radioactive water at the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is estimated to contain 100 million becquerels of radioactive substances per cubic centimeter, the plant operator said.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) made the estimation in a report on the water treatment system submitted to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

While trying to begin treating the increasing volumes of radioactive water at an early date, TEPCO has failed to indicate how it will store the toxic sludge or a final disposal site in its road map to bring the crippled plant under control.

Report of Japanese Government
to the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety
- The Accident
at TEPCO's Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations -

But I had the hell of a time getting accurate estimates of the isotopic contents of the trench water and their energy profile. The only number I got and I quoted was 5.4 Megabecquerels/cm^3. That is 54,000 TeraBecquerels in 10,000 Tons of water, not 720k Terabecquerels in 10k Tons. Can you give me a reference for your data point?

Here it is: http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu...es/110603a.pdf (page 8)

Out of the 720k TBq, 140 TBq account for C137. A little comparison: The Chernobyl core had a total C137 inventory of 280 TBq (of which only 40% escaped).

Tens of thousands of people marched through central Tokyo on Saturday to press the government to ditch nuclear power in light of the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster.

Protesters marched in orderly rows banging drums and shouting anti-nuclear slogans while walking toward the Economy Ministry and the head offices of Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the privateer which owns and operates the stricken atomic facility.

Demonstrations were also staged in Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukushima, where Tepco bosses have failed to stem radiation leaks from their reactors since the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out power and cooling systems.

Tokyo grows green curtains

The odd looking goya has long been a popular ingredient in Japanese cuisine, but Tokyoites are now growing the courgette-shaped bitter melon for reasons of energy conservation, not food.

Skylark, a restaurant chain, is cultivating the goya to create "green curtains" outside the windows of several hundred of its Tokyo eateries. The plants, it says, should form a natural shade to cool the interiors, reducing its reliance on air conditioners.

/snip

Some are taking more extreme steps in the hot muggy summer. Famista, a small website developer, has vowed to keep its air conditioners switched off and is paying employees Y2,000 ($25) a month to buy vest tops to wear.

Along with other companies, Skylark intends to set its air conditioners two degrees higher than normal - to 27C at the restaurant operator - this summer. The chain hopes the goya green curtains, combined with a special film it will apply to windows, will lower the temperature of a 330 square metre restaurant by two degrees.

Skylark favours goya because it is robust, has broad leaves, does not attract bugs, is easy to look after and fast growing. By the middle of the summer, each plant should be 2.5 metres high.

Japanese told to beat the heat with Hawaiian shirts"

At Japan's Environment Ministry, the atmosphere is almost preppy; it's full of fresh-faced young people in polo shirts, Crocs and even the odd Hawaiian shirt. This is the birthplace of Super Cool Biz, an energy-saving dress code designed to help ease power shortages following Japan's nuclear crisis, which could just lead to a revolution in Japanese office wear.

Elsewhere in the building, only half of the elevators are working. The corridors are murkily dark, with overhead lights switched off to save electricity. The air conditioning is off and the windows are open -- both unusual in Japanese offices.

Japan is struggling with power shortages following the nuclear crisis that has crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant and led to another nuclear plant also being closed down. To save electricity, several measures are being put in place, including making government employees in Tokyo start work an hour earlier.

Masahiro Sato, the father of Super Cool Biz, goes through the rules of this sartorial revolution intended to lighten up traditional office wear for the summer months: no neckties, no jackets, yes to polo shirts, yes to Hawaiian shirts, yes to sandals -- but no flip-flops. This, it's hoped, will be the new summer dress code of Japan's salarymen, designed to help the country through this year's power crunch.

"We're limiting air conditioners to 82 degrees to save energy," Sato says. "So we have to loosen up clothing guidelines, so people can be more comfy. As a target, we're looking at saving 10 percent of office electricity expenditure."

And from my own anecdotal evidence, my school is removing a third of the lights from classrooms (already well-enough lit by windows, anyway) changed the teacher dress code a bit, and mandated that A/C be set to no lower than 28.  Many stores have permenantly dimmed their main signs, and have also removed banks of lighting.  Lots of escalators have been de-activated as well, especially down escalators.  

Radioactive strontium that exceeds the government-set safety level was detected for the first time in sea water in the inlet next to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, reported that strontinum-90, at a level 53 times higher than the safety standard was detected in samples taken from inside an inlet used exclusively by the nuclear plant, on May 16.

TEPCO also said that strontinum-90 was detected at a level 170 times higher than the standard in samples also taken on May 16, near the water intakes outside reactor number 2. At the reactor number 3 water intakes, the level was 240 times higher than the legal safety limit.

An NHK survey of municipalities affected by the March 11th disasters has found more than 60 percent of them see little or no prospect of reconstruction.

The mayors of 42 cities, towns and villages in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima responded to the survey.

6 mayors, including those of Otsuchi Town in Iwate Prefecture and Fukushima's Namie Town said there is no prospect of reconstruction.

Another 20 municipal heads said there is little prospect of reconstruction.

SYDNEY(MarketWatch) -- Japan's government is considering evacuating more towns affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as data showed new areas of elevated contamination levels, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website Friday. The areas under review, which could affect more than 180 families, are outside Japan's existing 30 kilometer (18.6 mile) evacuation zone,

The Tokyo metropolitan government announced Wednesday it will gauge radiation levels in the air at 100 locations in the metropolis, in response to requests from cities, towns and villages for more expanded coverage than the current measurement conducted at the metropolitan government building in Shinjuku Ward.

Having no technical expertise in the industry, i wondered what's happened there, discovering a Level 2 Incident at the Blayais plant on the Atlantic coast.

With some eerie similarities to Fukushima.

Prior to the flooding, units 1, 2 and 4 were at full power, while unit 3 was shut down for refuelling.[1] Starting from 7:30 pm all four units lost their 225 kV power supplies, while units 2 and 4 also lost their 400 kV power supplies.[1][6] The isolator circuits that should have allowed units 2 and 4 to supply themselves with electricity also failed, causing these two reactors to automatically shut down, and diesel backup generators started up, maintaining power to plants 2 and 4 until the 400 kV supply was restored at around 10:20 pm.[1][6] In the pumping room for unit 1, one set of the two pairs of pumps in the Essential Service Water System failed due to flooding; had both sets failed then the safety of plant would have been endangered.[1][6] In both units 1 and 2, flooding in the fuel rooms put the low-head safety injection pumps and the containment spray pumps, part of the Emergency Core Cooling System (a back-up system in case of coolant loss) out of use.[1][6] Over the following days, an estimated 90,000 m3 (3,200,000 cu ft) of water would be pumped out of the flooded buildings.[1]
....
Around two and a half hours after the flooding began, a high-tide alarm for the estuary was triggered in the observation room of plant 4, although those in the other plants failed to activate. This should have caused the control room operators to launch a 'Level 2 Internal Emergency Plan', however this was not done as the requirement had been omitted from the operation room manual;[1] instead they continued to follow the procedure for the loss of the off-site power supply, so failing to shut down the operating reactors at the earliest opportunity to allow the residual heat to start to dissipate.[6]
....
During the morning of December 28, the Institute for Nuclear Protection and Safety estimated that, if the emergency cooling water supply failed, there would have been over 10 hours in which to act before core meltdown started.[6]

The emergency response seems to have been highly competent and effective. Further to their credit, there was "no quantifiable effect on radiation." After a few years of procrastination, the sea walls were raised and sealed.

So the incident confirms there was enough redundancy in the design to cope with this particular event. Still, makes one wonder. How much higher is the extreme event probability in a climate warmed world?

The adequacy of the sea walls has, however, been disputed by Professor Jean-Noël Salomon, head of the Laboratory of Applied Physical Geography at Michel de Montaigne University Bordeaux 3, who believes that, due to the potential harm and economic cost that would result from a future flood-related disaster, the sea walls should be designed to withstand simultaneous extreme events, rather than simultaneous major events.[4]

On the evening of March 12, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's oldest reactor had suffered a hydrogen explosion and risked a complete meltdown. Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked aides to weigh the risks of injecting seawater into the reactor to cool it down.

At this crucial moment, it became clear that a prime minister who had built his career on suspicion of the collusive ties between Japan's industry and bureaucracy was acting nearly in the dark. He had received a confusing risk analysis from the chief nuclear regulator, a fervently pro-nuclear academic whom aides said Mr. Kan did not trust. He was also wary of the company that operated the plant, given its history of trying to cover up troubles.

Mr. Kan did not know that the plant manager had already begun using seawater. Based on a guess of the mood at the prime minister's office, the company ordered the plant manager to stop.

But the manager did something unthinkable in corporate Japan: he disobeyed the order and secretly continued using seawater, a decision that experts say almost certainly prevented a more serious meltdown and has made him an unlikely hero.

Japan's Richest Man Challenges Nuclear Future With Nationwide Solar Plans

Billionaire Masayoshi Son has a track record in taking on monopolies after building a business that opened up the nation's telecommunications industry. Now he aims to shake up Japan's power utilities after the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Son, the 53-year-old chief executive officer of Softbank Corp. (9984), plans to build solar farms to generate electricity with support from at least 33 of Japan's 47 prefectures. In return, he's asking for access to transmission networks owned by the 10 regional utilities and an agreement they buy his electricity.
....
One option would be to raise funds to invest about 80 billion yen into building 10 solar farms, each with about 20 megawatts of capacity, said Softbank spokeswoman Makiko Ariyama.

The combined 200 megawatts of power capacity will provide more than 10 times the 19 megawatts in total produced at eight photovoltaic power stations run in Japan by the regional utilities as of June 9. Japan produced 988 terawatt hours of electricity in the year ended March 31.
....
Solar plants using 20 percent of unused agricultural land in Japan can have the generation capacity of about 50 gigawatts, almost matching that of Tokyo Electric, Son said.

I suspect this push will add strength to the wind power efforts already underway by Mitsubishi, Harokasan and others. In that regard, i don't believe we'll see the opposition to ridgeline wind turbines that we see in other lands, such as France and the UK.


"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

The government has announced guidelines on how to dispose of sludge that contains radioactive material.

Radioactive material has been detected in sludge from waste water treatment plants in many areas, mainly in eastern Japan, since the crisis began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The guidelines released by the government's nuclear disaster taskforce on Thursday say disposal facilities with filters will be used to prevent radiation leaks from fumes that are created when sludge is burned or dissolved.

They say sludge containing radiation of more than 100,000 becquerels per kilogram will be stored at facilities tightly shielded by substances like concrete.

A system to decontaminate highly radioactive water has gone into service at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The system is considered key to dealing with the build-up of contaminated water that is hampering work to bring the reactors under control.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, activated the system on Friday evening after conducting final test-runs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Japanese government's complicated organizational structure caused it to respond more slowly than it should have to the nuclear accident at Fukushima.

The agency advises Japan to streamline its regulatory structure so it can hand down decisions more quickly.

IAEA experts who visited Japan late last month said the country underestimated the size of the tsunami that hit the Fukushima plant, and that safety measures must be bolstered to deal with natural disasters.  

The commitment to Monju is rooted in the way Japan has sold its nuclear program to local communities, experts say. In persuading towns and villages to provide land for nuclear power stations, Japan has promised that the spent nuclear fuel -- which remains highly radioactive for years -- will not be stored permanently on site, but used as fresh fuel for the nuclear fuel cycle.

Giving up on any part of the fuel cycle would mean the government would have to find communities willing to become the final resting ground for the spent fuel.

"Of course, no community would accept that, and suddenly Japan's entire nuclear program would become unviable," said Keiji Kobayashi, a retired fast-breeder reactor expert formerly at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute.

US Orders News Blackout Over Crippled Nebraska Nuclear Plant | Pakalert Press

A shocking report prepared by Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a "total and complete" news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant  located in Nebraska.

According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a "catastrophic loss of cooling" to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a "no-fly ban" over the area.

Located about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant is owned by Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) who on their website denies their plant is at a "Level 4" emergency by stating: "This terminology is not accurate, and is not how emergencies at nuclear power plants are classified."

Economy and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda has asked local governments to restart operations of nuclear power plants that were shut down for safety checks following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Kaieda told reporters on Saturday he had confirmed that all power companies have implemented measures to avert serious accidents, such as a hydrogen explosion, in line with the ministry's instructions earlier this month.

Kaieda said restricted power is a major problem for the Japanese economy. He sought understanding from local people and the general public about restarting operations of nuclear power plants if proven to be safe

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has opened the doors and begun ventilation at the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The restoration work inside the No. 2 reactor has been hampered by humidity of almost 100 percent due to steam from the containment vessel and spent-fuel storage pool.

TEPCO opened the doors halfway at 8:51 PM on Sunday. It plans to fully open them at 4 AM on Monday if there are no problems.

The utility has been using an air purification device for more than a week to reduce the radioactive concentration inside the building.

(Reuters) - Germany's nuclear lobby is mulling plans to take the German government to constitutional court, to halt the country's nuclear exit and seek billions in damages, the online edition of Der Spiegel said on Sunday.

A legal opinion commissioned by utility E.On has concluded that the German government's plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022 is unconstitutional, Spiegel's Web site said.

The legal opinion, which was prepared for E.On by law firm Gleiss Lutz, says Germany's current energy strategy infringes on basic property rights enshrined in Germany's constitution, Der Spiegel said, citing a copy of the document.

TOKYO (AP) -- A new report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and an emergency manual from distant buildings and borrow equipment from a contractor.

The report, released Saturday by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., is based on interviews of workers and plant data. It portrays chaos amid the desperate and ultimately unsuccessful battle to protect the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant from meltdown, and shows that workers struggled with unfamiliar equipment and fear of radiation exposure.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and crucial cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and causing several explosions.

TEPCO has been criticized for dragging its feet on venting and sea water cooling -- the two crucial steps that experts say could have mitigated the damage. Company officials have said the tsunami created obstacles that were impossible to anticipate. An investigation by an independent panel is pending.

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.

Fukushima: It's much worse than you think - Features - Al Jazeera English

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Concerns over radioactive contamination are growing among people living next to the new evacuation advisory zones near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The people live just outside an area in Date and Minami Soma cities that the government last week designated for voluntary evacuation.

On Monday evening, Minami Soma city officials visited the homes of 5 families in Jisabara district, next to the zones.

The officials checked the radiation levels around the houses at the request of the concerned residents.

Tokyo Electric Power Company is continuing work to reinforce a spent fuel pool at the Number 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The walls supporting the pool were heavily damaged by a hydrogen blast on March 15th, following the earthquake and tsunami 4 days earlier.

The pool contains 1,535 spent fuel rods and its weakened structure makes it vulnerable to future earthquakes.

TEPCO on Monday completed one stage of the reinforcement that began late last month. 32 iron pillars, each 8 meters tall and weighing 40 tons, were installed beneath the pool on the 2nd floor of the reactor building.

(Reuters) - Steps to boost atomic safety after Japan's Fukushima accident must be "cost-effective," an industry body said on Tuesday, a day after the UN nuclear chief suggested power firms could help pay for expanded safety checks.

John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association, said the industry had been struggling in the last decade to limit capital costs while building a new generation of reactors.

"In this context, it is crucially important that regulatory actions taken in response to Fukushima have demonstrable benefit arising from any increased costs," he told a major international safety conference, according to a copy of his speech.

"Focus solely on cost-effective measures," he said.

We have seen some here remind us that Fukushima is not at all as bad as Chernobyl, which proved to be a false interpretation. (If TEPCO announced data can be trusted.) But we did not see a discussion of where nuclear power now stands in the scheme of energy futures, nor whether Fukushima has changed any equations.

For example, many state that Fukushima only shows us what might happen to older technologies, and that current technologies would never suffer such catastrophe. Which may be true, ignoring the existence of a fair number of older plants.

There was zero discussion of whether this civilization is technically capable of dealing with splitting the atom, or whether it has the understanding or the institutions to handle such technology.

I only know that a deputy PM in Japan told Green leader Trittin (on his visit last week) that Japan holds Germany as the goalpost for how to make energy sustainably. (Which i suppose is why i live here, Bundesbank be damned.)

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

 The Tokyo Electric Power Company is looking into why a system for decontaminating radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is not working as expected, delaying resumption of the system's full-scale operation.

The firm on Wednesday published data showing the amount of radioactive materials that had been removed from contaminated water during a test run of the US-made system.

The data show that density of Cesium-13 and Cesium-137 dropped to only one-100th of initial levels.

An earlier test run using water with a lower density of radioactivity showed a drop to about one-1000th.

Is the head of AREVA being replaced?

regardless, i didn't know reactor construction was so easy.

Areva's Workers Prepare For Shake-Up as CEO Exits

The last decade has seen a tug-of-war between Ms. Lauvergeon, the government and the heads of several French utilities over how to finance and organize the country's nuclear industry. Under pressure from increased competition to create a simplified French nuclear offering, the government recently decided EDF should oversee the export of France's atomic know-how abroad, a decision Ms. Lauvergeon resisted.

Nevertheless, now that Ms. Lauvergeon is leaving "it is very likely that a shake-up will happen at Areva," said Pierre-Louis Brenac, an energy consultant at SIA Conseil in France. "EDF will increasingly take a leading role in promoting the French nuclear industry."

A person close to the French Industry Ministry said that while nothing would likely happen in the short term as Mr. Oursel settles into his new job, "Areva's business model will have to change; its core business could also change."

Following the crisis in Japan, Areva is under pressure to convince utilities and governments its reactors are safer and more efficient than those of competitors. How this plays out could help determine the success of the engineering company in the long run.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is striving to prevent highly radioactive water from overflowing the facility amid delays in restarting a key water decontamination system.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has been reducing the volume of water injected into the first 3 reactors since Tuesday to curb a further build-up of highly radioactive water at the plant.

On Friday, it further reduced the volume of water injected into the No.3 reactor by 0.5 tons to 9 tons per hour.

Fukushima Prefecture has decided to distribute dosimeters to about 280 thousand children to monitor their radiation exposure caused by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Voices of parents expressing concern about their children's health have been growing louder.

The prefecture said on Thursday it will give dosimeters to children ranging from infants to junior high school students.

The prefecture will also subsidize cities and villages to replace top soil in the school yards or set up air conditioners in schools.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it lost control of an unmanned helicopter during a flight near the No. 2 reactor building, forcing the controller to make an emergency landing on a roof there.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says the remote-controlled light helicopter took off from an observatory south of the Fukushima plant just past 6:30 AM on Friday. Its mission was to collect airborne radioactive substances around the No. 2 reactor building.

The utility says its engine failed about 30 minutes later, making it impossible for the aircraft to ascend.

The operator of Japan's experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor Monju has successfully retrieved a 3-ton device that fell inside the reactor vessel 10 months ago.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency says it completed work to recover the fuel-exchange equipment at around 5 AM on Friday. The work took about 8 hours.

In May last year, the Monju reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, resumed operations after a 14-year shutdown. It was closed in 1995 after a sodium leak started a fire.

But 3 months after restarting, operations had to be suspended again after the device fell into the reactor during an inspection.

Responding to residents' demands for more information, Fukushima City released on Friday the results of radiation checks conducted on June 17th and 20th at more than 1,000 sites, including public facilities and roads in residential areas.

Six locations, including a park in a municipal housing complex, registered radiation levels of over 3.4 microsieverts per hour when measured one meter above ground. This exceeds the prefecture's threshold for re-checking.

Radiation of over two microsieverts per hour was recorded at 182 sites.
The city said that it re-checked the six sites on Friday, and all locations registered lower radiation.

An emotional Lady Gaga pledged to use her star power to "remind the world that Japan is safe" following the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.

...

"I believe it's time to look forward now," a teal-haired Lady Gaga -- or Lady Gaga-san as she is referred to in Japan -- told reporters at a press event in Tokyo on Thursday as she sipped tea on stage in front of photographers.

"It is so important that we continue to raise money. But it is also important that we remind the world that Japan is now safe and that the doors are wide open for tourists from all over the world to come in and enjoy the beautiful country."

(Reuters) - Angry parents of children in Japan's Fukushima city marched along with hundreds of people on Sunday to demand protection for their children from radiation more than three months after a massive quake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

"We want our lives back, we want to live like before the quake in happy families," said Hiroko Sato who marched in heavy rain with her nephews, age 3 and 7, next to banners saying "No Nukes" and "One Fukushima is Enough." "My baby was born two weeks before the nuclear accident and I don't feed her with my milk as I'm afraid I was exposed to too much radiation," said Sato.

Three reactors went into meltdown after the earthquake hit the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northeastern Japan on March 11, forcing 80,000 residents to evacuate from its vicinity as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods.

Millions Fewer Girls Born Due to Nuclear Radiation?

Female Chromosomes Especially Vulnerable?

The biological mechanism behind the skewed sex ratio wasn't investigated in the study. But previous radiation experiments on animals suggest the boost in males may be due to damage to X chromosomes in sperm, Scherb said.

In humans, a sperm cell contains either an X or Y chromosome, while an egg contains no Y chromosome. If an embryo has an XY combination, it will become a boy. An XX combination results in a girl. (Get a genetics overview.)

It's not known exactly why X chromosomes in sperm would be more likely to sustain radiation damage than Y chromosomes or in X chromosomes in eggs, Scherb said. Perhaps it's because X chromosomes are simply bigger targets or because eggs insulate their chromosomes better than sperm cells do, he speculated.

It could also be that, because X chromosomes--being larger than Y chromosomes--carry more genes, X chromosome damage is more likely to result in a fatally deformed embryo, he said.

Information on the study's co-author and institution:    Institute of Biomathematics and Biometry

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has bucked the anti-nuclear trend following Japan's Fukushima disaster by pledging €1bn of investment in atomic power.

Despite growing worldwide concern about the safety of nuclear plants, Sarkozy said the moratorium on new nuclear reactors adopted by certain countries since the Japanese nuclear crisis in March "makes no sense".

"There is no alternative to nuclear energy today," he told journalists on Monday. [...]

Sarkozy said France was known to be "considerably ahead" of other countries in terms of atomic power technology and safety.

"Our power stations are more expensive because they are safer," he said.

Yeah right. And I thought it was because the fkuced up the specs...

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has suspended using decontaminated water as a coolant because of leaky pipes.

Tokyo Electric Power Company began circulating recycled water through the No.1, 2 and 3 reactors at 4:20 PM on Monday.

But it halted the operation one and a half hours later after discovering water leaking from the pipes.

TEPCO has been attempting to run the decontamination system since June 14th. It has so far treated about 1,850 tons of the water.

An operator of waste incineration plants in Tokyo says it has found a high density of radioactive materials in ash at one of its plants.

An Edogawa ward plant, which handles general household garbage, detected 9,740 becquerels of radioactive materials per kilogram of ash.

The ash was collected from a device to filter exhaust fumes.

The plant's operator, an organization jointly set up by Tokyo's 23 wards, believes that radioactive cesium built up through the incinerating process.

The Japanese government held a meeting in Saga Prefecture, western Japan, on Sunday to explain to local residents about safety measures being taken to resume operations of a nuclear power plant in the area. But most of the people were strongly dissatisfied with the government report.

The meeting was the first of its kind since the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March.

Seven residents chosen by the government, including a housewife and a senior official of the local chamber of commerce, attended the meeting at a cable TV station.

Workers at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have started moving low level contaminated water to a giant steel barge for storage.

The transfer from the plant's make-shift tanks started on Thursday afternoon to the barge called the "mega float." The barge is attached to a quay on the plant's premises.

The make-shift tanks have been almost full since Wednesday with low-level radioactive water pumped from the basement of the reactor Number 6 turbine building. The water is threatening to damage equipment and gauges and thus hamper cooling efforts.

The newly installed reactor cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has resumed working after a 5-hour suspension due to mechanical trouble.

The operator of the crippled plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, says a French-made water-decontamination device, which is part of the cooling system, stopped automatically on Thursday afternoon. An alarm system was set off within 10 minutes.

TEPCO says after repairing the device and doing test runs, it resumed operating on Thursday evening.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says debris scattered inside the No. 4 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is posing an obstacle to work to bring the crippled reactor under control.

Workers entered the fifth floor of the building on Wednesday for the first time since an explosion on March 15th.

Photos taken by the workers show that most of the ceiling, except for a small part of the framework, has collapsed. Debris, steel frames, and other various things blown by the force of the explosion are scattered all over the floor.

The radiation level inside the building was less than one millisievert per hour, which TEPCO says is permissible for workers to carry out operations there.

The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says a hose has been leaking seawater used to cool the No.5 reactor, which is currently in a state of cold shutdown.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, is set to replace the hose, but will have to suspend the reactor's cooling function to do so. It says this will raise the water temperature, but the reactor will still remain in a state of cold shutdown.

This pretty dramatic picture from TEPCO shows a water leak in the temporary residual seat removal system (RHRS) cooling system of reactor number 5 at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The leak was discovered in a pipe carrying seawater on the morning of July 3 during a patrol. The cooling system was turned off while the hose was replaced.

Well, that didn't take long. Kyodo reports reconstruction minister Matsumoto will resign.

Martyn Williams (martyn_williams) on Twitter

@mr_ceebs He was appointed on June 28.

An explosion sparked a fire at a French nuclear power station on Saturday, just two days after the authorities found 32 safety concerns at the plant.

The blaze at the Tricastin plant in Drôme in the Rhône valley sent a thick cloud of black smoke into the sky. A mistral wind sent it south over a nearby motorway on one of the busiest travel days of the year as the French left for their summer holidays.

EDF, which runs the power station, said the incident took place in an electric transformer situated in the non-nuclear part of the plant and had not resulted in any radiation leak or any other contamination. A statement issued by the energy giant raised further concerns as it omitted to mention the explosion - only a fire - and did not give the cause of the blaze.

Some 45 per cent of 1,080 children under 15 from the Japanese Fukushima Prefecture have tested positive for thyroid exposure to radiation, a nuclear watchdog report says.

The screening was performed by Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission between March 26 and March 30 in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the independent body said on Tuesday.

Among those who tested positive, the degree of exposure was measured at 0.04 microsieverts per hour or less in the majority of cases. The maximum measured was 0.1 microsieverts per hour in a one-year-old. The government-established threshold for further investigation is 0.2 microsieverts per hour, so no emergency probe will be undertaken, officials said.

and a silent death in the seas.

Troubled Nuclear Plant On Way To Stable Cooling This Month

Move along, the earthquake today was only 5.6.

And the Emperor's new clothes are being readied.

Fukushima cover takes shape

In other news, there are zero news items concerning the idle windpower manufacturing lines over the past 18 months.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin