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US Experts: 'Chernobyl-Like' Crisis for Japan
WASHINGTON - US nuclear experts warned Saturday that pumping sea water to cool a quake-hit Japanese nuclear reactor was an "act of desperation" that may foreshadow a Chernobyl-like disaster.
Official in protective gear talks to a woman who is from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama March 13, 2011. Japan battled to contain a radiation leak at an earthquake-crippled nuclear plant on Sunday, but faced a fresh threat with the failure of the cooling system in a second reactor. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Several experts, in a conference call with reporters, also predicted that regardless of the outcome at the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant crisis, the accident will seriously damage the nuclear power renaissance.
"The situation has become desperate enough that they apparently don't have the capability to deliver fresh water or plain water to cool the reactor and
stabilize it, and now, in an act of desperation, are having to resort to diverting and using sea water," said Robert Alvarez, who works on nuclear disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies.
"I would describe this measure as a 'Hail Mary' pass," added Alvarez, using American football slang for a final effort to win the game as time expires.
An 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday set off the emergency at the plant, which was then hit by an explosion Saturday that prompted an evacuation of the surrounding area.
Workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, after the quake knocked out power to the cooling system.
What occurred at the plant was a "station blackout," which is the loss of offsite air-conditioning power combined with the failure of onsite power, in this case diesel generators.
"It is considered to be extremely unlikely but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades," said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation.
"We're in uncharted territory," he said.
The reactor has been shut down but the concern is the heat in the core, which can melt if it's not cooled. If the core melts through the reactor vessel, Bergeron explained, it could flow onto the floor of the containment building. If that happens, the structure likely will fail, the experts said.
"The containment building at this plant is certainly stronger than that at Chernobyl but a lot less strong than at Three Mile Island, so time will tell," he said.
Peter Bradford, former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that if the cooling attempts fail, "at that point it's a Chernobyl-like situation where you start dumping in sand and cement."
The two worst nuclear accidents on record are the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the partial core meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1979.
Another expert said the Japanese accident will rank as one of the three worst in history.
"If it continues, if they don't get control of this and... we go from a partial meltdown of the core to a full meltdown, this will be a complete disaster," Joseph Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, said in an interview on CNN.
Cirincione faulted Japanese authorities for providing partial and conflicting information about what was happening at the plant.
Cirincione said the presence of radioactive cesium in the atmosphere after the plant was vented indicated that a partial meltdown was underway.
"That told the operators that the fuel rods had been exposed, that the water level had dropped below the fuel rods and the fuel rods were starting to burn, releasing cesium," he said.
Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the Fukushima accident at four on the International Nuclear Event Scale from 0 to 7, meaning an accident "with local consequences," an official said Sunday.
The Three Mile Island accident was rated five while Chernobyl was a seven.
The government declared an atomic emergency and said tens of thousands of people living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant should leave after an explosion at the nuclear plant Saturday.
"This is obviously a significant setback for the so-called nuclear renaissance," said Bradford, the former NRC commissioner.
"The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on the television screen is a first."
But a spokesman for the World Nuclear Association said in an interview with CBS News that the threat of a full meltdown is minimal.
"I think that possibility is remote at the best of times and is diminishing by the hour as the fuel gets cooler and generates less heat," said Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the industry organization.
75 Comments so far
Show AllGood thing Obama (like Bush) thinks Nuclear power plants are awesome and totally safe and we need many many more of them, because clearly they are the best choice in the long term.
Give them a few more months, a year at the most, and our political leaders will ignore the evidence regarding nuclear reactors the way they ignored the would-have-been catastrophe in the Social Security system if the Bush administration had succeeded in privatizing it. Regardless of what happens with the Japanese reactors, our own nuclear power advocates will be pushing for more and still more reactors in our own country. Why? They make money for the big boys.
Sadly they often succeed in these affronts to the human race because they count on the inability of the American people to recognize historical patterns that are more than a few weeks old. If this nation had any kind of historical memory--which we don't--most of the schemes the multinational corporations and their political cronies try to foist on us would be rejected immediately.
Now Obama has a another "pathetic lack of leadership award" to add to his bulging trophy case. He called for more off-shore oil drilling a few weeks before the BP blowout in the Gulf. Then he calls for more nuclear power plants a few short days before the catastrophe in Japan. The guy is damn near batting a 1000 in terms of his inept insights into the future.
I can hardly wait for his next clairvoyant pronouncement regarding the future because it will certainly be proven false in a few short weeks or less.
It's the follow the lost leader principle--and it works because Americans have no real connection to the past, except the mythologized past, which is the worst of all possible guides to the future--if there is a future, which is highly unlikely with the idiots who are running this country.
With that happy thought, I sign off for the day.
god save La cucaracha
Odd I thought only Chernoybl type plants could have a Chernoybl like failures, something to do with the fact the Russian and Japenese reactors are nothing alike! in design, operation, or maintence!
>^^<
More concerns: 3 units out of the 6 Fukushima units were generating electricity, were hot and will stay quite hot for weeks, when the earthquake struck. ABC News reported at 6:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time that the Japanese government/operators are concerned about each of these three units becoming uncovered with water and melting down, not just the hydrogen-emitting unit 1.
NIRS.org reports that Fukushima unit 3 uses plutonium-based fuel. However, they use plutonium mixed oxide fuel. My best guess is that it won't burn spontaneously in the presence of air, unlike Chernobyl. Still not a good thing. 5:30 pm, Saturday, March 12. Report that Unit 3 has lost cooling.
Too bad they can't generate some electric power ... that would remove some heat from the core.
I've been warning about this and similar scenarios for years. The pro-nukers dismiss me as a "kook." I wish I was.
NO nukes is good nukes.
Good nukes are no nukes. Just like good wars are no wars. And - with our decrepit slants - good news are no news. Plus - the way things are going - good economy is no economy. And soon to come: good humans are no humans.
Oh well, the last one is a bit too pessimistic. But from the news-angle POW, that's the way it appears. Though each of us is much better than that, when only we're allowed - by our straight-jacket consensus-views - to be.
We love to love one another - and each other - when all the sucking-straws of profit-motive are removed from the relations.
And we'll be fine, in fact a lot better, without nukes. This third, confirming, nuclear disaster may be the best that's happened to humanity in a long time. Now the necessity for renewable and non-resource-depleting energy sources will move to the front of our collective consciousness. Maybe even slow down (did I say reduce? - I'll say reduce) the need for external energy-use all together [spell-ing mistk intn'd].
We the people are so much better than the global class-war - temporarily won by US - for overrated material goods allows.
We can Laugh, Sing and Dance, and stop letting the evil-generating principle of Compound Interest at the core of our economic exchanges press US into "growth" that is of the inferior, material kind.
We can grow in the joy of living, relating to each other in unnamed, slightly chaotic exchanges - the kind we love most - and go with the flow of life, until we die happily sated and flow on.
We can find the 'nuclear energy' at our own core, and let that give us the bouyancy we need and crave to go with the flow.
Nukes/ nuclear power ... the worst that humankind has done. The lessons are hard, but people Must learn to respect/ care for our home.
Sounds like somebody who didn't have grandma shoved in an oven by the nazis. Or die slowly from typhus infected blankets on a long march accross country.
Humans will always come up with more cruel ways to kill, radition is actually down on the mild scale.
>^^<
Who're these "humans" that "will always come up with more cruel ways to kill", white man? - Count me out.
The best quality in people is that we - most of us - are able to rise again to hope and love after we've brought escalating destruction and hate upon one another.
So take your "always cruel"-gene claim and stuff it! - These days even neuroscience proves you wrong: humans love to be generous and kind, more than the egotism our falsely consensual norms allow.
I can look at this situation in Japan, and agree with you.
It dawns on me more and more that we're living in a giant Shakespeare-ian play themed around the hubris of humanity.
Those usually ended on a positive note, right?
what's done, cannot be undone..................
How do you spell the Italian phase "What will be, will be"?
"Que sera, sera" - but you knew that.
It's a pretty safe prophecy.
Compare this statement from the above article:
"But a spokesman for the World Nuclear Association said in an interview with CBS News that the threat of a full meltdown is minimal."
with the following statement issued by a Japanese official:
"A meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors in northern Japan, an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told CNN Sunday."
The latter quotation is from: "CNN: Meltdown May Be Underway," by Tom Watkins, Common Dreams, March 12, 2011.
This meltdown is increasing by the hour, what happens when this molten plutonium melts through the reaction chamber floor?
No one knows but lucky us are soon to know!
Update: Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported.
Also, NRIS.org has a public statement where they're saying that unit 1 is in meltdown.
I don't feel good tonight. It's like watching the twin towers burning, then something happens to one of them and there's a cloud of dust.
Yeah Paul,
Few understand what's going on; and the nuke trolls and government prostitutes always take full advantage of that fact. They typically say things like: "There was no nuclear explosion." which is technically true: It was a hydrogen explosion. But it was caused by a runaway nuclear meltdown, which, in a few days or less is going to turn into "lava" and then drop into the water table and poison the whole island for hundreds of years. Pouring sea water on top of it is unlikely to work. It's an act of desperation. Sort of like sinking your boat to put out a fire.
Remember that downwind of Chernobyl the ground is now uninhabitable for 600 years. It is the size of Alabama. Trolls keep saying the two are different. But that's a clever play on words also. Chernobyl was 1000 mega watts. Fuku number One alone is only 460 mega watts, that's true. But since three of them Fuku Reactors are presently in trouble, it might turn out to be even worse. A triple FukYou.
This is far from over; and I'm not sleeping well at all. The whole thing is extremely depressing just like the fake wars we start all over the world.
It's dawning on me that Representational Democracy doesn't work. When the government tells you both that the radiation cannot hurt you;
And out the other side of their mouths they say: "Do not drink any tap water" and evacuates 200,000 people at the same time,
You know you're dealing with people who will say anything to avoid a panic. I think this situation is going to be one we never forget, if we survive it.
TJ
is that a trick question?.....................
Looks to me to be a government-sponsored news blackout.
I was living in Philly when Three Mile Island happened. What I learned was that you take the official announcements, and then go one step further. If they say "a small release has occurred," this translates into "a large release has occurred." When they say "the secondary containment has failed," this translates into "the primary containment has failed." And when they say the levels of radioactivity are "safe," this translates into "the levels are unsafe."
This pattern of deliberate lying is repeated over and over. e.g. government officials saying "The air is safe to breath in NYC after the twin towers collapse." It wasn't. It was later admitted by the EPA to be very unsafe. Similarly, claims that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is "safe to eat" is equally ludicrous.
But to answer your question, I don't think there will be any "accurate" information for at least a decade about what is really happening now. It took 20 years for the truth about TMI to be admitted, and the Japanese are notorious for face-saving maneuvers. You might try this link, which has many comments by folks who are actual nuclear operators trying to make sense of the various reports:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-explosion-update-core-presumed-intact-sea-water-used-bring-temperature-down-radiat
.
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
- Courtesy of another alert poster here.
Experts are being interviewed on every media source. Seldom are they saying the same thing. Hilary was great. She was sending coolant (water) to Japan.
This may be a boost for home sales on the west coast. You are safer in a single family home than urban tombs.
For continuous tweets and nuclear expert Jim Riccio's analysis regarding the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, go to:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/japan-nuclear-event-live-tweets-follow-our-nu/blog/33701
I'd have to discount greenpeace as a sourse of informantion in this, It's like asking a jew what he thinks of Egypt's new government.. Jourgonna get a wildly biased answer!\\>^^<
As a jew who is anti zionist, i find that comment surprisingly innane and unexpected from you.
I was about to get seriously worried, until this sentence hit: "[T]he accident will seriously damage the nuclear power renaissance."
I guess the beclaimed "rigid safety" of nuclear reactors wasn't that after all. What a shock. ( - Or maybe the "rigidity" during an earthquake was what did it in.)
"The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on the television screen is a first."
Nice, great show, for all US drama-junkies, now that the arab-uprisings are abating from the front pages and Ghaddafi is winning.
For those of US who want to follow the show as near as possible in real-time, here's a great link smbd posted earlier:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
Enjoy.
"UPDATE, 5:30 pm, Saturday, March 12, 2011. Reuters is reporting that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 has lost cooling capability: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-japan-quakenuclear-cooling-idUSTRE72B3GI20110312 This is of particular concern since, unlike all of the other reactors in trouble, Unit 3 has been using plutonium-based MOX (mixed oxide) fuel since September 10, 2010. Consequences of an accident at a MOX-powered reactor would be even more severe than at a more typical uranium-powered reactor."
Big Nuke's Hore-Lacy means "trust me, no problem". I feel so much better now
http://www.whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl/timeline.html
"The fate of all mankind, I fear, is in the hands of fools"
King Crimson
Thanks for that.
It was so plainly true in 1970 when that was penned.
"Upon the instruments of death, the sunlight brightly gleams..."
i have spent my whole life witnessing, excruciatingly, the playing out.
"Confusion will be my epitaph..."
Even if the plant doesn't melt down, the illusion that Nuclear Power can be safe, even in a rich First-world nation, should be ever dispelled.
The world needs to invest heavily in alternative energy that doesn't include the possibility of apocalyptic disaster nor waste that needs to be keep safe for many hundreds of years. Change rocks the earth.. Nothing is safe or free from change for that long. If Japan's pain gives us one gift, it may be the truth about nuclear safety.
"which side are you on?" goes the song...
"It is considered to be extremely unlikely but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades," said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation."We're in uncharted territory," he said.
Cirincione said the presence of radioactive cesium in the atmosphere after the plant was vented indicated that a partial meltdown was underway.
...the threat of a full meltdown is minimal.…said Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the industry organization."
the flag of a crack fascist batallion in the spanish civil war had written upon it the words, "long live death"!..(from a. camus)
Can someone answer this: what happens to the water that is used to cool hot reactors? Is it "recycled" back into the aquifers, bottled up, or just evaporate? With the sea water now being used, presumably hundreds of thousands of gallons per [second/minute/hour/day?] where is that water going? This is a real question and not a rhetorical statement.
It is evaporating as a hydrogen oxygen and water vapor cloud and I assume some is flowing over land and water, but at the moment all this is minor because there is the possibility of the molten Uranium hitting the Earth's core, no?
And then what?
And who knows what the heck is in the sea water???
Here's a link to a very up-to-date Wiki page about this event, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Japanese government has already admited releasing radioactive water into the ocean, and of course the released vapors will combine with water vapor and fall as rain somewhere. This is a planetary pollution event no different from atmospheric testing.
As for cooling reactors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_coolant and links therein.
Everything has to go someplace. This seawater, after it's poured onto the nuclear reactor core, definitely evaporates and the steam has to be released. For Unit 1 the steam probably exits out of the same hole that earlier allowed the hydrogen to escape, the hydrogen bubble which blew the outer building away.
At this point the plant's fancy equipment is all blasted away, electrically shorted out, corroded or otherwise nonfunctional. The operators may well be pouring seawater into the holes as fast as they can pump, and then excess seawater is overflowing and going into the ocean.
Could this be the beginning of the dreaded Japan Syndrome?
I had the same thought, O.S........I am getting a very strange feeling on this one....
Nothing is more important. We are talking about the destruction of Earth's life giving ability. Praying won't help anyone, neither will wishing upon a star. Using reason and logic to admit the folly can guide us to a better way of living.
There is no "they" here. That is part of the misconception, the disconnect. WE are all threatened by this catastrophe, same as the Gulf travesty, same as endless warfare, same as economic competition.
"We're in uncharted territory"
Let's put this into context. The nukular expertz may think they're in uncharted territory, but like the BP oil disaster, the nukular industry has had plenty of opportunity to chart that territory but failed because its spirit is that of arrogance and power lust.
If the spirit that prevailed in the nukular industry were that of peace, security, stability, solidarity and equity, the people there would quickly abandon their dead-end enterprise and support locally owned/controlled energy production of sustainable types and at sustainable volumes. They may or may not be kidding themselves, but they can't kid "we the people" of the far left.
Arrogance it is to think the forces of Nature will succumb to human whim.
"We're in uncharted territory," said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation.
Like the future ever was "charted territory". - That's the Grand Illusion right there. As this nuclear explosion - and so many other "unchartered" events - abundantly shows. - Shows steadily more of US, at any rate. With the rate being... somewhat too slow.
A problem is, there's "steadily more" of us humans too (some 240.000 more every day). Hard to keep up, dismantling the dangerously building damaging illusions.
Particularly as all those extra people are pressed into existence by the under-lying(!) principle of Compund Interest in the economy, to serve as surplus labor-force clamoring to get onto the bottom rung of the global wealth-pyramid rather than living with the bottom billion in starvation. Some system!
Hard to even talk fast enough, to disseminate essential info to all the new people arriving all the time. Not enough adults per child per info-load necessary for sane living. We're outrunning ourselves.
Our minds can't keep up with our bodies,
bodies can't keep up with legs,
legs can't keep up with the ground,
and the ground keeps rolling faster underfeet
as our minds keep spinning it.
I live in perpetual amazement at our human follies. Good for a laugh, good for a cry, good for perplexed blinking. But it's getting hard to blink fast enough.
"Biggest earthquake ever in Japan". Next eyeblink: "Among the three biggest nuclear explosions ever". Next: biggest Guinness World Record Ever bypassed on an hourly basis.
Blink, blink, blink again. LSD had nothing on this!
they could have charted all the territories if they could make a quick buck or two, but some territories were too inconvenient to chart, so they left those uncharted for future deniability. at least, they will die a buck or two richer than us happy broke soldiers in the capitalist war on humanity.
i repeat: the flag of a crack fascist batallion in the spanish civil war had written upon it the words, "long live death"!..(from a. camus)
Death survives us all.
Update:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110313
(Reuters) - Thousands of Japanese fled the vicinity of an earthquake-crippled nuclear plant after a radiation leak and authorities faced a fresh threat Sunday with the failure of the cooling system in a second reactor.
*Blink*
(Reuters): "Every time they repeated 'stay calm' without giving concrete data, anxiety increased"