With reference to the desire expressed by Chris “What the Japanese people, as well as the rest of the world, need very badly right now is one of the most comprehensive radiation and contamination mapping projects ever conducted.” there’s the internet of things network Pachube, being used for that very purpose. Here’s the link: http://blog.pachube.com/2011/03/real-time-radiation-monitoring-in-japan.html - Check out the google earth visualisation of the data linked to from that page!
It’s one of a number of efforts to do this, as listed on this page: http://www.safecast.org/, where they are mashing up the Pachube data with other sources on a single map.
Dear Chris, first of all thank you very much for the update and you investigation. In these days it is very hard to get good and impartial information. TEPCO and other official sources have proven to be unreliable. Too many times information have been given out with enormous delay and only partially. On the other side, people here want to go back to normality and the majority of them ignore completely the issue, burying their hand in the sand…
We live in Tokyo and have 3 small children and a dog…I need to be here for my job but I really don’t know what to do with my family. Is it safe for them to be here? What kind of precautions should be taken? Shall I send them away in the far south of Japan (Fukuoka) and then wait a couple of years to see what will be the situation in the future and decide. What would you do if you were in my place beside get a geiger counter and check everything…
[quote=travellingwithoutmoving]With reference to the desire expressed by Chris “What the Japanese people, as well as the rest of the world, need very badly right now is one of the most comprehensive radiation and contamination mapping projects ever conducted.” there’s the internet of things network Pachube, being used for that very purpose. Here’s the link: http://blog.pachube.com/2011/03/real-time-radiation-monitoring-in-japan.html - Check out the google earth visualisation of the data linked to from that page!
It’s one of a number of efforts to do this, as listed on this page: http://www.safecast.org/, where they are mashing up the Pachube data with other sources on a single map.
I hope that’s of use to some of you!
Nathan
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Nathan -
This is an outstanding link. Many, many thanks. This is where people need to be going for information. The only precaution is to read the text accompanying each survey site since the CPM to exposure rate conversion varies for different detector models.
Nice work digging this up.
here are some comments from Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds.com about the Mark1, it has been dangerous since the flawed design was put into service. I personally think that ALL MARK 1’s should be put out of service. and his site has all kinds of continuing updates many videos and pictureshttp://www.fairewinds.com/updates
Interesting documentary on Chernobyl including the scientists at work. What I wasn't aware of, was not only was there an explosion but also a full reactor meltdown. Scientist spent months/years trying to find out the condition of the remaining reactor core and eventually drilled a hole into the containment vessel to insert a camera. To there amazement they found it mostly empty - no fuel rods, graphite etc. Searching under the reactor they eventually found all the remaining fuel in a solidified slag. The remaining contents of the reactor which had not exploded upwards had melted along with a ring of sand around the reactor to form a glass type slag in the concrete maze of rooms below the reactor. Although Chernobyl has been surrounded by a huge concrete containment structure it is not hermetically sealed. The original building below is in danger of collapse which would likely cause a large dust cloud that could pass out of the gaps in the containment building, thereby causing a further release of radiation.!
So Fukushima has now been given Cat 7 status the same as Chernobyl.
If my memory of facts is correct? Fukushima has had 3 massive explosions. 4 reactors in trouble. They were storing up to 40 years of fuel rods in containment pools. If Fairewinds is correct there has been a likely nuclear reaction and 'detonation' in fuel pool no.3. Plutonium rod has been found at least 1km away. The ground level has changed by as much as 1ft, so concrete structure of whole building has likely cracks. They are pumping huge quantities of water which is believed to be escaping. Several reactors have no pressure and have containment failure. Radioactive material around Tokyo - sewer runoff.? ......................
Will Fukushima not be many multiples of Chernobyl Cat 7. Time will tell.!?
For the first time, Japanese authorities have suggested the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant may have gone beyond a meltdown.
An official report, which Japan will submit to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, says nuclear fuel in three reactors at Fukushima has possibly melted through the pressure vessels and accumulated in outer containment vessels.
Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper says this “melt-through” is far worse than a core meltdown, and is the worst possibility in a nuclear accident.
This is the first official admission that a “melt-through” may have occurred.
In the report, Japan also admits it was unprepared for the scale of the Fukushima disaster, which struck after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March.
The report also acknowledges there was insufficient communication between the government and the plant’s operator.
miuri Shimbun newspaper says this “melt-through” is far worse than a core meltdown, and is the worst possibility in a nuclear accident.
This is the first official admission that a “melt-through” may have occurred.
The bunny – purportedly captured on video just outside the crippled plant exclusion area and posted on YouTube on May 21 – has become big news in Japan and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere, stoking fears that contamination from the damaged facility could cause genetic mutations.
But both rabbit experts and radiation researchers told AOL Weird News the bunny’s bizarre looks could have a less sensational explanation.
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
…“The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor,” Gundersen added. “TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.”
…“We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl,” said Gundersen. “The data I’m seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man’s-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can’t clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl.”
…“Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said. “Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn’t exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor.”
“Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our efforts.”
- William Cohen, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, April 1997.
Workers at Japan's Fukushima plant say the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the fissures. They also say pipes and at least one reactor were seriously damaged before the tsunami hit the area in March.
The allegations raise concerns that the facility was doomed even before the earthquake triggered the disaster. Problems with deteriorating pipes at the plant had been reported for years. The cooling system failed to stop reactors going into meltdown after it was hit by the 40-metre-high waves. The plant has been leaking radioactive material ever since, despite efforts to clean it up.The allegations raise concerns that the facility was doomed even before the earthquake triggered the disaster. Problems with deteriorating pipes at the plant had been reported for years. The cooling system failed to stop reactors going into meltdown after it was hit by the 40-metre-high waves. The plant has been leaking radioactive material ever since, despite efforts to clean it up.
“We use a Lagrangian particles dispersal method to track where free floating material (fish larvae, algae, phytoplankton, zooplankton…) present in the sea water near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station plant could have gone since the earthquake on March 11th. THIS IS NOT A REPRESENTATION OF THE RADIOACTIVE PLUME CONCENTRATION. Since we do not know how much contaminated water and at what concentration was released into the ocean, it is impossible to estimate the extent and dilution of the plume. However, field monitoring by TEPCO and modelling by the Sirrocco group in University of Toulouse, France both show high concentration in the surrounding water (highest rate at 80 Bq/L and 24 Bq/L for respectively I-131 and C-137) . Assuming that a part of the passive biomass could have been contaminated in the area, we are trying to track where the radionuclides are spreading as it will eventually climb up the food chain.
The dispersal model is ASR’s Pol3DD. The model is forced by hydrodynamic data from the HYCOM/NCODA system which provides on a weekly basis, daily oceanic current in the world ocean. The resolution in this part of the Pacific Ocean is around 8km x 8km cells. We are treating only the sea surface currents. Particles in the model are continuously released near the Fukushima Daiichi power plant since March 11th. The dispersal model keeps a trace of their visits in the model cells. The results here are expressed in number of visit per surface area of material which has been in contact at least once with the highly concentrated radioactive water.”
The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says it is unlikely that
nuclear fuel has begun melting again as the density of the xenon is low and there
has been no change in the reactor temperatures. The agency says it will continue
to monitor the xenon in the reactor.
Go to http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html for a recent article updating the condition, number and precarious situation of the Fukashima spent fuel rods - by the former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, Mitsuhei Murata.
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[quote=safewrite]Go to http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html for a recent article updating the condition, number and precarious situation of the Fukashima spent fuel rods - by the former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, Mitsuhei Murata.
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safe - this response is in no way directed at you, only at the linked article.
I don’t know where to begin. This article is a deliberately misleading assembly of conjecture, understated or incomplete fact and overstated threat. First off, the article fails to mention that the spent fuel pools are intact. They always were intact and they never lost water. What they lost was the ability to recirculate water. That is no longer an issue.
All 6 of the FD plants are already shutdown. So if Unit 4 collapses, it will not cause a shutdown of all 6 plants…because they already are.
Let’s examine DADE Alvarez’ "astounding response"…
"304 fresh and unirradiated fuel cells." Big deal. New fuel can be and is routinely stored in air. The cells haven’t been exposed to a moderator, they don’t contain fission by-products on an significant scale. There is no decay heat generation. The radiation levels on contact with the fuel matrix will read background. I personally inspected every single new fuel cell that went into my submarine during a refueling overhaul - I got more exposure from the cement walls of the drydock than I did from the new fuel.
982 million Curies of of intermediate and long-lived radionuclides contained within the matrices of the remaining spent fuel cells. Of which, 393 million Curies are Cs-137. Sounds like a pretty good estimate. 200 times that which was released at Chernobyl? How about a little journalistic integrity here folks? The stark difference is that Chernobyl RELEASED that amount of Cs-137. The estimated 393 million Curies in the fuel cells at Fukushima Daichii are locked and contained within the zirc matrix of the spent fuel cells. Locked within fuel cells that are structurally intact, covered with water and with accompanying very low decay heat generation one year out after the accident - and dropping. "Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 200 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival."
For those of you allergic to hyperbole, you better hit your thigh with an Epi Pen now…
Why does the article not discuss the real likelihood and mechanism by which all of this Cs-137 would be released from the fuel cells? Collapse of the building at Unit 4 would be bad, but the idea that thousands of spent fuel cells would now be scattered about the complex and just now "leaking" millions of Curies of Cs-137 is an overstated threat. Okay fine, I’ll call it what it is - preposterous. Somebody please come up with a credible scenario by which this entrained Cs-137 would be released from the spent fuel. Hint: A collapsed building isn’t it.
The comparative metrics this article uses are poison pill arguments. There is no utility in comparing the amount of Cs-137 released at Chernobyl or released during atmospheric weapons testing and reprocessing to an amount of Cs-137 that is trapped in undamaged, structurally intact, relatively stable spent fuel cells with low - and lowering - decay heat generation levels.
But headlining an article with such metrics does generate hits on a website…
Dogs,Could you address the concern that if cooling of the SFP fails this could result in spent fuel rods catching on fire> melts cladding>release of radio nuclides>carbon–based workers forced to evacuate>no further remediation work possible at entire Fuku 1 plant?
I probably have some of that wrong but it seems to be the doomsday scenario being bandied about now.
Also, I would be curious to know what you make of the recent revelation by Tepco that a 35 ton crane had fallen into the SPF of unit three but Tepco has "not found any indication it damaged the pool’s walls and caused any leaks, or that it damaged the spent fuel". http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120415a4.html To this layman Tepco’s findings seem implausible.
[quote=debu]Dogs,
Could you address the concern that if cooling of the SFP fails this could result in spent fuel rods catching on fire> melts cladding>release of radio nuclides>carbon–based workers forced to evacuate>no further remediation work possible at entire Fuku 1 plant?
I probably have some of that wrong but it seems to be the doomsday scenario being bandied about now.
Also, I would be curious to know what you make of the recent revelation by Tepco that a 35 ton crane had fallen into the SPF of unit three but Tepco has "not found any indication it damaged the pool’s walls and caused any leaks, or that it damaged the spent fuel". http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120415a4.html To this layman Tepco’s findings seem implausible.
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According to what I understand from even Gundersen, things won’t start blowing up like they did a year ago: There just isn’t enough energy left for that. What could happen though is that trying to keep it cool (if not just to make sure the shielding does not melt), vapor forms and contamination starts escaping again, or worse if a big earthquake hits Fukushima again, the spent fuel might get thrown onto the ground and then all hell would break loose, but again, no explosions or anything like that. Just something that would eat at Japan, relentlessly over the next few centuries…
Samuel
