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Dedicated to the heroes who have strived to tell the world the truth - Helen Caldicott, Mimi German, Hatrick Penry, Kevin Blanch - and many others who will remain nameless
Recently I listened to the very first edition of the Lifeboat Hour (from September, 2010) with Mike Ruppert. That was several months before Fukushima. It all sound so mild and relaxed compared with what came later.
So much of my knowledge of what happened there came from my friend, Mike Ruppert and his journey to reveal the truth
Fukushima changed everything and it changed Mike.
What follows is a miscellany of material on the disaster as we mark the 4th anniversary.
Kevin Hester remarked to me today that Fukushima would mark an extinction event for humanity were it not for our facing our demise sooner, through rapid climate change.
The number one go-to person throughout, especially in that first year was Arne Gundersen at Fairewinds
Recently I listened to the very first edition of the Lifeboat Hour (from September, 2010) with Mike Ruppert. That was several months before Fukushima. It all sound so mild and relaxed compared with what came later.
So much of my knowledge of what happened there came from my friend, Mike Ruppert and his journey to reveal the truth
Fukushima changed everything and it changed Mike.
What follows is a miscellany of material on the disaster as we mark the 4th anniversary.
Kevin Hester remarked to me today that Fukushima would mark an extinction event for humanity were it not for our facing our demise sooner, through rapid climate change.
Mike
Ruppert talking about Fukushima – 13 March, 2011
To
listen to Mike Ruppert’s broadcast on the Lifeboat Hour on 13
March, 2011. directly after the tsunami and Fukushima catastrophe GO
HERE
Here
is Mike on Fukushima and man's demise
Apocalypse,
Man: Michael C. Ruppert on World's End
Mike's journey led him to acknowleding Hatrick Penry and Plumegate - that there has been a cover-up to hide that the worse had already happened in the initial meltdowns
Mike
Ruppert and Hatrick Peny discussing Fukushima – December, 2013
Arnie
Gundersen on Fukushima - 2011
March 16, 2011: CNN with John King
Useless
helicopters
1:07
– 1:23
JK:
“They need to get water up here, somehow, too cool these spent fuel
rods. They were thinking about using helicopters. Good idea or bad
idea?
AG:
“That’s a really bad idea, and I’m really glad they took it off
the table. The problem is that the gap between the fuel is really,
really critical
1:48-
1:55
AG:
“The fuel pool itself could begin to have a chain reaction if the
water hit it too hard and pushed the fuel to close together.”
March 17, 2011: Updates on Fukushima
Hole
in containment UNIT 3, leaking radiation
00:44
– 00:60
“Apparently
on Unit 3 they were able to get some water in because they saw lots
of steam coming out. The steam is not a good sign. It means there is
a hole in the containment and radiation is leaking out, and lots of
radiation is leaking out.”
Damaged
Fuel
4:11
– 4:24
“When
they squirt water in, steam is going to come out, because now the
containment has a hole in it and that steam is also going to carry
radioactivity because the fuel is damaged.”
Decommissioning
costs
5:35
-5:40
“A
clean nuclear plant like Oyster Creek or Vermont Yankee or Pilgrim
costs about 750-million $ to clean up, but a dirty plant like TMI
cost billions, and there’s six dirty plants.”
5:40-5:54
“Ultimately
when they get in and remove those plants, it is probably a
20-billion-dollar proposition to remove those six plants after they
have been stabilized, and the stabellization could easily be a
10-billion dollar problem.”
March 18, 2011 – CNN With John King
“Worse
than Chernobyl”
4:08
– 4:22
“TEPCO…
didn’t tell enough information soon enough.”
4:23
– 5:03
“JK:…Secretary
Chu called it worse than Three Mile Island…
Arnie:
“I actually think it’s at Chernobyl level right now…100 time
worse than the worst case we imagined a year ago.”
March 23, 2011: News on Fukushima Daiichi
Long-term
environmental contamination
3:46
– 3:58
“It’s pretty clear to me that the area immediately outside the plant will be contaminated for a long, long time, and I would not imagine people returning to their homes anytime soon.”
March 26. 2011: RT Moscow
Chernobyl
on Steroids
2:02
– 2:15
“This
is Chernobyl on Steroids….“This is worse than Chernobyl.”
March 29, 2011: Update on Fukushima – Discovery of Plutonium Leakage and Highly Radioactive Water
Contaminated
water leaking into ocean
2:53
– 3:03
“…enormous
quantities of of highly radioactive water have been found outside the
containment. That means the containment isn’t containing.”
4:34
– 4:37
“I
think that water is leaking into the ocean.”
TEPCO
concealing extent of core damage
5:08
– 5:13
“…the
core damage appears to be minimized by Tokyo Electric.”
6:18
– 6:23
“more
decay heat plus very little cooling tells me that the damage inside
that core is enormous.”
6:31
– 6:52
“what
that means is that it falls to the bottom of the reactor as slag…and
a melt down is possible.”
March 31, 2011: New Images Reveal Nuclear Fuel Rack Exposed to Air
Loss
of shielding
1:33
-1:35
“It
appears that the pools boiled dry.”
2:34-2:39
“The
water has two purposes: cooling but also shielding. That means that
the nuclear fuel is unshielded.”
4:04-
4:12
“The
other thing it means to me is that the nuclear fuel is
extraordinarily hot, and the plutonium inside can become volatile.”
4:38
– 4:49
“I
would recommend, based on this, that the evacuation zone should be
pushed back further because of these heavy elements being released,
as well as the cesium that was also in those racks.”
March 31, 2011: Update on Fukushima – Discussion on High Level Rad Releases and Previous ‘Worst Case Scenarios’ Planned for by Industry
More
evacuations necessary; fuel significantly damaged
1:35
– 1:47
“There
are some indications offsite that the releases are significantly
large… The fuel is significantly damaged…and of course, the
releases are going to be very large.”
2:37-
2:49
“There
are places well beyond where the Japanese are evacuating that should
be evacuated, based on deposition of radioactive materials nearby.”
3:54
– 3:57
“It’s
clearly leaking from the trenches into the ocean.”
4:17
– 4:21
“It’s
reasonable to expect that the ocean is going to be polluted.”
5:38-
5:51
“In the Fukushima vicinity, exposures are probably 500 to 1,000 times higher than anticipated in the accident analysis that was reasonable a month ago.”
June 7, 2011: CNN with John King
Hot
Particles
1:06
– 1:53
“JK:
You’ve seen evidence of what’s called ‘hot particles’ showing
up on the U.S. West Coast, in Seattle for example. What are we
talking about and how worried should people be?”
AG:
“Well, the radiation initially comes out as a big cloud of gases,
and that’s what you can measure with a Geiger counter. But now what
we’re finding are these things called ‘hot particles’ and in
the industry we call them ‘fuel fleas’ because they are
incredibly small. They’re smaller than the thickness of your hair.
In Tokyo, measurements indicated that there are about ten hot
particles per day in what a normal person would breathe. And…it’s
interesting because in Seattle it didn’t go down that much. It was
about five hot particles per day.”
2:07-
2:21 “These ‘hot particles can lodge in your lung or in your
digestive tract or your bone and over time cause a cancer, but they
are way too small to be picked up on a large radiation detector.”
The one source of in-depth knowledge from a mainstream source came from a book written by Mark Willisey, correspondent at the time for Australia's ABC
Fukushima
by Mark Willisey
As a technophobe it was always a struggle to understand exactly what happened at Fukushima following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, especially amidst the often conflicting information and misinformation. Even now we get statements like "IF there's a meltdown" at Fukushima.
So when I discovered that ABC correspondent and longstanding resident in Japan, Mark Willacy had written a book I sat down and read it.
I found that it brought a lot of clarity to the bits of information that came out piecemeal from different sources.
Willacy, in writing the book interviewed many people, including firemen and fishermen affected by the tsunami and events at Fukushima as well as some of the people, such as the manager at the Fukushima plant at the time, Tepco officials and - notably, the then-prime minister Naoto Kan.
I have made these notes, focusing on events at Fukushima Dai-ichi in the days following the tsunami.
What comes out clearly is the corruption of Tepco and collusion between the nuclear company, regulation officials and government, as well as the comfortable relationship between industry and media which ensured that the real story couldn't emerge - whistleblowers and truth tellers were weeded out and dealt with.
It is equally clear from Willacy's book that although the immediate cause of the catastrophe at Fukushima Dai-ichi was a natural disaster, it was also definitely an avoidable, man made phenomenon.
I hope that you find that the following adds to your understanding, even if it doesn't answer the question of whether the fuel rods at Reactor 4 dried out (in which case the worst has already happened, or whether they remain, damaged but intact, presenting the real possibility of further disaster.
I guess,at present, no one really knows for sure and only the future will tell.
Meltdown
at Fukushima
Seemorerocks
Government was not getting information from Tepco: “was extremely uneasy about whether they were telling us the truth about the situation at the site”
(Naoto Kan)
The top brass of the company were out of the country – on junkets – when the earthquake hit
“We couldn't understand who was taking the responsibility at TEPCO for this situation”
Tepco manager Yoshida was asking to vent the radioactive steam from reactor #1 to prevent an explosion.
Pressure in the containment vessel had soared to nearly double of its design strength.
The main fear was of a hydrogen explosion. If the zirconium-coated fuel rods inside the reactor over-heated, they would react with water, creating hydrogen.Once the hydrogen leaked out of the containment vessel it could reach an ignition point with oxygen in the air that could blow the building and reactor containment vessel apart
PM made decision to vent at 1.30 am
Bleeding and venting
Venting would take the pressure off the vessel and allow them to inject cooling water into the reactor to prevent meltdown – this is called feed and bleed
It was already too late
The fuel had begun melting more than 7 hours earlier.
3pm Edano announced there would be a 'small' release of radiation, assuring the public that the prevailing winds were blowing out to sea.
While at the plant Kan would be seen as interfering and slowing things down.
Kan takes helicopter to personally visit Fukushima – to get answers- and is assured by Haruki Madarama (head of Nuclear Safety Commission) “there will be no H2 explosion” in Reactor 1
Kan arrives to find that venting has no yet occurred. It turns out that they don't know how to do this manually (they could not do it remotely, because of the lack of power), so there is a frantic consultation of the operating manual – trying to figure it out while watching radiation levels rise.
Kan is told they would open the vents manually as soon as possible, 'even if we have to set up a suicide squad'
Kan's visit came at a crucial time for the operators.
At 8.03 orders went out to open the vent valve in an hour and Kan leaves for Tokyo
Kan at the time contemplated “the worse-case scenario: a doomsday release of radiation caused by multiple meltdowns, a chain reaction requiring the evacuation of …. Tokyo, and its 35 million people”
Non-essential people in the bunker were allowed to leave.
Suicide teams were working inside the reactor #1 control room with rising radiation level with full protection gear with oxygen tanks, thyroid tablets. One worker received 106 miilisieverts – were working in the dark, in intense heat.
Radiation levels so high that workers rotating in and out every 17 minutes
After a while they found the wheel for manually opening the vent and set the aperture for the valve at 25% - and left.
Radiation levels were rising (125 millisieverts in front of service building
Radioactive cesium-137 and iodine-131 near reactor 1 – a sure sign that the reactor core's fuel was damaged. Tellarium 132 – a telltale sign of reactor meltdown – was also discovered
At 8.15 am vapor seen rising into the sky – venting had begun – 'pressure was going lower'
It took Tepco 13 hours to start venting.
They were running out of fresh water to cool the reactors, and they knew they would have to start to use seawater, but this would be the end of the reactor
“The injection of water as a coolant for the reactors was the first priority; it is the most important issue. When fresh water ran out, there was no choice but to inject seawater” (N. Kan)
Tepco preferred not to cool with seawater because salt would damage it and it would have to be decommissioned.
“Can we agree that we have the option of waiting as long as possible in order to use fresh water” - Tepco official
At 2.50 pm there was no fresh water left and injection for cooling was stopped
Explosion at Reactor No. 1
At 3.36 reactor building #1 exploded (white smoke seen billowing from Fukushima)
Wind pushed the plume up the coast
“Suddenly, what looked like a sound wave rippled upwards from the Reactor 1 building, making the very air shimmer. Then light-grey smoke mushroomed sideways out of the building towards the sea and to the north. The wind pushed the spreading plume up the coast, as more smoke pured out. A magnified, slow-motion replay showed a hint of flame as the hydrogen inside the building combined with the oxygen already there, igniting and blowing off the roof, sending contaminated smoke into the atmosphere. The side walls of the upper building were blasted away, exposing the X-shaped steel framework”
The PM had heard nothing from Tepco or the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency about the explosion. He had learned about it from television.
Engineers at plant started stepping up measurements of radiation and feared that they would never get out alive.
Confirmation came that the containment vessel was intact but the building damaged – likely a hydrogen explosion. Workers ordered to stay in the bunker.
Prepared to get underway to open vents at both reactors 2 and 3.
Radiation and evacuation of the population
NHK made announcement to residents of Fukushima to stay indoors and close doors and windows, cover mouths and not drink tap water.
.
At 5.44 there was an announcement of the evacuation of people within a 10 km range of the plant – but this was not communicated to local officials.
Residents were evacuated inland, but the wind changed and radiation moved inland in same direction as the evacuees at about 4 pm – just 24 minutes after the hydrogen explosion at reactor no.1
This area became one of the most contaminated in Fukushima.
The report subsequently put out by Tepco lied about informing local officials
“The reports said they (Tepco) sent people to the temporary town hall at Tsushima to explain the situation”
“I still think it was an act of murder...What were they thinking whne if came to people's dignity and their lives? I doubt they even thought about our existance” (Tamostsu Baba, mayor of Namie)
Bureaucrats in Tokyo knew the truth as they had a computer system (SPEEDI) to predict the spread of radiation. These forecasts went unpublished, so as “not to create panic”.
This information was supposed to be made available to local officials, but wasn't. The Education and Science Ministry which oversaw SPEEDI, was holding it all back.
Even the PM and most of his inner circle didn't know SPEEDI existed.
The information was withheld until 12 days after the disaster for fear of 'creating a panic'
During this period SPEEDI information was made available hourly to the United States military.
12 March – 7 pm Workers started injecting sea water from the Pacific into Reactor to bleed away excess heat. 60,000 tonnes of water would be sprayed over and into the reactors in the first month, creating pools of highly reactive water in tunnels, basements, cracks and drains inside the buildings.
A worker checking water inside Reactor 2 would see his dosimeter max out at 1000 millisieverts (or 1 sievert) an hour.
Tepco officials claimed : “the water being poured into the reactors wlll evaporate in due course” (sic)
PM Kan tried to get answers from Tepco about the spraying of seawater (about which he was not advised) and the possibility of re-criticality (when a nuclear reaction accelerates and then reaches a self-sustaining level that is difficult to stop).
Tepco intended to prevent re-criticality by adding boric acid.
An order was made to stop to seawater injection.
“Yoshida must have thought it was the PM ordering it to stop. Of course I did not order it to stop”. (N Kan)
This instruction (wherever it came from) was disobeyed by Yoshida, the plant manager – he continued to inject seawater into Reactor 1. He defied and overrode Head Office.
“Suspending the seawater would have meant death (for those at the plant)”
14 March, 2011
Water levels at Reactor 3 dropped below measurable levels, leaving the 548 fuel assemblies fully exposed.
“The fact that pressure is rising in the dry well means that – like the number 1 reactor- a hydrogen explosion is now a possibility …. we have neither water nor ideas (to stop water blowing over and the building blowing up) (Yoshida)
One quarter of the Reactor 3 core had already melted down
Japan;s Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano had mentioned the possibility of meltdown, but would soon backpedal, insisting the rods had not melted and there was no danger to the population.
At this stage a PA announcement was made in the bunker – could the workers lend Tepco some money to buy water, fuel or food!!
The company was preparing a damage-control strategy for the media, saying the prospects of further explosions was 'extremely remote'.
“So do we really want to scare the public? If we are asked at our next press conference, we will deny it. We'll say (another hydrogen explosion is )impossible” - (Tsunehisa Katsumata – Tepco chairman)
Explosion at Reactor 3
At 11.01 Reactor 3 exploded.
The smoke from the explosion was black.
Tepco decided to simply parrot the government line even though no one knew what had caused the explosion.
The cause of the explosion has never been established, some speculating that it was a nuclear explosion – just like Chernobyl.
“There was an orange flash, which suggests the temperature must have been thousands of degrees centigrade before the explosion. Then there was black smoke' (Setsuo Fujiwara, nuclear-reactor designer) - a hydrogen explosion creates white smoke and steam.
The fuel in Reactor 3 is MOX – plutonium was scattered about after this blast.
The reactor building was bent like candy, unlike no.1 where the steel framework remained intact.
All this indicates a nuclear explosion.
At Fukushima Daiichi there was worry about a chain reaction.
At 1.25 pm Yoshida feared the Core Isolation Cooling system at Reactor 2 has stopped.
By 4 pm they knew the fuel rods were fully exposed.
At 5 pm Masataka Shimizu asked how much time left until they reached 'the worse-case scenario' (an uncontrolled meltdown and a chain reaction). He was told – 2 hours.
Tepco started thinking about evacuating the workers.
Pressure inside Reactor 2's containment vessel had exceeded it design limit and radiation was spewing into the atmosphere.
The fear was of a chain reaction involving Fukushima Dai-ini.
“There are a total of ten reacotrs in the first and second sites, and 11 spent fuel sites. If these ten reactors and all the fuel pools melted down in the days and weeks afterwards, it would cause the spread of radioactive substances dozens of times greater than Chernobyl....Should that happen, the entire east of Japan, including Tokyo, would have to be evacuated. Japan as a state would be finished. Many people would be killed”
(Naoto Kan, ex-PM of Japan)
Tepco wanted to evacuate workers from plant
Tepco started to discuss the evacuation of all workers from the plant
“We are now working to confirm the status of the situation with the appropriate body” (ie the PM's department).
Kan was woken up to be told that Tepco had decided to withdraw, they were sounding the PM's department out.
“I want to evacuate the staff at the #1 plant to the #2 plant. Would you help in any way” (Imasataka Shimizu to Industry Minister Kaeda)
Kan was incensed by suggestions that Tepco should pull out and faced down Tepco president Shimizu
“There will be no withdrawal, Not ever... Our country will not survive unless we put our lives on the line to bring this situation under control”
The Tepco president backed down immediately.
Tepco subsequently adopted the position that it never wanted a full withdrawal.
Reactors 4 and 2
At 5.35 am there was another explosion.
Smoke was coming out of Reactor 4.
In Reactor 2 pressure soddenly dipped to zero. It is not known what happened but this explosion released the greatest single burst of fallout during the entire crisis.
At about this time (9.38 am) the Reactor 4 building exploded and its wall collapsed and a fire started on the 3rd floor. Firefighters couldn't get near it because radiation levels were too high. It would have to burn itself out.
The fifth floor rooftop are was badly damaged, ripped apart from the explosion. This is where the fuel pool was stored.
“We'll die if it (the fuel pool) explodes”
Reactor 4 had been shut down prior to the tsunami and the fuel rods transferred to the spent fuel pool on the upper floor – 1331 highly radioactive fuel assemblies – containing about 10 times more cesium-137 than was released by Chernobyl., 5000 times more cesium than released by the Hiroshima bomb.
It also caused a reinforced concrete wall in the fuel pool to bulge by more than three centimetres.
The blast tore off the roof and left the fuel pool and its spent fuel exposed to the elements, hanging 4 stories above ground next to the reactor vessel. This was eventually covered with a white plastic sheet.
In addition to the danger of a collapse of the building (say in an earthquake) -
“if there's a crack in the pool and the water drains out, the fuel rods will be exposed...it will then be impossible to cool the fuel. So, if an accident happens, ten times more cesium than was already released by the meltdown will go into the atmosphere. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, Tokyo could become uninhabitable”
(Reactor engineer, Hiroaki Koide)
The wind which had been blowing eastwards changed direction and started to gust inland in the direction of Fukushima City.
The PM ordered the temporary evacuation of 650 workers at the plant, leaving a skeleton crew of essential staff, the 'Fukushima 50'.
An evacuation of people living within a 20 km radius of the plant was ordered, and for people within 20-30 km radius to stay indoors.
At reactor 2 radiation levels became extremely toxic, and radiation at the front gate spiked at 11,930 microsieverts/hour.
There is a description of the actions of firefighters to spray three tonnes of seawater every minute into the nuclear fuel pool of reactor 3 in conditions of high radiation, fir 7 hours at a time, retreating every few minutes to their airtight truck to ensure their radiation exposure didn't max out.
Radiation and Japanese schoolchildren
They were being exposed to 130 millsieverts per hour (or 2 millisieverts every minute), but the other danger was exhaustion and dehydration.
Some months after the disaster the Japanese government raised the radiation limit for schoolchildren to 20 millisieverts a year, which basically meant that children in Japan could receive the same annual dose of radiation as international nuclear power-plant workers.
This was done to keep the number of schools that exceeded the limit to the minimum.
Eventually the government flip-flopped and bowed to pressure by lowering the limit back to one millisievert.
On 15 May Tepco finally admitted what many had known for weeks:
"We estimate that regarding the Unit 1, nuclear fuel pellets have melted, falling to the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at a relatively early stage after the tsunami reached the station"
Half the 4-metre-long fuel rods of Reactor 1 had been exposed to the air and melted down within five hours of the tsunami striking.
It was also feared that this molten pool had burnt through the bottom of the pressure vessel and was sitting on the concrete floor of the containment vessel below. This was later confirmed by Tepco, estimating that this toxic lava had eaten its way through 70 cm of the 7.6 metre-thick slab.
Tepco also reported that:
- Reactor 2 probably suffered a meltdown 100 hours after the quake
- the fuel inside Reactor 3 was exposed and had melted down about 60 hours after the quake
International experts knew this within 24 hours of the tsunami - from the presence if cesium near the plant, a sure sign of nuclear fission.
Tepco maintained that it was simply too busy and distracted to tell the people that Japan was facing multiple meltdowns.
In the Japanese cabinet mention of the word 'meltdown' was taboo - to avoid public panic. Also, it is clear that the government simply did not know what was happening at the plant and was grasping in the dark for information.
Tepco was (and is) unable to tell the public any more because extreme radiation made any assessment of the interior of the containment vessels impossible.
"The reactor cores melted down and nobody knows where the melted fuel is now...we do not know the full scale of the contamination of the environment"
Hiroaki Koide
On 16 December 2011, none months after the meltdowns, Japan's new PM Yoshihiko Noda declared that the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi had "been brought under control and were in a state of 'cold shutdown' ( another lie or half-truth) and announced the decommisioning of the nuclear plant - a process that would take 40 years.
Willacy talks about other issues, such as the underplaying of safety issues by the company in order to save money and finishes his account by describing how earlier this year power was cut to the cooling systems at four pools used to store 8800 radioactive rods because of the activities of one rat and the slapdash improvisations to keep the plant from spiralling out of control again.
The only thing marring the book was that he finishes it up with optimistic statements on how innovative Japan is and how it will come out of this well - all of which is belied by the rest of the contents of the book.
Oh well! It is the habit of just about everyone to ignore their own arguments and take a good dose of hopium
Bringing us up to date-
Dr.
Chris Busby talked about supplement scandal and contamination
situation to Fukushima Diary
2:07-
2:21 “These ‘hot particles can lodge in your lung or in your
digestive tract or your bone and over time cause a cancer, but they
are way too small to be picked up on a large radiation detector.”
The one source of in-depth knowledge from a mainstream source came from a book written by Mark Willisey, correspondent at the time for Australia's ABC
Fukushima
by Mark Willisey
As a technophobe it was always a struggle to understand exactly what happened at Fukushima following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, especially amidst the often conflicting information and misinformation. Even now we get statements like "IF there's a meltdown" at Fukushima.
So when I discovered that ABC correspondent and longstanding resident in Japan, Mark Willacy had written a book I sat down and read it.
I found that it brought a lot of clarity to the bits of information that came out piecemeal from different sources.
Willacy, in writing the book interviewed many people, including firemen and fishermen affected by the tsunami and events at Fukushima as well as some of the people, such as the manager at the Fukushima plant at the time, Tepco officials and - notably, the then-prime minister Naoto Kan.
I have made these notes, focusing on events at Fukushima Dai-ichi in the days following the tsunami.
What comes out clearly is the corruption of Tepco and collusion between the nuclear company, regulation officials and government, as well as the comfortable relationship between industry and media which ensured that the real story couldn't emerge - whistleblowers and truth tellers were weeded out and dealt with.
It is equally clear from Willacy's book that although the immediate cause of the catastrophe at Fukushima Dai-ichi was a natural disaster, it was also definitely an avoidable, man made phenomenon.
I hope that you find that the following adds to your understanding, even if it doesn't answer the question of whether the fuel rods at Reactor 4 dried out (in which case the worst has already happened, or whether they remain, damaged but intact, presenting the real possibility of further disaster.
I guess,at present, no one really knows for sure and only the future will tell.
Meltdown
at Fukushima
Seemorerocks
Government was not getting information from Tepco: “was extremely uneasy about whether they were telling us the truth about the situation at the site”
(Naoto Kan)
The top brass of the company were out of the country – on junkets – when the earthquake hit
“We couldn't understand who was taking the responsibility at TEPCO for this situation”
Tepco manager Yoshida was asking to vent the radioactive steam from reactor #1 to prevent an explosion.
Pressure in the containment vessel had soared to nearly double of its design strength.
The main fear was of a hydrogen explosion. If the zirconium-coated fuel rods inside the reactor over-heated, they would react with water, creating hydrogen.Once the hydrogen leaked out of the containment vessel it could reach an ignition point with oxygen in the air that could blow the building and reactor containment vessel apart
PM made decision to vent at 1.30 am
Bleeding and venting
Venting would take the pressure off the vessel and allow them to inject cooling water into the reactor to prevent meltdown – this is called feed and bleed
It was already too late
The fuel had begun melting more than 7 hours earlier.
3pm Edano announced there would be a 'small' release of radiation, assuring the public that the prevailing winds were blowing out to sea.
While at the plant Kan would be seen as interfering and slowing things down.
Kan takes helicopter to personally visit Fukushima – to get answers- and is assured by Haruki Madarama (head of Nuclear Safety Commission) “there will be no H2 explosion” in Reactor 1
Kan arrives to find that venting has no yet occurred. It turns out that they don't know how to do this manually (they could not do it remotely, because of the lack of power), so there is a frantic consultation of the operating manual – trying to figure it out while watching radiation levels rise.
Kan is told they would open the vents manually as soon as possible, 'even if we have to set up a suicide squad'
Kan's visit came at a crucial time for the operators.
At 8.03 orders went out to open the vent valve in an hour and Kan leaves for Tokyo
Kan at the time contemplated “the worse-case scenario: a doomsday release of radiation caused by multiple meltdowns, a chain reaction requiring the evacuation of …. Tokyo, and its 35 million people”
Non-essential people in the bunker were allowed to leave.
Suicide teams were working inside the reactor #1 control room with rising radiation level with full protection gear with oxygen tanks, thyroid tablets. One worker received 106 miilisieverts – were working in the dark, in intense heat.
Radiation levels so high that workers rotating in and out every 17 minutes
After a while they found the wheel for manually opening the vent and set the aperture for the valve at 25% - and left.
Radiation levels were rising (125 millisieverts in front of service building
Radioactive cesium-137 and iodine-131 near reactor 1 – a sure sign that the reactor core's fuel was damaged. Tellarium 132 – a telltale sign of reactor meltdown – was also discovered
At 8.15 am vapor seen rising into the sky – venting had begun – 'pressure was going lower'
It took Tepco 13 hours to start venting.
They were running out of fresh water to cool the reactors, and they knew they would have to start to use seawater, but this would be the end of the reactor
“The injection of water as a coolant for the reactors was the first priority; it is the most important issue. When fresh water ran out, there was no choice but to inject seawater” (N. Kan)
Tepco preferred not to cool with seawater because salt would damage it and it would have to be decommissioned.
“Can we agree that we have the option of waiting as long as possible in order to use fresh water” - Tepco official
At 2.50 pm there was no fresh water left and injection for cooling was stopped
Explosion at Reactor No. 1
At 3.36 reactor building #1 exploded (white smoke seen billowing from Fukushima)
Wind pushed the plume up the coast
“Suddenly, what looked like a sound wave rippled upwards from the Reactor 1 building, making the very air shimmer. Then light-grey smoke mushroomed sideways out of the building towards the sea and to the north. The wind pushed the spreading plume up the coast, as more smoke pured out. A magnified, slow-motion replay showed a hint of flame as the hydrogen inside the building combined with the oxygen already there, igniting and blowing off the roof, sending contaminated smoke into the atmosphere. The side walls of the upper building were blasted away, exposing the X-shaped steel framework”
The PM had heard nothing from Tepco or the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency about the explosion. He had learned about it from television.
Engineers at plant started stepping up measurements of radiation and feared that they would never get out alive.
Confirmation came that the containment vessel was intact but the building damaged – likely a hydrogen explosion. Workers ordered to stay in the bunker.
Prepared to get underway to open vents at both reactors 2 and 3.
Radiation and evacuation of the population
NHK made announcement to residents of Fukushima to stay indoors and close doors and windows, cover mouths and not drink tap water.
.
At 5.44 there was an announcement of the evacuation of people within a 10 km range of the plant – but this was not communicated to local officials.
Residents were evacuated inland, but the wind changed and radiation moved inland in same direction as the evacuees at about 4 pm – just 24 minutes after the hydrogen explosion at reactor no.1
This area became one of the most contaminated in Fukushima.
The report subsequently put out by Tepco lied about informing local officials
“The reports said they (Tepco) sent people to the temporary town hall at Tsushima to explain the situation”
“I still think it was an act of murder...What were they thinking whne if came to people's dignity and their lives? I doubt they even thought about our existance” (Tamostsu Baba, mayor of Namie)
Bureaucrats in Tokyo knew the truth as they had a computer system (SPEEDI) to predict the spread of radiation. These forecasts went unpublished, so as “not to create panic”.
This information was supposed to be made available to local officials, but wasn't. The Education and Science Ministry which oversaw SPEEDI, was holding it all back.
Even the PM and most of his inner circle didn't know SPEEDI existed.
The information was withheld until 12 days after the disaster for fear of 'creating a panic'
During this period SPEEDI information was made available hourly to the United States military.
12 March – 7 pm Workers started injecting sea water from the Pacific into Reactor to bleed away excess heat. 60,000 tonnes of water would be sprayed over and into the reactors in the first month, creating pools of highly reactive water in tunnels, basements, cracks and drains inside the buildings.
A worker checking water inside Reactor 2 would see his dosimeter max out at 1000 millisieverts (or 1 sievert) an hour.
Tepco officials claimed : “the water being poured into the reactors wlll evaporate in due course” (sic)
PM Kan tried to get answers from Tepco about the spraying of seawater (about which he was not advised) and the possibility of re-criticality (when a nuclear reaction accelerates and then reaches a self-sustaining level that is difficult to stop).
Tepco intended to prevent re-criticality by adding boric acid.
An order was made to stop to seawater injection.
“Yoshida must have thought it was the PM ordering it to stop. Of course I did not order it to stop”. (N Kan)
This instruction (wherever it came from) was disobeyed by Yoshida, the plant manager – he continued to inject seawater into Reactor 1. He defied and overrode Head Office.
“Suspending the seawater would have meant death (for those at the plant)”
14 March, 2011
Water levels at Reactor 3 dropped below measurable levels, leaving the 548 fuel assemblies fully exposed.
“The fact that pressure is rising in the dry well means that – like the number 1 reactor- a hydrogen explosion is now a possibility …. we have neither water nor ideas (to stop water blowing over and the building blowing up) (Yoshida)
One quarter of the Reactor 3 core had already melted down
Japan;s Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano had mentioned the possibility of meltdown, but would soon backpedal, insisting the rods had not melted and there was no danger to the population.
At this stage a PA announcement was made in the bunker – could the workers lend Tepco some money to buy water, fuel or food!!
The company was preparing a damage-control strategy for the media, saying the prospects of further explosions was 'extremely remote'.
“So do we really want to scare the public? If we are asked at our next press conference, we will deny it. We'll say (another hydrogen explosion is )impossible” - (Tsunehisa Katsumata – Tepco chairman)
Explosion at Reactor 3
At 11.01 Reactor 3 exploded.
The smoke from the explosion was black.
Tepco decided to simply parrot the government line even though no one knew what had caused the explosion.
The cause of the explosion has never been established, some speculating that it was a nuclear explosion – just like Chernobyl.
“There was an orange flash, which suggests the temperature must have been thousands of degrees centigrade before the explosion. Then there was black smoke' (Setsuo Fujiwara, nuclear-reactor designer) - a hydrogen explosion creates white smoke and steam.
The fuel in Reactor 3 is MOX – plutonium was scattered about after this blast.
The reactor building was bent like candy, unlike no.1 where the steel framework remained intact.
All this indicates a nuclear explosion.
At Fukushima Daiichi there was worry about a chain reaction.
At 1.25 pm Yoshida feared the Core Isolation Cooling system at Reactor 2 has stopped.
By 4 pm they knew the fuel rods were fully exposed.
At 5 pm Masataka Shimizu asked how much time left until they reached 'the worse-case scenario' (an uncontrolled meltdown and a chain reaction). He was told – 2 hours.
Tepco started thinking about evacuating the workers.
Pressure inside Reactor 2's containment vessel had exceeded it design limit and radiation was spewing into the atmosphere.
The fear was of a chain reaction involving Fukushima Dai-ini.
“There are a total of ten reacotrs in the first and second sites, and 11 spent fuel sites. If these ten reactors and all the fuel pools melted down in the days and weeks afterwards, it would cause the spread of radioactive substances dozens of times greater than Chernobyl....Should that happen, the entire east of Japan, including Tokyo, would have to be evacuated. Japan as a state would be finished. Many people would be killed”
(Naoto Kan, ex-PM of Japan)
Tepco wanted to evacuate workers from plant
Tepco started to discuss the evacuation of all workers from the plant
“We are now working to confirm the status of the situation with the appropriate body” (ie the PM's department).
Kan was woken up to be told that Tepco had decided to withdraw, they were sounding the PM's department out.
“I want to evacuate the staff at the #1 plant to the #2 plant. Would you help in any way” (Imasataka Shimizu to Industry Minister Kaeda)
Kan was incensed by suggestions that Tepco should pull out and faced down Tepco president Shimizu
“There will be no withdrawal, Not ever... Our country will not survive unless we put our lives on the line to bring this situation under control”
The Tepco president backed down immediately.
Tepco subsequently adopted the position that it never wanted a full withdrawal.
Reactors 4 and 2
At 5.35 am there was another explosion.
Smoke was coming out of Reactor 4.
In Reactor 2 pressure soddenly dipped to zero. It is not known what happened but this explosion released the greatest single burst of fallout during the entire crisis.
At about this time (9.38 am) the Reactor 4 building exploded and its wall collapsed and a fire started on the 3rd floor. Firefighters couldn't get near it because radiation levels were too high. It would have to burn itself out.
The fifth floor rooftop are was badly damaged, ripped apart from the explosion. This is where the fuel pool was stored.
“We'll die if it (the fuel pool) explodes”
Reactor 4 had been shut down prior to the tsunami and the fuel rods transferred to the spent fuel pool on the upper floor – 1331 highly radioactive fuel assemblies – containing about 10 times more cesium-137 than was released by Chernobyl., 5000 times more cesium than released by the Hiroshima bomb.
It also caused a reinforced concrete wall in the fuel pool to bulge by more than three centimetres.
The blast tore off the roof and left the fuel pool and its spent fuel exposed to the elements, hanging 4 stories above ground next to the reactor vessel. This was eventually covered with a white plastic sheet.
In addition to the danger of a collapse of the building (say in an earthquake) -
“if there's a crack in the pool and the water drains out, the fuel rods will be exposed...it will then be impossible to cool the fuel. So, if an accident happens, ten times more cesium than was already released by the meltdown will go into the atmosphere. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, Tokyo could become uninhabitable”
(Reactor engineer, Hiroaki Koide)
The wind which had been blowing eastwards changed direction and started to gust inland in the direction of Fukushima City.
The PM ordered the temporary evacuation of 650 workers at the plant, leaving a skeleton crew of essential staff, the 'Fukushima 50'.
An evacuation of people living within a 20 km radius of the plant was ordered, and for people within 20-30 km radius to stay indoors.
At reactor 2 radiation levels became extremely toxic, and radiation at the front gate spiked at 11,930 microsieverts/hour.
There is a description of the actions of firefighters to spray three tonnes of seawater every minute into the nuclear fuel pool of reactor 3 in conditions of high radiation, fir 7 hours at a time, retreating every few minutes to their airtight truck to ensure their radiation exposure didn't max out.
Radiation and Japanese schoolchildren
They were being exposed to 130 millsieverts per hour (or 2 millisieverts every minute), but the other danger was exhaustion and dehydration.
Some months after the disaster the Japanese government raised the radiation limit for schoolchildren to 20 millisieverts a year, which basically meant that children in Japan could receive the same annual dose of radiation as international nuclear power-plant workers.
This was done to keep the number of schools that exceeded the limit to the minimum.
Eventually the government flip-flopped and bowed to pressure by lowering the limit back to one millisievert.
On 15 May Tepco finally admitted what many had known for weeks:
"We estimate that regarding the Unit 1, nuclear fuel pellets have melted, falling to the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at a relatively early stage after the tsunami reached the station"
Half the 4-metre-long fuel rods of Reactor 1 had been exposed to the air and melted down within five hours of the tsunami striking.
It was also feared that this molten pool had burnt through the bottom of the pressure vessel and was sitting on the concrete floor of the containment vessel below. This was later confirmed by Tepco, estimating that this toxic lava had eaten its way through 70 cm of the 7.6 metre-thick slab.
Tepco also reported that:
- Reactor 2 probably suffered a meltdown 100 hours after the quake
- the fuel inside Reactor 3 was exposed and had melted down about 60 hours after the quake
International experts knew this within 24 hours of the tsunami - from the presence if cesium near the plant, a sure sign of nuclear fission.
Tepco maintained that it was simply too busy and distracted to tell the people that Japan was facing multiple meltdowns.
In the Japanese cabinet mention of the word 'meltdown' was taboo - to avoid public panic. Also, it is clear that the government simply did not know what was happening at the plant and was grasping in the dark for information.
Tepco was (and is) unable to tell the public any more because extreme radiation made any assessment of the interior of the containment vessels impossible.
"The reactor cores melted down and nobody knows where the melted fuel is now...we do not know the full scale of the contamination of the environment"
Hiroaki Koide
On 16 December 2011, none months after the meltdowns, Japan's new PM Yoshihiko Noda declared that the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi had "been brought under control and were in a state of 'cold shutdown' ( another lie or half-truth) and announced the decommisioning of the nuclear plant - a process that would take 40 years.
Willacy talks about other issues, such as the underplaying of safety issues by the company in order to save money and finishes his account by describing how earlier this year power was cut to the cooling systems at four pools used to store 8800 radioactive rods because of the activities of one rat and the slapdash improvisations to keep the plant from spiralling out of control again.
The only thing marring the book was that he finishes it up with optimistic statements on how innovative Japan is and how it will come out of this well - all of which is belied by the rest of the contents of the book.
Oh well! It is the habit of just about everyone to ignore their own arguments and take a good dose of hopium
Dr.
Chris Busby talked about supplement scandal and contamination
situation to Fukushima Diary
7
March, 2015
On
3/6/2015, Fukushima Diary visited Dr. Chris Busby’s office in Riga
and spent almost a whole day to have a talk.
We
talked about all kinds of things from ocean contamination to the
latest medical research on cancer treatment.
The
entire footage is nearly 7 hours, but here I would like to post 2
extracts, which don’t need editing.
Both
of them are very important, and Dr. Chris Busby is looking for 1kg of
sediment samples from Tokyo bay in the end of the second video.
UCLA
Researchers: Fukushima “not only affecting that local area, but
also worldwide”
Gov’t
Expert: “Immediately the Iodine-131 plume moved eastward reaching
US West Coast [then] covering entire northern hemisphere…
Significant concern on the safety of the population and environment
worldwide” (VIDEO)
6
March, 2015
Mar
3, 2015: Four years after Fukushima disaster, some areas remain
untouched, clocks recording the exact time that the tsunami swept
through. Access is highly restricted but two UCLA researchers were
recently given permission to document
the disaster zone. — at
3:45 in —
“With this study I think that’s what we’re trying to explore —
is that once a nuclear catastrophe strikes, it’s not only affecting
that local area, but also worldwide.”
Atmospheric
dispersion of Iodine-131 released after the Fukushima event,
by Giuseppe A. Marzo, ENEA (Italian National agency for new
technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development), 2014:
From March 12, 2011, a significant amount of radioactive material…
discharged into the atmosphere… Total emission of 131I has been
estimated in [128**
petabecquerels (PBq)], while 133Xe, and 137Cs total emissions have
been estimated in [15,300 PBq and 36.6 PBq], respectively. In this
work the global atmospheric dispersion of 131I released by the
Fukushima accident is carried out, focusing on this specific
radionuclide due to its radiological
relevance in terms of consequences on the human health…
Figure 1 summarizes the simulation results. It illustrates the
radioactivity concentration due to 131I released into the atmosphere
at specific times and integrated over the total atmospheric
column. Immediately
after the initial release on March 12, the plume moved eastward
reaching the United States west coast on
[March 15 at 10:00p PST]… In early April the plume extended
over the entire northern hemisphere…
A significant accidental event occurred at the Fukushima NPPs…
volatile radionuclides such as 131I were transported away from the
source posing significant
concern on the safety of the population and the environment
worldwide…
the atmospheric dispersion of 131I [was]covering
the entire northern hemisphere by early April…
**According
to a document
released by TEPCO,
“Our result shows a higher I-131 amount (500PBq)
compared to the result obtained from a thirdparty organization
(120-200PBq).”
Gov’t:
It’s getting “even worse” on West Coast this year — Experts
say over 35,000 baby sea lions could be dead; “This phenomenon is
unprecedented in scale”
- Hundreds of times more pups than usual at rescue center
- Doctor: “Definitely indicates ocean not normal… Really, we should be worried”
4
March, 2015
OAA,
Feb 18, 2015 (pdf): We are seeing an unusually large increase of
California sea lion pups stranding [that's] intensified
over the last few weeks…
it is very difficult to pinpoint what is causing the increase…
[There are] warmer waters than usual, but an official El Nino has not
yet been declared… [We are] preparing for the worst… health
trends of marine mammals [inform] us about the health of the entire
ecosystem… if the stranding numbers exceed the 2013 UME [facilities
will be unable to] accept more animals… animals may be left on the
beach [or] humanely euthanized.
Malibu
Surfside News,
Mar 3, 2015: The number of animals that can be rescued and
rehabilitated is very small compared to the total number of pups in
distress… in
2013,
Federal officials estimated that 70
percent of the total number [~35,000 out
of 50,000 newborns] may
have died and experts
say that the numbers may be even higher this year.
Quartz,
Feb 27, 2015: This
phenomenon is unprecedented in scale: in January… more than twice
the highest number previously recorded… February
has been even worse…
Jim Milbury [of NOAA said] a
total of 1,200 sea lions have
reached California since
the beginning of the year… [It was a] much less significant event
in 2013.
Malibu
Times,
Feb 25, 2015: The California Wildlife Center [at this] time last
year…
had facilitated seven rescues.
As of the beginning of this week, 129
rescues have
been performed… CWC is alsoencountering
many sea lions that
have washed ashore dead.
The
Oregonian,
Feb 26, 2015: Oceana saysthousands of
sea lion pups… have died on the West Coast this year…
Press
Democrat,
Feb 25, 2015: A crisis [of] stranded pups and older
animals arriving
starved and sick on
coastal shores has reached the Sonoma Coast, where six animals have
been recovered in recent weeks, according to the Marine Mammal Center
near Sausalito. All
of them — four pups and two adults — later perished because of
their weakened physical state.
Shawn
Johnson, director of veterinary science at The Marine Mammal Center,
Feb 16, 2015 (at 3:30 in): [It's] the third year we’ve seen an
increased number of sea lion strandings… It’sdefinitely
an indication that the sea is not its normal self…
The sea lions are sentinels
of the sea… it
really indicates there’s a bigger issue happening in the ocean.
– (at 13:00 in) At the MMC we
have over 200 right
now… which is incredibly
abnormal. Normally this
time of year we
would have no sea lions pups.
— (at 17:00 in) The sea lions are telling us that there’s a lack
of fish. The cause of that is still
being investigated… Really,
we should be worried about what’s happening out
there right now [it] could
be directly related to… us
in the future.
Nuclear
Hotseat #193: Fukushima + SPECIAL Caldicott Symposium 3/6/2015
Fukushima News 3/5/15:
"Ineptco" Lies Again;
Unsolved Radioactive Leak
Mysteries; Nukes &
Terrorism
5
March, 2015
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