Japanese nuclear reactor in peril

Japanese nuclear reactor in peril

By Donal on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 4:18pm |

Japanese authorities and the U.S. military on Saturday were racing to find ways to deliver new backup generators or batteries to a nuclear power reactor whose cooling facilities have been crippled by a loss of power as a result of the earthquake.

The reactor, owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co., is currently drawing on battery power that may last only a few hours. Without electricity, the reactor will be unable to pump water to cool its hot reactor core, possibly leading to a meltdown or some other release of radioactive material.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031103673.html

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Realtime results for Fukushima, the tweets are racing:

http://twitter.com/search/%23japon#search?q=Fukushima

It's going to be interesting see what happens with Twitter on a topic like this. I am thinking along the lines of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. I am wondering whether governments will have to compete with Twitter as to urgency and with complete transparency if they are to prevent panic.

by artappraiser on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 4:31pm

BBC World just said the Japanese government has ordered evacuation within 6 miles of the plant.

by artappraiser on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 4:36pm

"When a fail safe system fails, it will always fail by failing to fail safe"

by cmaukonen on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 10:07pm

Japan says meltdown possible at nuclear plant

By Jay Alabaster, Associated Press, 12:40 a.m. Saturday, March 12, 2011

TOKYO — An official with Japan's nuclear safety commission says that a meltdown at nuclear power plant affected by the country's massive earthquake is possible.

Ryohei Shiomi said Saturday that officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake.

Shiomi said that even if there was a meltdown, it wouldn't affect humans within a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius....

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/japan-says-meltdown-possible-869316...

by artappraiser on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 12:49am

Japan Orders Evacuation Near 2nd Nuclear Plant
By Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, March 11, 2011

.....The power plants, known as Daiichi and Daini and operated by Tokyo Electric Power, experienced critical failures of the cooling systems after the plants were shut down, as they were during the quake.

About 45,000 people were affected by the evacuation order at the Daiichi plant, where those living within a six-mile radius were told to leave. The evacuation of the second plant was for a one-mile radius because “there is no sign that radiation has been emitted outside,” an official said.....

....Nuclear safety officials focused initially on the Daiichi plant. But by Saturday morning Japan had declared states of emergency for five reactors at the two plants, an escalation that added to worries about the safety of nuclear facilities in the quake-prone Japanese islands.

The Daiichi and Daini plants are 10 miles apart in Fukushima Prefecture, about 150 miles north of Tokyo and close to the quake’s epicenter off the coast.

The plants’ problems were described as serious but were far short of a catastrophic emergency like the partial core meltdown that occurred at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979.

A Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at the Daiichi plant. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal, NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, quoted nuclear safety officials as saying...

by artappraiser on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 1:36am

Japan rates nuclear accident less serious than 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl

March 13 | Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:56am EST

March 13 (Reuters) - A nuclear accident in Japan on Saturday rates as less serious than both the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Japan's nuclear safety agency said.

An official at the agency said it has rated the incident at Tokyo Electric Power's nuclear plant north of Tokyo a 4 according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) .

Three Mile Island was rated 5 while Chernobyl was rated 7 on the 1 to 7 scale, the official said....

by artappraiser on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 11:20am

Japanese nuclear reactor in peril

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