Japan: 9.0 Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Reactor Status #5

[essies]

What Is Japan's Nuclear Worst Case Scenario?

[video=youtube;D2AtUzaFLbs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2AtUzaFLbs[/video]

 

[Verity]

Apologies if this Chris Martenson newsletter has already been posted, but quick search didn't bring results. This is a very informative and helpful analysis with new photos, excellent comments, additional links, video, PDfs. Good read.

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Latest Satellite Imagery From Fukushima Tells Sobering Tale
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/...easer_55711&utm_campaign=weekly_newsletter_12

Here are a few snippets I found interesting:

Comment clarifying difference between "radiation" and "radioactivity", which writer says is being mixed up in the mainstream media reports:

Radiation would be alpha and beta particles, and gamma waves. These are dangerous to the 'Fukushima 50' or others exposed to them, but not to the world at large. The serious health threat here is radioactive materials escaping (isotopes of iodine, cesium, etc). Those materials, carried in wind currents and in earth and sea, get ingested by living things (e.g. humans and fish and asparagus), and accumulate, and can then be ingested by other living things which eat them (think: food web).

Here's the key point which you will not have grasped from reading the mainstream media: the danger lies with these 'internal emitters' - that is, isotopes which are ingested (breathed in or eaten). That is what will cause cancers worldwide. That is what gives this crisis global scope. NOT radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) emanating from the plant.

So from the standpoint of global public health (and remember: scientists insist that residue from Chernobyl continues to this day to cause new cases of thyroid cancer, years after the isotopes themselves have degraded to harmlessness), the statement should have read:

"Radioactivity [or radioisotopes] will continue to escape from the complex into the environment"

With this understanding, it is worth noting that such isotopes have in fact already been detected on both the east and west coasts of America, so we can safely assume that if they've reached the heartland by now or will very soon. The only effective 'defense' I know of - and a very partial, limited one at that - is to increase uptake of iodine via kelp or supplement of some form. At least, this may protect from iodine-131, which tends to lodge in the thyroid and leads to thyroid cancer years later. As the wikipedia page on I-131 puts it:


"Much smaller incidental doses of iodine-131 than are used in medical treatment, are thought to be the major cause of increased thyroid cancers after accidental nuclear contamination. These cancers happen from residual tissue radiation damage caused by the I-131, and usually appear years after exposure, long after the I-131 has decayed."

Link to Radiation Dosage Chart (and some other ones there on different topics I found interesting): http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/radiation-dosage-chart/

SOS from mayor of Japanese City:
[video=youtube;70ZHQ--cK40]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70ZHQ--cK40[/video]

 

[dsntslp]

Wow, how very sad Verity. Thanks for that though.

Seems they aren't getting info or help from their government. How hard it must be for him to do that video and admit his government has failed his city while begging for help from the rest of the world. How horrible things must be for the 20 thousand people who stayed while 50 thousand evacuated.

At least after hurricanes here we can go outside and begin cleaning up even if we have no power for weeks. I know that is no comparison to what they are going through but the extent of my personal disaster experience is from many hurricanes. We lost a new garden one year, over 100 tomato plants in just one section but at least we could replant. 47,000 in damages to our home. The roof almost' came off and FEMA determined the whole thing needed replaced including the plywood. Pool enclosure in the pool, not replacing it covered my deductible. Geez, that's all so trivial now in comparison. Frances and Jeanne hit hard here just 3 weeks apart in 2004.

How very sad. My heart hurts for them...

Prayers, many prayers for them.

 

[hollyblue]

Wow, how very sad Verity. Thanks for that though.

Seems they aren't getting info or help from their government. How hard it must be for him to do that video and admit his government has failed his city while begging for help from the rest of the world. How horrible things must be for the 20 thousand people who stayed while 50 thousand evacuated.

At least after hurricanes here we can go outside and begin cleaning up even if we have no power for weeks. I know that is no comparison to what they are going through but the extent of my personal disaster experience is from many hurricanes. We lost a new garden one year, over 100 tomato plants in just one section but at least we could replant. 47,000 in damages to our home. The roof almost' came off and FEMA determined the whole thing needed replaced including the plywood. Pool enclosure in the pool, not replacing it covered my deductible. Geez, that's all so trivial now in comparison. Frances and Jeanne hit hard here just 3 weeks apart in 2004.

How very sad. My heart hurts for them...

Prayers, many prayers for them.

OT, but, what the hello do you do with 100 tomato plants?

 

[dsntslp]

LOL, Hollyblue, I home can them in glass canning jars. I love it! I have a home pressure canner I can put up to 14 quart jars in at a time. I can even can meats! It all started because of the 2004 storms. We lost the meat from two freezers, we didn't have a generator back then. When they were over I wanted to figure out how to can the meats from two freezers so that I did not have to run both on the 5500W portable generator. I had to change from electric stove to gas though, I kept burning out electric elements due to the weight of the filled canner, lol! Now when we get a hurricane warning I start canning everything, ha! Preservation!

WAY OT but...You don't need a pressure canner for tomatoes though, just add a tsp of lemon juice to each quart jar to increase acidity as tomatoes are acidic anyway, then "water bath" by boiling them in the jars!

 

[hollyblue]

Sorry it took me so long to get back with info about demineralization, but there just isn't much out there...that I can find. Not very promising. How do you reverse the making of chaos...literally? Anyway, this is what I found, and the last link is from the CDC for those questioning fears of contaminaton.

In the alternative demineralization process, dissolved radioactive substances are extracted by passing through an ion- exchange resin. The evaporator residues and spent resins contain the removed radioactive material and are disposed of in a safe manner. The choice between evaporation and demineralization depends on circumstances and may vary from one plant to another.

http://www.tutorvista.com/physics/nuclear-energy-waste-disposal

From Wikipedia:
Ion-exchange in metal separation
Ion-exchange processes are used to separate and purify metals, including separating uranium from plutonium and other actinides, including thorium; and lanthanum, neodymium, ytterbium, samarium, lutetium, from each other and the other lanthanides. There are two series of rare earth metals, the lanthanides and the actinides. Members of each family have very similar chemical and physical properties. Ion-exchange was for many years the only practical way to separate the rare earths in large quantities. This application was developed in the 1940's by Frank Spedding. Subsequently, solvent extraction has mostly supplanted use of ion exchange resins except for the highest purity products.
A very important case is the PUREX process (plutonium-uranium extraction process) which is used to separate the plutonium and the uranium from the spent fuel products from a nuclear reactor, and to be able to dispose of the waste products. Then, the plutonium and uranium are available for making nuclear-energy materials, such as new reactor fuel and nuclear weapons.
The ion-exchange process is also used to separate other sets of very similar chemical elements, such as zirconium and hafnium, which incidentally is also very important for the nuclear industry. Zirconium is practically transparent to free neutrons, used in building reactors, but hafnium is a very strong absorber of neutrons, used in reactor control rods.

http://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/glossary.asp

 

[hollyblue]

LOL, Hollyblue, I home can them in glass canning jars. I love it! I have a home pressure canner I can put up to 14 quart jars in at a time. I can even can meats! It all started because of the 2004 storms. We lost the meat from two freezers, we didn't have a generator back then. When they were over I wanted to figure out how to can the meats from two freezers so that I did not have to run both on the 5500W portable generator. I had to change from electric stove to gas though, I kept burning out electric elements due to the weight of the filled canner, lol! Now when we get a hurricane warning I start canning everything, ha! Preservation!

WAY OT but...You don't need a pressure canner for tomatoes though, just add a tsp of lemon juice to each quart jar to increase acidity as tomatoes are acidic anyway, then "water bath" by boiling them in the jars!

LOL. Your a busy girl. I love tomatoes and my mother use to make quarts of homemade tomato juice....some spicy. I never learned to can and miss her homemade version.

 

[dsntslp]

So, the drinking water issue...

Basically, my friends in the country on well water, with reverse osmosis systems, will be able to filter water that is safe to drink?

This is all very interesting to me. I think I live just over 12 miles from a Nuclear plant. I know we are just outside the radius that gets the first round of iodine tabs.

 

[Quiche]

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a utility company official said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.reactors/

:waitasec:

 

[hockeymom]

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a utility company official said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.reactors/

:waitasec:

Sounds like a cob job.

 

[Daisyjane]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/82889.html

TOKYO, April 3, Kyodo

The government was aware of the possibility that the reactor cores of nuclear plants could partially melt down if all power supply equipment was crippled, making it impossible to cool down the cores' nuclear fuel, even before the March 11 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to last May's lower house minutes. Nobuaki Terasaka, who heads the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said on May 26, ''It is logically possible for a reactor core to melt down if all outer electricity sources were lost, leading the plant's cooling functions to be lost for many hours,'' according to the minutes of a House of Representatives committee. Terasaka also said the operators of Japanese nuclear plants ''have ensured safety'' by fitting the plants with multiple backup electricity sources. He was responding to a question from Japanese Communist Party legislator Hidekatsu Yoshii. More at link above.

 

[Quiche]

Sounds like a cob job.

I don't know what that is-- but let me guess: an awkward attempt at fixing something?

 

[Daisyjane]

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a utility company official said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.reactors/

:waitasec:

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/82882.html

Workers tried Sunday to block the leakage of highly radioactive water into the sea from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant by injecting polymeric water absorbent that can soak up 50 times its volume, but the water flow remains unaffected, the government's nuclear safety agency said.

However, those materials injected at a point 23 meters away from the seaside pit have not been sucked into the water flow, leaving no impact on the rate of leakage, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the governmental Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Lots more on their plans to combat leaks at link above.

 

[hockeymom]

I don't know what that is-- but let me guess: an awkward attempt at fixing something?

Exactly,something my father would do to fix a leak until he finally broke down and called a plumber.

On another note,the Dr. that was interviewed in the "worst case scenario" clip,mentions we shouldn't be concerned unless things really take a turn for the worse. Well how would we know? What is taking a turn for the worse? Not being able to stop a leak sounds pretty bad to me. Does it mean an explosion? I feel like most of these people can't even go there and seemed scared to even utter the words. When should we really start to worry?

 

[Quiche]

From Far Labs, a Vivid Picture Emerges of Japan Crisis

Quote: For the clearest picture of what is happening at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, talk to scientists thousands of miles away.

Thanks to the unfamiliar but sophisticated art of atomic forensics, experts around the world have been able to document the situation vividly. Over decades, they have become very good at illuminating the hidden workings of nuclear power plants from afar, turning scraps of information into detailed analyses.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110403/ZNYT03/104033010/-1/news?p=1&tc=pg

 

[Peliman]

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a utility company official said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.reactors/

:waitasec:

From the article and here's the kicker, it sounds like they are trying an expanding foam. Trouble is, the wont how how it reacts to the water it's going into. Sounds like a hail mary pass to seal the leak.

Eighty bags of a water-gel mix made by the Tokyo-based IB Daiwa company will be used in the operation. Each one contains 100 grams of material that includes a special polymer. A Tokyo Electric official said the substance should expand to several thousand times its size as it sticks, ideally, to plug the leak.

Read this earlier this morning and I'm like, we'll see what kind of mud pit this makes. There is such a thing as preparing and roughing surfaces even for paint to stick. If this dosen't work, they will need to clean the pit out before trying another sealer.

Water is a problem in getting mixtures to set and harden. I knew concrete wouldn't set and harden in water, now they have concrete mud in the pit.

Cross your fingers on the foam expanding under water.

 

[peeples]

How do they get bridges and overpasses to whose "legs" are under water to harden....
Isn't that cement.. sure looks like it here locally.. we have a pretty large lake that has the bracing legs of an overpass in it.

 

[Peliman]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/82882.html

Workers tried Sunday to block the leakage of highly radioactive water into the sea from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant by injecting polymeric water absorbent that can soak up 50 times its volume, but the water flow remains unaffected, the government's nuclear safety agency said.

However, those materials injected at a point 23 meters away from the seaside pit have not been sucked into the water flow, leaving no impact on the rate of leakage, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the governmental Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Lots more on their plans to combat leaks at link above.

It's crossed my mind that is the pit can leak water into the sea, the sea can leak sea water into the pit, especially during high tide. I think we also heard the coast along the earthquake zone, might have lowered somewhat, making me wonder if the pit is below sea level now.

 

[Quiche]

The first image at this link is the "leak"...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...gineers-fail-seal-radioactive-ocean-leak.html

 

[Peliman]

How do they get bridges and overpasses to whose "legs" are under water to harden....
Isn't that cement.. sure looks like it here locally.. we have a pretty large lake that has the bracing legs of an overpass in it.

Those are pre-built on land and assembled under and above the water.