Saturday 19th March: Day 8 after the quake and tsunami
Geoeye before and after pictures from the New York Times
2330 JST (1530 CET): The spraying operation should have ended around now.
Internal cables are being completed.
1906 JST (1106 CET): A 6.1 magnitude quake about 20km down has hit Iberaki with shaking felt in Tokyo. No risk for a tsunami but the epicentre is not so far away from Fukushima.
1830 JST (1030 CET): The Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier today “The crisis is abating step by step”. No doubt he had his fingers crossed at the time. Worth bearing in mind that in spite of all the alarm and sensational reporting and alarmism, there are no deaths associated with the nuclear accident to date while the dead and missing from the quake and tsunami now number 20,000+. Some of the emergency workers (about 20) at the site have suffered some radiation exposure but at a relatively low level compared to Tjernobyl. Outside of the exclusion zone radiation levels are still miniscule.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency, told reporters that a review of video shot from a helicopter and an on-the-ground check by a worker had confirmed that there is water in the spent fuel pool.
A seven-hour long water spraying exercise is ongoing. The current plan seems to be to start feeding power into reactors #1 and 2 early Sunday and also to reactors # 3 and 4 later on Sunday. Could be coincidence but it seems that all planned actions on the power reconnection are always preceded by a water spraying exercise and never carried out while water spraying is ongoing. Perhaps the water spraying reduces local radiation levels so as to permit longer working shifts in the exposed zones. The current spraying exercise will continue till about 2300 local time.
1730 JST (0930 CET): According to government quake-hit Oshika Peninsula moved 5.3 meters, dropped 1.2 meters.
1600 JST (0800 CET): Spraying has restarted and will continue now for 7 hours. SDF troops and fire fighters are together trying to set up a round the clock spraying capability. Reactors #5 and 6 are each being cooled by one of their own diesel powered pumps.
Press Conference by Chief Cabinet Secretary : Reactors # 1, 2 and 3 have been subject to sea water cooling and are somewhat stable. We believe the spray water has reached the reactor #3 spent fuel pond and this has also stabilised and spraying will continue for reactors #3 and 4. Further actions using additional equipment are planned once the situation has stabilised. The crisis is abating step by step.
Within Fukushima and Iberaki prefectures some milk and spinach had radiation levels above the limits set by the Food Safety Law. Today 6 samples of spinach had high radiation levels. Further investigations will continue and the prefecture governments will prevent transport of these.The radiation levels in these products would mean that continuous consumption for a year would be just equivalent to a CT scan. The detected levels are above permissible levels but are not an immediate health hazard. Detailed information will be provided by the Ministry of Food.
1530 JST (0730 CET): While the new high voltage power line is connected to a transformer within the plant perimeter, the path from there to the reactor#1 and 2 transformers was blocked by debris and an extra 1500 m of power line around the perimeter of the plant to the reactor transformers has to be installed. This power is unlikely to be switched on before late Saturday. The cooling pumps which were subbmerged by the tsunami have still to be checked out.
1500 JST (o700 CET): A diesel cooling pump was restarted at reactor #5 a few hours ago and the temperature in reactor #5’s spent fuel pond has decreased. A diesel generator at reactor#6 has also been restarted.
The radiation level at the west gate of the plant, located about 1.1 kilometers west of the No. 3 reactor, was relatively high at 830.8 microsieverts per hour at 8:10 AM but fell to 364.5 microsieverts at 9:00 AM.
Starting at noon some 30 tons of water were sprayed onto reactor #3.
Engineers have bored holes in the roofs of the buildings housing # 5 and 6 to avoid any hydrogen explosions.
The new power line is still not fully connected or in operation yet but the hope is that power can be turned on later today to reactor #2.
0800 JST (0000 CET): Checks are presumed to be ongoing before any attempt to turn power back on. Not only must the equipment integrity be checked but the possibility of short circuits and any volatile matter which could ignite must be eliminated as well. The next round of spraying will be at noon.
0600 JST (2200 CET): Reuters reports: Working inside a 12 mile evacuation zone at Fukushima, nearly 300 exhausted engineers were focused on trying to restore power at pumps in four of the reactors.
Another 1,480 meters (5,000 feet) of cable are being laid inside the complex before engineers try to crank up the coolers at reactor No. 2, followed by 1, 3 and 4 this weekend, company officials added. Should that work , it will be a turning point. “If they can get those electric pumps on and they can start pushing that water successfully up the core, quite slowly so you don’t cause any brittle failure, they should be able to get it under control in the next couple of days,” said Laurence Williams, of Britain’s University of Central Lancashire.
0500 JST (2100 CET): TEPCO has checked out the power line upto the receiving point at reactor #2 and confirmed that power can now be supplied. Presumably some equipment checks must be done before turning the power on.
0400 JST ( 2000 CET 18th): TEPCO says it has now connected an external power line to its stricken plant and would first supply reactor 2 because it is less damaged, Reuters reports. The power is from Tohoku Electric.
0230 JST (1830 CET): TEPCO has appointed Vice President Norio Tuzumi and Managing Director Akio Komori to be stationed at Fukushima City and J Village respectively from March 22, 2011. Tuzumi will be responsible for ensuring that TEPCO takes in the opinions and views of the loacl people and Komori will be responsible for safety and the prevention of further damage.
The operation to douse the overheating fuel rods at Fukushima resumed early on Saturday. Five specially-equipped engines from the department poured seawater for 20 minutes so as (to allow the work for connecting the power line to continue) says NHK.
0000 JST (1600 CET): Graham Andrew of the IAEA: “The situation at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants remains very serious but there has been no significant worsening since our last briefing” on Thursday.
Tags: Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Great Tohoku (Sendai) Quake, Tokyo Electric Power Company
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