Archive for March, 2011

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Another major earthquake within the next 6 days?

March 22, 2011

According to Piers Corbyn of Weather action:

According to Corbyn it was the ‘X Class’ solar flare of March 10, 2011 that caused a significant hit on the Earth by a Coronal Mass Ejection, which was reported by NASA. He says this, in turn, triggered the massive Japan super quake (M=9.0) the following day.

Former USGS geologist Jim Berkland warns of a ‘high risk’ seismic window and potential for a massive quake poised to strike somewhere in North America in between the dates of March 19th and 26th.

Three massive earthquakes have struck the Ring of Fire in the past year, says Berkland. If this clockwise trend continues, that places the Pacific NW next in line. The top seismic window in years is developing between the 19th of March and the 26th. There has been a massive fish kill off the coast of California, which indicates changes in the magnetic field.

The Indonesian tsunami struck on the day of a full moon, says Berkland. So did the Alaska earthquake of 1964. Though many scientists disagree with him, Berkland correctly predicted the 1989 “World Series” earthquake four days in advance.

EXTREME WEATHER AND EARTHQUAKE DANGER IMMINENT around 23rd-27th March warns Piers Corbyn

The very active solar region which emerged from the SE limb of the sun on the morning of 21st March is crackling with dangerous activity including extreme UV radiation and up to 50Mev proton bursts and its appearance along with other active regions on the sun fits our WeatherAction.com long-range WARNING for significant weather extremes and earthquakes in the period around 23rd-27th March, issued during February.

The weather events are expected in two waves ~23/24th and ~26/27th and extreme earthquake events risk is significantly enhanced all through this period 23-27th but probably more enhanced later with high risk continuing a day or so after 27th.

John O’Sullivan writes

Berkland suggests that in this top seismic window in years, the west coast of the united States as a high risk area. Piers Corbyn is less specific on the location but believes the time of highest risk is in the five day period of 23th to the 27th March.

Related:

The Great Sendai quake of 2011 is part of the Sun’s Dance

Solar effects will give increased volcanic and earthquake activity in the next 2 years


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Natural Disasters, Natural Phenomena, Solar science | 3 Comments »

Juholt, the smiling Stalin, begins the purge as the Social Democrats try to relive the past

March 22, 2011

The Social Democrats in Sweden will have their convention at the end of this week where Håkan Juholt will be confirmed by a vast majority, if not unanimously, as their new leader. It will all seem very democratic of course even though the party’s Nomination Committee produced his name out of a hat at the last minute after a very obscure and confusing process reminiscent of a Soviet style politburo election in action.

Håkan Juholt : image ulf-vargek.blogspot.com

While Juholt’s physical resemblance to a smiling Stalin is meant partly in jest, the coup by the left wing of the party and the subsequent purge of the more moderate and “right-wing” leaders is anything but a jest. There may not be much real blood spilled in these days but the elimination of the “opposition” is as ruthless as anything Stalin perpetrated. In an organisational sense the Social Democrats are the true inheritors of the power broking style of the communist parties of the Soviet bloc. The smoke-filled rooms are gone (since this is Sweden and smoking is almost as sinful as any hint of male chauvinism and certainly more sinful than paedophilia) but the back-rooms are still around and the influence of the power brokers still reigns supreme.

Of course a new leader will appoint his friends around him. But guilt by association has been created as a new sin within the Social Democrats. The Nomination Committee has done its job well and prepared the way for a purge. Where unwanted individuals actually proposed policies more in line with the electorate, they have been blamed for the election defeat without reference to policies so that they can be removed. Where favoured individuals backed the losing policies they have anyway been “promoted” as being the instruments of rejuvenation. But all of this is merely an attempt to step back to the “good old times” of 40 years ago.

The Svenska Dagbladet writes:

The ousting of Ylva Johansson and Thomas Östros is extraordinary. The latter is being punished for being Mona Sahlin’s candidate for finance minister. There seems also to be a new principle that not only the leader shall be held accountable for policy failures.

It looks like a shift to the left. (So the Social Democrats) dismiss Thomas Östros who criticized the Social Democrats’ fiscal policies from the right and selects Veronica Palm who has defended the tax policy adopted before the election.

I wonder how long it will take for the Social Democrats to realise that trying to recreate “good old times” is a cul-de-sac.


Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Sweden | 2 Comments »

Media coverage dies as work resumes at Fukushima Dai-ichi – steam plumes did not raise radiation levels

March 22, 2011

Fukushima hysteria dies down as the media find that their alarmist and sensational reporting is not going to be sustainable.

Perhaps they will return their attention and their headlines to the victims of the earthquake and the tsunami in between the bombing raids on Tripoli.

As George Monbiot puts it in The Guardian:

As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Now George Monbiot’s views about energy in general, and renewables in particular, are usually quite ridiculous and ill thought through but  where he is absolutely right is of course that in spite of the headlines and the apocalypse scenarios, “no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation”.

The work at Fukushima is difficult and hazardous  and it will test the courage and ingenuity of many – but it goes on even if all the headlines are gone     —– Kyodo News:

Work to restore power and crucial cooling functions resumed Tuesday morning at the crisis-hit reactors at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, following suspension Monday after smoke was detected at its No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, its operator said.

Firefighters and the Self-Defense Forces also prepared to restart a mission later in the day to spray a massive amount of coolant water onto spent nuclear fuel pools at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Although white smoke, possibly steam, was found to be continuously billowing from the buildings of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the utility known as TEPCO found it does not obstruct electricity restoration work as radiation levels did not particularly surge at the site.

An external power source was connected to the No. 4 reactor in the morning, making it the fifth of the plant’s six reactors to have regained a power supply needed for the restoration of equipment such as a ventilation system to filter radioactive substances from the air and some measuring tools at the control room.

TEPCO aims to restore power systems to revive some key facilities such as data measuring equipment and functions at a control room by Wednesday for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors and by Thursday for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, at a press conference.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Japan, Media, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | Comments Off on Media coverage dies as work resumes at Fukushima Dai-ichi – steam plumes did not raise radiation levels

Fukushima Dai-ichi plant: Work stopped as steam rises from reactors # 2 and 3

March 21, 2011

Work to connect power cables to the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors was halted Monday at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after smoke rose from the buildings housing the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the plant operator said.

TEPCO said it had briefly evacuated its workers after grayish and blackish smoke was spotted at the southeast of the No. 3 reactor building around 3:55 p.m. above a pool storing spent nuclear fuel, though a blast was not heard.

The smoke stopped after 6 p.m., but TEPCO subsequently found that white smoke was rising through a crack in the roof of the building that houses the No. 2 reactor at around 6:20 p.m. The utility said later the smoke is believed to be steam, not from the reactor’s fuel pool. As the No. 3 reactor remains without power, smoke was not apparently triggered by an electricity leak or short-circuiting.

The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said no injuries were confirmed in the incidents and that there have been no major changes in the radiation levels at the site.

Before the smoke was detected, external power had reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday, clearing the way for the plant operator to restore systems to monitor radiation levels and other data, light the control rooms and cool down the reactors and their spent-fuel storage pools. On Monday, TEPCO finished laying cables to transmit electricity to the No. 4 reactor, as a step toward resuscitating the power systems at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to the utility and the nuclear agency.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano told a special meeting of its board of governors that the situation at the Fukushima plant ”remains serious, but we are starting to see some positive developments.”

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will resume the operation on Tuesday after observing the situation at the site.

 

 

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | Comments Off on Fukushima Dai-ichi plant: Work stopped as steam rises from reactors # 2 and 3

Andrew – Prince of beggars

March 21, 2011

The Telegraph does not much like Prince Andrew and his venal ways. The Duke of York receives a £249,000 annuity from the Queen.  Last year the prince spent £620,000 as a trade envoy, including £154,000 on hotels, food and hospitality and £465,000 on travel.

Randy Andy

First there was the sale of his home in Berkshire to Kazakhstan president’s billionaire son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, for £15 million: £3 million over the asking price, although there hadn’t been a single prospective buyer in three years. It now sits unoccupied and in mounting disrepair, suggesting that the property, curiously, isn’t particularly essential to Mr Kulibayev’s portfolio.

There is the Duke’s 16-year friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, an American billionaire who was jailed for 18 months in 2008 for soliciting under-age prostitutes. The Duke – who was snapped in 2001 with a cheery arm around Virginia Roberts, Epstein’s 17-year-old “masseuse” – was also photographed strolling in Central Park with Epstein last December, after the latter was released from jail. Shortly afterwards, Epstein stepped in to pay off £15,000 of the Duchess of York’s debts, a matter which the Duke had reportedly been finessing during the trip.

The Duke of York has been engulfed in a new “cash-for-favours” row after a close friend paid off £50,000 of his ex-wife’s debts. David Rowland, a financier once described as “shady” in Parliament, gave the sum to the Duchess of York’s former press spokesman Kate Waddington, whom the Duchess owed in the region of £85,000.

In May 2010, the Duchess of York, the Prince’s ex-wife, was filmed by a News of the World reporter claiming that Prince Andrew had agreed that if she were to receive £500,000, he, the Prince, would meet the donor and pass on useful top level business contacts. She was filmed receiving, in cash, $40,000 as a down payment. The Prince’s entourage denied he knew of the situation

It would seem that one part of his activities as the UK’s Trade envoy is soliciting money from rather dubious people for the repayment of his ex-wife’s debts. She is also not slow to sell access to him – for whatever it is worth. No doubt there is a point of view that for this scion of the House of Windsor to do his utmost to repay his ex-wife’s debts is an extremely honourable thing to do.

His elder brother and heir to the throne is the epitome of silliness and no great credit to his House either but at least he does not seem to be venal.

I think we are half way up now.

Neither up nor down

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Andrew – Prince of beggars

Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant: Status as of Monday (21st) morning

March 21, 2011

Status of Fukushima Daiichi power station as of 09:00, March 21, 2011

Cooling continues and power is gradually being brought to all reactors. Systems and equipment are being checked. All units now have surface temperatures of less than 100 °C. Reactors # 5 and 6 have acieved “cold shutdown”.

External power reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday.

The government is also preparing SDF tanks to remove radioactive rubble from around the reactors that has hampered operations as well as a truck with a concrete squeeze pump to pour water from a higher point.

Reactors # 5 and 6 have achieved the status of “cold shutdown”.

Developments at Fukushima Daiichi on March 21st

  • Injecting water to the spent fuel pool at unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi by Tokyo Fire Department’s task force was finished at around 04:00 am this morning after 6.5 hours operation. Unit 3 has been sprayed with over 3,700 tons of water on Sunday and Monday.
  • Then, the Self-Defense Force conducted the operation of injecting water to the spent fuel pool at unit-4 from 06:37 am to 08:30 am this morning.
  • A construction company in Mie Prefecture voluntarily offers assistance for water injection at Fukushima Daiichi. The government emergency headquarters decided to accept the offer. The company’s 2 special vehicles and 3 operators departed last night to the site. The vehicles can inject water by using its 50-meter-long arm and pumps.
  • Ministry of Defense announced that the Self-Defense Force helicopter measured the surface temperatures of Fukushima Daiichi from the air and found that the temperature of all units are below 100 degrees C.
    • Unit 1: 58 ° C;
    • Unit 2: 35 ° C;
    • Unit 3: 62 °C;
    • Unit 4: 42 ° C;
    • Unit 5: 24 ° C;
    • Unit 6: 25 °C. (as of the afternoon on March 20)

Yesterday the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that the pressure of the Reactor Containment Vessel at unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi rose once (to 320 kPa as of 11:00 March 20th). TEPCO prepared to lower the pressure but concluded immediate pressure relief was not required. Monitoring the pressure continues (225 kPa as of 22:00 March 20).

Tags:, ,
Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | Comments Off on Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant: Status as of Monday (21st) morning

Could the disaster in Japan power a wave of sustainable growth?

March 20, 2011

Natural disasters and wars are in general very bad things.

Nobody in their right minds would wish for one. But they occur anyway. Disasters and wars have an immediate cost in human life and capital destruction which can never be a chosen path for any ethical course of action. But when they do occur the long term consequences  can critically depend upon the economic environment in which they occur. It seems to me that when they occur in times of economic depression or economic stagnation they can provide the stimuli which can lift countries and whole regions onto a new path of economic growth. Of course the spending that follows does not in itself create wealth. The spending could have taken place on something else (or the wealth spent could have been saved). But it is the direction of spending and the mood of the spending which, I think, creates the potential benefit. It can create a step-change in thinking and behaviour and resolve and shift the path on which economic movement occurs.

The May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China killed over 80,000 and destroyed infrastructure on an unprecedented scale for modern China. Yet, the economy was not derailed and instead the massive rebuilding effort that followed added an extra 0.5% or so to the economic growth that followed. The January 1995 Kobe earthquake killed over 6,000 and wiped out the older central areas of Kobe and yet the investment that followed lifted the Japanese economy as a whole – but only for a time. A new mood was created but it was not accompanied by any real political shift. And from about 1999 onwards the Japanese economy has not only been stagnating but Japanese policies have also been stuck in a political rut. In spite of much talk about demographics and the ageing of Japan and the need for new thinking, the political inertia prevailed. This has only been exacerbated by the global financial crisis.

The dislocation to Japanese society and the economy caused by the Great Tohoku quake and tsunami will be massive. But I am quite sure that the Japanese and Japan will overcome. It will take some time but it could even break them out of the political rut and onto a quite different and much more sustainable path. If there is a fundamental shift out of the deadly political complacency which is long overdue, then the short term stimulus that rebuilding will surely bring could become sustainable and the Japanese economy could again be a major driver of global improvements.

chart of the day, japan industrial production 1995Natural disasters can give a boost to the countries where they occur

Rebuilding efforts serve as a short-term boost by attracting resources to a country, and the disasters themselves, by destroying old factories and old roads, airports, and bridges, allow new and more efficient public and private infrastructure to be built, forcing the transition to a sleeker, more productive economy in the long term.

“When something is destroyed you don’t necessarily rebuild the same thing that you had. You might use updated technology, you might do things more efficiently. It bumps you up,” says Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University. “Disasters help people think about things differently.”

Studies have found that earthquakes in California and Alaska helped stir economic activity there, and that countries with more hurricanes and storms tend to see higher rates of growth. Some of the most recent work has found a link between disasters and subsequent innovation.

Mark Skidmore of Michigan State, along with the economist Hideki Toya of Japan’s Nagoya City University, published a 2002 paper in the journal Economic Inquiry that mapped the disaster frequency of 89 countries against their economic growth over a 30-year period. Skidmore and Toya found that, in the case of climatic disasters – hurricanes and cyclones, as opposed to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions – the more the better: nations with more climatic disasters grew faster over the long run than the less disaster-prone.

Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, a professor of economics at the University of Innsbruck, has found some support for Skidmore and Toya’s argument. In post-disaster rebuilding efforts in developing countries  at least in wealthier developing countries like Brazil and South Africa, there is indeed a tendency to use the rebuilding process as an opportunity to upgrade infrastructure that might otherwise have been allowed to grow obsolete.

War is also a “disaster” which costs human lives and destroys capital but can have similar effects.

As Prof. Joshua S. Goldstein puts it:

War is not without economic benefits. At certain historical times and places, war can stimulate a national economy in the short term. During slack economic times, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, military spending and war mobilization can increase capacity utilization, reduce unemployment (through conscription), and generally induce patriotic citizens to work harder for less compensation.

War also sometimes clears away outdated infrastructure and allows economy-wide rebuilding, generating long-term benefits (albeit at short-term costs). For example, after being set back by the two World Wars, French production grew faster after 1950 than before 1914.

Technological development often follows military necessity in wartime. Governments can coordinate research and development to produce technologies for war that also sometimes find civilian uses (such as radar in World War II). The layout of European railroad networks were strongly influenced by strategic military considerations, especially after Germany used railroads effectively to overwhelm French forces in 1870-71. In the 1990s, the GPS navigation system, created for U.S. military use, found wide commercial use. Although these war-related innovations had positive economic effects, it is unclear whether the same money spent in civilian sectors might have produced even greater innovation.

Overall, the high costs of war outweigh the positive spinoffs. Indeed, a central dilemma for states is that waging wars – or just preparing for them – undermines prosperity, yet losing wars is worse. Winning wars, however, can sometimes pay.


Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Economy, Ethics, Japan, Politics | 3 Comments »

Fukushima Dai-ichi Sunday 20th March: Power has reached reactor#2, plant will be decommissioned

March 19, 2011

Day No. 9 since the quake and tsunami.

Media hysteria is abating as the crisis  abates and Libya take s over the headlines.  “It is becoming more probable by the day that public health consequences will be zero and radiation health effects among workers at the site will be so minor as to be hard to measure”.

On Saturday, workers were close to restoring power to cooling systems at a quake-hit Japanese nuclear power plant. Fire trucks sprayed water for nearly half a day on reactor No.3.

“The situation there is stabilizing somewhat,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.

2400 JST (1600 CET): Known status by IAEA:

It would seem that the current critical  actions with the nuclear plant are connected – for now – with the spent fuel pools.

Unit 1 experienced an explosion on 12 March that destroyed the outer shell of the building’s upper floors. No precise information has been available on the status of the spent fuel pool.

For unit 2, no precise information has been available on the status of the spent fuel pool. Authorities began adding 40 tonnes of seawater to the spent fuel pool on 20 March.

Concerned by possible loss of water in the Unit 3 spent fuel pool, authorities began spraying water into the building in an effort to replenish water levels. First, helicopters dropped seawater on 17 March, and every day since then, including today, emergency workers have sprayed water from fire trucks and other vehicles.

Emergency workers began spraying water into the Unit 4 building today.

Temperatures in the spent fuel pools of Units 5 and 6 have gradually returned to significantly lower temperatures.


2230 JST ( 1430 CET): Status – Fukushima No. 5, No. 6 reactors stable after cold shutdown.

External power was restored at 3:46 p.m. to the reactor #2. Work is now ongoing to  start trying to restore the system to monitor radiation and other data, light the control room and cool down the reactor and the reactor’s spent-fuel storage pool.

Water spraying by fire trucks continues for cooling the overheating spent fuel pools by throwing thousands of tons of water into the No. 3 and No. 4 reactor buildings. The operation is possible because apparent hydrogen explosions blasted the roofs and walls of the buildings.

As of 11:00 a.m., Tokyo Electric said the radiation level about 0.5 kilometer northwest from the No. 2 reactor dropped to 2,579 microsievert per hour, compared to 3,443 microsievert per hour at 2 p.m. Saturday.

1830 JST (1030 CET): Water spraying on reactor #4 again (2nd time today). Sounds like some danger of radioactive leakage from the spent-fuel pond is persisting.

Status summary (BBC)

  • Reactor 1: Fuel rods damaged after explosion. Power lines attached
  • Reactor 2: Damage to the core, prompted by a blast, helped trigger raising of the nuclear alert level. Power lines attached
  • Reactor 3: Contains plutonium, core damaged by explosion. Fuel ponds refilled with water in overnight operation, but pressure said to be rising again
  • Reactor 4: Hit by explosion and fire, temperature of spent fuel pond now said to have dropped after water spraying
  • Reactors 5 & 6: Temperature of spent fuel pools now lowered after rising dangerously high. Diesel generators powering cooling systems

1800 JST (1000 CET): Power has “been supplied” to reactor #2 says Kyodo news. It is not clear if the power now available has succeeded in starting up cooling pumps or just that power is now available at reactor #2. Nevertheless a huge leap forward.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is most likely to be decommissioned. ”Looking at the situation objectively, it is clear,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a news conference, when asked whether the government plans to decommission the plant.

1600 JST (0800 CET): Current evacuation area not expected to change according to Japan’s Nuclear Agency.

Spent-fuel storage pools of the reactors No. 5 and No. 6 were cooled down to 37.1 °C and 41.0 °C, respectively, as of 7 a.m. Sunday.

More than 2,000 tons of water is believed to have been sprayed onto the No. 3 reactor’s pool, which has a capacity of 1,400 tons. Pressure at No. 3 reactor’s containment vessel suppression pool rose and plans to reduce pressure by venting were planned but the pressure stabilised and immediate work to reduce pressure at No. 3 reactor at Fukushima plant was deferred.

Fears of radiation release led to Ground Self-Defense Force spraying about 80 tons of water on reactor #4 for nearly one hour until 9:30 a.m., according to the Defense Ministry. Eleven fire trucks were used. Indications are that that water reached the pool.

Work to connect power and restart cooling pumps at reactor #2 is continuing.  It is planned to check the systems of the No. 2 reactor first. The building housing its containment was not damaged, which means it is hard to cool it down using water from outside.

0800 JST( 0000 CET): On Saturday and the early hours of this morning water spraying was carried out for a total of 13 hours (till about 5am on Sunday morning). The water temperature in the spent fuel pond of reactor #6 has fallen.

Power company engineers finished connecting the No.1 and No.2 reactors to external sources on Saturday evening.

Technicians seem to have attached a power cable to the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, hoping to restore electricity later today prior to an attempt to switch the pumps on. Equipment checks are probably being conducted now.They aim to reach No. 3 and 4 soon after that.

The Register writes:

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, badly damaged during the extremely severe earthquake and tsunami there a week ago, continues to stabilise. It is becoming more probable by the day that public health consequences will be zero and radiation health effects among workers at the site will be so minor as to be hard to measure. Nuclear experts are beginning to condemn the international hysteria which has followed the incident in increasingly blunt terms.

0100 JST (1700 CET 19th): IAEA  press conference on the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It hopes that power will be restored to reactor 2 today, which will then act as a hub to restore power to reactor 1. However it is not clear if water pumps have been damaged and if they will even work once power has been restored.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | Comments Off on Fukushima Dai-ichi Sunday 20th March: Power has reached reactor#2, plant will be decommissioned

Fukushima Dai-ichi 19th March: “Nuclear crisis is abating step by step”

March 18, 2011

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:, ,
Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | Comments Off on Fukushima Dai-ichi 19th March: “Nuclear crisis is abating step by step”

TEPCO was ready to give up and abdicate on 14th March

March 18, 2011

The Mainichi Daily News carries this story. Even in the unprecedented situation after the quake and tsunami and with the nature of the radiation risks involved the reaction of some of the TEPCO employees is understandable; but that TEPCO as a Corporation was ready to give up and ask the SDF to bear all the risks smacks of Corporate cowardice and does not say much for the Corporation’s values:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) told the government on March 14 that it wanted to withdraw all of its workers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, it has been learned.

TEPCO’s suggestion came two days after a cooling system failure caused by the March 11 quake and tsunami triggered a hydrogen blast at the plant’s No. 1 reactor. Though Prime Minister Naoto Kan rejected the proposal, the finding suggests that the power company was aware from an early stage that damage at the plant could develop into a nuclear disaster exposing workers to high levels of radiation. It is believed that TEPCO was prepared to let Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military handle the situation.

Several government sources said that TEPCO officials told Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda over the phone that the company wanted to withdraw all of its workers. Both government officials turned down the requests and reported them to Kan.

Shortly after 4 a.m. on March 15, Kan summoned TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu to the Prime Minister’s Office and told him pulling out was not an option. He added that a joint countermeasures headquarters would be set up.

Afterwards, the prime minister visited TEPCO’s head office in Tokyo and said, “This is not a matter of TEPCO going under; it’s about what will become of Japan.”

Government officials confirmed that TEPCO’s suggestions on the night of March 14 indicated the company wanted to pull out all of its workers.

At the same time complaints are smoldering within TEPCO over Kan’s response. TEPCO officials said that the company has 4,000 to 5,000 workers at the plant, including those from cooperating firms, but now only about 300 remain. They are working to control and restore power-generation stations.

“Saying, ‘I won’t allow you to pull out,’ is like saying, ‘Get exposed to radiation and keep going until you die,'” one member of the company commented.

TEPCO could well have allowed all workers who wished to do so to leave the plant while bearing their corporate responsibility. I am quite sure that there would have been many TEPCO employees who would have volunteered for emergency operations. Masataka Shimizu and TEPCO are no Samurai – but perhaps that is no longer a reasonable expectation. It does seem as if the military are now in control.


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »