Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011

SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Real cause of nuclear crisis

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Station, has been insisting that the culprit that caused the nuclear crisis was the huge tsunami that hit the plant after the March 11 earthquake. But evidence is mounting that the meltdown at the nuclear power plant was actually caused by the earthquake itself.

According to a science journalist well versed in the matter, Tepco is afraid that if the earthquake were to be determined as the direct cause of the accident, the government would have to review its quake-resistance standards completely, which in turn would delay by years the resumption of the operation of existing nuclear power stations that are suspended currently due to regular inspections.

The journalist is Mitsuhiko Tanaka, formerly with Babcock-Hitachi K.K. as an engineer responsible for designing the pressure vessel for the No. 4 reactor at the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear plant.

He says if the earthquake caused the damage to the plumbing, leading to a "loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA)" in which vaporized coolant gushed into the containment building from the damaged piping, an entirely new problem — "vulnerability to earthquake resistance of the nuclear reactor's core structure" — would surface and that this will require a total review of the government's safety standards for nuclear power plants in Japan, which is quite frequently hit by earthquakes.

Such a review will require a number of years of study, making it impossible to restart the now suspended nuclear power stations next year as Tepco hopes.

What puzzles Tanaka most is why the emergency condensers, which turn vaporized coolant (steam) into water and are supposed to lower both the pressure and temperature of the reactor, were not operating at the time of the accident although the condensers have the capability of functioning even when electricity becomes unavailable.

It is highly probable, he says, that the plumbing linked with the condensers was damaged by the earthquake, causing water or vapor to leak out, thus leading to the nonfunctioning of the condensers.

In a report released on May 23, Tepco said it stopped the emergency condensers after the quake occurred but before the tsunami hit the plant so that the temperature of the pressure vessel would not change by more than 55 degrees Celsius per hour. This, it said, was strictly in accordance with the instructions contained in the operating manual.

When a Diet committee looking into the incident asked Tepco to submit a copy of the manual, most pages of the documents so submitted were "blacked out," as the company alleged they contained trade secrets which it did not want to go into the public domain.

Totally dissatisfied, the committee issued another order to Tepco to submit the whole manual in its original form, to which the company complied on Oct. 24. This led journalist Tanaka to come to the conclusion that the utility was not telling the truth.

He said the 55-C-per-hour is a figure used in ordinary plants in a non-emergency situation to keep piping in a good condition and that the figure should not be used in an emergency. He pointed out that the manual says that the figure is something that should be followed in operations just prior to a cold shutdown of a reactor, not immediately after a problem has arisen.

At a news conference on May 15, Tepco said that according to its simulation, the meltdown at the No. 1 reactor of the nuclear power plant happened about 15 hours after the earthquake because the tsunami destroyed all electricity supply sources and the water level in the reactor lowered rapidly. But Tanaka says that the simulation is far different from the actually measured water level and pressure.

A rapid increase in the pressure inside the containment vessel is especially unnatural. Although the simulation report says that the pressure inside the containment vessel shot up to more than seven times standard atmospheric pressure around 5:40 a.m. on March 12, or about 15 hours after the quake, the fact is that the pressure had already risen to six times the standard at 12:12 a.m. on March 12 — five to six hours before the time given by the simulation report.

Simulation data calculated by a computer can be manipulated easily depending on the types of input. Tanaka suspects that Tepco cooked up simulation results to suit its own purposes in an attempt to deceive the public.

Atsuo Watanabe, former designer of containment vessels at Toshiba Corp., said on Oct. 26 that the most fundamental cause of the Fukushima plant fiasco probably lay in the blind acceptance of the safety standards adopted in the United States, which did not take into consideration all potential consequences from earthquakes.

The reactors damaged at Fukushima were of the GE Mark 1 type designed and built by General Electric Co. He pointed out that in the U.S., there is no need to consider the combination of an earthquake and a loss-of-coolant accident caused by broken piping, adding that it is reasonable to assume that the earthquake and loss of coolant occurred simultaneously at Fukushima No. 1.

Perhaps it was against such a background that Tepco blacked out crucial matters in the operational manual of the reactors, as there are 10 other GE Mark 1 type reactors in Japan.

These and other scientific findings have given rise to serious suspicion of Tepco's claim that the crisis at the nuclear power plant was caused by the tsunami, and not by the earthquake. And a view that blames the tremor as the true culprit is becoming more and more trusted.

It is imperative that the special investigative committee recently created within the Diet undertake thorough inquiry into the real cause of the accidents. The panel must force those Tepco employees who have worked on the spot to testify, even though the company has so far obstinately opposed such testimonies.

Should the government decide to permit the resumption of nuclear power stations in various parts of the country by blindly accepting assertions coming from Tepco, the whole nation would face uneasiness in preventing another calamity in the future and would fail to fulfill its accountability to the whole world, which is watching whether Japan will conduct a thorough investigation to determine the true cause of the Fukushima disaster.
This is an abridged translation of an article from the December issue of Sentaku, a monthly magazine covering Japan's political, social and economic scenes.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20111213a1.html

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Hundreds of Fukushima residents were exposed to radiation well above the level permitted for the general public following the March nuclear disaster, according to an official survey released Tuesday, confirming the accident's broad impact on local communities.

But the survey of 1,589 residents from three towns close to the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed that no residents were exposed to radiation above levels tolerated during nuclear emergencies. Most residents from the towns were evacuated by late April, suggesting the government managed to move residents from areas where radiation rose close to those levels.

The survey by the Fukushima Prefecture local government looked at the cumulative external radiation exposure of residents of Namie, Iitate and part of Kawamata towns in the four months following the March 11 accident. The towns are not the closest to the troubled plant, but residents were seen to be at risk of high radiation exposure because the government was relatively slow in asking them to evacuate.

Of the group surveyed, four residents received exposure of at least 10 millisieverts, with the highest dose at 14.5 millisieverts, significantly higher than the annual 1 millisievert level permitted for the general public by the Japanese government in accordance with international safety standards.

But they were well below the 20 millisievert threshold the government sets for forced evacuation of residents in nuclear emergencies.

Shunichi Yamashita, vice president of Fukushima Medical University and one of the prefecture's senior nuclear advisors, said the latest result indicated the accident's "impact on the health of the general public is extremely small," according to NHK, Japan's national broadcaster.

Exposure levels for nearly two-thirds of the group, or 998 residents, were less than 1 millisievert, while those for 549 people were within the range between 1 and 5 millisieverts. There were 38 people in the 5-10 millisievert band.

Included in the group were 311 children and teenagers, of whom 97.7% received less exposure of less than 5 millisieverts. Seven were estimated to have received more, but none at levels exceeding 10 millisieverts, Fukushima prefecture said.

Exposure levels were higher for residents who worked at nuclear facilities. Of the 138 nuclear workers in the three towns, five were exposed to radiation levels of over 10 millisieverts. The most elevated level was reported for a worker who received 37.4 millisieverts.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection, an influential Canada-based group of scientists that sets radiation safety standards, recommends authorities limit radiation exposure after a nuclear accident in the "lower part of the 1-20 millisievert per year band."

Experts say the risk of cancer increases in measurable ways once a population is exposed to over 100 millisieverts.

The survey did not look at internal exposure--radiation taken into human body through contaminated air, water or food.

-By Yuka Hayashi, The Wall Street Journal; +81-3-6269-2832; yuka.hayashi@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/artic...20111213-704941.html

The following link is a example of scare mongering, since certain members can not distinguish legitimate sources such as the Japan Times, New York Times, and the WSJ.

*DISCLAIMER: The following link is absolute BS.
http://www.moneycontrol.com...%29_bK25tbSo0bs.html

Even better google the subject, if anyone has been researching this subject themselves, they would see their are quite a few articles I haven't posted.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 12-13-2011).]

So now you have decided that it is a good idea to start using some discretion as to what dredgings you spam this thread with?

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: The following link is a example of scare mongering, since certain members can not distinguish legitimate sources such as the Japan Times, New York Times, and the WSJ. *DISCLAIMER: The following link is absolute BS. http://www.moneycontrol.com...%29_bK25tbSo0bs.html Even better google the subject, if anyone has been researching this subject themselves, they would see their are quite a few articles I haven't posted.

Four NRC Commissioners conspired, with each other and with senior NRC staff, to delay the release of and alter the NRC Near-Term Task Force report on Fukushima

It is clear from a review of emails and other documents that some of the Commissioners [...] worked with some NRC staff to alter the materials the Commission would be asked to vote on. They also attempted to delay its release both to Congress and the public.

[...]

Although the NRC had already rejected Commissioner Magwood’s proposal to publicly release the Near-Term Task Force report only after it had been approved (and, presumably, edited) by a majority of the Commissioners, Commissioner Magwood began to attempt to prevent its release to Congress and the public anyway.

[...]

On the evening of July 12, the chiefs of staffs of all NRC Commissioners were sent a copy of the draft press release on the NRC Near-Term Task Force report that was to be sent the following day, although typical Commission procedure states that circulation of such drafts an hour in advance is recommended as a “collegial practice.” Early the next morning, Commissioner Magwood sent his comments to Chairman Jaczko, stating that “someone reading this would think that every reactor in the country is a time bomb waiting to go off” and that the press release was “almost breathless.” The other three NRC Commissioners were copied on this email, and Commissioner Svinicki quickly echoed Commissioner Magwood’s views. Commissioner Magwood referred to the draft press release as “irresponsible” in an email to Commissioner Ostendorff

[...]

http://markey.house.gov/doc...al_w_attachments.pdf

List of nuclear accidents by fatalities

4,000 fatalities – Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine, April 26, 1986. 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and it is estimated that there were 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.

200+ fatalities – Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion, (Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union, 29 September 1957), figure is a conservative estimate, 270,000 people were exposed to dangerous radiation levels. Over thirty small communities had been removed from Soviet maps between 1958 and 1991.

33+ cancer fatalities (estimated by UK government) – Windscale, United Kingdom, October 8, 1957. Fire ignites plutonium piles and contaminates surrounding dairy farms.. Windscale was an air-cooled graphite-moderated reactor with no containment structure. A significant contributing factor was that the graphite caught fire.

17 fatalities – Instituto Oncologico Nacional of Panama, August 2000 – March 2001. Patients receiving treatment for prostate cancer and cancer of the cervix receive lethal doses of radiation.

13 fatalities – Radiotherapy accident in Costa Rica, 1996. 114 patients received an overdose of radiation from a Cobalt-60 source that was being used for radiotherapy.

11 fatalities – Radiotherapy accident in Zaragoza, Spain, December 1990. Cancer patients receiving radiotherapy; 27 patients were injured.

10 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-431 reactor accident, August 10, 1985. 49 people suffered radiation injuries.

10 fatalities – Columbus radiotherapy accident, 1974–1976, 88 injuries from Cobalt-60 source.

9 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-27 reactor accident, 24 May 1968. 83 people were injured.

8 fatalities – Soviet submarine K-19 reactor accident, July 4, 1961. More than 30 people were over-exposed to radiation.

8 fatalities – Radiation accident in Morocco, March 1984.

7 fatalities – Houston radiotherapy accident, 1980.

5 fatalities – Lost radiation source, Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR, October 5, 1982. 13 injuries.

4 fatalities – Mihama Nuclear Power Plant accident, August 9, 2004. Hot water and steam leaked from a broken pipe.

4 fatalities – Goiânia accident, September 13, 1987. 249 people received serious radiation contamination from lost radiography source.

4 fatalities – Radiation accident in Mexico City, 1962.

3 fatalities – SL-1 accident (US Army) 1961.

3 fatalities – Three deaths and ten injuries resulted in Samut Prakarn, Thailand when a radiation-therapy unit was dismantled, February 2000.

2 fatalities – Tokaimura nuclear accident, nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Japan, September 30, 1999.

1 fatality – Mayapuri radiological accident, India, April 2010.

1 fatality – Daigo Fukuryū Maru March 1, 1954

1 fatality – Louis Slotin May 21, 1946

1 fatality – Harry K. Daghlian, Jr., August 21, 1945 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

1 fatality – Cecil Kelley criticality accident, December 30, 1958 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1 fatality – Malfunction INES level 4 at RA2 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, operator Osvaldo Rogulich dies days later.

Japan May Declare Control of Reactors, Over Serious Doubts
Tepco Via Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Workers sprayed water in March to cool the spent nuclear fuel in a reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: December 14, 2011

TOKYO — Nine months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing a meltdown at three units, the Tokyo government is expected to declare soon that it has finally regained control of the plant’s overheating reactors.
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Reuters

Leakage from an evaporation condensation apparatus inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

But even before it has been made, the announcement is facing serious doubts from experts.

On Friday, a disaster-response task force headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will vote on whether to announce that the plant’s three damaged reactors have been put into the equivalent of a “cold shutdown,” a technical term normally used to describe intact reactors with fuel cores that are in a safe and stable condition. Experts say that if it does announce a shutdown, as many expect, it will simply reflect the government’s effort to fulfill a pledge to restore the plant’s cooling system by year’s end and, according to some experts, not the true situation.

If the task force declares a cold shutdown, the next step will be moving the spent fuel rods in nearby cooling pools to more secure storage, and eventually opening the reactors themselves.

However, many experts fear that the government is declaring victory only to appease growing public anger over the accident, and that it may deflect attention from remaining threats to the reactors’ safety. One of those — a large aftershock to the magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, which could knock out the jury-rigged new cooling system that the plant’s operator hastily built after the accident — is considered a strong possibility by many seismologists.

They also said the term cold shutdown might give an exaggerated impression of stability to severely damaged reactors with fuel cores that have not only melted down, but melted through the inner containment vessels and bored into the floor of their concrete outer containment structures.

“The government wants to reassure the people that everything is under control, and do this by the end of this year,” said Kazuhiko Kudo, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University. “But what I want to know is, are they really ready to say this?”

Perhaps to give itself some wiggle room, the government is expected to use vague terminology, announcing that the three damaged reactors are in a “state of cold shutdown.” Experts say that in real terms, this will amount to a claim that the reactors’ temperatures can now be kept safely below the boiling point of water, and that their melted cores are no longer at risk of resuming the atomic chain reaction that could allow them to again heat up uncontrollably.

And indeed, experts credit the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, with making progress in regaining control of the damaged reactors. They say the plant’s makeshift new cooling system, built with the help of American, French and Japanese companies, has managed to cool the reactors’ cores, including the molten fuel attached to the outer containment vessels.

Experts also say a new shedlike structure built over the heavily damaged Unit 1 reactor building has helped cap the plant’s radiation leaks into the atmosphere. The building was one of three reactor buildings destroyed in hydrogen explosions in March that scattered dangerous particles over a wide swath of northeastern Japan.

Still, experts say the term is usually reserved for healthy reactors, to indicate that they are safe enough that their containment vessels can be opened up and their fuel rods taken out. But they warn it may take far longer than even the government’s projected three years to begin cleaning up the melted fuel in Fukushima Daiichi’s damaged reactors. This has led some experts to say that proclaiming a cold shutdown may actually be deceptive, suggesting the Fukushima plant is closer to getting cleaned up than it actually is.

“Claiming a cold shutdown does not have much meaning for damaged reactors like those at Fukushima Daiichi,” said Noboru Nakao, a nuclear engineering consultant at International Access Corporation.

In fact, experts point out, damaged fuel cores have yet to be removed from plants that suffered meltdowns decades ago. In the case of Chernobyl, Soviet officials simply entombed the damaged reactor in a concrete sarcophagus after the explosion there in 1986. Some experts said talk of a cold shutdown deflected attention from the more pressing problem of further releases of radioactive contamination into the environment. In particular, they said there was still a danger to the nearby Pacific Ocean from the 90,000 tons of contaminated water that sit in the basements of the shattered reactor buildings, or are stored in fields of silver tanks on the plant’s grounds.

“At this point, I would be more worried about the contamination than what’s happening inside the reactors,” said Murray E. Jennex, an expert on nuclear containment at San Diego State University.

Mr. Jennex said he believed the government’s claim that the reactors themselves were now stable, and particularly that the resumption of the heat-producing chain reaction called fission was no longer possible. While the discovery last month of the chemical xenon, a byproduct of fission, in one of Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors briefly raised alarms that a chain reaction had restarted, Mr. Jennex said enough of the radioactive fuel had decayed since the accident in March to make that unlikely.

Other experts disagreed. Kyushu University’s Mr. Kudo said that the restart of fission, a phenomenon known as recriticality, could not be ruled out until the reactors could be opened, allowing for an examination of the melted fuel. But he and other experts said their biggest fear was that another earthquake or tsunami could knock out Tepco’s makeshift cooling system. They noted that it was not built to earthquake safety standards, and relied on water purifiers and other vulnerable equipment connected to the reactors by more than a mile and a half of rubber hoses.

“All it would take is one more earthquake or tsunami to set Fukushima Daiichi back to square one,” Mr. Kudo said. “Can we really call this precarious situation a cold shutdown?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011...r-reactors.html?_r=1

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 12-15-2011).]

Another alarmist wacko, a ex fukushima worker.


Interpreter in video, he will speak first then she will translate.
At 19:30 in

Immediately after the first hydrogen explosion, Tepco gave out a request to all of these labor dispatching companies and they said ‘send us people who don’t mind dying’.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 12-15-2011).]

First debris from Japanese earthquake/tsunami reaches Olympic Peninsula

By Arwyn Rice
Peninsula Daily News

PORT ANGELES — The first piece of debris that could be identified as washing up on the West Coast from the March 11 tsunami in Japan — a large black float — was found on a Neah Bay beach two weeks ago, Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham said Tuesday night.

Since then, the two researchers, known as DriftBusters Inc. — who have used flotsam to track wind and water currents in the Pacific since 1970 — have learned that the black, 55-gallon drum-sized floats also have been found on Vancouver Island.

Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham spoke to more than 100 people at Peninsula College and brought the float with them, along with examples of other items that may be showing up on beaches in the next year.

Tons of debris washed out to sea when a tsunami struck northern Japan after a massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake March 11.

About a quarter of the 100 million tons of debris from Japan is expected to make landfall on beaches from southern Alaska to California, possibly in volumes large enough to clog ports, Ebbesmeyer said.

Using models from a historic shipwreck that occurred 20 miles off Neah Bay, Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham have determined the path of debris that comes into that area off the Washington coast.

They said debris will be snagged by currents leading into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and that a large portion of it will end up on beaches from the mouth of the Elwha River to Port Townsend.

Many ocean models have shown that the massive congregation of flotsam that washed away from devastated Japanese coastal cities is in the middle of the Pacific and won’t make landfall in the U.S. for another year or two.

Most of it is exactly where those models predicted, but those models don’t take into account wind and flotsam with large areas exposed to the wind, said Ebbesmeyer, who became famous for his and Ingraham’s ocean research into currents after large spills of Nike shoes and bath toys from container ships in the 1990s.

Flotsam in a current travels an average of seven miles per hour, but it can move as much as 20 mph if it has a large area exposed to the wind, he said.

The float that was found in Neah Bay sits well above the water, has a very shallow draft and is lightweight, exactly what Ingraham’s computer model said would show up first.

It was found by Surfrider beach cleanup crews working on a Makah-owned beach on the strait, a few miles east of Neah Bay, Ebbesmeyer said.

The black floats are seen in the middle of the Pacific by the hundreds, and are not something that has been seen on Eastern Pacific beaches before, he said.

The floats are included in masses of black blobs supporting huge rafts of debris that include fishing boats, houses and possibly human bodies, Ebbesmeyer said.

Many of those bodies and parts of bodies will likely begin washing up in about a year, some simply as feet in athletic shoes, similar to those found in Puget Sound over the last decade, he said.

Ebbesmeyer has done extensive research on those feet, and said that many more may be found in coming years.

Athletic shoes make the perfect floats to preserve parts of bodies, Ebbesmeyer said, and there are still thousands of people missing from tsunami-stricken areas of Japan.

Shoes with remains or other possibly human remains found on beaches should be reported to the appropriate authorities, either police, sheriff’s deputies or park rangers, he said.

If the debris has any kind of identifiable marking, such as numbers or Japanese writing, it may be traceable, Ebbesmeyer said.

“All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect,” he said.

Families in Japan are waiting to hear of any items that may have been associated with their loved ones and may travel to the U.S. to meet those who found these mementos, he added.

Items that wash up may include portions of houses, boats, ships, furniture, portions of cars and just about anything else that floats, he said.

The rafts of debris include whole houses which may still contain many personal items, and the Japanese are known for storing important personal mementos in walls, Ebbesmeyer said.

Even the smallest of traceable items may be the only thing associated with one of those people who were lost during the disaster, he said.

Contact Ebbesmeyer at CurtisEbbesmeyer@comcast.net for assistance in translation and to track tsunami debris back to its Japanese origins.

“I have a translator to read things in Japanese,” he said.

Large items still in the water should be reported to the Coast Guard, as they may represent a hazard to boats and ships, he said.

Some shipping lanes have already been rerouted to avoid the worst of the debris, he said.

People should also be aware of the possibility of radiation contamination, he said.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant leaked a large amount of radiation into the water in the wake of the tsunami, and no one knows what levels of contamination there are in the currents, and the items being carried in those currents, he said.

Ebbesmeyer suggested local police take steps to have sensitive Geiger counters available to scan items — just to be safe.

The event was unprecedented, and no one knows yet what levels of radiation, if any, items have picked up, he said.

________

Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.

Last modified: December 14. 2011 5:12PM

http://www.peninsuladailyne...nami-reaches-olympic

quote Originally posted by carnut122: I've seen pictures of the debris. It's really VERY staggering. Not to start anything, but I wonder if and how much of a radiation risk this debris represents. Likewise, can it be sent to a regular landfill, or will it have to be treated as radio-active waste material?

Non-porous building materials can be washed down to remove the radioactive contaminates.

Africa | Americas | Asia | Europe | Middle East
Japan: crucial stage reached in nuclear plant shutdown [Updated]
December 16, 2011 | 4:00 am

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REPORTING FROM SEOUL -– Japan declared Friday that the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has reached a condition that suggests a critical stable state known as a “cold shutdown” and has ceased to leak substantial amounts of radiation.

The development comes nine months after an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the coastal plant March 11, knocking out its cooling system and eventually causing a series of meltdowns.

The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have reached a state of cold shutdown, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Cabinet members in an announcement intended to reassure Japan and the rest of the world that the nation is moving beyond its nuclear nightmare.

But critics say that continuing harm is being caused by the plant, stricken by what many call the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and that it will still take decades to fully decommission the facility.

Officials had predicted they would reach the cold shutdown state by early 2012, and Tokyo’s support of the claim by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., that the reactors have reached a crucial point is one more step toward finally encasing the plant in concrete as a precaution.

A 12-mile off-limits zone around the plant is expected to remain in effect for years, Japanese authorities acknowledge.

Officials say they can now move forward and begin reassessing dangers at evacuations areas around the plant. In the days following the March disaster, some 80,000 residents were evacuated from communities around the plant after the reactors spewed radioactivity into the air, sea and soil.

Still, Friday’s announcement was carefully worded, with officials suggesting that the plant had reached cold shutdown “conditions,” since the utility cannot measure temperatures of melted fuel in damaged reactors as precisely as they can in normal facilities.

Facility operators conceded that engineers will not be able to remove spent fuel from the three worst-hit reactors for 10 years, but say they may begin removing fuel from storage pools within the next two years.

Engineers said the plant’s more stable state came after the establishment of an improvised cooling system to circulate water through the damaged reactors. They have also set up a system to decontaminate radioactive water from the process.

But earlier this month, plant operators announced that 45 tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from that filtration system. Officials later acknowledged that some of that water had reached the Pacific Ocean.

Critics say the leak contradicted assurances that officials have limited the environmental damage at the plant 220 miles northeast of Tokyo. The radiation in the water from the most recent leak measured up to 322 times higher than government safety limits for various types of cesium.

Experts also worried about the detection of strontium, which they said remains in the human body for much longer than cesium and therefore presents a graver health hazard. Some independent sources have estimated that 80 gallons or more of strontium-tainted water has run into the ocean, twice the amount claimed by plant operators.

[Updated at 6:36 a.m., Dec. 16: Environmentalists blasted the government's claims of progress at Fukushima.

“By triumphantly declaring a cold shutdown, the Japanese authorities are clearly anxious to give the impression that the crisis has come to an end, which is clearly not the case," said a statement by the group Greenpeace. "Instead of creating a PR smokescreen to deflect attention away from the ongoing failure to help people living with the consequences of the disaster, the government’s priority should be to ensure public safety and begin the shutdown of all nuclear reactors in Japan.”]

And there are continuing signs that the fallout is entering the food system. A Japanese baby food manufacturer this month announced the recall of 400,000 cans of infant formula that reportedly contained traces of radioactive cesium connected to the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown.

Although radiation has been detected in food in Japan, including vegetables and fish, the finding marked the first time that poisonous isotopes have been found in baby formula.

The earthquake and tsunami left more than 20,000 either dead or missing along Japan’s northeast coast.

http://latimesblogs.latimes...nd-radiation-le.html

quote Originally posted by phonedawgz: So any wackos still claiming the fuel is 'going critical'?

I think radioactive xenon and production of iodine 131 is pretty self explanatory, unless you rather believe a lie.
To answer your question, yes the very wacko alarmist former prime minister is claiming re criticality. Glad we have your infinite knowledge, and Tepco's infallible record to set us straight.

Hatoyama: Nationalize Fukushima N-plant

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Only by bringing the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into government hands can scientists thoroughly discover what caused the nuclear crisis, former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama says in an article published in the Dec. 15 issue of the British science journal Nature.

In the two-page article coauthored by Hatoyama and Tomoyuki Taira, a fellow Democratic Party of Japan member of the House of Representatives, Hatoyama said the Fukushima plant "must be nationalized so that information can be gathered openly."

"A special science council should be created to help scientists from various disciplines to work together on the analyses," he said. "Through such a council, the technologies needed for decommissioning and decontamination...can be developed."

It is extremely rare for a major science journal to carry an article written by a former prime minister as a cover story, according to an official of Nature Japan.

In the article, Hatoyama criticizes Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled plant, for disclosing only limited information to Diet committees. He also hints at the possibility of recriticality at the plant and says there is still much about the crisis that needs clarification, including the state of the molten fuel within the nuclear reactors.

Hatoyama also says that he and Taira obtained data on samples of contaminated water TEPCO obtained from the basement of the plant's No. 1 reactor and asked an outside research institute to reanalyze them.

Results showed that radionuclide chlorine 38, one of the isotopes released during recriticality, "was indeed present," he claims.

TEPCO reported at one point that it found chlorine 38 in the sampled water, but the utility later retracted that statement, saying there was a mistake in the analysis.
(Dec. 16, 2011)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy...al/T111215005428.htm