EMERGENCY JAPAN: 9.1 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE
March 11th, 2011Rolling Blackouts Begin Monday
Via: Reuters:
Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Sunday that it would conduct its first-ever rolling blackout from Monday to help prevent an unexpected large-scale power outage after a powerful earthquake shut two nuclear plants indefinitely on Friday.
Blackouts will be conducted in turns at five areas in nine prefectures that it serves, as TEPCO expects peak power demand of 41 million kilowatts for Monday, exceeding supplies by 10 million kw.
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Times of India: Toll May Cross 10,000 in Miyagi Alone
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Big Picture Gallery: Japan: Earthquake Aftermath
Breathtaking devastation.
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Two Japanese Nuclear Reactors May Be in Meltdown
Via: CNN:
While saying there are no indications yet of dangerously high radiation levels in the atmosphere, a Japanese government official said Sunday that there is a “possibility of a meltdown” at two of the country’s nuclear reactors.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that officials still do not know if there have been meltdowns in the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi’s nuclear facility in northeast Japan. But as they attempt to cool down radioactive material and release pressure inside the reactors, he said authorities were working under the presumption that such meltdowns have taken place.
“We do believe that there is a possibility that meltdown has occurred. It is inside the reactor. We can’t see. However, we are assuming that a meltdown has occurred,” he said of the No. 1 reactor. “And with reactor No. 3, we are also assuming that the possibility of a meltdown as we carry out measures.”
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“If this accident stops right now it will already be one of the three worst accidents we have ever had at a nuclear power plant in the history of nuclear power.”
Via: CNN:
Another expert said enough was known to conclude that Saturday’s nuclear events in Japan rank high on the list of similar incidents. “If this accident stops right now it will already be one of the three worst accidents we have ever had at a nuclear power plant in the history of nuclear power,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear materials and president of the U.S.-based Ploughshares Fund, a firm involved in security and peace funding.
He said only the 1979 partial meltdown of a reactor core at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union were worse.
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EMERGENCY: JAPANESE AUTHORITIES PREPARING TO DISTRIBUTE IODINE
Reuters has the story up now.
Via: Reuters:
Japanese authorities have told the U.N.’s atomic watchdog they are making preparations to distribute iodine to people living near nuclear power plants affected by Friday’s earthquake, the Vienna-based agency said.
Iodine can be used to help protect against thyroid cancer in the case of radioactive exposure in a nuclear accident.
After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, thousands of cases of thyroid cancer were reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident. More cases are expected.
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This is verbatim off the Reuters liveblog:
And in confirmation of what was being speculated earlier, Japanese authorities have told the IAEA they are making preparations to distribute iodine to people living near the nuclear power plants. Iodine can be used to help protect the body from radioactive exposure.
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Quake Moved Japan Coast 8 Feet; Shifted Earth’s Axis
Via: CNN:
The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.
“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).
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Astonishing Tsunami Footage on CNN
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“Coolant” = “Billion Dollar Kill Switch”
Via: Cringley:
Tokyo Electric Power Company isn’t saying much. Utilities tend not to and Japanese utilities are notoriously secretive. But we got a clue to what’s happening from U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of all people, who remarked that the U. S. military was delivering “coolant” to the stricken reactor.
“Coolant?” wondered aloud all the CNN and Fox News nuclear experts looking for a lede for their stories. “What is she talking about, coolant?” This is a boiling water reactor and the coolant is water. The U. S. Air Force isn’t needed to export water to Japan.
This shows the limits of cable news experts and maybe experts in general, because Hillary isn’t the kind of person to choose the wrong words. She said “coolant” and she meant “coolant.” Though she may not have known she was saying so, she also meant the reactor was dead and will never be restarted.
A boiling water reactor does just what it sounds like — it boils water to make steam that drives a turbine generator. This is as opposed to a pressurized water reactor that uses the nuclear reaction to heat a coolant that never really boils because it is under high pressure, then sends that coolant through a heat exchanger which heats water to make steam to drive the generator. Boiling water reactors are simpler, cheaper, but generally aren’t made anymore because they are perceived as being less safe. That’s because the exotic coolant in the pressurized water reactor can contain boric acid which absorbs neutrons and can help (or totally) control the nuclear reaction. You can’t use boric acid or any other soluble boron-laced neutron absorbers in a boiling water reactor because doing so would contaminate both the cooling system and the environment.
That’s why the experts didn’t expect it because they are still thinking of how the plant can be saved, but it can’t be.
Though the boiling water reactor has already been turned off by inserting neutron-absorbing control rods all the way into the core, adding boric acid or, more likely, sodium polyborate would turn the reactor off-er — more off than off — which could come in really handy in the event of a subsequent coolant loss, which reportedly has already happened. But that’s a $1 billion kill switch that most experts wouldn’t think to pull.
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U.S. AIR FORCE DELIVERS COOLANT TO FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
Aren’t the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi water cooled? Uh, something is very strange here.
Via: Economic Times:
Washington: The US has transported coolant to a Japanese nuclear power plant affected by the massive earthquake, as it quickly moved naval and air assets along with humanitarian relief material for the tsunami-hit areas of the country.
“We just had our Air Force assets in Japan transport some really important coolant to one of the nuclear plants,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced yesterday, as Tokyo declared a state of emergency for five of its nuclear reactors at two atomic power plants in northeastern coast of Japan, where an 8.9-magnitude quake struck yesterday.
Japan is very reliant on nuclear power and they have very high engineering standards, but one of their plants came under a lot of stress with the earthquake and did not have enough coolant, she said.
“So Air Force planes were able to deliver that. So we’re really deeply involved in trying to do as much as we can on behalf of the Japanese and on behalf of US citizens,” Clinton said.
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Video of Ground Cracking Open, Water Being Pushed Up, Chiba City
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MARKET WATCH: FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR REACTOR COULD BE MELTING DOWN
Japanese nuclear authorities warned that a nuclear reactor could be experiencing a meltdown Saturday, a day after its cooling mechanism was damaged by the country’s most powerful earthquake in more than a century, according to various media reports in Japan.
Government officials said they were pouring water into the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear reactor to stop the meltdown, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
The Tepco reactors are about 150 miles north of Tokyo, and about 40 miles from the epicenter of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck northeastern Japan a day earlier.
Japanese authorities declared a nuclear emergency on Friday evening, and then ordered thousands of residents within 10 kilometers of the plant to evacuate. Some 20,000 people evacuated from the areas around the plants on Saturday, Kyodo reported.
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Star Advertiser: Quake Magnitude Raised to 9.1
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Boston Globe: Big Picture Gallery
An 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit off the east coast of Japan early today. The quake — one of the largest in recorded history — triggered a 23-foot tsunami that battered Japan’s coast, killing hundreds and sweeping away cars, homes, buildings, and boats. Editors note: we’ll post more as the story develops…
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AFP: Radiation 1000 Times Higher than Normal at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
A JAPANESE safety panel says radiation is 1000 times above normal at a nuclear plant in the country’s northeast, Kyodo news agency reports.
Japan’s Government has put the radiation level at the Fukushima plant eight times above normal and has stated that there is only “a possibility of a radioactive” leak from the reactor.
People within 10km (6 miles) of nuclear plant have been ordered to evacuate.
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LA Times: Hundreds of Bodies Found in Sendai
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BBC: Huge Whirlpool Created After Japan Quake
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Telegraph: Millions Stranded in Tokyo
Millions of people in greater Tokyo are stranded far from home after Japan’s biggest earthquake on record shut down the capital’s massive subway system.
Sirens wailed through Tokyo, television helicopters flew overhead and people rushed to the city’s ubiquitous 24-hour convenience stores, quickly emptying shelves of bento boxes, sandwiches and instant noodle cups.
Countless workers, who had fled violently swaying office blocks, found themselves stuck far from their families, and unable to speak to them because the overloaded mobile phone system could not carry most calls.
“I have no idea how I’ll get home,” said an 18 year-old woman waiting outside Ginza subway station.
She described how ceramics shattered around her in a department store when the huge quake hit mid-afternoon.
The government used loudspeaker alerts and television broadcasts to urge people to stay near their workplaces rather than risk long walks home, as highways leading out of the city centre were choked and hotels quickly booked out.
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Reuters: Japan: Trying to fix Nuclear Plant Cooling Problem
Japan said on Friday a cooling function at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was not working after a major earthquake but that it was trying to get backup power for cooling.
The government has declared an emergency situation as a precaution but there was no radioactive leakage and no damage from the cooling problem was expected at this stage, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.
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JAPAN DECLARES NUCLEAR EMERGENCY
Japan declares ‘nuclear emergency’ as attempts to cool reactor at northern plant are ‘not going as planned’ – official via NHK
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So what about fallout experts here. Would California be in the line of fire?
The Japanese took an awful risk building nuclear power plants considering their whole country is prone to massive earthquakes. We now see the risk was too great to take. After this disaster, I bet the Japanese won’t be building anymore nuclear power plants.