2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami - News and Analysis

[GuruPrabhu]

Anyways speed of propagation of a ocean wave is not even the 'property of water' it is governed by the depth of the water body i.e. in deep ocean a wave will travel much faster as compared to near the shore (v= Sqrt[g*water depth]) where 'g' is acceleration due to gravity.

Having said that I agree was wrong about WL and speed.

Negi-ji,

I simply wanted to point out the basic variable versus the derived variable. Notice that I said "surface wave" in my original post. A tsunami is a "bulk wave". So yes, they have different principles governing their propagation. I will not go into details because it will only invite Sanku-ji type comments.

[negi]

GuruPrabhu I don't do this kind of a thing for living hence I am not in touch with the related 'physics', however 5 years back when I was reading on ocean waves for my project I came across the following site.

http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oc ... r16_01.htm

In deep water, the phase speed depends on wave-length or wave frequency. Longer waves travel faster. Thus, deep-water waves are said to be dispersive.

That is why my original WL and speed comment (I know there is more to it).

You may send your thoughts on the same to me on my email (for it might be OT here) or if you wish we may take it to the Physics thread. I would be glad if you can throw more light on the subject.

'powerslavenegi@googlemail'

[Bade]

Looks interesting and of relevance for NPP and Tsunami studies, I did skim over the appendix at the end which has a nice compilation of data on past Tsunamis. Thought could be useful for people looking for stuff on studies done from a civil engg perspective.
http://www.jsce.or.jp/committee/ceofnp/ ... 060519.pdf

NOAA-NGDC data for Japan
Click on the max height entry to see more details on the 1896 event. Not clear what it was at the present site of Fukushima NPP during the 1896 event.

[Bade]

Code: Select all

JAPAN 	FUKUSHIMA 	FUKUSHIMA I POWER PLANT DAIICHI 	37.42139 	141.03250 	154    10.00        											
JAPAN 	FUKUSHIMA 	FUKUSHIMA II POWER PLANT DAIINI 	37.31624 	141.02490 	163 	12.00

From the above link for the recent event, the wave height at Daini seem to have topped by 2 meters over the Daichi site.

[Bade]

http://www.youtube.com/user/NOAAPMEL?fe ... BZGH3yieLc

Propagation of the March 11, 2011 Honshu tsunami was computed with the NOAA forecast method using MOST model with the tsunami source inferred from DART® data.

[Amber G.]

^^^ (10, 12 m values) are consistent with what I heard (and posted here).

[Amber G.]

This capital normally has 3X (or more) times the present radiation level at Tokyo..
Old Fox news report:
Holy Isotopes! Radiation Levels at Capitol 65 Times EPA Standards for Facility

...that radiation dose rates at the Roger Williams statue, located between the Rotunda and Senate Chamber, are up to 65 times greater than what the EPA plans to allow at Yucca Mountain.

The radiation-dose rate at the Williams statue also is up to 550 percent higher than the dose rate received at the fenceline of a nuke plant, and about 13,000 times higher than the average annual radiation dose from worldwide nuclear-energy production.

It's in congressional record.. and sources and data can easily be checked.
( Before some one panicks: US Capital is a building in Washington, DC USA, and the values are pre- Fukushima)

[shiv]

From a practical viewpoint, how on earth does one go about confirming whether a containment vessel has been breached or not?

In the days before ultrasound and CT scans there was a surgical adage to remind surgeons to consider hidden areas where pus could form unless one thought of looking for it. It was "Pus somewhere . Pus nowhere. Pus under diaphragm?" The meaning is: "Pus somewhere (the patient has fever and other signs of possible bacterial infection). Pus nowhere to be found (No obvious source of infection is detectable). Consider infection hidden under the diaphragm.

The current problem seems to be similar. People are claiming that there is a radiation leak. (Pus somewhere) but nobody knows where that leak may be or even if it has actually occurred (Pus nowhere). Could it be from the fuel rods (Pus under diaphragm?) How can one practically confirm or deny this in the absence of ultrasound/CT scans for nuclear reactors?

[abhishek_sharma]

DEVASTATION IN JAPAN: Radiation Risks Outlined by Bombs, Weapons Work, and Accidents

Jocelyn Kaiser

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1504.full

The ongoing leaks from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have raised concern that some workers and even the public could be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. So far, officials have said that levels outside the plant are low. But how do they know how much radiation is harmful? Risk calculations are based heavily on a 63-year study of 94,000 people who survived the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945. It is one of the largest, longest population studies ever done; for radiation safety, it is the gold standard. Its breadth and precision are “magnificent,” says John Boice, scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and former chief of radiation epidemiology at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Up to 200,000 people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima died soon after the bomb blasts— some from radiation sickness—but more survived. To understand the delayed effects of radiation, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences launched a joint study with Japan of bomb survivors, using a 1950 census to track them down. Initial case reports of cataracts, leukemia, and birth defects eventually became a long-term study to follow cancer and other illnesses in about 94,000 survivors and 26,000 unexposed residents. It was run by a U.S. and Japanese–funded agency eventually named the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF).

Researchers “spent a huge amount of time reconstructing where people were ATB, at time of blast,” says epidemiologist Richard Monson of Harvard University. They asked subjects whether they were inside or outdoors, near a window, upstairs or downstairs, and which direction they faced. They even constructed a mock Japanese village in the Nevada desert, hoisted a uranium reactor up in a tower, and measured the neutrons it spewed to study the movement of radiation through the air and into buildings. To fine-tune gamma-radiation estimates, researchers tested ceramic roof tiles on Japanese houses for a high-energy electron signature, says Tore Straume of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The dosimetry underwent several revisions over the decades.

Other RERF researchers monitored the health of survivors. Using death records and cancer registries, they soon documented leukemias, particularly in the young, tallying 219 deaths by 2002 in people receiving a significant exposure—a 45% rise above the number expected. It appeared to peak in 1950. By the 1970s, researchers were tracking an elevated rate of solid cancers; “it looks like it persists for a lifetime,” says NCI epidemiologist Kiyohiko Mabuchi.

Still, “people's perceptions of cancer caused are probably different from reality,” says biostatistician Dale Preston of Hirosoft International, who worked at RERF for 23 years. Leukemias were relatively rare, and although by 1998 about 7851 survivors in the study who received significant exposures developed solid cancers, only 850 cases, or 11%, have been attributed to radiation. (The cancer risk was about 50% higher for those who received at least 1 sievert of radiation; the risk drops with dose to 2% below 0.1 sievert. Lifetime risks are lower; for an exposure of 0.250 sieverts, the allowed limit for workers at the Daiichi plant, the increased risk of ever developing cancer is about 2.5%, Boice says.)

Data from hundreds of medical studies have been used to bolster the A-bomb– survivor results. In the early 20th century, before the risks were recognized, radiation was used to diagnose or treat everything from mastitis to tonsillitis—and some patients developed cancer, Boice notes. Studies of workers—such as women who applied radium paint to clock dials and later developed bone cancer—also proved useful. Studies of about 21,000 workers exposed to radiation starting in 1948 at the former Soviet Union's Mayak nuclear weapons plant, and of 30,000 villagers nearby along the Techa River, are proving “important,” Preston says: The cohorts received a wide range of radiation doses, and many workers inhaled plutonium, a long-lived radioisotope absent in the Japanese A-bomb survivors.

These studies and others of nuclear workers “in general have supported estimates from the A-bomb survivors,” says NCI's Ethel Gilbert. Controversy remains, however, about whether the bomb survivors' brief, one-time exposure would be as harmful if spread over many years. “It's the one major unanswered question,” Boice says.

Studies of nuclear accidents have been less useful for estimating dose responses, although they confirm that it's hard to see health effects from low-level exposures. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania exposed the nearby population to a “trivial” amount of radiation, Boice says; health effects were not detected. The 1986 Chernobyl accident, on the other hand, spewed iodine-131 and cesium-137 for 10 days in a plume that reached 5 million people. Researchers expect that 4000 excess cancer deaths will eventually result. But precise dose information is lacking even for the “liquidators,” the 600,000 workers who helped clean up, says Mabuchi, making it difficult to link exposure to disease.

The only clear health effect among the public from Chernobyl so far has been more than 6000 cases of thyroid cancer (15 of them fatal), mainly in people who as children and adolescents drank milk from cows that fed on grass tainted with iodine-131. This should “not be a problem in Japan” because contaminated milk and vegetables are being removed from the food supply, says radiologist Fred Mettler of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, a consultant to the United Nations on the Chernobyl disaster.

Studies of the A-bomb survivors (40% of the original group are still living) continue at RERF. A few of its 45 researchers are helping Japanese officials monitor the population near the Daiichi plant, says RERF vice chair and research chief Roy Shore. They're also discussing a possible study of the hundreds of workers involved in keeping the plant under control. If the Fukushima crisis becomes another Chernobyl, Shore says, “we'd certainly want to compile all the data we could.”

[abhishek_sharma]

Quake Questions

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... spent.html

Readers ask: Does the life of the rods affect their radioactive capabilities? Like, if they were getting near the end of their effective life, are they more or less dangerous? Are the rods the only danger, or are there other components, like cooling tanks or hydrogen containers, that are also dangerous with radioactive meltdown? Once the reactor's control rods are between sections of fuel rods, how is fission slowed to where it is controllable? It seems the control rods aren't adequate to regain control of the fission.

Science answers: Spent fuel is more dangerous because it contains a mixture of fission products, some of which can be long-lived radioactive waste, and also plutonium which is highly toxic.

In a boiling water reactor like those at Fukushima, the same water that cools the reactor core also boils and drives the turbine to generate power. This means that some radioactive material gets into the turbine and condensers and pumps, but these are usually very short-lived radionuclides.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... react.html

Readers ask: By what mechanism is a reactor shut down (to replace spent fuel, for instance)? Did that mechanism fail after the quake? If not, why are the cores experiencing meltdowns?

Science answers: A reactor is shut down by inserting control rods between the fuel rods. The control rods are made of a neutron-absorbing material, so that they slow the rate of fission reactions. In a boiling water reactor like the ones at Fukushima, the fuel rods remain hot even after the reactor is shut down because of spontaneous fissions from the nuclear fuel and fission products. Hence the reactor needs to have a supply of cooling water even when shut down.

Following the earthquake, automatic systems shut down those reactors that were still operating, inserting control upward from below the core in a boiling water reactor. But the loss of electricity from the power grid meant that the water pumps stopped working. When the backup generators, powered by diesel fuel, where knocked out by the tsunami, there was no system left to replenish the cooling water. The heat from fuel rods continued to boil away the cooling water until eventually the core was exposed to the air.

As the temperature rose around the core, the zircaloy cladding on the fuel rods began to react with the steam, oxidizing and releasing hydrogen. Nuclear plant workers, concerned about the buildup of pressure in the containment vessels, vented some of the gas inside. It was the hydrogen in this escaping gas that exploded, destroying the buildings around reactors 1, 3, and 4.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... nts-a.html

Readers ask: What's to stop the reactors' "spent" fuel rods from open-air burning during an uncontrolled nuclear fire? I understand these fuel rods are kept on top of the reactors but outside the vessel containment structure. Are they already exposed to the open air? The explosions seen on TV seemed to take the tops off of the reactor buildings. Are American reactors configured the same way?

Science answers: The director of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that water has drained from at least one of the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima site, the site of the nuclear crisis. (Japanese officials deny this.) This raises the possibility that the temperature of the rods, which are still radioactive, could rise, setting on fire the zirconium cladding, which keeps the rods together. That fire would spew radioactive fuel far and wide. What normally prevents this from happening is the water, if the cooling system is working properly.

U.S. reactors are split between boiling water reactors, like the Fukushima ones, which tend to store spent nuclear fuel within the reactor buildings above ground, and pressurized water reactors. PWRs, as they're known, usually store fuel below ground, and thus they presumably face less risk of losing the water for cooling.

[abhishek_sharma]

JAPAN DISASTER: Devastating Earthquake Defied Expectations

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6023/1375.full

Even for a nation inured to temblors and bracing for the Big One, last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami were beyond imagination. Experts, too, were caught off-guard. “I never thought this kind of [event] could happen” in this region, says Hiroo Kanamori, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The earthquake's astonishing power and unexpected location also expose the futility of forecasting where and when the next Big One will hit, says Robert Geller, a geophysicist at the University of Tokyo. Even in a country as extensively instrumented and thoroughly studied as Japan, he says, major quakes always “seem to be ones not expected.”

The 11 March Tohoku earthquake ranks among the five strongest temblors recorded by modern instrumentation. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Japan Meteorological Agency now peg the magnitude at 9.0. The quake ruptured more than 400 kilometers of crust along the Japan Trench subduction zone, where a tectonic plate is diving beneath the northeast coast of Honshu Island. Its epicenter was 130 kilometers east of Sendai, a city of about 1 million people in Miyagi Prefecture, and 373 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. Authorities expect the death toll to top 15,000. Tsunami waves that exceeded 7 meters in height when they came ashore washed away scores of communities and inflicted damage as far away as California. The tragedy may yet be compounded by ongoing crises at two nuclear power plants, where workers were racing to prevent reactor core meltdowns and contain radiation leaks as Science went to press.

Japan sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where about 90% of the world's earthquakes occur as tectonic plates bump and grind over and under one another. Along the Japan Trench, the Pacific Plate is being forced under the Okhotsk Plate. In some regions, the subducting plate slides smoothly under the overriding plate. In other areas, plates couple, or stick together, at their interface. If strongly coupled, the plates' boundary regions are twisted until the rock can no longer bear the strain. At that point, a slip or rupture along the boundary allows the plates to snap back into lower-stress positions, releasing accumulated energy as earthquake waves. The concurrent sea-floor movement produces tsunamis.


To assess earthquake risk in a given region, scientists look to past events for guidance. Records for northeastern Japan go back more than a century. Along the Japan Trench, earthquakes of magnitude 7 to about 8.3 have struck at 30- to 50-year intervals. According to Kanamori, recent earthquakes along the subduction zone relieved so much stress that it would have been hard to see where in the region enough strain had accumulated to produce a great earthquake. “Truthfully, we didn't foresee this,” says Takuya Nishimura, a geodesist at the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan in Tsukuba who co-authored a 2004 paper in Geophysical Journal International detailing the buildup of crustal deformation in the region.

An earthquake was anticipated off the coast of Miyagi where the 11 March event occurred, but it was expected to be much smaller. Historical records and instrumental observations indicated that for this smaller section of the subduction zone, earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 or so recur every 30 to 40 years. The most recent was a magnitude-7.4 event in 1978 that killed 28 and triggered a small tsunami. The rupture zone of the 11 March earthquake “overlaps but is much greater than the source area of the 1978 earthquake,” which ruptured only about 50 kilometers of the fault, Nishimura says.

Peering deeper into the past, researchers a few years ago recognized an event of similar intensity to the 11 March disaster. Historical records tell of a large earthquake and the coastal plain becoming a “wilderness of water” in the year 869. A telltale marine sand layer buried in marshy deposits on the Sendai Plain revealed that the ancient tsunami must have run as much as 3 to 4 kilometers inland from the coastline at the time. Based on the extent of the inundation, researchers estimated the magnitude of the Jogan earthquake at roughly 8.3. Local media report having found traces of last week's tsunami 5 kilometers or more inland.

If the Tohoku earthquake was a reprise of Jogan, supercycles of massive earthquakes may rock the region on 1000-year time scales, Nishimura says. Supercycles, of course, would not be limited to one segment of the Japan Trench, he says: “This event suggests that such kinds of great earthquakes might occur in other subduction zones.” One candidate is the Cascadia fault, which runs off the coast from northern California to southern British Columbia. Last week's earthquake “is going to be the benchmark for the Pacific Northwest when the Cascadia fault breaks,” says seismologist John Vidale of the University of Washington, Seattle. “We know that it can have an earthquake of this magnitude. It's a question of when, not if.”

One worry is how the 11 March earthquake may influence neighboring sections of the Japan Trench. “We are really concerned” that the release of stress offshore of northeast Honshu has increased the chances of a large quake much closer to Tokyo, says seismologist Shinji Toda of Kyoto University. His preliminary calculations suggest that the earthquake loaded stress onto the fault segment offshore of Boso Peninsula, a finger of land separating Tokyo Bay from the Pacific Ocean. Historical records indicate a large earthquake and tsunami battered the area in 1677.

The Tohoku earthquake will offer sobering lessons for risk assessment. Since 1965, Japanese seismologists have diligently watched real-time data from hundreds of instruments in the Tokai region west of Tokyo. If a fault along the Nankai Trough were to grow restless, a panel of seismologists would assemble on a moment's notice to decide whether to warn of an impending magnitude-8 earthquake. Authorities have strengthened public buildings to withstand intense shaking and have built dikes and floodgates along the coast to thwart the anticipated tsunami from such a temblor.

But Japan's two great earthquakes of the past 2 decades—the 11 March event and the Kobe earthquake of 1995—showed that experts were looking in the wrong place. Similarly, Kanamori says, in California attention is focused on the San Andreas fault, even though the most damaging earthquakes of the past several decades—including the 1994 magnitude-6.7 Northridge and the 1971 magnitude-6.6 San Fernando earthquakes—occurred elsewhere.

Researchers are able to estimate how much seismic strain will accumulate in a fault over time. “What we cannot predict is the individual sequence. It may be released in a single earthquake or may be released in smaller events,” Kanamori says. “In view of the inevitable uncertainty, in my opinion it's better to have a more general approach [to earthquake preparation] than to have a prioritized, focused effort.” For a nation that prides itself on preparedness, a distressing realization might be that some earthquakes are just too big, and too rare, to prepare for.

[amit]

This discussion can go on and on in circles without any resolution till the Fukushima crisis is defused (as it surely will be) a couple of months down the line. For every doomsday article about how the world is coming to an end due to Fukushima there are others which show that while the situation is bad it's not cataclysmic in nature.

So IMO what we need to look at is, what does this mean for India and Indian nuclear power plans?

Given what happened in Fukushima should we:

a) Become avowedly anti-nuclear and go for coal-fired plants?

b) Take a resolution not to buy American or anything tainted by the Americans, for example Japanese reactor containment vessels?

c) Learn from what happened in Fukushima and try to design our nuclear plants (particularly the layout and location) to avoid something similar since, given our electricity needs, we cannot ignore nuclear.

d) Scale back our electricity needs so that we don't have so much high base load demand?

e) Set up a panel of "international" experts to guide us on what we should do.

It would be interesting if folks who have been so critical of how the Japanese have handled Fukushima and about nuclear power in general take an attempt on this.

And Oh, let me say I think (C) is the best way forward.

[GuruPrabhu]

My vote is for D). We should return to our Indic roots and Vedic times. Why do we need electricity at all?

[vina]

Vina saar, TEPCO seems to be an aberration to the meticulous Japanese planning.

I don't think so. They would do the exact similar thing again if they used the same planning methods.

[ramana]

GP Why do you have this urge to be sent away? I would say what you posted is a flame bait. Amit did not give that choice. So what is your choice?

Haan ya naan?

[GuruPrabhu]

I do believe that reducing need for electricity is the best option. Why is that bad? That was option d) in that post.

Also, why am I under constant threat for being "sent away"? My ratio of post counts in light-hearted to serious category is soooooo much below the "smiley brigade" which you ignored in just the previous page of this thread.

I haven't used a smiley in such a long time.

[Amber G.]

^^^ Mean while US approves 2 GE ( (simplified) Boiling Water Reactors)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/ ... 0720110309
Or:Environmental approval for two new US reactors

[GuruPrabhu]

On second thought, I will impose a self "send away". Sayonara.

[vina]

No normal scenario analysis based safety design would have saved fukushima - what happened was indeed abnormal. under such conditions, clearly a fail safe design would have been better - but is no guarantor of absolute safety.

Yes. The LalBrof and LalChix have it right. Drumrolls pliss !! .

Indeed that is the point I have been saying in my earlier posts on this thread.

However no one answered my quiz on VikAd and Vikrant on the surface and Arihant and others underwater in one of my replies to Bade Mian's post .

And no one wants to buy my India Tsunami Protection Options either!

Yes, the current engineering (including Gen III +) of the Nuke Plants are incremental in nature ,based on a 1950s /1st gen philosophy and based on investment protection and marginal investment business case of the established nuclear establishment. They make more money when they can tweak existing designs minimally, build large complex nuke plants and then make a continuous cash flow by offering "services" and selling custom fuel for the daily operation of the plant. Sort of like a HP Printer and Cartridge example (though HP practically gives the printer away because it is a highly competitive market, the existing guys have made the system so complex that it costs a bum to set up the plant).

The industry needs fundamentally new disruptive designs that are fail safe. The only one of that was the PBMR kind of stuff , but even then more conventional things can be done. Stuff like LOCA has to be catered to , assuming that it WILL happen , and the plant doesn't go Paki when it does . The current effort (like the Gen1 designs of the 50s is to build redundancy and hope that it doesn't happen), but however a station blackout can scupper it.. a single point of failure.

Now, pliss to answer the kwij on Arihant below the surface and you can get hints on the kind of reactors that can become possible. Minaturized, small sized ones , completely underwater in the seas, no LOCA possible, no pakiness, possibly situated in the bosom of a concrete gravity stabilized offshore rig kind of structure with large concrete "boorqas" with massive reserve of water ityadi and immediate heat transfer in a shutdown state to the sink kind of jazz and even entombing it in a concrete boorqa in a dire situation is just easy by pumping in concrete.

In fact, from the common pics we see of research reactors, completely under the pool, and certified to run for a couple of weeks with no need for any watch whatsoever is the kind of model to go for.

Yes, you need fundamentally new engineering and make it failsafe. Building Tsunami walls, raising height is secondary.

Okay, lets take Sanku and Channakya's case of history based planning (thought he 38m at Fukushima definitely NEVER happened, there would be records of it), you build a 38m capable wall and cater to the current event or even put in a 10% margin, how do you know that the next event is NOT going to be a greater than your design wave with 100% certainty ? You cant. It is statistically impossible. You cant control that. You can only control what you can. That is your design.

What the GOI should do is to reject all current GenIII kind of designs offered and spur the DAE and the indian establishment and issue a challenge/RFP/whatever to the world at large for a reactor design that is failsafe against all possible reactor failure modes and only when proven ,go for a big construction spree.

The Fukushima incident is a timely reminder that all in all, the nuke industry (possibly because it got nearly killed and was starved of investment), has really not progressed much engineering wise beyond the Gen 1 types and any improvement has been rather marginal and not fundamental/radical/step change.

[arnab]

This discussion can go on and on in circles without any resolution till the Fukushima crisis is defused (as it surely will be) a couple of months down the line. For every doomsday article about how the world is coming to an end due to Fukushima there are others which show that while the situation is bad it's not cataclysmic in nature.

Amit saar,
It is not a question of whether nuke is cataclysimic or not. It is bringing to the table an informed opinion. I’m afraid certain posters take the BRF motto of ‘being ahead of the curve’ a bit too seriously. Let us look at this objectively.

Fact: A tsunami / earthquake knocks out power generators at Fukashima, leading to LOCA and venting/leakage of radioactive material. TEPCO / IAEA says that it is a serious accident hence emergency provisions are initiated – viz. evacuation, radiation monitoring, isolation of tainted food / milk and most importantly – transmission channels of information (None of these happened in Chernobyl where there was a core meltdown and most deaths there are occurring due to people who drank the contaminated milk. So in that sense this is a huge improvement in processes).

Tepco also increases the permissible level of dosage in a nuke emergency for workers from 100 msv to 250 msv (this is still below the IAEA emergency allowable limits of 500 msv). Certain death due to radiation happens at around 10,000 msv – just to put it in perspective.

With these facts one can have a rational discussion. But no, predictions flow forth!

Prediction 1: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – reactor explosion is imminent! (response: nope)

Prediction 2: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – reactor meltdown is imminent! (response: nope)

Prediction 3: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – there is radiation in air and water! (response: duh that was what IAEA has told us and is also providing the levels of radiation for perspective )

Prediction 4: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – workers are being exposed to more than 100 msv ! (response: yes and please check the facts above)

Prediction 5: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – radiation in sea is 100,000,000 times normal level ! (response: nope that was a faulty reading and has been pointed out)

Prediction 6: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – IAEA is holding a conference on what went wrong! (response: nope this is what organizations do)

Regarding your options, how about an option (f) which includes developing a mechanisim of 'self denial', that we seem to have done with coal related deaths

[ramana]

Until TMI happened LOCA was always a pipe break. In TMI coolant was lost then the PZR tank pressure disc ruptured and led to water being lost with out reaching the reactor core.

[amit]

Regarding your options, how about an option (f) which includes developing a mechanisim of 'self denial', that we seem to have done with coal related deaths

Arnab,

Thanks for your post, agree with all of it.

When you come to it (f) is always a given when we deal with one absolute and that is Nuclear is bad!

I just hope folks who have come out unequivocally with the statement Nuclear is bad stick to it and don't do another mental somersault on this issue. Afterall we could do with some Greenpeace types on this forum right?

[vina]

A very good article in NY Times, which does great justice to risk assessment and all the rest of the stuff we talked about . Definitely recommend a read At US Nuclear Sites, Preparing for the Unlikely

[Sanku]

No normal scenario analysis based safety design would have saved fukushima - what happened was indeed abnormal. under such conditions, clearly a fail safe design would have been better - but is no guarantor of absolute safety.

Yes. The LalBrof and LalChix have it right. Drumrolls pliss !! .

Well if that was abnormal in Japan, the Japanese should start getting used to a very abnormal lifestyle as business as usual.

In the end, we have 1 Nuclear disaster every 10 years as pointed to by Theo; perhaps this is going to be the new normal in the world?

But personally I don't think so, Germany has already done a U-Turn, and soon Japan will follow, they are certainly going to ask questions whether it was Japanese intrests or US commercial interest which got them into a mess of 30piR^2 of wasted country side of prime agricultural land. (at the very least)

Questions on whether LWR based nuke power is remotely economical will be asked (once real risk models are incorporated not current fraudulent estimates just to keep costs low)

However what I find interesting tough is that you mock us all, but reach exactly the same conclusion that we did a long time back

What the GOI should do is to reject all current GenIII kind of designs offered and spur the DAE and the indian establishment and issue a challenge/RFP/whatever to the world at large for a reactor design that is failsafe against all possible reactor failure modes and only when proven ,go for a big construction spree.

[Sanku]

Arnab denial never helped anyone.

Prediction 1: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – reactor explosion is imminent! (response: nope)

Come on now, clearly you have not been reading reports. Yes it did.

Prediction 2: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – reactor meltdown is imminent! (response: nope)

Yes it did.

Prediction 3: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – there is radiation in air and water! (response: duh that was what IAEA has told us and is also providing the levels of radiation for perspective )

Yes and the perspective is it is terrible, but we said it 2 days into the incident, not 2 weeks, IAEA is facing flack for it.

Prediction 4: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – workers are being exposed to more than 100 msv ! (response: yes and please check the facts above)

The facts are that 17 workers are in serious condition in hospital.

Prediction 5: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – radiation in sea is 100,000,000 times normal level ! (response: nope that was a faulty reading and has been pointed out)

No not the sea, the water in the reactor. See if you cant even the very basics right, why bother with a discussion?

And yes it is 100,000 time higher. Which btw is still a disaster.

Prediction 6: This is a disaster of unimaginable proportion – IAEA is holding a conference on what went wrong! (response: nope this is what organizations do)

Oh really IAEA hold regular conferences to deal with a specific disaster after calling it a disaster every year eh?

Regarding your options, how about an option (f) which includes developing a mechanisim of 'self denial', that we seem to have done with coal related deaths

Self denial and lack of knowledge are present in only a few here.

[Sanku]

And I dont know why do we have this continuous debate on it was unexpected when this sort of stuff (both issues due to seismic activity and cover up by japanese has been happening regularly)

Just the latest example prior to Fukushima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazak ... ower_Plant

The plant was completely shut down for 21 months following the earthquake. On May 9, 2009, one unit (Unit 7) was restarted, after seismic upgrades. Units 6, 1, and 5 have since been restarted as well.

Shut down for 21 months!!!

The earlier data falsification scandal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tokyo_ ... ny#Scandal

The IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei encouraged full transparency throughout the investigation of the accident so that lessons learned could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere.[31][/b[

Doesnt that remark seem deeply ironic now?

And oh this was posted before, but I think needs repetition

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-2 ... actor.html

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance

“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”

This from the people who made the NPP.

What was unexpected here?

[amit]

In the end, we have 1 Nuclear disaster every 10 years as pointed to by Theo; perhaps this is going to be the new normal in the world?

Nuclear disaster every 10 years??? Could you care to elaborate what happened in between TMI --->Chernobyl ---> Fukushima which can be categorized as "disasters"? And please don't ask to ask Theo.

But personally I don't think so, Germany has already done a U-Turn, and soon Japan will follow, they are certainly going to ask questions whether it was Japanese intrests or US commercial interest which got them into a mess of 30piR^2 of wasted country side of prime agricultural land. (at the very least)

It's about time you took a stand on this issue Sanku. So what do you think India should do? Abandon nuclear power altogether?.

And please don't give the spiel that Indian reactors are more safe yada yada. Because since you ask for proof from everyone, I'll ask you to prove with data points that could have got you "burned in the Middle Ages" that Indian PHWRs can survive a Black Swan of a 9.1 earthquake and a 12 meter tsunami.

[amit]

What was unexpected here?

The fact that Wiki has become a de jure source of facts.

Self denial and lack of knowledge are present in only a few here.

[Lalmohan]

Theo-ji, in a pyroclastic flow scenario - the thick hot volcanic ash that would evaporate the water away would also encase the entire plant in a very thick set 'concrete' as it hardens within a few hours. the whole site will be permanently sealed - like Pompeii in Italy. Unless i am mistaken, nuclear engineers tend not to build plants on active volcanos - although I seem to remember the americans tried to convince the philipines to build a reactor near mount pinatubo... but more knowledgeable people can answer that one. pinatubo has since deluged its surroundings with millions of tons of volanic ash and pyroclastic flows

meanwhile, on theIAEA Site today

Traces of plutonium are not uncommon in soil because they were deposited worldwide during the atmospheric nuclear testing era. However, the isotopic composition of the plutonium found at Fukushima Daiichi suggests the material came from the reactor site, according to TEPCO officials. Still, the quantity of plutonium found does not exceed background levels tracked by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology over the past 30 years.

Director general's briefing:

On Friday (25 March 2011), I took part in a video conference with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the heads of a number of major Agencies.

I explained that we have been working fully in accordance with the Joint Radiation Emergency Management Plan of the International Organizations. The Plan is co-sponsored by fifteen organisations and the IAEA is the focal coordinating body.

Our Incident and Emergency Centre has distributed information, channelled offers of cooperation, sent missions to Japan, and coordinated with partners including WHO, FAO, WMO, ICAO and CTBTO.

and the DG on the Vienna conference:

I would therefore like to propose that a high-level IAEA conference on Nuclear Safety should take place here in Vienna before the summer.

The conference should cover the following points:

an initial assessment of the Fukushima accident, its impact and consequences;
considering the lessons that need to be learned;
launching the process of strengthening nuclear safety;
and strengthening the response to nuclear accidents and emergencies

on radiation levels:

Two IAEA teams are currently monitoring radiation levels and radioactivity in the environment in Japan. One team made gamma dose-rate measurements in the Tokyo and Chiba region at 3 locations. Gamma-dose rates measured ranged from 0.08 to 0.13 microsievert per hour, which is within or slightly above the background. The second team made additional measurements at distances of 30 to 46 km from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. At these locations, the dose rates ranged from 0.5 to 3 microsievert per hour. At the same locations, results of beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.02 to 0.3 Megabecquerel per square metre.

New results from the marine monitoring stations 30 km off-shore were received for seawater samples taken on 26 March. The levels decreased at most of the locations. For iodine-131 the concentration results for four monitoring stations are between 6 to 18 becquerel per litre, and for caesium-137 between "below limit of detection" and 16 becquerel per litre. The dose rates measured on the sea surface remain relatively low between 0.04 and 0.1 microsievert per hour.

Samples collected on 26 March 330 metres east of the discharge point showed increasing concentrations. There were found to be 74,000 becquerel per litre for iodine-131, 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-137, and 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-134.

It is still too early to draw conclusions for expected concentrations in marine food, because the situation can change rapidly. Modelling results show an initial north-eastern transport of liquid releases from the damaged reactors.

Monitoring of iodine-131 and cesium-137 in drinking water is on-going. Iodine-131 has been monitored by the Japanese authorities in 2 of 10 samples taken in the Fukushima prefecture with values of 60 and 90 becquerel per litre. In the Ibaraki prefectures, iodine-131 was detected in 2 of 9 samples, the values were 40 and 90 becquerel per litre. The Japanese limits for the ingestion of drinking water by infants is 100 becquerel per litre.

Shiv-ji, good point about CAT scans and breaches. From the IAEA statements over the last few days, the breach is suspected because of changes in pressure readings and the higher level of radiation in a pool of water under the reactor. However there is no hard evidence at this time that a breach has occured. the authorities are proceeding on the basis that one may well have occured and are safeguarding the workers on site accordingly (i.e. exposure time).

Reports today (see above link) suggest that the instrumentation is almost back up and that temperatures and pressures are declining. Much more likely to have occured (note I said likely and therefore its a hypothesis) than a breach is a failed or leaking valve or pipe. The reactor is able to vent steam, therefore a likely point of failure is that mechanism rather than the core pressure vessel or the containment vessel

one drawback of this power plant design is that primary cooling water from the reactor core drives the steam turbines directly (or atleast that is what was reported). that would mean radiated water passing through machinery - and therefore making the design less safe. A safer system would be to have a heat exchanger to generate secondary steam to drive the turbines - i believe other plant designs have this feature, but i am not a nuke engineer

[Sanku]

Ranting against wiki and facts does not make for intelligent debate.

Just reiterating, not that it will do any good.

[Sanku]

I wonder if Mahen is still tracking this thread, is so he would have found the below report useful, and folks just quoting relevant news reports, please dont go off on rants against media, wiki, BRFites and what have you now please. (And no, no Lalchix either)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-2 ... aster.html

Radiation Detector Demand for Ships Surges Amid Japan's Nuclear Disaster

The MOL Presence, a ship with “abnormal” amounts of radiation after passing 67 nautical miles (124 kilometers) off Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, was heading back to the country after being rejected by authorities in China, a Xiamen port official said yesterday.

[amit]

Ranting against wiki and facts does not make for intelligent debate.

Just reiterating, not that it will do any good.

Why don't you use the IAEA website to report about what IAEA feels and says? That would be a start.

But Sanku I see you are continuously evading the question: In view of how "unsafe and dangerous" Nuclear power is, should India abandon the nuclear path?

Raving and ranting against the stupid Japanese is good time pass but at the end of the day all these reams of "data" is meaningless in a jingo forum like BRF unless you can extrapolate what it all means for India.

And yes "just reiterating, not that it will do any good".

[amit]

Theo-ji, in a pyroclastic flow scenario - the thick hot volcanic ash that would evaporate the water away would also encase the entire plant in a very thick set 'concrete' as it hardens within a few hours. the whole site will be permanently sealed - like Pompeii in Italy. Unless i am mistaken, nuclear engineers tend not to build plants on active volcanos - although I seem to remember the americans tried to convince the philipines to build a reactor near mount pinatubo... but more knowledgeable people can answer that one. pinatubo has since deluged its surroundings with millions of tons of volanic ash and pyroclastic flows

meanwhile, on theIAEA Site today

Traces of plutonium are not uncommon in soil because they were deposited worldwide during the atmospheric nuclear testing era. However, the isotopic composition of the plutonium found at Fukushima Daiichi suggests the material came from the reactor site, according to TEPCO officials. Still, the quantity of plutonium found does not exceed background levels tracked by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology over the past 30 years.

Director general's briefing:

On Friday (25 March 2011), I took part in a video conference with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the heads of a number of major Agencies.

I explained that we have been working fully in accordance with the Joint Radiation Emergency Management Plan of the International Organizations. The Plan is co-sponsored by fifteen organisations and the IAEA is the focal coordinating body.

Our Incident and Emergency Centre has distributed information, channelled offers of cooperation, sent missions to Japan, and coordinated with partners including WHO, FAO, WMO, ICAO and CTBTO.

and the DG on the Vienna conference:

I would therefore like to propose that a high-level IAEA conference on Nuclear Safety should take place here in Vienna before the summer.

The conference should cover the following points:

an initial assessment of the Fukushima accident, its impact and consequences;
considering the lessons that need to be learned;
launching the process of strengthening nuclear safety;
and strengthening the response to nuclear accidents and emergencies

on radiation levels:

Two IAEA teams are currently monitoring radiation levels and radioactivity in the environment in Japan. One team made gamma dose-rate measurements in the Tokyo and Chiba region at 3 locations. Gamma-dose rates measured ranged from 0.08 to 0.13 microsievert per hour, which is within or slightly above the background. The second team made additional measurements at distances of 30 to 46 km from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. At these locations, the dose rates ranged from 0.5 to 3 microsievert per hour. At the same locations, results of beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.02 to 0.3 Megabecquerel per square metre.

New results from the marine monitoring stations 30 km off-shore were received for seawater samples taken on 26 March. The levels decreased at most of the locations. For iodine-131 the concentration results for four monitoring stations are between 6 to 18 becquerel per litre, and for caesium-137 between "below limit of detection" and 16 becquerel per litre. The dose rates measured on the sea surface remain relatively low between 0.04 and 0.1 microsievert per hour.

Samples collected on 26 March 330 metres east of the discharge point showed increasing concentrations. There were found to be 74,000 becquerel per litre for iodine-131, 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-137, and 12,000 becquerel per litre for caesium-134.

It is still too early to draw conclusions for expected concentrations in marine food, because the situation can change rapidly. Modelling results show an initial north-eastern transport of liquid releases from the damaged reactors.

Monitoring of iodine-131 and cesium-137 in drinking water is on-going. Iodine-131 has been monitored by the Japanese authorities in 2 of 10 samples taken in the Fukushima prefecture with values of 60 and 90 becquerel per litre. In the Ibaraki prefectures, iodine-131 was detected in 2 of 9 samples, the values were 40 and 90 becquerel per litre. The Japanese limits for the ingestion of drinking water by infants is 100 becquerel per litre.

Shiv-ji, good point about CAT scans and breaches. From the IAEA statements over the last few days, the breach is suspected because of changes in pressure readings and the higher level of radiation in a pool of water under the reactor. However there is no hard evidence at this time that a breach has occured. the authorities are proceeding on the basis that one may well have occured and are safeguarding the workers on site accordingly (i.e. exposure time).

Reports today (see above link) suggest that the instrumentation is almost back up and that temperatures and pressures are declining. Much more likely to have occured (note I said likely and therefore its a hypothesis) than a breach is a failed or leaking valve or pipe. The reactor is able to vent steam, therefore a likely point of failure is that mechanism rather than the core pressure vessel or the containment vessel

one drawback of this power plant design is that primary cooling water from the reactor core drives the steam turbines directly (or atleast that is what was reported). that would mean radiated water passing through machinery - and therefore making the design less safe. A safer system would be to have a heat exchanger to generate secondary steam to drive the turbines - i believe other plant designs have this feature, but i am not a nuke engineer

This post should be read with what Sanku wrote here. Both talk about the same IAEA deliberations.

[Lalmohan]

i don't know what you've got against lalchix? is it the glowing gloves worn by the dancers? now they for sure would be sources of high radiation...

[amit]

i don't know what you've got against lalchix? is it the glowing gloves worn by the dancers? now they for sure would be sources of high radiation...

Actually what to do Lal Brof, there's no wiki entry on Lal Chix. Need one to make them halal or in this case radiation free.

[Sanku]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eme ... in-twitter

Workers race to pump radioactive water from Japan nuclear plant as contamination spreads

Contaminated water inside Unit 2 has tested at radiation levels some 100,000 times normal amounts, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Workers also discovered radioactive water in the deep trenches outside three units, with the airborne radiation levels outside Unit 2 exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour — more than four times the amount that the government considers safe for workers, TEPCO said Monday.

New readings show contamination in the ocean has spread about a mile (1.6 kilometers) farther north of the nuclear site than before. Radioactive iodine-131 was discovered just offshore from Unit 5 and Unit 6 at a level 1,150 times higher than normal, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters.

===========================================

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 30,00.html

How Dangerous Is Japan's Creeping Nuclear Disaster?

"We are experiencing an ongoing, massive release of radioactivity," says Wolfram König, head of Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection. "And everyone should know by now that this isn't over by a long shot." Nuclear expert Helmut Hirsch says: "All I hear is that people are wondering whether this will turn into a meltdown. But the thing is, it already is a partial meltdown." The difference, in this case, is that Fukushima is a creeping disaster.

Another 62,000 people live within the 30-kilometer zone. The head of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC) recommends expanding the evacuation zone to 80 kilometers, in which case 2 million people would have to be relocated

Instruments in a helicopter flying over the plant measured 80 millisievert of radiation at an altitude of 40 meters (131 feet) above the roof of the plant, with levels dropping to only 4 millisievert 200 meters higher up. This suggests that the radiation is coming directly from the holding pools.

For example, the highest reported hourly dose at the edge of the evacuation zone was 0.16 millisievert. A person who spends 25 days constantly exposed to such levels would receive the maximum permissible annual dose for workers at nuclear power plants.

[Lalmohan]

The rise and spread of Oehmen's blog on Fukushima
MIT Site

the formal version of the blog
MIT NSE Blog
however, this was last updated on the 26th of March

the following are my own views:

Note on Germany:
Nuclear power is a significant contributor to German energy supply - someone has already posted the stats earlier. The Green Party is a major opposition party in Germany and plays a part in coalition governments at the State (Lande) and Federal levels. The Greens have consistently been anti-nuclear on principle. Currently the German parliament is in the process of debating a nuclear bill which seeks to resume investment in new nuclear plants. Just like Kangress will do deals with small parties to gather votes for majority, so will the main German parties. The issue in Germany has much more to do with local politics than what is actually happening in Fukushima. Expect both sides of the debate to come out with strong opinions. Now that may be fine, but just across the Rhine river in France nuclear plants make up 80% of the electrical generation capacity. Any disaster there will affect Germany just as much as it does France. In a sense, the Greens may be ideologically sound, but practically displaying tactical brilliance like a well known ex-jarnail

On Energy:
Whilst we would all love to reduce our energy consumption, the raw truth is that demand for energy is rising very rapidly and the massive economies of China and India are creating the most demand. Not just for lights and a/c's but for industrialisation and urbanisation. This demand for power - and massive base-load capacity is not going to decline. Apart from nuclear, the only things that can economically create large base loads is coal and oil. These generate large amounts of toxic pollution and also massive releases of CO2, which appear to be a strong component of accelerated climate change. Gas, Solar, Tidal, even Hydro power are great at peak load generation, but even massive capacity increases in these will not easily match the baseload requirements. If we chose not to use nuclear technology, we must do so with our eyes wide open. If we are to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons, in the absence of fusion technology, we are taken down the road towards fission technology.

So, we come back to what is a safe way to use nuclear energy? However, that is for the Indian Nuclear dhaga and not this one.

[somnath]

^^LAlmohan-ji,

Agree with you on most points save one...

Oil is NOT a base-load source..It is horrendously expensive, and is being largely phased out even as a peak load source..Plus, it probably has the highest carbon footprint...Gas, on the other hand is perhaps the only viable "flexible" source - it can switch seamlessly between peak load source and base load source..And it has less emmissions as well..Problem is though, gas is a scarce commodity and needs to be shared with other users like fertiliser..Scalability therefore is an issue...Really, the only reliable and scalable base load source today is coal, and nuclear(!)...

the new Gen III LWRs apparently enable the plant to switch from 30% to 80% capacity in very short time (I posted a link sometime back)...Which will dramatically change the commercial contours of nuclear power..

[Sanku]

In midst of doom and gloom some unintended humor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110329/ap_ ... dyb3VwY2g-

Beijing's nuclear power plan for the next five years changes its stance from "energetic development" to "safe and highly efficient development," said the deputy director of the China Electricity Council, Wei Zhaofeng, according to newspapers.

Chinese and their love for transparent direct statements.

[amit]

Oil is NOT a base-load source..It is horrendously expensive, and is being largely phased out even as a peak load source..Plus, it probably has the highest carbon footprint...Gas, on the other hand is perhaps the only viable "flexible" source - it can switch seamlessly between peak load source and base load source..And it has less emmissions as well..Problem is though, gas is a scarce commodity and needs to be shared with other users like fertiliser..Scalability therefore is an issue...Really, the only reliable and scalable base load source today is coal, and nuclear(!)...

Another point IMO needs to be taken into consideration. The nuclear power plants we agree to set up today, like the one in Maharashtra for example, would only come on stream after 2015. Let's for argument's sake, take 2015. Now these plants are expected to keep generating electricity for 50 years at the minimum. Actually more if you go by the Nuclear Liability Bill date of 80 years or if you take the example of Fukushima, which is already 40 years old. Even if we take 50 years, then in say for example 2060 the plant would be generating around 1000 MW of power. Now try to calculate what would be the cost of oil and/or gas that would be required to generate an equivalent of 1000MW in 2060. Also try to visualise what kind of pollution we'd be having (not the mention radiation, remember coal plants emit 200 time more radiation than nuclear power plants) over this 50 year period. Only dirty coal-fired plants could be a viable alternative to nuclear.

As of now nuclear is the only way to go for countries like India which need to exponentially increase power generation. It's OK for stable economies like those of Germany which in any case is power surplus to dilly dally and tinker with various options, India does not have this luxury.

the new Gen III LWRs apparently enable the plant to switch from 30% to 80% capacity in very short time (I posted a link sometime back)...Which will dramatically change the commercial contours of nuclear power..

Of course they have. To take a 40 year old plant build with Gen I and try to paint as state of the art is stupidity of the first order.

PS: Sorry for the number of edits. My handheld giving trouble.