RECENT NEWS OF RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION IN JAPAN, GOVERNMENT COVER UPS, AND THE DANGER TO THE U.S. OF IT'S OWN SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL RODS

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June 10, 2011

Japan Admits 3 Nuclear Meltdowns, More Radiation Leaked into Sea; U.S. Nuclear Waste Poses Deadly Risks

Almost three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new radiation "hot spots" may require the evacuation of more areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency recently admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant’s reactors, and more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the first week of the disaster in March. “What they failed to mention is that they discharged an equally large amount into the ocean,” says our guest Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. “As [the radiation] goes up the food chain, it accumulates. By the time it reaches people who consume this food, the levels are higher than they originally were when they entered the environment.” Alvarez also discusses his new report on the vulnerabilities and hazards of stored spent fuel at U.S. reactors in the United States. Then we go to Tokyo to speak with Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group Green Action. She says citizens leading their own monitoring efforts are calling for additional evacuations, especially for young children and pregnant women. [Original includes transcript]

THE RADIATION LEVELS IN JAPAN SHOULD BE VERY MUCH HIGHER THAN THE FALLOUT REACHING THE U.S. SO JUST HOW HIGH ARE THEY IN JAPAN?

Shinjuku Station, Tokyo                                                            Photo credit: the blogger

I discovered that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry puts out a daily pdf giving the radiation rates in micro-Sieverts per hour by prefecture.

Below I paste in their release for April 21, 2011. The box to the left center gives comparison values of (1) the average radiation in micro-Sieverts that most people everywhere are exposed to in one year's time, (2) the dose received in a normal chest x ray, and (3) the added cosmic ray dose you'd receive on a round trip from New York to Tokyo and back.

So if you were at Shinjuku Station for an hour yesterday, you would have received 0.072 micro-Seiverts. And if you were to stay there for an entire year with no change in dose rate, you'd receive 630 micro-Sieverts, actually less than your typical annual dose from all sources of about 3,000 micro-Sieverts (which might include for example 70, 400, 600, and 2,000 micro-Sieverts per year due respectively to (a) living or working in a concrete building, (b) decay of natural radioactive Potassium-40 in your bones, (c) radioisotopes left over from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequent A-bomb tests, and (d) the Radon-222 you might breathe if you spend much time in a basement or mine).

If you lived in Fukushima Precinct (presumably outside the evacuation zone) yesterday you'd have been receiving 1.75 micro-Sieverts per hour, and you would accumulate 15,330 micro-Sieverts if you stayed there for a year and nothing changed. By comparison, the maximum yearly dose allowed for U.S. workers in radiation environments is 50,000 micro-Sieverts. Here is a handy chart in case you'd like to look up some of these numbers yourself.

Now all you have to do now is to realize that the fallout in the U.S. is undoubtedly diluted 10 to 1,000 times compared to Fukushima Prefecture. So put away your potassium iodide pills.

SEVERITY OF NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE IN JAPAN NOW RAISED FROM 5 TO 7

April 12, 2011

Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan “Not Equal to Chernobyl, But Way Worse”

Japan has raised the severity rating of its nuclear crisis from 5 to 7, the highest level, matching the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. We go to Tokyo for an update from Thomas Breuer, head of the Climate and Energy Unit for Greenpeace Germany and part of a field team of radiation monitors in Japan. He notes that unlike Chernobyl, the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is in a densely populated area. “We warned the government that there are a lot of cities and villages outside the 20-kilometers evacuation zone where the radiation levels are so high that people need urgently to be evacuated, especially children and pregnant women, because they are the most vulnerable part of the population to radiation,” says Breuer. [Original w/ transcript]

Here are two related videos:

HOW BAD IS THE FALLOUT IN THE U.S. OF RADIONUCLIDES FROM THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER? TWO PIECES OF GOOD NEWS: (1) VERY, VERY LITTLE YET AND (2) VERY, VERY SENSITIVE MEASUREMENTS ARE BEING MADE AND PUBLISHED!

Blogger's Note: I used radiation sources for 33 years while at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and for several years before my retirement I was curator of NRL's very hot Cobalt-60 gamma ray source. So I know a lot more about nuclear radiations than the guy in the street, but much, much less than those who actually specialize in radiation.

However, by joining the Ionizing Radiation Detection Group on LinkIn, I've gained access to some of the real experts. In particular, I learned from F. Patrick Doty, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories, that the highest reported activity as of the end of March due to Fukushima-fallout measured by the University of Washington was only 32 mBq/m3, meaning that "about 2 atoms of iodine decay per minute per cubic meter of air." Trivially small!

The other part of the good news is the extremely high sensitivity of the measurements and the fact that they are being published. Although the data below end at the end of March, I presume measurements continue to be taken and that any new spikes in activity will be published shortly at the UW Physics site.

Otherwise, for those wanting a better understanding of the means of analyzing radionuclides in the air, Dr. Doty recommended downloading this EPA guide book.

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The Japanese earthquake and tsunami caused a severe event at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.  At the University of Washington Physics Department we rapidly adapted one of our basic research labs to monitor for the arrival of trace amounts of fission products produced at Fukushima.  On Friday, March 18, we detected the first trace amounts of radioactive isotopes from Fukushima in Seattle.  We stress that the overall amount of the radioactivity is extremely low, at least thousands of times below EPA limits.  For all of the details, see our recent article on the arXiv!

Here are the most recent data 

Click here to view more peaks visible in our data.

Go here for original.

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Latest Satellite Imagery From Fukushima Tells Sobering Tale

Friday, April 1, 2011, 4:54 pm, by cmartenson

Noting that the press has largely turned its resources off of the Fukushima complex, and needing up-to-date information on the status of the damage control efforts there, we secured the most up-to-date satellite photo from DigitalGlobe (dated March 31st), which we analyze below. This is the first photo of the damaged reactor site at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility made available to the public in over a week. That means you, our readers, are the first public eyes anywhere to see this photo.

Drawing upon the expertise of our resident nuclear engineer and Ann Stringer, imaging expert, we conclude that the situation at Fukushima is not stabilized: Things are not yet at a place of steady progress in the containment and clean-up efforts. It's still a dance, forwards and backwards, with the workers making gains here and there but the situation forcing them to react defensively all too often.

In this report, we will tell you what we know for sure, what we are nearly certain of, and what we remain forced to speculate about.

Here is a portion of a much larger image (covering 25 square kilometers in total) showing the reactor complex as of March 31, at roughly mid-day:

Photo Credit, 2011, DigitalGlobe                                                                           

What We Can See

Here's what we can directly observe in the larger satellite image:

• Steam is still rising from Reactors #2, #3 (circled in green), and #4.
• Of the four reactor buildings, three are nearly or totally destroyed, while the outside (at least) of the fourth is in relatively better shape.
• We can count 7 fire trucks 'on site' with another 7 just to the north, all with water lines strung out across the ground.
• There is only one ship/vessel to be seen, located inside of the breakwater and nearly as far to the north as it can go inside that boundary.
• A significant number of the vehicles that can be seen at the core of the site have not moved since the first released photos on March 12.  
• There is a parking lot slightly to the north and west with approximately 250 passenger vehicles in it and a side lot with 30 large green tanks neatly arranged in rows.
• The rest of the area contains one-, two-, and four-lane roads (no traffic at all), worked farmland, residential and commercial areas, mostly empty parking lots, and two baseball diamonds.

Here's what we don't see...

• Nowhere in the 25 km area in the main photo can we find anything that looks like a staging area with a large collection of assets such as tanker trucks, pumpers, cement trucks, piles of pre-staged materials, ambulances, and fire trucks.
• The cement pumper truck seen a week ago has been apparently replaced by the boom at Reactor #4.
• There's no obvious barge delivering fresh water for the reactor cooling efforts as recently reported. (Perhaps it has come and gone?)
• There are no obvious changes to the roofs of any of the reactors.
• We don't see any people outside the plants working.

Things we can logically conclude...

The steam that is venting is a mixed blessing. It implies that cooling water is getting to some hot material, which is a good thing, but it also means that something is hot enough to vaporize water, leading to the continued release of radioactive contamination into the surrounding environment and further bombarding the reactor complex with radiation, which complicates the work efforts. [Note: prior sentence edited for clarity on April 2, 2011].

This means that the lack of steam coming from Reactor #1 is either a very good sign, or a very bad sign. Good because it could mean that the containment vessels are intact and cooling water is circulating. Bad because it could imply that no water is getting to it, and it is a very hot mass right now. According to TEPCO, Reactor #1 has had seawater, and now freshwater, circulating through the reactor vessel - and since both containment vessels are intact, we'll conclude the lack of steam is a good sign.

The situation at Fukushima is going to drag on for years. First there's the matter of stabilizing the situation, and this has not yet been fully achieved. Recent surprises in terms of the amounts and locations of radioactivity are one sign that the situation is not fully stabilized. Still, nothing has blown up in quite a while, the steam venting appears consistent, and the major surprises seem to be over for now. While the TEPCO workers are still reacting to things as they arise, these are smaller issues than last week, which is another hopeful sign.

The detected presence of neutron beams, I-134, and radioactive chlorine are all strongly supportive of the idea that criticality has resumed. Our best guess is that these are localized pockets, probably of short duration, and do not involve the entire core mass of any particular reactor conflagrating in some gigantic, greenish blob of uncontrolled fission. The geometries of the fuel in relation to neutron moderators requires precise conditions to support sustained fission and so it is rather unlikely to be occurring in anything other than localized pockets. If the entire reactor in its fully operational state was capable of supporting what we might scale to 100% fission, the amount of fission happening after a partial (or complete) meltdown will be a far lesser percentage. Still, any amount of fission is unwelcome at this point, because it is adding to the heat and generating fresh radioactive elements that can escape.

The constantly rising levels of radioactivity found in the seawater are a further unwelcome development, but without a proper isotope analysis, we cannot conclude anything about the potential resumption of fission from their gross amounts alone. It's always possible that the leftover fission products are now being washed in larger amounts into the sea for some reason.

Additional Drone Photos

These are the most detailed photos yet to emerge into the public space (released yesterday, March 31, as far as I know), and they are purported to come from a drone flyover on March 20 and 24. They are really quite good, and worth viewing in their entirety here.

Beginning with Reactor #3, one thing we can say is that this thing is a right proper mess:

(Source for all that follow)

There's a significant hole to the left of center that goes deep into the sub-structure (with a strange greenish cast that we've not been able to resolve after much conjecture) and it's clear that this building alone will take a long time to resolve.

Interestingly, we get our clearest image yet of the hole in turbine building #3 that was created by something ejected into the air during the Reactor #3 explosion.

Looking like one of those cartoon cutouts that happens when the coyote hits the ground, we get the impression that whatever it was happened to be quite heavy and possibly shaped like an Apollo capsule. It has been my suspicion, contradicting the official story, that the concrete containment vessel was what actually blew up in Reactor #3. I have been looking for evidence of in the form of large, heavy chunks of concrete (especially the refueling plug) lying about. I don't know what made this hole in the roof of the turbine building, but it was heavy.

Reactor #4 provides us with proof that serious damage can result from the effects of an overheated spent fuel storage pool:

Here the watering boom can be clearly seen. A camera was recently attached to the boom, and it took some interior shots that were suggestive of the idea that the spent fuel pool is damaged and largely drained of water. Spraying water into this pool, then, is probably a balancing act, with the desire to spray enough water on the rods to keep them cool being offset by the risk of having radioactive water drain away for parts unknown.
Almost certainly this same balancing act defines the efforts for Reactors #2 and #3 as well.

Conclusions

The efforts at Fukushima are probably weeks away from even basic stabilization, and we are years away from any sort of a final resolution. This crisis is going to be with all of us for a very long time. Radioactive material will continue to escape from the complex into the environment for weeks at best, and months or years at worst.

The chief concern here is that things might still take a turn for the worse, whereby radiation spikes to levels that prevent humans from getting close enough to perform meaningful operations and work on the site. If the radiation spikes high enough, it will force an evacuation from the vicinity, complicating every part of what has to happen next, from monitoring to remediation.

The general lack of staged materials anywhere in the vicinity indicates that authorities have not yet decided on a plan of action, feeding our assessment that they are still in 'react mode' and that we are weeks away from nominal stabilization.

On Thursday we learned from the Wall Street Journal that TEPCO only had one stretcher, a satellite phone, 50 protective suits, and enough dosimeters to give only a single one to each worker group. Given this woeful level of preparation, it is not surprising to see that regular fire trucks, cement trucks, and a lack of staged materials comprise much of the current damage-control mix.

We don't yet know enough to conclude how much fission has spontaneously re-occurred, but we have strong suspicions that the number is higher than zero. Here we make our call for the release of more complete and timely radiation readouts and sampling results by TEPCO and Japan so that we can assess what the true risks are. The situation remains fluid, and quite a lot depends now on chance and which way the wind blows.

And as I detailed in the Alert report I issued soon after the tragic events of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 10, the impact of Japan's tribulations on the global economy will be large and vast. World markets are simply unprepared for the third-largest economy to suddenly and violently downshift. The persisting crisis at Fukushima simply worsens the picture.

As always, we'll continue montioring developments closely and reporting our findings and conclusions on this site.

best,
Chris

Setback for Japan at Rogue Reactors

By ANDREW MORSE, MITSURU OBE and MEGUMI FUJIKAWA

Tokyo Electric Power employees work to restore power at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

TOKYO—The regulator overseeing Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex on Saturday announced a sharp elevation in radioactive contamination had been detected in nearby seawater, furthering signs of distress at a plant where officials had cautioned of radioactive leaks near hobbled reactors the day before.

A spokesman said the spike in radioactive iodine—to 1,250 times the legal limit—didn't pose an immediate threat to human health or the area environment, since the material quickly dissipates in the tides and would become diluted before reaching fish and seaweed.

"Because nobody is engaged in fishery in the evacuation area within a radius of 20 kilometers [from the plant], there will be no immediate impact on people in the area," added Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters at a news conference Saturday morning.

But the news underscores that fact that, for all the progress claimed by officials over the past week, they have a long way to go in bringing Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s reactors under control and understanding exactly what is happening inside the compound.

Saturday's report came a day after efforts to repower key cooling systems at the plant slowed amid reports of highly radioactive water in puddles at the plant's troubled reactor No. 3, where workers came into contact with the water on Thursday and had to be hospitalized.

Mr. Nishiyama on Friday linked the radioactive puddles in plant No. 3 to a possible breach in pipes or ventilators leading to, but not inside, the vessels that surround the core at plant No. 3. Plant officials said later Friday that puddles at Nos. 1 and 2 also contained high levels of radiation.

The precise source of the radiation in the seawater—by air or by water—could yield clues about whether there is new, unanticipated damage in the complex.

Mr. Nishiyama on Saturday said officials weren't sure what caused the latest surge. "Radioactive substances may have been transmitted through the air, or contaminated water could have drained from the plant somehow," he said. "I don't have further ideas."

He also said officials were crafting a plan to deal with the poisonous puddles. "I have heard that [the operator] has an idea about a place to store water and is preparing" for drainage, he said.

The seawater reading announced Saturday compared with an earlier report that showed iodine at 126 times the legal limit. A person drinking half a liter of water with the latest level of contamination would be consuming 1 millisievert, the equivalent of a full year's acceptable consumption.

The plant's regulator said Saturday it had begun to drain puddles with high levels of radioactivity at the turbine building connected to the No. 1 reactor.

The agency and Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, are mulling ways to drain puddles in reactors 2 and 3, while examining the amount of water in those reactors, Mr. Nishiyama said.

Workers started spraying fresh water on a reactor pressure vessel at No. 2 reactor Saturday, switching from a last-resort measure in which seawater had been used to cool reactors, a process that has led experts to worry about the accumulation of crystallized salt in cooling pumps.

Among the plant's most immediate concerns is reactor No. 3, where the basement of the turbine building has partially flooded with water that officials said contained radiation levels 10,000 times as high as normal, according to official briefings.

Patients exposed to nuclear-plant radiation transferred on Friday.

"The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is still very grave," said Prime Minister Naoto Kan at a news conference. "We are still not at a stage where we can be optimistic."

Early Friday, Mr. Nishiyama said the radiation levels in the water at reactor No. 3 appeared to suggest there had been a breach to the reactor.

Later that day, he amended that view to say there was no indication that the structures around the fuel rods—the pressure vessel and the containment vessel that surrounds it—had been damaged. Rather, he said, damage to ventilators or pipes leading to those structures was believed to be responsible for the leak.

While a breach involving reactor No. 3 would already appear to represent the most significant radiation leak thus far at the plant, it would be less severe than any damage closer to the fuel rods.

Even so, Friday's report from the No. 3 complex foiled the completion a top-priority job, as officials sought to pinpoint where workers are being exposed to hazardous levels of radiation.

Workers at the six-reactor complex had hoped to connect the control room of the No. 2 unit to outside power and start cooling systems at the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors by the end of Friday. Returning the plant's cooling pumps to stable functioning by Friday had been a priority for the government and Tepco.

"Radiation levels in some parts of the facilities are just stunning," said one official at Japan's nuclear regulator. "The work to fix the cooling system was made all the more difficult by the lack of information about where radiation is high inside the complex."

Officials said Friday they didn't know now when the cooling systems would come online. "We cannot say with certainty at this point in how many days all the reactors will be brought to a state of cold shutdown," or the cooling of a nuclear reactor to safe levels, said Mr. Nishiyama said Friday.

The setbacks came after a week in which workers at the plant appeared to make slow progress toward stabilizing the plant after Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital systems that cool nuclear fuel. High radiation levels, as well as difficulties in assessing and fixing damaged cooling equipment, have slowed efforts.

A week ago, much of the plant was still without power, control rooms were dark and temperatures were out of control in the pools holding spent nuclear fuel. Now, all the units are hooked up to the electric grid, all but one have lights on, and the temperatures in the pools have fallen. Mr. Nishiyama said he wanted to have the lights turned on at the last remaining dark control room Saturday.

"The amount of heat being generated by the core is declining.... Now physics is on their side. Last weekend it was against them," said Murray Jennex, an associate professor at San Diego State University, who worked in the commercial nuclear industry for 17 years. "The longer they go without anything major happening, the better."

Go to original to play these features.

Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Friday the U.S. has offered to provide fresh water for the cooling operations. A U.S. military spokesman in Japan said that as an initial step, the U.S. military plans to ship 525,000 gallons of fresh water on two Navy barges from a base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo.

Japan's government also said Friday it would begin helping evacuate people who live just beyond the "no-go" zone that surrounds the plant. The government has said it isn't considering officially broadening its 12-mile evacuation zone around the nuclear complex. But a state monitoring body this week released estimates that suggested radiation in some areas just outside the zone had reached levels deemed harmful to infants in the long term. People in the zone from 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) of the plant are also suffering shortages of everyday goods.

Underscoring the worries about a drawn-out recovery process, the government said it would begin helping evacuate people who live between 12 miles and 18 miles from the plant. Those people are currently being advised to stay indoors. The U.S. government has recommended a 50-mile (80-kilometer) exclusion zone.



More than a quarter million people have been evacuated overall in Japan following the March 11 twin natural disasters. On Friday, Japan's National Police Agency said 10,102 people had been confirmed dead and 17,053 were missing.

The Fukushima Daiichi accident is currently rated 5 on a seven-level international scale of nuclear accidents. That is the same as the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, meaning there was a release of radiation to the environment. The 1986 Chernobyl accident was a 7. Mr. Nishiyama of the nuclear regulator left open the possibility of raising the number after more data are available.

"Five is too low, given the severity of radiation in areas around the nuclear complex," said Masako Sawai of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, an antinuclear group in Tokyo. "The government is either underestimating the crisis or avoiding looking at it squarely."

—Chester Dawson and Stephen Power contributed to this article.

The Daily Bail





We Are Not Able To Measure The Amount Of Radiation Coming From The Power Plant

Uploaded by MoxNewsDotCom on Mar 23, 2011

March 23, 2011 CNN

Radiation Alert: Black smoke at Fukushima, contamination fears in Tokyo

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Mar 23, 2011


High levels of radiation have reached Tokyo following the accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. People in the capital have been told not to drink tap water. The country's struggle to resolve its nuclear crisis has again been stalled, with workers at the Fukushima plant evacuated after black smoke emerged from one of its reactors. RT's Igor Ogorodnev is in the Japanese capital for us.

"Yesterday, the Japanese government admitted that 30 kilometers outside [Fukushima]—not an evacuated zone—a person could have been exposed to as much as 100 millisieverts of radiation ...twice the amount of the evacuation threshold established by the IAEA and WHO."

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March 24, 2011

Radioactivity in Food, Water Sparks Fears of Widespread Contamination in Japan

Japan is facing growing fears as radiation leaking from the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station has contaminated food and water supplies. Bottled water was in short supply across Tokyo after Japanese authorities warned that tap water is too dangerous for consumption by infants. Thousands of people remain without potable water in areas of northern Japan ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami. We speak with Aileen Mioko Smith of Kyoto-based Green Action, one of Japan’s leading voices challenging the production, commerce and transport of nuclear material, and calling for sustainable energy policies. [Original w/ transcript]

Guest:
Aileen Mioko Smith, director of Kyoto-based Green Action. She is one of Japan’s leading voices challenging the production, commerce and transport of nuclear material, and calling for sustainable energy policies.

NOW FOR THE REALLY BAD NEWS FROM JAPAN...

March 22, 2011

"You Get 3,500,000 the Normal Dose. You Call That Safe? And What Media Have Reported This? None!"

What They're Covering Up at Fukushima

By HIROSE TAKASHI

Introduced by Douglas Lummis

Okinawa

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.  Probably his best known book is  Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires? 

He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses.  I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.

I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants.  In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution  [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.  One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can't bear the idea of that huge a financial loss.  But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn't fix the things.  On the one hand that's too much guilt for a human being to bear.  On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion.  And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe.  If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn't so dangerous after all.  Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry.  Hirose's account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis

Hirose Takashi:  The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media

Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00

Interviewers: Yoh Sen'ei and Maeda Mari

Yoh:  Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?

Hirose:  . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity.  Otherwise it’s like pouring water on lava.

Yoh:  Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the cooling system?

Hirose:  Yes.  The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks.  If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.

Yoh: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.

Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there.  But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV).  This is just a cartoon.  Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph).  This is the butt end of the reactor.  Take a look.  It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes.  On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors.  Only the engineers know.  This is where water has been poured in.  This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy.  Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there.  And it’s salt water, right?  You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens?  You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze.  They won’t move.  This will be happening everywhere.  So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate.  I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this.  You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

Yoh:  It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4.  This morning 30 tons.  Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks.  That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up.  Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

Hirose:  In principle, it can’t.  Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe.  Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes.  I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there.  And how long can they last?  I mean, physically.  That’s what the situation has come to now.  When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!”  Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic.  What we need now is a proper panic.  Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real. 

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky.  Because you have to assume the worst case.  Why?  Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors.  If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse.  So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time.  We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go.  And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down.  Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there. 

I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low.  This is the danger that the world is watching.  Only in Japan is it being hidden.  As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.  So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.  Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.  If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.  Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.  We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.  Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.  That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.  We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.  It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.  That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can’t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed.  It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn’t always do that.  Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo.  That’s how it is. . . .

Yoh: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.  All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.  What is the truth of the matter?

Hirose: For example, yesterday.  Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe?  And what media have reported this?  None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yoh:  So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning.  Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose:  That’s right.  When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go.  The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children.  Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments.  What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air.  Their instruments don’t eat.  What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .

Yoh:  So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.

Hirose:  If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no.  But radioactive particles are carried here by the air.  When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas.  It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.

Yoh:  Is there any way to detect this?

Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring.  They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements.  You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that.  And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much.  That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments.  You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post.  It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air.  Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point.  We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.

Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com

 

Power Corrupts, Nuclear Power Corrupts Absolutely

Michael Collins

The Chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, told a US House of Representatives subcommittee that: "There is no water in the spent fuel pool [at the Fukushima I plant] and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures." A "utility spokesman" for Tokyo Electric responded quickly claiming that the "condition is stable." AP, March 17

The New York Times, China's Peoples Daily, and other outlets covered this extraordinary asymmetrical exchange between the highest nuclear regulatory official in the US government and a "utility spokesman." (Image)

The public disagreement between two close allies in the midst of a severe crisis is highly instructive on a number of levels. If chair Jaczko wrong, it is a terrible embarrassment for the US. If he's right, we can conclude that much of the information from Tokyo Electric is questionable.

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima I is a complex event. Logical progressions are difficult to grasp and follow, particularly when the United States and Japan disagree so fundamentally at the highest levels.

Concerns about human loss and suffering are paramount. Information on that is also challenging. One theme from the start has been, this is not another Chernobyl. As failures continue and risks become apparent, the comparison to Chernobyl is less important than the risks to the 103 million Japanese on Honshu Island and those in surrounding nations. The best scenario advanced for a major release of toxic elements from the Fukushima I plant involves winds taking the danger west to the Pacific Ocean.

Guenther Oettinger, Commissioner of Energy for the European Union (EU) issued an ominous statement just hours ago:

"The site is effectively out of control," Guenther Oettinger, commissioner for energy, told a European Parliament committee. "In the coming hours there could be further catastrophic events which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island." Dow Jones, March 20

Ottinger went on to say that information from Japanese government sources was contradictory and that he had an information network beyond just official statements from Tokyo.

When the top US nuclear official and the commissioner of energy for the EU make major hedges on the worsening events in Japan, it's time to take notice.

The Larger Issue

In the midst of all this, it is important to pose the question that may have prevented this disaster and changed the world's energy future. Is nuclear energy an acceptable source of power?

The issue of fuel rod storage combined with the initial regulatory approach to the dangers of nuclear power plants can help answer the question.

The spent fuel pool consists of spent nuclear fuel rods that are stored in the Fukushima reactors (and other GE reactors with a similar design) after they have outlived their usefulness. They're placed in the pool of water designed to maintain the rods in a safe state. The storage needs will exceed capacity in the US by 2015.

Take a look at the image above of the reactor design at Fukushima (and 23 nuclear reactors in the US) and ask this question. Does this make any sense? The spent fuel rods, pilled up in the fuel pool, are above the reactor vessel and active fuel rods. If there is a meltdown or an explosion of sufficient quantity, toxic elements from both the reactor and the fuel pools may breach the containment structure and enter the atmosphere. Why create a design that compounds the most serious problem, the meltdown, with additional toxic emissions? Don't nuclear regulators understand the concept of a reasonableness test?

Market Driven Regulation

Robert Gillette wrote a classic investigative report for the Los Angeles Times 1979. He described the acceleration of nuclear plant sales and installations and the parallel retreat of regulators. There were no sales of nuclear plants in 1964. By 1966, 63% of new power generation came from nuclear plants. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was swamped with new proposals and short of staff. As larger, more complex reactors were designed, the AEC's budget suffered a series of cuts. Gillette summed it up nicely:

"Larger reactors would … build up larger amounts of radioactive wastes, which if dispersed in an accident, which if dispersed in an accident would amplify the consequences." Robert Gillette, Rapid nuclear growth at root of accident. Los Angeles Times , April 9, 1979

Despite budget cuts, there were farsighted regulators. One of them, Stephen Hanauer, wrote an internal AEC memo in which he suggested that GE was less than serious about it's reported tests of reactors like those at Fukushima I:

"Recently we have reevaluated the GE test results and decided on a more conservative interpretation than has been used by GE all these years (and accepted by us). We now believe that the former interpretation was incorrect, using data from tests not applicable to accident conditions." Stephen J. Hanauer, Atomic Energy Commission New York Times pdf September 20, 1972 (Article)

GE's use of "data from tests not applicable to accident conditions" is the height of reckless cynicism taken to an extreme.

After praising the logic of Hanauer's the suggestion to discontinue the GE reactors with the Mark I design, nuclear energy chief Joseph M. Hendrie suggested that adopting the plan, "could well be the end of nuclear power." He concluded that such an act would generally create more turmoil than I can stand thinking about." Joseph M. Hendrie, 1972 from the New York Times pdf, March 17 (Article)

Myopic Testing - The Past and Right Now

A flawed approach to testing compounded the problems of US nuclear regulators. A 1962 AEC regulation defined testing as the analysis of all credible accidents. Robert van de Poel's analysis showed the following: "What counted as an unacceptable credible accident was defined by a postulated maximum credible accident (MCA) which was laid down in official regulations in 1962. Changing Technologies 1998 van de Poel p.248 If industry scientists and regulators decided that an event couldn't take place, no matter how arbitrary the decision, the nuclear plant's requirement to withstand that event was forgiven.

Safety testing for Fukushima I by Tokyo Electric and Japanese nuclear regulators followed the exclusionary tradition of maximum credible accidents and its successor, probabilistic risk assessment. The credible level of stress on the plant, based on probability analysis, resulted in tests for a 7.9 Richter scale earthquake.

Why? Because that's what the plant could withstand, if you're a bit skeptical and presume that they tested the maximum stress tolerance prior to performing the official test. Why not test it for higher magnitudes on the Richter scale? It is not as though regulators and energy companies had to create a real earthquake for testing. This testing is done with software. Why not extend the effort to a 9.0 on the Richter scale? How hard is that?

They knew that there was a problem in 1972 and did nothing. They know now there are serious problems and they do nothing.

The US government recommended that the Japanese government adopt a 50-mile evacuation radius to around the distressed Fukushima reactors.

That same US government approved nuclear facilities with the similar designs, GE Mark I boiling water reactors. Each reactor or cluster of reactors is within 50 miles of a the population area listed in the chart below.

NRC Database 2011 (BWR=GE boiling water reactor -- similar to Fukushima)

That same US government recommends boldly pushing forward with more nuclear installations. It says nothing about the obvious dangers based on a history of flawed assumptions, testing, and performance review for the GE reactor type and the entire array of reactors in place.

Is this technology safe? Is it acceptable? Can we trust those in charge to tell us the truth? The answer to each of those questions looks more like no every day.

END

N.B. Nuclear energy firms in the United States questioned the governments suggestion that US citizens observe the suggested 50 mile radius around the Fukushima reactors.

This article may be reproduced entirely or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

LATEST NEWS OF THE NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN ...AND THE LESSONS AMERICANS SHOULD TAKE FROM THIS

 March 18, 2011

 "Underestimating the Seriousness of the Problem": Experts Urge Japan to Raise Nuclear Alert Level and Evacuate Wider Area

The Japanese nuclear crisis worsens as Japanese authorities race to cool the overheating reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Earlier today, Japan raised the nuclear alert level at the crippled plant from a four to a five, on par with Three Mile Island. This decision has shocked many nuclear experts. “Our experts think that it’s a level 6.5 already, and it’s on the way to a seven, which was Chernobyl," says Philip White of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo. We also speak with Dr. Ira Helfand of Physicians for Social Responsibility about the long-term health effects from radiation exposure from Fukushima. [Original w/ transcript here]

March 18, 2011

"Why Are We Playing Russian Roulette With the American People?": Longtime Nuclear Critic Ralph Nader Advocates Phasing Out Nuclear Power Industry

Former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate and nuclear critic Ralph Nader strongly advocates phasing out nuclear power in the United States by calling for public hearings on the status of every single nuclear power plant. "What we’re seeing here is 110 or so operating nuclear plants in the United States, many of them aging, many of them infected with corrosion, faulty pipes, leaky pumps and combustible materials... Why are we playing Russian roulette with the American people for nuclear plants whose principal objective is simply to boil water and produce steam? ... This is institutional insanity, and I urge the people in this country to wake up before they experience what is now going on in northern Japan." [Original w/ transcript here]

Nuclear Crisis -- Projection: Diluted Radiation Plumes Will Reach California Friday; Tokyo Flight Sets Off Radiation Detectors in Chicago

Follow the latest news from the disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi plant:

Blogger's Note: Don't miss video embedded below.( Scroll down to find it.)

Update: Al Jazeera reports that the official death toll in Japan is now 6,539, with 10,354 people missing.

Meanwhile, the Japanese nuclear safety agency has raised Fukushima's crisis level from a 4 to a 5. On the 7-point nuclear crisis scale, Three Mile Island was a 5, while Chernobyl was a 7.

Update: Americans, being a somewhat panicky people, have made a run on potassium iodide, which is administered to those exposed to high levels of radioactive iodine-131. 

Also, according to the LA Times, "taking potassium iodide tablets without just cause can be risky for some people, health experts warned Wednesday."

Update: The New York Times has an animated model that shows the likely travel path of the plume of radioactivity released from damaged reactors at Fukushima No. 1 power plant in Japan. It suggests that it the leading edge of it will reach the West Coast on Friday. The good news, for North American readers, is that the radiation will be highly diluted by the time it makes its long journey across the Pacific, and authorities say they expect the plume to represent no threat to human health. 

More troubling is that the situation is not yet under control, and could deteriorate -- a hazard heightened by the powerful aftershocks that continue to batter Japan. There is also uncertainty about exactly how much radioactivity has been released into the environment so far; Japanese authorities and TEPCO officials have released neither measurements nor estimates. 

Take a look at the Times' model here. 

Update: NHK English reports the latest official stats from the March 11 earthquake and Tsunami: 5,700 confirmed dead and 9,500 missing.

Update: The Chicago Tribune reports that traces of radiation were detected on a United Airlines jet that arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport from Tokyo yesterday "but determined that the plane’s cargo and passengers were safe."

Federal officials inspected a United Airlines jet and one other with Geiger counters after they arrived in Chicago from Narita International Airport Wednesday, sources told the Tribune. A person familiar with the search  said it was conducted by Customs and Border Patrol agents in the “guise of a random inspection.”

Though officials detected trace elements of radiation on two cargo containers on one of the planes, they later determined that the packages were safe, sources said. Officials also determined the jets were safe after inspecting for radiation.
The radiation plume forming over the Pacific from Japan’s nuclear crisis is a growing concern for U.S. carriers, who want to avoid contaminating aircraft surfaces and exposing passengers and employees to harmful radioactive isotopes.

For the first time in recent memory, maps used to guide aircraft around hazards such as storms and active volcanoes now carry a red radioactive sign to denote a no-fly zone over the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. Flight dispatchers Thursday were also given the coordinates of an area over the Pacific where airborne concentrations are of greatest concern, sources told the Tribune.

Update: The Kyodo news agency offers a confusing report about the attempts to get water into a cooling pond for highly radioactive spent fuel rods at Fukushima. First, some apparently good news:

An unprecedented attempt to douse an apparently overheating spent fuel pool with tons of coolant water at a stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima bore some fruit Thursday, but the emission of smoke newly confirmed at another pool suggests the difficulties that lie in the way of resolving the crisis triggered by the March 11 quake and tsunami.

But the headline, "Operation to pour water at Fukushima nuke plant said effective," appears to have overstated the tangible results:

The utility said vapor rising from the partially destroyed No. 3 reactor building suggests the operation went some way toward cooling down the pool that could otherwise emit highly contaminated radioactive materials.

However, no major changes were seen in radioactive levels at the plant immediately afterward.

Update: The disaster at Fukushima Dai'ichi has brought renewed attention to Japan's spotty nuclear safety track-record. AJE summarizes:

In 1997, at least 37 workers were exposed to radiation at the Tokaimura plant, after a fire and explosion.

In 1999, workers were reported to be hand-mixing uranium at the same plant.  Two workers later died.

Hundreds of people were exposed to radiation and thousands evacuated in the same year after an accident at Tokaimura.

The Fukushima number 1 plant has also had problems in the past. In 2006, a small amount of radioactive steam seeped out and blew beyond the compound.
In 2007, a powerful earthquake caused malfunctions at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant.  The damage included radioactive water spills, burst pipes and fires.

Update: This stunning footage shows the extent of the devastation at Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plant:

Update: Al Jazeera English, citing the IAEA, reports that "Japanese engineers have laid an external grid power cable to the number 2 unit, in accordance with plans announced on Thursday."

However they can't reconnect power until they have finished spraying water on unit 3, which is at major risk of overheating and sending more radiation out into the atmosphere. Earlier attempts to drench the fuel rod pools appeared to have very limited success.

Japanese officials have claimed that the power line would end the crisis, but that is questionable if, as has been reported, two containment vessels have been breached.

Update:  Here's the latest report from CNN on cooling efforts by the Japanese military:

Military helicopters began dumping water on the reactor Thursday morning, with police and fire trucks opening up after 7 p.m. (6 a.m. ET). Japan's Defense Ministry said the first effort lasted 40 minutes, and the Tokyo Electric Power Company said the efforts would continue throughout the night in order to keep the reactor and its adjacent spent fuel pool from overheating.

Update: This morning's report in the New York Times is grim indeed, describing the failure of multiple "ever more desperate and unconventional methods to cool damaged reactors" to make a significant impacts. Extremely high levels of radiation are preventing some efforts, hindering workers from getting too close to the zone. The Times also describes conflicting messages from American and Japanese officials, as Americans  such as Gregory Jaczko, the chair of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, have been much more fatalistic in public than their Japanese counterparts. American officials have recommemded evacuation within a 50-mile radius of the plant, more than the distance recommended by the Japanese.

Another article suggests that non-threatening radiation plumes could reach the West Coast of the U.S. in days. The radiation plumes from the plant "will "churn" across the ocean, "touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday" according to a projection from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, a UN-run organization.

Update: The LA Times has a sad story about what life is like at this moment for people who are trapped near the nuclear plant, and their sense of betrayal and isolation:

Residents describe spooky scenes of municipal cars driving down near-empty streets telling people to stay indoors, but they've seen few other signs of outside help.
Aid agencies are reluctant to get too close to the plant. Shelters set up in the greater Fukushima area for "radiation refugees" have little food, in part because nobody wants to deliver to an area that might be contaminated. And with little or no gasoline available, not everyone who wants to leave can get out. Radiation fears mingled with a sickening sense of abandonment Wednesday.

The fear of ostracism also brought back memories of the stigma faced by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who were often shunned due to their exposure to radiation. The connection between the two disasters isn't all negative:  scientific teams from Hiroshima are preparing to visit the stricken area while Hiroshima's hospitals are also getting ready to receive victims of radiation poisoning, according to this excellent report from Democracy Now!

Meanwhile the AP reports on the "bungling" and mismanagement and secrecy of the nuclear industry at large in Japan 

Leaks of radioactive steam and workers contaminated with radiation are just part of the disturbing catalog of accidents that have occurred over the years and been belatedly reported to the public, if at all. In one case, workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine, so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Two later died.

TreeHugger adds that WikiLeaks reveals warnings about the specific vulnerability of these plants to earthquakes two years ago.

Update: USA Today -- without information on radioactivity levels in Fukushima, there's no way of predicting how much radiation will hit the US:

"The Japanese government's radiation report for the country's 47 prefectures Wednesday had a notable omission: Fukushima, ground zero in Japan's nuclear crisis. Measurements from Ibaraki, just south of Fukushima, were also blanked out. Radiation experts in the USA say that the lack of information about radioactivity released from the smoldering reactors makes it impossible to gauge the current danger, project how bad a potential meltdown might be or calculate how much fallout might reach the USA."

Update: BBC reports:

Japanese defence minister Toshimi Kitazawa confirms four water drops took place over the Fukushima Daiichi plant. He says 11 "special purpose vehicles" manned by defence forces will conduct water spraying operations from the ground on Thursday afternoon.

Update: NHK English reports that temperatures are rising in the spent fuel cooling pools at Units 5 and 6. The two reactors were offline when the earthquake hit, but the fuel rods remain hot for years. The cooling systems in 5 and 6 are damaged, which poses a risk that the water will boil off, exposing the rods to the environment. In the worst case scenario, the spent fuel could combust in a chemical reaction, releasing radioactive smoke into the environment.

Operators at Fukushima No. 1 are desperately trying to get water into the cooling pools. According to NHK they are now trying to use a heavy water cannon to direct water onto the pools.

Update: An unnamed US official has told ABC news that Washington is not happy with how the Japanese have responded to the crisis:

U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be "deadly for decades."

"It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now," one U.S. official told ABC News.
"We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the official said. "Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool" down the reactors' rods before they trigger a meltdown.
"They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the official said.

Update: According to the Washington Post, industry is digging into its deep pockets to buy some influence in the hope of heading off efforts to better regulate nuclear plant operators.

Nuclear power advocates are waging an intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill this week in an attempt to limit the political fallout from the reactor crisis in Japan, which threatens to undermine already shaky plans for expanded nuclear capacity in the United States.
Lobbyists with the Nuclear Energy Institute and some of the United States’s largest energy firms, including Exelon of Chicago, are holding meetings with key lawmakers and standing-room-only briefings for staff members in an attempt to tamp down talk of restrictions in response to the Japanese disaster.
The efforts come as lawmakers held hearings Wednesday focused on the impact of the worsening catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, where at least three reactor cores are believed to be imperiled following a major earthquake and tsunami last week.

Update: Stars and Stripes reports, "experts are now saying the Fukushima crisis could rival the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union."

Nuclear scientists use the term “core-on-the-floor” to describe radioactive fuel burning through protective containment layers, hitting water and bursting into the atmosphere in a huge steam explosion, spreading clouds of radioactive gas and dust.
It’s never happened before, but experts fear it may soon become reality in one or more reactors at the Fukushima nuclear complex, which was gravely damaged in last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
“We are right now closer to core-on-the-floor than at any time in the history of nuclear reactors,” said Kenneth Bergeron, a former Sandia National Laboratory researcher who spent his career simulating such meltdowns, including in reactors of the type at the Fukushima plant.

This scenario is sometimes (inaccurately) referred to as the "China Syndrome." 

Update: The Daily Telegraph reports: "Japan was warned more than two years ago by the international nuclear watchdog that its nuclear power plants were not capable of withstanding powerful earthquakes."

An official from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in December 2008 that safety rules were out of date and strong earthquakes would pose a "serious problem" for nuclear power stations.

While it responded to the warnings by building an emergency response centre at the Fukushima plant, it was only designed to withstand magnitude 7.0 tremors. Friday's devastating earthquake was a magnitude 9.0 shock.
The news is likely to put further pressure on Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, who has been criticised for "dithering" over the country's response to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The Japanese government pledged to upgrade safety at all of its nuclear plants, but will now face inevitable questions over whether it did enough.

Update: The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that there is no longer water in one of the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-ichi, according to NPR. Japanese officials deny the report. What does this mean? NPR explains:

If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there's nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.

Update: According to Stars and Stripes Magazine, the Pentagon is preparing for a worst case scenario in Japan -- a full-scale meltdown. The military has instituted the following precautions to protect American service personnel and their dependents:

-- 50-mile no-go zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi (much bigger than the Japanese evacuation zone).

-- US Air crews flying rescue missions 80 miles have been told to start taking potassium iodide tablets.

Update: The Tokyo Electric Power company says "a new power line that could solve the nuclear crisis is almost ready." The power line would, in theory, restore the plant's crippled cooling systems. We're a bit skeptical that restoring power would end the crisis, given that multiple containment domes have reportedly been breached, but we'll keep you informed of the latest.

****

Last night here and this morning in Japan, a horrfying drama unfolded. News reports circulated saying that the remaining 50 workers struggling to contain the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had to temporarily leave because of a dangerous spike in radiation levels. They soon returned, but their absence provoked fears.

Furthermore, it appeared that the containment vessel in reactor 3 had ruptured, and plumes of smoke were seen exiting from the roof. Concerns remained about the pool which contained the fuel rods.

The New York Times has several detailed reports this morning:

The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be. The implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool, which is also at the No. 3 reactor, seemed equally dire. The developments were the latest in Japan’s swirling tragedy since an earthquake and tsunami struck the country with unbridled ferocity last Friday. Emperor Akihito told the nation on Wednesday he was “deeply worried” about the nuclear crisis.
The company operating the reactors had withdrawn most of its workers from the plant on Tuesday, leaving only a skeleton crew of 50 struggling to lower temperatures.
When those workers were forced to suspend cooling operations, the spent fuel rod pool began heating up dangerously.

There are many concerns about this growing nuclear threat, not the least of which is that the drama and horror is overshadowing the world's attention from massive humanitarian crisis--the homeless, foodless, hurt and missing--that has taken such an unimaginable, devastating toll already.

And then there is the anger and frustration with persistent claims that nuclear power is safe, and with the UN watchdog group International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which has to rely on member-states cooperation to provide inspection. One Russian expert who had helped with the Chernobyl clean up was particularly biting in his criticism: 

"The Japanese were very greedy and they used every square inch of the space. But when you have a dense placing of spent fuel in the basin, you have a high possibility of fire if the water is removed from the basin," former Soviet nuclear expert Iouli Andreev said, according to The Guardian. He had harsh words for the IAEA. "This is only a fake organisation because every organisation which depends on the nuclear industry – and the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry – cannot perform properly ... It always will try to hide the reality."