Earthquake/Tsunami Thread - FG Members Check In.

[calvinhobbes]

When I was at the supermarket yesterday the woman in front had a small piece of paper that I assumed was a shopping list, then I noticed at the top, "microsievert".

Can a dosimeter look like a piece of paper?

Stay safe, I wish you favourable winds!

 

[Hemihead]

They tried waterbombing the reactors with the help of helicopters now, the result was a bit like Top Gear, ambitious but rubbish. Now they are bringing in water cannon vehicles from the Tokyo Riot Police.

 

[hansvonaxion]

Unless they're a lot luckier than I think they're likely to be, a lot of those 50 people aren't going to survive.

I've read they upped the allowed dose to 250mSv (not per hour but in total, ie one day unprotected at 10mSv/h). For comparison, the so-called disaster dose German (and Austrian) firemen are allowed to take once in their life is 250mSv - it appears to be a normal figure in this kind of situation.

These statements appear to be at odds.

Though I imagine it would be quite difficult to accurately measure the radiation each has been exposed to.

Can a dosimeter look like a piece of paper?

It was just her notes, I guess she was studying up.

Just another side not, about half of Japanese men smoke... a lot. I can just imagine someone at home watching TV while lighting up thinking, those guys will be at an increased risk of cancer in the future!

 

[ESPNSTI]

We should definitely not build them the way the new one at Olkiluoto is being built. [/ ]

Those delays seem like a minor hiccup compared to Kalkar. (I used to live not too far from there.)
Shame, the sodium cooling seemed interesting, and it looks like they're looking at that again for the Generation IV reactors. (Not that I know much of anything about it.)

 

[Shirahime]

These blokes are from my neck of the woods as in back home NOT Scotland. Brit peeps, Peter Stevenson is the one on Sky News they usually talk to about how they're getting on. I dunno if anyone else will have seen him on their chosen news channel.

But I do hope these guys stay safe too, so they can carry on doing what they do best; helping others.
Rochdale Online: Fire-fighters in Japan are fit and well

 

[Goondu86]

Of course opinions are just opinions but from what I gathered over the past years and decades about how the Japanese state is organized, it's an open secret that the country is practically run by the corporations and that the middle name of the LDP is "Corruption".

I think there is no other democratic country in the world, where the same party has been ruling for the past 60 years. A real opposition doesn't seem to exist. And forgive me for saying this but from what I see here, the way this crisis is handled by the Japanese government, implies that the government is more or less on the leash of the industry and not vice versa.

Seen the local politics of Singapore yet? /wink

Back to topic, the TEPCO employees who are at the plant now are all badasses. Along with the rest of the people trying to take control of the situation. I sourced a copy of 'The Battle of Chernobyl' and the liquidators are all men/women with adamantium balls.

 

[Spectre]

Can a dosimeter look like a piece of paper?

Stay safe, I wish you favourable winds!

Yes, a film dosimeter can look like a paper card.

 

[hansvonaxion]

I've read they upped the allowed dose to 250mSv (not per hour but in total, ie one day unprotected at 10mSv/h). For comparison, the so-called disaster dose German (and Austrian) firemen are allowed to take once in their life is 250mSv - it appears to be a normal figure in this kind of situation.

To add, from Wiki;

US limit for volunteers averting major nuclear escalation: 500 mSv[5]
US limit for volunteers rescuing lives or preventing serious injuries: 1000 mSv[5]

 

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Back to topic, the TEPCO employees who are at the plant now are all badasses. Along with the rest of the people trying to take control of the situation. I sourced a copy of 'The Battle of Chernobyl' and the liquidators are all men/women with adamantium balls.

When your job title is "biorobot" you know you're a genuine grade-A badass.

 

[ESPNSTI]

They tried waterbombing the reactors with the help of helicopters now, the result was a bit like Top Gear, ambitious but rubbish. Now they are bringing in water cannon vehicles from the Tokyo Riot Police.

I assume they're sending trucks, but I wonder if Tokyo's fireboats could get close enough to the reactors to be useful.
If radiation is a problem, perhaps the trucks / boats could be rigged for remote control.

Edit: Looking at the pictures, seems that it would be a bit too far to reach for the boats.

 

[Spectre]

Though I imagine it would be quite difficult to accurately measure the radiation each has been exposed to.

That's what I'm getting at. Of course, I will be overjoyed if the general statistical predictions are wrong and everyone survives.

 

[narf]

These statements appear to be at odds.

Nah, not really. One is the officially allowed dose, the other is the reality of people getting exposed to more. Also, the officially allowed dose of 250mSv is not really healthy, it just does not do immediate severe harm.

 

[hansvonaxion]

Well I guess spectre was saying they could eventually die from health problems caused from exposure, I was reading it differently - that they would die at the site from exposure.

That's what I meant by saying I hope they (and their families) get taken care of (for as long as they all shall live).

 

[MacGuffin]

Last night in a talk show here on TV nuclear engineer Lars-Olov H?glund, the former chief of Vattenfall's construction department, was a special guest. He is one of those, who actually built nuclear power plants and must therefore be considered a first-rate expert, who actually knows what building and running a nuclear power plant means. So he was a welcome addition with his knowledge and practical experience (which most commentators and experts seem to lack these days).

He was the engineer, who uncovered the "incident" in the Swedish "Forsmark" plant in July 2006, where it almost came to a core meltdown, because an external short circuit had crippled the system and the emergency diesels simply wouldn't start automatically (!). Eventually two of the diesels started after about 20 minutes of desperate attempts and until today obviously nobody knows, why they started at last. So even today something "simple" like a diesel engine can confront enginneers with unsolved mysteries. So much for controlling technology.

H?glund is in retirement now and he said some interesting and very worrying things:

- Since it's been so long, that new nuclear power plants have been built on a big scale, most of the engineers and specialists are now in retirement and it's very hard to recruit new ones for what is widely considered a "dying technology" among young people. To illustrate the problem he said: "How many engineers are there today, who could build a steam locomotive?". Obviously there is a shortage of real experts of the technology today, who know the practical side and not only the theoretical part. He compared the personnel in nuclear power plants today to pilots of an airplane or drivers of a locomotive, who can operate it all and have handbooks to tell them what to do in case. But there are hardly any real experts anymore, who know the construction by heart and are familiar with its bugs or kinks, when things start to get seriously wrong. And even if they brought back the old engineers from retirement, it wouldn't matter much, because too many changes, upgrades or fixes have been made, since they left, so they wouldn't find their way so easily anymore, too.

- According to H?glund, construction faults can "sleep" for years and decades within a nuclear power plant without ever showing up. They will never show up in any test or inspection but will then show their ugly face in a crisis and nobody will know, what the hell is going on. That doesn't necessarily mean the construction is faulty but there might have been some slouchiness by construction workers or somebody didn't exactly stick to the plan. For example in the German Biblis power plant, which has been in operation since the early 1970's, it was discovered in the early 2000's, that some of the wall plugs in the concrete were mounted wrong and that effected the whole installation's ability to handle earth quakes, which are common in the area up to 5 points on the Richter scale or so. So who knows what undiscovered faults and bugs are lurking in all the other nuclear power plants in the world?

- The 50 men at Fukushima are, as he blatantly said, "sentenced to death" and he raised the question, how this catastrophe can be contained without bringing thousands of people in to repair the damage. Will be hard to find so many volunteers, who you can use for such a job, even in Japan. Even when they succeed in preventing a complete meltdown of the core(s), the installation is heavily contaminated and some containment or casing needs to be built (like in Tchernobyl). But who shall do that? In the Soviet Union they could simply order people to go there -- they sacrificed tens of thousands of people for building the contrete sarcophage at Tchernobyl. But in a free democracy? And for at least 3 reactors instead of 1?

- It's practically impossible to upgrade old power plants to the current safety standards. H?glund said, that would be like trying to upgrade a VW Beetle to the standards of a current VW Golf. Vattenfall had to answer a commission of inquiry after the Forsmark incident and were asked, if it was possible to upgrade old reactors to modern standards. The answer was "Yes, it's technically possible but it would be cheaper to tear them down and build them new."

- Even in the 1970's engineers like H?glund considered nuclear power a transition technology to something better and less dangerous and not a final solution to our power needs. H?glund said that all engineers knew the dangers of nuclear power, that there was always a remaining risk involved and that in the end there isn't such a thing like failsafe technology. He insinuated, that only wannabe experts could say such stupid things like "nuclear energy is safe". Every technology can fail, every construction can malfunction, no matter how high you set the safety standards. Failsafe is an illusion. But of course this wasn't said to people from officials at the time and also rarely ever since.

- He called the current attempts at Fukushima "acts of desperation" without a reliable power supply. Nobody knows how far the meltdown already proceeded but bringing it to a halt isn't just a matter of days. To put it into perspective: Burned-out fuel rods are stored for 5 years in a pool of water to cool down, before they can safely be taken to a disposal site.


There was a representative of the German nuclear lobby present at the talk show, too, and he stayed suspiciously quiet during and after H?glunds statements. If I remember correctly, he only contradicted him once but couldn't really make a point. The lack of opposition spoke for itself -- but of course that is only my personal impression.

EDIT: Here's the summary of an interview with Lars-Olov H?glund on the Forsmark incident, which I found earlier by googling his name a bit.

 

[hansvonaxion]

The 80km evacuation zone suggested by the US was based on the incorrect assumption that there was no water in the SF pool at #4. The SDF helicopter pilots confirmed there was water and now it is full.

They will start pumping water from the trucks in about 15 minutes.

They will also have power soon and will be able to pump seawater to the site.

 

[zeggawong]

? Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant and Accompanying Facilities

o As of 12:00PM on March 15, power generation of all facilities was restored to the commercial electricity grid from backup power generation systems. It was confirmed that no fire, damage to equipment, injuries to personnel occurred. Radiation levels were measured at a normal level of safety.

 

[Dr_Grip]

A friend of mine put the Chernobyl aftermath into an interesting perspective yesterday:
"If Chernobyl had happened in a western country, it would have gotten much worse, because no western government would be willing to sacrifice an entire army to save the country."

 

[brydie76]

FTFY.....

Don't want to start an argument or detract from the topic at hand, but that stereotype's getting a bit old....

To actually add something related to the topic, can somebody give me any idea as to where Nagoya is in relation to the reactors? I've tried to guess, but I'm not 100% sure as to what I got (about 400 km away). Have a friend living there at the moment and we are all a little bit worried about her!!!

 

[WillDAQ]

9am: http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300322727P.pdf
4pm: http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300350525P.pdf

They've started adding more stations to make the total red/green ratio look less worrying.

On the plus side:
- 19:00: 1937microSv
- 9:00: 1472microSv
- 16:00: 646microSv

 

[h-p]

To actually add something related to the topic, can somebody give me any idea as to where Nagoya is in relation to the reactors? I've tried to guess, but I'm not 100% sure as to what I got (about 400 km away). Have a friend living there at the moment and we are all a little bit worried about her!!!

Nagoya is south from Tokyo. As long as everything is fine in Tokyo, it'll be fine in Nagoya. And we will hear if things go bad in Tokyo.