Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant facing cataclysmic failure

Anderson Cooper seems a little freaked out on CNN, he's in Sendai.

Sanjay Gupta, who is with Cooper in Sendai is totally freaking out.

UStream feed dies, cnn picks up the slack -

CNN.com Live

"do not open your windows, do not go outside..."

Nikkei crashing.. trading halted.

DJIA futures down 175..

IMO the US had a strong indication that this was probable last Friday the same day that the following happened.

1. They limited the USAR response to two elite teams. One from CA and the other from VA. Both not only highly trained in USAR but also in radiological emergencies.
2. The Navy has limited their response to short term airlifts and after the crew exposure (albeit non critical) have even reduced it more.
3. The US had four 50 person DMAT teams preparing to respond. Two had been activated and were at Travis AfB awaiting flights to Japan Our local team was within a few hours of deployment to Travis then suddenly Friday evening all 4 were stood down.

Pretty good blog with info on the reactor issue

Health Physics Society News on facebook

http://http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=157387224301493

This is why I always buy American. Good luck with your Fukushima rice rockets suckers! ;-)

IMO the US had a strong indication that this was probable last Friday the same day that the following happened.

1. They limited the USAR response to two elite teams. One from CA and the other from VA. Both not only highly trained in USAR but also in radiological emergencies.
2. The Navy has limited their response to short term airlifts and after the crew exposure (albeit non critical) have even reduced it more.
3. The US had four 50 person DMAT teams preparing to respond. Two had been activated and were at Travis AfB awaiting flights to Japan Our local team was within a few hours of deployment to Travis then suddenly Friday evening all 4 were stood down.

:roll:

Yes, I am sure that a Country that built nuclear reactors that withstood a great earthquake and a tsunami are waiting with bated breath for us fossil fuel kings to come and rescue them.

:roll:

Yes, I am sure that a Country that built nuclear reactors that withstood a great earthquake and a tsunami are waiting with bated breath for us fossil fuel kings to come and rescue them.

Agreed. If anything this proves the risk worthiness of building nuclear power plants.

This is why I always buy American. Good luck with your Fukushima rice rockets suckers!

:confused: What are you saying, shopper?? Is this a reference to General Electric? Or am I just missing something? Well, whatever, FYI, We have quite a few GE boiling water reactors in this country.

List of boiling water reactors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:confused: What are you saying, shopper?? Is this a reference to General Electric? Or am I just missing something? Well, whatever, FYI, We have quite a few GE boiling water reactors in this country.

List of boiling water reactors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:cool: Well if GE built it that's worse, it was probably built in Tiawan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=1

I never have trusted GE. But I don't think we should just turn off all 26, we need them. Although if any are built on large fault lines here in the U.S. those should be retired pronto. (It amazes me that we actually built two nuclear reactors on the California coast! That just seems plain crazy.)

Shameful media panic very slowly begins to subside

There is a lot of good, unsensational information about the reactor/radiation situation in the Register article "Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA Alert"

Subtitled: " Shameful media panic very slowly begins to subside"


He basically summarizes the situation, in quite a bit of detail, quoting some serious nuclear experts as well.

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, badly damaged during the extremely severe earthquake and tsunami there a week ago, continues to stabilise. It is becoming more probable by the day that public health consequences will be zero and radiation health effects among workers at the site will be so minor as to be hard to measure. Nuclear experts are beginning to condemn the international hysteria which has followed the incident in increasingly blunt terms.

He also says the the US Gov't reacted sensationally, not rationally.

Overflights of the area by specially equipped US radiation-monitoring aircraft, conducted with Japanese permission, have confirmed the Japanese government's assessment that radiation levels beyond the powerplant site itself offer no cause for concern....

While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans there to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a far larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release specific radiation readings.

The renowned US nuclear engineer Ted Rockwell, who quite literally wrote the book on reactor safety, has harsh words for this position. He writes:

[Consider] the Three Mile Island (TMI) incident, where 10 to 20 tons of the nuclear reactor melted down, slumped to the bottom of the reactor vessel, and initiated the dreaded China Syndrome, where the reactor core melts and burns its way into the earth ... In the real world, the molten mass froze when it hit the colder reactor vessel, and stopped its downward journey at five-eights of an inch through the five-inch thick vessel wall.

And there was no harm to people or the environment. None.​

He concludes with an apology..

As one who earns his living in the media these days, I can only apologise on behalf of my profession for the unbelievable levels of fear and misinformation purveyed this week. I have never been so ashamed to call myself a journalist.

Don'tcha just love the media? We just have to remember that the number 1 motive of the media is to make money, number 2 is to promote an agenda and somewhere way down the list is a desire to report sort-of factual stuff as long as it doesn't conflict with numbers 1 and 2.

There is a lot of good, unsensational information about the reactor/radiation situation in the Register article "Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA Alert"

Subtitled: " Shameful media panic very slowly begins to subside"


He basically summarizes the situation, in quite a bit of detail, quoting some serious nuclear experts as well.



He also says the the US Gov't reacted sensationally, not rationally.

Overflights of the area by specially equipped US radiation-monitoring aircraft, conducted with Japanese permission, have confirmed the Japanese government's
assessment that radiation levels beyond the powerplant site itself offer no cause for concern....



He concludes with an apology..



Don'tcha just love the media? We just have to remember that the number 1 motive of the media is to make money, number 2 is to promote an agenda and somewhere way down the list is a desire to report sort-of factual stuff as long as it doesn't conflict with numbers 1 and 2.

You could just as well insert Big Business in this statement and have the same results ...:sarc:

Don'tcha just love the media? We just have to remember that the number 1 motive of the media is to make money, number 2 is to promote an agenda and somewhere way down the list is a desire to report sort-of factual stuff as long as it doesn't conflict with numbers 1 and 2.

And because of the media the situation continues to deteriorate.

"Maybe last week?s earthquake was a foreshock for an even larger one that?s coming. If this thought makes you queasy, you are feeling the bias we humans have against considering terrible tail events, or outcomes that are at the far end of the probability distribution. If we haven?t seen it, and it hurts to think about it, we ignore it.(much like the oil spill) But equating what has happened with what will happen is folly. When it comes to earthquakes, what we?ve recorded to date is a minute span of geological history." The rest is at the link below.

Nuclear Power Runs Amok: Laurence Kotlikoff and Eugene Stanley - Bloomberg

It's no surprise to many that I am anti-nuclear. Here's a great article for those interested.

Nuclear Debacle ? Not Clean, Not Safe | Renewable Energy News Article