Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster!!!

[Mike Oxlong]

Don't worry about the drone feed, some guys in a shack in Afghanistan are getting it all on TiVo with a pair of bunny ear antennas, some tin foil, and a digital TV converter they got with one of those coupons...

Most of the operators of those drone are living in the LV Nevada 'burbs...

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/21/world/la-fg-drone-crews21-2010feb21

[cstaylor]

Pressure at No. 3 reactor's containment vessel rising: nuke agency

Great. I wonder if they'll have to release more radioactive steam.

Does anyone know whey they only have one of the fire truck spray cranes in action? Shouldn't there be at least 6 of them, one ready for each reactor?

[Coligny]

So you can have a field day with the "cheeze eating surrender monkey" meme...

Also, to the dunce that keep redsnotting me and telling me i'm not French but Quebecois: Fuck Off... my passport say "Nationnalite: Francaise" My family is from Verdun and I lived around 30 years in the south of Paris... (more data for some lunatic stalker btw) I can even post a pic of the Health and vaccination Book from my older cat... guess what... she's french too...

[Not Invented Here]

:eek2:

Great. I wonder if they'll have to release more radioactive steam.

Does anyone know whey they only have one of the fire truck spray cranes in action? Shouldn't there be at least 6 of them, one ready for each reactor?

Well, to put it one way, where do you think the water they spray into the spent-fuel pool on top of what's left of the reactor 3 building goes?

If I'm not mistaken, the pressure in the reactor vessel is a good thing in terms of steam, since at those temperatures the only way to keep the water in it's liquid phase is at higher pressures. The steam doesn't cool down the rods enough, only liquid phase water does the trick. Also, the fact that there is pressure buildup in the reactor vessel means that at least reactor vessel containment hasn't been lost.

As for the fire trucks, I'd imagine it has to do with the fact that only one spent fuel pool is causing problems at the moment. I don't think reactors 5 and 6 have the same problems with their pool cooling systems, either, but I might be off on that. Seems like every time you think you've got this place figured out, something new explodes and then they hold a press conference to tell you that they have no idea what that noise was.

[Tsuru]

So you can have a field day with the "cheeze eating surrender monkey" meme...

Also, to the dunce that keep redsnotting me and telling me i'm not French but Quebecois: Fuck Off... my passport say "Nationnalite: Francaise" My family is from Verdun and I lived around 30 years in the south of Paris... (more data for some lunatic stalker btw) I can even post a pic of the Health and vaccination Book from my older cat... guess what... she's french too...

If it makes you feel any better, French Rafales led a broad international coalition into Libya by making the first couple of strikes against pro-Gaddafi forces yesterday.

[cstaylor]

Well, to put it one way, where do you think the water they spray into the spent-fuel pool on top of what's left of the reactor 3 building goes?

So why did radioactivity levels jump on 3/15 and 3/16 in the Tokyo area, but haven't risen in the last few days? Is the steam being completely blown out to sea?

[cstaylor]

As for the fire trucks, I'd imagine it has to do with the fact that only one spent fuel pool is causing problems at the moment. I don't think reactors 5 and 6 have the same problems with their pool cooling systems, either, but I might be off on that.

You'd think they'd have them prepared just in case they found a problem.

[Not Invented Here]

So why did radioactivity levels jump on 3/15 and 3/16 in the Tokyo area, but haven't risen in the last few days? Is the steam being completely blown out to sea?

Who knows. I'm no meteorologist, but I'd guess as much. The real trick is that the radioactivity in the steam doesn't remain constant, it decays with time just like it would anywhere else. Floating in one direction for an extra day or so can make a difference with stuff that has a half-life of about 8 days. Not to mention vertical air patterns, condensation, and everything else that could affect where and how much radiation is going to show up.

You'd think they'd have them prepared just in case they found a problem.

For all I know they've got a bunch of these trucks parked out of the way to avoid contamination. Could have sworn I saw a picture of a bunch of Tokyo fire trucks sitting around somewhere in an earlier article on this. Anyway, it would make sense to keep the fire trucks out of the hotter areas to avoid the fuss and worry of having to decontaminate them later, or losing them entirely if something bad happens (think "boom"), in which case they'd be in dire need of fire trucks which are now radioactive, and (go figure), on fire.

[ttjereth]

Also, anyone else tired of articles with titles like "English teacher living in Japan describes quake experience"?

I think ttjereth, newspapers and media are just looking for any story they can get to put a human face on it. and since there are many English teachers who live in Japan, and can speak the desired language, they are interviewing them. Not a lot of investment bankers were working in Kesunuma village when the earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck.
As long as it is factual and not overblown I have no problem with it. But if it is anything like that article the Sun in England printed with the desperate house wife in ghost town Tokyo who had no food and was afraid for her life, well I'll take a pass on that.

It just strikes me as weird how many of the interviewees are English teachers.

Also unfortunately, most of them have not been from anywhere remotely near the affected areas. Seems my neck of the woods (Chiba) in particular has a large number of the interviewees. I've seen 9 different interviews with different English teachers from Chiba already.

[ttjereth]

Maybe... But wasn't this plant at the end of it's life anyway ?

They gave it an extension, hoping to wring more money power out of it.

[Mulboyne]

[Coligny]

Modelisation of the radioactif cloud spread. (looks aboot bajilions times worse than it really is):

http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/irsn-meteo-france_19mars.aspx

[Catoneinutica]

"...it was obvious that tales of mass panic were wide of the mark."

Right on the target but wide of the mark,
What The Mail thought was fire was only the spark.

[Coligny]

#Not_a_real_news:

Since the radioactive cloud will reach France anytime now, the japanese governement will sent planes to rappatriate all those runaway frogs back to Tokyo:fitting soundtrack.

[Mike Oxlong]

[American Oyaji]

[Coligny]

I usually don't bag on the French, but this was interesting:

I don't usually defend the french... But aside from the "OMG Tokyo is a dead city" part... must admit that the japanese communication and management of the crisis is still far from anything you might want to put in a textbook... actually... it's quite close to anything you want -not- to do in case of accident. If you see that no official source seems to be reliable on their reports they don't really seem to know what they are doing, are being totally unprepared to an event of this size and have a tradition of complete procedural rigidity... only to choices remains, either you fire everybody and take control or you just GTFO...

Funny to just blast on the frogs while now.... everybody's doing it...

http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/3926040981/britain-fukushima-evacuation-80-kilometers

[scotchegg]

Apparently 75% of them have eaten their cheese and fled:

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/20/over-75-of-french-citizens-residing-in-japan-have-fled-the-country/

[nikoneko]

A guy from the IAEA was just on NHK saying exactly that. He blamed the gov't here for not releasing enough info leading to the foreign media freak out (he was japanese himself btw.) I half agreed with him and also half felt like it was the whole apologizing to someone who just bumped into you on the street Japanese thing as the foreign media is just as much to blame.

I also think part of the problem is the lack of English info out there and the western media's reluctance/laziness to dig into the info in Japanese as I've been pretty satisfied with my half-ass understanding of the Japenese lang. news I see and the translated nightly news on NHK.

Also the French did exacerbate the situation hugely. Even my good friend in Paris says it (his girlfriend was so panicked she was ready to fly us out within hours of the whole thing starting haha.)

must admit that the japanese communication and management of the crisis is still far from anything you might want to put in a textbook... actually... it's quit close to anything you want -not- to do in case of accident. If you see that no official source seems to be reliable on their reports they don't really seem to know what they are doing, are being totally unprepared to an event of this size and have a tradition of complete procedural rigidity...

[omae mona]

If you see that no official source seems to be reliable on their reports they don't really seem to know what they are doing, are being totally unprepared to an event of this size and have a tradition of complete procedural rigidity...

I kind of prefer this to the way they do it in my country. We tend to project 100% confidence that we know exactly what we are doing and have everything completely under control, when in fact everything is out of control. Actually I think the honesty of the officials in Japan has been refreshing. Obviously it would be best if they truly knew what they are doing. But since they don't, I am glad they are not lying about it.

And regarding procedural rigidity, I'm not sure that's a bad idea when so many people are in a panic and being irrational. If this event were occurring in the U.S., I think the government would have thought "out of the box" for certain. They probably would have brought out dozens of fighter jets to spray an aerosol made of ground-up potassium iodide pills on the power plant, put the president into a hazmat suit, and most importantly, made sure footage of all this was shown nonstop on TV so the public would know the government was "doing something".

[Mike Oxlong]

[damn name]

I'm curious.

1. What information do people want that they don't know?

2. If the crisis management is so bad, what would you do tomorrow to improve it?

[Coligny]

Procedural rigidity is good only for case that have been prepared for. The army waiting for tepco authorisation is still surrealistic... But easy to understand behind its greedy motivation, tepco priority was to save the plant, the army priority is to put the situation under safe control.

I'm curious.

1. What information do people want that they don't know?

2. If the crisis management is so bad, what would you do tomorrow to improve it?

You manage to trollishly miss the point: after the tokaimura cock up, trust was lost. Information is not necessarily aboot quantity but quality. There is no real need to know the gruesome details when the plant is still burning, but knowing that the few data or recomandations given can be trusted is quite important. Tepco didn't want to use seawater to protect their assets, compromising safety, and before that they falsified safety inspection reports...

2 look back... you will easily find answers... mainly fixing known historical weakpoints in the design, acting upon IAEA warnings... it's not a case of "after the accident it's easy to point fingers" it's a case where it seems the operator priority was clearly quick bucks over safety.

[Mock Cockpit]

I'm curious.

1. What information do people want that they don't know?

2. If the crisis management is so bad, what would you do tomorrow to improve it?

In situations like this no-one wants to hear a bunch of Pointdexters banging on about millisieverst and cesium 101. What they want to hear is the prime minister standing there with a shovel and a bucket saying "we're gonna get this bastard under control even if I have to go down there my own self and pour buckets of water on the muthafukka. I will not rest until every man jack of you are safe". We need the emperor to say he's prepared to go down there and do a royal dump on it if it'll help and most of all we need those TEPCO big wig pricks to be standing at the gate directing operations even if it means their cocks fall off in a month. You are the wankers who are getting paid the big bucks, you went after these positions of power, well boys it ain't all blowjobs from geisha girls and kickbacks from the yakuza. Fucking lead!

[damn name]

Coligny : I don't understand why those 2 questions are trollish.

Mock Cockpit: I like knowing those details. I think Kan made an excellent point last night (or was it two nights ago, I've lost track) that people didn't have time to be pessimistic. He was resolute, but honest about the seriousness of the problems at Fukushima and about the work that lies ahead. He has a lot more on his plate than the nuclear plant that has killed no one so far.

You were hoping for John Wayne so the foreigners will be happy?

[damn name]

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked those questions. It seems this is a group of people who know each other. Like a private club. I'm not looking for an argument. I was curious and not trying to pick a fight.

[Mock Cockpit]

You were hoping for John Wayne so the foreigners will be happy?

Actually first I was kinda hoping the emperor would bust out his royal fleet of kei-toras and strap a 400 litre tank to the backs of each one and the whole royal family drive right in to the guts of the place and let loose. And then take a royal dump in there.

[cstaylor]

I'm curious.

1. What information do people want that they don't know?

2. If the crisis management is so bad, what would you do tomorrow to improve it?

[1] TEPCO and the GOJ are going much better now, although they are still playing catch-up with events. For example, what is the protocol for inspecting, filtering, and verifying the water supply in all nearby prefectures? Is the GOJ going to leave it to each individual prefecture to handle it, or should there be a concerted effort with unified standards applied to all contaminated water supplies?

[2] With perfect hindsight now I'm sure the Jietai will want to purchase a couple of global hawks for nuclear inspection so they don't have to wait for the U.S. team to get in place. The GOJ should put into law that the Jietai should be available immediately during a similar event in the future.

I don't think the questions are trollish at all. Slate Hive is running a section right now where readers can suggest solutions to the cooling issues in reactors 3 and 4.

[nikoneko]

In situations like this no-one wants to hear a bunch of Pointdexters banging on about millisieverst and cesium 101. What they want to hear is the prime minister standing there with a shovel and a bucket saying "we're gonna get this bastard under control even if I have to go down there my own self and pour buckets of water on the muthafukka. I will not rest until every man jack of you are safe". We need the emperor to say he's prepared to go down there and do a royal dump on it if it'll help and most of all we need those TEPCO big wig pricks to be standing at the gate directing operations even if it means their cocks fall off in a month. You are the wankers who are getting paid the big bucks, you went after these positions of power, well boys it ain't all blowjobs from geisha girls and kickbacks from the yakuza. Fucking lead!

Because Bush was so good at that after 9/11 and Katrina... Sarcasm aside I get what you are saying and really appreciated the Tokyo Fire Dept. press conference yesterday, they did a hell of a job of bringing the info AND we're gonna get this shit under control.

[Jack]