Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster!!!

[Coligny]

http://spoonsenergymatters.wordpress.co ... aftermath/

ehm...

oups...

[yanpa]

As of 2:20pm cooling has restarted.

It's a Mickey Mouse setup...

Tepco smells a rat in Fukushima No. 1 fuel pool cooling glitch

A rat apparently gnawed on a switchboard or its wiring, causing the 30-hour power cutoff for the spent-fuel pool cooling systems at the triple-meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that led to renewed fallout fears, Tokyo Electric Power Co. indicated Wednesday.

Tepco said it found the burnt carcass of what appeared to be a rat near the makeshift switchboard as well as burn marks on the equipment, although it has yet to determine the exact cause of the power outage.

The switchboard runs the cooling systems of the spent-fuel pools of reactors 3 and 4 as well as a common pool located inside another building at the site that contains 6,377 nuclear fuel assemblies.

Tepco said it had not taken any steps to prevent wildlife, such as rodents, from getting at the switchboard and said it is continuing to investigate other factors that may have caused the power outrage, which was apparently resolved minutes after midnight Tuesday.

...more... (incl. picture of frazzled suspect)

Hang on...

The makeshift switchboard was located on the back of a truck that had been parked outside since May 2011. Tepco was planning to stop using the equipment and switch to a new permanent switchboard by the end of this month.

WTF? that's about the same level of engineering quality with which I've set up a bunch of temporary servers in the office, the difference being that if a rat chews through one of the cables there, all there will be is a dead rat and maybe some downtime, not a dead rat and a bunch of control rods a few hours away from turning the region into a nuclear wasteland.

[matsuki]

nuclear bandaids hahahaha

[Taro Toporific]

nuclear bandaids hahahaha

Nuclear regulators acknowledge fault below Tsuruga reactor is active
Kyodo News | May 23, 2013
The Nuclear Regulation Authority accepted on Wednesday an assessment that a reactor at the Tsuruga plant in western Japan is sitting above an active fault, making it increasingly difficult for the facility to resume operation.
It is the first time Japan's regulatory authorities have acknowledged an existing reactor is located above a fault feared to move in the future, according to an NRA official. The judgment may leave plant operator Japan Atomic Power Co. with no option but to scrap the No. 2 reactor.
More...

homer-reactor.png

[matsuki]

Wonder how much this will cost energy users that are supplied by JAP-Co

[Coligny]

nuclear bandaids hahahaha

Nuclear regulators acknowledge fault below Tsuruga reactor is active
Kyodo News | May 23, 2013
The Nuclear Regulation Authority accepted on Wednesday an assessment that a reactor at the Tsuruga plant in western Japan is sitting above an active fault, making it increasingly difficult for the facility to resume operation.
It is the first time Japan's regulatory authorities have acknowledged an existing reactor is located above a fault feared to move in the future, according to an NRA official. The judgment may leave plant operator Japan Atomic Power Co. with no option but to scrap the No. 2 reactor.
More...

homer-reactor.png

Come on, that's a journalistic "may"... Legally speaking they are fucked. They will need a change in the phrasing of the law first...
"nukular reactor over active fault might not be restarted unless they are blessed by the local priest for their safety and the safety of the shareholders".

[Russell]

Stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant struggles to keep staff

Keeping the meltdown-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in stable condition requires a cast of thousands. Increasingly the plant’s operator is struggling to find enough workers, a trend that many expect to worsen and hamper progress in the decades-long effort to safely decommission it.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the utility that runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant that melted down in March 2011 after being hit by a tsunami, is finding that it can barely meet the headcount of workers required to keep the three broken reactors cool while fighting power outages and leaks of tons of radiated water, said current and former nuclear plant workers and others familiar with the situation at Fukushima.

Construction jobs are already plentiful in the area due to rebuilding of tsunami ravaged towns and cities. Other public works spending planned by the government, under the “Abenomics” stimulus programs of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is likely to make well-paying construction jobs more abundant. And less risky, better paid decontamination projects in the region irradiated by the Fukushima meltdown are another draw.

Some Fukushima veterans are quitting as their cumulative radiation exposure approaches levels risky to health, said two long-time Fukushima nuclear workers who spoke to The Associated Press. They requested anonymity because their speaking to the media is a breach of their employers’ policy and they say being publicly identified will get them fired.

TEPCO spokesman Ryo Shimizu denied any shortage of workers, and said the decommissioning is progressing fine.

“We have been able to acquire workers, and there is no shortage. We plan to add workers as needed,” he said.

The discrepancy may stem from the system of contracting prevalent in Japan’s nuclear industry. Plant operators farm out the running of their facilities to contractors, who in turn find the workers, and also rely on lower-level contractors to do some of their work, resulting in as many as five layers of contractors. Utilities such as TEPCO know the final headcount — 3,000 people now at Fukushima Daiichi — but not the difficulties in meeting it.

TEPCO doesn’t keep track of contractors

TEPCO does not release a pay scale at Fukushima Daiichi or give numbers of workers forced to leave because of radiation exposure. It does not keep close tabs on contracting arrangements for its workers. A December 2012 survey of workers that the company released found 48% were from companies not signed as contractors with the utility and the workers were falsely registered under companies that weren’t employing them. It is not clear if any laws were broken, but the government and TEPCO issued warnings to contractors to correct the situation.

Hiroyuki Watanabe, a city assemblyman for Iwaki in Fukushima, who talks often to Fukushima Daiichi workers, believes the labor shortage is only likely to worsen.

“They are scrounging around, barely able to clear the numbers,” he said. “Why would anyone want to work at a nuclear plant, of all places, when other work is available?”

According to Watanabe, a nuclear worker generally earns about 10,000 yen a day. In contrast, decontamination work outside the plant, generally involving less exposure to radiation, is paid for by the environment ministry, and with bonuses for working a job officially categorized as dangerous, totals about 16,000 yen a day, he said.

Experts, including even the most optimist government officials, say decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi will take nearly a half-century. TEPCO acknowledges that the exact path to decommissioning remains unclear because an assessment of the state of the melted reactor cores has not yet been carried out.

Since being brought under control following the disaster, the plant has suffered one setback after another. A dead rat caused a power blackout, including temporarily shutting down reactor-cooling systems, and leaks required tons of water to be piped into hundreds of tanks and underground storage areas. The process of permanently shutting down the plant hasn’t gotten started yet and the work up to now has been one makeshift measure after another to keep the reactors from deteriorating.

Thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods that are outside the reactors also have to be removed and safely stored. Taking them out is complex because the explosions at the plant have destroyed parts of the structure used to move the rods under normal conditions. The process of taking out the rods, one by one, hasn’t even begun yet. The spent rods have been used as fuel for the reactors but remain highly radioactive.

News getting out via Twitter

One Fukushima Daiichi worker, who has gained a big following on Twitter because of his updates about the state of the plant since the meltdowns, said veteran workers are quitting or forced to cut back on working in highly radiated areas of the plant as their cumulative exposure rises.

“I feel a sense of responsibility to stick with this job,” he told AP. “But so many people have quit. Their families wanted them to quit. Or they were worried about their children. Or their parents told him to go find another job.”

Known as “Happy-san” to his 71,500 Twitter followers, he has worked in the nuclear industry for 20 years, about half of that at Fukushima. He has worked at bigger contractors before, but is now at a mid-level contractor with about 20 employees, and has an executive level position.

“If things continue the way they are going, I fear decommissioning in 40 years is impossible. If nuclear plants are built abroad, then Japanese engineers and workers will go abroad. If plants in Japan are restarted, engineers and workers will go to those plants,” he said in a tweet. Most of Japan’s nuclear plants were shut for inspections after the Fukushima disaster.

His cumulative radiation exposure is at more than 300 millisieverts. Medical experts say a rise in cancer and other illnesses is statistically detected at exposure of more than 100 millisieverts, but health damage varies by individuals. He was exposed to 60 millisieverts of radiation the first year after the disaster and gets a health checkup every six months.

Nuclear workers generally are limited to 100 millisieverts exposure over five years, and 50 millisieverts a year, except for the first year after the disaster when the threshold was raised to an emergency 100 millisieverts.

The workers handle the day-to-day work of lugging around hoses, checking valves and temperatures, fixing leaks, moving away debris and working on the construction for the equipment to remove the spent fuel rods.

Other jobs are already so plentiful that securing enough workers for even the more lucrative work decontaminating the towns around the plant is impossible, according to Fukushima Labor Bureau data.

321 of 2,124 openings filled

During the first quarter of this year, only 321 jobs got filled from 2,124 openings in decontamination, which involves scraping soil, gathering foliage and scrubbing walls to bring down radiation levels.

“There are lots of jobs because of the reconstruction here,” said bureau official Kosei Kanno.

A former Fukushima Dai-ichi worker, who switched to a decontamination job in December, said he became fed up with the pay, treatment and radiation risks at the plant. He has 10 years of experience as a nuclear worker, and grew up in Fukushima.

He warned it would be harder to find experienced people like him, raising the risk of accidents caused by human error.

He accused TEPCO of being more preoccupied with cost cuts than with worker safety or fair treatment. The utility went bankrupt after the disaster and was nationalized by a government bailout. Even if TEPCO somehow obtains workers in quantity in coming months, their quality would deteriorate, he said.

“We’re headed toward a real crisis,” said Ryuichi Kino, a freelance writer and photographer who has authored books about the nuclear disaster and has reported on TEPCO intensively since March 2011.

Under the worst scenario, experienced workers capable of supervising the work will be gone as they reach their radiation-exposure limits, said Kino.

He believes an independent company separate from TEPCO needs to be set up to deal with the decommissioning, to make sure safety is not being compromised and taxpayer money is spent wisely.

Watanabe, the assemblyman, said the bigger nuclear contractors may go out of business because they are being under-bid by lower-tier companies with less experienced, cheaper workers. That is likely to worsen the worker shortages at the skilled level, he said.

Happy-san has the same fear. Some of the recent workers, rounded up by the lesser contractors, appear uneducated and can’t read well, he said.

Although life at the plant has calmed compared to right after the disaster, Happy-san still remembers the huge blast that went off when one of the reactors exploded, and rubble was showering from the sky for what felt like an eternity.

“We had opened the Pandora’s box. After all the evil comes out, then hope might be sitting there, at the bottom of the box, and someday we can be happy, even though that may not come during my lifetime,” he said.

[Coligny]

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/sla ... tory01.htm

Slashdot on the zero death toll of Fukushima...

As usual: no dead meanz no problem, so nukular is all good ... Right ? Plus thyroid cancer is the easiest to cure so it don't count anyway...

Cringe worthy weaboo comments on how japan discard all contaminamated food and other lalaland review of the situation by people who can't put japan on a map and certainly still hate the germans for bombing pearl harbour...

[Samurai_Jerk]

So no one has died yet from conditions that typically take years to develop after exposure to radiation?

What a relief!

[Coligny]

That's SCIENCE !!!

Oups ... Sorry...

Just opportunistic exploitation of premature statistics....

[canman]

I'm not sure if anybody else saw this news report a few days ago, but they reported that in Iwate they have a number of unclaimed bodies from the earthquake and tsunami. They had sketch artists try and recreate the faces, if they were too badly decomposed, or they have posted items like watches or jewelry found on the bodies as tools to help people identify the bodies. Now I for one hadn't heard that there were unclaimed bodies, and would like to know why they haven't spread these photos and pictures around everywhere. From what I saw, they are done professionally, and are not gruesome in anyway, so why not try and get them out to everyone, so people can have more closure. I remember when the Aum people were still on the loose, I could see their damn faces everywhere!

[Coligny]

My bet:

Fucking privacy laws...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

My bet:

Fucking privacy laws...

Even worse....self-restraint.

[Coligny]

Japan...

Endless ...

St00pidity...

[canman]

I mean, I'm sure there are family members who want to know what happened to their loved ones, but if they are not given any information or where to go and check, how can they claim their loved ones. I hope the local governments will do everything they can to help families find and claim their deceased family members.
I really hope that the reason this is going on for so long, is that some company isn't making money off of keeping the corpses, or pressure from insurance companies, so they don't have to pay claims. But I know that even for Japan, that is too cynical!

[Coligny]

Pretty sure there is a time limit for claiming life insurance payout...

And little delay here and there...

But if it's like in the army... No corpse, no money... (MIA vs KIA)

[Coligny]

Japan, the country of endless fun:

Reconstruction Agency official's tweets slander NGO, lawmakers supporting Fukushima victims
A senior Reconstruction Agency official in charge of supporting Fukushima nuclear disaster victims has slandered lawmakers and an NGO on his private Twitter account in connection with their recovery efforts, prompting the agency to mull punishing him, it has been learned.

moar: http://mainichi.jp/english/english/news ... 8000c.html

Even for politician, there should be a limit to how much they are allowed to suck at their jobs...

[Yokohammer]

Tip of the iceberg, Coligny.

This was all over the news all day yesterday (Mizuno has been officially canned, by the way).
This guy had a total disregard for the people he was supposed to be helping as well as his job. The only difference between him and others in his position is that he was stupid enough to tweet about it. So stupid, in fact, that he was tweeting about how stupid other people were, thereby throwing a glaring spotlight on his own stupidity. What an ass. Unfortunately, I can't help thinking that there are others who hold the same contempt for the people they're supposed to be serving (they are "public servants," after all), but are just smart enough that they aren't going to reveal their true feelings publicly. I doubt that they're all like that, but I'm pretty sure there are more like, but marginally smarter than, Mizuno.

[Coligny]

Eat sum good rice from Fukushima... Want it or not...

From rice to be grown and harvested in 2013, the national government is buying up 250,000 tonnes for the government's rice reserve; of that, 40,000 tonnes, or 16%, may come from Fukushima Prefecture. The Fukushima prefectural government is encouraging farmers to participate in the government bidding if they fear "baseless rumors" driving down the price for their rice in the open market.

Reaching the point where I would really like to support Fukushima rice farmers... Maybe with a bullet in the head...

[matsuki]

Eat sum good rice from Fukushima... Want it or not...

From rice to be grown and harvested in 2013, the national government is buying up 250,000 tonnes for the government's rice reserve; of that, 40,000 tonnes, or 16%, may come from Fukushima Prefecture. The Fukushima prefectural government is encouraging farmers to participate in the government bidding if they fear "baseless rumors" driving down the price for their rice in the open market.

Reaching the point where I would really like to support Fukushima rice farmers... Maybe with a bullet in the head...

With all the mixing/relabeling of the rice they do, eventually even the average Japanese is going to buy foreign rice rather than risk getting a cesium supplement in their Japanese rice.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

With all the mixing/relabeling of the rice they do, eventually even the average Japanese is going to buy foreign rice rather than risk getting a cesium supplement in their Japanese rice.

Severely doubt it...at least the cesium will be Japanese, and -- in the mind of the average Yamatoese -- nothing beats cock-san.

[Mike Oxlong]

We're a long way from Bikini Atoll and irradiated fish...

[Russell]

Last two Japan nuclear reactors can stay online, even without meeting strict new safety standards

The Nuclear Regulatory Authority concluded that Units 3 and 4 at the Oi nuclear plant in western Japan are “not in the condition that would pose immediate safety concerns” even without being inspected under the new safety rules.

That ruling means operator Kansai Electric Power can keep the two units online until September, when they will undergo scheduled safety checks and be re-examined under the new rules, the authority said.

“I expect the operator will continue improving the safety of the plant towards meeting the new standards,” said the nuclear authority’s head Shunichi Tanaka.

The body will also continue examining if there are any active tectonic faults underneath the plant.

The stricter new standards are part of a government effort to convince a sceptical populace that they are taking safety issues seriously in post-Fukushima Japan.

More

Sounds like they are doing a great job to convince a skeptical populace. NOT.

[Big Booger]

Eat sum good rice from Fukushima... Want it or not...

From rice to be grown and harvested in 2013, the national government is buying up 250,000 tonnes for the government's rice reserve; of that, 40,000 tonnes, or 16%, may come from Fukushima Prefecture. The Fukushima prefectural government is encouraging farmers to participate in the government bidding if they fear "baseless rumors" driving down the price for their rice in the open market.

Reaching the point where I would really like to support Fukushima rice farmers... Maybe with a bullet in the head...

Well they are growing that shit like crazy here in Fukushima... the moment JA sent out notice about the government bidding... the plants went in the ground.. and I said to my wife.... WHAT THE FUCK....

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Stay calm, be cool! No worries....The radiation is not gonna do a thing....

Thank God Japanese don't have kids anymore...

[Coligny]

Tsssss, yer an idiut and if youse and these vedgetabuls wuz as smart and shit as -someone that I won't name because you all know against whom I'm still immensely pissed of- you'zad' knewzed that radiashiun is good for you and you only need to smile to it and shit rainbows instead of blood and everything would be ok.

[Coligny]

Thinking of witch... That cocksucking Abe is the perfect man for the job right now... You can never know if he gets radiation poisonning since shitting blood is already part of his daily routine...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Stay calm, be cool! No worries....The radiation is not gonna do a thing....

Thank God Japanese don't have kids anymore...

CNN had that same story on their website last night. Scary but the source is a Korean blog.

[yanpa]

Stay calm, be cool! No worries....The radiation is not gonna do a thing....

Thank God Japanese don't have kids anymore...

CNN had that same story on their website last night. Scary but the source is a Korean blog.

The original link says: "With all the reports of raised levels of radiation, not only in Japan, but in the US as well" which is irrational scaremongering and does not endear the website in question as a reliable source. Where was the mutant produce found? In what time periods? Enquiring minds wish to know.

[matsuki]

I don't think it's credible at all but discouraging the consumption of Japanese produce in any way may be a good thing.