Massive Quake Hits NE Japan

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

All in all as long as the reactors maintain integrity its not going to be a BIG thing from a public safety perspective. Venting losses is what is being seen right now and the wind is carrying it out to sea away from the public (hence the movement of the carrier fleet).

OTOH whoever made the claim that this is less in scope than TMI needs to have their head examined.

[Docfeelgood]

Before Monday's explosion, officials were aware of the risk of a blast. Operators knew that flooding Unit 3 with sea water would cause a pressure buildup in the reactor containment vessel but felt they had no choice if they wanted to avoid a total meltdown.

Is this the same reactor containment vessel that holds the nuclear material?
If so? would this be the cause of a big explosion? a steam pressure explosion?
If so then there would be radiation detectors going crazy. yes?
Really, they would not hide this information, I'm just thinking silly.

[giblets]

Life is fragile. There isn't much I can do about it.

[Docfeelgood]

Life is fragile. There isn't much I can do about it.

[Docfeelgood]

A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered Monday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture.

I can't imagine.

[Docfeelgood]

ABC news

Japan's Nuclear Emergency: Third Fukushima Reactor Failing
After Two Explosions at Plant, Third Reactor's Fuel Rods Exposed
"The situation is getting worse by the hour. We haven't hit bottom yet... We now have reports that unit 3 suffered perhaps a 90 percent uncovering of the core -- this is unprecedented since Chernobyl," Kaku said.

They just can't get a break!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

OK lets give a break down of acronyms/definitions

RPV (reactor pressure vessel)
Containment building comprised of primary and secondary containment

Primary containment is the "drywell" or reactor structure that holds the reactor in place and provides containment from possible 'meltdown effect' if the reactor is breached.

Secondary containment is the superstructure that provides missile protection and vapor release protection. Secondary containment in unit 1 and unit 3 was asploded. Primary containment is reportedly intact for both these units as well as the RPV itself.

[Docfeelgood]

"They haven't stabilized the sea water yet. Remember, they're hanging in there right there with the fingernails. This is how close we are to a full-scale meltdown. So it's stable in the sense that you're stable when you're hanging by your fingernails," The leak is making it difficult to keep the core of the reactor covered with sea water, Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist, said.

Any validity to this OGIE?

Check this from ABC they are reporting the third reactor is leaking!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=13131123

[The Mad Monk]

In Japan, the search for life yields death and devastation
MARK MACKINNON
Sendai, Japan— Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Mar. 14, 2011 10:51AM EDT
Last updated Monday, Mar. 14, 2011 11:12AM EDT

The squad of police officers made their way tentatively across what was once the parking lot of the Sendai Army Flight School, poking at the shifting ground beneath their feet with long wooden poles.

They used their sticks to prod at the wreckage of lives that had been lifted up by Friday’s tsunami and deposited here on southern edge of this battered city. Splintered homes, flipped cars, a living-room chair, a basketball.

But every now and again, one of the poles would strike something more unsettling: a human being.

“We find them everywhere. In the cars, beneath the rubble. No one knows,” said Sho Oji, who was directing a team of a dozen police officers digging for the dead. He said rescue workers found more than 1,000 bodies in the airport area alone over the past three days.

He was interrupted by a series of shrill whistle blasts. Another body had been found, deep in the sea of detritus. The entire team of police scrambled to the site, hoisting first a green tarp to protect the dignity of the dead, then a stretcher bearing a covered corpse.

And so it went across Japan on Monday, as rescue workers made one ghastly discovery after another. Some 2,000 bodies were discovered along the coastline north of Sendai as crews finally reached the hard-hit areas of Minamisanriku and Ishinomaki City. In Minamisanriku, it’s estimated that 10,000 of the town’s pre-disaster population of 17,000 are missing.

In Iwate prefecture, farther north, 12,000 people are missing in the town of Otsuchi, which had a pre-disaster population of 15,000. Another town, Rikuzentakata, which has a population of 23,000 people, has been described as “almost completely wiped out.”

Along the coastal highway being used by relief workers to access the vast disaster area, crews of fire fighters and paramedics loaded bodies – some of them tiny – onto blue tarpaulins and lifted them away from the rubble into waiting ambulances. Carrions circled overhead.

Though hope remained that some of the missing might yet be found alive, the overwhelming majority of the news was bad.

The official death toll stood at 2,800, but a police officer in hard-hit Miyagi prefecture – the region in which Sendai is the largest city – estimated that at least 10,000 died in Miyagi alone. Tens of thousands of people were still officially missing on Monday, more than 72 hours after the initial 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered the tsunami.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/in-japan-the-search-for-life-yields-death-and-devastation/article1940947/

[Hauldren Collider]

There are a bunch of Japanese students visiting TJ right now, they arrived last Thursday, and words can't even describe the shock they are in. Everyone is feeling really sorry for them.

[Docfeelgood]

There are a bunch of Japanese students visiting TJ right now, they arrived last Thursday, and words can't even describe the shock they are in. Everyone is feeling really sorry for them.

Please, give them our condolences.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Please, give them our condolences.

HC,

Doc is on your ignore, but the feeling is shared regardless.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Any validity to this OGIE?

Check this from ABC they are reporting the third reactor is leaking!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=13131123

Not going to comment until verification and more data available.

[Docfeelgood]

Not going to comment until verification and more data available.

TY
I understand.

[ColdWizard]

NEI

UPDATE AS OF 11:00 A.M. EDT, MONDAY, MARCH 14:
Fuel rods in the reactor vessel of Unit 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant were temporarily uncovered from cooling water today, but seawater injection has raised the water level to the halfway point, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said. Seawater is now being used to cool all three Daiichi reactors that were shut down after the March 11 earthquake. Unit 2 had lost its emergency cooling capacity. Workers were preparing to remove hydrogen from the reactor building, and TEPCO has opened the steam relief valve of the reactor.

The primary containment vessels and reactor cores of reactors 1 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi facility are intact, following earlier hydrogen explosions in the secondary containment buildings of both reactors.

At Unit 1, seawater injection continues to cool reactor. Safety regulators consider the reactor’s pressure an indication of a stable condition. The hydrogen explosion on March 11, which occurred between the primary containment vessel and the containment building, did not damage the primary containment vessel or the reactor core. To control the pressure of the reactor core, TEPCO has been injecting seawater and boric acid into the primary containment vessel of Unit 1 since March 12.

A hydrogen explosion Monday at Unit 3, similar to the unit 1 explosion, did not damage the primary containment, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said. The control room remains operational, and a government official said that pressure in the reactor vessel is stable. After the explosion, the few hundred people remaining in the 12.5-mile evacuation zone were asked to stay indoors.

At the Fukushima Daini site, cooling capability has been reestablished for Unit 4 at the reactor. Units 2 and 4 are in cold shutdown.