Courtesy ABC
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Japanese officials declared states of emergency for five reactors.
The container protecting a nuclear reactor at a plant facing a possible meltdown was not damaged in an explosion that injured four workers and destroyed the exterior walls of the plant, a Japanese government spokesman said today.
Government Spokesman Yukio Edano said the blast did not damage the nuclear reactor itself at the Fukushima Daiichi, which would cause radioactive material to leak out. But a top U.S. scientist said Japan must come to terms with the severity of the nuclear accident it is facing, and work to immediately protect its most vulnerable residents from the damage of radiation exposure — particularly protecting children against exposure to radioactive iodine.
“Any attempt to make it seem that this is not the worst case imaginable is foolhardy,” said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
If the reactor core melts through the steel vessel that is housing it, Lyman said, the risk Japan faces is a radioactive plume that could disperse tens or even hundreds of miles. “You could have large swaths of areas that will need severe remediation. And a lot of people exposed to radioactivity who will have an increased chance of cancer.”
The majority of the 51,000 people living near the danger zone have been already evacuated.
So for perspective, 10% of of Japans nuclear reactors, or 1% of the nuclear reactors in the world have partially melted down three mile island style, and will need to be cut apart piece by piece over the next 20 years, and buried somewhere.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Yes the disaster could have been much worse, threatening the displacement of the entire city of Tokyo, and the West Coast of the US, but the experts have it under control, and Nuclear containment buildings blowing up is nothing to worry about…
I’m sure these reactors were built, to the extent of the best engineering knowledge and practice of the time, to withstand earthquakes — probably with the idea of handling up to a 7.5 or so, just as the levees protecting New Orleans were designed and built to stand up to a Category 3 or even Category 4 hurricane. Who could have predicted that a Category 5 hurricane would ever come that way? Clearly, anyone with a brain. But the builders despaired of getting the Billions it would have cost from the funding agencies. Or, the funding agencies made it clear to the Army Corps of Engineers that it would never happen — it’s a matter of perspective, take your choice.
And who could ever have foreseen that these reactors would be exposed to a more powerful earthquake than they were designed to withstand? Again, clearly, anyone who really thought about it. But they hoped it would be far enough in the future that the plants would have come to the end of their life cycle or have been upgraded. But that kind of thing tends to keep getting put off and put off and studied to death.
Humans are not very good at foresight. We keep finding problems we never anticipated, or things happen we were sure would never come to pass in our lifetimes.
It’s already shockingly expensive to design and build a nuclear power plant — how much more would it cost to build one that could stand up to whatever worst-case scenario we can think of? And that would be safe to be around for as long as the nuclear materials used would be dangerous?
According to scientists if there is a “worst case” scenario with the Fukushima plant, then the west coast of the United States would be getting nuclear fallout in 10 days.
http://rense.com/general93/fallout.htm
I don’t know about the reputability of that graphic, 750 RADs is probably an exaggeration, with that exposure a lot of people wouldn’t make it.
Please spare a thought – or if you are religious, a prayer – for the workers at these plants. Almost certainly, the injured ones have been exposed to near-lethal dosages of radiation. These workers are heroes. Those people are obviously highly trained profession¬als and doing something most people are no where near brave enough to attempt. Stories say 1,000 people died when that explosion happened, yet the others stay and work to prevent something far worse.
To this very day the press mis-reports 3 Mile Island. They state that it “shut down as designed” and “suffered only a partial meltdown”. Truth is one of the reactors completely melted down and pooled at the bottom of the containment vessel. There was a large radiation release in the form of steam and if not for plant workers getting lucky and shutting down the water, a steam explosion would have occurred and Harrisburg would be a ghost town now.
The Japanese reactors right now are in a precarious state. They can’t shut them down and they are taking the unprecedented move of flooding the reactors with raw seawater. If a meltdown occurs, the explosion of steam will blow the facility sky high, and you will see a chernobyl style radiation release.
Since the two facilities were partially underwater, a meltdown would have caused a huge boom. The water has receded so things have improved, but the reactor(s) are wrecked. They’re not designed to be exposed to caustic seawater.
I have been sick since this explosion happened, and my doctor is at a loss to tell me what happened. I found a doctor who tells me that it is the fault of the nuclear reactor releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. He tells me thousands of people have gotten sick around the world but the news media is covering it up. I think it is the fault of General Electric and the Japanese companies running these nuclear reactors around the world, so I plan to sue them. A buddy of mine was outdoors with me the other day and we were building a shed in the back yard in the sun. We heard about the reactor incidents and after a while in the sun I started feeling hot and tired, and my doctor says it’s because of the nuclear reactors. They should all be shut down around the entire planet, we don’t need them and they are making people sick!
(sarcasm intended)
Uncle Patso, that wasn’t the problem with New Orleans at all. The dams were built poorly, probably a corporate mafia kickback scheme. So instead of merely having the water go over the dam, it broke through the dam. The sandbags held better than the newly built portions.