Unfortunately nobody is covering this except this guy:
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Actually, if you are able to read other East-Asian languages, this news is everywhere. Link in Korean (from one of the biggest newspaper in Korea)
http://news.donga.com/Inter/Japan/3/0213/20110513/37186396/1
I actually got an update this morning from Al Jazeera, then switched over to the Today show where they were doing an in-depth investigation of the heartbreak of bellybutton lint.
Read about it yesterday, and was hoping you (JCD) and Adam would have spoke about it on the NA show, but it broke while you guys were in the middle of it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8509502/Nuclear-meltdown-at-Fukushima-plant.html
No mention of “meltdown” in NYT.
Or do you say meltDOAN
A good source of information
http://fairewinds.com
I find it very interresting
This guy gets all wound up against nuclear power but does not the blame lie in the fact that the designers put the generators in the basement? Bet they don’t do it THAT way again.
Drudge Report had this info from AP yesterday.
#6 The problem with the generators was they were designed for like 6 foot wave and an 8 foot wave came. When No one ever saw an 8 foot wave before.
Yes my heights are wrong but that’s simplified answer.
Bullshit, the problem is the reactors are on an active earthquake fault. Screw the rest.
Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting this as well.
“Previously, Tepco officials had said they believed there had been “damage” to the fuel rods but didn’t specify what that meant. On Thursday, for the first time, officials conceded that the fuel rods likely had “melted,” crumbled or changed shape, and that the fuel had probably fallen from its casings.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576318470827245128.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird
@ Ah_Yea
Don’t you love the wordplay in US media? Lots of “could haves”, “Likely”, maybe’s” and believed. While others more interested in reporting the facts and nothing but give solid confirmation.
With “High Tech” its always the issue that caused this horrible accident is pretty obvious now in hindsight and its been corrected. Problem is, there are 15 things the experts all know are possible to happen but not cost effective to address so it is claimed “safe” and we take our risks. Then the next accident will be one of the 15 things already well understood but not designed against.
Any one issue can be afforded, but ALL OF THE KNOWN RISKS cannot be designed against and afforded.
LIARS will tell you differently. But they are lying.
Though you and Adam Curry thought the problems at Fukushima were a lot of hype?
I actually just looked this up on NHK’s website. Its absolutely true.
link for the story is here:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_26.html
An official of Japan’s nuclear safety agency has suggested that a nuclear fuel meltdown at one of the damaged Fukushima reactors means that filling the reactor’s container with water may be meaningless.
Hidehiko Nishiyama told reporters on Friday that melted rods at the bottom of the No. 1 reactor are being cooled by a small amount of water.
He said he doubts that it’s necessary to flood the containment vessel entirely, as the plant operator has been trying to do.
The operator, TEPCO, said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods in the reactor are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of the reactor’s pressure vessel.
TEPCO says the melted fuel has apparently cooled, even though much of the injected water is leaking through holes at the bottom of the vessel. …….
I actually sent this into CNN’s news tip email and then called them as well. The idiots don’t even have it up on their main homepage.. its just ridiculous.
I’m not emailing anyone else. Well maybe Fox.
This crap is exactly why I want Mr. Fusion home and car power supplies.
This is totally dreadful.
That’s histeria from the Frech contingent.
They have to design nuclear reactors with zip core separation facilities (where the fuel rods are hydraulically brought together against the force of gravity [up out of of sleeves coming at an angle from below,] and fall down to sub-critical masses,) and bury the whole reactor cores .5 Kilometer deep.
Then it would be safe.
You have to design for the worst case scenario.
The entire nuclear industry has to be run by sand hogs, ’cause the policy using accountants and politicians to run risk assessment has already been proved wrong.
Now that they have shamefully admitted to lying and purposefully withholding the factual truth from the public, who will forcefully demand and hold the Japanese government obligated to commit suicide?
If they dishonor themselves by hiding in shame without committing suicide, they need to be hunted down and executed.
#7 I guess we read the same story. I also learned about it today from the Drudge Report.
There are similar reactors at Browns Ferry not to many miles from my home. One of them was recently found to have a stuck valve that would have caused problems if they ever needed to use the emergency cooling system. No tornado damage though.
The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) daily information sheets (which I viewed through the Arms Control Wonk Blog) were more than enough information to determine that the fuel was melting during the crisis. The reporters are surprised because they weren’t understanding what the power companies were releasing.
With no way to safely store radioactive waste for 250,000 years, and no way to build a foolproof safe reactor, the big money nuke companies in the U. S. want this covered up as much as possible. Look forward to clean nuclear energy near you soon.
hmmm. Anyone ever hear of thermal pollution?
TV news has lost its value. just move on.
Funny how something like this gets all the nancie’s going. The reactors were past due to be decomisioned so they did indeed standup to their scheduled life expectancy. A couple cowardly simps shouldn’t deter us from moving forward with nuclear energy. Cover it in crete and deal with godzilla when he rises in a few years.
Did I hear him apologizing for Mururoa Atoll?
Much fuss about something expected.
We want our electric lives, AC, TV, iPods, computers, etc. No matter how we get that electricity there is some trade off.
You want hydro? Well, some water is going to be dammed and some fish will have a tough swim.
You want coal fired generators? Look for excessive CO2, SO2, and HNO3. Also figure out what you are going to do with all that ash.
You want wind? Look for dead birds, whirring noise, and a lot of trees cut down. And brown outs when the wind is calm.
You want solar. Look for shutting down your life every night.
You want nuclear? Look for a place to dispose the waste and the occasional accident. AND a lot of wusses all excited when Godzilla steps on their favorite geisha hall.
Everything is a trade off. We try our best to keep the negative elements to a minimum but sometimes things get bigger than we thought. You can design your reactor to survive a 747 crashing into it, a 8.5 earthquake, and a 25′ tsunami. BUT when a A380, a 9.0 earthquake, or a 30′ tsunami happens, well, … shit happens.
Try this.
Guys in aluminium foil suits are standing around the reactor.
I wouldn’t get too worried … yet.
In #24, Mr. Fusion said: You want solar. Look for shutting down your life every night.
Solar focused on salts heat the stuff until it becomes molten and the latent heat remains for a long time to boil low viscosity oil to drive steam turbines which generate electricity.
A few kilotons of salts would tide you over a sunless period of several days, which just doesn’t happen in some arid south western states.
Of course if the mega volcano under Yosemite blows up, (and someday it will happen,) so much shit will hit so many fans that not having electricity from the desert will be the least of your problems.
Risk assessment is done from the wrong perspective.
Its a systemantic principle that Fail-safe systems fail by failing to fail-safely.
Just taking to heart that change in perspective causes the design of systems to change from if to when.
Instead of “How likely is <something> to happen in X years?” they should be asking the question entirely differently.
They should be asking: :How will we get along when <something> happens and deprives us of power?
For one thing, it would lead to systems designed so that single points of failure stop the entire from working entirely instead of the current the nuclear reaction goes on on its own.
If they had implemented even a single zip feature which would have taken brought the fuel down to sub-critical units fissionable units the moment that a tremblor is detected, (out of the many plant improvements possible,) we would not be having these posts.
No I’m not a nuclear engineer, I’m a systems designer.
I design systems that fail elegantly instead of work mysteriously.
Elegant comes from the Latin e (meaning out) and legare (meaning choose*).
An elegant system is one where Occam’s razor has been applied and everything that is unnecessary has been out-chosen.
Implementing a reactor core so that it only produces electricity (and fissionables) when everything is perfect and stops working (and producing fissionables) when things are not perfect is easy, but it has to be done from the start.
You can’t retrofit safety.
*) the word legage is also at the root of legal which is who we choose to get along.
#24, Holy Cow. Is that really you?
“You want solar. Look for shutting down your life every night.”
Many areas cannot efficiently do solar, but most areas in the West can. Batteries store the energy collected during the day. I’ve heard of super capacitors in the near future. And, yes, battery disposal is an issue.
I think it will take different strategies in diff areas. Could create some jobs? Obama, where the fuck are you?