TEPCO: Unit 2 containment vessel leaking (April 18)

[jpak]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-04/18/c_13834199.htm

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhuanet) -- In Japan, the Vice President of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Sakae Muto, says the Containment Vessel of Fukushima Reactor 2 is leaking, and has probably been damaged. But he added that no problems have been found with the spent fuel rods in Reactor 4.

Meanwhile the nation's Chief Secretary, Yukio Edano, has arrived in Fukushima Prefecture for the first time since the disaster unfolded. Sunday's mission was aimed at explaining government policies to local leaders.

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[fascisthunter]

1. jpak keepin' it real

thanks for the update

[madokie]

2. This will make Chernobyl look like childs play before its all said and done. rec

[FBaggins]

4. Can you make a prediction on when that claim will cease to be objectively laughable?

Some sort of evidence that will make that clear?

Because right now there isn't any reason to believe that it's anywhere close... or likely to become so.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. The fact that they're both level 7 nuclear disasters

doesn't make them close in your mind?

:freak:

[madokie]

9. Wasting your time there

Sorry don't mean to be telling you what to do, it just came out.

[FBaggins]

12. Nope.

Seven is as high as that scale goes. If Chernobyl were 1,000 times worse than the threshold for a seven... it would still be a seven.

Take a look at the Kobe quake compared to this one. On the Japanese scale (which only goes up to seven), they are both the same. Does that make them close in your mind? The recent one was actually 100-times as powerful (and of course there's the tsunami to add onto that).


I've given examples on a number of threads of exposure/contamination rates from Chernobyl and compared them to the recently-reported data from Fukushima. It isn't even close.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

14. It's not over.

They'll only get closer from this point forward until the "containment."

You'd at least agree that it's the closest nuclear disaster to Chernobyl, right?

[FBaggins]

15. Neither is Chernobyl

But unless something else goes badly wrong, they're pretty close to "over" by most standards.

They're going to continue to leak highly radioactive water for a number of weeks. it sounds like they're close to at least capturing that and keeping it from getting to the ocean, but even while they aren't, those radioactive materials are not going into the atmosphere or ending up in drinking water or crops/livestock... they're going into the ocean. That's obviously not a good thing, but it's dramatically less dangerous than particles released into the air.

The amount of material released in ways that could end up on land has fallen significantly and while it's not "over", it's not going to appreciably increase detected levels in milk/cattle/crops/etc. Half-life decay is exceeding their new releases, so those levels are dropping pretty rapidly.

What we don't know is whether what's left will be 10% of what has been released... or 20 or 30%... but it isn't going to be five times as much. And Chernobyl was many times worse. Take ANY measure of actual exposure. Levels in milk around Chernobyl are available for years and years...

...Most of Fukushima province is already selling milk again. I could give you scores of examples.

You'd at least agree that it's the closest nuclear disaster to Chernobyl, right?

Oh yeah. No question about it. Possibly not by EVERY measure (it's unlikely to kill as many people as the only "six" did for instance), but in total release and damage to the reactors... it's second only to Chernobyl.

[SpoonFed]

16. Absurdity

Your recent attempt at downplaying this reminds me of hearing about how many nukes the US and the Soviets had and how many times over the would could be destroyed.

7 = 7 last time I checked.

Your fantasy football nuke industry coaching can't bring it back to the "not as bad as TMI" state despite how much you might want to try. Nice try at blaming this all on the tsunami, yet again. It's getting old dude.

This is a 7 because they decided to build 6 reactors in the worlds shittiest earthquake zone and all the hubris and pride of the engineers couldn't stop this from happening. I'm not even confident they can prevent this from going forward how ever nature plus the uncontrollable laws of physics takes it.

The upcoming documentary will be called "Fukushima: Unstoppable staring Denzel Washington".

[FBaggins]

17. You're not confident that it won't get worse? How can it?

After all... Just like you said... 7=7 :rofl:

Can you not see how ridiculously over simplistic your position is?

[SpoonFed]

18. Oh wait? It can still get worse?

You started off this disaster message board propaganda campaign of yours with imaginary under assessments of the disaster and then when things got so horribly bad that there was no where for you to go you then started first posting things are under control and getting better messages.

So which is it, we've reached INES Level 7, the worse possible level and things are now getting under control, OR things very much are not under control and the situation could get very much worse?

Can you not see how infantile you appear when you try to have your cake and eat it, too?

[FBaggins]

19. Of course it can get worse

But not according to you.

I hasn't been, but it still could.

And it would still be a seven.

"infantile" is the position that it doesn't matter if radiation levels were 100 times higher in milk than anything that has been reported anywhere... Because they're both sevens. It doesn't matter if not a single worker has received a deadly dose (while Chernobyl) killed dozens of them quickly with massive doses)... They're bot the same because the scale says so.

Incredibly juvenile.

[FBaggins]

20. "Fukushima Disaster Nowhere Near Chernobyl – Expert"

The atomic disaster which struck the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi NPP is incomparable to the 1986 Chernobyl accident, International Atomic Energy Agency's deputy director, Denis Flory, stated.

Even though Japan increased the Fukushima Daiichi NPP's nuclear event assessment level to 7. or as much as Chernobyl, Denis Flory, stated that it is significantly less catastrophic than the 1986 disaster in the former Soviet Union.

"The Fukushima accident and Chernobyl are very different," he said, as cited by The Australian. "Chernobyl happened when the reactor had power, it was a huge explosion, vapor, power explosion, and then you had a huge graphite fire."

Thus, Flory supported Japan's official position that the current nuclear threat is far lower than that of Chernobyl. According to Japanese officials, the Fukushima radiation releases had been less than one-tenth of the total released at Chernobyl.

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=127297

[SpoonFed]

21. translation

nuclear industry and regulatory insider says everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about,

PS. Why don't you just start suffixing "expert" to all your posts?

[madokie]

7. I see I got a reply but for some reason I can't reply back, du won't let me

Probably something I did on my end if the truth was known.

Oh well it would have been a waste of time anyway :hi:

[jpak]

3. The US NRC suspected this earlier this month (April 6)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07japan.html?src=me

The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought.

The statement came as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, started to inject nitrogen into the reactor containment vessel of unit No. 1 to prevent a possible explosion.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s statement regarded unit No. 2, and the agency underscored that its interpretation was speculative and based on high radiation readings that Tokyo Electric had found in the lower part of unit No. 2’s primary containment structure, called the drywell. The statement said that the commission “does not believe that the reactor vessel has given way, and we do believe practically all of the core remains in the vessel.”

The agency’s statement was issued after Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, told a House hearing on Wednesday morning that the commission had told him that the core had melted through the vessel.
He based that on a question his staff had asked the agency. But the agency responded to him by e-mail on Tuesday without directly addressing possible melting, saying only that it speculated that “part of the Unit 2 core may be out of the reactor pressure vessel and may be in the lower space of the drywell.” After the hearing, in response to numerous questions, the agency said that “there are possible leakage paths from the reactor vessel into the drywell.”

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[FBaggins]

5. I think that most of us here "suspected" it within a day or two of it happening.

Where did they think all the activity in leaked water was coming from?

[GliderGuider]

6. K&R

The biggest problem the global victims of this catastrophe have is the lack of trustworthy information - whether through official reluctance to release bad news or simple unavailability.

I still want to see some seppuku at the highest levels. The best short-term strategy for dealing with an intransigent, rogue power hierarchy is decapitation. "Pour encourager les autres."

[aquart]

10. Yes, well, when we apply that policy here at home

we can recommend it to others. For now, we would be racing headlong to pick up our mass Darwin Award, if we didn't have to stop and pick up our Hypocrisy statuette first.

[GliderGuider]

11. "Controlling over-population, one corporate executive at a time..."

I'll take my wins where I can find them. :evilgrin:

[madokie]

13. Peace

So would I