To our Japanese members of the trainz community
- Thread starter NSWGR_46Class
- Start date
Happened in reactor #2.
Hearing that they are evacuating non-essential personell at the facility.
The USA news not reporting containment failure at this time. You may have a different source for your info. Our news here is often "softened" to prevent panic.
Keep us posted what you are hearing.
Respectfully,
Aardvark, CNN has a live NHK feed on it's main page. My source is from there. A TEPCO (PowerPlant owners) briefing was interrupted when the angry Japanese reporters asked angry questions about how seawater would help if the containment leaked. I never heard Japanese so angry, they are usually a calm and respectful people.
al.sa
Thanks for the reply. Actually watching CNN here.
They are now just carefully discussing the containment failure.... resonable until full confirmation is received.
One of the experts interviewed says that the power company stores spent rods inside the dome. They are concerned about what may happen to these spent rods as well as the rods that are overheating.
Expert said on hearing of personnel evacuation that he sees this as a sign of a very real and dangerous situation.
Regards,
Thanks for the reply. Actually watching CNN here.
They are now just carefully discussing the containment failure.... resonable until full confirmation is received.
One of the experts interviewed says that the power company stores spent rods inside the dome. They are concerned about what may happen to these spent rods as well as the rods that are overheating.
Expert said on hearing of personnel evacuation that he sees this as a sign of a very real and dangerous situation.
Regards,
Radiation levels at the plant peaked at a whopping 8000 microsieverts/hour for a few minutes, or roughly the exposure from getting a CT scan.
To my best knowledge they have since gone down to something like 2000 uSv/hour, which is roughly the exposure you get each year if you're a frequent flier. Still no leakage of radioactive materials apart from some cesium in the steam.
Meanwhile, down the coast at the oil refineries...
But no one cares about that.
EDIT: seems that some of the readings are beginning to move into the millisievert range around the plant... that may actually cause some significant problems...
EDIT^2: spent fuel rods on fire, apparently. Well, that wasn't something I thought would happen. Uhhh... that's not good.
To my best knowledge they have since gone down to something like 2000 uSv/hour, which is roughly the exposure you get each year if you're a frequent flier. Still no leakage of radioactive materials apart from some cesium in the steam.
Meanwhile, down the coast at the oil refineries...
But no one cares about that.
EDIT: seems that some of the readings are beginning to move into the millisievert range around the plant... that may actually cause some significant problems...
EDIT^2: spent fuel rods on fire, apparently. Well, that wasn't something I thought would happen. Uhhh... that's not good.
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Actually the peak was 800 milliSieverts, that's 8 Sieverts, which is bad for your lymph and your reproduction abilities. The fire in the fourth reactor is burning at where they store the spend fuel, meaning there is fuel burning letting off a/b/g radiation and energic neutrons uncontrolled. those firemen fighting the fire must be heroes. And a CT scan is the doctor's last resort. That is like perhaps a hundred Xrays, so the parallel is not quite good there. Besides the uSv is like taking a CT scan each hour. Besides all radiation is bad bad bad, even miniscule amounts of which, which is now not the case.
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Very definitely microsieverts before, otherwise the current peak of 400 milisieverts wouldn't be such a huge deal.
(800 milisieverts is 0.8 sieverts. Once we get to around 1 sievert, we start getting health problems for people at the plant.)
And not all radiation is bad: you're exposed to about 2.4 mSv of radiation per year just from background radiation. It's reasonably normal.
Now, 400 mSv/hr is a problem which needs to be fixed. :\
My understanding of the situation on the ground:
Reactor building #4 is on fire. Reactor #4 is contained and shut down and has been for a few weeks for inspection, and therefore it can't heat up and start fission.
Reactor building #4 also has pool storage for spent fuel rods. They're under a few dozen feet of water. There probably won't be any event significant enough to boil away several dozen feet of water and expose the fuel rods.
EDIT: NHK reported a the fire was contained to the fourth floor of reactor building 4 and has now been extinguished.
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amigacooke
Well-known member
My sympathies and condolences to Japan.
Hi Everyone
I believe that the amigacooke condolences should be all we are sending or discussing on this thread at this time. I would be surprised if anyone on this forum has any expertise in nuclear reactors, tsunamis and earthquakes to realistically discuss the possible wide outcome of this growing disaster.
However, one thing has become very clear with every passing hour, that being the implications of this crisis has the potential to affect the lives of almost every one throughout the world.
Economically we are already seeing the affects on the financial and stock markets worldwide. Healthwise, there is the potential to spread the nuclear contamination perhaps over hundreds if not thousands of square miles and in terms of migration developed countries could see once again huge numbers of people wanting to access those countries.
As we ponder all this for the future, I believe all of us should just send our condolences and sympathies to the people of Japan and hope that their God may go with them
Bill
I believe that the amigacooke condolences should be all we are sending or discussing on this thread at this time. I would be surprised if anyone on this forum has any expertise in nuclear reactors, tsunamis and earthquakes to realistically discuss the possible wide outcome of this growing disaster.
However, one thing has become very clear with every passing hour, that being the implications of this crisis has the potential to affect the lives of almost every one throughout the world.
Economically we are already seeing the affects on the financial and stock markets worldwide. Healthwise, there is the potential to spread the nuclear contamination perhaps over hundreds if not thousands of square miles and in terms of migration developed countries could see once again huge numbers of people wanting to access those countries.
As we ponder all this for the future, I believe all of us should just send our condolences and sympathies to the people of Japan and hope that their God may go with them
Bill
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Russia sent two planes and a helicopter as well. And are rescuing areas US rescuers have escaped. The nuclear disaster is worse then Three Mile Island now, and just a step under Chernobyl. Sadly all kinda treehuggers would jump on the wave now and advocate for prohibition of nuclear power, that's sad.
The distance between a Chernobyl-style disaster and a Three Mile Island-style "disaster" (no radioactive material was released at TMI, neither was anyone injured or killed) is enormous.
A Chernobyl style event could occur at this site under the following circumstances:
1. The cores experience total meltdown.
2. Something inside the reactor causes some kind of explosion inside the reactor. (Even if this did occur, to puncture the containment unit would be nearly impossible.)
3. Either someone flies an airplane into the containment structure (which would likely puncture it; anything less is futile) or someone goes back in time and convinces Japanese nuclear engineers to use obsolete Soviet designs to build the reactor.
Roo, I was talking about the scale, Fukushima is a six and probably seven on a 1-7 scale, TMI was a five, Chernobyl was a seven. Just saying about the scale, not comparing technologies. Chernobyl is newer. The Fukushima containment is cracked at least in one reactor, maybe two. A M 9.1 quake is just not what the plants are designed for. Much less combined with a thirty foot high wall of water.
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Seems odd and sad that the trains are not running at Aizu Wakamatsu Station:
http://www.nttfukushima.com/live/jr_aizu/Default.html
Normally, during daylight hours, this webcam is a beehive of activity.
[Personal Note... at least all my favorite Japanese girl singers are all okay.]
`
http://www.nttfukushima.com/live/jr_aizu/Default.html
Normally, during daylight hours, this webcam is a beehive of activity.
[Personal Note... at least all my favorite Japanese girl singers are all okay.]
`
Wow......I've been trying to cool people down about the nuclear situation on another forum, and I missed this discussion by people that are far more mature then the before mentioned forum.....
Not to jump on anyone, but I am just going to post exactly what I know. I'm not a nuclear physicist (though I've considered it before) but I do quite a bit about whats happening at Fukushima.
First off, its getting worse with every day. However, the fears of a Chernobyl style disaster are simply not real. The reactor is a completly different design, and the Soviet built Chernobyl reactors were a joke (well, maybe thats poor wording). Their containment structures were lax, and the disaster happened while preforming an experiment which involved doing something the reactors were never designed to do, and when things went wrong, they were already in a bad situation.
I've seen a few posts mentioning concerns about the explosions. 3 have occured so far. All of them are hydrogen explosions caused by heated Ceasium 135 in the control rods, mixing with the water, producing hydrogen. When the excess pressure (steam) was vented into the containment building, the hydrogen dispersed into the building, and a spark ignited it. 2 of the 3 explosions were pretty minor, destroying only the outer building around the reactor, but not damaging the containment vessel that the reactor sits in.
The third explosion was different. It to was a hydrogen explosion, but it apparently occurred within the cooling system, not in the reactor building. The fear is it damaged the containment vessel, allowing an escape route for nuclear contaminated materials. But none of this can be confirmed, because no one can get near the reactor because of radiation.
Now, about the meltdown. What is happening is a bit of an Apollo 13 scenario. This many things were never meant to go wrong at the same time. These reactors are nearly 40 years old. They use electric pumps to move coolant around the reactor core to cool it, and produce steam. When the earthquake hit, the reactors did what they were designed to do, they SCRAMed. They stopped producing electricity, but not heat. The backup generators kicked in to take over the coolant circulation. Well, then the Tsunami hit, it damaged the backup generators, causing them to break down, and allowing coolant stand rather then circulate.
Sound like a design flaw? Well, yes, because of the age of the reactors. Modern reactors use gravity if they lose the electric pumps in an emergency to circulate water. All it takes is the turn of a valve, and gravity, which is constant in the universe, will work to slowly circulate the water, keeping it and the reactor core cool, and preventing the buildup of pressure (steam).
Well, old reactors don't have that feature, so several times the water level has dropped below the core's on reactors 1, 2, and 3, causing partial melting of the core. None of this has caused any damage to the containment vessel....yet. They have been able to keep the water levels high enough to prevent a total meltdown. What happens there is the core basically becomes a molten blob of radioactive material that is in an uncontrolled reactor and could melt through the crust of the earth if nothing stops it (see China Syndrome). Three Mile Island got close to that, but the reactor only lost about half its fuel to melting. Even if that does happen, there is a chance both the containment vessel, and the think concrete pad which it sits on will prevent this molten blob from melting into the Earth.
The fire at reactor 4 is more worrying then a total core meltdown. Reactor 4 was offline for maintenance during the quake, and all the fuel rods had been removed. The fire was in the fuel rod storage pond, basically a 40 foot deep swimming pool (don't even think about swimming in it, you WILL die) where nuclear material is stored under water to prevent radioactive contamination, and keep the fuel cool. Apparently, the explosion at reactor 3, which was pretty violent if anyone has seen the video, damaged the pool. Water levels have not been able to be maintained, and the fuel was briefly exposed, causing a fire. It was put out, erupted again, and I don't know whats happened since then.
Whats being done at Fukushima? Everything they can. The people there are Hero's. They are working at radiation levels far above legal safe limits, and even had to leave when it became toxic for a brief period of time. They are putting sea water into the reactors to cool them. This destroys the reactors, they will never function again. They will be Billion dollar paperweights. Clearly they are willing to do anything to prevent a terrible disaster. Experts are pouring in from around the world, even some who were involved at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Here in the US, we have nothing to fear. The amount of radiation that could reach the US might be slightly higher then background levels, but no more then getting an X-Ray at the Dentist (I had 12 X-Rays on my last visit). In Japan, do what the authorities tell you. Stay safe, and stay alert. The levels are still quite low, most of its blowing out to sea, but it is still higher then background levels.
Nuclear power is still one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy around. I have documents, graphs, and PDF's from around the world to back me up on that.
And most of all, keep the brave men at that plant in your thoughts, prayers, whatever it is you do. They are Hero's, the world is watching them do what they were trained to do. Their efforts at that plant are whats keeping this specific disaster small.
And best wishes to the some 10,000 missing in Japan right now, as if you don't already have enough to deal with.
Not to jump on anyone, but I am just going to post exactly what I know. I'm not a nuclear physicist (though I've considered it before) but I do quite a bit about whats happening at Fukushima.
First off, its getting worse with every day. However, the fears of a Chernobyl style disaster are simply not real. The reactor is a completly different design, and the Soviet built Chernobyl reactors were a joke (well, maybe thats poor wording). Their containment structures were lax, and the disaster happened while preforming an experiment which involved doing something the reactors were never designed to do, and when things went wrong, they were already in a bad situation.
I've seen a few posts mentioning concerns about the explosions. 3 have occured so far. All of them are hydrogen explosions caused by heated Ceasium 135 in the control rods, mixing with the water, producing hydrogen. When the excess pressure (steam) was vented into the containment building, the hydrogen dispersed into the building, and a spark ignited it. 2 of the 3 explosions were pretty minor, destroying only the outer building around the reactor, but not damaging the containment vessel that the reactor sits in.
The third explosion was different. It to was a hydrogen explosion, but it apparently occurred within the cooling system, not in the reactor building. The fear is it damaged the containment vessel, allowing an escape route for nuclear contaminated materials. But none of this can be confirmed, because no one can get near the reactor because of radiation.
Now, about the meltdown. What is happening is a bit of an Apollo 13 scenario. This many things were never meant to go wrong at the same time. These reactors are nearly 40 years old. They use electric pumps to move coolant around the reactor core to cool it, and produce steam. When the earthquake hit, the reactors did what they were designed to do, they SCRAMed. They stopped producing electricity, but not heat. The backup generators kicked in to take over the coolant circulation. Well, then the Tsunami hit, it damaged the backup generators, causing them to break down, and allowing coolant stand rather then circulate.
Sound like a design flaw? Well, yes, because of the age of the reactors. Modern reactors use gravity if they lose the electric pumps in an emergency to circulate water. All it takes is the turn of a valve, and gravity, which is constant in the universe, will work to slowly circulate the water, keeping it and the reactor core cool, and preventing the buildup of pressure (steam).
Well, old reactors don't have that feature, so several times the water level has dropped below the core's on reactors 1, 2, and 3, causing partial melting of the core. None of this has caused any damage to the containment vessel....yet. They have been able to keep the water levels high enough to prevent a total meltdown. What happens there is the core basically becomes a molten blob of radioactive material that is in an uncontrolled reactor and could melt through the crust of the earth if nothing stops it (see China Syndrome). Three Mile Island got close to that, but the reactor only lost about half its fuel to melting. Even if that does happen, there is a chance both the containment vessel, and the think concrete pad which it sits on will prevent this molten blob from melting into the Earth.
The fire at reactor 4 is more worrying then a total core meltdown. Reactor 4 was offline for maintenance during the quake, and all the fuel rods had been removed. The fire was in the fuel rod storage pond, basically a 40 foot deep swimming pool (don't even think about swimming in it, you WILL die) where nuclear material is stored under water to prevent radioactive contamination, and keep the fuel cool. Apparently, the explosion at reactor 3, which was pretty violent if anyone has seen the video, damaged the pool. Water levels have not been able to be maintained, and the fuel was briefly exposed, causing a fire. It was put out, erupted again, and I don't know whats happened since then.
Whats being done at Fukushima? Everything they can. The people there are Hero's. They are working at radiation levels far above legal safe limits, and even had to leave when it became toxic for a brief period of time. They are putting sea water into the reactors to cool them. This destroys the reactors, they will never function again. They will be Billion dollar paperweights. Clearly they are willing to do anything to prevent a terrible disaster. Experts are pouring in from around the world, even some who were involved at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Here in the US, we have nothing to fear. The amount of radiation that could reach the US might be slightly higher then background levels, but no more then getting an X-Ray at the Dentist (I had 12 X-Rays on my last visit). In Japan, do what the authorities tell you. Stay safe, and stay alert. The levels are still quite low, most of its blowing out to sea, but it is still higher then background levels.
Nuclear power is still one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy around. I have documents, graphs, and PDF's from around the world to back me up on that.
And most of all, keep the brave men at that plant in your thoughts, prayers, whatever it is you do. They are Hero's, the world is watching them do what they were trained to do. Their efforts at that plant are whats keeping this specific disaster small.
And best wishes to the some 10,000 missing in Japan right now, as if you don't already have enough to deal with.
Hi Everybody.
Although I very much respect your posting as very knowledgeable klinger I feel you are only looking at one aspect of this unprecedented disaster. What the world has witnessed here is a earthquake followed by a tsunami and then the nuclear emergency that you have posted on.
The combination of all three I believe makes this unprecedented and takes disaster handling into a whole new and unknown scenario. The nuclear emergency (so far) has perhaps killed a maximum of two people. However, it holds the possibility of long-term illness and death for people living near the plant and perhaps further afield. That is something we shall see in the future.
For the present we are already witnessing children without parents, families without homes, small businesses destroyed and large multinational industries crippled due to the number of production plants affected by the disaster. Here in Britain Honda are advising that they may have to try and source some components from other parts of the world which normally are supplied from Japan.
This disaster has happened to a country which is already one of the most indebted nations in the world. Therefore you can only wonder where the finance for the massive rebuilding program will come from and what effect that will have on the already stretched world financial situation.
This is not just a nuclear tragedy it is a humanitarian tragedy and a financial tragedy all combined which as stated takes us all into unknown areas of disaster control that even Chernobyl and the Asian tsunami of a few years ago did not reach.
For now, I am sure all our hearts go out to those who have lost their loved ones and have seen all their hopes and dreams for the future snatched away in the past few days.
Bill
Although I very much respect your posting as very knowledgeable klinger I feel you are only looking at one aspect of this unprecedented disaster. What the world has witnessed here is a earthquake followed by a tsunami and then the nuclear emergency that you have posted on.
The combination of all three I believe makes this unprecedented and takes disaster handling into a whole new and unknown scenario. The nuclear emergency (so far) has perhaps killed a maximum of two people. However, it holds the possibility of long-term illness and death for people living near the plant and perhaps further afield. That is something we shall see in the future.
For the present we are already witnessing children without parents, families without homes, small businesses destroyed and large multinational industries crippled due to the number of production plants affected by the disaster. Here in Britain Honda are advising that they may have to try and source some components from other parts of the world which normally are supplied from Japan.
This disaster has happened to a country which is already one of the most indebted nations in the world. Therefore you can only wonder where the finance for the massive rebuilding program will come from and what effect that will have on the already stretched world financial situation.
This is not just a nuclear tragedy it is a humanitarian tragedy and a financial tragedy all combined which as stated takes us all into unknown areas of disaster control that even Chernobyl and the Asian tsunami of a few years ago did not reach.
For now, I am sure all our hearts go out to those who have lost their loved ones and have seen all their hopes and dreams for the future snatched away in the past few days.
Bill
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Red_Rattler
Since 09 May 2003
Interesting that the country that got attacked by nuclear weapons, actually uses nuclear as a source of power. Not sure if this was deliberate or not, the movie Midway is on, started with the nuclear attack, and just after the starting, a news break about the nuclear episode that Japan is having now.
Japan is so unlucky to be on a fault plate.
I do suppose we, as the viewers of disasters, are rather ignorant. I've nearly forgotten about the cyclone that hit Queensland, the earthquake that killed 100 000 people in Haiti, and the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in '08/'09, and we seem to move on from one event, say I feel sorry for them, give a few dollars, then move on to the next event, say I feel sorry for them, give a few dollars and so on. So Japan will re-build for years after this, but in a year or two, we may have forgotten about the Quake/tsunami/nuclear explosion. Japanese people won't, but others will.
Nat(Vander), would you be qualified to go to Japan?? You're a rescue Fire-fighter, so I suppose you might
Jamie
I do suppose we, as the viewers of disasters, are rather ignorant. I've nearly forgotten about the cyclone that hit Queensland, the earthquake that killed 100 000 people in Haiti, and the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in '08/'09, and we seem to move on from one event, say I feel sorry for them, give a few dollars, then move on to the next event, say I feel sorry for them, give a few dollars and so on. So Japan will re-build for years after this, but in a year or two, we may have forgotten about the Quake/tsunami/nuclear explosion. Japanese people won't, but others will.
Nat(Vander), would you be qualified to go to Japan?? You're a rescue Fire-fighter, so I suppose you might
Jamie