The radiation at the Fukushima plants has gone up, rather than down, since June. This may be because contaminated water has become more concentrated due to evaporation. The release of radiation from the plant into the air continues, although a covering over Reactor 1 is almost completed. The release of radiation from the plant into … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 39: Nuclear Explosion at Reactor 3?
The latest update on the crisis in Fukushima. The hot spots are everywhere. Be careful where you step! But first, we’d like to introduce the handy-dandy Fukushima Post and Ana’s Feed search engine. This search engine will return results from this series of posts we’ve done. This is a good place to start if you … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 38: Decontamination Edition
As a result of our last posting on Fukushima, we had a discussion initiated by commenter Daedelus2u about radioactive istopes of Cesium becoming concentrated in fish. I thought I’d take this opportunity to expand on that discussion a little. This relates to the possibility that radioactive elements spilled or spewed from a nuclear reactor site … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 37: Glow in the dark fish, and the meaning of “Power”
One of the interesting items we have this week is a study by Greenpeace in which various organisms from the sea near Fukushima were sampled for radioactive isotopes. Let’s take a closer look. The data in the table provided (see the first item in Ana’s feed for the link) show the amount of radiation (radioactive … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster: Update # 36: Sushi Recommendations
It has been Just over six months since a magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the hours following that incident, nuclear power protagonists filled the blogosphere, the news outlets, and other media with assurances that little could go wrong, that the reactors would be managed, that the … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster: Update # 35
Today all we have for you is Ana’s feed, and only the first half. We have both been very busy with distracting things like work and other writing projects and so on. There are interesting things going on at Fukushima and in the Nuclear Power industry in general, as you’ll see soon. In the mean … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 34: A quick feed for your reading pleasure
In the old days this was easy. The power plants were melting down but no one knew what was going on inside them; Water was being poured in and cooking off as steam, and every now and then the way they were getting the water in or the way they were powering the pumps would … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 32: “Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in History”
The International Atomic Energy Association issued its last report on Fukushima on June 2nd and appears to not be keeping their web site up to date any more. This is the last time I’ll be checking with them unless I hear otherwise. The email scandal reported last time continues “Analysts say the scandal reflects panic … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 31: Radioactive stuff spreads, questions multiply
Perhaps the most interesting single thing on the table in today’s update is the revelation that at least one of Fukushima’s reactors suffered sufficient damage from the earthquake that hit the region … prior to the tsunami … to have likely gone out of control or melted down. This is hard to assess because the … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 30: It was, is, and will be worse than you thought
Much of the current news is about exposure and fallout. As a point of information, the Sievert is a unit of “dose equivliant” from exposure to ionizing radiation. It was designed to indicate relative levels of biological effects on living organisms. This measurement technique attempts to take into account the fact that radiation is absorbed … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 29: Indecent Exposure
There is an increase in reports of activity of scientists studying the extent and impacts of radiation spilled or otherwise transferred into the ocean from Fukushima. TEPCO, in the meantime, seems to have a need to put a lot more water, possibly decontaminated to some degree, into the sea. Similarly, there is a plan afoot … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 28: Mostly about contamination, of the sea, and around the world
In terms of radiation fallout Fukushima is said to be approaching Chernobyl by at least certain measures, and the potential for Fukushima to be worse in terms of total radioactive material released is very real. However, the two disasters really can’t be compared sensibly because the circumstances of release, and the potential effects, are very … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 27: They should have seen the tsunami coming.
Even as the situation at the troubled Fukushima Nuclear Reactors … well, remains troubled … the post-game analysis of what went wrong and what could have been done better develops. It is becoming clear that the plant had no real plan for the event of a tsunami even though it was built at an elevation … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 26: “My head is full of question marks”
It is possible that the bottom will fall out of the Fukushima Reactor 4 spent fuel tank. Efforts are being made to shore up the concrete structure. There is no longer any doubt that those mysterious holes hypothesized, seen or not see, in some of the reactor vessels are for real. It is now established … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 25: Elderly could build cooling system; radiation release and exposure concerns; fuel storage tank may collapse.