There is a lot happening in Japan, and the situation at Fukushima remains pretty much out of human control. There is a nuclear incident at a reactor site other than Fukushima. There is still quite a bit of radioactive material leaking into the sea. The radiation levels in the crippled Fukushima plants is still high … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 23: Exposures exposed, the hole in Reactor #1, and the sea around us … →

Worker exposure to high levels of nuclera radiation and the distribution of radioactive materials about the landscape and in possibly unexpected places are the stories of the week at Fukushima. Also, officials are wondering, how have the potential effects of a tsunami at Fukushima (and, apparently, it is possible to have a tsunami here) changed … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 22: When does the disaster end and the cleanup begin? →

The reactors at Fukushima continue to be hotter than “cold shutdown” levels, and at least one reactor (#1) is probably leaking from the core containment vessel. Fission products in high amounts, high pressure, and high temperature indicate that something close to fission is still happening although an apparent lack of large quantities of short lived … Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 21: The chickens come home to roost edition →

The most significant news seems to be the raising of the level of this accident, on the international scale of how bad things get at nuclear power plants, to the highest level, which is also the level set for the Chernobyl accident. This does not mean that the Fukushima Disaster is the same as the … Continue reading Japan quake, tsunami, nuke news 17: Fukushima is now officially “a Chernobyl” →

A crack in the containment vessel of Fukashima Reactor 3 has been mentioned by MSNBC and ABC news, citing the New York Times. The New York Times has an article in which the crack is mentioned in a side bar, attributed to an anonymous person. An anonymous source is not particularly impressive, but the New … Continue reading The Crack at Fukushima Reactor 3, and other matters →

The water within Reactor Number 3 (where three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation yesterday) is 10,000 times more radioactive than the average water inside a nuclear reactor and contains radioactive iodine that is generated during fission and has a half-life of 8 days. Japanese engineers are pretty sure that this means that … Continue reading There is now little doubt that Fukushima Reactor 3 experienced post-tsunami fission but it is leaking →

This is a particularly important update. An anonymous source in Japan has told reporters connected to the New York Times that there is a visible crack in the Fukushima Reactor 3. This is the reactor that showed isotopic evidence of a leak of some kind. Arguments had been made that a hole in the reactor … Continue reading Japan quake, tsunami, nuke news 10 … Tickling the Dragon’s Tail? →

Another sequence of headlines and news reports, continuation of THIS POST: Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels: Still nothing to get in a flap about The story of the three quake- and tsunami-hit reactors at Japan’s Fukushima plant continues, with indications that one of the three worst-hit reactors has sustained further damage. … Continue reading Japan quake, tsunami, nuke news 02 →

For the purposes of discussion in the Japan Disaster threads, I’ve made a graphic that very roughly approximates the zone of likely future very high rates of cancer if the Fukushima nuclear power plant were located where our (somewhat similar but smaller) plant is located, upwind during the winter of the Twin Cities. The lightened … Continue reading Twin Cities Nuclear What If →

We often drive on a stretch of Minnesota State Route 10 that runs from Elk River to Big Lake and eventually to a point past Saint Cloud that takes about an hour to drive on a normal day, and we see trains. The railroad track runs along this route, and during the hour it takes … Continue reading A Tale of Two Towers →

Tokyo Electric officials have noted that they can not rule out the possibility that fuel rods in the Fukushima reactors have melted, at least to some extent. No one else, as far as I can tell, thinks that fuel rods have not melted. A Question that is more important than that of Tokyo Electric’s sudden … Continue reading Japan nuke news 20: Tokyo Electric: “fuel may have melted” →