Fukushima In 40 Year Cold Shutdown

Alan Gillis Reports Nine months after the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese Government claims that the 3 damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are in cold shutdown conditions. Yes, if you add "conditions" which they did. At best with all the jerry-rigging to cool down the melted reactor cores and melted spent fuel pond at Reactor 4, using a mile of rubber hose to patch in new pumps, also add Temporary to cold shutdown conditions and 40 years to dismantle the industrial carnage in the Japanese government's new plan. That is if all goes well and new technologies are developed to safely remove melted cores and rods and dispose of them somehow somewhere.

At Chernobyl the solution was to cap the disaster with concrete. There was no way to cool the single exploded reactor with its mangled fuel rods scattered in a heap on the floor. With the aging sarcophagus steadily rotting, there is now a multi-billion dollar project underway to dismantle the cap and destroyed reactor complex (caused by a steam explosion during a safety test in 1986) and cover what's left with a giant containment building.

The China Syndrome

With 4 nuclear nightmare meltdowns at Daiichi, 3 reactors and 1 cooling pond, the Japanese situation was beyond critical. What could happen was far worse than what did happen at Chernobyl. Though with reactor vessels still holding it was thought or at least their concrete casings, there was a chance for a safe cooldown. It was a desperate gambit, a bet with a nuclear devil with a potential of more than 4 times the fallout of Chernobyl if the Japanese lost control of Daiichi. In the end they almost did loose control of Reactor 1 according to The Wall Street Journal, December 1. The 100 tons of uranium metal that comprised the core did liquefy and burned through the stainless steel vessel and 3/4 the way through the concrete containment, on the way to a China Syndrome. How did that happen?

Shutdown Cooling System Reactor 1 (Operator Error: TEPCO Report)

The problem is no one knows if the temporary Cold Shutdown Conditions will hold while extraction of somewhere around a 1,000 tons of superhot nuclear fuel goes on for 25 years. The new 40 year plan appears to avoid the need for a new and permanent cooldown system while work goes on. "Maintain stable reactor cooling" says the plan. Stockpile duct tape, hai.

Fukushima 40 Year Cleanup Or More Cheapo-Screamo

The first target is the spent fuel rods stored at 4 reactors starting with the more dangerous melted and damaged rods from the pool at Reactor 4. That extraction of hundreds of tons of spent fuel should start in 2 years and would take around 10 years to remove. Meanwhile reactor cores would be examined and properly flooded with heavy water before workers start the even more difficult and dangerous extraction of melted cores to take another 10-15 years, then another 10 years to dismantle and decontaminate the site. That's 40 long years if all goes well.

And what do you do about general Daiichi contamination and current radiation leaks so workers can safely extract the hot uranium? A makeshift shed for Reactor 1 now in place, but no secure containment for the old exploded reactor buildings that are dangerously radioactive with flooded basements too of radioactive water, 90,000 tons in all onsite, including some in tanks above ground.

Use robots, build robots first, design robots before start, checkout American MIT in lunch teams for exploratory session, no try unJapanese solution first, bake many meetings, try remote Honda Prius fly in 5000 for gang-bang enemy reactors.

Then like Chernobyl, shouldn't Fukushima Daiichi be fully shielded by a vast containment building over the entire site in case of other accidents like cooldown failure or another tsunami? At least stop any radiation release. It might be the permanent solution after all if there's major trouble with the Plan. In the end what do you do with all the nuclear waste?

Bury it somewhere else of course, though more safely. That's possible if you could ship it all to France (Japanese problem solved) where the French have the expertise in reprocessing and permanent storage. Or of course bury it at Daiichi and go Cheapo-Screamo to save a few billion bucks. Cleanup number 2 around Daiichi is way more gigantic, over 1500 square miles of primary contamination and thousands more of secondary, and could sink Japan too as every last Yen falls into the bottomless Fukushima money pit.

Not Saving Fukushima

It wasn't thanks to a mature nuclear industry (in surprise mode) or a wise government that had plans and answers. There was however some serious (don't panic the public) lowballing of the disaster from the authorities including low estimates on just about everything from reactor damage to radiation released and food safety. Another nail after nail in the coffin of public trust, we're so used to on this side of the Pacific, though shockingly new in a modern Japan that thought it had recovered from Samurai movies and feudalism. Suddenly safe friendly nuclear is only safe if you lowball the risks and PR the percentages to death.

Fukushima was the devastating wakeup call for Japan.

The national psyche where paternalism and conformity were the usual pillars of success took a hit. After the earthquake and tsunami the third nuclear shock was too great to be a game-changer. The public reaction was eerily quiet. The Japanese did not take to the streets to stop nuclear or call for the collapse of the government, apart from some mild demonstrations in Tokyo. Did not even remind the government that it failed to protect them as is the primary function of any government and why powerful central governments came into being in the first place. After all private industry can do most everything else including get us into trouble. Even TEPCO the utility in charge was not raked over the coals.

What did happen to Japan was a kind of national paralysis. First the great tsunami from nature and then on its heels the greater man-made nuclear threat for a generation. The Japanese public could only wander through the tragedies we watched on TV. In other countries there might have been panic and riots. In Japan the nuclear disaster and menace to the future didn't need a voice of thunder. The disaster seemed to be everywhere as high as the sky, as deep as the water.

Still who is to blame? What needs to change? Can Japan go forward if it re-builds on the sands of the past? Has the world gone forward after the financial meltdown? Still melting. You can blame the banks for the global financial meltdown as Occupy Wall Street has done and you can blame TEPCO for the meltdowns of Daiichi, but governments create the conditions for exploitation and disaster or safeguard the land and the people. Governments must change and that means the people who make the decisions. The easiest way? Make them liable for stupid mistakes like the rest of us. In most any country politicians walk away from their jobs with pensions, deserved or not. Shrugging off stupid policy or dumb do nothing that can cost us Billions is part of the political game: Public Service, win some loose some. Let the next guy fix the mess and let the public pay.

A Ray Of Hope Or Back To Square One

At least the Japanese government did respond by shutting down other nuclear plants at risk of similar failures pending new safety reviews and went as far as suggesting that nuclear power would be phased out within 40 years. Other governments took notice of nuclear reality and international protests and followed suit. At least in Germany, the waffling over nuclear is at an end. Other smaller nuclear powers like Italy might call it quits too, but the big players like the US, Russia, China and France are still in the nuclear game at least until the next accident.

After the initial soul-searching the picture that is now emerging in Japan is nuclear plants coming back online with some committee rehashing of alternative energy sources like wind and solar, some promises of funding for more green energy.

In the East they say The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with One Step. In our non-Confucian age we say Too Little Too Late. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hasn't Japan and the world been on the wrong road to power? Who built the bombs that can burn the Cauldron of the World? Who subsidized a nuclear power industry that threatens the well-being of every plant, animal and human on the planet? A thousand corporations or a handful of governments?

Bring On The Experts

Even now the experts still don't know the condition of damaged cores and containment. As late as November there were reports of more nuclear fission products detected meaning more nuclear fission. According to the Plan the reactor vessels and concrete are assumed to be stable, but will they deteriorate further, maybe breaching during the very long cleanup? It depends not only on continuing cooling but the corrosion of the concrete. A recent experiment at MIT suggests that concrete can corrode in the presence of seawater and uranium. Emergency seawater injection was already used as a stopgap coolant with boric acid. Is it still inside the reactors or has it been replaced with the usual safer heavy water (not available in drug stores) or purified water at least? Dasani, hai.

Saving Fukushima

When it came down to saving technological Japan from itself, it was seawater and fire trucks and firemen and the Fukushima 50 and the workers that followed, the brave few, that stood alone with a little luck behind them battling forces that could have destroyed Fukushima.

If 'cold shutdown' holds at Daiichi (the winter will be the next stress test on the makeshift cooldown system) there's a better future for Fukushima, though there are no guarantees. Not yet for the 88,000 still displaced from their homes and farms in the 12 mile No Go Zone and the larger 20 mile exclusion zone around Daiichi. Considering the scope of the damage, both from tsunami and nuclear contamination, at best there's little hope of a return to what residents had. A promise of a large scale Fukushima cleanup starting next Spring that could allow some into the outer zone, but how do the Japanaese decontaminate thousands of square miles and thousands of buildings exposed to about the equivalent of 60% of the fallout released from Chernobyl?

The reality so far is an abandoned Fukushima in cold shutdown and slow decay with police checkpoints about the only safety system in place. For something to do while waiting they can always read the TEPCO Report, the Government Plan and the new interim 500 plus page brick of a Government Report suitable for throwing, just out. Enough fallout there to kill every hope for no sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The usual disaster B movie stuff where you want to scream in Japanese: Everybody 'ron' 'ron' 'ron'. Stupid Daiichi, lucky monkey SOB!

The Probable Future When Money Makes Policy

Is the Japanese government like most governments promising what it cannot deliver? If you look at the EPA's long list of old nuclear sites in the US needing decontamination at millions of dollars an acre, if you look at the vast Chernobyl hinterland how do you scoop up billions of tons of contaminated topsoil and where do you put it? You don't. Of course you can study how to do it. Remove a little cesium contaminated topsoil, plant some new rice, wait. Burn the rice and measure radioactivity left, as is being done in a few test zones called Model Rehabilitation Projects. Or tag wild monkeys with dosimeters to see how much and how dangerous the radiation is. Never mind the radioactive groundwater contamination which keeps on spreading and is impossible to stop. Gone for awhile like the hypothetical badass rapper $40Million. Back as $40Billion, on your back and in your fn water tap.

From lessons learned, it is highly unlikely that the Japanese government can do more for Fukushima than a superficial cleanup. At present the government's plan is superficial. The first stage for the most contaminated zones, about 1500 square miles, the top 2 inches of soil (actually a little less or 4 cm) will be removed, as if there are no plants, trees and debris around. If that can be done the amount of dirt alone would fill 12,000 Olympic swimming pools. Supposedly that will remove about 3/4 of the radiation. But then where do you put that soil or are you going to try to wash it first, and with what? Then if that's the best you can do, are the former residents really going to want to have their children play in partially decontaminated zones running the risk of cancers as they grow up? Will these families actually return? Would you? Well the less fortunate who don't have friends outside or money to move are nearby in prefab makeshift housing bravely waiting to return. How long, who knows? Thousands of square miles of secondary contamination is all around Fukushima. The government has also promised to clean that up.

The Japanese will try their best, but if this goes on for years and years at 10,000 Yen a shovelful at a time, you might be seeing fences around old Fukushima and very few people in the ghost towns and villages until the next generation decides it's safe enough to return.

All of this could have been avoided as everyone knows. You don't build a nuclear plant in Japan near a well-known fault zone and if you do, then it has to be bullet proof and safe from tsunami, or better still you don't build any nuclear plants at all. There was no earthquake at Three Mile Island or at Chernobyl either. These were cases of Operator Error. You know the guys behind the buttons at the consoles, like Homer Simpson, often bored and half asleep, but before you laugh, it's fact-based TV according to Inspectors from DOE on surprise visits to real US nuclear plants.

Government Nuclear Action And Inaction On Nuclear

Thanks. Now the whole world is between a rock and a hard place. For cheap clean nuclear? Since when? 40 years, maybe 40,000 vacuum cleaners and just how much cash is that Daiichi-san? You can run rural Fukushima Prefecture for 4,000 years on Duracells for that kind of money.

Back home it's the same thing. Can't we do better than Homer Simpson For President or South Park For The Senate? Dunno. Maybe if we roll the dice like the Ancient Greeks did and elect our functionaries by lottery. From the folks that brought you Democracy. Power Ball Your House. $5 gets you the chance of a lifetime, one long 4 year lunch in Washington and your own mike on live TV. Play hard! Forget your 15 minutes of fame on Youtube with Fido. Dare to win it all!

That'll get governments truly democratic. Might even follow the will of the people since they won't be all lawyers. The boys and gals (50-50 too) on Capitol Hill could even stop pretending there are complex issues that have to be studied to death before anything is done, if ever, like lawyers do when padding accounts.


Stop all nuclear now, start the big shutdown of all reactors. Also the cheapest and safest solution in the long run. Follow the Kingdom of Heaven or die in fire. No metaphors needed. Ask the children of Chernobyl, the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

--Alan Gillis

Cooling Down A Nightmare: The TEPCO Daiichi Top Kill

Alan Gillis reports: Use firetrucks. Hai! Concerns by outsiders like physicist Michio Kaku and NewsHammer expanded in The Science of Conundrums, that the Japanese government and the nuclear plant operator, TEPCO have underestimated the scope of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi and so have been slow to act, are now confirmed. Unprepared for the unthinkable nothing was done the first day to cool the reactors until 4 hours after the first hydrogen explosion the following day. Overheating spent fuel ponds were ignored until fire hit Unit 4 later. With temperatures and pressures soaring, pumping in sea water was the only option, but it seems TEPCO didn't want to sacrifice Daiichi by ruining what was left of the plant. Now there's less left to worry about. Reminiscent of Chernobyl in this photo of late 1986 at the start of entombment operations.

Using seawater would destroy their multi-billion dollar investment. The Bridge on the River Kwai dilemma, the financial meltdown of TEPCO dilemma, and the political end of the myth of safe nuclear. Not the dilemma of the destruction of life in Japan.

The New York Times article of March 19, 2001 "Executives May Have Lost Valuable Time at Damaged Nuclear Plant" makes a compelling case for more bungling. The house is on fire? Should we use seawater? It will ruin the rugs and furniture.

But consider the four lives lost and other workers at the plant exposed to deadly radiation, the other hydrogen explosions and fires that might have been prevented, if these reactor buildings had been vented in time. The other day TEPCO did do some venting of buildings at risk to prevent hydrogen from collecting inside. Seems big holes were punctured. Why not that first day, before the hydrogen buildup, why not after the first explosion, the second, the third and before the smaller explosions and fires in Unit 4 that threatened its spent fuel pond? Consider the blasts of radioactive smoke and dust and steam released in massive plumes that could have been avoided. If these buildings hadn't been heavily damaged, they would also still act as a considerable barrier to continuing radiation release. Why no safety systems in place to vent these buildings? Why not louvers or vents that could be manually opened when the buildings were intact? Physicists and engineers knew the hydrogen formation/ explosion risks since Three Mile Island. A much more massive containment building there withstood similar explosions.

And now a senior government official admits Japan was caught off guard by the overwhelming scope of the triple disaster, see AP: "Japan official: Disasters overwhelmed government":

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano: "In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster," he said.

More than a week into the meltdown crisis, the experts have failed us over and over again. If Daiichi has shown us anything, once a disaster happens, those in charge not only fail to prevent it, but continue failing. This after last year's Gulf Oil Spill, where BP, the entire oil industry and the US Government were unable to prevent a simple accident, and in the first weeks were totally unprepared to deal with it, preferring to lowball the disaster and see what happens. Start the PR Machine first. Go through the motions. Look concerned.

Is this a repeat? A rerun with new footage and an alternate ending for DVD? So where is the vast Nuclear Industry's vast response to a nuclear emergency? Where is the Task Force that should have been flown in by the IAEA? Where are the Nuclear Navy Seals? Aren't any. A few talking heads on TV. Here is an industry that thinks nothing of spending $5 to $10 Billion on one new nuclear plant, that has a thousand more reactors deployed throughout the world, but won't spend a dollar on an Emergency Strike Force. It's even afraid to stress test its reactors after the stress test at Chernobyl in 1986 that caused the meltdown and radiation destruction of a zone of Ukraine the size of Switzerland.

Nuclear Safety Today: We're Perfectly Safe Until The Next Accident



Physicist Michio Kaku:"Japanese government clueless"

Better to start the Top Kill of Daiichi now, but there is little discussion of a Chernobyl Sarcophagus option and no political will yet to do so. There is some tinkering though like better delivery of seawater via low-tech fire trucks hosing down Daiichi. Will this stabilize the emergency? Yes, somewhat. Steam pressure in reactors that was threatening to explode reactor vessels seems to have eased. Attempting to restore electrical power for electric pumps that may or may not be damaged that also depend on piping that may or may not be damaged, is more problematic. One new electric line to only one unit might be turned on soon once everybody is satisfied that electrical arcing in damaged components and circuits won't occur and spark more hydrogen explosions. But with miles of wiring, how long could that take? In a nuclear hot zone with the Fukushima 50 working in the dark with no power? Though more technicians and engineers are on it, about 300 called in for re-establishing electrical power to Daiichi, but how many of them on site? You might recall remote crisis management from BP Houston in the early days where tremendous but invisible resources were deployed. One cleanup crew one shovel at a time spent half a day in a media glare cleaning a piece of beach for President Obama's press conference. If Obama went to Daiichi we'd get some action. "Weather's kind of hot but we're working on AC for the media trailers as you can see behind me. Plenty of ice-cold Coors if anybody wants some?"

If by a miracle we do get more cooling systems operating, well that's great. Except what's happening to the cooling water. Like hosing down your burning car, the water spills into the street, into the sewers and water table, out to sea, but here it's in tons per hour of dirty radioactive water contaminating the environment. Even if the old closed loop cooling system at Daiichi can be salvaged and its electrical system patched, it's bound to leak with the piping and valves cracked or smashed by the hydrogen explosions and fires. What about a permanent solution? Why not plan for the worst?

No planning to prevent a worst case scenario at Daiichi caused the real damage in the first place that now can't be fixed. It's radiation release. At best the Daiichi Nuclear Disaster can only be contained.

Lessons From Chernobyl


Physicist Michio Kaku: "Catastrophe in the making"

The Chernobyl sarcophagus is now being entertained like an unwelcome guest at Fukushima Daiichi by TEPCO, see Reuters: "Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant; tries to restore power":

"It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.

But some experts in Japan scoff at realistic containment:

"We believe it is not a realistic option," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Yeah, why not? He didn't say but other experts don't want to see further damage to the reactor cores and steel vessels reinforced with concrete. Duh? So don't drop heavy sandbags or bags of lead from helicopters. Use parachutes if you're that dumb. Hey, maybe there are other options, like spray your sand and concrete?

Others say encasing the reactors and spent fuel ponds without a cooling system would allow meltdown to continue and perhaps aggravate it like adding an insulation layer to the fire, raising temperatures inside. Yes, but you could go higher tech and allow for heat to travel throughout a thick concrete shell. So you could have passive convection cooling if you did it right. Maybe add a refrigeration plant on top? Why not work on engineering now? Hire Bechtel who designed the new confinement shell for Chernobyl that's under construction. A sarcophagus could stop most nuclear radiation from releasing, though you have to consider the "core on the floor scenario" where the fuel rods could continue their burn through the floor and rock underneath. Instead of officials saying no, better ask the best engineers what can be done. It's not a small problem unless you think that firetrucks can fix it.

Small For Profit Thinking And The Big Picture

And how do we get into these disasters? As long as politicians and CEOs make the ethical decisions for us based on what an oil well or a reactor should cost to be profitable. Engineers are asked to design and build within straitjacket budgets. They see the risks, they warn the client, they warn the operator, they warn their own company, but what do $80,000 guys in hardhats and jeans know? Not as much as suits and ties pulling in $6 million a year and $12 million in perks and options and bonuses, who know they can fire engineers for breakfast.

But there are exceptions. Some engineering firms like Bechtel insist on safety and won't work for nickel and dime clients. They don't cut corners and they don't come cheap. Bechtel has the best safety record in the industry, over 20 million man-hours without a fatal accident. What they build is first class. Contrast that with BP for instance and the BP spill, with hundreds of safety violations on other projects and workers dead and seriously injured since the Texas City Refinery disaster. The stakes at Daiichi are way higher. Daiichi threatens northern Japan and Tokyo, maybe Korea and China.

4,277 Tons Of Nuclear Fuel Can Burn

The scale of the potential disaster of a full meltdown at Daiichi is now clearer, see AP: "Plutonium in troubled reactors, spent fuel pools":

"The Fukushima Dai-ichi site has a considerable number of fuel rods on hand, according to information provided Thursday by Toyko Electric Power Co., which owns the atomic complex: There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores. Officials have said that the fuel in Unit 4's reactor vessel was transferred to its spent fuel pool when the unit was temporarily shut in November."

---Although the earlier news on Units 5 and 6, that these 2 reactors had been previously shut down for maintenance as well as Unit 4, suggesting fuel rods had been removed, seems only true for unit 4. So five reactors could melt down as well as 7 spent fuel ponds, for 4,277 tons of fuel rods, with significant levels of extremely dangerous plutonium especially in spent fuel and in the Unit 3 reactor that uses MOX fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium which is produced anyway in the other fuel rods in reactors as a by-product, is way more deadly. All 4,277 tons of Daiichi fuel has some plutonium in it. How much they don't say. A pinhead of plutonium can kill a human. How many pinheads in one ton?

Contain the radiation now or more of Japan will be threatened including the world's largest city of Tokyo, only 150 miles away with a total sprawl of 35 million people. Better start design now. It took 6 months of mobilization and engineering to seal just one damaged reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 in a quick and dirty operation that cost many lives, the firemen, the soldiers, the workers on the cleanup and construction. The official numbers of dead at the site and in the hot zone and beyond in Belorussia were lowballed by the PR Machine. Claims today run as high as a million dead. Many are still dying of slow cancers.

Unfortunately the old sarcophagus shell has been cracking for years. The new replacement for Chernobyl containment is taking 4 years to build. Work started last year.

Japan Can't Wait And See



7 Years For The New Chernobyl

With about 50,000 soldiers or half of Japan's army, its Self Defense Forces, devoted to Earthquake/ Tsunami relief and cleanup, it already looks like its entire force will be needed to help its stricken people. For the nuclear emergency too Japan needs massive International Aid, not just a handful of nuclear experts flown in from the IAEA, the US and France.

Japan should ask for the UN to intervene. Japan can't wait and see. A consortium of the world's best engineering firms needs to study Daiichi and how it can be safely sealed, without exposing workers and the general population to lethal radiation. If tinkering fails, without a backup plan, what's the option? Total meltdown? An open nuclear fire pit threatening Japan and its neighbors?

Michio Kaku has said that the possibility of a hydrogen bubble forming at Daiichi and blowing up nuclear cores and nuclear material into the air, is still possible, for another Chernobyl type disaster. The potential in Japan for destruction with 5 reactor cores and 7 spent fuel ponds is up to 12 times the radiation release of Chernobyl. It could kill millions.

Stranger Than Fiction



The Less Horrific BBC Version: Chernobyl 1986

If Japan said yes today, and the best and brightest, the bravest, were on it now, an all out effort could still take months to stop Daiichi. The new entombment of Chernobyl has been an extreme 3 year design and engineering challenge for Bechtel and its partners. How to build on a radioactive hot zone? You don't. Bechtel designed an ingenious solution. Construction after years of bickering on who will pay, is underway to 2013, budgeted at a cost of $1.17 Billion, with delays adding to costs, now $1.4 Billion.

Instead of risking the health of on-site workers in a nuclear hot zone, the project minimizes exposure. A monumental movable arch-like containment building 32 stories high and 3 football fields long will be dragged into place in sections on skid-like roads to secure Chernobyl for the next 100 years. It's an amazing engineering solution from Bechtel that no politician or bureaucrat would dream of.

Still only the second installment on a long nuclear mortgage. The site will be hot for thousands of years to come.

Breaking News from the Japanese PR Machine. Radioactive iodine 3 times normal levels in Iitate tapwater, a village 19 miles from Daiichi. It's "no danger to humans". But don't drink it, according to the same official at the same Japanese Ministry of Health. True story. Is that like Chernobyl isn't dangerous unless you're planning to visit? The gun is not loaded but do not use it for Russian Roulette. To catch a monkey you need a banana?

Updates And Resources

For updates on the International Nuclear Emergency, see The New York Times and check out NYT timelines and interactive features that make it easier to follow what's going on.

The latest NYT The Lede Blog is an overview of major developments.

Here are 3 NYT Interactive Features: The GE Mark 1 Reactor or Deconstructing a Controversial Design, Spent Fuel Poised For Meltdown or Hazards of Storing Spent Fuel, and the Status of the Nuclear Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant.

--Alan Gillis

Fukushima: Get Ready For The Chernobyl Solution

Alan Gillis reports: Time is running out for a permanent fix to Japan's 6 Daiichi reactors in Fukushima. With major damage to four of the units, and core damage to three, the EU's Energy Commissioner said yesterday that the situation is "effectively out of control". A look at the satellite image above courtesy DigitalGlobe.com makes it abundantly clear, though not clear enough to authorities in Japan.

Japan's nuclear energy giant, TEPCO, that operates this and other nuclear plants, backed by the Japanese government is still proceeding on a heroic mission to save Daiichi from total meltdown with last ditch attempts to cool the reactors and their spent fuel ponds. Seawater injection, the only coolant option, led to the hydrogen explosions and more seawater dumped later by helicopters over the wreckage hasn't been effective. Water cannon couldn't get close enough because of high radiation levels. Most of the support staff have been evacuated leaving behind about 180 workers in the hot zone to do what they can. To limit their exposure to radiation they work in rotating shifts of 50 risking their lives in a fight that looks like it's been ripped out of the pages of history. It's the Alamo again, but if these Japanese heroes fail, it will mean many more dead, and a dead zone that could spill into Tokyo and cripple Japan for a generation or more.

Huge gas-fired pumps have been ordered to augment cooling, the electrical line to Daiichi is being repaired, a new power line should be working today, but even if the reinforcements get inside, the earthquake and tsunami, and the hydrogen explosions, no doubt have reduced the old diesel pumps, the miles of piping and wiring on site into a tangle of rusted industrial scrap.

If Daiichi wasn't a nuclear plant and a dangerous nuclear hot zone an army of 5,000 would have to work for 6 months to get it running again. There's no time to save Daiichi from itself. It's nearly 40 years old and failed miserably. Scheduled for decommissioning soon, but not soon enough, it's now another tragedy that was almost avoided.

To rig it as a tomb for the reactors and their spent fuel ponds which are installed stupidly on a floor above the reactors; to arrange for round the clock cooling for even a hundred years, can't be done in a few days while a catastrophic meltdown threatens Units 1 through 4. Units 5 and 6 could be saved as the reactors had been emptied of fuel rods for maintenance before the mega 9.0 earthquake, the latest estimate of the violence of the cataclysm. Unit 4 could have been saved as it too was under maintenance but the spent fuel pond there has caught fire twice, and threatens a meltdown by itself that would also destroy its empty reactor underneath.

So why go this route when it's extremely unlikely that a full meltdown in 4 units can be prevented? Ask the IAEA, ask CERN, ask the DOE in the USA. Obviously the Japanese are in shock or in controlled panic mode. "Endure the unendurable" as the Emperor of Japan told his people on national TV the other day. Laudable and understandable, but the Japanese can't evaluate their own tragic situation when it consumes them on every front, three disasters in one, earthquake, tsunami and now meltdown. BBC Video on the Fukushima no man's land.

The Search For Survivors In Fukushima

The only real way to contain Japan's nuclear disaster, was proposed 2 days ago by the eminent physicist Michio Kaku. Like at Chernobyl, to stop the continuing escape of radiation, to save what you can of the land and the people, you need to act now and entomb the reactors of Fukushima Daiichi with sand and concrete, the Chernobyl Sarcophagus solution. So far no one in authority has been willing to discuss his ideas in public, and even the large community of physicists who must see the handwriting on the wall are strangely silent. Michio Kaku seems to be standing alone while his colleagues, perhaps fighting with their own internal PR demons, are strangely silent. Everything's fine. Experts are in charge. It's not my fight. Why look foolish if I happen to be wrong?

What's not happening, is also news. And nothing much is happening. An army of physicists like 10,000 at CERN are not on the march to save Japan.

The whole dirty nuclear industry spawned by physicists is at stake. So ignore or tangentalize or minimize any unpleasant connection to noble theoretical and experimental physics. It's all Politics and Public Relations and we are scientists. If that's not it, what is the truth? Physicists don't fcare?

Well the same sort of selfish thinking might be going on within the nuclear industry. Admitting defeat and burying a nuclear embarrassment in low tech sand and concrete would be the end of a nuclear Japan. Motivations never admitted by the major players, but then the media doesn't ask for elemental explanations either. The best we get is a Japanese monster movie.

"Uncontrolled burst of nuclear radiation reported, Mr Prime Minister."
"Hai".
"Strange giant sea creature in Sea of Japan."
"Whaaaat?"

For the best overview of the damage to Fukushima Daiichi with before and after satellite images, see this 9 page pdf from DigitalGlobe.

For excellent technical and readable updates on what's going on at Fukushima Daiichi, see this special MIT website, mitnse.com

Also on the special MIT website an article "On worst case scenarios" shows that water cooling may slow the destruction of reactor vessels of steel shielded with concrete during a meltdown as at Daiichi.

In the article below from NewsHammer, you'll find my first impressions of the cascade of disasters that have hit Japan so brutally. Also included the compelling ABC News video interview with physicist Michio Kaku where he warns Japan to act now.

--Alan Gillis

Fukushima Daiichi Out Of Control

Alan Gillis reports: The shock of Japan's mega earthquake and tsunami has paralyzed not only Japan but the rest of the world. It has been so fantastic and overwhelming, our response has been the Japanese response, a mesmerising flood of emotions staring from the blank faces of the survivors. A wonder far beyond the moment, as though time itself had stopped and entombed them and us.

Unstoppable forces suddenly come, suddenly go while unleashing a cascade of events as bewildering as all the destruction. Inevitable consequences wash over those of us still left standing like a tangible fate that won't stop until there's nothing left. What can we do anyway, especially behind a TV or laptop? Yet there are some who can act and have the power to save Japan from a second wave of disaster. But as part of the usual status quo that rarely acts in time, are politicians and scientists going to ignore the obvious or help us this time?

The big event still to come is not obscure, not buried in disaster upon disaster. It explodes literally at Fukushima near Tokyo, from a 6 reactor complex, that while we watch, explodes and explodes three times in a row sending out great clouds of dust and smoke and nuclear particle radiation. A 30 km radius evacuation of 180,000 people but radiation now detectable beyond Japan in the adjoining Russian Islands. Many Japanese stay put without other clear and better options. Go where, do what?

What do we do? We watch. We talk. Foreigners scramble to fly home. Many remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Low levels of radiation still, but for how long? The best guess of an ultimate disaster brewing is that one of the three most damaged nuclear reactors, Number 2 is breached and Number 2 is likely at risk for an actual full meltdown of its core.

American Physicist Michio Kaku Warns Japan

"Sandbag the reactors" or do what the Soviets did to stop Chernobyl. (Alternate video link)

The worst case now is not like Chernobyl, not a sudden and catastrophic steam explosion of the containment building and its reactor, releasing a enormous cloud of deadly radiation that drifted across Europe into the British Isles. Something more like Three Mile Island so far except there's no safe way to cool down Number 2. Injecting seawater to cool the overheating reactors caused the hydrogen explosions at Fukushima. Physicists knew it could happen and warnings were given, but there was also no choice they said. Something had to be done to prevent the meltdowns.

At Fukushima the worst case could be an even greater disaster.

With failures evident and failures spreading, it seems we are waiting for a worst case scenario before we act. Then it could be too big and too late. Not one nuclear meltdown but six. Telling the Japanese who haven't left the Fukushima disaster zone to stay inside their homes and wash and dry their laundry indoors won't work for long. Watching some experts say it's too early to tell and it can't happen here is no help either.

Perhaps the other 10,000 nuclear physicists watching the resumption of experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider today, were too busy to notice what's been happening in Japan.

Seriously, why the wall of silence around CERN? The foremost nuclear lab in the world always chatting up its nuclear safety at the LHC every chance it gets, and the great discoveries always over the horizon? CERN has nothing to say to Japan? No CERN plan to save Japan? Not CERN's job? Fiddle while Rome burns?

There are pictures and video and commentators telling us what they see, but no real discussion of the events at Fukushima. Details are sketchy they say. Why? Is it the Charlie Sheen effect? No time for the real world? So we should wait? It's an International Emergency that can wait? One more day, one more explosion can change everything. If the Japanese aren't prepared to act now and entomb Fukushima Number 2, they may never be able to contain the meltdown that would also threaten the other 5 already damaged reactors nearby.

Besides 3 explosions another had a fire around its heavy water swimming pool spent fuel storage pond. A lot of extremely hot rods close to the reactors, way more fuel waiting for a fire. The 2 of the 6 reactors not in the news, not hit with explosions or fire, also suffered some coolant loss. All this damage in one space that could fit on a big shopping mall parking lot.

According to Dr Kaku there is only one solution and that is to bury the reactors now including the most dangerous Number 2 in sand and concrete like Chernobyl. If not Number 2 at least we could see a more dangerous Nuclear Fire and Meltdown. At Chernobyl it seems the reactor was destroyed and its fuel rods were smashed and scattered into something of a deadly hot heap of nuclear material and rubble.

At Fukushima Number 2 it would be hotter still. You have concentrated fuel rods still aligned and close to each other, though separated by graphite rods inserted during automatic shutdown to slow down the fission reaction. The extremely hot and probably partially melted rods are all in a tight fitting mass within the jacket of a 6" thick stainless steel vessel that has partially
ruptured. When the steel melts away opening a nuclear fire pit how would you get close enough then to use the Chernobyl sarcophagus option? How close can you get to an open nuclear fire? Then if you're still alive try dumping sand on a fire that melts stainless steel.

Chernobyl RIP 1986

Many first responders died horribly after extreme radiation exposure at Chernobyl and many others in the disaster zone later of slower cancers. That could be avoided now in Japan. Wait and see from physicists and government could mean six nuclear fires on Tokyo's doorstep. The scientific community which is often in its own catatonic state of theoretical R&D and pension plans needs to wake up to this emergency. After all didn't the physics and engineering branch give us Chernobyl in the first place?

Remember the 1950's PR that started the nuclear industry? "Harnessing the Atom" as they called it. And this soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What next? "It can't happen in America" commercials and "tell your Congressman about today's safe nuclear option"?

Are you watching too Mr President? How about last year's Obama on video? No nukes but go nuclear? Loan guarantees of $36 Billion to the nuclear industry for new nuclear plants. What about all the unsecured nuclear waste and the old nuclear plants in the US like the General Electric design used at Fukushima? What guarantees do we have? What guarantees in Japan? And who will pay? Us too?

This Story Starts To Break

Reuters Video: IAEA: Japan nuclear plant damage "worrying"

Reuters: Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA

Reuters: Timeline: Japan's unfolding nuclear crisis

--Alan Gillis