I don't give a rat's ass if a native american tribe somehow believes that a desolate desert mountain is sacred. If a better site is available, I'm fine with going with that instead of Yucca mountain, but storing lots of old rods together in water pools close to cities is no longer acceptable. Whether it is this mountain or somewhere else, we need a nuclear waste repository. [Reply]
Originally Posted by alnorth:
I don't give a rat's ass if a native american tribe somehow believes that a desolate desert mountain is sacred. If a better site is available, I'm fine with going with that instead of Yucca mountain, but storing lots of old rods together in water pools close to cities is no longer acceptable. Whether it is this mountain or somewhere else, we need a nuclear waste repository.
The lesson of the day is if you need something to be soaked in water, then you should call the fire department. Looks like Japanese fire trucks have managed to cool the reactors enough to where the radiation in the area is falling quite a bit. The fuel rods at #5 and #6 are also not really a problem, so all we've probably got left is to make sure that the pools at #3 and #4 are full. They might be for all we know with all the intense FD water hosing, but no one can get close enough to see. [Reply]
Dr. Berninger serves as a "Crisis Sherpa”, consulting his clients on the necessary preparations and investment strategies best suited for the current economic crisis, which he expects to last for several years. His predictions about the scope and the impacts of the financial crisis have earned him credibility and a proven track record. During the course of the crisis he has become one of the most accurate Trend Forecasters.
Entrenched in the subjects of business finance, macro-economics, monetary policy and growth forecasting, he helps companies maneuver through the fallout of the financial crisis and helps them to prepare and position for potential future impact.
Berninger also developed new, proprietary concenpts on measuring and comparing GDP, Deflation and Inflation allowing him to foresee eventual economic trends.
Berninger holds a Ph.D in Chemistry and an MBA from IESE Business School. He has a strong background in business strategy, operations, innovation and IT. In his career he has helped to grow businesses to a significant levels and successfully established new operations.
In 2005 he started predicting the financial crisis and following events. At that time he was involved in a start-up project and identified the need to secure financing in times of crisis. His analysis helped him not only to predict the coming crisis, but he also correctly predicted its start for 2007.
In an article, which he published in 2005 on his website, he described the impact and slow down of the Spanish economy and the decline of the stock markets for September 2007.
At the start of the financial crisis he started to get further entrenched into the details of what he thought to be the largest crisis which his generation will face. Since then he provides thoughts and opinions to a broader audience. As a result his website has become a valuable resource for business owners and investors to understand the impact on their business and investing decisions.
The website has a clear objective, which is to share knowledge and information with an ever increasing community of risk aware business owners and investors seeking solutions for their daily problems. The website allows them to participate and share their concerns or questions and to have access to otherwise limited resources. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
Joern Berninger,
Crisis Consulting
etc...
This guy a family member looking for a job interview or something? Not sure if anyone in this thread owns a company looking to hire a risk management guy or not. In any case, he seems nice enough and hopefully he gets whatever he's looking for soon before his credibility is shot. ("japan is lost, tokyo is lost") [Reply]
Sunday morning update: The pressure in reactor #3 is stabilizing to the point where they don't think they even need to vent steam anymore, or at least not for a while if they do. It is believed that all storage pools are partially filled with water, because the radiation levels coming from the storage pools have fallen. The only other reactor that is of any significant concern is reactor #2, which is under control since they have no problem with keeping it full of water, but they also think the containment in #2 was damaged by the quake so there's no margin for error in that reactor. So, they want to get that reactor into a cold safe shutdown before #3. If power is restored to the reactor's cooling systems today then they will have it well under control.
Unless something really weird happens (meteor strike, terrorists, another quake right now), they will not have to bury these reactors in sand and concrete. They will be taken apart and scrapped over the next few months.
In other words, if googlegoogle is reading any of this, Japan is not going Chernobyl. This is an accident, caused by a once a millenia earthquake for that region to an old reactor using 70's technology, that led to something a little worse than TMI.
God, I hope so. I don't think we are in the clear yet. I'm keeping the faith.
This information isn't what Japan is reporting though. My guess would be that the mainstream media in the US would rather us focus on March Madness and the bombing of Libya.
Cool chart I saw which tries to lay out the dangers of nuclear radiation. Note the examples in blue regarding the extra dose for living in parts of CO, or living near the Fukushima reactor.
It's hard to pick out a "highlight," but this probably takes the cake:
Botched Container?
Mitsuhiko Tanaka, 67, working as an engineer at Babcock Hitachi K.K., helped design and supervise the manufacture of a $250 million steel pressure vessel for Tokyo Electric in 1975. Today, that vessel holds the fuel rods in the core of the No. 4 reactor at Fukushima’s Dai-Ichi plant, hit by explosion and fire after the tsunami.
Tanaka says the vessel was damaged in the production process. He says he knows because he orchestrated the cover-up. When he brought his accusations to the government more than a decade later, he was ignored, he says.
The accident occurred when Tanaka and his team were strengthening the steel in the pressure vessel, heating it in a furnace to more than 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that melts metal. Braces that should have been inside the vessel during the blasting were either forgotten or fell over. After it cooled, Tanaka found that its walls had warped.
This is bullshit... Aluminum doesn't melt till it reaches a temp of 1220 F. Depending on the alloys used in the steel the melting point varies. However, it'll take a minimum of 2500 F to melt steel. If it's stainless (more than likely) we're looking at a melting point of 2750 F. [Reply]
One criticism of Yucca mountain is even if we could store them safely, and even if the consequences of something unanticipated going wrong at Yucca mountain were next to nothing, what if something happens while shipping nuclear waste to Yucca mountain?
Apparently to compromise these dry nuclear fuel casks, you'd have to shoot it with something like a 88mm gun from an aircraft carrier at point blank range. [Reply]
Spraying of water resumes at crisis-hit Fukushima nuke plant
TOKYO, March 21, Kyodo
Fire trucks resumed spraying water early Monday at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as part of efforts to cool its overheating reactors and fuel pools.
The operation to cool the No. 4 reactor's spent-fuel pool began Sunday, while the No. 3 unit has so far been doused with over 3,700 tons of water since the unprecedented effort by Self-Defense Forces personnel, firefighters and others to lower the temperature in its fuel tank from outside its damaged building began Thursday.
External power reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday, paving the way for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. to restore their systems to monitor radiation and other data, light the control room and cool down the reactors and their spent-fuel storage pools.
The No. 5 and 6 reactors, which have been relatively less problematic than the plant's four others, stopped safely Sunday with the temperature of the water inside falling below 100 C, achieving so-called ''cold shutdown.''
After a magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami knocked out power March 11 at the plant on the Pacific coast of Fukushima Prefecture about 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, which were operating at the time of the quake and halted automatically, lost their cooling functions.
Their reactor cores are believed to have partially melted and seawater has been pumped into them to prevent the fuel from being exposed. A series of blasts have severely damaged their buildings as well as the No. 2 reactor's containment vessel in its pressure-suppression chamber.
Plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, known as MOX, in the No. 3 reactor poses the greatest risk of releasing highly toxic plutonium in the event of a meltdown. The fuel in the reactors is uranium.
The remaining No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6 units were under maintenance at the time of the earthquake, but the No. 4 reactor is different because some of the fuel was not in the reactor core but in the spent-fuel pool, which also lost its cooling function and lost the roof of its building.
Since alnorth is playing the Baghdad Bob of this crisis:
WHO spokesman: Japan food safety situation "serious"
BEIJING, March 21 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation said on Monday that the detection of radiation in food after an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant was a more serious problem than it had first expected.
"Quite clearly it's a serious situation," Peter Cordingley, Manila-based spokesman for WHO's regional office for the Western Pacific, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"It's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometres," he said.
Cases of contaminated vegetables, dust, milk and water are already stoking regional anxieties despite Japanese officials' assurances the levels are not dangerous.
Japan's government has prohibited the sale of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture and spinach from another nearby area. It said more restrictions on food may be announced later on Monday. [ID:nL3E7EK08V]
Cordingley said the WHO had no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima prefecture, where the damaged Daiichi plant is located, reaching other countries.
"We can't make any link between Daiichi and the export market. But it's safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone," he said.
Cordingley said the WHO's experts at its Geneva headquarters were trying to better understand the situation and would be able to give more guidance later on Monday.
But he cautioned that it was difficult to know at the moment whether the radioactive material found in some food in Japan originated from the stricken Daiichi plant. (Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Editing by Ben Blanchard) [Reply]
Reactor 3 with the MOX fuel is completely destroyed now. The gray smoke is not a good thing.
Work to restore power delayed as smoke seen at Fukushima reactors
TOKYO, March 22, Kyodo
Work to restore power and key cooling functions to the troubled reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was marred Monday by smoke that rose from the buildings housing the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the plant operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the government's nuclear safety agency said operations to revive power systems and spray massive coolant water onto overheating spent nuclear fuel pools will likely resume Tuesday after the utility observes the situation at the site.
TEPCO said it had briefly evacuated its workers after grayish and blackish smoke was seen at the southeast of the No. 3 reactor building around 3:55 p.m. above a pool storing spent nuclear fuel, though a blast was not heard.
The smoke stopped after 6 p.m., but TEPCO subsequently found that white smoke was rising through a crack in the roof of the building that houses the No. 2 reactor at around 6:20 p.m. The utility said later the smoke was believed to be steam, not from the reactor's core or spent fuel pool.
Firefighters and the Self-Defense Forces will prepare for the resumption of water-dousing operations Tuesday morning, the agency said. Three trucks with a concrete squeeze pump and a 50-meter arm provided by private firms will join the mission to pour water from a higher point.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said no injuries were confirmed in the incidents. Radiation levels at the plant briefly increased after white smoke was detected from the No. 2 reactor, but later fell.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a press conference that ''no problems had arisen'' with regard to the reactors and radiation levels after the smoke was detected.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency, said the causes of the smoke billowing from the No. 2 and No. 3 reactor buildings remain unknown and that the originally scheduled work to revive power and cooling systems at the troubled reactors will be delayed by one day.
As the No. 3 reactor remains without power, smoke was not apparently triggered by an electricity leak or short-circuiting, Nishiyama said.
Following a magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami on March 11, the cooling functions failed at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors and their cores are believed to have partially melted.
At present, coolant water is being pumped into the three reactors and the pools for spent nuclear fuel rods at the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 units. The roofs and upper walls of the buildings that house the No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors have been blown away by hydrogen explosions.
Before the smoke was detected, external power had reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday, clearing the way for the plant operator to restore systems to monitor radiation levels and other data, light the control rooms and cool down the reactors and their spent-fuel storage pools.
On Monday, TEPCO finished laying cables to transmit electricity to the No. 4 reactor, as a step toward resuscitating the power systems at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to the utility and the nuclear agency.
The plant operator was also trying to restore a ventilation system to filter radioactive substances from the air and some measuring equipment at the control room of the No. 2 reactor, but this mission remained uncompleted due to the temporary evacuation.
The restoration of some functions at the control room would help improve working conditions, according to the nuclear agency.
It may take more time before the vital cooling system is restored at the No. 2 reactor, the containment vessel of which suffered damage to its pressure-suppression chamber, as some replacement parts are needed for the electrical system, the agency added.
In Vienna on Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano told a special meeting of its board of governors that the situation at the Fukushima plant ''remains serious, but we are starting to see some positive developments.''
Amano, who made an emergency trip to Japan last week, said the IAEA will ''continue to do everything in its power to help Japan to overcome'' the crisis at the power station on the Pacific coast of Fukushima Prefecture, around 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.
To facilitate the water-spraying operations at the plant, the government is also preparing SDF tanks to remove rubble emitting high-level radiation from around the reactors.
Japan's nuclear agency, meanwhile, said one of seven workers who were injured following a March 14 hydrogen explosion at the No. 3 reactor was found to have been exposed to radiation amounting to over 150 millisievert per hour.
The level is lower than the maximum limit of 250 millisievert per hour set by the health ministry for workers tackling the emergency at the Fukushima plant.
TEPCO and the nuclear agency said the height of a tsunami that submerged key functions at the Fukushima plant is believed to have reached 14 meters, much higher than the 5.7 meters that the utility had factored in before the disaster struck the power station.
