Not out of the woods yet

[zolac_no_miko]

Explosions, fires and radiation leaks at the Japanese nuclear power plant. Still trying to get the fuel rods cooled down. Not good, guys. Not good.

Aftershocks still shaking the country. Rolling blackouts due to power plant shut-downs. Grocery and convenience stores have been cleaned out. Trains are not running regularly. The effects on the Japanese and global economies should be... interesting.

...In other news, we had a bad storm in the Valley on Sunday. A couple of logs large branches went down on our power lines, and we were out of power for all of Sunday afternoon and into the evening. I read comics by candlelight until the power came back on at 9 p.m. ...Seems we got off lucky. Elsewhere in the County, power is still out, and in some rural communities to the south, power will be out until Wednesday or later. Yikes.

EDIT: Death toll in Japan now up to 3300, may climb as high as 10,000. DDDD:

Comments

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

Given the populations of the towns that were completely wiped out, and how many people are still missing, it's going to be a lot more than 10,000 dead by the time this is over. :(

I've just got my fingers crossed that the situation with the reactors doesn't end up putting a whole lot of that Cesium into the jet stream because it'll all be headed straight here, argh.

As for that little windstorm, yeah, sounds like it was a lot worse lots of places. We just had a couple small branches come down and that was it. Power didn't even flicker here.

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

From what I'm hearing, we will not be having another Chernobyl... the plant in question wasn't even running when the earthquake happened, we're just dealing with a failure in keeping some spent fuel rods cool... whatever else might happen, we're not looking at a massive explosion sending radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Thank god.

Yeah, we had branches come down right across the street from us, so we had the whole teal lightning, weirdo creepy buzzing non-explosion sound, showers of sparks, and no power for hours. Fun times!

[shichahn.livejournal.com]

This is true, Chernobyl was affected by some very different circumstances that are not even possible of being duplicated at Fukushima. However the fire on the waste pit and the occasional ejections of steam from the reactor buildings are already putting radiation into the atmosphere at a measurable level. Most of that won't go very far (though it still sucks for Japan, especially since Tokyo is starting to be affected) but, you know. We get enough pollution from coal plants in China where adding a few radioactive particles on top of that really isn't something we need.

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

True. Basically, it's not a question of whether it's bad, it's how bad is it going to be.

[magusronin.livejournal.com]

Nuclear situation as I understand it. At the moment the highest radiation risk is still to the workers heroically fighting to get this plant back under control.

The situation seems to be as follows: prior to the earthquake three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were in operation. When the earthquake occurred the plants were shut down, but attempts effectively cool the fuel rods have so far failed. The fuel rods at all three reactors have now experienced partial exposure and consequently partial meltdowns. Steam from the reactors and other volatile gases have been released from the reactor to relieve pressure and prevent a catastrophic explosion in the primary containment vessels. Yesterday there was an explosion at reactor 2 that damage the primary containment vessel and caused the release of additional radioactive materials. The fire in reactor 4's spent fuel pond probably is not helping with the radiation problem.

In short, the likelihood of anything resembling Chernobyl is almost 0. However, within the next twenty-four hours we should be finding out whether or not containment holds for these reactors, and whether or not they're able to prevent a full meltdown.

As for ambient radiation. You guys in Portland already get many times over background being downstream of Hanford. I'm not terribly worried that we'll see significant levels, whatever happens at these plants. Clean up in Japan, however could be very difficult, if things go badly.

Here's to keeping our fingers crossed.

[drownedcities.livejournal.com]

I was wondering what had happened on Sunday. The power up here flickered, but it didn't go out. I thought maybe a light was going out or something until I realized how bad the wind was outside. :/

[mosrael.livejournal.com]

Oh man the power plants. I've been making my nuclear-history nerd buddy send me all the updates - here's a very useful summary: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/ and a short piece from a Tokyo resident on why he's staying in Japan: http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.html

I'm really impressed by the thorough and steady response of experts and the US in regards to helping out the Tepco workers. It was weeks before anyone was willing to admit that Chernobyl blew, and then the plant and the government spent more time trying to figure out who fucked up than helping the citizens who were exposed to it. The number of backups and backup-backups that Fukushima has is what makes that reactor model so stable, unless of course you have a massive fuckoff earthquake AND a tsunami. Good hell. Lucky for us all, the explosion that took place was outside the protective housing, and only damaged the housing that keeps the weather off. Fifty workers have decided to stay and keep tabs on everything they can, and I think they're fucking awesome. *crosses every appendage for those workers*