Not out of the woods yet
Mar. 15th, 2011 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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 oflogs 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:
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
EDIT: Death toll in Japan now up to 3300, may climb as high as 10,000. DDDD:
no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 07:55 pm (UTC)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.