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http://inventorspot.com/articles/earthquake_damaged_japanese_nuclear_plant_has_shaky_history
1971 plant built – March 25, 1971 commissioned
China Syndrome – lookup
Approximately 3,000 residents living near Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (located 170 miles or 270 kilometers northeast of Tokyo) have been ordered to evacuate the area as a precautionary measure. For those evacuated and others living nearby, the current emergency is not the first: the Fukushima Daiichi plant has a somewhat shaky history not always connected with earthquakes.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/earthquake_damaged_japanese_nuclear_plant_has_shaky_history
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Japan has done many things right –
The emergency preparedness and drills ahead of time were very right
The wireless availability across Japan was right
The earthquake resistant building materials used ahead of time were right.
The earthquake resistant building processes that were put into place were right.
The protective measures to prevent tsunamis from inundating city centers were right – even though the tsunami did get around some of those defenses.
The early warning systems were right.
When I saw on Japanese news tv last night, a grocery store who brought their groceries out on the sidewalk for people to buy, I knew that was also right. During disasters in the US, our stores don’t do that. They shutter and lock up the place.
The handing out of water and care packages to citizens in Japan that were already prepared ahead of time was right and the speed with which it was put into action was right.
The speed of bringing all the emergency disaster relief programs and actions into place was right.
The requests to international agencies and accepting outside help to come has also been timely, efficient and right.
– cricketdiane
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My suggestion, if people want to donate money or to help – find the rescue teams going and donate to them or to the International Red Cross.
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Japan is used to earthquakes and has instituted strict building codes and carries out frequent earthquake and tsunami drills. But the sheer intensity of Friday’s disaster was such that even the best preparation could only mitigate the tragedy.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/03/12/japan-quake.html
Also from this article –
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has also set up a Family Links website to help people trying to re-establish contact with missing family members and friends. The ICRC says the worst hit areas are in the prefectures of Miyagi, Fukushima, Tochigi and Ibaraki.
Other reports said 9,500 people were unaccounted for in the coastal town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture. Kyodo said that represents more than half of the community’s population.
One of the few buildings not destroyed in Minamisanriku was the hospital, but seawater had reached the fourth of its five floors. On Saturday afternoon, there were around 300 patients stranded there waiting to be rescued, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.
At least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere in the northeast.
(etc.)
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Japan struggles with nuclear reactors in wake of quake
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/index.html?hpt=T1
Tokyo (CNN) — Crews at a nuclear plant struck by an earthquake, then a tsunami and then an explosion in the span of 36 hours resorted Saturday to flooding a feverish nuclear reactor with sea water in hopes of preventing a meltdown of its core.
An explosion that sent white smoke rising above the Fukushima Daiichi plant Saturday afternoon buckled the walls of a concrete building that surrounded one of the plant’s nuclear reactors, but did not damage the reactor itself, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.
(etc.)
This article goes on to note that
While Cabinet Secretary Edano said later in the day that radiation levels appeared to be falling, the government nevertheless ordered an evacuation of residents within a 20-kilometer radius of the Daiichi plant, as well as a second facility where the cooling system had failed — the Fukushima Daini plant.
An estimated 170,000 people have been evacuated, though the process was ongoing, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday.
Japanese authorities have classified the event at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 as a level 4 “accident with local consequences” on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale intended to communicate to the public the significance of radiation-linked events. The scale runs from 0 to 7, with the latter being classified as a major accident.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/index.html?hpt=T1
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Note –
(from wikipedia)
The China Syndrome is a hypothetical idea of an extreme result of nuclear meltdown in which molten reactor core products breach the barriers below them and flow downwards through the floor of the containment building.(etc.)
The large size of nuclear power plants ordered during the late 1960s raised new safety questions and created fears of a severe reactor accident that would send large quantities of radiation into the environment. In the early 1970s, a contentious controversy over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear power plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the China Syndrome, was discussed in the popular media and in technical journals.
In 1971 (the same year that the Fukushima reactor complex was commissioned, my note), nuclear physicist Ralph Lapp used the term “China Syndrome” to describe the burn-through of the reactor vessel, the penetration of the concrete below it, and the emergence of a mass of hot fuel into the soil below the reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Syndrome
) – above found at wikipedia – entry China Syndrome – below my notes about it –
However (my note) – the meltdown into the soil and earth’s core as was originally suggested by the China Syndrome hypothesis was not the real issue of danger magnified by the potential for fuel rod assemblies to overheat and melt into one another. The outward dispersal of nuclear radiated materials into the immediate environment affecting large populations and carried by surface and high-altitude wind currents to even larger populations and environments turned out to be the greater problem. This was evidenced in the disaster at Chernobyl where a meltdown occurred, resulting explosions sent radiated materials skywards and outwards from the facility and high-altitude wind currents are known to have dispersed those materials over great masses of land, agriculture, animal herds used as food sources, populations and other environmental features, such as streams, lakes and rivers from which drinking water and irrigation water for farming are derived.
That is the real “China Syndrome” that occurs and is in danger of occurring now in Japan from the nuclear materials which have become unstable, overheated and may have already entered the “meltdown” phase. The explosion which occurred indicates the instability of the materials, the fact that aerial dispersal of a certain level of contaminants have occurred already and the danger which is present right now in the overall containment system.
The question is whether it will go to the next stage or be stopped. There are reports that seawater has been sprayed into the facility where the explosion occurred which would help to cool it to some extent. But the problems are actually an internal one. Where the fuel rod assembly sits, as the radioactive rods overheat, their proximity to one another allows a greater distribution of heat than the containment console was intended to handle. One report last night, said that the fuel assembly can reach temperatures in excess of 5,000 degrees. What the expert speaking did not say is how quickly once the process is started that it can magnify and develop heat levels exponentially feeding from itself. The electrons literally heat up and become “excited” with levels of atomic activity far in excess of anything the nuclear equipment in the plants were designed to accommodate. Neutron activity being given off and bounding around between the fuel rods would surely exacerbate the increase in heat, energy and overall activity in the pile. It has to go somewhere and without any realistic way to cool it down or stop the reaction . . .
– cricketdiane
I’ve always wondered if during the time of a potential nuclear meltdown of reactor fuel rods, if liquid nitrogen could be used to cool the entire mass quickly or if that would be reactive with the fuel itself. I don’t know. There are liquid propellants which are super cooled by their very nature. What would it take to use those on the reactors in Japan which are in danger right now before it gets any worse? During Chernobyl and even Three Mile Island, the difference was in the failure of officials in having world resources to quickly come to bear on those situations which made them worse than they had to become. We don’t have to do it that way this time and one of my notes about the most impressive things happening right now is the international interaction working to resolve the nuclear meltdown potential rather than to hide it until the danger is unmanageable as some past events around the world have been handled.
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Using the sea water to cool the reactor assembly was brilliant. On one of the news outlets online there was a picture of the boats sending long arcs of water into the plant where the explosion occurred. It may have bought some time. Each of the nuclear plant complexes have several reactors and the water may not be reaching the others in the complex since their roofs and walls are still intact. There comes a point where no human being will be able to be anywhere near these plants. That means the options for restoring the cooling system won’t exist past that.
another note about the other coverage of the devastation from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan –
I hope the Red Cross and other organizations are bringing generators and heaters. The temperatures are cold and expected to get even colder. Warm winter clothing will be needed, warm hearty foods of some kind, warmth, blankets and probably, shoes.
There is another organization besides the International Red Cross which gets the job done in situations of disaster and crisis – that is Oxfam which is an international confederation of fourteen organizations serving in an interactive and inter-relational way. The past events around the world for many years have shown that they get the resources from the donations to real things that provide shelter, food, semi-permanent substantial housing for disaster victims, things for the communities to rebuild their community and economic foundations, etc. More info about them can be found here –
The other note I would make about that is about donating to the International Red Cross for an event of this kind rather than to expect contributions given to the national red cross chapters to find their way as donations going for the Japanese people immediately.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Time can also be donated as a volunteer to the International Red Cross and to the Oxfam group
http://www.ifrc.org/en/get-involved/donate/donation/
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies – online donations page or consult the “Contact Us” button on site
http://www.oxfam.org/en/content/donate
Oxfam International donations page – you can select by country or by project
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Also – there are Urban Search and Rescue Teams going to Japan to help recovery efforts from nations around the world including the United States – those have been highlighted on some of the news broadcasts, can be found online or through the UN disaster relief and disaster aid lists of organizations involved – those would be a great place to donate time or money. Particularly since these urban rescue teams are underway right now to help – they will need money to support their efforts and possibly the donations of time through volunteers as back support – supplies have to be loaded and prepared, information relay has to happen and a host of other things which might need volunteer efforts.
Last night, I noticed a twitter from someone who mentioned how many emails he had already received asking for donations to help Japan. Maybe those emails are legitimate, maybe not. I do know that the above three organizations of people are actually getting the job done over and over again during past events. They came in with good solutions, enacted them, helped the communities get on their feet and protected life and safety in the process in an intelligent manner. They made good use of their resources, reached beyond the “norm” to find new solutions and new technology where it was available in the world and put it into place as part of the efforts, and they were reasonable about the overhead spent to get it done. That makes sense. I don’t know if any of the other non-governmental and charitable organizations have done that very well aside from the Catholic Charities International organization.
Many calls for money are made after an event and people want to help, but if the money does nothing beyond serving administration of the advertised efforts, then I don’t see what good it is. Personally, I’m not giving money to an organization to support the CEO and CFO in some lavish lifestyle with an enhanced income for them while people’s needs around the world are served in some half-assed pathetic manner. That is not what I want my money to do when I sacrifice my own needs and offer it to those around the world who are in some greater disaster than I am facing.
– cricketdiane
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