Yeah, they could have had a full-blown meltdown and a runaway reaction on their hands. As it stands, it sounds like some of the fuel melted and some is still exposed to air, which is quite bad in its own right, but they really dodged a bullet in the grand scheme of things.
They actually changed the article since I posted it. Compare what I quoted to the current article.
Japan starting to evacuate towns outside the official exclusion zone:
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3217555.htm
Presumably they are planning no increasing the exclusion zone size and want to do it stages.
Concerns about a missing 5000 tons of highly radioactive water: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_34.html
This is from Unit 1, so the missing water is millions of curies. And the Cs-137, damn…
Ars makes a nice summary of Science articles about the Japan earthquake. Interesting stuff about thow they misjudged the segment of the fault to blame.
Cores 2 and 3 suffered meltdowns too.
I wouldn’t want to live downwind of this place for the next few thousand years. That’s assuming you can’t dismantle a core with melted fuel slumped at the bottom? I have no idea on what the long term solution might be.
I reckon it’s entombment or robots.
H.
That level of long-term issues is not present at the moment and will hopefully be entirely avoided. If they can resubmerge the rods, then the current (relatively) low levels of radiation being released should go away. Entombment is another long-term option. Remember, even at Chernobyl you can (and many people do) get very close to the reactor today. The issue there was the release of a massive amount of radioactive debris from the initial explosion, and that debris can only be contained by the zone. And even then the issue is more about the risk of exposure to radioactive dust and in food and water more then it is whats in the air. Since we have not had that kind of explosion in Japan, its still a (relatively) lesser situation.
There is still a risk that something else will go wrong, though.
Seven scientists and other experts are being tried for manslaughter in Italy because they failed to predict a 2009 earthquake that killed 300 people.
While it has fallen from the headlines, the nuclear crisis continues:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/09_22.html
The Japanese government says it will quickly decide on whether to evacuate more people from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which have radiation levels exceeding the state limit.
This comes after it was found that accumulative radiation exposure levels in parts of Date and Minamisoma cities exceed the 20 millisieverts per year limit set by the government. The areas are outside the current evacuation zone.
Date is 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the plant.
It looks like the fuel has melted through one or more of the containment vessels, and is now pooled in the secondary containment area. This may well be the cause of the above.
I guess entombment might be the only option now, unless they can cool the material thats gone through the bottom of the containment vessel? Even the containment isn’t really long term, that multi billion project they are starting at Chernobyl now is only good for 100 years. Chernobyl isn’t right next to the coast or in an active earthquake zone either. If the current sarcophagus was hit with a big earthquake no one would be going near.
At least Japan has the design and technical ability to construct something that will work, if only for the time it takes to develop technology to neutralize or process the mess safely.
The Chernobyl comparisons are not apt, for a variety of reasons. Among other things, there is a lot more radioactive material inside the sarcophagus due to the initial explosion, whereas Fukushima has a relatively small amount of radioactive debris to deal with.
What’s especially discouraging is every time they revise an estimate, it is always for the worse. They seem to have assumed best case scenarios for everything.
They just doubled estimated release with the most recent announcement:
In early April, the agency said some 370,000 terabecquerels escaped from the facility. It now believes that figure was 770,000 terabecquerels.
So the official estimate is about 1/8th of Chernobyl, but climbing.
Are you talking about fuel and spent fuel in the cores? Or radioactive debris generally? And how does that affect long term entombment if that’s what they need to do? Or do you think they won’t need to do that?
I’m not exactly sure what your criticism of his point is. Yes there’s a scale difference (that seems to be shrinking unfortunately), but issues of viability of long term solutions are still relevant. Even if smaller than Chernobyl, the issue (viability of long term containment) itself doesn’t seem small.
I still think official Chernobyl numbers are too low and the amount of radiation (initial and post-entombment) are higher than what’s reported.
Just felt a little fun one here in Los Angeles.
Shallow 4.2 quake up in the valley:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/ci11001205.html
The epicenter is in the Games forum.
Surprised you felt one that small in LA. When I lived there for ~15 years, I barely felt anything under a 5.
That being said, I lived in the areas with tons of bedrock underneath.
~C~
When I was in Chino Hills, the outlying quakes tended to bounce off the bedrock and I felt them far less than, say, in Long Beach. However, the 4.5 one mile away within the bedrock caused the whole house to visibly flex.
That being said, didn’t feel it at all, but I think I was on the 210 Freeway at the time.
Apparently we just had an earthquake just on the edge of Vancouver Island and people felt it here in Vancouver. I didn’t feel a thing, and didn’t even know we had one until I got some email notification about it.
6.7 is what it registered. As much as I shouldn’t be, I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t feel anything.