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Nuclear events taking place in Japan.

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IamSmooth

Tue Mar 22 2011, 10:14PM

Registered Member #190 Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 12:00AM
Location:
Posts: 1567

Chris Russell wrote ...

I have one of those old CDV-715's, cost me around $10 plus shipping in good condition with the original manual. Looks like they're now going for over $50.

Nevertheless, it looks like people are buying them up, expecting them to be useful. Maybe it's time to put mine on the market!

Why don't you sell it and then buy it back in half a year?

Proud Mary

Wed Mar 23 2011, 12:43AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Japan nuclear firm admits missing safety checks at disaster-hit plant
Documents show operator failed to carry out mandatory checks at Fukushima Daiichi and allowed fuel rods to pile up

Justin McCurry in Osaka
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 22 March 2011

The power plant at the centre of the biggest civilian nuclear crisis in Japan's history contained far more spent fuel rods than it was designed to store, while its technicians repeatedly failed to carry out mandatory safety checks, according to documents from the reactor's operator.

The risk that used fuel rods present to efforts to avert disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was underlined on Tuesday when nuclear safety officials said the No 2 reactor's storage pool had heated to around boiling point, raising the risk of a leakage of radioactive steam.

"We cannot leave this alone and we must take care of it as quickly as possible," Hidehiko Nishiyama, of the nuclear and industrial safety agency, said.

According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company repeatedly missed safety checks over a 10-year period up to two weeks before the 11 March disaster, and allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility.

When the plant was struck by a huge earthquake and tsunami, its reactors, designed by US scientists 50 years ago, contained the equivalent of almost six years of highly radioactive uranium fuel produced by the facility, according to a presentation Tepco gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency and later posted on the company's website.

The revelations will add to pressure on Tepco to explain why, under its cost-cutting chief executive Masataka Shimizu, it opted to save money by storing the spent fuel on site rather than invest in safer storage options.

The firm already faces scrutiny over why it waited so long to pump seawater into the stricken reactors and, according to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper last week, turned down US offers of help to cool the reactors shortly after the disaster.

Critics of Japan's nuclear power programme say the industry's patchy safety record and close ties to regulating authorities will have to change if it is to regain public trust.

"I've long thought the whole system is a mess," Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic party MP, told Reuters. "We have to go through our whole nuclear strategy after this.

"Now, no one is going to accept nuclear waste in their backyards. You can have an earthquake and have radioactive material under your house. We're going to have a real debate on this."

Kono wants to see the government lead a fundamental reform of the industry's structure, which he says has encouraged collusion between plant operators and the people who are supposed to regulate them.

Reports said safety lapses at the plant continued up to two weeks before the tsunami disabled cooling systems in its reactors and sparked the biggest nuclear power emergency the world has seen since Chernobyl in 1986.

One month before the tsunami, government regulators approved a Tepco request to prolong the life of one of its six reactors by another decade, despite warnings that its backup power generator contained stress cracks, making them more vulnerable to water damage.

Weeks later, Tepco admitted it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment inside the plant's cooling systems, including water pumps, according to the nuclear safety agency's website.

Regulators have been accused of uncritically backing industry moves to prolong the life of ageing nuclear power plants such as Fukushima Daiichi amid mounting local opposition to the construction of new facilities.

A regulatory committee reviewing the reactor's stay of execution said maintenance management was "inadequate", and the quality of inspection "insufficient," according to reports.

When disaster struck earlier this month, the plant contained almost 4,000 uranium fuel assemblies kept in pools of circulating water â€“ the equivalent of more than three times the amount of radioactive material usually kept in the active cores of the plant's reactors.

The drop-in water levels in some of those pools after the tsunami has caused fuel rods to overheat, raising the risk of a full meltdown and the release of dangerous levels of radioactivity into the atmosphere.

Tepco workers, troops and firefighters have been working around the clock to keep the storage pools replenished by dumping water from helicopters and via high-pressure hoses from the ground.

The No 4 reactor, which suffered two explosions last week, contained 548 fuel assemblies cooling in a water pool on its upper floor.

Japanese plans to store radioactive nuclear fuel after it has been used have made little headway.

A medium-term storage site in Mutsu, northern Japan, is not due to open until next year, and the construction of an enrichment and reprocessing plant in Rokkasho has been hit by technical glitches and other delays.

Patrick

Wed Mar 23 2011, 04:14AM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

Proud Mary wrote ...

Japan nuclear firm admits missing safety checks at disaster-hit plant
Documents show operator failed to carry out mandatory checks at Fukushima Daiichi and allowed fuel rods to pile up

Safety checks!? We dont need safety checks. I mean, come on, what could possibly go wrong ?

If those responsible dont commit suicide (And Im not advocating, just saying), they should be put on trial and imprisoned for life after all this is done.

Proud Mary

Wed Mar 23 2011, 04:15PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Japan: the 'nuclear refugees' who may never go home
Nick Allen reports on the hundreds of people made homeless by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

By Nick Allen, Tokyo
Telegraph online
23 March 2011

It is close to midnight in a cavernous Tokyo sports centre and two little girls sit on a traditional tatami mat quietly playing backgammon unable to sleep.

Hinata Sahara, aged eight, and her seven-year-old sister Rikato, are a long way from their home in Fukushima and they have no idea when â€“ or even if â€“ they can ever go back.

They are part of Japan's latest problem, a wave of "nuclear refugees" who have fled as far as they can from the man-made disaster unfolding to the north.

Many hundreds of them, travelling haphazardly by car, bus, train, and foot, have now reached the Japanese capital, 140 miles from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex.

Some fear they will never go back north, and that their former homes will become ghost towns, condemned to rot in the long shadow of a leaky, radioactive power plant.

All of them know that the name Fukushima, where they grew up, will forever be twinned in people's minds with Chernobyl.

For the Sahara sisters their new, temporary abode is the Tokyo Budokan, an imposing, brutalist structure on the northern outskirts of the capital.

Formerly a showcase for displays of traditional martial arts and kyudo, the Japanese art of archery, it has now become a highly organised refugee centre with more than 300 residents.

In these unfamiliar surroundings Hinata and Rikato resist instructions to go to bed and play newly discovered board games long into the night, while their exhausted mother Atsuko Sahara, 29, tries to rest nearby.

Asked why she has had to leave her home Hinata says firmly "Houshanou," a Japanese word for radiation. It is a word she says angrily, and repeatedly, but she has a childlike understanding of what it means.

"Yes, I know what it is," she says. "It is bad air and it brings cancer to human beings. You can't see it but you can breathe it and you get sick. I want to go home but we have to wait until it goes away." While adults worry about the impact of the "Houshanou" on crops, the seafood industry and the economy, Hinata has more pressing concerns. Her two parrots â€“ "Micky" and "Minnie" â€“ have been left behind in Fukushima.

"I worry about them," she says, her brow furrowing. "I hope they will be alright and I want to go back so I can see them again. I miss my pets." She speaks quietly to avoid waking up the weary looking people sleeping under blankets on the wooden floor of the auditorium. It has been neatly divided up by families, many with children, who have constructed circular areas for themselves using mats and stretches of cardboard for walls.

Two dozen officials from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, dressed in crisp green jackets, scrupulously record every new arrival. The gymnasium floor is spotless, and shoes have to be left at the door. Boxes of children's clothes, warm socks, books, sweets and fruit have been anonymously dropped off by local people.

In a corridor refugees queue patiently for access to two internet terminals and several phones. Others are glued to the centre's one television watching 24-hour updates on the situation back home.

Many of those at the Budokan have had long, arduous journeys to get there.

When he heard of the problems at the power plant Ryo Igarashi, 20, packed his girlfriend Mai Endo, 19, his mother Kimie Igarashi, 49, and his grandmother Ishino Funaki, 77, into his Toyota and started heading south.

He said: "It took nine days. We set out on March 13, and we got here March 21. It is not far but we didn't know where we were supposed to go.

"The information we had was just to leave from near the power plant, so that's what we did. We didn't know who to ask, and we couldn't get gas. So we slept in the car at the roadside, or in a park, and listened to the radio for news.

"We just kept going and eventually we made it to here. I think we are far enough away now." Miss Endo said: "We want to get married next year and have a baby but we thought if we stayed something might happen to the baby. It might not be healthy, so we had to get out." Like many Japanese the couple are now well versed in the workings of nuclear power plants. As they sit on a wooden bench, transfixed by the television, news emerges that electricity has been reconnected to the six reactors at Fukushima.

It is now gone midnight but there is a ripple of excitement among the bleary-eyed refugees still watching.

"That means they can start the cooling systems," Mr Igarashi says to the others. "Maybe that means one day we can go home."

Dr. Drone

Wed Mar 23 2011, 04:43PM

Registered Member #290 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 08:24PM
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Steve Conner

Wed Mar 23 2011, 07:04PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Yes, I completely agree. Individual humans can be very clever and industrious, but the mob is dumb and lazy. And it seems the mob mentality exists in corporations too, when the goal of the corporation, for instance building a nuke plant, is so big and complex that no single person can take ownership of it. To me there is a strong case for requiring energy technologies to be "mob proof".

But this leads on to the paradox that we want infinite energy density, infinite power, infinite convenience, with zero risk. It can't happen. I think gasoline is about the most energetic thing that corporations can be trusted with. Los Alamos published a report called something like "A Review of Criticality Accidents" in 2000, a chilling read that demonstrates what happens when middle management get their hands on fissile material. All of the accidents are obviously preventable in hindsight (how many plutonium ingots do you think it is safe to carry in that box marked "One Plutonium Ingot Only"?) But somehow these things get lost between the cracks of a big industrial complex.

Proud Mary

Wed Mar 23 2011, 07:37PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Environmental crimes are first and foremost economic crimes.

Safety culture always suffers at the hands of private enterprise, where management consider that their first duty is towards shareholders.

Steve Conner

Wed Mar 23 2011, 07:57PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

True, but then why did all the worst nuclear accidents to date happen in Soviet Russia, where there was no such thing as private enterprise? Hopefully Fukushima won't break this trend by out-exploding Chernobyl or the Mayak processing plant.

It is sad that there is no way of costing services rendered to us by the environment. Or maybe it's just as well, I think the bill would be a very unpleasant surprise.

The German Govt. is taxing nuclear fuel at 145 euro per gram now. I wonder how that compares to the cost of putting a gram of spent fuel in safe storage, assuming there even is such a thing?

Martin King

Wed Mar 23 2011, 10:11PM

Registered Member #3040 Joined: Tue Jul 27 2010, 03:15PM
Location: South of London. UK
Posts: 237

Perhaps if laws were made where shareholders and directors in companies would have to personally pay back the costs of any major disaster, then they may take a keener interest in the companies practices and corners may be cut a bit less. In a limited way they do through the fact that future share prices/dividends fall through the floor, but that doesn't affect the money they already have stashed away in the bank, and it's that you want to hit.

Martin.

Ash Small

Wed Mar 23 2011, 11:14PM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

Dr. Spark wrote ...

.From minimum wage workers who can't get my order right at McDonalds, to to mechanics that install parts incorrectly on passenger aircraft, to nuclear power plants not being properly inspected, it seems we grow more and more incapable of doing the job right the first time...

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.....

Steve McConner wrote ...

True, but then why did all the worst nuclear accidents to date happen in Soviet Russia, where there was no such thing as private enterprise? .

.....Proves my point.

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