Fukushima!

...apocalyptic:

Day to day events and the jobs' pressures, mainstream's constant bread and games irrigation, floods of hard to differentiate pseudo-news mixed with unbelievable acts under UK's terrorist laws easily help (us) to forget and avoid the real problems. One being Fukushima!

I came across the article in RT: Fukushima apocalypse:Years of `duct tape fixes` could result in `millions of deaths`:

- The racks inside the pool that contain this fuel were damaged by the explosion in the early days of the accident. 
- Zirconium cladding which encased the rods burned when water levels dropped, but to what extent the rods have been damaged is not known, and probably won't be until removal is attempted. 
- Saltwater cooling has caused corrosion of the pool walls, and probably the fuel rods and racks. 
- The building is sinking. 
- The cranes that normally lift the fuel were destroyed. 
- Computer-guided removal will not be possible; everything will have to be done manually. 
- TEPCO cannot attempt this process without humans, which will manage this enormous task while being bombarded with radiation during the extraction and casking. 
- The process of removing each rod will have to be repeated over 1,300 times without incident. 
- Moving damaged nuclear fuel under such complex conditions could result in a criticality if the rods come into close proximity to one another, which would then set off a chain reaction that cannot be stopped.

At Fukushima, they are dealing with massive amounts of groundwater that flow through the property, and the endless pouring that must be kept up 24/7/365 to keep things from getting worse. Recently there appears to be subsidence issues and liquefaction under the plant.

Liquefaction is explained here; just the same like pouring water into a sand-box when we were children. Only, in this case this is lots of water, contaminated, into grounds known to shake constantly and there are swimming pools full of nuclear fuel rods waiting to take a dip and melt back to where they came from... if not that one earthquake strikes first.

It would be interesting to hear and read from alternative sources about the situation in Fukushima. Fukushima Diary is one: a desperate voice.


Any more?

Carpe diem!

humans' incapacity

Reactor 2 radiation

too high for access

 source

29.03.2012!: The Japan Times: 

Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour and any attempt to send robots in to accurately gauge the situation will require them to have greater resistance than currently available, experts said Wednesday.

Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The experts said the high radiation level is due to the shallow level of coolant water — 60 cm — in the containment vessel, which Tepco said in January was believed to be 4 meters deep. Tepco has only peeked inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. It has few clues as to the status of reactors 1 and 3, which also suffered meltdowns, because there is no access to their insides.

The utility said the radiation level in the reactor 2 containment vessel is too high for robots, endoscopes and other devices to function properly.

Spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said it will be necessary to develop devices resistant to high radiation.

High radiation can damage the circuitry of computer chips and degrade camera-captured images.

For example, a series of Quince tracked robots designed to gather data inside reactors can properly function for only two or three hours during exposure to 73 sieverts, said Eiji Koyanagi, chief developer and vice director of the Future Robotics Technology Center of Chiba Institute of Technology.

That is unlikely to be enough for them to move around and collect video data and water samples, reactor experts said.

"Two or three hours would be too short. At least five or six hours would be necessary," said Tsuyoshi Misawa, a reactor physics and engineering professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute.

The high radiation level can be explained by the low water level. Water acts to block radiation.

"The shallowness of the water level is a surprise . . . the radiation level is awfully high," Misawa said.

While the water temperature is considered in a safe zone at about 50 degrees, it is unknown if the melted fuel is fully submerged, but Tepco said in November that computer simulations suggested the height of the melted fuel in reactor 2's containment vessel is probably 20 to 40 cm, Tepco spokeswoman Ai Tanaka said.

Tepco has inserted an endoscope and a radiation meter, but not a robot, in the containment vessel. It is way too early to know how long Tepco will need to operate robots in the vessel because it is unknown what the devices will have to do, Tanaka said.

A Quince was exposed to radiation of 20 sieverts per hour for a total of 10 hours, and the device worked fine, Koyanagi said. If the team conducts further experiments, it may find out the robot can resist even more radiation, he added.

According to experts, even though high radiation in the containment vessel means additional trouble, it is not expected to further delay the decommissioning the three crippled reactors, a process Tepco said will take 40 years.

The experts noted, however, that removing the melted nuclear fuel from the bottom of the containment vessels will be extremely difficult.

Tepco inserted a radiation meter into the containment vessel of reactor 2 Tuesday for the first time, measuring atmospheric radiation levels at several points inside the vessel. The readings logged 31.1 and 72.9 sieverts per hour.

Tepco has not been able to gauge the water depths and radiation levels of the containment vessels for reactors 1 and 3, as, unlike unit 2, there is no access.

I normally do not copy articles in full; this one, however, makes one break out in sweat, right to the very end where reactors 1 and 3 are declared un-accessible. All by the experts!

This all while mainstream discusses Cameron's sausage rolls, his gas station advisory capacities and ominous £250,000 dinner parties.

Carpe diem! 

(11-03-11)*3

14:46: Earthquake: Tsunami: Fukushima

In magnu lucto sum!

daughter's heroine

I chose my mum to be my heroine because she is hardworking,
trustworthy and has to put up with me, my brothers and sister.

as seen in Charleston Academy; Inverness

Trustworthiness: would it not be nice to be able to rely on this virtue? The people of Japan did when they were told by their ingenious and omniscient politicians how brilliant their nuclear power technology, those highly trained managers and technicians were and how safe it all was and is:

TOKYO—Government officials failed to distribute to thousands of people pills that could have minimized radiation risks from the March nuclear accident, government documents show.
The disclosure is the latest evidence of government neglect of emergency procedures in the chaotic days after the disaster, in which an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

WSJ ASIA: Japan officials failed to hand out Radiation Pills in Quake's Aftermath

Not even the most simple of all measurements they were capable of initialising. What ignorance, falsehood and stupidity? Failure across the board with no consequences for the failed.

Don't you expect the governments of Euroland to have any clue of what they started when they imposed the EURO upon us and even less when it comes to handle the current crisis out of which there is no way by inventing new dubious ways of accounting (for) ever more debts, every day. That's treating ill patients with more illness; or more debts with more cuts; or trying to safe a dying City from Financial Transaction Tax while betting on a deceasing currency watching what was to be a globalised world and celebrating that nonsense of "we are not part of it"!?

Glad to say: the basics never change; the escape into what is a young sister's and daughter's basic trust into her mum was and is the last resort. Parents: proud as can be; and responsible!

Carpe diem!


more:

Truth or Paranoia? Activists Claim Parts Of Tokyo Are More Radioactive Than Chernobyl

6 months into Japan's cleanup, radiation a major worry

the closer you get...

...the earlier you'll die!


Two brave Japanese driving towards Fukushima Power Plant.




We are damn close!


Carpe diem!

sunny investments

The scheme shows the connection to the mains (E)
of an individual's house PV unit (A) connected via the rectifier (B)
and the feed-in-meter (C) to the mains-meter (D).
(Sharp Germany)

On average over the last five years the price for energy generated by PV panels has decreased as follows:

• 2010 > € 2,950.00 per kWp (-14.49%)
• 2009 > € 3,450.00 per kWp (-19.77%)
• 2008 > € 4,300.00 per kWp (-10.42%)
• 2007 > € 4,800.00 per kWp (-4.00%
• 2006 > € 5,000.00 per kWp

Government incentives have done the deal: solar power becomes more competitive; nuclear is, if at all, just one minor but then technically not solved (waste) and dangerous option!

Yes, the Intelligent Grid needs Smart Meters but also decentralised supply of energy from the reverse end; this way the basic load can be reduced and it will be more evenly distributed; at the same time overall emisions from power generation will be reduced considerably and the nations' risky dependance on fossil fuels or other imported (again > nuclear) energies will be reduced.

In addition energy efficient devices (LED etc.) and real (!) and supervised (!) Passive House building standards are the way forward and the only option to fight climate change and excessive energy cost.

Carpe diem!

growth, growther, growthest

growth isn't possible


Dr. Victoria Johnson of nef:

Magic bullets - such as carbon capture and storage, nuclear or even geo-engineering - are potentially dangerous distractions.

BBC news, in short


download the publication (pdf) here.

The definition of growth based on a pecuniary increase alone is just one possible but ancient criteria ruling our lives; should we not better begin to evaluate other areas that could benefit from "growing" such as "quality of life" in general terms or "harmony", "health", "comfort", "knowledge" and "wisdom"; finally "real solutions to real problems" could do with massive growth!

Carpe diem!

incentives avoid 3 (8) pplants since 2002

The "B-KWK", the "Bundesverband Kraft-Waerme-Kopplung", a complicated name for what is simply the association of CHP manufacturers and suppliers in Germany has proudly published that the capacity of all installed CHP units since 2002 has avoided to build three average sized power plants in Germany; export included the equivalent of even eight pplants had not to be constructed.

Here is the link; sorry you will need to use some translation software as the association is merely supporting German manufactures - in German language - I was told today. So much for globalisation.

Anyway, it would be interesting to compare the total of paid out incentives with the cost of building those power plants; and then there is the benefit (for...?) of not having had to convince sensible voters and force tough antagonists into actually approve those plants whether nuclear or gas or coal.

Carpe diem!

nuclear waste heritage!

source

A couple of weeks ago under the headline "Forever waste" I referred to problems of the salt mine ASSE in Germany used as a final storage for light and medium contaminated nuclear waste. The storage was used from 1965 until 1978; originally declared safe for at least 100,000 years to come soon penetrating humidity, then water questioned its reliability.

As usual all kinds of sources give you a wide range of choices to select your fears from; while BILD.de in October of 2009 - see photo below with a man filling his wee cup - reported that the daily volume of water penetrating certain areas of the salt mine and only such with no nuclear waste stored in had increased from 30 to 100 litres per day - which in buckets sounds not really threatening - other official sources report water volumes of up to 12m³ - avoiding to say "12,000 litres per day"; what a charming and calming difference?

source

Cleaning up in 420 days

Last week it was decided to clean up the place. Roundabout 126,000 barrels filled with nuclear waste, the majority not even labelled, and dumped in deep, now salt water flooded holes will need to be taken above ground (from 750m down) and precisely examined; not decided, yet, is what to do then with the historic waste the majority of which was dumped in 1976 and 1977 when the closure was imminent and all wanted to get rid of then most probably all kinds of nuclear waste; now the commission allows 4.8 minutes for each barrel for transport above ground and thorough examination.

Odd figures always make one sceptical: so they calculated 10,080 hours to do the complete job!? One year equals 8,760 hours, surely they can work in three shifts, so all will be cleaned up within one year and 55 days.

Besides the threat of the water the salt mine is obviously declared structurally unsafe; life spans of 3 to 10 years are given before the risk of collapse is declared acute; no worries, this time the scientists should be a wee more accurate and the tolerance in their guesses might be a bit closer to reality than 100,000 safe years compared to really only just some dozens of years. It remains to be seen whether the tolerances in guessing and throwing the dice will allow for 420 stress-free days for this 4.8 minute per barrel operation.

Would a € per barrel figure not be more interesting?

May be that tells you why the hurry...

source

Yes, this bracket was once straight.

The globe’s stories about finding appropriate sites for storing nuclear waste even on a minimum scale of sustainability are stories of failure, lies and in the best cases belittlement; never over the last fifty years was just one safe place found but billions have been spent and will now need to be invested into old waste – not to talk about the new one.

It is just another lie that alternative energy is expensive and the driver of cost when it comes to sustainable electricity generation and transport; the real cost for R&D and the waste problematic of nuclear power is dumped on us through separate balance positions. But what is cost against the threat of nuclear contamination? Would you like to own a house around Hanover/Germany and drink fresh water?

final storage sites near Hannover, Germany

Carpe 420 dies!

the nuclear countdown

telegraph: "Ten nuclear power plants get the go-ahead despite safety fears"

source: "Explain that Stuff!"

The article appears to me like a confession of failure and sums up pipe dreams of 10 new nuclear power stations supplying up to 25% of the UK's electricity latest from 2025 onwards with the first to go onto the grid as early as 2018: nine years from now!

If you miss the explanation why this should work now and has not for the last 20 years: I do too.

May be the mixture of a Government ready to override all objections, to sweep away the toxic waste problem while mixing in dark and cold power-cut-scenarios and the need for some pseudo-green coal power plants and the ever-so-alleged leadership in new technologies such as CCS shall act as the smoke screen.

Is that what sustainability stands for?

Carpe diem!

apropos waste!

guardian.co.uk:Landfill sites may be used to dump radioactive waste

Don't worry; there will be a site near you; this is for "low level waste", only; but lots of it!
What an easy solution for the nuclear industry and the bankrupt Councils?

Carpe diem!

Nuclear Power; does it do the trick?

[facts, only]


31 of 206 countries rely on nuclear power.

In 2000 the world counted 448 Nuclear Power Plants;
today there are 440;
eight gone.

Within the coming 15 years 150 plants will have to be closed
for security reasons or as most will reach the end of their life expectancy.

No (final) solution for the 1,000,000year-hot-waste;
old repositories already causing colossal cost;
always at the tax payers’ risk;
in summary an expensive bill of exchange on future.

The US has tried to build just one plant during the last thirty years;
public opposition killed it.

Planning and construction takes 20 odd years.
financing needs the tax payers’ money;
money by the bucket load;
public acceptance for any of the above is problematic.


What happens if we go through another tiny little Chernobyl-like incident anywhere on the globe?

Interesting trial, interesting trick!

Carpe diem!