Fukushima apocalypse...

[Jordan]

Japan Expert: “All I can do is pray nothing goes wrong” at Fukushima Unit 4; Concern over “dangerous chain of events” — TV: “At least evacuate nearby residents” — NYTimes: No external supervision of Tepco; To start within 10 days.

In the next 10 days [Tepco] is set to start the delicate and risky task of using a crane to remove the fuel assemblies from the pool, a critical step in a long decommissioning process that has already had serious setbacks.

 

Just 36 men will carry out the tense operation.  A separate team will work overnight to clear any debris inside the pool that might cause the fuel to jam when a crane tries to lift it out, possibly causing damage. the work will be carried out by a

 

Tepco-led team and without external supervision. Underwater cameras will help engineers search for debris, left from the original explosion, that might jam the assemblies, and a robotic arm will be used to try to remove any debris that does get in the way.

 

The crane is designed to hold its load if power is lost, and Tepco said it has doubled the cabling that will lift the cask, which could weigh as much as 90 tons when filled. The biggest fear is that an earthquake or tsunami will disrupt the fuel assembly transfer.

 

 

Yasuro Kawai, former nuclear plant engineer who now heads a group that is independently monitoring the decommissioning process: “All I can do is pray that nothing goes wrong” [...] He said much depends on whether the assemblies were damaged during removal — for example, if the casks carrying them were to accidentally fall to the ground, exposing the rods — and whether such damage was severe enough to force workers to evacuate. “If they drop the rods, will the situation be easily contained, or do we need to worry about a more dangerous chain of events? There are just too many variables involved to say for sure.”

 

 

 

http://enenews.com/tv-they-should-at-least-evacuate-nearby-residents-before-fuel-removal-at-fukushima-japan-expert-all-i-can-do-is-pray-nothing-goes-wrong-nytimes-no-external-supervision-of-process-set

[Jordan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/world/asia/removing-fuel-rods-poses-new-risks-at-crippled-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html

 

Removing Fuel Rods Poses New Risks at Crippled Nuclear Plant in Japan.

It was the part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that spooked American officials the most, as the complex spiraled out of control two and a half years ago: the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4, with more than 1,500 radioactive fuel assemblies left exposed when a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off the building.

 

In the next 10 days, the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, is set to start the delicate and risky task of using a crane to remove the fuel assemblies from the pool, a critical step in a long decommissioning process that has already had serious setbacks.

 

 

Just 36 men will carry out the tense operation to move the fuel to safer storage; they will work in groups of six in two-hour shifts throughout the day for months. A separate team will work overnight to clear any debris inside the pool that might cause the fuel to jam when a crane tries to lift it out, possibly causing damage.

 

 

“We are making our final preparations,” Naomi Hirose, the president of the company, known as Tepco, said at a news conference on Friday. “We hope to be done by the end of next year.”

 

 

The attempt to remove the fuel rods underscores the complicated, potentially hazardous work that lies ahead at the plant, which was crippled by explosions and by meltdowns in three of its reactors in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

The operation addresses a threat that has hung over the plant since the crisis started. Though the fuel has cooled significantly since the early days of the crisis, and Tepco has shored up the reactor building, it is still dangerous to have the fuel high up in a damaged structure that could collapse in another quake, experts warn.

 

 

But removing it poses dangers, too. The fuel rods must remain immersed in water to block the gamma radiation they emit and allow workers to be in the area, and to prevent the rods from overheating. An accident could expose the rods and — in a worst-case scenario, some experts say — allow them to release radioactive materials beyond the plant.

Plant engineers will use a crane to lift the fuel assemblies from the pool and put them into giant casks of water. Each cask will be placed on a trailer and moved to a more secure pool at ground level.

 

 

“There are potentially very big risks involved,” Shunichi Tanaka, the head of Japan’s nuclear regulator, said last week. “Each assembly must be handled very carefully.”

 

 

Tepco hopes that a smooth start to the removals will help it regain at least some of the credibility it lost in its response to the quake and tsunami that overwhelmed the plant and in the cleanup.

 

 

A string of blunders by Tepco, including underestimating the potential for large amounts of groundwater to become contaminated and reach the ocean, has some experts wondering whether the company is up to the task.

Even minor problems with the fuel removal could strengthen calls for the decommissioning work to be taken out of Tepco’s hands.

“All I can do is pray that nothing goes wrong,” said Yasuro Kawai, a former plant engineer who now heads a group that is independently monitoring the decommissioning process.

 

 

He said much depends on whether the assemblies were damaged during removal — for example, if the casks carrying them were to accidentally fall to the ground, exposing the rods — and whether such damage was severe enough to force workers to evacuate.

 

 

“If they drop the rods, will the situation be easily contained, or do we need to worry about a more dangerous chain of events?” Mr. Kawai said. “There are just too many variables involved to say for sure.”

 

 

Tepco officials said the removal plan has been vetted by the company’s engineers and outside experts, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the work will be carried out by a Tepco-led team and without external supervision.

The company said it has taken extra precautions. The plant has been preparing for months, erecting a steel structure around and over the damaged reactor building and fitting it with a crane to lift the casks about 100 feet in the air. Underwater cameras will help engineers search for debris, left from the original explosion, that might jam the assemblies, and a robotic arm will be used to try to remove any debris that does get in the way.

 

 

The crane is designed to hold its load if power is lost, and Tepco said it has doubled the cabling that will lift the cask, which could weigh as much as 90 tons when filled.

 

 

The biggest fear is that an earthquake or tsunami will disrupt the fuel assembly transfer. Sizable aftershocks from the 2011 quake frequently jolt the region. Last month, a magnitude-7.1 quake off the coast near Fukushima caused a small tsunami.

Tepco has said the steel covering structure and crane can withstand an earthquake as strong as the magnitude-9.0 quake that damaged the plant in 2011.

 

 

Lake H. Barrett, a former United States Department of Energy official who was in charge of removing fuel from a stricken reactor after an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, is now a special adviser to the president of Tepco. He said he believed that the risks in removing the fuel from the Reactor No. 4 pool at Fukushima were small and that a significant release of radioactive material was highly unlikely.

 

 

And when the job is done, Mr. Barrett said, the overall danger will be reduced.

This fuel “really needs to come back down to a ground-level pool that is not damaged,” he said. “That’s going to improve the risk situation.”

 

 

In the early days of the crisis, American officials were so worried about the pool that they advised Americans to stay farther from the plant than the Japanese government ordered, which many Japanese officials still remember with humiliation. The worst-case scenario of a breach in the pool, leaving the fuel rods uncovered, has not happened, and Tepco believes the fuel assemblies have relatively little damage.

[Dustparticle]

 I wonder is this:http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5065054/starfish-wasting-disease-on-west-coast is cause by the fallout?

[trottigy]

From the article you posted - NO.

 

 

Starfish are dying off in startling numbers along the West Coast of the United States and Canada. And they're doing it in a rather gnarly manner: the sea creatures are coming down with a syndrome that sees them disintegrate into piles of white goop.

 

Marine scientists are warning that instances of the illness, known as sea star wasting syndrome, are occurring at an unprecedented rate this year. The ailment is believed to be caused by a bacterial infection, but scientists are still trying to figure out why it's cropping up now. 

 

So it is caused by bacteria. As radiation KILLS bacteria - this seems an unlikely cause.

 

in fact from the same article:

 

 

 

It's unclear what's causing the outbreaks, but scientists thus far speculate that unusually warm ocean temperatures — which lend themselves to the proliferation of bacteria — might be responsible.

 

So perhaps the Global Warming trend is more the cause than nuclear radiation.

Edited November 13, 2013 by trottigy

[Buddy]

For some reason I can't post a link to the "reply to this topic." the copy and paste doesn't want to work. Anybody got a suggestion.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2013 by a3a27988

[trottigy]

Sometimes you have to use the "more reply options" in the full version.

[Jordan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24958048

 

Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant begins fuel rod removal.

 

Tepco has been preparing for months to remove fuel rods at Fukushima.
 

Workers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have begun removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building.

 

The delicate operation is seen as a necessary step in stabilising the site.

It will take about two days to remove the first 22 fuel rod assemblies, plant operator Tepco says.

Overall, more than 1,500 assemblies must be removed in what correspondents describe as a risky and dangerous operation set to take a year.

 

Experts say hydrogen explosions after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 have made the current storage facility vulnerable to further tremors.

 

The fuel rod assemblies are four-metre long tubes containing pellets of uranium fuel, and the fear is that some may have been damaged during the disaster.

 

When the tsunami struck, water knocked out cooling systems to three of Fukushima's reactors, which went into a state of partial meltdown.

 

Unit 4 was undergoing maintenance, so all of its fuel rods were being stored. But a build-up of hydrogen triggered an explosion in Unit 4, damaging its structure.

 

'Important process'

 

The removal process, which has been preceded by months of repair work and planning, began on Monday afternoon.

"At 15:18 [06:18 GMT], we started to pull up the first fuel assembly with a crane," a spokesman for Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) said.

 

A recently installed crane is being lowered into the pool and hooked on to the assemblies to place them inside a cask.

Removal of fuel rods from the storage pond is a key step in the decommissioning

Tepco has conducted trial runs of the process, which involves large casks

 

The fuel rods will then be deposited into a more secure storage pool with a cooling system.

Experts say it is vital that the casks are watertight so the rods have no contact with air - which risks overheating and possible contamination.

 

Yoshihide Suga, Japan's top government spokesman, said he hoped the operation would go as planned.

"We hope that this [process] will be conducted in a manner that will not disturb local residents, and that the removal will be done on schedule, properly and safely," he said.

 

Tepco spokesman Masayuki Ono called the operation "a very important process in moving ahead with the plant's decommissioning".

 

Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka has warned that rubble from the blast in the pool could pose a problem, Kyodo news agency reported.

 

 

"The fuel has to be handled very carefully. There is a need to make sure that a fuel assembly is not pulled out (from the fuel rack) by force when it gets stuck because of the rubble," Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant has suffered a number of setbacks in recent months, including a series of toxic water leaks and worker errors.

• 1. Small crane retrieves spent fuel rods from storage pool. A protective shell has been built over the top of the damaged reactor building. There are 1,331 spent fuel rods and 202 unused fuel rods to be removed
• 2. Fuel rods are carefully lowered into specially-constructed casks, which each weigh 91 tonnes and can hold up to 22 rods
• 3. A larger crane lifts full cask out of the storage pond and lowers it out of the building and on to a flat-bed truck. The casks will then be taken to a safe storage pool on the Fukushima site

[Jordan]

Low-Dose Radiation ☢ DOE Study

 

[Jewelz]

Worsening conditions and so much cover up ! Just like our Dec magazine " Can You Trust The News "

All to keep people thinking of everything but the need for God's Kingdom!

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-record-radiation-leak-616/

[trottigy]

Worsening conditions and so much cover up ! Just like our Dec magazine " Can You Trust The News "

All to keep people thinking of everything but the need for God's Kingdom!

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-record-radiation-leak-616/

So what have you heard?

[Jewelz]

I hear nothing here on the news but the research on web sites. I feel they don't want to create a panic among people or make them think about the need for God's kingdom to solve this.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-radioactivity-flowing-into-the-ocean-will-shift-towards-west-coast-of-north-america-unpredictable-consequences/5362535

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Toy Poodles]

Obama raises the amount of radiation considered safe in the soil and in drinking water.

 

 

 

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-approves-raising-permissible-levels-of-nuclear-radiation-in-drinking-water-civilian-cancer-deaths-expected-to-skyrocket/5331224

[trottigy]

For a little more info -http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/04/10/epa-draft-stirs-fears-of-radically-relaxed-radiation-guidelines/

The non-binding document does not relax EPA’s standards, the agency has said in response to the criticism. But it directs agencies responding to radiation releases to standards at other agencies that are less stringent than EPA. Douglas Guarino has the scoop at NextGov, a publication that follows technology and government:

The new version of the guide released Friday does not include such dramatically relaxed guidelines in its text, but directs the reader to similar recommendations made by other federal agencies and international organizations in various documents. It suggests that they might be worth considering in circumstances where complying with [EPA's] own enforceable drinking water regulations is deemed impractical….

For example, the new EPA guide refers to International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines that suggest intervention is not necessary until drinking water is contaminated with radioactive iodine 131 at a concentration of 81,000 picocuries per liter. This is 27,000 times less stringent than the EPA rule of 3 picocuries per liter.

via EPA Relaxes Public Health Guidelines For Radiological Attacks, Accidents – Nextgov.com.

That EPA rule was designed for a lifetime of exposure, the IAEA guideline for short-term exposure.

The document was signed Friday by acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe, but it developed under the Bush Administration and was revised under the supervision of Obama’s nominee for the top EPA post, Gina McCarthy, who has headed EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation since 2009. McCarthy faces a confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday.

[Jewelz]

Yikes I don't think holding our breath will do any good!

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_01/Steam-over-Fukushima-as-sign-of-catastrophe-89-tons-of-deadly-radioactive-fuel-could-reach-US-in-2-days-2074/

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[surfergirl]

I have been reading up on this its not good what's happeningl On Google Plus there is circle that talks about this subject..

One of the articles recommended buying a stack load of duct tape & closing up the gaps & buying painters drop sheets. etc.

 

Kinda reminds me of an ep of Macgyver a chemical power had errupted & he used a chocolate bar to stop the leak. If only. Hey,lols

So terrible & the worse is The Japanese are getting their homeless people to clean up their mess. 

Crazy terrible world. 

 

Hey it now 2014. I wonder sometimes as it will be 100yrs since Jesus cleaned the heavens what will be this yr. Just my thinking on looking at the bright side of life.

[Jewelz]

Well just like how the Berlin Wall fell overnight, things can change suddenly! It is a momentous year for our reigning King and we know he loves and cares for us. I came across this scripture which I found encouraging today Ezekiel 34: 11-16

11 “‘For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah says: “Here I am, and I myself will search for my sheep, and I will care for them. 12 I will care for my sheep like a shepherd who has found his scattered sheep and is feeding them. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered in the day of clouds and thick gloom. 13 I will bring them out from the peoples and collect them together from the lands and bring them into their land and feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams and by all the dwelling places of the land. 14 In a good pasture I will feed them, and the land where they graze will be on Israel’s high mountains. They will lie down there in a good grazing land, and they will feed on choice pastures on the mountains of Israel.” 15 “‘“I myself will feed my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down,” declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah. 16 “The lost one I will search for, the stray I will bring back, the injured I will bandage, and the weak I will strengthen; but the fat one and the strong one I will annihilate. I will feed that one with judgment.”

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[trottigy]

Yikes I don't think holding our breath will do any good!

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_01/Steam-over-Fukushima-as-sign-of-catastrophe-89-tons-of-deadly-radioactive-fuel-could-reach-US-in-2-days-2074/

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

I tried to go to the source of this article -

 

Content blocked by the City of Henderson

<h1 id="noscript-blockMessage">Content blocked by the City of Henderson</h1>

 

Reason:

This Websense category is filtered: Racism and Hate.

 

URL:

http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/146-mjt

 

I was able to see the one above, but I was looking for some main stream news like Reuters or CNN or BBC, but I can't find anyting and the "alt" news sources I often can't reach from work (see above).

 

Does anyone have a main stream source. Maybe even something from Japan?

 

EDIT - I did find this about Unit 4:

 

Edited January 2, 2014 by trottigy

[rocket]

Dec.28, 3-5 days. It's too late. We have all been irradiated.    I'm still here. 

[Miss Bea]

Their putting some scary stuff out there, especially for us on the west coast of America. I went to a site IAEA, pretty complicated reporting, but at least there won't be a run on duct tape in this area. Hard to know if whatever is out there is true. But this one is an international atomic energy reporting site. One can hope...

[Jewelz]

This was an interesting article.

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/watch-the-left-hand-fukushima-may-be-the-right/

[ReadYourBible]

Dec.28, 3-5 days. It's too late. We have all been irradiated.    I'm still here. 

Apparently I'm not.  I had a brother come to me at the meeting last night and inform me that my Obit was in the paper. 

[trottigy]

Apparently I'm not.  I had a brother come to me at the meeting last night and inform me that my Obit was in the paper. 

 

Like Jesus - back in bodily form??????? 

[ReadYourBible]

What concerns me most about these sorts of posts is how it has the capability of distracting us from Jehovah.  

 

An acquaintance of mine and I disagreed as to what was being shown in the media.  There is a lot of hype in media, and environmentalists will jump on any bandwagon, since it is a platform in which to preach their views.  I'm not saying it's all wrong, but each page will definitely have its own slant.
 
While I surely care about the earth, and what is being done to it. I am not going to follow topics such as these so religiously that I begin posting pages and pages of information.   

 

I don't consider this a 'head in the sand' view, I consider it a protection I see how this sort of thing can pull you into environmental activism and lead you away from neutrality.  

 

Just some of my thoughts on the matter.

Edited January 2, 2014 by cerebral ecstasy

[ReadYourBible]

Like Jesus - back in bodily form??????? 

Somehow I don't think Jesus had cellulite.

[rocket]

Apparently I'm not.  I had a brother come to me at the meeting last night and inform me that my Obit was in the paper.

When you look in the mirror, if all you see is a glow, maybe the obit is right.