Japan asks U.S. for help cooling nuclear reactors

[Ravi]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Japanese government has formally asked the United States for help in cooling the nuclear reactors damaged by a major earthquake last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday.

Japan asks U.S. for help cooling nuclear reactors | TPM News Pages

I wish they had accepted our help a few days ago when we offered it. This doesn't sound good.

 

[waltky]

Too many corners cut...

Reports: Lax oversight, 'greed' preceded Japan nuclear crisis
March 16, 2011 - Reports suggest that greed within the worldwide nuclear industry, combined with an insufficient UN watchdog and lax oversight of Japan's nuclear plants, contributed to the Japan nuclear crisis.

As Japan races to control a nuclear crisis in the wake of Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, the country's sterling image – as one of the nations most prepared to prevent and manage a disaster of this magnitude – is being tarnished.

Reports are emerging that both the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency and the Japanese government failed to properly ensure the safety of the country's nuclear power industry.

The reports are challenging the recent refrain that the world's No. 3 economy couldn't have done better and once again highlighting how poor government oversight of an industry that allegedly cut corners to turn higher profits can spawn an environmental disaster.

Just as the BP oil spill one year ago heaped scrutiny on the United State's Minerals Management Service, harshly criticized for lax drilling oversight and cozy ties with the oil industry, the nuclear crisis in Japan is shining a light on that nation's safety practices.

Design flaws in nuclear reactor containment vessels?

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GE engineer says he quit over unsafe reactor design
Thu, Mar 17, 2011 - A General Electric Co (GE) engineer said he resigned 35 years ago over concern about the safety of a nuclear reactor design used in the now crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan.

Dale Bridenbaugh said the “Mark 1” design had “not yet been designed to withstand the loads” that could be experienced in a large-scale accident. “At the time, I didn’t think the utilities were taking things seriously enough,” Bridenbaugh, now retired, said in a telephone interview. “I felt some of the plants should have been shut down while the analysis was completed, and GE and the utilities didn’t want to do that, so I left.”

Bridenbaugh said that to the best of his knowledge, the design flaws he had identified were addressed at the Dai-ichi plant, requiring “a fairly significant expense.” GE in a statement said it has had “40 years of safe operations” of its boiling water reactor Mark 1 technology.

“In 1980 the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] issued a generic industry order assessing the Mark 1 containment,” the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company said. “We responded to this order and issued it to all of our customers.” Following last Friday’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the Dai-ichi plant has suffered several explosions, and is now sending radiation wafting into Tokyo, 240km to the south. Authorities are trying to prevent a full meltdown.

Bridenbaugh said that after leaving GE, he started a firm to advise state governments on safety issues. Like many, he said he was watching closely as events unfold in Japan. “I feel sorry for the guys over there trying to handle that thing,” he said. “On the other hand, you can’t say the Fukushima situation is a direct result of the Mark 1 containment. It is a direct result of the earthquake, tsunami and the fact the Mark 1 containment is less forgiving than some of the other reactor versions.”

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[Mr.Fitnah]

They have needed help for a long time.

 

[waltky]

Dat Japanese man onna news last night says dey muckin' up the fuel rods with dat sea water dey puttin' on it...

Dangerous Breach Suspected at Japan Nuclear Plant
Mar 25, 2011 – Two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a crisis at a nuclear plant, the facility is still not under control, and the government said Friday there is a suspected breach at a reactor. That means radioactive contamination at the plant is more serious than once thought.

Japanese leaders defended their decision not to evacuate people from a wider area around the plant, insisting they are safe if they stay indoors. But officials also said residents may want to voluntarily move to areas with better facilities, since supplies in the tsunami-devastated region are running short. The escalation in the nuclear plant crisis came as the death toll from the quake and tsunami passed the grim milestone of 10,000 on Friday. Across the battered northeast coast, hundreds of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed still have no power, no hot meals and, in many cases, no showers for 14 days.

The uncertain nuclear situation halted work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, where authorities have been scrambling to stop the overheated facility from leaking dangerous radiation. Low levels of radiation have been seeping out since the March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling system, but a breach could mean a much larger release of contaminants. The most likely consequence would be contamination of the groundwater. "The situation today at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is still very grave and serious. We must remain vigilant," a somber Prime Minister Naoto Kan said. "We are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care."

The possible breach in the plant's Unit 3 might be a crack or a hole in the stainless steel chamber of the reactor core or in the spent fuel pool that's lined with several feet of reinforced concrete. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far lower than what would further melt the core. Suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers suffered skin burns after wading into water 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found in water in or around a reactor, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

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Japan mulls burying nuclear plant
Sat, Mar 19, 2011 - HELL OF A WEEK: Officials yesterday raised the incident level at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant to five on the INES scale, which ranks nuclear accidents on a one to seven scale

Japanese engineers said yesterday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release. The same method was used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986. However, they still hoped to solve the crisis by fixing a power cable to two reactors by today to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No. 3 reactor, the most critical of the plant’s six reactors.

It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged burying the sprawling complex was possible, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters or scrambling to restart cooling pumps may not work. “It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down first,” an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.

As Japan entered its second week after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 10m tsunami flattened coastal cities and killed thousands of people, the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl looked far from over. The nuclear disaster has triggered global alarm and reviews of safety at atomic power plants around the world.

“This is something that will take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as you eventually remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent-fuel pools,” US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko told a news conference at the White House. Millions of people in Tokyo continued to work from home, some fearing a blast of radioactive material from the complex 240km to the north, although the International Atomic Energy Agency said radiation levels in the capital were not harmful.

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