Japan Quake and Tsunami for USA West Coast

[comsnark]

heh. . .

Obviously I did not mean Oshkosh University if Wisconsin. I was refering to Oshkosh Community College, which is has administrative office in the basement of a Tallahassee Oklahoma YMCA (Not to be confused with the Tallahassee Fl YMCA). If you google it, you will find it hard to find.

 

[OldSkool]

Thanks for the link Comsnark. Great information with no bias twist. We can use a little of that now a days.

 

[comsnark]

Well. .

Let's start here: http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/

with a bit more here: http://mitnse.com/

Bottom line: Unlike earlier in the week, it looks like things are getting better at Dai-ichi. The situation can still, however, be summarized as "what a mess". I mean, when you have to resort to dumping water from a helicopter onto a nuclear power plant to prevent a meltdown: That has GOT to be a bad day.

But on the plus side; using Firetrucks appears to have worked in terms of getting water into the Spent Fuel Pools of reactors #3 and #4. That hopefully means that the fuel is flooded and won't heat up to the point of creating a huge fire that sends large amounts of radiactive particulates into the air. Presumably, this is not an issue for the other reactors.

But on the plus side; it appears that Reactors #1,#2, and #3 are no longer being vented. That implies that the water being injected into the reactors is no longer boiling off and that therefore the reactors must be reaching the cold shutdown state where they won't do any more harm. (But there is still references to water being injected: Where does the water go? Not clear on that point). Remember: All the real radioactive nasties were being released with the steam (or from the fumes from fires in the spent fuel pools)

And it appears in the next couple of days, they will restore permanent AC power to the reactors. Now, I don't exactly know what restoring permanent electrical power to the site actually means. I suspect this means something far different than merely replacing portable diesel generators. I suspect that this also involves restoring electrical connections to high voltage, high horsepower equipment (i.e. pumps!) I suspect the switchgear/motor control centers for these plants (analogy would be the circuit breaker panel in your house) were wiped out by the Tsunami, and electrically driven pumps could not be run until the breakers/switchgear was replaced even if you had large diesel generators available.

 

[comsnark]

Update: from a computer website, no less!

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/05/fukushima-reactor-1-melted-down-2-and-3-may-have-too.ars

Not that I am an expert; but to my ears I am not sure how far from the "worst case" things actually got at these reactors. Basically. . .they finally got into the #1 reactor control room and have determined that the fuel rods have melted into a puddle of radioactive goo at the bottom of the reactor! The suspicion is that the other two reactors that were operating at the time of the earthquake are in a similar condition.

Now. . they have been pumping cooling water into these reactors for weeks. NOBODY seems to know where the water is going. (!) (hint: don't go fishing near there! Glad I don't own real estate in that neck of the woods!)

On the plus side, I have still not heard about fatalities or illness from the radiation. (aside from those injured directely when the earthquake struck and when the containment buildings exploded - geez that does read bad. . .but to put this in perspective the order of magnitude for casualties on this site is comparable to that of Deep Water Horizon oil spill. 11 workers died in that incident)