Hopefully if these guys get it right solar thermal will take off in a big way:

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2664

Satellite picture
of the plant taken 9:35 AM Wednesday shows reactor buildings #1, #3, #4 pretty much destroyed, and a hole in building #2 with smoke coming out. Scroll down the page for a close-up of ruins #3 and #4. Looks almost like WTC ground zero!

The oil tanks for the generators were above ground--so that is likely them. That looks like a typical containment put around fuel tanks in these parts. US news made the point that at US nuke plants emergency fuel tanks are underground and that the Fukushima tanks were not. Oil tanks above ground to get washed away and generators in the basement to get flooded. I'm sure more than one person mentioned that that might not be a very good arrangement over the years.

Japan has such huge problems to deal with. It would do no one any good to start going after the people responsible for the plants design right now. I've been keeping the old Jimmy Dean song 'Big John' in mind when I think of the 50 souls still hanging in there fighting those runaway reactors--they are all Big John

And speaking of cascading failures and evacuations, let's not forget what is unfolding right now in the southern island of Kyushu:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110130/us_ac/7740098_japans_shinmoedake_vol...

NASA's Earth Observatory posted a satellite image of the eruption from Shinmoe-dake, showing the ash plume. According to the Earth Observatory report, the ash plume was as high as 15,000 feet and the subsequent ash fall prompted closure of nearby highways and rail lines. Authorities have stated they do not expect the Mount Shinmoe to pose a threat to lives or property, but some experts have warned that this eruption is similar to a violent eruption that occurred 300 years ago.

According to the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo, the eruptions that occurred in 1716-1717 from Shinmoe-dake started as phreatic explosions, went to phreatomagmatic (which happen when magma and water meet) and then to a magmatic eruption. A lava dome was confirmed in the crater of Shinemoe-dake. Lava domes form when magma rises.

And remember that Shinmoe-dake is only one of twenty volcanoes in the immediate area.

The Jeff Masters blog (renown for hurricane information) has wind models regarding dispersion from Fukushima:

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1764

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1763

Engineers design. Management makes decisions. Marketing explains why what they did is good for you.

The fuel pools are at the side of the reactor housing, so that a ceiling crane (such as those in factories) can lift the rods from the reactor, move them over, and lower them to the storage pool. This all takes place inside the reactor housing (the paneled cube). The explosions of reactors 1 and 3 blew the cranes away, exposing both the concrete plug for the reactor as well as the storage pool, which appears to have less "armor" protecting it from the top.

Power should be an area where outside help could readily be brought to bear. Repairing lines from a functional source to the reactor site would go pretty quickly, and of course given the several days now any type of generator could be on-site. TEPCO has not updated plant status in a day or two for Dai-ichi, so the state of external power is unclear. Daini has routine updates which include off-site power is available and all is apparently well there.

I suspect radiation and mechanical issues inside the plants are now the more limiting factors, but of course it's hard to know without more information. Quite likely, if power were available reactors 4, 5, and 6 would have few issues. Surely, though, there is sufficient generator power for all six by now? The diesels from another plant could probably have been moved in 3 days.

Early in the crisis it was reported that the US military had offered Japan the use of its massive airlift capabilities, with substantial airlift already in the area and more arriving daily. Given this resource, it's hard to imagine how Japan can still be reporting that the on-going problems are largely due to a lack of electrical power and cooling capability at the main reactor site in crisis (Fukushima Dai-ichi)? Another report said that some of the best power equipment delivered to the site on Saturday could not be used because of "mis-matched connectors"!

I once worked for an American company that rents medium to large-scale, portable power, cooling and lighting equipment, with options for fast delivery just about anywhere in the USA and southern Canada. It could be quite expensive, with rental rates well over $100,000 per day not at all uncommon (20 years ago). But it was a real eye-opener for me as to what can quickly be put in place when the money is right.

This week, one of the many problem moments was said to be due to certain on-site water pumping equipment (possibly fire engines?) running out of diesel fuel, because no one had been closely monitoring diesel fuel supplies at that time!! How can this be the problem with work that should be the #1 priority for one of the most advanced industrial nations on earth? ...AND with an open ended offer of major logistical support from the largest military machine on the planet?? Someone is not making full use of what's available.

Just today I heard one possible explanation for some of this. The American offer of military assistance involves a plan to open up major depot site for US military equipment and personnel in northern Japan. However, that plan is still waiting for Japanese diplomatic approval, since it is being seen as a new American military "base" on the Japanese main island (Honshu). So vital help for averting catastrophe is now waiting in limbo, pending what appears to be a rather leisurely negotiation process with the Japanese foreign ministry?? If this is the sort of BAU attitude that the Japanese government is taking on the nuclear situation, then the current, sad course of events becomes both more understandable and IMHO more unforgivable.

With the rolling blackouts, petrol shortages, and the like, I see no possible way to evacuate Tokyo. Furthermore, I imagine most migrations would be towards Kansai, partiularly the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe megapolis, which would stretch already weakened infrastructure further. This is simply not going to happen, which is probably why officials keep saying that everything is under control -- because they have no way of carrying evacuations even if they were necessary.

This is the sort of incident which could possibly tip the system into runaway, as Japanese civilization gets leveled down to a place from which it can't recover... i.e. rolling blackouts aren't just the temporary state of affairs, but the norm, petrol rationing spreads as resources typically used at the consumer level are redirected for repair and cleanup. This of course lowers their production in the global economy which inhibits their ability to pay for continued repairs, meeaning many things just aren't ever repaired, and Japanese power erodes rather quickly. Then the question becomes, is South Korea, China, Russia and Hawaii ready for an influx of Japanese refugees... and would they take them?

Building a reactor in Tsunami alley right next to the ocean is about the stupidest thing ever. This whole cluster $%$# is because water destroyed the backup systems. Put the generators on the roof! Waterproof connections? My boat trailer has those.Z Just 20ft? of elevation and we probably wouldn't be worrying about this disaster.

Ok, I wanted to ask if they mechanicaly could pull the fuel rods apart from each other, changing its geometry so that even with no other control system working the primary reaction would stop.

But it's a moot point, since them I learned that without the external layer of the rods (AKA in a meltdown) the primary reaction would stop anyway.

They complained that Japan wasn't telling them anything. And they are not obligated to. It's all voluntary, and Japan was making like a clam.

Kinda like BP....

How about piling a few kilotons of high explosives on the inland side of the reactors and blowing them far, far out to sea? If they can just get it far enough to roll down the continental plate into the trench...send it all back to where it started.

Why not carry a hose with a helicopter if there is ready air access? Then you need only one flight to have the job done.

Good point. The plume will be spreading as it travels. If this is off by just a bit, that plume would be right over Tokyo before being pushed north. Of course much of the fall out would come down in those early hours.

The cold front and subsidence forecast for the next few days is certainly good news. However, much like the Gulf Stream is a favored path for "Nor'easter" low pressure systems riding up the US East Coast, vigorous low pressure systems also tend to ride along the oceanic warm Kuroshio Current that flows generally NE along the Japanese Islands. These systems will tend to loft particles of some of the more harmful isotopes high up into the atmosphere where they can be carried to the USA and Canada, not to mention falling at intermediate distances and ending up in the Pacific food chain. If the emissions are not stopped soon and end up being of several days duration or longer this is bound to be a problem for more than just Japan but for a much greater part of the world.

You are right. I suppose I was just expressing frustration at something that probably can't be fixed in a straightforward way.

Energy use reflects the combined decisions that each of us make hundreds of times a day. For example, here in London, I turned on a light at my desk. It is possible that it is being powered by a nuclear plant in France. Each such action -- and there are many hundreds every day -- is an implicit vote for a particular form of organization and energy use elsewhere in the world. It would be very difficult or impossible to get enough information to make an informed decision that pushed things the right way each time.

That's why on days like this, I feel that we *are* a little like yeast. We have constructed a barrel to live in that is so much more complicated than any one of us can understand. I worry that in a few decades, we are going to be swept along by events entirely out of our control.

Well said. Perhaps we can move past attitudes of sneering judgment being displayed by some here and talk soberly and compassionately about the enormous challenges facing all of us going forward?

So what, you are claiming that the open-air tests in the US desert SW caused no problems?

The Cold War may be over, but its legacy remains quite hot—and deadly. A new report estimates that fallout from open-air nuclear testing has killed more than 15,000 Americans and will cause at least 80,000 cancers.

Study: 1950s nuclear fallout worse than thought

Testing has killed thousands, a new study shows.

BTW the atmosphere is 3D. For a nuclear blast weather is everything, but for a long-term radiation release climate comes into play. Big difference.

The first problem was the immediate deposition of fallout and the radiation from that. The second problem would be the result of those radioactive elements entering the food chain. I recall hearing of an incident in which a worker set off radiation alarms upon entering a Canadian nuke plant. The radiation which triggered the alarms was traced to the sandwiches in a lunch box, which contained meat from a caribou that had been taken in the wild. It's a small world upon which we live, but our minds are much smaller still...

E. Swanson

In the early 1970s I was involved in some early designs for offshore platforms in the North Sea. We designed based on a "100 year storm". During the couple years we were doing the designs - with innumerable modifications - there were two winter storms in the North Sea that substantially exceeded the 100 year storm criteria.

As a good engineer I knew that meant we didn't have to worry about a serious storm for another 200 years.

My boss wasn't that impressed with my reasoning.

http://nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/gemk1reactorsinus.pdf

The above document lists the 23 General Electric Mark 1 reactors in the US. They are east of the Mississippi, except for Cedar Rapids and Nebraska City. It would appear that only Southport, NC is at all near an earthquake risk.

So earthquake and tsunami risks would not have been much of a consideration to US designers.

Most likely they were sold to the Japanese by high level trade commission involving plenty of diplomatic pressures about the mutual advantages of our cooperative defense and business arrangments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1886_Charleston_earthquake

The figure of 28 was for the victims of acute radiation sickness during the first three months of the crisis during 1986 alone: the true count over the entire course of the accident and remediation will undoubtedly never be known.

From http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/chernobyl-15/liquidators.shtml :

"Within the first three months, the group known as the “Early Liquidators”, those first on the scene including plant workers, construction workers and local fire-fighters, lost 28 members to Acute Radiation Sickness. Another 106 persons were treated for the same disease and survived. Nineteen additional patients died over the eight years following the accident, although these were not necessarily associated with radiation exposure."

There were 600,000+ liquidators all told, and most of them have not been followed closely. I'll have to look in my references later this evening: there might be more. But I do know that the helicopter pilots paid a very heavy toll, as did the liquidators who actually went onto the roof of the building adjacent to the destroyed reactor hall with essentially no protective gear to literally move debris by hand.

My heart goes out to the brave souls who are on the front lines of this fight.

Depends on how it's done. Here's an alternative:

Every neighborhood, town, district, etc. has one or more storage systems. The grid is really a series of peering connections, and connections to major "power vendors" like wind farms, solar, etc. The grid is allowed to bounce up and down and fluctuate, and the local storage system levels it. The local storage system need only be centralized at the local community scale.

Obviously big cities like Tokyo or New York would be more centralized, but that's part of being a big city. They'd probably operate like city-states.

I didn't say that.

As near as I can tell there are several rational reasons to be skeptical:

1) Is it really cheaper than renewables? The energy density of the fuel is huge, but so is the technical difficulty of using it and dealing with the waste products, shipping them, recycling or storing them, etc. An artistic metaphor that comes to mind is a horn of plenty in the middle of some kind of shifting labyrinth. To get there requires a lot of complexity, and sometimes the labyrinth does nasty things that surprise you.

2) It seems to be a technology that demands centralized political control, more so than renewables. A lot of people don't like that.

3) Do we need it? I lead a totally modern life, work as an engineer, have access to all the world's knowledge at my fingertips, and use much less energy than your average American. I live in an urban center, don't own a car, and walk/bike everywhere. At the very least this proves to me that many, many people could cut their energy use in half without sacrificing much of anything in terms of standard of living. We are really profligate wasters of energy in this country. There's a lot of fat we could trim. If we did that, would we fit under what renewables could reasonably support?

But there's other things on the pro-nuclear side:

1) Big cities. I cannot imagine Tokyo, New York, etc. existing post-fossil-fuel without nuclear power. Big cities require massive constant energy inputs. Maybe they could be surrounded by massive fields of wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel crops, etc. like ancient medieval kingdoms, but this leads us to...

2) One of the nice things about nuclear is that it is separate from the biosphere. It's this weird inorganic source of energy. Huh? Think about it. Do you really want technology linked into the same sources of power as the rest of the ecosystem? That's what biofuels mean. Think of the land use implications. How many acres of bio-crop does a nuke plant replace?

3) You'd need a nasty mishap every 25 years, or maybe even more often, for it to equal the continuous devastation of coal. We seem to permit the latter and most people don't seem to care. Google "mountaintop removal" and "coal sludge spill."

4) Is radiation really as dangerous as we think it is? We detonated hundreds of atom bombs in the atmosphere in the 50s, and we're still here. There are many reasons to be skeptical of the linear no threshold model, and of the fear-mongering about isotope traces left behind after something like this. People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was a slight increase in cancer, but how does that compare to air pollution from coal and oil?

There's 750 of them right now, volunteers, rotating in 50 at a time. Very brave, very selfless people indeed, it's sobering.

I am pro nuclear power. Pro nuclear because it's a viable option in the face of few others.

However, I am anti-complacency, and complacency is part of the human condition.

The people closest to a nuclear reactor are often the most comfortable with it, which is a huge problem.

It is so easy to forget, that a nuclear reactor is at one moment, a huge, C02 free, everest of energy. However, turn of the lights and leave that same bottle of energy alone for a week.

That nice shiny reactor will turn itself into a molten slag of corium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_(nuclear_reactor), which is literally the most vile, deadly, unbelievably retched substance humanity can create. It'll dissociate concrete into gas and component molecules, blast a library of incredibly toxic, radio toxic, corrosive, and otherwise horrible substances into the atmosphere, convert water into hydrogen peroxide, turn steam into hydrogen, and basically thwart any human attempts at containing it.

So it's good to keep that in mind when we're designing and running these things.

Visualize a chess game. You are player X, mother nature is player Y.

You have fewer pieces than she does, and have now entered into a phase of the game where, while you are a skilled and talented player, you are also clearly able to recognize that checkmate is inevitable. She's also got some options in the game which you don't have, although you were given the option to inspect them before the game started, but chose to ignore that in favor of determining the rules yourself. In other words, the real rules are absolute and determined by Y, the rules we generate will fail but we believe they won't.

Your pieces are parts of your ecosystem. You can use them all up before being checkmated, or you can gracefully tip the king over and admit the inevitable defeat, thus preserving the lives and future viability of your various pieces.

I am unable to actually derive any meaning from the term 'marginal economic benefit' since from what I understand all nuclear power is not economically viable in the first place.

If we forget the entire 'economic' modeling, which I think is a good place to start, and look merely at extraction rates and long term viability of the various options, it's clear that none of the current options have any future.

We would probably, as you note, with fewer nukes, increase our coal extraction / burning rates, with a net gain/change in the chess game of exactly zero, since they will get burned up anyway, only maybe not as quickly.

Keep in mind they are currently majorly revising actual economically viable coal extraction re reserves, with massive downgrades in future reserves. No more 200, 300 year future talk, it's now approaching 20 to 40 years, which is about what was being discussed when I started following the peak oil issue in the late 90s.

I see this only in terms of a realworld chess game where we already have lost too many key pieces to nature to ever win, or even reach stalemate.

Future generations will curse us, believe me, and they will curse our toxic wastes we leave behind. Discussions of 'economic benefit' when the outcome is only destroying more of our ecosystem long term in all cases is just not something I can find any heart to really get into.

I don't know or understand why so many modern humans cannot respect mother nature, and why or where their profound contempt for her rules and limits came from, but I am unable to participate in that contempt or self-centered focus on personal greed, consumption, and fulfillment of desires that were not even an idea in someone's brain 80 years ago.

I see now that the requirement for all decisions to be taken in long term was not some side thing for those who managed to live more sustainably than we do, it was the only thing. Despite this I see ground for hope, but not in any way a hope that will satisfy artificial notions of economic development. But that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.

I have in previous threads mentioned Soros's book The Alchemy of Finance, which strives to not be a work on finance, but on human behavior and social systems. It succeeds in my opinion. One of the key concepts therein is that the way we as thinking entities perceive reality is always filtered through our thinking, and this is not something you can get around. The requirement, so called, for x or y levels of energy consumption in my opinion fits in perfectly with this model. It's a feedback loop, we believe we require x or y level, then we generate x or y level, then we believe we need x or y + 1, so we generate that. Once generated, that forms a new floor for what we believe is necessary for human existence, even though it's totally obvious that it isn't, nor has it ever been.

To be clear, what Soros is noting here is the inevitable failures of social 'sciences' to achieve the status of certainty that physical science is able to reach. In other words, there can be no social science because the agent who is investigating is the agent being investigated, and that agent contains biases that are not possible to work around. So what's he's talking about is understanding social systems. Personally I would go further, because I do not believe science itself actually is doing what it pretends to be doing, but that is going way too far afield, and would lead to pointless discussions that would do little good.

This recent Japan nuclear problem to me is a perfect test for the core premises of several books I've recently started digesting, and their premises are being proved not just slightly correct, but absolutely so.

The corollary of this point is that it's not a one way process, ie, just as we adjust our world views to the x=x+1 process, so too when we hit the limit of that, determined by underlying tendencies and fundamentals, so too do we adjust mentally to a model which now is x = x -1, until a new relative steady state is reached (itself an illusion, since only once actual sustainable living is reached can we discuss relatively steady states, but it's an adequate working model).

So all these frantic postings from people here who insist that the x = x+1 condition are the only possible outcome and future for us are simply demonstrating Soros's notion of reflexivity in an explicitly clear manner.

When x = x-1 becomes the prevalent bias, these people will vaporize, or rather, the bias will vaporize, and will be replaced by those who maintain equally adamantly that an ongoing x = x - 1 is the natural condition, and it's absurd to suggest otherwise. At some point in the distant future we will bounce off and on from x = x, each time being corrected, again, as we try to use x = x +1 model, and returned to the x = x model. This won't be a choice, but it's so far in our future it's also pointless to even really discuss that future.

The core concept here is that there is no way for human beings to actually avoid the underlying bias and trendlines, which are mutually self-reinforcing, ie, there is no point of view outside of them that is solid, but we can note that this process exists, and then try to mold our thinking to fit this model, which in my opinion is a significantly superior model for understanding human actions and social thought.

To be clear: the bias we now internalize about yearly growth in consumption of electricity leads directly to yearly growth in consumption of electricity, it is a feedback loop. When our bias alters due to our views coming too far out of step with what the fundamentals can provide, the bias will swing to the negative side of the slope, which will involve declining, decreasing levels of electrical power consumption. How our biases achieve explanations to ourselves at that point remains to be seen, but one thing is certain, they will. I am glad to see such a fantastic real world test case here and now for these ideas, it's rare real concepts can be so readily tested, Soros used the market to test these, but he knew the ideas were much larger than the market.

This is how Soros explains all bubbles and boom/bust cycles, and I would without hesitation include the growth/decline model as fitting this perfectly, only more slowly, and over a longer and more complicated period of time.

In other words, we view our normal as normal, but that normal itself is not fixed, it's fluid, it changes. People don't like change, but when it comes, it comes, one can either resist (as in rightwing climate heating denialism), or one can move with it, ideally a bit ahead of it to give you an edge. Not impossible at all. Difficult, sure.

I apologize for using your very good and honest question as a foil to work these concepts out, but why not? that's what discourse is supposed to do in the first place.

The developing world would go with less power, not the OECD.

Aren't we using all at rate commensurate with marginal economic benefit?

Not really. We are actually using it up as fast as we can get it! Nuclear and renewables just give us extra power right now. As the fossil fuels run out then we will be forced to use less energy. Apparently, that is the only reason that we(as a species) will ever decide to use less energy.

But the boiling. Still bad no?

They're inferring that the water covering the spent rods is boiling because hydrogen is being released. As I understand it, they have a little time to figure out how to get more water into the pool to cool it down before the water boils away and exposes the spent rods--maybe a day or two.

So maybe the boiling is a delayed reaction? I hope so and it quits soon.

All right Microsoft now we need translations for graphical characters or a nice universal label format. One day we will all speak Billgatese.

When they start talking about helicopters, you know they are improvising with whatever they have on-hand.

They really ought to have special purpose-built equipment on-hand that would let them direct cameras and water without the need for people to need to expose themselves to radiation.

Ah, lol, if it ain't broke...

You can do the whole page in google if you paste the link into the box and click on the corresponding link that appears in the other box.

But far easier is to use Chrome instead of Internet Explorer or Firefox - then whenever you're on a foreign page it will just detect it and drop down from the top giving you the option to translate the page there and then.

Anyway, Bing language is probably just as good as Google. I was more thinking about its search function. When MS announced it (about a million years after google had already cornered the market) I wondered why anyone would switch from the google search engine to the bing engine.

What the heck, it's your life, do what you want! Lol.

Which autosuggest is that? Are you using Chrome? or IE?

In Chrome you can stop it asking whether you want to translate a page or not if that's what you mean?

I think that's old news. This is current. TEPCO press conference right now. They are very worried it seems. Something started up about 45 mins ago.

That's backwards.

Water is the moderator, under normal operation, which slows down the fast neutrons to thermal levels, thus increasing their reactivity with uranium.

Control rods with a high boron (which absorbs neutrons) content are used to quench the reaction in the core (these were automatically inserted when the earthquake hit).

Spent fuel will not go critical.

So, the spent fuel in the storage ponds can go critical. My brain is struggling to absorb the reality of this.

Ever since I first learned about nuclear power in 5th grade, I've been told, "no, don't worry, there is NO WAY that a nuclear power plant can explode like a bomb. It's IMPOSSIBLE." Impossible. Whenever some "uneducated" citizen would raise this question, scientists and officials would roll their eyes, and explain once again to the poor, stupid citizens that a nuclear explosion at a power plant was IMPOSSIBLE. I learned to roll my eyes, too.

Pity, the scientists and engineers and officials forgot to tell us about--apparently even forgot to think intelligently about--the "spent" fuel, stored right up next to the nice reactor, but cleverly outside the cozy, impenetrable containment shell. The spent fuel which can, apparently, go critical, if a very inconvenient natural disaster should interrupt our ability to tend it. The spent fuel that the scientists and officials assure us they can keep absolutely safe, from any and all hazards, imagined and unimaginable, for 10,000 years, or 250,000 years, forever. Didn't quite make it, did they?

TEPCO says "The possibility of recriticality is not zero". I'll take their word for it.

Every hour - every minute - they can delay a complete meltdown increases the odds it won't melt through both the reactor and the containment structure (although the containment in Unit 2 is reportedly leaking or ruptured.

If it melts into a slag heap with concrete and steel the Russian solution seems best - thousands of yards of concrete and a plaque for the workers that will sacrifice their lives.

I can think of several ways to remove the roof but they all either subject workers to unacceptable radiation or risk damage to the spent fuel pools.

I'm way out of my depth here but I read somewhere (lost the reference) that the "new" fuel is stored in a pool. It could be that they meant the core assemble with mixed new and old fuel which I think still needs cooling water until it is replaced in the reactor vessel.

You are right it doesn't make sense to store new fuel in a pool.

My ignorance of the refueling process in gigantic. My understanding is they pull the entire core for refueling and have to store it in cooling water. If anyone knows the details please enlighten me.

I don't believe the spent fuel can go critical but if it is not sufficiently decayed it will burn or melt when removed from the water, or if the water boils away. This will release lots of "bad stuff" into the atmosphere.

I note that even in dry casks they expect temperatures of 90 to 140 deg C. Above boiling but not enough to melt anything. Seems like they wait over 19 months to move from spent fuel pool to casks.

I just want to know the characters for "Second Coming" and why that was chosen.

I'll bet you a buck it means "meltdown." WAG.

If they are abandoning their efforts to keep these piles cool, meltdown is eminent, IMO. Cores in 3 reactors, not sure about stored 'spent' fuel in the pools. Reports are that there is far more material in storage. The rub: it all wants to be free.

The fly in the ointment for the firedoglake article is that it appears the fire was oil/lubricant elsewhere, and they let it burn out, only to have it flare up again.
Otherwise, they're right about what will (eventually, without cooling) happen.

The Maddow video is pretty good, very good for the press.

Thanks for the rogerwitherspoon link - interesting paper

(for a boiling water reactor's fuel in the spent fuel storage pool)

The time to heatup and boiloff down to 3 feet above top of fuel, per table 2.1 (page 2-1) after 60 days of decay time (the lowest the table goes), is 145 hours (>6 days). Did their "shroud replacement" start less than 60 days ago? If so, heatup then boiloff is faster.

I wonder if seiche had splashed out any of the water in the pool, getting a head start on boiloff.
Check out this video of a seiche in a mere 7.2 quake (the Japanese quake was ~100x more power).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3OwziE4anM&NR=1

Or shaken any fuel assemblies, perhaps physically damaging them (releasing fission products).
Probably won't move them into criticality, since they should be in racks (see the Maddow video - good shots of a storage pool).

Fig 2.1 on page 2-3 has a graph of the heatup time to release of radionuclides.
It's only about 3 hours to release of radionuclides when the spent fuel (in the case where it's very hot from a recent shutdown) is uncovered.
The assumption was heating from 30 deg. C to 900 deg. C, which causes cladding rupture.

But even after 4 years of proper/cooled storage, the heatup time is only 40 hours.

No mention of hydrogen from radiolysis.

Hmmm - given that there is NO fuel in reactor #4, what caused the explosion?
Any hydrogen would have HAD TO COME from the rods in the storage pool.
What else could be around? If there are quantities of solvent - or diesel spread by the tsunami - in there, the warm building could vaporize these hydrocarbons, leading to the explosion. Maybe this is more likely, the explosion was low and apparently stronger, compared to the hydrogen explosions in #1 and #3. Or, it generated more hydrogen to completely fill the building before it exploded.

As her guest (Frank von Hippel) notes - a meltdown is not needed to release lots of radionuclides, only cladding rupture - since the boiling points of most of the nasties is fairly low.
The full video is at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/42100927#42100927

230,000 times as toxic to man? Make it a double.

Am I reading right? In addition to iodine pills certain antibiotics may reduce the chance of infection in the GI tract if administered after exposure?

Gamma is energy

and Clapton is God.

Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation, of higher frequency than x-rays.

They don't need to come in through the air handling system of the car. Unless it is made of rather thick lead sheet.

"Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!"

My point there was that a radionuclide could come in via air system and then emit a hard gamma.

So gamma can get in that way indirectly via the air system.

The machine translation screwed it up. It says the earthquake start a 2:46 pm. That's when he heard the cranes crash.

Please do link to the original. I appreciate it.

I don't think it says they only had one geiger counter. It says they had to pass through a specialised contamination checkpoint (and clothes change) to get from one area to another of the plant which would have fixed detection equipment. There was a bottleneck at this one point. I am sure they would have also had held counters but they would be following protocol.