“TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record. Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station – an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan – is now likely uninhabitable.” — Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think
Holy shit.
(CNN) — Japan raised the severity level of its nuclear crisis to the maximum level seven on Tuesday, putting the Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster on a par with the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
The decision to raise the crisis level up from five to seven came after a review of the amount of radiation released in the month since the plant was severely damaged by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, says Japan’s official nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).
Level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) incidents involve a major release of radiation with widespread health and environmental effects, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Continue reading…
Dog rescued from floating house
(Reuters) – A dog that survived in a house swept away to sea three weeks ago by the devastating Japan tsunami was saved on Friday by a coast guard rescue team flying over an island of debris.
Local television showed an aerial view of a brown medium-sized dog trotting around the roof of the house — the only part of it floating above water — before disappearing inside through a broken section of the roof.
The coast guard rescuers, thinking there might also be people alive inside the house, lowered one of their team onto the roof. He tried to coax the dog out, but then went in after tearing a wider opening. He came out with the dog in his arms and they were transported back to safety by boat.
Domestic media said no people were found inside the house.
UNDER ONE WOOF Three curious new tenants at Green Animal Hospital in Miyako, Japan, now converted into a temporary animal shelter center to handle the influx of pets belonging to tsunami victims. (Photo: Roslan Rahman / AFP-Getty via the San Francisco Chronicle) Source
Isn’t this amazing?
Can you imagine an American corporation doing anything “for the good of the country” that might involve a slight reduction or freeze to the annual stockholders’ profits or the enormous bonuses raked in by the CEOs? Not in America, Patriots!
That would be like asking G.E. to pay some taxes… an idea the Republican – Teaparty tells us is ridiculous and unpatriotic.
Damn Nature R U Kidding Me With This of the Day: In one of the most harrowing pieces of footage to emerge in the aftermath of the 2011 Sendai Earthquake, the resultant tsunami overruns the city of Kesennuma, leaving very little in its wake.
[japanprobe via thedailywhat]
Irradiated nuke worker in hospital: A laborer who had been working to restore power and cooling functions at the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant walks to a special vehicle for radioactive decontamination, while being shielded with a blue sheet to conceal his identity, outside of the Fukushima Medical University Hospital in Fukushima city on March 25, 2011. Three workers were exposed to high-level radiation the previous day while laying cable at the troubled plant. (Kyodo)
Kyoto reports high level radiation may be leaking from #3 reactor core:
High-level radiation detected Thursday in water at the No. 3 reactor’s turbine building at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant appears to have originated from the reactor core, the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Friday.
[...] A day after three workers were exposed Thursday to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building, highly radioactive water was found also at the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors’ turbine buildings.
CNN:
That water likely indicates “some sort of leakage” from the reactor core, signaling a possible break of the containment vessel that houses the core.
The containment vessel is designed to prevent radioactive material from escaping into the atmosphere, even if other parts of the reactor are damaged. A rupture in the containment vessel could pose problems for workers who are trying to prevent that, depending on its severity.
Japanese officials on Friday began quietly encouraging people to evacuate a larger swath of territory around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a sign that they hold little hope that the crippled facility will soon be brought under control.
[...] The No. 3 unit, the only one of the six reactors at the site that uses the mox fuel, was damaged by a hydrogen explosion on March 14. Workers have been seeking to keep it cool by spraying it with seawater along with a more recent effort to restart the reactor’s cooling system.A broken vessel is not the only possible explanation, he said. The water might have leaked from another part of the facility.
The news Friday and the discovery this week of a radioactive isotope in the water supplies of Tokyo and neighboring prefectures has punctured the mood of optimism with which the week began, leaving a sense that the battle to fix the damaged plant will be a long one.
Two workers at Japan plant taken to hospital:
Three workers at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant were exposed to high radiation as they sought to restore power to reactor three, with two hospitalised, the nuclear safety agency said Thursday.
“Three workers who were working to lay cables in the basement of the turbine building were exposed to radiation between 170 to 180 milli-sieverts,” a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said.
“Two were sent to hospital after they found themselves in a puddle of water. Although they wore protective clothing, the contaminated water seeped in and their legs were exposed to radiation.”
An exposure of 100 milli-sieverts per year is considered the lowest level at which any increase in cancer risk is evident.
Wow. Good thing that direct contact in the water was only 170 to 180 millisieverts! Right?
And seriously, what happened to the third worker who wasn’t hospitalized: dead or new super powers?
UPDATE 4:00 PM MST: Radiation 10,000 times normal levels has been measured in the water where three Fukushima plant workers were irradiated while laying power cable underground at the No. 3 reactor’s turbine building, Kyodo News is reporting. Via CNN
Sounds like that’s a bit more than 170 – 180 millisieverts, doesn’t it?
Be sure to select “sticky dots.” Click the map below for animation & stay to watch at least until 11/3/2011 at 14:46:
Via @TokyoReporter
17-year-old evacuee Shoko Igarashi hugs her dog, who will have to be looked after by friends while Shoko goes into a shelter in Koriyama, 60 km west of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, on March 23. (Go Takayama / AFP – Getty Images)
Anybody aware of relief efforts for Japan’s pets?
(Ways to help the human victims of the disaster can be found here)
Smoke rises from a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. (Photos: CNN)
CNN:
[5:37a.m. Monday ET, 6:37 p.m. Monday Tokyo] Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official with Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said officials did not know what was burning Monday in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant reactor No. 3. He said the smoke was coming from the building’s southeastern side, where the reactor’s spent nuclear fuel pool is located.
BBC:
Electricity has been restored to three reactors at the Japanese nuclear plant wrecked by fire and explosions after the 11 March quake and tsunami.
However the cooling systems are not yet operating, and the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says the situation remains “very serious”.
Some workers at the stricken facility were temporarily evacuated after smoke was seen rising from reactor No 3.
White smoke was billowing from a building that houses the No. 2 reactor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station Monday afternoon, while grayish smoke that was seen rising from the building of the No. 3 reactor stopped shortly after 6 p.m., the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
The recent monster quake that hit northeastern Japan altered the earth’s surface, geologists say, loading stress onto a different segment of the fault line much closer to Tokyo.
Experts are quick to point out that this doesn’t mean a powerful earthquake is necessarily about to strike the Japanese capital. Even if it did, the structure of the tectonic plates and fault lines around the city makes it unlikely that Tokyo would be hit by a quake anywhere near the intensity of the 9.0-magnitude one that struck March 11, said Roger Musson of the British Geological Survey.
@Reuters: FLASH: Japan govt says expects to establish power supply to no.4 nuclear reactor “very soon”
@BreakingNews: Police estimate death toll from Japan’s quake, tsunami will exceed 18,000 – AP
“It’s probably not politically correct to say it, but [Three Mile Island] was a piece of cake compared to what they’re facing over there in Fukushima, in terms of the problem,” said Harold Denton, the federal nuclear engineer who became a calming, knowledgeable voice during the height of the Three Mile Island crisis in March and April of 1979.”
The footage is filmed from inside a car as the tsunami crashes into a coastal road.
The driver told local media he had no choice but to keep going: “When I turned the corner I could see the wall of water. At that moment I could do nothing else but keep driving. Water came up and the car was floating in the water. I was panicked, the water was probably two metres high. If I came out of the car I thought I would be caught in the water as well so I thought I would wait until it had come down.”
