Fukushima Nuclear Plant Scrambles To Avert Radiation Crisis

TOKYO (Reuters) - Thousands of residents were evacuated from an area around a nuclear plant in quake-hit Japan after radiation levels rose in the reactor, but there was no word on whether there had actually been a leak.

Underscoring grave concerns about the Fukushima plant some 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. air force had delivered coolant to avert a rise in the temperature of the facility's nuclear rods.

Tokyo Electric Power Co said pressure inside a reactor at its Fukushima-Daiichi plant rose after the cooling system was knocked out by the earthquake, the largest on record in Japan.

Kyodo news agency quoted the company as saying that the radiation level was rising in the turbine building and the pressure had risen to 1.5 times the designed capacity.

Experts said there could be leakage if water levels in the Fukushima reactor fell and the temperature of the nuclear rods rose, though this might not happen immediately.

"Even if fuel rods are exposed, it does not mean they would start melting right away," said Tomoko Murakami, leader of the nuclear energy group at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics.

"Even if fuel rods melt and the pressure inside the reactor builds up, radiation would not leak as long as the reactor container functions well."

TEPCO confirmed that water levels were falling but it was working to avert any exposure of the nuclear fuel rods.

"There is a falling trend (in water levels) but we have not confirmed an exposure of nuclear fuel rods," a TEPCO spokesman said.

Residents living within a 3 km (2 mile) radius of the plant were told to evacuate from the area, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference. "The government is making every effort to restore the cooling system," he said.

Kyodo news agency said 3,000 residents were being evacuated.

Reactors shut down due to the earthquake account for 18 percent of Japan's nuclear power generating capacity.

Nuclear power produces about 30 percent of the country's electricity. Many reactors are located in earthquake-prone zones such as Fukushima and Fukui on the coast.

TEPCO had been operating three out of six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant at the time of the quake, all of which shut down.

The spokesman added that there were no concerns of a water leak for the remaining three reactors at the plant, which had been shut for planned maintenance.

(Additional reporting by Risa Maeda in Tokyo and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Edwina Gibbs; Editing by Edmund Klamann and John Chalmers)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[Jean Pierre Dubois]

11:29 AM on 03/19/2011

This is just huge! Here they got exclusive high quality satellite pictures from the fukushima nuclear power plant: http://www.fukushima-nuclear.com/fukushima-nuclear-reactor-explosion-satellite-views/
we can see the buildings and roofs blown away by the explosion. We also see the radioactive cloud dispersed by wind. It's really scary!

[NeverUndecided]

04:11 AM on 03/13/2011

I don't think it's sunk in yet how damaging this is to Japan's engineering "economy" (and almost culture), not in the sense that it is Japanese, but that past a critical threshold of energy/resource burnBACK, it's game over.

[charles77]

12:19 AM on 03/13/2011

Come of Huffpost.

The main says NUCLEAR MELTDOWN!

and the first paragraph of the article is:

Thousands of residents were evacuated from an area around a nuclear plant in quake-hit Japan after radiation levels rose in the reactor, but there was no word on whether there had actually been a leak.

I mean come on, which is it?

[StephenJK]

01:17 AM on 03/13/2011

This article posted as the situation was initially developing. That was, I think, a couple days ago.

[Coronadoman]

12:12 AM on 03/13/2011

Where, online, can we independently confirm the radiation levels emanating from Japan, and their correlation with the winds blowing east from Japan?

[Kendall]

01:57 AM on 03/13/2011

You can't. The levels at any appreciable distance from the plant are so low that natural background radiation would mask them completely.

[getoffmedz]

12:20 PM on 03/13/2011

NP apologist.

[AnneV]

02:37 PM on 03/13/2011

This is not direct to your question, but the Anchorage Daily News this morning has an article about possible effects, and one of the comments has a good, levelheaded but urgent summation of info regarding protection of US citizens with Iodine -- within the next 6-10 days. Alaska learned from damaging fallout from Chernobyl and are alert. The winds appear to be more south this time, so looks likely would get Washington, Oregon, California . . and presumably further East.

Very good, succinct blog page : Dr. David Brownstein - Holistic Family Medicine: Japan, Radiation Fallout and Iodine Recommendations

http://drdavidbrownstein.blogspot.com/20

[MIKEBC]

10:12 PM on 03/12/2011

I thought they could just pull out the fuel rods and stop the thing from working and making heat?

[charles77]

12:21 AM on 03/13/2011

Actually your close, they are supposed to be able to drop in "control rods", which stop the reaction.

[Kendall]

01:51 AM on 03/13/2011

The reactors were scrammed at the first moments of the quake. They aren't making any more new heat. But the temperature can rise when the coolant stops flowing because of the heat already there has no place to go. It's like when you shut off your car on a hot day. Engine temperature will temporarily rise because your water pump isn't pushing coolant from your engine any more. Eventually it all cools down on its own.

[SonyaInTx]

10:01 PM on 03/12/2011

Engineering fail.

They built the plant with the backup generators in the basement where they flooded after the tsunami!

[AZterritory]

07:39 PM on 03/12/2011

We're Fukushima'ed.

[maslin]

01:16 PM on 04/08/2011

Yeah, by all means let's make their place name into a obscene joke while they are experiencing a crisis.

Stay classy, Arizona!

[PerotVentuSheehCarte]

07:28 PM on 03/12/2011

"Corrupt controlled media don't tell the truth.
Dishonest governments don't tell the truth.
Containment has been breached.
Traditional cooling not possible.
Study prevailing winds.
Never forget 9/11 lies"

[hagagaga]

07:15 PM on 03/12/2011

At least Japan has experience dealing with nuclear disasters.

[WryAwry]

06:16 PM on 03/12/2011

Wow -- lots of ping-pong in these comments.

I don't know for sure, but when you see a ginormous explosion at a nuclear power plant? Generally speaking, that can't really be a good sign ...

[CessnaDriverI72]

06:49 PM on 03/12/2011

It's nothing, nothing!

Don't you know anything about nukular power?

[Kendall]

01:55 AM on 03/13/2011

GE BWR's have some hydrogen around in the turbine building because it's a dandy coolant for the generators. The explosion was a hydrogen-based explosion. It's possible that the hydrogen reservoir was damaged and leaked into the building. The explosion could have had nothing to do with the nuclear side of things.

[SiddArthur]

02:59 PM on 03/12/2011

THORIUM MSR... It's the future of "nuclear" power, and it's the thing we'll wish we had in twenty-five years when many others do.

[oneyippie]

01:01 PM on 03/12/2011

To clarify someone else's comment: "there's 8760 times normal radiation coming from reactor."

He figured this based upon one hour exposure = one year's exposure. 8760 hours in a year.

[CessnaDriverI72]

06:51 PM on 03/12/2011

But that doesn't mean it's bad for you.

[getoffmedz]

12:23 PM on 03/13/2011

Not until you glow in the dark?

; o }

[MichaelGMan]

12:43 PM on 03/12/2011

Want to see what real news coverage is like? Go to Al Jazeera's english website. http://english.aljazeera.net This why America is losing the information war as Sec. of State Clinton explained it.

[Cannonball Taffy O Jones]

12:47 PM on 03/12/2011

Yeah, unless you want honest reporting on Qatar or any subject the dictator of Qatar decides is taboo.
 
AJ certainly is my favourite news outlet owned by a hereditary absolute monarch.

[ThinkCreeps]

01:10 PM on 03/12/2011

Be fair. There is that suspicion, but like-for-like they do well. AJ reporting is at least worth watching. Although, prima donna americans barreling around countries that they didn't know existed the week before ain't much to better.

Rupert Murdoch isn't that dissimilar from an hereditary absolute monarch.

[MichaelGMan]

04:15 PM on 03/12/2011

I am willing to look into that, but it must point out something. If what you state is true, it makes American journalism even more pathetic.

[splashy]

12:37 PM on 03/12/2011

With alternatives you don't have to evacuate, possibly never to be allowed to return or get your things because everything you have is contaminated.

NO NUKES!

[Solsister]

01:31 PM on 03/12/2011

Well said! And we all know that each of us can find ways to live a little less extravagantly, a little more efficiently and make it possible to need less energy generation of ANY kind as a result.

[Kendall]

04:47 PM on 03/12/2011

Standards of living tend to track with the greater use of energy. Sure, we could reduce consumption, but we would also have to do without many of the comforts and efficiencies we currently enjoy. That just isn't going to happen, no matter how many true-believers want it. It makes more sense to develop greater sources of sustainable energy production, one of which is nuclear.

[charles77]

01:38 PM on 03/12/2011

The ONLY replacement for Nuclear is Coal which has it's own problems.

The never return to home stuff is just silly. You are thinking of a Chernobyl type event, that is different from what is happening here.

Chernobyl was a very different type of reactor. What's happening in Japan is bad, no doubt. Chernobyl had no containment dome and was a different type of reactor. The fuel itself burned and heavy smoke carrying radition spread over a wide area.

This is a venting of steam, which carries some radiation but not much.

This is much more like 3 Mile Island, it was bad but killed or injured no one. Some steam was vented. The other reactor, there were two, one had a partial meltdown, is still running and producing power to this day and the area around the plant is fine.

[Bluesue]

02:08 PM on 03/12/2011

I worked at TMI for 12 years. Reading last night about what was happening at these reactors, I thought about the hydrogen bubble at TMI. Remember that? From the NRC:

"Within a short time, the presence of a large hydrogen bubble in the dome of the pressure vessel, the container that holds the reactor core, stirred new worries. The concern was that the hydrogen bubble might burn or even explode and rupture the pressure vessel. . ."

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

Now the WaPo reports this:

"Japan's chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, later told reporters that the blast occurred when vapor from the reactor's steel container turned into hydrogen and mixed with outside oxygen, the Kyodo news agency reported. Edano said the explosion blew off the roof and walls of the building around the containment vessel but did no serious damage to the container itself."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031103673.html?hpid=topnews

My question is how did that hydrogen form in the building? At TMI it was in the pressure vessel, which I can understand. In Japan it was in the building. Where did it come from? Is there a breach in the vessel?

[afgail]

12:31 PM on 03/12/2011

The US is delivering "coolant"? Isn't that water? What gives?

[czs5056]

12:32 PM on 03/12/2011

it could be a specially made coolant that is clear like water

[Kendall]

04:37 PM on 03/12/2011

It's light water, water with a reduced deuterium component. It has less neutron producing isotopes of hydrogen in it.