Radiation levels have fallen steadily for a month. Speaking for TEPCO:
“You aren’t generating any new fission products and it’s going to get easier and easier to bring the reactors under control,” said David Fletcher, an adjunct professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering at the University of Sydney. “It’s quite possible to do it in that sort of time. Seems like some better news than what we’ve been hearing for a while.”
Once temperatures fall below boiling, the crisis is over. Clean up is another matter, of course.
Best engineers in the world. contrary to blog-shit, nobody dying of radiation. Fuel cost for processed uranium UO2 to drive your electric car for a year is still under $50 a year. Compare that to filling up your blood-sucking gas tank very week.
MTBF or come on down for the inevitable, entertaining screeches by Big Coal and Big Oil shills :::
Bloomberg and Shimbun Asahi and the Japanese teevee networks have covered this. The situation on site in Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) is pretty well under control.
Radiation in the air is the broad threat to public health. That has declined to a percentage of the 5,700 nanoSieverts/hour safety limit that IAEA specified for lab workers.
-- 343 nanoGrays/hour 06:50 nanoGrays/hour local time on the 18th
-- 346 nGy/h -- 04:50 AM local time on the 17th
-- 350 nGy/h-- 09:30 PM local time on the 16th
-- 356 nGy/h -- 04:50 AM local time on the 15th
-- 360 nGy/h -- 09:00 PM local time on the 14th
-- 362 nGy/h -- 10:40 PM local time on the 13th
-- 366 nGy/h - 11:10 PM local time on the 12th
-- 379 nGy/h - 09:40 PM local time on the 11th
-- 389 nGy/h - 07:30 AM local time on the 10th
-- 404 nGy/h - 10:00 AM local time on the 9th
-- 423 nGy/h - 09:00 AM local time on the 8th
-- 437 nGy/h - 10:30 AM local time on the 7th
-- 441 nGy/h - 10:30 PM local time on the 6th
-- 464 nGy/h - 10:00 PM local time on the 5th
-- 463 nGy/h - 9:00 PM local time on the 4th
-- 480 nGy/h - 9:00 PM local time on the 3rd
-- 499 nGy/h - 9:40 PM local time on the 2nd
-- 536 nGy/h - 5:10 AM local time on the 1st of April
-- 556 nGy/h - 9:40 AM local time on the 31st
-- 575 nGy/h - 11:00 PM local time on the 30th
-- 597 nGy/h - 4:40 AM local time on the 29th
-- 646 nGy/h - 6:50 PM local time on the 28th
-- 684 nGy/h - 10:20 PM local time on the 27th
-- 786 nGy/h - 11.00 PM local time on the 25th
-- 866 nGy/h - 8:20 PM local time on the 24th
-- 957 nGy/h - 7:30 PM local time on the 23rd
-- 1012 nGy/h - 1:10 AM local time on the 23rd
-- 1221 nGy/h - 7:20 PM local time on the 22nd
-- 1178 nGy/h - 9:20 PM local time on the 21st
-- 1145 nGy/h - 6:10 PM local time on the 21st
-- 1160 nGy/h - 4:30 PM local time on the 21st of March
Normal range is 20-to-100 nanoGrays/hour. (Gray = Sievert for these general background measurements.)
Tokyo is seeing normal reading at 46-to-82 nGy/h. Average is below 60 nGy/h.
Self-Defense force cleared out one high rad area just outside the 20 km radius evacuation zone to the northwest of the plant. That was back three weeks ago.
Eating a banana smacks you with 100 nanoGrays. Same for a spinach salad. 5,700 nGy/h = 5 REM/year = the IAEA worker safety limit.
These readings in Ibaraki and near Yokyo are roughly 5%-to-1% of the safety limit.
The cooling systems at the power station were knocked out by a 15-meter (49-foot) surge following a magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11. Efforts to cool the reactors and stem radiation leaks have been hampered by fires and aftershocks. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata told reporters in Tokyo yesterday that he plans to resign when the time is “appropriate.”
“Maintain the cooling, that’s the main thing,” Fletcher, who studied the 1986 Chernobyl disaster while working for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, said by telephone from Sydney. “One would hope they turn the corner and get reliable cooling.”
Radioactive Water
Radioactive water continued to accumulate in ditches near the No. 2 and 3 reactors, Tetsuya Terasawa, a spokesman at Tepco, told reporters yesterday. Radiation levels in the sea near the plant have also risen, according to Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Tepco has placed bags of sand and zeolite, a material that can trap radiation, in the sea, Nishiyama said on April 16.
Bloomberg article
Engineering problems, engineering solutions. Schools are open in western Fukushima Prefecture and parts of Miyagi. Background rad levels there are below 50 nanoGrays/hour, despite unsubstantiated claims in various blurbs.
E.g., Greenpeace is being seen in Japan as anti-Japan for reason of the whaling issue. They've put out a dozen press releases that fell flat on the facts.
BTW: Rain run-off areas near to and south from FNPP are at risk of concentrating cesium isotopes. There could be as many as 1,000 "hot" areas, but more likely 50 to 100.
Cesium-137 is a poison.
This is the public health issue that deserves serious attention. Kicking up dust in these areas could be life threatening. SDF has people out, but there needs to be a specific project launched to nail down every high rad cesium-laden run-off area.
ASAP.
Even the apparently spotless Japanese children like to get down in the mud when parents are not looking. This problem needs at least 200 people assigned just for Ibaraki -- starting as close to yesterday as possible.
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I'm still looking for an electric car. I want to power it out of a local nuke. America exports $700-billion a year for oil, which could be reduced substantially be swapping over to nukes. We can';t be going to war over oil, not any more.
The record tsunami complicated this Japanese crisis. Looks like the engineers are figuring out what to do. I'd rather bet on good engineering than know for sure we're getting trashed over foreign oil.