A very strong 8.9 magnitude earthquake has hit Japan and tsunami warnings have been issued across the Pacific.
New Zealander, Ken Ring, forecast the recent devastating earthquake in Christchurch and forecast an increased likelihood of earthquakes between September 2010 and May 2011 because of the increased gravitational pull on the earth given the current alignment of Jupiter and Saturn.
I would link to Mr Ring’s website but it appears to be down tonight.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Also the moon is a few meters closer to earth at the moment, but surely its proof of nothing. As Ken Ring’s blog is down (possibly rewriting) I went off to Tallbloke and got another opinion.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/ken-ring-earthquake-predictions-in-christchurch-nz/
Off the top of my head and without evidence to convince me otherwise – it looks like hocus pocus.
I followed Ken Ring’s predictions for my area for around 6 months – he was no more accurate than BoM.
He believes the moon pulls on the atmosphere as well as the tides. When it’s high tide the atmosphere is thick therefore warm temps, when it’s low tide there’s a thin atmosphere and cool temps.
here’s an interview with Ken from a few years ago.
http://breakfornews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth-10-03-11-dsl.mp3
If Long Range Weather Forecasting (LRWF) is your thing, then you can’t go past Hayden Walker, a distinctly Australian oriented site.
I first heard of LRWF in the late 60’s when his father Lennox Walker used to report twice a week for the agricultural report and he would detail the upcoming weather. I know it sounds like mumbo jumbo, but he had an amazing accuracy, and intensively detailed records dating back to the early 1800’s for all Australia, utilising records from both predecessors Clem Wragge, and Inigo Jones. The farming and grazing communities across Australia would religiously rely on his forecasts.
This is the link to some of that history.
http://www.worldweather.com.au/History.htm
This is the link to Hayden Walker’s page of links, and as you can see from that in that right hand column, some of those links are indeed interesting mainly to satellites etcetera. I like the Live Earth Cams and there is a plethora of them after that link is taken.
He also has links in the left column as well, and you can access other pages at his site by navigating with the prev and next tabs at mid screen.
http://www.worldweather.com.au/Meteor.htm
Tony.
see also
http://eprints.usq.edu.au/4795/1/Wilson_Carter_Waite_Author's_version.pdf “
and here’s an interesting comment at WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/monster-earthquake-off-of-japanese-coast-7-9/#comments
here’s the comment in full
Sam the First says:
March 11, 2011 at 9:01 am
I’ve read several comments here dissing astrometeorology, which really are ill-informed. Mundane astrologers – who are of course also astronomers – have been predicting this magnitude of natural calamity at just this moment (as Uranus passes over the Aries point – 00.0˚ Aries in conjunction with a perigree moon) for a long time.
Only yesterday the most talented of them (imo) Theo White wrote a long entry on his blog http://globalastrologyblog.blogspot.com/ which included this, and remember it was posted approx 24 hrs before yesterday’s earthquake struck:
” During the entire month of March 2011 we can expect to hear of powerful earthquakes along the ‘Ring of Fire.’
In March, look first to Asia for seismic action in the northern hemisphere – China and Japan, then to the Philippines, along to the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, to British Columbia, Canada, then to California in the United States, stretching down to Mexico and into South America.
With the global transits at hand, there are sure to be powerful, large magnitude earthquakes in the months of March and April.
My astrological calculations show a 88.9% rating for significant seismic activity between 6.6 to 7.9+ in magnitude.
There are additional planetary configuration signals I’ve interpreted that show even stronger quakes by scale – 8.9 to 9.2 in magnitude. Some people will not believe me, but transits are well within astrological red-zone warning range. ”
Remember, this was written and posted before the earthquake struck. He also wrote a long defence of astrometeorology which all of you would be well advised to read; it explains that this branch (like others) when PROPERLY studied and practiced, is a science.
Theo White has a link to WUWT on his website. He has written there often in refutation of AGW, and has detailed climate predictions for the future based on geophysical reactions to planetary movements.
Anthony would be doing the world and science a favour if he would invite Theo to write a guest post on this science. His record is impeccable in predicting weather events which both the ‘climate scientists’ and conventional meteorologists have missed entirely.
Please don’t scoff until you have done the research: Theo has, and his accuracy is awesome. Do yourselves the favour of reading him: you might learn something.
The SMH put this story up before the quake struck, which puts them ahead of the news cycle.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/i-see-a-supermoon-rising-but-do-i-see-trouble-on-the-way-20110311-1bqrw.html
I read the rest of the comments and can say that Sam the First didn’t get a good reception by other commentators
While this is a little off topic, it directly relates to the Japanese Tremblor, and I hope Jennifer allows me a little leeway to explain something that may be worrying some people as they read the reports coming out of Japan, and because I already have this information ready, then also forgive me for linking into my own Posts on the matter.
As you might expect, a lot of media (sensationalism) focus has been on any report about the Nuclear electrical power plants there and I would like to add a little something for those who see something like this, and might waver in their opinion of these types of Power Plants.
Especially in Japan, those plants were originally constructed to be able to withstand earthquakes, and most of them are constructed to be able to withstand direct large scale quakes. While most of the energy in this Tremblor would have been nowhere on the scale as at the direct point of the snapping of the Plate in this case, those plants obviously still ‘felt’ some of the energy.
They are specifically designed so that in the first instance, detectors set in play the automatic shutdown procedures.
The first thing that happens is that the Reactor is SCRAMmed, and the control rods are driven back into the reactor. This happens within four seconds, and after that, no Nuclear reaction can take place at all. This SCRAM process has triple redundancy, (note triple) and I explain this at the following Post, along with the rudimentary operation of the two main types of process used to generate electrical power, PWR, and BWR Plants.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/nuclear-electrical-power-generation-%E2%80%93-why-the-fuss-part-6/
However, that is not the end of the problems that may eventuate. The main problem is the huge inherent heat associated with the reaction, necessary to boil water to steam to drive the turbine which then drives the generator. Because of that heat, a continuous supply of cooling water still needs to be circulated through the reactor core, even after shutdown, and again, this also is a triply redundant safety measure.
The problem at Three Mile Island was that one pump failed and not enough water could be kept up to the core. What water was there boiled off and exposed the top section of the core. Even though there was no nuclear reaction, that top part of the core melted from the intense heat, and what did escape into the Atmosphere was steam from the now melting core.
This is explained in greater detail in the following Post:
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/nuclear-electrical-power-generation-%E2%80%93-why-the-fuss-part-10/
And from Nick Loris and Jack Spencer at this Post:
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/three-mile-island-and-chernobyl-what-went-wrong-and-why-today%E2%80%99s-reactors-are-safe/
There has also been an escape of steam from one of the Japanese reactors, and as bad as this (seemingly) sounds, read the text in those posts about the Three Mile Island accident and see especially how much of a ‘dose’ actually did escape into the air around that Plant.
A secondary thing also was reported as cause for concern, that being the fire in the turbine of one plant, and in fact, that fire was quite speedily extinguished.
If any part of a nuclear plant could have trouble it would be the turbine itself.
This is similar (and that’s a vast oversimplification indeed) to a jet engine turbine, having many rows of many blades in differing lengths in each of the three stages. Those very quickly spinning blades would be most subject to the intense vibration caused by this Tremblor, and one blade fracturing would then cause a huge cascading smashing of those blades, and this would have initiated the fire. The turbine room is well removed from the reactor room, so no fire in that turbine room would have got remotely close to impacting that huge concrete encased reactor.
For an image showing just part of the turbine go to the following link and scroll down the page to the second image. That first image there is of the Californian plant at Diablo Canyon, also constructed to withstand a (direct) magnitude 7.5 quake. Both images can be seen in much larger detail by clicking on the images, and both effectively show the scale, both of the turbine room, and also that one section of the turbine, shown here with the man working on that section of blades.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/the-limitations-of-renewable-power-part-1/
Again, sorry to take so much space here on a matter not really ‘on’ the main topic.
Tony.
All good, Tony. Consider this an open thread on the earthquake and tsunami.
Thanks Jennifer,
I wasn’t sure how well something like this would be received.
Having had those three years now looking into all aspects of electrical power, Nuclear power generation was one of the things I specifically looked at in reference to replacing large scale coal fired plants, if it ever came to that at all.
I’ve just listened to a ‘Special’ PM on ABC radio, and the announcer showed his almost total ignorance on the matter.
He wasn’t even sure if the Japanese plants even had containment structures.
He mentioned, almost in passing that experts had said there was no ‘melt down’ as he referred to it, but that they would say that, and anyway, reporters ‘assured’ him that it was in fact melting down.
As I mentioned, the problem is keeping water in the reactor, and that is what the reporters are using as the basis for a meltdown similar to Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was also quoted with reference that this situation was similar, and see the Jack Spencer Post I linked to above on just what happened there.
It would seem that the ABC is using ‘Silkwood’ and ‘The China Syndrome’ as sources for their information.
See Jack Spencer’s most recent Post at the following link:
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/dont-jump-to-nuclear-conclusions-in-tsunamis-wake/
Tony.
a comment on
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/11/nuclear-meltdown-race-to-save-reactors-in-japan/John Whitman says:
March 11, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Here are some very initial thoughts from an old nuclear guy, without much information other than my memories of yore.
First, calm down. This is a technical problem to be resolved, just that.
All the nuclear units at the both the Fukushima Daiichi site and Daini sites are Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs).
During power operation the fuel in the cores of BWRs are designed to perform in a controlled boiling environment during full power operation. The nuclear plant of concern is fully shutdown with all control rods inserted. The shutdown plant’s decay heat rate across the fuel cladding is very tiny compared to power operation heat rate across the fuel cladding.
Boiling in the BWR fuel core is not itself a concern wrt to fuel cladding failure or melting, it was designed for that environment. What is of concern is that there needs to be water in the RPV (reactor pressure vessel) that contains the fuel core. The water level needs to be (if my oldish memory serves me correctly but don’t quote me on this after so many years) more than ~2/3 of the fuel core height in some BWRs. As the water in the concerned RPV boils off more water will, over time, need to be added to the RPV to keep the core sufficiently covered within design limits. So they need electric power restored to add the water; whether by batteries, DGs or from the grid (solar and wind power if it is daytime or the wind is blowing). That is a context for what is meant when talking about time factors.
Another time factor revolves around a different concern. That is the concern that steam produced by the boiling in the core (without cooling), will find its way into the secondary containment. Steam, in the existing emergency shutdown condition will normally find its way out of the RPV into the primary containment (a steel shell and large water pool with some areas having concrete structural support) because that is what it was designed for. But the concern is that without electricity to provide cooling systems to the primary containment, after a period of time, the design pressure of the primary containment might be theoretically be reached. If this happens then leakage to the secondary containment (basically the reactor building) will occur, that is the last barrier to the potential for radioactive gases being released into the environment.
I can only assume (because it is what I would do) the strategy by the Japanese utility and government would be to prevent primary containment damage (leaks), so that you still have an unchallenged secondary containment as some sort of a backup. Prevention of primary containment damage (leaks) could theoretically be achieved by periodically venting the primary containment through some HEPA filters into the environment to prevent damage to the primary containment. It is a possibility (high or low) to do that without electrical power depending on many different circumstances which are unknown to us (the public). I would consider this a good strategy (while trying to restore electric power for water addition to the RPV and cooling systems for the primary containment) because controlled release is better than the potential for uncontrolled release if the primary containment is eventually damaged by not venting it.
Some really good minds with thousands of total experience years are addressing the problems at the Fukushima nuclear plants.
John
Well, it’s not looking good, a nuclear expert tells The Times: meltdown has technically begun at Fukushima.
WUWT is up to speed on this.
the best thread to keep in touch with this as mentioned on WUWT is http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_earthquake_reactors_1203111.html
here’s the latest I think
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031220-e.html
Press Release (Mar 12,2011)
Plant Status of Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (as of 1PM March 12th )
Unit 1 (shut down at 2:48PM on March 11th)
– Reactor is shut down and reactor water level is stable.
– Offsite power is available.
– At 8:19am, there was an alarm indicating that one of the control rods
was not properly inserted, however, at 10:43am the alarm was automatically
called off. Other control rods has been confirmed that they are fully
inserted (reactor is in subcritical status)
– Status of main steam isolation valve: closed
– Injection of water into the reactor had been done by the Reactor Core
Isolation Cooling System, but at 3:48AM, injection by Make-up Water
Condensate System begun.
– At 6:08PM, we announced the increase in reactor containment vessel
pressure, assumed to be due to leakage of reactor coolant. However, we
do not believe there is leakage of reactor coolant in the containment
vessel at this moment.
– At 5:22AM, the temperature of the suppression chamber exceeded 100
degrees. As the reactor pressure suppression function was lost, at 5:22AM,
it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in article 15,
clause 1 has occurred.
– We decided to prepare implementing measures to reduce the pressure of
the reactor containment vessel (partial discharge of air containing
radioactive materials) in order to fully secure safety. This preparation
work started at around 9:43am.
Unit 2 (shut down at 2:48PM on March 11th)
– Reactor is shut down and reactor water level is stable.
– Offsite power is available.
– Control rods are fully inserted (reactor is in subcritical status)
– Status of main steam isolation valve: closed
– Injection of water into the reactor had been done by the Reactor Core
Isolation Cooling System, but at 4:50AM, injection by Make-up Water
Condensate System begun.
– We do not believe there is leakage of reactor coolant in the containment
vessel.
– At 5:22AM, the temperature of the suppression chamber exceeded 100
degrees. As the reactor pressure suppression function was lost, at 5:22AM,
it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in article 15,
clause 1 has occurred.
– We decided to prepare implementing measures to reduce the pressure of
the reactor containment vessel (partial discharge of air containing
radioactive materials) in order to fully secure safety. This preparation
work commenced at around 10:33AM and completed at 10:58AM.
Unit 3 (shut down at 2:48PM on March 11th)
– Reactor is shut down and reactor water level is stable.
– Offsite power is available.
– Control rods are fully inserted (reactor is in subcritical status)
– Status of main steam isolation valve: closed
– Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System is turned off. Currently,
injection of water into the reactor is done by Make-up Water Condensate
System.
– We do not believe there is leakage of reactor coolant in the containment
vessel.
– We decided to prepare implementing measures to reduce the pressure of
the reactor containment vessel (partial discharge of air containing
radioactive materials) in order to fully secure safety. This preparation
work commenced at around 12:08PM and completed at 12:13AM.
– At 12:15PM, the reactor achieved cold shut down.
Unit 4 (shut down at 2:48PM on March 11th)
– Reactor is shut down and reactor water level is stable.
– Offsite power is available.
– Control rods are fully inserted (reactor is in subcritical status)
– Status of main steam isolation valve: closed
– Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System is turned off. Currently,
injection of water into the reactor is done by Make-up Water Condensate
System.
– We do not believe there is leakage of reactor coolant in the containment
vessel.
– In order to cool down the reactor, injection of water into the reactor
had been done by the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System, however,
At 6:07AM, the temperature of the suppression chamber exceeded 100
degrees. As the reactor pressure suppression function was lost,
at 6:07AM, it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in
article 15,clause 1 has occurred.
– We decided to prepare implementing measures to reduce the pressure of
the reactor containment vessel (partial discharge of air containing
radioactive materials) in order to fully secure safety. This preparation
work commenced at around 11:44AM and completed at 11:52AM.
Indication from monitoring posts installed at the site boundary did not
show any difference from ordinary level.
No radiation impact to the external environment has been confirmed. We
will continue to monitor in detail the possibility of radioactive material
being discharged from exhaust stack or discharge canal.
There is no missing person within the power station.
We are presently checking on the site situation of each plant while
keeping the situation of aftershock and Tsunami in mind.
A seriously injured worker is still trapped in the crane operating console
of the exhaust stack and his breathing and pulse cannot be confirmed.
Currently, the rescue efforts are under way.
A worker was lightly injured spraining his left ankle and cutting both
knees when he fell while walking at the site. After medical treatment,
the worker is resting in the office.
and of course commiserations and best wishes to all our Japanese friends
“those plants were originally constructed to be able to withstand earthquakes”
Say that again?
We now have talk of a meltdown.
Design = fail.
Yep, I agree with rog on that.
If only he were alive, my teacher of Physical chemistry would be very happy with the fulfillment of his Murphy’s Law… At least this time.
🙂
“Also the moon is a few meters closer to earth at the moment, but surely its proof of nothing. As Ken Ring’s blog is down (possibly rewriting) I went off to Tallbloke and got another opinion.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/ken-ring-earthquake-predictions-in-christchurch-nz/
Off the top of my head and without evidence to convince me otherwise – it looks like hocus pocus.”
Ken Ring made a prediction for Christchurch NZ on the 20th March, not for Japan.
The Moon’s average orbital distance is 384,403 km
At that time, the Moon Earth distance will be 356,577 km or 27,826km closer than average.
It will the the Moon’s closest approach to Earth for 18 years. At the same time, Jupiter will be at perihelion, it’s closest approach to the Sun, which comes around every 11.86 years. This time,Saturn is on the opposite side of the Sun, and this means the Sun Jupiter distance will be extra close too. At the same time, Mercury will come into opposition with Venus, and the axis of that alignment will be close to 90 degrees to the Earth-Sun line. In traditional astrology, this is a ‘difficult’ aspect.
I don’t know if it means anything will happen or not, but I’ll be watching with interest. At Jupiter’s last perihelion, the solar wind died for two days. This had never been recorded before, and may have been a coincidence. From other investigations we’ve been making on my blog, I suspect the electromagnetic connections between planets and the sun are more important than has been thought.
It would be easy for me to say nothing, as it would ‘seem’ on the surface that what I have said, giving the impression of “do not fear, nothing will be too bad”, might be perceived to have been proved incorrect.
True, this is an incident, still rated as a 4 on the scale of incidents when Three Mile Island was 5 and Chrernobyl a 7, but again, you need to understand the process.
All you will hear will be scaremongering to the nth degree, and I can see Bob Brown and Christine Milne panting to get to the media to use this for their own agendas, but you cannot take ‘media’ reports as being the ‘absolute’ truth on the matter.
The first thing that needs to be understood fully is that the reactor is scrammed so no reaction can continue, and that happens within 4 seconds of the initial ‘shaking’.
As I then mentioned the main problem then is to keep cooling water to the inside of the reactor vessel because of the inherent huge temperatures involved in the process.
With no reaction taking place, the next step is to shut down the generator from distributing power, a procedural matter, as you just cannot flick the on/off switch.
Then, wind back the turbine.
Now, as no power is being produced from the plant, there needs to be power to run the pumps supplying water to the inside of the reactor vessel, the second step of the triple redundancy. That power is supplied from outside sources, and those other plants were shut down following the onset of the Tsunami.
Second redundancy is onsite diesels to run small generators to provide power to ‘drive’ the pumps, and the third step is battery backup.
When all else fails, and there is an existing small problem in the vessel, as seems to be the case here, then that huge inherent heat overwhelms the water supply as it boils off to steam, and the ‘pile’ needs to be kept ‘in’ the water. As that water boils off, then the heat now has nothing to cool it, hence the temperature rises even further.
Now, that steam buildup ‘inside’ the vessel had to be vented ‘outside’ the vessel, hence into the huge concrete blockhouse surrounding the vessel. That buildup of steam pressure overwhelmed the release mechanism and ‘blew’ the concrete blockhouse structure. This is not a ‘nuclear’ explosion per se, but a steam explosion.
Back inside the vessel, with parts of the structure now exposed, the temperature is still rising, and it evidently may have got to 2000 degrees C. This is beyond the melting point of steel, and that steel encased vessel would start to melt.
This is what happened, partially, at Three Mile Island, minus of course the concrete blockhouse ‘blowing’, and only the top portion of the complex inside the vessel actually melted.
The reactor turbine and generator at Three Mile Island were cleaned up, removed from the site, and instead of 2 reactor/turbine/generators, there is now only one. That one ‘complex’ continued operations delivering power and still operates today. Across the River there at Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, barely 100 metres from the complex that had the problem is a main highway. People still stop at the tourist vantage point there to take photographs of the now single plant.
With respect to the original ‘explosion’, as I explained, a steam pressure build up induced ‘blow’, it will be, and quite naturally, correlated with a nuclear explosion in not so many words, but that will be the impression.
For the nuclear fuel used in this process, it is in the form of ceramicised pellets, enriched to, typically, 3% level of enrichment.
The uranium existing as an ore in the ground already has an enrichment level of 0.7%, and when the fuel rods reach a point where they are no longer viable to support nuclear reaction that enrichment has decayed back to around that original ore level of 0.7%.
For weaponised enrichment that level is typically greater than 98%.
Now I’m not saying that this situation in Japan is nothing to be concerned about. What I am saying is that it needs to be kept in perspective.
In this case, it took an absolute catastrophe for one reactor at one plant to be overwhelmed, and some of you might quite rightly say that is all that is needed.
However. keep in mind Three Mile Island, and how nothing untoward has happened in the years hence.
Post on Enrichment levels:
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/nuclear-electrical-power-generation-%E2%80%93-why-the-fuss-part-4/
Post on the Fuel rod assemblies:
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/nuclear-electrical-power-generation-%E2%80%93-why-the-fuss-part-5/
Again, let me stress I am not painting this as something that is really nothing to be concerned about. What needs to happen is people need to be aware of the best information available, not that I have that, but I might add, my information might be a little more detailed than what most media commentators is.
Again, sorry to take sooooo much space here.
Tony.
Weapon
Tony an interesting interview
http://skepchick.org/2011/03/a-conversation-with-my-dad-a-nuclear-engineer-about-the-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-plant-disaster-in-japan/
final paras
Q: So I guess a final question I have for you is, do you think nuclear power plants should be built in an earthquake prone area such as Japan?
A: I think it’s important for the nuclear industry, to be unemotional about what has happened here. So, like I said, it does appear that all of the design features that were required for the earthquake, functioned, and the plant was going through a normal shutdown sequence. Obviously, when the tsunami came, that was something that was not designed for, because it flooded the location where the emergency diesel generators were and caused them to lose all power, and we’re now in a scenario that’s well beyond any design contingencies that were designed for that plant.
So, I think the nuclear industry has to take a serious look at what has occurred in Japan. Although nuclear power is an important source of electricity, I think we have to seriously question any plants that are located next to the ocean and the worst case scenario for this type of event, an earthquake followed by a tsunami, as to the impact it would have on that plant, and the emergency backup system.
Clearly, in this case, this was not taken into account and the net result is, we have a nuclear plant that appears to be very very close to a core meltdown.
18:32
Q: And what would a core meltdown lead to? I mean, is this going to be contained? Is there any chance that this is going to be like a Chernobyl type situation? I mean, I know that’s a different scenario, but is there a potential for a large radiation leak here?
A:So, you ask a good question, and probably one that is on the mind of the public. So, the first thing is, this is a different scenario from the one that happened at Chernobyl. And let me just explain a little bit. Chernobyl reactor was a completely different type of design than those that we typically have in Western society. That was a graphite moderated reactor and probably the big difference between either a pressurized water reactor or a boiling water reactor like we have in the West, is that a water cooled reactor is what we call inherently stable.
In this boiling water reactor, even though, it’s not good that the core would not be cooled, as the water level drops, and you generate steam, the steam is less dense than the water, so that means that there’s less molecules of water to moderate or slow down the neutrons. So, when a steam void forms, it actually causes the power level to drop in that vicinity, or the heat generation to drop in that vicinity. The problem you have, of course, is you do need to cool the reactor because you have all this residual heat, but a pressurized or boiling water reactor is inherently stable, as opposed to the Chernobyl design which is inherently unstable.
The other big difference is, all Western reactors have to have a containment building. And so, according to the news reports, although the auxiliary building has been destroyed, the containment, or steel liner, has not been destroyed. So that’s still intact, so in theory, as long as they can maintain the pressures in that, and there should be relief valves on that, to maintain the pressure, even if the core was to melt, the vast majority of the radioactivity should be contained within that containment building. At Chernobyl we didn’t have that, so when the core melted and caught on fire, all the radioactivity will spread to the atmosphere and to the countryside. In this case, that should not occur, however, again we’re beyond the worst case scenario here, where the last resort now is to try to rig something up to use seawater to cool the plant and the auxiliary building, with all the safety systems has been destroyed.
21:17
Q: Well, we’ll just keep our fingers crossed and I hope that there are a lot of nuclear engineers and military people really working hard to keep this from being an even worse disaster than it is already. Thank you very much Dad, for — Er, sorry did you want to say something?
A: Yeah, I was going to say, it’s obviously a very grave situation however, the one good thing is that Japan has many many nuclear power plants and they have a lot of nuclear experts in that country, so in addition to the help and expertise that they can get from the US and other folks that have a lot of nuclear experience they have a lot of their own people who have a lot of expertise. And I’m sure that they’re doing everything they can, but again, I do have to emphasize that I think this is an extremely serious situation.
22:10
Q: OK, thank you so much, Dad, for all of your insights. I’m so glad I have a nuclear engineer in my family.
A: You’re welcome.
Q: I’ll get this posted, and hopefully this will answer some questions that some people have been having.
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I just noticed the word ‘Weapon’ under where I signed off on my previous comment.
That’s what you get for not proof reading the whole of the comment.
Sorry, unintended additional comment, as a weapon I most certainly am not.
Tony.
Tony, here is a story which states the situation is serious, but under control.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
From that same Brave New Climate site comes this Update for today, 15th March.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/15/fukushima-15-march-summary/
As you might expect from virtually every media outlet, the real truth is somehow a pack of lies and a cover up, as everyone knows it has already ‘melted down’.
This latest report paints a cautionary picture, but by no means as sensational as some media outlets, where speculation is more important than the facts.
I urge readers to read through the information at the link.
I also note with interest that the first Post has been up since March 13, and in the ensuing 48 hours or so, there have been close on 600 comments.
Now that it has been posted for a while, those urgers for a non nuclear plant future are adding comments that what he has said is perpetuating a huge cover up, and that he’s being paid to say as much.
It would seem to me that people are more willing to listen to a worse case scenario than actual facts.
Tony.