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Originally posted by beatupplenty:
You are using common sense to ruin everyone's drinking and fornicating before they get vaporized. In nine months there are gonna be a lot of newborns named Fukushima.

I think I name mine Fuk U. Shima

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http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.quake/index.html?hpt
=T1&iref=BN1

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Tokyo Electric, battling to avoid a meltdown at its Fukushima nuclear plant, faces “severe” rebuilding costs and Toshiba’s nuclear business may see increased scrutiny, said Minoru Matsuno, president of Value Search Asset Management Co. in Tokyo.

Radiation levels near the Fukushima plant, located 135 miles (217 kilometers) north of Tokyo, rose above Japanese limits after an explosion yesterday destroyed the walls of the reactor building. Nippon Steel Corp., Suzuki Motor Corp. and Canon Inc. today joined the growing number of companies saying their operations were hurt following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake on March 11 that rocked Japan and triggered tsunamis.

“For Tokyo Electric and anything nuclear-related, it’s going to be pretty bad,” said Makoto Kikuchi, chief executive officer at　Myojo Asset Management Japan Co., a Tokyo-based hedge fund advisory firm. “The biggest fear I have is what will happen at the nuclear power plant as it would be a real disaster if the situation deteriorates into another Chernobyl.”

Disruptions at Shin-Etsu and Sumco Corp. account for about 60 percent of the world’s electronic wafers, will undermine global supply, which may benefit the No. 3 producer, Wacker Chemie AG’s Sitronic, according to Klaus Ringel, an analyst at Credit Agricole Cheuvreux.

Dennis Chan, an analyst at Yuanta Financial Holding Co., wrote March 11 that Sony, which has factories in Fukushima-ken and Tochigi-ken in northern of Japan, may be affected. The company makes about 10 percent of the world’s laptop batteries, according to Chan. The company said today that it’s halting production at eight factories that make products ranging from Blu-ray discs, magnetic heads and batteries.

Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. said thousands of new vehicles were damaged. Toyota will suspend production at its dozen factories in Japan and its body makers on March 14, while Honda said it will stop production at factories in Sayama, Mouka, Hamamatsu and Suzuka.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-13/tokyo-electric-toshiba-east-j
apan-rail-may-be-among-most-hurt-by-quake.html

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Japan battles to stop nuclear catastrophe

Prime minister Naoto Kan said Japan faced its “worst crisis” since the second world war as the nation grapples with the aftermath of Friday’s earthquake and tsunami and the increasingly serious situation at two nuclear reactors reports the Financial Times.

His warning came as fears grew that the death toll from the devastating tsunami would ultimately be measured in the tens of thousands.

I believe that by coming together as a nation we can overcome this crisis,” Mr Kan said in a televised news conference.

While rescue workers worked around the clock to find survivors of the tsunami along Japan’s north-east coastline, nuclear experts were trying to prevent a nuclear meltdown at an atomic plant in Fukushima, some 240km north of Tokyo.

Earlier on Sunday, Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman, said there was a “significant chance” that radioactive fuel rods had partially melted in two reactors [Number One and Number Three] at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility.

More than 24 hours after engineers began pumping seawater into the Number One reactor, the water level inside its containment vessel and that of the Number Two reactor, remained significantly below levels needed to cool their uranium fuel and prevent a full nuclear meltdown.

Seawater injection at the second reactor began early on Sunday morning, but nuclear safety officials said the water level was not rising as intended. Olli Heinonen, former deputy head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Japanese authorities were “having tremendous trouble”.

“As they long as they can maintain a reasonable level of cooling at the affected reactors, they can avoid partial or full meltdown,” said Mr Heinonen. “But if they fail there will be a steam explosion and the dispersal of radioactive material. It may be a day or two before we know if they have succeeded.”

Mr Heinonen said the nuclear incident was “certainly the most serious since Chernobyl” which occurred in 1996.

On Sunday evening, an official at Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said fuel rods in the Number One and Number Three reactors were exposed by more than 1.5 metres inside their containment vessels. While coolant-water levels at the Number Two reactor were normal, engineers were preparing seawater injection equipment as a precaution.

Despite the growing concerns about the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Mr Edano said the radiation levels outside the facility, operated by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), did not pose a major health threat.

“I am trying to be careful with words,” he said during a televised news conference. “It’s undeniable that some of the fuel may have been deformed, but this is not a situation where the whole core suffers a meltdown.”

Experts said a partial meltdown would likely mean that the reactors’ uranium fuel rods had cracked or warped in places from overheating, releasing radioactive particles into the reactors’ containment vessels. Some of those particles would have escaped into the air when engineers vented steam from the vessels to relieve pressure building up inside.

Adding to problems at the site, hydrogen from vented steam was detected in the Number Three reactor’s outer building, threatening an explosion similar to the one that blew apart the Number One reactor building’s roof and outer walls on Saturday. That blast left the reactor’s core and protective containment vessel intact, Japanese nuclear safety officials insisted.

It remained unclear how much radiation had escaped from the power station, or how far it had spread. Sensors at another nuclear complex 100km to the north picked up levels four times higher than the legal maximum, Japanese media reported.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7feb0aaa-4d3d-11e0-85e4-00144feab49a,Authorise
d=false.html

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DISCLAIMER: Australian Radiation Services is aware of information about radioactive contamination being spread from the Japanese nuclear reactor incident released under the ARS logo and name. We wish to be clear that this information has not originated from ARS and as such distance ourselves from any such misinformation.

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DISCLAIMER: Australian Radiation Services is aware of information about radioactive contamination being spread from the Japanese nuclear reactor incident released under the ARS logo and name. We wish to be clear that this information has not originated from ARS and as such distance ourselves from any such misinformation.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
In Japanese, those names actually are significantly different: they're numbers. Daiichi is one, daini is two.

Why the US isn't bothering to translate them when it would help make reporting clearer is beyond me.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I wouldn't call it bogus. It actually does illustrate a possible scenario. What's bogus about it is the numbers - we don't know where the contamination numbers came from or how or who did the time lapse modeling, if anyone did.

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Originally posted by HAKEN:

The Japanese government has formally requested the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency's assistance in covering up the situation at its nuclear power plants.

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The impact of all this extends far beyond China’s borders. Taken as a group, its coal-fired power plants emit the world’s highest levels of sulfur dioxide (a major element of acid rain) and mercury, both of which rise high into the atmosphere and hitch a ride on air currents circling the globe. One study, published last year in the Journal of Geophysical Research, calculated that three-quarters of the black carbon pollution in the atmosphere over the western United States originates in Asia. It is estimated that as much as 35 percent of all the mercury pollution in the western United States comes from abroad, and China is most likely the main culprit.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:

A run on iodine in CA.

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Japan has told nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, of a fire at the Fukushima plant and that radioactivity is being released directly into atmosphere.

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CNN -- U.S. Navy personnel are taking precautionary measures after instruments aboard an aircraft carrier docked in Japan detected low levels of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the Navy said Tuesday.

The USS George Washington was docked for maintenance in Yokosuka, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) from the plant, when instruments detected the radiation at 7 a.m. Tuesday (6 p.m. ET Monday), the Navy said in a statement.

Personnel will limit outdoor activities and secure external ventilation systems there and at a nearby air facility in Atsugi.

"These measures are strictly precautionary in nature. We do not expect that any United States federal radiation exposure limits will be exceeded even if no precautionary measures are taken," the Navy said.

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Originally posted by Zeek:
So, you guys have followed this more than me. Maybe you know the answer to this. I keep reading that the backup generators were damaged. So, the plants couldn't pump fresh water in to cool the reactors.

So, in all these days of the crisis we couldn't get some new generators shipped in? There must be another problem there, but I haven't seen anything more than the generators being the base cause of the issues.

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