From the Miami Herald

Walls fall, smoke pours from Japan nuclear plant

By YURI KAGEYAMA and JAY ALABASTER
Associated Press


SENDAI, Japan -- An explosion at a nuclear power station tore down the walls of one building Saturday as smoke poured out and Japanese officials said they feared the reactor could melt down following the failure of its cooling system in a powerful earthquake and tsunami.

It was not clear if the damaged building housed the reactor. Tokyo Power Electric Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, said four workers were injured but details were not immediately available.

Footage on Japanese TV showed that the walls of one building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing. Puffs of smoke were spewing out of the plant.

"We are now trying to analyze what is behind the explosion," said government spokesman Yukio Edano, stressing that people should quickly evacuate a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius. "We ask everyone to take action to secure safety."

The trouble began at the plant's Unit 1 after Friday's massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it spawned knocked out power there. The disaster has killed hundreds of people and devastated the country's northeastern coast, where rescuers began slowly arriving Saturday.

The toll of destruction was still not known more than 24 hours after the quake since washed-out roads and shut airports have hindered access to the area. An untold number of bodies were believed to be buried in the rubble and debris.

The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area near the quake's epicenter. Local media reports said at least 1,300 people may have been killed.

Adding to worries was the fate of nuclear power plants in the region. Japan has declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability.

The most troubled one is facing meltdown, officials have said.

Pressure has been building up in the reactor - it's now twice the normal level - and Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters Saturday that the plant was venting "radioactive vapors." Officials said they were measuring radiation levels in the area.

The reactor in trouble has already leaked some radiation: Operators have detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.

Wind in the region is weak and headed northeast, out to sea, according to the Meteorological Agency.

Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan's nuclear safety commission, said that even if there was a meltdown, it wouldn't affect people outside a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius - an assertion that might need revising if the situation deteriorates. Most of the 51,000 residents living within the danger area had been evacuated, he said.

Meanwhile, the first wave of military rescuers began arriving by boats and helicopters.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops would join rescue and recovery efforts following the quake that unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed - a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields, smashing towns, airports and highways in its way.

"Most of houses along the coastline were washed away, and fire broke out there," said Kan after inspecting the quake area in a helicopter. "I realized the extremely serious damage the tsunami caused."

Stratfor just reports reactor meltdown (email).

==============

A March 12 explosion at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown.

The key piece of technology in a nuclear reactor is the control rods. Nuclear fuel generates neutrons; controlling the flow and production rate of these neutrons is what generates heat, and from the heat, electricity. Control rods absorb neutrons — the rods slide in and out of the fuel mass to regulate neutron emission, and with it, heat and electricity generation.

Timeline from BBC

BBC News - Timeline: Japan power plant explosion

F

__________________
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it."-- Mark Twain

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.36

Meltdown fear after nuclear plant blast
Yuji Okada and Mari Iwata
March 13, 2011

Meltdown fear after nuclear plant blast

Japan wakes to devastation

As day breaks in Japan, pictures emerge of the devastation caused by a 8.9 magnitude quake and tsunami, and world leaders pledge their support to the relief effort.
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TOKYO: A nuclear reactor damaged by Japan's biggest earthquake may be starting to melt down, local nuclear authorities have warned.

There was a large explosion inside a concrete reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 power station about 220 kilometres north of Tokyo after the reactor's cooling system failed.

Smoke was seen billowing from the plant last night, four people were injured and radioactivity had risen 20-fold.
The explosion destroyed the walls of the reactor building.

But serious damage to the container of the reactor is believed to be unlikely, Kyodo News reported, citing unidentified nuclear safety agency officials.

Fuel rods at the reactor may be melting after radioactive cesium material left by atomic fission was detected near the site, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Yuji Kakizaki said by phone.

''If the fuel rods are melting and this continues, a reactor meltdown is possible,'' Kakizaki said.

A meltdown refers to a heat build-up of such intensity in the core it melts the floor of the reactor containment housing.

A Japanese cabinet minister confirmed radiation was leaking from the plant and there were reports that the cooling system to a second reactor had also failed. Earlier, the Japanese government ordered a 10-kilometre exclusion zone around the site. Traffic piled up as the government scrambled to evacuate more than 45,000 residents.

TV channels warned nearby residents to stay indoors, turn off air-conditioners and not to drink tap water. People going outside were also told to avoid exposing their skin and to cover their faces with masks and wet towels.

They also reported that special medical teams were heading to the region.

This came as more than 100 aftershocks were recorded since Friday's quake, which killed more than 500 people, a toll that was expected to rise dramatically.

Temperatures inside the reactor's core reportedly soared as engineers poured seawater into the reactor to cool it. Earlier, workers deliberately vented radioactive gas into the atmosphere to ease building pressure inside the plant.

The company was also preparing to release gas at its nearby No. 2 nuclear plant.

Loss of cooling water resulted in a near meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979, the worst nuclear incident in US history.

If coolant is not restored, a meltdown could occur. Extreme heat can melt through the reactor vessel and result in a radioactive release. Reactors have containment domes to catch any release. But the earthquake could have cracked the containment system.

Hideyuki Ban, the co-director of Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre, said to The Wall Street Journal: ''The Japanese government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has said that if the water level can be raised to cover the fuel rods, they can keep the situation under control, but if the water cannot cover the fuel, the damage will become more severe, and that means radioactive materials will be released.''

TEPCO, Asia's biggest power company, confirmed that it had started releasing radioactive gas from the plant to try to reduce pressure in the reactor containment housing after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake.

''You don't want to have that containment pressurised. When the pressure starts building up, the emergency procedure is to start venting,'' said Dave Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union for Concerned Scientists.

''They've essentially entered a beat-the-clock game. As long as there is no fuel damage, there will be radioactivity, but it will be very low.''

Radiation spread by the venting process would not be at a level dangerous to health, Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman at the government's nuclear agency said.

TEPCO said it had lost control of pressure building up in three reactors at the No. 1 plant after the quake struck. Temperatures in the plant's control room rose to higher than 100 degrees, a company spokesman said.

Bloomberg; AFP

__________________
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it."-- Mark Twain

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.36

From slashdot:

Why it exploded (Score:5, Informative)
by TopSpin (753) writes: on Saturday March 12, @06:06AM (#35462638) Journal

It will take the media and Japan a while to circle around to what caused the explosion, so I'll explain it now.

1. cooling circulation failed due to power loss.
2. reactor boiled off the coolant inventory and exposed the core
3. core overheated and damaged the fuel
4. the damaged fuel reacted with water vapor (zircaloy+H2O) and created a hydrogen bubble
5. the hydrogen burned (exploded, iow) and neatly removed the outer walls of the reactor building

The explosion you see in the videos aligns perfectly with the Fukushima Daiichi No.1 reactor building seen here [wikimedia.org] (forth square building from the left.)

The BBC has provided this incredible before/after photo [bbcimg.co.uk] where you can actually see the reactor building structure with the walls removed by the explosion: the metal framework is still intact.

The exact same thing happened with TMI-2 in 1979. The hydrogen burn occurred inside the containment dome. The Fukushima reactor doesn't have such a dome, so the hydrogen accumulated in the reactor building.
Nuclear Emergency Declared At 2 Plants In Japan - Slashdot

__________________
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it."-- Mark Twain

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.

An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.36

There is currently good footage on CNN about the Fukushima Daiichi No.1 reactor.

According to the news report, they have started pumping seawater into that reactor building to help with the cooling. This means that they have definitely written that reactor off. It will never again produce electricity.

Yet if it helps to prevent a complete meltdown of the reactor (we know that the fuel rods themselves have at least partially melted, because otherwise, no cesium would have been detected in the steam coming out of the reactor), this is the right thing to do.

A full reactor meltdown would mean that the perimeter of evacuation would have to be extended much beyond the 12 km radius that they currently use and that this area would not be inhabitable for quite some time.

Okay, criticising articles from the Daily Mail is a tad fish-in-a-barrel, but what the hey.

Already some people are gloating about the humbling of modern Japan – Telegraph Blogs

Quote:

The great thing about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan is that they have exposed just how wimpy mankind is in the face of nature’s fury. That, at least, seems to be the implicit and quite grotesque message of this Daily Mail article, which effectively gloats at Japan’s terrible tragedy and holds it up as a lesson for cocky humankind. Where we consider ourselves oh-so-advanced and superior to all other living creatures, this quake has demonstrated that “we are, in fact, hopelessly irrelevant… dwarfed by phenomena beyond our control”. Apparently that “all-conquering intercontinental aquatic bulldozer” known as a tsunami has not only swept aside towns and villages in Japan – it has also revealed, to those dumb enough still to believe that mankind is special, that “in the scheme of things, homo sapiens is not so sapiens after all. We are just ants with cars.” There is almost a teenage excitability to the Daily Mail writer’s discussion of the “brutal lessons” of the earthquake. “One of the most advanced nations on Earth was innocently going about its business when Nature suddenly decided to go Thwack!”, he says, using Batman-style lingo and exclamation marks to describe nature’s apparently conscious punishment of the Japanese for their hubristic modernity. Later, in keeping with the idea that nature is a sentient force, he describes “her” as being “deeply unimpressed” with humanity’s various selfish antics, including the way we “reclaim land from the oceans and build sea walls to keep those irksome waves at bay; design ever-larger ships to heave ever more unnecessary consumer goods around the planet; build ever larger airports to accommodate the insatiable appetite for easy travel…” In short, nature is punishing us for modernising our planet, for seeking to explore and tame our surroundings, and we probably deserve it. This might appear as a crude one-off response to a terrible tragedy. In truth, it is commonplace today to see disasters being described as lessons for greedy mankind from the angry gods of the natural world. Whether it is the recent flooding in England, described by one Guardian journalist as “environmental ECT” for people who are “apathetic about climate change”, or leading green Mark Lynas’s claim a few years ago that mankind has woken Poseidon “from a thousand-year slumber and this time his wrath will know no bounds”, a backward, irrational, pre-Enlightenment view of nature as the boss and mankind as her mere playthings is creeping backing into serious public debate. And the message is always the same, as it is in today’s Daily Mail article on Japan: we must learn from older, pre-modern human societies, which had “a more realistic sense of their place in the world”. No, we shouldn’t. To do that – to stop building and developing and progressing just because sections of the cut-off intellectual elite says it makes nature angry – would be the real disaster. Japan’s tragedy is awful, but there has been far less loss of human life than there was in Haiti in January last year or in the Asian tsunami of 2006. Why? Because Japan is better developed, and thus better able to withstand what some fools refer to as “nature’s fury”. The Daily Mail says the events in Japan are “profoundly humbling and horrible”. They are horrible, that’s for sure. But humbling? No – our response to this tragedy should be to build even bigger, more nature-resistant human societies, not to crawl back into the caves where our ancestors came back.

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On the other hand, it's a very Shinto point of view - the idea of nature as a sort of violent, capricious and frequently revolting dominatrix. Susanowo dropping a flayed pony on Amaterasu's palace etc.

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Any yeah, okay, 10 000 is more than 19, but come on. The point still stands - anywhere else it would have been a million times worse.

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Sigh. On the other hand, mocking the Telegraph is often even easier. There is a lot of intent attributed to the Mail and other articles, the bulk of which seems to be motivated by simplistic anti-intellectualism.

It's far from absurd to recognised the limits of human ability to control nature. There is nothing at all we could do about the potential yellowstione supervolcanoe. Thats just life. There is no manifest destiny, the world was not created as humanity's playground, sometimes reality bites back.