One more before I go. Earlier I asked how much spent fuel was stored in the reactors. Here is the unfortunate answer.
Yes, this site is as fringe as they get, but the article is priceless. A couple of the journalists that write for them do uncover some great facts, even if they do use them to jump to conclusions. (I never do that!) 40yrs of spent nuclear rods blown sky high
They document (very well) the number of spent rods, over 600,000, stored in the reactors’ ‘attics’ at the site. The cited documents suggest an average of 700 spent fuel assemblies generated per year, and 63 rods per assembly, which means they use 44100 rods per year. That’s about 13yrs of rods at current consumption rates. I don’t see how they get 40yrs. However, the rest of their numbers match the cited document, and the disturbing part is 3 of 6 of those ‘attics’ have, as they say, ‘blown sky high’.
The approximately 300,000 rods in those attics would then have been subjected to the blasts. Their pools could be damaged. (leaking water?) Their protective cases could be damaged. (leaking NEUTRONS?) Their cooling IS compromised. They ARE beginning to burn, if only intermittently, and they are at least releasing some radioactive material into the air. (Remember, one reactor is plutonium-based, so many of these rods contain plutonium.) At worst, left unattended, (they ARE being left unattended at least for the time being) they could go critical.
So the next question is: What happens if they go critical?
I’m sending this to much fewer people than previous emails. Yes, a select audience that already knows I’m a nutter. Reason being: I have moved past assimilating verifiable information and am mostly just guessing what will happen next. (more so with each email) However, I have to say my analysis of the possible outcome thus far has been pretty close, and has been backed up by official statements. Not that I arrived to the conclusions on my own but my point is I wasn’t misleading. Ex: Possibility of fission in spent fuel rods, possibility of fallout reaching US.
Anyway, now I’m gonna go off the deep end. There’s a guy named Jim Berkland(sp?) – I THINK his site is Syzygyjob.com – who used to work for USGS but was let go when he expressed some fringe opinions and had them printed in the paper. He believed in a connection between tidal forces and earthquakes, and even believed that mass changes in animal behavior could be indicators of quakes. Based on those factors, he predicted the Ca quake during the world series. He was with, I think, a few days of the actual quake. Understandably, though, the USGS didn’t want to be associated with his ‘predictions’. I don’t think his methods are unscientific. All science is based on observations that uncover patterns, and then further investigation and experimentation to determine causes. Then again, the causes he claims to have identified may be hooey! You decide.
I only bring this guy up because he is again saying that there is some sort of tidal maximum occurring in the Pacific on March 19th. He believes there will be another large earthquake on the west coast of the US. That’s it. Hope he’s wrong! Hear him for yourself:
TEPCO asked the US military for help. Attempts to control the situation included dropping water on the spent rod pools by helicopter, and a proposal to tap into another power company’s grid to get power to the reactors’ main cooling systems.
The helicopter idea seems like nothing more than a good way to make some pilots sterile. At first I thought they meant to hover over the pools and then drop the water, but what they actually did was just drop the water as they were flying by. Correct me if I’m wrong, but those neutrons aren’t stopping unless they’re IMMERSED in water. This seems nearly pointless.
The power line idea seems interesting but will not directly help the broken spent rod pools. However, they will free up the other pumps to focus on those areas. Apparently, the power line idea will not be started until Thurs morning. No estimate was given on when it will be complete. If it works it does have some promise of calming things down. Let’s hope it works!
Though the Fukushima 50 (the 50 very brave or very forced workers who are basically committing suicide to try and impede the disaster) were withdrawn at some point due to dangerous radiation levels, they were sent back to the site after the radiation level supposedly decreased some, AND the (government or TEPCO) increased the maximum allowable exposure limit.
Apparently the #4 reactor’s main fuel rods were not actually in the reactor. While the reactor was down for maintenance, those rods were temporarily stored in the ‘attic’ with all of the spent rods.
US has recommended US citizens within 80km of Fukushima 1 evacuate. Japan is still only recommending evac for its citizens if they’re in the 20-30km radius.
US is providing evac for embassy employees and their family.
It should take up to a week for radiation to reach Ca & Wa, so this may be just an anomaly, but as some clouds passed over Californiatoday, an extremely highradiation reading was detected. Several youtube videos discuss this, but who knows where it’s headed? Radiation levels dropped to normal as soon as the cloud passed. I guess that means it wasn’t raining!
NYT thinks they have an idea of its path. If that reading was real, it must have been from the first explosion, because otherwise it got here way too fast. If that assumption (and many of my other inferences) is correct, expect the fallout from the #3 explosion to be much stronger. Another (albeit exaggerated) account of radiation readings over Pacific.
I don’t recall if I mentioned the eruption of shinmoedake… That was on 3/13 I think. I can’t find the live feed though. If anyone has a link, please send it.
Can’t recall any more significant events today but here are some more useful links…
Linear Mode
