they're ****ed. that's putting it nicely

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120....

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Reactor 2 radiation too high for access

73 sieverts laid to low water level will even cripple robots

Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour and any attempt to send robots in to accurately gauge the situation will require them to have greater resistance than currently available, experts said Wednesday.


Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The experts said the high radiation level is due to the shallow level of coolant water — 60 cm — in the containment vessel, which Tepco said in January was believed to be 4 meters deep. Tepco has only peeked inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. It has few clues as to the status of reactors 1 and 3, which also suffered meltdowns, because there is no access to their insides.

The utility said the radiation level in the reactor 2 containment vessel is too high for robots, endoscopes and other devices to function properly.

Spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said it will be necessary to develop devices resistant to high radiation.

High radiation can damage the circuitry of computer chips and degrade camera-captured images.

For example, a series of Quince tracked robots designed to gather data inside reactors can properly function for only two or three hours during exposure to 73 sieverts, said Eiji Koyanagi, chief developer and vice director of the Future Robotics Technology Center of Chiba Institute of Technology.

That is unlikely to be enough for them to move around and collect video data and water samples, reactor experts said.

"Two or three hours would be too short. At least five or six hours would be necessary," said Tsuyoshi Misawa, a reactor physics and engineering professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute.

The high radiation level can be explained by the low water level. Water acts to block radiation.

"The shallowness of the water level is a surprise . . . the radiation level is awfully high," Misawa said.

While the water temperature is considered in a safe zone at about 50 degrees, it is unknown if the melted fuel is fully submerged, but Tepco said in November that computer simulations suggested the height of the melted fuel in reactor 2's containment vessel is probably 20 to 40 cm, Tepco spokeswoman Ai Tanaka said.

Tepco has inserted an endoscope and a radiation meter, but not a robot, in the containment vessel. It is way too early to know how long Tepco will need to operate robots in the vessel because it is unknown what the devices will have to do, Tanaka said.

A Quince was exposed to radiation of 20 sieverts per hour for a total of 10 hours, and the device worked fine, Koyanagi said. If the team conducts further experiments, it may find out the robot can resist even more radiation, he added.

According to experts, even though high radiation in the containment vessel means additional trouble, it is not expected to further delay the decommissioning the three crippled reactors, a process Tepco said will take 40 years.

The experts noted, however, that removing the melted nuclear fuel from the bottom of the containment vessels will be extremely difficult.

Tepco inserted a radiation meter into the containment vessel of reactor 2 Tuesday for the first time, measuring atmospheric radiation levels at several points inside the vessel. The readings logged 31.1 and 72.9 sieverts per hour.

Tepco has not been able to gauge the water depths and radiation levels of the containment vessels for reactors 1 and 3, as, unlike unit 2, there is no access.

Uhh...this is bad, right?

Quote:

Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced.

http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.htm....

1crzydmnd-

Sounds bad, but is it speculation, or are there real structural concerns surrounding building 4?

Pretty real concerns.

There's some pretty damn scary quote in the article 1crzydmnd linked above:

Quote:

Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization.

How true is this statement? Wouldn't it have a lot to do with how far the Cesium-137 would be dispersed? (which would depend on particle size, wind & water currents, etc)

I'm guessing the main concern here is that an aftershock would topple the (already weakened) structure holding the spent fuel rods and would uncover them starting some sort of fire which would disperse the Cesium, right?

Sounds like a pretty precarious situation, but I'm wondering about how likely an outcome that would be?

... theoretically would also make the rest of the complex completely unapproachable ... all 6 reactors & fuel pools would, it is thought, likely completely fail (because no one could get close to maintain power, water cooling, etc.).

Radiation appearing in Bluefin Tuna in CA waters

http://www.komonews.com/news/consumer/Ra....

http://enenews.com/tepco-email-possible-....


Interesting translation / screen shot from Yahoo Japan on this web link above....



Hmmmm, "re-criticality"?

What
the
phuck?

Power Companies Face the Shareholders

At Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the company’s No. 1 shareholder, the district of Tokyo, asked for greater transparency in electricity-rate setting to be written into the corporate charter.

In western Japan, Kansai Electric Power Co.’s biggest shareholder, the city of Osaka, proposed the utility exit from nuclear power completely. JRT readers know Kansai as the operator of the Oi nuclear plant whose reactors are slated for immanent restart. Before last year’s accident at Fukushima Daiichi effectively put the brakes on nuclear-power generation in Japan, the utility depended on reactors for about half its electricity supply.

“We will never exit from nuclear power,” said Makoto Yagi, president of Kansai Electric, in response to Osaka’s proposal.

Tepco and Kansai Electric both said those proposals were defeated — though they didn’t say by how big a margin.

Those shareholder proposals likely didn’t have much of a chance to begin with. Though Tokyo and Osaka are the largest single shareholders of Tepco and Kansai Electric, respectively, their holdings are still far lower than the combined stakes of the Japanese life insurers and banks that are the utilities’ main institutional investors.

Those financial companies tend to vote with management of the companies whose shares they hold. And they’re often creditors as well, which makes it unlikely they’d support a proposal that would hurt the profitability of their borrowers, like decommissioning nuclear plants would.

Meanwhile, Tepco’s annual meeting was the last official appearance of Tsunehisa Katsumata, the utility’s powerful chairman and former president, who led negotiations over last month’s government bailout of the utility.

“As someone who has served as president and chairman during the last 10 years, I have a major responsibility (for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident). I’d like to offer my sincere apology,” Mr. Katsumata said before the 4,471 shareholders who attended the meeting.

Mr. Katsumata was formally replaced as chairman by Kazuhiko Shimokobe, a government-appointed bankruptcy lawyer and corporate turnaround specialist. He will become a “corporate friend,” an honorific bestowed by the company to former presidents or chairmen.

Mr. Katsumata will also remain an external director of Japan Atomic Power Co., a utility of which Tepco is the top shareholder.

Mr. Katsumata was so influential within Tepco — he was dubbed the utility’s “shadow shogun” — that some shareholders voiced concern he might continue to exert influence even after his official exit.

Nonfiction-writer-turned-deputy-Tokyo governor Naoki Inose showed up to the meeting to make that point.

“This is a time of rebirth for Tepco. But you may become an obstacle to that goal,” Mr. Inose told Mr. Katsumata during the meeting. “If you really wish for your company’s rebirth, you, as a member of the old regime, should sever all ties with the company.”

Mr. Katsumata’s reply: “I will never poke my nose into the management of the company.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/....

Fukushima plant directors resign with golden parachutes
Directors and auditors at TEPCO - the Japanese operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant - have used the company's annual general meeting today to resign. In theory, they're doing so to take responsibility for last year's disaster. But the ABC can confirm that nearly half of those who resigned will take up lucrative posts with other TEPCO group companies.

Some of the executives are also facing the biggest lawsuit in Japanese history - a $67 billion compensation claim from shareholders for what they describe as unforgivable negligence.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3....