Fukushima, Take 2

[varjohaltia]

The situation obviously keeps evolving, but here are some observations:

The proper way of knowing how badly you should panic comes from the radiation readings in the surrounding areas. Even when the levels peaked to seriously unhealthy (but not immediately lethal) levels at the plant yesterday during the fire, the surrouding areas haven't reported anything panic-worthy.

It's hard to say not to worry. Of course there has now been a release of radioactive material that is well beyond anything that should have been possible, so that's worrisome. It'll be hard to know that things won't get worse, or what the effect nearby are as far as contamination sticking around or getting into the foodchain or water supply and concentrating. But so far the levels really aren't enough to be harmful; we're talking equivalent to living around more naturally radioactive soil or working as a flight attendant. I'd leave the immediate neighborhood of the plant, but more than a hundred miles away I'd stay put and would keep an eye on the TV without losing sleep.

Reports of radiation that is 50 times the normal sound panic-inducing, but they really aren't. We're talking about minute levels. Remember that this is measuring accurately very low levels of radiation. What really matters is the total exposure that ends up happening, and the elevated levels nearby reported so far aren't enough to cause concern. The anti-fallout instructions to not bring laundry in from the outside, to brush off when coming inside etc. are panic inducing, but based on all the data so far they are a case of "better safe than sorry."

There's something rotten in TEPCO. I hate to put more fuel to the fire as far as "Authority is lying" but running out of water, running out of fuel on pumps, nuclear fuel storage tanks running so dry that they catch fire from decay heat, inability to prevent hydrogen explosions in the reactor buildings... The cascade of failures is sounding increasingly hard to comprehend. Bad leadership, woefully inadequate training, badly botched desgin, cultural inability to admit problems and seek help before the get out of hand, angered Fate... There'll be room for hundreds of books of failures coming out of this. Hearing that someone other than TEPCO is beginning to oversee the situation or take charge would be welcome right about now. The upside is that it's hard to think of anything else they can possibly screw up worse anymore.

In contrast, based on the readings from the local governments and TEPCO, the government isn't doing a particularly good job at keeping people informed with enough information, but the measures they've taken and information they've given have all made sense to me. The content of their communication has been remarkably reasonable, the delivery sucks.

NHK World is also doing a good job, and has been my main source of info. They have talking heads, but the speculation is limited. On the other hand, major US news organizations completely ignore official press conferences, instead concentrating on Anderson Cooper measuring the depth of debris piles and having talking heads speculate on twelve-hour-old information. Eventually Reuters and AP report on the conferences and press releases, and THEN CNN suddenly reports breaking news. Right after these messages. Complete with some total misunderstandings by the anchor, who apparently did not pass high-school physics.

Nothing new from reactors 1 & 3. 2 also seems stable-ish, though either the reactor vessel, containment vessel, or both are likely damaged. How badly, we don't know. Either TEPCO doesn't know, since they have to rely on damaged instrumentation to figure out the condition of the plant, or they don't want to fess up.

Reactor 4 (just like 5 and 6) was somewhere between in cold shutdown and empty. Based on everything I've gathered, the reactor vessels or containment for 4-6 are just fine. What happened was a fire at a spent nuclear fuel pool at reactor 4, and not surprisingly that's the cause of the major release of radiation yesterday. This will lead to a lot of questions, and it's frankly a failure that's very hard to comprehend. Fundamentally, an uncovered pool packed tightly enough with spent fuel to generate enough heat for a fire is not very different from an uncovered reactor core. A lot of the shorter-lived isotopes will have decayed, so fuel in the spent rods isn't as bad as the fuel in the reactor, but it's mighty bad either way.

The wonderful fresh food at Japanese convenience stores apparently isn't so good during emergencies. When transportation networks fail, the constant fresh deliveries stop too.

Comments

[elusivetiger.livejournal.com]

The problem is not only that we thousands of miles away are not experienced nuclear power plant engineers, but that we are relying on the quality of information coming out of Japan. The government has a vested interest in tightly controlling any potentially damaging or dangerous information so as not to create a panic, which may well lie in conflict with any given individual's interest in staying alive and healthy. Large-scale organisms such as governments strive to protect the organism as a whole at the cost of a few cells, in the same way that we may not think a great deal about the death of a few muscle cells or even, in extremis, a limb.

It's also entirely possible that even the thousands of experts hell-bent on analyzing this catastrophe and the Japanese government itself don't know exactly what's going on, and how much to worry. A lot of this is simply new territory to be studied empirically in real time and through later forensics, despite a fairly thorough understanding of the design and theory. Ah, modern science - how you bless, how you curse.

Me, I'd be getting out of Dodge if I had anywhere else to go. Sadly most citizens there probably do not. It's just a horrible situation and a scale of human grief light years beyond personal comprehension.

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm engaging into exactly the same armchair engineering I'm lambasting the pundits for. I think I know better. Partially it's my coping mechanism, to break things down into analytical, logical, science/engineering framework.

It's increasingly obvious that the power company is hiding stuff or doing something wrong. It's just not making sense anymore. The details of what is happening at the plant are something where a "coverup" and a chronic lack of communication is absolutely taking place.

Aside from that, though, I have a lot more faith in the government. So far, their statements have been consistent with other sources, they seem to have followed standard emergency procedures triggered by various milestones of reactor malfunction, starting evacuations and such even before the danger was imminent -- or perhaps they knew. They do need to communicate more, but so far I have fairly high confidence in the factuality of their statements.

The good is that as far as the actual impact, municipalities, some of the 500 foreign rescue workers and every embassy in Tokyo is holding up their own Geiger counters, so we'd find out pretty quick (will find out pretty quit) if serious contamination starts to head to populated areas.

If I was a foreigner in Tokyo, I'd probably be on the way somewhere else. If I was a resident... hard to say.

This is indeed all uncharted territory, and it's hard to overstate how bad this is even if few people aside from the plant staff and first responders get severely exposed. FOUR nuclear reactors in a first world country have had catastrophic failures, and despite days of work the failures keep cascading. That's so far out of the "nuclear power is safe" playbook it's hard to comprehend. On that note too, despite the plants being old and having deficiencies in design, I really do want to know how TEPCO managed to blunder this badly. Even after a tsunami and earthquake, you have to work pretty hard at failing to keep your buildings from blowing and spent fuel pools from boiling dry.

A lot of the Japanese express deep mistrust of TEPCO and the government, they're not just as vocal about it. However, once rebuilding begins and investigations get going, I expect this to have pretty far reaching consequences, and not just in Japan.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been having trouble synthesizing the information and what it means. I have friends in Japan though they're in Osaka, far from the site, but I'm concerned and your updates are helpful.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Oh - you actually met Mia, when they were living in the US and she was quite homesick. They've been in Japan for about a year now.

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

I did! Osaka should be fine, even if things get worse, but the uncertainty must be horrible. I'm still hoping to get to Kyoto in a few weeks, we'll see.