Ana’s Feeed starting Sunday mid day through last night: TEPCO press conf. (NHK): Since the accident, we have caused a huge amount of trouble and inconvenience to residents and anxiety to the greater population in general … Residents have been asked to evacuate and they would like to return home and we would like to…

Claims are being made that the situation at Fukushima is starting to improve, but there is no actual evidence of this. We probably (but not certainly) passed the point where nuclear fuel is likely to accumulate in such a way as to cause a major fission event or explosion, but there is still sufficient heat…

The most significant news seems to be the raising of the level of this accident, on the international scale of how bad things get at nuclear power plants, to the highest level, which is also the level set for the Chernobyl accident. This does not mean that the Fukushima Disaster is the same as the…

Welcome to the “I’m starting to get cynical” edition. The situation at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Plant reached an impasse over the least few days. Two or three of the reactors are in a situation where cooling is being kludged, the reactor fuel rods are damaged and have melted but the details are unknown, storage pools…

Despite the deafening silence from TEPCO regarding questions over a physical breech in Reactor 2, it is now generally being considered that there is a breech in reactor 2. It is not clear if it is a hole in the containment vessel of some kind or just some disconnected or cracked pipes. Experts are estimating…

Curiouser and Curiouser …. the podcast. This is part one of three planned discussions with Theo Theofanous.

The experts monitoring and reporting on the Fukushima nuclear disaster have, for several days now, stopped talking about melting reactor fuel or breached containment vessels. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Energy Collective, and other groups now merely pass along information about pressure and temperature and make a note here and there about water being…

As I tune in to NHK live TV, and see the piece on using Twitter to aid in disaster relief being shown for the 20th time over the last 48 hours, I wonder about what appears to be a sudden and dramatic drop in the level of coverage of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.…

It is said that it is physically impossible for the nuclear material in any of the Fukushima reactors to melt through the containment vessels. Despite a rumor of a crack in one of the vessels, nuclear power experts have maintained that it is impossible that there could be such a crack. Nonetheless, a US based…

The most interesting and important current news, interesting if confirmed, is that plutonium has been discovered in soil near Fukushima. With all this talk about radiation, it is easy to forget that some of these elements are extremely poisonous in their own right. Plutonium is a very nasty poison. I’ve not seen the news reports…

Sea water has now been replaced with fresh water for cooling reactors, and, apparently, spent fuel storage pools. Work continues on restoring power and repairing cooling systems, but the cooling systems remain unrepaired. An interesting development overnight (overday in Japan): A very high radiation reading in Reactor 2 showed what apparently was high enough radiation…

A crack in the containment vessel of Fukashima Reactor 3 has been mentioned by MSNBC and ABC news, citing the New York Times. The New York Times has an article in which the crack is mentioned in a side bar, attributed to an anonymous person. An anonymous source is not particularly impressive, but the New…

This is a particularly important update. An anonymous source in Japan has told reporters connected to the New York Times that there is a visible crack in the Fukushima Reactor 3. This is the reactor that showed isotopic evidence of a leak of some kind. Arguments had been made that a hole in the reactor…

The water within Reactor Number 3 (where three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation yesterday) is 10,000 times more radioactive than the average water inside a nuclear reactor and contains radioactive iodine that is generated during fission and has a half-life of 8 days. Japanese engineers are pretty sure that this means that…

Ana’s Feed starting at about 2PM Thursday 24 March: Finally found some info on that simulation mentioned earlier: “…the model showed that areas where cumulative exposure over 12 days reached 100 millisieverts–the government’s maximum for infants–extended beyond the evacuation zone. A map based on data from the center showed areas that received a cumulative 100…

Ana’s Feed starting just after midnight 24 March: “…estimates that 57,000 pounds of salt have accumulated in Reactor No. 1 and 99,000 pounds apiece in Reactors No. 2 and 3, which are larger.” (Editor’s note: This is what I had independently calculated, so it looks right to me) Ban Ki-moon and IAEA and various governments…

And maybe dinner, too. This will mainly affect our local Twin Cities folk: Thom Pham and the staffs of Wondrous Azian Kitchen and Thanh Do Restaurant with support from World Class Wines and Joto Sake will host two fundraisers to support the people affected by the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. On Wednesday, March 23rd…

Risk, Trust, and the Arrogance of Numbers …The coal and biofuel safety numbers don’t come with a disclaimer that the greatest number of additional deaths from these fuels are due to indoor use for cooking, not from industrial energy production. Wind and solar energy numbers don’t reflect that these are developing industries, without decades of…

With the current nuclear power plant kerfuffle1 in Japan, people are making comparisons with a TMI-Chernobyl scale, with TMI being a nuclear accident that is not bad at all2 and Chernobyl being the worst case scenario.3 This is actually very reassuring, because Chernobyl was really no big deal.4

There are new fires at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plants. There was a fire on the roof of Reactor Unit 3. It burned for several hours causing workers to pull out of the area to have radiation levels tested. The radiatoi levels did not, however, change. About 6:00 PM local time fire went out…

Continued from here … Ana’s feed starting Friday 8 PM TEPCO has raised the occupational limit of radiation for its workers to 150mSv/hr. Some workers have already been exposed in excess the old limit of 100mSv/hr. Workers who have been exposed to the limit will not be sent back in. -NHK morning broadcast Saturday: Those…

So that Japanese children can be traumatized by the Fukushima in a more appropriately Freudian way and never really learn to love properly: Personally, I think this would be more accurate if Nuclear Boy was sitting next to three or four Diaper Genies on fire. See also this post at Class:M … “At first glance,…

… continued … Ana’s Feed Starting about midnight, March 17th Today’s chopper missions over Daiichi have been canceled. The IAEA has asked Japan to cooperate with the international community. Kan says he will do the utmost to overcome the crisis – vows to disclose more info to the int’l community. -kyodo news The new electrical…

Nine of ten nuclear reactors at two locations at Fukushima, Japan, have problems ranging from damaged cooling systems to partial meltdowns, and spent fuel storage facilities at several of these reactors are severely damaged. In some cases, facilities seem to have been shut down safely. In other cases, there is a strong suspicion of serious…

… continuing .. Good news and bad news, mostly just uncertain news. A cable needed to power equipment has been installed. It turns out that one of the reactors uses Plutonium. Ooops. Cable reaches Japan nuclear plant Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good ‘Worst probably over’ The story of the quake- and tsunami-stricken…

The quake, which was centered under the sea, did considerable damage to undersea communications cables. Originally the damage was thought to be minimal but it is apparently rather significant. At least five major cables have been damaged. Details here. Meanwhile, the US military has blocked several websites that are eating up bandwidth that is needed…

Japan needs your help after the earthquake, tsunami, and complex nuclear accident. George Takei on the Japan Quake and Tsunami. Hat tip: Claudia Sawyer I don’t think the amount of heart makes as much difference as the amount of the donation, but it’s a nice sentiment. The truth is, Haiti needs your help more. A…

… continuing from earlier news News, blog, and other items: Singaporeans in Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures told to evacuate Language used to describe atomic meltdown borders on reckless hyperbole Know Nukes: The Japanese Earthquake & Anti-Nuclear Hysteria: Explaining how the Japan Nuke Disaster is not melt down, there will be no radiation leaks, and it…

As I write this, I’m told that there are eleven water cannon vehicles heading to the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, to attempt to cool down nuclear material that is exposed and exuding (I dare not use the word “leaking” lest I be thought an alarmist) radiation at a rate that seems to be…