Japan is now facing two melt downs. Nuclear and market/yen. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is facing one and causing the other.
The news from the reactors at Fukushima is contradictory and would be comic if it wasn’t horrific. What we do know is that the French are advising their citizens to leave Tokyo and planes are being sent to get them. We also know that earlier today, the European Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger said,
“The site is effectively out of control….In coming hours there could be further catastrophic events which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island.”
The reason he said that, apart from daily explosions and fires, is that it has been confirmed by TEPCO, who own and run the plants, that there is no cooling water getting to the reactors to replace the water which has boiled off leaving the rods in both the reactors and the spent-fuel containment pool uncovered and approaching melt down. TEPCO admitted this afternoon that if the rods remain without water to cool them then it is likely a chain reaction will restart.
Two plans have been talked about today as being variously, underway, nearly there or not nearly there at all, are laying a power cable to power pumps or building a temporary road so as to get water cannon close enough to shoot water in. As I said if it wasn’t horrific it would be comic.
Time is running out. Various experts are saying 24 hours to 48 hours. IF they get water in to cool the fuel rods then catastrophe is averted and we can rest easy with a mere disaster. However, if they don’t get water in there very soon and a chain reaction does start, then the amount of radiation jumps dramatically. And if reactor three re-ignites then they are in a whole new world of pain because that reactor contains MOX (mixed Oxide fuel) which contains Plutonium which has a half life of tens of thousands of years. This worst case scenario has been getting relentlessly less impossible all day. If it happens then the whole area probably becomes impossible to clean up and will become a no man’s land.
That is one melt down at whose edge Japan is standing. The other is economic.
Just as the earthquake which started all this, moved, unseen, a truly vast body of water which became a tsunami, so it has now set in motion a whole set of world spanning currency tsunamis in the global Forex markets. The Forex (Foreign Exchange) market is HUGE. About $4 trillion per day. The centre of the trade is London. It is also, in many ways, the centre of global speculation. Forex is where the Big Banks and the Hedge funds do what they do to make huge profits at huge risk to themselves and everyone else.
Forex is not only huge, but the trades done in it are also insanely leveraged. Leverage means they are fantastically lucrative when the go right, but can also destroy a trading desk, or even the entire bank or Fund it is in, if it goes badly wrong. Of course these traders are ‘very clever’ and things never go wrong. Except occasionally. But only when unexpected, once in a life-time events happen which no one could have foreseen. Like… I don’t know… an earthquake or a Tsunami or a nuclear melt down. The sort of thing that you wait a life time for and then three come along at once.
Tonight the Forex world is holding its breath. Forex/currency trading happens in pairs. One is bought another is sold. The centre of much currency trading is what are called ‘Carry Trades’. For those who don’t know, they are trades where a dealer borrows a great deal of money in a currency that has a very low interest rate, changes it into another currency that has a higher interest rate, and puts the cash in a bank. As long as the rate he is getting on his cash is higher than the rate he is paying to borrow it, he is making easy money. Of course what all this depends on is the value of the currencies relative to each other. With such huge amounts of money being shifted around and the deals being so enormously leveraged, small changes can and do make vast profits and equally scary losses. Dealers therefore are supposed to be tightly overseen to make sure they don’t get ‘reckless’ and that they hedge their bets.
But oversight and hedging are all useless IF there is a really big and sudden change in value between the pair of currencies being traded. And that is what has happened tonight. The Yen has gone ballistic. The reason is not proven, but it seems very likely it is what I speculated in the last post, that people, funds, businesses, banks, insurers, everyone in Japan, needs Yen and are selling everything they can and buying Yen to pay for rebuilding. Because they are all buying Yen, it’s value/price is shooting up.
Regardless if that is the case or not what is happening is that the Yen/Dollar trade is as one Forex headline put it, “Out of control”. Or as ZeroHedge put it,
One can only watch this devastation with horror. USDJPY drops to 76. Unbelievable. Many Wall Street FX desks are blowing up right at this moment.
And it’s not just the Yen/Dollar which has being wrecked. So are all the currencies which have close pair trading with the Yen, such as the Australian dollar. What is also spooking the Forex world is that so far the Bank of Japan has not intervened to sell Yen in its customarily desperate and doomed effort to lower the value of the Yen. So far there is no sign, leaving some to wonder if that’s because they BoJ is broke.
The effects of this will be global. Such huge moves in the value of the Yen will mean some traders will not be able to cover their bets in the morning. They will have to sell assets at whatever price they can get. If they do have to sell in a fire sale, they will get massacred. Who will the casualties be? The really big banks, the primary dealers, will be saved by central banks who will let them borrow. The smaller but ‘still big enough to have been making bets they can’t cover’, and the hedge funds, will be the ones who could get pulverized.
And it is not just the Yen. The other currency which looks like it is on a tear is the Swiss franc. It has shot up as traders move to a ‘safe’ currency. If it stays high it will bleed Eastern European countries like Hungary who owe their debts in Swiss francs but have to pay those debts in their own currency. Europe, Australia and the US wil all be rocked by this. I think we will see the Nikkei crumble and if it does, again, then the blood bath of the last few days on the European, London and New York Exchanges will continue.
We are once again standing close to the edge.
"Such huge moves in the value of the Yen will mean some traders will not be able to cover their bets in the morning. They will have to sell assets at whatever price they can get. If they do have to sell in a fire sale, they will get massacred."
What a wonderful thought!
you mean they won't be able to buy all our woodland?
(or whatever else the UK has on fire-sale themselves)
Excellent piece, interestingly no one is talking about it and as you suggest, it's the same story every time we have a low probability 7 sigma event. The key point is that in our recent QE driven rally there have been no forced sellers. In fact, this is the first time we've seen forced sellers in the market since the crisis.
dusysurface,
I know what you mean.
nopackdrill,
A car boot sale with everyone selling and not a soul buying. A sad silent field of the desperate.
Hunk of Junk,
Thankyou. The City seems unnaturally quiet today. Not a bird stirring. BoJ intervenes, calm descends. Even though I see all Mizuho's ATM's stopped working in Japan (Japan's second laregst financial services company) locking people out. What do you make of it?
Either I and lots of others are completely wrong about this or there is some delayed action mechanism holding the whole thing off. Any ideas?
Golem,
I guess what the Japanese people need right now is genuine liquidity. By this I mean real cash (or equivalent convertibles), not the phoney "liquidity" created by the finance sector.
Japan's economy will have no choice but to deflate over the coming months and years. Therefore credit will get reigned in. Add to this a demand for highly liquid money (e.g. cash & equivalents) and there will be some very screwy dynamics in their M0 versus M3. The "two vortices" are picking up speed.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome (deflation / hyperinflation) Nicole Foss's advice seems prescient:
"Foss strongly recommends Americans stay liquid in US Dollars and avoid going into any debt. As jobs and many businesses disappear, Foss foresees a crash in the money supply, leaving most people without cash or credit, and a minority hoarding the little that remains."
Status update at Fukushima:
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300350525P.pdf
Reactors 1,2 & 3 are currently stable but most at risk of over heating. To maintain the status they are requiring constant (improvised) cooling.
The Spent Fuel status is another thing to watch out. This is most critical at reactors 3 & 4. However 5 & 6 are also increasing in temperature.
The other slightly concerning thing is the lack of info on Spent Fuel Pools at reactors 1 & 2. There is a lot of (unverified) chatter on the net about spent fuel being kept ABOVE the reactors and therefore could have gone up with the building explosion.
What are in reactors 5&6? I've never heard them mentioned before.
It feels like the Japanese nuclear experts are just coming out of the Denial Phase of the Kubler Ross grief cycle…
Just thinking back to the 1st day of the disaster, nuclear experts on Sky/BBC news assuring anyone who would listen that the Japanese nuclear reactors were all modern & there will be no problems.
If in the longer term the Japanese economy needs a bail-out, I imagine they would look on this with great shame & be highly insulted, due to their deep sense of honour & patriotism. Could this be one possible country where Nationalism could take root ? Weimar Republic style.
As for the speculators, what's that saying ? " If you live by the sword…….
Screw them.
Hawkeye,
Thanks for the updates.
StevieFinn,
I don't know enough about contemporary Japan to take a view on how the Japanese might react as a people. So far they have been trusting of authority…like us.
Further details on Fukushima, courtesy of blogger on Max Keiser:
"They claim that the second explosion at Unit 3 was also an hydrogen explosion like the first one. I severly doubt that cause I think the second one was a nuclear one and also damaged the fuel storage pools and spent fuel storage racks at the top of the building like seen on two schematics:
Schematic 1 and Schematic 2
Second Explosion at Unit3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ
Here you can find recent info about the fuel storage at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant from 16 November 2010:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
——– end quote
There is 1700 Ton-U of spent fuel on-site, yet very little info is coming through on the real risks.
I'm no expert on this, but it is already worse than 3 Mile Island, and still has scope to equal or surpass Chernobyl.
Just in case this hasn't been picked up here (sorry if it has).
The biggest concern is the large amount of spent fuel stored in the (now unexpected open-air) pools on top of the 6 reactors.
There were 1760 TONS of uranium fuel in these 6 pools as of March 2010.
And if I got the maths right, ANOTHER 1300 tons or so more fuel in what they call 'the common storage pool' which is at ground level (below wave height – oops) next door.
Reading the TEPCO data, they had a real problem with getting rid of the fuel rods. They had been restacking their fuel storage areas at a higher density because they had no-where to put all the spent fuel , they were generating 700 fuel assemblies every year(!)
They also store some of the less-hot fuel in dry casks, these were air cooled at ground level in another building (hope they don't float!), and after 10 years storage the casks are still at 90-120 C
To me, nuclear power seems to be energetic parallel of huge financial leverage and structured products: You get to do all sorts of amazing stuff now with your immediate income (electricty now), and someone else has to pay for it later (a lot later, given that it will be a LONG time before some bits of land are useable again if it goes wrong)
Just like the financial system, the risk had been 'eliminated' by society providing rescue services, backup generators, tsunami barriers, uninterruptable mains power grid, helicopters, water cannons etc – great until for some reason the insurance turns out to be worthless and not actually up to the job.
Just like the hedging system.
PS: Sources are good in such a contentious issue: Original TEPCO document here:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
Another point to mull over:
Nature doesn't do bailouts.
On the TOP?!
Forgive me but didn't the 'top' blow off a couple of the reactors? Or am I confusing 'top' with something else?
Golem,
Yep – look at the schematics in my last post.
All Mainstream media only references the Common Pool!
Stored fuel are in a concrete 'swimming pool' structure, on top of the reactor, as part of the massive concrete containment vessel.
The 'top' that blew off was a steel building over the top of the reactors.
How much of the concrete underneath was damaged is hard to tell but its definitely missing bits on one of the reactors.
And of course once the steel building is missing, the pools and their contents are exposed to the atmosphere (normally its all hermetically sealed)
there's a very good explanation from the union of concerned scientists:
http://www.ucsusa.org
direct link with image:
http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=more&utm_campaign=sp-nuke-more-3%2F13%2F2011-pm
Disclosure – UCS are anti-nuclear. But very professional, a union of 200,000 academics worldwide. I have found their analyses the most reliable so far.
Looking at the schematics one thing seems unavoidable. Any explosionlarge enough to blow even part of teh roof off, would be very likely to have breached the integrity of the pools of water in which the spent fuel reds are stored. If so then the reason there is no water left, is not that it boiled away but it ran our of a hole in the side or bottom.
If that is the case then keping the rides cool is not going to be as simple as re-filling the pool.
The skeleton in the closet
I'm not sure whether the mainstream media is incompetent or has been gagged / mis-informed, but from what I can tell there is as big / if not bigger risk posed by the spent fuel than contained in the reactors.
There is 3000 tons of spent fuel on-site (not just the common pool but inside the reactor housings). This must dwarf the couple of tons actually in the reactors (as it seems like more than 20 years of the stuff has remained on-site).
All graphics / schematics on the TV and the web just talk about the reactor, which understandably is under maximum containment.
Very little is being communicated on how comparatively weakly the spent fuel is contained, or where it is, and what risk it poses:
"On average, spent fuel ponds hold five to 10 times more long-lived radioactivity than a reactor core."
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread675259/pg1
Given that the Japanese were cramming old fuel in to these ponds, this could keep going from bad to worse.
Hang on, they did WHAT!!!
Put the nuclear waste on top of the reactor that was in an earthquake zone…
You cannot be serious.
Talk about a related contingency…
Are there other reactors like this? Dunno why, but i'm really suprised to hear the Japanese would do this.
On an economic note, if (and we all obviously really hope there isn't)there is a full blown meltdown and Japan gets ruined,what happens next? Presumably, there will be murder in the bond markets in the short term, but in the medium term, would this not prove a lifeline for the EU and the US as was the case after WW2 when the competition was not there?
The cooling pools are set into the massive concrete structure housing the reactor, so it is possible that the gas blasts didn't actually do them much damage.
On the other hand, a bit of minor panic at this stage might be appropriate. There appears to be a large hole in the side of the concrete halfway down one of the reactors.
In terms of design stupidity, if I understand correctly I think the idea is to have somewhere to put the fuel rods while loading and unloading the reactor – I think they are safe as soon as underwater but very dangerous to be near if in the air.
So a pool really near the reactor opening is sensible from a handling point of view. What seems a little more foolish is using the pools for long-term storage.
And in the USA, where everything is supersized, so are the risks. Their reactors' cooling systems only have 4 hours of battery backup instead of the 8 they had in Japan, and much higher densities of fuel stored in their cooling pools.
fitzy103,
sadly ther are many reactors like this. The reactors are an old GE design. Often described as one of the workhorses of the industry. I believe there are quite a few in the US.
Knowing that it is a GE design makes me look at teh 'difference' between US alarm and Japanese assurances and wonder if GE has run a few scenarios and models for the US government which don't have happy endings.
I would expect the Japanese government would know the same things but bet they would not tell their own people nor any one else until events did the telling for them.
1700 tonnes of Uranium and some tonnes of Plutonium in now dry tanks ABOVE the reactors buildings that have been on fire and which have also their tops blown off does NOT sound stable to me.
They talk about the reactor cores not being breached. Fine. But if the fuel in the pools is open, uncooled and some of it having taken a blow from the explosions, then we do have radioactive fuel open to the elements and heating up. We also know those pools were storing more than they should have. TEPCO, like most operators had run out of storage room and was double staking the stuff. That means the heat in those spent rods will be even more concentrated.
I'm afraid I am not buying the assurances.
Hi Golem,
I'm with you. Check this out and tell me it's under control…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBXqiw6EJUk
Freeze it on 30 seconds – there appears to be some sort of green smoke or something. Can't be any good.
If the building was to fold in on itself, is there the chance the old fuel rods could re-ignite?
I'm no chemist… Isn't plutonium atomic bomb material?
Ben Gabel mentioned the parallels with the financial industry in an earlier post. Another parallel is the fact the politicians never seem to trust the people through the fear of causing panic. It seems to me that in Japan during this crisis, and Ireland during the financial crisis, the people have been very dignified (almost too dignified you might argue in Irelands case), and that a bit more panic from the politicians might have been appropriate.
I'm afraid to say that it looks increasingly certain that there is going to be a full melt down.
TEPCO just had a press release saying, "There is a severe incident happening right now." their words not mine. They have also admitted that neither the radiation levels nor the temperatures have gone down. WHich means their antics with helicopters and water cannons were exactly what they looked like – desperate and doomed to failure.
We are, I think, seriously on the way to an ignition of pluntonium containing fuel rods in what are probably partially open to the air former cooling tanks which are now dry and hot.
IF, and it is still if thankfully, – but IF this does happen then we have a worst case scenario because radiation levels will go up and stay up in an ongoing reaction.
Seriously though, I do not believe there is any chance of a nuclear event. As I understand the technology, you need very high grade uranium or plutonium assembled in a particular way to make a bomb. What is happening here is the fuel in the storage tanks is 'spent' so although still radio-active it just fizzles when left without cooling. Having said that yes, it is deadly serious and if these rods are left without cooling you will get a cloud of nasty dirty radio-active debris spewing out that is basically poisonous. And it could go on for months if not years.
Golem, On the topic of the Yen, it seems at first counter-intuitive for their currency to appreciate while they are suffering from lost production (let alone the human tragedy). I would love to know about traders who are having their fingers burnt with the carry trade unravelling before their eyes and being unable to do anything about it.
How will this effect the Pound/Euro I wonder? Anybody?
I agree, my understanding is that we do not risk a nuclear explosion.
It seems that the risk is a molten pool of radioactive fuel that :
1) vaporizes itself from its own heat and disperses into the air (now).
2) possibly burns its way through the containment structure at a later date and hits the watertable, with a resultant steam explosion.
This could still be pretty bad as there are thousands of tons onsite; I have no idea what proportion would be released, presumably not all.
The actual pollution in terms of radiation might be, well, quite bad, even though you don't get the blast effect from the 'explosion' some are fearing.
IanG,
Yes, indeed. I am sorry if the way I phrased it made it sound like I was suggesting there would be some sort of nuclear explosion. I didn't mean that at all. Of course there can't be an explosion. By melt down I mean the fuel would get hot enough to melt its containment sheath and start to react with and in the air. Burning , as you say, in a fizzling way that would go on for years if left and contaminating the whole area.
If the radiation is already to high for people to work in any proximity imagine how it would be if the fuel starts to burn.
Sorry if I made it sound like I meant an explosion.
I know next to nothing about nuclear physics, but by the sound of things, the extreme heat is the problem. Materials that were never ment to come into contact with each other are, and this could lead to a chain reaction in the worst case scenario.
As things stand, it looks like they are just sitting there releasing radiation into the atmosphere. Even if it doesnt get any worse, its still pretty grim.
Also, a plane landed in Chicago from Tokyo and the passengers set off the radiation sensors in the security area. I've no idea what levels they are set at, but i think we can take it from this the problem is a lot worse than we are being told.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/tokyo-passengers-trigger-u-s-airport-detectors-n-y-post-says.html
Seems to be a lot of confusion:
millisieverts and microsieverts;
per hour and per year;
at the plant, in the 20km radius zone, further afield;
'meltdowns', 'chain-reactions', 'explosions';
worst case scenarios allowing for one reactor; all reactors; including spent fuel rods.
I'm not sure what to make of it.
Sir John Beddington and Professor Lawrence Williams claim worst case scenarios would still restrict harmful health affects to a localised area around Fukushima?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/ferguswalsh/2011/03/japan_nuclear_leak_-_health_risks_2.html
Radiation monitoring updates from various cities in the region:
http://tsukubanews.wordpress.com/
Am trying to get an idea for what the worst case scenario is? Fukushima becomes a no-man's land with harmful levels of radiation for years to come, but all this talk of Tokyo? and China?? and west coast USA???
ahimsa,
I am not an expert either but some of the wilder speculations are daft. The worst case sceanrios involve on-going burn of nuclear material putting radioactive nucleotides into the air. The longer the burn went on the more would be vented into the air and water. The burn would not be explosive nor run-away as it was in Chernobyl which would mean the heavy nucleotides would not be thrust high in to the atmosphere. Which means in turn that the majority of the material would settle to ground near to the site.
The site would get heavily contaminated. I think it would at the very least be vastly expensive rto clean. Though it could still be done. More likely some core area would become a no man's land surrounded by a 'safety' cordon. how big – depends on how long the burn goes on.
So I do not see any chance of much radiation making it even to the West coast of America. Some to be sure but not panic or 'dangerous' levels.
I put dangerous in quotes because in my opinion the established safety levels are based on rather bad physics, when they should be based on good biology. There are better theories and better data but it is a political and scientific battle ground which we could go in to if people really wanted on another day. It is a good story of cover ups and scientists under house arrest. Did the research for a documentary I could not get commissioned.
Anyway I think there will be far higher and more serious long term effects in teh local area tahn the authorities wil predict and admit.
China too is not in great danger as things stand, I don't think.
The chain reaction talk just means that the fuel both the spent fuel and the fuel that was in the reactors, because it is not being cooled, might heat itself to the point where it starts to burn and even to spontaneously start a self sustaining nuclear chain reaction. But that does not mean an explosion. It just means a reaction that keeps going.
I hope this helps a little. I recommend The Automatic Earth blog/web site for good info. Others here may have better sources. Anyone?
Uranium is harder than steel and heavier than lead, which is why the lunatics use it in shells, on impact it also oxidises [burns] very rapidly leaving behind a toxic dust. What I dont know is how hot it has to get before it flames into a dirty bomb, of the type so popular with media scaremongers. My instincts tell me they should bury it in lead shot/sheet/ scrap Im thinking this would isolate the fuel rods convect heat away and form a skin around it.
Thanks, helped to clear up some confusion, though much as I thought. (My multiple question marks re wider & wilder speculations were supposed to indicate increasing incredulity).
Your uncommissioned docu sounds interesting and I suspect it's awareness of previous cover ups that feeds the public doubt and fear in these times.
I am reminded of Hawkeye's post on Huxlian information overload, and George Montbiot's comments(re climate change debate) that the internet now provides one with the resource to affirm any and all preconceived ideas. Add to that a general cynicism regarding the honesty of information from previously trusthworthy bodies(church, government, science, media, employers, bankers, etc.) and there is a crisis of confidance/trust/faith?
Oh yes, and I completely forgot Stoneleigh was an expert on things nuclear. Heading to Automatic Earth now..
"What is also spooking the Forex world is that so far the Bank of Japan has not intervened to sell Yen in its customarily desperate and doomed effort to lower the value of the Yen. So far there is no sign, leaving some to wonder if that's because they BoJ is broke."
Would it be possible of you to explain this for me? I'm fairly new to economics and don't get this bit. If BoJ is selling yen then doesn't that mean someone else is buying it? How does this bring the yen back down?
Some info about the disaster on this site that I havn't seen anywhere else.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_646201.html
some correction:
A nucleotide is a large molecule, made up of numerous atoms-a building block of DNA, consisting of a sugar, a base and between one to three phosphate groups.
an example is Adenosine triphosphate=ATP. These are natural and ubiquitous to living things.
I guess you mean 'radionuclide' where you are using the expression nucleotide.
A nuclide is one of a number of different atomic species, which can be naturally occurring, or the product of nuclear fission. They can be stable or unstable and produce radioactivity by decay.
Radiocative substances-radionuclides can be Beta, or alpha or gamma emitters. Alpha and beta emitters are low energy and with little or no penetrative power, however these are very dangerous if they get into the food chain and are ingested-as the radioactive substance can get very close to the cell and its contents. Alpha and Beta particles can penetrate cell membranes and damage the DNA because they have mass. DNA damage is associated with cancers.
Gamma radiation is very high energy form, the most energetic on the electromagnetic spectrum, but without mass. The danger is like the danger of being exposed to the the sun's radiation but much worse than the UV radiation from the sun. Of course it depends on the size and concentration of the source.
http://www.nuclear.utah.edu/class_notes/5730/5-reactors.ppt
Slide 24 (Advanced boiling water reactor) and slide 28 (Economic Simplified Boiling Water reactor). These schematics both show the general design as having the fuel storage pools located above and external to the concrete casing housing the reactor.
TheMacPuddock,
-sigh-Radionuclide is indeed what I mean. Sorry. It's well seen my background is in biology. Appologies.
Thankyou for the speedy correction.
Dan Hot,
When a central bank goes to the market to sell its currency – and as of this morning with the G7 meeting it now looks like seveeral central banks will coordinate sellingYen – teh value of the currency they are selling tends to go down simply because of supply and demand. The banks will sell huge amounts and try to keep the supply higher than the demand, thus forcing teh price down.
So although there will be buyers, there will be greater supply. And of course there is a psychological element knowing that it is a central bank that has intervened with their very great resources. So many traders will not want to be speculating on the wrong side of that bet and so they pull out leaving even fewer buyers.
It is all swings and round abouts, as you sense. It is just a matter of tipping supply or demand temporarily one way or the other.
Hope this helps.
Helps a lot, as with your other articles. The hardest part is knowing the sad state of our government and not knowing how to change it. Please keep it up!
@Ben Gabel,
Gamma radiation can't be stopped by clouds, much less reflected. IAAA (I Am An Astrophysicist). However, a significant amount of the radiation can probably pass through the walls of the SPF. Plus you have all the Alpha and Beta radiation wafting about who knows where after those explosions. Who knows, we haven't really got any information, just speculation.
Apparently most of the water probably sloshed out of the pools during the earthquake.
As it many disasters, the real risk was not the one everyone thought it was. That's the problem with complex technology and systems.
My first reaction to help the people along the coast who are currently suffering, was to donate some money – then the Bank of Japan created X hundred billion dollars – I kind of realised that money isn't the problem.
Where are International Rescue? Probably held up in customs. Maybe their palm tree was knocked over by the tsunami.
Just watched this documentary from Horizon called " Nuclear Nightmares " if the science is right, it's good news for the Japanese. On the other hand, if it's pro-nuclear propaganda it isn't. I am not qualified to know, but for Japan & the rest of us, I hope the science is correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1HF_TnCkhg&feature=player_detailpage
StevieFinn,
Sadly I do not think this documentary is true at all. I know the line it is taking. In essence it says – the vast bulk of the negative health effects after Chernobyl were due to stress and worry. The evidence and science which refutes this notion has been collected and done in Belarus and Northern Europe as well as here in teh UK. It is all avaialable and would have been avaiable for this film, but is always ignored.
The WHO had arranged a gloabl meeting about the evidence to which it had invited all th e top people, but the WHO itself was prevented from holding it. The then head of the WHO resigned as a result and has spoken out about it since.
The huge amount of evidence and very good science was all witheld and one of the central scientists was put under house arrest for 6 months in Belarus. This is all a matter of public record.
The science of exposure thresholds is bad science. It is essentailly done by physicist who ignore biology. They tend to use averages which is fine in physics but stupid in biology. I exagerate for effect but in essence, using their methodology they would say a bullet shot at you would cause you no harm. They take the kinetic energy of the bullet, work out an average for your body mass and show how the energy thus averaged is below what your body can withstand. Ignoring the biological fact that the bullet hits and conentrates it force in one area.
As for the production company, I know them. David Sington and I go back a long way. We argued then we still do. He is deeply conservative with both a small and capital C.
In short the film is a disgrace. It is highly selective and made zero attemtp to look at the good scientific evidence which does not support the conclusion they wanted to come to. As do the scientists in the film.
That is my opinion for what it is worth.
Today's status update on Fukushima:
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300433768P.pdf
Not much different to yesterday. To summarise there are 13 centres of risk; 6 reactor cores, 6 spent fuel ponds (one per reactor) and the common pool.
Reactors 4,5 and 6 are the only things in green. They could probably be safely contained in the short and medium term, even remotely.
But that still leaves 9 points of potential failure. At the moment, the highest risk areas (in red) are reactors 1 2 & 3 which are showing as "fuel exposed", and two spent fuel ponds (3 & 4).
So that is five high risk areas that need immediate and probably on-site attention, plus a further 4 areas with scope for deteriorating.
So not only is there the problem that they can only really operate from a distance, but that they are having to tackle 9 crises simultaneously. Restoration of power will probably only really help sustain the areas currently under control (in particular reactors 5 & 6 and their respective spent fuel pools).
I can't see the restoration of power being helpful in the buildings where explosions have occurred. Not only that but as they are all situated so close to each other, any resolution efforts are constricted by the weakest link in the chain.
A serious problem in any one area would probably render the whole site uninhabitable, and I can't see how they could get the situation under control remotely.
Golem
I had an idea you might know something about this documentary, it all felt like it was too good to be true. I avidly watch Horizon documentaries & have had a tendency to take most of them as gospel. It is no wonder that people get confused about these & other issues & don't know what to believe.
Thanks for putting me right, your opinion backed by your knowledge is worth a lot to someone like myself.
That's kind of you to say so.
But as you say, it is just my opinion. I try to let the evidence tell the story rather than making it fit the story I want, but we all see the world in light of our prejudices to some extent, don't we.
I used to work at Horizon. It is not what is used to be.
Hi Golem, Just to say thanks for doing all this work. Many people have been educated (myself included) as to what is really happening in the wider world that is not reported by the MSM. I dont think it is conspiricy as such just that they – the media opinion formers – all went to the same (private) schools, same (generally Oxbridge) unis and attend the same dinner parties. Not trying to dis those who took that route I should add just the way it is a clique. Thus we end up with 'group-think'. So we are ill-served and let down very badly just at the time truth and transparency is needed.
Keep the posts coming, I look forward to the next one.
Hello,
Can anyone explain what a "coordinated intervention by the G7 to restrain the soaring Japanese Yen" actually is?
What mechanism is being used, what's the inevitable downside and is it purely to prevent huge losses at Forex trading desks at major banks as Golem describes?
Back to the issues in Japan – is it just me or does there seem to have been a sudden news brown-out for the past 36 hours?
About 5pm thursday, all the UK news sites seemed to tone down their coverage. The Guardian for example suddenly lost its dramatic "Status 1-2-3-4-5-6 " graphic of red and amber reactor danger levels.
I don't think it is simply that the events in Libya are more eye-catching; even on dedicated blogs there was a sudden dearth of new news.
All we got, instead of breathless hourly updates by frenetic journalists, was a change in approach – just the old "we're pumping water it will be stable in a bit and by the way we have a long power cable so everything will be fine by next week" repeated over and over again.
Anyone know anything about the D-Notice system? Can they tell the papers to 'tone it down a bit?'
And why would this be the case? I see that the Met Office have modelled dispersion clouds for fallout – but have decided not to release it publicly in case it 'contradicts information from Japan'.
With nuclear disasters, I fear that no news is NOT good news. I hope we are not now adding "Too Big To Admit" to our lexicon.
So I'm off to the attic to dust off the geiger counter. Still thousands of sheep here in Wales too radioactive to eat, from Chernobyl.
Or at least, they say its from Chernobyl – though if you look at the maps of Chernobyl fallout in the UK, they seem to by amazing coincidence to be downwind from Sellafield/Windscale/Seascale. Oh well at least we have lots of electricity to run our laptops and comment sagely on blogs with.
hi Ben
I noticed exactly what you noticed.
suddenly it was not a problem.(at least for us).
I am sure there has been some kind of decision between the various news outlets to tone it down, whether by some mechanism such as D notices or just a consensual agreement among the main players.
I think there is a risk of it getting all a bit hysterical. I actually know of people who have been seriously affected by brooding over the events and speculating over the outcome.
I am not arguing for silence but responsible reporting is always an issue.
Not convinced even the outlets that take themselves seriously(guardian) were doing a great job. There was one article asking for suggestions from the general public about how to solve the problem which I thought was in very poor taste. I can see what they were trying to do but it backfired.
There is always an issue of trying to avoid being morbidly interested in disaster when it's best just to get out of the way and shut the f.up.
A live map of Japan radiation levels HERE
Fukushima is under survey so they still have no figure for ground zero suprisingly. You think they would have tested that first.
I think it may be simpler – the media rely overwhelmingly on the wires which in turn rely on official sources for information on stuff like this. No news from the official sources means nothing to write.
Nick Davies in Flat Earth News gives a very good account of how global media organisations have gutted their investigative departments over the last two decades or so. Couple that with the fact that you're talking about nuclear power generation which very few people/journos understand (the press has always been weak on science) and you can see why they've switched attention to the middle east – it's more familiar ground.
You can't generate a lot of content from "they're continuing to throw water at it until the point where they decide they just have to bury the whole thing in sand and concrete".
Well worth a read http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23762
Mega-Banks and the Next Financial Crisis
Scary stuff :-
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/MC23Dh02.html