IWAKI, Japan -- A partial meltdown was likely under way at a second nuclear reactor, a top Japanese official said Sunday, as authorities frantically tried to prevent a similar threat from nearby unit following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.
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Some 170,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the area covering a radius of 12 miles (20 kilometers) around the plant in Fukushima near Iwaki. A meltdown refers to a very serious collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to manage temperatures. A complete meltdown would release uranium and dangerous byproducts into the environment that can pose serious health risks.
Japan dealt with the nuclear threat as it struggled to determine the scope of the twin disasters Friday, when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in its recorded history, was followed by a tsunami that ravaged its northeastern coast with breathtaking speed and power.
The official count of the dead was 763, but the government said the figure could far exceed 1,000. Media reports said some 10,000 people were missing or unaccounted for.
The quake and tsunami damaged three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which lost their cooling functions necessary to keep the fuel rods functioning properly. At first the Unit 1 reactor was in trouble with an explosion destroying the walls of the room in which it is placed. Later, Unit 3 also began to experience problems.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said operators released slightly radioactive air from Unit 3 Sunday, while injecting water into it as an effort to reduce pressure and temperature to save the reactor from a possible meltdown.
Still, a partial meltdown in the unit is "highly possible," he told reporters.
"Because it's inside the reactor, we cannot directly check it but we are taking measures on the assumption of the possible partial meltdown," he said.
Edano said radiation levels briefly rose above legal limits, but that it has since declined significantly. Also, fuel rods were exposed briefly, he said, indicating that coolant water didn't cover the rods for some time. That would contribute further to raising the temperature in the reactor vessel.
Meanwhile, the government doubled the number of troops pressed into rescue and recovery operations to about 100,000 from 51,000.
Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the Japanese coast, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least a million households had gone without water since the quake struck. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable. Some 2.5 million households were without electricity.
Powerful aftershocks continued to rock the country, including one Sunday with a magnitude of 6.2 that originated in the sea, about 111 miles (179 kilometers) east of Tokyo. It swayed buildings in the capital, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.
The LA Times reports:
The earthquake-triggered tsunami that thrashed California's coast Friday morning, killing one person, caused at least $50 million in damage, experts said Saturday.Lori Dengler, a geology professor and director of the Humboldt Earthquake Education Center at Humboldt State, said the damage estimates were preliminary ? and were likely to rise.
Full story here.
WSJ reports:
Documents show that Tokyo Electric tested the Fukushima plant to withstand a maximum seismic jolt lower than Friday's 8.9 earthquake. Tepco's last safety test of nuclear power plant Number 1?one that is currently in danger of meltdown?was done at a seismic magnitude the company considered the highest possible, but in fact turned out to be lower than Friday's quake. The information comes from the company's "Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 Updated Safety Measures" documents written in Japanese in 2010 and 2009. The documents were reviewed by Dow Jones.The company said in the documents that 7.9 was the highest magnitude for which they tested the safety for their No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants in Fukushima.
Read the whole story here.
To help readers get up to speed with the events unfolding in Japan, our friends at Boing Boing explain the basics of nuclear energy:
At a basic level, nuclear energy isn't all that different from fossil fuel energy. The process of generating electricity at a nuclear power plant is really all about making heat, just as it is at a coal-fired plant. Heat turns water to steam, steam moves turbines in the electric generator. The only difference is where the heat comes from--to get it, you can light coal on fire, or you can create a controlled nuclear fission reaction.
Read more here.
HuffPost's Travis Donovan reports:
The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that shook Japan and triggered a powerful tsunami on Friday has had a profound effect on both the surrounding terrain and the planet as a whole.
Dr. Daniel McNamara, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Huffington Post that the disaster left a gigantic rupture in the sea floor, 217-miles long and 50 miles wide. It also shifted Japan's coast by eight feet in some parts, though McNamara was quick to explain much of the coast likely didn't move as far.
McNamara found the way in which the quake actually sunk the elevation of the country's terrain to be more troublesome than coastal shifting. "You see cities still underwater; the reason is subsidence," he said. "The land actually dropped, so when the tsunami came in, it's just staying."
Read the rest here.
CNN reports:
Japanese authorities are operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are under way at two nuclear reactors, a government official said Sunday, adding that there have been no indications yet of hazardous emissions of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
According to CNN, Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said:
"We do believe that there is a possibility that meltdown has occurred. It is inside the reactor. We can't see. However, we are assuming that a meltdown has occurred," he said of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility. "And with reactor No. 3, we are also assuming that the possibility of a meltdown as we carry out measures."
Full story here.
Scientific American spoke to nuclear experts about a worst-case scenario at the Fukushima power plant:
"Reactor analysts like to categorize potential reactor accidents into groups," said Bergeron, who did research on nuclear reactor accident simulation at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. "And the type of accident that is occurring in Japan is known as a station blackout. It means loss of offsite AC power?power lines are down?and then a subsequent failure of emergency power on site?the diesel generators. It is considered to be extremely unlikely, but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades."The probability of this occurring is hard to calculate primarily because of the possibility of what are called common-cause accidents, where the loss of offsite power and of onsite power are caused by the same thing. In this case, it was the earthquake and tsunami. So we're in uncharted territory, we're in a land where probability says we shouldn't be. And we're hoping that all of the barriers to release of radioactivity will not fail."
Full story here.
Japan's Kyodo News reports on radiation levels in the wake of nuclear emergency:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has notified Japan's nuclear safety agency that the radiation level at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has exceeded the legal limit, the agency Sunday.Hourly radiation at the site was measured at 882 micro sievert, in excess of the allowable level of 500.
Full story here.
CNN reports on the international community's response to Japan's crisis:
With Japan's death toll at 686 people, the international relief effort has been spurred by the stark, globally televised videos of homes and offices rattled to near collapse and entire waterfront communities being washed away by a rising ocean.The international community's assistance complemented the United States' expansive relief mission, which includes supplies, several warships, search-and-rescue teams, radiation-contamination specialists, and two officials from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission with expertise in boiling water nuclear reactors.
Full story here.
ABC News examines the risks associated with radiation:
The acceptable level of radiation exposure, up to 10 microsieverts per year, is based on a "no threshold" model, which assumes a direct relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk and implies anything beyond natural levels is harmful. But some experts argue that low-level radiation may be less harmful on a per unit basis.Jacky Williams, director and core leader of the Center for Biophysical Assessment and Risk Management Following Irradiation at the University of Rochester Medical Center, called the 20-kilometer evacuation radius an "extremely conservative safety zone to protect against fallout."
Read more here.
Reuters reports on efforts to contain fallout from the nuclear reactor's explosion:
Attempts to control a nuclear reactor that exploded after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in northern Japan are continuing using water supply and steam release to cool it down, the top government spokesman said on Sunday.Friday's devastation left the No.1 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi power plant with a crippled cooling system, causing a rise in reactor temperature and pressure.
"We are doing the two things at the same time - venting air out of the reactor and supplying water into the reactor," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.
Full story here.
CNN reports:
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived off the coast of Japan Sunday to support Japanese forces in disaster relief operations, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement.More U.S. aid -- in the form of equipment, staffers and search-and-rescue teams -- was expected to arrive Sunday to address the widespread devastation caused by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami.
Japan has ranked the accident at Fukushima nuclear facility as a 4 on a 7-point scale, Ria Novosti reports:
The Japanese authorities have described the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant as a "nuclear accident with local consequences" in a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the DPA news agency said.The report assigned the accident the level 4 on the international INES scale that runs from 1 (anomaly) to 7 (major accident), the news agency said. According to the IAEA's definition, a level-4 accident is defined as having "local consequences," such as a "minor release of radioactive material."
More here.
Kyodo News reports on the state of Japanese hospitals in the wake of catastrophe:
Due to power outages, hospitals said they had limited electricity to maintain vital functions and feared other supplies would run out quickly.Tohoku Kosei Nenkin Hospital in Miyagino Ward, Sendai, was treating 400 patients while meanwhile looking after dozens of locals seeking shelter. The meeting space they opened for the evacuees was filled immediately after the quake, and some people spent the night in hallways.
Full story here.
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