Willacy's Fukushima

[Barry Brook]

A new post has been published on BraveNewClimate. Link here: bravenewclimate.com/willacys-fukushima

ABC journalist Mark Willacy recently launched a book: “Fukushima: Japan’s tsunami and the inside story of the nuclear meltdowns”. The ABC is giving the book plenty of exposure and gave Willacy time off to write it. Here, Geoff Russell critiques it, and ABC's response...

This BNC Discussion Forum thread is for the comments related to this BNC post.

[Roger Clifton]

When is an explosion not an explosion? Arguably, there were six explosions at Chernobyl.

The old RMBK was unstable at low power settings after being at full power. Although it was supposed to have been shut down, the workers irresponsibly kept the reactor critical. In critical balance that is, between moderation and absorption. With water coolant flow slowed down, much of the neutron flux was being absorbed by the xenon left over from its full-power run. As the xenon burnt away, the rate of absorption collapsed and so the power surged. The heat dumped in the fuel rods, their temperatures shot through the roof, and their entrapped fission product volatiles blew the rods into pulverised fragments. Bang #1.

Steam piping shattered, the incandescent fuel fragments flash heated the escaping steam. Bang #2. The liberated steam penetrated the freshly fractured graphite moderator. Since the graphite had already accumulated red heat, the water gas reaction ran away. Bang #3. Inflated now with the created hydrogen and carbon monoxide, the fragmented graphite now lifted off. Bang #4. The reactor vessel and the containment fractured and accelerated away, allowing the swirling hot hydrogen and carbon monoxide to ignite with the outside air. Bang #5. With the momentum from all the previous impulses, the fragmented and powdered red-hot graphite also mixed with the outside air. Bang #6.

There was certainly a nuclear excursion at Chernobyl. But it was not an explosion fast enough to fission a significant proportion of the fuel, as would be required for the bomb of popular fantasy. More of a woof than a crack.

[chrispydog]

Disaster porn abounds whenever the words nuclear or radiation can be put in bold type on a headline, and invariably the quantifiable facts are omitted.

"Our ABC" has been aiding and abetting this cult of ignorance, and it seems to me a legacy of the old hippy greeny lefty bits of its DNA that are really due for a clean out. One seasoned radio journalist told me that he's been in Soviet Russian reactors and even had to evacuate his family after Chernobyl, so yeah, that proves it, nuclear energy is....(insert your own favourite term for Armageddon).

It's like saying you won't fly in modern commercial airliners because you once saw a clapped out Russian military helicopter fall out of the sky!

I was tempted to read Willacy's book just to see how appalling it was, but I really must thank Geoff for his excellent review, I really don't need to.

BTW I checked on the Radio National's Science Show website, and the only nuclear story I saw was another bit of Fukushima disaster porn.

Not a good sign.

[Asteroid Miner]

The tsunami failed to destroy the containment buildings in Fukushima. The containment building walls, ceiling and floor of American containment buildings are a minimum of 1 meter [about 39 inches] thick and HEAVILY reinforced with steel. There is so much steel reinforcing rod that when you look at one under construction, you wonder where there will be any room for concrete. The San Onofre reactor in California has a containment building with 6 foot thick walls, ceiling and floor.

The Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment building. The roof was not bolted down and was as light and flimsy as possible. The containment building at Fukushima contained the steam pressure. The steam pressure lifted the roof at Chernobyl. Shame on Geoff Russell for not knowing the difference. Containment buildings are pressure vessels that contain the steam until it is released thru a valve. That couldn't happen at Chernobyl, because the roof lifted off.

[Asteroid Miner]

Roger Clifton: To be a nuclear explosion, it has to be hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion, at least 15 million degrees, and it has to have a shock wave traveling at 20 thousand times the speed of sound. Chernobyl had neither.

Geoff Russell was right on the no nuclear explosion part.

[Richard123456]

See this ( Evacuation of Tokyo? )


www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273


Advice from other countries including USA and nuclear industry wanted Japan to evacuate farther away from the plant.


You have deliberately omitted the risk of fuel pools, if these start erupting are you advising the people to stay where they are and do not worry it is safe? By what you have said it must be stay and live in the wonderful glow of the radiation that will beef up your immune system. If you think they should evacuate, that is a risk they had to allow for, plus other plants were struggling to prevent a melt down and what if the wind blew towards Tokyo that flooded the Ronald Reagan Carrier injuring many. Japan should have evacuated Tokyo because of these risks but how is that possible. This does bring up the feasibility of evacuating a city. My home town of 10,000 had to evacuate because chlorine gas escaped from the paper mill, it was a free for all, no one knew what direction to go in even though there is only 3 directions, some toke a route that went past the mill!!! My relatives laugh at it now but at the time had to assume that children at school would be taken care by others as they drove away at 10 miles/hour for hours to clear city limits.

[joffan]

Richard, You illustrate the points Geoff was making. The media cannot be trusted to report accurately on nuclear matters. And neither, apparently, can you.

Fukushima's fuel pools could not "erupt". Nobody was injured on the USS Ronald Reagan.

Your story about evacuation from a chlorine leak - a serious and deadly matter - illustrates the intrinsic hazards of evacuation. Such hazards were never compared to the hazards of remaining in place in the Fukushima response; if they had been, the evacuation would have been slower and much smaller.

[geoffrussell]

Sept 7, 2013 6:37:53 GMT 9.5 Richard123456 said:

See this ( Evacuation of Tokyo? )


www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273


Advice from other countries including USA and nuclear industry wanted Japan to evacuate farther away from the plant.


You have deliberately omitted the risk of fuel pools, if these start erupting are you advising the people to stay where they are and do not worry it is safe? By what you have said it must be stay and live in the wonderful glow of the radiation that will beef up your immune system. If you think they should evacuate, that is a risk they had to allow for, plus other plants were struggling to prevent a melt down and what if the wind blew towards Tokyo that flooded the Ronald Reagan Carrier injuring many. Japan should have evacuated Tokyo because of these risks but how is that possible. This does bring up the feasibility of evacuating a city. My home town of 10,000 had to evacuate because chlorine gas escaped from the paper mill, it was a free for all, no one knew what direction to go in even though there is only 3 directions, some toke a route that went past the mill!!! My relatives laugh at it now but at the time had to assume that children at school would be taken care by others as they drove away at 10 miles/hour for hours to clear city limits.

Hi Richard ... the BBC story is a brilliant example of ignorant journalism. The lack of any substantial cancer toll from Chernobyl should be enough to convince people not to take fear mongering seriously.

[David B. Benson]

Geoff Russell --- Well done.

[Roger Clifton]

Over coffee, an ABC acquaintance of mine (I wont name him) defended Mark Willacy's reporting from Fukushima. I tried to quote him – "The shattered reactor, oozing with radiation", come on, isn't that a wild exaggeration? But my friend challenged me, is that exactly what Mark had said? Well maybe he hadn't said "radiation", but it is certainly what we gathered from the report. (Later I checked, he did often say the reactor was "oozing" without saying what was oozing, but only one such report ascribed "radiation", and then to someone else's fear.)

I raved on. "16,000 people died here, in front of the reactor" I paraphrased. My friend rose to Mark's defence… Hang on, there you go again, is that exactly what he said? Well, I demurred, he certainly talked about 16,000 people dead and there the crippled power station stood behind him in the image. Later, it turned out that he had never explicitly said that anyone had been killed by radiation, it was just our folly to jump to that conclusion, it seems.

I went on. Thousands of people, in danger of their lives from fallout, we had been told, even though the evidence was overwhelming that no one had been injured by radiation. My friend protested that thousands of people were indeed exposed to radiation, over the safety limit. What, 20 mSv/a, I said, you guys must know that is not associated with a casualty rate? Maybe, my friend said, but it is a legal safety limit, and exceeding it legitimates a reporter saying that it was unsafe.

"Legitimates"? Yes, my friend insisted. Mark isn't a historical researcher trying to unearth all the facts. He is a reporter, preparing stories for a public that wants to hear them. He doesn't cheat on what facts he uses.

I thought back on that one too. Mark Willacy had reported on the particularly high fallout that dropped on the town of Iitake. Although we were free to infer that these people were in terrible danger, and that something horrible it happened, Mark actually showed us the face of a radiation counter saying that the sample (of sweepings?) he had been shown was giving a reading of 28 uSv/h. Yes, microseiverts. You and I know that this is a figure to be taken seriously for public safety, but it isn't actually something that is a terrible danger, nor particularly horrible. Mark had actually shown us a fact, and we, the squeamish public, were allowed to jump to our conclusions.

At what point does a story become misleading? I had to concede that a reporter's first duty is to sell newspapers. And a public enmired in its superstitions wants to hear stories that confirm them. Perhaps Mark Willacy has just been doing his job.

[Roger Clifton]

Sept 8, 2013 20:38:58 GMT 9.5 Roger Clifton said:

At what point does a story become misleading?

On 16 May, ABCTV (Australia) Lateline ran a story about a long-awaited reprocessing plant in Japan. It is planned to provide enough fast-reactor fuel for about 8 GWe, that is for about 8 million people.

Anti-war activists get shrill about reprocessing, because in the 1960s and 70s it promised a pathway for lesser powers to make bangers, now obsolete. However, in Japan the anti-war movement is still very strident. Since they have managed to block the development of fast reactors, they are eager to stamp out its fuel supply.

Mark Willacy conveyed their fears to us, quoting the fearful:
"(antinuke:) If there was an accident, it would be catastrophic" ...
"... Washington fears this plant may fuel a race for nuclear technology and even weapons in North Asia"
"despite fears it'll create a pile of plutonium theoretically capable of being used to build thousands of nuclear weapons"

The report was entirely about fear. Mark Willacy himself did not assert any technical hazard. However, we were clearly invited to participate in that fear ourselves. When introducing the piece, compere Tony Jones played along. "The Japanese say the weapons grade plutonium will only be used for power generation..."

What an idiot! Mark Willacy had not given him a basis to say that the fuel is "weapons grade", but he and we had been clearly allowed to believe it. When even a journalist senior among journalists is sucked in by the spin of a story, it does look very much like Mark Willacy's stories have been excessively misleading.

[Ed Leaver]

I've been preparing a general article on nuclear issues that I've posted to my homepage, but am not happy with the section on Fukushima (among others) and have a general question about the Japanese Government evacuation orders. I'm going from the WNA description of the disaster: Fukushima Accident 2011. I've pasted in the general evacuation timeline from subsequent investigations interspersed with -- as best may be determined -- what went on at Unit 1 and when. Unit 1 requires separate consideration. From Why Fukushima Was Preventable it might be noted

With electricity still available, cooling appeared to proceed normally in units 2 and 3 before the tsunami arrived. In unit 1, for reasons that are not yet known, the temperature and pressure of the core dropped unexpectedly quickly. In order to avoid damage to the reactor vessel and in keeping with the plant’s operating procedure, operators turned the emergency cooling system on and off repeatedly to slow the rate of cooling. The system happened to be disabled at the time all electrical power to the plant was lost following the tsunami.6 Had it been operating, the subsequent accident sequence may have unfolded more slowly at unit 1

The backup generators and backup backup batteries were located in the containment building basements, which were flooded by the tsunami. The tsunami also damaged and disabled the circulation pumps to the reactors' ultimate heat sink. And the external busbars that theoretically might have allowed the tie-in of emergency portable generators. But flooding of such magnitude was never anticipated [shrug], and complete station blackout never prepared for nor practiced. The plant operators were literally flying blind under extremely stressful circumstance. There were no lights, and no instrumentation. The entire country was in a bit of a shock. With that background, here's apparently how it went down:

Sequence of evacuation orders based on the report by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident
11 March
14:46 JST The earthquake occurred.
15:37 Loss of AC power Unit 1
15:42 TEPCO made the first emergency report to the government.
15:46 Loss of Cooling Unit 1
17:46 Water level down to top of fuel
18:46 Core damage starts
19:03 The government announced nuclear emergency.
19:16 Water level down to bottom of fuel
20:50 The Fukushima Prefecture Office ordered 2km evacuation.
21:23 The government ordered 3km evacuation and to keep staying inside buildings in the area of 3-10km.
12 March
01:46 Reactor Pressure Vessel damage
05:44 The government ordered 10km evacuation.
05:46 Fire pumps with fresh water
15:36 Hydrogen explosion on service floor
18:25 The government ordered 20km evacuation.
15 March
11:01 The government ordered to keep staying inside buildings in the area of 20-30km.
25 March The government requested voluntary evacuation in the area of 20-30km.
21 April The government set the 20km no-go area.

So. They were faced with complete loss of water coverage to Unit 1 core. The only previous such experience was at Chernobyl (totally different plant, but zirconium-steam chemistry is a constant), which resulted in massive hydrogen explosion. The Fukushima plant operators attempted to vent excess hydrogen from the suppression chamber to external atmosphere, but the vent stack failed from lack of power. So hydrogen accumulated to some unknown extent on the service floor, which is also where the spent fuel pool lives which has cooling problems of its own. So there is going to be an explosion of unknown size and with unknowable radiation release. What's the government supposed to do? Appoint a committee?

Okay. I don't know, I'm not an expert, and I'm asking here because some of you are. But the way I see it, the Japanese government called the initial evacuation more or less right. Afterwards, sure. After the dust from the last explosions at units 3 and 4 had settled, one might more reasonably expect that one deploy some radiation experts to evaluate the affected areas and find out just how bad it really was (not very) and identify any isolated hot spots, of which there were several at Iitake and Namie. And I understand why one might think 20 mS/a is low by at least a factor of five and maybe ten. But its also ten times typical Japanese background, and LNT remains the world standard. 

So that's they way I see it, and will be happy to be shown my errors. Thanks!

Ed Leaver

[edireland]

There was no point evacuating until actual radiation release of dangerous levels was detected (as the evacuation itself will produce nonzero casualties).

Frankly it might have been better if they had gagging orders on the press to avoid a panic but that sounds awfully totalitarian.

[geoffrussell]

Ed Leaver: Radiation isn't magic ... it comes from stuff which gets blown around. So things like wind direction and shelter are important. Unlike many chemical hazards, radiation is fairly easily measurable. So rule number one is don't panic and rule number two is stay inside. Work out what is happening with wind direction and have people measuring and then make rational decisions. Outside of the immediate vicinity of the plant, there isn't any need for haste. A cool and targetted response, probably only involving the very young makes sense. Evacuation, particularly if it is for more than a few days, has a massive detrimental impact on health and people's future which needs to be carefully weighed against the small risks involved. Every petrochemical fire spews a plume of carcinogens over surrounding areas. The big difference is that nobody runs around calculating how many cancers might be caused over the next 40 years. Nobody wants either kind of accident, but we handle petrochemical fires with a lot more rationality than nuclear plant accidents.

[Ed Leaver]

Geoff: Thanks, I think I got some of that. The problem I face is that in my energy articles I cite the WNA's Information page as an authoritative source, and they lead off their section on the  Fukushima Accident 2011 with

* There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but over 100,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes to ensure this. Government nervousness delays their return.

So if I want to refute that, I need another authoritative source. From the WNA Fukushima article: 

In May 2013, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reported, following a detailed study by 80 international experts. It concluded that "Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers." The only exception are the 146 emergency workers that received radiation doses of over 100 mSv during the crisis. They will be monitored closely for "potential late radiation-related health effects at an individual level."

By contrast, the public was exposed to 10-50 times less radiation. Most Japanese people were exposed to additional radiation amounting to less than the typical natural background level of 2.1 mSv per year.

People living in Fukushima prefecture are expected to be exposed to around 10 mSv over their entire lifetimes, while for those living further away the dose would be 0.2 mSv per year. The UNSCEAR conclusion reinforces the findings of several international reports to date, including one from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that considered the health risk to the most exposed people possible: a postulated girl under one year of age living in Iitate or Namie that did not evacuate and continued life as normal for four months after the accident. Such a child's theoretical risk of developing breast cancer by age 89 would be increased from 29.04% to 30.20%, according to WHO's analysis.

UNSCEAR's report "will be the most comprehensive international scientific analysis of the information available to date" when published in full later in 2013 at the UN General Assembly.

Now it turns out WNA updated this page the day after I uploaded my draft, and appended

in September 2013 the government said that “The radiation dose due to the radioactive material release is 0.03 mSv per year, equivalent to 1/70 of annual natural radiation dose (Japan’s average is 2.1 mSv per year)."

Summary: There have been no harmful effects from radiation on local people, nor any doses approaching harmful levels. However, some 160,000 people were evacuated from their homes and only in 2012 were allowed limited return.
Comments on the radiation situation by international experts are posted on Prime Minister & Cabinet official website. 

So I'll follow up on that new "official website" link, and see what they have on the current groundwater problem as well. Report back when I do. Meantime that "postulated girl under one year of age living in Iitate or Namie that did not evacuate and continued life as normal for four months after the accident." is somewhat misleading in the sense that yeah, sure, within four months someone would have dropped by, measured the radiation level, told her to scoot, and life is good. Because the rad expert would have measured 0.84 mS/d at the hottest hotspot in Namie, multiplied by 365 and gotten 306 mSv/a. Four months is one third this, 100 mSv, the "Lowest level at which increase in cancer risk is evident (UNSCEAR). Above this, the probability of cancer occurrence (rather than the severity) is assumed to increase with dose. Allowable short-term dose for emergency workers taking vital remedial actions (IAEA)." And 220 mSv/y is "Long-term safe level for public after radiological incident, measured 1 m above contaminated ground. No hazards to health below this (IAEA)." Sure, we also see 250mSv/a as "Natural background level at Ramsar in Iran, with no identified health effects.", but with 306 mSv/a exceeding the 220 Msv/a limit set by IAEA, what's the rad expert supposed to do? Leave her there? (source: Nuclear Radiation and Health Effects)

I'll comment upon the origins of LNT hypothesis another time. Meanwhile, a fascinating footnote to WNA's Chernobyl Accident 1986

f. Although most reports on the Chernobyl accident refer to a number of graphite fires, it is highly unlikely that the graphite itself burned. According to the General Atomics website (http://gt-mhr.ga.com/safety.php): "It is often incorrectly assumed that the combustion behavior of graphite is similar to that of charcoal and coal. Numerous tests and calculations have shown that it is virtually impossible to burn high-purity, nuclear-grade graphites." On Chernobyl, the same source states: "Graphite played little or no role in the progression or consequences of the accident. The red glow observed during the Chernobyl accident was the expected color of luminescence for graphite at 700°C and not a large-scale graphite fire, as some have incorrectly assumed."
A 2006 Electric Power Research Institute Technical Report states that the International Atomic Energy Agency's INSAG-1 report is
...potentially misleading through the use of imprecise words in relation to graphite behaviour. The report discusses the fire-fighting activities and repeatedly refers to “burning graphite blocks” and “the graphite fire”. Most of the actual fires involving graphite which were approached by fire-fighters involved ejected material on bitumen-covered roofs, and the fires also involved the bitumen. It is stated: “The fire teams experienced no unusual problems in using their fire-fighting techniques, except that it took a considerable time to extinguish the graphite fire.” These descriptions are not consistent with the later considered opinions of senior Russian specialists... There is however no question that extremely hot graphite was ejected from the core and at a temperature sufficient to ignite adjacent combustible materials.
There are also several referrals to a graphite fire occurring during the October 1957 accident at Windscale Pile No. 1 in the UK. However, images obtained from inside the Pile several decades after the accident showed that the graphite was relatively undamaged. 

Charles Barton also penned a decent piece on this: Did Graphite in the Chernobyl Reactor Burn?

Now oxygen oxidation is admittedly somewhat different from the water-gas reaction. But given the difficulties several groups have encountered sustaining oxygen combustion of nuclear-grade graphite, I'd treat claims of water-gas explosions at Chernobyl with a modicum of skepticism pending further empirical confirmation.

Thanks again,
Ed Leaver

[James Greenidge]

Sept 7, 2013 6:55:11 GMT 9.5 joffan said:

Richard, You illustrate the points Geoff was making. The media cannot be trusted to report accurately on nuclear matters. And neither, apparently, can you.

Fukushima's fuel pools could not "erupt". Nobody was injured on the USS Ronald Reagan.

Your story about evacuation from a chlorine leak - a serious and deadly matter - illustrates the intrinsic hazards of evacuation. Such hazards were never compared to the hazards of remaining in place in the Fukushima response; if they had been, the evacuation would have been slower and much smaller.

The great glaring institutionalized hypocrisy in the U.S. is while nuclear plants can't open until there're countywide sirens and deep evacuation plans and media channel preparations in place, there're ZIT such requirements for oil and gas plants and chemical facilities here, even though they've a LONG grim track record of not just evacuating whole neighborhoods but even putting them away. Unreal and outrageous public health/safety concern hypocrisy!

James Greenidge
Queens NY
thanks atomicinsights.com

[Roger Clifton]

I bought a copy. As Geoff says, the book has a solid background of beautiful and tragic stories from survivors about heroism and sadness, the stories that we should have been seeing on television soon after the tsunami, when eastern Japan was in crisis. You get the distinct impression of a competent reporter trying to deliver an understanding of the disaster that took 15,000 lives and left half a million traumatised - but for some reason the message gets entangled with a story that had no direct casualties at all.

Interwoven are stories from an epidemic of fear of Something Worse. - That is my term for it, the author artfully avoids being so specific. He is not writing about the hysteria, instead he wants us to feel it.

Something Worse is vague, elusive and scary. To you and me, it is rather like that thing which creeps up behind you in the dark but vanishes when you look around. To his informants, it is something horrible that is going to happen sometime to everybody affected, but they don't know quite what or when.

Something Worse is almost nameless, though the author frequently gives it the word "radiation" - always sinister and vague, the physical connotations varying. At times the term could be misunderstood to mean a specific increase in background gamma radiation, but no, that is just a boundary beyond which is certain disaster, again unspecified. As other times, it seems to be the unidentified stuff that "oozes" continuously from the damaged power station. It seems that "radiation" is something unquantifiable that can only really be compared to other forms of evil. And yes, the word "toxic" appears in the same way, an unspecified nastiness.

I get the impression from the book that everybody believed in Something Worse except some non-conforming authorities. But of course they get shouted down in the urgency to Do Something about it. An interesting part of the book starts when Prime Minister Kan tries to get specific information about this Something Worse thing, but the believers fail to answer. Meanwhile his experts keep trying to tell him something less. ... I will read on.

[Roger Clifton]

It seemed that the Japanese authorites hadn't learnt the lessons of Chernobyl, but the book shows it wasn't so. There are two experts whose stories appear.

One, Prof Yamashita, veteran of much Chernobyl research, had been appointed to survey for any thyroid damage among the children of Namie, who had been particularly exposed and evacuated twice. He got a reputation for reassuring mothers (apparently quite bluntly) that the radiation they had received was of no threat to their health, saying that they could take up to 100 mSv before there could be any significant risk to their health. He was met with anger from the community. The Mayor of Namie spoke angrily to the author, saying "He puts everything so simply, but that is not what a physician should say". You wonder how a physician should speak. Instead a petition was raised, asking for him to be sacked from the job. Presumably to be replaced with somebody more indulgent to their fears.

The other Chernobyl veteran, Prof Kosako, was assigned to advise the Japanese Cabinet. In direct line of access to the Prime Minister Kan, he tried to stop the PM evacuating Fukushima in the middle of the night. After all, he knew the terrible consequences of evacuating Chernobyl. Later he was to say that he was the only person to say "No" to the Prime Minister.

However his concern was to protect mental and physical health, the social structure, and the economy of the area. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, had a wider populace that was worried about Something Worse, and had to be seen to Do Something. Had he failed to order the evacuation, it would have been he who got replaced with someone more indulgent to their fears.

So hundreds of frail evacuees died. Will the panic merchants be blamed for that, or the broken power station? I think we know the answer to that one already, too.

PS: References...

[cyrilr]

Thanks for yet another thoughtful post full of perspective, Geoff.

Regarding the Fukushima steam explosion. That actually wouldn't have happened in any event. The many redundant steam relief valves (SRVs) will reject excess pressure from the reactor vessel passively (powered by springs that don't care about electricity being available or not). These SRVs will then slowly pressurize containment. With a saturated water pool in the pressure suppression chamber, this would then result in slooooowly increasing the pressure in the containment. But never a steam explosion. The slow pressurize rise will at some point lift seals such as the containment head seals, relieving the pressure. This is what happened to the hydrogen in at least one of the reactor units, it escaped the containment vessel this way and detonated outside containment, in the upper building used for servicing, refuelling etc.

Chernobyl was very different due to the rapid pressurization created by the runaway reactor, later reinforced by the graphite that reacts with steam producing flammable and volumous carbon monoxide gas. Impossible with LWRs.

[Ed Leaver]

Roger: could you possibly edit your 3 Oct comment to please include the book title and author, and page references? Such would make for a more useful way to cite a book to which most internet audience will not have access. Thanks! 

[Roger Clifton]

Ed Leaver asks for references to my comment,
(saying that Japans leaders did have Chernobyl-wise advice)

A link to Geoff Russell's post about the book is, from the title line of the thread:
bravenewclimate.com/2013/09/06/willacys-fukushima/

It may be some time before the book becomes web-linkable
as it is on sale as hardcopy. But here's a link to buy the book:
shop.abc.net.au/products/fukushima-tpb
This link includes a precis, with a sample of the severe slant
that is sure to set your blood boiling, much as Geoff describes.

From the book's index -
Prof Yamashita's story is told on pp 196-200, 255-6, and on p 288 is
the interview with the mayor who was angered by his reassurances.

Prof Kosako appears more often, but his attempt to stop
the widespread evacuation is on p 86.

[Ed Leaver]

Thanks, Roger. Exactly what I desired. I've placed a link to your comment in my online. article (end of Section 9.3.2). Hard to envy Prime Minister Kan's predicament.

[Deleted]

Does the book mention the increase in post-Fukushima dog bites? These link to increase in rabid dogs in Washington, D.C. during 1908, the year of largest European earthquake ever recorded. Then too, the April 1, 1946 Aleutian earthquake and tsunami also links to the discovery of sockeye disease virus in the Columbia River region and Oregon sockeye virus about the same time. Since rabies and Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS) are rhabdoviruses, it seems worth mentioning the ebola link to the plastic water pipes at Fukushima that have been penetraed by Fushige Chigaya grass (Imperata cylindrica):

Imperata cylindrica / Fukushima
thisbluemarble.com/showthread.php?p=434775#post434775

Imperata / Azachrysene
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23334457

Azachrysene / Salmonella Mutants
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3908925

Diazachrysene / Ebola / Botulinum Neurotoxin / Malaria
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21265542

The report at ENE News about the hemorrhaging eyes of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasi) after seining at Malcolm Island link the hemorrhagic symptom to cadmium, which will do the same thing because it destroys endothelial cells yet leaves the basal lamina intact. The starfish arms coming detached would reinforce the modus operandi of both cadmium and hemorrhagic viruses: rabies virus, a rhabdocirus similar to viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus, maintains a constant titre at the extracellular matrix in neuroblastoma cells, and this may link to a meningoencephalitic symptom that caused toe post-earthquake Fukushima dogs to increase their biting.

[jekr]

Oh dear, Mark is at it again.

Apparently "experts" (note plural) are foretelling catastrophe if anything goes wrong with Tepco's fuel rod removal.

www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-31/tepco-to-remove-highly-radioactive-used-fuel/5060282
www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-31/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-tepco-tokyo/5059514

Only one "expert" is quoted - an impressive-sounding Yale University professor. According to the professor, maybe Tokyo will need to be evacuated!

What is this professor's area of expertise?

Sociology.

News.com have picked the story up now as well.

*sigh*

[Ed Leaver]

Nov 1, 2013 8:49:14 GMT 9.5 jekr said:

Oh dear, Mark is at it again.

Apparently "experts" (note plural) are foretelling catastrophe if anything goes wrong with Tepco's fuel rod removal.

www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-31/tepco-to-remove-highly-radioactive-used-fuel/5060282
www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-31/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-tepco-tokyo/5059514

Only one "expert" is quoted - an impressive-sounding Yale University professor. According to the professor, maybe Tokyo will need to be evacuated!

What is this professor's area of expertise?

Sociology.

News.com have picked the story up now as well.

*sigh*

Leslie Corrice covered this effect three weeks ago. Mark is late to the party and could be called for piling on. Go to Leslie's Fukushima Commentary, and scroll down to "Doomsday Prophecies Precede Fukushima’s Spent Fuel Removal" on October 11.