ok rain is a great thing apparently… 石崩山 monitoring station is currently at 128 instead of 65 to 70… went up to this value over the last two hours. all the other stations are still kinda ok. took a screen for those who want to see it documented. will upload that tomorrow when i get around to it. am too tired now and cant be ***** to seek around for image hosters. ok while i typed the value went up to 134… -.-
The once “not so good” news about the ongoing emission of shortlived isotopes like Iodine-131 (something that should not happen if the reactors were completely shut down) seems to have faded out of view - obviously “no change” hardly ever makes it into the news of the day, but thanks to the diligent folks in the forensic analysis thread in the “physicforums” the matter is being probed more deeply.
A hint for anybody who cannot read the whole 280+ pages of posts in that thread: start from physicsforums.com/ and jump to “Last”, from where it is easy to move back to previous pages from the recent past: that thread continues to be a very educational experience.
And something from an official news source:
“Evacuation area officially expanded”
www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/22_20.html
Related to that a map that had been published a few days ago:
physicsforums.com/showpost.p … count=4529
Looking back to March 17, you may recall that helicopters were dumping water on one of the damaged reactors in Fukushima, and in the days following that, many had wondered what the helicopter maneuver was supposed to accomplish, since it was obvious from the beginning that it was ineffective. But maybe that was not the case after all - it just depends on how you define “effective”:
“Helicopter water drop was message of Japan’s determination in nuclear crisis”
mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/201 … 5000c.html
http://img140.imageshack.us/f/radiation140.jpg/
note the 140 value for 石崩山 which is now back to its usual value of around 70. went up during the heavy rains last night.
somehow embedding the picture does not work. maybe a mod can change link to pic if he wants.
Anyone see any truth in this? I can’t really tell. It seems a legit but quite a monstrous claim.
[quote=“Mediterranean”]Anyone see any truth in this?
youtu.be/pI-KdOoe-LA[/quote]
Anyone see? Yes
Any truth in this? On the scale of many million years yes.
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”][quote=“Mediterranean”]Anyone see any truth in this?
youtu.be/pI-KdOoe-LA[/quote]
Anyone see? Yes
Any truth in this? On the scale of many million years yes.[/quote]
Find out soon enough…or maybe not.
TEPCO reports #4 fuel rod pool water at 91 C (more than 50 C higher than normal)
www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/23_12.html
Conerning fallout reaching the US, a hint from the physicsfroums: “how to do a custom search on EPA’s website”
blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/0 … 8th-19279/
(scroll to the bottom of that page for instructions)
And here are some excerpts from an ongoing discussion at
physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=289
It has been noted repeatedly that TEPCO and the Japanese government have more than once tuned down offers of special equipment (from other countries) that would allow them to get more detailed video observation inside the plant and more extensive radiation measurements. Visual information that has been published recently is of poor quality, and radiation measurement and isotope data that are mede available are missing essential information (from the point of view of specialists in the field). There are also no independent observers on the site, and all the information the media gets about the state of the power plant comes from TEPCO. Considering TEPCO’s history of fudging and covering up, considering the way things work in the Japan bureaucracy, and considering human nature in general, the following observations and opinions make a lot of sense to me:
post4618:
[quote]from a PR standpoint (more my field), TEPCO should IMHO very much report on bad things they haven’t seen. What better news than “no new neutron bursts or evidence of corium concrete interaction” could there possibly be to quell - reasonable or unreasonable - fears? Personally, I find the lack of reporting of the “bad stuff” they have not found rather disconcerting. For more than one reason I find it difficult to imagine that they are not looking for these things, not at last because the Japanese government might/should require such info to plan further actions regarding the population affected by this accident.
Very opposite to the scientific approach, when it comes to PR, one rule of thumb certainly is that one often learns more from the information not provided than from the information given.[/quote]
post4626:
[quote]there has to be a giant disparity between relative rates of transport of caesium and iodine from fuel into the water for the spent fuel pool #4 and for all the reactors. 3 orders of magnitude. While for 3 other reactors it is same order of magnitude (and same order of magnitude ratio as for Chernobyl i think, and TMI, but someone should check the numbers).
Why would it hit the spot where it is same order of magnitude as other reactors a few weeks ago? Luck?
re: TEPCO’s actions. They used to check for short living isotopes. They published data with, of all things, Cl-38 . Then they published data with I-134 . Then TEPCO officials declared there is no criticality. Then they retracted the data where they had I-134 and claimed 3 orders of magnitude mistake (overestimating radioactivity). Then government official (Kan?) really harshly criticized them for measurement mistakes, with a lot of hollow words of how it puts worker lives at risk - keep in mind, that was TEPCO erring on the side of caution! edit: even worse, there were also many stupid words how it is unforgivable to release data without review. Then they released new data without I-134 and Cl-38 and the number of isotopes being tested for dropped sharply. It looks almost as if government is urging TEPCO to cover things up.[/quote]
post4627:
[quote]The problem was that they recorded gamma spectra on samples that had been taken 10 hours before. The presence of isotopes with halflives of about an hour was impossible. But their software had extropolated noise backwards in time. In this case, there was no cover-up.
However, in the video of the English-language press conference, the Tepco engineers seemed to get evasive when there were questions about criticality. The only real statement they gave was that there is no criticality at Unit 1 right now. They referred to measurements by neutron detectors.[/quote]
post4635:
[quote]Found an article in IEEE Spectrum that says Honeywell’s T-Hawk drones took radiation measurements along with hours of (lousy IMO) video. TEPCO has yet to release any of that data.
spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robo … a-reactors
The flow of information is going to get much worse on Monday. That’s when the Japanese government takes control of the public information releases and puts the muzzle on TEPCO. Foreign journalists and bloggers have so far been banned from the government press conferences. At the TEPCO affairs the foreign reporters are the only ones asking the tough questions. If they continue to keep the foreign press out of the loop at official government press points then the information flow will be reduced to a trickle.[/quote]
post4638:
post4640:
[quote]Yes. So far it all looks like either
a: they found criticality, but did not tell anyone,
b: they showed no criticality, but did not tell anyone (but they did about reactor #1)
c: they didn’t check for criticality.
Given everything, it could be c. Plus, given how much government has flamed them for erring on the side of caution and for publishing incorrect data without review, it looks like they are under pressure not to tell and maybe even not to look as they may be obligated to publish whatever they find.
Plus, some white collar could be just dismissing the criticality all the way (i recall one time one of their officials said that it is hard to imagine re-criticality in shutdown reactor. When responding to either French or IAEA’s suggestion to borate water more.)[/quote]
In other words: we (in Japan) don’t want people to know the facts… and we certainly don’t want any inquiries into uncharted territory or speculation…
My own take on all this: by putting the desire to stay in “safe” realms of thinking, to cover things up, and to save face above the need for factual information, my country - considered to be technologically advanced - would seem to have embarked on a course that ensures that much of the trust people may still have in nuclear technology is destroyed - now wouldn’t that be ironic? 
Does anyone of the Plutonium or Uranium reaching Taiwan or around the island?
Only the 80 tons we bought back in the 70s. So far.
Only the 80 tons we bought back in the 70s. So far.[/quote]
An interesting discussion at physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=291
Some of the participants in that discussion there have returned to an already earlier presented contention that TEPCO is withholding vital information, or deliberately not looking for that information, or totally clueless about what to do: from all the evidence it looks like the fuel rod storage pond in building 4 (the one that is loaded to capacity or more) has been losing a lot of water from early on in the game, either due to leakage (structural damage from the earthquake) or due to boiling (as the result of an ongoing nuclear reaction in that . (Note that in post 4651 the Japanese participant mistakenly speaks about a report as if it was from March 23 - it is actually from April 23).
Anyway, which do YOU prefer in this situation - incompetence or deception? 
What do you mean ‘or’ ?
Okay, so I’m taking that as a “no”. lol
I have not been checking the Japanese news agencies and other media sites for updates in recent days, since i’ve been busy with other things.
But this morning i’ve caught up on the last two days of posts made to the discussion (and forensic analysis) going on in the nuclear engineering section of the "physicsforums: there is an ongoing stream of new information and new insights.
A few of the more interesting things i have learned from recent posts there are these:
-
Reactor 4 seems to have undergone some modification in September of last year that showed up, some time after the earthquake as something like an opening in the wall in a place where it makes little sense to have one.
physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=300
15 pages later, after several hypotheses have been offered and ruled out, the various bits of evidence being discovered have come together to allow a tentative explanation: an extra cooling unit related to the fuel rod storage pool was installed at some time, this unit fell off during the earthquake, leaking fluid then discolored the wall in that area and created an image that eventually came to look like an opening. The question arising from all that is, of course, why did TEPCO install such a unit before they loaded the pool with the fuel rods from the reactor? One answer to that would be that they knew they would end up with more fuel rods in the pool than it was designed for… interesting, especially in view of hints of “double stacking” that had come out weeks ago already. -
Reactors 5 and 6 shows and odd wave pattern of increasing and decreasing water levels and temperature. One participant’s comment:
physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=309
[quote]Water should not be disappearing from the nuclear reactor, it is a closed loop cooling system
Furthermore, we are observing low level radiation in the ground water of Unit 5 and 6, possibly this is the source.[/quote]
This is recent information, so we’ll have to wait for what the experts may come up with eventually…
-
Measurements of radiation from airborne dust containing Iodine-131 and Cesium-137, taken in Japan but published in Germany, have been showing an increase in recent days.
physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=314 -
Some background information about how the ocean is continuously used as a dumping ground for radioactive waste:
blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/201 … ing-risks/
Related to that, one poster’s submission:
[quote]we have no data for the radioactive concentration of the sea water between 11th and 20th of March. The first data TEPCO gave was detected on 21st of March, taken around the south discharge canal:
tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp…1032201-e.html
So their calculations concerning the amount of radioactive leak into the sea are far too low, there is no doubt about it.[/quote]
- Some information about how difficult it is to measure radiation levels and how little we know about the associated risks:
physicsforums.com/showpost.p … count=4963
It is, of course, reasonable to assume that we will always know less than what could theoretically be known, and under normal circumstances not all of what is not known would hint at something bad. However, in a situation like the one we have in Fukushima, missing information is more likely than not “bad news” - and TEPCO and the Japanese government are doing a good job keeping bad news to a minimum. Like, who needs bad news, eh? 
A related tangent:
I think it is human nature (or, in other words, natural for humans) to want to conceal “bad news”: information about weaknesses and mistakes can be exploited by others (competitors), so whether you are a hunter-gatherer, a farmer, a soldier, or an engineer, there is always an incentive for covering up your own mistakes (this includes telling lies when confronted by others). The backside of that coin is a desire to gather information about what other people do (intelligence) and to uncover “bad news” about them. Many of the old sagas and legends talk about this process - one striking example from northern Europe that i am aware of is the Nibelung Saga (for people from other continents this summary may be of interest: authorama.com/nibelungenlied-2.html).
Well, here is a more detailed explanation of how the media works (or doesn’t work) in Japan:
japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segawa/3516
Add to this report that as of April 25, the Japanese government has assumed full control of the information flow coming from TEPCO, so those of us in Japan who can think for ourselves don’t expect to get any useful information about the state of the Fukushima power plant from domestic sources - at least on the face of it: we can, of course, read between the lines to some exten. But we will have to make use of the internet, where we find, for example that ongoing forensic analysis thread. I have just read the latest part, starting at page physicsforums.com/showthread … 0&page=315, and there is a wealth of information and interesting links.
In addition to government spin and information flow control we have two other serious problems to deal with in Japan:
- A lot of people in the areas in or near the exclusion zone want to believe that things are under control, that there is no danger, and that they can return and resume their regular lives, and they will therefore will be unimpressed by information that contradicts the non-news our government issues.
- The language barrier: Most Japanese would be unable to make sense of the forum i keep mentioning here even if they were interested in it.
So… will Forumosa, too, get a letter from the Japanese government?
(You all know that Forumosa posts are indexed by Google and other search engines, right? Whatever we write here can be found by anybody who searches for it.)
What about this letter? Let me go back for a moment to this article from March 17:
bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-1 … dents.html
And then some related commentary concerning this matter:
physicsforums.com/showpost.p … count=5243
physicsforums.com/showpost.p … count=5246
[quote]
Somebody want to provide a link that gives evidence for this assertion?
Did this come from some press conference or something?[/quote]
physicsforums.com/showpost.p … count=5249
[quote]
[quote]Somebody want to provide a link that gives evidence for this assertion?
Did this come from some press conference or something?[/quote]
Excerpt from Asia Pacific Journal
[i]"Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government’s policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat “rumors” deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send “letters of request” to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they “take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. ”The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality."[/i][/quote]
Anyway, government censorship is not a sexy topic, so this seems like an opportune moment to for me to end my reporting in this thread.
Damn, this was such an informative thread, too.
I think you might enjoy reading along in this thread: physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=480200 - maybe starting at the beginning is a bit hard, considering there are well over 5000 postings already, but if you go to “last” and jump back a few dozen pages from there it’s not too difficult to find your way in…
What’s that matter yuli,afraid to call a spade a spade? Sorry,uncalled for. You’ve done a helluva job.
Allow me to be dirrect. Whether people want to accept it ir not,I’m afraid this incedent is a global disaster that will affect humans and the environment for decades to come. People better start waking the fuck up and start realizing that the gov’ts and and corporations are on one side of the ledger and everything else is just collateral damage. It’s a mad world.
youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4
I’m just calling it for what it is.
Rant over.
Perhaps my pulse would pick up just a little if you could start by showing me where they’re burying the bodies. Should be easy enough, they’d be the corpses in lead coffins.
Off you go now. Don’t keep us waiting. This is obviously high priority.
HG