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He's right: It's CRAZY to be worried about an ongoing catastrophe/potential Extinction Level Event. Crazy, I tells ya.. Reuters, via ENEWS:
The new head of the company at the centre of Japan’s nuclear disaster said on Thursday he was baffled by fierce criticism of the firm where he has worked nearly 40 years and hoped to rebuild public trust but offered no clear idea how to do so.
[...]
At one of the meetings, a moderate earthquake struck and he was quickly peppered with questions about the safety of a badly damaged building at Fukushima full of spent fuel rods.
That was “quite a shock for us,” [President of Tepco Naomi Hirose] said, because the company assumed its reinforcement work has been sufficient.
Fukushima’s spent fuel pool No. 4 has been a source of international concern because they are exposed to the atmosphere after one of the explosions that hit the station tore the reactor building roof off and caused its walls to tilt.
[...]
His attitude is very comforting, in a clueless rich guy who makes a disaster scenario oh so much worse kinda way, don't you think? I can't wait for his public reaction when the inevitable happens: GUUUUHHHHH?? Wuuuuuhhh? Howdathappen?
Ooh. The odds of Godzilla attacking Los Angeles as opposed to Tokyo have increased! ENEWS. Excerpts:
[...]
In the following years, the tracer cloud continuously expands laterally, with maximum concentrations in its central part heading east. While the northern portion is gradually invading the Bering Sea, the main tracer patch reaches the coastal waters of North America after 5–6 years, with maximum relative concentrations ( > 1 × 10−4) covering a broad swath of the eastern North Pacific between Vancouver Island and Baja California. Simultaneously some fraction of the southern rim of the tracer cloud becomes entrained in the North Equatorial Current (NEC), resulting in a westward extending wedge around 20°N that skirts the northern shores of the Hawaiian Archipelago. After 10 years the concentrations become nearly homogeneous over the whole Pacific, with higher values in the east, extending along the North American coast with a maximum (~1 × 10−4) off Baja California. The southern portion of the tracer cloud is carried westward by the NEC across the subtropical Pacific, leading to increasing concentrations in the Kuroshio regime again.
[...]
Region I = Western Pacific
With caution given to the various idealizations (unknown actual oceanic state during release, unknown release area, no biological effects included, see section 3.4), the following conclusions may be drawn. (i) Dilution due to swift horizontal and vertical dispersion in the vicinity of the energetic Kuroshio regime leads to a rapid decrease of radioactivity levels during the first 2 years, with a decline of near-surface peak concentrations to values around 10 Bq m−3 (based on a total input of 10 PBq). The strong lateral dispersion, related to the vigorous eddy fields in the mid-latitude western Pacific, appears significantly under-estimated in the non-eddying (0.5°) model version. (ii) The subsequent pace of dilution is strongly reduced, owing to the eastward advection of the main tracer cloud towards the much less energetic areas of the central and eastern North Pacific. (iii) The magnitude of additional peak radioactivity should drop to values comparable to the pre-Fukushima levels after 6–9 years (i.e. total peak concentrations would then have declined below twice pre-Fukushima levels). (iv) By then the tracer cloud will span almost the entire North Pacific, with peak concentrations off the North American coast an order-of-magnitude higher than in the western Pacific.
You can find the simulation model video here.
As one ENEWS commenter stated, this study is based on a one time event, as opposed to ongoing radioactive release, which is what is happening. The saturation levels are worthless, but see how it spreads? That's the takeaway, here..
Two from Fukushima Diary.. The Good News? Ok, the kind-of Good News?
[Reactor4] Debris removal was finished, fuel will be taken out soon.
Following up this article..[LIVE] Tepco is removing the upper part of reactor4
Tepco finished the debris removal of SFP4. Now the PCV and SFP4 are completely exposed outside.
They are going to take out 2 of the new fuel assemblies soon.[Link]
So.. Only 1551 fuel assemblies to go? This comment is also.. Troubling..
look, I have photos of SFP4 in the top part of reactor 4 building from last year – IT IS GONE.. Spent Fuel Pool Four is no longer part of the building. We can clearly see the top of the reactor (big yellow dome)but where is the fuel pool which should be ABOVE the reactor ???Where is SFP 4 ??
Huh.
Not so good news: Survey robot died in reactor 3
Related to this article..Robot destroyed within 2 hours in reactor 2
Survey runner robot stopped on the radiation measurement of torus room in reactor3.
From 11:00 to 15:00 of 7/11/2012, Tepco was taking radiation, visual and “sound” data in torus room of reactor3 by using a robot. The atmospheric dose was 360 mSv/h.
Human worker opened the door of the torus room to let the robot enter, it went around clockwise, but the communication was interrupted at the manhole located at the South-East of torus room.
The robot is cabled, Tepco hasn’t verify the cause yet. They only assume the cable might have been damaged on the way. Tepco can’t take the robot back either because the radiation level is too high.
The robot sent radiation and visual data until it stopped but because the sound data is recorded in it, it can’t be obtained until they get the robot back. They were planning to detect the water leaking point by recording the sound data.
They recorded the sound data when they conducted robot survey in torus room of reactor2 as well, but because the alarm of survey meter was too noisy, they couldn’t hear the sound of water flow.
I'd still like to know the circumstances around TEPCO busting ass to clean up Reactor4 much faster than scheduled. As with all things Fukushima, the bad news still outweighs the good.
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