*Surprisingly*, from Fox 5, originally from the Wall Street Journal. Excerpts:
General Electric defended the design of a now-stricken reactor it supplied to Japan 40 years ago, saying its containment system was safe and reliable, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Fukushima No. 1 plant's reactor No. 1, which experienced a dramatic explosion Saturday, is equipped with a GE boiling water reactor with a so-called Mark 1 containment system.There have been concerns about that particular designforyears, with critics saying it is notasrobust as later models. And: GE dismissed that criticism, in what appeared to be its first comments about equipment it supplied Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
"The BWR Mark 1 reactor is the industry's workhorse with a proven track record of safety and reliability for more than 40 years," Michael Tetuan, spokesman for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, said Monday. "There has never been a breach of a Mark 1 containment system."
Until Now. And there are how many now? Also not the wording "design for years." Also note the 1971 was 40 years ago. Continue on..
In the early 1970s, just as a number of reactors were about to be licensed, Stephen Hanauer, a senior member of the Atomic Energy Commission staff, suggested banning "pressure suppression" methods to contain radiation in the event of a meltdown -- methods built into General Electric's Mark I and Mark II containment designs as well as Westinghouse's ice condenser design. The advice was considered and disregarded.
"Steve's idea to ban pressure suppression containment schemes is an attractive one in some ways," Joseph Hendrie, then a deputy director with the AEC, wrote in a Sept. 25, 1972, memo. Hendrie acknowledged that alternative, "dry" containments -- featuring the towers or domes commonly associated with nuclear plants -- had the "notable advantage of brute simplicity in dealing with a primary blowdown, and are thereby free of the perils of bypass leakage."
But regulators ultimately decided that the technology developed by General Electric and Westinghouse was "firmly embedded in the conventional wisdom."Banning it, Hendrie wrote, "would generally create more turmoil than I can stand." His memo was obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists through a Freedom of Information Act request. .. Today, three of six GE reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan are in danger of meltdown after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.And 31 aging GE reactors of the same design -- 23 of them with Mark I containment systems and eight of them with Mark II--continue to operate in the U.S., raising concerns among both politicians and scientists.The Mark I containment is rectangular, the Mark II cylindrical. This NRC document explains the two in more detail. .. NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko told reporters Monday that all U.S. nuclear plants "are designed to withstand significant natural phenomena like earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunamis. We believe we have a very solid and strong regulatory structure in place right now." .. But industry watchdogs see the fateful decision regulators made almost 40 years ago -- to choose political and economic pragmatism over tougher safety standards -- as endemic in the culture of the NRC as it deals with the prevention of low-probability, high-consequence accidents. .. They were designed to withstand a pipe break, not a meltdown," he said. It wouldn't take a major earthquake or a tsunami to knock out primary and backup power and push the systems to the breaking point; a hurricane or tornado could suffice. .. A 1975 report for GE by a team of scientists and engineers found that the company's boiling water reactors were more vulnerable to seismic events than pressurized water reactors -- such as Three Mile Island -- designed by Westinghouse and other firms.
"The PWR [pressurized water reactor] design is inherently more seismic resistant because of lower reactor vessel placement and the need to design for larger LOCA loadings," the report said. LOCA is an acronym that stands for loss of coolant accident --the type of accident triggered by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. GE's research team said it would push to make the company's newer reactors more able to withstand earthquake-related stresses. .. In 1986, former NRC official Harold Denton told a group of utility executives that, according to commission studies, GE Mark I reactors had "something like a 90 percent probability of that containment failing" under accident conditions.
Japan ordered emergency workers to withdraw from its stricken nuclear plant Wednesday amid a surge in radiation, temporarily suspending efforts to cool the overheating reactors.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers, who have been dousing the reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to stabilize their temperatures, had no choice but to pull back from the most dangerous areas.
"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Edano said, as smoke billowed above the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."
This is happening, and it's rapidly spinning out of control..
The gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing to mark next month's 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident with a series of self-congratulatory statements about the dawning of a safe age of clean atomic power, a series of catastrophic but entirely avoidable accidents take place in not one but three reactors in one of the richest countries of the world.Fukushima is not a rotting old power plant in a failed state manned by half-trained kids, but supposedly one of the safest stations in one of the most safety-conscious countries with the best engineers and technologists in the world.
Chernobyl blew up not because the reactor malfunctioned but because an ill-judged experiment to see how long safety equipment would function during shutdown went too far.So, too, in Japan, it was not the nuclear bits of the station that went wrong but the conventional technology.The pumps did not work because the power supply went down and the back-up support was not there because no one had thought what happened was possible.
Even though Japan had been warned many times that possibly the most dangerous place in the world to site a nuclear power station was on its coast, no one had taken into account the double-whammy effect of a tsunami and an earthquake on conventional technology. It's easy to be wise after the event, but the inquest will surely show that the accident was not caused by an unpredictable natural disaster, but by a series of highly predictable bad calls by human regulators.
Iran on Tuesday criticized the deployment of soldiers from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states into Bahrain, the first cross-border intervention since a wave of popular uprisings swept through parts of the Arab world.
"The presence of foreign troops and meddling into Bahrain's internal affairs will only further complicate the issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in Tehran. Saudi troops were not visible in main areas of the capital Tuesday.
The protests have fueled fears that unrest may spread to Saudi Arabia.Many Shiite Bahrainis retain cultural and family ties with Iran and Shiites in eastern Saudi Arabia;Bahrain's ruling family has close links with Saudi Arabia, which holds 20 percent of the world's oil reserves. .. "The Saudis are adding fire to the situation," said one of the protesters, Hussein Ali, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer. "We consider the Gulf force to be an invader." .. Saudi Arabian troops moved into Bahrain as part of a regional force from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The United Arab Emirates sent some 500 soldiers, U.A.E. Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan said. .. More than 100 military vehicles have crossed into Bahrain, Al-Jazeera television reported. (The next article calls those "military vehicles" tanks.)
The increasingly bloody confrontation between the mostly Shi'ite protesters and their Sunni King, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, led the monarch to ask for backup on March 13 from the Joint Peninsula Shield, the military coalition established to protect members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) from invasion.On March 14, more than 100 Saudi tanks rolled across the causeway that links Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in an effort to quell the uprising and save Bahrain's royal regime.Saudi Arabia's arrival marks the first time an outside country has intervened in a protest since the wave of unrest began in the Arab world in January. (See TIME's exclusive pictures of the crackdown in Bahrain.)(Check out the link.. After looking at these images, two things became more clear: The income disparity is pretty large between haves and have nots(Compare the nice cars and nice clothes to the no cars and not nice clothes), and.. The Shiites aren't submitting. They won't back down: Not now..) Saudi Arabia's unexpected military action could further anger not only the protesters in Manama but also leaders in Iran, perhaps leading the island nation to become the scene of a proxy war.Iran has long had an interest in dominating the Persian Gulf. Stratfor's John Friedman wrote in a position paper on March 14 that the larger uprising's spread to Bahrain represented a "golden opportunity" for Tehran. "The Iranians are accustomed to being able to use their covert capabilities to shape the political realities in countries,"he wrote,something they did effectively in Iraq. "The Saudis, recognizing that this posed a fundamental risk to their regime and consulting with the Americans, have led a coalition force into Bahrain ... pressed by covert forces, they were forced into an overt action they were clearly reluctant to take." (See "Why a Saudi Intervention in Bahrain Won't End the Protests.")
The Bahrain/Saudi/Iranian crisis is some mutant, militarized Romeo and Juliet, where both Iran and Saudi Arabia are Romeo, Juliet is the Bahraini Ethnic Shiites(With Iran) and Sunnis(With Saudi Arabia), and America is Juliet's father: Traditionally Powerful and Present(Viathe 5thFleet), but ultimately, unable to influence the crisis to a peaceful outcome, and suffering a devastating loss...
The car park at Tokyo Disneyland was drenched with water-logged segments from the ground following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan's Pacific coast Friday, police said
It was earlier reported that a tsunami might have caused the inundation but police said the phenomenon was due to liquefaction of soil caused by the intense shaking of the tremor.
There were 69,000 people at the Disneyland and the adjacent Tokyo Disney Sea, built on a landfill in Tokyo Bay, when the quake occurred..
Future damage to Japan's reclaimed land WILL be a problem.
A special feature of the Mark 1 design is that the used fuel, also called spent fuel, is stored within the reactor building in a swimming pool-like concrete structure near the top of the reactor vessel. When the reactor is refueled, the spent fuel is taken from the reactor by a large crane, transferred to the pool, and kept underwater for a few years. This spent fuel must be kept underwater to prevent severe releases of radioactivity, among other reasons. A meltdown or even a fire could occur if there is a loss of coolant from the spent fuel pool. The water in the spent fuel pool and the roof of the reactor building are the main barriers to release of radioactivity from the spent fuel pool.
An explosion associated with Unit 1 occurred on March 12, at 3:36 p.m.2 At first the authorities stated that this was in the turbine building next to the reactor building.However, it is the reactor building roof and part of the walls near the roof that were completely blown off leaving only a steel skeleton at the top of the building. This indicates an explosion inside the reactor building – probably a hydrogen explosion, since hydrogen is much lighter than air, it would accumulate near the top of the building. The explosion therefore seems to have occurred near the level where the spent fuel pool would be located in a Mark 1 reactor. ..While Japanese authorities have stated that the reactor vessel is still intact, there has been no word regarding the status of the spent fuel pool structure, except indirectly (see below).Is it still intact? This is a critical question as to the range of potential consequences of the reactor accident.
GE, the company that boasts that it “brings good things to life,” was the designer of the nuclear plants that are blowing up like hot popcorn kernels at the Fukushima Dai-ichi generating plant north of Tokyo that was hit by the double-whammy of an 9.1 earthquake and a huge tsunami.
The company may escape tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in liability from this continuing disaster, which could still result in a catastrophic total meltdown of one or more of the reactors (as of this writing three of the reactors are reported to have suffered explosions and partial meltdowns, and all could potentially become more serious total meltdowns with a rupture of the reactor container), thanks to Japanese law, which makes the operator--in this case Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) liable.But if it were found that it was design flaws by GE that caused the problem, presumably TEPCO or the Japanese government could pursue GE for damages.
In fact, the design of these facilities--a design which, it should be noted, was also used in 23 nuclear plants operating in the US in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont--appear to have included serious flaws, from a safety perspective.
Remember: Any ONE of these events would be catastrophic. Combine them, then throw in some secondary economic impacts. The micro to macro perspective of this unfolding event is staggering, even if the best possible-ending occurs.
At 6:14 a.m. a loud thud rocked Reactor 2 of Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant, quite unlike the previous two blasts that blew apart the surrounding structures.This time the explosion occurred inside the steel containment chamber that surrounds the core reactor. The containment chamber captures and holds runoff water and condensed steam that escapes from the core reactor.
TEPCO and the nuclear safety agency have not explained the process that led to the blast.
In Monitor 3, the chemistry of splitting water molecules into hydrogen gas and supercharged oxygen was explained. In the first two blasts, these volatile gases recombined outside the reactor unit and blew apart the concrete rooms.
This third and latest blast is one of internal combustion.
Japan warned radioactive levels had become "significantly" higher around a quake-stricken nuclear power plant on Tuesday after explosions at two reactors, and the French embassy said a low-level radioactive wind could reach Tokyo within hours.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people within 30 km (18 miles) of the facility north of Tokyo to remain indoors, underscoring the dramatic escalation of Japan's nuclear crisis, the world's most serious since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.
Other than some random human interest stories, there seems to be no good news coming from anywhere in Japan.
Keep in mind that the hated emergency laws from the Mubarak era, part of what provoked the Egyptian uprising to begin with, are still in place and that the country’s intellectuals, its political parties, labor unions, and the media all fear a silent counterrevolution.At the same time, they almost uniformly insist that the Tahrir Square revolution will neither be hijacked nor rebranded by opportunists. As the ideological divide between liberalism, secularism, and Islamism disintegrated when the country’s psychological Wall of Fear came down, lawyers, doctors, textile workers -- a range of the country’s civil society -- remain clear on one thing: they will never settle for a theocracy or a military dictatorship. They want full democracy.
Moammar Gadhafi's forces swept rebels from a key oil town Sunday with waves of strikes from warships, tanks and warplanes, closing on the opposition-held eastern half of Libya as insurgents pleaded for a U.N.-imposed no-fly zone.
Gadhafi's troops have been emboldened by a string of victories in the struggle for Libya's main coastal highwaybut their supply lines are stretched and their dependence on artillery, airstrikes and naval attacks makes it hard for them to swiftly consolidate control of territory, particularly at night. The insurgents claimed they moved back into the strategic town of Brega after dusk in a fast-moving battle with a constantly shifting front line,destroying armored vehicles and capturing dozens of fighters from Gadhafi's elite Khamis Brigade.
Most Americans are not familiar with the sultanate of Oman. The mostly desert country the size of Kansas wraps around the Arabian peninsula's southeastern corner, bordering Yemen on its southwest and the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia along most of its inland border. Oman's long seacoast runs along the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. And its northern tip forms one side of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz across from Iran.
Oman's autocratic monarchy has long been one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East. And, as with authoritarian U.S. allies in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, a largely nonviolent, pro-democracy struggle has arisen in Oman as well.
Protests began in the capital of Muscat on February 19 but soon spread to other cities across the country. Similar to the other largely nonviolent insurrections taking place elsewhere in the Arab world, the protests have been centered on demands for democracy, human rights, economic justice, and curbing official corruption.As in Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, and other monarchies that have witnessed protests in recent weeks, most protesters are not demanding the abolition of the monarchy. They're seeking an elected parliament with real power, essentially transforming the current absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy.
And they're getting fired upon. Imagine if they wanted total overthrow of the government?
A parliament group asked Bahrain's king on Monday to impose martial law after a month of unrest that has left the tiny Gulf nation sharply divided between minority Sunni Muslims backing the ruling system and Shiites demanding sweeping changes.
There was no immediate response from Bahrain's monarch, but authorities have expressed increasing frustration that opposition groups have not accepted offers to open dialogue aimed at easing the crisis.
A military-run clampdown would risk further polarizing the strategic island kingdom - home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet - and send a chill through the many international banking and financial companies that use Bahrain as their Gulf hub.
At least five people were killed Sunday and 105 others wounded in violent regime crackdowns against the nationwide protests. The heaviest clashes were reported at Sanaa University in the nation’s capital, while the southern city of Aden also saw violence.
The protests across Yemen have been growing for weeks, with the protesters demanding that long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh resign and allow free elections.Saleh, for his part, has ruled out such a resignation, saying it would bring “chaos.”
The wind direction may impact where the radiation goes both at a local level and even across the globe. The wind direction at both of these locations are similar since the Onagawa power plant is located just to the northeast of Fukushima power plant.
"The exact direction of the winds would have to be known at the time of the release of a large amount of radiation to understand exactly where the radiation would go," according to Expert Senior Global Meteorologist Jim Andrews.
It is unknown when a large release of radiation would occur, if at all, at this point.
The Pentagon was expected to announce that the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which is sailing in the Pacific, passed through a radioactive cloud from stricken nuclear reactors in Japan, causing crew members on deck to receive a month’s worth of radiation in about an hour, government officials said Sunday.
The officials added that American helicopters flying missions about 60 miles north of the damaged reactors became coated with particulate radiation that had to be washed off.
This would be why wind direction is important:Tokyo nuke cloud crisisFrom The Sun. Excerpts(Emphasis theirs):
JAPAN is teetering on the brink of nuclear catastrophe amid fears a radioactive cloud could envelop Tokyo's 13million residents.
The Foreign Office warned Brits to avoid the capital as it was feared a SECONDnuclear reactor was heading for meltdown after Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
And there were heightened concerns early today following a hydrogen blast 170 miles north of Tokyo at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. (That one's mine..)
A Japanese man who was swept 15 kilometres out to sea in the tsunami was plucked to safety yesterday after being spotted clinging to wreckage, officials said.
A Maritime Self-Defence Force destroyer rescued Hiromitsu Shinkawa, 60, after discovering him floating on a piece of roof in waters off Fukushima prefecture two days after the disaster struck.
The man, from the city of Minamisoma, which was destroyed, was swept out along with his house after the tsunami.
Fresh white smokeroseagain Monday from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, caused by an explosion at a building tied to the facility's No. 3 reactor.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that, according to the head of the nuclear facility, the container vessel surrounding the reactor is still intact. Initial reports suggest that radiation levels rose following the explosion late Monday morning, butEdano said he does not believe there has been a massive leak.
"We are now collecting information on the concentration of radiation," he said. .. The secretary said that water continues to be injected into the plant's No. 3 reactor. That fact, and the pressure levels, has led authorities to believe that the reactor itself remains intact.
Japan's nuclear crisis and Chernobyl: key differences Articles of this nature will be later looked upon as the Voice of Reason during an irrational time, or hopelessly naive. At the moment, that is no one's call..
Wow! This must be seen to be believed. CNBC's Larry Kudlow talked about Japan's earthquake yesterday: "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that." It's hard to say if this was a blooper or just a horrible thing he actually believes?
Weather Action owner Piers Corbyn says “The massive Japan Earthquake and Tsunami were triggered by massive events on the Sun and there are more to come in the next two years”
The shores of Acapulco's beaches were this weekend teeming with masses of fish packed so tightly they looked like an oil slick from above.
Thousands of sardines, anchovies, stripped bass and mackerel surged along the coast of the Mexican resort in an event believed to be linked to the devastating Japanese tsunami.The Pictures are really cool, and since it's Mexico, there's no quake damage.
A meltdown occurs when the control rods fail to contain the neutron emission and the heat levels inside the reactor thus rise to a point that the fuel itself melts, generally temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing uncontrolled radiation-generating reactions and making approaching the reactor incredibly hazardous.
A meltdown does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster.
As long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with.If the core breaches but the containment facility built around the core remains intact, the melted fuel can still be dealt with — typically entombed within specialized concrete — but the cost and difficulty of such containment increases exponentially.
However, the earthquake in Japan, in addition to damaging the ability of the control rods to regulate the fuel — and the reactor’s coolant system — appears to have damaged the containment facility, and the explosion almost certainly did.
The Japan earthquake was the fourth most powerful ever recorded with a magnitude of 9.1, twice more powerful than the initial estimate of 8.9, Gerard Fryer, geophysicist of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said this morning. .. The new magnitude was adjusted based on the impact of the quake throughout the Pacific, he said. ”It fits all measurements, including in Hawaii,” Fryer said.
So what will happen? Why a scramble for liquidity of course, just like we saw back in September 2008, when cash stricken companies sold all their liquid assets first, resulting in a toxic loop of self-fulfilling prophecy selling which almost tobbled(toppled?) the $25 trillion shadow banking system.And what will said Japanese insurance companies sell first? Why the very same Eurozone bonds they acquired with so much pomp and circumstance, by the minions of the insolvent Eurozone, back in January of course.
Every potential worst case scenario continues to spread wide, and rapidly..
Some respond to Japan earthquake by pointing to global warmingFrom The Daily Caller. Throwaway article about a Twitter fight from the idiot believers of Global Warming(Clarification: I am not calling Global Warming out as idiocy. The term "idiot believers" applies to followers of this, or any theory, who have based their beliefs on little to no actual knowledge. This is not a comment for or against Global Warming. Rather, Twitter is the subject, and the article is the jumping off point..). Maybe they sought to connect the damage from the tsunami to rising sea levels, or some theoretical link that might takes pages to explain, or maybe they were just wrong: Global Warming doesn't cause earthquakes. We won't ever know their full motivation or comprehension of the concept and implications of what they post, as they've chosen a forum that limits them to 140 characters! You cannot, Can NOT have any worthy, nuanced, multi-level, developed discussion regarding the merits of Global Warming,or any other complex issue,on Twitter. It is, by design, impossible.
If you can encapsulate your thoughts into 140 characters at any given time; I'm pretty much assured not to care what those thoughts might be. They're trivial. Dumb. Ham-Handed. They're blunt, inaccurately descriptive, under-developed, annihilated grammatically, shallow, one dimensional, or meant as comedy, which is the one exception. Twitter promotes lazy thought andrewards short attention spans, which exacerbates the rampant lack of critical thought already contagion here in year 2011.
It feels as if this trend of verbal acceleration and condensation has negatively effected our collective emotional response. We are bored with what doesn't immediately grab our attention, or that that holds our attention too long. We don't have to think; so we choose not to. And we extend that courtesy to those around us. We have chosen shallow and easy. We'd prefer not to. We want 140 characters as opposed to a full explanation. Twitter is just the symptom.
And that is why, ultimately, we are doomed. Provided we don't rip apart, first..
After Julian Assange crashed and burned in his threat to release documents that expose fraud at Bank of America, many thought he had been only bluffing, and that BofA is actually clean. Not so fast. A member of the hacker collective Anonymous, which singlehandedly destroyed "hacker defense" firm HB Gary, who goes under the handle OperationLeakS "is claiming to be have emails and documents which prove "fraud" was committed by Bank of America employees, and the group says it'll release them on Monday" reports Gawker. As to the contents of the possible disclosure: ""He Just told me he have GMAC emails showing BoA order to mix loan numbers to not match it's Documents. to foreclose on Americans.. Shame." If indeed this makes the case against BofA' foreclosure practices stronger, it certainly explains why the banking consortium is scrambling to arrange a settlement, and also why Bank of America recently split off its $2 trillion in mortgages into "good bank" and "bad bank" entities.
Freaky, ominous, and "Holy crap! When will this disaster strike?" footage from CNN Ireport, via Godlike Productions..
Remember, please, when you see the earth tearing, swaying, and water squirting upwards where there was no water previously, that this is real. This is what a Worst-Case-Scenario looks like before it happens.
Japanese authorities are venting radioactive steam into the air after the earthquake on Friday critically damaged a nuclear reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The Japanese government on Friday declared a nuclear emergency at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after the reactor's cooling system failed. The government ordered thousands of people living within 6 miles of the plant to evacuate. Early Saturday, it declared a nuclear emergency at a second power plant where a cooling system had also failed.
"It has the potential to be catastrophic," said Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, and a former senior policy adviser to the Energy Secretary during the Clinton administration.
Why would the west coast USA be in danger? The prevailing jet stream winds are blowing from Japan directly across the Pacific ocean to the west coast of the United States. Any airborne radiation would make its way across with the jet stream, reaching the U.S. in approximately 36 hours, depending on the actual speed of the jet. And: Update, Clarification from NHK World News Japan… a second location, Fukushima II, not far from the Fukushima I nuclear power plant, is also experiencing cooling problems. The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said equipment failures have made it impossible to cool 3 of the plant’s 4 reactors. (Translation: ‘impossible’ is not a good word). And: Update, Reuters is now reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company has lost ability to control pressure at some of the reactors at its Fukushima II (Daini) plant nearby the Daiichi power plant (Fukushima I), both suffering from core cooling problems.If battery power at Fukushima II is depleted before AC power is restored, the plant will stop supplying water to the core and the cooling water level in the reactor core will drop. And: Update, Kyodo news reports, “the operator of the two plants in Fukushima Prefecture is set to release pressure in containers housing their reactorsunder an unprecedented government order, so as to avoid the plants sustaining damage and losing their critical containment function.”…”the action would involve the release of steam that would likely include radioactive materials”
Radiation inside a Japanese nuclear reactor surged to 1,000 times its normal level after today's 8.9-magnitude earthquake knocked out power to a cooling system, and tsunami floods have hampered efforts to get it restored.
It reportedly was one of five Japanese nuclear reactors that lost cooling ability, prompting a race against the clock to install fixes.
In the worst case, at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No. 1 reactor, heat-induced pressure built up inside the crippled reactor, prompting widespread evacuations within a 10 kilometer radius and stoking fears of a potentially catastrophic radioactive event.
This is close to the depth of the Christchurch quake, but the Magnitude is just so, so, so much more powerful..
Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days,including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday.
Thirty minutes after the quake, tall buildings were still swaying in Tokyo and mobile phone networks were not working. Japan's Coast Guard has set up task force and officials are standing by for emergency contingencies, Coast Guard official Yosuke Oi said.
MSNBC just carried a Press Conference by the Japanese Prime Minister. Standout passage? He said it looks as if no radiation from Japan's Nuclear power plants has leaked. That's comforting, I guess..
An 8.8 magnitude earthquake has been reported out of Japan, and a tsunami warning has been issued for the country. The news out of the country is not good right now, especially with some of the statements that CNN has issued about cars toppling off bridges in the area.
I'm watching the tsunami rolling over farmland and populated areas. The initial images are beyond description. This one's gonna be heartbreaking.. Continuing coverage begins now.
Colonel Gaddafi's forces today blasted an oil terminal to smithereens as Libya's bloody civil war entered its blackest day.
Rebels retaliated by firing back with rockets as a fireball exploded from one of the oil tanks and the sky above the Es Sider terminal, in the east of the country, filled with hideous smoke.
A witness said one of the smoke plumes was the biggest he had seen in the conflict so far.
The fresh onslaught came as Gaddafi deployed tanks and snipers to 'shoot anything that moves'.
BENGHAZI, LIBYA - Rebel forces in Libya engaged in intense fighting on two fronts Wednesday, claiming to break through a three-day standoff with government fighters in the town of Bin Jawwad but suffering another day of heavy casualties in the besieged western city of Zawiyah.
In Zawiyah, government forces were heavily shelling the main square, residents said, with airstrikes, tank and mortar fire, machine guns and artillery.
"We need some international aid here," said Mohammed, an opposition spokesman in the city, which was bombed for a sixth consecutive day by forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi. "At least stop them from having airplanes fly over us."
Most likely he is desperate and over the years he must have been haunted by the fantasy that he really created a country of his own and therefore no one has the right to challenge his ownership of Libya. He must believe what he keeps repeating: that he is neither a president nor a king to resign; he is an uncontested leader of a revolution, who possesses nothing but his gun and he will use it to regain control. He also claimed that he turned power to the people to govern themselves, a form of democracy superior in his view to any other system of government yet devised. If he is truly insane, it is just because he believes this hallucination.
Nearly three weeks after Libyans surprised themselves by revolting against Muammar Gaddafi's brutal 42-year rule, euphoria at the prospect of swiftly deposing the dictator has given way in the rebel capital, Benghazi, to the grim prospect of a popular uprising evolving into a drawn-out military conflict.
That is stoking fears about the consequences of losing, as Gaddafi's forces use tanks and artillery to crush the revolutionaries' takeover of the city of Zawiyah, near Tripoli, and stall the rebel advance from Benghazi hundreds of miles short of the Libyan capital.
Inside Libya, Gaddafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who now heads the opposition National Libyan Council in Benghazi, called for foreign air strikes and a no-fly zone.Citing sources within the council, the New York Times reported that this stance was adopted at a heated council meeting where “others strongly disagreed”. There has been deep opposition to such a call within popular protests against Gaddafi, because of fears of a return to neo-colonial rule—fears that Gaddafi is exploiting to posture as a defender of Libyan sovereignty.
DOCTORS from the scene of violent anti-government protests in Yemen's capital said that what was thought to be tear gas fired by government forces on demonstrators may have been nerve gas, which is forbidden under international law.
Military personnel opened fire on Tuesday night and used what was originally assumed to be tear gas to disperse a group of demonstrators who were trying to bring additional tents into the protest area outside Sanaa University. And: Earlier reports indicatedthat the gas used was tear gas, but doctors who have been treating the wounded refuted that claim today.
"The material in this gas makes people convulse for hours. It paralyses them. They couldn't move at all. We tried to give them oxygen but it didn't work," said Amaar Nujaim, a field doctor who works for Islamic Relief.
"We are seeing symptoms in the patient's nerves, not in their respiratory systems.I'm 90 per cent sure its nerve gas and not tear gas that was used," said Sami Zaid, a doctor at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa.
Mohammad Al-Sheikh, a pathologist at the same hospital, said that some of the victims had lost their muscular control and were forced to wear diapers.
Yeah; That's nice.. And the rest of the country seems to be collectively gearing up for a fight.. From the Chicago Tribune. Excerpts:
"This is the moment. We cannot go back from here," said protester Wael Sakkif, pointing to the blood on the pavement. "This is all Yemen's blood."
The unrest followed a large riot in the nation's largest prison as inmates added their voices to demands for Saleh's removal, news reports and human rights groups said.
Prisoners set mattresses and blankets on fire Monday and marched into the central courtyard of the facility in Sana, the capital. Police used tear gas and fired live ammunition to disperse them. Twenty-five inmates were injured, said Amal Basha, chairwoman of the Sisters Arab Forum, a rights group.
And:
Protesters and opposition figures say the government is trumping up internal threats to gain domestic and international support for Saleh, a key U.S. ally in the battle against Islamic Islamist militants. The Yemeni government has long fought an armed separatist movement, a rebel insurgency and the growth of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an Al Qaeda offshoot based in Yemen's tribal areas. And: .. negotiations collapsed late last week, and there has been "a total breakdown of talks" between opposition leaders and Saleh, said Aidroos Naqeeb, head of the Yemeni Socialist Party.
The number of police vehicles, soldiers and trucks armed with water cannons deployed in Sana increased this week.
A government news release stated that the increased security measures were in response to "multiple terror attacks on security and army personnel" last weekend, but tension at the anti-Saleh camp increased anyway.
"It looks like the government is getting ready for a fight," one protester said.
The use of nerve gas, IF true, is a major escalation as to what Saleh (And the rulers of the next country to fall, and the next..) is capable of, what will be utilized, and how far he'll go, all for the sake of retaining power. Saleh has shown his hand. What will happen next?
Symbolic Pics of the Month 10/26
-
In this edition of SPOTM: NBA YoungBoy wants to be famous until he's NBA
OldBoy; "Obsession" star Inde Navarette's disturbingly symbolic photoshoot.
Also...
Another Epstein Class whistleblower ‘suicide’
-
“How US commerce secretary’s Epstein links were uncovered by British
whistleblower“ (Verity/Byrne/Milne):Andriesz suspected there was yet more
to find in t...
International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2025
-
by Robert Wilkinson Today, September 19, is a High Holy Day for
Pastafarians, and thus for all good people who like to give treats to
children and celebrat...
-
Question from reader: Dear Mr. Fulford, I have been following your weekly
updates every Monday for the past three or four months, perhaps even
longer. I mu...
How Things Work
-
Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years
after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of
an ...
Mom Has Stacked Dinner Party Roster
-
GOLDEN, CO—Their eyes widening in amazement as the 43-year-old rattled off
the names of heavy hitter after heavy hitter, impressed members of the
Dreesh...
Service Interruption notice
-
You may have noticed rigorousintuition.ca is currently down. We're moving
servers. Drew informs me it shouldn't take too long. Perhaps tonight or
tomorrow....
BOOK:
This, ultimately, will be a record of the evolution of my consciousness through life experience. It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, but the archive is close to achieving some form of order.
I'm not sure this.. will have an "end," as much as a stopping point.
BLOG:
I have unusual interests. I seek out alternative news, philosophies, and cosmologies. Heres a sample of my reading life. Thanks for peeking in..
Posts
