Quake hits eastern Japan, nuclear plant stable

ChannelNewsAsia.com ^

[justa-hairyape]

Watch out where those Yankees go and don't you eat that corium snow.

Good news for Japan is that the wind has been blowing offshore for quite a few days. Not good news for us in the states though. They have found the first snow in Saint Louis had 4 x background gamma radiation. Internal houses reading 2x background.

0.27 microSv/h from snow in Saint Louis

Original story from the www.potrblog.com .

[Razzz42]

No worries, EPA will just raise the limits for how much background radiation is safe for humans.

There was a rash of US nuke power plants shutting themselves down (one plant, auto-shut down 3 times in one week) when sensing elevated radioactivity after events in Fukushima. Many excuses, like turbine maintenance problems or some other lame suggestions but no clear cut official reasons why they these nuke plants automatically shut themselves down.

The reason it is lame verging on silly is that you don’t want to cycle a nuke plant on and off unnecessarily due to tremendous temperature variations with hot and cold extremes experienced with all the plumbing and fixtures during restarts and shutdowns, shortens the lifespan of very expensive parts.

US Navy won’t even released the findings of what was recorded by the ship Ronald Regan’s sensors when it was caught in a fallout plume from Fukushima. Everything is a big secret.

[justa-hairyape]

Did some research on the possibility that reactor #4 suffered some type of explosion on January 9th Japan time. Now obviously this would have been a small explosion, since we have not seen images or videos of the resulting smoke or explosion itself. Just looked at all the video archives of the Tepco camera for January 9th (note all times here will be in Japan time). These archives basically compress 1 hour into 3 minutes. We unfortunately do not have an archive, as far as I know, for the JNN camera which actually has a better view of reactor #4.

Some of the events that happened during that day are described here. Tepco did quite a bit of work on the reactors that day. The JNN camera feed stopped and just displayed "live event has ended" for quite a few hours. It appears that the feed stopped sometime between 1:16 pm and 6:30 pm on the 9th. A new feed was available at least by 6:42 pm on the 11th. There were also two earthquakes on the 9th, which did visibly shake the Fukushima area. There was also clouds present, but no rain or snow was seen that day.

Now the view from the Tepco camera for reactor #4 is not very good and is partially obscured. So I was primarily looking for any flashes or visible explosions. There were two flashes that day. The first was a short flash of blue light that occurred right at sunrise. That one appeared to be some type of video camera glitch, but cannot say for certain. It is the second one described below. The second flash that occurred that day was a bright white flash that appeared brighter in just certain areas of the video. Now that flash could have also been a flash from lightning. Impossible to differentiate between the two. If it was a lightning flash, it was the only occurrence that day. And also, this is winter time in Japan where lightning is less possible. The lightning or explosion flash occurs right at about the 2:51 to 2:52 time frame in the video archive below, which covered the 15:00 to 16:00 time frame. That would put the event at about 15:57 (3:57 pm JST January 9th), if my math is correct.

2012.01.09 15:00-16:00 (Live Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cam)

Now according to online posting records, the JNN camera feed did turn off somewhere during this time frame. Sometime between 1:16 pm and 6:30 pm. Just a coincidence I am sure. If we get some more evidence that there really was a small explosion in reactor #4 on the 9th, will save this info to post onto a new thread. Would be nice if someone out there was archiving the JNN camera feed, which has a better view of #4. My guess is it was probably turned off soon after that flash. The two significant earthquakes that day occurred within two hours of the flash.

Now the first flash of light that occurred during the day at sunrise can be seen in the video below. It occurred before they began the days busy work and occurred at least 5 hours before the JNN camera feed was turned off. It occurs at about the 1:07 to 1:08 time frame in the video link below. Real time length of video is from 06:00 to 07:00. That flash occurred at about 6:22 am on the 9th. My gut says it was a video glitch, but who knows. Very odd color of light none the less. Perhaps a neutron beam ? What ever it was the entire video frame lite up with that color and that says video glitch to me. Or perhaps an EMP-like discharge ?

2012.01.09 06:00-07:00 (Live Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cam)

At any rate there is video evidence of two strange flashes of light occurring on the day that #4 was supposed to have experienced an explosion, as was reported by a Japanese elected official in an unofficial manner.

[Razzz42]

Need sensor readings from the plant site to confirm any spike in contamination releases. All I hear from TEPCO, which is now the Japanese government, is denials or crickets in the background and even they are radioactive (base of the food chain).

[justa-hairyape]

There would be higher readings at the plant. You might not however see much increase further inland because the wind has been moving out to sea for quite a few days now. With the direction the wind has been moving, there could however be higher concentrations in the Tokyo area. Sometimes it was going southeast from Fukushima with a slight turn back toward Tokyo. We would definitely see higher contamination readings in the sea, but no one is really checking the Pacific right now. Not even the US or Canada. And of course North America should be reading higher levels, but nothing near the levels we saw back in March or April.

[justa-hairyape]

Should also add, that since that possible explosion in #4, there has been what appears to be some type of shield or drape hanging from the upper floor of #4. Appears to be covering the area where the top of the SFP is located. Possible radiation shielding of some type. You can see it here in this image just to the left of the pale green colored SFP. Has the shape of an obelisk (cue the apes and bones from 2001 a space odyssey).

This shows what the area to the left of SFP #4 should look like. The crane is pumping water into the pool in this photo.

[Razzz42]

Last I read Unit 4 had a temporary cover over the pool to keep debris from falling into it and a pump along with its plumbing for recirculating cooling water was installed to replace damage parts. During earthquakes it is not uncommon for water to slosh back and forth even spilling out over the sides in the spent fuel pools. Doesn’t help if the stored fuel assemblies are already crammed together in a pool and get disturbed with the water movements.

A nuclear power plant with melted cores and they don’t bother to monitor on going releases? TEPCO is just not disclosing the readings.