TEPCO Opened the Double Door to Reactor 1, 500 Million Becquerels of Radioactive Materials Released

ince the pressure inside the reactor building is lower than the outside by design, when TEPCO opened the double door the cooler outside air got sucked in, and the radioactive air that was inside the building was pushed up and out of the building through the roof that had collapsed by the explosion on March 12.

And they chose to open the door at night, when the outside air was even colder. So the whole point of this exercise was to release as much radioactive air as possible out of the reactor building, it seems. They could have chosen to do it during the day when the outside air was warmer, but that wouldn't have pushed out as much radioactive hot air as they would have liked.

Meanwhile, Asahi Shinbun says the radiation level even after the air-filtering system had supposedly reduced it to a safer level still measured several 10s of millisieverts/hr up to 700 millisieverts/hr, and the workers were exposed to as much as 10.56 millisieverts radiation for the work that lasted 29 minutes from 4:18AM JST on May 9.

Seven TEPCO employees and two from NISA entered the reactor building to measure the radiation levels at various spots inside the building.

That doesn't sound low to me. But Asahi reports that TEPCO is going to remove the air-filtering system they just installed, and continue to have human workers work inside the reactor building to install the water cooling system

I submit we need to cut TEPCO - and the nuke power industry in general - some breaks here. The TEPCO units largely survived a catastrophic natural event far in excess of design specs - and post construction upgrades - and have yet to kill anyone, I’m aware of.

Perhaps its time all the world quit acting like children with their expressions of an “I want it now” mentality and face the reality recovery and cleanup of the reactors and the tsunami is going to take years. Even longer if Mt. Fuji decides to awaken..... Too many are quite complaisant to accpet the benefits of nuclear power. But far less so to accept its risks. “Risks” BTW, that improved technologies and processing would pretty much reduce to levels below the risks/consequences of convbentional plants.

Far more germane, IMNSHO, is the impact anti-nuke activists can have upon Japan. In the not too distant past Japan went to war over energy. Denying them the benefits of nuclear power would re-create the scenario leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. >PS

The amazing thing is how not even the major left-leaning media outlets seem to have any idea about all these things you keep claiming are happening in Japan.

It’s like there’s an entire alternative Japan reality where the buildings are all falling over, nuclear fuel rods are jumping out of their spent fuel pools, and reactors have double-doors that are propped open to “let all the radiation out”.

This one was good for a laugh though, what with the pseudo-science of “they opened the doors at NIGHT, because it was even COOLER outside and it meant even MORE hot air would flow out with radiation”.

Because, as we all know, a 110-degree temperature difference will create a much larger updraft than a 100-degree temperature difference.

And it’s not like they could have just propped the doors open for an extra couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, in the REAL world, they have radiation monitors all around that plant, and they are monitoring the air above and for miles around in all directions, and the radiation levels are dropping. And yet somehow we are supposed to believe that there is this huge radiation release, and not one detector caught it.

Most of these stories are so ludicrous that I feel silly even PRETENDING that they should be taken at all seriously. Which is probably why none of the serious posters following this disaster has bothered to wander into these threads.

Maybe I should just slowly back away now, out the door, and leave you all in peace. All is well, all is well, ....

Oh, here's a real article about the real world where the real double doors were not yet opened:

CORRECT: Workers Enter Fukushima Reactor For 1st Time Since Crisis

Tepco expects the air-cleaning operation could help lower radiation to one-twentieth of pre-ventilation duct levels within two to three days.
"It is necessary to confirm a decline in the radiation level before any decision to open the double-entry doors" that block external and internal access to the reactor building, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman and deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

They are installing air ventilation equipment to filter out the radioactive particles. The workers could spend 10 minutes in the facility, and recieved about 2.8 millisevierts of radiation during that 10 minutes.

“It’s like there’s an entire alternative Japan reality where the buildings are all falling over, nuclear fuel rods are jumping out of their spent fuel pools, and reactors have double-doors that are propped open to “let all the radiation out”.”

I posted a link to a video of Russia today newscast interviewing someone while discussing growing speculation that reactor 4 building is leaning and they show a picture that seems to indicate this is true. I have quoted a Japanese expert commenting on the belief that an explosion in spent pool 3 ejected portions of radioactive fuel out of the pool and into the environment: Japan’s Dr. Saji who is a former member of Japan’s Atomic Nuclear Safety commission. Dr. Saji’s email includes the following comments about the explosion in fuel pool 3:
“We were just lucky due to the favorable meteorological conditions during the entire development of the accident.”
SNIP
“We were very lucky even with a large release from 1F3 due to the most severe hydrogen explosion that could have induced a heavy land contamination. This resulted from the wind direction towards the sea at the time of the releases, although this must have resulted in wider ocean contamination far from Fukushima Daiichi”

And lastly I quoted an article by a blogger who translates Japanese press conferences and TV interviews into English and comments on them. He translated earlier email traffic that indicated a few days before the doors opened that TEPCO was expecting to vent alot of radiation while saying publicly it would be very little radiation. The blogger updated that it was a sizable amount of radiation> He’s Japanese - it’s possible he has strong feelings about what is happening in his country and he doesn’t like being jerked around and includes his opinions in his blogs. Obviously you don’t like his comments - some Freepers will agree with you, others may not. This is not me living in an alternate reality claiming things that no one has heard of. All your griping and whining indicates you don’t like what I post in Chat/General. Oh...I see...you tried the obligatory ‘left leaning’ paint brush. Keep it - it’s all your invention.
Try this, next time just say “I don’t like what you posted!” - it will save us both time.

It's not that they TRIED, it's that they DID. I realise you might not have read the story at the link you just provided, since you have to subscribe. But if you find a place to read the story without needing to subscribe, you find these interesting facts:

The move came after the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency gave the go-ahead, saying it has assessed that opening the double-entry doors at the troubled facility would not have serious impact on the environment.
...
the level of radioactive materials in the No. 1 reactor building is low enough to pose no problem when it opens the doors,
...
even if radioactive substances are released from the No. 1 reactor building as a result of opening the doors, the radiation dose within the plant's premises would be well below 1 millisievert - the level a person is normally exposed to annually.

A far different story than the one spun here about them opening the doors in the middle of the night to let out huge amounts of radiation.

The story I linked to earlier, and the story you just linked to, both explain that, rather than opening the doors to RELEASE radiation (and doing it at night to "release more radiation because of temperature differences"), they reduced the radiation in the building FIRST (by sending people in and setting up an air filtration system), and opened the doors AFTER the air was filtered enough to lower the radiation.

That was my point. You posted an article claiming they had a secret plan to open the doors and release huge amounts of radiation to clear out the building, and that they timed the door opening to maximize the temperature difference to increase the convection flow and remove more radiation.

The REAL news sources that I and now you have linked to, tell us that they sent people in, set up a filtration system, filtered the air until radiation levels were low enough to minimize radiation release, and THEN they opened the doors.

So the truth is pretty much opposite the claim in the article you posted. And THAT was what I was attempting to communicate.

If there had been a major release of radiation due to them opening the doors in the middle of the night as part of a secret plan to evacuate the radiation from the building, you wouldn't have to read someone's blog or watch a youtube video to learn about it.

Try this, next time just say “I don’t like what you posted!” - it will save us both time

But that would be stupid. The point of posting things is to discuss them. Part of the discussion is to debate the possibility of the information being correct, and part of that analysis involves weighing the respectability of the source.

I don't care at all about what "you post". I care about what is said in what you post. I want to discuss, argue, and debate over the information that is posted. It doesn't bother me a bit that you post all sorts of wild conspiracy theories -- how else would we discuss them if they weren't posted.

OK -- I did make that one argument yesterday about how it was sad that FreeRepublic appeared in a google page full of left-wing and conspiracy sites with the headline story that reactor 4 was leaning. But that's just because that story was just so hilariously, well, that was an argument in another thread -- I only bring it up here because it supports your argument that I care about what you are posting.

“You posted an article claiming they had a secret plan to open the doors and release huge amounts of radiation to clear out the building, and that they timed the door opening to maximize the temperature difference to increase the convection flow and remove more radiation”

Charles - I posted an article stating that TEPCO Opened to the doors to Reactor 1, 500 million Becquerels of Radioactive Materials Released. That was following an earlier post I made re a private email exchange saying high levels of radiation would be released and a public announcement that low levels would be released. So the reader can decide whether 500 million Becquerels of Radioactive material is either described best by the private email or public announcement. I saw the blogger has opinions but I trusted FReepers to decide whether they agreed with the blogger or any other content - I hadn’t realized that you expected me to pour over the post line by line stating my personal beliefs about every statement in it - because that is a ridiculous expectation that other people posting at FR are not held to...outside of nuclear energy posts. If you scan the other posts you’ll see that I assumed they opened the doors at night to take advantage of air patterns that carried contamination away from the closest population centers and out to sea.
You have bolded a statement by NISA saying that the release “would not have serious impact on the environment.”. FReepers who have gained confidence in official spokespersons during this crisis appreciate this kind of statement and some on FR who have not that level of confidence will be indifferent to such statements.

I’m seriously confused by your objections.

YOu posted an article that said things. I don’t “expect you” to have “poured over” the thing you posted line-by-line to state your opinion. I would expect that if I characterize that opinion, you wouldn’t object to my characterization without expressing what your opinion was on it.

Further, I don’t know why my commenting on the stupidity of the claims made in the article you posted would bother you in the least, especially if you don’t have the opinion that the article is pushing. I certainly wasn’t claiming that you wrote the article, but you are the one who posted the article, so responses discussing the article will of necessity be posted as replies to you.

In your other reply to me, you suggest I’m somehow NOT discussing what is in the article, when in THIS reply you are complaining that I AM discussing what is in the article, as if doing so hurts you in some way.

But I think it’s clear that I am discussing the claims made in the article, applying logical and scientific filters to the claims, and reaching a conclusion that the blogger at the least is ignorant of his subject, if not actually misleading deliberately or even lying about what the reports actually stated.

I don’t think I’ve found any credible news source that backs up the claim of high radiation release — I cant’ even say I found one that discusses the amount of radiation released. I also can’t find an official news source which comments on the supposed e-mail; I certainly am not taking it as fact that such an e-mail exists based on the claims of a blogger or a russian video.

Excerpt from Your Post 6: “The amazing thing is how not even the major left-leaning media outlets seem to have any idea about all these things you keep claiming are happening in Japan.

I do not ‘keep claiming all these things’ are happening - I have made some posts featuring content that you disagree with, that’s all. Comparing your post 6 to your post 15 you seem to be back pedaling and trying to imply that you never offered such an unreasonable distorted view of my posts in the first place and that you are shocked I misinterpreted it that way - but the FR record stands and anyone curious can make their own comparison.

“I don’t think I’ve found any credible news source that backs up the claim of high radiation release — ‘

I said I leave it to bloggers to decide whether the radiation released matched TEPCO’s private email stating that high radiation would be released on MAY 8 versus TEPCO’s public announcement that it would be a low radiation release. I don’t see the point in my repeating this information further.
In the lower third of this article: http://japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segawa/3516
there is an article (”Shortage of Information and Aid for Fukushima Citizens in the Radiation Exclusion Zone”) describing TEPCO’s policy of limiting access to TEPCO execs daily meetings to those networks with whom TEPCO has a sizable advertising account - no foreign press or independent Japanese press allowed. That is why there is a virtual media blackout on Fukushima. Without direct access to TEPCO execs, many news sources are hesitant to speak and so foreign outlets and bloggers like this one translate public interviews and documents. You are satisfied with receiving information only from the liable party (TEPCO) and that’s fine with me - I and some others are examining outside content and sharing it in order to balance our views.
The blogger is including the Japanese text and names of the players on his website as a service to the public and anyone who takes issue with his translation or the named officials can contest him. He also embeds video interviews with audio and links to the original Japanese text. If he didn’t work to make his work checkable, I’d have never stayed beyond the first visit. If his quality falters, so will his readership. Any FReeper following a link can find out whether they want to read his info or look further for network news. Whatever TEPCO says regarding the quantity of radiation released is relatively unchallenged because they are in an exclusion zone and outside independent sources are not permitted access for testing so the public has to take their word for it and TEPCO’s word has not been good in many respects - hence additional scrutiny to information disseminated.
There is a reason crying TEPCO execs apologized for not sharing information at the start of this thing - during the time they were saying ‘all is well’ there were no major news agencies saying anything different because TEPCO holds the reins to information. At this point, Japanese citizens have formed their own radiation monitoring network and are creating their own information network.

NOTE: I appreciate the improved civility in your last post on this thread.

In your post right before my first post in this thread, you said, in your own words: “I assumed they may have opened the doors at night because they anticipated that the wind would be flowing toward the ocean (and the US).”

That did lead me to think that you believed the story in the article you posted about the doors being opened at night because it would flush out the radiation more quickly. That was an assumption on my part, and I’m sorry that I didn’t let your words speak for yourself.

In the other thread which you had posted, you also made certain comments that led me to believe you were accepting the premise of the article, including that the plant was leaning. But since we aren’t supposed to drag things from thread to thread, I will apologize for conflating the two threads.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.