Posted on 03/14/2011 5:27:49 PM PDT by gandalftb
There was a new explosion Tuesday morning at a reactor the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and the company that runs the plant said water may be leaking from the reactor.
Half of the rods inside the reactor were not immersed in water and the suppression pool, which holds the water used to keep the rods cool, seemed to be damaged, according to Tokyo Electric Co. and government officials.
The level of radiation also rose around the reactor, but a government official said there was no danger.
"The radioactive level near unit 2 has gone up, but at this juncture, the level is not judged to be immediately harmful to human bodies," said Noriyuki Shikata, a spokesman in the prime minister's office.
The blast is the third at the plant in the three days since a powerful earthquake struck Japan on Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I’d be shocked if a bunch of Obamaites weren’t trying to shut down all nuclear.
Last I checked Obama was against and not for nuclear power.
Via Twitter Breaking News
More on blast: Explosion may be more severe than previous incidents; containment vessel possibly damaged - nytimes
6 minutes ago via breakingnews.com
there are a lot of people poo pooing this issue but if I was in Japan I would be getting out.
8217 microseverts at the gate after the explosion tells me that radiation is leaking or gets released.
I wouldn’t trust those Power plant people until the CEO goes into the Nuclear plant himself showing how safe it is...
Agreed, there is plenty of high ground, why not put the whole plant farther inland? Amazing mistake.
Yeah. And The San Andreas reactor is designed for 7.5. A few times weaker than this one.
“While the two previous explosions were hydrogen blasts, caused by a buildup of steam in the reactor unit, this time officials are not sure what the cause was.”
That, plus the fact that radiation is going on, seems to indicate another hydrogen blast.
The containment is still intact. If it were not, you’d expect to see radiation increasing.
With the budget they had, I can think of many fail safe simple designs that would prevent this, I'm sure many could with enough time & money, which they had a'plenty.
Simply shameful, I'm not saying they should "commit" , but I understand the cultural phenome.
I'll bet they thought of it. But the cost of making power plants on a coast "tsunami-proof" is astronomical. It would have prevented their construction in the first place, on economic grounds.
My guess is they just said, ignore the threat. And for 40 years they were right....
Diablo Canyon is about 50 miles from the San Andreas Fault.
That is not “on” it.
San Francisco is ON the San Andreas Fault.
There’s nothing to indicate that the containment is compromised.
None of us in our lifetime will see another nuke plant built in the US.
Given that the core temperature is still decreasing, that’s pretty much what has been happening.
I guess the dilemma is, would you tell the truth, knowing that sheer panic and chaos would ensue, or stave off panic by downplaying the threat, and behind the scenes plan for mass evacuations, but in a way that is more orderly?
50 miles is on in earthquake design terms.
I believe they made the reactor for unit 1. Units 2 and 3 were another other company, IIRC.
Is Japan’s government still going to claim that everything is under control? This is a catastrophe of biblical proportions!
The report doesn’t share your analysis. This is all conjecture.
You’d expect a spike in radiation if the containment were compromised, which hasn’t occurred.
Two, the core is subcritical now, which means that even if it were exposed, it wouldn’t be able to go critical as what happened in chernobyl.
The tsunami wave that hit the plant measured at least 7 metres in height, compared to the maximum 6.5 metre case the plant was designed to cope with.
Drudge linked a Meltdown alert for reactor #2 just before the explosion. That was a full meltdown alert.
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