Posted on 03/22/2011 9:27:08 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
All 6 Fukushima Reactors Reconnected To External Power
TOKYO (Kyodo)--All six reactors at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were reconnected to external power, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) said Tuesday, although smoke detected at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors the day before had temporarily hampered efforts to restore power and cool down spent nuclear fuel pools.
Tokyo Electric said that it is also close to restoring lighting in the control room for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, a move that is expected to allow for more intensive work to bring the nuclear crisis under control and to restore the reactors' key cooling functions.
Earlier in the day, industry minister Banri Kaieda acknowledged that the progress in electricity restoration is good news but added that the situation involving the reactors remains ''extremely tough.''
(Excerpt) Read more at e.nikkei.com ...
P!
Another month and they’ll have all six up and running. I know... a bit of a stretch (probably a couple will never restart), but they’re teaching the world a thing or two on how to deal with a challenge.
No whining, no finger pointing, no waiting for “the man” to take care of things - just roll up the sleeves and just do it.
Amazing that those cooling pumps and pipes withstood all that shock and upheaval and came back on. I don’t know if the plants are ever expected to be fitted with new turbines to put out juice again, but keeping them cool will help immensely in minimizing the chances of further radiation releases. Myself, I would have thought highest priority would have been to get all the fuel safely out as soon as they practically could. (Maybe that entails getting the cooling systems working again.)
Yamato-damashii
Those men working at the plant are probably dead men walking with the amount of radiation they’ve been exposed to.
Well at least they are honorable men. You will find only a few in Washington DC.
“Those men working at the plant are probably dead men walking with the amount of radiation they’ve been exposed to.”
Of course they are. And they knew it going in. God bless them.
No, they are rotating the men and once they reach a safe limit they no longer go back in. They also have been given CBR uniforms which reduces exposure by a factor of 10. Courtesy of a private US company.
“Those men working at the plant are probably dead men walking with the amount of radiation they’ve been exposed to.”
I’m not at all sure about that... They were rotating the men to keep them from being overexposed. I’m sure they had monitoring badges. We’ll know soon enough how much exposure they got. Regardless, they are heroes.
Regardless, they are heroes.
I think you are right- they took the best equipment that was there and went in, live or die.
You can’t write Japan off. They aren’t punks. They had us and China by the short hairs for a while.
They sacrifice for the common good- multi-generational mortgages, die for the Emperor warrior-ethos. They’ll be back.
No, they won’t.
Once they used seawater to replace the initial cooling water in some of the reactors, it was game over for those reactors. They have no way forward but to decommission them now. The reactors where they didn’t use seawater might be restarted, but that might well be a policy decision now.
There’s plenty of finger-pointing in Japanese culture. It just isn’t out in the open. Remonstrations in their corporate culture happen behind closed doors. There will be resignations and career-ending terminations made after this, but it will happen quietly for all but the high-profile executives.
The disaster has a silver lining in that regard, at the very least.
Kim Jong il and Kim Jong Un had better watch it, or they are going to regret ever threatening or irritating the Japanese. JAPAN has the capability, technology, intestinal fortitude and the WILL to CRUSH PYONGYANG in ONE BLOW.
Let this serve as a warning, if any of them are reading FR at Kim Il Sung or Amnokgang Universities.
Nobody pays attention to them, and give fuel, grain, and other goodies to N. Korea. They can no longer pull stunt to gain attention and get freebies in return for getting quiet. They lost their leverage. Unless they pull even more dangerous stunt with the survival of their regime on the line.
I’ve seen estimates that Japan could have a working nuclear weapon inside of six months from the decision to go forward with the project.
Given a place to test it (they probably wouldn’t want to do so on their island), I’d certainly believe that. They have quality down to an excruciating science.
Japan needs to tell Kim “We’ve been looking for a place to put the used fuel from our wrecked reactors — don’t give us any ideas.”
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