Posted on 03/14/2011 7:42:56 PM PDT by kristinn
TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday that there is a high risk of elevated levels of radiation from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant where an explosion occurred earlier in the day, and urged people within 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors.
"Substantial amounts of radiation are leaking in the area," Mr. Kan said on television at 11 a.m. in Tokyo. "We are making utmost efforts to prevent further explosions or the release of radioactive materials," he said.
Early Tuesday morning local time, authorities said that an explosion inside part of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant appeared to have caused damage to the unit, and some staff were evacuated from the facility as radiation levels at the site rose sharply.
Mr. Kan began his address by asking people to be calm about the situation. He said that the government is doing everything it can to prevent further radiation leaks.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Nikkei futures down 16%. All hell is breaking loose.
Most futures are now well off their lows.
I’m actually kind of surprised how well the market has held up. We are just reaching the lows from the Egypt crisis at the end of January. We hit the recent highs 3 weeks after that.
We could fall quite a bit farther before breaking the integrity of the uptrend from the ‘09 bottom.
Relocate the entire population of Japan to America. With their work ethic and discipline and intelligence they can and will revitalize our deteriorating culture and political process. They will be a force to reckon with as they assimilate and counter entrenched liberalism. I have a feeling they will know instinctively how to handle Mexico and the threat it presents to the U.S. as well as the threat from Islamic extremism. This could be a blessing in disguise for America, or, to put it another way, the Lord sometimes works in strange ways.
Thanks.
They did. It’s 30km now.
BTTT
I agree — but I also would expect that many of them would rather stay in their homeland and stick it out, to the death if need be. They are likely that fiercely proud.
But I’d welcome them here. I’d welcome a family into my home if need be. I wish I could do something more to help then send off some donation or watch them starve.
Switch them out with all the illegals.
20km-30km are "evacuation in place" - stay inside, close windows, don't run your a/c and heater, don't bring laundry inside, wash clothes you were wearing out.
No they are still having issues with Reactor 4 at plant two according to a recent IAEA press release. I as well thought everything was under control there?
“Japanese authorities yesterday reported to the IAEA at 21:05 CET that the reactors Units 1, 2 and 3 of the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant are in cold shutdown status. This means that the pressure of the water coolant is at around atmospheric level and the temperature is below 100 degrees Celsius. Under these conditions, the reactors are considered to be safely under control.
Japanese authorities have also informed the IAEA that teams of experts from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant´s operator, are working to restore cooling in the reactor Unit 4 and bring it to cold shutdown.”
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
And before you flame me, I can't help wonder what the remaining WWII vets think about our Navy “Helping”
And/or how many Americans know what political party the President was in when we dropped those bombs...
BTW - I'm glad he did and we should be proud.
God bless you!
Kyodo: 18 km no-fly zone over strickened nuclear site.
CNBC: Tokyo NOT considering telling people to stay indoors after trace amounts of radiation detected there.
They’ll recover from the nuclear portion of the disaster just fine. Hiroshima and Nagasaki individually were far worse than the worst-case scenario for that N-plant. It’s the shattered infrastructure, over 10,000 dead, and the possibility of another big earthquake during the recovery itself that is a far greater threat.
If this had happened in 2020 instead of 2011 they would’ve had the much safer planned reactors 7 & 8 on-line and the 30-40 year-old reactors 1-4 would’ve been already defueled and getting dismantled.
Honestly, what the remaining WWII vets think isn’t relevant to the current political interests of the United States. Not that I expect the current president to act in those interests, but the United States, today, has tremendous areas of overlapping security interests and concerns with the japanese. You have to be blind not to be able to read a map and see where the major security threats to both of us in asia are coming from.
Yes, a democrat dropped the bomb. Not sure what political affiliation has to do with anything so far in the past. Democrats of the 40’s were more conservative than todays republican party. Comparing obama and truman is a laughable exercise, but the joke is on us!
Yes, bombing japan saved countless lives of US soldiers in the bloodbath that home island invasion would have been, and probably saved more japanese lives to boot, though that wasn’t the motivation for it. Only people ignorant of the actual history or unable to get around their nuclear or anti-american neuroses would argue against the use of the bombs. There do appear to be quite a few such people, though. I cannot see how not using the bomb would have benefited either the US or Japan (post-defeat) in any sense whatsoever, and I have wondered about what additional territory Stalin would have been able to annex/acquire/liberate in such a scenario.
As far as radiation, yes, hydrogen bombs caused radiation but it was VERY short-lived, from what I have read. If you were nearby, you died of it, but it was at vastly lower levels pretty quickly. The cities were rebuilt pretty much where they were before as far as I can tell (I have driven close to but not through nagasaki), which says a lot.
From the second article: Sounds pretty benign...
“But we examined worse accidents or
terrorist events that destroy redundant plant
systems inside or outside containment,
rupturing containment penetrations,
producing ground-level, unfiltered releases.
Even in this extreme situation, the
radioactivity remains largely bound in the
fuel.
Condensing water and the physicalchemical
properties of fuel retains most
radioactivity in water and structures (as at
Three Mile Island). Condensing water limits
releases, which are not in readily dispersible
forms, nor do they remain in respirable
forms. This minimizes inhalation hazards.
Spent fuel pool radioactivity has lost the
short-lived and most volatile products and
has insufficient energy to disperse in
hazardous forms. Even hypothesized
zirconium fires would only burn cladding
and structures, external to the fuel, adding
little to the radioactivity release.
In the worst case scenario, near-plant
contamination would warrant evacuation,
but not urgently; there would be time for
evacuation without significant public
health risk. Radioactivity dispersed widely
has lower concentrations, in low-hazard
forms.”
Better read again.
The two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII were fission (uranium), not fusion (hydrogen), and they were NOT clean bombs. We hadn't developed that technology yet.
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