TEPCO Update 3/22
TEPCO has released a statement on water spraying operations — apparently they are using a cement spraying pumping truck. I had no idea such a thing existed.
2011
220 posts
Gravity’s Gone
As Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers sings, “been falling so long it’s like gravity’s gone and I’m floating.” Events in Pakistan remind me of this lyric. On March 2nd, Pakistan’s Minorities Affairs Minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, was gunned down getting…
FEPC Statement 3/22
Hiroko Tabuchi, David Jolly and Kevin Drew report in the New York Times that the Unit 2 cooling pond “was spewing steam late Tuesday, forcing workers to divert their attention to dousing the reactor building with water.” The FEPC statement…
Radiation Doses
I’ve been struggling with how to express the risk from radiation doses without sounding like either a fear-mongering lunatic (“You will die from a slow and painful cancer!”) or some nuclear-industry hack (“Really, it’s no worse than smoking a cigarette…
Libya’s Lessons for North Korea
Hey, remember when Bush Administration officials tried to convince Kim Jong Il that he could get the same denuclearization deal Bush gave Qadhafi? Yeah, the last couple of days might explain why Kim didn’t think it was such a great…
FEPC Statement 3/21
Here is your daily information sheet from FEPC. Another fire at Unit 3. That’s not encouraging. TEPCO is in the process of turning on the lights. Once power is restored, we’ll have some idea whether TEPCO can get this under…
FEPC Statement 3/20
Time for our daily FEPC statement. There are some indications that, as TEPCO is restoring power, they are stabilizing the situation. An emerging argument is that either TEPCO or the Government of Japan has not been sufficiently forthcoming. Let me…
FEPC Statement 3/19
Below, please find the most recent FEPC statement. In the comments, reader “oldHP” notes that the wikipedia entry for Timeline of Fukushima Nuclear Accidents is quite good and easy to read. Full text after the jump.
Clapper on Iran NIE
Taking a break from Japan for a bit, DNI Clapper, in his prepared statement, provided an unclassified summary of the most recent NIE on Iran’s nuclear programs during the March 10 World Wide Threat hearing before the Senate Armed Services…
FEPC Statement 3/18
FEPC has released another update. This statements includes an announcement that Japan has increased the level of seriousness of the accident at Units 1,2 and 3 to 5 on the INES scale. A lot of folks thought a 6 was…