Update from Tokyo
Ok, so that earthquake joke I made the other day is no longer funny. Apparently, those quakes were just the warm-up act for the massive 8.9 behemoth that struck us today. I was just exiting the Tokyo subway when it…
Fukushima, as it happened
March 2011, day by day: the Japanese industry’s own status reports from the stricken plant, posted as they came in, with what they did and didn’t tell us.
12 posts
FEPC Statement on Fukushima
Am pleased to be back in the US, safe and sound with my family. (Note to reporters: Stop sounding disappointed; it pisses me off.) The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC) — which arranged for my trip —…
Another FEPC Statement
Another statement from FEPC. My comment: TEPCO is fighting the good fight, continuing to inject seawater into Units 1 and 2. TEPCO has suspended seawater injection on Unit 3 after the explosion. That looks very bad. Remember, the goal now…
New FEPC Statement
Update | 4:32 pm It looks like there is some confusion about the source of the fire, which the IAEA reported was “at the spent fuel storage pond.” Keith Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times quote an…
Cascading Failures
No one knows where Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster will end. The current signs are ominous. We can only hope that the spent-fuel ponds can be prevented from boiling off. In the meantime, we can try to draw out some of…
Most Recent FEPC Statement
FEPC has released another update. Not great news. The cores are all at least partially exposed. The water temperature in the spent fuel pond is 183 degrees Fahrenheit — close to boiling. The fact sheet contains a small amount of…
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…
FEPC Info Sheet 3/24
TEPCO turned on the lights in the control room at Unit 1. I imagine this is a little like turning on the lights Saturday morning after a very large party that turned ugly. It has to be the same sinking…
TEPCO Info Update 3/25
TEPCO ponders the source of the Iodine-131 and concludes it is probably from reactor 3. Apropos of our discussions earlier today and yesterday. Full-text after the jump.
Localized Criticalities at Fukushima?
My colleague at MIIS, Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress has written a paper, What Was The Cause Of The High Cl-38 Radioactivity In The Fukushima Daiichi Reactor #1. Ferenc concludes that we cannot exclude the possibility that little pockets of melted fuel have…
FEPC Info Sheet 3/30
Below the jump, please find today’s FEPC info sheet. I wanted to pass along two other items of interest, which perhaps ought to inform the stories we are going to start seeing over the next couple of days as the…
Is Mrs. Merkel Irrational?
On Monday morning March 28, I appeared at the opening panel discussion at the 2011 Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference, to discuss “Implications of Japan’s Nuclear Disaster,” together with two colleagues, Eli Levite, ex of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, and former…