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CHECK OTHER SITES FOR OTHER AND MORE UP TO DATE INFORMATION and visit yesterday's update for more info and links - and see also: fallout alert - info on radiation exposure treatments and warnings - rosemary, potassium iodide
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UPDATE 9:00 PM 1700 PDT THURSDAY MARCH 17
until today it has been only an extremely serious situation getting worse.
although still an extremely serious situation with terrible potential and already tragic consequences, a bit of good news now is that they are apparently getting power back to the plant so that they might be able properly cool what's left of the reactors and fuel ponds. also: water canons and fire trucks may have been able to spray water into the critical #4 reactor pond, and the US is sending some giant pumps.
hopeful for success with cooling efforts -- still no encouraging word on meltdown status with four out of six reactors in serious trouble, some extremely so with partial meltdowns and containment breaches which verge on critical -- utter catastrophe looms as extreme radiation levels continue inhibiting effort to gain control -- fuming and perhaps melting spent fuel ponds perhaps most serious as they are not contained and vent directly into the atmosphere -- reactor 3 contains plutonium mix capable of worst -- radiation plume forecast to hit U.S. West Coast, but so far predicted fallout said to be minimal.
Tracking The Latest At The Fukushima Nuclear Plant
NPR: The situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been changing rapidly and growing increasingly complex since the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11. Problems began Friday, and each day has brought new, unsettling developments. With unique conditions at each reactor, slightly different responses are required. But the most common response at this point is water. Workers have been trying -- and in some cases are succeeding -- to pump seawater into the cores of Units 1, 2 and 3 and spray seawater to the spent fuel pools at 3, 4, 5 and 6. Each reactor has a used fuel pool in the upper level of their buildings. Getting water to the spent fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 from the air and ground proved difficult Wednesday and Thursday after radiation levels spiked. Japan Self-Defense Forces managed to spray 30 tons of water from the ground with emergency fire vehicles on the spent fuel pool at Unit 3 Thursday. Safety officials also said Thursday they were most concerned about the pool at Unit 4. Below is a chart showing the status of each of the six reactors, with the most recent information as possible... more [breakdown on all six reactors one by one]
regarding Fallout Concerns
Radiation Risk to the US
All Things Nuclear, MARCH 17, 2011: Given the fact that Japan is thousands of miles from the United States, it is highly unlikely that Americans would be exposed to radioactive material from direct inhalation of a plume from the Fukushima nuclear complex.
While wind patterns will likely carry the radioactive plume eastward, radioactive material will be so diffuse by the time it reaches Hawaii, Alaska, or the mainland United States that it is highly unlikely to create significant health concerns.
Related to this, UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) just released a statement about potassium-iodide pills... more
Animated map shows radioactive material's path across Pacific toward California
LA Times, Local: As The Times' Ralph Vartabedian reported, small amounts of radioactive isotopes from the quake-crippled Japanese nuclear power plant are being blown toward North America. Though they could reach California by Friday, officials said they see no health danger and stressed that any radiation reaching here would be well within safe limits.
“Serious Danger of a Full Core Meltdown”: Update on Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe - Video Newscast
Democracy Now! - Fears of a full-scale nuclear reactor meltdown are increasing as Japanese authorities use military helicopters to dump water on the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The water appears to have missed its target and failed to cool the plant’s reactors and spent fuel rods. “The walls of defense are falling, with the melting of the cores, the collapsing of the—we’re expecting the collapsing of the vessels. And then, with these damaged containments, these are all open windows to the atmosphere,” says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. Some experts say U.S. reactors are safer than those in Japan. But investigative journalist, Karl Grossman, notes a 1985 report by the National Regulatory Commission acknowledged a 50 percent chance of a severe core accident among the more than 100 nuclear power plants in the United States over a 20-year period. [includes rush transcript] - click here for reports on the crisis from DNow!
Cable reaches Japan nuclear plant
BBC News ASIA-PACIFIC: Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have successfully connected a power line to reactor 2, the UN's nuclear watchdog reports... Restoring power should enable engineers to restart the pumps which send coolant over the reactor.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the cable was in place by 1730 local time (0830 GMT) on Thursday, and that engineers plan to reconnect power to the reactor once workers have finished spraying seawater over reactor 3... Helicopters and water cannon have been dumping seawater over the Fukushima reactors, to try to prevent fuel rods melting, but it is unclear how great an impact this had... Video footage suggests the attempts were not very successful, with most of the water falling outside the target buildings... Earlier, an IAEA official said the situation at Fukushima had not deteriorated, but could yet do so... "We could say it's reasonably stable at the moment compared to yesterday," said Andrew Graham.
Japan nuclear crisis deepens as radiation keeps crews at bay
The Guardian: Race is on to restart cooling systems with emergency power after dropping water on damaged reactors has little effect
The frantic attempts to refill the leaking storage pool came as engineers installed a kilometre-long power cable to replace those destroyed in last Friday's earthquake and reconnect the power plant to the grid. Engineers said the power supply would first provide electricity to reactor 2. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) said three of the plant's six reactors – numbers 1, 5 and 6 – were relatively stable... The fresh power supply will be used to drive pumps that are needed at three of the reactors to circulate seawater and prevent their nuclear cores from going into meltdown. The water levels in all three reactors are dangerously low, exposing between 1.4m and 2.3m of the fuel rods, according to Nisa. The fuel rods should be covered with water at all times to prevent meltdown.
Click here to visit the Radiation Remedies and Usage Warnings portion of the fallout alert page.
NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW
FOR UPDATES: BBC News ASIA-PACIFIC
The Guardian (UK) - Fukushima nuclear power plant updates
NHK WORLD English (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN Podcast (English)
HERALD SUN Breaking News (Australia)
The Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)
GOOGLE SEARCH LATEST NEWS FOR "Fukushima + nucler"
GOOGLE RSS FEED FOR "Fukushima + nuclear"
Stars and Stripes
Check Democracy Now! for excellent reporting.
See also:
• news feeds on right
• more news feeds below
• yesterday's update for info, links, and videos
• fallout alert with some info on radiation exposure remedies and warnings - (rosemary, potassium iodide)
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