Things That Matter

Uranium to the masses – the fresh trend of spring 2011. We know that 6 reactors are more or less leaking in Fukushima, which is comforatably far away.

The story’s a bit different with Libya. The umbrella protecting the civilians has its side effects….

“In the first 24 hours of the Libyan attack, US B-2s dropped forty-five 2,000-pound bombs. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from British and French planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads.

DU is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore. It is used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Because it is a very heavy substance, 1.7 times denser than lead, it is highly valued by the military for its ability to punch through armoured vehicles and buildings. When a weapon made with a DU tip strikes a solid object like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it, and then erupts in a burning cloud of vapour. The vapour settles as dust, which is not only poisonous, but also radioactive.

An impacting DU missile burns at 10,000 degrees C. When it strikes a target, 30% fragments into shrapnel. The remaining 70% vaporises into three highly-toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. This black dust remains suspended in the air and, according to wind and weather, can travel over great distances. If you think Iraq and Libya are far away, remember that radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales….

During the “Shock and Awe the invading US forces fired two hundred tons of radioactive material into buildings, homes, streets and gardens of Baghdad. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor took a Geiger counter to parts of the city that had been subjected to heavy shelling by US troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal in residential areas. ”

With westerly winds blowing from Libya we could find something similar in the resorts of Egypt and Israel fairly soon, especially in the light of very likely invasion by ground troops, as Gaddafi’s tanks fail to stick on the ground, an act that tends to increase the amount of DU used by an order of magnitude.

With hot southern winds from the Sahara, the honour of welcoming the radioactive cloud will stay with the resorts of Italy and Greece. So when picking a sunscreen, add a dosimeter just in case. Local governments might not be too willing to undermine the tourist industry, so whether this gets reported remains to be seen.

We will find out soon enough, sunburn combined with radiation levels results in mild swelling of exposed body parts (if you’re old enough to have experienced  Chernobyl fallout in Western Europe, you may remember).

Special caution should be taken by those that are pregnant…

Once you read this, you can draw your own conclusion of the objectivity of information released during an emergency that may be somewhat embarrasing to the government. Do not put all your faith in what you hear, but rather try to act according to common sense.

The Japanese government flip-flopped on the situation at the plant, safety measures, and evacuation plan, leaving the residents confused, and potentially exposed to more radiation.

The government’s response may be understandable given the situation, but coming from that country, I think it goes much deeper. It is one of the flaws of the Japanese system: Extend and pretend.

Here’s the time line of the explosion and subsequent response from Yomiuri Shinbun (translating from original Japanese, from two articles-here and here, 3/13/2011):

Around 3PM, 3/12:

TEPCO (power company) announced their effort to lower the pressure in the fuel core container was successful.

Around 4PM:

Emergency broadcast system of Minami-Soma City (where the power plant in question is located) announced that there may have been an explosion in the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant, and warned the residents not to go outside.

The residents, not sure what to do, started to evacuate anyway, to get as far away as possible.

At 4:30PM:

Another emergency broadcast message that the previous news of explosion was WRONG, and that THERE WAS NO EXPLOSION at the plant.

Relieved, some residents went outdoors. However, the TV was showing the building that housed No.1 reactor – the top half of the building had apparently been blown off.

At 5:35PM:

Another emergency broadcast message telling the residents not to go outside, JUST IN CASE. The residents were perplexed. Only fragmented information about the status of the plant from the government or TEPCO (the power company in charge of the plant).

At 5:45PM:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano held a press conference and said there had been some sort of “explosion event” at the plant, but declined to comment further when pressed, pending further analysis.

Around 6:30PM:

The evacuation zone was finally expanded from 10 kilometers to 20 kilometers.

At 8:40PM:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano held a second press conference, and finally admitted that there had been an explosion, and assured that there was nothing to worry about, everything was under control. He said there was no breach of the container and the reactor core was intact, and the explosion was due to the hydrogen from the released steam combined with the surrounding air (oxygen), which blew up the top half of the building.

THE EXPLOSION TOOK PLACE AT 3:36PM.

It took the cabinet secretary more than 5 hours to even admit there was an explosion at the nuclear plant. And we are to believe his word that the situation is totally under their control, that they know what they’re doing.

I sure hope he’s right.

(Hope is a dirty word now, I forgot..)

Roger Highfield, magazine editor, and Yuriko Nagano, contributor, Tokyo

A turning point in the efforts to avert a meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station came in the wake of the blast that destroyed the exterior walls of the crippled reactor.

The emergency began when the magnitude 8.9 earthquake which rocked the region on 11 March put the 439 MWe Boiling Water Reactor into shutdown mode.

Even after shut down, however, a reactor still requires cooling.

Diesel generators initially supplied cooling water but they failed about an hour after the quake as a result of the tsunami, prompting fears of a meltdown.

The pressure in Fukushima 1 started to rise, as the cooling water covering the core boiled into steam.

Malcolm Grimston, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, said that the fuel began to overheat.

At around 1500 degrees Celsius, the zirconium metal cladding the uranium fuel would react with the steam to form hydrogen.

If any of the fuel rods have been compromised, there would be evidence of a small amount of other radioisotopes called fission fragments (specifically radio-caesium and radio-iodine), according to Paddy Regan of Surrey University.

Regan added that while the intergrity of the pressure vessel is secure, the vast majority of the fission fragments and radioactive fuel material is safely contained within the pressure vessel and should not escape.

However, the pressure in the steel vessel would have increased inexorably.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tepco, had the flexibility to use pressure release valves to vent some steam, even though it was mildly contaminated, because it had taken the precaution of evacuating the local population within a 12 mile radius.

Grimston described this as “extraordinary forward planning”.

The steam was released from the pressure vessel into the surrounding building and this was consistent with reports that radiation levels had soared to around 1000 times the background level. Officials also said they had detected caesium, an indication that some fuel was already damaged.

The blast occurred at 3:36 PM local time after a large aftershock shook the plant, though Grimston said that it was not clear the two were connected.

The shock wave that can be clearly seen in video of the blast suggests a point ignition source detonated the released hydrogen when it came into contact with oxygen in the air, he said.

Four workers were injured, according to Atsushi Sugimoto of Tepco.

“At this point, we don’t know how much radiation has escaped,” said Shinji Kinjo of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. “Should the situation change, the evacuation zone could become larger.”

Yukio Edano, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, said the cause of the explosion was a mixture of hydrogen, from steam escaping the core, and oxygen from the surrounding air.

He added that the pressure vessel was unaffected and the incident would not be a cause for a large amount of radiation to leak.

Although the concrete cladding disintegrated in a spectacular fashion, Grimston said that the fact that the metal frame of the building was left intact suggests that the explosion was not as violent as it looked.

Because the plant went into operation in 1971 and is due for decommissioning, the decision was taken by Tepco to flood it with seawater containing boric acid to kill the nuclear reaction.

This began just after 2pm UK time and would take up to ten hours.

The use of corrosive seawater would render the reactor unusable but would ensure that the risk of a meltdown had been averted, said Grimston.

He said that, if the information he had received was accurate, it looked a “textbook example” of how to deal with a nuclear emergency.

Tepco said Fukushima was stable but remained sketchy on key details.

More measures are under way to protect the local population. “The authorities also say they are making preparations to distribute iodine to residents,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Meanwhile, an official at Japan’s nuclear safety agency rated the incident  a 4, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Three Mile Island was rated a 5, while Chernobyl was rated 7 on the 1 to 7 scale.