The AP News app just beeped my iPhone that Japanese officials have confirmed an explosion at the Number 3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was a building at the Number 1 reactor that exploded yesterday. More details as they come in.
UPDATE: From the BBC:
A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan which was damaged in Friday’s earthquake, but officials said it had resisted the blast.
TV footage showed smoke rising from Fukushima plant’s reactor 3, a day after an explosion hit reactor 1.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency said the blast was believed to have been caused by the build-up of hydrogen.
However, the agency said it could not confirm whether there had been an uncontrolled leak of radioactivity.
UPDATE, UPDATE: There are some in the comment thread who seem to think that I am being alarmist… that it was just a hydrogen explosion, so nothing to worry about. But I dunno, it’s hard to watch a mushroom cloud rise over a nuclear power plant and not be at least the teensiest bit concerned:
Correction: There was an explosion in the building containment surrounding reactor 3. The reactor itself didn’t explode.
You might keep in mind that one of those events is a problem but a minor issue and caused by taking steps to reduce the already small risk of radiation exposure in venting steam. One is a serious catastrophe. Mixing or equating them is misleading and likely to contribute to the panic your colleague Mudede contributed to yesterday.
Yes, what happened to Charles? Was he forbidden to post about this, or did he OD on his vitamins?
Agree with @1 here.
Yup. I was just going to post the point @1. Thanks, @1. Well put. Totally different.
Secondary-containment explosions could, however, disrupt critical sensors, control circuits, pumps, valves, etc.
@1,
I went with the info in the AP newsfeed until more details came in. That said, I wrote “at” the Number 3 reactor, which was accurate enough. The error in my original post was to imply that the Number 1 reactor had exploded yesterday; I have corrected that.
Where are the spent fuel ponds at the Fukushima plant? I suspect that there’s a lot of potentially nasty stuff stored outside the reactor itself.
Another example of how the “Like” button on Facebook can be unfortunate.
Serious stuff, however. I hope our media can keep and even keel about this, but I’m not hopeful.
“can keep AN even keel”…apologies.
The containment around the reactor exploded? Not the reactor? Is that all? Is that even news? Anybody who blogs about a non-event like the containment around a reactor exploding is shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Look, I’ll check my Webster’s: news (n) matter that is newsworthy.
Matter that is newsworthy. Does Webster’s say word one about some little old containment blowing off? No sir, that’s not the defintion of news according to The Dictionary, you ignorant treehuggers.
These alarmist hippies who jump every time a tweency little explosion knocks one or two dinky little feet of concrete off a reactor containment make me sick. They’re supposed to explode, you potheads! Real men sleep sound in their beds at night listening to the reassuring thrum of reactor containments exploding.
And the radiation released is less than you normally receive getting your chest x-rayed in a jet flying at 30,000 feet for a year while breathing coal dust. And when was the last time anyone you know balked at that? Anyone? Ever? No. Nobody I know has ever said they objected to that. So shut up.
Remain calm. All is well.
There had been warnings from the people working on the plants that there would probably be an explosion in the Number 3 containment building. It was necessary to vent gases, one of which is hydrogen. This was the same thing that happened in building No. 1. Not great news but not a signal that control of the situation has been lost. Personally I’m praying for the people who are inside that plant struggling to contain this and risking their lives for everyone else.
While I admit to knowing next to nothing about how reactors work, wouldn’t you think that if they ever needed to release hydrogen gas to prevent something even worse happening, that having the building explode wouldn’t be the best route? Wouldn’t you think the ability to release gas would be part of the building plan?
Maybe you guys are reading news reports from sources other than the usual internet ones, but all of the ones I’ve looked at use language similar to what Goldy is saying…”explosion at the reactor.” And yeah, I think explosions at nuclear reactors are newsworthy.
The shape the ejecta forms from a discharge is irrelevant; “mushroom cloud” doesn’t even seem appropriate from the video posted.
Here’s the question; what is the reactor design? If this were a Chernobyl design reactor, I could understand high levels of concern; however, I suspect that the japanese have not been stupid enough to implement a chernobyl style design.
Failure modes are a critical part of any reactor design (assuming we’re not talking about soviet-era reactor design); for this reactor, what are the expected failure modes, and what are the tolerances? Instead of reporting semi-panicked information, could you possibly research and report the relevant information?
Because in an effort to keep people freaking out about venting, they allowed hydrogen to build up inside the building. The building, I might add, is not even containment – it’s not pressure housed and not supposed to keep anything out.
@10 I know it looks bad. But trust me when I say that there were far more casualties on that NYC bus than this will cause. People should focus on the people who are in actual danger from this earthquake, who are without power, food, water.
A friend that I used to work with sent me this link, and I actually found it well-written. Maybe some of you would feel better if you checked it out. http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/0…
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention I worked on nuclear reactors for 6 years.
@13 It is impossible for this reactor to do what chernobyl did. Impossible. I will personally donate everything I own to The Stranger to set on fire in pioneer square if it does.
11 dead – half are national defense – in the 2nd explosion – likely NUCLEAR MELTDOWN
No, it’s not good. People are trying to leave Japan by air.
also they are adding Boron to sea water (which they never use) to flood the cores in a last ditch attempt to prevent the nuclear meltdown.
dudes, @16 for the bonfire win!
@16: that was my point, that this is not Chernobyl, or anything even vaguely close. The alarmism being promulgated on Slog is ridiculous; I was asking Goldy to possibly do the research that would assuage his fears (and hopefully report his findings to the rest of us, as well).
They keep trying to blame this on hydrogen. If this thing is as much of a sieve as it appears to be, the hydrogen gas would be the first thing to dissipate.
So, guess I’m willing to go down as an alarmist, but three uncooled piles of nuke goo, spewing radiation and read to to coalesce into an underground Superbomb gets my hackles up.
When are we going to take this situation out of their (clearly incompetent) hands and get a UN/US team in there to give us the truth?!
Echoing @16, I’d encourage @13 or anyone who wants a pretty good simple summary that seems to represent what the last couple days’ reporting has described as the differences between the Japanese reactors and Chernobyl to go ahead and try this from the Christian Science Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Ne…
It’s still hard to tell what the exact situation is at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 170 miles north of Tokyo. Concerns were first raised about damage Friday, after the earthquake and its aftershocks. Saturday, despite officials’ decision to flood the first reactor at the plant, there was an explosion in the building housing it, though, The New York Times reports, “the steel containment of the reactor remained in place.” That’s the official line, at least. Now, Sunday, the battle is on to keep the same thing from happening in the third reactor.
I won’t pretend to know the extent of the radiation, but as explosions go, that wasn’t a particularly big one. And while it was vaguely mushroom shaped, it was nothing like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear blast.
Take a deep breath, Goldy. This is twice in one day you are overreacting. They have been predicting this blast for more than a day. It is essentially a repeat scenario of the earlier blast. It isn’t a surprise to anyone who has been watching/reading the news. Not to be taken lightly, but not a sign of the apocalypse either.
@18 It’s called chemically poisoning the reactor to ensure that it doesn’t somehow start up again. I’d be surprised if you could find a reactor on earth without such a plan.
@21,
Do you have any evidence that anything more than a minute amount of radiation has leaked? Do you have any expertise in nuclear reactors that would allow you to accurately judge the effectiveness of the Japanese competency to deal with the problem? Under what authority do you propose to take this out of Japanese hands and send in a UN/US team, unless they specifically ask for help?
@21 They are cooled. They are not spewing radiation. And I don’t even understand what you mean by superbomb. Chill.
Looked more like a penis cloud to me.
I’m scared too, but I am too lazy to educate myself about basic physics!
Hold me!
Fun fact: Any sufficiently large explosion forms a mushroom cloud. Nuclear material doesn’t affect the shape of the resulting clouds at all.
From the Toronto Globe and Mail this morning:
A partial meltdown was already likely under way at one nuclear reactor, a top official said, and operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down at the power plant’s other units and prevent the disaster from growing even worse.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/worl…
Let’s see…who do i believe a top official of the Japanese government or some ideologicaly pro-nuke trolls named prompt and Reverse Polarity. Think I’ll keep worrying.
Goldy, you are being needlessly alarmist. Mushrooms are fungi. Fungi clouds are harmless because fun guys are insouciantly unware, like Gatsby, of the homonymical implications of neoliberalism. The real meaning of the cloud is in the absence, the lack, the seemingly endless non-infinite nature of the real. It should make you question post-neoliberalism, regardless of the ultimate meaning of your embrace of bourgeois contemporary dance.
Sincerely,
Charles
Well, AP says this: U.S. Seventh Fleet moves ships, planes away from quake-hit Japanese nuclear plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination.
The buildings were built to withstand a 7.9 earthquake. With or without specific radioactive anything, these are becoming uncontrollable exploding buildings. Some of them happen to be nuclear. As someone said early on a blog I think boingboing, this looks like the end if there ever was one. Didn’t they upgrade it to a 9.0? My heart goes out, money can’t even being to help this. The damage looks to be in the trillions.
@31 Want to put money on it that everything will be ok, there will be no dangerous release of radioactive material to the public?
This is why we can’t have nice things like nuclear plants. People get all crazy.
@35 it’s easy to understand why people get scared shitless about nuclear, though. I won’t say it’s because of our bad track record–it’s been not TOO bad for the big things. But when you have the nuclear attacks in World War 2, Chernobyl, and the Ukraine as the main benchmarks, it’s not surprising that people get scared shitless. If something went totally tits up, you’re talking about some pretty extreme long term scenarios.
But we do have a pretty poor overall track record of keeping nuclear material under wraps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civ…
@35&36
Fun fact! Every nuclear scientist is panicking that we have two molten balls of poisen DEATH poisen starting…..so yeah……panick.
Fact number TWO!!! No one will know if the rods have melted until the cooling systems start and they can check inside the reactors, but everything sounds bad.
lets say this explosion is no big deal, they still have 6 reactors that are malfunctioning and in various states of collapse. Do you believe they have ever planned for this amount of damage? Do you believe they have the personnel, equipment and supplies on hand to deal with 6 simultaneous disasters? My fear is that they are currently like those plate spinners from vaudeville. they run from plate to plate and hope they can get to each one before it crashes to the stage.
I love all the nuclear apologists! “Nothing is wrong! These are events they plan for! No big deal! As an anonymous commenter with a fake name and funny avatar, I will burn all my stuff if this gets worse!” I hope they are getting paid well, although I would think the GOP and the conservative think tanks do not pay these folks that well.
Shit, this is bad. This is real bad.
@40: And I love people who act like chickens who’ve been hit in the head by an acorn instead of doing a little research!
Goldy and Charles are smart people, and like many smart people they assume that (since they are smart) they understand everything. Even things they know nothing about. (Mushroom cloud, Goldy? Really?)
Personally I spent the weekend listening to some one who has actually operated a nuclear reactor sputter with frustration at the irresponsible reporting (and blogging) on this disaster. Yes it is bad. Yes it will be hugely expensive. No it is not like Chernobyl. No it is not a giant bomb.
Oh and FYI gttim? People who have actually worked with nuclear reactors aren’t “apologists”. They’re people who know what the fuck they’re talking about. Which Goldy, Charles and in particular Will in Seattle don’t.
@38: I would ask for a citation please, as to your assertion that “Every nuclear scientist is panicking.”
Some people are mistaking my viewpoint.
I’m not pro-nuclear, nor an apologist. And I didn’t say nothing was wrong. I’m actually opposed to nuclear power, generally.
I was simply pointing out that the explosion was neither a nuclear mushroom cloud, nor a sign of impending doom. It is time for concern, but not panic. No explosion is good, but this particular explosion was not unexpected, and wasn’t catastrophic. If people care to educate themselves, they can understand that things are serious and tense in those nuclear plants, but not completely out of control.
“Mushroom cloud” is most definitely alarmist. There was no mushroom cloud, just a building plain ol’ blowin’ up, probably from catastrophic failure of a big-ass steam pipe. Now, having said that, yeah, they’ve got a pretty serious situation over there. But please don’t be like the rest of science-ignorant America.
Here’s another, calm analysis of the situation with the nuclear plants there.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/…
The explosions are caused by the use of seawater to cool the containment vessels… due to the minerals and salt in sea water, the excess heat causes hydrogen and oxygen to build up… and cause an explosion. This is a known and anticipated event, when using the backup-backup cooling method of pulling sea water in to cool things down.
I don’t like nuclear power, but if these calmer articles are to be believed, the plant shutdowns are going well, especially in the face of a giant-fucking earthquake and subsequent giant tsunami. Yay safety regulations.
mushroom cloud? yet another reminder to never believe anything posted on slog, ever.
@35 I don’t think immediate deaths happen from meltdowns unless we’re talking Chernobyl, which this is clearly not. Things have gone about as well as they could with such a shitty precipitating natural disaster. Yet, MORE radiation in the atmosphere increases the probability of ionizing events, potentially leading to cancer or other illnesses that may take time to develop. Note that there’s still debate over what actually has happened with Chernobyl and the real death toll is indeterminate because some of those people are STILL suffering from the results.
Corrected for you below:
“This is why we can’t have nice things like nuclear plants. People get all CANCER.”
@38 “two molten balls of poisen DEATH poisen starting” the fuck are you talking about?
@45 Hydrogen probably would have built up with any water they used. The reason you try not to use seawater is that the minerals in seawater will fill the reactor vessel with a ton of gunk and it’s a pain in the ass to get rid of.
@47 You can say that the radiation people have gotten will increase their risk of cancer in the same way that standing outside in the sun for 10 minutes a day increases your risk of cancer. It’s totally true. But the mistake is thinking that anyone within a thousand mile radius of this incident who gets cancer gets it due to this – but you can’t prove it either way.
I will say that I’m frustrated that they can’t seem to keep the cores covered.
@48 Again, this whole argument that since analogous amounts of radiation are already extant, that we should keep adding more to the environment is troubling to me. Still I am more concerned for the victims of the tragedy in general. And yes, the natural disaster (the combo of the earthquakes and tsunami) has had an immense impact compared to the nuke issues.
Just a quick comment on the “mushroom cloud …”
in the blog text at the top…
IF this were a nuclear explosion, & not a much smaller hydrogen explosion
NONE OF THE BUILDINGS SHOWN IN THE PICTURE WOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT
STANDING … duh …
@48: @38 is talking about the two reactors that appear to be in at least partial meltdown. A melted mass of radioactive Uranium which could reach criticality again inside the reactor and which control rods no longer have ANY ability to stop is a pretty bad thing. As in, if you were standing next to that, you would be dying/dead in a matter of minutes.
And a third reactor whose core appears to have been COMPLETELY UNCOVERED for apparently MORE THAN TWO HOURS.
We have a situation where we have a COMPLETELY UNKNOWN STATE OF CONTROL over THREE reactor cores, and an UNKNOWN ability to actually get water into and cover the core. For all ANYBODY (including the plant operators) knows, the core could have melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel already and could be spilling out all over the floor.
To continue stating that “everything is under control and the cores are cooling down and the nuclear reaction has stopped and everything will just continue to cool” IS A CROCK OF TOTAL BULLSHIT.
NOBODY KNOWS what is going on inside those containment structures.
So let’s stick with the facts here. WE HAVE SOME DEGREE OF MELTDOWN HAPPENING, and likely in THREE reactors. We have an UNKNOWN ability to cool the cores, and repeated failures to get water into the core. We have evidence of an APPARENT leakage in at least one reactor vessel, due to the ability to pump water INTO the reactor, but an INABILITY to increase the water level. We DON’T really know how much melt has happened, or whether things have stabilized or not.
It’s POSSIBLE that things will not get any worse and they will stabilize and we’ll be left basically with a Three Mile Island-type incident at 3 (or more) reactors.
It’s also POSSIBLE that things will continue to worsen.
The operators don’t know what’s going on, and all of their safety systems have been obliterated. If that’s NOT concerning to you at ALL, then you’re an idiot.
Yeesh. I know it’s Slog and all, but do you really have to be such a fuckinf drama queen?