View of the reactor 4 fuel- handling machine at Fukushima Daiichi power station. This device ordinarily hangs from the ceiling within the service area of the reactor. It is used to shift fuel from storage or transport to the core, or from the core elsewhere. The machine now is on top of the reactor spent- fuel pool, 8 meters below where it ought to be. Smoke is presumably from overheating fuel rods within the pool. The photograph was taken by a remote- controlled helicopter within the past week, (Kyodo News).

The soothing continues non- stop:

High levels of radiation at 2 reactors

Yomiuri Shimbun

High levels of radiation were measured Sunday by remote-controlled robots inside the buildings that house reactors Nos. 1 and 3 of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant–levels that would need to be lowered for workers to work inside the buildings, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Monday.

The agency said radiation levels were measured from 10 to 49 millisieverts per hour for the No. 1 reactor and from 28 to 57 millisieverts per hour for the No. 3 reactor.

“As things stand now, it would be difficult to send workers inside them to work. We need to lower the radiation levels or block them somehow,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokeman for the agency.

It marked the first time that radiation levels have been measured inside the buildings housing reactors Nos. 1 and 3 since hydrogen explosions occurred in these two units in the wake of the massive quake and tsunami on March 11.

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Inside the building housing reactor No. 3, the interior of which was also photographed by a robot Sunday, there was a large amount of debris found, making it impossible for the robot to advance further.

Where in the reactor ‘buildings’ did the robots go? One would think they were confined to office areas where there are no pressure control doors that would require human hands to open. What would the radiation levels be within the actual containments? Probably lethal within minutes: this would explain the gibberish about the “difficulty to send workers inside”.

Inside where, exactly?

Here’s more:

Challenges abound to control crippled reactors

Yomiuri Shimbun

Can Tokyo Electric Power Co. bring the four troubled reactors at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant under control within six to nine months as it announced Sunday? What challenges must it overcome before achieving its avowed goals?

Under the announced timetable, TEPCO aims to bring the crippled reactors to a stable condition known as a “cold shutdown”–a situation in which water temperatures inside the reactors are stabilized below 100 C–within six to nine months.

It will take this amount of time to achieve cold shutdown because the reactors, fuel rods and containment vessels are all in terrible conditions, experts said.

In the aftermath of a series of accidents at the Fukushima Prefecture power plant that was triggered by the March 11 earthquake and a massive tsunami, TEPCO studied measures such as purifying ever-increasing amounts of contaminated water and using it to cool the reactors and cooling water inside the reactors through heat exchangers by running seawater through narrow pipes.

But under its new timetable, the utility decided to give precedence to a method of pouring water to fill reactor containment vessels to cool pressure vessels as suggested by U.S. nuclear experts.

The problem here is what does TEPCO mean by ‘containment’? Does containment mean the pressure vessel(s) or does it mean the concrete buildings within which the pressure vessels are located? Presumably, the pressure vessels are already being flooded with water leaking out almost as fast as it can be pumped in.

Likewise, the containments are also compromised, with water carrying intensely radioactive isotopes flowing into basements under the turbine hall(s). Filling the containment(s) is an idea without legs due to earthquake and explosion damage to the brittle concrete structures. Pouring in the water will indeed cool what is left of the reactors’ fuel and fuel waste. The ground will become the sink for heat created by decay heat and criticality but the fuel will release massive amounts of radioactivity which will flow into the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, radioactive particles on the ground or volatile gases will continue to be lofted into the air. Over time, the plant grounds will become too lethal for anyone to stand for more than a few minutes. Farms, towns and homes close to the plant will become uninhabitable. Once that point is reached the reactor complex will have to be abandoned, if only until a larger- Chernobyl scale approach is mustered.

Once that approach takes form the ‘techy’ idea of ‘cheap’ meltdowns will be replaced by reality: nuclear power is a modernity- canceling force. Technology insists problems can be solved by ‘software’ or ‘robots’. Robots cannot climb stairs, move debris or handle water. Only humans willing to gain a lifetime of radiation exposure in a few seconds while wearing lead underwear and socks can do this. Modernity is rendered non- relevant to the problems modernity itself creates.

Right now, the water is the carrier of radioactivity: it is the source of the 57 or whatever mSv per hour detected within the buildings along with the much higher readings taken in the basements. TEPCO presumes to be able to recycle this intensely radioactive water — outside the containments — and use it for cooling:

New water treatment facilities

As for the handling of contaminated water, there are plans to establish new water treatment facilities and create new reservoirs, according to TEPCO’s timetable.

However, TEPCO has admitted the risk of possible delays in establishing such facilities and that they may not work as planned.

When transferring high-level contaminated water, careful handling is required to prevent the water from leaking from hose joints.

Meanwhile, it is highly likely that contaminated water is leaking from the No. 2 reactor, where a pressure suppression chamber is feared to have been damaged. Radiation levels around the reactor are too high for workers to approach and “seal” the reactor building.

At the No. 4 reactor, it is necessary to reinforce the structure below the temporary storage pool for spent nuclear fuel rods to prevent any possible spillage. However, this task is also expected to be fraught with difficulty.

Hose joints: TEPCO has the same credibility as Curly, Larry and Moe. TEPCO insinuates it can cycle thousands of tons of water per day through a leaky Rube Goldberg array of hoses, pumps and heat exchangers. Who the fuck are these idiots trying to kid? The water would carry both radioactive particles and toxic residues but also salt from seawater flooding. Heat, salinity and corrosive radiation would accelerate failures, the high levels of radiation would make repairs hazardous. Radiation would accumulate within the equipment: the passage of time (and successful use) would render it too radioactive to approach.

Keep in mind:

• Water in a reactor is a fission moderator. Reactor flooding is allowing some criticality to take place even as it allows the resulting heat to be dissipated. Criticality is creating short- lived gaseous isotopes such as iodine 131 which are dissolved in the water. Since the condition of the cores is unknown, the possibility exists for a criticality runaway and more steam explosions and/or fires.

• Managers are already injecting nitrogen in an attempt to suppress hydrogen/oxygen recombination. This suggests that fuel is ‘hot’ enough to cause radiation dissociation of water.

• Radiation is cumulative. Particles are trapped within the structures designed to contain them.

• TEPCO is in a race against time. The ongoing emissions of radiation from the reactors will continue to accumulate. At the end of the six- month suggested period to reach ‘cold shut down’ radiation from the plant will be more than 75% of Chernobyl’s. In a month, Fukushima has emitted 10% of the radionuclides emitted by Chernobyl. The calculus of radiation is relentless.

Events will overtake TEPCO along with the Japanese government. The country will have no choice but to marshal its resources and launch an all- out assault on the plants’ nuclear cores. This assault will includes thousands of tons of lead and boron, millions of tons of sand, hundreds of thousands of ‘volunteers’, equipment to build a massive concrete cofferdam between the plants and the sea, millions of tons of concrete along with the dissolution of TEPCO and the restructuring of the Japanese government.

This isn’t speculation, it is inevitable. Like the ongoing thermodynamic crisis that is unwinding on Wall Street and in the West’s capitals, the emergence of physics in day to day life will represent a tax against modernity that cannot be evaded.

Meanwhile, Sally Williams @ Intelligent Life Magazine by way of the Economist describes the art of giving survivors the ultimate bad news, that a loved one is fatally ill or deceased:

“We find it really difficult telling people really difficult things,” Dr Leonard tells me later. And she is experienced—in her clinic at the Whittington Hospital in north London, she has to tell two to three patients a week that they are coming to the end of their lives. Even a decade after the Cancer Plan, “we’re not trained to deal with the emotional fallout.”

The immediate fallout tends to be tears, shock, numbness or a sense of unreality. Some people are unnaturally calm, which may not help: “It presents a challenge for working out if they’ve understood what you’ve said,” says one consultant. Models such as spikes, a six-step protocol for breaking bad news, have caught on quickly in medical schools because they provide a framework and make a messy situation easier to manage (“set up an interview…assess the patient’s perception”). But in the end the consultation comes down to two people: doctor and patient. And when they sit facing each other in the consulting room, patients can be very influenced by the doctor’s manner. In 1991 the British Medical Journal published a study called “Your Child is Dead” by Ilora Finlay and Doris Dallimore. It asked the parents of children killed in car accidents to comment on the way three groups—the police, nurses and doctors—had delivered the bad news. The police were rated the most sympathetic because it looked as if it mattered to them. “He cared so much he had tears in his eyes,” was one parent’s comment on one officer.

The lesson, says Dr Leonard, is that showing emotion is OK. She recently examined some junior doctors and found them skilled at adopting the bad-news framework, but it failed to benefit the patients, because they were terse and curt. “Of course, don’t reach for the tissues first and start crying. But in medicine we’re trained to be so professional and we come across as cold and actually, if you are a bit choked and you are sad, patients don’t mind, because they see it hurts you too.”

Let me try this out:

“Guess what, Americans, Europeans, Chinese and other wannabes? Yr waste- based economy with all the crap you truly love such as automobiles, big houses and luxury are dead, dead dead!

Hoo fucking Ray!

(I have to work on my bedside manner, you think?)

UPDATE:

Arnie Gunderson looks @ reactor temps and pressures along with measuring iodine isotopes in reactor 4 spent fuel pool.