7/3/2011 TEPCO makes progress on cooling/water treatment system

Date: 7/3/2011

There does seem to be some progress made on TEPCO's cooling/water treatment system. According to the Daily Yomiuri, on Saturday the system was run and has decontaminated 3,580 tons of radioactive water, enough to provide 10 days worth of cooling.[1] Another sign of progress is that the cooling system is able to work off of decontaminated water in a closed loop, without requiring 2-3 tons of fresh water per hour being pumped in (sourced externally) as was previously required when the cooling system first started operating on June 27, 2011.[1, 2]

Also a broken hose with a large hole has been replaced which allows the resumption of reactor #5's cooling, which had been halted to do the repair.[3] NHK World: TEPCO improves circulation cooling system [2] When examining the right sidebar of the EX-SKF blog, where EX-SKF tracks the millimeters from the top of radioactive water drainage ditches to the water level, the distance from the top of the water to the top of the ditches is increasing, which means the amount of contaminated water pooling at Fukushima Daiichi is getting lower: another good sign. Sources: [1] TEPCO in water purification push, Daily Yomiuri [2] TEPCO improves circulation cooling system, NHK World [3] Cooling resumes at Fukushima No.5 reactor, NHK World

EX-SKF Sidebar

7/2/2011 Fukushima Update–Lies, Damned Lies and the Big Lie.

Source: The Paltry Sapien
Date: 7/2/2011
by: Matthew Payne

Baby Being Checked out for Radiation (c/o The Guardian)

UPDATE (7/3): The post below discusses what I see as the all-pervading mendacity surrounding the Fukushima accident, but The Atlantic Wire has an extremely important story, based on eye-witness interviews, that finally breaks TEPC0′s and the various governments’ blockades on what precipitated the accident (h/t to Joieau at Daily Kos for highlighting this story). We now know the standard story, that of a recovering plant being knocked out by tsunami wave taking out its emergency electrical generators, is the biggest lie. As the authors of the piece, Jake Adelstein and David McNeill note the truth may have been something very different:

But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes, burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake — long before the tidal wave reached the facilities, long before the electricity went out?

...
Read full article here

7/2/2011 Los Alamos lab prepares to reopen as fire threat eases

Source: Reuters
Date: Sat Jul 2, 2011 5:42pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory has ended a state of emergency and was taking small steps on Saturday toward reopening as the threat from a record New Mexico wildfire subsided.

But highlighting the need for continued vigilance, a squirrel sparked a small blaze on lab property on Saturday when it touched a transformer. That fire, which measured about an acre, was quickly extinguished, the lab said in a statement.
...
Read full article here

Editor's Note: TA-53 (Technical Area 53) is where the squirrel mentioned above blew out the transformer, causing an electrical fire.  TA-53 is outside any of the affected areas as shown in the MODIS or GOES fire detection maps provided by the USDA Forest Service.

Below is a map showing the Technical Areas and Material Disposal Areas together:

7/2/2011 Japanese Youth Show Signs Of Radiation Exposure

Source: care2 (make a difference)
Date: July 2, 2011 6:30 pm
by: by Beth Buczynski

Test results show that children living in Fukushima city during the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear fallout may suffer from internal radiation exposure.

It is known that the Fukushima power plant, which is still under repair, sprang several radioactive leaks during the natural disasters, contaminating both sea and tap water, as well as soil of surrounding farm areas. Produce and milk exports were both halted in the weeks following the crisis for fear of spreading contaminated foods.
...
Read full article here

7/1/2011 (Map) Levee blown causing several inch rise in Missouri river level

Date: 7/3/2011 published

On 7/1/2011 at approximately 10 AM CST, the privately owned Vanmann #30 agricultural levee was demolished via dynamite which caused a surge in the Missouri river level of several inches. The levee is just North of the Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuge as per the following KETV Omaha Channel 7 video:


Based on the map in the above video, I mapped the busted levee (dynamite exploding icon) showing its relative positioning to Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station (nuke icon at top) and Cooper Nuclear Station (nuke icon at bottom):

View Live Ustream Radiation Detectors in a larger map

The blown levee is slightly downstream (Southeast) from Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station and upstream (North) of Cooper Nuclear Station.

Here is the river level at Blair, Nebraska where Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is located:

Click here for current Missouri river level

Here is the river level at Brownville, Nebraska where Cooper Nuclear Station is located:

Click here for current Missouri river level

Although the levee being purposely blown is alarming, it did not cause the Missouri river to rise to previous high levels.

7/3/2011 (Maps) How close is wildfire to Los Alamos National Lab?

Date: 7/3/2011

Friday 7/1/2011 I overlaid the MDA (Material Disposal Areas) and Technical Areas maps from Los Alamos Study Group on top of the GOES data set from the USDA Forest Service to get an idea of how far the Las Conchas wildfire had possibly encroached upon the LANL grounds, to see if the wildfire had possibly already contacted hazardous nuclear and/or chemical/explosive waste.

Here is the composite of the MDA and TA maps as one:

Here is the MDA+TA map overlaid on to the USDA Forest Service GOES data set:

Disturbingly, some of the older GOES yellow fire detection squares above (the square shows a potentially affected area, not that it is actually on fire) span several Material Disposal Areas: MDA-M, MDA-F, MDA-C, MDA-Q, MDA-P, MDA-N, MDA-R, MDA-S, MDA-Z, MDA-Y, MDA-K  Notice that the yellow dot where I am assuming the actual detection occurs falls almost right on top of MDA-Y in TA-39 (Southeast portion of map).

So far the press does not report fires actually reaching any hazardous materials and releasing radiation in to the air.

Here is the MDA+TA map overlaid on the USDA Forest Service MODIS data set:

The MODIS data set shows older yellow detection squares being closest to MDA-M in TA-22, MDA-R in TA-16 and MDA-AB in TA-49.

Due to there not being many recent (red) detections close to the lab grounds it seems as if most of the danger has passed (at least according to GOES and MODIS). Most recent detections currently are primarily Northwest of Los Alamos National Lab.

Click here for previous maps from 7/1/2011 and source material (specific MDA and TA descriptions for example). Note that I only included 0-6 and 0-12 hour detections for that particular day as the older (yellow) detections are likely to be burnt out already.

Note that due to the top secret nature of Los Alamos National Lab, we do not know where all of the hazardous nuclear or chemical waste is located.  Also, radiation can be released in to the air from burning trees which have grown near previous dump or test sites. Decades ago, barrels of nuclear waste were kicked-and-rolled in to unlined pits per Washington's Blog:

...
For many years, one method of disposal was “kick-and-roll”. The back of a truck was brought to the edge of a hole and barrels of waste were kicked. Wherever the barrels rolled tow as their final resting place.
...

Following is a good (but several days old) interview with theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku by KOATTV Action 7 News: