• New here? Register here now for access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Plus, stay connected and follow BP on Instagram @buckeyeplanet and Facebook.

Japan hit with 9.0 Earthquake and 45 ft Tsunami

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
Fascinating Presentation

This has been doing the rounds on the 'nets.

A PowerPoint presentation (saved in various forms) by a fellow called Braun out of Areva.

Apparently this was originally made available to those who could legitimately log on to trusted sites, like the Hanford.gov document repository. That barrier no longer exists, the versions in the wild appear authentic, even down to Deutsch-centric syntactical errors - the cv for the author seems legit, and Areva had prior interaction with TEPCO.

(Areva is a primary supplier of engineering services of the European nuclear industry).

There are now so many versions of this out in the wild it has me thinking, when was the last time a truly nerdy piece of failure analysis went viral?
 
Upvote 0
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42301452/ns/world_news-asiapacific

Plutonium found in soil outside Japanese nuke plant
Detection had been expected; officials also find radioactive water leak

TOKYO ? Tiny amounts of plutonium have been detected in the soil outside of the stricken Japanese nuclear complex, the plant operator said Monday.

Experts had expected traces would be detected once crews began searching for it, because plutonium is present in the production of nuclear energy.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the amounts found at five sites during testing last week were very small and were not a risk to public health.

TEPCO official Jun Tsuruoka said only two of the plutonium samples were believed to be from a leaking reactor.

Cont'd ...
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
sandgk;1899923; said:
This has been doing the rounds on the 'nets.

A PowerPoint presentation (saved in various forms) by a fellow called Braun out of Areva.
Click to expand...
Good stuff man. Finally, a sort of concise presentation that gives everyone the design and component I.D. ("reactor", "reactor vessel" "reactor containment" versus "torus" versus "reactor containment building") that is helpful in understanding what happened, and explains the whole reactor containment building blow-out/explosion caused by venting from the reactor containment (from the break down of the fuel rod cladding into hydrogen gas) into the frame building surrounding the reactor vessel and the reactor containment that I was talking about previously - as not that big a deal. (other things are a big deal)

CNN was the freaking worst. :mad1:
 
Upvote 0
Still an even more frightening and overpowering video of the tsunami:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b-2iByqHVI"]YouTube - Tsunami ravaging Kesennuma port[/ame]

Pause at 1:28, 3:06 & 4:00 :eek:
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Japan fixed this quake-damaged road in just six days

ap_highway_ba5.jpg
 
Upvote 0
US carrier fought contamination while aiding Japan


ABOARD THE USS RONALD REAGAN -- When U.S. Navy helicopters returned from a humanitarian mission on the first weekend following Japan's earthquake and tsunami, Lt. j.g. James Powell felt a slight unease.

Powell, the radiation health officer aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, knew there was a chance the choppers could have been exposed to radiation from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant as they ferried relief aid to northeastern Japan, and even though "the Japanese had told us we'd be fine," he still wanted to be sure.

"I was kind of nervous about it," the 30-year-old nuclear engineer said. "So I said, 'Let's just go check them, just in case. ... Let's just go check it out.'"

That was Sunday, March 13 - two days after the earthquake and tsunami had hit the coast and one day after the first explosion from the nuclear plant.

Thus began three days of mostly sleepless nights for Powell as he and others worked to contain contamination to the $4.5 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and calm the nerves of its crew of about 4,500.

Powell's first examination showed a level of radiation on the nose of a helicopter 50 times higher than the ship's standard. Further checks showed that helicopter crew members themselves were coming in contaminated.

"I'd never seen it on a nuclear-powered ship before, I'd never seen any skin contamination, never seen any sort of contamination anywhere that it wasn't supposed to be," Powell said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press on the deck of the carrier as sailors cleaned the expansive surface to try to strip it of any residual radioactivity.

While the checks of helicopter crews were being done, air samples were "coming back hot," Powell said of the situation on March 13.

The level of contamination in the air made it difficult to conduct accurate checks on people, so Powell took over the ship's barber shop - a poorly ventilated space that protected the air inside and kept the contamination level low enough to conduct accurate "frisks," or tests.

Meanwhile, the ship itself was taking evasive action, trying to move out of the area of the radioactive plume. After about two hours, it succeeded, Powell said.

"And then after that, we just started checking out the helicopters, checking out all the people, put them all in this little tiny room," he said. "It was kind of scary."

Powell was quick to point out that contamination levels were never anywhere close to what could be considered dangerous, emphasizing that no one on the ship was exposed to even half the radiation from a chest X-ray. "I would say not even a tenth," he added.

For Powell, the main challenge was all the uncertainty.

"I knew that we were OK as far as what we had hit, but it's just like, 'What the hell happened and what's gonna happen again?'" he said.

.../cont/...
Click to expand...

When was the last time the Navy had to deal with an actual decontamination scenario from an external source (ie not from a reactor on a carrier/sub). Have they ever had to do so since weapon testing moved underground?

I also wonder if the CBR detection system was tripped at any time.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top