Another fun day in Nippon...

[jsbowden]

Things aren't looking so good:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/03/20113124353222667.html

Unlike the Ukraine, there isn't a whole lot of Japan to move to in the event large sections of it become uninhabitable.

Comments

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

Based on news reports, the Japanese have at least three things going for them: (a) the Fukushima reactor heat is from leftover heat remaining after a full reactor SCRAM, not a still fully-running reactor like Chernobyl was, (b) if you had your choice of a total meltdown in a Western water-moderator reactor vs. a Chernobyl style RMBK flammable graphite moderator reactor, from what I understand you're better off with a Western one and (b) there at least is a big empty patch of ocean to the East, with the prevailing winds to the East.

All those things are likely to reduce the damage by orders of magnitude, as I understand.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

b) Well, given that Chernobyl didn't even have a hard containment system, yeah. At the moment, the reports I'm reading say that the containment system hasn't ruptured-- apparently, the explosion seen was not directly related to the reactor system itself.

(Not that the situation is good. Radiation exposure per hour, on-site, is normal human exposure per year.)

d) Still, while the Japanese (and the rest of the western world) builds much safer reactors than Russia ever did, there are still even safer ways to build them. Can't seem to get any approved here in the United States, and this will probably make it impossible to get anything done for another thirty or forty years.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Also as of noonish when I looked at some of the links from jsbowden

The blast blew off the outer concrete shell of a building housing one of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi (number 1) nuclear power station, leaving behind a skeleton of metalwork. Four workers are reported to have been injured at the site and radiation is leaking into the environment. Japanese authorities have extended the evacuation zone around the plant to 20 kilometres.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a press briefing that the pressure vessel that houses the radioactive core of the plant is intact, and that a large amount of radiation leakage is not expected. He said that radiation is remaining at a low level. The Japanese news agency Kyodo earlier reported levels of 1050 micro Sieverts - within Japanese national safety levels - around the explosion at the Fukushima 1 reactor building.

Edano announced that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the Fukushima facility, will be allowed to use sea water to cool the reactor down.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

I haven't been watching the headlines obsessively, but the sense I'm getting is that either:

1) At least one agency is not really sure what's going on, or
2) At least one agency is bullshitting.

Nothing I've read today is encouraging at all.