Japan Scrambles to Avert Nuclear Catastrophe

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2011/1103/fukushima_b_0312.jpg[/img]
A day after Japan was hit by a double blow — a monster earthquake followed by a killer tsunami — the full extent of death and destruction is still unclear. By Sunday 8 a.m. Tokyo time, the official toll was 686 people dead, 1,128 injured and 784 missing, but those figures are expected to rise dramatically in coming days. Japanese media reported that one town had about 10,000 people unaccounted for. Meanwhile, a crippled nuclear reactor was being flooded with sea water mixed with boron, an emergency replacement for regular coolant that one concerned U.S. expert called "a Hail Mary pass." Some reports indicated that meltdown may have already started at the plant and that a second reactor in the same facility was also undergoing an emergency.
Aftershocks are continuing and fires from burning oil storage tanks have yet to be put out. The biggest new risk is the possibility of a reactor meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant no. 1, one of two such facilities where the fuel rod cooling system failed. On Saturday evening local time, an explosion occurred at the Fukushima plant, reportedly destroying walls. Authorities expanded the evacuation zone from a 10 km to a 20 km radius. Even before the explosion, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had reported leaks of the radioactive nuclear material cesium. Late Saturday night, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the radiation around the plant had not risen after the blast but had decreased, for reasons he did not specify, the Associated Press reported.
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHfR_wybvw0#ws]Huge explosion at Japan nuclear plant[/url]
The sea water appears to have been brought in as a substitute for the regular water used as coolant for the uranium fuel rods at the heart of the reactor. The combination of earthquake and tsunami appears to have knocked out both the onsite electrical generators and offsite ones used to pump in the water — hence the move to flood the reactor with sea water, which is in plentiful supply from the relatively close-by coast. The failure of both generators is technically called a "station blackout" scenario, says physicist Ken Bergeron, who worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation at Sandia Labs. The scenario, he says, was low probability and highly unlikely. But Fukushima has beaten the odds and is now in the middle of a major crisis. Bergeron spoke at a teleconference of nuclear safety experts in Washington D.C. Also speaking was Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he specializes in nuclear disarmament. It was Alvarez who called the sea water stratagem "a Hail Mary pass." There has to be enough sea water, "at the necessary volumes and necessary rates," Alvarez said, to stabilize the reactor and to keep the core from melting.
The reported presence of Cesium 127 was disturbing, experts agreed, because it was evidence that the core had overheated, if only for a portion of time. The radioactive debris is produced when the core is exposed above the coolant water level and overheats. One of the other potential by-products of such overheating is hydrogen. Hydrogen is believed to be the cause of the blast at Fukushima.
How bad might it get? Bergeron says, "if the core does melt, then it will slump to the bottom of the reactor vessel, melt through to into the containment floor" which will lead to that safety measure to fail. "It's likely to spread like a molten pool to the edge of the steel shell and melt through." You could have containment failure in less than a day." Then the core would be exposed to the external environment. In that worst-case scenario, the only thing that can be done is to entomb the melted core in sand and cement, much as was done in Chernobyl. Said Bergeron, "A lot of first responders will die." Chernobyl rendered an area half-the-size of New Jersey uninhabitable.
Much of northeastern Japan, which was hardest-hit, is still under water, and entire neighborhoods have been buried by mud and debris. Damage in the biggest city in the region, Sendai, which has a population of about 1 million, has yet to be properly assessed. Four trains plying coastal routes have disappeared. Search and rescue efforts have been hampered by collapsed and blocked highways and roads. Food and water are scarce, and countless numbers of people are stranded and without heat and power. Tokyo's airports are still closed. On-the-ground reports from the badly affected areas are few and incomplete.
U.S. President Barack Obama called the quake a 'potentially catastrophic disaster' and pledged military and other assistance. U.S. military units based in Japan offered to participate in rescue operations and other humanitarian missions should the Japanese government ask for help. The U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet is based near Tokyo. Some 50 other nations said they were standing by to help if needed.

It will take time for Japan to weigh the full economic implications of the disaster. Earthquakes tend to have less impact on major economies than first expected. The areas badly hit on Friday are less economically important than the coastal industrial zones that suffered greatly after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. But the disaster could create even more uncertainty about Japan's recovery from its worst postwar recession. Says Richard Jerram, chief Asia economist of the Macquarie Group: "The fragile economic cycle is not in a position to withstand significant disruption."

Koichi and Yukiko Fujii, an elderly couple now living in Tokyo, were residents of Kobe when the quake hit there. "Kobe was terrifying but this one in Tokyo was a lot worse," says Yukiko. Koichi turned 85 on Friday. "This is quite a birthday present ... I have lived through World War II, and two of the worst earthquakes in Japan's history. I sure hope this is it for a while." Sadly, for Japan and its people, the suffering is far from over