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this thread is dedicated to prayers thoughts and news about the disaster destined to effect us all. God care for their many lives....
I pray for all those affected.
Interesting huh.
Another theory, (earth at perigee causes earthquake storms) doesn't work...the moon is currently between apogee and perigee. Scratch that theory, but it sure does sound like what they call a "storm".
Emergency authorities have ordered the evacuation of all civilians in a two-mile radius around the power plant, a total of about 3,000 people, and are planning to vent slightly radioactive steam from the plant, which is located about 160 miles north of Tokyo. Those within a six-mile radius were warned to stay in their homes.
Significant shaking associated with an earthquake causes a nuclear reactor to automatically shut down, with control rods being plunged into the core to stop the nuclear reactions. It does, however, continue to produce massive amounts of heat that must be dissipated by the emergency cooling system.
Photos: Scenes from the earthquake
Ironically, the plant must use externally generated electricity to keep the coolant flowing through the pond and cooling towers. Otherwise, all the coolant will boil off, the fuel rods will melt and there is a possibility that radioactive material will escape from the reactor's containment dome.
"If they can't get adequate cooling to the core, it could be a Three Mile Island or worse," said nuclear physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is working to improve the safety of nuclear power. The loss of coolant at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania for only 30 minutes led to a 50% meltdown of the core in that 1979 accident.
The electrical grid in Fukushima province was badly damaged by the tsunami, so power is not available from that source to cool the fuel rods. All reactors have diesel emergency generators to provide backup electricity, but apparently those at Fukushima No. 1 were damaged by the tsunami and are inoperable.
The reactor also has backup batteries to take over in such an event, and authorities were able to bring those on line and restore the flow of coolant after less than an hour. But those batteries have a life no more than about eight hours, according to nuclear expert Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, an organization working to "free the world from nuclear power and nuclear weapons."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. Air Force is assisting in flying in backup generators, and Japanese ground forces are also trucking generators and batteries to the site, according to media reports. Time is critical, according to experts. Once power to the cooling supply is interrupted, all the coolant could boil off in as little as an hour, Kamps said.
If there is a meltdown at Fukushima, "the containment building is the last line of defense," Kamps added. The reactor is 40 years old and the original ventilation system had to be retrofitted to allow radioactive gasses to be vented so that pressure would not build up and cause an explosion that would spread radioactivity over a much wider area.
Authorities said that pressure had already built up inside the containment building to about 50% above normal and that they would begin venting radioactive gas into the atmosphere, although they said there was no danger from the release.
Similar venting of radioactivity occurred at Three Mile Island.
Videos of the earthquake
"Rising containment pressure is not a good sign that they have things under control," Lyman said. "We need to get better information from the Japanese about what is going on, but the few things that are coming out are very worrisome."
It will take about two days for the fuel rods to be brought back to a safe temperature what is known as a cold shutdown. After that, only minimal cooling will be required.
The six reactors at the site use some of the oldest nuclear technology, dating back to the 1960s.
The reactor uses a single cooling loop and does not have a containment dome, but rather uses a smaller containment vessel around the reactor core.
"These first-generation boiling water reactors have the least margin of safety of any reactor design," said Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton University physicist and former White House advisor.
Without electrical power to circulate water inside the core, the cooling water would begin to boil off, he said. But operators still should be able to add new cooling water and keep the core fully immersed while it cools down.
"It doesn't sound like we are in meltdown mode," he said.
The shutdown of the nuclear reactors affects perhaps 8% of Japan's electrical generating capacity. Most of those plants should be able to go back on line within a few days. But it's likely that the tsunami has severely damaged the electrical grid, so it may be much longer before all the power lines can be repaired.
Photos: Scenes from the earthquake
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com
Times wire services contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011, Los Angeles Times
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Ring of Fire?
I'm lost today.