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Subscribe to RSSRobert Bazell, NBC News Chief Science Correspondent, is in Tokyo covering the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant and the growing fears of a massive radiation leak. He spoke to msnbc.com by phone Thursday morning to discuss the crisis.
There seems to be a lot of confusion over what is happening at Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant. What is the government doing to fix the problem at this point?
There are really two voices of authority on the nuclear reactor – the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electrical Power Company, which owns and operates the power plant. The company doesn’t have press conferences; they issue press releases that get translated into English and so far the information has been very confusing.
But today the government met with foreign reporters for the first time. That’s important because it shows that they want to communicate with the outside world. That came after the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gregory Jaczko raised concerns that there may be little or no water in Number 4 reactor’s cooling pool. That would be an extremely serious situation because the rods could get extremely hot, melt and release a lot of radiation into the atmosphere if they are not covered by water.
Kenji Shimizu / AP
Japan's Self-Defense Forces's helicopters scoop water off Japan's northeast coast on their way to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant Thursday morning. Click on the photo for a complete slideshow from Japan.
At the press conference today the Japanese minister said that there were two views within the Japanese government: One, that there was no water, and the one that there is some water in the No. 4 reactor. They said that was based interpretations of photographs they somehow got from inside the plant.
That was a big admission – they had never said before that anyone thought there was no water. But it revealed how bad the potential is – and it’s still just potential, no one is saying for sure that these reactors are going to blow out a significant amount of radiation. We just don’t know what may happen.
Today, we saw dramatic shots of helicopters dropping water on one of the reactors. Many here had a visceral response to those photos because that’s what we saw at Chernobyl, which was the worst nuclear disaster ever.
This will never be as bad as Chernobyl, because even though we may have some complaints about how forthright the Japanese have been, they did announce immediately that they had a problem. The then-Soviet Union tried to keep Chernobyl a secret for a long time, so people couldn’t even get out of the way if they wanted to.
But as soon as they recognized there was a problem, the Japanese government set up a zone where they urged people to evacuate who weren’t working on the power plant.
So it is a question of how big the threat of a massive radiation leak is. But it’s not for certain it’s going to happen.
And the Japanese government, even though they have given conflicting – and perhaps less forthright answers sometimes – at least they have been giving answers.
How are people dealing with the situation in Tokyo? How are they determining what’s real vs. rumors and the immediate risks? Are people trying to prepare themselves? Rushing to buy things at stores?
It varies from person to person. Quite a lot of people are being very stoic and believe the government. Others, if they have a place to go, and the means to do it, they are trying to get out of Tokyo.
Right now, the wind is blowing in such a way that if there was a big radiation release, it would head to the Tokyo area. An estimated 30 million people live in the Tokyo area. It is one of the greatest concentrations of human beings on earth. So you have to think of the seriousness of that.
The biggest problem is gasoline. There is almost no gasoline to be had – except for taxi cabs and emergency vehicles. A lot of commuter trains aren’t running and there are rolling blackouts, so a lot of businesses aren’t operating. Those things are not as much a result of the risk of radiation, but the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami. The Japanese schools are still open. But schools for children of foreigners are closed for two weeks and then they will reassess the situation. A lot of foreigners have left already.
There are reports that at least 19 workers at the power plant in Japan have been injured, more than 20 exposed to radiation and two have gone missing during the battle to prevent a nuclear disaster. Who does that leave to deal with the crisis there?
At the government news conference today they said there are at least 270 working to try to contain the problem. They have to rotate and work in shifts because the radiation the level is so high that they can’t work for very long. There are limits to how much exposure each individual can take.
How are you and the crews protecting yourselves?
Right now there is no radiation in Tokyo. We have instruments to measure it and there is none here.
The Japanese government also has at least one radiation activity monitoring system in every prefecture in the country. The results from those tools are posted every hour, 24/7, on the Internet. So you can log-on and see where the government says it’s detecting radiation. Even more so, we have our own detectors.
So if there was a radiation cloud coming, first of all, I think we’d get a warning about it. Secondly, you would take the precaution of going indoors.
People who have studied Chernobyl and other radioactive leak events say that if you are in a well-sealed building, your exposure goes down by 95 percent because the exposure is mostly particular matter you need to avoid.
Are you still being screened for radiation daily?
No, the NBC people who got screened were those reporters who had traveled from the quake area in the north back to Tokyo. And they were screened by our own private nuclear experts. They found slightly elevated doses on a few people’s shoes – but again these doses are not anything that anyone would consider to be a health risk.
You are still there in Tokyo reporting and as you said there is no radiation there, but are you starting to get a little nervous?
Personally, I’m not nervous about this. During my graduate studies I worked at what was then called the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, now known as the Berkeley Lab. http://www.lbl.gov/ Because I was trained in science, I am familiar with what radiation can and can’t do.
I think there is a lot of irrational fear about radiation. You definitely have to be careful – radiation is a threat that you can’t see, you can’t feel, you can’t smell. As a result, people fear it a lot more than they would fear other things that are probably a much bigger threat to them.
I’m not trying to be blasé or casual about it, but you just have to be knowledgeable about it.
So what are the steps that need to be taken to contain the radiation threat?
Obviously today was desperation day because of the helicopters. They weren’t getting enough water into the reactor pools that contain the spent fuel rods which are enormously hot. If the rods are not covered in water, they melt and they could create a chain reaction. That would be really bad because the explosion would be huge.
So they have to fight to keep water in there. Water is actually the only thing you can battle this threat with – they need to just keep circulating water around the fuel rods.
Seeing the helicopters made everyone realize that pumping sea water in wasn’t working. Then they brought in water cannons that are usually used to suppress riots.
Apparently they have now finally gotten a huge electrical cable near the plant. That should enable them to run water pumps in a much simpler way than using fire trucks. So if they can get pumps up and running, which they are supposed to start doing tomorrow, that could reduce the threat considerably. So it’s sort of a race against time.
If it works out, there will be electrical pumps finally working again that could circulate enough water to cool down the reactors and greatly diminish the threat.
It’s a race to get water in there.
Leave a Comment:
May leaders follow advice from the wisest scientists and technicians to prevent further tragedy.
Sending my deepest compassion to those who give their life stopping the radioactivity for the benefit of humanity. May all affected by this tragedy somehow be well. A consoling "Dear Japan, Letter of Love" clip is offered by friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USGlQ_A1Nu0
Dear Sirs,
The US RADCON teams that respond to Broken Arrow incidents are trained to move into such areas if provided with heavy armour vehicles such as the 90 Series Main Battle Tank and 90 Series Tank Recovery Engineer Vehicles.
The Navy must provide the pumping equipment and the Marines the amphibious landing craft. The Army can bulldoze away comtaiminates and build dirt berms for safe passage of sheilded troops. The Marines can quickly move back and forth to supply ships gathering naval pumping laying new piping to the plant for the sea water.
We (myself) knows how to do this the JSDF must take control of the situation as a Broken Arrow campaign and protect Japan from contaimination.
The "sheilded troops" might get some free body tattoos and, - video games in the F.O.Bs might not be so much fun anymore!
Semper Fry! 'n gimme twenty!!!
O.Kie rocks!
The simple truth is that it won't work. The protection is inadequate for high radiation environments. It might work in a mild environment, but here, you'd need a couple of feet of shielding just to survive long enough to do any good. And, the tanks can't get up the stairs to the waste pools, etc. What is needed is relatively small shielded robots with flexible hoses to be placed where needed. Call I-Robot and let them put their stuff to work.
4 - iRobots are on their way...
The Japanese people, with their resilience, can and will do it.
Let's just pray for them so they save their lives and ours.
Our Lord Jesus Christ also loves pagan Japanese. God's grace is eternal and sometimes very difficult to comprehend. The Japanese should confess their sins. Only god will help, our prayers are with them!
You're an idiot. Your Christian God is a meglo-manic homophobic sadistic psycho/sociopath. The only saving grace is that your god is not real. If there really was a god, I'd thank him (or her, or it) for that! The Christian, Muslim and Jewish "god" are a real person's worst nightmare. Remember, if there were to be a "God" like you pretend, the it caused all this to start with. That's an insane act, thus your God is insane by all civilized standards. I'm glad I don't believe in an insane deity! I suggest you face reality and simply act right because it is right to do so and give up the concept of punishment, etc. because that ain't gonna happen! You have a life...live it right and feel good about yourself. Don't pretend there is some "invisible" something that watches over you. There isn't. Whatever you deserve, I hope you get it. But there is no God to give it to you. Sorry, Bunkly, but that's the truth.
Robtice, you hit the nail on the head. When will folks realize we have to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.
Japan is mainly Buddhist, which believes in one god, Buddha. Pagan is a term referring to someone who believes in multiple gods, such as the Greek mythology. The word you are looking for that best suits your statement is Infidel. Which I'm sure you've heard at least a couple times in the last few years. Also did you consider there are many Japanese christians, I'm sure you didn't. Next time you jump to conclusions about an entire nationality of people you should really make sure you have knowledge on the subject not just a book that you blindly follow.
I don't understand why anyone isn't asking this when dealing with this potential disaster:
Where are the robots?
The US Military has robots to assist in disarming bombs. Why can't these types of robots be used in areas that have radiation too high for humans to survive in? They need to get water into the reactors, send a robot in holding the end of a hose and take it to where the water is needed.
Japan, being a nation leading in technology and (I thought) robotics, they would have access to robotic technology that could assist them in dealing with this type of situation. They seem to be relying on only humans to do all of this, when they have robotic AI that can walk around a house and take care of itself. You can't lead me to believe they don't have anything at their disposal that could assist them in anyway with this situation.
Plus, they need power at the facility... Isn't alot of the Naval Fleet (US, Japanese) Nuclear Powered? Couldn't they dock a ship next to the facility and hook up some power lines? At least temporalily to get the situation under control?
I just don't understand why they haven't looked into these things to help? Seems so stupid. Forget national security/secrets, etc. This is a potential disaster upon on the whole world. Do anything you can, take any risk needed and get it fixed!
dear robots fans,
actually robots cant work in high radiation level environment.
Electronic components fail immediately .
half right. rad hardened chips meant for space flight can handle much more than the nuke plant is giving off but those expensive chips are used for "normal" ground robots.
Before the storage ponds became significant in the news, a diagram of each reactor's storage pond and estimated contents was shown in a report. I recall numbers ranging from 60 to 160 TONS in each of these storage pools. That is around ONE MILLION POUNDS of radioactive waste in the form of spent rods. It is being reported that tons of salt water is being used to maintain adequate water levels in these storage ponds. As the salt water boils off, contaminants are accumulating in these storage ponds. It has been reported that the casing around the spent fuel when exposed begins to degrade and will burn when the temperature reaches something like 2,000 degrees. So, the point is not to have an explosion in these storage pools releasing the material into the atmosphere. Is anyone considering the much lower ignition point of these contaminants, not to mention the corrosive chemistry that must be taking place that would affect the actual ignition point of the rod casings? Would blowing a million pounds of radioactive material into the atmosphere reach the western coast of North America?
Way sad story. The twin rotor airships appear to be in a flyover fog pattern with their bucket drops. Sometimes these water bucket drops are done in a lower faster flight path. Seen it work on forest fires.
The lower faster flight path stops the airship before it is directly over the hot spot. Ya dump the h2o at an angle while the bucket of water spirals towards the fire. This lowers exposure to heat/radiation. Only the h2o is ever directly over the target, where its the hottest.
Why are they not dropping chipped ice instead of water? In a forest fire the water method they are using works cause your trying to battle a spreading fire, thus you would not need to aim the water to a imaginary bulls-eye . In this situation I would think a giant snowball work be a more useful. You can aim a snowball, and I would think as it melts it would cool the reactor. This is just my opinion from watching the failed attempts of the helicopter water drops.
What they are doing here is just pissing in a wildfire. How about they line up the Nuclear Engineers that thought it was a good idea to build these reactors so close to the fault line, with no emergency precautions just like the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, and have them all stand in a line and piss on the reactors. What do people think?!
When I saw pictures of helicopters carrying buckets of water to dump on the reactors or the spent fuel cooling ponds i was completely dumbfounded. this is their best attempt? when the earthquake hit the reactors automatically shut down. things would have been fine but the tsunami took out the backup generators. now there is no way to pump water into the reactor and the reactor core is too hot & may melt completely. now if im the guy in charge of that plant, the 1st damn phone call im making is to request large diesel generators to be helicoptered in so that there is power for the water pumps. I havent heard anything in the news about them trying to bring in a generator, they are talking about running a power line out to the plant! this is days later & they are running a wire? generators could have been delivered & running for several days now.
Keep It Simple Japan
Add a hose or chute to the water bucket and direct the water where it should go.
Or
Drop water bags loke bombs to get water to the reactor.
Both would save the lives of the brave people trying to cool the reactors.
you all got solutions apparently.
the smart USA, go to Japan to help them out then, shouldn't you contribute to the world a bit more when real crisis happen, rather than starting wars over and over again?
you got the technology to shoot missiles at Libya, but not the heart to share some of your nuclear knowledge to control this expanding potential disaster?
@Kof-3193569 You are crazy...bashing their beliefs even in a time of great need. What does their belief system matter to you or the situation. If you want to pray then pray, but not very kind of you to be so judgemental, makes your kind words sound not so kind. Are you better than them because of your belliefs? I also would like to know how you know what Jesus is thinking.
Are these people idiots? Just get a fire hose up to waste pools and use it to pump water into it. A simple industrial tracked robot that can access the stairs or one that could be air-dropped on the upper surface could do the job or ask someone with an already fatal exposure to do it. Lay in some 8" hard quick-coupling piping the same way and flood the containment through a breech or doorway. These people better get thinking out of the box NOW, not later! Use the chopper to string the fire hose to the roof is another way. God, what idiots! Dropping water like they are doing is a publicity stunt, not real prevention. I'd be ashamed to be Japanese, watching these idiots who run this disaster!
The chopper idea dropping water works best if the water would only hit the target rather than drift in the wind. The solution -- freeze it! Dropping ice chunks would fall directly on the target with no loss in the wind. The additional chill of the ice may help with the decrease of temperature as well. If a number of companies can come up with the ice and get it out there , dropping it from helicopter is best -- with the least chance of extended radiation (such as would be received from those on the ground).
Pagans are people who do not worship Jesus. Jesus is God. Thats just the way it is. He is very real.
Japan should not worship buddha since buddha is a demon and its against the first commandment .
if your god told you to be this close-minded, then I'd rather turn to Buddha.
Your ignorance is astounding!!! Here is the definition of Paganism since you OBVIOUSLY don't know how to google it yourself:
Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller", "rustic") is a blanket term, typically used to refer to polytheistic religious traditions.
Also as far as I am aware (and since I am NOT closed minded or blinded by religious doctrine, if I am wrong someone please inform me. My mind is malleable with facts.) Buddhist based religions have far less blood on their hands than Christian, Jewish or Muslims do. I do not recall there ever being a war started by Buddhists over religion. And even if I am wrong about this, the other big three killed scores more people over the centuries.
And don't use Pearl Harbor as an example, that was not done for religious reasons. And those that use Pearl as an excuse for "god" taking vengeance on the people of Japan just look stupid. Not ignorant, stupid, ignorance is curable with knowledge, stupidity is a lifelong affliction.
Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll to to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money! George Carlin (R.I.P.)
OPERATION "CHILL-OUT"in Japan....
Use 800lb. blocks of antartic ice cut into 24 blocks @33lb.each. Reform block with paper dividers to act
as air foil to disperse smaller blocks as dropped on Reactors from the air. 33lb blocks would minimize
damage to buildings and allow ice to melt, helping to put fires out and lower the ambient temp. of
buildings. Phase 2... use of snow-makers like ski resorts use and target key areas of reactors. pack
them in ice/snow. Use UPS to get ice to Japan...military type bombings with a 800lb block of ice disperse
into 33 lb blocks would do alot more than "buckets of water"....that dont even hit the target. We have a
end-less supply of ice and the means to get it to Japan. If the temp. goes down so does the radiation.
The key is chilling out this monster, like the sci-fi classic "The Blob"...just bring the ice to it. After cooling
the reactors....well im working on that and the problems in Libya too.
Thanks ...hey it might work...
Kurt Adams 509-525-8320