Round-up of the disaster. Japanese "docility", for want of a better word
Robin Whittle
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- Robin
Short version: This is a full-scale nuclear disaster. Hundreds
of thousands or millions of people may die or have
their health permanently damaged. Large areas of
land may yet be rendered uninhabitable for decades.
100M+ people's safety depends on the direction
of the winds.
Some questions about the genetic basis of Japanese
docility.
I am amazed that some people seem unmoved by this nuclear crisis. Some
people seem to think the worst thing about it is that it will discourage
the adoption of nuclear power. Others seem to calmly accept the
government's statements about safe levels of radiation and that the
situation is under control.
Two of three reactors have had their outer containment buildings
partially destroyed by massive explosions. The explosions are the
result of large amounts of hydrogen, which can only occur due to overly
high temperatures causing steam to be split by the zirconium (metal)
fuel rod tube into zirconium oxide (a ceramic) and hydrogen.
Unit 1 seems to have lost just the top of the building - where the
yellow crane is in this diagram of a similar General Electric reactor
and its containment building:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/imagemaps/rx-bldg1.jpg
Unit 3 seems to have had its containment building much more badly
damaged. This is evident from the overhead photo:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51672000/jpg/_51672029_011525965-1.jpg
The movie of Unit 3's explosion clearly shows some large objects rising
and falling in the generally upwards plume. These are probably the
yellow cap in the above diagram, pictured here:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/headlift.jpg
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/rflg-fl2.jpg
and the cover over that cap, the hexagonal part shown here:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/rflg-fl1.jpg
When the fuel rods overheat, the metal tubes either melt or convert to
ceramic zirconium oxide, which is not a metal and which can't contain
the fuel pellets, which are uranium oxide (and all sorts of fission
by-products) for Units 1 and 2 or which are the same plus plutonium (far
more carcinogenic and radioactive) for Unit 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel
From recent reports it is clear that the operators are reduced to using
petrol-diesel powered fire fighting pumps to try to force seawater
(perhaps with boron, which is a neutron absorber) into the three
reactors' pressure vessels. They need to do this while overcoming the
pressure in the reactor vessels, and they need to release the steam
created by the heat, which carries off radioactive compounds into the
atmosphere. Basically, they are using evaporative cooling. They can't
keep the reactor vessels sealed, because the main way of cooling the
reactor core is the evaporation of water.
There is no evidence of a complete meltdown - in which fuel melts,
concentrates in the absence of control rods and starts up the highly
energetic fission reaction again. This could happen to any of the three
stricken reactors
However it has been admitted that all three reactors have their upper
parts of their fuel rods and control rods - actually flat barriers
rising vertically between the bundles of rods red below:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/bwrfuel1.jpg
uncovered by water for enough time for them to overheat and be damaged,
including partially or completely melting.
So all three reactors have the water inside the reactor vessels heavily
contaminated by fuel and its constituent short half-life fission
by-products.
The outer containment building of Unit 3 has been completely breached,
and probably of Unit 1 as well. The outer containment buildings are
doing nothing to stop the release of radioactive steam, which is
necessary due to the evaporative cooling regime.
And all through this, the government flat out lies - insisting that the
situation is under control????
They have not released any diagrams of the reactors, or detailed
information about what is going on.
It is possible that one or more of these reactors may yet melt down -
with consequent risk of new fission reaction and a massive explosion
which would distribute the hundred tonnes or so of uranium etc. over a
broad area. But let's assume this is not going to happen.
The reactors are releasing dangerous quantities of radiation.
The amount they release will go down over time, since this is roughly
proportional to the heat they are generating and to how badly damaged
their fuel rods are, since the rate of steam emission is governed by
their need to cool the cores primarily by evaporation.
As long as fission does not start up again (and this is not assured due
to the possible or probable melting and disintegration of the fuel rods)
then the amount of heat will reduce over days and weeks. Initially it
is about 6% of the operating power. This is "Decay heat":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat
We are now getting close to 4 days from when the fission reaction was
stopped (within a few seconds, by lifting all the control "rods" fully,
at the start of the earthquake). Here is a curve, with logarithmic time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Decay_heat_illustration.PNG
The first reactor to fail (Unit 1) generated about 500 megawatts of
electricity. With efficiency of 33% or so, this means it typically
generates 1.5 gigawatts of heat. We are now down to it generating a
fraction of a percent of this, but this is still a huge amount of heat
to get rid of, for an object whose core measures only about 6 x 6 x 5
metres (my guess). Units 2 and 3 are 30% or so more powerful.
That heat needs to be dissipated primarily by evaporating the water,
which releases radioactivity to the atmosphere.
The saving grace of this entire situation *so far* is that the winds
have been taking the radioactive emissions offshore. There's no wind
shown on the chart here at present:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/Region/i_JP/2xWindSpeed.html
but since the earthquake, the wind direction for the Fukushima location
has been west to north-west. There has been a low (anticlockwise) to
the north and a high (clockwise) to the south. This still is the
situation to a certain extent:
http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/graphics/npac.gif
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/g3/
but now I see a small low just south of Tokyo, which would tend to push
the wind at Fukushima to the west or north west, if not for the bigger
low to the north. I see a cold front moving to the east-south-east, so
this is still an offshore movement of air.
The *only* thing which has saved millions of Japanese people from direct
exposure to significant airborne radiation is the wind direction.
No-one can tell exactly how much radiation is being dissipated, but
given all three reactors have had their fuel rods (or at least the upper
parts of them) severely damaged by heat, and because all three reactor
vessels are being opened to the atmosphere for the purposes of
evaporative cooling (even if the vessels and the pipes to the turbine
buildings are not damaged), then I think it is reasonable to assume that
the the radiation emission would be disastrous from a human health point
of view, if anyone was downwind of if. To what extent it would render
the ground permanently uninhabitable, no-one can say.
If the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction, such as to the
south-west, then tens of millions of people would have been breathing in
the radioactive fuel and short-half-life (rapidly disintegrating)
fission by-products. There would have been extensive measurement of
this, which could not be covered up. There would be serious health
problems and likely panic-driven movements of people which would amount
to deaths in the thousands or perhaps millions.
Everyone has been blessed by the wind direction.
The wind won't keep blowing offshore.
The big question is how quickly can the operators establish a
non-evaporative cooling system (including flushing water in and out of
the core, to let it out to sea) for all three reactors, before the wind
direction turns inland, and worst of all, to the south west.
170 million people are crammed into these islands - I guess half of them
within a few hundred km of this horrible nuclear disaster.
The nuclear disaster could, and I suspect will, dwarf the impact of the
earthquake and tsunamis.
That decay heating curve goes on for a long time. The wind will
probably change direction in the coming days or weeks.
Having read this, how could anyone think that the government has the
situation "under control"? There's no way of getting 50 to 100 million
people out of danger if they are downwind of these emissions in the
weeks and perhaps months to come.
I read years ago in a Lonely Planet travel guide (not a primary
anthropological source for the time-period in question) that for several
hundred years in Japanese history (in the 1500s or so), Japan was
largely or entirely under "military" (or the like) rule. It was clearly
stated that during this period, anyone who showed any sign of dissent
from this hard-line authoritative rule, would be killed.
Can anyone comment on how true this statement is?
To the extent it is true, then the Japanese people are the result of a
highly selective breeding experiment which meant that anyone in that
period who was not quite docile and cooperative, is probably not an
ancestor of modern Japanese people. To the extent this is true, and to
the considerable degree to which docility and the like is genetically
determined, the Japanese people would be expected to be quite docile and
likely to believe the assertions of their government, compared to other
populations.
Can anyone imagine how a hundred-million closely cramped and to some
extent traumatised Italians, Russians, English, Irish, American or
African people would have reacted to the nuclear disaster I have just
described? I think there would be outrage, panic and other developments
in stark contrast to what I understand is the quite passive response of
the Japanese people so far.
By now, most people would have realised that their health depended (so
far) entirely on the direction of the wind!
There would be a scramble to get 1000km or more away from the reactors,
because everyone knows the wind direction will change before the
reactors can be completely sealed.
(Yet I have not heard of this happening in Japan.)