Source?

Radio this morning but since then I haven't been able to find anything.

In fact just read this which shows the contrary...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14 ... _analysis/

Actually from reading that it makes more sense about the "higher than background" radiation readings.

If these are from random chlorine/sodium/whatever else isotopes then they would have broken down within seconds of being released.

They would have shown a higher radiation very close to the plant but nothing else when moving further away.

Yeah, I read Lewis's two articles on there. The comment thread on the first one is a bit... epic. There are a couple of bits of debatable science in it but the general gist - that the people running around waving their arms in the air don't have a clue, and that things are fairly serious but pretty contained - seems to tally with the total of the other reports I've seen from sources you'd consider vaguely reliable on science matters (i.e. not the BBC).

Jon

TBH I think I got a higher dose taking a tour round Dungeness when I was a kid.

Another >6.0 magnitude earthquake hits Shizuoka after a >5.0 magnitude tremor clicky.

Hate to say it but I think they're expecting one or more major quakes.

Hope the new one near Mount Fuji doesn't kick that off as well.

If that happened in a disaster movie (I am writing the script now and expect to make millions from Hollywood) I would scoff
i.e.
Earthquake with
Tsunami with
Nuclear meltdown and to top it off
Volcano

We would then only be missing Godzilla to make it a perfect storm

Oops

Sony pulls the release of PS3 game 'MotorStorm:Apocalypse', in which players raced cars through a city in the midst of a catastrophic earthquake.

The correct thing to do, but you can just imagine the developers looking at the news footage over the weekend and thinking 'oh bollocks'.

Jon

From the BBC:

Latest BBC news is that the radiation has dropped from 100 milli whatsits to something like 0.001 milli whatsits.

Good news at last. Given that the uranium fission was halted almost instantly the rods should be cooling to a safe level now and within the next few days should be finished (I.e. Residual heat gone)

Fingers crossed.

I don't think it is quite as easy as that. The rods absorb the neutrons but they are still being released. If there has been any melting of fuel or damage to the rods by the heat, then any sort of misalignment could be bad news if there are any further interuptions to the cooling system.

True but I thought they had avoided meltdown? Surely it is only at the very beginning when meltdown is a risk?

f***ing wow. anyone seen this vid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zfCBCq ... =topvideos

apoligies if posted already? made my hair feel as though it was electric...

also heres another spooky "coincidence"

3/10/11 (japan quake) + 9/11/01 (twin towers "terrorist" attack) = 12/21/12 add them 2 dates together and you got the exact date of the alleged "doomsday" in 2012

They also completely killed off Disaster Report 4 IIRC, and it was good to go I believe

If the core is emitting much less radiation that means much less fission is going on. Ergo less 'new' heat is being generated. However we don't know what temperature the core has actually reached - if it's close to critical, there doesn't need to be much more heat generated to reach the melt temperature of the fuel rods. So the danger isn't past until the fission cascade has been sufficiently slowed AND the core itself has cooled down. The problem is the containment vessel that's stopped it leaking so far is also designed to be a very good insulator - after all, in normal operation you want to keep as much heat as possible in there. So they can only cool the core relatively slowly.

By the sound of it, they've got the fission cascade pretty much stopped. Therefore the chances of serious containment failure isn't anywhere near as high as it was. But it's still walking on eggshells for a while yet. And they've probably still got some ancillary problems to deal with, like whatever hydrogen buildup is left and a lake full of irradiated seawater.

Misaligned fuel rods at this point aren't going to affect the cooling process - they've effectively scrammed the reactor and are flooding it with seawater, so there shouldn't be any spots that don't get cooled. A misaligned fuel rod will be an absolute bugger to deal with when they finally get around to dismantling the thing though because they're bloody heavy so if one gets stuck in place god knows how they'd get it out.

having said all of that, I don't think anyone outside TEPCO knows what's actually going on.

Jon

This timeline Seems to be the best summary of what has been reported so far. If it's to be followed, the main trouble is now with the fuel rod pool at Fukushima Daiichi 4. By the sound of it the building isn't in any way airtight and therefore radiation is leaking from the spent fuel rods and possibly radioactive steam from the pool they are housed in. That's bad but it's not meltdown bad.

Jon