"Mount Fuji in Red" Akira Kurosawa's Dreams 1990
The film is a series of shorts depicting dreams Kurosawa had. It's really worth watching and there's even an appearance by Martin Scorsese as Van Gogh in one of the shorts if that helps peak any one's curiosity about it more.
The information regarding the reactors is still changing even now. Here's the information on the status of the reactors. The plant had 6 reactors at the time, but only reactors 1-4 were either in operation or had recently spent nuclear fuel. As such, reactors 5 and 6 were able to be put in cold shutdown relatively quickly and didn't have the same problems that the other 4 had. Here is the information regarding Reactor's 1-4's problems and current status:
The current status for all of the reactors is they have proper cooling with fresh water being supplied to each of the reactors. This means the situation for each of them is stable in that there won't be more melting. The more concerning problems are now due to radiation release. Reactor 1's reactor core has fallen to the bottom of its containment vessel and the reactors core's of 2 and 3 have also melted during this time. The housing structures of Reactors 1, 3 and 4 have had damage to the upper part and Reactor's 2 has possible suppression chamber containment failure. [1] In simpler terms, this means that all of the reactors are now stable in cooling to prevent further melting, but there is still containment issues of radiation and contaminated cooling water in reactors 1, 2 and 3.
First for some background about the plant itself. The nuclear power plant is in the Prefecture of Fukushima. Fukushima is in the Tōhoku region, where the earthquake and tsunamis caused the most damage. The prefecture is the southern-most prefecture in the Tōhoku region bordering the Kanto region, which Tokyo is a part of. However, the plant isn't close to Tokyo with it being about 140 miles (225 km) away. Fukushima Prefecture is just south of Miyagi Prefecture, which was hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunamis. Dai-Ichi means Number 1 in Japanese so it doesn't mean anything special. I think the reason the name has been used in the media reports was to distinguish this plant and Fukushima's Dai-Ni (Number 2) plant which was also having cooling problems in the beginning, but was able to be brought under control quickly. The plant at the time of the earthquake had 6 reactors and 2 more were being built at the plant, which upon building and completing them in 2016 and 2017 would have made the plant one of the largest in the world. [2] The other important factor leading up to the earthquake was Reactors 4, 5 and 6 were not in operation due to planned maintenance.
A simple summary of the disaster at Fukushima is the tsunamis that followed the earthquake destroyed backup power generators to a plant without power from the earthquakes and tsunami damage. Without any power, the reactors had no way to cool the nuclear fuel. While the nuclear reactors stopped immediately following the earthquakes and nuclear fuel rods secured as designed for security measures, the fuel rods need months of continual cooling to achieve cold shutdown and be safe from melting. With no electricity to pump in water for cooling, it eventually got hot enough to boil the water that were in the cooling pools and left fuel rods exposed to air. This caused fuel rods to heat up more, melt and release radiation. This would continue until a variety of drastic measures were used to refill the cooling pools and get electricity back to the plant. After the situation was more under control, the main problems have been containing the radiation, specifically the irradiated water used as emergency coolant and properly disposing of irradiated materials / cleaning up the site and surrounding areas.
Here's a more detailed timeline of the events of the disaster at the plant that gives a good rundown of the events at Fukushima by the Nuclear Energy Agency. [3]
So how was all of that able to happen? Well, besides the disaster itself, there were a combination of poor planning and decisions not to upgrade safety measures before the disaster that made things much worse. While backup plans were obviously in place, they weren't enough to stop what happened and a few additional actions could have prevented a lot of the problems. The first factor was this plant being an older one. Reactor 1 had begun producing Nuclear Power in March of 1971. [4] The older plant models need electricity for the water coolant to operate. What happened at Fukushima showed the exact reason why this is a bad idea. If electricity is lost for a long enough period, meltdown will occur. However, newer reactors don't use this kind of cooling system. Now gravitational cooling systems are used, where the cooling water reservoir is higher than the nuclear plant, allowing gravity to deliver the cooling water. This system would work even if electricity was to be lost. It's something that could have been upgraded at the plant that would have prevented what happened but wasn't. The other major failure, at least in my mind was the position of the back-up generators. They would have been able to provide electricity to the plant even after the power failed, but the tsunami wiped them out. The generators were on the ground because they assumed the tsunami protective wall would block any wave that came in. [5] If the generators were on a platform they could have survived and kept the electricity going. The things that I think is more hindsight being 20/20 than serious lapses in planning was the planning for the worst case scenario for earthquakes and tsunamis for the area. The earthquake was the worst in probably 1200 years in Japan and would have went far beyond the levels of confidence used in good engineering planning.
The bigger question now might be why build nuclear plants in Japan, which is seismically active or in an area that is prone to tsunamis. For the first question of why use nuclear power in Japan, the answer is until recently there have been few other options. Japan is a small island nation with few resources and 75% of the land too mountainous to be habitable. With many of the plants built at a time when alternative energy also wasn't viable there was no other choice. Even now due to immediate need for electricity, Japan will still be looking to nuclear power. However, the accident might be creating a change to that. There's currently talk of proposing a law to make all new housing have solar panels by 2030. [6] This could work really well as Japan gets a lot of sun, architecture codes already have rules in place to prevent buildings from casting too large a shadow on other buildings so almost all buildings still have access to sunlight and buildings are rapidly replaced here, which would make for quicker implementation than other countries. Other viable ideas that I haven't heard much talk of would be geothermal, wind and wave hydroelectric power. As for the second question, I have less answers. The nuclear plants need to be close to the coast, because it's the only place where enough water can be drawn in to cool the plant. What I don't know is why they were built along the Pacific Ocean side near the fault lines and not on the Sea of Japan side where tsunamis wouldn't be such a risk. However, I'm sure there are other factors that I don't know about and makes my conjecture into this relatively of limited use.
After disaster had struck there were also some troubling problems about trying to fix the situation. None of this is due to the workers who have and continue to do an incredible job and have been the very definition of heroic throughout this ordeal. The general disaster response and planning by Tepco (the electric company in charge of the plant) and the government was pretty bad. First, I'll talk about Tepco. Tepco has a monopoly on electricity supply in the Tokyo / Kanto area and really strong political connections. They've also had a history of cover-up and problems most notably in 2002. [7] There has been some talk of the government acquiring and dismantling Tepco, but it seems to only have been talk and not very serious. What would make this difficult is two-fold being: a. it's strong political ties which might also explain some of the political beating Prime Minister Kan has taken the last few weeks, although the extent of either I don't know and b. the government not wanting to take over Tepco before it pays as much as possible for the containment, cleanup and reparations to those affected so it won't be paid for by tax payers.
Next for the government side. Here's an incredibly basic Japanese political overview pertinent to government context before the nuclear plant crisis. The Liberal Democrat party was in control of Japan from 1955-2009, when the Democratic Party came into power and has been in power since then. The other major factor is throughout the past 6 years, 5 different prime ministers have been in power; 3 on the Liberal Democrat side and 2 since the Democratic Party coming to power in Japan. It has been a time of relatively weak leadership in Japan and even the current prime minister, Naoto Kan has had to deal with a vote of no-confidence and low poll numbers the past few weeks here. Besides the political dysfunction / ineffectiveness of its recent history, the Japanese government comprises of a large bureaucracy making decisions slow and deliberate. These two factors showed themselves at the worst possible time during the crisis. It wasn't that actions were slow to be carried out, as they are usually quite efficiently done here, but nobody was seemingly willing to make decisions that needed to be made. To give an idea of some of the struggles in decision making, the clean-up and restoration of operations at Sendai airport was taken over by the U.S. military stationed in Japan and then relief operations directed by American personnel for weeks before returning operation to Japan. [8] Combined with Tepco previous problems regarding safety issues and cover-up could have lead to delays for a situation that couldn't have them. Such as how long it took to get electricity to the plant and water into the reactors for cooling. (Day 2 for any water, 4 days for water to reach all of the reactors and 11 days for electricity at damaged reactors to start testing.) [9] This also forced the workers' hands on-site who had to think and enact unprecedented emergency actions to try and keep things under control for that length of time. This is especially bad in light of the recent findings of meltdown starting five hours after the earthquake and the fuel falling to the bottom of the containment vessel 11 hours after the earthquake. [10]
Lastly, I'll cover the other event that happened during the problems at the nuclear plant that needs some explanation. The explosions that occurred to the housing unit buildings of the reactors were from a build-up of hydrogen that then exploded. [11] The hydrogen can be created when the fuel rods start melting and probably mixed with the oxygen when the inner containment vessel was vented to the outer containment vessel to relieve pressure. This is why there were explosions at the reactors during the crisis and were not as large a problem in the long run as originally feared.
This basically covers most of the important parts leading up to and during the nuclear plant crisis. The next part, and final part of the nuclear and earthquake coverage will be the impact from the nuclear disaster, as well as some commentary of the media coverage and of the term 'flyjin' created during this time.
References:
1. "Current Status of Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (as of June 27, 2011)," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/images/f12np-gaiyou_e_2.pdf.
2. "Tepco Cancels Plan to Build 2 New Reactors at Fukushima," Nikkei.
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110418D18JF399.htm.
3. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.
http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-04.html.
4. "Overview of Facility of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/outline_f1/index-e.html.
5. "TEPCO Details Tsunami Damage / Waves that hit Fukushima Plant Exceeded Firm's Worst Case-Projections," Daily Yomiuri Online.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110410003477.htm.
6. Tim Hornyak, "Japan Eyes Solar Panels on all New Buildings," CNET.
http://news.cnet.com/japan-eyes-solar-panels-on-all-new-buildings/8301-17938_105-20065704-1.html.
7. "Heavy Fallout From Japan Nuclear Scandal," CNN.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/09/02/japan.tepco/index.html.
8. Martin Fackler, "Quietly, U.S. Troops Help Japan Reopen Sendai Airport," The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/asia/14sendai.html.
9. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.
10. Brian Vastag and Steve Mufson, "Japanese Scientist: Fukushima Meltdown Occurred Within Hours of Quake," The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/japanese-scientist-fukushima-meltdown-occurred-within-hours-of-quake/2011/05/26/AGYXSJCH_story.html.
11. Leika Kihara and Kiyoshi Takenaka, "Japan to Fill Leaking Nuke Reactor with Sea Water," Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/japan-quake-reactor-idUSTKZ00680620110312?feedType=RSS&feedName=hotStocksNews&rpc=43.
After disaster had struck there were also some troubling problems about trying to fix the situation. None of this is due to the workers who have and continue to do an incredible job and have been the very definition of heroic throughout this ordeal. The general disaster response and planning by Tepco (the electric company in charge of the plant) and the government was pretty bad. First, I'll talk about Tepco. Tepco has a monopoly on electricity supply in the Tokyo / Kanto area and really strong political connections. They've also had a history of cover-up and problems most notably in 2002. [7] There has been some talk of the government acquiring and dismantling Tepco, but it seems to only have been talk and not very serious. What would make this difficult is two-fold being: a. it's strong political ties which might also explain some of the political beating Prime Minister Kan has taken the last few weeks, although the extent of either I don't know and b. the government not wanting to take over Tepco before it pays as much as possible for the containment, cleanup and reparations to those affected so it won't be paid for by tax payers.
Next for the government side. Here's an incredibly basic Japanese political overview pertinent to government context before the nuclear plant crisis. The Liberal Democrat party was in control of Japan from 1955-2009, when the Democratic Party came into power and has been in power since then. The other major factor is throughout the past 6 years, 5 different prime ministers have been in power; 3 on the Liberal Democrat side and 2 since the Democratic Party coming to power in Japan. It has been a time of relatively weak leadership in Japan and even the current prime minister, Naoto Kan has had to deal with a vote of no-confidence and low poll numbers the past few weeks here. Besides the political dysfunction / ineffectiveness of its recent history, the Japanese government comprises of a large bureaucracy making decisions slow and deliberate. These two factors showed themselves at the worst possible time during the crisis. It wasn't that actions were slow to be carried out, as they are usually quite efficiently done here, but nobody was seemingly willing to make decisions that needed to be made. To give an idea of some of the struggles in decision making, the clean-up and restoration of operations at Sendai airport was taken over by the U.S. military stationed in Japan and then relief operations directed by American personnel for weeks before returning operation to Japan. [8] Combined with Tepco previous problems regarding safety issues and cover-up could have lead to delays for a situation that couldn't have them. Such as how long it took to get electricity to the plant and water into the reactors for cooling. (Day 2 for any water, 4 days for water to reach all of the reactors and 11 days for electricity at damaged reactors to start testing.) [9] This also forced the workers' hands on-site who had to think and enact unprecedented emergency actions to try and keep things under control for that length of time. This is especially bad in light of the recent findings of meltdown starting five hours after the earthquake and the fuel falling to the bottom of the containment vessel 11 hours after the earthquake. [10]
Lastly, I'll cover the other event that happened during the problems at the nuclear plant that needs some explanation. The explosions that occurred to the housing unit buildings of the reactors were from a build-up of hydrogen that then exploded. [11] The hydrogen can be created when the fuel rods start melting and probably mixed with the oxygen when the inner containment vessel was vented to the outer containment vessel to relieve pressure. This is why there were explosions at the reactors during the crisis and were not as large a problem in the long run as originally feared.
This basically covers most of the important parts leading up to and during the nuclear plant crisis. The next part, and final part of the nuclear and earthquake coverage will be the impact from the nuclear disaster, as well as some commentary of the media coverage and of the term 'flyjin' created during this time.
References:
1. "Current Status of Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (as of June 27, 2011)," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/images/f12np-gaiyou_e_2.pdf.
2. "Tepco Cancels Plan to Build 2 New Reactors at Fukushima," Nikkei.
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110418D18JF399.htm.
3. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.
http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-04.html.
4. "Overview of Facility of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station," Tepco.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/outline_f1/index-e.html.
5. "TEPCO Details Tsunami Damage / Waves that hit Fukushima Plant Exceeded Firm's Worst Case-Projections," Daily Yomiuri Online.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110410003477.htm.
6. Tim Hornyak, "Japan Eyes Solar Panels on all New Buildings," CNET.
http://news.cnet.com/japan-eyes-solar-panels-on-all-new-buildings/8301-17938_105-20065704-1.html.
7. "Heavy Fallout From Japan Nuclear Scandal," CNN.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/09/02/japan.tepco/index.html.
8. Martin Fackler, "Quietly, U.S. Troops Help Japan Reopen Sendai Airport," The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/asia/14sendai.html.
9. "Timeline for the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident," Nuclear Energy Agency.
10. Brian Vastag and Steve Mufson, "Japanese Scientist: Fukushima Meltdown Occurred Within Hours of Quake," The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/japanese-scientist-fukushima-meltdown-occurred-within-hours-of-quake/2011/05/26/AGYXSJCH_story.html.
11. Leika Kihara and Kiyoshi Takenaka, "Japan to Fill Leaking Nuke Reactor with Sea Water," Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/japan-quake-reactor-idUSTKZ00680620110312?feedType=RSS&feedName=hotStocksNews&rpc=43.
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