No. 1 plant's air radiation highest measured so far

[kristopher]

Source: Japan Times

Tepco said Saturday it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour at the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The radiation reading, which was taken when Tokyo Electric Power Co. sent a robot into the No. 1 reactor building on Friday, is believed to be the largest detected in the air at the plant so far.

On Friday, Tepco found that steam was spewing from the reactor floor. Nationally televised news Saturday showed blurry video of steady smoke curling up from an opening in the floor.

...The pressure suppression containment vessel is located under the building and highly radioactive contaminated water generated by the reactor is believed to have accumulated there, Tepco said, adding the steam is probably coming from the water.

Read more: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110604x1.html

[Poll_Blind]

1. 4,000 millisieverts = 4 sieverts. Around hour or more of that and you're beyond all treatment.

That's if you don't breathe any of it in, just the radiation exposure itself. See HERE for more information.

It's been difficult for me to get a clean conversion from Becquerels to Sieverts because...well...there isn't any. Not unless you know exactly what element is putting off the radiation and in this situation there's such a soup of toxicity, there isn't an easy answer for that. A sievert reading, like this, is much easier to understand than doing conversions. It means that for anything but cockroaches it's lights-out.

PB

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. sounds like it's even to hot for robots...wouldn't those numbers render them useless?

[robdogbucky]

2. The reasons?

Submitted by Chris Martenson

Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers Of Fukushima Are Worse And Longer-lived Than We Think


"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind and blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan - it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed."

So cautions Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan's Fukushima disaster. The situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. In the near term, the reactors remain particularly vulnerable to sizable aftershocks, which still have decent probability of occuring. On top of this is a growing threat of 'hot particle' contamination risk to more populated areas as weather patterns shift with the typhoon season and groundwater seepage...


"...Arnie Gundersen: When you see hydrogen explosions, that means that the outside of the fuel has exceeded 2,200 degrees and the inside is well over 3,500 degrees. The fuel gets brittle, it burns, and then it plops to the bottom of the nuclear reactor in a molten blob like lava. It was pretty clear to a lot of people, including apparently to the NRC, but they weren’t telling people back in March, that that had occurred in reactor one. There was essentially a blob of lava on the bottom of the nuclear reactor. So I have to separate this – a nuclear reactor - and that is inside of a containment. So there is still one more barrier here. But the problem is that the reactor had boiled dry and they were using fire pumps connected to the ocean to pump saltwater into the reactor. Now, if this thing were individual tubes, the water could get around the uranium and completely cool it. But when it's a blob at the bottom of the reactor, it can only get to the top surface and that would cause it to begin to meltdown. Now, on these boiling water reactors, there are about seventy holes in the bottom of the reactor where the control rods come in and I suspect that those holes were essentially the weak link that caused this molten mass. Now it's 5,000 degrees at the center, even though the outside may be touching water, the inside of this molten mass is 5,000 degrees. It melts through and lies on the bottom of the containment.

That’s where we are today. We have no reactor essentially, just a big pressure cooker. The molten uranium is on the bottom of the containment. It spreads out at that point, because the floor is flat. And I don’t think it's going to melt its way through the concrete floor. It may gradually over time; but the damage is already done because the containment has cracks in it and it's pretty clear that it is leaking. So you put water in the top. And the plan had never been to put water in the top and let it run out the bottom. That is not the preferred way of cooling a nuclear reactor in an accident. But you are putting water in the top and it's running out the bottom and it's going out through cracks in the containment, after touching directly uranium and plutonium and cesium and strontium and is carrying all those radioactive isotopes out as liquids and gases into the environment..."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

[Gregorian]

5. Thanks for posting. It's exactly what I've been thinking all along.

When we heard about melting, I immediately envisioned this solid mass that could not be cooled except over it's surface. And that is a small percentage compared to it's overall volume.

[StarsInHerHair]

9. I'm glad you posted that I was going to, notice he says we r well byond science

here, we're charting new territories now.......at least now I have an idea of the ambient air temps........since tepco has thrown polyester-type tarps over parts of the buildings, I still vehemently advocate building a steel building like an aircraft hangar over ALL the buildings, now I include #5 &6 here, & THEN HEAVILY lead plate THAT BUILDING NOW!



How soon til the State of CA or OR files a suit against tepco for unnecessary exposure to radiation? In that same article it mentions that scientists trackd "hot particles" that REACHED SEATTLE & that for the month of April (I think) if you were to go outside & breathed in 10 hot particles a day, use the average male lung capacity as 10 cubic meters. They did not yet have the info for May yet.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. This is Japan's third....

nuclear disaster (we caused the other two). I wonder if they will vow to get rid of nuclear power like Germany did.

[leveymg]

6. We caused all three, if you count GE as part of "we."

Even Godzilla was Made in America (released from the ice by a US atomic bomb test), according to the original script.

[Corruption Winz]

7. Fool me once....

You'd think this might be the last straw. But..... you'd also rethink and realize that some people just don't learn from their mistakes.

[AndyTiedye]

8. Radiation Levels Keep Getting Higher and Higher

Tepco has promised to bring the plant under control by January, but doubts are growing whether this projection is overly optimistic.

Does this mean it will keep getting worse and worse until at least January?
Or will all the corium from the melted-down reactors party together and make a big :nuke:

[sce56]

10. Radiation in No. 1 reactor building at highest level yet

Source: Japan Times

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour in the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.


Where there's smoke: A video image from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant shows steam rising from an opening in the floor of the No. 1 reactor building Friday. TEPCO / AP

The radiation reading, which was taken when Tepco sent a robot into the No. 1 reactor building on Friday, is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant so far. On Friday, Tepco found steam spewing from the basement into the building's first floor. Nationally televised news Saturday showed blurry video of a steady stream of smoky gas curling up from an opening where a pipe rises through the floor.The radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes. Tepco said there is no plan to place workers in that area of the plant and said it will carefully monitor any developments.

The utility said it took the reading near the floor at the southeast corner of the building. The steam appears to be entering from a leaking rubber gasket that is supposed to seal the area where the pipe comes up through the first floor. No damage to the pipe was found, Tepco said. The reactor's suppression chamber is under the building, and highly radioactive water generated from cooling the reactor is believed to have accumulated there, Tepco said, adding that the steam is probably coming from there.

On Friday, nine workers who entered the building to attach a pressure gauge to the pressure vessel of reactor No. 1 were exposed to around 4 millisieverts of radiation, according to Tepco. The fuel rods are believed to have melted almost completely and sunk to the bottom of the containment vessels of reactors 1, 2 and 3. A complete meltdown would have seen the fuel melt entirely through the containment vessels and into the reactor floor.


Read more: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110605a3.html

---

Can we say China Syndrome now? How is it that the steam is coming up from under the reactor floor? The only thing that makes sense is that the fuel melted out of the vessel and down through the floor!

[suffragette]

11. And they're concerned radioactive water will overflow if there's heavy rain

And the forecast says rain is on the way.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-radiation-record-levels-2011-6
Tepco also warned that pools of radioactive water will overflow by June 20 or sooner if there is heavy rain.
While storage tanks are rushed to the area, the weather forecast for Fukushima is ominous: Thunderstorms tomorrow and rain throughout the week.


Yikes.

[stockholmer]

12. this is going to keep getting worse,Tokyo is in terrible danger, & soon the world will have to admit

that THIS SHIT IS GOING TO KILL MILLIONS VIA CANCER.

A slow motion global nuclear holocaust.



:(

[nonperson]

14. It's not a problem because a DU member told me the other day

When I asked how many people would die due to Fukushima he said, "All of them." Meaning I suppose that we all die sooner or later and to the nuclear death industry apologists that means it's OK to melt down plants and irradiate millions of people around the world because we're all going to die anyway.

This is the logic behind the nuclear death industry. Make money we're all going to die anyway and a horrible death due to radiation poisoning and cancer is as good as any other cause of death as long as the nuclear death industry P&L statement has more P than L for its investors.

[defendandprotect]

13. kr

[Citizen Worker]

15. Drip, drip, drip. Death by a thousand cuts or...? What's the difference when the outcome is the

same?

[Rex]

16. So how big will the exclusion zone be by next January?

This shit just gets worse and worse.