Explosions and fires have occurred during the morning in Japan (the night of Spain). Until disposal (waiting for lower pollution at levels not so alarming) workers have been unable to come to suffocate because the radiation was excessive, so we study various alternative measures, among which the helicopters and complex hose systems. The alarm of a nuclear disaster continues to grow around the floor, hit four of six reactors the earthquake that devastated the country on Friday . Japan has already announced it will ask for help (especially materials such as anti-radiation suits) to the U.S.. The reactor 3 could be seriously damaged, as acknowledged by the Japanese Government. Kyodo alert (attributing the information to TEPCO) on 70% damage in the fuel rods from the reactor 1 and 33% in the 2 [ query in this chart the various components of the reactor ]. This is the first step to melt the core, since the fuel rods are heated and begin to merge with elements of metal rods that contain them. Should form a highly radioactive metallic magma. If the containment can be hold inside the building (which occurred at Three Mile Island, in the U.S. in 1979). If the containment fails and the radiation comes out, the tragedy could reach unintended consequences.
A plant employee who discovered the fire at reactor No. 4 at 5.45 am (local time), an outbreak rekindled the fire the day before. The Ministry of Health of Japan had to increase the legal limit of exposure to radiation at 250 miliseaverts for workers to get closer to the reactor 4 and extinguish the fire. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO, in English), responsible for the plant, claimed he was trying to control and planned to spray the reactor with boric acid (an inhibitor of the fire) until the center all alarms became reactors 2 and 3 and the radiation being emitted.
In any case, plant engineers have told NHK television in one of his priorities is to inject water into the reactor 4 from helicopters, because the building is inaccessible by land due to high radiation levels . The problem is that a shot from the top might be too violent and cause accidents such as cracks or overflow, plus it would be a danger to the helicopter pilots. In any case, authorities now consider it a priority to raise the level of the pool inside the reactor to prevent the temperature rise accelerate a possible merger.
Doubts about what is happening in the nuclear and how they are managing growing by the lack of information in Japan. The reactors 4, 5 and 6 were not operating the plant when the earthquake and tsunami, as Tokyo always left out of his warnings. Until Monday came the announcement that the two fires in the spent fuel pool 4 had produced a radioactive cloud. To this was added to the fuel pool reactors 5 and 6 were warming up, so Tepec has begun to cool them.
The spent nuclear fuel, which is radioactive for tens of thousands of years, is stored in pools that require continuous cooling. If you're warming that may mean more trouble getting water into the plant. Moreover, Japan was considering whether to remove the roof of the reactors to prevent a possible leakage of hydrogen does cause further explosions within the reactor building.
The design of this type of restraint systems since the design was discussed in the sixties, by General Electric. The effectiveness of containment, known as Mark I, the first reactor, was questioned by a U.S. official report of 1972, a year after it opened Fukushima.
A government against the strings
Fukushima The table began to worsen on Monday night (English time). After the last explosion in the reactor 2, the situation is particularly worrying. The International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) admitted that the primary reactor containment "may have affected its integrity." Assuming that this ruling may have an accident is to assume another dimension. Until then all calls for calm were that the containment buildings had withstood the explosions of hydrogen near the reactors.
The seriousness of the situation Central has been on the ropes the Japanese Government. Prime Minister Naoto Kan was brought yesterday to the nation through a televised statement in which, after calling for calm to the citizens, acknowledged that "there is growing danger of further radiation leaks." The Japanese, still shaken by the huge loss of human lives, about 10,000, according to unofficial data, which have caused the earthquake and tsunami, received little sympathy with his words, which many consider to have been late and have raised more clutter How reassuring.
At the same time, TEPCO seemed to throw in the towel and removed from the stricken plant, which already have been three explosions and two fires, almost all the 800 engineers and technicians these days are trying to avoid a catastrophe. TEPCO has left only 50 workers in a titanic struggle to control fires and re-cooling with sea water in the other three reactors injured. The levels of radiation, which had soared in the early hours of yesterday, fell significantly, at least for now, thanks to the work of those operators.
Experts, however, believe that such a task should have been left in the hands of a handful of men and feel the lack of which the Government has not placed in front of this battle. Especially after the spokesman Yukio Edan, acknowledged that the problems extend to the last two reactors at the plant, 5 and 6. Has begun to heat the water in the pools of these, which, like 4, also were out for review before the tsunami occurred. Not rule out further explosions.
"What the hell is going on?" Naoto Kan snapped TEPCO director for not informing him of the explosion. The prime minister has decided to form a crisis-in which is integrated TEPCO, and has been placed in front of it. Shortly after the governor called Fukushima, Yuhei Sato, to warn that "fear and anger of the people of this prefecture is reaching its limits. "
The information policy is an absolute failure. After all these days the Government has tried to keep a low profile information about what was happening in central Fukushima, Yesterday's radical turn baffled the traditional Japanese society. "The farther you are from the plant, will be safer", it occurred to Edan said in a televised news conference too. "Now we talk about levels of [radiation] that may have a health impact, "he said.
Power outages selective for two million Japanese, more than 200,000 evacuees in the 30-kilometer zone around the central ... Nevertheless, chaos has not taken hold in the north or Tokyo, a megalopolis of 30 million, because the extreme civility of the Japanese blast slows the words of the spokesman. However, many foreign companies echoed the explosive warning and ordered their expatriates to leave Japan as soon as possible, reports Reuters. A flight of employers, tourists and foreign residents contributed to the International Nuclear Event Scale and Radiological raising the status of the Fukushima nuclear alert level 6, only one grade below the Chernobyl maximum ever achieved.
Tokyo authorities, meanwhile, indicated that in some parts of the city of radioactivity was 40 times higher than usual, which does not pose a health risk, and insignificant particles were detected iodine and cesium .
"Our concern has been to know what happened to our family and friends. We are baffled. The Government has told us that we are in danger, but gives no explanation or guidelines on what can or should do," says the singer Rika Yoshida, who has chosen to go on holiday to Spain.
Concern about a new Chernobyl
Naoto Kan can not hide their panic to melt the heart of some of the damaged reactor or pop one of the sarcophagi that contain the reactor, as happened in Chernobyl in 1986 - and release into the atmosphere radioactive cloud 500 times higher than the atomic bomb on Hiroshima suffered in 1945. It has therefore decided to ban flights over Fukushima within a radius of 30 kilometers. Yesterday also finished evacuating all the inhabitants within a radius of 20 kilometers and asked those who live between 20 and 30 miles from the center to remain at home with windows and doors closed.
"My whole family is from Kyoto [southern Japan] and are very concerned because here are close to Fukushima Niigata. I have taken four days off and I get out to see them," said Tanaka, a hotel employee.
Most of the 127 million people in Japan these days spend glued to phones and TV. For the mobile earthquake alarms are more than 6. Yesterday sounded twice, but did not affect earthquakes. And the television coverage they are giving different channels to what happened and what may yet come. Many people have stockpiled water, dried food, rice and other foods. In Niigata, a city half a million inhabitants located 150 kilometers west of Fukushima, may be some empty shelves and shortages in supermarkets. But as one travels from west to east, toward the disaster area, the shortage is more palpable, to be extreme on the coast where the tsunami struck. Thus, in Sendai, a city of one million inhabitants, restaurants and supermarkets are closed because they are empty. The same occurs in the vicinity of the exclusion zone Fukushima, whose shelters and shelter the displaced schools.
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