Japan suspends work at stricken nuclear plant | Hacker News Reader

Japan suspends work at stricken nuclear plant

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I'm having a hard time reconciling patio11's article with more recent reports of people walking 60km to get home, all food being gone from all stores, people living in Apple stores, and the government ordering a 30km evacuation zone around nuclear power plants.

Maybe his point was "it could have been a lot worse", but I read it more like "everything went as planned and life went on without missing more than a few beats". The latter certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

I read his post as being about the quake. with the tsunami, all bets were off. i suspect what you're describing is the aftermath of the tsunami, not the quake.

One thing patio11's article did was to dispell many misconceptions that Americans have about Japan. It is easy to claim that hindsight is 20/20, but his post was very relevant and on target considering the circumstances.

patio11 is undoubtedly correct that 'Japanese does not have a word for excessive preparation'.

But no matter how excessively prepared for a 7.0 or a 7.5, it may not be possible to prepare for the utter destruction of a 9.0 followed immediately by a tsunami.

Is it true that there is no japanese word for 'looting'.

This all came up from a joke, we were watching the news broadcasts, and my friend said 'you know there is no looting in Japan' and I said 'that is because they don't have a word for it'. I ended up looking it up, and it seems true - can you confirm?

略奪 ryakudatsu

edit: link to definition - http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/79721/m1u/%E7%95%A5%E5%...

You can't reconcile it because they are two different things. I read it a couple days ago but I believe the points you refer to were all centered in Tokyo. I was in Tokyo for this past weekend and the metro was shut down Friday afternoon which made it extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, for people to get home after work. In Tokyo and the rest of Japan outside of the affected area, yes life has gone on with just some minor interruptions. That definitely isn't the case for those in the disaster area.

Please read patio11's article again!

The nuclear power plant is 160mi from Tokyo. You'd think that there's some difference in the conditions across that distance?

When the 2004 tsunami happened in South India, a town on the coast would be devastated, while a village 2km inland would be completely unaffected.

From this Google Maps link to driving between http://bit.ly/g4hfPm Tokyo & Okuma you can see that the road runs along the coast and might have been hit by the Tsunami, causing lack of supplies.

So most likely explanation

1. On the coast, esp. in the Miyagi province, a lot of things are screwed. It could have been much worse if there was not the Japanese emergency training/response.

2. 5km inside the coast-line, there will be earthquake damage, no tsunami damage, and life will be near normal by now.

[edited for grammar/formatting]

I am located in Hashimoto, Kanagawa (search for 神奈川県相模原市橋本 in Google Maps if you want to see where this is) and may be able to provide some insight.

Japan is a relatively small country, but the current atmosphere is considerably different in different locations. My experience near Tokyo has been quite interesting, but it is nothing compared to the disaster that has unfolded north of here. For those close to the big earthquake and tsunami, life has been completely changed if they are lucky enough that it was not ended.

Life is nowhere near back to normal where I live. It is surreal: with trains stopped and few cars on the road, the neighborhood has become very quiet, with the exception of public announcements through loudspeakers and "incoming quake" alerts through mobile phones. The rolling blackouts are likely a significant factor of the atmosphere. Some train lines in my area were stopped completely while others are only stopped when the power is out. The queues of people for trains have been very long, so it is difficult to commute. As a result, most stores in my area are completely closed. Some stores open when electricity is on, but many shelves are empty of goods that are in demand. Other stores have special security to allow small groups of shoppers (at a time) through a fence into the entranceway in order to purchase in-demand goods, while entrance to the actual store is blocked. Most apartments require power to pump water, so our water goes out as well when the power is off. With strong earthquakes continuing to roll in and blackouts scheduled for some time, I do not know how long it will take for things to return to normal here.

I do not have direct experience of what it is like where patio11 is at, but without the rolling blackouts, I am sure that the atmosphere is very different.

I have more that I would like to say, but this comment is long enough already, and my power is scheduled to turn off in five minutes.

Are the rolling blackouts happening all over Tokyo? Are people in Tokyo going to work and are kids going to their schools now just like before?

Good luck to you.

The central part of tokyo (ward 23) is (with a few very small exceptios) exempt from blackouts, due to having a lot of critical government infrastructure on its grid. Most central tokyo trains have multiple power sources, and are running all day with only slightly reduced schedules (they seem to be gradually ramping back up to full service; some, including the Yamanote line, are already back to the normal schedule). Trains to outlying areas often have to suspend service during blackout times, which rotate each day. Most Shinkansen lines are back up to some degree - some running full schedules - with the exception of lines heading northeast closer to the epicenter; those lines will need major track and station repair.

A lot of people are staying home to help reduce load on the transportation and electrical infrastructure. Once the power plants start to come up (and people stop hoarding groceries), things should start to approach normality in the Tokyo area at least. Areas closer to the epicenter will need more rebuilding, however.

The rolling blackouts are imposed in the cities and prefectures around Tokyo, but central Tokyo itself (the 23 wards) keep power so that the government and key industry can continue to function. Here is a map: http://www.accessj.com/2011/03/quake-power-outage-area-map.h...

Basically, areas are assigned to one of five groups, and the electric company announces when each group will be without power. A given group may be without power for one or two ~3-hour periods between 6:20am and 10:00pm. The schedule is rotated for fairness, as power outages have significant impact on business. Note that south/west Japan is not part of this because they use 60hz AC while north/east Japan uses 50hz AC and the technology to convert on a large scale is not in place.

The power outage schedule has been a bit frustrating, but we cannot really complain when we think of the larger context and the extreme difficulties that people are going through in other parts of Japan. The electric company said that they would post the schedule for a given day by 18:00 of the day before, but I have yet to see that happen. The schedule often changes, and this afternoon was my second time to wait for a power outage that did not come. Japan uses loudspeakers to give out current information, but I live in between two loudspeakers and am unable to make much sense of either one, particularly with the echoes. When the power did not go out this afternoon, I checked the electric company website again and see that it was updated; my power is now scheduled to be out from 3:20pm to 7:00pm. A chart on a recent newspaper article looks like a sane schedule, and I hope they stick with it! http://mainichi.jp/select/weathernews/20110311/news/20110316...

I have not been to downtown Tokyo lately myself, but stories from friends indicate that the atmosphere is very different there as well, despite the fact that they always have power. I would love to go check it out myself, but I refrain from doing so in fear that it may difficult to return home if something happens while I am out. (I was returning from Tokyo on Friday afternoon and enjoyed a long hike home then, after being evacuated from a train.)

Thank you very much for your wishes. Personally, I was very close to the epicenter of a M7.0 earthquake years ago, and with that experience behind me, I remain quite calm and unworried. I quit my job last year and am bootstrapping a lean startup, so I am working at home and do not even need to worry about commuting. :)

Outside of the immediate disaster zones, I think "everything went as planned and life went on without missing more than a few beats" is substantially accurate. The context for my post was originally I got literally in excess of a hundred people who thought I might be dead trying to reach me because of the reporting, despite me being several hundred miles away. I have been talking to news reporters the last few days (whose Rolodex of English-speaking Japanese people is apparently non-existent, so I'm the next best thing) and its like we're living on two different planets: "Can you comment on the food shortages you're experiencing in Fugu?" "Fugu is a poisonous fish. I live in Gifu. There is no food shortage here. I just got a pizza delivered despite there being an earthquake in the middle of the delivery." "I thought the quake was days ago?" "Not that earthquake, the Shizuoka earthquake, at 10:30 PM last night." "Shizuoka... is that by the nuclear power plants??" I nearly exploded. Halfway between Tokyo and Nagoya, cut off power to a lot of people, and would have been virtually unremarkable except that it happened this week.

This is a disaster localized to a small portion of a big country. That was certainly not a given: Tokyo could be burning right now, and the situation at the nuclear plant which literally had a tsunami hit it could be the situation at every nuclear and chemical plant in the country. (Or the plant could have suffered immediate, catastrophic failure, rather than immediate work-as-designed followed by a deterioration which gave us enough time to evacuate everyone.

Food distribution and trains got a hiccup in Tokyo -- they're now operating normally. (They're decidedly not normal in the towns destroyed in Miyagi, obviously. 500,000 people were displaced at least temporarily.)

People do not live in Apple stores. They stayed there one night while waiting for train service to be restored. If you're worried about displaced folks, look to the evacuation sites like e.g. schools in Miyagi, which is where folks who don't have a home to go back to are staying temporarily.

My impression is simply that people don't know Japanese geography, which isn't all together too surprising. There's no reason a person should know the geography of Japan any better than the geography of Uzbekistan if he or she doesn't have a specific tie to either country. They just hear "earthquake in Japan" and ask the people who live in Japan if they're doing alright.

My brother lives in Auckland. We had a lot of people asking if he was OK after the quake in Christchurch. They are ~700 miles away on different islands, so he wasn't affected at all by the quake there, but we patiently explained this. It seems silly to get so haughty when people are expressing genuine concern for your well-being.

It's actually understandable to be so haughty, at least after you've had roughly a hundred people do so. As someone who's here right now, I can tell you we've got enough on our minds that, while we certainly get that people are concerned with us, proper information in the hands of others would make life infinitely easier on our side.

There's no reason a person should know the geography of Japan any better than the geography of Uzbekistan if he or she doesn't have a specific tie to either country.

I'm going to agree here. I went to high school in Tokyo and I hadn't heard of Gifu until patio11 mentioned it. This is not really a problem due to the availability of these things called "maps", however.

This is not really a problem due to the availability of these things called "maps", however

Oh, how I wish this were the case. (The lady from the New York Times excepted, this has been a repeated issue when speaking with reporters. I have been falling back to my "If Japan were the United States..." explanation quite a lot.)

This is not really a problem due to the availability of these things called "maps", however.

And the availability of this thing called 'the periodic table' means everyone knows and understands basic chemistry.

The periodic table explains more complex relationships than: "how far apart things are" or "where they are in relation to one another." Basic concepts such as distance and relative orientation are things that (should) come as a basic understanding to even people with no formal education; therefore once one is introduced to maps, those concepts are (or should be) very easy to grasp. The relationships and orientation of elements on the periodic table are much more complex and cover much less 'intuitive' topics.

If you're reporting on Japan about a natural disaster that affects different parts of the country differently, it may be worth the 1-2 seconds to type in 'maps.google.com' in your browser.

I agree with that. The reporters thing seems to be a fresh take on it -- my impression from the beginning of the comment I replied to and the blog post from the other day was that it was just a lot of normal persons enquiring. Interfacing with reporters obviously is bound to be frustrating.

People have a 1/x scale with distance. When I lived in California my grandmother in the UK would call everytime there was a hurricane in Florida.

You can't really expect professional TV reporters to be any better informed than my 80year old grandmother.

That famous New Yorker cover http://bigthink.com/ideas/21121 comes to mind again.

Patio11's post both shed light on facts that were receiving little to no news coverage shortly after the main disaster and gave a valuable personal perspective on the unique ethos and role of preparedness and engineering in Japanese society.

Sometimes when people write from a contrarian or polemical viewpoint, overstatement occurs in the effort to create balance. I can certainly understand if Patrick's case was slightly overstated. The situation has evolved since his article was posted, but his overall point of the success of Japan's preparedness remains true and still under-reported.

Remember, this earthquake was one of the most powerful in history[1]. I think for many it's difficult to imagine just how much worse the devastation could have been from this compound disaster. I shudder to think of the physical destruction and social chaos that would ensue should such an earthquake and tsunami strike my beloved Bay Area; compared to Japan in this context our social fabric is a very loose weave.

[1] http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes

This piece gives some perspective on the tsunami's effects in small coastal villages: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16scene.html

Headline is false (possibly mistranslation).

According to http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/latest-updates-o...:

11:13 P.M. (EST) Core Group of Workers Remain at Plant The Times’s Hiroko Tabuchi reports that a small group of workers remains at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, contrary to what an English translation of the chief cabinet secretary’s remarks had implied.

Edit: http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2 is also reporting that workers are (back) in. Also NHK is clearly reporting that the chief secretary misspoke radiation levels and used milli instead of micro.

I waited a while to get a feel from multiple media outlets before replying to you, and CNN aired the video of the remarks in question in that time...based upon waiting, it would appear that the headline is in fact true. BBC, AP, and CNN have all reported that operations have been suspended due to high radiation levels, as high as 1,000 mSv at their peak, which is enough to justify complete evacuation as I understand it. The last report of radiation levels was 600-800 mSv.

Edano's translator on the tape said (loosely, I typed quickly): "All the workers there have suspended operations there. Even the minimum ones. So we have evacuated them in a safe area."

The even the minimum ones is interesting. Edano himself promised more details on the suspension later, which is worrying in itself.

Edit: Video of Edano's remarks here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

That was 600-800 uSv.

Watch the video. He specifically said milli-Sievert.

And then he was corrected by the dude in the white lab coat.

I however heard micro on my translation and was a little bit confused during the correcting.

It might be where they're measuring. He went on to indicate that at the gate, the measurements had just reached the milli- level; perhaps the exorbitantly high figure is very close to the core?

I think the figures that were thrown around in that press conference--either by Edano or 'white lab jacket guy'--varied by location however the translator had my head spinning and I couldn't deduce what's what.

I'm pretty certain that anytime "600 to 800" was mentioned, it was supposed to be in uSv, and that those measurements were taken at the plant's gates.

Fair enough. Will be good to see a correction, then (like that'll happen) -- most of the big names in the media have already run with milli-.

Takeaway for me from this: units for radiation exposure suck, and don't communicate well to the lay.

I'm willing to bet they will repeat that news conference on the hour (one minute) on NHK:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

EDIT: They indeed did so, but shortened and dumbed it down with only 2 figures being provided by 'WLJG'--2.3 and 6.4 mSv 'near the plant', with the latter being the peak at the time of 'leak.'

There's no point endlessly debating the numbers since Tepco releases them in full:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/tepconews/index-j.html

Here are the latest ones for Fukushima-daiichi:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110316c.pdf

The columns are, in order, date, time, location (often 正門, the main gate), gamma rays, neutron radiation, wind direction, wind speed. The latest peak seems to be 10.85 mSv/hr at 12:30PM on the 16th, down to 2.5 mSv/hr less than one hour later.

It would be awfully nice if people included units of time when talking about sieverts, because it is a cumulative measurement. If you don't mention how long it takes to absorb a reported dosage people are going to get unnecessarily confused.

Nikkei and CNN both reported that 50 employees stayed behind out of 800, with CNN quoting someone as saying that they should be considered heroes for doing so (couldn't agree more). If you click CNN's "breaking" on this topic, the article actually still says that. This is certainly a much more serious development.

Edit: Anderson Cooper called this "hard to believe" on-air, and he's being careful about how to word it.

Edit 2: BBC just finished a writethru with more details on the full suspension (thanks paul): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

That was yesterdays news. Those ~50 remaining all evacuated apparently.

Also, the Wikipedia "Timeline of Fukushima nuclear accidents" has been reliable for the latest updates - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nucle...

As a total aside, I find it interesting that Wikipedia, which 5 years ago would never be considered a reliable source for a developing event such as this, is now (rightly) considered a good place to go to for up to the hour information.

I've found wikipedia to be an excellent source of news on current events.

One of the problems with most "regular" news reporting is that it's very context sensitive. It's a tiny diff of info that assumes that you have already applied all of the previous diffs. If you want to understand a situation well this process can be infuriating. Wikipedia however actually distills down all the info into a complete and coherent whole making it a far more useful overall source of information.

However, there are some caveats. Wikipedia isn't well optimized for breaking news, so the hiccups in the process can cause more problems there than for other articles. Case in point, the wiki article for the Sendai quake/tsunami had very early on listed the number of casualties at an astonishing 6 million.

"Case in point, the wiki article for the Sendai quake/tsunami had very early on listed the number of casualties at an astonishing 6 million."

I imagine that was fixed pretty quickly. Things like that tend not to last very long.

It was only that way for a few hours, but the magnitude of the inaccuracy is important to keep in mind. No matter how good wikipedia gets it's always important to use critical reasoning to make sure what you're reading is actually reliable information.

As a followup: At some point while I was trying to keep my annoyance in check at being forced to listen to CNN in the airport terminal during a layover on my trip back from PAX East in Boston I had a realization about traditional media. It's essentially just a giant example of the broken telephone game. The information from the people who actually know and understand what's going on is transferred in relay-like fashion through spokespeople, to reporters, to copy writers, to editors, to anchors. Sadly most of the people involved in this chain do not have any expertise in the subjects at hand and do not have robust mechanisms for ensuring the accuracy or utility of their reporting.

In the end you get the classic "purple monkey dishwasher" problem of too many questionably reliable nodes on an information route, and then amplified by the prejudices and predilections of everyone involved plus the needs of the news organization to drive traffic in order to maximize revenue.

I'd suggest caution in using WP for this. WP tends to get a lot of activity on current events (I usually don't bother editing them for that reason), this one is less likely to draw on the usual contentious/opinion driven contingent, but it is always a risk.

Quite a lot of "current event" incidents are badly covered on WP until some time after the fact.

Facts and figures could well be very wrong; with lengthy discussion on the talk page ironing it out. There is also a strong western bias in the writing/sources, especially (as it happens) with regards to Japan. Finally; people will tend to write their own interpretations and comment on such events; some of which hangs around longer than it should.

Use with care :)

11:36 The remaining 50 workers located in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have evacuated after radiation levels there have surged. They were allowed back in less than an hour later.

Actually, the 50 evacuating was based on a mistranslation. They're still there.

I updated the title of the submission, thanks.

They stayed behind because the Prime Minister screamed at the executives to make it happen.

Conjuring the language of war, Mr Kan is reported as saying: "Retreat is unthinkable."

False attention grabbing title.

They have not abandoned it, they said in the press conference just passed that they had suspended operations due to a radiation peak but they expected to resume again without much delay.

Edit: The workers have returned http://roound.com/redalert

The entire article didn't mention any kind of expectation for resuming operations, and you are doubting the Associated Press here, not Gizmodo. Can you cite the rest? So far, I can only find this AP story.

BBC reports a suspension http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

BBC also reported 1,000 mSv measured at the plant. Pretty sure they got that wrong too.

The AP reported that figure as well in the linked article.

That can't possibly be right, can it?

It would certainly explain the evacuation.

Edano said "1,000 milli-Sieverts" had been measured last night, but that it was down to under 800 now, and that at the gate the measurements were now in the milli- range as well (hence the evacuation).

TEPCO is not exactly being forthcoming about Dai-ichi, but they're being really proactive in telling us the same exact thing about Daini every hour: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.htm...

Actually the BBC does seem wrong in that it is reporting 1000 millisieverts rather than microsieverts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

^ 1:20 in the video. Milli. Not micro.

Those are Edano's words, not the BBC's. I was told above that he was corrected by another person and that various translations have it as a different figure, but that isn't in the linked video.

He misspoke. NHK correcting this now. micro is correct; NOT milli

I haven't heard anything about 1000 mSv at all. I've been watching/listening to: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

(According to the IAEA) There was one measurement of 400mSv between reactors 3 and 4 [1], I think which actually occurred sometime on monday GMT (possibly Tuesday morning in Japan), which prompted the evacuation. It fell again, which probably prompted the authorities to allow workers back in.

The 1000mSv figure is most likely a misreporting of the transient 1008 or 1080uSv (I recall it had an 8 in it) measurement reported over the weekend, or some subsequent measurement... there have been lots in and around the plant that have been on the order of 1000uSv.

I really wish everyone in the media speaking about the nuclear crisis would timestamp their comments accurately, ideally in GMT. People all around the world are trying to follow events, and it's nearly impossible to know when some reporter says something about an event whether they're using Japanese time, their local time, or GMT.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/notes/international-atomic-energy-ag...

It was just announced in a press conference that I caught live on NHK that they were planning on resuming operations shortly.

The AP article seems to have been written prior to this conference.

Which is exactly what I refered to in my post. sigh

I think everyone (including myself) was reacting to your claim it was a false attention grabbing title. Regardless of that, looks like broken telephone, best source might be to watch NHK broadcasts directly as you did (CNN seems to be translating it live?). The HTML-news sources didn't note the further detail then, maybe they have now.

EDIT: Ah, NHK is providing the translation and stream. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

EDIT 2: Apparently they've been ordered back now. http://roound.com/redalert

EDIT 3: Or not, no-one else is confirming.

"2:53 PM - Workers ordered to leave the Fukushima plant have been allowed back after radiation levels fell, the Japan nuclear agency said.

Pumping of seawater at reactors at No. 1, 2 and 3 was proceeding smoothly, it said.

(Reuters)"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/#entry-6a...

Thou shalt not doubt The Associated Press. Unbelievable.

The on-site workers have left, those who were basically right next to the reactor. There is no indication in any article I have read that they will soon return, only plans of helicopter based fire-fighting or other options.

They ruled out using helicopters as anything but a last resort in the press conference. They said it was too risky to dump lots of water on the already fragile reactors.

via @W7VOA

"S. Korea to ship boric acid to help Japan stabilize nuclear reactors."

You don't need a helicopter to deliver boric acid into the reactors.

But you need tons of additional water if you deliver it with a helicopter.

And it would seem they have decided to take the risk. NHK reporting Japan self-defense forces are preparing to pour water on Daiichi No. 3 reactor from helicopter.

I agree the word "abandon" sounds too final. It sounds like they've given up on it which is not true. I think a non-sensationalist headline would say workers have "pulled away".

Kyodo News reported that staff had vacated the control room due to high levels of radioactivity. If that is not "abandoning" then it is pretty close to it.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/15/japan-quake-live-blog-f... (scroll down or search for "control" in the postings)

The problem people seem to have is that "abandon" implies "everyone has left and no-one will ever come back", and that the plant will be left, unattended, to its fate. While various articles seem to actually be saying "people left temporarily, but will be coming back" and that efforts will continue to deal with the problem.

I'd argue that is splitting hairs. What will magically lower the radiation when the workers leave?

They can't drop boric acid and water on the half-melted reactors from helicopters for fear of rupturing them further, the control systems are no longer effective, and pumping in seawater hasn't worked too well so far.

<i>What will magically lower the radiation when the workers leave?</i>

Time.

Wind.

Right. Most of the radiologicals that have been released with the steam have very short half lives so the radiation levels drop rapidly (relatively speaking).

I would point out that the dangerous stuff that is there is iodine(-131 IIRC) with a half life of 8 days and since it can give you thyroid cancer it is not "safe" until it virtually is gone at 80 days; and cesium-137 with a half life of 30 years, a gram of which can kill you.

CNN actually sent out breaking news alerts for both. Silly.

They earlier raised the legal radiation limit that workers can be exposed to from 100mSv to 250mSv.

Readings at the gates were 800uSv 30 or so minutes ago when the suspension was announced.

Don't you mean 800μSv - microsieverts?

Seems to me like they have a long way to go until 100mSv - millisieverts

No, I don't think so. Whatever sources I got that from had it as milli. I triple checked.

World Nuclear News has posted an update regarding recent developments to their site: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Second_fire_reported_at...

Sounds like reactor #3 may have suffered damage similar to #2 causing the increase in radiation.

the ny times has a pretty amazing article now about the 50 remaining workers trying to avert nuclear disaster in Japan. apparently they are back at work now after radiation levels dropped:

http://t.co/7H

also, reuters has a very good real time blog, I think it's best source of up to date, level headed info. They curate commentary from other into their stream, and have experts, such as nuclear expert do live Q and A in the stream.

http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2

Apparently they've been ordered back 2 minutes ago.

http://roound.com/redalert

This link that you posted seems to be sending a lot of misinformation, though the "return to work" part is correct. Radiation levels in Tokyo are near-normal as far as I can see on the online counters.

I'm collecting the factual links that do not contain the hysteria, on a post on my blog. No, there is no adsense on that blog.

http://bnpcs.blogspot.com/2011/03/links-about-situation-in-j...

It's quite possible, I have no idea who's updating it, and NHK TV isn't confirming it (yet?).

180 workers onsite now, according to YokosoNews folks translating the TBS.

(Sorry in advance if this is a stupid question or I didn't pick up on a major point) Can anyone explain how they're going to stop whatever is going wrong without any workers there?

I've read news reports that they were thinking about helicopter drops of water and/or boric acid.

They've rejected helicopter drops because the targets aren't close enough to the holes in the reactor building roofs.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/japan.nuclear.re...

FYI, the article is false. It was based on a translation error. A core group of workers is still at the plant working to cool the cores.

Source:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/latest-updates-o...

A reporter for the NYT in Japan says the workers aren't leaving -- http://twitter.com/#!/HirokoTabuchi/status/47882019102928896

More importantly, she claims that a "core team" didn't leave. There's a lot of contradictory and confusing information on the situation right now.

In times like these heroes are born. I wouldn't be surprised if some workers stay behind or break protocol to do whatever it takes.

Question: why don't the US military forces get involved in the rescue effort at Fukushima? Is it because the Japanese government does not want the US to get involved due to political considerations, or because there's not much the US forces could do to help at this point?

This is worrying (unless it's to conserve bandwidth so the video can be rebroadcast via mirrors): "TEPCO has removed public access to a webcam showing the Fukoshima reactors. Now a password is needed in order to observe the complex."

So just out of curiosity, does GE have any liability since they built all those reactors?

Or does "earthquake" get them out of any responsibility?

Any GE Mark I's on the west coast on the USA?

The reactors didn't fail; the site did. If the backup generators and power grid didn't fail, there wouldn't have been any issue. It's well known that you can't just unplug a nuclear power plant and have it shut down safely.

You can find a list of Boiling Water Reactors here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiling_water_reactors

What the Russians did at Chernobyl was they asked the army for volunteers fully informing the soldiers that it could be a suicide mission. They ended up getting more volunteers than they needed.

Really? I've seen a couple of docos where the firefighters and such said they had no idea what they were getting themselves into . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCcutzXzYg

I was just in the middle of this. I'm at about 4 minutes, and the people have gas masks around their necks that they're not even bothering to use. Seems like they're oblivious.

That is correct, the original first responders had no idea and many of them died within a few days. Afterwards the government called for volunteers.

Volunteers? In Soviet Russia? You are kidding me. I lived there (not in Russia, but it does not matter).

I was a small kid at the time, but I have heard a family story a few times how my father stayed out of work and home not to be included into the list of "volunteers".

There were people asking for him at work. The reasons for choosing him? He was an engineer and young enough.

He got notified by a coworker and got himself a certificate from a doctor to stay out of work.

A lot of other young guys didn't get a warning in advance and now suffer the illnesses they got from "volunteering".

Yes, I know there are a lot of "Liquidators" that were forced to work at Chernobyl. But the original crew that was going up to the roof and disposing material by hand, those guys were military volunteers. Here I found the story of one guy that volunteered http://www.chernobylee.com/articles/chernobyl/interview-with...

Apparently those guys were treated as heroes, got benefits like higher pensions and being able to go to the front of any line (cool!).

Nice try, Soviet Propaganda Ministry.

Nobody volunteered, this was soviet russia. The 'bio-robots'[1] were all culled from reservist regiments and most of them were absolutely scarred shit of going in and cleaning up.

Even the miners who worked to re-support the foundation were never 'asked' - they were simply bought onto the site and dumped there.

The full time military units never went anywhere near the reactor - that was for the reservists. They needed the military units to keep everybody else inline.

As a person who's family survived eastern euro communism, I can tell you that your view of it is greatly, greatly skewed and straight out of what they wanted people to believe.

there was no 'please' or 'thank you' or 'yes' or 'no' - there was say nothing, or be missing.

checkout this excellent doco about the biorobots and the cleanup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vMTdSAm1w

[1] Why they were called biorobots is chilling. The roof of and surroundings of the reactor had to be cleaned up. They bought in robots, but they would break down due to the high radiation exposure. It is estimated that on the roof it only took 40 seconds of exposure to receive a lethal dose. When the robots broke down, the army response command bought in reservists who they dubbed the 'bio-robots'. These guys were given sheets of lead to stick to themselves to provide some protection, and then sent up to the roof holding a shovel in 1 minute intervals. Some of the bio-robots made 5 or more trips - there were almost 200,000 of them in total, and it is estimated that over 25,000 died right afterwards, and the majority are now disabled or dead. All of the official reports were downplayed and the incidents covered up until after the wall fell.

Just to add to the public thrashing of your comment..

My Estonian father-in-law was given 5 minutes notice to pack his bags at 5am, and taken to Chernobyl along with many other Estonians. He had no choice. He was not told where they were going.

Thankfully, his task was to be a driver for the Russian officals (who wisely stayed some distance away from the reactor), rather than clearing up the power station.

4200 people who "volunteered" in a similar manner currently reside in Estonia. Many of those who were taken have since died.

Just in case anyone is wondering, levels of radiation in Shinjuku, Tokyo, have remained at about 0.05µSv/hr for the day, tapering off from 0.1µSv/hr for a few hours very early this morning (before the evacuation from Dai-Ichi). Equivalent to about one chest x-ray each month. Normally the amount in Tokyo is 0.035µSv/hr.

Instead of committing Seppuku the responsible executives should form a bucket brigade ...

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