YokosoNews From Japan Update X3

From Katz on YokosoNews: he watches the Japanese news and interprets it for English speaking people. Here is information from multiple news conferences in the last couple of hours. He did social information before this disaster. They are trying to not say anything negative about the government at this time and be responsible during the emergency. Helping keep the population from panicing is a big goal because they can't do what they need to do to help themselves and others in a panic state. Some of the information being reported in the U.S. is wrong.

Anything in parentheses is my comment.

The officials/scientists in Japan on the news media said for a while they were not sure what was on fire while the U.S. news was reporting a specific reactor . They say they could not see due to the smoke and the radiation was too high to send people in due to high radiation. It could have been #3 or #4 or a cooling pool. (The cooling pool is a very likely source of smoke.)

The science people say many sensors are broken which makes figuring out what is on fire by remotely using instruments difficult. They say they can't cool down the fuel rods because they can‘t figure out what to even work on. Now they are saying the fire could be a third nuclear reactor, they just don't know.

One of them says the fuel rods may be exposed to the air, but they don’t know. The general picture from what they are saying is just a big cluster. They also sound very stressed. They exchanged the fuel in the storage pools 9 months ago, there are 514 of them under the cooling process. If the temp is greater than 1200 they may be hot enough to burn.

They are trying to organize more fire trucks to help feed water and any kind of pump to help with the water. (This is just desperate. OMG.)

Now another guy reports they took a picture from a mountain and it looks like #3 (northwest corner) is the one smoking.

(These reactors were built by idiots (GE) and have spent rods which cool above the reactors, so spent rods on fire could take the whole reactor down.) The Japanese government doubled the normal exposure of radiation allowed for nuclear reactor workers so they can stay longer. (There has been a report they may have received lethal doses in some cases.)

From Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company):

They have now announced plans to pour water from helicopters. They will pour it gradually to prevent some kind of problem that could occur from lots of water poured at once and investigating the safety factors of using a helicopter. They claim they are getting information faster.(Japan’s prime minister was pissed he did not get information quickly enough, that‘s why they said that.)

Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced anything is possible, but they will judge based on the current circumstances. (Reading between the lines here) They say they are trying their best to prepare to pour the sea water in the reactor.

A reporter asks if they are going to ask for help from the U.S. They say many countries are offering to help and the U.S. is providing pump(s)?

A minor amount of radiation has been detected in Tokyo. Reporter asks about evacuation plan. Now they go into the song and dance about exposure at all times to radiation from x-rays and air flight. They will judge based on the current circumstances. (Reading between the lines here) They say they are trying their best to prepare to pour the sea water in the reactor.

A reporter asks if they are going to ask for help from the U.S. They say many countries are offering to help and the U.S. is providing pump(s)?

They go into the song and dance about how people are exposed to radiation from x-rays, air flights, etc, again. (Of course they don’t mention many of the nuclides are different). They say they are coordinating with police, etc. and soon will make an announcement. A reporter asks if this will be enough if there is a melt down. They say they are doing a simulation and have an evacuation plan in place based on the current situation. If a melt down happens they will get ready for it. (Why plan ahead for God’s sake?)

They discuss the food shortages and urge people not to go and just buy out the stores which will cause a shortage for others. They especially would like those outside the disaster area to stop buying up all the food. They discuss transportation problems and ask people to not buy up gasoline. They discuss power shortages due to the lack of nuclear power plants and the public must get used to a society with less power. People in Japan must conserve energy because it goes to the ravaged areas first. They have asked other countries for help with fuel.

The journalists complained about Tepco confusing them. They are trying to allow the information to only come from one source. They say they don’t want to make hasty decisions because of the safety of the workers.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano said the Prime Minister has not gone home yet, but he was told to rest so he could have the ability to make judgments. People all over Japan have been very concerned he would collapse due to his constant work since the earthquake, etc.

Japan Security Committee (They are the agency that over sees Tepco):

There has been a variable pattern of radiation today 900 to 2036 to 6046 to 2.3 to2.9 to 3091, all milisieverts (and much more) and #3 reactor water level is down (I thought they could not get this kind of information). (However, all kinds of numbers are thrown around, it is very confusing).

There was a rise in radiation earlier and they ordered the workers to leave the site. People do go there to collect data however. They say the radiation is down now and the earlier reading was wrong (It was just a math error by a non-scientist). For a while they did not know if the radiation was coming from #2 or #3 as #2 has damage to the suppression chamber. Now with the readings down Tepco is sending workers back to the site. They think the reading is 10 milisieverts unconfirmed. Now they are saying the smoke is coming from #3 reactor, but the radiation is coming from #2 due to damage. The pressure of #2 has increased, but they do not know why. They assume the supply chamber is damaged, but they have no confirmation. They want to hear confirmation from Tepco. There is an 8 meter hole in #4 reactor. (They are very scientific or as Katz says, “More geeker than us.” (They aren’t more geeker than me, lol.)

(They report information and then someone else will say it was not correct, but there are many people very concerned with making sure accurate information is given. This has a lot to do with the technical nature of the problem and difficulties in such a chaotic mess as Japan is in now. Remember they had another major earthquake which caused more damage in another area along with all the other problems. There is way to much for any government to manage, there is of course mass confusion. People are working very hard to help their people. The workers at the nuclear power plants are heroes who are risking their lives to try to limit the damage for everyone else. They are very focused on helping those who are outside in freezing conditions and hungry.) When they find dead bodies they put a red flag to mark them because they will be covered with snow and can’t take care of them yet.

The governor of Tokyo has essentially said the earthquake/tsunami was divine punishment, but the news media in Japan is not hyping it because there are too many more important things going on. Katz says, “We don’t care about him now, we are too busy saving lives.” (Wow, in the U.S. our news media would report the idiots before helping the victims.) All through all of the reports there were many earthquakes.

Katz says start saving money because they will recover and want people to come to their country.

They were talking about Anderson Cooper because he is in Japan. Katz had no idea who he was and said he would only talk with him if he was good :).

Update #1: They have called for the National Security Forces to get their helicopters ready to haul water. At the nuclear power plant there are 180 workers trying to clean up the radiated debris from the tsunami and explosions.
From Katz: “If people tell me we are screwed, what’s the level of the screwed?” The reason he says this is he enjoyed the luxury of the electricity and did not complain about the nuclear power plants.

Update #2: Self Defense of Japan around 4 PM deployed helicopters to go pour water into the reactor. This morning in Japan, their Wednesday, smoke from #3 reactor is coming from the suppression pool of the spent fuel due to increased temperature and vaporizing water. Then later they detected higher radiation, then it went back down. #2 is leaking radiation. #3 is running out of water for cooling. #4 has rising temperature, it has spent fuel rods which were cooling. #5 and #6 were off line from before the earthquake. They evacuated 70 workers from the site during the high radiation. Now the 180 workers (180 heroes) are continuing to remove the debris from the blasts, etc. They are all being monitored for radiation closely. Some towns started to detect higher radiation due to the loss of radiation from the plant earlier at levels of no concern. The government keeps repeating the airplane and background radiation spiel. The two missing workers that have been reported as being killed in an explosion were actually swept away by the tsunami. There is no radiation threat in Tokyo. There were injuries with an old hydrogen blast and the people were sent to the hospital. Radiation was worse today than yesterday.


#1,#2, #3 are being ventilated to extract the gases and drop pressure so they can use more water to cool the reactors, fire trucks are standing by. There are over 7000 people missing with over 11,000 missing or dead at this point.

Emperor Akihito held a rare press conference (He is basically a figure head). He expresses regret to the victims, says the power plants are in critical condition and he hopes the workers will resolve the situation as soon as possible. He discussed all the people suffering from lack of food and energy while hoping to rebuild soon. The emperor is impressed by all the people in Japan who are working to help and all the international rescue teams who came to Japan to help under dangerous conditions. He hopes the people stay calm and help each other. He hopes they can overcome the circumstances and he knows the victims will have a hard time. He calls on everyone to offer support and asks the victims not to give up. He asks everyone to help the people in the disaster area a long time.

Katz explains that when engineers are giving press conferences it may not go very well because they are not good at such things. (They are talking over the heads of most people at times as well and keep the journalists confused. If scientists went on the news in this country and started giving out so many facts it could cause seizures)

Update #3: Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks and Spent Fuels at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station from November 16 2010.