Fukushima's No. 1 reactor building radiation level rises

Hmmm... 370 tanks (made of what, with a life of how long, I wonder), sitting on the surface of the ground, to hold 40,000 tons?

It is said that there are over 100,000 tons of radioactive water in those basements, so these tanks will go part-way to relieving the situation, I guess, while they set up that French water filtration system.

Honda's Ashimo was found hidden in disguise on a train heading South.

So much for Japanese robotics.

This is not enough storage. We need to have filtration systems going on and heavy duty to clean up this mess.

Good luck.

Quick question for all those science buffs out there.

If the water in the basement of Reactor Number 1 is at 50 degrees C, or 122 F, what is making it so hot?

Is the cooling water that is being poured onto the melted fuel inside the reactor vessel becoming hot as it leaks down through the bottom of the reactor vessel and down through/around the floor of the containment building?

The worst is yet to come!

The worst is yet to come!

prayers nothing but prayers !

@NF: But the apologists will NOT believe it and WE already know but yep, keep shouting it, the apologist-rationalizing camp has got a few more empty tents in it, and that counts for something. However, the despicable release of all that radiation continues unabated.

Radioactive water has been leaking from the plant

AND GASES!

The hot water in the basement must have come into direct contact with nuclear fuel or corium, no doubt about that. The interesting question is where this contact occurred: inside the leaking reactor pressure vessel, into which the water was initially injected, or in the containment vessel. In the latter case, this would imply that a fair amount of corium already left the reactor pressure vessel (the rpv could even be empty, that would explain why it is so relatively cold). Then there is only one barrier left between the molten core and the environment. Very scary thought!

"Unlike the No. 2 and No. 3 units at the plant, there is no valve aimed at preventing reverse flows of steam at the No. 1 unit."

Why not? Once again, completely neglectful.

What is wrong with you people? Stop making mountains out of molehills. I have learnt from experts here on JT that this is no big deal. In fact radiation can be pretty good, it can prevent e coli and such in foods, how great is that?

Tepco are great and are doing their best, we owe them our lives for their integrity and high safety standards.

It's a bit of radiation big deal, i am going sunbathing near the plant with klein2 tomorrow and we won't die and nor will you. Everything is under control and you get more radiation from eating 1,742 bananas a day, so stop fear mongering people.

stevecfc -- great post.

Yeah, well said. I need to go and catch some rays too.

The reading means that a worker is exposed to the maximum limit of 250 millisieverts, set for the ongoing emergency at the plant, after just about four minutes. TEPCO said its workers have no plan to work in that area of the plant, but added it will carefully monitor developments.

Those TEPCO germs should all grow a collective pair and go in there and get to work. Even the Soviets had no problems getting volunteer "bio-robots" who went in and took one for the team at Chernobyl, knowing the probable consequences. Watch the docos if you don't believe me. Cry me a river, TEPCO grubs - get in there and start fixing this crap up!

PS - and I don't mean the "temp" workers - they should NOT be exposed to risk - the TEPCO staffers should be in there at the coalface cleaning up this screw-up...

Oh oh...another TEPCO-apologist/fan strikes! LOL

you get more radiation from eating 1,742 bananas a day.

The radioactive isotope found in banana is Potassium-40. Brazil nuts and lima beans have more K-40 than bananas, read meat, carrots and white potatoes have almost the same amount. It poses no threat to humans.

The main radioactive isotopes emitted to environment from Fukushima reactors are Iodine-131 and Cesium-137. They are human produced isotopes and do not exist in nature. Iodine-131 is the major risk for children as Iodine is selectively absorbed by thyroid gland.

This is not the case for naturally occurring K-40.

Basically for living organisms, we cannot compare K-40 and I-131 at all.

P.S. Wikipedia has a good introductory article about this banana equivalent dose (BED) thing.

The TEPCO managers and politicans that profited from all the backroom deals and ongoing safety violations should be forced to seppuku by radiation clean-up in the fukushima tomb !

So we are down to weekly updates of horror and gloom... on weekends, just like all the rest of Japan's "important" news.

Look. The radiation INSIDE of the reactor buildings will go up, or the radiation OUTSIDE the reactor buildings will go up. Guess which one is good news.

The article really does its best to surprise me, but it fails. There is more radioactive water, but they are going to use it for cooling, or they can process it to take out radionuclides. Rains are coming? Well, that means more water might be released, but it is also more diluted.

I don't know. This is all going to take awhile. I am pretty sure that all of this could be resolved faster, but why? The longer they wait, the better it gets. They won't bring in heavy equipment to move rods and fuel and all the rest until it has all cooled down. They won't want to expose workers any more than they have to.

Somewhere along the line, most of the doomsayers here are going to decide that their greatest health risk is from cell phones or acetominophen or mercury in their fish. Or 0157 E. coli. Just make sure that you tell the press which way the winds are blowing so they can keep up.

I hope someone is working on changing the control areas. The evacuees should be getting back to their homes, and many of the evacuated and controlled areas are safe.

I am much much more concerned about the government than TEPCO at this stage. TEPCO has shown an excellent track record at working this problem. The gov is dropping the ball by not revising its policy of "get everybody out" to something more like "give people their lives back along with reasonable levels of risk". Cordon off the really hot areas and let everyone else get back to work.

If I had been evacuated, I would be champing at the bit to get back to my home, and if it were in an area with anything up to 30 mSv per year or so, I would probably just go back and tell the government to go fly. My view is that the gov did the right thing by evacuating people. Now they are just being lazy and passing the buck. They should be working actively to get these people home and get these communities working again.

I have not heard ZIP about an "exit strategy". Kan is just dragging this out even though MEXT data show it is not as bad as most people think. If he "trusts MEXT" and demands Hamaoka's shut down, the should "trust MEXT" and get these people back to their homes.

"And, given TEPCO's and the government's track record to-date, it is foolish to assume anything will go as well as hoped."

Funny you should bring that up. Saw a great blog recently on the levels of anxious messages used on Japanese Twitter. There were huge spikes showing fear and worry near each event following 3.11, and most were related to radiation. MOST.

That surprises the heck out of me because not a single person has died from radiation there. Nobody will either, I believe. So it could be said that most of the fear and worry following 3.11 has been entirely pointless. Groundless. Baseless. Foolish. Of zero merit or consequence.

If someone had told me on 3.16 that things in Fukushima were going to work out ok, I would have believed them. I did. Others, in fact ALL the foreigners I knew, fled in panic based on blind fear. A sobering display of mass foolishness.

Almost all have come back. You are saying they are making the foolish decision NOW by coming back. Is that right? Or did they make the foolish decision then? They have made their own choices, showing that your statement is foolish.

@Klein: It always amazes us that people will sit down at a computer to whinge about the awfulness of science (I'd be rather proud to be an ''apologist'' for it myself - don't fancy returning to the cave though), apparently with no sense of irony at all. Back to papyrus and quills for you though, eh? The science of the disaster. Look into it.