IAEA group inspects nuclear plant at Onagawa

Apparently the tsunami just topped the wall there at Onagawa, so they were lucky to get away with a flooded basement.

The Japanese can inspect all that they want, but when it comes down to the truth, the radiation from these reactors re all over the place in Japan.

I wonder if the inspectors will be offered large fat envelopes of "omiyage"?

soon we shall be told that the onagawa nuclear reactors are safe for a restart. And before you know it, all the idled reactors will be online until another catastrophy. Then another round of inspections and reassurances, and so on.......

Well, if one needs (and Japan does not) to restart, Onagawa is as safe as it gets. Good place, high ground, although incompetent, out-of-date and toothless supervisory body (non-existent at the moment, actually).

Nuclear energy with all the safeties on is much, much more expensive than shale gas, and impossible to justify with economics. But Japan's response is to remove the expensive safeties. Riiight! Seems legit, Japan.

Why is nuclear power important? It's a thing called peak oxygen. There is a shortage of organisms that can generate oxygen in the carbon cycle. That's what the problem is. We need safe nuclear fuel and energy in the future, but none of the reactors currently being used are safe. All nuclear reactors vent tritium. The reason is you cannot maintain micro cracks between the containment area that generates steam which is mainly steam turbines or water turbines or whatever. It's basically nuclear reactions heating water that forms steam or hot water. There is no way to completely contain that. And when you have neutrons striking water, it creates heavy water which is ditritium and tritium which is two neutrons in a water molecule. So it is impossible to not generate tritium. Tritium will cause a slippage of your DNA when it tries to replicate.

How catastrophic does it actually have to be? Inspections that continue to ignore 1 off events, that do happen! Yep all is well for the N-village

Been up there, seen the results, temporary housing has become permanent, land unusable till my grandson has grandchildren at best. The upside?...cheep (it's costing a bomb) safe? (really...that's the argument?) we need it to stop people getting distressed (AC) in the summer heat!

Again how catastrophic do things need to be?

The Government in excile? Due to radiation? The creating of an unlivable environment,? The upsides are hard to find.

Whoops! The correct spelling for ditrium is deuterium.

zichiAug. 01, 2012 - 08:32AM JST

There was also a fire in one of the turbine halls.

There was an electrical fire in a small switch box inside the hall that had nothing to do with the reactor itself.

alladinAug. 01, 2012 - 09:32AM JST

The Japanese can inspect all that they want, but when it comes down to the truth, the radiation from these reactors re all over the place in Japan.

So is the radiation from everything everywhere. Onagawa did not release significant levels of radiation, and in fact, the only radiation alarm to trip was tripped by radiation from OUTSIDE the plant.

Basroil,

"significant levels" hey, l would dare say any release of radiation is significant but l know as a TEPCO spokesman you will disagree.

@CrazyJoe: In fact, if You handle tritium properly and collect it, it is not such a big issue. The half-life is less than two weeks, the decay product is non-radioactive (Helium 3) and also very important for scientific and engineering applications (low temperature applications - mixture of Helium 3 and Helium 4 is the most powerful known coolant). If You fumble around with tritium - well, India showed clearly what I mean - workers get irradiated. Deuterium on the other hand is completely harmless, since it is neither radioactive nor anyhow toxic. In fact it is present at the ppm level in normal water and even massive emissions won't change anything about that.

If Onagawa could be restarted or not really has to be seen (if it makes sense is an independent, quasi-religious question). Even during completely ordinary operations of a nuclear plant, there are radiation spikes (e.g. from exchanges of fuel elements, where the containment vessel has to be partly opened). As long as the IAEA report can exactly describe what happened in Onagawa and which part of the plant is responsible for the radiation leak, I don't see it any more critical than any report about another plant. However, I don't believe that they will disclose the investigation results. Transparency and nuclear power industry don't fit together somehow.

@Johannes Weber

Thanks for the correction.

zichiAug. 01, 2012 - 03:27PM JST

So you are stating the radiation from the Fukushima plant reached Onegawa? The alarm tripped at 20 microsieverts/hr.

I'm not stating it, IAEA is. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima130311.html