#reactor 3

[parttimereporter]

Sorry to ruin a new year..

The beginning of a year always comes with hope--you can make plans and resolutions. On January 1, everything seems possible.. 

After I was done the traditional sauerkraut dinner today with family, I began thinking a bit about my own resolutions.  I have some hopes and dreams for better employment, to successful train a child to use a potty, and to attempt to stop a puppy from biting. There are some other personal aspirations that I'd rather not share with the world through a website..

The last thing I want to see are hopes dashed by some God awful world event.. we are victims too often to fate, evil, and plain old bad luck..

So when I saw a link posted on Drudge tonight about the United States government ordering 14 million doses of potassium iodide, it was unsettling. The source, of course, is Alex Jones' INFOWARS.. so there are some big iodized grains of salt I chose to take with the information..but the information shared there is directly from the government's FedBizOpps site..

I figured.. maybe this is normal.. Maybe this is alright.. Just another order on the federal site, and someone paranoid website owner took it the wrong way.

And then there is this..

A plume of mysterious smoke is rising from reactor 3 at Fukushima in Japan.. You can read more from RT.COM on that. 

I saw that information posted tonight on Weatherboy Weather's Facebook page.. He was hit hard by commentary on his post concerning Reactor 3's smoke rising .. people called the story a hoax, fear mongering, and fake.

But the information is very, very real..much to the horror of the world--whatever parts of that are actually paying attention to the Fukushima nightmare.

If you think that RT is not a valuable source of information, there are some others you may want to consider on this same developing story:

From COUNTERPUNCH: The Mystery Plume Rising Over Fukushima's Reactor 3

The ECOLOGIST: Fukushima meltdown? Mystery steam rising over Reactor 3

Voice of Russia: Steam over Fukushima as sign of catastrophe: 89 tons of deadly ...

The ECOLOGIST does take into consideration some other possibilities, besides an apocalyptic meltdown, such as the smoke is happening because rain is hitting stray fuel elements. But the other portions of the story are more troubling: A meltdown may be taking place, or corium has reached groundwater and a complete meltdown has occurred, something that will reach the Pacific Ocean.

I have reported lots of Fukushima since 2011. Even though I have re-posted some horrid news about the events there, including recent information that Japan is not only silencing people telling the truth about the disaster, but also recruiting the homeless to clean up the radioactive mess, I have tried to believe that things will work out.. that Fukushima is a long-distance nightmare, something happening somewhere 'there' and its disturbing developments will not impose pain anywhere else. 

But those simply ways to tell myself everything is alright may be out the proverbial window with this information of strange smoke rising. 

I am not at the alarmist level just yet, with one of those 'bring out your dead' sources being Turner Radio Network telling people along the West Coast to prepare for an immediate meltdown at Fukushima.

The world was told this by TEPCO: The process of removing spent fuel rods was going to be delicate and dangerous. 

There still may be some hope, though.. A website named FUKUSHIMAUPDATE.COM has a story running trying to tame down the flames of fear over the reactor 3 steam.. The site also offered up some more factual information, again, downplaying any cataclysmic event.. 

So ....all eyes on reactor 3. At least for whatever eyes are looking at it. Unless there are still journalists being told to keep quiet about what is happening at Fukushima..

[annesewell]

According to a leaked tape of an internal meeting, a company charged with decontaminating the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, forced workers to lower their radiation readings.

The workers were given lead boxes by a senior executive, which they were told to make into shields. They were told to place these over the dosimeters and, as lead effectively blocks radiation, significantly lower readings were produced... read more.

[jnshourly-blog]

2011/03/18 Status update

In general, factual updates are slow currently. It seems that the water spraying to cool down the reactors isn't very effective so far, and they're trying to reconnect power to run water pumps to cool the reactors. It's rumored that the water has run dry in the fuel pool at Reactor 4, but I can't find hard confirmation of this from any source yet.

Reuters:

http://af.reuters.com/article/metal...0110318?sp=true

quote:

TOKYO, March 18 (Reuters) - Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear reactor in sand and concrete may be the only way to prevent a catastrophic radiation leak, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.

  Officials said they still hoped to fix a power cable to at least two reactors to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, one of the most critical of the plant's six.

  It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged that burying the sprawling complex was an option, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters were having little success.

  "It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.

...

Japan's nuclear agency spokesman, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said it was also unclear how effective spraying water on the reactors from helicopters had been on Thursday. The priority was to get water into the spent-fuel pools, he said.

  "We have to reduce the heat somehow and may use seawater," he told a news conference. "We need to get the reactors back online as soon as possible and that's why we're trying to restore power to them."

  Asked about burying the reactors in sand and concrete, he said: "That solution is in the back of our minds, but we are focused on cooling the reactors down."

  Jaczko said the cooling pool for spent-fuel rods at the complex's reactor No.4 may have run dry and another was leaking.

  An official at the plant operator said he expected power to be restored at its most troubled and damaged reactors -- No.3 and No.4 -- by Sunday. Engineers are trying to reconnect power to the least damaged reactors first.

[jnshourly-blog]

Some info on the water truck spraying

From Shinobo:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/201...4746581000.html I'll try and translate this as best I can. Approximately 30 tons of water were expelled by the special fire engines into Reactor 3. The shooting finished approximately an hour ago. The government has demanded the JSDF create a contingency plan in case the water plan fails. Also there were evidently 5 fire engines. If I'm reading this right, all of the workers engaged in this acviity were safely inside the fire trucks. Something about them all being safe from the radiation. As an additionally piece of info, the team that tried to use high pressure hoses but was unable to continue because of the radiation was a special riot control squad from the Tokyo Metro Police.

[jnshourly-blog]

SDF attempting use of special fire engine

After the police had to halt their attempt earlier, the SDF are now reporting they will be replacing said water cannon with one of their own fire engines, as reported by NHK.

Edit: Some reports note the engine is already in place and spraying Reactor building 3.