Sunday, February 26, 2012

(Updated with Additional Photos) Photo of Fukushima I Nuke Plant in Bleak Winter

From Enformable.

Kyodo Tsushin News took the video on February 26, 2012 from a helicopter. To view the video, go here.

Other than the tarp-covered Reactor 1 building and cranes to remove large debris, it looks the same as, say 6 months ago. From this angle, the Reactor 4 building looks just like it was on the day "a fire broke out" on March 15, 2011. In that sense, the plant is very "stable" - hardly anything changed after nearly a year.

Click to enlarge.


Screenshots from the Kyodo video:




From the last photo, it looks like TEPCO will soon run out of space to put those storage tanks for the treated water and the highly radioactive waste water.

NHK has their video here.

24 comments:

Atomfritz said...

Expecting more leaks at this temperature around the critical water melt point I looked at the Tepco handouts page http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/index-e.html and bingo! The leaks start to amass these days.

Tepco also seems to really "care" about the wellness of their workers.
Now they announced to change from the active carbon filter masks to (cheap) particle filters. The fact that these do not absorb radioactive gases and small hot particles seems to be of little concern.

Anonymous said...

Unit 1 seems to have almost nothing intact behind that big tent.

There are more pictures on it at cryptome.org (I put a link on my blog to it)

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

That's from SARRY. I was writing a post and got side-tracked. Thank you.

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

Thank you for posting these photos. Looks like at least 50 water storage tanks which is just an unsustainable method of dealing with the problem. That said after viewing these photos I have another major concern. Please, tell me that those are not hundreds of tanks of Hexafluoride gas? That's a by product of enrichment which may have been done at Fukushima given there was some research going on there or certainly in Ibaraki and then stored there. Hexafluoride gas is extremely lethal and of equal concern to radiation. Those tanks should not be stored near the ocean and certainly not near a facility that may explode. I hope I am wrong about what they are. Please find out more if you can on what is contained within them. If a jet crashed in that field of tanks it could release a plume of gas that if swept south into Japan could killed everyone in one day. This gas is highly highly lethal. A 5 Seivert exposure of radiation all at once will kill you in 14 days. Only a sniff of gas equal to smelling someone's perfume will kill you in one day of Hexafluoride gas and there is not enough duct tape in the world to keep it out of your house if something bad happened. It should be miles and miles away from Fukushima. It is just completely unacceptable for it to be stored there.

no6ody said...

Ms. Brackett, if you are not a troll, you have been listening to them. There is no such thing as hexafluoride gas--uranium hexafluoride is prolly what you mean, and it is not something you could store in a concrete tank for a five minutes, as it would react with the water vapor in the air. It is also a solid at room temp and many thousands of tons are stored in steel tanks all over the US. One Sievert is enough to kill a person, tho the time frame is variable.

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

@no6ody, excuse me for my nomenclature, lol. I never stated what form or what pressure the gas may be contained at in those blue tanks but they certainly are the steel tanks used and if ruptured or corrosion occurs due to sea breeze exposure the solid returns to gas and will ignite when in contact to water vapor. I never implied they were stored in those concrete buildings either although your point further illustrates my duct tape one in that a home is not a safe haven to escape it's release. Only enough land space will do that and it's unconscionable that TEPCO would store these so near the town of Fukushima even if the quake had never happened if in fact that is what they are?

Anonymous said...

Ms. Brackett, these tanks are not for gas. Where have you been all these months?

I really do suggest you go somewhere else where your level of intelligence and knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

These tanks certainly are for storage and my question is what is stored in them? When safety is at hand there are no "unintelligent" questions to be asked. If you want me to go into detail on how the fluoride metal can electro plate itself to the steel interior walls of these tanks, I will but there is no excuse to be rude over a simple safety question.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Tanks contain water, as they have since June 2011. That's why, probably, anon asked rhetorically "where have you been?".

Information on all the activities at the plant since March 11, 2011: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/press/f1-np/index-e.html

Anonymous said...

Piss off Karen brackett

Anonymous said...

"I hope I am wrong about ..."

Karen, for all future reference the answer to whether you are wrong, hopefully or not, is YES.

Ivan said...

Pictures looking like vibrant Saturday night club scene in Bratsk, or Gulag Angara prison labor camp.

Anonymous said...

...nuclear winter

Anonymous said...

>If you want me to go into detail on how the fluoride metal can electro plate itself to the steel interior walls of these tanks,

m'kay how does it do that?

Atomfritz said...

>If you want me to go into detail on how the fluoride metal can electro plate itself to the steel interior walls of these tanks,

Actually, the reason for the embarrassing total failure of the Rokkasho uranium enrichment plant are metal deposits in the centrifuges.

There is very little published about the details how this happened, turning the 4000+ Rokkasho centrifuges into hazardous radiochemical waste. Probably much face-saving is involved in this, as this was a gross failure of the Japanese nuclear industry to copy the Urenco process developed in Germany. (I am quite sure North Korea will have learnt from Japan's mistakes.)

Urenco probably isn't unhappy with this, as the Japanese nuclear industry so still has to enrich their uranium in Germany, which they wanted to avoid by using their Rokkasho plant.

Even if this is going off-topic, I'd really welcome to learn about technical aspects of this so little-talked-about complicated process of metals depositing which hampers the Japanese nuclear industry so much.

Chibaguy said...

@KSB,
I think I know who you are as you have know idea where the city of Fukushima is nor the geography of Japan. Let's just say this is one more place that you will not get away with posting BS. Get on with yourself.

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

Sorry, I left to watch the Oscars. Look, I had never heard of this site before until a few weeks ago when a reporter on a news program asked Gundersen of Fairwinds if there were any good sites to watch and he recommended this site because it reports translations of Japanese news which of course Google translates as well but thought I would check it out and so there you go. So, if it has been discussed on here obviously by my asking the question meant I did not know they are supposedly being used to store water. Just seeing this much of this form of storage was quiet alarming to me. It is good news and do hope that TEPCO has been truthful on the contents. Arevamirpal, thank you for answering my question and for the link.

Anonymous said...

Watch the oscars? WTF? ....Google translates this site? Dont think so, Ultraman does the translating .....

Anonymous said...

Google translates Japanese to English--try it out, see what you get.

Wow, KSB, you seem to know a heck of a lot about nothing.

Anonymous said...

Google translate is shit , i used it and it mangles the fuck out of japanese... Maybe KSBs head is the same..

Anonymous said...

Gundersen mentioned this site and enenews, like 8 months ago. And Google "translates". And this person is not a bit embarrassed, and opens her mouth about things she has no clue on, as if the accident happened only a few weeks ago.

I can't take it any more.

Anonymous said...

I can't take the condescending "I am an American here to help you" attitude.

And Jesus Christ nailed to a stick, how can Karen, a former nuke fuel operator for NFS be so harebrained? Is this the norm for people working in the nuke industry? Should I even wonder after TEPCO's stelar performance? Fuck was I ever naive all this time assuming the nuke industry had standards and employed intelligent competent people to run its business.

I almost want to read the now "all caps" Finnish troll rants instead...not quite...but almost.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Oh no... I can already see him, screaming in all CAPS...

Anonymous said...

Maybe something horrible happened to him on his latest fishing expedition where he lost use of his digits. One can hope, can't one.

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